Journey Towards Christmas
Convoy at Dusk
Official History of the 1st Ammunition Company Second New Zealand Expeditionary Force1939-45
DEPARTMENT OF INTERNAL AFFAIRS
BY
COULLS SOMERVILLE WILKIE LTD
CRAWFORD STREET DUNEDIN
For help and encouragement in writing this history the author wishes to thank Lieutenant-Colonel W. A. T. McGuire, Majors P. E. Coutts, J. D. Fenton, R. C. Gibson, and S. A. Sampson, Captain B. J. Williams, WO I I. McBeth, WO II A. L. Salmond, Sergeants S. T. Midgley and G. McG. Mowat, Corporal G. J. McKay, and Drivers D. Falconer, G. W. Harte, and G. P. Laverick.
Foreword
By Lieutenant-General Sir Bernard Freyberg, vc, gcmg, kcb, kbe, dso, lld.
The publication of this history gives me an opportunity, which I welcome, of paying a tribute to the work in the
This book is a record of their achievements. They were a 1st Echelon unit, and were one of the few of our Division that took part in General Wavell's Desert Campaign against the Italians in
I am inclined to think that the New Zealand Division's greatest contribution to the war effort was during the early years in North Africa.
It has been said that ‘The Western Desert was a tactician's paradise, and a Quartermaster-General's nightmare’. The campaign in North Africa was certainly a war of movement. Mobility and administration played a decisive part. A motorised force was needed. New Zealanders were ideal men for this class of warfare. They found their way across the unmapped, featureless Desert by night as well as day with uncanny skill, almost by instinct.
In this book is the story. It tells us of their formation, their work in training and in battle. It deals not only with our successes but also our disasters, such as
When I said good-bye to the Division in
I would go further and say without their resource and skill we could never have attempted ‘the turning movements’ in North Africa at which this Division of ours was so formidable.
I hope many will buy this book and that military students to come will study it, and glean from the pages the lessons which abound therein.
Governor-General
One time General Officer Commanding,
Contents
List Of Illustrations
List Of Maps
In the biographical footnotes the occupations given are those on enlistment. The ranks are those held on discharge or at the date of death.
Chapter 1
Design For A Unit
Design For A Unit
The advanced party consisted of The main body of the
Scon we were marching down
By the time they reached Hopuhopu some members of the party were in a mood to treat everything as a gigantic joke and the sight of a group of officers in front of an endless prospect of greyish-white bell tents, the former as smart and polished as the latter were dirty and dilapidated, did nothing to damp their spirits. When the
On the whole,
In the afternoon fifty-two others joined us, bringing our strength to about 156.
When you volunteer for the Army you make, as it were, a pact with the Devil. You surrender not quite your immortal soul but at least your immediate hopes and ambitions, your independence and freedom, and the kindly and familiar ways of home. But the Devil is notoriously a gentleman and he grants you something in return. He frees you from the trouble of earning a living and the responsibility of thinking for yourself. Not a very good bargain perhaps, but something. The new recruit feels as though he has gone back to school, or back even further than that—back to the nursery.
Most of us, if we search our memories, will find that we were happy at Hopuhopu in spite of the continual rain, the leaky tents, the monotonous parades, the appalling food. The meals, everyone will agree, descended to a level of greasy sogginess that was seldom touched at any other time in our Army life. The food itself was
It rained steadily at first and we spent a great deal of time in our tents. Daily our civilian clothes became damper and more disreputable and it was a relief when we were issued with serge uniforms and felt hats. By this time we had rifles and webbing as well, and the cleaning and laying-out of our kit (a performance that was subject to all the bewildering and terrifying taboos attendant on priestly ritual) presented us with an almost insoluble time problem between breakfast and company parade; but the old Army lore, much of which, no doubt, came down to us direct from the Peninsular campaigns, gained rapid currency, and after a few days it was seldom that anyone was unduly late for a parade or conspicuously badly turned-out, though the officers always found something to criticise. Once used to wearing uniform, we dropped quite swiftly into Army ways. It was easier to drill, easier to double when ordered to, and less of an affront to our native independence to stand to attention when addressing an officer, salute him, and call him ‘Sir’.
Some civilian clothing still appeared in the ranks (a few figures proved too obstinate even for Company Quartermaster-
Our officers were all enthusiasts and within the limits of the little training manuals they carried about in their pockets they did their best to make things interesting for us. We were bossed about
Lt-Col W. E. Colton; Regular soldier;
No, we were not driven. Some of the NCOs, being new to authority, may have been guilty of minor pin-pricking, but on the whole the relation between the officers and NCOs and the common herd was one of friendliness tempered with caution. When was dignity endangered? At what point did cheerful obedience become servility? It was too early for people to feel quite certain of their position. Only the OC, with his kindly, unassuming smile, was at ease on
The company was divided into its service components on 13 November, which gave us the nucleus of Company headquarters and Workshops Section and one complete transport section (A Section), and two days later all temporary and acting ranks were relinquished and appointments were made according to trade and other qualifications. As yet we had no transport of our own, and in spite of one or two lectures about ammunition points and the care of vehicles we had only the vaguest notion of what our real work would be. Some of us, no doubt, had schoolday memories of sumpter-mules at Hastings, of waggon trains loaded with luggage and laughing doxies at
What else did we learn at this time? Little, one fears, that was of much practical use to us afterwards. No one showed us the
Between reveille and tea-time we had scarcely a moment to ourselves. There were parades and lectures (hachures and re-entrants went round and round in our heads in company with charger guides and Section 40 of the Army Act), and there were route marches and fatigues. Each day's work ended with half an hour's physical training under Captain Bracegirdle Lt-Col O. Bracegirdle, DSO, ED, m.i.d.; clerk; Dvr R. D. Ward; mechanic;
Fatigues. Burnt porridge to be scraped from dixies, congealed fat from baking pans. Great drums of slops to be carried gingerly towards the latrines first thing in the morning. Parades. Your
By the middle of November we were beginning to behave and look like soldiers. ‘Titch’ Maybury's green hat was only a delightful memory and it was unusual for an officer to be addressed (unless, of course, by ‘Snake Gully’) by any title except ‘Sir’. The influenza epidemic, which had filled the camp hospital and converted some of our tents into sick-bays, had abated, and so had the grey rain. The sun came out and dried the mud and the acres of wet canvas. It sparkled on burnished buttons; it hinted at far, hot lands half the world away. ‘Perhaps we shall go to
After six weeks at Hopuhopu we moved to the newly-constructed camp at
The weather was fine and we made rapid progress with our training and really rapid progress in friendships. We knew now that we should be going overseas as soon as shipping was available and the knowledge made everything, friendship included, twice as important. Previously we had been at liberty to regard our relation with the Army as a military liaison—a chaise longue affair. Now we realised that we were committed to a proper marriage, a marriage that had every chance of being consummated on the battlefield. It was a relief to know where we stood, and our morale bounded.
There had been comparatively little skylarking at Hopuhopu—we had been too busy for one thing and for another tents make indifferent playgrounds—but at
The days hurried by to the slap and creak of marching files and the eternally reiterated three drum beats (one—pause—two: one—pause—two) to which we were learning to subdue the rhythm of our working hours; the evenings went by to the tune of ‘South of the Border’ and a churning babble from the newly-opened wet canteen, the nights to the stealthy pacing of sentries and a grumble of soft snores from the long, darkened dormitories. December came and early in the month Company Quartermaster-Sergeant Robin Hood, Sergeant Athol Buckleigh, Lt A. J. Buckleigh; motor mechanic; Taupo; born Sgt S. J. Mellows; commercial traveller;
Surrounded by mounds of gear—kitbags, sea kits, overcoats, packs, rifles, everything—we sat in a meadow outside
Company Sergeant-Major Colton stood talking to a group of officers. Without his peaked cap, tailored uniform, and Sam Browne he looked smaller, less impressive, more approachable. Like the rest of us he was wearing light khaki drill and a New Zealand felt hat. The officers seemed more approachable too. Their manner suggested a readiness to laugh, crack jokes, hand around cigarettes.
It was one of those pale, indeterminate summer evenings, neither bright nor dull, and the talk and laughter, after rising and falling in the still air hour after hour, had subsided to a low growl. Most of us were drained of energy, for the past three weeks had been extremely strenuous. First there had been final leave, then the wrench of leaving home again. New Year's Night for some of us—self-respect demanded it—had meant sneaking out of camp to
That had occurred yesterday evening, and now, surrounded by our belongings, we waited for the word to move.
‘Up on your feet,’ ordered the sergeant-major, and soon we were marching towards
We were exhausted when we reached the station and more exhausted after we had battled to find seats next to our friends and card partners. There was a small crowd of women and girls on the platform and when the engine gave three snorts and started to move they waved and called out to us. As soon as we felt the movement we settled down, after the immemorial custom of soldiers at the beginning of a long train journey, to empty our water bottles and eat all our rations.
We played poker, sang ‘South of the Border’, and, later in the night, tried to sleep. But the carriages were cold and uncomfortable and there was room on the floor for only a few people at a time. The train rushed through the flying darkness, saying South of the Border, South of the Border, South of the Border, South of the Border, South of the Border. Some of the soldiers were very young, and their faces, streaked with smuts, were childish and weary under the dim lights.
A night journey by rail is the perfect agency for removing
The train came to a halt alongside SS Orion. From then on events moved so quickly that by the time we had finished lunch—and an excellent lunch it was—our ship was anchored in the stream.
When we saw our quarters for the first time we jumped to the conclusion that a mistake had been made and we waited for it to be rectified with much shouting and recrimination and a vast shifting of gear. But nothing happened and we remained in our beautifully-appointed cabins, some of which contained only two berths. All were furnished with electric fires, fans, hot and cold water, white sheets, and fluffy blankets. It was a far cry from the austerities of Hopuhopu, and a slight tendency on the part of some of the officers to behave as though they had arranged the matter with the Orient Line was pardonable under the circumstances.
The Orion was the Commodore's ship, and at seven the next morning, followed by the Strathaird, the Empress of Canada, the Rangitata, and HMS Ramillies, she led the way out of the harbour. In Cook Strait we were joined by HMS Leander and the Dunera and the Sobieski. By nightfall the convoy was well out in the Tasman.
With almost empty decks the Orion trembled through the windy darkness, swishing and humming softly. She seemed barely to be whispering, but the loudest noises from below were quenched and smothered by that whisper. No sound, no chink of light, told of the quick traffic, the bright teeming city, enclosed and hidden. Nothing spoke of it but the currents of warm air that streamed from ventilators and tainted the salt wind with an odour of engine oil, warm bodies, hot pipes, cabbage water. Below the Plimsoll line a frilly whiteness bordered the ship's sides and her sharp forefoot divided the water into twin plumes. Otherwise she was part of the night, though once or twice she gave a sly wink. None of the
There were 1428 troops in the Several changes had been made in our establishment of officers. Our OC was now a major and Capt Bracegirdle had been posted to the 4th Infantry Brigade and Lt Hood to HQ Divisional NZASC. Newcomers were 2 Lt Torbet (who had left us to gain a commission) and 2 Lt R. C. Aitken.Orion and of these 166 were members of the Ammunition Company: eight officers,
After a day or two we felt as though she had been our home for months. The weather was cold at first but this mattered little as we had our comfortable cabins to retire to when work was finished. The training programme continued: lectures, route marches, physical training. We practised anti-aircraft drill on the promenade deck, pausing every now and then to snatch up guns and tripods and flatten ourselves against the bulkhead as marching troops lurched past to the tune of ‘ Capt L. A. Radford; machinist; Maeroa,
In the
On the following morning the troops in the Brig S. H. Crump, CBE, DSO, m.i.d.; Regular soldier; Orion paraded under Colonel Crump
The black bitumen stretched ahead of us in a tremor of heat, and Australian motorists, with mistaken kindness, drove up and down the column with iced drinks, which many of us—for the hospitality of the previous night had left burning thirsts—gulped at a draught. The result, of course, was stomach cramps. By the time we reached
The convoy sailed the next day and shipboard life went on as before, only now we seemed to have more time on our hands: more time to lean over the rail (with the rather thrilling consciousness that if anyone fell overboard he would be likely to stay there); more time to watch the troubled marbles of the water and listen to their interminable swish-swishing against the ship's side, or to look up at night towards the Southern Cross, New Zealand's private constellation, and catch from the corner of an eye the sly progress of a comet, and wonder to see a whole world slipping from star to star as the flying-fish, all day long, had been slipping from wave to wave. And, after the custom of voyagers since the invention of ships, we spent long hours in exchanging preposterous information about dolphins and porpoises and the mysterious
Colombo was our next landfall, and on 30 January we spent an afternoon in the East. It bewildered and astonished us. The whole scene was in technicolour, with lamp-black shadows everywhere, plenty of flake white in the foreground, and a background of chrome yellow, emerald, and ultramarine. There was no haze at all and all the dimensions stood out hard and square like bricks. It was so much like something out of Hollywood (Super-Colossal! Next week at the Regal!! Better than gunga din!!!) that one half-expected to see the producer's name—Darryl F. Zanuck or David O. Selznick—blazing across Heaven.
It dazzled us and it made us thirsty, but ten rupees odd (with Japanese beer at two rupees the bottle) was insufficient for serious thirst-quenching, so most of us wandered around in the hot sun and stared and stared. It was all spread out in front of us: snake charmers—glossy bullocks—money changers—boys beautiful as Mowgli—hideous old wizards with lips and teeth scarlet from chewing areca-nut—vendors of cheap cheroots and expensive ivory or ebony elephants—Somerset Maugham Englishmen—performing mongooses—scampering rickshaws. A number of these were drawn by hot and excited Kiwis who had insisted on changing places with the rickshaw boys regardless of the heat. ‘Fat’ Davison Cpl N. A. Davison; barman-cook; Kohimarama,
We visited wonderful Buddhist temples, and while countless effigies of the Philosopher Prince, with crab-like arms and legs sprouting from improbable places, looked down on us from Nirvana—detached, charitable, ineffably bland—saffron-robed priests lectured us in Oxford English. Finally one would murmur, eyeing us with expectancy: ‘It is the custom…. You pay what you like….’ Our initiation, done in a very delicate and priestly way, to the system of baksheesh.
There was no leave for us the next day and we left for
The Red Sea, too, was a disappointment. It was opaque and unctuous, its appearance suggesting that the Israelites had not only crossed it but had washed up in it after a particularly greasy meal. A hot wind followed us and for two days we sweated and gasped for breath in an atmosphere that seemed to be centrally-heated.
We had known for some time that Egypt was our destination, and as the end of the voyage drew near senior officers lectured us on the customs and geography of the country and medical officers gave grisly little talks from which their audiences, after squirming uncomfortably for twenty minutes, arose dedicated to continence.
The Orion came into the Gulf of
That night the Orion rode at anchor opposite Port Tewfik and we slept in her for the last time. We had finished the first stage of our long journey. The war, which no one really believed in yet, which no one understood yet, least of all the drivers of the Ammunition Company, had been going on for 162 days. It was generally thought that
How wise we had been to come early!
Map of Egypt, 1940-41
Chapter 2
How To See Egypt On A Pound A Week
How To See Egypt On A Pound A Week
WE were tired after our 90-mile train journey from Port Tewfik, and by the time we had marched from Meat and vegetable ration.
In places the surrounding darkness was pale with bell tents and the tops of the nearest ones glowed discreetly orange, but apart from the talk and laughter in our own lines Orion's warm, quivering, and noisy bowels.
The orderly officer made his rounds; orange faded from the tent tops; silence flowed in from the escarpments. Soon we slept, but after a while the cold crept up through our bed-boards and into our very bones.
Although it was still cold when we breakfasted the next morning, by ten o'clock we had been ordered to wear hats and shirts as a protection against the sun. The day was a holiday and we spent it in settling down and generally taking our bearings. No leave to Dvr C. J. O'Brien; carpenter's apprentice; Dvr F. J. Wells; labourer; Manurewa; born NZ, Dvr C. P. Sanders; truck driver;
After a few days the allowance of leave was quite generous and before long our knowledge of
Just to walk through
But the best entertainment of all was provided by the common people of Egypt, the great army of Georges, the street-corner boys, the fellahin: in short, the Wogs (wily oriental gentlemen). Unlike the pashas, beys, and big effendis, who usually went around in a great state of moisture and fuss, as though life were a large auction sale and the best bargain was just going under the hammer, the wog took his world easily. Our attitude towards him, adopted a few days after our arrival in Egypt, never altered. It was made up of amused tolerance, intense exasperation, and the respect due to a
Maleesh—never mind. In their bottomless cynicism (if ever you hear of a romantic wog give us news of him), their delight in a hard bargain, their imperturbable good nature, and their enormous splay feet—which seemed, as it were, to grin up at us, deliciously deflating human dignity, each root-like toe as comic and full of character as a Thurber drawing—we found sources of unending entertainment.
At Ngaruawahia, 1939
On the Orcades at Fremantle
Christmas parcels, Liverpool, 1940
Maudi from the Tura caves
Altogether, what with resisting or surrendering to temptation, eating large and indigestible meals, drinking the mild Stella or the raging zibbib, and carrying on interminable dialogues, compounded of banter and abuse, with our friends the wogs, an evening in
The same cannot be said for the first few weeks of our training in
The weather throughout February was unpredictable—it blew hot and it blew cold. Nevertheless we got through a good deal of training. On the 19th a month-long course in infantry work was started and there were special courses for NCOs, drivers, and motor-cyclists.
During March our training entered a more interesting phase. Using pool transport, we went into the desert on exercises that lasted several days at a time and gave us valuable experience in night driving and taught us a little about sleeping rough. Before that we had believed we were cold at nights! The Workshops' drivers were happier too. They had missed their tools as a man misses tobacco.
At last we were busy in what seemed to us a sensible way. There were camp driving duties, and parties were sent to
April was like March, but when May came we were issued with our full war establishment of vehicles, which included lorries for
We now had vehicles for an ammunition company planned to consist of Company headquarters (three officers and 69 ORs), three transport sections (A Section: two officers, 98 ORs, and four sub-sections with a total of 21 load-carriers; B Section: two officers, 89 ORs, and four sub-sections with a total of 19 load-carriers; C Section: ditto), and Workshops Section (one officer and 44 ORs). Total all ranks, less attachments: 399. Total vehicles, plus staff cars, motor-cycles, and Company headquarters, section headquarters, and Workshops' transport: 129.
The wiseacres who had once predicted that we should never leave New Zealand were now busy predicting that we should never see action. Already a ‘Home-before-Christmas’ clique was in existence. Probably every unit of every expeditionary force in history has possessed a branch of that hardy and pathetic society that annually dissolves itself on the approach of Christmas and as regularly reassembles on Boxing Day.
Extraordinary months! On 9 April
We did take a few precautions, however. We established
During the third week of May, while the Germans were driving towards the Channel ports, we left dhobie had been thrown in for good measure.
We were very comfortable but we were also very busy, for with our fine quarters we had taken over the transport duties in Cairo Sub-area from the
We worked from dawn till dusk. We delivered rations to British troops stationed in the Garrison; we ran a school bus for their children (‘Hey, Mister, my daddy's a sergeant-major! Got any stamps, Mister? Got any small change?’); we carried army clerks from mess to office (this was in the days before Rommel had done away with most of the small amenities of Base life); we carted ammunition from
While the evacuation from
Others were falling asleep too, for the long trips to the ports were a severe strain with only one driver to a lorry.
The road between
We were fortunate in being busy at this time. Spending hours on the parade ground practising the lying-load position would have been intolerable while the shadow of the long night, inexorable as
No one told us, after the end of May, that we should be home before Christmas. We were promised different things: blood, toil, tears. Even the old oil story was in abeyance for a short while.
One of our earliest reactions was to tumble out of bed in the small hours and into a large air-raid trench, which we manned as a defensive position. Machine guns were posted at vital points and our Boys anti-tank rifle was taken from its canvas cover. For a day or two there was quite a Vitai Lampada atmosphere about the Garrison, but nothing came of it—neither jammed gatlings nor dead colonels. No Fascist-inspired mobs, crying on Islam, attempted our barricades, and on the 12th the Egyptian Government broke off diplomatic relations with
None the less the war had moved immeasurably nearer. The lion was right out of his cage now, and from time to time, among the thickets of conjeeture and misinformation, one glimpsed an eye or the flickering of a tawny tail.
There the Might of
Turning west before they reached
We saw with a shock the blueness of the
We started long before dawn on these trips, rushing through sleeping
The Western Desert! The magic syllables punctuated conversation in the
The ferry service, Cairo Sub-area duties, guard and passive air
For weeks past the red flame trees bordering the playing-field had gazed down through long hot afternoons on our victorious cricket team. Of 35 matches played in S-Sgt E. J. Schonau; motor mechanic; Frankton Junction; born Gnr T. H. Woodill; fellmonger; Te Papa,
Yes, it was all mixed and mixed. Much of it was hot desert, and mounting drowsiness, and endless adhesive tape, black and melting at noon. Much of it was long, sweaty waits outside boissons gazeuse—and all the desire in the world centred around those cool bottles of colouring,
Much of it was flame trees drenched in sunlight, and a grittiness underfoot, and the yielding fusion of ball and cricket bat, and the smell, sweetish and persistent, of hot oil, hot engines, hot rubber— and flies buzzing, tirelessly important and importunate; and mosquito nets like gauzy wedding dresses misting a few sleepers in the long barrack-room; and skull-capped Abdul with white galabieh and red sash moving lazily along the verandahs and pausing now and then to intone mournfully and mockingly: ‘Lemonë. Ver' g-o-o-d—ver' hygiene—ver' col'.’
And much of it was flame trees under the warm moon, and the
Early in September our A Section drivers— ‘My chickens' Lieutenant Moon Maj N. C. Moon, m.i.d.; commercial traveller; Takapuna,
The date, 5 September, marks the beginning of a chapter—for the family feeling that was to hold the section together through four long years, those characteristics, that corporate personality (that soul, if you like the word) that was to distinguish A Section from its equally individual companions—aloof B Section, friendly, games-playing C Section, party-loving Workshops, Headquarters, harassed and cynical, and the still unborn Ammunition Platoon with its Cinderella complex—started from the moment when Lieutenant Moon and his chickens took flight before dawn, heading for the The two officers and 70 ORs of A Section took with ‘them only their correct establishment of transport, so the vehicles held for C Section were left without drivers. The situation was met by the attachment of one sergeant and 36 ORs from the RASC.
The sky above
Lieutenant Moon, though, was not pleased. ‘In future,’ he said, ‘you'll use your slit-trenches. And Davies, Dvr N. R. Davies; labourer; Paratu, Walton; born NZ,
Lieutenant Moon was a New Zealander to the core but he spoke with a soft drawl that suggested the Confederate States. When he abused them his chickens could almost hear the ice tinkling in the glasses of mint julep and the darkies singing in the plantations. (And when he called them his chickens, by the way, he meant very much what Long John Silver meant when he spoke of his lambs.) He had a gift for humorous exaggeration and he made full use of it. To appear on parade with the least suspicion of a sidewhisker was to invite the comment that there was no room in A Section for ‘any dam' John Bowles’, and the driver whose vehicle raised the smallest particle of dust in the area was promptly asked what had given him the idea that he was Segrave or Sir Malcolm Campbell. His chickens cursed him and they told stories against him—‘Yes,’ he was supposed to have said while testing one of the vehicles, ‘she certainly is runnin' mighty sick. When you get home just clean number three plug. Guess that'll fix her.’—but they laughed at his jokes and they would have followed him into any Balaclava-like situation you care to imagine if he had said to them, ‘Righti-o! Get weavin'.’ When he left them they gave him a silver cigarette case—and funds were low at the time.
After a week or so at
Towards the end of September it seemed that another transport section might be needed in the Maj L. W. Roberts, MBE, ED, m.i.d.; clerk;
In spite of its voluptuous name, the Virgin's Breast (suggested to Arab geographers by the presence of two conical hills surmounted by stone cairns), the locality was sufficiently sandy and inhospitable to satisfy all requirements. As it was a toughening-up camp the drivers slept in their lorries, than which, surfeited as they were with tents and barrack-rooms, nothing could have suited them better. A wet canteen was established, and impromptu evening entertainments followed automatically. Nightly the Virgin's Breast (our drivers had a coarser name for it) vibrated to shouts and echoes robuster than any that had troubled its innocence through an eternity of passing caravans.
Time softens everything—buildings, bad liquor, memories. The bright enchanted islands—the excitements, the good times we had, the moving on crisp, sunny mornings through countries as strange to us as Cloud-Cuckoo-Land, the suppers of oyster fritters—these alone seem to stand out, whereas the dreary and bitter tasting sea in which they were pin-points only—the monotony, the homesickness, the recurrent feeling (did anyone quite escape it?) that one's individual efforts were doing rather less to win the war than those of the Man in the Moon—seemed misted over for the most part, and by mists rosy and luminous as from reflected sunsets. They were good times, though, and many of us can look back on those days at
Chapter 3
Meeting At Amiriya
Meeting At Amiriya
Birth of a Happy Section
AT this time, while some of us were at
The main body of the Capt J. Veitch; bus driver; born Maj J. D. Fenton, MBE, m.i.d.; foreman motor mechanic;
In no time at all the section's parade-ground work reached an extremely high standard. It could hardly have done otherwise with Sergeant-Major Bill Dillon Maj W. L. Dillon, m.i.d.; Regular soldier; Central Military District,
Sergeants-major in quest of regimental perfection can be extremely trying and the ‘Bull’ spared neither officers nor drivers (the former, perhaps, even less than the latter), but nearly everyone was pleased for his sake when the complete camp guard was chosen from C Section on the day of the Governor-General's visit and when the section defeated all comers from the NZASC in a drill competition.
The section was extremely fortunate in its leaders. Captain Veitch—he was called ‘Scotty’ always—was a man of great energy and personal charm, and the spirit of happy keenness with which he and Second-Lieutenant Fenton imbued their drivers during those early months was felt as an influence for unity long after both officers had gone their ways, one of them to a grave in
July ended and final leave came along. Then, on 27 August, C Section (91 all ranks) boarded the Orcades at Mauretania and the Empress of Japan, which were carrying the Perth Achilles, whose honours were fresh upon her. In those days the Battle of the
The next morning the convoy swung west and soon the Southern Alps had faded from sight. Near the coast of Achilles drew a ring round the convoy, as though placing it within the protection of a magic circle, and turned back towards New Zealand. Her place was taken by HMAS Canberra, which had brought the Aquitania from
It was cold in the Bight but the sun blazed as the ships came into Cpl Roy Hintz, who had been admitted to the ship's hospital on the first day of the voyage with a severe abscess and had undergone an operation in
The next land was sighted on the 16th and early in the afternoon the Orcades anchored in
The Orcades tied up in the Alexandria Dock at lunch-time the next day and the drivers marched to temporary quarters in the cricket stadium. Leave was granted until a late hour. The New Zealanders spent their money on everything from expensive carved ornaments to cheap Indian babies. The latter were being sold like
On the following morning, after a long wait near the quayside, C Section went aboard the Ormonde. While the men were embarking they cast disgusted glances at a large pile of carcasses covered with flies. Native stevedores were dragging them through filth and dust and after they had been loaded an odour of decay permeated a great part of the ship.
Shore leave was granted that evening and early the next morning the Ormonde moved into the stream and dropped anchor. For lunch there was stew. It was not appetising and its smell, to put the matter mildly, was powerful. A memory of fly-covered carcasses haunted the men's minds and no one made much of a meal. And there were other reasons for dissatisfaction. The ship had been left dirty by Imperial troops, who had disembarked a few hours earlier, and quarters seemed cramped after those in the Orcades. To make matters worse it began to rain.
There were murmurs and more than murmurs, and while the officers were at lunch serious trouble broke out. At a quarter past one, shortly before the ship was due to sail, troops took possession of bridge and wheelhouse and told the captain that the ship would not leave port until their grievances had been redressed.
The C Section drivers, although as discontented as anyone, remained quiet. Captain Veitch and Second-Lieutenant Fenton visited their quarters and urged them (the former in no measured terms) not to side with the malcontents and to remember that the important thing was to join their comrades of the Ormonde.
That night it became imperative that the ship, which was now under arrest, should leave within a few hours if it was to catch up the convoy. Pickets were posted at all vital points at half past six the next morning and by seven the Ormonde was under way, catching up the rest of the convoy, which had been steaming at reduced speed, at half past three in the afternoon. The next day the ships entered the danger zone.
The Red Sea was entered early on 26 September and shortly after daylight the drivers were encouraged by the sight of a large convoy of merchantmen ploughing placidly towards the Gulf of
Port Tewfik was reached on the 29th. Our drivers spent the 30th on board and on 1 October they disembarked. That night they ate their evening meal at
From the start the newcomers got on famously with the rest of the unit, and if they were irritated by a slight tendency on the part of some of their new friends to speak of New Zealand as though it were a country in which they had spent a happy childhood long, long ago, they did not show it. In matters such as finding one's way about
For several weeks they trained in the bull-ring, growing progressively wearier of the ‘Bull's’ bellow, but at last their vehicles were handed over to them. Routine duties in the Cairo Sub-area gave them plenty of driving practice under difficult conditions, and on the whole they provided their seniors in service with disappointingly few dented mudguards at which to raise a pained eyebrow. They helped, too, with the ferry service, which now extended to Mersa Matruh, some thirty miles west of
Meanwhile the war had been changing and expanding. Over Britain the
And then, on a December day, we showed that we too could attack.
Working for Wavell
Ever since the outbreak of the Italo-Abyssinian war the Libyan frontier had been a chink in our imperial armour, and since
From then on General Sir Archibald Wavell had been playing David to Graziani's Goliath.
In the circumstances our A Section drivers camped at
The Regia Aeronautica, although it was often heard and on moonlight nights and exceptionally clear days sometimes seen, was never a nuisance as far as A Section was concerned. Its behaviour justified the popular witticism: the Italians come in at 5000 feet and dive to 10,000. What they excelled in was sowing the desert with explosive fancy goods—thermos flasks, fountain pens, and other ingenious trifles.
After spending two lazy months at
They moved again on the night of 4-5 December, travelling to
It was hardly Henry V haranguing his troops before Agincourt but the effect was the same. Lieutenant Roberts was not alone in being excluded from the coming show, and the few New Zealanders, the happy few whom fate had chosen to take part in it—transport drivers, engineers, signallers—would have been less than human if they had failed to compare themselves to their own advantage with gentlemen in base camps then abed.
The campaign opened brilliantly and by the evening of the 10th
At first the drivers worked between
The Wolves of Uno momento! Uno momento!’ Sometimes it was necessary to fire a shot over their heads or, as a last resort, threaten them with freedom. Once they were in the lorries, however, the clouds melted and soon the desert would be ringing with their throaty baritones and sweet tenors. Our drivers didn't mind. There was something notable and even humorous and touching about bumping over desert tracks, or along the vile coast road, trailing clouds of Verdi and Puccini.
After Sollum had fallen the trips to the forward areas took two days, and loading and unloading usually took another day, so the drivers had little time for servicing their vehicles and less for sleep. The roads were always bad and day after day vision was reduced to only a few yards by wicked dust-storms whipped up by high winds. The lorries stumbled through a whirling ginger gloom, crashing into pot-holes, breaking springs, tearing tires.
Main street, Helwan
Italian prisoners from Bardia
‘
Bardia Bill’
In the salt marshes of Buqbuq—a British tank bogged
On fine days—for a while at least—the work was fascinating and the drivers were like children let loose in a toy department. The desert was dotted with wrecked diesel lorries and abandoned dugouts. Quartermasters' tents debouched boots, bales of new uniforms, knives and forks, jars of face cream, and packets of sweets. It was an L-Cpl W. T. Higgins; miller; Roto-o-Rangi, embarras de richesse. Undiscriminating as jackdaws, they brought back mixed treasure and rubbish to their
It was tremendous fun for a while but from the first there had been a bad drawback. You would see the lorries break convoy, converge on some fort or system of defences, and pull up with a squeal of brakes. Then the drivers would plunge into the dugouts and reappear laden with loot, only to cast it away a second later on finding their legs and arms dusted with black fleas and their clothes hopping with them.
After the fall of
At Abbassia things were done in style—Christmas turkey and Christmas pudding by ‘Fat’ Davison, a speech by the Major—but at
With the arrival of the New Year Wavell struck again.
Towards evening, however, under the huge shadow of the escarpment, with the battle banging away in the distance and night approaching, something inside the drivers, a little knot of anxiety and anticipation, tightened. After all, this was a real battle their passengers were going into and it was the first battle that our drivers had had anything to do with.
As it happened, that period of waiting and wondering was the most memorable part of the trip, for what followed was in the nature of anti-climax. After dark the Australians were driven up the escarpment and deposited near
As the field supply depots moved forward, the drivers, working in small convoys under their sub-section corporals, made longer and longer trips, but the novelty had worn off. What had seemed treasure once was now dirty Italian rubbish—wrecked lorries, torn
However, not all the jobs were the same. A few drivers were fortunate enough to visit Between AD 20 and
A Section's drivers did not have a monopoly of the forward areas at this time. As the fighting troops advanced so did the RASC units catered for by our ferry service, and by the beginning of February we were making round trips of from 1300 to
The Divisional Ammunition Company was now at
At Helwan we occupied large huts in No. 1 area—not that the number matters, for no area differed from another except in its relation to Shafto's cinema and the NAAFIs. All the huts were identical and around all of them was the same sand.
On the day after the move C Section was given a new job.
When it seemed likely that the British would have to withdraw towards the
When the lorries were away working and the camp was deserted except for the cooks and a mechanic from Workshops, there was a touch of fantasy about the scene, and for a moment you wondered why. Then you saw it: the tents—two big and one small—the water cart and the lorry the mechanic was tinkering with, they were the only objects of their own size in the whole landscape. Everything else was small like the little pebbles and the wisps of camel-thorn, or large like the hill of Gebel Ruzza, or enormous like the billowing clouds.
The supplies had been buried over a wide area and there were many dumps to be uncovered. The presence of some was proclaimed by the hard outline of a layer of packing cases and around others there was a litter of broken boards, showing that marauders had been at work, but a few had to be searched for like buried treasure.
The members of the digging party were angry and resentful at first, taking it amiss that men junior to them in service should be handling the lorries, but the weather was so fine and the air so pure (being sharp and golden like a good orange) and working in the bright sunshine stripped to the waist was such an agreeable experience that they had no choice but to enjoy themselves, and presently the various gangs were vying with one another in the amount of work they could do.
They worked all day and they worked, illicitly, at night, for it is in human nature to love digging things up—whether buried by Captain Flint or dropped carelessly by the Chaldeans. Evening after evening they would creep out of camp to dig secretly for the rum and cigarettes they believed were concealed somewhere, but they never found anything worth taking except a few cases of condensed milk and some tinned fruit.
The lorry drivers, too, were enjoying themselves. Each morning as the sunlight started to spill over the flats a loaded convoy set out for
To everyone's disappointment the job lasted only ten days. Its importance, however, was out of all proportion to the miles covered and the tons lifted. It was the story of a party of disgruntled drivers sweating out a grievance in the sunshine and ending up by doing a good job and having a fine time. The unit was growing up and it was growing together.
At Helwan we had neither beds nor bed-boards—only straw palliasses and a concrete floor. However, we had discovered by now that the less the Army does for you the more you are allowed to do for yourself, and we had no difficulty in making ourselves comfortable. Life was becoming daily less regimental and we were still doing enough work to keep us off the parade ground.
We worked for New Zealand units in
Meanwhile we were still operating the ferry service, and on 26 January the unit sustained its first casualties in the Dvr R. C. Larkin; truck driver; Dvr J. Carter; mechanic fitter; Papatoetoe,
February came, and as by now most of the vehicles had covered between 15,000 and 20,000 miles, it was decided to give them a thorough overhaul. To complete the job within a month our Workshops' drivers, helped by everyone who could be spared, slaved
February, then, was a month of hard work and long hours, but it had its lighter moments. The loss of our orderly room through fire and the consequent destruction of the greater part of our records (which we watched with complacency, believing that anything recorded about us was unlikely to be to our advantage); a Divisional regatta in which we won the assault-boat event; the finals and semi-finals of the Divisional boxing tournament, in which Frank O'Connor Dvr F. E. O'Connor; motor body builder; Dvr J. A. Cave; farmhand;
Early in the month the return of A Section had been heralded by the arrival of the Don Rs and within a week the last group of lorries had arrived back. As they reported in they were fallen on by the mechanics, for it was now known that a move could be expected any day.
Only one question was asked: where now? Each of us possessed a clue. They hung in the huts or crowned our bedrolls, battered, some of them, already. There had been a fresh issue of sun helmets. Now that, surely, meant the
March came and on the 3rd of the month ‘Bull’ Dillon disappeared. He was our advanced party.
The next day was our last at
That night the NAAFIs did a roaring trade. Bottles covered every table. Bottles covered the floor. Underfoot there was a roughness of broken glass and a sloppiness of spilled beer. Every now and again some soldier would be intolerably wounded in his deepest feelings and would strike out wildly.
The next morning was bright and chilly, very soothing to feverish brows. Long before the time to start our lorries were lined up and waiting. At last the Major's car moved slowly towards the road and we followed. Slowly we drove through
The next morning we set out for
The engines barely purred for we were travelling very slowly. Louder than the engines, louder than the tires whispering to the black bitumen, was a noise of singing. In no other way could we express our exhilaration, our confidence in the future, our delight in being on the move.
Diversion to a Dragon-Slaying
Nothing remains but to get B Section to At that time our drivers of the The advanced party, which had entered Maj N. M. Pryde, MBE, ED; bank accountant; Maj S. A. Sampson, OBE, m.i.d.; butcher; Aquitania.
While the convoy was in the
The troops went ashore in lighters, entraining for
The Ammunition Company was taken to the village of Bourley, about four miles from
During their first week in England all New Zealand troops were issued with free rail warrants and granted 48 hours' disembarkation leave. Our drivers were sent off in three groups and most of them went to
In London there are barbed-wire entanglements and machinegun emplacements, and the parks and the city gardens have been divested of their iron railings, which are being converted into armaments.
And so are the Evening Standards.
They are undisturbed, too, in the sleepy market towns and the villages of the South Country. Some of the drivers have gone there, taking the winding English lanes whose hedges are white with hawthorn and following them to quiet places where (close to the grey church, always so large and stately in comparison with the other houses: a stone sheepdog guarding her stone pups) the village inn—the Lion, the Three Tuns, the Death of
They are not disturbed (or if they are they are keeping it to themselves) in the big houses, walking towards which and admiring the rhododendrons New Zealanders may be seen often, a friendly old gentleman or an old lady having offered them a meal and a hot bath.
They are not worried in the village shops and the cottages (or if they are they are taking care to hide it) or in the Commercial Road and the Elephant and Castle. Gone are the days when people were eager for soft jobs, searched for funk-holes in the country, grumbled about evacuees, bought up all the tinned stuff in the neighbourhood, carped and criticised. Since France has fallen, since England has been defeated in Evening Standard. It depicts a solitary British soldier in a steel helmet. He stands on the cliffs of
It was their finest hour.
A week passed and the company was issued with its transport (Bedfords and a few Albions) and its second-line holding of ammunition.
During July the drivers underwent extensive training in convoy work and vehicle maintenance besides carrying out brigade transport
Early in August a Divisional exercise was carried out and the company established ammunition points and functioned in accordance with the rules laid down for a transport unit. Our drivers returned to Bourley on the 8th, the richer by much practical experience in operational work and by memories of the
On the night of the 27th-28th a move was made to St. Leonard's Forest near Hastings. The journey took four hours, and for the greater part of that time it was impossible to use lights as enemy aircraft were overhead. On two occasions the convoy was halted by air raids. The next day was spent in working out a scheme of protection for the bivouac area and in digging in anti-tank rifles and machine guns. On the 29th the company returned to its old area at Bourley.
Meanwhile the Battle of
August ended, and the sky over England was still ours and
From their bivouac area, and in the country lanes where their convoys were held up, our drivers saw the planes come over. For a start they came in arrowhead formation with Messerschmitts above them and one large black bomber, usually, in the lead. Later they came over in tight blocks or in serried tiers, and they came from all points of the compass. Ack-ack pounded them and our fighters darted to the attack, snarling all over the sky in great circles, but many of them got through, and presently from the direction of
At first the whine of the sirens was the signal for everyone to drop what he was doing and take cover, but after a while it was decided that work should continue during alerts, unit air sentries being relied on to give adequate warning of any real danger. The company maintained two ack-ack posts.
On 6 September the unit left Bourley for Bristling Wood, near The move from the
The new area provided good cover, which was just as well, for concealment and camouflage had become matters of the first importance. A Dornier was shot down only half a mile from the area soon after the company arrived, and a week later a Hurricane crashed 400 yards away, the pilot escaping with minor injuries. The ack-ack posts were no longer engaging even low-flying aircraft, for orders had been issued forbidding them to open fire unless the area was directly threatened.
The weather, in the meantime, had changed. It was less warm now. Shotguns were banging away in the woods and the nuts were
The Luftwaffe was losing heavily—on 15 September, when the battle was at its peak, 185 enemy planes were reported shot down—but still it was getting through to Very well, alone!
In spite of her scars and of the constant danger from the skies
Under the circumstances the allowance of official leave was not niggardly. Each week three of the drivers were granted seven days' leave, and free rail travel was provided to all places as far north as Carlisle.
October arrived, and by this time autumn had become early winter. It was no weather for camping out and everyone was glad to hear that the company would be moving into winter quarters, suitable accommodation having been found at Hunton, a small village near
The drivers of the transport section moved to Hunton a day earlier than the rest and it was as well they did, for they had been gone only a few hours—it was the afternoon of the 3rd—when the old area was bracketed by an enemy bomber. The residue of the company did not present a large target and no damage was done.
In the days that lay ahead they were to become used to narrow escapes, for while they were at Hunton the neighbourhood received plenty of attention from the
During October bad weather interfered with the training programme but transport duties were carried out as usual. It was pleasant indeed after driving for hours through the cold rain to come home to the oast-house, which was always warm and dry. In the lower story, which was used as a mess room and cookhouse, a large open fire was kept burning night and day and its grateful warmth pervaded the sleeping quarters, which were separated from the room below by nothing except an iron grating, spread now with palliasses and bedrolls instead of with drying hops.
The New Zealand contingent moved from
December came and brought an improvement in the weather. The mornings were bitterly cold but the ground was dry and hard and there were many of those lovely hours of December sunshine that come early in the afternoon when the last bronze leaves are eddying through the still air under milky skies, blue here, with the delicate faint blue of milk, and gold in places, but only dusted with gold, like cream. With twilight the frost seized everything and in village streets there was no warm glow from cottage window or inn door to speak of Christmas. Enemy bombers droned and hiccupped through the night sky and tighter than the grip of frost was the grip of darkness.
The company had been released from its operational role on moving from the
The days flew by and it was Christmas—Christmas for German kittens whose fathers were marching against England and Christmas for the children of Ash. There was holly and mistletoe and reedy trebles touchingly out of tune singing about the shepherds and good King Wenceslas, but there were no bells. For the first time
Christmas dinner for the whole company was held in a gaily decorated garage, part of Company headquarters' billets. The fare was excellent and until late in the afternoon everyone was merry. Then there was bad news. Sergeant Andrew Morton Sgt A. Morton; motor driver; born
The old year ended, and early on
Half across England they travelled, reaching Newport at half past ten in the morning and boarding the Duchess of Bedford the same day. On the 5th the ship moved down the Severn estuary, anchoring in the Barry Roads, where she spent the 6th. She sailed at five the next morning, crossed the Irish Sea in company with three other transports, and anchored off Bangor, County Down, on the 8th.
The convoy received an addition of six transports on the 11th, and on the 12th, after sailing before dawn, was joined by eleven more off the Firth of Clyde, which brought the total number of ships to twenty-one, not counting a large naval escort.
A bitter wind and green-grey tumbling seas marbled with foam. ‘Hell,’ says everyone, ‘Must be near Duchess is in harbour. Leave is granted and no one behaves outrageously so there is more leave. Old friends are greeted and the dream meals are translated into fact. Three clear days at Duchess anchors in the Gulf of
On the 5th our drivers go ashore and a train takes them to
Cigarettes glowed in the darkness. Somebody cursed the cold and made reference to the peculiar effect it would have on a brass monkey. That bitter chill that creeps over the desert just before dawn was making us shiver in spite of greatcoats and a mass of equipment. We should be warm enough, though, when we started moving. Valise (with blanket-roll bound round it), haversack, kitbag, full web equipment, rifle, ammunition, water bottle, respirator, and a hundred odds and ends—under this load it was difficult even to stand up, let alone march.
During the ten days we had spent at Maj R. C. Aitken; mechanic;
Dawn drew a streak of lemon in the east and someone said: ‘All right. Pick up your gear. By the centre, quick march. Keep your ranks.’ Tripping over rocks, cursing our loads, which (in spite of the rehearsals) kept trying either to hamstring us or to garrotte us, we trudged across the desert in the direction of El Quadir station. It was only a short march—a couple of miles or so—but by the time it was finished the strongest of us had had enough. As soon as the train arrived the jostling and pushing that had characterised our behaviour from the moment of parading started all over again.
Perth
At a quarter past eleven in the morning the gap between the wharf and the cruiser's side started to widen. Clumsily we dressed ship, getting barked at by the Master at Arms for talking. ‘Smartly there! You're in the
Swiftly the cruiser gathered speed, dipping through the cold and sparkling waters.
Someone asked a sailor where we were going. He looked surprised.
‘
Map of Greece
Chapter 4
Picnic Before A Thunderstorm
Picnic Before A Thunderstorm
DURING our first six hours on Greek soil we attracted very little attention. We arrived at the port of
After we had landed and stood for some while in three ranks we were told to fall out and stay within call. Greek labourers looked up from the huge trench they were digging near the wharf and accepted cigarettes. Only one person took any real notice of us and he was the proprietor of the little wineshop at the dock gates. He responded to our presence by doubling the price of his wines and spirits. And that was all that happened. We were disappointed, for we had expected to be made a fuss of.
We were disappointed, too, in what we could see of Perth had made the trip in just over twenty-four hours—it was felt as an anti-climax. Ten-ton diesel lorries had taken away one load of men, and here we were sitting on our gear on the wharf, hot and uncomfortable in pith helmets and battledress, waiting for their return.
A diversion was caused when the Araybank, very high in the water, sidled into the space lately vacated by the Perth, presenting the men ashore with a side like a red cliff, from the summit of which the drivers in charge of vehicles peered down excitedly, shouting abuse to their friends and being taunted in return with comparisons between the Perth's quick journey and the eight days it had taken the Araybank to cross.
At last, after we had waited six hours, the ten-tonners came back and we climbed aboard. As we rumbled through
It was embarrassing but it was pleasant. It was pleasant to read, or to imagine we read, love and trust in those Greek faces, pale in the half-light—flower-like faces of children, old men's faces out of the Old Testament, women's faces that Bellini might have painted, and the many other faces equally Greek but not as clearly distinguished in that moment of sentiment: the fruitshop faces (‘Yes, we have no bananas.’) and the café and dining-room faces (‘You lika da steak and da oyst, no?’) and the blue-black jowls and greasy coiffeurs and sweating foreheads of the
We did not start singing until we had left
When we reached the camp we came down to earth with a bang. Most of the tents were only half-pitched and there was nothing to eat. Our advanced party—not his fault—had gone to the wrong camp.
We were up early the next morning—almost before the wet, white mist had cleared from the pine trees. Those of us who were not on duty (thirty lorries were employed in carting supplies and ammunition from
Everything was a delight and a wonder—strange and yet not altogether strange, for this, too, was our heritage. Grimm was a German and Hans Andersen lived in
Soon after we arrived at Kephissia everyone was given a 500-drachma note worth rather less than a pound. Such a quantity of notes had never before been seen in the neighbouring cafés and
During the afternoon and evening we became acquainted with the delicious wines of the country: mavrodaphne and the ordinary crassi, as well as with Metaxa brandy, the not-so-delicious ouzo (we had known it as zibbib in Egypt and as arrack in Palestine), and a noisome liquid that tasted of turpentine and pine needles and made everyone who took too much of it allergic to fir trees for about a year afterwards.
For a little while we listened to the fruity baritones and thrilling tenors of the Greek police. (Afterwards they had to listen to us.) They wore olive-green uniforms and they seemed to be the only men of an age and condition to be called up who were not in the forward areas. They sang beautifully but with rather too much emotion, their voices reminding one of massed violas anguished among whipped cream. (Our own singing, later in the evening, was even more emotional and not nearly as good.) Their favourite chorus went to the tune of the Jim Henderson, in Woodpecker's Song but the only word we could distinguish was Gunner Inglorious, suggests the following translation:
But how hopeful it sounded then! Hopeful for us and hopeful for the Greek people; hopeful for everyone who knew nothing at all about what was going on. Possibly there never had been a more hopeful convoy than the one that pulled out from Kephissia camp for northern
Soon we were passing through
On through Kalimera, New Zealand!’ they cried—all the rosy-cheeked children and handsome young women and shepherds and old men.
As the shadows became larger—shadows as big as sheep stations cast by tremendous hills—the halts occurred more often and it was dark when we arrived at
The next day we moved off at first light and travelled through fairy-tale country—pocket-handkerchief fields, patchwork-quilt farms, little laughing streams rushing from openings in the hills as from school, with, behind them and above them, terrific, towering, gold and green and purple mountains, like sleeping heroes, like sleeping gods, with huge lazy limbs sprawled carelessly everywhere and muscles like bits of the Elgin Marbles blotting out a quarter of the sky. We refuelled at
That night we were not so tired and some of us went to a small, tumbledown village and drank rough red wine in a little dark wineshop where Greek soldiers were singing their defiant woodpecker song. Our battledress and the badness of the wine were the only things that would have surprised Homer had he come strolling in.
Off again early the next morning and on till we reached the foot of the
We made camp beside the
We had arrived at our destination and it was a lovely place.
During the next few days we were very busy. A Section supplied a guard for ammunition at
When we were not working we were enjoying ourselves among our new surroundings. We went for long walks; we washed our bodies and our clothes in the icy stream and every evening we feasted on new-laid eggs and fresh bread, in payment for which
On one of the clear days an enemy observation plane flew over. It hung in the air, small and silvery and innocent-looking, and we gazed up at it with intense interest and some awe. ‘Don't look up, boys,’ yelled Second-Lieutenant S. F. Toogood. Maj S. F. Toogood, m.i.d.; theatre manager; The chief appointments on 2 March were: Company headquarters, Maj McGuire, Capt R. C. Gibson (posted 22 Jan 41), WO II W. L. Dillon (appointed CSM 10 Nov 40); A Section, Capt Moon, 2 Lt S. F. Toogood (attached 28 Feb 41); B Section, Capt Sampson; C Section, Capt Torbet, 2 Lt Fenton; Workshops, Lt Aitken. The following had left us: Lt Roberts (appointed OC Base Training Depot, NZASC, Dec 40), Lt Radford (posted to HQ Command NZASC, 16 Dec 40), WO II Colton (posted to OCTU, 10 Nov 40).
The enemy went away and there was nothing sinister any longer under the mountain in the clear sunshine. Spirits were high at that time; the whole green spring was only a breath away and the note was hope. Ours was the Woodpecker's attitude towards the war and we never doubted that it was shared by Generals Papagos and Wilson. Commanders-in-Chief of the Greek and British forces respectively.
We had no newspapers and no wireless sets, and when
When we heard the news we began to talk about leave in
On 2 April the company was ordered to unload its second-line holding of ammunition at Kilo 9 on the Second-line holding of Scale per weapon: 53 rounds HE, 17 smoke, 5 AP. Approximately.
We were employed in this manner when
We were still excited and eager—more so than ever—but the Woodpecker was glancing uneasily behind him, which was what the Germans had hoped he would be doing. André Maurois records that Jean Cocteau said to him after the disaster at Sedan: ‘All you see now on the roads of
On the night of 8-9 April—the night before the Germans occupied
The roads were so greasy that they might have been smeared with lard and it was so dark in the pass that the spare drivers had to stand on the running-board and give directions. Many of us had already taken out our windscreens in spite of the cold.
The next day we took our second-line holding to an area near
Meanwhile the
We, of course, knew little or nothing of what was going on. As we saw it the deluded Germans were being allowed to hurl themselves against our impregnable positions at
On 11 April—by which time all New Zealand troops had withdrawn from the positions forward of
The NZASC was functioning well at this time but the panzer divisions were also functioning well. There was a lot to take away and not much time. Colonel Crump, Commander NZASC, must have experienced all the sensations of a man who hurries down
For us it arrived on Easter Sunday, 13 April. That morning Captain Sampson took a convoy to Amyntaion near the
The petrol was discovered about six miles down the Amyntaion-
Often, in the days that lay ahead, we were to be wet and cold, sick and sorry, tired and frightened—never hungry. Empty and half-empty tins of peas and beans and pears and raspberries were to mark the passage of our convoys. It is probably fair to say that from the day of the first ‘open slather’ until the day we left
After our drivers had taken all they could cram into the lorries they were told to destroy what was left. It was forbidden to use fire so they spiked the petrol tins and poured kerosene over the food. While they were doing this they were ordered away by British officers who wanted the area for their guns.
The drive back to
They slept uneasily—‘cramm'd with distressful bread’.
After a week of rain and snow and cold winds Easter Sunday dawned bright and clear, promising fine weather. By midday our sodden hillside was drying out well. If the rain held off, we prophesied, the
After a big lunch of tinned meat, pickles, and fruit salad—in every section the cook's lorry was well stocked now—a convoy left to pick up the 26th Battalion at its reserve position a few miles north of our area and take it by way of
By this time the battle for
Those of us who stayed in camp hung out our blankets to dry in the bright sunshine, washed our clothes, kicked footballs. It was a lovely afternoon and the sunshine was spilling over the foothills by the
Chattering like monkeys, the drivers came down from their vantage points. A Section's cooks went back to their interrupted task of cornering and killing a large porker that had been driven into a gully. Washing was resumed and the footballs were brought out again. It was still a lovely day. There was a sound—you could hear if you listened carefully—that suggested that other and larger footballs were being punted about beyond the mountains: Pomp! Pomp! Pomp! Pomp! Anti-aircraft guns were in action.
The drivers who had been with the 26th Battalion returned to camp. They had been dive-bombed but without damage or casualties.
Easter Monday was another lovely day.
A convoy set out to collect ammunition from a field supply depot south of
The traffic was thick on the roads and it was difficult to keep any distance between the lorries. The spare driver rode behind the cab and watched the skies. As soon as he saw aircraft he banged hard on the roof. The lorry jerked to a stop and both drivers tumbled into the ditch or ran into the waist-high crops and lay quiet and quaking. As soon as the aircraft had passed the lorries moved on. The idea was to save your life without holding up the traffic more than you could help.
After one heavy raid Wally Mosen Dvr W. V. Mosen; lorry driver; born Raetihi,
After delivering their loads the drivers headed for home, very thankful to have got rid of their ammunition. A fork in the road was now under German observation and it was being shelled, but the lorries rushed through at wide intervals and all got safely past.
The convoy was machine-gunned again and Jim Nichols Dvr J. Nichols; labourer; Matamata; born Dvr D. C. Forbes; general store-keeper;
It was sundown by the time the company area was reached and everyone was very tired and shaken. It was a new area, those of us who had stayed at home having moved four miles down the road in the afternoon. We, too, had something to talk about. No sooner had we settled in than half a dozen bombers, flying close and fast like wild geese, had appeared from the east. They were quite low and there was a clicking of rifle bolts as we got ready to engage them. As soon as they were within range the rifles began to crack, sounding under the beat of engines like snapping twigs. We were too excited to feel afraid, and when the first bomb started to whistle down one or two of us had our rifles pointed straight up in the air and were almost over-balancing. The bombs came striding across the paddock, punching great brown holes in the soft ground, but the only casualties were two sheep.
That evening we told stories of our escapes and gathered in the last sunshine to examine a lorry that had been towed in with bullet holes in cab and windscreen.
In A Section's ack-ack truck, Percy Sanders and Jim Stanley Dvr F. J. Stanley; motor mechanic; born NZ,
‘They stuck to their guns all day,’ the drivers were saying. ‘Percy worked the Bren and old Jim fired the Boys anti-tank rifle from the shoulder. They reckon he's black and blue.’
Presently shadows covered everything—the bomb craters, the two dead sheep, the faithful Bedfords—and everyone who was not on picket duty turned in. We had a feeling that we should be wise to lay in a supply of sleep.
Fort Capuzzo
Arrival in Greece, Piraeus
New Zealand infantry in Athens
Chapter 5
The Thunderstorm
The Thunderstorm
SHADOWS over our drivers asleep in their Bedfords, shadows over
At a late hour that night we were visited by Colonel Crump. After he had gone there was a hurried conference of section officers and presently the sleepy drivers were shaken into wakefulness and told to get ready to move at once. A group of drivers started to strike a tent but the Major told them not to bother with it. ‘You won't need that tent,’ he said. The drivers looked at him for a moment, wanting to ask questions. There was something ominous in the words. They were like the small, chilling whisper from the silver reconnaissance plane: I can see the whites of your eyes. For days past we had been saving things that other people had left behind and now we were ourselves leaving behind things. We didn't like it.
Our orders were to take first our second-line holding and then the ammunition from a nearby field supply depot to a new area near
Soon after midnight word arrived by Don R that all heavy non-combatant vehicles were to be through
Meanwhile the drivers of the section vehicles had finished clearing the field supply depot and were back in the
We were on the road all through the night of the 15th-16th (stopping and starting and dozing off), and the last group of lorries did not get home until the afternoon of the next day. As they were pulling off the road into the Dvr S. A. Fisher; railway storeman, Otahuhu;
The lorries that had reached home earlier in the day were already back on the road. They had been formed into a convoy to take ammunition from
By dusk, however, all transport was in the
No sooner had we fallen asleep, it seemed, than the NCOs were going from lorry to lorry and telling us to throw on our ammunition as quickly as possible. By a quarter past one we were heading for Dvr R. H. Meredith; motor driver; Dvr C. L. George; shearer; Te Kowhai, Frankton Junction; born
Dawn of the 17th found us jammed nose to tail in a column that stretched as far as one could see. Fortunately it was still raining, so no aircraft came over. After we had passed through
We ate our supper under the grey olive trees, the drivers hesitating between tinned peaches and tinned cherries, tinned pineapple and tinned pears. On a little grassy plateau a portable gramophone looted from a bombed house ground out the theme song of the campaign:
It was still, even though we were beginning to detect in it a faint note of mockery, a delightful tune.
That night, for the first time in over eighty hours, we enjoyed a long, sound sleep.
The detached vehicles under Second-Lieutenant Fenton had come under the direct orders of Headquarters NZASC two days earlier. On the 16th, while the three-tonners carted engineers' stores from
Meanwhile the three-tonners had returned to
By 9 p.m. the lorries were dispersed some distance from the embussing point, waiting for the signal to move forward to collect the troops. Stacks of supplies were burning not far away and the transport was silhouetted against the rosy light, which faded and glowed jerkily. Presently the order to move came. Leaving the fires behind, the convoy went forward into a blackness so complete that at the first halt the drivers fastened scraps of white paper to the tailboards of their lorries. As they neared the embussing point they could see where German shells were landing and sometimes the shell-bursts could be heard above the whine of the engines. The nearest one was like the sudden opening and clanging shut
When everyone was aboard the convoy set out for the
Through Elasson it went, through
Our lorries had been crawling all night—the whole of the 4th Brigade Group was on the move—but beyond
A message from the head of the column seemed to suggest that the halt would be a short one, but the road was badly blocked and after a while the drivers were ordered to disperse their vehicles as best they could. The section of the column that included most of Second-Lieutenant Fenton's detachment—Sergeant Buckleigh's 30-cwts. were now close behind it—was directed on to a hillside, part of which was in crops. To reach it the drivers had to cross a stretch of meadow that was very muddy and had been badly churned up by traffic. The lorries started to shoulder their way out of the congestion, slipping and lurching over the ruined verges and sticking, some of them, and having to be towed out. And all the
I can see the whites of your eyes—sending messages to its base. The lorries ploughed through the mud and cut swathes through the bright green barley, the infantry running ahead of them, breasting the crops like bathers, seeking the cover of distant trees, desperate to get away from the road and the planes that were coming to bomb it. Farther up the road towards
Presently the whole hillside was still. The lorries were not well dispersed but the drivers had done the best they could. Their nerves were as taut as piano wire and they stood by their lorries and glowered at their nearest neighbours, each believing that it was the other fellow's fault that the transport was not better dispersed. ‘Why can't the mad b—— move his b—— truck over that way?’
Soon the bombers came. They came singly and in groups. They bombed and machine-gunned the road and then they concentrated on the paddocks and hillsides. Several aircraft headed straight for where six or seven of our vehicles were parked. They flew low and there was no scream from the bombs—just a swosh-swosh-swosh that was inaudible above the hammering of the engines unless you were close to it. Then came the sheets of flame and the terrific slaps—one, two, three, four—and the sense of being smashed over the head with a rubber truncheon. Black smoke streamed over the hillside and through the murk you could see the red tracers, elongated like jelly beans and travelling, it seemed, no faster than cricket balls, wavering up towards the bombers. The bombers banked and you could see tongues of flame shooting from their wings as their machine guns fired. And then, like an afterthought, came the slap of a last bomb.
The planes had come in so low that some bombs had skidded along the soft ground without exploding.
After they had gone the drivers checked up on the damage. It might have been far worse. There had been casualties and several vehicles were on fire. One of these was parked among Sergeant Buckleigh's 30-cwts. and in the back of it cases of small-arms ammunition were burning like popcorn. A bomb had landed beside one of our 30-cwts. and the driver was muttering all the oaths he could think of. Only a few minutes before, by fitting an extra horn, he had concluded a programme of work that had made his
The enemy came over again and there were more casualties and more lorries were damaged and set on fire. While this raid was in progress Sergeant Buckleigh attended to the wounded, taking no notice of bombs and bullets. Helped by a corporal from the Dvr Q. R. W. Taylor; civil servant; Takapuna,
Several of the drivers did good work that day. Among them was Alf Hallmond, Dvr A. J. Hallmond; labourer;
During the morning something happened to
It was late in the afternoon before any general movement was possible on the road, and all day long the enemy passed backwards and forwards in the sky, owning it. All day long the New Zealanders crouched in culverts or bomb craters or lay hidden in the barley, watching the relentless sky or glancing longingly towards the mountains in the south, towards which the road ran straight and level across the plain. And all day long the transport stayed in the same area. It was near the village of
At last came the order to move. A prolonged hooting of horns brought the infantry from their hiding places at the double, and they crouched and squatted among the tangles of equipment, edging as close to the tailboards as possible.
Driving conditions were extremely bad. There was only a yard or so between each lorry and here and there a burning or disabled vehicle lay half across the road. You saw bombs bursting ahead of you and every so often a tremendous banging on the cab almost made you jump out of your skin. In one convulsive jerk you grabbed the hand brake, cut the engine, and dived into the ditch. Sometimes a Messerschmitt roared past; often it was a false alarm. In any case many of the infantry would run two or three hundred yards from the lorries—not that our drivers blamed them for this: they knew the infantry had been through far more than they had—and it might be three minutes before the column could again start to move. Progress was so slow that the passengers began to argue among themselves about the wisdom of stopping. Some were for keeping going; some were hotly against it.
‘For God's sake box on, driver.’
‘You're doin' all right, driver. We're not gettin' killed for these bloody jokers.’
‘We'll never get any bloody place if we keep stoppin'. Get on and get it over with.’
Panicky drivers of light or unloaded vehicles—drivers of heavy vehicles too for that matter—lost their heads completely and kept blowing their horns, mad to pass everything on the road whether or not there was room to squeeze by. As soon as our drivers managed to get a little space between their lorries, these others—free lances or interlopers from convoys farther back—cut in. More than one put his vehicle over the bank. At one stage Colonel Crump drove past and shouted that all drivers were to stay in convoy and keep discipline. For a time conditions improved but soon they were as bad as ever.
The time came when the column was blocked by a burning vehicle and a huge bomb crater near a bridge. A detour had been made—was still being made, the shovels darting like tongues under the very wheels of the lorries, which jerked, stopped, screamed in anguish, jerked on—through a sodden meadow. In this several of our vehicles became bogged, and the
The hold-up, however, though intensely trying to everyone's nerves, with the mountains and safety beckoning, was really a blessing. It enabled the military police to prevent any driver from turning into the meadow until the vehicle in front of him was a fair distance in the lead. Consequently when the transport got back on the road it was properly dispersed at intervals of from 50 to 100 yards. These intervals were held without much trouble until dusk.
The sun was setting as the main group of our lorries gained the foothills. Spearheads of olive shadow were thrusting across the plain of
After dark the column closed up until it was travelling nose-to-tail once more. Then there was another long halt and a group of drivers gathered round one of the 30-cwts. They were excited and they laughed a good deal. They ate ravenously for a little while, chopping and changing, turning from this to that—from tinned peaches to pickles, from pickles to condensed milk—but their appetites soon failed. They became solemn and spoke of Second-Lieutenant Norman Chissell 2 Lt N. F. Chissell; garage attendant; born NZ,
The driver of the 30-cwt. told how Sergeant Buckleigh's detachment had collected the 32nd Battery of the 7th Anti-Tank Regiment from
‘We did the job two nights ago. They dragged us away late in the evening from a supply dump we were stuck into—beer, tobacco, good tinned stuff. We went along the main road and turned right before it goes up into the pass. We stopped in a paddock for a bit and then set off up a hell of a narrow, winding, rocky track. There was just room for a 30-cwt.—a three-tonner wouldn't have
‘It took us a while to get to where we had to pick up the antitank jokers and when we did arrive there was a long wait. It was as black as the inside of a cow and raining hard and we had an awkward place to turn the trucks in. One of them had conked out a little way down the track, blocking it completely, so “Buck” gave orders to shove it over the cliff. We had time, though, to strip her of anything worth keeping.
‘The anti-tank boys were just about finished when they arrived. They'd marched miles over the mountains and had had to destroy all their guns and transport. They didn't feel too good about it.
‘We travelled south all the rest of that night and part of the next day, dropping our passengers in an area off the
‘We got to the area, threw the load on, and still had a bit of daylight left. We were parked right by a river and it was a corker evening. We had a clean up and some of the boys got their rifles out and threw tins in the river for target practice. Some storks came over and we put a few shots round them. There was a supply dump on the other side of the road but the eyes had been picked out of it and the Greeks were lugging away what was left—bully and stuff. Some of the B Section jokers had some beer but not enough for a party.
‘We had a great night's sleep and it was daylight when we woke up this morning. “Buck” came round and said we were to get cracking at once as Jerry was only one jump behind us. It was as quiet as one thing and there was hardly any stuff going past on the road. We caught up the main traffic stream just outside
By this time most of his listeners had wandered back to their own vehicles. With the two or three that remained the talk became
After a while the column moved again. An endless stream of lorries was heading for the
During the early part of the night nearly everyone drove without lights, but later, as there was no evidence that the
For a long time the drivers had been puzzled by a rosy glow ahead of them. It was a town burning and someone said it was
Leaving it behind for the Germans—it was only a tiny incident in the long Walpurgis night they had wished on the whole world—our lorries drove on into the cold darkness, which seemed to be unending and immutable. Nine miles was as much as they did in any hour and sometimes they did no more than two.
Dawn came at last and the journey ended soon afterwards. Second-Lieutenant Fenton's detachment dropped the 20th Battalion in its new positions and then set out to rejoin the unit, finding it on the coast below
The rest of our load-carriers had also been on the road that night and the day before. On Friday the 18th at seven in the morning a Don R had arrived from Headquarters NZASC and told the Major to take us back to the
Refreshed by our sound sleep we set out in good spirits along the coast road and although we were attacked from the air no harm was done—the heavy bombing and strafing of Second-Lieutenant Fenton's and Sergeant Buckleigh's detachments was taking place on the inland road. The convoy was halted and dispersed about eight miles south-east of
Puzzled, he returned to the lorries and at the entrance to the dispersal area was met by a Don R who handed him a message cancelling his previous instructions and telling him to go back to
To move in or out of many roadside areas in
The drivers of a three-tonner at the tail of the convoy were removing theirs when they were attacked by three Messerschmitts. Their lorry was set on fire and destroyed, and Captain Sampson's pick-up, which they had pulled out of the mud a little earlier, had to be abandoned with four flat tires.
During the journey to
However, he and Percy continued to stand by their guns, and they stood by them valiantly on 18 April on the road to
By daylight we were in an area near
The next day was 20 April, a Sunday. It was also
Workshops, which had been in an area off the
The raids continued and by three in the afternoon the drivers had retired in disgust to a dry creek-bed some distance from the area, leaving a sergeant, a corporal, and two volunteers to operate a report centre.
Just on dusk two Messerschmitts flew low over the area. By this time it was pitted with bomb holes, so the pilots may well have gone home to report that in addition to the damage done to
Workshops inspected its area with wonder and happy pride. The drivers gathered beside the indestructible staff car to marvel at the enlargement of the original crater by a second bomb. They agreed that a greatcoat riddled by machine gun bullets had certainly been mistaken for a prone soldier and that the administrative corporal had cut a ludicrous figure while sheltering in a too-small slittrench. They wondered how the sections had got on.
The sections had got on very well. The same euphrasia was being experienced in the
During the afternoon the spare men and the drivers without vehicles had been given a particularly unpleasant task—the loading of the unit's transport with 3000 rounds of 25-pounder, all of which was in a single stack a few miles from the area. The Major himself
Dvr R. S. Grant, MM; garage attendant; Frankton Junction; born NZ,
The birthday ended when night came, and although it had been our most dangerous day so far only two men had been injured—neither seriously. They were Jack Murdoch Dvr J. I. Murdoch; truck driver; Dvr R. T. Reid; driver; Henderson,
By now the New Zealand Artillery had taken up positions in the
The sea was nearby and that evening many of us had a quick bathe. The water was cold but it was deliciously refreshing. When aircraft came over we stretched ourselves on the pebbles and lay still, letting the creamy surf wash over us.
Nearly everyone was in good fettle. From the downward curve of the sun you could trace the upward curve of our spirits: it was a new law of nature introduced by the
Bombed
Bombing in Larissa
A convoy halted in Volos
‘A direct hit on the cookhouse’—page 79
Laughing and talking and calling to one another in the darkness, the drivers ate their supper and turned in. Presently the whole area was hushed. All you could hear was the footsteps of the sentries as they strolled under the olive trees, a muffled grumble of talk coming from a lorry far up the hillside, and the occasional sweet, clear pipe of a night bird. We had been told that the German paratroopers signalled to one another by imitating bird calls.
All night long, silent, impassive, stoical, in twos, in tens, in twenties, not glancing at the sentry who stood in the entrance to our area, Greek soldiers trudged south. None of them had rifles; few carried anything beyond a small bundle. They were like the chorus in a Greek tragedy. They were not men, you felt, but symbols of defeat, expressing all the pity and terror of the world we live in but feeling none of it themselves. Probably, though, they had fought with unbelievable bravery and their hearts were full of bitterness and anguish. Or were they merely dead-tired and longing for home and glad that for them the war was nearly over?
The sentry at the entrance was puzzled. He did not know that a Greek army in the Epirus had been surrounded and forced to capitulate to the Germans, nor did he know that during the day the
General Wavell himself had gone to
We were told about this the next day. Our first reaction to the news, human and perfectly pardonable, was one of relief. Freedom from Stukas, a hot bath, leave in Your sign! Thumbs up! We remembered the storm of flowers and the faces in the twilight in
And we remembered other things. ‘The English? They know only one military operation—re-embarkation.’ Lord Haw-Haw had called us ‘
The Major told us of the withdrawal after breakfast on the morning of the 22nd and he added a word of warning. He had noticed, he said, that some of us were getting jittery. He reminded us that only one man in the unit had so far been killed, though all had had narrow escapes. It was better, he said, to go home without an arm or a leg than with broken nerves.
After that the odd men and the drivers without vehicles stacked their kitbags in a dry ditch, guessing they had seen the last of them, though there was some talk of sending them down later. Then they climbed aboard two A Section lorries and were driven south under the command of Second-Lieutenant Toogood. Their destination was an assembly area near Daphni on the outskirts of
When the party reached the Daphni area they found that Company headquarters was already there. Workshops arrived the next day.
Moved off (noted the senior NCO, Staff-Sergeant Jim Harley), Capt J. W. Harley; mechanic; Leeston; born NZ,
8 a.m. Were caught in Thebes Pass. Enemy planes overhead had caused a large convoy to stop. Strafing but no damage done.
9 a.m. Got going again. Orders were for us to destroy Workshops and stores waggons by running them over the steepest cliff in the pass but thought better of it and took them on.
2 p.m. Arrived Daphni. Quite a number of unit vehicles parked in olive grove. Dispersed and settled down for a meal.
4 p.m. Enemy planes over; no damage.
The rest of the unit spent the day in the Dvr G. E. Dvr R. V. B. Brown; factory hand; L-Cpl C. B. Hitchon; taxi proprietor; Dvr G. M. Carroll; cook; born England, Light Aid Detachment.
Later in the morning we were told to keep two lorries for unit transport and destroy the rest, with the exception of eighteen from C Section, four from A Section, and three from B Section, which were to stand by to help with the withdrawal of the 6th Brigade. First we removed the petrol tanks for delivery to the New Zealand Artillery, which was short of petrol. Then we drained the oil from sumps and differentials and poured grit in them. We started the engines and pulled the throttles wide open. They hammered for a time; then they began to cough and spit. Finally they clattered
coup-de-grâce. They were good lorries. They had covered thousands of miles in Egypt and the
Then we sat down to refresh ourselves with tinned fruit. The twisted roots of the olive trees were now our larders, their cleft trunks our wardrobes, their branches our coat-hangers. Owning nothing except what we stood up in and could carry, and having nothing to take care of any longer except our rifles and ourselves, we felt strangely free.
Late that afternoon, with many glances at the sky, the drivers whose vehicles had been destroyed left for Daphni in the two lorries that had been kept for that purpose, Captain Moon leading them in his staff car. They arrived safely, as Workshops had done earlier in the day. The Longos area was empty now except for the transport that was standing by to shift the 6th Brigade. At eight the evening before twenty-five vehicles from the Supply Column and twenty-five from the
Since dawn on the 23rd the 6th Brigade, supported by the New Zealand Artillery and a number of British guns, had been holding the coast sector of the
On the evening of the 23rd the Major had been shown the embussing point in the 6th Brigade headquarters' area by the Brigade Major and told that his transport was to be there at nine o'clock the next night. Later, however, it was decided to advance the hour so as to free the narrow coast road for south-bound traffic engaged in earlier withdrawals, but because communications had broken down the Major did not get his fresh orders. (It would have
Following what he thought was still the plan, the Major left the
As the lorries drew near the danger zone—
The infantry, as it happened, were also late in arriving, but at half past nine the vehicles from our unit embussed the 24th Battalion. Under the weird light, fantastic with leaping shadows and sudden gouts of darkness and sinister with small sounds, the lorries were loaded and in no time they were down on their springs with their canopies bulging like untidy parcels. Some of the men were famished and our drivers showed them where the food was kept and the cigarettes.
One by one the lorries disappeared in the darkness and went lurching along the narrow road, travelling without lights. The Major and Second-Lieutenant Butt Capt F. G. Butt, m.i.d.; farmer; Seddon; born
More than a hundred miles were covered before daylight and morning found the brigade well south of the last line of defence. The 24th Battalion was hidden in an oak grove near Eleusis, a few miles north-west of
It was Anzac Day.
Chapter 6
Withdrawal From Greece
Withdrawal From Greece
ANZAC morning.
In the Daphni area Company Quartermaster-Sergeant Jack Williams Capt B. J. Williams, MC; hotel manager; Birkdale,
Anzac afternoon.
In an area below Kriekouki Sergeant Buckleigh's detachment of nine 30-cwt. lorries (the tenth had been destroyed) was standing by to help with the final withdrawal of the 4th Brigade, which was to hold its present positions at all costs until the next night. The detachment was now under the command of a lieutenant from the 4th
Anzac evening.
On Kea Island, fifteen miles from the Greek mainland, a party of New Zealanders left the shelter of the olive trees and the wooded gullies and made for the harbour. They had been ordered to sleep near the beaches in case a ship came. Among them were Sergeant ‘Dad’ Cleave, WO II V. J. Cleave, MM; motor mechanic; WO I I. McBeth, m.i.d.; civil servant;
‘We were in the last landing craft to leave the beach,’ said Ian McBeth. When she moved off we were under the impression that we were being taken to a ship but as time went by and we seemed to be heading for the open sea we began to wonder. Then the commander of the landing craft spoke to us out of the darkness. He spoke quietly in level tones. He said: “We regret that it is impossible to take you to
‘The voyage that followed was supremely uncomfortable. There were five or six hundred men in the landing craft and except for a small space forward she was decked over. Nearly everyone was wearing his greatcoat, web equipment, and haversack, and we were so jammed together that it was next to impossible to take anything off and difficult even to loosen a strap or unbutton an overcoat. We were standing in a mixture of water, oil, and petrol, and the fumes were so bad that smoking was quite out of the question. Soon we were wet through with sweat.
‘After sailing for four and a half hours the landing craft arrived at
They had slept soundly, many of them, even while the harbour was being bombed and low-flying aircraft were strafing the gullies and hillsides. Now, waiting by the beach, few were sleepy. They talked on into the night and no ship came.
Sitting in the darkness and talking about ships—that was what Second-Lieutenant Fenton and the drivers of C Section's administrative vehicles were doing on Anzac evening. They were in the
Late that afternoon our drivers saw a tragic sight. The Ulster Prince, a sizeable merchant ship, went aground in
No one was surprised when it was learned that there would be no embarkation that night.
And so, on Anzac evening, after spending all day in hiding, our drivers were waiting for the word to move. It came after dark and they marched eight miles to a quiet cove, carrying greatcoats, toilet gear, and one blanket each. When they got to the cove nothing happened, and later they were told that there was no chance of their being taken off that night. They were weary and disappointed and they dreaded another day under the
‘Who goes there?’ said an authoritative voice from the darkness. Our drivers were fed up and each of them waited for someone else to reply—a dangerous habit at that time. The challenge was repeated and they could make out an English officer with drawn revolver. It was time somebody answered. Replied Bill Davies, Dvr W. H. Davies; motor mechanic;
The next day was the 26th and the sands were running out—running out in the
To the hungry drivers on
The foundation of the stew was a chicken and a kid. The former had been given to ‘Sheriff’ by a village woman; the latter he had returned with after disappearing among the trees. He stirred the pot with his bayonet and thoughtfully sucked a finger. No—it was not quite ready.
Intent on their bellies our drivers were not listening for the assembly signal, but the moment it was heard—three shots in quick succession—hunger was forgotten and they hurried to where the NZASC party was forming up under a captain from the Supply Column who was on the island with 200 others from his unit.
The landing craft had moved a few miles to a safer anchorage and the troops were to march over the hills and join her. They started off in groups of twenty. It was about noon.
For a while the going was flat; then the trail started to zigzag upwards. As soon as one summit was gained another one appeared behind it. ‘Dad’ Cleave made his involved jokes and helped where he could and the men kept going. At last, when they were beginning to feel that everything in the world was vanity except the pleasure of stopping and stretching out at full lengh, the trail began to wind downhill. It wound through a village, and there, by the water's edge, was the landing craft. Three of our drivers were the first to reach her, which was remarkable considering that the NZASC party had been the last to start. They stripped off and fell into the sea, snatching several glorious minutes before it was realised how clearly their white bodies showed up.
The barge sailed at dusk. Early the next morning our drivers were taken aboard the anti-aircraft cruiser Carlisle bound for
Near the Daphni area the two great Thornycrofts—the Workshops lorry with lathe and drill and work bench, and the stores
Gear-boxes, differentials, and engines were stuffed with ammonal, the entire contents of a case about the size of a butter box being used, and fuses were laid. Later it was felt that a smaller amount of explosive would have done the job.
After lunch the drivers were told that if all went well they would embark that night, and at four in the afternoon the remaining transport, with the exception of a pick-up and a breakdown lorry, set out on its last journey, leaving Second-Lieutenant Aitken and a small party to demolish the Thornycrofts.
The fuses were lit—they were supposed to burn for a minute—and the demolition party piled into the pick-up, which stopped dead after travelling some fifty yards, its differential wedged against a rock. The explosion was expected momently and the party's efforts during the next minute may be described as frantic. As it happened there was plenty of time to spare, for the lorries were still intact when the pick-up reached the main road, which was about a mile away. By this time Creek civilians were making for the gully in search of loot, impervious to waves and shouts. The minutes dragged by and at last the lorries disintegrated with a shattering explosion, injuring or killing, our drivers felt guiltily certain, more than one civilian. A column of smoke rose in the air and a flight of Messerschmitts dived on it, their guns firing. Staying no longer, the party headed towards
Meanwhile the main party was on its way through kalimera, kalaspera, kalinikta? No, it was easier to exchange waves with the two drunk Australians, their arms around girls, on a balcony. It was easier, going through Constitution Square, to taunt, as one of our drivers did, with what cruel injustice he could not be expected to know, the lonely airman seated on the café terrasse, elbows on an iron table: ‘Having a good leave, old man?’ The airman did not look up.
The hedges of the pretty road east of
We were ordered to destroy Captain Moon's staff car and all but two or three of the lorries. Destroying the staff car was good fun: there was plenty of upholstery to slash, plenty of gadgets to break. The indomitable huckster who had been negotiating with a Greek business man looked on in distress. To the dozen or so civilians who had gathered to watch us we gave the back cushion, the radiator muff, a few blankets, and some tins of food. The portable gramophone—the one we had looted—went to a little boy. He was delighted with it and thanked us prettily in correct English.
He was playing it when we moved off at dusk in the remaining transport, and the ‘Woodpecker's Song’, which had greeted us on arrival, made a fitting requiem for the broken, deserted lorries, blurred and shadowy in the twilight, round the little boy and his gramophone.
We dismounted a few miles down the road, leaving the transport to be destroyed by engineers. Then we shuffled down to the beach in pitch darkness. We stood in a long, whispering queue and time lapsed. At last we were packed aboard a landing craft and taken, with water washing about our boots and our heads bowed beneath the steel deck, to the Glengyle. As soon as we had settled down in
Glengyle sailed for
The Greek women saw the flash of ‘Tiny’ Kinnaird's Dvr F. H. Kinnaird; bush hand; Ruahine, Southland; born Taumarunui,
Apart from that, 26 April had not been an amusing day for Second-Lieutenant Fenton and his detachment. Dawn had found them hiding beneath olive trees not far from the
The landing had occurred at breakfast-time that morning, and by then, after travelling all night, the 6th Brigade was in position between Maj C. M. Torbet, OBE, m.i.d.; motor engineer; He was occupied during the 25th and 26th in locating supplies and petrol and arranging for their distribution. In the early hours of the 27th he sailed for Kingston.
At that time it was the intention to withdraw the 4th Brigade across the
‘We were heavily bombed and strafed on the way up,’ said Reg Troughear Cpl R. Troughear; lorry driver; Pokeno, Dvr A. W. Hearn; lorry driver; Cpl I. V. Hogg; panel beater; Dvr A. N. Bradbury; lorry driver; born
‘So much time had been wasted in taking cover from aircraft that now we just carried on. We debussed the infantry and pretty soon they were in action, though they were too late to do anything about the
‘The infantry held their positions until evening and then they moved back to fresh ones—the idea, I think, was to cover the withdrawal of wounded and stragglers. Anyway it was late at night before we got back to where we had left the B Section lorry. What was left of it was still burning and there was no sign of Arthur and the others.’
Bradbury and Hogg had been told to stay where they were until a given hour and then move south. They were joined by Arthur Hearn, and later, as there was no sign of the infantry, they pulled on to the road. At once they were machine-gunned from the air, the lorry being set on fire. Alan Bradbury was killed, Ivan Hogg wounded in the hand and leg, and Arthur Hearn in the thigh.
Meanwhile the rest of the 26th Battalion had moved to positions about twenty miles north of
‘These daylight moves,’ said Captain Torbet, ‘were made under merciless attacks from the air. We left the
‘In Tripolis, which was being bombed as we passed through it, we were met by civic officials who handed us a sheet of typescript stating that no British troops were to stage within three miles of the town as their presence was likely to provoke air raids.
‘It looked to me like fifth column work, and later I was not surprised to hear that signboards in
For No. 9 and No. 10 sub-sections, which were travelling at the end of the convoy with instructions to pick up stragglers, it might have been better had the signboards been switched earlier, for they were directed to
North of the canal, too, the situation was becoming graver. Throughout the 26th, Sergeant Buckleigh's 30-cwts. had continued to stand by for the withdrawal of the 4th Brigade from its positions at
‘During the day,’ said ‘Chum’ Thomas Dvr B. A. Thomas; bricklayer; Pinner, Middlesex, England; born England,
‘The withdrawal started when it got dark. The infantry marched to the end of the pass and we picked them up and headed towards
Near the beach at Nauplion Second-Lieutenant Fenton's detachment had come to the end of its second day of waiting. No paratroops had landed there, the last Messerschmitt had gone singing into the sunset, and it was dark again. Our drivers were happy in the lovely darkness and for the moment they were not worried about the morning, though they knew now that if they were not taken off that night they were unlikely to be taken off at all.
Presently they were ordered to go to the beach and they fell in at the end of a long column of Australians who were marching nine abreast. They could not believe there would be enough shipping in the harbour to hold all those Australians and themselves as well. When they got to the beach they were ordered to about turn. This put them at the head of the column, which apparently had marched past the embarkation point in the darkness. Wading, swimming, floundering, they boarded a landing craft, and as soon as it was full it put off, slapping through the salty darkness. For a while the commander of the craft believed he would have to make Perth
Our drivers were given sandwiches and hot drinks and while they were enjoying these they discovered that the That was the last planned embarkation from the Perth's crew, under the impression that the men ashore were in trouble, had volunteered to a man to cover their embarkation.
The next day—the 27th—was lovely—a perfect spring Sunday.
The Greeks wore their best clothes and went to church. Under the baroque spires and onion-shaped domes, pink, golden, or gleaming white, they prayed fervently for the strange soldiers, a stream
The soldiers with the shabby uniforms and tired faces were still there after the service. When you spoke to them, saying ‘Nike’ (victory), or gave them the thumbs-up sign, they answered in their foreign language: ‘That's right, Dad. How you doin’, anyway?'
‘It was all pretty quiet and peaceful,’ said ‘Chum’ Thomas, ‘with people going to church and that sort of thing, but we were expecting the Germans to appear any moment. The 4th Brigade Group was dispersed between
‘During the morning we were told to destroy our trucks. Stan Barrow Dvr R. S. Barrow; seaman;
‘We had been under attack from the air all day long and when we moved back towards
‘Soon shells started to land near us and from then on it was rather like a bad dream. German motor-cyclists came down the road and we fired on them. I remember the tracers and the noise
‘Later we were given orders to go to the beach and after a march of about five miles we went straight on to the landing craft. When I got aboard the ship I met some of the other boys and they had the surprise of their lives. Stan, who had made his way to the beach after our truck was hit, had told them I had been killed in the raid.’
The ships that sailed that night were the last to embark troops from the Dvr C. F. Arblaster; carpenter; Dvr R. J. W. Dolphin; contractor;
The morning of the 27th—that brilliant and interminable day—found the 6th Brigade still guarding
All day long fighters, bombers, and little impudent Henschels, like dragonflies, brushed the tree-tops, searching for troops and vehicles. No cooking was done and our drivers moved only when the camouflage nets had to be shifted to cover the changing shadows cast by the lorries.
‘Some of us,’ said Captain Torbet, ‘were hidden among olive trees on the slopes of a little valley, and during the day an elderly man in peasant clothes strolled down the centre of it, glancing from side to side and calling out with a strong American accent: “Come out, boys! Come on out! Don't be scared!” No one moved and he went away.’
That evening Captain Torbet heard a German radio announcer state that the
One of the biggest worries was petrol. As the original intention had been to embark the brigade from Sgt R. O. Hintz; driver-mechanic; born
It was difficult to guess how much petrol the lorries would burn. They had been heavily laden when they left the
The convoy passed through
Before daylight brought the
The day seemed endless.
And the next day—the 29th—seemed endless in a little town some miles from
‘For three nights running,’ said Corporal Wally Dahl, Sgt W. A. Dahl; tram driver; Dvr L. S. H. Robinson; motor driver; born Dvr A. C. Davie; motor driver; Walton,
‘They arrived punctually at seven and we were taken to a barracks near
In all, seventeen of our drivers were captured in the They were Cpl Wally Dahl, Cpl Cam Grinter, Bill Dalton, Arthur Davie, Jack Donnelly, Ted Donnelly, Don Hourigan, Bill Johnson, Bill Leathwick, George Le Comte, ‘Red’ Lee, Ted Malcolm, Bob McNee, Phil Moore, Les Robinson, Jack Shaw, and Sid Spilsbury.
At eleven the night before, Captain Torbet's transport had been marshalled in a dry creek-bed and about an hour later it moved off towards the beaches at
In groups of seventy the men marched down to the beach. A wait followed and Captain Torbet was told that about 200 men, including his own drivers, One hundred and twenty NZASC all ranks were embarked from
Through the small hours of the morning, when the sky is darkest and the human spirit reaches its lowest ebb, the drivers waited on the beach, hope and courage running out like sand. They heard the putter of engines as landing craft went backwards and forwards in the bay and they knew there were not many troops left on the beach.
Finally, when hope was beginning to seem foolish, they were taken to the Ajax, the last ship to be loaded. The last boatload reached her just before four in the morning.
In Ajax, as in Havock, Griffin, Isis, Calcutta, Vampire, Voyager, Perth, Kingston, Glengyle, and all the other ships that had taken part in the evacuation, everything was under control. The sailors relieved our drivers of their valises and handed them up the gangway. The decks were heaped with equipment and the companion-ways were blocked with troops, but it was like stepping out of chaos into order. After days of confusion and destruction and falling back the journey had ended in a place where panic was unthinkable. You felt that if the last trump sounded and the
Ajax would be standing by to proceed with the evacuation of His Majesty's subjects from the four corners of the earth. The very sight of the bluejackets—their levity, their good humour, their confidence—was better than a promise from St. Michael that in the last event
Soon the soldiers of the Ajax or in any ship of the
As soon as our drivers had settled down they were given hot cocoa and bully-beef sandwiches. They tried to say thank you but it was no good. ‘Garn,’ said the sailors. ‘'Ev another muckin’ cup. My oath, Miss Weston….'
On
It is good to be with you after three years.
Chapter 7
Island Interlude
Island Interlude
WE set off in fairly good order from Glengyle, carrying Company headquarters, Workshops, and some of the section drivers, had been attacked during the morning, one bomb landing near enough to buckle plates and cause interior damage, against which the
Soon men started to drop out and sit down in the cool on the low stone wall beside the lane. Some took off their boots; others opened packets of biscuits and tins of sardines. More men fell out when we came to a little wineshop and no effort was made to stop them. Presently what was left of our column, with the exception of a hardy twenty or thirty who were marching in the lead with Captain Moon, broke into small groups, each going its own pace. When they came to a spot that looked pleasant they halted and made camp. Everyone was tired but happy to be in
Just before dusk the men who had carried on for an extra mile or so were rewarded by coming to a field kitchen by the roadside. Here you could collect a cup of tea and something to eat. Soon it was dark and the flames from the cooks' fires, leaping and dancing beneath the big dixies, threw a ruddy glow on the faces of the men near them. Few talked or laughed and everyone waited patiently in the long queues as men who are already drenched wait patiently in a rainstorm. We were soaked through with tiredness.
Two searchlights fingered a silver cloud-bank and there was a distant thump but hardly anyone took cover. Hot tea first, then sleep—that was the programme.
By noon the following day all but a few of our drivers had reported at the assembly area, which was three miles west of the town of
The area, of course, consisted only of rows of olive trees festooned with grey blankets. Scores of little fires were burning beneath them and on every fire there was a battered tin with shaving water in it. We had the rest of the day in which to get cleaned up and that night we had another sound sleep.
Captain Torbet's detachment went straight to Egypt and Major McGuire was given a battalion composed of the combined NZASC personnel in
During our first four or five days on the island we did little except march, and when we were not marching we were sitting under the olive trees waiting to march or lying down under them exhausted after marching. We marched along the coast road between
We were infantry now (it exhilarated and disturbed us) and the purpose of this marching, as we saw it, was to get us fit and at the same time confuse reconnaissance pilots.
Our officers—true they were not as heavily laden as we were, their bedrolls, so it seemed, being shifted from place to place by mysterious agencies: donkeys, perhaps, were at the bottom of it—marched with us. In the lead would be Captain Moon, looking as spruce and nonchalant as though he had stepped from the white portico of the old home to give an order to his coloured overseer, and in the rear Second-Lieutenant Toogood, larding the ground like Falstaff but always ready with a word of encouragement or abuse and never too exhausted to join battle with his verbal Cpl A. Falconer; truck driver;
We grumbled a good deal, of course, but most of our grumbles were merely a concession to good form. We were fit, the weather was glorious, and we were more than a little pleased with ourselves. The thunder had roared, the lightning danced, and we were hardly any the worse for it. Some had been wounded, some had been taken prisoner, and some were missing, but only one had been killed—no, two; for we counted Norman Chissell. At that time we were unaware that Alan Bradbury had been killed and two sub-sections captured. Our casualties in
Late on 1 May, to everyone's distress, the sections were split up, though the unit remained intact. The NZASC Battalion had been absorbed into
We were reshuffled and the next day we marched to a position in the hills about a mile north of
Here we settled down as infantry. We established ack-ack posts, kept paratroop watches by day, posted strong pickets at night, and at dawn sent out patrols and stood to arms. We had no shovels and no wire and not all of us had rifles. A few were without overcoats, and in the chill of the early morning when the white mists were mounting beneath the olive trees you were liable to be challenged by a figure in a grey blanket with a scarlet stripe. A head-dress of turkey feathers and the illusion would have been complete
Some of us pretended to be bored, adopting the attitude that
Every morning half the unit had leave to go swimming or to visit
This open-air life made us desperately hungry and the rations, unfortunately, were slender. The cooks were using open fires—gathering wood was one of our daily jobs—and they had no gear except a few dixies and some cut-down petrol tins, but most of them went to a lot of trouble to make the bully-beef stews appetising. They added herbs and vegetables, purchased from a common fund or stolen, and Mark Brown Cpl J. M. Brown; cook;
We were hungry all the time. Grapes were all about us but they were a few weeks short of being ripe. However, we raided the local potato patches and we killed pigeons. Stuffed with onions and bread-crumbs they were delicious.
The days slipped quickly by. Looked back on they seem all blue and gold. In spite of our many duties we were able to spend hours on the beach and hours in the little wineshops fronting the Wind in the Willows, whom they rather resembled. To go with the wine there were little dishes of baked cuttle-fish, chopped egg and tomato, and—most delicious of all—rice wrapped in vine leaves and fried in oil with paprika.
Always at this hour the watch for paratroops was intensified. Throughout the lovely May evenings the watchers sat in pairs on the highest knolls in the brigade area, searching the sky and the surrounding country. The olive trees stretched away in every direction like toy soldiers, parting here and there to allow room for a vineyard, green and tender with young vines, or a square orange grove guarded by white walls. In the background, so massive that the country brushed up to them over the foothills appeared toy-like, were the
The whole countryside looked like a wonderful old carpet that has lain for long years in a busy, sunny room. The colours, still warm and glowing, were like the ghosts of colours once unbelievably brilliant. Everything had a look of long use. Millions of hands had worn the well smooth; millions of feet had hardened the clay path. Every house and cottage—the feeling was inescapable—was so saturated with family life that the house was the family.
Here the pattern of life had gone on unchanged and unbroken, threaded through by the same customs, the same smells of cooking, the same unaltering round—water to be got from the well and fish from the sea, goats to be milked, grapes to be gathered in and wine pressed out in due season—since Minos was a king in
On 8 May we left our rifles and ammunition for
Having no arms we did no guard duties, and as we were on a moment's notice to move there was no leave. This left us unlimited time for doing what we could to make ourselves more comfortable or less hungry. Greek pedlars came round with trays of cakes and pastries and as long as our drachmae lasted we bought them, but they were not cheap. We built shelters of rushes and groundsheets and talked interminably about our experiences in
When dusk gathered we built fierce bonfires. Their life was limited to about half an hour because of the blackout, so we built them more for cheerfulness than for warmth. Sometimes a water bottle of red wine would pass from hand to hand and then there would be singing, much to the disgust of Winston Churchill, A Section's old bulldog. He would gaze into the flames with an expression incredibly wise, mournful, and disapproving, and when the concert ended, as it did invariably, to the strains of ‘Ole King Farouk’ (our version—not a respectful one—of the Egyptian national anthem), he would yawn with relief, showing his yellow, broken stumps.
Most of us turned in soon after dark, to lie talking for a long while or gazing up under the enormous yellow moon at a tangle of olive branches, beautiful and complicated as a rood-screen. Often we heard aircraft, and then someone would yell out, simulating panic: ‘Don't look up, boys. Stop smiling, that man with the gold teeth.’ The aircraft would go back to
Sometimes we were woken by the sound of strafing, and whenever the harbour was bombed the ground stirred under our ribs as though the island had coughed. Once we awoke to see a plane diving down the white beam of a searchlight, its guns firing.
They were happy and healthy days and the war situation gave us no uneasiness at all. The official news—a neighbouring British medical unit had a wireless set—was mostly bad: it told of heavy night raids on
Captain G. A. Hook Capt G. A. Hook; motor mechanic; Hastings; born Marton, Rev. Fr. J. F. Henley, CF; Roman Catholic priest; Eltham; born
Originally the intention had been to evacuate both the Supply
Nieuw Zeeland but the available space had been reduced unexpectedly and it had been decided to embark either the whole of the larger unit, the Supply Column (less certain details that would have to remain in
Father Henley took a coin from his pocket and spun it, Captain Moon calling heads. Heads it was.
Accordingly, on 14 May, at half past one in the afternoon, we set out for
We went aboard the We left behind Capt H. A. Rowe (posted to unit 27 Mar 41: attached to Supply Column 27 Apr 41), Lauris Newfield (his batman-driver), Cpl Keith Smith (sick), and Jim Winstanley and Stan Barrow (missing when we embarked). Nieuw Zeeland late in the evening and at dusk she began sidling into the stream. The gap between her side and the wharf widened like a slow yawn, and then, just as the slack water was beginning to ruffle, a man pounded on to the wharf. Without hesitating, he flung his revolver to someone on the weather deck and made a flat gangling dive. He came up gasping and spluttering and was dragged aboard at the end of a life-line. We laughed and clapped and gazed again at the lonely diminishing figures still standing on the wharf while the beautiful island, like an island in an old story, melted into the twilight behind them. The incident had been very dramatic—the revolver flying through the air, the plunge into the black water, the widening ripples, the gasping, spluttering swimmer being dragged aboard—and we knew now that we had witnessed an escape. We too, perhaps, were escaping.
We knew now that the Germans would come—tomorrow or in a week's time. Captain Moon, perhaps, had known all along. Anyhow, the coin which Father Henley had tossed was in his pocket. He was keeping it as a souvenir.
The Nieuw Zeeland took us safely to
We had nothing in common any longer with the gipsy company that had lived in rags under the olive trees. Our island days were like a dream and it was as though we had never been away. Under the newly risen sun—it would be a scorcher later on—we stood stiffly to attention. Everything we wore, from boots to despised sun helmets, was brand-new. We were clean, shaved, regimented, and—for the moment—bored.
Chapter 8
Murder On The Old Hook
Murder On The Old Hook
Readers of Westerns must have been irresistibly reminded of the saloons in their favourite boom towns. Pianos tinkled interminably, oceans of beer were drunk, and no one thought twice before changing a 100-piastre note. Credits were substantial after the austerities of
‘The old firm boys the old firm. Here before it's the old firm boys it's the old firm….’
Driver's windscreen removed for visibility
Two bombs in one hole near a staff car
Destruction of Workshops' store lorry —page 90
Retreat through Athens
‘When they waved to us’ —page 90
The Crown and Anchor kings were reaping a golden harvest. Needing no equipment beyond lungs of brass, a heart the size of a pea, and the conscience of a hermit crab, they had been making a good thing out of the Army ever since the first day of the war and they intended to go on making a good thing out of it as long as the good Lord gave them health and strength. They knew all the dodges. Not for them parades and fatigues. Not for them the discomforts and limitations of the field.
For a while they were untroubled by competition and there were enough suckers to go round. Soon, however, a large number of outsiders, among whom were members of the Ammunition Company, succumbed to the lure of quick riches. They pooled their resources and set up in business on their own, and it was not long before a table shortage developed. The result was a new racket: table-broking. At auction a table would fetch anything from 15 to 30 shillings.
The authorities probably had a fair idea of what was going on, and almost nightly there were raids, but warning was given by a corps of highly-paid scouts (‘OK, boys. Wrap her up. Officer of the picket.’) and arrests were uncommon.
Everything went smoothly for about a month—too smoothly, for by then most of the suckers in
The craze passed, or at least abated considerably, and remittances arrived from New Zealand to restore our finances and enable us to take advantage of the fortnight's leave due to us.
Most of us spent at least a week of it in the Holy Land.
For our second week's leave most of us went no farther than pensions established for British troops. In these it was possible—indeed, you were expected and encouraged—to lie at ease in bed during the greater part of the morning and drink American canned beer. Nothing we did or left undone could surprise the Achmeds and Mahomets. Their cynical and amused tolerance (which, we should have said, was our attitude towards them) was proof against everything.
Thus the end of May and the first weeks of June.
Naturally we had little time in which to concern ourselves with the march of events, and perhaps it was as well, for a full knowledge of their course might have caused us to break out in a cold sweat. On a June weekend the Axis gained a decisive victory in a tank battle in the
Not that there was nothing, or even little, on the credit side. A brilliant campaign in
But no one could dispute that
Our first reaction towards this stupendous event was probably the common one:
Late in June we moved to the Mahfouz area, the hottest and sandisest place in
The move to the new area marked the division between a life of comparative indulgence and a more rigorous ordering of our days. Well, that suited us. We had enjoyed our leave and we had spent our money. Now was the moment for the hermit crabs to take their bulging pocket-books to
The violent catharsis effected by
It was not a programme of absorbing interest and anything that presaged action—the arrival, for instance, of forty-eight reinforcements—was welcomed eagerly. ‘When will we get our new vehicles?’ was the most canvassed question. Most of us had not touched a steering wheel since our arrival at
The lorries arrived early in August. We collected them from
From then on we were unable to take the slightest interest in route marches and training programmes. Drivers to whom vehicles had been allotted were distinguishable from the rest by their habit of strolling through the vehicle park at odd hours as a farmer strolls down to the paddock to inspect his new Jerseys. The unlucky ones—whenever the unit was at full strength we had plenty of spare men—were hard put to it to conceal their disappointment. ‘A loader's job'll do me, boy. You can have your stinking trucks. But I don't know what come over old “Dad” giving one to what's-his-name.’
A chance to test the new Chevrolets came later in the month, when first C Section, then A Section, then B Section, took part in a 36-hour desert exercise in the
September came and soon we were preparing for a move. The attendance at the morning sick parades dropped sharply and drivers who had been nursing desert sores with the assiduity of professional beggars began to pester ‘Doc’ Turner Cpl C. R. Turner, m.i.d.; storeman; Otahuhu; born Ti Tree Point, Hawke's Bay,
We had it all worked out—a season in the desert, a race to
On 16 September, after collecting our second-line holding of ammunition and filling our lorries with enough petrol for a satisfyingly long journey, we left Not all of us, though. C Section was attached to the 5th Brigade Group at this time and did not join us at
The new area was ideal. Headquarters and Workshops were on the beach—the drivers could jump straight out of bed into the
But it was not all holidav for Workshops—nor for the rest of us. We worked for the New Zealand brigades and we played our part in building up the desert supply dumps for the coming offensive. No one had told us, of course, that an offensive was in preparation, but we could read the signs: hundreds of square miles covered with stacks of ammunition, petrol, and food: camps springing up everywhere: convoys of guns and lorries. The desert railway was being pushed forward as well and we had a finger in that pie. For over seven weeks the drivers of No. 1 sub-section carted sleepers and rails for the New Zealand Railway Construction Companies, earning praise for their work.
The Luftwaffe and the Regia Aeronautica were not indifferent to all this activity but there was little they could do about it. The desert allows unlimited room for dispersal and the
Our drivers saw little of the
It was our only excitement at
The autumn days slipped past pleasantly and quietly and soon we were well into November. The desert was cold at night now and the
There had been very few changes. Major McGuire had left us for Headquarters Base NZASC and his place had been taken by Major P. E. Coutts Maj P. E. Coutts, MBE, ED, m.i.d.; salesman; The chief appointments on 9 November were: Company headquarters, Maj Coutts (posted 3 Oct 41), Capt S. A. Sampson (second-in-command), 2 Lt K. E. May (posted 28 Jun 41), Capt H. S. Jones (artillery officer attached), 2 Lt O. W. Hill (attached 24 Nov 41), WO II Dillon; A Section, Capt R. C. Gibson, 2 Lt J. M. Fitzgerald (posted 3 Sep 41); B Section, Capt D. C. Ward (posted 3 Sep 41), 2 Lt A. M. W. West-Watson (posted 18 Oct 41); C Section, Lt Fenton was detached from the unit at this time and on 14 November he was posted to the newly-formed 6th Reserve MT Company. The following had left us: Maj McGuire (posted to HQ Base NZASC, 3 Sep 41), Capt Moon (posted to Supply Column, 26 Aug 41), Capt Torbet (posted to
What else had occurred? Nothing much—only a few slow processes. During the past six weeks our lorries had been run in completely and the same could be said of our unit. After the campaign in
We still cursed and grumbled, blackguarding our officers and any NCOs who were outstandingly conscientious, but we did it almost without malice and almost without meaning to. Of the squeaks of genuine distress, the hammering of round pegs in square holes, the chafing of loose parts, there remained only that irreducible minimum one finds even in hand-made machines and in hand-picked companies, and our lorries were certainly not the one nor was our unit the other. In short, we were run in. So something had happened—something quite important.
The autumn days slipped by and past our area moved new guns, new tanks, new troops, new lorries. We watched them and we knew the hour was at hand. Well, it had been a long time, but doubtless that time had been well spent. Evidently this new army they were talking about—and this new commander, General Auchinleck General Sir Claude Auchinleck had succeeded General Wavell as C-in-C MEF on 5 July, and on 26 September the
We watched the new tanks—Valentines, Crusaders, and American General Stuarts—going past in the golden dust.
‘Valentines, eh? Two-pounder gun?’
‘Valentines me —-. Matildas! Look at the armour.’
‘Well anyway, lend us your bike, “Broady”, to go down to “Cocky's”.’
‘Mind old Percy doesn't see you.’
During the second week of November we were told to prepare our vehicles for large-scale desert manœuvres. ‘Manœuvres me —-!’ we said, echoing ‘Broady’ on the subject of Valentines. We knew better.
At 2.20 p.m., 13 November, we pulled on to the main road, heading west.
Chapter 9
Fox In The Fowl Run
Fox In The Fowl Run
WHINING in low gear, the stream of vehicles headed for the setting sun. In the Ministries and offices the big men had done their jobs and now it was our turn—the turn of the small men. Only through our goodwill would the guns shoot, the tanks advance, the wheels go round. The columns of figures had crawled out of their pigeon-holes, the acres of maps had become solid desert, and under the uncaring sun, which was levelled on the advancing transport like a spotlight, glinting on windscreens, causing the drivers to blink and curse, the drama began to unfold.
Campaigns go well or badly; they seldom go smoothly. Already hitches had occurred. We had moved on to the road over two hours ago, and now, at 4 p.m., we were still only a few miles from where we started. Our carefully-nursed dispersal had not survived the assaults of an ambulance unit and a heavy anti-aircraft regiment, and it seemed as though the convoy would be split up hopelessly before it reached the starting point for the advance.
It was dark when we turned off the coast road to the
A little uneasy sleep, and then, with heavy heads and stiff, cold limbs, we climbed back into the cabs and bumped off towards the west, while the chill morning, white and pale grey with a fleck of yellow in it, opened behind us like an oyster. Now we could see what the Ammunition Company looked like in desert formation. As far as the eye could see the sand was chequered with our lorries, each of which—in theory, anyway—was the moving but constant centre of 160,000 square yards of empty desert. Crawling through the colourless morning light, they resembled a regiment of monstrous snails, humped, drab, uniform. They butted their way up the sides of wadis, crunched over hard ground, ploughing
The area in which we were scheduled to spend the night of 14-15 November was reached late in the morning. We were then about thirty miles from the coast and still quite close to the
Throughout the 15th we travelled slowly but steadily due west, halting at dusk after travelling forty-five miles. The last three stages of the journey to the frontier were to be made at night, so we rested during the 16th, moving off at dusk in close formation. When we halted at one in the morning we had travelled twenty-five miles and were thirty-two miles due south of
So far everything had gone fairly smoothly, but early on the night of 17-18 November the formation struck soft sand, some thirty lorries sinking axle-deep. Vehicles without four-wheel drive—some of the sections had a few Mapleleaf Chevrolets—became hopelessly bogged and this meant hard work for our breakdown lorries. Where the ground was not soft it was villainously rough and it was often necessary for the formation to narrow its front to avoid wadis or minefields. The presence of the latter was indicated by softly-glowing lanterns, but several of the drivers, confused by the darkness and knowing they were out of position, had moments of panic when they wondered if they were on the right side of the line. It was an eerie night. In ragged columns the vehicles plunged and stumbled through the desolation of stone and camel-thorn, and the heat and smell of them—you got a blast of it when a dozen or more swept crazily together to avoid an obstacle—alternated with a whisper of cold wind, forbidding as the brush of skirts when the coven gathers for its sabbat. West, in the direction of the frontier, sheets of lightning blinked and played along the horizon. North, south, and east, we were hedged in by the deep, mocking darkness.
We crossed the Egyptian frontier at dawn on the 19th, halting near
That night we enjoyed a sound sleep, and we spent the 20th in doing the hundred and one jobs—everything from washing a pair of socks to adjusting a noisy tappet—that accumulate in the course of a long journey.
On the following afternoon we moved through the 300-yard breach in the wire to occupy an area eleven miles north-west of
It had started already.
Already advanced elements of 30th Corps, after taking Rommel by surprise and clashing with his armour, were in sight of the
The next morning—the 22nd—we set out for
After we had travelled steadily for an hour and a half the Major was told that his lorries were passing between the frontier fortress of Libyan Omar and troops of the 7th Indian Brigade who were about to attack it. If we didn't want to get shelled, he was told, we had better swing left at once. Our drivers could see the Indian infantry sitting silently in open lorries. Almost
All was well, however, and we reached our new area, where we made haste to dig in, early in the afternoon. The New Zealand Division was now in action against
Meanwhile the fighting around
At nine on the morning of the 23rd a convoy from the new company, composed of C Section (ammunition), two sections from the Supply Column (rations), and six lorries from the 4th
In the usual desert formation, which by now our drivers had become adept in maintaining, the convoy pushed on, encountering here and there bad patches of soft sand in which a number of lorries gave trouble, halting all the rest. The second time this happened C Section was joined by four Royal Army Service Corps Bedfords whose excited drivers told how their convoy had been attacked and dispersed on Trigh Capuzzo.
They were in the middle of their story when five enemy armoured fighting vehicles were sighted. Some of the lorries were still bogged, so the drivers were ordered to form the transport into a defensive square and defend it with their rifles.
Fortunately the enemy sheered off without firing, and Captain Butt, grabbing a shovel, at once organised the spare drivers into a digging party. Soon every lorry was on firm ground again.
At two in the afternoon, when the convoy was due south of
An hour and a half later three enemy armoured cars bore down on the convoy from the east, attempting to cut it off. The Trigh was now only five miles ahead, so Captain Roberts decided to run for it. As soon as the drivers saw the speed-it-up signal the transport surged forward, rocking and bumping over the rough desert. The manoeuvre was successful and the armoured cars dropped away on the right flank. Just in front of Bir Nza er Rifi, which was a mile south of the Trigh and in line with
Meanwhile Captain Butt had gone forward in his staff car to put the matter to the test. The moment it reached the floor of the wadi
A second later our drivers lost all interest in what was going on in the wadi. Now they were under fire themselves. They leaped for their cabs and with a throaty scream of engines the whole convoy turned and fled south while three armoured cars fired on it from one direction, two machine guns from another, and two small-calibre guns (probably anti-tank guns) from a third. The going was abominable and there were slit-trenches everywhere. Into one of these a Bedford—one of the four that had joined the convoy earlier—plunged headlong, having to be abandoned.
The pursuit was not given up until more than five miles had been covered and all the while a heavy concentration of unidentified transport had been moving north-west on the right flank.
After travelling south for eight miles, Captain Roberts turned east at Uesc Chet er Reian (through which the convoy had already passed once), carried on for another nine miles, and halted for the night at Bir es Sufan, the transport forming up in a laager just as the covered wagons did in Red Indian country.
Bir es Sufan, no doubt, meant something to Arab nomads. One could imagine—though not without an effort—their comparing it with Nza er Rifi and Uesc Chet er Reian and confessing a nostalgic preference for the former. To our drivers it was nothing—just a stretch of desert indistinguishable from any other stretch. To Captains Butt and Roberts it was a six-figure map reference (475392). Even the cistern, whose presence was suggested by the prefix Bir, was invisible to the uninitiated.
Some of the drivers had eaten and bedded down and others were still busy over their primuses, with canopies close drawn to prevent any light from showing, when a distant squeaking and rumbling, as of mice and volcanoes mixed, forced itself on the attention. Presently its import became unmistakable and Captain Butt sped from lorry to lorry. He said: ‘Stay where you are. No noise, No lights. No smoking.’
From the monstrous racket individual sounds began to sort
Feeling that they had experienced quite enough for one day the drivers went to bed.
Only a few miles from where C Section's lorries were laagered but separated from them by Heaven alone knew how many wandering groups of Germans, New Zealanders, Italians, and South Africans—for by now the confusion on both sides was considerable—the Major was recording the day's events.
November 23 0100 hours: 14 Lt A-A Section 123 ORs commanded by Capt G. Fordyce.
Everyone from the Major down—from General Auchinleck down—was worried. There was reason to be. The Germans had retaken
The tired sentries paced up and down beside the closly-packed
On the morning of 24 November Rommel felt the ball in his hands and he decided to make a touch-down. Collecting three armoured divisions—two German and one Italian—he made a run for the Wire. Tanks of the 7th Armoured Brigade, like plucky half-backs, went in to tackle him, but he fended them off, and in the afternoon the 21st Panzer Division under General von Ravenstein reached the frontier at
Supplying the New Zealand Division with ammunition, petrol, food, and water had been difficult before; now it was a nightmare task. The 50th Field Supply Depot, from which we had been drawing ammunition, was near
For transport units there was no safety. Every convoy was like a fleet of fishing smacks in a hostile ocean. It was now to be discovered if our drivers could really drive—if our section officers and subalterns could really read maps and lead men.
The 24th dawned cold and bright, a pleasantly astringent Monday morning. Taking their cue from the weather, the drivers woke in good heart. Already, no doubt, steps had been taken to avoid a recurrence of the unpleasantness of yesterday.
Renewed optimism was in the air and ‘Fat’ Davison responded to the general feeling by giving his drivers a breakfast of fried sausages—a rare treat after a succession of bully-beef stews eked out with army biscuits.
They queued up in the chill silver and gold sunlight, avoiding the long spikes of shadow cast by the lorries and chatting happily
Waiting for nightfall, Crete
The Prime Minister inspects Bedfords at Maadi
Leave in Tel Aviv
Ration trucks at a supply depot
‘I was next in the queue,’ said George Laverick, Dvr G. P. Laverick; truck driver; Netherton, On the 23rd the 5th South African Brigade had been overrun south of
‘A column of some sort was moving towards us from the northwest, so the cooks packed up at once and I didn't get my snarler. A few minutes later we were on the move, heading south and then east towards
The rest of the unit had also started the day on an empty stomach. We were roused before dawn and the Major led us westwards across the desert, Captain H. S. Jones Lt-Col H. S. Jones; company manager;
In real fact the situation, at least as it affected the New Zealanders, was beginning to clear a little. The 4th Brigade was at
The brigades linked up later in the day in readiness for the final battle for
At half past ten a Divisional military policeman told us to go to Bir el Halezin, seven miles south-west of Bir el Chleta. We moved steadily in that direction until noon when we were halted by an action between British and enemy tanks. While we were waiting for the situation to clear, Captain Ward Capt D. C. Ward; motor driver; born NZ, Maj R. C. Gibson; woodwork instructor, Auckland Education Board;
Watching from Company headquarters' area, Corporal Bev Hendrey 2 Lt C. B. P. Hendrey; truck driver;
Later in the afternoon the Major was asked to move his transport as it was parked between German tanks and the guns of the 22nd Armoured Brigade. We moved a mile south and settled down for the night.
The light faded from apple-green to blue-grey and all over the desert groups of transport huddled close in the prescribed formation—-Custer's Last Stand. A Section's lorries were protected by the
Dvr A. B. Meiklejohn; orchardist; born NZ, Dvr. O. J. Kennedy; builder's labourer; Tapanui, Otago; born Tapanui,
Again the sentries walked up and down beside the close-packed lorries. Nothing very alarming had occurred during the day and they spoke sagely and cheerfully of final flings, mopping-up operations, and isolated pockets of resistance—and their wireless sets did the same. True there were some disturbing stories about. Packs of panzers, it seemed, were roaming the desert and chivying and savaging unprotected convoys. And there was that business about the tanks. None of ours, a bewildered tankie had explained, fired anything heavier than a two-pound shell, whereas the lightest shell fired by the German tanks was 4½ pounds and the heaviest 14-15 pounds.
We consoled ourselves by thinking of their horrible pink petrol. A British tank wouldn't look at it.
The blue light faded to black and later the moon rose. The burnt-out stubs of tanks and trucks stood out dark against the desert, the surface of which seemed to have been strewn with largesse—great silver pieces. They were only petrol tins, though, and empty German and Italian and British food tins.
With eighteen men and one corpse in the back of the lorry Sam Mellows's drivers found it impossible to stretch out in comfort. They dozed for a while, then woke up aching with cold and cramps, then dozed again. Before dawn they were roused by a rumble of tanks and a confused shouting from the Germans. They shook hands in the darkness, feeling suddenly certain that the enemy was surrounded and they would soon be free.
‘It started the afternoon before.’ said Corporal S. T. Midgley Sgt S. T. Midgley; traveller;
‘After we had gone about three miles we noticed a convoy in the far distance moving towards us on our right front. Sam Mellows thought it was most probably Captain Gibson returning with A Section after failing to get through to the 4th Brigade, so he halted his vehicles. Shortly afterwards we saw six armoured cars swing across our front and drive swiftly down our left flank, keeping about half a mile out in the desert. We could now see that the formation ahead of us was an armoured column and our spirits sank when we noticed that it was accompanied by motor-cycles with side-cars.
‘The six armoured cars swung left, each of them heading towards one of our lorries. Sam Mellows shouted to the drivers to stand firm. The car that had singled us out halted fifty yards away and an officer said in perfect English: “Hands up! Have you any arms?” I said: “Rifles only.” The officer said: “Drive to the rear of the column.” A German soldier got in beside our driver and Sam Mellows and I climbed into the back of the lorry, two guards going with us.
‘Meanwhile this scene was being repeated at each of the lorries and in a matter of minutes the convoy was heading towards the German column, which had never halted, the armoured cars following behind with their machine guns trained on us. While we were catching up the column we passed within a mile or so of the company area and I could see our boys and their vehicles.
‘After we had travelled a short distance we came under heavy fire from British 25-pounders and Jerry set off at full speed, altering direction from time to time. Shells were landing all round us and we heard afterwards that the lorry in which Arty Meiklejohn and Steve Kennedy were driving received a direct hit, but we could get no details. The shelling continued for about half an hour and all this time the column seemed to be travelling more or less in circles.
‘At dusk we halted. After dark the column moved five miles to confuse the
‘That night we were told to unload one of the captured lorries and we were all herded into it. We were joined by six Tommies who had been captured earlier in the day and that made eighteen of us. It was pretty close quarters.
‘We didn't get a feed that night. In fact the Jerries gave us nothing all the time we were with them. I don't know how we should have managed if the boys hadn't thought to grab a few tins of food while they were travelling in the backs of their lorries. Our Jerry guard—he stayed with us always and he used to sit on the camel tank, which by a mercy was full of water—was pretty generous in sharing his own rations. He was a good little joker. He came from
‘An officer, an elderly man who visited us before we turned in, was quite decent too. After telling us to make ourselves as comfortable as possible he stayed for a little chat, mentioning that he knew England well and liked it. He said he used to referee soccer matches at Wembley stadium.
‘As a matter of fact most of the Jerries we met treated us well. On the whole we found them a pretty free and easy crowd, much like ourselves, and there was only one incident that really got our goat. That had occurred during the afternoon. Sam and I, while we were in the back of our lorry, dug out a carton of 200 cigarettes, from which we gave the two guards a couple of packets each. They must have mentioned this outside, for during one of the halts an officer came up to us—he was a typical Prussian specimen: lean, with a cold, hard eye and a clipped, abrupt way of speaking—and demanded some of the
‘With eighteen jokers in the back of the lorry it was hell trying to get to sleep. To make matters worse we had a most unpleasant addition to our number early in the night. An officer poked his
‘Before daylight we saw flares in the sky, and the Jerries started shouting and we heard tanks. We were highly delighted, believing the laager was surrounded by our own chaps. Nothing happened, though, and soon it was light enough for us to see that we had been joined by a huge enemy force—a collection of armour and lorried infantry. Rommel was there as well we heard later. We looked through peepholes we had made in the canopy and saw vehicles of all types stretching out in every direction. It was a bitter sight.
‘We moved at sunrise—having first got rid of the dead Jerry, thank goodness!—with the bulk of the tanks travelling in front and a screen of armoured cars and tanks on the flanks and scout cars away out on the horizon.
By this time the fate of the six lorries was no longer a mystery. At breakfast-time Steve Kennedy had reached Company headquarters dazed with exhaustion. He said that his lorry had been destroyed and Arty Meiklejohn was lying out in the desert seriously wounded. A rescue party was formed under Captain Sampson, with Steve, although he was almost at the end of his tether, acting as guide. He told his story as they went along.
When the German column came under fire from our 25-pounders Steve's and Arty's lorry received a direct hit, both drivers being blown out of the cab. Arty's leg was almost severed by a piece of shrapnel but Steve escaped with a bad shaking. The lorry started to burn fiercely.
A German soldier pointed his revolver at Steve and told him to leave Arty and climb aboard the next lorry. Steve refused to do this and the German fired, missing him and wounding Arty in the
After a fairly long search—Steve could give only vague directions—the burnt lorry was sighted with Arty lying beside it. He was in bad shape by now, and for the time being it was impossible to evacuate him to a field dressing station. (He was evacuated the next day and was killed on the day after that—the 28th—when New Zealand medical units were overrun between Bir el Chleta and Point 175.)
The rest of the morning passed quietly. A Section returned from serving the 4th Brigade and B Section from serving the 6th.
Early in the afternoon orders arrived for the 65th RASC Company, which had reached our lines before breakfast with the now familiar story of a chase by tanks. Their ammunition was to go to the 4th Field Regiment, their petrol and water to the supply point. It was as well that something for the guns to shoot had come forward, for C Section was now serving the 5th Brigade in the
Word came at two in the afternoon and the sections set out under Captains Gibson and Ward to load ammunition at the 62nd Field Supply Depot, which was some distance from Alem el Abiad and over thirty miles south by west of Bir el Halezin.
After the convoy had travelled a dozen miles it was halted by Captain Gibson who had noticed a suspicious movement ahead. Some A Section drivers took advantage of the halt to salvage a perfectly good staff car that was sitting unattended in the desert. It was undamaged except for a few bullet holes, and a short tow started the engine. In the meantime two armoured cars had moved to a ridge on the left flank.
As soon as the convoy moved off they pounced—like a cat with
Dvr C. Cameron; butcher; born NZ,
Our drivers got home in time for tea. The steaming bully stew and soggy rice, reassuringly familiar against the rather macabre atmosphere of the campaign, went down well after the day's excitements, a pleasant consciousness of dangers overcome adding sauce to the cooks' efforts. A and B Sections were not sorry to have had an adventure of their own, for C Section, according to all reports, had been stealing the limelight.
During the 24th—the day of Rommel's dash to the frontier—the Composite NZASC Company had been disbanded, C Section remaining at
After travelling south by west for eighteen miles the convoy came under fire from artillery on the right flank. Captain Butt turned it about and headed for a tank recovery section he had passed four miles back. He made his report to the officer commanding the unit but it was received sceptically and his request for an armoured escort refused. The tanks in the area, he was told, were under repair and none of them was really fit for action.
In an attempt to by-pass the danger zone he led the convoy five miles west and then turned south, only to be halted after travelling
‘I was in the staff car with Freddy Butt and his driver,’ said Sergeant Bob Aro. WO II R. G. Aro, MM; fitter and turner; L-Cpl J. F. Girvan; tractor driver; Seafield,
Our drivers saw the staff car come tearing towards them in a spray of bullets and the lorries turned as one. As they did so five more armoured cars appeared on the right flank, and for a minute it looked as though the game was up. Bullets went between the lorries and over and under and through them. At first the convoy drew ahead, but then it struck soft sand and the armoured cars started to gain. One lorry was hit in a vital part and it clattered to a standstill, the drivers tumbling out. The enemy kept up the pursuit mile after mile, and all the time Captain Butt's staff car was like a sheepdog. Now it was in the lead indicating the course; now it was on a flank watching over a straggler. The C Section drivers were beginning to swear by him. Finally he led them back to the recovery section and only then did the armoured cars give up the chase.
Again the officer in command was asked for the loan of a light tank and this time the request was granted. However, just as the convoy was setting off, three armoured cars appeared 1300 yards north of the position. They prowled about, nosed this way and that, and then sat back on their haunches for all the world like dingoes; and like dingoes they slipped away into the haze when four I-tanks rumbled towards them. The incident, unfortunately, caused the officer commanding to change his mind. He decided that he must keep everything he had for his own protection, so Captain Butt had no alternative but to leave the convoy where it was and try to get through to Headquarters NZASC with a report.
During the next two hours the drivers amused themselves by exploring the recovery section. It consisted of a mass of vehicles—tank-transporters, lorries, and light trucks—and at the moment it was engaged in repairing British I-tanks that had come to grief in the fighting for the
A cloud of dust appeared from the direction of Libyan Omar and rapidly grew larger. ‘What can you see?’ asked Tom Laverick Cpl T. D. Laverick; factory assistant;
There was an instant—a moment suspended in time—in which the dust cloud was stabbed with orange flames and a voice could be heard shouting ‘Take post!’ and the Tommies could be seen manning their ruined tanks, calm through despair or through long discipline. Then the shells came over with a squeal and a short rush and the dust hid everything. On Bob Aro's orders our drivers
Bob Aro was leading the larger group, and as soon as it was safe to do so he swung north and went straight to the Supply Column lines near
Captain Butt had managed to get through to Headquarters NZASC and had been instructed to put himself and his section under the command of Captain Roberts, the Composite NZASC Company having been re-formed to serve the 5th Brigade. He had set out for the recovery section to collect the convoy and while still some distance away had seen fires break out in the area. He had closed to
Except for the party that had dashed off on its own—ten drivers in four lorries—C Section was complete again. Without further delay it joined the Composite Company and moved seven or eight miles north-east into the
Night came with a quickening chill, a dropping of green and pink and blue veils and a rush of shadows.
At twenty minutes to eight, after moving four miles north with the 22nd Armoured Brigade, our unit halted and made camp. The German column halted after moving five or six miles.
‘It was quite dark by then,’ said ‘Midge’. ‘The boys were in good spirits, though some of them had begun to feel a bit knocked up. We were stiff and sore and what we needed above everything else was a smoke. That was out of the question of course. A glimmer of a light would probably have been a shooting matter. The Jerries, I think, were getting a bit rattled, but you couldn't blame them for that. We'd had a taste of the
‘Later in the afternoon, while halted, we were shelled by British 25-pounders. Several vehicles were hit and one shell landed only thirty yards away from us, spraying our lorry with stones and gravel. We were not allowed to get out and take cover and we didn't feel any too good sitting up there like Jacky. Craning from the back of the lorry, we could see the flash of the guns when they fired and after each flash we spent some lovely seconds wondering where the shells were going to land.
‘Presently we moved out of range and we kept going until just on sunset, when all the tanks went forward, apparently to engage a British force. I got out of the lorry for a minute, the guard going with me. Our lorry was pointing north and the sun was going down on the left flank. Standing near me was a German officer. At that moment two 8-cwt. Chevrolets driven by Tommies came towards us out of the setting sun. When they were about twenty yards away they must have noticed my battledress and the uniforms of the two Germans, for they changed down with a flourish and one of them shouted: “What the hell goes on?” One of our boys had been watching through a peephole in the canopy and he yelled out: “Go for your bloody lives!” The two Chevrolets leapt forward, swung hard left round the tail of the lorry and hard left again round the bonnet, and were away into the setting sun, gathering speed. The officer yelled to the guard for his rifle. It was at the slung position and a second or two went by while he struggled with it. A few more were lost while the officer doubled round the lorry and by that time the target was just a diminishing cloud of dust right in the eye of the setting sun. It was hopeless
‘Taking it by and large, we felt pretty chirpy that second night. We knew we had a good chance of being rescued so long as the column stayed in the forward areas. We discussed it from this angle and that, and all the while the need for a smoke got worse and the cold struck up through the steel tray….’
Clusters of tanks, trucks, and tired men—like islands of various sizes in a cold, dark ocean—dotted the whole desert. They lay so still that it was possible for two of them to be almost cheek by jowl without knowing it. In a dozen places the leopard was lying down with the kid or with other leopards, but not in amity. The German column, for instance, as ‘Midge’ and his friends were to find out shortly, had chosen a British force for a bed-fellow, and it was chance alone—a dozen miles in this or the other direction—that prevented that force from being the one that was sheltering our ten lost C Section drivers and the Tommy sergeant who had driven up exclaiming: ‘Blimey, chum! You bloody near shot me.’ He had been mistaken for a German.
Now there were only three lorries, the fourth having broken down early in the chase, which had been very hot for a while. Rough going, however, had helped our drivers to get clear, and after putting a safe distance between themselves and the doomed recovery section they had halted and allowed the irate Tommy sergeant to come up with them. A bullet fired by Alf Hallmond had missed him by a whisker.
The drivers said to Corporal Ernie Symons Cpl A. E. Symons; farmer; Ohaupo,
There was a mass of transport on the horizon and it was decided to approach it from the flank with extreme caution. Shy as antelopes and as vulnerable, the three lorries and the Tommy sergeant's pick-up drove hesitantly across the desert, halting near a British anti-tank gun. There was a bad moment when the crew abandoned their billy of tea and sprang to action stations, but the drivers were wise enough to stay still and presently they were recognised. ‘If
The fugitives had found sanctuary with the B Echelon of a British armoured brigade. About 300 vehicles, including tanks and tank-transporters, were dispersed over a wide area, and the position was protected by anti-tank guns. Ernie Symons and the others were not sorry when the officer commanding the unit ordered them to stay where they were until contact could be made with a New Zealand convoy. While they were talking with the OC a scout car brought in a captured lorry and ten Germans, one of whom was an officer, a big, tow-headed Nazi who must have weighed every ounce of 16 stone. As soon as he got his feet on the ground he slung the OC a tremendous our tea. For you, chummy, we've kept a nice bit of bull.’ The big Nazi looked hose pipes and hunting whips but had sense enough to keep quiet.
Each of our drivers received a big helping of ham and they went to bed that night on full stomachs, to dream, perhaps, of dusk, gentle and soft as a suéde glove, brushing over
Dawn in the desert comes in about five blinks. Peering through gummy eyes and a misted windscreen, you see only a lumpy pallor joggling beyond the radiator cap. You blink—and perhaps doze for five minutes—and when you open your eyes individual snail shells and spikes of camel-thorn can be seen plainly. You blink
We had been woken by gunfire shortly before dawn—the dawn of the 26th—and the company, at the request of the 22nd Armoured Brigade, was moving back to Bir el Halezin. (Our overnight area, no doubt, was needed for a tank battle.) Captain Butt's convoy, as dawn broke, was feeling its way, engines grunting and backfiring in low gear, down a winding, precipitous track on the Sghifet el Charruba escarpment, near Bir ez Zemla, seven miles north of
‘That hour before dawn,’ said George Laverick, ‘was the worst part of a long, bad night. Quite early we had seen distant enemy flares and later the whole horizon was jumping with them. At the same time we could hear the growl of heavy transport going past. By midnight there were Very lights and parachute flares on all sides of us and it looked to me as though we were pretty well surrounded. However, the loaded lorries got away all right and I felt better after that. My lorry carried mines, so I didn't have to go.
‘Not long before daylight a small group of transport, part of the great mass that was still moving past, got off its course or mistook us for Jerries. Anyway, it came in across the small airfield—there was one just in front of us—and when it reached the middle it was given the works. Machine-gunners opened up at point-blank range and an anti-tank gun joined the fray. This lasted about ten hectic minutes. Tommy voices could be heard calling out: they said they were British prisoners. But Germans voices could be heard too, so the officer in charge of us, suspecting a trap, refused to allow them to come in and ordered us to fire on the slightest movement. The cries from the wounded were terrible.
‘When dawn came we saw a grisly sight. About thirty German and Italian soldiers were lying out there wounded and three were dead. I didn't see any wounded Tommies, but I feel certain there must have been some as about sixty prisoners had been set free and in the trays of two of the six lorries captured there were large pools of blood. There was an ambulance—occupied by a British airman and a German—that did not seem to have been hit, and there was a German staff car, the driver of which was dead.
‘The day opened quietly and I was just beginning to think things were rather fun when—at about nine in the morning—a Jerry convoy came towards us, very uncertain about who we were. It came on about ten yards at a time, taking all precautions. Its inquisitiveness was soon satisfied. Our 25-pounders opened up and the way those Jerries turned and took to their scrapers reminded me of my own experiences. It was all right to see the old Jerry getting a bit of his own back.
‘The next target to show itself was a crawler and a second shot from a 25-pounder sent it to its doom. The two occupants tried to escape but Kiwi machine-gunners changed their minds for them. One of them came in with his hands up. The other had no hands; he was badly burnt as well, and he died.
‘Intermittent firing by our guns had been going on since early morning and it was now early afternoon. Stuff was still going past out in the desert….’
Throughout the afternoon a mass of tanks and transport moved towards L-Sgt A. F. Mills; lorry driver; Te Kawa West,
There was nothing to do except watch and wait, so Clarry Monahan Dvr C. Monahan; builder; Hastings; born
For ‘Midge’ and his friends, passing at that moment through the gap between the two positions, there was no afternoon tea. In other circumstances Clarry could have served them from the ammunition point or George Laverick could have driven over from
‘This was our third day with the Jerries,’ said ‘Midge’. ‘At dawn that morning we were woken by the hell of a racket and by shouts for the driver of our lorry, Stan Wrack, L-Cpl C. S. Wrack; storeman;
‘Next we were machine-gunned by fighter aircraft from a low level. At the time we were in semi-darkness, the guard having tied down the canopy at the back of the lorry. We could hear the planes swooping down on us and the rattle of their machine guns, and we cowered in the tray with our tin hats crammed over our ears. It sounded as though the planes were right on top of us and it was the hell of a feeling sitting there and not knowing what was
‘At every halt Stan would sing out the news and the boys found this a great comfort. Stan's was a difficult job and everyone remarked that he was the right man for it. He kept cool and nursed us along over the bumps.
‘During the day we were transferred to an open Jerry three-tonner, Stan coming with us. We were now near the front of the convoy.
‘We had only the vaguest idea of our position but we guessed we had been making a good deal of easting since our capture and were now close to the frontier. Actually we were not far from
‘When we were a few miles from
It was afternoon-tea time and when the bombing was over B Section boiled up, but A Section, which had not sustained casualties, carried on towards
At two in the afternoon nineteen empty A Section lorries followed by twenty-two empty B Section lorries (plus a detachment from the 65th RASC Company) had left the unit lines at Bir el Halezin, joining Trigh Capuzzo and heading east. According to
Shortly before three, by which time A Section was ten miles from
Then the raiders headed towards A Section. The drivers started
see the bastards are ours.’
There were two Very light pistols in A Section's ack-ack lorry but Jim Stanley had no idea what to do with them.
The firing stopped as suddenly as it had started and the aircraft flew away. Possibly only a warning had been intended. At all events, though the area had been raked with fire, no damage had been done. This was not the case with Captain Ward's B Section.
‘We were driving along Trigh Capuzzo in column of route,’ said ‘Skin’ Wilson, Dvr E. D. Wilson; shop assistant; Dvr T. W. P. Barlow; truck driver;
‘Our convoy then moved off the Trigh and got into desert formation but we were still pretty close together. Apparently we had been attacked by Blenheims with heavy fighter escort and no one could get the guts of it at all. However, hardly any damage had been done—a punctured tire for the “Tree Man” was about as far as it went.’
While the lorries were being checked a single British fighter-bomber flew over and dropped two flares. This was done to reassure them, the drivers decided, so no one was much concerned when a large
‘I stood watching the planes,’ said ‘Skin’, ‘and it was not until I saw the black blobs falling that I realised we were being bombed again. Some of us dived under lorries. Others ran for it. I got about fifty yards from my lorry and flopped down in the sand. I think there were about eighteen planes, bombers and fighters, the same ones that had attacked us before. They dropped stick after stick of little anti-personnel bombs and I didn't think I was going to come out alive.’
In the second raid Frank George L-Cpl F. A. F. George; shearer; Glen Massey, Dvr L. A. Hawking; dealer; Bayswater, S-Sgt D. C. Henderson; clerk; born Dvr A. H. Storey; motor driver; born
‘After that,’ said ‘Skin’, ‘we were told to disperse the transport properly. I could see that my lorry had been knocked about a good deal—she had three flat tires for one thing—but I got into the cab to have a go at starting her. As I did so I called out to “Yorkie”—Albert Storey—who was my cobber on the lorry. A second later I saw him struggling to his feet right at my elbow. He looked pretty bad and I had just time to hop out of the cab and grab hold of him before he slipped to the ground. He had been hit in the back by a piece of shrapnel that had passed right through the engine. Everyone thought the world of “Yorkie”. He was a fine musician, and back in Dvr R. L. Crapp; labourer; born
Six lorries belonging to the
A Section, meanwhile, was nearing
‘It is not very nice, this desert warfare,’ said one of the other officers in a gentlemanly sort of way, evidently wishing to dispel the unpleasant impression made by his companion. ‘Myself, I do not find it very nice. These biscuits, they are very nice.’ (They weren't: they were horrible.) ‘You have plenty?’
He was a tall, fine-looking man with a simple face and very honest blue eyes. He was the sort of man you would be glad to get into conversation with on a railway journey. It was impossible to doubt his courage and integrity and difficult to doubt that he was inherently decent: it seemed unbelievable that a man of his stamp could have anything but contempt for the Nazi bosses. (This was in the days when people still spoke wistfully of ‘honourable elements in the German officer class’.) He said he came from Bavaria. His rat-faced companion came from
The remaining member of the trio was a small, plump man with a cherubic face, steel spectacles, and a really charming smile. He spoke hardly at all, contenting himself with munching biscuits, smiling his disarming smile, and bouncing up and down in the uncomfortable little seat provided by the Motley mounting. He looked like a village schoolmaster—you thought of woollen mufflers and children singing ‘Silent Night’—or like one of those lovable, absent-minded German professors whom most of us had read about
Conversation with the pleasant Bavarian and the task of keeping a sharp eye on the disgusting little creature from
After halting the convoy Captain Gibson drove forward alone, tooting his horn. He stopped for a moment at the guarded entrance, then signalled the lorries forward. They went rumbling into
‘You're lucky, boy,’ a New Zealand anti-tank gunner said to Jim Stanley. ‘We were watching you all the way. We were pretty near certain you were Germans and if that officer of yours hadn't come forward the way he did you'd have stopped the lot.’ He pointed to where the gun and tower were glowing softly in the twilight, adding: ‘That's our work.’
There was no supply depot in
It shone on Company headquarters, Workshops, and the handful of load-carriers at Bir el Halezin. It shone on the small, dirty compound in
It shone on Captain Ward's lorries, which, about midnight, were forming a laager somewhere east of Bir el Halezin. The wounded drivers, after waiting nearly five hours, had been taken in a passing British ambulance to 13th Corps' main dressing station. After that the convoy had headed for home, Captain Ward's information being that it was useless to try to reach
It shone on the B Echelon of the British armoured brigade, one of whose six laagers sheltered the three lorries in which Ernie Symons and his nine C Section drivers were sleeping. No dreams tonight of Nazis and Westphalian hams. They had spent a pleasantly quiet afternoon tinkering with a German motor-cycle that Ernie and Alf Hallmond had brought back to camp after going out on patrol with the scout cars, and later they had taken their turn at the listening posts. Now they were sound asleep.
The aircraft came over about half past one in the morning. They circled in the moonlight and dropped several bombs, all of which fell on the same laager—the one in which the C Section lorries were parked. Two were set on fire and the third was riddled with shrapnel. Tom Laverick was wounded in the back, Bob Troughear Cpl R. W. Troughear; carting contractor; Pokeno, Dvr S. C. Pausina; butcher;
Tom Laverick was stunned by blast and when he came to he was surrounded by flames.
‘I opened my eyes,’ he said, ‘and the canopy was blazing and fire was darting all over the back of the lorry. At first I couldn't make out what had happened or where I was. A few seconds must have passed before I pulled myself together but once I did start to move I was over that tailboard like lightning. I didn't realise I had been hit until I was outside.
‘At the back of the lorry there was a Tommy with his head blown off. Another Tommy had lost his leg and was screaming out and calling for his sergeant. I went over to see if I could help but there wasn't a thing I could do for him. A plane was still hovering over the burning lorries and machine-gunning.’
The driver of the third lorry, meanwhile, had climbed into his riddled cab and pressed the starter, expecting no result. To his astonishment the engine fired at once. The others scrambled aboard, the fit helping the wounded, and the lorry headed for the open desert, which seemed safety itself in comparison with that fiery neighbourhood. It was a wise move, for presently the aircraft returned, bombing and strafing.
Banners of flame streamed skywards for a long while, and afterwards, in half a dozen places, hot metal glowed cherry red.
The moon had still an hour or two left. It shone down on
Most of A Section's lorries were grouped roughly around an open space, which appeared at first glance to be a dumping ground for old clothes and abandoned equipment; then the moonlight,
Herrenvolk—and the poor devils were as cold as any Pole and as hungry as any Greek. Yesterday they had ranked with the world's finest soldiers: tonight they were down and out—finished. The presence of two Bren guns crouched over slim bipods—bird dogs inspecting the day's bag—seemed almost superfluous.
The prisoners squirmed and muttered and some of them moaned a little. Nothing else moved. They might have been dying men on a dead planet. Everything looked cold and dead, and low in the heavens, colder and more dead than anything on earth, washing the sands with silver, emphasizing each mean and ugly detail—the discarded tins, the rusty wire, the poor disgusting prisoners—turning the sentries into silver statues and silvering the guns and lorries, evil and indifferent, was the moon.
The drivers lay for a minute longer—two minutes longer—in the lovely blankets, but the voices came back: ‘Right-oh, you jokers. Pack up. Pack up. Moving in ten minutes.’
It was a little before two in the morning and Captain Roberts had been ordered to replenish the Composite NZASC Company at the 50th Field Supply Depot near Capt W. S. Duke; butcher;
The frozen prisoners were herded aboard—with pathetic honesty they scuttled round trying to return old radiator muffs and bits of canvas they had borrowed—and within ten minutes the convoy was under way, travelling south-west. Ahead and on both flanks German flares bobbed up and down in a manner indescribably
The drivers who had been left behind were inclined to congratulate themselves—the No. 1 drivers anyway: the spare drivers were less certain. They had been issued with hand grenades and extra rifle ammunition and told they were infantry. They shivered in their slit-trenches, longing for dawn.
‘The night was quiet,’ said George Laverick, ‘but Jerry put up a continual string of flares, showing that he had us taped pretty near all round. My heart was right down in my scrapers.’
Just before dawn two Hurricanes took off from the airfield. Soon it was light.
‘With great sighs of relief,’ said George, ‘my cobbers and I made our way back to the lorries and put the billy on. When we were all set for the first mouthful—the milk was in the billy and some of the boys were getting their cups and others were fossicking around for eats—the siren sounded. The rising sun was just level with the horizon, and over a low ridge, about a thousand yards away, came German tanks, lorried infantry, and motor-cyclists, shooting and shelling.’
Chapter 10
Thursday, Friday, And Saturday
Thursday, Friday, And Saturday
THE siren sounded, Bren carriers raced in from the desert, and our guns opened fire. It was 27 November.
‘We were woken by the hell of a racket of shelling and machine-gunning,’ said Claude Campbell, L-Cpl H. J. C. Campbell; truck driver; Mangamuka, Dvr H. W. McCabe; lorry driver; Ohaupo, Dvr D. H. Baker; contractor; Mangamuka,
At the start of the attack some of our drivers were asleep; others were brewing up, folding their blankets, cleaning their teeth. Noel Orsborn Dvr N. J. N. Orsborn; farm labourer; born NZ,
‘Very soon,’ said Clarry Monahan, who had taken cover behind a small stone cairn, ‘the machine-gunning made it too hot for us and we retired to a small building beside which a lorry was parked. The lorry was hit and went up in a roar of flames. I began to sweat considerably for I knew it was loaded with Bofors shells. There was a mob of jokers sheltering in the building and when I suggested making a dash for an old ruin about a chain away they said: “You'll never make it.” I said: “I'd as soon give it a go as wait here to be killed by those bloody Bofors.” About seven of us made a dash through the machine-gun fire and all of us got away with it. The ruin was manned by three airmen with Lewis guns
One after another the lorries caught fire and those carrying mines or explosive blew up.
Corporal Nigel Barach Cpl N. J. Barach; motor driver; Maungaturoto, Dvr C. Aro; driver-mechanic; Dvr E. Turner; motor trimmer;
‘We asked the engineers what was in it,’ said Cyril. ‘They told us it was ammonal. We asked them how much and they said “Half a dozen cases.” Then they disappeared. It was impossible to move Dick, so Nigel and I decided to stay with him. About five minutes later the ammonal blew up, the blast knocking us all unconscious.’
Meanwhile the casualty list was mounting. Gil Drinnan Dvr G. B. Drinnan; farmer; born Milton, Cpl C. G. Mann; grocer; Dvr J. D. B. Clifford; carpenter; born
George Laverick had gone to ground beside the billy and the brimming mugs, and he watched the tanks close in, firing as they came.
‘As soon as the leading tank was within range,’ said George, ‘a
‘By this time the machine-gun fire and mortaring was terrific. I could see three tanks about 300 yards away and still coming on. I spotted a better hole farther back and started crawling towards it. I had crawled twenty-five yards and still had another twenty-five to do when Jerry spotted me and started to do a bit of peppering. It was time for me to take to the old feet and I tell you Lovelock's record had nothing on that last twenty-five yards. I landed in a good, deep hole with an 18-inch stone wall right round it. Through the cracks I could follow operations and as things progressed I am not ashamed to say that I put up a prayer or two. At one stage I noticed a little bird like a sparrow standing near me. He wasn't game to get up and fly.
‘I could see things were hopeless, so I buried my diary and two or three letters, keeping only my paybook. The three tanks came within fifty yards of me, and then one of them halted and continued to let fly with all he had while the other two, firing furiously, carried on, intent on routing us out. One rumbled each side of me at a distance of about three yards, but—thank God!—I was not noticed.’
At that moment Don Baker was saying: ‘Look at this.’ About fifty yards away, side on to the trench in which he was sheltering with Claude and Harvey, three German Mark IV tanks, their guns shooting out flames eight feet long, were finishing off a 25-pounder.
‘A few minutes later,’ said George, ‘things ended. I stood up and gazed about me. It was a sorry sight. The place was a mass of burning vehicles. I had seen three of our lorries disappear in black smoke, but some of the others—the ones with less sensitive loads—were still in the process of going up. Even though the firing had stopped
When the firing stopped Cyril Aro and Nigel Barach stood up too.
‘The blast from the ammonal had knocked all of us unconscious,’
All over the area our drivers were standing up, their hands in the air.
‘The Jerry who routed us out,’ said Claude Campbell, ‘wore glasses and had a bit of camouflage in his tin hat. He was wildly excited and he looked grotesque, but he meant business all right. Stuff was burning all round us. One of the armoured cars that had escorted us from the 22nd's position the night before was burning like a torch, and as we watched the wireless mast started to wilt and bend slowly over.’
‘I stood up,’ said Clarry Monahan, ‘and the white flags were flying and the German tanks came flooding in with Rommel leading them.’
It was not Rommel whom Clarry saw but a German tank commander. His tank halted near Brigadier Hargest Brigadier James Hargest was then in command of the 5th Brigade. He was captured with 46 officers and 650 ORs after an action lasting about an hour and a half. He escaped in
When Clarry and another driver approached their lorries they were turned back by Germans with tommy guns. George Laverick had the same experience.
‘I had about 200 yards to walk to where our lorry had been before it was blown up,’ said George, ‘and when I got there out pops a Jerry. He was about the biggest of the lot and why he had to pick on me I just don't know. He took one look at me and then rammed the snout of his tommy gun in the fleshy part of my back, at the same time saying something that sounded like George, like most of the others, had confused Rommel with the tank commander. Rommel arrived in Ooch! and
Ooch performance. By this time I was under way, running with my hands in the air, which wasn't easy. A couple more pokes and a couple of Oochs and I was in full gallop. We kept it up between us until I reached the other prisoners at the RAP.’
It was little enough our drivers were allowed to salvage from their wrecked vehicles—a blanket, perhaps, or an overcoat. Most of them had lost everything except what they stood up in. While they were searching among charred rubbish German amateur photographers got busy with their cameras. ‘Smile, please,’ they said, and many of the prisoners responded automatically before realising their mistake. Other Germans were routing around for tinned food and when they discovered a tin of something particularly palatable they opened it on the spot, making a hearty meal in front of the breakfast-less prisoners. British emergency rations—slabs of rich chocolate—were in great demand, and for these a number of our drivers were searched.
With the lorries burning around them, the dead lying beside their guns, and the wounded and dying being carried to the Regimental Aid Post on stretchers, the prisoners were lined up in four ranks and counted. An inspection took place, the German guards pulling up short when they came to a New Zealander who was wearing ammunition pouches and a bayonet. ‘The Jerries,’ said Clarry, ‘did their scones. They dragged him out of the ranks and whipped his bayonet off him, looking thoroughly disgusted. We did a big grin.’
It was their last grin for some while. After the strain, relief had brought gaiety, almost hilarity, but this had worn off now and our drivers were feeling lost and forlorn. In all fifty-four members of the Ammunition Company had been captured—forty-seven from C Section (counting former 14th Light Anti-Aircraft Section personnel) and seven from B Section. A party from B Section had been left in charge of mines in the
Twenty-one lorries had been burnt or captured.
Half an hour after the battle the German transport and armour headed west, a skeleton force remaining to look after the prisoners. At last they were given the order to move, and the long column, escorted by motor-cycles with spandaus mounted on side-cars, started its 18-mile trudge to the prison compound in
Our drivers were hungry, thirsty, and over-wrought, and the struggle to rise to their feet after the short hourly rests became increasingly painful. ‘Fat’ Davison, with wounds in the calf and thigh, was soon in great distress, but he struggled on gamely mile after mile until at last he was forced to sit down by the roadside. George Laverick and two others stayed with him. After a while a staff car pulled up and a German officer asked them what they were doing. They told him that ‘Fat’ was wounded and could go no farther. The officer said: ‘Don't worry, boys. I was a prisoner in
The prisoners were halted near the outer defences until dark. Just on dusk a German officer drove up and shouted that there was a hot meal waiting inside the fortress. Our drivers gave him a cheer, but the announcement was made either in error or as a cruel joke, for the small walled compound into which they were eventually herded after another march contained nothing except a little water, dirty and brackish. The prisoners were parched with thirst and they rushed it, with the result that many of them failed to get a drink.
The compound was so crowded that there was hardly room to turn. This mattered little, for the night was bitterly cold and the prisoners would have had to huddle together in any event. Besides there was comfort in proximity.
They slept at last, forming under the cold moon in
Through the Wire—the opening of the Second Libyan Campaign
Inside the boundary wire—a plane burns in the distance
New Zealand Divisional Headquarters at Bir el Chleta
Despatch riders, Tobruk
The rest of the Composite NZASC Company was still free, but only, as it seemed to our drivers, by a miracle. After leaving
At first light, with unidentified vehicles approaching from the north-east, the convoy continued on its course, swinging wide from the Wire, only to run into a semi-circle of enemy tanks, transport, and armoured cars. Turning under fire, it went back to Dvr L. J. Howarth; farmhand;
Still pursued, the convoy headed towards the 22nd Battalion at Bir ez Zemla, but was turned back once again. Captain Roberts considered next the possibility of dodging the enemy until dark and then trying to return to
Now began a breathless scramble for safety and it went on hour after hour. The going, for the most part, was terrible, and the convoy became as formless as a chariot race. Each driver chose his own path, intent only on following the leading staff car and avoiding slit-trenches. Often three or four lorries would be travelling abreast, mudguard almost touching mudguard.
What they were running from was not always clear to the drivers, but when they looked south or behind them they could usually discern little scurrying objects preceding a plume of dust, the more terrifying because they were seldom glimpsed clearly. Even when the pursuers were invisible the spectacle of between ninety
The man at the wheel, of course, saw only what was in front of him, and for mile after mile it was little except clumps of camel-thorn round which the drifting sand had formed hard mounds anything from six inches to a foot high. They were so close together that it was impossible to steer between them and a lorry could be kept on its course only by brute strength. It was like driving over a gigantic nutmeg grater.
Hardly ever was it possible to travel in top gear, but in second and third they attained speeds they had previously thought impossible. They no longer gave a damn about their cherished engines. They prayed only that ‘conrods’ would not buckle like hot pokers and flying pistons mix everything into a metal omelet. But the wonderful Chevrolets never faltered. They boiled along mile after mile, screaming like circular saws. They took terrific wrenches; they were slammed up and down until it seemed next to impossible that a single spring could be unbroken; but only one Ammunition Company lorry was lost through a mechanical defect that day. It had been towed for some miles and was cast off the moment the situation became really dangerous.
A Section's anti-aircraft lorry was on the southern flank of the convoy, the muzzle of Jim's anti-tank rifle projecting over the tailboard. On several occasions he drew a bead on distant armour, but it was not until early in the afternoon that he got a chance to fire. Three midget armoured cars, which his experiences in the
After they had gone Jim threw his rifle on the deck and glowered at it. Its rubber shoulder pad had come away from the butt and he had taken some shrewd knocks. Besides, he had never quite forgiven it for misfiring in
Earlier, a number of