Shred of Evidence

Winston was with the 3rd Battalion of the Royal Tank Regiment, and Jeremiah was with the 5th. In the dust and smoke of the battles for Sidi Rezegh, tank crews were shuffled as the situation demanded, and one day the two brothers found themselves in the same Honey, Winston as commander and Jeremiah as gunner.

War is a study in contradictions. There are moments of sharp intensity followed by hours of boredom. People who are strangers try to kill one another, the most personal of acts. The men die on foreign soil so that we women will be protected. My two boys died in the deserts of Northern Africa so that I would be safe from the Germans in London.

A mother is not supposed to have favorites, but Winston was my first child and thus always more fascinating to me than Jeremiah ever became. When they were young, I wanted to explore the world through Winston’s wide blue eyes, but we two were held back by the squalling of his younger brother who always seem to require a feeding or a change.

Jeremiah was a sniffler, and I have to admit that I had no patience for it. Winston was a man while still in his britches, and I expected no less from his brother.

As they grew older, Winston only widened the gap between them. He became an adventurous pioneer and shot to the top, Jeremiah continuing to stumble through his dust. Winston was bold. He wooed the girls and rallied the boys. He impressed his elders and burned like a flame.

Jeremiah became as invisible as a thin afternoon fog. From time to time I almost forgot he even existed, and then one day he slipped off and married some cockney barmaid who was even more pale and wan than he was.

If Jeremiah tried to act the King of his castle, it must have been a sad mockery. Poor Jeremiah wouldn’t be the center of attention if he was holding a gun on you, that’s just how he was. If I felt sorry for anyone, it was the girl who must have soon realized that she married the wrong brother.

At least the barmaid didn’t have to dwell on the awful truth for long, because only months after the marriage my boys were sent off to war as the Germans once again tried to prove themselves master of the world.

Winston wrote the longer letters filled with richer detail that transported me from the cold rains of November to the dusty plains of the African desert.

I imagined the sights and smells of brewing up a pot of tea in shallows filled with petrol, the lurch as my tank was hit by an armour-piercing round from a Mark III, the sound of artillery pounding the ground for what seemed like hours at a time, the taste of the ever-present sand crackling in my teeth.

Sitting at my window, I could see the Gerries silhouetted in the setting sun as they marched over the distant dunes.

In all, Winston had three tanks knocked out from under him in the battles around Sidi Rezegh. The first had been tipped over into a ravine by a hail of antitank gun fire as he broke through a concentration of enemy armour. The second one had the engine knocked out by a Mark III during an advance. The last one had a tread thrown by a Mark IV during a retreat.

That disabled Honey was the tank that Jeremiah had shared with him, and this time it was Jeremiah who told me the tale.

While the crew had emptied out of the tank, a shot had rung out and Winston folded in half over the edge of the cupola. “Gerry got me” was the last thing Winston said.

War is misdirection. Only in the midst of battle would you find British soldiers on African soil fighting Germans through countries that barely existed.

The men themselves were almost superfluous in the new order of things. On our side was the tank that the Americans called the M3, we called the Stuart, and what the crews themselves called the Honey. On the other side were the German Mark IIIs and IVs, the mind-numbing accuracy and punch of the 88.

In-between the protagonists and against everyone was the desert itself: the dust, the windstorms, the miles of uninterrupted terrain which sucked the petrol dry. The desert was cold at night, hot during the day, and nearly unbearable for any number of reasons.

There were accidents as there are during a war. Cover everything with a layer of dirt, hide equipment in dust storms and smoke, draw lines in the sand which shifted hourly. Winston once burst firing through a convey of supply trucks only to find that they were ours. Luckily no one had been hurt.

I sit here now alone and infirm, my skin as taut and dry as if I’ve been stretched out in the desert all these years. The Second World War is long over, and yet I feel that I’m as much a prisoner of the event as the many young men who didn’t come back.

Jeremiah was killed three days later during a Stuka attack, struck down from above by that screaming bird of prey. I wonder sometimes whether we would have become closer had he returned without his older brother, and I wonder too whether Jeremiah might have thought so, might have hoped so.

His barmaid visited me today for the first time in years, having just received a letter from a man in Jeremiah’s unit. Apparently there was some old tanker’s reunion, and one of the men had decided to seek her out to document Jeremiah’s bravery in the days before he died.

Disbelief must have shown on my face, because she leapt into a defense of Jeremiah saying that I had always misjudged him. She screamed that I was still under Winston’s spell and then she stammered an apology. As she ran from the house in tears, she confessed that she knew what that was like ever since the day that Winston had forced himself on her.

The Honey had 51 mm of armour at its thickest part, but I thought that I might have it beat. Somewhere along the line I became impervious.

How much of what happened during the battle for Sidi Rezegh was my fault? Had I been blind to Winston’s shortcomings, and blind to Jeremiah all together? Had my uneven feelings created a situation that culminated in one brother taking the opportunity to strike back for the thousands of little inequities?

Take away the dust and the smoke, and I think that Winston’s last words were “Jerry got me.” I can only guess that Jeremiah reported them nearly correctly because some part of him wanted credit for finally bettering his older brother. He might have thought it his only chance for winning my love.

The winds may blow, the sands may shift, but the skeleton underneath remains.