Free The Man Who Broke Into Auschwitz by Denis Avey

down with pressure on the side handle. Mosley pointed at the target with his revolver and gave the order, ‘Bursts of five, when you’re ready.’
    It was pretty accurate at that range. The flames engulfed the first trucks quickly and those behind were caught in the orange light making them easier targets. In seconds, shadowy figures were running into the sand beyond.
    Our bigger guns began barking explosive shells towards the enemy and we moved off down the column; sometimes stopping to aim, often just firing on the move. Some gunners liked to spray bullets wildly. I never fired more than five in a batch; I didn’t need to. We’d put the occasional tracer bullet in to see how we were doing and we would see them arcing over in the darkness.
    That column was the best part of three miles long and we brought it to a halt. When we got to the end, we spun around and prepared to cause more trouble on the return journey. They were firing back, of course, but not having much joy. We kept it up for three hours but a couple of our trucks were in trouble, so we had to head back for repairs. We were getting short of food and ammunition. There was a squally wind with bursts of heavy rain so you often couldn’t see much. The artillery couldn’t move because the armour needed all the petrol and some of the guns only had thirty rounds left each.
    The Italians weren’t giving up. It went on all that day, with sporadic attacks, gunfights and blown-up vehicles everywhere with soldiers crouched behind them. The CO of our headquarters company arrived during an uncharacteristic lull and decided what we most needed was a mess tent, so he put up a big white marquee right by us. What a silly arse. It made a beautiful target and Italian shells started arriving immediately. The main battle was now three miles north where our tanks were attacking the Italians on the road round the hill we called ‘the Pimple’. We were the ‘longstop’, the cork in the bottle, and they kept trying to break through.
    We were getting more and more stretched. A group of Italian tanks was heading straight for battalion headquarters and we only stopped them a hundred yards short. White flags began appearing and by the end of the day about 10,000 prisoners had been taken but the rest still kept attacking.
    Somewhere out in the dunes towards the sea, one of our NCOs, Platoon Sergeant-Major Jarvis, was guarding 500 prisoners withthe help of Rifleman Gillan. They saw two big Italian tanks coming so they decided to rush them, two men on foot against tanks. The Italian prisoners, seeing a chance to escape, joined the rush and the puzzled Italian officer in the leading tank opened his turret hatch to see what was going on. Jarvis clubbed him on the head with his rifle then fired in through the slits and the crew surrendered. Gillan did much the same with the other tank and they captured both of them. They both got the DCM for that but when an officer congratulated them, Jarvis just replied, ‘Yes, it was all right, sir, because the rifleman and me had a nice, warm place to spend the night.’
    In the darkness, we could hear the rumble of heavy vehicle engines. It was clear they were planning something. Just before dawn we spotted them. A large force headed by thirty tanks was approaching the roadblock where it dispersed quickly as if to surround the barrier. It was their last all-out throw of the dice and when they broke through our forward positions, it looked like it might work. The lads had no choice but to drop back. We had eleven anti-tank guns left at the start and as we knocked out the tanks, they were knocking out our guns. The story goes that in the end we had just one gun working and the crew of that gun accounted for five tanks with their last five rounds. I’m not sure it was quite that close but that last Italian tank got to within twenty yards of our HQ tent before we stopped it.
    We dealt with the infantry following the armour and by that time, everyone