Alamein

by Iain Gale

  They laid him alongside Turner on the rocky floor of the HQ dugout. He was conscious now that the blood was beginning to coagulate, yet he still felt covered in the stuff. Next to him were the battalion signallers and their radios. The adjutant, Tim Marten was there too. But his closest companions were the flies. They seemed determined to swarm across his face and investigate every inch of the blood. Bird tried to brush them away but more landed in their place.

  That damned American song was still going round and round in his brain. ‘I know why and so do you. Why do robins sing in December?’ Stupid lyrics he thought. Better off by far with something safe like ‘Room five hundred and four…the perfect honeymoon alone with you’. He thought of Moira, of home and began to cry. Not loudly, just a quiet sobbing, and then he realized what he was doing and made himself stop. Beside him Turner had begun to make strange noises and Bird tried to make them out. It was the delirium that often comes with head wounds and fever. ‘You there. Aim and fire. Sink that destroyer. They will not pass. They shall not capture this harbour. Fire, fire. Sink all their ships.’

  It was 4 p.m. Bird turned to Turner: ‘Colonel. There are no ships. They’re enemy tanks we have to destroy and we’re doing very well, sir.’

  The colonel turned to him and stared, smiling and unseeing. Bird gave up. And as he did a salvo of shells crashed into their position sending up showers of sand and rock. Bird sat up and tried to work out where they were coming from and horribly it appeared to be from behind their own lines. He called across to Sergeant Swann: ‘Sar’nt. What’s happening? Are those our guns?’

  ‘Don’t know, sir. I think so. Adjutant’s sent someone to find out.’

  More rounds came in and this time there were casualties. Swann cursed as two of his men were killed outright by an airburst and over on the other side of the depression another rifleman died. Corporal Cope ran up to Bird: ‘Thought you’d like to know, sir, not that it’s good news, but the adjutant says those are our guns, 105mils from Second Armoured.’

  Christ, thought Bird. Not again. It was typical of this desert war that no one was ever quite certain of what they were firing on, friend or foe. It was hard enough to know where you were yourself. At last the 105s were silent and Bird prayed that dusk would come soon for that seemed to be the only way they would make it through until relief finally arrived.

  By night the enemy tanks would be blind and that was his only hope. But it was shattered a few minutes later. Briggs knelt down beside Bird and Turner who had started to rave again. ‘Sir, bad news. We’ve sighted more Jerry tanks. Around seventy of them in two groups. Adjutant thinks they’re heading towards the armour in our rear, One Brigade. It’s just possible they don’t know about us.’

  ‘How many guns have we left?’

  ‘Of our own we’ve got Sar’nt Swann’s and Corporal Cope’s, and Sar’nt Binks’ and Sar’nt Cullen’s. But all the crews are pretty badly shot up. We have got Mister Baer’s RA battery too though. There’s still four of them left.’

  That was good news, thought Bird. Those four six-pounders could inflict a lot of damage on the German armour and Baer, a lively jazz musician from Oxford, was as good a man as any to command them. They heard gunfire: ‘That’ll be Mister Baer now, sir.’ There was a series of explosions, and then cheering. ‘Sounds like he’s bagged one.’

  There was more firing from their left and Bird tried to get up but only succeeded in propping himself on his elbow. Nevertheless by moving position slightly and with some help from Briggs he was able to see one of Baer’s six-pounders in action, manned by Sergeant Binks and his crew of three. As he watched it fired, hitting one of the attacking German Mk IIIs which began to burn. Just then however a high explosive shell flew in and scored a hit on Binks’ gun. The sergeant was thrown back against the sand and a huge piece of shell casing took the head off one of his gunners while more of the flying shrapnel reduced the other two to objects barely recognizable as human beings. Binks pushed himself to his feet and stared at the ghastly scene then immediately sat back down in a state of shock. Bird too was affected. How quickly in war, he thought, such small victories turn to tragedy. He flopped down on to his haversack and fell asleep to the sound of gunfire.

  It was dusk when he awoke and all seemed quiet. Turner was murmuring in his sleep. Briggs was sitting beside him. ‘Welcome back, sir. You’ve had a good rest. Slept right through it.’

  ‘Through what, Briggs?’

  ‘All sorts of fun and games we’ve had, sir. Let’s see. Jim Hine now, he got one of them and then Chard hit another three, or was it four? Then Sar’nt Swann, well he turned an abandoned gun on another one and got it. Captain Wintour couldn’t control hisself then. Then Jerry came over and got his wounded. Enough of them there was. I was going to wake you, sir, if you hadn’t woken up first. We’ve been given our marching orders.’

  ‘We’re abandoning the position? What time is it?’

  ‘Twenty-two-thirty hours, sir. Seems we’ve done our bit. First Armoured’s coming through here. Major Marten reckons we saved their bacon, sir. I reckon it’s a bleedin’ miracle. We knocked out that many tanks.’

  ‘How many? Do we know?’

  ‘Not for certain, sir. But Major Marten reckons it must be over thirty tanks and five or six SP guns plus a couple of eighty-eights. That’s not counting the ones we damaged.’

  Bird listened, amazed. They had held off two entire armoured divisions. Then he asked, ‘What about us, Briggs. What are our casualties?’

  ‘Seventy killed and wounded, ten of them officers.’

  Bird remembered now, thought about his poor anti-tank company. All those men lost. In his mind he began to draft the letters: ‘died gallantly defending a hopeless position against enormous odds.’ But how would he end it, he wondered? ‘By his action this day he helped to hold off the German tanks and allowed our armour to advance to victory.’ He prayed that he would be proved right.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  Midnight HQ Eighth Army De Guingand

  De Guingand looked at his watch. It was midnight. He sat at the small table in his converted dugout command post and began to write up the following morning’s report. Second Armoured Division had advanced past the Rifle Corps at Woodcock position but had met with strong and determined resistance from Fifteenth Panzer Division.

  Twenty-Fourth Armoured Brigade had put in an attack to the south of the Snipe position and met resistance from Eighth Panzers. Neither of them had achieved success.

  He wrote, in a steady, fluid hand: ‘During the afternoon of 26 October Twenty-First Panzer Division counter-attacked but were beaten off by our armour. Ninetieth Light Panzers and the Italian Bersaglieri attacked Point Twenty-nine in the late afternoon but were beaten back by Ninth Australian Division.’

  There was little real news but at least the report ended on a high note. ‘In the last few hours the positions at Snipe and Woodcock held throughout the day by KRRC and Rifle Brigade have been consolidated by Tenth Armoured Division. The front is secure.’

  Wednesday 28 October

  TWENTY-NINE

  11.00 a.m. Near the Ninetieth Light Division Rommel

  He had committed the panzers, had played his last card. But in truth it had not been his battle. If only he had come back sooner, before the British had lodged themselves on Miteiriya Ridge. They should never have been allowed to get that far. And now all he could do was wait. He could not pretend to himself that Montgomery’s move had not come as a surprise and now he found himself no longer in control, but fighting a battle in which he was responding. This was not the way to fight, not his way. He paced the floor of his command vehicle, his Mammut which he had used since coming out here. Montgomery, he believed, had a similar command vehicle. He wondered if they were at all similar in other ways. Now he was running around in the shadow of the Allied commander, his men chasing to catch up with the British as they advanced.

  He had moved the Twenty-First Panzer Division up from the southern sector, away
from the Italians. They would be isolated, but there was nothing to be done. The threat to the north was too great. With them he had brought half of his artillery then committed them and Ninetieth Light Division in a classic coordinated counter-attack at the salient. It was to be supported by a wave of Stuka dive-bombers. But a few hours ago the news had begun to come in and now Rommel stood surveying the map in his headquarters, stroking his chin and wearing a scowl of concentration. He could not help but wonder where the masterstroke might lie. The battle had been raging for four days, though he had only been in command for barely two of those. There must be, he thought, something I’m missing, some manoeuvre that I haven’t yet seen. The salient in the north near the kidney-shaped feature was clearly the focus of attention. But he feared that it was all too late.

  His planned air assault on the Australians had been smashed by the RAF. Four squadrons of Hurricanes and two of the new American-built Kittyhawks had seen off the Stukas. He thought back to Poland and France and realized, not for the first time, that the new technology on the Allied side was fast overtaking the supposedly invincible Nazi war machine.

  He took his pencil and circled a spot on Kidney Ridge where reports had come in of a defence by anti-tank guns which had brought the Twenty-First Panzers to a temporary halt and cost him dearly in tanks and manpower. And it was not only at the front line of the battle that he was suffering.

  Now, after another night of bombing with the RAF taking out his tanks as they were forming up, before they had a chance to manoeuvre, he began for the first time to sense the real possibility of a defeat. And he feared it.

  He turned to his chief of staff: ‘Bayerlein, what news of the 164th?’

  ‘It seems that they’ve got through, sir. The 433rd and 382nd are back in communication, with us and with each other.’

  ‘That’s good. That’s something.’

  ‘We took more casualties overnight, sir. Tanks.’

  ‘The new Shermans?’

  ‘Yes, sir. They sit hull down at over two thousand yards and simply outshoot us. There’s nothing we can do.’

  If only the Führer had fulfilled his promise of the Tigers. But it was of no use considering that now. ‘Have you that list again? May I see it?’

  Bayerlein handed him the newly typed-up list of the available tanks: ‘15th PzDiv–21Mk III and IV, 21st PzDiv–45MkIII and IV, Littorio Div–33M, Ariete ArmdDiv–129M, Trieste Mot–Div34M.’

  ‘Is that it?’

  ‘That’s it, sir.’

  So that was all he had; 66 German tanks and 196 Italian, but the latter he knew would not survive long against the Grants and Shermans. They were slow, lightly gunned and poorly armoured.

  Montgomery seemed to be playing with him. Clearly he was planning a large attack along the coast towards Sidi Abdl el Rahman. But he could not be sure yet if the entire British offensive in the north might not be augmented by an attack in the south. Was it a feint? He picked up from the table a map captured from the British and clearly marked with Montgomery’s plan to push northwest from the Australians’ salient at Hill 29.

  He called to Rolf Munninger, his young personal clerk and a fellow Schwabian. ‘I have a new directive for the army. Can you take it down?’

  Munninger hurried through from the radio room and began to write as Rommel spoke. ‘Any soldier who fails or disobeys is to be court-martialled regardless of his rank. This is a battle for life or death. I demand that every officer and man put forward his utmost effort.’ He paused: ‘Got that?’

  ‘Yes, sir. Shall I send it to…?’

  ‘To all corps and divisional commanders. At once.’

  Life or death, he thought. But now was the time to make provision for the worst. He had to rescue what he could of the Afrika Korps before it was too late, had to gather enough to keep it together as a fighting force.

  ‘Bayerlein, I want every surviving German unit moved up to the northern sector. Every man who can fight, every tank, every gun. Every German. But we must make provision for a fallback position.’ He circled the map. ‘Here at Fuka. A hundred miles behind the German lines along the coast. If the attack goes against us then we must thin out the front and fight a defence. What have we in reserve apart from the Trieste?’

  ‘Nothing, Herr Generalfeldmarschall.’

  ‘Nothing but one division of Italians. So, we pull back some of the panzers from the front line and create a new reserve. Where’s the Twenty-First now?’

  ‘Still engaged with the enemy, sir. Up by the coast road.’

  ‘Pull it back and replace it with the Trieste. The Ninetieth can hold the coast road. And move the Ariete Division south to replace the German units down there. And issue an order to all troops. Munninger, you take this down: “Instead of harassing fire, which involves unnecessary ammunition expenditure, troops are to open fire on the enemy at sight with short, concentrated salvoes”.’ Munninger went off to the radio room.

  Rommel turned to the chief of staff: ‘I’m afraid, Bayerlein, that we shall not be able to withstand such attacks as the British are now capable of putting in. We cannot wait for them to make their decisive breakthrough. We must pull out to the west before they do so.’

  ‘But, sir, that will mean losing much of the infantry. Perhaps all of those that are non-motorized.’

  Rommel frowned. ‘Well then, so be it.’ He paused and smiled: ‘You know, Bayerlein, I’ve found again and again that the day will go to the side that is the first to plaster its opponent with unstoppable firepower. Who do you suppose that might be in our case?’

  Bayerlein shrugged. ‘You shouldn’t talk like that, sir. Thinking the worst sometimes makes it happen.’

  ‘I think it may be too late for that sort of wishful thinking, Bayerlein.’

  Munninger re-entered and handed a message to Rommel. ‘Sir, more bad news I’m afraid. We’ve just heard that two tankers carrying fuel to us from Italy have gone down in Tobruk harbour.’

  Rommel shook his head: ‘How much fuel were they carrying?’

  ‘Four thousand tons, and one of them also had fifteen hundred tons of ammunition.’

  Rommel said nothing. That was it then. He looked again at the sheet of paper on the table containing the numbers of remaining tanks. The Fifteenth Panzer Division had been decimated from 119 tanks to 21. This was a battle of attrition, a battle that he knew he most probably would lose.

  Tired and anxious, he sighed: ‘Bayerlein, I am not to be disturbed. I think I need to sit down for a while. I need to think.’

  It was the final thing. Fuel, as he had told Gause, was the key to this battle and with the sinking of the two tankers he had just lost irreplaceable supplies. Now, even if he could rally his tanks and make a break through there was no way he could exploit it. The army was virtually immobile. What he feared most was what he already knew. That Montgomery’s army was quite the opposite, well supplied, well fuelled and able to cross the desert in fast pursuit of his ragged and wounded forces. A breakthrough anywhere in the line by British armour would almost certainly mean that they would take what was left of Panzerarmee Afrika in the rear. And then it really would all be over.

  He sat down at the little table and began to write to his wife.

  Dearest Lu,

  The battle is raging. Perhaps we will survive in spite of all that goes against us. If we fail it would have grave consequences for the entire course of the war, for in that case North Africa would fall to the British almost without a fight. We are doing our utmost to succeed, but the enemy’s superiority is tremendous and our own resources very small.

  I haven’t much hope left. At night I lie with my eyes open, unable to sleep for the load that lies on my shoulders. If we fail, whether or not I survive the battle will be in God’s hands. The lot of the vanquished is hard to bear. I have a clear conscience, as I have done everything to gain a victory and have not spared my own person. Should I remain on the battlefield I would like to thank you and our boy for all the love and joy you have give
n me in my life. My last thought is of you. After I am gone you must bear the mourning, proudly.

  Your own,

  Erwin

  THIRTY

  7.00 p.m. Near Trig Twenty-nine Kibby

  Kibby sat on an ammo box tucked into the side of an abandoned foxhole and oiled his submachine-gun. He was not a happy man. Captain Robbins had given them the gen and to put it politely it seemed like a pretty complex plan. But then Kibby had never been particularly polite and to put it bluntly, he thought it stank. But if that was what the brass had up their sleeve then who was he to argue with them? The five battalions of Ninth Australian Division were to move north and northeast using Trig 29 as a sort of pivot. Their objective was the railway line and the road; 2/48th were to be held in reserve at first, following on with an eastern attack along the main road to somewhere with the endearing name of ‘Ring Contour 25’. But 2/24th would take Thompson’s Post. Or die trying to. And it all had to happen before the sun came up.

  Kibby whistled and spoke to Ashby without raising his eyes from his task. ‘Well, whoever dreamed this one up thought of a real corker. It’s going to be like bleedin’ Piccadilly Circus out there. More diggers than you could shake a fist at and all done before sun up. What a beaut.’

  For what no one had really explained was that for the reserve battalions to get anywhere those in forward positions would have to succeed in the initial attack. If they did not then it would be pure bloody chaos, chiefly because what was meant to happen in the dark might be happening in full daylight and thus in full view of the German defenders.

  Kibby carried on oiling the Thompson, checking and double-checking the mechanism. He didn’t want it jamming on him. Not if it was going to be as busy out there as it sounded it might. Ashby too had chosen a Thompson for the attack. He was new to the weapon and was copying Kibby’s actions while trying to seem as if he knew exactly what he was doing.