The Desert Fox: The Story of Rommel

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The time is 1941,

a month before Pearl Harbor.

At eleven o'clock, on a November night,

a British submarine

surfaced in the Mediterranean

off the coast of Libya in North Africa,

behind the German lines.

- Are you sure the light carries that far?

- It should.

There they are.

- What's he saying?

- He says they're all set, sir.

Tell him we're coming in.

These were British commandos,

and the purpose of this carefully plotted raid

was the death of one man.

Cover me.

- It's no use. Go on.

- Get hold of my arm.

It's no use, I tell you. Get out of here.

Did we... Did we get him?

Are you serious, Englishman?

The following order from General Auchinleck

is to all commanders and

chiefs of staff of the Middle East forces.

"There exists a real danger

that our friend Rommel

is becoming a kind of magician

or bogeyman to our troops,

who are talking far too much about him. "

"He is by no means a superman,

although he is undoubtedly

very energetic and able. "

"Even if he were a superman,

it would still be highly undesirable

that our men should credit him

with supernatural powers. "

"I wish you to dispel by all possible means

the idea that Rommel represents something

more than an ordinary German general. "

"Ensure that this order

is put into immediate effect,

and impress upon all commanders

that, from a psychological point of view,

it is a matter of the highest importance. "

Signed:
CJ Auchinleck, General,

Commander-in-Chief, MEF.

This is the North African desert

in June of 1942,

and these are British soldiers

taken prisoner the night before

by units of the German Afrika Korps.

Run, you fool! Run!

You, come on! Get out of there!

Get over with the other prisoners.

Who is the senior officer here?

- I am, I suppose.

- Come with me.

- Rank?

- Lieutenant colonel.

I want you to go with these two officers,

under a flag of truce,

and tell that battery to stop firing.

Tell them they're killing their own men.

- Sorry, I can't do that.

- I'm giving you an order.

Here, tie this on that rifle.

Listen, Major, I'm a prisoner of war.

You can't give me any such order.

- You know that as well as I do.

- I won't argue the point with you.

Either you do as I tell you

or we'll soon find a way to make you.

- Are you going or not?

- Major! Major!

What's the row?

- The field marshal said you're right.

- Field marshal?

So this, then, was Rommel.

Erwin Johannes Eugen Rommel,

commander in chief of the enemy army,

and the most celebrated

German soldier since World War I.

Already a legend in the desert,

he was a fox who had chased his hunters

back and forth across North Africa

about as often as they had chased him,

and his tricks and turns

had made even the tommies chuckle,

which is scarcely the proper reflex

to the enemy in time of war.

In spite of which, he was still,

of course, my enemy.

The enemy not only of my country

and the army in which I served,

but of all life as I knew it.

Not only of democracy

as free men had fashioned it,

but of civilisation itself.

My name is Desmond Young.

At the time of my capture

I was a lieutenant colonel in the Indian Army.

This was my first and only sight

of the cool, hard professional soldier

whose scrupulous regard for the rules of

warfare had been exercised, in this instance,

so fortunately for myself.

Two years and four months later,

while the British and Americans were

still fighting their way across Europe,

Erwin Rommel was dead.

He was dead, the Nazis reported, of wounds

gallantly received on the field of honour.

But the Nazis were great liars,

of course, and many people wondered.

For already there were mysterious rumours

floating across the battle lines.

So when the war was over

and my military life behind me,

I gave myself a mission.

I set out to discover what

actually had happened to him.

what was the truth about his death,

and on what field of honour had he died?

In a modest home in the tiny village of

Herrlingen by Ulm, in Wrttemberg, Germany,

I talked long and often

with Rommel's son and widow,

and examined his letters,

reports and other papers.

In Germany I talked to soldiers who had

served with him, over him and under him,

in England, with men who

had fought against him,

from field marshals to desert rats.

And in both countries, of course,

I went to the official records.

Based on these facts, what now follows

is the true story of Erwin Rommel.

The beginning of the end

for this single-minded soldier

came at 9.30 on the evening

of October 23, 1942,

when, at El Alamein,

six miles of British guns...

Fire!

I discovered that, actually, Rommel was

not in Africa when the storm of battle broke.

Suffering from a chronic

diphtheria of the nose,

he had been relieved

of his command a month before

and flown back to a hospital in Germany.

But, when the telephone rang at his bedside

and a familiar voice from Berlin

called on him once more,

he rose and was in a plane

on the way back to the desert within hours.

- Thank you. Still the dandy, I see.

- Just luck, sir.

Welcome back, sir.

- Shall we look at those maps?

- Over here.

- How are you, Bayerlein?

- Very well. Did you see Frau Rommel?

Yes, she came and stayed a week,

she and Manfred.

- How does it look today?

- They've simply got too much for us.

I've no idea how we'll get out of it.

Not with the amount of petrol we've got.

- We have petrol.

- Not enough.

- It's still on the way?

- No, nor any prospect of it.

- Who told you that?

- I've talked to Rome three times.

There's no petrol on the way nor any

committed to us, as of ten o'clock last night.

Schultz. Aldinger.

- The tanks, did they come?

- None.

- None since I left?

- No. None since August.

- What about the guns?

- Nothing.

- And no petrol at all?

- Not a pint.

This is correct within the hour.

Get me a stool, will you?

Here's where it's worst.

The 15th's in a bad way. They drove...

- What's this?

- The Trento Division.

- Yes, I see. How far's this armour?

- No further.

Where are my maps?

Bring the 21st and Ariete north through here.

- Move the 90th and Trento forward here.

- So they'll hook up.

- Is Montgomery sending his infantry in first?

- Naturally.

Then the armour? Let's send our tanks in first

and blow a hole through that infantry.

If it works, we'll be on top of his tanks,

with our infantry pouring in to polish it off.

- Very good, sir.

- If it doesn't work we'll know better next time.

You're not going up now, are you?

- Oughtn't you to turn in?

- After three weeks of being turned in?

- We're away, sir.

- Let's head north and go in with the 21st.

But there was now another fox in the desert,

an even craftier one, perhaps.

And if the battle boiled into confusion

during the next few days,

it was a confusion that was clearly

more and more in Montgomery's favour.

- Have you found the field marshal yet?

- No, sir. He's out at the front again.

I don't know how the men in the line feel,

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