Free Killing Rommel by Steven Pressfield Page B

facto battalion commander, with Stein and two or three other captains and majors of allied arms in support.
    High command has lost control of the field. Brigade can’t locate its constituent elements on a map, let alone find the enemy, or work out what to do with either. My diary records a run of four days when either no orders at all come in, or when they do they are so out of touch with affairs on the ground, that to obey them would produce an even graver tragedy than what is already happening. “I can’t make head or tail of this, can you?” says Mallory of one particularly egregious signal. When he bins it, all hands cheer.
    Mallory issues his cardinal order. “From this hour, all heroism is forbidden. If I hear of one officer making some valiant ‘charge’ or taking some gallant ‘stand,’ by heaven, I’ll find him myself and wring his bloody neck.”
    Mallory outlaws all undisciplined retreat. “One cannot simply pack up and piss off. It’s bad manners.”
    Our new leader restores order. He gives us heart. He defines the problem and provides a solution. “The enemy attack with tanks and anti-tank guns working together. He advances in massed order, while we hurl ourselves at him in penny packets. This is suicide. From now on, we advance and withdraw as one unit, supporting one another.”
    Except the Grants with their 75mms, Eighth Army has no tank gun that can fire a high-explosive shell, the kind you need to knock out Rommel’s 88s and their crews. The solid shot of our Honeys and Crusaders are worthless against such targets.
    This is where Stein comes in. Working with Mallory, he brings up his 25-pounders, which
can
fire HE, and he keeps them close. This is a desperately risky business, for such artillery are hell to move out in a hurry; it takes minutes for them to limber up and flee, should Rommel’s gunners get their range or his infantry bring them under fire. So we tanks must stay with them. Stein’s 25-pounders are the only weapons we have against the Afrika Korps’ 88s and Paks, and the only guns that can take on Mark IIIs and IVs beyond a thousand yards. We are in this together. This is not tactics, it’s life and death.
    â€œListen to me, friends,” Mallory instructs us in night leaguer. “One act I will never stand for is leaving our fellows behind. Bugger military protocol or lofty notions of honour. I can’t live with running out on a pal, and I won’t let any of you do it either.”
    This is the sort of stuff we need to hear.
    Our condition is preposterous, really. We are like civilians seeking to bring common sense to bear upon problems that we should have been trained for but have not been. Worse, we must get our new lads up to speed, sometimes during the very night preceding their first action, while we ourselves are nearly as green as they. Fresh “bods” come up from the rear and are made corpses almost before we learn their names. Stein takes this hard. All our young officers do.
    Night Thirteen, Stein and I get a few minutes together, after each has completed his duties of the evening. We perch on the tailboard of a fitter’s truck and share cold tea and rum from the very flask that Stein had revived me with that night at Winchester. I ask whether he’s still writing poetry.
    â€œNo, by heaven, and I shan’t ever again.” He indicates the tanks and men round about. “Stuff like this calls for prose, Chap. Short sentences, pithy and lean.”
    I tell Stein how impressed I am with him—and how different he seems from our days at university.
    â€œNot actually. All that’s changed is we’ve switched from men of words to men of action. And a damn relief too!”
    Stein tells me that when he first got out to Egypt, he applied for the Long Range Desert Group. “It seemed like what Lawrence would have done.” He means T. E. Lawrence, Lawrence of