Alamein: The turning point of World War Two

‘Let no man surrender so long as he is unwounded and can fight.’

It was hardly Shakespeare. But something in those words gave him real comfort and he hoped that the men would share in that. The general had ended with a simple message: the sooner they won, the sooner they could all go back home to their families. But de Guingand knew only too well, as he knew did Montgomery, that no matter how hard any man might fight, no matter how many Germans he might kill, there was nothing any of them could do that would guarantee that they would make it back home and not end their days in the dust of the desert. And he wondered how many of them would have to die before the lord of battles granted them their victory.

TWO

2.00 p.m. Just behind the Allied front line Captain Hugh Samwell

He had been lying in this position for almost eight hours now and one thing was abundantly clear. Soon, no matter what happened, he was going to have to take a piss. The hated order had come through the previous evening and issuing it to the men had been an onerous task: Strictly no movement after dawn’. It had produced a predictable collective groan. Even more predictably some wag had yelled, ‘Lucky Dawn’. The CSM had cautioned him, but there were no charges on the eve of battle. And anyway, thought Samwell, that sort of thing was good for morale. Besides, sending up army-speak was a field sport. But for all the levity, Samwell and every man in his platoon knew that when the army said ‘strictly’ it meant it. No movement. He wondered whether their people at home would ever hear about that, would ever really understand what it actually meant.

He shifted again and eased the cramp in his leg. His bladder felt like a football about to burst. Looking around the slit trench for the tenth, perhaps the twentieth time he saw nothing that might act as a makeshift urinal. Then, suddenly it came to him; the water bottles. Samwell dug gingerly around in his pack which lay between his legs and after a while his hand alighted on a familiar glass shape. It was an old whisky bottle; one of two he had retrieved at the mess and filled with water. Reluctantly he opened it. His dry mouth ached for a drink but he realized that even the movement of raising the reflective bottle to his lips might attract the attention of an enemy observer. He reverted to his first thought and taking care not to make any conspicuous movement managed to get it on its side and gently let the contents run out. The noise brought fresh torment to his aching bladder. He urged the water out: Come on, come on, empty you bugger. Finally, when he thought that enough had gone, he managed to manoeuvre the bottle towards his trousers and, unbuttoning his fly, carefully moved until he was just in the right position in the neck. The relief was palpable. A feeling without parallel in his memory.

For a moment, as he buttoned-up and stowed the full bottle deep in the sand of the trench, Samwell was conscious of the absurdity of it all. Here he was, a grown man, an officer in a proud Highland regiment, lying on his back in a hole in the desert with his dick inserted into a bottle. He almost laughed out loud but managed to stifle it. War was like that, he thought. So unnatural that it was bound to create situations which even an artist or poet would find hard to imagine. Much of it was farcical. And thank God for that. They had all learned to laugh in the face of death.

He took out the book he had just received in the post: They Die with their Boots Clean. It was a novel about the Coldstream Guards. Its title hardly seemed to make it appropriate reading for the circumstances, but his wife knew only too well what he liked to read and he thought of her kindness in sending it to him. He reached inside his battledress and took out the precious photograph that had come with the book, of his wife and their two small children. Allan was three now and little Inge only two. He looked closely at his wife, his darling Klara. Took care to take in the lines of her face and her eyes. Those deep blue eyes. Oh my darling Klara. He murmured silently: ‘Why did your countrymen have to make this war on us?’ His wife came from Cologne. He had met her there before the war and they had married quickly, two young people hopelessly in love. They had thought that at first they might settle in her home town. His German was passable and there were opportunities for talented engineers in the new Germany. Hitler’s Germany. But Klara had seen what was coming and wanted no part in it. So they had settled in Scotland, in a modest house at Dalmorglen Park in Stirling, a quiet residential cul-de-sac of new homes.

Samwell had had a good job before the army took him. Not bad at thirty-one to be a managing director. His company, Scottish Radio Industries in Denny, was a relatively new business producing wireless sets, but it was expanding and seemed to have a bright future. And the workers were a good bunch. Solid, dependable types with a keen work ethic. But then the war had come and in an instant their dreams, along with those of millions of others like them, had been fractured into a thousand fragments.

Samwell of course had been one of the first to get into it, as Klara had known he would be. He was already a soldier in the Territorials. Commissioned second lieutenant in January 1938, his army number was 73830. To answer the call and go permanent into the regulars had seemed only natural. They had been mobilized in August ’39.

Of course he’d been teased about his age at Aldershot. Even before he’d been old for an officer cadet. The younger men had called him ‘uncle’ as they did any of the older intake. He didn’t mind. They were good lads for the most part and his eight or ten years’ seniority won him a respect which they did not have for each other. He had revelled in the mess nights when the rooms seemed to sparkle with the light reflected from the regimental silver and they might have been fighting Victoria’s wars rather than this struggle against an inhuman enemy.

Soldiering came naturally to Samwell. He had been a good officer cadet at school at Glenalmond, and had been under an Argyll sergeant then. He himself wasn’t a Scot, of course. Born in Cheshire, in fact, just before the last war. Now though he found himself a lieutenant, acting captain now, in one of the proudest regiments of the British army, Princess Louise’s Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders. A Scottish regiment. A highland regiment. Perhaps, he thought, the coming battle would confirm his rank. He intended to make something of himself in the army. Well, once you were in you were in. Might as well give it everything you could, like anything in life. Even if afterwards he returned to the business in Denny, it would look good on the records, maybe even help his career in Civvy Street.

Samwell thought like a soldier now. His mind had entered into the army framework wholeheartedly and without restraint and the army had moulded him into an effective officer, a leader of men. Much of his job was however keeping records. Acres of paperwork. And all the everyday duties of the company officer: siting latrines, foot inspections, arranging sentry duty, pay parades, making sure there was sufficient ammo and rations, censoring letters and organizing games to keep the men occupied. At times he felt a little like a cross between a kindly schoolmaster and a local council official. And then there were the endless route marches, the fatigue, the sleepless nights. The desert brought its own problems: the great skin-searing khamsin sandstorms that ruined rations and ripped tents to shreds; skin sores, dysentery, jaundice and the ubiquitous flies. No sooner had you opened your mouth to take a bit of bread and jam or a fried egg, than it was covered with flies.

He tried to read some of the book, which strangely was written by a man with a German-sounding name, Gerald Kersh, who had apparently served as a guardsman himself. For the second time he wondered why they were fighting the Germans and how it all made sense. The book wasn’t so bad. A look at the men in one platoon of the Guards in our own times. A passage caught his eye: ‘We had discussed the retreat from Dunkirk. The Cockney, Bob Barker said: “But it was a bit of luck the sea was smooth anyway.” Hodge, opening one of his blue eyes, said: “Why, don’t ee’ see? The Lord God starched out his hand over that water. He said: ‘Now you hold still and let my children come away’.”’

He wondered whether God would be with them in the coming fight. God had always been with him. He thought of home. Of his father, Edward, the rector of a small church in Falkirk and his mother at work in their modest house, keeping up appearances even though the war had meant cuts in all directions. They had been so proud when he had been commissioned into the Argylls. They were the local regiment of course, with their HQ at Stirling Castle. How many hours had he spent in the regimental museum poring over the battle honours and the relics of past campaigns?

He loved the regiment. Klara often teased him about it: ‘Oh Hugh, I think that you must love your soldiers more than me. Men in skirts…’ Then he would laugh and feign anger and chase her around the ktichen, at last catching her and kissing her, checking all the time that the children were not near. God how he loved her. If only this could all be over and he could be back with her. With her in his arms. He tried to put her face from his thoughts. But once bidden, like a genie from the bottle, it would not go back. Not at least until his lovesick heart had had its fill.

He tried hard to concentrate on the matter in hand. But nothing lay around him save sand and rock and the men, silent and motionless. Somewhere he heard a tank engine turning over, and overhead in the distance the distinctive hum of planes. Allied planes, he thought with a feeling of comfort. His mind drifted back to Stirling, to the museum. He tried to replace Klara’s divine image with that of some regimental relic. The colours carried at the Battle of New Orleans when the regiment had been all but wiped out by the American army; the bagpipes played at the relief of Lucknow as the Argylls had marched into the city; the drum carried in the Boer War with its bullethole; the watch that had saved the life of Private Watson in Salonika in 1918.

He wondered if there would be any similar trophies and relics from the coming battle. For a moment Samwell felt a weird sensation of abject fear mixed with pride and elation. He felt almost euphoric. He was about to take part in a battle that would surely go down in history as one of the greatest. He knew in the same instant that this too might be the defining moment of his own life. He was suddenly aware of hard breathing close by and turned to see who was with him in the trench. But he was alone and realized that the breathing was his own. He tried to calm himself. To take part in such a battle was nothing new to the regiment. Hadn’t it fought through Spain with Wellington? It was the Argylls too who had been the original ‘thin red line’ at Balaclava under Sir Colin Campbell. And they had come home with seven VCs from the Indian Mutiny.

A fly landed on his right leg and he recoiled at its bite before flicking it off. It flew back and he swatted it hard, killing it. He looked down at the turned-up shorts, the rolled-over socks and the non-regulation desert boots that so many of his fellow officers had also adopted, including the general himself. It was an uninspiring uniform. Khaki and beige bleached to nothing by the desert sun. They were hardly the stuff of the thin red line, he and his men, certainly by their appearance. No ostrich-feather bonnets and tartan sashes for us, he thought. We are modern warriors. We fight in the colours of the desert. We are creatures of the sand and rock. Like rats, scorpions, lizards we burrow, scuttle and hide while around us the iron dinosaurs roam. It was a primeval contest, this desert war, fought on the most unforgiving terrain known to man. Yet perfect for tanks. Like a great ocean, but of rock and sand. For a few minutes his trick worked. He was in the museum again, touching the relics, the RSM telling him their history. But all too soon Klara came back to him again. Klara. Oh God. Her sweet face filled his every thought. Desperately trying to lose her, he went over again the drill they had learnt for the coming attack. They had been told to walk forward. Slowly, taking their time. It was precisely the same drill that his father had been ordered to follow commanding a platoon of the Cheshires on the Somme in 1916 and not for the first time it occurred to Samwell that it might have the same catastrophic consequences. Wasn’t Montgomery, for all his famous reforming zeal, nothing more than a veteran commander of that terrible war? Had he not learnt from its mistakes? They had been told that the barrage that was to precede them would be the greatest in all history. Rumours were that a thousand guns would open fire at once. He prayed that they would be effective.

Then there were the mines; thousands of them apparently, laid by the Germans and Italians across the front. He knew that the sappers would be out there before them in their two-man teams, were out there now for all he knew with their new Polish mine detectors. They would mark the cleared paths with white tape. All the infantry would have to do was follow the tape. But what, he wondered, if the sappers got lost or if the tape was blown away by shellfire, or if they missed their way? Better not to think.

There was one good thing though about their walk forward. They had been told that the pipers could play. Just as they had in 1916, he thought, and in India in 1857 and in the Crimea and at Salamanca. The news had given him a tremendous kick. Just like in the old days, he thought. Pipers at the head. No colours now of course waving in the breeze above the bonnets, but kilted pipers all the same, even in this age of mechanized war.

He scanned the desert once again, but saw nothing. Looked at his watch. It was five minutes past four, 16.05 hours. He sighed. They had been told that the attack would go in that evening; 21.40 hours had been given as ‘H’ Hour. He reached into his sack and once again pulled out the over-printed map which showed all the known enemy positions as noted by the air reconnaissance. Any fear had subsided now and once again he felt the sensation of being present at a great event, though as an observer rather than a participant. He imagined himself as he would be in five hours’ time, advancing at the head of the platoon to the skirl of the pipes. To go into battle with the pipes – it was more than he could have hoped for.

It must have been after seven when he awoke and realized to his horror that he had been asleep. He wondered for how long and looked about him at the other trenches and foxholes, but the men, or what he could see of them, appeared not to have noticed him, or at least not his misdemeanour. Samwell shook his head to clear it and rubbed at his eyes. He couldn’t, he reasoned, have been asleep for too long as he did not have that telltale layer of sand on his body that came when you dozed off in the desert. Nor could he feel any fresh fly bites. At the most five minutes, probably less. It was getting dark now and he began to become aware of activity about him. At last. He saw a shape, a man scurrying towards him, his silhouette marked by the distinctive Balmoral bonnet unique to highlanders; his batman, Baynes, an affable Glaswegian.

‘Mister Samwell, sir. There’s some hot food coming up and the CO’s doing his rounds with a sitrep, sir. Just thought you’d like to know.’ He peered at Samwell’s face and red eyes: ‘Crikey, sir, you look like you’re all in. Fit to drop off. You all right, sir?’

‘Of course I am, Baynes. Sand in my eyes, that’s all. Thank you for that. Better get back or you’ll miss your own scoff.’

‘Nothing much to miss there, sir. Desert chicken again I’ll bet.’

‘Ah yes. What would the British army be without its bully beef?’

‘Better off I reckon, sir. But I’d better not miss it. See you later sir.’

As Baynes disappeared back to his trench, Samwell again went over the drill for the attack and then Baynes reappeared at his side. ‘Stew, sir? It’s really not that bad.’

‘Thank you, Baynes.’ Samwell took the mess tin and began to eat, hungrily, washing the food down with a mug of black tea. ‘No milk again?’

‘Sorry, sir. It’s that problem again with the purifying tablets in the water. They’ve made the milk curdle. Stinks something rotten, sir.’

Samwell was just drinking down the last of the gravy when he was aware of a man standing above him outside the trench. He looked up.

‘Don’t hurry, Hugh. Finish your dinner.’

Samwell stood up and, putting down the mess tin, climbed out of the trench and saluted his commanding officer, Colonel Anderson.

‘Sorry, sir.’

‘Well, Hugh. Ready for the off?’

‘Quite ready, sir. Can’t wait.’

‘Good. The men seem to be raring to go. Let’s keep them that way till H Hour, shall we?’

‘Sir. Is it true that we’re going to have pipers?’

‘They’ve been authorized by Division. Good idea if you ask me. Remains to be seen whether it’ll actually happen, but I’m inclined to think it might. D’you think it would help the men?’

‘Most certainly, sir. And it would put the fear of God into the Jerries.’

Anderson laughed: ‘Yes, Hugh, I daresay it would. Well, we’ll see, shan’t we. Good luck. Remember to follow the tape. And walk slowly, Hugh. We don’t want to run into our own barrage do we? The Jerries won’t know what’s hit them. Just walk forward and don’t forget to collect the prisoners.’

THREE

4.00 p.m. Between Haret-el-Himeimat and Deir-el-Munassib Colonel Marescoff Ruspoli

‘Luigi. Tell me again. Why is it that you wear a spanner around your neck?’

Lieutenant-Colonel Marescotti Ruspoli had lost count of how many times he had asked the same question in the past few weeks. Of course he knew the answer. That was not the point. He looked at the six young men who stood before him, their uniforms as clean and fresh as their smiles. They smelt of Italy, of home and he envied them the fact that they had seen that blessed place such a short time ago.

The question was a ritual.

Ruspoli sat in his ‘office’: an unstable folding chair behind a table made from ammunition boxes in the command trench that lay a few metres behind the front line of his unit’s position. The Raggruppamento Ruspoli, made up from the VII/186th and the VIII Battalion of paratroops and several artillery batteries. Just under one and a half thousand men in all. Not that there were 186 regiments of paras of course. In fact there were just two. But they were the elite fighters of the Italian army and jealously proud of the fact.

As he prepared to listen to the familiar reply Ruspoli munched at what was left of a hunk of dried salami that the cook had been keeping for him specially. Having handed out a few slices to his battalion officers, he was now savouring every last mouthful. Ruspoli was a fine-featured man of fifty, younger-looking than his years, with a thin moustache as dark as his black hair and small yet kindly brown eyes.

His orderly, Luigi Santini, laughed and replied: ‘Well you know, Colonel, how long we’ve been waiting for those anti-tank guns?’ He held up the spanner: ‘I reckon that this is the only way we’re going to be able to fight the enemy tanks when the attack comes. We take them to bits bolt by bloody bolt.’