• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 1164 0

what the Germans regarded as a sideshow into a major theater of the war. By the use of daring and tactical initiative he had carried the reluctant Italians along with him and made even them look like winners. Time and circumstance had aided him immeasurably, and he had hit the British when they were at their lowest ebb in the eastern Mediterranean. As soon as they were able to regroup and rebuild their ruined forces after the Greek disaster, they struck back, and in their turn overran the Western Desert. Then, over the end of 1941, both sides settled down; it was a matter of supply, and the one that could build up fastest in the Western Desert would gain the edge and the initiative.

Here Rommel was at a disadvantage. The Germans were throwing everything they had into first stopping the Russian winter offensive, and then reopening their own drive deeper into Russia. Relatively little of their material was sent south. Rommel was left to his own resources. The British, on the other hand, put their major effort into the Mediterranean. At enormous costs of shipping and supplies they tried to give Auchinleck enough of a shot in the arm that he could continue his offensive. Yet even though the British put more into Egypt than the Germans sent to Libya, within the theater itself they faced great difficulties. It was Rommel who was pushed back on his bases, and the British who now had the long tenuous supply line out from Alexandria all the way to El Agheila. As they built up their dumps along the coastal road, Rommel got a helpful convoy in early January of 1942. Two weeks later, still thin but seizing the moment, he jumped off on his second offensive.

The British were caught on the hop and were quickly pushed back out of the Cyrenaican hump; they lost large amounts of the supplies so painfully carried forward; rations, ammunition, trucks, and fuel now were gratefully used by the Germans and Italians. The retreat ended temporarily on a line just west of Tobruk, the Gazala-Bir Hacheim Line, and the rapid withdrawal went down in the troops’ folklore as “the Gazala gallop.”

Once again both sides paused to gather their breath. Now it was Rommel who was the more distant from his supplies, and he noted with concern that the British were still building up more rapidly than he. Rather than await the inevitable swing of the pendulum, he decided to attack again and he reopened his offensive on May 26.

The Gazala-Bir Hacheim position was about thirty-five miles long, running south from the coast into the desert. The British field commander, General Neil Ritchie, had extensively fortified it with minefields, wire, and a series of infantry strongpoints. The southern end of the line was held by the Free French brigade dug in around Bir Hacheim. Ritchie’s idea was that he would use his armor to shore up his strongpoints, and keep the Axis forces from breaking through. He also kept a heavy concentration of armor behind his open southern flank to catch the Germans should they break around it. The British had a substantial superiority in tanks, about 700 to 560 of the enemy, and nearly half of those 560 were light Italian vehicles. Besides that, during the course of the battle the British got the first 200 American Grant tanks, which outgunned the Germans.

The battle that began on May 26 was a remarkable one. Rommel’s infantry and some armor put in a straightforward attack against the main British line. While they did that, his mobile armored force moved south, around Bir Hacheim, and then fought its way into the rear of the British line. The British slugged it out every inch of the way, and with their main line four-fifths surrounded, still refused to budge. Rommel was then forced to bring his armor back into the main line—from the British side of it—and hold onto a strongpoint of his own, aptly named “the Cauldron,” resisting the attacks of Ritchie’s armor while he managed to resupply. Meanwhile, he sent everything he could spare south against the now isolated Bir Hacheim. The cut-off French held for ten days against heavy attacks led by Rommel