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Pure Bluff

The West African Command's busiest time was before Operation Torch, the Allies North African landings, in French North Africa on November 8, 1942 led by General Eisenhower.

Diana Polisensky

• 4 min read
Pure Bluff
Ground crew gather round a mobile canteen run by local volunteers of the British American Ambulance Corps at the RAF flying boat station in Bathurst/Half Die, The Gambia.

Their job up until then had been to convince Vichy the attack was to be launched on Dakar drawing their land forces and the U-boats away from Morocco and Algeria. To this end large numbers of troops were sent to Bathurst and very ostentatious preparations were made in The Gambia.

It was pure bluff because the command had no armor, no artillery except a few 3.7 inch Howitzers. Their preparations were counted by Vichy who deployed bot tanks and large numbers of 75 mm field guns, backed by units of the Foreign Legion and other white units as well as Senegalese regular troops. Everybody in GHQ realized that should hostilities actually breakout they were hopelessly out matched and would be dependent on the Navy for artillery cover and the inevitable evacuation by sea. Fortunately, the real landings were successful and not a shot was fired on The Gambian border. They contained many of the best Vichy troops who otherwise might have been in Morocco. Reportedly, the seas around Dakar were alive with U-boats, on the day of the landings, some sixteen hundred miles to the North-East.

The success of the landings ended the first phase of Edgar's stay at Achimota and ushered in the second which lasted till the fall of Tunis on May 13, 1943. In this second phase there was only an outside chance of West Africa being involved should the campaign in North Africa take an unfavorable turn. Their main concern therefore turned to sending troops to the Far East campaign.

By now Edgar was fully established in his new post and felt on top of it. But an Establishment Inspection Officer was sent from the WO to see if the Command was over-staffed and report whether the Staff Officers were of suitable caliber for their jobs. Within days of his arrival he made himself incredibly unpopular as he was tactless.

In due course he came to Edgar's office to see what Q (Provisions) were doing. He opened the proceedings by asking Edgar to outline his duties. It was rather an impressive list and took about ten minutes to detail. Their conversation from that point on went as follows: "Colonel Whitehead, you've passed the Staff College course?"

"No."

"I assume you're a regular soldier?"

"No."

"What are you then?"

"I'm a Rhodesian farmer."

"How did you get this appointment?"

"Logic."

"What do you mean by "'Logic'?"

"An ability to argue from the particular to the general."

"Excuse me, but what are your qualifications for this post?"

"I'm an unqualified success."

He then left Edgar, to see his Brigadier and told him, "That's an extraordinary officer you've got in Q."

The brigadier replied, "Don't you upset Whitehead, he takes my chair every time I go to the Middle East on duty and for two pins he'd go back to his farm in Rhodesia."

The Inspecting Officer met his Waterloo the following night. It so happened this was Edgar's Wednesday off and he left about 1630 by car for the Accra Club, with some friends. They spent a pleasant evening and were just having a final night cap when they heard a fracas developing in an inner room. From it there suddenly emerged one of their full Colonels who said, "Whitehead, I've hit him, I've hit him twice, he's bleeding like a stuffed pig. Take the bastard back to camp in your car."

Edgar took him to Achimota where the Inspecting Officer demanded to see the Duty Officer and wrote out a full report on being struck in a public place by a Superior Officer. Edgar assessed while he wrote, he had 'drink taken'.

Fortunately for all concerned the Duty Officer was a most intelligent and tactful young man. The next morning he called on the visitor and told him, "Sir, I have burnt the report you wrote last night."

The reply was "What do you mean by that?"

"Well Sir, it occurred to me you are due to go to East Africa Command in three days time. If this report is officially handed in, you will inevitably be delayed here for at least three weeks by Court Martial Proceedings. I thought the War Office would not be pleased if they learnt your whole timetable was disrupted in consequence of a drunken brawl. If you disagree with my action it will be a simple matter to write out the report again."

Wishing all my readers and their friends and family a very Merry Christmas and New Year. Happy Hanukkah to all my Jewish family and friends as the candles are lit to celebrate survival against all odds. Wishing everyone prosperity in the year ahead.

Attention Zimbabwe! Hannah Rothwell of Pungwe Projects, 10 Stuart Avenue, Pomona, Harare can take book orders for Whitewashed Jacarandas and Full of Possibilities. Once Hannah places an order it is usually received from the UK within two weeks. Contact her at: PUNGWEPROJECTS@GMAIL.COM phone 0785 685 568. Find her on Facebook as Pungwe Projects or on Instagram as pungwe_projects.

The historical novel Whitewashed Jacarandas and its sequel Full of Possibilities are both available on Amazon as paperbacks and eBooks.

These books are inspired by Diana's family's experiences in small town Southern Rhodesia after WWII.

Dr. Sunny Rubenstein and his Gentile wife, Mavourneen, along with various town characters lay bare the racial arrogance of the times, paternalistic idealism, Zionist fervor and anti-Semitism, the proper place of a wife, modernization versus hard-won ways of doing things, and treatment of endemic disease versus investment in public health. It's a roller coaster read.

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