Field Marshal: The Life and Death of Erwin Rommel

by Butler, Daniel Allen

  Rommel, his copilot, and the gun crew clambered aboard, and, following Rommel’s directions, set out to find the Afrika Korps’ headquarters section, collecting a handful of stragglers and a trio of dispatch riders on the way. Hardly had they found the command vehicles than one of the notorious Libyan sandstorms swept over them, immobilizing the lot. A few hours later, as the wind began to ease, Rommel announced that he was going to Mechili to see if the attacks he had ordered had gone in. With visibility reduced to a matter of yards, it was necessary to navigate by compass and speedometer—and more than a little guesswork—but they managed to find a stretch of telephone wire, which they promptly followed on the presumption that it must lead somewhere. It did, bringing them directly and unexpectedly to the walls of Mechili, where General Streich was waiting patiently to inform Rommel that the fort had been taken a few hours previously, 1,700 enemy soldiers, some artillery, and most importantly a sizeable number of trucks having been captured in the process. The remains of the British 3rd Armoured Brigade—12 A-7 Cruisers, 20 light tanks and the same number of captured Italian tanks—and the 3rd Indian Motor Brigade had taken refuge in the old fort on April 6. Despite trying to brass it out by feigning a greater strength than they actually possessed—and twice refusing German calls to surrender—they capitulated after failing to break through the enemy perimeter on April 8.

  With one of his two objectives in hand, Mechili, Rommel wasted no time in moving on the other, Derna. The previous day, Leutnant Hans-Otto Behrendt, who had come to North Africa so that Rommel could avail himself of the young man’s skills as an Egyptologist and experienced desert traveler, had driven into Derna and found it deserted—the British had abandoned the town just hours before he arrived. Behrendt reported as much to Rommel, who immediately sent Ponath’s 8th Machine-Gun Battalion packing with orders to occupy Derna as quickly as possible, von Schwerin’s mixed force of Germans and Italians not far behind, Rommel himself in their train. This was a gamble on Rommel’s part, forced on him by yet another mistake: when the 5th Panzer Regiment arrived at Mechili that morning, Colonel Olbricht asked permission to halt the unit long enough to clean the sand and grit that had accumulated in his tanks’ guns and turret mechanisms during the sandstorm, a task that would take several hours at best to accomplish and leave the regiment immobilized. Rommel immediately agreed, then, when Behrendt’s news of Derna reached him, regretted doing so. He had to hope that the British continued in their headlong plunge to the east, and didn’t pause long enough to take a close look at the Axis forces pursuing them, for if they did, it would be readily apparent that those German and Italian units lacked the strength to stand long against a determined counterattack. The Western Desert Force, however, had not yet arrived at that inevitable moment when any retreating army stops to ask itself exactly from what is it running, and so the withdrawal continued. That moment was rapidly approaching, but for now fortune continued to favor the Afrika Korps, and Derna was occupied without incident.

  For all of his mistakes, hardly a day passed in early April 1941 without some new plum figuratively falling into Rommel’s lap. The German invasion of Greece began on April 6; by April 9 the Greek and British forces in the northeast were in full retreat; on April 15, the British began planning to withdraw their units from the mainland to Crete. The swiftly developing debacle in Greece occupied most of the attention and energy of Wavell and his staff, leaving them little time for Cyrenaica. The Royal Air Force had sent the best squadrons in the Middle East to support the operations in Greece, leaving the bombers and fighters of the Regia Aeronautica a free hand to harass the retreating British mercilessly. Bungled communications caused the main British fuel and supply depot at Msus to be put to the torch on April 6, leaving most of the British mechanized and motorized units with only whatever gasoline was left in their tanks—usually enough to run, rarely enough to turn and fight. And on April 7, Lieutenant General Neame and Lieutenant General Richard O’Connor were captured when their staff car ran afoul of one of von Schwerin’s reconnaissance patrols.

  As kind as fortune had been to Erwin Rommel in the first months of 1941, she was cruel to Philip Neame: like Rommel, Neame was newly promoted to corps command, but was forced to gather up the reins of the Western Desert Force as it was in the middle of yet another reorganization at the same time its most experienced units were being withdrawn. He’d barely had time to learn the names of his subordinates, let alone grow into his new command, when Rommel attacked, and the more experienced O’Connor, commander of the British forces in Egypt, was in Libya to assist and advise Neame in his new posting.

  The loss of Neame and O’Connor, along with Brigadier John Combe, who was with them when the two generals were “bagged,” was a sore blow to the British. The Western Desert Force was deprived of its commanding officer at the most critical moment of Rommel’s offensive, temporarily paralyzing the British chain of command; O’Connor, Neame’s predecessor, had led the Western Desert Force during Compass, and Combe was the commander of the flying column that had cut off the Italian retreat at Mersa el Brega in January. Philip Neame was unquestionably a good officer and a brave man (he had been awarded the Victoria Cross in the Great War), but he was new to the desert and had never before led armor. O’Connor and Combe were both “Desert Rats” who knew how to lead armor and motorized infantry in desert operations. Their experience might well have given the Western Desert Force a fighting chance at stopping the Afrika Korps west of Egypt; without it, only fate or chance could halt Erwin Rommel’s advance.

  Ironically, the British, who only a few short months earlier had proven themselves to be masters of desert warfare, were so impressed by the speed and skill, not to mention the sheer audacity, with which Rommel and his men had struck that the story was soon making the rounds within the Western Desert Force, and even in Cairo and Alexandria, that the Afrika Korps was a picked elite, specially trained and equipped for the war in North Africa. Had they known of this, Rommel’s “Africans,” as he would come to call them, would have convulsed with laughter. Far from being elite soldiers, they had to learn many of the basics of desert warfare “on the job.” Much of their equipment was ill-suited for the desert: while the Wehrmacht’s cotton “tropical” uniform was adequate for the climate, for example, the rubber-soled boots initially issued with it literally began to melt when they came into contact with rocks that had been baking in the desert sun. Even such basics as sand-colored paint were missing: when the 5th Panzer Regiment went into action for the first time its tanks and armored cars still wore the same panzergrau used in Poland and France. The crews had to resort to the temporary expedient of coating their vehicles with mud made from the local soils—good camouflage, but hardly durable.

  A large portion of the Afrika Korps’ success was attributable to two highly intangible factors, against which the British, for the moment, at least, had no effective counter: luck and Rommel. It was pure luck that brought the 5th Light Division to Cyrenaica at the moment when the Western Desert Force was being systematically stripped of its most experienced troops and its best equipment, which were being sent to Greece, where most of the men would become prisoners of war and their vehicles destroyed or abandoned. It was also the British misfortune that, just as the Germans were arriving in North Africa, Wavell’s attention and energy were diverted elsewhere—specifically, to Greece. Again, it was simply bad luck that all of the available intelligence, including what was regarded as the most reliable source of all, Ultra, led everyone in the British chain of command, from Churchill on down, to believe that the Germans would sit passively behind the defenses at El Agheila. And again, it was pure luck that command of the Afrika Korps was given to an officer who possessed the imagination and moral courage to take advantage of such an extraordinary confluence of circumstances.

  It was Rommel, of course, who was able to turn what would and should have been a succession of minor inconveniences for the British into something approaching a military calamity for them. For their ba
d luck was Rommel’s good fortune, and he possessed not merely the temperament but also the tactical skill to recognize an opportunity and exploit it to the fullest. However Rommel may have fumbled about in the early days of April 1941, none of his mistakes were irretrievable, and they were made when the British were powerless to exploit them. However imperfectly, Rommel learned from those mistakes, and quickly got his legs under him, acting with the sort of boldness that General Schmidt a year previously had insisted was the essential characteristic of a panzer commander. The Afrika Korps was not an elite, it didn’t need to be: it had an elite leader, and that made all the difference.

  That the British might have thought their opponents to be a cut above the ordinary was an understandable mistake, as the Germans seemed to learn very quickly how to operate in the Libyan desert. The war in North Africa was fought across terrain and in conditions unlike those in any other theater of war, which, as Rommel emphasized in his critique of Graziani’s advance into Egypt in the previous year, imposed their own set of rules on those who fought there. Unlike, say, Morocco, with its endless vistas of windswept sand dunes, the Libyan desert was mostly a rocky plain that rose from the Mediterranean, rather gently in some places, with startling abruptness in others. Steep-faced ridges called “escarpments” stretched parallel to the coast for most of the distance between Benghazi and the Egyptian frontier. The Via Balbia ran along these escarpments, or just below them: the handful of places where the road crossed through or over the crests created natural choke points where a determined defender could stop cold an attacking force many times its size. Behind the ridges of the escarpments stretched a stony, hardscrabble plain that reached south for as much as 200 miles before the vast, empty sands of the Sahara began.

  Away from the coast, there were no permanent settlements; the only inhabitants were the Bedouin, Arab nomads who moved their flocks and herds between the widely scattered oases. Vegetation was sparse and stunted, save for the Jeb el Akdar, the Green Mountains of northwest Cyrenaica, which for a few weeks in the springtime lived up to their name. The ground was flat, hardscrabble, difficult—in some places impossible—for infantry and artillery to dig into. Typical of any desert, days were usually blindingly hot, while nights were uncomfortably chill. Hans von Luck, the major who commanded the 3rd Reconnaissance Battalion, remembered the heat vividly: “Everyone sought out a little patch of shade. Some men really did fry eggs on the overheated armor plating of their tanks. It is no fairy tale. I have done it myself.” The heat of the day often was made worse by the blast furnace-like desert wind that the Bedouin called the “Ghibli.” It frequently raised blinding sandstorms that made flying impossible and travel by land treacherous. With almost no landmarks to serve as guides and navigation points, a traveler who became disoriented in the Libyan desert was soon hopelessly lost, and unless incredibly lucky, dead shortly thereafter.101

  Sand—or more properly, grit—was the never-sleeping enemy of anyone who would attempted to live and work in the Libyan desert and whatever tools or equipment they might possess. It got everywhere: in every crevice, crease, wrinkle, and orifice of the human body, in the works of every mechanism, device, and piece of equipment, no matter how simple. Aircraft engines required special air filters to keep out dust that would ruin piston rings and bearings; automotive engines needed the same, along with special oil filters. Sights and recoil mechanisms on artillery pieces and tank guns were especially prey to this grit, and required constant cleaning. Infantrymen had to clean the bolts of their weapons several times a day to keep them clear and functional, with only the lightest possible coating of lubricant on the actions, to prevent dirt from building up and causing malfunctions. And of course the grit constantly found its way into food and water.

  All of this was more or less bearable, but then there were the flies, every bit as pervasive as the sand and grit. They were literally countless, creeping into everything with as much determination and efficiency as the sand—and with a special propensity for food. They were fond of human blood as well and when these flies bit they left welts and sores behind, which quickly festered. With them came disease: dysentery would be the constant bane of Rommel and his men. Adding insult to injury, in addition to the flies were the occasional venomous snake and an abundance of scorpions: there wasn’t a man in the Afrika Korps or the Western Desert Force who didn’t suffer from these vermin.

  Fuel and water—the twin lifebloods of military operations in the desert—were particularly problematic for the Axis: every liter of gasoline had to be transported from a refinery in Europe to a Libyan port, usually Tripoli, in an Italian tanker, running a gauntlet of British submarines and bombers in the process, and from thence to the front by truck. (It should be noted that the courage of the Italian tanker crews was on a par with that of the British and American merchant marine—there is no record of any Italian tanker, once it set sail for Libya, ever turning back.) As one side or the other advanced and so lengthened its supply lines, this sometimes created the almost comical situation where those trucks were burning more fuel than they were transporting, necessitating the creation of a succession of fuel dumps along the way, just to supply fuel to the fuel carriers. This was a tremendous handicap to operations, especially for the Afrika Korps, as objectives and operational planning frequently had to be tailored to available, often inadequate, fuel supplies. For the British, it was less of a problem, as much of their gasoline came from refineries in Iran, and was delivered to Cairo via pipelines rather than vulnerable tankers.

  While water could almost always be found within a few miles of the coast, it was often brackish and saline, and there was never enough to supply the needs of more than a fraction of the soldiers on either side, necessitating tanker trucks to bring water forward from sources far behind the front. Again, the British had the advantage, Wavell having been the driving force behind the establishment of water pipelines and pumping stations in Egypt that carried clean fresh water westward, much closer to the troops than anything the Axis were able to set up. Whatever its source, the Afrika Korps purified all of its water, leaving it tasting heavily of chemicals. Some men tried to disguise the taste by mixing the water with reconstituted lemon juice, while others resorted to ersatz coffee, which they promptly christened “nigger sweat.”

  Food was yet another challenge for the Axis soldiers in North Africa. As any combat veteran from most any war can readily attest, the quantity and quality of service-issued rations can usually be described as “indifferent” at best, and the North African campaign was no exception to the general rule. The diet of the Germans and Italians in Libya was bland and unimaginative, with little variety. There was an abundance of Italian sausage, issued in tins stamped “AM” (for “Administrazione Militare”), which the Germans immediately christened “Alte Mann” (“Old Man”), but the Italians dubbed “Arabo Morte” (“Dead Arab”). The Germans had black bread, the Italians dry, hard biscuits, and both armies were provided with onions, oatmeal, and dried beans. German soldiers readily bartered with whatever Bedouin nomads were nearby for tomatoes, eggs, chickens, pretty much any fresh food the Arabs had to offer; the Italians, who despised the Bedouins and were despised in return, were less enthusiastic about such dealings.

  What was always eagerly anticipated by both Axis armies were captured British supplies, especially “bully beef” (tinned corned beef), that staple of the British military diet, derided by generations of Tommies. The British also had white bread, a luxury in wartime Germany, as well as canned fruit—peaches were immensely popular with the men of the Afrika Korps. Captured British warehouses and supply dumps would always be thoroughly looted (in an orderly, efficient German manner, of course) of these prizes; frequently, parcels of bully beef would be sent home to Germany, where they were regarded as something approaching a delicacy.

  All in all, the officers and men of the Afrika Korps had much to learn about desert warfare; to their credit, they learned quickly and, for the most part, well. The early mistakes ap
parently had a palliative effect on the Germans and Italians alike, for by April 8, everyone was moving in the right direction and quickly enough to satisfy Rommel. His letter to Lucie that day was openly exultant:

  Dearest Lu,

  I have no idea if the date is correct. We’ve been attacking for days now in the endless desert and have lost all idea of space or time. As you’ll have seen from the communiqués, things are going very well.

  Today will be another decisive day. Our main force is on its way up after a 220-mile march over the sand and rock of the desert. I flew back from the front yesterday to look for them and found them in the desert. You can hardly imagine how pleased I was.102 His letter on April 10 informed Lucie that

  After a long desert march I reached the sea the evening before last. It’s wonderful to have pulled this off against the British. I’m well. My caravan arrived at last early this morning and I’m hoping to sleep in it again tonight.103

  The portrait of Rommel as a corps commander that emerges from those 10 hectic days between March 31 and April 9 is intriguing, though not always flattering. His ability to perceive the weakness of the British forces arrayed against him at El Agheila, based on nothing more than a few scattered bits of intelligence and his own instinct, was remarkable. Likewise was the swiftness and energy with which Rommel exploited that weakness: he saw a moment of tactical and strategic weakness on the part of the British where his nominal superiors, in Tripoli, Rome, and Berlin saw none, and understood that he was being presented with an opportunity the likes of which few generals are ever offered, and comprehended the fleeting nature of that moment; once past, it would never come again. His planning was bold and imaginative, relying on speed and surprise as much as violence in execution to ensure success.