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Previous | Contents | Next Cliff wrote the following in the 1970s. General Montgomery, the 8th Army Commander in Chief, once asked Corps Commander Horrocks which he would prefer — six Divisions with less than adequate communications; or five Divisions with first class signals. Horrocks opted unhesitatingly for the latter, commenting that it was ... Read more
Previous |Contents | What we generally think of as the Battle of El Alamein, the turning point of the war in North Africa, was in fact the second battle. The first saw the 8th Army stand and fight just 40 miles or so from Cairo, Alexandria, the Suez Canal — and ... Read more
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Previous |Contents | Next Cliff described some 6th Brigade training manoeuvres in the Syrian desert to give “some idea of life with the Infantry”. He wrote this in the 1990s. It certainly wouldn’t have passed the censor in his letters home. ~ Ian § First, Cliff described a night attack ... Read more
Previous | Contents | Next On 24 November 1941, when this story begins, we were attached to 21 Battalion, which had been in action at Beir El Gubi. We’d had 70 casualties and been on the move almost constantly for about a fortnight. My closest encounter with the enemy up ... Read more
| Contents | Next “Div Sigs” — Divisional Signals — was a specialist unit of the Second New Zealand Expeditionary Force, whose members were seconded to the various Brigades, Battalions etc to maintain communications. There were two ways to communicate: by radio or by phone (i.e. landlines — likely to ... Read more