The position had been well selected by the reconnaissance parties, but the defence works were of an exiguous nature, being composed of a series of unfinished defence localities or ‘boxes’, separated from one another by wide spaces, which it was intended should be watched by mobile formations or columns.[5]
A quick reconnaissance of this famous ‘line’ must be made at this stage to enable the reader to follow the operations that immediately ensued as well as the larger battle to come. We may imagine this reconnaissance to have been made on 30 June, which was the day before Rommel ran head-on into it.
Starting at the north, where the South Africans were bathing from the blinding white beach, a belt of salt marsh was encountered, not wholly impassable, before reaching the low coastline of pale rock and sand. Thence the ground shelved upwards very gradually to the narrow coast road — the only tarred road throughout the whole length and breadth of the desert.
About a mile farther inland ran the single-track railway, looking neglected and desolate on its lonely way through the wastes from the Nile Delta towards the Egyptian frontier, and immediately south of it stood the little rocky eminence of Tel el Eisa, for the capture of which so much Australian blood was soon to be shed.
South-east of the Tel one entered the ‘Alamein Box’, where the 1st South African Division had taken post, and in the distance one could see El Alamein station, from which the line and the battle were to take their names. With some sense of anticlimax, one noted that it was no more than a lonely halt on the railway, with a shed or two beside the track. The railway was a military line, otherwise there would have been no need for any station in this desolate and uninhabited region.
From El Alamein station (which was within the box) a desert track ran away approximately southwards, and it was at this track,, known to us as the Springbok Road, and to the hopeful enemy as the Rommel Track, that later on the British armoured divisions were to be seen forming up for their approach to the battle.
From the western edge of the Alamein Box, looking out over blank desert, one could get a distant view of the most significant features over which the battle was to be fought. ‘Significant’ they were only in a tactical sense, for nothing that was at all significant topographically attracted the eye in the western prospect. The shallow landscape was varied by none but the most trifling undulations. Only by a close study of the map could one make out that the line of the horizon, which was scarcely recognizable as a ‘feature’, was formed by a long, low ridge. This was the notorious Miteiriya Ridge and its north-westerly extension.
If, before Rommel got there, one drove over to its highest point, which was six miles away, and followed this prolongation, one arrived at a locality where the map showed a 30-metre ring contour, kidney-shaped. On the map it looked like an elevation forming the crest of the ridge and it, therefore, soon became known as Kidney Ridge. This trifling feature, less than a mile long, gave rise to an enormous amount of confusion and misdirection, for the ring contour, in fact, marked not an elevation but an indentation. The real ridge ran east and north of it and it is an exceedingly important feature to bear in mind, for here and hereabouts Rommel set some of his main defences.
Three miles beyond the Kidney could be discerned something rare in the desert. This was a line of telegraph poles that ran along a straight desert track that we called the Rahman Track and the enemy called the Ariete Track. At the northern end of it, gleaming in the sun, could be seen the white minaret of the small mosque of Sidi Abd el Rahman. Here Rommel shortly established his headquarters and his tank repair workshops.
All this area between the Alamein Box and the Rahman Track was to be the main battlefield. If one returned to the box and drove southwards a few miles on 30 June no troops at all were to be encountered until one arrived at a ragged, shallow depression known as the Deir el Shein. This had just been occupied by the tired 18th Indian Infantry Brigade and its supporting artillery, nearly all new troops hurried over from Northern Iraq, 1,000 miles away. This was the second ‘box’ of the Alamein front. Here the brigade, all alone, was somewhat anxiously awaiting Rommel’s expected onslaught the next day.
Frowning immediately above the Deir el Shein was the most pronounced feature yet encountered, running east and west across the front like a long and bony hog’s back. This was Ruweisat Ridge, of evil memory. Rocky, austere, 200 ft above sea level, it became the scene of some of the bloodiest and most ill-directed fighting in the days immediately to follow, which formed the concluding phase of the Battle of Gazala.
Southward of Ruweisat, after dipping a little, the ground rose again to a large, smooth-backed swelling named Alam Nayil, which became one of the main buttresses of the British defence, and away eastward of it, at some fourteen miles’ distance, could be discerned yet another prominent ridge, which one could see at a glance would be ‘vital ground’. This was Alam el Halfa Ridge. It formed no part of the Alamein ‘line’ itself, but was a very important backstop at which Rommel, before long, was given a bloody nose.
Continuing southward from Alam Nayil, one left most of the rock behind and came to a stretch of devil’s country of rough, eroded deirs and much soft sand, in which one’s vehicle was likely to get badly stuck, so that the shovels and sandmats had often to be got out as one sweated to drive on a little farther. In the largest of these deirs, a deep forbidding pit, four miles long, of steep, eroded cliffs and hillocks, known as the Munassib Depression, were to be found the greater part of the New Zealand Division, who had just got back there after a hair-raising drive through the enemy lines.
Last of all, on the very edge of the great Qattara Depression, which was the end of the line, stood the most prominent of all the desert features — the steeply conical Qaret el Himeimat, or Mount Himeimat, rising suddenly like a Pyramid to nearly 700 ft. It dominated all the country northward and whoever sat on it could observe every movement for many miles around.
Westward of the line described, other boxes were at first held by scattered ‘brigade groups’, but all these were soon withdrawn to this general line. Other features of the Alamein position will be encountered, but those that should be most impressed upon the mind from the beginning are the dead flat terrain astride the coast road and the railway, the Miteiriya Ridge and the faint line of its extension up to the Kidney Ridge and the telegraph poles of the Rahman Track that lay beyond. In these localities we shall see the most critical fighting.
ROMMEL HALTED
Against these positions Rommel launched his tired and attenuated divisions immediately he reached them, intending to give Eighth Army no time to consolidate and to seize as soon as possible the great prize that seemed to be almost within his grasp.
His attempt to puncture the new positions was made on I July. Pressing with great urgency, he did not pause even for a reconnaissance — a neglect for which he was to pay a heavy price, for his appreciation of the British dispositions was very much at fault. His thrust was made astride the Miteiriya Ridge and through the gap south of the Alamein box, his intention being that one wing of his army should swing north to envelop that box, while the other wing swung south to take 13th Corps in the rear.
It was a thoroughly bad plan, badly executed, and the attack went completely awry. The left wing went astray in its desert navigation and, instead of passing through the gap south of the Alamein box, ran head-on to the box itself, was engaged by the South Africans, thrown into confusion and pinned down by fire. The 90th Light Division, formidable fighters though they were, broke astonishingly into a panic and would have fled in disorderly rout but for intervention by some senior officers. The right wing, which included fifty-five tanks of 15th and 21st Panzer Divisions, ran into the box at Deir el Shein, which they did not know was occupied.
The 18th Indian Infantry Brigade, holding this depression, was under a temporary commander and was without proper divisional control and support. With it were 97th, 121st and 124th Field Regiments, Royal Artillery, in whole or in part (without any centralised com
mand), nine old Matilda tanks and an anti-tank company of The Buffs. Most of these were untried troops, there was a failure of communications, command of the battle was lost at the start and two of the infantry battalions and some of the guns were overrun.
General Nehring tried to induce the remainder to surrender, sending in a captured British officer in a bren-carrier under a white flag, but what was left of the garrison stood fast, the regiments fighting independently in a day of fiery heat, and 121st Field Regiment being left at the end of the day with one gun and one round of ammunition. The Germans, losing eighteen tanks, were surprisingly shaken. Six of these were knocked out at close range by the 25-pdrs of 275th Battery, under Major William Paul, and others by boldly handled 6-pdrs under Major N. Metcalf, both of 121st Field Regiment under Lieutenant-Colonel Edmund Stansfield, and by the guns of The Buffs under Major P. G. Clarke. The advance was blocked until dusk, when what was left of the garrison withdrew, having received no support from any other formation. Such was too often the fate of the lone and unsupported ‘brigade group’ of those patchwork days.
Although the Deir el Shein box was captured and its loss appeared at the time an unfortunate affair, it was learnt subsequently from German sources that this unexpected resistance was fatal to their hopes. Their spearhead had been blunted, their armour stopped from cutting in behind our positions at a moment when we were badly off-balance, and a precious day of opportunity lost. The actions at the Shein and Alamein boxes thus marked the turn of the tide. The day had begun for the enemy with tremendous exhilaration. He expected that before the end of it his reconnaissance elements would be on the outskirts of Alexandria itself. So slender was the margin. So thin the thread.
The day’s grace enabled the British to re-establish themselves in better balance. The Royal Air Force, from their new airfields, began to belabour the enemy. The battle continued, however, with scarcely a day’s intermission for almost another whole month, Rommel urgently seeking a weak spot by which to break through, Auchinleck repeatedly counter-attacking. The heat was stifling, the fighting savage and the losses heavy. Both sides were being reinforced, the British more strongly than the enemy. The 9th Australian Division came over from Syria, took over the coastal sector and made a number of assaults, in which they captured Tel el Eisa and took Miteiriya Ridge but could not hold it.
More important were the savage battles to secure possession of Ruweisat Ridge, on whose rocky crest the shells burst with vicious detonations and in which the infantryman could find no relief from their persecution. The New Zealanders, the Indians and their British battalions stormed and won but could not hold, stormed again and won but a little. The ridge and its flanks became littered with the corpses of both sides and the feeding ground for myriads of flies.
This bitter July fighting did not constitute, as has been claimed by some, a ‘First Battle of Alamein’. To take such a view is to mistake its relation to operations as a whole. It was the concluding phase of the Battle of Gazala. It was the aftermath of that rough harvest. The fighting from Gazala eastwards was continuous, with no change of plan, no new intention on Rommel’s part, while Auchinleck, for his part, tried to throw him back by counter-attack.
Indeed, if the July fighting is regarded as a separate battle, it has to be recorded emphatically as a failure on Auchinleck’s part, for the several offensive operations that he mounted were specified to ‘destroy’ or ‘encircle’ the enemy or to make deep penetrations and ‘exploit’. In these intentions they did not succeed, nor even begin to do so. They were terribly badly laid on from the top and the courage and devotion of the regimental soldiers called upon to execute them were brought to nought by the gross faults of Auchinleck’s subordinate commanders. They had meaning, however, as an ‘offensive defence’, for the important thing was that, although the British failed to throw the enemy back, they firmly stopped his advance. Mussolini, cheated of his triumphal entry into Cairo, after waiting three weeks, flew home to Italy in gloom.
It is not intended here to record the factual details of these fierce and often confused July battles. Their course has been briefly related in the official history. By the end of the month both sides were exhausted, having fought each other to a standstill and leaving the sandy wastes and the rocky elevations littered with smashed vehicles, black tangles of unrecognizable wreckage, broken weapons, scraps of clothing and equipment and scarred with the shapes of shattered tanks, their inner walls coated with a plaster of human flesh or their open turrets exhibiting, half-extruded, the roasted bodies of their crews.
Like heavyweight boxers retiring to their corners after a gruelling round, both sides paused to recruit and collect themselves for a new effort. It is, therefore, appropriate that we also should pause here to make a brief appraisal of the state of Eighth Army, since it closely concerns the events that were to follow and because of what has been said elsewhere.
Chapter Four: Blemishes And Obstacles
FAULTS IN COMMAND
It cannot be said that the direction of the enemy’s offensive plans during the July fighting (as distinct from battlefield leadership) was of a very high order. Rommel had misappreciated the situation after crossing the frontier and he was now butting his head against a brick wall, only to find himself badly bruised at the end of the month. He struck in the wrong places.
Able tank leader and brilliant opportunist though he was, Rommel was lacking in certain of the qualities of all-round generalship. Robbed of the opportunity for manoeuvre, inclined to see all situations in terms of tanks, and regarding his infantry (in Freyberg’s words) as ‘followers of the armour by day and weapon-holders by night’, he was not well equipped to deal with a situation with which he was unfamiliar and which was, in fact, beyond his resources. He was to reveal the same shortcomings at the Battle of Alamein, which he stood a very good chance indeed of not losing if he had known which were the right clubs to pull out of his bag.
On the British side, however, things were even worse. We had superior numbers, but on the command levels a serious deterioration had set in. It is difficult to say anything severe enough about the conduct of the June and July battles at Army and Corps levels; and it would have been unnecessary to dwell on these matters if it had not been for the criticism and counter-criticism that has eddied around them. Military failures are by no means always due to the shortcomings of the generals; quite often the generals are let down by the troops, but in Eighth Army the troops were of a particularly high standard.
In spite of the adversities that they had suffered during this month of savage fighting and of the long withdrawal from Gazala, which would have severely strained most troops, the fighting spirit of the Eighth Army soldiers remained little impaired. Except for the newer arrivals, they were an army of young veterans and were skilled craftsmen in combat. For the greater part, they were tenacious and resilient and their understanding of the ways of the battlefield was exceptional.
Sir Oliver Leese, who came out from England a little later to take command of 30th Corps, was impressed with ‘their fine morale, their high standards generally and their knowledgeable way of doing things. The standards of infantry training were excellent and the standards of gunnery very high indeed. Relations between officers and men, tested in battle, were extremely good and there was a strong sense of comradeship everywhere.’[6]
These excellences were by no means paralleled by the professional qualities of some of the senior commanders. The generals of Eighth Army, almost without exception, were men of great personal courage in battle, but it was largely by their bravery and their leadership in combat that they had risen to higher command. In Montgomery’s words (to the author): ‘They knew a great deal about fighting but not much about War.’
Well-tested military doctrine was being almost daily transgressed and what Montgomery called ‘the stage management of battle’ deplorably handled. Operations of great weight and moment were put in hand without inter-divisional conferences. Commanders went into battle with lit
tle knowledge of what was ordained on their flanks. The armour and the infantry fought separate, uncoordinated battles. Different axes of advance, different objectives, different timings, inadequate reconnaissance and inadequate air photographs put the fighting soldier into battle at hazardous odds.
In 30th Corps (commanded by an officer of the most shining personal courage), there was a particularly unhappy state of affairs. Douglas Wimberley, the Highland Division Commander, on arrival in the desert from home, ahead of his division, attended some conferences at corps headquarters to learn ‘the form’ and was very much startled at the objections and questionings of orders by divisional commanders. These came particularly from the commanders of the Dominion divisions who, being themselves badgered by their governments with anxious questions and admonitions, would frequently counter the corps commander’s proposals by the formula: ‘I must consult my government about that.’ Admittedly, this was not always fair play on the part of those who had a favoured position, but it showed up glaringly the lack of confidence that existed.
Leaving one of these acrimonious conferences one day, the astonished Wimberley remarked in ironic jest to his GSO 1, Roy Urquhart: ‘Really! If this is the form, I shall have to consider referring any orders I don’t like to the Secretary of State for Scotland!’
The misdirection of battlefield operations showed itself particularly in two serious weaknesses — the complete failure of cooperation between infantry and tanks, and the dispersal of force by the fragmentation of divisions.
Alamein (Major Battles of World War Two) Page 5