There was plenty of caustic criticism in officers’ messes and in the Delta, where the Army Commander’s headgear was regarded as rather a cheap stunt, but this and his tank inscribed ‘Monty’ were externals designed to make his person prominent, and it is a fact that he very soon became a familiar figure instantly recognized by all ranks, and that there was no soldier in Eighth Army who was in any doubt who commanded it.
Von Mellenthin, the German staff officer, recorded: ‘There can be no question that the fighting efficiency of the British improved vastly under the new leadership, and, for the first time, Eighth Army had a commander who really made his presence felt throughout the whole force.’[15]
Chapter Six: Prelude To Alamein
Alexander’s instructions to Montgomery, confirmed in writing on 19 August, were that he was ‘to prepare to attack the Axis forces with a view to destroying them at the earliest possible moment’, and, meanwhile, to hold the present positions.
Montgomery’s appreciation of the situation, with which Alexander agreed, was that Eighth Army would not be in a position to accomplish the first and paramount task until late in October. His forces must be built up until they were sufficiently superior to overcome defences that were daily becoming stronger; he must make good many deficiencies and he must make good also the gaps in the Army’s training for the particular kind of battle that he intended to impose upon the enemy.
As to the second part of Alexander’s instructions, it was clear that a renewal of the enemy’s offensive was likely to take place very soon and for this Montgomery prepared with every confidence immediately on his arrival. The battle that followed almost immediately — only a fortnight after Montgomery’s arrival — was not only of great importance for its own sake but is also of special interest to us in showing the mistakes made by Rommel when confronted with some of the same problems that were to face the British at Alamein.
As we have noted, both sides had of late been actively recruiting their exhausted forces since the ending of the July battles. On the enemy side there arrived some complete new formations, which had been intended for the attack on Malta. The Germans had already received 164th Light Division and the tough Ramcke Parachute Brigade; the Italians sent a whole parachute division — the Folgore, spirited troops of good training and physique. Other Italian forces arrived which did not at first appear on the battlefield.
Among the new German tanks to arrive were the most powerful models yet seen on any battlefield; these were the Mark IV Specials, which, in addition to their specially hardened armour, mounted a long, high-velocity 75 mm gun, capable of killing a tank at 3,000 yards. Of these formidable weapons the German Africa Corps had twenty-seven before the end of August, as well as seventy-three or more of the only slightly less formidable Mark III Specials, which had made their first appearance at Gazala. The disparity in power, if not in numbers, between the British and the enemy tanks was thus even more pronounced than ever. Scarcely less welcome to Rommel was a new access of strength to the German and Italian air forces, which, before the end of August, approximately equalled those of the British and Allies.
Rommel was perfectly well aware, however, that a build-up of the British forces had also begun and that it was likely in time to exceed anything he could expect to reach him. He, therefore, determined to attack again as soon as his forces were sufficiently augmented, in spite of his continued shortage of petrol, large quantities of which were being spilled out on the Mediterranean as the tankers were sunk. Of the fuel cargoes sailed from Europe 41 per cent were lost during August, but by the end of the month Rommel had enough fuel for 150 miles per vehicle in the fighting echelons and he thought this would do.
He proposed now to break right through to Alexandria itself by the destruction of Eighth Army where it stood. The method and style of attack that he decided upon were typical of his previous tactics. It was to be a bold ‘right hook’ at the southern end of the British front, where the twelve miles of desert between the New Zealand flank on Alam Nayil and the Qattara Depression were sparsely held by 7th Armoured Division behind the minefields January and February.
Through this sector Rommel proposed to drive his tanks, passing to the south of the Alam Halfa ridge, and then to wheel northwards right up to the coast in the British rear, while his infantry formed a defensive flank. Twenty-first Panzer Division was then to make for Alexandria, 15th Panzer and 90th Light for Cairo.
The initial phase of this bold plan involved a deep penetration of the British front on the first night of the attack, so that at dawn the panzer divisions, having wheeled, would be facing north, ready for the round-up and the break to the coast. This meant that the tanks of the DAK, placed almost on the extreme right of the attack, were expected to penetrate no less than thirty miles from the start line.
It did not need any profound or astute thinking on the part of the British staff to foresee this manoeuvre. It was typical Rommel, and the disposition of our forces invited such a method; indeed, deliberately so. The Alam Halfa ridge, lying at right angles to our front and with its western edge some thirteen miles behind, had been noted in the days of Auchinleck as the key to any such manoeuvre and had accordingly been selected to become a ‘defended locality’.
It was characteristic of the old command, however, that the defences which had been prepared there were for a ‘brigade group’, and that, if an action was going to be fought there, it was going to be on the old cavalry ideas of ‘fluidity and mobility’, ‘mobile wings’, ‘artillery battle groups’ and similar nonsenses, which had so often been disastrous before and which would have played straight into Rommel’s hands. The staff appreciation written for Auchinleck by Dorman-Smith at the end of July, which embodied these suicidal notions, might almost have been written for Rommel's express benefit.
On his first tour of the desert, Montgomery saw at once the importance of Alam Halfa. He had not seen any previous staff paper. Indeed, the situation was as obvious as it must have been to any alert Staff College student. Horrocks, on arrival from England to take over command of 13th Corps, found that his staff had ‘no doubt at all’ what Rommel would do. Montgomery was not satisfied, however, that so important a defended locality should be a mere drawing on the map; within forty-eight hours of his arrival he occupied it, shaking the complacency of Cairo by demanding that 44th (Home Counties) Division, fresh out from England under Ivor Hughes, should be sent forward ‘tomorrow’.
The brigade position was expanded to a divisional one. Orders were given that the armour was not to be ‘loosed’ for a gamble in the open, but to sit tight in positions of their own choosing. The exiguous defences were strengthened by 44th Division. Pits were bulldozed or blasted by the sappers for the tanks to fight in protective hull-down position. On 21 August, Horrocks, upon whose Corps the battle would fall, held a staff exercise, in the form of a ‘telephone battle’, that foreshadowed almost exactly the course of events that soon took place. A raid by the Australians was prepared, to be carried out on whatever date Rommel attacked. The enemy’s preliminary moves were detected and closely followed in fighting reconnaissances by 208 Squadron RAF.
Virtually the only uncertainty about the expected enemy offensive was the date, but the phases of the moon pointed clearly to a night at the end of August. The method of fighting the defensive battle was determined in advance and Kippenberger, attending the conference, was struck by ‘the ready, balanced feeling that we all had’.
Montgomery’s orders to Horrocks were that 7th Armoured Division, if heavily pressed, were to give way slowly, harassing the enemy on the southern flank and front, and being careful to avoid ‘getting mauled’, while 44th Division and 10th Armoured Division awaited the main thrust of the enemy on the Alam Halfa ridge and its flanks.
The Germans and Italians attacked on the night of 30/31 August and at once met the same difficulty as the British were to experience at the Battle of Alamein. Their efforts to penetrate the January and February minefields were strongly opposed
by the infantry and fight tanks of 7th Armoured Division, and it took them six hours — far longer than they had calculated — to clear corridors for their tanks; so that daylight on 31 August, which should have revealed the DAK some twenty-two miles within the British fines, found them only just struggling clear of the mines.
Seventh Armoured Division, under Callum Renton, gave way slowly in accordance with orders and the enemy halted while Rommel made a new plan. A hot wind from the south blew a great cloud of dust before it, so that aircraft could not operate nor gunners observe with accuracy. Six hours late, the DAK, numbering 200 tanks in massed formation, with the Italian armoured divisions on their left, tightening the intended wheel, swung north-eastward and advanced on Alam Halfa. With the sandstorm blowing into the faces of the British, 21st Panzer Division was lured to attack Pip Roberts’s 22nd Armoured Brigade (under command 10th Armoured Division), whose tanks, unknown to the enemy, were in their dug-in positions west of the ridge.
It was the first time that the British had seen the new Mark IV Specials. Their weight fell especially on the high-silhouetted Grants of 3/4th City of London Yeomanry, which could not adequately conceal themselves. The big Mark IVs sat well back and picked off the Grants one by one. The CLY were soon decimated, but Roberts, in an ably-handled action, superbly supported by the field artillery and by the stout-hearted anti-tank gunners of 1st Rifle Brigade, stood his ground, outfought the Germans’ superior tanks and brought their attack decisively to a halt before darkness fell.
The next morning Rommel tried again, sending 15th Panzer Division to find the British left flank. He failed again. Fighting of great intensity went on for several more days, the brunt of it falling mainly on 10th Armoured Division under Alec Gatehouse, imperturbable under the shelling of his own headquarters. The infantry of 44th Division in the main defensive positions on the ridge itself were never engaged, and the issue had really been decided on the first day.
The enemy, encompassed on three sides, was continuously lashed by the artillery of 10th Armoured and 44th Divisions and pounded mercilessly by the Desert Air Force and No. 205 Group. Fierce air battles were fought as Kesselring exhorted the Luftwaffe pilots to support their comrades of the Panzerarmee. The British troops likewise experienced some sharp bombing, Kesselring having flown in an additional force of Junkers from Crete.
An attempt by the New Zealand Division to effect encirclement by a hastily mounted flank counter-attack was a failure and Rommel, unable even to hold the ground won, was allowed to withdraw without serious interference, leaving behind forty-nine tanks totally destroyed, fifty-five guns and 395 vehicles, and losing 2,910 men.
British casualties amounted to 1,750 men and sixty-seven tanks, though only half the tanks were total losses. In the air the British and Allied losses were actually much heavier than the enemy’s, sixty-eight aircraft being shot down against forty-one German and Italian.
Montgomery’s deliberate policy throughout was to conserve his forces for the bigger battle for which he was now planning. The enemy was left in possession of our minefields January and February, which now became his own, and, on Montgomery’s express instructions, Rommel was allowed to retain the dominating height of Qaret el Himeimat in the extreme south, in order that he might have full observation over those measures that were being put in hand to deceive him of our coming intentions.
Alam Halfa was of considerable significance for the greater engagement to come. On the British side it was a model defensive battle, ably controlled and ‘stage managed’, in Montgomery’s phrase. It had developed almost exactly as Alexander and Montgomery anticipated and Rommel, in effect, had allowed himself to be drawn into what was very like a calculated ambush. The conduct of the battle on the British side had shown very clearly the firm directing hand of a new master and presented a vivid contrast to the muddled actions of the previous twelve months. No less significant, and exemplifying a recognized maxim, was its demonstration of the advantages enjoyed by a strong defence over an attacking force that was not considerably stronger at the point of main impact.
Not the least of the results of the battle was that to all the soldiers of Eighth Army and their comrades in the air it gave a new impetus and buoyancy to their confidence in themselves and their commanders. It was the first time since ‘Crusader’ that the Germans and Italians had been unequivocally defeated and seen off the field. It was the first time since its inception that Eighth Army had been handled as a closely articulated fighting machine.
In Raymond Briggs’s words, the spirit changed under Montgomery’s impetus from one of ‘dogged defence and defiance’ to one of ‘knocking Rommel for six’. He recorded: ‘A spirit of aggressiveness arose and was seen in the very different appearance of the soldiers themselves… Only those who saw it for themselves could realize and wonder how one man had succeeded in changing the whole character of an army in three weeks.’
And Coningham wrote soon after the battle:
‘In all my force there is an atmosphere of enthusiasm and expectancy at the prospect of going on to greater things as part of the Eighth Army.’
On the German side, Alam Halfa manifested some of the weaknesses that often characterized Rommel’s judgement. His intelligence was very much at fault, he grossly underestimated the time needed to breach our minefields, he totally misappreciated our reactions to his attack and he failed to employ his infantry to good purpose when his panzers were brought to a halt. He did not even know that we had occupied the ridge.[16] Most significantly of all, he failed to learn from Alam Halfa that he was now up against a new ringmaster who firmly controlled all his horses as one team. What he could not help realizing, however, was that he had no further potential for another offensive as things stood, that the next blow must come from the British and that he must go over to the defensive.
Rommel took the initiative against Montgomery twice only — at Alam Halfa and four months later far away at Medenine — and on each occasion, entirely through his own misjudgements, he suffered a bloody nose. Leese, who, as a Corps commander, probably fought more battles with him than anyone else, said of him (to the author): ‘I never knew Rommel to execute any exceptional manoeuvre nor any that we did not anticipate.’
Chapter Seven: Preparations
With this successful defensive battle out of the way, Alexander and Montgomery began to prepare for the great offensive. Mr Churchill, with his customary drive, was pressing for it to be mounted in September, but Alexander was successful in convincing him that it could not confidently be undertaken until late in October. This was, indeed, leaving the matter dangerously late, for, apart from the obvious necessity of defeating any hostile force that might be in the field, two special considerations made it imperative that Rommel should be soundly and convincingly defeated as soon as possible.
One of these considerations was the position in Malta. So far as supplies were concerned, that position had been eased in August by the remnants of a battle-tom convoy which reached the island after a terrific fight, but the little island was still in deadly danger. If it was to survive, it was vital that the Cyrenaica airfields should be in the possession of the RAF as quickly as possible. This was a consideration that was forcefully and repeatedly represented to Alexander and Montgomery by both Tedder and Mr Robert Casey, the Minister of State in Egypt. Hitler had ordered that Malta, because of the devastation inflicted by its ships and aircraft on supplies to Rommel, must be ‘paralysed’. In consequence, Kesselring began a terrific aerial assault early in October, keeping it up for ten long days before acknowledging defeat by the RAF.
The second special consideration was the forthcoming invasion of French North Africa by the British and American force under General Eisenhower, which Alexander and Montgomery knew was to take place early in November. This operation, under the code name of ‘Torch’, was not only a military risk but also a political one. The French territories in North Africa — Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia — were under the control of the Vichy governm
ent, theoretically neutral but in fact subservient to the Germans and certainly anti-British. Though the ground had to some extent been secretly prepared, no one in Britain or America knew for certain what sort of a reception the French forces or the French civilians would give to the Allied landings, and it was realized in London and Washington that the most promising way to swing the opinion of the hesitant Frenchman in North Africa was to achieve a resounding success in the Western Desert.
As events were to turn out, ‘Torch’ ran into considerable military difficulties and the Germans, who immediately rushed a strong expeditionary force to Tunisia, were not expelled from North Africa until Eighth Army, after a 2,000-mile-long chain of victories, joined hands with Eisenhower’s forces in front of Tunis, into which units from Eighth Army were the first to enter. The operational commander of the combined forces was Alexander and he himself said afterwards: 'I am quite certain that the British First Army and the United States 2nd Corps could never have taken Tunis and Bizerta unaided.’
There were, of course, several other reasons — reasons of policy, of morale and obvious military reasons — why Rommel should be beaten as soon as possible, but these were particularly cogent ones. To suggest, as has been done, that there was no need to make the attempt and that Alamein was an ‘unnecessary battle’ is utter nonsense.
NEW WEAPONS
It was apparent to the British commanders that the coming battle, with no flanks and against deep defences, would be completely different from previous desert operations and would approximate to those of the First World War. The enemy defences had become so strong and so deep that the breeching of them would involve, as Alexander said, 'a battle on the grandest scale’. It would be a severe battle of attrition, with heavy losses to be expected and with the infantry dominant in the opening phases.
Alamein (Major Battles of World War Two) Page 8