Alamein (Major Battles of World War Two)

by C. E. Lucas Phillips

220476[21] (‘fighting state’)

  108000[22] (53736 Germans)

  Tanks (fit for action)

  939 (in forward area)

  548[23] (249 German)

  Guns, field and medium (in action)

  892

  552

  Guns, Anti-tank

  1451

  1063

  Mines

  460000

  Aircraft (serviceable)

  530

  350[24]

  CONSIDERATIONS

  While training and reorganization were going on Montgomery was maturing his plans. The problem before him was that his divisions were confronted by thirty-eight miles of deep and intricate defences, having no flanks or other opportunity for manoeuvre. The scope for surprise was small.

  There was no cover to give natural concealment from the enemy to the large preparations necessary before the offensive — the movements and assembly of whole divisions, the positioning of tanks, guns and operational vehicles, the accumulation in the forward areas of very large stocks of ammunition and stores of all sorts, the preparation and marking of tracks for the forward movement of a great mass of vehicles to the vital sectors.

  Nor were the forward areas alone concerned. The multitudinous activities in the rear — the great stocks of petrol, rations and the construction of water supply points in particular — might be equally revealing of intention to the eyes of the enemy cameras from the air.

  Equally serious were the indications that might be given by the registration shoots necessary for the artillery to confirm their precise positions, the nature and volume of the mass wireless traffic that filled the atmosphere (to which the enemy systematically listened, as we did to his) and the pattern of the activities of our air forces.

  Reviewing the relative strengths, Montgomery had cause for satisfaction that by the middle of October he would have a superiority of more than two-to-one in tanks, with more still on the way, that his artillery was of an exceptionally high standard of training and provided with enormous stocks of ammunition, that the Desert Air Force was sufficiently strong and well served to achieve air superiority and that his infantry would be adequate in numbers to force their way through the defences. He knew well, however, that the enemy’s potent weapons were nearly half-a-million mines and the tank-killing guns which he handled with such remarkable boldness and skill.

  Two large questions Montgomery had, therefore, to decide initially were the nature of the battle that he would impose upon the enemy and the point of his main effort. His first intention, communicated to the corps and divisional commanders only at the conference on 15 September, was to attack in two sectors simultaneously, with the main effort in the north.

  He designed to ‘trap’ the enemy in the positions in which they stood and destroy them there. Thirtieth Corps was to breach the northern defences and 10th Corps was to pour through with its armoured divisions and position itself ‘on ground of its own choosing astride the enemy supply routes’. The enemy armour would thus be obliged to attack our armour in this chosen position and would be destroyed. The enemy infantry would then be rounded up.

  Simultaneously, there was to be another attack in the south by 13th Corps, which would be of a secondary nature and designed primarily to prevent the enemy from sending 21st Panzer and the Ariete Divisions to reinforce the northern sector.

  This was the broad conception on which was based all the reorganization, disposition and training of Eighth Army that took place during the five weeks before the battle, the formidable supply, repair and technical preparations to support it, and Coningham’s dispositions in the air. In its general conception the plan conformed to the now traditional desert pattern of destroying the enemy armour first and then mopping up the unprotected infantry; it departed from the usual pattern only in putting the main emphasis on a northern drive instead of the usual swinging movement up from the south.

  As the weeks passed, however, Montgomery began to be troubled with doubts about some aspects of the plan. He was satisfied with the standards of leadership and the fighting qualities of officers and men but was apprehensive that some of them had not had the right kind of training for the sort of battle that he proposed to fight. He thought, he tells us, that he might be asking too much of them.

  On 6 October, accordingly, he decided, while adhering to the main lines of the plan, to shift the emphasis.

  A BATTLE OF ATTRITION

  That emphasis should now be, not to destroy the enemy’s armour first, but his infantry. The aim would not be to ‘trap and destroy’ but to destroy by attrition. He would rely mainly on the close-quarter fighting qualities of his regiments, which he knew to be of a high standard, on the flexibility and tactical skill of the artillery and on the powerful backing of Tedder’s air forces.

  Under massive artillery support, our infantry and their supporting tanks would breach the minefield defences and then proceed to wear down the enemy infantry by a process of attrition that he called ‘crumbling’. Tenth Corps’ armoured mass would pass through, form a protective front, and place themselves to receive and break the attempt that he knew the enemy’s armour would make to come to the assistance of their infantry. The enemy was to be repeatedly hammered and methodically destroyed piecemeal. He would be made ‘to dance to our tune’ by the constant pressure of our initiative.

  ‘Having thus eaten the guts out of the enemy,’ Montgomery said, ‘he will have no troops with which to hold a front. His Panzer army may attempt to interfere with our tactics and may launch counterattacks; this would be just what we want… The eventual fate of the Panzer army is certain — it would not be able to avoid destruction.’

  It is significant to note that in both editions of this plan it was Montgomery’s purpose that the British armour should not be ‘loosed’ against the DAK, but, as at Alam Halfa, should position itself on favourable ground and await the attack that the enemy would be bound to launch.

  Having studied Rommel’s methods, Montgomery counted on the mistakes that he knew Rommel would make and proposed thereby to invite him to destroy himself. This was the real inspiration behind Montgomery’s plan, which was outwardly pedestrian but which was based on a shrewd psychological appreciation. He had no intention of bringing on a battle of movement, which was Rommel’s strong point and in which prior calculations are liable to be upset by unexpected circumstances, but to impose on his adversary a type of battle to which he was unaccustomed and to which he would make the wrong reactions. Rommel’s standard reaction was the tank counter-attack and Montgomery knew that, in making such attacks without an infantry overture, against good troops all set to receive them, Rommel was certain to lose all his squadrons one by one. He had appreciated Rommel’s weakness in the handling of infantry and knew their reluctance to launch attacks by night, which are the one means by which, in those circumstances, opposition to the armoured attack can be removed.

  As before, there were to be blows by both the right hand and the left in this battering match, and the big punch, also as before, was to be in the north by the infantry of 30th Corps, closely followed by the armour of 10th. The assault on the minefield defences was to be made by the Australians, the Highlanders, the New Zealanders and the South Africans. The New Zealanders would have 9th Armoured Brigade under their own command and, after the break-in, were to have a special assignment in the break-out and the pursuit. The other infantry divisions would be supported by the tank battalions of 23rd Armoured Brigade.

  The objective for the break-in was the far side of Miteiriya Ridge and a line in extension of it to the north-west, marked by a series of small features and together forming, in effect, a continuous low ridge, merging into what became known as Kidney Ridge. This objective of 30th Corps infantry was given the code-name Oxalic.[25] We should note particularly that this was short of the third line of defence, consisting of anti-tank guns and dug-in tanks, which the enemy began to prepare from the Rahman mosque southwards a few weeks before the battle.


  This plan meant that the break-in through the minefield defences would be on a front of about six and a half miles and to a depth which varied from three miles at its southern end to five miles at the northern, and across this mine-infested territory two ‘corridors’, as Montgomery called them, were alloted for the advance of the tanks of 10th Corps. The armoured divisions of that Corps were to move up these corridors immediately behind the infantry and would make for a ‘bound’, code-named Pierson, which was from one to two miles beyond the infantry objective.

  Then, after reconnaissance, they would move on another three or four miles to a ‘report line’ drawn roughly south-eastwards from Tel el Aqqaqir and called Skinflint.[26]

  In their writings Field-Marshal Montgomery and others have given an emphasis to these ‘corridors’ in a manner that may seem to suggest that they were the avenues of attack, but, of course, they were not so. The opening attack was to be an infantry one. Their task was to establish a broad and deep bridgehead. Across the ground secured by this bridgehead routes were assigned for the passage forward of the armour.

  Thus, as admirably expressed in 10th Armoured Division’s operation order (OO No. 11 of 19 October):

  10 Armd. Div. will move through the bridgehead to be secured by 30 Corps and, in co-operation with 1 Armd. Div., destroy the enemy armour on or west of 30 Corps final objective.

  We shall better understand the battle, therefore, if we forget about ‘corridors’, except as broad avenues across the infantry bridgehead allotted for the forward movement of 10th Corps and along which they would clear their own minefield gaps. The infantry divisions would clear their own lanes for their fighting vehicles to move forward. In fact, across the whole bridgehead, eighteen or more lanes were designed to be swept on the first night by the sappers of all the divisions.

  For the left-hand punch by 13th Corps in the south, there was no material change of plan. The French were to capture the dominating height of Himeimat and Hunter’s Plateau to the west. To the south of the Munassib Depression 7th Armoured and 44th Divisions would blow a hole in the minefields and, if conditions were favourable, exploit success by a swing to the north.

  The low mechanical condition of 7th Armoured, however, was a controlling factor in these calculations. The main purpose of the southern operations was to keep the enemy guessing about our main intention and to oblige him accordingly to keep 21st Panzer Division and the Ariete Armoured Divisions down in the south. The enemy must be led to believe, for as long as possible, that we intended to follow the usual tactics of an enveloping attack from the south.

  If there was not a quick success, and penetration seemed likely to be made only at great cost, 13th Corps attack was to be called off, in order to keep 7th Armoured Division intact for future operations.

  The tasks that Montgomery accordingly assigned to each Corps Commander were these:

  30th Corps: To secure a bridgehead (Oxalic) beyond the enemy defence zone before dawn and assist the passage of 10th Corps.

  10th Corps: To pass through Oxalic and bring on an armoured battle on ground of its own choosing; if there was no opportunity of this, operate to prevent enemy armour from interfering with 30th Corps’ crumbling operations. Corps first bound — Pierson; advance subsequently to Skinflint to challenge attack.

  13th Corps: To penetrate enemy defences south of Munassib for the passage of 7th Armoured Division, but not to allow that division to become mauled; and to secure Qaret el Himeimat. Such was the plan in outline. The code name chosen for the operation was Lightfoot — significant enough for those who would have to walk over those miles of minefields. Other things being ready, the date for the operation was determined by the moon, for artificial moonlight’ had not yet been invented. The maximum period of natural moonlight was necessary for the troops, especially the mine-lifting parties, to see what they were doing. And, as Montgomery calculated that the battle would last ten days or more, a waxing moon was the thing.

  The date accordingly chosen was 23 October.

  Zero hour, the time at which the infantry were to go into the assault, was to be 10 p.m.

  Another of Montgomery’s leading principles was to take his troops into his confidence and explain to them the plan of battle. It was not sufficient merely to order them to assault at a certain place and time. He wanted them to feel that they were trusted comrades in ‘an enterprise of great pith and moment’. So began a practice that was to become almost a normal routine before every large battle.

  The junior ranks could, obviously, not be told until almost the last minute, but, having training and other considerations in mind, Montgomery ordered that the news should be broken progressively by ranks, beginning himself with the corps and divisional commanders at Burg el Arab on 15 September. Brigadiers and COs of RE units were taken into confidence on 10 October, the sappers having a special responsibility for preparation.

  By a series of directives Montgomery told all senior officers what sort of battle they must train for — a ‘real rough house’, a long ‘buffeting’ of many days ‘under the continuous strain of hard battle fighting’, one which would demand that men’s physical condition should be ‘really tough and hard’ and in which ‘determined leadership will be vital.’ This insistence upon hard unit fighting was, no doubt, increasingly influenced by the information that began to come in of the third defensive belt that the enemy was preparing beyond the reach of a one-night attack, but of which we probably had only partial evidence.

  Among the generals, whose comments Montgomery invited, the plan was not without its critics. Lumsden and Gatehouse were apprehensive on the part of the armour. They foresaw that, as the tanks emerged singly at the ends of the corridors and attempted to fan out right and left, they were likely to be picked off one by one by the anti-tank guns that would be immediately concentrated upon them. And if the infantry should be unable to get right through to the 30th Corps objective, the tanks would be caught in exposed positions in daylight in the minefield, unable to manoeuvre.

  Gatehouse thought it impossible for the sappers to clear mines to such a depth in a single night. (In fact, the time between Zero hour and next morning’s first light left only half an hour more than the theoretical best possible.) Both foresaw confusion and congestion in the narrow gaps through the minefields as the great mass of tanks, guns and vehicles strove to get forward, and these gaps would soon be ‘taped’ by the enemy artillery.

  To all these objections Montgomery firmly replied, ‘Nonsense’.

  De Guingand and Walsh, the chiefs of staff of Montgomery and Leese, attending Lumsden’s corps conference for the battle, were both disturbed to find that Lumsden seemed to have little faith in the plan. The two staff officers reported accordingly to their chiefs. There were those among the infantry also, particularly the Dominion infantry, who, remembering the July fighting, declared: ‘The tanks won’t go through’. Freyberg said so frankly.

  Monty reacted immediately. The armoured attacks, he said, ‘must and shall’ go through. Moreover, if the areas of their corridors were not completely cleared by daylight on 24 October, the armoured divisions must fight their own way through into open country beyond. He had plenty of tanks and did not mind how many were lost if the result were achieved.

  These doubters — whose doubts were by no means invalid — were, however, but a very small handful and were to be counted among the senior officers only. Among the regiments and the battalions no such clouds disturbed the horizon. Nor did those who were unhappy about the plan give any sign of their disquiet. Major Jack Perrott, of 2nd (Cheshire) Field Squadron, recorded that Gatehouse was an inspiration to 10th Armoured Division during training and that when the time came for the plan to be announced he was ‘inspired by Alec Gatehouse’s enthusiasm’. Lumsden and Gatehouse, being obliged to accept the plan, did not lack the loyalty to carry it out as best they could.

  THE RED HERRING

  Though the plans were at first disclosed only to the most senior officers, all men of
perception could see that something was brewing. To everyone the almanac of things to come was always the moon. In the Warwickshire Yeomanry John Lakin and Clive Stoddart, watching the old moon wane and the sickle of the new rise and swell, were reminded of Winston Churchill’s dramatic words when he had talked to them one sweltering day in August. ‘Gentlemen,’ he had said, ‘you will strike an unforgettable blow against the enemy. The corn will be ripe for the sickle and you will be the reapers.’

  We have seen that this offensive plan involved the movement of multitudes of troops, tanks, guns and vehicles, together with the piling up of great stocks of ammunition and stores, and that the total lack of cover made it impossible to conceal these activities from the cameras of the enemy. In the absence of any opportunity of surprise by manoeuvre, it was vital to the success of the plan that some means should be devised of surprise by deception.

  How, then, could we deceive the enemy? How present a picture which, looked at through his wideawake eyes, would convince him that it was not a fake? The answer resolved upon was that, since the main evidence could not be concealed, it should be falsified.

  The enemy must somehow be led to believe that our main effort was to be in the south. As far as possible he must also be left guessing about the timing of our attack, but it was appreciated that the phases of the moon would give him some indication.

  The co-ordinating brain behind the ingenious plan now evolved was that of Charles Richardson, an officer on Montgomery’s planning staff. It was on such a grand scale that it was given its own code name of Operation Bertram. It involved planning in minute detail, the employment of a large labour force, quantities of transport and the mocking-up of very large numbers of dummies made from wooden battens, hessian canvas, cut-up petrol tins and suchlike material. The exact position to be taken up in the zones of attack of every tank, gun and vehicle was fixed several weeks in advance and then Bertram began to operate.