War's Nomads: A Mobile Radar Unit in Pursuit of Rommel during the Western Desert Campaign, 1942-3 Read online

  Published in Great Britain and

  the United States of America in 2015 by

  CASEMATE PUBLISHERS

  10 Hythe Bridge Street, Oxford OX1 2EW, UK

  and

  908 Darby Road, Havertown, PA 19083, USA

  © Gilllian and Colin Clarke 2015

  Hardcover Edition: ISBN 978-1-61200-288-0

  Digital Edition: ISBN 978-1-61200-289-7

  A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission from the publisher in writing.

  Printed in the United Kingdom by Short Run Press, Exeter

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  To Oscar, Isobel and Inez:

  grandchildren of Gillian and Colin Clarke,

  the editors, and great-grandchildren of

  Frederick Grice, the author

  Contents

  List of Plates

  List of Figures

  List of Tables

  Acknowledgements

  Maps

  Introduction by Colin Clarke

  Part 1 On Draft

  1 Embarkation

  2 Crossing the Line

  3 Cape Town, the Suez Canal and Cairo

  Part 2 Erk in the Desert

  4 El Alamein and the Western Desert

  5 From the Green Mountain to the Gulf of Sirte

  6 Out of the Libyan Desert

  7 The Cities and Towns of Tripolitania: Reflections on Libya

  8 Tunisian Finale

  Epilogue

  Appendices

  List of Plates

  1 Fred at Ballasalla, Isle of Man, while on radar training, March 1942

  2 Fred prior to embarkation, 24 April 1942

  3 ‘Winners of the Desert Line-shooting Trophy. A group of noble erks, 606, September 1942’

  4 Unit 606 – the gharry with radar mast on top. Note petrol engine to rotate aerial beside truck

  5 Fred in his dugout at Alam el Osmaili

  6 ‘Harry Allen (H. Cookie), 606, September 1942’. The figure on the right is Jack Scott (Cookie)

  7 ‘Five of us sitting on the roof and in the entrance of my dugout. It looks no great shakes here – but that was before the renovation.’ H. Cookie is in front, and the others from the left are: Cpl Pryce, Jack Scott (Cookie), Fred and Jimmy

  8 Sergeant Clark, Unit 606 (left) and Sergeant Budd, Unit 607 (right), Alam el Osmaili

  9 ‘Having my hair cut by an Indian,’ Alam el Osmaili

  10 Sunset in the desert, Unit 606, October 1942

  11 Fred at Alam el Osmaili wearing his South African bush jacket and boots

  12 Beyond El Alamein: the debris of war

  13 Abandoned German tank with the palm-tree-and-swastika emblem of the Afrikakorps

  14 A view from the tailgate of Unit 606’s gharry: the pursuing convoy crosses the wire-line marking ‘the entry into Libya, November 1942’

  15 AMES Unit 606. Named by Fred as follows: Cpl Jack Pryce, Harry Allen (H. Cookie) back row; Alec, Bob, Fred and Jimmy next-to-back row; Jack Scott (Cookie), Roy, Sarge (Nobby Clark) next-to-front row; Norman and Sid front row. ‘Taken at Gambut – one stage of the big offensive.’ Fred holds the flit spray, while Jimmy and Sid have rifles. Between Norman’s feet is the beautifully made German box for valves labelled Mechaniker

  16 ‘Italian colonists’ farm near Barce’. The fascist inscription on the facade reads: Il Duce ha sempre ragione – ‘The Duce is always right’

  17 ‘Breakfast in the “green belt” near De Martino’

  18 Stopping for tiffin near Baracca: Alec (with mug), Cpl Pryce and Sid

  19 Baracca: abandoned public building with marble floors. Members of Unit 606 in foreground

  20 El Agheila: Cpl Pryce, on the left, and Fred foraging

  21 The German dinghy in the surf at Sirte

  List of Figures

  1 The troopship Highland Monarch left Avonmouth and joined the convoy WS19 at Oversay, Islay, Inner Hebrides

  2 The Highland Monarch visited Freetown, Sierra Leone and Cape Town, South Africa en route to the Suez Canal – Kabrit inset

  3 Cape Town and neighbouring settlements

  4 Cairo and neighbouring settlements

  5 The Western Desert Theatre of War, from Alexandria to Mareth

  6 Mediterranean settlements of Egypt and Libya from Alexandria to Tobruk

  7 Cyrenaica: from Tobruk to Ghemines

  8 The Gulf of Sirte: from Ghemines to Misurata

  9 Tripolitania and Tunisia: from Misurata to Mareth

  10 ‘Home, 606. September 1942.’ Fred’s pen-and-ink sketch of his dugout at Alam El Osmaili

  List of Tables

  1 North-African Place Names and their Adjacent Landing Grounds (LGs)

  2 AMES 606, Squadrons 260 and 213, and the Landing Grounds, 1942–1943

  Acknowledgements

  We are grateful to the staff of the following institutions for their help with the research for this book: The Public Record Office, The National Archives at Kew, London; the Air Defence Radar Museum at Neatishead, Norfolk – and especially to Roy Bullers, a radar specialist and former RAF Squadron Leader; the library of the RAF Museum, Hendon, London; and the Bodleian Library, Oxford University, especially to Sue Bird of the Radcliffe Science Library.

  Additionally, we are indebted to the late Nigel James, cartographer in the Map Department of the Bodleian Library, Oxford, for drawing the maps of North Africa and the Mediterranean (Figs. 5 to 9). The remainder of the maps (Figs. 1 to 4) were prepared for us by Ailsa Allen, Cartography and Graphics Officer in the School of Geography and the Environment, Oxford University. We are grateful to her for her map-drawing and curatorial skills, and for preparing the black-and-white images for publication.

  Gillian and Colin Clarke

  Maps

  FIGURE 1: The troopship Highland Monarch left Avonmouth and joined the convoy WS19 at Oversay, Islay, Inner Hebrides

  FIGURE 2: The Highland Monarch visited Freetown, Sierra Leone and Cape Town, South Africa en route to the Suez Canal – Kabrit inset

  FIGURE 3: Cape Town and neighbouring settlements

  FIGURE 4: Cairo and neighbouring settlements

  FIGURE 5: The Western Desert Theatre of War, from Alexandria to Mareth

  FIGURE 6: Mediterranean settlements of Egypt and Libya from Alexandria to Tobruk

  FIGURE 7: Cyrenaica: from Tobruk to Ghemines

  FIGURE 8: The Gulf of Sirte: from Ghemines to Misurata

  FIGURE 9: Tripolitania and Tunisia: from Misurata to Mareth

  Introduction

  Colin Clarke

  The nature and scope of War’s Nomads

  Frederick (Fred) Grice’s book, War’s Nomads, provides a worm’s-eye view of one of the key events of World War II, namely the military activity following the second battle of El Alamein in Octo
ber-November 1942. Afterwards the British Eighth Army drove Rommel’s Afrikakorps across Egypt and Libya into Tunisia, where it was finally defeated. Fred’s account is unusual, not only because it was written from ‘below’, by an ‘erk’ or aircraftsman (AC), but because it deals with a tiny radar unit of rarely more than ten men, and links together the themes of air and land power. The Western Desert War was the first campaign in British military history, in which the Royal Air Force (RAF) and the army had collaborated so closely. The account is notable because of its quality – it was written by someone on the brink of becoming a professional author.

  Fred Grice was an English graduate and grammar school master who, by the time he was called up in 1941, had already collected folk stories relating to the North of England. These stories, which he had told in his own words and had prepared for publication before he left England in May 1942, were proof-read by his wife in 1943, though the book, Folk Tales of the North Country1 was not issued until November 1944. Moreover, from 1937 Fred had kept a regular journal, in which he recorded the varied activities of his literary and personal life and noted seasonal changes in the natural environment, witnessed on the rugged walks he took on the moors around Durham. In short, when he was drafted to Egypt in 1942, he was a budding professional writer with a keen eye for environmental detail and ear for language. He used these skills assiduously to produce the two handwritten journal volumes and typed memoir that cover the period 1942–43 and form the basis for this book.

  However, this is not a history of derring-do, but a careful account of two phases in the early RAF career of a thoughtful and reflective young man. ‘On Draft’ deals with waiting to embark after initial training; describes Fred’s journey to the battle zone; and records the privations of a low-ranking AC in barracks and on board a troopship. ‘Erk in the Desert’, a typed memoir written in first draft in East Africa a few months after the events, gives a detailed account of the activities of Unit 606, a radar crew that follows just behind the battlefront. Its task is to provide radio-detection cover for the advanced landing grounds being used, in this instance by RAF fighter-bomber squadrons, because these landing strips are the targets of attacks by the German Luftwaffe and the Italian Air Force.

  As Fred himself records at the beginning of ‘Erk in the Desert’:

  I have no intention of dealing at length with the military events of this campaign. I have no right to do so, for the grim business of killing and being killed was, in the main, carried on out of our vision…It is rather for me to recall those less hazardous and sensational aspects of the desert campaigner’s life – his working, eating, sleeping and relaxations, the businesses of his day-to-day life, the beauties and uglinesses of the land he campaigned in, the inconveniences it imposed and the pleasures it afforded.

  Not only does he not deal, in a systematic way, with the military events of the Western Desert campaign, but, for security reasons, he singularly – and deliberately – fails to explain the purpose of his mission: to get to a targeted selection of the 240 landing grounds in the desert with all speed; and then to defend them against air attack by using a Light Warning Set (radar) developed to go operational within an hour (Table 1). Landing grounds – or a specific landing ground – are mentioned quite casually in the memoir; but the emphasis on speed and keeping up with front line of the army is never fully explained. Nor does he expand upon the importance of the Kittyhawks II and III (or Kitties) – American-built fighter-bombers that were crucial to the air superiority established by the RAF during the period 1942–43. Consequently, all these issues, and others relating to Fred’s educational background and RAF training, are addressed in this introduction.

  TABLE 1: North-African Place Names and their Adjacent Landing Grounds (LGs)

  Place names are spelled as they appear in the text and on the maps, but are also given in local, modern Arabic equivalents wherever possible. Adjacent early 1940s landing grounds (LGs) are given by name or number.

  EGYPT

  Alam el Osmaili

  Alexandria

  Al-Iskandarīya

  (LG 8)

  Burg el Arab

  Burj al ’Arab

  (LGs 28 and 39)

  Charing Cross

  El Alamein

  Al ’Alamein

  El Daba

  Ad Dab’a

  (LG 105)

  Fuka

  Fūka

  (LGs 16, 17, 18 and 19)

  Galal

  Jalāl

  Maaten Bagush

  (LGs 14 and 15)

  Matruh

  Marsā Matrūh

  (LG08)

  Sidi Barrani

  Sīdī Barrānī

  (LG 02)

  Sidi Barrakat

  Sīdī Barakāt

  Sidi Haneish

  Sīdī Hunaish

  (LGs 12 and 13)

  LIBYA

  Agedabia

  Ajdābyā

  (Agedabia East and Agedabia West)

  Antelat

  Antalāt

  (Antelat No 1 and 2)

  Apollonia

  Sūsah

  (LG)

  Barce

  Al Marj al Qadīm

  (LG)

  Bardia

  Al Bardīya

  (2 LGs)

  Baracca

  Al Marj al Jadīd

  Battisti

  Benghasi

  Banghāzi

  (Benina and Benina North)

  Beni Ulid

  Banī Walīd

  Bir Dufan

  B’ir Dūfān

  (Bir Dufan 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6)

  Buerat

  Bu’ayrāt al Hasūn

  Castel Benito (Tripoli)

  Bin Ghashir

  (LG)

  Cyrene

  Shahhat

  (LG)

  De Martino

  Al Fa’idīyah

  Derna

  Darnah

  (2 LGs)

  El Adem

  Al ‘Adam

  (LGs 144 and 157)

  El Agheila

  Al ‘Uqaylah

  (LG)

  El Assa

  Al ‘Assah

  (LG)

  Gambut

  Kambūt

  (LGs 139, 142 aand 143)

  Gazala

  ‘Ayn Al Gazālah

  (Gazala LG Nos 149, 150 and 152)

  Ghemines

  Qamīnis

  Homs

  Al Khums

  Jimimi

  At Tamīmī

  (Tmimi 1and 2)

  Leptis Magna

  Labdah

  Marble Arch

  (LG)

  Maturba

  Martūbah

  (Nos 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5)

  Mersa Brega

  Marsá Burayqah

  (LG)

  Misurata

  Misrātah

  (LG)

  Nofilia

  An Nawfalīyah

  (2 LGs)

  Olivetti

  Jaddaim

  Rzem

  Ra’s at Tīn

  Sabratha

  Sabrātah

  Sansur

  Janzūr

  Sedada

  As Saddādah

  (LG)

  Sidi Aseiz,

  Sīdī Uzayz

  (LG 148)

  Sirte

  Surt

  Soltan

  As Sultān

  (LG)

  Sorman

  Surmān

  (LG)

  Tamet

  Thamad Hassān

  (LG)

  Tarhuna

  Tarhūnah

  The Green Mountain

  Al Jabal al Akhdar

  Tobruk

  Tubruq

  (Tobruk Nos 1, 2, 3, and 4)

  Tocra

  Tūkrah

  (LG)

  Tripoli

  Tarābulus

  (Mellaha LG)

  Umm Er Rezan

  Umm ar Rizam

  Zav
ia

  Az Zāwiyah

  Zouara

  Zuwārah

  (LG)

  TUNISIA

  Ben Gardane

  Ben Guerdane

  (2 LGs)

  Borj le Boeuf

  Borj Bourguiba

  Foum Tataouine

  Tataouine

  Isle of Djerba

  Ile de Jerba

  Jebel Nefusa

  Jabal Nafūsah

  Mareth

  Mareth

  Mareth Hills

  Monts des Ksour

  Medenine

  Medenine

  (LG)

  Seven Sweepers Bridge