A Lancashire lad Goes to War: Chapter 8

TRIPOLITANIA

I was amazed by the reception when I returned to duty the following morning. "Glad you're back Brookie!" No one wanted to operate the recorder, and the people who had operated it during my absence had been unable to give the field party a quick confirmation when the line had been repaired following a break. They took half a minute to work out the correct values of current and resistance, but I could remember each microphone's reading and only needed 3 or 4 seconds. During this time the field party would be under fire (the shellfire itself often broke the wire), so it needed to return as soon as possible. I therefore knew why so many people were pleased to see me. I also discovered that Captain Lewsey had been hit by a mortar shell and lost a leg before reaching Tripoli, and been flown to hospital in England. Captain Lewsey’s replacement was Captain Ted Harris, who was a really nice bloke.

Twelve New Zealand surveyors were posted with us to learn about sound ranging. We showed them how to set up the recorder, then use of the Line Testing Unit and how to read the films, use of the wind and temperature charts and how to plot the results on the artillery board. We also told them how to give the co-ordinates to 8 AGRA (Army Group, Royal Artillery) for onward transmission to the field regiments. They were really nice lads and were with us for about a month. There was a very flat area between the Germans and us. A Spandau machine gun would fire at us from the German side, but the bullets would fall short by about 15 yards. We used to upset the machine gunner by waving to him: he would fire at us but the bullets always dropped short. One day one of the New Zealanders tried to get a bit nearer, but he went too far and a spent bullet went through the front part of his shorts and stuck in the back of the cloth. He danced around trying to get rid of it, as it was very hot and burnt a blister on the side of his thigh.

We continued to be bombed during the nights. I had forgotten what it was like after the peace of Cairo, and I also had to again grow used to the noise and flies, and what we now called 'food' which was anything sent to the Front Line from stores including the usual bully beef, tins of fatty bacon, very hard cheese also in a tin and margarine called Oliol, which was so hard that it did not even melt in the heat of the desert. We moved forward several times but I cannot recall place names until the Mareth Line, where the Germans put up a terrible fight with very heavy shelling and bombing. At the appropriate time, the shift changed, but the members of the new shift told me with disgust that my Relief refused to take over as the shelling was so heavy and he had a responsibility to his wife at home whilst I was single. Sergeant-Major Davidson tried to drag him out of his bivouac, but he fought and still refused to come out. I was not pleased, as I had to do three shifts of really hard work without any sleep (my shift of 24 hours, his shift of 24 hours, and back on my shift of 24 hours). My Relief was much older than me and though I expected him to be charged, he never was - possibly because there was not too many surveyors who wanted to operate the recorder and one down would have meant someone from Troop HQ having to take over. I cannot remember how long the battle lasted, but when we moved forward again there were dead bodies from both sides everywhere.

As we advanced westwards, somewhere near the border with Tunisia, we encountered an Arab village on an outcrop about 90 feet high and a mile across called, I think, Tikrunah. Although it was situated just on our front line, it was still occupied by the Germans who were therefore able to see a long way into our territory. One dark night a detachment of the New Zealand Division climbed up the cliffs, and using knives quickly and silently dealt with the enemy.

One day shortly after we entered Tunisia we began to find vegetation again: the odd solitary orange grove and occasional clumps of tall elephant grass. When I came off night duty, the senior sergeant, Donald Sinclair shouted, "Brookie, over here - the front is moving forward tonight". He wanted me to go ahead with two men, a truck and a driver to dig a headquarters bunker for occupation that night. I asked for the location of the infantry as we looked at the map with the Junior Officer, Lt Bowering. "They are along there," he said, pointing in front of the place I had been sent to. One of the two men was from REME. He was a very frightened man and had been kept in the wagon line until quite recently. I objected to the choice but Donald was adamant that I had to take him. He became even more anxious when I told him to fetch a shovel and climb into the truck as we were going forward. We set off towards the coast road - still the only proper road in the area, and turned towards the front. We passed handmade signs erected by soldiers billeted at the roadside, such as 'Max speed 10 mph' and 'we don't want your shit, and when Gerry sees it we don't want his either'.

After about half a mile we pulled off the road into an orange grove and climbed out of the truck. We had only walked a few yards further when a lieutenant appeared from nowhere and stopped us. "Where the hell do you think you are going?" he demanded. While I unfolded the map he told my driver to move the truck right back to the edge of the trees. I showed him my destination and he was not pleased. "Come with me, but get down and crawl." We crawled to the edge of the grove and the lieutenant pointed to a row of soldiers lying in slit trenches with their rifles ready. He told me that this was our forward defence. I told him that I had been told to go 30 or 40 yards further, to which he replied, "You are on your own then, but don't bring fire down on my blokes." When I worked out where I had to go, I thanked my luck in finding that a large patch of elephant grass would cover us. I returned for my two men, briefed the driver and told him to stay with the truck.

The three of us crawled out to the elephant grass and I marked out a patch with my spade about ten feet square. We started digging, but had only just removed the top covering of grass when we heard the distinctive double bang of a gun firing towards us. You could always tell if the gun was always pointing in your direction as you hear a bang from the cordite and another bang as the shell hits` the air after coming out of the barrel - hence the double explosion. If it was pointing away from you there was only a single bang of the cordite exploding. We flattened ourselves on the ground. The REME man shouted at the enemy to stop - he certainly was in a bad way. I lifted my head slightly to look at him; he was only about three feet away when a shell slammed into the ground a similar distance away from my feet. I was very lucky that it did not explode. A large piece of shrapnel shaped and whizzing round like a propeller passed between the REME man and me. Although it must have been travelling very fast, it appeared to pass us in slow motion - about 18 inches above the ground. About ten or a dozen shells fell all around us and as the other Royal Artillery Gunner and myself were battle-wise we knew to stay down and keep flat to the ground. I saw that REME soldier was panicking and looked as if he was going to get up and run so I crawled over to him and put my arm around him and said a prayer to ask for strength and courage. A warm feeling passed through me and I felt very calm, even though the shells were still falling around us. The REME man went quiet and eventually the shells stopped falling; I do not know how long it took because in that situation 2 minutes sometimes seems like two hours.

Eventually we stood up, I checked my colleague to ensure that he was fit, and said, "Right! The quicker we get this dug and sand-bagged, the sooner we get away." We were soon finished as the ground was soft, and I put our Number 10 (all Royal Artillery Survey Regiments’ identification in the British Army was shown as a white ten on a red and blue background) at the entrance so that no one else would occupy it. We crawled back to the infantry lines, where the lieutenant greeted us with, "You lot were lucky; I thought I would have to get some of my men to drag you all back."
Upon our return to the Troop, I raged at Donald for putting us in such a dangerous position, but I was wasting my time. "You're all right, aren't you Brookie? What are you worrying about?" The rest of my shift found it very entertaining.

We moved several times and had a base a few miles from Sfax. The Germans continued to put up a good fight and we received a great deal of fire. We ran a base out not far from Sousse; we stayed in most bases for two or three weeks before moving forward again. Whilst there, I drove into Sousse itself with two or three other soldiers. Most of the natives would have little to do with us, but there did not seem to be too many shortages in the shops. From there, we moved on to Enfidaville which was a small village and was our last base before the ceasefire. About a mile from the village lay a ridge and we dug into this slope about 60 yards from the top. There was a lot of activity on the front line so that meant that machine was constantly running film. We usually noted this as ‘a busy day for sound- ranging’. To change shifts we had to pass through the village. The main junction in the village was often shelled, and eventually there were about a dozen burnt-out trucks that had been pushed to the sides of the road. It was a constant reminder that soldiers had been killed but as none of our unit was ever hit, we knew we were lucky.

The village had a beautiful little church. Once I went in to have a look around. The church bells were played on a form of large keyboard and sounded melodic. When I was on duty one day we heard Nebelwerfer rockets heading in our direction. This was a German rocket launcher which had six rockets in it and each had a screamer built into it which sounded a bit like a police siren. It made your heart pound as you heard one, two, three, four, five, six sounds heading in your direction. You could not pin-point the sound and one of the rockets landed at the crest of our hill and the next one impacted about ten yards short of us. The resulting shower of rubbish, debris and shrapnel made holes in our tarpaulin cover. A third rocket burst about 20 yards lower down and was a direct hit on a 25-pounder gun headquarters, killing everyone there. As the Nebelwerfer rockets had no single detonation we could not use our sound-ranging equipment to locate them. However, as each rocket is fitted with a siren, the advance post could give us a bearing towards its starting point. We then gave this information to the gun control for the 25-pounders, resulting in 10 rounds being fired at that location from each of 24 guns.

Whilst we were at Enfidaville the Germans surrendered and so the fighting ended. We moved to a field of lush grass and plenty of water which was about two miles from Tunis. Our shirts were black with sweat as we had often gone two or more weeks without washing thoroughly. About once a month when we were moving through the desert, we had metal petrol cans called ‘flimsies’ - so called because if you bumped them they leaked. They were about 14 inches square and about 18 inches deep. You cut them in half and then they could do more than one job (just what the army approves of) - Benghazis to brew up and a container for washing up including clothes. One of these which were two-thirds full would serve four men to wash their bodies and clothes so obviously the clothes were very clean towards the end and the bottom of the tin was like sludge. To actually have as much clean water as we wanted was complete luxury. We also cleaned our trucks and equipment, played some football and generally lazed around.

One day some soldiers came back from Tunis in a 15-cwt truck with a barrel of red wine and a tap. When we asked about the cost, we were told that they were driving behind some shops and the barrel fell into the back of the truck! Whatever its origin, we had quite a party that night. One of the lads named Hamilton took his spade for a walk about twenty or thirty feet lower down the field to dig a hole for his toilet. As he was squatting there, some ‘bright spark’ took his Varey Pistol (a full-size pistol grip with a barrel about two inches in diameter which takes a large single shot. The Infantry used them to fire coloured flares - white for light, green for go and red for stop - I think). This drunken lad aimed at Hamilton and fired!
Most of us were taken by surprise as we watched the ball of fire speed towards him; we all thought it would hit him, but instead it went right between his legs, singeing his shorts (but not his bottom) as it passed. I doubt this could have been achieved if we had all been sober.

After staying in the field for a few weeks we moved on to the coast. Our trucks parked on a sandy piece of land, and between the sand and the sea were a stony escarpment about ten yards wide that went in both directions. These stones were covered with hundreds of little frogs about ¾ inch long. They were so close together that it was impossible not to walk on them as we went to the sea to bathe. I could not help think about the plague of frogs mentioned in the Bible.

An Arab village lay within walking distance. One day, six of us walked there to see if one of the fishermen would take us fishing. After bartering for a while he agreed to take us for about 4 hours and supply hand lines. We caught quite a lot of fish of all colours, shapes and sizes, which we hooked on a length of string. We returned to land, paid our money and told him to take the fish to his family. Later we saw the fisherman at the Sergeants' Mess selling our catch.

After the Axis surrender in North Africa, I made two trips to Algiers to exchange stores. Captain Harris accompanied two guards and me on one of these trips, and he removed his pips so that he could enter restaurants with us. The other time I went with RAF Sergeant Humphreys; after completing our business we parked briefly on the outskirts of Algiers before heading back. We had called in to one of the American bases and been given some sandwiches so we stopped to eat them. We were leaning against the truck enjoying our lunch when two First Army soldiers tried to pick a fight with us. Lucky for us a couple of Redcaps came along and arrested them. First Army soldiers had come into Algiers with the Americans to meet up with us (8th Army). Unfortunately they got stuck and though eventually they did meet up with us they hadn’t travelled the two thousand miles that we had. They entered the battle late on and so there was quite a lot of rivalry between us.

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