Alan Whicker - Whicker’s War

We passed our first landfall at night – the breathtaking hulk of Gibraltar – without really believing we could fool the Axis telescopes spying from the Spanish coast and taking down our details. By now we knew we were heading for the exotic destination of Algiers. Its agreeable odour of herbs, spices and warm Casbah wafted out to sea to greet us.

In Algiers I rounded up our drivers and we collected the Unit’s transport: Austin PUs – more than 20 of them. These ‘personal utilities’ were like small underpowered delivery vans, but comfortable enough for two. They saw us through the war until America’s more warlike jeeps drove to the rescue. I had been told to deliver this motorcade to AFPU in a small town in the next country: Beja, in Tunisia, where we were becoming a Unit again.

I thought that having come all this way I ought to take a look at Sidi-Bel-Abbès to check-out the HQ of the Foreign Legion, but it was on the Moroccan side of Algeria, and the Legionnaires still uncertain whether they were fighting for us or against us. In Algiers I consoled myself in the cavernous Aletti bar with other officers heading for the war. Then we set off for Stif and Constantine. It was a lovely mountain drive on good roads in cool sunshine, with the enemy miles away.

The journey to recapture Europe was taking the new First Army longer than expected. Our push towards the Mediterranean ports of Tunisia, from where we planned to attack Europe, had been halted. Hitler was supporting the fading Afrika Korps to keep us away from his new frontiers. The enemy was now being reinforced every day by 1,000 fresh German troops from Italy. They flew in to El Aouina Airport at Tunis and joined the tired remainder of the Afrika Korps arriving across the Libyan Desert, just ahead of the Eighth Army.

At Beja we unloaded the supplies we had been carrying in our PUs and joined the rest of the Unit awaiting us in a small decrepit hotel. I had been carrying one particularly valued memento of peaceful days. It says something for the progress of technology when I reveal that this was a small portable handwound gramophone with a horn, as in His Master’s Voice. It now seems laughably Twenties and charleston, but in those days there were no such things as miniature radios, of course, and great chunky wireless sets required heavy accumulators.

Unfortunately, the accompanying gramophone records I brought had not coped with the stressful voyage. The solitary survivor was good old Fats Waller singing My Very Good Friend the Milkman. On the flip side: Your Feets Too Big. We played this treasure endlessly, then passed him on to the Sergeants’ Mess for the few cameramen still not placed with Army units. When they could stand him no longer he was joyfully received by the drivers. Fortunately Fats Waller’s voice was not so delicate or finely-tuned an instrument that it lost much quality from constant repetition. I always hoped that one day I would be able to tell him how much one recording did for the morale of a small unit stranded amid the sand and scrub of North Africa.

The First Army had earlier been expected to occupy Tunis and Bizerte without difficulty, but instead lost Longstop Hill and was almost pushed back from Medjez-el-Bab. A major attack was planned to make good that defeat and capture the remaining enemy forces in North Africa. Leading the thrust for Tunis would be two armoured divisions. I went to join a photogenic squadron of Churchill tanks, awaiting action.

The Churchill was our first serious tank, developed before the war. It weighed 39 tons and with a 350hp engine could reach 15mph, on a good day. It originally had a two-pounder gun, which must have seemed like a peashooter poking out of all that steel. Then in ’42 its manufacturer Vauxhall Motors installed a six-pounder. In ’43 this was replaced by a 75mm, making it at last a serious contender – though the German Tiger we were yet to meet weighed 57 tons and had an 88mm. Throughout the entire war German armour was always just ahead of us. We never met on equal terms. However, we had heard how Montgomery had run the Panzers out of Libya, so were optimistic about our chances before Tunis.

For my cine-cameraman partner I asked Sergeant Radford to join me. Back in our old Marylebone days Radford had been the main protester against marching and drilling with the rest of the Unit in Dorset Square. He always seemed a bit of a barrack-room lawyer, so I thought I should carry the load rather than push him into partnership with some less stroppy sergeant. With a precise, fastidious and pedantic manner – before the war I believe he had been in Insurance – Radford was a great dotter of i’s and crosser of t’s, but I suspected where it mattered he was a good man. In fact on the battlefront and away from Dorset Square we soon came to terms. He was a splendid and enthusiastic cameraman, and would go after his pictures like a terrier.

On our first battle outside Tunis, some Churchills suffered the mechanical problems they inherited from the original 100 Churchills remaining in the Army after Dunkirk, and broke down. The day did not go well.

You don’t remember events too clearly, after a battle. It’s all too fast and fierce and frightening – but I do recall seeing Radford going forward clinging on to the back of a tank, as though riding a stallion into the fray.

Being on the outside looking in, is never a wise position in war. Nevertheless after a busy day on Tunisian hillsides, we both found ourselves on the lower slopes of Longstop Hill when the final attack was called off. I was mightily relieved to see him again, exhausted but in good shape.

Next day the Commanding Officer drew me aside. He was a smiling Quorn countryman who would have been happier riding to hounds. Our enthusiasm, he said, had been ‘a good show’. That was a relief, since I gathered we had been seen as a bit long-haired and effete. At least the Regiment’s worst suspicions had not been confirmed … To be complimented by a CO of such style and panache was accolade enough; then he added that when life calmed down he was going to put us both in for gongs. That seemed a satisfactory way for a Film Unit to start its war and a reminder that we were not there to take pictures of parades.

When the battle for Tunis resumed next dawn German gunners concentrated upon our lead tank. The CO was the first man to be killed.

The elusive quality of battlefield behaviour is well-known: bravery unnoticed, medals unawarded … because no one was there to see. Yet Radford’s behaviour in the face of the enemy had been seen by a senior officer who, when we had asked permission to join his tanks, thought we might be a nuisance. At least on our first day in battle we had not let down that most gallant gentleman.

Yet in truth, we were not in the hero business. Our CO regularly reminded us that no ephemeral picture was worth a death or an injury. This did not stop the braver cameramen risking their lives. (The General who led the British forces in a later war in the Gulf, Sir Peter de la Billiere, has reminded us, ‘The word “hero” has become devalued. Nowadays it’s applied to footballers and film stars, which does a disservice to people who have risked their lives for others.’)

So we covered the slow advance through Tunisia. It was our first experience of fighting alongside the Americans. Totally unblooded, they were quite unequal even to General Rommel’s beaten army at Kairouan and the Kasserine Pass, suffering 6,000 battle casualties and a demoralizing major defeat in their first engagement of the war. The Germans were amazed at the quantity and quality of the US equipment they captured intact.

In April ’43, after observing the battle for Tunisia, the Allied Commander, General Sir Harold Alexander, found the US troops ‘soft, green and quite untrained’. He reported to the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, General Sir Alan Brooke: ‘There are millions of them elsewhere who must be living in a fool’s paradise. If this handful of divisions here are their best, the value of the rest may be imagined.’