MINQAR QAIM, 1942
It
was an inauspicious beginning. Freyberg caught
shell
shrapnel in the neck.
The
advance east
was
late, but the scruffy trucks fell like a summer storm
on
the German positions;
the
storm became
a
shattered mirror of trucks aflame,
overhead
the
videogame fireworks of tracer fire like shooting stars
and
chrysanthemums of green phosphorus,
tank
noise and empyreumatic
(your
ten bob word) stench:
a
slow motion ecstasy of training and duty.
Snout
to tail like Piccadilly,
full
throttle, pedal to the metal, the Kiwis burst through
a
German medical post, First Battalion of
104
Rifle Regiment, 21 Panzer HQ.
The
enemy
were
slaughtered like mutton as they stirred
from
their tents (so many in pyjamas in the
desert).
The
wounded were finished off with bayonets.
Rommel
called them ‘gangsters’. In war
no
hand remains entirely clean for long, but England
could
not be disappointed.
The
expression ‘friendly fire’ hadn’t been invented yet
(Dulce
et decorum est pro patria mori),
but
there was that in spades in the chaos of the melee.
The
wadi was opened in minutes.
The
Germans rallied at noon
from
the laagered survivors of 21 Panzer.
The
Kiwis burst through like Ezekiel in a ball of fire.
History
pivoted slightly in a tense twenty-four hours;
mosquito
bites distracting from the eastern front
and
all for the sake of a horseshoe nail.
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