The Great World War 1914–1945: 1. Lightning Strikes Twice. John Bourne

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      Just as the armies sent by Britain to the Middle East were diverse and polyglot in character, so was there a bewildering variety in the campaigns in which they became involved. There were diverse campaigns fought against a range of enemies and conducted over a vast area of harsh terrain. One of the first took place in the North African desert along the Libyan/Egyptian border when the British suppressed a Senussi-led Arab uprising in 1915–16, while from 1917 onwards T. E. Lawrence, in the Hejaz, helped to support the Arab revolt against Turkish rule. Meanwhile, large-scale conventional campaigns were fought against the Turks in Sinai, Palestine and Mesopotamia. The Second World War saw an even greater variety of campaigns against a wide variety of opponents. There were short but sharp actions against the Vichy French in Syria, an Axis-sponsored revolt in Iraq, and a hard-fought campaign against the Italians in Ethiopia and Eritrea. However, the main campaign took place against the combined German and Italian forces in the Western Desert. This campaign certainly represented a break with the past, as, for the first time, the Western Desert became an enormous battleground for two major conventional opponents utilising high-intensity manoeuvre warfare.

      Such a diverse mix of regions, opponents and fighting raises the difficult issue of whether it is possible to make valid comparisons between the experiences of British troops of both World Wars. While the conduct of the campaigns was often different, and the nature of the opponents and terrain often sharply in contrast, nonetheless the British soldiers of both wars who served in the Middle East were connected by their experiences of Egypt and the desert, of soldiering in a harsh environment, and through their experience of the British Army. British soldiers were aware, if only dimly, of the weight of history present in the region, and they were linked by tradition with the previous British soldiers who had served in the desert.

      The desert campaigns fought in the First World War certainly influenced the soldiers of the Second World War. T. E. Lawrence, the British hero of the Arab revolt during Allenby’s campaign in Palestine, influenced an entire generation with his book The Seven Pillars of Wisdom5. Many officers of the Eighth Army quite self-consciously modelled themselves on the independent spirit of Lawrence of Arabia. This was reflected in the rejection of army-issue clothing in favour of sheepskin coats, corduroy trousers and desert boots, or ‘brothel creepers’ as they were better known. The glamorous idea of the British officer as guerrilla leader also found its way into Eighth Army tactics. This was most noticeable in the formation of ‘Jock columns’, which were small independent forces of motorised infantry and artillery, designed for raiding and scouting rather than heavy fighting. Lawrence’s influence also encouraged the growth of many raiding groups such as the Long Range Desert Group (LRDG), Special Air Service (SAS) and ‘Popski’s private army’, which were used for deep raids and observation of the Axis positions.

      All the British troops who served in the Middle East were linked by their experience of travel. While troops serving in Flanders or France travelled to a reasonably familiar corner of Europe, the men who served in the desert had to endure a long sea voyage to a very different part of the world. After the relative inactivity on board ship and the tedium of routine days, the first experience of the Middle East could come as a shock. One Second World War veteran, whose first landfall in the Middle East was on the barren, rocky shores of Aden, remembered that, ‘I think one’s first impressions when you go ashore at a place like Aden are so mixed, you’re bewildered with the difference. It’s all so utterly different from anything one’s ever seen in one’s life.’⁶ This sense of entering a very different, alien world was common to all British soldiers who served in the Middle East.

      Once the long journey was over, there was one experience that linked almost every British soldier sent to the Middle East. The sights and sounds of Cairo and Alexandria were familiar to thousands of British soldiers who first arrived in Egypt and who spent their precious hours of leave taking in the sights and indulging in the bazaars and fleshpots of these two cities. A visit to the surviving Ancient Wonder of the World was obligatory. E. A. Woolley, a First World War veteran, remembered that, ‘I visited the Great Pyramids and went on top and also inside the Great Pyramid… I also went to the Sphinx… seeing them as I did, one could not but be impressed by these fantastic constructions.’⁷

      The pyramids remain a potent symbol of ancient Egypt, and thousands of British soldiers had their photographs taken next to these monuments as a reminder of their visit.⁸ However, the soldiers’ experience of Egypt went far beyond the ancient world. One veteran remembered being fascinated by:

      ‘Cairo, the Nile, the souks [markets], the mingling of so many nationalities, the pleasant smells of spices and cooking borne on the warm evening air (but not the ghastly daytime smells of which there were plenty). I suppose it summed up for me what I’d always imagined the Orient should be like.’⁹

      Many troops enjoyed the exotic and foreign experience that Egypt offered, while many others simply enjoyed Cairo’s and Alexandria’s bars and nightlife. These innocent pleasures were sometimes mixed with more base concerns, as a naval rating related:

      ‘… three of us went ashore in Alex to the Fleet Club for a game of tombola and our ration of beer. We still had plenty of time, so we said to ourselves, “Let’s go to Sister Street.” We were young and curious to visit the most renowned of the Eastern Fleet brothels, and wondered what effect it might have on three randy young men.’¹⁰

      Egypt’s reputation as a part of the exotic Orient was certainly enhanced by encounters such as these, but these experiences, although welcome, tended to be short-lived and most soldiers found themselves serving far away from the Delta and its temptations.

      It was the experience of the desert itself that united all the soldiers who fought there. The desert in popular imagination has long been a place of romance and mystery, but British soldiers soon found that the reality was very different. The intense heat, sand, dust and flies soon removed the mystery, and the most widely held belief among British soldiers in the Eighth Army was that, ‘“The blue” was… a right bastard.’¹¹ Living in the desert brought a series of discomforts and irritants that were quite new to British soldiers more used to a green and temperate climate. The first unpleasant shock to be experienced by any soldier was the intense heat of the day and the chill that descended as soon as the sun went down. One veteran remembered that:

      ‘In early July 1917 we found ourselves in the desert of Sinai about eleven miles south-east of Gaza, and there we found that the all-pervading heat… almost struck us physically, so intense was it. There was no avoiding it [and] no shade whatever.’¹²

      In the Eighth Army, during the Second World War, the mark of a desert veteran was to ‘get your knees brown’, which proved that you had been burned by the sun and served in the desert long enough to adapt to its conditions.

      Another feature of the desert conditions was the sheer physical effort needed to march through sand. Marching through the night for the surprise attack on Beersheba on 29 October 1917, one soldier found it:

      ‘…particularly tiring to march through sand… the desert may be romantic but we didn’t see much romance about it that night. We marched and marched and marched through that desert the whole night long.

      The worst feature of all to me I think was the dust. There was choking dust flowing over us from the other columns on our sides. We were perspiring madly [and] the dust settles on your face. I remember seeing my own face next morning when I went to shave – it was nothing but rivulets of dirt or rather clean rivulets amongst the dirt on my face – I wouldn’t have recognised myself.’¹³

      The huge clouds of dust thrown up by the movement of thousands of soldiers were an unavoidable discomfort. Clouds of dust were ever-present, but they probably reached a peak at Alamein in October 1942, when the passage of thousands of tanks and vehicles along a set number СКАЧАТЬ