Читать книгу For Five Shillings a Day: Personal Histories of World War II - Dr. Campbell-Begg Richard - Страница 10
ОглавлениеNorth Africa to the eve of El Alamein
I taly entered the war on 10 June 1940, and on 13 September its troops advanced from Libya into Egypt, establishing fortified positions around Sidi Barrani. The British, under General Wavell, outnumbered by the Italians, attacked the Italian positions on 7 December, and by 8 February 1941 they were on the borders of Tripolitania, having soundly defeated the Italians and taken many prisoners. Then, as a result of operations in Greece and Crete, a greatly reduced British force was left to guard Cyrenaica and Egypt. Rommel, now in North Africa with his Afrika Corps, went on the offensive in late March, and by 11 April the British were back in Egypt, leaving a force in Tobruk, which came under siege. Rommel’s subsequent attacks to take Tobruk and British attempts to relieve the town were inconclusive and resulted in heavy losses to both sides.
Finally, towards the end of December, after a month of bitter fighting, Tobruk was relieved and the Germans were back on the western border of Cyrenaica. On 21 January 1942 Rommel went on the offensive, and by 30 June was in Egypt some hundred miles west of Alexandria. After heavy fighting he was forced on to the defensive south-west of El Alamein, while the Eighth Army, now under General Montgomery, prepared itself for what was to prove the decisive offensive in October, which will be the subject of a later chapter.
Rex Thompson was one of the New Zealanders who arrived in the Middle East at an early stage when the Italians were without German support:
‘Early in 1940, as a driver in the NZ Army Service Corps, 2nd Expeditionary Force, I left New Zealand on the Sobiesky, a Polish ship which was very modern, and in it got to Egypt. I went to Maadi camp, had more training there and, being a driver, I had a job at one stage testing tyres on the trucks in the desert sand and reporting on their performance, etc. Early on I was attached to the 4th Indian Division, and that was quite an experience. They were tremendously adept at camouflage in the desert. Twenty minutes after camping for the night you’d never know there was a vehicle or a person on the desert.
Rex Montgomery Crowther Thompson
As a Division, we moved to Mersa Matruh and I was attached to the Regimental Transport Office there. We used to take the troops up from the train to the border; they’d been on leave or were going on leave. And that’s where we struck our first taste of bombing by the Italians. They used to come over at 4 o’clock every afternoon when the train arrived. And we had slit trenches along the road by the station and we made the mistake of getting into them very early to start with, and all the natives would pile in after us. They’d wait till we got in and pile in on top of us so we had to reverse that. And it was quite an event to be waiting and watch the bombs leave the planes. And from then on we were providing transport over the various parts of the desert, and we soon found out the safest place with the Italian bombing – they were doing over a petrol dump or an ammunition dump – was to get on the dump because it was usually safer than scattering round it.
After a period carting supplies, petrol, etc, to various dumps over the desert area we started taking Italian prisoners of war back to Egypt. We had a little bit of fun with them; they appeared to be so pleased to become prisoners, you couldn’t very well lose them, and when you backed up to the compound they were in, instead of getting about 25 you got about 50 of them. And so we’d leave room for as many as could get in. One day we were stopped for a spell – we used to stop every hour, while they had a comfort stop – and the prisoners would all scatter over the desert, all over the place, and you’d only have to start the vehicle up, they’d be there. This particular day we were stopped and a British staff car came along and one of the officers said, “What are all those chaps doing out in the desert? You’re supposed to be looking after them and taking them into Alexandria.” So we just jumped into the vehicle and started the motor, and they all just piled in and away.’
Another to experience the war in the Western Desert was Leo Hannah, a New Zealand doctor about to undertake post-graduate studies in London. When the war broke out he joined the Royal Army Medical Corps:
‘I arrived in Cairo in February 1941 when the British forces had just succeeded in routing the Italian Army in Libya, and the bulk of those British forces had come back to Cairo to refit, and the front line was being held by fresh troops from England. I was posted as Medical Officer with the rank of Captain to a regiment, the First Battalion The King’s Royal Rifle Corps. They had been fighting the Italians and had actually been training in the desert before the war and were thoroughly conversant with the Western Desert.
At that time the New Zealand and Australian Divisions and British troops had gone to Greece and it was expected that the bulk of the troops in the Middle East would go to Greece and that the war would be fought in the Balkans. However, we suddenly were told that our battalion was to go back into the Western Desert right up to Benghazi, which was just behind the front line, to guard Italian prisoners of war, of whom there were many thousands. This was rather unexpected and mysterious, and we had to be hurriedly refitted with trucks, etc, and we made our way back through the Western Desert. When we got to Tobruk we were told that there were German troops in Libya, that they were driving back the British troops in the front line without any difficulty and that we would be fighting a battle in the next two or three days. This took us by surprise because nobody had mentioned the presence of German troops in Libya until then.
Leo Gordon Hannah
We continued westwards and got just short of Benghazi and found ourselves attached to the 9th Australian Division, who were on the coast road whilst the British troops were further south. We were then posted to be rearguard to the 9th Australian Division and withdrew behind them back to Tobruk with our Rifle Companies fighting various rearguard actions with the advancing Germans. It was decided that Tobruk should be held at any cost, and we thought that we would be shut up in Tobruk, but somebody decided that as we were the only mobile infantry regiment with our own transport, we should not be shut up in Tobruk so we went out into the desert and the Germans came in between us and Tobruk, in which we had left the 9th Australian Division and various other British troops.
We went back to the Egyptian frontier and stayed there for some weeks. As reinforcements gradually came up from Cairo, the Germans occupied themselves with surrounding Tobruk and we kept them under observation from the outside and fought various minor actions with them. There were two attempts made to relieve the Tobruk garrison when forces of tanks and artillery came up from Cairo, but these were unsuccessful and our life was mainly one of patrolling and observation, and at times we were the only troops in close proximity to the Germans.
The medical set-up was very primitive. At first we didn’t have an ambulance; we got an ambulance later on, otherwise everything was just done with trucks – we had 15cwt trucks. Each section of infantrymen had one – I had one and the stretcher bearers had two – and we just put what casualties there were on these trucks as comfortably as possible, and the distances were very great. There was a field ambulance behind us, but it could be anything from 10 to 40 miles behind us, and the unfortunate casualties just had to put up with bumpy trips as there was no air evacuation in those times. One could only give morphia for pain and splint broken legs and bandage wounds; the situation wasn’t suitable for suturing wounds, and these had to wait until the trucks got back to the field ambulance, which, as I say, was a variable distance back.
The usual type of action would be when we were approached by marauding columns of German tanks and armoured cars, in which case we would usually make a quick retreat but come under fire from the tanks until we had got out of range, as at that time there were no British tanks anywhere near us. We were also liable to be strafed from the air by German fighter planes and occasionally bombed by Stukas, but the casualties were not heavy at those times.
Finally, a determined effort was made by what had become known as the Eighth Army, and in late October 1941 an attack was made on the Germans who were still around Tobruk, and there were several days with heavy fighting between the Egyptian frontier and Tobruk. The casualties then were very heavy and the situation was always extremely fluid in that in tank warfare in the desert there was no front line and one could be attacked from front or rear or either side unexpectedly by mobile columns of tanks and armoured cars. The fighting was very complicated and at times one side appeared to be winning and at other times the other side. Casualties were better looked after at this stage because the Field Ambulance was up in the midst of this fighting and were able to do a reasonable amount of surgery when they were not actually under shellfire.
Eventually the Eighth Army seemed to get on top, largely owing to the actions of the New Zealand Division, who fought very, very well at that time. A link-up was made with the Tobruk garrison, which by this time was entirely composed of British troops because the Australians had been evacuated a few months previously at the express demand of the Australian Government. The evacuation had been done by British destroyers at night coming up from Mersa Matruh to Tobruk and going back again before daylight came, when they would be vigorously bombed.
Our battalion had heavy casualties in this fighting, which is known as the Battle of Sidi Rezegh, and we were taken back to Cairo to get reinforcements and generally refit. It was very sad to see the number of men and officers who were killed. I remember vividly dressing the wound of the Brigadier to which my Battalion was attached, who won the VC in the fighting at Sidi Rezegh because of his outstanding leadership and heroism. He was Brigadier Jock Campbell and he drove in and out of a section of the fighting in an 8cwt truck directing tanks and the fire of artillery in the most heroic manner. I was circling an area of heavy fighting in my truck looking for casualties one afternoon and a British tank came driving out of the thick of the fighting towards my truck, which had a Red Cross flag on it, and as it drew near I saw that the body of the Brigadier was lying across the front of this tank and he appeared to be unconscious. However, by the time the tank got up to my truck, he was on his feet again and the tank commander said that he had seen the Brigadier struck by some object and he had fallen off his truck unconscious. The tank commander had jumped out and picked him up and put him across the front of his tank and brought him over to me.
By this time Jock Campbell was on his feet and wanting to get back into things, but I insisted on examining him and he had deep graze on the side of his chest, but it was not a really dangerous wound so I began to put a dressing on, and I had to order him to stand still while I put it on. And he said, “Well, hurry up, hurry up – I must go and rally those bloody tanks.” And so as soon as I got the dressing on he was away again, his truck having come up in the meantime. I might mention that one of the riflemen of the 1KRRC also won the VC when the battalion had to attack a heavily held German position and he unfortunately lost his life in doing this.
We were in Cairo for several weeks and then up to the Desert again and took over much the same role as we had been at before until May 1942, when the Germans, who had been refitting also back in Tunisia, attacked and in much greater strength than before. There was again a period of several days’ vigorous fighting in the same fixed set-up analogous to a naval battle, with troops being attacked from all directions, on all sides. The Germans got the advantage in this because they had much better tanks and much heavier artillery, and the Eighth Army had to withdraw.
My Battalion had to withdraw past Tobruk in the middle of the night, and about 3 o’clock that morning my truck was blown up by a mine which fortunately was just in front of the truck and just blew the front off it, and my driver and I received only minor injuries, but sufficiently severe for us to be evacuated to hospital. So that was the end of my association with the 1KRRC.’
Another New Zealander, this time a gunner, Lance Bombardier Bruce McKay Smith, was recalled with his unit from Syria because of the deteriorating situation in the Western Desert:
‘We packed up very quickly and took off in a mad dash back to Egypt. I’ve forgotten just how long we were, but it was a record time with all the gear we had. We got just to the outskirts of Cairo, then to Alexandria, and then straight up the desert road as far as Baggush, where we camped for two or three days and then went on up to Mersa Matruh, where we were put into vacated gun positions. The whole place hadn’t been used for a wee while and was infested with fleas, so we got out of that very quickly, out on to the open ground, but the Jerry used to bomb us fairly repeatedly. By this time we had an anti-aircraft unit of Bofors guns, which helped quite a bit.
After three days, I think, in Mersa Matruh, General Freyberg decided it wasn’t the place for us to be, and we headed out into the desert to a place called Minqar Qaim, and we didn’t realise at the time, but the Jerries were only a matter of miles behind us as we moved out. We came to this Minqar Qaim, which consisted of a very flat area of desert with an escarpment of about a hundred odd feet rising up out of it, and the guns were put in position below the escarpment and the infantry in front of them again, and we knew the Germans were coming because we could see these great clouds of dust heading towards us. The second night we were there I happened to be amongst a group setting out on a reconnaissance towards the German positions. We had two 25-pounder guns, two Vickers machine-guns, a platoon of infantry and some wireless vans. We were out in the dark and we stayed there all night and, at first light, we could hear the German tanks and apparently we got orders over the radio to get back quick, which we did, and I’m very thankful about that, but we got back and as we arrived back the Germans started shelling and our guns started replying.
For the whole of the day it was an artillery duel. Every now and again the German infantry would approach in vehicles and head towards our positions where our infantry would be waiting for them, and our own guns, of course, managed to repulse them most of the day. But up on the escarpment behind us – actually just straight above where I was – General Freyberg was in a bivouac arrangement directing things, when he got wounded by, I think, a mortar shell, and he was out of action because of that. I don’t know how they got him out, but he was got out anyway. Our guns kept firing and then they started to get low on ammunition and as dark approached the Germans cooled off their attack a wee bit, but we knew that they’d got round on both our flanks so we had a very narrow alleyway behind us.
Bruce McKay Smith
As it got dark all the guns that were serviceable were lined up behind their quads to pull them, and all personnel were allocated space in a vehicle of some kind to get out. Then – I’m not sure what time of night it was – but we set off going south. Now the Maori infantry put in an attack towards the Germans and all hell was let loose. The Germans, apparently, hadn’t expected us to move at night; they weren’t prepared, so they were firing blindly at anything. The vehicle I was in, we had quite a few machine-gun bullets through the canopy, but nobody got hurt. There was just utter confusion – flares, gun shots, machine-gun fire, mortars, anything that could make a noise seemed to be going. We got through the main line of German defences, or whatever they were – they were pretty scattered and ineffectual – and carried on in the vehicles. There were always some vehicles knocked out and some casualties, but not a great many.
We got out and by daylight were clear of the whole area. The vehicle I was in was a 3-ton truck with a fairly high canopy, and we became separated somehow or another from the main body and all we could do was follow the wheel marks of the vehicles that had gone ahead of us. We got strafed once by a German fighter plane, but he didn’t do any good; I think he must have had tracer bullets, which set fire to the camouflage net, and that was the only trouble we had. Fortunately, all the vehicles had plenty of petrol and we kept going for all that day and I think most of the next night. It was moonlight, of course, and we were able to see the tyre tracks; we daren’t show a light of any kind. Eventually we finished up back at Baggush again where the rest of the regiment had gradually made their way. How we all found our way there I still don’t know, but we did.
Then the regiment reformed and we were divided into our individual batteries again with what gear we had. Eventually we got reinforcements to build our numbers up and then we were set to work to build defensive positions about the Alamein area. We went to the south until we got in amongst the sand dunes where it was pretty well impossible to travel with vehicles and guns and things. We dug positions there and we seemed to occupy positions for a day or so and then move off on to somewhere else. Then we were told we were to be in what they call Jock columns, which was a mixture of, perhaps, a troop of artillery and a platoon of machine-guns and a platoon of infantry, plus an ack-ack gun too, and we were told to virtually wander round the desert to see if we could see any Germans. It was a pretty ridiculous idea really because as soon as the Germans saw us they would open fire and we’d fire back and they had superior numbers so we’d clear out again, and it carried on like this for several days.
Then the Division gradually came together and then the big battles started, Sidi Rezegh and so forth; one of them was where Charles Upham won his VC. We carried on with this mobile column, reconnaissance it was really, and then gradually the whole Division moved back to the Alamein line after quite a number of minor actions. We were put into virtually fixed gun positions on fairly stony ground, rocky ground – took a lot of hard work. Meantime the German bombers knew where we were and they gave us a bit of hurry up every now and again. But we had more anti-aircraft defence than we’d had prior to this, and on one occasion a German aircraft was shot down in our lines and the pilot said that they knew where all our different divisions were.
We spent quite a considerable amount of time there. Now and again the Germans would attack, particularly on our left flank, which we nearly always repulsed fairly well, but there were quite a number of tank battles. In the meantime some of us were individually given leave to go to Cairo for a few days, which was much appreciated. And also I took part in building dummy gun positions out of scrim and timber, dummy vehicles, all sorts of dummy stuff to try and fool the Germans. It was a wee bit away from our lines and the Germans did bomb occasionally, but I am not sure how effective they were. This all went on until the fateful day of 23 October 1942 when the big battle of Alamein started.’
James Hayter, DFC, now in the Middle East, continues his narrative:
‘I was sent to the Western Desert in early 1942 where I joined 33 Squadron as a Supernumerary Flight Commander, and I came back on the last retreat. I was shot down by a Macchi 202 and that was annoying, because I don’t know how long we had a dogfight for, but we got lower and lower and lower until my ailerons were jamming, and I thought, well, I’ll force land. It was an Italian boy – he overshot me, and as he overshot me I thought, God damn it, I might be able to get a shot at him, and I managed to hit him and he crash-landed up in front, landed up in front of me and I landed on top of the Australian lines. This was OK – we went to have a drink afterwards and the Australians were all for shooting him, and I wouldn’t let them do that and I took him back as my personal prisoner. We had a tent and I was drinking with this chap and he could speak perfect English, and the Military Police arrived and they were most annoyed with me for talking to this guy. I got a ticking off from Air Marshal Saul for consorting with the enemy.
We now started to do some low-level stuff, and eventually we were told that we were not to come lower than 7,000 feet; we were Hurricane bombers and, you know, one bomb, dropping it from 7,000 feet, you’d never hit anything. You were very lucky if you did. If you went down and strafed anything you got a rap on the knuckles – it was so bloody stupid. I went to “Mary” Coningham [Air Vice-Marshal] and I said, “You know, this is absolutely bloody ridiculous, sir, we’re not being effective.” You know, low-level strafing on the desert, there was miles and miles of transport you could shoot at. Sure, you have casualties, but it was worth it and we did it from D-Day onwards. We did a lot of it – all our stuff was low-level. Even if you didn’t set a vehicle on fire you frightened the hell out of them, which was pretty demoralising, you know. If you get 12 aircraft line astern and they’re shooting up a convoy, it causes a hell of a panic.’
Keith Newth, a Corporal of Regimental Signals in the NZ 20th Battalion of Infantry, moved up to the desert in the latter stages of 1941 and went into his first action there. But before long his unit was sent to Greece:
‘Back in Alexandra from Crete, we were entrained back to Cairo. The next day, I’ll never forget arriving back in the Cairo station – there was Lady Killern to meet her New Zealand boys. We were taken up to King Farouk’s castle or whatever it was and given a wonderful dinner. The Egyptians seemed to absolutely fall in love with the Kiwis. They were wonderful to us, and yet they would rob their own mothers. I had a little boy come to me, “Kiwi, cigarette Kiwi”, so I handed him a packet of cigarettes. It had only one cigarette in it – he said, “It’s your last cigarette,” and he wouldn’t take it.
And I’m certain no soldier ever dreamed of the idea of being a prisoner of war. Anyway, I was wounded and captured at Sidi Rezegh by the Germans. And the next thing I knew was, a German officer said to me, as he leaned out of his tank, “For you the war is over.” I had my left arm broken and he got a splint and put my arm in this splint, stopped an Italian truck, kicked the co-driver out of it, stuck me in and told the driver to take me to the hospital at Derna. And the next morning I remember Rommel coming along and looking at everybody with his stern look. First words he said were, “Why so many prisoners?” which made you shake a bit. The next thing he said was, “You will attend to the worst cases here, be they British, German, Italian or what,” and that was the type of man he was.
So then I was taken back to hospital in Derna and they took me to the German Hospital. It was full, so they took me to the Italian Hospital. It had 20 beds in the ward and they were full except for one for me and these Italians – I thought they were all Italians – and I was a bit unpopular, as you can understand. They said, ‘Your RAF, boom, boom, boom.”
I said, “Oh yes, I know what you mean.”
By gosh, they knew what they were talking about, because that night, in the middle of the night, the RAF came over and they bombed all right, because the hospital had ack-ack guns all around it. And all these Italian orderlies at the hospital had taken off – they didn’t worry about us. And the bombs blew all the glass out of the windows and so forth and my bed collapsed with the top end of the bed down on the floor and my broken arm had nothing done to it – it was broken in two places. I had to get myself up off the floor and get myself out of that.
Keith Lewis Newth
And that was on the Monday night, and on the following Friday they decided to do something about my broken arm and the doctor – they had no anaesthetic, nothing at all – he just got one chap to hang on to the elbow and another to pull on the hand and he bound it up. But he bound it up with the bones in the wrong direction – instead of butting to each other they were crossed – so it was a dead loss and eventually they had to be broken again and reset. That’s another thought that will never leave me, what I went through there. There was in the operating room five beds. I was in the first one, luckily. They did my arm, no anaesthetic, and if I started to faint the chap behind slapped you across the face because they did not want you to go out on them. But next to me they took a chap’s leg off, and you could hear them scraping the bone, and another one, they did work on his kneecap and another one’s arm was taken off, and all were done without anaesthetics. The chaps who had the amputations said for a start there was very sharp pain, but then once they hit the bone it sort of went dead. But, oh hell, you could almost hear chaps scream back in New Zealand.
I was lucky, in fact, because I was taken across to Italy in a hospital ship, Cecilia, but the ship our boys, the 20th Battalion boys, were being taken across to Italy on was torpedoed by our own people and, while not all of them were drowned, I don’t think many of them were saved because they were battened down anyhow, so they couldn’t get out. More of the horrors of war of course.’
New Zealander Kenneth Frater, a driver in the 2nd NZ Supply Column, part of the 5th Brigade, was also caught up in the fighting around Sidi Rezegh:
‘When daylight came we were near a New Zealand Field Dressing Station at Sidi Rezegh. Our escort went off apparently to join in the battle, which seemed to be in progress on all sides. We were asked to move as we were making a target of the Dressing Station. There was constant tank and artillery fire, and wherever we moved we were told to get the hell out of it as we were spoiling a line of fire or making an unnecessary target. An Artillery Major told us we were interfering with a perfectly good battle. Eventually we moved to a comparatively quiet area near Divisional HQ behind our troops, who were attacking the enemy forces besieging Tobruk. Here we unloaded our loads of rations. At last somebody was glad to see us. The forces at Sidi Rezegh had not received rations for 48 hours. Tich Cotterell, in charge of our unit, was awarded the Military Cross for bringing soft transport through three enemy armoured columns and getting urgently needed supplies to our fighting troops. Sergeant Stan Grubb had also been a tower of strength, but he received no recognition.
Through the day other transport trucks and personnel trickled into the area and we were becoming a large target and limiting movement of fighting weapons. The General decided we had to be got rid of, so as soon as it was dark we lined up nose-to-tail and the infantry punched a hole in the German line to allow us to move through behind the Tobruk defences. The engineers moved behind the infantry and swept a clear track through the minefield, which was about a mile deep. The only indication was a tape left to show the way. It was a stop-start trip with shells flying around. At times during a stop someone would go to sleep and the vehicles in front would be out of sight. Then someone would have to walk with the tape in hand to find the way. By daylight most were safely through.’
Kenneth Carrol Frater
Kenneth Frater’s Supply Column joined the rest of the NZ Division in Syria, but in June 1942 was in the rush to get back to Egypt because of Rommel’s rapid advance. Working from a supply dump at Mersa Matruh, his unit just made it back to the Alamein Defence Line ahead of the Germans. However, his troubles were by no means over:
‘We dispersed our trucks singly at about 75-yard intervals. The cook started up the burner to cook a meal. There were four planes stooging slowly round with wing lights on, so we naturally assumed they were ours. People were drifting towards the radio truck to listen to the 9pm news. The driver from next to us arrived at our truck and my No 2 and I were just starting off with him to hear the news when bombs started screaming down. We saw the radio truck hit and threw ourselves to the ground. The last bomb in the string exploded alongside us, luckily in soft sand. The other driver took most of the damage as he was nearest to the bomb with me alongside him and my No 2 further away. I was deaf in my right ear and couldn’t hear much out of the other, my neck hurt, and when I stood up I was lame, but couldn’t find anything wrong. I later discovered the heel had been sliced off my right boot. I guess it took a minute or two to recover our senses, then we discovered the bloke nearest the bomb had taken the full impact and was quite badly wounded. We carried him to the HQ truck and found quite a number of wounded already there. Ambulances started to arrive so we got out of the way. We learnt that there had been about 20 men at the radio truck when it sustained a direct hit, killing 12 and wounding the rest.
Several trucks were on fire, so the area was well lit up. Most of the drivers elected to move further away from the burning trucks, but when we got back to our truck we found that a lump of shrapnel had flattened one tyre, so decided to stay put until daylight. That same night, those with the Division at Minqar Qaim had a worse time. The infantry cut their way through the German lines with bayonets, with the transport vehicles following behind. Two of my friends who were carting explosives for the engineers received a direct hit and were literally blown to kingdom come.
After several days we were all sorted out and back with our own units. I still couldn’t hear with my right ear and my neck was pretty sore. I reported sick and was sent to Field Hospital. There I was told I had a burst eardrum and a whiplash. I was told that my problems would heal themselves and was sent back to my unit. My ear has never healed properly.’
Apart from the dangers of battle, there were other real problems in the desert. Kenneth Frater again:
‘From my point of view, my worst enemy was the Egyptian fly. With German and British troops combined there were 3-400,000 troops in an area 50 miles long and probably 8 miles wide. On the battlefield dead bodies often lay unburied for days. The only hygiene was to be like a cat. Scratch a hole in the sand and cover it up. The flies during the heat of summer moved in dense swarms. Having a meal was a real conjuring trick. You had to keep your food covered and then try and get a spoonful in your mouth with as few flies as possible. I contracted dysentery. I was taken to Field Hospital, but I continued to get worse. There was talk of evacuating me to Base Hospital. I didn’t want that, as when you returned from Base, you were liable to be drafted into the infantry. Fortunately an orderly, an angel in disguise, brought me a tin of Highlander condensed milk and said, “Get that into you – it’ll stop anything.” Within 4 hours my contractions had stopped and I was thinking perhaps I could manage some food. I had a couple of days on mashed potatoes and gravy and was then sent back to my unit. Our Medical Officer apparently didn’t like the look of me so recommended that I have convalescent leave. I had five days in Cairo. I wondered who the strange guy was when I saw myself in a full-length mirror. I had lost just on 3 stone.’
New Zealand Gunner Officer and Battery Commander, Leonard Thornton, had clear memories of the alarm caused by Rommel’s advance towards Alexandria:
‘The NZ Division was in Syria when Rommel began his push in the Western Desert again, and Tobruk fell and we were hurtled back into the battle. And we made what was really, for a division, a lightning move. It took us only about, I suppose, five or six days, to move all those hundreds and hundreds of kilometres back into the Western Desert. And as we went up into the desert from Alexandria and went up that narrow and well-known desert road towards the west, the Eighth Army and the Air Force were coming pell-mell back down the road and it was, shall we say, not exactly riotous, but it was certainly a very disorganised retreat. And morale had fallen to pieces, so it was quite a challenge. The Kiwis rather liked the idea that they were going to save the situation, so we went in the most orderly way we could. Up alongside the road, mostly against the stream of traffic coming back from the disordered battles that had occurred further to the west. And we were ordered to take up a fixed position as they prepared defensive positions at Matruh. General Freyberg, who was our redoubtable commander, made one of the best decisions of his life when he said, “I command a mobile division and I am not going to have them shut up in old-fashioned silted-up defences protected by rusty and not very effective wire. I must fight the battle in a mobile way.” And because of his insistence we were allowed to get out on a flank and fight the battle at a place called Minqar Qaim.
Freyberg was an unusual man and he was in a unique position really, because he was the overall force commander as well as being a fighting commander, and as the Divisional Commander, so he had wide responsibilities, wider than an ordinary major-general commanding an ordinary old infantry division. However, secondly he was directly responsible to the New Zealand Government for the safety and, indeed, the employment of the New Zealand Force. The New Zealand Force was a pretty large and mobile force. We had, at that stage, three infantry brigades and the usual bits and pieces, so if really necessary, if he thought it was necessary, he could at any time refer to the New Zealand Government to say, I have been asked to do, perform such and such a task here, and I think it’s either appropriate or I think it’s not appropriate, and I’d like you to say whether I am to conform. I don’t think that, in this case, he found it necessary to refer the matter back, although after the debacle in Greece to which New Zealand troops had been committed, he was a little wary. We then fought the battle at Minqar Qaim and, of course, in the nature of things, as the battle flowed towards us and then round us, the Division was surrounded. You had to accept that as a normal situation in a mobile operation, but it’s not a very comfortable one.
Leonard Whitmore Thornton
I had, in the meantime, been detached from my regiment, which was, as you might say, in the bag at Minqar Qaim, because I had been sent off with an infantry battalion, the 21st Battalion. I was now commanding a field battery to defend another small outpost area to the south of the main divisional position. We were quite detached so we fought our own operation down in this lonely part of the desert while the Division defended itself in its locality at Minqar Qaim. The Division, having defended itself through something like two days and nights of defensive fighting, realised that the situation was rather threatening and they would have to break out. And at that critical moment General Freyberg, making a reconnaissance of the front-line areas towards Cairo, that’s to say on the eastern side, was wounded by some stray shelling and quite badly wounded in the neck, so that was just the wrong moment to lose your commander.
However, the reserve commander took over and that night the whole Division did an extraordinary operation, just charging through the night, a silent attack, and broke through the German lines and the entire force escaped with very, very low casualties really. An extraordinary operation – my own regiment came out on the Saturday and broke their way out separately and they all moved off towards a defensive position, which had been prepared further towards the east. In the meantime, of course, I didn’t know what had happened; communications in those days were very chancy indeed. You seemed to think that in the field everyone would be in touch; we had no idea really what had happened to the Division. And so I had a rather uncomfortable day being pursued by a few tanks and armoured cars and that sort of thing and trying to support the battalion. The battalion itself got scattered and, anyway, the long and short of it was that after a very uncomfortable night in the middle of the desert and not knowing quite what was happening, we moved off back and got the buzz, really from a chance encounter with an engineer officer, a lone figure travelling across the desert. We then fell back on to the main position.
So we reorganised ourselves back on what was eventually to become the Alamein Line. And there was fought a series of battles, and these were very untidy battles indeed with very poor co-ordination. I look back on it now, I realise how poor the co-ordination was between the arms. We had lost a large number as prisoners at that time, which is always a sign of poor control and c-ordination. There was a total lack of understanding between the British armour and the infantry – I don’t mean only ourselves, but the armour and infantry generally were not working well together. We had no armour at that time, no tanks in other words at that time, apart from some light tanks. So it was a very, very unhappy period and our losses were very high, including, I can’t remember the figure now, but we must have lost something over 2-3,000, probably prisoners. So we were in a very depleted state when that phase of the battle came to an end. It came to an end really because Rommel had outrun his supplies and couldn’t maintain the attack, the offensive any longer. And we fought a particularly painful final operation with two borrowed British infantry brigades because our brigades were now so fought out, and eventually the line settled down.
In the meantime the brigade in which I had served as a brigade major had been severely mauled and the entire brigade headquarters had been lost, had been taken prisoner, including the brigadier, and some of course were killed. And so I was then called back from my enjoyable role as a battery commander. It’s much nicer being a line officer; of course, you don’t have to work nearly so hard and it’s more interesting; you have better contact with the men and so forth. Anyway, I was pulled away from that job as battery commander and I was pulled in to go back and reconstitute the brigade headquarters and retrain a new brigade headquarters in the middle of this rather desultory period.
The battalions were right down in strength, the weather was extraordinarily hot, we were afflicted with mosquitoes and flies and dreadful things called desert sores because the diet and living conditions were very poor. There was not enough water for washing and that kind of thing. People became afflicted; any kind of scratch would become a suppurating sore and people would be covered with these terrible sores. I don’t know how I managed to escape them – it was just good luck I guess. So it was a very difficult period – something like 11 weeks we were in the line under these very unpleasant conditions. There wasn’t a great deal of enemy action. On our side we felt we had to dominate the battlefield, so we did a lot of patrolling and raids went on. Again it was very hard to sustain the troops’ morale, which I thought was getting a bit low. I actually ran a daily newspaper for a long time because I realised the chaps were getting rather depressed, so I ran a sort of paper to try and give them some information about what was happening, and before long it was pretty widely circulated among the British units as well as our own, I might say. I think that was probably because an enterprising editor, who was my sergeant clerk, managed to dream up rather an unwholesome joke, which he added to the end of every issue, so that was much sought after.’
