Free Killing Rommel by Steven Pressfield

inside.
    The day is over. We’re alive, we haven’t been put in the bag, haven’t disgraced ourselves. But we haven’t accomplished a damn thing either, and in fact we’re about to sit down twenty miles east of where we started. As darkness descends and our squadrons retire in weary, dust-caked columns, we know the enemy are not reeling as we are, but remain keen and eager, anticipating the dawn when they will throw their formations upon us again and we will face them with our same inferior tactics, armour and weaponry.
    It’s a sickening feeling, knowing the enemy has your number. We can feel the force of Rommel’s genius. He calls the tune, we dance—and always one step behind. Rommel concentrates his armour; we fritter ours away in dribs and drabs. His Panzers never attack but in mass. When you see Axis tanks, you see columns and phalanxes; it looks as if the whole world is coming at you. The enemy’s style is ripping, audacious. They are all little Rommels. Opening the merest breach, they exploit it ruthlessly and without hesitation. They turn small victories into big ones. On our side, we’re bold but not smart; our rushes are like the Charge of the Light Brigade, all flash and no sense. Now in night leaguer, troop and squadron commanders assemble at Colonel L.’s command truck, ducking through the blackout blanket into the cigarette-and pipe-smoke-dense interior. We can sense control slipping. The field is too broad, the enemy too swift and unpredictable. Squadron commanders ask L. for the foe’s position. He doesn’t know. Brigade doesn’t know. Division doesn’t know.
    Days of disorder follow. We have no answer for Rommel’s armour, firepower or speed. The Afrika Korps’ tactics are to throw tanks and anti-tank guns forward in tandem, either to seize some strategic ground that threatens our flank or route of withdrawal, or to advance frontally in such strength that we must counter or be overrun. Since the range of our guns won’t let us slug it out at long distance, we have no choice but to close with the foe. This is exactly what he wants. We fling our outgunned, underarmoured Honeys and Crusaders at Rommel’s Mark IIIs and IVs, which immediately reverse out of range, leaving us to run on to his dug-in, diabolically sited 88s and Pak 38s. The anti-tank guns tear us apart. When the foe’s officers spot enough flamers and gun-downs, their Panzers reappear. With every clash, we lose more men and more tanks.
    Our line falls back again and again. In the confusion, elements scatter. Regiments crack up. Brigades break apart. Entire squadrons go missing. The civilian may react with incredulity. How can vehicles as massive as tanks get separated from one another in flat, open desert? But a brigade on the move spreads out over scores of miles. When the terrain is broken, when sandstorms and dust storms get up, when midday glare obscures vision or the tanks must move in darkness, if the column comes under fire and individual elements must move swiftly in attack or retreat, not only is it the easiest thing in the world to get separated, but in fact it requires tremendous concentration and presence of mind
not
to get separated. The norm is to be separated. One learns how to arc tracer fire, “toffee apples,” into the night sky to show your mates where you are so they can help you navigate by wireless as you grope your way home.
    In the Cauldron clashes, as these battles have come to be called after the name of the minefields round Knightsbridge, our squadron loses eight tanks out of sixteen; at King’s Cross south of Tobruk, my troop of four drops down to one, then zero. Pease has had four tanks shot out from under him; I’ve had three. As refits come up after dark, each troop commander grabs what he can. Faces cycle through as fast as machines. In column rumbling into night leaguer, we run into fellows we have never seen