Chance Encounter

Italian soldiers examining an abandoned Crusader Mark II
(Source)

Unbeknownst to the crew, the artillery near miss which had damaged some of the nuts and sheered off a bolt holding one of their road wheels onto the hub had also cracked the road wheel. But not in a way that the crew would have noticed during a cursory inspection.

The back side of the road wheel had a crack in it, it started as a small crack but that kept increasing as the Crusader worked its way down the rocky desert track at speed. After all, to Sergeant O'Connell's knowledge, they were the last British vehicle headed north towards Benghazi. There was nothing behind them but Germans and Italians.

"Shite!" Private Caddick cried out as the tank lurched to the left. Whereas the tank had been wobbly before, now it was completely screwed. He could hear and feel (through the steering lever) that the left side track was off, or going off. He stopped the vehicle.

"Alan, why the hell are we stopping?" O'Connell asked. He had been dozing in his commander's seat. Fitzhugh and O'Shea were watching to the rear (which is where they had the turret slewed to) and had also been struggling to stay awake. They looked at each other with some concern, something was off.

"Have a look outside Sar'nt, I think the bloody track is off!" Caddick was already climbing up out of his hatch. Looking to the rear he could see that the track was indeed off the wheels, he could see it laid out behind the tank.

"Might be a quick fix, Sar'nt ..."

When he climbed down off the vehicle, his heart sank, the road wheel that had taken some damage before was now completely broken, a good half of it was missing. As he walked towards the back of the tank, O'Connell joined him on the ground.

"What happened?" O'Connell asked.

Caddick pointed back towards the broken road wheel and said, "Might have gotten cracked, maybe because of the near miss, maybe because of the sheared off bolt, I don't know."

Walking a bit further he spotted the other piece of the road wheel, "And there's the rest of it."

"Damn it," O'Connell exclaimed, "we don't have a spare for that. Maybe we could remove that wheel, get the track back on it, drive real slow, not make any sharp turns ..." He was thinking aloud, and he didn't believe a word he was saying.

"Sure Sar'nt, if we were back in Blighty on a training course we could probably nurse the crate back to camp, but here?" As he said that, his arm sweeping the surroundings, he saw a dust cloud to their rear, his arm stopped its sweep. "Though I doubt the Jerries will give us time to fix anything."

O'Connell looked in the direction which Caddick had been looking, vehicles, not far off he wagered. "Get everyone off the tank, grab anything useful you can, weapons, tarps, food, water, anything we can carry. We're going to have go hide in the desert and hope the bastards pass us by."

M13/40 tanks advancing across the desert, April 1941
Bundesarchiv
(Source)

The Italian tank was lost, they'd lost contact with the rest of their company a few kilometers to the rear when they had contacted the British rear guard. Sergente Giuseppe D'Arezzo was standing in the hatch of his M13/40 trying to figure out where they were. They had seen a German unit ahead of them veer off into the desert, but their orders were to stick to the coast road.

He knew they weren't on the coast road, but according to his map, which was dated 1928, this track led to the coast road. Well, at least he thought the track they were on matched the one on his map. (In reality they were about two kilometers east of the coastal road, this track wasn't on the map he was using.)

As he was about to order a stop so he could try and get his bearings, he saw a British tank ahead.

"Target tank, dead ahead, prepare to engage!" he ordered as he dropped down into his seat. His gunner, Armando Scola had already laid the gun on the target.

"Sergente, she looks disabled!" Scola called out.

"Fire!" D'Arezzo ordered.

O'Connell and his crew were about 50 yards off the track, with a clear view of their tank. They were sweltering under a tarp, it was about the same color as the surrounding terrain and it provided concealment. But it was beastly hot underneath it.

When the little M13/40 had fired its gun, O'Connell had jumped. Couldn't they see it was disabled? Then the thought struck him, how many times had they put a round into a seemingly disabled/abandoned tank, just in case?

He sighed in disbelief when the saw his tank get hit in the engine compartment and immediately start to smoke. The Italians were not fooling around, they fired a second round into the Crusader. This one hit the turret ring and penetrated to hit a round in the ready ammunition rack. O'Connell's tank began to burn fiercely. They faced a long walk home, or the rest of the war in a P.O.W. camp, neither prospect appealed to O'Connell.

"She's dead, Sergente!" Scalo was thrilled, it was the first time he had personally destroyed a British tank.

D'Arezzo was grinning, it was a clean kill. "Halt when we get a little closer, it does look abandoned, but maybe we can see what happened to the crew."

D'Arezzo's entire crew dismounted. the men all wanted to see their first kill.

D'Arezzo saw the track trailing behind the vehicle on its left side, he also saw the wrecked road wheel. There was no sign of the crew, unless they were still in the burning vehicle. He shuddered at that thought.

"Sergent, there is no smell of burning men." Soladato Giovanni Zecca, the bow gunner/radio operator mentioned. Indeed, there was none of that horrid smell which would indicate that the men who crewed the tank had died inside her.

"They probably broke down during the retreat and hitched a ride on another vehicle." D'Arezzo commented, though he had an uneasy feeling, something seemed off.

The driver, Caporale Claudio Rendine had gone to the right side of the burning tank, he was studying the ground, staying well clear in case the vehicle blew up.

"Sergente D'Arezzo! There are footprints leading into the desert!" Rendine called out.

O'Connell nodded as the Italian crew found his crew's tracks. Private Ian Sullivan had been aiming his rifle at the Italian tank commander, when O'Connell nodded, he squeezed the trigger, then immediately began to engage the other Italians.

One man had drawn a pistol and was starting to aim in their direction, though the brave man got a shot off in their general direction, it was obvious that the Italians had no idea of their precise location, The tarp had done its job.

Sergente D'Arezzo had gone down hard, it was obvious to the surviving crewmen that he was dead. Rendine had been hit shortly after the sergeant, he was lying on the ground, moaning and clutching his belly.

Zecca and Scalo immediately threw their hands in the air, bellowing, "Non sparare, ci arrendiamo!¹"

The men watched as five British soldiers seemed to arise from the desert floor, first there was nothing, then there were five men. Zecca noticed the tarp as one of the British picked it up.

"Bastardi." Was all Scalo could say.

O'Connell and his crew made it to the British fallback position near Beda Finn. They had forced the Italian driver to show Caddick how to drive the M13/40 and then had told the Italians, "Piss off, we have no room for prisoners."

Rendine had died of his wound just as the British drove off in their stolen tank. Zecca and Scalo were somewhat disappointed, they had rather hoped that their war was over.

Maybe next time ...

¹ Don't shoot, we surrender!