Following a lull in the desert war which saw the Germans and British reinforce their armies, Rommel suddenly attacked British fortifications with an assault on the northern sector of the British line near Gazala. Pinning down the British in the north and outflanking the 1st Free French Brigade, Rommel succeeded in encircling the main British positions, trapping them in what became known as 'The Cauldron'. With thousands of British soldiers killed or taken prisoner, this was a devastating defeat for the Allies. Accompanied by contemporary photographs and maps depicting the movement of both armies, Ken Ford provides a masterful study of Rommel, the 'Desert Fox', at the height of his powers as he swept the British army back to the site of their final stand at El Alamein.

Ken Ford was born in Hampshire in 1943. He trained as an engineer and spent almost thirty years in the telecommunications industry before a change in career led him to become a full time military historian. He is the author of over twenty books on various aspects of World War II including Campaign 158 El Alamein. Ken now lives in Southampton, UK.

2008-06-20 Good text marred by sloppy prints and sometimes hurried maps.

I am quite impressed with the text of Gazala 1942 - Rommel's greatest victory. This campaign book fits very nicely between Tobruk 1941 (Campaign 80) and El Alamein 1942 (Campaign 158) and together they bring a very clear picture of the desert war. Especially since Gazala begins with an overview of Crusader that lifted the siege of Tobruk and ends at the First Battle of El Alamein.

Ken Ford manages to paint a clear picture of events and captures the highlights well as the reasons for them, the defiant and brave stands of the 150 Brigade of the 50 "Northumbrian" Division and the Free Franch Brigade at Bir Hacheim. Both stands showed the quality of the allied troops but the British High Command failed to utilize them to their advantage.

The different style of leadership is clearly portrayed, Rommel leading from the front and even taking command at platoon level to see an attack through while the British leaders failed time and time again, not obeying orders and failing to understand the concepts of tank warfare. At Gazala the British had for the first time a tank that could match the Germans - the Grant and a powerful enough anti-tank gun the 6 pdr. With numerical superiority their rigid and static thinking became their bane. I have read quite a few books on the Desert War and I think this one captures Gazala best in the big picture.

There are plenty of maps, and these are usually good but have a hurried feel at times since the unit markings are sometimes wrong (like Trento and Brescia are labled as tank divisions on one map but were in fact infantry divisions) so bad proof reading there. But overall the maps are plentiful and appropriate to the text.

There are only 2 colour plates in this book which is less than standard but that is fine since one is below medium and the other is plain bad and neither adds anything to the book. There are however plenty of good photographs from the battle that make up for this and the book would have been better had the colour plates been omitted altogether.

So with a well written and informative text by Ken Ford and very good photographs I recommend this book. It is good that this important battle has the attention it deserves.