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17. Pursuit

Next morning there was still heavy shelling in the bulge. I went up, did not enjoy my trip, and felt very doubtful. But the General was certain. He said he had told the Army Commander that the battle was over and had sent a cable to the same effect to the New Zealand Government. In the late afternoon there was a divisional conference. The General said the gap was made to all intents and purposes and next morning we would go south through it and head westwards and north to Fuka on the desert road to cut off the Germans in the north. The six Italian divisions in the south, without troop-carrying transport, were doomed in any case. We were to load up with eight days' water, rations, petrol for 500 miles, the gunners with 360 rounds per twenty-five pounder and 200 rounds per medium gun. This was great news. Monty and I opened our last bottle of whisky to celebrate it.

Next day we did move out. It was quite impossible to move in formed bodies. All we could do was to work our way through the gaps in the minefields in single file, the armour leading. It was all most confused and difficult. 4 Light Armoured Brigade was to lead, but owing to the crowded state of the tracks it was four hours late. 9 Armoured Brigade and 5 Brigade were next, but in the thick dust and terrific congestion we had the greatest difficulty in even getting into the forward area. Our own divisional provost company was out in front marking the thrust-line behind 4 Light Armoured Brigade and there appeared to be no traffic control. At last, in the late afternoon, we found that the way was clear ahead.

The armour was going headlong. Plainly there was a real gap. I abandoned the idea of halting to form up and went on with my headquarters group, knowing very well that page 239 everyone was getting on as fast as possible irrespective of anything I could do or say and we could concentrate from the rear later. A message came for me to go forward and join the General. I went up fast in my staff car, and after passing through Main Divisional Headquarters found him at the very head of the column, immediately behind the armour. He was sitting on the outside of his tank, happy as a cherub and pointing and smiling gleefully at each group of stranded Italians or abandoned guns that we passed. There were very many signs of complete victory.

With Steve Weir in his car on the other side of the General's tank we sped along briskly and elatedly until dark, when we had done twenty-three miles. The armour collected into a laager. Tactical Headquarters closed up to it and we started to whistle for the rest of the Division. Main Headquarters came in, guided by Very pistol flares, before long, but there were anxious hours before 5 Brigade arrived. Wireless touch was good but we were not quite certain of our location. Monty had halted and closed up the Brigade at dusk. We told him to look out for flares and put them up at set moments; but there were flares going up all over the desert and hours passed before the Brigade rolled in and halted behind Divisional Headquarters, nose to tail. I felt guilty about having gone off without warning and Monty was very annoyed with me.

Shortly afterwards, while I was talking to the General outside his A.C.V., there was an outbreak of firing at the rear of 5 Brigade. Evidently one of the numerous groups of escaping Germans had bumped into us. Roddick, commander of 4 Light Armoured Brigade, was near and I asked him to send some of his tanks to drive them away. He said it would be difficult in the dark and suggested that instead we should all move on a little. The General indignantly refused to move for a bunch of ragamuffins so I walked back through the vehicles to make sure that 5 Brigade was doing something. Before I got to my A.C.V. the firing had stopped, but one of our ammunition trucks was blazing merrily. Some 23 Battalion carriers had driven the enemy party away but not before they had done this damage and inflicted page 240 about twenty casualties. They also kidnapped Tom Catley, my junior signals officer. He had got out of his truck to speak to some people who approached from trucks a few chains away. They were Germans and when they realized the position they grabbed Tom, hurried back to their trucks and opened a very nasty fire. Tom's disappearance presented us with a problem. He had been in the field for some months but had never told his wife that he was, and daily used to write long letters describing his imaginary doings amid the delights of Maadi. Now he would have to be reported missing and the truth would be out. Fortunately, a few days later, while we were still cogitating, he was picked up. His captors had got fed up with carting him around eating their rations and had set him loose.

6 Brigade arrived in the early hours of the morning, being directed by wireless on to the burning truck.

Two hours before dawn on 5 November we opened out into desert formation, still with the armour leading, and resumed the move. The intention was to get on to the escarpment west of Fuka and there block the road. Again 4 Light Armoured Brigade led, the General well forward with it. Very soon after daylight the armour surprised a German column at breakfast. Eight Mark III and IV tanks were knocked out and two captured intact. Little groups of transport could be seen in all directions making off as fast as they could. The G.O.C. Trento Division and his second-in-command were captured trying to escape in a little staff car. I was with General Freyberg when this G.O.C. was brought in and I thought him rather a soldierly-looking fellow. He started by saying that he had served with the British in the last war, to which the General replied that Italy had behaved very badly this time. He then said sadly that his fine division (and Trento was not a bad division) had been destroyed, but there was no offer of sympathy. He was then escorted away, being allowed temporarily to remain in his car, much distressed that no notice was taken of his offer to shake hands. General Freyberg took the war seriously and disapproved highly of the Italian Army.

About midday the armour was held up by two parallel page 241 wire fences 600 yards apart running north and south from Fuka escarpment. An enemy rearguard with guns was in position behind and there was some brisk shelling. Some of our guns came into action and quite a heavy artillery duel began. I went forward in my car to find out what the noise was about and found the General sitting on the outside of his tank in a very exposed position and getting a fair share of attention. I climbed up beside him and he remarked that being on a tank gave one a great feeling of security. I did not have that feeling nearly so strongly.

After a considerable delay, 4 Light Armoured put some of its small supply of infantry through the minefield under cover of a smoke-screen, and sappers cleared and marked a gap. I had felt pretty sure that the two fences belonged to the same dummy minefield that the South African major was marking out when Inglis and I came on him the morning after Minqar Qaim, but fences had to be treated with respect in the desert, so I said nothing about my suspicions. No mines were found, in fact, but a gap was fenced off quickly and the armour went through. The enemy rearguard cleared off except for some 88s which continued to fire from the north. 4 Light Armoured Brigade turned in that direction and headed for the road but still met this opposition.

5 Brigade was then brought forward and passed through the gap under a brisk fire, at full speed and without a casualty. It was nearly dark so I formed the Brigade up in close formation under some cover. The General told me to go north to the road, but in effect to use my own discretion whether it could be done, and not to get heavily involved. The rest of the Division would make no further move after passing through the minefield and the probable intention for next day was to continue westwards south of the road and seize the Bagush landing-grounds. I moved a few miles to give space for the rest of the Division to get through the minefield and form up, and then halted to consider the position. We had lost touch with the armour. We calculated that we were still ten miles south of the road. I came to the conclusion that it was impossible to get into a solid position barring the road during the night, that we would only get into serious page 242 trouble with the still powerful German armour if we made the attempt, and decided to stay where I was. This was a difficult decision to make and I do not know whether it was right, but no comment was made to me about it. During the day the total advance was thirty-one miles.

The move was resumed at first light next morning, directed on the escarpment south of Bagush, and 5 Brigade fell in at the rear of the column. Good progress was made for some hours and we expected to carry on and cut the road at Charing Cross, the junction of the roads from Matruh to Sidi Barrani and to Siwa. There were light showers in the morning and then a deluge. Water began to lie in sheets and many vehicles were caught in the mud. We struggled on to the Bagush landing-grounds, twenty-three miles, and then the bottom fell out of the desert and we were hopelessly bogged. Rain continued all night and next morning we looked out on a flood. My car sank down to the axles. All through the 7th we remained in this predicament, our supply columns a few miles away in similar circumstances and quite out of reach. The enemy, travelling on the hard road, made full use of this respite. Most of the year's average rainfall of six inches must have fallen in that twenty-four hours.

8 November was fine and the desert dried up amazingly so that in the afternoon we were able to move again, though delayed by many soft patches. We halted after doing twenty-eight miles. During the day I ran across to the old Minqar Qaim battlefield where there were 300 German graves in a neat cemetery. The skeletons of the men killed near my headquarters, and buried by us in shallow graves, had been uncovered. It was pleasing to see an Italian armoured car blown up on our unlucky minefield. I sent a party to bury our poor lads again and mark their graves.

The enemy had got clear ahead and next day we followed along the road to near Sidi Barrani where the armour had a small scrap. Progress was slow and difficult for the road was in bad order and there was a great congestion and jostling for room on it; but we did sixty-three miles.

We started again early on the 10th and again struggled forward slowly all day. I left a company of the Twenty-first page 243 to clear up Sidi Barrani, where enemy parties were reported, and we by-passed the village. In the afternoon it was reported that Halfaya pass and the escarpment above Sollum were held and I was ordered to outflank the Halfaya pass position by getting on to the escarpment to the south. We did a very slow and difficult seven miles across country and were then recalled and had much trouble squeezing ourselves back on to the crowded road. It was a long, tiring day and at nightfall everyone wanted to stop; but very fortunately I ordered the battalions to make good another twelve miles, which kept them on the move until nearly midnight.

Meantime I had gone ahead and found Roddick, who was halted with his tanks and motor battalion at the foot of Halfaya pass. He said that the pass was held and the road mined, but that he had enough infantry to clear it and did not want me to crowd farther forward than a certain line. I agreed gladly enough and got back to Brigade Headquarters, parked just clear of the road, about midnight. Everyone had gone to sleep, so Ross, Joe, and I had some supper and lay down to sleep by the car.

At 2 o'clock I was wakened by an officer whom Roddick had sent back. He said that his few infantry—I think he said there were only fourteen bayonet men—had been unable to clear the pass and he asked for help. The Brigade was scattered back over miles of road sandwiched in among guns and vehicles of many units and it would take many hours to assemble and deploy. But dawn was not long ahead, and it would never do to allow our great mass of packed transport to be caught by guns in daylight. The A.C.V. had been left stranded eighty miles back and we were so mixed up that I could not find Monty or my signals officer: so I roused Ross and drove down the road until we saw Twenty-first Battalion's ‘84’ sign a couple of miles back. I found Ralf Harding and told him to bring his rifle companies forward and meet me at the junction of the road leading to the pass and the main road. He was a bit surprised to hear that I would then want him to storm the pass.

I then returned to Roddick and told him that we would fix the matter up. I thought that this rearguard, whether page 244 German or Italian, was probably feeling very lonely and unhappy and would not resist a brusque attack. We waited anxiously for Ralf. He arrived very quickly with two companies under Roach and Smith, only 110 men all told, and not as many as I had hoped. I thought it would probably do, however, and told him to go up the road with vanguard and point as in the pre-war text-books, to deploy on either side of the road as soon as he met opposition, and go straight in with the bayonet. He debussed and marched off, many of the men still looking stiff and sleepy.

I returned to Brigade, woke Monty, who was surprised and rather indignant to find me waging war on my own in this fashion, and we set to work to rouse and bring forward the Twenty-third and lay on a serious attack with guns and all other amenities if the coup failed. I was quite confident that it would not. By dawn we had this well under way and the troops nearly ready to move. I went back to Roddick, on the way saw some tracer on top of the escarpment, and reached him to find that all was over. A message had just come in from the Twenty-first that they had the pass and many prisoners. His sappers were clearing the road and his tanks moving up behind them and would soon be through.

Very happy and relieved I returned to Brigade. We told the Twenty-third to calm down and have breakfast and then told Division of our goings on. After a cup of tea I went off again, met a long column of Italian prisoners winding down the pass, and found Ralf on the top. Naturally enough he was very pleased about things. He had attacked with both companies in line, firing from the hip and yelling, and after one blaze of fire the Italians had surrendered. The Twenty-first had one killed and one wounded. Sixty or seventy Italians had been killed and there were 612 prisoners, of whom a few were Germans. The Italians belonged to the newly arrived Pistoia Division. The General was always very amused by their motto: ‘I am valiant unto death!’

The tanks had already gone through and captured a troop of 105's which would have made things very unpleasant for us if they had been left until morning. We discovered that the road up the escarpment from Sollum had been blown. page 245 During the day the endless column of the Division and of Eighth Army stretching back far out of sight climbed the pass and moved on into Libya. There was no more opposition and during the afternoon the Division halted on the high ground above Bardia. 5 Brigade went into bivouac with headquarters at Menastir, a hundred yards from where I had been when the Twentieth had its fights a year before. The armour went on with the pursuit. We cleared football grounds and started a programme of training and a divisional football competition.