World War II: The Autobiography (21 page)

5. U-424. 11th
FEBRUARY

It was just before midnight on the following night, as we reached the end of our beat, that we found one, and once again my ship was in luck. The moment was an awkward one, as the Group was engaged in the manoeuvre of changing the direction of search, which meant that we were not in a formation to keep clear of one another. I told the rest what I had found, and our new senior officer tried to confirm the contact, at first without success. Still under the influence of what I can only describe as a “Won’t be stared at through periscopes” complex, I then made to attack, and went through a hair-raising time, as I had to break off and stop the ship to avoid a colleague, and then re-start the attack from only 400 yards range. The explosion of the pattern lifted the stern of the ship, but she still held together, and the instruments still worked so the battle could proceed. Conditions for some reason were not as good as usual, and an uncomfortable time followed while we lost and regained and lost contact again while trying to follow the U-boat, which was snaking freely. The
Woodpecker
got contact firmly, though she was not sure that she had a genuine submarine echo, and only attacked it for luck, without result. They then lost it altogether, and it looked as though this whole operation would turn out a frost until Wilkinson, promoted to leading seaman, and his Asdic team, announced a firm contact at last, well clear of consorts. It was astern and at long range, which sounded on the face of it unlikely, but Leading Seaman Wilkinson was so confident that I begged to be excused, and went back after it. It got better as we got closer, until we were not only sure that we had got hold of the real thing, but knew enough about it to attack. The proper thing would have been to wait for a colleague to confirm, but this groping around, dot and carry one business was tiring people out without getting anywhere, and so in we went. We lost contact again on the way in, but were determined to have a bang, and completed the attack. After that we waited.

There was no contact, but instead we were rewarded with sounds. First of all I was told my listeners could hear a noise as though someone was hitting a bit of metal with a hammer. That went on intermittently for some minutes, and then there followed a sharp crack: two more bangs like muffled explosions came next, and then silence.

We had heard of what the submariners call “breaking up noises”, which came from a ship as she sinks after disappearing from view. It seemed fair to assume that what we had been listening to were breaking up noises from a U-boat, and, since other ships present had also heard them, and none of us now had a contact, it was decided not to hunt further, but to patrol around this spot until daylight and see if any evidence could be found then. We told the Boss what we had done, and gathered from his reply that he was hastening back; having replenished his stock of depth-charges, and would give us his verdict when he had seen the evidence.

The investigation at dawn was rather disappointing. There were patches of oil, of which we picked up samples for analysis, since the light diesel oil that the submarines use is different from the oil burnt in ship’s boilers, and there was some wooden debris painted grey, but of a nondescript character that might have come from any kind of vessel. The Boss turned up about ten o’clock and was justifiably unconvinced, but I was so insistent with my story of the bangs that he gave us the benefit of the doubt, and decreed that we would all go away and return before dark, when he would give us his decision. We formed up and away we went. It was a long and tiresome day, and I, for one, got my head down all the afternoon to make the time pass. At 5 pm we were back, and what a sight met our eyes this time. An oil patch covered several square miles of sea, in the middle of which floated a convincing quantity of debris. “The U-boat is sunk,” signalled the
Starling,
“you may splice the main brace.”

6. U-264. 19th
FEBRUARY

At daybreak the convoy was clear of attack, but it was tolerably certain that the discomfited U-boats would be found not far astern of the convoy, and so that was where Captain Walker took the Group to look for them. We started the search at 9 am and by 11 am the
Woodpecker
had “found”. She had plenty of depth-charges left, and so she and the
Starling
hunted while the rest of us kept the ring. It was a long hunt this time, of great interest to the people in the middle, but dull for the rest of us until the climax came. A series of attacks had damaged the U-boat until her leaks got beyond the capacity of her crew to keep under. She was getting heavier and heavier and nothing further could be done, so her captain decided to abandon ship. He used the last of his high-pressure air to get to the surface, the crew got out and the submarine sank at once. We got off some shots when she broke surface, but soon realised it was a waste of ammunition and ceased fire. The whole crew was picked up.

The crew of U-264 was lucky; the fatality rate for U-boat crews in World War II was 63 per cent. No other service of any combatant action suffered such a loss of life in the conflict.

Part Three

The War in the Desert

North Africa, 1940–43

INTRODUCTION

The spillover of World War II from Europe into Africa was primarily caused by the territorial ambitions of Mussolini. With the vision of a new Roman Empire before him, the Italian Fascist leader first struck at Britain’s East African colonies. This turned into an ignominious rout when British forces – primarily made up of colonial units – defeated the Italians at Keren, in Eritrea, in March 1941 and then promptly occupied Italy’s colony of Ethiopia. Mussolini’s offensive against Egypt and the strategically vital Suez Canal was no more auspicious. Launched from the Italian possession of Libya, the army of Marshal Rodolfo Graziani marched sixty miles into Egypt in three days – and then, enormously over-extended, collapsed at Sidi Barrani before a surprise attack on 9 December 1940 by Britain’s Western Desert Force. The British counter-offensive subsequently rolled Graziani back 400 miles to Beda Fomm.

And so was set the pattern of war in the Western Desert. A running offensive (and retreat by the other side) along the single coastal road, with the pursuer attempting to hook around the pursued to cut off the retreat, whilst also striking at his defended positions (essentially the ports of Tobruk, Gazala, Benghazi, El Aghelia, Tripoli). The war in the desert would probably have been over by spring 1941 had not Hitler sent Mussolini a rescuing knight in tank armour: Erwin Rommel. For eighteen months the conflict in the Western Desert swung back and forth along the 1,200-mile coastal strip until October 1942 when the British Eight Army, under the newly appointed Montgomery, landed a reeling blow at El Alamein which forced Rommel into headlong retreat towards Tunisia. Unfortunately for Rommel, Tunisia was no haven, because on 8 November an Anglo-America Army began to land in French North Africa in Operation Torch. The Afrika Korps was squeezed between a rock and a hard place. Six months of dogged fighting later, Tunis fell to the Allies. The war in Africa was over.

THE ITALIANS SURRENDER AT BEDA FOMM, 7 FEBRUARY 1941

Cyril Joly, 7th Armoured Division

A breakneck march by the British 7th Armoured Division saw them hook around behind the retreating Italian 10th Army, which was then trapped at Beda Fomm between the “Desert Rats” and the 6th Australian Division.

Before first light the leaguers were astir, and as the dawn reddened the eastern sky behind us, it lit the long, straggling, inert mass of the Italian column where it lay still in its positions of the previous day. The Italians had been harassed throughout the night by our guns and a number of roving infantry fighting patrols which had kept them on the alert and deprived them of rest and any chance to reorganize. From my position on the dune I watched an attack which was launched soon after dawn by about thirty Italian tanks against the position on the road. This was beaten off quickly and with little difficulty.

For a time there was silence on both sides. For all the efforts of the previous day, the Italian column still looked huge and threatening. I watched with apprehension the movements of the mass of vehicles before me. On either side of me, hidden behind the crests of other dunes and ridges, I knew that there were other eyes just as anxious as mine, surveying the scene before them. In the mind of each one of us was the sure knowledge that we were well outnumbered. Each of us knew by what slim margin we still held dominance over the battlefield. Our threat was but a façade – behind us there were no more reserves of further troops. Even the supplies of the very sinews which could keep us going had almost run out. If we lost now we were faced with capture or a hopeless retreat into the empty distances of the inner desert. It was a sobering thought. I felt that the day, with all its black, wet dullness, was heavy with ominous foreboding. The scene before me was made gloomy enough to match my mood by the black clouds of acrid smoke which shrouded the battlefield like a brooding pall.

Gradually I became aware of a startling change. First one and then another white flag appeared in the host of vehicles. More and more became visible, until the whole column was a forest of waving white banners. Small groups of Italians started to move out hesitantly towards where they knew we lay watching them. Larger groups appeared, some on foot, some in vehicles.

Still not able to believe the evidence of his own eyes, the Colonel warned, “. . . Don’t make a move. This may be a trap. Wait and see what happens. Off.”

But it was no trap. Italians of all shapes and sizes, all ranks, all regiments and all services swarmed out to be taken prisoner. I felt that nothing would ever surprise me again after my loader suddenly shouted: “Look, sir, there’s a couple of bints there coming towards us. Can I go an’ grab ’em, sir? I could do with a bit of home comforts.” We took the two girls captive, installed them in a vehicle of their own and kept them for a few days to do our cooking and washing. I refrained from asking what other duties were required of the women, but noted that they remained contented and cheerful.

Out of the first confusion, order was slowly restored. Each squadron was given a part of the battlefield where we were to collect the prisoners and equipment and to keep careful tally of the captures. It was a novel but exhausting task, and Kinnaird, anxious to be done with it as soon as possible, pushed and harried us to clear our portion of the area.

The battlefield was an amazing sight. It was strewn with broken and abandoned equipment, tattered uniforms, piles of empty shell and cartridge cases. It was littered with paper, rifles and bedding. Here and there small groups of men tended the wounded who had been gathered together. Others were collecting and burying the dead. Still others, less eager to surrender than the majority, stood or lay waiting to be captured. Some equipment was still burning furiously, more was smouldering. There were many oil and petrol fires emitting clouds of black smoke.

There were few incidents. Soon the generals and the high-ranking officers had been discovered and taken away. The remaining officers were piled unceremoniously into Italian lorries and driven off. The thousands of men were formed into long columns guarded at head and tail by only one or two of our impassive, imperturbable and perpetually cheerful soldiers, who shouldered the unaccustomed new duties with the same confident assurance with which they had met and mastered all the other trials of the campaign.

It was the work of some days to clear the battlefield of all that was worth salvaging and to muster and despatch on their long march to the prison camps in Egypt the thousands of prisoners.

ENTER ROMMEL, FEBRUARY–JULY 1941

Leutnant Heinz Werner Schmidt, Afrika Korps

Born in 1891, Rommel first distinguished himself in World War I, winning a
Pour le Merite.
An early Nazi sympathiser, he commanded the Fuhrer’s escort battalion during the Austrian, Sudetenland and Czech occupations and the Polish campaign. During the invasion of France, he commanded the 7th Panzer Division to such great distinction that he earned himself promotion to commander of the Afrika Korps. Although he only arrived in North Africa on 12 February 1941, and knew nothing of desert warfare, he was a born master of mobile operations – so garnering the nickname “The Desert Fox” by an admiring enemy – and by 24 March was on the offensive. After unceremoniously ejecting the British from Beda Fomm he went eastwards at lightning speed and by 11 April was almost at the start line of O’Connor’s December 1940 offensive.

We went for the little fort in the desert, and the British positions round it, from three directions. The engagement was sharp but lasted only a couple of hours. We took the British commander, Major-General Gambier-Parry, in his tent. The haul of prisoners numbered almost three thousand. We had a further spectacular success. A mobile force of motor-cyclists caught up with the British column moving eastward across the desert below the Jebel Akhdar nearby, and to their astonishment held up the two heroes of the British advance to Benghazi: Lieutenant-General Sir Richard O’Connor, who had just been knighted for his successes against the Italians, and Lieutenant-General Sir Philip Neame, V.G. So we had three generals in the bag.

Mechili landing-ground was littered with destroyed planes. British machines swooped down to attack it afresh at short intervals. At the height of one assault, “my” Fieseler Storch dropped in out of the sky. Out stepped Rommel, smiling buoyantly, fresh from a personal reconnaissance of the desert scene.

The command trucks of the captured British generals stood on a slight rise. They were large, angular vehicles on caterpillar tracks, equipped inside with wireless and facilities for “paper” work. We christened them “Mammoths” then, but I did not realize that these useful trucks would be used by Rommel and his staff and commanders right through the long struggle that was now beginning in the desert.