JUNE 18, 1942
OUTSIDE OF TOBRUK, LIBYA
DAY
General Erwin Rommel is determined to increase the Nazi stranglehold on Fortress Europe.
Even if he has to get down on his hands and knees.
Rommel rides in the front passenger seat of his Horch 901 staff car. The dirt road unspooling through the desert is one sharp bump after another. A driver and two staff members share the vehicle. It is a week since Bir Hakeim fell. The French getaway is regrettable to Rommel, but he bears a grudging respect for the defenders. “Seldom in Africa was I given such a hard fought struggle,” he admits.
Rommel has always been lean, but a year in the desert has chiseled his features and given his compact body the sleek countenance of a bantamweight boxer. His face is grizzled in a cowboy suntan: bronze cheeks and nose topped off by a lily-white forehead from tugging his cap down low. His haircut is an awkward concession to the desert, shaved on the sides with a short tuft of hair on top. The general’s uniform, like his car’s sand-covered bonnet, is coated in a fine layer of Libya. Squint marks line the corners of his goggle-covered eyes. Binoculars dangle by a black leather strap from his sunburned neck.
The desert is never flat, but it is very often bare, alternately concealing and revealing a land of hostile sensation: cruel heat, savage winds, scorpions, vipers, biting flies, charred British Matilda and American-made M3 General Grant tanks painted with names of faraway girlfriends—like “Rosemary” with her turret blown off—escarpment, abandoned tents, blackened guns, spent casings, the trampled earth of a dozen recent battlefields.
And land mines.
Everywhere, unseen, land mines. Thousands upon thousands sown by the British to stop Rommel’s amazing army, buried between sandy desert crust and the limestone beneath.
To most men, this is hell.
To Erwin Rommel, this is a kingdom.
His kingdom.
And like all great conquerors, his domain is never big enough.
Today’s goal is the port city of Tobruk. The British own it. Rommel needs it. The capture of Bir Hakeim makes it possible for him to focus completely on expanding his realm. Only after taking the vital city with its square houses and flat roofs can Rommel advance on his ultimate goal, the Egyptian capital of Cairo.
Suddenly, across the desert, the general makes out the profile of German trucks parked in random fashion. Each vehicle is empty. No signs of drivers or soldiers. No one emerging from behind a rock after taking a relief break.
Erwin Rommel orders his driver to halt.
It was February 1941 when Adolf Hitler summoned General Erwin Rommel to Berlin to name him commander of a new unit known as the Afrika Korps. They would fight in the desert, a type of warfare completely foreign to Rommel. These tanks and infantry would serve as a Sperrband—a forbidden zone—preventing a resurgent British Army from capturing Italy’s colony of Libya.
The call to duty pleased Rommel. At the time, war was over in Europe. Opportunities to fight were few. As the general flew to Africa, his peers and adversaries in the panzer command languished, the glorious dash across France in the past and prospects of a future command highly unlikely.
No one could have foreseen what happened next. Rommel became the bully of North Africa, taking blitzkrieg to the British, ignoring orders to remain on the defensive. Time after time, the Afrika Korps prevails. Rommel’s army became unbeatable, a crack unit pushing their mental, physical, and emotional limits to win battles. Rommel’s men fight to exhaustion, often collapsing on the desert floor when a battle is won, so tired that enemy soldiers caught behind German lines and trying to make it back to safety will report walking directly through Rommel’s sleeping army without anyone stirring.
The media pays attention. The “obscure German General Rommel” becomes famous, and not just to Berlin residents lapping up Nazi propaganda. Rommel grows so used to being filmed that he demands to repeat a scene if the camera angle used by the propaganda film crew is not flattering. He gets fan mail from German citizens and regularly responds with a signed photo. German Red Cross nurses stationed in the African desert regularly mob him for an autograph or snapshot.
It is the British press who dub Rommel the “Desert Fox” for his cunning. The New York Times will gush that Rommel is one of those “soldier’s soldiers who win respect even from their enemies . . . the first military genius who has appeared in this war. He leads tank battles before lunch, air battles after lunch, and in the evening, like an umpire in a sham battle, explains to prisoners why they lost.”
Time magazine is about to place him on the cover.
Perhaps the greatest acclaim is from Winston Churchill. The British prime minister was heavily criticized for praising a Nazi general in the House of Commons but will forever refuse to back down. “Rommel was a splendid military gambler,” the prime minister will write in his memoirs. “Dominating the problems of supply and scornful of opposition . . . his ardor and daring inflicted grievous disasters upon us, but he deserves the salute I made him.”
Despite the glory, Rommel is racked by depression and self-doubt. One reason the Führer chose him for command in Africa was immense personal vigor. But now the general’s health is declining from the long months of unrelenting sun, dust, and wind. “Field Marshal Rommel is suffering from chronic stomach and intestinal catarrh, nasal diphtheria and circulation trouble,” his doctor will write. The general also appears jaundiced at times and suffers from boils on his face. “He is not in a fit condition to command.”
To which Rommel will write home to wife Lucia, “Much too low blood pressure, state of exhaustion, six to eight weeks’ rest cure recommended. I have requested the High Command to send a substitute.”
General Erwin Rommel wants to go home.
Only he is not done here.
Rommel is garrulous when the cameras are filming but in fact has few friends. The general writes almost daily to Lucia, back home with their tall, bespectacled thirteen-year-old son, Manfred. The invasion of the Soviet Union one summer ago has led to moments of bitterness. Vital reinforcements, tanks, gas, and food he needs to win in Africa are being diverted to the Eastern Front. And until Rommel drives the British from Egypt by capturing Cairo and the vital Suez Canal, he well knows he is just one defeat away from falling out of favor with Adolf Hitler, a man with a very short memory.
Erwin Rommel steps out of the Horch to deal with the baffling sight of the stalled and empty German trucks.
The general studies the ground. Carefully, Rommel gets down on his hands and knees. The sand has been disturbed. Using extreme caution, he brushes away the sediment.
A land mine takes shape.
Rommel’s staff will not take the time to write down whether the general has chanced upon an anti-tank or antipersonnel mine. The British Mk series of antipersonnel devices are cylindrical in shape, the width of a bread plate and six inches tall. Britain’s anti-tank explosives are the dimensions of a hefty hardcover novel and weigh in at five to twelve pounds. Both are made of steel and packed with TNT. Some versions add explosive barium nitrate or ammonium nitrate. Detonation takes place when the weight of an individual or vehicle applies pressure to the surface.
Whether the victim is a tank or a man, all it takes is four pounds of compression—the rough equivalent of a weak handshake—to make a land mine explode.
The explosive systems within the many styles of Mk are amazingly unique. There are few similarities, as if the munitions designers found one way to successfully build a land mine and then, realizing that long-term employment depended upon duplicating the process in a completely opposite fashion, moved on from the original design to start completely anew.
Yet they all blow up.
The blast range is thirty yards. Everything within that kill zone becomes a casualty. The outer casing of each land mine is steel. The explosion shatters the canister, sending thousands of shards of hot metal flying in every direction.
Rommel can clearly see what happened here: the drivers stopped when they realized they had entered a minefield. The British were waiting, having set the trap. The unlucky German drivers and soldiers are now prisoners.
Rommel would be wise to find a different road.
But the general’s objective is to guide the attack on Tobruk, and that means getting to the other side of this minefield. He crawls forward. Upon locating an explosive device, Rommel determines its outlines and gingerly wipes away the sand. One by one, the general finds more mines and removes them from the road. His every point of contact with the earth—palms, knees, boots—has the potential to press down on a mine.
In fact, the general’s life will indeed be cut short. The end will be sudden and unexpected, although he will have time to ponder his last thoughts.
But that tragedy is still two years away.
For now, Rommel thinks only of land mines. Not strategy, not Lucia, not biting black flies, not complete and utter exhaustion.
Land mines.
Rommel takes care. Great care. His touch is light. The Afrika Korps is beginning its final advance on Tobruk. Somewhere in the distance the general hears the percussive thud of artillery and longs to find the battle but knows this is not a time to rush.
Land mines.
A path in the sand. Rommel feels carefully, taking care not to miss even a single explosive device. He removes each bomb from the dirt and sets it to one side. Time means nothing.
Done.
The general stands. He wipes the desert grit from his hands.
Rommel orders his driver to find the battle.