The Last Great Cavalryman

by Richard Mead

  Alexander was also seriously concerned, as was Casey, who was poised to report failure to the prime minister, so on 29 October the two of them and Dick went up to Montgomery’s HQ for a conference to discuss ‘Supercharge’. Dick did not even mention the visit in his diary, writing instead about the heroic action of 2nd Rifle Brigade in defending ‘Snipe’, an area on one side of Kidney Ridge, against large numbers of German tanks: neither does it feature in his later published recollections. Alexander did record it in his own memoirs, however, and the impact it made: ‘The Eighth Army commander appeared to have favoured an attack from as far north as possible. But Dick McCreery, as an experienced armoured commander, was emphatic that it should go in just north of the existing northern corridor. There is no doubt at all in my mind that this was the key decision of the Alamein battle, nor have I any doubt that Monty was suitably grateful to my Chief of Staff.’11

  There is no record anywhere of Montgomery’s gratitude! Moreover other accounts, whilst recognizing Dick’s urging of this new direction of attack, do not ascribe all the credit to him. The rationale behind his advice was that new intelligence had shown that the majority of the German element of Rommel’s army was now positioned in strength along the coast, but that the Italians, who would be much more vulnerable to attack, were situated further south. This intelligence, derived from Ultra, was available to both GHQ Middle East and to Eighth Army, where Montgomery’s gifted GSO1 (Intelligence), Bill Williams, had come to exactly the same conclusion as Dick, although he and de Guingand had so far failed to convince their chief. De Guingand confirmed later that ‘McCreery also felt that “Supercharge” might work better further south, and we discussed the matter together.’12

  Charles Richardson, who had joined de Guingand and Williams in advocating the change in plan, remembered that when the staff met Dick, ‘the subject of the axis was then raised; McCreery, who approved of the proposed change, volunteered to discuss it with Montgomery, only to be warned off with some vigour by Freddie. The Chief of Staff had now learnt that such acts of persuasion stood no chance of success when conducted by outsiders, particularly if attempted by McCreery, whom Montgomery invariably disparaged; they must be handled à deux at the right moment by one of Montgomery’s own team. The delegation departed and Freddie soon pulled it off.’13 Certainly later that day it was de Guingand who rang Dick to let him know that Montgomery had changed his mind. Dick was delighted, as was Alexander. The correct interpretation of events thus seems to be that, whilst Dick had undoubtedly come to the conclusion on his own that the axis of advance should be changed, had convinced Alexander that it was necessary and had advanced the argument in the conference with Montgomery, the Eighth Army staff had reached an identical conclusion and, doubtless encouraged by Dick’s concurrence, had finally convinced Montgomery to change his mind.

  Supercharge was launched on the night of 1/2 November, just after Dick had returned from a flying visit to Palestine to lecture at the Middle East Staff College in Haifa. The operation was directed by the New Zealand Division HQ and used that division’s artillery and engineers, but took three infantry brigades from other divisions under command as Freyberg’s own infantry, other than the 28th Maori Battalion, was recovering from the earlier battles. Pole position was taken by 9 Armoured Brigade, which was effectively sacrificed to draw the teeth of the German armour, whilst the infantry expanded the shoulders of the salient. The armoured cars of the 1st Royal Dragoons were the first to get behind the enemy, on 2 November, but it took further infantry attacks before 1 Armoured Division could break through comprehensively on the night of 4/5 November, followed by 7 Armoured Division. Dick was with Alexander visiting Eighth Army on 4 November and arrived back at GHQ at 1700 hrs. Half an hour later Montgomery telephoned to say that a great victory was in sight.

  If Dick had kept his counsel on any doubts about Montgomery’s plan for Lightfoot, he was unable to contain his frustration over the subsequent pursuit, as the Germans withdrew in good order, leaving their Italian allies to their fate. George Davy later wrote: ‘Dick could not have influenced the events after the battle and he and I alike failed – at our respective levels – to overcome the inertia in the desert. We shared the feeling of frustration and exasperation as Rommel crept away.’14 Dick felt that, in his determination to have no subsequent reverses, Montgomery took forward far too many troops. On 14 November he was astonished to find an enormous traffic jam at the Halfaya Pass near Sollum, with 1 Armoured Division’s tank transporters packed together nose to tail, whilst up on the escarpment 7 Armoured Division kept running out of petrol. Alexander suggested to Montgomery that it might be possible to send a mobile force to cut off Rommel at El Agheila, just as O’Connor had succeeded in doing to the Italians in February 1941. Montgomery replied that if anyone thought he was going to be the fool to get a bloody nose for the third time they were very much mistaken.

  Montgomery was indeed only too aware of the reverses to earlier victories in the desert, but his caution meant that the pursuit became a litany of missed opportunities to strike a decisive blow at the retreating Germans. Not for the last time, he was demonstrating his seeming inability to finish off a defeated enemy. On the other hand, between Lindsell and Eighth Army’s DA & QMG, Brian Robertson, the arrangements were put in place to ensure that the increasing length and vulnerability of the lines of communication were not going to be a major cause of bringing an end to the advance, as they had been in the past to Wavell and Auchinleck and twice to Rommel.

  One after another the old battlefields of the desert war were passed and Eighth Army entered Benghazi on 19 November, although it was another full month before it was able to overcome the defences at El Agheila. During that time it became apparent that Montgomery wanted to get rid of both Lumsden and Gatehouse. With barely room for two corps in the advance towards Tripoli and with Miles Dempsey having been called out from the UK to take over XIII Corps in Egypt, Montgomery was determined to give X Corps to Horrocks. His view of the performance of X Corps at El Alamein fully justified this in his own mind, but many of his critics thought he was prejudiced against the cavalry, whose senior officers he saw as amateurs. When Dick dined with the newly sacked Lumsden on 30 November he found him very bitter about Montgomery. Dick suspected that the animus between them might have had its origin during the retreat to Dunkirk, when Montgomery was commanding 3 Division and Lumsden the 12th Lancers, providing intelligence on German movements. Brooke, Montgomery’s corps commander at the time, later put paid to this theory, but admitted that he had never got to the bottom of the troubled relationship. He himself admired Lumsden greatly and gave him another corps command on his return to England.15

  Dick was also saddened by the decision to disband 8 Armoured Division, which he had formed and trained in 1941. It had never fought as a division and its constituent parts were now needed as reinforcements. Also disbanded was 24 Armoured Brigade, still under the command of ‘Kench’ Kenchington, the RTR battalions being dispersed elsewhere, although the other founder member of the division, 23 Armoured Brigade, was by now a significant independent component of XXX Corps.

  On 23 January 1943 Eighth Army entered Tripoli, by which time change was in the air for Alexander and Dick. GHQ Middle East was now 1,000 miles away from its only army, whose success had been followed by the necessity to set up a military government in the newly occupied territories. The burgeoning geographical extent of the C-in-C’s responsibilities was made that much more apparent by a trip which he and Dick made in the first week of the New Year over much the same distance in a completely different direction, to Sudan and Eritrea.

  At the other end of the Mediterranean the Allies had landed in French North Africa on 8 November, but First Army had made slow progress in expelling the Axis from Tunisia, which had been seized from the Vichy French. With Montgomery now poised to enter the country from the south, the need arose for coordination between the two armies and this was endorsed by the Casablanca Conference. General Eisenhower,
who commanded Allied Forces, had no battlefield experience and it was agreed that Alexander should take overall command in the field.

  On 18 February Alexander handed over Middle East Command, shorn of its responsibility for Eighth Army, to Jumbo Wilson and was duly appointed to the command of the new 18th Army Group, taking Dick with him as his chief of staff.

  Chapter 16

  Victory in Tunis

  ‘I hope to get a change of job sometime this year,’ Dick wrote to Lettice on 27 January 1943 in the knowledge of the decisions made at Casablanca, ‘but I must stick to Alex as long as he wants me. He knows that he will give me a fair deal. I may even get something like Herbert had out here’ (a corps command). There was, as it happened, no question of Dick leaving Alexander at this juncture. Brooke wrote subsequently: ‘I must confess that I had some doubts as to whether Alexander would have the ability to handle this difficult task. I had, however, great faith in his Chief of Staff, Dick McCreery, and I hoped that between them all would be well. The battle of Tunis proved the accuracy of this forecast, but I have never felt that McCreery received all the credit due to him for the part he played in these operations.’1

  As the chief of staff to an army group commander, rather than to a C-inC of a major overseas command, Dick took a step down in rank to major general, whilst his erstwhile deputy James Steele, who took over from him, moved up in the opposite direction. It is apparent, however, that both Alexander and Dick saw this as a temporary arrangement until the campaign had reached a successful conclusion, and that not only Alexander, but more importantly Brooke, in whose gift it lay, had promised him a field command in due course. In the meantime there was tangible recognition of his contribution to Middle East Command when Dick was made a Companion of the Bath. Alexander’s citation made clear his opinion.

  As my Chief of Staff since August, 1942, Lieut.-General McCreery has been actively involved, in general, in the re-organization of Middle East Forces, and in particular, in the preparation of plans for the successful Eighth Army offensive which commenced in October. That the re-organization has been completed rapidly and smoothly is, in large degree, due to the leadership which he has given the whole staff both general and administrative.

  The preparation of the plans for the Battle of Egypt threw a heavy load of responsibility on him for a considerable period beforehand, and it is no exaggeration to say that its success was greatly influenced by the completeness and exactness of the preliminary arrangements. General McCreery during this time was the guiding planner and controlling coordinator. He worked strenuously and advised wisely. He relieved me of much anxiety.

  When operations started he continued to be of the greatest assistance to me, displaying qualities of forethought and patience which has meant so much, particularly during the critical opening days of the offensive. I have no hesitation in saying that by his work and influence he contributed greatly to the victory of the Desert Army.

  Although 18th Army Group was not to be formally constituted for another ten days, Dick left Cairo on 8 February and travelled via Malta to Allied Forces HQ in Algiers. There he stayed with Walter Bedell Smith, Eisenhower’s chief of staff, whom he thought ‘v. nice and capable’ and with whom he was to establish an excellent working relationship. Fortunately there was one member of Eisenhower’s multi-national staff, Jock Whiteley, whom he already knew well, both from Staff College and more recently as BGS (brigadier general staff) to Ritchie at Eighth Army, and he was briefed extensively by him before meeting Eisenhower, whom he found very talkative. He also met Harold Macmillan, the British minister of state resident in North Africa, whose chief Foreign Office adviser, Roger Makins, was an old family friend in whose parents’ house Dick and Lettice had held their wedding reception. On 11 February he left for Constantine, where the new HQ was established. Some 3,000 feet above sea level, it proved to be bitterly cold in the tents used as accommodation, with a very poor temporary mess in a local café.

  Leaving Charles Miller, the Major General Administration, to organize the 70 officers and 500 other ranks who had come to join the HQ from Cairo, followed in due course by a number of Americans and French, Dick left on the following day to visit First Army. This formation was very different to Eighth Army. Created to command the disparate British and American troops who had landed in North Africa in November 1942, and subsequently the French who had declared for the Allies after some difficult moments, it had had a gruelling winter. Balked almost at the gates of Tunis by the lightning speed of German reinforcement, it had found itself fighting in the mountains in often appalling conditions of wet and cold. Moreover, relationships between its commander, Kenneth Anderson, and his Allied subordinates had not always been good, the French determined to establish their independence in their own territory and their self-esteem after the bitter defeats of 1940, the Americans suspicious of the British and nettled by comments about their inexperience. Anderson’s character, dour, occasionally irritable and often incapable of establishing a rapport with his fellow officers of any nationality including his own, had not helped.

  Dick found Anderson worried by his difficulties with Allies and with the military position. He was more heartened by meeting Charles Allfrey of V Corps – ‘a grand chap’ – and Charles Keightley, a fellow cavalryman and old friend who had been AA&QMG of 1 Armoured Division in 1940 and was now GOC of 6 Armoured Division. He was back in Algiers on 17 February to welcome Alexander on his arrival to take up his new role. The two of them left on the following day to visit II US Corps, where they found what Dick described as ‘an atmosphere of gloom’. The commanding general, Lloyd Fredendall, was away on a visit, but the two British officers quickly realized that there was no effective plan or coordination on his front.

  Fredendall’s absence was understandable as II US Corps was under attack to the south. Von Arnim, the German commander in Tunisia, and Rommel, still facing Montgomery but anxious about his rear, had launched a coordinated attack with two panzer divisions on the American positions at Gafsa and Sidi Bou Zid on 14 February forcing their way through the passes in the Eastern Dorsal range of mountains and driving the Americans back in confusion. Further attacks were made over the next week, pushing the defenders, many of them in a state of panic, back though the passes in the Western Dorsals at Sbeitla and Kasserine and threatening the Allies’ supply bases at Tebessa and Le Kef. Anderson hurriedly sent British reinforcements to stem the tide and the Germans were held at Thala and Sbiba, with von Arnim and Rommel, whose own coordination had been poor, eventually conceding failure on 22 February – but it had been a very close run thing.

  Alexander was far from impressed by Anderson’s handling of the situation, asking Montgomery for Leese to replace him, but the latter was still needed in Eighth Army. As a result Alexander put Anderson on a much tighter leash than Montgomery, relieving him of II US Corps and XIX French Corps and placing them under his own direct command and giving each nationality its own well-defined sector, whereas they had previously been intermingled. The other deep impression made on Alexander was the poor planning and training of the Americans and their generally low morale, although a number of individual units had fought well. He expressed his concern over Fredendall to Eisenhower, who had reached the same conclusion and had him replaced at II US Corps by George Patton, a strong leader with very high standards who rapidly took a grip on his new command. Alexander also insisted on the Americans setting up a battle school, which was largely staffed in the early days by British instructors and NCOs, some from Eighth Army.

  The reorganization of First Army and direct operational control of the Americans and French provided a great deal of work for Dick, helped in part by the HQ’s relocation to Ain Beida, south-west of Constantine on the road to Tebessa and better placed for visiting the front. David Hunt described it as ‘the smallest and certainly the most efficient HQ that I ever served on in the whole of the war.’2 It was still in the mountains and still very cold, with both offices and accommodation under canvas, but
it stood in a very attractive location in a fir wood. Dick had little free time whilst he was there, but when he did he enjoyed walking through meadows full of spring flowers, including carpets of wild jonquils. For his numerous journeys in an open car, Alexander had lent him a spare wool-lined airman’s jacket, but he still had to wear three jerseys every evening to keep warm.

  The main reason for Rommel’s withdrawal from the Kasserine area was his growing concern over Eighth Army’s progress in the south. On 6 March he launched what would be his final attack in Africa, against a well-prepared Montgomery at Medenine. For the Germans and Italians this was a repeat of Alam Halfa, as their tanks made little impression on the well-sited defences, incurring serious losses. On 9 March Rommel left Tunisia on sick leave, never to return, and the newly styled German-Italian Panzer Army retreated behind the defences of the Mareth Line. Montgomery began his assault on this formerly French defensive system on 20 March, but failed completely to crack it open. It required a long flank march by the New Zealanders and Free French, followed by 1 Armoured Division, to threaten the Axis rear and compel von Arnim to order a retreat.

  Alexander’s forces in Tunisia were in almost constant action, with the intention of cutting the Axis retreat from the south and forcing their formations in the north back into an ever smaller area around Tunis and Bizerta, but the resistance, established in carefully sited positions in the semi-circle of mountains around the Plain of Tunis and the various passes across the Eastern Dorsals, was strong and well led. Very little progress was made at first, indeed there were a number of setbacks, including an individual one when Dick’s invaluable personal assistant, Pat Stewart, was seriously wounded while out with an American reconnaissance patrol.3 Dick spent much of his time visiting the various commanders, both with Alexander and by himself. He was delighted by the arrival of John Crocker to command the newly arrived IX Corps, the more so as Crocker’s BGS was ‘Babe’ MacMillan, Dick’s Sandhurst and Staff College contemporary. The corps became operational on 24 March, but its first operation, mounted on 8 April by 6 Armoured Division and 34 US Division in an attempt to break through the Fondouk Pass and cut off the retreating Italian First Army, ended in failure when the Italians escaped the trap.