|
2/12/42 Wednesday.
Reveille at 5am. Cold up here. Sound of the sea close by. Left at 6am. Sea on our right.
They pushed it along this morning. Hun debris and burnt trucks to be seen now. Cemeteries
too. Flat scrub country.
9.30am At Daba for refueling. Flat open place. Left Daba at
11am, and right away saw trucks, tanks and vehicles all over the country. Everywhere you
looked there were burnt and wrecked trucks. As for petrol tins, they littered the desert.
Great sight on the Daba aerodrome. Dozens of Hun planes wrecked, some of them still in
their stone hangers. Tails, wings and all parts all over the place. One Messerschmitt was
right alongside the road, in its hangar. Junkers and all sorts. Saw a very neat Hun
cemetery with its black and white German crossess. Arrived at Baggush at 2pm and at 3pm
halted at the junction to Mersa Matruh and Sidi Barrani. Wrecked gear all the way. Two
burnt tanks were in a bunch of trees near a creek bed.
7.00pm Still at Matruh junction and bedding down. [At this stage the
Allies were chasing the German and Italian troops westwards across North Africa to
Tunisia, after winning the second battle of Alamein, which had started on 23 October.
Struan MacGibbon had been wounded in the arm by shrapnel in the first battle of Alamein,
and following recovery and leave, was one of a group of soldiers ferrying trucks from Mena
(near Cairo) to Tobruk. He finally caught up with hostilities in January 1943, at Nofilia,
Tripolitania.]
Return to top of page
|
|
