by Iain Gale
He looked again at the map. Of course they could have stood at Sidi Birani or Mersa Matruh. But the present line was superb, unassailable. And it exploited the fact that there were only three ways by which Rommel could attack them. In the north in the gap between Ruweisat Ridge and the railway line, in the centre where they were strongest and in the south.
He had to admit, no matter how it galled him and it surely did, that Auchinleck had been right. Of course, he would never have admitted that in public, or indeed in private to anyone. It was all-important that the men should believe that the new man in charge of them had his own plan and his own original methods. He had shown them as much from the moment he had taken over, had made them the fighting force they now most surely were. Fitness was the key. Physical exercise and a sense of purpose. Drill, drill and more drill and battle training. For now they were ready. And now he knew they could win.
He did not intend to defend. Rommel had had his chance, had attacked in June and had failed. Concentration, control and simplicity. The holy trinity of the battlefield had defeated him at Alam Halfa. They had lured him in and destroyed his strength bit by bit. Rommel had overplayed his hand and now it was their own time to attack. Well, of course that had apparently also been Auchinleck’s plan. But Churchill had perceived that Auchinleck’s heart was not in it, and the men knew it too. They could tell a soldier’s true feelings. Auchinleck had made too many plans for the evacuation that he felt must follow their defeat. That was no way to treat an army, to act as if they had been beaten already.
Emerging from his reverie, Montgomery turned back to Poston: ‘Do you think the men are really ready for it now, John? The big attack?’
‘More ready than ever, sir. They’ve had enough of fighting a defensive war.’ Poston paused and smiled, then went on: ‘Do you recall, sir, that joke circulating in Cairo back in August, when you’d just arrived. They said that General Auchinleck’s defence plan was to allow Rommel to break through right up to Cairo. But that when the Germans reached the Gezira Club in the capital all the staff at GHQ should instantly turn out with their sidearms and chase him back to Tripoli?’
Montgomery laughed, that strange high-pitched laugh that made his features appear even more birdlike. When he spoke it was with weak ‘R’s, turning them to ‘W’s which coming from anyone else might have appeared comic.
‘Very good, John. Yes, I do seem to remember that one. I think we can afford to be a little more positive now, don’t you?’
‘You’ve worked miracles, sir. Nothing less.’
‘We’ve a different army now, John. And we’re going to use it.’
He knew that he had achieved something important. He had got rid of all the belly-aching, and had told his staff quite bluntly on the first day that if any man wanted to continue to invent lame reasons for not doing his job then he could get out of it at once. They were staying here. And if they could not stay and win and remain alive then they would stay here dead.
He had also decided that the plan of battle should be known to everyone from general to private soldier. And so he had attempted to visit them all. Not just the Brits, but the Aussies, the New Zealanders, the Indians and the rest. He had even taken up the offer of an Australian slouch hat which he decorated with regimental badges as he toured the other Divisions.
He knew that his presence had had an effect on the men. Freddie de Guingand, his chief of staff, had told him that the sick rate dropped off dramatically. In fact men were desperate to return from sick leave so as not to miss the big push. He was confident that now every single one of his soldiers felt a part of the plan. All that he had to do was to make sure that it worked.
He looked again at the map and this time traced another line, to the west of his original. Rommel’s own position was certainly impressive, but it had a fundamental flaw. What had Bill Williams called it? An Italian corset strengthened by German whalebones. Yes, he liked that. A bit like Wellington at Waterloo, strengthening his Belgian and Dutch regiments by placing them beside a battalion of seasoned British veterans. But it was not quite the same here.
He wondered where they would be now without Williams. He was the finest intelligence officer that Montgomery had ever encountered: an Oxford Don with a quite brilliant brain, now a major in the King’s Dragoon Guards. And Williams had said something further to him. The phrase continued to go around in his mind. If they could separate the German whalebones from the soft Italian corset they would smash through the Italians. It was simple and quite brilliant, and Montgomery had readily adopted it as his own.
So they would attack. Alam Halfa had paved the way. Ultra had revealed the losses. Fifty-one German tanks destroyed and more damaged and over 3000 German and Italian casualties.
Churchill, impatient as ever and keen to please the Allies, had sent Montgomery a peremptory memo telling him that it must be in September. Of course he wasn’t having any such nonsense. They would never have been prepared and he told Churchill as much. He would not risk men’s lives in a premature offensive. General Alexander, the commander-in-chief, had presented Churchill’s case, but Montgomery was having none of it. He would launch the offensive in his own time; four days after the anniversary of Betty’s death. The twenty-third of October looked set to be the perfect night. Tonight.
‘John, is Freddie back from Alex?’
‘Yes, sir, he’s in his HQ I believe.’
‘His HQ?’
‘He’s adopted an old Italian pillbox, sir. Made it quite like home apparently. Still smells a little.’
‘Very good. Then I think we might pay him a visit, don’t you?’
Both men stepped out of the caravan and walked over to the former Italian strongpoint which now acted as the HQ for Freddie de Guingand. It was draped with camouflage netting and around it some armoured cars had been dug in, connected by shallow slit trenches. He was pleased that Freddie should be so close at hand.
They were complete opposites, it occurred to him, and not for the first time. Freddie de Guingand was fourteen years his junior. He had first met him at TA HQ in York in 1923. Montgomery had been teaching soldiering skills and young Freddie, devilishly handsome at twenty-two, a trainee second lieutenant, had impressed him with his perceptive intelligence. Despite their shared love of golf and bridge, how very different they were. Freddie forever living on his nerves, highly strung, a lover of wine and women; an inveterate gambler, an epicure. And he himself, Montgomery. Calm, self-controlled, abstemious. Those at least were the virtues which he liked to claim as his own, the heights to which he aspired.
He had decided to make Freddie his chief of staff almost instantly after having taken up the command of Eighth Army. Chief of staff: his invention. The army did not work on that principle. It believed that the army commander could use his staff officers himself. But Montgomery knew that a good CoS was essential to coordinating any campaign. That was surely what had cost the other generals in the desert their commands. That was why he was here. With Freddie at his side – Berthier to his Napoleon – and Alexander, the overall commander, behind him, he had the framework of an unassailable team. If only he could be sure that he could rely on all his corps commanders: Horrocks, Lumsden and Leese. Brian Horrocks he had known in the Great War and had personally appointed to XIII Corps. As for Leese, he had taught him at Staff College back in 1926 and had appointed him like Horrocks on his own merit. But it had been at Horrocks’ suggestion that he had given Lumsden X Corps and he already felt uneasy about it. Lumsden was certainly a game fellow. Lanky, dashing and with a liking for sartorial excess, he had been an amateur jockey before the war. But Montgomery disliked the arrogance that went with it. He might be a tremendous horseman and have a creditable handicap at golf, but he was not sure that the man had enough real ‘pep’ for such a plan as he had in mind. And therein, he suspected, might lie something of a problem.
Ducking beneath the low lintel of the pillbox, difficult even for his diminutive frame, Montgomery entered with Poston as ever
close behind. ‘Freddie? Ah, there you are.’
De Guingand stood and saluted then grasped a thick sheaf of papers from his desk. ‘Sir. I have the latest sitrep here. I was just coming to find you and hand it over.’
Montgomery stared at him and a brief smile flickered across his face. He shook his head in a fatherly manner. ‘Don’t be silly, Freddie. You ought to know by now. You know I never read any papers when I can get the person concerned to tell me himself. Put all that bumpf away. See if you can find General Leese and ask him to dine with me. Oh, and why don’t you join us? Shall we say seven o’ clock? Outside my caravan. Don’t be late.’
Their frugal meal began at precisely seven o’ clock. But the food was of no great consequence to Montgomery. They sat within a large tent of mosquito netting into which the flies had still managed to gain access and dined as was his habit on bully beef and lemonade. But he was more concerned with the words of his corps commander and chief of staff. Leese went on: ‘As I was saying, I toured the positions today, sir. The men are mad keen, especially the Highlanders. They know they’ve got the Australians and New Zealanders on their flanks. They say they feel safe, sir. That’s the extraordinary thing really. They’re so remarkably confident. Never seen the like. And they really understand the plan.’
Montgomery smiled and tugged at his earlobe. ‘Thank you, Oliver. That’s most reassuring.’ He turned to de Guingand: ‘How d’you find the food, Freddie? Not a patch on what you sampled in Alexandria, I’ll bet.’
De Guingand laughed: ‘No, sir. I’m afraid you’re right. But it’s really not bad don’t you think?’
‘Where were you, the English Speaking Union?’
‘Yes, sir, it’s always a safe bet.’
‘How was it, the town? As confident as Leese’s men?’
‘More so, sir. It’s a different place from two months ago. They really seem to believe that the threat has gone.’
‘It has, Freddie. All we’ve got to do now is prove them right, gentlemen, isn’t it?’
The others smiled and Montgomery stood. They followed suit as he placed his hat on his head.
‘Now I think I’ll turn in. You, Oliver?’
‘I rather thought I’d watch the barrage, sir.’
‘As you will then. But what you think you’ll see I don’t know and whatever good do you suppose you’ll do?’
‘None, sir, of course.’
‘Quite. None whatsoever. You know that there is absolutely nothing you can possibly do now which will influence the battle. Your job, Oliver, is to get to bed early so you’re fresh in the morning. You must be on top form. This battle is sure to be full of shocks and you will have to take them.’
Leese nodded: ‘Yes, sir. Perhaps I should reconsider.’
‘I think you would be wise to do so. And now I really must get to bed so, gentlemen, if you’ll excuse me.’
He turned and walked up the few steps to the caravan. At the top he looked back. ‘Remember, Freddie. Any developments, be sure to wake me instantly.’
Montgomery twisted the door handle and entered the small wood-clad room. It was surprisingly cool. He closed the door behind him, removed his hat and ran his hands through his thinning hair. He sat down and stared at the floor. It was good. Leese’s report had backed up all that Freddie had told him. Everything was in place, the men were spoiling for a fight. It was all running to plan. But, he wondered, what will the situation be when I have taken 10,000 or 20,000 casualties and have lost a hundred or two hundred tanks?
He dismissed the thought. There was no going back now. Everything was ready. They must attack and force the issue. ‘D’ Day and ‘H’ Hour were set. Within half an hour the terrible barrage would begin, heralding perhaps the most important battle of the war to date. And he was its master. If he won he would be lauded and rewarded. But should he fail both the politicians and the people would vilify him. This then was to be the test of all the years. This was to be his chance.
He opened his diary and took up the pen that lay permanently beside it. ‘The enemy knows that we intend to attack and has been strengthening his defences. On our side we have the initiative and a great superiority in men, tanks and artillery and other materiel. We also have an army in which the morale is right up on the top line, and every officer and man knows the issues at stake, knows what is wanted, and knows how the battle will be fought and won.’
Every man might know, he thought, but only he had the ultimate responsibility. He might delegate and inform but ultimately the decisions were his alone.
He continued to write in the diary and as he did so wondered how posterity would evaluate his words. There would be bloodshed. Much of it. There was no way of avoiding that. And in the end a battle won here would save many more lives and might help to finish the war.
He wrote: ‘The battle will be expensive as it will really become a killing match.’ And as soon as he saw the words, he thought of their true meaning. How many men would they lose? 10,000 men, 20,000? He wrote again: ‘I have estimated 10,000 casualties in this week’s fighting…’
All that they needed now, he thought, was good weather. That and perhaps just a modicum of good luck.
SIX
7.00 p.m. Near El Alamein railway siding Josh Miller
He opened the dusty, dog-eared book and read the passage again, savouring the beauty of the lines. Xenophon was such a beautiful writer, he thought, interspersing his information with passages of real poetry. In the two years that he had been studying the classical historians at Harvard, Josh Miller had learnt to distinguish between their styles until he was able to spot them blind. Xenophon’s account of the Battle of Cunaxa between Cyrus’s Greek mercenaries and his brother’s Persians had always held him spellbound and here, in this endless desert which he supposed might with a small stretch of the imagination resemble the battlefield in Babylon it seemed even more real. He read on: ‘They all wore helmets, except for Cyrus who went into battle bare-headed. It was now midday and the enemy had yet to come into sight. But in the early afternoon dust appeared like a white cloud and after some time a sort of blackness extending a long way over the plain…far from shouting they came on as silently as they could, calmly, in a slow, steady march.’
Imagine that, he thought. Coming on into battle in a slow, steady march. Having to keep your body from breaking into a run, or running away, as the arrows and the spears began to rain down upon you. It occurred to him that he was for the first time in his life sitting in what would soon he presumed become another battlefield, surrounded by so many thousands of modern-day warriors. The thought sent a shiver down his spine. He steadied himself, placing a strong, muscular hand palm-down on the rocky ground on which he was sitting.
They had parked the Dodge ambulance at a crossroads of the coastal road that ran into the west and the southern track that had been christened Springbok Road in honour of the South Africans who now held most of its length from their Australian comrades near the sea down here into the desert.
Miller gazed out towards the west, towards the enemy and thought about the men who lay out there in their trenches and foxholes. Men from Germany and men from Italy. Men who knew this desert better than he by far, who had been here for years when this war was in its infancy. He was glad to be here, to be part of this great adventure. He knew that if he had not come he would forever have regretted it. Not for missing the chance to fight. As the son of a Quaker and a pacifist in his own mind, he would not have joined the regular army and would have protested if conscripted. Killing was anathema to him. But helping his fellow man, whatever his nationality, now that was something else. The American Field Service, an independent ambulance unit with a distinguished record in the last war had seemed perfect.
Perhaps, he thought, that was why he had felt the need to learn so much about war. He still believed that there might be another way. While his fellow students ploughed on deep into Plato and Socrates, Miller preferred to stay with Thucydides, Xenophon and Caesar. Now later c
onflicts interested him. Napoleon in particular fascinated him and in Cairo, after they had finally got there from the depot at El Tahag, while all the talk among his friends had been of pharaohs and pyramids, Miller’s mind had been on the image of a small Corsican general standing at the base of the Sphinx less than two hundred years ago. A man bent on world domination whose wars had lasted twenty-five years. He wondered how long this present one would last, fuelled as it was by the megalomania of another European emperor.
He was such a long way from home. Halfway across the world from college, and from the family home in Long Island. And in real terms he might as well have been on the moon.
Aged nineteen and filled with curiosity to see more of the world, he had volunteered without hesitation for the ambulance service. Someone had given him a copy of Life magazine and pointed to photographs of AFS volunteers helping the British in North Africa. Ambulances alone in vast expanses of sand; men running with stretchers. He had thought how romantic it all seemed. After he had signed up he learnt how at Tobruk AFS men had died with the British and their allies. Others had been made prisoner. He looked now at the small group who for the last two months had inhabited the ambulance that had made the journey with them five thousand miles across the Atlantic. Thought how they looked for all the world like straight British soldiers with their funny schoolboy shorts and their socks and their boots. They wore the same kit, had the same webbing, even had the same haircuts. It was only when they spoke, as now that you could tell they were Americans.
