An Australian Band of Brothers by Johnston Mark;

Author:Johnston, Mark;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of New South Wales Press
Published: 2018-03-01T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 15

ALAMEIN IN NOVEMBER: THE GREATEST CHALLENGE

1–6 November 1942

Orders for the 24th Brigade to relieve the 26th in the Saucer went out at 7.30pm on 31 October. The relief was completed by 3.30am, and reflected credit on the 9th Division’s staff work. The 2/43rd boarded trucks and crossed the railway at Tel el Eisa at 8.15pm. Moving slowly and cautiously to skirt enemy positions, they drove south, then west, past burning vehicles, and finally north. One account says there was no smoking and no talking. Eventually they stopped and debussed in the Saucer. Quietly they waited for orders. The wait was quite long, for company commanders went forward to try to reconnoitre in the dark. Some men dozed, which Allan noted ‘we were all apt to do, and sometimes in the most unlikely situations’. Then Grahame Hartree, acting Company Sergeant Major for Don Company, moved among the men telling the recumbent to stand up and prepare to move. After one of them did not respond, it emerged that he was dead, probably from the 26th Brigade’s hard fight in the daylight.1

As they marched west, in the dim light they saw the railway line running along an embankment to their right and ‘a long low concrete building’. This was the Blockhouse, a name that the 2/43rd would use for the coming battle. They passed through a gap dug a few days previously in the railway embankment and continued north into the several hundred yards of flat ground of the Saucer. A and B Companies went on to its northern upper lip, B11, or Barrel Hill, which Allan remembered as ‘a mound perhaps several hundred yards long’. Some of the A and B Company men dug positions on the forward slopes of Barrel Hill, with A on the right, B on the left. Don Company was to be in reserve, although the battalion was crammed into such a limited area that there was not much distance between the front and the reserve. It was obvious that all would be under fire soon and that the RAP, located in the Blockhouse, would be very busy. In his 9 Section, Allan’s men, half of whom were new to action, needed no orders or encouragement to look after their own protection. They dug in as fast and as far as they could, which was about 12 inches, before they reached hard ground. They had no sandbags to build parapets or any head cover. Using a spade and a German entrenching tool that he had souvenired, Allan made a frame and piled rocks against it. It gave him little confidence, but was better than what men on Barrel Hill and beyond had, for they were bereft of wire and anti-tank mines.2

The 2/43rd and 2/28th, under Brigadier Godfrey, came with instructions about who was to relieve whom, but it was difficult to follow these as positions in the Saucer had changed since the orders were issued and the situation was confused. In the dark, on virtually unreconnoitred

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