Intelligence and Deception are two sides of the same coin and both are as old as war itself. In the British Army, Military Intelligence – the obtaining of information on the enemy’s intentions and the prediction of his likely actions – had been recognized as a discrete activity in the War Office since 1873, when an Intelligence Branch was set up to pull together information on the major foreign powers. In the reorganization of the War Office at the beginning of the twentieth century, Intelligence was firmly established as one of the key branches of the General Staff, although it was frequently combined with Operations. It also spawned some offshoots, notably MI5, dealing with counter-intelligence, and MI6, dealing with overseas intelligence. The Intelligence Corps was formed in 1914, only to be disbanded in 1929. It was re-formed again in the summer of 1940, but in spite of substantial growth in its numbers, most intelligence officers, and especially those in the field, did not belong to the Corps and had no specialized intelligence background or training, but were appointed from outside. This gave rise to a strong element of amateurishness in the work, exemplified by Auchinleck’s appointment of the inexperienced Freddie to the post of DMI Middle East in early 1942. Although some of the basics were taught at Staff College, it seemed to many that all that was required was a keen intellect and an enquiring mind. These qualities were indeed vital, but without the many tedious hours of disciplined sifting and sieving through all the sources, they were not enough in themselves.
In the field there was an Intelligence staff in all formations from army groups to brigades, and there were Intelligence Officers in battalions and regiments. At Eighth Army in September 1942, the establishment consisted of twelve officers and thirty-seven other ranks. The GSO1 (I) was still ‘Spud’ Murphy, whilst Bill Williams was one of four GSO2s, another of whom was responsible specifically for RAF liaison. The numbers fluctuated slightly, but remained at much the same level throughout the North African campaign.
Monty very quickly identified Williams as an Intelligence officer of some quality and, according to his memoirs, resolved at a very early stage that he would head up his Intelligence staff, although this was not to happen for many months. Newly promoted from captain to major, a mere 29 years old and a ‘hostilities-only’ officer, he was not ready for such a promotion at the time, but Monty was never one to let age or background stand in the way of putting the right man in the right job.
Part of the attraction of Williams to Monty was that he was the guardian of ULTRA, having been ‘indoctrinated’ into the most important secret of the war whilst working at GHQ. How much Monty himself knew about ULTRA before his arrival in Egypt is not known, but his position as an army commander in the UK would almost certainly have put him on the list of recipients. The gift to him, not long after his arrival at Eighth Army, of Rommel’s plan for Alam Halfa, which turned out to be correct in every detail other than a twoday delay due to a lack of petrol, made a considerable impression. Quite apart from the blow rendered to the Axis forces, the victory immediately bolstered the new commander’s reputation within Eighth Army and lifted morale as only success can do. In fact, although ULTRA continued to produce highly valuable information which had a material impact on Monty’s approach to this and future campaigns, on only one future occasion, at Medenine in February 1943, would it be quite so precise in its accuracy.
That ULTRA was never once compromised was one of the great achievements of the war. It was only available to higher commands, army groups and armies, but even then the combined number of people in on the secret was very large. At the army level, the intelligence was handled by a separate group within the Intelligence branch known as the Special Liaison Unit (‘SLU’).1 This group had separate offices from the rest of G (I) and was staffed by both officers and other ranks, who included the cipher clerks and signallers. It was the signallers who received the signals from Bletchley Park. The sender and the receiver had identical ‘one-time pads’, and the former would indicate which of the tear-off sheets on the pad was to be used. The cipher clerks would then use the specific data on the sheet to decipher the signal before destroying the sheet. It was effective and safe, but relatively slow. Later in the war, Typex machines were introduced, which radically improved the speed of deciphering.
It was, however, all too easy to misuse ULTRA. As Williams was later to write:
It should not be necessary to stress the value of the material in shaping the general intelligence of the war. Yet it should be emphasized from the outset that the material was dangerously valuable not only because we might lose it but also because it seemed the answer to an Intelligence Officer’s prayer. Yet by providing this answer it was likely to save the officer from doing Intelligence. Instead of being the best, it tended to become the only, source. There was a tendency at all times to await the next message and, often, to be fascinated by the authenticity of the information into failing to think whether it was significant at the particular level at which it was being considered … The information purveyed was so remarkable that it tended, particularly if one was tired or overbusy, to engulf not only all other sources but that very common sense which forms the basis of Intelligence.2
Williams’s background as an academic now came into play. Accustomed to weighing all the evidence, not just that obtained from a single source, he was well equipped to handle ULTRA with precisely the level of respect it deserved:
At an Army HQ we maintained … that during battle we had not done our day’s work properly unless we had beaten the ULTRA, unless we knew what was happening and could appreciate what would happen before it could arrive. This did not mean that we were not glad of its arrival, for at best it showed that we were wrong, usually it enabled us to tidy up the loose ends and at worst we tumbled into bed with a smug confirmation.3
If ULTRA was a gift to Monty, then Monty was a gift to his Intelligence staff. He believed the Intelligence which they were providing, but he made it his own as far as others were concerned, thereby providing just the level of cover needed. Only he and Freddie, who had been indoctrinated whilst serving as DMI at GHQ Middle East, saw the naked material. For further consumption by corps commanders and others, an appropriate gloss was put on the regular Intelligence appreciations received from Army HQ in order to conceal its origins. The only other people aware of it were an equally small number of RAF Intelligence staff, with whom a conference was held nightly to agree how it should be disseminated.
Freddie was only too aware of the way in which ULTRA should be handled from the experiences and eventual fate of his predecessor as DMI, John Shearer. ULTRA had been available from the beginning of the North African campaign and had enabled Shearer to predict accurately the ability of Rommel to attack for the first time in March 1941. On that occasion Wavell had not believed the evidence, based on his own appreciation of the logistical difficulties facing his enemy. Subsequently, Shearer himself had come to grief through an overoptimistic interpretation of ULTRA in early 1942. Freddie was not going to allow the same mistakes to be made.
ULTRA was far from being the only source of Intelligence. A close cousin was the Y-Service, which covered all day-to-day interception of enemy radio and, to a much lesser extent, telephone traffic. In addition to the SLU, there was a dedicated Y-Service detachment at Army HQ, which operated under similar levels of secrecy, although its existence and the nature of its work were widely recognized. Its origins lay in the formation of the Government Code and Cypher School in 1919, known as Station X and more familiarly as Bletchley Park. By late 1942 the school’s establishment had grown from some 150 at the outbreak of war to about 3,500 and it was to increase very substantially over the next three years. Always associated with ULTRA, in fact it handled all types of signal intelligence and even had its own cryptanalytical outpost at Middle East Command, known as the Combined Bureau. In both Cairo and Bletchley Y-Service work was carried out on the decryption of German and Italian codes and cyphers.
During the course of a battle the Y-Service tended to become more important than ULTRA, as the Enigma machines were not used to the same extent at the tactical level, where relatively low level codes and cyphers were employed. Moreover, by the use of direction finders, the Y-Service could also monitor the movements of enemy units and formations. Williams considered that it helped significantly to build up the day-to-day knowledge of the enemy which enabled his staff to handle ULTRA with more confidence. For his part he took care to ensure that the Y-Service staff were fully appraised of all other intelligence being received, with the sole exception of ULTRA.
Other sources of intelligence were, in fact, vital. Perhaps the most important of these was aerial photo-reconnaissance. Although it was still some distance from the highly sophisticated activity of the last two years of the war, photo-reconnaissance had come on a long way since 1940. There were as yet no specialized Mosquito aircraft in the theatre, although Tedder had asked for them, but light bombers, particularly the Martin Marylands operated by the South African Air Force, were doing very good high-level strategic reconnaissance work, largely from an altitude of 25,000 feet, whilst low-level tactical reconnaissance was still being carried out by Hurricanes. Between them they managed to contribute significantly to building a picture of the location of the Axis formations and units.
On the ground, the best intelligence had, from the beginning of the campaign, been obtained from the Long Range Desert Group. This was essentially a covert organization, sending its patrols across the wide expanses of desert behind enemy lines to monitor enemy movements whilst concealing its presence, although it did on some occasions attack Axis targets or provide transport for others to do so. During the period up to the end of July 1942 it had kept a watch on the only metalled road between Tripoli and Benghazi, but the rapid German advance to El Alamein had forced it to move its base from the Siwa Oasis, west of the Qattara depression, much further south to the Kufra Oasis, from where such operations, although still carried out, were much more difficult to mount. It would not be until the advance had started in November that the LRDG would come fully into its own once again.
The other major source of intelligence was prisoners of war. Whilst the armies were facing each other across the line at El Alamein, these were relatively few, although patrols would sometimes manage to snatch some, the interrogation of whom would add to the tapestry of Intelligence being patiently built up. Once the battle had begun, they became more plentiful and provided some useful corroboration of other sources.
In the nearly two months between the Battles of Alam Halfa and El Alamein, Eighth Army built up a very accurate picture of the location of the Axis formations. The fear now was that the enemy would also build a similarly accurate picture of Eighth Army, giving them advance notice of where and when a new offensive might strike. A deception plan was required to throw them off the scent, and Monty put Charles Richardson in charge of developing it.
Deception was used at all stages of campaigns, but played a particularly significant role in the run-up to major operations. It would reach its apogee with the highly complex and outstandingly successful Operation FORTITUDE before and immediately after the landings in Normandy in 1944, but even in 1942 it was far from being a new concept. In the Middle East the specialists were concentrated not at Army HQ but at GHQ Middle East, in the persons of Colonel Dudley Clarke, whose ‘A’ Force had had great success in the past, through a variety of ruses, in persuading the Axis that Eighth Army was much larger than it actually was, and Colonel Geoffrey Barkas, the Director of Camouflage. Richardson and these two men now collaborated on Operation BERTRAM.
The main element of Monty’s plan for the next battle was a concentrated attack by four of the five infantry divisions of XXX Corps, through which the two armoured divisions of X Corps would then be passed, all on a front of less than ten miles at the far north of the line. The purpose of Operation BERTRAM was to persuade the enemy that that attack would take place in the south, where Rommel would in any event be more likely to expect it, and that its timing would be two or more days later than it was actually planned to begin. It did so by concealing Eighth Army’s real intentions and moves and by providing false information, primarily for the benefit of aerial reconnaissance.
The first problem was the arrival of two new divisions, 51 Highland and 2 New Zealand, in the XXX Corps sector. Long before the date of the attack, the administrative transport of XXX Corps was visibly dispersed in positions which would in due course be occupied by the operational transport of the two divisions, and a gradual switch took place in such a way that the overall numbers did not increase. When the infantry arrived close to D-Day, they were concealed during the day in slit trenches which had been dug a month earlier. Dummy 3-ton lorries were erected in the positions to be occupied by the field artillery, each of which covered a gun and its limber, whilst the quads (gun tractors) were similarly disguised.
The next task was to conceal 2,000 tons of POL (Petrol, Oil & Lubricants), 3,000 tons of ammunition, 1,000 tons of engineer and ordnance stores and 600 tons of other supplies. Most were dealt with by adding very gradually to, but also camouflaging, existing dumps well known to the enemy; but a new site, fully camouflaged, was also constructed on hummocky ground near El Imayid, close to the sea some miles behind the front line. Vehicles and tents on the existing dumps were replaced by supply stacks camouflaged to look the same. POL was hidden in slit trenches which had been in existence for at least a year. At the same time, visible dummy dumps were set up in the southern area.
The most difficult problem was how to conceal six additional tracks leading up to the front from the assembly area 25 miles to the rear, which were being built under the orders of Fred Kisch. There was no good solution other than to delay construction, particularly in the forward areas, to as close as possible to D-Day and to mount constant fighter patrols during daylight hours to deter enemy reconnaissance. All road traffic in the north was strictly controlled by day, whilst traffic in the south was increased. A dummy water pipeline was also constructed to the southern sector, making slow progress, so that by D-Day it was still many miles away.
Notwithstanding that XIII Corps in the south would play a relatively minor role, Monty proposed to attack there to keep the German panzer divisions away from his main thrust. It was thus necessary to increase the artillery establishment in order to break through the minefields. To conceal this, a double bluff was arranged, whereby obviously dummy guns were put in position, to be replaced by the real thing close to D-Day.
The forward move of X Corps from its training area at Wadi el Natrun was staggered. The initial move to a staging area to the south was carried out openly in daylight, which suggested that it might be joining XIII Corps. On the night of D-3 the corps moved north again to an assembly area behind XXX Corps, its place in the staging area filled by exactly the same number of disguised lorries and dummy tanks and guns. Wireless sets were left behind which continued normal working under Clarke’s ‘A’ Force, whilst wireless restrictions were applied to the real divisions.
Richardson was determined that Operation BERTRAM should be highly disciplined. After expressing concern to Freddie that its importance might not be well understood, he was provided with a letter from Monty to each of the corps commanders, explaining what would be happening and instructing them to comply with all of Richardson’s plans, regardless of the inconveniences which were likely to be experienced. In the event, all went well, except that a fierce dust storm destroyed a number of the dummy vehicles, literally blowing many away and requiring the camouflage team to work all through the night to restore the situation.
Operation BERTRAM was a successful collaboration between Main HQ Eighth Army and GHQ Middle East and, at the staff level, the relationship between the two was excellent, helped not a little by Freddie’s character and that fact that he, and others like Williams, had worked in the latter. There was, however, considerable resentment at GHQ about the way in which Alexander was treated by Monty. Alex was profoundly useful to Monty, both because he kept the politicians in London and Cairo off his back and because he oversaw the organization which provided all the army’s material and human resource requirements. The Eighth Army Commander did not, however, rate his superior’s military skills at all highly and had not done so since he had taught him at Staff College. Monty tended to treat Alexander as a facilitator, willing and able to provide whatever Eighth Army needed, as the speedy arrival of 44 Division at Alam Halfa had demonstrated. He neither sought nor listened to any advice on how to fight the battle and he could on occasion be abrupt with and sometimes downright rude to Alex. This went down very badly with the senior officers at GHQ, notably Dick McCreery, Alex’s Chief of Staff, who had been sacked by Auchinleck for disagreeing with his proposals for the use of armour, only to be selected by Brooke to replace Corbett. McCreery, a strong character, stood up to Monty in a way which Alexander was not prepared to do and incurred his displeasure accordingly.
The relationship between Monty and Alex certainly allowed the former uncommonly free rein. Alex was, if nothing else, a pragmatist. As McCreery wrote after the war, he took the view that, ‘There is only one active army in my command and Montgomery is in command of it. The essence of my job here is to support him in every way I can, to handle all the political problems involved with many allies and to let him get on with the battle.’ The resentment lingered, but it was narrowly directed at Monty himself. Neither Freddie nor McCreery, outstanding staff officers with a common objective, let it get in the way of their cooperation.