At length, Murphy judged that he must have reached Woodcock. He halted and ordered immediate consolidation. At 5.29 a.m. he reported that he was in possession. He seems, in fact, to have reached the eastern edge of Woodcock and to have come to a stop in between some German and Italian units.
At 6 a.m. Murphy reported by air that tanks could be heard near by. Soon afterwards he and the FOO of 104th RHA both went off the air.
At dawn, 2nd Armoured Brigade was moving round on their northern flank, as they had done the day before, but, before they could intervene, the enemy suddenly attacked with tanks and overran the Sussex, with a loss of 47 killed (including Murphy himself) and 342 missing. A little later a patrol of 10th Hussars discerned, at a distance of two miles, the melancholy spectacle of the prisoners being marched away to captivity.
The brigade had been hustled into these assaults with too little forethought. Like those of 7th Motor Brigade on the night before, the operations had been laid on with insufficient opportunity for reconnaissance, with much confusion about map locations and with inadequate measures for ensuring that the assaulting troops were correctly guided to their unrecognizable objectives in the dark obscurity of the desert.
Thus amid signal triumphs there were frustrations and occasional bitter losses. Yet these reverses were purely local and all the time the battle was being steadily won. Rommel began to lose the battle the moment he attempted the tank counter-offensive. His armour was as much at the mercy of the British anti-tank guns as ours were at his. His tactics were merely those of the battering-ram. In the last two days he had lost another 100 tanks, of which about 75 were German. He was doing exactly what Montgomery wanted. Which particular patch of desert Rommel chose for his self-immolation was of little consequence.
On 28 October the relief of 1st Armoured Division by 10th began, but for the remainder of the day 2nd Armoured Brigade remained in action, steadily continuing the work of attrition. Major K. J. Price, of 9th Lancers, in a skilfully handled squadron attack, demonstrated how, on a limited scale, anti-tank guns could be overcome. Putting down a smoke screen to mask a battery of 88s on his flank, he swung his squadron in a half-circle in the cavalry manner and, at a cost to himself of three tanks, overran a German company position that contained three 50-mm anti-tank guns and two heavy mortars.
In another series of small engagements by the regiment, Sergeant F. Edwards, with Corporal Nickolls as gunner, handling their tank with brilliant skill and coolness, stalked and destroyed eight of the enemy, to the delight of the watching Gordon Highlanders. Montgomery himself listened to the progress of this engagement on the radio and afterwards telephoned his congratulations and his instructions for Nickolls to be recommended for the Military Medal.
That night Briggs handed over his front to Gatehouse, and 1st Armoured Division pulled out for a very brief refit and reorganisation in readiness for the new blow that Montgomery was preparing. Lightfoot was over for them. In four and a half gruelling days of continuous fighting they had not got very far on the ground, but they had inflicted great damage to the enemy. Their claim to have knocked out 186 enemy tanks so far was a trifle on the high side, but certainly up to this time they had been by far the largest tank destroyers. Of these, 94 were known to have been completely burnt out or to have been destroyed by the Royal Engineers in their nightly sallies for that purpose. A very high proportion of the kills was to the credit of the 6-pdrs of the riflemen of 7th Motor Brigade and the gunners of 76th Anti-Tank Regiment, pre-eminently at Snipe. Added to these tank victims were fifty-five guns of all sorts destroyed and a good bag of prisoners. An enormous amount of damage had been done by the divisional artillery under ‘Frizz’ Fowler, as, indeed, had been done by all the divisional artilleries and the boldly handled medium regiments of the Royal Artillery. Rommel seems to have been surprised at the fact that British artillery officers accompanied the leading tanks and were able to bring down concentrations of fire with ‘tremendous speed’ to meet any situation.
First Armoured Division had thus contributed handsomely to the ‘crumbling’ operation. Though they had not done so quite in the manner anticipated by Montgomery, he sent his able young ADC, John Poston, to convey to Raymond Briggs his personal congratulations on the handling of the division. But whatever emotions or reflections the red-eyed tank crews may have entertained as they drove back through the dusty minefield gaps, with croaking voices and cracked faces, were submerged in an intense desire for sleep.
On the night that 1st Armoured pulled out, the Australians began the northward drive to the coast road that Montgomery had ordered and thither we direct our attention for the next tempestuous four days.
Chapter Sixteen: Thompson’s Post
(28 October to 1 November)
THE AUSTRALIAN OFFENSIVE RENEWED
The country on the front of 9th Australian Division was not quite so devoid of features as that over which the other divisions of 30th Corps had been fighting and the shape of its frontage had become decidedly awkward. The attack on the night of D Day had hinged on the centre of the divisional front, so that the division faced two ways.
From the sea coast it faced north-west for two and a half miles, as it had done for four months, running across the dreary salt-marshes that lay immediately inland from the snow-white beach, passing just west of the bony crest of Tel el Eisa and crossing the black ribbon of the coast road and the broken thread of the railway before it reached the open desert. Along this coastal sector 24th Brigade stood guard under Arthur Godfrey in a position of defence. A little to the westward of the ruined Tel el Eisa station, at the point where the attack of 23 October had begun, the line pivoted until it faced north, reaching westward to Point 29 since its capture on the night of 25 October. Along this northward face, still deployed on the ground they had won in three nights’ fighting, the soldiers of 20th Brigade (of which Victor Windeyer had now resumed command) and 26th Brigade under ‘Torpy’ Whitehead sat squarely in their rocky ‘doovers’, supported by the English tanks and guns of 23rd Armoured Brigade Group under Rickie Richards.
Within the angle of this two-directional front stood a strongly fortified enemy outpost system, known as Thompson’s Post. It was dug-in on a somewhat pronounced rocky elevation, covered about half a square mile, dominated the bare desert on all sides of it, had a German artillery observation post just behind it at Point 25 and was to prove a thorn in the flesh of the Australians.
Most of the country was flat and sandy, with underlying rock, but north of the road it was somewhat interrupted by the small, rocky hummocks which were a continuation of Tel el Eisa, and here and there were to be seen an occasional palm or wild fig-tree near the road side.
Facing the Australians round this awkward pocket, which the British artillery and the Allied Air Forces made extremely uncomfortable, were 164th Light Division and the Bersaglieri, troops of good quality, together with the still more formidable ‘battle groups’ of 90th Light, freshly thrust into the fine.
Thus the Germans and Italians, though they had had a gruelling ordeal, held all the advantages of the defence. The assaulting Australian brigades, however, — 20th and 26th — had had a scarcely less gruelling time. In the five days they had been in the line, together with 40th RTR under Jim Finigan, they had not only made three winning attacks but they had also, under fire from two directions, decisively beaten off two counter-attacks, including Rommel’s ‘rivers of blood’ attack on the 26th.
They were not alone among the other divisions in these trials of combat endurance, but the fierce and bitter conflicts to which they were now to be committed were made remarkable by the fact that they were begun and carried through by men who already showed in their faces the strain that comes from long endurance of shell fire and who had already been severely weakened by casualties. Thus Second-13th Battalion, a New South Wales unit, had been decimated of officers after completing its capture of the Oxalic objective on 24 October. The CO, Lieutenant-Colonel Bob Turner, all the company commanders
and nearly all the platoon commanders had been killed or wounded. The assaulting rifle companies began the new operations with strengths of about thirty-five officers and men each — little more than the strength of a platoon — instead of 120.
This was fairly representative of several of the battalions in 20th and 26th Brigades and reinforcements were so lacking that the detention camps and hospitals in the base areas as far away as Palestine were being scoured to make good the casualties.
The blow which Montgomery ordered to be struck by the Australians was calculated to serve two purposes: it would maintain the motive of the initiative, thus forcing the enemy once more to react to his tune, and it would improve the prospects for a break-through astride the coast road, which, at that time, seemed to Montgomery the most promising vista. Along that road he saw the powerful impetus of Bernard Freyberg thrusting fast and hard with his spirited New Zealanders as part of the drive he ordained for 10th Corps. He therefore withdrew Lumsden’s Corps headquarters into reserve in readiness for that drive, leaving 10th Armoured Division temporarily under Oliver Leese’s command in the Kidney sector, where during the next few days it performed some excellent ‘crumbling’.
Morshead’s task of a northward attack from the shoulder of the bulge was anything but easy to execute. His grand objective was the coast road and he had also to demolish the strong forces in the coastal pocket, which, from its most formidable feature, we may call the Thompson’s Post pocket. He intended first to enlarge his tenancy at Point 29. Then, with the aid of Richard’s armour, he would strike for the coast road and swing south-eastward to destroy the enemy in the Thompson’s Post pocket, who consisted chiefly of 125th Panzer Grenadier Regiment and some Bersaglieri.
In outline, his plan for achieving this purpose was first to capture two enemy positions about a mile to the north-east[66] and to the east-north-east[67] of Point 29, each being a battalion task. This was entrusted to 20th Brigade. Then 26th Brigade and 23rd Armoured Brigade were to advance between the two captured localities and secure the main road, whence they would turn inwards and exploit to clear the pocket. For these operations Richards would have two of his armoured regiments — 40th and 46th RTR — and his gunner regiment, 121st Field Regiment, with their 25-pdrs on ‘Bishop’ mountings.
It was a complicated operation, involving the Australian CRA, Brigadier Ramsay, in a difficult programme of artillery fire, to support attacks in different directions. However, Oliver Leese gave him every gun he could spare for the task, and Dennis, his Corps artillery commander, handled the complicated disposition with his usual easy skill.
The night was dark and cold under the glittering canopy of stars when 20th Brigade’s attack began at 10 o’clock on 28 October. It was entrusted to Second-13th Battalion (now commanded by George Colvin) and the Queenslanders of Second-15th, under C. K. M. Magno. They were met by some fairly hot shell-fire and suffered painful casualties from S-mines, but gained their objectives and sat firmly on them.
The circumstances in which this attack was launched, and launched successfully, are vividly illustrated by the experiences of B Company of Second-13th, who were posted on the right flank in their attack on ‘Fig Orchard’.
A new officer — Captain C. Vincent — arrived to take command of the company just before it was due to attack. George Colvin had already given out battalion orders to the company commanders. At his ‘Order Group’ there had been only a subaltern to take orders for B Company — Lieutenant Frederick Treweeke. Vincent, on his arrival, had at once to call his own company ‘O Group’, though he did not yet know the battalion orders. So weak was the company that his O Group consisted of Trewceke, one other officer, one corporal and two privates, and it took place under heavy fire.
They collected together in adjacent holes in the ground. Treweeke, reading from his rough notes, shouted them to Vincent between shell bursts. Vincent, unable to hear him at one point, shouted to Treweeke to come over to him. Receiving no answer, he scrambled over to Treweeke’s hole and found him dead.
The dead subaltern’s pencilled notes were almost illegible, but, deciphering as much as he could, Vincent took his slender company straight to the battalion forming-up position. Their strength was two officers and thirty men and with these they had to attack on a frontage of 200 yards for a mile and a half in the dark to the ‘Fig Orchard’ near Thompson’s Post. They did this successfully, and sent forward a patrol as well.
In such circumstances, Colvin had no following-on troops for mopping up and before long his battalion command post was being kept under incessant fire by a heavy mortar and two Spandaus in a German position in the left rear. Colvin ordered C Company to deal with them and the mission was entrusted to Lance-Sergeant Reginald McKellar and the remnants of a platoon — ten men. He was given the bearing to the enemy post and was handed a compass. With no other information or aids than these he set out.
The platoon traversed a minefield of 200 yards depth, reached the barbed wire surrounding the enemy post and was immediately attacked by the two Spandaus, which pinned them to the ground, while the mortar went on firing. McKellar, however, gave the order for the patrol to let fly their hand grenades, of which they carried four each. The patrol then rushed the post and captured the guns and their crews.
There remained, however, the trench mortar, which, from 30 yards away, was still pumping bombs into Fig Orchard. This also they rushed and captured after a hand-to-hand fight in the pit, knocking out one of the crew with the fist and shooting down another who tried to escape.
Another German machine-gun then opened fire on the patrol, killing one of the prisoners, and the patrol began to make their way back, driving their prisoners before them through the minefield at the point of the Tommy gun. McKellar then realized that, if he left the mortar behind, it might be manned again by the enemy. He therefore went back himself with four men, dismantled it, captured another prisoner and made his way back to his company, with the German prisoners carrying the mortar and the machine guns.
It is by such acts of individual initiative, with which the next four days’ fighting was vividly illuminated, that actions are often won and dominance over an enemy asserted. Before the night was out the four rifle companies of this battalion had been reduced to a total of 100 and they had lost another CO, Colvin being severely wounded after having commanded the battalion for only four days. The ‘orchard of dreadful memory’ became a charnel-house reeking with the stench of German dead and a place of sudden death for the Australian infantry and the English tanks. ‘Mind the bloody orchard’ became the warning to all who had to pass that way.
Thus the first phase of this assault of 28/29 October went well, but of the attempt of 26th Brigade and their accompanying tanks to push right forward to the coast road in the next phase there is a rougher story to tell.
The units selected for this bold thrust were Second-23rd Battalion, commanded by Bernard Evans, and 46th RTR under T. C. A. Clarke. The two units had worked together often before and knew each other well. On this occasion, in order to get tanks and infantry on to the objective together, part of the infantry were carried on the Valentines and part in carriers — a device of very dubious merit. Unfortunately, the start-line, very advanced, had been chosen from the map and was not reconnoitred.
Darkness and clouds of dust obscured the start and 500 yards from the start-line Clarke’s tanks began to blow up one after the other on an unexpected minefield. Others were knocked out by short-range anti-tank gunfire, while scalding machine-gun fire forced the infantry to dismount from the tanks. Tanks and infantry soon lost touch with each other and the attack broke down in confusion. The Valentines suffered very severe casualties, Clarke himself being badly wounded right at the start and all his squadron leaders being casualties also; Major Eric Offord took command.
In this turmoil, the two brigadiers, Whitehead and Richards, were following up together close behind the assaulting troops and were caught in the enemy counter-barrage. Whitehead held an imprompt
u and uneasy conference in a ‘doover’ but had now small chance of controlling events. Richards sent back for six Scorpions to come forward and flail the minefield. Finigan, who had been supporting 20th Brigade, calmly came up in the midst of the storm to offer the help of 40th RTR, but Richards sent him back. By 4.15 a.m. it was learnt that Evans had halted his battalion and dug in half a mile beyond the start-line, together with all that remained viable of 46th RTR — eight tanks in all. The attempt to penetrate to the coast road had thus not succeeded, but severe damage had been inflicted on the enemy and his position had been pierced at a very sensitive spot. The 3rd Battalion of 125th Panzer Grenadier Regiment had been virtually annihilated and a gap had been blown between what remained of them and Battle Group 155 of 90th Light.
This was excellent ‘crumbling’ in just the sort of ‘dog fight’ that Montgomery had purposed and for which 9th Australian Division was so well equipped by nature and by training.
THE RIVAL COMMANDERS
As the news of the new northward thrust came through to the two rival commanders in the early morning of 29 October, and its relationship to the operations as a whole was appreciated, we are presented with a fascinating picture of how they read each other’s minds.
Rommel was now at last seriously worried. His tank strength, which had been ravaged in five days’ fighting with 1st Armoured Division, was now augmented by forty-six new or repaired tanks, but his German panzers nonetheless were reduced to about half their original numbers and his infantry and artillery were daily being shattered, captured, crazed and exhausted by the sustained pressure of the British offensive. His attempts to throw the British out of the ground they had won had broken on the rocks of their anti-tank guns, their tanks employed defensively, the ‘terrible British artillery’ and the bolts showered down by the Allied aircraft.
Alamein (Major Battles of World War Two) Page 31