An Englishman at War

by James Holland

  After lunch with five other officers from the course, I went round the old city with a dear old lady who has been out east for 14 years and is the official guide for the KD Hotel. We met John and a very attractive Australian VAD at tea at the sports club. As John had to see about his car and David had to do some shopping I was landed with this girl, not that I minded at all as she was very attractive and most pleasant. Her name is Sue Otherson. As she had some shopping to do, we went to a little shop run by Austrian refugees. I saw a most lovely gold necklace with which I have heavily fallen in love. They are asking lb15. I am very seriously considering buying it in the form of an investment. If anything should happen to me I shall leave it to Pat.

  Afterwards we went back to the hotel and had some tea. The attractive VAD had to go back to Rehovot. We expressed the hope that we shall meet again in Cairo when she has some leave.

  Monday, 16 March

  John Walters and I left the King David at 6.30 in the morning to motor back to Egypt to join the Regiment. It was a glorious day and we had a most enjoyable run down, arriving at the Continental Hotel 5.30 in the evening.

  Tuesday, 17 March

  Cairo is hot, full of troops and remarkably smelly. I saw one of my cine films which I had had developed at Kodak and which was jolly good. David Steele had come down from Jerusalem by train. We lunched together at the Tart Club with Pearson, the HAC gunner who was on the course.

  After lunch I said goodbye to David, it was quite fun having him on the course with me and returned to Khatatba camp. Instead of taking the Delta road we came across the desert and got stuck. Fortunately we had only just left the road and an ambulance happened to be going along the same road.

  Wednesday, 18 March

  I started the day catching up and finding out what has been going on during the time I have been away. Roger has been in charge and everything seems to be in good order.

  Thursday, 19–Friday, 20 March

  No more tanks have arrived. The CO is doing an attachment up in the desert. Donny Player is in command. Training is becoming more difficult. Troop leaders are training their own troops.

  Saturday, 21 March

  We had a whole day indoor TEWT at Brigade HQ, colonel, second-in-command and squadron leaders from each regiment of the brigade. Each syndicate had a gunner attached. The brigadier and Colonel Corney ran the show. It lasted until four o’clock in the afternoon.

  Sunday, 22 March

  Pat now informs me that the King of Greece, whom he saw at the Gezira Club, has 25 medals (estimated). Man Soor, the sixth son of Ibram Faud, the Saud of Arabia, was at the ambassador’s garden party, and although they tried to interest him in many things, he could not keep his eyes from a hedge. Eventually, he said, ‘Oh, I see, it’s a wall made of little trees.’ This was because he had never seen a hedge before. Laughter from the rest of the mess who couldn’t see the point of the story until supplied by Pat.

  Note: Ibn Saud has had more wives than any living man. He has 60 registered sons and about 100 others unregistered. How many daughters, he has not been able to estimate. Pat has given me so much to write that I won’t write any more.

  Monday, 30 March–Friday, 3 April

  I am getting very slack in writing this diary. But I don’t seem to have the time. Training has gone on the same during this week. A Grant tank has arrived. It really is most impressive and makes the Stuart look quite small when they stand side by side. B and C Squadrons are going to have the heavies and my squadron for the moment will have the lights. As far as I can see, we shall be used entirely for reconnaissance and as a protective screen.

  We had another brigade scheme during this week. We moved as a brigade, and the Regiment’s navigator got 40° off the bearing and as a result we crossed over the brigade front. The colonel had the new Grant tank out as his headquarters. Sam Garrett was acting as protective troop and when answering a signal from the CO to come towards him, owing to a misunderstanding between Sam and his driver, Sam crashed into the CO’s tank and broke a sprocket! So the CO had to change chargers! It was a dreadful thing to happen to the new tank, but all the same rather humorous that the light tank should put the heavy out of action!

  The CO continued on with a regimental scheme that went off quite well. Price McCowan has returned to the Regiment after an interesting time in the desert. He is going to C Squadron. Stephen Mitchell has gone off up the desert.

  Friday, 3–Wednesday, 15 April

  We are still at Khatatba, and we still have no more tanks. Each squadron has three lights and B and C Squadrons have one Grant tank each. As soon as B and C Squadrons get another Grant tank the CO is going to hand over all the lights to my squadron and our role will be reconnaissance and not to get heavily engaged. It should be rather fun, very similar to armoured cars.

  Stephen Mitchell has done an attachment for a week with the 10th Hussars in the desert. He found everything very static and had quite an interesting time and had some bombing on his way home.

  The CO asked me tonight whether I wished to go to the staff college and told me that if I did he was willing to put my name in, in which case I had to fill in a pro-forma. It’s most difficult to decide whether to accept the offer or not. If I do have my name accepted it would mean a six-month course and some kind of staff job at the end and a very good chance of not coming back to the Regiment, which I would hate, more especially as we shall be getting all the tanks in the near future.

  But on the other hand if I want to stay in the army after the war a staff college course would be a great asset. General Clark has left the division and Gatehouse has taken his place. All squadron leaders met him today.

  Wednesday, 15 April

  In the afternoon Lawrence Biddle, John Walters, Geoffrey Brooks and I went into Cairo. We went in my staff car. Tea at Gezira, which was most delightful especially as there was a cricket match on. I ran into Kim Semlies. I have not seen him since war began. He was with a very deadbeat-looking dame. I am going to have dinner with him one evening and hear all his news. The Gezira Club is certainly a most attractive spot, especially after Khatatba camp.

  At 7 o’clock we all met at the Continental for a drink and then went to the St James restaurant for dinner, which was most excellent. We then went to the opera house and saw an American show of The Gondoliers, which I thoroughly enjoyed. It was the first time I had been in a theatre since leaving England.

  Friday, 17 April

  Stephen Mitchell is at the moment reading what I am writing and has added his comment. [You cheeky old devil! Stph] It’s been a busy day. I lectured for an hour in the morning and took a Bren-gun class in the afternoon.

  Two air-graphs from Martin Rosewell, also a letter from Bridget.

  Squadron leaders’ conference in the evening. I am reading such a good book, called Invitation to the Waltz. In a way there is something to be said for being killed off in this war. Only to have known joy and happiness and gained a certain position and some popularity and not to have known misery, poverty and sadness. I am writing this in the mess after dinner. The wireless is playing a most attractive waltz. Music is really very lovely and at this moment I somehow feel that I would rather lose our signet than our capacity for . . . music.

  9

  Into Action

  Shermans moving forward.

  STANLEY TOOK A BREAK from writing his diary between April and June. The Sherwood Rangers were continuing to train on tanks in Palestine, and throughout the rest of April and much of May a lull had continued in the Western Desert. General Ritchie, the Eighth Army commander, had decided to make a stand along the so-called Gazala Line, with the intention of building up his forces, then striking back across Cyrenaica and, with luck, into Tripolitania. His line, however, despite extending some forty miles south, was not a continuous defensive position but, rather, strung out into a series of defensive ‘boxes’ each surrounded by wire and mines and in which various brigades were positioned. They were often so far apart that they could not be mutu
ally supported. Realizing this, Rommel decided to strike first and did so on 26 May, both outflanking the line to the south and severing it in two.

  Furious fighting followed, in which the British lost large numbers of tanks, the line crumbled and, by 14 June, Ritchie had been forced to order his remaining brigades to fall back towards Tobruk.

  Sunday, 14 June

  In the last few weeks my diary writing has been very bad indeed. The war has not been going too well up in the Western Desert and as a result the Grant tanks have been taken away from us. This was followed by six of the light tanks being taken from our squadron. All very disappointing, but they have to have tanks up there. I have been up to Cairo once or twice and one weekend I stopped with Vera Philips and Hope Avery in their flat. I went out on the dicky and got tight with Vera. She is a girlfriend of John Walters and I met her through him. John has been away; he came back for a short time before going up to Haifa on a staff-college course. It was quite obvious to me that he objected and was most suspicious of my having taken his girlfriend out. But considering the fact that both he and Vera are married, he really has no cause to worry.

  On Sunday night, 14 June, things began to happen. We had an order from Brigade that the Regiment had to be at ¼ hour’s notice to move. All the light tanks of the Regiment, 28 in all, and all vehicles, were ordered to travel separately by train, to form a composite force of lights with the Greys and the Staffs under Lord Fiennes, the colonel of the Greys. The remainder of the Regiment were to follow under Donny Player, as Flash Kellett had left for a course. In the end our train party left on Tuesday morning, 16 June. I was OC that train.

  We loaded the tanks onto the train flats and travelled with our crews on the same flat, as there was not a great deal of room. But I had my camp canvas chair and with the help of my tank crew, Corporal Bacon, Corporal Cash and Brentson, we were all most comfortable. A hot meal was supplied at Amaya and we continued on for a couple of days until we came to Machiefa, which is west of Sidi Barrani. There we formed up with the remainder of the tank force from the Greys and the Staffs.

  We spent a couple of days there, waiting to be called out in the event of an emergency but we were not required. It was really just as well as we had with us no B Echelon at all, which, incidentally, had been thrown at us at the very last moment and were coming up behind on the road. After a couple of days, we then retreated back to Charing Cross, about ten miles south of Mersa Matruh, where we formed our respective regiments as a brigade group under Gatehouse, our divisional general.

  After about a week we had orders to return east once again and finish off brigade training in the Alexandria area. I was to take the Notts tanks back first. Stripped, we loaded up the tanks onto the flats once more. Most of our loading and unloading had been done by night and the drivers had done very well. In the meantime, we have heard that the Huns have reached Sidi Barrani. While we were loading at Mersa, we had some bombing but no damage. After about four hours we reached Simla, only three miles from Mersa, and there I was informed by the RTO that the train was to return at once to Mersa! So back we went again, unloading the tanks again in the dark, but with a full moon and during an air raid. We spent the rest of the night on the perimeter. There was not much left of the night after we had filled up with petrol.

  Early next morning we received the astounding order that we should hand over all the tanks to the County of London Yeomanry and 1st RTR. This really came as rather a cruel blow as we really considered ourselves a trained squadron now and, having been brought right up to the front line, fully expected to have a crack. We all hated having to hand over those tanks, which all the NCOs had looked after so well and had had for practically six months. However, we had to take the long view. The higher command had decided, and I think rightly, that it would be much better to keep our regiment intact and not split squadrons or troops to make up other units, and instead send us back up without our tanks to be re-equipped. My squadron handed over to the 1st Tanks, which have had a good deal of fighting and have been badly knocked about. They have now been made up to strength with a miscellaneous bunch of men and it was very galling to our men having to hand over to some crews who had never been in a Honey tank, never worked on a No. 14 set, and some of the gunners had never even seen a 37mm or Browning gun. A chap called Cruikshank was the squadron leader to whom I handed over. He told me the position and admitted that he only knew half his men by sight and that the majority of his crews had been formed on paper only. However, they all admitted that they had never taken over tanks in cleaner or better condition or better stocked with rations, which incidentally we handed over complete with all water cans, etc., which we had made on the way up.

  However disappointing it may have been to lose their tanks, Stanley and the Sherwood Rangers had done well to avoid the front at this time. After nearly four weeks of battle, Eighth Army was being routed. On 21 June, Tobruk fell – a stunning blow, which had far-reaching effects. For Churchill, who was in Washington at the time and learned the news from President Roosevelt, it was a particularly bitter and humiliating loss – the latest in a string of devastating defeats that year. Eighth Army was now falling back in disarray to a new defensive position only 60 miles west of Alexandria. Known as the ‘Alamein Line’, after the tiny railway stop near the coast, it was, despite its alarming proximity to Alexandria and the Suez Canal, the best defensive position along the entire Western Desert because it was 40 miles long and ended with the vast Qattara Depression. This was impassable to vehicles, which meant it could not be outflanked. However, the defences had only been hastily prepared and whether they were strong enough to prevent the Panzer Armee Afrika sweeping on to Cairo and the Canal Zone remained to be seen.

  During this time, Rommel’s pursuit was being greatly hampered by the efforts of the RAF’s Desert Air Force, which was operating round the clock and close to the front by using squadrons to leapfrog backwards from one landing ground to another. Their performance at this critical time probably saved Eighth Army from annihilation.

  Thursday, 25–Tuesday, 30 June

  After handing over our tanks we were supposed to leave Mersa Matruh at midnight 25 June but, owing to confusion, we did not leave until 4 o’clock next morning. The train was terribly crowded, consisting entirely of goods trucks and they were mostly open. I travelled in an open together with Major Le Grand, the Belgian major, Jack Whiting and John Bethell-Fox. We had also about 15 Indian troops and four other officers, so we were very crowded. The Staffs were also on the train under Bill Lewisham, who is a most charming person. Altogether we were 66 hours on that train and we were all very pleased when we arrived at Amariya.

  Just after Derba there was a hold-up on the rail, which involved a two-hour delay. Bill and I decided to evacuate the train, which was just as well, as a German plane then came over and bombed and machine-gunned it. The Staffs had some narrow escapes. At almost midnight, we got going again and shortly after another plane came over and this time concentrated on the road, which ran parallel to and about 400 yards from the railway. It was a remarkable sight to see the plane going backwards and forwards along the road shooting from both ends. We expected any moment that it would turn its attention on us. Some of the coloured troops on our truck tried to jump the train (not the Indians) and we had some difficulty preventing them. We eventually arrived at Amariya and went to Maricopets Camp where we joined the rest of the Regiment.

  In the meantime the Hun has been pushing on. Mersa Matruh, Fuka and Derba have fallen and we have taken up a position along the Alamein Line, about 40 miles from Alexandria.

  There are no more diary entries until October 1942. It is possible that Stanley stopped writing for a while, but it seems more likely that these entries have simply gone missing. At any rate, it is a great shame because the period coincided with great changes in Eighth Army and also the Sherwood Rangers’ first battle in their new role as an armoured tank regiment.

  Throughout July, Rommel’s forces tried to bludgeon th
eir way through the Alamein position, but were held at bay. At the beginning of August, Churchill visited Egypt and sacked Auchinleck, the second Middle East C-in-C to lose his job in little more than a year. He was replaced by the imperturbable and hugely experienced General Sir Harold Alexander. General ‘Strafer’ Gott, formerly commander of XIII Corps, took over Eighth Army. Tragically, he was shot down and killed when his transport plane was attacked en route to Cairo in what was almost certainly a deliberate assassination. His replacement was General Bernard Montgomery. By this time, both sides had fought to a standstill and during the remainder of August tried to build up strength once more. For Rommel, now with horribly extended supply lines, this was no easy task, and one made worse by the incessant assault on his supply convoys from both submarines and air operating from Egypt and Malta. For Eighth Army, conversely, the lines of supply were now very small, and were being reinforced with weapons and matériel from the United States.

  Rommel struck at the end of the month, desperately hoping for a decisive breakthrough, but at the Battle of Alam Halfa, the line held once more. On 1 September, the Sherwood Rangers went into action, getting to within 800 yards of 15th Panzer Division’s positions. After losing a number of B and C Squadron tanks – and Stanley’s friend, Jack Whiting, who was killed by shellfire earlier in the morning – they were ordered to withdraw. When Stanley’s A Squadron pushed forward again on 3 September, they discovered the Germans had withdrawn. The following day, Stanley pushed on further with one of his troops and captured three 50mm anti-tank guns and a number of prisoners.