A Lancashire Lad Goes to War :Chapter 4

EL ALAMEIN

Towards the end of August 1942 we were ordered out to the Front. This was the first time we would be coming into contact with the enemy, so amidst the feeling of excitement there was much trepidation as we wondered how we were going to cope when we came under enemy fire.

We loaded up our trucks with all the equipment and set off for El Alamein. The journey was long and as it was the heat of summer, we were in temperatures of over 90 deg Fahrenheit. We finally reached the rear area of the battlefront in the central sector, and set up the wagon lines. All sorts of shapes come up in the loose sand of the desert and we were able to put all the trucks in a depression in the sand which was about three feet in depth. This dip enabled us to hide the wagons partly from view. After we had established our wagon lines (campsite), and the cook had sorted out the cookhouse - this was a paraffin stove large enough to cook meals and heat water for about sixty men - a large mug of tea was very much in need.

As I was an Instrument Operator in Forward Headquarters, I dug in with my “Oppos” about three-quarters of a mile behind the Infantry and set up Base. In a hole about nine feet square there was an Instrument Operator (me), the Film Reader, Draughtsman Plotter, Telephone Operator, Number One Sergeant and the Captain who was in charge of the troop. We started doing the job we had been training for - locating enemy guns. There were five trucks referred to as the microphone trucks. These were placed at designated co-ordinates about 800 yards apart, and the surveyor who had worked out the co-ordinates and his helpers dug the five microphones in the sand. The ground was flat for miles and miles so the quicker these were sighted and okayed by HQ as working, the quicker these men could get back to relative safety as the Germans could observe them quite easily. When we did our training at Larkhill, we were instructed that these microphones must be one thousand yards apart, but this was not practical in the desert. The lines kept being broken by trucks or shellfire or tanks and these had to be repaired, so these lines had to be kept as short as possible. However the nearest one was still about a quarter of a mile forward from its connection at HQ, and the farthest microphone could be even more than a mile away. I was rather surprised at how quiet it was, as the guns on both sides fired only intermittently, together with the sporadic rattle of a machine gun. There were four 25-pounder guns on each side of us, and the nearest gun was about 250 yards away. We worked 24-hours shifts, changing at dusk. In our second or third shift, shells started to land all around us. My first proper contact under fire, and I did not feel frightened - just had a funny feeling - a bit like going down the steep slope of a roller coaster at the fairground. The adrenalin always ran high, but as I had a job to do, I concentrated on that and tried not to worry about the danger. We just had to carry on trying to locate the enemy guns - particularly the ones which were aiming at us! Each time we were shelled we felt more and more apprehension and fear in case our luck ran out. After the battle, the Times Newspaper referred to us as a dedicated band of men locating enemy guns by trigonometry. Meanwhile, we were obtaining some good estimates of the locations of the guns and their co-ordinates, which were passed to the Counter Battery Officer of the 8th Army Group Royal Artillery (8AGRA) who then gave their gunners the targets. More and more guns, tanks and aircraft were being sent to the front, and as the build-up to El Alamein continued, Field Marshall Montgomery, who was in charge of the Eighth Army, used to visit the units along the line to chat and boost morale. He found that a number of units were unaccompanied by their colonels, and when he discovered that these officers were in Cairo, he set off to the Shepherds Hotel - the best hotel in Cairo where only officers were admitted - and found a large number of them living in luxury. They were all sent to the Front the following morning with an instruction to “Get up there with your men among the sand and flies, and eat the same rations”. Bread was rarely available - even in the wagon lines. When we were forward on duty we ate biscuits (called Hard Tack) which were about as big as a cream cracker but as hard as rock, and we had to break these biscuits on the corner of the table or truck. We were dished out Bully Beef (corned beef) which we stewed with a little water, and very hard tinned cheese. It was a good job we were all young and had our own teeth; otherwise we would have struggled to eat anything! Illumination at night was provided by Tilly Lamps which did not impress me at all as they were really noisy giving off a hissing sound and they also gave off quite a lot of heat. I therefore “acquired” a 250w generator, a 12v battery and some headlight bulbs together with a few yards of cable. I soldered the flex to the lamps, connected this to the battery which was hooked on to the generator and this provided us with enough electric light. When you are in the army, you have to improvise all the time to try and make life a little more comfortable. The Front Line was about ten miles long, and we were positioned in the Centre Sector. When I was in the wagon lines, a little desert rat would come in for a piece of biscuit, eat it and then disappear into the desert. There was a small hill which the Germans occupied and held - even after the Big Push on 24th October.

However, towards the end of September, we were moved to locate the Italian guns at the southern end of the Front. The land in this area was so flat that we could see the Italian Infantry who were just in front of us — about ¾ mile away. The Qattara Depression (quicksand) was a few hundred yards further south, so there was nobody in that direction. Two 5.5” guns of the Free French were about 400 yards north of our position, and nearby was a burnt-out German scout car and two graves for its lieutenant and driver. The wagon lines did not travel with us, so rations came up by truck every day as we now had both shifts working and sleeping near the headquarters. Apart from a few lizards and rats, the only other insects were flies and they were an absolute pest. One fly had a proboscis which went right through our shirts and sucked out our blood, so we had to rely on our mates to swat them off us. They stung our bodies and it was really painful. Ever since we had moved up to El Alamein, the orderly sergeant had handed out Mepacrin (anti-malaria) tables with our evening meal. We certainly needed them as our sector was swarming with mosquitoes every evening.

We would stand on a big square rock and watch the Italians who were facing us, and the Free French occasionally shelled the Italian position. One day we were watching two planes strafing the Italians when they turned and headed towards us. Sixth Sense told me something was wrong and I just shouted, “Jump! Jump”! We jumped off the top of the rock just before the planes fired and sprayed the top of the rock with bullets where we had been standing just seconds before. As one of the planes passed straight over the top of us, we saw that it was an American plane. The Rations Truck was coming towards us and the plane shot it up, missed the driver but killed the passenger, and the second plane headed for the Free French and killed two men.

Even though it was much quieter in the Southern Sector a few shells landed in our area, and we located a number of enemy guns. However we never had a “stonk” (a number of shells dropping in a confined area) like we did in the Central Sector. The regiment was initially part of Brian Horrocks’ 13 Corps. To signify this, on one mudguard we displayed a brown camel on a light-coloured background, with the number 317 along the top of the picture. The other mudguard displayed the British Army survey insignia, half red and half blue with a white 10 across both colours and a white stripe along the top. When we were transferred to the 30 Corps (after El Alamein and heading to Sicily) its emblem was a rampant boar.

One day we received a letter from General Montgomery to say that we would shortly push the enemy out of North Africa. On the evening of 23rd October, 1942 he began to fulfil that prophecy. At 21.40 hours the whole Front erupted, as between 500 and 600 guns were fired all at once along the 10 Mile Front. The survey team shut down, as it was impossible to do anything amidst such a disturbance. We stood on the big rock watching what looked like a great fireworks display, and felt just a little sorry for the troops on the receiving end. After about ten minutes watching, we decided to bed down and go to sleep. When our guns stopped firing at dawn, the enemy gunners were going to make us busy with the guns that we had not knocked out. Every time e the battle stopped and just before it started, normally word would come round that if anybody wished to take Holy Communion, the chaplain had set up a portable altar in one of the gun pits. It always seemed odd to sing a hymn, say prayers and take the bread and wine under the barrel of a 25-pounder gun, which four or five hours later would be causing death and destruction amongst the German lines as the attack began.

As it happened, enemy fire was intermittent, which helped us to locate the guns fairly quickly. The main attack had been from the Northern Sector to the Centre. On 25th October, we were ordered back to the Centre, taking up our old positions. The Germans were holding on to this sector, and seemed to have plenty of guns and armour; consequently it was much more hectic for us, as we were constantly shelled.

One day, as the shifts were changing, I noticed that my relief had not arrived, and there was nobody to relieve me. I therefore stayed on to operate the recorder. I managed a couple of hours of sleep during the night, but was woken when one of our Lines was broken and nobody else knew how to use the Line Testing Unit. My shift came on again the following day, and again there was no relief so again I had to stay on. I finally discovered that the Relief had caught malaria. I knew that he had not been taking his tablets as he had told me that he wanted to catch the disease in order to get a job at base. I believe that he had been a Dispenser in a hospital. I stayed on again for the next shift, having had very little sleep, and at the end of that shift we received order to pack up. We had broken through the German Lines.

I cleaned and packed the recorder, and left someone else to disconnect the batteries and the other electrical equipment while I went outside for my first sleep in two days. The next thing I was aware of was George Lloyd shaking me, saying “Come on Ken, we are leaving” — meaning that we were moving forward with the battlefront. We went down the path marked through our minefield, and then through the German minefield to where the German Front Line had been. We advanced another mile or so, and then camped for the night. The wagon lines caught up with us the following day. Heavy fighting was still in progress about two miles in front of us. On the second or third day we had been in this location — probably 6th November — we saw a huge brown/black cloud which was at least two houses high, and it was rapidly coming towards us from the west. Most of us did not recognise it, but the veterans knew it was a sandstorm and shouted for us to face the trucks away from it. If we had stayed facing the wind the storm would sandblast the windscreen and make it impossible for us to see through as it was we could not see any more than thirty six inches through the storm. The wind died down as dusk approached, and we were able to eat our bully beef. Rain began to fall, and in about an hour the desert was covered with a couple of inches of water, which meant that we had to sleep in the vehicles with all our equipment. The rain stopped falling about half an hour before dawn, and by the time we got up there was no sign of water. We had breakfast in reasonable comfort and even managed a wash and shave. Then from the west came another brown/black cloud and another sandstorm was upon us. This one lasted until just before dusk, followed by more rain. In total, three days passed this way. The sand invaded everything — even the food, and it was most unpleasant having our teeth crunched on the sand particles as we ate our meals.

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