Desmond Young - Rommel, The Desert Fox

by Unknown

  They should never have let themselves be misled into splitting up their forces before the battle or during our feint against the Gazala position. The fact that their units were fully motorised would have enabled them to cross the battlefield at great speed, if and wherever danger had threatened. Mobile warfare in the desert has often and rightly been compared to a battle at sea where, in the same way, it is wrong to attack piecemeal, leaving part of the ships in port during the battle.

  [Here follows a detailed account of events up to the evening of May 29th.]

  BREAKING THROUGH THE MINEFIELDS

  At first light on May 30th each of the divisions moved into the area assigned to it and took up a defensive position. During these movements we noticed the presence of strong British forces with tanks in the Ualeb area. This was the strengthened 150th British Brigade from the 50th Division. In the meantime part of the 10th Italian Corps had succeeded in crossing the British minefields and establishing a bridgehead on the eastern side of them, although the lanes the Italians cleared through the minebelts were subjected to heavy British artillery fire, which had a most upsetting effect on our moving columns. All the same, by noon contact had been established between the striking force and the loth Italian Corps and thus a direct route opened to the west for supplies and reinforcements. During the day the British brigade was encircled in Got-el-Ualeb.

  In the afternoon I drove through the minefield to the 10th Corps headquarters for a meeting with Field-Marshal Kesselring, the Italian Corps Commander and Major von B�low, the F�hrer's adjutant, and told them my plans. The British minefield was to be shielded by the Afrika Korps from all attacks by British formations from the north-east. Meanwhile I intended to smash the whole of the southern part of the Gazala position and subsequently to resume the offensive. The operation would include the destruction of, first, the 150th British Brigade at Ualeb, and then the 1st Free French Brigade in Bir Hacheim.

  The enemy had only hesitatingly followed up our withdrawal. The falling back of the German-Italian formations had evidently come as a surprise to him and besides this the British Command never reacted very quickly. Already on the morning of May 30th we had noticed the British taking up positions with 280 tanks on the east and 150 infantry tanks on the north of our front. We kept waiting for the British to strike a heavy blow. But in the morning only a few British attacks were launched on the Ariete and beaten off by the Italians and there were some slight British advances on the rest of the front. Fifty-seven British tanks were shot up that day.

  In the afternoon I myself reconnoitred the possibilities of an attack against the forces occupying Got-el-Ualeb and I detailed part of the Afrika Korps, part of the 90th Light Division and the Italian “Trieste” Division for an attack on the following morning against the British positions there.

  The attacking formations advanced against the British 150th Brigade on the morning of May 31st. Yard by yard the German-Italian units fought their way forward against the toughest British resistance imaginable. The British defence was conducted with considerable skill. As usual the British fought to the last round of ammunition. They used a new anti-tank gun of 57 mm. calibre. Nevertheless by the evening of the 31st we had penetrated a considerable distance into the British positions. On the next day the British occupying forces were to receive their final knockout. Again our infantry, after heavy Stuka attacks, burst against the British positions. On this day I accompanied the attacking troops with Colonel Westphal. He was unfortunately severely wounded the same day in a surprise British mortar attack and had to be taken back to Europe, so that I had to do without him in the days that followed. This was a bitter loss. For me his assistance had always been of outstanding value, because of his extraordinary knowledge and experience and readiness to make decisions.

  The attack continued. One after another the sections of the elaborately constructed British defence system were taken by my troops, and by early afternoon the position was in our hands. The last British resistance was at an end. We took 3,000 prisoners, and destroyed or captured 101 tanks and scout-cars as well as 124 guns of every kind.

  THE BRITISH SOLDIER

  [In describing the operations of the next few days, Rommel touches on the merits and demerits of his opponents.]

  That day the Guards Brigade had evacuated Knightsbridge, after the area had been subjected all morning to the combined fire of every piece of artillery we could bring to bear. This brigade was practically a living embodiment of the positive and negative qualities of the British soldier. An extraordinary bravery and toughness was combined with a rigid inability to move quickly.

  [After describing the capture of Tobruk, Rommel touches on his decision to advance into Egypt, contrary to the Duce's original orders.]

  This was a plan which might perhaps succeed. It was an experiment. The operation would not entail any risk to my army's safety. As things were we could have defended ourselves with success in every possible situation during our advance.

  Later this advance came in for some criticism. It was said that the supply columns available in North Africa would not in the long run have been able to manage the long supply-route from Benghazi to El Alamein and that the British would have greatly benefited from the shorter supply route to their front from Port Said. To this there are the following counter-arguments:

  (a) British superiority at Sollum would have had an even greater effect than at El Alamein. The enemy could have out-flanked our forces by deep detours and destroyed our motorised divisions with their armoured formations which, at the time of El Alamein, were heavily superior not only in numbers, as before, but also in quality. The prospect of withdrawing our non-motorised infantry from the Sollum front would have been even worse than from El Alamein. During the El Alamein battle they represented the bulk of the army, but they would have had no chance of effective action at Sollum, where the positions they occupied demanded no break-through attempts from the enemy but only an easy outflanking movement. They would have proved either an easy prey for the British motorised units or a burden in a withdrawal. Of course our supply columns had to cope with serious difficulties during the advance into Egypt. But it was essential to demand the same efforts from the supply staffs in Rome as from the tank crews and infantry, overtired after three weeks of fighting. Thus, supply by sea to the harbours in the forward area should have been improvised as it had always been promised would be done in these circumstances. When I gave the order for the thrust into Egypt, I assumed that the fact that final success in Egypt had been brought so close would have spurred the Italian High Command on to making some sort of increase in their effort, and I had, therefore, several times clearly and plainly asked for the exploitation of the captured harbours.

  (b) There would have been no considerable improvement in our supply position at Sollum either, because then Benghazi and Tobruk, instead of Tobruk and Mersa Matruh, would have been within effective range of the British bombers. Benghazi would have been ruled out, for all practical purposes, for vessels of large tonnage, and this would have meant extending the transport route as far as Tripoli, which would have been beyond the capabilities of our supply-columns. For the British, on the other hand, to operate on the frontier would have scarcely made any difference to their supply position. At their disposal were railways, enough vehicles for road-supplies, and well-organised coastal shipping.

  [The advance into Egypt was marked by heavy and confused fighting.]

  The New Zealand Division under Freyberg, an old acquaintance of mine from previous campaigns, concentrated in the night and broke out to the south. The wild flare-up that ensued involved my own battle headquarters, which lay to the south. The Kiel battle-group and parts of the Littorio went into action. The exchanges of fire between my forces and the New Zealanders reached an extraordinary pitch of intensity. Soon my headquarters were surrounded by burning vehicles, making them the target for continuous enemy fire at close range. I had enough of this after a while and ordered the troops, with the staff
, to move back southeastward. The confusion reigning on that night can scarcely be imagined. It was impossible to see one's hand before one's eyes. The R.A.F. bombed their own troops, German units were firing on each other, the tracer was flying in all directions.

  BEFORE EL ALAMEIN

  With amazing swiftness the British organised fresh reinforcements for Alamein. Their High Command had recognized that the next battle there would be largely decisive and they had considered the situation with sober care. The danger of the hour drove the British to extraordinary efforts. In times of extreme peril it is always possible to achieve objects until then considered impossible, for there is nothing like danger for sweeping aside preconceived ideas.

  By July 13th the front was stabilised. From the point of view of command the British were here in their element, for their strong quality was a form of tactics which expressed itself in the modern kind of infantry fighting and static warfare. Their specialty lay in local attacks, carried out under the protection of infantry tanks and artillery. The Alamein position adjoined the sea to the north, and to the south it sank away into the Qattara Depression, a level area of moving sand with many salt-marshes, and therefore impassable for heavy vehicles. As the Alamein position could not, therefore, be outflanked, the war became one in which both sides disposed of great experience and knowledge, but neither could make use of revolutionary methods which would come as a complete surprise to the other. The outcome of this static war depended on who had more ammunition.

  I had, therefore, wanted to escape in the last few days from this static warfare, in which the British were masters and for which their infantry had been trained, and to reach the open desert before Alexandria, where I could exploit the absolute operational superiority we enjoyed in open desert battles. But in this I did not succeed; the British knew quite well how to break up the thrusts of my severely weakened forces.

  RETROSPECT

  With these actions the great battle of the early summer came to an end. It had begun with a fantastic victory. After Tobruk had been captured, the extraordinary strength of the British Empire began to show itself again. For only a few days could we hope to go on past El Alamein and occupy the Suez Canal area. While we must fight every battle with the same forces, the British were able to throw fresh troops, fully armed and up to strength, into the fight and withdraw from the Alamein front for recuperation those divisions which had been badly hammered in Marmarica and Western Egypt. My troops stayed in the fight. My numbers grew always less, while at the same time the losses from dead, wounded and sick kept rising. Always it was the same battalions which advanced, largely in captured lorries, on the British positions, and then, springing from their vehicles, charged over the sand at the enemy. Always it was the same tank forces which drove into the battle, and the same gunners who fired the shells. The deeds performed in those weeks by officers and men reached the limits of human efficiency.

  I had made extraordinary demands on my forces and spared neither the rank and file, nor their leaders, nor myself. It was obvious to me that the fall of Tobruk and the collapse of the Eighth Army was the one moment in the African war when the road lay open to Alexandria with only a few British troops to defend it. I and my colleagues would have been fools if we had not done everything to exploit this one and only chance. If success had depended, as it did in olden days, on the stronger will of the soldiers and their leader, then we would have overrun Alamein. But our sources of supply dried up, thanks to the inactivity and disorganisation of the supply depots in Europe. Then the powers of resistance of many of the Italian formations collapsed. The duty of comradeship obliges me to make clear, particularly as I was supreme commander also of the Italians, that the defeats the Italian forces suffered in early July before El Alamein were in no way the fault of the Italian soldiers. The Italian soldier was willing, unselfish and a good comrade and, considering his circumstances, his achievement was far above the average. The performance of all the Italian units, more especially of the motorised forces, far surpassed anything the Italian Army had done for a hundred years. There were many Italian officers and generals whom we admired as men and as soldiers. The cause of the Italian defeat sprang from the entire Italian military and state system, from the poor Italian equipment, and from the small interest shown in this war by many high Italian leaders and statesmen. This failure often prevented me from carrying out my plans.

  THE BATTLE OF ALAM-EL-HALFA

  By the end of August the urgently needed supplies of ammunition and petrol, promised by the Supreme Command, had still not arrived. The full moon, absolutely vital to our operation, was already on the wane. Further delay would have meant finally giving up our offensive. Marshal Cavallero, however, informed me that the petrol ships, heavily escorted, would arrive in a matter of hours, or the next day at the latest. Hoping for the fulfilment of this promise; trusting to the assurance of Marshal Kesselring that he would fly up to 500 tons over to North Africa in case of need; but above all certain that if we let the full moon go by we were losing our last chance of taking the offensive, I gave the order for the attack to be carried out on the night of August 30th-31st as planned.

  Everything had been in readiness several days before; for we had reckoned with the arrival of the petrol at any minute. But in fact we did not want to start moving until after the arrival of the petrol, in view of the unreliability of Cavallero.

  In the early stages of the battle, the British defended their strong positions with extraordinary toughness and so hindered our advance. As a result they were able to send warnings and situation reports back to headquarters and give the British Command time to put the necessary counter-measures into operation. Such a breathing space was of tremendous importance to the British. They needed to hold their front only until their striking forces. had grouped themselves for the necessary action against the German-Italian forces which had broken through.

  My plan, to go forward with the motorised forces another fifty kilometres by moonlight, and from there to proceed to a further attack northwards in the early morning light, did not succeed. The tanks were held up by unsuspected ground obstacles and we lost the element of surprise, on which the whole plan finally rested. In view of this we now considered whether we should break off the battle.

  Had there been a quick break-through in the south by the motorised forces, the British would have needed time for reconnaissance, for making decisions and putting them into effect. During this time our movements need not have met with any serious counter-measures. But we had now lost the advantage of this breathing space. The British knew where we were. I resolved that my decision, whether or not to break off the battle, should depend on how things stood with the Afrika Korps.

  I learned soon afterwards that the Afrika Korps, under the out-standing leadership of the Chief of the General Staff, General Bayerlein, had in the meantime overcome the British mines and was about to push farther eastwards. I discussed the situation with Bayerlein and we decided to carry on with the attack.

  Owing to the fact that the British tank forces were again assembled ready for immediate action, a wide outflanking drive to the east could not be carried out, in view of the constant menace to our own flank which would be presented by the 7th Armoured Division to the south and by the 10th and 1st Armoured Divisions in the north. We had to decide on an earlier turn northwards. In the event, the offensive failed because:

  (a) The British positions in the south, contrary to what our reconnaissance had led us to believe, had been completed in great strength.

  (b) The continuous and very 'heavy attacks of the R.A.F., who were practically masters of the air, absolutely pinned my troops to the ground and made impossible any safe deployment or any advance according to schedule.

  (c) The petrol, which was a necessary condition of the carrying out of our plans, did not arrive. The ships which Cavallero had promised us were some of them sunk, some of them delayed and some of them not even dispatched. Kesselring had unfortunately not been able to
fulfil his promise to fly over 500 tons a day to the vicinity of the front in case of need.

  BRIGADIER CLIFTON

  A night attack on the 10th Italian Corps cost the British particularly heavy, losses, including many dead. There were also two hundred prisoners, among them Brigadier Clifton, commanding the 6th New Zealand Brigade. I had a conversation with him on the following morning. He had just been busy convincing the Italians that they must surrender, in view of the strong British tank forces facing their position, and the Italians had already taken the bolts out of their rifles, when, to his annoyance, a German officer had arrived and his plan came to nothing.

  He seemed extremely depressed as a result. I tackled him about various acts, contrary to international law, committed by New Zealand troops. Clifton showed the most absolute certainty of victory, which was understandable now that our attack had been beaten back. He was an old Africa veteran, for he had led British troops against us since 1940, had been in Greece, and was also in the winter fighting of 1941-42.

  He impressed us as a very brave man and very likeable. He insisted on becoming a prisoner of the Germans and not being sent to Italy. I tried to carry out his wish, and, evading general instructions, handed him over to a German depot in Mersa Matruh. However the O.K.H. later ordered that he should be handed over to the Italians.