Alamein (Major Battles of World War Two)

by C. E. Lucas Phillips

  In the air, unheard in the general din by their comrades on the ground, forty-eight Wellingtons were dropping 125 tons of bombs on the enemy gun positions. The bombing, the tremendous storm of shelling and the successful jamming of the enemy’s radio by the specially-equipped aircraft, completely disrupted his signal system. It was a long time before Stumme’s headquarters knew what was happening and, so little did he appreciate the impact of the occasion, that his uppermost thought was merely to conserve his stocks of ammunition.

  Thus for fifteen minutes all the guns of 30th Corps, supported by the Desert Air Force, pounded the enemy guns with no reply. The artillery plan then began to vary with each division’s needs. The gunner regiments prepared for their long programmes of mixed concentration and barrage in support of the infantry assault. They knew that the infantry were already walking forward, bayonets fixed. In the Troop that we have just been watching the GPO ordered:

  ‘Serial B.’

  The sergeant, omitting all unnecessary repetitions of previous orders, gave in succession the new ones:

  ‘Charge 2.’

  ‘Zero Three Degrees Two-o minutes.’

  ‘4,800.’

  ‘Fire by order, 5 rounds gunfire.’

  The gun was now laid on the enemy’s forward defences. The GPO, his eye on the second-hand of his watch, waited until it was seventeen seconds short of 10 p.m. and then called out:

  ‘B Troop, fire!’

  Up in front the infantry walked forward to the attack.

  Chapter Eleven: The First Night

  THE INFANTRY

  To reach their objective on the Oxalic line the South Africans were required to advance some three miles from their own forward defences, and the Highlanders and Australians distances up to five miles. The sheer physical effort, under the strains imposed and after a night and a day of discomfort, was considerable, especially for those most heavily laden, such as the machine-gunners, each of whom had to carry the equivalent of three-quarters of a sack of coal, and the wireless operators of the artillery FOO, while the nervous stamina of the mine-lifting sappers would be stretched to the uttermost.

  These distances had been somewhat reduced by the advancement of the start-line into No Man’s Land, but there still remained the dark miles of minefield honeycombed with unseen enemy cells. Because the penetration demanded was very deep on most of 30th Corps front, intermediate objective lines had been laid down, at which the attacking soldiers could pause to reorganize and correct those losses of direction and cohesion that are almost inevitable in a long night attack, or at which new units, advancing from a new start-line, could leap-frog the first waves.

  These intermediate objectives varied in each division according to the distance and to the siting and strength of the enemy defences. Thus on the Highland and Australian fronts there were three intermediate lines and, on the New Zealand front, one, this line being co-ordinated with their neighbours’ and constituting the ‘first objective’ of 30th Corps.

  In every one of the battles that was to be fought within this battle, the overshadowing element of the mise en scène and the one that distinguished it from fighting on any other terrain, was the enormous clouds of dust that enveloped the field. The artillery barrage that preceded every attack was the prime instigator of these artificial dust storms, adding to them the drifting smoke from its own shell-bursts. The obscuration was further thickened when the tanks growled up, churning the sand into powdery dust. Night, when nearly all the attacks were made, darkened again the spectral gloom, so that most of the battles were fought in swirling, fog-like clouds.

  In these circumstances it was extremely difficult to locate any enemy post contesting the way, whereas the enemy could discern the moving silhouettes advancing towards him. Such, of course, is nearly always one of the advantages of the defence and explains why a few can so often bar the way to many.

  The infantryman’s problems of keeping direction and of recognizing, when he reached it, an objective which was completely unidentifiable were resolved in part by the help of the artillery. Though the desert maps were unreliable and of small scale, the gunners’ facilities for fixing their own positions on a ‘grid’ by methods of survey enabled them to discharge a projectile in almost exactly the required direction and, with very little error, to the right distance. Indeed, in nearly all the actions of the battle now begun it was the curtain of shell-bursts in a barrage that showed the infantry the general direction and the distance they had to go.

  On a broad frontage, however, there was still the danger that a particular unit might stray off-course into the section of its neighbour. Against this an ingenious and simple device was employed. The bofors guns of the Light Anti-Aircraft batteries were brought into the plan. Their part was to fire bursts of coloured tracer shells along the boundaries between each brigade and division; it was a device that proved most effective through the dust and smoke.

  These expedients, however, were not sufficiently exact for individual battalions and companies. They were accordingly led by a navigating officer whose exacting task it was in the din and dust to walk forward with his eyes glued to a hand compass, counting the paces as he went. In the 7th Battalion The Black Watch six navigating officers fell killed or wounded on this first night. Behind the navigating officers white tape was reeled out to mark the battalion’s centreline for those coming up later. Another party in the rear set up a line of masked hurricane lamps along the tape.

  The prime duty of the leading companies in each battalion was to ‘lean on the barrage’ as closely as the shell bursts allowed, so that they could pounce on any living enemy before they recovered their wits and manned their weapons. Let us remind ourselves, however, that, although heavy concentrations of artillery fire were aimed at known or suspected enemy strongpoints, the ‘curtain of fire’ in front of the advancing infantry was a very thin one, but, for want of a more convenient expression, we must continue to use the term ‘barrage’. When the barrage ceased to move forward and became a standing barrage, the infantry knew that an objective had been reached, and this fact was emphasized with smoke-shell fired right across the front by the field artillery as part of their barrage programmes.

  Another device for helping the infantry to identify their objectives was to illuminate the sky immediately above by the crossed beams of searchlights, but this did not prove very satisfactory.

  Thus everything possible was done to help forward the leading rifle companies and those who went with them. The rest was up to their skill in battle and their courage. Their prime duty was to reach their objective, not to stop and fight enemy posts between the thin-spread sections, unless obliged. These were the quarry of the mopping-up troops that followed. Once the leading companies fell behind the barrage, they would have to fight the rest of the way with their own weapons against enemies concealed at ground level.

  How exacting was the task laid on them may be imagined from the fact that, of the 17,000 men in an infantry division of three brigades, even when at full paper strength, scarcely 4,000 were available to assault with rifle and bayonet, and in practice the number was always very much less. The leading line of a battalion, when attacking ‘two-up’, seldom exceeded 200 men.

  These few had to overcome resistance, seize a position and hold it until gaps had been cleared through the minefields for the tanks and their own anti-tank guns to come forward. If daylight came before support could reach them, their position would become highly sensitive.

  For all this, the time provided by one night was exceedingly short. A little less than eight and a half hours of darkness remained after Zero hour. For the sappers, this allowed scarcely more than half an hour beyond the theoretical best-possible. Could the infantry reach their final goal on time and could the mines be lifted fast enough? This was the crucial thing.

  While the British guns were bombarding those of the enemy, the waiting rifle companies crossed their taped start-lines and quietly moved forward under cover of the din, counting their
paces and timing their progress, to positions a little short of the enemy’s forward defences. There they lay down and waited again for a minute or two, listening, and stirred by those little quiverings and tremors which all but the most stolid experience at the moment before going into action.

  Then came to their expectant ears that pause in the bombardment which told them that their gunners were preparing for the new target, the infantry target. It was a pause more charged with immediacy than any other moment, for it told them that their own hour was about to strike. ‘Their duty and their honour’ lay immediately ahead; so also did their peril. They peered again, and for the last time, at their watches.

  On the stroke of ten o’clock they heard above them a sudden swish, increasing in pitch, as of hundreds of great birds coming in to alight. A second later the barrage burst in front of them like one instantaneous salvo. It fairly caught my breath’, recorded Humphrey Wigan, the Middlesex machine-gunner. ‘It stunned even our own troops,’ wrote Major H. Gillan in the Australian Division, ‘and the ground vibrated under our feet like the skin of a kettledrum’. The darts of red bofors tracer shot along their flanks and the beams of the directional searchlights shone out. For the rest of the night, that swish and crash and continuous trumpeting of the guns behind were to be the harmonic of all the minutes.

  With rifles at the high port and with long bayonets gleaming wanly in the moonlight, the infantry stepped out towards the curtain of smoke and dust. What would they meet beyond it? Above the smother of the barrage the enemy’s rockets shot up into the sky all along the thirty-eight mile of front, calling for the help of their artillery; but none came. Every three minutes the barrage jumped forward a hundred yards and the moving line of men closed up on it. It was, said Kippenberger, too slow a pace for his eager soldiers. It was too slow also for the ardent Highlanders, in action for the first time. Some of the leading companies were up to the barrage so quickly that they had to halt and wait, and then, as it jumped forward again, they were quickly in among the enemy.

  The roar of the barrage filled and overshadowed all thought and feeling. Humphrey Wigan kept repeating: ‘By God, this is wonderful!’ Sapper Flinn, of the 3rd Cheshire Field Squadron, ready to drive forward his truck of mine-lifting stores, experienced a sudden leap of his feelings from the pit of his stomach to his racing heart and said: ‘Now nothing can stop us!’ The generals watched, listened and some of them prayed. The brigadiers, awaiting their time to go forward, fidgeted beside their wireless sets, anxious for the first news from ahead. ‘Our hearts,’ wrote Kippenberger, ‘were with the gallant rifle companies.’ Montgomery glanced at the text from Henry V in his caravan: ‘Oh God of battles, steel my soldiers’ hearts’ and went quietly to an early bed.

  In 51st Division, the kilted pipers, erect and proud beside their battalion and company commanders, broke into their wild-sweet music, heard shrill and high above the crash of shells, carrying the melodies of loch and glen across the foreign desolation. On their flanks the Australians and the New Zealanders, too, heard the heartening strains and knew thereby that, though the Jocks had vanished into the dust and the darkness, they were there.

  ‘All my thoughts’, said Robert Weir, of the Cameron Highlanders, ‘were pleasant thoughts; and when our piper played The Road to the Isles I asked myself: “I wonder if it is”.’ For he knew that ‘the Isles’ were the celestial islands of the Blest. Piper Duncan McIntyre, in Blair-Imrie’s company of 5th Black Watch, nineteen years old, hit quickly twice, continued to play, but a third hit brought him to the ground. Dying, he still continued to play and, when his body was found, the bag was still in his oxter and his fingers still upon the chanter.

  The counteraction of the enemy, dazed by the violence and suddenness of the bombardment in depth, was slower than usual. The bombardment of the enemy batteries had been completely successful. For a long time very few of their guns spoke, so that our infantry got away to a clean start. When the enemy artillery did respond to the SOS rockets, their fire fell not on the foremost waves of our infantry but on those coming up behind. Not until after the first hour or so did the counter-barrage become serious. What was more damaging in the early stages, and indeed throughout, were the trench mortars; a high proportion of the wounds sustained by the British troops that night was from mortar fire.

  After the first shock the mortars and machine guns that had not been eliminated by direct hits from our artillery burst into life after the barrage had passed over, firing on fixed lines or on shadowy shapes moving up towards them in the dusty moonlight. Many stuck to their posts, fighting back tenaciously. Others of the enemy posts, as we have seen, had been inaccurately plotted on our maps or not located at all, due to the difficulty of interpreting desert air photographs.

  Such posts as lay directly in the path of the infantry were, for the greater part, quickly overcome. Those in the gaps between the thin-spread sections were passed by. The first trickles of prisoners began to file in, many of them stunned by what Rommel called ‘the terrible British artillery’, covered in dust and half-dressed; an Italian officer came in wearing red pyjamas.

  Thus 30th Corps’ first objective beyond the first minefield, and halfway to the final Oxalic line, was won without serious difficulty or heavy casualties all along the line. The forward companies saw the barrage stand still, the white clouds from the smoke-shell, as they burst overhead, drift across the front to mark the pause, and the searchlights cross their beams somewhere overhead. The first waves halted and dug themselves in, while the second waves came up, put out tapes for their own start-line, disposed and oriented themselves to go through to further objectives.

  On the front of 5th New Zealand Brigade, however, the exalted Romans, having taken his objective, three-quarters of a mile within enemy territory, with unexpected ease and finding no enemy there, was not satisfied to stop, as his orders prescribed. He said to his adjutant, Angus Ross: ‘We can’t stop here; we haven’t fought yet.’

  Filled with what Kippenberger described as ‘ferocious ardour’, he swept on, through the shell and smoke of our own standing barrage, fought his way without artillery support for nearly another mile right to the foot of Miteiriya Ridge, far ahead of anyone else and far ahead of the barrage also. There he stopped, endured the storm of the creeping barrage as it caught him up again and passed over, and held his ground until the astonished 21st and 22nd Battalions came up in due time. Then, dishevelled but full of fight, he fell back to the line where he should have stopped.

  Everywhere along the front, however, enemy resistance stiffened violently after the first objectives had been gained and the final assault began. Beyond lay the second main minefield belt. Yet other minefields lay there also, at present undisclosed, unexpected and far more troublesome than the first. The enemy’s battle outposts became stronger and thicker. Defences unrevealed by air photography sprang to life. His artillery awoke to the situation and began to shorten range. The battlefield was wrapped yet more thickly in a veil of smoke and dust from the bursting shells and the exploding mines. The barrage began to outrun the leading companies as they were forced to stop and fight the enemy in their way.

  Here and there the infantry triumphantly won their objectives, but here and there their attacks began to be held. The deeper they penetrated the thinner became their ranks and the stronger became the enemy’s defences. It is time, therefore, that, as the final objective is approached, we should stop to record, all too briefly though it must be, the separate fortunes of the battalions. We shall begin, in traditional manner, at the right of the line, where 9th Australian Division was posted.

  The Australians

  Right up on the sea coast, where 24th Australian Brigade lay under Arthur Godfrey, nothing more was attempted than a feint attack, as one of the measures to keep the enemy guessing. It was made between the sea and Tel el Eisa. The brigade was supported, from positions in front of the infantry, by the new 4.2-inch rifled mortars of 66th Chemical Warfare Company, RE, who on this one nigh
t shot off the complete stocks of their high explosive in the Middle East.[29]

  South of Tel el Eisa, however, the Australians made their genuine attack. It was entrusted to Whitehead’s 26th Brigade on the right and to 20th (temporarily commanded by Hugh Wrigley) on the left. They had a long way to go, the Oxalic line being four miles ahead.

  Whitehead’s attack, very deep but on a narrow front, was a complete success. His was the vital mission of providing right flank protection to the whole Army on the now exposed open shoulder of the attack. This dangerous flank stretched for 7,000 yards, of which 3,000 yards had formerly been No Man’s Land. His bayonets were too few for all his tasks. With some facing west on the newly won objective, the remainder, as they turned to face north, could cover only 4,000 yards of the flank. He therefore-plugged the 3,000 yards gap with a special mixed force, under Lieutenant-Colonel Ted Macarthur-Onslow, of anti-tank and machine guns, on the German pattern, each post wired in and mined. The Germans reconnoitred the gap in the early light of the 24th, but never attempted to attack it, making their efforts elsewhere.

  On Whitehead’s left, however, the attack of 20th Brigade had a rough passage in the later stages. Like the other divisions in the Corps, they had no difficulty in securing the first objective, using Second-15th and Second-17th Battalions. At the half-way line the New South Wales Second-13th Battalion, under Bob Turner, took on the final assault, while little Jim Finigan’s Valentines of 40th RTR waited to come forward in support as soon as paths were cleared through the minefields. Turner’s task was no light one for a single battalion — to penetrate 2,600 yards on a frontage of nearly a mile. He proposed to do this in two stages, C and D Companies making for an intermediate line, and A and B then going for the final objective.

  The first mile of the attack was covered without meeting serious opposition; many of the enemy outposts, here Italian, withdrew in the face of the oncoming barrage. One incident, however, may be chosen to illustrate the fine junior leadership of this Australian division.