CHAPTER TEN

WE HAVE THE ENEMY ON THE RUN

 

After the breakout from Alamein, the 8th Army hotly pursued the retreating enemy across the Western Desert. My crew was one of three from the squadron that moved on detachment westward behind our advancing armies, among which was the New Zealand Division playing a significant role. Each aircrew took its own fitter and rigger ground staff to service its aeroplane. We also took our own rations and cooked for ourselves. The mess staff had remained back at base. We pitched tents for accommodation. Water was brought up the desert road in army tankers. So was petrol which was always in abundant supply thanks to the astonishing organization of the Army Service Corp. The Salvation Army provided comforts for the Services in all theatres of the war, appearing where no other comforts organization ventured. So while we were on detachment well up “the Blue”, as we called the Western Desert, the “Sally Van” showed up from time to time to serve us with a cup of tea and a bun - a cup of char and a wad, as we used to say.

We had a novel “stove” for cooking. We sunk into the ground an empty four-gallon petrol can with the top cut off. We filled it with sand on which we poured petrol.Three or four rods were slotted across the top of the can to form a grid to hold the cooking utensil. When a match was thrown into the “stove” the petrol fumes rising from the sand in the can ignited into a steady flame. After cooking we put a cover over the “stove” to stop evaporation of the petrol.

Some of the desert landing grounds we occupied on detachment had been until recently used by the German Luftwaffe. Lying around were wrecks of German aeroplanes which had been destroyed on the ground by R.A.F. Hurricane fighters armed with canons. The landing strips were simply a pathway smoothed out in the desert by graders. The Western Desert is not soft sand such as is the Sahara Desert. Rather it is mostly hard gravel and stones with just a fairly thin layer of sand.

In the evenings when we were not on ops we often squatted under the wing of the aeroplane listening to the Vera Lynn show broadcast by the B.B.C. from London. Our wireless operator tuned in on the Wimpy's wireless and rigged an extension speaker outside. Vera Lynn was known as the “sweetheart of the forces”. The songs she sang all had an appealing melody and a nostalgic theme and she sang them with a sob in her voice. I saw men with tears in their eyes with homesickness as they listened to her. She was a tremendous boost to the morale of servicemen.

Generally when we were returning to base from ops at night I would have the wireless operator tune the Vera Lynn show into the aeroplane's inter-com. It was tremendously relaxing after the tension of a convoy strike. After the Vera Lynn show finished we tuned into Radio Berlin to listen to the Lili Marlene show. She was the German counterpart of Vera Lynn, except that her shows were heavily dosed with propaganda. The particular Lili Marlene show we listened to was broadcast in English. Her songs were interspersed with appeals to British servicemen to give up fighting. The advice was to swallow aspirin soaked in iodine which the German announcers said would simulate a heart attack which could get us sent home. That propaganda had no effect, apart from giving us a laugh, but we did enjoy the music, particularly Lili Marlene's theme song, “Underneath the Lamplight”. It became a worldwide hit.

One of our advanced detachment bases was at Gambut. From November 17 to 20, 1942, my crew was put on readiness to search for and bomb the Italian battle fleet comprising three battleships, several cruisers and support destroyers. The Italians had a formidable navy but had been reluctant to venture into battle .It had been holed up for some time at the Taranto naval base. It was kept under constant surveillance by Spitfires of a PR (photographic reconnaissance) squadron operating from Malta. These Spitfires were unarmed and were able to fly at altitudes above the ceiling of enemy fighters. Our readiness alert stemmed from the Spitfires discovering that the fleet had vanished from Taranto.

Their disappearance caused a flap at Middle East Command for fear that it might presage an attack on British convoys which were now getting more ships through to Malta due to the fact that the waning bomber strength of the Luftwaffe restricted it to fewer and fewer air strikes against our shipping. Furthermore, due to the success of Allied air attacks against German convoys trying to supply Rommel's Afrika Korps more and more German aircrew had to be diverted to flying Junkers 52 transport aircraft to carry supplies to North Africa.

After four days the Italian fleet was spotted by the PR Spits back at Taranto. It was surmised that it had been wandering around the Adriatic Sea to confuse the Allied Command. I was happy about that because an attack on a battle fleet would have been a dangerous operation. But it showed the Italian Navy had little stomach for action.

The much-vaunted (that is by the Italians) navy had been rendered ineffective for almost two years by a daring British Fleet Air Arm attack on Taranto harbour on November 11, 1940. Virtually obsolete Swordfish biplanes operating from a Royal Navy carrier in the Adriatic Sea launched a crippling torpedo attack on the ships. It was the first time torpedoes had been launched in battle from aeroplanes. The success of the attack encouraged the R.A.F. to convert other aeroplanes to torpedo bombing. The versatile Wimpy was an ideal vehicle. It could carry two torpedoes and was very manoeuvreable at an altitude of only 50 feet over water at night. Our sister squadron, No 38, was one of those converted. I was later to join 38.

From Gambut our detachment moved up to Benghazi, the main port of Libya, on November 29, only a week after it had fallen to the 8th Army.There were two airfields there which had been constructed by the Italians when they colonised Libya in the ‘thirties. They were called Berca I and Berca II. Our briefing had not identified the two, or which one we were to land at. We put down at Berca I. The control tower appeared to be occupied. We could see figures sitting there. But we could not get a response on the R/T. So I taxied over to the tower and went inside.To my astonishment the two figures we had seen sitting there were dead Germans.They had been killed by the rapidly advancing 8th Army and their comrades in their haste to retreat had left them there.

So we took off and landed at Berca II across the road. It transpired that we had been expected there but when we said we had landed first at Berca I we faced looks of horror. We were told Berca I had not been cleared of land mines laid by the retreating Germans. We were lucky to have missed them because an aeroplane that landed there by mistake the next day was blown up on touching down.

Just before Christmas 1942 I reported to the Medical Officer and was diagnosed as having jaundice. I was admitted to the hospital at Benghazi which was originally an Italian civilian hospital and later a German-Italian military hospital until taken over as a British military hospital when the Afrika Corps was in headlong retreat from the advancing 8th Army. I was there on Christmas Day. As a special treat for patients, Christmas dinner had been flown up from Cairo. The general fare was roast pork but that was too fatty for jaundice patients so chicken was sent for them. But the dinners became muddled. I got pork instead of chicken. Lucky for me, as it turned out. The pork made me ill.That night a German air raid was made on Benghazi. When the warning sounded the hospital patients were ordered to go to an air raid shelter in the hospital grounds. I, and one other jaundice patient, felt too ill to move so we stayed in bed. The shelter received a direct hit from a German bomb killing the patients who had evacuated to that particular shelter. I guess it was fate that I escaped.

By now, with this incident and others previously, I was beginning to wonder whether I had the proverbial cat's nine lives.