At a pre-arranged point, Sergeant Baron Carson struck out to the right flank on a compass bearing to attack a known enemy strong-point defended by anti-tank and machine guns. In any circumstances, that was a difficult and testing mission. Unable to see more than eight yards in the dust and smoke, he had difficulty in maintaining direction and keeping his platoon together, but he took the bursts of enemy fire as compass, cut the protecting barbed wire and burst in to overcome the post with hand grenade and bayonet. At once he organized it for defence. He also sent out patrols.
One of these patrols made contact with Second-48th Battalion of 26th Brigade, who were digging in on the final objective 1,000 yards forward. Carson thereupon took his platoon right up and dug in on their left. Hearing the sounds of heavy fighting from his own battalion on the left, however, and seeing no success rockets, he set off, alone, to discover the fortunes of his Company. On the way he captured a German outpost, single-handed, taking nine prisoners.
Meanwhile, on reaching the battalion’s intermediate line, A and B companies had leap-frogged C and D and begun their attack upon the final objective. Almost immediately they became heavily embroiled. Barbed wire, S-mines and trip-wires entangled their feet and mutilated their ranks. In spite of this, the two companies fought their way with the greatest determination right to the front edge of the final positions. The division had adopted a standard battle drill by which attacks had to be completed by an hour which permitted full consolidation before daylight — defences dug, anti-tank guns sited, posts wired and mined. Turner therefore halted his attack at extremely close range, with the objective almost in his hands.
Captain R. G. Sanderson, commanding A Company, seeing a party of enemy approaching and supposing them to be surrendering, ordered his men to cease fire. He stood up to take them and was immediately shot down. Lieutenant E. F. Norrie, already seriously wounded, took command and ordered the advance to continue, when he himself was killed. Lieutenant C. A. O’Connor, also wounded, and in action for the first time, came forward to lead the Company, led an assault against a German outpost, captured it after a bloody hand-to-hand struggle, and was mortally wounded. Only one officer was left in the company.
B Company, falling to the command of Lieutenant F. S. Treweeke, fared little better after overcoming one strong position, where they ‘carpeted the ground with German dead’, and took twenty-three prisoners. Their positions untenable, the companies were obliged to give ground and quickly dug themselves into ‘doovers’ about 1,000 yards from their goal.
Finigan’s tanks, free at last from the minefields, came forward at first light, looking to Turner Tike battleships in line ahead’, squatted on the new FDLs and suppressed in the most convincing manner the many targets that were presented to their guns.
The Highlanders
On the Highland Division’s front, Wimberley’s battalions everywhere made good progress, though unable to capture all their objectives on the first night. There was stiff opposition after the halfway line, with grievous casualties. The minefields on their front were found to be much more numerous than had been expected. Under the added strain and under the fire of by-passed battle outposts that had to be fought off the mine-lifting sappers were delayed. In consequence, the Valentines of 50th RTR, under John Cairns, were delayed also.
In this division, the Corps Oxalic objective was known as the Blue Line, with three intermediate lines on which to pause for reorganization. On the Blue Line lay four of the enemy’s strongest defences, which in divisional orders were named Aberdeen, Stirling, Nairn and Kirkcaldy, the last being the culminating point of Miteiriya Ridge at its north-western end. One squadron of Valentines, carrying two platoons of infantry on their backs, was allotted to help 1st Gordon Highlanders capture Aberdeen, another in like manner to help the Argylls on to Stirling, and the remainder, under Cairns himself, for the capture of Nairn with the divisional Reconnaissance Regiment.
On the division’s extreme right, next to the Australians, 5th Black Watch, led by Thomas Rennie, secured the halfway Red Line with smooth precision. There 1st Gordon Highlanders, commanded by the burly Horatio Murray and accompanied by their Middlesex machine gunners, leap-frogged them at the halfway line and made off with two companies in the dusty moonlight for Aberdeen. This was a defended locality on the long, low feature to become notorious in the ensuing armoured battle as ‘Kidney Ridge’.
As the leading companies of 1st Gordons were preparing to advance, a solid wall of shell fire confronted them and remained stationary. Wigan, leading 12 Platoon of the Middlesex, recorded that ‘the ground shook and reverberated, the air seemed to be solid with metal’. For some reason, he thought of the parting of the Red Sea waters. Major Michael du Boulay, watching from the start-line before it was the turn of his company to go forward, recorded that ‘I personally never saw in the whole war anything to compare with the barrage A and C Companies had to go through. As a spectator, it seemed to me impossible that anyone could survive.’
It was at first thought that this could not be the enemy’s counter-barrage but our own, in which there had been some error of timing. The companies were told, however: ‘You have got to go through.’
Go through they did; the two leading companies led with great dash by Hubert Skivington and James McNeil, but suffering fearful casualties. Emerging from it, they were brought up short by two or more German Spandaus some sixty yards ahead. Skivington, accompanied by Harry Gordon and Bruce Rae and about a platoon of men, attempted to charge but he and about half the platoon were killed.
Enraged by the death of his friends, Lieutenant Ewan Fraser, one of those men who feel exhilarated in battle, having ordered covering fire by bren guns, went out alone, got in behind the enemy machine guns and wiped them all out with grenades. The two companies had won their objective, which was the intermediate Black Line.
Skivington’s company, which had gone into action with five officers and 102 men, was by 2 a.m. reduced to one officer (Lieutenant Harry Gordon) and eighteen men. McNeil’s company had suffered similarly. McNeil, a big, stalwart man, of whom it was said that it would take more than one shell to knock him down, merely coughed when he was first hit in the chest, but a second shell wounded him mortally. Thus, sorely bruised but unshaken, and commanded by junior officers, the little handful dug in and hung on, a lonely outpost in the wild night. Yet Bruce Rae, another of those men who positively enjoyed battle, when asked by Gordon how he felt, replied: ‘Oh, I feel as though I had had a couple of bottles of champagne.’[30]
The Gordons’ two rear companies, with their troop-carrying Valentines, meanwhile waited anxiously on their start-line. They were intended, on receipt of a success signal from the forward companies, to follow through, leap-frog them and assault Aberdeen. No news came, however, and the shelling was very bad. Murray properly decided that ‘the situation did not permit the forward movement of infantry on tanks’, and he accordingly released the Valentines. In the early hours of the morning, still without news of what had happened ahead, he led forward his other two companies.
After going about 500 yards, however, as the result of a hazardous reconnaissance by Captain Charles Barker with a section of carriers, Murray decided to dig in where he was and await daylight. Du Boulay, meeting Murray at this juncture, observed feelingly:
‘I say, sir, this is absolute hell!’
‘Nothing to be frightened of, Mike,’ replied Murray.
‘Good God, sir!’ exclaimed du Boulay with even more feeling, ‘aren’t you?’
There we shall leave 1st Gordons for the time being and shall resume the story of their trials and ultimate triumph in the next chapter.
The second of the most troublesome objectives on the Highlanders’ front was Stirling. It was a particularly strong position, defended by numerous machine guns and nine field and anti-tank guns, of which at least two were 88s. It was the target of 7th Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, under Lorne Campbell, a tall and slender London Scot. On his avenue of approach to St
irling there were not a great many enemy outposts, but, being largely dead ground, it was heavily impregnated with mines of all sorts, including large aircraft bombs — a factor that applied equally to the whole of the southern half of the Highland Division sector.
In common with other battalions, Campbell’s problem was to conserve sufficient strength, after a four-miles attack, to assault the tough nut at the end of his avenue. To do this, he proposed to push right through to the Black Line with only two companies, and then to put in his B Company and A Company coming forward on Valentines of 50th RTR.
Thus, almost from the start-line, the Argylls and their Middlesex machine gunners incurred heavy casualties from the enemy’s counter-barrage and from mines. D Company lost all its officers. A big aircraft bomb wiped out a whole platoon. The Middlesex suffered sharply also. Nevertheless, the strong outpost Greenock was stormed with gusto and the Black Line secured. The Valentines and their accompanying infantry, however, impeded by the mines, could not be got through in time and Campbell, too weak now to attempt the assault on Stirling, halted and dug in.
It was on their extreme left that the Highlanders had their most shining success of this night. There, next to the New Zealanders, 7th Black Watch advanced under their able and gallant young CO, James Oliver, a slight, alert figure, quick-thinking, cheerful and good-looking.
Leap-frogging 5th Cameron Highlanders at the halfway line, 7th Black Watch directed their attack on Kirkcaldy, that part of the Corps final objective which lay beyond Miteiriya Ridge, at its north-western extremity. Here the ridge culminated in a sharply ascendant feature shown on the map as Point 33[31]. Between it and the line where the Black Watch took over from the Camerons was the intermediate Black Line, which lay at the foot of the ridge.
From the moment they leap-frogged the Camerons, the battalion began to come under heavy and damaging shelling, which continued throughout the remainder of the attack. Casualties mounted rapidly. All the six officers who were detailed in turn to act as navigation officer were killed or wounded.
Few enemy were bodily encountered at first, but as the Black Line was approached the crumps of trench mortars were added to the shelling and an unexpected minefield was struck. It was thick with S-mines, Italian Red Devils and murderous 250-lb aerial bombs on trip-wires. From one of these aerial bombs, although the Jocks were moving at five yards’ interval between men, a whole platoon of about thirty men was wiped out as it went up with a terrific roar. The S-mines, jumping stomach-high, killed or gravely wounded more. The Red Devils crackled under foot.
These ravaging casualties, however, did not deter Oliver’s Black Watch. They walked forward steadily to the music of the piper. When the smoke shells from their artillery told them that they had reached the Black Line, the strength of the four rifle companies had been reduced by more than half.
Here, in accordance with the divisional plan, there was a halt for fifteen minutes before making the final advance to the Blue Line, still another mile ahead, beyond the Miteiriya Ridge, which now faced them. Oliver quickly reorganized his stricken but unbowed battalion, forming them into two composite companies. One of these he put under the command of Charles Cathcart of Pitcairlie, and ordered him to continue the advance.
This Cathcart did with great daring and determination. With less than a hundred men, with the barrage now lost, but with his piper still playing, he stormed up Miteiriya Ridge, passed through yet another minefield beyond the ridge, pushed over barbed wire obstacles and triumphantly gained his Blue Line objective.
He got there with about forty men. They were the remnants of two companies which had begun more than 200 strong. All the five officers who fought through with his little force were killed or wounded, Cathcart himself being one of the wounded.
He set to work at once to organize his 500 yards’ front, drawing back a little and to the left when he calculated that he had overshot his mark, and made contact with 21st NZ Battalion. There he remained with his handful of men, the wounded and the able, exposed and without relief, for the remainder of that night and all next day.
The action this night by 7th Black Watch was thus a shining example of leadership, initiative and guts at all levels in a battalion inspired by the fighting spirit. Their casualties on this night and the further seven nights and days that they held their position numbered 261 killed and wounded, including nineteen officers and two sergeant-majors. Nearly all were incurred on the first night.
Elsewhere on the front of 51st Division the assaulting battalions designated to go right through to the Oxalic line had equally hard fighting. Under Hugh Saunders, 5/7th Gordon Highlanders, advancing on the left of their 1st Battalion, made excellent progress until reaching the enemy outpost Stricken, when, like their fellow-Gordons, they were met by a wall of fire. One company was nearly wiped out. With no strength to press the assault, Saunders halted his companies. It was a critical moment for untried young soldiers. They looked at their CO in the hurricane of fire and saw him quietly light a cigarette. They stood fast and dug in and took Stricken next day. On their immediate left, 1st Black Watch, under Neil Roper-Caldbeck, overcoming all opposition, went right through to the Black Line, which was their objective, in excellent order. Indeed, Captain Gerald Osborne seized a battery 1,000 yards ahead before being recalled.
The New Zealanders
On the left of 51st Division, the New Zealanders, attacking Miteiriya Ridge, stormed over the crest and won nearly all their objectives in the face of very heavy casualties. So thoroughly did they crush the opposition that both their own 9th Armoured Brigade and Gatehouse’s 8th Armoured Brigade got clean through, in a manner that we shall see presently.
Freyberg — and he was not alone — had been concerned that the timings of Lightfoot left very little margin for clearing passages through the minefields and pushing up the supporting weapons and the armour. At his final divisional conference Gentry, commanding 6th Brigade, remarked: ‘Even if it goes like an exercise, the mine-lifting is virtually impossible in the time.’
The division advanced to the attack with Howard Kippenberger’s 5th Brigade on the right and Gentry’s brigade on the left. They used only one battalion each for the first objective, but had the Maori Battalion following to mop up, a task at which they were extremely competent. Behind them, as the New Zealand Sappers cleared their gaps in the minefield, John Currie’s tanks waited their chance to go forward, with the Royal Wiltshire Yeomanry on the right under Peter Sykes, the Warwickshire Yeomanry (Guy Jackson) on the left and 3rd Hussars (Sir Peter Farquhar) following up.
For some hours Freyberg and his brigadiers fretted at their tactical headquarters with little news of the fortunes of the battalions ahead. On 5th Brigade’s sector we have seen how Romans, leading 23rd Battalion in exalted mood, swept on beyond the first objective. But of this Kippenberger knew nothing. The sappers, however, were making good progress on the minefield gaps and at 11.30 p.m. Kippenberger, feeling that he could wait no longer, ordered up 23rd Battalion’s anti-tank guns by one gap and the tanks of the Royal Wiltshire Yeomanry by another.
The seizure of the first objective, although in fact it had taken place on time, was not confirmed until 3 o’clock in the morning, and Freyberg himself immediately went forward in the Honey tanks that constituted his tactical HQ. He was watching the clock critically and sniffing the breezes of battle.
The attacks on the final objective beyond the crest of Miteiriya Ridge now began. They were entrusted to 21st and 22nd Battalions on the right and 26th and 25th on the left. As on the rest of the Corps front, a heavy defensive fire was encountered, mainly from mortars and machine guns in battle outposts held by a spirited enemy. The New Zealanders were obliged to pause to fight them and their barrage passed away ahead. They pressed on, however, with their own weapons, keeping direction with difficulty in the obscuring dust and smoke and suffering heavy officer casualties. On the extreme right, where Reginald Harding was leading 21st Battalion, all the officers in Butland’s company were
lost and Sergeant Bramwell took command.
Throughout the night communications with companies were very bad. Nothing worked. It was not till about 4 a.m., much past the scheduled hour, that the golden rain rocket, which signalled that they had won all their objectives, was observed at 5th Brigade headquarters. Behind the rifle companies the minefield gapping party was pushing forward as fast as possible, with a vanguard of the Royal Wiltshire Yeomanry scotching them up. This vanguard was provided by two Troops of Crusaders of Lord Weymouth’s squadron, vigorously led by Captain ‘Tim’ Gibbs, who had a Troop of Scorpions under command, working in unison with the New Zealand sappers. The new device worked well here, though it missed some mines and threw others up into the air, many of them falling, unexploded, on to the Scorpion itself, which became covered with their sinister forms as though with limpets.
The Scorpions, however, were under orders to return as soon as they had reached the top of Miteiriya Ridge, where it was believed that the minefields ended. Such was far from the facts. Mines abounded beyond the ridge. It was getting dangerously late. If the tanks could not get through before first light they would have small chance against the enemy guns.
The Wiltshires accordingly pressed forward under the impetus of Peter Sykes, while the New Zealand sappers bent afresh to the infested ground. The heavy squadrons advanced. They went up on mines one after the other, but continued to press forward, passing ahead of the infantry. The crews of the wrecked tanks stuck to their guns and, as soon as it was light enough, began to engage the enemy where they stood; but they were now sitting targets and were all knocked out, most of them being shot up in flames. They were just that little bit too late. Sykes was very badly wounded and, for a brief hour Lord Weymouth took command until the arrival of Alistair Gibb.
Alamein (Major Battles of World War Two) Page 17