Moreover, behind these defensive minefields he began to prepare a third belt of defence, characterized by pits for dug-in tanks and antitank guns. This belt began just east of the mosque of Rahman and ran roughly southwards for about seven and a half miles. Eight miles from our forward positions, it was beyond the reach of a single night’s penetration by infantry and it was, indeed, to prove the main obstacle to the progress of Montgomery’s armour.
In the earlier and largely mobile fighting enemy mines had not had serious importance. As soon as he had been stopped in front of Alamein, however, Rommel began minelaying on a large scale and by the third week in October had sown close on half a million of these explosive devil’s eggs.
Overall, 96 per cent were anti-tank mines — German, Italian, French and the ‘Egyptian’ mine made by Egyptian contractors to British order and captured by the enemy. They were buried just below the soil and blew up under pressure, not necessarily destroying a tank but certainly crippling it. Wheeled vehicles were damaged beyond repair and their occupants usually killed or mutilated. The anti-tank mines were not, as a rule, set off by the weight of a man, if he walked naturally, but a man running actuated them and then there would be nothing left of him and his near neighbours.
The long Italian ‘box’ mine was easy enough for trained men to lift, and the corrugated, green French mine required considerable pressure to actuate it. The Egyptian mine was sensitive and tricky to handle, but the most widely used and most notorious was the German Teller. This was a round, shallow canister with a raised neck, in which the striker was seated. The Italians sowed their mines on a regular pattern — about one every five yards in each direction — which the Royal Engineers had learned to recognize, but the Germans, like the British, sowed theirs irregularly.
Even with no complicating factors, the removal of these mines was a ticklish enough job, but other devices had come in to multiply the risks. The battle of wits between the inventor of mines and the soldier who had to find and lift them at his immediate peril had just begun. The booby-trap technique had not yet reached its high-water mark of devilish ingenuity, but quite a lot of mines were trapped, ready to put a quick end to the man who tried to lift them. Thus, if one mine were lifted, a connecting device might blow up another.
More dangerous to the soldier himself, however, were various devices for killing him personally as he walked over the ground. The horrible ‘shoe’ mine, which blew off a man’s feet (as one did Kippenberger’s), had not yet made its appearance, but the S-mine used at Alamein was even more lethal. It was a small metal cylinder from the neck of which protruded three little horns. When the horns were trodden on, a ballistic charge shot the cylinder into the air about stomach-high, where it burst, discharging an all-round volley of shrapnel bullets. It was a deadly killer.
Thin trip-wires, invisible by night, might also bring sudden and violent death. The S-mine itself could be so exploded. Trip-wires were also connected to large aircraft bombs which could kill men wholesale, and did so at Alamein. Quantities of the small Italian hand grenades called ‘Red Devils’ lay about the minefields; themselves dangerously sensitive, if you picked one up to remove it, you might set off a mine and blow yourself and your comrades to pieces.
Such were some of the delights of Rommel’s gardens. To walk among them made one’s feet tingle. But in an assault the infantry of the rifle companies were expected to advance across them at walking pace without a pause, accepting casualties. It was not possible, however, to bring up their supporting weapons and vehicles — anti-tank guns, bren gun carriers, etc. — nor any tanks, until a lane through the minefield had been ‘de-loused’.
This was the particular business of the squadrons or companies of Royal Engineers in the divisions. They had, of course, plenty of specimens of all types of mine and all divisional sappers had been trained to such familiarity with them that they could disarm and dismantle them blindfold. Even in daylight and when not under fire, the business required a strict and exact drill. One had to search with the fingers below and around each mine lest a booby-trap wire was attached. One must never take a step without looking or feeling where to put one’s feet. The usual method of disarming the anti-tank mine was to feel for and remove the igniter, but the S-mine was disarmed by inserting a nail into the small hole in which the safety pin had been seated before the enemy mine-layer had removed it.
All this was a dangerous enough business, which not very many men approached without some bad moments, but the first difficulty was to find the mine. Hitherto the only methods had been by visual evidence cf disturbed sand, which the enemy was often very skilful in concealing, and by prodding the ground with bayonets. Besides being primitive, slow and dangerous, this could be done only by day and therefore gave the show away to the Germans as soon as it began.
This had been a contributory cause of some of the costly failures in the July fighting, as on one afternoon when, after the Royal Engineers had cleared a lane under full observance, 9th Lancers moved through, to find the enemy anti-tank guns ready waiting for them. Enemy minefields were rarely known and reconnoitred and, in the muddled methods of that period, the sappers’ orders usually took the vague form of instructions to gap ‘any minefield that may be found’. In the apt words of Sapper H. Flinn, of 3rd (Cheshire) Field Squadron, ‘We were pitchforked unexpectedly into battles without any kind of preparation’. This was an absurd way of laying on an attack, since only too often the whole operation depended on that factor.
An analytical study issued by 1st Armoured Division recorded that ‘Failures in the summer at Ruweisat Ridge had clearly shown’ that sappers alone could not do the job, that co-ordination by all arms was necessary, that control of the operation must be centralized and that ‘the most careful planning to the last detail’ was essential.[18]
In one of these July ‘nonsenses’, when the anti-tank guns of 50th Division were blown up on mines and the infantry overrun by the enemy, Major Peter Moore, commanding the squadron in which Sapper Flinn served, was wounded and sent back to the Delta. Moore was an officer of the Regular service of quite exceptional qualities. To us, perhaps the most important was that he was a serious, thinking, dedicated sapper; but he was much more besides. Tall, dark, wiry, physically ‘tough’, used to hard living, he had already established a reputation for great personal bravery, a reputation that was to be further enhanced and to be recognized in multiple decorations. He was one of the few men who have fought with the revolver at arm’s length and personally wrestled with an armed enemy. Like many officers who are successful leaders in battle, he was extremely strict in matters of training and unit discipline. In short, he was a very fine all-round soldier.
His wound healed, Moore returned to the desert in August, just after Montgomery had arrived. Almost at once he was sent for by Brigadier F. H. Kisch, Chief Engineer of Eighth Army. Kisch had recently held a conference of all the corps and divisional engineer commanders on the mine clearance problem and they had sent in their written recommendations. These he now handed to Moore and said: 1 am sure that there should be a drill for this, just as there is a drill for loading and firing field guns. Go away and come back in a week’s time with your recommendations. When you have worked out a drill and I have approved it, you will form the Eighth Army School of Mine Clearance.’
This development, from which was to emerge one of the chief battle-winning techniques of Alamein, owed its origin to directions from Montgomery, who saw the clearance of mines as one of the vital tasks in the ordered and controlled ‘stage management’ of battle.
In due course the school was set up near Burg el Arab and Moore was given a South African and a New Zealand officer to help him. Some of the most stubborn problems that faced him right from the start were: how to devise some method of detection and clearance by night; how to locate and reconnoitre a minefield without giving the game away to the enemy; how to avoid crippling casualties that would imperil the operation. Other problems were matters of ‘drill’ or te
chnique — how wide the gap should be, how it should be marked by day and night, how to keep direction, how to co-operate with infantry and tanks and so on.
By good fortune, the answer to the problem of detection by night came just at the right moment. There already existed an electronic type of detector known as the Goldak, which operated on the principle of two balanced coils, and any change in inductance caused by a metal object underground set up an oscillation that could be heard in earphones as a ‘ping’. The Goldak was not sufficiently robust or reliable, but the first models of the subsequently famous Polish Mine Detector now began to come in. Operating on the same electronic principle, it had been invented by Captain J. S. Kosacki, assisted by Lieutenant Kalinowski, of the Polish Free Forces then training in Scotland, and had been accepted by the War Office in March.
This meant that at last we were not dependent on visual evidence of disturbed earth nor on primitive bayonet prodding. It meant that we could work by night. This was a tremendous step forward, but supplies of the new detector were limited and by the time of Alamein only 500 had arrived, some of which proved faulty. In the event a great deal of mine clearance had to be done by prodding. The detector looked rather like a floor polisher on a broom handle and had the objection that the operator had to stand erect while he swept from side to side a few inches above the ground; he was therefore very exposed and vulnerable and needed to be a very cool hand in an operation which was the most severe nervous and physical strain of any that had to be endured on the battlefield.
The drill for the whole operation of gapping was worked out very quickly and approved by Kisch. It owed a great deal to Lieut-Colonel Kenneth Mackay, CRE (Commander Royal Engineers) of 1st Armoured Division, under whom Moore had served, and was based on one troop (or platoon) of sappers — two officers and about forty men — per gap. For the reconnaissance, an officer and a small party moved forward, reeling out a white tape behind them; this was to become the centre line of the gap. When the reconnaissance party reached the area where air photographs or other information suggested that the minefield might be expected, they planted a blue pinpoint light showing to the rear.
They then advanced in a stooping position with arms dangling, fingers just above ground level, back of the hand to the front, feeling for trip wires and keeping a sharp lookout for S-mines. Direction had to be kept very accurately by compasses exposed to the sun the day before.
When the reconnaissance party judged that they had reached the end of the mine belt on the enemy side a second blue light was shown.
On this signal, the ‘gapping party’ followed and at the head of it was a pilot vehicle. Its floor was heavily sandbagged, its steering column extended for the driver’s safety, and the driver himself, usually a volunteer, had to be a cool and steady hand. The purpose of the pilot was to test whether the reconnaissance party had accurately located the front edge of the minefield. In the open spaces between one minefield and another it might also discover whether there were any stray, haphazard mines. If the pilot blew up, the drill for clearing and marking a free lane began at once. There were never enough pilot vehicles, but they never lacked for drivers.
Three teams came forward, each with the task of making an 8-ft lane, the complete gap of 24 ft being calculated to allow two tanks to pass, until time permitted further widening. When the Polish detector was available, each team consisted of nine men and an NCO.
The nine were deployed in three trios. Three operated the detectors. In the second trio the two outside members, looped to each other to keep the right width, reeled out white tapes to mark the 8-ft lane. The third trio pinned the tapes down to the ground.
The team worked quickly right across the minefields, the object at this stage being to mark the lane and to clear S-mines, which was done by the NCO himself, while all hands lay flat. Having reached the far side of the minefield, they turned about and worked backwards for the actual de-lousing. For this stage, in order to minimize casualties from any mines that exploded, all hands moved at the crawl, except the detector-men.
The second trio, two of whom had previously been the tape-men, became the ‘mates’ or ‘directors’ of the detector men, keeping them going on a straight path, and putting a marker on top of each mine as its presence underground was revealed. The markers were cones cut from the flimsy white-metal of petrol tins.
It was the third trio who actually lifted the deadly canisters. Lying prone, as they came to the silver cones gleaming in the moonlight they carefully scraped away the soil with their fingers, feeling all round and underneath and, if there was no tell-tale booby-wire attached, fitted a loop of signal wire to the mine, moved back a little way and pulled it out. If it did not go off, the ‘Devil’s Egg’ was then disarmed by removing the igniter and stacked at the edge of the lane.
A vital feature of the drill was that the men in each trio were echeloned twelve feet back and to the left of one another and all were well spaced out. This was to avoid crippling casualties from an exploding mine or enemy fire.
Meanwhile, as this party of ten was working back to cleanse the lane, another party was working forward in the same lane. When the two parties met, the lane was clear.
Finally, the edges of the completed 24-ft gap were quickly fenced with a single string of wire and planted with T-shaped posts carrying orange and green pinpoint lights, the green on the safe side.
Tanks and vehicles could now drive through the ‘safe lane’, while the sappers went ahead, following the reconnaissance party’s white tape to the next belt of mines. Simultaneously the military police came forward with a lorryload of pickets and lamps and, with this tape as axis, marked out the route forward.
The time that this operation was expected to take, when there was no interruption by the enemy, was an hour per 200 yards, using detectors; when prodding, double that time. Needless to say, it was a very severe test of the nerve and steadiness of every man engaged.
This, in outline only, was the drill evolved. It dealt with the Royal Engineers’ part of the operation. Before the great battle Moore and his squadron were posted to 10th Armoured Division and they will very soon be seen putting their own drill into practice in battle.
At the same time an entirely different and most ingenious method of mine riddance was being put to the test by means of a fearsome-looking equipment known as the Scorpion, devised by the South African engineer Du Toit. This was a Matilda tank, in front of which, thrust forward on two projecting arms, was mounted a rotating shaft, and to this shaft were attached several short lengths of heavy chain. As the shaft revolved, driven by a separate V8 engine, the whirling chains beat the ground like flails and exploded any mine that they struck. Only a limited number was ready for Alamein, manned by 42nd and 44th Battalions Royal Tank Regiment with an RE complement. They were not at first a great success, becoming very overheated after long spells of flailing and stirring up enormous clouds of dust which attracted hostile attention and which made it almost impossible to keep direction. Later, as improvements were made, the Scorpion Regiment was formed.
Clearing the mines, however, was only a part of the problem of penetrating the explosive thickets of the devil’s gardens. Sappers alone, while absorbed in their sensitive task, could not fight the enemy battle outpost as well, though they were trained to do so if necessary and sometimes did. Thus it was very important to provide them with a protective force, so that they could concentrate on their task undisturbed. Moreover, after the gap had been made, its use had to be controlled.
A great advance was made when, in time for Alamein, a composite Minefield Task Force was created in most of the divisions. Each division had its own ideas, but that evolved by 1st Armoured Division became the standard model in Eighth Army and was taught at the Halfa Staff College. In that division the force consisted, in addition to the sapper squadrons, of a battalion of infantry (2nd Battalion The Rifle Brigade), three troops of tanks, a detachment of Military Police and a detachment of Royal Signals.
The whole force was under the command of the infantry CO and he was responsible for the three gaps required for the passage of an armoured division. It was at once a mine clearance force, a fighting force, a traffic control authority, a channel of communications and a centre of information. The control of traffic in both directions was of the first importance to operations and the coolness with which the ‘red caps’ performed this and other duties in the minefields under fire, immaculate in their daily turn-out until they became smothered in dust, was one of the star performances of Alamein.
No less excellent was the work done under the same conditions by the Royal Corps of Signals, for good communications were vital. Thus it was the sappers, signals and military police who led the armour into battle.
A special kind of minefield task force was employed by 13th Corps down in the south. Here the main covering force for the sappers was provided by 44th Division Reconnaissance Regiment, commanded by Lieut-Colonel J. L. Corbett-Winder, the unit being completely equipped with bren gun carriers. The ‘Snail’ was another ingenious device used in the south. This was a lorry dripping diesel oil, which leaves an unmistakable trail in the moonlight. Maimed by 211th Field Park Company, they ‘proved a lane’ which the sappers found clear; it must have been the first time that a field park company, whose business was normally confined to providing stores, had led a division into battle!
Thus by the time of Alamein the clearance of safe passages through minefields had been recognized as a vital and integral part of an assault operation, requiring careful training, careful integration into the plan and an important place in the operation orders of every division.
THE ALLIED AIR FORCES REGROUP
Under Tedder’s direction, reorganization and training were taking place in the air forces also. After the battle a vigorous spearhead of mobile fighter squadrons would be wanted for the pursuit and the new American squadrons had to be geared to the machine; these factors necessitated casting the Desert Air Force in a fresh mould.
Alamein (Major Battles of World War Two) Page 10