SAVED BY DEAD SAPPER
The literary agent George Greenfield (1917-2000) relates a remarkable episode in his war memoir, Chasing the Beast (1998). In the summer of 1941 Greenfield was part of the 44th Division in North Africa, which was rushed forward to help construct and man the Alamein defensive position against Rommel’s Afrika Korps.
“The Alamein line was the narrowest stretch of the desert between the Mediterranean and the impassable Qattara Depression, where tanks would bog down to their axles in the treacherous black ooze [..] Detachments of Royal Engineers, the sappers, were ordered to lay down the widest possible minefields on the far side of the rudimentary defences. Some of the minefields were three hundred, even four hundred, yards wide. It was necessary to leave the obligatory zigzag paths through them both as a safe passage for some of the belated units still trickling back from the Knightsbridge defeat and, perhaps optimistically, for the Eighth Army to use when it had regrouped, held off the Afrika Korps, and launched its own attack. When the path was open – it would be wide enough to take a tank with a few feet to spare on either side – stakes would be driven in at intervals, coupled with long tapes to form a kind of avenue. Closing off the minefield took little time.
