The Last Great Cavalryman

by Richard Mead

  II US Corps experienced much the same result in its attempts to take the El Guettar defile further south, to bring pressure on the Germans to withdraw from their positions opposite Eighth Army at Wadi Akarit. Like Crocker, Patton failed to break through, and after Montgomery had succeeded in forcing the Germans’ position by a stunning outflanking movement through the hills by 4 Indian Division, the Americans also failed to cut off their retreat. Dick liked and admired Patton and spent a lot of time at his HQ , but he was not an easy subordinate for Alexander. Dick often had to call on the assistance of Patton’s more diplomatic deputy, Omar Bradley, to couch the C-in-C’s orders in such a way that they would be palatable. On one of these visits, Dick came as close to the actual fighting as he had been at any time since France in 1940, near enough to see the German guns in action. Although Patton himself had by this time transformed the organization of his corps and was full of confidence in his ability to beat the Germans, Dick continued to be surprised by the ineffectiveness of some of his formations, noting particularly in his diary that 34 US Division was ‘hopeless’ and 1 US Armored Division ‘useless, morale v.low’.

  Dick’s role was not confined to planning or operations: he was also required to smooth relations between the nationalities, particularly the British and Americans. The Americans were inclined to bridle at attempts by the British to tell them how to fight, but although Alexander had influenced the removal of Fredendall and set up a British-led battle school for them and although he was critical in private, he himself was the essence of diplomacy to their faces and Dick followed his lead. Others were less guarded and a serious instance of Allied dissention came when Crocker criticized the performance of 34 US Division at Fondouk to some visiting Americans in the belief that he was speaking off the record, only to see it published. Eisenhower was angry with Crocker and furious with the censors who had let it through, whilst both Alexander and Dick had to pour oil on the troubled waters.

  A bigger problem was the bad feeling between the two British armies, who now met each other for the first time. The origins of this lay with Montgomery, who positively encouraged his men to regard themselves as superior, not difficult after their victorious fighting advance across North Africa. In Dick’s words:

  My headquarters now had to contend with the rivalries between the Eighth and First Armies. Unfortunately, Monty in his build-up of the Eighth Army had led everyone to adopt a very intolerant attitude to others, and Allies. This was a great pity when close cooperation between the two wings of 18th Army Group was about to begin. Certainly the inflated ideas of the Eighth Army made my life much more difficult in the last few weeks of the African campaign.4

  Following Montgomery’s success at Wadi Akarit there was no natural defensive line for von Arnim until the range of hills just north of Enfidaville, to which he retreated in good order. It was clear that further progress on this sector by Eighth Army would be difficult, if not impossible, and thus one of its formations, 1 Armoured Division, was transferred to IX Corps, which was due to play the major role in the final battle for Tunis. The contrast between the tanned and healthy desert warriors, lauded at every step by the press and the BBC, and their compatriots, pale from their winter in the mountains and without a victory to their name, could hardly have been greater. The men of 1 Armoured were informed that 6 Armoured Division and 46 Division, whom they were joining in IX Corps, had fought very hard and would be sensitive to any criticism, but tensions nevertheless developed. Oliver Leese, visiting First Army’s HQ , was taken aback by the very evident resentment of Eighth Army, particularly as articulated by Anderson.

  The Axis forces were now penned into a relatively small area in the north-east of Tunisia and Alexander and Dick began to plan the closing moves in the campaign from their new HQ , which had moved at the beginning of the second week of April to a site next to some Roman ruins at Le Kef. Here they were much closer to the front, although visits to Eighth Army still had to be made by plane. For this phase II US Corps and XIX French Corps were brought back under First Army, although Alexander continued to exercise tight control over Anderson. In the initial plan only one American division was to be used. Patton and Bradley protested strongly to Eisenhower, who recognized that it was vital for public opinion in the USA that Americans should be seen to be playing a major role in the victory. The solution was to transfer II US Corps from the most southerly to the most northerly sector of the front, adjacent to the Mediterranean, and to give it the responsibility for taking the key city of Bizerta. At the same time Bradley replaced Patton, who left to command Seventh US Army for the invasion of Sicily.

  The pace of life intensified for Dick, who was on the move almost every day, visiting the various formations and agreeing their plans for the forthcoming operations. Inspecting the newly arrived 1 Armoured Division, led by Raymond Briggs, one of the last survivors of the pre-Montgomery armoured commanders, he was delighted to find a number of old friends. There were in particular many familiar faces in Dicks’s old 2 Armoured Brigade, whilst the armoured car regiment was the 12th Lancers, whom he had not visited since just before El Alamein.

  On 16 April Alexander issued his orders for Operation Vulcan, timed to commence on 22 April and to involve the whole of First Army, the intention being finally to get out of the mountains and onto the plain, from where the assault on Tunis would be markedly easier. The fighting was extremely hard, but eventually V Corps managed to take its long-desired objectives, including the notorious Longstop Hill, IX Corps made progress in the south and II US Corps surprised Alexander by the success of its advance in the north. The way was now open for the final attack.

  As expected, Eighth Army had ground to a halt, its attempts to penetrate the hills north of Enfidaville blocked by vigorous German resistance. On the night of 28/29 April Montgomery made his final attempt to get though with the newly arrived 56 Division, but it was a disaster. On 30 April Alexander and Dick visited him to discuss the future of the campaign. ‘Left 0630 for 8 Army,’ wrote Dick in his diary. ‘C-in-C had long conference with Monty. Decided to abandon major ops of 8 Army due to great difficulty of ground, & 7 Armd. Div and 4 Ind Div & 201 Gds. Bde. all to come & join 1st Army.’ Dick had been pressing Alexander for some time to engineer the transfer of more formations from Eighth to First Army, but the C-in-C had been reluctant to force such a dramatic move on his powerful subordinate. Now he found Montgomery offering to do just that, indeed the Eighth Army commander took all the credit for the plan to finish off the war in North Africa. In addition Horrocks was sent to command IX Corps, where Crocker had been seriously wounded. Dick was dubious about Horrocks’s abilities as a corps commander, but there was no obvious alternative, as Leese, like Montgomery himself, now had his mind on planning the forthcoming Sicily campaign.

  The centrepiece of Operation Strike, planned by Alexander and Dick to deliver the coup de grâce to the Axis, was an assault by IX Corps straight down the road from Medjez el Bab to Tunis. This brought together two longstanding First Army formations and two which were newly arrived from Eighth Army: 4 Division and 4 Indian Division, respectively on the right and the left of the road, were ordered to crack the German defences on a 3,500-yard front and thereby create a breach in the defences for 6 and 7 Armoured Divisions to pass through. Horrocks planned the usual daylight attack, preceded by a heavy artillery barrage, but on the insistence of Francis Tuker, the GOC of 4 Indian Division, it was launched in the dark at 0300 hrs on the morning of 6 May, achieving a significant element of surprise. By mid-morning the armour was able to move through and, although it failed to capitalize on the disintegration of the defenders on the first day, on the second it found little resistance. The armoured cars of the Derbyshire Yeomanry from 6 Armoured Division and the 11th Hussars from 7 Armoured Division, symbolically representing the two British armies, entered Tunis together on the afternoon of 7 May: at exactly the same time 9 US Division occupied Bizerta.

  Mopping up took another four days during which the British cleare
d the Cape Bon peninsula and, with XIX French Corps advancing speedily from the south, surrounded the remaining Germans and Italians. Von Arnim found himself cut off and surrendered to Tuker’s troops and on 12 May Field Marshal Messe of the Italian Army sued for an armistice on behalf of all the Axis forces. Hostilities ended formally at 1220 hrs the following day and later that afternoon Alexander sent his famous message to Churchill: ‘Sir, it is my duty to report that the Tunisian campaign is over. All enemy resistance has ceased. We are masters of the North African shores.’

  By any standards this was a triumph. Some 238,000 prisoners were taken, a greater number than at Stalingrad, whilst the Allied strategy, to start on the road to ultimate victory by clearing the Axis out of Africa and thereby establishing dominance in the Mediterranean, had been triumphantly vindicated. Moreover, in spite of Montgomery’s vainglorious claims, the triumph was unequivocally Alexander’s.5 His critics would later say that he could have achieved it faster, but it could hardly have been more unambiguous.

  Alexander’s skill lay in welding together an Allied team out of the disparate formations which he had inherited and giving it the confidence to succeed. As Dick was to write later; ‘It is sometimes said that great leaders of men, like great racehorses, are somewhat on the lazy side. They always have something in reserve for the emergency which tests a man’s calibre. That would certainly be true of Alexander. He abounded in physical and moral courage, but he conserved his energy for the great occasion.’6 This happened in front of Tunis, but it would not have worked without Dick, of whom Alexander wrote in his despatches: ‘His scientific grasp of the whole sphere of military matters made him of the greatest assistance to me throughout my period of command in Africa.’7 Brooke was one of many who felt that Dick had not been accorded the credit due to him for his part in the victory. Dick’s only claim for himself came in a letter to Lettice: ‘This time, anyway, I feel that I have had some small hand in this success.’8

  Dick was being characteristically modest. During the final stages of the Tunisian campaign Alexander had demonstrated more grip of military operations than he had done at any time before and he was not to do so again until just before the end of the war. The main ingredient of the C-in-C’s success was a highly talented chief of staff, who deployed the intellect which he himself lacked. There was a very marked contrast between his performance in this campaign and the one which followed shortly afterwards in Sicily, in which he proved unable to control either of his army commanders, Patton and Montgomery. Montgomery was the first to recognize this, writing later in a characteristically forthright way: ‘Alexander… is not clever and requires a C.G.S who knows the whole business and will get on with it… Given such a C.G.S. he is excellent. But without such a C.G.S nothing happens.’9

  Alexander had told Dick in late April that he would like to keep him on, but went on to say that it would not be fair to him, with which Dick did not disagree. The C-in-C was as good as his word. The day after the end to hostilities was Dick’s last one at 18th Army Group. On 15 May he left for Algiers, driving there in leisurely fashion and seeing many of the Roman sites on the way. Having taken leave of Eisenhower and his staff, he flew out from Maison Blanche airfield four days later, stayed two days at Gibraltar, delayed by the reports of fog in England, and eventually arrived back at Hendon early on the morning of 22 May.

  Dick reported immediately to the War Office, but was able that afternoon to travel down to Oxford by train to be met by Lettice and all the family except Michael, who later arrived from Eton. For the next four weeks he was based at College House, but he was required to make a number of visits to London. Brooke was abroad, but Dick met Archie Nye, the VCIGS, and Sandy Galloway, the Director of Staff Duties, and had a long interview with James Grigg, the Secretary of State for War. It was clear that there was no immediate job for him, and this was confirmed when he eventually saw Brooke on 22 June, although he was greatly encouraged by the meeting. ‘The C.I.G.S. was in very good form and very nice. He said that he did not want me to think that I was being forgotten, and I think there is no doubt I shall get a Corps. I gathered from him that it may be some little time before all the changes are made. As you know the P.M. has to have a hand in it all. I am in General Paget’s10 mess, and he also obviously wants me to have a good job, so all should be well.’11

  After meeting Brooke, Dick had gone down to GHQ Home Forces, which was at Wentworth Golf Club with its offices in the clubhouse and the senior officers’ mess in an elegant residence close by. His immediate task was to give a series of lectures on the North African campaign, which took him all round the country, talking to army, corps and divisional HQs, the Staff College, training organizations, groups of independent units and even schools. He delivered twenty-four of these lectures over thirty days, often two a day, a daunting task for one who was far from adept at public speaking, but they were at least interspersed with welcome breaks at College House.

  On 24 July he heard that he would be taking over VIII Corps from Herbert Lumsden. He found this very awkward, as his hopes for his best friend in the Army were nearly as high as for himself, and whereas VIII Corps had been nominated as one of the components of Second Army for the future invasion of Europe, II Corps District, to which Lumsden was now appointed, was a static formation with administrative responsibility but no operational role. Four days later Dick travelled up to York, to be met by Lumsden for a briefing over dinner at the Station Hotel, after which they went to the HQ at the nearby Claxton Hall for the formal handover.

  Dick had got what he wanted, command of a corps destined for what was becoming known as the Second Front. What is more, it was a predominantly armoured formation, designed with much the same role in mind as Montgomery’s corps de chasse and incorporating both Guards and 11 Armoured Divisions, the latter still commanded by Percy Hobart, the former by Alan Adair, an old friend of Dick’s from Cairo in the 1930s. The third component was 15 (Scottish) Division, but during Dick’s four weeks in command, two of which were spent on exercises held by the armoured divisions and one on a study week for the senior commanders of Second Army, he had no opportunity to visit it.

  On 5 August, just before leaving for the study week, Dick heard that the honours for services in Tunisia had just been announced and that he was to be made a Knight Commander of the Bath alongside Anderson, now his immediate superior as GOC-in-C of Second Army. This was a tremendous accolade, reflecting Alexander’s appreciation of his services and undoubtedly endorsed by Brooke, and it put him well ahead of any of his contemporaries. A few days later it was announced that he had also been appointed an Officer of the Legion of Merit by the Americans.

  There was a further surprise to come on 24 August. Dick’s diary records ‘Tel from 21 Army Gp that I have to leave at once for my old haunts. Probably someone has been wounded.’ Under orders to travel as soon as possible, he travelled down from Claxton Hall to College House to pick up some essential items of kit, before going on to the War Office, where he was told that Horrocks had been seriously injured in a ‘tip and run’ German air raid and that he would be taking over X Corps with immediate effect. Moreover, he was informed, the corps would be in action within weeks.

  Dick’s delight at the prospect of command of a corps on active service was only tempered by his sadness for Lettice and the family, who had been looking forward to him remaining in the UK until well into 1944. He was able to treat her to Jack Buchanan’s latest show in the West End followed by dinner in a smart restaurant where they ate ‘an excellent grouse’. On the following day she saw him off at Hendon.

  Chapter 17

  Avalanche

  There was no repeat of Dick’s first meandering wartime journey to North Africa. Instead he was given top priority for transport, arriving in Algiers on 23 August, less than 24 hours after leaving England. That afternoon he saw Eisenhower, Alexander and Humphrey Gale, AFHQ’s Chief Administrative Officer, and dined with Bedell Smith in the evening. On the following day he met Macmillan a
nd Makins for a briefing on the political situation and settled down to read the plan for Operation Avalanche, the proposed landing by Allied Forces on the mainland of Italy at Salerno.

  The political background was complex and had exposed a strategic rift between the Allies which would impact on the Italian campaign as it developed. The British, notably Churchill, saw it as an end in itself, with the prize being a drive into the Po Valley and then through the Ljubljana Gap in Slovenia into the Hungarian and Austrian plains. The Americans, led by the Army Chief of Staff George Marshall, but with Roosevelt in full accord, were clear that the only way to defeat the Germans was an attack on the heart of the Reich in north-west Europe. For them Italy was a diversion, valuable in drawing off German divisions from France and useful in giving gainful employment to the enormous resources the Allies had accumulated in the Mediterranean until the summer of 1944, the earliest time an invasion of France could be mounted – but it was not the route to victory.