The Triumph Page 15

  The Axis front fell back, and curled to its left, that is, against the coast, where it was pinned down by the weight of British forces. The infantry reserves were thus able to move forward and resume the battle for Sidi Rezegh while the panzers themselves were endeavouring to recuperate, and now at last, the weather having cleared, the RAF was able to assist and blast anything hostile that moved; they had complete command of the air. The village was taken and re-taken several times, but the battle was now starting to sway the British way, for the main Axis infantry remained pinned against Bardia and Sollum on the coast; the RAF was also effectively preventing supply columns from using the Capuzzo Track, and the garrison in Tobruk was mounting a sortie to link up with the approaching Allied forces. Thus, amazingly despite the defeat of his armour, Cunningham was poised for victory, when there came a dramatic intervention.

  *

  The brigade had been arranged in a ‘leaguer’, a square with the tanks and artillery on the outside and the trucks inside, and Fergus had just finished inspecting his battered command, after snatching a few hours’ sleep — no one had had any for forty-eight hours. Several more tanks had been lost even in the defensive positions about Sidi Rezegh, and only twenty-seven were fit for action — but this was more than in most of the other armoured regiments. The human casualties were no less depressing. Some hundred and thirty men, a quarter of the ration strength of the entire regiment, were missing or known dead; another seventy-odd were wounded — a horrifying reversal of the normal casualty ratio, but when a tank brewed in the middle of a battle there was virtually no hope for those inside. Among the dead were Captain Romerill, Lieutenants Edison and Smith, and Sergeant-Major Brothers, while the recently-arrived Captain Petheridge was wounded. Fergus promoted Butler to sergeant-major, but made no other field changes, as he only commanded little more than one squadron in any event. He was relieved, however, to learn that both the Manly-Smiths had survived; Bert had, as usual, been in the thick of the fight, but this time his tank had emerged unscathed.

  Again as usual, he had an opinion to offer. ‘We have to get better machines, Colonel, sir,’ he said. ‘Otherwise they are going to keep us hanging by the short and curlies.’

  ‘He’s right, of course,’ Fergus confessed to Bentley as they had a frugal supper. ‘It’s asking too much of men to send them into battle with inferior weapons.’

  He had just turned in for some more precious sleep when the alarm went. ‘There’s a breakout, sir,’ gasped the telegrapher.

  The Brigadier summoned his regimental commanders. ‘That fellow Rommel has gathered what remains of his armour and punched east,’ he said. ‘As all our reserves are committed to the battle, there is nothing between him and Cairo. He must be caught and brought to battle, regardless of the cost. All units must be ready to pull out in fifteen minutes.’

  Desperately men finished their dinners and clambered into their machines; the tanks had happily been refuelled and re-armed that morning. Fergus took his place in the cupola of Allack’s tank and fired the verey pistol to bring the pitifully small force he now commanded into column behind him. The other armoured units of Thirtieth Corps were also under way, and they raced over the bumpy ground, seeking the enemy.

  ‘You have to hand it to that bastard for nerve,’ Allack commented.

  ‘He’s stuck his neck out too far this time,’ Fergus growled. ‘And by God we’re going to cut it off.’

  They roared through the night, while the RAF swept above them looking for the enemy. The panzers were spotted just before dawn. Rommel of course lacked the fuel to make a plunge for Alexandria or Cairo; his aim had been to relieve the pressure on his infantry by swinging up behind the Allied forces in turn. But lacking air superiority it was a forlorn hope. The British armour this time held a watching brief, content to leave the work to the RAF, who tore into the panzers with their machine guns, cannon and bombs. Soon Rommel realized that he was in danger of losing his precious Afrika Korps, and was in full retreat, harried by the Seventh Armoured Division, and as usual, giving as good as he got.

  The regiment regained Sidi Rezegh to find the enemy gone. But the surprises of this remarkable battle were not yet over, for now they learned that they had a new army commander. It appeared that General Cunningham had wanted to call off the struggle for Sidi Rezegh, in view of the exorbitant casualties his men were suffering. General Auchinleck had himself flown into the battle area to see what was happening, had determined that the battle would be continued to victory, regardless of casualties, and had replaced Cunningham with his own Chief of Staff, Ritchie.

  The rights and wrongs of so exceptional an occurrence —the replacement of a commanding general in the very middle of a battle — could not be gauged at regimental level. There was still a lot of hard fighting to be done, as Rommel tried desperately to extricate his infantry. The entire Seventh Armoured Division now numbered only a hundred and twenty tanks, but they were again thrown into the battle, and again found themselves outgunned by the panzers. But Rommel was now thinking only of escape, and on 8 December General Ritchie was able to announce that Tobruk had been relieved.

  *

  That Auchinleck had made the right decision became obvious when the casualties were tallied. Including the garrisons that had been cut off in Bardia and Sollum and forced to surrender, the enemy had lost thirty-three thousand men, whereas the Allies had lost only just over ten thousand in killed and missing — of these, less than three thousand were positively identified as dead — and some seven thousand wounded. Even more revealing were the tank figures: three hundred Axis tanks had been destroyed in the battle, against only two hundred and seventy-eight British. Many more had been put out of action, temporarily, but because the Allies had held the ground these were now available to be repaired and put back into service. Had the assault been called off on account of unacceptable casualties, it would have been a catastrophe.

  Of the British tank losses, the vast majority had been suffered by the Seventh Armoured Division, and Fergus would dearly have loved to take his men out of the line to recuperate, but this was impossible, as the orders were to mount the maximum possible pursuit of the enemy. The days of the Desert Gallop seemed to have come again, as the armoured columns roared to the west, accompanied by the RAF. The Axis retreat became headlong, but as had happened the year before, when the Allies reached El Agheila and the borders of Tripolitania, they had to call a halt to let their supply columns catch up with them. By then it was January 1942, and what was happening in the desert had suddenly become of small importance in the larger view. Even as, on 8 December, the siege of Tobruk had been raised, the news of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor had been received. Now it was indeed a world war.

  *

  Fergus had no time even to consider the implications of the entry of the only two remaining great powers into the conflict until February, when at last the Seventh Armoured Division was allowed to return to Egypt, its place being taken by the First Armoured Division, just sent out from England, and reputedly the finest in the British Army. With their new uniforms, and their unscarred tanks, they made a proud show as, pennons flying, they rolled past the battle-weary veterans of the desert campaigns.

  ‘Green as grass,’ Bentley commented, watching through his binoculars some of the supply trucks making heavy weather of the sand. ‘Let’s hope Rommel doesn’t come again until they’ve had a chance to get sunburned.’

  Fergus made no reply to that. He agreed with his adjutant, and he was dismayed to see that the replacements were armed with the same vehicles which he had watched shot to pieces around him before Sidi Rezegh. Of course, with the RAF controlling the skies, and reinforcements pouring into Egypt — the total ration strength of the Allied armed forces in North Africa was now over half a million men — things were different this time. Or were they? Without warning, and with hardly more than a hundred tanks, of which nearly half were Italian, Rommel launched a sudden and savage counter-attack, now at last supported by the
Luftwaffe. The First Armoured Division mustered a hundred and fifty tanks, but were torn apart by the panzers, and again as had happened a year before, the entire Allied front crumpled into headlong retreat. Benghazi fell, and Derna, and the so recently victorious army was almost back to Tobruk before Auchinleck, again interfering personally in the battle, checked the German advance, and left the two exhausted armies glaring at each other across the desert.

  Fergus was too busy to worry about what was happening to the west; there was still a great deal to be done even in the Delta. There were his men to restore to full health as rapidly as possible — the mental strain of a long modern battle could produce results very akin to a prolonged nervous breakdown. Then there was the complete reorganization of the regiment to be undertaken; he was told that there would be replacements soon enough, and his surviving tanks, and men, had to be the cadres on which these replacements would grow. Thus he was required to make his recommendations immediately. Petheridge was sufficiently badly wounded to be returned to England, so Fergus gave B Squadron to Lieutenant Mather, and C Squadron to Lieutenant Brown, both of whom were promoted to captain. As they each had only eight tanks under their command, the absence of any lieutenants to assist them was not immediately important. Fergus also had to re-establish his NCOs. Butler was a tower of strength here, and happily agreed when Fergus promoted Bert to sergeant. ‘Always in the thickest fighting, that boy,’ the Sergeant-Major said. ‘He’s a born soldier.’

  Then there was the dismal business of sitting down with the padre and writing to the next of kin of those who had been killed; there were so many, this occupied him for some time.

  On a happier note, there were letters to and from the family. The biggest news from home was that Harry was now fighting as hard as anyone, as the Japanese surged through the Philippine Islands. Fergus gathered that Dad and Mom were worried for their youngest son, naturally, but at the same time content that their entire family should be taking part in the struggle. They wrote too about the destruction of the London flat, but assured him that they were both well, and that Broad Acres had not been damaged in any way, so far.

  They also said conventionally nice things about Annaliese, but Fergus decided that they had not yet become fully reconciled to the fact that she was again going to become a daughter-in-law. On the other hand, Liese’s letters were full of love, and desire, too. Reading them made him feel more than ever guilty over that brief beauty with Monique Deschards. He wondered where she was now, and what she was doing? But he would never see her again.

  He replied in kind, and then took himself off to Cairo. This was at least partly because he was commanded to do so, in order that he could be invested with the precious crimson ribbon by the British Resident. It was also an occasion for meeting the Lord Privy Seal, Sir Stafford Cripps, who was on his way to India to attempt to persuade people like Nehru and Gandhi to cease their agitation for independence until the Japanese had been dealt with. Cairo was, however, not merely a stopover for Cripps, as Fergus discovered when the following evening he was invited to the Commander-in-Chief’s flat, where he discovered, to his surprise, that it was to be more of a supper tete-a-tete than usual: he was the only guest.

  ‘I get precious few quiet evenings,’ Auchinleck told him. ‘And I haven’t had a chance to talk to you since before Sidi Rezegh. What did you think of it?’

  ‘I think thank God you made us go through with it, sir,’ Fergus said.

  ‘I didn’t ask you here to be flattered, Fergus. I want some criticisms.’

  ‘Well,’ Fergus said cautiously, not at all sure what the General was looking for, from him, when he must have received reams of reports from the various brigadiers. ‘Tactically, we need better tanks. I don’t think our armour is inferior to the panzers’, but our two-pounder gun is too light except at very close quarters. I think this has been proved by the fact that when we get into a melée we do as well as they. It is when we are moving up to the attack that we suffer the most casualties.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Then we don’t have an adequate anti-tank weapon, nothing to compare with their dual-purpose eighty-eights. And most important of all, sir, having regard to the differences I have already mentioned, our strategy of dispersion is a poor one. If it takes two of our tanks to kill one German panzer, then we must always have two of ours available. Our armour was thrown into the Battle of Sidi Rezegh piecemeal. Surely, as Sidi was the whole object of our attack, all the armour should have been concentrated on it, and not dispersed to look for the enemy. Once we held Sidi, he would have had to come to us. As he did. Only he would have met our entire force at once.’

  Auchinleck nodded. ‘There were tactical mistakes. But it is this sense of inferiority that our armoured personnel have which is most worrying. Have you mentioned any of this to your father?’

  ‘Well...no, sir.’

  ‘Why not? Not a misguided sense of loyalty to the Eighth Army, I hope. The best thing you can do for the Eighth Army, for us all, is to bring these facts to the attention of those who can correct them. I am trying. But I need all the help I can find. Your father has Churchill’s ear. That may be most important.’ Auchinleck had dismissed his servant, and now he poured them each a goblet of brandy. ‘I wouldn’t like our conversation to go any further, Fergus, but the Government don’t really understand what is happening out here, and if they are not careful, they are going to land us in one hell of a mess. They complained when I took so long to mount our offensive in November, but they were delighted with my apparent success. Yet I was never in any doubts as to how it would go, and continue to go. In fact, as regards tank losses we came out better than I had hoped. But since then things have gone badly. I don’t want to take any credit away from Rommel. He is a brilliant tactician, and he came back far quicker than I had thought he possibly could. The fact is that he was reinforced more quickly than I could be, because the Axis have been getting their convoys through the Mediterranean whereas ours are being diverted round the Cape of Good Hope. But it is also a fact that he counter-attacked before he was reinforced, and that the First Armoured Division simply fell apart. I am convinced that he began his attack just as a probe, which he took advantage of when he saw how well it was going. Churchill is furious. He cannot understand how a hundred and fifty virtually new tanks, manned by fresh troops, could have been routed by a hundred and twenty old bangers manned by men who had so recently been defeated. The fault of course lies partly in the tanks themselves, of course, and partly in the fact that ours were fresh troops, unused to the desert, whereas Rommel’s men were all veterans.’

  ‘With respect, sir,’ Fergus ventured. ‘Isn’t the truth of the matter that Rommel always leads his attacks in person, whereas you are tied to Cairo so much of the time?’

  Auchinleck grinned. ‘You’re back to the compliments, Fergus. You could even be right. But then, the biggest fact of all is that Rommel has Libya to worry about, and nowhere else. I have to fight him, and administer Egypt, and keep an eye on Palestine, and deal with Rashid Ali in Iraq, and butter up the Turks, all at the same time. I simply have to spend most of my time here. Anyway, they’re not interested in excuses at home. With things going so badly elsewhere — Singapore, Hong Kong, Malaya, the Germans getting set to resume their Russian advance — the powers that be badly need a victory, and they reckon that here in the desert is where they are most likely to get it. They are also once again concerned that if we don’t keep the enemy fully occupied here in North Africa he may launch an all-out assault on Malta. Well, we are going to keep him occupied, and they are going to get their victory, but only if we attack on our terms, not Rommel’s.’ He paused. ‘Do you mind me talking like this?’

  ‘I appreciate it, sir,’ Fergus said.

  ‘They are clamouring for me to launch another offensive. They keep reminding me that my ration strength is enormously greater than Rommel’s, that I have more tanks...and they grumble like hell when I ask for still more. That’s the real reason why C
ripps stopped by, you know. To tell me personally that the Government wants an offensive, now! I just cannot convince them that merely having more men and more machines is a waste of time unless those men and machines are as good as the enemy’s. That means as well trained and acclimatized. I am deter-mined not to throw my people into battle merely to be cut up. That would be criminal. When our preparations and the training of our replacements are completed, then we shall attack. I should be most grateful if you would explain all of that to Murdoch. He will understand it, and it’s just possible he may be able to get it across to the PM.’

  ‘I will certainly try to do so, sir,’ Fergus said. ‘But supposing Malta were to fall. Wouldn’t that have a disastrous effect on our situation here?’

  ‘As we can no longer use the Mediterranean as a supply route, I cannot see that the fall of Malta could be in any way as disastrous for us as to lose the Eighth Army. Warfare is a matter of choosing the lesser evil. Our strength will continue to grow here, regardless of the Mediterranean situation. If Malta falls, perhaps Rommel’s strength will grow more quickly than it is now doing, but I still think we will grow faster. That is something else that needs to be explained.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Fergus agreed.

  *

  He returned to the Delta in a pensive frame of mind, understanding, perhaps for the first time, the many problems that went with the independent command of a large body of men. Dad had always made it seem so simple. But Dad must have had the same doubts, been subjected to the same pressures. He did as Auchinleck had asked, and wrote home as fully as he could, explaining the difficulties and asking Murdoch to convey them to the Prime Minister.