Alamein (Major Battles of World War Two)

by C. E. Lucas Phillips

  It was not until the more dangerous attacks of the afternoon by the battle group of 21st Panzer Division that they got the chance of a shoot, when the German tanks began to approach closely, and then they quickly killed four of them. Two of Callon’s guns, however, in dead flat ground north of the railway overlooked from the OP on Point 25, were knocked out. That night, which was the relatively quiet night when 24th Brigade relieved 26th, Savory moved the remaining two back alongside Bawden’s. At the same time the Troop commanded by Pat Cramer was moved forward. The Rhodesians were now mainly in the terrain taken over by Second-43rd Battalion. Savory’s little command post was a hole dug into the side of the railway embankment, not far from a small railway hut where Australian medical officers had set up a precarious Aid Post in the heart of the conflict. The Red Cross emblem on this hut and the files of wounded being brought to it were clearly seen by Rommel himself as he watched his troops trying ‘to throw back the British’.

  On the next morning, which was Sunday, 1 November, at the warning that the new German attack of that day was imminent, Savory was ordered to bring up the reserve Troop of Lieutenant Paul Jackson, a quiet, spectacled officer, who in peace served in the Native Administration of Southern Rhodesia. To bring up their guns, Savory had to drive three miles in daylight, under direct observation from the Thompson’s Post area, by a track appropriately named Guillotine. He ordered the Troop to ‘drive like hell, wait for nobody, zigzag and create your own dust’. This they did with such gusto that they arrived in the deployment area with only one man wounded.

  The attack was imminent and Jackson’s Troop dug in with all speed near the railway on the Thompson’s Post side. His own truck was hit and went up in flames as they did so. Savory, going back to his hole in the railway embankment, saw four portees with their 6-pdrs driving forward across the track and for an agonized moment thought they were his own going up in error; but they were Australian guns and within a few minutes he saw every one of them blown to pieces.

  This was the beginning of a furious and critical struggle which went on for nearly a day and a half. All Cramer’s guns appear to have been destroyed after an onslaught in which Cramer himself, going about from gun to gun with complete unconcern, to the admiration alike of the Australians and his own troops, met his death after an example of steadfast leadership that lives in the memory of all who survived.

  The other Troops, more fortunate in their positions, fought with no less spirit. On Sergeant Hotchin’s gun all the detachment except himself and Gunner Robert Young were wounded, but the two continued to man the gun together until it was knocked out. John Bawden, tall, stalwart, the picture of a soldierly figure, commanding his Troop with resolution and composure, was an inspiration to them all, in perfect control, at once on the spot when any detachment was in difficulty or danger. He had his guns very well sited, with the result that they did great damage with little loss. In the faint grey light of early morning on 2 November, Sergeant Cary, seeing some enemy guns coming into action at 1,200 yards, engaged them and, after a few misses in the poor light, hit them one after another and set fire either their trucks or their ammunition.

  The final exploit of the Rhodesian anti-tank gunners came on the afternoon of the same day. Gunner Peter Vorster sighted a German Mark III tank approaching on a reconnaissance. To the right of it, at long range beyond the road, he saw an 88-mm being towed by its half-track and to the right of that again a captured 6-pdr on the move on its portee.

  With successive shots he knocked out the tank, the 88, its tractor and the portee. There followed a demonstration that must be almost unexampled on a modern battlefield. The surrounding Australians, transfixed with admiration for this cool and superlative shooting, stood up in their doovers and burst into cheers, as though they were applauding a century in a Test Match.

  Three months later, after the 9th Division had returned to Australia, there arrived through the devious ‘usual channels’ a report by the CO of an Australian battalion bringing to Montgomery’s notice the courageous bearing of the Rhodesian anti-tank gunners and recommending for a very high award the dead subaltern officer, but, since he was dead, the rules of the Army allowed him no more than a Mention in Dispatches. To those who know, this tells its own tale.

  Here we take leave of the gallant Diggers and those who supported them. They had, in General Alexander’s words, ‘fought the enemy to a standstill’. And themselves also. Alamein and Africa were over for them. If they listened with some wistful feelings to the news of the victory so soon to come, to which they had so much contributed, and to that of the subsequent pursuit, in which they were denied a share, their compensation was that they were soon to see their native land again, before setting out to win fresh laurels in New Guinea.

  For, as we say goodbye to 9th Australian Division, we turn to see the curtain go up on the last act.

  Part III: Supercharge

  Chapter Seventeen: ‘A Real Hard Blow’

  (1/2 November)

  MORALE FROM THE SKIES

  While the Australians were ‘drawing everything on to themselves’, the forces designed by Montgomery for the final blow were being quickly marshalled and re-equipped. Though the infantry available for a further strike was much weakened and although 24th Armoured Brigade was broken up, the losses in tanks were quickly made good, the artillery, albeit tired, were still very much in the ascendant and the air forces were in control of the skies for most of the day.

  The enemy’s strength had been reduced in all arms. By the end of October his tank casualties amounted to 289, of which 222 were total losses. With the recent augmentations, his tank strength may still have been nearly 300 (the Papers say 304), still a formidable force, but forty were still in the south in the Ariete Division. He still, also, had nearly as many anti-tank guns of all sorts as ever and his ammunition supply was far from being as short as Rommel tried to make out. Moreover, his forces were now so disposed that he could concentrate quickly on a narrow front. His most serious shortage was in petrol.

  Even more important than the statistical and material conditions of the rival forces was the morale factor and in this the air forces under Tedder’s command had been a potent influence. To our own front-line soldiers the spectacle of the immaculate squadrons sweeping overhead with majestic unconcern and the roar of their bombs, shaking the earth and erupting in enormous clouds of smoke and dust, was immensely heartening, materializing in their eyes as a symbol of invincibility.

  To the enemy, on the other hand, the cumulative effect of round-the-clock bombing became an ever-tightening strain. ‘Air raid after air raid after air raid,’ wrote Rommel himself, more than once in person the quarry of the aerial hunters. Continuing when the daylight squadrons finished, the night bombing by experienced teams of RAF Wellingtons and Fleet Air Arm flare-dropping Albacores lengthened the hours of strain and disturbance among the tank leaguers and the concentrations of transport. These, in fact, offered better targets than were normally to be found by day, when, as often as possible, units were widely dispersed.

  Indeed, the material damage from aircraft, as contrasted with their effects on morale, was very small, especially against troops and guns dug in. Even tanks suffered little serious damage, except for the rare and fortuitous direct hit. The only tank destroyers we had at that time were Hurricane II Ds armed with 40-mm ‘cannon’, firing armour-piercing ammunition, and these, to be effective, had to fly very low and so themselves became targets for every kind of enemy weapon. Their use was accordingly confined to the southern front.

  Where our aircraft did execute material damage of the greatest value was at sea. There the Wellingtons and Beauforts continued to sink the enemy’s fuel and supply ships with admirable regularity; to such an extent that Rommel was obliged to resort to having fuel brought to him from Crete by air, and there, accordingly, 205 Group paid a bombing visit on 27 October.

  THE BATTLEFIELD PICTURE

  The picture painted for us, however, as we look over th
e battlefield on the last day of October, is by no means one in which the soldier’s dream of victory was clearly written in the sky.

  As we have seen, both Germans and Italians had surrendered readily enough on many occasions, but on the whole the enemy, particularly the German enemy, was resisting tenaciously, showing not only his good fighting qualities, but also his swift response to a situation. These responses were not always sound tactically, but they were instinctive on his part, trained as he was to act swiftly and to counter-attack immediately. The local initiative of his junior commanders was very high and he was skilful at swift improvisation and in the economic use of force. His battle drill insisted on the immediate sowing of mines and the deployment of his anti-tank guns wherever they might be needed and for this manoeuvre he had a tremendous advantage in the half-track vehicles that towed them. Moreover, these guns, both those of the divisional units and the formidable heavy weapons manned by the Luftwaffe, were served by exceptionally brave and resolute detachments.

  We see the enemy now, therefore, contemplating a short withdrawal, but not defeat. His main strength had been disposed between Tel el Aqqaqir and the coast road, apprehending as he did that Montgomery’s intention was to advance along the axis of that road. Approximately along the line of the Rahman, or Ariete, Track he threw out a very formidable zareba of anti-tank guns. Forward of this track, he still maintained his positions at Woodcock and Snipe in the Kidney Ridge area, facing our old Oxalic line along its general length.

  Such in outline is the picture behind the enemy’s front, where Rommel was anxious but not dismayed. Within the British lines, under cover of the storm that was raging on the Australian sector, the picture shows us the swift and secret marshalling behind clouds of dust of the new striking forces. They were working against time, for Montgomery did not intend to slacken the momentum of the offensive, and staff officers, working day and night with their clerks and signallers, were under severe strain.

  Thick congestions of traffic built up as divisions, brigades and units began to shape their courses for the allotted routes forward through the old minefields and order themselves in their determined sequences of march. Intricate regulations governed the movements to Traffic Control Posts, Start Points, Regulating Stations and at all these, as well as at cross-routes and the gaps in minefields, the Military Police, under the orders of their Assistant Provost Marshals, stood imperturbable amid the billowing clouds churned up by fleets of vehicles that lurched and clanged over the dusty desert in the stifling heat of day and the bitter cold of night. Backwards to the base flowed the loaded ambulances and the damaged tanks jangling on their transporters; forward from the base flowed up the RASC lorries with ammunition, fuel, rations and stores of all sorts, new tanks and their ready-trained crews. The dead, wrapped in blankets, were laid to rest in their sandy graves. The air hummed with a cabbalistic jargon in English, German, Italian, French, Greek, Urdu and Afrikaans.

  Overhead there was a deeper hum as the Allied squadrons swept the skies and occasionally, at dawn or eve, an enemy squadron darted out to rain down sudden mischief or a lone Messerschmitt skimmed the desert like a blackbird across the lawn, gunning whatever target lay beneath and awakening an angry chatter from every bren, rifle and bofors-gun that could be brought to bear in the swift seconds of its passing.

  Amid all these physical activities, officers of all arms were deep in conferences, poring over sand models of the next zone of attack, defining objectives and boundaries, determining the methods and timings of attack, debating the rate of advance and studying the now very scanty information from air photographs and other sources of the dispositions of the enemy. The gunners were working out their complicated sums to bring together the fire of more than four divisions in what was to be the densest concentration of artillery yet fired. The armoured car regiments, long awaiting their turn, were making ready to slip out and to kindle the fires of havoc in the enemy rear.

  Montgomery had been visiting the divisions to show himself, to feel the pulse of the troops and to apportion praise where it had been due. With his characteristic disregard of the rules of grammar, he wrote home to General Sir Alan Brooke, the CIGS:

  A real hard and very bloody fight has gone on now for eight days. It has been a terrific party and a complete slogging match… So far Rommel has had to dance entirely to my tune; his counterattacks and thrusts have been handled without difficulty up to date. I think he is now ripe for a real hard blow which may topple him off his perch.

  FREYBERG’S ‘CUP OF TEA’

  The ‘real hard blow’ was planned under the code-name Supercharge. In general method it was to be a variation on the theme of Lightfoot, with the infantry of 30th Corps attacking at night under heavy artillery cover and the armour of 10th Corps following up as quickly as lanes could be cleared through whatever minefields there were.

  There, however, the resemblance ended. The attack was to be on a narrow front of only 4,000 yards and to the same depth, employing two infantry brigades only. There was a waning moon, not rising until 1 a.m., thus leaving only about four and a half hours for gaining the objective and sweeping a way through the mines before getting the armour out into the open. Very little was known of the locations of enemy defences forward of the Rahman Track and, therefore, a different artillery plan was required. For the same reason, and in view of the experience of Lightfoot, the tank attack to be launched after the infantry objective had been won would also be covered by a barrage.

  Such were the general considerations. We have already seen what sector Montgomery had selected for the blow. It would create a further extension of the bulge, or what Raymond Briggs called a ‘funnel’, at its northern end. The centre of this attack would carry the infantry within about half-a-mile of the Rahman Track, north of Tel el Aqqaqir, and the armour was then expected to break through the line of guns known to be on the general line of the Rahman Track and to pass beyond.

  There was at first some uncertainty about what infantry could be called upon for the initial phase of this momentous attack. Except for the South Africans, no uncommitted infantry divisions were left in 30th Corps who were strong enough for the effort. As we have seen, Bernard Freyberg was seriously concerned at the numerical weakness of his New Zealand infantry (whom Montgomery designed for a special mission in the pursuit), and he said to the Army Commander during the planning for the new operation:

  ‘I will lead any other infantry you like, but I will not take my New Zealanders into another assault.’

  Montgomery, however, wanted Freyberg to do the job and he knew his man. He raised the matter again when they next met. First, he told Freyberg that he could have 9th Armoured Brigade again, but Freyberg shook his head; it was a matter of infantry. Montgomery then offered him a British infantry brigade as well, but he still shook his head, although Montgomery could see that he was clearly ‘weakening’.

  ‘Very well, Bernard, I’ll give you two infantry brigades.’

  Freyberg fell. ‘I could see,’ Montgomery said afterwards, ‘that the old war-horse was itching to fight again. This sort of show was very much his cup of tea and I knew he was the right man for it.’[71]

  The Supercharge opening attack, therefore, was to be made by the New Zealand Division under Freyberg’s command, but, except for the Maori Battalion, without New Zealand infantry. The brigades that Montgomery gave them, in addition to 9th Armoured, who were already fast becoming blood-brothers of the Kiwis, were 151st and 152nd Brigades.

  The first of these, commanded by Brigadier ‘Jos’ Percy, a burly figure with greying hair, came from 50th Division in the south and was composed of 6th, 8th and 9th Battalions, Durham Light Infantry, and we shall accordingly call them the Durham Brigade, by which name they went in their own division.

  The second of these brigades, commanded by the thorough, sandy-haired Caithnessian, Brigadier George Murray, came from 51st Division, was composed of 2nd and 5th Seaforth Highlanders and 5th Cameron Highlanders and so was often called the
Seaforth and Cameron Brigade.

  For the benefit of those readers who may not be clear about these things and for those writers who certainly are not, it must be emphasized that these were not operational ‘brigade groups’ in the desert sense, but brigades temporarily allotted to 2 NZ Division, fighting under the orders of the commander of that division and operationally integrated into it, with his normal divisional staff, his full divisional artillery, engineers and medical and other services. In military terminology, the Durham and Highland Brigades were ‘under command’; so also were 9th and 23rd Armoured Brigades, the latter, less one battalion, being also added to Freyberg’s force for close support of the assaulting infantry and being ordered over from the Australians as soon as Finigan’s tank battle was done.

  The infantry, however, as in Lightfoot, were only a means to an end. Theirs was the task to storm the approaches to the citadel. It was for the armour to break in the gates and to destroy the enemy within. The most critical of all tasks was that designed for 9th Armoured Brigade, who were to break open the gate so long locked by the enemy’s anti-tank guns, now ranged in strength along and before the Rahman Track. The brigade had, accordingly, been made up to strength with seventy-nine Shermans and Grants and fifty-three Crusaders.

  So vital was its task that Montgomery, who on this occasion, as on so many others, could see far, impressed upon Freyberg that he was prepared, if need be, to lose every tank in the brigade, provided they broke that gate. The lean and percipient Army Commander was to be justified not only in the accuracy of his anticipations but also in his judgement of John Currie and his resolute regiments.