British Forces

British cartoon of (?) March 1941, showing General Archibald Wavell, C-in-C Middle East, zapping the Mussolini-headed bees. This appears to be a reference to Wavell's Western Desert Army's rout of the Italian 10th Army at Beda Fomm, which threatened Italian North Africa with total defeat and collapse. Unfortunately for Wavell, Churchill's insistence on the diversion of resources to other areas of Wavell's command (Greece, Iraq) prevented him from finishing the Italians off, with the eventual result that his Desert Army was faced with an Italian army reinforced by Rommel's Afrika Corps. The result was defeat and the prolongation of the North African war by some two years. Churchill interpreted Wavell's method in exercising his hugely various command as excessively cautious and insufficiently aggressive. He was thus replaced with Claude Auckinleck and packed off to command in India. Mind you, Auckinleck, on taking over the C-in-C Middle East command, acknowledged Wavell's competence in dealing with the complex problems facing anybody in this post at the time. Auckinleck subsequently suffered a similar fate himself, to be replaced with Montgomery. An interesting point about this cartoon is that Wavell is shown wearing spurs. Not very likely - Wavell was an infantryman from the start. Best regards, JR.