Inferno - Max Hastings [86]
Click here to view a larger image.
As Sgt. Sam Bradshaw searched for the rest of his tank squadron during the shambles of Crusader, he glimpsed an enemy soldier limping beside the sandy track.
I drew alongside and called out, “Are you Italian?” He replied, in very good English, “No, I’m not a bloody Italian, I’m a German,” obviously annoyed at the suggestion. He was wounded, so I gave him a lift on the tank [and] a drink of water. He gave me a Capstan cigarette. “We got one of your supply columns,” he said. We saw some German armoured cars about 1,000 yards away and he rolled off the tank and hobbled towards them. My gunner traversed on to him and I shouted on the intercom “Don’t fire—let him go.” He turned around and saluted and called out cheekily, “I’ll see you in London.” I called back, “Make it Berlin.”
There were disadvantages, however, to this “civilised” approach to making war. Allied troops who regarded their tactical position as hopeless saw little risk and no shame in surrendering, rather than fight to the death or submit themselves to a waterless desert. British commanders, and their superiors in London, became increasingly dismayed by local capitulations and the allegedly excessive sporting spirit of the campaign.
The Eighth Army was comprised of a remarkable range of national contingents. Its New Zealand division—later a corps—was recognised as outstanding, reflecting all its nation’s virtues of resolution and self-reliance. Two Australian divisions were also highly rated, especially after the legend was established of the “Diggers’ ” stand at Tobruk. A German officer shouted indignantly at a prisoner: “You are an Australian and you come all the way over here to fight for the filthy, bloody English!” War correspondent Alan Moorehead wrote of “men from the dockside of Sydney and the sheep-stations of the Riverina [who] presented such a picture of downright toughness with their gaunt dirty faces, huge boots, revolvers stuffed in their pockets, gripping their rifles with huge, shapeless hands, shouting and grinning—always grinning.” Notoriously ill-disciplined out of the line, and sometimes poorly officered, they deserved their formidable reputation, especially for night operations. “The Australians regarded themselves as the best fighters in the world,” wrote a British officer. “They were.” He added that their units were held together by “mateship,” almost always a stronger motivation for successful soldiers than any abstract cause.
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 its white officers’ complacency about their men’s loyalty to the king emperor, the Indian Army was a force of mercenaries. Among the Eighth Army’s British formations, the 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: the 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