THE ALAMEIN LINE was now a mass of wire entanglements and extensive minefields, most of which were of the anti-tank variety. The ground varied over the 40 miles from the coast to the Qattara Depression – stony sand and vetch to the north, and utterly flat to the untrained eye, although there were a number of low ridges that it was sometimes hard to notice until directly on them. Further south, the desert developed into strange lunar valleys with sudden escarpments, over which it was hard for vehicles to cross, but then it levelled out again into a broad gravelly plain.
Montgomery’s plan for the battle was to punch two holes through the Axis defences, one in the north and one further to the south, although it was the one in the north that was to be the main breach. This was also the strongest part of the enemy line, but Monty believed that any attack in the south would still have to wheel north at some point and so concluded it would be best to hit the strongest point head-on first along a 10-mile front. This was to be called Operation LIGHTFOOT. It was XXX Corps who were going to make this main hole and their objective was an imaginary line some 3–5 miles beyond the British front line and codenamed ‘Oxalic’. The hole would not be 10 solid miles wide, but rather would be through two channels, each of three lanes each just 8 yards wide, which would be cleared by the engineers during the night. Through these impossibly narrow lanes, the weight of British armour – hundreds of tanks, trucks and guns – would travel, then burst out into the wide, open desert beyond the minefields. The tanks would then hold the panzers at bay while the enemy infantry was destroyed in a process Monty called ‘crumbling’.
At the same time, XIII Corps would break through the line to the south through which 7th Armoured Division would pass, and the Fighting French, as they were now renamed, would attack the Italians at the extreme south. That was the plan, at any rate.
Much depended on Mary Coningham’s Desert Air Force and the other air forces now in the Middle East. There were concerns about numbers, as ever; on paper the Axis had 595 fighters to call upon, while the Desert Air Force had 506. The difference – and it was a big one – was that the Allies had plenty of fuel, ammunition and workshops close to the rear, and the Axis did not.
Montgomery was also staking much on his artillery. On the eve of battle, he had 908 field guns compared with the Panzerarmee’s 200. 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; that is, they would try to destroy 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 and moving their range forward at a rate of 100 yards every three minutes. The differences between the start of this battle and those of the Western Front in the last war were negligible.
On the other hand, innovative tactics were not Monty’s game. Rather, he was offering firm leadership, fire-power and careful handling of his largely conscript Army. There would be three phases: the ‘break-in’ – the initial moves; the ‘dogfight’ – that is, the crumbling process; and then the ‘break-out’, by the armour when the battle would be wrapped up. He warned of bitter fighting and suggested it would last around a week. There was no doubt that the Panzerarmee was weakened, but the line was a naturally strong defensive position, there were millions of mines, and the German troops, especially, were highly disciplined and unlikely to throw in the towel at the first sign of trouble.
German and Italian units were rather mixed up. Infantry were dug in but the Afrikakorps was split. Part of 15. Panzer and the 164th Light were in the north along with the Italian Trento Motorized Division and the Littorio, one of just three armoured divisions in the entire Italian Army. A long, narrow minefield then extended roughly east–west for around 10 miles, separating the two halves of the line. To the south of this were 21. Panzer; the Ariete, another of the three Italian armoured divisions; and the Folgore, one of two Italian airborne divisions.
Tenente Giuseppe Santaniello and the gunners of the Trento Division were roughly in line with the Miteiriya Ridge in the northern half of the line. For weeks he had been living in his fox-hole, occasionally firing the guns but mostly watching, waiting and trying to preserve ammunition. Over the past week, enemy air activity had increased, which suggested something was up, but even so, the start of the battle, when it came, was a shock.
Santaniello had been in his dugout looking up at the most beautiful moon when suddenly, at 10 p.m., the entire horizon burst into flame. ‘An infinite number of flashing tongues of light,’ he wrote, ‘intersecting one another and spreading in an immense semi-circle which stretched as far as I could see.1 Then a whistling, whispering inferno exploded on top of us.’
The ground was trembling under the continued pounding. Santaniello felt as though his guts were being crushed. His comrade, Petolicchio, was grimacing next to him, shaking quite uncontrollably and jabbering at the same time, congratulating himself on reinforcing their dugout that very morning. Santaniello crouched, thinking of the ordeal that lay ahead, then realized that he too was shaking and that his mouth was full of saliva. ‘As hard as I tried,’ he noted, ‘I couldn’t get a grip on myself.’2
On the other side of the line, Albert Martin saw the barrage open like sheet lightning before thunder, the flash coming before the sudden eruption of noise. He had never heard anything like it. The 2nd Rifle Brigade were now in 1st Armoured Division as part of X Corps, the recently created corps de chasse of Montgomery’s plans, and he had spent the day feeling nervy and edgy, smoking incessantly. Now the battle had started and the shock waves of those guns pulsed through the ground. Also watching was Ted Hardy, with the 6th Australian Division to the north. He had spent every night of the previous week creeping forward and clearing mines. Now, though, he was watching from a shallow sand hill as shells poured on to the enemy positions. ‘I felt a bit sorry for them,’ he admitted.3
As the gunners’ loading rhythm changed, so the sky became a kaleidoscope of flickering colour. Among those now manning the 900 guns was Jean-Mathieu Boris, who had been ill and in hospital, then convalescing, and had only just joined his comrades near Himeimat at the southern end of the line at 9 p.m. Forty minutes later, he had watched hundreds of aircraft attacking the enemy positions and at 10 p.m. he was beside one of the 25-pounders in the French sector as they fired one shell after another over to the Italian lines.
One of those on the receiving end of the French shells was Caporale Luigi Marchese. As soon as it began, he decided to move into one of the better-protected dugouts and had just reached it when a stream of shells rained down on to their position and several hit the dugout. The canvas covering the hole was struck by a hail of shrapnel, stones and grit, transforming it into a colander, but at least he was uninjured. ‘Now there was nothing to do but wait,’ he wrote, ‘because outside the inferno raged on.’4
From his caravan at Air HQ, Tommy Elmhirst started writing to his wife. ‘The battle started five minutes ago,’ he scribbled, ‘and even here, up wind, there is no mistaking the thunder of the guns.’5 The air battle had been going well apart from problems caused by bad weather on the 21st. On the 22nd, Allied fighters had cruised back and forth over the Luftwaffe airfields at El Daba, challenging the 109s to come up and fight. The tactic worked: German fighter pilots were scrambled to take on the intruders. Billy Drake had been leading his own squadron as well as Dale Deniston and the Americans of 66th Fighter Squadron over El Daba when they spotted four 109s below them. Diving down, they hit all four, Drake claiming one of them. ‘I think we have definitely set Rommel back,’ Elmhirst had written.6 ‘His Air Force was hardly seen in the air today.’
Fifteen minutes after the guns began firing, they stopped as suddenly as they had begun and, in Cairo, Alexander signalled the Prime Minister: ‘ZIP 2200 hours local time today.’7 For five minutes, the gunners re-set their guns, then opened up the creeping barrage, and so the infantry began advancing. From where he stood, in the brief silence Jean-Mathieu Boris could faintly hear the bagpipes of the 51st Highland Division to the north.
The opening night of battle at Alamein was marked by both confusion and the mounting sense that not all was going to plan, although that was, perhaps, inevitable with a nighttime assault through very narrow lanes of the desert. When Albert Martin finally set off, the situation seemed to him to be incredibly confused. For all the space of the 40-mile length of the Alamein Line, all the British armour was now trying to channel itself into six narrow passages. The infantry divisions in between and either side could advance freely over the minefields, but not so the tanks, gun tractors and carriers, who were desperately squeezing themselves into a passage narrower than a tennis court. White tape marked the way, while posts had been thrust into the ground and on them were empty petrol cans, each holding an oil lamp with a moon, star or sun cut out of the metal, depending on the track. Amid the noise and mayhem, Martin couldn’t help wondering who had prepared all these cans and how they had miraculously appeared there.
The trouble was, very quickly neither Martin, nor anyone for that matter, could see the lanterns or anything very much, as the air swiftly thickened with smoke and fine, cloying dust. The sand was becoming crushed into powder and clouds of it were swirling into the air, clogging eyes and throats and hindering visibility. The fog of war had descended. Tanks and vehicles began bumping into one another and the enemy’s guns, albeit limited in number, had opened up too. As in the First World War, the opening barrage appeared to have had only limited effect.
Not that Tenente Giuseppe Santaniello would have agreed. He was among those trying to fire back, but all around him now were apocalyptic scenes as shells continued to explode and the casualties mounted. Dust and smoke filled the air, mixing with the bitter stench of burned explosive. A sinister light glowed over the battlefield and through it bursts of fire could be seen. ‘The layer on the third gun didn’t want any help,’ recorded Santaniello, ‘and despite his back being laid open to the lungs and his legs mangled, he got down from his seat himself.’8 Santaniello tried to shout orders but he could hardly hear himself speak. When his men did yell back their confirmation, their voices ‘seemed to come from beyond the grave.’
Opposite Santaniello, a few miles to the west and also covered in dust, were the men of the Sherwood Rangers, now mostly equipped with the new American Shermans, although Major Stanley Christopherson and his men in A Squadron, spearheading the Rangers’ attack, were in the lighter, faster and less well-armed and protected Crusaders. Christopherson had already had to send one of the Crusaders leading them back with a water leak and they had been halted before they’d even reached the start line. Christopherson ordered his men to refuel their tanks and, while they waited, to get a cup of coffee made from water in tins above the engine. ‘When the engine runs for any length,’ he explained, ‘the water invariably gets heated up.’9
They eventually got going again, but it wasn’t until 4 a.m. that they finally reached the first enemy minefield, passing through the New Zealand Division’s sector of the corridor. Halfway through, as they passed by the northern end of the long, narrow Miteiriya Ridge, they were stopped again. Jumping down from his tank, Christopherson walked up to the front of their column, which had halted by a hastily set-up control post. There he learned they could move no further for the moment because the lane head still hadn’t been properly cleared after all. Up ahead, he could see the muzzle flashes of enemy guns and tracer reaching out across the desert.
They’d been there a short time when a message came through from division to push on regardless. With mounting apprehension, Christopherson ordered his squadron on, following behind the Crusaders and expecting to hit a mine at any moment. To his enormous relief, they were all still in one piece when a sapper informed them they had made it through. Anti-tank and machine-gun fire soon started pouring towards them. They had no choice but to keep going, however, because a dangerous bottleneck was forming behind them at the mouth of the route through the minefields. Turning southwards, they had gone about 200 yards when they ran straight into German anti-tank positions, some as close as 50 yards. Mayhem ensued. Armour-piercing shells screamed across the gap and, in moments, five of Christopherson’s Crusaders had been knocked out and were burning brightly in the last darkness of the night.
‘EDWARD,’ radioed Christopherson’s friend Sam Garrett in the leading tank, using what he thought was the right codename, ‘I have been hit twice.10 Tank on fire – am evacuating.’ Before Christopherson could reply, the CO, Colonel ‘Flash’ Kellett, radioed, ‘Get off the bloody air and your name is KING not EDWARD!’ As Garrett’s crew bailed out, they were machine-gunned, but despite being wounded three of them made it to safety.
‘It was quite one of the worst moments of my life,’ wrote Christopherson.11 ‘I couldn’t go forward, but all the heavy tanks were behind me so I couldn’t go back on account of them and the minefield … We just had to sit there.’ They were, however, now firing back and two enemy panzers were soon burning.
As dawn crept over the battlefield, so the enemy fire increased. Amongst the Italian gunners was Giuseppe Santaniello, who could see British tanks advancing towards their position. His battery opened fire and then they saw German tanks moving up to support them. This was 15. Panzerdivision launching its counter-attack. A number of the men started cheering, ‘Viva il Re!’ and ‘Viva il Duce!’ ‘The battle is filled with the noise of tracks on the move, of machine-guns, of armour-piercing rounds, of 88s,’ Santaniello jotted in his diary, ‘everything covered in the dust thrown up by the tanks, like the wake of ships in a sea of sand.’12
Not far away, four Grants of B Squadron of the Sherwood Rangers were hit and began flaming – or ‘brewed up’, as the crews termed it – then another four and three more Crusaders. Ahead, German, Italian and British corpses already littered the ground, some dark with blood and thick with flies.
From the Italian lines, Giuseppe Santaniello could no longer really tell who was who, but every time a tank went up in flames, his men cheered. ‘For them,’ he jotted in his diary, ‘everything that burns is British.’ Then one tank that had been hit continued to roll forward before finally coming to a halt in a sea of fire.13 Santaniello could see one of the men trying to get out, but the flames were too much. ‘Soon all that remains,’ he wrote, ‘is a blackened mass which bubbles and burns.’
Later, he saw some of the Italian infantry begin to get up and start falling back – their flanks were now open, they explained. Then one of the battery commanders asked to withdraw, explaining that his guns were low on ammunition. His commander told him to stay put. Fall back, he told him, and he would personally see he was shot in front of his men.
Meanwhile, the remains of the Sherwood Rangers’ A and B Squadrons held firm as the rest of the column withdrew through the minefield gaps. Now that it was daylight, however, further gaps in the enemy’s minefields were apparent, so on the orders of Colonel Kellett, Christopherson was at last able to bring the rest of the regiment back over the Miteiriya Ridge without any further losses. It had been a difficult night.
‘A tense day here awaiting developments,’ wrote Tommy Elmhirst at Desert Air Force HQ.14 ‘Good and indifferent news coming in but the Army have not achieved the hundred per cent success they planned.’ The infantry had managed to get within 1,000–2,000 yards of the Oxalic objective, but progress had not been so good in the narrow channels of X Corps. The experience of the Sherwood Rangers had been repeated at the mouths of both corridors and, because of the delays, there had not been enough time to get sufficient armour clear by dawn.
A lull developed. Scraps of news reached Albert Martin and the other riflemen still in the thick of the minefield. They were used to beetling about in their wagons, spotting the enemy, engaging, then moving on again, but here they were rather pinned down. ‘We were surrounded by all the trappings of a major battle,’ he noted, ‘it had all the tension, stuff was exploding onto our patch, casualties were occurring, but there was no target for us to have a go at.’15 He and his mates couldn’t understand why there had been no counter-attack.
Despite some elaborate deception plans that Montgomery had put in place – including a magician using smokescreens, amplified sound and fireworks – the Axis command had not been fooled. Panzerarmee intelligence officers had also managed to get fairly accurate appreciations of British dispositions and had guessed that the October full moon would be a likely time to attack. With this in mind, it was bizarre that the Panzerarmee should have so many senior officers away at once; with a handful off sick, was it really necessary for others to be given rare periods of leave at the same moment? As it happened, there was plenty of confusion amongst the Axis forces that morning, but not because of any magic shows further up the coast.
General Stumme, Rommel’s stand-in, had left Panzerarmee HQ that morning to have a look at the front line and the level of enemy minefield penetration in the Australian sector. He was just getting out of his car when he was fired upon. Panicking, his driver sped away with the General still clinging to the side of the car. Stumme then suffered a massive heart attack, fell off the car and died, although his body wasn’t found until the following day.
General Ritter von Thoma, the commander of the Akrikakorps, took over, but for a while the Panzerarmee had been rudderless. He quickly gripped the situation but, as a panzer man, was all too aware of the shortage of fuel, too much of which was still at Benghazi. A tanker was due to dock in Tobruk on 26 October, but if that failed to materialize, then the situation would once again be desperate. With this in mind, von Thoma decided it was pointless wasting fuel on a counter-attack when they could stay put on their containing line and blast any oncoming attack from fixed positions.
Meanwhile, Montgomery was trying to piece together what information he could. In the far south, the French assault by the Foreign Legion had failed, and the 7th Armoured Division had been unable to breech the minefields but had done enough to keep 21. Panzer and the Ariete Divisions pinned down. By the evening, however, he had learned that infantry casualties were quite high and that the armour was bogged down. He now issued new orders. The Aussies were to carry out a crumbling operation that night to exploit their pretty impressive gains; the New Zealanders were to push south from the Miteiriya Ridge; and X Corps were to renew efforts to clear the corridors and burst into the open desert beyond. In the south, 7th Armoured was also to make another attempt to break through.
The Australians couldn’t believe they had to attack again. It meant another long night for Ted Hardy, who would have to creep forward and help clear mines. It was tricky and dangerous enough in the comparative calm of a lull, but under fire and with flares crackling overhead, and with tracer arcing and shells exploding, it was no fun at all. The 51st Highlanders were also pushing forward, trying to open a gap for 1st Armoured Division, and once more playing their pipes. Albert Martin watched them, the eerie sound of the pipes cutting across the sound of battle as the men disappeared like spectres into the smoke and dust.
The Sherwood Rangers, meanwhile, were also on the move once more, having fended off a localized counter-attack by German panzers late in the afternoon. That evening, Stanley Christopherson was just climbing back into his tank when a shell burst overhead. The blast hit his head, closing his eye, giving him a nosebleed and concussion and a few splinter wounds. Really, it was a lucky escape, but he was sufficiently injured to need attention. After being patched up he was taken back to Alexandria.
Later, the Sherwood Rangers formed up again but soon got stuck, nose to tail, unable to move. At this point, they were attacked by Stukas and much of the B Echelon, the ‘soft-skins’ with their ammunition and fuel, was hit. Twenty lorries were blazing. It was one of the Luftwaffe’s few successes and caused pandemonium. Meanwhile, the sappers were finding the minefields denser and deeper than they had thought. It was another disappointing night.
At 3.30 a.m. on 25 October, crisis talks were taking place at the Army Commander’s headquarters, as it was clear X Corps were starting to baulk at the lack of progress and rising casualties. Montgomery stuck to his guns, however: they had to press on, whatever the casualties. Nor were XIII Corps doing much better in the south. Only the Australians, it seemed, were making much progress, so at General Freyberg’s suggestion, Monty decided to switch tack and reinforce the Aussies with armour and motorized artillery. It was a good move: that night, they surged forward, sweeping through the Axis positions, then holding and consolidating a key feature near the coast called Point 29.
While the battle was raging in the desert, Major-General Mark Clark had been making his clandestine trip to Algiers. For three days, General Eisenhower, still in London, had heard nothing and had been worried sick, but then, at around midnight on Saturday, 24 October, he finally got word that his friend had made it safely back to Gibraltar. The following afternoon, the man himself was walking through the door of Eisenhower’s rented cottage on the edge of London and, all things considered, looking well.
Sitting down, Clark then told his tale. They had met the British submarine HMS Seraph and had reached their rendezvous point off the coast of Algiers without a glitch, but had then waited thirty-six hours, watching through a periscope for a white-light signal from a secret house on the shore. As stipulated by Général Mast, his party had included four other staff officers with specific expertise in planning, supply and civil affairs and had included Clark’s right-hand man and Head of Plans, Brigadier-General Lyman Lemnitzer.
At long last, the signal came and Clark, his team and three British Commandos set off to the beach in folbots – collapsible canvas canoes.
Général Mast and several of his staff officers were there waiting for them, as was Bob Murphy. Clark opened the discussion by telling Mast that they had to trust one another and that it was essential they were frank and honest. Clark admitted he then lied like hell – he made no mention, for example, of any dates; as far as Mast was concerned, TORCH was still some way off and remained hypothetical only. Mast gave him exact details about the location of troops and batteries along the coast. The problems, Mast suggested, would come from the French Navy; he did not trust Darlan and advised the Allies against dealing with him. Clark, however, made it clear that Giraud could never be overall Allied commander, but he did suggest he could be Governor of French North Africa and that Mast could be Deputy Chief of Staff of the Allied Expeditionary Force. Mast seemed happy with these proposals and also accepted British involvement.
Clark and his party had landed at 10 p.m. and were still talking well into the following morning, at which point Clark excused himself for a pee. As he did so, word arrived that the police had become suspicious after local Arabs had reported footprints on the beach and were on their way to the house. The Americans and the three Commandos were hurriedly bundled into the cellar, Clark clutching his carbine, and soon after the police arrived. While the owner of the house was assuring them nothing was wrong, one of the Commandos was seized with a coughing fit. Clark then offered him his chewing gum, taking it from his own mouth and handing it over to the slightly perplexed Commando, who began chewing nervously; it seemed to do the trick. ‘Have you another piece?’ the man asked soon after.16
‘Why?’ whispered Clark.
‘Because this one has no flavour.’
Fortunately, the police went away again without checking the cellar. It was clearly time to go, but as they hurried down to the shore they realized quite a swell had developed. Clark stripped off and sat on his clothes in his folbot, but they were all flung into the sea and so headed back to the shore again. Completely naked but for his cap, Clark persuaded the owner of the house to let him back in and to give him some clothes. They all then hid in nearby woods until the swell calmed down. They were nearly spotted by some locals, but managed to get into their folbots and head back out to the submarine, which had now manoeuvred just half a mile from shore. Once safely aboard, they made it back to Gibraltar without mishap.
Mast, Clark believed, had committed himself so far that there was now no chance he could possibly be double-crossing the Allies, so Eisenhower agreed that on 4 November he should be told the landings would take place four days later. A question mark still remained over Darlan, but it looked as though this extraordinary high-stakes mission had paid off. They would know soon enough.