'With The East Surreys'
'With The East Surreys'
This week's excerpt looks at just one of the battles that took place in Tunisia at the end of February 1943 as the German's final offensive was brought to a halt
The English county of Surrey is not noted for its mountains, being today dominated by suburbia and gentle farmland. But for some reason the East Surrey Regiment were chosen to be trained as mountain warfare specialists during the war. In consequence they found themeslves closely engaged in some of the most difficult infantry fighting in the European theatre, over a sustained period of time.
The Surreys' 1st Battalion embarked from Greenock in Scotland in October 1942 in Operation TORCH, with a complement of 796 men. When the Tunisian, Sicilian and Italian campaigns were over, they had suffered a total of 1,311 casualties. It is said by veterans that of those 796 there were only eighteen men still serving at the end in May 1945. In a shorter period from March 1943 to November 1944, the 1/6th Battalion also lost more than their original complement, giving a combined total across the two battalions of 2,153 dead, wounded, and missing.
Given these casualties, it took assiduous research from a wide range of sources for Bryn Evans to reconstruct their journey in With The East Surreys in Tunisia, Sicily and Italy 1942 – 1945: Fighting for Every River and Mountain. Using numerous eye-witness accounts he paints a vivid picture of how the infantry fought and died in the most rugged and inhospitable terrain. A particular contribution comes from the unpublished memoir of John Woodhouse, then a young officer, later commanding officer 22 SAS Regiment. He was a key figure in establishing the post-war SAS so successfully in the role that it has today.
In late February 1943 General von Arnim launched Operation OCHSENKOPF (Ox Head) - a three-pronged assault on British lines in Tunisia. One of the prongs was in the direction of ‘Hunt’s Gap’ but was halted for over 12 hours in an intense battle at Sidi Nsir.
The battle and artillery bombardments by both sides for Fort McGregor resulted in the whole hill being 'littered with British and German dead, bodies and parts of bodies, which were twisted together into tumbled heaps'.
Another thrust was intended to retake Fort McGregor, a hilltop position occupied by the 1st Battalion, East Surreys:
Throughout the night of 25/26 February, paratroopers of the Herman Goring Division launched attack after attack, both artillery and ground assaults, against the Surreys.
In front of our B Company there was a small rocky pimple of a hill, sticking up in the plains thirty metres high. The whole of D Company were dug in and wired in on this hill. It was at least 1,000 metres in front of us, too far for effective fire support. The topology and deploy ments meant that D Company, led by Major Brooke Fox, was isolated on Fort McGregor.
Before dawn we watched as the darkness was streaked with flashes of tracer bullets between D Company, and the assaulting Germans, who had completely encircled the hill. Explosions rent the air as they used explosives to blast holes in the barb wire.
As the darkness paled, the Germans, having been beaten back several times with scores of men killed, made a final assault and successfully reached the top. We had a grandstand view of the bloody fight.
Lieutenant Kindon, a platoon commander in D Company, who was wounded and taken prisoner, described one of the attacks:
A second attack started after a heavier bombardment. This was a much stronger assault. No. 16 Platoon was wiped out and the enemy gained a foothold in 18 Platoon's positions and in my own platoon area. The battle was at its height, intense, bloody and desperate. We fell back to our rear weapon pits and fought on from there.
The enemy pressure now eased off but about ten minutes after wards, without any pre-bombardment or warning, the paratroopers mounted their third and final attack. I heard our medium machine gun cease firing and almost at once saw a solid wave of paratroopers coming in directly at the manned weapon pits, but there was no stopping this overwhelming attack.
At the same time I could see more enemy coming over the hill from the area of Company HQ, down on top of us, and then for me it was all over One minute I was in the fight and then - nothing. I came to and found I had some mmor wounds and realised that I had been knocked out. I was dragged to my feet by the Germans and led away with five or six other soldiers, through the old Company HQ area, and then away from the hill.
There were bodies everywhere, D Company had gone down fighting, and most of our men lay strewn around, it was a tragic sight. As we passed what was left of the outer wire, the enemy dead increased in number. On the approaches to the hill lay many more German dead.
Lieutenants Kindon and Rook were both wounded and captured with a few others who were still standing. Amongst the dead were D Company CO Major John Brooke Fox, and his second in command Captain Lindsay.
For a time Captain Taylor had been in touch with Major Brook-Fox on the field telephone:
As long as I could talk to John, I knew they were holding their own. After an hour or so he told me his Captain Lindsay had been killed, but he was sure he could hold on. Eventually John's telephone was cut by the explosions and he was out of touch with me and battalion HQ. The noise of battle faded away into almost silence, and the CO, Lieutenant Colonel Bill Wilberforce, agreed with me that the hill was lost.
About a week later, John's wife Angela sent him a parcel. Colonel Wilberforce, knowing that John was my best friend, sent his batman, Wilson, over to me thinking I should have it. It contained a long letter and news about their small son, some pipe tobacco and new under clothes etc. All very sad.
Although the Surreys with other Battleaxe units regained Djebel Djaffa, an attempt to recapture Fort McGregor, when numerous men were quickly lost, was called off. Next, because Fort McGregor's strategic position in the Medjez salient meant that it had to be won back, with a total disregard for any Surreys who might be still surviving there, a massive artillery barrage was opened up at the hill's summit. This was followed by probing counter attacks.
Two Surreys' stretcher-bearers, Sergeant John Davies and Private R. Moore, were awarded the MM and DCM respectively. When Moore found himself being shot at by a sniper, he returned fire with his Bren gun, which then failed on him. Rather than return to the lines, he managed to repair the Bren and began to stalk the sniper. Moore killed the sniper, and brought back the German's papers as evidence.
'Throughout the day huge blasts from heavy artillery enveloped the hill in black smoke/ observed John Woodhouse. 'Other medium guns and 25-pounders joined in, until as dusk fell all was quiet. I was ordered to take a patrol of six men and find out if the Germans were still there.'
Following the bombardment and Woodhouse's night reconnaissance patrol, which luckily found Fort McGregor abandoned by the Germans the Surreys reoccupied the hill.
As dawn lit the grim sights I searched the dugouts and trenches. I found three German soldiers unwounded and happy to surrender. They were stood with their back to the quarry wall. My soldiers shouted abuse at them, along with cries of 'shoot the bastards'. The Germans were clearly terrified, but safe while I was in command, and probably safe without me. Two or three wounded Surreys had sur vived our artillery bombardment but were in a state of shock. Fortunately we had never heard of stress syndrome, so did not suffer from it.
The German paratroopers showed suicidal bravery. The Nazi era inspired young Germans with the will to die which made them the best army in the world. Though they achieved the almost complete destruction of our D Company, who had fought to the end, they could not hold Fort Macgregor themselves. As I stood there, I remembered that I had been attached to D Company in Scotland as umpire only six months before.
The battle and artillery bombardments by both sides for Fort McGregor resulted in the whole hill being 'littered with British and German dead, bodies and parts of bodies, which were twisted together into tumbled heaps'.
Later the padre estimated that he himself also buried around sixty unknown soldiers. At the height of the OCHSENKOPF offensive General Anderson considered withdrawing from Medjez, before Alexander insisted on no retreat.
In the end British casualties were heavy, including some 2,500 taken prisoner. Yet some 2,200 Germans were also taken prisoner by the British, and possibly a similar number killed or wounded, losses that were far harder for the Axis to replace than the Allies.
Although First Army had been pushed back some ten to twenty miles, this stubborn defence by the Surreys and other Battleaxe Division troops forced von Arnim to halt his offensive in the north.
Similarly, on 6 March in the south near Medenine, Eighth Army threw back a counter-attack by the Panzerarmee. Soon after an ill and exhausted Rommel flew home to Germany to recover. Von Arnim was forced to place all Axis forces onto a defensive footing. With hindsight, it seems to have been a tipping point.
This excerpt from With The East Surreys in Tunisia, Sicily and Italy 1942 – 1945: Fighting for Every River and Mountain appears by kind permission of Pen & Sword Books Ltd. Copyright remains with the author.