The Last Great Cavalryman

by Richard Mead

  This was a minor victory in what Dick was fast recognizing was an impotent role. Although he was invited to attend the C-in-C’s major conferences he was not a member of the inner circle, which was dominated not by Corbett but by an increasingly influential Dorman-Smith, and Dick’s views were often disregarded. On the family side letters from Lettice arrived infrequently, although the Duke of Gloucester brought several with him when he visited the theatre, and there was one scare when he received a cable from Lettice to say that Bob had had an operation to have a kidney removed, but was doing well. Follow-up cables reported that he was out of danger and Dick took comfort after consulting a colleague from the RAMC, who reassured him that the loss of a kidney should not have any adverse effect on quality of life.

  In mid-May Dick paid another visit to Eighth Army, spending all his time with Norrie, Lumsden and Messervy, discussing their dispositions. Gott’s XIII Corps held all the fixed defences of the Gazala Line with the bulk of the infantry and an army tank brigade, positioned behind minefields running south from the Mediterranean coast. Norrie’s XXX Corps was to defend the desert flank with almost all the armour, Lumsden’s 1 Armoured Division lying astride one of the main east – west desert arteries, the Trigh Capuzzo track, Messervy’s 7 Armoured Division dispersed further south in the open desert. 1 Free French Brigade, positioned in a well-defended box at Bir Hacheim, and 3 Indian Motor Brigade to its south-east both came under Messervy’s command.

  Back in London, Churchill’s impatience with the lack of movement was growing and signal after signal went out to Auchinleck pressing him to take the offensive. The reply was inevitably that the C-in-C would do so when he was completely ready, but that this was unlikely to be much before the end of May. On the night of 26/27 May, Rommel struck first.

  Chapter 14

  Crisis in the Desert

  Rommel’s armour swept round the desert flank and turned north, with a view to driving a wedge between the static British infantry divisions and the rest of Eighth Army. Although it had been spotted by the armoured car screen its strength was unexpected, consisting as it did of 15 and 21 Panzer Divisions, 90 Light Division and the Italian Ariete Armoured Division. The result was that 3 Indian Motor Brigade was overwhelmed and 7 Motor Brigade, the infantry component of 7 Armoured Division, was pushed back to the east. Messervy’s divisional HQ was overrun and he himself was taken prisoner: although he subsequently escaped in the confusion, it was some time before he was able to re-establish contact. The first two armoured brigades encountered, 4 and 22, took heavy losses, but as the Germans pressed on they were given time to recover. By the time the Germans reached the Trigh Capuzzo track, the British were waiting for them and Lumsden attacked with his 2 Armoured Brigade, whilst the Germans also came under fire from 201 Guards Brigade in its defended box at ‘Knightsbridge’. Meanwhile the Free French held out at Bir Hacheim.

  Though caught napping, this was not yet by any means a disaster for the British. The Lee/Grants came as a particularly unpleasant surprise to the Axis, holding off the leading 21 Panzer Division with their superior range. Running out of momentum and with his supply lines cut, Rommel was close to defeat, but his response was masterly. Turning due west towards his own static front line, he destroyed 150 Brigade1 and pulled back all the attacking formations into a defensive position against the minefields, known as ‘the Cauldron’, from which he cut a passage to his own lines for supplies. Ritchie’s response was sluggish. A quick attack on the Cauldron might well have settled the issue in the British favour, but it was not until the night of 5/6 June that a concerted operation was mounted by 22 Armoured Brigade and two Indian infantry brigades. The planning and execution were both poor and the result was a fiasco. The Free French evacuated Bir Hacheim after a heroic stand on the night of 10/11 June and on the following morning Rommel broke out of the Cauldron. Bolstered by PzKpfw III Js, which were a match for the Lee/Grant, he won the subsequent tank battle conclusively, in spite of heroic efforts by Lumsden, who found himself commanding two armoured divisions when Messervy was once again cut off. By 18 June Eighth Army was in pell-mell retreat to the Egyptian frontier, leaving a garrison at Tobruk which was surrounded and eventually surrendered on 21 June. Futile attempts were made to try to stop the advancing Germans and Italians at Sollum and Mersa Matruh, but by the end of the month the army was back on the El Alamein Line. By that time Messervy had been sacked, as had Ritchie, and Norrie was to follow them a few days later. Auchinleck himself took direct command of Eighth Army

  Back in Cairo as the battle developed, Dick had been seething with frustration. ‘I am fit and well,’ he wrote to Lettice on 27 June, ‘but, needless to say, during these last few weeks I have hardly enjoyed being a spectator and feeling that I can do so little.’ ‘Herbert’, he continued, ‘has been magnificent… he ran nearly all the fighting for the first two weeks… he was always calm, encouraging and thinking ahead.’ The see-saw nature of the battle had been highly confusing. Leaving the Sunday morning service in Cairo Cathedral on 31 May, Dick had found himself standing next to Auchinleck, who told him that it was too early to be sure, but he thought that they might be on the brink of a great victory. Optimism continued to reign right up to 18 June, then their hopes plummeted.

  On the following day Dick had been up to the Western Desert, arriving at Sidi Barrani to find the army moving through on its way east. ‘The most extraordinary sight,’ he wrote later, ‘with traffic of every description packed nose to tail, frequently double banking, nearly all moving eastwards towards the Delta. Tanks, bulldozers, staff cars, bren gun carriers, recovery vehicles, and lorries of every type were moving inextricably mixed up.’2 He saw Ritchie, Norrie and Lumsden and was back in Cairo to brief Auchinleck on the tank situation before the C-in-C left to take personal charge of the battle on 25 June, accompanied by Dorman-Smith, who had recently been appointed to the position of Deputy Chief of the General Staff (DCGS). The losses of tanks at Gazala and on the retreat had been enormous. At one stage at the beginning of the battle the numbers had been reduced from 300 to 70 and Dick now had to ensure that these were replaced as quickly as possible.

  Dick had been taken aback by the attitude at GHQ, writing in his diary on 29 June: ‘C.G.S (Corbett) more gloomy than usual, all sorts of preparations going on for the defence of the Delta.’ There were signs of panic, as secret papers were burnt and women and children were evacuated to Palestine and the Sudan. Dick had not agreed with the attempts to halt the Germans at Sollum and Mersa Matruh, where outflanking through the desert was almost inevitable, but was now adamant that Eighth Army should stand and fight in its new and intrinsically strong defensive position. In Norrie’s words: ‘He was emphatic that it would be very wrong to discuss withdrawing to the Nile and that we should make a “do or die” stand at Alamein with no further retirements. I entirely agreed and expressed this view officially.’3

  The next month was to prove one of the most trying of Dick’s military career. One of the consequences of ‘the flap’, as the mood of panic at GHQ was called, was a proposal to close the base workshops at Alexandria and move the most valuable plant and machinery to Haifa. ‘I was absolutely opposed to this,’ wrote Dick later. ‘These workshops were turning out some six tanks a day after repair and base overhauls and every good running tank was needed up with the Armoured Brigades. I argued that it was far better to have another 50 or 100 tanks now to fight with, even if we lost the equipment in the base workshops as a result. I felt that if we lost Alexandria we would certainly require no base workshops for some considerable time afterwards!’4 In this at least he got his way.

  The workshops themselves were not always functioning at peak efficiency and were particularly dilatory in preparing the tanks for Dick’s old 8 Armoured Division, which he went to Suez to greet on its arrival in the country. Dick had a number of set-tos with the director of mechanical maintenance, so much so that the latter complained to Auchinleck. The Division’s 23 Armoured Brigade was equipped with Valentines, d
esigned as infantry tanks but expected to perform in the cruiser role. The urgency to bring the brigade into action meant that they were sent up to the front eleven days after arriving in Egypt, before being modified for desert conditions and without their wireless sets being properly netted. On 22 July the brigade was ordered to support an attack by 6 New Zealand and 161 Indian Brigades on the western end of the defensively important Ruweisat Ridge. Armed with the old 2-pounders, capable of a maximum speed of 15 mph, and with their crews unversed in desert warfare, the Valentines were no match for the Germans. By pure luck they overran a Panzergrenadier battalion and came within yards of the Afrika Korps HQ, but swift action from anti-tank guns and 21 Panzer Division overwhelmed them and by that night the brigade had effectively ceased to exist. Just 7 Valentines remained of the 106 which had gone into battle. One consequence of this operation was the general loss of confidence in the armoured formations among the infantry divisions, and particularly the New Zealanders.

  Both Lumsden and Raymond Briggs, the commander of 2 Armoured Brigade, were wounded during the weeks of fighting which later became known as the First Battle of El Alamein, as was Alec Gatehouse, who had temporarily succeeded Lumsden at 1 Armoured Division, but all were back in action relatively quickly. Dick’s former adjutant Frank Arkwright, however, was killed in action leading a yeomanry regiment, an event which affected Dick deeply. On a much more positive note, Dick learnt on 6 August that his fifth child and fourth son, Charles, had been born on 30 June. The cables sent to him by both Lettice and his mother had gone by air mail and taken over five weeks to arrive.

  By this time Dick was locked in conflict with his C-in-C. As he wrote to Lettice on 28 July: ‘I have had my worries lately, people who know nothing about it advising my boss on all sorts of points of organisation without me being consulted. I had a real set-to with my boss 2 days ago and I hope that I have cleared the air a bit. I cannot be just a “yes” man, and did not come out here just to sit in our office whilst others give most unsound advice on matters they know nothing about!’ The ‘unsound advice’ was coming from one quarter only, Dorman-Smith, but it was finding a ready acceptance in Auchinleck. The background was one in which the C-in-C was urgently seeking new ideas on how to break what looked like deadlock, having succeeded in stopping Rommel, who was himself now at the end of a very long line of communication and unable to press any further attack due to lack of supplies. The issue was one which was spectacularly demonstrated in the attack on Ruweisat Ridge – the apparent inability of the armour to cooperate effectively with the infantry. The solution proposed by Dorman-Smith was the extension of the ‘all-arms’ brigade groups to carry out the sort of operations which had been used by the ‘Jock columns’5 with some success in the early days of the Desert War against the Italians, effectively carrying out ‘hit and run’ raids rather than mounting a concerted offensive. Auchinleck had a history of leaning towards such battle groups and he and Dorman-Smith had written a paper on the subject in 1938 when the former was the DCGS in India and the latter the director of military training.

  Most of the senior officers were against them. Messervy, now in Cairo as acting DCGS in the absence of Dorman-Smith, presented a paper disagreeing with battle groups which had the support not only of Dick, but also of Wilfred ‘Tommy’ Lindsell, commandant at the Senior Officers’ School during Dick’s time there and now the Principal Administrative Officer. Auchinleck tore it up in a fury. Bernard Freyberg and Leslie Morshead, who as the GOCs of 2 New Zealand and 9 Australian Divisions had the luxury of appeal to their governments if they were ordered to undertake a reorganization of which they did not approve, declared that they would refuse to implement any such proposal, preferring to fight as complete divisions. Dorman-Smith then proposed the creation of ‘mobile’ divisions, by which every division would be reorganized to comprise one armoured brigade and two infantry brigade groups. This might have been a good idea and indeed Freyberg later reorganized his division on much the same lines, albeit with the artillery and engineers as divisional troops. Dick, like others, felt that to do this in the middle of a battle, when all the training had been for the current organization, was madness.

  The last straw for Dick came when Dorman-Smith proposed that each armoured regiment should be formed of four squadrons rather than three, to make the regiment better able to withstand losses after a major engagement. This was not as simple as it sounded and would result in serious disruption as men were moved about between units and sub-units and then trained in what would inevitably be new tactics. This would apply particularly to any regiments arriving in the theatre from the UK, where no such reorganization was contemplated.

  On 16 July, having sounded out all the armoured commanders, who were entirely like minded, Dick began work on a memo arguing against the various reorganizations and he met Corbett three days later to discuss it, writing about the CGS in his diary with evident surprise – ‘he agrees to a lot!’ On 26 July he was summoned to Eighth Army HQ with John Harding to confer with Auchinleck, who was not in a good mood. Arriving after a very bumpy flight, he found the C-in-C ‘v. angry with my memo, and he bullied me for over an hour, but I stuck to my pts.’ In the face of Dick’s intransigence a decision was reached to send out a questionnaire to all the armoured commanders seeking their views. Harding, who had been due to fly to the UK to give Brooke a full update on the situation in Middle East Command, was to delay his departure so that the results could be taken into account. This actually suited Dick, who was certain of how his RAC colleagues would react, but it made his position with Auchinleck very precarious. ‘So I have won the first round!’ he wrote in his diary, but there was serious uncertainty as to whether he would come out on top in the match.

  In the meantime, and unknown to Dick, significant developments were taking place in the UK, whose consequences would shake the whole of Middle East Command. On 16 July Brooke obtained Churchill’s approval to go to the Middle East to see the situation for himself. Although it was clear that the Axis advance had been stopped, he was concerned about what would happen next, particularly in the light of a proposal by Auchinleck to give command of Eighth Army to Corbett, whom Brooke did not know but doubted would be suitable. Because a high-powered delegation was due two days later from the USA, the visit had to be deferred until the end of the month. By this time the prime minister had decided that he would come as well, staying in Cairo before going on to meet Stalin in Moscow. Brooke set off on 31 July so that he could spend a day in Malta, whilst the prime minister flew on the following day. The two men arrived in Cairo within an hour of each other on the morning of 3 August.

  Dick was unaware of the impending arrival of the two most important figures in the British war effort until two days beforehand and it was a while before he met either Brooke or Churchill. In the meantime nothing had changed, and when he visited the C-in-C at Eighth Army’s Tac HQ on 6 August he was subjected to ‘another long bully’ and threatened with dismissal if he did not toe the line, which he resolutely refused to do. That evening, however, he was treated to a talk with Churchill and on the following morning he had a meeting with the CIGS, whom he found ‘v. helpful & encouraging!’ On 8 August he accompanied Churchill and Brooke on a visit to 8, 9 and 24 Armoured Brigades. Dick travelled in the PM’s car and wrote later: ‘I had picked him up at the British Embassy and we had only gone 100 yards when he said, “Now don’t forget I am the Prime Minister and you must be absolutely frank. In your opinion what is wrong?” I did not find this difficult to answer.’6 Churchill was somewhat indiscreet, as Dick’s diary recorded: ‘He told me a few secrets about changes in comd!’

  Much had indeed been going on in the meantime. It was by then common ground between the prime minister and the CIGS that Auchinleck should go, as should both Corbett and Dorman-Smith. Churchill offered the C-in-C’s job to Brooke, who declined it on the grounds that he would give better service in his current role. The two men decided on Alexander as Auchinleck’s replacement and a signal was s
ent for him to fly out to Egypt immediately.

  It is a fair assumption that Dick had wind of Alexander’s appointment from his conversation with Churchill and he would have been entitled to assume from this and Brooke’s encouragement that his own career was reasonably safe, albeit not necessarily in his current appointment. What he did not know was that the CIGS already had other ideas for him, Brooke writing much later in his Autobiographical Notes: ‘It now remained to find a successor… as Chief of Staff. I at once thought of Dick McCreery, who I had sent out to the Auk as his Adviser on Armoured forces… I knew his ability well and I also knew that he had acted as G.S.O.1 of the 1st Division…I therefore decided to suggest him to Alex as soon as he arrived.’7 Unsurprisingly Alexander leapt at the suggestion.

  It was because his new appointment was so unexpected rather than because he was concerned about his future that Sunday, 9 August 1942, was one of the most extraordinary days of Dick’s life. He was sitting in his office in the ‘Pink Pillars’, the GHQ building in Cairo, when he was visited by Angus Collier, the deputy military secretary, responsible within Middle East Command for all senior appointments. He came, in Dick’s words, ‘to say that General Auchinleck8 had decided that he did not need an M.G.R.A.C. at GHQ and that he was recommending to the War Office that I should go home to command an armoured division, and I would be replaced by a Brigadier. In other words I would be politely sacked.’9 An hour later Alexander walked into the office to say that he wanted Dick to be his chief of staff. He asked Dick to come over for tea and a chat at the British Embassy, after which Churchill invited Dick for a post-dinner drink and kept him talking until after midnight.