Another Debacle

(Source)

Private James Fitzhugh thought back to his latest encounter with the German army. They had been in a great position, the hull protected by an earthen berm just forward of the tank, the turret mostly protected by the same berm.

They had draped boughs from the nearby trees (olives he thought, rather ironic considering that olive branches were considered an offering of peace) over the turret. From fifty yards away it looked like a brush pile. Plausible enough, as the farmers who maintained the olive groves did gather up downed branches and pile them up for later disposal. In the middle of a fork in the road was perhaps an odd place for such a thing but as Sergeant O'Connell said, "I doubt the Jerries know how olive groves are maintained, they have none of that in the Fatherland!"

They had Kiwi infantry dug in to either side of them, the position felt like a good one.

Until the Stukas came.

The bent-wing dive bombers seemed to know exactly where to drop their bombs for maximum effect. Other than a direct hit, the men were safe within the armored walls of their Cruiser tank Mk.II. But they could hear the screams of the infantry as the bombs killed them in their rifle pits.

Corporal Fred McTavish had shouted out that he could see Jerry tanks coming down the road. "Mark 3s from the look of 'em, too big for Mark 2s!"

O'Connell had come on the intercom, "Steady lads, wait until they're at point blank range Freddie. Willie, you keep the rounds coming, we need to kill a couple of them to block the road."

Private William O'Shea stood hunched over inside the sweltering heat of the dark turret. He held the next round in his hands, ready to load as soon as the breech was cleared of the previous round. He wasn't so much worried about the German tanks, their armor was readily defeated by the 2-pounder anti-tank rounds such as the one he held in his hand, he was more worried about the German infantry.

His tank carried no high explosive rounds at all, doctrine called for using the machine guns against infantry¹, the problem was, the hull machine-gun was blocked by the very same berm that protected the hull. The co-axial machine-gun pointed where the turret pointed which would negate the use of the main gun for dealing with armor.

O'Shea was a new soldier, scarcely six months in the Forces, but he paid attention, he learned quickly and what he saw here was a recipe for disaster. Not to mention which, his ankle still hurt like Hell. They'd laced his boot up tightly to keep it stable, but truth be told, he couldn't hobble more than a few yards without assistance.

The tank shook as a near miss rattled the bones of everyone inside the vehicle. O'Shea heard one word over the intercom, from the Sergeant.

"Shit ..."

The gunner in the lead Pzkw IIIH watched as the dust from the last bomb explosion settled. What he saw made his blood run cold. "Feindlicher Panzer, direkt voraus!²" The last bomb had blown off all of the foliage covering a British tank sitting not forty meters away.

He laid the gun on the target, but he was a fraction of a second too late. He saw a flash, then the world went black.

"Hit! Second tank, to the left ten degrees!" O'Connell had watched their first round hit the German tank right below the gun mantlet. The round must have glanced down and into the turret ring as the tank immediately jerked to a halt and begin to smoke. He ignored the crew bailing out as he wanted to hit the second tank he had glimpsed to the left rear of the tank they had just killed.

"Round is up!" screamed O'Shea as he reached for a third round.

"Firing!" McTavish barked as he hit the trigger.

The Panzer commander looked down into the turret, his gunner was nearly torn in half and the driver's position was a mess of blood and viscera. He wondered where the driver was, then it struck him, his driver was still in his seat, what was left of him from the shoulders down.

He saw the interior get brighter in all the smoke when the loader opened his hatch and dove over the side of the vehicle. That's when he noticed that the bow gunner's position was sunlit, so he had bailed as well.

He tried to climb out but his left leg wasn't cooperating. Puzzled he sat back down, perhaps his pant leg was caught on something. He checked by sliding his hands down his leg, only to discover that his leg ended just below his knee.

He was thinking, the pain hadn't hit him yet, "Now what do I do?"

A second later the ammunition in the ready rack exploded.

O'Connell nodded savagely, McTavish's second round had blown the right track off of the second tank, immobilizing it. That tank's turret was now traversing to line up on his tank. He heard the gun crew go through their drill, then his blood froze when he heard his gunner scream, "HANG FIRE!"³

"Get us out of here, Fitzie!" he barked at the driver.

Fitzhugh was ready, he'd had the engine running and had kept the transmission in gear, both of his legs were sore from nearly standing

on the brake pedal. But to his immense relief the tank rolled forward, he immediately moved his levers to pivot the tank to the right where they'd be screened by the now burning German tank.

O'Connell screamed over the intercom, "Fitzhugh! What the Hell?" The sergeant had expected Fitzhugh to back out of the position, keeping their front to to Germans. Then he remembered, that bloody clutch.

"Hang on lads, I'll get us out of here, swing the turret to the rear, I can't back up!" Fitzhugh screamed his answer over the intercom. O'Connell was already swinging the turret to the rear.

Fortunately, the smoke from the burning German vehicle had masked the second German's vision, he had fired at them but the round had missed by far enough that O'Connell hadn't even noticed.

The clutch on the old beast had finally given up the ghost some thirty-five miles back and two days ago. Now Fitzhugh and his crewmates were queued up on a pier at Piraeus waiting to shuffle aboard a Royal Navy warship tied up to the pier.

They had carried O'Shea for a large part of the way until an old Greek farmer had sold them an even older donkey to carry the injured O'Shea.

One of the Kiwis with them had said that what they'd paid for the donkey was way too much, he also said that he hoped the old farmer didn't try to spend the money they'd given the man. As Fitzhugh remembered it, the crew had had ten shilling coins among them. Not even a pound!

O'Connell had pointed out that the coins were silver, the old man was smart enough to melt them down for the silver. After all, he'd managed to sell a worn out donkey which he probably couldn't have given away in normal times.

The donkey had given out some ten miles further on, but still it had helped. Still and all, he was glad that they didn't have to carry the lad any further.

Each time the men had heard engine noises overhead, they had all looked up. The Luftwaffe had been ever more active over the past few days, fortunately today was overcast, with lots of low clouds and scud. The Germans were up there, but couldn't come down.

"All right, you lot, get aboard, leave anything and everything. You! Soldier! Leave that rifle, if it ain't weightless, it ain't going aboard."

Fitzhugh turned around and watched as a burly sailor snatched the rifle from the soldier's hands and smashed it over a bollard, shattering the stock and bending the barrel. Then the sailor pitched it into the harbor.

"What the bloody Hell am I supposed to fight with now?!" the soldier screamed in frustration.

"Ain't no fighting where you lot are going, ye'll be there a week or two then it's back to Egypt where you'll be re-equipped. Now move along or stay, makes no never mind to me!"

"Where is it we're going then mate?" O'Connell asked a sailor preparing to cast off the lines holding the ship to the pier.

"An island out in the Med, Crete it's called. You'll be safe from the Huns until we can get you to Egypt. Now let's go, all of you!"

Fitzhugh nodded, Crete, he thought to himself, an odd name but one he seemed to remember from school, something about minotaurs or something.

Well, they should be safe there. After all, the Royal Navy controlled the seas. Right?

¹ See this.

² "Enemy tank, dead ahead!" (German)

³ A "hang fire" means the round in the gun didn't fire, either due to a faulty fuse/primer or a problem with the propellant. Either way, the gun didn't fire when it was needed. It will still fire, but after a delay. A misfire is when the fuse, or primer, doesn't detonate the propellent at all.