At 0615 on July 3rd, 1942, Corporal Alfie Nichols sat in the gunner’s position of his Crusader tank on Ruisat Ridge, watching a dust cloud rise 8 miles to the west as German Panzers began their approach across the Egyptian desert. 24 years old, 11 months in North Africa, zero tank kills.

The 15th and 21st Panzer divisions were moving east with approximately 60 tanks heading straight for the ridge where Nicholls and the remnants of second armored brigade waited in their thin-kinned Crusaders. The British called the Crusader a cruiser tank. Fast, maneuverable, completely outmatched.

Its two-pounder gun could barely scratch a Panzer 3 at range, and against a Panzer 4, it was almost useless. The armor maxed out at 49 mm on the turret face. German 75mimeter rounds went through crusader armor like paper. Crews gave it a nickname that stuck, tin can. By the first week of July 1942, second armored brigade had lost 87 tanks in the long retreat from Gazala.

The 9inth Lancers had been reduced to a handful of operational vehicles. 13 crews had been killed in the previous 3 weeks. Another 21 had been wounded badly enough to evacuate. Egypt itself hung by a thread. Alexandria sat 70 mi to the east, the Suez Canal beyond that. If Raml took Ruisat Ridge, nothing stood between the Africa Corps and Cairo.

Nicholls had grown up in the English countryside, the son of a farm worker. Before the war, he’d been known locally as a poacher, an excellent shot with a rifle, patient, calm under pressure, capable of bringing home a bulging sack of feeasants and rabbits from a night’s work.

Those skills translated poorly to tank gunnery at first, missing targets, wasting ammunition. His commander had considered transferring him to infantry, but something changed during the retreat. Nichls stopped thinking like a rifleman and started thinking like a hunter.

He learned to read terrain, to anticipate movement, to wait for the moment when a target stopped, even for 3 seconds before firing. His hit rate improved, not enough to matter in the chaos of Gazala, but enough that his crew trusted him when it counted. The tanks came at dawn. Nicholls counted 18 panzers in the first wave. Panzer 3es and fours mixed together, moving in loose formation toward the western edge of the ridge.

British 25p pounder artillery opened fire, shells bursting among the advancing armor. The panzers kept coming. They always kept coming. At 600 yardds, the German tanks began engaging the forward positions. Nicholls watched through his gun site as a crusader from Ca Squadron took a direct hit.

The tank brewed up instantly, ammunition cooking off inside the turret. Two men got out. The loader didn’t. Nicholls had known that loader. They’d shared cigarettes the night before. The standing order for Crusader crews was simple. Engage at close range. The two-pounder couldn’t penetrate frontal armor beyond 300 yd.

So, British gunners had to wait until the panzers closed to knife fighting distance. It meant sitting still while 88 mm rounds screamed past. It meant watching friends die before you could shoot back. Nicholls tank commander gave the order to hold fire. 400 yd. Still too far. 350. 300. A Panzer 4 turned its turret toward Nickel’s position. He could see the muzzle of the 75mm gun swinging toward him.

If you want to see how Nicholls hunting skills turned out against German armor, please hit that like button. It helps us share more forgotten stories. Subscribe if you haven’t already. Back to Nicholls. The Panzer 4 fired. The shell missed by 6 ft. Close enough that Nicholls felt the concussion through the tank’s thin armor. His commander’s voice came through the intercom. Fire when ready.

Nicholls centered the crosshairs on the Panzer 4’s turret ring, the weak point where armor was thinnest. He took a breath, waited for the German tank to settle for just two seconds, and squeeze the trigger. The two-pounder shell hit the Panzer 4 exactly where Nicholls aimed, the turret ring. The round punched through the thin armor joint, and the German tank stopped moving.

Smoke began pouring from the commander’s hatch. Nicholls didn’t watch. He was already scanning for the next target, a Panzer 3, 320 yards out, moving left to right across his field of vision. The German tank was advancing toward a cluster of British anti-tank guns positioned on the western slope of the ridge. Nicholls tracked the movement, waited.

The Panzer 3 slowed for just a moment to traverse rough ground. Nicholls fired. The shell struck the side armor at an angle and penetrated. The Panzer 3 lurched to a halt, its right track shredded. Two kills in 90 seconds. Nicholls loader was already ramming another round into the brereech. The commander was calling out bearings. Driver was backing the crusader into a hold down position behind a low rock formation.

Standard British tank doctrine. Fire. Move. Don’t stay exposed. The battle spread across Ruiz ridge. German artillery began hammering the British positions. High explosive rounds detonated among the scattered crusaders, throwing up geysers of sand and rock. Nicholls watched another tank from B squadron take a direct hit.

The crusaders thin top armor couldn’t withstand the blast. The tank came apart. Raml’s panzers were trying to punch through the ridge and reach the open desert beyond. If they succeeded, they could swing north and cut off the entire eighth army supply line. The handful of British tanks on Ruisat were all that stood in their way.

Nicholls crusader moved to a new firing position. From here, he had a clear view of the western approaches. He counted 11 German tanks still advancing. The panzers were spreading out now, making themselves harder to hit with artillery. Smart tactics, but it also meant they were moving more slowly, giving Nicholls more time to aim.

A Panzer 3 appeared in his gun site at 280 yard. The German tank was stopped, its commander probably assessing the British positions. Nicholls didn’t hesitate. He centered the crosshairs on the turret face and fired. The round penetrated. The Panzer 3’s hatch flew open and the crew began bailing out. Three kills. It was 0730.

The battle had been raging for 75 minutes. British anti-tank gunners were taking a terrible toll on the advancing panzers. The obsolete two-pounder guns that were useless at range proved deadly at close quarters. Nicholls watched as a gun crew 200 yd to his left engaged a Panzer 4 at pointblank range. Three rapid shots. All three penetrated. The Panzer burned.

But the Germans were winning the exchange. For every Panzer knocked out, two or three British guns were destroyed by returned fire. The ridge was becoming a killing ground. Nicholls could see wrecked vehicles burning across the western slope. some British, some German, all belching thick black smoke into the morning sky.

His tank moved again. The driver found a position behind a small rise that gave them cover from German artillery, but kept the western approaches in view. Nichols scanned through his gunsite. Movement. A Panzer 4 advancing at 400 yd. Too far for a guaranteed kill. Nicholls waited. The Panzer kept coming. 350 300. The German tank stopped to fire at a British position.

Nicholls aimed for the hull side where the armor was thinner. He squeezed the trigger. The shell struck home. The Panzer 4 shuttered and stopped moving. Smoke poured from the engine deck. Four kills. By 0800, Nicholls had fired 17 rounds, four confirmed kills, three probable hits. The other rounds had missed or failed to penetrate. His loader’s hands were blistered from handling the hot shell casings.

The inside of the turret stank of cordite and sweat. And the Germans were still coming. The German assault reached its peak at 0820. Nicholls counted nine panzers advancing in a coordinated line attempting to overwhelm the British positions through sheer weight of fire. The 15th Panzer Division was pushing hard. They knew what Ruizad Ridge meant. Control of the ridge meant control of Egypt.

Nicholls crew had been in continuous action for two hours. The Crusader’s engine was overheating. The radio was crackling with reports of British tanks knocked out across the entire front. Cquadron had lost four tanks in the last 30 minutes. A squadron was down to three operational vehicles. The ninth Lancers were being ground down, but they were taking Germans with them.

Nicholls watched as a two-pounder anti-tank gun crew engaged a Panzer 3 at 150 yards. The first round missed. The second penetrated the glacus plate. The Panzer stopped. Its crew evacuated. The British gun crew was already traversing to engage another target when a German high explosive round landed directly on their position. The gun and crew disappeared in the blast.

Nicholls pushed the image from his mind. Focus on the target. A Panzer 4 was advancing toward his position at 300 yd. The German tank was firing on the move, its 75 mm rounds falling short. Nicholls waited for the Panzer to stop. German doctrine emphasized fire and movement, but even Panzers had to pause occasionally to aim properly. The Panzer 4 halted.

Nicholls fired. The round struck the turret side and penetrated. Five kills. The time was 0835. Nicholls had been in combat for 2 hours and 20 minutes. His commander ordered the driver to reposition. The Crusader backed out of its firing position and moved 300 yd east along the ridge. From the new location, Nicholls had a different angle on the German advance.

He could see the smoke from burning vehicles rising across the battlefield. At least 20 tanks were on fire. Impossible to tell from this distance how many were German and how many were British. A Panzer 3 appeared in his sights at 260 yards. The German tank was stationary, its commander probably trying to coordinate with other Panzers. Nicholls aimed for the hull side. Fired.

The shell penetrated below the turret ring. The Panzer 3’s engine caught fire. Six kills. The pattern continued. German tanks advancing, British guns firing, vehicles burning, men dying. The battle had devolved into a brutal slugging match with neither side willing to give ground. Raml needed the ridge to continue his advance into Egypt.

The British needed the ridge to prevent the collapse of their entire defensive line. At 0900, Nicholls Crusader was running low on ammunition. The loader reported 12 rounds remaining. In a normal engagement, 12 rounds would be plenty, but this wasn’t a normal engagement.

The Germans were still pushing, still attacking, still trying to break through. Nicholls made every shot count. A Panzer 4 at 310 yd. Hit seven kills. A Panzer 3 at 240 yd. Hit eight kills. The loader was down to eight rounds, then six, then four. At 0925, Nicholls spotted a Panzer 3 moving into a firing position 400 yards out. Long range for a two-pounder, but the German tank was perfectly silhouetted against the morning sun.

Nicholls compensated for distance, aimed high to account for bullet drop. The Panzer 3 stopped to fire at a British position. Nicholls squeezed the trigger. The shell flew true. It struck the Panzer 3’s turret face at an angle and penetrated. The German tank’s ammunition cooked off.

The turret lifted six feet into the air and crashed back down. Nine kills in one morning. Nichols sat back from his gun site. His hands were shaking. Not from fear, from exhaustion and adrenaline. He just accomplished something no other British tank gunner would achieve that day. But the battle wasn’t over, and he had three rounds left. The German assault began to falter at 0940.

The 15th Panzer Division had lost too many tanks. The coordinated push that had threatened to overwhelm the British positions was breaking apart into individual actions. Panzers were pulling back to regroup. Some were retreating westward, trailing smoke from damaged engines.

Others sat immobilized on the battlefield, their crews already evacuated. Nichols’s commander received orders over the radio. Hold position. Conserve ammunition. The crusader settled into a hullown position behind the rocky outcrop. From here, Nicholls could observe the entire western sector of Ruizat Ridge without exposing his tank to direct fire.

The battlefield stretched before him like a graveyard. Wrecked tanks dotted the landscape. British crusaders with their turrets blown off. German Panzer 3s and fours burning from penetrating hits. Anti-tank guns lay abandoned, their crews dead or wounded. The morning sun cast long shadows across the carnage. British artillery continued firing.

The 25 pounders were targeting German assembly areas to the west, trying to prevent Raml from organizing another assault. Shells burst among the retreating Panzers. Nicholls watched as a damaged Panzer 4 took a direct hit and exploded. That kill didn’t belong to him, but it still mattered. Every German tank knocked out was one less threat to Egypt. At 1000 hours, the radio crackled with new information. Second armored brigade had held the ridge. The German attack had been stopped.

Casualties were severe on both sides, but the line held. Alexandria was safe for now. Nichols’s loader counted the remaining ammunition, three rounds. The crusader had started the day with 52. 49 had been fired. Nine confirmed kills. Several probable hits. The rest had missed or failed to penetrate.

In tank combat, even the best gunners missed more often than they hit. The commander ordered the driver to move to a new position further east along the ridge. As the crusader maneuvered, Nicholls got his first clear view of the entire battlefield. He counted at least 30 burning vehicles. The accurate smell of burning rubber and diesel fuel filled the air.

Smoke columns rose hundreds of feet into the sky, visible for miles across the desert. British recovery teams were already moving forward to salvage damaged tanks. If a crusader could be repaired, it would be. The Eighth Army couldn’t afford to lose any more armor. Every tank mattered in the mathematics of desert warfare. Raml had fewer tanks than the British, but his were better. The British had more tanks, but they were inferior.

The only way to balance that equation was to keep every possible vehicle in the fight. Nicholls crew waited. The Germans might attack again. Raml was known for his aggressive tactics. He didn’t give up easily. If he thought he could still take the ridge, he’d throw everything he had at it. The morning assault had failed, but afternoon might bring a fresh attempt.

At 1100 hours, movement to the west. Nicholls tensed. More panzers? He centered his gun site on the dust cloud. No British tanks. The 22nd Armored Brigade was moving up to reinforce the ridge. Fresh tanks, full ammunition, rested crews. The reinforcements changed everything. Nichols commander received new orders. Fall back to refit.

The crusader turned east and began moving away from the front line. Nichols took one last look at the western approaches. The ridge was littered with destroyed vehicles. German and British metal twisted together in death. His hands were still shaking. Nine kills in 4 hours of combat using a gun that wasn’t supposed to be effective against German armor in a tank the crews called a tin can. Nicholls didn’t feel like a hero. He felt exhausted, thirsty.

His ears rang from the constant gunfire. His eyes burned from staring through the gunsite. But he’d done something remarkable, something that would catch the attention of the highest levels of command, something that would change his war. He just didn’t know it yet. The crusader reached the rear assembly area at 11:30.

Nicholls climbed out of the turd for the first time in 5 and 1/2 hours. His legs nearly buckled. His uniform was soaked with sweat despite the morning chill. The loader and driver looked equally spent. The commander was already walking toward the squadron headquarters tent to file his afteraction report.

British tank doctrine required detailed reporting after every engagement. Ammunition expended, targets engaged, confirmed kills, probable kills, damage to friendly vehicles. The reports went up the chain of command to build an accurate picture of the battle. Nichols commander had kept careful notes throughout the morning. Nine confirmed enemy tanks destroyed by Corporal Nichols.

No other gunner in second armored brigade came close to that number. The report reached brigade headquarters by noon. From there, it went to divisional command. Someone noticed the unusual statistic. Nine kills, one gunner, one morning. Using a two-pounder gun in a Crusader tank. The numbers didn’t make sense.

Two pounders weren’t supposed to be that effective either. whether the report was exaggerated or something extraordinary had happened on Ruisat Ridge. Divisional intelligence began cross-referencing the claim. German radio intercepts from the morning mentioned heavy tank losses on the 15th Panzer Division’s right flank, exactly where Nicholls had been positioned.

Aerial reconnaissance photographs showed nine destroyed German tanks in a cluster matching the grid coordinates from the 9th Lancers report. The claim checked out. Nicholls had actually done it. By 1400 hours, word reached Eighth Army headquarters. General Bernard Montgomery had taken command of the eighth army just two weeks earlier on August 13th.

But the July 3rd battle at Ruisat had occurred under the previous commander. Montgomery was reviewing all recent actions to understand what had worked and what hadn’t in the desperate fighting that saved Egypt. The Nicholls report caught his attention. Montgomery understood the tactical reality of desert warfare.

British tanks were inferior to German panzers in almost every measurable category. Armor, firepower, reliability. The only advantages British crews had were numbers and determination. Individual acts of extraordinary skill could shift the balance in small but crucial ways. Montgomery made a note. Find Corporal Nichols. Personal congratulations. The general believed in recognizing exceptional performance.

It improved morale. It gave other soldiers something to aspire to. And in the summer of 1942, the eighth army desperately needed morale. Nicholls knew none of this. He spent the afternoon helping his crew service the Crusader. The tank needed maintenance, oil change, track tension adjustment.

The two-pounder gun had to be cleaned and inspected. Combat put tremendous stress on equipment. Tanks that weren’t properly maintained broke down at the worst possible moments. At 1600 hours, an officer from brigade headquarters appeared at the ninth Lancer’s position. He asked for Corporal Nichols. The crew pointed him out. Nichols was under the tank checking the suspension. He crawled out covered in grease and dirt.

The officer informed him that his actions on July 3rd were being reviewed at the highest levels. Nicholls didn’t understand what that meant. He’d done his job, killed enemy tanks, survived. What was there to review? The officer explained that nine confirmed kills in one engagement was unprecedented for a British tank gunner in North Africa.

Command wanted to verify the achievement. Nicholls provided details, times, ranges, target types, the locations where each panzer had been hit. The officer took notes, thanked him, left. Nicholls went back to work on the crusader suspension. He didn’t think about recognition or medals or generals.

He thought about the next time he’d face German tanks because there would be a next time. Raml wasn’t finished. The Africa Corps would attack again. What Nicholls didn’t know was that his name was already moving through the command structure. Montgomery had made his decision. The corporal who’ knocked out nine panzers in one morning deserved recognition. The paperwork for a military medal was being prepared.

and Montgomery himself would deliver the congratulations personally. But first, the Eighth Army had to survive the next German offensive because Raml was about to launch his final attempt to break through to Alexandria. The Africa Corps attacked again on August 30th, the Battle of Alam Halfa.

Raml’s last offensive attempt to reach the Nile Delta. The Ninth Lancers were back in action, their crusaders positioned on the southern flank. Nicholls was in his gunner seat. Same tank, same crew, different battlefield. The pattern repeated itself. German panzers advancing across open desert. British tanks fighting from defensive positions. Artillery hammering both sides. By September 5th, Raml had been stopped again. His fuel situation was critical.

His supply lines from Tripoli stretched over a thousand miles. The Royal Navy and Royal Air Force were sinking his supply convoys in the Mediterranean. The Africa Corps was running out of time. Nicholls added two more confirmed kills to his record at Alam Halfa. A Panzer 3 and a Panzer 4, both at close range, both using the same patient hunting techniques that had worked at Ruisat.

His total stood at 11 confirmed enemy tanks destroyed. Some sources would later claim he achieved many more, but Nicholls only counted the kills that could be verified through official reports. In midepptember, the ninth Lancers pulled back from the front line. New equipment was arriving in Egypt. Americanbuilt Sherman tanks.

The Crusaders had done their job, but they were obsolete. The Sherman carried a 75mm gun that could actually penetrate German armor at range. Better protection, more reliable. The crews would finally have a tank that could fight panzers on equal terms. Nichols and his crew trained on the Sherman. The gun was completely different from the two-pounder. More powerful, longer range, different ballistics.

Nicholls had to relearn his gunnery skills. The patience and timing remained the same, but everything else changed. He adapted. Good gunners always adapted. On October 15th, 1942, Nicholls received orders to report to Eighth Army headquarters. He arrived to find several other soldiers waiting. An officer explained they were being recognized for exceptional performance in recent battles.

General Montgomery would personally congratulate each of them. Montgomery appeared at 1,400 hours. The general moved down the line of soldiers, speaking briefly to each one. When he reached Nicholls, Montgomery stopped. The general knew the details. Nine enemy tanks destroyed on July 3rd at Ruisat Ridge. An extraordinary achievement.

Montgomery shook Nicholls hand, told him the eighth army needed more soldiers like him. Men who could take inferior equipment and still defeat the enemy through skill and determination. The encounter lasted perhaps 90 seconds, but it meant something. The commanding general of the entire eighth army had taken time to recognize a corporal from the ninth lancers. Word spread through the regiment.

Nicholls became known as the best shot in second armored brigade. He didn’t let it affect his work. Tank gunnery was about consistency, not reputation. Every engagement was different. Every target presented unique challenges. Pride got crews killed in the desert. Overconfidence led to mistakes. Nicholls stayed focused on fundamentals. Identify target. Judge range. Wait for the right moment. Fire.

The military medal came through in late October. The citation specifically mentioned the nine confirmed kills on July 3rd. Nicholls received the medal during a brief ceremony at regimenal headquarters. He pinned it to his uniform and went back to training on the Sherman. The second battle of Elamagne was scheduled to begin on October 23rd.

The Ninth Lancers would be in the thick of it. Montgomery’s plan for Elamneagne was methodical. Overwhelming artillery barrage, infantry breakthrough, armor exploitation. The Eighth Army had superiority in numbers. More tanks, more guns, more men. This time, Raml wouldn’t escape. Nicholls checked his Sherman’s gun one final time.

On October 22nd, the 75mm was properly calibrated, sights aligned, ammunition loaded. His crew was ready. The tank was ready. Tomorrow night, the largest artillery barrage in North African history would announce the beginning of the end for the Africa Corps. And somewhere in the German positions, enemy gunners were making their own preparations, checking their own guns, loading their own ammunition, preparing to kill British tankers.

The Sherman was better than the Crusader, but it could still burn. And Nicholls knew that in the chaos of armored combat, skill only improved your odds. It didn’t guarantee survival. The artillery barrage began at 2140 on October 23rd. 900 British guns opened fire simultaneously. The sound was overwhelming. Continuous thunder rolling across the desert.

Shells screamed overhead toward German positions. The barrage lasted 20 minutes. Then the infantry went forward. Nicholls and the Ninth Lancers waited. Montgomery’s plan called for infantry to breach the German minefields first. clear lanes for the armor.

Then the Shermans would push through and engage the panzers in the open desert beyond. The plan was methodical, careful, completely unlike the chaotic battles of earlier months. The breakthrough took longer than expected. German defenses were deep. Minefields stretched for miles. Italian and German infantry fought stubbornly from prepared positions. The British infantry took heavy casualties clearing the way. By October 26th, the armor still hadn’t broken through.

Montgomery adjusted. He shifted the axis of attack, concentrated force on a narrow front. The ninth Lancers moved to new positions. On November 2nd, the final assault began. Operation Supercharge. The Shermans rolled forward through the cleared lanes in the minefields. Nicholls was back in action. The fighting at Second L Alamagne was different from Ruisat. The Sherman’s 75mm gun changed everything.

Nicholls could engage German tanks at 600 yd with reasonable chance of penetration. He didn’t have to wait for knife fighting range anymore. The improved armor meant the Sherman could absorb hits that would have destroyed a Crusader. But German gunners adapted, too. They targeted the Sherman’s weak points, the hull sides, the turret ring, the ammunition storage.

The Sherman had a deadly flaw. Its ammunition was stored in sponssons on the hull sides. A penetrating hit often ignited the ammunition. British crews called burning Shermans Ronssons after the cigarette lighter. One strike and they light. Nicholls added three more confirmed kills during the breakthrough.

German Panzer 4s and an Italian medium tank. The details blurred together. Target, range, fire, move, repeat. The regiment’s history recorded his achievements, but Nichols stopped counting after Ruat. The numbers didn’t matter anymore. Survival mattered. Keeping his crew alive mattered. By November 4th, the Africa Corps was in full retreat. Raml had lost the battle.

Lost Egypt. The German tanks that survived were withdrawing westward across Libya, pursued by British armor and hammered by the desert air force. The tide had turned in North Africa. The Ninth Lancers pursued the retreating Germans across hundreds of miles of desert through Tbrook, past Benghazi, all the way to Tunisia. The campaign dragged on through winter and into spring.

By May 1943, all Axis forces in North Africa had surrendered. Over 250,000 German and Italian soldiers became prisoners of war. Nichols survived the entire North African campaign. His crew survived. The same men who’d fought beside him at Rouesad in that thin-kinned crusader were still with him when the Africa Corps surrendered.

extraordinary luck in a theater where crew casualties ran over 50% for British armor. The regiment shipped to Italy in mid 1944. Different terrain, mountains instead of desert, villages instead of open sand. The Sherman was less effective in the narrow Italian roads and steep hillsides.

Tank combat became a close-range affair again. Ambushes, sudden engagements, high losses. Nicholls continued fighting. the Gothic line, the crossing of the Leone River, the final push to the Po Valley in spring 1945. His confirmed kill total grew, though exact numbers from the Italian campaign were never precisely documented. Some regimenal sources claimed he destroyed over 40 enemy tanks total. Others stuck with the verified minimum of 13.

On May 2nd, 1945, German forces in Italy surrendered. The war in Europe ended six days later. Nicholls had survived 5 years of combat. From the desperate defense of Egypt to the final victory in northern Italy, he’d fought in two different tanks across two different theaters against one of history’s most formidable military forces. The regiment demobilized in late 1945.

Nichols returned to England to civilian life to the countryside where he’d learned to shoot as a young poacher. The skills that had made him deadly with a rifle had translated to tank gunnery. and those skills had helped save Egypt when it mattered most. Alfie Nichols never spoke much about the war. Men of his generation rarely did.

He returned to the English countryside and went back to work. The marksmanship that had made him the ninth Lancer’s best gunner remained, but he used it for hunting again, not poaching this time, legal shooting. The skills that had destroyed nine German panzers in one morning now brought home rabbits and feeasants for the family table. He married, raised children, lived a quiet life far from the desert battlefields where he’d fought.

Neighbors knew he’d served in North Africa and Italy. Some knew about the military medal. Very few knew about July 3rd, 1942. About Ruizat Ridge, about the morning a corporal in a Crusader tank had accomplished something extraordinary. The 9inth Lancers amalgamated with the 12th Royal Lancers in 1960, forming the 9th 12th Royal Lancers.

The combined regiment preserved the histories of both units. Nichls achievement at Ruisat was recorded in the official regimental history. Nine confirmed enemy tanks destroyed in one engagement, a record that stood for the entire North African campaign. Those who met Nicholls in his later years described him as unassuming, modest, a man who’d done something remarkable, but never considered himself remarkable. He’d simply done his job.

Aimed carefully, fired when the target presented itself. survived when many others didn’t. The fact that General Montgomery had personally congratulated him seemed less important to Nicholls than the fact that his crew had made it through the war alive. The crews who hadn’t made it were never far from his thoughts.

The loader from Sea Squadron who died when his crusader brewed up at 0620 on July 3rd. The 139th Lancers crews killed during the retreat from Gazala. the men who’d fought beside him at Alam Hala and Elmagne and across Libya and into Italy, the ones who came home and the ones who didn’t. Tank warfare in the Second World War was brutal. Crews fought in steel boxes that could become ovens if penetrated.

The British started the North African campaign with inferior tanks and had to compensate through skill and courage. Men like Nicholls made that possible. They took equipment that the Germans called tin cans and found ways to destroy panzers. Anyway, Nicholls passed away decades after the war ended. His obituary mentioned his service with the Ninth Lancers, the military medal, his role in the North African and Italian campaigns, but the details of July 3rd, 1942 remained largely unknown outside military history circles. the morning when a 24year-old corporal had used a

two-pounder gun and hunting instincts to achieve nine confirmed kills against superior German armor. If this story moved you the way it moved us, do me a favor, hit that like button. Every single like tells YouTube to show this story to more people. Hit subscribe and turn on notifications.

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