For Five Shillings a Day: Personal Histories of World War II. Dr. Campbell-Begg Richard
and a British tank came driving out of the thick of the fighting towards my truck, which had a Red Cross flag on it, and as it drew near I saw that the body of the Brigadier was lying across the front of this tank and he appeared to be unconscious. However, by the time the tank got up to my truck, he was on his feet again and the tank commander said that he had seen the Brigadier struck by some object and he had fallen off his truck unconscious. The tank commander had jumped out and picked him up and put him across the front of his tank and brought him over to me.
By this time Jock Campbell was on his feet and wanting to get back into things, but I insisted on examining him and he had deep graze on the side of his chest, but it was not a really dangerous wound so I began to put a dressing on, and I had to order him to stand still while I put it on. And he said, “Well, hurry up, hurry up – I must go and rally those bloody tanks.” And so as soon as I got the dressing on he was away again, his truck having come up in the meantime. I might mention that one of the riflemen of the 1KRRC also won the VC when the battalion had to attack a heavily held German position and he unfortunately lost his life in doing this.
We were in Cairo for several weeks and then up to the Desert again and took over much the same role as we had been at before until May 1942, when the Germans, who had been refitting also back in Tunisia, attacked and in much greater strength than before. There was again a period of several days’ vigorous fighting in the same fixed set-up analogous to a naval battle, with troops being attacked from all directions, on all sides. The Germans got the advantage in this because they had much better tanks and much heavier artillery, and the Eighth Army had to withdraw.
My Battalion had to withdraw past Tobruk in the middle of the night, and about 3 o’clock that morning my truck was blown up by a mine which fortunately was just in front of the truck and just blew the front off it, and my driver and I received only minor injuries, but sufficiently severe for us to be evacuated to hospital. So that was the end of my association with the 1KRRC.’
Another New Zealander, this time a gunner, Lance Bombardier Bruce McKay Smith, was recalled with his unit from Syria because of the deteriorating situation in the Western Desert:
‘We packed up very quickly and took off in a mad dash back to Egypt. I’ve forgotten just how long we were, but it was a record time with all the gear we had. We got just to the outskirts of Cairo, then to Alexandria, and then straight up the desert road as far as Baggush, where we camped for two or three days and then went on up to Mersa Matruh, where we were put into vacated gun positions. The whole place hadn’t been used for a wee while and was infested with fleas, so we got out of that very quickly, out on to the open ground, but the Jerry used to bomb us fairly repeatedly. By this time we had an anti-aircraft unit of Bofors guns, which helped quite a bit.
After three days, I think, in Mersa Matruh, General Freyberg decided it wasn’t the place for us to be, and we headed out into the desert to a place called Minqar Qaim, and we didn’t realise at the time, but the Jerries were only a matter of miles behind us as we moved out. We came to this Minqar Qaim, which consisted of a very flat area of desert with an escarpment of about a hundred odd feet rising up out of it, and the guns were put in position below the escarpment and the infantry in front of them again, and we knew the Germans were coming because we could see these great clouds of dust heading towards us. The second night we were there I happened to be amongst a group setting out on a reconnaissance towards the German positions. We had two 25-pounder guns, two Vickers machine-guns, a platoon of infantry and some wireless vans. We were out in the dark and we stayed there all night and, at first light, we could hear the German tanks and apparently we got orders over the radio to get back quick, which we did, and I’m very thankful about that, but we got back and as we arrived back the Germans started shelling and our guns started replying.
For the whole of the day it was an artillery duel. Every now and again the German infantry would approach in vehicles and head towards our positions where our infantry would be waiting for them, and our own guns, of course, managed to repulse them most of the day. But up on the escarpment behind us – actually just straight above where I was – General Freyberg was in a bivouac arrangement directing things, when he got wounded by, I think, a mortar shell, and he was out of action because of that. I don’t know how they got him out, but he was got out anyway. Our guns kept firing and then they started to get low on ammunition and as dark approached the Germans cooled off their attack a wee bit, but we knew that they’d got round on both our flanks so we had a very narrow alleyway behind us.
Bruce McKay Smith
As it got dark all the guns that were serviceable were lined up behind their quads to pull them, and all personnel were allocated space in a vehicle of some kind to get out. Then – I’m not sure what time of night it was – but we set off going south. Now the Maori infantry put in an attack towards the Germans and all hell was let loose. The Germans, apparently, hadn’t expected us to move at night; they weren’t prepared, so they were firing blindly at anything. The vehicle I was in, we had quite a few machine-gun bullets through the canopy, but nobody got hurt. There was just utter confusion – flares, gun shots, machine-gun fire, mortars, anything that could make a noise seemed to be going. We got through the main line of German defences, or whatever they were – they were pretty scattered and ineffectual – and carried on in the vehicles. There were always some vehicles knocked out and some casualties, but not a great many.
We got out and by daylight were clear of the whole area. The vehicle I was in was a 3-ton truck with a fairly high canopy, and we became separated somehow or another from the main body and all we could do was follow the wheel marks of the vehicles that had gone ahead of us. We got strafed once by a German fighter plane, but he didn’t do any good; I think he must have had tracer bullets, which set fire to the camouflage net, and that was the only trouble we had. Fortunately, all the vehicles had plenty of petrol and we kept going for all that day and I think most of the next night. It was moonlight, of course, and we were able to see the tyre tracks; we daren’t show a light of any kind. Eventually we finished up back at Baggush again where the rest of the regiment had gradually made their way. How we all found our way there I still don’t know, but we did.
Then the regiment reformed and we were divided into our individual batteries again with what gear we had. Eventually we got reinforcements to build our numbers up and then we were set to work to build defensive positions about the Alamein area. We went to the south until we got in amongst the sand dunes where it was pretty well impossible to travel with vehicles and guns and things. We dug positions there and we seemed to occupy positions for a day or so and then move off on to somewhere else. Then we were told we were to be in what they call Jock columns, which was a mixture of, perhaps, a troop of artillery and a platoon of machine-guns and a platoon of infantry, plus an ack-ack gun too, and we were told to virtually wander round the desert to see if we could see any Germans. It was a pretty ridiculous idea really because as soon as the Germans saw us they would open fire and we’d fire back and they had superior numbers so we’d clear out again, and it carried on like this for several days.
Then the Division gradually came together and then the big battles started, Sidi Rezegh and so forth; one of them was where Charles Upham won his VC. We carried on with this mobile column, reconnaissance it was really, and then gradually the whole Division moved back to the Alamein line after quite a number of minor actions. We were put into virtually fixed gun positions on fairly stony ground, rocky ground – took a lot of hard work. Meantime the German bombers knew where we were and they gave us a bit of hurry up every now and again. But we had more anti-aircraft defence than we’d had prior to this, and on one occasion a German aircraft was shot down in our lines and the pilot said that they knew where all our different divisions were.
We spent quite a considerable amount of time there. Now and again the Germans would attack, particularly on our left flank, which we nearly always repulsed fairly well, but there were quite a number of tank battles. In the meantime some of us were individually given leave to go to Cairo for a few days, which was much appreciated. And also I took part in building dummy gun positions out of scrim and timber, dummy vehicles, all sorts of dummy stuff to try and fool the Germans. It was a wee bit away from our lines and the Germans did bomb