ABSTRACT
Two days after my arrival the Italians declared war. For some reason the date, 10th June, has always stuck in my mind, and I think the same is true of many others who were in the Middle East at that time, as a more significant date than 3rd September. Nothing much happened on 3rd September or for many months after; but from 10th June there were constant active operations. Sir Archibald Wavell, Commander in Chief in the Middle East, had no intention of allowing a period of ‘phoney war’. He might have been excused from coming to a different conclusion since his forces were so immensely outnumbered that a gallant defensive seemed his only possible strategy. No doubt it was for that very reason that he decided that it was necessary to take the offensive. On the morning of the 11th June the 11th Hussars, his only armoured car regiment, broke through the long barbed wire barrier on the Libyan frontier in the first of many raids into enemy territory. Simultaneously the R.A.F. made an attack on the aerodrome of El Adem, to the south of Tobruk. It was very successful. The entire garrison had been paraded early, to take advantage of the freshness of the morning, and were listening to a harangue from their commanding general. They were lined up remarkably neatly and provided an admirable target. A few days later the 11th Hussars sent a patrol onto the road between Bardia and Tobruk, the two principal towns of Eastern Cyrenaica, and picked up a prisoner, General Lastrucci, Chief Engineer of the 10th Army. He was accompanied by a woman who was not his wife and who gave birth to a baby in the forward casualty clearing station. The comments of the troops can be imagined but were unjustified; she was merely an acquaintance whom he was taking to hospital in Tobruk.
