In the meantime, Claude Auchinleck gathered up the reins of the Eighth Army himself. There would be no stand at Mersa Matruh, as in his considered judgment the front was still too broad and his divisions would be spread too thin to prevent Rommel from punching through them, or else swinging around their southern flank as he had done at Gazala. He fought a series of delaying actions to buy time as the Eighth Army fell back to a new defensive line just west of El Alamein, an unprepossessing railroad siding sitting on the Mediterranean coast. What made the Alamein position so attractive was that just 40 miles inland the bottom of the desert fell out as an impossibly steep 600-foot escarpment gave way to the northern-most reach of the Qattara Depression, a vast, impassable expanse of dry lakes, soft sand, salt marshes, and scrubland. Thus a natural choke point for any army advancing into Egypt from the west was created: it would be impossible to outflank any defensive line which was anchored on the Depression. If Rommel was going to take Cairo, he would have to go through Eighth Army, not around it.
Rommel, of course, continued to give Auchinleck reason to want to minimize the Afrika Korps’ ability to maneuver. On June 27 the 2nd New Zealand Division and the 50th Infantry Division, just arrived back in the fold after its jaunt across the desert after Gazala, were almost cut off from the rest of Eighth Army by the 21st Panzer and 90th Light Divisions. The officers and other ranks of the 50th Division, who were becoming old hands at this sort of thing, promptly mounted up and drove eastward as fast as they could, slipping the noose before the 90th Light could reach the coast, but the Kiwis were not so lucky. The 21st Panzer was able to swing behind their position at the oasis of Mingar Qaim, almost completely surrounding the 2nd Division. The early hours of June 28 saw a short, sharp melee of rifles, pistols, grenades, and bayonets, as the New Zealanders shot and thrust their way through the 21st Panzer, rejoining the rest of Eighth Army later that day.
Though the action was over in less than 15 minutes, the breakout had unexpected and potentially serious consequences, as a German aid station had been directly in the path of the charging Kiwis. Several German medical personnel and some wounded German soldiers—an accurate number has never been determined—were killed in the rush, some shot, others bayoneted. In a war where both sides routinely demonized their opponents, it was not long before the word spread that the Kiwis had committed a war crime, and Göbbels’ propaganda hacks were soon calling them “gangsters.” Rommel was furious, in no small part because he felt that such conduct should have been beneath soldiers he had once described as “the elite of the British Army,” and threatened reprisals on captured New Zealanders if such practices continued. An explosive situation was eventually defused when Rommel came face-to-face with Brigadier George Clifton, the senior New Zealand POW. Clifton, speaking with a soldier-to-soldier bluntness which Rommel appreciated, regretted that the incident ever occurred, but made the point that it had been a nighttime attack, lit only by muzzle and grenade flashes and the flames of burning vehicles: the New Zealanders could not have known they were attacking a medical unit until it was already too late. Rommel, who had seen his share of nighttime actions go awry, accepted Clifton’s explanation and the furor was allowed to gradually fade away.174
Though the 50th Infantry Division had escaped when the 90th Light Division reached the coast east of Mersa Matruh, the Germans were now sitting astride the coast road and blocking the retreat of X Corps, composed now of brigade groups from four different divisions. Auchinleck ordered the corps to follow the 2nd New Zealand Division’s example and force a way through the Germans, but the brigade movements were poorly coordinated, leading to the 29th (Indian) Infantry Brigade being nearly destroyed, losing more than 6,000 troops and 40 tanks. Huge supply dumps were abandoned at Mersa Matruh, falling, naturally, into the hands of the Germans and Italians, allowing the panzerarmee to maintain its momentum a bit longer.
These captured supply dumps were utterly invaluable to Panzerarmee Afrika, as it had completely outrun the capabilities of its supply services for the time being. The Axis effort in North Africa had always operated in a more-or-less hand-to-mouth effort; there is most definitely no record anywhere of Rommel remarking on a surfeit of men, equipment, or materiel—especially fuel. But the additional 400 miles added to the Axis supply line since the fall of Tobruk pushed an already faltering logistical system to its breaking point. Tobruk, Benghazi, and Sidi Barrani would never achieve their full potential as supply ports for Rommel and his men; even had they done so, their capacities were so small that they would have only eased the problem somewhat, rather than eliminated it. In a way reminiscent of Bonaparte’s policy of making the enemy pay for his wars, or even, ironically, the Barbary freebooters of the eighteenth century, Rommel was, for the time being, dependent on plundering enemy supplies—he frequently refers to captured “booty” in his diaries and letters—to keep his army in the field and fighting.
The men of the Afrika Korps and the Italian divisions had been in near-constant action now for five weeks. Exhaustion was beginning to take its toll among all ranks, and the sick lists were growing, especially with cases of jaundice and dysentery. The Axis momentum was dwindling, like a pendulum reaching the end of its arc: the moment of stasis was rapidly approaching, though Rommel was doing his best to ward it off. His own drive and enthusiasm never faltered, at least not yet.
30 June
Dearest Lu,
Mersa Matruh fell yesterday, after which the Army moved on until late in the night. We’re already 60 miles to the east. Less than 100 miles to Alexandria!175
So what compelled Rommel push himself and his men so hard? There are several explanations, all of them offered with varying determination over the years, most of them to some degree facile: Rommel’s feeble grasp of logistics led him to overstretch Panzerarmee Afrika; Rommel was out of his depth at this command level, still leading his army as if it were a battalion in the Italian Alps; Rommel’s vanity fueled his need to accrue personal glory, blinding him to military realities; Rommel was a near-reckless gambler who was unable to rein himself in.
The real answer is supplied by Rommel himself, and works on a much deeper level than any other explanation. In his own words,
I was determined at all costs to avoid giving the British any opportunity of creating another new front and occupying it with fresh formations from the Near East. . . . Our intention was to overtake the Eighth Army’s formations by a lightning thrust forward and bring them to battle before they had been able to join up with other formations from the Middle East. If we could once succeed in destroying the tattered remnants of the Eighth Army which had escaped from the Gazala battles, plus its two fresh divisions, and this was by no means impossible, then the British would have nothing left in Egypt capable of opposing our advance to Alexandria and the Suez Canal.176
“Alexandria and the Suez Canal.” Those five words explain everything. They were the glittering prizes of the North African campaign, and Rommel saw that clearly. Crusader had demonstrated that merely maintaining Italy’s position in North Africa, the mission originally given to Rommel and the Afrika Korps, was irrelevant: the reason why the British had driven the Italians out of Cyrenaica in early 1941 was because three months previously, the Italians had threatened, however ineffectually, the British hold on Alexandria and the Suez Canal. That was why he had been driven across Libya in November and December 1941: it had not been merely to retake essentially useless territory, rather he had been perceived as a threat to the canal, and therefore must needs be repulsed; the British were compelled to honor any threat to the Suez.
Now, incredible as it might seem, Rommel and his army were poised to offer the greatest threat to the canal that had ever been presented. Bonaparte once observed that “In war there is but one favorable moment; the great art is to seize it.” Rommel now saw his great moment, an opportunity to hand the British not merely a decisive defeat, but a critical one. Alexandria’s port facilities were literally irreplaceable for the British, while denial
of access to the Mediterranean via the canal would impose a shift in Allied grand strategy worldwide. It was an opportunity that would never again present itself, Rommel understood this perfectly well: the Allies’ capacity to reinforce, re-equip, and resupply far exceeded that of Germany and Italy; Eighth Army could only grow stronger while Panzerarmee Afrika could only weaken. Pausing back at the frontier or at Sidi Barrani to rebuild his strength and restore his forces, as critics then and now have suggested he should have done, would have only accelerated that imbalance. If Rommel was to take Alexandria and the Suez Canal, he had to strike now. He had no other choice—anything less would have been tantamount to an admission not only of defeat, but of purposelessness. Erwin Rommel had already lived through one war where too many men died in the service of a losing cause. He would, if fate permitted, never be part of another.
And that is the deeper level on which rested Rommel’s decision to keep attacking even after Tobruk was taken. No truly great commander seeks war in perpetuity, all fight to bring an end to the war at hand: only a madman seeks to make war for its own sake. Erwin Rommel wanted the war with Britain and America to come to an end: his “favorable moment,” if he could bring it about, had the power to change the entire paradigm of the war in the Mediterranean and compel the Allies to consider resorting to the negotiating table. It was to this end that he pushed forward every man in the panzerarmee to the point of exhaustion, none of them harder than he pushed himself. All that was needed now was one final rush that would put paid to Eighth Army once and for all; the British literally could retreat no further without conceding defeat. The decisive battle of the North African campaign, Rommel was certain, would be fought at El Alamein. He was absolutely right.177
EL ALAMEIN WOULD only ever have one moment on the world stage, because, like other places where Churchill’s “hinge of fate” also turned, such as Gettysburg, the Mont Saint Jean ridge, Guadalcanal, or the Gallipoli peninsula, El Alamein itself was and would remain thoroughly unremarkable. As the cornerstone of a defensive position, however, the Duke of Wellington himself would have found much to commend it. It sat on the Mediterranean shore, with no right flank to turn, its railroad siding greatly simplified supply problems, while some 10 miles due south sits the 8-mile long Ruweisat Ridge, low, rocky, ideal for covering and concealing large numbers of infantry guns and tanks. The ridge runs almost due east-to-west, and has the natural effect of channeling any attack in its direction to the north or south of it, while any forces positioned in the ridge itself remain poised as a threat to the flank of such an attack. Another 10 miles on into the desert was the Deir el Munnasib depression, not a feature to be held by defenders, but yet another terrain obstacle that by its near-impassability dictated the line of advance to any local attack. Finally, another 10 miles to the south lay the impassable escarpment that marked the beginning of the Qattara Depression. Apart from Sollum and the Halfaya Pass at the Egyptian frontier, no finer defensive position existed anywhere between Alexandria and Tripoli.
Auchinleck was counting on this fact, counting on adding the natural strength of the Alamein position to Eighth Army’s, buying him time bring up further reinforcements, reorganize broken divisions, and build up his armored strength in order to turn the tables on Rommel and go over to the attack himself. The defensive potential of the El Alamein line had been recognized by the British Army even before the war began, and some desultory efforts at constructing three large defensive boxes along the line had begun in 1940, one at El Alamein, another southwest of the Ruweisat Ridge, and the third down near the edge of the Qattara Depression, although only limited progress had been made in completing any of them. Now every soldier who could lift a sandbag, swing a pickaxe, or lay a landmine was working like a beaver to finish them. Divisions, brigades, and battalions began arriving willy-nilly from Gazala, the action around Tobruk, and Mersa Matruh, and Auchinleck thrust them into the El Alamein line wherever he could find a slot for them—once he was confident he had a stable front facing Rommel, he began sorting them out. The 10th Infantry Division, 1st South African Division, and 5th Indian Divison—grouped together as XXX Corps—held the right of the line, while the 2nd New Zealand and 5th Indian Divisions—XIII Corps—stood on the left, both corps strongly supported by as much artillery as Auchinleck could muster. It was his armor that caused him the most concern, as both the 1st and 7th Armoured Divisions were at less than brigade strength, with just over 100 tanks between them at the moment, though Auchinleck knew that at least 300 new Sherman tanks, courtesy of the United States Army, were on their way to Alexandria. Faster, more rugged and reliable, better armored and just as heavily armed as any panzer the Afrika Korps had in the field, these tanks promised to be game-changers for Eighth Army, hence Auchinleck’s determination to buy time for their arrval.
Rommel understood what Auchinleck was attempting, and as one professional regarding the work of another, he approved:
More and more British tanks and guns were arriving at the front. General Auchinleck . . . was handling his forces with very considerable skill and tactically better than Ritchie had done. He seemed to view the situation with decided coolness, for he was not allowing himself to be rushed into accepting a “second best” solution by any moves we made. This was to be particularly evident in what followed,178
“What followed” was that on July 1, the understrength and weary Afrika Korps along with the 90th Light Division carried out Rommel’s first attack on the El Alamein line. For once fuel was not a pressing issue, but water and ammunition were, and the limits of both would to some degree dictate Rommel’s tactics. The two divisions of the Afrika Korps, the 15th and 21st Panzer, were to move through a gap in the minefields between the defensive box at El Alamein and the Deir el Abyad, a small depression southwest of Alamein. Once past the Abyad, the Afrika Korps would turn right and fall on the rear echelons of XIII Corps, while the 90th Light turned due north, heading straight for the coastal road. As soon as the 90th Light was in position, the division would attack the El Alamein box from the west, driving defenders—in this case the 1st South African Division—straight into the 90th Light’s waiting ambush. The Ariete and Trieste Divisions would contain the defenders in the center and southern boxes while the Littorio Armored Division, only recently arrived in North Africa, covered the Afrika Korps’ left flank.
Almost from the outset, everything went wrong. Given that Gazala had begun on a similarly discordant note, that might have been seen as a good sign, but it was not to be. The 90th Light moved east as ordered but veered slightly to the north as it did, running into the South Africans and quickly becoming pinned down by enemy artillery. A sandstorm prevented the 15th and 21st Panzers from moving out on time, and when they did begin their advance, they almost immediately came under heavy attack by medium bombers of the Desert Air Force. Kesselring’s redeployment of Fliegerkorps X to focus all of its energies on subjugating Malta was now hurting the Afrika Korps; the Royal Air Force had nothing close to air supremacy, but for the moment it was able to achieve local air superiority almost as a matter of course. It might all be worth it if Malta were taken, but by now even Kesselring began to see how Hitler was using every new success of Rommel’s, no matter how minor, as proof that Hercules was unnecessary.
When the two panzer divisions finally got rolling, they moved out smartly past the Deir el Abyad as planned. But behind the Abyad was a smaller depression called the Deir el Shein, which was supposed to be unoccupied. Here Germans got their first surprise, running headlong into the 18th Indian Infantry Brigade. Rommel’s Ic, Colonel von Mellenthin, had no idea it was there, and understandably so, for the brigade had been rushed to Egypt from Iraq, taking up its position late on June 28. The Indians stood their ground and fought hard, with the remnant of the 1st Armoured Division coming up in support, but eventually the 18th Brigade was overrun and the Deir el Shein taken, though at a cost Rommel could ill-afford: a quarter of the Afrika Korps’ remaining armored strength was taken out of action; at t
he end of the day, the two panzer divisions could muster fewer than 40 tanks between them.
Rommel was getting desperate now. For the next two days he kept up the attack on the western end of the Ruweisat Ridge, but accomplished nothing. On July 5 XIII Corps counterattacked on the Afrika Korps’ southern flank, the usual slightly ponderous, overly deliberate attack which the Germans and Italians had been routinely decimating over the previous 20 months: this time they were barely able to bring it to a halt. The near-constant presence of British bombers and fighter-bombers overhead only exacerbated the problems: between July 2 and July 5, the Royal Air Force flew more than 2,000 sorties against Panzerarmee Afrika, continuing to erode Axis strength.
Even the name “Panzerarmee Afrika” began to ring hollow, as between them the German and Italian armored divisions had fewer than 100 operational tanks, while the average infantry strength of each division was just 1,500 effectives. As much as the British, the conditions of the desert were wreaking havoc on Rommel’s officers and men: fatigue, poor diet, marginal sanitary conditions, flies in their millions, all were sapping what physical and moral strength remained. Non-battle casualties to dysentery and jaundice, the latter having already once laid Rommel himself low, were equaling losses in combat.
The euphoria that had swept over Rommel after the fall of Tobruk had evaporated, its place taken by a darkening realism. His letters to Lucie in these days stand in stark and startling contrast to those written just a week earlier, showing how far and how rapidly Rommel’s situation had unraveled.
3 July 1942
Dearest Lu,
One loses all idea of time here. The struggle for the last position before Alexandria is hard. I’ve been up in the front area for a few days, living in the car or a hole in the ground. The enemy air force gave us a bad time. However, I hope to manage it. Heartfelt thanks for your many dear letters.
Field Marshal: The Life and Death of Erwin Rommel Page 43