Al Bayda, Libya, North Africa.
Photographer: Unknown.
It is 1941 and the village of Beda Littoria in North Africa stands illuminated by the rays of a Libyan sun. Originally founded by Greek colonists as Balagrae and later edified by the Romans with a temple complex dedicated to the deity Asclepius, the village is one of the few remaining outposts of the Regio Esercito, clinging on to the tatters of Mussolini’s North African empire.
Under the arch of a building, shaded from the sun, two soldiers are engaged in a conversation. Their dusty boots and dishevelled uniforms strongly hinting prolonged use and exposure to a harsh desert life where amenities are scarce and water a luxury. Yet neither are Italian.
The peaked cap of the older soldier with a Knight’s Cross neatly cradled between buttoned collars is the revealing sign of a Wehrmacht commander and an important one at that too.
Troubled by the heat, weary from lack of sleep and living on tinned sardines, bread and cold tea with a dip of lime, most often left untouched. The officer is a husk of the man he once used to be. Virtually unrecognizable from the carefully framed photos of him circulating Nazi Germany which hails him as a hero of Deutschland.
A tidy collection of media, which peppered with the right admixture by the Wehrmacht’s Propaganda Division’s head, Joseph Goebbels, is creating the desired effect among the German population. In strengthening Hitler’s stance and justifying the ongoing war.
Yet the officer is not a character dreamed up by Goebbels. In fact, he is much more real than his photos being printed in the tabloids.
So real that not long after this photo was taken, a British military unit of twenty commandos had launched a daring raid at Beda Littoria with orders to capture or have him killed.
What had brought Rommel to Al Bayda?
However, it is not until one comes across the caption attached to the vintage photo which reads, Rommel in Al Bayda 1941, does one finally find the hidden story emerging. Importantly, the sequence of events that had brought this 49-year-old Generalleutnant to stand in this corner of the earth with legs smartly parted in military style and hands clasped tight over the small of his back.
A decorated veteran of the first world war, an author and teacher at the military school in Dresden, and later the War School in Austria. Rommel was one of the brilliant military minds Germany had produced during the timeframe of the second world war.
Swift in action and decision, never idle for long and notorious for disobeying commands for the greater good. He was the German general who had shocked British and American armies with his Fingerspitzengefuhl mobile warfare, and perhaps the only commander who was capable of winning the North African Campaign for the Axis powers, had he been properly supported and timely supplied with fuel, men and armour.
First commandant of the Afrika Korps.
Assigned as the first commandant of the Deutsches Afrika Korps and later promoted to command the Panzergruppe Afrika and subsequently the Panzerarmee Afrika as a Feldmarschall. The events that had brought Rommel to North Africa had begun with the invasion of British Egypt by the Italian 10th army. Shorty, after Mussolini had declared war on Britain and her allies.
In spite of finding initial success, the 10th had eventually found itself outclassed by the British in Egypt. A counter-offensive launched had not only annihilated the 10th but also allowed the British to capture a good portion of Mussolini’s Libyan territories, and penetrate inland as far as 400 km.
The success of the British in Libya, not surprisingly, had alarmed Mussolini and threatened with the loss of his African province, he had appealed to his ally, Adolf Hitler for immediate assistance.
Who in turn anticipating the loss to free up British regiments for use in more vital battlefields had created the Deutsches Afrika Korps in January 1941, and had it flown to Tripoli as an expeditionary force under the command of his favourite commander, Erwin Rommel – promoted to the rank of Generalleutnant, a month later in February 1941.
ROMMEL, THE LEGEND: A FARBOUND.NET WALLPAPER.
Rommel’s counter-offensive.
A recent participant in the invasion of France, and having observed the potential of a Blitzkrieg up close in Poland, while serving as Hitler’s bodyguard. Rommel, as a commander was used to taking the initiative and instinctively responding to battlefield situations.
It was a trait he had acquired during World War I as an infantryman in the Prussian Deutsches Heer, which had encouraged soldiers to capitalize on opportunities, and one that he was to exploit to the full in North Africa.
Beginning an offensive that had lasted over a year and witnessed a see-saw battle between his Afrika Korps and the much larger, better equipped, better supplied and better fed 8th British Army. Comprising of British, Indian and Australian regiments.
Rommel in this phase of the war in Africa had brought the Axis powers of Germany and Italy more closer to complete victory than they had ever achieved before or could hope to attain hereafter.
Rommel, the desert fox.
Here among the barren landscapes where temperatures at times soar over 120 Fahrenheit. Compasses and modern GPS are required to navigate miles of shifting sand. And swarms of flies drive both men and animals insane. He had also established his reputation as one of the finest military tacticians in the world.
A defining path that he himself had set in precedence in March 1941 by defying the orders of the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht to act as a defensive force and launching a military reconnaissance, which had quickly escalated into a full-fledged conflict, and allowed him to force the British out of Cyrenaica, excepting the port city of Tobruk.
The cornerstone of his victories, not superior German armour or Panzers, but his tactical acumen and his uncanny ability to surprise the British, in spite of British intelligence having infiltrated Italian High Command and constantly eavesdropping on German Communications.
Combing subterfuge with highly coordinated military tactics that had seamlessly brought tanks, artillery and anti-tank units to leapfrog from offensive to offensive in concentrated and mass attacks.
Rommel had vexed the British to such an extent, that his victories had not only alarmed Winston Churchill and called for an immediate reshuffle of the 8th army’s command structure. But also earned him the nickname of the Wusten-fuchs or the desert fox.
The village of Beda Littoria.
During this time, the village of Beda Littoria was of little importance to both the Axis and Allied armies. It was neither a strategic location nor considered to be of any real military value. The village was briefly the headquarters of Rommel and later a station of the chief quartermaster of the Panzergruppe Afrika.
The village’s only claim to fame during the North African war was a failed assassination attempt on the life of Rommel. Which had taken place a night before the beginning of Operation Crusader in November 1941.
The British, frustrated by his unconventional tactics had sent a team of elite British commandos to capture or kill Rommel, under the assumption the village was his headquarters.
Military funeral for the commando leader.
Unknown to the commandos, however, Rommel by then had shifted his headquarters closer to the besieged city of Tobruk and was not even in North Africa but celebrating his 50th birthday in Rome, Italy. Which ironically British Intelligence had been privy to.
Detected after an alarm had been raised, many of the commandos had been captured after an ensuing firefight. Though Rommel had been a little indignant with the British for assuming he would be residing 250km behind the frontlines.
He had nonetheless ordered a military funeral with full honours for the leader of the commando unit – who had died from wounds during the shootout at the villa in Beda Littoria.
The photo.
This rare vintage photo comes from the University of Al Bayda. It appears to have been left behind by German troops during the retreat of the Axis forces from Libya and may possibly have been taken by a soldier who wished to preserve the memory of his General in his own personal album.
Rommel was a soldier’s soldier. While thoroughly professional with his officers, he had yet put the welfare of his men before him.
The Allied Generals, Montgomery and Patton, had reserved a deep respect for Rommel. While Montgomery had kept a portrait of the German commander in his command caravan. Patton had studied his books and was the first American commander to adopt Rommel’s tactics for mobile warfare. Which he had, incidentally, used with devastating effect in Northern France.
To the three generals, the contest in North Africa was not a war. Montgomery saw it as a tennis match while Patton, as a medieval joust.
