The Man Who Broke Into Auschwitz by Denis Avey Page A

None of us wanted to get too close and at moments like this, knees in the dirt, pushing sand over a human face, we knew why. We piled what stones we could find on top to stop the wild dogs getting at him and stood up without so much as a prayer. I pulled the bolt out of his rifle, attached the sword to the end and rammed it barrel first into the sand at his feet. I turned away and left him alone in the desert.
    Long after it was over, they came and cleaned up the site of those battles. They moved buried bodies to the military cemeteries but there were a lot they couldn’t find, so they listed them on the Alamein memorial. Bill’s name is there, so he still lies where I left him somewhere in the shifting sands south of Sidi Rezegh.
    We were ordered forward again to see if Gubi was still occupied. We found out when all sorts of heavy artillery and anti-tank fire opened up. The South African Brigade arrived soon after that and we tried to warn them but their leading armed company sailed straight into the danger area and got badly smashed up, poor devils. Some of them were without doubt the boys whose hearty songs had raised our spirits on the
Mauretania
as we sailed up the coast of Africa.
    Thankfully, one of our officers managed to get to the main body of their troop-carrying lorries before they came in range and they dug themselves in. Twenty-seven Stuka dive-bombers, complete with fighter escort, appeared overhead. Usually they were flown by crack pilots but this lot delivered their bombs into an empty patch of desert. Only one managed the usual steep dive, though he spoilt it by failing to pull out in time and followed his bomb into the ground. It prompted quips that the pilots must have been Italian but I found it hard to believe the Germans would allow Italian pilots to fly their planes. Perhaps they were novices.
    We were getting near our objective. Fifteen miles to the north was the ridge, overlooking the Trigh Capuzzo track. On that ridge was the mosque tomb of Sidi Rezegh, a white building with a dome, and a big airfield. 7th Armoured Brigade had already rampaged across it, destroying Messerschmitts and Stukas, crushing their fuselages with the tanks. It came at a high price in casualties. My friends in Major Sinclair’s ‘A’ company had suffered, losing two carriers to anti-tank guns. Looking back, I find it was described later as ‘one of the outstanding exploits of the desert war’.
    Seizing the ridge allowed our forces to overlook the so-called Axis road towards Tobruk but the assault was making slow progress, not enough for the besieged garrison to break out to meet us.
    I’ve read the military histories so now I know what went wrong.The Germans didn’t share our appetite for a set-piece tank battle. They chose their moments and used their superior weapons to take us on in separate, unconnected fights that cost us dear. They were good at it. That morning, 21 November, I drove the carrier up out of a
nullah
and as I crested the brow I saw a German tank a thousand yards away. The gun swivelled and he was firing on us in a flash. I only just had time to do a skid turn and drop back down into the dip.
    Major Sinclair’s ‘A’ Company met the Germans in the early afternoon when seventy-five panzers came straight at them in a confusion of dust, shell bursts and burning vehicles. Our men were hopelessly outnumbered and their anti-tank guns had been knocked out. The survivors took to the
wadi
s for protection and were soon trapped between tanks to the south and infantry to the north as the light faded. Soon he and his men were in the bag.
    Les and I had been buzzing around in the carrier for most of the night with the rest of Hugo Garmoyle’s column. In the morning we were sheltering in the valley south of the airfield when we heard despairing messages from Battalion HQ, which was pinned down. It was no more than three small pick-ups with wireless masts, completely exposed on bare ground, the HQ staff