Nigel Cawthorne by Japanese Reaping the Whirlwind: Personal Accounts of the German, Italian Experiences of WW II Read Free Book Online Page B

legs being pulled into the tower hatch, where a whirlpool was forming. Then the U-boat sank below me.
    Looks was rescued by a British rating:
    I was hanging on the scramble net limp as a lettuce leaf. Then a British sailor jumped over the rail, climbed down the net, got hold of my collar and said, ‘Come on, sailor!’ and hauled me up on deck.
    The entire crew of U-264 was saved, but of nearly 800 U-boats sunk during the Atlantic campaign, most went down with all hands.

3
HOLDING THE LINE: ATTRITION ON TWO FRONTS
    During 1942, the Germans suffered further reverses in North Africa. In the summer, Hitler ordered an advance on Cairo. But Rommel found his supply lines overstretched and complained that ‘support only arrives when things are almost hopeless’. On the night of 1 November 1942, the British, under General Bernard Montgomery, stopped the German advance with a counterattack at El Alamein. Two days later, Rommel wrote to his wife:
    Dearest Lu,
    The battle is going very heavily against us. We’re simply being crushed by the enemy weight. I’ve made an attempt to salvage part of the army. I wonder if it will succeed. At night I lie open-eyed racking my brains for a way out of this plight for my poor troops. We are facing very difficult days, perhaps the most difficult a man can undergo. The dead are lucky, it’s all over for them. I think of you constantly with heartfelt love and gratitude. Perhaps all will yet be well and we shall see each other again.
    Unhelpfully, Hitler sent a signal saying:
    The situation demands that the positions at El Alamein be held to the last man. A retreat is out of the question. Victory or death! Heil Hitler!
    It made no difference; the German army was soon fleeing back towards Tripoli, then on to Tunis. During the battle at El Alamein, Leutnant Heinz Schmidt’s Special Group 288 was left out of the fighting:
    We listened to the heavy battle going on a dozen miles to the east of us, while our weapons lay idle and there was nothing for us to do except swim or lounge in the sun.
    But they became Rommel’s rearguard. Schmidt described the conditions they then faced:
    We went without sleep, without food, without washing, and without conversation beyond the clipped talk of wireless procedures and orders. In permanent need of everything civilized, we snatched greedily at anything we could find, getting neither enjoyment or nourishment … The daily routine was nearly always the same – up at any time between midnight and 0400; move out of the lager [camp] before first light; a biscuit and a spoonful of jam or a slice of wurst, if you were lucky; a long day of movement and vigil and encounter, death and fear of death until darkness put a limit to vision and purpose on both sides; the pulling in of sub-units which had been sent out on far-flung missions; the final endurance of the black, close-linked march to the
lager
area; maintenance and replenishment and more orders – which took until midnight; and then the beginning of another 24 hours.
    On 8 November 1942 the Americans, who had now joined the war, landed in Morocco and Algeria and began closing in on Rommel from the west. Then, in early December, the British First Army under Lieutenant General Anderson led an attack on Tunis, the last Axis stronghold in North Africa. It was repulsed, but as the British, Americans and French were preparing to have another go, Colonel Rudolf Lang was moving 10 Panzer Division from Marseilles to Naples, ready to be shipped across the Mediterranean.
    As soon as the last transport train had been expedited on 4 December from Marseilles, which – contrary to the rural population – was not altogether friendly towards us, last but not least because of the occupation of Toulon, I proceeded through Nice, Genova, Florence and Rome to Naples, driving by automobile to save time. It rained almost all the time so that we could not enjoy the beauty of the countryside. Many anti-tank obstacles had already been