To War With The Bays: 17 - Our Worst Enemies
...Although during the fighting we had seen a considerable amount of aircraft activity, we had never been attacked ourselves. We saw many more German planes than our own. Our aircraft support was very limited, though the pilots were very brave when overwhelmingly outnumbered. We saw a few dogfights and would raise a cheer if one of our Spitfires or Hurricanes brought down a German. We had machine-guns mounted on top of the tanks, and when we weren't moving, one of us was always on ack-ack duty...
Jack Merewood continues his vivid account of warfare in the North African desert. To read earlier chapters of Jack's story please click on To War With The Bays in the menu on this page.
After we buried Freddie we kept moving until 4 a.m., and then were up again at 6.30 a.m. Unfortunately our tank had developed a radiator leak, and it was decided that we couldn't continue fighting. Jim and I took it back to the Ordnance Corps about fifteen miles away. When we arrived they examined it and found they couldn't do the job so we would have to take it to another RAOC depot twenty-five miles away.
We loaded it on to a tank transporter and arrived there in the late evening. Jim and I slept in the tank on the transporter. The fitters inspected the tank and decided we had better take it to the main depot at Tobruk.
So next day, still on the transporter, we travelled another sixty or seventy miles before stopping for the night. On the way we counted about twenty wrecked aeroplanes on the ground and hundreds of wrecked Italian wagons. Nine of the planes were definitely German, the others we couldn't identify.
Although during the fighting we had seen a considerable amount of aircraft activity, we had never been attacked ourselves. We saw many more German planes than our own. Our aircraft support was very limited, though the pilots were very brave when overwhelmingly outnumbered. We saw a few dogfights and would raise a cheer if one of our Spitfires or Hurricanes brought down a German. We had machine-guns mounted on top of the tanks, and when we weren't moving, one of us was always on ack-ack duty.
We arrived at Tobruk the next day and unloaded the tank straight away. There had already been a lot of fighting in and around Tobruk, and many of the buildings were in ruins. There was a YMCA there, but unfortunately we didn't have any money, as we hadn't been paid for a long time. They did, however, give free cups of tea, so we took advantage of this offer, while looking rather wistfully at the sweets and biscuits which were on sale. We had rations on the tank, of course, but it would have been nice to have had a bit of a treat.
Jim and I found an empty house and bedded down there for the night. Next day we went and had our free cup of tea again at the 'YM' and I noted in my diary: 'Won't we be glad when we get some pay, then we can buy some chocolate.' I also needed some money to buy stamps so that I could post some letters I had written.
Two days later we were still in Tobruk, and going into the 'YM' I was amazed to meet Joe Gagen, a young man who went to Hillhouse Central School when I did. He and his pal gave me sixty cigarettes and two stamps, so I could at least post two letters. He also gave me an old Huddersfield Examiner which I eagerly read.
After five days in Tobruk we were informed that our tank was beyond repair, and they were giving us another one. To our dismay it was a Stuart. After the Crusader it was like moving from a Rolls-Royce to a Tin Lizzie. Of course we had no choice, so we transferred our kit and made our way back on a transporter to the Regiment. We had become really attached to our Crusader and were very sorry to lose it - especially for a Stuart.
We arrived back with the Regiment late the same day, only to discover that Captain Patchett and his whole crew were missing. We heard later that one of them had been killed and the others taken prisoner. Other news was that Dick Rowney, who had pulled his badly wounded commander out of his tank to safety, had been awarded the Military Medal, the first MM to be awarded to our Regiment in North Africa.
We were also paid at last.
There had been other casualties but, now the Regiment had regrouped, we were soon in action again. We had a new tank commander, Lieutenant 'Joe' Radice, whom we didn't take to as we had done to Captain Patchett, and Dick Rowney was now back in our tank as wireless operator, with Jim and myself.
We engaged German troops, tanks and vehicles, but with our 37 mm gun on the Stuart, we may as well have been attacking them with a peashooter.
Then the fighting died down. The weather was warming up and our worst enemies now were the flies. They nearly drove us mad.
One thing we looked forward to was the arrival of a truck bringing the mail. Sometimes we'd go a week or two without mail and then get letters in batches. I was lucky that my mother and sister wrote almost daily, and Emily, Audrey and so many other people. It was marvellous to get all these letters.
