The carrier pigeon (excerpt from Brazen Chariots)

"RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht" (ramblininexile) 05/30/2019 at 11:00 • Filed to: literature, literary shitposting, history, tanks

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(...)in the first week in November we moved up to a place called Hallequat, south of the road running between Sidi Barrani and Sollum. This was virtually the forming-up point for the brigade for the attack which everybody knew was now imminent, though nobody knew when or where.
(... brigade suffers track damage, relocated to new leaguer positions nearby )

A rather odd thing happened to me at this time. I had been sent out in charge of a small recce party in a 15-cwt. truck to see what the going was like ahead of our area. We had come across a patch of soft sand in which the truck got stuck, and needed a good deal of manhandling to get out. With two or three others I was pushing and heaving at the back of the vehicle, cursing volubly as the wheels spun round kicking up the desert into our eyes and ears, when there was a sudden, soft, fluttering noise in my ear, and I felt a light touch on my back.

I took a casual glance from the corner of my eye, and was amazed to see a pigeon sitting on my shoulder. Nobody else had noticed it, and as I stopped and straightened I put my hand up slowly expecting any second that the bird would take fright and fly off again. Instead it seemed to come willingly into my hand, where it snuggled down contentedly. Only then did I notice the tube of white paper fastened to its leg by a piece of elastic. I called to the others. They gaped when they saw what I was holding, and walked back towards me. I pointed to the piece of paper.

“A carrier pigeon!” said Harry Maegraith. “How the hell did you get hold of that?”

Maegraith was an Australian troop commander in ‘C’ Squadron. We had been in England and Greece together, and when his ancient tank had broken down somewhere in Macedonia he had jumped on the back of mine with a few other bods. We were great friends.

While I gently slid the elastic off the pigeon’s leg, I told them what had happened. There was a strange air of unreality about the whole thing which impressed all of us. As far as I knew we were 10 or 15 miles from the nearest British formation. There was nothing in sight except sand, rock and scrub. What was this mysterious paper that had come fluttering down on to my shoulder from an empty sky above an empty land? A message from some remote patrol lost in the desert? Could it be a German carrier-pigeon with a secret signal from the High Command?

The others clustered round, caught in the mystery of the moment, holding their breath while I unfolded the curled slip. It made a dry, rustling sound that could have been heard twenty yards away. Slowly I opened it out until the penciled message lay revealed. It was in English and said simply: “BUGGER YOU, LEAVE ME ALONE”.

(Crisp goes on to explain that they never actually found whose pigeon it was, but that he suspected 3 RTR’s technical sergeant, who had all kinds of weird things in his service truck.)

!!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! is the memoir of !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! ’s experiences, Operation Crusader, in C yrenaica, eastern Libya, 1941.

DipodomysDeserti > RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht 05/30/2019 at 11:23

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RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht > DipodomysDeserti 05/30/2019 at 11:29

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3RTR Technical Sergeant, West North African Campaign (1941, colou rised)

You can tell a Finn but you can't tell him much > RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht 05/30/2019 at 11:40

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That book is an excellent read, and Crisp was a hell of a guy.  I may have to reread that one of these days.

RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht > You can tell a Finn but you can't tell him much 05/30/2019 at 11:55

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I ordered a copy of The Gods Were Neutral , which is out of print, and read it a couple months ago. Bottom line, the Greek campaign was incredibly stupid on the British side , but Hitler assigning forces to oppose it was among the worst things he could have done for his ability to maintain the Eastern Front.

AuthiCooper1300 > RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht 05/31/2019 at 11:06

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Oh that’s absolutely wonderful.

I will show this to my partner. Her late father fought in Crete, in North Africa and in Italy ( a n d s u r v i v e d ) ; one of her aunties was a nurse and the other one a WAAC ( s h e d r o v e t r u c k s ! ) , both in Egypt and Italy.

( b y t h e w a y , m a y b e y o u c a n w r i te a n o t e c o r r e c t i n g * S y r e n a i c a ? )

RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht > AuthiCooper1300 05/31/2019 at 11:16

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I corrected the spelling of Cyrenaica. That’ll teach me to try spelling things from memory.

Crisp’s book is by no means a complete retelling of the North African campaign, as it’s just a snapshot of Crusader, but it’s a really good book.

AuthiCooper1300 > RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht 05/31/2019 at 11:29

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Happens to the best of us, worry not.

Yes, I understood the scope of the book was not the whole NA campaign, but it is certainly extremely likely his unit fought in Operation Crusader.

I w i l l t r y t o f i n d a c o p y a s a p . T h a n k s a g a i n .

RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht > AuthiCooper1300 05/31/2019 at 11:40

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The copy I linked on amazon is a decent enough printing, but my older copy (Bantam) has some additional pictures in it that the current edition does not. So, you might want to try to find that.

Was her father in tanks, or in the infantry or support columns? If he was in the infantry, then his experience could have been nearly anything. Some groups stayed out of action nearly completely, but some NZ and Aussie troops saw particularly brutal action defending Tobruk and more so the airport at Sidi Rezegh. If he was in tanks, it would be interesting to know if he were one of those assigned to the new Crusader cruiser tanks or the lend-lease M3 Stuarts like Crisp was. The cruiser tanks that had come before (A9/A10/A13) were absolutely detested by him, and what he’d driven before the US tanks were delivered - though the Crusader wasn’t terrible.

AuthiCooper1300 > RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht 05/31/2019 at 11:52

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Thanks for the tip, much appreciated.

He was a g u n n e r with the 2NZEF. I know almost nothing about his service, unfortunately ( h e d i e d a t 4 0 w h e n s h e w a s just a l i t t l e k i d ) apart from the fact that he saw a lot of action.

RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht > AuthiCooper1300 05/31/2019 at 12:07

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At one point some Kiwis were in slit trenches around the airport with almost no outside support, and Crisp’s group were desperately trying to make it there from the South but got broken up and semi-lost. Germans were more or less coming over the trenches in tanks. An assault on, I think, the west side of the airport took place, an area that was already littered with burned planes and Matilda IIs and Crusaders. The NZ general spotted some tanks at the airport perimeter (including Crisp), drove up to them in a staff car(!) , and led them to the airport.

Crisp: “If you wait fifteen minutes more of the squadron should be here” General: “if you’re there in fifteen you’ll be too late” Or something like that. So, Crisp and one other tank made it to the field, the other tank took a hit and tore off, which left Crisp trading shots from the cover of debris with an advancing steel curtain of dozens upon dozens of Panzers until he finally decided “yeah.... fuck this noise”.

Funny enough, just having been there for a few minutes to help embolden the infantry and make the Germans cautious played a part in the Germans’ decision to husband their meager ammo and fuel and pull up short of overrunning the airfield that day.

Not that he’d have painted himself a hero. He’d have readily told you that he ended up alone against the Germans completely by accident and only held out long enough to know reinforcements weren’t coming and he was going to have to run away.