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Overview: South African forces in the Second World War

In 1939, as in 1914, South Africa declared war against Germany in support of Britain. Once again, the Union was bitterly divided between the supporters of two Anglo-Boer War generals who had become political giants in the country. JBM Hertzog, the Prime Minister, wanted South Africa to stay neutral. Jan Smuts wanted to support the British. Smuts won the crucial vote in Parliament by 80 votes to 69, and became Prime Minister for the second time.

The Union Defence Force (UDF) had been badly run down in the interwar years, and apart from some Active Citizen Force (ACF) units and specialist formations like the artillery, much of the transport and equipment needed to be built up from scratch. Training capacity and facilities needed to be substantially and rapidly expanded. The political sensitivities aroused by the war meant that the government relied only on volunteers, not conscription. Even Permanent Force (PF) officers who were uncomfortable with the British cause were permitted to refuse to serve outside of South Africa.

At the outbreak of war, the PF consisted of just 352 officers. Of the 5 033 men in the PF, only about 1 700 were in the infantry – in the Special Services Battalion, a short-service unit that had been formed in the 1930s to help alleviate unemployment. The ACF was not much bigger, and consisted of 918 officers and 12 572 men. Only white men were considered for bearing arms, which meant that the pool available for service in 1939 was estimated to be about 320 000 men, aged between 20 and 40. However, as in the First World War, non-white volunteers were accepted and welcomed for labour and support work. Though some were armed for guard duties, none were officially allowed to go into combat.

More than 227 000 South African whites (including several thousand women) volunteered for service in the Second World War. A further 123 000 “non-whites” also joined up, including 27 000 in the Cape Corps. Nearly 9 000 of all races were killed in action. Many South Africans also served in the British armed forces.

The South African army’s main fighting contributions took place successively in East Africa and Abyssinia (1940–1941), the North African desert war (1941–1942), and the Italian campaign (1944–1945). There was also action in Madagascar. Strategically, the desert battles (known to soldiers and their families simply as “up north”) were the most important to the British cause, and tactically this was where South Africans made a contribution out of all proportion to their numbers.

The British presence in the Middle East was vital to the outcome of the war. Aside from the strategic value of Cairo and Alexandria for control of the Suez Canal and the Mediterranean, respectively, British forces protected the oilfields in Iraq and Persia, and constituted “the moral and physical prop” that kept Turkey neutral. If the Germans had been victorious at Alamein between June and October 1942, or earlier, the outcome of the war could have been different: if not a German victory, then an unsatisfactory conditional peace or a more drawn-out conflict with even more devastating consequences.

For three years great battles ran their course along the coastal strip of North Africa. Following Mussolini’s declaration of war against the Allies on 10 June 1940, Italian forces invaded British-held Egypt that September, advancing just 100km inside to build a series of fortified camps around Sidi Barrani. In December, the 30 000-strong Commonwealth army under the command of Major General Richard “Red” O’Connor “cut the wire” between Egypt and Libya in December 1940 in what was supposed to be just a five-day operation. O’Connor’s troops advanced rapidly until February 1941, capturing 110 000 of Mussolini’s troops in just two months. The success of the British campaign led Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden to remark to Winston Churchill: “If I may debase a golden phrase, never before has so much been surrendered by so many to so few.” But O’Connor’s force was soon pushed back following the arrival of German troops in February 1941: although Adolf Hitler had never intended to make an African campaign part of his strategy, he dispatched the Deutsche Afrika Korps (DAK, generally known simply as the Afrika Korps), under the command of General Erwin Rommel, to bail out his Italian ally.

Rommel’s progress was finally halted at El Alamein, in Egypt, between July and December 1942. There followed a rapid Allied advance into Libya and Tunisia and the surrender of the remnants of the Afrika Korps (October to May 1943). The seesaw nature of the campaign, characterised by a series of advances and retreats, was dubbed the “Benghazi Handicap” by the troops, with the phase from Benghazi to Alamein (overrunning Tobruk en route) becoming known as the “Gazala Gallop”, and the long westward retreat of the Afrika Korps, the “Tripoli Gallop”.

The desert war is often portrayed as the last of the conflicts in which chivalry and comradeship between enemies played a part. This was due mainly to the mutual struggle of the two sides against the elements, the swarming flies and pervasive, invasive dust. It was as much at times a “private war” as one between foes – though it was brutal and costly. Some 100 000 men lost their lives over the three years of fighting.

The desert war was also an extreme demonstration that a modern army required a considerable and complex logistical tail. By January 1941, it was calculated that each British division in the Middle East (about 18 000 men) required another 41 000 men to maintain it in the field. Rommel had completely outrun his supply abilities by the time his army reached El Alamein, a situation made worse by the fact that only one in four of his supply ships was reaching the ports of Tripoli and Tobruk, many being intercepted by the Royal Navy and Royal Air Force operating out of Malta. In September 1941, for instance, Rommel wrote: “Out of 5 000 tons of petrol which had been due to arrive by the 3rd, 2 600 tons had already been sunk and 1 500 tons were still in Italy.” Many of the supplies which did make it to North Africa “consumed themselves” in their delivery to the front.

The campaign in East Africa

The South African forces that served “up north” are remembered mainly for their part in the great battles in the Western Desert – defeat at Sidi Rezegh and humiliation at Tobruk, but also glory in the saving of North Africa at El Alamein in July and November 1942. However, the Springboks distinguished themselves in early 1941 as part of the British-led effort to drive the Italians out of East Africa, Abyssinia, Somalia and the Sudan.

Benito Mussolini’s empire in East Africa was established following the Italo-Abyssinian War of 1935–1936, when Italian forces conquered Abyssinia (present-day Ethiopia). The empire incorporated this newly occupied territory as well as the colonies of Eritrea and Italian Somaliland. In June 1940, when Mussolini took Italy into the war on the German side, Italian forces in East Africa (numbering some 300 000) were seen as a threat to British supply routes along the Red Sea and through the Suez Canal.

Overall command of the East African theatre was in British hands, and this was accepted by the South African government when it raised a division for service against the Italians. By August 1940 the 1st South African Division was formed. It included three infantry brigade groups, each consisting of three rifle battalions, an armoured car company and supporting signal, engineer and medical units. By the end of the year, approximately 27 000 South Africans were serving in East Africa. That figure rose to 43 700 troops by the end of the campaign. They included just under 10 000 Coloured, Indian, Malay and African troops, who, though unarmed, played a significant role as drivers, cooks, stretcher-bearers and labourers.

The relationship between the UDF and the British did not get off to a good start. The GOC (general officer commanding) for East Africa, Major General DP Dickinson, ordered the 1st South African Brigade group to be split up into its component battalions. It thus ceased to operate as an entity, and by the end of September 1940 the battalions were spread out along the northern frontier of Kenya. The “dissection” was completed before the divisional commander, General George Brink, had even arrived in the country. Prime Minister Jan Smuts flew to Nairobi to intervene with Dickinson. The story goes that Smuts ordered Brink and Brigadier Dan Pienaar to leave the room, but Pienaar left the door slightly ajar so that what Smuts had to say could be heard: “You are no general for me,” he screamed at Dickinson, “I did not send my young men to die of fever in East Africa. I sent them here to drive the enemy out of Africa.”

Churchill and General Archibald Wavell, the GOC Middle East, were informed by Smuts. The result was that Dickinson was replaced by General Alan Cunningham. The South Africans would again fight as a united formation – and they achieved spectacular success. The war reporter Carel Birkby, whose book Springbok Victory told the story of the East African campaign, wrote that “in two breathless months General Cunningham’s force blasted its way from Kenya through Italian Somaliland, into Abyssinia and on to Addis Ababa. There was little doubt of the success of his lightning drive once he had forced the enemy’s first main defensive line on the Juba River. And I think the Battle of the Juba in February 1941 was won at the Battle of El Wak in December 1940.”

El Wak was an Italian fort situated on the Kenya-Somali border, 644km northeast of Nairobi and about 160km north of Wajir, one of the jumping-off points for the attacks on Abyssinia and Somaliland. The objective of the 1st South African Brigade, going into action for the first time, was to seize and destroy not only El Wak but also a number of surrounding outposts. The whole operation, wrote Birkby, was “an almost flawless model for a bush-war raid – a textbook exercise in earnest”. He witnessed the attack by South African infantry and armoured cars:

At 08h15 as the sun began to pour down its drenching heat, the infantry moved up and found strong Italian defences behind barbed wire. The rattle of musketry began. Ten minutes later the tanks on the left were heard crashing through the dry thorn bush. They passed the infantry and swept round parallel with the enemy wire. One of the tanks broke down with clutch trouble a few yards from the wire. An enemy 65mm gun was brought to bear on it. Grenades burst around it. Machine-gun bullets thup-thupped against its side. Its headlight was blown off. The crew, busy as bees in an upset hive, laboured to get the clutch right and soon had the tank careering onwards again. The whole line of tanks rolled along the defences letting loose a deafening and devastating broadside for a quarter of a mile. The tank crews were so close that they could see the enemy working their guns.

The South African infantry, with support from the Gold Coast brigade, followed the tanks through gaps that had been blown in the wire and “shot and bayoneted those of the enemy who did not flee from their machine guns and artillery.” Apart from taking 120 prisoners, the troops seized 15 guns, 300 000 rounds of small-arms ammunition and 1 000 shells, and destroyed huge quantities of stores and ammunition. About 200 Italians escaped and “became our unwitting allies; they were walking pamphlets far more convincing than any exhortation in the vernacular that our aircraft could drop among the natives; they were missionaries of terror among their comrades”. The commander of El Wak had fled the fort the day before the battle, “hurrying off as fast as he could go in a mule cart. He left all his secret documents behind him, including complete plans of the Italian defensive scheme for the Lower Jub. The garrison was not heartened by the defection of their commander. They fought with little heart.” For his leadership in the field, Brigadier Pienaar was immediately awarded the DSO.

The next major encounter was the battle for Mega, a strongly defended fortress on the southern Abyssinian plateau. It was assaulted by the 2nd and 5th South African brigades, which constituted General Brink’s main force. Joel Mervis, the legendary editor of the Sunday Times, wrote this account of Mega in his history of South African forces in the Second World War:

Rain fell during the night, and on a wet February 16 a thick mist hid the hills which were the first objective. The enemy had spotted the advance and having already established and registered the road and its vicinity, opened fire with artillery. The South African trucks scattered, and troops rushed from their transports. They started to advance on foot across the hills. At midday a tremendous storm broke, the mist grew thicker, and the troops were lost in the mist.

They were travelling lightly, without either greatcoats or groundsheets, and had little protection against the bitter cold. The supply trucks were bogged in the mud and that night the ration was one can of bully beef and one biscuit to every four men.

On February 17 the weather was bleak but the battle grew hotter. The South African artillery moved up, but not until 18h00 was a Scottish unit able to capture a machine-gun post on a hill dominating the line of the regiment’s advance. By dark the men were so tired and cold they could scarcely move, but there was naught for their comfort. They had to spend another bitter night out in the open. Guns had been manhandled forward during the night and at dawn on February 18 the troops went forward under the cover of the shells.

Carel Birkby takes up the story:

Our men could see the guns hammering the picturesque fort of Mega itself and our fire silenced the enemy guns. Our aircraft bombed and machine-gunned the fort all morning and a direct hit from a bomb killed every man in one of the blockhouses. The mortars of the Irish battalion pounded another blockhouse until the 12 blackshirts in it came out, waving a white flag.

The action reached its climax in the late afternoon. The troops waited for zero hour at 16h45, while black clouds hung over them and rain beat down with then orchestrating the shallower note of mortar fire.

At zero hour the Irish advanced with bayonets fixed across a clearing and down a hillside towards the fort from the left. The Scottish came in from the right, firing as they advanced, and their mortars behind them laying a barrage. The South Africans were fighting in heavy mist. Just after five o clock, through a break in the mist, a Scottish officer saw a white flag flying from a high mast behind the fort.

The Field Force Battalion (FFB) on the mountain peaks had not only captured the enemy’s main artillery position, but now commanded the whole valley in which Mega lay. The FFB boys had not known what it was to be dry for three days and they had little sleep, because they were continually at ‘stand to’. Despite this, they set out on a forced march of 12 miles across the veld at 07h30 on the last day of the battle and they started to scale a mountain with its summit lost in the mist. They slid and slipped and slithered as they struggled upwards, dragging their heavy mortars and machine-guns behind them through the thick bush.

The mist was so dense that at times they lost sight of each other. The advance guard reached the summit after hours of climbing, to be met by two enemy machine-gun posts. The FFB men flung themselves down flat and fought the enemy until reinforcements dragged up mortars through the narrow defile and started to bombard the Italians. The Italian officer commanding the enemy artillery hoisted a white flag, astonished at the sudden appearance of troops in his rear.

Some of the most gallant acts were performed when the SA Irish regiment ran into a field of land mines. Lt HJ Barker of the 5th Field Company, SAEC, won the MC for going forward personally with his men under fire and clearing the road to Mega of mines. The mines were home-made and nobody knew either how they worked or where they were laid as they were buried six inches below the surface with no protruding parts. Barker stayed with his men while they dug them out with their bayonets.

The main battle of the campaign took place in February 1941 at the Juba River, near the village of Gobwen in what is now Somalia. Logistical difficulties were as much of a problem as the enemy. In a night march, the men had to manhandle everything, even their heavy mortars, through the dense thorn scrub. Some of them moved forward on their hands and knees as they carried loads of mortar bombs, which weighed 9lb (4kg) each. Sometimes they had to link their arms and push bodily backwards through the bush. Light tanks came up at about half past four in the morning and helped by crashing tracks through the bush for the infantry to follow in the moonlight. Eventually the infantry and their trucks were across the ridge and near the “starting line” which was about a mile from Gobwen.

South African artillery began battering Gobwen and the area around it after daybreak. At zero hour, 07h00, the barrage lifted and the guns began to bombard the enemy positions and artillery in Juba on the other side of the river, while bombers roared overhead and strafed them too. The Cape Town Rifles (The Dukes) and the 1st Transvaal Scottish advanced on the village from different directions.

War reporter Birkby was again an eyewitness to the battle. “Two companies of the Dukes stormed across the open landing ground, a peaceful looking field that became an inferno. From a ridge on the other side of the river enemy mortar posts and machine-gun nests bristled. Enemy artillery had plotted every part of the area, and shells came over not in ones and twos but in dozens. The Dukes went on through bursting shells and mortar bombs with the whistle of bullets in their ears. Men began to fall. Their comrades showed great heroism getting wounded men to safety. Often the rescuers themselves were wounded.”

The pattern established in these battles continued through the campaign until the fall of Addis Ababa, the capital of Abyssinia (Ethiopia), on 5 April 1941, and the final surrender of all Italian forces in Abyssinia and Sudan by their overall commander, the Duke of Aosta, on 18 May. The South African forces would overcome considerable disadvantages of geography and climate – steep and narrow roads, thick bush, extreme heat and cold – and mount indirect and frontal attacks on entrenched Italian defences, supported by artillery. They were heavily outnumbered but made up for this disadvantage with their mobility and superior leadership. South African combat engineers were able to overcome the delays imposed by Italian demolitions of passes and bridges.

Birkby described the scene after the surrender of the garrison at Amba Alagi in northern Abyssinia, the last objective of the South Africans:

I came up again from the South African camp to the summit of Toselli Pass, through the chaos of dead animals and men among the wreckage of shelled trucks. Two hundred Italian lorries, some of them burned out, cluttered the mountain road. The pass had been blown up here and there. The few buildings on the mountain slopes were just riddled ruins. Macaroni and mortar bombs, chianti carafes and grenade, all were jumbled in one mournful mess with the dead who would need these things no more.

Like rock rabbits emerging from their holes on the pyramidal peak, the beaten men came out of the ruins of Toselli fort. In one unending stream, like soldier-ants on the march, 4 500 Italians moved down the mountainside, their column one gigantic letter Z against the green background. They marched past the Major General Mayne and his brigadiers. The pipe band of the Transvaal Scottish played a lament. The leaden-footed Italians tried to fit their pace to the unfamiliar Highland music. Some of them marched smartly in fours, some in shambling, shapeless rabble.

For the Springboks, it was exactly a year after the 1st South African Brigade had been constituted for full-time service. They had played a major part in the collapse of the Italian empire in Africa, thus making the Red Sea and the Suez Canal safe for Allied shipping and stabilising the strategic balance in the Middle East.

The Outspan Club was one of many facilities available for Springboks in North Africa and Italy.

A South African armoured car on a pontoon bridge in East Africa.

South African infantrymen on patrol in East Africa.

Vital for morale: a field post office in East Africa.