by David Irving
Now Rommel realized that the British had begun a general withdrawal from the bulbous peninsula of Cyrenaica; evidently they were desperate to keep their remaining forces intact.
Agedabia was the starting point of half a dozen desert tracks cutting across the peninsula. Rommel determined to exploit them to the east. On April 2 a stern veto came from Gariboldi: “This is in contradiction to what I ordered. You are to wait for me before continuing with any advance.”
Rommel did not wait. On April 3 he decided on a dramatic three-pronged thrust across the peninsula. If he moved fast enough he might destroy the entire enemy force right there. The southernmost prong of his thrust would cut clean across the desert, following an ancient caravan trail known as the Trigh el Abd; the trail led from Agedabia onward through Ben Gania, Bir Tengeder, Bir Hacheim and Bir el Gubi to the Egyptian frontier. A “Bir” was a waterhole—in theory. Rommel put Count Gerhard von Schwerin, a spiky but experienced half colonel, in charge of a mixed German-Italian force for this prong. Streich would lead another task force on a parallel track and—since a passing Italian priest had just tipped him off that even Benghazi, capital of Cyrenaica, was being abandoned—Rommel sent a reconnaissance battalion straight up the coast road to the big port. They drove in through cheering crowds at ten P.M. that evening, just as a furious General Gariboldi was confronting Rommel about this disobedience of his veto.
An orgy of destruction and murder had marked Benghazi’s second change of owners in three months. The British had detonated 4,000 tons of Italian ammunition and fires were still raging everywhere. A German navy commander sent next day to investigate this port’s capacity for supply ships reported: “Australian troops and Arabs looted the buildings and robbed the Italian civilians of all their valuables at pistol point.” One of his officers wrote of a building he took over, “In the rooms where the young girls had been slaughtered I arranged for photos to be taken of the pools of blood before they were mopped up.” But now General Sir Philip Neame’s motley “Cyrenaica Command” was being hustled straight out of the peninsula by Rommel’s unexpected advance.
Rommel unquestionably knew that he was disobeying. He boasted about it to Lucie that day: “My superiors in Tripoli, Rome and perhaps Berlin, too, must be clutching their heads in dismay. I took the risk, against all orders and instructions, because the opportunity was there for the taking. Probably it will all be pronounced okay later. They’ll all say they would have done just the same in my shoes.”
In Berlin there was indeed consternation. How was the impetuous general to know that his exploits were unbalancing months of meticulous secret planning for the Nazi intervention in the Balkans and Russia? The German High Command gave him a sharp rap across the knuckles. Keitel radioed him—using the so-called “Enigma” code—on April 3 that Hitler had firmly specified that Rommel’s job was to stand fast and tie down British forces. “Any limited offensive moves that this necessitates are not to exceed the capabilities of your small force. . . . Above all, you are to avoid any risk to your open right flank, such as is bound to be entailed in turning north to attack Benghazi.” If the British armor pulled out of Cyrenaica, of course, then a new situation would arise—but even then Rommel was still to await fresh orders.
Now history received a taste of Erwin Rommel, the master of deception, the headstrong adventurer who always got his way. At nine P.M. that same day the fat Italian commander Gariboldi confronted Rommel in his trailer headquarters at Agedabia, his white gloves twitching with fury, and demanded absolute obedience. Rommel merely grinned. “There’s no cause whatever for concern about our supply situation,” he declared at one stage. They nearly came to blows. After three hours they were interrupted by the radio signal from Keitel ordering Rommel to stay put. Rommel read it, then announced to Gariboldi that it stated that the Führer had given him “complete freedom of action.” This was very far from the truth, but Gariboldi was too slow-witted to spot it. Rommel even persuaded himself, it seems, because he told Lucie, “From the Führer have come congratulations for our unexpected successes, plus a directive for further operations that entirely fits in with my own ideas.”
His own commanders were appalled at the prospect of striking out immediately across the desert peninsula. Streich objected that he needed at least four days to replenish the Fifth Light’s supplies—all their dumps were way back at the Arco dei Fileni, “Marble Arch,” the towering white triumphal arch built by Mussolini in 1937 on the frontier between Tripolitania and Cyrenaica. Rommel curtly ordered him to unload all the division’s trucks in the open desert immediately and send them back empty, each carrying a spare crew (provided by the tank crews) for a round-the-clock trip to collect gasoline and ammunition from those dumps. Streich warned lugubriously, “Then my division will be stranded for at least a day.” Rommel insisted: “This is the way to save bloodshed and to conquer Cyrenaica!” (The words are in the Afrika Korps diary.) He made a mental note to get rid of this quarrelsome general. The crossing of Cyrenaica then began.
A Luftwaffe general wrote at this time:
Cyrenaica is an almost treeless and therefore shadowless lunar landscape. The Jebel el Akdar is a wildly fissured mountain range broken only by a few valleys in which sand, usually white or reddish yellow, stunts the growth of any vegetation. Mobility is restricted almost entirely to the desert road, so it is startling in the midst of this barren waste of sand and stone to fly across the tents, flocks of sheep and camels of Arabs of whom no European knows: what caravan trails do they use, what is their living, what laws and customs do they obey? The farther east you go along the desert road, the more inhospitable the landscape becomes: while for about thirty miles east of Benghazi the colonizing work of the Italians is evident, around Derna and Tobruk there are no signs of human habitation. Even the pitiful stunted pines fall off. The thorny shrubs barely struggle up to knee height.
For one week, that April of 1941, Rommel’s little force trekked across this desert, through the shimmering heat of a high noon sun that raised the arid air to 120° F and more, and the cold of nights that dropped in one hour to freezing point. There were sand vipers and scorpions and armies of loathsome flies. The worst enemy of all, after their cruel thirst, was the sudden sandstorm. It would start as a curious little dust devil whirling between the bushes and develop into a torment of seventy-mile-an-hour winds whipping billions of tons of hot, fine red sand across the desert. The storm might last for days on end. The fine sand penetrated everything—even the watches the troops wore. It choked the engine filters; it got into tents, eyes and noses; it ran off car windshields like rain; it cut visibility. “Can’t see more than three yards,” wrote one of Rommel’s company commanders in a diary. “In the afternoon, thank God, the storm subsides. We all crawl out, like moles from our holes, and begin the job of digging everything out again.”
Rommel’s great gamble began on April 4. Schwerin’s little force was already moving east, with orders to cut straight across the peninsula to the other coast at Tmimi—Rommel could never get his tongue around that word, and stammered “Tmimini” instead—and block the coast road there against the withdrawing British troops. At two P.M. Colonel Gustav Ponath’s Eighth Machine Gun Battalion also plunged eastward into the raw desert, with trucks carrying enough gasoline, food and water for 300 miles; their target was Derna, also on the other coast. Rommel had assured Schwerin that supplies would be airlifted to him. Since the Fifth Light Division’s trucks had not yet returned from the dumps, Rommel looked for Streich, found him sleeping fitfully in his Kübel car, and announced: “You are to empty all the gas tanks of your remaining transport into your combat vehicles and tanks, and advance at once through Ben Gania to the coast, between Derna and Tobruk. The rest of your division can catch up when the trucks get back from the fuel dumps.” An Italian general anxiously interrupted Rommel: “But that trail is a death track! We saturated it with Thermos mines two months ago during our retreat!” Rommel brushed his objections aside.
By
fading light, one driver after another, accustomed only to the easy motoring of Europe’s asphalt highways, turned off the firm Via Balbia and plowed into the desert sand and gravel. Streich’s tanks were crewed by stand-ins, since the tank drivers were away trucking gasoline back from the dumps. Soon the wheeled equipment was up to its axles in sand drifts. The trucks that followed tried to skirt around them and bogged down too. Tractors went forward in the darkness to haul them out. Within hours, Streich’s whole force was crippled and spread over a wide area; he was not pleased at all, and he ordered all headlights switched on and the trucks to winch each other out and keep together as well as they could. They soon lost sight of the desert trails, and the maps provided by the Italians proved useless. Guided by compass or stars alone, some elements managed to make some headway, but others were stranded and left behind to face thirst and hunger in the desert. Hefty explosions suddenly lit the sky as the first Thermos mines were hit. An ammunition truck erupted in a ball of fire, illuminating the desert for miles around. By dawn most of Streich’s force was again immobilized and out of gasoline.
The heat of the sun brought new problems. At Ben Gania the tanks halted as the engine oil overheated and ran thin. Virtually all radio communication failed. Rommel could not raise his base headquarters, and they could not reach him. Days of unremitting chaos were beginning—how many of his drivers would ever reach the other coast after 200 miles of this? Rommel ranged across the desert in a Junkers 52 transport or light Storch plane, trying to control the movements. Twice he blundered into enemy units he had mistaken for his own. He landed to berate generals and colonels for their slowness, and cursed them because the enemy was slipping eastward out of their grasp. Once Schwerin saw the Storch flitting past overhead and swore: “That must be Rommel!” Another time a struggling motor column dared to pause for breath. The Storch zoomed in at shoulder height and a piece of paper fluttered to the ground: “If you don’t move off again at once, I’ll come down!—Rommel.” Those who were lost, he found and pointed in the right direction again. But which direction was right? There was one solitary signpost, in mid-desert—but not a trail or track to be seen.
The key to the desert seemed to be the ancient Turkish-built fort at Mechili, a crumbling white stone pile rising above the desert mirages—the hub from which seven desert trails radiated like spokes to the coasts and the distant interior. Rommel believed it would be only lightly garrisoned. He rose at four A.M. on the fifth and wrote to Lucie: “Big things are happening in Africa. Let’s hope we can pull off the coup we’ve now launched.”
Air reconnaissance that day detected that the fort at Mechili was occupied by quite strong enemy forces after all, but Rommel decided to concentrate first on Mechili anyway. His base staff back at Agedabia disagreed: “We would prefer,” they noted, “to see Tobruk as the objective, to interrupt the coast road there and stop the enemy escaping, and to leave just a masking force at Mechili.” Rommel was of two minds. Twice on the sixth he gave different orders to Ponath’s machine gun battalion. First, “Attack Mechili!” and then “Forward to Derna!” after all. Then a plane was sent to head off Count von Schwerin and an officer ran over with a message: “Rommel orders you to turn north and attack Mechili!”
Six-thirty A.M. on April 6 found Rommel only fifteen miles south of the fort—but he was virtually alone. His Afrika Korps was still stranded across the desert. After a while his aide Lieutenant Behrendt, the Egyptologist, arrived with a few trucks, the first of Schwerin’s party. Rommel sent him skirting around Mechili to block its exits to the east. Another aide found Streich at seven-thirty, halted at a dried salt lake some miles away. Rommel called Streich and Schwerin to a furious conference. They were lightly clad in khaki shorts; he was in full uniform, with riding boots, breeches and thick gray tunic. In the broiling heat his temper snapped, and he ordered them to attack the fort at three P.M. Streich refused, and pointed out that his tanks and vehicles were still scattered back across the desert for 100 miles, with broken frames, overheated engines, no gasoline. Rommel screamed at him that he was a coward. Streich unhooked his Knight’s Cross—won for gallantry in 1940—and snapped: “Nobody has dared tell me that before. Withdraw that remark, or I’ll throw this at your feet.” Rommel muttered a withdrawal, but showed he did not mean it.
Later that afternoon, Rommel returned, pulled out a watch and barked at Streich: “It is now five P.M. You will attack Mechili at six with Schwerin’s group, and capture it. I will order the Italian artillery to support you.” At that moment Streich had only two trucks armed, with light antiaircraft guns, and no other weapons at all. Schwerin had little more and perhaps a few machine guns. How were they to move the fifteen miles to Mechili before the sun set, with its usual abruptness, at seven? And where was Schwerin now, and the Italian artillery? Streich set out with his few trucks, looking for Schwerin. He failed, lost his way, returned long after dark and reported to Rommel. The latter said nothing (he had in the meantime tried to find the Italians and failed). That night Rommel tried to capture the fort himself with the few platoons he had. “This operation miscarried,” Streich’s war diary dryly observes. Rommel’s own memoirs do not mention it.
Twice during the seventh he sent a lieutenant into the fort with an ultimatum to bluff the British. On both occasions the officer was sent back blindfolded, the second time with a scribbled message: “No intention of surrendering.” Several times next day Rommel took off in his Storch to look for his main task force, Colonel Olbrich’s Fifth Panzer Regiment. Not until the sun had set did he find it, picking its way around a boulder-strewn region that not even tanks could cross. He flew off the handle, and privately decided that Olbrich too would have to go. After dark he landed near Streich’s command post. Eight tanks had now arrived from the company commanded by Major Ernst Bolbrinker. Rommel tersely ordered yet again, “You will capture Mechili tomorrow!”
Before dawn he climbed wearily out of bed and wrote dutifully to Lucie: “Don’t know if the date’s right. We’ve been advancing across an endless desert for days on end, and we’ve lost all notion of time and space. . . . Today’s going to be another decisive day. After a 220-mile march across the desert sand and stones, our main forces are arriving and are going into action. . . . Now there’s going to be another Cannae, modern style.” Cannae was Hannibal’s most famous victory.
At about six he again left in his Storch to tour the battle area. His aide, Lieutenant Hermann Aldinger, wrote a few days later:
The Storch lifts off for a quick look over the front lines and battle dispositions. The pilot gets a sign: “Go lower!” but no sooner is he down than the Italian troops (in error) are letting fly at it with all they’ve got. Bullets begin hitting his wings, and with a burst of aerobatics the pilot just manages to get the hell out of there. Far to the west are dust clouds: they must be our troops. On the run in, the general gets a real shock—they are British troops heading west. Stragglers? Or a British counterattack? He’s got to warn our troops moving up from the west about this danger. Eight miles later the general sees our own leading troops, and goes in to land. The pilot doesn’t see a big rock, the Storch loses half its undercart. “Desert pileup.”
Our troops have an eighty-eight-millimeter gun with them, but they tell the general that it was disabled last night in a shoot-out with the British. They’re heading north now to try to contact the rest. The general asks, “What transport have you got?” “A truck.” “Then let’s get the hell out of here. The British will be here within five minutes, they mustn’t find us. We’ll make a detour through the desert. I know the way.”
Everything is loaded aboard, and a crazy drive begins. On the way we pick up three or four more trucks that have lost their way. Despite all these adventures, the general gets back to our command staff safely. Meanwhile we can see a sandstorm brewing—a ghibli. His command staff are ready to move off. We haven’t gone 800 yards before we are suddenly engulfed in the violent storm. All our staff are scattered and we find ourselves alon
e. We can only guess which way we are going by compass and speedometer. We zigzag, we strain our eyes ahead, sometimes the sky lightens, sometimes it turns dark red. We see three dispatch riders in the sandstorm, their heads bent, their motorcycles covered; we take them with us and grope our way toward the airfield. There we find more stragglers. We ask them how the attack is going. Nobody knows. Slowly we feel our way along the telephone line, and suddenly we find that we are just outside the fort of Mechili. There are weapons and equipment lying around, and hundreds of prisoners cowering on the ground while the sandstorm rages and covers everything—like a blizzard in dense fog.
In the fort’s yard the division commander [General Streich] reports to the general: “Mechili has fallen. We have taken 1,700 prisoners, including seventy officers and a general, and we have captured quantities of guns, trucks and food.”
Thus Rommel missed the party at Mechili. So did Colonel Olbrich’s main tank force; it did not arrive until noon. His tank turrets were jammed tight by the sandstorm anyway. Rommel approved the suggestion that the turrets should be dismantled and cleaned, and he sent Schwerin’s force and a pursuit group along the desert track to Derna on the coast. Lieutenant Behrendt had taken the same desert trail to Derna on the day before in an eight-wheeler, and had driven right into the beautiful, well-laid-out port.
The British had already passed through, and Arabs flocked in brightly colored cloaks around the Wehrmacht trucks, offering eggs, oranges, dates and other delicacies for sale. Gustav Ponath’s machine gunners had followed in Behrendt’s tracks, and after a heavy fire fight had established a foothold at Derna airfield. When Rommel drove onto the airfield at six-thirty that evening, April 8, Colonel Ponath proudly announced the capture of 900 prisoners, including four more generals—one of them Sir Richard O’Connor himself. Ponath added that his machine guns were down to literally their last belt of ammunition each. His troops were worn out, but Rommel was relentless. He ordered Ponath to continue eastward at once along the highway, toward Tmimi and Tobruk.