What are you reading at the moment?

Currently reading this one. Loads of detail regarding pre-war RAF from a fighter pilot who started on Siskins and then did a stint in the Fleet Air Arm during the early 30s. Following various training positions he became a Lysander pilot, embarking on clandestine operations over France.

 

I'm ready to read, Back to Mandalay, by Lowell Thomas. I grabbed this in hardback for £4 (Amazon) last week and was overjoyed with the images and photographs present in the book. Many from the time just before Chindit 2 got underway. However, even more wonderful, tucked away in the middle of the book was the attached letter, used I believe as a bookmark!!

 

I just got a copy of The Day Rommel Was Stopped and have started it.

I paused to look at a couple of other books to see what they said about Robcol. To my horror, Barrie Pitt doesn't even mention them. Neill Barr does, however, give them a good if brief writeup.

 

There is a lot of preamble before you get to the actual fighting in The Day Rommel Was Stopped. It's not simply the story of May-July 1942, but the story of the post-war research of those months: how and why the history was written.

The only publication you haven't mentioned to go into depth about Robcol is Captains of the Gate: Three Battles Against The Odds by Denis Blomfield-Smith. Two chapters are dedicated to the fighting from Mersa Matruh to Ruweisat (the other battles are the Channel Ports 1940 and Kohima). I suspect that Gunfire Target by Oates covers it from a personal perspective as he was there with 11 Fd Regt, but I don't have a copy because it's too damned expensive.

 

Right - and it was that part of the book which made me wonder about whether books which I owned, published since then, had done a better job. This is a bit of a black mark on Pitt's work in my opinion. The way he described it, you would think that the Panzers just drove along and were shelled from a distance by some artillery to the south, rather than there having been a desperate struggle.

I will have to calm down and read the book as it is. Last night I got to the part describing other events on the same day in 1942 and I started to get a bit testy. I felt the same way, fairly or not, when I read The Bridge at Remagen. It's a problem when your expectations don't match with what a book actually is - it needs to be taken for what it is, not for what it isn't.

 

I've just checked John Connell's Auchinleck: A Critical Biography and it is equally unsatisfactory. It has the South African and 1 Armoured Division saving the day with their fortitude, where Jephson explains that the 1 Armd Div flag on the map did not denote a very large number of tanks or a structured fighting force. It, again, has the enemy pounded by artillery as if there were just a line of 25pdrs in the desert and no infantry. The vital point, I suppose, is that the Grants of 1 Armd Div were able to be duking it out with the Panzers on the night of the 3rd because ROBCOL, ACKCOL and the South Africans had withstood throughout the crucial day before. ROBCOL didn't even come under 1 Armd Div command until the 3rd. Admittedly a regiment of 'Honeys' from 22 Armd Bde turned up at about tea-time (17:00) on the 2nd, but by this time ROBCOL had been in action for some seven hours.

Connell also has the South Africans requesting withdrawal and then going over Dorman-Smith's head to request the same from Auchinleck, but no actual mention of their subsequent withdrawal occurring on the night of the 2nd/3rd is present. Jephson is very nice about it, but the picture he paints is that at the time ROBCOL viewed them as having upped stumps and buggered off leaving them exposed on the right flank until 11th HAC and ACKCOL plugged the gap.

You may find these useful:



From: Captains of the Gate: Three Battles Against The Odds by Denis Blomfield-Smith

 

Charley, you are a real gentleman. That third map is especially brilliant and I will print it out to keep at hand while I read the book. Thank you very much!

P.S. it would not have been THAT surprising (to me) for a South African unit to have buggered off considering their poor performance at other times e.g. Operation Crusader.

 

It sounds as if Pienaar was a little stressed!



Pendulum Of War

 

Ah, see my post following yours. I do have some sympathy for Pienaar--such a large slice of their national contingent had already been lost and they even thought they were being shelled by friendly fire at one point.

Smuts puts it in context. Although the great man does sound slightly jingoistic he isn't talking of reducing exposure but of raising another division--I've great admiration for Smuts.



https://www.amazon.co.uk/Selections...qid=1516376760&sr=8-1&keywords=smuts+papers+6

 

You're right - they HAD been under very heavy fire.

I was just thinking of times during Crusader when Pienaar seemed reluctant to actually move his units as ordered. Or maybe the commands weren't given forcefully enough.

 

Happy to take your word for it: I'm an absolute duffer on North Africa prior to Spring 1942. I will note that it's surprising (although perhaps it shouldn't be) how much the individual relationships between the senior officers made a difference--in both favourable and unfavourable situations: if, say, Norrie and Pienaar had been at the staff college together and Norrie had not barked at him, or Dorman-Smith had been more supportive than confrontational, perhaps Pienaar would have felt more confident in holding his ground.

 

Currently reading Back to Mandalay, by Lowell Thomas. Picked it up as some wrap around reading to the Chindits. Strangely written, but extremely interesting with a large amount of first-hand accounts in the build up to the glider landings on the 5th March 1944. Deals with the setting up of the 1st Air Commando and the relationship between Wingate and Cochran.

 

A Good Parcel of English Soil: The Metropolitan Line

 

Very in depth and detailed study of a squadron that spent years in the Middle East. I got the book mostly for accounts of the use of Wellesleys in East Africa and Marauders as torpedo bombers in the Med by 14 Squadron

 

This and it's bloody good as well.

 

Have you been able to get hold of the accompanying map that is advertised in the book? I tried via the Ebay route (as stated in the book) with no luck and the author's email (the second suggested way in the book) didn't work.

 

Finally found a cheap copy of this which details the Italian use of the Bf109. Lots of nice images and photos and a pretty decent translation.

 

.

Currently reading "Spy Princess" by Shrabani Basu, a biography of SOE operative Noor Inayat Khan. I'm about half way through but it's been excellent so far.

My admiration for the courage of the SOE agents that went into enemy territory knows no bounds.

 

Tried the eBay route myself and couldn't find anything. Let me know how you go on emailing the author? In the meantime I'm trying to remember the name of the website where you can buy copies of that series of maps!