OPERATION SALAM – THE JOURNEY across the desert to Cairo – did not begin until 29 April. On 7 April Bletchley Park deciphered a message from Almásy dated 27 March that revealed they would be ready in ‘9 or 10 days’ and he would ‘arrive at the forward position in my own car on Monday or Tuesday.’ The forward position was the Jalo Oasis.1
Eppler says he rode with Almásy to Jalo from Benghazi; ‘Almásy sat next to me as we drove, smoking a cigarette.’ Once at Jalo ‘we would prepare oursselves for the journey itself. We would check our supplies and vehicles and stock up with water before pushing on into the desert.’2
Jalo was not the cool oasis they had hoped. Eppler found it lacked ‘purling brooks there, no wonderfully scented fruit and no mysterious black female eyes. In fact, there was no romance to be found there at all.’ As for the oasis, ‘the springs are brackish and the inhabitants surly. A thousand palm trees and filthy mud huts stood in a hollow in the middle of the desert. The wind blows ceaselessly; there is never an end to it.’3
All the same he was glad to get there, even if confused about the date. Eppler states they arrived at Jalo on 11 May but this is clearly a mistake in his account.
As our column drove into the oasis, the soldiers of the small Italian garrison were sitting listlessly chatting about their girlfriends back home. We exchanged greetings in a desultory way. Our limbs were leaden and our brains numb. We needed a long break.4
Almásy found the oasis and the Italians rather different.
Besides the padre, I’m the only guest in the officer’s mess of the small fort. The Italians – some 30 infantry officers of different ranks and ages – are all from the same division. They’ve been here without rotation or leave since the reoccupation of the Oasis some three months ago, and are a good natured bunch.5
The padre had come to celebrate Easter Sunday Mass. They enjoyed a special meal to which Almásy and his men were invited. Even the weather improved: ‘A pleasant northern breeze is blowing.’ They dined on rice soup and roast lamb, and ‘pastry with a genuine fruit taste is served. Cyrenaica red wine helps to create the excellent mood.’ The Italians began the inevitable sing-song. ‘Many evenings I had heard them singing their gorgeous tunes in beautiful tenor, baritone, and bass voices. Today’s program consists mostly of marches … and the inevitable “Lili Marlene” with four voices as always.’ By this time Rommel had asked Radio Belgrade – which broadcast to German troops – to play ‘Lili Marlene’ every day. They could not ignore his request, and the song became the sign-off number at 9:55pm, and was quickly taken up by all the desert armies.6
Two British Beaufighters spoiled the festivities at the oasis by carrying out a strafing run. One man of the garrison was killed and two wounded; the Almásy group helped throw up a curtain of anti-aircraft fire. Both aircraft were damaged, forcing them to crash land in the desert; a garrison soldier on the airfield perimeter saw one of the aircraft losing height, and marked the direction. Almásy took a reading on the bearing with his prismatic compass, and in the morning a patrol set out on that bearing to take a look.
We had only gone 10 kilometres when something suddenly loomed on the eastern horizon. Even on the hard-surfaced sand it’s not advisable to brake forcefully. The tyres can sink through the hard upper crust, leaving the car bottomed out. I step off the gas, wait until the car rolls to a stop, and then climb on the roof. The silhouette of the grounded enemy airplane is clearly visible through the field glasses.
They approached the aircraft cautiously, finally finding that the crew had set out on foot. Jalo was only eight miles away, but that way lay captivity. Some 30 miles to the northwest was another small oasis, and Almásy concluded that the crew must have gone there, a place only occasionally visited by Italian patrols. They followed the British tracks, which were fairly straight, implying that the men had a compass.
It’s a weird sensation, moving across the endless flat surface, heading towards the horizon without a single reference point. I drive slowly, not wanting to lose the footprints weaving gently in front of us. Here the desert is like a tennis court without bounds, smooth as a tabletop and without a single pebble on the reddish yellow surface.
Within an hour they reached the oasis, where the Arab children confirmed the presence of ‘inglesi’. The two RAF men were exhausted by the desert hike, ‘their footwear shredded by the abrasive sand.’ They offered no resistance and were ‘somewhat stunned that we [were there] so soon’.7
Almásy’s presence at the Easter Day celebrations places him at Jalo by 5 April 1942. On 14 April, Almásy requested the Abwehr commissary in Berlin ‘send 3 cases of tobacco in paper. I should like to leave on the 20th.’8
Up until this point Bletchley Park had been able to decipher communications between Berlin and the Almásy Commando, but then could intercept nothing until 25 May. This was mainly due to the fact that once Almásy set off, all communications switched to a local radio network in Libya, not via Tripoli and on to Berlin. Also, Bletchley Park was extremely busy in this period; as we have seen, Almásy was given a low priority until Jean Alington alerted MI6 to his activities.9
Why was there such a delay in setting off from Jalo? No doubt Almásy wanted his men to get used to the vehicles and driving in the terrain. In addition, Rommel’s main advance east from Benghazi – resulting in the Gazala battles – did not begin until 26 May.
On 29 April they set off and quickly realised that the Italian maps were inaccurate; these stated that there was serir (gravel as hard as concrete on which vehicles could travel quickly) as far as the Dukhla Oasis, Almásy’s chosen route. But 30 miles east of the Palificata Track the commandos encountered dunes, which could only be crossed by zigzagging, a time- and fuel-consuming technique. In two days they covered only 20 miles, all in 120-degree daytime heat, and freezing nights.
On the third day Entholt, who was known as the ‘junior doctor’, succumbed to desert colic, an illness caused by exhaustion, resulting in loss of balance and fainting fits. There was no remedy other than rest. Then Von Steffen, the Sergeant Major, fell ill. He, after Almásy, was the main driving force of the unit: ‘He had been the genius of the technical side of Operation Salam.’ It was Von Steffen who had found out from a local that the water from the Jalo wells would not keep and would be undrinkable within three days, and they had had to obtain fresh water at Bir Butafall a dozen miles away. There was no choice, with two men seriously ill, they had to turn back to Jalo.10
The Route of Operation Salam.
They were back at Jalo by 6 May where Almásy had no alternative but to send both invalids back to Tripoli for treatment. The British were wrongly led to believe that Sergeant Von Steffens had returned to Tripoli to become CSM of another expedition.11 Later both Entholt and Von Steffens were sent to a military hospital in Germany.
On 8 May Almásy conducted an air reconnaissance from Jalo to find a new route: ‘If the entire zone is impassable I shall travel via Kufra through territory known to me.’12
The Almásy Commando set out once again on 11 May.
It was 5 o’clock and the night was visibly clearing over the endless sand plain to the west. It was cold, bitterly cold. The bonnets of our vehicles were drawn abreast and pointing south. The needles of their Askania gyro-compasses had been checked against each other. Their steering had been tightened. We were waiting for the command to go. Fingers stiff with cold were warmed for the last time round hot tin tea mugs, from which we took short sips. Seconds later we were streaking over the surface of the serir, baked hard over millions of years.13
Having made a camp 170 miles south of Jalo, Almásy was however forced to consider taking a longer but less punishing route. He radioed back to Jalo on 13 May, reporting that one car was abandoned due to a damaged gear box, and stating that the ‘dune region east of Gialo-Kufra track [was] impassible.’14
He decided to take the route via Kufra and the Gilf Kebir and on to Assiut; however, this meant a complete recalculation, as it was a detour of 300 miles in both directions, increasing the distance to a round trip of over 2000 miles. It was risky, as Kufra was in British hands, but he decided ‘We must go via Kufra, the task must be carried out.’15
Vehicle and personnel numbers would have to be reduced in order to stretch the fuel and water, so two men and a Bedford truck were sent back to Jalo. Four vehicles would go on, two Ford V8s and two Bedfords. Those travelling with Almásy would be Eppler and Sandstette, and three Brandenburg corporals: Munz, Woehrmann and Koerper. They set out once again on 15 May.
Left behind at Jalo – specifically the Italian W/T station codenamed ‘Schildkroete’ (Tortoise) – was the W/T operator Lance Corporal Waldemar Weber, Salam’s link to Rommel. His operator code was Otter. He reported directly to Abteilung I, a small unit of six junior officers attached to the mobile HQ of Panzerarmee Afrika under G2 (Intelligence) Major Ernst Zalling.16 Salam traffic with Schildkroete was to report daily at 0900, 1500 or 2030hrs.17
See here for a list of abbreviations used in the below notes
1 GCCS 19/94 No 26524 Salam message
2 Eppler, p 198–200
3 ibid, 202–203
4 ibid, p.203
5 Almásy, p.79
6 ibid, p.81–82
7 Almásy, p 92–94
8 GCCS 19/28 No 25061 Tripoli to Berlin 15/4/1942
9 Kelly, p.202
10 Carell, p.216–217
11 KV/2/1467 ref 50/I/0842
12 GCCS 19/30 No 28316 Salam-Western Desert area 8/5/1942
13 Eppler, p.203
14 GCCS 19/30 No 28341 Salam-Western Desert area G2 13/5/1942
15 IWM-LOP Operation Salam Diary
16 Behrendt, p.57
17 GCCS 19/30 No 28337 Salam-Western Desert area G2 4/5/1942