World War: Liberation Out of Libya?

Fighting in Africa’s deserts is like playing chess with nothing but rooks and pawns. Whole areas of strategic gambit are impossible, and even admissible tactics are confounded and confused by nature. Water is as vital as ammunition; sand finer than talcum makes its way into eyes, carburetors and rifle breeches; heat averaging 120 degrees out of doors becomes incineration inside a tank or behind an airplane engine. Trails ideal for the soft pads of camel feet are too soft for the treads of caterpillars. Mirages, the blistering wind called ghibli, sand blizzards, lack of cover, germs and salt in wells—all constitute hazards often more dangerous than point-blank enemy.

Into this gritty, parched, uncertain warfare Italy and Britain were plunged deep last week. This campaign, which the British seemed inclined to treat as comic opera and the Italians as the biggest thing since Julius Caesar, was potentially as important to World War II as the still possible invasion of the United Kingdom by the Germans.

If the Battle of Britain should turn adversely for the Axis, or if it should become a long-drawn-out affair of bombings and blockade, the Southern Theatre might well be the deciding area of combat. Like wolves and dogs which instinctively spring for adversaries’ throats, the strategists of the Axis last week seemed to be baring their fangs for the British Empire’s jugular vein at its two most exposed spots. Foreign Minister von Ribbentrop’s visit to Rome (see p. 29) paved the way for action against Gibraltar, and the Italian drive in Egypt was headed straight for Suez and the Red Sea.

If the Axis controlled the extremities of the Mediterranean, Britain’s fight would be far harder, might be impossible. Without the oil fields of Iraq, without tenable naval bases in the Mediterranean to harry the Axis on its southern flank, without the help of the Moslem world and without the last shred of support in the Balkans, Britain would be hard put to it to win.

Italian strategy was not the German one of fanning and pinching mechanized columns. There was only one Italian drive. The Italian commander, Marshal Rodolfo Graziani, used Foch’s plan of “applying superior force at one point.” From Fort Capuzzo in Libya (see map}), fortnight ago, started the Italian spearhead—a long thin line of light Fiat tanks in Indian file, three infantry regiments, including many blacks, a machine-gun battalion, a company equipped with mortars, an artillery regiment with heavier 10-centimetre Ansaldos and Vickers 15.2s, two sapper companies with well-drilling and road-building equipment, a communications company with water trucks, two mopping-up units, support from the Air Force, using mostly Breda combat bombers, and from reserves, bringing total strength to about 250,000. This well-balanced striking force drove first for Salûm, five miles across the border.

The defenders—perhaps 70,000 Britons, Australians, New Zealanders, Rhodesians, Indians—had been braced for the attack for some time. They were reported to have captured confidential plans for such a drive from the First Libyan Army many weeks ago, and were amazed to find the plans nevertheless followed to a T last week. Against the plans the British defense was apparently: to fall back, harassing the invaders, to well-watered Mersa Matrûh, the terminus of a narrow-gauge railroad from Alexandria, thus avoiding serious action until the British were in an area with good supply lines and the Italians were far from their base with extended supply lines which could be attacked.

When the Italians reached Salûm, they found the town apparently bristling with tanks and guns. But their attack brought only a ghostly defense; the tanks and guns were all dummies made of wood. The column pushed on until it reached Bagbag, 25 miles from Libya, and finally Sûdi Barrani, 55 miles in. The British hit and ran with tanks, armored cars and planes. They dynamited and salted a dozen Roman wells in the neighborhood. But the attackers were supplied with water trucks and apparatus to condense fresh from salt water.

At Sûdi Barrani the Italians halted to gather themselves for the push to Mersa Matrûh, where Cleopatra used to bathe in the blue sea waves. No sooner had the Italians settled down than the R. A. F. from the air and the Royal Navy from the sea began harassing them. Well acquainted with the lessons of Lawrence in Arabia and Allenby in Palestine was the British Commander, Lieut. General Sir Archibald Percival Wavell, 57, who knows the Middle East like the knuckles on his own hand. He sent his men to work on the un-camouflaged Italian camps with a little of everything, including mobile “guerrilla artillery.” British warships from Alexandria shelled the coastal road by which the Italians advanced.

Even in the desert, World War II was total last week, and volleys of propaganda and politics were not wanting. Italy was extremely anxious that the 32,000 British-trained Egyptian troops should not be engaged. The Italian press cried that this was a “war for Egyptian independence”—”liberating Egypt from the oppressing domination of the English.” Although the Egyptians showed no particular desire to be unyoked, the Egyptian Cabinet neither declared war against Italy nor prepared its armed forces for action. But four Cabinet members from the Saadist (nationalist) Party, traditionally anti-British, resigned on the ground that the only honorable thing to do was to fight the Italian invaders.

One of the reasons for Italian confidence was apparent superiority in the air. With a pronounced margin in numbers, the Italians also had at least parity in plane quality, since the British use mostly planes like Gloster Gladiators in Egypt, where dust and sand jam modern retractable landing gear. A third possible reason for Italian optimism was numerical superiority—perhaps four-to-one—in troops. Another was the threat of a diversion against the British rear, from Italian East Africa.

There was no question that all these hopeful factors had made Italians a little giddy. Wrote Benito Mussolini’s mouthpiece Virginio Gayda: “Nothing can save Britain now.”