The retirement that Rommel had ordered to the Fuka position began at three o’clock. He himself had but a short while arrived at his headquarters, ‘only just escaping by some frantic driving a carpet of bombs laid by 18 British aircraft’.[81] He was in an anxious frame of mind, but hopeful that, behind the barrier of guns and armour that he had erected on and westward of the Rahman Track, he would be able to extricate the whole of his forces in an orderly manner. The British armour must be held at bay while his units pulled back in their ordered sequence, the guns and tanks last, maintaining always a strong rearguard.
Half an hour later came a signal from Germany that totally shattered his already uneasy equilibrium. It was a signal from Hitler himself, ordering him ‘not to yield a step.’ It said:
In the situation in which you find yourself there can be no other thought than to stand fast and to throw every gun and every man into the battle. The utmost efforts are being made to help you. Your enemy, in spite of his superiority, must also be at the end of his strength. It would not be the first time in history that a strong will has triumphed over the bigger battalions. As to your troops, you can show them no other road than that to victory or death.
A similar signal arrived soon afterwards from Mussolini.
Rommel was stunned and dismayed and for a time did not know what to do. He knew that to obey the order meant the suicide of the army and the end of the Axis cause in Africa. It was, nevertheless, an order and he had not yet learned how necessary it was to circumvent Hitler’s orders to military commanders in order to avoid destruction. Before taking action, however, he telephoned Von Thoma and read out Hitler’s order to him. Von Thoma replied at once that the German Africa Corps could not hope to escape destruction if it attempted to hold on to its present positions. He suggested a limited withdrawal to Gazel.
Rommel decided then to attempt a compromise. He ordered 90th Light Division and 10th and 21st Italian Corps to stand fast in their present positions, the DAK (what was left of it) to withdraw after dark six miles to the west, Ariete Division to take post on their right and 20th Italian Corps (the armoured corps) to conform. This might be said to be a compliance in principle with Hitler’s order, but with a readjustment of his forces in order to avoid immediate destruction. The planned general withdrawal to Fuka was off.
At the same time Rommel sent a reply to Hitler in which he emphasized the serious situation to which the Axis forces had been reduced and reporting how heavy were the losses. He ended his signal: Every last effort will continue to be made to hold the battlefield.
Montgomery, of course, had no wish to see the enemy make a general withdrawal. He wanted them to continue fighting it out where they stood. Their destruction would then be certain. By staying so long they had enabled him to give them so severe a battering that he hoped very soon to deliver the coup de grâce.
By that evening, however, the accumulating straws of evidence presented a picture that Montgomery correctly read as meaning that the enemy was on the brink of a general, not a local retirement. He also correctly appreciated that Rommel’s intention was to attempt a stand on the coastal escarpment above Fuka. Montgomery wanted to catch him and cut him off before he got there. He chose this moment therefore to give shape and substance to what was in his mind. In a moment of inspiration he gave surprise orders for a swift follow-up that evening of the successful minor attacks on Skinflint and Snipe made the evening before.
Through the extension of the funnel that would thus be made, south of Tel el Aqqaqir, he would launch the New Zealanders on the great sweep into open country for which they had been so eagerly waiting and 7th Armoured Division, under the no less eager leadership of John Harding, would be sent by the same path. Both were then to wheel to the right up to the coast to cut the enemy’s line of retreat. He gave the orders for this further southward exploitation, the details of which we shall notice in a moment, at noon and he entrusted the sword again to 51st Division.
It was a most skilfully conceived operation, typical of Monty’s gift for exploiting success in an unexpected quarter with the aid of swiftly extemporized reserves. It was the stroke that was to blast open the last door of the enemy’s strongroom.
Chapter Twenty-One: The Day Of Victory
THE LAST INFANTRY ATTACKS
The three attacks that Montgomery entrusted to Highland Division on the night of 3 November accordingly took place when Rommel’s infantry and guns in the north had been ordered to hold their ground. For these operations, 5th Indian Infantry Brigade had been ordered up from its position to the south of Miteiriya Ridge at very short notice and placed under Wimberley’s command. It was led by Brigadier D. Russell, an able commander of buoyant and cheerful disposition who was known by all as ‘Pasha’ Russell. The three operations are of particular interest, for they provided the avenue for the ultimate surprise which wrecked Rommel’s plans and made a nonsense of Hitler’s order.
As finally enunciated, the tasks were these:
5/7th Gordon Highlanders (153rd Brigade) and 8th RTR to capture a portion[82] of the Rahman Track two miles south of Tel el Aqqaqir, starting at 5.45 p.m. on the 3rd.
5th Indian Brigade and 50th RTR to capture a stretch[83] of the track four miles south of the Tel, starting at 1.30 a.m. on 4 November.
7th Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders (154th Brigade) to capture the Tel itself, starting at 6.15 a.m. on the 4th.
To these ‘gate-opening’ operations Montgomery attached great importance. They were not easy to launch but were launched with great speed and skill by the commands and staff of the formations concerned. ‘Very great credit’, Montgomery wrote afterwards, was due to them for the swift and effective execution of the unexpected plan, which again included the co-ordination of a large volume of artillery by Steve Weir. There was, however, one fly in the ointment.
The plans for the first of these attacks had been completed in detail and the gun programmes for the supporting artillery made out when Leese telephoned Wimberley. The Gordons’ objective, he said was no longer occupied by the enemy. Eighth Armoured Brigade were already on this section of the Rahman Track, so it was merely a question of moving the Gordons forward to occupy it. The barrage and the air support must accordingly be cancelled.
Wimberley replied that this did not at all square with his information. He was pretty sure that the position was occupied by the enemy and not by our tanks and he did not at all like sending his infantry and tanks in without a barrage. He asked for whatever British armour was there or thereabouts to be cleared away, so that he could put down his barrage as planned.
Leese, however, believed the information to be authentic; 1st Armoured Division had been very positive. The most that he would concede was a smoke barrage to guide the Gordons on to the right place.
The Gordons’ operation, under the command of Hugh Saunders, was accordingly launched in its modified form, starting from a little left of the Seaforths’ new position at Skinflint. Three platoons were mounted on the Valentines of 8th RTR. The tank commander made strong objections to this dangerous practice, but was overruled (not by Saunders). The gunners fired their smoke barrage and the infantry and tanks advanced behind it.
The operation was a tragic failure. The assault was brought abruptly to a halt by a strong and unexpected enemy position on the way to the objective. Saunders tried to call for extempore artillery support, but the wireless links missed. In accordance with orders he had had from Brigadier Murray, he halted, dug in and stood his ground. The two units had ninety-four casualties, including sixteen officers. Of the thirty-two Valentines that went into action, nine were destroyed and eleven other damaged.
It was a sad evening for Wimberley. Watching the tanks come back heavily laden with the bodies of his dead Jocks, he swore: ‘Never again.’
Shortly after this he received orders from Leese, by telephone, of the further attacks to be made that same night by 5th Indian Brigade and by the Argylls. Strained and irritable, he said to Leese:
&nb
sp; ‘Must we really go on attacking like this, sir?’
Leese replied:
‘Surely you of all people are not going to lose heart at this stage?’
Wimberley wrote later in his journal: ‘So many attacks, so many switches of troops. As soon as one show is over, we begin preparing for the next.’
The operation of Pasha Russell’s Indian brigade two miles farther south also caused no little anxiety. Much was asked of them. They had first to come right up from the Miteiriya Ridge and were due to attack at 1.30 a.m. on a part of the front of which they had no knowledge, travelling to it by circuitous and strange ways. The dark, moonless night, the press of traffic now trying to push forward and the confusion of tracks and minefields further bedevilled the passage of their lorries. They were spotted by enemy aircraft and dive-bombed. The 3/10th Baluch got bogged in the soft sand. They arrived late at their forming-up position just north of Kidney Ridge, with only two incomplete battalions — 1/4th Essex (temporarily led by Major D. J. M. Smith) and 4/6th Rajputana Rifles. There they were briefed by George Murray, commanding 152nd Brigade, who knew the tactical situation and something of the terrain.
To the confusion of the staffs and gunners of all the divisions supporting him, Russell was obliged to ask for the barrage to be postponed for an hour, while his battalions sorted themselves out and were married to their armour and while he hurriedly re-apportioned their tasks. Yet, in the face of all this, the tired but well-disciplined troops were got to their start-line balanced and in good order. A formidable task lay ahead of them — a night advance into the unknown to a depth of one and a half miles.
When at last, accompanied by 50th RTR, and guided by a powerful barrage, they did attack, the Indian brigade walked straight through, overcoming opposition in what was rightly described as ‘a most soldierly performance’. They took 351 prisoners and many anti-tank guns, at a cost of 80 casualties. The brigade reached their objective and consolidated in a dramatic hour, of which the historian of 4th Indian Division has so vividly captured the significance:
The guns lifted and were done; there was quiet but for the crackle of small-arms fire. Out in front little figures scuttled madly, seeking holes. A carrier platoon went out to bring them in. Then another noise, thunder out of the east, and more thunder. The roar mounted. The tanks came plunging through, lunging to the west through the gap… and wheeling north for the kill. The sun rose on the last of Alamein.
For, all this time, John Harding had been fuming at the delay in getting forward his 7th Armoured Division. The tanks that the Indians saw were those of 22nd Armoured Brigade under Pip Roberts, beginning on that swift ‘wheel to the north’ that was later that day to have its dramatic climax. At the same time, 4/6th South African Armoured Cars slipped out and, like the Royal Dragoons, who were already doing mischief behind the enemy, began to range the open desert.
The last of the three Highland Division attacks, entrusted by Wimberley to Harry Houldsworth, commanding 154th Brigade, went smoothly and swiftly. The 7th Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, under Lorne Campbell, supported by seven regiments of artillery firing planned concentrations of mixed high explosive and smoke, advanced on Tel el Aqqaqir and walked through with thirty-one casualties in the face of a little light shelling. The enemy was beginning to melt away. The Argylls captured, intact, the whole apparatus of a divisional headquarters, with signals office and orderly room, documents of the highest importance, large supplies of champagne and chianti and a stock of Iron Crosses with which the Jocks invested themselves. The same morning Saunders advanced with 5/7th Gordons and occupied the position he had been unable to take the evening before. The long, dreary little ridge so devoid of features that had looked down upon a great armoured battle and below which now lay the shattered and blackened remains of some 200 tanks and their sad human remains was at last in our hands.
‘That’, in the words of Montgomery, ‘ended the battle.’ The break-out had been accomplished and the hunt was on. He had issued his orders for it the day before. The way was now open for the lorry-borne New Zealanders, complete with their own eager infantry, to launch out on their assigned sweep right-handed to Fuka, accompanied by 9th and 4th Armoured Brigades under command. First, 7th and 10th Armoured Division began to shape their courses to wheel northwards in similar fashion. Down in the south, the divisions of 13th Corps made ready to follow the demoralized Italians who were beginning to melt away, with little food, little hope and no transport; Rommel had abandoned them.
There was still some fighting to be done and there was still plenty of shelling to face. But it was a day in which a tremendous exhilaration filled the whole of Eighth Army. The heavy fatigue slipped off men’s shoulders like an abandoned cloak. Wimberley recorded in his journal: ‘All very exhilarated in spite of fatigue. Bodies of dispirited prisoners crocodiling in and our armour pouring forward.’ On every hand lay the wreckage and the flotsam, human and material, of a broken army. This was victory at last. This was conclusive, undeniable, irreversible victory.
Peter Moore, the fighting sapper, watching the armoured cars swing out that day, called to memory how often before he had seen them drive out in the belief that all the desert was theirs and how each time the terrible clang of shot upon armour had brought disillusionment. Now, as he watched them, he knew that that would never happen again.
It was D plus 12.
DESTRUCTION OF THE ITALIANS
On the morning of that day five divisions of British troops — the three armoured divisions, the New Zealanders and the Highlanders — eager and exhilarated, began to move after the enemy, in the hope of encirclement and quick surrender. About 60,000 men tried to squeeze through the narrow apertures of the minefield lanes and to seek the ‘good going’ in the desert beyond.
In spite of all the careful staff arrangements, there was appalling congestion. Thus Freyberg, waiting for no man, was ten miles ahead when his 6th Brigade and 9th Armoured were still in the Rahman Track area. Fourth Light Brigade, which should also have got up with him, was still right back at the Springbok Track at dawn and took three hours to cover the twelve miles to the Rahman Track. Wimberley, having visited Tel el Aqqaqir and found the Argylls in great form, forged ahead in his jeep, ahead even of his own leading troops, the divisional Reconnaissance Regiment. Harding’s lorried infantry, the Queen’s Brigade, were far in the rear, trying to worm their way through the crowded traffic in the old minefields.
Harding did not wait for them. As soon as the Indians had seized their stretch of the Rahman Track, he hurried forward with 22nd Brigade, meeting little opposition until he arrived at a ridge some ten miles south-west of Tel el Aqqaqir. This was the southern flank of the new defensive position which, as we have seen, Rommel had ordered his armoured divisions to hold. Here he had posted General De Stephanis’ Italian 20th Motorized Corps, a reasonably powerful force of all arms, of which the preponderant element was the Ariete Armoured Division, so far unscarred by battle. The usual barrier of anti-tank guns bristled along its front, well supported by field artillery and infantry.
Seventh Armoured Division at once attacked. There was a long fight. The Italian armour, in their inferior tanks, together with the artillery, fought it out stubbornly and well, but it was not long before the front as a whole began to crack. The German 3rd Reconnaissance Unit under Major Von Luck tried to come to their aid, but without avail. ‘Tank after tank’, Rommel himself recorded, ‘split asunder or burnt out, while all the time a tremendous British barrage lay over the Italian infantry and artillery.’[84] The Italians were overwhelmed, the Ariete Division shattered and 20th Corps ceased to exist, its broken remnants streaming westward in disarray. The enemy’s southern flank was broken and lay wide open.
SURRENDER OF THE PANZER COMMANDER
Meanwhile 1st Armoured Division, to the north of 7th, was pushing back the sterner stuff of the German Africa Corps also and was likewise about to break through. Lumsden had made his way right forward to them during the action and h
ad seen Briggs, who was up in front with 10th Hussars. It is this regiment who act for us the final scene and bring the drama to a symbolic end.
Soon after this battle began, Von Thoma, who was a distant witness of it, became very anxious. Fragments of disquieting information reached him, gradually building up a threatening picture, and enormous dust clouds could be seen in the distance to the south, giving evidence of large movements.
At about noon he spoke to Rommel and told him that British tanks, armoured cars and a mass of transport were moving round the southern flank. Rommel refused to believe him. It was ‘nonsense’, he said. The movements could only be those of armoured cars and they were nothing to worry about. The main British forces were committed frontally and they had nothing available to send round the flank. Rommel’s map (seen by Archer-Shee afterwards) still showed 7th Armoured Division down in the south.
Von Thoma, however, was too experienced a soldier to misinterpret the reports and the visible signs. He sent up a reconnaissance aircraft to investigate further, and his fears were amply confirmed. He telephoned Rommel again and Rommel still refused to believe him.
‘It is quite impossible,’ he said, ‘that the British could have gone through the Trieste Division (the motorised infantry of 20th Corps) without my being told.’
Alamein (Major Battles of World War Two) Page 39