In early 1942, somewhere in the open desert south of Benghazi, Private Johannes Stevens of 135 Motor Transport Company of the Cape Corps turned around the Bedford truck in which he transported thirty German prisoners of war captured in a skirmish early in the day.
Just in time, he thought, as the dry hot Khamsin wind churned up clouds off the dunes of the Libyan Sand Sea. He’d have to forget about reaching Jaghub before nightfall and outride the approaching sandstorm. The sandstorm won, outrunning both him and the light. It enveloped him in a dark billow of stinging sand that blotted out the sky. Then it settled as fast as it had passed, but just before it cleared, the truck reeled and swerved with a blown rear wheel. Stevens got out of the truck to change the wheel. His partner aimed a rifle at the prisoners attempting to jump out of the back of the truck.
The dust and sand cleared. He was in the middle of a minefield, and it had taken his wheel as its first casualty. At least the German prisoners were also as nervous as him now and prayed as he changed the wheel. He’d have to reverse out of there because he did not know how deep into the minefield he was. He was well on course when another mine exploded under the truck’s front wheels. The truck died and he evacuated the prisoners under armed escort through the minefield.
Around midnight, they cleared the minefield and settled down to camp. In the distance, Gazala was burning. Above it, searchlights fenced on the night sky’s screen to trap German bomber planes in its glare. And when it did, anti-aircraft fire exploded into radiant puffs of smoke in pursuit of darting German warmoths. From where he stood, Stevens saw the blue and red streaks of tracer fire lash the skies to the sound of booming artillery fire and the grinding rumble of a phalanx of German tanks bearing down on Gazala. This emboldened his prisoners, but he stayed awake, alert for any escape attempts.
Sometime before dawn, one German made a run for it. Stevens steadied his aim, breathed, and shot him down from about twenty meters. Then he gathered all the prisoners and marched them across the desert to join the big allied retreat from Gazala en route to El Alamein in Egypt.
Private Johannes Stevens was mentioned in an army report, but he did not receive a medal for bravery. Instead, he returned to Cape Town when demobilised, with a government-issue bicycle and the promise of grants up to £100 or loans up to £500, if he could prove that he had suffered financial loss at home while in the army.
Johannes Stevens did not qualify for any military grant or loan. He did not own a home and was unemployed before joining the Union Defence Force.
Jeremy Vearey het grootgeword in Elsiesrivier. Hy was ’n lid van MK en ’n lyfwag vir oud-president Nelson Mandela. Hy is ’n vorige majoor-generaal in die SAPD en was tot onlangs adjunk-provinsiale-kommisaris in die Wes-Kaap SAPD. Vearey se biografie Jeremy vannie Elsies het in 2018 by Tafelberg verskyn. Sy book Into Dark Water: A Police Memoir (Tafelberg 2021) is benoem op die 2022 Sunday Times Literary Awards langlys.
