The training had been intense. All through those first weeks of October, they had operated together as a division, practising minefield penetration, clearing gaps, marking passages, how to emerge and disperse once through to the other side. The tanks – new Shermans, as well as Grants and Crusaders – gave demonstrations of using new armour-piercing and high-explosive rounds. Tanner had been impressed. Around them, signallers had continued to lay thousands of miles of wire, while at night, a near constant stream of supplies had headed past them towards the front. Tanner had never seen anything like it.
He and Sykes had finally been sent on a five-day six-pounder gun course, like everyone else. Not every platoon in the company had been converted to six-pounders; some remained as rifle platoons in their trucks and carriers, but everyone had been taught gunnery. No six-pounder in the 2nd Battalion would ever stop firing for lack of men who knew what to do. And when Tanner and Sykes had rejoined the company, they had travelled up to the front through concentrations of dummy lorries, tanks and guns – wooden boxes painted and camouflaged. They had been amazed. The attention to detail, the sheer logistical effort, had been impressive. The Rangers had even been given ropes to drag from their trucks, then sent down to the southern end of the line, stirring up huge clouds of dust and sand as they went, simulating the build-up of forces to the south, rather than the north.
Whether all this bluff and effort had fooled the enemy, Tanner had no idea, but he had watched the growing confidence of the men. The mere thought of pulling the wool over German and Italian eyes had given them a lift.
It was now just after five in the afternoon. Three hours to go. He had stripped and cleaned his weapons three times already; he could not do so again. The boys were quiet and withdrawn. It had been good, he thought, to have had more than a month back with the company. That fortnight with C Detachment had seemed longer than it had been, and when he’d returned there had been a few new faces. Smailes had been posted home, his replacement at Company HQ a young lad from Manchester, called Peck. Tanner had also been conscious that he had left to join Vaughan under something of a cloud, yet on his return there had been no further mention of his dust-up with the Rutland Yeomanry. All had seemingly been forgotten. Perhaps it had been just as well that Sykes had rejoined the battalion a couple of days before him. By the time Tanner had arrived, the news of their achievements in Tobruk had gone round not only A Company but the entire battalion. He was not a man to brag, but on this occasion, his friend’s big mouth had done him a favour.
Tanner now looked around the company, the men sitting on or standing beside their vehicles. The Bedfords and carriers had been joined by Austin gun portees, the six-pounders already positioned on the backs. Tanner patted his kit, then decided to go for a wander. Check the men. Some were writing letters, others standing around brew cans, smoking. He spotted McAllister.
‘How are you, Mac?’
‘All right, sir. Just wish we could get on with it now. It feels big this time, don’t it?’
‘Does a bit.’
‘I don’t mind admitting I’m nervy.’
‘We’ll be fine. Those Jerries and Eyeties won’t know what’s hit them.’
They both looked up at a jeep speeding towards them. As it got nearer, it seemed to be heading straight for A Company.
‘Well, blow me,’ muttered Tanner, stepping towards it.
As it drew up, Alex Vaughan said, ‘Evening, Jack. Everything all right here?’
‘Everyone’s a bit twitchy but, yes, I think so,’ he said. ‘How are you, Alex?’
‘All right. Busy, as you can imagine.’ They had only seen each other a few times since Tanja’s murder. Tanner had been fortunate. He had suffered concussion and a gash on his head, but after a few stitches and an extra day’s leave, he had returned to the desert. Vaughan had been posted immediately to Eighth Army Headquarters.
Vaughan stepped out of the jeep and took the cigarette Tanner offered. ‘I never thought I’d say this,’ he remarked, ‘but this battle has been a Godsend. A bloody selfish thing to admit, I know, but I’ve barely had a moment to think since I got back out here. It’s been good for me. Taken my mind off things.’
‘I can’t tell you how many times I’ve run that evening over in my mind,’ Tanner told him. ‘I’ve really tried to remember, but all I can see in my mind’s eye is that gloved fist and a dark shape, nothing more. I can’t believe that bastard’s still out there.’
‘I don’t know that he’ll ever be caught now. People have other things to think about.’ He glanced at Tanner. ‘You and I have other things on our minds.’
Tanner nodded thoughtfully. ‘How’s the chief?’
‘Very chipper. Exuding plenty of confidence. He thinks it’ll be a tough fight, but I don’t think he has any doubt whatsoever about the outcome.’
Tanner smiled wryly. ‘I should bloody well hope not, with the build of forces we’ve got. But how many of us are left at the end of it – well, that’s another matter.’
‘I know. The tension is extraordinary. I’ve been visiting units all day and everyone’s nerves are taut as hell.’ Vaughan flicked away his cigarette. ‘I must dash.’ He held out his hand. ‘Good luck, Jack. And when this is all over, let’s try and get that evil bastard. I can’t think of it out here, but I’m certain there’s something – some clue – that can help us nail him.’
‘All right,’ agreed Tanner. ‘We both owe her that.’
Vaughan sped off again and Tanner went to Peploe’s truck. He found the captain looking again at his marked-up map, an enlarged sheet of the northern part of the line. They had all known for some days what the battle plan was and their own role in it. Montgomery had personally briefed every officer down to lieutenant colonel, which had included Colonel Vigar. He had briefed his own officers in the mess tent, complete with swagger stick as his pointer and a large map hung at one end.
Montgomery, he assured them, was certainly not ‘shilly-shallying’ about. ‘His message to us was crystal clear,’ he told them. ‘That we stand here and fight until we have won. The Army Commander is of the view that the only way to win the war is by killing Germans. He didn’t mention Italians, but I’m sure he meant them too.’ There had been a ripple of laughter at that. ‘In any case, I agree with him entirely. He says the battle will be hard fought, believes it will last about a week, but that our tails are up, and that he fully expects us to hit Rommel for six, right out of Africa.’
Vigar had cleared his throat. ‘So: to the plan,’ he had said. ‘We’re going to make two big punches, one in the south, which will effectively be a feint, and one in the north – here.’ He prodded the Miteiriya Ridge with his stick. It was a long, low feature that ran diagonally north-westwards five miles to the west of the El Alamein railway stop. ‘The problem, as you well know, is that we’ve both been laying staggering numbers of mines. The Hun and Eyetie minefields are marshes of the bloody things, as much as three miles thick in places. It’s no problem for the infantry because there’s hardly an anti-personnel mine out there, but it’s a bugger for our armour. So here’s what we’re going to do. XXX Corps is going to make the initial punch. Four infantry divisions – the Aussies, the new boys, the 51st Highland, then the Kiwis and the Boks – will attack along a ten-mile front, with the aim of reaching an imaginary objective just beyond the enemy minefields, which he’s calling “Oxalic” here.’ He ran his stick along a line marked in red on the map. ‘Within this ten-mile front, the sappers are going to clear two corridors, here and here.’ Two more taps on the map: the first corridor cut across the Miteiriya Ridge; the other lay a couple of miles further north.
‘These,’ he continued, ‘will each contain three eight-yard-wide lanes, which the sappers will clear and through which our armour in X Corps will pass to debouch behind the enemy’s main front line. Now, I realize that’s barely going to be wide enough to swing a cat, but for obvious reasons, our sappers need to work under the cover of darkness. We cannot expect them to clear
more than that in one night. The plan is then to widen them each to sixteen yards. I should also add that the operation through the minefields will be preceded by a barrage from nearly a thousand guns and a sustained, concentrated assault from our air forces that will begin tomorrow, the twenty-first of October. Everyone clear so far?’ A few nods and yes-sirs.
‘Good, because here’s where we come in. We are, as you know, now part of 1st Armoured Division, the exploitation or strike force. Along with our cousins in 2nd Rifle Brigade, we are to be the Minefield Task Force. And what does that mean? It means we are to protect the sappers during their mine-lifting operations. They will be leading the clearance of the lanes through the enemy minefields and we will be with them, at the very van of the advance.’
There had been a few groans.
‘It’s an honour,’ Vigar had continued, raising his hands to silence the dissenters. ‘We are to clear any pockets of resistance bypassed or left behind by the advancing infantry, in our case the Jocks in 51st Highland.’ He now drew three lanes on a blackboard that stood beside the map. ‘The three lanes in the northern corridor are to be codenamed Sun, Moon and Star, and these will be indicated by posts into which will be put a flimsy-can lightshade, with the relevant shape of each lane stamped in the tin.’ Vigar then told them the other codewords, which were to be given when the lanes had reached the required width and various levels of penetration. ‘If the Minefield Task Force becomes engaged by the enemy during this process and progress is halted, the codeword “Sanctimonious” should be issued. This will mean, “Brigade engaged by enemy – cannot push on”. I know it’s a lot to take in, but in the next few days, I need you all to study the plans in detail. Mark up your maps, make a note of the codewords and learn ’em so that you know it all like clockwork.’
Soon after, they had been dismissed.
‘A bit bloody optimistic, isn’t it?’ Tanner had said to Peploe, as they’d walked back to the company. ‘I mean, how many bloody vehicles are they trying to put through just twenty-four yards?’
‘Barely more than a cricket pitch,’ Peploe had replied. ‘Perhaps you should take it up with Monty. He seems to like his cricket analogies.’
Since then, Peploe, Tanner and the other officers in the company had worked hard to drum the plan and its details into every single man. The attack was coming, everyone knew it, but no one could say for certain when it would take place. Not until the previous evening, Thursday, 22 October, had the order of the day been issued. Late in the afternoon, Peploe had been summoned to see Vigar.
‘D’you reckon this is it?’ Sykes had asked Tanner, as Peploe had hurried to the battalion commander’s tent.
‘Odds on,’ said Tanner. ‘Moon’s full enough.’
Peploe had reappeared a short while later and had then called the entire company around him. Speaking from the body of his truck, he had told them that tomorrow evening, 23 October, the battle would commence.
‘I’m going to read out the order of the day from the Army Commander,’ he had said. ‘It won’t take long. He says: “One. Our mandate is to destroy Rommel. Two. We are ready now. Three. Every officer and man should enter battle to see it through – to fight, to kill, to win. Four. The sooner we win this battle, the sooner we will get back home. Five. Let no man surrender as long as he is unwounded and can fight.”’ Peploe had folded away the thin piece of paper. ‘That’s it. We’ll be moving up to our start positions at twenty hundred. Those in carriers will remain in their vehicles, the rest of us, I’m afraid, will be on foot.’ A collective groan. ‘Chaps, I know you’re all brave men, and I know you’ll all do me, Old Man Vigar and this fine regiment of ours proud. It’s a privilege to be your company commander, and I know this will soon be one of the finest victories in our long history. Good luck to all of you. Let’s fight together, for one another and for all those back home. These are great days, and years from now we’ll look back and be proud we played such a key part in one of the finest victories in Britain’s long, noble history.’
The men had spontaneously raised their arms and cheered, and Tanner had been surprised by how moved he felt.
‘Well done, sir,’ he had said to Peploe.
‘Didn’t think it was overly Churchillian? I got a bit carried away.’
Tanner had laughed. ‘No, I liked it. So did the boys.’
Twenty-four very long hours had passed since then, and now, as Tanner joined Peploe by the bonnet of the truck, he looked down at the lines and markings on the map, then back up at the mass of vehicles and the vast expanse of desert ahead of them. Up there was the battlefield, and for all the talk, for all the confidence, for all the carefully prepared lines on a map, he’d been fighting in the desert long enough to know that, in a few hours’ time, it would be mayhem out there. Absolute bloody mayhem.
At long last they were on the move. The RAF had been flying over all day, hammering the enemy positions, and they continued to do so now. Dull explosions flashed, the glow already filtered by the haze and smoke of earlier bombing. Ordered out of the transport, they had been led towards the Sun track, already marked, a dotted, rather mesmeric trail through their own minefield, which had been cleared by the sappers over the previous evenings. To his amazement, Tanner saw that every ten yards or so, there was a post at either side of the eight-yard gap from which shone an oil lamp. And cut into every single shade was a circle, denoting the sun, while below, stretching across the vetch and sand, there ran a strip of white tape.
‘Who the hell did all this?’ asked Sykes, as they walked forward beside the carriers. ‘It goes on for bleedin’ ever.’
The desert here was about as flat as could be, and the twin lines of lights appeared to mark an infinite avenue into the unknown. ‘God knows, Stan,’ said Tanner, ‘but there must be thousands of them. The wonders of the British Army, eh?’
At just before nine o’clock, they reached no man’s land. Directly ahead of them, the sappers moved forward in their trucks and jeeps, still at walking pace as they hammered more posts along the white tape left as a trail by the advancing infantry. Here, on the southern side of the northern corridor, no man’s land was a little over two miles wide.
Already men were coughing and spluttering at the dust. The noise of hammering and the rumble and squeak of tracks was continuous, but there was an absence of small-arms fire.
‘Sir,’ said Phyllis, having recovered from a coughing fit. ‘I don’t feel that scared any more.’
‘Glad to hear it, Siff.’
‘I think it was all the hanging around. But now we’ve started it’s not so bad, is it?’
‘We’re doing all right at the moment,’ Tanner replied.
‘Just you wait, Siff,’ said Hepworth. ‘When we hit their minefields that’s when the fun and games’ll begin.’
Tanner glanced at his watch. He could just see the luminous dials. Twenty to ten. No sooner had he done so than a flash of what seemed like sheet lightning streaked across the sky behind them, and then, a moment later, there was a deafening eruption of noise as more than nine hundred and fifty guns opened fire all along the line. Shock-waves pulsed through the ground as hundreds of shells screamed and hurtled over them, exploding in a series of dull-orange waves a few miles ahead.
Amid this numbing din, the Rangers continued forward, following the sappers as they began clearing the lanes at the beginning of the enemy minefield. Tracer ahead, soundless above the racket of the barrage, as the enemy machine-gunners opened fire and the Highlanders returned their own. Flares were being sent into the sky and now Tanner could see the Highlanders pressing forward, spread out, silhouetted like spectres.
As the gunners’ loading rhythm changed, the sky became a kaleidoscope of flickering colour. A quarter of an hour later, there was a sudden pause. Now the small-arms fire ahead could be heard. Flashes of light, tracer zipping across the open battlefield, yet so far the Rangers had been kept clear of the fight. Tanner felt strangely untouchable as he walked slowly beside one of the c
arriers.
Counter-battery fire was screaming over their heads, but a few minutes later, their own began again as the artillery switched to a rolling barrage before the advancing infantry. Again, the ground trembled beneath them, while between the scream of shells, they heard the RAF once more, the imperturbables taking over the role of bombarding the enemy’s gun positions.
Something seemed to have gone wrong. Progress had ground to a halt. In the lanes at the edge of no man’s land, the sappers’ vehicles had stopped.
‘What’s going on, sir?’ Tanner shouted up to Peploe, in one of the carriers.
‘Haven’t a clue. Bradshaw’s been told nothing over the R/T. Will you go and have a dekko?’
Tanner hurried forward, following the line of lamps, but the sappers could say only that they’d been told to hold firm for the moment.
‘Were you given a reason?’ he asked.
‘Not really,’ replied a captain. ‘Only that there’s been a problem with the Star lane and all the traffic going through there has had to be diverted down Moon and then cross over.’ He glanced towards it, but they could see nothing in the haze, only hear the low rumble of tanks and the squeak of tracks through the din of the bombardment.
‘Well, that doesn’t stop us pressing forward, does it?’ Tanner asked.
‘It shouldn’t do, but orders are orders.’
‘For God’s sake!’ said Tanner. ‘This is madness. It’s already a stiff enough task as it is without any sodding delays.’
The captain shrugged. ‘“Ours not to reason why, ours but to do or die.”’
As Tanner headed back, cursing, he saw one of the carriers, losing patience, venture out of the lane and promptly hit a mine. There was a flash, the vehicle seemed to jolt into the air, then landed again, its right track blasted apart and useless. The men seemed to be all right, but Tanner hurried over and yelled at them. ‘You bloody idiots! Stay on the sodding lane!’
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