The harsh realities of combat
From Afghanistan in 2008 back to the battle of Ed Duda to break the siege of Tobruk in 1941
I have read two remarkable books recently on the subject of infantry platoon command, one from ‘Afghan’ as the long campaign was known to British soldiers and the other from the Second World War. The first, Callsign Hades is a brilliant evocation of soldering at the front end by Patrick Bury. I cannot recommend it highly enough. I was a platoon commander at the sharp end in the early 1980s when we were training to fight the Third Shock Army, who never turned up, and the IRA and INLA, who did. Patrick Bury went through more periods of intense combat in Afghanistan than I did in my short wars, but everything he described in terms of his experience of commanding young men in battle, when the rounds came down range towards you, resonated with me like a beating drum. His experience of Sangin in 2008 had much that was similar to mine in the Ballymurphy in 1983. What were the differences? When I was caught in a noisy IRA ambush in Belfast the RUC kindly filled out some paper work on the ‘Attempted murder of Second Lieutenant Lyman, 1LI.’ I have it still, a memento of an age which we though we all understood at the time but which Sinn Fein are rapidly reinterpreting for us as something that was morally and legally even-stephens. No such paper-work accompanied Bury’s platoon of Irish Rangers as they struggled to fit themselves into a similarly incomprehensible war in the cultural craziness of this set of engagements in rural Afghanistan in the late 2000s.
The second book was John McManners’ brilliant account of his own recruitment into the Royal Northumberland Fusiliers in 1939 and his service through the wars years which followed. Gritty, unadorned, literary and often comedic, the book is a marvellous read, resonating with me every bit as much as Bury. Fusilier is one of those rare accounts of war that one, when asked to describe it, can only respond by saying: ‘Read it.’ A superb review was written by Allan Mallinson in 2002, who alerted me to the book recently. I’m a little embarrassed about this, because I should have known about the book, as the siege of Tobruk in 1941 and the battle of Ed Duda which brought it to an end in December 1941 was the subject of my Longest Siege.
John McManners, incidentally the father of Hugh McManners who wrote Falkland Commando, serving in my brother’s old outfit (148 Battery of 29 Commando Regiment RA), described in a couple of pages his role in the battle of Ed Duda in which the Vickers machine guns of the Northumberland Fusiliers played a significant part, in which one of the company commanders received a posthumous VC and in which he was wounded. A longer treatment of the battle, taken from my book, follows. In it I tried to capture something of the relentless demands on men of sustained, exhausting, bloody conflict.
Operation Crusader began on 18 November, with 30 Corps (7 Armoured Division, 22 Guards Motorised Brigade, 4 Armoured Brigade and the 1 South African Division) advancing deep into Libya, hoping to find, engage and destroy Rommel’s armour in the desert vastness far to the south of Tobruk. The offensive came as a surprise to Rommel but this advantage was soon squandered. Lieutenant General Sir Alan Cunningham, the British 8th Army commander, who had not yet learned the secret of Rommel’s success – concentration of strength – fell into the traditional British trap of dispersing his effort and weakened his otherwise formidable force from the outset. By the second day of the battle the Corps was widely separated and, although the airfield at Sidi Rezegh, only twenty miles south-east of Tobruk had been captured, the dispersal of the Corps meant that it was not strong enough to provide the knock-out blow required. Inside Tobruk, the garrison awaited the codeword ‘Pop’, which would indicate that the German Panzer divisions had been smashed and that their breakout towards the Ed Duda escarpment was imminent. By the evening of 20 November, following much confusion across a widely disparate battlefield, the centre of gravity for 30 Corps moved to Sidi Rezegh. Amid an entirely misplaced optimism that the Germans were on the run, the Tobruk garrison was ordered to break its bonds for the first time in nine months, early the following morning.
On 17 November it had rained hard – the heaviest and most sustained rainfall in memory – which had the advantage of keeping enemy aircraft out of the air, although the temperature was low. When ‘Pop’ came through on the evening of 20 November a diversionary attack was launched by the Polish Carpathian Brigade the next morning in the western area, while the three infantry battalions leading the breakout – 2 Black Watch, 2 King’s Own and 1 Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire Regiment (the ‘Beds and Herts’) – came up into the sector of the line manned by the 2 Leicesters, who worked feverishly to prepare the front for the breakout. A special machine-gun group in the Leicesters under the command of Major Jack Bryant – comprising fifty Brens plus captured Spandaus and Bredas – was created to offer fire support to the troops of the King’s Own (attacking ‘Butch’) and the Black Watch (being launched against ‘Jill’ and ‘Tiger’). In the cold and gloom of the following morning the men of the King’s Own under Lieutenant Colonel ‘Crackers’ Creedon trudged grimly through the position, the tanks of 7 RTR creaking and squealing slowly after them.
The ‘Tobruk tanks’ had 158 armoured vehicles (69 Matildas, 32 old Cruisers, 25 Mark VIs and 32 Armoured Cars) at the start of that first day of what was confidently predicted to be but a three day battle. The troops had lain out on the desert all night, provided with blankets brought up specially and fortified by a slug of rum when a whispered reveille was sounded at 5.15 am. At 6.20 am precisely – H Hour – one hundred guns of the garrison’s artillery, moved to new firing positions during the night having carefully hoarded ammunition for weeks, opened fire on the German and Italian positions. Sergeant Ray Ellis was commanding No.1 Gun in A Troop of 425 Battery, South Notts Hussars, and had spent most of the previous night moving through the cold and wet to new positions ready for the bombardment. There was no shelter from the biting wind and rain, and only the constant activity during the day prevented the men from dwelling on the fact that they were all soaking wet, muddy and miserable. During the first day of the battle each of the sixteen British 25-pounders (Rommel, in contrast, had over 200 guns in Böttcher’s 104 Artillery Group ready to attack Tobruk) fired over 900 shells. The men, as a result, were exhausted. The physical demands of loading each shell, manhandling the gun, dragging the guns out of the ground into which it embeds itself after each shot, were huge, and in the periods when there was no firing men would have to try to sleep in waterlogged trenches, it being too dangerous to remain above ground. The Italians had perfected the art of firing their Bredas at such an angle that the dangerous little shell easily able to take a man’s head off would descend almost vertically without any warning, to explode in the men’s trenches or around the guns. Their favourite targets were the gunners, who were forced to fight in largely fixed locations and to man their guns without the protection an infantryman would have when fighting from his trench, or a cavalryman would have in his tank.
At 6.30 am – Z Hour – on the left flank of the breakout, A and D Companies of the King’s Own Regiment led the attack on ‘Butch’ while the Black Watch prepared to attack on the right. Each section of the King’s Own was armed with a Bren gun and thirteen Bren magazines; each rifleman carried a hundred rounds in bandoliers and three grenades; in addition each platoon had two Thompson sub-machine guns and an anti-tank rifle. The enemy retaliated immediately with a tremendous artillery barrage but most shells fell behind the battalion. Ten Matildas of 7 RTR moved forward followed by the carriers but so many tanks were disabled by mines that most were knocked out before the infantry could even move. Despite this, D Company moved forward steadily and with a final rush captured ‘Butch’ at the end of the bayonet. It was a desperate and bloody, albeit mercifully short-lived affair. The position – held, to British surprise, by German rather than the Italian infantry they had been expecting – fell in ten minutes, but at the cost of thirty dead and over seventy other casualties. Of even greater surprise was the discovery that two of the German infantry battalions were from the 361 Afrika Regiment, made up entirely of Germans who had served in the French Foreign Legion. Many had fifteen years experience of fighting in North Africa and Indochina. They were a formidable enemy.
With ‘Butch’ secure the remainder of the King’s Own now turned their attention to ‘Jill’ which they attacked from the left while B Company of the Black Watch, the pipes of Sergeant Major Rab Roy skirling ‘Highland Laddie’, ‘Lawson’s Men’ and ‘The Black Bear’ through the dark dawn, advanced with bayonets fixed against a well-wired and heavily mined German position. In this attack things went wrong from the start. The 7 RTR Matildas that had supported the King’s Own onto ‘Butch’ should in fact have gone forward with the Highlanders against ‘Jill’. Unwilling to delay their attack the Black Watch advanced alone without waiting for the promised armour. For several hundred yards the widely dispersed company moved forward in silence, each man cocooned in a world of his own anxiety. Suddenly, the enemy trenches opened up in a barrage of fire and flame. German machine-guns hidden amongst the camel-thorn played wildly against the advancing men and devastated their ranks: all five of the company officers and seven of the thirteen NCOs were hit. There was no choice for the remnants of this brave advance, given the slaughter in their midst, but to charge. Led by the bayonet, inspired by the pipes, the remaining Highlanders surged in against this hail of lead. The position was taken, but only ten men were left standing as the last Germans raised their hands in surrender. ‘In due course’ wrote a watching journalist, William Forrest of London’s News Chronicle who had been bottled up in Tobruk for three months, ‘Jack fell down and Jill came tumbling after.’ One watching gunner officer, staggered by the bayonet charge he had just witnessed into the hurricane of fire, could only say of the Jocks: ‘They were absolutely terrific; I’ve never seen anything like it.’ One officer, lying badly wounded in the arm and leg at ‘Jill’, awoke from unconsciousness to hear the sound of ‘Highland Laddie’ wafting across the battlefield and promptly got to his feet, straightened his webbing, picked up his Webley revolver and began to advance again to the sound of the fighting. D Company then rushed through the survivors of B Company on ‘Jill’, still without the promised tanks, in the direction of ‘Tiger’ where lay entrenched an entire German machine-gun battalion. Meanwhile the Vickers machine-guns of the John McManners’ Northumberland Fusiliers were brought up onto ‘Butch’ and began to play their deadly music.
The Germans’ feverish industry during the previous night had been to construct an anti-tank minefield running from ‘Jill’ on the left to the positions known as ‘Tugun’ to the right. All morning tanks, first of 7 RTR and then of 1 RTR, stumbled into the minefield, were immobilised and came under infantry fire from the watching German positions. Four Matildas from Captain Walter Benzie’s C Squadron were brought to a sudden stop and their crews were sniped at and several killed. This obstacle, until it was cleared by hand, nearly brought the tank support to a premature halt. Desperate, however, to get around the minefield and onto ‘Tiger’, Brigadier Willison, commander of the Tobruk Tanks since September and in overall command of the Breakout, ordered both 1 and 4 RTR to skirt the minefield as best they could and make their way to ‘Tiger’. In the meantime the Black Watch advanced towards their objective, alone.
The highlanders’ advance mirrored those against ‘Butch’ and ‘Jill’. Pipe-Major Roy was twice wounded, but continued to play. It was a fearsome, Somme-like battle, the highlanders marching forward into the teeth of German fire as steadily as had the Argylls at Sidi Barrani the year before, the constant whine of bullets, rapid staccato of machine-gun fire, the crump of mortar and artillery shells and the sudden crack of exploding anti-personnel mines leaving a crumpled patchwork of bodies littering the desert floor. ‘Isn’t this the Black Watch?’ shouted Captain Mungo Stirling, the Adjutant, already wounded in the leg, when machine-gun bullets scythed through the advancing ranks and tempted frightened men to seek the sanctuary of the ground. ‘Then charge!’ Waving his men on with his blackthorn stick, he was instantly cut down and killed. Where they could, comrades would thrust a bayoneted rifle into the ground to give direction to the stretcher bearers following up the rear. The path to ‘Jill’, and then to ‘Tiger’, became a forest of upturned rifles. Only now did the Matildas arrive from the direction of ‘Butch’ to the north, Colonel Rusk of the Black Watch having chased all over the battlefield for these errant beasts, standing up in one to provide direction to the tank commanders and leadership to his men. Pipe-Sergeant McNicol, with Pipe-Major Roy wounded now for the third time, played the remainder of the battalion onto ‘Tiger’, by now entirely covered in a layer of dust and smoke. By 10.15 am ‘Tiger’ was finally occupied, but at a horrendous cost. In the hardest battle the Black Watch had fought since Loos in 1915, only eight officers and a hundred and sixty men from the six hundred and thirty two that had started out that morning remained. Four hundred and sixty-four silent bodies lay in bloody heaps all the way back to ‘Jill’, and the Tobruk perimeter. Some survived the long wait for stretcher bearers, many did not.
In order to protect his right flank, Willison ordered A Company of the Beds and Herts and B Company of the Queens Own, together with the remaining Matildas of 7 RTR, to attack the enemy position on the right flank at ‘Tugun’. If this flank remained insecure the advance on Ed Duda, when it was ordered, would be especially vulnerable. The initial attack on Tugun was completely successful, 185 Italians being captured. It was only later, however, that the jubilant infantrymen realised that they had not captured the whole position, but only the edge of an extensive series of fortifications. But a hold had been made, and ‘Tiger’ and the edge of ‘Tugun’ were the limits of the British advance that day. A four-mile deep and two-mile wide wedge had been driven into the enemy in the direction of the Ed Duda escarpment. Capturing this high ground would provide observation all the way back to the Tobruk perimeter, as well as controlling the route of the Trigh Capuzzo in the shallow valley further south. But the cost had been high, not just in infantry but in tanks. By the end of the day 1 RTR had only eight Cruisers and thirteen Mark VIs left, from an original twenty-six Cruisers and nineteen lights tanks, and had lost twenty-two crew. O’Carroll’s 4 RTR were down to twenty-five Matildas.
By this time, out in the desert, the 8th Army’s plans were in complete disarray. Late on the 19th, 7th Armoured Brigade had in fact captured the airfield at Sidi Rezegh, which sat on a slight escarpment above the Trigh Capuzzo, although an attempt to push on to Ed Duda by 6 RTR was halted personally by Rommel, who took command of a battery of 88s. Although the British plan was to reinforce the Sidi Rezegh position as soon as possible with the South African Division, after which a link up with the Tobruk garrison could be achieved, this never happened as the South Africans were mauled by the Ariete Division at Bir Gubi and made no further progress north. Rommel’s 21 Panzer Division retook the Sidi Rezegh airfield on 21 November while 15 Panzer Division all but destroyed the 4 Armoured Brigade. Operation Crusader, which had started so expectantly, now began to unravel. By 23 November – Totensonntag – the German Remembrance Day for the victims of the Great War, resulted in considerable losses of British armour across a confusing desert battlescape. By the end of the day 8th Army had only 44 ‘runners’ left amongst its tank force, although urgent efforts were being made to recover and repair the crocks. Only the New Zealand 6 Infantry Brigade had seemed to have had any success, seizing Point 175 some seven miles east of Sidi Rezegh and capturing a sizeable part of the Afrika Korps HQ. Norrie’s 13 Corps were ordered to take over what had been 30 Corp’s offensive, with instructions to take Sidi Rezegh and Ed Duda ‘at all costs’: Scobie’s 70 Division and the breakout from Tobruk, now five miles long and four miles wide, also came under Norrie’s command.
Meanwhile, in the deep salient created by the Tobruk garrison Brigadier Willison’s troops worked hard to consolidate their positions and to prepare for the next and final stage of the breakout: to meet up with the advancing 8th Army on the Ed Duda ridge. The plan was for the wedge to become the corridor into Tobruk for the relieving 8th Army, approaching rapidly across the sands in the south from the direction of Sidi Rezegh. On 24 November the Leicesters advanced out of Tobruk’s perimeter on the left flank and took responsibility for the northern edge of the wedge, which at 2,000 yards long was easily covered by fire during the day but with difficult gaps to plug at night. A Company was on the right flank, on the old ‘Jack’ position, and the left flank (D Company) was in the enemy’s old positions opposite the perimeter. Everyone was securely ensconced in the enemy’s old trench positions, which comprised mutually supporting platoon positions, each with three triangular shaped section positions, and each platoon area surrounded by mines and wire. With the wedge in place the 70 Division now worked hard to expand it both north and south-west, as the wedge was under constant enemy observation and fire, by machine-guns, artillery and an 88 mm, which fired its high velocity, low trajectory shell to limited effect against the entrenched Leicesters. On the night of 25/26 November C Company advanced north, with the support of tanks, to attack a position around a wrecked plane still in enemy hands. The tanks, however, were stopped by mines although the Leicesters pressed on regardless. No 13 Platoon, with fifty percent casualties, succeeded in cutting through the enemy wire and in capturing the position. The garrison had broken its bonds, but fierce fighting took place by day and night to keep hold of the tenuous wedge that had been driven into the enemy. Protecting the newly-won Wrecked Plane position Sergeant Forrester of the Leicesters encountered an enemy patrol, into which he instantly charged, cutting down two enemy soldiers with the bayonet and forcing the other nine to surrender.
On the right flank successful though costly efforts were made to eject the enemy from positions south of Tugun known as ‘Dalby Square’ by both 1 and 4 RTR and the 1 Battalion the Yorkshire and Lancashire Regiment. At the same time attempts had been made on the night of 24 November to take the remainder of ‘Tugun’. It was not a success, the weight of fire being so severe that the men were forced to the ground, where they remained throughout the night, unable to move. Then, in the afternoon of the 25th an extraordinary display of courage unnerved the defenders. Second Lieutenant Ben Thomas watched a second attack develop by forty-five men under the command of Second Lieutenant Teddy Ablett, setting out in broad daylight with a thousand yards of open ground to cover without any tank or air support:
These 45 men just walked slowly towards Tugun armed only with rifles, a Bren gun or two and some hand grenades. 100 yards, 200 onwards up to about 300 yards from the enemy before they let loose. Here and there a man went down, hit or taking temporary cover. But Teddy strode on and Sergeant Major Kemp with him, until they hit the defence wire which they bashed down or found a gap.
They disappeared from sight and it seemed that about 8 or 9 men followed in. Then there seemed an interminable lull when one couldn’t tell what had happened, but all firing ceased on both sides. Then suddenly figures appeared signalling success – then more and more figures and some 80 Italians had given themselves up and were straggling back over the ground covered in the attack to surrender. In fact, they gave in when face to face with the first few of our men to get in… Unfortunately Teddy, first man in, had a hand-to-hand struggle for a moment or two and lost an eye in the process: neither he nor anyone else knows quite how.
With the Beds and Herts now in ‘Tugun’, it was left to 2 Queens Own to launch a night attack westward on ‘Bondi’ from ‘Tugun’ during the night of 24/25 November. It proved to be a disaster for the Queens and Bondi was not evacuated by the enemy until the general withdrawal began two weeks later. ‘One of the Bren carriers carrying the mortar platoon was blown up on a minefield’ recalled Sergeant Harry Atkins:
The driver, Hurst, was badly injured. CSM Fred Jode and I lifted him from the wreck, but it was obvious that he was beyond help and he died. Georgie Poole, a north country lad, was then badly wounded. Captain Armstrong, the Company second-in-command and a new arrival, was in conference with the Company Commander, Captain PRH Kealey, when a mortar bomb landed among them and Captain Armstrong was killed, and Corporal North, one of my Section Commanders, was shot dead as he lay close to me.
The heroism displayed by men such as Teddy Ablett was commonplace within the corridor. On Sunday 23 November as preparations were underway for the attack on Dalby Square, Private Frank Harrison, working the radio sets in the back of Brigadier Willison’s Command Vehicle, heard news of the fate of two of the King’s Dragoon Guard armoured cars sent out to search for the South Africans, who were thought (wrongly as it transpired) to be trying to make their way from the Sidi Rezegh escarpment north across the Trigh Capuzzo to the Ed Duda ridge. Instead of coming across the 8th Army they had run into heavy fire in the area of ‘Wolf’, still strongly defended by the enemy. Lieutenant Beames’ armoured car was hit first and his driver killed. Beames managed to get out of the vehicle, but was wounded in the arm and both legs. The second vehicle, under the command of Lieutenant Franks was also hit and all four members of the crew were killed. When the news of this contact came over the radio Lieutenant Colonel O’Carroll, Commanding Officer of 4 RTR, ordered two of his Matildas, preparing for the assault on Dalby Square, to change direction south-east and rescue the unfortunate cavalrymen. One of these Matildas was commanded by Captain Philip (‘Pips’) Gardner. Finding the stricken vehicles still under heavy fire, Gardner instructed the second Matilda to provide covering fire while he tried to recover the wounded from Lieutenant Beames’ car. When he reached it, he decided to try to tow the vehicle back, but to do so required him to get out of his tank. Frank Harrison listened to events over the command radio.
Then his problems began. He found that he couldn’t budge the tow rope fixed along the side of the tank. He went to the rear of the tank and tried the one attached there. This came free, but in order for him to be able to use it, driver Trooper Robertson had to turn the tank round. Gardner signalled to him through the tank visor to do this, and he began the manoeuvre. The men inside the tank turret had no idea what was happening and Lance-Corporal McTier, who was firing the Besa [machine-gun], suddenly found himself being turned off his target. Trooper Richards, the wireless operator, who was now acting as loader, put his head out of the turret to find out what was happening and was killed immediately and fell back inside the tank.
McTier pulled Richards’ body away and defying the enemy stuck his head out of the turret, so that he could hear Captain Gardner’s instructions. Gardner had managed to get his rope attached to the stricken armoured car when he saw Beames lying wounded on the ground. Picking the wounded officer up he signalled to McTier to take the strain and back up, but at that moment Gardner was himself struck in the leg by a bullet and knocked off his feet, and the tow-rope snapped. Fortunately the bullet had not broken Gardner’s leg and he managed to pick himself up and half-drag, half-carry Beames to the tank. Placing Beames onto the side of his Matilda, Gardner then pulled himself up and ordered McTier to reverse. As the Matilda began backing away the gallant Gardner was hit again, this time in the arm. By this time the second Matilda was alongside pouring Besa fire into the enemy positions, and the batteries of 1st RHA were also laying down heavy fire to cover their withdrawal. With both Matildas now moving away from the fray McTier climbed out of the turret and helped the wounded Gardner hold onto Beames. Willison, in his Command Vehicle and listening to the whole of this extraordinary affair on the command radio net turned to Harrison and said of Pip Gardner ‘That man is going to get the Victoria Cross.’ As the crippled tank trundled back past his HQ Willison marched out and saluted its gallant crew. For extraordinary bravery and perseverance in the face of overwhelming odds, Gardner was indeed awarded Britain’s highest award for gallantry.
Despite the success Willison’s men had in expanding the corridor the ‘wedge’ nevertheless remained vulnerable on its three flanks. Two nights following the initial attack on the area of the ‘Wrecked Plane’ to the north of the corridor, the Leicesters mounted a full battalion attack, with four companies, again supported by tanks of 7th RTR and the guns of the Essex Yeomanry, to clear German positions firing into the corridor and hindering British freedom of movement. Again, it was the toughness and determination of the infantry that brought about success. With eight hundred yards to go before the enemy positions were reached, the tanks hit the old enemy defensive minefield almost at once and could not get through. They maintained heavy fire for a while on the enemy positions in a dazzling Guy Fawkes display of noise and light, but were forced to stop as the infantry neared their objective. The 25-pounders fired a heavy bombardment at the start of the attack, but were then forced to fire elsewhere in support of other operations during the night. Held up initially on the enemy’s forward positions Second Lieutenant Dane Vanderspar managed to insert his platoon over the enemy wire and into two of their four posts. By now the attackers had virtually exhausted their supplies of ammunition and grenades, and in the words of the John Marriott ‘the battle developed into a shouting match of broken English and German, each side calling on the other to surrender.’ Fortunately for the Leicesters, the Germans decided to do so, abandoning their positions soon after. The Leicesters, by firm resolve but with the loss of eighteen men, succeeded in widening the corridor by eight hundred yards.
Out in the southern desert the battle between Rommel’s Panzergruppe Afrika and the 8th Army raged confusedly. Rommel set out on the 25th in a concentrated advance of his armour to the Egyptian border at Sidi Omar, in an attempt entirely to destabilise the British, and panic Cunningham into a precipitate withdrawal. It very nearly worked, but in the end Rommel’s drive ran out of steam (and fuel), although it added yet more complexity to an already complicated battle. General Auchinleck replaced Cunningham with Ritchie, and demanded that 8th Army fight aggressively to the last tank, and not to consider withdrawal. With the hold on Sidi Rezegh lost for a time, the New Zealanders were ordered to advance to the long ridge skirting the southern fringe of the Tobruk perimeter, capturing the escarpment with Belhamed to the east and Ed Duda to the west (with two miles between them), as well as recapturing Sidi Rezegh from the three German battalions Rommel had left to defend this vital location: after this, the long anticipated linkup with the Tobruk garrison could be achieved. By the 25th however, it was clear that this was not going to happen quickly: instead, Scobie took the initiative, ordering his men onto the Ed Duda escarpment on 26 November.
This time, unlike the breakout itself, Willison ensured that the cooperation between infantry, artillery and armour was faultless. The Matildas moved first, accompanied by Z Company of the Royal Northumberland Fusiliers, carrying their Vickers heavy machine-guns in Bren carriers, under the command of Captain J.J.B. Jackman. Their task was to get on to the escarpment and allow the following infantry – 1 Essex – to occupy it. An hour after noon the Matildas and Northumberland Fusiliers had made it to the base of the escarpment, 1 Essex waiting four miles back in trucks to see the outcome, ready to move up to occupy the position. The struggle for the ridge was heavy and sustained, and for a time it was not considered that the tanks and the Fusiliers could be able to continue to hold the ridge against the weight of fire they were receiving. On the Tobruk side of the ridge David Prosser, a Movietone cameraman, stood filming the distant battle. He could see the artillery bursting among the tanks and the fearsome explosions as tanks brewed up. Even at his distance the desert was a dangerous place. ‘Sometimes a man would be struck down beside you by a stray splinter from a burst,’ he wrote. ‘The difficulty with these shells was that the splinters went such a very long way, so that you might stand up a few seconds after a burst in the distance, thinking that they would have settled by then, only to hear a heavy smack on the ground alongside seeing a splinter as big as your fist drop at your feet.’
Then, the edge of the escarpment was reached and with it a portion of the relief road which ran across the top. With the Matilda tanks in hull-down positions firing as quickly as they could to beat down the enemy artillery and machine gun fire, the Fusiliers quickly planted their Vickers guns on the edge of the position and began engaging targets in the shallow valley beyond, where the enemy had encamped and where its gun batteries were located. In the midst of this maelstrom of fire the infantry of the Northumberland Fusiliers and their machine guns were distinctly vulnerable. Captain Jackman rushed from post to post, coordinating the fire of his guns. One of his soldiers, Fusilier Richard Dishman, recalled that the Company Commander came up to his Vickers position and ‘lay down on the gun line, and began to observe through his binoculars. He then gave us the order to fire on a truck and cyclist [on the Trigh Capuzzo]. “Give them a burst,” he said, and just as these words were said a mortar bomb dropped just in front of our left-hand gun, wounding three and killing Captain Jackman and Corporal Gare instantly.’ For his inspirational leadership during this battle, which was decisive to the capture of the Ed Duda ridge, Jackman was awarded a posthumous Victoria Cross.
At 1.45 pm, with the Matildas and Northumberland Fusiliers holding their own on the northern edge of the escarpment, the order for the main infantry advance was given, and 1st Essex moved off to follow the armour, Bren gun carriers leading the way. The tanks had done their job well in spite of intense artillery and mortar fire, but as the carriers drew closer to the escarpment they came under direct artillery fire. Half of the carriers were destroyed with the loss of nearly forty men. The Reverend John Quinn, a Regimental Chaplain, went forward with the troops during the attack on Ed Duda. He got more than he bargained for:
Finding a Bren carrier going forward to bring back another damaged Carrier, I got a lift forward. But I got a bit alarmed how far forward we were going, far further than I should ever have wished. First we passed the Matilda tanks, which had stopped, then we passed through the infantry advancing with fixed bayonets through a tornado of enemy shelling.
Suddenly there was a terrific explosion, and we were enveloped in a cloud of smoke, and we were half-blown, half-scrambled out of the carrier and fell on the ground. I was surprised to see that I was still alive and later that all my limbs were all complete apart from a pain on the knee…
The driver and his companion had both been killed, and soldiers of the Northumberland Fusiliers helped him to safety in a slit trench. The RAF, after months of absence in the skies about Tobruk, had arrived in force to support the garrison and to beat back the black clouds of Stukas that could otherwise have prevented the breakout, but as the Essex advanced tragedy struck. A flight of South African Air Force Maryland bombers (called up by the New Zealanders on Belhamed, unaware of what Willison was doing on the Ed Duda front) their fall their bombs with devastating effect on the carriers of D Company, leading the Essex charge. Eighteen men, including the Company Commander, Major Robinson, were killed. Lieutenant Philip Brownless, with his men travelling forward in the trucks of C Company, destined to attack and secure the left hand edge of the Ed Duda escarpment ahead, was shocked to see a curtain of flame and smoke descend upon the carriers only two hundred yards ahead. But within seconds they were through the carnage and moving on to their objective, undeterred despite the multitude of shells falling among the bouncing column of dust-spewing trucks. Eventually the tank line was reached. Passing the hull-down vehicles at the bottom of the escarpment, Brownless and his men leapt from their vehicles:
I put two sections forward, and one following twenty yards behind, all in extended order, and started moving east, along the bottom of the escarpment. The shelling was extremely heavy. Shells were landing all around us. I kept them moving as hard as I could. We kept lying down as the salvos started to land, but the men were marvellous the way they were up as I shouted ‘Up’… One of my men fell, hit in the crutch.
As we advanced over the top, shells were bursting everywhere. The road was 150 yards in front, with a continuous storm of shells bursting down its length, and knocking the telegraph poles about like pea-sticks. I kept shouting to the sections to keep well spaced. We reached the road, which was our objective. There were some deafening explosions as shells landed right amongst the platoon. I was blown over, and so were some others. I felt myself and was surprised to find that I was all right. I could not see a thing. The dust cleared. It was obvious that if we remained in the area they were shelling on that rocky ridge there would not be many of us left… I shouted ‘Advance!’ and moved 100 yards forward of the road, made the platoon get down, and placed my sections, one covering the road and the other two forward.
Despite this fire the Essex quickly occupied the ridge in support of the lone company of Northumberland Fusiliers who were firing on a rich panoply of targets in the broad valley ahead of them, through the centre of which ran the Trigh Capuzzo, the old Ottoman road that ran all the way through the desert to Bardia. Despite the battle raging on the ridge, German and Italian vehicles continued to use the road. The men lay on their bellies and quickly built stone sangars – or reused now-empty German ones – to prepare for the inevitable counter-attack, while fifty German prisoners were sent to the rear. The men of 1 Essex did not have to wait long for Rommel’s reply. Immediately ahead of his position Brownless saw three German Panzers crawling up the bare rise towards him. A number of D Company men who had gone further over the ridge came running back: Brownless and Lieutenant Browne, the company second-in-command, grabbed these men and distributed them among the company, before calling up Battalion HQ at the base of the escarpment behind them for tank support. The Essex had no anti-tank weapons. To Brownless’ great relief a light tank made an appearance behind him on the position and began, courageously, to engage the Panzers singlehandedly. Perhaps assuming that this lone tank was the harbinger of many more, the Panzers backed off. By 3 pm this threat to the front of the position had reduced, but at the cost of the young stand-in Company Commander – Lieutenant Parry – who was killed. In the confusion of the fighting enemy vehicles still tried to use the relief road which now ran through the battalion position. A German staff car came careering up the road from the direction of Belhamed to the east: two bursts of Bren gun fire killed the driver and sent the vehicle crashing off the road. As the day developed the ‘bag’ included three trucks and three cars.
The Germans, furious that they had been pushed off this vital ridge, one that not only allowed long visibility across the desert into Tobruk, but along which travelled the relief road, were determined to recover the escarpment at all costs, and desperate counter-attacks were thrown against the thin end of the British wedge. Enemy artillery positions in the shallow valley that lay between the Ed Duda escarpment and the Sidi Rezegh ridge further to the south, continued to fire onto the newly acquired Essex positions, where the men were feverishly trying to embed themselves in solid rock with their shovels, helmets and bayonets. Mortar fire, recalled Brownless, was continuous and intensely frightening:
The Germans used about eight mortars at a time, and divided the area into quarters, each of which they concentrated on in turn, and always fired rapidly. How I remember lying flat in the bottom of my weapon pit with my batman, terrified as we listened to the swish of bombs as they came down, and then the deadening crash as they landed all around us.
Immediately after the attack to the front of the position on the sorely depleted D Company (the company comprised only 40 men at the end of the day, down from 120 at the start) an attack on the right flank, following the road leading from El Adem, was launched on B Company. This attack was held, and a spirited counter-attack produced a bag of eighty German prisoners, who were all sent trudging to the rear. At the same time a further desperate attack was launched on the Essex’ left flank, from the direction of Belhamed, but this too was repulsed.
During that first night on the escarpment the enemy closed up around the thin British perimeter. Somehow, following desperate fighting against Rommel’s panzers during previous days, the first exhausted elements of 8th Army arrived inside the wedge – the 19 New Zealand Infantry Battalion and a Squadron of the 44 RTR managed to link up with Willison’s Tobruk Tanks at Belhamed. The first, albeit tenuous, link had been established between Tobruk and 8th Army. But it was a psychological moment rather than a practical one. The Kiwis were delighted to have reached what they mistakenly thought was the ‘sanctuary’ of Tobruk on the left hand edge of the escarpment at Belhamed. ‘We soon realised’ recalled Captain John Marriott of the Leicesters, ‘that they were looking on Tobruk as a haven of refuge, and that they were far from a relieving force.’ Indeed, General Godwin-Austen, announced the link up of the Tobruk garrison and the New Zealanders with the signal ‘Tobruk and I both relieved.’ The battle was far from won, however, and much remained at stake, for control of Sidi Rezegh, which dominated the Trigh Capuzzo in the shallow valley below, was fiercely contested by Axis and British armour for several days to come. Rommel had been persuaded that Sidi Rezegh was vulnerable to a pincer movement from the Tobruk garrison breakout in the north and the 8th Army in the south, and ordered that it be reinforced, at the same time withdrawing his forces from the speculative and wasteful sally towards the Egyptian frontier. As they moved west 15 Panzer Division overwhelmed and destroyed the 5th New Zealand Brigade at Sidi Azeiz. Unable to fight Panzers with rifles and grenades the New Zealanders were forced to surrender, and 800 went into the bag, along with the brigade commander.
The days which followed were ones of constant though confusing and disparate battles across the desert. It was often difficult to tell friend from foe, and to understand exactly what the enemy intended. The Germans and Italians had, however, mastered the art of killing British tanks, but operating en masse and by using the deadly 88 mm to maximum effect in tank ambushes. The fighting swirled around the breakout corridor and over and around the Sidi Rezegh escarpment. At the front end of 70 Division ‘wedge’ lay the exposed 1 Essex on the Ed Duda ridge, upon whom artillery fell like rain, or so it felt to the men of the Essex Regiment, who spent their days trying to improve their inadequate holes in the rock. ‘We were shelled with everything’ recalled Brownless, ‘from small-bore high-velocity guns to nine-inch howitzers. Quite a few of the nine-inch shells were ‘duds’. It was a remarkable sight to see such massive projectiles bounce off the ground, and travel for another 200 or 300 yards, making a queer jerky noise as they spun askew through the air, and then rolling over and over as they hit the ground.’ Many shells, however, were not duds. The day after they had seized the heights of the ridge Brownless was twenty yards from the Company Command, Captain ‘Jock’ Nelson and the second-in-command, Lieutenant Browne, when a shell landed amongst them. When the dust cleared, Nelson ran over to a body lying prostrate on the ground. ‘It was Browne, his limbs twisted horribly, but his face untouched, looking life-like, except for the eyes, which were still. The shell had landed at his feet as he was talking, and blown him thirty yards away… So died one of the youngest and bravest soldiers I had known.’
On 27 November a D Company patrol pushed 2,000 yards across the Trigh Capuzzo to the heights above it on the southern side of the valley, in the hope of contacting members of the advancing 8th Army. They only found parties of enemy infantry, however, and no sign of the tanks of 30 Corps. Throughout the shallow valley through which ran the Trigh Capuzzo German and Italian forces surged, first east and then west, flowing back and forward like the tide, all the while bumping up against the jagged salient thrust out to Ed Duda by the Tobruk garrison. ‘At times the situation was so confused’ recalled Tutt, ‘that we did not know what the next few hours would bring:
Sometimes we were asked to bring down fire on positions in the rear of our forward troops, indicating that they had been encircled. A tank skirmish took place behind one of our gun positions and we were unable to fire for fear of hitting our own men. We worked out fire tasks in the Command Post, only to tear them up half completed as our axis of fire swung through ninety degrees because the battle had changed direction. The sky was permanently darkened by the smoke of burning vehicles and tanks. There were explosions all around us and no fixed base that we could safely call our own. At times we were without food or water and practically out of ammunition because our supply trucks could not thread their way between friend and foe. Often the Command Post telephone rang to report another casualty to be shuttled down to the hospital. For a number it was too late. Their silent, blanket-wrapped bodies were carried away, all of them good companions, four of them close friends.
Just forward of Ed Duda, on the southern side of the valley the fleeing Germans had left a battery of medium artillery. These guns were now in the middle of no-man’s land, and it was expected that the enemy would make an attempt to recover them. Sergeant Ray Ellis volunteered – he was never sure why – to attempt to salvage the guns and bring them into the British lines. The plan was that while Ellis was to go out to the battery to prepare each of the guns for recovery, Private Jim Martin would rush out in a truck to tow them back in, one at a time. After the Royal Engineers had made a gap in the wire to allow him through, Ellis started his rush towards the guns:
There was almost continuous mortar fire coming over at the time and also a great deal of shell fire which became so heavy at one point that I had to dive for cover… My main concern at the time was finding any available cover as I dodged across the windswept ground towards those horribly exposed guns, wishing all the time that I had not been so foolhardy as to volunteer for such an escapade.
The ground was littered with the bodies of men who had fallen in the attack and I felt very vulnerable imagining that every soldier in the German Army had me in his sights. When I eventually reached the guns it seemed strange to be among these German guns. There were eight of them in a staggered line, each one surrounded by the usual equipment found on a gun site; ammunition, gun stores, men’s equipment, empty cartridges and, in this particular situation, dead bodies…
I went first towards the gun at the right of the line, and after a quick inspection of the piece and the gun carriage, I was able to make a start in lowering and centring the gun barrel, fastening the clamps, releasing the brakes and generally preparing it for movement. This done, I hurriedly made my way towards a pile of rocks which lay in front of the guns… I threw myself down behind them to wait for the truck, and found myself in company with the body of a British soldier… He was a private soldier from the Beds and Herts, and had been badly wounded in the lower abdomen. Someone had tied a shell dressing over his wound and dragged him into the cover of the pile of rocks during the battle. There he had been left to die all alone in this bleak, God forsaken desolation. He had bled to death.
Private Jim Martin then sped across the rocky ground with his truck, and hitched up the first gun to take back. German artillery was by now firing at his swerving truck, but the pair managed successively to hitch up four guns, each taking about an hour to recover. By this time the Germans had switched their firing from Martin’s truck to the guns themselves, Ellis risking the whirring shafts of shrapnel as he dashed about his task, seeking cover in the dust beside his silent companion after each effort. All around him crashed the discordant symphony of desperate battle. ‘The noise alone was above imagination,’ he recorded ‘the whine of bullets, the scream and crash of shellfire, the roar of aircraft engines overhead, and from time to time the shriek of Stuka as they dived to unload their bombs on to our positions.’ Finally, at the end of the day Martin was able to collect the last gun and make it safely back through the wire on the top of Ed Duda. ‘Darkness had now fallen,’ recalled Ellis ‘but there was no difficulty in finding our way because the sky seemed to be alive with flares.’ Back in the gun position the exhausted Ellis was given a swig of rum. Not having eaten all day it had an immediate effect: rolling himself into a wet blanket, he curled up in his soggy slit trench, and fell into an worn out, rum-induced sleep.
All the while steady improvements were made to the Essex’ defences, but even these were nearly of no avail on the early afternoon of 29 December, when a major German Panzer (Mark IVs) and infantry attack by 15 Panzer Division began on the right flank, against B Company in an attempt to roll up the British defenders from the western flank. Philip Brownless watched the attack unfold. ‘German tanks were standing 1,000 yards off our position and shelling us. They started closing in. It was late in the afternoon, and the sun was behind them. Three of our [Matilda] tanks came up on the side of our position, later joined by a fourth…. They started withdrawing in pairs, firing as they went. As the heavy tanks got nearer the position, the German light Mk IIs moved up on our flank, and swept the area with machine-gun fire.’ After a heavy bombardment against the flimsy stone sangars the defences proved no match for the German tanks, and were destroyed piecemeal, the British anti-tank guns being knocked out one by one. By early evening some twenty-five Panzers had penetrated to the heart of the battalion position and were within 400 yards on Lieutenant Colonel ‘Crasher’ Nichols’ HQ, most of B and A Companies having been killed, wounded or taken prisoner. ‘You could see plainly German infantry with our prisoners behind those tanks’ recalled Brownless. The situation was now serious, although Nichols throughout remained confident that the situation was not lost, and that fresh troops, with armoured support, could drive the enemy from their newly-won position. D Company was successfully managing to hold off infantry attacks on the southern front, and C Company, on the left hand edge of the escarpment, remained intact. Counter-fire by Matilda tanks was unable to make any headway against the Mark IVs on B Company’s old position, however, and a number of Matildas were left in flames. But it was now getting dark, and although Brownless feared that the Germans were about to sweep across the rest of the escarpment they did not, frightened perhaps by the four Matildas which were now to the rear of Brownless’ platoon position, firing hull-down over the top of the deafened infantry.
At this critical moment Lieutenant Colonel Nichols asked for, and received, the support of two companies of the Australian 2/13 Battalion, those unfortunate antipodeans who had been left behind when the remainder of Morshead’s division had been shipped out in October. The Essex Battalion HQ received a warning from HQ 70 Division (inside Tobruk, running the battle) that it was feared that Ed Duda might very shortly become untenable, and to prepare for a withdrawal back into Tobruk. But this was not how ‘Crasher’ Nichols saw the situation, and he immediately drafted a signal to send back to Major General Scobie: ‘Ed Duda growing stronger every hour, feel confident we can resist attack from any quarter. Strongly deplore any suggestion of withdrawal.’ What Nichols did not know was that the newly-appointed commander of the 8th Army (Lieutenant General Ritchie, who had replaced the sacked Cunningham on 26 November) recorded on the same day the view that ‘if our troops can continue to hold Ed Duda the battle will be won.’ Scobie immediately accepted Nichols’ assessment, and asked the Australians whether they would assist. ‘Whatever happens’ Scobie told Lieutenant Colonel ‘Bull’ Burrows of the 2/13th, ‘we must hold Ed Duda.’ The Australians did so, willingly.
While the Australians were being brought up from Tobruk by truck, every tank that could be spared was rushed to the western edge of the escarpment as fast as their eight miles per hour could manage, and a tank-versus-tank duel then got underway. Philip Brownless had a grandstand view from his weapon pit:
We could hear our tanks coming up behind us, their engines groaning as they manoeuvred into formation. Suddenly our guns started shelling very accurately just behind the German tanks… The shell fire stopped, and our tanks started moving through our positions towards the Germans. There were about twelve of them. As soon as their lumbering forms were sighted by the Germans, the area broke into a blaze of fire. White-lighted tracer shells scorched the air. The German light tanks, with their heavy machine guns, were blazing strings of tracer bullets at the tanks. Our tanks deployed. They too were firing furiously. There was confused firing for some time. The Germans showed no sign of withdrawing. One of their tanks had flames pouring from it.
The Matildas (from O’Carroll’s 4 RTR) then withdrew, back on the Essex’ position. By 10 pm the Diggers had quietly arrived on the position and formed up, facing west. Then, following the Matildas, they launched a counter-attack against the intruders. ‘Crasher’ Nichols offered Lieutenant Colonel Burrows the use of a carrier, but the Australian had replied: ‘No thanks, Colonel, I’ll go in with the boys.’ The tanks drove directly into the mass of German armour, and a furious battle again ensued, with tanks manoeuvring across the escarpment. The night was bright with the light of repeated explosions, and bullets cut the parapet of Brownless’ trench. In the confusion a Panzer ‘crashed up to our weapon pits’ he recalled, ‘went straight over two of the only three pits in my platoon which could be dug down into the ground, wheeled round just in front of my hole, and trundled off in another direction.’ Then, with a wild yell the Australians ran in with the bayonet. The attack was spectacularly successful, the entire right wing of the escarpment being recovered, the tanks driven off and most of the German infantry taken prisoner, undoubtedly surprised at the sudden re-emergence of the Australians on the battlefield. Captain Walsoe of the 2/13th described this attack, the last Australian action of the siege:
Suddenly we were away. I remember calling out “Come on Aussies” and seeing the long line of steadily advancing men on either side of me. Up the slope we went and as we neared the top we heard the jabber of a foreign tongue in which we could soon distinguish “Englander kommen”. I fired a green Very light and with a wild roar our chaps charged down upon them. The sight and sound of us must have been too much for the Germans. A few desultory bursts of fire and then they cracked. Some broke and ran; some, cowering in their weapon pits, held up their hands.
Lieutenant Geoffrey Fearnside recalled men ‘running everywhere, whooping like savages. Moonlight gleams and ripples restlessly upon naked bayonets…The Germans are yelling confusedly… We have surprised them:
Some have raised their hands and are running in; others stand where they are, uncertain…
It is all very confused. We come upon a German lying on the ground. His face is a black shadow underneath his steel helmet… A burst of macine-gun fire had disembowelled him and his intestines are hanging from his body. He salutes us frantically with a bleeding arm. “Bitte!” he whispers hoarsely, “Schiesst mich, Kameraden!”
There is a movement in a sangar just ahead. I go towards it and come face to face with a German soldier. He is bearheaded and his hair is closely cropped. He just stands there, unable to collect his wits…I shoot him down like a dog and watch him fall queerly to earth. Even in the moonlight his blood flows vividly red.
The Australians swept over the German position, in an orgy of disciplined fury, let by the bayonet and by dawn resistance had ceased. The 2/13th had captured 167 prisoners, more than the total of the Diggers involved. Later that morning an attempted German counter-attack got no closer than 800 yards to the position before being beaten back. The Diggers, whose arrival had undoubtedly turned the situation on the right flank of the Ed Duda position, remained with the Essex until 3 December, when their antipodean brethren, the 19th New Zealand Infantry Battalion who had arrived outside Tobruk expecting to be welcomed as liberators, but instead found themselves in the midst of a still furious battle, replaced them. The situation around the escarpment at the time was extremely fluid, as German and Italian troops were forced against the sides of the corridor by the pressure of battle. On the morning after the Kiwis arrived the Germans launched an assault from the north against the position held by C Company. A German infantry battalion, supported by artillery and mortar fire, hurled itself frantically against the Essex’ positions, but the steadiness of the troops, now having lain in their shallow holes for a week under constant attack, turned the tide, and a counter-attack by the New Zealanders broke up the enemy assault. That day – 30 November – Rommel launched a strong attack across the Trigh Capuzzo against Sidi Rezegh, taking prisoner most of what remained of the 24th and 26th New Zealand Brigades.
German attacks were launched repeatedly against the northern side of the corridor. By 30 November there were signs of westward movement by the Germans and Italians, and a battery of 1 RHA worked hard all day firing against them. Retaliation was not long in coming, however. The next morning, as the usual cold, clammy mist hugged the ground in the pre-dawn darkness, shapes were seen by alert sentries forward of the Royal Leicesters’ position advancing in attack formation. A troop of tanks that had happened to be resting to the rear of the Leicester’s were alerted and before long enemy anti-tank guns opened fire and the assault began in a cacophony of noise. Three of the battalions’ carriers, with captured Spandaus instead the normal Bren guns, managed to catch the enemy infantry in the flank and caused them heavy damage. Within the hour the assault foundered, at the cost of thirty German dead, twenty wounded and fifty-two sullen prisoners, as well as two captured 50 mm anti-tank guns that had been brought up to deal with the British 25-pounders that had caused such havoc the previous day.
To the extreme left of the escarpment, however, at Belhamed, the 4th New Zealand Brigade was attacked by elements of 15 Panzer Division, and forced to relinquish their positions, thus threatening Ed Duda from the left flank. Scobie, desperate for weapons with which to engage Rommel’s Panzers, called up the Polish Carpathian Brigade’s anti-tank guns. Two batteries of guns, under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Dolega-Cieszkowski arrived on the forward slopes of Belhamed on the afternoon of 30 November, and a third battery was summoned up the following day. They arrived with no time to spare. Private Grimsey of the Beds and Herts was dug in on the forward slope of Belhamed when on the early morning of 1 December another German attack came in:
German infantrymen were swarming towards us. I kept wondering when our Captain was going to give the order to fire. We hadn’t much ammunition – every bullet must count. As they came towards us the waiting was unbearable. It was a relief when the order to fire came. We halted them to such an extent that some Germans started setting off their smoke canisters to enable them to retreat, taking their casualties with them. We were all jubilant. I got hold of the muzzle of my rifle and burnt my hand; it was so hot from firing.
Our joy didn’t last long. Several German tanks appeared on the scene. We had no anti-tank guns, but a Polish unit behind us had one… The tanks approached steadily and when we had given up hope the Polish gun opened up with tracers. He stopped three tanks with three shells. The others retreated: they must have thought that we had a number of anti-tank guns.
On the western side of the Ed Duda escarpment on the relief road in the direction of El Adem the Germans held positions at Points 157 and Points 162: the fact that Ed Duda itself was at 158 feet above sea level gives some indication of how minor these variations in height were. As the British hold of the Ed Duda ridge strengthened it became important to remove these enemy positions. The Durham Light Infantry were ordered to attack first against Point 157. When successful the 4th Battalion, The Border Regiment were to advance through them to capture Point 162. At 8.30 pm on the evening of 5 December the Durhams began the three and a half mile advance march from the Essex’s position on Ed Duda, the only noise being the swish of boots on the sand. A Company advanced on the left, C Company on the right, with B and D Companies behind. ‘Just like training’ observed the adjutant, Captain ‘Topper’ Browne to the Commanding Officer, Lieutenant Colonel Eustace Arderne. After two hours Italian singing could be heard in the distance: the Italians always sang at night, to keep up their spirits. Suddenly the Italian pickets realised the threat against them, the singing stopped abruptly and a murderous fire was opened on the advancing troops. The fire was so fierce that both A and B companies came to an immediate halt, the men burrowing into the sand and taking shelter where they could behind rocks as the Italians reacted with machine-gun, rifle and 75 mm artillery fire, the latter firing over open sights. Casualties quickly mounted, and Arderne realised the foolishness of advancing without tank cover. It had been thought, on previous experience, not to be worth the trouble, with tanks falling easy victims to mines they could not otherwise see in the darkness, and their noise giving the game away long before their arrival. The element of surprise lost, Arderne sent messages back to bring up armour.
While the tanks were being mustered men of C Company managed to infiltrate successfully through the Italian positions on the right flank. In due course the Matildas rumbled up and after being sorted out, advanced on the Italian positions, machine-guns spewing fire with the Durhams advancing at the double with fixed bayonets behind them, led by the redoubtable Arderne. After fighting through the position – the Italian artillerymen fought valiantly – the Commanding Officer’s party soon came across a bunker. ‘Sergeant Blenkinsop was with me’ Arderne was later to write, ‘he had just seen his company commander [Major Adrian Keith] killed [by an Italian grenade] and was out for blood. Down he went [into the bunker] and after a good deal of noise there was silence and out came Blenkinsop. ‘Well?’ Arderne asked. Blenkinsop looked a bit sheepish and replied: ‘They offered me chocolates sir, and I hadn’t the heart to kill them!’ The action was over by 2.30 am the following morning, Point 157 falling for a loss of thirty-eight Durham casualties. The four 75 mm Italian artillery pieces, some anti-tank and machine-guns, together with five officers and one hundred and twenty-five Italians, were captured. One officer was taken prisoner as he was trying to escape on a motorcycle on the back of which was strapped a large suitcase.
It was very nearly the final action of the siege: the 4th Borders occupied Point 157 against no opposition, and by 10 December Rommel’s army was in full retreat. In fact, during the previous days large numbers of German and Italian transport had flooded west along the Trigh Capuzzo and on the southern escarpment in an effort to evacuate to a new line to the west of the Tobruk area. The British seemed unable to do anything about these struggling, dusty columns, either from the air or from artillery fire. The long and confused battles for domination of eastern Cyrenaica, which had focused on Sidi Rezegh in the final fortnight of Operation Crusader were drawing to a close, Rommel now certain that with only 40 of the original 558 tanks with which he had started three weeks before, he could not win this battle, at least.
It was not yet apparent, however, at least to the exhausted men on the Ed Duda escarpment, that it was all over. They had seen these vast tidal waves of movement east and west, and back again, many times during the previous fortnight. For two days, however, the enemy had pressed an entire company of troops up against the base of the southern escarpment, firing harassing machine-gun and mortar fire against the Essex’ position atop the ridge. Now, artillery fire began landing amidst the Axis columns from the south, which indicated fire from an advancing 8th Army. This realisation quickened the heart beat of the tired Tobruk garrison desperately defending the corridor. Brownless realised that something was up: perhaps this was an Axis withdrawal after all? In fact, at 7 am on 6 December Rommel ordered the Afrika Korps to withdraw to the north-west to cover the withdrawal of all German and Italian forces from Cyrenaica. Early on 7 December ‘Crasher’ Nichols gave him instructions to take a strong patrol out to the base of the forward escarpment and to clear the German company position. At 11 am, just as he was leading his men out, a vicious rain of mortar shells fell across the position, and Brownless’ patrol was forced to seek sanctuary in the D Company trenches on the forward slope. Horrified at the extent of this requirement – his patrol comprised fifteen men, against perhaps 100 enemy – Brownless nevertheless obediently edged his way down a wadi towards the German position. To his surprise, he found it empty:
The Germans had left, and probably under cover of the mortar fire, half an hour earlier. This was too good to be true. I decided to have a look round some of the tents. We found a store of food in one of them… There was nothing very interesting, but we helped ourselves to a few tins of food and some black bread, which we had learnt was rather palatable. There were a lot of empty beer bottles round the tents. We failed to discover any full ones. In one store tent, though, we found some band instruments and drums…
I thought we really ought to go back and report the valley clear, though the temptation to stay and look through more tents was strong, for I love looting. We returned in correct formation, but carrying three bugles, two drums, three flutes, a ukulele, and our pockets and equipment bulging with food.
When he returned to his own position Jock Nelson told him that ‘Crasher’ Nichols was going to inspect the battalion. It was their first parade for many months, certainly the first in Tobruk, and it meant only one thing: the battle – and therefore the siege – was over. In fact, the salient in the south-west corner at Ras el Medawar would not be recovered by the Poles until the night of 9 December, but on the 7th a flood of 8th Army transport finally made it through the corridor and into Tobruk. The import of this reality did not immediately sink in. Brownless formed up his severely depleted platoon. In operations between 26 November and 9 December the Essex had lost 240 men, a third of its fighting strength. It was their fourteenth day on Ed Duda, and the nineteenth since the breakout. The battalion had been counter-attacked six times and had on at least one occasion been completely overrun by enemy tanks, to the extent that General Scobie was prepared to order the evacuation of the ridge. But at the thin end of the three-sided Tobruk corridor the Essex – reinforced throughout by a company of the Northumberland Fusiliers, and for two days by two companies of the Australian 2/13th battalion, themselves relieved at the end of the battle by the Kiwis of the 19th Infantry Battalion – had managed not merely to survive, but to overcome the surging torrents of violence that had swept across the desert against them. They had won! Looking at his men drawn up in front of him, Brownless could only feel two things: exhaustion, tinged with pride:
Never before had I seen such a scruffy, dirty-looking lot of bodies in the King’s uniform. I must have looked as bad myself, but we could not help it. The Colonel strode up, walked quickly round the ranks, and asked one or two of the men questions. He then turned to me and said ‘Excellent! Well done; excellent.’ I saluted, and as he walked off turned round and dismissed a platoon of which I was very proud.
From his headquarters off the Derna Road on the same day Rommel wrote to his wife:
Dearest Lu,
You will no doubt have seen how we’re doing from the Wehrmacht communiqués. I’ve had to break off the action outside Tobruk on account of the Italian formations and also the badly exhausted German troops. I’m hoping we’ll succeed in escaping enemy encirclement and holding on to Cyrenaica. I’m keeping well. You can imagine what I’m going through and what anxieties I have. It doesn’t look as though we’ll get any Christmas this year.
And in London that afternoon Winston Churchill told a packed House of Commons, to whooping cheers, that: ‘It may definitely be said that Tobruk has been disengaged.’