To War With The Bays: 18 - The Flattened Bullet
...We had not seen bread for about three months. Instead we had packets of biscuits, very much like dog biscuits, extremely hard, and wearing on the gums. One day there was great excitement; the ration wagon had located a bakery in Tobruk and arrived with some bread. This was shared out between us. We had seen better bread. When sliced, it was found to be grey in colour, and we had to dig the weevils out before eating it. It was bread, though, a welcome change from biscuits, and this treat was repeated occasionally....
Jack Merewood tells of life in the desert for British troops during the North Africa campaign. To read earlier chapters of Jack's vivid war memoirs please click on To War With The Bays in the menu on this page.
On 6 March, 1942, we were delighted to hear that we were now going to change the Stuarts in the squadron for Crusaders. They arrived the next day, and we were thankful to see the last of our Stuart. Our Crusader had done just under 400 miles, and on the side had the name 'Cagney' painted in large letters.
With the Regiment pulled back, our squadron found ourselves positioned on the top of an escarpment, where we were to stay for well over two months. We did our best to make things as comfortable as possible in the conditions. During the day the tanks could get too hot to touch, but at night it was cold.
On the ridge where we were the ground was solid, though sand blew about incessantly. Our tank crew dug a hole about four feet deep and nine feet long, with a sloping entrance at one end. In the walls we dug out squares to act as shelves and over the top we stretched a tarpaulin and put heavy stones on it all the way round to anchor it to the ground. It took a few days to make, but when finished it served as a shelter, and also a kitchen with shelves on which to keep our food.
A wagon came every few days bringing supplies from the base many miles away. The food was mainly tinned corned beef (bully beef) and tins of M & V (meat and vegetables). We had a treat from time to time when we were issued with tins of bacon, sausages, potatoes and rice pudding.
Besides our brewing-up tins we had a small, very well-made stove. It consisted of a small cylinder, which we filled with petrol, then pumped to compress it; we could then turn on and light a jet.
Somehow I became cook on our tank. It being a Crusader there were four of us, but later on a Grant, where the crew was six men, and later still on a Sherman, with a crew of five, I always held this exalted position, probably because no one else wanted it, though from time to time I was congratulated on the concoctions I used to dream up with mixtures of our basic rations.
We had not seen bread for about three months. Instead we had packets of biscuits, very much like dog biscuits, extremely hard, and wearing on the gums. One day there was great excitement; the ration wagon had located a bakery in Tobruk and arrived with some bread. This was shared out between us. We had seen better bread. When sliced, it was found to be grey in colour, and we had to dig the weevils out before eating it. It was bread, though, a welcome change from biscuits, and this treat was repeated occasionally.
One day I was on ack-ack duty and some German planes flew over. I (and others) opened fire on them, but we didn't bring any down. Another morning, without warning, two Stukas appeared right out of the rising sun. They flew very low, one directly over our tank firing small explosive shells and bullets.
I happened to be standing by our 'kitchenette'. I ducked inside and heard the splat of a bullet nearby. It was all over in seconds, and although we ran to our tanks and started firing our ack-ack guns, we were far too late to cause them any problems.
I went back to our dugout and found the bullet I had heard, flattened on one of the stones holding down our roof. It was no more than a foot away from where my head had been. I picked it up and carried it around with me for years; in fact I brought it home after the war, but somehow it managed to get lost (probably thrown away by my mother).
Jim and Dick had had narrow escapes too, standing near the tank, neither of them was hit, but two bullets had hit the Crusader.
The other plane had flown directly over another tank about thirty yards away. Their crew hadn't been so lucky. Bob Weightman and Ted Ryan had both been injured, but fortunately neither of them seriously. Bob had been cut by bits of shrapnel on his neck and chest and Ted was hit in the foot.
Each crew slept at the side of their own tank. The wind, usually full of sand, would blow straight between the wheels and bogies of the tank, so you had to improvise some sort of protection. Each tank had a ground sheet which would be fastened to a bar that ran along the side, then draped down and stretched out on the ground to be slept on. We hardly saw any rain here, but on the odd occasion when we did, we slept with the ground sheet on top of us.
At night it was deathly quiet and as we lay there by the tank, it was amazing how we could hear people talking on other tanks nearby, even if they whispered.
