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

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СКАЧАТЬ thing about desert warfare is the mobility, the fact that you could just go anywhere within your limits. You couldn’t go too far south or you’d set off into the soft sands and you couldn’t do that. You’d come to a dead halt. I suppose the mobility is the thing, the capacity to be able to continually outflank each other.’⁴⁰

      However, there was an important distinction in the nature of mobility between the First and Second World Wars. While tanks were used during the Battle of Gaza in 1917, and the Duke of Westminster’s armoured car squadron was the first experiment with motorised warfare in the Western Desert, most soldiers in the First World War were restricted to the mobility offered by horses and their own legs. The Australian Light Horse gained fame for their ability to ride around the Turks – quite literally – but one British infantryman remembered that all his travels in the desert had been, All on foot. Never had a ride on a horse or anything… But I think I walked every inch of the way from the Suez Canal, Kantara, right up to Jerusalem. Every inch was covered on foot. Not in one day – not in two days either!’⁴¹

      While the soldiers of the First World War were restricted to age-old forms of transport, the British Army that fought in the desert in the Second World War was almost wholly motorised. The mechanisation of the Army, and the opportunity for mobility that this conferred in an area devoid of natural barriers, meant that the fighting in the Western Desert in the Second World War was more fluid, chaotic and confusing than any before. During the ‘Crusader’ battle in November 1941, one soldier’s battalion met with German tanks:

      ‘The tanks fire a few shots after, but we’re soon out of range, and keep moving at fair speed for ten miles, with hundreds of other vehicles streaming in concourse. It looks like a stampede, but everything’s under control. Apparently these “scarpers” are accepted desert technique; when there’s no cover at all and no particular bit of ground is tactically worth much sacrifice, getting thrown up against heavily superior enemy forces leaves no option but to clear out, the quicker the better – discretion proving the better part of valour every time.’⁴²

      This unparalleled mobility also had some unforeseen effects. With few features or places worth fighting for (with the exception of Tobruk), the armies could seize and relinquish vast areas of ground in a matter of days. As each army advanced, its supply lines became stretched, and its spearheads consequently weaker, while the enemy, retreating on to his supply lines became correspondingly stronger. This see-saw effect led to the famous ‘Benghazi stakes’ in which the armies found themselves advancing and retreating over the same desert five times in the space of two years.

      The mechanisation of the armies in the Second World War was only one area of contrast. During the Palestine campaign of 1917–18, the Australian Light Horse had thought nothing of mounted charges against Turkish trenches, as one veteran related:

      ‘The Turks, on the whole, right through the whole campaign, didn’t seem to like the steel – you were safer with them at 100 yards than you were at 600 yards. At 600 yards they were wonderfully good shots and they’d shoot you right up to the trenches, but the minute you got amongst them with the steel it was always a surrender.’⁴³

      While the Australian Light Horse gained a fine reputation for the speed and daring of its mounted actions in Palestine, such exploits were a thing of the past by the Second World War. An episode during the Eritrean campaign demonstrated just how much had changed after the 20-year interval. During the advance to Keren, the headquarters of Gazelle Force, a reconnaissance unit commanded by Colonel Messervy, was charged from the rear by a squadron of Eritrean cavalry:

      ‘Out of the scrub they burst, galloping furiously and throwing those little Italian hand grenades at anyone they could get. The guns were rapidly turned round and opened fire at point blank range. Gazelle headquarters dived into their slit trenches and started to fire with everything available. But the charge was stopped less than thirty yards from the guns and the few surviving cavalrymen fled, pursued by an armoured car. Out of the sixty men who made the charge, twenty-five dead and sixteen wounded were left on the ground. It was a most gallant affair. It demonstrated beyond all doubt that this obsolete arm could not be used to attack troops armed with modern weapons.’⁴⁴

      Horsed cavalry had had its day by 1939, but a mounted Yeomanry cavalry brigade was sent to Palestine in 1939. However, by the time these troops saw action at Alamein, their horses had been replaced by armoured steeds.⁴⁵

      While Allenby’s men were familiar with the names of the settlements they fought over in Palestine, the featureless nature of the Western Desert meant that the few landmarks and towns in the area took on heightened significance during the campaign fought in the Second World War. Benghazi, Tobruk and Mersa Matruh became household names in Britain, but there was little to remind soldiers of past military history. Bir Hacheim, identified only by two hummocks in the middle of the desert, had been the site of the rescue of the prisoners from HMS Tara in 1915 during the Senussi campaign, but gained greater fame during the Battle of Gazala in May 1942 for the tenacious defence of the French Foreign Legion.⁴⁶ Just as their forebears had named trenches on the Western Front after familiar domestic landmarks, so soldiers in the desert identified positions with familiar names to bring some element of home to the barren landscape. The Guards defensive position or ‘box’ during the Battle of Gazala, known as ‘Knightsbridge’, is one of the most famous. But although one of the fiercest tank battles of the Desert War raged there, there was nothing to distinguish this piece of desert from another apart from the name.

      One unique feature of the Desert War in the Second World War was the development of the ‘Krieg ohne Hass’ (War without Hate). With the battle areas largely devoid of population (with the exception of the townspeople of Benghazi, Bardia and Tobruk), the armies could concentrate simply on fighting one another. Although the fighting was certainly intense and bloody, a mutual respect developed between the armies to the extent that Rommel became an almost mythical figure amongst the British troops. This spirit also manifested itself in the generally correct and proper treatment given to prisoners and wounded. While this was obviously a clearer distinction for the Germans, who enacted such brutality on the Eastern Front, it also provided a contrast with the desert campaigns of the First World War. British soldiers respected the fighting qualities of the Turkish soldier in much the same way that they admired the skill of the German soldiers 20 years later. General Sir John Shea emphasised that he ‘respected the Turk as a soldier, and was always careful to make my plans as best I could… I thought he was a good stout-hearted soldier, and he fought well.’⁴⁷ While there was a mutual respect between foes in the First World War, there was no development of a similar spirit of a ‘War without Hate’. Turkish treatment of British prisoners could be appalling and this seems to have been reflected in the harsher style of war between the two armies. One British soldier tasked with the capture of some Turkish machine-guns led by German officers related that:

      ‘When I gave the word, we all dashed forward… There wasn’t one left alive after we’d finished with them. We captured the guns and finished them off. And the German officers, they had the first packet, believe me.’⁴⁸

      Although such an attitude to fighting was also common on the Western Front in the First World War, this kind of incident does not accord with the idea of a spirit of ‘chivalry’ engendered by desert fighting.

      Yet even though there are numerous contrasts between the two wars in the desert, the similarities remain more important. Both armies experienced the hardships of the desert and the sense of isolation, intensified by distance and enhanced by the harsh climate. Both developed a distinctive identity as desert warriors, quite separate from the wider identities found on the Western Front in the First World War, or of Slim’s Fourteenth Army in Burma in the Second World War. Both armies shared the experience of defeat and eventual victory, and this veteran’s account of taking Turkish prisoners in Palestine in 1918 could easily have been an Eighth Army veteran speaking of O’Connor’s СКАЧАТЬ