10th Armoured Div looks back on its battles

Discussion in 'North Africa & the Med' started by Roy Martin, Nov 7, 2022.

  1. Roy Martin

    Roy Martin Senior Member

    I have found a typed copy of a three page article on this subject, wrtten by a Captain J Macrae Maclennan, Observer with the Division. It first appeared in The Crusader dated November 30th 1942
    If it hasn't been posted previously I can type it up.
    It is on rather yellowed foolscap paper and was among my father's stamps and badges etc. so I assume he was in someway involved.
     
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  2. Chris C

    Chris C Canadian

    If it's legible you could just photograph the pages and post them. I'm sure it would be an interesting read either way!
     
  3. Roy Martin

    Roy Martin Senior Member

    Hi Chris, it is legible, but it is on foolscap and the third page is on the reverse of page two. So I will type it out but it may take a couple of days as I am only a two finger typist and somewhat out of practice!
     
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  4. Roy Martin

    Roy Martin Senior Member

    Here is the first third of it, he is rather more poetic than we are now used to, but I assume that it is wrtten for general readership, I did indent the paragraphs but that hasn't survived the transfer. (another third tomorrow):

    Extract from ‘The Crusader’ dated November 30, 1942

    10TH ARMOURED DIV. LOOKS BACK ON ITS BATTLES

    by

    Capt. J Macrae Maclennan, Observer with the Division



    We sit by the sea. Our fight, for the present, is over. The guns are muzzled. The tanks are still. We laze on snowy sands. We make ourselves clean and erase the stains of battle from our well proved tools of war.

    Was it only three weeks ago that we set out in the twilight to begin this adventure? So much that is memorable has happened that the days before the battle seem to belong to another era. So many names that meant nothing to us have now an everlasting significance: Mitarelya Ridge, “Woodcock”, “Snipe”, and point 32; Gwalal, Fuka and Matruh.

    We sit by the sea. We are the lucky ones of the 10th Armoured Division who have come through it all: yeomen in armour; veterans of the Royal Tank Regiment, “foot-sloggers” of the Buffs and the Royal Sussex Regiment; Royal Horse Artillery and the yeomen gunners; men of the anti-tank and anti-aircraft batteries; sappers, signalmen, supply and transport personnel; men of the ordnance and tank recovery services; “red-caps” and field security police; ambulance drivers and medical orderlies.

    We live and we remember. We remember these things….



    The scene on that first morning after our tanks had passed through the second enemy minefield. Our ears are weary from the night-long thundering of the guns. Judged in terms of sound alone, the battle now beginning on Mitareiya ridge seems a gentle business by comparison with the fury of the darkness.

    But what a war-like scene it is. The rows of tanks upon the ridge. The quick flash of the guns. The swelling shrubs of earth made by bursting enemy shells. The blazing trucks and broken guns. The towering walls of sand, raised by movement, which obscure whole regiments from view.

    The boys, many of them in action for the first time, who grin and wave as we passs. The gunners, fighting their guns in the open with heavy shells falling on all sides. The “soft-skins” driven fearlessly into a deluge of fire in which it seems even the tanks must suffer mutilation.

    The earth, pock-marked by our shells during the night. The enemy dead. The prisoners streaming back. The endless forward flow of our troops. The sappers, still working in the minefields. The linesmen keeping communications open. The military police controlling the traffic. The ambulances in their errands of mercy.

    The seeming chaos of this hour of crisis as the whole division debouches through those narrow gaps. The quiet confidence of the brigadier who says, “We’ve got here and we’ll stay here …. until we can get on”.

    Not for another ten days were we to surge forward into the open desert as we had so often dreamed of doing.
     
  5. Chris C

    Chris C Canadian

    I'm familiar with the poetic; I've run across a description of a type of small barrage which called it better than any fireworks at the Crystal Palace. But it is a really good "sense description" of the scene and memories.
     
  6. Roy Martin

    Roy Martin Senior Member

    I don't know Chris.

    Page 2:
    The night of terror when the Luftwaffe scored a lucky hit on one of our echelons and caused a fire which illuminated the whole brigade of tanks creeping forward over the ridge. The triumph of the sappers in breaching the mine-field under continuos bombardment from the air and fire from every sort of ground weapon.

    The heroism of the signals sergeant who saved his truck with its precious cargo of spare wireless sets from the line of burning vehicles and worked all night and by the morning had restored the wireless efficiency of his regiment despite the battering it had taken.

    The glory of the Staffs, on this occasion in their grim fight at close quarters with the enemy on the other side of the minefield. Their heavy irreplaceable losses.

    The work of the “Floating punches”, the little parties of the Staffs which accompanied the tanks. Their job – to “winkle out” the crews of the 88mm. and other anti-tank guns to enable our armour to push on. Their armament – machine-guns carried with their crews in “soft-skins” which bravely followed into places dangerous for our heaviest armour. Their escort-carriers which covered the machine gunners when they got down to their work of killing the German anti-tank gunners.

    Their bag in one battle – two crews of deadly 88mms.

    The unpalatable “mixed grill” of the Royal Sussex Regiment when they attacked “Snipe”, “Woodcock” and the kidney-shaped feature between the two. Their week of trial in their lonely salient when nothing could live on the ground to their rear by day and only carriers could come up by night and then at great risk. The endless shelling and machine-gun fire which they endured in their hastily dug positions. The way they held on until their flanks were secured and all was well.

    The men of the echelons bringing up unfailingly to the fighting troops the things that they need if the are to live and fight – ammunition, food, water. The routes along which they came known to the enemy and constantly attacked. Always there at the end of a day’s fighting and the regiment closes into a “leaguer”. Always the same cheery unassuming fellows. But every man knows what he owes to them.

    The men who went out by night to bring in our damaged tanks, knowing that the enemy had those tanks covered. Their skill. Their quiet discipline. The brilliant performance in a single week in saving seventy tanks and other vehicles.

    The gunners – the men to whom the Eighth Army is indebted for all time. Their faces after a barra(ge?) [tear] tired, blackened yet exuberant. Their incomparable efficiency. Thei(r?) [tear] joy in battle.

    Those grim days, November 2 and 3 when the enemy was putting all his weight into a last fling against us as we stood out exposed in the hard-won wedge which was to lead us at last into the open desert. Those vicious hard-smacking salvoes. The mighty crash of his heavy shells. The curtains of fire in which our tanks were enveloped and yet emerged unscathed.

    The work of those days of our bombers which we watched with awe as they unloaded on the enemy positions and the whole horizon except for the narrow sector at our rear became a tumbling confusion of smoke and flame and sand.

    November 4. The day of liberation. The day of exhilaration. At At last we had won it; freedom of manoeuvre. The war of movement could begin.
     
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  7. Roy Martin

    Roy Martin Senior Member

    The great forward movement of the Eighth Army. We in the van. Behind us multitudes of vehicles, spreading themselves out over the desert to the limits of vision. Evidence of the toll in burnt out enemy tanks and vehicles, guns and aircraft; an aperitif for us.

    The thrill in the evening as we start on our night march to Gwalal to cut off the retreat of the enemy along the coastal strip.

    That morning at Gwalal when the enemy came racing out of the East in his bid to escape. With no protection out in front he came on in solid columns along the lines of the road and railway. Not for a moment could he have suspected that he was driving into a trap. There were muzzle covers on the guns of his tanks. He had no thought of fighting. His sole idea was to push on westwards as hard as he could.

    On he came- right on to where the guns of the Sherwood Rangers and the R.T.R. - whose tanks were hull-down on the rounded sandhills overlooking the ways to the west – could bear with most effect. Right onto where the Glasgow anti-tank gunners were waiting to take terrible vengeance for the ten days of shelling without respite during which they were never able to hit back.

    And then we let him have it. The destruction was incredible. The gunners aimed with cool, deadly certainty. Nothing, they determined, nothing was to escape. And nothing did. Tanks were hit and burst into flames. Men leapt from their tanks and ran towards our guns their hands held high. The columns scattered, were pursued by our fire and wrecked. Guns were smashed and crumbled up.

    The toll was 53 tanks and innumerable guns and tracks. More than 3,000 prisoners were eventually rounded up.

    We lost not a single tank or gun.

    By night onto Fuka. In the morning we were on his tail as he “pulled out” His guns covering the withdrawal of his tanks, sought to parry our thrust. Ours opened up whilst the R.T.R., Staffs and Sherwoods went off in pursuit.

    A brisk little battle followed. Result: a crop of burning enemy tanks on the escarpment; a row a row of abandoned guns for us; and a white flag waving from the enemy positions.

    Fuka was ours: a station and an aerodrome littered with the hulks of Axis aircraft. Half an hour after the battle the vanguard of the R.A.F. arrived and touched down on the landing ground – a lone Hurricane.

    On again to Matruh.

    More delaying tatics by the Germans. The road sewn with mines. Our tanks engaged by a screen of anti-tank guns.

    Gallant Robin Hood of the Sherwoods hit and maimed as it goes forward to reconnoitre.

    But by the morning gaps had been made in the minefields by the Buffs and the Sappers – not without casualties.

    The tanks passed through the gaps. With them went the General on his “charger”. The British were back in Matruh after an absence of five months.

    He goes on to write about the church bells ringing in England – I am happy to type this out if anyone wants it?
     
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