History of the Second World War (49 page)

Unfortunately, a lack of wireless security allowed the German ‘intercept’ services to hear, and warn Rommel, of Auchinleck’s design. The 21st Panzer Division was moved back to meet the enveloping attack, and that countermove may have increased the hesitation which the executive commanders showed in fulfilling Auchinleck’s decisive intention. Similar hesitation was shown in the northern sector. When the 21st Panzer Division moved back, some of the 1st Armoured Division’s Stuart tanks started to push forward, and this insignificant advance produced a very significant effect — a sudden panic among the scanty troops of the 15th Panzer Division (whose fighting strength now was only fifteen tanks and some 200 riflemen). Such a panic in such tough German troops revealed how badly overstrained they were. But nothing was done to seize the opportunity for a general attack — by the armoured division, and the corps — which might well have proved decisive.

That night Auchinleck, even more emphatically than before, ordered his forces to drive home their attack, saying in his orders: ‘Our task remains to destroy the enemy as far east as possible and not to let him get away as a force in being . . . the enemy should be given no rest. . . . Eighth Army will attack and destroy the enemy in his present position.’ But he did not succeed in passing his own vigorous spirit down the ‘chain of command’. He had moved his tactical headquarters up close to 30th Corps H.Q., but that had been established nearly twenty miles behind the front, while it was equally far from 13th Corps H.Q. in the south. Panzerarmee H.Q. was only six miles behind the front, and Rommel himself was often up with the forward troops, applying a personal impulse on the spot. Rommel has been much criticised by more orthodox soldiers, German as well as British, for the frequency with which he was away from his headquarters and his fondness for taking direct control of the fight. But that direct control, although it caused some of his troubles, was a prime cause of his great successes. It revived in modern war the practice of, and influence exerted by, the Great Captains of the past.

On July 5 the 13th Corps did little, and the 30th Corps even less, to carry out Auchinleck’s aim and orders. The brigades of the New Zealand Division, which were cast for the leading role in the attack on Rommel’s rear, were not informed of their Commander-in-Chief’s intentions, and the decisive action expected of them. Auchinleck may reasonably be criticised for leaving the bulk of the armour with the 30th Corps instead of sending it to reinforce the intended rear thrust by the 13th Corps, but there is little reason to think that it would have been more vigorously employed there than it was in the centre — where a vigorous thrust might easily have succeeded in view of the enemy’s weakness. The 1st Armoured Division had now been brought up to a strength of ninety-nine tanks, while the 15th Panzer Division facing it had only fifteen left, and the whole Afrika Korps barely thirty.

The best excuse, and basically the truest explanation, was sheer tiredness — resulting from prolonged strain. That was the factor which in this first crucial phase finally settled the issue — as a stalemate settlement.

On balance, this was probably to the immediate advantage of the Germans and Italians, although to their ultimate disadvantage. The British situation was never so desperate as it outwardly appeared, whereas by July 5 Rommel’s forces were nearer to complete collapse than they had ever been to complete victory.

During the short lull which followed, the remainder of the Italian infantry divisions came up, and these took over the now static front in the northern sector, thus setting free the Germans for the new thrust in the southern sector that Rommel was planning. But on July 8, when he was about to try this thrust, the fighting strength of his three German ‘divisions’ had risen to no more than fifty tanks and about 2,000 infantry, while that of the seven Italian ‘divisions’ (including the recently arrived Littorio armoured division) was only fifty-four tanks and about 4,000 infantry. The British were reinforced by the arrival of the 9th Australian Division, which had so vigorously defended Tobruk in 1941, and by two fresh regiments, which brought them up to a strength of more than 200 tanks. The Australian division was sent to join the 30th Corps, which was now given a new commander, Lieutenant-General W. H. Ramsden — previously commanding the 50th Division.

Rommel’s intention to switch his effort southward fitted in well with Auchinleck’s desires, and new plan — which was to use the Australians for an attack westwards along the coast-road. When the Germans moved south, the New Zealanders withdrew eastward, evacuating the Bab el Qattara Box, so that all the Germans gained by this thrust on July 9 was ‘vacant possession’ of this ‘box’.

Early next morning, the Australians launched their attack near the coast, and speedily overran the Italian division holding that sector. Although they were checked, and some of the lost ground regained, by German troops who were rushed to the spot, this strong threat to Rommel’s coast-road line of supply forced him to abandon his thrust in the south. Auchinleck promptly sought to exploit the effect by a thrust aimed at the now weakened centre of Rommel’s line, on the Ruweisat Ridge. But, again, a well-conceived plan miscarried through mismanagement by the subordinate commanders, and lack of skilful combination between armour and infantry — to which the Germans owed so many of their successes.

The faulty tactical combination between the arms was made all the worse by the distrust that had long been growing among the infantry of the support they were likely to get from their own armour if, by pushing forward, they exposed themselves to counterattack from the panzer troops:

At this time there was throughout the Eighth Army, not only in the New Zealand Division, a most intense distrust, almost hatred, of our armour. Everywhere one heard tales of the other arms being let down; it was regarded as axiomatic that the tanks would not be where they were wanted in time.*

* Kippenberger:
Infantry Brigadier,
p. 180.

Even so, the thrust and threat strained Rommel’s meagre resources, while a counterattack he attempted in the north had little success. Although the British tanks were slow in meeting German tank counterstrokes against their own infantry, they helped to frighten the Italian infantry into large surrenders. Writing home on July 17 Rommel said:

Things are going downright badly for me at the moment, at any rate, in the military sense. The enemy is using his superiority, especially in infantry, to destroy the Italian formations one by one, and the German formations are much too weak to stand alone. It’s enough to make one weep.*

* The Rommel Papers, p. 257.

Next day the 7th Armoured Division developed a threat to Rommel’s southern flank, to extend the strain while Auchinleck prepared a new and heavier attack with further reinforcements which had now arrived. It was again aimed to achieve a breakthrough in the centre, but this time on the southern side of the Ruweisat Ridge, towards El Mireir. A fresh armoured brigade, the 23rd, which had just arrived (with 150 Valentines), was to be used in this attack — but one of its three regiments was sent to help the Australians in a subsidiary attack on the Miteiriya Ridge in the north.

The prospects looked all the better since the Eighth Army, with this additional brigade and fresh deliveries to the others, now had nearly 400 tanks on the scene. Rommel’s tank strength was even lower than his opponents realised — the Afrika Korps had less than thirty left. But, by a combination of luck and judgement, they were posted just at the point where the main British thrust was looming — and, in the event, only a small proportion of the British tanks were actually brought into action there.

Auchinleck’s plan this time was to burst through the enemy’s centre by a wide-fronted night attack with infantry — the 5th Indian Division — advancing straight along the Ruweisat Ridge, and the valley south of it, after the resistance had been lowered by a northward sweeping flank attack of the New Zealand Division. Then, at daylight, the new 23rd Armoured Brigade was to drive through to the El Mireir end of the valley, and the 2nd Armoured Brigade would then pass to carry on the exploiting drive. It was a finely conceived plan, but required thorough working out of the detailed process by the executives, which it did not get. The successive steps were not adequately co-ordinated at a corps conference, and Gott’s subordinates remained hazy about each other’s part.

The attack was launched on the night of July 21, and the New Zealanders arrived on their objective. But then German tanks came up and counter-attacked them in the dark, causing confusion. At daylight they smashed the most advanced New Zealand brigade — while the 22nd Armoured Brigade, which was to have protected the flank of the New Zealand advance, had not appeared on the scene. For its commander, in contrast to the Germans, had declared that tanks could not move in the dark.

Meanwhile the 5th Indian Division’s night attack had failed to reach its objectives. Worse still, it failed to clear a gap in the minefields for the follow-up advance of the 23rd Armoured Brigade. When its 40th and 46th Royal Tank Regiments were launched to the attack in the morning, they met the Indians falling back, but could get no clear information as to whether the mines in their path had been cleared. So they most gallantly drove on, and carried out what the New Zealanders, admiringly but too aptly, called ‘a real Balaclava Charge’. They soon found that the minefield had not been gapped, and that they had charged into a triple trap — coming under intense fire from the German tanks and anti-tank guns when they ran onto the minefield and became stranded there. Only eleven tanks returned. The one redeeming aspect of this ill-fated attack was that these two fresh regiments of the R.T.R. had helped to restore the confidence of the infantry, and of the New Zealanders particularly, that they would not be left in the lurch by the excessive caution of their own armour. The other regiment of the brigade had shown a similar thrustfulness in the northern attack. But the price was heavy — altogether, 118 tanks were lost this day, compared with the Germans’ loss of three, Even so, the British tank strength was still ten times as large as Rommel’s. But the miscarriage of the initial attack had such a damping effect that little further effort was made to resume the attack and use the potentially overwhelming weight of the forces on the British side.

After four days’ interval, for reorganisation and regrouping, one further attempt was made to break through Rommel’s front — by a thrust in the north. It opened well with the Australians’ capture of the Miteiriya Ridge by moonlight, and the 50th Division to the south of them also made a good start. But the commander of the 1st Armoured Division, which was to follow up and pass through, was not satisfied that a sufficiently wide gap had been cleared in the minefield. His delay spoilt the prospects of the attack as a whole. It was mid-morning before the leading tanks started to move through the minefield, and they were then pinned down by German tanks which had been rushed north. The infantry on the far side of the minefield were cut off, and then cut up by a counterattack. Meanwhile, the Australians had also been driven off the ridge, and a part of them similarly trapped.

Auchinleck now reluctantly decided to suspend the attack. Many of the troops were showing signs of exhaustion after the prolonged struggle, and an increasing tendency to surrender if isolated. It was also clear that the defence had the advantage on such a restricted front, and that the advantage would grow with the reinforcements that were now at last reaching Rommel — by the start of August his tank strength increased to more than five times what it had been on July 22.

While the battle ended in disappointment for the British, their situation was far better than when it opened. The final sentence of Rommel’s account of the battle utters the final verdict: ‘Although the British losses in this Alamein fighting had been higher than ours, yet the price to Auchinleck had not been excessive, for the one thing that had mattered to him was to halt our advance, and that, unfortunately, he had done.’*

*
The Rommel Papers,
p. 260.

Although the Eighth Army had suffered over 13,000 casualties during the July battle at Alamein, it had taken over 7,000 prisoners, including more than a thousand Germans. The price would have been lower, and the gains much greater, if the execution of the plans had been more vigorous and efficient. But, even as it was, the difference in the total loss on either side was not large, and Rommel was much less able to afford the loss. His frustration was almost certainly bound to prove fatal in view of the flood of British reinforcements that was now pouring into Egypt.

His own account makes it clear how perilously close to defeat he came by mid-July. Even clearer is his own confession at the time, in a letter to his wife on the 18th: ‘Yesterday was a particularly hard and critical day. We pulled through again. But it can’t go on like it for long, otherwise the front will crack. Militarily, this is the most difficult period I’ve ever been through. There’s help in sight, of course, but whether we will live to see it is a question.’† Four days later, with reserves still fewer, his troops had to meet an even weightier blow, and were fortunate in surviving it.

† ibid., p. 257.

Rommel’s subsequent account of the battle pays a high tribute to the British Commander-in-Chief: ‘General Auchinleck who had . . . taken over command himself at El Alamein, was handling his forces with very considerable skill. . . . He seemed to view the situation with decided coolness, for he was not allowing himself to be rushed into accepting a “second-class” solution by any moves we made. This was to be particularly evident in what followed.’‡

‡ ibid., p. 248.

But each of the successive ‘first-class’ solutions which Auchinleck devised (with the aid of his fertile-minded chief staff officer, Dorman-Smith) went wrong in the third-class compartments of the executants’ train. Its corridors also became blocked. One important cause of blockage was the presence of such a mixture of contingents from the different countries of the British Commonwealth, under such conditions of strain, and the way that the commanders were distracted by anxious questions and cautions from their respective Governments. While such anxiety was very natural after the unhappy experience of recent months, it multiplied the usual friction of war.