What then did the enemy see? In the north he saw a fairly heavy concentration of lorries and light vehicles of various sorts and, although at first he wondered what this might mean, he ceased to concern himself when he saw little change in the pattern as the weeks went by. Likewise he saw advanced slit trenches dug well in front of the forward infantry positions, but he got used to these also.
Farther back and farther inland, in the Staging Areas, he saw quantities of tanks, armoured cars, guns and their attendant trucks — real ones, these — sitting astride the system of tracks leading to the southern front, and he calculated that, as long as they stayed there, he would have two days’ notice before they could be in battle positions. He saw a concentration of artillery near the Munassib Depression. He saw a water pipeline, complete with pumping stations and water-storage towers, being methodically laid in a trench that pointed directly to the south and he calculated that the rate of progression was such that it would be completed soon after 1 November. He saw dumps of stores and ammunition accumulating in the same quarter. He saw 10th Armoured Division move up openly and almost ostentatiously to positions on 13th Corps front. His listening sets heard the busy wireless traffic of a tank formation preparing for operations.
He did not, however, know that this wireless traffic consisted of prepared signals sent out by the inoperative skeleton of 8th Armoured Division, he did not see that the pipeline being laid by 578th Army Troops Company, RE, was made of pieces of petrol tin, he did not see 10th Armoured Division move silently out of their southern position and leave dummies behind them. He did not see, on the northern front, the flimsy shapes of the sham lorries cast aside as the tanks, guns and scout cars and real lorries moved into their places. He did not see beneath the vast and convincing camouflage nets the huge stocks of warlike stores assembled at El Alamein station, and he did not recognize in the innumerable lorry-like objects up and down the front the deliberately shaped stacks of ammunition and rations.
Nor, twenty-four hours before the battle, did he see the attacking infantry move quietly up to the advanced trenches, empty and camouflaged, that they had previously dug close to the start line of their assault.
THE ENEMY’S DIFFICULTIES
To what conclusions, then, did the enemy come from these and many other evidences, and from his assessment of the probable factors, and what was his condition of meeting the threatened attack?
Rommel flew home on leave to Germany on 23 September. His health was poor and he required treatment. His place was taken temporarily by General Georg Stumme, a leading exponent of armoured warfare, who had been engaged in the hitherto victorious campaign in Russia and who, no doubt, was not sorry to exchange that bleak theatre of war for the sun of Africa. He took over from Rommel on 22 September.
He found that the Axis atmosphere was not a happy one. Divided authority had led to mutual recriminations, and prescriptions for remedying the several ills remained unexecuted. The rear administrative system was infirm and shaky and presented a striking contrast to our own well-articulated and ably-directed system. Relations between ground and air were also bad. Rommel, a few days before he flew home, had sent in a long list of his requirements and a pessimistic report on the prospects.
What concerns us more nearly is that he had given orders to increase the depth and strength of his defence. The front face of each minefield box was to be lightly held by battle outposts, guarding the outer minefield and disposed in depth. The front line of the main defensive zone was drawn back behind the second minefield belt and from here the zone extended for a depth of up to two miles. The third line of defence, from Sidi Abd el Rahman southwards, including anti-tank guns and dug-in tanks, was begun. It was this line, manned by the guns and tanks of 15th Panzer and the Littorio Armoured Divisions, which in the event was to trouble us most.
These two enemy armoured divisions were located in this area, with 21st Panzer and the Ariete Divisions in the south. It has often been said that this arrangement must have been Stumme’s, as it was unlike Rommel to divide his armour. In fact, the dispositions were Rommel’s own, his intention being to be able to plug quickly any breach in the defences that we might make on any part of the front.
Another feature of his dispositions, which he had been employing for some time, was to stiffen the Italian infantry, in whom he had little faith, with German detachments. Thus, in the south, squads of the Ramcke Parachute Brigade were posted at key points among the Folgore Division (though the Folgore did not need this corseting), and of 164th Light Division among the Trento in the north.
Stumme and his staff watched the British preparations with care. They noted the active patrolling by our infantry in the south. They followed from day to day the move forward of our supply dumps and, from the height of Mount Himeimat, watched the daily methodical progress of the dummy pipe-line. They observed the pre-battle attacks on their fighter airfields at Daba and Fuka by the Desert Air Force. But the accumulation of evidence led them to no definite conclusion. They could not be certain what was genuine and what was fake.
On 20 October Stumme issued a directive which said that a British attack might come at any time and any place. The probabilities were examined on each section of the front, but, on balance, he considered that our main effort was most likely to be made on 'the northern part of the southern front’, which meant somewhere about Munassib.
The day before, Stumme had made a depressing report on his administrative posture. The water supply in the forward areas had partially failed, the troops were undernourished and the sickness rate was rising. The shortage of petrol was a constant anxiety and there was a lack of spares for mechanical transport.
However, we must be in no doubt but that, in spite of these uncertainties and these deficits, the morale of the German troops, if not of the Italians, was very high and their fighting spirit as strong as ever. They were tenacious and resourceful, swift in their reactions, ably and courageously led at all levels, experienced in battle. They could, on occasions, fight like tigers.
While these intensive preparations were being made on both sides, there had been some fighting to be done, apart from the day-to-day business. In particular, an attack was launched on the night of 30 September by the Queen’s Brigade of 44th Division against the formidable defences of the Munassib Depression, held by the Folgore Division and the Ramcke Parachute Brigade. The objects were to secure better concealed areas for the deployment of artillery and to lend added colour to the picture of an impending offensive in the south.
In this attack the 6th and 7th Battalions of the Queen’s won their objectives, but in the 5th Battalion two whole companies were wiped out and a third decimated. The brigade commander proposed to renew the attack the next night, but Horrocks called it off. The brigade had suffered 392 casualties, but the ground won on the north and east sides of the Depression was consolidated. A memorable incident in the operation was the advance and deployment under fire of 57th Field Regiment, RA.
Part II: Lightfoot
Chapter Ten: D Day
MASTERY IN THE AIR
D Day approached. The waiting tanks and guns prepared to move into their secret positions. Maintained at an even flow, the transport companies continued daily to augment the mounting piles of shells, cartridges, bombs, hand grenades and all the other stores of war. The artificers and mechanics tested and serviced the guns, tanks, aircraft, armoured cars and small arms under their care. As it was before Agincourt,
The armourers, accomplishing the knights,
With busy hammers closing rivets up,
Give dreadful note of preparation.
Staff officers worked far into the night at plans, maps, air photographs, intelligence reports, administrative instructions, operation orders and march tables.
Yet none but a few knew what lay ahead. In the forward localities the infantry and the artillery observation officers gazed out over the sere and shadowless wastes ahead, seemingly devoid of life but dotted with the shapes of burnt-out
tanks, of wrecked vehicles and of scattered remnants of equipment, ‘where black death keeps record of his trophies’. Nightly, the infantry patrols continued silently to range the wide expanses of No Man’s Land, seeking information of the enemy. Daily the squadrons of the air, ‘with strong wings scaling the upward sky’, bent their bright courses. The nights grew colder; men wore their battledress blouses in the evening and the early morning, and their greatcoats by night. But the middle hours of the day were very hot still.
The first blows were struck from the air. They were aimed at securing superiority over the enemy air forces from D Day onwards, so that there would be the minimum interference with our ground operations and so that the Desert Air Force and their cooperating squadrons from that day onwards could concentrate on attacking the enemy’s forward troops.
Coningham began, accordingly, with heavy bombing attacks on the enemy airfields. On 19 October the German fighter airfields at El Daba were attacked by Baltimores of 55th and 223rd Squadrons, fighter-bombers of 2nd and 4th Squadrons South African Air Force and by the Royal Australian Air Force. Night attacks followed by Bostons, their targets illuminated by the Albacores of the Fleet Air Arm.
Next day the Italian airfields at Fuka were bombed and another punishing visit paid to El Daba. On the 21st the Wellingtons joined in. Blow followed blow. By day and by night the attacks were kept up until the 23rd without intermission. By the 23rd, at a cost of only thirteen British aircraft and one American, our fighter patrols roamed over the enemy’s forward airfields continuously without challenge, complete masters of the air. In readiness for the next phase of close engagement and pursuit, Coningham moved two fighter wings forward to advanced airfields at El Hammam.
THE PLAN PROCLAIMED
The time drew near for all men to be taken into the Army Commander’s trust.
On 19 and 20 October Montgomery made his memorable expositions at the Amariya Cinema to all officers down to the rank of lieutenant-colonel of how the battle was to be fought, how it would develop and how long it would last. It was an occasion not likely to be forgotten by those who attended. To many it was a day of revelation. It was the day that Montgomery finally and firmly impressed upon the Army not only his professional personality but also the inevitability of victory. In a rapt silence the gatherings of officers — sunburnt, experienced, not easily impressionable, most of them already proved leaders, many of them bearing upon their persons or their clothing the scars and emblems of hard service — listened to that incisive, rather metallic, completely matter-of-fact voice telling them in professional form exactly what was going to happen. It was no mere pep-talk, no homily on heroics.
He told them of his original plan and of how he had changed it. He reviewed the enemy’s situation and our own, emphasizing our superiority in all departments. He told them that his plan for what he called a ‘crumbling’ operation to destroy the enemy first would require a hard, slogging ‘dog fight’. We must destroy the enemy methodically and piecemeal, without ever relaxing pressure. We must maintain offensive eagerness. The whole affair, he calculated, would last twelve days and they must not expect spectacular results too soon. The enemy could not last out a long battle; we could, and, if we gave him no rest and stuck to the proper battle techniques, victory was certain.
The old desert hands, with ‘sand between their toes’, who clung to the old loyalties and who had greeted with scepticism the arrival of the new men from home, went to the gatherings with no very high expectations. They were case-hardened. They came out of the cinema, however, utterly convinced. They experienced, for the first time, a complete assurance that unequivocal victory was at last to be their reward and that never again would they need ‘to flog up and down the same piece of desert’. Even so seasoned a hand as Victor Turner, professional soldier and disciple of the old regime, declared that it was ‘absolutely thrilling’.
For most of those who listened, Alexandria and Cairo lay for ever behind them as they came out of the cinema. Never again would they savour their flesh-pots and their squalors, or feel the bed-bugs bite them in Kasr-el-Nil barracks and Abassiyah, or enjoy the English relaxations of Gezira and the Turf Club, or be cheated in the Kasbah, or gaze appraisingly upon the pyramids and the sphinx.
On 21 October, on Montgomery’s orders, the COs themselves broke the news to all their own junior officers and men, sitting silent and absorbed in semi-circles on the sand, with diagrams of the coming battle before them and with the sun blazing down on their bronzed limbs. From that briefing no man was excluded except only those who were then in the foremost positions, lest they should be raided by the enemy, and those who were to go out on patrol.
On that day all leave was quietly stopped without any official announcement. Thenceforward Eighth Army was safely locked up without bars in the great immensity of the desert. On the same day Montgomery paid a final visit to the assaulting divisions to see if they were all ‘well and comfortable’. He found the Army’s morale, he declared, ‘on the top line’.
Few men who were in the desert at that hour will ever lose the memory of the heartening breath that swept across the sandy wastes and rocky desolations, that blew invigoration into the cramped trenches, the sweating gun pits, the close-battened tanks and the expectant squadrons of the air. It was tremendously exciting, tremendously challenging. An Army whose pride and spirit was always high became infused with a new buoyancy of spirit and a new conviction of their power to win. Lieutenant-Colonel Bob Turner, addressing his Second-13th Australian Battalion and feeling the inspiration of Montgomery’s address, gave them his own text from Macbeth to take into battle: ‘Be bloody, bold and resolute’.
Major Jack Perrott, addressing his sappers of 2nd Cheshire Field Squadron and striving to pass on to them the enthusiasm he had caught when Gatehouse addressed the officers of 10th Armoured Division, declared that ‘the battle was won before it had started’. Sapper Flinn, of the companion 3rd Cheshire Field Squadron, felt an exhilaration never experienced on the eve of any other battle. ‘The dynamic little man in the funny hat’, he said, ‘convinced us entirely that we were going to win and that the shambles of the past were over.’
Harding, the new commander of 7th Armoured Division, recorded that ‘the atmosphere of well-designed, objective preparations, lively expectancy and quiet confidence pervaded the division and indeed the whole Army’. McCreery, Alexander’s Chief of Staff, severe, matter-of-fact and emphatically no ‘Monty man’, declared that the morale of the infantry was ‘sky-high’. Briggs observed that there was ‘a lighter spring in men’s steps’, a confidence in their bearing, a new ring in their voices, and a positive direction in their thinking.
Kippenberger, breaking the news to 23rd New Zealand Battalion, whom he had selected for the first violent burst into the enemy lines, told them that this was the greatest moment of their lives. Theirs was the duty and the honour of breaking in. ‘I expect you to do it’, he said, ‘whatever the cost.’
Romans, the battalion’s ardent CO, a man who in battle burned with fires of exaltation, called the men to their feet and led them in ‘three fierce, and thundering cheers.’[27]
The evening sandstorms blew up, the empty petrol tins bowled along before the wind, banging like fire-crackers, the flies swarmed under a torrid sun, the screaming Stukas dive-bombed occasionally from the brazen sky, the shells and machine-guns crackled, as of old, but a new stimulus and a new purposefulness were clearly abroad in that far desert.
Extraordinary measures were taken, under the Bertram plan, to conceal from the enemy the last moves forward. On the night of 20 October, First and Tenth Armoured Divisions began to move up by stages to their assembly areas behind 30th Corps front. The main bodies immediately sank into wireless silence, but small detachments selected from men with ‘recognizable voices’, whom the enemy would already have heard talking on the air, were left behind in the training areas to maintain a simulation of normal wireless activity. Gatehouse himself, together with Bill Liardet, his
GSO 1, had to journey back so that their well-known voices could be heard.
On reaching the assembly areas, tanks, guns and vehicles slipped secretly into the positions occupied by the dummies of the Bertram plan. From then on no movement of men or vehicles was allowed by day except what was unavoidable. No smoke from fires, no lights, no washing, no airing of beds, no digging. Tracks made by the tanks moving in were obliterated by dragging wire trailers along them.
The utmost care was demanded to ensure that, on the featureless ground and in the dark, the assaulting infantry of 30th Corps should start on the right line in relation to the artillery barrage and keep its ordered direction. On 51st Division’s front, Lieutenant-Colonel J. C. Stirling, of the 5th Seaforth Highlanders, virtually lived for four days and nights in No Man’s Land, identifying and marking exactly the 2,500 yards of start-line, and clearing and marking the nine lanes leading up to it through our own minefields. The start-line was to be a few hundred yards out in No Man’s Land. To find the exact pinpoints of each terminal, he employed officers converging from various directions, marching by compass and counting their paces. These lines were required to be marked with nine miles of white tape, but, in order that they should not be observed from the air or by an enemy patrol, he laid them out first with telephone wire, ready to be quickly replaced by tape on the night of the 23rd itself.
‘ON YOUR MARKS!’
On the night of 22 October the assaulting infantry of 30th Corps, the heavily-laden machine gunners, the artillery Forward Observation Officers and the engineers of the mine-clearing teams, lit by an early moon, moved quietly forward to the shallow slit trenches that had previously been dug, camouflaged and provisioned, on the home edge of our own minefield, steel-helmeted, equipped and ready for the great test.
Alamein (Major Battles of World War Two) Page 14