The Cauldron at Gazala

On 31 May 1942, five days after the Battle of Gazala began, Colonel General Erwin Rommel’s German and Italian armoured divisions stood in a shallow depression in the desert behind the British Gazala Line, with their backs to the British minefields. The British called the place “the Cauldron”, the Germans the “Wurstkessel”. That day the Axis forces, which had already cleared gaps through the mines for their supply columns, attacked the only obstacle still separating them from their own rear: the box of the British 150th Brigade at Sidi Muftah. The battle, which for Rommel had begun with a setback, was starting to turn in his favour.

Cut off behind the minefields

The outflanking move around Bir Hakeim on the night of 26/27 May had taken the Axis mobile forces into the rear of the Eighth Army, but it had not destroyed that army. After the fighting of 27 May with the British armoured brigades, in which American Grant tanks went into action for the first time, Rommel had lost a large part of his tanks, and his divisions were scattered between Bir Hakeim, Knightsbridge and El Adem. Fuel and ammunition got through only with difficulty along the route around Bir Hakeim, which was long and under attack from British columns and aircraft. General Marie-Pierre Kœnig’s French box at Bir Hakeim was holding out, and the shorter route, straight through the British line, led through the minefields.

28 May was the worst day for the Axis. The 21st Panzer Division advanced north towards the escarpment above the coast road, but the 15th Panzer Division came to a halt without fuel, the Italian Ariete was fighting British tanks at Bir el Harmat, and the 90th Light Division was pushed back from El Adem. For a time Rommel lost contact with his headquarters. During the night of 28/29 May he personally led the supply columns through the gap that the Italian Ariete and Trieste divisions were holding north of Bir Hakeim, and in the morning fuel and ammunition reached the Afrika Korps.

29 May: Crüwell captured, Rommel does not turn on Bir Hakeim

War chronologies record under 29 May that Rommel turned against Bir Hakeim, intending, once it had fallen, to go north and destroy the fortifications of the Gazala Line. That was the general idea, but not what happened that day. On 29 May the Afrika Korps, exhausted and still without a secure supply line, fought a hard battle in a sandstorm with the British 2nd and 22nd Armoured Brigades east of the minefields, in the area that from then on was called the Cauldron. Rommel sent the 90th Light Division and Trieste against Bir Hakeim only on the night of 1/2 June, after the destruction of 150th Brigade, and the French position fell on 10–11 June.

That same day the German side lost the commander of the group that was attacking the line frontally. General Ludwig Crüwell flew in a Fieseler Storch over positions he believed to be Italian and found himself above the British box of 150th Brigade. According to some accounts the aircraft was shot down; according to others the pilot landed, mistaking the enemy for his own side. Crüwell was taken prisoner. His group was temporarily taken over by Field Marshal Albert Kesselring, who happened to be in Africa and who – as he later recalled – thereby placed himself under Rommel’s orders, although formally he outranked him.

On the evening of 29 May Rommel decided to go over to the defensive. The next day the Afrika Korps fell back westwards, right up against the minefields, and formed a front facing east, strengthened by a wall of anti-tank guns, including 88 mm anti-aircraft guns. From the west, Italian units of X Corps and engineers were clearing two gaps through the mines: on the Trigh el Abd track and on the Trigh Capuzzo, on either side of 150th Brigade’s box. The minefields that were meant to protect the British now began to shield Rommel’s rear.

30–31 May: the attack on 150th Brigade

Before the battle Rommel had not known about this box. The position at Sidi Muftah, which the Germans called Got el Ualeb, was held by Brigadier C. W. Haydon’s 150th Brigade of the 50th (Northumbrian) Division: a battalion of the East Yorkshire Regiment and two battalions of the Green Howards, with artillery, engineers and part of the 1st Army Tank Brigade – about thirty infantry tanks. A dozen or so kilometres separated it from its nearest neighbours to the north, and more than twenty to the south. On 28 May Haydon pulled in his southern battalion and prepared an all-round defence.

On 30 May the first attack by Afrika Korps units was repulsed. In the afternoon Rommel reconnoitred the position himself and assigned units of the Afrika Korps, the 90th Light Division and the Italian Trieste to the assault. They moved off on the morning of 31 May. Rommel recalled that his troops advanced yard by yard against exceptionally stubborn resistance, and German reports described the defence as skilful and tenacious. By evening the Axis troops had broken into the position, but they had not taken it. At one point Rommel himself led a platoon of panzergrenadiers into the attack.

The British looked on without acting. For three days 150th Brigade defended itself without help. For several days the conviction prevailed at Eighth Army headquarters that Rommel was trapped and that the Afrika Korps’s withdrawal towards the minefields marked the beginning of a retreat. General Claude Auchinleck, relying on inflated reports of German tank losses, pressed Lieutenant General Neil Ritchie to strike along the coast into the enemy’s rear. Ritchie, more concerned about Tobruk, strengthened the boxes in the rear and prepared an attack on the Cauldron, but until 1 June he made no co-ordinated attempt at relief. The British armoured brigades – some of them equipped with Grants – attacked the positions in the Cauldron separately and suffered losses from anti-tank fire.

1 June: the end of 150th Brigade

Under 31 May the situation is usually described accurately: Rommel’s offensive had stalled far short of Tobruk thanks to the resistance of the British 1st and 7th Armoured Divisions, and Rommel had cleared two gaps through the minefields on either side of 150th Brigade’s position, shortening his supply route, encircling the brigade and turning the British mines into his own shield. He had not, however, finished concentrating his forces on 31 May; the fight for the box went on for another day.

On 1 June, after attacks by Ju 87 dive-bombers and with the 21st Panzer Division taking part, the assault was renewed. In the early afternoon the defence was broken, Brigadier Haydon was killed, and the survivors were taken prisoner. Rommel reported that he had taken some 3,000 prisoners and destroyed or captured 101 tanks and armoured cars and 124 guns. The brigade was never re-formed.

Place in the war

The Cauldron at Gazala was the turning point of the battle. Rommel, who on 28 May had been close to defeat, turned a dangerous position behind the enemy’s lines into a strong defensive position with a secure supply route, while the Eighth Army wasted several days on piecemeal attacks and hesitation. On 5 June a British counter-attack on the Cauldron, named Operation Aberdeen, collapsed under the fire of the German anti-tank guns, and Rommel’s counter-stroke overran the headquarters of two divisions and destroyed several infantry battalions and artillery regiments. Freed from the threat to his rear, Rommel turned against Bir Hakeim, which the Free French abandoned on the night of 10/11 June, and on 12–13 June he smashed the British armoured brigades at Knightsbridge. On 21 June he took Tobruk.

In British military history the Cauldron became an example of the dispersal of forces: the more numerous Eighth Army, with new tanks and guns, allowed its opponent to recover in its rear and to destroy its brigades one after another. The defeat at Gazala cost Ritchie his command in June, and in August Auchinleck too had to go, even though it was he who had halted Rommel at El Alamein in July.