Australians Unaware of Importance of 9th Division at El Alamein

From the Australian newspaper in November 2012. Historians explain how the battle panned out and the involvement of the Australian 9th division.
"The conundrum, however, is that El Alamein has become the forgotten battle in Australian memory. It has a contradictory identity: it is the most important battle we fought in that war, yet is the least remembered."


ARRIVING back in the African desert at dusk on October 25, 1942, an anxious German commander, Erwin Rommel, gave orders to break the British Eighth Army's new offensive in the north - directly attacking the 9th Australian Division.
The Battle of El Alamein, launched two days earlier by Britain's General Bernard Montgomery in an exposed and featureless desert near the Mediterranean Sea, was to that point the most important British offensive of World War II. On Montgomery's initiative would depend Winston Churchill's entire Mediterranean strategy and his conviction that the Middle East must be secured before any campaign to liberate Europe from Nazi control.
When Rommel returned from Germany, where he had gone to recover from illness and confer with Adolf Hitler, the battle had reached a crisis point. He now sent a rallying message to the Axis forces invoking his mystique as the Desert Fox, saying: "I have once more taken over the command of the army."
It was the fourth year of the war. Churchill was struggling, still searching for a significant land victory to break Hitler's momentum. In political and military terms, he knew Montgomery's offensive would become the turning point of the war.
El Alamein became the most important battle in which Australians participated during the war. This was for two reasons: the battle was a transformative event that changed world history, and the role played by the 9th Division was crucial to the British victory, a point made by British commanders at the time. When the battle ended, Montgomery went immediately to the Australian lines to thank the commander of the 9th Division, Lieutenant General Leslie Morshead.
The conundrum, however, is that El Alamein has become the forgotten battle in Australian memory. It has a contradictory identity: it is the most important battle we fought in that war, yet is the least remembered.
This testifies to the historical amnesia bred by our contemporary cultural outlook and the "little Australia" mentality - the view that fighting abroad with Britain in the two world wars was misguided. El Alamein is an unfashionable battle because it was fought far from home and was a successful British Empire engagement, unlike the fall of Singapore.
This week, on the 70th anniversary of the battle's conclusion, a re-assessment is overdue. The story of El Alamein is about how Australia played a critical role on the global stage. Britain's mood at the time was captured in the war diary of Churchill's chief of the general staff, General Alan Brooke, who wrote on the eve of battle: "There are great possibilities and great dangers! It may be the turning point of the war."
The global struggle, in fact, was transformed in late 1942 at two points - when in early November Montgomery broke Rommel's army, and when German general Friedrich Paulus failed to take Stalingrad, surrendering his army to the Russians in January 1943.
Paulus went into captivity rather than commit suicide, as Hitler expected - but suicide was the ultimate price Hitler would extract from Rommel in 1944.
Morshead and his division had become illustrious before El Alamein for their role in 1941 in holding Tobruk during a long siege, a symbol of Allied willpower when that willpower was manifestly weak.
The most convincing testimony about El Alamein on which the reputation of the 9th Division endures came from the British commanders on the spot.
General Oliver Leese, who commanded 30 Corps in the battle (including the 9th Division), wrote to Morshead on November 6, 1942, asking him to explain to his men their "immense part" in the victory. Referring to the final Eighth Army breakthrough, Leese told Morshead that "if the Germans could have broken your division, the whole gun support of the attack would have been disorganised and its success vitally prejudiced". Writing within hours of the victory, Leese said: "I am quite certain that this break-out was only made possible by the homeric fighting over your divisional sector."
British historian Niall Barr, in his Pendulum of War: The Three Battles of El Alamein, highlights Rommel's relentless assaults on the 9th Division, saying: "Through their stubborn, repeated attacks and dogged resistance they had drawn the last reserves of the Panzerarmee into the fiercest fighting ever witnessed at El Alamein."
Former Australian War Memorial historian Peter Stanley tells Inquirer: "The Australian achievement still cries out for explanation. Its men withstood 12 continuous days of severe fighting. Their endurance made possible Montgomery's counter-stroke, arguably the only time in history an Australian formation made such a decisive victory possible."
At El Alamein, Montgomery's army was more than 200,000 strong (with some units unfit for offensive operations), with just over 1000 tanks. It faced an Axis force of about 110,000 with about 550 tanks.
In its victory the Eighth Army lost 13,560 killed, wounded or missing. The Commonwealth cemetery at El Alamein contains 7567 headstones and lists 11,945 soldiers and airmen from the African campaign with no known grave.
Three weeks ago an Australian delegation, including 21 veterans aged between 88 and 95, visited El Alamein to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the battle. The group was led by Veterans Affairs Minister Warren Snowdon and included army chief Lieutenant General David Morrison.
On October 20, the group attended a ceremony at the 9th Division memorial, then walked 80m for the international service at the Commonwealth war cemetery, where 1234 Australian soldiers are buried.
Their white headstones lie in the sand in a cemetery dotted with purple and red bougainvillea, as well as eucalyptus trees.
In his speech Morrison said: "Our soldiers fought superbly here. In the pantheon of bravery and sacrifice that lights our past, in the glow of battles such as Gallipoli, Kokoda, Kapyong and Long Tan, none burns brighter than Alamein."
The official historian of Tobruk and El Alamein, Barton Maughan, who served as an intelligence officer with the 2/13th Battalion during the battle, records that the 9th Division lost 620 dead, 1944 wounded and had 130 taken prisoner.
In their 2002 book on the battle, historians Mark Johnston and Peter Stanley say: "The Australian division, although representing just under a tenth of the Eighth Army's strength, had suffered more than one in five of its casualties."
When the entire Alamein campaign is considered, from July to November, the division took a total of 5794 casualties out of a strength of about 15,000. A feature was the high degree of casualties among officers.
"Never again would so many Australians die in such numbers in such a short time," Johnston and Stanley write.
"Alamein was the last of the great killing matches in which Australians took part in the 20th century."
The key to the British victory was the appointment of Montgomery as Eighth Army commander. Yet this happened because of a wartime mishap.
In August 1942, Churchill had travelled to Egypt to resolve the command crisis and poor morale in the Eighth Army that had led to its humiliation by Rommel. Impatient to see an offensive, Churchill removed General Claude Auchinleck from command in favour of Lieutenant General "Strafer" Gott. Gott was self-confessedly tired, and it was a misguided appointment. But Gott was killed when his plane was shot down by the Germans while he was on his way to take up his post.
Only at this stage was Montgomery elevated. While a showman and egoist, his appointment was the critical decision. The transformation was immediate.
Visiting the Australians, Monty took to wearing a slouch hat that he would decorate with a variety of regimental badges. Morshead told his officers, "Things are going to be different soon."
"Montgomery was the best," recalls Australian veteran Ron Myers, 93, from the 2/2 Machine Gun Battalion. "He was visible and he was everywhere."
Joe Madeley, 92, from the 2/13th Battalion, says: "As soon as Montgomery arrived we got more of everything. He talked and gave you confidence."
El Alamein defied the usual mythology: the Australians respected their British commander; they trusted Morshead; and the Australian and British chiefs co-operated effectively most of the time.
An unlikely looking pint-sized leader, Montgomery was a social misfit, a clear thinker and superb organiser. His career had been a repudiation of Britain's class-based military leadership from World War I, when commanders rarely saw their men. Monty's dictum involved training, planning, morale-raising activity and communication from the top to bottom of his army.
Having halted Rommel's drive to the Suez Canal in September in a defensive operation known as the Battle of Alam Halfa, Montgomery moved the next month to take the offensive. He predicted El Alamein "will become a hard killing match and will last for 10 to 12 days, therefore our soldiers must be prepared not only to fight and kill but to go on doing so over a prolonged period".
He said the task of his infantry was to "eat the guts" out of the enemy infantry so "he will have no troops with which to hold a front", thereby setting the scene for the tank breakthrough that would scatter Rommel's forces. This tactic put much of the burden on selected infantry units, in particular the 9th Division. Montgomery's words became a literal description of the task of the Australians at El Alamein.

AT 8.40pm on the night of October 23, 1942, Morshead, located 1800m from the Australian start line, wrote to his wife, Myrtle: "In exactly two hours' time by far the greatest battle ever fought in the Middle East will be launched ... it is high moonlight, tomorrow being full moon ... A hard fight is expected and it will no doubt last a long time. We have no delusions about that. But we shall win and I trust put an end to this turning forward and backward to and from Benghazi. The men are full of determination and confidence."
At 9.40pm 900 guns opened up on Rommel's lines. The battlefield was lit up in a delusion of summer light. Australia's official World War II historian Gavin Long writes: "The floor of the desert shook, vehicles shuddered without pause, men's bodies and their very voices quivered under the mighty shock waves."
Veteran Gordon Wallace, 90, from the 2/15th Battalion, recalls: "There was a colossal movement of men and explosions. There were fellows dropping besides you and you had to keep going."
Bill Corey, 94, from the 2/43rd Battalion, says: "At the start it was like daytime. Then it was all noise and the flash of guns."
Madeley says: "When the bombardment began I thought, 'None of us will survive this.' But with the Germans taking the punishment, I then felt, 'It will be a walkover.' "
Montgomery had an integrated plan that required his 30 Corps in the north to break into Rommel's defences; his armour in the form of 10 Corps was to drive through to exploit the infantry's progress; and in the south 13 Corps was to draw off Axis armour, then seek to attack Rommel's rear areas.
The northern line was a rollcall of the old empire - the Australians on the extreme right, closest to the Mediterranean, then from the sea the 51st Highland Division, the New Zealanders, the South Africans and the 4th Indian Division, all under the command of Leese. Leese's records reveal his fears, despite numerical superiority - he wrote before the battle that of his five divisions only the Australians were at full strength and ready for sustained offensive operations.
The 9th Division consisted of three brigades - the 20th Brigade under Brigadier Victor Windeyer (comprising the 2/13th, 2/15th and 2/17th battalions); the 24th Brigade under Brigadier Arthur Godfrey, killed late in the battle (2/28th, 2/32nd and 2/43rd battalions); and the 26th Brigade under Brigadier David Whitehead (2/23rd, 2/24th and 2/48th). The division included five artillery regiments.
Several weeks before the battle the Germans dropped propaganda leaflets on Australian positions: "Aussies. The Yankees are having a jolly good time in your country. And you?" Many troops kept them as souvenirs.
Montgomery's ability to reach all troops was revealed in the pre-battle speech to the 2/24th by its commander, Lieutenant Colonel Charles Weir. "Each of you will receive a personal message from General Montgomery which he has asked me to give to you. In it, he asks that every man will fight til he can no longer fire a rifle."
On opening night almost 10,000 assault troops advanced against heavily fortified Axis posts, minefields and infantry. Some veterans reported they heard bagpipes next to them. Asked how he felt, Corey says: "We never thought of getting beaten." Madeley adds: "I had a nine-man section and after the end of the first night only three were still standing." Corporal CW Mears of the 2/17th reports "dust and chaos, one cannot hear or see".
On the morning of October 24 the Australians were close to their first night objectives. Leese felt 30 Corps' opening had been a "great success". But Montgomery's overall plan had failed - the armoured divisions had failed to break through as instructed.
Even worse, they had hardly tried, thereby provoking serious ructions within the Eighth Army command. Montgomery was dismayed.
In his memoirs he wrote that this "infirmity of purpose on the part of certain senior commanders almost lost us the battle".
It took another 11 days to secure the vital armoured breakthrough. That meant the battle now proceeded into what Montgomery had thought might happen - a "dog fight" or "killing match" over another seven to eight days. The focus now fell on 30 Corps to keep advancing as the Germans geared for a long series of counterattacks.
In his history, Long says that from October 26 "the Australians started their drive northwards and brought the whole weight of Rommel's Afrika Korps against them".
One of Montgomery's intelligence officers, Lieutenant Colonel JO Ewart, described the tactics: "The plan had the simplicity of genius. It was to persuade the Germans that we were going one way and to go the other."
The key came when Rommel finally committed "the whole of the enemy reserve", the 21st Panzer and the 90th Light Division in the north, against the 9th Division where "the Australians had not yielded an inch".
The 9th Division's task was to function as a military sponge - to soak up much of the enemy's firepower to create the opportunity for a tank breakthrough farther south. With Rommel fixated on the northern front, in the south Montgomery on November 2 launched his long-awaited Supercharge, the name given to the armoured breakthrough that finally secured victory at El Alamein.
Morshead was ruthless yet responsible. He accepted the huge burden Montgomery imposed on his division. Leese told Morshead on the night of October 26 that Montgomery wanted the Australians to follow their initial success with more attacks in the north: they must draw everything they could upon themselves. "He (Leese) glanced at Morshead and saw no flicker of hesitancy disturb that swarthy face."
For individual battalions the intensity of prolonged fighting and the scale of casualties was immense. On the night of October 25-26 the 2/48th took Trig 29, a slightly elevated spur, with a combination of artillery and hand-to-hand fighting, with more than 100 Germans captured and nearly as many killed.
Across the next two days Rommel launched 25 attacks in an effort to regain the ground, declaring that "rivers of blood" were expended on a miserable strip of land.
By October 29 the 2/13th was near breaking point. "It had been attacking and beating off counterattacks for five sleepless nights," Long writes. Its rifle companies were reduced to 35 of all ranks, less than one-third of normal strength. Its commander, Lieutenant Colonel Robert Turner, was killed early in the battle and his replacement, Lieutenant Colonel "Flash" George Colvin, was seriously wounded and evacuated on October 29.
The 2/15th commander, Lieutenant Colonel Keith Mango, advancing with his forward troops, lost his arm and suffered serious head wounds; he died two days later. In furious fighting the 2/23rd casualties included two majors, four captains and 10 lieutenants.
On October 28 Rommel had sent a message to all commanders: "The present battle is a life-and-death struggle. I therefore demand that every officer and man gives his all."
In the north the tempo intensified on October 30-31, with Morshead launching an even more ambitious attack relying on the 2/32nd, 2/24th and 2/48th, the last of these under the command of Lieutenant Colonel HH Hammer.
These battalions cut a passage two miles (3.2km) long in one of the enemy's strongest parts of the battlefield. But the casualties were crippling.
The 2/24th entered this attack with 206 men and had 42 killed and 116 wounded. The 2/48th lost 47 killed and 148 wounded. But the objectives that night had not been reached and Maughan, most unusually in an official history, criticises Morshead's judgment. Johnston and Stanley bluntly judge that Morshead had asked too much of his troops.
However, from Leese's position at 30 Corps headquarters the Australians were fulfilling their strategic brief to the hilt. He said: "They drew on their front most of the Panzer Corps, of which they destroyed a great part with their anti-tank guns. It was a magnificent piece of fighting by a great division led by an indomitable character, Leslie Morshead."
What was the key to sustained high Australian morale? Apart from more resources and more guns, Corey tells Inquirer: "The officers and men mixed together. They were one of us. We weren't like European armies, where the officers and the men were completely separate."
ALAMEIN was the beginning of the Allied march to Berlin. In London, before midnight on November 4, 1942, the BBC advised its audience "to stay listening because we are giving the best news we have heard for years".
Earlier that day the Eighth Army had captured General Ritter von Thoma, commander of the Afrika Korps, who was compelled to dine with Montgomery the night before he went into captivity. Rommel's son, Manfred, recalled long after the battle his father "knew it (the war) was all over" once Montgomery had prevailed in North Africa.
Von Thoma later said of Montgomery: "I thought he was very cautious considering his immensely superior strength but he is the only field marshal in this war who won all his battles."
Montgomery's biographer Nigel Hamilton says El Alamein had a double meaning: as a military victory and as a symbol to the free and enslaved world of the Allied ability to ensure Hitler's defeat.
On November 10, 1942, Churchill spelled out El Alamein's importance after a long run of British military defeats, famously declaring: "This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning."
Yet El Alamein has a paradoxical ethos as both beginning and end. It was the beginning of the defeat of the Axis powers because it showed the democracies possessed the will and resources to prove Hitler could not win a war on two fronts.
Yet it was an end because, in the evocative words of Maughan: "The call to battle was a rollcall of the empire, that grand but old-fashioned 'British Commonwealth of Nations' fighting its last righteous war before it was to dissolve into a shadowy illusion."
Alamein was the empire's military swan song and where it left the stage. The battle ended that phase of war where the empire stood alone. The torch was passed to Russia and and the US. Never again would Australians fight under British command in the Middle East.
In his official history Maughan summarises the Australian role: during the first phase of the battle the 9th Division shared the heavy fighting with other assault units; in the critical second phase, the dog-fight, it "bore the main burden of the attack"; and in the final phase, though not heavily committed, all three brigades were involved.
Maughan quotes from the autobiography of British Lieutenant General Brian Horrocks, commander of 13 Corps: "The success of Supercharge was largely due to the 9th Australian Division who had carried out continuous attacks night after night. After the battle I went to see General Morshead to congratulate him on the magnificent fighting carried out by his division. His reply was the classic understatement of all time: 'Thank you, General, the boys were interested.' "
Johnston and Stanley record that after the battle Morshead, aware the division would soon return home, invited the commander-in-chief of the Middle East, General Harold Alexander, to an event no other formation in wartime had tried: a parade of the entire division.
It occurred on Gaza airstrip on December 22, 1942, in bright sunshine with 12,000 officers and men in formation, a phalanx more than a kilometre long of troops somewhat jaded and tired, having risen early that morning. Alexander delivered a short but uplifting address: "Your reputation as fighters has always been famous, but I do not believe you have ever fought with greater bravery or distinction than you did during that battle, when you broke the German and Italian armies in the Western Desert." The Last Post was sounded with Maughan, at the event, remarking that it seemed the final wailing note must have reached back to "those rows of crosses at El Alamein".
On the 25th anniversary of the battle in 1967, Montgomery returned to the Alamein cemetery. Johnston and Stanley recount his remark: "The more I think of it, the more I realise that winning was only made possible by the bravery of the 9th Division."
He said he would visit Australia again to thank them. He never made it.
The battlefield today bears no signs of its epic past. There are just a few dirt tracks to guide explorers to the sites of once fierce encounters at Trig 29, Fig Orchard and Thomson's Post where many Australians fought and died. Close to the 2/13th's location on the second night we found the remains of a mine and shards of shrapnel.
The battlefield, however, is a reminder that World War II was a vast global struggle. Australia's security was threatened by the prospect that hostile and murderous regimes would establish global or hemispheric dominance. Our ultimate security was determined by the great encounters far from our shores and progress in the European and Middle East theatres, not just the Pacific theatre, directly affected our future.
There is no doubt British leaders at the time placed a rare value on the role of the 9th Division. As an imperialist, Churchill's technique was to offer patronising thanks to his "colonies" for a job well done. However, Churchill's message to prime minister John Curtin after the 9th Division's return was different: it reflected the recognition among British elites that, at the fulcrum of the war in the Western Desert, the Australians had done something special.
In his March 6, 1943, cable, Churchill said: "As I told General Morshead in a letter I gave him before his departure from Cairo, this division has left behind it a record of energy, courage, enterprise and daring which will be an imperishable memory among all the nations of the British Empire who fought in true comradeship in the Western Desert."

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/inquirer/australias-pivotal-role-in-the-end-of-the-beginning-remains-underrated-at-home/story-e6frg6z6-1226513865089

 

Spidge

In my study of the El Alamein three battles, it became clear to me that without the Australian 9th Divisions actions and activities - Rommel would have posted yet another victory of the 8th army

and they were sadly missed on retiring to Australia so soon- why they are forgotten as this time is beyond me...

Cheers

 

Geoff,
Splendid post and thanks for sharing.

As time marches on, I am reminded by a conversation I had with Tom Canning five years ago. The more we discuss the importance of the entire Commonwealth's contributions to winning the war, the more future generations will learn and pass on to the next generation.

 

Tom,

I read this post on the http://forum.axishistory.com a few years ago and wonder if that is still the opinion of many people?

Geoff

 

Owen,

You are most likely correct in your assumption as both Churchill and Haig are not spoken of dearly in some conversations. I think Haig was known to put all men through the grinder in his war of attrition, not just Australians .

Sending the Australians and New Zealanders to Greece and Crete and losing so many did not make him popular but that was Churchill.........always a political gain on the horizon. (The Greek merchant Fleet)

The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941 changed a lot of things for Australians. Our 8th Division went into the bag in Singapore.

Churchill's attempt to divert the 7th division to Malaya instead of Australia did not endear them to him either as they would have also gone into the bag as all their equipment was on another ship steaming to Australia.

The 6th division was involved at Bardia and then taking Tobruk. The seige of Tobruk was in the news all the time from April to November 1941.

I feel the Australian people had more things on their mind throughout 1942. The Japanese crushing every thing in their path and nearly on our doorstep.

The Pacific and the Japanese were foremost in their minds and I feel news of the victory at El Alamein did not have the same impact for them as the Tobruk seige.

 

Spidge

i think that OWEN has hit the spot with the Australians rejecting the El Alamein battle over their hositilty to Britain to send their men miles away from home for one or another failed effort -eg

Greece ,Crete etc……completely forgetting that Britian did NOT hold a gun to their heeds But Austraiia VOLUNTEERED TO SEND THEIR DIVISIONS TO THE MID EAST-AND they did very

well- perhaps they should have been clobbered - th MIGHT have changed their minds..

Don'T think Rommel knew too much about the 8tth Army - if he thought that 8th had enough Infantry to do what they wanted - that being so he would never had the success he had at

chasing then back all the way To Alamein - MOnty took over on 12 th august - and soon had three more divisions and lots of Supplies…..

Cheers

 

Interesting,.my son was telling me of a NZ couple this week who were pontificating in his local that there was no British presence at Gallipoli and the British sent the ANZACs to do the job.....no mention either of the French being there.

My NZ cousin's husband was a member of the NZ forces who were posted to Britain in 1940 to defend the island against the anticipated German invasion,He then fought in Greece,pulled out on to Crete......gave a good account of of the German airborne invasion of Crete and the close quarter battle that that took place with the local population joining in....their evacuation from Crete via the RN.to Alexandria...went on to be captured by the Italian armour...as he put it "rifles are no good against tanks".Kept for 5 weeks in the open with no cover by day or night with nothing hardly to eat....scathing of the Italians and relates that they were saved when they were relieved as POWs by South African troops at Tobruk.

As regards Japanese expansion in the Pacific,nobody had a crystal ball for the outcome,clearly Australasia was under threat.While the victory by the USN at the Battle of Midway in June 1942 in hindsight, marked the limit of Japanese victories and expansion in the Southern Pacific ,there was still the task of elimating the Japanese presence in New Guinea in order to prevent the Japanese using it as a base for an attack on the Northern Territories....some historians refer to it as the campaign that halted the Japanese invasion of Australia.Similarly was the critical situation on Guadalcanal which US forces had to subdue the enemy.Then followed the task of pushing the Japanese back to their mainland by "island hopping" which took over 3 years to achieve.

In the critical year of 1942,the Australians and New Zealanders had much to concern them about the danger that the Japanese Imperial Forces represented to their homeland but still participated in a war at the "furtherest end of the earth" to preserve the idelogy of the British Empire and its Dominions.

Discipline and appreciation of the "mother country"...there has always been a degree of resentment against the British military "culture" by the Australians.In the Great War,the Britsh military leadership were critical of the informal relationship of men towards their officers as vastly distinct from the British forces.....seen by British military leadership as a lack of discipline.In the Great War,much to the dismay of Haig,the Australians refused to carry out the death penalty against what was regarded as serious military offences.To the Australian politicians and its military leadership, the AEF were volunteers.and they refused to extract the supreme penalty.On the other hand the NZEF,carried out military executions much like the British.

 

Harry

My Father was with the K.O.S.B's in WW1 - and after being wounded in France - on recovery was sent to Gallipoli where he was wounded - again - and on recovery was sent to France once

more to be wounded for the third time - getting fed up with patching him up they promoted him to Gas Instructor Sergeant - in Ireland here he finished up with a life long hatred of all things Irish

Cheers

 

Hello readers interested in Australian Military History during WW2 in North Africa and in particular the 9th Division.
The 9th Division is famous for its role in the siege of Tobruk (April to December 1941), then Alamein (July to November 1942).
See the following book that is recent in terms of research and includes references to letters from the soldiers to their families.
A good read, even for those that are familiar with the standard write up's.
The maps are brilliant and adds to the understanding of the deployment of the Brigades that made up the 9th Division.
Also, the location of the adjacent - British 51st Highland Division, the 2nd New Zealand Division and 1st South African Division.
TITLE: Alamein - The Australian Story
AUTHORS: Mark Johnstone & Peter Stanley
PUBLISHER : Oxford University Press
First published : 2002

Cheers
Viv R (Perth Western Australia)

 

The actions of the 9th Australian Division in the northern most sector during the last Battle of El Alamein were truly magnificent, as were those of the 2nd Bn Rifle Brigade, 7th Motor Group, at Snipe. That was the 'Break-In' to the Axis defences that Montgomery exploited during Operation Supercharge.

However, nor should it be forgotten that it was the 151st Infantry Brigade, 50th (Northumbrian) Division and 152nd Infantry Brigade, 51st (Highland) Division, that where in the van of the Operation Supercharge attack that fatally breached the Axis defences, which the British Armour exploited in the 'Break-Out' behind the Axis defences.

What localised national bios do not shout out loud is that it was truly a joint effort - of the Empire/Commonwealth (and others).

I say 'and others' because the 50th (Northumbrian) Division's third brigade at this time/battle was the 1st Greek Infantry Brigade.

As far as the 9th Australian Division is concerned, I think the British CoS, Freddie de Guingand, paid it a very high compliment when he commented to Montgomery that he wished that Division was available for the D-Day landings. I know the 9th Australian Division believed that the Japanese they were fighting at this time were a much inferior enemy to the Germans and maybe they would have preferred to have fought out the war in Nw Europe?!?

Best,

Steve.

 

Thanks Dianne,

Had not read that before.

Cheers

Geoff

 

Geoff,

Re the post on AHF that you quoted, I think that the poster was simply suggesting that the 8th Army had more than enough infantry at Gazala in May 42 and wasn't specifically disparaging the Australians or belittling their military effectiveness when in the front line.

Regards

Tom

 

Great site about the Aussie 9th Div here: The 9th Divvy!

 

Yes, really good.

 

Well it's certainly the continued opinion of the person who posted it. It is also an opinion that is posted out of context here, and one that considers the very specific time-frame, the requirements, and the supply situation in it. Replace 'Australian' with 'French', 'Indian', 'British', etc. and it would still be a valid opinion. The point is not regarding the nationality, but the formation type. Lack of infantry was not the problem in CRUSADER. Therefore, adding more infantry (be they Australian or whatever) wouldn't have fixed it.

All the best

Andreas