The First Victory

by Andrew Stewart

  There was a further prong to Wavell’s strategy: it involved British Somaliland, which had remained central to his thinking. After a brief period during which the defeat’s impact had been fully absorbed, some discussion followed within the War Office in London about using Somalis who had been forced to flee, and were now refugees in Aden, to act as small seaborne raiding parties and ‘centres of unrest’.87 In the months that followed, the British government’s local representative continued to call for more to be done across the water to agitate against Italian occupation.88 Eventually steps were taken with the establishment in Aden of Military Mission No. 106, also known as Hamilton’s Mission, which was intended to carry out acts of sabotage in the now former pro-tectorate and neighbouring Jibuti.89 In addition to this a great deal of clandestine work was done by the former Senior Administrative Officer in the Somaliland Government Service, Reginald Smith, who was able on a number of occasions to enter the territory undetected. He used these surreptitious visits to pick up whatever information he could and pass it back both to MI6 and the authorities in Aden.90

  This activity also helped the commander in Cairo as he crafted an excellent deception story to cover the proposed move of reinforcements from the Western Desert to the Sudan.91 Operation ‘Camilla’ was all about making the Italians believe that the troops he was going to send south to support Platt were actually going somewhere else. In the elaborate story Wavell crafted, they were described as being part of a major force which would land in mid-February at various points in the captured territory before pushing on towards the key Italian base at Harrar.92 Wavell wrote in this highly secret but entirely fictitious document that ‘the loss of British Somaliland has always rankled bitterly between my government and myself. I got a rocket from the government and nearly lost my job at the time . . . I have orders to recapture it as soon as resources are available, and am most anxious to remove this blot on my reputation.’93 It even described Cunningham’s advance from Kenya as being intended to draw attention away from the real main effort. The subterfuge was known to only a few specially selected officers in his staff and his two senior generals in Khartoum and Nairobi, and with the language designed to appeal to Aosta, this was then sent to the regional commanders in a form that it was believed could be intercepted by the Italians. The operation’s references to the protectorate seem to have been misunderstood, but the suggestion that Cunningham’s advance was intended only as a secondary effort was accepted, and this played a key role in how the campaign subsequently developed. When the move from the Sudan began, this even reinforced the Italians’ appreciation of the way in which they believed the British actually intended to conduct the attack against them.

  With the detailed preparations for the British and Commonwealth forces’ offensive now in their final stages, the South African troops at their base in Marsabit were poised to mount their first major military action of war. These were from the 1st South African Infantry Brigade under the command of Brigadier Dan Pienaar, mostly the Royal Natal Carbineers, who were supported by a number of specially adapted Bren gun carriers, described as ‘tankettes’, as well as the Gold Coast battery of light guns and some Kenyan pioneers.94 An attack at El Wak on the Italian side of the border post was planned for 16 December, Dingaan’s Day, to boost morale and also to allow some practice for brigade-level operations. None of the troops involved had ever fought in a major engagement but this was later judged to have been ‘an almost flawless model for a bush-war raid’, and was referred to by one of those involved as ‘the first Allied victory of the Second World War’.95

  As the South African troops reached the Italian positions amidst ‘a large group of wells of very smelly water in limestone country with thick bush’, they charged with bayonets fixed, singing the regiment’s Zulu war song, a visual and aural assault that overwhelmed the terrified defenders.96 Described as ‘rather like a Commando raid’, it was all over by lunchtime, by which point ninety-nine Italians were dead and another forty-four captured. More than a million rounds of ammunition were destroyed and much equipment recovered, including trucks, cars, machine guns and rifles, and even four camels which were towed back to Marsabit behind an armoured car; congratulating Cunningham on the success, Wavell asked that any of this materiel he did not require be sent to Cairo for onward distribution.97 The most important items captured, however, were a large quantity of the Italian headquarters’ documents; these were used for the breaking of more ciphers and further improved the intelligence advantage.98 It also meant that the planners in Nairobi had to work ‘day and night’ sifting through them as the proposed campaign plan was revised.99

  Despite its success, the raid had, however, highlighted many of the challenges that might lie ahead, with long distances and difficult terrain facing the attackers.100 In this case the target was 110 miles from the brigade’s base and could only be reached along a single badly maintained narrow road. The column of over 1,200 vehicles needed to transport the attackers had to carry not just the men, their weapons, their ammunition and fuel but also enough food and water for five days; with the final section of the approach entirely waterless and the assumption being that the Italians could have contaminated the wells, the latter was critically important. As the attack was carried out in a shade temperature recorded as 105°F, one gallon per day per man was carried in the front line transport, which was enough to last for three days; the troop-carrying vehicles carried enough for another day. The last forty miles of the approach had to be covered in darkness so as not to alert the defending garrison and the infantry and gunners had no choice but to dismount from the convoy and walk the last six of them. Vulnerable to ambush and air attack throughout, if they had been discovered the outcome might have been very different. It should have been clear from this experience that the coming battles would be as much physical trials as contests fought against a defending body of troops.

  Despite this, the outcome had been positive, and there was an immediate political dividend as the South Africa press’s encouraging references to the attack helped persuade Smuts to offer an additional division to join the fighting farther north. It is hard to say whether Churchill recognised the reason for this offer but he desperately wanted these troops and insisted that it should not be rejected. Wavell in turn argued that at this stage any new troops sent by the dominion would ‘be an embarrassment’ as it would be difficult to equip them for a fighting role with what was then available to him.101 He had been warned by Cunningham that the South African battalions under his command were generally understrength and he doubted that they could find the additional trained and equipped manpower.102 It was left to the senior officer in Cairo to point out to the authorities in London that Smuts was actually still quite restricted by domestic political tensions and the lack of universal popular support for the war that was known to exist in South Africa. This influenced where its forces could be sent and Wavell argued that it would be likely to prevent them from being sent to fight in the Western Desert. Once again Churchill thought differently, insisting that in the time it would take for the units to be prepared and set sail northwards, political approval could be secured in Pretoria for them to be shipped directly to the Middle East. At the same time he expressed his view that, in any case, ‘by the end of April the Italian Army in Ethiopia might have submitted or been broken up’.103 He was ultimately proven correct in both arguments but it was another serious disagreement between him and Wavell. Despite the laudatory comments following the tremendous success of Operation ‘Compass’, the first large operation carried out in the Western Desert, relations between the two men remained in a parlous state.

  Although they had appeared for a time to have a clear advantage, anxiety was growing within the senior ranks of the Italian military. By mid-December 1940 Aosta was writing to Rome to say that he thought an attack from the Sudan was imminent, while another report sent a few weeks later warned that any move against Kismayu would be the opening of a general offensive in the south.104 The
se assessments appeared to suggest the Italian commander still believed the offensive from Kenya would be a secondary effort, entirely as Wavell had anticipated, and his deception plans were already proving too sophisticated for his opponents. The British general’s strength lay in his agile and innovative mind, his willingness to take risks and to support others to do the same, and his cerebral approach evident in his advice that a commander ‘should constantly be considering methods of misleading his opponent, of playing upon his fears and of disturbing his mental balance’.105 He had several other equally important concurrent campaigns and did not have time to be involved too closely in East Africa, although it is obvious that he did maintain a close overview. To enable Platt and Cunningham’s offensive action, Wavell provided clear objectives to his commanders, then stepped back to allow them to get on with the task and was ‘the last person to stop anything going ahead’.106 Even before the attack began, his opponent Aosta appeared to have already been defeated mentally. He confessed to Mussolini that he viewed the local African population as being ‘in a state of latent rebellion’, urging that plans must be made for the possibility of the collapse of organised defences. He did not believe he could ‘save the entire Empire’ and his suggestion was that pockets of resistance should instead be established within which the defending troops would be told to resist to the last man.107 The battle for East Africa was about to begin, and if the British and Commonwealth commanders were hoping for the best, the Italians were now already assuming the worst.

  CHAPTER 6

  THE ADVANCE FROM KENYA

  BY LATE JANUARY 1941, preparations on the southern front were nearly complete and Cunningham’s forces were poised to advance. Accompanied by his aide, who had recently arrived in Kenya, the general had spent the previous few weeks travelling and had visited almost all of his command area.1 Major James Blewitt wrote back to his cousin in Britain describing the long air journeys during which they flew over a ‘most extraordinary country’ and every type of terrain ‘from almost tropical vegetation to absolutely dry deserts without a drop of water for miles’.2 At this point, even before the advance had begun, the British commander suffered a recurrence of his earlier health issues, possibly malaria but described as ‘some sort of mild stomach trouble’, although he again made a quick recovery. This was not an entirely surprising relapse as he was already juggling the operational stresses of his command and the challenges of leading his multinational forces with political pressures that left him looking ‘both ways’.

  Cunningham faced a diverse variety of problems. There was, for example, a delicate situation on his personal staff, a scandal described by an American journalist as a case of ‘ultra-British correctness [being] suddenly upset by tropic passion’, which was centred on the community of white Kenyan settlers who lived in the country’s highlands in what was known as Happy Valley.3 Cunningham’s assistant military secretary, Josslyn Hay, the 22nd Earl of Erroll, was shot dead in Nairobi just before the advance got under way in what was described to Wavell as a ‘crime passionelle’.4 Whilst the southern front commander thought it ‘an unsavoury case’, he seemed more upset that he had lost a ‘first class’ member of his team who ‘was clever and quick’ and knew everybody, as well as now having to find a replacement at short notice.5 At the same time he also had to deal with a potentially significant political issue as some of the newly arrived South African officers were quick to agitate that they should only have to serve under their own national commanders. Cunningham discussed these tensions with Smuts, highlighting how they undermined his ability to lead a unified force. This led to the apparent evaporation of the problem but he was also aware that everything done by the South Africans was followed closely by their press correspondents, who scrutinised his actions and emphasised the merits of their countrymen at every opportunity. It was a hugely complicated relationship to manage and there would be trials ahead for those tasked with taking charge of it, both on the East and North Africa battlefields.

  If this were not enough, in many respects the greatest issue facing Cunningham was one that faced all Britain’s senior military commanders at this stage in the war. With resources stretched, and knowing the importance of the distances that were involved, it was as clear to him as it was to Wavell that campaign success depended entirely upon the degree to which his troops could be kept supplied.6 When he had arrived in Kenya he found there was ‘almost nothing at all – everything was improvised’.7 Despite the work that had been done by Dickinson, the key problem on the southern front still remained the 300-mile desert they had to cross before reaching the Italian positions and in which, between the rivers Tana and Juba, there was no water at all to be found. He had also discovered that, in addition to the British not having the transport to move both men and water forward, the method of water carriage was poor: it had to be carried in leaky containers that lost much of their load. This shortfall was compounded by an organisational reluctance to accept that the standard British Army water bottle design was not fit for purpose, particularly for troops operating in a region where the often intense heat meant this simple piece of equipment was vital. Simply put, it spilled more than it held and later, as the advance continued into Italian Somaliland, the Italian version became an important item to acquire. This had been designed to allow for a restricted but continuous flow and, within a short period, most of the British and Commonwealth troops, private or officer, had at least one in their possession.

  The lack of water was critical and potentially meant the advance would not be feasible. South African specialists had greatly helped to improve the situation but much more needed to be done. Colonel Brian Robertson played a vital role with his preparations and detailed staff work.8 Famed for his ingenuity, Robertson would finish the war as a major-general, renowned as one of the best Allied administrators. He deployed Royal Engineer survey teams to locate water and at Hagadera and Galmagalla, both in the desert ahead of the proposed line of advance, brackish but drinkable sources were found.9 Although to some this was an apparently minor development, in many respects it was one of the key events of the entire campaign. As one later account put it, ‘it was said at the time that when Mr Churchill asked General Wavell, “When the hell is Cunningham going to get moving towards Kismayu?” the correct answer would have been, “as soon as Sergeant van de Merwe and his rig strike water at Hagadera”’.10 This discovery meant that the daily ration of water for the initial stages of the advance could be expanded to a gallon per man and half a gallon per radiator.11 It was still not a huge amount but much better than had previously been thought possible. Half of the individual ration went to the cooks and a quarter to the water bottle whilst the remaining quarter was used by the men to wash, shave and clean their teeth.12 They got by, although the smell was noticeable after a few days, which is why some christened themselves ‘the upwind boys’. The small increase in water also helped when it came to the troops’ food rations as there had also been an apparent lack of thought about what form this might take.13 Whilst the men from West Africa had access to fresh meat and vegetables, the British and South Africans often only had bully beef and biscuits and the latter, known to the men as ‘dog biscuits’, could be eaten only if washed down with lots of water.14 Many of the troops had previously gone hungry, but with the slight increase in the amount of water available, they would at least now have a little more food to digest.

  There was another significant logistical problem to be overcome: the amount of fuel that would be needed to keep the advancing troops moving. Robertson shared Cunningham’s concerns, noting that men and horses could keep going when food ran short but ‘when lorries and tanks run short of petrol, they stop altogether and the force which they compose is at the mercy of its enemy’.15 This had been a long-standing concern extending back even before September 1939 and the outbreak of the European war. In anticipation of a future conflict, a million gallons of petrol had been stored at Mombasa, but no thought was given to the local climate and the effect it
would have.16 In a pre-war study, the War Office had calculated the amount of tin plate needed to produce solid petrol cans which could be re-used, but it had instead been decided to save money and develop a four-gallon ‘flimsy’. This could not cope with the heat of a typical East African day and then the cool of the night, and the men considered themselves fortunate if just one gallon was left after the cans had leaked petrol vapour. Any large dump could be smelled from more than a mile away, and by January 1940 it was reported that 3,000 tons of petrol had already vanished from Mombasa.17 Apparently simple but important issues such as this had not really been addressed and, when added to the huge distances involved and a shortage both of tankers and drivers, the ability to sustain an advance when an average brigade consumed around 20,000 gallons of fuel a day did not appear guaranteed.18 The use of the sea for transporting supplies therefore became a key planning consideration for Cunningham and he later acknowledged the role that had been played by the Royal Navy in landing stores. This also served to reinforce the thinking behind Smuts’ demands that Kismayu needed to be captured early on in the battle if success was to follow.19