All Hell Let Loose_ The World at War 1939-1945 - Max Hastings [85]
Opinions about the South African component of Auchinleck’s army were more equivocal. On good days it was good, but on bad ones the division did not impress. The same might be said of Indian units: the Indian Army sometimes displayed remarkable courage and fighting skill, but its performance was uneven. The British justly esteemed the prowess of their beloved Gurkhas, but not every man or battalion excelled. For all white officers’ complacency about their men’s loyalty to the King Emperor, the Indian Army was a force of mercenaries. Among Eighth Army’s British formations, 7th Armoured Division – ‘the Desert Rats’ – was deemed an elite. The Germans regarded British artillery with unfailing respect. But the old cavalry regiments, now uneasily translated from horses to tanks, were prone to displays of mindless courage which evoked their worst traditions.
An important difficulty persisted until the late summer of 1942: Eighth Army’s fighting men had little confidence in their higher commanders. The colonial contingents, especially, believed that their lives were being risked, and sometimes sacrificed, in pursuit of ill-conceived plans and purposes. There was bitter resentment about the huge ‘tail’ of the army, indulging a privileged lifestyle in Egypt while fighting soldiers endured constant privation ‘up the desert’. A British gunner wrote sourly: ‘I came to realise that, for every man sweating it out in the muck and dust of the Western Desert, there were twenty bludging and skiving in the wine bars and restaurants, night-clubs and brothels and sporting clubs and racetracks of Cairo.’ Another cynical soldier wrote the song of this tribe:
We never went west of Gezira,
We never went north of the Nile,
We never went past the Pyramids
Out of sight of the Sphinx’s smile.
We fought the war in Shepheard’s and the Continental Bar,
We reserved our punch for the Turf Club lunch
And they gave us the Africa Star.
Britain’s prime minister shared that soldier’s disgust. An elaborate support system was essential to sustain Eighth Army in a country lacking its own industrial infrastructure. But Churchill fumed about the extravagant manpower committed to logistical and administrative rather than combat functions.
The men who fought the desert war suffered fewer hardships than those serving in Russia, Burma or the Pacific, but water shortage imposed chronic discomfort. ‘The flies plague us in millions from the first hour in the morning,’ wrote an Italian officer. ‘The sand always seems to be in our mouths, in our hair and in our clothes, and it is impossible to get cool.’ Armoured officer Pietro Ostellino wrote in August: ‘Even the climate has begun to make us lose hope. All day we suffer an infernal heat while the shade is rendered useless by a constant suffocating wind. It seems as though the valley has become a furnace. After eight in the evening the wind drops, but … we suffocate.’ In their tanks, the temperature often rose above 40 or 50 degrees Celsius. Opening hatches merely allowed sand and dust to swirl in.
British soldiers received a water ration of two pints a day, together with copious issues of tea brewed in old fuel tins on fires of mingled petrol and sand. They ate chiefly bully beef, biscuits and canned fruit. The Germans rejoiced in captures of Eighth Army rations, which they preferred to their own, especially the generous issues of cigarettes. ‘We … slowly make ourselves become Tommies,’ wrote Wolfgang Everth wryly during one of Rommel’s advances. ‘Our vehicles, petrol, rations and clothing were all English. I … breakfasted off two tins of milk, a tin of pineapple, biscuits and Ceylon tea.’
Men learned that the desert was perilously nuanced terrain on which to move and fight. ‘Smooth yellow sand, attractive to the uninitiated, was deadly,’ wrote a British officer.