All Hell Let Loose_ The World at War 1939-1945 - Max Hastings [230]
Throughout 1942 Britain continued the relentless naval struggle to hold open its global supply lines. The RAF’s offensive against Germany slowly gathered momentum, joined by some USAAF bomb groups. A weak, predominantly Indian army confronted the Japanese on the Burmese frontier. The US chiefs of staff were impatient to land in France, offering a token troop contribution to what would have been an overwhelmingly British forlorn hope. Churchill dismissed this idea out of hand, and convinced Roosevelt that the Allies should instead pursue the attainable objective of securing victory in the Mediterranean. North Africa thus persisted as the only theatre in which substantial British ground forces fought the Axis. In the desert, the men of Eighth Army girded themselves for new efforts in a wilderness where neither side had the smallest emotional stake. British officer Keith Douglas wrote:
The great and rich men who cause and conduct wars … have so many reasons of their own that they can afford to lend us some of them. There is nothing odd about their attitude. They are out for something they want, or their Governments want, and they are using us to get it for them … It is exciting and amazing to see thousands of men, very few of whom have much idea why they are fighting, all enduring hardships, living in an unnatural, dangerous, but not wholly terrible world, having to kill and to be killed, and yet at intervals moved by a feeling of comradeship with the men who kill them and whom they kill, because they are enduring and experiencing the same things.
Neither Churchill nor his people doubted the dominant importance of the struggle in Russia, but North African operations mattered much to British self-respect. In the winter of 1942–43, these also offered an important, probably indispensable opportunity for some US formations to gain combat experience, and for curbing the hubris of their generals. During much of the preceding year, however, it seemed doubtful that the British could even hold Egypt. MP Harold Nicolson wrote: ‘A whisper is going round that our troops do not fight well … Our men cannot stand up to punishment. And yet they are the same men as man the merchant ships and who won the Battle of Britain. There is something deeply wrong with the whole morale of our Army.’ Churchill told a secret session of the Commons debating the desert campaign: ‘The conduct of our large army … does not seem to have been in harmony with the past or present spirit of our forces.’ Following the ignominious surrender of Tobruk on 21 June, Auchinleck dismissed Ritchie, his field commander, and took personal charge of Eighth Army. But at the end of the month, beaten at Mersa Matruh, his battered formations retreated yet again, to the El Alamein line inside Egypt.
British fortunes were at their lowest ebb. It was widely agreed that desert generalship and tactics in the first six months of 1942 had been deplorable, the Gazala battles scandalously mishandled. Morale was wretched. It seemed plausible to both sides that Rommel might reach Cairo, and Egypt be lost to the Allies. The strategic impact of such a blow would have been limited, because the Axis lacked resources for exploitation. But the cost to British prestige, already badly tarnished, would have been appalling. Panic swept Egypt, and the Royal Navy’s Mediterranean Fleet quit Alexandria. Lt. Pietro Ostellino wrote exultantly to his wife on 2 July 1942, in a letter that emphasised residual fascist enthusiasm among some Italians who clung to hopes of military success: ‘Things here get better and better. As you will have heard from the radio and newspapers, the English and their allies are taking such a beating that they will find it difficult to raise their heads again. They deserve it! Our soldiers are simply marvellous. We cannot fail to be victorious now.’
Washington agreed. The leaders of the US Army believed,