Inferno - Max Hastings [238]
Rommel, returning from sick leave to the battlefield, signalled Berlin that he was embarking upon a full-scale retreat, revealed by Ultra to the triumphant British. By 4 November, the Eighth Army was advancing in pursuit across open desert, while Axis units sought escape. Formica wrote that day: “As we drove, vehicles of every sort crossed my path, carrying pale and battered men. When I questioned officers and soldiers I realised that our whole line had cracked. It seemed impossible! … ‘Look,’ said my battalion commander. ‘There are the English tanks.’ I saw the enemy … silent and still like some treacherous wild beasts, half hidden in the early-morning mist.”
Lt. Pietro Ostellino wrote that night: “We could see flares all around us in the starry sky: red for English and green for German. We had been moving slowly, at the best speed possible given the terrain and the darkness, when I was forced to abandon my tank in the desert because it couldn’t keep up with the others.” He and a handful of fellow Italians drove trucks westwards through the darkness, occasionally pausing so the officer could dismount and check his compass, until a German vehicle chanced upon them. Ostellino asked for news of the British, and though they had no language in common the Germans made plain that the enemy were all around them, that their only hope was to cover distance before dawn.
They paused briefly around midnight to eat and doze. Ostellino was woken by a shout, walked to investigate, and came upon the remains of an infantry battalion, heading for El Daba. “The men were at the end of their tether and desperately thirsty. Only the officers, who all had southern accents, sustained some spirit and energy and urged their men to keep going … It was a pitiful scene when those men driven to desperation by thirst and exhaustion went down on their knees around me so that I could give them a drink.” He found their colonel, an little veteran of the First World War with one eye covered by a black patch, following his men in a field car. The old man said pityingly, “We officers have other spiritual resources but my soldiers, poor fellows, can think only of their thirst.” In truth, throughout the desert campaign Italian leadership was deplorable.
The Eighth Army’s armoured units sped westward, their tracks churning sand, their crews thrilled that months of deadlock were broken. “The view from a moving tank is like that in a camera obscura or a silent film,” wrote Keith Douglas, “in that since the engine drowns all other noises except explosions, the whole world moves silently. Men shout, vehicles move, aeroplanes fly over, and all soundlessly: the noise of the tanks being continuous, perhaps for hours on end, the effect is of silence.” On and on they drove, though heavy rain and Montgomery’s caution prevented them from converting success into destruction of Rommel’s army. Vicenzo Formica noted in some embarrassment the contrast between the chaotic Italian rout and the ordered withdrawal of the Afrika Korps. “I met Captain Bondi, the Ariete’s German liaison officer, cordially disliked by our men. He pointed to parties of German soldiers who were retreating on foot, very tired but still in perfect order, even as enemy shells fell between their files.”
Vittorio Vallicella found the experience of retreat considerably less disagreeable than much else that had happened to him since 1941. He drove fast westwards with only six companions, successfully avoiding the roadblocks established to halt stragglers and reassemble broken units. For some days they were troubled by no news and no officers, and outpaced RAF strafing. They found dumps of petrol and oil to sustain their flight, and even managed to shoot a gazelle for fresh meat: “In the tragedy of the war these are some of our