El Alamein
Page 19
Montgomery himself preferred to be out and about. He spent a great deal of time visiting troops who were training, and talking with corps, divisional and battalion commanders and, often, with their officers and men. Towards the end of September, he acquired a ‘Personal Protection Force’ consisting of a troop of Grant tanks, a troop of anti-tank guns, and an infantry company. This force was intended to defend Eighth Army GHQ in the event of a German commando raid, like one the British had attempted on Rommel’s headquarters in November 1941. Montgomery’s own Grant became his frequent mode of transport in the forward areas. Sergeant Stephen Kennedy of 1st/6th RTR recalled:
Each day, the General would visit Corps Headquarters from GHQ. He didn’t want his generals to come back to him. He would go forward to them. We would go off earlier on and wait for him just at Tel el Eisa, which was in the Australian area. We would wait by the side of the road. He would come along after a while in his staff car and then get into the tank and go into the desert to meet up with corps HQ – to meet up with the other generals – which was within range of the enemy.19
It was Kennedy and his crew who were responsible for Montgomery’s famous two-badged beret, which he subsequently frequently wore (in defiance of army regulations). According to Kennedy:
We heard the General was wearing an Australian hat and it was blowing off. They say Corporal Fraser, the driver, said ‘You can have my beret’. If this happened, so well it be, but they asked his ADC [aide-de-camp], Captain Poston, 11th Hussars, would the General wear a beret? He said ‘I’ll ask him’ and our Lieutenant got permission from the ADC that he would wear a beret. They also asked him would he wear the badge of the regiment and he said he would. They were able to order a brand new beret with the badge in and Corporal Fraser, who was the one he thanked for driving him, stepped forward and said ‘General, will you wear our beret?’ He’d already been tuned in and knew the form and he said ‘Of course I will’. He wore the beret that day and the next day he appeared in that beret and he had his general’s badge beside it. He’s probably the only general in the army who had two badges.20
If Montgomery’s Australian hat could be dismissed as flamboyantly idiosyncratic, his new headgear was a statement challenging anyone who still questioned his authority; an army commander did things his way.
Alexander, as Commander-in-Chief, maintained close contact with Montgomery through the simple expedient of setting up a small advanced base close to Eighth Army Headquarters. He visited Montgomery often during this period, offering his assistance in overcoming difficulties but, otherwise, not intervening in any way. With Air Vice-Marshal Coningham’s Desert Air Force Headquarters also at Burg-el-Arab, the land and air commands were co-located, even when the commanders themselves were frequently not.
In Montgomery’s plan it was essential that X Corps got beyond the Axis minefields by first light. In preparation for the battle, both armoured divisions of the corps (1st and 10th) had been taken out of the line, reorganized, and given opportunities to train. For the training, special areas had been marked out to represent the minefields and defences, though giving no indication of where the actual place would be ‘on the night’. Sergeant Fred Hunn, 12th Lancers, recalled:
We had to train at going through the minefields in darkness as though we were attacking. It was all preparation and training so we could move at night as though it was more or less second nature. They had the minefield all taped and they’d simulate the minefield being cleared and there’d be tape with little lights, little red lights that could show – not from the enemy side but facing you – and you could then motor through them. This was done with all the tanks, the whole division would then go forward. We [the armoured cars] would then follow through ready for when the tanks would break out and, once the breakout had been accomplished, we would take up our role of going forward shooting up any transport, or whatever and following the enemy up.21
The process of creating armoured divisions as ‘divisions of all arms’, which had begun before Alam Halfa, was still going on. Amidst a host of other changes, 7th Motor Brigade’s move to 1st Armoured Division created some resentment at being transferred from ‘the Desert Rats’, as Rifleman Reg Crimp observed:
Training is strenuous, and there are many portents of approaching action. All the other camps in the area are now filled with infantry, tank and artillery units. A large draft arrived yesterday from Geneifa to bring this Battalion up to full strength. Evidently a purge has been going on lately at the base, combing out surplus personnel, and many faces I haven’t seen for months are now re-appearing. The anti-tank company has been re-equipped with the latest, and much more formidable, 6-pounder guns, in place of their piddling 2-pounders. Quite a lot of new trucks have been drawn to replace our desert-weary veterans, and new signs are being painted on all vehicles as a result of our now belonging to another division; the old red jerboa on the white circular field, famous badge of the Desert Rats, having had to give way to a white rhinoceros on a black oval field – the ‘pregnant pig’, as some of our fellows, regretful of the change, scornfully describe it.22
Reorganization and training in the armoured divisions had been intended to be complimentary. They were nothing of the kind. The transfer of 7th Motor Brigade was to help create an armoured formation akin to the German model. However, the integration of the motorized infantry and armour could not happen overnight. It took time.
At the same time, Auchinleck’s scheme for concentrating tanks by their types in the various formations was still being implemented. This entailed many transfers as the squadrons received new or reconditioned tanks. Every commander did his best to acquire the newly arrived Shermans in place of the Grants or Crusaders. However, even some of the units allocated Shermans were not happy, as Lance-Corporal Mick Collins of the Wiltshire Yeomanry, found:
We got our tanks but they were not the brand new Shermans that Winston Churchill had said we were to have. The tanks were certainly not in their first flush of youth as they had been taken over from American armoured units and consequently had considerable mileage on their clocks. So much for promises, but at least they were of the latest type even if they were well-worn.23
Even less happy was Captain Stuart Hamilton of 8th RTR:
Imagine our great disappointment when we were informed that we were not going to get the new Sherman tank but that we were to be re-equipped, once again, with blasted Valentines with their pathetic little 2-pdr pop-gun, and that we would be joining the 23rd Armoured Brigade. It was reckoned that the forthcoming battle was going to be a very tough one indeed and that they should have the backing of a battle-experienced Valentine Tank Regiment.24
Against this background, training in X Corps was necessarily basic and disjointed and the corps de chasse remained far from being in the shape Montgomery wanted. Some close to Montgomery felt that the root of many problems was the attitude of the corps commander. Carol Mather commented:
I think he [Lumsden] felt this was a misuse of his armour. He wasn’t really convinced that the plan was the right use of armour. That’s why I think he was reluctant. He didn’t agree with the strategy.25
However, as Mather admitted, Lumsden and his divisional commanders all had genuine and complex concerns about the planned operations.
He was being ‘sticky’, but one must remember that the armoured troops had suffered terribly in the desert up to that moment. The number of tanks and lives lost was very high. We were continually suffering from the fact that we were outgunned by the Germans and when they started using the 88 millimetre anti-aircraft guns in a ground role, of course, they by far outgunned us. The armour commanders were very sensitive as to how the armour was to be used. They didn’t want to be exposed to being sitting ducks in the front line.26
There was general apprehension amongst the armoured unit commanders about the possibility of getting their tanks and, very importantly, the vehicles needed to keep them supplied, through the minefields in one night. Training exercises confirm
ed their fears. Experience of the July battles also led them to doubt the infantry’s ability to clear a path through the minefields in sufficiently quick time for their armour to pass through. More pertinently, however, they did not attempt to test this in their exercises – which focused on the problems of manoeuvring at night and retaining order. Exercises began with the assumption that XXX Corps had done its job.
Neither Lumsden nor Leese worked to bridge this gap in the training. Leese had only recently assumed command of XXX Corps from Ramsden after the Alam Halfa battle, and on arrival in Egypt, ‘had been horrified at the controversy between infantry and armour’, noting ‘neither had confidence in the other’.27 Nevertheless, he did not address this schism. Yet amongst his divisions the suspicion that the armoured leaders were likely to act too cautiously was so strong that Morshead, Pienaar and Freyberg, the three ‘Commonwealth commanders’, approached Leese to express their concerns. With no first-hand experience of the Desert War, and an unwillingness to believe that the armour would not follow Montgomery’s orders to the letter, Leese took the matter no further. His over-simplistic analysis was that the armoured divisions were too worried about mines and the 88mm anti-tank guns.28 Much criticism has been levelled over this matter at Lumsden, but at least some should also be directed at Leese and also at Montgomery and Guingand for not insisting on closer corps co-operation. This was, after all, one of Eighth Army Headquarters’ chief roles.
The exception to this lack of trust in infantry–armour relations was in 2nd New Zealand Division where 9th Armoured Brigade, commanded by John Currie, became an organic component of Freyberg’s division. Trooper Len Flanakin of the Warwickshire Yeomanry remembered:
We settled down with the 2 NZ Division very well and found them to be a jovial lot. They were tough as soldiers but a damn sight tougher on the rugby field. They accepted us for who we were… General Montgomery paid us a visit while we were at ‘Happy Valley’ and I shall always remember him referring to us as ‘wonderful material’.29
Flanakin’s remark about rugby indicates the work being done in a crucial aspect of infantry–armour co-operation. Freyberg went further still in pursuit of effective collaboration, as Howard Kippenberger recalled:
The General gave a dinner party in Alexandria to the senior officers of the Division and of 9 Armoured Brigade, and it can be said that thereby a lot of reserve and shyness was broken down. The regiments put the New Zealand fern-leaf, our distinctive emblem, on their tanks and vehicles. We were pleased that they were clearly proud to wear it. We sent our men to examine and admire their Shermans, and our bands to play at their ceremonial parades and church services. We called on one another at every opportunity and got to know as many individuals and personalities as possible.30
In the Great War, the benefits of ‘social activities’ which followed the ‘formal’ training exercises to successful co-operation between infantry and tank crews had been recognized, since they fostered a stronger empathy between the two arms which, in turn, encouraged teamwork.31 But, above all, the two arms ‘trained together, did TEWTs, and prepared and carried out exercises together.’32 The six weeks of training granted to the New Zealanders and 9th Armoured were used to good purpose and contrasted with 23rd Armoured Brigade’s disastrous introduction to battle back in July.
Both Leese and Lumsden were present at an exercise conducted by the New Zealanders and their attached armour which ran from 24–27 September and from which Freyberg concluded that ‘considerably more collective training would have to be undertaken before the tanks and infantry could work as one.’33 But, whilst Freyberg trained his division to address the problem, the lessons were not applied elsewhere.
Amongst XXX Corps infantry, the training opportunities were harder to come by. Both 1st South African and 9th Australian Divisions were in the front line. Consequently, brigades were withdrawn from these positions and trained in turn. In 51st Division, Major-General Douglas Wimberley was guided by the principles he had learned from his Great War mentor:
It was very necessary that every man should go into his first action knowing exactly what he had to do. I had had that lesson well drummed into me by the teaching of ‘Uncle’ Harper, our General, in 1917 at Ypres and Cambrai, and there was no time to be lost in practising!34
A small proportion of Wimberley’s command was also in the front line. But here they were receiving valuable instruction in the techniques of desert warfare from the Australians:
Our officers in the line were attached to Australian officers, our sergeants to their sergeants, if the Australians sent out patrols they were composed of a mixture of Aussies and Jocks under instruction. We were very fortunate in our instructors. They were veteran troops and they could not have been kinder to us.35
Wimberley laid out an exact replica of the defences his men would face in the coming attack. Then each brigade practised its battalions in their role in the initial attack. Wimberley strove for realism in the training:
I used our Divisional artillery to fire the exact barrage they would have to fire in the battle, at the same rate and with the same pauses for leap-frogging. Meanwhile Divisional Signals carried out the same outline plan, reporting the capture of objectives: and the Sappers did their clearing of mines through dummy minefields, of what we believed were the same breadth as the ones we had actually to gap in the battle.36
Attempts to create realistic conditions in the largest of his division’s exercises (this time involving both 153rd and 154th Brigades covered by the divisional artillery), tested the infantry’s mettle but, unfortunately, led to the death of the second-in-command of 1st Black Watch, Major Arthur Wilmot, mortally wounded by an artillery ‘short’. Private Frank Devaney of the 1st Black Watch remembered:
We did mock attacks with live artillery. They tried to do something they’d never done before. They tried with a 50-yard lift. To walk behind it – this curtain of fire – to ensure that we were on the objective before Jerry could get his head up and man his machine-guns, etc. [Then] the whole thing was revised. The reason why it was altered was because the second in command at HQ was killed by a shell – Sir Arthur Wilmer [sic]. They said it would have to be done with a hundred yards’ lift. Even a hundred yards’ lift was terrific. Can you imagine these 800 guns firing a hundred yards just in front of you when you’re walking forward as close as you probably can? The idea was that we could walk so close as when a 25-pounder strikes, all the blast goes forward so you can be as tight as you like up behind that curtain of fire. It’s not affecting you but everything is affecting everybody in front of it, but you’re getting the concussion, you’re getting the noise. You’re getting it coming down over the top of you. The projectiles are coming lower and they swish.37
Opportunities to train were welcome, but the training focused narrowly on the tasks required to get through the Panzerarmee defences. As in the planning, no thinking was directed towards the detail of the hoped-for exploitation.
On 6 October, Montgomery modified the battle plan.38 The revised plan aimed at the methodical destruction of the Panzerarmee through ‘crumbling’ operations aimed at the Axis infantry after XXX Corps had made bridgeheads in the defences. In Montgomery’s colourful expression, the attackers having ‘eaten the guts out of the enemy’, the Germans and Italians would be unable to hold their positions. If the Afrika Korps attempted to interfere by launching counter-attacks, this would play into the hands of the numerically superior Eighth Army. With the line-holding infantry destroyed, the Afrika Korps could not avoid destruction anyway. Montgomery’s tone was now altogether more cautious and warned that ‘we should keep well within ourselves, and should not attempt ambitious operations beyond the capabilities of our somewhat untrained troops’.39 This change in approach was influenced by intelligence analysis of the likely Panzerarmee response to a surprise attack. Montgomery’s stated reason was the inadequate level of Eighth Army’s training.
Many of the plan’s most ambitious elements were unchanged. At a corp
s conference the following day, the continued expectation that the armour of X Corps would, and must, break through the minefields in one night was again debated. Lumsden, despite his own strong opinions on the approach, dutifully reflected the Army Commander’s views during the discussions but allowed consideration of an alternative approach by which the armoured operations started a night after XXX Corps had seized the bridgeheads. Guingand, who was present, afterwards told Montgomery of the armoured commanders’ continued unhappiness with the plan. Montgomery moved to quash the continued rumblings of discontent, forcefully telling Lumsden that his orders allowed no latitude in interpretation.
Montgomery continued to suggest that the state of training had been his principal reason for changes in the plan, going even further to indicate where the inadequacies might be, when it was appropriate for his audience. According to Kippenberger: