Desert War

This is the kind of book you’ve been waiting for about the war—a book by a correspondent who was in the thick of the actual fighting, in the front lines and sometimes ahead of them. Only in North Africa, because of the strange fluid quality of desert tactics, have correspondents actually been allowed to see men in battle—to attach themselves to fighting units and to move constantly with those units. It is this which gives its unique quality to Russell Hill’s account of the second British invasion of Cyrenaica.

Mr. Hill is the brilliant young Cairo correspondent of the New York Herald Tribune. He knew the campaign was going to start days before it actually did; and he was permitted to inspect oasis outposts, supply dumps, and even Tobruk itself, still surrounded and still magnificently holding out. When the big “flap” began, Hill moved out with a forward unit, and was immediately plunged into that made swirling melee that is deeper fighting, and to which no description short of Hill’s own can do justice.

If you were puzzled by the reports which came for days from Sidi Rezegh, where Rommel made his stand and his escape; if your heart leapt at the relief of Tobruk; if your hopes were raised then the British reached El Agheila, and were dashed down again when Rommel lashed back to Tobruk and the Egyptian border—you will find all the answers and the explanations in this book.

With 14 illustrations and 5 maps.