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"Dave
McKegg in slit trench, Western Desert"
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15/7/42 Wednesday. [Alamein] Four columns
moved off at 11pm and after three miles we waited for the infantry to attack. Things
opened up in fine style and tracers were tearing all over the place. White ones and red
ones following one another like snakes. Look all the world like a glistening string of
beads. Mortars and heavy stuff making the ground quiver, with Verey lights making it as
day. A beautiful sight but deadly.
5.00am Hun prisoners coming back.
5.30am Digging in. Spent bullets fizzing by.
10.45am Stick of bombs behind us and I was caught in the open.
Dived under a truck and did I feel exposed.
2.45pm Bombs landed 100 yards, away right near a swag of
prisoners. What a smoke and blast and three trucks further away are in flames. Prisoners
coming in all the time.
6.15pm Prepare to move.
6.25pm Action, tanks. We are now waiting.
7.45pm Twenty Huns overhead. Ack-ack fire by the mile, hit one
near the tail and down she came not quarter of a mile away and went up in a sheet of
flame. Thats the stuff. Our fighters overhead now.
8.00pm We got hell that time. A dozen big Junkers came over and
let go everything. Sticks of four at a time and the ground fairly shook. Two more trucks
on fire. Those must have been Hun fighters overhead because they did not interfere with
the bombers. Very little damage compared to the number of bombs dropped.
8.30pm Hell popping now
and our guns forward one going flat out. My slit trench and I will be good friends tonight. What a hole a bomb makes. Five feet by five feet hole and the
earth for 30 feet around all blackened.Return to top of page
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