Transcript: Longstop Hill

Audio transcript

Gerry Chester: 

B Squadron took the lead and the first approach was... Longstop is actually two djebels [hills] and the first one was taken pretty easily and then the second one, the Djebel Rhar... we were right in front... my tank and... Of the three in HQ troop, one of them, the captain’s tank, had lost its track in the previous fight. So there was my tank, major’s tank and a couple of others... from 2 Squad.

We got up to a col between the two djebels... up between Ahmera and Rhar... and we were there. And skipper gave the order to these two tanks to go up and they climbed up, one went that way and the other went this way, and climbed to the top, which the Germans thought was impossible that anyone could get up there, absolutely impossible.

And they surrendered, of course, and came down and the commanding officer went down and, from what I was told, he saluted David Dawney and told him that he could not believe that any tank could possibly get up there.