An Englishman at War

by James Holland

  General Montgomery, the commander of the Eighth Army from 1942.

  Alam Halfa was a victory for Montgomery and for Eighth Army, but had been something of a rude awakening for the Rangers, who had charged forward and walked straight into a screen of anti-tank guns – the same error British tanks had been making since the Deutsches Afrika Korps had first arrived in North Africa. ‘We made every mistake in the book,’ says John Semken, ‘but fortunately the battle only lasted a few days and we then had six weeks in which to sort ourselves out, reorganize and train, and learn from our mistakes.’

  10

  The Battle of El Alamein

  General Montgomery talking to Lt-Col Jim Eadie on the latter’s regimental command tank.

  ON 14 SEPTEMBER, the Sherwood Rangers, along with the rest of 8th Armoured Brigade, had moved back thirty miles to a new training area, where they relentlessly practised moving through dummy minefields by night. New tanks arrived, including a number of the latest American M4 Shermans. The first four were handed over to the regimental HQ Squadron and named Robin Hood, Little John, Maid Marion and Friar Tuck; so began a tradition that the commanding officer’s tank would always be called ‘Robin Hood’. Stanley’s A Squadron, however, was the reconnaissance squadron and so kept its Crusader tanks – lightly protected, armed only with a six-pounder gun, but fast. They were not known for their reliability, however, and especially not in the desert where the sand soon found its way into every working part. ‘It was a miracle,’ commented the Regiment’s official history, ‘if a Crusader engine functioned for more than about 36 hours without some strange and terrible trouble developing.’

  The Regiment had been impressed by Montgomery, who, largely through Flash Kellett’s influence, had visited them personally several times since arriving to take over Eighth Army. John Semken was certainly impressed by the new army commander. ‘The effect of Monty was dramatic,’ he says. ‘He really was beyond all phrases.’ What struck him most was the sense of complete control and Montgomery’s statement that there would be no more retreats.

  Montgomery was determined not to be rushed into launching an assault until he was certain of winning a decisive victory. Part of this process was building up sufficient strength, but another aspect was retraining, which was, as the Sherwood Rangers discovered, intensive. Every man, Montgomery insisted, was to know exactly what was expected of him and how to do it.

  The basic plan was to punch two holes through the Axis defences, one in the north and one in the south, although it would be through the northern one that Monty would make his main breach. This was also the strongest part of the enemy line, but the army commander believed that any attack in the south would still have to wheel north at some point, and therefore believed it was best to hit the strongest point head-on first. This main breach would be over a ten-mile front. A combination of infantry, engineers and tanks would follow an artillery barrage, passing along two narrow cleared lanes through minefields. Once through, the armour would contain and hold off the enemy tanks, while the rest of the forces isolated and destroyed the enemy infantry, in a process Montgomery called ‘crumbling’. This would be followed by the ‘break-out’ and ‘pursuit’.

  Montgomery reckoned the battle would last about ten days and it was planned for the third week in October. It was important it was no later, because the Allies were planning a second attack in north-west Africa, with a joint Anglo-US force landing in Algeria and French Morocco, called Operation TORCH. The aim was to crush French Vichy forces, then strike towards Tunisia. A victorious Eighth Army would also push the Axis forces back and encircle them in a giant pincer operation; that was the plan at any rate. TORCH was due to be launched on 10 November.

  The Sherwood Rangers were still part of 8th Armoured Brigade and were to be involved in the opening of the attack, through the northern breach in the New Zealand Division’s sector and using the southern of the two corridors to be cleared through the minefields. Since this corridor consisted of three narrow channels no wider than a tennis court, this was no easy task – and especially at night, with the fog of war rapidly descending . . .

  Friday, 23–Saturday, 24 October 1942

  We waited for an hour at Bombay Track where we replenished with petrol. My crew gave me a cup of coffee, which we were able to make from the water we carry in tins by the engine. When the engine runs for any length the water invariably gets heated up, from which we can make excellent coffee. On the way up Sergeant McCann’s tank sprang a bad water leak so we had to leave him behind. Also Ronnie Hill had trouble with his sprocket, but he was able to join us later.

  We had an hour’s wait at Springbok Road, where we met the divisional general, and then got the word to go forward. We proceeded line ahead, with Sam’s troop in the lead, followed by Patrick McCraith, who was navigating, followed by me and the other two troops. In all I had nine Crusader tanks in the squadron, made up as follows. Squadron HQ, Basil Ringrose and myself; 2 Troop, Mike Hollingshead, Corporal Truman; 3 Troop, Mike Bilton, Sergeant Hardinge; 4 Troop, Sam Garrett, Corporal Dring and Corporal Hudd.

  Just as we were about to enter the passage through the minefield we were held up by the New Zealand Light Cavalry and the 9th Brigade moving south. Urgent messages came up to me from the CO on the air to push on, which I couldn’t do.

  We passed through our own minefield without incident. The sappers had clearly marked the path with lights and white tape on the ground. Halfway through they had one control point established where I met David Summers from Division. At that point the heads of all three columns were level: ourselves, Staffs and 3rd RTR.

  We then started through the enemy minefield. The New Zealand infantry were to have pushed through and formed a bridgehead on the far side of the enemy minefield so that the tanks could debouch from the lane and take up positions on the ridge on the other side.

  Then came the enemy minefield. In the distance we could see some enemy solid shot flying about the place, green tracer shot. Halfway through the enemy minefield Sam, who was leading, was again stopped by a control post. I came up to the front and learned we could go no further for 50 minutes as a lane had not been properly cleared. However, a message came through from the divisional commander that we should proceed at all costs, which we did, expecting at any moment to go up on a mine. However, we finally got to the end about an hour before light – at least, we were told by a sapper that we had reached the end – but we came under heavy anti-tank and machine-gun fire from both sides, and we were eager to get out into the open, and so were the people coming along behind us, so I gave the signal. No sooner had we gone about 200 yards than we ran straight into German anti-tank gun positions, and five Crusaders were immediately knocked out in the squadron.

  It was quite one of the worst moments in my life. It was dark, I couldn’t go forward, and all the heavy tanks were behind me, so I couldn’t go back on account of them and the minefield. The infantry had not been able to clear the ridge ahead.

  We had to sit there, and then eventually, at the CO’s orders, managed to withdraw behind a ridge and onto the minefield, on which we lost some Grants and scout cars.

  The ridge they were behind was the Miteirya Ridge, a long, low, narrow rise in the ground of about four miles long. It rises not much more than about 30 feet, but that was enough to shield a tank.

  This is what happened to every troop in my squadron.

  The idea was to advance three up: 2 Troop on the left, 3 in the centre, and 4 on the right.

  2 Troop was under Lieutenant Hollingshead, who had only been with the Regiment a very short time. A 50mm anti-tank shell hit the tank and wounded him and his operator, Wright. The tank was again hit by a shell, which killed Hollingshead and also Wright. The driver, Gerrard, jumped out and called to Lewis, the gunner, to follow him, but he continued to stand on top of the tank trying to get Wright out, and he received a direct hit from another shell, which killed him outright. Gerrard remained in a slit trench.

  The other tank i
n 2 Troop was commanded by Corporal Truman. His tank received a direct hit, which put it out of action, and as the guns were jammed, he and his crew evacuated the tank and hid all day in a slit trench. They later contacted Gerrard from the other tank and after dark tried to get back to us again. However, they were caught by a German patrol and taken prisoner. They spent the rest of the night in a gun pit, where they found Chadwick, another of our drivers, badly wounded, and being looked after by a New Zealander. The Germans treated them well and gave them chocolate and water. They were astonished at the extreme youth of the Germans, especially the NCOs. The next day was extremely unpleasant on account of our own barrage, but they were eventually rescued by some tanks of the 3rd Hussars and reported back to us.

  Mike Bilton was in charge of 3 Troop, the centre troop. His tank received a direct hit, which gave him a nasty wound in the stomach, and which wounded his operator, Wright, and put his tank out of action. Incidentally, his tank was on a minefield.

  Sam Garrett was in command of 4 Troop, the right-hand troop. His tank was immediately hit twice, and he gave the order to his crew to evacuate, but not before he took the signal watch from the wireless set. This is the message which he passed back to me: ‘Edward. I have been hit twice, tank on fire, am evacuating.’ Before I could reply the CO came up on the air and said, ‘Get off the bloody air, and your name is King, not Edward.’ As his crew left the tank they were machine-gunned. Bingham, the operator, was badly wounded, Corporal Ives, the gunner, slightly wounded. The driver, Wilkinson, made off on his own, but I have since heard that he is in hospital. Sam Garrett led them back and was unwounded himself, but livid at having to leave all his kit on the tank.

  As a result of this debouching from the minefield before dawn, I lost five Crusader tanks from the squadron. The Grant tanks, eager to be free of the minefield before the sun rose, pushed on from behind and had four tanks knocked out, including Mike Laycock’s. Having withdrawn behind the ridge for the rest of the day, and still more or less on the minefield, we came in for some very heavy shelling.

  Bill Kepner got killed during the morning. He left his tank to assist a wounded man in the minefield and a shell got them both.

  My squadron sergeant major, Hutchinson, dashed forward to some of our knocked-out tanks and tried to rescue the crews, but was also wounded and has since been recommended for the MM by the colonel.

  Sergeant Grinnell and Lance Corporal Hopewell received a direct hit on their scout car and were both badly wounded.

  I met Mike Laycock on the ground after his tank had been knocked out. He got heavily fired on by machine-gun fire and his tin hat saved him. I took him back on my tank to one of his own. He told me that Bill McGowan had gone, but this turned out to be incorrect. It was another of B Squadron’s tanks which had gone up, not Bill’s.

  On my way back behind the ridge I saw Mike Bilton lying on the ground beside his tank. I got out and found that he had been badly wounded in the stomach. At that moment, Jack Tyrrell, our gunner OP, came past in his tank on the outside of which he had about 10 badly wounded gunners. He immediately stopped, heaved Mike on the back of his tank, and took him off.

  Until about 16.30 it was impossible to get anything to eat, except biscuits and bully in the tank, but at 16.30 I pulled out from the ridge and we brewed up behind the tank. A cup of hot tea could not have been more acceptable.

  At that hour I had only the following tanks left in the squadron: Corporal Dring in a 6-pounder (after Sam had lost his tank he joined Corporal Dring). They had some quite good shooting with their 6-pounder; Ronnie Hill, having broken down on the approach march, had now found me, and finally Corporal Butler, who later during the day received a direct hit on the side of the tank from an HE shell. This put the tank out of action, but fortunately did not damage any of the crew.

  At about 17.15 I went to our left flank on the ridge to see what I could see from there, together with Tyrrell, the OP. The Hun started to develop a tank attack with about 20 or 30 tanks. I feel certain that his idea was to destroy our forward knocked-out tanks on the minefield. One Panzer Mk IV special had crept right up a depression and suddenly appeared about 300 yards to our immediate front. When the turret began to travel round in our direction and point at us, I beat a rather hasty retreat behind the ridge, especially in view of the fact that the breech mechanism of our 2-pounder had jammed. So did old Jack Tyrrell in his Honey tank. I then contacted the other tanks on our left and saw Bob Crisp, the squadron leader of their light squadron. I left my tank and got on the back of his to have a word with him. At that moment he and his OP were trying to pick up an 88mm, which was blitzing them. He told me that he had lost two officers that morning, most unnecessarily, as they had left their tanks and wandered about. I took the hint and got back into mine.

  On my return, a shell burst just overhead. I had a very lucky escape. All it did was to completely close my left eye, blacken both, give me a violent nosebleed, slight concussion and some splinter wounds round the eyes. I was taken back to the RAP, which belonged to the New Zealanders, slightly nervous about left eye as I thought a splinter might have damaged the sight. I was sent back to hospital in Alex, had the eye examined and passed OK, so returned immediately with Sam Garrett, who had also found his way back.

  We returned in time for the next battle and in the meantime very little happened as the Regiment was sent back to re-form. Basil Ringrose took over A Squadron in my absence.

  On the evening of the first full day of battle, 24 October, the Sherwood Rangers had pushed on through the gap beyond the Miteirya Ridge, but tanks need support to maintain their advance; as the Regiment’s support trucks – ‘soft skins’ – moved up they were attacked by Stuka dive-bombers and a number were hit and caught fire. Unfortunately, the flames provided an ideal aiming point for the Axis artillery and soon after both the Rangers and the 3rd Royal Tank Regiment were forced to pull back. Captain Bill Kepner, who Stanley mentions was killed, had joined the Sherwood Rangers in 1939 as an NCO, but was one of the new breed of officers to have been commissioned from the ranks. He is buried at the Alamein cemetery.

  The following sequence of events took place after I left.

  On the night of the 24th, the brigade formed up again to get through what remained of the enemy minefield after a passage had been prepared by the sappers. They moved off at 21.00 hours but Pat McCraith, the navigator, was told by the REs that he could not go further. The CO demanded an explanation for the delay, to which Pat replied that a ‘big niner’ (that absurd expression supposedly in code, which meant commander) had stopped him. The CO answered that our immediate ‘niner’ had told him to proceed at all costs. Pat replied that he couldn’t go forward against the orders of a ‘ninety-nine’ and so the argument continued, which Pat won.

  The Sherwood Rangers had not yet quite got to grips with using their radio sets or the prescribed code. The perceived wisdom at the time was that each squadron had four troops of four tanks plus a squadron headquarters troop, thus twenty tanks in all. Each squadron was led by a major with two captains, one who was second-in-command, and one who was the ‘rear link-man’. The idea was that these would communicate with each other via the B set wireless radio, which had a range of around 200 yards. The A set had a wider range and was used for communicating between squadrons and other units. The trouble was two-fold. First, the Rangers went into battle, for the most part, with their turret hatches down and using the periscope. At night, and with the intense dust, this made it next to impossible to see a thing. Second, each tank was supposed to use strict code with which to communicate, but in the confusion, this was often forgotten or became muddled. John Semken, who had been the signals officer at one point, admits it was pretty chaotic. ‘Our wireless procedure,’ he says, ‘was being constantly changed.’ Keith Douglas noted that the Sherwood Rangers stuck to prescribed code-names as far as possible but code for their actions was based almost entirely on allusions to horses and cricket. ‘I shall need a farrier, I’ve cast a sho
e,’ meant a track had come undone; ‘returning to pavilion,’ meant withdrawing. ‘It was,’ says John Semken, ‘bloody silly.’ The Rangers certainly maintained their idiosyncratic radio language for much of the North African campaign, but learned that it made sense for tank commanders to operate with hatches open and their heads sticking up for much of the time.

  At 22.00 hours our barrage started. The whole brigade was formed up line-ahead when a bomber came over and dropped some bombs on our column. Five more soon returned and bombed our soft-skinned vehicles, which were literally nose to tail. There is a general opinion that the bombers were our own. Part of our echelon was completely destroyed, including our fitters’ truck, killing Sergeant Headland, A Squadron fitter sergeant, a grievous loss, as well as Trooper Bence the electrician, and Trooper Long, the driver. Trooper Else, whom I had put in the truck to operate a wireless, which I had installed, was wounded. Trooper Hemingway, another truck driver from A Squadron, was also killed, and Troopers Hall and Whatley wounded. The Regiment lost a good many 3-tonners.

  At last the brigade moved off. The leading regiment had not gone far before it turned and came back at a very undignified pace. We covered their retreat and the Staffs were then in the lead and remained there for the night.

  Sunday, 25 October

  The Regiment found itself on exactly the same ground as the previous day, but the enemy must have suffered heavily from our terrific barrage and bombing, to say nothing of the gunfire from the tanks.

  The CO then decided to take the ridge with the Regiment alone and made necessary plans with the gunners, but Brigade refused to allow the CO to carry out his plan.

  Ronnie Hill got killed during the morning. He was standing on the outside of John Semken’s tank, which received a direct hit from an HE shell and this blew the poor boy to pieces. John Semken was quite unhurt.