Together
with his staff officers, on 2 July 1941 General der Panzertruppe Erwin
Rommel (left, Kommandierender General Deutsches Afrikakorps) made a
visit to the headquarters of I.Bataillon / Schützen-Regiment 104 /
15.Panzer-Division in the Sollum front, which is on the border
Libya-Egypt. During this visit, in particular "Der Wüstenfuchs" (The
Desert Fox) congratulated the commander of the battalion, Hauptmann der
Reserve Wilhelm Bech (walking at the forefront with Rommel), who in the
battle a month earlier managed to withstand the British tank forces who
were trying to break through the Halfaya Pass in order to free their
comrades who were besieged in Tobruk, in a mass attack codenamed
Operation Battleaxe (15-17 June 1941). For three full days Bach and his
men endured wave after wave of enemy tank attacks, with only a platoon
of Flak 88 cannons as their main weapon. Although Rommel himself had
ordered the Bataillonskommandeur to retreat to a more adequate defensive
location "if possible", Bach interpreted his commander's last words in
the opposite direction: a counterattack that succeeded in repelling the
British troops! For this phenomenal achievement, Bach - who is a former
priest (!) - was awarded the prestigious Ritterkreuz des Eisernen
Kreuzes on July 9, 1941, just a week after this photo was taken. The
Flak 88 itself was originally an anti-aircraft gun, but it can be just
as good when it comes to hitting tank targets on the ground. BTW, in
April 1941 - which was only one month after Rommel arrived in North
Africa - German forces managed to defeat the invading British army and
driven it out of Libya, except for one stubborn ANZAC garrison which
remained in the port city of Tobruk (despite being besieged by a
combined force of Italian and German Afrikakorps). Over the next year,
the re-capture of Tobruk became Rommel's biggest obsession, because
without it all German efforts to conquer Egypt would be vulnerable. When
the port city was finally occupied in June 1942, a grateful Hitler
rewarded Rommel with an extraordinary promotion to Generalfeldmarschall.
Source :
https://www.bridgemanimages.com/en/search?filter_group=all&filter_region=GBR&filter_text=Erwin%20Rommel
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