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OPERATION SCIPIO THE 8TH ARMY AT THE BATTLE OF WADI AKARIT 6TH APRIL 1943
Book Type: C
by B.S. Barnes, 352 pages.
Wadi Alkarit was the German's last major stand against the victorious advance of the 8th Army; their position, dominated by the two features of the Djebel Tebega Fatnassa and the Djebel Roumana was a daunting target; no wonder that General Montgomery classified the battle that followed as the hardest he had fought while in command of the 8th Army.
Barrie Barnes has produced a remarkable account, it ranges from his admirably clear setting of the scene, through the terse and laconic entries in unit War Diaries to the vivid and usually confused first hand accounts of those in the front line who could only see what was immediately visible to them in the fog of war.
The accounts of the Victoria Crosses awarded to members of each of the Divisions involved highlight the bravery of the British and Indian soldiers that fought at Akarit. These men were giants in their day; I have been lucky enough to know quite a few of them. Most of them returned after the war to a hundrum peacetime existence; they did not boast of their exploits and many of them showed the marks of a life that had been less than easy; many looked old and tired and sometimes a little shabby; but they were true heroes.
Perhaps the spirit of what took place can be summed up by the story of Major John Lindsay MacDougall of Lunga of the 7th Argylls who, wounded as he was, charged the approaching enemy masses with the five surviving members of his company headquarters shouting "No surrender, 'C' Company! Charge!" as he hobbled after them on his improvised crutch. My father put him up for the Victoria Cross but he received instead the Distinguished Service Order. Known as "No Surrender John " to his men, he was later wounded again in Sicily and died of his wounds as a prisoner of war.
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