ABSTRACT
On 5 November 1915, the HMS Tara was torpedoed and sunk by a German U-Boat while on patrol just North-East of the Egyptian garrison town of Sollum. The Anglo-Sanusi War as it became known was short-lived. British military intelligence interpreted maneuvers as part of a German-Turk campaign to exert concerted pressure on British-occupied Egypt from the Western desert and draw forces from the Dardanelles and the Suez Canal. The Western Egyptian and Libyan Desert was a landscape that demanded a different kind of warfare from the Western Front. While Williams' doubts about "mastery" are only detectable in textual absence, Rolls self-consciously foregrounds his lack of visual conquest in Steel Chariots in the Desert. Although Rolls might not identify with the Arab peoples, he yet articulates a shift in imperial consciousness honed by his experiences of navigating and surviving a desert landscape that could not simply be mastered by European technology. Williams also exhibits similar concerns about the imperialist project.
