Alamein (Major Battles of World War Two)

by C. E. Lucas Phillips

  Archer-Shee was about to give orders to 10th Hussars to push on, when orders came from Fisher to deploy where they were. The regiments did so and appear to have suffered no losses from mines at this stage.

  As the sky lightened, the regiments were able to see where they were. Ahead the ground rose gently for about 3,000 yards to the skyline formed by the ridge of elevated ground that came to be known as Kidney Ridge, and on this higher ground, as the leading squadrons very soon discovered, the enemy guns were posted. The Bays were very soon in action with them in the north and were in contact with the Australians on their right and 1st Gordons on their left. In the centre the two leading squadrons of 9th Lancers were moving slowly forward to the crest and on Star route 10th Hussars were also in action, watching the left flank. Thus the brigade as a whole reached an area about three miles short of the Pierson Bound.

  The hold-up at the head of the long, single-file train of tanks and vehicles crawling up through the dust-enveloped lanes inevitably delayed all those in the rear; so that by the time the armoured brigade was brought to a halt, Bosvile, ardent and fuming, had not been able to lead his Motor Brigade from its night halt on the Springbok Road.

  In the southern corridor somewhat better fortune attended 10th Armoured Division. As we have seen, both 8th and 9th Armoured Brigades had been able to top the Miteiriya Ridge, but 24th Brigade, following 8th by the same routes, did not leave the Springbok Road until 4.30 a.m. and by sunrise had got no further than the old enemy front line. The lorried infantry brigade, like their opposite numbers in 1st Armoured Division, had still not yet even made a start.

  THE GUNS

  Thus ended a long night of exceedingly hard fighting by the troops of 30th and 10th Corps. The gates of the enemy stronghold had been broken open and a firm foothold had been secured within his bailey from which to renew the momentum of the attack. In the assault upon those gates, the way had been shown by the guns and now, in hundreds of gunpits, the exhausted gunners lay asleep where they had fallen as soon as the last series of their long night tasks was over. The hardest labour had fallen on the medium gunners, with their larger weapons and their heavier shells. Deafened, red-eyed, coated with dust raised by the blasts of more than 600 rounds, the gunners were oblivious to the cold dawn wind. Outside the pits stood the great mounds of brass cartridge cases and the stacks of green ammunition boxes that they had emptied that night. The guns themselves, sponged-out, clean and cool at last, lay in their carriages loaded and ready to be fired at an instant’s notice in response to a call from the infantry or the tanks ahead. Beside each gun, muffled in his greatcoat, a red-eyed sentry stood.

  Not all the gunners, however, were able to take this temporary rest. Many of the batteries, as soon as their last series was fired, were required to limber up and go forward to new positions, joining the long, slow queues in the clouds of dust, meeting the guarded files of dreary prisoners walking in and the sand-dimmed shapes of ambulances jolting down the tracks with their grievous loads, passing at the track side the still, blanketed figures for whom dawn brought no reveille, observing the coolness of the Military Police as they directed traffic under shell-fire in the swirling minefields, deploying at length in their new position. There they quickly laid out their fines of fire from the GPO’s instruments and fired a few rounds to register their new positions at the orders of the FOO in the infantry and tank positions ahead.

  In 1st Armoured Division, the new Priests of 11th RHA were very soon given their baptism as A Battery escorted the Bays, B the 10th Hussars and E the 9th Lancers. The gleam of early daylight gave both sides plenty of targets and within a few minutes all the regiment’s OPs were calling for fire as the FOOs ordered Troop target! on their wireless sets. Without hesitation, the guns swung out from the columns of tanks in the cleared gaps, drove into the enemy minefields and from there opened fire. The whole area of last night’s operation was being smartly shelled by the enemy and the next day’s battle had begun.

  ATTACK IN THE SOUTH

  While this big punch was being delivered with the Army’s right hand, another punch, equal in vigour but much smaller in size, was being delivered by the left.

  Horrocks’s plan for 13th Corps was broadly similar to the northern plans, but in the zone of impact selected — Himeimat and the rough desert to the north of it — the forces he had available consisted only of 7th Armoured Division (having no Shermans and no infantry brigade), part of 44th Division, which was covering a wide front, and the Free French, but 50th Division was available for supporting operations. The main effort was to be by 7th Armoured and 44th Divisions and there were thus not nearly enough infantry for a really hard punch.

  The outline plan was for the infantry of 44th Division, in the Army Commander’s phrase, ‘to blow a hole’ through our old minefields January and February, of which we had allowed the enemy to retain possession after the battle of Alam Halfa, and form a bridgehead beyond. Seventh Armoured Division were then to pass through. At the same time the Free French, under command 7th Armoured, were to attack the commanding Himeimat feature, which dominated the main battlefield and the terrain westward of it known as Hunter’s Plateau. The distances were considerable, especially for men on foot. Between our new minefields, Nuts and May, there was a space of four and a half miles. Between Nuts and January there was a No Man’s Land of six miles. After the penetration of January there was nearly another two miles before reaching February, which was a formidable belt, 1,000 yards deep.

  The difficulty confronting Horrocks, and John Harding, commanding 7th Armoured, in particular, was to reconcile two apparently conflicting tasks. On the one hand, they had to attack with sufficient determination to oblige the enemy to keep 21st Panzer and Ariete Armoured Divisions down in the south, and, indeed, to make a break-through if all went well; but, on the other hand, they must not incur casualties that would cripple 7th Armoured for any future operations for which it might be required. The prospects of an easy success, however, were not high. The mechanical condition of the armour and wheeled vehicles was poor, the defences were strong and deep, the enemy (mainly the Folgore and the Ramcke) of high quality, the country ahead rough and broken or quilted with soft sand, and the attack must necessarily be on a narrow front that would expose open flanks requiring protection against counter-attack. These, however, were not considerations to deter such a tiger as Harding.

  The attack of the British divisions was directed on a point in January three and a half miles north of Himeimat.[35] Immediately after dusk 131st Brigade, consisting of three battalions of the Queen’s Royal Regiment from West Surrey, who were under command 7th Armoured for the operation, moved up to a forward assembly area. They were in high fettle. The attack over January was to be made by 1/7th Battalion under a barrage, and as Zero hour approached they walked up through the gaps in our own minefields and so over the long expanse of No Man’s Land in the bright moonlight to their start-line.

  Close on their heels came a strong minefield task force commanded by Lieutenant-Colonel Lyon Corbet-Winder, which consisted of 4th and part of 21st Field Squadrons RE, six Scorpions under Major Foster, two companies of 1st Rifle Brigade, a squadron of armoured cars under Major John Lawson, 11th Hussars, and 44th Division Reconnaissance Regiment, the special unit equipped entirely with bren gun carriers. Behind this minefield task force 22nd Armoured Brigade and 4th Light Armoured Brigade, each with its battalion of motor infantry, awaited their opportunity to go forward.

  Unlike their comrades in 30th Corps, the attacking infantry were under fire from the beginning. The 1/7th Queens were being shelled before they left the start-line and machine-guns and mortars soon added their stings. The second-in-command, Major E. W. D. Stilwell, and two other officers were killed at the outset. In spite of this, January was overrun and it seems that small numbers even reached the final objective. There, however, they were isolated in rough and broken country and many taken prisoner. The CO, Lieutenant-Colonel R. M. Burton, was shot trying to escape, but ot
hers succeeded. The survivors withdrew successfully to a wadi just west of January at 3 a.m., reformed under Captain P. R. H. Kealy, and took up protective positions at the head of the minefield gaps soon after they were made.

  The minefield force similarly had to fight its way through. Required to make four gaps, they found themselves impeded by soft sand, and harassed from the start by damaging enemy fire. The flailing Scorpions, crawling forward in huge clouds of dust and shattering noise, were most resolutely handled by Foster, but one by one they became eliminated by casualties or breakdowns, and the sappers had then to have recourse to lifting the mines by hand. This they did with the usual steady nerve and sangfroid of their kind, but it was not until 2.30 a.m. that the two southern gaps had been cleared, and only then after several enemy posts had been attacked and subdued by 1st Rifle Brigade and after several carriers of the Reconnaissance Regiment had been left blazing in the lanes. By 4 a.m. 5th RTR, the Royal Scots Greys and the two Rifle Brigade companies were through.

  One of the gaps was being enfiladed with damaging effect by an Italian gun, the flash of which was stabbing the night from about 2,000 yards ahead. Lieutenant-Colonel Freddie Stephens, commanding 1st Rifle Brigade, thought he could make out the emplacement in the moonlight and ordered up a machine gun platoon under Sergeant Buxton. The four guns, mounted on trucks, came into action very quickly. The effect, in Stephens’s words, was ‘quite instantaneous’ and later in the night all the detachment were found dead — a remarkable piece of night shooting. The gun was then turned round and its entire stock of ammunition fired off against another enemy battle outpost with great effect.

  Corbet-Winder’s force, bruised but unshaken, then set out to cross the long open space between the two minefields to tackle February, accompanied by most of Lawson’s armoured cars. Time was getting on.

  Through the gaps now made in January came the armour of the Desert Rats, accompanied by the anti-tank guns of their Rifle regiments. With the Greys on the left and 5th RTR on the right, they crawled through the gaps in clouds of dust and smoke, past the blazing carriers and the stricken Scorpions. By 4 a.m. they were through and were organizing a bridgehead. An hour later, the minefield force, pushing on through the night with diminished ranks, reached February and began to breach that also; but the night was now far spent and further fighting made it impossible to get through the second minefield before daylight. The January bridgehead, however, was extended southwards by bold offensive action against fighting opposition almost to the slopes of Himeimat.

  Horrocks having decided to hold the ground gained and to resume the offensive next night, the assaulting troops withdrew to the open ground between the two minefields. There, sitting under direct observation, particularly from the height of Himeimat, tanks and infantry alike had a gruelling time from the incessant enemy shelling.

  Meanwhile, the Free French in the rugged ground in the extreme south had also faced great difficulties. Attacking against strong opposition, they successfully conquered much of the ground before them, but the sand was so soft that they could by no means drag through their anti-tank guns and, being counter-attacked by a German armoured column known as the Kiel Group, were obliged to give up most of the ground won. The pyramid-like mount of Himeimat therefore remained in enemy hands, for his artillery observers to plague us in the plain below.

  Thus by dawn on 24 October, 13th Corps had achieved about half their objective after some very heavy fighting between two determined forces.

  Chapter Twelve: D Plus One

  (Day 24 October and Night 24/25)

  THE BRITTLE MORNING

  Soon after daylight on 24 October, which was a Saturday, the generals were up in front, seeing the situation for themselves, holding quick conferences and considering the next steps. Gatehouse roared up the Boat route to Miteiriya Ridge with tremendous panache, sitting on top of his command tank in a white poshteen and black beret, looking larger than ever and intentionally conspicuous. With his instinct for the feelings of the soldier in the more trying hours of battle, he drove right up on to the ridge, accompanied by Ebbels, his genial CRA, and toured about, grimly noting the burning tanks of the Sherwood Rangers and the Staffordshire Yeomanry at the minefield exits ahead, as he had feared they might be. Likewise John Currie, wearing his red, blue and gold cap, walked the whole length of the New Zealand front to visit his regiments of 9th Armoured Brigade, shot at by every kind of weapon but returning unscathed.

  Montgomery, Leese and Lumsden likewise came up, to talk to Freyberg and Gatehouse. The newly-broken battlefield over which they passed was one of the strangest that any of them had yet seen. Across the stark sandscape, already scarred with the wreckage of the night’s destruction, huge packed columns of tanks, guns and vehicles of all sorts slowly lurched and jolted amid billowing clouds of dust up the demarcated routes across and between the Devil’s Gardens. Everywhere the engineers were widening the minefield gaps, along which signallers were laying telephone lines and constantly repairing them as they were broken up by shell fire, ambulances were going up and down, salvage parties were recovering damaged tanks and vehicles. Sudden squalls of fire from German and Italian artillery burst along the lanes as soon as they had been photographed from the air, setting light to vehicles here and there and thickening the manmade dust-storm, amid which the white-sleeved Military Police, as though on a race day, dispassionately directed the thronging traffic.

  In the spaces between the main belts of mines, and sometimes right in among the mines also, all sorts of units were seeking to deploy in their forward moves, competing with each other for patches of favourable ground in the all-enveloping dust. Field artillery regiments, fretting, like impatient motorists, to get on, swung off the routes, unlimbered and came swiftly into action, often under fire, all men moving at the double to answer the calls that were already beginning to come in from the FOOs ahead. In the urgency of operations the guns respected no one, their muzzles often but a few yards from some post or vehicle, until its blasted occupants absconded in distraction.

  On the rocky slope of Miteiriya, where the greater part of two armoured brigades was assembled, and a third was about to crowd in, the congestion was astonishing. So thick upon the ground were the tanks, guns, vehicles and men that it seemed impossible for any shell to pitch without hitting something. So fog-like was the suspended pall of dust that no aircraft could be discerned overhead.

  Along the bank which so conveniently ran just beneath the crest of the ridge for part of its way, the British tanks, hull-down, were exchanging shot for shot with the enemy. The ridge and its forward slope were very hot spots. The shells cracked viciously on the rocky surface and merely to show one’s head was a draw a waspish burst of fire from half a dozen Spandaus. Both sides hit each other hard. In spite of these angry exchanges, the New Zealand sappers on the sector of 5th Brigade, when they saw the tanks of the Royal Wiltshire Yeomanry immobilized in the forward minefield, as recorded in the last chapter, set to work in broad daylight and under direct observation to clear lanes to them. Prodding with bayonets, they followed the set drill as though on a demonstration. Displaying superb battlefield discipline, they made no ‘heat of battle’ haste. As each man was killed or wounded, another stepped quietly in to take his place.

  Large stretches of the new ground were under direct observation from the enemy to a considerable depth. The most dangerous thing to do, now and for the next few days, was to move about. Wimberley’s jeep went up from a burst right under the wheels which killed Colin Cruickshank (his driver) and Lance-Corporal Anderson, very gravely wounded Lieutenant Crosbie and flung Wimberley out unconscious and battered. In the south, the Chaplain of 1st Rifle Brigade was himself killed while conducting a burial service. John Harding, in full view, was driving away from a conference with his brigadiers of 7th Armoured Division when a shell burst beside the jeep and killed his ADC, Captain H. Cosgrave.

  In the most forward positions the front-line soldiers sat tight in the ground newly conque
red, under sudden bursts of violence. Tired out after their all-night struggle, they waited for the expected counterattack. The sand began to drift over the innumerable dead bodies of friend and enemy. As the sun rose in its strength, the wounded of both armies, waiting to be found, lay blistering in its breath, tormented by flies and with no relief from the continuing fire.

  But the spirit of all men in Eighth Army, in spite of the brittle nature of the situation that always arises on the morning of an assault, was still very much in the ascendant. Stephenson, the Middlesex CO, jolting up a Highland gap in a jeep to inspect his machine-gun positions, saw a dying Cameron in a minefield. He stopped, dismounted and went across to offer help. The soldier, thinking only of his battalion and not of himself, replied steadfastly:

  ‘We’re quite all right, sir.’

  Then, mistily recognizing the CO of the Diehards, he added with touching gallantry: ‘The Diehards are there, you see, sir.’

  To reinforce the front-line soldier, his comrades of the air made a special effort that day. All through the 24th the day bombers and the fighter-bombers shuttled to and fro in that impressive good order which comes from polished flying and which always gives comfort to the heart of the infantryman squatting in his hole in the ground. The ‘eighteen imperturbables’ — the RAF Baltimores and the South African Bostons — became a familiar and encouraging spectacle of the air. In the north the main effort was made against those enemy forces from which the counter-attack was to be expected — 15th Panzer and the Littorio Armoured Divisions — but in that effort eight bombers were shot down and twenty-seven damaged by gunfire. In the south the cannon Hurricanes put out of action a German unit equipped with captured British tanks. That day the Desert Air Force flew 1,000 sorties and the United States Air Force 147.