THE FOXES OF THE DESERT

One of the greatest single campaigns of the entire War---or of any war-- is retold excitingly and well by a German author. It is General Irwin Rommel's great ""Afrika Corps"" history of 1941-1942, in which armies see-sawed back and forth across the Libyan Desert in a desperate struggle for power in North Africa. Here are the great battles of Bir Hacheim, of Tobruk and El Alamein. Here are the officers and men of both sides ---Rommel, Auchinleck, Wavell, finally, Montgomery---who daily made history. The side stories make equally fascinating reading too. The author tells of how commando groups such as Britain's Long Range Desert Group struck hundreds of miles behind enemy lines, then ""evaporated"" into the burning desert. He tells the Hollywoodish spy stories too, the accounts of espionage and intrigue in Cairo which included master spies, beautiful belly dancers, and the beginnings of Nasser's own plot to overthrow the British in Egypt. The publisher lauds the author as being ""objective"". He is not. And from time to time he lapses into German sentimentality which seems to make the business of war less gruesome than it is. But his facts are good, his style clear and dramatic. He does his vast subject justice.