The Brigade began to take casualties early but were encouraged by the numbers of German and Italian dead who littered the path of their approach and by the shattered men who gave themselves up, many of them almost hysterical from the fearful bombardment. Other enemy posts, however, overleapt by the inevitable gaps in the barrage, resisted and the advance was marked by a series of fierce little duels by sections and even single men who encountered detachments of entrenched Germans still full of fight. Thus, Private James Brown, of the 8th Battalion, though wounded himself, wiped out or captured a German section post single-handed and in the 6th Battalion RSM Page and Sergeant Albert Dunn accomplished similar feats of arms.
The 8th Battalion of the Durhams, however, was itself very much cut-up. Jackson’s own carrier was blown up by a direct hit. Even at the halfway objective, the two leading companies had lost more than 100 men. B Company had lost all its officers and A Company had been reduced to isolated sections. The attack upon the final objective was undertaken by C Company alone, finely led by Captain I. R. English. To that objective, isolated from the rest of the battalion, they hung on nearly all next day under a galling fire and with German tanks within a few hundred yards.
On the dangerous right flank, as was to be expected, 6th Battalion also faced stiff resistance. Here one platoon lost its subaltern commander, all its NCOs and all but five of its men. While attending to their casualties the doctor was himself wounded; he carried on, but, while he was dressing the wounds of RSM Page, both were killed, as well as the medical sergeant. Away on the left, the medical officer of the 9th Battalion (an American) and his sergeant were likewise both killed.
Thus the passage of the Durham Brigade was rough and bloody, yet they reached their final objective within a few minutes of time, and by four o’clock in the morning, with the partial moon beginning faintly to illuminate the scene as the dust of the barrage settled, they were digging into the rock. The New Zealand sappers, making a safe way for the armour, came up behind them and by five o’clock the fighting vehicles of 6th Battalion, led by Maurice Kirby, were up, and soon afterwards the ambulances, crammed with wounded, were making their way back.
Brigadier Percy, however, seems to have been out of communication with his battalions during the later stages and Freyberg, back at his Honey, was anxious, for a firm base for the armoured advance was very important. The situation was not lucid and it was not until nearly 5.30 a.m., with first light less than an hour away, that he felt justified in informing 30th Corps that the new front had been fully won.
Farther still to the right, where the flank of the night’s attack hinged on the Australian sector, the Maoris also had a fierce fight for their limited objective. Assaulting with their characteristic fire, they captured the stronghold west of Point 29 that threatened the Durhams’ right flank, linked up with the Australians and handed over to them their bag of prisoners. But they took 100 casualties in doing so, including their gallant half-Maori CO, Fred Baker, whose tongue was torn out by a bullet.
On the opposite flank, the Sussex Brigade had the satisfaction of capturing Woodcock, with their 2nd and 5th Battalions, thus avenging the bitter experience of their sister battalion there a few nights before.
Thus, although the Durhams’ hold at the northern extremity of their new front was tenuous, Freyberg could regard the night’s work by his infantry and sappers, superbly supported by the artillery of 10th and 30th Corps under the able handling of his own young CRA, as a brilliant success. Not only had the ground been won as a ‘funnel’ for the armour, but severe casualties in killed, wounded and prisoners had also been inflicted on the enemy in this battle of attrition; 9th Durhams alone had captured over 400 prisoners. The enemy was, therefore, not nearly so thin on the ground as General Alexander’s subsequent dispatch suggests, and they had been overcome in a battle fought in the ‘old-fashioned’ First World War way — the Freyberg way.
It was a splendid prelude to the momentous attack in the new-fashioned way by 9th Armoured Brigade, which he was itching to see launched against the Rahman Track, now only half-a-mile distant in the centre, while it was yet dark.
Chapter Eighteen: The Charge of 9th Armoured Brigade
The unpredictable factors of war, however, denied to Currie’s brigade the chance to meet the enemy while it was yet fully dark.
Currie, like Freyberg, knew well that the moon’s phase would give him little enough time after the securing of the infantry objective and the weeding of the Devil’s Gardens. His target, we may remind ourselves, was the Aqqaqir Ridge, which, running north-and-south, lay one-and-a-half miles west of the infantry objective, with the Rahman Track, lined with telegraph poles, running diagonally across the intervening ground. Like most other features in this part of the Western Desert, the ridge was merely a long swelling a trifle higher than the surrounding ground and the Tel itself was merely the highest point in it, without any distinctive outline.
The enemy guns and other defences were deployed in a wide crescent and in depth, many along the Rahman Track itself, others in front of it and others beyond. Many were sited, as was their wont, on the reverse slopes of small folds of ground, so that they might catch the attacking tanks at a disadvantage at killing range. There were some two dozen 88s in the screen, most of them in positions beyond the track, together with what the subsequent staff study described as a ‘vast number of smaller guns’.
The barrage for Currie’s attack was timed to begin at 5.45 a.m. He had told his three regimental commanders of Montgomery’s preparedness to accept a hundred per cent casualties and some of the COs had, in turn, passed it on to their squadron leaders. The deadly seriousness of the operation was thus evident to them all, but they accepted the challenge without cavil. Their only reservation lay in their concern for the time factor. They dismissed from their minds the likelihood that they would all be wiped out and felt confident that, if they could get in among the enemy guns in the dark, they would be successful. But only in the dark. The COs therefore realized how vital it was that they should reach their Grafton start-line on time and they determined that they would press their approach march through the minefield and the newly-won infantry positions with all the resolution possible, taking large risks. Currie, shaking hands with a very young tank gunner of the Warwickshire Yeomanry whose fighting eagerness delighted him, said: ‘We can’t fail.’ If his brigade could blow a hole and if 1st Armoured Division could keep close up to him, then the gates of the enemy citadel would be open at last and the battle won.
The gates, however, were not to be opened quite so quickly or so easily. The brigade left its rest area near El Alamein station at eight o’clock in the night of 1 November, faced with an all-night approach march of about eleven miles before reaching their start-line. They numbered 123 tanks, few of which were new. The replacement Crusaders issued to the Royal Wiltshire Yeomanry after their Miteiriya losses were in a deplorable state. Nothing fitted. Nothing worked. Guns, compasses and radios were all faulty.
The brigade moved off in double line-ahead in three regimental groups into the Diamond, Boomerang and Two Bar tracks, each armoured regiment with its infantry company of 14th Sherwood Foresters, who were placed immediately in rear of the leading tank squadrons, and the anti-tank guns from 31st New Zealand Battery. On the right the experienced Peter Farquhar led 3rd Hussars, in the centre Alistair Gibb commanded the Royal Wiltshire Yeomanry, and on the left were the Warwickshire Yeomanry under the strapping figure of Guy Jackson, a man of astonishing physical resilience.[73]
They were soon in difficulty. The darkness of the night and the enveloping clouds of powdered dust, more than a foot deep, churned up by their own tracks, and driven down each column by a head wind, plagued them from the beginning. The drivers, straining to peer through their apertures, were choked with dust and for long periods could see nothing at all. Tanks at times cannoned into each other and at others lost contact and the wheeled vehicles got stuck in the dust-bog.
As they moved up into the
battle area of the ground that had just been won by the Highlanders, the Warwickshires were momentarily checked by having to dispose of some anti-tank, or tank, fire from their left flank. On the troublesome right flank the 3rd Hussars group, pressing with great determination and led by the Crusaders of A Squadron, under Captain Richard Heseltine, suffered damaging casualties from the persistent shellfire that was harassing the Durhams. Every one of the wheeled vehicles was knocked out. All the officers of A Company of the Foresters were killed or wounded. The majority of the lights put up to mark the minefield lanes cleared by the New Zealand sappers had been blown to bits, and in the fog-like conditions ten tanks were lost, either blown up on mines as they tried to by-pass the burning wheeled vehicles in their urge to get forward, or else knocked out by shellfire.
The Hussars’ group accordingly arrived at the Durhams’ shaky front line with no anti-tank guns and with the Foresters so crippled by casualties that, when the time came to form-up for the attack, the intention to intersperse them between the leading tanks, which had been done so successfully in Lightfoot, had to be abandoned. In the brigade as a whole, twenty-nine tanks failed to arrive in time for the attack.
Nevertheless, as a result of their determination, the Hussars and the Royal Wiltshires arrived at the Grafton start-line on time. The Warwickshires, however, try as they would, could not quite make it. The Hon. Peter Samuel, leading the advance with the Crusaders of A Squadron, had been badly thrown out in time and direction by an inexplicable diversion in their allotted minefield gap, which had led them to a blind end and obliged them all to turn round and return to the point where the lane had forked.
Farquhar and Gibb urged Currie to let them make their attack without waiting for Jackson, in order to get in among the enemy guns while it was still dark. Currie, however, was concerned for the Wiltshires’ left flank and with the importance of making the breach as wide as possible. He thought he could accept a slight delay and asked for his barrage to be postponed for half-an-hour. To this Freyberg felt obliged to agree, though it meant communicating the change to fifteen artillery regiments in the various divisions of the two corps.
The regimental commanders collected their squadrons and arrayed them for battle. Farquhar regrouped 3rd Hussars, withdrawing Heseltine’s much damaged A Squadron from the van, and replacing it by Michael Eveleigh’s B Squadron. All were feeling the fatigue and ‘bloodiness’ of the all-night march. For Major ‘Tim’ Gibbs, who led the advance of the Wiltshires, the approach had been a nightmare, for the intercom radio of his Crusader was out of action, and he had sat all night out on the front of the tank, choked with dust, shouting verbal orders to his driver through the aperture.
All, however, were able to get on their marks reasonably well balanced. The spirit of the squadrons was high and the call of a desperate enterprise put every man upon his mettle. The radios crackled as orders passed from tank to tank. The night was noisy with desultory fire from guns and mortars, but no man deceived himself that the growl of the engines and the creaking of the tracks were unheard by the watchful enemy. Unlike the cavalry of old, the iron horsemen could not muffle the jingle of their harness.
John Lakin, commanding a squadron in the Warwickshires, ‘marvelled at the quiet calm of every man and officer as they moved dimly and certainly each to his own particular job; for this was no picnic, and the dead and wounded lay all around as clear evidence of what might befall any man’.
The warning of extreme casualties had not been passed beyond squadron leaders. Not every man could be expected to face such odds with easy feelings. There were some, however, who, when they saw the surprising position in the field that their brigade commander now took up, could not fail to draw their own startling conclusions. For Currie decided that, if there were to be 100 per cent casualties, the brigade commander himself could not be excluded. Accordingly, instead of posting himself in one of the accepted positions in the field, from which a brigadier could command, he now placed himself near the van of the attack. He ordered his little brigade major, Pat Hobart, who knew all, to follow him at ten yards’ intervals.
Having emerged from their minefield lanes, Currie’s regiments spread out frontally into line-abreast by squadrons, disposing themselves in the irregular pattern that, in their cavalry days, they had known as ‘artillery formation’. The feeling that this was indeed a cavalry exploit was not far absent and it was surely the cavalry spirit that would be needed this night of all nights. Regimental and squadron commanders went about on foot, giving last-minute orders.
In the two yeomanry regiments the Crusader squadrons, some of them armed only with 2-pdrs, led the array, followed by the heavy squadrons of Shermans and Grants. The three regiments deployed in the same order of battle as that in which they had marched — the white horse of 3rd Hussars on the right, the Prince’s feathers of the Royal Wiltshires in the centre and the Warwickshire bear on the left. With the two yeomanry regiments were their companies of the Foresters, in carriers or on foot. In the Wiltshire Yeomanry Captain John Gilbey was astonished to find that a sergeant of the Highland Division had jumped on his tank in the approach march, begging to be allowed to go with him; Gilbey’s gunner having become a casualty, the Jock was given some hurried instruction and took the gunner’s place for the coming battle. In the rear of Currie’s regiments were the light tanks of the New Zealand Divisional Cavalry, standing by for their special task after gaining the objective.
The regiments formed up and waited, like horsemen with reins hanging loosely from the bit. The engines idled. The dust of movement settled. Tank commanders peered out of their turrets in the wan moonlight and beheld each other’s solid shapes on either hand. Ahead lay the seemingly empty night. The desert was a cold, blue-grey vastness, stretching out to the stars beyond Aqqaqir. One could see about 100 yards — dark enough, men reflected, for a reasonable chance that some of them would get through.
Inside each tank all was quiet. The crew, coated with dust, suddenly became sensible to the strain and fatigue that they had already experienced. The driver sat quietly between his steering sticks, awaiting the order in his earphones to start. The gunner, his weapon ready loaded, tested his traverse a last time and relaxed. The wireless sets ceased their chatter for a while; the last order had been given and the next signal would come from the guns.
At 6.15 the guns roared their signal and the barrage burst in front. The drivers, their hands now ready on the sticks, heard the command in their earphones: Driver, advance. They engaged gear, let in their clutches and moved forward into the gloom. Tank commanders, their turrets kept open, stood up with head and shoulders outside; but Farquhar, like Currie, preferred to sit out on top of his tank, behind the turret. The leading squadrons closed up to the barrage, driving not very far behind the curtain of smoke and dust. The curtain then began to move forward at a very slow infantry speed, jumping 100 yards every three minutes.
Not far from the van could be discerned the slim shape of their brigade commander, standing right up on the outside of his tank, in his faded mess-cap, looking sharply to left and right. In contrast to his usual manner, Currie was in a deadly mood tonight, set and determined, the tiger in his blood, not ready to tolerate the slightest faltering on the part of any man.
As the tanks went forward, out of the smother small parties of Germans sprang up from their trenches and then ran about distractedly. The Besas and Brownings of the tanks attacked them at once and many were dropped. Others put up their hands and, with a jerk of the thumb from the tank commanders, were ordered to the rear. Others staggered about in all directions, bewildered and crazed by the barrage, and were inescapably run down by the oncoming tanks. Their mouths were seen to move with unheard screams as the great steel treads rolled on to crush them. The dead and wounded who lay in the path were crushed likewise.
Thus, for a while, the British tanks carried all before them. In the north and centre the leading squadrons of 3rd Hussars and the Wiltshires, their machine-guns blazing, reach
ed the Rahman Track while it was still dark and passed well beyond. The remaining squadrons followed, but the night was nearly spent and, as the eastern sky began to lighten, the British tanks were silhouetted against it and the enemy’s heavy guns that were disposed in depth opened a devastating fire against their black shapes. In an instant the whole character of the action was transformed. The enemy gunners and infantry who had surrendered ran back to their weapons and manned them. Along and beyond the now discernible telegraph poles there took place what an officer of 3rd Hussars described as ‘a desperate and bloody encounter’. Both sides hammered each other ‘even at the cannon’s mouth’, but, whereas the enemy in the open could clearly see the shapes of the British tanks, the gunner inside the tank was as though blindfolded and could at first do no more than sweep the ground ahead with his Browning or his besa.
Of that tempestuous fight at close quarters it is scarcely possible to give a detailed and coherent account, but through the smoke and din we may discern its main outlines as the barrage passed on and as the telegraph poles began to silver in the early morning light. We see a Crusader tank of the Wiltshires driving right across a gun in its pit, straddling the barrel with its tracks. We see others poised on the lip of a gun-pit, wiping out the detachment with their machine-guns. We see nearly all the enemy guns that were closely engaged overcome, shattered or crushed by the tanks or left with no gunners to serve them. We see also the heavy and inevitable price that was exacted by the more distant guns, the big 88s and 7.62s beyond the track, as they opened fire in the biting dawn, now overlaid with a film of mist. One after another the British tanks were knocked out, and as the smoke and flames poured from their hulls the crews leaped out and rolled themselves in the sand to put out their burning clothes, or endured that harsher fate that overcomes those who could not escape.
Alamein (Major Battles of World War Two) Page 35