A Battle of El Alamein Military Medal group to Sergeant Anderson Royal Engineers / 3rd Cheshire Field Squadron

G.VI.R. Military Medal, correctly impressed 1909714 L. Sjt. R. Anderson, R.E.

1939 to 45 Star

Africa Star

Italy Star

Defence Medal

War Medal with Mention in Despatches Emblem

Condition GVF (MM service number officially corrected)

Robert Anderson was born in Brighton Sussex, he joined the Royal Engineers in early 1940. By October 1942 he was Sergeant serving with the 3^rd (Cheshire Field Squadron Royal Engineers.

The following account of the Squadrons actions in the early stages of the Battle are below. Taken from  C. E. Lucas Phillips’ book  Alamein

‘Third Field Squadron was commanded by Major Peter Moore, the fighting sapper who had run the Eighth Army School of Mine Clearance ... The Squadron already had a fine record, having fought in the brief, turbulent campaign in Greece as well as up and down the Western Desert. They had a rough time in the July fighting, having been pitchforked into mine clearance tasks in ill-planned battles ...

There was a No Man’s Land of about a mile before the first enemy minefield, the location of which was well enough known. The gapping parties of the 3rd Field Squadron walked forward to within 500 yards of it, with their sandbagged pilot vehicle driven by Sapper Shaw, their mine detectors, their large reels of white tape, their tin-markers, their pickets and lamps.

They waited expectantly for the blue light from the reconnaissance officer, while the guns trumpeted behind them and the barrage roared ahead ... The moonlight, not yet obscured by dust, wanly illuminated an other-wordly scene in which the few score sappers seemed to be alone in a realm of noise. ‘We felt rather lonely and naked, recorded Moore, ‘without any escort of infantry or tanks’. But this was his only concern. His men had been trained to a hair for what they had to do and each man, as he waited, went through his own part in his mind.

The blue light showed ahead and they were off. The machine-guns began to crackle like electric drills and their tracers flicked along the line. A few shells began to fall. The pilot vehicle, creeping towards the blue light, blew up and burst into flames. Enemy machine-guns and mortars turned on it at once, like steel filings drawn to a magnet ...

Moore’s sappers got down to work at once in their echeloned teams, sweeping with their detectors, feeling with their fingers, marking and pulling out the mines and taping the sides of the lane. This was the real thing at last after weeks of training. Knowing that time was precious, they worked as fast as their delicate and dangerous task allowed, moving forward yard by yard, eyes to the ground, ears tuned to the detector’s alarm, trying to ignore the distracting sounds of battle all around, trying to be cold-blooded in the heat of emotion of conflict. Tellers, Italian mines, a few S-mines and mines of other sorts were lifted from the soil of the Devil’s Garden and made harmless. It was not very difficult work at first, for, the wind having blown away the sand in many places, the mines there lay clearly exposed ...

Third Squadron hurried forward to the next main enemy minefield. They were in the thick of the battle now. The din increased as the enemy weapons replied to our own more vigorously. German and New Zealand dead lay in greater numbers, and many wounded waited anxiously for help to come. The second minefield was found to be much more thickly sown than the first. Trip-wires and the booby-trapped Italian Red Devils became more plentiful. The S-mines were encountered wherever there was dead ground and Moore, crawling to a flank to find a deviation, was saved only by the eye of an alert subaltern beside him from putting his hand down upon the deadly horns.

As his teams topped the Miteiriya Ridge, the enemy’s fire increased in intensity and the sappers’ casualties grew. All their expertness and all their coolness were called for as they handled the infernal machines in the dark, following the precise drill that they had been taught and trying to make themselves insensitive to the devil’s carnival around them. It needed guts to stand up and stay standing up when everyone else was either lying down or running, for they were now right up with the leading infantry beyond the crest of the ridge. In the left of the squadron’s two gaps, two of the detector operators were hit one after the other, but on both occasions the stalwart Sergeant Stanton took his place.

It was in this second minefield that Moore most felt the need for protective troops to fight off the enemy posts interfering with his work. Several enemy machine-guns were now firing at his team from both flanks and although most of the bullets were whistling overhead, a German heavy machine-gun opened accurate fire from only seventy yards away on the right. It became difficult to make progress, for any movement brought immediate fire. Moore was about to send back for his reserve Troop to attack the position, when a New Zealand officer, seeing their difficulty, attacked the position with two of his men with tremendous dash and, amid an eruption of bursting grenades, killed or captured every man in the post ...

The shelling was now considerable and many dead lay strewn over the rocky slope. He found that a bank ran along the crest of the ridge and that Moore’s few vehicles were tucked under it. Moore himself arrived very soon and reported that both gaps, Boat and Ink, were making good progress, not much behind time and that his teams were, in fact, in front of the infantry. It was 3.30 in the morning and 8th Armoured Brigade was due to start through in half an hour ...

The sappers of Third Field Squadron had been ‘working like demons’ to complete Boat. Moore, like his C.R.E., was getting more and more anxious about time. A hard driver in training, in action, like other good leaders, he encouraged and guided and was always on the spot when he was most wanted. Before long, like Brinsmead on Bottle, he was ahead of the New Zealand infantry, but his men were as steady as rocks under the continuous fire as they crept forward, sweeping, marking, lifting, taping.

It was getting towards six o’clock and the sky was beginning to change from black to grey and the stars to fade as he watched his men work through to the very end and saw a sapper put up the last marker. Then he turned and raced back as fast as he could through the gap that had been made. At the end of it, in the expanse between the two minefields, he saw the tanks of the Sherwood Rangers lined up, nose to tail, waiting for the word to go forward ... ’

Their job accomplished, Third Squadron withdrew, but not before witnessing the destruction of half a dozen tanks of the Sherwood Rangers, for the Germans had been waiting with a screen of dug-in anti-tank guns. In fact, the Rangers lost 16 tanks within a very short space of time’

Anderson was awarded the Military medal for his part, the award was gazzeted on the 14^th of October 1943, personally approved by Montgomery. The citation is as follows;

‘ Lance-Sergeant Anderson was in charge of the party whose duty it was to light the gap made by his troop on 23-24 October 1942 at Alamein, when the machine-gunning was at its highest. Lance-Sergeant Anderson went down the gap placing lamps on the pickets although he lit himself up in doing so. The gap was marked perfectly and the tanks did not lose a moment in passing through. Subsequently, he has done consistently good work clearing mines with forward troops over a long period.’

Anderson was twice Mentioned in Despatches, once for Italy on the 11^th of January 1944 and a second on the 27^th of November 1945.