Killing Rommel. Steven Pressfield. Doubleday, doubleday.com, 2008. 335 pages.

 

Reading Killing Rommel is the closest thing to actually participating in one of these daring WWII raids.

We’ve come to expect “ripping good yarns” from best-selling novelist Steven Pressfield, but usually his historical novels are set in the ancient world and feature the likes of Alexander the Great or Leonidas the Spartan. This time out, however, Pressfield moves the target of his unmatched skills as storyteller 2000 years forward to World War II’s desert war in North Africa where the Desert Fox, Germany’s Erwin Rommel, reigned as Britain’s nemesis in 1942. But, chiefly, this is a compelling, thoroughly-researched story based upon the exploits of Britain’s Long Range Desert Group (LRDG), the daring, often eccentric commandos who roamed the vast stretches of North African desert in jeeps and light trucks conducting reconnaissance missions and raids on Axis units far behind the front lines. Rommel himself declared that “man for man, the LRDG had done more damage to the Axis cause than any other outfit in the North African campaign.” Pressfield shows you how they did it.

The story is presented as a first-person-account memoir written by a fictional citizen-soldier, Lt. R. Lawrence “Chap” Chapman, a British Eighth Army armor officer “seconded” to the LRDG in the summer and fall of 1942. Ostensibly only temporarily joining the LRDG for a single patrol to assess the trafficability of remote routes that large armored formations might take through the forbidding desert, Chap quickly bonds with his new “band of brothers” mates and defies orders to return to his regular Eighth Army unit – even going AWOL from a field hospital while sick with pneumonia to rejoin the LRDG. Historical personalities, however, are part of the story, too, and legendary desert commandos like Jake Easonsmith, Paddy Mayne, Nick Wilder, Ron Tinker, and Vladimir Peniakoff, aka “Popski,” appear to help propel the “can’t put it down” narrative. These historical personalities and their authentically detailed missions — and Pressfield’s extraordinary attention to the historically accurate details and experiences of the desert war — make the book read more like an exciting unit battle history of the commandos than a work of fiction. As Pressfield explains, “Practically no incident depicted in these pages as happening to the men of T3 patrol did not occur in fact to others at other times during the desert war. In other words, if an event didn’t happen to these soldiers literally, it either did happen to men just like them or it could have.” Yet, Pressfield doesn’t just tell us a fascinating story about the Long Range Desert Group, he takes us along for the ride! Reading Killing Rommel is the closest thing to actually participating in one of these daring WWII raids in the trackless desert of North Africa that any of us today will ever get.

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As the title suggests, “killing Rommel” is the intended purpose of the first mission that initiates Chap into the LRDG brotherhood; yet the unique nature of the desert war – in Pressfield’s (and Rommel’s) words, a “war without hate” – meant that the commandos set about their job with a calculating, businesslike efficiency, not overwhelmed by some intense desire to rid the world of a brutal, Nazi monster (see “[1] POV – Rommel: War Without Hate” by Steven Pressfield in the ACG website blog section). Rommel was targeted because he was the driving force and battlefield genius behind the Afrika Korps’ and Axis forces’ success in the theater, and at the time the mission was planned, he had British and Commonwealth forces reeling on the ropes – his panzers were only a short drive from Cairo and the strategically important Suez Canal. “Killing Rommel” was devised as a bold stroke to reverse Britain’s North African battlefield fortunes, and the only military unit that offered any hope such a daring, risky mission might succeed was the LRDG. While British and Axis forces faced each other across the battlefield of El Alamein, an LRDG patrol (with Chap along) strikes out across the desert to find the Desert Fox and kill him – if they can.

Pressfield’s thrilling story of how that raid and Chap’s subsequent adventures with the LRDG played out is both a rare “insider”s” look at the commandos’ operations and a cautionary tale of how incredibly difficult military operations are. A thousand things, big and small, can go terribly wrong and torpedo a military operation, especially one in which success – even survival – hangs on such a small thread. In Killing Rommel, “Murphy” (of Murphy’s Law) definitely goes along for the ride. Trucks break down, humans make seemingly small but potentially deadly errors, equipment fails or is destroyed, men fall to accidents, illness and German bullets – and to the egregiously misnamed “friendly fire” – and simply navigating across the desert (aptly compared to navigating at sea) is an incredibly complicated yet vitally important endeavor. After reading Pressfield’s description of desert navigation, finding the proverbial needle in a haystack now seems like child’s play compared to the nail-biting task of locating a life-saving cache of petrol in the desert wastes before darkness – and failure — arrives. And looming over all are the vagaries of the weather and, most importantly, the unforgiving desert itself: men (and equipment) bake in a 135-degree furnace in daytime, then shiver through freezing temperatures at night; flash floods come out of nowhere to wash away everything in their paths, trucks included; and simply crossing the endless series of dunes hundreds of feet high in the desert’s sand seas challenges the skill and endurance of even the best drivers. One mistake can prove fatal; the opportunities to make mistakes are virtually unlimited. That any of the LRDG commandos survived these daring raids seems remarkable – that they actually persevered to wreak havoc on Axis forces is a monumental tribute to their courage, skill, morale, initiative, innovation, and (for want of a better word) plain old guts.

Steven Pressfield’s Killing Rommel is a highly-recommended tour de force that deftly combines his well-known, much-acclaimed, finely honed skill as a compelling storyteller with an unmatched degree of historical accuracy and authenticity. Read it and you’ll know what it really felt like to be part of one of the greatest special operations outfits in military history. Armchair General rates this book 5 STARS, our highest rating.

PHOTO CREDITS (in order of appearance)

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NATIONAL ARCHIVES
Special Air Service and Long Range Desert Group operators check their weapons before setting out on a mission in 1941. These two units often operated behind enemy lines for extended periods of time.

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ROMMEL FAMILY ARCHIVES
Rommel in North Africa.

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NATIONAL ARCHIVES
Soldiers of the Long Range Desert Group and Special Air Service patrol the desert looking for targets of opportunity.