Inferno - Max Hastings [87]
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 the 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 shortages 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.” The armour 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 110 degrees Fahrenheit. 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 the Eighth Army’s 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. “Unless it was of short duration and taken at speed the truck would bog to the axles. Pebbly going was usually good, but sometimes it was a deceptive crust with soft sand underneath which only the experienced eye could detect at a distance. In some places the desert was smooth and firm as a race-track for miles on end and in every direction; in others it was treacherous as treacle.” Both sides were sometimes confused by their enemies’ use of captured transport. Again and again, British troops received unwelcome surprises from approaching British vehicles and even tanks which proved to be driven by Rommel’s men. The Italian Bologna Division was panicked one day by the sight of a column of British trucks in their midst, until they discovered that it carried Germans.
Between offensives, there were long intervals of boredom, training and preparation. “The chief occupation of soldiers in wartime is hanging around doing nothing, though preferably purposefully,” wrote a British soldier. Men dug incessantly, laid minefields, patrolled and conducted sniping duels. They suffered from desert sores, jaundice, dysentery. Both sides learned to curse khamsins, sandstorms that reduced vision to a few yards and drove yellow grit into every crevice of vehicles, equipment and human bodies. Italians called them ghibli. Pietro