good morning jeremy

  

M  Y  S  T  I  C 

love

   dad

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Rommel Denied

  

Despite the shellacking handed them at

Gazala, Tobruk, and Mersa Matruh 

the Eighth was still an army.

They were focused, ready and willing 

to end Rommel's joy ride here and now.

 

The Afrika Korps' sprint into Egypt left their air cover

behind.  The Messerschmitt fighters were notoriously

short ranged and couldn't reach Rommel's forces

as he neared Alamein.  

Britain's Desert Air Force took advantage of Germany's

vulnerability and bombed Rommel's troops without

let up, day and night.  Everything down to refueling

tanks was disrupted.  Still, Rommel urged his men on

with single-minded ferocity.

Time was critical.  Soon the 8th Army would receive

300 Sherman tanks from the US - the first of this

new breed of armor, just off the assembly line.

Ships filled with troops were also on the way.

Rommel had to crush the British now or lose

all hope of taking North Africa.

Rommel charged into the British defenses believing

he was still fighting General Richie.  He wasn't.

Auchinleck's troop deployment was not anticipated

by the German generals and they ran full bore into

a barrage of artillery fire that came from three directions.

For three days Rommel twisted and turned looking

for a soft spot in the British defense.  He found none.

A spent force.

The Afrika Korps was exhausted.

They could go no further.

Rommel's only choice now was to 

set out the mine fields and stretch out

the barb wire.  From here on Rommel

would be on the defensive.

* * * * * 

©  Tom Taylor

OVER   EASY

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good morning justin

C H A N C E     E N C O U N T E R

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   dad

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Gymnast

  

 Global strategy is too important to be left to generals.

Planning for military conflict is just one factor among

many that need to be considered by leaders to win

the war.

President Roosevelt's top military commanders were

strenuously promoting an Allied assault on France 

before the end of 1942, within a year of the bombing

of Pearl Harbor.  The proposed invasion would be

of a size and complexity that occurred on D-Day,

three years later.

Churchill argued the plan was ambitious beyond its means.

We hadn't the ships, tanks and airplanes needed for this

undertaking.  No one had any firm ideas, let alone 

experience, at how to conduct an amphibious assault.

Britain and Canada would have to lead the way because

most of the Yanks were in basic training.  The US Army

would grow a thousand percent by the end of the year.

Nearly everyone was busy learning their job.

Hitler would welcome this half-baked military effort,

pulverizing Allied formations as they land.

The resulting disaster would set back the opening 

of a second front in France a couple of years

and possibly leave Stalin wondering whether it

would be better to settle with the Nazis than to put

his faith in an incompetent ally.

 Roosevelt was in agreement with Churchill.

Gymnast was Roosevelt's plan for a second front

in North Africa as opposed to taking Germany

head on in Europe.  By attacking the French in

Vichy Morocco and Algeria, the Americans would

learn from dealing with a less formidable enemy.

In fact, the French might choose not to fight at all.

US troops were untested and definitely not ready 

for prime time.  While German generals spent years

brooding over how to slice and dice their opposition,

the US Army was busy chasing Poncho Villa around

the southern border with Mexico.

US troops would get their baptism of fire at a mountain

pass named Kasserine.  Rommel pretty well torched

the American effort to hold him back.  The loss was a 

bitter humiliation for Eisenhower's men.  But it wasn't 

the catastrophe that would have occurred on the shores

of Normandy.  It was a valuable teaching lesson.

Adjustments were made in personnel.

General George S. Patton was given a division of tanks

to command.

* * * * *

©  Tom Taylor

OVER   EASY

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good morning jacob

  

L A     S T R A D A

love

   dad 

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Milestones

  

Churchill pulled the best of the 8th Army from North Africa

to defend the Greeks from Hitler.  The summoned

British force proved to be an expensive gesture that

was easily swept aside.  The Germans captured

seven thousand Brits.  The remainder of Churchill's

force fled to Crete.

The thirty thousand British troops were just getting 

acquainted with their new surroundings when a sky

filled with German paratroopers assaulted them on 

the island of Crete.   Having recently abandoned their

tanks back in Greece, Britain once again ceded the

battlefield to Germany.  Twelve thousand of 

Churchill's men became POW's.  The rest sailed

through submarine infested waters in order to 

reach the Egyptian port of Alexandria.

For Churchill the news of Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor

undoubtedly sounded to him like the bugle call signaling

Uncle Sam was on his way.  Too bad Roosevelt would be 

chasing after the Japanese.  Germany was the real threat.

Four days following Pearl Harbor, Hitler solved Roosevelt's

dilemma and declared war on the U.S.  

Washington quickly embraced the European war

as the nation's first priority.

Shocking word came from the tip of the Malay peninsula

where the British island fortress there had surrendered.

With its imposing 15 inch guns pointed out to sea, this

symbol of Britain's rule was considered impregnable.

London's colonial army of 80,000 surrendered to a modest

Japanese force of 30,000.  Turns out English troops were

no match for men trained in jungle fighting.  

Singapore's defenders assumed the threat 

would come by sea and chose to ignore the

possibility of an invasion over land.

 

Japan called the shots in the Pacific until Midway.

The US Navy took advantage of breaking Japan's

military code to ambush Tokyo's national pride -

their world class carrier fleet.  All four Japanese

carriers sank into the ocean's depth while

the Yorktown was America's only loss.

With Japan's defeat, Churchill no longer saw Tokyo

as a serious threat to his Commonwealth members  

of India and Australia.

The loss of Tobruk was too much.

So here we were.  The 8th Army, with its

back to the wall, fighting for all the marbles

near this small railway depot isolated in the

Sahara desert.

A no confidence vote against Churchill was the 

talk among members of the House of Commons.

All this erupted as the Prime Minister plotted

global strategy with his most important ally,

President Roosevelt.

* * * * * 

©  Tom Taylor

OVER   EASY

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good morning jack

  

Afrike  and  Jack  in  Italy

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