My old man (left) in Egypt during the campaign against Rommel's Afrika Corp. I colourised it for fun.
He never spoke about the war. A while ago I decided to do something about that, so I researched his unit actions and wrote a novel, half set in 1959 and half in WW2. It's my fifth novel. Here is a little extract from the WW2 part:
The shelling continued for the rest of the night. Heavy stuff was still coming in when the eastern horizon showed a thin orange line. Gradually, the darkness lifted; the great red sun lifted itself into the sky, and the temperature began to rise.
The shelling eased off. I peered over the lip of the parapet. The enemy had got very close. Bodies lay not more than a cricket pitch away. A Panzer Mark III, with no turret, burned, its ammunition cooking off into the air, and several armoured cars, one almost completely destroyed, lay abandoned.
The shelling stopped. The continual explosions had made me deaf. John was saying something—I saw his lips moving—but I couldn’t make out the words above a shrill whistling that filled my head. I shouted, “What?” and moved closer.
John practically shouted in my ear, “They’ve lifted the barrage!”
I could see that. Anyone could. I wasn’t about to stand up to see if there were any latecomers, perhaps one with my name written on it; no, sir! But the sergeant was standing up, looking through a pair of binoculars.
He took the binoculars away from his eyes and shouted, “Look sharp! Enemy armour!”
I turned to the front, and sure enough, something was coming, judging by the clouds of dust. Diesel engines growled. Only the Germans used diesels.
The sergeant looked right and left. Evidently he wasn’t happy with what he saw. “Stand to, you lot!”
“That’s us I s’pose.” John repacked some small stones around the mortar’s baseplate. “Here we go, Buddy!”
Our field guns began coughing, followed immediately by the sound of twenty-five-pounders going over. Thank God they hadn’t been knocked out by the German barrage.
The crumping sound of explosions not too far in front of our position made me take a quick peek. Clouds of dust obscured the view, but then dark shapes appeared.
I saw bright flashes and ducked just in time as a hail of machine gun bullets tore through the air above my head. It wasn’t just machine guns, either; 20mm cannon fire meant those big armoured cars were in the spearhead. Tank shells began blasting the ground around our position.
I heard the sarge yelling: “Infantry following the tanks!”
“Buddy, what’s the range?” John asked.
I thought about what I’d seen moments ago and deducted fifty yards. “Maybe four hundred yards.”
“Right. Let’s have a go, then!”
I loaded, John fired. Despite the machine gun and cannon fire sweeping the parapet, sending chips flying, John peeked over the top to adjust his aim. Our bombs would give the advancing infantry a fright.
“Come on, Buddy! Keep it up!” John shouted. Residue stained his face, he’d caught some of the side-blast from the tube.
“I’m almost out!” It was true; all I had left were smoke bombs and illumination rounds.
“Use the rifle. I’ll be back.” And before I could utter a word, John leapt from the hole, made it across the couple of yards to the trench, and set off for more ammunition.
I grabbed the Lee-Enfield and put it to my shoulder, peering into the fog. There—dark shapes advancing. I pulled the trigger, and the rifle butt thumped me in the shoulder. The bolt was awkward to work but I chambered another round and fired again. And again.
John made it back. We began loading and firing, but the range was down to one hundred yards, and the situation looked grim.
The fire from either side of us began to lessen. Our Bren teams and rifle squads were being slaughtered, and I hadn’t heard anything from our twenty-five-pounders in a while. Where was our armour? They’d be too late, as usual. I just knew it. We’d be overrun. And once through our line, they’d roll us up.
John peeked over the parapet to estimate the range. With a sound as if chopping wood, his face exploded into gore. He fell back into the hole. One moment there, the next, gone.
I put my hand up to my cheek and felt a sticky mess. Oh God. I froze. Couldn’t move.
The growling sound of a German engine sounded loudly, in front.