Chapter 11a - Deeper Into the Desert

CHAPTER X1 - Part One - DEEPER INTO THE DESERT

A Wellington bomber had been recorded. Although an exact reference had been given, there was a great deal of doubt and conflicting evidence as to its real position. Even sound map refernces weren't wholly reliable for fiferent maps didn't correspond completely.

We set off to find it with a jeep and 15 cwt, each with a British driver and officer. The first day was a hard one. It was extremely warm. A khamsin was blowing again. The surface was solid rock for the greater part of the journey.

At lunch, we had but a drink of tea, nobody felt like anything else. The heat became worse as the day drew on. After eighty miles of bruising, we arrived at El Charruba, twenty five miles from the supposed position of the Wellington.

There's nothing at El Charruba. Its just a name on the map. The first job was to brew up some more tea and put up the tent. Just before that was finished, I began to feel feint and had to lie down. Every time I got up, I almost fell again. At first I took it to be my own weakness, but, when the others followed suit, I realised it was heat exhaustion.

Fully an hour and a half elapsed before anyone stirred. Eventually we got up, brewed up, and had some tomato soup. It had a most miraculous effect and seemed even better with the tin of fruit that followed. This was our total food for the day.

Even the night remained too warm for sleep 'till after two o'clock. We would all have a cigarette, then resolutely turn over for ten minutes. A bit later, someone would discretely light another, only to be regaled for his meanness in not handing them round.

At 5.30 in the morning we welcomed the dawn, ate a good breakfast, and by 7.30, the search party was ready to leave.

Our plan was that the other officer would spend the day searching with the jeep, while the spare driver and I kept the camp going. This saved the trouble of striking and pitching camp. Anyway, the search party found lot of the ground impassaple to 15 cwts.

They returned at two o'clock with no news of the Wellington, but they had discovered a good well only a mile away. EI Charuba had been a fort. We went out there with our tins and picked up plenty of water. Once more, we led a life of luxury.

The next day was taken up with a further fruitless search as far as the aircraft was concerned. The search party did sight a reptile which they quoted as being four feet long. We pulled their legs a great deal about it, but I have no doubt they did sight such a monster.

On the fourth morning, we began the return journey. By way of proof of the roughness of the tracks, I was thrown out of my seat with such violence that I knocked a piece of skin, the size of a half crown, off my houlder, on the top of the window frame of the truck door. This same bump, as we discovered later, cracked one of the rear engine mountings.

How we were looking forward to a bath and a propper meal. Five miles before we reached Benghazi, we could smell the place after having been in the clean, fresh desert air. What a shock when we got in. The water pipeline was broken, our bath had had it. Our meal was grand, but by candle light. The electrics had also failed. Take me back to Charruba. We had light and water.

More seriously, we could enjoy all this. Three years before men had fought for their lives here. What we found hard was incidental to them. Ours was a boy scout job.

My next job was to visit Giovanni Berta (Gub Gub). Here I was to register a cemetary. Investigations before departure enabled us to arrange accomdation with a small road-working party of 10 German prisoners and a British Corporal.

Our journey was fraught with disaster. We had three trucks and eight Germans. Not twenty miles out of Benghazi the fan belt broke on one of the trucks. We had to tow the thing up Tocra Fass and onto Barce. Here, A Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers Light Aid Detachment contrived to fit a fan-belt off another make of truck.

Our second misfortune was to a tyre. A piece of rubber as big as a fist, dissappeared from the tread, revealing the grey cord of the tyre, but fortunately without bursting.

In Giovanni Berta we lived on an old Italian, Farm on the top of a hillock, high up on the Jebel limestone plateau. It was much cooler that we had been used to, the evenings were quite nippy.

We dug the cemetery up, but were only able to establish 40% identities. All the memorials had been neatly stacked in the corner of the cemetery, to make more room for the Arab's corn, which they were cultivating over the graves.

We had spent nearly the whole week at Giovanni Berta without discovering that, under a pile of stones in the small garden outside our house, was a large family of tortoises. In all there were about eight. One or two were quite small, the others larger with scarred shells. The Prisoners in the neighbourhood were in the habit of killing all the smaller ones, opening them, and bolting the two halves together to make an ash-tray. Excellent in appearance, but rather galling to anyone with a love for animals.

It had been reported to me that, at Bedda Littoria, lay the bodies of the four Germane killed with Col Keyes V.C. His body had been taken to the Benghazi Military Cemetery. So, on my last day, I went to investigate.

I found that what I had been told was the truth. But the graves were well marked and in good condition. I tried to telephone my OC in Benghazi for advice. I could not understand why, in the first place, the bodies had not been moved with Col Keyes. Anyway, they should have been registered and come up for concentration in the normal way.

Lybia was a former Italian Colony. There was now a Military Government. So, I decided to go and see the local Military Government Civil Affairs Officer, another British Army Officer. I was prepared to move them as seemed my duty, but the Local Civil Affairs Officer, wanted them left, where they were, as the place had become almost a shrine. This seemed sensible, so that's what we did.

On the way back to Giovanni Berta, I picked up an African who had only been buried about a year before. Everyone was rather annoyed about it. In the first place, it seemed pure idleness that he had not been buried in a propper cemetery. He had to be taken to this grave and could just as easily been put in a truck and buried normally.

Our anger was raised all the more, when we found the grave had been filled with enormous stones. We had to use our hands to move them. This meant running the risk of scorpions. We were always at risk of being bitten by both black and white scorpions. We often eased stones with a pick or shovel so we could check there wasn't a scorpion lurking underneath.

To make matters worse, the body had been buried in a complicated mass of corrugated iron, tent poles, canvass, rope and wire, which was both difficult and messy to dissentangle. The body still had drainage tubes attached. They had just rolled him up in the tent in which he had died and dug a great big hole.

Our run back to Benghazi the following day was very successful. All our trucks were on the road before eight, and back in Benghzi unloading at three.

One of my 'time economies' was a halt on the road just outside Benghazi. Men were then appointed to unload the trucks when we got back and each driver given detailed insructions as to where he was to go first. The loading of the trucks was, of course, worked out the night before we started. The men were allowed to spread themselves how they liked unless I had loaded spare petrol onto one of the lorries.

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