General Sir Claude Auchinleck, Commander-in-Chief Middle East Land Forces, took over personal command of 8th Army from Lieutenant-General Neil Ritchie on 25th June 1942. There is little douht that Auchinleck had heen ill-judged in February 1942 when he confirmed Ritchie in what had been a temporary command, despite evidence and advice that Ritchie lacked the experience and capacity to command an army. Equally it would have been well if Auchinleck, as Prime Minister Churchill had urged, had taken personal charge of the Gazala battles at an early stage. However, the Western Desert was only one among the commander-in-chief’s several cares. It was not so simple a matter to go off and look after a single front. For although the Middle East Command had shed East Africa since Wavell’s time, it was still responsible for support of Turkey, a neutral state, and for the defence of the Persian Gulf oilfields from attack from the north, through the Caucasus. Auchinleck had lived with this latter danger ever since the German invasion of Russia had reached the Don the previous autumn.
Auchinleck, therefore, unlike his predecessors or his successor, bore the double burden of an army commander and of a theatre commander-in-chief.
For this reason it was Auchinleck’s belief as commander-in-chief that 8th Army must not be exposed to the risk of a final defeat, but must at all cost be kept in being.
Left: A German Hanomag half-track of the Afrika Korps rolls across the soft sand of the desert. The number plate prefix means 'Wehrmacht Heer’, indicating an Army vehicle
In order to continue to defend the Gulf oil from Rommel. Whereas Ritchie had planned a do-or-die battle at Mersa Matruh, Auchinleck wished to retreat to El Alamein which would give him a little time to reorganize his forces and plan his own battle instead of fighting Ritchie’s. But Rommel struck the day after Auchinleck assumed personal command. The Battle of Mersa Matruh (26th-28th June 1942), fought in decayed defences according to Ritchie’s deployment, marked the climax of German moral domination in the desert. With handfuls of exhausted troops Rommel bluffed the British (including fresh, strong formations) into thinking they were broken through, surrounded, and beaten, while poor communications virtually cut Auchinleck off from the battle. As soon as he saw the compromised battle was lost, Auchinleck ordered the army back to Alamein. Both armies, units all mixed up, raced each other for the forty-mile-wide neck between the sea at Alamein and the impassable Qattara Depression. Alexandria lay only sixty miles beyond.
Although 8th Army narrowly won the race, the British still faced the possibility, in Auchinleck’s words, of 'complete catastrophe’. 'No one,’ he wrote later, 'least of all I, could say whether the Army could be rallied and re-formed soon enough to hold Rommel and save Egypt.’ Auchinleck thus faced the greatest test of a general —the rallying of a beaten army and the redemption of a lost battle. Behind him in Egypt there was panic and defeatism. He told his soldiers: 'The enemy is stretching to his limit and thinks we are a broken army. . . He hopes to take Egypt by bluff. Show him where he gets off.’
In fact this was an accurate military appreciation. By failing to halt after Tobruk to allow Malta to be attacked, as agreed, Rommel had taken an immense gamble. For unless he managed to break through to the Delta very quickly, his army would be increasingly starved of supplies, reinforcements, and fuel, owing both to British naval action based on Malta and the length of his own communications. On 1st July, three days after Matruh, Rommel attacked 8th Army at Alamein.
The essential unity of all the fighting at Alamein from July to November 1942 has been obscured by the changes in the British command that took place in mid-August, when General Sir Harold Alexander replaced Auchinleck as commander-in-chief and Lieutenant-General B. L.Montgomery became the new 8th Army commander. It was one extended battle with pauses between the actions. It opened with Rommel’s desperate attempts to shoulder his way past Auchinleck, his failure, and the failure in turn of Auchinleck to force him into retreat. This was the First Battle of Alamein (lst-26th July 1942). There followed a period of stalemate broken only by an unrealistic and vain second attempt by Rommel to break through: the Battle of Alam Haifa (31st August-3rd September). Finally came the British counter-stroke with massive fresh forces that swept Rommel out of Egypt. This was Montgomery’s victory in the Second Battle of Alamein (23rd Octo-ber-4th November 1942).
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