The Gazala frontline was in trouble. Swarms of enemy Stuka dive-bombers swooped down low, darting between allied anti-flak fire and sword-fighting searchlights to lay their incendiary eggs. Allied mortar and anti-aircraft batteries burst into flames of flying shrapnel, exploding arsenals and chunks of human debris. The Stukas vanished into the night above the clouds as fast as they had emerged.
Corporals Daniels and Pernall of the Division Ammunition Supply Company of the Cape Corps scanned the battlefield for their surviving mortar, anti-flak and artillery batteries. They had better get this ammunition convoy moving to those positions soon before the Stukas return, or Field Marshal Rommel’s Afrika Corps overrun them. They saw the telltale flames on one truck filled with high-explosive mortar bombs first. If that truck blew, the rest of the convoy would follow and there would be no ammunition for the survivors to fight back.
They acted first and worried later. And, in a mad scramble to unload the simmering explosives, they dashed to and from the burning truck to save the convoy. As a reward for their bravery beyond the call of duty, they had to pose for an official photograph and were mentioned in a dispatch to Allied headquarters. They returned to Cape Town at the end of their tour of duty, unsung and as unfree as they were before they left to serve their country.
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.
