El Alamein

by Bryn Hammond

  Nevertheless, as the Official History rightly points out, the fact that a small part of Rommel’s command managed to break away probably seems more of an anti-climax in retrospect than it did at the time to the men of Eighth Army.106 The remarkable Charles Potts – ‘The Fighting Parson’ – writing on 12 November summarized the experience of Second Alamein for many of the survivors:

  The shelling was terrific for the first 13 days of the battle while we struggled through the rows of enemy minefields. All day and all night the noise was deafening, gun flashes and explosions all round us. It was horrible, and very frightening. Some men lost their nerve altogether and shivered and chattered with terror. It was a job to keep some of them going. I was lucky in that I managed to keep pretty cheerful all the time, except for such ghastly moments as when my best corporal, of whom I was extremely fond, had his head blown clean off; I had to cover him up so that the others shouldn’t see him. And now everywhere there is wreckage, vehicles, including huge tanks, blown to smithereens. Thank God the dead are mostly burned. It was not an easy victory – at least not at first. We had a bitter struggle and a taste of bloody hell. It must have been even worse for the Germans. Our artillery pounded them mercilessly and our bombers strafed them continuously (Damn these b____ flies – they are all over me).107

  * ‘War Without Hate’ – the title Rommel chose for his account of the North African Campaign.

  * Rifle cleaning cloth.

  CONCLUSION

  THE END OF THE BEGINNING

  This is not the story of victory against the odds. During the entire period from late June until early November 1942 the British, Commonwealth and Dominion forces in North Africa together with those of their allies retained a numerical superiority over the Germans and Italians in men and equipment with nothing less than temporary parity in statistical terms in a few specific areas for short periods of time. It is, rather, a story of victory won through an arrest in the decline and retreat of an army and the defeat in turn of its chief protagonist’s ambitious designs for glory. The subsequent introduction of fresh troops as reinforcements and the development of appropriate tactics for the use of new and improved technologies available in increasing numbers contributed to a final and irrevocable success.

  In June 1942, Eighth Army’s greatest enemy was the effect on morale of the two previous years of desert warfare. After an initial major success against an opponent whose troops were subsequently, and wrongly, universally dismissed as being of doubtful military value, the advent of a relatively small, new force, which was more tactically skilful and better equipped, led by a dynamic and tactically adept military commander had produced a ‘see-saw’ of fighting with advance and counter-attack back and forth along the many miles of desert roughly parallel with the North African coast. In this fighting, men at all levels of Eighth Army had been painfully aware of the limitations of their leaders and the increasingly obvious shortcomings of some of their equipment (particularly tanks). With fundamental flaws in the organization and tactics of its armoured formations, but without sufficient opportunity to address these weaknesses adequately, events on the battlefield had undermined their belief in the possibility of securing victory. These events also encouraged them to magnify the achievements of their enemy’s most celebrated commander, who was credited with almost superhuman qualities. ‘Rommel’ became the personification of the German-Italian Panzerarmee in North Africa, although it actually comprised tens of thousands of men.

  Morale, however, is a most amorphous element of warfare, indicated by the broad and various terminologies it frequently encompasses. These include ‘fighting spirit’, ‘the will to combat/win’, ‘combat motivation’, ‘belief’ (in war aims, leaders, the possibility of victory or success, etc). The term is often partnered by ‘combat performance’ or ‘combat effectiveness’. Most recently, in connection with the Desert War, it has been defined as ‘the willingness of an individual or group to prepare for and engage in an action required by an authority or institution’. This willingness ‘may be engendered by a positive desire for action and/or by the discipline to accept orders to take such action’.1 In the story of the Desert War, it is often the arrival of Bernard Montgomery to command Eighth Army that is taken as the point at which that force’s decline in morale was stopped and turned around; the point at which ‘belief in victory’ was re-engendered. This very connection demonstrates the multi-faceted nature of morale and the difficulty in understanding how each facet relates to the others.

  As this account of the battles around El Alamein clearly shows, Eighth Army had most emphatically not lost its ‘will to combat’ in late June and early July 1942 – the nadir of its military fortunes. Undoubtedly, however, there were those at that time (and, indeed, it is possible to suggest later) who had lost their ‘belief in victory’. Nevertheless, just as in connection with the British Expeditionary Force of 1917 there was a tendency to place too much store on the ‘grousings’ and complaints of the ordinary ‘Tommy’ and to suggest they were not really committed to the task in hand, so there has been a desire to over-stress the depth of any ‘morale crisis’ in Eighth Army in July 1942. This is in order to emphasize Lieutenant-General Bernard Montgomery’s undoubted understanding of the importance of morale and his success in re-instilling a belief in victory in the minds of the men he commanded. The over-emphasis on the chronological divide around Montgomery’s assumption of command would be less significant if it were not for the fact that this split is then used to differentiate between the relative combat effectiveness of the force when commanded by General Sir Claude Auchinleck and by Montgomery.

  In fact, as this account has shown, Eighth Army under Auchinleck became an increasingly effective fighting force in defence in the first half of July 1942. A victory was assuredly secured when Rommel was forced to admit failure in his drive on Alexandria and cease his attacks on 4 July. Crucially, however, this was not a decisive victory, obvious to all. It would take several more days before this decision became widely recognized and, even then, the part played by most men in securing that victory was not clear to them. Precisely why Rommel’s forces ceased offensive operations was not understood.

  Nevertheless, a success had been accomplished by men fighting and dying. Even the ‘local’ or ‘tactical’ defeats such as the loss of 18th Indian Brigade at Deir-el-Shein after being effectively besieged offered important contributions to the overall success. There was no better way for Eighth Army to demonstrate that it had retained its fighting spirit, or ‘combat motivation’ than in fighting. An expression popular amongst Luftwaffe pilots during the Desert War was ‘Der Geist machts!’ (‘It is the spirit which counts!’). This correctly emphasized the importance of combat will as the most important facet of morale. In regard to ‘Auchinleck’s’ Eighth Army in July 1942 the spirit was not only intact but could even be considered reasonably healthy. This point is reinforced by the fact that, during the second half of July, an almost, but not quite, unbroken sequence of failures in Eighth Army’s offensive operations did not produce an overall crisis in the army’s morale, which remained sufficiently good to weather these setbacks.

  Conversely, this should also not be taken as an attempt to diminish Montgomery’s contribution in terms of morale to Eighth Army’s ultimate success at Alamein. Montgomery had an extremely good understanding of the importance of morale. It is principally he who is responsible for the Alamein story which centres on his assumption of command as critical to the turn round in morale that, in turn, inspired victory. What Montgomery did do was to engender in the minds of the men he came to command a belief in the genuine possibility of victory. His confident portrayal of the manner in which ‘Rommel’ would be defeated by his army carried much weight with the majority of his command. There were undoubtedly ‘old sweats’ who saw his published proclamations to this effect for just what they undoubtedly were. Until they were proved by action, they were just words. Nevertheless, for every occasion when men at whatever level responded w
ith cynicism to his references to the Almighty and his ‘With God’s help’ exhortations, there were others – such as his appearances at the Amariya cinema prior to the start of Lightfoot – which won for him the infinite loyalty of almost all those he addressed. In the latter circumstance, it was the regimental commanders and senior officers who returned to their units keen, in turn, to instil this new-found belief in their own commands.

  On 30 June Auchinleck had issued a message to the army he commanded to encourage them in the forthcoming fighting. His urging to his men to show Rommel ‘where he gets off’ seemingly had little effect on its intended audience since no reference appears to it in censorship reports based on soldiers’ correspondence with home at the time. It may well be that this was, to a large extent, because it was unnecessary. Men knew and understood the predicament that the British cause was in after Gazala and the fall of Tobruk. The opportunity to stand and fight was welcomed. The men were already hoping to tell Rommel where to get off. By contrast, in October 1942, when men could witness for themselves the preparations being made for a large offensive against the Axis forces and the extent to which reinforcements and new equipment had arrived for use in this attack, they needed to believe that victory was really possible. Those who had fought Rommel before wanted to believe that this time an attack was being prepared with thoroughness and due regard to their opponents’ abilities. Those for whom this was their first time in battle needed to believe that their commander would not squander their lives in vain. Montgomery’s oratory duly delivered. Victory, however, was secured by the side with the bigger battalions, with weapons greatly improved in quality and quantity.

  In a letter to The Times newspaper published on 27 September 2001, the veteran of 2nd Rifle Brigade’s epic stand at ‘Snipe’, Major Tom Bird DSO, MC and Bar, most effectively summarized the views of many Eighth Army veterans who had served under both Auchinleck and Montgomery. He began by taking the historian Alastair Horne to task concerning Horne’s ‘miracle’ by which Montgomery ‘in a matter of weeks turned a defeated horde into a victorious army’. In Tom Bird’s view, ‘a lot of us who were there when he arrived didn’t regard it as the miracle it has since been made out to be’. By way of explanation, he wrote that ‘Although we were dismayed that we had withdrawn so far, we did not at all look upon ourselves as a demoralised* army in need of a miracle.’ Whilst Montgomery was initially regarded as ‘a funny little man in an Australian hat with a nasal voice who spoke in excruciating clichés which embarrassed rather than uplifted us’, the real encouragement came from new, greatly improved weapons and the fact that ‘these were for the first time in plentiful supply’. ‘We could at last penetrate enemy tanks at an acceptable range,’ Bird wrote. Finally, regarding Montgomery, he observed that ‘when Monty had won battles and proved himself to be a great commander we came to trust and admire him – but not in those early days’.2

  The circumstances in which the three battles around Alamein came to be fought all suited the acknowledged tactical strengths of the British forces. In the defence in prepared positions, tactical responses were to an extent obviously conditioned by the enemy’s decisions and actions. In the attack, considerable experience from the Great War was still applicable in the battlefield situation now encountered and many techniques of positional warfare were once again applied – particularly in ‘First’ and ‘Second Alamein’. Concentrated artillery fire – whether in the form of a bombardment, barrage or an updated variant such as the ‘stonk’ – had increased effect and validity in these circumstances. There are numerous examples of attacks by infantry preceded by artillery preparation being remarked on by observers with some reference to similar attacks witnessed in the Great War. So, for example, on 22 July Howard Kippenberger watched as 161st Indian Motor Brigade attacked along Ruweisat Ridge:

  From 21 Battalion Headquarters I had a grandstand view at less than a mile. They had strong artillery support: either a ragged barrage or a series of heavy concentrations, probably the latter. The advance went forward smoothly for about a mile. It reminded me of a battle of 1916, waves following one another in good alinement [sic].3

  The supporting techniques of flash-spotting, sound-ranging, gun calibration, survey and meteorological observation therefore resumed their Great War position of importance for the work of counter-battery fire, for which Eighth Army now received a boon in the shape of the remarkably accurate and reliable 5.5-inch guns which saw service from mid-July 1942.

  In addition, the introduction of ‘Priest’ 105mm self-propelled guns improved the capability of the army to provide barrage fire further forward in support of armoured formations, whilst the Shermans and Grants of these units were also able to fire HE and, thereby stand off from targets in the manner that the German PzKpfw IV ‘Special’ had previously been able to do. This new combination of tank main armament and other guns freed up the 25-pounder field guns for more effective work in developing barrage and area fire, whilst the introduction of the 6-pounder anti-tank gun further assisted this liberation of the artillery’s ‘workhorse’. In noting the contribution of the 6-pounder, however, it would be wrong to dismiss completely the 2-pounder anti-tank gun with which many infantry formations were still equipped throughout the Alamein battles. Given the right circumstances, these could still make an effective battlefield contribution – albeit chiefly in close defence and against tanks with poorer armoured protection.

  The Germans and Italians, by comparison, also received some new equipment or already possessed better equipment for particular roles than their opponents. In this regard, the 88mm dual-purpose anti-tank and anti-aircraft gun was especially important and Eighth Army never possessed a weapon to match it despite suggestions for using the 3.7-inch anti-aircraft guns defending Alexandria and Cairo and installations in the Delta. However, even these much-dreaded German weapons had their shortcomings and numbers were destroyed in the late October fighting in particular because of their high profile and attempts to use them as anti-aircraft weapons when occupying positions designed to support their deployment as anti-tank guns.

  Armoured vehicles such as the Italian Semovente da 75/18 had a low silhouette ideal for the desert and were welcomed. Also highly regarded were the self-propelled anti-tank guns with which some Panzerjäger units were equipped and, of course, the PzKpfw Mark IV ‘Special’ tanks. Italian heavy artillery remained of consistently good quality throughout the campaign – a valuable contribution too infrequently recognized. However, all these weapons were available in limited numbers, by contrast with the 6-pounder, for example, of which over 800 were in service with Eighth Army units by 23 October 1942. Nor can it be said for the British that quantity replaced quality since both the 6-pounder and Sherman tank were to see considerable service, with the latter remaining in use by front-line units until the end of the war.

  New weapons and equipment became available to Eighth Army throughout the entire period of the Alamein battles and not just with the arrival of the Alexander–Montgomery command team. Those available for Second Alamein were in greater numbers than at First Alamein or at Alam Halfa but, given the nature of the fighting in October 1942, it was the arrival of the Sherman/Priest combination that gave Montgomery’s Eighth Army a significant advantage over the army Auchinleck had led, as opposed to any other weapons.

  Rommel made much of the quantitative differences in strengths between his German forces and Eighth Army in explaining away his defeat at Alamein, but his doing so should not marginalize the important fact that he received both German and Italian reinforcements of good quality in mid-1942 in the shape of Fallschirmjäger-Brigade Ramcke and 164. leichte Afrika-Division as well as Divisione Paracadutisti ‘Folgore’. The equipment establishments of these formations were admittedly never at full strength. They were especially lacking in vehicles. Still, as combat proved, in the case of the parachute units they were at least a match for experienced desert divisions like 50th and 7th Armoured and their performance in Operation Beresford showed the
m in considerably better light than 44th Division.

  These reinforcements did good service for the Panzerarmee, as did the Italian armoured formations ‘Ariete’ and ‘Littorio’ and the motorized ‘Trieste’ divisions. Rommel’s acknowledgement that, with the former’s destruction in November 1942, ‘we lost our oldest Italian comrades, from whom we had probably always demanded more than they, with their poor armament, had been capable of performing’4 went some way towards recognizing the important contribution Italian units made to the Axis cause but still fell short of making clear the fact that the forces he commanded needed the Italian units. Focus on the performance of Italian formations of all types in disadvantageous circumstances, such as that of the ‘Sabratha’ on 9–10 July or the ‘Trento’ and ‘Bologna’ formations under the 23 October barrage, has created an unbalanced and misleading picture of the Italian contribution. Their high command and strategic leadership were confused and weak but the battlefield performance of what was, after all, the greater part of the Panzerarmee was admirable given these factors and the inferior quality of most of their tanks and personal weapons. Howard Kippenberger would rail against how an attack by two infantry and two armoured brigades had been ‘easily dealt with’ by a single small Panzer unit of twenty or thirty tanks and a ‘fifth-rate Italian infantry division’5 but, in doing so, unwittingly credited even the much-derided Italians with better fighting qualities than their Eighth Army opponents.