El Alamein Read online

  From any ‘Tommy’ or Digger’, there was always a likelihood of resistance to any initiative from those in authority. Montgomery’s attempts to ensure every man knew his role in the fight against Rommel provided one opportunity. Cyril Mount recorded:

  The first thing we got were a whole pile of pamphlets – leaflets – being dished out. We knew that Montgomery had taken over from Auchinleck. We were very sceptical because I think most people were fond of Auchinleck. We were very sceptical of this guy who’d come out and he was going to break eggs with a big stick, sort of thing. But he kept sending these pamphlets which were sort of semi-religious: ‘With God’s help. We will hit him for six out of North Africa’ and that type of stuff which people very ostentatiously used as bog paper. I don’t know whether that had any effect on morale or not but that was coupled with the new regime of physical training and leaping about in the sand and becoming fit.56

  As a divisional and corps commander, Montgomery had insisted on a rigorous training regime for all men for which many who served under him cordially detested him. Now he brought his zealous views on personal fitness to the desert. Captain Carol Mather, a liaison officer in Eighth Army General Headquarters, observed:

  He was a bit sceptical of the Desert Army because, as he said, the men looked very fit and bronzed and all the rest of it but none of them had walked a mile since they came into the desert. Everyone was riding in vehicles, so they really weren’t quite so fit as they looked. I think this was quite true.57

  The reaction from Eighth Army old hands was much as it had been in Britain. Cyril Mount recalled:

  There were orders for PT, which was absolutely ridiculous. We had to do PT in the sand, jumping up and down with our arms waving. It irritated a lot of people. We were incredibly unfit, I think, at the time. We weren’t exercising, we were lying around reading. But I think we started to feel OK in the end.58

  There were many who were enthusiastic about Montgomery despite appearances, for example Lieutenant-Colonel John Anderson Smith of 57th Anti-Tank Regiment:

  We had only been in the desert a few days when I was summoned with the other COs to meet the Prime Minister Winston Churchill. He shook hands with all of us but said practically nothing at that time. Amongst others there was a little man in a bush hat who looked slightly familiar and who I took to be a CO of one of the Australian units. Only as I was going did I realise it was Monty. He had taken over 8th Army only a day or two before. In the first week that he had command the whole atmosphere notably changed and took on a much more confident tone.59

  Others admired what they took to be indications of a strong personality. Trooper Ian King of 3rd Hussars ‘was struck by the intensity of his eyes as he out-stared each man when he passed.’60

  Crucially, Montgomery won over many senior commanders and their staff. Those he didn’t adapted strategies they’d used under Auchinleck to deal with the new man, as Carol Mather remembered:

  Lumsden was a very dapper, beautifully dressed, beautifully turned-out man – quite a difficult character and he didn’t care for Monty… Those who were under his command greatly admired him. But he wanted to go his own way and he resisted Monty’s orders as to what he was to do and what he wasn’t to do.61

  The majority of Eighth Army was indifferent to the change in commander. What affected them was any change to their personal comfort or their job as they understood it. It was fortunate for Alexander and Montgomery that other factors worked in their favour at this point.

  The new commanders took over at a time when the British, for the first time, held many of the advantages in the Desert War. Rommel’s forces were exhausted and diminished in size and equipment by the attempt to take Egypt. It would be some time before the Panzerarmee could resume the offensive. Meanwhile, reinforcements and replacements were arriving in great numbers. New divisions (8th Armoured, 44th and 51st) were training in the Delta and the desert. The growing strength of Eighth Army was obvious to even the casual observer, including Lance-Corporal Laurie Phillips of the 1st Rifle Brigade:

  Back here in the Alamein position, we found the desert much more crowded than we had been used to; with a comparatively narrow front, and Alex only sixty miles away, most of the desert seemed to be occupied by the vehicles of some sort, whereas in the wide open spaces of Libya one could go for miles without seeing another unit. (It is one of the features of the army that it seems to take 100 men at the rear to keep one soldier at the front.) Moving up from the rear, one passed through a mass of camps – supply depots, ordnance workshops, pioneer units, tank delivery squadrons, sub-area HQs and heaven knows what. Then at varying distances depending on how far forward the front was, there would be Army HQ, Corps HQ, Corps and Divisional supply columns and transport units, then Main Div HQ, the ‘B’ Echelons, and Main Brigade HQ. Then the country started to look relatively uninhabited as one reached the business end – the battalions, batteries and tank regiments, usually fairly widely scattered and with vehicles well dispersed as unobtrusively as possible.) At Alamein we could not disperse as much as we would have liked, but the RAF were keeping the Luftwaffe away, and when they did appear they had such a wide range of targets that one was unlucky to cop it, although we did, once or twice.62

  Despite the crowding of the army’s positions and the need for dispersal, ground units acknowledged that the Desert Air Force was doing a good job in providing protection against the Stukas and ground-attack Messerschmitt Bf-109s. The crews of the 40mm Bofors anti-aircraft guns worked hard with little credit despite shortcomings in their equipment. The combination of aircraft and anti-aircraft guns proved effective in diminishing the threat from the air, whilst the ineffectiveness of the attacks encouraged men to treat them as ‘normal’ thereby diminishing their effect on morale still further. Private Ernie Kerans of the 9th DLI, 151st Brigade, described the routine:

  His air force could be expected to put in hourly visits during the daylight, strafing and bombing. Casualties were remarkably light, the desert sand killed most of the blast. We got used to these low-flying strafing fighter-pilots. As soon as we could estimate we were no longer in the direct line of fire, out would come the rifles and Brens and we would have a ‘Bird Shoot’. It must have been worse for the pilots than for us with our nice deep ‘funk holes’. When the enemy planes came over the New Zealand artillery threw everything including their mess tins at them. What a display. Once I saw them knock out eight out of ten ME109s in less than three lively minutes. During the latter days of our stay in the Southern Box we saw less of the German and more of the RAF. The lads used to sit on the sides of their trenches and in comparative safety watch for hours one dogfight after another. The area was a graveyard of planes.63

  New equipment was also available in greater quantities than ever before. Eagerly anticipated were the Sherman tanks. Churchill was to some extent responsible for raising expectations when on 8 August he had visited various yeomanry regiments, as Lance-Corporal Mick Collins of the Wiltshire Yeomanry, 9th Armoured Brigade, recalled:

  It gave us all a feeling of being less cut off and it was heart-warming when we saw the old boy, sat up on the back of his open Staff car, give the well-known ‘V’ sign and puffing away merrily at his interminable cigar. In his speech to the Regiment he said that we had not been given a proper chance so far and that we were to be issued with the new Sherman Tanks that were even then on the high seas. You can imagine the feeling that went through the camp after those promises.64

  Troops were instructed to refer to the new tanks by the code name ‘Swallow’ – something, it was observed, Churchill singularly failed to do. The code name’s origins were fairly obvious but, in fact, the swallows did not arrive until summer was almost over and, for the moment, it was the promise they offered rather than anything of substance that boosted morale.

  Montgomery also actively encouraged one aid to unit cohesion that had been discouraged under Auchinleck, as Douglas Wimberley recounted:

  One of the delights to me of no
w being under Monty, was that he really understood the value of morale and esprit-de-corps. I had been very worried, when I had arrived in Egypt, to be told that no Divisional signs were allowed to be worn. I was quite determined that we in the Highland Division would wear our signs, and indeed had brought many thousand shoulder patch signs with me for this very purpose, to be donned as soon as it was beyond doubt to the enemy that the 51st were in the Middle East – and with our pipes, kilts and accents, this fact could obviously be kept secret for a very short time in a country like Egypt. I went at an early date to Monty to tell him I intended now to put up our Division sign again on all the troops, and on all the vehicles. He heartily agreed, and it was not long before the custom extended to every formation in the 8th Army.65

  Unfortunately, this caused friction with other units. According to Captain David Elliott of 107 Battery, 7th Medium Regiment:

  These extra divisions had come over to support us – one of which was the Highland Division. Arrived from England and didn’t have a tremendous reception from the old stagers much because they started plastering the area with ‘HD’ – which was their divisional sign. Before that there had been the jerboa – 7th Armoured Division’s sign – but nothing to the extent that the 51st Highland Division did. Everywhere was ‘HD’.66

  Other factors also worked to maintain and improve morale in Eighth Army now. The food and the sanitary arrangements remained largely unchanged. But with a more static front line, occasional comforts came more often. Cyril Mount remembered:

  Occasionally you got a mobile NAAFI, but things were severely rationed. You could have one tin of peaches OR one tin of pineapples. One bar of chocolate or whatever. And you also got decent cigarettes. We were still getting these Victory V cigarettes with weevils in from India. But you got a ration which was 50 cigarettes – they were Wills Navy Cut – but they were sealed. On the lid there was a little point which you slid along and then you pressed it, and you turned it, and it opened this foil on the lid. And the smell of real tobacco was so beautiful! You tried to make these 50 last, because the other things were so awful.67

  Other suppliers of variety to the monotonous diet were available occasionally but the goods they offered were popular and soon ran out. Private George F. Bartle of the 6th Cheshires, 44th Division, recalled:

  Visited a YMCA truck which stopped in an infantry unit’s lines but not in time to buy fruit and drinks. Food still mostly bully and biscuit but some dried fruit in the evening and ‘baaksheesh’ bread at mid-day.68

  Parcels arrived from home – both personal ones and those sent by well-wishers themselves living under rationing. Ernie Kerans was touched by the genuine, but impractical kindness of an old family friend:

  My mother died when I was young and she felt she was a bit like my adopted family because I used to go there a lot and she used to send us letters. Well, when I was abroad, you didn’t get any parcels or anything like that but she used to put five Woodbines in an envelope – you can imagine what they were like when they came about three weeks after. When you opened up, they all poured out. Well, I didn’t like to say anything because she was so good to send them. But she used to put them in an envelope and brown paper tape all the way round and a letter used to come like a little parcel with five woodbines in.69

  This, once more, was not a result of Montgomery’s appearance. Even in the midst of the July battles, efforts to maintain morale were regularly being made, as Louis Challoner recorded:

  A radio van came up to RHQ on July 11th and took recordings of messages from several of us to be broadcast in Blighty on the 17th. I was fortunate enough to be chosen and got a good message over which was well received. We all felt brighter and with increasing mail and prospects of a rest of a few days we were quite ourselves again. Some desert sores were awkward.70

  One other factor played an important part in ensuring that morale remained high during August and September. Neither Auchinleck or Montgomery can claim credit for it, it was not unique to Eighth Army nor was it unique to the desert campaign, but ‘environmental factors’ certainly assisted its development. The character of the Desert War was such that it encouraged small mutually supportive groups to thrive – gun and tank crews, infantry sections, groups of sappers. The manner in which such groups sustained morale is perhaps best explained by the comments of Lieutenant Charles Potts, 1st Buffs, 8th Armoured Brigade:

  We live in tiny communities attached to our various vehicles. I have my batman, my driver and my wireless signaller with me. They quarrel and argue constantly. I sleep on the ground on one side of the vehicle and they sleep on the other. Vehicles are nearly always at least 100 yards apart for fear of bombing. Hundreds of vehicles moving around the desert like unsociable ants, rarely getting close to one another. Surprising really how we keep cheerful – grumbling always, but still fairly cheerful.71

  These communities tackled practical problems together and gave many a sense of ‘family’ – including the arguments! They shared the bad and good things and fought, lived and died together. Most men in such groups hoped at the very least not to let their mates down. These bonds carried them through much adversity.

  * Chiefs of Staff Committee.

  * Rt Hon Sir Richard Casey, Minister of State responsible for Egypt.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  SUMMER MADNESS

  On 10 August, as generals Sir Alan Brooke and Sir Harold Alexander breakfasted on the terrace of their hotel in Cairo with Churchill, events of great significance for the war in North Africa and the Mediterranean were taking place at sea. A convoy of fourteen merchant ships, escorted by two battleships, three aircraft carriers, seven cruisers, and twenty-four destroyers with various ancillary vessels, and screened by submarines, had passed through the Straits of Gibraltar during the night and was now sailing in the Mediterranean. Operation Pedestal – the largest undertaking of the war to supply the beleaguered island of Malta – had entered its most critical phase.

  During the next six days, harassed by German and Italian air attacks, motor torpedo boats and submarines, and threatened by mines and a force of cruisers from the Regia Marina, the convoy battled through to its destination. Of the original fourteen merchantmen, only five managed to complete the voyage. Nevertheless, 47,000 tons of supplies were landed, ensuring that the island’s inhabitants could hold out until December 1942, albeit on very meagre rations. Crucially, one of the surviving vessels was the Ohio, which limped into Grand Harbour, Valletta, with two destroyers lashed alongside for support on the morning of 15 August. Although badly damaged, this tanker was carrying 12,000 tons of oil which ensured that aircraft and submarines from the island could once again undertake offensive operations against Axis shipping in the Central and Eastern Mediterranean. Meanwhile, in connected operations, the aircraft carrier Furious flew off a total of sixty-six Spitfires, which considerably enhanced the island’s air defences.

  The Royal Navy paid a heavy price for Pedestal. The aircraft carrier Eagle, the cruisers Manchester and Cairo and the destroyer Foresight were all lost. Many of the other vessels were damaged in various degrees. Thirteen Fleet Air Arm and five RAF aircraft were shot down. Even so, the Germans and Italians had failed to prevent a major strategic success for their opponents. Furthermore, two Italian cruisers, unable to intervene against the convoy, had been badly holed by a British submarine, P42. Two Italian submarines were also sunk, and a third damaged.1 More, and larger, Italian naval vessels had not been able to put to sea to attack the convoy because of the chronic shortages of fuel that inhibited all Italy’s endeavours in the war.

  Pedestal showed Malta’s continued importance to the Allied war effort as a base from which aircraft and submarines could attack supply routes of the Axis forces in North Africa. Between June and September, aircraft from the island and Egypt flew nearly a thousand sorties in search of enemy shipping, sinking fifteen ships over 500 tons, with consequent losses of 60,588 tons of vital supplies. Similarly, submarines accounted for fifteen ships and 56,64
2 tons. During July (when shortages of aviation spirit had limited air operations out of Malta chiefly to those aimed at defending the island, and when the 1st and 10th Submarine Flotillas had temporarily moved bases from there) only five ships were sunk by submarines or aircraft, with a loss of little more than 11,000 tons of supplies. In August, when fuel brought by the Ohio enabled 10th Submarine Flotilla to return to Malta and resume patrols in the Central Mediterranean, the figures were ten and 52,056 – and this despite the fact that Pedestal did not reach the island until the middle of the month.2 Similarly, only six per cent of all Axis supplies to North Africa were lost in July, but twenty-five per cent of general military cargo and, significantly, forty-one per cent of fuel in August, with twenty per cent of all cargo (including fuel) in September. Malta had, therefore, despite its travails, an important part to play in the Allied cause.

  Malta’s chief influence on the North African campaign, however, was its maintenance as a threat to Axis supplies. Having captured Tobruk, Rommel expected the port to serve as an advanced base for the landing of supplies for the Panzerarmee. In July, however, Comando Supremo chose to use Benghazi and Tripoli instead – chiefly because Tobruk lay within range of aircraft based in Malta and the Desert Air Force in Egypt. These alternative ports were 800 and 1,300 miles respectively behind the front. Transporting vital supplies these distances was logistically unsustainable. At the beginning of August, Rommel forced a temporary switch back to Tobruk, which resulted immediately in a dramatic rise in shipping losses. The Italians reverted once again to the safer ports.3 Whilst Malta remained unconquered, Comando Supremo’s concerns about shipping losses would continue to impact on the flow of albeit-inadequate supplies to the Panzerarmee, compounding the fundamental supply problems they were facing.