Desert Rats

The Eighth Army was probably the single most famous military formation raised by Great Britain and its Commonwealth during World War II. Formed in September 1941 from veterans of Western Desert Force and newly arrived troops, it went on to wage an extended hard–fought campaign against German and Italian troops across the desert wastes of North Africa, with fierce fighting taking place in Libya, Egypt, Tripolitania and finally the mountains and plains of Tunisia. It was the only theatre where the British Army could take the war to the Axis powers, whose armed forces were led by perhaps Nazi Germany's most able and charismatic Panzer general. It was also, in many respects, a campaign as much against a hot, dusty and unforgiving climate and environment in which British Commonwealth troops lived, moved and fought, as against the enemy.

This Desert War waged by Eighth Army was decidedly an imperial war effort carried out for much of the time without significant US support. The polyglot composition of Eighth Army, composed of British and a range of other Commonwealth troops — Australian, Indian, New Zealand and South African, as well as smaller Free French and Polish contingents — in itself helped Eighth Army build a distinctive identity. Only by the Second Battle of El Alamein did British divisions make up the majority of Eighth Army, and even then a considerable proportion remained from the Commonwealth. By the end of the Desert War, Eighth Army had its own style, a slang peppered with Arabic terms, a distinctive ethos, and a 'lived–in' uniform adapted to the heat of the desert.

Eighth Army was thrown into battle immediately in November 1941 in Cyrenaica and engaged in a seesaw war fought back and forth along the Mediterranean littoral, under a succession of senior British commanders (including Alan Cunningham, Neil Ritchie, Claude Auchinleck and Bernard Montgomery), during which its fortunes waxed (with an initial hard–fought victory during Operation Crusader) and waned (arguably reaching its nadir in June 1942 with the fall of Tobruk). Eighth Army experienced a sharp learning curve. Indeed, it initially displayed amateurism of the worst sort, suffered poor leadership and experienced repeated abject defeats. Defeat, however, was ultimately crowned with victory following the decisive battle of El Alamein. Much had to be learnt by trial and error about command and control, fighting methods, doctrine and training in the harsh school of experience. It was a campaign unlike any other fought by a British Army, involving highly mobile operations covering vast distances in which tanks played a central role. Indeed, the war waged across the 'great sand table' (a device used by the military to teach students tactics) as one former officer has described it, was the great testing, learning and proving ground for the British Army during the early war years, without which success in its later stages may have been far harder. By its end Eighth Army had acquired a new professionalism that stood it in good stead during the invasions of Sicily and Italy.

The fundamental task or combat mission first assigned to Western Desert Force and then its successor Eighth Army in September 1941 remained virtually unchanged throughout the Desert War. For Middle East Command, from 2 July commanded by Gen. Sir Claude Auchinleck, the defence of Egypt and the Suez Canal, the vital maritime link between the United Kingdom and the far–flung eastern part of the British Empire, was always of key strategic importance. A purely defensive attitude, however, was anathema to the Prime Minister and the British High Command, who placed successive Commanders–in–Chief under intense, sustained pressure to mount offensive operations. Eighth Army, commanded by Gen. Sir Alan Cunningham, was given an immediate task on its formation, like its predecessor Western Desert Force, with relieving the beleaguered garrison of Tobruk, establishing airfields in the 'bulge' of Cyrenaica to provide air cover for convoys plying between Alexandria and Malta, and most immediately of defeating the Axis forces operating along the Mediterranean littoral. To do so a range of combat formations drawn from the British Commonwealth armies — British, New Zealand, Indian and South African — were placed at its disposal, including infantry and armour, as well as a range of supporting arms and services. A smaller number of formations from other countries under Axis occupation also formed part of Eighth Army from time to time, including the Polish Carpathian Brigade, Free French troops and Greeks.

The task of carrying out this combat mission assigned to Eighth Army — indeed the whole character of the Desert War — was dominated and vastly complicated by the sheer scale of the theatre of war, and by the difficult climate and terrain across which for three long years it fought what was, in many respects, a novel form of conflict. The backdrop of this extended fighting between Eighth Army and the Axis powers stretched along the Mediterranean littoral from Tunisia in the west, across Italian Tripolitania and Cyrenaica, and then into Egypt, ending at El Alamein. Tripoli and Cairo were separated, for example, by a distance of 1,200 miles. Despite its size, the theatre of war was largely free from human habitation, except for a few small towns and villages scattered along the coast and tiny bands of Senussi nomads, who eked out a bare living in the interior. In the west, the area around Tripoli was more highly cultivated, as was that westwards into the mountains of Tripolitania. During the endgame in Tunisia fighting took place in more open cultivated areas.

The area popularly and largely inaccurately known as the Western Desert (a name correctly just applying to the area within the western confines of Egypt) formed the main arena for fighting between the heterogeneous British forces and the Axis powers. This was a rough rectangle some 240 miles long and at the greatest 150 miles in width. It was divided into two distinct areas: the coastal strip, and the desert proper lying above a line of steep escarpments.

The coastal strip (of varying width) lying between the escarpments and the Mediterranean sea formed generally a low–lying plain, consisting of a limestone pavement thinly overlaid with sand and scattered rock fragments, with areas of open sand and sand dunes nearer the coast. Access to the sea was blocked in places by salt marshes. Some rainfall meant the area supported limited cultivation around which small settlements existed.

The twin escarpments, varying widely in height and precipitousness, that separated the coastal strip and the desert proper (lying on the limestone plateau above) had particular tactical and operational significance throughout the war in the desert. These dominating natural features, rising to a height of 500ft in places, faced northwards towards the sea and provided valuable points of observation, and places of concealment and were largely impassable to wheeled and tracked vehicles, except at a few gaps. These natural choke points — such as at Fuka, Halfaya and Sidi Rezegh — provided vital access from one area to another and because of this formed the focus of much fighting during the Libyan campaign.

The desert terrain lying on the Libyan plateau above the escarpments, standing on average 500ft above sea level, was extremely flat with only a few low–lying ridges and depressions breaking up a largely monotonous landscape. The surface of the desert on the limestone plateau varied widely from area to area, presenting differing going for both tracked and wheeled vehicles. The desert had relatively few landmarks of significance and next to no vegetation, except near oases deep in the interior. This made desert navigation an essential skill for all combatants.

The main area of intensive combat operations fought by Eighth Army was demarcated to the south of the Western Desert by the oases of Jarabub and Siwa, lying at the edge of the great sand sea, a tract of deep sand and high dunes impassable to wheeled or tracked vehicles, which stretched hundreds of miles. To the south of the railway halt at El Alamein in Egypt the Quattara Depression, a vast area of salt marsh lying 200ft below sea level, passable only to camels along a few tracks, created a natural bottleneck some 40 miles wide.

The barren, unpopulated and wide open expanses of the open desert gave unparalleled free scope for manoeuvre for fast–moving armoured and motorized units and meant mobility was always at a premium. It often proved difficult to know where anybody was at a given time and also very difficult to judge distances in the desert, and engagements often took place at long range. The desert also imposed massive logistical constraints on commanders, given the few roads and complete absence of railways until they were constructed during the war, making comprehensive maintenance and supply arrangements of paramount importance. As one German commander purportedly declared: 'The desert was a tactician's paradise, but a quartermaster's nightmare.'