The Relief of Tobruk

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Official History of New Zealand in the Second World War 1939–45 The Relief of Tobruk The authors of the volumes in this series of histories prepared under the supervision of the War History Branch of the Department of Internal Affairs have been given full access to official documents. They and the Editor-in-Chief are responsible for the statements made and the views expressed by them. By Authority: R. E. Owen, Government Printer, Wellington, New Zealand 1961

New Zealand infantry and Tobruk tanks. Men of 19 Battalion pass a Matilda of 4 Royal Tanks at Ed Duda after the link-up Black and white photograph of men of the 19 Batallion marching alongside a tank

Title page Official History of New Zealand in the Second World War 1939–45 The Relief of Tobruk W. E. MURPHY WAR HISTORY BRANCH DEPARTMENT OF INTERNAL AFFAIRS WELLINGTON, NEW ZEALAND1961Distributed bywhitcombe & tombs ltd.Christchurch, New Zealand

Preface

A play with a cast of 250,000, a setting the size of Italy, and a plot like a pot of eels, twisting and turning in all directions, would be hard to stage. Yet this is what this book tries to present. Of necessity some characters appear briefly, often unannounced, and then slip away; others keep coming and going; a few have larger roles. Their importance is not to be measured by their time on the stage. Some heroes appear but once. Except for Hitler and Goering in the prologue, there are no villains—only men perhaps misguided or mistaken at some junctures. All do their best and most do it under conditions of danger and urgency, merely suggested in the play, which are fully understood only by those who knew the real thing.

The reader must find things hard to follow at times, as I did myself in the more than ten years, on and off, that I worked on this campaign; but the glossary and index have been made as useful as possible as guides to the maze and the people in it. Fuller explanations and introductions in the text of the work would have made it intolerably long.

Many readers will doubtless think it is too long already; but this campaign deserves close attention. It was in my view the greatest campaign of the New Zealand Division. I have examined it from all angles and at all levels and some of the deeds and some of the doers sparkle with interest.

I began my studies with a brief but rewarding collaboration with Mr V. B. Gray and have had much other help. The narratives and enemy appreciations from the Historical Section of the United Kingdom Cabinet Office have been invaluable and Brigadier H. B. Latham has sent me copies of original documents, answered questions, and wisely commented on proofs, drawing not only on his knowledge of the records but on his experience of the battle itself as artillery commander of the corps in which the New Zealand Division served. Sir James Butler, Mr G. M. A. Gwyer, and Major-General I. S. O. Playfair (with Captain F. C. Flynn, RN, Brigadier C. J. C. Molony, and Air Vice-Marshal S. E. Toomer) have carried out parallel researches from which I have profited.

The German Military Documents Section of the Department of the Army, Washington, has helped through four channels: by supplying source material for the United Kingdom appreciations mentioned; by lending me originals or copies of documents; and by allowing Mr W. D. Dawson of this Branch and the late Captain J. E. Betzler of the Union War Histories Section of South Africa to make translations which I could use. I sometimes found as a result that I had better German sources than British.

Mr J. A. I. Agar-Hamilton, former Editor-in-Chief of the Union War Histories, and Mr L. C. F. Turner, his assistant editor, corresponded with me for years, provided many documents and drafts, and never failed to stimulate me agreeably. They also kindly made Betzler's translations available. Mr Gavin Long and Lieutenant-Colonel D. W. B. Maughan of the Australian Official War History have both been most helpful and Dr Bisheshwar Prasad and his India and Pakistan narratives and history likewise. This expert and willing support gave me a sense of belonging in some small way to a distinguished enterprise with branches in many British Commonwealth countries and in the United States. None of the governments concerned has refused a request or denied use of a document.

The late Sir Howard Kippenberger, as Editor-in-Chief, gave me a free hand, warm encouragement, and every facility at his disposal and his successor, Brigadier M. C. Fairbrother, has done the same. The Prime Minister's files were made readily available by Mr A. D. McIntosh and his staff of the Department of External Affairs. Lord Freyberg let me use all his records, including his personal diary, and Lord Norrie similarly lent me his many files and was in every way friendly and helpful.

Many officers overseas and almost all senior surviving New Zealand officers have contributed in some way and very many junior ones. Interviews of repatriated prisoners of war conducted in England in 1945 by Mr W. G. McClymont and written statements by them about the actions in which they were captured have been valuable. I have interviewed hundreds of men myself, moreover, and corresponded with hundreds of others, particularly survivors of units which suffered such heavy losses that their contemporary records were seriously impaired. Though I have not relied on post-war recollections to establish important facts, I am obliged to all these helpers and impressed by the frankness and accuracy of their contributions.

Members of War History Branch, past and present, have done all they could, willingly and efficiently, so that it was a pleasure to work with them — particularly Judith Hornabrook and Robin Kay with the archives, Elsie Janes with a mountain of typing, and Bill Glue (who also compiled the biographical footnotes) patiently and skilfully in the long and difficult processes of publication.

Professor N. C. Phillips read the final draft and saved the reader from several clumsy sentences and awkward mannerisms and many distracting footnotes. Lands and Survey Department has worked hard and well on the maps and the Government Printer has been prompt and efficient in the many stages of his work.

To all these and to many others unnamed I am deeply grateful.

WELLINGTON

December, 1960

Contents Page PREFACE v 1 AFTER GREECE AND CRETE 1 2 LULL IN THE DESERT WAR 7 3 PREPARING FOR ACTION 23 4 THE CRUSADER PLAN 37 5 EIGHTH ARMY AND PANZER GROUP AFRICA 51 6 FROM BAGGUSH TO THE LIBYAN FRONTIER 62 7 A DISASTROUS BEGINNING 79 8 THE FRONTIER OPERATIONS BEGIN 110 9 HEADING FOR TOBRUK 135 10 SUNDAY OF THE DEAD 156 11 THE ATTACK ON POINT 175 173 12 THE MATRUH STAKES 197 13 THE CAPTURE OF THE BLOCKHOUSE 235 14 SUCCESS AT BELHAMED; FAILURE AT SIDI REZEGH 249 15 JOINING HANDS WITH THE TOBRUK GARRISON 266 16 A COSTLY NIGHT ATTACK ON SIDI REZEGH 286 17 ROMMEL'S ‘EVIL DREAM’ 297 18 TWO ATTACKS ON CAPUZZO 315 19 THE LOSS OF 5 BRIGADE HEADQUARTERS 332 20 ROMMEL RETURNS TO THE TOBRUK FRONT 351 21 INCREASING PRESSURE ON 6 BRIGADE 366 22 COUNTER-ATTACK ON THE TOBRUK CORRIDOR 390 23 SIDI REZEGH IS LOST 412 24 BELHAMED AND ZAAFRAN 432 25 PLODDING ON WESTWARDS 466 26 GAZALA AND BEYOND 487 APPENDICES: I: Casualties in CRUSADER Campaign 524 II: Minutes of Conference between General Freyberg and his Senior Officers at Baggush, 17 October 1941 525 NEW ZEALAND HONOURS AND AWARDS IN CRUSADER CAMPAIGN 528 NOTE ON SOURCES 530 BIBLIOGRAPHY 531 GLOSSARY 537 INDEX 547

List of Illustrations Frontispiece Men of 19 Battalion pass a Matilda of 4 Royal Tanks at Ed Duda after the link-up with Tobruk British Official Following page 150 Ceremonial parade at Baggush before the battle British Official A chilly autumn swim at Baggush NZ Army A relief model of the battle area J. C. White collection New Zealanders and Indians extend the desert railway NZ Army (M. D. Elias) Fifth Brigade drives towards the frontier R. W. S. Stone collection Crossing the frontier wire British Official A Divisional Cavalry Bren carrier pauses in muddy going inside Libya R. J. Loughnan Crusader tanks advance across scrubland G. Silk (AIF) An armoured-car patrol British Official A desert convoy led by a Stuart tank G. Silk (AIF) An early conference in Libya J. C. White collection A quick meal during a halt in the advance NZ Army Valentines of 8 Royal Tanks drive past New Zealand field guns NZ Army New Zealand Bofors crew ready for action at dawn, 22 November 1941 J. B. Hardcastle Sidi Azeiz G. H. Levien Fort Capuzzo D. A. Hawkins C Squadron, 8 Royal Tanks, with 6 Brigade J. B. Hardcastle An ‘88’ is towed away from Gambut by a ‘half-track’ as 4 Brigade arrives, 23 November F. England Men of 20 Battalion move past Valentines of A Squadron, 8 Royal Tanks, near Bir el Chleta, 24 November 20 Battalion collection An early batch of German prisoners NZ Army The Blockhouse C. N. D'Arcy The ‘Mosque’ at Sidi Rezegh J. M. Mitchell An artillery signals truck in action NZ Army Infantry of the Tobruk garrison advance in the break-out battle British Official German prisoners on Belhamed on 26 November J. S. Harper Major-General R. M. Scobie confers with his predecessor, Major-General L. J. Morshead, on taking command of the Tobruk garrison British Official Following page 150 Tobruk, an aerial mosaic looking south-eastwards towards the main battlefield at Sidi Rezegh A and B Companies of 19 Battalion pass 4 Royal Tanks in a thrust from Ed Duda to link up with 6 Brigade, 27 November British Official Lieutenant-Colonel S. F. Hartnell of 19 Battalion greets Brigadier A. C. Willison of 32 Army Tank Brigade at Ed Duda British Official Brigadier H. R. B. Watkins of 1 Army Tank Brigade confers with Lieutenant-Colonel W. G. Gentry after a Stuka raid J. C. White Brigadier L. M. Inglis, commanding 4 Infantry Brigade NZ Army Following page 358 Marked map captured with General von Ravenstein on 29 November J. C. White collection 15 Panzer Division bears down on 6 Brigade at Sidi Rezegh, 30 November A. S. Frame Closing in on 6 Brigade A. S. Frame General Freyberg speaks by wireless to 30 Corps J. C. White A portée of L Troop in action on 1 December A. B. Gordon Smoke over Belhamed, 1 December J. C. White Belhamed, 1 December J. C. White A blazing Signals truck on Belhamed NZ Army Guns of 4 Field Regiment prepare for anti-tank action after Belhamed is lost F. T. Allan Retreat from Zaafran, 1 December J. C. White New Zealand vehicles enter Tobruk C. J. Boland Lieutenant-General Sir Alan Cunningham, first commander of Eighth Army British Official Lieutenant-General C. W. M. Norrie, GOC 30 Corps British Official Bardia British Official Sollum from the air G Branch war diary A Vickers gun of 4 MG Company in action at Menastir with 22 Battalion G. Silk (AIF) Scene of fierce fighting outside Bardia British Official The turret of a Matilda tank holed by a German anti-tank gun British Official Transport under fire in the lee of an escarpment G. Silk (AIF) A corner of the captured MDS near Point 175 20 Battalion collection The prisoner-of-war compound after Bardia fell British Official Following page 358 A Bofors being manhandled up an escarpment on the way to Gazala G. Silk (AIF) Stuka raid on transport near Gazala British Official Italians captured in the Gazala line march past a Vickers gun British Official A New Zealand 25-pounder firing in the Gazala battle G. Silk (AIF) Lieutenant-General N. M. Ritchie British Official Lieutenant-General A. R. Godwin-Austen, GOC 13 Corps Imperial War Museum Major-General W. H. E. Gott, GOC 7 Armoured Division British Official General Auchinleck congratulates General Freyberg after the campaign British Official General Rommel seated on a German armoured truck, February 1942 Imperial War Museum General Bastico, C-in-C of the Italian High Command in North Africa Associated Press Major-General von Ravenstein, GOC 21 Panzer Division British Official Major-General Neumann-Silkow, GOC 15 Panzer Division Major-General Suemmermann, GOC 90 Light Division

List of Maps Facing page The Mediterranean Theatre 1 The Battle Area 19 The Armoured Battle, 19–22 November 1941 85 Belhamed and Zaafran, 1 December 1941 423

In text Page BATTLEAXE Operation, 15–17 June 1941 9 The Move to the Assembly Area, 11–14 November 1941 68 The Approach March, 15–18 November 1941 70 13 Corps Operations, 19 November 111 The New Zealand Division advances, afternoon and evening of 21 November 116 Operations of 5 Brigade, 22 November 118 Attack on the Omar forts, 7 Indian Brigade, 22 November 125 The Capture of Sollum Barracks, 23 November 128 Blocking the Via Balbia, 22 November 131 The Division advances westwards, 23 November 146 The Attack on 5 South African Brigade, 3–6 p.m., 23 November 158 6 Brigade, approximately 1 p.m., 23 November 176 Attack and counter-attack at Point 175, afternoon of 23 November 187 Rommel's dash to the Frontier, 24 November 210 The Capture of Point 175, B Company, 24 Battalion, 24 November 223 Attack on Point 172, 20 Battalion, 24 November 228 The Capture of the Blockhouse, 25 November 238 Parallel attacks by 4 and 6 Brigades, night 25–26 November 252 Linking up with Tobruk, 26 November and night 26–27 November 270 ‘Sidi Rezegh is Ours’—morning 27 November 291 A Wasted Day at the Frontier, 25 November 300 Frontier Operations, 26 November; two night attacks on Capuzzo, 26–27 November 318 The Capture of 5 Brigade Headquarters, 27 November 334 Attack on Capuzzo, afternoon of 27 November 343 The Capture of Jalo 352 Rommel returns to the Tobruk front, 27 November 353 Sweeping the Corridor as the Panzers return, 28 November 367 Operations, 29 November: Attacks on Ed Duda and Point 175 395 Counter-attack on Sidi Rezegh, 30 November 416 Action at Menastir, 3 December 476 Fighting near Bir el-Gubi, 4–5 December 479 The Second Attack on Ed Duda, 4 December 481 Approaching Gazala, 11–12 December 491 Assault on the Gazala line, 13–16 December 494 A lost chance, 16 December 503 Pursuit across Cyrenaica, December 1941-January 1942 507 Frontier Operations, 16 December 1941–17 January 1942 511

The occupations given in the biographical footnotes are those on enlistment. The ranks are those held on discharge or at the date of death.

The Mediterranean Theatre Colour map of the Mediterranean and surrounding countries

CHAPTER 1 After Greece and Crete

IN the history of the New Zealand Division the campaigns in Greece and Crete are chapters of waste and frustration, an unhappy introduction to battle. An earlier New Zealand contingent had endured greater hardship and suffering in another Balkan adventure, the eight Anzac months at Gallipoli in 1915; but in 1941 there was a double dose of humiliation. The challenge to the Wehrmacht on the mainland of Europe failed miserably and then the Cretan outpost was lost. A third of the Division was left behind on battlefields and beaches from Salonika to Sfakia, 900-odd dead or dying and the rest facing years of captivity.

See McClymont, To Greece, and Davin, Crete, in this series.

Time might tell that this costly experience would prove invaluable; but in June 1941 the loss was more evident than the gain.

Of the 16,700 men who had sailed to help ward off the German threat to Greece, 5816 (on a July estimate) did not return, and it was but a small consolation that reinforcements at hand or on the way were more than enough to replace them. Many desert-trained veterans of the First Echelon were gone, and many, too, of the Second Echelon men who had served England in the dark days after Dunkirk. Their places would be taken by men from the 4th, 5th, 6th and even 7th Reinforcements—in ascending scale of inexperience—who would outnumber the ‘old hands’ in many units. Yet morale proved remarkably buoyant, as the Prime Minister, Mr Fraser, noted when he reviewed 5000 survivors from Greece on 18 May and found them ‘in great heart and excellent condition’, and again when he met men from Crete at Alexandria a fortnight later, the fit and the wounded all ‘convinced of superiority man for man over the Germans given equal weapons and equal air support.’

Rt. Hon. P. Fraser to acting Prime Minister, Wellington, 19 May and 24 Jun 1941.

It was in arms and equipment, above all in transport, that the Division was reduced to penury. All guns and vehicles had been lost, most small arms, even personal belongings in many base kits sent by an error of judgment of Greece. Lorries in base camps at Maadi and Helwan were barely enough for administration, to say nothing of training, a situation which from the lower levels looked uncomfortably close to stalemate. Middle East quartermasters were unmoved by appeals on behalf of units not assigned an active role, and less fortunate units could see no way to reach this envied status without a modicum of training equipment.

Sixth Brigade, having missed the holocaust of Crete and returned to Egypt with its units largely intact, was among the blessed. By 27 May its battalions—the 24th, 25th, and 26th—were so far restored to battle-worthiness that they could assume a role in the defence of the Canal Zone against airborne or Fifth Column attack. The two other brigades—the 4th and 5th—could not hope for a high priority in replacement of war stores until reinforcements had been absorbed and the units brought up to something approaching their normal complements. Even then the flow of new equipment would depend on the future role of the Division, which remained for some months in doubt. By the end of June the field regiments had their full quota of gun-towing vehicles (‘quads’) and a third of their 25-pounder guns, but most other units were living from hand to mouth.

By 10 July General Freyberg

Lt-Gen Lord Freyberg, VC, GCMG, KCB, KBE, DSO and 3 bars, m.i.d., Order of Valour and MC (Gk); born Richmond, Surrey, 21 Mar 1889; CO Hood Bn 1914–16; comd 173 Bde, 58 Div, and 88 Bde, 29 Div, 1917–18; GOC 2 NZEFNov 1939-Nov 1945; twice wounded; Governor-General of New Zealand Jun 1946-Aug 1952.

was able to point out to the New Zealand Government that the units were ‘almost up to strength’, though the 6th and 7th Reinforcements had not yet arrived; but he expected ‘wastage’—the bloodless technical term for what was chiefly the shedding of blood—to increase in the autumn and winter and therefore needed the 8th Reinforcements as scheduled.

See Documents Relating to New Zealand's Participation in the Second World War (hereinafter Documents), Vol. II, pp. 33–5.

The future of these reinforcements was much affected by a new War Office plan

Organisation Plan 36 of the Field Force Committee (briefly FFC 36).

for expanding the effort of the British Commonwealth which entailed increased manpower demands. Mr Fraser and the Adjutant-General, Colonel Conway,

Brig A. E. Conway, CB, OBE, m.i.d., Legion of Merit (US); Whakatane; born Reefton, 7 Apr 1891; Regular soldier; Canty Regt 1914–16 (Capt); twice wounded; Adjutant-General, 1940–46.

discussed this plan in Maadi with Lieutenant-General Sir Guy Williams, Military Adviser to the New Zealand Government, and senior officers of 2 NZEF while Freyberg was still in Crete. One part of the plan was to form an army tank brigade in New Zealand for oversea service, providing at least for the training months an insurance of sorts against aggression nearer home. For this reason Fraser and his Cabinet approved, as Freyberg did too (when he found time to study it), though he had an eye to the Middle East rather than the Pacific. Meanwhile General Sir Archibald Wavell, Commander-in-Chief Middle East Forces, had welcomed a suggestion that the Anzac Corps which had existed for a short time in Greece be reconstituted on a permanent footing, a proposal which ran parallel to another part of the plan. Freyberg was offered command of this Corps when the crisis in Crete passed, but his response was lukewarm. ‘I would personally prefer to stay with the New Zealand Division’, he wrote on 11 May, though he would accept the command provided he could ‘remain a servant of the New Zealand Government by continuing to be GOC 2nd NZEF and provided the New Zealand Division remains part of the Corps….’ By the time he was able fully to consider this scheme and examine other parts of the War Office plan the Maadi consultations had ended, Fraser was on his way to England, Williams and Conway were flying to New Zealand, and discussion continued by cablegram. By 25 June Freyberg was almost enthusiastic about the proposed Anzac Corps and as late as 20 September he was still interested, not knowing that the Australian Government, plagued by manpower shortages, had decided against it.

See Documents, Vol. II, pp. 1–15 and 22–69; Stevens, Problems of 2 NZEF, pp. 38–9; Long, Greece, Crete and Syria, pp. 70n and 539–44.

New Zealand was nevertheless committed in principle to provide a fair share of Corps troops, either for a new Anzac Corps or for any other Corps in which the Division operated, and planning continued accordingly until outdated by the outbreak of war with Japan.

Other matters which Fraser tackled before he left Egypt included Freyberg's status as GOC 2 NZEF. Freyberg was to feel free, Fraser told him, to put his opinion direct to the Commander-in-Chief Middle East Forces on any matter concerning ‘the safety of the D[ivision]’ (as Freyberg noted in his diary). The New Zealand War Cabinet, he continued, ‘should have the benefit of your experience and in future … will definitely ask for your advice.’ Freyberg had the right to refer ‘any matter affecting the safety of the NZEF’ to the New Zealand Government and the latter would in turn refer any proposal for the employment of 2 NZEF to him for comment.

This clarified Freyberg's status, as a further safeguard of New Zealand interests. The Greek enterprise had in its very conception taken Australian and New Zealand help too much for granted—a situation to which the current naval negotiations between the United Kingdom and the United States provided an unhappy parallel.

See p. 24.

The war effort of the two Dominions was concentrated in the Middle East to a far greater extent than that of the United Kingdom and disaster there was to them a relatively more tragic prospect. Twice in two months New Zealand came close to losing its one and only division, with its invaluable nucleus of trained officers and NCOs, and the Government had to take what steps it could to make sure that any such grave risks taken in future would be fully warranted. Fraser was not making Freyberg sole judge of this except in case of dire emergency; he simply wanted the facts relating to the employment of the Division to be adequately disclosed to the Government.

The Prime Minister was sharply dissatisfied, now he knew the facts, with the Government's briefing prior to the Greek campaign, and interviews with men back from Greece and Crete had impressed him deeply, in particular, with the need for strong air support if the Division's contributions to the war effort were to be effective. But Freyberg's charter already gave him unusual powers for a divisional commander

See Stevens, pp. 93–6, McClymont, pp. 19–20, Scoullar, Battle for Egypt, pp. 3–4, and Agar-Hamilton and Tumor, The Sidi Rezeg Battles 1941, pp. 81–4.

—an arrangement which, even with tact and restraint on all sides, could be embarrassing. Short of stationing a minister in Cairo—a step which even the United Kingdom War Cabinet did not take until the end of June—there was no way the New Zealand Government could gain the influence it sought without adding to the already considerable burden on Freyberg's discretion.

iii

There had also been criticisms of operations in Greece, some of them aimed at Freyberg himself. Mr Fraser put some points as questions to an inter-services committee being set up to inquire into other aspects of the campaign and got reassuring answers. The committee in due course found that ‘unavoidable circumstances’ were to blame and gave Freyberg ‘an unsolicited testimonial’.

McClymont, pp. 489–90, and Wood, The New Zealand People at War: Political and External Affairs, pp. 188–9.

A parliamentary colleague, Brigadier Hargest,

Brig J. Hargest, CBE, DSO and bar, MC, m.i.d., MC (Gk); born Gore, 4 Sep 1891; farmer; Member of Parliament, 1931–44; Otago Mtd Rifles, 1914–20 (CO 2 Bn, Otago Regt); comd 5 Bde May 1940–Nov 1941; p.w. 27 Nov 1941; escaped, Italy, Mar 1943; killed in action, France, 12 Aug 1944.

commander of 5 Brigade in an arduous rearguard in Crete, returned to Egypt physically exhausted and unburdened himself to Fraser with particular reference to Freyberg's method of command. Hargest was in no condition just then to make a balanced judgment; but he soon got over it and (on 30 October) wrote to Fraser, when he heard the latter was back in Wellington, in warm terms, expressing abounding confidence in Freyberg:

I have often worried over the anxiety I caused you when I unloaded my cares on you in Cairo. I have no doubt now of the justification for doing so, but the effect itself justified it all. The General met us in several conferences and we cleaned up a great deal of important details. I was forthright in my remarks and he was splendid about it all — but the result has been good beyond my strongest hopes. Now we meet in conference and the whole details are placed before us — we on the other hand are free to express ourselves — and we must accept a share of the responsibilities. Thanks to you we have developed a new method - conference before the details are fixed…. I have never been so happy soldiering as now and never had more confidence — I cannot say more.

None of the other brigadiers who served in Greece — Miles Puttick and Barrowclough — joined Hargest in his complaints. Moreover Freyberg had had little opportunity until after Crete for the kind of consultation mentioned. The improvement in relations Hargest thought he discerned, therefore, was possibly due to closer acquaintance with a distinguished soldier who was not personally well-known in New Zealand military circles when he was appointed GOC.

Meanwhile Fraser had obtained opinions on Freyberg's ability at the highest level in Cairo and when he reached London. ‘While Mr. Fraser likes Freyberg and is keeping an open mind’, General Sir John Dill, Chief of the Imperial General Staff, wrote on 20 August to Wavell and his successor as C-in-C MEF, General Auchinleck, ‘this is causing him grave anxiety.’ None knew Freyberg's qualities better than Wavell, who replied on 21 August that Freyberg had ‘produced one of best trained and disciplined and fittest divisions I have ever seen and he must be given fullest credit for their exploits in Greece and Crete.’ Auchinleck also wrote reassuringly and considered that ‘it would be great mistake to move Freyberg from the Command of the New Zealand Division….’

See Kennedy, The Business of War, p. 160, and Connell, Auchinleck, pp. 274–6.

Mr Fraser's own position was in some ways like Freyberg's. The civilian conduct of the war, like the military side, could not always be restricted to formal channels, and Mr Churchill in particular was no respecter of hierarchies. In urgent and important affairs London sometimes deemed the effort and delay of Dominion consultation to be, like a Bank of England note, redeemable only on demand. As Fraser's grasp of these affairs grew his demands naturally increased. Both he and the acting Prime Minister, Mr Nash, showed a proper respect for the opinions of the experts but felt in no way bound by them and did not hesitate to voice disagreement. Neither was happy about the way the situation in the Indian Ocean and Pacific was being handled and they said so. Their mandate was from the people of New Zealand alone and their Government would not abdicate its authority in favor of the Middle East Commanders-in-Chief, the London Chiefs of Staff, or the United Kingdom Government.

See Wood, pp. 216–18.

On the delicate preliminaries to the campaign in Greece it was Smuts whose views Churchill sought, not Fraser's, though the South Africans could not serve there and the New Zealand contribution was essential. Personality was, as always, a coefficient of formal authority: Smuts was an established and impressive figure on the international plane, Fraser a newcomer. As the war moved towards its third year, however, Fraser and his government colleagues were moving on from a fairly general acquiescence in the strategic decisions of the United Kingdom and its professional advisers to a more critical and independent standpoint.

CHAPTER 2 Lull in the Desert War

EVEN the experts were baffled in mid-1941 by the strategic problems of the British Commonwealth in its lonely struggle with the Axis powers, perhaps soon to be joined by Japan with baleful repercussions. Planning to win the war was at this stage like planning to win a sweepstake. All that could be done was to buy more and more tickets and risk going bankrupt. Some tickets were on blockade, some on sabotage and rebellion in countries in enemy hands, some on a great bomber offensive, and some on the entry of the United States on the British side. None was on the entry of Russia, which was not thought likely to bring any but temporary advantages.

See Gwyer and Butler, Grand Strategy, Vol. III (in preparation), and for an unofficial American view, Higgins, Winston Churchill and the Second Front, Chs. 1–4.

The security of the bases in the United Kingdom and Singapore by the accepted strategy was prior to that of the Middle East, but it was mortgaged, as General Dill thought, by Mr Churchill to finance dubious Middle Eastern enterprises. In this connection, though Wavell's intimates recognised that he was ‘always ready to take a chance’,

Cunningham, A Sailor's Odyssey, p. 402.

Churchill gained the opposite impression and it was a grave blow to Wavell to find that in one case—the Iraq revolt—his own judgment was wrong.

In dealing with Iraq, the advice of Gen Auchinleck, C-in-C India, prevailed, with far-reaching consequences.

But time adds perspective to these clashes of opinion and personality. The British position in the Middle East was saved, as it happened, not by Churchill or Wavell, but by Hitler. Overwhelming German intervention in the Middle East was possible and indeed warmly recommended by Hitler's naval chief, Grand-Admiral Raeder, and by Reichsmarschall Goering himself. But Hitler instructed the Wehrmacht instead to conquer Russia.

This was as Churchill suspected, but his hopes needed no such rich nourishment and he refused to wait. He had ventured to challenge the German colossus on the mainland of Europe with no allies but Greece and a Yugoslav faction. Scarcely had the last British troops left Greece, however, when a new desert offensive was urged on Wavell, concurrently with an invasion of Syria and, if it lasted long enough, with the battle of Crete. Forces and supplies were shipped round the Cape early in May and tanks and aircraft rushed through the Mediterranean at Churchill's instigation and at immense risk, with injunctions to Wavell to put them to good use at the earliest moment. The risks taken made even the appearance of delay smack of base ingratitude. ‘All our hearts at home’, Churchill says, were ‘set on beating Rommel in the Western Desert.’

The Grand Alliance, p. 298.

Great pressure (‘undue’ according to Dill) was exerted on Wavell and he agreed to attack ‘before he was fully prepared’.

Dill to Auchinleck, a personal letter of 26 Jun 1941, quoted in Butler, Grand Strategy, Vol. II, pp. 530–2.

Five extra days were grudgingly conceded by Whitehall for crews to get used to their new tanks and the offensive, code-named battleaxe, opened on 15 June, eight days after the invasion of Syria began.

Despite heavy commitments elsewhere, Wavell had been anything but hesitant in his handling of the desert operations. An Axis assault on Tobruk had come to a painful halt early in May. Then, in a brief effort (brevity), he tried in the middle of the month to regain the frontier area and perhaps relieve Tobruk. All that could be seized, however, was Halfaya Pass and even this vantage point was lost at the month's end to a German counter-thrust. battleaxe was intended not merely to recover this lost ground but, as Churchill wrote on 27 May, to ‘inflict a crushing defeat upon the Germans in Cyrenaica’.

Such a victory over German forces was a consummation greatly to be desired; but its ingredients were essentially military, and of these Wavell was the better judge. He had hoped to mount battleaxe before the full weight of the newly-arrived 15 Panzer Division could be brought to bear, but this hope faded early in June. He voiced misgivings, too, about British equipment in the light of current reassessments: the cruiser tanks were unreliable, the infantry tanks too slow, the armoured cars too lightly armed and armoured, and the enemy anti-tank guns unexpectedly powerful. It was therefore a gamble to attack with fewer tanks and perhaps fewer infantry than the enemy; but Churchill refused to see battleaxe in this light and limit his hopes of success.

'Battleaxe' Operation, 15-17 June 1941 Black and white strategic diagram of the 'Battleaxe' operation

The desert operation fell far short, in the event, of Churchill's expectations and short even of the limited success for which Wavell hoped. The infantry tanks (‘Matildas’) of 4 Armoured Brigade destroyed or damaged 50 out of 80 of the tanks of 15 Panzer Division in one morning and overran many guns; but 7 Armoured Brigade (with cruiser tanks) was much weakened in an outflanking move and failed to hold a strong counter-thrust. On the third day Wavell intervened in person and allowed the commander of the Western Desert Force, Lieutenant-General Beresford-Peirse, to call off the operation. The force withdrew to Sidi Barrani in ignorance of the damage inflicted on the enemy, which was not nearly so heavily outweighed by the British losses as was thought at the time. Freyberg wrote on 9 October: ‘We suffered decided reverse and lost large number of tanks. After battle several comds were sent to other jobs.’ But dismissals and courts-martial ensued on the German side and Rommel was anything but pleased with several of his senior officers.

To Churchill, however, it was a ‘most bitter blow’ and he received it alone at Chartwell, where he ‘wandered about the valley disconsolately for hours’.

The Grand Alliance, p. 308.

Wavell for his part summed up the situation quickly and accurately and reported next day to London that ‘no offensive in the Western Desert would be possible for at least three months’, thereby rubbing salt into the wound of Churchill's disappointment. A few days later Wavell agreed with his naval and air colleagues to accept the commitment of holding Tobruk at least until the autumn, though the garrison could not now hope for early relief.

Wavell was now tired out and in need of a rest. The bombardment by memoranda from London which Admiral Cunningham (also a target) has described as ‘singularly unhelpful and irritating in times of stress’,

A Sailor's Odyssey, p. 402.

on top of the inescapable cares of Wavell's vast command, was a serious distraction. Air Chief Marshal Longmore had been abruptly dismissed early in May and Wavell suspected that Churchill had for some time been itching to get rid of him too. The failure of battleaxe settled the issue and the decision about the future of Tobruk was Wavell's last important act as the Middle East Commander-in-Chief.

At the end of June he changed places with General Sir Claude Auchinleck, Commander-in-Chief India, and in a moving message of farewell on 4 July he expressed his thanks to the troops who had served him ‘so well and loyally’. New Zealanders not long back from Crete read of the failures and setbacks when ‘you have been outmatched in numbers and equipment, never in fighting qualities or endurance’. For those serving in rear areas there was a special word of praise for work ‘essential to success in battle’. To this General Freyberg replied ‘on behalf of all ranks of the NZEF’ expressing the ‘genuine sense of personal loss’ felt by the New Zealanders, which Wavell gracefully acknowledged on 7 July.

That Churchill, most articulate of men, should prefer the fluent Auchinleck to the taciturn Wavell is not surprising. Yet the choice was in one way a curious one; for Auchinleck had already incurred Churchill's displeasure by seeming to ‘play too much for safety and certainty’ in the Norwegian campaign,

The Grand Alliance, p. 309; but in The Gathering Storm, p. 470, Churchill admits interfering too much in that campaign.

a fact of which Churchill was soon to be reminded. General Dill was alarmed not so much by the change as by its implications and hastened to put his views to Auchinleck in a letter of 26 June. In this remarkable document Dill absolved Wavell from blame for attacking in Syria with inadequate resources and for mounting battleaxe with undue haste—‘except in so far as he did not resist the pressure from Whitehall with sufficient vigour’. On the other hand he allowed that ‘pressure from those who alone see the picture as a whole and carry the main responsibility may be necessary’ and that political advantages sometimes outweighed military drawbacks in particular projects. Auchinleck would not have all the resources needed for his ‘great task’; these would come later. ‘But in the meantime we have a grim fight to fight and we cannot afford hazardous adventures’, Dill wrote. ‘So do not be afraid to state boldly the facts as you see them.’

Butler, pp. 530–2, italics added. Also quoted by Connell, pp. 246–8, who points out that this letter was not received until 21 July.

In the terms of Wavell's dismissal, written on 21 June, Churchill wanted ‘a new eye and a new hand’ in the ‘most seriously threatened’ Middle Eastern theatre;

The Grand Alliance, p. 310.

but Dill was evidently anxious that these should not be guided by Churchill alone. Next morning the nature of the threat to the Middle East changed dramatically when barbarossa (the invasion of Russia) opened, providing welcome though possibly short-lived easing of German pressure elsewhere.

Wavell's summing up after battleaxe was promptly forgotten. Auchinleck reached Cairo on 30 June and the very next day Churchill urged him to ‘renew the offensive in the Western Desert’, if possible before the fighting in Syria ended. For at least six weeks, and possibly three months, almost the full weight of Germany would be turned against Russia. What broad happy vistas this opened up: Cyrenaica, then Tripolitania, then Sicily or French North Africa! But the cupboard was bare. battleaxe had expended the prime requisites for a major offensive, and the new commander-in-chief, with Dill's backing, was not slow to point this out.

Auchinleck replied on 4 July in terms which contrasted sharply with Churchill's urgency. British influence in Syria would have to be secured and in Iraq ‘re-established’, then came the defence of Cyprus—in fact all that was needed to provide a firm base. Only then could a desert offensive be ‘contemplated’, though he estimated that it would call for two, and perhaps three, armoured divisions. This did not sound at all like the kind of ‘new eye’ and ‘new hand’ that Churchill had intended and he set out his argument in some detail on 6 July for an offensive not later than mid-September and preferably much earlier. Prospects would be favourable by the end of the month, would not improve during August, and might diminish drastically in September—or sooner if Russian resistance collapsed. Churchill was anxious also about the ‘offensive value’ of the Tobruk garrison—a pet theme of his

See Harris, Bomber Offensive, pp. 153–4.

—in two months' time. But Tobruk was no Gerona and the Australians found it extremely hard to make any deep impression in the enemy lines from May onwards.

On 15 July Auchinleck stated conditions for the success of a desert offensive which, if accepted, promised to delay the opening until the end of the year. Even Dill was somewhat taken aback by this and the London Chiefs of Staff tried various inducements. Could Auchinleck not start the operation at the end of September, they asked on 19 July, if they sent him another 150 cruiser tanks at once and another 40,000 men? Otherwise they could not afford this diversion of scarce shipping. With these tanks, Auchinleck answered, he might mount a limited offensive to relieve Tobruk in mid-November—a fortnight earlier if trained crews were also provided. If he could also get 150 more American tanks and certain heavy transport he might undertake a major offensive to drive the enemy out of North Africa. As things stood, he pointed out, he would not have even one armoured division ready for action by the end of September.

To the Defence Committee this seemed agonisingly slow. Now was the time to strike, or within the next few weeks, while the Germans could least afford diversions from their vast effort in Russia and while they were hard put to it to maintain their troops in the desert. There was only one way out of the impasse: would Auchinleck and Air Marshal Tedder, Longmore's successor as AOC-in-C, come to London and talk it over? This question was put to them on 23 July and the two reached London on the 29th.

There and at Chequers the argument continued. There was indeed much to be said for an early offensive and Auchinleck heard it over and over again: the political and military need to help Russia, the unlikelihood of a land attack from the north (from Turkey or the Caucasus) before mid-September, the strain of supplying Tobruk and the value of a concurrent sortie by its garrison, Axis supply troubles in North Africa, and so on. But he remained unmoved and with impressive dignity and eloquence presented the case for a November opening for the coming offensive, now called crusader. He outlined the immense labours which must precede it in office and workshop, on the parade ground, and in the desert itself. Assessing strength by counting tanks, guns and heads was of little use. Training at all levels was all-important; to skimp it was to invite disaster, as battleaxe had shown.

It was Churchill who yielded in the end, though unconvinced, and Auchinleck and Tedder returned to Cairo with a promise from the Defence Committee that 22 Armoured Brigade (from 1 Armoured Division) would be sent to the Middle East as soon as possible. In view of this Auchinleck had agreed to start crusader on 1 November.

There remained, however, a marked difference between Auchinleck's and Churchill's views of the offensive. Churchill expected it to open ‘a continuing path’ leading, as a matter of course, to Tripolitania and if possible to French North Africa or even Sicily. But Auchinleck was still inclined to see it in terms of security rather than gain. It was a tight situation which faced him. Malta was cut off after tiger

Code-name for a large convoy through the Mediterranean carrying aircraft and nearly 300 tanks from the United Kingdom early in May 1941.

from supplies from the east and the Tobruk supply line was expensive in small ships and air cover. The Fleet bases at Alexandria and Haifa, the Suez Canal, and Suez itself (the chief point of entry for Middle East supplies) were subject to air attack and a concentration of bombing against any one of them—particularly Suez—was much to be feared. Then there was the danger that the Germans might come down through Turkey or the Caucasus.

Auchinleck's sentiments were shared by Admiral Cunningham and Air Marshal Tedder, to whom crusader's greatest attraction was the expectation that it would yield airfields in Cyrenaica and thereby greatly ease the strain on Malta. The importance of this tiny and much-bombed island in affording security to the base in Egypt was out of all proportion to its size. Only attacks from Malta on Italian shipping would allow the British forces with their 13,000-mile supply lines to build up faster than the Axis forces in North Africa. To sustain these attacks demanded a great supply effort, with massive naval and air support. Air raids on Malta slackened during May and even more in June and July, because of barbarossa and as a kind of rebate from the loss of Crete, to which some Luftwaffe units were transferred from Sicily. But success against enemy shipping could best be achieved by surface striking forces based on Malta and these, after Crete, could not be afforded. In June and July sinkings therefore decreased and more Axis supplies got through to Libya. Not for a moment could the Middle East Commanders-in-Chief afford to lose grip of this critical situation.

iii

In the rarified atmosphere of high strategy the New Zealand Division, while recuperating from Greece and Crete, was mentioned, in a manner unacceptable to Freyberg, only as a possible relief for the garrison of Tobruk. This fortress was, like Malta, a symbol of gallant defiance maintained only by straining scarce shipping resources almost to breaking point. As a festering sore in the side of the German-Italian army in Libya it was well worth the effort; but Churchill demanded even more. He had been upset that the battleaxe plan did not include as ‘an indispensable preliminary and concomitant’ a sortie from Tobruk,

The Grand Alliance, p. 308.

perhaps not knowing of the hard fight of one brigade of the garrison in support of brevity, nor of the continual exertions by the Australians to drive in the dangerous enemy salient at Ras el-Medauuar, nor yet of the trouble the commander (Major-General Morshead) had had to prepare another brigade to link up with the Western Desert Force in the second stage (which failed to eventuate) of battleaxe. The garrison was not nearly strong enough to break out on its own and a premature move would have been dangerous if not disastrous, as is only too clear from subsequent fighting. By the end of June only 1000 yards of the salient had been regained on a front of a mile and a half and Morshead had to keep three brigades at full stretch to man the 30-odd miles of perimeter, each being relieved by the fourth from time to time to find what rest it could, though there was no haven beyond reach of enemy guns and dive-bombers.

When brevity and then battleaxe failed, the relief of Tobruk became a dream of the future. Most of the garrison had been committed to action on 8 March and besieged since 10 April and ‘a wave of pessimism swept over the defenders’,

Wilmot, Tobruk, p. 167.

though with digging, wiring and mining and almost incessant patrolling they soon regained their confidence. By night no-man's land was theirs; but they could not fail to note the increasing activity of enemy guns and aircraft, while their own guns for lack of ammunition had to control their tempers.

See Bayonets Abroad (2/13 Battalion, AIF), p. 108, and ‘Silver John’, Target Tank (2/3 Anti-Tank Regiment, AIF), pp. 108–16.

This and the heat, the brackish water, and the unvaried diet caused cumulative strain and sickness, often of a kind not adequately reflected in medical reports. As the post-battleaxe lull continued into July and operations in Syria ended, Lieutenant-General Blamey, now Deputy Commander-in-Chief, Middle East Forces, proposed that the garrison should be relieved by sea, by the New Zealand Division or 1 South African Division.

Middle East was not so amply supplied with troops, however, that a whole division could be replaced without widespread repercussions. The relief of 18 Australian Brigade (needed by its parent division

7 Aust Div.

) by 1 Polish Carpathian Brigade was already arranged; but who was to take over from Morshead's division? The question was settled in Auchinleck's absence

Though in accordance with his wishes.

by a Cairo conference of 2 August at which 70 Division, formerly 6 (British) Division, was chosen.

Undoubtedly connected with this decision was a sudden, brief flurry of activity among the New Zealand authorities at Maadi and Helwan on 4 August. A warning order was hurriedly issued for

Divisional Headquarters and 4 Brigade to move to Syria at short and rather mysterious notice. Advanced parties would report at Cairo railway station the same evening. ‘Destination and action at destination will be issued later’, the order cryptically added. By the afternoon it was cancelled and the fuss ended. The Poles duly relieved the Australian brigade and the Indian cavalry regiment in Tobruk in mid-August; 70 Division prepared to relieve Morshead's 9 Australian Division.

Opponents of the relief fought a determined rearguard action, but Blamey and three successive Australian governments insisted and all but a battalion and a half of the Australians were brought out by the end of October. British sources point to Australian domestic politics as the villain of the piece and Churchill is particularly outspoken. Yet it is hard to see how a major role for the garrison could have been allotted troops who had been in action for eight months and besieged for seven of them. Even the last stage was vigorously opposed, though there was little to be said for embarking on crusader with a garrison of bits and pieces—British, Poles and disappointed Australians.

See Playfair, The Mediterranean and the Middle East, Vol. III, pp. 22–5; Hasluck, The Government and the People, 1939–41, pp. 616–24; The Grand Alliance, pp. 367–71; and Connell, pp. 276–83.

Crusader was to take place in a corner of the world's greatest desert, the desert which stretches from the Nile for 3000 lonely miles westwards to the Atlantic and for 1500 equally desolate miles southwards nearly to the Equator. In current Army terms there was first the Western Desert as far as the Egyptian frontier, then the Libyan Desert, with the great Sahara to the west and south of it, though in truth from Nubia to Mauretania was all one wasteland, hostile to life and miserly with its treasures.

Oil from the Sahara was then a mere dream.

These could not sustain modern armies and everything was imported: the men, their machines and supplies, and the issues they contested—all, that is, but water, found at scattered points along the coast and at rare inland oases.

Among the few fertile parts are the Green Mountain (Jebel Akhdar) of Cyrenaica, bringing rain and vegetation in season to 200 miles of coast from Benghazi to Bomba. There were found—or so said the Romans—the garden of the Hesperides and the dark waters of Lethe. But this ancient granary with its golden memories is small indeed alongside the endless miles of semi-desert which stretch across the base of the Cyrenaican hump, merging into deep sand dunes which seal off the southern boundary 100 to 180 miles from the coast. This barren and almost impassable duneland, the Libyan Sand Sea, is flanked on the north and north-east by the two large oases of Jarabub (in Libya) and Siwa (inside Egypt), 150 miles inland, and east of these lie the salt marshes of the Qattara Depression, narrowing the desert eastwards until at El Alamein it is no more than 30 miles wide. The Western Desert is thus a funnel starting 60 miles from Alexandria and opening westwards into the steppes of Cyrenaica, 300 miles long by 150 wide. In this tufted semi-desert with limestone outcrops, a few twisting wadis dry for all but a few days each year, and here and there an Arab tomb or other vague landmark, the desert armies were destined to meet.

Between El Alamein and El Agheila they would have to share a 600-mile open flank in this semi-desert with seldom a serious restraint of climate or terrain on the movement of mechanised forces—a tactician's paradise indeed, but only for those with strong nerves. ‘Going’ in the Sollum-Tobruk area, for example, varied from impassable escarpments (mostly parallel to the coast at a distance of a few miles) to firm, smooth surface well inland which allowed mile after mile of comfortable top-gear driving. The coast strips below and just above the escarpments were inclined to be treacherous, with soft sand and broken ground entailing much gear-changing and many defiles. Here, too, the winter rains carved their wadis up to 30 miles inland and were survived for days or weeks by patches of mud or swampy ground (and hints of greenery), compounding the deception of soft sand and calling manpower all too often to the aid of mechanical horse-power. Sandstorms could at other times halt all movement in a wilderness of discomfort, though the wind more often achieved no more than minor irritation from sand scudding along the surface, clogging food, hindering the maintenance of machinery (especially aircraft engines), and fraying tempers.

The main escarpment on the Egyptian side took shape south of Sidi Barrani and curled and rose for 50 miles towards the frontier until at Upper Sollum it became a 500-foot cliff overlooking the sea, mounted only by a tarmac road, Sollum Pass, or by a lesser route, Halfaya Pass, four or five miles to the south-east. West of Bardia this escarpment broke up into smaller ones which in turn merged into two south of Tobruk. In the autumn of 1941 what these lost in height they gained in tactical stature as they approached that fortress. To the south terrain features were so modest and rare that the frontier mostly followed the 25th meridian. The Italians had put up a 169-mile barbed-wire fence embedded in concrete on the

Libyan side of the frontier to restrict the wanderings of the Senussi bedouin, but by mid-1941 this had become dilapidated and of little significance.

In the summer and autumn of 1941 the frontier divided the opposing forces except for the British garrisons of Tobruk and Jarabub and patrols of the Long Range Desert Group which ranged deep into Libya, offset by a small but important enemy encroachment on Egyptian territory at Halfaya. The desert armies clung in the main to the coast, served by the coast road and on the British side by the railway to Mersa Matruh. On the enemy side a 47-mile road by-passing Tobruk (Strada del'Asse or Achsenstrasse) was laboriously constructed by 6000 Italians and opened on 9 August, saving enemy vehicles a rough cross-country journey. Only reconnaissance, training manoeuvres, or major operations would tempt either side for long into the desert hinterland. Though the desert was one vast highway for motor transport it charged a high price in lorries, fuel and supplies, all of which were husbanded for operational demands.

Even near the coast the desert miles drank petrol copiously and posed many awkward problems for an army like the British in which everything on the ‘Q side’ stemmed from Railhead. By this European doctrine Railhead was a benevolent institution established as near to the scene of fighting as comfort and convenience allowed. From Railhead came the troops, tanks, guns and other vehicles of the fighting formations. From it also came the supply lorries, like dusty or muddy pearls strung together in road convoys bearing food, ammunition, fuel, engineering equipment, medical supplies, comforts—whatever was needed. Back along the network of roads came the ‘empties’, the wounded, and, if Fortune smiled, the prisoners.

Thus it was in theory; but the desert decreed otherwise. Railhead there was indeed, by a happy conjunction of foresight and luck; but it was 140 miles by road from Matruh to Sollum, 190 rough miles to Jarabub, some 300 by a roundabout route to Tobruk, and more than 600 to the far corners of Cyrenaica. The conquest of this vast area by manoeuvre on the open flank would inevitably take the British forces far beyond reach of the usual supply services—the two echelons of RASC transport which normally travelled between Railhead and the fighting units.

Each mile the railway advanced westwards from Matruh would save many dozens of supply lorries and the extension of it towards the frontier became a matter of urgency. A tricky eight miles up an escarpment south of Matruh and on to the plateau had been surveyed by 9 NZ Railway Survey Company and formed (but not completed) by New Zealand technicians and Arab labour by February.

See Cody, New Zealand Engineers, Ch. 2 (in preparation). Operating the railway was a military rather than a civilian task and 16 NZ Ry Op Coy had some exciting adventures. A section of the Div Ammunition Coy for seven weeks carried sleepers for the railway extension.

Work did not start again until 1 June, but this time the task was tackled in great earnest and gained increasing momentum. After battleaxe indicated that none but an offensive on the largest scale offered hope of success, more and more labour was applied and by 15 September the line reached Mohalfa (formerly ‘Charing Cross’), gaining 17 valuable miles. The New Zealand Railway Construction and Maintenance Group with two construction companies (the 10th and, after 22 September, the whole of the 13th) and splendid Indian labour pushed the line westwards at a rate which by 20 October reached the astonishing average of two miles per day—bewildering to desert navigators who were apt to find their calculations wildly astray on their return journeys. The aim was to set up a new railhead and have it working as far west as possible before crusader opened; but there were some who felt the New Zealanders had raised their sights too high. All criticism, however, was happily confounded when the new line reached Misheifa, 93 miles from Matruh, on 8 November and the new railhead with nine miles of sidings was opened for business on the 15th. The saving in lorries thereby has been estimated

By Smith, ‘Military Railway Construction in Middle East, 1941–42’, in Proceedings of the New Zealand Institute of Railway Engineers, 1947, p. 469. But Joan Bright (History of the Northumberland Hussars Yeomanry 1924–1949, p. 108) puts the figure at 2700 lorries saved.

at 4000–5000 and the railway cut the task of maintaining the large forces earmarked for crusader, at least in the early stages, down to manageable proportions.

In one way, however, the railway robbed Peter to pay Paul, since the locomotives needed more water than the whole desert army would drink, and demanded a huge increase in the supply. In fifty-six days seven pumping stations and ten large reservoirs were built and 145 miles of water pipeline laid—a vast programme completed, like the railway, in the nick of time to meet the needs of crusader. By 13 November water was reaching the railhead in adequate volume, much of it piped 270 miles from Alexandria.

New Zealand Engineers also contributed, 18 Army Troops Coy being engaged throughout and many detachments from New Zealand divisional units from September onwards.

These great construction works went hand in hand with other capital outlay on the forthcoming offensive: airfields in the Canal Zone for heavy bombers, forward landing grounds for light bombers and fighters, and roading and similar works as far afield as Syria. Thus the effort of building up and maintaining a force of little more than 100,000 in the forward area engaged many times that number throughout the Middle East, to the astonishment and dismay of London authorities who found it hard to grasp the administrative limitations imposed on operational planning in an undeveloped land.

The Battle Area Colour map of the battle area

On the frontier July and August passed quietly, though in the coast sector three columns (fait, hope and char in current Signals jargon) took turns at playing a dangerous game of provoking an enemy who in his strong arc of defences covering Halfaya and Sollum ‘held all the aces.

Goodheart, The History of the 2/7 Australian Field Regiment, p. 73.

Gunners would push forward a single 25-pounder to snipe by night and later, as the technique improved, by day, attracting as intended far more fire in return than they expended themselves. On the plateau above the escarpment light mobile forces watched and waited while the enemy toiled with pick and shovel, digging, concreting, wiring and laying mines to extend the defences in a series of battalion strongpoints 30 miles south-westwards from Sollum to Sidi Omar, a strong arm to ward off British intervention long enough to allow the Axis troops, when the stage was set, to capture Tobruk.

This was a project on which Rommel had set his heart, but the cold facts of administration were against it. He had no counterpart to the railway from Alexandria and no sizable port nearer the front than Benghazi. Transport aircraft did what they could to make up deficiencies but the supply situation was always uncertain and (largely because of His Majesty's submarines) at times critical. So the Tobruk operation was several times postponed and the prospect of invading Egypt faded into the distant future.

General-of-Panzer-Troops Rommel was nominally under the command of the Italian General Bastico, Commander-in-Chief of the Italian Armed Forces in North Africa, but Bastico's few attempts to assert his authority proved singularly unsuccessful. It may have been some consolation, however, to know that even the Army High Command in Berlin

Oberkommando des Heeres, abbreviated OKH.

also failed. A large independent headquarters and liaison staff was sent to Libya under a General Staff officer, Major-General Gause, who had orders not to place himself under Rommel's command but to report direct to Berlin. But Rommel's ‘morbid ambition’ (as Gause described it) and Hitler's continued support proved too much even for OKH. In mid-August Rommel absorbed Gause and his staff into a newly-formed headquarters, Panzer Group Africa, and Gause acted from then onwards as his Chief of Staff. This was virtually an army command, including as it did the German Africa Corps,

Deutsches Afrikakorps (DAK).

21 Italian Corps, and 55 Italian

Savona Division (in the frontier area); but its only mobile troops were 15 and 21 Panzer Divisions. The 20th Italian Mobile Corps, not yet battle-worthy, remained directly under Bastico.

The non-mobile troops, including a German division (Division z.b.V.

Zur besonderen Verwendung—For Special Purposes.

Afrika) in course of being formed from independent regiments and battalions, had plenty to do either on the Tobruk front or the frontier line, and in August and September several small actions were fought to tighten the ring around Tobruk; but the panzer troops languished in the summer heat. Their whole background of doctrine and training had been directed towards mobile rather than static operations.

A limited operation of some sort was clearly called for and in mid-September it was provided: a raid, code-named sommernachtstraum,

Midsummer Night's Dream, aptly enough.

by the bulk of 21 Panzer Division to overrun a supposed British dump some miles south of Sollum and strike heavy blows at two British groups thought to be defending it. As the time approached Africa Corps strongly suspected that the ‘dump’ was empty and doubted whether much damage to the British groups would result; but for Rommel the operation was essentially action as opposed to inaction and had irresistible appeal. In the pale light of the last-quarter moon early on 14 September, he went forward personally with one of two battle groups of the division which threaded their ways through the minefields while 3 Reconnaissance Unit swung widely southwards and then northeastwards to simulate a third attacking force. Fighter aircraft brought forward for the occasion to Gambut airfield stood ready to help.

The British covering forces, however, were amply forewarned by the roar of engines and tank tracks in the still desert night. The leading battle group came on fast soon after dawn but the British withdrew even faster, though one South African armoured-car commander was able to report that he was ‘lying a close second to a German tank’ in an exciting race.

Goodheart, loc. cit.

By breakfast-time enemy tanks had reached Hamra, 20 miles south-east of the suspected dump, and the wild-goose chase reached Sofafi, another 20 miles eastwards, in the course of the afternoon. There the enemy halted, the tanks refuelled in dangerously close order, and the RAF and SAAF bombers caught them in the act. There had been no parallel movement in the coast sector below, where the sniping gun, well forward in its minor war of attrition, ‘broke all records by scoring 5 for 225 before the breakfast adjournment’—five rounds fired for 225 returned.

Ibid.

But after dark even this coastal force withdrew, leaving a small rearguard at Buq Buq and sending another nervously south-westwards from Sidi Barrani to meet the enemy armour. Behind them the water point at Buq Buq was needlessly demolished.

The night of 14–15 September had on the British side an exciting uncertainty and various detachments prepared themselves as sacrificial offerings if the Germans continued the advance. As far back as Mersa Matruh 5 South African Brigade sent a battalion forward as a delaying force. But no sacrifice was demanded and on the 15th the German armour headed westwards, pausing only to shake its fist at armoured cars which followed insolently close.

The dream had ended. How happy the awakening was can only be surmised from the German documents and contemporary comment was understandably guarded. There was some consolation from the capture of a South African office truck with three prisoners and some interesting papers (as against 12 Germans and 16 Italians captured). But sommernachtstraum came at an unfortunate time from the viewpoint of German Intelligence. One of its main objects was to reassure Rommel that no British offensive was impending and thereby free him from worry about what the British might do when he attacked Tobruk. All Rommel could learn from the captured papers was that the British covering forces were slender and planned to move back quickly if seriously threatened. A week or so later he might have learned of a scheduled strengthening of these forces to protect forward depots and landing grounds for crusader. But Rommel liked to ride his dreams bareback and was only too eager to accept whatever support sommernachtstraum offered for the view that British moves would not clash with his attack on Tobruk.

As a fillip to German morale, which was also intended, the Dream can have paid but a small dividend, the British mobile troops being adept and pugnacious with their guns and too slippery for effective reprisal, while the ‘carpet bombing’ which the Germans experienced for the first time at Sofafi was anything but reassuring. It did much damage to the panzers and very nearly killed Rommel himself. The tank strength of 5 Panzer Regiment dropped drastically from 110 to 43, a difference of 67 which was made up so slowly that it was not until November, on the eve of crusader, that the former total was reached. Some of the 67 may have been in workshops for routine overhaul but the majority were probably damaged in some way or other, though only two tanks were abandoned on the field.

In aircraft the situation was even worse. Though the enemy got slightly the better of the fighter clashes, the balance swung heavily against him after a raid on the crowded Gambut airfield. The Panzer Group war diary plaintively records on 15 September that

Fliegerfuehrer Afrika, the German Air Force commander, telephoned to say that no aircraft at all would be available until 1 p.m. next day; all fighters at Gambut had been put out of action and bombers had to have fighter support. As a crowning indignity a number of Stukas manned by Italians landed within the British lines and were captured intact.

When the fuss died down preparations for crusader went ahead quietly. The 4th Indian Division under Major-General Messervy assumed command of all troops in the forward area and its 11 Infantry Brigade took over the coast sector later in the month. The 7th Armoured Division also moved up inland, strengthening the covering forces and promising heavy punishment to any similar reconnaissance-in-force the enemy cared to attempt. As a further insurance the New Zealand Division began to assemble 180 miles behind the front.

CHAPTER 3 Preparing for Action

GENERAL Freyberg himself came up from Baggush (a coastal oasis 30 miles east of Matruh

Fortified as a ‘box’ by 4 NZ Bde a year earlier (see McClymont, pp. 53–4) and subsequent occupants.

) with a small party a day or two later and stayed a night at General Messervy's headquarters at Sofafi. On this brief visit, the first of a series by New Zealand officers, he found time for a quick study of the frontier situation, a short survey of the ground, and on the way home a halt to see for himself the good work of the New Zealand Engineers on the railway west of Matruh.

The New Zealand Division, less 5 Infantry Brigade,

Still working to fortify a line near El Alamein.

had reached Baggush in the middle of the month to act as long-stop to the Western Desert Force while a more active role was being shaped. The Division was tentatively but not yet irrevocably committed to crusader. Such a commitment came well within the prescription ‘affecting the safety of the NZEF’ and a final decision entailed consultation between the New Zealand Government, the Middle East Command, and in the end the United Kingdom Government.

Freyberg's own views were clear. ‘We had taken part in two forlorn hopes’, he says. ‘We had … been routed, losing all our arms and equipment…. It was most important that we did not have another failure…. troops can have heavy casualties, so long as the heavy casualties are not linked with failure.’ These are post-war comments, but contemporary documents confirm their accuracy as a reflection of his thoughts at the time. ‘What we wanted most was a success’, he adds, ‘but it was most important that we were not employed upon another costly failure.’

Comments on my preliminary narrative, 15 May 1950.

Behind him and equally anxious on this score was the Prime Minister.

At a government-to-government level a new relationship was emerging. In the course of his prolonged visit to the United Kingdom, Mr Fraser, like Mr Menzies before him, sat in the War Cabinet, and though he said little he learned much. He had been much perturbed by a scheme (duly put into effect) to move American naval strength from the Pacific to the Atlantic, thinking this would prove an incentive rather than (as curiously intended) a deterrent to further Japanese aggression.

Mr Fraser had attended a meeting in Sydney of the Australian War Cabinet when this matter came to a head and found the Australians apprehensive on strategic grounds but even more perturbed at the lack of consultation on a matter of vital concern to the two Dominions. See Hasluck, p. 346. Butler (p. 502) says the Dominion governments concurred ‘generally’; but they had been advised of the scheme too late to do otherwise.

This was early in May and the situation vis-à-vis Japan deteriorated in Fraser's continued absence. The acting Prime Minister, Mr Nash, cabled crossly to him on 16 July that ‘the customary policy of saying or doing nothing which might be construed as provocative by the Japanese has resulted inevitably in the very situation we are at such pains to avoid.’

The disasters in Greece and Crete had followed and deeply troubled him, prompting a searching questionnaire of 30 June to the United Kingdom Chiefs of Staff. Why had the New Zealand troops had to fight in Greece and Crete without adequate support? Had the lessons of Poland and France not been learned? Had poor inter-service liaison and defects in the Middle East system of command led to the Crete débâcle? It was a protest rather than a question when Fraser asked, ‘What steps are being taken to avoid a recurrence of a situation under which well-trained and courageous troops find themselves battered to pieces from the air without means of defence or retaliation?’ Looking to the future he added, ‘Is the vital importance of air and armoured reinforcement of the Middle East fully recognised and are the necessary steps being taken?’

See McClymont, pp. 491–513, for full text.

The answers were only mildly reassuring. Though the questions were restricted chiefly to the two campaigns they were in effect a challenge to the direction of the whole British Commonwealth war effort, as Mr Churchill was not slow to recognise. While in London Fraser did not press, as Menzies had done, for permanent representation in the War Cabinet; but he was no less anxious for prompt, full and frank consultation on all matters of vital concern, and the crusader preliminaries were to provide a remarkable example of how far Churchill was now prepared to go to meet his criticisms.

iii

These preliminaries also indicate, however, some initial uncertainty on Freyberg's part about his somewhat contradictory duality of status, especially with a new Commander-in-Chief in place of one with whom he had reached some sort of understanding. As divisional commander he was clearly subordinate to Auchinleck and any corps commander Auchinleck cared to interpose—a subordination deepened by a lifetime's experience of the military hierarchy. He was acutely aware, too, how the need for military security in planning great operations governed all disclosures, how an unguarded word could ambush the fighting men. How much should he reveal to his Government, and by what channels? Fraser had insisted on earlier and fuller briefing than had been supplied before Greece; what should he tell, and when?

Freyberg's leanings were towards caution and by the time he gave Mr Fraser his first warning of crusader—on 13 September—the Division was already on its way to Baggush. Fraser was somewhat taken aback to read that ‘Division up to War strength’, that it was trained and was moving ‘in stages’ to the Western Desert, to be followed in a month's time by the reinforcements training at Maadi.

For full texts of the main messages see Documents, Vol. II, pp. 70–8.

Battle was evidently in the offing and he at once sought more details. ‘I gather from your telegram that the Division should be employed early in operations’, he replied on the 16th. ‘In view of experience in GREECE and particularly in CRETE I should be grateful if you would telegraph me the following information, if necessary after consultation with Commander in Chief, Middle East.’ There followed another penetrating questionnaire, with the explanation that the Government needed the information ‘in order to satisfy themselves and (if it should be necessary to do) to assure the people … that our troops have not been committed to battle without every possible precaution and preparation to meet every calculable emergency’—a worrying addendum to a security-minded general. Two days later Fraser asked further if the Division was ‘to be associated in a corps with any other division or divisions and if so with which division or divisions and under whose command.’

These requests caused some commotion. An interim acknowledgment went to Fraser, Brigadier Stevens

Maj-Gen W. G. Stevens, CB, CBE, m.i.d.; England; born London, 11 Dec 1893; Regular soldier; NZ Fd Arty 1915–19 (Maj); AA & QMG, NZ Div, 1940; Officer in Charge of Administration, 2 NZEF, 1940–45; GOC 2 NZEF, 22 Nov 1945–6 Jul 1946.

came up from Maadi, and Freyberg drafted replies in consultation with him which Stevens took personally to Auchinleck, together with a letter of introduction with the following rather stiff postscript:

It is well to state that under the agreement between the British and N.Z. Governments the NZ Govt. reserve the right to consult me upon any question of policy. From time to time they have done so.

Under my charter I have the right to consult them upon any question of policy.

He evidently expected trouble; but Auchinleck had heard of Freyberg's ‘charter’ and his reaction was disarming. He at once sanctioned the reply to Fraser's first message and added helpful notes to the draft reply to the second. Then, as soon as he could, he wrote a friendly letter to Freyberg:

22 September 1941My Dear Freyberg,

Many thanks for your letter of the 17th and for sending Stevens to see me. I am grateful to you for letting me see the cables and thoroughly appreciate the way in which you drafted the replies. Your attitude is most helpful and you may rely on me to do all I can to help you give your Prime Minister as much information as I possibly can, consistent with the need for secrecy, so that he may be re-assured as to way in which the New Zealand Division will be employed and commanded in any higher formation in which it may be included….

Not the least of the Commander-in-Chief's burdens arose (and were to continue to arise) from pre-war neglect by British Commonwealth leaders to work out the implications of Dominion independence for a joint war effort. All was now makeshift at a personal level, with a premium on tact, and in this—at least in this first instance—neither Auchinleck nor Freyberg was lacking.

Thus Fraser received his answers (dated 19 September), and though they told him little about crusader they were enthusiastic about the battle-worthiness of the Division, about which Fraser was asked to make no statement ‘just now other than that Division is in good heart’ because of the ‘vital need for secrecy’. The questions are set out below with the answers in italics:

(1)

In what operation is division to be engaged? We are carrying out intensive desert training for defensive or offensive operations.

(2)

What role is it to play in these operations? Role not yet disclosed and as you will realise depends on many circumstances.

(3)

Is it completely equipped in all respects up to war establishment? Division is probably best equipped in Middle East right up to War Establishment except for items which are not available here or are at present in process of being made up.

(4)

If not what are deficiencies? 28 light tanks for Divisional Cavalry proportion light anti-aircraft guns both of which will shortly be supplied. Anti-aircraft Regiment at present on defence of aerodromes but returning to Division for training in mobile desert operations. Shortage Anti-tank rifles 5th Brigade shortly to be made up.

(5)

Are you satisfied that the Division is ready for action? Yes Division is trained and when deficiencies mentioned in para 4 made up Division will be fit for war in every way.

(6)

Is adequate AFV support available for contemplated operations? Importance AFVs is fully realised and our strength now much greater and adequate deal with estimated situation Western Desert.

(7)

Is adequate air support available for contemplated operations and have appropriate arrangements been made for its use in conjunction with land forces? Importance of air support realised and no operations could be contemplated unless it is adequate. Situation of course entirely different from Crete as fighter aerodromes available at all stages.

Since your visit here attitude to air co-operation between RAF and Army completely changed. RAF are doing their utmost and combined exercises are being carried out.

‘I do not think there is any Division superior to ours in Middle East’, Freyberg added. ‘Am certain that as force we have been treated better than any other for equipment….’ Despite the guarded answer to the first question it was evident that a great offensive was brewing, and the next cablegram (20 September) by implication confirmed this:

We will be part of Corps commanded by General Godwin-Austen specially selected after successful command in East Africa and Abyssinia. We will be with Indian Division and possibly South African Division. I am authorised by C.-in-C. to let you know for your personal information that General Cunningham late C-in-C East African campaign will be in command of operations as a whole.

With these bare bones of a small part of the battle plan Mr Fraser contented himself for a fortnight. Then he sought more information, this time from a different source:

4 October 1941

Following is for Prime Minister [United Kingdom] from Prime Minister:

For various reasons it would help us very much here if you could for my own personal information give me an indication when action in Western Desert is likely to commence.

But Mr Churchill was not to be drawn. Thanking Fraser for his ‘Winch No. 1’

When Fraser used Churchill's own code-name in his reply the name pefra was suggested for future messages, initiating the winch-pefra correspondence which continued until May 1945.

, he replied on 5 October that the

date of operation uncertain owing to Australian demand to release all their troops from restriction [i.e., Tobruk] which complicates our plans. Hope these difficulties will be overcome. Will cable you later.

Fraser did not mind waiting; but in the interim Freyberg unwittingly injected a fresh and powerful stimulus to the newborn Churchill-Fraser correspondence. In a cautious but generally encouraging survey of the whole Middle East situation addressed to the Defence Minister

Hon. F. Jones; see Documents, Vol. II, pp. 73–5.

on 9 October he slipped in the current estimate that in aircraft the enemy would have ‘decided superiority in numbers 3 to 2’ in the forthcoming operation.

Fraser at once rushed to arms, his post-Crete misgivings on this score thoroughly aroused. In ‘Pefra No. 2’ of 13 October he asked Churchill for ‘the best appreciation possible of the prospective air, tank and A.F.V. strengths of the enemy and ourselves in the Middle East’, with technical details and the estimated scale and time lag of enemy reinforcement from Europe. Echoing the Crete questionnaire, he wanted an assurance that ‘the question of air support, which we … regard as a vital factor, has been fully considered and appreciated by those responsible and that a situation in which our men are called upon to fight without the necessary means of defence and offence particularly in aircraft, tanks and A.F.V.s, will not recur.’

Churchill's first answer on 15 October, a brief assurance based on United Kingdom estimates with a promise to ‘cable you more fully early next week’, gave no hint of trouble. But it coincided with a sharp clash between Tedder and the Chief of Air Staff, Tedder's estimate being more cautious and taking careful account that the enemy was able if he chose to reinforce North Africa far more quickly than the RAF. The figures needed for Fraser's benefit could not be sent without the endorsement of the AOC-in-C Middle East and Churchill was angered and perplexed. He sent the Vice-Chief of Air Staff, Air Chief Marshal Freeman, to investigate in person and told Auchinleck in a private letter that Freeman, ‘an officer of altogether larger calibre’, was available to replace Tedder if Auchinleck thought fit.

Gwyer and Butler, op. cit.; see also Richards and Saunders, Royal Air Force 1939–1945, Vol. II, pp. 170–1, and Owen, Tedder, pp. 150–1.

But Freeman and Tedder quickly re-examined and reshuffled the figures, giving the RAF a more favourable balance, Tedder retained his post, and Churchill was able on 24 October to confirm his message of the 15th with detailed though not very significant figures of aircraft, tanks, and guns. He specified that the details were ‘of fateful secrecy’ and added that the London War Cabinet had ‘declined to be informed of the date of the offensive’.

Fraser thanked him on the 25th and there, for the time being, the winch-pefra correspondence rested.

With Freyberg's cable of 9 October, which gave a review of battleaxe, then of Auchinleck's preparations, the enemy's situation, and the New Zealand Division's current programme and prospects, Fraser was now reasonably fully briefed; but his inquiry was to yield yet another dividend.

As soon as Auchinleck heard of Fraser's London inquiries he called for Colonel Stewart,

Maj-Gen Sir Keith Stewart, KBE, CB, DSO, m.i.d., MC (Gk), Legion of Merit (US); Kerikeri; born Timaru, 30 Dec 1896; Regular soldier; 1 NZEF1917–19; GSO I NZ Div 1940–41; Deputy Chief of General Staff Dec 1941–July 1943; comd 5 Bde Aug–Nov 1943, 4 Armd Bde Nov 1943–Mar 1944, 5 Bde Mar–Aug 1944; p.w. 1 Aug 1944; comd 9 Bde (2 NZEF, Japan) Nov 1945–Jul 1946; Chief of General Staff Apr 1949–Mar 1952.

former GSO I of the New Zealand Division, and gave him all necessary information about the coming offensive to convey orally to the Prime Minister in New Zealand. At the same time Auchinleck wrote personally to Fraser explaining Stewart's mission and the need for the strictest secrecy.

The documentation of this episode unfortunately lacks a personal letter from Freyberg to Fraser of 29 Sep (mentioned in Freyberg's diary and acknowledged by Fraser on 6 Nov) which has not been traced.

In the five convalescent months June to October the Division recovered its strength and grew stronger than ever. It digested what was needed of four reinforcement drafts,

Later sections of the 4th and the 5th Reinforcements (May), the 6th (July-August), and the 7th (October), with an average of 4000 each.

absorbed new or newly-arrived units and sub-units, reorganised its existing units in the light of experience, and learned or evolved new tactical and administrative methods for both desert and amphibious warfare. Some of the best officers and NCOs were sent home (chiefly for the army tank brigade); but others also went who had been tried in battle and had failed, so that those who remained commanded respect.

The organisation behind the Division, too, became stronger as 2 NZEF acquired more facilities and formed minor units of various kinds. Though the bulk of the Corps troops New Zealand was to provide under the FFC 36 plan were to be raised at home (and did not in the end leave there), Freyberg wanted if he could to form a regiment of medium guns from resources in Egypt. The Division was already largely self-contained, the army tank brigade was expected in due course, and with a New Zealand medium regiment as well he would command the powerful and balanced force of all arms which had long been his ambition.

See Documents, Vol. I, pp. 50–2.

But manpower proved insufficient and he agreed instead to raise another RMT company, a compromise less curious than it sounds. Troop-carrying lorries were more essential in mobile operations than medium guns, though they were more easily borrowed. Consequently the Division for the rest of the war had to take whatever medium guns the Corps or Army in which it served was able to grant it. This was in accordance with a well-established principle of the British Army which sharply conflicted with Freyberg's ambitions and the New Zealand practice.

Freyberg had perhaps been too ready to lend New Zealand units when needed, as he pointed out in a letter to Mr Fraser of 18 Dec:

‘… in my efforts to get the Force together for training I am frequently at variance with Higher Military opinions.

‘General Blamey will not lend a single Australian unit. His policy has made him non persona grata. While we lent everything we were very popular. As soon as we asked for our units back they looked upon me as a Fifth Columnist.’

In forces from the United Kingdom, armoured units, medium and anti-aircraft artillery, machine-gun battalions, and even RMT companies were switched from division to division as circumstances and economy required, a policy destructive of any esprit de corps above regimental level and in the case of New Zealand units difficult to administer, since it raised problems of discipline, for example, and pay which were better avoided.

When 14 Light Anti-Aircraft Regiment, to take one case, completed its training in August, the activities of German night bombers against Alexandria and the Canal area created much demand for anti-aircraft gunners. Since the 40-millimetre Bofors guns were also in short supply an active role for the regiment became imperative. Thus 41 and 43 Batteries soon saw action at Tel-el-Kebir, Ismailia, Kantara and Port Said and 42 Battery manned guns at Ikingi Maryut and Aboukir near Alexandria. Regimental Headquarters was compensated for the temporary loss of 42 Battery (under direct command of British Troops in Egypt) by gaining temporary command of a light and a heavy battery of Royal Artillery. Valuable experience resulted, several enemy aircraft were ‘shared’ with neighbouring gunners, and the unit soon gained such proficiency that BTE was understandably reluctant to part with it. When the time came for desert manoeuvres, however, General Freyberg wanted it back. The regiment needed training for a mobile role and he had to insist that it be released.

Similarly, when GHQ noted in a Divisional movement order that 4 Reserve Mechanical Transport Company was earmarked to go to Baggush it promptly objected. Freyberg had responded favourably on 7 August to a GHQ request (to 2 AIF and 2 NZEF) that the ‘fullest and most economical use’ be made of Base and L of C troops by treating them as ‘part of a general pool’, though he felt that New Zealand troops of that nature should wherever possible be used at least partly to support the Division. The Deputy Chief of General Staff (Major-General N. M. Ritchie) sharply reminded him of this on 7 September. But the case of RMT companies was out of the ordinary. They were used on the L of C as general carriers; but they had, too, to carry infantry into battle. This called for strong nerves and careful training—for the infantry as well as the drivers. So Freyberg again insisted and on 11 September Ritchie agreed that the company should move with the Division and stay with it for about ten days' training, after which it would probably be needed to help prepare for the coming offensive. ‘Every effort will be made’, Ritchie added, ‘to use this coy in work connected with the NZ Div or in the area occupied by NZ Div.’ So far so good; but the interests of 2 NZEF and MEF conflicted and friction was bound to recur.

Current demands for the services of the New Zealand brigades and some specialist units in various capacities clashed, as usual, with the training and re-equipping of the Division for operations. All three brigades served in the Canal area at some stage and had a taste of night bombing there, luckily with no loss other than of sleep.

To their miscellaneous duties 5 and 6 Bdes had to add stevedoring at Ismailia and elsewhere to replace local labour frightened off by these raids.

Sixth Brigade continued in its anti-parachutist role until mid-August, then returned to Helwan for a four-day exercise, and finally prepared to move back to the Canal area, this time to Kabrit. There on the shores of the Great Bitter Lake was the Combined Operations school, where 5 Brigade served a brief apprenticeship before relieving 6 Brigade at Ismailia, while 4 Brigade took its turn at the school, practising embarkations and assault landings on the far shore of the lake. The skills thus acquired were never, as things turned out, to be used in action, and so it was perhaps just as well that events overtook intentions and 6 Brigade was diverted at the last moment from Kabrit to the Western Desert in mid-September. Units carried out whatever training their other duties allowed in the period June-September and despite interruptions made fair progress. At a higher level, however, much training was still required.

It was easy for the various commands in the Middle East to look on formations out of the line as reservoirs of labour for defence works and similar tasks. So much needed doing and time spent on training produced so few tangible results. Hence a move at short notice by 5 Brigade on 5 September to dig last-ditch defences in front of the Nile Delta and build roads to serve them—two days after Divisional Headquarters had been warned to prepare to move to the Western Desert for operational reasons! Then 4 Brigade was despatched to Baggush in mid-September, with 6 Brigade (by a last-minute change of plan) hard on its heels. This last move, as the 6 Brigade diary suggests, may have been ‘not unconnected with German recce moves in the Western Desert’ (sommernachtstraum), though the Division was in any case taking over the ‘command, care and maintenance’ of the Baggush Box from 4 Indian Division and 161 Infantry Brigade. The posture, in other words, was defensive and in such a situation the force commander concerned could always think of a hundred tasks for the newcomers, all claiming priority over mere training. Thus it had been since May and still was with 1 South African Division at Matruh where, despite frequent appeals by their commander, the South Africans were allowed no time until 11 October for training even at company level: five months with not a single battalion exercise! Little wonder, then, that as crusader approached the senior South African officers became increasingly anxious.

A similar fate might have threatened the two New Zealand brigades: though much had already been done to the Baggush defences they were far from complete and some parts had fallen into disrepair. But Baggush was 30 miles farther from the front than Matruh and for the moment much less important. At all events no serious effort was made to turn the New Zealanders into navvies and any such attempt would have met stern opposition from Freyberg. Not only was he armed with his special powers, but he was under officers who had been very much junior to him in the British Army between the wars, a fact of which they could not fail to be aware, sometimes uncomfortably so. Training, then, came first and the Baggush defences, though held more or less ready, had second call on the time and energies of the New Zealand units.

Bit by bit nearly all the Division assembled at Baggush, some elements by road, others by rail, and one unit, 7 Anti-Tank Regiment, by a three-day cross-country drive from Mena

A point of departure strikingly marked by the Great Pyramid and the enigmatic Sphinx.

—a valuable exercise. The NZASC companies were stationed at Fuka a few miles to the east, where they were conveniently placed to carry out their current duties as general carriers.

Items carried by 4 RMT Coy, for example, included ammunition, petrol, water and other supplies, Cypriot pioneer troops, and sheep for Indian units.

The specialist arms had mostly stayed in base camp at Maadi or Helwan until this move, attaching only such elements to the infantry brigades in the Canal area or on training exercises as were essential for their purposes. All had to get used to new equipment and techniques: the Divisional Cavalry to light tanks, the field regiments to a new three-battery organisation, the anti-tank regiment to new portées (lorries adapted to carry or tow 2-pounders) and 75-millimetre guns, and the Engineers and Signals to a variety of new equipment. All received their share, too, of four-wheel-drive trucks and lorries from Canada or the United States which removed much of the drudgery from desert driving. Some units even received one or two strange-looking vehicles then called bantam cars but later famous as jeeps. As a long stride towards making the Division fully mobile (in the technical sense), HQ 2 NZEF formed 6 Reserve Mechanical Transport Company during October.

Yet another ASC company was needed to move the whole Division simultaneously and one was duly lent by the RASC.

Several non-divisional entities were also formed during the month: ‘T’ Air Support Control Signals Section, ‘A’ and ‘B’ Field Maintenance Centres, and ‘X’ Water Issue Section, all needed for the vast Corps organisation within which the Division was to operate.

Early in the month 5 Brigade downed tools at Alamein and moved to Baggush, where it was quickly absorbed into a busy routine of training and re-equipping. The transition from rags to riches was for all units fast and exciting.

Freyberg's instructions from Western Desert Force early in September were to practise moving brigades on wheels over the desert in ‘open formation’—an expression not nearly as specific as it sounded. A brigade group contained nearly 1000 vehicles and was most vulnerable when on the move. In what order should it travel and rest by day and by night?: four problems to which no standard solution existed and which each brigade solved as best it could by trial and error. Wide dispersion by day would reduce damage from air raids, but at the price of long and vulnerable defensive perimeters and reduced manoeuvrability. Moving across country in darkness without headlamps or tail lights created another set of problems: how to reconnoitre and light the route and destination, how to traverse rough ground, how to find specific vehicles in the sprawling group, how to time moves and estimate distances the group could cover—how, in short, to take tactical advantage of the hours of darkness. The general aim was to be able to move quickly across open desert, to achieve surprise wherever possible, to overcome if need be strong all-round defences, and to consolidate against armoured counter-attack. This was, so far as could be guessed, ‘the most difficult operation in which we were likely to take part’, as Freyberg later wrote.

‘The New Zealand Division in Cyrenaica’, a report printed for limited circulation early in 1942, p. 2.

Against seasoned German troops it could not lightly be attempted and the under-standing between all arms at all levels in attack and defence was immensely important. This could be improved only by practice and by early October all battalions had exercised with the anti-tank and Vickers guns which would normally be attached to them. Brigade exercises were an altogether larger undertaking, needing careful preparation. I tanks could not be borrowed, a serious deficiency; but all other troops were at hand or within call and staffs were soon immersed in planning brigade manoeuvres.

The various units, sub-units, and individuals meanwhile did all they could to fit themselves for the desert. Navigation—a strange term in army circles—was much studied by officers, NCOs and drivers, with magnetic or sun compasses for bearings and speedometers to measure distances. The infantry improved their marksmanship with small arms and mortars and used up their training quotas of live grenades. By day all units had a full curriculum and night marches and patrols were frequent. Engineer detachments showed how to lay, detect and lift anti-tank mines or blast gaps through barbed wire with Bangalore torpedoes, and a special squad of the Green Howards gave a series of astonishing demonstrations of wire-crushing. A new call-sign procedure entailed much hurried memorising of letter combinations in Divisional Signals and new wireless codes demanded countless hours of study throughout the Division. In between times men worked on the Baggush defences and periodically manned them for twenty-four hours at a time. Platoon, company and battalion battle drills were rehearsed with great care to extract all possible benefit in increased skills and confidence for the trials which lay ahead.

A series of operation orders and instructions, both written and oral, were issued on 8 October for the first full-scale brigade manoeuvre. Divisional Headquarters emerged from its maze of dugouts and tunnels next day, elaborately sorted its various parts into a reconnaissance party, a Main Group, a Closing Group, an Advance B Echelon and a Rear Group, and set out for a 30-mile drive eastwards along the coast road and then 20 miles south-eastwards across rocky desert, the last part in darkness and with no lights other than shaded hurricane lamps posted at intervals to mark the route. A short drive next day and a longer and somewhat hazardous night journey took the group, now including Divisional Artillery Headquarters with two field regiments and the bulk of 6 Infantry Brigade Group (nearly 500 vehicles, an impressive sight, though only half the full quota), to an assembly area some 40 miles westwards. From there 24 Battalion with RAF fighter support mounted an attack on 11 October on ‘Sidi Clif’, a wired and mined dummy strongpoint laid out previously by a section of 7 Field Company. Sappers cleared a lane through the minefields, a fictitious regiment of I tanks (represented by lorries) drove through and fanned out, covered by high-explosive and smoke concentrations from the field guns, and the infantry and supporting weapons quickly followed up and settled in to meet a notional counter-attack. The 26th Battalion Group pushed through to ‘Bir Stella’ and consolidated likewise with its quota of supporting arms. The exercise was over by 1 p.m. and the large gallery of ‘brasshats’ was suitably impressed.

With minor variations, Sidi Clif and Bir Stella were duly captured again on the 16th by 4 Infantry Brigade Group (with Divisional Cavalry as well this time) and on the 20th by 5 Infantry Brigade Group, thereby completing ‘Div Exercise No. 3’. Manoeuvres by all three brigades had gone largely according to plan and much had been learned about handling large aggregations of vehicles by day and by night. If little could be learned in their absence about co-operation with I tanks, one of the two main objects, the techniques of moving and deploying a large mobile force in the desert were much improved and standard tables were now drawn up giving speeds and distances for cross-country travel under various conditions as follows: DaylightMoonlightDarknessDistance in MilesRate in Miles in the HourDistanceRateDistanceRateIncluding artillery707567405Without artillery8010567405Move expected to end with a fight6010
These figures were proved rather optimistic, this one especially so.
427305With route lit by lamps————305Unlit route————??

Freyberg was much impressed with the flexibility desert-worthy lorries gave to infantry operations. Units and their supporting weapons could be moved quickly, attacks from different directions could be synchronised ‘with some degree of certainty’,

Quotations are from Freyberg's lecture notes.

and planning was in general simplified, particularly in view of the savings in artillery ammunition resulting from swifter approaches, assaults, and subsequent consolidation. The tactical setting of the ‘attacks’ embodied certain misconceptions of the current situation at the frontier and the role and capabilities of the I tanks remained uncertain, the tendency being to overrate them. With these reservations the exercises could be accounted successful and testified to the high standard of unit training. No brigade night attack was practised, but units had trained to this end.

Veterans of Greece and Crete could well understand Freyberg's insistence that vehicles should be 200 yards apart in daylight, whether halted or on the move, and, as added insurance against loss from air raids, that slit trenches should be dug for everyone at all lengthy halts. But a new type of warfare was envisaged when he laid down that a move into enemy territory would be ‘on the hedgehog principle’ so as to be able to ‘meet attacks from all directions’. Flanks and rear had no stable connotation for manoeuvre across open desert, though any move which exposed a flank to the enemy was to be avoided if possible. The main defect of the brigade exercises as seen in retrospect was that they focussed attention on a hypothetical attack of a kind which the Division was not in fact called on to carry out in earnest, to the detriment of more general lessons. The pressing problem of what to do with the vast mass of non-fighting vehicles when in contact with the enemy, for example, remained unsolved, possibly because half these vehicles did not take part in the schemes.

To Freyberg and his brigadiers it was already clear that there would be hard fighting ahead. It was a prospect which, after Greece and Crete, was at once welcome and dreaded. Losses there were bound to be, as in the earlier campaigns, but if the outcome was a failure, added to the frustrations and tragedies which already marred the Division's record, it could be disastrous for 2 NZEF and indeed for New Zealand. With this in mind Freyberg scrutinised every detail of the plan which began to emerge.

CHAPTER 4 The crusader Plan

BATTLEAXE had been viewed at GHQ MEF as a disaster and it was only by displaying this spectre, with dire warnings of possible repetition, to the service and political heads in London that Auchinleck was able to delay crusader until administrative facilities promised adequate support. It was plain enough that battleaxe had been uncomfortably constricted by the inability of the supply services to support an ambitious tactical plan and Auchinleck was determined not to let crusader suffer under the same handicap. The comparative freedom from administrative limitations, however, was like strong and unaccustomed wine to the planners and went to their heads. Much time was wasted on a quite impracticable scheme to by-pass not only the frontier defences but the Tobruk front as well and make the main thrust across the base of the Cyrenaican bulge to the Gulf of Sirte. It is curious that this was one of the two alternatives Auchinleck put to his new army commander,

Headquarters Western Army was formed in Cairo early in September and on the 25th it moved to Baggush, with Rear HQ at El Daba. At midnight, 26–27 Sep 1941, it was redesignated Eighth Army Headquarters, with 13 and 30 Corps under its command, to which the Tobruk garrison was added in October.

General Cunningham, on 2 September, the other being to attack ‘from the coastal sector, south of the escarpment, and to feint from the centre and south’—the centre presumably being the Tobruk front. The ultimate aim was to drive the enemy out of North Africa, but crusader was concerned only with capturing Cyrenaica, to be achieved in the first instance by destroying the enemy's armoured forces.

Cunningham elected to try to trap the enemy armour between the frontier and a line some miles west of Tobruk. With half again as many tanks as the enemy (as he estimated in an appreciation of 28 September) he should have no great trouble in disposing of the German-Italian armour despite a similar disparity of air strength in favour of the enemy. Meanwhile the mass of mobile infantry would guard the L of C and watch the frontier strongpoints. If the shape of the tank battle allowed, the Tobruk garrison might break out to link up with the armoured force; but the relief of Tobruk ‘must be incidental to the plan’.

More crusader details were revealed at a conference at Army Headquarters on 6 October attended by divisional and corps commanders and corps and army staff officers. General Freyberg listened intently as the plan unfolded but said nothing until the New Zealand Division was discussed. With a superiority in tanks of five to four (not counting the I tanks), as it was now estimated, Eighth Army proposed to fight the opening and decisive battle with part of the armoured corps only—two out of the three armoured brigades, the third having a dual role which might make it unavailable. Since all depended on the outcome of this armoured clash, the confidence thus reposed in two armoured brigades to achieve the main purpose of the campaign almost unaided is as remarkable in its way as the time wasted on Auchinleck's Gulf of Sirte alternative. Both indicate a readiness to abandon accepted principles which is hard to explain even years after the event. Those chiefly concerned must have looked on their new-found freedom from supply limitations and the extreme mobility of their forces on the desert plateau as a licence to ignore the principle of concentration of force or the tactical importance of ground. Neglect of the latter was obscured at this stage by the vagueness of the proposals put forward for the armoured force which specified, reasonably enough, that the British armour would accomplish its mission by ‘threatening the forces investing TOBRUK in order to make the enemy deploy his armd forces’ but did not venture into details. If the intention was to concentrate on vital ground, as many of those present no doubt imagined, all should be well; but this was later found not to be the case.

Freyberg was unwittingly first to cast doubt on it. His division, as part of the infantry corps,

13 Corps, with NZ and 4 Indian Divisions and 1 (Army) Tank Bde (with I tanks and a field regiment). 30 Corps was to include 7 Armd and 1 South African Divisions and 22 Guards Bde.

was to drive behind the frontier strongpoints to isolate them from the main battle and he was not at all in favour of such a move while there was any likelihood that strong panzer formations might oppose it. The dual role of one of the armoured brigades—to co-operate with either the infantry or the armoured corps as the situation demanded—was not in itself sufficient. ‘I made it clear’, he says, ‘that I did not agree … to go out into the blue against unbeaten armoured formations.’ That the armoured brigade would be ‘in support’, he added, ‘meant nothing to me, as they would be ordered away in a crisis and … unless we had tanks under our immediate command we should not be moved across the [frontier] wire until the armoured battle had commenced.’ The principle at issue was that infantry in mobile operations could not be expected to defeat a full-scale panzer attack and from this, Freyberg says, ‘we never willingly departed.’

Comments on my narrative, July 1950, again with solid documentary support linking them with his contemporary views.

Thus began an argument, which echoed through later discussions at Corps and Army level, about the command of the third armoured brigade group. Lieutenant-General Godwin-Austen, backing up Freyberg, wanted it under his command; Lieutenant-General Norrie, now commanding the armoured corps, naturally wanted all armoured brigades under his wing; Cunningham was ready to compromise and retain direct command himself, which pleased neither side. The wisdom of Solomon was called for but was not forthcoming and the issue was never properly settled. That the armour and infantry should fight in close conjunction as a concentrated force was remote from current consideration.

The plan as outlined at this conference promised to disperse Eighth Army in a way that was daring, to say the least. Thirteenth Corps (Northern Force) was to make a left hook northwards to hem in the frontier positions, 30 Corps (Southern Force) was to drive north-westwards to Tobruk, and the third armoured brigade (Centre Force) was to operate between them. The Tobruk garrison was to break out south-eastwards when the time was ripe to link up with Southern Force, while far to the south an unspecified number of armoured cars and lorried infantry with artillery support was to skirt the edge of the Libyan Sand Sea from Jarabub to capture Jalo and Aujila, 250 miles from the likely battleground of the main armoured forces. Such a wide deployment of forces was inconceivable unless it was a foregone conclusion that the enemy's armoured forces would be decisively defeated in the opening stages—an assumption not lightly to be made about German armour, with its record of outstanding success in many theatres, marred by nothing more serious than the rebuff outside Tobruk at the beginning of May. The official minutes of this conference are nevertheless quite clear on this vital point: 7 Armoured Division (with only two brigades) would be stronger than the two panzer divisions put together and each armoured brigade would be ‘slightly stronger’ than a panzer division, the basis of the comparison evidently being a mere counting of tanks. That an Italian armoured division might also have to be dealt with was scarcely considered; its tanks, the minutes broadly hinted, were inferior.

The strength and capabilities of the British armoured force were matters for the experts and Freyberg was in no position to pass judgment on their assessments. At his own conference of 17 October he pointed out that the numerical superiority of the British tanks (now reduced to 5 to 4) was partly offset by the better quality of the Pzkw III and possibly of the Italian M13 too, though it was still thought that a British armoured brigade was stronger than a panzer division. What was proposed for the infantry was a different matter and in some ways worrying. Frequent mention of brigades instead of divisions and the detailed allotment of tasks raised suspicions that Eighth Army was too ready to fight with detached brigade groups, which would reduce the potential of the force as a whole and make inefficient use of the field artillery. Freyberg therefore specified at his first crusader conference with his brigadiers on 17 October that the field regiments were ‘not to be decentralised

i.e., put under command of the brigades.—Minutes of the conference.

unless necessary’, an instruction which the plan as it emerged in detail relegated to no more than a forlorn hope. Dispersion was to be the order of the day and it was now too late to change.

Eighth Army tended also, he felt, to underrate the opposition likely to be put up by German troops. Tobruk was tightly besieged and it seemed to him that the final link-up with its garrison would call for more infantry than the plan provided. This task had been given to only two brigades of 1 South African Division, which had already served under General Cunningham in East Africa and was theoretically well-suited for operating in conjunction with armoured forces in a fast-moving battle. It was designed to have a full complement of troop-carrying vehicles permanently allotted (i.e., it was ‘fully mobile’); but the lorries which had served faithfully in the long haul from Kenya to Addis Ababa and beyond were not desert-worthy, and pending replacements for them the division was for many months without the bare essentials for training. The desert demanded an entirely new range of skills and techniques for navigation, movement, deployment and minor tactics (to say nothing of administration) which the South Africans had had little chance of learning, particularly while stationed at Matruh and subject to endless requisitions for labour on the local defences. As late as mid-October, therefore, the division was woefully ill-prepared for the trial ahead of it and was still short of 2271 vehicles. This figure fell by the end of the month to 1203 and was further halved in the next day or two, but time was running out and the situation was critical in the extreme. The division was not nearly ready for action and for less versatile troops the allotted role would have been out of the question. As it was, Major-General Brink of the South African division was only able to accept his commitments when Cunningham allowed him three more days to get ready and made it a matter of honour. Otherwise 4 Indian Division would have changed places with 1 South African Division, or so Cunningham said, though it would in fact have been even harder to get that division ready in time. Brigadier Pienaar's 1 South African Brigade had had first call throughout on equipment and transport and had managed to conduct two brigade exercises, but Brigadier Armstrong's 5 Brigade first assembled in the open desert when it moved forward to meet the enemy.

As if these handicaps were not enough, the South African division was condemned to leave its third brigade behind in Matruh, a detail of the plan which attracted Freyberg's attention. He was under threat of a somewhat similar sentence himself, since he had been warned to have one brigade ready to move westwards to join 30 Corps if the need arose; a larger force, he was told, could not be maintained so far west. This made him study the scheme for breaking through to Tobruk, and the more he looked at it the less he liked it. When the time came he suspected that he would be asked to drop current commitments and make for Tobruk to help join hands with the garrison. In such an eventuality he wanted all three brigades together, to develop the full fighting potential of the Division. As he wrote to Mr Fraser on 18 December,

the plan to relieve TOBRUK was not strong enough. It was entrusted to two Brigades of the South Africans with the Armoured Force.

Two days before we marched out to the Battle I asked for an appointment with the Army Commander and said ‘You are attacking Five Italian Divisions and more than a German Division with two Brigades of South Africans and you will fail & we shall be ordered in the end to march upon TOBRUK. We are ready to do so. All our plans have been made with that object in view. I do wish to say that it is imperative that we should go as a complete Division not a two Brigade Division as in Crete’. I went on to say that we had been trained to work and fight as a complete Division and as such we were only half as strong if one of our three Brigades were detached.

‘I doubt if I made any impression on General Cunningham,’ he wrote later to the Minister of Defence (6 February 1942). ‘He thought I was over-anxious and I thought him over confident.’

With these reservations—that he disliked what he later called the Brigade Group Battle and that he was reluctant to move into Libya until enemy armour was fully committed against 30 Corps—Freyberg indicated no serious misgivings about the plan. At his conference of 17 October he told Brigadier Inglis

Maj-Gen L. M. Inglis, CB, CBE, DSO and bar, MC, VD, ED, m.i.d., MC (Gk); Hamilton; born Mosgiel, 16 May 1894; barrister and solicitor; NZ Rifle Bde and MG Bn, 1915–19; CO 27 (MG) Bn, Dec 1939—Aug 1940; comd 4 Inf Bde, 1941–42, and 4 Armd Bde, 1942–44; GOC 2 NZ Div, 27 Jun—16 Aug 1942, 6 Jun—31 Jul 1943; Chief Judge of the Control Commission Supreme Court in British Zone of Occupation, Germany, 1947–50; Stipendiary Magistrate.

that it was ‘good to be going into a well planned campaign at last’.

Inglis, comments on my narrative, July 1950.

Even after the campaign Freyberg wrote (to Mr Fraser) that the ‘plan they had worked out was a very good one. …’ He warned the Defence Minister on 9 October of heavy fighting ahead and concluded that in the circumstances ‘proposed operations difficult but offer good chance success.’ Battle plans embody prophecies and the main forecast of the crusader plan, that the first great tank clash would be decisive, seemed reasonable enough. As he explained in the same cable,

This like all modern battles is in first place battle of machines and exploitation by lorry borne fighting troops of all arms.

The opposite of the German doctrine by which all arms combined in the attack and the armour exploited success.

Had he been party to the discussions which settled the details of the armoured corps plan and the sally from Tobruk he might have felt rather less confident.

The plan for the armoured corps was a curious mixture, reflecting, long-standing uncertainties of armoured doctrine in the Britis Army which left the main questions of command and organisation still unanswered. Differences of outlook between the cavalry and the Royal Tank Corps had not been resolved by combining them in the Royal Armoured Corps. The development of two main kins of tank (cruisers and I tanks) was symptomatic, springing from and in turn encouraging divergent and mutually exclusive schools of thought about their uses. Even more important, attitudes within the RAC had not led to harmony with other fighting arms—the gunners, sappers and infantry—which was a major ingredient of success in German mobile operations. The desert war thus far had raised false gods and nurtured heresies and frequent changes of command had gravely weakened the Inquisition. Successes against the Italians might in some quarters be scorned; but they were victories nevertheless, and how were the newcomers to know, for example, how much the British tanks owed to the tight divisional control of the guns at Nibeiwa and the Tummars in December 1940, and how much to the eager and fast-moving infantry of 4 Indian Division?

Against this background General Cunningham's assignment appears formidable. With no established body of theory to guide him and no real experience of tank warfare, he was to take into battle by far the largest British tank force yet assembled. Important parts of the scheme, moreover, had already been settled when he arrived—the establishment of his main striking force (7 Armoured Division), for example, and how the I tanks were to be used. The Headquarters of 30 Corps, like that of Eighth Army, was newly formed and the plan was well advanced by the time General Norrie assumed command. Norrie himself was new to the desert and naturally took careful note of the opinions of the veterans of the desert war, foremost among whom was his old friend, Major-General Gott. Of remarkable personal appeal and bravery, Gott had risen from a battalion to an infantry brigade command and was now GOC 7 Armoured Division, an astonishing climb for an infantryman and testimony enough to the esteem in which he was held. But he was firmly convinced that under the new conditions of mechanised warfare ground had little if any tactical importance: the one essential was to ‘keep mobile’. Of the misconceptions which hampered the development of British armoured doctrine in the desert this was one of the most damaging.

The armoured corps headquarters lost its first commander, Lieutenant-General Pope, and his two senior staff officers in an air accident on 5 October, the headquarters was not fully mobilised until a week later, and Norrie was barely in the saddle before he had to attend a conference with the Army Commander and Major-General Scobie of the Tobruk garrison on the 15th.

One of the worst features of the plan, as expressed in the minutes of this conference, was the treating of the role of the armoured corps as if it were a specific objective. The role was, as Cunningham wrote a few weeks later, to ‘seek out and destroy’

Eighth Army Operation Instruction No. 13 of 9 Nov.

the enemy armoured forces, which put the emphasis in the first instance on ‘seek’. This could easily lead to a wild-goose chase across the desert hinterland if the enemy armour chose not to give battle, and Norrie took the sensible view that he should proceed at the outset to occupy ground too vital for the enemy to ignore. He proposed reaching El Adem, south of Tobruk, with his armoured division on the same day he crossed into Libya. There, astride the main enemy supply lines, he could meet on ground of his own choosing the strong enemy reaction his move was sure to provoke. There also he could link up with a sally by the Tobruk garrison. Behind his armour would be 1 South African Division, ready to join with the garrison in rolling up the leaguers outside Tobruk, and from El Adem the South Africans might well be able to swing north-westwards to cut off the escape routes of the enemy west of Tobruk.

This was a bold scheme and, granted the assumption that the British armour could defeat the panzer divisions, a sound one; but Cunningham would not accept it. He doubted whether the enemy armour would be drawn and feared that it might move instead against ‘our other columns’—presumably 13 Corps. The enemy might, in other words, exploit the 60-mile gap between his two corps, a weakness inherent in the Army plan. The better answer was not to disperse the Army in this way; but it so happened that this weakness was more than counter-balanced by a built-in dispersion of the enemy's efforts between Tobruk and the frontier positions 60-odd miles away. The enemy was therefore poorly placed to take advantage of any openings Norrie's scheme offered him.

Here after months of privation was the reward offered by the stout defenders of Tobruk and the inherent tactical superiority of Eighth Army's situation over that of the enemy in Cyrenaica; and for the first time administrative facilities allowed the British to turn it to full account. But Cunningham's plan would not permit it. Instead the British armour was to move a short distance into Libya and then wait and see how the enemy reacted, conforming to enemy movements and yielding the priceless possession of the initiative. Norrie protested, but in vain.

The main outline of the campaign as Cunningham visualised it is set out with admirable clarity in the minutes of the conference: first the tank battle, then the relief of Tobruk, and then the pursuit to Benghazi; but the details are curiously jumbled. ‘Troops of N.Z. Div might possibly be the first to reach TOBRUK’, says the opening sentence with prophetic insight not matched elsewhere in this document; but no special Signals provision was made for this, nor was 7 Armoured Division to be able to get in direct touch by wireless with the garrison, though it might very well be operating close at hand long before the South Africans came on the scene. Again, ‘N.Z. Div might act as a bait to draw the enemy armd forces out’; but why the enemy should react to a mere bait and yet not to the cutting of his main arteries at El Adem is hard to see.

Auchinleck chewed over the various alternatives offered the enemy at different stages and set down the results in notes of 30 October for Cunningham's benefit. He was emphatic that Eighth Army must make an ‘obvious move to raise the siege of Tobruk’ but this valuable insight was clouded with worries lest the enemy should escape westwards. Thus he recommended activities to confuse the enemy as to the ‘time and direction of the main thrust’, and he acquiesced in separating the main striking force into two corps fighting different battles and even, if the enemy chose to withdraw, in breaking up the leading forces into ‘highly mobile columns’ for the pursuit. One possibility, he thought, was that the enemy might post his two panzer divisions by his supply dumps alongside the Via Balbia between Bardia and Tobruk and refuse to be drawn even by a threat to the siege front: in this case the armoured corps was somehow to ‘secure escarpment, picquet gaps, so as to prevent tank movement’—i.e., lock up the enemy armour north of the chain of escarpments on a front of some 40 miles—and then proceed to relieve Tobruk. While ready for these eventualities, 30 Corps must be able to deal with the ‘most likely course’ open to the enemy, which would entail his moving

his armoured forces south of escarpment to a suitable area north of Trigh el Abd and west of Capuzzo with object of striking at our 30 Corps in flank and heading it off Tobruk, his eastern flank being protected by his Sidi Omar - Halfaya defences.

In that event ‘we must accept battle and concentrate the strongest possible armoured force against him in this area’—other than I tanks that is.

Auchinleck's despatch, ‘Operations in the Middle East from 1st November 1941 to 15th August 1942’, The London Gazette, 13 Jan 1948, pp. 376–7.

Despite his confusing elaborations, Auchinleck was reasonably clear about driving with all available cruiser tanks towards Tobruk and thereby bringing the enemy armour to battle and (he hoped) to destruction, and he expected the garrison to ‘sally out and assist main attack by threatening enemy rear and flank and distracting his attention.’

Ibid, p. 377

But this was not what Cunningham intended. The garrison was to take no part in the battle until the enemy armour was defeated or in course of destruction, and 7 Armoured Division with only two armoured brigades might well be fighting this crucial battle a few miles outside the Tobruk perimeter without any kind of help from either the garrison or the rest of Eighth Army. ‘The day for the sorties will depend on the result of the armoured battle’, the minutes of the 15 October conference state; ‘this in turn may mean that the S.A. Div may not reach the escarpment [south of Tobruk] for perhaps three days.’

There was no way by Cunningham's plan of concentrating the strength of Eighth Army against the enemy's mobile forces. The garrison could throw in a considerable weight of tanks, guns and infantry, but only if the main battle took place somewhere near El Adem, in which case one armoured brigade group would have to be left guarding the flank of 13 Corps in the frontier area, far outside the vital arena. All three armoured brigades could operate together in the frontier area if the enemy obliged, but this would allow 13 Corps a minor part and the South African division and the Tobruk garrison no part at all in the decisive battle.

Norrie pleaded at a corps commanders' conference on 21 October to be freed from the encumbrance of guarding the flank of 13 Corps, so that he could take all three armoured brigades towards Tobruk, ready to ‘strike hard in any direction’; but Godwin-Austen objected. The New Zealand Division would be in a ‘most precarious’ position unless an armoured brigade could protect it against a strong panzer attack and he wanted this brigade under his command while such a possibility remained.

‘Eighth Army Report on Operations’, Phase I, Preparations (10 Sep–17 Nov 1941), p. 4.

As time passed it became clearer in some quarters that the best plan was to despatch the full striking force of 30 Corps to El Adem, and when this suggestion was raised at another conference on 29 October Godwin-Austen concurred (though in a letter to Freyberg of 7 November he expressed himself as being ‘a bit nervous as to the complete security of our left in spite of the Army's Order to 30 Corps to be responsible for it’). Such a move would inevitably attract the bulk of the panzer forces and he was prepared to meet unaided any likely thrust in his direction by German armour, up to the strength perhaps of a full panzer division. This was a solid concession to the ‘go for Tobruk’ school; but Cunningham refused it. He stuck to his scheme for the British armour to assemble at Gabr Saleh on the opening day of the offensive—a name on the map 50 miles south-east of Tobruk and some 25 miles inside the frontier. There on the evening of D 1

‘D 1’ was the opening day of the offensive, ‘D 2’ the second day, and ‘D—1’ the day before, a system later changed to ‘D Day’, ‘D + 1 Day’, ‘D—1 Day’, etc.

at the earliest Cunningham intended to study enemy reactions and decide in which direction to continue the advance: if towards Tobruk then one armoured brigade group should stay to protect 13 Corps no matter how much this might conflict with the main aim of destroying the enemy armour. Norrie could not see the point of standing at Gabr Saleh, which would not necessarily provoke immediate enemy reaction. But there the matter stood and on 9 November it was confirmed in a written directive to Norrie, followed on the 13th by another to Godwin-Austen.

In its final shape, therefore, the armoured corps plan was to cross the frontier at Fort Maddalena, 45 miles inland, after a carefully concealed approach march, and then drive north-westwards to Gabr Saleh, with armoured-car patrols fanning out to the Trigh Capuzzo. The enemy was expected to show his hand at once and Cunningham would then decide whether Norrie should head towards Bardia or Tobruk. If the latter, then ‘it may be necessary to leave a portion of the armour to protect 13 Corps’—a vaguesounding provision, though current organisation into brigade groups made it unlikely that a smaller ‘portion’ of armour would in fact be side-tracked from the main battle. Norrie was to order the start of the sortie from Tobruk, but not until the enemy armour was defeated or rendered incapable of interfering.

In this phase 13 Corps was merely to prevent enemy mobile forces from passing through the frontier fortress line to threaten the L of C of Eighth Army. A motorised force was to be ready to drive round the frontier line, when Cunningham gave the word, and isolate this line and Bardia from the main battle area, its left (or western) flank being covered by 30 Corps until such time as ‘this protection can be dispensed with’. The next step would be to release ‘the maximum number of troops which can be spared’ to advance westwards, to overcome any enemy ‘who may have been cut off East of Tobruk’, and then to come under command of 30 Corps if need be to help relieve the garrison. Some of these troops should be ‘detailed beforehand’ and made ready to move at a moment's notice. The reduction of the frontier strongpoints and Bardia was to follow the relief of Tobruk and would therefore conflict with the needs of the pursuit if any sizable body of the enemy got away westwards.

Norrie made a final appeal at a conference on 14 November to be freed from the task of protecting 13 Corps, and was told that this was ‘really the same as the protection of the lines of communication of the 30th Corps’,

Eighth Army Report, p. 5 (para. 11).

a reply which seemed to squeeze the role of 13 Corps in the opening phase into virtual insignificance. If the British armour was indeed so powerful that it could thus afford to undertake two such conflicting tasks with the confidence which the battle plan implied, it might be inferred that the motorised infantry would be called on for nothing more arduous than mopping up non-mobile enemy troops left behind by the victorious British armour when, in due course, their isolation enforced surrender. But this was not General Freyberg's view. It is interesting to note that Freyberg and his senior officers were studying closely a scale relief model of the escarpments south-east of Tobruk which he had caused his sappers to construct. He believed that this region, particularly Sidi Rezegh, where the two main enemy supply routes of the Trigh Capuzzo and the recently built Tobruk by-pass road passed through a bottleneck overlooked by two escarpments of paramount tactical importance, would be the scene of the hardest fighting of crusader campaign.

iii

This remarkable confidence in the British armour was maintained, too, in the face of steadily accumulating evidence of changes in enemy dispositions which promised heavier opposition than had been bargained for. Two mobile Italian divisions were now known to be guarding the desert flank along the line of the Trigh el-Abd westwards from Bir el-Gubi, 35 miles south of Tobruk. One of these, Ariete Armoured Division, was now well placed at Bir el-Gubi to intervene in the projected tank battle or to oppose the relief of Tobruk, and whatever its weaknesses (actual or imagined) it could scarcely be ignored. Yet the documents, indicate a complete absence of anxiety on this account and it seems to have been left to the commander of 7 Armoured Division to make any special provision he cared in this connection, with the further handicap that 1 South African Division, which had been meant to cover his left flank, was as a result to be held back at El Cuasc, 15 miles farther south than previously ordered. The enemy was stronger, yet the South Africans with their valuable artillery, including a medium regiment, would not now be at hand.

The British armoured force which was thus expected to take in its stride the addition of another armoured division to the strength of its opponents was itself anything but homogeneous. Its most experienced armoured brigade, the 7th, was equipped with an odd assortment of cruiser tanks of various kinds and ages, including only one full regiment of the latest Crusaders. Another brigade, the 4th, which had successfully engaged 15 Panzer Division in battleaxe with the heaviest I tanks, was now re-equipped with American tanks which were light even for cruisers (and which needed special ammunition and petrol). The one brigade which was completely equipped with the latest tanks, the 22nd, did not reach Egypt until October and was further delayed by modifications to its tanks, so that its desert training, to which much importance had been attached, was drastically curtailed. Curious reasoning determined the following allocation, of supporting arms between these formations: GunsFormation25-pdr Field2-pdr Anti-tankMotorised Infantry7 Armoured Brigade Group164One company22 Armoured Brigade Group84One company4 Armoured Brigade Group2412One battalion

(Each brigade also had a troop of Bofors light anti-aircraft guns and a troop of sappers.)

The 4th Armoured Brigade Group was detailed to guard the left flank of 13 Corps, which possessed an I-tank brigade and a mass of mobile artillery and infantry. The other two brigades, with a smaller quota of supporting arms and perhaps no outside help, were to ‘seek out and destroy the enemy armour’. The Support Group had 36 field guns, 36 anti-tank 2-pounders and 16 Bofors as well as two motorised infantry battalions (each less one company). No BRA was appointed to 30 Corps till 19 October, however, too late for him to initiate a firm policy of concentration for the large number of 25-pounders in the armoured division. The invaluable medium regiment in 30 Corps was to take no part at all until the armoured battle was decided. Thus 7 Armoured Division was to enter the fray with three armoured brigades and the Support Group, all designed and intended to fight largely independent actions, and it was thought not unreasonable to hope that the enemy armour would be defeated by the loosely co-ordinated operations of two brigades, the heterogeneous 7 Armoured Brigade and the untried and scarcely desert-worthy 22 Armoured Brigade.

It could be said of the contributors to the Army plan that, like a certain Biblical tribe, their name was Legion; but the plan was in a special sense Cunningham's own. It disregarded his Commanderin-Chief's main injunctions and Norrie's weighty objections (with which in the end Godwin-Austen concurred) and reserved for an army commander with no experience of armoured warfare or desert conditions the decision on which the whole shape of the battle depended. In effect Cunningham was making a highly unusual effort to plan an encounter battle—and with unfamiliar forces and techniques.

The ‘blower’ was the main medium for passing orders in tank warfare, but according to a friend Cunningham ‘hadn't a clue as to how to talk on the air’—a failing he shared with most if not all likely candidates for his command.

Whatever its logical status, this aim was the perhaps inescapable consequence of the object he had given Norrie, to ‘seek out and destroy’ the enemy armour, and his confidence that it could be achieved was shared by all concerned. Nobody pointed out the exorbitance of the demands the plan made on his own powers of perception. With every device of deception the British armour would approach the frontier. Then it would drive 70–80 miles and the reconnaissance units more than 100 miles on the opening day, still rigidly maintaining wireless silence, before the enemy could give any sort of indication of how he proposed to cope with the intruders. Only after the enemy reacted—and he had more reason than his opponents to hold his hand—could Cunningham make his decision. Yet Scobie would have to know this by 6 p.m. if the Tobruk garrison was to exert its strength next day, the best augured case.

This was an impossible condition and ruled out a sally by the garrison before the third day. That Cunningham was not altogether unaware of this is suggested by his undertaking to remain close to Norrie ‘from D1 until sufficient battle information is forthcoming to enable a decision to be given as to your future movement from the area GABR SALEH’.

Operation Instruction No. 13.

Wireless silence en route was not calculated to hasten the decision-making, particularly in view of the enemy's devotion to wireless interception for tactical Intelligence. The plan was silent as to how the momentum of the advance could be maintained beyond Gabr Saleh; indeed, Cunningham was prepared to let the enemy call the tune. ‘If he split his forces’, the Eighth Army report quotes him, ‘we could split ours’, an open defiance of established principle, all too sadly in keeping with the dispersion of effort which was the outstanding characteristic of the crusader plan.

CHAPTER 5 Eighth Army and Panzer Group Africa

THE Axis leaders were also guilty of dividing their forces in the Mediterranean and it was this, allied with the huge demands of the war against Russia, that was at the root of their failure to get adequate supplies and reinforcements to North Africa, the abiding weakness of their desert army. Air power was in this respect critical and the air strength at hand was enough had it been used in direct support of supply lanes. Instead it was frittered away in raids on Alexandria, the Canal area, Haifa and elsewhere, and from this point of view the move of German air units from Sicily to Crete was a mistake. Thus by a world-wide effort in factory, field and workshop, on the high seas and in the air, supplying the Middle East, slipping small ships through to Tobruk and occasional convoys to Malta, and blocking the short Axis sea routes to Libya by all possible means—and by waging with relentless vigour the Battle of the Atlantic—the British built up a slight and precarious superiority in men and material for the coming offensive. A tiny fraction of this effort concentrated by the Germans and Italians on the vital sea lanes could have reversed this situation; but their advantage of interior lines, never more clear-cut than this, was thrown away.

The tale of sinkings between Italy and Libya was told by Germans and Italians throughout summer and autumn in the bare terms of official signals and reports or in sorrow, anger or despair according to the teller's viewpoint. Ships of all shapes and sizes sailed from Naples, Brindisi and Taranto, in guarded convoys or alone, to be awaited at Tripoli, Benghazi or Derna with fateful uncertainty. In August Nita went down, then Maddalena Odero, Esperia on the 20th and Egadi a few days later. Aquitania was badly damaged on the 27th, and on the 29th-30th Cilicia was sunk, Riv damaged by bombing at Tripoli, and the tanker Pozzarika set on fire (though its 585 tons of oil were miraculously saved). And so the tale continued in September (with two 19,500-ton liners, Oceania and Neptunia, going down), a brief respite in the second half of October, then a chapter of calamity in November when surface attack by the light

cruisers Penelope and Aurora with attendant destroyers from Malta was added to air attacks and the lurking danger from submarines. Seven strongly escorted merchant ships from Naples were all sunk on 9 November together with two Italian destroyers, a disaster which the Italian Foreign Minister, Ciano, found ‘inexplicable’ and which left Mussolini ‘depressed and indignant’.

Ciano's Diary, p. 395.

Though the opening days of crusader saw a further deterioration in the Axis supply situation, the long pause in the fighting had nevertheless allowed the Germans to build up reserves of ammunition, petrol and rations which seemed adequate for the operations Rommel contemplated, and his quartermaster reported accordingly on 11 November. The enormous strain to which his organisation was shortly to be subjected was unforeseen; but it proved that despite the almost incessant barrage of German complaints about Italian shortcomings on their L of C, the Germans had managed to acquire a considerable amount of ‘fat’ and were able to live off it in an emergency.

The long-term outlook for Axis supplies in North Africa had come under Hitler's scrutiny and he had taken the first steps to improve it some months earlier. The thorough overhaul of the whole supply system which was long overdue, however, was not easy to carry out. This was an Italian province and Hitler was well aware how deeply Italian self-esteem was committed. Though the Germans had already achieved effective control of operations in the desert they maintained (with occasional lapses) the somewhat implausible fiction that Rommel owed allegiance to the Italian commander-in-chief, General Bastico. The difficulty in the central Mediterranean was that the naval and air operations to supply Libya were conducted not from the fringes of the distant Sahara but from Comando Supremo in Rome. It was there, on the Duce's doorstep, that Hitler had to assert his claim for a controlling interest in central Mediterranean operations, a matter of some delicacy.

The first step was to commit U-boats, half a dozen in August and more later.

Only four U-boats entered the Mediterranean before crusader started, but they soon made their presence felt by sinking Ark Royal (14 Nov) and Barham (on the 25th).

Then Luftwaffe units were brought back from Crete to Sicily for convoy protection; the order was of 13 September, but the change took several critical weeks and was not carried out as Hitler intended. Then came the prime move: by doubling Luftwaffe strength in this theatre at the expense of the Eastern Front Hitler was able to bring on the scene a very senior officer, Field-Marshal Kesselring, commander of Luftflotte 2. By extending Kesselring's responsibilities in a vague fashion acceptable to the Italians, but intended to soak up by degrees most of the initiative they currently enjoyed in disposing their own naval, air and anti-aircraft forces on the routes to Africa, Hitler hoped to win his point. With Mussolini's concurrence the post of Oberbefehlshaber Süd

Commander-in-Chief South.

was thus created; but the Italians failed to conform. Though Kesselring was no more amenable to General Cavallero's orders than Rommel was to Bastico's, he found his Italian naval and air colleagues stubbornly independent.

Hitler's bid to win the battle for supplies came too late to forestall crusader and he was too attentive to Italian sensibilities to achieve his main purpose of a unified Italo-German command under Kesselring. Nor was he able to make his way to good effect through the political maze of relations with Vichy France and Spain. The French North African authorities provided a trickle of equipment and supplies but refused use of the short sea route by way of Bizerta, the Spanish government hedged on the question of Gibraltar, and an attack on Malta was as far off as ever. By attacking rather than waiting, therefore, the British were calling the tune, a situation to which Hitler was quite unaccustomed.

However much Hitler might have wished to temporise in this theatre and concentrate on defeating Russia, his desert commander was not at all disposed to sit and wait, and it was a blessing for the newborn Eighth Army that its desert enemy was preparing in the main not to meet attack but to capture Tobruk. As the hot summer months merged into dusty autumn this long-contemplated enterprise became an obsession of Rommel's, and Italian apprehensions of a British offensive became a vexing irritation which made him less and less inclined (after sommernachtstraum) to weigh with care any evidence pointing in that direction. The documents are eloquent on the inability of the Axis partners to see eye to eye on this point, though Mussolini remained anxious throughout to regain Tobruk. Bastico blew hot and cold with bewildering ease. Gambara was opposed, according to Ciano, on the grounds that ‘when we attack Tobruk this will be followed by a British attack on our flank at Sollum which he feels we cannot resist’;

Ciano's Diary, p. 399.

but in conference with Rommel on 29 October he gave every indication of satisfaction. A British counter-offensive or diversionary attack had in any case been carefully provided for by Rommel and his staff and they pointed out that it was largely immaterial whether the almost inevitable British move was one or the other; the Tobruk operation was expected to end well within the three days which they estimated as the shortest time within which either counter-move could take effect. What the Germans and, for the most part, the Italians refused to consider in detail was that the British might strike first, though Rommel admitted to Gambara in a rare moment of expansion that the forthcoming posting of Ariete Armoured Division at El Gubi and Trieste Motorised Division at Bir Hacheim had taken a great load off his mind. Even OKH Intelligence showed a remarkable uncertainty as to British intentions and was apt to see things not as Bastico saw them, but in an exactly opposite light.

Preparations of the magnitude required for crusader were impossible to hide satisfactorily and the steady advance westwards of the desert railway told its own story. OKH Intelligence reported on 8 October an ominous British build-up evidently intended for a desert offensive, but a month later on the flimsiest evidence it changed its mind. Rommel's mind, however, had long since been closed to everything but the Tobruk project. He had carefully be down in July five conditions to be met before the attack could be mounted. The first was that there should be no signs of impending attack on the Sollum front and no great change in British grouping there. Another condition—that there should be adequate air support—had been stipulated also by Hitler himself, and Rommel well knew that it could not be met. None of the conditions were in fact met and at the last moment, with overwhelming evidence of an imminent invasion from Egypt on the largest scale, Bastico was near to panic. He wrote to Cavallero on 11 November (with a copy to Rommel) listing the unfavourable omens and begging him to reconsider ‘in the minutest detail’ the date for starting the attack, a matter which was supposed to be for Bastico alone to decide. By November, however, the priestess of the Delphic Oracle could not have dissuaded Rommel, though he continued to go through the motions of consulting the Italians. He had flown to Rome on 1 November and there, when Bastico's letter arrived, he was soon able to win Cavallero's support and extract from him a stern order that the operation must start as soon as possible. The tentative date was the 20th but a final decision on that rested as before with Bastico, a situation more in keeping with comic opera than with the heavy drama of war. Rommel returned to his headquarters at Gambut (halfway between Bardia and Tobruk) on the 18th to be greeted with a telegram from Berlin reiterating the Fuehrer's insistence that air support should be adequate. At that stage he hoped to attack on the 21st and the necessary regrouping of his forces was already far advanced; but crusader had already started.

Rommel's confidence in his ability to ward off an attack from Egypt rested on an almost fatal misconception that his own L of C were inherently more secure than those of the British. He had lived for too many months too close to his own situation to see its essential weakness and he assigned the line of frontier forts built during the summer under his watchful eyes a greater tactical influence on British operations than the facts warranted. This line would indeed force the British to move deep into the desert to outflank it, and he thought that in so doing they would inevitably expose their L of C to a counter-thrust. His categories of thought on this subject were naturally restricted by the material shortages which were his daily burden and the keynote of his very existence, and he could not conceive of the vast dumping plan for crusader utilising great fleets of lorries and techniques altogether beyond his resources. Thus he could not see that the farther south within reason the British swung the less vulnerable would be their L of C and the better placed they would be to cut off his own supplies at the El Adem bottleneck.

iii

One detail of the Panzer Group Africa order for the attack on Tobruk, issued on 26 October, gave rise to an odd touch of drama. Both sides had selected the same sector, the Axis troops to break in and the garrison to break out, and both went to great trouble to hide their intentions and achieve surprise. Each counted on striking the other where he was comparatively weak, an illusion which was soon to be shattered at a cost of many lives, providing a harsh introduction to desert fighting for newly-arrived units, both British and German.

The Tobruk garrison, as things turned out, was the chief loser from the successive postponements of crusader. The plan required it to be ready to start its sally by dawn on the second day and operation orders were therefore issued on 12 November, to be followed by a pause of uncertain duration. As the uncertainty was prolonged the pause grew into an uncomfortable hiatus during which Africa Division relieved 25 Bologna Division in the eastern sector, guns of all calibres were moved into battle positions on this front, and 15 Panzer Division, Bologna and 17 Pavia Division began to assemble for their roles in the assault.

Prejudice combined with deliberate deception to keep each side very much in the dark as to the other's activities and intentions. General Headquarters, Middle East, was almost as reluctant to accept that an attack on Tobruk was imminent as Panzer Group was to admit of the possibility of being forestalled by a British offensive.

The Cairo authorities were ‘not convinced’ by testimony of prisoners in mid-November about Axis intentions; and similarly, when a Panzer Group staff officer read in his copy of Bastico's letter to Cavallero of statements by captured British signals officers he noted, ‘These are certainly lying.’ That the far-reaching changes in Axis dispositions passed practically unnoticed may be balanced against German under-estimates of the strength of the garrison which were, under the circumstances, no less remarkable. How far these erred may be seen from the following table: Superiority of the Assault Force Over the Tobruk Garrison
Estimates by Panzer Group to OKW, 1 Nov 1941, compared with actual strength.
In number of tanksIn light gunsIn heavy gunsIn infantry battalionEstimated3½ timesTwice10 times2½ timesActualRoughly equalTwice8 timesTwice

Thus what was estimated to be a comfortable margin of superiority for the assault on which Rommel was prepared to stake his whole reputation was in reality rather different. Even his great predominance in artillery was worth less than its face value in view of organisational and doctrinal obstacles to its use in proper concentration at the point of assault. Moreover, the garrison disposed of heavy anti-aircraft and coast guns, many of which could be used landwards. In numbers of British tanks the final estimate was nearly 90 short, and 69 of these were Matilda tanks, the kind which had inflicted heavy losses on 15 Panzer Division in battleaxe. In infantry he had to rely on ill-equipped and under-strength Italian units for 13 of his 20 attacking battalions. A surprise was surely in store for him if only Eighth Army held its hand.

But this was not to be. The earliest Rommel could attack was the 21st;

A firm date for the assault on Tobruk had not actually been set when crusader opened.

and the longest respite Cunningham dare grant the South Africans was until the 18th. By this narrow margin crusader prevailed and the assault on Tobruk became a desert mirage, flickering and fading in Rommel's eyes until seven months later, in very different circumstances, it suddenly materialised.

When Sir Winston Churchill wrote of Auchinleck's failure to mount crusader by September 1941 at the latest as ‘a mistake and a misfortune’

The Grand Alliance, p. 364.

he was expressing his faith in action as opposed to delay, in vigour rather than passivity. But the delay gave Auchinleck a greater increment of strength than his desert enemies and it was not until mid-November that he could field an army with reasonable prospects of success. Even then the margin was slim and the haste in some ways excessive.

As late as the end of September, when Eighth Army was born, British strength in the desert was little greater than it had been before battleaxe; in some respects it was less. By mid-November cruiser-tank units and mobile infantry were trebled and the number of I tanks doubled and administrative backing allowed considerable freedom of manoeuvre, while the level of training, though still in many ways disappointing, was much higher. The main German striking force, on the other hand, had changed very little. A division of ‘positional infantry’ had come into being and an army artillery command, and there were now five Oasis Companies to help garrison the frontier strongpoints. With the creation of Panzer Group Africa these German troops had strengthened Rommel's claims to a decisive influence on Axis land operations in North Africa. At the last minute, too, much-needed German medium and heavy artillery (up to 210-millimetre) reached the Tobruk front. But German contributions to mobile operations depended as before on the normal two divisions of Africa Corps, which had undergone what might be called a partial face-lift. A reshuffle of existing resources with the addition of one or two sub-units of artillery enabled 5 Light Division to be redesignated 21 Panzer; but one of its two motorised infantry battalions was tied to the Sollum defences and its tank strength was still below the pre-battleaxe figures. By November 15 Panzer Division, with a full complement of tanks and an enlarged infantry component, was much the stronger of the two.

The increments to Axis strength in a battle of manoeuvre were chiefly Italian: 20 Mobile Corps, consisting of Ariete Armoured Division backed by Trieste Motorised, arrived at the last minute in the forward area. Both of these divisions, however, were woefully deficient in guns, transport and essential services and the tanks of Ariete (Italian M13s) inspired no confidence either among their users or their German associates. The arrival of the Italian Savona Division in the autumn, however, enabled the frontier positions to be held in strength with less call on German resources.

The positional infantry at Tobruk

The Italian 21 Corps under Gen Navarrini (Brescia, Trento, Pavia and Bologna Divs) and Africa Div which was to come under DAK (Lt-Gen Cruewell) for the assault on Tobruk.

and on the frontier was in its current form incapable of mobile operations and not really suitable for other than defensive fighting even in static warfare, the Italians particularly so. Two of the Italian divisions, indeed, were not intended for anything more: Brescia in the western sector of the Tobruk front and Savona in the frontier area. The other three Italian divisions besieging Tobruk, Trento, Pavia and Bologna, were to be motorised when equipment came to hand; but at the moment Ariete and Trieste had priority and were still much below establishment. Africa Division had some of its supporting weapons motorised; but though intended as the spearhead of the assault on Tobruk, it was an odd assortment of units in varying degrees of preparedness. Its infantry consisted of 155 Infantry Regiment of three battalions, which had been arriving since the beginning of June and was still incomplete and very short of transport, 361 Africa Regiment of two battalions (at least one of which was of former French Foreign Legionnaries) whose transport and heavy equipment was rusting in Naples awaiting shipment, and two under-strength battalions detached from regiments now serving in Russia, III Battalion of 347 Infantry Regiment and III Battalion, 255 Infantry Regiment. By mid-November the divisional commander, Major-General Suemmermann, still had only a skeleton staff and a few vehicles, he was at loggerheads with Bologna about details of the relief, and his war diary viewed the early stages of crusader with understandable alarm. Africa Regiment, on the escarpment east of Sidi Rezegh, still had no anti-tank weapons at all.

The Sollum Front (as the Germans called it) was in rather better condition. Shortage of anti-tank mines had entailed a last-minute rush to complete the all-round defences of the southern strongpoints, ‘Frongia’ and ‘Sidi Omar’. But the deep minefields from there to Halfaya made a formidable barrier, covered by the strongpoints of ‘Cova’, ‘d'Avanca’, ‘Cirener’, ‘Faltenbache’

Named after Italians and a German who had died in the desert fighting.

and Halfaya, with Italian garrisons reinforced by Oasis Companies or, in the case of Halfaya, by a battalion of 104 Infantry Regiment and supported by powerful German 88-millimetre or Italian 75-millimetre HAA guns in anti-tank roles. Behind this line was a minor position at Sollum, held by another Oasis Company, and the strong and well-manned defences of Bardia. From ‘Cirener’ to Sidi Omar was designated West Sector and came under Major-General de Giorgis of Savona Division, with headquarters at Bir Ghirba; but ‘Faltenbache’ and Halfaya were lumped, with Sollum, under Major-General Schmitt in Bardia as East Sector, though the bulk of the troops in both cases were Italian. The whole front came directly under Panzer Group command, together with 21 Panzer Division and two German reconnaissance units, for quick action in case the British did attack while the Tobruk project was under way. This in turn led to another division of responsibilities between the German reconnaissance troops and those of the Italian Mobile Corps under Gambara, complicated by the fact that the dividing line between the two groups ran diagonally across the line of advance selected for 30 Corps.

The Germans nevertheless possessed one advantage which, in the event, almost outweighed all their disabilities: their anti-tank guns and tactics outclassed those of the British. In the long stalemate which followed brevity and battleaxe (when these German weapons were introduced) the British neglected to find a way of overcoming this handicap.

One solution, the introduction of a more powerful tank and anti-tank gun, the 6-pounder, was denied them; for it was only just going into production after much delay.

See Postan, British War Production, p. 194.

The 2-pounder on which the desert forces had to continue to rely had only armour-piercing ammunition (solid shot) and as a tank gun was therefore ‘reserved for penetrating armour’,

As Brig Davy instructed 7 Armd Bde on 17 Nov.

which restricted its role and narrowed the tactics of the British armour. With the larger gun and HE ammunition tank crews could have retaliated against the guns which plagued them, including the ‘88s’. As an anti-tank gun, moreover, the 6-pounder would greatly have increased the value of the infantry of Eighth Army, particularly in the eyes of those who believed that ‘tank units were capable of winning an action without the assistance of other arms’.

Wilson, Eight Years Overseas, p. 28.

As a makeshift a few 75-millimetre guns with ‘platforms’ like those of the 25-pounder were commissioned as anti-tank guns (one four-gun troop per battery in the anti-tank batteries of the New Zealand and South African Divisions), slightly narrowing the gap in performance between the British and German equipments. To complicate the picture, a few Pzkw IIIs were fitted with reinforcing plates which made them almost invulnerable to the 2-pounder except on the sides and these encouraged the myth that the British tanks were outgunned. Such were the tactical consequences of a decision, taken when France fell, to carry on making 2-pounders rather than to slow up production drastically by changing over to 6-pounders. Because of this decision, correct though it might then have been, Eighth Army had to face German formations which were much superior in anti-tank strength.

The Germans could therefore deploy detached elements—reconnaissance troops, for example, and flank and rear-guards— with relatively little worry that they might be overrun by tanks. This was indeed an advantage; for on the British side there was no such assurance. The ‘go it alone’ British tank enthusiasts (an influential minority in the RAC) were thereby reinforced in their views, and when things went wrong for them they blamed their tanks and not their tactics. At the end of crusader Auchinleck remarked to his Army Commander that ‘British soldiers with inferior tools have often beaten … enemies much better equipped than they were in the past, and they will do it again if properly led.’

Letter of 1 Jan 1942, quoted by Connell, p. 421.

In the present case, however, the inequalities in equipment were not great, except in anti-tank guns.

Two partial remedies of even this deficiency were already at hand: in the 25-pounder the British had a gun well-adapted to the task of neutralising the German ‘88’, a clumsy and vulnerable weapon in its current form, and to a lesser extent the 50-millimetre anti-tank gun;

Not to be confused, as all too often it was, with the short-barrelled 50-millimetre then mounted in the Pzkw III. The tank gun had less power of penetration than the 2-pounder or the US 37-millimetre (mounted in the Stuart tanks).

and in anti-tank mines the infantry had one means of holding tanks off their positions, as the Tobruk garrison had long since demonstrated. The first, however, entailed careful tactics for locating anti-tank guns and combining field guns and tanks in counter-measures, and no such tactics had been developed. As a poor alternative it was laid down that field guns should, whenever possible, take up positions from which they could engage tanks over open sights in an anti-tank role, a task which conflicted with the primary field role and for which in any case the 25-pounder was not well suited. As to the second, it ran contrary to the doctrine that ground had no tactical significance, and the fact that anti-tank mines could be lifted as quickly as they could be laid made no impression, leaving infantry formations with the desperate alternatives of a do-or-die action with field guns blazing away over open sights or ignominious flight.

Eighth Army was badly organised to meet this deficiency. The armoured corps which was to fight the crucial battle against enemy tanks had far fewer field and anti-tank guns than 13 Corps and had no heavily armoured I tanks at all. The British I tank Mark II, the heaviest tank in the desert, had long since acquired a reputation among the Germans and Italians of being invulnerable to anti-tank fire except at short ranges, and the damage it inflicted on 8 Panzer Regiment on 16 June was still fresh in the minds of men of 15 Panzer Division. Throughout crusader the Germans were constantly reporting the presence of the much feared ‘Mark II’ (as they called the Matilda); it had become a bogey in much the same way that the Pzkw IV (the ‘Mark IV’) played on the minds of British troops. But its low speed and short radius of action were deemed serious disabilities in the armoured regiments, which felt themselves well rid of the Matildas when these were allotted exclusively to 13 Corps and the Tobruk garrison. The Valentines, which had a longer radius of action than the Matildas but were less heavily armoured and were vulnerable in their suspensions, were slightly less unwelcome among the cruiser tanks and they, too, were excluded from the armoured corps. The Germans thought otherwise, for it was a captured Matilda which led 8 Panzer Regiment, for example, in the attack on Belhamed on 1 December. After disaster struck the British armour in the early days of crusader there were loud and long complaints of serious disparities in armour and armament between the British and German tanks, which illustrates that even after the event it was not realised that the most dangerous adversary of the British tank was the German anti-tank gun.

CHAPTER 6 From Baggush to the Libyan Frontier

IN the New Zealand Division defence against tanks was much canvassed, but the true prophet here, as elsewhere, passed unrecognised. Anti-tank mines could be had in reasonable quantities and the new CRE,

Brig Clifton having been released on 18 Oct by General Freyberg to act as CE 30 Corps.

Lieutenant-Colonel Hanson,

Brig F. M. H. Hanson, DSO and bar, OBE, MM, ED, m.i.d.; Wellington; born Levin, 1896; resident engineer, Main Highways Board; Wellington Regt in First World War; comd 7 Fd Coy, NZE, Jan 1940–Aug 1941; CRE 2 NZ Div May 1941, Oct 1941–Apr 1944, Nov 1944–Jan 1946; Chief Engineer, 2 NZEF, 1943–46; three times wounded; Commissioner of Works.

had seen to it that the infantry as well as the sappers were trained to use them, as he firmly advocated they should. His propaganda nevertheless failed and the Division was not ‘mine-conscious’ in crusader and made no use of this valuable weapon. The New Zealand sappers were asked on occasions to lift enemy mines, but never to lay their own, though the threat of tank attack was a constant and at times overwhelming burden. Defensive minefields were too passive to accord with current views; they attached more value to the ground they protected than prevailing opinion allowed. ‘portée action’ similarly became the rule rather than the exception in the anti-tank regiment; ‘ground action’ usually allowed better concealment and more effective fire, but it smacked too much of static warfare.

In organisation and tactics the Division had a sort of semiautonomy, however, and some interesting experiments were conducted. Reconnaissance, for example, needed to be swift, far-reaching, and thorough; but the Eighth Army units concerned, the New Zealand Divisional Cavalry among them, were not equipped to fight for information against any but the lightest opposition—always a matter of concern and at times a grave weakness. Divisional Cavalry had only the lightest of tanks and some Bren carriers, and it was an interesting move to attach a troop of 25-pounders to the regiment at the start of the campaign, with anti-tank troops added as circumstances required. Other innovations, such as the counter-battery organisation,

There had been a CBO in Greece but only an embryonic CB layout.

were common to other formations and followed naturally from maturing techniques and an increasing flow of equipment. In still others the Division had been designated by higher authority as a suitable laboratory for experiment, and it was thus that the New Zealanders made a sizable contribution to the new Air Support Control system, the benefits of which were widely diffused.

The days at Baggush, however, were in the main crowded with smaller triumphs

Among them an 8–0 victory over a South African brigade at rugby football on 8 Nov.

and tragedies and with mundane routine. Field guns were calibrated, bayonets sharpened, khaki drill exchanged for winter battledress, and anti-gas drill was carried out from time to time with less enthusiasm than marked the ‘trial packs’ most units conducted to find space in their vehicles for their manifold and increasing possessions. Three resounding echoes of Greece and Crete came in the form of VCs awarded, to Upham,

Capt C. H. Upham, VC and bar, m.i.d.; Conway Flat, Hundalee; born Christchurch, 21 Sep 1908; Government land valuer; three times wounded; wounded and p.w. 15 Jul 1942.

Hinton

Sgt J. D. Hinton, VC, m.i.d.; Christchurch; born Riverton, 17 Sep 1909; driver; wounded and p.w. 29 Apr 1941.

and Hulme,

Sgt A. C. Hulme, VC; Te Puke; born Dunedin, 24 Jan 1911; farmer; wounded 28 May 1941.

and Upham's was presented on 4 November by Auchinleck himself.

For some amusing repercussions in 20 Bn see Kippenberger, Infantry Brigadier, p. 80.

Cunningham had already introduced himself at the end of September and made a warm impression; he was a personal friend of Freyberg's and had the knack of putting even casual introductions on a high plane of interest, while his gift for recalling names and details enriched later meetings. He seemed very pleased, in turn, with what he saw of the Division. Godwin-Austen, too, had made his debut as visiting corps commander and told officers and senior NCOs of 4 Brigade that ‘it is a real privilege for me to be with you again—the last time was at Rhododendron Ridge’,

B. I. Bassett, in a letter home, 19 Oct 1941.

a remark well-calculated to endear him to the few veterans of Gallipoli in his audience. To the others he gave evidence, like Cunningham, of an articulate intelligence which augured well for crusader, and one New Zealand staff officer described him on this occasion as ‘first-class stuff’.

As details of the crusader plan seeped down through the ranks, which they inevitably did despite careful security measures, all reservations and misgivings were filtered out and what was left gave no grounds for any but the purest of enthusiasms. ‘An IO from Div HQ expressed the opinion’, says the 28 (Maori) Battalion diary for 8 November, disregarding grammar, ‘that resistanc would be slight if at all’. The same diarist the day before wrote that ‘among all ranks there appears to be a gradual keying up of spirits, a certain buoyancy of feeling in expectation of action at last….’ No obfuscations here, and none wanted! The general impression was summarised by the Field Security Section on the 2nd:

move to fwd area taken for granted, location generally guessed as Siwa, details not known.

Morale excellent. Slight uneasiness about RAF [Greece and Crete again!] countered by evidence of RAF strength in the area.

Rumours—NZ Div to attack the Italians, the UDF

Union Defence Force (of South Africa).

the Germans. Move to fwd areas and an attack in the very near future accepted as facts….

That the Division would be challenging a power that was supreme in the continent of Europe and making prodigious advances in Russia was a reflection reserved in the main to higher levels. At the unit level the diarist of 22 Battalion spoke for the majority when he noted at the end of October that the ‘health and fitness of the tps is good and the morale is high. …’ The men were well placed at Baggush to observe the flow of tanks, guns and lorries along the coast road and the numerous and heavy trainloads of ammunition and supplies moving westwards, a fabulous wealth of material with which to buy victory, and the complementary cost in lives and suffering they estimated lightly.

One detail of 2 NZEF policy created a small but dark cloud when it was laid down that 10 per cent of the strength of Divisional Cavalry and infantry battalions should be left out of battle so that in case of disaster a core of sorts would survive for rebuilding. This dismal provision was of course scorned and the initials LOB dreaded. Many were the intrigues to escape this unwelcome label, but usually in vain, and the second-in-command, three or four other officers, and some sixty other ranks were subtracted from each battalion. In Divisional Cavalry Major John Russell

Lt-Col J. T. Russell, DSO, m.i.d.; born Hastings, 11 Nov 1904; farmer; 2 i/c Div Cav 1941; CO 22 Bn Feb–Sep 1942; wounded May 1941; killed in action 6 Sep 1942.

was classified LOB by special edict of General Freyberg, who knew that keeping him out of battle could never be a matter of routine; but Russell went in the end as a special LO. In the 20th an LOB gloom was added to Upham's VC embarrassment.

iii

While the Division's part in crusader seemed simple and certain at platoon level, as is usually the case with troops in good heart, it was the subject of ceaseless elaboration by the various staffs and of numerous conferences and discussions at the command level. Freyberg at first followed Cunningham's initial method of issuing no documents other than conference minutes and for his Brigadiers' Conference of 17 October this worked well enough. The Divisional plan was still fluid at that stage and only six officers were given full details.

Brigs Miles, Inglis, Hargest and Barrowclough and Lt-Cols Gentry (GSO I) and Maxwell (AA & QMG). See Appendix II.

Moreover, Freyberg's mind was groping beyond the details so far disclosed to him and he asked his brigadiers to explore ‘Protection of Col[umn] moving along an escarpment’, an eventuality which high-level planning hardly held open for the whole Division. Freyberg flew up to Godwin-Austen's advanced headquarters for a conference on 1 November, had Auchinleck to lunch on the 4th, and passed on further details to his brigadiers in the afternoon. By this time planning was carried on under the security heading of ‘NZ Div Exercise No. 4’ and the staff work for the move from Baggush and Fuka was well advanced. The Division was to move a brigade at a time to an assembly area in the desert south of Matruh: that was to be the first stage of the ‘exercise’ and at least one New Zealand unit, Divisional Cavalry, was soon aware of its significance. Godwin-Austen's anxiety about his left flank led him to ask for this regiment to patrol the frontier south of the Trigh el-Abd to give ample warning of any panzer threat in the week before crusader opened. The regiment therefore moved independently from Baggush with its outmoded Mark VIB light tanks and its perky Bren carriers on the 7th and 8th and took up its new role under command of 4 Indian Division on the 10th, with A Squadron forward.

The Corps and Divisional plans had by this time taken firm shape, with ample documentation, and what emerged was what might be expected of formations intended to mark time while another corps fought the decisive battle. A negative character predominated, effort was to be fragmented, and there was much labelled ‘anticipatory’. Though there was some attempt to give vent to the surging offensive spirit of the troops, the sum total, if the armoured battle took its intended course, would nevertheless amount to extravagant waste of the potentialities of a force of two strong infantry divisions (with four fully and two partially mobile brigades), a brigade of heavily armoured tanks, and an impressive array of all kinds of mobile artillery. But Freyberg and General Messervy of 4 Indian Division knew the Germans too well to conceive of the coming operations as a possible anti-climax to their long preparations.

The first task laid down by ‘13 Corps Instructions for Battle’ (12 November) was to ‘protect the L of C running westwards from No. 2 Fwd Base’, but the detailed tasks allotted to Messervy hovered uncertainly between defence and offence and were more concerned with covering the right flank of the New Zealand Division than with guarding against a body blow aimed at the main railhead of Eighth Army. So lightly, in fact, was this danger assessed that Messervy was expected to commit his one mobile brigade at an early stage to an attack on the strong defences which anchored the south-western end of the frontier line near Sidi Omar, to the detriment of his other obligations. This brigade, the 7th, would in the first instance shuffle southwards round these defences and prevent their garrisons from interfering with the moves of the New Zealand Division. The gap thus opened up between this brigade and 11 Indian Brigade in the coast sector was to have been filled by 5 Indian Brigade, occupying extensive defences—North Point, Playground and Kennels Box—which had been built to cover the vast forward base; but this brigade was also saddled with multifarious duties along the L of C and could not man these defences in any strength until some days after crusader started, by which time, if things went reasonably well, the need would have passed.

In the opening moves of crusader the New Zealand Division and 7 Indian Brigade were to keep in step, the latter occupying a defensive position astride the frontier at Bir Sheferzen and facing northwards while the New Zealanders crossed the Wire to the south. As the New Zealand Division swung north on the first stage of its mission to hem in the frontier line from the west, 7 Indian Brigade would conform by digging in at Bir Bu Deheua, west of the twin strongpoints Libyan Omar and Sidi Omar Nuovo,

Called by the enemy ‘Sidi Omar’ and ‘Frongia’ respectively.

still covering Freyberg's right flank but now unable to carry out any part of Messervy's third task, which was to ‘Stop and destroy any enemy force attempting to adv[ance] southwards, south-eastwards or eastwards’ between the coast and Bir Sheferzen. A battalion, 1 Royal Sussex, held back at first in the North Point area, was to move to Bir Bu Deheua at an early stage of the advance and its departure would leave a dangerous gap, the assumption evidently being that the enemy would either counter-attack at once or not at all. After the New Zealand Division completed the isolation of the frontier line, Messervy was to prepare his 5 Brigade for an advance towards Tobruk, but it would take time to reassemble the brigade's scattered elements. Thus while Messervy had been allotted 1 Army Tank Brigade (less a battalion with the New Zealand Division) and far more than the normal divisional quota of guns,

One medium regiment (6-inch howitzers and 4.5s), four field regiments, two anti-tank regiments and three independent companies, and a regiment of Bofors, a total of some 300 guns, as compared with 172 in NZ Div (though exchanges soon strengthened the latter at the expense of 4 Indian Div).

with the chief purpose of defeating any counter-attack towards the main forward base and the desert railhead, he was far more concerned with preventing the escape of the enemy in the frontier area.

The New Zealand Division was to cross the frontier and form up south-west of Bir Sheferzen by midnight on 18 November, ready to push northwards next day to the Trigh Capuzzo at Sidi Azeiz, 12 miles south-west of Bardia. From there patrols and pickets would be thrown out southwards to link up with 7 Indian Brigade north of Bir Bu Deheua, a road block would be set up on the Via Balbia at Menastir to the north, and detachments would hold the few crossings of the escarpment for nearly 20 miles westwards from Menastir to ‘prevent any enemy forces moving southwards from the area north of the BARDIA – TOBRUK rd’. On a 30-mile arc, therefore, from the south through east to north-west, all movement by the enemy to or from the frontier line, Bardia, or the broken ground north-west of Bardia was to be stopped. A raiding party was to cut the Bardia-Capuzzo water pipeline, but no other action was planned in the first instance to isolate Bardia from the rest of the frontier line. At the same time a brigade group was to be ready to move westwards to dispose of enemy groups isolated in the region of Gambut and Bir el Chleta, halfway to Tobruk, and this might have to carry on to the Tobruk front under the command of 30 Corps. In this case another battalion of 1 Army Tank Brigade would probably come under New Zealand command, and with it the brigade headquarters and 8 Field Regiment, RA (intended solely for close support of the I tanks), leaving only one I-tank battalion with the Indian division.

Until the enemy armour was pinned down or defeated, however, the New Zealand Division was to stand on guard in the best possible anti-tank posture at its station just across the frontier, covered by 4 Armoured Brigade. Then would come the hemming in of the frontier garrisons, the capture by the Indian division of the two Omar strongpoints, and if fortune favoured the New Zealand Division, the seizure of Bardia and Fort Capuzzo. From there onwards the Army plan was vague. Thirteenth Corps was to help round up the enemy on the Tobruk front before doing much more in the frontier area; but Freyberg was assured, when he proposed taking his whole command to Tobruk, that it could not be maintained so far west. No more than two brigades, the 6th New Zealand and the 5th Indian (when ready), were at all likely to take part in the relief of Tobruk.

An insistent question remained: was it more urgent to cut off the escape of the besiegers of Tobruk or to open up the coast road through Sollum to ease the supply of Eighth Army? Everything again depended on how quickly and completely the enemy armour was defeated. Delay would increase supply problems and make the opening of the coast road more urgent. There was, however, a third possibility that was earnestly considered: ‘ROMMEL must by now realise his numerical inferiority and the desirability of withdrawing westwards nearer to his own bases for supply and nearer to his own fighter aerodromes.’

Appreciation by Capt R. M. Bell, GSO III (I), 10 Nov.

Units of 5 Infantry Brigade Group began to trickle westwards from Baggush on 11 November, Armistice Day, and Freyberg and a distinguished visitor, the Rt. Hon. W. J. Jordan, watched from the side of the road as the first vehicles moved off. The spacing was ten to the mile and the speed on the road 15 miles in the hour, which would have made a column more than 100 miles long but for the fact that the total distance to be covered was in most cases no more than 60–70 miles—along the coast road, the Matruh by-pass, and then the Siwa road, from which units branched off westwards into the desert for up to 12 miles to their places in the divisional assembly area. There units dug in facing west and after a hot meal settled down to sleep. Next morning 4 Infantry Brigade Group set out, followed by Divisional Headquarters Group (though Freyberg stayed behind), and took up position in the assembly area; it was a trying journey, with much other traffic on the coast road and much dust flying in the rough desert stretch. On the 13th Freyberg rose early and took to his car the same bag he had carried into the Battle of the Ancre twenty-five years ago to the day.

He was soon to see fighting as fierce as at Beaumont-Hamel in that battle where he won his VC.

He enjoyed a fast drive and was in time for breakfast at the new area; but 6 Infantry Brigade Group which followed found the road congested with other traffic and it was long past midnight when all detachments came to rest, some of them still short of their destination.

the move to the assembly area, 11-14 november 1941 Black and white diagram and map

By next morning practically the whole of the Division was for the first time assembled as a complete entity, an historic occasion. In an area twelve miles by eight the 2800-odd vehicles rested 200 yards apart in brigade laagers, with clusters of men among them, and here and there a staff car or truck tearing a thin ribbon of dust from the flat, scrub-covered desert. The troops rested as much as possible and enjoyed the clear, warm day. The unhurried routine included distributing rations, water and POL,

Petrol, oil and lubricants.

cleaning weapons and overhauling equipment. Workshops in 5 Brigade worked hard repairing broken springs, Intelligence sections collected information and marked maps, and there were several conferences.

Freyberg took the opportunity to call together all his officers down to company commanders and tell them what he thought fit about crusader. ‘No battle is easy’, he began. ‘This one promises to be a very tough one.’ The Germans were on the defensive and would pick their ground well. ‘They realise the value of AFVs’, he added, ‘and they will not hesitate to use them in a desperate counter stroke.’ He did not think the Germans would risk fighting in the open and considered they would rely on aircraft and anti-tank guns to reduce British tank strength and then ‘launch Counter stroke to re-establish his line at SIDI OMAR and HALFAYA position.’

Conference notes in Freyberg's crusader file.

He was confident, however, that troops determined to fight hard would beat the Germans, who had relied hitherto on aircraft and tanks to win their battles for them. The Italian army and air force were, moreover, weak links. The Tobruk garrison, on the other hand, was strong and might possibly be ‘the deciding factor’. Freyberg outlined the preliminary moves, 50–60 miles by day on the 15th, a slow and cautious 16–20 miles in the night of the 16th–17th, and 15 miles the following night and then across the frontier after dark on the 18th ready to advance at dawn. The Corps task was to cut off the garrisons of Bardia, Sollum, Sidi Omar and Halfaya and ‘at a later stage to destroy them’, but everything depended on whether the enemy chose to fight forward in defence of these positions or to leave them for a time to their own resources and fight the armoured battle ‘in rear position South of TOBRUK’. The opposing air forces were evenly matched and the RAF could not provide close support until its fighters gained the upper hand. Air attack would be a constant threat, to be overcome by dispersion and controlled fire, but not when tank attack also threatened: this was more formidable and vehicles would close in to form smaller perimeters and ‘increase Gun support’. Battle routine would henceforth be strictly enforced, brigades would halt in battle order, troops would dig in at once, and anti-tank and LAA guns would take up positions accordingly. After a special plea for units to send back all possible information at every stage of the battle, Freyberg ended characteristically. The battle had to be ‘fought out to a finish, in the end ruthlessly.’

Spirit of the B.B.

British bulldog.

wins. You must prepare everybody for it both mentally as well as physically.

As a final (and still unavailing) step to encourage the use of anti-tank mines, 6 Fd Coy demonstrated laying and lifting them to the assembled officers.

Parties left in the afternoon to reconnoitre brigade and unit lines in the area which was next day's destination. In the present area units regrouped for this move and Divisional Administration Group (under the CRASC) came into being, with all ASC units except troop-carrying transport, Divisional Workshops and Ordnance Field Park, and the Salvage and Mobile Surgical Units, removing from the brigade groups vehicles they did not need.

the approach march, 15-18 november 1941 Black and white strategic diagram of the approach march, 15-18 November 1941

It was not until next day, when the Division drove westwards in one vast array of ‘transport, tanks, guns and carriers covering the whole panorama of the desert plain’ (as Freyberg described it in his report), that the full emotional impact of its new-found unity, mobility and potential power was felt.

Looking round from any slight vantage point … the whole expanse of desert was peppered with moving vehicles as far as the eye could see—and on the horizon fresh lines of black specks were popping up like puppets on an endless chain…. the country was very stony—great slabs of ‘crazy pavement’ at times and patches of scrub. No air interference but five Messerschmitts seen in the sun.

GOC's diary.

The experience of driving towards the enemy in the company of nearly 20,000 men with no apparent doubt among them was as impressive as the spectacle. From the post-Crete depths the morale of the Division had soared to dizzy heights. Feeling of such intensity was not likely to be dampened by the minor mishaps of the journey, many broken springs among them. The rather clumsy performance of an exercise in contracting to meet tank attack and then opening out again, which was included in the journey, was a revelation of inadequate divisional training only to the perceptive few, though it left 5 Brigade 1000 yards south of its proper course.

This exercise and the various layouts adopted by the three brigades on the move and at rest did, however, illustrate one aspect of the differences in kind and character between the three brigades which had emerged in more than eighteen months of corporte extence. Fourth Brigade

Now commanded by Brig Inglis, vice Brig Puttick (later Lt-Gen Sir Edward), who had returned to New Zealand in Aug. 1941 to become Chief of the General Staff and GOC NZ Military Forces.

had served a long apprenticeship at Baggush the previous winter and had most first-hand knowledge of desert conditions. Its accepted routines for moving or halting by day or by night were therefore in many ways superior to those of the other two brigades and later became standard in the Division. In organisation 5 Brigade with four battalions was the heavyweight and its greater mass was naturally harder to handle.

On the score of battle experience 6 Brigade had some leeway to make up, having missed the Crete fighting, and for the same reason it retained the largest proportion of ‘old hands’. There were only three new COs in the ten infantry battalions—two in 4 Brigade and one in the 6th—and only one of these, Hartnell

Brig S. F. Hartnell, DSO, ED, m.i.d.; Palmerston North; born NZ 18 Jul 1910; carpenter; CO 19 Bn Oct 1941–Apr 1943; comd 4 Armd Bde Jun–Jul 1943; 5 Bde 9–29 Feb 1944.

of 19 Battalion, was as yet untried in battle. The weight of experience, as of numbers, was in the COs of 5 Brigade, three of whom had seen action in the First World War as well as in Crete (and had between them earned a VC and an MC) and two of whom were members of the Regular Force.

Lt-Cols Andrew, VC, and Dittmer, MBE, MC.

In terms of average age, too, the COs of 5 Brigade came top, with 4 Brigade next (Hartnell at 31 was the youngest), and then 6 Brigade (with two young Regulars in Shuttleworth,

Lt-Col C. Shuttleworth, DSO, m.i.d.; born Wakefield, Nelson, 19 Jan 1907; Regular soldier; CO 24 Bn Feb 1940–Nov 1941; p.w. 30 Now 1941; died UK, 15 May 1945.

34, and Page,

Brig J. R. Page, CBE, DSO, m.i.d.; Canberra; born Dunedin, 10 May 1908; Regular soldier; CO 26 Bn May 1940–Nov 1941; wounded 27 Nov 1941; Commander, Northern Military District, 1950–52; Adjutant-General, 1952–54; QMG 1956–60; head of NZ Joint Services liaison staff, Canberra.

33).

All three brigades had attained some degree of unity of spirit which was consolidated in various ways by the characters and methods of their commanders. Barrowclough

Maj-Gen Rt. Hon. Sir Harold Barrowclough, PC, KCMG, CB, DSO and bar, MC, ED, m.i.d., MC (Gk), Legion of Merit (US), Croix de Guerre (Fr); Wellington; born Masterton, 23 Jun 1894; barrister and solicitor; NZ Rifle Bde 1915–19 (CO 4 Bn); comd 7 NZ Inf Bde in UK, 1940; 6 Bde, May 1940–Feb 1942; GOC 2 NZEF in Pacific and 3 NZ Div, Aug 1942–Oct 1944; Chief Justice of New Zealand.

of 6 Brigade, for example, was a high-minded and fearless leader, still much the same as when he stormed the defences of Le Quesnoy at the head of his battalion in 1918. He was as ready now as then to attack Germans wherever and whenever he found them on the battlefield, and in this was well attuned to the feeling in his battalions that they had to ‘catch up with’ the other battalions because they missed Crete. He was disinclined to delegate authority, and in this may have been influenced by the relative inexperience of his newly-appointed BM, Major Barrington,

Brig B. Barrington, DSO, OBE, ED, m.i.d.; born Marton, 2 Oct 1907; insurance inspector; SC 6 Bde Mar 1940–May 1941; BM 6 Bde May 1941–Jan 1942; DAQMG 2 NZ Div May–Nov 1942; AA & QMG Nov 1942–Dec 1944; DA & QMG NZ Corps Feb–Mar 1944; died Wellington, 17 Apr 1954.

on whose shoulders operational staff work would normally fall. Thus the main burden of work, as of responsibility, fell on Barrowclough, and he welcomed it.

Inglis of 4 Brigade had commanded a machine-gun company at Le Quesnoy and, like Barrowclough, was one of the first to set foot in that town. The methods of the two men—barristers and solicitors in civil life—provide an interesting contrast. Inglis had a confident and, capable BM

Capt Bassett, who had served a gruelling initiation as BM of 10 Bde in Crete.

and used him to the fullest extent, and he could rely, too, on the judgment of Kippenberger

Maj-Gen Sir Howard Kippenberger, KBE, CB, DSO and bar, ED, m.i.d., Legion of Merit (US); born Ladbrooks, 28 Jan 1897; barrister and solicitor; 1 NZEF1916–17; CO 20 Bn Sep 1939–Apr 1941, Jun–Dec 1941; comd 10 Bde, Crete, May 1941; 5 Bde Jan 1942–Jun 1943; Nov 1943–Feb 1944; GOC 2 NZ Div, 30 Apr–14 May 1943, 9 Feb–2 Mar 1944; comd 2 NZEF Prisoner-of-War Reception Group (UK) Oct 1944–Sep 1945; twice wounded; Editor-in-Chief, NZ War Histories, 1946–57; died Wellington, 5 May 1957.

of 20 Battalion, another solicitor and a friend of long standing who had commanded a brigade in Crete. Thus he felt able to stand aside at times and let his headquarters run itself with only occasional guidance, trusting to his tactical flair to give good warning when intervention was required.

Hargest approached crusader bursting with confidence. With four battalions his 5 Brigade was the strongest and he was sure it would acquit itself well. All his battalions and his field regiment had lost heavily in Crete, however, and new faces predominated. Twenty-second Battalion still had on its collective mind its withdrawal from Maleme airfield, which was not without its effect on Hargest himself. He was on record as ‘one of the finest soldiers in the Division’ in France in 1916–18

Stewart, The New Zealand Division, 1916–19, p. 178.

and he entered crusader determined to erase the unhappy chapter of Crete. His staff was in the main the same that had served him through much adversity in that campaign and there was a warm bond. Hargest had had less chance than his fellow brigadiers, however, of getting to know the desert, wherein a headquarters was as apt as a fighting unit to find enemy on its doorstep. His reluctance after Crete to yield even unimportant ground was in marked contrast to current light-hearted attitudes in the armoured corps towards the significance of ground, and of the two extremes Hargest's was certainly to be preferred.

Freyberg reached the new bivouac area at dusk on the 15th and went through the latest Intelligence with Captain Bell.

Lt-Col R. M. Bell, MBE, ED, m.i.d.; Waipawa; born Penang, 16 Jan 1907; sheep farmer; IO NZ Div, 1940–41; GSO III (I) 1941–42; GSO II (Air) Feb–Jun 1944; twice wounded.

The enemy air force was active, though not nearly as much so as the RAF. The GOC was still slightly uneasy about the air situation and talked it over with the RAF liaison officer, Wing Commander Magill,

Gp Capt G. R. Magill, OBE, DFC and bar, m.i.d.; born Te Aroha, Cambridge, 23 Jan 1915; journalist; joined RAFAug 1936; LO to HQ NZ Div, Nov–Dec 1941; comd No. 180 Sqdn 1943; Operations Staff, No. 2 Group, 1943–45.

who was a New Zealander. One possibility he toyed with was of ‘bursting through to Tobruk if things go well and taking aerodromes’, thereby crippling the enemy air effort at least for a time. ‘Indications are for an early attack on Tobruk’ (he wrote in his diary), a welcome development, as the enemy might well get caught on the wrong foot. Bardia seemed lightly held, also encouraging. The one dark item

Other than the news that the Ark Royal had been ‘sunk at last’ after several premature claims by ‘Lord Haw-Haw’ on the German radio.

was that on the latest count the Germans had 80–100 powerful 50-millimetre anti-tank guns. The night moves planned for the Division ‘may startle the Boche’, his diary continues. ‘At present, thing which puzzles is that Rommel has everything forward. He is going to counter attack. It is not a battle of positions, it is a matter of destroying one another's armies.’

The impending moves, however, were already viewed with concern in some quarters. Travelling in low gear across rough desert had already used up 40,000 gallons of petrol instead of the 25,000 allowed for: 3¾ miles per gallon per vehicle in place of the estimated 6 m.p.g. The Division was more than 15,000 gallons short of current needs and the Petrol Company had to make two trips to the nearby Forward Base, working until long after dark. The complicated scheme for rationing Eighth Army also had teething troubles and the Supply Company had similar difficulties, so that units had to draw on their reserves. A full-scale divisional move into action was a different matter from manoeuvring brigades in the well-known hinterland of Baggush. One difference which soon made itself felt was in the marking of the route for the night marches. A half-mile interval between lamps was adequate for the fairly level ground south of Baggush and for the first night move on the 16th; but patches of soft sand on the night of the 17th, defiles through small wadis, and several minor escarpments caused delay and confusion and the field regiments in particular had much trouble. One regimental commander described it as ‘difficult, dangerous and hair-raising’

Lt-Col Weir of 6 Fd Regt.

and the small reconnaissance party which laid out the lights

The Div IO, the Engineer IO, most of the Provost Coy, and several others.

was much criticised, though the real trouble was that many more lights were needed for such uneven ground. By a trick of fate an electrical storm provided eerie flashes to light the chaos and stimulated speculation that the fighting might already have begun. This wild journey ended a few miles short of the frontier early on the 18th, only an hour or two before the armoured mass of 30 Corps 10 to 30 miles to the south surged through the Wire on its way to Gabr Saleh.

vii

As it approached the frontier, 30 Corps too had become no stranger to broken springs, nor even to broken axles. Lack of training and desert experience was only too evident in some units. Not until 16 November, for example, did the South Africans make their first major essay at moving cross-country by night, and the arrival next day of what their historians call a ‘Churchillian exhortation’ ranking crusader in advance with Blenheim and Waterloo can have done little to soothe the feelings of those charged with the task of repairing the damaged guns or vehicles.

Agar-Hamilton and Turner, pp. 119–22.

To many others this stretch of desert was only too familiar and night travel no more than a routine, enlivened by the breathless excitement of the occasion. Thus it was with the skilful reconnaissance units which led the offensive and needed no charitable moon to light their way.

More than 80 miles to the south, ‘Force E’ of the Oases Group under Brigadier D. W. Reid

With HQ 29 Indian Inf Bde, a South African reconnaissance battalion and most of an armoured-car regiment, field, anti-tank and LAA batteries, a section of sappers and miners, and an Indian infantry battalion.

got ready to leave Jarabub on a long and lonely trek to the distant oases of Jalo and Aujila. Some 300 miles north-west a small band of desperadoes delivered by submarine made a brave but clumsy attack on what was wrongly thought to be Rommel's residence.

See Kay, The Long Range Desert Group in Libya, 1940–41 (War History Branch Episodes and Studies), pp. 30–2, and Elizabeth Keyes, Geoffrey Keyes, VC. Keyes earned his posthumous VC in this raid.

Two more groups were dropped by parachute to sabotage airfields at Gambut and Tmimi on the night 16–17 November without success. These far-flung activities all had one central aim, the recapture of Cyrenaica, to which Eighth Army's 120,000 hearts were dedicated.

viii

Had the Germans not been so intent on their own schemes they must have discovered what was afoot. The Italians had been only too ready to take note of the various warnings; but even they failed to get wind of the vast moves taking place from the first week in November.

De Giorgis of Savona Div thought an ‘enemy offensive to be imminent’ as early as 14 Nov and issued orders accordingly. See Manzetti, Seconda offensiva britannica in Africa settentrionale e ripiegamento italo-tedesco nella Sirtica orientale, 18 Novembre 1941–17 Gennaio 1942, the Italian general staff history.

Daily reports to Berlin from Panzer Group Africa Headquarters in this period start monotonously with the statement ‘Enemy situation unchanged’, to which as late as 18 November only one word was added—'mainly’. The Intelligence war diary of Panzer Group reveals a singular obtuseness in the face of almost unmistakable evidence. The New Zealand Division was spotted from the air on the 14th and again next day, yet its absence on the 16th was merely noted. It had disappeared into the blue and evoked no further comment. The vigilant German wireless interception company, No. 3 Company of 56 Signals Unit, detected the move of 1 South African Division from Matruh and confirmed it on the 16th with scarcely a raised eyebrow. When complete silence descended on British wireless activity on the 17th the German Intelligence relaxed, though the Italians were acutely suspicious. Bad weather had set in and no aerial reconnaissance could be flown. Nothing more could be done until it cleared up.

Yet the best evidence of all was solemnly recorded in Panzer Group records without a suspicion of its real significance. The fact is that the RAF had given the enemy clear warning of coming events which the Germans refused to see in any other way than as a reaction to their preliminary moves for the attack on Tobruk (which they characteristically supposed had been disclosed to the British by treachery). The switching of RAF targets from distant ports and installations to nearer landing grounds and dumps in the week before D 1 was a marked change of policy: it was tactical rather than strategic and obviously so.

From the RAF point of view crusader began in mid-October in a gradually increasing programme of bombing from Malta and Egypt and of fighter activity to deny enemy observation of battle preparations. At the same time careful though incomplete photographic and other reconnaissance of the relevant area of Cyrenaica was carried out as cloud, sandstorms and enemy fighters permitted. In the last week, 11–17 November, bomber sorties against airfields rose from 38 the previous week to 127

‘Royal Air Force Operations in the Western Desert and Eastern Mediterranean, 18 Nov 1941 to 19 May 1942’, Air Staff (Operations Records), HQ RAF, ME, Aug 1943.

and fighter sorties from 191 to 274, though still well under maximum effort so as not to reveal full fighter strength. It was an impressive programme by current standards and comparatively economical; but the results achieved fell short of claims, in the same way that the achievements of the British armour were shortly to be exaggerated, partly through overlapping reports. In helping the Royal Navy to sink enemy shipping and in protecting the small ships supplying Tobruk the RAF made a valuable contribution to the coming operations; but land targets were less profitable. The vast spaces of the desert were ill-suited to air action against ground targets on any scale then feasible. Unless landing grounds were caught crowded with aircraft they made poor targets and attacks on army installations or troops seldom had more than a nuisance value. Aerial reconnaissance, however, was extremely valuable and Eighth Army was able to enter the fray with printed maps of enemy positions giving detailed information no more than a fortnight old.

Air Headquarters, Western Desert, had been set up alongside Eighth Army Headquarters with a New Zealander, Air Vice-Marshal Coningham,

Air Marshal Sir Arthur Coningham, KCB, KBE, DSO, MC, DFC, AFC, Legion of Honour (Fr), Distinguished Service Medal (US), Order of Leopold (Bel), Croix de Guerre with Palm (Bel); born Brisbane, 19 Jan 1895; 1 NZEF 1914–16; entered RFC 1916; permanent commission RAF 1919; AOC No. 4 Group, Bomber Command, 1939–41; AOC Western Desert, 1941–43; AOC 1st TAF, N. Africa, Sicily, Italy, 1943–44; AOC-in-C, 2nd TAF, invasion of NW Europe and Germany, 1944–45; lost when air liner crashed during Atlantic crossing, Jan 1948.

in command and a staff dedicated to achieving supremacy over the enemy air forces in Libya and closely supporting Eighth Army for the brief term of the impending offensive. crusader was to serve the purposes of the Navy and RAF as much as those of the Army, and the new Air Support Control system seemed to promise closer and more flexible air support for land operations than had hitherto existed. Planning could naturally not allow for the extreme confusion of the situation on land which was shortly to prevail and which made ‘bomb lines’ between British and enemy troops almost impossible to draw. Nor could the RAF planners hope for more than temporary superiority over the desert battlefields. Tedder, in stating his case to London, claimed no more than a probable qualitative superiority by virtue of the poor equipment of the Italian air force in Libya, reinforced by a higher rate of serviceability in RAF units. Fortunately current estimates were wrong and the RAF did in fact possess the local preponderance in numbers about which Churchill was so anxious to reassure Mr Fraser. On the other hand, any advantage the British pilots could drive home against their Italian adversaries tended to be offset by their own troubles when tackled by Messerschmitt 109Fs, superior in performance to the obsolescent Hurricanes and Tomahawks with which the RAF fighter squadrons were equipped. Tedder reported that the moral ascendancy of the Me109F pilots had been overcome, but the flattering tactics adopted to reduce their depredations hardly support his contention.

Thus the handful of Me109Fs at the disposal of Fliegerfuehrer Afrika, Major-General Froehlich, were able to achieve an effect out of proportion to their numbers. Some such advantage was urgently needed, as it was only too clear to the Axis leaders (as it was not to their opponents) that they had many fewer bombers and fighters in the desert than the RAF. Last-minute allocations of more Luftwaffe units would rectify this for the Tobruk operation but would still leave the Sollum front weak in air cover in the opinion of Reichsmarschall Goering, as OKW advised on 1 November. In Rommel's absence Cruewell nevertheless committed Panzer Group Africa to the Tobruk attack and reposed every confidence in the ability of the frontier line to hold out for a few days against British counter-attacks, even by strong tank forces.

Froehlich's situation was unusual. He was under the command not of Rommel but of General Geissler of X Flying Corps in Sicily, and so far as the Italians were concerned his powers were restricted to co-ordinating the operations of the Luftwaffe units in North Africa with those of the forward units of General Marchesi's 5 Air Fleet. This nevertheless seems to have worked fairly well and the Italians were particularly pleased with the Stukas Geissler gave them. Their own aircraft were inferior and it was good for their morale to have German crews operating alongside them and perhaps one or two Me109Fs overhead. Froehlich was not in the habit of setting up shop alongside Rommel's headquarters, however, and the absence of a close understanding between the two, in marked contrast to the co-operation between the two Axis air forces, became only too obvious at times. So long as the RAF fighters were mainly based east of Sidi Barrani no serious repercussions ensued and the Axis air commands were able to make good use of their slender forces

Axis air strength in Cyrenaica in September is given by Manzetti (p. 24n) as follows: ItalianGermanBombers43‘some 100 aircraft’100Fighters110—Reconnaissance aircraft15Total 283Observation aircraft11Torpedo-carrying aircraft4

This is the same, if the RAF official historians are correct (Richards and Saunders, Vol. II, p. 173), as the total of serviceable aircraft at the start of crusader, the full total then being 436, to which might be added 186 in Tripolitania and 1400 in Italy, Greece and neighbouring islands.

Tedder's total force of serviceable aircraft was over 700, two-thirds of them in the Western Desert and the rest in Malta or the Canal Zone and Nile Delta. Of Coningham's 29 squadrons, six were South African, two Australian, one Rhodesian and one Free French and two were Fleet Air Arm.

For details of New Zealand airmen serving in this theatre see Thompson, New Zealanders with the Royal Air Force, Vol. III. One of them was Wing Cdr E. W. Whitley, DFC, who gave his name to the special force (Whitforce) assigned to cover the Oases Group and attack the coast road in western Cyrenaica.

in attacking Tobruk and the ships which supplied it. But when the RAF fighter wings moved up to the frontier, as they did for crusader, their numerical advantage could make itself felt over the whole battle area and the loose co-ordination between Axis air and ground forces only served to emphasise disparities in air strength.

CHAPTER 7 A disastrous Beginning

THE British cause gained a valuable, if intractable, ally in the weather, which timed its intervention to perfection. ‘Sandstorm, thunderstorm and torrential rain towards evening’, the war diarist of Panzer Group wrote at Gambut on the 17th. Moving east from the Green Mountain, the storm struck the enemy first and for two vital days grounded his aircraft. Later the rain poured down impartially on both sides of the frontier, but Coningham's fighter squadrons far south in the Maddalena area missed most of it and remained operational. All along the coast there was chaos. Water gushed down countless wadis, carried away culverts, blocked roads, cut the railway west of Matruh, flooded airfields and bivouac areas, bogged down guns, and between Derna and Benghazi brought all military traffic to a standstill.

The British reconnaissance regiments saw only the lightning flashes as they drove forward in the night 17–18 November to their various rendezvous in Libya, and suffered no immediate setback to their high hopes. All had crossed the frontier many times; yet all felt a unique quality in this experience. They shared with those following them a remarkable upsurge of feeling. In the brief interval between the work and worry of preparation and the keener anxieties of conflict the spirits of Eighth Army units soared upwards. Even desert veterans felt a somewhat boyish excitement as they passed through gaps in the Wire for the crusader offensive. They could not conceive of defeat. They could feel, if they could not all comprehend, the historic nature of the occasion and no lack of the will to win would withhold from them success in full measure. They were out to gain if they could the first great land victory of the war over German forces.

These generous and general feelings were mingled with local and personal reactions to the details of the advance. B Squadron of the New Zealand Divisional Cavalry pushed through the Wire before midnight on the 17th under command of 7 Indian Brigade and came to rest, after 20 miles, just short of Bir Gibni. The horizon at dawn was empty and the flat expanse of sand and shingle sprinkled with black dust and tufted with scrub seemed to hold no menace. But vehicles soon appeared to the north, and after an hour B Squadron was lightly shelled and one troop gingerly engaged by what looked like light tanks. These hauled off when the attached 2-pounders fired at them and came back with two or three reinforcements, continuing until one was disabled, whereupon they quickly withdrew, towing the crippled tank. Light shelling and a spattering of MG fire continued for the rest of the morning.

The skyline south of B Squadron hid the mass of 30 Corps after it crossed the frontier, preceded by petrol lorries, and refuelled its 500 cruiser tanks a dozen miles inside Libya, covered by RAF fighters. Still hidden from view, it then wheeled north and fanned out with three armoured-car regiments leading on a 30-mile front, followed by their respective armoured brigades.

From right to left, KDG (less one squadron) leading 4 Armd Bde, 4 SA Armd Car Regt leading 7 Armd Bde, and 11 Hussars ahead of 22 Armd Bde.

Behind the armoured cars and tanks came the guns and infantry and the B Echelon lorries, and behind these the artillery and infantry of the Support Group, with the Headquarters of 7 Armoured Division 20 miles south of the leading troops, Corps Headquarters nearby, and the South African division spread out over a huge area of desert many miles south-south-west.

All went like clockwork until noon, when B Squadron saw King's Dragoon Guards coming up on time from the south and was mystified when the armoured cars veered east and set about ‘capturing’ the right-hand troop. Their error discovered and no harm done, the King's Dragoon Guards moved on north-westwards with red faces and soon struck more opposition, this time genuine, by Bir Gibni.

By this time all three armoured-car units of 30 Corps had run up against their counterparts on the enemy side, Wechmar Group

Named after Lt-Col Freiherr von Wechmar of 3 Recce Unit, who had 33 Recce Unit and an anti-tank company also under his command.

along the Trig el-Abd and RECAM

The reconnaissance group of the Italian Mobile Corps.

south-east of Bir el-Gubi, and, lacking the gun-power of their opponents, had to wait until the cruiser-tank units caught up and majestically brushed aside this trifling opposition. Running helplessly before this tide 3 and 33 Reconnaissance Units headed for the Trigh Capuzzo, appealing for help as they went, and RECAM retraced its steps towards El Gubi. By dusk 4 and 7 Armoured Brigades had reached their allotted stations and the 22nd, held up by refuelling troubles, was ten miles short of its destination. No more than slight skirmishes had taken place, to which the enemy near Sidi Omar added a grumbling conversation of guns with 7 Indian Brigade as the latter moved up to the Wire. Faced with no more serious reaction than this, General Messervy promptly ordered 1 Royal Sussex to rejoin the brigade, leaving little or no infantry to cover his centre in the Playground area. Very few enemy aircraft appeared over Eighth Army, none could be tempted up even in defence of one of the main landing grounds of the Luftwaffe at Gazala, and the RAF had to go as far afield as Martuba and Jalo to find enemy on the wing.

The paucity of opposition anywhere was mystifying and the 90-mile advance of 30 Corps ended up rather lamely in a wide arc north of Gabr Saleh more or less as Cunningham had prescribed, with no more impressive trophies than one or two German prisoners and an eight-wheeled armoured car. The upshot was that at the end of the day General Norrie ‘could not give the Army Commander much information on which to base further plans’.

‘Narrative of Events’, dated 29 Dec 1941.

To Norrie this was not surprising, for it was what he had predicted, and he warned the Toburuk garrison by wireless that its sortie would not start next day. But Cunningham's whole plan rested on the assumption that the enemy would react quickly and thereby yield the information on which the next stage of the operations would be based. He was aware, now that the great weight of Eighth Army was actually in motion, that he could not hold back for long the various subsidiary but important moves which he had made dependent on an early and decisive clash with the German armour. The Tobruk garrison was tensed for its sortie, the South Africans ready and anxious to make their dash for Sidi Rezegh, the Indians and New Zealanders were itching to close in on the frontier strongpoints and snatch what they could of them, and the ramifications of these projects were widespread.

At Alexandria, for example, the Navy awaited word to take to Tobruk the first large merchant ships for many months.

Yet the day had disclosed nothing of enemy intentions.

There was no solution within the framework of his plan to Cunningham's present predicament. All he could do for the moment was to indicate to Norrie (with whom he was travelling) a wish to relieve Tobruk as soon as possible, though he could not yet release 4 Armoured Brigade from its protective role on the right. But Gott had a mind of his own and after dark issued orders which effectively curtailed the possibilities open to Cunningham. Gott was worried about Ariete at Bir el-Gubi and directed the attention of 22 Armoured Brigade and the Support Group to that position, at the same time forbidding the 22nd to cross the Trigh el-Abd. This virtually left only 7 Armoured Brigade free to ‘go for Tobruk’, and with 4 Armoured still tied to 13 Corps it split the British armour into three groups looking three different ways. Then came a Corps order giving both El Gubi and Sidi Rezegh as likely objectives for the next day and telling the South Africans to be ready to take over Gubi with one brigade and establish the other brigade a few miles south of it. Corps evidently thought the Italians might easily be persuaded to vacate their position and ordered bombing, not on Gubi but between El Adem and Ed Duda. Cunningham's wish to ‘stage relief over earliest date’ was also passed on and Gott and Brink were told to ‘act energetically tomorrow’.

30 Corps order of ‘some time before midnight’, as quoted by Agar-Hamilton and Turner, p. 133.

The important thing, of course, was to ensure that their energies were concentrated on reaching a common goal; but there was now little chance of this. When Cunningham eventually reached a decision of sorts next morning that 7 Armoured Division should move north-west (rather than north-east) there were therefore the makings of a first-class muddle unless the enemy retired of his own accord from El Gubi, which was not likely. In the absence of evidence of enemy intentions, no clear policy for the next stage was possible, and when 30 Corps resumed its travels on 19 November it had no central aim, no single objective, and many incentives at various levels for dispersion of effort.

This was a sorry outcome to a day which offered rich reward. The weather which had cloaked Eighth Army's approach made it doubly certain that Cunningham would achieve that traditional aim of the invader, surprise. Strategically this was more than acceptable; tactically it became an embarrassing handicap, delaying enemy reactions and trapping the Army Commander in a quandary of his own making. His plan allowed him no tactical gain from surprise and the command structure and communications put any far-reaching change of plan out of the question. Thus the vital ground at El Adem which could now be had at a cost mainly of petrol was left for a later date when it would have to be paid for with blood.

iii

Not all of this was a fault of the plan and Cunningham could not be held accountable for freaks of the weather, lapses of German Intelligence, or the stubborn refusal of the German command to recognise CRUSADER for what it was: an attempt, unconnected with current Axis schemes, to force a decision in Cyrenaica. With no warning whatever of the approach of Eighth Army, no responsible German staff officer could be expected to believe reports of as many as 200 British tanks practically on the doorstep of 21 Panzer Division, and indeed those of Wechmar Group who saw these unheralded intruders scarcely believed their own eyes. When 7 Indian Brigade shelled elements of 3 Reconnaissance Unit early in the morning the Italians were blamed and the German liasion officer with Savona Division was ordered to put a stop to it. Major-General von Ravenstein thought only in terms of a strong British reconnaissance and ordered a company of light tanks and a troop of field guns to reinforce Freiherr von Wechmar in the evening. Lieutenant-General Cruewell

Commanding Panzer Group Africa in Rommel's absence, though he spent most of the day at his own D AK Headquaarters.

was rather more concerned, but at Panzer Group Headquarters Major-General Gause ‘held that an enemy offensive was out of the question’

DAK war diary.

and the two finally agreed that the British were only trying to harass the Axis forces outside Tobruk, perhaps to delay their attack. A German battle group on its way to Gabr Saleh would take the British on the flank next day and destroy them, though 15 Panzer Division was also alerted. On the Tobruk front German artillery continued to move into position for the attack.

Rommel did not enter the discussion until eight o'clock at night (he was just back from Rome with final approval of his own plan) and remained as firmly convinced as ever that the British were in no position to forestall his attack on Tobruk. ‘We must not lose our nerves’, he told Cruewell pointedly, and von Ravenstein was told not to move the battle group to Gabr Saleh. The chapter of woe from the storm was more upsetting than the doings of a few adventurous British patrols. Major-General Suemmermann with his makeshift division poised to attack Tobruk took a very different view, however, and during the night ordered Colonel Mickl of 155 Infantry Regiment to form a front facing south and south-west between Sidi Rezegh and El Adem to guard against a stab in the back.

The contradictory elements in the orders at different levels in 30 Corps could have been reconciled during the night by more experienced staffs; but haste has its price and CRUSADER came too soon for the Corps and Army headquarters to acquire the necessary skill. Gott's headquarters, on the other hand, was of long standing and none questioned its proficiency, so that at times the tail seemed to wag the dog. Thus Gott's worry about his left flank, unknown to Cunningham and not properly realised even at Corps, led to a startling and disastrous departure from the Army plan and Cunningham's current intentions. While the Army Commander was still working up to his decision to make for Tobruk, Gott was already on his way to join Brigadier Scott-Cockburn and his yeoman regiments of 22 Armoured Brigade. Before they had gone very far Gott caught them up and ordered Scott-Cockburn to attack Bir el Gubi at once.

The 11th Hussars promptly reported enemy tanks on their objective and the troopers drove on eager to get to grips with them, which they did at noon, with Royal Gloucestershire Hussars leading, 4 County of London Yeomanry on the left, and a mere eight field guns in support. Fortunately the Italians were not yet well established at El Gubi. The tank regiment of Ariete (the 132nd) had only reached there the day before, elements of 8 Bersaglieri Regiment were digging in when 22 Armoured Brigade arrived, and the bulk of the division was still to the north. The Italians were nevertheless able to bring down very much heavier supporting fire than was available for the British tank units, 132 Tank Regiments counter-attacked strongly in the afternoon, and the day ended with the Italians still at El Gubi and both sides licking fairly extensive wounds. Some fifty Italian tanks were destroyed or damaged and at least as many Crusaders, and the 22nd captured 200 enemy, six times as many prisoners as the Italians claim.

Such results would have been highly gratifying against either of the panzer divisions, but against a formation which was not even under Rommel's command (unbeknown to Eighth Army) and before the bulk of the German armour had been engaged they were calamitous, though sanguine first reports tended to hide this fact. Gott's impulsive action in ordering this attack without so much as consulting his own corps commander was at the root of many of his later troubles; yet such was his prestige that when Norrie joined him in the afternoon, after getting Cunningham's decision to make his main thrust towards Tobruk, no objections were raised. That the El Gubi attack side-tracked and caused heavy losses to half the armour available for such a thrust was not realised.

The reports which came in to Norrie and Gott at the latter's headquarters in the afternoon suggested that the relief of Tobruk might be far more easily effected than had been imagined. The 4th South African Armoured Cars led 6 Royal Tank Regiment towards Sidi Rezegh against negligible opposition and the Crusaders dashed on to the landing ground south-east of there and rounded up numerous enemy air crews and ground staff. Two aircraft managed to take off but nineteen airworthy planes were captured, together with many others already damaged. Indeed, the chief obstacles to the advance of 7 Armoured Brigade and the Support Group were patches of ground made soggy by the recent rain. The escarpment north of the airfield was left in enemy hands, but 7 Armoured Brigade was nevertheless within striking distance of the Tobruk siege lines and the immediate outlook seemed highly promising.

The Armoured Battle, 19-22 November 1941 foud colour diagrams of the 'Armoured Battle', 19-22 November 1941

From a wider viewpoint things were less satisfactory. The 4th Armoured Brigade north-west of Bir Gibni was still tied to the left flank of 13 Corps and the British armour was thereby split up into three groups, many miles apart, on a 50-mile arc at a time when the two panzer divisions were still within reach of each other. An essentially favorable situation of the previous evening had already been converted to an unfavorable one and the spectre of defeat in detail was there for those who chose to see it. On the other hand the enemy was little, if at all, better informed than Eighth Army or more judicious in his immediate reactions.

The looseness of command which had allowed 7 Armoured Division to break up into separate groups pursuing independent aims was apparent at lower levels as well. Thus 4 Armoured Brigade allowed one of its three regiments, 3 Royal Tanks, to go chasing north-eastwards behind the King's Dragoon Guards in pursuit of German reconnaissance troops and in its absence the main body of the brigade came under heavy attack. A more accurate assessment of the position by the enemy could well have resulted in a rapid concentration of both panzer divisions against Brigadier Gatehouse's brigade with disastrous results. As it was, 5 Panzer Regiment with added artillery was slowly assembled under Colonel Stephan, and in the late afternoon it was despatched against the left flank of 4 Armoured Brigade. The somewhat sketchy information on which this attack was based and its over-ambitious aim—to sweep round south-eastwards to Sidi Omar and destroy the whole of the British forces in this area—indicate that neither Panzer Group nor Africa Corps had yet got down to serious thinking about the new situation. Stephan Battle Group with its two tank battalions with 40-odd tanks each,

The official tank strength of 5 Pz Regt at the start of CRUSADER was 120, but next day it dropped to 83, a difference of 37 which cannot be accounted for in terms of battle losses and may have some connection with losses in SOMMERNACHTSTRAUM or with a wish to reassure Berlin regarding the ability of 21 Pz Div to carry out its role while Rommel attacked Tobruk.

one to the right rear of the other, moved off under the eyes of Ravenstein and Rommel himself and soon became locked in battle with what seemed to be a force of much superior strength. All efforts to outflank this force failed and frontal attack made little headway. After dark the Germans withdrew a few miles north, having lost eight tanks against 23 of Gatehouse's Stuarts.

In actual fact the two groups were fairly evenly matched (in the absence of 3 Royal Tanks): Gatehouse had a few more tanks (113 all told) and Stephan had more artillery, including a troop of ‘88s’. What gave the Germans an exaggerated picture of British strength was the superabundance (by Axis standards) of transport, a recurring factor throughout CRUSADER. The Germans never realised that the huge British B Echelons were often more hindrance than help in the heat of battle.

The absence of 3 Royal Tanks, however, drew an unexpected dividend and perhaps saved Gatehouse from attack next day by the whole of Africa Corps. Not only had 3 Royal Tanks (with King's Dragoon Guards) holed up 3 Reconnaissance Unit on the escarpment west of Bardia: it attracted the whole of 15 Panzer Division next day to an area which by then contained no more than one or two British armoured cars. Three British battle groups had been located, one heading for Tobrunk, another facing Stephan, and a third on the way to Capuzzo, and it was against the third that Cruewell mistakenly decided to make his main effort next morning. Ravenstein took a pessimistic view and preferred to hold his hand until the situation clarified, as he through the British much stronger. Neither Cruewell nor Rommel would concede this and they still looked on the British operations as a diversionary attack; but their agreement to commit 15 Panzer Division inevitably deferred the Tobruk assault, thereby yielding the British object if their diagnosis was correct.

The dispersed British armoured brigades were therefore given a few hours' grace on 20 November to concentrate against the German armour, either in attack or in defence of vital ground. But the indecisive outcome of the first clash with the Germans was claimed in some quarters as a victory and the grave danger in which Gatehouse now stood was not recognised. The next few hours could be critical and the battle needed firm control; yet at 5 a.m. on the 20th Cunningham flew back to his Advanced Headquarters in the Maddalena area. Communications forward from there were slow and there was no system such as the Germans used whereby higher formations intercepted wireless conversations or signals between lower formations and kept in touch from minute to minute with the changing situation. Without such an aid the British method of command was ineffective and divisions and even brigades were left to their own resources for long periods. Against an enemy who believed in tight control of operations this was asking for trouble, and the trouble was not long in coming.

Stephan Battle Group attacked southwards again in the morning of the 20th but found the fast Starts elusive and the guns of 2 Royal Horse Artillery irrepressible. The British tanks were less anxious to close than they had been before and their long-range tactics and rapid outflanking moves ate up Stephan's ammunition faster than he could afford. Knabe Battle Group (artillery, machinegunners and infantry of 21 Panzer Division) tried to come in on Stephan's left but was held up by KDG, reported as a strong force of tanks and guns. In mid-morning Stephan swung to his left rear to help Knabe and by noon, with almost no ammunition left, both groups broke off the action and withdrew north-eastwards. Tank losses were by German estimates eight British against four German; but British claims were far higher and again converted an indecisive action into supposed victory. Meanwhile 15 Panzer ‘attacked’ eastwards.

That rejoicing might be premature was soon learned when 4 Armoured Brigade moved a few miles north later in the morning and was then warned that the two panzer divisions had linked up and might shortly stage a combined attack. This was just what Cunningham had sought to bring about when he crossed the frontier with all three armoured brigades and the Support Group at his disposal, and his decision to make for Tobruk now appeared premature. The enemy had played into his hands by committing Stephan Battle Group in much the same haste and ignorance of the opposition as Scott-Cockburn's brigade had attacked El Gubi; but 7 Armoured Division had not been ready to receive this sacrificial offering. The rest of that division was committed elsewhere and Gatehouse might now have to stand alone, not only against Stephan but against both panzer divisions.

Cunningham was naturally worried and his BGS, Brigadier Galloway, warned Norrie by R/T and prompted him to order Scott-Cockburn to the aid of Gatehouse, a move which took all afternoon and turned the whole Corps situation upside-down. Other suggestions from Godwin-Austen and Freyberg that Gatehouse should avail himself of the support of the New Zealand Division, with its battalion of Valentines and its strong artillery then only a few miles to the south-east, were not accepted either by Gatehouse or his superiors, though 13 Corps did agree to release 4 Armoured Brigade from its protective role, recognising the inevitable. The three regiments of 4 Armoured Brigade meanwhile faced north confidently, apparently unaware of the anxieties felt on their behalf.

The danger was fortunately not as great as it appeared. A shortage of ammunition of which 21 Panzer had complained early in the morning developed by the afternoon into a complete breakdown of administrative services, leaving the whole division temporarily stranded a few miles west of Capuzzo. Cruewell now wanted both divisions to drive against Gatehouse's brigade; but 21 Panzer could not move. So 15 Panzer attacked alone in the late afternoon, into the setting sun and too late to achieve a decision against the 100-odd tanks of 4 Armoured Brigade. Even this division was short of petrol and it was confused by the deceptive mass of British transport, which obscured the centres of resistance and thinned out German artillery fire as targets seemed to expand alarmingly. The three British armoured regiments were nevertheless gradually pushed back south-eastwards across the Trigh el-Abd in furious fighting, and when the leading elements of 22 Armoured Brigade arrived from the west at dusk they were more than welcome, though too late to do much this day.

This time the enemy camped for the night on the battlefield and damaged Stuarts not towed away were irretrievably lost, whereas 15 Panzer by its own accounts had lost no tanks at all. Since 4 Armoured Brigade had this day lost more than forty tanks from all causes this outcome was highly ominous, though the bad omens were hidden in greatly inflated claims of German tank losses, which had so far been no more than a dozen all told. Gatehouse now had only 97 of the 164 tanks with which he had entered Libya.

The switching of 22 Armoured Brigade from El Gubi put paid to rather vague plans of installing a South African brigade as a new tenant there in place of Ariete and of sending the 22nd to join 7 Armoured Brigade and the Support Group at Sidi Rezegh. The South Africans had done little so far other than attract the main attentions of the enemy air forces, an unsought and unwelcome distinction, and were only too willing to co-operate with Scott-Cockburn in dislodging the Italians. But this scheme was watered down even before the 22nd departed to the nebulous task of ‘masking’ El Gubi if the Italians offered determined opposition. At all events one brigade, the 1st, dug in in an arc east and south of El Gubi and, after much delay, 5 South African Brigade began to move to Sidi Rezegh, reaching two miles north of the Trigh el-Abd before darkness (and lack of training in night marches) halted it.

The need of more infantry at Sidi Rezegh had been felt acutely since dawn on the 20th. With no more than a company at hand, 7 Armoured Brigade could not seize and hold the raised rim of the escarpment just to the north and gain observation across to Ed Duda. It could not even dislodge the anti-tank guns brought up in the west during the night, nor the infantry of Africa and Bologna Divisions which had dug in facing what Panzer Group still regarded as a minor intrusion. The tank units and guns with a handful of infantry were thus condemned to hold a three-mile-wide ledge of flat desert sprinkled with scrub, which gave cover to infantry and low anti-tank guns but none to tanks or lorries. The enemy overlooked this ledge from the north and south-west and shelled it all day from guns hidden below the Rezegh escarpment, and when the Support Group arrived in mid-morning to relieve the tank units it came under accurate and persistent fire. Its five infantry companies could not attack six or seven enemy battalions, though with the backing of the 160-odd tanks of 7 Armoured Brigade they could expect to hold their ground. Four companies were stretched thinly across three and a half miles of the northern front and the fifth covered the right rear to the south-east, with two field batteries in between and the squadrons of 4 SA Armoured Car Regiment roaming widely in support. Stukas bombed the area in the afternoon but caused no casualties and did little damage.

It needed a sanguine disposition to see this as a promising situation, now 22 Armoured was diverted to the east and the South Africans had the curious role for infantry of containing an armoured division. General Freyberg's prediction that more infantry would be needed to relieve Tobruk was already coming true. But Gott was as optimistic as ever and told Norrie as early as 10 a.m. that the Support Group would be able to link up with the Tobruk garrison if the sortle started next morning. The sortie was therefore ordered and Gott was given the task of ‘co-ordinating all troops in the SIDI REZEGH area’.

Norrie, ‘Narrative of Events’.

Gott was at this time unaware that the enemy retained the Sidi Rezegh escarpment, and it came as a surprise to him when he paid another visit at night (20th–21st) and learned that Brigadier Campbell, commanding the Support Group, had ‘no real foothold’

Cabinet Office official narrative, ‘General Auchinleck's Offensive and the Relief of Tobruk’, Ch. G, Phase 2 (hereinafter the UK narrative).

on this vital feature and that the enemy's use of the Trigh Capuzzo and the By-pass road was unimpaired. An improvement could nevertheless be expected in the morning, when 5 South African Brigade was due to arrive, and Campbell therefore agreed to attack northwards at first light on the 21st with the four companies of infantry facing the rim of the escarpment supported by his 25-pounders. With the escarpment in his hands, a link-up between 7 Armoured Brigade and the Tobruk garrison at Ed Duda should be a simple matter, or so it seemed.

This was a haphazard way of mounting an operation of immense significance for the whole campaign. In the planning stages it had been realised that a premature sortie could expose the Tobruk garrison to grave danger; yet this risk was taken before both panzer divisions had been engaged and at a time when neither of them was in any way tied to operations elsewhere. Shortly after the sortie was ordered, indeed, Gatehouse's situation was viewed with considerable alarm and his brigade ended the day in hasty retreat from obviously superior forces. To cover operations at Sidi Rezegh both 4 and 22 Armoured Brigades were to be ready to attack northwards on the 21st, and if the enemy withdrew he was to be ‘relentlessly pursued’

UK narrative.

—an eventuality which might have commended itself to Gatehouse and Scott-Cockburn but which would have appeared in a very different light to those in the path of two onrushing panzer divisions.

By an ironic turn of events the enemy was planning such a move, though not as a retreat. After breaking contact at Gabr Saleh, 15 Panzer was to swing right, 21 Panzer was to come up on its right, and the two were to advance north-westwards at 6.30 a.m. on the 21st through Sidi Rezegh to Belhamed, to end in one swift stroke all chance of a junction between the invaders and the garrison of Tobruk. Anti-tank and field gunners with sapper-infantry would cover the rear and hold off the British forces now south of Gabr Saleh. Rommel's confidence that small rearguards could achieve this was not in the event misplaced; but the scheme was risky and it is worth nothing that if these rearguards failed the whole of Africa Corps could be sandwiched in the midst of 7 Armoured Division, with South Africans and part of the Tobruk garrison piling in to complete its destruction, a situation more favorable to Eighth Army than the crusader planners had dared hope for.

There was no prima facie case for preferring this move to the more obvious one of driving home the advantage which 15 Panzer had gained the previous evening by a combined attack southwards from Gabr Saleh, and Cruewell, whose idea it was to link the two divisions in an attack, had expressed no preference as to the direction or objective and asked Panzer Group to specify these. The decisive influence seems to have been Rommel's grudging acceptance of crusader as a major offensive and its corollary that the British intended nothing less than the final relief of Tobruk. Rommel guessed further that the garrison would try to break out south-eastwards next day, and Suemmermann issued orders accordingly that strongpoints facing Tobruk must be held at all costs. The sudden departure of Africa Corps from the frontier areas, however, would leave the strongpoints there to their own resources, and Rommel therefore signalled urgently to General Schmitt to defend his positions against attacks from any direction, including the rear, and submit situation reports every three hours until further notice, and de Giorgis likewise. Rommel's defensive scheme which had seemed admirable during the long lull now displayed its weakness. He could take his armour back towards Tobruk, but only by turning his back on Schmitt and de Giorgis, and his nagging worries on their behalf were to become a distraction which in the end fatally undermined his judgment.

vii

Dawn on the 21st brought with it high hopes that crusader would gather speed and weight and quickly achieve victory. The Tobruk garrison would direct its strong tank force and artillery and two brigades of infantry against the Italians in the east and south-east and burst through to Ed Duda, while 7 Armoured Brigade would pass through the Support Group at Sidi Rezegh and make contact with the garrison, the South Africans meanwhile consolidating the Sidi Rezegh end of the ‘corridor’ and 4 and 22 Armoured Brigades taking care of the German armour. Three hours sufficed to being these hopes crashing down.

The Tobruk sortie had been planned as a second-phase operation, after the battle of the armour. No threat of tank attack was envisaged as the break-out forces broke through to Ed Duda and linked up with 30 Corps, and from there they would begin at once to ‘roll up’ the remaining siege troops, in conjunction with the infantry of 30 Corps. But this was not what Norrie had had in mind when he proposed making straight for El Adem. He wanted the sortie on the second day (the 19th) with the enemy armour still undefeated. Cunningham did not perceive this distinction and though he rejected the ‘go for Torbruk’ suggestion he still hoped to start the sortie on that day. Even Major-General Scobie, who was present at the conference of 15 October, was not asked to face enemy armour and he had only one plan. this was to establish his army tank brigade (of mixed infantry, cruiser and light tanks) and an infantry battalion on Ed Duda with a field regiment close at hand. With British forces at Sidi Rezegh this would close the Trigh Capuzzo and By-pass road to enemy traffic. A heavier sortie was possible: Scobie had four strong infantry brigades, each with anti-tank companies and MMGs, and could give them strong artillery support. But the question had not been put. What he planned was what had been asked of him.

The night of 20–21 November was filled with stealthy movement as four bridges were put across the anti-tank ditch in the south-eastern sector of the Tobruk perimeter and the tanks and infantry assembled for the sortie, while in the west and south the Polish Carpathian Brigade and the 23rd Infantry launched feints with thunderous artillery support and apparent success. A brief bombing by the RAF after dawn was quickly followed at 6.30 a.m. by the assault on the foremost strongpoints, with the help of timed concentrations of artillery fire. The 2nd King's Own on the left with the 19 Matildas of D Squadron, 7 Royal Tanks, gained an easy success and 120 ‘completely surprised’

Quoted in the UK narrative.

German prisoners—the first hint that the opposition was not what had been supposed. The next hint was that all the unit carriers and many tanks fell victim to unsuspected minefields. One company had strayed to the right, but was not needed, and the strongpoint (nicknamed ‘Butch’) was soon strongly held against possible counter-attack.

The ease of this success on the left, however, was like a blue patch of sky in a thunderstorm. The 2nd Black Watch on the right suffered fearful losses and the survivors had to draw on the deepest resources of the human spirit to sustain themselves and the traditions of their regiment in its hardest struggle since Loos, 1915.

Fergusson, The Black Watch and the King's Enemies, p. 111.

The Black Watch were without the 50 Matildas of 4 Royal Tanks at first, as these had unwittingly veered off to the left, and the infantry came under deadly fire in front of the first objective, ‘Jill’. As the Matildas, correcting their error, drove down from the north trailed by the detached company of 2 King's Own, B and D Companies staged a desperate and costly frontal assault. By these combined efforts Jill was taken and the King's Own company occupied it while the Black Watch pressed on towards their final objective, ‘Tiger’. But more unlocated minefields intervened, anti-tank guns spoke up here and there, and the remaining I tanks broke up into small detachments probing as best they could for a way through. The defenders of Tiger lived up to the British nickname for their position and offered ferocious resistance, to which was added heavy fire from neighbouring strongpoints. As detachments of I tanks slowly closed in from three sides, the bagpipes (hitherto silent for security reasons) sounded above the noise of battle. One piper, wounded, continued to play where he fell. Then at 9 a.m. the battalion, now numbering fewer than 200, rose in the wake of B Squadron and took Tiger at the point of the bayonet. One stubborn party of machine-gunners held out in the south-west until the tanks ran over it. Five officers and 160 other ranks of the Black Watch remained in action, less than a quarter of those who had set our three hours before. Their booty included 12 field and 30 machine guns (soon turned against the enemy), together with the chastened survivors of Tiger's garrison. These Germans and Italians had no cause for shame. The superlative éalan of the Black Watch in the attack had been equalled by the remarkable persistence of the defence in the face of formidable tank-and-infantry pressure. Later in the morning D Company of 1 Bedfords and Herts came up to reinforce the Black Watch, whose numbers increased by evening to eight officers and 196 other ranks.

In terms of killed, some 200, the Black Watch lost about twice as many here as any NZ battalion in a single action throughout the war.

The carriers of 2 Queen's had been repulsed at Tugun at 7 a.m. and tried again at ten with no better result. A heavier attack was needed but took some time to prepare. Meanwhile the Black Watch had suffered fire from ‘Jack’ a little to the north-east and ‘a weak coy’, with two troops of 4 Royal Tanks and supported by 104 Royal Horse Artillery, quickly seized this position at about 10.30 a.m. This was a more significant move than at first appeared. Not only did it forestall a much larger operation intended for the same purpose, but ‘Jack’ proved to be the headquarters of Meythaler Battalion and the kingpin of the defence on the left. Major Meythaler had signalled his divisional headquarters at 10.25 a.m. that all was quiet; ‘9 British tanks out of action on mines’, he added, and ‘10 tanks still waiting ready to attack us’. Then there was silence. Meythaler himself was captured and General Suemmermann was left to guess what had happened.

This gave a lodgment in enemy territory three and a half miles deep and ten square miles in area. An outer ring of enemy strongpoints was more loosely connected and could be more easily penetrated and there was, moreover, a considerable amount of artillery, mostly Italian, which now lay open to attack in the intervening spaces. The 28 assorted cruiser tanks and 21 light tanks of 1 Royal Tanks had been meant to sweep unaided through this area, overrunning various headquarters and creating confusion; but this naturally took no account of the many undetected minefields which interlaced the front and of the anti-tank guns which lay in ambush, to which the thickening haze of dust and smoke added another obstacle. Thus 1 Royal Tanks lost four tanks to mines at the start and was held up by guns at ‘Wolf’, south-east of Tiger, until the I tanks of 4 Royal Tanks could engage them. With this aid C Squadron swept through the northern part of Wolf and after some delay A and C Squadrons attacked ‘Freddie’, east of Tiger, only to be turned back by anti-tank fire. Passing through Jack after its capture, 1 Royal Tanks took another forty prisoners. The regiment's final objective was ‘Walter’, just south of the Via Balbia four miles outside the Tobruk perimeter; but there was now little hope of reaching this and 1 Royal Tanks therefore rallied north-west of Butch, leaving a light troop to defend a battery of 1 RHA which had moved forward to Jill. The more elaborate attack on Tugun went in at 3 p.m. and gained perhaps half the position, together with 250 Italians and many light field guns; but the Italians in the western half could not be dislodged and the base of the break-out area remained on this account uncomfortably narrow.

If the raids of 1 Royal Tanks had achieved less than intended and the rear areas had proved less vulnerable than the planners imagined, they had nevertheless caused much alarm in the enemy camp and brought Rommel himself to the scene. He was desperately anxious to prevent a link-up between the garrison and the British at Sidi Rezegh and came up at the head of 3 Reconnaissance Unit and a scratch force of guns of various kinds, including Suemmermann's last company of anti-tank guns. Much of the opposition 32 Army Tank Brigade (which was now in command of the sortie) attributed to existing strongpoints undoubtedly came from this mobile force and a German author speaks of ‘bitter, costly fighting’ here.

Kriebel, Feldzug in Nordafrika, an unpublished narrative complied at the end of the war in conjunction with German officers who took part—a valuable adjunct to the contemporary German documents. Kriebel was GSO I of 15 Pz Div in crusader.

Yet it was not this force which chiefly hindered the feared link-up, nor even the strong Italian opposition at Tugun. The decisive influence was the adverse trend to events at Sidi Rezegh. The final thrust, to Ed Duda, was postponed from 2.20 to 4 p.m. because of Tugun; then within five minutes of zero hour word came from 30 Corps that the South Africans could not get through and Ed Duda operations was forthwith put off indefinitely.

The chief concern now was to make fast the valuable gains until the advance to Ed Duda could be resumed. Prisoners taken so far numbered 1100, half of them German, and any alarm which Scobie might feel at the addition of 10–12 miles to the length of the perimeter he now had to defend with 59 fewer tanks was surpassed by Suemmermann's dismay at the sudden reversal of his situation. The war diary of Africa Division described the outlook as ‘very serious’ and added that the next day ‘would probably bring a crisis.’

viii

Suemmermann's view was more comprehensive than Scobie's, as he was committed at Sidi Rezegh as well as Tobruk, and for him the day had provided a bewildering succession of fluctuations of fortune on both fronts, ending with as much uncertainty as it had started. At Sidi Rezegh 155 Infantry Regiment, on the escarpment north of the airfield and the lower ground to the west, was in the path of the British advance to link up with Tobruk and was told to hold its ground at all costs, as was 361 African Regiment on Point 175, just to the east. The latter, though ill-equipped, had the better position, being covered to some extent by a deep wadi—Rugbet en-Nbeidat

‘Rugbet’ = wadi; ‘en-Nbeidat’ = the Abeidat, the chief bedouin tribe of the region.

—curling round from south to west and another to the east. These formations and Italians (probably of Pavia Division) who were working their way eastwards along the southernmost escarpment from Bir Bu Creimisa greatly outnumbered in infantry the British at Sidi Rezegh; but they viewed the 100-odd tanks of 7 Armoured Brigade with understandable concern.

From the British viewpoint everything depended on these tanks and on the early arrival of 5 South African Brigade. Meanwhile three companies of 1 King's Royal Rifle Corps—the ‘60th Rifles’—and A Company of 2 Rifle Brigade prepared to attack northwards. Planners calculated and consulted throughout the night to get this small force across the billiard-table surface of the airfield, an oblong cleared of the low scrub which dotted the surrounding desert and mercilessly exposed to enemy fire. Then the infantry was to seize the escarpment to the north and gain observation over the Trigh Capuzzo as a first step towards linking up with the Tobruk garrison. A Company of 2 Rifle Brigade was to occupy the barely discernible Point 167 on the north-western edge of the landing ground and the 300 men of the 60th Rifles would take over the rest of the escarpment as far as the Rugbet en-Nbeidat, a stretch of two and a half miles. Night patrols found no enemy on the objectives but ‘small numbers’

Wake and Deedes (editors), Swift and Bold, The Story of the King's Royal Rifle Corps in the Second World War 1939–1945, p. 64.

were nevertheless expected to be there. These should be dealt with adequately by a concentration of all fifty available 25-pounders, and 6 Royal Tanks was to cover the left flank and move down to the Trigh Capuzzo, sending a detachment on to Ed Duda when the time was ripe. The right flank would be open but 7 Hussars could quickly move up to cover it, while 2 Royal Tanks guarded the rear.

The attack was due to start at 8.30. a.m. and an hour before this the enemy shelled the whole length of the starting line as if to indicate it to the waiting riflemen. Then at 7.45 the South African armoured cars patrolling to the south-east reported a vast mass of enemy armour, perhaps 200 tanks with supporting arms, advancing rapidly. There was no time for elaborate counter-measures and Brigadier Davy had to act quickly. He could not call off the attack, as 70 Division had long since started its sortie and expected help at Ed Duda. The best he could do was to hand over the attacking force to Brigadier Campbell of the Support Group, detach 7 Hussars and F Battery 4 RHA, and with these and 2 Royal Tanks, 100 tanks in all, turn to meet the newcomers. Two miles to the south-east he got ready to fight what was in fact the bulk of Africa Corps.

The attack on Sidi Rezegh went in under a short concentration by the 42 remaining guns and covered by a thin smoke screen. The Bren carriers made the best of this, racing up towards the escarpment in the wake of the bursting shells. Five of the seven carriers of D Company on the right were disabled by flanking fire, but A Company's carriers missed this and reached the edge of the escarpment only to find the enemy strongly posted in the numerous wadis. The platoon commander made for a large wadi and there the crews dismounted and carried on a series of skirmishes which brought in thirty prisoners, mostly Italian, and ended the struggle on the right. Carriers of C Company on the left came under heavy fire from the west, but met no enemy on the escarpment and stayed to guard this flank until the infantry got forward. The only remaining opposition on the objective was now in the centre, facing A Company.

The infantry, meanwhile, followed in widely extended order. A filmy veil of dust and smoke lingering from the shellfire gave welcome cover as the men trudged across the airfield and little fire came their way. All companies, however, ‘came under very severe fire from all arms and were forced to get down’ when they emerged from this veil 200 yards short of the escarpment.

Swift and Bold, p. 65.

D Company managed by fire and movement to get up to the wadi containing A Company's carriers with small loss, C Company reached the crest on the left with ‘fairly heavy casualties’

Ibid., p. 66.

, and A Company, 2 Rifle Brigade, reached Point 167 with comparative ease despite MG fire from the left which 6 Royal Tanks failed to subdue. In front of A Company of 60th Rifles, however, resistance was fierce and it was only by heroic individual actions and pressure from the flanks that ground could be gained. Rifleman Beeley, for example, ran forward firing his Bren from his hip and killed all seven men in one post, silencing an anti-tank gun and two MGs, but losing his own life in so doing. (His bravery and inspiring example were recognised by a posthumous VC.) The acting adjutant at great personal risk went across to the artillery FOO and directed his attention to the most troublesome source of fire, which was then silenced. The survivors of A Company rushed in ‘with fixed swords’ and all opposition ended.

The 60th Rifles lost 3 officers and 26 other ranks killed and 55 wounded in this very fine action; enemy dead might have been as many as 300 and some 700 German and Italian prisoners were collected. ‘There were large numbers of all kinds of machine guns, mortars, anti-tank rifles and quick-firing

Probably ‘automatic’ is meant.

anti-tank guns in the positions, together with quantities of all types of ammunition…. The positions were carefully and cleverly sited and well built up with stones’

Swift and Bold, p. 66.

and it seemed that at least one German MG company had been in occupation. By noon the whole escarpment was held, enemy shelling had stopped, and men could move freely about their tasks amid the gruesome relics of the fighting. The Commanding Officer of the 60th Rifles, Lieutenant-Colonel De Salis, decided to close in to the west on Point 162, dominating the track down the escarpment past the tomb of Sidi Rezegh. There the depleted companies adapted enemy defences to their own needs in the rocky ground and artillery OPs began to direct fire on the By-pass road to the north-west.

Unfortunately 6 Royal Tanks had not waited for this propitious time to start the drive to Ed Duda. The regiment knocked out five German tanks on the way to the Trigh Capuzzo; but a ‘special detachment’ (including Regimental Headquarters) despatched unsupported towards Ed Duda drove through a German engineer company on Belhamed, causing temporary confusion but losing two tanks, and then struck more trouble, probably from the scratch force under Rommel himself. None of this detachment returned. This needless loss of the bulk of the regiment left only enough tanks to form a composite squadron and this was soon urgently summoned to help Davy.

Brigadier Davy had undertaken an almost hopeless task and had the German advance been pressed resolutely he would soon have been overrun. The 7th Hussars soon lost its CO and the bulk of its tanks, and the remaining dozen, apart from a detached troop, became separated from Brigade Headquarters and had to drive far to the east to find a way round the huge enemy force. This it did, after many tribulations, but too late to take further part in the day's fighting. With only 2 Royal Tanks and the guns left (all the latter now having turned to face the German armour) Davy did what he could to shield the Support Group. The enemy luckily showed some uncertainty at this stage and drew off north-eastwards, covered by anti-tank guns. South of Point 175 the German tanks refuelled, and when they came on again in mid-afternoon the 25-pounders of the Support Group gave them a fiery reception. Most of the remaining strength of 2 Royal Tanks was quickly expended in a flank attack and at this critical juncture Brigadier Campbell arrived on the scene with the composite squadron of 6 Royal Tanks. With the strength of desperation the enemy was brought to a halt, and the day ended with Sidi Rezegh still precariously in British hands and the enemy in overwhelming force just to the east.

Why 7 Armoured Brigade and the Support Group had to face the whole of the German armour this day without help from the rest of their division is an unhappy story. Over-estimates of enemy tank losses made 4 and 22 Armoured Brigades only too ready to see the sudden disengagement of Africa Corps at Bir Gibni as a retreat, and Cunningham at Advanced Army Headquarters heard accordingly from Norrie at 8.45 a.m. that the German armour had ‘taken a knock’

Quoted in the UK narrative.

and the action had now developed into a running fight. Scott-Cockburn was told to intercept the enemy and Gatehouse to attack his rear; but neither could match the pace of the German force, though they managed to disable some lorries. Both had to halt for refuelling, 4 Armoured Brigade after only a few miles, and armoured cars were left to carry on the pursuit. When the brigades got under way again, the 4th on the right was held up by rain-softened desert and later by a few 88-millimetre guns eight miles from the scene of the last-ditch stand by Davy and Campbell, while the 22nd veered too far south and passed some miles beyond the battlefield before Gott could recall it. Scott-Cockburn's Crusaders at last came to grips with tanks at Bir el Haiad in the evening, a dozen miles south of the Support Group, but only a minor skirmish ensued before the contestants retired for the night. Neither brigade suffered more than a few scratches from the day's fighting, whereas 7 Armoured Brigade was virtually destroyed: it had 28 tanks left out of 160-odd and the Support Group was in a serious predicament. The 5th South African Brigade, far from joining the Support Group as intended, had been halted by Gott personally south-east of Bir el Haiad and told to dig in there until the route north was open. There the South Africans beat off an attack by Italian tanks from the west and knocked out eight tanks and at 2.30 p.m. repulsed a German tank thrust from the north-east while Gott waited for the situation to clarify. He was out of touch with his other brigades and for most of the day could do little or nothing or influence the course of events.

Norrie's hopeful interpretation of the situation early in the morning, however, had set in motion a train of events which, though intended to be subsidiary to the armoured battle, proved in the end decisive: he recommended starting the operations of 13 Corps. Cunningham had not expected this and took some time to consider it. He spoke to Norrie first, pointing out that though it ‘would probably have no immediate effect on the tank battle, the general effect might well be important’

UK narrative.

—true enough, but a radical departure from the crusader plan, nevertheless, and all the more so since 4 Armoured Brigade was released from its protective role. Then Cunningham asked Godwin-Austen's opinion and finally Auchinleck's. All agreed and General Freyberg was therefore told to make for the Trigh Capuzzo at Sidi Azeiz (confirmed in writing at 9.45 a.m.), and General Messervy was authorised to carry out his tasks in the frontier area.

None of these officers had any idea of the real trend of events. One report Freyberg heard this morning, for example, was that 65 enemy AFVs

Armoured fighting vehicles, normally tanks, though armoured cars would be counted.

were ‘confirmed destroyed yesterday’, and when 4 Armoured Brigade drove across the battlefield on the 21st it supplied no corrected estimate of enemy tank losses. By noon the whole of 30 Corps had broken up into brigade groups with independent aims and uncertain communications and no accurate picture of operations could emerge.

Everything put in Gott's hands except the South African brigade had slipped through them. Norrie could learn more from Scobie than from Gott and it was about the Tobruk sortie that Cunningham began to worry. Perhaps with Freyberg's warning in his ears, he pressed for greater effort to get the South Africans forward—both brigades if at all possible. Brigadier Napier, Norrie's BGS, assured Galloway, and through him Cunningham, that the battle was under control and he hoped to get both of Brink's brigades up next day to co-operate with 70 Division. To Cunningham, watching flags on the map, there was no obvious reason for the hold-up. A liaison officer arrived from 30 Corps in the late afternoon with more or less reassuring news of the battle; but the must have left before Norrie halted the sortie short of its final stage, the dash to Ed Duda. Not knowing this, Cunningham anxiously visualised Scobie's spear- head reaching that feature and there being stranded. He had no word of the débâcle in the morning, when a large part of 6 Royal Tanks disappeared below the escarpment at Sidi Rezegh never to return, and he had no inkling of the plight of the Support Group. His while conception of the battle was artificial and he told the LO to tell Norrie that 30 Corps must link up with the sortie if it reached Ed Duda: ‘this would appear to involve only a short night march’, he added.

Quoted in the UK narrative.

To Campbell's embattled troops at Sidi Rezegh these words might have sounded like a message from outer space. Cunningham's last injunction to the LO is revealing: if ‘Tobruch were not cleared up’ he would ‘certainly required to see the Corps Commander tomorrow’

Ibid.

. A firm order would have been more to the point.

Cunningham's instructions to Godwin-Austen were even less distinct. Godwin-Austen could ‘go forward as he pleased, and need not refer unnecessarily to the Army Commander’

Ibid.

though he was not to take ‘undue risk’. These orders did, however, contain one meaty item: the New Zealand brigade group designated to co-operate if need be with 30 Corps—the 6th, now at Bir el-Hariga—would be despatched westwards and firm orders on this point would follow. This was the only way that the crusader plan now allowed him to influence the Tobruk battle and Cunningham eagerly seized it. If the South Africans could not get through to Ed Duda perhaps the New Zealanders could. The LO from 30 Corps had been told of this and of Cunningham's feeling that the fighting outside Tobruk would call for more and more infantry, and it must have come as a surprise when Norrie rejected the scheme. Norrie took it that the New Zealanders would come through Gabr Saleh, a route closed to infantry, whereas Cunningham meant them to drive above the escarpment south of the Trigh Capuzzo. When Norrie heard this he agreed; he was not particularly anxious for more infantry but welcomed the Valentine tanks which he wrongly understood to be with the brigade.

The Army order to 13 Corps about the New Zealand brigade stated that it was to move ‘with all possible speed’

UK narrative.

but this phrase was not passed on to the New Zealand Division and no sense of urgency was felt at either Corps or Divisional Headquarters. So far as Godwin-Austen and Freyberg knew, the battle was going favourably and a Corps situation report at 8.10 p.m. quoted an estimate that 170 enemy tanks had been hit, many vehicles and guns disabled or captured, and the Italians were rapidly withdrawing ‘true to form’.

In reality Eighth Army had lost 180-odd tanks this day against a loss of fewer than twenty enemy tanks (including eight Italian tanks claimed by South African guns). Had Cunningham and his corps commanders realised that by this time .30 Corps was not outnumbered in tanks by its opponents—it barely reached parity with the Germans alone—they would have been thunderstruck. So long as 1 and 32 Army Tank Brigades remained in different compartments of the battle from that of 7 Armoured Division, Gott's major purpose of seeking out and destroying the enemy armour was now beyond his strength.

It was a stroke of luck that neither Rommel nor Cruewell saw the battle in the light. The former was still desperately anxious to maintain the siege of Tobruk and had in mind a defensive action to economise in resources and gradually adjust the balance with an enemy be thought greatly superior in strength. For the same reason Cruewell proposed a very different course of action. He was intent on a battle of manoeuver in which he felt that the superior skill and battle-worthiness of his panzer troops offered the only hope of success; supplies at hand could not sustain a long-drawn-out battle. As a compromise between Rommel's and Cruewell's viewpoints Africa Corps was split up, 21 Panzer going to Belhamed in a blocking role with 155 Infantry Regiment on its right and 361 Africa Regiment on its left, while 15 Panzer drove back along the Trigh Capuzzo and assembled south of Gasr el Arid. Cruewell meant to tackle the flank and rear of a force which he though stretched in one vast mass of tanks, guns and vehicles from Sidi Rezegh to Bir el-Haleizin. By so doing he took his strongest formation right off the battlefield before dawn on 22 November, and it was not until after dark that it returned to the ground it willingly gave up in the morning. While 15 Panzer was thus touring its own backyard the British armour was free to concentrate against the Germans and Italians south-east of Tobruk.

Now was the time to smash through the weaker of the two panzer divisions, the 21st, and the battered 155 Infantry Regiment and join hands with the Tobruk garrison. For the first time 7 Armoured Division could apply its full strength at one point and had every advantage of ground and observation. The situation around the newly-formed salient in the Tobruk perimeter was also favorable, the enemy there was still uncertain and confused, and from Scobie's viewpoint there was everything to be said for pushing on to Ed Duda before opposition hardened, though not unless 30 Corps meant to meet to him there.

As General Norrie learned the details of the previous day's fighting and formed a better appreciation of the situation, however, he gave up the idea of pushing through to Ed Duda on the 22nd and postponed the last stage of the Tobruk sortie because of ‘the unfavorable situation at Sidi Rezegh’.

UK narrative.

He was still at Gott's headquarters somewhere west of Gabr Saleh and had to rely on what came over the ‘blower’, on delayed reports by LOs, and on various signals, the sum total of which made a patchy picture. The one fact which towered ominously above everything was that 7 Armoured Division now had only 204 tanks in working order. Despite gross over-estimates of enemy tank losses, which remained uncorrected, this was enough to induce caution until the situation cleared. Norrie's attitude was reasonable, though he was ignoring Cunningham's wishes in not forcing the issue at Ed Duda; but a heavier penalty than the Army Commander's displeasure was to be exacted. He was shortly to be faced with the utter ruination of the armoured plan.

The morning's operations on the 22nd were deceptive. Skirmishes took place at various points from Sidi Rezegh to Bir el Haiad, ten miles to the south, and it was not at all clear from the behaviour of some enemy units that they were trying to get away. Gunners of a battery of 60 Field Regiment, indeed, gained the opposite impression. They were rushed up to the eastern flank to meet an attack by forty tanks and blazed away at them over open sights in a heroic duel, ‘gunners dropping dead and wounded about their guns’ and other braving furious fire to bring up more ammunition. A fight to the death seemed under way when the enemy suddenly broke off and disappeared. The CO of the 60th Field

Lt-Col A. F. Hely (later Brigadier), whose grim account in The Royal Artillery Commemoration Book, 1939–1945, pp. 188–9, is the source of the quotation.

claims credit for this one behalf of his gunners and they certainly deserved praise, but the enemy was in fact doing what he intended. Some tanks descended the Rugbet en-Nbeidat to the Trigh Capuzzo, but more got down the escarpment farther east. While 21 Panzer disposed itself at Belhamed during the morning, 15 Panzer slowly retracted its sprawling limbs and made off in the opposite direction, assembling 20 miles from Belhamed in the course of the afternoon. The 22nd Armoured Brigade followed only a short distance and came to rest on the southernmost escarpment east of Point 178, while 4 Armoured Brigade went off on a wild-goose chase after an enemy force said to be ten miles south. No such force was found and the brigade slowly retraced its steps over swampy ground back to its starting point at Bir el-Haleizin. An effective concentration at Sidi Rezegh was as far off as ever and the two armoured brigades now showed a marked reluctance to venture on the three-mile-wide ledge between the Sidi Rezegh and southern escarpments. They voted instead for freedom of manoeuvre on the open plateau and thus threw away the reward earned by the Support Group in gaining dominance over the Trigh Capuzzo. With the main enemy on the lower ground between there and Ed Duda, the British armour could advance under cover of its field guns with splendid observation and every chance of success. But 21 Panzer was allowed to assemble at Belhamed opposed only by the field guns, and the Germans quickly regained the initiative.

The panzer troops were accustomed to a faster tempo of operations than their opponents and planning in Eighth Army was apt to be outdated by sudden and unexpected German moves. Thus Gott placed a sanguine construction on a lull at 1.30 p.m. and conferred on the landing ground with officers at hand, deciding to bring up 5 South African Brigade to repeat on a larger scale the attack of the previous morning to gain a wider base on the Sidi Rezegh escarpment next morning for a thrust to Ed Duda. At 2 p.m. he set out for the South African brigade to fill in the details of this scheme; twenty minutes later 21 Panzer attacked.

This was on Rommel's own initiative. With a hazy idea of what Cruewell intended with 15 Panzer Division, he came up to Ravenstein's headquarters and ordered what he thought would be a supporting operation: Knabe Group, the infantry of the division, was to take on the formidable assignment of attacking southwards straight up the escarpment into the teeth of the Support Group while 5 Panzer Regiment with attached ‘88s’ was to swing round the western edge of the same escarpment and attack eastwards up the gentle slope of the three-mile-wide ledge to regain the airfield. As an aid to a major assault from the east by 15 Panzer this was reasonable enough; as a solo effort by Ravenstein's weaker division it would have appeared preposterous and Rommel certainly did not intend it thus. When 21 Panzer succeeded tout seul in regaining the airfield the final doom of British armoured hopes for crusader was sealed.

The victory thus gained had deep foundations. Never did the panzer troops give a plainer demonstration that their battle tactics were in a class far above those of their opponents. Neither side had any shortage of courage or determination and it was the superior combination of all arms which allowed 5 Panzer Regiment to make steady progress in the face of counter-thrusts by the yeomen of 22 Armoured Brigade. Campbell and his dwindling band of gunners and infantry performed their usual prodigies of valour, but weight of numbers and guns and the presence of panzers behind them tore loose the grip of the 60th Rifles and the company of 2 Rifle Brigade from the escarpment above the tomb of Sidi Rezegh, and the men were rounded up in sad clusters in the wadis and re-entrants and herded into captivity. German anti-tank guns on both this and the southern escarpment meanwhile formed a gauntlet which Scott-Cockburn's Crusaders tried to run with little chance of success. Those which got farthest ended up victims to the ‘88s’ with 5 Panzer Regiment.

The 4th Armoured Brigade was slow in arriving and by the time its 108 Stuarts were within striking distance the remnants of the 22nd were making a valiant but unavailing stand on the airfield. All eyes were on the German tanks which appeared from time to time through the haze of dust and smoke, and the 25-pounders engaged them whenever they could over open sights, neglecting the ‘88s’ and 50-millimetre guns which were doing most of the damage. But this was not the occasion for a revision of British armoured tactics and the Stuarts when they came were introduced with care lest they too became burnt offerings to a more skilful enemy.

Gott and Gatehouse conferred briefly south of Point 175 and then 3 and 5 Royal Tanks edged gingerly westwards south of the airfield until the former linked up with 22 Armoured Brigade. But Brigadier Campbell was impatient. He had been driving about the battlefield all afternoon in an open car, most of his infantry were overrun, and now his gunners were fighting desperately against heavy odds. Campbell therefore led one of the RTR regiments into an attack across the airfield. This was soon repulsed (though it gave 5 Panzer Regiment some anxious moments), Campbell was wounded, his headquarters and some of his guns were overrun, and the remaining guns were in a worse plight than ever. Once again Gott conferred with his brigadiers and decided to withdraw what was left of the Support Group alongside 5 South African Brigade. The enemy continued to advance with all arms co-operating as a well-drilled team and the 25-pounders were threatened with infantry attack with strong artillery support. British tanks then intervened and the crisis passed. As night descended the troops withdrew as planned.

The 22nd Armoured Brigade had suffered heavily and now had only 34 tanks, 7 Armoured Brigade had about 15, and 4 Armoured Brigade still had about 100. These figures tell their own story, and this crushing defeat by an enemy force which had no more than 57 tanks when the action started

Three were destroyed, twelve damaged, and two broke down, a total loss in 5 Pz Regt of 17 tanks.

cannot be explained in terms of the current complaints that 7 Armoured Division was ‘out-numbered and out-ranged’. In the absence of 15 Panzer Division von Ravenstein had been able to defeat the British armour, with help only from the Army Artillery north of Belhamed and despite every disadvantage of ground.

‘The final scene’, as Lieutenant-Colonel Hely saw it, ‘was aweinspiring enough. In the light of burning vehicles and dumps our guns slipped out of action, leaving the field to a relentlessly advancing enemy, who loomed in large, fantastic shapes out of the shadow into the flare of bursting shells.’ But nightfall did not end the grim struggle. It was quickly followed by a further German success of the kind that more often comes in battle to the active than to the passive participant. Cruewell had ordered 15 Panzer Division to make ‘a wide swing to the south-west’ and attack the enemy facing 21 Panzer, and in mid-afternoon this move began. The leading tanks drove rapidly over hard, flat desert and soon came upon a mass of British B Echelons, starting one of the many ‘flaps’ of the campaign, with supply lorries scattering in all directions before the tanks in ponderous disarray. After several clashes and some readjustment of the marching order the whole division halted before 7 p.m. still short of the main battlefield. After 40–50 miles it ended up a mile or two south of where it had started and the day had been wasted. The divisional commander, Major-General Neumann-Silkow, ordered 8 Panzer Regiment to close in on the escarpment to the north at Point 175 and the rest of the division settled down for the night.

The commanding officer of the leading tank battalion, Major Fenski, picked his way carefully through the darkness in his armoured command vehicle and suddenly found himself in the midst of a British laager. At ten yards he identified British tanks and with remarkable presence of mind he drove through to the far side, at the same time ordering 1 and 2 Companies to swing left and right respectively to surround the enemy. What followed is described in the divisional war diary:

The tanks shone their headlights, and the commanders jumped out with their machine pistols. The enemy was completely surprised and incapable of action.

So far there had been no firing. A few tanks tried to get away, but were at once set on fire by our tanks, and lit up the battlefield as light as day. While the prisoners were being rounded up a British officer succeeded in setting fire to a tank.

This coup on our part got the rest of 4 British Armoured Brigade with light casualties to ourselves. The brigade commander, 17 officers and 150 other ranks were taken prisoner.

One armoured command vehicle, 35 tanks, armoured cars, guns and self-propelled guns,

i.e., 2-pdr anti-tank portées.

other fighting vehicles, and some important papers fell into our hands.

The Germans were mistaken about the brigade commander, as Gatehouse was away at the time and escaped capture; but they captured most of brigade headquarters and 8 Hussars, together with wireless links essential for effective command. Though 3 and 5 Royal Tanks were elsewhere during this affair they, too, were to suffer disorder and dismay when they tried in the blackness of night and in ignorance of this disaster to link up with brigade headquarters and stumbled instead on the alert 15 Panzer Division. For the next day 4 Armoured Brigade was an uncomprehending and uncooperative spectator of the battle, and three days later, after communications were restored and stragglers gathered in, it still numbered only 37 tanks. On the other hand 15 Panzer had suffered its first tank losses this day, a total of 19 tanks, which brought its tank strength down to 116.

The armoured part of the crusader plan had now broken down completely, and with the exception of a solitary action on the 27th the armoured brigades did no more significant fighting, though their presence (reorganized as a composite brigade) as a ‘fleet in being’ was not without some influence on the campaign. From now onwards the guns and infantry, supported by the two army tank brigades, carried Eighth Army's burden and faced up as best they could to the still-undefeated enemy armour. Rommel and Cruewell had won the first phase and looked for ways and means of sealing their victory.

Meanwhile the South African brigade destined for Sidi Rezegh fought a sharp action of its own, curiously insulated from the main battle though little more than a stone's throw away. Elements of 155 Infantry Regiment had been filtering along the southern escarpment and by noon reached as far east as Point 178, which overlooked the whole battlefield. Ensconced there among the rocks with anti-tank guns and MGs, they were not easy to dislodge and 11 Armoured Brigade gave them a wide berth. In his anxiety to get 5 South African Brigade to Sidi Rezegh Gott toyed with the idea of doing the same—of making a wide swing round this position and approaching the airfield from the south-east. But the nuisancevalue of the enemy here became intolerable and he ordered Brigadier Armstrong to attack Point 178 and occupy the escarpment for some distance to the west.

Without much ado Armstrong sent in 3 Transvall Scottish at about 1 p.m., supported by only eight 25-pounders. They had to cross a mile of flat desert thinly sprinkled with low camel-thorn and had some 500 yards to go when the enemy opened intense fire and forced the infantry down. Little further progress was made, the commanding officer, Lieutenant-Colonel Kirby, was mortally wounded while urging his men on regardless of fire, and by the time the companies withdrew at dusk the battalion had lost 25 killed, 9 missing and 83 wounded and had made no impression on the enemy position.

The tank battle being in Gott's hands, Norrie particularly concerned himself with the South Africans and conceived of a larger operation which would place the whole of 1 South African Division on the southern escarpment and on a smaller feature to the west, Hagfet en-Nezha.

Hagfet = cistern, but the feature was the head of a wadi.

To release 1 South African Brigade from the ‘masking’ of El Gubi, he was freeing 22 Guards Brigade from its many protective tasks along the L of C and around the Maddalena landing grounds; but Brigadier Pienaar was to move at once, leaving only a small covering force and pressing northwards before dark. This was the gist of an order General Brink received at 2.40 p.m. But Norrie was to thwarted from above and from below.

Pienaar raised strenuous objections to a night march and when Brink supported him Norrie did not press the point, with the result that Pienaar's brigade was allowed to halt at midnight ten miles east of El Gubi and 12–15 miles south of 5 Brigade, though there was no good reason why the two brigades could not have linked up this night as Norrie wanted. The Corps Commander was now banking on forming a solid infantry position in the Sidi Rezegh area made up 1 South African Division plus 6 New Zealand Brigade (with a squardron of Valentines), with flank protection by what was left of 7 Armoured Division—a radical change of policy.

Some such arrangement was essential if 30 Corps was to join hands with the Tobruk garrison in the near future, which was what Norrie had been told he must do. But Cunningham's own resolution weakened regarding El Gubi and he began to fear that 22 Guards Brigade might not suffice for the ‘masking’ role. He therefore pressed Norrie to detach part of the South African division to reinforce it. With every evidence of embarrassment Norrie did so and a reinforced battalion group was accordingly detached from 1 South African Brigade for the next twenty-four hours, a precaution that was in vain and served only to illustrate how little the Army Commander understood the capabilities of infantry formations against armoured forces in the open desert. Ariete was free to move in or out of El Gubi as it pleased and the ‘masking’ troops were left in the end guarding the front door of an empty building.

A junction with the Tobruk garrison was farther off then ever when the day ended, leaving Scobie poised uncomfortably halfway to Ed Duda with a greatly enlarged perimeter to defend and the specture of ammunition shortage for his 25-pounders beginning to haunt him. During the day he enlarged the middle of the bulge by taking in ‘Lion’, a position south-west of Tiger which proved to be undefended, but another attack on the enemy half of Tugun failed. There was much evidence of confusion in the enemy camp, however, suggesting that 32 Army Tank Brigade had it tried could certainly have got to Ed Duda. In so doing it would have constricted if it did not altogether thwart the manoeuvres of 21 Panzer Division in the afternoon.

In four days Eighth Army had lost some 530 tanks

Including 35 I tanks of 42 and 44 R Tks lost on the 22nd at Sidi Omar; see pp. 124–7.

while the enemy lost about 100.

If the tank strength of 21 Panzer at the outset was 83 and not 120.

Of 500 cruisers 7 Armoured Division retained fewer than 90, whereas the three enemy armoured divisions still had 250 tanks (170 of them German) of the 356 with which they had started the battle. Against Ariete the score was even; against the panzer divisions the British tank units were outclassed in a way that defies explanation in terms of personalities or of relative armour and armament, the terms chiefly considered in the Middle East at the time.

The German 50-millimetre and ‘88’ were indeed much better as anti-tank guns than their British counterparts; but the British could also boast of technical advantages. The essential difference was not of equipment, but of method. The Germans were favoured by a tactical doctrine, inspired by British prophets unhonoured in their own country,

See, inter alia, Liddell Hart, The Tanks, The History of the Royal Tank Regiment, Vol. I, Guderian, Panzer Leader, p. 20, and Ropp, War in the Modern World, Ch. IX.

which had been refined by years of close study and experiment. The main instrument of this was the Panzerdivision, a powerful and versatile organisation of tank crews, gunners, engineers and infantry all trained to work in close harmony, and it had no parallel in the British Army, a fact so clouded by terminology that it was seldom perceived. British tanks there were, of course, and armoured battalions and brigades assembled in one or two armoured divisions with mobile guns and infantry; but the theoretical foundations were insecure, tactical doctrine varied from unit to unit, and damaging heresies flourished.

Among these was the belief that British heavy tanks, condemned by inadequate engine power to be slow-moving, should only be used to help infantry and the lighter and faster tanks should have independent roles requiring little or no co-operation with other arms. In battleaxe 7 Armoured Division had included a brigade of cruiser tanks and one of I tanks and the failure of the offensive was officially attributed in large part to their conflicting requirements. But the I tanks had in fact more than held their own with 15 Panzer Division and in the long lull before crusader the Germans were much concerned to prevent the British from again using heavily armoured Matildas with artillery support to blunt the panzer arm. Their fears were groundless. The planners of crusader constructed separate compartments for the two types of tanks and only the cruisers were to tackle the enemy armour. The consequence by the end of the 22nd was the defeat of the cruiser-tank force at small cost to the panzer divisions.

CHAPTER 8 The Frontier Operations Begin

THE operations of 13 Corps were conducted against a background of misconceptions of which the most important was that the damage inflicted on the enemy armour in the early days was greater than 7 Armoured Division had suffered. The history of later phases has for this reason an odd air of unreality. Truth was not only stranger than fiction; it was incredible. Had the true position been known no responsible commander in 13 Corps would have accepted the commitments which led to the relief of Tobruk and took Eighth Army to the far corners of Cyrenaica. The fiction that the enemy armour no longer existed as an effective force was the foundation of planning in 13 Corps, and particularly in the New Zealand Division, from the 22nd onwards.

This state of affairs arose from many causes, of which the hardy optimism of Eighth Army was not the least. In 13 Corps there was no disposition at all to take a gloomy view of events, estimates of enemy losses were accepted as a routine and could not be checked, and severe fighting took place before some units were even prepared to concede a proper respect for the enemy. Indeed the first two or three days were something of a trial for men who had crossed the frontier on the 18th in expectation of sudden and violent action and then a headlong pursuit of the enemy, and had found instead that they had to cool their heels in some nameless area of desert while the critical battles were being fought elsewhere. When highly-coloured reports came in of first engagements, these men itched more than ever to start their own tasks.

It was not until ten o'clock at night on 18 November that the New Zealand Division began to pour through gaps in the frontier wire at El Beida, after an uneventful day on the Egyptian side. The cold of the night pierced greatcoats, mufflers and balaclavas, and men travelling in the open shrouded themselves in blankets as the 2800-odd vehicles followed their leaders at four miles in the hour to their new assembly areas. The ‘concertina effect’ when local obstacles slowed down a column and vehicles hurried afterwards to catch up with the others gave rise to speeds of 12 m.p.h. or more, which the gunners in particular found hazardous and exciting. In 4 Brigade, which veered off course and made a three-quarter turn to rectify this, the move ended in considerable confusion which was not overcome until dawn.

See Kippenberger, pp. 84–5.

In the new area 4 Brigade was forward to the north, with 5 and 6 Brigades to its right and left rear respectively and Divisional Headquarters Group tucked in behind the three of them, while Administration Group remained just east of the Wire. The 7th Indian Brigade was already at Libyan Sheferzen, linked by patrols of B Squadron, Divisional Cavalry, to 4 Armoured Brigade at Bir Gibni on the Trigh el-Abd.

13 corps operations, 19 november black and white map diagram of 13 Corps Operations, 19 November

Daylight revealed mainly domestic matters (congestion at Divisional Headquarters, too great a dispersion in 5 Brigade) and no sign of enemy. Men looked curiously about them but found little change in the smooth face of the desert. Here, as on the Egyptian side, it was firm shingle with patches of sand and a thin sprinkling of scrub. It was nevertheless enemy territory and slit trenches were dug, as General Freyberg noted, on a more enthusiastic scale'.

As the day progressed the absence of enemy aircraft provoked much comment. The RAF liaison officer, Wing Commander Magill, told Freyberg he thought the Division as an air target would provide ‘poor bombing’ but would not be ‘too bad for strafing’. At about 2.30 p.m. a few Me109Fs machine-gunned Advanced Headquarters of 13 Corps just to the east and a nearby landing ground and then flew back over the Divisional area, where they were quickly engaged by 41 Light Anti-Aircraft Battery—the first New Zealand shots of the campaign. Shortly after midday word came that 7 Indian Brigade had occupied Bir Bu Deheua without opposition and Corps soon afterwards ordered the Division to move up to the Trigh el-Abd, some 12 miles north, which it did in the late afternoon without incident. The desert was smooth and flat, lorries could drive quite fast, and units were able to take up defensive positions before it got properly dark.

Each brigade was now allotted a squadron of 8 Royal Tanks, though C Squadron did not join 6 Brigade until much later. The troops were reassured to see the heavily armoured Valentines driving slowly through the laagers, some of them still carrying their ‘sunshields’, meant to look from the air like the canopies of lorries. Freyberg had discussed the capabilities of the Infantry tanks with Lieutenant-Colonel Brooke of 8 Royal Tanks in the morning. They could travel 60 miles across country and carried in first-line transport fuel for another 90 miles, to which might be added a ‘good quantity of fuel’ on tank transporters if these were not required to carry tanks. The purpose of this exploration of technicalities is revealed in a diary entry this day:

My feeling is that ‘I don't care what the Boche is doing. I would go slap for Tobruk. If we wait he will get his air [force] up. I don't think he knows where we are.’

Freyberg went ahead with preparations for the tasks already allotted in the frontier area; but when Hargest came in to discuss them he warned him of a ‘possible move to Tobruk’. The relief of this fortress, he was convinced, was the key to victory and not merely a consequence of it. Hints in the afternoon of an enemy withdrawal westwards from Halfaya added weight to this opinion, and in any case made it even more likely that 13 Corps would soon be ordered to start major operations. Freyberg telephoned Corps after dark and was told that this would be next morning but probably not ‘very early’, and he passed this on to his brigadiers as a warning order.

The next morning, 20 November, dawned bright and good news soon came in. Ariete had lost 45 tanks and 200 prisoners and 21 Panzer had also been hard hit. Five miles to the north 4 Armoured Brigade had joined battle with some 180 tanks and Freyberg, expecting quick results, got ready to move. Brigade commanders were warned they might have to advance at short notice north-eastwards to Hafid Ridge or straight to Tobruk. Divisional Cavalry

B Sqn was now back and B Tp of 4 Fd Regt was under command, as well as seven 2-pdrs of 341 A-Tk Bty.

would lead the way, with a 25-pounder troop attached, and then 5 Brigade.

Then came a puzzling hiatus. From 5 Brigade shell bursts could be seen to the north-east and Divisional Cavalry heard the hammering of guns to the north-west and had an anxious few moments from eight tanks, which luckily proved to be Stuarts of 4 Armoured Brigade. Hopes rose with reports that the enemy in front of this brigade was retreating. But Freyberg felt the Germans might move through the frontier line to counter-attack from somewhere north-east of the Omars, or they might come against the right flank of 4 Brigade. He spoke to Corps about helping 4 Armoured Brigade if needed:

I said we were ready to go out and help. Only way to move bodily, cannot take guns without denuding ourselves. Alternatively they could come on to our flank to rally or go to our rear. If the 4 Armd Bde is ordered to rally we can take a strong bump. ‘We are omnipotent. If you want us to advance let us know. If they ask for help, we will have to consider how best we can do it.’ Strong Cav patrol of ours is going over to contact 4 Armd Bde.

Freyberg's diary, recorded by his PA, Capt J. C. White, with the GOC's actual words in quotation marks.

A little later, when both panzer divisions were identified and located north of 4 Armoured Brigade, 13 Corps suggested to Army and 30 Corps that Gatehouse might rally if necessary ‘on left flank NZ Div who are strongly posted in present area.’ The patrol of Divisional Cavalry duly got in touch with Gatehouse and offered New Zealand help, which he rejected. Later in the afternoon the dual role of 4 Armoured Brigade was dropped with Godwin-Austen's consent.

Freyberg was anxious to help and pressed the matter. He was in ‘a terrific fighting mood’, according to the Divisional Cavalry commander, and pointed out to the BGS 13 Corps that the New Zealand Division could be invaluable to 4 Armoured Brigade ‘if they are in difficulties’, particularly against 21 Panzer Division which was wrongly reported to have four infantry battalions as well as its tank regiment and artillery. Hargest watched 7 Indian Brigade engage enemy to the north-west and came in at 2.40 p.m. to report on this. All was favourably construed and Freyberg remarked to his GSO I, ‘Can't help feeling he [the enemy] is on the run and we should help’, but Gentry

Maj-Gen Sir William Gentry, KBE, CB, DSO and bar, m.i.d., MC (Gk), Bronze Star (US); Lower Hutt; born London, 20 Feb 1899; Regular soldier; served North-West Frontier 1920–22; GSO II NZ Div 1939–40; AA & QMG 1940–41; GSO I May 1941, Oct 1941–Sep 1942; comd 6 Bde Sep 1942–Apr 1943; Deputy Chief of General Staff 1943–44; comd NZ Troops in Egypt, 6 NZ Div, and NZ Maadi Camp, Aug 1944–Feb 1945; 9 Bde (Italy) 1945; Deputy Chief of General Staff, 1946–47; Adjutant-General, 1949–52; Chief of General Staff, 1952–55.

disagreed: ‘No Sir; I think he is obviously contemplating some dirty work, coming forward with a view to breaking our communications’, he replied. ‘Our plan may be to let him come as far this way as possible before giving him a knock.’ Then came a warning order from Corps that the Division might have to move 10–11 miles forward at first light next day. This was disappointing and Freyberg rang Brigadier Harding again to say he was still willing to move this night. Harding was more cautious and asked if the Division was a little nervous about the large number of enemy tanks in the neighbourhood, to which Freyberg responded vigorously: ‘Oh, Good God, we are frothing to go! There's no nervousness here.’ To those around him he added, ‘We are not frightened of a few tanks.’

‘General Freyberg was a very practical optimist and on the facts as he knew them at the time was never foolhardy in his actions whatever he may have said.’—Gentry, letter 23 Mar 1960.

But 13 Corps was more cautious and he was told at dusk to stay where he was in the meantime and be ready to meet attack from the north. The Division, as a matter of routine, was ready for this and so Freyberg went straight to bed.

iii

The GOC's confidence was founded like that of other senior officers on the belief that the British armour would prove too strong for its opponents. Even with both panzer divisions in the frontier area and 4 Armoured Brigade released from its protective role, there seemed no great cause for concern, though local and temporary difficulties might arise. But the morning of 21 November brought relief from even these minor anxieties. When all the German armour made off at an early hour towards Tobruk, General Godwin-Austen gladly availed himself of the discretion vested in him the previous morning by the Army Commander. Quickly reassessing the situation, he ordered the New Zealand Division to advance to the Trigh Capuzzo and the Indian division to prepare an attack on the Omar forts.

battleaxe had given hints of what the New Zealanders might have to meet on their march north and in the light of that campaign Freyberg and Hargest briefly surveyed the possibilities. Hargest suggested he might ‘do a Sidi Clif’ on Fort Capuzzo, moving up at night; but Freyberg was not at all sure that 5 Brigade would meet opposition there. Though eager to get under way he was reluctant to engage in heavy fighting until the situation cleared. ‘If there's anything in it’, he concluded, ‘Capuzzo will have to be left until next night.’ ‘I am quite happy’, Hargest replied. ‘We shall be busy after our idleness.’

The situation as understood at Divisional Headquarters was highly favourable and was reported at 11 a.m. to brigades in the following terms: ‘4 Armd Bde were attacking 30 enemy tanks and remainder were pursuing enemy northwest. 22 Armd Bde was moving along enemy south flank. Intercept of enemy message stated situation one “of extreme urgency”.’ But Freyberg was dissatisfied with the vagueness of reports from Corps and telephoned Godwin-Austen to make sure no ambiguities had crept into the various instructions passed and to provide against needless delay in unfolding the Divisional plan.

Freyberg's side of the conversation was recorded and is summarised here.

Hargest's brigade would be on its way by 11.30 a.m., preceded by Divisional Cavalry. If it reached Sidi Azeiz and the next bound from there to the escarpment west of Bardia seemed open, Freyberg would report back to Corps by wireless at 2 p.m. for permission to send 4 Brigade to block the Via Balbia. At the same time 6 Brigade with 44 Royal Tanks, less one squadron, would drive to Bir el-Hariga, west of Sidi Azeiz, in readiness to go on if needed to Gambut or Tobruk. To all this Godwin-Austen readily agreed; but there remained one irksome possibility against which 13 Corps could not guard. The enemy in the Omar forts might choose to break out westwards and the link between 5 Brigade and 7 Indian Brigade would be too weak to hold him. ‘If he does that’, Freyberg remarked, ‘the long stop at TOBRUK will have to be informed and they will have to round them up.’ Thus the major operations of the Division began in an atmosphere clouded only by the fear that some of the enemy in the frontier area might escape westwards.

the new zealand division advances, afternoon and evening of 21 november black and white map diagram of the advance on 21 November

Divisional Cavalry had duly moved off at 11 a.m. with its three squadrons in line on a front of some ten miles, driving northwards over flat desert, past a few wrecked aircraft and on to the Trigh Capuzzo. A Squadron soon came upon Sidi Azeiz, and its carriers with 2-pounder support drove off two staff cars and a handful of lorries and captured four Germans and fifty Italians, among them an officer who had been taking a bath and preferred to wave his towel in surrender rather than to cover his nakedness. A Breda gun which might have offered stern opposition had it been manned was also captured and the regiment had every reason, as Freyberg noted in his diary, to be ‘very pleased with themselves’. But the Cavalry had to push on northwards, and the element of farce in their first encounter was soon followed by a comically serious ‘attack’ on Sidi Azeiz by 22 Battalion in ignorance of what had gone before. This was also unopposed but uncovered more booty in the form of four more Bredas, much ammunition, seven lorries and two motor-cycles.

In the course of its advance 5 Brigade was authorised to undertake all the tasks tentatively allotted by the Divisional plan and Hargest was in a tremendous hurry to get as much done as possible before dark. When Lieutenant-Colonel Allen

Lt-Col J. M. Allen, m.i.d.; born Cheadle, England, 3 Aug 1901; farmer; MP (Hauraki) 1938–41; CO 21 Bn May–Nov 1941; killed in action 28 Nov 1941.

of 21 Battalion, who was sent on ahead to reconnoitre Hafid and Bir Ghirba on the right flank, halted to brief his company commanders and the hastily-attached supporting troops,

Eight field guns, four Bofors, four Vickers and a section of sappers, with a handful of stretcher bearers.

Hargest drove up at high speed and ordered him to keep the battalion group moving. Allen therefore had to pass orders to his subordinates one at a time as they rode in turn in his car. He halted for the night just west of Hafid and the troops dug in facing east, while the rest of the brigade group settled down between there and Sidi Azeiz.

Lieutenant-Colonel Leckie

Col D. F. Leckie, OBE, ED, m.i.d.; Invercargill; born Dunedin, 9 Jun 1897; school teacher; Canterbury Mtd Rifles Regt, Anzac Mtd Div, 1916–19; CO 23 Bn Aug 1940–Mar 1941, May 1941–Jun 1942; comd 75 Sub-Area, Middle East, Aug 1942–Mar 1944; wounded 25 May 1941.

of 23 Battalion was then told to send out a reinforced company to patrol the approaches to Fort Capuzzo and, if possible, cut the water pipeline between Bardia and Sollum. With reasonable luck this company might be able to test the defences of the Fort to pave the way for a full battalion attack before dawn on the 22nd. But luck was even more plentiful. By a miscalculation the company set out from a point a mile and a half nearer the fort than it supposed and soon found itself inside what had been regarded as outlying defences without sight or sound of enemy. The company commander, Captain Thomson,

Maj F. S. R. Thomson, MC, m.i.d.; born NZ 25 Aug 1912; draper; twice wounded; died of wounds 28 Mar 1943.

saw no reason to draw back and with quick precautions against ambush marched into the heart of the fort and captured it with scarcely a shot fired. The small Italian garrison was surprised not by stealth but by noise: Thomson's company, thinking itself out of enemy earshot, had given such loud warning of its approach that the handful of defenders had no thought of hostile intrusion. Two 105-millimetre guns and their crews were captured. Thomson brought up his carriers and anti-tank guns and soon laid out his own defences. He now possessed the main telephone exchange of the frontier area and within a few minutes (with the help of a co-operative Italian officer) the water pipeline was cut. At 5 a.m. on the 22nd two lorries loaded with rations drove in from Bardia and three Italians were killed and a dozen captured. Further exploitation of the seizure of this track junction and communications centre followed after dawn, the enemy on the northern hinge of the frontier line taking some time to grasp what had happened.

operations of 5 brigade, 22 november black and white map diagram of the operations of the 5 Brigade, 22 November

Meanwhile an instruction was signed at Brigade Headquarters at 10.35 p.m. allotting Leckie, with a supporting squadron of I tanks, the tasks of capturing Capuzzo, blocking enemy movement in the area, and patrolling the road to Musaid on the way to Sollum. At 1.30 a.m. Leckie got word that the first and most important of these was already accomplished. The whole battalion would nevertheless be needed to hold the large area specified and carry out subsidiary tasks, and the remainder moved forward in the early hours of the morning, reaching Capuzzo soon after dawn.

The brigade staff was also planning another operation against an objective which was to prove in the event undefended, Hafid Ridge, a slight feature which had been the scene of heavy fighting in battleaxe. The instruction was signed at 11.15 p.m. and 21 Battalion Group was to be ready to attack any time after first light on the 22nd. The defences as known up to 6 November and overprinted on current maps showed only a few scattered diggings and a little wire in the area, with some transport to the south-west, and there was nothing to suggest that enemy might be found there in strength; but it was better to be sure than sorry.

While 5 Brigade swung right to face Sollum, 4 Brigade, at first meant to halt short of the Trigh Capuzzo, was ordered while on the move to carry on northwards to the escarpment west of Bardia. This promised to be an easy journey of five or six miles, but it proved very different. After dark units struck soft ground and patches of bog. North of the Trigh Capuzzo the guiding lights veered off course and some detachments followed them while others kept to the correct bearings, only to come upon a deep and muddy trench which crossed the route. In black night and drizzling rain men sought to extricate vehicles and get past obstacles as best they could. Carriers and four-wheel-drive lorries towed less versatile vehicles across the ditch or through the mire and units sorted themselves out bit by bit south of Menastir. Enough order had been restored by 5.30 a.m. on the 22nd for battalions to move off on their allotted tasks, 18 Battalion probing to the right along the lip of the ridge towards Bardia, while 20 Battalion drove north to cut the Via Balbia and 19 Battalion opened out to the west to cover Brigade Headquarters.

Despite this muddy ordeal, however, the brigade gained an even greater measure of surprise than 5 Brigade. The 250-foot escarpment dominated the coast road and the ground to the north and opened up as day dawned a peaceful panorama of unsuspecting supply and service units, mostly of 21 Panzer Division, which were scattered along both sides of the road. First success went to a German detachment which decamped from alongside 18 Battalion at first light and made off rapidly towards Bardia with an FOO of 4 Field Regiment, though a few Germans, much loot and some 100 vehicles were later captured in the deserted camp. B Company explored eastwards to within 200 yards of Bardia defences and noted manned posts every two chains along the perimeter and a few small working parties outside. At point-blank range 4 Field Regiment meanwhile shelled clusters of vehicles at the foot of the ridge and caused the numerous cameos of camp life below to break into violent animation. When ‘the Germans to the north discovered we were upon them’, says Brigadier Inglis, ‘the stretch of country we overlooked resembled a disturbed ants’ nest.' A Company of 20 Battalion rushed down the escarpment on foot to form a road block, then Lieutenant-Colonel Kippenberger committed B Company to attack a camp of sixty tents to the east, and finally D Company to help. B Company pushed on 500 yards north of the road with the carriers another 500 yards farther on, and the mortars took full advantage of the sweeping view from the top. By breakfast time some seventy prisoners had been taken, the rest of the enemy was roused and in full flight, and firing died down, though the Bardia guns soon began a slow bombardment of the crest in the area of 18 Battalion. Inglis began thinking of attacking Bardia and at 9.32 a.m. suggested to Divisional Headquarters that he might start to do so at ten o'clock; but Freyberg was not at hand and the matter was deferred.

On its journey to Bir el-Hariga 6 Brigade met even worse going than 4 Brigade and floundered through the mud in increasing confusion until, at 1 a.m., Brigadier Barrowclough decided to halt for the night six or seven miles short of his destination. A vehicle-repair detachment of eight vehicles with two German officers and eighteen other ranks was captured on the way without a shot fired. On the way, too, Barrowclough heard that 44 Royal Tanks with two squadrons of Matildas was coming up to join him. For some time he was out of touch with Divisional Headquarters, since the wireless-link vehicle had joined 4 Brigade by mistake, and therefore could not learn what was in store for him. All he knew was that for the time being he was in divisional reserve awaiting further instructions.

These had reached Divisional Headquarters, as it happened, from Corps at 6.30 p.m. in the following bald signal:

One Bde Gp will definitely be required to move west-wards 22 Nov to pass to comd 30 Corps. Location to which Bde is to go will be signalled later. Ack.

Then came further details, timed 8.45 p.m. and received at 12.50 a.m. on the 22nd:

As situation north of escarpment is still obscure 6 Inf Bde Group will move south of line BIR EL CHLETA 454403 and point 175 438404 destination follows later. Maximum AG 93

Probably fuel.

will be taken for VALENTINES.

Actually Matildas, as Gentry soon learned, not Valentines as Norrie had been given to understand and as he wanted.

Second line transport will accompany Brigade group. Ack.

No urgency attached to either message and 13 Corps seemed to confirm this in reporting at 8.10 p.m. on the 21st that 170 enemy tanks were thought to have been hit and that the Italians were ‘rapidly withdrawing BIR HACHEIM true to form’. In this setting the move of 6 Brigade to join 30 Corps could occasion no alarm and was linked in the eyes of 13 Corps with no crisis in the battle to the west. On the contrary, the circumstances under which such a move had been envisaged in the crusader plan were favourable and the ordering of the move by Eighth Army was taken as a good omen.

Breakfast time on 22 November therefore saw the Division's operations developing according to plan and with good auguries. Soon afterwards a heavy shower of rain ‘made conditions unpleasant’, as the Divisional Cavalry diarist noted, and clogged rifles and Bren guns with sand. A mile or two to the south 7 Indian Brigade moved into position for a midday attack on the three linked strongpoints of Sidi Omar Nuovo, to be followed through to Libyan Omar, a mile to the west; but 5 Brigade knew little about this important operation.

Hargest had been refused permission to attack Musaid during the night because of 6 Brigade's impending departure for 30 Corps; but it was occupied in the afternoon without fighting and with no sign of enemy until next morning, when sixteen Italians emerged from a cellar and surrendered to the platoon of 23 Battalion which was in occupation. B Squadron of 8 Royal Tanks followed through to the escarpment overlooking Sollum and there lost two tanks before dusk on the 22nd.

Bardia was approached from three directions. Eighteenth Battalion investigated its defences from the west, then a company of 22 Battalion advanced from Sidi Azeiz in mid-morning, and in early afternoon another came from 23 Battalion with I-tank support. The defences, far from being lightly held and in a state of disrepair as had been believed, were strong and active and three men were killed and fifteen wounded before the company of the 22nd could be extricated in the late afternoon. The third probe ran into such heavy shellfire that the tanks and infantry beat a hasty retreat. The capture of Bardia would evidently call for an operation much larger than any at present contemplated and so the Division looked for other ways of exploiting the situation. There was already much profit from the activities of both brigades at no great cost to either; but not many ripe plums now awaited picking.

Hargest and Freyberg were both delighted with the capture of Capuzzo and had no idea how easy it had been. In this optimistic atmosphere another operation got under way with less than usual care and guidance from above. Patrols of 21 Battalion soon after first light on the 22nd found Bir Hafid unoccupied and Allen decided to seize it and probe towards Bir Ghirba. While a strong patrol was being assembled for this purpose he reported to Brigade Headquarters and there received orders to attack Bir Ghirba, to capture it if possible, and in any case ‘definitely to contain it’.

21 Bn war diary.

One object, and perhaps the only one, was to divert attention from the Indian attack on the Omars, of which few details were known.

Allen's plan must be inferred from what happened. The fighting patrol already in being, 15 Platoon with a section each of carriers and mortars, as the spearhead was to attack what was thought to be an outpost of the Bir Ghirba position. A and B Companies and supporting arms were then to mount the main assault south-eastwards while the rest of C Company took over Bir Hafid and D Company guarded the vehicle park.

The ‘outpost’, however, proved to be the main position and the fighting patrol spent a miserable hour or so establishing this fact. Under Captain Ferguson

Capt C. A. Ferguson; born Auckland, 24 Apr 1908; accountant; p.w. Nov 1941; deceased.

it approached soon after 9.30 a.m. and ran into heavy mortar fire, the infantry dismounted, and their vehicles were sent back. The platoon made ground to the left, where there was slight cover, but lost a dozen men and could get no closer than 150 yards from the enemy. A sudden heavy shower of rain soaked the infantry to the skin and left them lying shivering in puddles, their small arms useless for the time being.

Ferguson spoke to Allen by R/T and the latter at once came up by carrier, heedless of the fire he attracted. A quick study of the ‘buildings, concrete emplacements, dugouts, native houses, wire and petrol dump’

Ferguson.

ahead convinced him that this was indeed Bir Ghirba, and Allen ordered B Company up to attack on Ferguson's right. Shielded from the enemy's view by rain, the lorries took the infantry to within 600 yards of the nearest barbed wire. Then the men pressed forward on foot until the mist lifted suddenly and the fortifications stood out clearly ahead: minefields marked by low wire and behind them concrete emplacements and one or two hulldown tanks. From these came fierce fire against which no more than 150–200 yards could be gained in short dashes and at considerable cost in men. Then B Company was pinned down still 300 yards short of the enemy.

Allen now committed A Company and its lorries drove up quickly between B Company and Ferguson's detachment. As the vehicles drove boldly forward, however, they were hit one after the other by anti-tank and small-arms fire and put out of action. The riflemen dismounted roughly level with B Company and splashed through puddles of water in a series of charges until they, too, could get no farther. Many were hit in vehicles or in the act of vacating them, and the slightest movement from those on the ground attracted keen enemy attention. The 25-pounders of 47 Field Battery gave continuous support and scored several successes but were too few to subdue the MG fire, though they hit an ammunition dump which went up in several explosions, one of them heavy enough to shower A Company with fragments.

There was little Allen could now do with his own resources and when Major Straker,

Maj T. W. Straker, m.i.d.; England; born NZ 2 Oct 1915; geophysicist; p.w. 27 Nov 1941; escaped to Switzerland from Italy, Nov 1943.

the Brigade Major, arrived on the scene in mid-afternoon Allen asked him for another company. Brigade Headquarters refused, but authorised him instead to relinquish Hafid Ridge, thereby making the rest of C Company available. With the lesson of A Company's experience in mind, C Company was stripped to troop-carrying vehicles only and these were introduced with care to avoid exposing the loaded lorries to fire of the kind which had swept through A Company. By this means the two fresh platoons got forward on the left, near Ferguson's detachment, with comparatively few casualties, though part of 15 Platoon came under fire from both sides in the process and Ferguson eventually got permission to withdraw it a short distance. Four more 25-pounders

D Tp, 28 Fd Bty.

were added to 47 Field Battery at this stage but made little difference.

At dusk C Company had almost reached the wire, but was faced with some thirty MGs in strong positions. Against such opposition only a well-prepared assault offered hope of success, and after dark the possibilities of a battalion attack by night or at first light next morning were canvassed. Allen in the end settled for an attack two hours before dawn. Meanwhile the wounded received the attention denied them in daylight, ammunition was brought forward, and hot food was prepared. In the midst of this activity, against a background of burning lorries and the still-exploding enemy ammunition dump, an order came from Brigade about 12.30 a.m. on the 23rd for the battalion to withdraw.

The 25-pounders continued to fire and by their flashes and the light of a burning A Company lorry the companies disengaged and withdrew to the B Echelon area, the lorries coming as far forward as they dared to pick up their loads. There a hot meal awaited the men and was eagerly eaten. Bir Ghirba had offered far sterner resistance than they had been led to expect and they were not sorry to see the last of it.

Losses in this abortive action are given in the unit diary as 13 killed and 65 wounded; but the question of why such heavy losses were accepted for such a minor (and in the end fruitless) action remains unanswered. One officer concerned remarked that General Freyberg was ‘not enthusiastic’ when he heard of Allen's heavy losses. Freyberg obviously intended no such costly operation and he probably wanted no more than a show of force to distract attention from the Indian attack to the south. Allen certainly acted within his instructions and, since the Brigade Major spent two or three hours with him in the afternoon without calling a halt, the misunderstanding must have been at brigade level. At all events, the headquarters of 55 Savona Division at Bir Ghirba, with 600 men to defend it, was not seriously endangered by an infantry attack across flat desert in daylight without tank support and covered by very few field guns. With no anti-tank guns the attackers were throughout highly vulnerable also to a tank counter-thrust, which was by no means unlikely. Of all the New Zealand attacks in crusader this was the most unrewarding.

vii

The hasty and haphazard mounting of the Bir Ghirba attack stands in sharp contrast to the careful and thorough preparation of the Indian assault on the Omar forts, which it was meant to assist. This had been the subject of study for some weeks at many levels and entailed close combination on the battlefield of many arms, including the RAF bomber and fighter forces. The plan was to descend from the north on the three linked strongpoints of Sidi Omar Nuovo (‘Frongia’) and then carry on two miles westward into the heart of Libyan Omar (‘Sidi Omar’ as the enemy called it), a compact and even stronger position with five main segments. Omar Nuovo was manned by III Battalion of the Italian 16 Infantry Regiment, with supporting arms which included several Italian 75-millimetre HAA guns in anti-tank roles, while Libyan Omar contained I Battalion and Regimental Headquarters reinforced by 12 Oasis Company and other German detachments, including the crews of 88-millimetre guns which could fire with deadly anti-tank effect at ranges upwards of 2000 yards. Anti-tank minefields of great depth and complexity covered southern and western approaches, some had even been hastily laid in the north which it was hoped might be free of them, and there was much barbed wire. Five miles north-east of Omar Nuovo was a similar position, ‘Cova’, against which 4/11 Sikh Regiment carried out several feints as the rest of 7 Indian Brigade assembled. Slit trenches which formed the infantry posts were flush with the ground and very hard to locate, making the strongpoints ‘almost invisible’.

Stevens, Fourth Indian Division, p. 91.

attack on the omar forts, 7 indian brigade, 22 november black and white map diagram of the attack on the Omar Forts

The Omar Nuovo operation was in essence an infantry battalion attack, carried out by 1 Royal Sussex, but with a weight and quality of support which might have made 21 Battalion (had they known of it) green with envy. First two formations of Marylands sprinkled the target with bombs, followed by twenty-three low-flying fighters with blazing machine guns. Twenty minutes later, at noon, the 4.5-inch guns and 6-inch howitzers of 68 Medium Regiment and the 25-pounders of 1 and 25 Field Regiments, RA, fired timed concentrations and laid a thick smoke screen to shield the right flank from the Libyan Omar guns. Two carrier platoons led off at 12.20 p.m., but the two squadrons of Matildas which were meant to be right behind them were twenty minutes late and lost much of the benefit of the artillery programme. Next came two companies of infantry in lorries, then the reserve squadron of I tanks, and finally the rest of 1 Royal Sussex, an anti-tank battery, and another field battery.

Several tanks and perhaps some carriers came to grief on minefields, some of which were unmarked. Then there was a brief pause as anti-tank guns, including ‘88s’,

As was thought, but a German map of 16 Nov marks the Omar Nuovo guns as Italian 75-mm HAA in anti-tank roles, which were almost as good as ‘88s’.

engaged the tanks. The infantry debussed at the minefields and burst into the enemy positions in the face of heavy fire, the tanks and carriers pressed on, and by 1.50 p.m. Omar Nuovo was captured except for a few posts. The tanks and carriers rallied to the north to form up for the assault on Libyan Omar while the Royal Sussex rounded up prisoners, attended to their many casualties, and occupied the defences.

In rallying the tanks struck more mines and the new assault was thereby delayed until 3.15 p.m. It went in on a narrow front, as minefields dictated, with B Squadron, 44 Royal Tanks, leading with troops in line ahead. Driving through the narrow neck between minefields, B Squadron found itself heading straight towards two ‘88s’, and the leading troop, having no alternative, increased speed to close with them, making it impossible for the following tanks to open out into more effective order. Thus the squadron tackled a powerful anti-tank position ‘practically line ahead’,

UK narrative.

a disastrous method, and lost thirteen of its fourteen Matildas. The remnants of 42 Royal Tanks, formed into a composite squadron, deployed more widely in an effort to escape this deadly fire and in so doing lost tanks on a minefield to the north. The infantry, this time 4/16 Punjab, were again too far behind the covering artillery fire and had little or no tank support; but they nevertheless carried on as the Royal Sussex had done with great gallantry and overran many posts, taking numerous prisoners. The greater part of Libyan Omar, however, remained in enemy hands, with the menacing ‘88s’, 12 Oasis Company, and well over a thousand Italians still resisting. By infiltration during the night the Punjabis were able to tighten their grip and gain a thousand more prisoners next day; but the western part of the fortress was stubbornly defended (and was not captured, as it happened, until the end of the month).

Omar Nuovo was thus seized and the even stronger Libyan Omar breached in the afternoon of the 22nd, and 7 Indian Brigade proceeded to consolidate its gains. Some 1500 prisoners were taken, all told, at a cost of a third of that number of casualties.

According to the UK narrative; 1 Royal Sussex lost 114 men, 4/16 Punjab 166, and 42 R Tks 52. The balance of 268 is not accounted for and the 500 may be a slight exaggeration.

Both infantry battalions were hard hit, but the really crippling loss was in tanks: 42 Royal Tanks lost 35 I tanks out of 42 and only seven I tanks and seven light tanks were left in fighting order. The heavily armoured infantry tanks had fared no better than the cruiser tanks of 30 Corps against enemy anti-tank guns, and the ‘88s’ had given terrible evidence of their power in terms of blazing and gutted Matildas. The minefields had served them well by disabling tanks for later destruction or by channelling the attack to suit the guns. Much comment was made at the time and later about the lack of a tank gun which could engage such powerful anti-tank guns to good effect;

e.g., in 42 Royal Tank Regiment 1938–1944, p. 10.

yet a battery of 8 Field Regiment, RA, had followed the tanks into action with the express purpose of giving close support against opportunity targets, and proper co-operation between Matildas and 25-pounders could have done much to overcome the danger.

Messervy's striking power was now greatly reduced and it was out of the question for some time to eat any farther into the frontier line. ‘Cova’ was strongly held, as 4/11 Sikh found in the course of its covering operations, so a Corps plan of 7.20 p.m. to take this next day and Bir Ghirba as well had to be shelved. Moreover, 5 Indian Brigade was still scattered along the L of C, leaving a wide gap between 7 and 11 Brigades which Central India Horse did its best to patrol. It was an odd twist of fortune, however, that this scarcely favourable situation of 13 Corps gave rise to acute anxiety in the mind of the man who had designed and supervised the extension of the frontier line to Sidi Omar: General Rommel. This attack and the operations of 5 New Zealand Brigade farther north were to provoke a reaction of such unreasoning violence that it robbed Rommel of the fruits of victory at Sidi Rezegh.

viii

Good news meanwhile flowed continuously to Hargest's headquarters from 23 Battalion during the 22nd, outweighing any misgivings the 5 Brigade commander may have felt about the Bir Ghirba attack. Carrier patrols had by 9 a.m. taken 38 Germans and 80 Italians using the Bardia-Sollum road, and this traffic yielded by the end of the day more than 250 prisoners. After dark Leckie was told to co-operate as closely as possible with Lieutenant-Colonel Dittmer

Brig G. Dittmer, CBE, DSO, MC, m.i.d.; Auckland; born Maharahara, 4 Jun 1893; Regular soldier; Auckland Regt 1914–19 (OC 1 NZ Entrenching Bn); CO 28 (Maori) Bn Jan 1940–Feb 1942; wounded 23 Nov 1941; comd 1 Inf Bde Gp (in NZ) 1942–43; 1 Div, Aug 1942–Jan 1943; Fiji Military Forces and Fiji Inf Bde Gp, 1943–45; Commander, Central Military District, 1946–48.

of 28 Maori Battalion, who would pass through in the night to capture Sollum Barracks at the top of the pass, the main concerns being to cut off traffic between Sollum and Bardia and patrol the pass road to prevent its demolition, thereby retaining this route for later use in supplying Eighth Army.

the capture of sollum barracks, 23 november black and white map diagram showing the capture of Sollum Barracks, 23 November

The Maori attack went smoothly according to plan. The rifle companies dismounted at Musaid and advanced on foot at 3.30 a.m. on the 23rd, with C Company on the right and D on the left, each with an added platoon. Coming upon the rough circle of barrack buildings from the north-west, they surged through light rain in the stillness before a cold dawn and were soon joined by the ten Valentines of B Squadron, 8 Royal Tanks, under Major Sutton. A few rifle shots heralded light skirmishing among the buildings which led to the capture of dozens of willing Italian prisoners. The few Germans were less obliging, but fifty-four Italians in a cave gave themselves up to one Maori. The tanks silenced a mortar which opened fire near the water tower and helped to overcome the crew of another to the north. A troublesome machine gun on the edge of the escarpment was taken at the point of the bayonet by a section of B Company. Other gun positions identified from aerial photographs proved to be empty, though an anti-tank gun fired several times before D Company charged it. Local opposition soon collapsed and C and D Companies spread out along the escarpment to isolate the barracks from Lower Sollum, while A and B Companies, using existing defences and digging more where required, settled in to the north and west.

Among the few casualties of this early fighting was Dittmer himself and for the time being Major Sutton took command, succeeded later in the day by Captain Love.

Lt-Col E. Te W. Love, m.i.d.; born Picton, 18 May 1905; interpreter; CO 28 (Maori) Bn May–Jul 1942; died of wounds 12 Jul 1942.

Guns on the escarpment towards Halfaya began to range accurately throughout the area and the tanks, attracting much fire, lost some of their popularity among the infantry near them. The Vickers gunners were also shelled as they carried out their characteristically thorough preparation of MMG positions, with one section facing Halfaya and the other Bardia. The German company in Lower Sollum kept the pass road and its environs under small-arms fire, which killed Captain Tureia

Capt P. Tureia; born Waiapu, 5 Jan 1897; civil servant; killed in action 23 Nov 1941.

of C Company and discouraged further exploitation thereabouts in daylight. Slowly the enemy in Bardia and Lower Sollum perceived what was happening and began to react.

Casualties in the actual assault were few, but shellfire on inhospitable ground caused several deaths and wounded many men. By dusk the dead numbered 20 and there were 34 wounded, Captain Harvey

Maj H. D. Harvey; Auckland; born Adelaide, 31 Dec 1896; Regular soldier; Lt, AIF, 1914–18 war; wounded 23 Nov 1941; Tonga Force, Jun 1943–May 1944.

of A Company among them. These losses were not light in relation to the poor quality of resistance offered, and would doubtless have been fewer had some of the Maoris restrained their high spirits and investigated their new surroundings more cautiously. Booty included several 75-millimetre guns, one 25-pounder, and many German and Italian machine guns with much ammunition, as well as numerous vehicles (most of them out of order) and large quantities of food, cigarettes, and other comforts.

The capture of Upper Sollum sealed off the large Halfaya-Sollum position from Bardia, at least so far as the non-mobile frontier garrisons were concerned, and seemed to 5 Brigade Headquarters to offer opportunities for exploitation, particularly by artillery fire. From the top of the pass ‘gun-positions, trench systems, dug-outs, cookhouses, groups of vehicles and the enemy himself were easily discernible to the naked eye and most of this was within range of our 25-pdrs at MUSAID’.

Straker, in a report dated 5 May 1945.

It seemed a gunner's paradise, and the Brigade Major, himself a gunner, was much impressed. But the long haul to stock Musaid with gun ammunition made a heavy artillery programme impracticable and the Sollum-Halfaya defences were in any case less vulnerable than they looked.

For the enemy the greatest embarrassment from 5 Brigade's operations was that the frontier strongpoints could no longer get water and other supplies from Bardia, and the Italian official historian blames Major-General Schmitt, commander of the East Sector, for neglecting to put Capuzzo, Musaid and Upper Sollum in a proper state of defence. At Panzer Group Headquarters the impression gained ground that the British meant to capture Sollum and Halfaya Pass, ‘which would have given … [them] command of the coast road most important for … [their] supply’, and when the latter remained in German hands anxiety abated. ‘Only Upper Sollum was lost’, the Panzer Group battle report states, with evident relief. But the presence of strong British forces in this area could not be viewed lightly and the situation at Sidi Omar was anything but reassuring, as Panzer Group learned in the following signal from Savona Division received at 2 p.m. on 23 November:

A reconnaissance force must be pushed straight forward to Sidi Omar as Bir Ghirba is not threatened at present. If possible provide immediate air support for Sidi Omar where the position is critical as a result of heavy attacks in superior force.

This had profound consequences; but General de Giorgis failed to indicate that Omar Nuovo and half of Libyan Omar (‘Sidi Omar’) had already been lost. This, too, had its repercussions. At the very time he sent the message, 4/16 Punjab was in course of ejecting the last of the defenders from the eastern half of Libyan Omar and adding a thousand to the total of prisoners taken the previous day. De Giorgis was nine miles away at Bir Ghirba; but Panzer Group somehow gathered that his headquarters had fallen into British hands.

In the morning of the 22nd Freyberg went to all three brigade headquarters and heard nothing but minor problems. At lunch time he learned that the Tobruk sortie had gained ‘some success’ and 1100 prisoners had been taken, and he took it that the garrison had by that time linked up with 30 Corps. Soon afterwards he discussed the tasks of 4 Brigade with Brigadier Inglis. The road block on the Via Balbia seemed secure and 18 Battalion and units of 5 Brigade were keeping a close watch on Bardia, which was too strong for Inglis to tackle unaided. The attack which the brigade staff was preparing was therefore called off. But Freyberg was uneasy about Inglis's third task of dominating the escarpment crossings for 15 miles west of Menastir. Divisional Cavalry with added field and anti-tank guns now had this role; but Freyberg felt it would be too much for them after dark and thought Inglis should send 19 Battalion. Divisional Cavalry could then withdraw into reserve. Inglis agreed and 19 Battalion under Lieutenant-Colonel Hartnell moved off at 3 p.m. and took up its new duties two hours later.

blocking the via balbia, 22 november black and white map diagram

Twentieth Battalion had had a busy morning at Menastir. B and D Companies had duly climbed back up the escarpment at midmorning, having cleared several encampments. Then enemy were seen west of A Company's road block and C Company was sent down to attack them. A heavy mist blotted out the ground below and when MG fire from the direction of C Company was heard, mingled with the sound of heavier calibres, Colonel Kippenberger had to hurry half a mile westwards along the crest before he could make out what was happening through a break in the mist. It looked as though C Company, which had no anti-tank guns, was faced with half a dozen tanks and a mobile gun, two mortars and ‘some scores of infantry’.

Kippenberger, letter home, 28 Feb 1942.

He soon got 4 Field Regiment to fire at the ‘tanks’ and his 3-inch mortars at the infantry, while Captain Fountaine

Col D. J. Fountaine, DSO, MC, m.i.d.; Westport; born Westport, 4 Jul 1914; company secretary; CO 20 Bn 21 Jul–16 Aug 1942; 26 Bn Sep 1942–Dec 1943, Jun–Oct 1944; comd NZ Adv Base Oct 1944–Sep 1945; wounded 26 Nov 1941.

withdrew C Company in good order. By noon the enemy had halted a mile west of the road block and was lightly shelling A Company.

This called for further action and Kippenberger proposed a battalion attack with I-tank support, to which Inglis readily agreed. A Squadron of 8 Royal Tanks therefore descended, formed its Valentines up facing westwards, and attacked under short, sharp concentrations by 26 and 46 Field Batteries. C Company followed 500 yards behind, while Kippenberger took B Company along the crest to seize whatever chance was offered of committing it below, only to get driven back in error by fire from the Valentines. But no harm was done. The enemy ‘tanks’ were driven off easily and 230 prisoners brought in by C Company, together with a few mortars and two infantry guns. This brought the total of prisoners in this area to about 320, including 18 Germans, while casualties in 20 Battalion were only two killed and five wounded.

A brave and resourceful German officer, Captain Briel, CO of 606 Anti-Aircraft Battalion, was Kippenberger's opponent in this action. Briel's 20-millimetre platoon had been stationed a few miles west of Menastir to protect the B Echelons of 21 Panzer Division, and it was this platoon with supply personnel, mostly Italian, who supplied the opposition, reinforced later by men from Briel's headquarters. The immediate object was to cover the evacuation of the dumps of 21 Panzer and lorries shuttled backwards and forwards throughout the day taking supplies westwards. By evening the dumps were almost cleared, though enough remained for Briel to order his little group to hold on until next day. It was lucky for him that observers mistook his armoured half-tracked gun carriers with their automatic 20-millimetre dual-purpose guns for tanks, and that they were unaware of the intention behind his stubborn and skilful delaying action. Both sides were, as it happened, in the happy position of being able at the end of the day to congratulate themselves on a local success; but Briel's was the greater achievement and the course of the campaign might have been very different had 4 Brigade captured the bulk of the supplies of 21 Panzer, opening the way to those of the rest of Africa Corps in the Gambut area.

The methodical exploitation of the surprise gained in the night move to Menastir, however, was rudely interrupted by a signal from Corps at 1.40 p.m. which Freyberg thought ‘extraodinary’:

Leave minimum Tps to observe enemy BARDIA and send remainder your tps clear up area North road BARDIA-TOBRUK and advance on GAMBUT which enemy aircraft still using. Advance West will best assist VZV [not deciphered] plan.

Gentry thought Godwin-Austen intended a brigade raid to Gambut airfield and back. ‘Rather cunningly’, he added, ‘they [Corps] have put the responsibility on us of deciding what is the minimum number of troops to police Bardia.’ Freyberg was at the time preoccupied with ‘bottling up’ Bardia and sent a liaison officer to 13 Corps to explain how strong the enemy was in this area. ‘Area held by 20 Bn is terribly weak’, he noted in his diary. ‘We don't want these people to get out and when they find a Bn instead of a Bde they will try. They counter attacked from the North of Bardia this morning. Corps Comd must know we are up against a good number of troops.’ In a signal of 2.30 p.m. to 13 Corps he expressed this as follows:

6 Inf Bde now under comd 30 Corps. Presume you NOT wish take all Tps other than those guarding BARDIA. Propose leaving minimum guarding western exits from BARDIA and send two bns two sqns I Tanks and Div Cav to clear up area incl GAMBUT and North of rd BARDIA TOBRUK west to 46 Grid Line. Will you say if this meets Corps order. Enemy Tps on present Div front active. Do NOT recommend weakening the block South of BARDIA at present. Reply immediate.

Grid 46 was a north-south line just west of Gambut and the broken country north of the Via Balbia up to there still held many enemy troops and facilities; but the airfield was evidently the chief objective, as Gentry had perceived. At 4 p.m. 13 Corps signalled agreement.

Gentry went to 4 Brigade about 3.30 p.m. and in the absence of Inglis left orders for the brigade (less 20 Battalion) to move to Point 220, eight miles westwards above the escarpment. This was in line with the crusader operation order and caused no surprise. The brigade staff seem to have understood that they were to take over from Divisional Cavalry, and Inglis assumed that all that was intended was to strengthen a move already ordered. Nineteenth Battalion had gone to relieve the Cavalry and now the 18th was to follow, which it did, with Brigade Headquarters and supporting arms, at 4.25 p.m. To Gentry it was the first stage of a move to Gambut; but he was not ready to order the second until Corps agreed to Freyberg's proposals. Freyberg wanted 44 Royal Tanks (less a squadron) and the attached field battery to go too, but they had not yet reached 4 Brigade and steps were therefore taken to inform them of the new rendezvous. For the time being 20 Battalion at Menastir would retain A Squadron, 8 Royal Tanks, as well as one field battery and other support.

Fourth Brigade (less the 20th) deployed around Bir el Baheira soon after dark. Divisional Cavalry had gone before 19 Battalion arrived and could not therefore detach the squadron which Freyberg also wanted to go with 4 Brigade on the Gambut ‘raid’. Some time in the night Brigadier Inglis received a cyclostyled message from Divisional Headquarters ordering him to go to Gambut at first light and clear the enemy from that neighbourhood and from a 20-mile stretch of broken country north of the Via Balbia. This was an interesting assignment, but still no radical departure from the crusader plan, and it carried no hint that all was not well on the Tobruk front. On the contrary, it seemed to suggest that things had gone better than expected and that the Division could undertake even more ambitious tasks than the plan had laid down.

CHAPTER 9 Heading for Tobruk

THE tasks now confronting the New Zealand Division were indeed more ambitious than anything the crusader plan proposed; but the circumstances were far less propitious than any previously envisaged. What Freyberg concluded was that he would have to leave one brigade in isolated possession of an arc from Menastir through Capuzzo to Upper Sollum while the rest of the Division marched towards Tobruk, and he eventually chose 5 Brigade for this ‘masking’ role. This meant disappointing Hargest, who badly wanted to take further advantage of his position in rear of the enemy's frontier defences; but Freyberg, Inglis, and Barrowclough seemed cast for roles in an altogether larger enterprise which promised quick and complete success. Freyberg therefore did not make strong objections to splitting up his division in this way. He hoped, moreover, that the Indians would soon take over the present role of 5 Brigade and let Hargest rejoin the Division and share this success.

The view of the battle on which these hopes were founded was almost totally misleading and it was only slowly and partially corrected. The armoured battle had been lost not won and the Division was venturing westwards against a far stronger enemy than Freyberg had been led to believe. He expected 30 Corps to protect him against whatever panzer forces had survived the early fighting and looked on the strong force of I tanks now under his command

1 Army Tk Bde (less 42 R Tks), with 8 R Tks (Valentines) and 44 R Tks less B Sqn (Matildas) and 8 Fd Regt, RA; 65 A-Tk Regt, RA, was to follow.

for help against infantry rather than tanks. As the dangers were by degrees disclosed, however, he accepted heavier and heavier commitments.

The mission to Gambut was at first mystifying. Freyberg had assured Barrowclough soon after 9 a.m. on the 22nd that 6 Brigade was expected to operate in the Gambut area as well as at Bir el Chleta and it was understood that for this purpose the brigade would come under 30 Corps. It was not until after 4 Brigade had left on the first stage of its journey to Gambut that any sort of solution to the mystery was offered, in the form of the first incredible intimation of the disaster which had overtaken 30 Corps. A similar disclosure, also far short of the full truth, was made in the late afternoon to Barrowclough and added to his westward journey an urgency that had hitherto been lacking.

The changeover from Matildas to Valentines for 6 Brigade, in accordance with Norrie's wishes, had caused trouble and delay. Freyberg and Barrowclough were agreed that the brigade should not venture westwards without tank support; too little was known of what lay ahead. So the Matildas of 44 Royal Tanks (less one squadron) were diverted to 4 Brigade and Barrowclough had to await the arrival of C Squadron, 8 Royal Tanks, with its Valentines. Barrowclough had no direct wireless link with 30 Corps and was very much in the dark about what was expected of him. All he could do was to be ready to move off as soon as the Valentines reached him. At 1.30 p.m. he issued instructions for the move to Bir el Chleta, which the I tanks (when they arrived) and 24 Battalion were to lead. There was still no great hurry so far as he knew and his scheme was that if darkness fell before the brigade reached its destination it would halt for the night. A Squadron, 8 Royal Tanks, did not turn up until 3 p.m. and a quarter of an hour later the brigade group moved off. The 900-odd vehicles drove on steadily over uneven desert astride the Trigh Capuzzo at 8 miles in the hour,

With spurts of more than 12 miles per hour.

a pace which caused the 25-pounders to bounce merrily and gave the crews of the swaying Bofors many moments of alarm.

After a few miles, however, there came a dramatic intervention which changed the whole outlook. A liaison officer from General Norrie found his way to Barrowclough and gave an account of the armoured battle so strikingly different from any yet heard that it could scarcely be believed. The main point as far as 6 Brigade was concerned was that the Support Group of 7 Armoured Division was ‘heavily pressed’

Barrowclough's report in the 6 Bde war diary.

at Sidi Rezegh and badly wanted the Valentines. These were therefore to go there post-haste without waiting for the rest of the brigade.

This still assumed that 6 Bde was travelling via Gabr Saleh, as Norrie had at first been led to believe, and he wanted the tanks to take the much quicker direct route.

This was a startling order and troubled Barrowclough greatly. He was highly vulnerable to tank attack while on the move, he still expected to have to fight at Bir el Chleta and Gambut, and was liable to be attacked from any direction without warning. Midway as he was between 13 and 30 Corps, he could look to neither for support and could communicate with the latter only by slow and roundabout means. After some heart-burnings he decided to meet the order and instructed C Squadron's commander, Major Veale, accordingly. But his anxieties found quick relief. Veale conferred briefly with his subordinates and came back to say that he could not possibly exceed the pace at which the brigade was already travelling. This solved the immediate problem and the journey continued as before.

The liaison officer's account suggested local setback rather than general disaster in the armoured battle. He offered the whimsical and contradictory estimates of enemy tank losses then being fed back to Corps and Army and made it all the harder to comprehend how the Support Group could have got into serious trouble. Barrowclough was still thinking this over when the brigade reached Gasr el Arid and there came upon sixty vehicles and a few enemy tanks. Twenty-fourth Battalion halted and, after some uncertainty, the Valentines nosed forward, one or two anti-tank guns went into action, and a few 25-pounder rounds whistled off into the distance. At this the enemy drew off out of sight, leaving a disabled lorry and a dozen men behind, and the march was soon resumed, unhampered by one or two tanks which continued to haunt the horizon.

At some stage of the journey a messenger from 30 Corps passed unseen on his way to General Freyberg, and later another, with further details of the battle. What the first had to say was duly relayed to Barrowclough as follows:

Have received orders from 30 Corps that you are to take your Bde Gp with all haste to relieve Support Gp of Armd Corps who are surrounded at SIDI REZEGH 428405. You will receive no further orders but you will start fighting and get in touch with Gen GOTT comd 7 Armd Div who is surrounded there. Recognition signal is two red verey lights. Leave your 2nd line [transport] at present location or send back eastwards. You must decide quickly whether you go by rd or part on escarpment.

This sounded as though the whole of 7 Armoured Division and not just the Support Group was surrounded, a very much worse situation than the LO had suggested; but it did at least vaguely outline a course of action and Barrowclough pressed on. But it was already getting dark, Veale's tank crews were worn out, and the brigade staff with a sleepless night behind them and a day of work and worry ahead had to have food and rest. At about 8 p.m. Barrowclough therefore called a halt. After a quick meal he called up the orders group and presented his plan. The brigade would move off again at 3 a.m., with 25 and 26 Battalions leading and 24 Battalion to the right rear. Passing south of Bir el Chleta to by-pass any enemy there, he would issue fresh orders at Wadi esc-Sciomar, three miles east of Point 175. He hoped to reach 175 by 8 a.m.

During the halt a Captain Clark arrived, another emissary from 30 Corps, with the following message in Norrie's handwriting:

Nov 22Secret To/

G.O.C. N.Z. Div or Brigadier of Selected Bde Co-operating with 30 Corps 1.

Situation as marked on Map (1030 hrs) [not preserved] L.O. has full details of our tps & enemy—also Tobruk progress.

Your Task in General is to secure an all round defensive locality about Pt 175 438404. Bring your Valentine Tanks.

After securing this, gain touch with troops of 7th Arm Bde & 5 S.A. Bde about SIDI REZEGH.

I suggest you shd move S of escarpment from GASR EL ARID to avoid climb later.

My HQs Pt 179 448360——[west of Gabr Saleh]

Am sending you W/T set on my frequency—

(sgd) C. W. M. Norrie Lt General

30 Corps

Thus Norrie had by this time learned that the New Zealand brigade was taking the direct route along the Trigh Capuzzo; but when he specified shortly after 10.30 a.m. on the 22nd that Barrowclough should secure Point 175 he was evidently unaware that this would then have meant fighting his way through the whole of 15 Panzer. If the LO was no better informed on other points Barrowclough would have learned little that was of use to him.

iii

Freyberg was still toying with ideas of attacking Bardia or other frontier garrisons when he heard of the troubles of 30 Corps. He regretted the scarcity of ‘bombardment and barrage guns’ and advocated to Godwin-Austen

In an appreciation signed at 2.15 p.m.

‘a definite policy of dumping ammunition’ following a conversation with the CRA. Brigadier Miles

Brig R. Miles, CBE, DSO and bar, MC, ED, m.i.d.; born Springston, 10 Dec 1892; Regular soldier; NZ Fd Arty 1914–19; CRA 2 NZ Div 1940–41; comd 2 NZEF (UK) 1940; wounded and p.w. 1 Dec 1941; escaped, Italy, Mar 1943; died Spain, 20 Oct 1943.

somehow reminded him of an earlier talk with Cunningham when the latter spoke of the desert campaigns as ‘a Bde Gp War’.

In quotation marks in Freyberg's diary.

Freyberg asked him, ‘Since when?’, adding, ‘Against the Boche [1] consider the striking power and manoeuvrability of a Division is necessary to give weight and effect to attack.’ These words were to ring truer and truer as the hours and days passed.

In such a frame of mind Freyberg was not at all prepared for his next visitor, an LO from 30 Corps, with news that the Support Group was surrounded at Sidi Rezegh and in dire need of help from 6 Brigade. This sounded so unlikely that his first impulse was to arrest the man as a spy. The impulse passed and confirmation soon came with another LO direct from Gott. On the highest priority, therefore, Freyberg sent the signal of 4.45 p.m. to Barrowclough. Yet he was still so far short of the truth about the armoured battle as to be almost in another world. The liaison officers, he wrote in his diary, ‘claim the annihilation of a large part of the German tanks and drew a picture of some 60 enemy AFVs of the 2 Armd Divs hull down with A Tk arty in support being attacked by 250 tanks of 3 British Bdes.’

Hard as these reports were to understand, they seemed clear enough on one point: it was a shortage of infantry and not of tanks from which 30 Corps was suffering. This was of course what Freyberg had predicted to Cunningham and his thoughts jumped ahead from the salvation of the Support Group to the relief of Tobruk. ‘Had a talk to Hargest and Miles’, his diary says of this episode, ‘and thought of a plan to go for Tobruk leaving 3 Bns under Kippenberger to contain Bardia, etc.’ The first formulation of this plan was in a letter Freyberg wrote in the evening to General Godwin-Austen:

C/1398

My Dear Corps Commander,

I have seen a LO from 30 Corps and also a personal one from General Gott, 7 Armd Div.

I am taking Musaid and clearing the enemy out of the area Capuzzo-Musaid-Salum. This should be done at dawn tomorrow. In view of the general situation I suggest that I re-arrange my forces around Bardia as follows:—

20 Bn and sqn tanks astride the road Bardia-Tobruk and on the escarpment.

One Bn of inf at Musaid.

Two coys of inf at Capuzzo with sqn ‘I’ tanks.

Remaining two coys in Bde Reserve at Sidi Azeiz.

Although this would leave the garrisons very weak, I could if necessary take the remaining two bns under Brigadier Hargest and get him to join forces with Brigadier Inglis who has two bns of the 4 Inf Bde, two sqns of ‘I’ tanks and the Div Cav. I suggest that this force could march on Tobruk along the escarpment to break through the Bologna Div, or such other help as is necessary. I feel I could do this starting early in the morning.

If this is done it would be necessary to get the 4 Ind Div to extend their boundary up to Capuzzo.

Yours sincerely, B. C. Freyberg

P.S. I have as you know dispatched the 6 NZ Inf Bde with all haste complete with Valentines, to relieve the Support Gp. I know they will do well.

There followed a busy hour of consultation, first with Miles about the guns, then with Brigadier Watkins about 1 Army Tank Brigade, with Lieutenant-Colonel Agar

Lt-Col G. L. Agar, DSO, OBE, ED, m.i.d.; Auckland; born Auckland, 18 Jun 1905; telegraph engineer; OC Corps Sigs, WDF, Oct 1940–Feb 1941; CO 2 NZ Div Sigs Sep 1941–Sep 1942, Nov 1942–Jun 1943; OC NZ Corps of Sigs Sep 1941–Jun 1943; SSO Sigs, Army HQ, Sep 1943–Dec 1944.

regarding the enormous upheaval the scheme would cause in signals arrangements, and finally with Captain Bell, who reported that 700–800 prisoners had been captured so far. Going over the situation with Colonel Gentry Freyberg concluded, ‘Am convinced must get infantry Division up to attack Tobruk and get that high ground to SE [Sidi Rezegh]. Get that and the battle for Tobruk is won.’

This was the ground of which Freyberg had had a scale model made for study; his insight that the main object of the first phase of the campaign should be the relief of