The Great World War 1914–1945: 1. Lightning Strikes Twice. John Bourne

for the Germans, who enacted such brutality on the Eastern Front, it also provided a contrast with the desert campaigns of the First World War. British soldiers respected the fighting qualities of the Turkish soldier in much the same way that they admired the skill of the German soldiers 20 years later. General Sir John Shea emphasised that he ‘respected the Turk as a soldier, and was always careful to make my plans as best I could… I thought he was a good stout-hearted soldier, and he fought well.’⁴⁷ While there was a mutual respect between foes in the First World War, there was no development of a similar spirit of a ‘War without Hate’. Turkish treatment of British prisoners could be appalling and this seems to have been reflected in the harsher style of war between the two armies. One British soldier tasked with the capture of some Turkish machine-guns led by German officers related that:

      ‘When I gave the word, we all dashed forward… There wasn’t one left alive after we’d finished with them. We captured the guns and finished them off. And the German officers, they had the first packet, believe me.’⁴⁸

      Although such an attitude to fighting was also common on the Western Front in the First World War, this kind of incident does not accord with the idea of a spirit of ‘chivalry’ engendered by desert fighting.

      Yet even though there are numerous contrasts between the two wars in the desert, the similarities remain more important. Both armies experienced the hardships of the desert and the sense of isolation, intensified by distance and enhanced by the harsh climate. Both developed a distinctive identity as desert warriors, quite separate from the wider identities found on the Western Front in the First World War, or of Slim’s Fourteenth Army in Burma in the Second World War. Both armies shared the experience of defeat and eventual victory, and this veteran’s account of taking Turkish prisoners in Palestine in 1918 could easily have been an Eighth Army veteran speaking of O’Connor’s offensive of 1940–41 or the final pursuit in 1942:

      ‘And the troops went forward then and of course captured prisoners on the way, just like that. Thousands and thousands of them being captured. They were all fed up with the war and everything else. We were just enjoying ourselves then. They were on the run.’⁴⁹

      Perhaps the final experience of victory after hardship was the most important common bond running through the two wars in the desert. Yet some men could feel bitter about their personal experience in the Desert War. Peter Bates stated that, ‘My own involvement was a 12-hour engagement with the enemy that ended in capture, and like many who served at Alamein, for all I accomplished I might as well have stayed at home.’⁵⁰ Perhaps the words of a veteran of the Eritrean campaign, written in 1941, sum up the experience of many in the numerous campaigns of the Desert War:

      ‘I have seen the most ghastly sights and heard noises which I shall remember to the end of my days. I’ve seen unparalleled bravery and self-sacrifice and have seen all the horrors of modern warfare magnified a hundredfold by the intense heat, flies and filth. There’s nothing glorious about it at all, only stark reality.’⁵¹

      Notes on contributors

      Dr Niall J.A. Barr, Joint Services Command and Staff College, UK.

      Dr Barr is a Lecturer at King’s College London, based at the Joint Services Command and Staff College. He is an authority on the history of the British veterans’ movement and has a deep interest in the history of both world wars. Having recently worked with J.P. Harris on a collaborative study, Amiens to the Armistice: The B.E.F. in the Hundred Days Campaign 8 August-11 November 1918, he is currently researching the Alamein campaign of 1942.

      Recommended reading

      Black, Donald, Red Dust: An Australian Trooper in Palestine (London: Jonathan Cape, 1931)

      Caccia-Dominioni, Paulo, Alamein 1933–1962: An Italian Story (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1966)

      Crimp, R. L., The Diary of a Desert Rat (London: Leo Cooper, 1971)

      Crisp, Robert, Brazen Chariots: An Account of Tank Warfare in the Western Desert November-December 1941 (London: Frederick Muller, 1959)

      Dinning, Hector and McBey, James, Nile to Aleppo: With the Light Horse in the Middle East (London: Allen & Unwin, 1920)

      Gilbert, Adrian (ed), The Imperial War Museum Book of the Desert War 1940–1942 (London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1992)

      Gilbert, Vivian, The Romance of the Last Crusade (London: D. Appleton-Century, 1935)

      Graham, Domick, Against Odds: Reflections on the Experiences of the British Army, 1914–45 (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1999)

      Hughes, C. E., Above and Beyond Palestine (London: Ernest Benn Ltd, 1930)

      Warner, Philip, Alamein (London: William Kimber, 1979)

Chapter 8

       War in the Pacific

      Eric Bergerud

      Between December 1941 and August 1945 the United States and its allies fought an unrelenting war against the Japanese Empire. Although only one portion of what Japanese leaders called the Greater East Asian War, Pacific operations were certainly the most decisive in the military sphere. Even though more people died in China and South East Asia than in the Pacific, it was Allied victory in the Pacific that determined the nature and duration of the overall conflict.

      Although East Asia had been racked by tumult for decades before 1914, it was spared the military ferocity of the First World War. Tsing Tao in 1914, still less Rabaul in the same year, simply do not register on any scale of comparison with the warfare experienced in the Pacific a generation and a half later. Nevertheless, the Great War did much to shape the military geography of the Second World War. Japan seized German possessions in China and the Central Pacific. Many of these islands became battlefields when the US drove into the Central Pacific in late 1943. While Japan was picking German plums, Australia was also active, taking north-west New Guinea and the nearby Bismarck Archipelago, which included the islands of New Ireland, New Britain and Bougainville. Much of this area early in the Second World War fell to Japan. Centred at their great bastion at Rabaul on New Britain, the Japanese developed a base system in the Bismarcks that served as a major bulwark of their maritime defence line protecting the precious resources in the East Indies. Efforts to take or neutralise Rabaul drove on the campaigns in both New Guinea and the Solomon Islands and constituted the major Allied effort in the Pacific for a year and a half.

      Inter-war events in Europe also had a crucial bearing on the road to war in the Pacific. Japan’s aggression in Manchuria and later against China would have been unthinkable without the paralysis caused in the Western world by the Depression and later the looming war clouds in Europe. Hitler’s early triumphs accelerated events tremendously. The Japanese Government, controlled by the military and supported by militant expansionists, saw the defeat of France and Britain’s apparent doom as a priceless opportunity to move in and occupy mineral-rich South East Asia, then controlled by the European empires. Because of antagonism over China and the strategic position of the American-controlled Philippine Islands, a move into South East Asia would also almost certainly mean war with the United States. When Hitler struck Russia, again there was delight in Japan. However, the Japanese Army insisted that it keep its core on the Manchurian border to take advantage of a Soviet collapse. This meant that the Imperial Headquarters would part with only 11 divisions for ‘southern operations’, which the army considered the responsibility of the Japanese Navy.

      It is important to understand the relationship between the war in Europe and the Pacific War. On the one hand the wars were essentially separate conflicts. Although allies on paper, Germany and Japan never co-ordinated action in a meaningful way. On the other hand, Japan was absolutely dependent upon a German victory. If Hitler went down