All Hell Let Loose_ The World at War 1939-1945 - Max Hastings [88]
there was a tremendous crash. I felt a sharp pain in my right leg, heard the operator groaning, and said, ‘Driver, advance.’ Nothing happened. The shell, an 88mm, had exploded in his stomach … At the time I realised only that the engine had stopped, the Tannoy internal communication set had broken down, air was escaping from the high pressure pipes and clouds of acrid smoke were coming up from inside. It all happened in a moment. Then we were out of the tank and running towards another one. It was our squadron leader, who had stopped to rescue us; my gunner was already on the tank, the operator had disappeared on another, but I could only hobble because my leg wobbled uncontrollably beneath my weight. I was terrified they would go without me. The Germans shelled me as I ran. The ground opened up at my feet and I staggered as the blast struck me, but I was not hurt. I hurled myself onto the tank, dizzy and exhausted as we moved off to safety. The gunner was beside me smiling cheerfully though his right arm was smashed to bits below the elbow. Bones gleamed white through the blood and his fingers dangled on shreds of skin. He was bleeding badly so we fixed up a tourniquet and I gave him my syringe of morphia. We talked about going home.
At a field hospital, he recovered consciousness after an operation to hear falling bombs and the terrific din of Tobruk’s anti-aircraft guns. ‘There were so many wounded that the floor was covered with patients on stretchers, the reek of anaesthetic filled the air and people were groaning or shouting in delirium as they died. The heat and stuffiness were quite appalling. My right leg was in plaster to the hip, the other was smothered in dried blood. There were no sheets and the blankets scratched.’
Both sides suffered heavy tank losses in confused fighting around ‘the Cauldron’ in the centre of the British line, but by 30 May the Germans had gained a decisive advantage. The British were forced into headlong retreat. A South African and Indian force was left to defend Tobruk, while the remainder of Eighth Army fell back into Egypt. Rommel bypassed Tobruk, then on 20 June turned and assaulted its defences from the rear, where the line was weakest, and soon broke through. The South African commander, Maj. Gen. Hendrik Klopper, surrendered next morning. By nightfall on the 21st, all resistance had ended. More than 30,000 prisoners fell into Axis hands. Only a few units made good their escape to Eighth Army.
Vittorio Vallicella was among the first Axis troops to reach the port of Tobruk. ‘What a shock to find there hundreds of Senegalese [French colonial troops] who, at the sight of our little band, leap to their feet raising their hands in token of surrender,’ he wrote in his diary. ‘How extraordinary that they should do this to poorly armed men far fewer than themselves. With surprise but also respect, we gaze fascinated at these poor black soldiers who serve rich England, who have come from afar to take part in a war, when perhaps they don’t even know for whom or for what they are fighting.’ Exploring the town, the Italians were astonished by the comfort of the English quarters, with their showers, every officer’s bed with its mosquito net, and a surfeit of supplies. They delighted in the discovery of luxuries: tinned plums and boxes of what Vallicella at first took for dried grass. His sergeant explained that this was tea, a real treat. Some Arabs found plundering the dead were shot. Several men killed themselves by wandering into minefields. The Germans quickly placed guards on all the British food dumps, which the Italians interpreted as a slight on themselves: ‘Even here our allies want to lord it over us.