All language subtitles for Rommel forgot about the infantry The Brutal Reality of Libya 1941 [DownSub.com]

The sand was in my throat before I even

opened my eyes. It was not the fine

kind, not the powder that drifted

through tent [music] flaps and settled

on your rations. This was coarse desert

gravel, the kind that carried inside it

tiny fragments of something harder,

something that ground between your back

teeth and left the enamel feeling like

it had been worked with a rasp.

I had been lying face down on the ground

for 6 hours.

The ground at that hour, before the sun

came back up, was cold enough to pull

the warmth out of your chest, and you

pressed yourself against it willingly

because once the sun rose, you would

want to be dead rather than exposed to

it.

You learned [music] quickly that the

desert does not have temperatures. It

has states of punishment. The night

punishes [music] you with cold. The day

punishes you with heat. There is no

comfort zone between them. The

transition from one punishment to the

other lasts about 40 minutes, and during

those 40 minutes, you could almost

forget where you were. I remembered

where I was the moment I rolled onto my

side.

>> [music]

>> The pain in my right hip was from the

sharp edge of a buried stone. I had been

too exhausted the previous night to

locate it and remove it before lying

down.

You stop bothering after a while. You

just lay on whatever the desert gave you

and trained yourself to stay motionless

so the stone's edge would not [music]

cut deeper.

My canteen was next to my head.

I reached for it.

I shook it before opening it,

>> [music]

>> the old habit, to gauge how much was

left by the sound. It made almost no

sound at all. I opened it and drank what

was there, which was perhaps two

swallows of water so warm it felt like

drinking from a cup of something

recently boiled. The mineral taste of

the water in this part of the country

was difficult to [music] describe. It

tasted like the inside of a rusted tin

can.

It tasted like [music] wet chalk.

It collected a film on the back of your

teeth and your tongue felt coated with

it after drinking.

Some of the men refused to drink it at

all once they learned it came from a

wadi cistern that had not been properly

cleaned.

Those men were sick from dehydration

within [music] two days. After watching

that, I drank whatever they gave me and

said nothing about the taste. The sky

was still dark, but it was the dark of

approaching dawn, not real dark, not the

dark [music] where the stars were

visible.

The stars in Libya were extraordinary.

And I say that flatly without sentiment

because they were a practical

orientation tool.

Nothing more. When the sky [music] was

black and full of stars, you had perhaps

4 hours until dawn and you use those

hours to sleep.

When the stars began to disappear into a

pale gray wash, you had perhaps 40

minutes.

I had 40 minutes.

Shaeffer was already awake. He was

sitting 3 m from me with his [music]

back against a rock formation and his

rifle across his knees.

And he was eating something from a tin

that he held close to his face to catch

whatever heat was still [music] in it.

His face looked like the face of a man

who had already made peace with the fact

that he was going to die within the next

year and was simply choosing the most

efficient [music] way to get through the

remaining time. Not suicidal, not

resigned in the dramatic sense, just

very quiet about it.

He was 23.

He looked closer to 40.

"Water status." I said. "Three [music]

canteens for the position. The truck

didn't come last night."

The truck not coming was a problem I had

already calculated in my mind during the

night lying on the stone. The supply

column that served our sector had been

hit two days ago by a British artillery

strike on the coastal track. Two

vehicles destroyed. The remaining

vehicles were rerouted through a longer

path that added four hours to the supply

cycle. Four hours extra in this heat

with the distances [music] involved

meant the trucks arrived at night or not

at all. When they arrived at night,

sometimes the guides missed the position

[music] coordinates and the truck

continued past in the dark and you did

[music] not get your water until the

following night when the truck came back

assuming the British [music] gunners had

not found the road again.

I sat up fully and checked my rifle. The

Karabiner 98k Kurz was as reliable a

weapon as existed in the German

infantry, but the desert reduced

everything reliable to unreliable over

time.

The bolt action had no dust protection

of any kind, no cover, no seal, nothing

between the mechanism and the air and

the fine suspension particles that the

Libyan desert produced infiltrated the

receiver directly settling into the bolt

raceway and around the extractor.

You had to clean the bolt face [music]

every morning. Not because you expected

to fire in the first minutes of day, but

because if a situation developed

quickly, you did not have time to clear

a jam and a jam in contact was simply

death with extra steps.

I ran a dry cloth along the barrel.

[music]

There was a small amount of rust colored

residue on the cloth. That was surface

oxidation from the humidity that

sometimes accumulated in the night air

and deposited itself on metal surfaces

before the heat returned and drove it

away.

This happened even in the desert. Metal

and moisture found each other.

Behind me in the scraped out depression

that served as the squad's secondary

position, someone was coughing. It was

Metzger. He had been coughing for 9

days. It was not the cough of someone

with a chest infection, though that was

a possibility. It was the cough of a man

who had inhaled enough dust particles

[music]

that his lungs were staging a constant

low-level protest, pushing back against

the accumulation. You heard that cough

often enough and you stopped registering

it as a medical concern and started

hearing it as background noise, like the

sound of a distant engine or the wind in

the rocks. The day Metzger stopped

coughing would be stranger than the day

he kept coughing. The sky was becoming

gray-blue at the horizon. I could see

the slope of the ridge 200 m north of

our position and the darker mass of the

escarpment rising beyond it. Somewhere

behind that escarpment was the track the

British used to move their supply

columns. We had been told to observe and

report. We had been told this 4 days

ago. We had observed and reported twice,

both times noting vehicle movement on

the track, both times receiving

acknowledgement [music]

by field telephone from the company

command post and both times nothing had

been done with the information.

This [music] was not unusual.

Information accumulated somewhere above

us and was processed [music] at a speed

that had no relationship to the urgency

of the situation on the ground. You

filed your reports and you went back to

watching the ridge and you drank your

foul water and you ate your tinned

[music] rations that tasted of rust and

vegetable matter of uncertain origin

and you waited.

The sun came up.

It came up the way it always came up

here, with the aggressive suddenness of

something

>> [music]

>> that had been waiting just behind the

horizon for an opportunity.

In Europe, in the forests and the

valleys, sunrise was a gradual process.

You had time to adjust. Here you had

roughly 12 minutes between the first

appearance of the sun's edge above the

eastern skyline and the moment when the

full force of the [music] heat was

engaged.

Within those 12 minutes, the temperature

rose by perhaps 12°.

Within the first hour, it would rise by

another 15. By midday, it would be

somewhere around 43° [music]

if the khamsin was not blowing. If the

khamsin was blowing, the temperature was

academic because the sandstorm made all

other concerns irrelevant.

I had been in Libya for 4 months.

I had come from the harbor of Tripoli

off a transport vessel from Naples,

[music]

and I had stepped onto the dock with my

full kit and immediately [music]

understood that everything I had been

told about this place was accurate and

yet somehow had not conveyed the reality

[music] of it. You could be told the

temperature figures. You could be told

about the sand. [music]

You could be told about the flies. None

of that prepared you for the first

morning when the flies settled on the

corner of your right eye

>> [music]

>> while you were trying to read a map

coordinate and your instinct was to wave

them away and your arm was too tired

[music] to complete the motion.

The flies in this desert were not

[music] the flies of German summers.

They were something different. They were

deliberate. They sought out moisture on

the human body with a precision that

felt intentional.

>> [music]

>> They found the corners of your eyes, the

edges of your cracked lips, the rim of

your nostrils.

>> [music]

>> They drank from these places and you

learned to let them do it because the

alternative was exhausting yourself

trying to prevent something that was

going to happen regardless.

Dysentery arrived in my stomach

somewhere during the second week.

I was not unusual in this. Every man in

the company had it in some form by the

end of the third week. The severity

varied.

For some men, it was a manageable

inconvenience, a cramping that passed, a

looseness in the bowels that required

attention but did not prevent function.

For others, it was genuinely [music]

disabling, reducing them to figures who

moved bent at the waist from their

sleeping position [music] to a

designated area behind a rock formation

and back again multiple times per night,

losing fluids that the water supply

could not replace fast [music] enough.

Feldwebel Huber lost 6 kg in 10 days. He

looked like a man who had been partially

dissolved.

His uniform, which had been tight at the

collar when he arrived, hung off him

like a garment borrowed from a larger

man. He kept his voice level and his

commands clear, and he kept moving,

which was the correct response and also

the only response available to [music]

him given the circumstances.

The position we occupied was a scrape in

the rock roughly 130 m long, [music]

running roughly east to west along the

southern slope of a low ridge. [music]

The rock was limestone of a porous,

crumbling variety that broke into

irregular chunks and could be stacked

into rough walls that provided cover

from small arms fire but [music] would

not stop shrapnel.

The men had improved the position over

the previous week, shifting rocks,

deepening the scrape in two key sections

[music]

where the ground was softer, creating

small alcoves where ammunition and water

could be stored in marginal shade.

It was not a comfortable position. It

was a position that had been made

slightly less fatal than when they found

it. The machine gun was positioned at

the western end of the scrape behind a

low parapet of stacked limestone blocks

with a field of fire covering the open

ground to the north and northwest. The

gun was the 7.92 mm MG 34, which in

Europe was an excellent weapon and in

Libya was an excellent weapon that

required continuous attention. The

mechanism of the MG 34 operated on a

principle of short recoil with a

rotating locking head, the

drehkopfverschluss,

and the tolerances between moving parts

that were acceptable in European

conditions became problems in the desert

because the sand particles suspended in

the air were fine enough to infiltrate

the mechanism during firing and coarse

enough to cause friction that degraded

cyclic reliability. [music]

The weapon had no meaningful dust

protection. The feed cover seated tight

when closed, but the ejection port and

the receiver gaps gave the desert direct

access to the working parts. And there

was nothing you could do about this

except clean the weapon more often than

the manual required. The barrel change

process, which in field conditions in

Europe could be accomplished in 6 to 10

seconds by a trained crew, took longer

here because the barrel release

mechanism accumulated grit at the latch

point. And the laufschutzer, the

asbestos barrel sleeve, had to be

handled with care in the heat to avoid

burns.

You learned to overlubricate slightly

against doctrine because the oil acted

as a partial barrier against particle

infiltration, but overlubricating

attracted more particles, so the

solution was imperfect in both

directions.

I maintained the gun. This was my

primary function in the squad. Schaefer

operated as the number two, carrying the

ammunition in canvas belts in a metal

case and feeding the weapon.

The gun's operation [music] demanded

this division of labor.

One man could not effectively aim, fire,

and manage the ammunition feed

simultaneously in contact. Two men was

the minimum.

With two men and one of them wounded or

dead, the gun became a liability, a

weight to be carried or abandoned. I had

thought about this often. I had thought

about what I would do if Shaeffer

stopped functioning. The answer was that

I would do what I could with what I had,

and [music] the outcome would be

whatever it was.

The morning passed, the way mornings

passed.

Heat increased. The flies increased.

Two men from the third squad [music]

came up the slope to report to

Lieutenant Brenneke, who was stationed

in the center of the position, and they

carried with them a field telephone

handset and 30 m of cable that had been

repaired in three places with electrical

tape.

The telephone connection to the command

post was intermittent.

The cable ran along the ground back to a

junction somewhere behind the ridge to

the south, and somewhere along [music]

that run the cable had been cut or

damaged, probably by vehicle wheels or

by the casual action of a man who had

not looked at what he was walking on.

This was a constant problem. Field

telephone cables in a desert environment

were trampled, driven over, degraded by

heat, eaten by something none of us

could identify what, and repaired so

many times the repair sections were

longer than the original cable in some

[music] stretches.

I cleaned the bolt assembly of the MG 34

while the sun [music] climbed. I removed

the bolt, wiped it with a lightly oiled

cloth, examined the extractor claw for

cracking.

The extractors on this gun had a

tendency [music]

to develop hairline fractures from

thermal cycling in extreme heat, found

nothing, reassembled the bolt, cycled it

manually three times to confirm smooth

operation, loaded a belt of 250 rounds

from the case, and set the gun in the

ready position. This took 40 minutes.

Schaeffer watched the northern approach

while I worked.

Bauer said the British moved something

up last night, Schaeffer said.

>> [music]

>> He said this in the tone of reporting

weather.

What kind of something?

He didn't say. He said there was engine

noise for about 2 hours after midnight

on the north track.

Engine noise at night meant vehicle

movement under cover of darkness,

which was standard practice.

>> [music]

>> The British used darkness for logistics

and forward movement of equipment in

this sector, as we did. The difference

was that the British had more vehicles

and more fuel, so their night movements

produced more engine noise and covered

greater distances. What Bauer had heard

could have been supply lorries, could

have been armored cars, could have been

the repositioning of artillery pieces.

Each of these possibilities had

different implications for what [music]

would happen to us in the next 24 to 48

hours.

"Tell Brennecke," I said, "he knows."

Bauer told him at 0500.

I said nothing more about it. There was

nothing to say. If the British were

moving equipment forward, either it

[music] was preparatory to an attack on

our position, in which case the next day

or two would be very loud and very

violent, or it was movement on a larger

axis that had nothing to do with our

position, [music]

in which case the next day or two would

be the same hot, fly-infested, [music]

thirsty waiting that the previous

several days had been. The The

was not interesting anymore.

It had been [music] interesting in the

first weeks. Now it was just the state

of things. The khamsin arrived at

approximately 1,100 hours. You knew it

was coming before it arrived. The air

underwent [music] a change in quality

that was difficult to describe but

unmistakable.

It became drier.

Your nasal passages, which were already

cracked [music] and bleeding from the

standard dryness of the desert,

began to dry further.

And the skin on the back of your hands

began to feel tight.

Then there was a yellowish tint at the

horizon to the southwest.

A bruised quality to the sky at the edge

and a distant sound that was not quite

wind and not quite the sound of

something grinding.

Then it arrived.

The khamsin was not a sandstorm in the

cinematic sense.

It was not a wall of sand that moved

across the landscape at high speed and

buried everything. It was more total

than that. It was a suspension of fine

particles that filled the entire

atmosphere to a height that blocked

sunlight, reducing the day to a dark

orange murk in which visibility dropped

[music] to less than 20 m. The particles

were fine enough to pass through cloth,

fine enough to infiltrate sealed metal

cases, fine enough to find their way

into your lungs and your eyes and your

ears and the chamber of the MG 34

through every gap in the weapon's

housing, through the ejection port,

around the feed mechanism, into the

barrel from the muzzle end. The

temperature during the khamsin rose by a

further 10 to 15 degrees even as the sky

darkened because the suspended particles

trapped heat against the ground and

blocked the convective cooling that

normally moved through the air.

A morning that had been 40° became 50°.

>> [music]

>> This was a specific kind of suffering

heat and blindness arriving together.

We covered the gun. We pulled a

tarpaulin over the position, holding it

down with the limestone blocks. We

wrapped our faces in whatever cloth was

available. Some men had acquired

Arab-style head wraps that functioned

better than the standard German

equipment in this environment, and they

were wearing them now, wound around the

head and lower face, leaving only a

narrow slit for the eyes. I had a length

of light cotton that I had [music]

bought from a local trader near Derna

for a price I would not have considered

paying in Germany, and this I wrapped

around my head over the standard field

cap, tucking the end under my chin.

The cloth reduced, but did not eliminate

the particle infiltration.

You breathe [music] through it and felt

the grit on your teeth.

The mucus in your nasal passages [music]

turned the color of rust.

We stayed down. Movement in the khamsin

was difficult and pointless. You could

not see well enough to do anything

useful, and the effort of moving through

the wind exhausted you at a rate three

times that of still air.

Lieutenant Brennecke moved along the

position once, crouching, checking that

the men were in place and not doing

anything unnecessary.

He said [music] nothing that required a

response.

He was efficient that way. The khamsin

lasted 4 hours and 20 minutes by my

watch. When it passed, the air was clear

>> [music]

>> with a clarity that had a specific

quality, a sharpness, and a brightness

[music] that felt almost violent after

hours in the orange murk. Every surface

was coated with a thin layer of fine

sand the color of dried bone. The rocks,

the equipment, the folded limbs of

sleeping or resting men, all of it

covered with the same uniform pale dust.

You had to clean everything again.

>> [music]

>> The bolt of the MG 34 had accumulated

particles inside the tarpaulin covering

despite the covering, which was

expected. I removed the tarpaulin,

disassembled the bolt, cleaned it again,

examined the feed tray, cleared the feed

tray, reloaded the belt, repositioned

the gun.

It was now mid-afternoon.

The temperature was 45°.

Metzger [music] had stopped coughing.

This was not because he was better. He

was sitting in the corner of his alcove

[music] with his knees drawn up and his

head back against the limestone, and he

was not coughing because he had decided,

apparently, that coughing was no longer

worth the energy it required.

His lips were cracked badly enough that

there was dried blood at both corners. I

did not ask him how he was. He would not

have appreciated the question and could

not have answered it usefully. [music]

The truck came that night, not the water

truck, a different vehicle, a

Kubelwagen, bringing a message from

Hauptmann Fuckt at the battalion command

post.

The message was delivered by a Gefreiter

from the headquarters section named,

according to what he told Leutnant

Brennecke, Ritter.

He was young and he had the look of

someone who had not [music] yet

internalized what this place did to a

man.

His uniform was still relatively clean.

>> [music]

>> He spoke quickly and left quickly,

turning the Kubelwagen around in the

dark and disappearing back down the

track to the south. Brennecke called the

squad leaders together. There were three

of us in the position. The squad leaders

crouched around Brennecke, and Brennecke

spoke quietly, as men learn to speak

when they have been in the field long

enough to understand that sound carries

in open terrain at night [music] at

distances that seem improbable.

The British were going to attack, not

tonight, likely within the next 36 to 48

hours, according to the intelligence

assessment that had been compiled at

brigade level and transmitted down to

battalion.

The attack was expected to come along

the coastal axis [music] to the north of

our position, but there was a secondary

axis through the escarpment pass that

passed approximately 400 m east of where

we were sitting. And if the British used

that secondary axis, we would be [music]

directly in the path of whatever came

through it. Brennecke said we were to

improve the position immediately and

prepare for direct contact. He said the

battalion [music] had no reserves to

send us. He said the company's other two

platoons were in positions 3 km to the

[music] east and could not reach us

quickly in the event of an attack.

He said these things in the level

informational tone of a man who

considered himself responsible [music]

for the management of facts rather than

the management of morale.

I respected this. Men who tried to

manage morale through false optimism or

theatrical speeches were exhausting.

Brennecke was not that. [music] We spent

the night moving rock. The pain in

moving rock in the dark in extreme heat,

even night heat, which was perhaps 22°

at this elevation, was the pain of

exhausted muscles working against heavy

irregular objects in bad light with no

adequate tool.

We moved the rocks with our hands. We

had two entrenching tools for the squad

and we used them where the ground

permitted [music] digging, but this

limestone ground did not permit much

digging. The surface was a thin layer of

loose material over rock and the rock

was close [music] to the surface

everywhere. You could not dig a a

fighting position. You could scrape and

shift and stack, and by dawn you had

something [music] that was slightly

better than what you had the night

before, and whether slightly better was

[music] enough would be determined by

events that were not under your control.

I deepened the MG nest by approximately

30 cm and extended the limestone parapet

on the left flank to provide cover

against fire from the northeast. The

extended parapet was [music] three

courses of limestone blocks and would

stop small arms fire and minor shrapnel

fragments.

It would not stop direct fire from a

heavy weapon. Almost nothing in this

position would stop direct fire from a

heavy weapon.

This was a fact and not a reason for

paralysis.

Dawn came.

The heat came with it.

On the second day after the warning in

the early afternoon, the artillery

began. The first round landed

approximately 150 m to the north of our

position in the open ground between our

ridgeline and the escarpment.

There was no warning. Artillery has no

warning except the whistling of the

round as it falls.

And you have perhaps 1 second of that

sound before the impact, which is not

enough time to do anything deliberate.

The 1 second is enough to plant your

[music] face in the ground, which is the

reflex you develop. The impact of the

British 25-pounder was a sharp crack

followed immediately by the sound of

fragments moving through air at high

velocity, a sound like a hand passing

rapidly through water, but louder and

harder and more metallic. [music]

And then the secondary percussion of

fragments impacting rock surfaces around

the position.

>> [music]

>> Then the dust and debris landing.

One round, then silence for

approximately 3 minutes, then three

rounds in sequence, the impacts walking

progressively closer to the ridgeline,

landing at roughly 180 and 60 [music] m.

The British were ranging. Someone behind

those guns, a forward observer, was

watching the impacts and correcting

[music]

the guns onto our position. He could see

us or he could see our position. We had

done nothing that morning [music] that

would have given away the position

visually. But positions that had been

occupied [music]

for several days accumulated signs.

Scuff marks on rocks, disturbed ground,

the occasional glint from metal

surfaces, a slight variation in the

color pattern of the terrain caused by

disturbed material.

Artillery forward observers were good at

reading these signs. Brenneke was on the

field telephone immediately, calling

back for counter-battery fire that we

all understood was not going to come

quickly if it came at all.

Our artillery in this sector was in

short supply and had been committed to

the main [music] coastal axis where the

British attack was expected to develop.

What we had was what we had and what we

had was a series of stacked limestone

blocks and approximately 43 infantry

soldiers with rifles [music] and one

machine gun.

The artillery increased. Over the next

20 [music] minutes, the fire volume

built to the level where individual

rounds could no longer be individually

distinguished.

The sound became a continuous rolling

[music] interrupted by the sharper crack

of close impacts and the longer, lower

sound of impacts further away and the

whole acoustic mass of it pressed

against your ears and your chest [music]

and your cognition with the cumulative

weight of constant percussion. Under

prolonged artillery fire, you experience

the physical pressure of the sound waves

as a separate sensation from the hearing

of them.

Your chest cavity resonated. Your teeth

resonated. Your vision blurred slightly

at each nearby impact because the

concussive force traveled through the

ground and up through your body and

disturbed the optic process.

I was behind the MG nest. Schaefer was

beside me, pressed against the parapet.

His arms wrapped around the ammunition

case. He was not looking at anything. He

had his eyes pressed shut and his jaw

clamped and he was breathing slowly

through his nose. This was the correct

response. There was nothing to look at.

If you exposed your head above the

parapet during this fire volume, you

would almost certainly be cut down by a

fragment within a few minutes.

You waited. You calculated the density

and proximity [music]

of the impacts and made a judgment about

whether the fire was increasing or

decreasing. And when it shifted or

decreased, you moved. A round landed 4

[music] m to the left of the MG nest.

The impact force came through the ground

and through my boots and through my

spine [music]

and registered at the base of my skull

as a sharp kick.

The sound was beyond sound. It was a

physical interruption of the air in my

ear canals that translated into a

complete momentary absence of hearing

followed by a high-pitched frequency

[music] that lasted for perhaps 30

seconds and then faded to a lower

ringing that persisted [music] for

hours. Limestone fragments, small

irregular pieces of the parapet itself

that had been displaced by the

concussive force, fell around and on me.

One fragment, roughly the size of a

rifle round, struck my left [music]

shoulder blade with enough force to

raise a bruise. I did not stand up. I

rolled onto my side and checked that the

MG 34 was still in position.

It was. The tarpaulin I had pulled over

[music] it to protect the mechanism had

been blown off by the blast concussion.

I checked the belt feed visually.

[music]

The belt was intact. I checked the

barrel visually, no visible damage. I

rechecked the bolt, clear. Schaefer's

head was bleeding, not heavily. A

fragment, probably very small, had cut

him across the upper forehead above his

right eye. The cut was perhaps [music] 4

cm long and not deep, but scalp wounds

bleed in volume disproportionate [music]

to their severity, and he had blood

running down his face from the cut,

crossing over his right eye, and

dripping off his chin.

He had not said anything.

He was still in position, still holding

the ammunition case. He had not been

rendered non-functional. I handed him a

field dressing from my webbing.

>> [music]

>> He pressed it to his head without

looking at me.

The artillery shifted north. This was

not a cessation. The fire was

redirecting, moving its center of mass

to a new target, which meant either the

forward observer had decided our

position was neutralized or he was

transitioning to preparing a different

target. Indeed the case, the rounds were

now landing significantly further north,

and the volume directly on our position

dropped from continuous to sporadic,

perhaps one round every 40 to 60

seconds. Still close enough to require

caution, but no longer the wall of fire

that had been.

Brenneke appeared. He moved along the

position in a low crouching run,

checking each position.

He arrived at the MG nest.

"Langer," he said, "field of fire north.

They will come through the pass."

He said the two things and moved on.

Werner Lange, Gefreiter, number one on

the MG 34, Schützenregiment 115,

in a limestone scrape somewhere in the

desert west of the Cyrenaican Plateau,

received his two pieces of information

and repositioned the gun to maximize the

field of fire north toward the pass. The

pass was a natural cut in the escarpment

approximately 450 m from our position.

Through binoculars, which were standard

issue and which I had because the

previous number one on the gun had been

evacuated with malaria 10 days prior and

his equipment had remained with the

position, I could see the lower portion

of the pass cutting through the rock

face.

The mouth of the pass was roughly 60 m

wide, narrowing as it rose. There was

vegetation on both sides of it, thorn

bush and stunted acacia, which was

unusual in this section of the terrain

and suggested a subsurface water source.

In this vegetation, [music] a force

could conceal itself at the mouth of the

pass before advancing. I saw them at the

edge of the vegetation before they

moved. You develop a sense for movement

in terrain over weeks of watching

[music] the same view. Your eye learns

what is static and what is variable.

When something varies in a pattern that

has been static, your eye registers it

before your conscious mind processes it.

I registered movement in the [music]

left vegetation mass of the pass mouth,

held the binoculars steady, watched, and

after approximately 15 seconds I saw

clearly helmeted [music]

figures, the distinctive wide-brimmed

flat profile of the British steel

helmet, low behind the thorn bush line,

moving [music] east to west. "Targets in

the pass vegetation," I said, "left

side, roughly 200 figures, possibly

more. I cannot see depth.

"Fire when they move." Shafer said.

"Fire when I judge it." I said.

This was not disagreement. Shafer was

correct that the moment of open movement

was the optimal fire moment, but the

timing of when to open fire with a

machine gun position

>> [music]

>> is not simply the moment targets become

visible. It is the moment the maximum

number of targets are in the optimal

fire zone simultaneously, [music]

which requires judgement about spacing

and movement rate that cannot be made

until the targets have begun to move.

You do not burn a machine gun position's

location and surprise advantage against

the first six soldiers who step out of

cover. You burn it against the maximum

concentration you can achieve, and

achieving maximum concentration means

waiting through the discomfort [music]

of watching targets who might see you

first.

They moved. The British infantry came

out of the vegetation at the mouth of

the pass in a dispersed line, widely

spaced, moving at a walking pace in

short rushes with men covering each

other.

This was good infantry technique. The

dispersion reduced the effect of machine

gun fire by ensuring that even a

sustained burst along the line would hit

fewer men than a tightly packed

formation.

But the pass was a geographic funnel.

And however much the British dispersed

their spacing laterally, the funnel

geometry compressed their effective

width as they descended from the pass

mouth toward the flat ground where they

would have to cross to reach our ridge.

I waited until the leading element had

cleared the pass mouth fully, and the

follow-on element was at the mouth

itself, creating a concentration across

the funnel. I opened fire. The MG 34 at

400 m

>> [music]

>> fires a 7.92

mm rifle cartridge with an effective

range considerably beyond 400 m. At 400

m, through accurate fire,

>> [music]

>> you put rounds where you aim them. The

weight of fire from a machine gun belt,

250 rounds, cyclic rate of roughly 800

[music] rounds per minute, at 400 m,

produces a beaten zone, a horizontal

band of impacts through which infantry

movement becomes statistically [music]

untenable. The traversal of the gun's

barrel by perhaps 3 to 5 degrees [music]

sweeps this beaten zone across the

target front. I traversed left, I

traversed right. I reduced elevation

slightly for the [music] figures at the

top of the funnel, who were at slightly

greater elevation and range. The dust of

[music] the desert surface kicked up

ahead of the burst as rounds impacted

low, and I adjusted upward minimally.

Shaeffer fed the belt.

His hands [music] moved the belt with

the smoothness of repetition. He was

bleeding steadily from his forehead, but

his hands did not shake. There was

return fire almost immediately. It came

from the vegetation at the pass mouth,

from rifles and at least one Bren light

machine gun, which had a distinctive

slower rate of fire compared to our MG

34, a rhythmic thumping that was

identifiable even in the overall noise

of the engagement. The Bren rounds

impacted the limestone parapet with

sharp cracks, and rock chips flew from

the top of the parapet with regularity.

[music]

You stayed below the parapet edge. You

aimed through a gap in the limestone

that provided approximately 15 cm of

clearance to observe and direct fire

while keeping the majority of your head

below the top surface of the parapet.

The gap was not comfortable,

>> [music]

>> and it did not provide good visibility,

but it provided continued function. The

MG 34 jammed on the 203rd round. I felt

the change in the firing cycle before I

consciously registered what it meant. A

change in the rhythm, a hesitation,

>> [music]

>> a failure of the bolt to fully cycle

forward.

I released the trigger.

The gun was silent.

At 400 m in the open ground below the

pass, British infantry was still

advancing. The jam was a feed

malfunction. A cartridge had not fully

seated in the chamber, probably because

a particle of sand had entered the feed

tray and created sufficient friction to

interrupt the smooth cycling of the

cartridge from belt into chamber.

This was a known failure mode for the MG

34 in desert conditions.

I had dealt with it before. The

correction was open the Zuführerdeckel,

the feed cover, remove the mal-seated

cartridge, clear the feed tray,

reposition the belt, close the cover,

pull the cocking handle rearward

>> [music]

>> to chamber the first round of the

reloaded belt. This took 11 seconds. 11

seconds is a very long time when people

are trying to kill you and you are not

returning fire. I registered this

intellectually [music]

and continued working at the speed that

was safe rather than the speed that

anxiety suggested.

A rushed clearance that introduced a

second jam was worse than a deliberate

clearance that cost 11 seconds. The gun

returned to fire. I expended the

remainder of the first belt and Schäfer

loaded the second belt in 2 seconds. We

continued firing.

The British infantry at the mouth of the

pass had gone to [music] ground at the

moment the gun fell silent and had not

resumed movement despite the weapon

returning to fire. This was correct

tactical [music] behavior on their part.

A machine gun that goes silent in

contact may be jammed or may be changing

targets [music]

or may be changing barrels. You do not

know which it is from 400 m.

The rational response is to remain below

ground until you receive further fire

and can assess whether the problem was

temporary. A British 25-pounder round

landed 7 m to the right [music] of the

MG nest. This one was close enough that

the blast pressure was a physical event.

A flat push of air against the body that

arrived faster than sound followed

immediately [music]

by the crack of the impact and the

percussion in the chest cavity.

Limestone fragments from our own parapet

fell onto the gun and onto me and onto

Shafer.

The belt was displaced from the feed

tray by the fragment impacts. I cleared

it and reseated it. My ears were

producing a sound at a frequency that

had no relationship to any external

sound in the environment. I was still

functional. Shafer was not.

He was on his side against the left wall

of the MG [music] nest and he was not

moving. He was not making any sound. His

field dressing had been blown off his

forehead by the blast and the cut there

was bleeding freely again, but there was

also something wrong with his right side

at the hip where his tunic had been torn

and something dark was spreading across

the fabric.

I pulled the tunic fabric away from his

hip.

A fragment had entered the right hip at

an oblique angle. The entry wound was

approximately 2 cm

and the surrounding tissue was already

swelling and discoloring.

He was breathing. [music]

He was unconscious.

He would remain alive if the fragment

had not struck anything vital,

which I could not determine by looking

at the entry wound. I was alone on the

gun.

I pulled Schaefer back from the exposed

face of the parapet with my left arm,

moving him 3 m rearward into the

depression at the base of the MG nest.

I returned to the gun. I loaded the

second belt myself. Single-manning an MG

34 in contact is not the designed

operational mode for the weapon, and the

limitations are real. The gun requires

both hands on the Doppelgriff, the twin

rear grips, to control elevation and

fire. The thumbs depress the Abzugknopf

between the [music] grips. Both hands

steer the weapon, and this leaves no

hand free to manage [music] the belt.

You set the ammunition case on the

ground beside the gun and let the belt

run freely from the case into the

[music] feed tray, accepting the

increased risk of Zuführung, a double

feed, if the belt kinks or the case

shifts.

You cannot prevent this. You can only

fire in shorter bursts to reduce the

chance of belt tension problems

developing, and you stop the moment you

feel any change in the cycling rhythm

rather than letting a jam develop

[music] into a full stoppage.

I fired in shorter bursts.

The British advance had stalled at the

base of the pass. The leading element

had taken casualties. I could see three

figures on the ground in the open

between the pass mouth and the first

available [music] cover, which was a low

fold in the terrain approximately 70 m

out from the pass. The follow-on

elements were back in the vegetation.

The Bren gun was still firing [music]

from the vegetation. Its thumping rhythm

steady and patient. Bren gunners in the

desert were good. They held their fire

and used it economically, and they found

positions that worked, and they stayed

in them.

Rounds from the Bren impacted the

limestone parapet continuously in groups

of four and five, each burst precisely

targeted at the gap through which I was

directing fire. The Bren gunner had

located my position from the muzzle

flash, and was working to suppress it. I

lowered my observation angle, pressed my

face into the rock, and let the burst

pass. Then I raised back to the gap and

continued. Lieutenant Brennecke came to

the MG nest at a low run. He arrived in

a crouch, breathing heavily, pressed

against the right wall of the nest.

"Schafer," he said, seeing Schafer on

the ground, "hip wound, unconscious,

breathing." Brennecke said nothing for a

moment. He looked through the gap at the

pass.

"They'll try the right flank next," he

said. "The pass is stalemated. They have

a flanking element somewhere to the

east. I can't cover both."

"I know."

He was already moving back along the

position.

"Hartmann is moving to the eastern end.

Concentrate on the pass."

I concentrated on the pass. The attack

came in three more waves over the next

two and a half hours. Each wave followed

the same pattern, build up in the

vegetation, movement out into the open

ground below the pass, contact with our

fire, withdrawal or going to ground,

consolidation. After the third wave, the

attack did not develop a fourth. The

British infantry in the vegetation at

the pass mouth were either ordered to

hold or chose to hold, and the fire

reduced to the Bren gun firing

sporadically and occasional rifle fire

from covered positions. Nothing was

advancing.

The flanking element to the east engaged

the right portion of our position for

approximately 40 minutes. I could hear

it behind me, the rapid, rhythmic fire

of British rifles. They worked their

bolts at a rate that no German

infantryman with a carbine could match,

round after round with barely a pause

between them.

And the thumping of what sounded like a

second Bren gun, [music] and the

irregular fire of our own men from the

eastern end of the scrape. Brenneke was

somewhere in that, directing. Hartmann

was there. I did not look behind me.

Looking behind you when you are the only

man on the machine gun facing the

primary threat was a way to die from the

primary threat.

My barrel was hot.

>> [music]

>> Barrel temperature on the MG 34 was

managed through barrel changes, which

with a crew required [music] roughly 10

seconds, but which I could not execute

alone without surrendering fire entirely

for the 25 to 30 seconds it took a

single man to unlatch the barrel

housing, extract [music]

the hot barrel using the Laufschützer

sleeve, seat the replacement, and

[music] latch it closed, all while

keeping his face below the parapet.

I had fired approximately 600 rounds

through the barrel since the engagement

began.

At that round count in these

temperatures, the barrel was approaching

the threshold where accuracy degradation

became significant and cook-off risk

increased. Cook-off was the risk of a

cartridge discharging from the heat of

the chamber without the trigger being

depressed, which could cause an

uncontrolled burst and potentially

rupture [music] the breech.

I reduced my burst length to three to

four rounds and increased the interval

between bursts. The British withdrew

from the flanking position first. The

rifle and Bren fire from the east

thinned and stopped over a [music]

period of roughly 15 minutes. Then there

was silence from that direction. Then

Hartmann appeared at the edge of the MG

nest, walking, not running, [music]

which was a sign the immediate threat

there had passed.

"They pulled back," he said. "The pass,

too," I said.

I was watching the vegetation.

Nothing was moving in it. The three

British figures on the open ground

between the pass and the fold in the

terrain were not moving, either.

"Schafer's bad," Hartmann said,

>> [music]

>> looking at the figure against the wall.

"I know."

We waited.

The sun was now at a low angle in the

west, casting long shadows behind every

[music] rock, and producing the brief

temperature decline of late afternoon

that the body interpreted [music] as

relief, even when the actual temperature

was still 38°.

The flies had not [music] abated during

the engagement.

They did not distinguish between combat

and non-combat. They found the blood on

Schafer's tunic, and they found the

moisture at my eye corners, and they

worked at their tasks with the same

diligent purposelessness as always.

Brennecke did an accounting when the

firing stopped.

Of the 43 men in the position at the

start of the day, we had four dead and

seven wounded, of whom two were unable

to walk.

The dead were placed in a row at the

south end of the position, behind the

deepest section of the scrape. Their

identification discs collected. They

were not covered. We had no material

available to cover them, and they were

not left exposed [music] out of

disrespect, but because we had no

choice. Schafer was conscious by [music]

the time the medic got to him, which was

approximately 90 minutes after he had

been wounded. Being 90 minutes from

medical attention when you have a

fragment in your hip in 45° heat

>> [music]

>> in a position with minimal water supply

is not a good situation.

But he was conscious and he was in pain,

which indicated that the fragment had

not struck the major vascular structures

of the hip because damage [music]

there would have produced shock and

death within 30 minutes. The medic

administered morphine from a serette,

the small pre-loaded tube with a needle

at [music] the end that you pressed

against the skin and squeezed, and bound

the wound and arranged for [music]

Shafer to be carried back to the

battalion aid station that night when

the supply vehicle came. I cleaned the

MG 34. I cleaned it in the last light of

the day, working by touch in the

sections where the light [music] was

insufficient. I cleared the feed tray. I

inspected the barrel and found three

spots of pitting on the inner surface

near the crown, which was a sign of

accelerated metal fatigue from thermal

stress. The barrel needed replacement.

We had one spare barrel for the gun,

which I kept in a metal case at the back

of the nest, protected from sand by a

canvas wrapper.

I replaced the barrel, confirmed correct

seating by closing the bolt manually and

verifying it moved forward [music]

without resistance against the new

barrel face, found it acceptable,

reassembled the weapon, loaded a belt,

returned the gun to the ready position.

Then I ate.

Eating in this environment was an act of

will rather than appetite. The appetite

disappeared in the extreme [music] heat.

What remained was the intellectual

understanding that not eating would

reduce function over the following days

and that reduced function in this

environment, with further contact

likely, was an unacceptable risk. The

ration tin contained something

designated as a meat product in a pale

gelatinous medium that had been

manufactured somewhere in continental

Europe and transported to this place in

conditions that were not designed to

improve its quality.

>> [clears throat]

>> The smell was sufficient. The taste was

what the smell suggested it would be. I

ate it.

I ate the hard bread that accompanied

it, which had the texture and

approximate flavor of compressed

sawdust, but provided calories.

I drank the last of my water.

The water truck came at 2300 hours. It

came without lights as the vehicles had

to navigating the track by the driver's

knowledge of the route and by the

available starlight, which on this night

was adequate. The truck was a standard

Wehrmacht 1 and 1/2 ton cargo truck with

a 1,000 L water tank mounted in the bed.

The water in the tank was the same water

that came from the same cisterns as

always, mineralized and warm, tasting of

rust and dissolved stone. I filled both

canteens. I drank one full canteen

before the truck left. The truck also

brought a replacement for Schäfer. He

was a young Oberschütze from the

replacement pool at battalion, fresh

from Germany, who had been in Libya for

11 days, and whose uniform was still

clean in the way uniforms are clean when

you are 11 days into a deployment that

will last until you are killed or

evacuated. [music] His name was Fischer.

He introduced himself by name and rank,

and I told him to sit down and observe

the gun and ask no questions [music]

that were not directly relevant to

operating the feed mechanism.

He sat down. He observed the gun.

He asked one question.

Is it always this bad?

No, I said. He seemed relieved.

Sometimes it's worse, [music]

I said. He stopped asking questions.

That night I lay on the ground with the

stone under my hip and the stars visible

through the clear air above the ridge

[music] and I listed the facts of the

situation in my mind as a form of

discipline, a way of keeping the mind

occupied with concrete accessible

information rather than allowing it to

generate interpretations that were not

evidence-based.

The facts were

we had held the position. The British

attack had not succeeded. We had lost

four men dead and seven wounded. The MG

34 was functional with a replacement

barrel. Water supply was restored for

one day. Food supply was marginal.

Ammunition for the gun was approximately

600 rounds remaining from the day's

consumption of roughly 900 rounds total

across 2 and 1/2 hours of [music]

intermittent engagement. The position

had been improved by two days of work

but was still not capable of

withstanding a heavy direct fire

assault. The flanking threat to the east

had withdrawn but not been destroyed

[music]

and could return.

These were the facts.

I organized [music] them.

I made no interpretations.

I closed my eyes.

The stone was under my hip and the flies

found me in the dark

working at the corners of my cracked

lips and the cold came up from the

ground and I lay still and let all of it

happen and after a period of time I was

not awake anymore.

The morning came back the same way

[music] it always came. The sand was in

my throat before I opened my eyes.

Over the following three weeks the

position was contested four more times.

Two of these were artillery engagements

only where British guns worked over the

ridgeline systematically without

accompanying infantry which suggested

either preparatory fires for an attack

that did not develop or punitive

targeting based on intelligence about

our location.

The other two involved infantry, though

neither reached the scale or duration of

the first engagement. In the second

infantry contact, Fisher operated the

feed [music] mechanism without error and

did not flinch from his position when

the fire was close. In the third, he was

hit in the left forearm by a rifle

fragment, a wound that was superficial

but painful, and he dressed it himself

and remained in position. [music]

After that, I said nothing more to him

about how bad things were or were not.

He had developed his own answer to the

question. The heat did not diminish, the

flies did not diminish, the water

remained mineralized and warm and tasted

of dissolved metal,

>> [music]

>> and the food was what the food was, and

the dysentery moved through the position

in waves taking each man down for two to

four days before releasing him to return

to function, and then coming back for a

second visit six to eight weeks [music]

after the first. This was the nature of

the organism involved, and it was

consistent and impartial in its

application. [music]

Metzger's cough returned after the

second artillery engagement. He had

stopped coughing for 10 days and I had

noted this and drawn no conclusion from

it because drawing conclusions from the

cessation of symptoms in this

environment was methodologically

unsound. The cough came back louder and

with a wet quality that had not been

present before. He was eventually

evacuated to a field hospital at Derna

after it was determined he had developed

a pulmonary condition that required

treatment beyond what the battalion's

medical resources could provide.

I did not know his eventual outcome.

Men were evacuated [music]

and you did not learn their outcomes

unless you happen to encounter them

again, which in this campaign was

unlikely. The position was relieved

approximately 5 weeks after the initial

assault when the tactical situation on

the coastal axis shifted and our sector

was reorganized.

A relief column came at night as

everything in this desert came and went

and we moved [music] back to a staging

area roughly 20 km to the southwest

where there was an actual structure.

A former agricultural storage building

made of the same pale limestone as the

desert surface. And inside this building

there were cots, wooden cots with canvas

bases flat level above the ground. I lay

on the cot and felt the absence of the

stone under my hip for the first time in

weeks

>> [music]

>> and this was a significant physical

sensation, the absence of pain. The

absence of the grinding irregularity of

the desert surface under the body.

It registered as something close to

comfort, which by that point in the

campaign was a relative measure. Fischer

was on the next cot. He was already

asleep. His left arm was in a clean

dressing that a medic had applied at the

staging area and his face in sleep had

lost the particular set it wore during

the day. The expression of continuous

low-level assessment that you developed

after enough time in the field. In sleep

he looked his age, which was 19. I did

not sleep immediately. I cleaned the MG

34 in the yellow light of a field lamp

working through the standard sequence.

Disassemble, clean, inspect, reassemble,

verify function.

The gun had approximately 800 rounds of

ammunition remaining in the cases.

In the morning I would draw more from

the ammunition point. In the morning

there would be [music] a briefing about

the next phase of operations. In the

morning, the heat would return, and the

flies would return, and whatever the

next thing was would begin its

development. And we would know what it

was when it arrived, and not before.

I ran the bolt three times, smooth. I

closed the cover. I set the gun against

the wall of the limestone building and

lay back on the cot, and the ceiling

above me [music] was rough pale rock

with small black marks on it that might

have been old smoke stains from a fire

someone had built in this building

before the war arrived and made the

building a military installation [music]

rather than a place where ordinary human

activities occurred.

I thought about Shafer,

his hip, whether the fragment had come

out clean or whether it had moved during

the evacuation, [music]

which fragments in hip wounds sometimes

did, whether he was at the hospital in

Derna or whether they had moved him

further back to Tripoli or to Italy,

whether he was drinking water that did

not taste of dissolved limestone,

[music]

whether the flies at the hospital were

the same flies as the flies in the

position, which was a question without

utility, but which occurred to me

anyway. I closed my eyes. The stone was

not there. This was notable. The cot was

flat and the cot was level, and the

stone was not there, and this was

enough.

Outside the building, somewhere in the

dark desert that continued [music]

in all directions as it had always

continued and would always continue, the

war was in the same place [music] it had

always been, waiting with the same

patience it always demonstrated, not

diminishing and not accelerating, but

simply present

as the heat was present, as the flies

[music] were present, as the taste of

dissolved limestone in the water was

present, as all the fixed and permanent

[music]

conditions of this place were present.

In the morning, it would begin again. It

always began again.