My Life by Lionel Graves. (Page 26)
To run the centre I had the help of three German Afrika Korps P.O.W's, Hans Neubert from Hamburg, Tony (?) and Walter (?) who mainly covered the garden. Hans Neubert was my right hand number 1 man, he had been a sergeant major in Rommel's special wireless interception unit and could speak perfect English, there should be a longer description among my papers, but they would be stationed with their caravans behind the front lines and would record every message, radio telephone or morse sent from GHQ Cairo or from the tanks and armoured cars and infantry sets, etc, they knew which individual was sending the morse or speaking and could identify which regiment or unit was involved and could decode the message as quickly as the actual recipient. A great help to Rommel, but just before Alamein a German general had accused their C.O. of cowardice for being so far behind the front that he moved up really close to the front line. When Montgomery started the attack at Alamein the Australians swept forward and captured the whole unit. As Walter said, “New Zealanders komm, hande hoch” (New Zealanders came, hands up) Walter was in a different unit. Hans Neubert claimed that their capture was the reason that Rommel finally lost the whole of North Africa. He was a very good commercial artist and painted lots of posters and individual drawings of people from photographs, we got on well together.
Rommel's
Intelligence in the Desert Campaign.
By Hans-Otto Behrendt. 1941-1943
Published by William Kimber – London.
The End of 621 Radio Intercept Company. (Hans Neubert). No sooner had the Good Source (messages from Col Fellers, American military attache in Cairo, decoded by Germans) dried up, than a catastrophe took place of even more serious consequences for Panzer armee Afrika. On 10th July 1942, most of 621 Company Radio Intercept Company was overrun and annihilated at its possibly too far advanced operations point near Tell el Eisa, west of Alamein; its entire documentation was captured by the enemy.
How did that happen? As mentioned earlier, that morning the reinforced 26th Australian Brigade with 2/24th and 2/48th battalions of 9th Australian Division had attacked in the Tell el Aisa area. The operations report of Panzerarance Arfika relates:
Whereas in the south the attack was making good progress and promised well for the next day, on 10th July, 1942 at 0600 hrs the enemy attacked the (Italian) Sabratha division north of the coastal road with a reinforced brigade after laying down a preparatory artillery barrage for one hour and with tank support. Italian troops here whose artillery seems to have consisted of one light artillery battery and one heavy artillery batallion, either surrendered without resistance or took to their heels. The Sabratha division was largely wiped out or captured and lost its entire artillery except for the heavy battalion. Barely two miles south-east of the Panzerarmee Command Post itself was it possible for us to restore an improvised line of resistance using the machine gunners and Flak units attached to Army H.Q. And some elements of 382 and Infantry Regt which was just arriving along the coastal road and kept the enemy from advancing further.
A regrettable consequence of this route was that the enemy advanced so quickly that they were able to destroy nearly the whole of 621 Radio Intercept Company... The only reference (in Australia) found was in 9th Divisions Intelligence Summary No. 245 of 13th July. This states under 'Enemy Identifications', POWS's captured night 9/10th July included POW from 2nd Bn 86 Inf Regt Sabratha Div, 4 Bty 75/273 Mob Art Regt and 7 Bersaglieri Regt 21 Corps. Some 1,556 prisoners were then captured by 261st Brigade in coastal sector. 69 of the German POW's captured at the same place and time were identified as belonging to Nachrichton. Fernaufklarings – Kompanie 621 (3 Coy 56 Sig Bn). Some very valuable documents including wireless intercept messages were captured from this Coy.
...Second. Lt. Wisehmann, one of the units officers who had the good fortune to be attached to Rommel at the time said in 1974:
Captain Seebohm was extremely ambitious and always wanted to win glory in Rommels eyes by obtaining impressive results from our company. For that he needed... a site for our radio monitor offering good reception conditions and the possibility of picking up all the important enemy wireless nets loud and clear:... Rommel thus often had signals in his hand before the enemy commanders to whom they had been addressed.... One of Capt. Seebohm's platoon commanders, Lieut. Heinrich Habel, was at the time with his platoon under the orders of 90th Light Division, then he escaped the catastrophe. He asked Seebohn earlier in July why he had sited his 'Circus' – as the soldiers dubbed their unit with all it antennae, tents and buses – so far forward. The answer was a cynical - “A fine thing to tell me now!” Hable later learned that a 'colonel' had reprimanded Captain Seebohm because (perhaps at Matruh) he had left his position too early. The colonel concerned had evidently not realized that this company was not a rearguard combat unit but a precious and even irreplaceable Intelligence gathering operation.
A report from Staff Sergeant Hassler, commander of one intercept platoon at the time -
“At about 4am on this day, heavy artillery fire awoke us. We were sited hard by the sea, north-west of the Tell-el-Eisa railway station. Soon the artillery began laying down smoke-shells; behind this smoke screen enemy tanks advanced westwards along the coastal road. Later they encircled the company. The Australian infantry came first, carrying their Bren guns at the slope. As soon as the light machine guns of our company opened fire however they took up aiming positions, tracking their fire forward yard by yard and causing heavy casualties. When the tanks came up from the rear that was that. The rest of the company, except the motor transport which had previously escaped, was captured. The company commander Captain Seebohms had been badly wounded. He was sent to the military hospital at Alexandria – he died soon after... Later the prisoners were transferred to the Faid camp on the Suez Canal.
Hassler also said that when he withdrew the intercept company at Merss Matruk at the end of June, he was accused of cowardice by a powerfully built and tall colonel and threatened with court martial regardless of the fact that this company had totally different duties. Seebohm had called his officers and NCO's together and declared that from now on there would be no retreat.
This book was first published in Germany in 1980 by
Rombach & Co GmbH,
Danck und Verlaghaus,
Freiburg im Breisgau.
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It wasn't all work and no play, we used to swim in the Bitter Lake, canoed on the Suez Canal, played lots of tennis, there was a court in the sergeant's mess, the cinema, of course visiting Ensa touring theatre companies, once there was a production of Le Boheme by a second rate Italian opera company but as Mimi went sick and couldn't perform must have been more than her tiny hand that was frozen. I played one game of cricket on a concrete pitch on the sand, covered with a strip of netting, one game was enough, it was too dangerous. Had a week's leave at Port Said at a special holiday camp, went with Duke Winfield, saw shows, a hypnotist, tennis, swimming and relaxing.
A pot-pourri of ecents and happenings not necessarily in the correct order – a heavy thunder storm, the camp was flooded with streams running between the wards, no patients lost. One night a sergeant from the Special Investigations Branch of the M.P's came to set a surprise emergency turn out of the whole hospital and camp at 2am. Major Rice the company officer who authorised the test told everyone and we all sat in the sergeant's mess fully dressed waiting for the alarm at 2am when we went swiftly to our emergency posts. I was talking to the SIB man in the mess later and he was disgusted with the exercise. A brigadier visited the hospital for an inspection and inspected the library and education centre and checked my duties, he was very impressed but on departing suggested I had my haircut – happy memories.
When we needed a pair of civvy shoes we would get a picture from an advert or a fashion magazine, take it to the shoemaker who stood you on a piece of paper and drew an outline of your feet, then less than a week later you would have a hand made pair of shoes at a reasonable price and no clothing coupons as at home. Incidentally we slept in sheets, everywhere else in my army career we just had rough blankets.
An outbreak of cholera started in the villages and towns of Egypt and there were about 300 deaths a day. We had to have anti-cholera jabs and the woman doctor who gave me mine threw the syringe, just like a dart into my arm and caught it quickly before it dropped and then pressed the lunger. Slight discomfort afterwards but no worse than the other injections.
A RAMC sergeant, another very nice chap, working as a pharmacist committed suicide by taking poison. They flew his father out for the funeral, a little man from Durham and I've seldom felt more ineffectual when talking to him in the mess, a very difficult and sad situation as there was not much that could be said. Another chap I had known in the past at Farnborough and Catterick drowned whilst swimming in the Great Bitter Lake.
Email: Lionel Graves (lionel@graf-tek.com).
Copyright ©2000-2008 L. Graves. All Rights Reserved.
