The Man Who Broke Into Auschwitz (6 page)

Men were moving around between tents. They felt safe. There was the odour of cigar smoke from the officers’ tents, garlic from the cooking areas and I fancied you could smell cologne. The voices were louder now, soaring above the camp. There was always a big difference between the officers and men in the Italian military. These were officers and they were clearly living it up. But there was also a noise I hadn’t heard for sometime now. Above the deeper voices I caught the sound of women laughing. I don’t know if they were prostitutes or ordinary civilians but there they were, as clear as you like and unmistakeable. They seemed to be enjoying the party.

We should probably have returned the way we had come. There was a bit too much action on the base for my taste and we were
getting more committed the deeper into the camp we went. Then, just feet away, a tent flap was thrown open, sending a shaft of light out across the camp. Although we were still in the shadows there was no choice. We both knew instantly the only way out was forwards. In the desert both armies looked shabby and identification wasn’t easy in the dark, despite our brown woollen hats. The Italians wore all kinds of things – we had even found hairnets in one of the camps we had taken. It must have been the fashion in Rome but it led to a good deal of sniggering.

There was no choice. We got to our feet and without so much as a glance left or right, we walked slowly, and with as much composure as we could muster, past the tents and through the inner camp until we were back in the shadows and could exit the other side. The entire base held perhaps 200 people and we had passed right through the centre of it unchallenged. It was only then that I noticed that the boss had his torch switched on and shining out of his pocket the whole time.

That was the routine, patrols at night then grab what sleep you could because the chances were you’d be off again as the next night fell. These patrols weren’t always plain sailing and soon I had a very close call. I had picked up a small wound on my forearm. It wouldn’t heal. It was bandaged up, but the sand got everywhere and it was a mess. The sleeve of my uniform kept the white bandage hidden and providing it stayed covered and out of the moonlight I could go on patrol.

One night, we were sent to capture prisoners in an outlying post. If they could be persuaded to sing, the intelligence could be invaluable when we attacked. We were widely spread out so essentially I was on my own. I heard a single metallic click some distance away so I knew one of the lads was getting nervous.

I dropped down into a
wadi
some five or six feet deep and skirted around hoping to get a better vantage point. Knowledge was power on night patrols and you had to know the full story before you made a move. After a good distance in the gulley I
began slowly climbing up, taking great pains not to dislodge any rocks. I heard a noise and stopped, pressed against the side of the shallow ravine. It was the sound of boots on stony ground. Someone was up there. I heard him take another step to the edge of the
wadi
. Then I saw him, an Italian sentry staring down into the darkness, but although he was looking towards me, he was seeing nothing or so I hoped. I was just a few feet below him and I fingered the trigger of my revolver. I was aiming at him and couldn’t miss at that distance but I knew that to fire would have woken the entire camp and they’d soon make tomato purée out of us.

The options racing through my mind would all bring catastrophe. I could scramble up and use the knife but he wasn’t going to stand there politely whilst I climbed out of the ravine. For all I knew there could be a whole platoon up there enjoying a silent smoke. I stayed put. I would shoot if he made the slightest noise but it could mean fighting a gun battle at close quarters.

Still hidden in the darkness of the
wadi
, I moved my arm a fraction and I saw him stiffen. I knew instantly I had exposed an edge of the white bandage just below my wrist. ‘Damn,’ I said to myself. Should I shoot, run and take my chances? I couldn’t see his face in the darkness but we were both in mortal danger and we knew it. His rifle was by his side. Lifting it to fire would have taken a second at least and I would have pulled the trigger and been running back through the
wadi
before he hit the ground. Instead he froze on the spot, hardly daring to breathe. We were both trapped.

In every dicey situation in the desert to date I’d told myself that too much thought wasted time and that could mean the bullet. You didn’t have to think, you had to do. It was my mantra for survival. Instinct told me the right option was to stay frozen to the spot. I waited. The seconds ticked by but he didn’t raise the alarm. Instead, he looked left and then right and stepped slowly backwards away from the edge of the
wadi
then turned
and walked away and out of sight. I dropped back into the ravine and hastily retraced my steps back to the rest of the platoon. I knew he had seen me and might raise the alarm sooner or later. We had been hopelessly compromised and we slipped away into the night.

We captured four prisoners during that patrol. I grabbed one of them and it was child’s play. He was walking around quite alone, oblivious to who was out there. He was tall for an Italian and, despite the dark, I could tell he was clean-shaven and wearing a blue-grey forage cap. I had to get him unawares and that meant stalking him until I was in a position to make a move. I swapped my revolver to my left hand and jumped him from behind, pulling his right arm up behind his back and jabbing the gun in his ribs, withdrawing it quickly in case he spun around. The terror in his eyes told me he got the message.

There was no struggle and I didn’t have to say a word. He knew the game was up and he came quietly. But that’s when it can get tricky. Once a captive is over the initial shock and knows he is not about to die, if he is any kind of soldier at all he will start looking to turn the tables. I was lucky. My prisoner was petrified and stayed that way until we handed him over later that night and we could finally hit the sack.

Each patrol was becoming a battle for survival. The Italians weren’t all Jessies, despite what people made out, and every exchange with the enemy often came down to kill or be killed. I concentrated on staying focused. Occasionally we would get mail from home, passed down the line to us, dog-eared and dusty. Most of the boys scrambled to get hold of the letters before running off to plonk themselves down against the wheel of a truck to read them with smiles of recognition fluttering across their faces at remembrances of home.

I couldn’t do that. Home was warmth and civilisation and where I was now just wasn’t civilised. I glanced at the letters from my mother and put them away unread. When you speak a
language, you think that language. My mother, bless her soul, spoke the language of home. That didn’t belong in the desert so, purely for self-preservation, I refused to read her letters. They would have blunted my purpose and made my survival less likely. It might just mean milliseconds but in that time you can get killed. I was closing down still further. In different ways, we all were. I carried a great wodge of those letters with me and didn’t read them until I was back in Cairo.

The events of one patrol were to stay with me. The worst of it is, seventy years on, I can barely recall where we were or what we were doing but I can feel it all right. I can still feel everything about it, even now. Patrols were becoming routine, and each one began like the last and ended with us collapsing onto our bedrolls just before the dawn light drove back the stars. I know we were doing a reconnaissance of an Italian position somewhere on the fringes of Tobruk. It was a sizeable camp with strong defences and I feared there’d be some surprises.

I had taken to carrying a knife on patrol. It wasn’t a standard issue weapon but it was handy. I had picked it up early on, along with a 9mm Beretta automatic which I had stripped from a surrendering Italian officer. I carried that in a tiny holster under my arm whilst the knife was in a sheath that I had made myself. It was just six inches long, but it was sharpened on both edges and came to a needle-sharp point. I had removed the hilt for a better grip and I knew how to use it. You never grasped a knife in the fist, stabbing downwards like a Hollywood killer. Do that and you’re dead: by the time you had raised the blade you’d probably received one in the guts yourself. A fighting blade was always held upwards with the pommel pressed into the palm of the hand and the thumb flat on the steel.

The platoon was spread out around the camp and we had all been given different tasks. I hated patrols where we were so far apart. You were really alone. I knew if I got into a jam it was down to me to fix it quickly and quietly. Shooting would wake the
whole camp. I had no intention of ending up in a shallow hole with sand shovelled on my face.

I was somewhere in the outer defences crouching down when I saw him, standing in the shadows just a couple of yards away. I had no real cover other than the night but he hadn’t seen me yet. I knew this was bad, very bad. Any moment now he would spot me and the shooting match would start. The wrong decision and I was done for. I took the knife in my hand. There was a sound. He moved; he’d seen me. I sprang on him from the darkness, thrusting the blade up and in below his ribcage. He went down silently and I felt his weight momentarily on my arm as he sagged to the earth and stayed down.

My first response was relief. He could have killed me, but I’d survived. All that bayonet training back home hadn’t helped prepare me for this. The screaming, shouting and aggression was designed to make you do it without thinking. This was different – silent, done in the shadows, and I had felt his body weight on me in the darkness. It was him or me. That is how it is in bloody war. You make excuses to yourself all the time.

Back then, I simply thought
I’ve got away with it; I’m alive
. I just wanted to get back to the desert and the rest of the patrol quickly. I had prevented the operation being compromised and I reported what had happened. There wasn’t so much as a thank you.

He was the only man I killed with my bare hands, but it affected me all right, that one. You never forget it, never. A memory is lodged in the mind but a feeling inhabits the whole body. And I have carried the feeling of that night with me for the last seven decades.

W
e were getting ready to attack Tobruk, harassing the enemy in the night using the Bren guns and a navy bombardment was coming to soften up the Italian defences. There was still some light when we parked up in the carriers. To one side of the track was a cliff, perhaps fifty feet high. Looking the other way, we could see the Mediterranean.

Instinct is a fine thing in war and it is usually wise to heed it. I had a strange feeling and suggested that we should move the carriers further along the road. Minutes later there was a deafening blast, sending shock waves through the carriers and everyone in them. The sound rumbled around, reverberating off the rocks and our ears were left squealing with that high-pitched sound you get after an explosion. Our language was unrepeatable. The Royal Navy could deliver a devastating punch and you were better out of the way when it did. Their opening shot had fallen close to where we had been just minutes before.

Normally I’d have said to myself, ‘A miss is as good as a mile’, but that was just the first shell and a naval bombardment is not something to witness at close quarters. Before the dust settled I slammed the carrier into gear and we were on the move. It was just as well because another friendly shell thumped into the rock face close behind us. We didn’t stop.

The attack began early in the morning with the Australians hitting the defences from the south. We could see thick black smoke coming from the docks where the Italians had set fire to oil
tanks. Their cruiser, the
San Giorgio
, was in the harbour after being badly damaged by the RAF. They beached her and set her on fire as well.

One of our officers, Tom Bird, broke through the defences with the ‘S’ Company carriers, capturing scores of guns, 2,000 prisoners and, best of all, the contents of an Italian officers’ mess. The tanks came in behind him and white flags started appearing everywhere. They took more than 25,000 prisoners in Tobruk, but ‘Electric Whiskers’ wasn’t one of them. He’d slipped away again.

The Italians had done a lot of damage to the harbour but the best news was there was lots of water in the reservoirs to quench our thirst.

Now Tobruk had fallen we could return to our nomadic ways and around then I got to know one of our best officers, 2nd Lieutenant Mike Mosley. It didn’t start well. I was driving a truck with him in the passenger seat when we hit soft sand and the wheels started spinning hopelessly. We were soon up to the axles and going nowhere fast. He wasn’t exactly pleased.

‘Didn’t you see it?’ he asked. ‘What kind of a driver are you, Avey? You’re supposed to look where you’re going.’

I was stung. I didn’t take comments like that from anyone, officer or not. I fancied I was a good driver and the snipe was worse coming from an officer I really respected. I bit my lip and that was rare in those days. With Mosley looking on, we began digging the truck out, laying out the perforated metal sand-trays to give the tyres something to bite on and we were soon back on the road.

I usually drove a Bren gun carrier. Someone had spotted I was a handy mechanic. The carriers were nippy enough, you could get nearly 40 mph out of them and despite their clunky tracks and their armour plate, they were manoeuvrable. You steered with fine movements of the wheel. Turn left to brake the left track and you pivoted round it, turn the wheel right and you did the opposite.

A bit later we were on a dusty hillside. A lengthy column of trucks had parked up along an escarpment track, pressed tightly against the uphill side of the road. The other edge was marked by a drop sheer enough to make you queasy.

Mike Mosley spotted me in my carrier. ‘Take me along the column and back,’ he said, climbing in and standing bolt upright in the commander’s seat. He obviously wanted to be seen by the troops as if he was expecting to take a drive-by salute. My chance had come. I turned the switch to bring on the ignition light and pressed the starter button. The V-8 engine spluttered into life. I slammed it into gear and slithered off. I was soon accelerating without mercy as Mosley hung on to the armour plating trying to keep his breakfast down and staring into the void. With just twelve inches to spare on each side I reached full speed with my eyes fixed on the narrow track and Mosley looking increasingly green around the gills. A minor flick of the wheel would have locked one of the tracks and we’d have been airborne. It put the wind up him all right. I turned at the end of the column and repeated the trick before the clouds of dust from the first pass had settled. He climbed out, just managing a stifled thank you. ‘Touché,’ I said to myself. I’d made my point. He was pretty civil after that.