El Alamein

by Bryn Hammond

  On the ground, the problems of fuel supply to the North African theatre of operations continued, but it was the distances required to transport fuel deep into the southern flank of the Axis forces that were now taking their toll. The Panzerarmee command also mistakenly expected to get a large proportion of the fuel landed from the vessel Giorgio, which landed at Tobruk with 2,474 tons on 28 August, but all but 120 tons was intended for the Luftwaffe.54 Malta-based aircraft damaged the Abruzzi carrying 611 tons on 1 September and sank the Picci Fassio with 1,100 tons of fuel on the following day but these losses came too late to influence Rommel, who had already decided to withdraw – disappointing news for at least one young officer, Oberleutnant Heinz Werner Schmidt of Sonderverband 288:

  On the third day of the battle our own Sonderverband still lay inactive in the reserve area. Reports from forward became steadily more non-committal. We began to feel that the ‘final shot’ at Alexandria had misfired. I had been thinking regretfully that in the Nile Delta I should miss the three white tropical uniforms I had left in the hotel in Asmara when I flew out of Eritrea; now my regrets began to fade. I developed serious doubts as to whether I should ever, as a soldier, set eyes on the Pyramids.55

  Thus far, Montgomery’s control of the battle had been beyond reproach. Adopting an existing plan he had tailored it to his needs and conducted the battle on terms that used the strengths of Eighth Army as they appeared to its new commander in the short time he had been in Egypt. He had committed the necessary reserves in support of his corps and divisional commanders when circumstances required and had, otherwise, allowed Horrocks to fight the battle as he wanted. He had regularly visited his subordinate commanders with his Tactical Headquarters whilst leaving de Guingand as Chief of Staff to run matters at GHQ in Burg-el-Arab. However, Rommel’s withdrawal and its connection with fuel supply problems, about which Montgomery was well-informed, represented a significant missed opportunity. Montgomery was slow to reorganize his forces to seize the initiative and, though he was informed via Ultra on 2 September that the Panzerarmee was temporarily going on the defensive owing to lack of fuel, it was only that evening that he ordered specific action and then it was with the caveat that it was important not to rush into the attack.56 Overly cautious, Montgomery achieved nothing on 3 September and it was, once again, the Desert Air Force which did the most damage.

  It was only that night that Operation Beresford, involving 5th and 6th New Zealand Brigades flanking 132nd Infantry Brigade of 44th Division, was launched. It would be 132nd Infantry Brigade’s first desert attack. The purpose of the attack was ill-defined being seemingly a set of probes to test the Panzerarmee reaction.57 Very little, if anything, was prepared for what would happen in the event of the attack’s success or failure. One squadron each of Valentine tanks from 46th and 50th RTR were to support 132nd and 5th New Zealand Brigades respectively.

  In the event, ‘a great many things went wrong’. Brigadier Cecil Robertson of 132nd Brigade failed to follow the advice of the more experienced Brigadier Howard Kippenberger in his preparations and was subsequently severely wounded when his brigade was late reaching its starting positions – by which time the Germans and Italians were alert to what was happening. The ‘greenness’ of the 4th and 5th Royal West Kent battalions and 2nd Buffs showed in practically all they did. It was an especially chastening experience for Lieutenant Harry Crispin Smith of 4th Royal West Kent Regiment:

  We were really not terribly trained for desert warfare and we were thrown into this night attack without any artillery support – the idea being to have a silent attack – and yet silence was sacrificed because we took lorry loads of mines with us. There were these lorries grinding about, and I think the enemy had plenty of warning. Luckily we were the reserve company just behind the three attacking companies. On our particular front a three-ton lorry load of mines was hit and went up with a cataclysmic roar. We had some tanks on the flank that were blazing away but a lot of their fire was misdirected. With A Company we had to cover the withdrawal of the attacking companies after they’d made their attack and had been repulsed and were streaming back. We had the Bren guns out giving covering fire as best we could in the moonlight and then this German Spandau opened up and the bullets came whistling in amongst us. Several men were killed – but of course you never know at the time who’s been killed and who wasn’t. A burst hit the ground just in front of my face and then another just behind my feet. I thought, ‘Well, the third one’s not going to be so good’. The bullets just skimmed over me excepting two which succeeded in perforating my backside. I remember thinking it was quite like being caned by my housemaster when I was a boy at school.58

  Eventually the battalion pulled back at first light and took up a position about a mile back.

  We weren’t in very good shape by then. The rifle companies had very heavy casualties and of course we had to leave the dead and the wounded. So we withdrew and we licked our wounds back in the rear area of the Alamein line. The battalion had taken quite a lot of casualties and it took quite a while to get organized again. The same applied to 5th Battalion and 2nd Buffs. None of them had had a very successful night.59

  In spite of the success of 28th (Māori) Battalion and the gallantry of the Valentine crews of Major Alan Hughes’ B Squadron, 50th RTR, who knocked out a detachment of German 88mm guns from Flak-Regiment 135 and were last seen charging another – an example of ‘mixing it’ much admired by the New Zealand infantry – Brigadier Kippenberger was forced to order a retirement. The plan had unravelled and his counterpart, Brigadier George Clifton of 6th New Zealand Brigade, had been captured. Witnessing an incipient counter-attack by Italian M13/40s and Bersaglieri from 22nd Battalion’s headquarters, Kippenberger prepared to contact his brigade-major, Monty Fairbrother, to organize concentrated fire from his division’s supporting artillery. Kippenberger recorded how the battalion commander, Lieutenant-Colonel John Russell:

  pointed out, some 3,000 yards away, four or five tanks and perhaps a hundred infantry, with more coming into view every moment. ‘This looks like it, Sir,’ John said. I grunted agreement and said I would go back and get the guns on; there was time enough yet. More and more infantry and more tanks appeared. Several of the tanks were firing at long-range, and from them and the 88’s the Twenty-second was getting quite a preparation. The sight fascinated me and I still dallied. Another minute and John said: ‘You’d better go now, Sir, this is where I do my stuff.’ I rang Monty and told him to call for fire from every gun we had on to the map squares that I estimated the counter-attack would be passing through in ten minutes. Then I scrambled into my jeep and bolted off, not so much out of timidity as out of the virtuous realization that my right place was at my own headquarters.60

  Five minutes later, at his own headquarters, Kippenberger found Fairbrother giving final telephone instructions to the artillery:

  He finished, said ‘Make it snappy’, and we waited in silence. The gunners responded splendidly… In this case it was eleven minutes before the first shell howled overhead. Very good for those days. A few seconds later every gun was firing, while we gloated. It was a magnificent, overpowering concentration. After five minutes it stopped. I called for a repeat, searching back. Down it came like the hammer of Thor. We rang the Twenty-second and asked how things were. ‘That’s fixed ’em,’ said the Adjutant. ‘They’re fixed.’ So they were.61

  It was a landmark moment. ‘For the first time in our experience, the immediate counter-attack had been crushingly defeated,’ Kippenberger noted.62 The reforms of Brigadier Noel Martin, Eighth Army’s Brigadier-General Royal Artillery (BGRA), in centralization of artillery control were now bearing fruit (although, shortly afterwards, Martin lost his job as Montgomery culled commanders and replaced them with those he favoured).

  Later, with his battalion now in reserve, Harry Crispin Smith took the opportunity to hop a ride to Alexandria to visit a hospital to have his wound properly dressed:

  I went riding the truck down t
he desert, which didn’t do my backside any good as you can imagine. It was very bumpy. They kept me in for a night. That made the wound official. It went down in the hospital records as ‘Gunshot Wound: Buttocks’. Gunshot Wound Buttocks! GSW Buttocks. So my wife got the telegram in due course. I never realized this was going to happen and in actual fact I’d only been superficially wounded.63

  Beresford was a failure with hazy aims and uncertain armoured support. It demonstrated that there were many things that Montgomery’s arrival had not fixed, and suggested that the new Army Commander’s cautious approach to operations might itself be the source of future difficulties. After the battle there was a heated exchange between Major-Generals Gatehouse and Lumsden over why the former had not pursued and ‘annihilated’ Rommel during the withdrawal. According to Gatehouse:

  I informed him that previous to the battle I had had a long briefing by Monty, and that this had been one of the main points insisted upon – viz not to be drawn on a wild goose chase on to the muzzles of waiting 88mm guns – as Rommel had so often managed to make his enemy do in the past. [Lumsden] would not believe me and when I repeated I had had definite orders on this point, and that I heartily agreed with them, he quivered with rage and left my HQ in a hurry.64

  Montgomery’s cull of commanders, in which Brigadier Martin was a casualty, began soon after Alam Halfa. Lieutenant-General William Ramsden, an Auchinleck appointment, was allegedly dismissed with the memorable ‘You’re not exactly on the crest of a wave, Ramsden’. He was replaced by Sir Oliver Leese. Brigadier Sidney Kirkman came out from England to be the new BGRA of Eighth Army. Major-General Callum Renton went because of his falling-out with Horrocks during Alam Halfa, and was replaced by John Harding – already a ‘Monty favourite’. Montgomery could not sack the three Dominion commanders, nor could he dismiss ‘Gertie’ Tuker of 4th Indian Division. Neither did he promote them; Morshead and Freyberg were both angry at being passed over for corps commands. Ability sometimes lost out to the known quantity – but many of those appointed proved very successful.

  Whilst a great deal of work began on preparing an Allied offensive, there was a further brigade-sized operation undertaken by 44th Division at the end of September. The attack by 131st Brigade, which consisted of three territorial battalions (1/5th, 1/6th and 1/7th) of the Queen’s Royal (West Surrey) Regiment, was intended to retake the Deir-el-Munassib (Munassib Depression), which the Panzerarmee had held since Alam Halfa, and, to keep Axis attention focused on the southern part of the front. Preparations for the attack were better than for 132nd Brigade’s participation in Beresford. Nine field artillery regiments were to support the attack, which was scheduled for 29 September. Private Jack York of 1/5th Battalion recalled:

  The enemy had still retained their hold on part of this area after the September push, and the result was quite a large bulge in our front line. Our task was to straighten this out – and rumour had it that the enemy here consisted of Italian pioneer units and second-rate troops, in which case we were told, the attack would be a piece of cake.65

  This was clearly the terminology of reassurance, reeled out at the briefings. Private Fred Daniels, also of 1/5th Battalion, heard the same message:

  The Company Commander called a meeting of officers and NCOs during the afternoon and we learned that the job that night was likely to be no trouble at all – a ‘bit of cake’ – as the Army says. We were to take an Italian position and hold it for forty-eight hours until relieved – just a matter of straightening up the line. Tank and air support was promised, and an Artillery barrage would effect a preliminary ‘softening up.’66

  There were also hints that little opposition was expected owing to the surprise nature of the attack. Corporal Ernest Norris, from 1/5th, remembered his thoughts at the time:

  I hoped that he was right. Sitting there under the hot sun, letting the sand pass through my fingers and cursing the flies, the war had suddenly become a very close and personal thing. The speaker spoke in the customary ‘old school tie’ manner with reference to the honour of the Regiment. And, indeed, why not? It was solely a Queen’s affair and was to be named ‘Braganza’. I wonder if the ghost of King Charles II’s wife … was also there, nodding her approval… For most of us, this was the first time we had taken part in an attack and we heard the news with a mixture of fear and excitement. Of course we joked about it and said things like ‘We’ll show the bastards’ but in each man’s mind was the hope that he would show out well once the chips were down.67

  Dressed in Celanese shirts, shorts, woollen cardigan and battle order equipment, the men were taken in trucks to a gap in the protective minefields, arriving at midnight. Carriers, anti-tank guns and mortars arrived at the same time. One vehicle accidentally exploded a mine at the side of the track, making a terrible sound. The rifle companies now advanced, quietly moving into the Depression. Jack York painted an evocative picture of the scene:

  Each man was carrying extra rations and ammunition, and we were all wearing desert boots made of soft suede leather, with a thick crepe sole – very useful for night attacks as they made little sound. The floor of the Depression was quite flat, with soft sand in places. We had to walk about four or five miles. The night was chilly. On and on we plodded, with a muttered curse now and then, as someone tripped over camel thorn or stumbled into soft sand. The Depression seemed to assume quite a ghostly atmosphere, as the pale moonlight filtered through, and we could see the grotesque shapes and outlines of the hard high sides of the Wadi – about half a mile away on either side – where the moon was making weird patterns of light and shadow on twisted column and crested ridge. The whole of the desert outside seemed so unusually quiet it was almost sinister to our tensed nerves. Not a sound of a gun or burst of fire in any direction. Almost as if we had entered a prehistoric world, and were disturbing the virgin sand for the first time. Just a gentle chill wind in our faces and the faint unmistakeable smell of the desert. Hardly anybody spoke, but many of us gave an apprehensive glance now and then at the sides of the Depression, dreading to hear the burst of fire from some inquisitive enemy patrol.68

  Arriving near the area to be attacked, they then rested until 0510hrs when the advance began. At 0525hrs supporting artillery opened fire and 1/5th moved forward in a vast saucer rimmed with fire. Ernest Norris described the start:

  Our artillery opened fire with the shells screaming over our heads and the noise rising to a crescendo. That made me feel better and when we were ordered to fix bayonets and spread out in line, I felt proud that I was there. Sounds corny perhaps, but it’s true nevertheless.69

  The 1/6th Queens were on the right flank of the Depression, the 1/7th on the left. Norris continued:

  We started forward in line at a steady plod with our eyes fixed on the exploding shells, shoulders hunched, but determined. I well remember the sudden feeling of nakedness when our guns stopped firing and the grim silence as I stalked forward in fear. It was dark and eerie and felt bloody dangerous. Then they let us have it. They were using tracer and it came over like a broken curve of light seemingly slowly at first then suddenly rushing in followed by a sharp crack. Men were being hit and shouting as they went down and our line must have broken. I found myself crouching in a dip with Sergeant Wakefield and a great deal of noise. He said that we had better get on forward and he edged himself to the lip of the hollow. But I must admit that we were both a bit reluctant to move.70

  The attack had run into serious trouble, failing to reach the main objective amidst noise and confusion. Norris went on:

  It was still dark but that desert dawn was very close at hand. Clearly through all that noise I heard Captain Clark calling out ‘Carry on Mr Cole-Biroth, I’ve been hit’. From behind us came one of the signal section with his set strapped to his back and he asked us where he could find Captain Clark. We told him that he was wounded and Cole-Biroth was in command. He complained that he couldn’t get BHQ [Battalion Headquaters] only atmospherics, and that either we were too far f
orward or his set was fucking useless. He needed orders.71

  Then, with characteristic suddenness, daylight came:

  We found ourselves lying just outside the barbed-wire perimeter of the Italian position, in full view of the defenders and their compatriots in machine-gun nests in the rocks above us, who proved their vigilance by sending single shots every time we moved hand or feet. But the company commander now decided he ought to contact Battalion HQ. When we tried to get through we found that the set had been damaged and was useless. No message had been received and none sent from our company throughout the engagement.72

  The coming of morning helped orientation but also showed the desperate nature of the situation. It also brought heavier and better-directed fire:

  It was daylight now and I could see in front of me the rising ridge with lots of hard ground and masses of rocks and stones leading to the sky line. I could also see some of my company crouched behind cover where there was a fair-sized dip – or drop – just below the summit. We were being mortared and that, coupled with the machine-gun and rifle fire, was very frightening. I heard our Bren-gunner screaming: ‘Me arm’s gone! Me arm’s gone!’. This was George Church. His arm was slung round his back and was lying on top of his small pack. He had been machine-gunned in the shoulder, four or five bullets smashing it completely and slinging his arm to where it was now like a kicked-open door with broken hinges. He was not bleeding much so maybe all that sand that filled his wounds was blocking the flow. We could only try to dress them with a couple of field dressings and leave his arm where it was. He was taking it very well and making little of it. I think it was a great relief to him to know that the arm was still there. He had really thought that he had lost it. Not that it looked much good to him now. I remember George asking me to light a cigarette. We were copping it again and fear made me speak sharply. Within seconds I was apologizing and George was smoking but that didn’t excuse me to myself.73