Inferno - Max Hastings [85]
“We can learn from the Germans,” wrote the Australian John Butler during the siege of Tobruk. “Their battalions are a complete unit—with anti-tank guns, tanks, air force and field workshops and ack-ack defence and artillery—with us if we wanted support from the air force we must give 48 hours notice—a Gilbertian situation like writing a letter to the fire-brigade when one’s home catches alight.” The institutional weakness of the British Army produced commanders at every level who lacked energy, imagination and flexibility; most units deployed in the desert were poorly led and trained. “In 1941 and early 1942 the morale of the British Army … was very low,” wrote one of its officers, Lt. Michael Kerr. “The standard of infantry training was really quite terrible. Soldiers were unable to understand what they were meant to be doing and what everything was about.”
The scale of operations in North Africa was tiny by comparison with that of the war’s decisive confrontation in Russia: at that period, the British seldom deployed more than six divisions against three German and five Italian formations. But the Eighth Army’s doings commanded intense attention at home, because this was the only theatre in which Britain’s soldiers were fighting Germans. Rommel achieved celebrity on both sides, admired for flair, boldness, and dashing personal leadership; less was known about his neglect of logistics, always a critical factor in North Africa. The British chose to regard the Afrika Korps’ commander as a “good German,” ignoring the fact that he remained an impassioned supporter of Hitler until it became plain that Germany was losing the war. The Allies usually enjoyed a notable intelligence advantage through their breaking of Axis codes, but in 1941–42 Rommel was uniquely well-informed about British operations, thanks to his interception of the daily reports of the U.S. military attaché in Cairo, Col. Bonner Fellers. Rommel referred affectionately to these signals as his “little Fellers,” and they gave him an important edge until Fellers’s recall to Washington in July 1942. The chief influence on the battlefield, however, remained the institutional superiority of the German army. This contributed more to Rommel’s successes, and his own generalship rather less, than the contemporary British media acknowledged and modern legend sometimes suggests.
THERE WAS A PERCEIVED ROMANCE about combat in the vast spaces of Libya, with headlong advances and retreats. Much anecdotage, sometimes reported in the British press, noted the Afrika Korps’ humane treatment of prisoners, and occasional truces between combatants for the recovery of wounded. “One enemy post was approached,” wrote an Australian, Private Butler, during the siege of Tobruk, “just in the act of drawing the pin [on a grenade] when a voice was heard from a sangar, ‘Stay Aussie—we have two wounded Diggers here’ … The Aussies said the Germans had shot them and then went out at great personal risk, brought them in and dressed their wounds, gave them hot coffee and then sent for their medical assistance. Thank God there is chivalry.” Likewise, a participant recorded a halt in fighting while both sides recovered their wounded: “Men of both armies stood up under an astonished sun. The absolute stillness almost tinkled with tension … It was the more incredible in contrast with the fury of the night … The truce was as if two