The Mammoth Book of Modern Battles by Jon E. Lewis

Author:Jon E. Lewis [Lewis, Jon E.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781845298851
Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group

El Alamein (1942)

J. F. C. Fuller

The first three weeks of July 1942, on the El Alamein line [in North Africa] were devoted to attack and counter-attack. Rommel’s one aim was that the front should not become static, and Auchinleck’s aim was to make it so. The latter won the tussle and the outcome of the campaign became a question of reinforcements and supplies.

Faced with this situation, Rommel calculated that up to mid-September the advantage would be his; but in this he was badly deceived, because from the end of July on Auchinleck switched the main weight of his air offensive from the forward positions to the ports of Mersa Matruh, Bardia, and Tobruk, which left Rommel with Benghazi – 680 miles away – as his nearest secure base of supply. The results were that by the middle of August he was still short on establishments of 16,000 men, 210 tanks, 175 troop carriers and armoured cars and 1,500 vehicles; his army consumed double the amount of supplies that crossed the Mediterranean, and had it not been for the vast enemy dumps captured in Marmarica and western Egypt, “it would”, as he says, “never have been able to exist at all.”

Rommel was severely criticized for not halting on the Egyptian frontier after he had taken Tobruk. True enough, had he done so he would have curtailed considerably his communications, but this in itself would not have solved his supply problem, because, as long as Malta remained in British hands in the long run it was impossible for him to out-stockpile his enemy. Further, once his attempt to rush the Alamein position failed, he could not fall back on a rear position because he had not sufficient transport simultaneously to supply his forward position and build up a position in rear. Since to remain where he was could not solve the problem of driving his enemy out of Egypt, he realized that he would have to attack, not when he was fully ready – that he could never hope for – but before his enemy’s deficiencies had been made good.

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