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This story was submitted to the People’s War site by Roger Marsh of the ‘Action Desk — Sheffield’ Team on behalf of Reg Reid, and has been added to the site with the author’s permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

The Lighter Side of War

By
Don Alexander
CHAPTER 16: March to May 1943 - Butch and the `Entente Cordiale' - The final push against Bizerta and Tunis 133 Company (7th Armoured Division) play their part. Benghazis. Major Dodds' demise.

The Germans pushed supplies and troop reinforcements into Rommel's enclaves at Bizerta and Tunis but, helped by intelligence reports from Bletchley Park, the RAF shot down many of the supply planes, and Royal Navy submarines sank many of the supply vessels.
General Alexander ordered General Bradley II (US) Corps to go for Bizerta, the British 1st Army, to take Tunis and Monty's 8th Army to take Enfidaville and to be prepared for a last concentration of Axis forces at Cape Bon. Large groupings of American forces were put in reserve, to be saved for the planned invasion of Sicily from Bizerta agreed by Churchill and Rooseveldt at a meeting in Casablanca in January 1943.

I've not been able to find what role the French troops played in the final drama, though the six French Arabian troops who walked into 133 Company (7th Armoured Division's) farm had rusted cavalry rifles which confirmed their poor equipment. Butch challenged them to a shooting competition over 100 yards. He hit the target every time with his Lee Enfield 303; all the French Arabians missed. They suggested that his British 303 rifle was better than their cavalry rifles, which it was, and that they should swap over. They did and still missed with his 303. Butch saw their cavalry rifles were red rusted inside the barrels and yet still managed to hit the target. He wasn't called Butch for nothing!
They wanted to know about the British way of life and Butch, being naturally curious, wanted to know about theirs. They said they made a strong liqueur from tea and Butch gave them a few packets of best Naafi tea from `Rice' Cheeseborough's stock. They were overwhelmed with gratitude and offered to get the two Englishmen a couple of Arab girls. Cheeseborough looked interested but Butch quickly refused their kind offer!
He was annoyed though at what we would now call their `racist' attitude towards Staff-Sergeant Smith who was half-caste, black father, white mother, from Liverpool. The workshops' staff sergeant had walked up and they asked Butch why he had got stripes.
How could Englishmen serve under a black man? They called him `shit', and Butch boiled up, but restrained himself from lashing out at them, merely suggesting they call the staff sergeant that to his face! They left still on reasonably good terms. The `Entente Cordiale' was saved. Cheeseborough was amused that Butch had actually contemplated defending an NCO - such is life!

The only other contact with the French Army Butch can recall is an encounter in Medjez- el-Bab when he was on detail with driver Jack Powell. Jack, showing off his French, shouted from his cab, "Qa va mon brave?" to a Foreign Legionnaire striding across a square. "Ey up lad, how are you?" the legionnaire shouted back. He was from Manchester and had joined the Legion to forget. What did he want to forget? He'd forgotten! (not really; this old joke ,courtesy of Laurel and Hardy, who, you will recall, joined the Legion when Ollie's girlfriend jilted him).

`Benghazis'
There was a period of furious activity with convoys backing up the 7th Armoured Division of the 8th Army as they ranged northwards and the long hours were spent on the desert roads. The lads picked up a useful tip from the Desert Rats. They were issued with biscuit tins - stout sealed square metal boxes with a round hole in the top from which you could shake out the `hard tack' biscuits one at a time. One Desert Rat must have had an inspiration - he put sand in an empty tin, poured petrol through the hole, soaking the sand, struck a match and whoosh, he'd got a flame to boil water for tea or to cook meals on metal plates. He punched two holes in the side of the tin with the marlin spike on his Sheffield made army knife and put wire through these to hang the tin, when not in use, on the back of the lorry. These ingenious little `stoves' came to be known as "Benghazis" - after the Libyan town.

On the move you'd hear the clanking of metal as the "Benghazis" swung around and when lines of lorries stopped at the side of the road for a tea break you'd see the flares as the tins were brought to use. Butch found the sight of Benghazis firing up especially impressive at night; there was now little fear of Luftwaffe planes, more of `friendly fire' from the USAF.

Major Dodds' demise

Back at camp Major Dodds showed more regard for possible Luftwaffe action. To defend the camp he had the back of a lorry converted to a gimcrack brengun carrier. The bren was placed on a high trestle table, and was operated by a very small soldier called driver Dutton (Button' to the lads) who was not much over five foot and had to stand on a box to fire the gun. His six-foot assistant was extremely shortsighted but usually managed to feed the bullets in. They could range the camp, the farmyard and surrounding countryside if necessary. The camp now had 180 degrees cover from attack!

The first day Driver Petty took them on a reconnoitre outside the camp, he went under a very low bridge and gunners, trestles and gun were knocked flying. What blew it for Major Dodds though wasn't this episode but a meeting of Dodds in his Humber and sand covered soldiers emerging from a sand covered Jeep on a sand covered desert road. "Stand to attention when you speak to me," he had shouted before realising the soldier he addressed was the liaison colonel who had been responsible for merging 133 into the 8th Army. The colonel didn't react to that but went with him back to the camp and tore a strip off him for having guards placed with gleaming brass visible for many hundreds of yards, compared with his men who could merge unnoticed into the desert scene.

The colonel determined at that moment that Dodds would have to go but he didn't tell the major immediately because there was to be shortly an opportunity for him to really shine. (Also the 8th Army had been unlucky with majors recently; one killed at Tripoli and another had been decapitated leaning too far out of a Jeep and struck by an American army lorry.) The North African conflict was now over: General Bradley had led his II (US) Corps to take Bizerta. Montgomery's 8th Army had broken through Rommel's lines on 20th March 1943, swept all before them, and took Tunis alongside the 1st Army, who'd been allocated the job.

The 1st had grumbled, thought the 8th under their flamboyant commander were over- confident, but there was no denying Monty was the man and it was over by May 1943 - a great allied victory, orchestrated by General Alexander - later Lord Alexander of Tunis.
Rommel had been flown out of Tunis by the Luftwaffe and some of his troops had also escaped, evacuated by the German Navy from Bizerta, but the remaining defeated German and Italian troops, numbering 150,000, were put into makeshift prison camps. With the 100,000 prisoners taken earlier it was a massive blow to the Axis powers, and more prisoners were taken by this British-led campaign than by the Russians at Stalingrad.
On 13th May 1943 General Alexander signalled Churchill, "Sir, it is my duty to report that the Tunisian campaign is over. All enemy resistance has ceased. We are masters of the North African shores." On the same day driver Wheeler sent his weekly letter to his mam in Gateshead; "Prodigal reporting. All's well."

Butch, Brotherstone and Alexander's Victory Parade Tunis 1943 Butch loses his Lancia
The opportunity for Major Dodds to shine was to be General Alexander's victory parade in Tunis. They do get some rain in the winter in Medjez-el-Bab which is still fairly high up in the mountains, interspersed with weather hot enough, even in May, to burn the fitter who fell against a lorry mudguard. A rainwater pond at the farm had degenerated to a little patch of mud in early June yet one of the lads managed to drop his belt into this mud, the day before the big parade. He laid it out to dry in the hot sun, two hours later he brushed the mud off to find he'd got the best belt in all three platoons. Other lads immediately dropped their belts in the mud too.

Every man, every vehicle was bulled up to a very high degree on the day, every man, that is, except Reid and Brotherstone who were in fatigues. Lieutenant Baker thanked them for volunteering to look after the camp, thus missing a moment in world history, the parade to mark victory for the allies in North Africa over Fascism, the salute to be taken by General Alexander himself, with Monty, Bradley and all the other top brass. Butch and Brothers found it amusing that they should be thanked for missing the biggest bull shit parade ever in history (Butch's words).

They didn't intend to mooch around camp though and decided to go with the Lancia Aureola to a beach west of Tunis for a swim. On the road to Tunis they found themselves in a huge British Army convoy with troops sitting in open lorries with their rifles, tanks, bren gun carriers, artillery pieces, the lot, Yanks too, and French, all bulled up to high heaven. A Scots regiment's pipe band made the hair stand up on the back of the neck.
"Butch boyo, we are in Alexander's victory parade and we are in crap order!!"
There they were two Tommies in dirty fatigues driving a car commandeered from the enemy! The 8th Army lads in the lorry in front of them had big grins on their faces. Soon they could see in the distance Alex himself on a dais taking the salute. Brotherstone turned to Butch, "You can do the salute, man of Sheffield Steel, and, while you are at it, throw one up for me!" And with this he rolled himself into a ball out of view under the dashboard.

A traffic MP reared up on his wooden box at a cross roads, saw them, and pointed angrily directing them off the parade route. The road they were directed to was more of a track which led to the coast by a range of sand dunes to the beach. They parked the Aureola, clambered over the dunes on the beach and into the sea in their underpants!

"If Lucy could see me now……..!" Brothers was thinking of his sweetheart in Connah's Quay as he floated on the water. "She'd think you looked a right chuff, I'm sure `Girly' Ruth Hawes in High Wycombe isn't thinking of me, perhaps she would be doing if I'd had my head blown off in bloody Burma! Christ it's hot here, otherwise the sands are like Skegness."

"Except they stretch inland for 800 miles." "You mean like Southport?"
"Have you heard, one lad in `C' platoon wrote home that we're going back to Blighty soon. It didn't pass the censor so they've posted him, the daft bugger, for possible leak of information to the enemy." "Where've they posted him?" "To Blighty." "Not such a daft bugger then!"

They got back into their fatigues and were passing a solitary bungalow in the dunes to go back to the car when an old lady beckoned to them from the porch. They went over to talk to her and she invited them in to meet her husband. "Excuse our mucky clothes - we've had a good swim though so at least we're clean." "We can't expect you to be well turned out after the battle for Tunis. Isn't the victory parade today? Did you manage to get out of it?" "Yes - just." Butch then changed the subject. "Your English is very good. You could be English, you two." "We are English. We retired here ten years ago for peace and quiet. Didn't ever think the tide of war would lap up to our little bungalow." "I should have thought the Germans or Ities would have locked you up as undesirable aliens. " "The Italian troops were very nice to us, we did have a couple of German soldiers too, questioning us. We think they were military intelligence but they were nice too, if a bit serious."

Butch and Brothers wished them well and got to camp before the troops returned.
It was to be the last trip out in the Aureola though. Lieutenant Baker had seen Butch in it, going in and out of camp on many occasions and in Medjez-el-Bab so, despite protestations that "……it needed work on it", he commandeered the vehicle. "Bad luck Butch, thanks for running us around in it - I thought it was too good to last. I thought Captain Mascoid would get it."

This was Wheeler being a little serious for once. Butch replied, "Mascoid's an ex ranker - he wouldn't exploit any of the lads. " "Not like Baker, it takes the bloody biscuit him getting it." Wheeler was alluding to Lieutenant Baker's civvy role, a biscuit salesman for Huntley & Palmers in Reading. Captain Mascoid didn't pull rank either with Lieutenant Baker, another captain at HQ saw Baker showing off in the Lancia and took it from him.
Baker had had the car six hours.

The captain's ownership lasted just one hour. He found an Italian automatic pistol in the glove box, took it out, put one up the spout, got his finger on the trigger instead of the trigger guard and accidentally shot himself in the elbow. The new O.C. thought the captain wasn't a fit person to be in charge of the vehicle and commandeered it for himself.

Pr-BR

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