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

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СКАЧАТЬ much as two feet deep in places. Like fluffy snow upon the ground, it rises into the air and hangs like a thick fog in the darkness. Eyes, ears and noses are filled with it and it nearly chokes a man whenever he opens his mouth to speak.’¹⁴

      These man-made dust clouds were uncomfortable, but could not be compared to the natural khamsin or sandstorm. A member of the first armoured car squadron in Egypt remembered his first sandstorm in 1915 vividly:

      ‘I noticed what appeared to be a great bank of fog, moving towards us from the southward. The Egyptian interpreter who rode in my car cried out that it was a sandstorm, and we ran the cars quickly to the lee side of the fort, while a violent wind arose and swept the swirling sand about us, until nothing could be seen at the distance of a yard. Breathing was almost impossible, and the darkness was eerie, while the grains of sand which were continually whipped against our hands and faces by the hot wind stung like the points of needles.’¹⁵

      Sandstorms could sometimes last for days, making life in the desert a real misery. This unwelcome natural phenomenon reinforced the soldiers’ perceptions of the desert as a harsh, sterile and alien environment.

      However, the main reason for this perception lay in the nature of the desert terrain itself. The character of the desert could change dramatically from soft sand to a rocky limestone bed within a few miles, and each desert, from the Western Desert of Egypt to the Sinai or Sudan, was very different. One veteran of the Western Desert and Eritrean campaigns in the Second World War noted that, ‘The Western Desert was sandy, scrubby and from time to time stony, but there was very little vegetation of any sort… [while] the Nubian desert is just an endless plain of golden sand.’ Even though desert veterans soon learned to recognise the differences between areas of desert, the main impression was still one of a barren landscape filled with sand. One Eighth Army veteran noted his first sight of the desert with disgust:

      ‘By late afternoon we’ve reached our destination, Jerawla, a few miles short of Mersa Matruh. Why anyone troubled to confer a name on the place or what anyone could have found to stick a label on, heaven alone knows – there’s just miles of blank sand in every direction.’¹⁶

      Soldiers found that places marked on the map were often just that – names on a map. The featureless nature of the terrain meant that good navigation was essential; as one staff officer commented, ‘You can’t wander around the desert, it’s a dangerous thing to do.’¹⁷ One veteran remembered that his training in Egypt during 1915 placed a premium on navigation, and that the troops:

      ‘…had to learn to cross the desert from one place to another without any maps – there were no maps of the district, the only maps I ever saw out there were signed H. H. Kitchener Lieutenant, presumably made in the 1880s. There were no roads, no charts, no signposts.’¹⁸

      Navigation in the desert with outdated maps, even if they had been produced by the famous Kitchener, was no easy matter. However, one solution adopted in 1917 was the use of wire-mesh ‘roads’, which assisted in both navigation and marching. One veteran remembered that the Battle of Gaza in 1917 was:

      ‘…to me the climax of a walk of about 130 miles across the Sinai Desert – we left the Suez Canal knowing that eventually we were going to meet our friend the Turk again after the Romani scrap – but we didn’t know where it was to be and that crossing was… made possible only because somebody had the simple and brilliant idea of laying wire netting across the loose sand and that helped us considerably.’¹⁹

      While such methods could be useful on an approach march, they were of no help in the Western Desert, where the majority of Middle Eastern battles were fought during the Second World War. By 1940 soldiers did have access to good-quality maps and the sun compass²⁰, which made the task of navigation much easier, but one feature of all the desert fighting was the frequent confusion caused by map errors and the inability to pinpoint a position in the middle of the desert.

      Another reality of desert life was the scarcity of water and the discipline that had to be enforced to cope with a meagre water ration. Ensuring that there was sufficient water for the troops was a major task in both wars. One quartermaster sergeant remembered the effort required to sustain Allenby’s advance through the Sinai in 1917:

      ‘…now there were troops moving for that advance from all directions and they all had to be watered. There were twenty miles of waterless desert to cross and that water was carried by camels. On that particular occasion there were over 20,000 camels carrying water alone.’²¹

      Even with the best efforts of the engineers and the Army Service Corps to bring up water and store it for use, water remained a constant preoccupation for most soldiers. One Australian Light Horse trooper remembered that, ‘Hunger never worried us at any stage of the game but water did.’²² Yet most soldiers found that, with practice, they could survive on very little water. One veteran of Allenby’s campaigns related that:

      ‘Then too there was the question of water and thirst. We had to discipline ourselves to use only two pints of water a day… the troops had to learn to do without it and they did. They can do it and they did do it.’²³

      Water supply for the Eighth Army was not based on camels but on trucks, which eased the problem considerably. Nonetheless, the transport of water up to the front remained a major task and water was still the most precious commodity consumed by the army. Soldiers in the LRDG and SAS patrols who served in the deep desert received the same ration as soldiers in the First World War – just 2 pints of water a day. Ironically, the situation in Tobruk during its famous six-month siege in 1941 was slightly better, but still meagre:

      ‘In Tobruk water was a scarce commodity at half a gallon per man per day, and that was for drinking straight, as tea, for all ablutions and for washing clothes, etc. One got used to it, but when someone came up from Alexandria with a bottle of real water and a bottle of whisky the recipients drank the water neat and left the whisky!’²⁴

      This Second World War anecdote was an echo of a truth discovered by a First World War veteran, who wrote that, ‘Water is the staff of life in the desert, and its quality varies so much that half a pint of good water there is a gift of more value than a half dozen quarts of the best champagne in Europe.’²⁵

      Of course, these harsh climatic conditions had been present for centuries and the Bedouin tribespeople who inhabited the desert were inured to these difficulties. British troops also managed to adapt to the conditions. In fact, most soldiers adapted well to the desert conditions so that they could stand the heat of the day and the chill of the night, navigate themselves through the featureless terrain and cope with the strict rationing of water.

      However, there were still some discomforts that most soldiers never really learned to live with effectively. The armies fighting in the desert found that no matter how carefully they disposed of the rubbish, detritus and waste that they inevitably produced, their rubbish dumps and latrines formed perfect breeding grounds for hordes of flies that followed the army wherever it went. This meant that the men could never be free from the attentions of these persistent insects. A First World War veteran explained that:

      ‘… there were millions of flies, literally millions. They were in everything and on everything. They were in our food, they were in our clothing, they were in our ears, wherever we turned there were millions of flies. If you put a piece of paper down it would be black with flies in a few moments. We were living in bivouacs at the time and I had a little pet chameleon who seemed to appreciate the unlimited rations, but he made no difference whatsoever to the population of flies. They were simply intolerable.’²⁶

      Soldiers in the Second World War also kept chameleons СКАЧАТЬ