With the onset of the Italian offensive, the division was ordered immediately to pull back to another position at Baqqush. Faced with the Italians’ numerical superiority, Wavell was cautious enough to feel the need for a prepared position further to the rear of Nagamish. Yet Graziani surprised him by staying firmly put in Sidi Barrani and refusing to oblige by advancing on Matruh. O’Connor recalled ‘a real disappointment at the time, as complete plans had been prepared to destroy his [Graziani’s] whole force had he made the attempt’.13
In consequence, the 4th Indian Division was ordered back to Nagamish on 10 October. Towards the end of the month, it had its first land engagement with the Italians in a small raid on an Italian camp. The Italians responded by bombing the Nagamish divisional area with fifteen aircraft, losing nine of them to the RAF fighters. Ajit Singh Mann, a medical orderly from Punjab, recalled that the enemy also dropped explosives ‘camouflaged as pens, pencils, watches and dolls. Indian troops used to pick [them] up and these used to blow up.’14
By this time, the long-awaited reinforcements – especially tanks – had reached Suez. Churchill used the opportunity to ascertain why Wavell persisted with his dilatory approach. The secretary of state for war, Anthony Eden, was sent on a fact-finding mission to Egypt in mid-October. Mindful of Churchill’s ‘desire to have at least one finger in any military pie’, Wavell cagily revealed to Eden his evolving plan to attack the Italians at Sidi Barrani. On learning of the proposed offensive – ‘Operation Compass’ – Churchill by his own account ‘purred like six cats’. The prime minister was rapturous, believing that Britain was at last going ‘to throw off the intolerable shackles of the defensive’. In mid-November, Churchill cabled Wavell that Germany was unlikely to leave its ally unsupported for long: ‘now is the time to take risks and strike the Italians’. Wavell refused to be hustled into action. The operation was under preparation, he replied, but ‘not possible to execute this month as originally hoped’.15
At Nagamish, the Indian units were engaged in further training. The exercises were conducted in full sight of the Italians – the idea being that when necessary, training moves could be used to mask actual moves for an offensive. The divisional armoured regiment, the CIH, moved out of Nagamish and trained with the 7th Armoured Division to maintain a harassing contact with the Italians. An Indian infantry battalion was also moved up to establish logistics dumps for the division in the forward area. Petrol and ammunition, food and water were systematically stored in a dumping area of 6 square miles. In the last week of November, the entire Indian division took part in a massive training manoeuvre organized by the Western Desert Force.16
The overall plan for Compass sought to exploit a key flaw in Graziani’s defences. The Italian positions at Sidi Barrani were a chain of fortified camps running south for about 40 miles. Strangely, the Italians had constructed them in two clusters, with a 15-mile gap between Nibeiwa, the last camp of the northern lot, and Sofafi, the first camp of the southern group. The gap apart, the minefields ringing Nibeiwa were left open at the rear to enable the passage of supplies. The British plan tasked the 4th Indian Division with punching through this gap and attacking Nibeiwa from the rear. Thereafter the division would head north for the camps of Tummar East and West and thence to Sidi Barrani. The 7th Armoured Division would protect the flank of the 4th Indian Division from an attack from Sofafi and subsequently would turn on the southern camps. A small mixed force from Matruh would work with the Royal Navy to thwart Italian reinforcements from the north. The RAF would attack various Italian airfields in Libya to prevent the Italian air force from intervening. In short, the plan was to box in the Italians and attack them in an enclosed area.17
The 4th Indian Division was beefed up with a third (British) brigade as well as the recently arrived 7th Royal Tank Regiment. The regiment had forty-eight ‘I’ (Infantry) or ‘Matilda’ tanks. Fitted with a 40mm gun and a thick plating of armour, the Matildas were the spearhead of the 4th Indian Division. They would lead the strike on Nibeiwa supported by the 11th Indian Infantry Brigade, and would subsequently attack Tummar with the 5th Indian Infantry Brigade.
On 7 December, the RAF began its bombardment of the Italian airfields. The next night, the Desert Force moved its formations to within 15 miles of the Nibeiwa gap. At 0700 on 9 December the artillery units began registering their targets. Fifteen minutes later, the seventy-two guns with the 4th Indian Division sent shells raining down on the Italian defences. At 0735, the Matildas reached the Nibeiwa perimeter and made short work of the Italian MII tanks that were lined up unmanned in parade-ground formation. As the Matildas pushed into the camp, the Italians fired all weapons at their disposal – only to realize that none of their ammunition could pierce the skin of the British tanks. The 11th Indian Infantry Brigade followed closely behind and stubbed out all pockets of resistance. Within an hour from the start, the Indian brigade was in control of Nibeiwa.
Tummar West fell in a similar fashion. Emboldened by these quick successes, the divisional commander ordered an immediate attack on Tummar East. The Italians were coincidentally setting out from that position for a counter-attack and were mowed down by the machine guns of the 5th Indian Infantry Brigade. Even before Tummar East was mopped up by the brigade, Beresford-Peirse ordered the third, British, brigade to cut the road from Sidi Barrani to Buq Buq. By early afternoon on 10 December, the division had encircled Sidi Barrani. The commander decided to press on with an attack on the Italian camp near the village. Thirty-six hours after it began, the battle of Sidi Barrani was at an end;18 38,000 Italian troops were captured as well as 73 medium and light tanks, 237 guns, over 1,000 vehicles and large quantities of ammunition and stores. The British force sustained 624 casualties, the majority of them only wounded.
At 1630 hours on 10 December, as Beresford-Peirse watched one of his battalions leaving the start line for the final assault on the village, a liaison officer arrived from Cairo in a staff car. He carried orders that the 4th Indian Division was to be replaced at the soonest by the 6th Australian Division and was to move to the Sudan. ‘This was at that moment a singularly unpalatable order for the Indian Division’, Beresford-Peirse would note later, ‘involved as they were in winning the first big success of the war.’ He did not pass on the order until the Italians had finally surrendered on 11 December 1940.19
The decision to pull out the 4th Indian Division was controversial. The commander of the Western Desert Force was not alone in thinking that it impeded the subsequent pursuit of Italian forces along the coast of North Africa. ‘There is no doubt’, O’Connor later insisted, ‘that the loss of the 4th Ind. Div. lost us three weeks or more, since 6 Aus. Div. was not ready … for a full month.’ And he added: ‘what a lot we could have done with the 4 Ind. Div. & a fleeing enemy’.20 The division was indeed well trained, fully equipped and battle tested. As such its replacement with a new division was deeply problematic. The switching of the divisions may well have been decisive in preventing the British from capturing Tripoli before Rommel arrived with German reinforcements. More generally, the pulling out of the 4th Indian Division inaugurated a trend whereby well-prepared and battle-hardened Indian units would frequently find themselves tossed around between various fronts and theatres. That said, Wavell had his own reasons and compulsions. To be sure, he had not foreseen the extent to which Operation Compass would succeed and the possibilities it would throw open. Nevertheless, the decision was primarily taken in response to a combination of political pressure and a deteriorating operational situation in East Africa.
In July 1940, the Italians based in Abyssinia (Ethiopia) and Eritrea had attacked and captured the border towns of Kassala and Gallabat in the Sudan. The following month, they had overrun British Somaliland. The withdrawal of the small British force from Somaliland with minimal casualties had enraged Churchill. It felt like an African Dunkirk – only worse for the troops having been turfed out by the Italians. ‘What you need out there is a court martial and a firing squad’,
he growled: ‘Wavell has 300,000 men.’21 Although Wavell disagreed, observing that ‘a big butcher’s bill was not necessarily evidence of good tactics’, he was thereafter on the back foot in East Africa.
Wavell, for his part, was well aware of the importance of East Africa. With the closing of the Mediterranean, the Red Sea provided the only route for his command to receive supplies from Britain and India. He was anxious for the defence of Port Sudan and Djibouti, but perceived the principal danger as the presence of eight Italian submarines and seven fleet destroyers in the Eritrean port of Massawa.
During his visit to Egypt in October 1940, Eden flew down to Khartoum with Wavell and conferred with the local military commander as well as with General Jan Smuts of South Africa. General Platt, the commander in the Sudan, said that he was planning offensives to retake Gallabat and Kassala; Smuts insisted that these offensives be co-ordinated with military operations in Kenya to capture Kismayo – and eventually attack Ethiopia. Eden concurred with this view. It was agreed that offensive operations towards these ends must begin as early as possible.22 Churchill, of course, was raring for an offensive.
Sudan initially had only three British battalions. A squadron of tanks was despatched from Egypt in early September 1940. Later that month, the 5th Indian Division began arriving from India. Formed in 1939, the division was badly trained and worse equipped for combat in East Africa. An Indian staff officer recalled that they were ‘grossly overloaded with extraneous material, both personal and military, presumably to meet any contingency including social ones’.23 The division also had an unquiet passage to Africa. En route to embarkation, it was abuzz with rumours about a ship being sunk off the coast of Bombay by a German U-boat. This led to desertions in some units. Sardara Singh, a young soldier with the transport company, was handcuffed with his comrades and placed under British guard. In Bombay, his unit was put on board HMS Talamba. The ship was then taken some miles out to sea to anchor. ‘The British officer then removed the handcuffs and told us that we were now free. From here it was impossible to desert.’ Sardara felt that the British had been ‘over cautious’. Some of his comrades had panicked only because they had ‘hardly been given any worthwhile briefing for the war’.24 But German intelligence and propaganda were busy as well – not least because of appalling operational secrecy in the Indian army. An Indian officer noted that ‘though our destination was supposed to be secret, everyone from canteen contractors to the General knew it was Port Sudan’.25 William Joyce, the Irish-American admirer of Hitler known as ‘Lord Haw-Haw’, broadcast to India the precise details of the 5th Indian Division’s shipping arrangements, adding for good measure that ‘none of them will arrive at their destination which is Port Sudan’.26
The voyage also set the men on edge. Second Lieutenant Prem Bhagat wrote to his girlfriend that ‘a sea journey does get a bit exacting when there is a ship full of men with nothing to do’.27 As the ships approached Port Sudan, there was another surprise for the Indians. An enemy plane flew overhead, scattering leaflets in Punjabi, Hindi and English with warnings to the effect: ‘We will come two hours later and sink the ship, so better run away but we will not attack soldiers running away.’28 This briefly rattled the British as well as the Indian troops.
On reaching Sudan the division was reorganized. It originally had two brigades with three Indian battalions each. The existing units in the Sudan were placed under its command bringing it up to its full strength. The 5th Indian Division now had three infantry brigades – the 9th, 10th and 29th – each of which had two Indian and one British battalion, and two regiments of artillery and two companies of engineers. In addition, a mobile unit called ‘Gazelle Force’ was formed around the divisional armoured regiment, the Skinner’s Horse.
The 5th Indian Division’s main task was the defence of Khartoum and it was deployed in the vicinity of Kassala. However, the divisional commander, Major General Lewis ‘Piggy’ Heath, was determined to undertake local offensives against the Italians. In early November 1940, Gazelle Force engaged Italian forces 25 miles north-east of Kassala. After ten days of skirmishing, the force was tasked with attacking Big Hill, an imposing mile-long feature immediately to the north of the Italian position. The plan was based on dubious intelligence about the strength and morale of the Italian troops – it was believed that the majority of the Italians would surrender at the first opportunity. In the event, they put up a tenacious defence and no headway could be made. The attack failed and Gazelle Force had to pull back.29
This early engagement suggested that the Italian troops in East Africa were better prepared, led and motivated than Graziani’s forces in North Africa. These facts, as well as British weaknesses, were amply underscored by another abortive offensive in the first week of November. On Wavell’s instructions, Heath prepared a plan to capture the forts of Gallabat and Metemma. The attack was to be carried out by the 10th Indian Infantry Brigade with a British armoured squadron of twelve tanks.
The brigade was led by an officer who would, by the end of the war, be recognized as one of the outstanding Allied commanders: Brigadier William Slim. Originally commissioned into the British army during the First World War, ‘Bill’ Slim was transferred to the Indian army in 1919. Between the wars, he shinned up the professional ladder, serving as an instructor in staff colleges in India and Britain as well as commanding his battalion, the 2/7th Gurkha Rifles. Of humble origins, Slim commanded universal respect, from British and Indian soldiers alike, for his down-to-earth style and his twinkling sense of humour. His ability to quickly grasp the human angle to any situation was obvious to anyone who read the novels, short stories and hilarious essays that he penned under the pseudonym of Anthony Mills. Captain J. N. Chaudhuri, who served with Slim in Sudan and later became chief of the Indian army, was ‘impressed by his calmness in any situation and his inherent powers of leadership which were immediately apparent. There was no guile about the man. He meant what he said and he said it pleasantly.’30
On reaching the Sudan, though, Slim was peeved with the set-up. In particular, he was unhappy with Heath’s decision to reshuffle his troops by replacing an Indian battalion, the 3/2nd Punjab, with the 1st Battalion of the Essex Regiment. He thought that this smacked of an old belief that the presence of white troops would stiffen the natives. Slim protested but was overruled. His brigade went into action with the 4/10th Baluch and the 3/18th Royal Garhwal Rifles as well as the 1st Essex. The plan was first to capture Gallabat and then move on to Metemma. On the evening of 5 November, the 10th Indian Brigade advanced to forward positions a mile and half from the Gallabat fort. Preparations were made with perfect secrecy. From his command post on a nearby hillock, Slim looked on with a measure of satisfaction.
Our plans were made, the attacking troops had reached their start lines, and guns and tanks were ready with their crews sleeping beside them. I felt as I lay down and pulled a blanket over me that while like other mortals we could not command success, we had done all we could to deserve it.31
Slim was up before dawn and anxiously awaited the first wave of air strikes by the RAF. At 0530 hours the artillery and air bombardment began. The fort was shrouded in dust as shells rained down on it. For a while it became all but invisible to Slim, who was peering through his binoculars. As the guns fell silent, the tanks roared up to the fort with the Garhwalis in tow. The Italians had carefully laid down their defences and Slim’s troops initially found the going tough. By 0730, however, the fort was overrun and captured, but of the ten tanks that led the attack only one remained serviceable. The tank commander informed Slim that a truck loaded with spares was on its way but it would take several hours before the tanks could be fixed. The Italians sensed that the attack was sputtering and launched a counter-attack on the positions now occupied by the Indians. Although the counter-attack was repulsed, Slim decided to postpone the attack on Metemma and consolidate the Garhwal and Essex battalions at Gallabat.
At this point, the Italians gained the upper hand
in the air. Italian Caproni bombers escorted by a squadron of CR42 fighters bombed Gallabat. Five British Gladiator fighters sought to engage them and were promptly shot down. Prem Bhagat was in Gallabat fort with his company of sappers: ‘in 40 minutes some 14 planes just littered the place with bombs. I lay flat on the ground and after the bombing was over I was covered with earth, two bombs having dropped just five yards away.’32 Worse still, the bombing began minutes after the 1st Essex entered the fort. The British troops scrambled for cover as shrapnel and rocks whizzed around them. The explosion of an ammunition truck unhinged a few of them, who fled and implored the others to join them. Waves of panic swept through the battalion and before the officers could get a grip on the situation, several men had seized two trucks and bolted out of the fort. The morale of the battalion was seriously shaken. Italian bombers returned that night and the next morning without any interference from British aircraft. After consulting his senior officers, Slim reluctantly ordered a withdrawal.33 Although the attack had gone awry, Slim was lucky enough to come out of the East African theatre professionally unscathed – ironically, because he was strafed by an Italian aeroplane a few days later.
The failure at Gallabat underscored Italian strengths as well as British weaknesses in the East African theatre. The Italian defences were well prepared, with extensive use of obstacles, mutually supporting firing positions and carefully stationed reserves. Italian aircraft and artillery were capable of supporting the infantry formations and the men fought in terrain with which they were familiar and were strong on the defensive. British forces, on the other hand, were grouped into brigades that had not trained, let alone fought, together. Although the Indian units had some experience of fighting in similar conditions at the north-west frontier, their skills were rusty. For several months, the units had been preparing to operate as a mechanized force. Slim’s brigade, for instance, had spent considerable time learning to drive motorized vehicles and fighting mobile wars. But their ability to operate alongside tanks was clearly of little use in a terrain most unsuited to tank warfare. Further, the Indian formations were ill-prepared to cope with Italian air superiority: they had no anti-aircraft guns. The inability to protect forward troops against air attack was a major shortcoming.
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