Alamein (Major Battles of World War Two)

by C. E. Lucas Phillips

  The enemy, after the first surprised shock, had reacted well. The German Panzer Grenadiers had fought as one always expected them to do and, of the Italians, the Folgore in the south and the Trento in the north had also resisted stubbornly enough until the close approach of the bayonet. But in the enemy headquarters behind there was an uneasy atmosphere. The ravaged communications, disrupted by the RAF or torn by shellfire, gave only the scantiest and most uncertain information of what was happening. Accordingly, Stumme drove out in his car early in the morning to see for himself the state of affairs, accompanied by Colonel Buechting and driven by Corporal Wolf. He ran into a storm of fire. Buechting was killed. Wolf swung the car round and Stumme appears to have jumped out of it and to have fallen dead from a heart seizure.

  Command of the Panzerarmee was taken over by General Ritter von Thoma, a tall, lean old warrior scarred with many wounds, who had until then been commanding the DAK. He did not take a very serious view of the situation, decided that no major readjustment of his forces was necessary and that the British penetration was such as could be sealed off by local counter-attacks. He still kept 21st Panzer and the Ariete Divisions in the south and he still kept 90th Light Division in reserve. His forces were in good order; the British had not yet got right through his main defences; the batteries of anti-tank guns, dug in to the ground level and invisible, still barred the way and there were still plenty more mines.

  Yet his reconnaissance aircraft must have told him that some 700 British tanks were now deploying or advancing on 30th Corps front.

  Montgomery, as he assessed the situation early that morning, had good cause for restrained satisfaction. In the south, 13th Corps were doing what he wanted of them. In the north, the infantry of 30th Corps had bitten deep into the enemy position and had taken most of their objectives. The armour had very nearly got out on Miteiriya Ridge. Another half-hour of darkness might have done the trick. But north of Miteiriya Ridge the multiple minefields encountered and the by-passed battle outposts had so delayed 1st Armoured Division that, at first light, they were still more than two miles short of their destination.

  At the conference which he held with Leese, Lumsden and Freyberg, in the forward area, Montgomery gave order for the attack to be resumed that night where it had left off, with the original objectives. The particular import of this was that, while the infantry of 30th Corps had only minor operations to perform, the armour of 10th Corps must reach and deploy on the Pierson Bound. The prime need was to get the armour out into the open before the enemy front stiffened. The Army Commander impressed upon Lumsden that he was prepared to accept large tank losses to achieve this end. First Armoured Division must fight its way forward with its own resources as quickly as possible and 10th Armoured must renew operations that night to enable the New Zealand Division to exploit southward into the open according to the plan.

  FIGHTING IN THE NORTH

  North of Miteiriya Ridge, the immediate needs on the morning of the 24th were for 1st Armoured Division to push on and for the Highlanders to improve their positions. The armour was much delayed. As we have seen, Turner’s Minefield Task Force, encountering battle outposts left behind by the infantry, had had to fight for a path for the sappers. When the night dissolved into dawn, they found themselves completely overlooked by Kidney Ridge and again came under damaging fire, this time observed fire. Very fine work was done by the sappers of 7th Field Squadron and by the Rifle Brigade carrier platoons of B and C Companies under Peter Innes and Dick Flower, who got through in the face of direct fire from 88s on the crest. Innes had both legs broken by shell fire. The second minefield was fully gapped by 7 a.m. but then a third was encountered, and, ultimately, no fewer than six belts in all had to be penetrated.

  What had seemed in the planning stage to be a reasonable possibility of clearing two main minefield belts in one night turned out in the event to be the impossible one of clearing multiple ones. Sun route was the first to be cleared, enabling the Queen’s Bays to get well forward on the Australian sector by the afternoon of D plus 1, but Moon was not right through for 9th Lancers until later and Star (the route for 10th Hussars) not until next day, by which time the sappers and Turner’s Minefield Task Force were physically and emotionally exhausted.

  The regiments of 2nd Armoured Brigade did not, of course, wait for the completion of these lanes, but pushed up as far as they could. Archer-Shee, CO of 10th Hussars, was twice blown up on mines in the attempt to press forward. The armour became dispersed among the Highland infantry in circumstances that were to become irksome to both. Long-range fighting between tanks began early.

  Soon after sunrise, with the shadows long and crisp on the desert floor, a force of long-gunned Mark IVs and IIIs of 15 PZ Division appeared in the distance and began to bear down on the front of the Highland Division and 2nd Armoured Brigade. They were engaged at 2,000 yards by Fisher’s tanks and, apparently surprised by this long-range performance of the Sherman, which they now met for the first time, turned away northwards, leaving some of their tanks in flames. Firing high explosive for the first time, the Shermans began to take toll of the enemy anti-tank guns also much more effectively than had been possible with solid shot of pre-Alamein tanks.

  The new Priests of 11th RHA likewise had their baptism of fire. Supporting the Queen’s Bay on the Australian sector, A Battery engaged some probing enemy tanks over open sights and saw them off. For the first time, they used ‘airburst’ and ‘bouncing’ HE against infantry in trenches and against targets beyond a crest betrayed by dust clouds. Working right forward, all the batteries of the regiment sustained direct hits on their Priests from the enemy’s guns, but the day’s actions were distinguished by the fine behaviour of the detachments, particularly the humble ammunition numbers, who fed the guns and whose duty required them to be out in the open on the ground.

  The enemy’s anti-tank guns were terribly difficult to locate, but when a squadron of Bostons swept out of the sky and began accurate bombing just ahead of 10th Hussars, the long barrels of the 88s were seen to swing upwards to engage them. Thus disclosed against the early morning sky, they at once drew the eager fire of 10th Hussars and the guns of B Battery HAC. Here the Tenth got their first 88. This nice example of ‘ground support for the air’ was repeated at each sortie of our aircraft and became the regular practice of our armour. The business of our armour, however, was not to engage in long-range duels, but to get forward to ground where they could bring on a battle with the enemy tanks. Raymond Briggs, returning from the forward squadrons with Fisher, was visited about midday at his Tac HQ by Lumsden, fresh from Montgomery’s battle conference. Lumsden told him that the Army Commander was ‘not satisfied’ with the progress made and that the armour, if delayed by the incompletion of the infantry task, must fight its own way through regardless of losses, and that immediate action to do this must be taken. This order Briggs passed to Fisher by radio, saying he must push ahead at all costs. Fisher enquired: ‘Do you mean “at all costs” literally?’ To which Briggs replied: ‘Yes, I do; at all costs.’

  The results were immediate. In 9th Lancers Lieutenant Otto Thwaites leapt out of his tank and guided his Troop forward on foot, searching for mines. In Lieutenant B.S. Agate’s Troop the sappers of 1st Field Squadron advanced under close enemy fire, rifle in hand. Both Troops, crammed closely together, pushed through and made for the high ground ahead. Agate’s tank was hit at once in an oil tank and began to burn. He and his crew, however sat fast and continued to engage the enemy until expressly ordered by Major George Meyrick to bale out. Ninth Lancers and 10th Hussars both wheeled towards Sun route as soon as it was through.

  A spirited attack in the afternoon by 2nd Seaforth Highlanders, under Kenneth McKessack, enabled 9th Lancers to push ahead and gave a fresh impetus to operations.

  McKessack had probably been intended to go right through to the stronghold named Stirling on the ridge ahead, which was 51st Division’s ultimate objective in this sector, but Wimberley, when he gav
e his orders, was still dazed from the blowing-up of his jeep and had just had a tiff with Fisher, and he ordered McKessack to ‘attack due west through 1st Black Watch 1,500 yards beyond the minefield’ — which was, in fact, a little short of Stirling. The main purpose, however, was to facilitate the advance of 9th Lancers.

  The Seaforths attacked across the mines at 3 o’clock with only three companies. It was a gallant affair in glaring daylight in the face of heavy mortar and machine-gun fire. B Company lost all their officers and their sergeant-major, and command was taken by the company clerk. Led by Major Gilmour, the remnants of the two leading companies reached their objective successfully and dug in.

  The minefield was then gapped and Gerald Grosvenor passed through with 9th Lancers. Not long afterwards Grosvenor’s regiment, attacking frontally, overran Stirling itself, thanks to a bold diversionary attack by 50th RTR to draw fire from the 88s in the stronghold, in an operation in which Cairns’s battalion lost nine tanks on mines.[36]

  By soon after 4 o’clock all three regiments of Fisher’s brigade had forced ways through the minefields by Sun route and were beginning to stretch out in front of what they soon began to call Kidney Ridge, but still east of the enemy’s main gun line.

  The enemy then did exactly what Montgomery wanted. As Fisher’s tanks, emerging from the gaps, spread out to deploy in front of the infantry, high clouds of dust behind the enemy lines in the Kidney sector gave notice of some large activity. Von Thoma’s tanks were mustering. It was their favourite hour of attack, with the sun declining behind them and dazzling their enemy. About half an hour later they launched their counter-attack, a counter-attack made by instinct and as a matter of course, not of judgement. Thus began the first of many tank battles that were gradually to wear down the German armour, as Montgomery intended. He counted on their automatic habit of counter-attack and he knew that by this means he could destroy them.

  The attack was made by 15th Panzer and the Littorio Armoured Divisions. In the usual enemy manner, it was made at slow speed under the cover of anti-tank guns, on to which the enemy sought to entice our armour. Fisher’s regiments, however, stood fast where they were. Very soon more than a hundred tanks on each side were engaged and a battle of considerable moment and intensity developed. Vigorous artillery fire accompanied the cannonade of tank versus tank. Part of the enemy attack fell unavailingly on the London Rifle Brigade on the Australian flank, as will presently be recorded. The weight of the enemy’s fire fell not least on the British infantry; the Yorkshire Dragoons suffered severe casualties in their exposed positions and so also did the Highland battalions, on whose terrain most of the British tanks took station.

  The action went on until darkness began to obscure the field, when the enemy withdrew, leaving twenty-six of his tanks burning or totally wrecked. His counter-attack had been a complete failure and the destruction of his armour had begun. The British regiments lost no less but could afford to do so. What was more important was that in this, the first of the considerable tank engagements of Alamein, they had demonstrated their prowess and held the field.

  They leaguered where they were, with a minefield behind them and scattered mines all round. Enemy machine-guns and snipers, creeping close up, bothered them all night and the Allied air forces, preceded by flare-dropping aircraft, laid their bombs very close to the safety limits. About midnight the maintenance echelons drove up and the tank crews got down to their mechanical tasks, to refuelling and to replenishing the ammunition bins. The fitters, who had been working all day under shell fire on the tanks damaged in the minefields in the early morning, came forward with their tools and began the new sessions of the night.

  That same night (24/25 October) 20th Australian Brigade, in a fine minor exploit, completed the seizure of their ultimate goal. During the afternoon, just as the first tank battle was about to begin, Bob Turner, CO of Second-13th Battalion, was mortally wounded, and his adjutant, Ronald Leach, killed while talking to Jim Finigan, CO of 40th RTR, and the battalion was now almost officerless. George Colvin, however, came up from reserve to assume command and, abandoning the plan for a formal assault behind a barrage, made a plan with Simpson, commanding Second-17th on the right, for a combined silent attack. Surprising the enemy outposts, the two battalions captured the final Oxalic objective with few casualties, hacked out their ‘doovers’ in the iron-hard ground, brought up their anti-tank guns and, with 40th RTR in close support, were ready to meet the enemy’s counter-attack by dawn. It was a model operation.

  ‘ABERDEEN’

  On the left of the Australians, 1st Gordon Highlanders also pressed on towards their final goal, not with immediate success, in circumstances of great difficulty and vexation.

  We have seen in the previous chapter how, on the first night, A and C Companies of the Gordons, penetrating a murderous barrage, secured the Black Line, which was their target and which was three-quarters of the way to the battalion’s final Blue Line objective, known as Aberdeen; and we have left the other two companies and the CO of the battalion, ‘Nap’ Murray, halted about a mile behind them. The two forward companies were cut off, Murray had no news of them, the shelling was heavy and continuous and the situation was brittle and precarious.

  Twice Lieutenant Harry Gordon, now commanding the remnant of C Company, had sent runners back to acquaint Murray of the situation. He had seen both of them killed. Finally, he sent Sergeant-Major Thompson, telling him, ‘You have got to get through.’ This Thompson did, bringing heartening news to the anxious Murray. Accompanied by Thompson, Murray went forward himself, found the companies decimated and slightly off-course, but sitting securely on the ground they had won. On a second visit in the afternoon to plan a resumption of the attack, he was wounded in the violent exchange of fire as 10th Hussars, in 2nd Armoured Brigade, having pushed through, began the tank battle that has already been recorded. He was evacuated from the field and command of the battalion fell to Major James Hay, who that night led up the rear companies and reunited the battalion.[37]

  In order to present a consecutive narrative, we shall follow the remainder of the operations of 1st Gordons against Aberdeen out of their chronological order, since the sequence of events typifies the situation battalions often had to face and since there has hitherto been no little confusion about the operations on this important sector. The confusion was also only too evident on the ground itself at the time, for, on top of the inherent problems of desert fighting, the forces of two different army corps were fighting on the same soil for different objectives, neither having much knowledge of what the other was doing. We shall see more of this problem.

  On the night of 24/25 October, therefore, 1st Gordons, or what was left of them, reunited under James Hay, stood on the Black Line, a short mile from their final goal. D Company, under the dour South of England Kenneth Paton, was then ordered to advance. Apparently it was intended that they should secure Aberdeen itself, which, we may remind ourselves, lay on the north-eastern rim of the scarcely distinguishable Kidney feature which was so difficult to identify on the ground.

  With Paton and D Company went 12th Platoon of the Middlesex Regiment, under Humphrey Wigan, with their Vickers heavy machine guns. Summoned hastily to accompany the Gordons, Wigan was led to understand that the operation was only a patrol. Patrolling was scarcely an operation on which machine gunners were ever liable to be included, but Wigan, not questioning, at once assembled his platoon in the dark and, in order to lighten their heavy loads, told his men that water, rations and small packs would not be necessary. It was the typical small mistake of one not yet experienced.

  D Company of the Gordons and 12th Platoon of the Diehards advanced, traversing yet another minefield. There was some light, indiscriminate shelling and flares rose frequently from the enemy lines, causing the advancing soldiers to ‘freeze’ in their steps every few minutes. As they negotiated some barbed wire, they heard the rumble of a tracked vehicle ahead and dropped to the ground. The vehicle stopped short of th
e wire barely fifty yards ahead and a voice shouted out in German, asking what unit they were. There being no reply, the vehicle swung sharply about and disappeared into the night. They had been spotted.

  When they had cleared the wire about ten minutes later, it was accordingly no surprise that mortar and small-arms fire began to develop and the enemy’s flares began to shoot up into the sky every few seconds, illuminating the scene almost continuously. There then took place a totally unexpected encounter, illustrating what was perhaps the first of several unforeseen incidents when two formations are operating on the same ground. In the light of one of the flares, there stood revealed several British motor vehicles, apparently abandoned. Since the enemy employed a good many captured British vehicles, this occasioned no great surprise, but caution was clearly necessary and, while the Highlanders halted, a voice ahead called out loudly: ‘Does anyone here speak English?’

  The ring of the voice was authentic and, after a little while, Paton, joined by Wigan, went forward and to their astonishment met an officer of the London Rifle Brigade (7th RB), from 1st Armoured Division. They had advanced by Sun Route through the Australian sector and had orders to deploy in support of 2nd Armoured Brigade. In deploying, their vehicles had been blown up by mines and they had been brought to a halt by small-arms fire from positions in front of Aberdeen, with many casualties.

  In view of the uncertain situation and of the need to be dug-in before dawn, Paton decided to halt his small force likewise, deploying the Middlesex machine guns on his left. Thus the Jocks had Cockneys to right and to left of them and not the least of the sparse comforts of the situation was the Riflemen’s possession of some anti-tank guns.