Before Monty: The First Battle of El Alamein

At the end of June 1942, the British Eighth Army was retreating into Egypt after a series of defeats. Tobruk had fallen on June 21, and an attempt to hold the line at Mersa Matruh ended in further withdrawals. Rommel’s advance threatened Alexandria, the Nile Delta and the Suez Canal. In Cairo, British officials burned confidential documents as they prepared for the possibility of another withdrawal.¹

Eighth Army halted the German-Italian advance at El Alamein. During July, British, Indian, South African, New Zealand and Australian troops fought under General Claude Auchinleck, several weeks before Bernard Montgomery took command. Their resistance kept the Egyptian supply base in Allied hands and gave the army time to rebuild. Auchinleck also tried to destroy Rommel’s army through repeated counterattacks. Some gained ground, but failures of coordination left infantry exposed and led to costly defeats. These failures revealed problems in the cooperation between infantry, tanks and artillery that Montgomery later worked to correct.

The Road Back to Egypt

The disaster began on the Gazala line in late May. Although the Eighth Army had plenty of forces and modern equipment, its defensive setup and use of mobile units allowed Rommel to focus his attacks on isolated groups. As the battle went on, British counterattacks failed to stabilize the front. By mid-June, the British position had collapsed. Losing Tobruk cost the British a key port, led to tens of thousands being captured, and gave Rommel’s army supplies and vehicles for the push into Egypt. Eighth Army was retreating again, with little time to recover and regroup.²

Rommel wanted to keep Eighth Army retreating and deny it time to reorganize. He expected an immediate pursuit to produce another collapse before the British recovered. Captured British fuel, food and transport made a pursuit possible that was already straining his own supply system. Beyond the border lay objectives far more valuable than another stretch of desert: Alexandria and its naval facilities, the Egyptian base, and access toward the Canal. Every day given back to Eighth Army reduced the prospect of taking these prizes cheaply.

His superiors had different priorities in mind, including a pause and the projected assault on Malta before a major advance into Egypt. Rommel pressed for pursuit instead and secured backing for it. The decision committed his army to gaining another success before the resources sustaining the previous one ran out. Captured supplies kept the pursuit going for a time. Rommel based the next stage on the same expectation of a British collapse, despite the growing demands on his exhausted troops. Once resistance stiffened, the army faced a sustained battle at the end of an already strained supply line.³

Auchinleck assumed direct command of Eighth Army on June 25, replacing Lieutenant-General Neil Ritchie. He also retained his responsibilities as Commander-in-Chief Middle East, a vast appointment extending far beyond the immediate battle. His intervention brought authority to an army in crisis, but also burdened one man with multiple duties that competed for his attention. While he tried to organize the defense of Egypt, his headquarters also had to consider the security of Iraq and Persia and the possibility of a German advance through the Caucasus.

At Matruh, these pressures met an army whose communications and understanding of orders were already badly strained. Formations withdrew at different times, headquarters lost contact and troops found themselves having to escape positions that had ceased to form part of a workable defense. Determined fighting brought many men out, including New Zealanders who broke through the encircling enemy, but the retreat continued. Auchinleck and his adviser, Major-General Eric Dorman-Smith, had concluded that the better chance of saving the army lay farther east. El Alamein offered a narrower front between the sea and the Qattara Depression, restricting the enemy's freedom to maneuver.⁴

A battlefield with an end

The Alamein position offered an unusual advantage in a theater famous for open flanks. The Mediterranean closed the northern end. To the south, the escarpments, salt marshes and difficult surface of the Qattara Depression obstructed an operational sweep around the army. Gaps and weak sectors still offered Rommel routes into the army’s rear, but the coast and the Depression limited his scope for a wide outflanking movement. The fighting increasingly turned on holding, breaching and reinforcing a restricted front.⁵

Across that front, small changes in height acquired exceptional importance. Ruweisat Ridge gave observation over ground essential to Eighth Army's communications. Miteiriya Ridge and the coastal heights around Tel el Eisa offered similar advantages to the troops occupying them. Maps marked these features as distinct objectives. At ground level, their low outlines were difficult to identify, particularly at night. Beneath a thin covering of sand, rock made digging a slow and sometimes nearly hopeless business. Infantry reaching a ridge still faced enemy fire with little shelter and difficulty identifying approaching troops.

There was also a large difference between an Alamein defensive position and a completed defensive line. Fortified areas, usually called boxes, had been laid out around the railway halt and farther south. Much remained unfinished. Wide gaps separated the positions, while the mobile forces intended to cover them had been depleted by the retreat. The South Africans had worked to improve the northern defenses, but a continuous, deeply organized barrier still lay in the future. The first days were fought with an improvised mixture of fixed positions, mobile groups and arriving reinforcements.⁶

The condition of the armies narrowed their choices further. Eighth Army contained exhausted survivors, badly reduced formations and fresh units that had scarcely reached their assigned ground. Equipment elsewhere in Egypt first needed repair, issue to trained crews and transport to the front. Its presence in a depot did little for a formation already under attack. The German panzer divisions approaching Alamein possessed only a few dozen serviceable tanks between them. Their Italian partners had also endured long movements and repeated fighting. Their reputation and skilled leadership remained strengths, but losses, worn vehicles and ammunition shortages reduced their fighting power.

The supply problem extended from the Mediterranean crossing to the fighting vehicle. Cargo landed in Libya still had to travel long distances by road. Lorries used fuel carrying fuel, suffered breakdowns and competed for space and maintenance with the rest of the army. Captured British transport helped Rommel enormously, but it also testified to the improvised basis of his advance. Allied attacks on shipping and the interruption of fuel deliveries increased the difficulty, while losses varied over time. The Italian navy brought substantial quantities ashore, while the army at Alamein still lacked what it needed. Supplies landed in an African port had yet to reach the fighting units. Rommel's accusations against the supply authorities concealed this distinction.⁷

In the air, the Desert Air Force helped turn distance and exhaustion into immediate battlefield pressures. Its own withdrawal had required repeated moves between airfields, but operations against the advancing Axis columns continued. At Alamein, bombing and strafing disrupted movements, scattered transport and denied tired troops uninterrupted rest. British artillery offered another means of concentrating strength without concentrating every battery in the same place. Observers and communications coordinated the fire of separated guns against threatened sectors. These advantages depended on an army remaining sufficiently organized to use them. The first test came before that organization was secure.

The first three days

Rommel's attack on July 1 sought another rapid dislocation of the British position. In the north, the 90th Light Division was to work around the Alamein defenses and reach the coast behind them. Rommel assigned the panzer divisions the penetration farther south and the drive into Eighth Army's rear. The plan depended on speed, a reasonably accurate picture of the defenses and an opponent still susceptible to panic. Delays, poor visibility and faulty intelligence began to unravel those expectations almost immediately.⁸

At Deir el Shein, the German armor encountered the 18th Indian Infantry Brigade. Recently brought from Iraq, the brigade had been hurried into a position with inadequate time to prepare and serious deficiencies in communications and supplies. Its supporting guns had arrived from different formations. The men had worked desperately on wire, mines and trenches, but the defenses remained incomplete. Auchinleck's determination to avoid leaving immobile infantry to be surrounded had produced orders to make the brigade mobile; the necessary transport had failed to arrive. It stood directly in the path of the attack.

The brigade was eventually overwhelmed, but its resistance consumed the day. German engineers and infantry had to force their way through obstacles under covering fire while tanks entered the position and fought the defenders at close range. Appeals for armored assistance passed too slowly through the British command system, and the help that arrived failed to save the garrison. Some men escaped; others fought until their positions were overrun. The loss was severe, yet Rommel had spent hours and scarce fighting strength reducing a position he had expected to pass or overcome quickly.⁹

Farther north, the 90th Light Division ran into the South African defenses and the concentrated fire of their supporting artillery. Attempts to move round the box brought the Germans under further fire. Units became pinned down; at one point panic threatened to spread through the division before its officers restored control. Rommel himself experienced the weight of the bombardment while trying to push the attack forward. By evening, the division had failed to complete the encirclement on which the northern operation depended.

Auchinleck had intended to answer the advance with a counterstroke into the Axis flank. His difficulty was communicating that intention through his own army. Lieutenant-General William Gott's XIII Corps remained out of reliable contact during the critical hours. The same headquarters that understood the enemy's broad purpose failed to coordinate its available forces in time. The day's successful defense emerged from the resistance of formations and their supporting arms, amid continuing uncertainty at higher levels.¹⁰

On July 2 the struggle continued around Ruweisat. Improvised British groups, South African troops, anti-tank guns and concentrated artillery fire checked renewed German efforts. British armor intervened as it became available. On July 3, New Zealand artillery and infantry struck a separated column of the Italian Ariete Division's guns, capturing men, weapons and vehicles. The success disrupted an already strained Axis flank. Rommel's mobile formations remained dangerous in local fighting, but had failed to break Eighth Army before its defense began to recover. That night he halted the offensive and began reorganizing for a different kind of battle.¹¹

Turning Rommel north

The halt encouraged Auchinleck to attack. The enemy had reached Alamein exhausted, with a thin front and limited reserves. Auchinleck hoped to break the Axis army before it recovered. He chose Italian-held sectors to draw German reserves away from Rommel’s own preparations, relieve pressure elsewhere and expose fresh weak points. The idea gave Eighth Army a way to influence the battle after weeks of reacting to its opponent. Its success depended on exploiting the enemy’s weakness without demanding more than his own formations were ready to deliver.

The strongest early demonstration came near the coast. Before dawn on July 10, the Australian 9th Division attacked the positions around Tel el Eisa. These troops brought experience from Tobruk and a determination to fight as a coherent formation under Lieutenant-General Leslie Morshead. Artillery from Australian and South African units, together with British medium guns, supported the attack with a powerful concentration. Parts of the advance achieved surprise; elsewhere, alerted defenders and difficult ground slowed the assault. Supporting vehicles bogged in the coastal terrain. Even so, the Australians captured important heights and positions around the railway.¹²

The blow fell heavily on the Italian Sabratha Division, whose defenses gave way. Rommel had to respond to a crisis on a flank from which he had hoped to economize forces. German troops arriving from the rear and an improvised force assembled around army headquarters helped contain the penetration. Armor was diverted north. The Australians' gains brought the Axis coastal communications under threat and forced Rommel to interrupt his own designs. Their attack succeeded through concentrated artillery, limited objectives and a formation fighting together.

Holding the salient required more fighting. German counterattacks came against infantry working to deepen shallow positions in hard ground. Bombing, shellfire and tanks tested the Australians repeatedly. Artillery and anti-tank guns were essential to preventing the captured positions from becoming another trap. The initial advance had altered the local balance, but it had also committed Australian battalions to an exposed sector that absorbed men and ammunition throughout the following weeks.

The fighting also cost Rommel a valuable intelligence asset. The Australians captured much of Company 621, the German signals-interception unit that had exploited British wireless traffic near the front. Its loss reduced a source of rapid operational information. On the Allied side, Ultra decrypts helped reveal Axis intentions and difficulties, but such information still required interpretation. The decrypts revealed broad intentions and concerns. Identifying surviving gun positions and checking minefield routes still required local reconnaissance. Intelligence about the enemy’s weakness still had to pass through the command system and reach the troops conducting the attack. The fighting soon exposed the distance between knowing the enemy was vulnerable and being able to defeat him.¹³

The uneven performance of the Italian formations was part of that problem. Some positions collapsed; others resisted effectively and helped stop Allied attacks. The infantry's weapons, transport, rest and training varied, and many men had been asked to march and fight beyond reasonable endurance. Rommel's accounts shifted between blaming his partners and acknowledging the demands made upon them. Italian units bore several of Eighth Army’s heaviest blows, but nationality alone was an unreliable guide to the resistance in the next position.¹⁴

Winning the ridge, losing the battle

At Ruweisat, Auchinleck sought a more damaging penetration. On the night of July 14–15, the New Zealand Division attacked toward the ridge while Indian troops operated on its right. The plan relied on an aggressive night advance to bring the New Zealand infantry onto the ridge before the Germans organized an armored response. Auchinleck sought to disrupt the Axis center by securing the ridge and bringing supporting forces forward. The infantry’s arrival on the objective was only the first stage; holding the ground through daylight required armor, anti-tank guns and reliable artillery support.¹⁵

The advance carried the New Zealanders through the positions of the Italian Brescia and Pavia Divisions. Battalions fought through scattered posts, lost direction, became intermingled and continued forward. By dawn, troops were on the ridge and large numbers of prisoners had been taken. The penetration was deeper than the attackers had fully appreciated. Some of the posts treated as preliminary obstacles had been part of the enemy's main defensive system. Behind the infantry, however, bypassed positions still covered routes that vehicles and supporting weapons needed to use.

Reaching the ridge exposed the weakness in the plan. Men who had marched and fought through the night tried to dig into rock with little cover against the coming daylight. Anti-tank guns were missing, difficult to site or still mounted on the trucks that carried them. Such portees made weapons mobile across rough desert, but also presented conspicuous, vulnerable targets. Artillery observers had to establish communications and identify targets in a situation that neither side understood clearly. A success achieved by scattered infantry now required coordinated support from several arms.

The army's division of tanks into different roles complicated the task. Cruiser tanks were expected to operate with an independence that encouraged armored commanders to think first about fighting enemy armor. Specialized infantry tanks were intended to support the foot soldiers more closely. At Ruweisat, the infantry needed close armored protection, while the available cruiser formations remained under a separate command. Requests to place tanks directly with the New Zealanders ran against both established practice and the claim that their crews lacked the necessary training. Reconciling these demands was a task for corps headquarters. The operation nevertheless proceeded without a clear arrangement for protecting the infantry immediately after they reached the ridge. The distinction between tank types had become a division between expectations, leaving the Germans an opening for counterattack.¹⁶

The British armor had been expected to provide protection, but the expectations were inconsistent. New Zealand commanders expected close tank support against the early German counterattacks. Written orders in the armored chain made movement dependent on reports and codewords, with different understandings of the tasks of support and exploitation. The brigades also faced different routes, surviving anti-tank positions and mines. Their ability to arrive at the decisive place depended on reconnaissance and information that the confused night battle had failed to provide. The arrangements failed to ensure that armor reached the infantry before the German counterattacks.¹⁶

German tanks struck exposed elements early, overrunning the New Zealand 22 Battalion before it established an effective defense. The crisis continued through the day. German commanders gathered forces from other sectors and attacked the 4th New Zealand Brigade in the afternoon. The British armor remained unable to intervene effectively where it was needed. Much of the brigade was overrun, and the survivors' anger at the tanks that had failed to arrive became another division within the army. Indian troops and surviving New Zealand positions still held part of the ridge, but the opportunity to break the Axis center had gone.¹⁷

The infantry had good reason to feel abandoned. The armored crews also faced genuine dangers: unsubdued posts and uncertain minefields threatened their tanks on the route to the men they were meant to protect. The failure lay across the operation. Infantry expectations, armored orders, artillery support and the clearing of routes had been assembled into a plan that looked more coherent than it was. Courage in the assault repeatedly took troops beyond the reach of their supporting arms. Auchinleck's offensive purpose remained understandable, but his army had demonstrated again how difficult it found the transition from a successful penetration to a defensible gain.

The last attempts

Another attack followed on the night of July 21–22. Operation Splendour aimed to penetrate around El Mreir and Ruweisat with New Zealand and Indian infantry, supported by British armor. Preparations incorporated lessons from the previous failure. The artillery program was stronger, and New Zealand headquarters made urgent efforts to secure tank support against the counterattack. There was awareness of the danger. The army still lacked an effective arrangement for overcoming it.¹⁸

The New Zealand 6th Brigade reached the El Mreir depression through a night of scattered resistance, confusion and difficult movement. Supporting weapons did get forward in places, but communications failed, and crews struggled to site their guns in the darkness and confusion. The brigade had advanced into an area in which German armor was already concentrated. Before the infantry could consolidate, the panzer regiments attacked. Vehicles and guns became targets in a crowded, confused space. The intervention from British armor came too late to prevent another destruction of exposed infantry.

The fighting farther east produced an equally costly failure. The newly arrived 23rd Armored Brigade, equipped with Valentine infantry tanks, went forward against a defense whose minefields and anti-tank guns had survived the preceding operations. Its crews had trained in Britain, but had been given little opportunity to learn the conditions they were about to meet. Their attack suffered devastating losses. The tanks had arrived in the theater, but their crews entered battle without adequate preparation for the task. Hasty commitment converted a new reinforcement into another depleted formation.¹⁹

The losses were also dangerous for Rommel. German infantry positions had been overrun, prisoners taken and reserves repeatedly shifted to threatened points. The mobile forces repeatedly restored the front, using men and equipment that were difficult to replace. Auchinleck saw the enemy’s weakness as grounds for another attack. A battalion that had just survived its own failed advance faced the same prospect with exhausted men and depleted support. The disagreement concerned the means of exploiting Axis exhaustion as much as the opportunity itself.

The final large effort came on the night of July 26–27. Operation Manhood sought a northern penetration around Miteiriya Ridge, including the feature known as Ruin Ridge. The Australian 2/28th Battalion went forward while British infantry of the 69th Brigade attacked on a neighboring axis. The plan assigned South African engineers the minefield gaps and British armor the exploitation of the infantry’s success. The operation required several separate forces to reach their objectives, report their positions and pass supporting arms through controlled routes. Each depended on the others performing as expected.²⁰

The 2/28th reached its objective, but its transport and support were caught behind a minefield swept by fire. Burning vehicles exposed the route to further shelling. Wireless contact became intermittent, while attempts to send help or restore communication failed. The battalion waited on the ridge expecting reinforcement. Elsewhere the British infantry also struggled forward and became separated from essential weapons. The armored advance was delayed amid uncertainty about gaps and objectives. When German armor counterattacked, the isolated infantry could not hold. Much of the 2/28th went into captivity. The British battalions suffered heavily, and tank attacks failed to retrieve the situation.

The failures produced practical conclusions as well as recriminations. Minefield clearance required a controlled passage for tanks, infantry and their supporting vehicles, clearly marked and kept open under fire. A report by the army's chief engineer, Brigadier Kisch, challenged the demand for absolute certainty that every mine had been removed. He also called for armored formations to take responsibility for their own gaps, using their own engineers. The issue was trust as much as technique: a formation needed to know who had cleared its route and who controlled movement through it. Such lessons gave the later army something concrete to rehearse. They also showed how much detailed organization lay between an order to exploit success and a brigade moving forward at the required hour.²⁰

By the end of July, Eighth Army's offensive effort was exhausted. The enemy had been checked and damaged, but remained in possession of a defensive system that had become stronger with each pause. Auchinleck had to accept that the same strained formations and methods were inadequate for the decisive result he wanted. Rommel's army had survived, still capable of inflicting sharp defeats, still unable to resume the advance on Egypt. Both commanders had exhausted the offensive strength of their remaining forces.²¹

What July made possible

Auchinleck's position contained a difficult truth. He had saved the situation in which he took direct command, while sharing responsibility for the campaign that had produced it. His record included the appointment and supervision of Ritchie, the handling of Eighth Army before the retreat, divided headquarters responsibilities and continuing failures to coordinate attacks. These were substantial weaknesses in his command. During July he imposed a more effective defense, used artillery to concentrate power and seized opportunities to disturb Rommel's plans. His demands for further offensive action repeatedly exceeded his formations’ readiness and coordination. A balanced judgment has to keep these parts of the record together.

Churchill demanded a victory to reverse the disasters of the summer. Auchinleck’s record offered a successful stand, costly attacks and plans for a major offensive after further rebuilding. During the Prime Minister's August visit, that gap between political urgency and military readiness helped end his command. Harold Alexander was selected to replace him in the Middle East. Gott was initially chosen to command Eighth Army, but was killed when his aircraft was attacked on August 7. Montgomery then received the appointment and took command on August 13.²²

He inherited an army that had already stopped Rommel and was beginning to identify the requirements of a more effective battle. Its artillery had demonstrated the value of concentrated fire. Its engineers and formation staffs were working through the failures of minefield crossing, liaison and consolidation. Auchinleck's appreciations of early August considered defense against an attack in the south and preparations for a deliberate offensive in the north, supported by deception, harassment and intensive rehearsal. The broad military reasoning behind later success was already developing before the command changed.²³

Montgomery brought a stronger ability to turn such reasoning into a shared purpose. He explained what the army was to do, made his presence felt and insisted on matching preparations to the tasks assigned. His commitment to stand and fight at Alamein gave soldiers and commanders a clear answer to weeks of uncertainty about further withdrawals. Confidence that the next operation had a sound plan influenced how men approached it, alongside the weapons and rebuilt formations available to them. Leadership reached the battlefield through communication, training and decisions about the demands placed on troops.²⁴

The evidence for this change extends beyond the later claims of commanders. Soldiers' correspondence, as reflected in contemporary censorship summaries, shows serious distress through the summer and a marked recovery in the autumn. Medical and disciplinary records also suggest that the army's condition improved. These sources require care: a man captured in an encircled position does not thereby demonstrate poor morale, and administrative statistics cannot measure every reason for failure. They nevertheless make it difficult to treat the defense of July as proof that Eighth Army's recovery was already complete. Confidence differed between formations. Repeated, badly supported attacks undermined morale and trust between the infantry and armor.²⁵

Rommel's renewed offensive at Alam el Halfa, beginning on August 30, supplies the same caution at the operational level. July had ended the pursuit from Tobruk, but had left the Axis army capable of rebuilding and attempting another penetration. Montgomery's defense used artillery, armor, prepared positions and air power to defeat that attempt. He kept the battle within the limits of his army’s training and coordination and resisted the temptation to turn every enemy reverse into an immediate general pursuit. By early September the attempt to regain freedom of action had failed. The prospect of an Axis breakthrough to the Delta had receded further.²⁶

The October offensive required a different achievement: breaking a developed defensive position and sustaining the pressure through a costly battle. When the Axis front finally gave way in early November, Eighth Army pursued with much stronger logistical support than had sustained Rommel's improvised June advance. The Allied landings in French North Africa on November 8 then opened another threat to the Axis position. The destruction of the armies in Tunisia remained months away, but the strategic setting had changed decisively. October's victory and Torch gave the reversal a reach that July's defensive success had not yet possessed.²⁷

July therefore deserves a particular place in the campaign's history. It closed the brief opportunity in which Rommel hoped to convert a shattered British field army into the conquest of Egypt. The country, its workshops and depots, and the base from which a new offensive could be supplied remained in Allied hands. That result was achieved by formations fighting under terrible pressure, through a combination of resistance, firepower, improvisation and enemy exhaustion. The men who held at Deir el Shein and around the Alamein box preserved that base and the routes through which fresh troops, weapons and supplies reached the army. Their resistance gave the later commanders time and resources for rebuilding.

Montgomery arrived in Egypt to find an army that had stopped Rommel, suffered badly, and still struggled to make its attacks work. The training and coordination he insisted on addressed problems exposed repeatedly in July. Auchinleck's stand gave him the base and the time for that work. Both achievements belong in the story of how Eighth Army recovered.

The July fighting also gives players of Panzer Campaigns: El Alamein ’42 a different view of the campaign. Before the great October offensive came the struggle to keep a battered army in the field and get its tanks, guns and infantry working together.

Notes

Bibliography

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