On 8 September, after their now regular Tuesday night dinner with the Prime Minister, Generals Eisenhower and Clark managed to leave before midnight, something of a first. Ike reckoned his attempt to stifle a yawn, which Churchill spotted, had something to do with it. Also, Anthony Eden, the Foreign Secretary, turned up just after eleven and needed to talk; so soon after, Ike and Clark were released. Even so, Clark still strode down the corridor as fast as he could – past experience had taught him that the PM would all too often stop as he ushered his guests to the door, struck by some afterthought which then had to be discussed there and then in the corridor until thoroughly exhausted.
Ike arrived back at the Dorchester around midnight and immediately woke up Harry Butcher to give him the ‘dope’. Although the PM and President were now as one on the plans, Churchill had been pressing him for a date. The planners were working towards 4 November, but Ike had told the PM, ‘November 8 – sixty days from now.’ The men needed to be properly equipped and trained, Ike told him – US forces were being formed into regimental combat teams, similar to British brigades, and so the infantry regiments needed to train alongside their attached units of artillery and engineers. Then why not put British commandos, at a more advanced state of training, in US uniforms? the PM suggested. ‘I would be proud to have them wear ’em,’ Churchill assured him. But Ike wasn’t budging. The sham would soon be discovered, he told Churchill, and that could only work against them.1
‘This is a tragedy,’ noted Churchill to the Chiefs of Staff, ‘and every effort must be made to save at least ten days. Time is our chief enemy now.’2 But the ever-impatient PM was in for another disappointment. Back in August, Alex had warned Churchill that the earliest date for Eighth Army’s offensive would be the end of September, not taking into account the effect of an attack by Rommel. Monty then rather put his foot in it by telling Churchill that the first week of October was more realistic and that they could expect the battle to last a week. But there was no full moon until the third week of the month, and one was needed so that the sappers could see clearly enough to make a sufficient gap through the minefields: without open flanks at either end, blowing a hole through the enemy lines was the only means of attack. The necessary equipment needed for this operation would not be in Egypt before 1 October, Alex told Churchill, so it could not occur in September. Moreover, once it arrived, the Mobile Striking Force – X Corps – would have to be trained in its use. But Churchill was insistent that the Panzer Army should be defeated before Operation TORCH in order to encourage the French to jump ship to the Allies and the Spanish to remain neutral. ‘I have carefully considered the timing in relation to TORCH,’ wrote Alex, ‘and have come to the conclusion that not only complies with military reasons but also to provide cover for TORCH, the best date for us to start would be minus 13 of TORCH.’3 In other words, around 24 October.
Churchill was not happy. Alex was discovering just how difficult it was to derail the PM once he had got an idea or notion into his head. The new C-in-C had to write two long, carefully reasoned cables to Churchill in which he essentially repeated his arguments as to why the third week in October was the only practicable date for launching the new offensive, now ironically codenamed LIGHTFOOT on account of the vast numbers of mines now separating the two opposing forces.
Monty knew little of these discussions. Alex rightly believed that his army commander needed to be shielded from any prime ministerial interference. As it happened, Brooke was of the same mind, and when the PM interrupted a rare day’s grouse shooting the CIGS became very terse with him, giving Churchill short shrift over his melodramatic blustering. ‘It is a regular disease that he suffers from,’ Brooke noted in his diary, ‘this frightful impatience to get an attack launched!’4
But Alex also entirely agreed with Monty’s prognosis about the state of his army. Alam Halfa, Alex pointed out to Churchill, demonstrated the ‘urgent need of intensive training especially for the Mobile Striking Force’.5 During the battle, Eighth Army had still lost more men and even more tanks than the Panzer Army. As the Sherwood Rangers had shown, there were sections of the army that were more akin to Kitchener’s men at Omdurman than the kind of forces needed to win modern wars, and the only offensive action of the battle – the New Zealand-led night-time attack – had been a fiasco and demonstrated how difficult it was to fight across heavily defended minefields. As the Afrika Korps had proved time and again, quality – in training and equipment – counted for more than quantity.
As a whole, Monty did not think much of the British Army and was well aware of the effect of the inter-war years of neglect. Despite its growing superiority in tanks and firepower, it was, he noted, ‘a regrettable fact that our troops are not, in all cases, highly trained’, and he accepted that they could easily blow this massive material advantage. But he was wrong to tar the whole of Eighth Army with the same brush. There was little wrong with much of the infantry: the Australians, New Zealanders, 7th Motor Brigade and Tuker’s Indians, for example, were generally quality troops with a collective mass of experience. The problems lay, first, with the commanders and the faulty military doctrine that had been passed down; and, second, with the armour. The problem of the commanders could in part be solved by Monty’s zero-tolerance of bellyaching. He also changed his corps commanders: Lieutenant-General Sir Oliver Leese was brought over from England to take over XXX Corps, and Lieutenant-General Brian Horrocks had also arrived to take command of XIII Corps. Monty had taught Leese at Staff College, and both he and Horrocks had served under him in the UK. Both were fairly unimaginative and had so far had steady rather than exceptional careers – Tuker was appalled by their lack of tactical knowledge – but crucially, neither would quibble with the boss. In future, there would be a far smoother dissemination of orders. Moreover, as Alex pointed out to Churchill, both Leese and Horrocks not only had experience of leading men in battle but also of training them.
The issue of armour was more problematic. By mid-October, Eighth Army would have over a thousand tanks, of which over four hundred would be Shermans and Grants; but the difficulty would be getting the various units of cavalry, tank regiments, and yeomanry to work to the same prescribed tactics and hand-in-glove with anti-tank screens. This required a wholesale change in doctrine, something that could not be done in an instant, especially since the moment battle began confusion would inevitably reign and bad habits almost certainly come flooding back.
It was a quandary, but Monty believed that the best way around it was to make a simple plan, then stick to it. That way every man, from the top to the bottom of the chain, would know exactly what was expected of them. Then they would rehearse it over and over until the lines had been learned – not just the troops involved, but the logistics teams too. Supply systems had to be perfected, organizational weaknesses uncovered.
The Sherwood Rangers Yeomanry were sent back thirty miles along with the rest of 8th Armoured Division. A dummy minefield was constructed with lanes marked out by perforated petrol cans with lights inside. Over and over, the regiment practised going through these lanes at night. To add a sense of realism, flares were shot up into the sky and explosions set off by the sappers. The infantry were also sent back out of the line, partly to train and partly to get fit and refreshed. Monty had decided that the Australians would provide much of the infantry muscle, and since they would be among the first passing through the minefield gaps it was felt it would be a good idea for them to know something about mines. Shortly after Alam Halfa, for example, Joe Madeley found himself being sent to Mine School. The whole battalion was then taken out of the line towards the end of the month and sent some twenty-six miles back. Camped next to the sea, for nearly two weeks they underwent training and physical exercise and swam. At the end of this period, Joe was given five days’ leave in Cairo. Apart from suffering a terrible hangover on the train back (‘because we’d spent the previous night with the Kiwis’), he was otherwise refreshed and in good shape for the enormous task ahead.
Only the New Zealanders were taken out of the line as a complete division. After ten days’ rest at Burg el Arab – where Maiki Parkinson spent the time swimming and watching the Kiwi concert parties – they were sent south to a training area. Initially, the battalions trained separately. After a few days range-firing and toughening up with bayonet and physical exercises, the Maori began carrying out mock attacks by dawn, day, dusk and at night, both on foot and in trucks. Finally came a three-day divisional exercise with live ammunition fired by the artillery as the New Zealanders moved forward under a creeping barrage; the sappers also made paths through real minefields and blew holes in real wire.
Albert Martin and 2nd Rifle Brigade were also taken out of their forward positions and moved to Burg el Arab for training, PT, and swimming. Monty paid a visit while they were there, and Albert, for one, was beginning to be impressed by the new army commander. ‘The impact of Monty’s visit stayed with us,’ noted Albert. ‘We also liked his scathing comments about Rommel and his repetitive and un-enterprising battle strategy. It sounds heresy, I know, but by the time Monty had finished with us we were almost looking forward to the coming showdown.’6 Albert was also cheered by the good military sense that Monty spoke: there would be no more defended boxes with their inflexibility and negative connotations; no more penny-packet forces and cavalier tank charges, but troops operating in strength. On the other hand, Albert and his mates were sorely disappointed to learn that they were being transferred from the 7th Armoured Division to the 1st Armoured Division, now part of Monty’s new corps d’elite, X Corps. The 7th Armoured, with their jerboa logo, were the Desert Rats, the original core of Eighth Army; 1st Armoured’s logo was ‘a silly, meaningless figure of a rhinoceros’. For several days, feelings ran very high, threatening to undo all the positive things that had been achieved under Monty’s command. ‘The poor fellow who came round to paint a new logo on the trucks was subjected to violent abuse,’ noted Albert.7
‘We in the Air Force were ready at any time we might be called on,’ noted Tommy Elmhirst, ‘nevertheless, we were able to make good use of any respite for blooding our new-entry American pilots.’ These were, in Tommy’s opinion, ‘first class material’ with a mass of flying experience.8 Duke Ellington, for example, had around three hundred hours by the time he reached the Middle East, way more than any pilot in the RAF going operational for the first time. But they lacked any combat experience and so Mary Coningham devised a system of integrating the Americans with RAF units, believing, quite sensibly, that this was the best way to teach them the ropes of desert flying.
US Mitchell bomber crews had joined 3 Wing in time for the start of Alam Halfa. Cobber Weinronk liked them well enough, but was surprised by a number of differences. For example, the Americans had co-pilots, a luxury not enjoyed by the RAF or SAAF. He also thought their strange ‘lingo’ was ‘quaint’. ‘Where we say, “opening the throttle,” they say, “heaping on the coal,”’ he noted. ‘Where we use the phrase, “flying speed to take-off,” they say, “hearing the blue line.”’9
Experiencing front-line duty for the first time at Alam Halfa was quite some initiation, but the 57th Fighter Group was given a slightly less frenetic start. Now collected together once more after their stint acclimatizing, they were sent to Egypt in mid-September. Duke Ellington had enjoyed his brief time on Cyprus. In between the flying, there had also been plenty of time to swim in the sea and visit the various nightclubs on the island. All their ground support had been with the rest of the 57th Fighter Group, and so the 65th Fighter Squadron had been looked after entirely by the RAF. This had meant living off British food as well. Duke had come to terms with the monotony of eating bully beef day after day, but ‘the weevil infested bread took a little bit longer to get used to’ and he was looking forward to becoming an all-American outfit once again.
In this he was to be kept waiting a while longer, for the bad luck that had dogged his trip to the Middle East had not deserted him. Just before the squadron had been due to join the rest of the group back in Palestine, Duke had damaged his plane whilst practising landing from a tight turn – a gust of wind had caught him and he’d knocked the edge of his wing. So once again the squadron went on ahead without him. After a couple of days morosely hanging around, Duke was told his aircraft was ready again. ‘So I got my little bird cranked up,’ he says, ‘and I was just passing the coast of Cyprus when my engine quit.’ He reckoned he had enough power to get himself landed, and although the island was quite mountainous, he managed to spot a relatively flat area and got himself safely down. He’d just got his baggage out when he saw lots of Cypriots running towards him with pitchforks. ‘They thought I was the bad guy!’ he says. He was saved by the arrival of a British Bren carrier.
When he finally reached the rest of the group in Palestine, Duke was feeling a little embarrassed, but his CO, Art Salisbury, immediately said to him, ‘Duke, I hope you get the first 109 – you’ve had tough luck.’ ‘I can’t tell you how much that meant to me at the time,’ admits Duke, ‘and how much it has stuck with me over the years.’
The group was in Palestine for only a few days after Duke’s arrival before being posted to their first combat base in Egypt – LG 174 on 16 September. The 65th were attached to a South African fighter squadron and over the next few weeks they were taught some of the basics of combat flying. ‘They were so experienced those guys,’ says Duke. ‘They taught us how to survive.’
Until joining the South Africans, Duke had spent much time practising dogfighting and aerobatics, but, as he discovered, there was less call for these in the aerial combat of the Western Desert. ‘The RAF way was to get to the target area and then get the hell out. It was all ground-strafing and dropping bombs.’ But as John Fairbairn had discovered, it also took time to adjust to the strangeness of flying in the desert and for those unused to spotting enemy aircraft, often just pinpricks in the sky until it was too late, the guiding hand of those more experienced made all the difference. Not only had Billy Drake, for example, honed his ground-attack technique, he had also taught his men how to deal with attacks by enemy fighters, who nearly always had the advantage of height. For starters, the three-plane vic – or ‘V’ – as prescribed by the RAF in the first years of the war, and which was still used by the USAAF, had long ago been discarded by Billy and most of the other fighter units. ‘The basic formation was the finger-four,’ he says, ‘well spaced apart and working in pairs, leader and wingman.’ If the whole squadron was flying, there would be three such flights of four – Red, Blue, and Green Sections. ‘This way everyone had a bloody good sight of what was happening. Whoever saw the enemy first would inform the leader. He’d say, “Thanks, chum – I’ve seen them,” and then would make up his mind how to deal with them – whether to detail part or all of his force against them.’ The key was the timing of the ‘break’, the moment at which the pilots suddenly turned their aircraft onto their sides and pulled into a tight turn. This was always the leader’s decision. ‘The trick was to leave it to the last minute so the 109s would overshoot us,’ says Billy.
Like Tommy Elmhirst, however, Billy Drake was not only impressed by the very high standard of flying among the Americans, but also by their willingness to learn. Mostly, it was men from the 64th and 66th FS who were flying with Billy’s 112 Squadron, and it soon became clear that they were catching on fast. ‘They were a great bunch,’ he noted, ‘and I think they respected us. Certainly the feeling was mutual.’10
Training continued in Britain, too. The Bowles twins, Tom and Henry, were now together in the same 2nd Battalion of the 18th Regimental Combat Team. Henry had managed to get himself transferred so that he could be closer to his brother – although not to the same company. He was now in Battalion HQ Company while Tom was part of a mortar team in Company ‘G’. The 18th RCT was still a part of the Big Red One, the First Infantry Division, which, as the US Army’s most experienced infantry outfit, was due to spearhead one of the TORCH landings. Also now attached to the division in preparation for TORCH was Bing Evans’s 1st Ranger Battalion.
On 18 October, Ike and Harry Butcher left Telegraph Cottage early and took a sixteen-hour train ride to Kentallen in western Scotland to watch the Big Red One carry out some training exercises in landing craft. Arriving at midnight, they were immediately taken to see a night-time exercise. The troops – Tom and Henry Bowles included – were already in combat loaders, some as far as six miles from the coast, others only a mile away. Under cover of darkness, they were to approach the shore, land, and then take a number of dummy ‘enemy’ positions.
In a caravan of ten cars led by Ike, Butch and a British officer, they drove from point to point to where the various landings were being made. At each place they would get out of the cars and slosh through the mud to talk to the officers and men and observe their operations. Between 1 a.m. and 9 a.m., they drove some ninety miles. For much of the time it was raining and since their driver looked exhausted, Butch took over the wheel, even though he had never driven in the UK before and was unused to the blackout and to right-hand-drive vehicles.
When they were stopped by Brigadier-General Ted Roosevelt, son of the first President Roosevelt, they were given a glowing report on the success of the exercises and assured that they had ‘all but choked Hitler’.11 Ike, however, felt disinclined to agree, and when, after breakfast in Inverary, they watched some more manoeuvres, they did so with a growing sense of unease. The troops looked good – healthy, fit and agile – but Ike was worried by the lack of direction and leadership given by the officers, who all appeared unsure about what they were supposed to be doing. ‘It is in this level of command that we have our most glaring weakness,’ he told General Marshall, ‘and it is one that only time and eternal effort can cure. We are short on experience and trained leadership below battalion commander, and it is beyond the capacity of any Division Commander or any Colonel to cure these difficulties hurriedly. Time is essential.’12 They didn’t have much experience above battalion commander, either, not in terms of battlefield command at any rate. This was the single biggest problem facing a US Army that was unused to war and growing at an exponential rate.
Unfortunately, time was a luxury they did not have. In just a few weeks, these same US troops would be landing in North Africa. As if to rub it in, while in Scotland Ike received a cable from Marshall, relaying the message the President was intending to send the Vichy leader, Marshal Pétain, as the landings were being made. ‘I am sending an invincible American army,’ FDR had written, ‘to cooperate with your African government in arming your compatriots and repelling Axis invasion.’13
They returned to London feeling pretty low. Ike was getting a cold from stomping about in the cold and the wet, but back in his office in London he confessed to Butch that he was struggling with a ‘state of the jitters’.14 This was principally because of the disappointing showing in Scotland, but also praying on his mind was the fate of Mark Clark, currently on a secret and highly risky mission to Algiers.
The roots of this mission had begun a month before, in the middle of September, and it had come about at the suggestion of the President’s man in Algiers, Robert D. Murphy. Engaged in trying to gauge French reaction to any Allied landings, Murphy had long-established relations with the French, having served in Paris for some years before the war and in the American embassy in Vichy after the French surrender in June 1940. Recalled to Washington by Roosevelt, he was sent to North Africa in December 1940, officially as Consul General but in reality as the President’s personal intelligence agent in Algeria.
Affable and politically shrewd, Murphy had achieved much, having created strong relations with a number of Vichy French military and political leaders; he had even negotiated an aid pact with Vichy France. All of this enabled Murphy to continue his extremely useful good relations with these Nazi subjects and gave him an entrée to some of the key players in Vichy France, most notably Admiral Darlan and General Giraud. Giraud had dramatically escaped from a German prison but on his return to France had sworn loyalty to Pétain. Darlan had been a modernizing and popular head of the French Navy before the war, but had become convinced that the Allies had no chance of beating the Axis powers and so had tied his colours firmly to the Vichy mast. Although briefly Pétain’s deputy, he was still officially head of all France’s armed forces. His dislike of the British ran deep (his great-grandfather had been killed at Trafalgar), and had intensified after the British had sunk the French Fleet at Oran in July 1940.
With TORCH given the green light, Murphy was summoned home in September for talks with the President, and then, disguised as Lieutenant-Colonel McGowan, had headed on to London for top-secret talks with Ike and his team. He arrived in London somewhat earlier than expected, on the morning of 16 September. Harry Butcher had been having lunch with the broadcaster Ed Murrow when he received an urgent call from Ike telling him to get over to Telegraph Cottage right away. Ignoring jokes about it being the start of the second front, Butch hurriedly left. When he reached the cottage ‘Colonel McGowan’, in an ill-fitting uniform, was chatting earnestly to Ike in the garden.
These were to prove invaluable discussions for both parties. For Ike, it was a chance to have a frank conversation about many of his concerns about the French situation in North Africa with someone who knew the situation and people there as well as anyone. Murphy was able to brief him on the size, state, and political temperature of the French forces there, and of the mood of the civilian population. French Morocco, Murphy confirmed, was the area of greatest danger, and although there were plenty in Algiers who would support the Allies, his best guess was that the landings would be met with resistance in some areas and swift submission in others.
Ike was then able to give Murphy a comprehensive briefing in turn, and the plan certainly gave Murphy cause for confidence. The proposed scale of the landings, he told Ike, was exactly what his co-conspirators in Algiers had been hoping for. He also reported on his dealings with General Giraud, who in August had sent word that the Allies could count on the French Army siding with them as long as landings could take place in France as well. Giraud was suggesting spring 1943. Perhaps on his return to Algiers, Murphy suggested, he should let Giraud know that the USA was now in a position to take action on a substantial scale and should ask whether he was willing to act decisively alongside them. There would be no trouble smuggling him out of France, he assured Ike; but how the French general would react to such an approach, Murphy was not prepared to guess.
If Giraud did come in from the cold, they would then have to address the question of French command in North Africa. Giraud’s circle of friends had made it clear to Murphy that, were there to be Allied control of north-west Africa, it would have to be commanded by a Frenchman. This was out of the question, although Ike was prepared to concede that French troops might be able to remain under French command. On the other hand, General de Gaulle, Ike explained, would be kept out of the operation, and Murphy felt this was a good idea: they needed to win over the Vichy French in situ; de Gaulle would only throw a spanner in the works.
They talked all afternoon and continued well into the night, long after others privy to the discussions had departed, and then resumed again during and after breakfast the following morning. Butch was there throughout, listening and trying to absorb the implications of this increasingly complicated operation. It was a very thin political tightrope that they now had to cross; bar a few exceptions, most senior Frenchmen had decided to back the horse they felt would win. But who did they think was most likely to win in North Africa? Ike had been charged with planning the biggest seaborne operation ever attempted. Working out the logistics and preparing training programmes was a black-and-white affair, but political intrigue was a different matter altogether. No wonder Murphy confessed that he felt quite humbled by the burden of responsibility.
However, there was one other thing Ike might like to consider, Murphy suggested; something that might make all the difference. If he were to send a senior US military figure over to Algeria for discussions with French Allied collaborators, it would demonstrate serious intent. This person could then also brief their French friends about activities that might help the landings, such as silencing coastal guns, seizing radio stations, and providing signals to the approaching Allied armada.
The risks of such a mission becoming compromised were huge – the entire operation would undoubtedly be blown – and so Ike refused to give Murphy an immediate answer. But after some discussion it was agreed that it was a risk worth taking. From many volunteers, Ike chose his deputy, General Mark Clark.
The troops, of course, knew nothing of this, although in the Western Desert everyone was keenly aware that the offensive was coming. One person in a good position to watch the comings and goings at army HQ was Sam Bradshaw. The 6th Royal Tanks had never recovered from their efforts during two long months of battle. ‘C’ Squadron – down to just a dozen tanks – had been attached to 1 RTR at Alam Halfa, while the rest of the regiment became part of an armoured column held in reserve. At the end of September, what was left of the regiment was briefly reunited but was then split again. While most of the men were finally taken out of the line and sent back to Khatatba Camp, ‘B’ Squadron, including Sam, was sent to Eighth Army Tactical Headquarters at Burg el Arab, where they were to protect the army commander and his staff.
‘We were supposed to be very proud about this,’ says Sam, ‘but to be honest it didn’t seem that great an honour.’ One of the squadron, Jock Fraser, had the responsibility of driving Monty around any time he needed a tank. It was Jock who suggested Monty try a tank beret rather than the Aussie broad-brimmed hat he had taken to wearing – an idea the army commander accepted. From then on, he was rarely seen without it.
Even better placed was Lieutenant Carol Mather. He had known Monty before the war – his mother had been great friends with Monty’s wife Betty, and both families had been skiing together. Even then, in the late 1920s, Monty had seemed to Carol to be everything a soldier should be, right down to the clipped moustache. The boy and the soldier struck up an unlikely rapport, and when Monty’s wife died, Carol, then aged seventeen, was sent to spend a few days with him to keep him company.
In early October, Monty suddenly called for him. ‘I need a personal liaison officer to go around the battlefield to tell me what’s happening,’ he told Carol. It was an offer he could hardly refuse; nor did he have any trouble securing a leave of absence from David Stirling, who was only too happy to have one of his men in the pocket of the army commander. So it was that, in the middle of the month, Carol reported to Tac HQ, where he was given a new Jeep and driver and the task of thoroughly familiarizing himself with the various commanders, dispositions, and minefields of the battle area. He even began driving Monty around himself, as the army commander visited the troops and gave them his regular pep talks. ‘He was a good person to work for,’ says Carol. ‘He wasn’t the completely austere person that everybody makes out. He actually had a very good sense of humour and once he accepted you and trusted you, you had no more worries.’
Allied success in North Africa still had much to do with the war of supply. Disrupting Axis shipping throughout the Central Mediterranean remained as critical as ever. This task was made easier now that Malta was again able to make a more positive contribution. In addition to the torpedo-bombers that were now operating between Malta and Egypt, and relentlessly attacking Axis shipping, the submarines of the 10th Flotilla were back operating from the island and making their presence felt once more. Crippling losses and a base in ruins had forced them to join the 1st Flotilla in Beirut back in April. With the 8th Flotilla operating from Gibraltar, it had meant that any Allied submarines had to steam around 900 miles before they could make any assault on the Axis supply lines. Just two enemy ships had been sunk by submarines in June, and only one in July.
With the Axis aerial blitzes over, however, Captain George ‘Shrimp’ Simpson had begun to move his submarines and crews back to the beleagured island. In August, his men had accounted for seven enemy merchant ships, some 31,000 tonnes and nearly a third of the tonnage Rommel reckoned he needed per month. Simpson’s force was still severely under strength, however, and so several larger submarines were seconded to bolster his numbers. One of these was the S-Class submarine HMS Safari, on loan from Gibraltar.* Simpson was delighted to see her pull into Malta on 19 September: her skipper, Commander Ben Bryant, was, as Shrimp put it, ‘the most experienced and competent submarine commander afloat’. A pre-war legend in the submarine fraternity, Bryant was, at nearly forty, old to be still commanding a boat, yet in the opening years of the war, when he had commanded HMS Sealion in home waters, he had shown that he was as sharp and capable as he’d always been, while his performance since arriving in the Mediterranean earlier in the summer had only heightened his formidable reputation.
Recently joining Safari as fourth hand had been 21-year-old Lieutenant Ronnie Ward. The son of a Yorkshire GP, Ronnie had entered Dartmouth Naval College at thirteen. His family had always loved the sea, spending weekends and holidays at Bridlington and Scarborough, and although there was no naval history in the family, Ronnie was certain from an early age that his future lay with the Royal Navy. He loved his four years at Dartmouth. ‘A lot of people hated it,’ he says, ‘but I basically obeyed the rules and had a marvellous time.’
After serving as a midshipman on a destroyer – and seeing action in Norway and Dakar among other places – he was sent on his sub-lieutenant’s course and then posted to submarines. Although given the option of moving back to surface vessels, he’d enjoyed his time training on submarines so much he decided to stay and was eventually posted to P.43, a submarine operating in home waters. Unfortunately, Ronnie’s blissful naval career to date suddenly took a nosedive. ‘I couldn’t stand the captain,’ he explains. Matters came to a head during a patrol off Norway. The CO had ordered the periscope to go up every three minutes, but the seas were particularly rough, the boat* was lurching all over the place and water was sloshing over the lens, so Ronnie had cut back the frequency with which he put up the periscope. Unbeknown to Ronnie, however, the CO had been timing him, and severely reprimanded him in front of the rest of the crew. Absolutely furious at being so humiliated, Ronnie angrily stormed out of the control room. On their return to the Clyde, he was promptly taken off board and packed off to Gibraltar as spare crew.
There he was taken aside by Ben Bryant, who’d heard about his dismissal from P.43. ‘I don’t think you’ll do anything like that ever again, will you?’ Ben had said.
‘No, sir, I won’t,’ Ronnie had replied.
‘Good, I think you’ll be all right. I’ll take you on but you’ve got to behave yourself.’ Since then, Ronnie hadn’t looked back. ‘Ben was marvellous,’ he says. ‘Made me feel at home right away.’ And he was also someone from whom a junior officer like Ronnie could learn a great deal.
Safari set off on her first patrol for the 10th Flotilla on 26 September, heading for the Dalmatian Coast. British submarines had not been operating there recently and Simpson was anxious to shake up Axis supply routes heading from Yugoslavia and down through the Straits of Otranto. They spent a frustrating couple of days tracking a steamer that eluded them as it went into port between a number of islands, but as darkness fell on 1 October, Ben felt sure he would be able to catch it the following morning as it set out from port.
As submarines were incredibly slow, successfully second-guessing the movements of the enemy was an essential skill for a submarine commander. The S-Class, for example, had a maximum underwater speed of nine knots – around ten miles an hour – although this could not be kept up for long: the batteries that powered the diesel engines would soon run low at that speed. For the most part, their underwater operating speed was little more than jogging pace. Consequently, getting in position to sink enemy ships was about playing a long and often stealthy game of cat and mouse.
Under a bright moon, Safari pushed out to sea on the night of 1 October to recharge her batteries, a task that could only be done on the surface. They had begun the process when suddenly the watch standing out on the conning tower smelled a slight whiff of funnel smoke on the air. Immediately the recharging was broken off, action stations were called, and Safari slipped beneath the waves. In this case, it turned out to be a small torpedo boat, and although they easily avoided it, they had to give it a wide berth. As a result, the following morning they reached their position to catch the steamer later than Ben had originally intended.
Working close to the shore meant there was invariably the added risk of mines, particularly in the approaches to any port. Safari was equipped with a mine detector unit (MDU), an application of the Asdic – in turn a form of sonar; but the problem with using these instruments was that they could be picked up by other vessels, and so had to be operated sparingly. Nonetheless, they had taken a chance and MDU had shown them a clear path between the islands. In fact, the area was heaving with mines, but either their MDU was particularly efficient or, more likely, they had simply been very fortunate. At any rate, at 9.45 a.m. on 2 October, as they slipped through a narrow and shallow channel between two islands, they finally caught up with the steamer. The delay meant it was now some 3000 yards away – nearly two miles. This was quite a distance for a torpedo strike, especially since Ben reckoned the steamer must be doing at least thirteen knots, and so he decided to risk surfacing and to try and hit it with the 3-inch gun mounted on the bridge instead.
Ben was well known for his use of the gun. Although equipped with six torpedo tubes, the high-velocity 3-inch gun was, he reckoned, often more effective, especially if the target was not surrounded by large numbers of aerial and destroyer escorts. Opening fire, they appeared to have taken the steamer completely unawares, and although only fifteen of the thirty-six shells they fired hit home, the steamer was soon in flames. Before they could sink her, however, she’d run herself aground on the nearest beach. She was evidently being used as a troop carrier and through his binoculars Ronnie watched men leaping overboard. Ben immediately ordered them to dive and, closing in, they fired a torpedo at 1,000 yards. As it hit home, the steamer erupted into flames again; they could still see the smoke the following day, by which time they had withdrawn safely back out to sea. Even so, after their attack, torpedo boats and enemy aircraft hunted them all morning and afternoon, and on into the night. They eventually escaped only by following the wake of the German E-boats as they patrolled further out to sea.
Conditions on the submarines were cramped to say the least. Safari had a crew of forty-eight and everyone, apart from the skipper and the chief engineer, operated on a system of two hours on and four off. In the off-duty period, each man had to do all his eating and sleeping; any kind of normal daily routine went by the wayside, although they did try to have a cooked meal when they surfaced at night. Quite often this was interrupted by having to dive straight down again, however. ‘Conditions were very primitive,’ says Ronnie. ‘How the poor crew survived, I’ve no idea. We five officers at least had a loo for our own exclusive use and so did the engineers, but the rest of the crew had to share one between them – not much fun.’ The entire boat reeked of diesel, and, towards the end of a voyage, rotting food. Enough provisions had to be taken to last them the entire patrol, and this could be between two and three weeks. Washing was minimal, and old and battered uniforms and sweaters were worn, their smart kit left behind at base. Most returned from patrols with beards. Ronnie had grown one, then decided not to bother shaving it off.
Having hunted along the Yugoslav coast, they crossed to the other side of the Adriatic, spotting and attacking another merchant vessel. Three torpedoes missed and a fourth failed, so once again they surfaced and turned to the gun. Hits were scored but not enough to sink her, and so then they headed back to the Dalmatian Coast once more. On 8 October, they spotted a four-ship convoy. Despite a sea mist and an escort of MTBs, they still managed to sink a heavily laden 1500-ton vessel. Two days later, they found another three-ship convoy. At a range of 2000 yards – just over a mile – they fired three torpedoes and hit two of the ships. This was no mean feat: although they had a primitive computer on board known as a ‘fruit machine’, most of the calculations were done by eye and rapid mental arithmetic. This required a very cool head. Speed and range of the target had to be hastily assessed, then the director angle (DA) calculated, the ‘aim-off’ needed in order to hit a moving target. Hitting a ship, unless it was dead in the water at point-blank range, was very difficult indeed, and made more so by the submarine’s delicate trim – or balance. Torpedoes were necessarily fired just below the surface, where the sea’s swell could rock the boat, but trim could also be affected by a number of other factors, including sudden changes in depth or even salinity. This was why 80 per cent of all successes were achieved by just 20 per cent of the commanding officers. Some had the knack, but most didn’t.
This particular attack was followed by heavy depth-charging as torpedo boats swept above them hunting furiously. ‘This could be pretty hairy,’ admits Ronnie. Some depth charges came agonizingly close. Corking fell off the ceiling, a few light bulbs went, and the sub was rocked from side to side. Ben ordered them to dive deeper. The needle on the altimeter clicked round the gauge: two hundred feet, two hundred and fifty, three hundred. They were now at the boat’s maximum diving limit, but Ben told them to keep going. Three hundred and twenty feet, then three hundred and fifty. By now the boat was creaking and groaning with the intense pressure. No one spoke a word. ‘You had to be absolutely quiet,’ says Ronnie. ‘If you had to open a valve or something, you wrapped a piece of wool around the spanner so it wouldn’t clang against another piece of metal.’ If a depth charge blew within twenty-five feet of them, they would be split apart. Then three hundred and ninety feet.
Ben stopped them there. The attack lasted three quarters of an hour, and in that time they were depth-charged twenty-six times. After three hours of appalling tension, they finally resurfaced and set sail for home.
It was a tradition among submariners to enter their home port flying a Jolly Roger if they had been successful during their patrol. White bars were stitched on next to the skull and crossbones to denote each ship sunk. As Safari entered Malta’s Marsamxett Harbour, their Jolly Roger had four new bars sewn on. Furthermore, they arrived home with much information about the busy Adriatic shipping channels. No wonder Shrimp Simpson was so glad to have Ben Bryant and his crew join the 10th Flotilla.
In Egypt, new troops continued to arrive, fresh from Britain. The 51st Highland Division, at last reconstituted after its almost complete annihilation in France in 1940, had reached Egypt in August. Among them was twenty-year-old Johnny Bain, a private in the 5/7th Gordon Highlanders, part of the 153rd Infantry Brigade. He was not, as it happened from Scotland, but from Aylesbury in Buckinghamshire. His grandfather had been Scottish and his father had fought in a Scottish regiment in the First World War, but Johnny and his brother Kenneth ended up with the Highlanders purely because they joined up in Glasgow. Both of them hated their father, who was violent and a bully. He once punched Johnny so hard that he knocked him out. When Johnny discovered his father had been fiddling his income tax and stashing money in a box in his wardrobe, they decided to pinch it and flee home. After a week’s drinking spree, and by now running short of money, they tried to join the RAF and then the Merchant Navy before finally ending up in Glasgow and taking the King’s shilling there, joining the Argyle and Sutherland Highlanders.
Johnny had little idea what he was letting himself in for. Growing up, the First World War had made a great impression on him – his father talked about it endlessly – but he understood little about the current war. ‘I was ignorant and uninterested,’ he admits, and although to begin with the war had seemed quite exciting, he soon discovered he wasn’t really cut out for soldiering. He and his brother were also soon separated when Kenneth was sent on an engineering course. Johnny was a talented boxer, however, and won the Highland Area Army Championships, which got him noticed. Given a couple of stripes, he became a PT instructor for a short while, but on returning to ordinary duty decided he was no good at taking drill and organizing guard duties, so one day simply walked out and hitched a lift to London. ‘I had some idea I could live there,’ he says, ‘but of course I never could.’ He was picked up and brought back, but to avoid a court martial he agreed to revert to rank and to be transferred to the London Scottish. Shortly after, he was transferred again, this time to the 5/7th Gordon Highlanders, who were about to leave for the Middle East.
Having won the ship’s boxing competition on the journey out, Johnny reached Port Tewfik at Suez and was sent straight to a training camp at Geneifa. In a short time, he would be among those leading the assault when the battle was launched. Having never been in any kind of combat before, he no idea what to expect; but despite his chequered army career to date, and a certain amount of apprehension, he couldn’t help feeling rather excited by the prospect.
Back in their positions at the front, the 2/13th Australian Infantry Battalion were frequently given the task of slipping over the wire at night in an effort to discover enemy dispositions and, if possible, to capture a few prisoners who could then be grilled for information. Joe Madeley and his section were out on patrol on the night of 6 September. Because it was pitch dark, they had worked out their route beforehand – so many yards in one direction, then turn and head another predetermined distance in another direction. They didn’t spot anything, however, and so had just turned to head back when they realized they’d wandered straight into the rear of a machine-gun post. Somewhere along the way, they’d made a miscalculation. ‘There was barbed wire all round the front,’ says Joe, ‘but we walked in through the back. We didn’t even know it until we heard a German voice. They thought we’d be coming from the other direction so started firing and lobbing grenades in front of their position.’ It only took a moment for both parties to realize what had happened. Knowing they were surrounded, Joe and his mates ran for their lives, diving into a shallow gully as bullets whistled over their heads. Joe’s heart was racing, but luckily no one had been hit. He fired a few bursts of his Thompson machine gun and between them they lobbed a number of grenades; then, after waiting a short while, they silently crept back towards their lines. As they stumbled into company HQ, Joe and the rest of the patrol began laughing so much they couldn’t stop. At headquarters they’d heard all the noise and seen the tracers and asked what on earth the hysterics were all about. ‘We couldn’t explain,’ says Joe. ‘Nerves I suppose.’
The pilots had also been given some time at rest camp and for Johnny Fairbairn that had included a bit of leave in Cairo. It soon passed, however, and after a few days’ ‘drunkenness and debauchery’15 he returned to active duty with 73 Squadron, which, by the beginning of September, had finally changed from day to night duties. The task of the night-fighter was quite different to that of his daytime counterpart. For one thing, it was a solitary business. Pilots would take off alone, ‘intrude’ far behind enemy lines, and then circle around enemy landing grounds waiting for unsuspecting bombers to return home from a raid. Extra petrol tanks were fitted so that, if necessary, flights could last up to three hours or more. John found it a ‘skulking lonely’ business, sitting in a cramped cockpit ‘eerily lit by the luminosity of the dashboard instruments’ and with the constant throb of a Merlin engine the only company. ‘Like a vulture suddenly appearing from nowhere,’ noted John, ‘the art was to lie low a short distance away from the target and remain unobtrusive until the time came to move in for the kill.’
It took him time to adjust back to the role for which he’d originally been trained, but John eventually grew used to the sudden arrival of a corporal creeping through his tent flap in the middle of the night and telling him it was time to get going. From his warm and snug campbed, he would wearily put on several layers of clothes and step out into the freezing desert night, then stumble towards the silhouette of his black-painted Hurricane, which for some reason always seemed at least twice its normal size at night.
With the flare path lit, he would then taxi and take off. As soon as his undercarriage was up, the flare path would be turned off and John would head off into the inky blackness. During the flight to the target, he couldn’t help imagining the eyes of the enemy all glaring up at him as they heard the sound of his engine overhead. Generally, he flew at around 7000 feet, too high for light ack-ack, but even so, the first time he was caught in the cross-beams of searchlights he had the fright of his life. ‘I was lit up, naked and ashamed,’ he wrote, although he soon learned that the trick was to push the control column forward and dive out of the way.
Before reaching the target, he would turn out to sea, lower his height to about 4000 feet then head inland again. Many nights nothing happened at all, but on others the wait was rewarded. His heart would leap as the flare path suddenly came on and wingtip lights showed the presence of tired enemy bomber crews coming back in to land. That was his chance to pounce.
One night, he was intruding over Sidi Haneish airfield, the same place where he had joined 73 Squadron back in May. Suddenly the flare path shone brightly and John spotted an enemy bomber coming in to land with all lights on. Following the enemy aircraft as it turned into its approach, John crept up to within 250 yards of its tail, and then, as the bomber touched down, pressed the firing button, holding it down for a full eight of its maximum fifteen-second capacity. All hell let loose. John slammed open the throttle, pulled up the nose, and desperately strained for height. But having lowered his speed to little over a hundred miles an hour, his Hurricane was now ‘floppy as a pregnant duck’ and as he climbed away all too slowly, the feared searchlights caught him and tracer began streaming all around him.
Diving down again to avoid the beam, there was suddenly a huge flash of flight and the Hurricane lurched violently. It wasn’t his aircraft that had been hit, however, but the bomber exploding beneath him. ‘Looking back over my shoulder,’ he noted, ‘I saw the whole drome lit up by a huge conflagration which remained in my rear-view mirror for some time as I headed full bore for home. I was quite proud of that victory.’16
Around the same time, towards the end of September, the squadron gained a new flight commander. Flight Lieutenant Tommy Thompson was a veteran not only of the Battle of Britain but had also spent a long stint on Malta, flying at a time when there were no Spitfires and the RAF fighter pilots on the island were struggling against massive enemy air superiority. Those had been hard times indeed – little food, appalling conditions, and, worst of all, almost no drink.
During his time on the island, Tommy had become a founder-member of the Malta Night-Fighter Unit – word had gone out that volunteers were wanted for night fighting and that the new CO wanted men who liked their drink and knew how to have a good time when off duty. Tommy had been all for that and so had signed up right away. Somehow, he’d managed to survive ten long months on the island, and so had initially been relieved when he’d been posted to Khartoum as an instructor. However, he soon discovered instruction was more dangerous than operational flying. On one occasion a student had braked too hard, flipping them both onto their backs. Another time, he was teaching formation flying and one of his pupils almost flew into the back of him. ‘I’d told him to catch up,’ says Tommy, ‘and the next thing I know there’s this bloody great roar, and I looked up and saw him slide straight over me. He took the radio mast off, the tip of the fin and the starboard wing tip.’ Tommy’s aircraft almost immediately dropped a thousand feet, but somehow he managed to get it back down safely. ‘The first one paid my bar bill for a week and the second for a fortnight!’ says Tommy. Consequently, it was with some relief that he was posted back to operational flying.
By the time he joined 73 Squadron, the nature of their night intrusions had changed. With the offensive now just a few weeks away, the emphasis was on disrupting Rommel’s supply lines to the front. On one of his first intrusions, Tommy attacked transport on the Daba-Fuka road, hitting several vehicles. The ack-ack at strafing levels tended to be a bit more intense and Tommy’s Hurricane was damaged on the underside by a piece of flak, although he made it back to base in one piece. This was the pattern right up to the third week of October. ‘The aim was to annoy them, play on their nerves,’ says Tommy, ‘and make them feel as though they could never feel safe, even at night.’
Meanwhile, Duke Ellington was discovering that combat flying was quite a different proposition to flying when there was no enemy about. One of his first missions was to attack the enemy airfields at El Daba. Mary Coningham had learned that the landing grounds at both El Daba and Fuka were waterlogged from rain and so, on 9 October, decided to mount a number of large raids while the Axis aircraft were stuck on the ground.
As they flew towards their target, Duke certainly discovered his adrenalin pumping. They were part of a four-squadron escort – including Billy Drake’s 112 Squadron – that was to cover twenty-four bombers to the enemy airfields. They were then to follow up with their own ground attack. Maintaining total radio silence, they flew low out to sea then turned back in to hit the landing grounds. As they reached their target, they shot up everything they could in one pass, then turned back east in a wild scramble to avoid interception.
Unfortunately, the airfields hadn’t been as waterlogged as Mary had been led to believe and a number of 109s were already airborne. They were flying low and fast across the desert when Duke suddenly heard a voice over his radio shouting, ‘Ship flying straight ahead, turn, turn, turn!’ Duke glanced up and saw a 109 diving straight for him. Panicking somewhat, Duke flung his Kittyhawk into a tight turn, and frantically turning his head, saw cannon shells burst into the sand on the desert floor. Round and round he went, the 109 glued to his tail. Only by dropping into the Qattara Depression did he finally shake off his pursuer. ‘It gave me quite a wake-up call, I can tell you,’ says Duke.
There is no question that in the Western Desert life was more dangerous for the Allied fighter pilots than it was for the bomber crews. Axis fighter claims were nearly all against other fighters rather than bombers. In part this was because they used their better altitude performance to give them height superiority, an important advantage when attacking other aircraft. But this meant they were rarely able to break through the fighter escorts and get at the bombers. There was also an entirely different culture between German and Allied fighter pilots. The RAF, for example, promoted the success of the squadron and the air force as a whole; who shot down what was not particularly important, and anyone seen to be bragging or ‘shooting a line’ was soon put in his place. The Luftwaffe, however, encouraged the cult of the individual and all efforts were made to ensure that a unit’s ace continued scoring – and against fighters; bombers were perceived to be less worthy adversaries.
In the Western Desert, Hans-Joachim Marseille, the ‘Star of Afrika’, was by some distance the leading German ace, with a staggering 151 aerial victories in North Africa alone. In his entire career he shot down 158 aircraft, of which just four were bombers. He had incredible eyesight, a natural gift for flying, and, crucially, had mastered the art of deflection shooting, which meant aiming fire at a point where the target and bullets met. Moreover, Marseille developed a technique for hitting aircraft turning in a tighter circle than his own, the usual defence adopted by the Allies against superior speed and height.
By September 1942, Marseille had become a one-man killing machine, with the rest of his squadron protecting him while he got on with the business of shooting down RAF fighters. On 1 September, he shot down seventeen in one day; on 15 September – Battle of Britain Day – he destroyed seven in seven separate dogfights in just eleven minutes, and a further seven just over a week later.
Fêted in Germany, Marseille, with his fair hair, blue eyes, and Aryan good looks, was a publicity dream and the Nazis milked it for all it was worth. He was awarded the Knight’s Cross with Oak Leaves, Swords and then Diamonds – the highest honours available to a fighter pilot. His brilliant career finally came to an end on 30 September – and appropriately enough he was not vanquished by a foe, but by engine failure. Although he baled out, he struck the tail as he did so, gashing his hip. Whether this killed him is not known, but certainly his parachute never opened. His unit, JG 27, and indeed the entire Luftwaffe, were distraught, but for the Allied airmen, the skies above the Western Desert were certainly a safer place with his passing.
Planning, planning, planning: in Washington, London and at a dusty camp in the desert called Burg el Arab. Monty produced his plan for Operation LIGHTFOOT in September. The idea 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 so therefore concluded it was better to hit the strongest point head-on first.
The northern punch would initially be made by Leese’s XXX Corps using the 9th Australian, the recently arrived 51st Highland Division, the New Zealand, and 1st South African Divisions attacking on a ten-mile front, and aiming to reach an imaginary objective, a line to be known as ‘Oxalic’. This was drawn along the rear side of the principal Axis defences, some three to five miles from the British front line. Within this ten-mile stretch, two more thoroughly cleared channels were to be made, through which the armour of the corps d’élite – Lumsden’s X Corps – would pass. They would then break out wide and establish themselves on defensible land beyond the Oxalic line to be known as ‘Skinflint’. Horrocks’s XIII Corps would simultaneously punch a hole in the south of the line, through which 7th Armoured Division would pass for what would be no more than a diversionary attack. At the same time, the Fighting French, also now returned to the front line, would attack the Italian-held feature at Himeimet at the extreme south of the line.
Monty was convinced that by making his main attack where Rommel least expected, he would achieve the vital element of surprise. Enormous deceptions were planned to make the enemy believe the south was where the main thrust would be. Major Jasper Maskelyne had already proved himself very useful during the Flap when he had managed to ‘move’ the harbour at Alexandria. Known before the war as ‘Maskelyne the Magnificent’, he was an illusionist of considerable repute. The secrets of precisely how he did it have never been revealed, but, as with all illusionists, mirrors, smoke and clever lighting were key ingredients. Monty now wanted Major Maskelyne to help trick Rommel again. Large numbers of dummy vehicles, guns, and tanks were made and placed in the south and constantly shuffled around. Bogus recordings of radio traffic were devised to mislead German radio units; and a dummy water pipeline was laid at such a rate as to make it seem as though the offensive would start in November, not October. Albert Martin, who in early October had been sent on a 6-pounder gun course, returned to his company to discover ‘great concentrations of dummy this and dummy that’. He reckoned they looked pretty realistic from 200 yards away on the ground, so must have been even more convincing from the air. The Riflemen joined in the game of bluff by driving lorries with chains attached to them to stir up the dust up and down the line. ‘Whether we fooled anyone, I couldn’t say,’ noted Albert, ‘but it added novelty to our preparations.’17
This was all well and good, but as September made way for October, Monty began to have doubts about the emphasis of his battle plan. Having watched many of the training sessions and exercises now underway, he was not sure that his forces were capable of what was being demanded of them. ‘The plan was simple,’ he wrote later, ‘but it was too ambitious. If I was not careful, divisions and units would be given tasks which might end in failure because of the inadequate standard of training.’18 Once again, these nagging doubts were prompted by the state of the British armour rather than the infantry. On 6 October, he made his decision. X Corps’ armour would be set a more modest target, a line only a mile or two in front of Oxalic to be called ‘Pierson’. Originally, Monty had aimed to destroy Rommel’s armour then turn on the infantry. In his new plan, the British armour was only to contain and hold off the Panzers while the rest of his forces carried out a methodical destruction of the enemy infantry. This was to happen by a process he called ‘crumbling’, whereby unarmoured infantry divisions would be attacked and cut off from their supplies. If the enemy armour then counter-attacked, that was fine by Monty – enticing the enemy forward as they had enticed so many British tanks in the past was exactly what he wanted. They would then be drawn onto fixed anti-tank screens and blown to pieces.
Clearing the huge numbers of mines was a difficult process. Most were anti-tank rather than anti-personnel, which was why the infantry would be able to move forward with, it was hoped, comparative ease. But the Axis had laid at least half a million mines of all kinds, and unfortunately the only effective way to clear them was by the laborious process of tentatively prodding with a bayonet or steel probe. Alternatives, such as the electronic detector and the specially designed flail tanks, were few and far between and notoriously unreliable. Clearing them by hand took time, however, especially at night, even though a large number of mine-clearers had been allocated for the task.
But no matter how many times they practised simulated nighttime mine-clearing, no one could say for sure how the real thing would go. Nothing on this scale had been attempted before. Nonetheless, by dawn on the opening night of the battle, Monty aimed to have cleared three narrow lanes of just eight yards wide each through both of the two corridors planned for the northern sector. Through these impossibly narrow lanes, the weight of British armour – hundreds of tanks, trucks, and guns – would travel, and then burst out into the wide, open desert beyond the minefields. It was ambitious, to say the least.
Much yet again depended on Mary Coningham’s Desert Air Force and the other air forces in the Middle East. They had certainly maintained their air superiority since Alam Halfa, but Tedder was still worried about shortages of aircraft, especially fighters. ‘I am gravely worried over my fighter position and prospects,’ he wrote to Portal in September. ‘Facts are that we are at only 50 per cent strength with three Spitfire squadrons and lower with the Kittyhawk squadrons.’19 More Kittyhawks did arrive, but these squadrons were still under strength by the third week of October. Nor had the number of Spitfire squadrons been increased. The Luftwaffe, on the other hand, was being sent a number of the new improved Me 109Gs, which in terms of performance knocked the socks off anything the Allies could offer, even the Spitfire V. In fact, by 20 October, in all of Egypt the Allies could call on 506 twin- and single-engine fighters, while the Luftwaffe had 595 at their disposal. The difference – and it was a crucial one – was that the Allies had plenty of fuel, and the Axis did not. Even so, Mary Coningham would have to handle his forces well.
And much also depended on the artillery. On the eve of battle, Monty had 908 field guns, of which 824 were 25-pounders and 25 were the new 5.5-inch howitzers, as used by Sergeant Harold Harper and the 7th Medium Artillery. In contrast, the Panzer Army could call on only 200 field guns. The opening bombardment by the British gunners was to signal the start of the battle. For twenty minutes, they were to concentrate on counter-battery fire – i.e. they would aim to neutralize the enemy gun batteries, most of which they knew about thanks to extensive aerial photography by the RAF. They would then provide a creeping barrage, lobbing shells over the advancing infantry, moving their range forward at a rate of 100 yards every three minutes. The differences between the start of this offensive and those of the Western Front during the First World War were negligible. Tactically, Monty was offering nothing new at all.
What he was offering was firm leadership, with careful handling of troops and reserves and a plan that everyone could understand. There would be three distinct phases he told his men: the ‘break-in’ – the initial moves; the ‘dogfight’ – in which the infantry would crumble the enemy’s defences and which he envisaged would last a week; and the ‘break-out’ – by the armour, when the battle would be wrapped up. ‘This battle will involve hard and prolonged fighting,’ he told his commanders on 6 October. ‘Our troops must not think that, because we have a good tank and very powerful artillery support, the enemy will all surrender. The enemy will NOT surrender and there will be bitter fighting.’20
Rommel’s situation was not good – he was short of everything – but experience had proved how effective the Germans were in defence, and there was no better place to defend than the one they were in. Rommel had stayed put for precisely the same reason that the Auk had stopped along the Alamein Line in the first place. As Alam Halfa had shown, making an effective attack across defended minefields was no easy matter. Rommel’s sappers had also sown what he called ‘devil’s gardens’ – random and particularly unpleasant patches of anti-tank and anti-personnel mines criss-crossed with trip wires and booby traps.
The German field marshal was, however, no longer in Africa. He had not been well throughout the Battle of Alam Halfa and, suffering from fatigue, low blood pressure and stomach ulcers, he had finally left Egypt on 23 September, a month after requesting a temporary replacement. Nonetheless, his replacement, General Georg Stumme, was a highly competent tank man who had served with distinction in Russia; furthermore, before leaving for Germany, Rommel had thoroughly outlined his defensive plans for the forthcoming British offensive.
Monty was fully aware that his battle would not be easy, despite his massive material advantage, but was his plan the right one? Only time would tell.
‘To Ike, the principle of unity of command is almost holy,’ noted Harry Butcher, yet throughout that summer and autumn of 1942, General Eisenhower was repeatedly told that this vision of togetherness was doomed to fail.21 But Ike didn’t see why, and was pleased to observe that at TORCH headquarters the initial feelings of mutual suspicion and distrust were being replaced by co-operation, comradeship and a common sense of purpose. Even so, the differences between the two allies did on occasion threaten to prove his detractors right. One such stumbling block was over the British War Office’s directive to Lieutenant-General Anderson, due to command the British First Army in North Africa. In drawing up this directive, the War Office essentially copied the one given to Field Marshal Haig during the First World War, when he had been subordinated to the French Marshal Foch. Anderson was ordered to serve Ike loyally but if he felt he was being given an order that appeared to ‘imperil’ any British troops, then he had a right to appeal to the War Office before carrying out that order.
Understandably, Ike felt things had moved on since then – and even since Lord Gort had been subordinated to General Gamelin in France in 1939 – and strongly believed that the Allies should be viewed as one in the field, and that there should be no doubt about the responsibility and authority of the Allied commander. By this time, however, Ike had begun to get a grip on the British way of doing things, so rather than complain to the British Chiefs of Staff, he appealed instead directly to General Sir Hastings Ismay, the PM’s Chief of Staff and a paragon of common sense and discretion. In a carefully worded note, Ike pointed out that there would be many times when both US and British forces were likely to be ‘imperilled’ and, although he was sure Anderson would be unlikely to use this right of appeal, he did feel very strongly that the proposed directive would only ‘weaken rather than support the spirit that should be developed and sustained among all ranks participating in this great enterprise’.22
Quietly and efficiently, Ismay took this matter to the Chiefs of Staff, and it was dealt with swiftly. Ike had suggested that Anderson should keep his right of appeal but only if, in his view, an order gave rise to a grave or exceptional situation, and even then he had to inform the Allied commander of his intention to appeal first, and give the reasons for doing so. In what was a considerable breakthrough on the part of Eisenhower, the British Chiefs of Staff agreed entirely with his suggestions. In doing so, they enabled Ike to lay down the basis for the strongest military alliance in history.
Ike also formed an immediate and mutual rapport with Admiral Cunningham. The two had first met during ABC’s twelve-day visit to England in September. ‘I liked him at once,’ wrote Cunningham. ‘He struck me as being completely sincere, straightforward and very modest … We soon became fast friends.’ ABC had also been impressed by the way Ike had got British and US staffs working together and was of precisely the same mind as the Commanding General – determined to ensure that nothing stood in the way of this crucial unity of thought and purpose. At times his patience was tried, however. ‘To our way of thinking the Americans are more given than ourselves to calling a spade a spade without troubling to wrap it up in polite verbiage,’ he noted.23
He finally left America for good on 11 October, delighted to be able to get away from the ‘hot-house’ atmosphere of Washington and back to an active part in the war. Even better, he would soon be returning to the Mediterranean. Throughout his time in Washington, thoughts of his old hunting ground had never been far from ABC’s mind. He had heard with dismay about the retreat back into Egypt, had mourned the sinking of the Eagle and the other losses suffered during Operation PEDESTAL, and his anxiety about Malta had only grown. With this in mind, he and his staff entered into the preparations for TORCH with considerable zest and energy, sure that success would mean the end of the Siege of Malta and Allied victory in the Mediterranean. For ABC, there could be no greater spur.
Keeping TORCH a secret was of paramount importance, yet there were scares along the way. Harry Butcher was beside himself when he discovered that a crucial page of his diary was missing. He could not think of any conceivable way in which it could have got out of the office, where it was always written, typed, and then put onto microfilm; but despite looking high and low, there was simply no sign of it anywhere. He hated having to add to Ike’s worries, but although Eisenhower was upset, he was ‘so considerate I could have wept’ and told Butch not to tell anyone and to keep looking. ‘After all,’ noted Butch, ‘I’m responsible and probably should be sent home on a slow boat, unescorted, to use one of Ike’s favourite expressions.’24
A more serious scare came in mid-September when the War Department in Washington intercepted a message to United Press from their news editor in London warning UP to prepare for coverage at Casablanca and elsewhere in French Morocco where the US would soon be striking. Whether this had been sent by secure cable or insecure radio was not known, but it was certainly a cause for worry that journalists were prepared to risk so serious a breach of security.
The third and potentially most dangerous scare came a week later. General Clark had written a letter to the Governor-General of Gibraltar, which had been taken by hand by a naval officer. Unfortunately, his plane had been shot down and the dead officer had later been washed up near Cadiz in southern Spain, the letter still about him. Amazingly, the letter had been sent to Madrid and then passed on to the British apparently without being opened. At any rate, one outcome of this episode was that the final date for TORCH was moved from 4 November to 8 November, the last day it was considered feasible to land troops on the beaches near Casablanca.
Worries that the details of TORCH would be blown were never far away. With the clock ticking faster, news arrived that the Vichy Government had learned from both German and Japanese sources that the USA was planning operations soon against Dakar and Casablanca. Vichy was convinced that Axis aggression in North Africa was imminent. Murphy also warned that German spies were flooding into North Africa – there were rumours that 500 blank French passports had been handed out to Germans.
Meanwhile, Admiral Darlan had expressed his willingness to ‘play ball’ and to bring with him the French Fleet, providing he would be made C-in-C of French Armed Forces in North Africa, and that the USA assured him of economic aid on a large scale. On the other hand, Murphy reported that his most senior collaborator in Algeria, General Mast, was still in favour of General Giraud rather than Darlan, and was suggesting the Allies send a submarine to pick him up from southern France. Murphy’s personal take on the matter was that they should encourage Darlan with a view to securing his co-operation with Giraud.
Murphy also announced that it was finally time for General Clark and his team of four staff officers to head to Algeria for their covert meeting with Mast and other leading Allied collaborators. ‘Clark was as happy as a boy with a new knife,’ noted Butch, but added, ‘Ike won’t breathe easily until Clark is back, for he is a close friend of 25 years’ standing and if anything happens to him, Ike would be desperate.’25 Clark finally took his leave from the cottage just before midnight on 17 October. He was to fly to Gibraltar, where he would wait for the signal to proceed by submarine to an ultra-secret rendezvous some miles west of Algiers.
Much still hung in the balance.
In Egypt, the air battle had already begun with an intensification of bombing and strafing of enemy landing grounds, lines of communication, and positions along the front line. On the 20th, Cobber Weinronk took part in a stooge on LG 21. He spotted a number of dispersed aircraft, and watched their bombs start several fires including one particularly large conflagration. They’d encountered little flak; really, he noted, it was a ‘milk run’. There’d been greater danger when he’d tried to land. He was only 300 feet off the ground when his gunner shouted that there was another plane coming in below. Cobber opened the throttle, did another circuit and this time landed OK. ‘On another drome,’ he noted, ‘the Commanding Officer had just landed when a plane landed on top of him, and he was decapitated.’26
The following day, Mary Coningham paid a call, giving the South African wing ‘the low-down on the situation’. Like Monty, he had spent the last few days roaming round talking to his men. But the time for talking was almost over. ‘If there is anything I have not yet done, it is now too late,’ Tommy Elmhirst had written to his wife on 21 October.27 Monty must have been feeling the same; that day he’d given his commanders and officers their final briefing. Now he had to sit back and wait.
Nonetheless, that night both Monty and Mary appeared to be confident and in good spirits. The commanders and their principal staffs had taken to having dinner together – it was another way of harmonizing the army and air force. Tommy enjoyed the dinners and had recently begun introducing some topic of conversation at the table each night ‘to take all our minds, including Montgomery’s and Mary’s, off our responsibilities for a short time’. Monty was apparently always on good form during such discussions, and Tommy was able to draw out his views on subjects like ‘The benefits, or otherwise, of a Staff College education’, or ‘A balanced life: so much time for wife and family, so much time for work and play’. ‘A very great deal of sense was talked around our supper table,’ noted Tommy, ‘more than the layman might credit the serviceman with possessing.’
Supper together on the 21st was, Tommy observed, quite cheerful. He’d started a conversation going on the subject, ‘The young married officer is the curse of the services.’ The conversation soon evolved into what things were likely to make a successful marriage. ‘It was the first time any of us had seen Montgomery REALLY unbend and be very human,’ noted Tommy. Supper overran by twenty minutes.
The next day, Monty told his army that the battle would start the following night, 23 October. He wanted every man to be in no doubt as to exactly what his task was. Throughout the day, up and down the line, briefings were given about the battle and what each unit’s role would be. ‘Nearly all day looking over maps and plans,’ noted Joe Madeley. ‘Issued with grenades and extra rounds.’ Then he went to battalion HQ to look at a giant 20-foot-square sand model of the area they were to go over.
Back in London, the Prime Minister was also waiting anxiously for news of when battle would begin. ‘Let me have the word ZIP when you start,’ he wrote to Alex on 20 October, once again adopting the codeword from the launch of Alam Halfa. ‘Events are moving in our favour, both in North Africa and Vichy France, and TORCH goes forward steadily and punctually.’ Then he added, ‘But all our hopes are centred upon the battle you and Montgomery are going to fight. It may well be the key to the future.’28