STEAM AT WAR 11




Following a week of horrendous bombardment from allied artillery by night and aerial bombing by day the enemy was routed. As the railway track was repaired we followed up with supply trains, first with a field workshop train to which I was attached for two weeks to eventually arrive at the end of rail within sight of Tobruk. The Germans had built the final 19kms of track to the edge of the escarpment overlooking Tobruk by dismantling some of our sidings and balloon loops and transferring the rails and sleepers. Over the entire 560 kilometres from El Alamein to end of rail the war wreckage presented vivid evidence of a great long running battle. Burned out tanks especially Italian tanks all pointing west were still smouldering. There were destroyed road transport vehicles, half-track troop carriers and everywhere temporary graves marked by wooden crosses and German and Italian helmets. There were intact munitions supply dumps and airfields littered with self destroyed fighter planes. We passed through a rearguard action site at Fort Capuzzo where the defence emplacement consisted of nothing more than a metre high wall of rocks and rubble. The sight and stench of the shredded Italian clothing and equipment was appalling.

A winding road from the end of rail led down to the Tobruk port. Our construction units built several widely spaced railway spurs or curved back-shunts onto which we pushed the arriving trains then disconnected and moved out about a half kilometre while Indian labour gangs performed the 3 to 3½ hour task of unloading. We then backed up, hooked on and cleared out hopefully before enemy air attacks that by then had become few and far between. About 25Km short of Tobruk a large airfield was established at Gambut from where American Liberator bombers attacked targets in Italy. It had its own railway siding and we regularly delivered trainloads of bombs and aviation fuel. The sight of twenty-one of these heavily loaded bombers taking off in echelon formation was awe-inspiring. The dust from the surface would hang in the air for an hour or more. From the approaches to Gambut and Tobruk we were to watch these places come under air attack, especially the Tobruk port where the harbour was jammed with sunken British, German and Italian ships.

During their occupation the enemy had brought over about twelve diesel mechanical locomotives to work as much as they could of the captured railway. There were three sizes, 500, 350 and 250 horsepower. Most of them were rendered unserviceable by having their engine fuel systems destroyed. The few that were mobile soon became inoperable through breakdown and lack of spare parts. All were pushed to the ends of spurs and back-shunts to serve as end of track stop blocks. The Italians contributed about an equal number of ingeniously designed yard shunting locomotives that had tall central cabs with the engines mounted beneath. They were built on low slung chasses the ends of which carried traversing jacks which in the retracted position passed beneath the wagon headstocks. Evidently Italian railway working methods called for much preoccupation with re-railing of wagons. None of these were left serviceable and joined wreckage bulldozed clear of the tracks.

A great gift to the allied forces was the capture of large numbers of Italian Fiat and Lancia heavy-duty diesel lorries. These were most durable vehicles that stood up to continuous use. By contrast, the German trucks, especially those with air cooled motors soon joined the junk piles. Highly prized were the captured Italian Lancia and Alce motor cycles. They were the first sprung rear end motor cycles that we had seen. Their very smooth running motors had quite large external flywheels. The finely engineered German BMW motor cycles that came into our hands did not survive long in the desert conditions.