My father, Sgt George Brown (1552009), kept diaries of his war years and wrote a book called "The Moulton Image". A lot of things were as he remembered them, especially his time in the desert, where he said there were no dates, just day and night and he had a desert rat friend called Monty.
Dad had a gun team and they were doing a 'Strategic Withdrawal' to El-Adem near Tobruk and there were some heavy Ack Ack guns already there and fifteen bofors. Dad's was a bofors, he took position, their gun was to fire warning shots, for the rest of the guns to go in to action. There was a half moon shining and he doubled the guard. All was well until 01.00 when the guard reported vehicles coming up to them. Gun teams were in position and he heard number 4 pull the hand operating lever to the rear catch and a round pressed on the loading tray. The hand operating lever was replaced and reposted 'HELD'. He waited until the vehicles were 100 yards away, all infantry trucks, then they stopped. His gun team were swearing at him for the delay. They had a little terrier dog called spot, who knew the sounds of aircraft, and when German, he would bark like mad and run to the gun pit. But if it was ours he would just wag his tail furiously and that was what he was doing. My father said "hold your fire and I will crawl out to hear them talking. I will give my gun if they aren't English". He heard an order given in English and challenged him to come to him and be recognised. He said "who are you?" to which the answer was "what the bloody hell has it got to do with you". Then he said "we have come through the desert from Benghazi, all our officers have been killed and it has left me as sergeant with two hundred Gurkhas". When my father told him about all the guns that were trained on him, he said you have saved us all from being killed and the lads will be in your debt forever". They then stayed with them and the sergeant explained it to my father's officer who said to him "Sergeant Brown you put the whole exercise last night in jeopardy, it was fool hardy what you did". But he had the satisfaction of two hundred brave lads being saved to fight another day, thanks to a little dog's intuition.
Dad wrote his book in long hand, recorded it on a tape and then my daughter printed it out for him on her computer and got it made in to a book. He then died in 2010 at the age of 95.
Sylvia Bell