All Hell Let Loose_ The World at War 1939-1945 - Max Hastings [235]
On 23 October, Montgomery launched Operation Lightfoot, the opening phase of the twelve-day second Alamein battle, which began with a devastating bombardment. Vittorio Vallicella was chatting with some Germans, drinking captured tea, when British shells began to fall upon them. ‘I have seen many enemy barrages, but the intensity of this one is beyond our experience.’ Men choking amid the acrid fumes of explosions watched tongues of flame leaping up across the desert. Vallicella took refuge in the drivers’ dugout, seeking comfort in the companionship of others: ‘Together we feel less fear.’ He described one scene hard to imagine in any army save that of Mussolini. Ordered by a lieutenant to load the dead onto a truck and drive them to a temporary cemetery beside a field hospital, he refused. The officer threatened him with a pistol. At that moment their colonel arrived, remonstrated fiercely with the lieutenant and snatched the weapon from his hand; the crestfallen officer collapsed into tears. Vallicella and his comrades took the bodies to a field hospital, where nurses helped with the grisly task of unloading. They told the soldiers that their main task for days past had been to lay the dead in mass graves; even the necessary bulldozers had to be borrowed from their German allies.
For almost a week, Axis forces beat back repeated British attacks. In London, Churchill fumed. Lt. Vincenzo Formica recorded a surge of exultation in his unit on 1 November: the Italians briefly supposed that the British had abandoned their efforts to break through. They were heartened by the news of heavy tank losses which panzers had imposed on Montgomery’s armoured units: ‘Officers and men, who had lived through the fighting and suffered for months amid the Egyptian desert through the hottest part of the year, saw that all their suffering and sacrifices were to be rewarded with the prize every warrior craves: Victory. We assumed we would be launching a counterattack. The word was “Christmas in Alessandria!”’
Within twenty-four hours, however, the picture changed dramatically. Montgomery afterwards claimed that Alamein was fought to his original plan. In truth, he was obliged to shift his focus of attack northwards, but Eighth Army’s dominance of the battlefield was not in doubt. Attrition imposed intolerable losses on the Axis forces, whose fuel shortage had become acute. ‘All our illusions were shattered on the night of 2 November,’ wrote Lt. Formica. They set off behind a tank column, only to discover that its leader was lost. At last their colonel appeared, and personally guided them to the Ariete Division’s concentration area. There ‘it became very plain to me that the whole military situation had changed – to our disadvantage. Long columns of vehicles from different units and even different formations were moving so chaotically as to make it obvious these were not organised bodies pursuing objectives. Conditions were appalling: poor visibility, vehicles bogged in sand, collisions. I looked down from our vehicle on silent and exhausted infantrymen. Occasionally I glimpsed the plumes of the Bersaglieri, upon whom so much glory and sand had been heaped.’
Rommel, returning from sick leave to the battlefield, signalled Berlin that he was embarking upon a full-scale retreat, revealed by Ultra to the triumphant British. By 4 November, Eighth Army was advancing in pursuit across open desert, while Axis units sought escape. Formica wrote that day: ‘As we drove, vehicles of every sort crossed my path, carrying pale and battered men. When I questioned officers and soldiers I realised that our whole line had cracked. It seemed impossible!