A simulated observer/journalist's setting of the campaign
Nov 23, 2014 5:40:39 GMT
Post by Michael Miller on Nov 23, 2014 5:40:39 GMT
It's some of the most forbidding terrain on Earth. Summer temperatures can exceed 130° Fahrenheit, or 40 Celsius. Water is to be found only at wells miles apart. High winds stir up immense clouds, storms of dust. The great emptiness is spellbinding to the young men, underage boys in many cases.
Some of the men are there as volunteers, full of patriotic fervor for what they see as nothing less than the reestablishment of the ancient Roman Empire (the part that was actually Rome). Others, most of them, and not uncommonly those who have been critical of the government, have practically been dragged from their homes and shipped off.
It’s a generation of young men who had watched their fathers return in boxes from war, or as horribly disfigured shells of their former selves. And brothers, and best friends for some, who have been drafted a second time in their lives to wage war against the greatest empire on earth, that had been their ally in that war, only 22 years ago. They had been a part of a bloody, terrible stalemate. This was followed by crushing defeat, which by seeming miracle only months later, ultimate victory.
Even that victory, so dear and painfully won as it was, soon turned hollow. Promises made by their Allies were broken. Betrayed, injured and angry, impoverished by the unimaginable human and material cost of the struggle, they listened to raging speeches full of hatred. Demagogues blamed the soft, wishy-washy liberals and socialists for the lack of international respect that they said the country was entitled to.
Ill-equipped, often carrying weapons which were literal relics of that great convulsion, the men now find themselves in a hostile environment, depending on endless lines of trucks to provide virtually everything they need. These trucks are not fancy modern vehicles with GPS, and smartphone chargers. They’re balky, fickle and fuel hungry themselves. The only decent road stretches across one thousand miles of that same desert.
The order to attack has come, for September 9, 1940. Soldiers look doubtfully at each other, and the officers who are to lead them. Most of the officers treat the lowly enlisted men badly. Of the meager provisions that can be brought forward so far by vehicles that were unreliable even in relatively developed Italy, the officers took what they wanted first and left that much less for everyone else. Adding fraud and shoddy workmanship to their woes, the men find themselves poorly equipped, and led, compared to the British Commonwealth troops just across the Egyptian frontier.
Attacking was not what these men by and large wanted. Surviving in this inhospitable desert was hard enough, let alone trying to defeat an army. Thoughtlessly, macaroni was issued to the men as the greatest part of their lousy rations. Pasta of course requires Water to prepare. In the dry wastes, this can become impossible at times, leaving men hungry and thirsty for days.
Rodolfo Graziani was well aware of the tenuous state of his forces. But he was badgered on by Il Duce, Benito Mussolini, who wanted a cheap success to bolster Italian bargaining positions after what he expected to be a quick armistice and a new peace conference to right the wrongs against Italy. Oh, yes of course the Germans deserved something too...
On paper, Graziani’s Italian 10th Army was an impressive force, mustering over 250000 men, hundreds of tanks, and an air force that greatly outnumbered their opponents in almost every area. But still he was worried about a few exceptions to his apparently overwhelming superiority. He’d taken command only two months before, after national hero Marshal Balbo's death. Graziani was familiar with Libya, having led a brutal counter-insurgency against Senussi tribesmen in the late 1920s.
The biggest exception was in some of the least glamorous aspects of an army. In trucks, and the material carried by them, the Commonwealth was better equipped. The Royal Navy and their civilian transport shipping usually held the advantage on the sea and could more readily move men and supplies by ship. Fascist Italy’s opponent possessed a big advantage in their ability to provide logistic support.
The Commonwealth, by this time over 200 years a global empire, knew a thing or two about supporting soldiers in far-flung lands. Those lands stretched from north of Britain to South Africa, from the Caribbean across the Atlantic and Indian Oceans to New Zealand, Australia, Singapore and Hong Kong in the Far East. The sun truly never set on the Empire.
But it was beginning to set. The many costs of the Great War from 1914-1918 had been felt deeply there as well. A generation of men was missing. Through the 1920s and well into the 1930s, military spending was way down and the massive armies of 1918 shrank. Nobody wanted to be the ones to tell a public traumatized by the carnage that “The War to End All Wars” hadn’t ended them.
The Great Depression ravaged economies all across Europe and America. Late and reluctantly, after Ethiopia and Munich, rearmament began amid the gathering blackness of war. Once again, the world was descending into a nightmare, and since the beginning of this one in September 1939, things had been going disastrously.
Mighty France, ally and co-victor in the Great War, had fallen within weeks, just 3 months earlier after the German “Blitzkrieg” through the forests of the Ardennes had cut the Allied armies in two. In Britain the Royal Air Force fought for their life against the Luftwaffe to fend off an expected invasion.
So despite the vast resources of empire, little could be spared immediately in Egypt, despite the crucial strategic importance of the Suez Canal. Equipment that might have reinforced the little Western Desert Force of no more than 36000 men stayed in Britain to refit the 300000 who’d been rescued from the debacle of the German victory off the coast of Flanders with practically nothing left except themselves.
The British advanced force was only the size of an understrength division. Composed mostly of men from the 7th Armoured Division, they were short of gear themselves, though not to the extent of the Italians. They would not immediately engage but instead maneuver to delay any Italian advance.
Across the eastern half of Libya, known as Cyrenaica, pilots strap into the cockpits of Savoia-Marchetti SM. 79 bombers and Fiat fighters. Crews enter the hellish interior of Ansaldo M11/39 tanks amid the heat. Those doubtful infantrymen strap on heavy packs and shoulder their fifty-year-old Carcano Model 1891 rifles.
The three months of “phony war” in the Western Desert is going hot.
©2014, Michael Miller. All rights reserved.
Some of the men are there as volunteers, full of patriotic fervor for what they see as nothing less than the reestablishment of the ancient Roman Empire (the part that was actually Rome). Others, most of them, and not uncommonly those who have been critical of the government, have practically been dragged from their homes and shipped off.
It’s a generation of young men who had watched their fathers return in boxes from war, or as horribly disfigured shells of their former selves. And brothers, and best friends for some, who have been drafted a second time in their lives to wage war against the greatest empire on earth, that had been their ally in that war, only 22 years ago. They had been a part of a bloody, terrible stalemate. This was followed by crushing defeat, which by seeming miracle only months later, ultimate victory.
Even that victory, so dear and painfully won as it was, soon turned hollow. Promises made by their Allies were broken. Betrayed, injured and angry, impoverished by the unimaginable human and material cost of the struggle, they listened to raging speeches full of hatred. Demagogues blamed the soft, wishy-washy liberals and socialists for the lack of international respect that they said the country was entitled to.
Ill-equipped, often carrying weapons which were literal relics of that great convulsion, the men now find themselves in a hostile environment, depending on endless lines of trucks to provide virtually everything they need. These trucks are not fancy modern vehicles with GPS, and smartphone chargers. They’re balky, fickle and fuel hungry themselves. The only decent road stretches across one thousand miles of that same desert.
The order to attack has come, for September 9, 1940. Soldiers look doubtfully at each other, and the officers who are to lead them. Most of the officers treat the lowly enlisted men badly. Of the meager provisions that can be brought forward so far by vehicles that were unreliable even in relatively developed Italy, the officers took what they wanted first and left that much less for everyone else. Adding fraud and shoddy workmanship to their woes, the men find themselves poorly equipped, and led, compared to the British Commonwealth troops just across the Egyptian frontier.
Attacking was not what these men by and large wanted. Surviving in this inhospitable desert was hard enough, let alone trying to defeat an army. Thoughtlessly, macaroni was issued to the men as the greatest part of their lousy rations. Pasta of course requires Water to prepare. In the dry wastes, this can become impossible at times, leaving men hungry and thirsty for days.
Rodolfo Graziani was well aware of the tenuous state of his forces. But he was badgered on by Il Duce, Benito Mussolini, who wanted a cheap success to bolster Italian bargaining positions after what he expected to be a quick armistice and a new peace conference to right the wrongs against Italy. Oh, yes of course the Germans deserved something too...
On paper, Graziani’s Italian 10th Army was an impressive force, mustering over 250000 men, hundreds of tanks, and an air force that greatly outnumbered their opponents in almost every area. But still he was worried about a few exceptions to his apparently overwhelming superiority. He’d taken command only two months before, after national hero Marshal Balbo's death. Graziani was familiar with Libya, having led a brutal counter-insurgency against Senussi tribesmen in the late 1920s.
The biggest exception was in some of the least glamorous aspects of an army. In trucks, and the material carried by them, the Commonwealth was better equipped. The Royal Navy and their civilian transport shipping usually held the advantage on the sea and could more readily move men and supplies by ship. Fascist Italy’s opponent possessed a big advantage in their ability to provide logistic support.
The Commonwealth, by this time over 200 years a global empire, knew a thing or two about supporting soldiers in far-flung lands. Those lands stretched from north of Britain to South Africa, from the Caribbean across the Atlantic and Indian Oceans to New Zealand, Australia, Singapore and Hong Kong in the Far East. The sun truly never set on the Empire.
But it was beginning to set. The many costs of the Great War from 1914-1918 had been felt deeply there as well. A generation of men was missing. Through the 1920s and well into the 1930s, military spending was way down and the massive armies of 1918 shrank. Nobody wanted to be the ones to tell a public traumatized by the carnage that “The War to End All Wars” hadn’t ended them.
The Great Depression ravaged economies all across Europe and America. Late and reluctantly, after Ethiopia and Munich, rearmament began amid the gathering blackness of war. Once again, the world was descending into a nightmare, and since the beginning of this one in September 1939, things had been going disastrously.
Mighty France, ally and co-victor in the Great War, had fallen within weeks, just 3 months earlier after the German “Blitzkrieg” through the forests of the Ardennes had cut the Allied armies in two. In Britain the Royal Air Force fought for their life against the Luftwaffe to fend off an expected invasion.
So despite the vast resources of empire, little could be spared immediately in Egypt, despite the crucial strategic importance of the Suez Canal. Equipment that might have reinforced the little Western Desert Force of no more than 36000 men stayed in Britain to refit the 300000 who’d been rescued from the debacle of the German victory off the coast of Flanders with practically nothing left except themselves.
The British advanced force was only the size of an understrength division. Composed mostly of men from the 7th Armoured Division, they were short of gear themselves, though not to the extent of the Italians. They would not immediately engage but instead maneuver to delay any Italian advance.
Across the eastern half of Libya, known as Cyrenaica, pilots strap into the cockpits of Savoia-Marchetti SM. 79 bombers and Fiat fighters. Crews enter the hellish interior of Ansaldo M11/39 tanks amid the heat. Those doubtful infantrymen strap on heavy packs and shoulder their fifty-year-old Carcano Model 1891 rifles.
The three months of “phony war” in the Western Desert is going hot.
©2014, Michael Miller. All rights reserved.