Inferno - Max Hastings [88]
Even during long lulls between battles there were few diversions save the arrival of mail, every soldier’s obsession. Many men wrote home almost daily, because there was nothing else to do. The act of writing maintained a link with their other lives which became ever more precious as the passage of months extended into years. The Eighth Army’s soldiers were granted occasional brief leaves in Cairo, a city they learned to hate. Olivia Manning, who later became famous as author of The Balkan Trilogy, arrived there as a refugee from Greece in April 1941: “The unreality had something to do with the light … It was too white. It flattened everything. It drained the colour out of everything. It lay on things like dust … we were shocked by the colourless summer delta. The squalor of the delta shocked us horribly—not only the squalor, the people’s contentment with squalor. For weeks we lived in a state of recoil.”
Having been abroad since 1939, Manning gazed curiously at the throng of British soldiers in the streets: “Sweat shining, hair bleached to sameness, the pink burn of English skin disguising differences; much of a size, not tall … Their worn, thin, washed-out khaki was wrinkled with heat. Dark patches of sweat showed between their shoulder blades and under their arms.” Officers found consolations in the smart rendezvous of Egypt: “Groppi’s at Cairo and Pastroudi’s at Alexandria stay in the mind,” wrote one. “There is a splendid decadence in having morning coffees and éclairs amid gilt mirrors and all the kitsch of afffuence.” Other ranks, however, knew only Cairo’s sordid bars and brothels, which inflicted alarming disease rates on the Eighth Army.
For Mussolini’s soldiers, from the outset the North African campaign was a nightmare. The usual hazards of war were rendered almost unendurable by Italian shortages of food, ammunition, vehicles, medical supplies and belief in their cause. A transport driver, Vittorio Vallicella, kept a diary which is an unflagging tale of woe. The campaign was hopeless, he said, “not because of our incompetence or the enemy’s courage, but because the other side was so much better organised.” He added bitterly: “This is ‘the war of the poor’ wished upon us by the Fascist hierarchy, comfortably ensconced in Rome’s Palazzo Venezia.”
Vallicella claimed to have seen only one Italian ambulance in all his time in Africa; he complained bitterly of lack of leadership at every level, from supreme headquarters in Rome down to his own unit’s officers: “How many times have we veterans saved their bacon. Our ally’s divisions are much more aggressive, with vastly superior fire power and manoeuvrability, led by officers who really lead. Many of our own officers have been sent home wounded or sick.” Italian soldiers resented the disparity between their own meagre rations—soup, bread, a little jam, the occasional lemon—and those of officers, who enjoyed wine and mess dinners with mineral water flown in from Italy. They cherished rare glimpses of home comforts, such as a visit from Red Cross girls bringing parcels sent by well-wishers in central Italy: “After nearly twenty months it is wonderful to see these lovely women bringing useful gifts.”
Their best source of decent food, however, was the enemy: “For those lucky enough to return alive from a night patrol there was booty: jars of jam and fruit, packets of biscuits and tea, tins of corned beef, bottles of liqueurs, cigarettes, sugar, coffee, shirts, trousers, casual shoes, towels, lavatory paper, medicines like aspirin and quinine, condensed milk, jerseys made from real wool, compasses and every other kind of equipment under the sun. Such