Inferno - Max Hastings [76]
Wavell had impressed on Neame that it was more important to keep his army intact than to hold ground, but soldiers ignorant of this higher purpose were simply bewildered by their own headlong flight. Gunner Len Tutt described an action in which his 25-pounder battery held off panzers for some hours, then as darkness fell was suddenly ordered to withdraw: “The rot seemed to set in. We dropped into action a little way down the road but had hardly surveyed the position before we were ordered to withdraw again. There seemed no overall direction. Too many units were on the move at the same time, a mistake which contributed to a growing panic. We soon saw the danger signs: men abandoning a stalled truck and running to get on another vehicle, when possibly a few seconds under the bonnet would have kept it going. Others were abandoned because they had run out of petrol, and yet there were three-tonners loaded down with the stuff passing on either side.” There was further seesaw fighting in which the Halfaya Pass and Fort Capuzzo changed hands several times, but at the end of May the Germans and Italians occupied the disputed ground.
Pietro Ostellino wrote on 13 May near Tobruk: “We are well advanced now and it is only a question of time. It is quite hot, but bearable, and I am in good health—brown as a salami, partly from the sun and also because we are covered in sand which sticks to our skin and with sweat forms a layer of mud. We have enough water, but fifteen minutes after washing we are back to what we were before.” Soon afterwards, hearing news of the Axis advance into Greece, he wrote: “Yesterday I received a letter from Uncle Ottavio from Albania in which he talks of the great victory they have achieved there. We will soon be emulating them and will throw the English out of everywhere.” Though the Australians held out in Tobruk even after the Afrika Korps raced past towards Egypt, strategic advantage lay firmly with Rommel. And meanwhile, across the Mediterranean, as Ostellino noted, the British had suffered a further series of disasters.
2. A Greek Tragedy
THE STRUGGLE FOR the Balkans began with a black farce precipitated by Mussolini. Having considered a takeover of Yugoslavia, instead, on 28 October 1940 he launched 162,000 men into Greece from Albania, an operation only revealed to Marshal Graziani in North Africa by Rome Radio’s news broadcasts. Even Hitler was kept in the dark: the Duce was so nettled by Germany’s takeover of Romania—deemed part of Italy’s sphere of influence—without consultation with Rome that he determined to turn the tables by presenting Berlin with his own fait accompli in Greece. The pretext for war was mythical Greek support for British operations in the Mediterranean. A small country of 7 million people was expected to offer no significant resistance; Greece’s defences faced Bulgaria, not Albania. The British were committed by treaty to support the Athens government, but initially offered only a few weapons and aircraft. Mussolini told his officers: “If anyone makes any difficulties about beating the Greeks, I shall resign from being an Italian.” His foreign minister Ciano, sometimes dovish, favoured the invasion as offering easy pickings. He believed Athens would capitulate in the face of token bombing, and sought to ensure such an outcome by allocating millions of lire to bribe Greek politicians and generals. It remains uncertain whether this money was paid, or merely stolen by fascist intermediaries.
Rome was anyway denied its desired outcome. The Greek people, enraged by an Italian submarine’s sinking of the Greek cruiser Helli weeks before Mussolini’s declaration of