Castle of the Eagles

by Felton, Mark;

  Following the decision to withdraw to Tmimi, the bulk of XIII Corps headquarters staff had left Marawa by 8.30pm. Only then had O’Connor, Neame and their closest aides left.

  Their little convoy had originally consisted of three cars. Bringing up the rear of the convoy had been a Chevrolet Utility containing General O’Connor’s aide-de-camp, Captain John Dent, a driver and most of the senior officers’ baggage and bedding. Dent, though, had lost the other two cars an hour after starting out as they threaded their way through slow-moving columns of retreating British trucks.5

  Now, Neame ordered his driver to turn off the main road to Derna and take a shortcut that he knew to Martuba. The driver was exhausted, and Neame took the wheel himself. The two big American cars thundered on through the dark desert night along the dusty road. After ten miles Brigadier Combe spotted a signboard that had been stuck to an old jerrycan beside the road and suggested that they stop and examine it. Neame refused, claiming that he knew the road and not to worry.

  After driving for a further two or three miles General O’Connor was becoming uneasy, noticing that the position of the Moon indicated that they were heading north rather than east. He voiced his concerns to Neame several times, until Neame finally stopped and allowed his driver to take the wheel again. They resumed the journey, the officers nodding off in their cars until the drivers alerted them to another slow-moving convoy ahead.

  In the second car Lord Ranfurly spoke to his driver about the convoy of trucks that was difficult to make out in the dim light as the cars were fitted with blackout-shielded headlights. A dashing Scottish aristocrat, the athletic 27-year-old Earl of Ranfurly, known as Dan to his friends and serving in the Nottinghamshire Yeomanry, was the sixth holder of the earldom.6 He was possessed of a very formidable and determined wife. Refusing to be left behind in England when Dan went off to war, Hermione, Countess of Ranfurly, broke every army rule and protocol and managed to get herself to Cairo where she was able to see her husband when he went on leave.

  Up ahead, Neame’s car came to a halt. Ranfurly stuck his head out of the passenger window in the car behind and listened. Mingled with the sounds of the trucks’ engines was distant shouting – foreign voices. But it was too indistinct to attribute nationality.

  ‘Must be Cypriots,’ said Ranfurly uncertainly to his driver. The British had conscripted many Cypriots to drive supply trucks in the Middle East. ‘Just hang on here a minute,’ he continued, opening the door and walking over to Neame’s car. About to confer with Brigadier Combe, who had climbed out of the front passenger seat of Neame’s car, suddenly Ranfurly was aware of movement. A figure came out of the gloom and thrust an MP-40 machine pistol at his middle.7 Combe’s face dropped in astonishment.

  ‘Hände hoch, Tommi,’ growled the German. Ranfurly slowly raised both arms above his head. The German soldier, uniform coated in desert dust and wearing a tan-coloured forage cap, shouted for help.

  Combe quickly turned to the car window and roused the dozing Neame and O’Connor. Combe reached into the glovebox and pulled out a hand grenade, stuffing it into his clothing.

  ‘Get down on the floor and remove your badges of rank,’ hissed Combe urgently at the generals.8

  General O’Connor, looking around wildly as more Germans came running up to the cars, hastily unclipped his service revolver from its lanyard before shoving it inside his shirt, and then pulled off his rank slides.9 Seconds later, the car doors were wrenched open by German soldiers. ‘Raus, raus,’ yelled a German sergeant, pointing a Luger pistol at the officers.

  The Britons were herded at gunpoint into a nearby hollow, where they would remain under guard for three nights. On the third day Neame and O’Connor revealed their identities to the commanding officer of the 8th Machine Gun Battalion, Oberstleutnant Gustav Ponath.10 He hardly dared to believe his luck. Within minutes Ponath was on the radio to Rommel with very good news indeed.

  Ponath packed the senior prisoners off, with their ADCs and batmen, in a truck to Derna where they were handed over to the Italians, who had command authority over the North African theatre.11

  In one fell swoop a massive blow had been dealt to the Allied cause. The Western Desert Force was suddenly deprived of its commander and the desert genius assisting him just at the most critical moment of Rommel’s offensive. The shock almost paralysed the British chain of command, deeply depressing General Wavell when he heard the terrible news.

  *

  Mechili, Libya wasn’t much of a place – just a name on a map of the barren Western Desert. Brigadier Edward Todhunter would describe it as ‘a horrible little place in the desert’.12 But it was where Michael Gambier-Parry’s war was to take a very bad turn for the worse.

  On 25 March 1941, forward patrol units of Major-General Gambier-Parry’s 2nd Armoured Division had been attacked and El Agheila taken. Things had then gone quiet for a week before Rommel struck again on 1 April. The 2nd Division had been forced to withdraw, moving east towards Egypt in stages, fighting continuous sharp engagements with Afrika Korps panzer regiments. Rommel launched a pincer attack on the British division, using the Italian 10th Bersaglieri Regiment and elements of the German 5th Light Division and the 15th Panzer Division. The British and Indian troops, the latter the 3rd Indian Motor Brigade under the command of Brigadier Edward Vaughan, were exhausted by the pace of the operations and increasingly demoralised. On 4 April, Gambier-Parry, or ‘G-P’ as he was known to his friends, was given orders to block the Western Desert Force’s open left flank, but it was realised that though brave, the 2nd Armoured Division was inexperienced, short of personnel, ammunition and signal equipment; furthermore, G-P’s command of the division had left a lot to be desired. Among higher command there had been mutterings concerning a ‘lack of urgency and grip of the situation’.13

  By the time G-P and his divisional HQ arrived at Mechili, 60 miles south of Derna, on the evening of 7 April, they were at the limits of their endurance.14 The 2nd Armoured Division, in the words of one senior commander, ‘more or less fell to pieces.’15

  Forty-one-year-old Brigadier Todhunter was with G-P as the 2nd Armoured Division’s ‘Commander Royal Artillery’. His command group received sporadic shelling from German artillery on the morning of 8 April, as well as plenty of long-range machine gunning. This lasted all day until the evening, when the intensity of German shelling suddenly increased in ferocity and infantry began probing the perimeter. The British troops beat the Germans off this time, but casualties were mounting and the strategic situation was deteriorating all along the divisional front line as Rommel brought his armour to bear.

  Todhunter had only been made a brigadier the month before, while he had been on leave in Cairo. Born into a landed family from South Essex, Todhunter had joined the Royal Horse Artillery in 1922 after leaving Rugby. He had thick, dark, oiled-back hair and wore black-framed spectacles that made him look more like a university professor than a tough and experienced soldier. Sent back to the front line in Libya, he had joined Gambier-Parry’s staff with the rank of Temporary Brigadier.

  The British began to move again at first light on 9 April, always east towards Egypt and safety. Todhunter was tasked with organising some defence for divisional headquarters, Gambier-Parry and his staff having moved up to the front ‘unprotected and without any knowledge of how close the enemy were’.16 But Rommel was upon them instantly. ‘As soon as it was light enough to see we ran into really heavy shellfire,’ wrote Todhunter a few days afterwards. ‘Lots of it and fairly big stuff and a little further on we ran into a lot of machine guns and anti-tank guns.’17 Moving in their large Dorchester command vehicles, the division’s senior officers decided to turn the column south in the hope of outwitting the Germans, before resuming their withdrawal to the east. With G-P and Todhunter were Brigadier Vaughan (known to all as ‘Rudolph’) and his Indian soldiers and Colonel George Younghusband, a senior cavalryman and kinsman of the famous Edwardian explorer Sir Francis Younghusband, the conqueror of Tibet. Yo
unghusband was GSO1 (General Staff Officer Grade 1), responsible for directing the battle and signing off Gambier-Parry’s orders. Younghusband had already impressed higher command, which noted that he ‘gave confidence’.18

  ‘Things looked pretty gloomy,’ wrote Todhunter at the time with commendable understatement. The withdrawal manoeuvre was doomed to failure as the British ran straight into large numbers of German tanks shortly after setting off.

  Todhunter’s Dorchester had just crested a slight rise in the ground when six German tanks confronted him and his men. Infantry were firing machine guns, and anti-tank guns had opened up on the British column as well, brewing up several British tanks and armoured cars in a confused engagement. Within seconds German bullets peppered Todhunter’s vehicle, some armour-piercing rounds passing between his legs. One punched a hole right through his attaché case. Suddenly there was a terrific crack and the Dorchester rocked on its springs, smoke and dust filling the cabin. An anti-tank round had struck home, passing clean through the vehicle like a hot knife through butter.19 Todhunter and his staff hastily baled out, taking cover as the German panzers closed in. Within a few minutes it was clear that the headquarters of the 2nd Armoured Division, and those units helping to defend it, were not going anywhere. They were surrounded. Men began to raise their hands.20

  Dust and smoke billowed across the hot battlefield as about 2,000 British and Indian troops laid down their arms over a large area and columns of German troops moved up to take their surrender. Todhunter’s staff captain turned to him.

  ‘Sir, there’s a good chance we can get away now, in all this confusion,’ he said, slightly wild-eyed.

  ‘I agree,’ replied Todhunter, looking about in all directions. ‘Look, you wander off and leave me. I’ll follow in a couple of minutes. At the moment I’m a bit too conspicuous in this bloody red hat.’21 He touched his field cap, its middle band the bright red reserved for colonels and higher. His shirt collar was also adorned with red tabs.

  ‘But sir,’ protested the captain.

  ‘Go on … get going!’ exclaimed Todhunter, clapping him on the shoulder. ‘I’ll be there presently.’

  The captain reluctantly walked off, away from the approaching Germans, gathering men as he went. He managed to slip through the German encirclement and would make it to the British base at Mersa Matruh a few days later with 51 comrades, having also collected eight abandoned vehicles along the way to speed his escape.22

  For Todhunter, his war appeared to be over. Another officer who escaped the encirclement reported a few days later that Todhunter ‘was last seen in the filthiest temper and using appalling language.’23 His foul mood was more than shared by all the other officers and men who were now ‘in the bag’.

  *

  An hour later, Michael Gambier-Parry stood and watched as a battered Horch staff jeep bounced its way across the rocky desert floor towards him. G-P hooked his thumbs into his gun belt, the holster now empty of its heavy service revolver, and waited. Standing beside him were three other British officers, the red tabs on the collars of their grimy shirts and red hatbands indicating their elevated ranks. Dozens of other British officers and men stood close by three large Dorchester command vehicles, giant armoured boxes on wheels the dimensions of those normally found beneath transport planes. Several British armoured cars and trucks lay scattered across the desert, badly shot up or still emitting plumes of black smoke into the clear blue sky, evidence of the ferocious battle that had ended not long before. German soldiers stood around cradling rifles and machine pistols in their arms, while medics from both sides tended to casualties wrapped in blankets on the dusty ground or propped up in the shade of trucks.

  ‘What do we have here, chaps?’ muttered Todhunter at Gambier-Parry’s elbow, his eyes fixed on the large staff jeep that had drawn to a creaking halt close by. Todhunter adjusted his spectacles, removing his cap to run the back of one hand across his sweaty forehead.

  The others remained silent, George Younghusband reaching into his hip pocket to retrieve a silver cigarette case. He offered it around, but only Todhunter helped himself to a smoke, the stiff desert wind whipping the smoke away as he lit up behind cupped hands.

  A German soldier, one of several dressed in the sand-coloured uniform of the Afrika Korps, dashed forward to the staff vehicle and quickly yanked open the passenger side door. A medium-sized, middle-aged German officer hauled himself out of his seat, one hand steadying a pair of large binoculars that hung around his neck, the other adjusting a button on his knee-length black leather great-coat that was grimy with desert dust. Several other field cars and half-tracks ground to a halt close by and staff officers, many festooned with map cases and signal pads, joined the senior German, who strode towards Gambier-Parry with an air of determination.

  ‘Well, I never …’ exclaimed Younghusband as he recognised the German general.

  ‘Gentlemen,’ said a young Afrika Korps captain formally, in good English, ‘allow me to present Generalleutnant Rommel.’

  The Desert Fox, his keen dark blue eyes twinkling with good humour beneath the peak of his field grey service cap, stopped before Gambier-Parry, a friendly grin creasing his weather-beaten, tanned face.

  ‘General,’ said Rommel, touching the peak of his cap with one gloved hand.

  ‘Sir,’ replied Gambier-Parry, returning Rommel’s salute. G-P’s companions followed suit. So this was the great Rommel, thought G-P, looking the German over with renewed interest. The Britons watched as Rommel adjusted a patterned civilian scarf that was tucked around the collar of his coat, noticing the Knight’s Cross and the First World War Blue Max that he wore beneath. Rommel spoke to a young captain who was standing beside him.

  ‘My general presents his compliments,’ said Rommel’s interpreter, Hauptmann Hoffmann, ‘and asks for your names please.’

  ‘Gambier-Parry, Major-General, commanding 2nd Armoured Division.’ Rommel nodded, tugged off his right glove and proffered his hand. Slightly taken aback, G-P shook it. The German’s grip was firm and as dry as the surrounding desert.

  ‘Brigadier Todhunter,’ said G-P, pointing to the officer beside him, ‘Brigadier Vaughan, and Colonel Younghusband.’ Hoffmann made quick notes on a signal pad as Rommel’s eyes scanned each man’s grimy face. Then he said something in German to his interpreter.

  ‘My general enquires whether there is anything that you need?’24

  For the next few minutes Rommel and the senior officers chatted amiably enough through Hoffmann. It was clear to G-P and his officers that Rommel was a decent sort, and certainly no strutting Nazi. His concern for their welfare and comfort would make a lasting impression on the British officers.

  ‘My general requests that you, General Gambier-Parry, join him for a meal, if you are in agreement?’ asked Hoffmann. G-P was somewhat surprised but accepted nonetheless. It was a surreal end to an extraordinary day that had seen the British suffer a crushing defeat. The past couple of days had delivered to the enemy a host of demoralised British senior officers, all victims of the Desert Fox’s tactical genius and aggressive handling of his small panzer force.

  *

  When Major-General Gambier-Parry arrived for dinner, he discovered that the Germans had erected a tent for the occasion. G-P seated himself opposite the Desert Fox, and over the next hour the two men, through the interpreter Hoffmann, swapped stories about the First World War, the desert, enjoyed good wine and at the end settled back to smoke ‘excellent cigars’.25 G-P was no stranger to the desert. An uncle of his, Major Ernest Gambier-Parry had been part of Kitchener’s expedition to Egypt to avenge the death of General Gordon at Khartoum, and he had published a book on the campaign in 1895, six years before G-P was born. G-P’s first personal experience of the desert had come in the First World War, when after winning a Military Cross in France and serving at the bloodbath of Gallipoli, he had fought the Turks in Mesopotamia. In 1924 G-P had transferred to the Royal Tank Corps, been a staff officer in London before becomi
ng a brigade commander in Malaya. In 1940 the government had dispatched G-P to Athens as Head of the British Military Mission to Greece before promoting him to Major-General and assigning him command of the 2nd Armoured Division in North Africa.

  As G-P rose to take his leave he noticed that his general’s cap, which he had left on a map table outside the tent’s entrance, was missing. He told Rommel, whose face took on a hard expression. Following Rommel outside, he watched as the Desert Fox made heated enquiries with junior officers until a few minutes later a young soldier was sheepishly brought before him holding G-P’s cap. Rommel was furious, giving the soldier a loud tongue-lashing concerning appropriate souvenirs and military conduct, before returning the cap to G-P with an apology.

  G-P felt that he should in some way thank the Desert Fox for dinner and the fuss that had been made over his errant cap. Thinking quickly, he reached into his hip pocket and retrieved a pair of plastic anti-gas goggles and presented them to Rommel. The Desert Fox was clearly touched by the gesture, and immediately placed them around his own service cap.26 There they were to remain for the rest of his life, completing the image of the desert warrior that was to appear in so many photographs and newsreels before Rommel’s untimely death in October 1944.27

  Rommel permitted G-P, Todhunter and Vaughan to keep their Dorchester armoured offices and later on 9 April the prisoners, aboard whatever of their vehicles were still in running condition, were escorted by German half-tracks and motorcycle combinations to the airfield at Derna, where they bedded down for the night. The next day the Germans took the 2,000 prisoners to old barracks in Derna. On arrival they were surprised, and not a little relieved, to discover that they were to be handed over to the Italian Army.28