• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 1574 0

as chief of the Imperial General Staff on 1 December, General Sir Alan Brooke, wrote to ‘My dear Auk’ – the nickname was apposite considering Auchinleck’s beaky appearance – admitting that ‘One of the fundamental defects that requires remedying is the lack of gun-power of our tanks. We are doing all we can to get the six-pounder in as quickly as possible… I can promise you we shall do all we can to press on with the 6-pounders.’33 In March Churchill called for a special War Office inquiry to investigate why he had not received a report on how to counter the 4½-pound projectiles that German tanks could fire. In the course of a War Cabinet Defence Committee discussion, Brooke said that two defects had developed in the Cruiser tank, in the fan-belt drive and the lubrication system, although the necessary spares and equipment were being flown out.34

Although Rommel counter-attacked, even sending part of his force on a wide flanking movement towards Egypt, Auchinleck’s nerve held, and by Sunday, 7 December the Afrika Korps was forced west of Tobruk, which was relieved that day. It was a significant moment, but entirely overshadowed in history by the attack on Pearl Harbor on the same date. The Eighth Army, by then commanded by General Ritchie, forced Rommel all the way across Cyrenaica back to El Agheila by the end of the year. Just as events in Yugoslavia had forced Wavell to denude the Western Desert of troops, so the spectacular entry of Japan into the war cost Auchinleck his two excellent Australian Divisions, the 7th and 9th, which the Australian Government demanded be sent back to defend their homeland.

January 1942 saw the Afrika Korps and Eighth Army facing each other at El Agheila. The Axis had lost 24,500 killed and wounded since the launch of Crusader and 36,500 captured (mainly Italians), to British Commonwealth losses of 18,000. Rommel attacked on 21 January, capturing Benghazi and large quantities of stores, before the two lines settled down between 4 February and 28 May at Gazala. The British mined the 40-mile Gazala–Bir Hacheim Line, their 125,000 men, 740 tanks and 700 aircraft outnumbering Rommel’s 113,000 men, 570 tanks and 500 aircraft – but being Rommel it was always likely he would attack next.35

The fighting in the desert, partly because there were fewer opportunities for German atrocities against civilians, has been considered more ‘gentlemanly’ than that in Europe, especially on the Eastern Front. An aspect of this was witnessed in February 1942 when the former commander of the Afrika Korps’ 21st Panzer Division, Lieutenant-General Johann von Ravenstein, who had been captured by New Zealanders the previous November, wrote to Major-General Jock Campbell to express ‘the greatest admiration’ for his 7th Armoured Division and to avow that ‘The German comrades congratulate you with warm heart on the award of the Victoria Cross. During the war your enemy, but with high respect, Von Ravenstein’.36

Rommel’s offensive against the Gazala Line on 28 May inaugurated three weeks of heavy fighting. Carver later calculated that between 27 May and 1 July he averaged two and a half hours of sleep in every twenty-four.37 On 31 May the Italians broke through the minefield and, despite coming under heavy attack from the RAF, on 13 June Panzers took a strategic crossroads nicknamed Knightsbridge. ‘Messervy’s unfortunate experiences in the Gazala battles illustrate the typical difficulties of a desert commander,’ recalled Carver of the commander of the 7th Armoured Division, Major-General Frank Messervy. ‘When he stayed with his headquarters, it was overrun; when he left it, he was ignominiously forced to seek refuge down a well.’38 Rommel now threatened the Eighth Army’s rear and, after the Free French had evacuated Bir Hacheim on the night of 10 June, Ritchie had no choice but to withdraw to Halfaya on the Egyptian border, once more leaving Tobruk behind to be besieged. This time, however, the day after the British reached Halfaya on 20 June, Tobruk fell to the Afrika Korps’ concerted ground and air attacks, in one of