No assault could, therefore, hope to succeed unless there was a substantial superiority over the defending forces. There was no prospect of obtaining the orthodox three-to-one superiority based on First War teaching, and the British command had to be satisfied with a planned overall superiority in men and equipment of approximately two to one. The principal shortcoming was in infantry, of which there was never enough.
By the gallantry and skill of the Allied navies and merchant services, reinforcements to achieve this superiority continued to flow in during September and October. The sweating quays of Egypt were crowded with discharging cargoes by day and by night, the great base stores depots swelled and expanded across the sandy reaches of the Delta and the Canal Zone, the workshops hummed and clanged as new equipment was serviced or damaged equipment repaired, the great base hospitals received new drafts of doctors, orderlies and nurses, the reinforcement camps were filled with jostling drafts of pale-skinned soldiers and airmen experiencing their first bouts of dysentery and their first ordeal by flies, route-marching under the grilling sun by day and by compass at night, swallowing the daily tablet of mepacrine against malaria, gradually hardening themselves after the lethargy of a long sea voyage. An air of formidable preparation hung over the desert and the sultry Delta, but only the chosen few knew what was afoot. At the Gezira Club cricket and golf went on as usual and the swimming bath was as full as ever. On a hundred improvised fields the footballs bounced about in the cool of the evening. In the afternoon the staff of GHQ continued to have their long siesta.
Of all the new arrivals, the largest formed body, and one that was to bring new lustre to the desert army as well as to itself, was 51st (Highland) Division, under Douglas Wimberley. Having undergone all the trials of the newcomer and having manned the defences of the Pyramids, ‘the Jocks’ moved up on 8 September in rear of Alam Halfa, behind 44th Division. Here they felt at last near the battlefield and learned the ways of desert life. They accustomed themselves to the water ration, learnt how to make desert fires, underwent the experience of becoming caked with sweat and sand, discovered the enchantment of bedding down under the glittering canopy of stars and awoke to the piper’s reveille of ‘Hey Johnny Cope’.
Of material recruitments to the new Allied strength the most precious was the new Sherman tank, which we owed to a spontaneous act of generosity on the part of President Roosevelt and the ungrudging co-operation of General Marshall. Three hundred Shermans were sent off at once in six of America’s fastest ships, and, although one of them was torpedoed and sunk next day, the loss was immediately made good. At last the British armoured regiments had a tank that could meet the best German tanks on equal terms. Mounting a 75-mm gun, the Sherman was a marriage of British and American design, based on our experience in combat. Two hundred and fifty-two were issued to units and were ready for action at the opening of the Battle of Alamein, and more were coming in. Some regiments, however, as in 9th Armoured Brigade, did not get their Shermans until the night before the battle and several of them were found to be mechanically shaky.
Another tank newcomer was the British Crusader Mark III, which mounted a 6-pdr gun instead of the little 2-pdr that all British tanks had hitherto possessed. Keenly awaited by the armoured regiments, it was soon being criticized for having most of the mechanical faults of its predecessors. About one-third of the tanks in Eighth Army were Crusaders of sorts.
Almost as welcome as the Sherman was the first of the self-propelled artillery for the support of the armour. We had improvised a model ourselves by mounting a standard 25-pdr gun in the chassis of a Valentine tank. This equipment, known as the ‘Bishop’ and manned by 121st Field Regiment, RA, went into action at Alamein, but it was not a satisfactory makeshift and could not compare with the properly designed American ‘Priest’, which now began to arrive.
The Priest mounted a 105-mm gun, in a Grant tank chassis, with a flashless charge. It was first issued to 11th (Honourable Artillery Company) Regiment, Royal Horse Artillery, in 1st Armoured Division, was soon a success and in time became the standard equipment for all RHA regiments. It meant, however, a completely new training for the British gunners, since American artillery methods are based on those of the French, and Leggatt’s officers and men had to learn a new language from American instructors of ‘mils’ (instead of degrees), ‘panoramic telescopes’, ‘pro-directors’ and so on.
Among the other equipment that was now flowing in was a steady increase in the numbers of the new 6-pdr anti-tank gun. By the time of Alamein most of the artillery anti-tank regiments and many of the infantry platoons had been re-equipped with this in place of the 2-pdr. In the hands of stout-hearted detachments it was to take a heavy toll of enemy tanks. A few were mounted on lightly armoured chassis to form the self-propelled guns known as ‘Deacons’; they were issued to ZZ Battery of 76th Anti-tank Regiment, R.A., and gallantly handled under Major Ronald Crouch.
The 6-pdr suffered, however, from one serious defect. It was transported on an Austin lorry known horribly as a ‘portee’. In contrast to the Chevrolet portee previously employed in the Middle East, its high and bulky silhouette was fearfully conspicuous and a magnet for German fire in daylight.
NEW TRAINING
Montgomery drafted his general plan for the Battle of Alamein soon after Alam Halfa and, having received Alexander’s acceptance, expounded it to a conference of corps and divisional commanders by the sea-shore on 15 September. He gave a comprehensive picture of his intentions and assigned each division its task. What his plan was will be seen in a later chapter. Wimberley recorded in his journal, it was to be a ‘real set-piece battle of the First War type’.
Now this was a type of battle of which Eighth Army, as such, had had little experience. Their mentality was deeply engraved with the design of the outflanking movement, with the armour as the ascendant arm. Montgomery therefore ordered an intensive programme of re-training (and reorganization) to be undertaken in the brief time remaining.
The Army had now to be drilled, not for the customary desert battle of movement but for a burst-in frontally, a head-on clash, a night assault against strong fixed defences. It was to be a battle in which, in its critical first stages, the infantry were to be dominant, with the tanks geared to their movements and with massive artillery support under centralized control. All the techniques of the assault upon strong defences had therefore to be practised — the penetration of deep minefields, the infantry attack under a moving barrage, quick consolidation against counter-attack, the neutralization of enemy guns, the passage of armour through the bridgeheads won by the infantry, signal communications, administrative support and so on. Furthermore, they had to be practised under the exacting conditions of all-night attacks.
This was a formidable programme of training to be undertaken in the short time available, and the training was very tough. Whole divisions were pulled back and were worked up by stages to a point at which they conducted rehearsals of the parts to which they had been assigned, though no one but the divisional commander yet knew what that part was to be. The Highland Division rehearsed their part five times. Stretches of desert were selected that resembled the ground that the division would have to attack, incorporating the known enemy defences. Actual mines were laid and across these the infantry advanced while the sappers cleared safe lanes for the armour and fighting vehicles. Live artillery barrages were fired.
Hitherto infantry assaults behind a moving barrage had had no place in desert warfare. Barrages, indeed, had come to be considered old-fashioned and had been replaced by the artillery ‘concentration’, which is a characteristic of the moving battle rather than the battle of position. Indeed, many young artillery officers had not worked out a ‘barrage table’ since their days as cadets.
Montgomery, however, intended to employ barrages on the largest scale in a series of night attacks and the troops had therefore to be practised in walking close up behind a moving curtain of bursting shells. Oliver Leese and the divisional comm
anders themselves led the first waves behind the barrages to give confidence to those who were unaccustomed. There were few casualties, but in the Highland Division Major Sir Arthur Wilmot and five men of the Black Watch were killed.
By these rehearsals, sand-table exercises and other training methods the divisions cast their desert thinking into a new mould. The more the problems were examined, the more evident it became that a night attack across entirely featureless country covered with mines, barbed wire and booby traps was a difficult and complicated operation requiring careful planning in the smallest particular. How to be sure you were going in the right direction in the dark, how to recognize the imaginary line in the desert that was your objective, how to keep touch with flank units in the fog of the all-covering dust-even these primary needs were stubborn problems.
The method commonly employed in the infantry was for a navigating officer to lead the assaulting troops compass in hand and counting the paces. One need hardly say that this required a man of cool nerves. We shall see before long the stratagems employed to overcome these problems and how they sometimes failed.
In this vital training period the technique for infantry attacks was to a large extent worked out in the New Zealand Division under General Freyberg, and the other divisions in 30th Corps adopted the methods he evolved. Co-operation between infantry and armour received special attention. The Valentine tanks of 23rd Armoured Brigade thus trained with the assaulting infantry whom they were to support, and an inspired move was made when Montgomery gave 9th Armoured Brigade, a formation of fine fighting spirit, to the New Zealanders as their own armour.
In addition to this large-scale divisional training directed to the particular operation, Montgomery ordered intensive unit-retraining. The Army had suffered 102,000 casualties in the ten months from the ‘Crusader’ battle to Alam Halfa, and the more recent replacements had not been properly assimilated into their units. Men freshly out from home had much to learn, such as minefield operations, and a few things to unlearn, such as the slit-trench mentality and the passive attitude towards hostile aircraft. Montgomery had found on arrival that no unit training was being done.
‘Officers considered’, he said,[17] ‘that the only training necessary was fighting. Of this the older hands had had plenty and their standards were high, but that attitude would not do. I insisted that, whether in the line or not, they should resume training, especially for the large reinforcements that had been coming in to replace casualties and for those who had been recently stepped up in rank.’
The spectacle was therefore soon to be seen, all the way along the line, except in the south, of platoons and companies marching silently out of the line in the pale mauve light after the dawn ‘stand down’, to carry out exercises and classes a few miles behind the front, and marching back again in the late afternoons as the sandstorms whipped up and, with an accent note characteristic of the desert theme, the empty petrol tins banged and bowled along before the dust-laden wind.
Together with this re-training, a great deal of re-organization was taking place within Eighth Army, directed by Montgomery himself. The largest and most significant was the re-formation of 10th Corps as an all-armoured corps under Herbert Lumsden. Other changes were designed, in part to shape the Army to the operations he had planned for it, and in part to establish divisional loyalties more permanently. He took a strong objection to units floating about from one division to another.
In his letter of 29 September to Corps commanders on the uses of divisions, which has been quoted earlier, he personally laid down the composition and affiliations of each division: its brigades, artillery regiments, engineer squadrons or companies, etc. These, he said, would belong ‘definitely’ to the divisions and ‘will wear the respective divisional signs on their clothing and on their vehicles’.
Knowing that there would be some heartburning over this and that, for example, those who had worn the emblem of the ‘desert rat’ would hate to exchange it for another, he went on in his curt, ‘typical Monty’ fashion:
There may be certain individuals and units who do not like the composition of divisions as stated, and who wish for changes.
There will be no changes.
Protesting, or belly-aching, about the matter is forbidden.
A conspicuous example of these revised affiliations was the switch of 7th Motor Brigade, the famous infantry limb of 7th Armoured Division, to 1st Armoured Division. This change was made because 1st Armoured Division, which Montgomery had cast for a special role, had no infantry brigade, whereas the 7th Armoured Division, whose tanks and vehicles were mechanically in a shaky condition, was not at first intended for a principal part.
The direct order on the wearing of divisional emblems was a further fillip to the divisional spirit. The Highland Division, to whom this was a sore point, were dismayed when told on arrival in Egypt: ‘Of course, you’ll have to take down your flashes’. Wimberley therefore personally asked Montgomery’s permission and was told: ‘Of course; certainly wear your badges.’
At the end of September — the day before Montgomery’s letter on divisions — his battle plan was disclosed to brigadiers and to RE commanding officers, the latter having a particularly compelling responsibility for clearing mines.
From then on operational preparations became intensive. Commanders went up the line and stared speculatively at the distant low outline of Miteiriya Ridge and its north-westerly extensions, which was to be the main objective. They reconnoitred routes, assembly areas, lying-up positions, harbours for waiting tanks and transport and forward sites for their own battle headquarters. Sapper officers went out into No Man’s Land on minefield reconnaissance as best they could. Interdivisional conferences were held to arrange boundaries and to agree on the controlled speed of the infantry advance and the covering barrage. Guns were calibrated. On the edge of our own minefields advance trenches were hewn out of the rock or shovelled out of the sand, camouflaged and stocked with water and hard rations; they were small and cramped slits in which the assaulting infantry were to lie in hiding for a day before moving up to the start-line of the attack, for they had a long way to go and the start-lines were fixed as far forward as possible.
THE DEVIL’S GARDENS
Perhaps the most vital of all the preparations for the battle, however, was the technique evolved for the dangerous business of clearing enemy mines. We cannot appreciate the hazards with which the Army was faced at Alamein without an understanding of the prickly nature of those hazards and the courage of the men who had to tackle them. Official and popular accounts pass lightly over this fundamental operation, and the generals who have written their memoirs scarcely mention it.
The defensive system that Rommel had for months been building was based on mines, barbed wire, anti-tank guns and machine guns, in great depth. The Germans called these minefields ‘Devil’s Gardens’ and the mines themselves, by a change of simile, ‘Devil’s Eggs’. The British, more soberly, called them ‘mine marshes’. The ‘garden’ or ‘marsh’ stretched the whole length of the front and its depth in some places was as much as five miles.
The mines themselves were sown in two main frontal belts, usually a few hundred yards wide. Between these main belts, which were irregular in shape, lay an expanse of open desert, often three or four miles wide, across which, connecting the two main belts at numerous points, transverse belts had been sown, so that attacking tanks that punctured the first belt would find themselves boxed in. Reaching out from the main belts there were numerous, apparently haphazard fingers or antennae of mines and wire, designed to lure tanks of troops on to the field of fire of a concealed gun. Thus the pattern of the minefield was an irregular maze.
The front (British) edge of each belt was entirely open and the presence of mines was by day discernible only to the keen and practised eye, and by night not at all. A brisk wind might, however, blow the sand off them here and there. The enemy’s own ‘home’ edge was usually marked by barbed wire from which hung s
mall metal labels adorned with a skull and crossbones and the admonition Achtung Minnen. Belts of barbed wire were also irregularly spread inside the minefield, usually to protect the ‘battle outposts’.
Within these bristling devil’s gardens were concealed numerous small defensive works — trenches or stone sangars (weapon emplacements with a parapet of rocks, specially favoured by the Italians) — in which were sited machine-guns, anti-tank guns, mortars and observation posts. Access to them was provided by narrow lanes through the mines. These were what Rommel called ‘battle outposts’.
They were sited so that the whole of the minefield areas were covered by fire, if not by bodies; fire-power being more important in defence than numbers. The fire posts were, of course, mutually supporting. Their purpose was to delay and cripple an attacking force as it struggled through the minefields, while the main strength of the armoured and infantry divisions in the rear, having freedom of movement, disposed itself for a knock-out blow.
Here, then, was a model and formidable example of ‘defence in depth’. There was nothing at all new in the technique, for it was the normal defence technique of the Germans, but its strength was in its depth. It demonstrated how a defence, with great economy of force, could hold a strong tactical advantage against an attacking force of superior numbers. The head gardener who supervised this infernal planting scheme was Colonel Hecker, Rommel’s Chief Engineer, and Rommel himself watched its progress daily and had great confidence in its stopping power. The month’s delay in our attack which Alexander pressed upon an impatient Mr Churchill gave Rommel the opportunity to thicken, deepen and intensify hit barriers still further.
Alamein (Major Battles of World War Two) Page 9