‘Let’s get back to the defensive line,’ Reynolds said. ‘Leave the men to mop up here.’
While the medics raced out to the closed gap to tend to the dead and wounded, Greaves followed the major to his jeep, climbed in beside him, and was driven away from the perimeter, following the three-mile route taken by the Panzers. As the tanks could only travel at thirty miles per hour, the jeep soon caught up with them and Reynolds raced boldly between them, determined to reach the British defensive line before the Germans. He had just driven up over the crest of a low hill, giving a clear view of the British six- and 26-pounders, when the tanks behind him opened fire and one of the first shells came whining down to explode with a mighty roar.
Greaves heard the roar of the explosion, felt the blast hammering at him, then was picked up and spun in the air, before falling through a great silence. He smashed into the ground, bounced up and rolled over it, then blacked out.
Regaining consciousness, he found himself on a stretcher, being carried back through more explosions, geysering soil, sand and gravel, to where the big guns were belching fire and smoke. Laid down on the ground beside Reynolds, who was on a stretcher and covered in blood, Greaves, whose lower half was numb, was forced to watch the ongoing battle without being able to take part in it.
While he had been unconscious the Panzers had continued their advance, firing their 55mm and 75mm guns, with the tracers illuminating the darkness like neon lights. When the tanks were about 700 yards from the British gun positions, the gunners fired on them with their 25-pounders and anti-tank guns, about 100 rounds per gun, which temporarily stopped them again. Then the British tanks moved out to engage them and, with luck, push them back a second time.
Two of the heavy enemy tanks tried to get around the British flank. One was hit by a 25-pounder shell and exploded, breaking down as it tried to struggle back. The other fired and hit the British 25-pounder and its crew, causing dreadful carnage before making its escape with the other tanks.
After knocking out seven of the Panzers with their 25-pounders, the gunners eventually turned them back for good. Escaping through the gap they had created when they broke into the perimeter, the German tanks left pursued by a hail of shells and bullets from the Tommies who had taken command of the gap.
A sudden, startling silence reigned until, as if only slowly realizing that they had won, the gun crews clapped and cheered.
Still stretched out on his stretcher and not able to move, Greaves felt a spasm of panic, then groping carefully, discovered that he had broken his left leg and badly bruised the other, but was otherwise not seriously hurt or permanently injured. Glancing sideways at Reynolds, he saw that although covered in blood, he seemed fairly perky.
‘Are you OK?’ he asked.
‘Lots of blood from shrapnel wounds in the thigh,’ Reynolds replied with a cheerful grin. ‘Looks much worse than it is, old chap.’
‘Well, we certainly appear to have given Jerry a good hiding,’ Greaves said, wanting to sound as cheerful as Reynolds looked.
‘We did,’ the major replied, ‘but I wouldn’t call it a victory. Tobruk is now surrounded by the Germans and in a state of siege. This could last for months.’
Greaves tried to sit up but passed out from the pain. He dreamt that he was relaxing on the deck of a ship with a cool breeze blowing across the open deck and cooling the sweat on his fevered brow.
Regaining consciousness a few hours later, he found himself lying on a stretcher on the open deck of a British destroyer heading from Tobruk to Alexandria. Glancing sideways, he saw Reynolds, now swathed in clean bandages and still relatively lively.
‘Rommel,’ Major Reynolds murmured as if continuing a conversation with himself. ‘He’s a formidable enemy.’
‘We can beat him,’ Greaves said quietly.
‘I agree,’ 24-year-old Lieutenant David Stirling said, packing his rucksack on his cluttered bed in the Scottish Military Hospital in Alexandria. ‘Rommel’s a brilliant general, a man to respect, but he can be beaten.’
‘And doubtless you know how to do it,’ Lieutenant Greaves replied sardonically, knowing that Stirling was a man who loved soldiering and was full of ideas. Born in Scotland of aristocratic lineage – his father was General Archibald Stirling of Keir – young Stirling was a bit of an adventurer, passionately fond of hunting, shooting and mountaineering, as well as being devoted to the Army.
‘Of course,’ Stirling replied with enthusiasm. ‘I’ve been studying the subject for weeks. Saved me from going mad in this bloody place and kept the marbles…’ He pointed to his head with his index finger. ‘…well polished. Know what I mean, Dirk?’
‘Yes,’ Greaves said, also packing his rucksack, for he, too, was finally leaving the hospital. ‘If a man spends too much time in bed, his brain tends to rot.’
‘Too right.’
Having been in hospital for over six weeks, Greaves understood the dangers of chronic boredom. He had managed to get through his own first few weeks by dwelling on how he came to be there, although it was rather like reliving a bad dream.
After being knocked unconscious by the explosion, he had regained his senses as he was carried on a stretcher through a series of explosions to the Regimental Aid Post a few hundred yards away. Placed on the ground in a large tent between men worse off than himself, including those classified as Dead On Arrival, he had to wait his turn while the harassed doctors and medics assessed the injuries of those being brought in, carried out emergency surgery, including amputations, and passed the casualties along the line.
Reaching Greaves and Reynolds, they found that the former had broken his left leg and the latter had suffered serious perforations of the stomach from shell fragments. Greaves’s leg was put in a temporary splint, Reynolds’s stomach was temporarily bandaged, then both were placed with other wounded men in an ambulance and driven to the Main Dressing Station in a white-painted stone building in an area being torn apart by the shells of enemy tanks and dive-bombing Stukas.
Lying on a real bed in a large, barn-like room converted into a makeshift hospital ward, receiving warm smiles from the RAMC nurses, Greaves nevertheless could not shut out what was going on around him: essential first-aid and medical treatment, including blood transfusions, the removal of shell splinters from bloody limbs, and even more complicated amputations and other operations. It was a grim sight, made worse by the moaning and screaming of men in terrible pain.
Greaves’s broken leg was reset and encased in a proper plaster, then, even as Reynolds was being wheeled into the surgery for an operation, Greaves was picked off his bed, placed on a stretcher and carried out of the building, into another ambulance. He was then driven to the harbour of Tobruk where, under cover of darkness, he was casevacked – casualty evacuated – in a small boat to one of the four destroyers anchored in the harbour. Those swift vessels, he knew, were the lifeline to Tobruk, running the gauntlet of Stukas under cover of darkness to bring food, ammunition, letters, and reinforcements to the besieged harbour town, as well as shipping out the casualties.
While crates of supplies were being lowered on slings down one side of the destroyer, Greaves and the other wounded men were hoisted up the other and carried down on their stretchers to the sick bay located deep in the crowded, noisy hold. There they had remained until the ship reached Alexandria, when they were transferred from the ship to the present hospital. After a minor operation to fix his broken leg, Greaves had been transferred to the recuperation ward where he had been given a bed right beside his fellow lieutenant, David Stirling, who was recovering from a bad parachute drop.
The hospital was pleasant enough, surrounded by green lawns bordered by fig and palm trees where the men could breathe the fresh air while gazing at the white walls and bougainvillaea of