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the desert war suffered fewer hardships than those serving in Russia, Burma or the Pacific, but water shortage imposed chronic discomfort. ‘The flies plague us in millions from the first hour in the morning,’ wrote an Italian officer. ‘The sand always seems to be in our mouths, in our hair and in our clothes, and it is impossible to get cool.’ Armoured officer Pietro Ostellino wrote in August: ‘Even the climate has begun to make us lose hope. All day we suffer an infernal heat while the shade is rendered useless by a constant suffocating wind. It seems as though the valley has become a furnace. After eight in the evening the wind drops, but…we suffocate.’ In their tanks, the temperature often rose above 40 or 50 degrees Celsius. Opening hatches merely allowed sand and dust to swirl in.
British soldiers received a water ration of two pints a day, together with copious issues of tea brewed in old fuel tins on fires of mingled petrol and sand. They ate chiefly bully beef, biscuits and canned fruit. The Germans rejoiced in captures of Eighth Army rations, which they preferred to their own, especially the generous issues of cigarettes. ‘We…slowly make ourselves become Tommies,’ wrote Wolfgang Everth wryly during one of Rommel’s advances. ‘Our vehicles, petrol, rations and clothing were all English. I…breakfasted off two tins of milk, a tin of pineapple, biscuits and Ceylon tea.’
Men learned that the desert was perilously nuanced terrain on which to move and fight. ‘Smooth yellow sand, attractive to the uninitiated, was deadly,’ wrote a British officer. ‘Unless it was of short duration and taken at speed the truck would bog to the axles. Pebbly going was usually good, but sometimes it was a deceptive crust with soft sand underneath which only the experienced eye could detect at a distance. In some places the desert was smooth and firm as a race-track for miles on end and in every direction; in others it was treacherous as treacle.’ Both sides were sometimes confused by their enemies’ use of captured transport. Again and again, British troops received unwelcome surprises from approaching British vehicles and even tanks which proved to be driven by Rommel’s men. The Italian Bologna Division was panicked one day by the sight of a column of British trucks in their midst, until they discovered that it carried Germans.
Between offensives, there were long intervals of boredom, training and preparation. ‘The chief occupation of soldiers in wartime is hanging around doing nothing, though preferably purposefully,’ wrote a British soldier. Men dug incessantly, laid minefields, patrolled and conducted sniping duels. They suffered from desert sores, jaundice, dysentery. Both sides learned to curse khamsins, sandstorms that reduced vision to a few yards and drove yellow grit into every crevice of vehicles, equipment and human bodies. Italians called them ghibli. Pietro Ostellino wrote home: ‘You would think it impossible to take two and a half hours to cover the two hundred metres which separated the mess from my tent but that is the truth. I have never seen a night so dark: you stopped for a moment to clear your eyes and immediately lost your bearings. When finally I got to my tent I found everything under five centimetres of sand. At any moment, the canvas seemed likely to blow away.’
Even during long lulls between battles there were few diversions save the arrival of mail, every soldier’s obsession. Many men wrote home almost daily, because there was nothing else to do. The act of writing maintained a link with their other lives which became ever more precious as the passage of months extended into years. Eighth Army’s soldiers were granted occasional brief leaves in Cairo, a city they learned to hate. Olivia Manning, who later became famous as author of The Balkan Trilogy, arrived there as a refugee from Greece in April 1941: ‘The unreality had something to do with the light…It was too white. It flattened everything. It drained the colour out of everything. It lay on things like dust…we were shocked by the colourless summer delta. The squalor of the delta shocked us horribly – not only the squalor, the people’s contentment with squalor. For weeks we lived in a state of recoil.’
Having been abroad since 1939, Manning gazed curiously at the throng of British soldiers in the streets: ‘Sweat shining, hair bleached to sameness, the pink burn of English skin disguising differences; much of a size, not tall…Their worn, thin, washed-out khaki was wrinkled with heat. Dark patches of sweat showed between their shoulder blades and under their arms.’ Officers found consolations in the smart rendezvous of Egypt: ‘Groppi’s at Cairo and Pastroudi’s at Alexandria stay in the mind,’ wrote one. ‘There is a splendid decadence in having morning coffees and éclairs amid gilt mirrors and all the kitsch of affluence.’ Other ranks, however, knew only Cairo’s sordid bars and brothels, which inflicted alarming disease rates on Eighth Army.
For Mussolini’s soldiers, from the outset the North African campaign was a nightmare. The usual hazards of war were rendered almost unendurable by Italian shortages of food, ammunition, vehicles, medical supplies and belief in their cause. A transport driver, Vittorio Vallicella, kept a diary which is an unflagging tale of woe. The campaign was hopeless, he said, ‘not because of our incompetence or the enemy’s courage, but because the other side was so much better organised’. He added bitterly: ‘This is “the war of the poor” wished upon us by the Fascist hierarchy, comfortably ensconced in Rome’s Palazzo Venezia.’
Vallicella claimed to have seen only one Italian ambulance in all his time in Africa; he complained bitterly of lack of leadership at every level, from supreme headquarters in Rome down to his own unit’s officers: ‘How many times have we veterans saved their bacon. Our ally’s divisions are much more aggressive, with vastly superior fire power and manoeuvrability, led by officers who really lead. Many of our own officers have been sent home wounded or sick.’ Italian soldiers resented the disparity between their meagre rations – soup, bread, a little jam, the occasional lemon – and those of officers, who enjoyed wine and mineral water flown in from Italy. They cherished rare glimpses of home comforts, such as a visit from Red Cross girls bringing parcels sent by well-wishers at home: ‘After nearly twenty months it is wonderful to see these lovely women bringing useful gifts.’
Their best source of decent food, however, was the enemy: ‘For those lucky enough to return alive from a night patrol there was booty: jars of jam and fruit, packets of biscuits and tea, tins of corned beef, bottles of liqueurs, cigarettes, sugar, coffee, shirts, trousers, casual shoes, towels, lavatory paper, medicines like aspirin and quinine, condensed milk, jerseys made from real wool, compasses and every other kind of equipment under the sun. Such things never featured in our own supplies.’ When Vallicella caught malaria, he prayed that it might be something worse, to justify his repatriation to Italy – and was disappointed. Where most men thrilled to receive mail from home, he was dismayed to learn from his family letters that those at home knew little about ‘the hell we were in’. He was rash enough to voice aloud the view that without armour and rations it was impossible to fight, which caused him to be threatened with a firing squad. Only the intervention of his colonel saved his life.
Wavell began the Middle East war with 80,000 troops under his command. By the time Auchinleck, his successor, launched Operation Crusader in November 1941, he fielded 750,000, albeit most committed to garrison, logistical and support tasks across the theatre. After pushing Rommel back to El Agheila, the British anticipated a lull, and set about refitting their armoured units. But the Axis forces, having escaped destruction, regrouped with remarkable speed. When Pietro Ostellino emerged from the long and bloody Crusader mêlée, ‘I had the pleasant surprise of finding my kit, which I thought had fallen into English hands. It was aboard a truck which managed to escape the enemy encirclement. I finally got to sleep on my camp bed. I was in tatters after ten days without even washing my hands. I got rid of all the dirt as well as lice – some of these are still with me, but a little petrol should get rid of them. Clean, I feel a new man.’
Most of the Axis army shared Ostellino’s reinvigoration. On 21 January 1942, the British were rudely surprised when Rommel launched a new offensive, with devastating effect. Within three weeks he advanced almost three hundred miles eastwards before familiar logistical problems obliged him to halt. Neil Ritchie, now Eighth Army’s commander, set about creating strong defensive positions – the so-called Gazala Line, based upon brigade ‘boxes’ protected by mines and wire. He intended Rommel to dissipate his strength assaulting these, then to commit British armour, as usual superior in numbers, to press his advantage.
This gambit failed miserably: Ritchie had neglected to study his enemy’s commitment to deep penetration