This month, seventy years ago, the Western Desert Force, under the command of Major-General Sir Richard O’Connor, launched Operation Compass against the Italian Tenth Army commanded by General Mario Berti.  
    Three months earlier the Italian Tenth Army had been on the offensive.  Three of its corps had moved from the Libyan Province of Cyrenaica, east, along the Mediterranean into Egypt, approximately sixty miles, recapturing Forts Capuzzo and Magdalena on the Libyan side of the border and occupying Sollum and Sidi Barrani in Egypt.  There, General Berti, following orders from the Governor-General of Libya, Marshal Rodolfo Graziani, ordered his army to dig-in and to create fortified strong points, from the Mediterranean coast south. Unfortunately, the strong points were too far from each other to give mutual support, and what armor was available, General Berti scattered among the strong points, thereby eliminating his mobile reserve.
    Tenth Army’s forces were dispersed all over the desert: 3rd Gennaio Camicie Nere Division (named for the date of an important speech given by Mussolini in the Italian Parliament in 1925) and the Libyan Corps headquarters were at Sidi Barrani; First Libyan Colonial Infantry Division was at Maktila; Second Libyan Colonial Infantry Division at Tummar; Cirene Infantry Division at Sofafi, south of Sidi Barrani; Catanzaro Infantry Division at Buq Buq, to the west of Sidi Barrani; 28 Ottobre Camicie Nere Division (named to honor the Fascist march on Rome October 28, 1922, that brought the party to power in Italy) at Halfaya Pass, west of Buq Buq and near the Egyptian/Libyan border; Marmarica Infantry Division at Sidi Omar, south of Sollum on the Egyptian/Libyan border; Tenth Army headquarters and 23rd Marzo Camicie Nere Division (so named to honor the date of the founding of the Fascist Party on March 23, 1919) at Bardia in Libya.
    Marshal Graziani had promised Il Duce that the Tenth Army would resume its offensive on December 15th.  However, on October 28th, the Kingdom of Italy attacked the Kingdom of Greece, which adventure sucked away supplies that the Tenth Army had been promised and which it needed to advance further and to contest the full strength of the Commonwealth forces.
    On December 8th the British commenced their own offensive by an air and naval bombardment of the Italian strong points. The next morning the Tommies moved forward. As the Italians were eating breakfast, they heard the swirl of Scottish Bagpipes, and more ominously, the rumble of the heavy Matilda tanks. Lt. Col. G. R. Stevens of the Fourth Indian Division described the Italian response: “Frightened, dazed or desperate Italians erupted from tents and slit trenches, some to surrender supinely, others to leap gallantly into battle, hurling grenades or blazing machine guns in futile belabour of the impregnable intruders.” They had no answer for the heavy Matildas. Italian artillerymen continued firing at the heavily armored British tanks, while their shells bounced off the armor, until they were overrun, sometimes literally, by the monstrous Matildas.
    The layout and spacing of the Italian strong points allowed the British to concentrate superior force against each, reduce them, and then move onto the next. Lt. Gen. Sebastiano Gallina, commander of the Libyan Corps, reported that, the battlefield was, “...infested by a mechanized army against which I have no adequate means.” To further compound the problems, General Berti was absent on sick leave. The commander of Fifth Army (which was still headquartered in Tripoli, 900 miles away) Italo Gariboldi, was given temporary command of Tenth Army, and relocated, temporarily, to Bardia, 200 miles distant. Eventually, on December 23, Giuseppe Tellera was given command of the remnants of Tenth Army.
    By 5:00 p.m. Sidi Barrani had fallen.  In his diary, on December 10th, Mussolini’s son-in-law, the Italian Foreign Minister, Count Galeazzo Ciano, wrote, “News of the attack on Sidi Barrani comes like a thunderbolt. At first it didn’t seem serious but subsequent telegrams from Graziani confirm that we have had a licking.” For the day, the British captured twenty thousand Italian soldiers, one hundred eighty guns and sixty tanks at the cost of six hundred casualties. One of those escaping the disaster at Sidi Barrani was Lt. General Annibale Bergonzoli, commander of XXIII Corps.
    The Italians called this “The Battle of Marmarica,” while the British labeled it “The Battle of the Camps.”
    The next day Marshal Graziani wired Commando Supremo that, “recognizing the impossibility of damming the enemy march on the desert flats, I thought it essential to put to use the unique, natural obstacle of Halfaya while throwing strong reinforcements into Bardia and Tobruk.” Both Bardia and Tobruk are in Libya, more than 600 hundred miles away from the Marshal’s headquarters in Tripoli. Count Ciano noted in his diary that Mussolini, “...maintains that the many painful days through which we are living must be inevitable in the changing fortunes of every war.”  
    The First Libyan Division surrendered on December 10. The next day, Buq Buq and Sofifi were captured.
    On December 12th Marshal Graziani, in his headquarters far from the battle front, wired Rome to say that Cyrenaica (the eastern half of Lybia) was lost, recommended a retreat to Tripoli, and claimed that the battle was, “a flea against an elephant.”  Mussolini confided to his son-in-law that, “Here is another man with whom I cannot get angry because I despise him.”  Meanwhile, Marshal Graziani ordered Sollum and Fort Capuzzo abandoned. By December 20th they, and Sidi Omar, had been occupied by the “Desert Rats” of the British Seventh Armored Division.
    Meanwhile, British Middle Eastern Commander, Sir Archibald Wavell ordered the Fourth Indian Division transferred to the Sudan for the coming offensive against Italian East Africa. It was replaced by the Australian Sixth Division.
    The British now set their sights on Bardia which was defended by forty-five thousand men commanded by Lt. Gen. Bergonzoli, who was a veteran of the Spanish Civil War.  He had commanded the Littorio Division at the Battles of Guadalajara and Santander and in the Aragón Offensive and was known as “Barba Elettrica” - Electric Whiskers.
    The Italian Duce wrote to Barba Elettrica, “I have given you a difficult task, but one suited to your courage and experience as an old and intrepid soldier - the task of defending the fortress of Bardia to the last. I am certain that Barba Elettrica and his brave soldiers will stand, at whatever cost, faithful to the last.” In response to Il Duce’s entreaties, Barba Elettrica promised, “I am aware of the honor and I have today  repeated to my troops your message. Simply and unequivocally, in Bardia we are and here we stay.”  Those troops included 23rd Marzo & 28 Ottobre Camicie Nere Divisions and the remnants of the Marmarica, Cirene and Catanzaro Infantry Divisions. However, the Italian equipment and arms were antiquated and woefully inadequate for the coming battle.
    After a naval bombardment from British battleships Barham, Warspite and Valiant and four destroyers, on the morning of January 3, 1941, General O’Connor gave the Italians their first taste of the “Aussies,” as the Australian Sixth Division, commanded by Major-General Iven Mackay went on the attack.  By January 5, it was all over for Bardia.  Forty-four thousand eight hundred sixty-eight Italian soldiers were in Commonwealth hands. The cost to the Australians had been 456 casualties. Future British Prime Minister, Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden, in a play on Churchill’s speech extolling the RAF for its performance during the Battle of Britain, quipped, “Never has so much been surrendered by so many to so few.”  General Mackay predicted, on January 6, 1941, that the, “Germans cannot possibly keep out of Africa now.”
    However, Barba Elettrica had escaped in a staff car and was headed to Tobruk, where he assumed command of that city’s defenses from General Petassi Manella.
    By now the Italian Tenth Army had lost eighty thousand men since the beginning of the campaign on September 10, 1940. From top to bottom the Italian leadership was descending into a depression.  Il Duce told his son-in-law, Count Ciano, that the Italians were, “A race of sheep and that in the future we shall select an army of professionals, selecting them out of twelve to thirteen million Italians there in the valley of the Po, and then part of central Italy.  All the others will be put to work making arms for the warrior aristocracy.” Marshal Graziani sent his wife to Count Ciano with a letter pleading for help from the Luftwaffe, blaming his problems on Marshal Pietro Badoglio, Chief of the Italian General Staff, and talking of suicide.  
    On January 9, 1941, the Aussies surrounded Tobruk, and on the 21st began assaulting it.  Tobruk was a fortress town, on the Mediterranean coast of Libya, defended by twenty-five thousand Italian soldiers with forty-five light and twenty medium tanks, two hundred guns, antitank ditches, Forts Soloaro and Pilastrino, and several other strong points, together with the 10" guns of the Cruiser San Giorgio.  On January 22, 1941, the port fell.
    Once again, Barba Elettrica was able to make his escape, leaving Admiral Massmiliano Vietina to surrender the City and its garrison. The next day an Australian soldier lowered the green and red flag of the Kingdom of Italy and replaced it with a digger’s hat. The Aussies captured twenty-five thousand more soldiers, two hundred eight guns, twenty-three tanks and two hundred vehicles and enough tins of food to keep the Italians going for two months, at a cost of forty-nine killed and three hundred six wounded. Marshal Graziani wired Commando Supremo that he had faced not one, but seventeen divisions, saying that, “I had a vision of the future.  I saw that it was not possible to avoid the fatality of the future!”
    The day after Tobruk’s surrender, Marshal Graziani wired Commando Supremo, “I am more or less in the position of a Captain in command of his ship which is on the point of sinking because errors are present on all sides.” Afer requesting more armor, and - correctly - explaining that, “In this theatre of operations a single armored division is more important than an entire army,” Marshal Graziani received a telegram from Mussolini on January 27th saying that, “I want you to know, dear Marshal, that we are eating out our liver, day and night, to send you the necessaries for this arduous battle.”  
    That same day, the 4th Armoured Brigade of the 7th Armoured Division reached Fort Mechili, in the desert, but was unable to take it because of the strength of Italian defenses, requiring the assistance of the rest of the division. In the face of the entire division, the Italian garrison evacuated during the evening of January 26, 1941.
    In the meantime, Barba Elettrica had made his way to Derna, where he assumed command of that garrison, which included the Sabratha, Pavia and Brescia Infantry divisions. Derna is a Libyan city on the Mediterranean, which then had a population of 10,000. On February 3, 1941, after a week of fighting, under orders from Marshal Graziani, the Italians abandoned Derna to the Aussies and Barba Elettrica escaped once again.
    The remnants of the Italian Tenth Army were retreating west along the coast, on the Via Balbia. The British, on February 4, 1941, dispatched a force of about 2000, under the command of Lt. Col. John Comb, across the dessert, from Fort Mechili, in an effort to intercept the retreating Italians. The intersection point would be at the village of Beda Fomm, on the Via Balbia, about 70 miles south of Benghazi.
    Col. Comb’s force arrived about 30 minutes before the Italians on February 5, 1941. The next two days saw intense fighting - often hand-to-hand. On the morning of February 7, the last twenty of the Italian medium tanks broke through the British line, and were only stopped by British artillery yards from British headquarters. General Tellera was killed in this last, desperate, assault. With the balance of 7th Armored arriving across the desert, and the Aussies in their rear, the Italians had no choice but to surrender - including the elusive Barba Elettrica. General O’Connor observed that, “I think this may be termed a complete victory as none of the enemy escaped.”
    Benghazi was captured on February 6, along with six Italian generals.
    With the capture of El Agheila, on February 9, 1941, events elsewhere transpired to end the campaign and Marshal Graziani’s participation in North Africa. In the short space of two months Commonwealth forces had captured 130,000 Italian prisoners (including 22 generals), for a cost of 494 dead and 1,225 wounded. On February 8, Marshal Graziani had written to the Italian Dictator: “Duce, these latest events have severely depressed my nerves and strength, so that I cannot continue to exercise command in full possession of my faculties. I therefore ask to be recalled and replaced.”  He would be replaced by General Gariboldi.
    Afterwards, the German Führer joked to his generals that, “Failure has had the healthy effect of once more compressing Italian claims to within the natural boundaries of Italian capabilities.”
NEXT: ROMMEL TO THE RESCUE!

Mr. Wimbrow writes from Ocean City, Maryland, where he practices law representing those persons accused of criminal and traffic offenses, and those persons who have suffered a personal injury through no fault of their own.