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The End in Africa
. 8vo pp. 210 Rilegato tela, sovracoperta (cloth, dust jacket) Dedica e firma all'occhiello (Owner's name on the half-title) Copertina sciupata ai margini (Some chipping and nicks around top and bottom of cover) Molto buono (Very Good)
- GenresWorld War IIWarHistory
4 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1943
About the author
Alan Moorehead
97 books94 followersAlan Moorehead was lionised as the literary man of action: the most celebrated war correspondent of World War II; author of award winning books; star travel writer of The New Yorker; pioneer publicist of wildlife conservation. At the height of his success, his writing suddenly stopped and when, 17 years later, his death was announced, he seemed a heroic figure from the past. His fame as a writer gave him the friendship of Ernest Hemingway, George Bernard Shaw and Field Marshall Montgomery and the courtship and marriage of his beautiful wife Lucy Milner.
After 1945, he turned to writing books, including Eclipse, Gallipoli (for which he won the Duff Cooper Prize), The White Nile, The Blue Nile, and finally, A Late Education. He was awarded an OBE in 1946, and died in 1983.
After 1945, he turned to writing books, including Eclipse, Gallipoli (for which he won the Duff Cooper Prize), The White Nile, The Blue Nile, and finally, A Late Education. He was awarded an OBE in 1946, and died in 1983.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
January 4, 2021
The End in Africa (The Year of Eisenhower, Alexander & Montgomery,1942-1943) is the third and final volume in Alan Moorhead’s ‘Desert War trilogy’, and is just as well written and captivating as the first two. This book deals with the campaigns of 1942-1943 after General Bernard Law Montgomery took over from General Claude Auchinleck as Commander-in-Chief in North Africa. Churchill sent Montgomery to command the Eighth Army because he was a fighter and Churchill wanted a general who would be aggressive and win against the skilful Field Marshall Rommel of the Afrika Korps. Churchill ended up frustrated because ‘Monty’ wasn’t stupid and knew that lack of aggression wasn’t the reason the British had been pushed back all the way from Benghazi in Libya to El Alamein in Egypt. There were many reasons, and Monty simply refused to attack Rommel until he had built up an enormous army well-supplied with new and more up-to-date tanks (with bigger guns), more anti-tank guns, fuel, water and other supplies, and more men. Churchill was livid but, in the end, Monty won the day.
This book begins with Alan Moorhead travelling on a luxury liner converted as a troop carrier – full of German prisoners of War (PoWs) from Egypt to Durban, South Africa. He describes in great detail the attitudes of the prisoners and that of their guards towards them. The Germans were prisoners but not beaten, and still had a plan … to overthrow the guards and take over the ship. It was a good plan and may have worked if not for the vigilance of one guard. After Durban, the ship continued to Halifax in Newfoundland, Canada, and Moorhead describes the cold and the danger of scores of ships entering and leaving Halifax in thick fog, the eerie sound of their foghorns moaning mournfully through the damp murk.
The second (short) chapter describes his onward journey to New York by train and his experience of it; it was also where he heard the news of Monty’s great victory at El Alamein and the American landings in Morocco – he felt he had to get back to Africa to witness ‘his’ Eighth Army winning for a change. He was lucky enough to be allowed to fly across the Atlantic in a Consolidated B24 Liberator bomber, landing in Scotland.
From there he travelled to London, and Chapter three includes his beautifully written observations about the situation in England, and how things were organised. He was allowed to fly with parachute troops in a glider on a full-scale exercise in preparation for airborne operations in the future, including D-Day, though that was nearly 18 months away. He also visited and wrote about a battle school which was highly realistic judging by Moorhead’s comments regarding the discomfort he felt and the conditions in which the training was carried out.
Next, he travelled to Londonderry where he joined a ship – a corvette named HMS Exe (which was later redefined as a frigate), a new but austere, uncomfortable ship, but one equipped with modern gear such as the latest ASDIC (the British name for SONAR), Oerlikon cannons and gunnery instruments. They sailed to Gibraltar while protecting a convoy from U-boats (German submarines), and when the ASDIC operator got a signal they raced about at high speed, dropping depth charges to either destroy the sub or scare it away. After Gibraltar, the convoy continued to Oran and Algiers, and here is a quotation from the book to give you a feeling for the writing:
We were at the first degree of readiness all this time, since enemy aircraft were about and we were in bomber range from Italy. Around the guns we pulled on white anti-flash gloves and hoods, so that the ships’ company began to look like a gathering of the Ku Klux Klan. Far off to the north-east, near the Italian coast, we could hear the distant sound of gunfire. Over our sector the protective screen of British fighters flew lazily back and forth.
Some of our convoy turned into Oran that night. Ironically, having come all this way, one of the transports fouled another near the entrance to the harbour, and only with great luck and better judgement were the two big ships and their cargoes got to the docks. The rest of us – destroyers, cruisers, aircraft carriers, battleships, freighters, oilers and transports – sailed on to Algiers.
In line astern this armada rounded the last headland and moved into the channel of the port. Algiers at any time is a beautiful sight from the sea. Today it glistened. Row on row of big white buildings climbed up to the hills above the bay. The white mosques of the Kasbah, gleaming in the morning sunshine, made a wavering reflection in the transparent sea.
I love this stuff. Moorhead makes me almost believe I am there or, at the very least, that I really missed out by not being there. He has a way with words that make everything so clear, even the complicated French politics described in the following chapter, including the assassination of Admiral Darlan, the senior military figure in the Vichy government that was cooperating with the Nazi Ocuppiers, and a traitor to the de Gaullists. The young man who shot him at point blank range believed that he would be recognised as a hero of France, but the authorities had him shot within 48 hours.
From the dirty political intrigues of Algiers, Moorhead was pleased to be able to travel to a small village near the front line in Tunisia where he felt comfortable among genuine people and the soldiers he admired and followed. He explains the mixed feelings of the local populace as the Allies advanced: some were keen de Gaullists/Free French/Fighting French keen to kick out the Nazis; landowners and farmers, however, had tolerated the German and Italian Occupiers because they had not caused any destruction and had spent a lot of money on food and wine so, despite their strict regulations and curfews, the French and Arabs had learned to live with them, and made a profit. Now the Allies were coming and they were worried their farms would be bombed and their fields, which in some cases they had taken decades to cultivate and make productive, ruined by tanks and shellfire – and who can blame them? After they were liberated, of course, it was a different story and they were relieved to be free from the yoke once again.
Moorhead goes on to describe in great detail the strategy, the tactics and the movements of both sides, and all the great and important battles that ensued in the desperate struggle for supremacy in Tunisia. I had not appreciated before reading this book, quite how terrible the battle for Tunisia was, although Spike Milligan’s war diaries (see Rommel, Gunner Who? and Monty, His Part in My Victory) were very poignant, too.
In the end, of course, we took Tunis and Bizerta and, thanks to air supremacy (first time ever!) and naval superiority in the Sicily narrows, we prevented the Axis from evacuating their troops and captured an entire army of about 250,000 men. So at the end of the book, Moorhead describes how men of the Eighth Army came face-to-face with men of the Afrika Korps – 90th Light Division, 15th Panzer Division and 21st Panzer, the latter all being PoWs, of course. Both sides were relieved that the fighting was over so the animosity between them was replaced by fascination – these men had fought each other across hundreds of miles of desert for three years, sometimes winning and sometimes losing, and here they were, staring at each other and seeing men just like themselves in many ways. It must have been a very strange feeling.
At the end of the book, Moorhead says this:
The struggle had gone on so long. It had been so bitter. There were so many dead. There was nothing more to say.
The last of the German generals came down to the landing-field and was flown off to captivity. The last of many thousand enemy soldiers trudged into internment camps.
And in our ranks the soldiers stripped off their uniforms, washed, and fell asleep in the sunshine.
All Africa was ours.
I cannot praise this trilogy enough, for facts, clarity and quality of writing – it is a pleasure to read and I will be reading it again.
5 stars
This book begins with Alan Moorhead travelling on a luxury liner converted as a troop carrier – full of German prisoners of War (PoWs) from Egypt to Durban, South Africa. He describes in great detail the attitudes of the prisoners and that of their guards towards them. The Germans were prisoners but not beaten, and still had a plan … to overthrow the guards and take over the ship. It was a good plan and may have worked if not for the vigilance of one guard. After Durban, the ship continued to Halifax in Newfoundland, Canada, and Moorhead describes the cold and the danger of scores of ships entering and leaving Halifax in thick fog, the eerie sound of their foghorns moaning mournfully through the damp murk.
The second (short) chapter describes his onward journey to New York by train and his experience of it; it was also where he heard the news of Monty’s great victory at El Alamein and the American landings in Morocco – he felt he had to get back to Africa to witness ‘his’ Eighth Army winning for a change. He was lucky enough to be allowed to fly across the Atlantic in a Consolidated B24 Liberator bomber, landing in Scotland.
From there he travelled to London, and Chapter three includes his beautifully written observations about the situation in England, and how things were organised. He was allowed to fly with parachute troops in a glider on a full-scale exercise in preparation for airborne operations in the future, including D-Day, though that was nearly 18 months away. He also visited and wrote about a battle school which was highly realistic judging by Moorhead’s comments regarding the discomfort he felt and the conditions in which the training was carried out.
Next, he travelled to Londonderry where he joined a ship – a corvette named HMS Exe (which was later redefined as a frigate), a new but austere, uncomfortable ship, but one equipped with modern gear such as the latest ASDIC (the British name for SONAR), Oerlikon cannons and gunnery instruments. They sailed to Gibraltar while protecting a convoy from U-boats (German submarines), and when the ASDIC operator got a signal they raced about at high speed, dropping depth charges to either destroy the sub or scare it away. After Gibraltar, the convoy continued to Oran and Algiers, and here is a quotation from the book to give you a feeling for the writing:
We were at the first degree of readiness all this time, since enemy aircraft were about and we were in bomber range from Italy. Around the guns we pulled on white anti-flash gloves and hoods, so that the ships’ company began to look like a gathering of the Ku Klux Klan. Far off to the north-east, near the Italian coast, we could hear the distant sound of gunfire. Over our sector the protective screen of British fighters flew lazily back and forth.
Some of our convoy turned into Oran that night. Ironically, having come all this way, one of the transports fouled another near the entrance to the harbour, and only with great luck and better judgement were the two big ships and their cargoes got to the docks. The rest of us – destroyers, cruisers, aircraft carriers, battleships, freighters, oilers and transports – sailed on to Algiers.
In line astern this armada rounded the last headland and moved into the channel of the port. Algiers at any time is a beautiful sight from the sea. Today it glistened. Row on row of big white buildings climbed up to the hills above the bay. The white mosques of the Kasbah, gleaming in the morning sunshine, made a wavering reflection in the transparent sea.
I love this stuff. Moorhead makes me almost believe I am there or, at the very least, that I really missed out by not being there. He has a way with words that make everything so clear, even the complicated French politics described in the following chapter, including the assassination of Admiral Darlan, the senior military figure in the Vichy government that was cooperating with the Nazi Ocuppiers, and a traitor to the de Gaullists. The young man who shot him at point blank range believed that he would be recognised as a hero of France, but the authorities had him shot within 48 hours.
From the dirty political intrigues of Algiers, Moorhead was pleased to be able to travel to a small village near the front line in Tunisia where he felt comfortable among genuine people and the soldiers he admired and followed. He explains the mixed feelings of the local populace as the Allies advanced: some were keen de Gaullists/Free French/Fighting French keen to kick out the Nazis; landowners and farmers, however, had tolerated the German and Italian Occupiers because they had not caused any destruction and had spent a lot of money on food and wine so, despite their strict regulations and curfews, the French and Arabs had learned to live with them, and made a profit. Now the Allies were coming and they were worried their farms would be bombed and their fields, which in some cases they had taken decades to cultivate and make productive, ruined by tanks and shellfire – and who can blame them? After they were liberated, of course, it was a different story and they were relieved to be free from the yoke once again.
Moorhead goes on to describe in great detail the strategy, the tactics and the movements of both sides, and all the great and important battles that ensued in the desperate struggle for supremacy in Tunisia. I had not appreciated before reading this book, quite how terrible the battle for Tunisia was, although Spike Milligan’s war diaries (see Rommel, Gunner Who? and Monty, His Part in My Victory) were very poignant, too.
In the end, of course, we took Tunis and Bizerta and, thanks to air supremacy (first time ever!) and naval superiority in the Sicily narrows, we prevented the Axis from evacuating their troops and captured an entire army of about 250,000 men. So at the end of the book, Moorhead describes how men of the Eighth Army came face-to-face with men of the Afrika Korps – 90th Light Division, 15th Panzer Division and 21st Panzer, the latter all being PoWs, of course. Both sides were relieved that the fighting was over so the animosity between them was replaced by fascination – these men had fought each other across hundreds of miles of desert for three years, sometimes winning and sometimes losing, and here they were, staring at each other and seeing men just like themselves in many ways. It must have been a very strange feeling.
At the end of the book, Moorhead says this:
The struggle had gone on so long. It had been so bitter. There were so many dead. There was nothing more to say.
The last of the German generals came down to the landing-field and was flown off to captivity. The last of many thousand enemy soldiers trudged into internment camps.
And in our ranks the soldiers stripped off their uniforms, washed, and fell asleep in the sunshine.
All Africa was ours.
I cannot praise this trilogy enough, for facts, clarity and quality of writing – it is a pleasure to read and I will be reading it again.
5 stars
April 29, 2024
The final book in the trilogy, marked by a wonderful account of Moorehead's travels to the US, UK and then back to the front. The action shifts to Tunisia, the arrival of the Americans and Montgomery, and the final defeat of the Germans once and for all.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews