Alamein: The turning point of World War Two. Iain Gale
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fuel and he needs ammunition and according to our intelligence, he does not have sufficient supplies of either.’
Intelligence, he thought, was everything, worth fifty thousand men on the battlefield. And they had the finest intelligence in the war – Ultra. The code-breakers at Bletchley Park were now able to break the German Enigma code. Since 1941 they had been receiving intelligence based on radio messages from Fliegerführer Afrika. But he knew too that intelligence alone could not win a battle. It was down to the generals and it was down to the men. In his case men who were itching for victory, the men of Eighth Army. Men who had fought at Gazala and been twice up to Benghazi. The ‘Benghazi handicap’ they liked to call it. Men who had run from Tobruk to be able to fight again. Well, this was their battle and everything was at stake. Not just the Allies’ vital hold on the Middle East and Suez. But also he knew, as Churchill did, the war itself and indeed his own position as leader of the nation.
He looked again at the map. Of course they could have stood at Sidi Birani or Mersa Matruh. But the present line was superb, unassailable. And it exploited the fact that there were only three ways by which Rommel could attack them. In the north in the gap between Ruweisat Ridge and the railway line, in the centre where they were strongest and in the south.
He had to admit, no matter how it galled him and it surely did, that Auchinleck had been right. Of course, he would never have admitted that in public, or indeed in private to anyone. It was all-important that the men should believe that the new man in charge of them had his own plan and his own original methods. He had shown them as much from the moment he had taken over, had made them the fighting force they now most surely were. Fitness was the key. Physical exercise and a sense of purpose. Drill, drill and more drill and battle training. For now they were ready. And now he knew they could win.
He did not intend to defend. Rommel had had his chance, had attacked in June and had failed. Concentration, control and simplicity. The holy trinity of the battlefield had defeated him at Alam Halfa. They had lured him in and destroyed his strength bit by bit. Rommel had overplayed his hand and now it was their own time to attack. Well, of course that had apparently also been Auchinleck’s plan. But Churchill had perceived that Auchinleck’s heart was not in it, and the men knew it too. They could tell a soldier’s true feelings. Auchinleck had made too many plans for the evacuation that he felt must follow their defeat. That was no way to treat an army, to act as if they had been beaten already.
Emerging from his reverie, Montgomery turned back to Poston: ‘Do you think the men are really ready for it now, John? The big attack?’
‘More ready than ever, sir. They’ve had enough of fighting a defensive war.’ Poston paused and smiled, then went on: ‘Do you recall, sir, that joke circulating in Cairo back in August, when you’d just arrived. They said that General Auchinleck’s defence plan was to allow Rommel to break through right up to Cairo. But that when the Germans reached the Gezira Club in the capital all the staff at GHQ should instantly turn out with their sidearms and chase him back to Tripoli?’
Montgomery laughed, that strange high-pitched laugh that made his features appear even more birdlike. When he spoke it was with weak ‘R’s, turning them to ‘W’s which coming from anyone else might have appeared comic.
‘Very good, John. Yes, I do seem to remember that one. I think we can afford to be a little more positive now, don’t you?’
‘You’ve worked miracles, sir. Nothing less.’
‘We’ve a different army now, John. And we’re going to use it.’
He knew that he had achieved something important. He had got rid of all the belly-aching, and had told his staff quite bluntly on the first day that if any man wanted to continue to invent lame reasons for not doing his job then he could get out of it at once. They were staying here. And if they could not stay and win and remain alive then they would stay here dead.
He had also decided that the plan of battle should be known to everyone from general to private soldier. And so he had attempted to visit them all. Not just the Brits, but the Aussies, the New Zealanders, the Indians and the rest. He had even taken up the offer of an Australian slouch hat which he decorated with regimental badges as he toured the other Divisions.
He knew that his presence had had an effect on the men. Freddie de Guingand, his chief of staff, had told him that the sick rate dropped off dramatically. In fact men were desperate to return from sick leave so as not to miss the big push. He was confident that now every single one of his soldiers felt a part of the plan. All that he had to do was to make sure that it worked.
He looked again at the map and this time traced another line, to the west of his original. Rommel’s own position was certainly impressive, but it had a fundamental flaw. What had Bill Williams called it? An Italian corset strengthened by German whalebones. Yes, he liked that. A bit like Wellington at Waterloo, strengthening his Belgian and Dutch regiments by placing them beside a battalion of seasoned British veterans. But it was not quite the same here.
He wondered where they would be now without Williams. He was the finest intelligence officer that Montgomery had ever encountered: an Oxford Don with a quite brilliant brain, now a major in the King’s Dragoon Guards. And Williams had said something further to him. The phrase continued to go around in his mind. If they could separate the German whalebones from the soft Italian corset they would smash through the Italians. It was simple and quite brilliant, and Montgomery had readily adopted it as his own.
So they would attack. Alam Halfa had paved the way. Ultra had revealed the losses. Fifty-one German tanks destroyed and more damaged and over 3000 German and Italian casualties.
Churchill, impatient as ever and keen to please the Allies, had sent Montgomery a peremptory memo telling him that it must be in September. Of course he wasn’t having any such nonsense. They would never have been prepared and he told Churchill as much. He would not risk men’s lives in a premature offensive. General Alexander, the commander-in-chief, had presented Churchill’s case, but Montgomery was having none of it. He would launch the offensive in his own time; four days after the anniversary of Betty’s death. The twenty-third of October looked set to be the perfect night. Tonight.
‘John, is Freddie back from Alex?’
‘Yes, sir, he’s in his HQ I believe.’
‘His HQ?’
‘He’s adopted an old Italian pillbox, sir. Made it quite like home apparently. Still smells a little.’
‘Very good. Then I think we might pay him a visit, don’t you?’
Both men stepped out of the caravan and walked over to the former Italian strongpoint which now acted as the HQ for Freddie de Guingand. It was draped with camouflage netting and around it some armoured cars had been dug in, connected by shallow slit trenches. He was pleased that Freddie should be so close at hand.
They were complete opposites, it occurred to him, and not for the first time. Freddie de Guingand was fourteen years his junior. He had first met him at TA HQ in York in 1923. Montgomery had been teaching soldiering skills and young Freddie, devilishly handsome at twenty-two, a trainee second lieutenant, had impressed him with his perceptive intelligence. Despite their shared love of golf and bridge, how very different they were. Freddie forever living on his nerves, highly strung, a lover of wine and women; an inveterate gambler, an epicure. And he himself, Montgomery. Calm, self-controlled, abstemious. Those at least were the virtues which he liked to claim as his own, the heights to which he aspired.
He had decided to make Freddie his chief of staff almost instantly after having taken up the command of Eighth Army. Chief of staff: his invention. The army did not work on that principle. It believed that the army commander could use his staff officers himself. But Montgomery knew that a good CoS was essential to coordinating any campaign. That was surely what had cost the other generals in the desert their commands. That was why he was here. With Freddie at his side – Berthier to his Napoleon – and Alexander, the overall commander, behind him, he had the framework of an unassailable team. If only he could be sure that he could rely on all his corps commanders: Horrocks, Lumsden