Three Days, Two Ways

The Afrika Korps were distributed on the Egyptian-Libyan border in crafty ambiguity. Colonial Commander Lieut. General Erwin Rommel had disposed them so that they were ready to attack and they were ready to defend.

Out in front they held Halfaya (Hellfire) Pass. Behind Hellfire was a huge tank park. Behind that was a mass of infantry. Behind that was another tank park. And in the utmost rear there were many airfields with many planes.

These dispositions, which could be used two ways, were supplemented by duplex tactics. To the minimal detail, the German troops knew what to do on the offense, what on defense; for in most cases the tasks were identical, though differently applied, the equipment identical, though differently used.

As the zero hour approached one dawn last week, all General Rommel had to know was whether he was coming or going.

First Day. He knew that the British were mounting an attack. Though the British had used great caution, Axis reconnaissance had for seven days spotted perhaps two divisions of Indian infantry, scattered thinly and on foot, making its blistering way toward the frontier from Matruh, 150 miles inside Egypt. General Rommel knew that so much infantry does not move so far so fast in the face of such hardships unless a real attack is contemplated.

The main British column, when the attack came, was sent along the top of the sheer 300-foot escarpment. The British had threaded their way far to the south east of Hellfire Pass, and hoped, by a wide swing, to encircle the German positions.

General Rommel met the main British force with one of his ambiguities-- he sent the full steel strength of his primary defensive tank park onto the offense. They counterattacked. On that first day a violent tank battle swirled on the desert. Besides his tanks General Rommel turned his anti-aircraft batteries against the advancing British tanks. The battle seemed to go geographically in favor of the British, who nevertheless suffered terrible metal losses.

While the tanks were tangled, Indian infantry stormed Hellfire. These wiry veterans of crag warfare on India's North-West Frontier sneaked into defiles and crevasses as obscurely as rock-dwelling lizards. They stormed post after post, took many, and by night felt confident of taking the rest.

But as soon as it was dark the Germans began rocket-signaling. The sky was striped with blue, green, red and yellow rockets, each conveying a message: Here we need men. . . . Send ammunition. . . . We must have artillery. . . . Bring food. In the darkness supply troops sneaked up to carry out the requests. By morning the posts were fully manned, fully armed, fresh as if untouched.

Second day decided the battle. It was so hot that gun barrels blistered any hand that touched them. It was so dry that the brackish, chlorinated, half-boiling water tasted like something from a mineral spring. Nevertheless both sides fought gallantly.

It soon became clear that the R.A.F. pilots were as yet unable to turn their bitterly learned lessons of defense into attack closely wedded to ground attack. The R.A.F. fought well--using some U.S. planes--but the best it could claim was that it was "holding the German dive-bombers at bay." That was not attack.

Third Day. The orthodox idea of a tank trap is a super-ditch like a lion pit. But the Germans' trap for the British tanks was of steel, like a bear-trap. It snapped at dawn on the third day.

The northern jaw of the trap was a column of tanks which cut directly south from Bardia on the coast; the southern jaw another column which swung north from Sidi Omar, 25 miles down in the desert. These tanks, which seemed to the British to have come from nowhere, were from the rear tank park, near Tobruch.

The jaws closed relentlessly on the fleshy part of the British offensive--just behind the British tanks, just in front of the infantry reserve. When the British tardily saw the jaws snapping, there was nothing to do but pull out as much of the paw as possible. The British claimed a clean withdrawal; the Axis, 200 tanks.

The artisan of conversion, who turned offensive techniques into defensive as easily as if tactics were tailored like reversible overcoats, was 49-year-old Lieut. General Erwin Rommel. He has made a habit of ambiguity.

Having been one of Adolf Hitler's intellectual blotters in the days when the Fuehrer was throwing the ideological ink of Mein Kampf around, Erwin Rommel turned himself into a thug, helped organize the illegal Reichswehr and SA storm troops. Having fought against the Italians at Isonzo in World War I, he was now fighting with them in their Libya--though his contempt for such Latin colleagues as General Italo Gariboldi, with whom he theoretically shares command, is great.

Having been born in south Germany, in Swabia where the swains are slow and mellow, he turned into a Prussian flint-heart. Recently he greeted a new A.D.C.: "I congratulate you on your new post; your four predecessors were killed in it."

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