MEDJEZ-EL-BAB, TUNISIA
MAY 7, 1943
Private William Haroldson checked his watch and felt nauseous: 4:40 A.M.—five minutes to zero. He tightened the chin strap of his pith helmet, leaned back against the inside of the Bedford, and let the heavy vibration of the idling engine spread throughout his body. He and fifteen other members of the British Eleventh Hussars Regiment sat knee to knee inside the canopied cargo bay of the sweltering truck, part of a mile-long column of tanks, armored cars, and personnel transports of the Seventh Armored Division, idling in the darkness thirty miles southwest of Tunis.
The muffled shouts of sergeants outside the vehicle suddenly grew louder. There was a loud slap on the truck door, and a deep voice from outside bellowed, “Go, go, go!” With a horrific gnashing of gears, the Bedford lurched forward toward the German line.
As the truck bounced along the desert road, a lance corporal sitting across from William motioned for him to do something with his rifle. William didn’t understand. “What?” he asked above the roar of the engine.
Annoyed, the more experienced soldier grabbed the rifle from between William’s legs, yanked the bolt mechanism backward, and pressed it forward with a metallic ka-chink. Then he reached into his own ammunition pouch and retrieved a single .303-caliber round. He quickly ejected the ten-round charger from William’s rifle, added the additional bullet, and pressed the charger back into place. He handed the rifle back to William, barrel up. “Ten in the charger, one in the chamber,” he shouted in a thick Manchester accent.
William nodded.
“The Bosche are waiting for us down there, mate,” said the lance corporal. “You’d better be ready.”
William nodded again.
“This is it, boys,” yelled William’s squad leader as the rickety Bedford bumped and pitched its way down from the high ground at Medjez-el-Bab to the desert floor below. “Heads low.”
William slinked down as low as he could, until his helmet was clanking hard against the metal wall of the truck bed. A solitary thought was reverberating in his mind: I don’t want to die.
The first enemy blast came just minutes later—a thundering ka-pow that lifted the truck’s rear wheels off the ground and shredded its canvas canopy. The powerful concussion left William gasping for air, his ears ringing painfully. The truck slammed down with a gut-wrenching impact, and all sixteen men inside flew around like toy soldiers, banging heads, limbs, and rifles. Miraculously, the truck restarted and began accelerating again. William scampered back to his seat, clutching his rifle. He could hear the rat-tat-tat of the gunner in the cab firing his heavy Bren—a tripod-mounted machine gun. The Germans were close.
Another explosion. The troop carrier lurched violently to the left as sand and rocks sprayed into the cargo compartment through the torn canopy. The Bren gunner was still firing rounds in a mechanical staccato, rat-tat-tat-tat, as the transport slid to an abrupt halt.
“Out!” screamed the squad leader. William followed his comrades as they scrambled with their weapons out of the back of the truck and onto the sandy road. The sun was just breaking the horizon, illuminating the eastern sky in a brilliant orange.
Suddenly, there was automatic gunfire from behind, and a young man next to William—an eighteen-year-old private just like him—grunted loudly and fell to the sand with several bullet holes in his back.
“Behind the truck!” screamed the squad leader before he, too, was cut down by a storm of German bullets.
Frantic, William ducked low and followed his squad mates off the road and behind the Bedford. Bullets were slamming hard into the other side of the truck as William flattened to the ground. From his new vantage point beneath the truck, he could see the source of the bullets. A German Panzer tank was approaching fast from the south, its small front portal flickering with muzzle flashes. At the top of the Bedford, the Bren gunner was still firing a steady stream of British bullets, but to no avail. The Nazi tank was invulnerable.
William watched in horror as the massive Panzer stopped short, pivoted, and trained its long barrel directly on the Bedford. Somebody shouted, “Run!” But before William could even lift himself off the ground, a tremendous explosion blasted sand and heat into his face, temporarily blinding him. Instinctively, he buried his face in his arm. When he looked up, he was surprised to see the German tank in flames, the apparent victim of a smaller British Crusader tank, now visible through the smoke of the wreckage.
The lance corporal from Manchester was first to his feet. “Back in the truck,” he shouted to the other men. “Now!” As the men clambered back into the truck, more German Panzers were exploding in the crossfire between two columns of British tanks, which were closing together like pincers.
They’d broken the German line.
By the time William’s regiment reached the outskirts of Tunis late in the afternoon, Rommel had already surrendered to the Allies.
William’s regiment entered the eastern sector of the city, where the process of disarming and interning tens of thousands of dispirited German and Italian troops was already in full swing. William’s squad was assigned to “the medina”—the old quarter of Tunis—a byzantine patchwork of cobblestone streets, open-air souks, and ancient buildings. Their orders were to clear every building to ensure that no enemy holdouts were lurking inside.
“Come on, mate,” said the lance corporal from Manchester, slapping William on the back as he walked past. William had stopped momentarily to take in the impressive view along the Rue de la Kasbah, a palm-lined promenade that cut through the heart of the medina. He had read about Tunis as part of his Roman history lessons, his favorite subject in school. Here, in 255 B.C., the Carthaginians had defeated the mighty Roman army in the Battle of Tunis, using thousands of cavalry and Nubian elephants under the command of Xanthippus, a Greek mercenary. Beneath the swaying palm trees of the Rue de la Kasbah, William imagined Xanthippus parading his elephant army triumphantly through the streets of Carthage.
“Let’s go,” shouted Manchester, motioning with his arm. William caught up with him, and the pair continued walking along the Rue de la Kasbah toward the towering edifice at the end of the street.
“Would you look at that?” said Manchester as they approached the massive building.
“It’s a mosque,” William said. “You can tell from the minaret.” He pointed to the ornately decorated square tower that rose high above the rest of the building. The exterior walls of the sprawling mosque were colonnaded in a Romanesque style, enclosing more than an acre of space within.
“Strangest mosque I’ve ever seen,” said the lance corporal.
William studied the crude city map that his platoon commander had given him. “Says here it’s the Great Mosque of Al-Zaytuna. Actually, I’ve heard of it before.”
“You don’t say.”
“I remember reading about a famous mosque in Tunis that served as a major university in the Middle Ages. I think this is it.”
Manchester eyed him curiously. “A history buff, are you?”
William nodded. “My father teaches history at Clifton College.”
Manchester smirked, apparently amused by that fact. Then he slung his rifle over his shoulder and started off toward the mosque. “Come on, then.”
The two soldiers reached the Al-Zaytuna mosque and entered the long portico that extended the entire length of the west side of the building. The arched portico was supported by dozens of ornate Roman columns, which the builders of the mosque had salvaged twelve hundred years earlier from the ruins of Carthage, just across Lake Tunis to the east.
They approached the first heavy wooden door and exchanged glances. Slowly, Manchester pushed the door open with a squeak, and the pair entered the mosque with rifles at the ready. After passing through a narrow archway, they entered a vast courtyard, covering nearly three-quarters of an acre, with a large fountain in the middle. In the fading twilight, William could just barely make out the red-and-white geometric pattern of the tile pavers covering the ground.
“Over there,” said Manchester quietly. He nodded toward an open door in the northeast corner of the courtyard, which led into a portion of the building near the minaret.
William peered in that direction and saw the faint glow of candlelight emanating from the doorway. Someone was inside, in violation of the citywide curfew. Before William could say anything, Manchester was already on the move. William caught up with him a few steps later, and the two made their way across the courtyard and took up positions on either side of the open doorway. There, they readied their rifles. William gripped his with two sweaty hands.
“Hear that?” Manchester whispered.
Through the open doorway, William could hear a sharp, metal-on-metal sound repeating in rapid succession. Chink. Chink. Chink. It stopped for a moment, then resumed. Chink. Chink. Chink. Chink.
Manchester stepped quietly through the open doorway. William took a deep breath and followed, his stomach churning, in knots. He didn’t like this one bit.
They now stood at one end of a long hallway with narrow windows on the exterior side facing the darkening sky. At the other end of the hallway, a horseshoe-shaped archway framed a set of descending stairs. The flickering candlelight and the metallic noise were coming from down the stairs. Manchester pressed his finger to his lips and silently mouthed, “Shhh.” Then he started cautiously down the hallway toward the stairs with William following close behind.
The noise continued in periodic spurts. Chink. Chink. Chink.
They passed through the horseshoe-shaped archway and stopped at the top of the stairs. Manchester motioned for William to stay put, then pointed to his eyes and the hallway behind them, signaling to keep a lookout behind us.
William nodded and watched as the lance corporal descended the steps to a landing about six feet below, turned, and disappeared around the corner. It was at that moment that William realized something awful.
The metallic noise had stopped.
That thought had no sooner crossed William’s mind when chaos suddenly erupted below. He heard Manchester shout, “What the f—!” followed immediately by scrapes, thumps, and grunts, and then a strange gurgling noise. These noises echoed loudly throughout the stone stairwell.
William hesitated for just a moment. Then he bounded down the stairs, rounded the corner at the landing, and stopped dead in his tracks when he saw the gruesome spectacle below him. Manchester was lying faceup at the bottom of the stairs, his throat slit wide open from ear to ear, his body writhing as blood gushed from his neck in all directions.
William recoiled in horror, his heart nearly bursting through his chest. At the edge of his vision, he saw something moving away in the room beyond. Someone, or something, had just ducked out of sight.
Panicked, William clambered down the steps and dropped to one knee beside his comrade’s body. “Oh, God,” he whispered, not knowing what to do. The lance corporal’s spasms continued for several seconds, then faded and finally stopped. He was dead.
Terrified, William scanned the room for any movement. Nothing. Everything was still now.
The room, which appeared to be a meditation or prayer hall of some sort, was a large rectangular space with two rows of six marble columns supporting the ceiling in a network of symmetrical arches. A massive brass candelabra hung low in the center of the room, bathing the columned space in dancing yellow light. The floor was an intricate mosaic of red, black, and white stones arranged in a traditional Arabic pattern of intertwining geometric shapes.
William’s training had not prepared him for this. He had to get help. He stood to leave, but something in the room suddenly caught his eye. On the far side of the room, in an alcove partially obscured by one of the marble columns, an old wooden ladder was propped up against the wall. William leveled his rifle and took one cautious step into the room to get a better view. He could now see a chisel and hammer on the floor near the ladder, surrounded by a white circle of debris. His eyes followed the ladder to the wall, where someone had chiseled out a small hole just above the keystone of the arched alcove. Strange.
Suddenly, there was motion nearby.
William turned to see a uniformed Nazi officer charging out of the shadows a few yards away, shrieking and wielding a bloody dagger above his head.
William backpedaled but immediately found himself pinned against the stone wall adjacent to the stairwell. He struggled to get his rifle into firing position as the Nazi attacker bore down on him like a crazed animal. In a panic, William squeezed the trigger of his rifle without aiming. A deafening shot exploded out of the barrel and ricocheted off a nearby column.
He’d missed.
The Nazi officer paused for a second, curled his lips into a mocking smile, then moved in for the kill.
William fumbled the bolt lever of his rifle upward and cycled it rapidly back and forth as the Nazi officer lunged savagely at him with his dagger. Squeeze the trigger! The dagger flashed past William’s eyes at the exact moment he fired his weapon, again without aiming.
The report of the rifle echoed throughout the columned space. But this time, there was no ricochet.
The Nazi officer stumbled backward as the .303-caliber bullet tore into his stomach, the sharp tip of his swastika-emblazoned dagger just barely missing William’s chest. To William’s amazement, the man regained his footing a few feet away and slowly stood upright. A widening circle of blood was already soaking through his olive drab tunic. Wincing in pain, the man muttered something in German and began advancing unsteadily toward William, the dagger held feebly in one hand.
William frantically chambered another round and stared in disbelief as the bloodied German officer stumbled toward him. What was wrong with him? With no other option, William fired another bullet into the man’s torso at close range. The officer’s eyes bulged as he absorbed the impact of the second shot and retreated backward several steps. He wavered on shaky legs for a moment, then crumpled to the floor.
William stood for several seconds with his back against the wall, trembling and hyperventilating. His ears were ringing loudly, but from somewhere outside, he could hear distant voices yelling in English. His platoon mates had apparently heard the gunshots and were on their way.
William gawked at the dead Nazi officer on the floor. The man was still gripping the dagger in one hand. A pool of blood was spreading out around his body, onto the mosaic floor. William glanced up at the chiseled hole in the wall and wondered what this was all about. Haltingly, he approached and used his foot to roll the man over onto his back. The dead man’s face was thin and clean shaven, his wire-rimmed glasses broken and askew. He looked intelligent, as if he could have been a college professor somewhere. What was he doing in this mosque? Surely he must have known that Rommel had surrendered to the Allies.
William spotted a prominent lump in the front pocket of the man’s bloody tunic, and he cautiously crouched down and retrieved an object from inside. It felt strange between his fingers. As he held it up to the candlelight, he saw that it was a jagged black stone, about two inches in diameter, with an irregular shape and a bit of mortar debris still clinging to its edges. He placed the object in the palm of his other hand and gasped at the resulting phenomenon. Impossible!
Just then there were heavy footsteps in the hallway upstairs.
“British army!” someone yelled from above. “Announce yourself.”
William’s heart skipped a beat. He quickly rose to his feet and shoved the mysterious object into his pocket. “P-P-Private William Haroldson,” he yelled back. “Eleventh Hussars, second platoon, first squad.”
There was a pause. “Is the area secure, Private?” shouted the voice.
William looked around at the two dead bodies on the floor. “Yes,” he answered. “But we need a corpsman.”