HISTORY
BOOK REVIEW: SA’s forgotten war role in Western Desert chronicled
SOUTH AFRICANS VERSUS ROMMEL: The Untold Story of the Desert War in World War llDavid Brock KatzStackpole SA’s story in the Second World War has been much neglected. Recent books have skimmed over the campaigns and none has dealt with them in detail since 1961 when the Union War Histories Section at the military archives was closed down by the Nationalist government on the grounds of cost-cutting — but probably also because its members had opposed the war. The section produced two of the most comprehensive secondary sources of SA’s role in the war. The Sidi Rezegh Battles 1941 and Crisis in the Desert: May-July 1942, which is mainly about the surrender at Tobruk, were under the editorship of Prof John Agar-Hamilton, a military historian. Both, long out of print, deal with fighting the Axis powers in what was then known as the Western Desert. The rug was pulled from under the project before it could get to grips with East Africa, Madagascar and the hardest fighting of the lot, in Ita...
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