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2nd New Zealand Divisional Artillery

More 6-Pounders Arrive

More 6-Pounders Arrive

For the anti-tankers it was a most exciting day and their excitement, centred on their new 6-pounder guns, was in many cases shared by the infantry and other gunners around them. The anti-tank defences consisted at first of minefields hastily laid and extended in the morning under fire, of the 2-pounders and five 6-pounders of the 7th Anti-Tank, of Bofors with dual roles, and as a last resort 25-pounders firing over open sights. But more new guns were on the way. The RQM, with a party of drivers mainly from the 6th Field, had got them the night before, too late to reach the Division on the 26th, and had spent a cold night with inadequate clothing (they had not expected to be away so long). In the morning they hastened to deliver the guns, reaching RHQ about 10 a.m.

Lieutenant Cornwell took 12 of them to just outside the 4 Brigade area for 31 Battery. He went away to get instructions and Lieutenant Butcher of A Troop, seeing them there and fearing they might be captured, took some men out and brought them to Brigade Headquarters, where he was told to take over four guns and give his four 2-pounders to the nearby Maoris.

The enemy had by this time worked round to the north-east of the brigade, the action was getting warmer, and Butcher page 319 hastened to get his new guns into action, while the Maoris happily accepted the 2-pounders. The new guns were still covered with grease and graphite and the gunners worked anxiously to clean them. Luckily the enemy did not press forward for two hours and in that time the four troops of the battery—C behind the Maori FDLs, A at the junction of the Maoris and 20 Battalion, B with the 20th, and D with 19 Battalion south of B—were ready to try their guns out and they had a gallery of spectators equally keen to see them open fire.

black and white map of el alamein

It took longer to reach the areas of 32 and 33 Batteries. When Cornwell reached the 32nd, early in the afternoon, the position was under quite heavy shellfire and an attack seemed imminent. The existing gun positions, mainly in the 22 Battalion area, were well forward and exposed, and the battery commander, Major Bliss, thought it better to defer the changeover. Major Sweetzer of 33 Battery, however, guarding mainly the southern approaches to the Division (though his M Troop was to the north alongside the Maori position), gladly accepted not only the new guns, but the added commitment of manning most of the 2-pounders as well, since the infantry were at that time too busy to take them over. He already had 16 guns and he ended up with 28 and, except for a troop of 2-pounders taken over by Maoris, managed to man them all. Every single man who could be spared from other duties was called to help with the guns. The scratch gun crews did their best, but it was not easy to clean the bores and some guns opened fire with much grease still clinging to them. Telescopes, according to Sweetzer, ‘were the exception rather than the rule’ and several of those that did arrive were defective. Only three men of the battery had even seen a 6-pounder before.

J Troop was closely watching an advance by lorried infantry from the south in mid-afternoon when the guns arrived. Some Maoris detailed to take over the J Troop 2-pounders had been ‘hovering round like vultures’ in their eagerness to do so. They followed the 6-pounders to the gun positions, helped to transfer gear from one portée to another in a race against time, and in a quarter of an hour drove off in triumph. The J Troop gunners, totally inexperienced in operating their new weapons and unhappily aware of the thick grease which almost smothered them, saw the enemy getting closer, hastily took up hull-down positions en portée, and opened fire, getting 100 rounds away as fast as they could.

page 320

K Troop changed over two guns at a time and had to deal with an attack before the second two guns arrived. Staff-Sergeant Calvert11 with a gun manned by a scratch crew from BHQ drove gallantly forward and engaged an enemy tank towing two guns. It stopped and the enemy was trying to get one of the guns into action when Calvert's gun disabled it. Then his gun and other K Troop guns engaged the tank, scoring hits on it at long range, but failing to prevent it from driving away. Mortar fire then disabled Calvert's gun and killed a machine-gun officer who was bravely helping. Another scratch crew nearby under Gunner Trace12 claimed one tank knocked out for certain and another ‘probable’. M Troop was in two sections facing north, the forward one under the troop commander, Lieutenant Mitchell, being relatively isolated and out of touch with the other. Only six rounds per gun were at hand and many tempting targets therefore had to be ignored. The only firing, about 1.30 p.m., was with small arms against an enemy group about 50 strong which was driven to ground. When it was silenced Mitchell took a detachment forward and captured the survivors, some 25 young-looking Germans, and handed them over to nearby Maoris.

11 S-Sgt L. H. Calvert, m.i.d.; Greytown; born Whangarei, 10 Jun 1906; auctioneer's assistant.

12 Gnr F. Trace (now Grace); Kamo; born Aust., 14 Mar 1909; carpenter.