Alamein by Stephen Bungay

Author:Stephen Bungay [Bungay, Stephen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781781311608
Publisher: MBI

VIII

EL ALAMEIN – ROUND THREE

BY THE EVENING OF 23 October 1942, the pieces were lying on the chess board for all to see.

Churchill and his chiefs-of-staff had won the strategic war. Rommel’s army was at the end of its tenuous lines of communication in a hostile environment and was about to be cut off by an Allied army landing far in its rear.

Cunningham, Somerville and Park had won the supply war. If serious fighting started, no one in the Panzerarmee Afrika knew how long their stocks of fuel or ammunition would last. They were already on short rations. They were outnumbered two to one in tanks and guns.

Tedder and Coningham had won the air war over the desert. They had air superiority over the battle front and the RAF dominated the air on both sides of it.

The British had won the information war. The Axis dispositions were known. The deception in the south had worked. Battlefield communications were now secure, and people knew how to use them. Since the Germans had lost their ears on the battlefield in July, so the Eighth Army had sharpened their own, and radio interception units listened in to enemy conversations.

In an earlier age, perhaps, Montgomery would have sent Rommel a note and they would have met in the desert. Montgomery would have offered Rommel an honourable surrender. Rommel would have proffered his sword, which Montgomery would, of course, have returned. The Afrika Korps would have kept its arms, and marched home. But in the twentieth century, only killing would do.

For if the odds were clear, the outcome of the battle was not. The Eighth Army had not yet won the tactical war. It had practised how to use tanks, guns and infantry together, but nobody knew if it could do it for real. It had attacked before with more guns and more tanks than its enemy, and failed. Perhaps it would fail again. Perhaps the belts of mines would prove to be impenetrable. Perhaps the British would get stuck in them, and anti-tank guns and machine guns would turn them into a killing ground. Perhaps Montgomery would make a crucial mistake. Perhaps the fighting prowess and self-sacrificial heroism of the German soldier would see him through again.

The political war had not been won. If Hitler could not conquer, he wanted death. For Churchill, saving Egypt was not enough. He needed a victory in the field. So the armies had to fight a battle.

However, this battle would be one in which the strengths of the Eighth Army would count for most and the strengths of the Afrika Korps would count for least. They were going to play a different game, and Montgomery had set the rules. There would be no manoeuvring. Montgomery was going to use the Eighth Army like a steel-tipped drill to bore holes in the dam Rommel had created with his defensive positions. The defences, strong as they were, would be assaulted head-on in the ‘break-in’. The artillery would be used to give the infantry some purchase on the sheer, unbroken wall they faced.

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