ON August 19 I paid another visit to the Desert Front. I drove with Alexander in his car out from Cairo past the Pyramids, about 130 miles through the desert to the sea at Abusir. I was cheered by all he told me. As the shadows lengthened we reached Montgomery’s headquarters at Burg-el-Arab. Here the afterwards famous caravan was drawn up amid the sand-dunes by the sparkling waves. The General gave me his own wagon, divided between office and bedroom. After our long drive we all had a delicious bathe. “All the armies are bathing now at this hour all along the coast,” said Montgomery as we stood in our towels. He waved his arm to the westward. Three hundred yards away about a thousand of our men were disporting themselves on the beach. Although I knew the answer, I asked, “Why do the War Office go to the expense of sending out white bathing drawers for the troops? Surely this economy should be made.” They were in fact tanned and burnt to the darkest brown everywhere except where they wore their short pants.
How fashions change! When I marched to Omdurman forty-four years before the theory was that the African sun must at all costs be kept away from the skin. The rules were strict. Special spine-pads were buttoned on to the back of all our khaki coats. It was a military offence to appear without a pith helmet. We were advised to wear thick underclothing, following Arab custom enjoined by a thousand years of experience. Yet now half-way through the twentieth century many of the white soldiers went about their daily toil hatless and naked except for the equal of a loin cloth. Apparently it did them no harm. Though the process of changing from white to bronze took several weeks and gradual application, sunstroke and heatstroke were rare. I wonder how the doctors explain all this.
After we had dressed for dinner—my zip suit hardly takes a minute to put on—we gathered in Montgomery’s map wagon. There he gave us a masterly exposition of the situation, showing that in a few days he had firmly gripped the whole problem. He accurately predicted Rommel’s next attack, and explained his plans to meet it. All of which proved true and sound. He then described his plans for taking the offensive himself. He must however have six weeks to get the Eighth Army into order. He would re-form the divisions as integral tactical units. We must wait till the new divisions had taken their place at the front and until the Sherman tanks were broken in. Then there would be three Army Corps, each under an experienced officer, whom he and Alexander knew well. Above all the artillery would be used as had never been possible before in the Desert. He spoke of the end of September. I was disappointed at the date, but even this was dependent upon Rommel. Our information showed that a blow from him was imminent. I was myself already fully informed, and was well content that he should try a wide turning movement round our Desert Flank in order to reach Cairo, and that a manœuvre battle should be fought on «his communications.
At this time I thought much of Napoleon’s defeat in 1814. He too poised to strike at the communications, but the Allies marched straight on into an almost open Paris. I thought it of the highest importance that Cairo should be defended by every able-bodied man in uniform not required for the Eighth Army. Thus alone would the field army have full manœuvring freedom and be able to take risks in letting its flank be turned before striking. It was with great pleasure that I found we were all in agreement. Although I was always impatient for offensive action on our part at the earliest moment, I welcomed the prospect of Rommel breaking his teeth upon us before our main attack was launched. But should we have time to organise the defence of Cairo? Many signs pointed to the audacious commander who faced us only a dozen miles away striking his supreme blow before the end of August. Any day indeed, my friends said, he might make his bid for continued mastery. A fortnight or three weeks’ delay would be all to our good.
On August 20 we sallied forth early to see the prospective battlefield and the gallant troops who were to hold it. I was taken to the key point south-east of the Ruweisat Ridge. Here, amid the hard, rolling curves and creases of the desert, lay the mass of our armour, camouflaged, concealed, and dispersed, yet tactically concentrated. Here I met the young Brigadier Roberts, who at that time commanded the whole of our armoured force in this vital position. All our best tanks were under him. Montgomery explained to me the disposition of our artillery of all natures. Every crevice of the desert was packed with camouflaged concealed batteries. Three or four hundred guns would fire at the German armour before we hurled in our own.
Although of course no gatherings of troops could be allowed under the enemy’s continuous air reconnaissance, I saw a great many soldiers that day, who greeted me with grins and cheers. I inspected my own regiment, the 4th Hussars, or as many of them as they dared to bring together—perhaps fifty or sixty—near the field cemetery, in which a number of their comrades had been newly buried. All this was moving, but with it all there grew a sense of the reviving ardour of the Army. Everybody said what a change there was since Montgomery had taken command. I could feel the truth of this with joy and comfort.
We were to lunch with Bernard Freyberg. My mind went back to a similar visit I had paid him in Flanders, at his battle-post in the valley of the Scarpe, a quarter of a century before, when he already commanded a brigade. Then he had blithely offered to take me for a walk along his outposts. But knowing him and knowing the line as I did I declined. Now it was the other way round. I certainly hoped to see at least a forward observation post of these splendid New Zealanders, who were in contact about five miles away. Alexander’s attitude showed he would not forbid but rather accompany the excursion. But Bernard Freyberg flatly refused to take the responsibility, and this was not a matter about which orders are usually given, even by the highest authority.
Instead we went into his sweltering mess tent, and were offered a luncheon, far more magnificent than the one I had eaten on the Scarpe. This was an August noonday in the Desert. The set piece of the meal was a scalding broth of tinned New Zealand oysters, to which I could do no more than was civil. Presently Montgomery, who had left us some time before, drove up. Freyberg went out to salute him, and told him his place had been kept and that he was expected to luncheon. But “Monty”, as he was already called, had, it appeared, made it a rule not to accept hospitality from any of his subordinate commanders. So he sat outside in his car eating an austere sandwich and drinking his lemonade with all formalities. Napoleon also might have stood aloof in the interests of discipline. Dur aux grands was one of his maxims. But he would certainly have had an excellent roast chicken, served him from his own fourgon. Marlborough would have entered and quaffed the good wine with his officers—Cromwell, I think, too. The technique varies, and the results seem to have been good in all these cases.
We spent all the afternoon among the Army, and it was past seven when we got back to the caravan and the pleasant waves of its beach. I was so uplifted by all I had seen that I was not at all tired and sat up late talking. Before Montgomery went to bed at ten o’clock, in accordance with his routine, he asked me to write something in his personal diary. I did so now and on several other occasions during the long war. Here is what I wrote this time:
“May the anniversary of Blenheim, which marks the opening of the new Command, bring to the Commander-in-Chief of the Eighth Army and his troops the fame and fortune they will surely deserve.”
On August 22 I visited the Tura caves, near Cairo, where vital repair work was being done. Out of these caves the stones of the Pyramids had been cut some time before. They came in very handy now. Everything looked very smart and efficient on the spot, and an immense amount of work was being done day and night by masses of skilled men. But I had my tables of facts and figures and remained dissatisfied. The scale was far too small. The original fault lay with the Pharaohs for not having built more and larger Pyramids. Other responsibilities were more difficult to assign. We spent the rest of the day flying from one airfield to another, inspecting the installations and addressing the ground staffs. At one point two or three thousand airmen were assembled. I also visited, brigade by brigade, the Highland Division, just landed. It was late when we got back to the Embassy.
During these last days of my visit all my thought rested upon the impending battle. At any moment Rommel might attack with a devastating surge of armour. He could come in by the Pyramids with hardly a check except a single canal till he reached the Nile, which flowed serenely by at the bottom of the Residency lawn. Lady Lampson’s baby son smiled from his pram amid the palm-trees. I looked out across the river at the flat expanses beyond. All was calm and peaceful, but I suggested to the mother that it was very hot and sultry in Cairo and could not be good for children. “Why not send the baby away to be braced by the cool breezes of the Lebanon?” But she did not take my advice, and none can say she did not judge the military situation rightly.
In the fullest accord with General Alexander and the C.I.G.S., 1 set on foot a series of extreme measures for the defence of Cairo and the water-lines running northward to the sea. Rifle-pits and machine-gun posts were constructed, bridges mined and their approaches wired, and inundations loosed over the whole wide front. All the office population of Cairo, numbering thousands of staff officers and uniformed clerks, were armed with rifles and ordered to take their stations, if, need be, along the fortified water line. The 51st Highland Division was not yet regarded as “desert-worthy”, but these magnificent troops were now ordered to man the new Nile front. The position was one of great strength because of the comparatively few causeways which cross the canalised flooded or floodable area of the Delta. It seemed quite practicable to arrest an armoured rush along the causeways. The defence of Cairo would normally have belonged to the British general who commanded the Egyptian Army, all of whose forces were also arrayed. I thought it better however to place the responsibility, should an emergency occur, upon General Maitland-Wilson—“Jumbo”—who had been appointed to the Persia-Iraq Command, but whose headquarters during these critical weeks were forming in Cairo. To him I issued a directive to inform himself fully of the whole defence plan, and to take responsibility from the moment when General Alexander told him that Cairo was in danger.
I had now to go home on the eve of battle and return to far wider but by no means less decisive affairs. I had already obtained the Cabinet’s approval of the directive to be given to General Alexander. He was the supreme authority with whom I now dealt in the Middle East. Montgomery and the Eighth Army were under him. So also, if it became necessary, was Maitland-Wilson and the defence of Cairo. “Alex”, as I had long called him, had already moved himself and his personal headquarters into the Desert by the Pyramids. Cool, gay, comprehending all, he inspired quiet, deep confidence in every quarter.
We sailed off from the Desert airfield at 7.5 p.m. on August 23, and I slept the sleep of the just till long after daylight. When I clambered along the bomb-bay to the cockpit of the “Commando” we were already approaching Gibraltar. I must say it looked very dangerous. All was swathed in morning mist. One could not see a hundred yards ahead, and we were not flying more than thirty feet above the sea. I asked Vanderkloot if it was all right, and said I hoped he would not hit the Rock of Gibraltar. His answers were not particularly reassuring, but he felt sufficiently sure of his course not to go up high and stand out to sea, which personally I should have been glad to see him do. We held on for another four or five minutes. Then suddenly we flew into clear air, and up towered the great precipice of Gibraltar, gleaming on the isthmus and strip of neutral ground which joins it to Spain and the mountain called the Queen of Spain’s Chair. After three or four hours’ flying in mist Vanderkloot had been exact. We passsed the grim rock-face a few hundred yards away without having to alter our course, and made a perfect landing. I still think it would have been better to go aloft and circle round for an hour or two. We had the petrol and were not pressed for time. But it was a fine performance. We spent the morning with the Governor, and flew home in the afternoon, taking a wide sweep across the Bay of Biscay when darkness fell.
When I set out on my missions to Cairo and Moscow the commander for “Torch” had not been chosen. I had suggested on July 31 that if General Marshall were designated for the Supreme Command of the cross-Channel operation in 1943 General Eisenhower should act as his deputy and forerunner in London and work at “Torch”, which he would himself command, with General Alexander as his second. Opinion moved forward on these lines, and before I started from Cairo for Moscow the President had sent me his agreement. Much however remained to be decided about the final shaping of our plans, and on the day following my return to London Generals Eisenhower and Clark came to dine with me to discuss the state of the operation.
I was at this time in very close and agreeable contact with these American officers. From the moment they arrived in June I had arranged a weekly luncheon at Number 10 on Tuesdays. These meetings seemed to be a success. I was nearly always alone with them, and we talked all our affairs over, back and forth, as if we were all of one country. We also had a number of informal conferences in our downstairs diningroom, beginning at about ten o’clock at night and sometimes running late. Several times the American generals came for a night or a week-end to Chequers. Nothing but shop was ever talked on any of these occasions. I am sure these close relationships were necessary for the conduct of the war, and I could not have grasped the whole position without them.
On September 22 at a Chiefs of Staff meeting at which I presided and Eisenhower was present, the final decision was taken. The date of “Torch” was fixed for November 8.
In the midst of all this Rommel made his determined but, as it proved, his last thrust towards Cairo. Until this was over my thoughts lay in the Desert and the trial of strength impending there. I had full confidence in our new commanders, and was sure that our numerical superiority in troops, armour, and airpower was higher than it had ever been before. But after the unpleasant surprises of the past two years it was difficult to banish anxiety. As I had been so lately over the very ground where the battle was to be fought, and had the picture of the creased and curving rocky Desert, with its hidden batteries and tanks and our Army crouched for a counter-spring, so vividly in my mind’s eye, the whole scene was fiercely lighted. Another reverse would not only be disastrous in itself, but would damage British prestige and influence in the discussions we were having with our American Allies. On the other hand, if Rommel were repulsed growing confidence and the feeling that the tide was about to turn in our favour would help carry all our other affairs to agreement.
General Alexander had promised to send me the word “Zip” (which I took from the clothes I so often wore) when it actually began. “What do you now think,” I asked him on August 28, “of the probabilities of ‘Zip’ coming this moon? Military Intelligence opinion now does not regard it as imminent. All good wishes.” “ ‘Zip’ now equal money every day,” he replied, “from now onwards. Odds against [it are] increasing till September 2, when it can be considered unlikely.” On the 30th I received the monosyllabic signal “Zip”, and telegraphed to Roosevelt and Stalin: “Rommel has begun the attack for which we have been preparing. An important battle may now be fought.”
Rommel’s plan, correctly deduced by Montgomery, was to pass his armour through the weakly defended mine-belt in the southern part of the British front and then swing north to roll up our position from flank and rear. The critical ground for the success of this manœuvre was the Alam Halfa ridge, and Montgomery’s dispositions were made principally to ensure that this did not fall into enemy hands.
During the night of August 30 the two armoured divisions of the German Afrika Korps penetrated the mine-belt, and next morning moved to the Ragil Depression. Our 7th Armoured Division, withdrawing steadily before them, took station on the eastward flank. To the north of the German armour two Italian armoured divisions and one motorised also attempted to cross the minefield. They had little success. It was deeper than they had expected, and they found themselves under severe harassing fire from the enfilading artillery of the New Zealand Division. The German 90th Light Division however successfully penetrated, to form a hinge for the armour’s northern swing. At the other end of the line simultaneous holding attacks were made on the 5th Indian and 9th Australian Divisions; these were repulsed after some stiff fighting. From the Ragil Depression the German-Italian armour had the option of striking north against the Alam Halfa ridge or north-east towards Hammam. Montgomery hoped that they would not take the latter course. He preferred to fight on his chosen battleground, the ridge. A map which showed easy going for tanks in that direction and bad going farther east had been planted upon Rommel. General von Thoma, captured two months later, stated that this false information had its intended effect. Certainly the battle now took the precise form that Montgomery desired.
On the evening of the 31st a northward thrust was repulsed and the enemy’s armoured mass went into laager for a night, uncomfortably spent under continuous artillery fire and violent air bombardment. Next morning they advanced against the centre of the British line, where the 10th Armoured Division were now concentrated to meet them. The sand was much heavier than they had been led to believe and the resistance far stronger than they had hoped. The attack, though renewed in the afternoon, failed. Rommel was now deeply committed. The Italians had foundered. He had no hope of reinforcing his forward armour and the heavy going had consumed much of his scanty fuel. He had probably heard also of the sinking of three more tankers in the Mediterranean. So on September 2 his armour took up a defensive posture and awaited attack.
Montgomery did not accept the invitation, and Rommel had no alternative but to withdraw. On the 3rd the movement began, harassed in flank by the 7th British Armoured Division, which took a heavy toll of unarmoured transport vehicles. That night the British counter-attack began, not on the enemy armour, but on the 90th Light and the Trieste Motorised Divisions. If these could be broken, then the gaps in the minefield might be blocked before the German armour could return through them. The New Zealand Division made strong attacks, but they were fiercely resisted and the Afrika Korps escaped. Montgomery now stopped the pursuit. He planned to seize the initiative when the time was ripe, but not yet. He was content to have repulsed Rommel’s final thrust for Egypt with such heavy loss. At relatively little cost to themselves the Eighth Army and the Desert Air Force had inflicted a heavy stroke upon the enemy and caused another crisis in his supply. From documents captured later we know that Rommel was in dire straits and of his insistent demands for help. We know too that he was a wearied, ailing man at the time. The consequences of Alam Halfa, as the engagement was called, were effective two months later.
Although our two great operations at both ends of the Mediterranean were now settled and all preparations for them were moving forward, the period of waiting was one of suppressed but extreme tension. The inner circle who knew were anxious about what would happen. All those who did not know were disquieted that nothing was happening.
I had now been twenty-eight months at the head of affairs, during which we had sustained an almost unbroken series of military defeats. We had survived the collapse of France and the air attack on Britain. We had not been invaded. We still held Egypt. We were alive and at bay; but that was all. On the other hand, what a cataract of disasters had fallen upon us! The fiasco of Dakar, the loss of all our Desert conquests from the Italians, the tragedy of Greece, the loss of Crete, the unrelieved reverses of the Japanese war, the loss of Hong Kong, the overrunning of the Dutch East Indies, the catastrophe of Singapore, the Japanese conquest of Burma, Auchinleck’s defeat in the Desert, the surrender of Tobruk, the failure, as it was judged, at Dieppe—all these were galling links in a chain of misfortune and frustration to which no parallel could be found in our history. The fact that we were no longer alone, but instead had the two most mighty nations in the world in alliance fighting desperately at our side, gave indeed assurances of ultimate victory. But this, by removing the sense of mortal peril, only made criticism more free. Was it strange that the whole character and system of the war direction, for which I was responsible, should have been brought into question and challenge?
It is indeed remarkable that I was not in this bleak lull dismissed from power, or confronted with demands for changes in my methods, which it was known I should never accept. I should then have vanished from the scene with a load of calamity on my shoulders, and the harvest, at last to be reaped, would have been ascribed to my belated disappearance. For indeed the whole aspect of the war was about to be transformed. Henceforward increasing success, marred hardly by a mishap, was to be our lot. Although the struggle would be long and hard, requiring the most strenuous effort from all, we had reached the top of the pass, and our road to victory was not only sure and certain, but accompanied by constant cheering events. I was not denied the right to share in this new phase of the war because of the unity and strength of the War Cabinet, the confidence which I preserved of my political and professional colleagues, the steadfast loyalty of Parliament, and the persisting goodwill of the nation. All this shows how much luck there is in human affairs, and how little we should worry about anything except doing our best.
In the meantime I found some relief in examining the proposals which the Foreign Office were elaborating, in consultation with the State Department in Washington, on the future of world government after the war. The Foreign Secretary circulated to the War Cabinet in October an important document on this subject entitled “The Four-Power Plan”, under which the supreme direction would have come from a council composed of Great Britain, the United States, Russia, and China. I am glad that I found strength to put my own opinions on record in the following minute to the Foreign Secretary, which was dated 21 October 1942:
In spite of the pressure of events, I will endeavour to write a reply. It sounds very simple to pick out these four Big Powers. We cannot however tell what sort of a Russia and what kind of Russian demands we shall have to face. A little later on it may be possible. As to China, I cannot regard the Chungking Government as representing a great world-Power. Certainly there would be a faggot vote on the side of the United States in any attempt to liquidate the British overseas Empire.
2. I must admit that my thoughts rest primarily in Europe—the revival of the glory of Europe, the parent continent of the modern nations and of civilisation. It would be a measureless disaster if Russian barbarism overlaid the culture and independence of the ancient States of Europe. Hard as it is to say now, I trust that the European family may act unitedly as one under a Council of Europe. I look forward to a United States of Europe in which the barriers between the nations will be greatly minimised and unrestricted travel will be possible. I hope to seq the economy of Europe studied as a whole. I hope to see a Council consisting of perhaps ten units, including the former Great Powers, with several confederations—Scandinavian, Danubian, Balkan, etc.—which would possess an international police and be charged with keeping Prussia disarmed. Of course we shall have to work with the Americans in many ways, and in the greatest ways, but Europe is our prime care, and we certainly do not wish to be shut up with the Russians and the Chinese when Swedes, Norwegians, Danes, Dutch, Belgians, Frenchmen, Spaniards, Poles, Czechs, and Turks will have their burning questions, their desire for our aid, and their very great power of making their voices heard. It would be easy to dilate upon these themes. Unhappily the war has prior claims on your attention and on mine.
Thus we approached the great military climax upon which all was to be staked.
21 + s.w.w.
