Killing Rommel

By Stephen Pressfield

In this historical fiction, Pressfield gives the account of a more modern desert battle that of the Nazi African campaign in World War II. This book was as well written, meticulously researched and contained as complex characterization as his other books. Which of coarse meant I absolutely loved it! Engaging, challenging, didactic. There are so many interesting things I learned about fighting war in a desert and the specific challenges faced by those who fight in this terrain.

Interestingly enough, we watched Humphry Bogart's "Sahara" last night and it dramatizes some of these challenges. Mainly: water, exposure, sand and then water again.

"Let me say this about courage under fire. In my experience, valour in action counts for far less than smply performing one's commonplace task without cocking it up. This is by no means as simple as it sounds. In many ways, it's the most difficult thing in the world. Certainly for every glorious death memorialsed in dispatches, one could count twenty others that were the product of fatigue, confusion, inattention, over or underassertion of authority, panic, timidity, hesitation, honest errors or miscalculations, misphas and accidents, collisions, mechanical breakdowns, lost or forgotten spare parts, intelligence deficiencies, mistranslated codes, late or inadequate medical care, not to say bollocksed-up orders (or failure to grasp and implement proper orders), misdirected fire from on'es own troops or allies, and general all-around muddling, sometimes the fault of the dead trooper himself. The role of the officer, in my experience, is nothing grander than to stand sentinel over himself and his men, towards the end of keeping them from forgetting who they are and what their objective is, how to get there, and what equipment they're supposed to have when they arrie. Oh, and getting back. That's the tricky part." Page 13 - 14

"Am I mad? On the one hand, I cannot and will not let myself believe that what I have ordered and performed at Benina is "right" It isn't and never can be. I can't simply block it out and carry on as if nothing has happened. At the same time I must carry on - for my mates, for England, for Rose and for our child. The alternative is unthinkable. With this, I understand the perverse logic of war and the true tragedy of armed conflict. The enemy against whom we fight are human beings like ourselves, individuals with whom each of us might have been friends except for the deranged fictions of nation, doctrine, race and religion, and whom now me must murder (as they seek to murder us) in the name of those very same fictions. And yet, knowing all this and understanding it, still, in some depraved and ineluctable* way, we and they must live it out to the bloody finish." Page 241

*impossible to avoid or evade

I am now very interested in reading something about Rommel himself, a true account of his life and history. He sounds like a fascinating leader.

Book 28