D FitzGerald

@VoicesofWW2 Picture is Knightsbridge Box I think, not Bir Hacheim. Taking nothing away from the bravery of the Free French Troops.

On this day in 1942, Rommel attacked the British line in Libya and walked into the most heroic stand of the desert war. 15 days later, he would call it the hardest fight he ever had in Africa. May 26, 1942. The British 8th Army, under Lieutenant General Neil Ritchie, had spent the spring digging fortified positions in the Libyan desert west of the port of Tobruk. The line ran 40 miles south from the Mediterranean coast at a village called Gazala to a crumbling old fortress in the middle of the Sahara called Bir Hacheim. Between them lay a chain of minefields and infantry strongpoints called "boxes." Each box was self-contained, designed to hold out even if surrounded, like coral atolls in an ocean of sand. The southern anchor of the entire line was Bir Hacheim. It was held by the 1st Free French Brigade. 3,700 men. Half of them Foreign Legionnaires, including German and Austrian Jews who had fled the Reich and now wore French uniforms, Spanish Republicans who had crossed the Pyrenees in 1939, French marines, North African colonial infantry, and Pacific islanders from Tahiti and New Caledonia. They were commanded by Général de brigade Marie-Pierre Koenig, a man with a quiet voice, a slight limp from a wound in the previous war, and an iron will. Their orders were to hold the desert flank against the Afrika Korps for as long as possible. At 14:00 on May 26, after an opening artillery barrage, Erwin Rommel launched Unternehmen Venezia. Italian X and XXI Corps attacked the Gazala line head-on with infantry and a feint of armor. That night, under cover of darkness, Rommel personally led his entire panzer striking force, the 15th and 21st Panzer Divisions and the Italian Ariete armored division, on a sweeping night march to the south. They went around the British line. At dawn on May 27, Rommel's tanks came up behind the 8th Army. The British, who had been expecting a frontal assault, suddenly found three Axis armored divisions in their rear, between them and Tobruk. The desert war became a chaos of swirling tank battles, lost units, missed orders, and burning vehicles. Rommel needed one thing to make his plan work. He needed to overrun Bir Hacheim in 24 hours so his fuel and ammunition convoys could resupply him through the gap in the southern minefield. Bir Hacheim refused to fall. Koenig's 3,700 men, against eventually 30,000 Axis troops, held out for 15 days. Stuka dive-bombers attacked Bir Hacheim in waves of 100 aircraft at a time. The pilots called it die Hölle, "the Hell." Italian armor was repulsed. German panzers, including units Rommel personally led to the perimeter, were beaten back by 75mm guns dug into the sand and fired over open sights. Rommel sent envoys forward under flags of truce demanding surrender. Koenig sent the same answer every time. In the British high command, the contempt for Vichy France that had marked Allied attitudes since 1940 began, quietly, to soften. By June 10, the position was a ruin of trenches, broken anti-tank guns, dead camels, and dead bodies in the sand. The garrison had been reduced to 2,400 effectives. They were out of water. The Stukas had wrecked the wells. That night, Koenig led a breakout through the German encirclement in trucks driving without headlights. Susan Travers, an English-born ambulance driver attached to the Foreign Legion who had become Koenig's driver and his lover, drove the lead vehicle straight through a German checkpoint at 50 mph with shells exploding around her. She would later become the only woman ever officially admitted to the French Foreign Legion. 2,400 of his men made it back to British lines. The fact that a French formation, fighting for a France that had surrendered two years earlier, had held out for 15 days against Rommel's best became the moment the Free French were taken seriously as a fighting force by Allied governments. Up to that point, Charles de Gaulle in London had been treated by the British and Americans as a useful nuisance. After Bir Hacheim, he was treated as the leader of an army. Hearing the news in London, de Gaulle wept openly. He told his staff: "When at Bir Hacheim a glimmer of France's resurrection appeared through the storms, the world recognised the French." Rommel wrote in his diary: "Seldom in Africa was I given such a hard fought struggle." The delay at Bir Hacheim cost Rommel time he could not afford to lose. By the time he resumed his advance with full fuel and ammunition, the British had reorganized. It was not quite enough. Two weeks later, Tobruk fell. 33,000 British and Commonwealth troops surrendered. The 8th Army was driven back across the Egyptian border to a railway halt named El Alamein. What stopped Rommel there, on the threshold of Cairo, was the time that 3,700 Frenchmen had bought him in the sand at Bir Hacheim.

@kevinpurcell @SeaSpitfires 4x2 flanalette. (For cleaning rifle)

@SeaSpitfires 4 x 2? I can see it in the stores: "4 x 2, pine, Hitting Germans in the head, For the use of" Just in case the bayonet, knife, rifle, grenades are not immediately to hand. 6 foot of string: like the towel a cool frood always has enough string.

On 1 November 1944 this is what a rifleman of 4 Commando carried when they landed at Flushing in #Walcheren44. Of note they appear to have dispensed with the battledress blouse in favour of a sweater under the Denison smock. It's also good to see they took Ford Prefect's advice.

@jameswharton Is this the British Army’s Dunkirk moment? We have no equipment (either through gifting away or our self denying acquisition process) so we might as well wake up and acknowledge the situation. Start afresh and boldly acquire rapidly equipment that is good enough at scale.

To recap, there is currently three reviews into the Army’s Ajax armoured vehicle programme: These include: • A review into the specific vehicles involved in the Salisbury Plain incident, which saw 31 soldiers fall ill • A wider review into the safety of Ajax, examining all vehicles across the programme • A review into the flow of communications between Army officials and government ministers, after Luke Pollard was given inaccurate written assurances that the vehicle was safe

@NatashaMDay Never confuse rank with ability.

@thinkdefence It makes sense not to publish how you are improving your HQ survivability in open source documents.

Been reading about the evolution of HQ ARRC, really impressive how they have changed, specially in reducing footprint to improve survivability

More Wargame events to visit

More playtesting of FISH City. Very useful feedback.

Day Three. Very interesting topic.

Battlefield studies allow armed forces to draw historical observations and lessons into contemporary operations. The Soviet assault onto Berlin in 1945 provides comprehensive combined arms urban warfighting focus at scale. Excellent education for all involved.

Playtesting FISH City Wargame.

More on Red Teaming from Rand

Wargaming in support of Procurement. 🤔