ps: Today's business trip, the second estimate will be late, sorry......

On January 21, 1943, at the Allied Escort Command Headquarters in Mombasa, Kenya, U.S. Army Lieutenant General Dwight David Eisenhower, the top commander of the Allied African Theater, listened to a report on the situation from all sides with a sad face.

Operation Torch was undoubtedly a complete failure, more than ten times greater than the losses in the Dieppe landing campaign in August last year, which had been recognized as a terrible one, and although this outcome had little to do with his command, it still made him feel extremely sad: dozens of warships, more than 100 aircraft, more than 200 medium and large transport ships, more than 10,000 naval officers and men, more than 40,000 army units, and the equipment of four entire divisions, and even a single German was sent to the bottom of the sea or became trophies of the enemy without even a single German sight. His whole heart seemed to break as death notices poured out of his typewriter one after another.

This was the worst defeat the United States had suffered since Pearl Harbor, and even at the Battle of Bataan, which shook the United States, the American soldiers suffered only more than 10,000 casualties and more than 15,000 prisoners (although most of these prisoners of war later died). Coupled with the losses of nearly 20,000 naval officers and men (the fleet and the defenders of Kuah Island) in the recent Battle of the South Solomon Sea, in just three months, the Combined Fleet actually caused more than 70,000 casualties on its own side, and in his heart, it seemed that it had become the most ferocious enemy of the United States.

He knew that there was a great clamor in the country for President Roosevelt to change his policy of "Europe first and then Asia," and although he rationally agreed with the president's views, in the face of such a bloody situation, he emotionally preferred to maintain the same position as ordinary soldiers and the people -- the feelings of the soldiers were easy to understand, one was angry, the other was frustrated, and the war was by no means as easy as they imagined.

He couldn't help but sigh, it has been 13 months since the United States entered the world war, but in addition to the huge potential and sufficient supplies, the army, especially the army, is not at all ready for a global war. Now what can be pulled out to fight are the backbone teams that were trained and cultivated before the war, and they are the few and only excellent troops in the United States. Although the domestic army has expanded to more than 3 million in one go, many of them are still in the stage of scrambling to train new recruits, and the proportion of veterans in them is less than 10%, and the officers are also rookies with little practical experience.

He was soberly aware that this loss was not worth mentioning in any of the countries of Britain, Germany, and the Soviet Union. The British lost 300,000 horses in the North African campaign alone, the 100,000 horses on the Middle East battlefield are estimated to be unable to be saved, and the Russians are estimated to lose 6 million troops if not 7 million, and 7-80,000 people are just a week's loss for Stalin. Even the Germans, who had been advancing all the time, still had the defeat in the Battle of Moscow? He estimated that Germany had lost at least 1 million so far – in fact, German casualties on all fronts had exceeded 1.2 million since the start of the Soviet-German war.

But the British, the Germans, the Soviets could bear these losses without care, but the United States could not afford - there were simply too few experienced soldiers and officers. The casualties of a single battle in the United States rose from a few thousand to 12,000, and suddenly now it has become 50,000 in one go. And their current opponents are the world-famous generals who have been famous since the beginning of the Polish campaign - Guderian, Rommel, Kesselring, which is not a well-known figure?

If he had a choice, Eisenhower would now be tempted to bring these forces back to the United States or Britain, and to return to South Africa if they were not good, rather than cowering in Kenya and not knowing what he could do – after the mobile fleet caught and wiped out the returning fleet in the Mozambique Channel, there was no hope for sea transport, because no one knew where the damned Japanese fleet would come from, and without the help of the fleet, where would he go to find enough supplies and support to build the East African defense? He didn't think that trench digging in the style of the First World War could hold off the German armored forces - and even more sadly, there were not enough barbed wire and mines now!

"Sir, a ship has come into port today - he has secretly driven along the coastline from Madagascar, and he has not encountered any Japanese devils on the way."

"What brave people." Eisenhower sighed, "What's on board?" ”

"Some flour, rum, olive oil, wool coat...... Oh, and a little petrol - about 1,000 barrels, he said the defenders of Madagascar entrusted him to bring us. ”

"Good, good." He was very happy, "If you buy them all, you can give a little more money." ”

"This ......," said the logistics officer, embarrassed, "we don't have the budget for this, and besides, we don't have a shortage of anything other than gasoline." ”

"We need supplies, everything can't be spared, and the devil knows when we will be able to resume normal sailing." "Gasoline is the most urgent thing we need – and we should be paid for the money they take the risk to help transport it," he patiently explains. ”

He is not hypocritical, this is a real need. The soldier must first obey orders, the torch plan failed, but the war continued, the name of the commander of the African theater of operations sounded very loud, but he knew how heavy the burden was on his shoulders - President Roosevelt and General Marshall gave him clear instructions, to do everything possible to build a reliable line of defense in East Africa, to keep the hope of the Allied counteroffensive, he carefully considered it for two days and repeatedly communicated with his subordinates and held meetings several times, everyone felt that this task was difficult to complete.

What's even worse is that the African theater is also responsible for saving those soldiers who have retreated from the front, including the British and American officers and soldiers who landed on the beach in the Horn of Africa, including the British, Australian and New Zealand officers and soldiers who retreated from Cairo and Aswan, including the remnants of the defeated soldiers who retreated from Sudan, Eritrea and other places, and even worse, they did not have a strong organization, did not have enough logistics, and did not even have many vehicles to use, the number of such troops was 20,000 at first, and then 40,000. In the end, all aspects added up to find that it had exceeded 60,000.

Theoretically, these units were under the control of the Allied African Theater Command, but he could do nothing about them except for being able to roughly find their location on a map and contact them by telegraph.

If these were strong and powerful troops, all of them had the will to fight and sufficient combat materials, he would not hesitate to immediately lead the other three divisions under his command to catch up with them and launch a counteroffensive - unfortunately, these more than 60,000 people have been beaten off their fighting spirit, discarded their baggage, and are a critically ill patient who is out of breath and needs to be rescued urgently. What he has to do now is not to counterattack, but to rack his brains to save these troops as soon as possible. After much thought, Eisenhower decided to retreat all of these forces to Kenya – to try to hold off the Germans here, and Sudan, Ethiopia, and Somalia had to give up all of them.

Churchill gave a lot of reasons for disagreeing with this arrangement, but President Roosevelt agreed without hesitation, Marshall hinted that he could exercise the authority of the supreme commander of the African theater, and the usual "good old man Ike" immediately understood and decisively gave the order, and all the troops expressed their support and obedience, and only hoped that Mombasa would help, and London finally pinched his nose and agreed.

At the same time, the progress of the German army was very fast, after replenishing the logistics supplies, settling the rear, and collecting enough trains, Guderian led 3 armored divisions and 2 Egyptian infantry divisions to the south, and there was a 10-day agreement with Germany not to attack when Ramsden withdrew, which was of course abided, but Ramsden did not dare to completely pin his hopes on the German army's trustworthiness, let alone be stupid to stay in Aswan again, the ANZ army found all the ships and cars that Aswan could collect, Desperate to retreat south.

Although Admiral Alexander's behavior was particularly shameless, it must be said that the decision to retreat ahead of schedule was very wise, and his more than 10,000 troops easily managed to grab enough ships to go south along the Nile, while Ramsden did the same thing with time and effort, and when the last New Zealand soldier boarded the ship and left Aswan, Guderian's vanguard was less than 15 kilometers from Aswan Airport.

Although General Ted of the Royal Air Force was not dismissed like Alexander, he was mercilessly reprimanded by London, forcing him to fight the current situation, as many planes in the direction of Aswan as he wanted, he was ready to scavenge for gasoline and fly towards Gosmu, but the final result was a headache, not only the number of planes was large and the fuel was small, and the flight range exceeded 900 kilometers, and finally those short-legged Spitfire, Hurricane and other short-range fighters had no choice but to give up - to give up fuel to more needed aircraft.

Because the Australian and New Divisions only have a little infantry weapons that they carry with them, they are now so downtrod that even grenades and mortars are considered high-end firepower, and they ignore the other side in negotiations with the Egyptians - after Egypt abrogates all Anglo-Egyptian agreements, the Egyptian army can theoretically use force, but the British Empire has accumulated a lot of heritage over the years, and the Egyptian commanders do not want to make a big deal about it, so they should turn a blind eye.

The poor British couldn't even find enough explosives to destroy the planes, and they were reluctant to explode them with gasoline, and the final solution to the problem was ironic - with the help of local city officials, the Egyptians secretly provided a few boats and a dozen trucks to Ramsden, while the British retreated in a hurry, allowing the Egyptians to take over the airport and the more than 20 Spitfires and Hurricanes that were stranded behind - both sides thought they had made a good deal.

When the German reconnaissance unit stormed the airfield, there were cheering Egyptian soldiers on one side and the departing British desert air force on the other—there were less than 100 planes left. (To be continued.) )