The Blockhouse and Saucer area: The Saucer

Chris Coulthard-Clark, Historian, AWM

When the battle opened (9.40 pm on 23 October 1942), the plan for the 9th Australian Division required that its 24 Brigade (on the northern-most flank, beside the coast) merely simulate an attack, to keep enemy forces opposite engaged and tied down. Meanwhile, 20 Brigade (on the left) and 26 Brigade (in the centre) were ordered to attack west, in concert with 51st Highland Division on the Australians' southern flank. By this effort, the line in this part of the Allied front was taken forward by about two miles.

At about midday on 25 October, Montgomery decided to make this whole northern sector the focus of further "crumbling" operations. As a consequence, an attack was launched that night by 26 Brigade against the Trig 29 feature, the importance of which lay in the fact that, although it was only about 20 feet higher than surrounding terrain, it was the highest point in the area and gave observation over 4-5,000 yards in every direction.

Trig 29 then lay directly north of the positions just won by 2/48 Battalion as part of 26 Brigade's advance, so an attack along this axis, if carried further towards the sea, would eventually bring the Australians in behind the German 164th Division and trap them in a salient against the coast. Such a threat was one which could not fail to draw a strong enemy response.

Montgomery had also instructed Morshead to have plans ready for further northward attacks to maintain and increase the pressure against the enemy defending the coast road. The British 1st Armoured Division was to continue its attempts to break through the enemy line and push west and north-west, if possible getting to the rear of the enemy in the salient. The 51st Highland Division would also keep pressing west. The efforts of all three formations, in combination, presented a considerable threat to the enemy.

Morshead made plans for an operation on the night of 28 October. Before then, inevitably, the Australians had to fend off a number of German counter-attacks which were aimed at taking back Trig 29, and this led to heavy fighting from the 27th – especially during the afternoon of that day. As part of the Army re-organisation carried out by Montgomery at that moment in the battle, 20 Brigade's front was taken over by 51st Highland Division and the brigade was thus freed up to become a reserve for Morshead's impending attack.

The impact of the seizure of Trig 29 on the enemy was already evident in Rommel's decision to send forward to this flank the 90th Light Division from Daba, and to also concentrate the Afrika Corps and a large part of his Italian mobile troops against it. By keeping Rommel's attention focused on this part of the line, and drawing so much of his available strength into attempts to eliminate the threat posed, the 9th Australian Division was taking on a pivotal role in the battle.

Once Rommel's forces became seriously unbalanced through concentrating against the northern flank, Montgomery had his chance to land a decisive blow where the enemy line was now weakest – which happened to be in the centre. The task of punching the hole through which the British armour would pass, what was dubbed "Operation Supercharge", was assigned to the New Zealand Division and timed to commence on the night of 1 November.

In the meantime, the Australians were obliged to endure the burden of their own attacks as well as the weight of the enemy forces which their activity drew in upon them. It was a further exhausting night attack by the 9th Division on 30 October which brought them into the area in front of us here, across the railway line and astride the coast road. We can see why the troops, when they saw at daylight the ground they had gained, called it "the Saucer".

The attack was carried out by two depleted battalions of 26 Brigade, the 2/24th and 2/48th (which between them had barely 450 men), reinforced by the understrength 2/32nd Battalion of 24 Brigade and the three companies of the 2/3rd Pioneer Battalion, and with British tanks of the 40th Royal Tank Regiment in support. More importantly, considering the highly exposed nature of the terrain, the troops making the attack were supported by twelve field regiments and three medium regiments of artillery − a total of 360 guns. Frankly, without that weight of covering fire, it seems unlikely that this position could have been won and then successfully held.

The first troops into here were from the 2/32nd Battalion. Moving off from their start positions a few minutes after 10 pm on a line slightly east of due north, coming directly towards where we are standing, they gained the railway line (which was their intermediate objective) and briefly paused to re-form before resuming the advance. When the 2/32nd halted, it had two companies on the reverse slope covering the road and two still on the southern side of the railway facing west. At this point the engineers came forward and began cutting a gap through the railway embankment to enable motor transport to get across. Since the walls were found to be about twelve feet high, and the engineers were without any equipment apart from shovels and improvised explosive charges, this was a job that took more than three hours.

One of the notable features on the battlefield that we can still see from here is the so-called "Blockhouse". This was actually a six-room building meant to house railway gangers before the war, and had been taken over for use by the Germans as a casualty aid post. When the Australian attack swept across this area, three German doctors and nine orderlies were still working there. They were left to continue treating casualties, which they did without regard to which side the wounded were from, and were joined by Australian medical staff to form what has been described as "a kind of international medical post" that operated for the next few days.

The Blockhouse

Unfortunately, no maps I've seen or anything I have read indicate where along the line as we are looking at it that the gap through the embankment would have been. But, because German minefields were in the area directly behind the Blockhouse, I'm guessing that the cutting must have been on this side of it from where we are looking now. Because there was an unoccupied area between the final positions taken up by the companies of the 2/32nd, enemy forces were able to move down east along the railway line (from behind us) and pour fire onto the gap from a distance of only 250 yards. Despite this, the gap stayed open and in use.

As the second phase of this night's operation, the 2/24th and 2/48th Battalions were supposed to follow the 2/32nd over to the northern side of the railway, form up in the lee of Barrel Hill and then sweep east back along the road (that is, away from us) to clear out and capture the enemy defences. This part of the plan miscarried when the battalions missed linking up in their start positions in the dark and thus lost the benefit of a protective barrage laid on to provide cover for their advance. Although they pressed on towards their objectives, they suffered heavy losses and came up against increasingly stiff opposition. When the 2/48th Battalion had been reduced to 41 men, its CO decided to turn back and make for the Blockhouse. Learning of this, the CO of the 2/24th did likewise, and arrived back on the edge of the Saucer with just 54 survivors.

Meanwhile the 2/3rd Pioneers, who had been set the task of attacking 3000 yards directly north from the Saucer to a point in dunes near the coast, where it was to take up a blocking position facing both west and east, set off on an equally abortive effort. The Pioneers had travelled only half the prescribed distance when they were forced to halt and dig in, because of the imminent approach of daylight and the fact that their supporting bombardment had become stationary and blocked any further advance. When dawn came, this unit found itself in another saucer of ground in which it was subjected to enemy fire from three sides. Lacking their heavy weapons and ammunition (which were loaded in trucks that had been held back), the Pioneers were dangerously unsupported in a position into which the enemy could see almost every inch and probe with fire. While they had achieved the goal of virtually sealing off the enemy in the coastal salient, this was with what the Australian official history correctly describes as a "brittle wedge".

It was these exposed positions that the Australians were forced to defend for the next two days against some twenty-five counter-attacks by the 90th Light Division and 21st Panzer Division, before the success of "Operation Supercharge" began to relieve the pressure placed on them by Rommel. Fortunately for the Australians, they had received during the early hours of 31 October a vital reinforcement in the form of the tanks of 40 RTR, which came up and adopted defensive positions beside 2/48th Battalion north of the railway line. Also arriving at this juncture were 6-pounder anti-tank guns from the Australian 2/3rd Anti-Tank Regiment and the 289th Battery, RA (which was actually a Rhodesian unit).

Obviously it isn't possible to fully describe today the protracted fighting that took place around here, but standing on this ground it is only too easy to appreciate the ferocity and horror of what it was like. With so little natural cover available, there was little protection to be had against artillery and tank shellfire. As the defending units were so heavily reduced in strength, the weight of supporting fire that they could summon to break up and destroy attacking enemy tank and infantry formations was crucial to their very survival.

Perhaps predictably, many of the Pioneers' positions north of here were fairly quickly over-run or ground down by German attacks. Here at the main Saucer, however, the Germans enjoyed less success even though the eastern part of the Australian defence was pushed back to south of the railway line. This left the casualty station at the Blockhouse operating in a virtual no-man's land, but keep operating it did. Moreover, by late afternoon on 31 October Morshead had learnt how seriously depleted his units here had become and decided on relieving the 26 Brigade with the 24th that night.

The changeover of brigades at the Saucer was completed by 3.30 am on 1 November, which was indeed fortunate in view of the weight of the German attacks which were about to hit the Australian positions. In the words of the official history, dawn "revealed to the incomers numerous enemy all around them, at distances only 800 to 1,000 yards away". To a tornado of smalls arms, mortar and artillery fire which erupted, the Germans attempted to add an air attack a little after 8.30 am but this was intercepted and broken up by British and American fighters.

From shortly before midday, the enemy's ground assaults were virtually incessant. Attacking infantry were supported by numerous tanks and self-propelled guns, along with sustained fire from machine-guns, mortars and artillery (including 88-mm guns firing air-burst rounds). The Australian positions were almost constantly smothered in smoke and dust. Even after the headquarters of 24 Brigade was struck by a shell which mortally wounded the commander, and killed or wounded many of his staff, the units kept fighting. The Germans kept coming even after dark, and still the fight raged in the Saucer. It did not die down until 2.30 on the morning of 2 November − by which time Supercharge had been launched.

It takes nothing away from the achievement of the troops who made the breakthrough which heralded Rommel's defeat at El Alamein to note that this was so largely due to the gallant and determined resistance which was mounted by the 9th Division at this point in the battlefront. It may be claiming too much to say that this was the make-or-break point for Montgomery's plan, but it does seem fair to say that here at the Saucer the necessary conditions were met which made the victory of El Alamein possible.