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Review
| The Lost Oasis. The Desert War and the Hunt for Zerzura: The True Story Behind The English Patient, by Saul Kelly. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2003. 302 pages. $16.95, paper.
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| The subtitle of this book by Saul Kelly, the author of several works on the Middle East, reveals the author's intent to present a very factual (and unromantic) description of events in the Libyan desert before and during the Second World War, events that inspired the prize-winning novel by Michael Ondaatje (1992) and the subsequent Oscar-winning movie, The English Patient. The film, based on Ondaatje's novel, focuses on a tragic love story between Ladislaus de Almasy, a Hungarian archaeologist, and a married English woman who meet while searching for Zerzura, the legendary lost oasis in the desert of southeastern Libya before the Second World War. Kelly maintains that the activities of Almasy, who worked for German intelligence during the German North African campaign, and those of his British counterparts, are not depicted accurately in either The English Patient or in numerous other scholarly or fictional accounts such as Leonard Mosley's, The Cat and the Mice (London, 1958) or J. Eppler's, Operation Salam (London, 1977). The author asserts that "none of them tell the real story: namely, the search by Almasy and his fellow desert explorers for the legendary oasis of Zerzura, a hunt which led to Great Power rivalry, espionage and, finally, war between the members of the Zerzura Club, culminating in the notorious case of Rommel's spies in wartime Cairo" (xii). Relying on interviews with survivors of the Zerzura club, published secondary and primary sources, and British (and a few Italian) archival collections, the author presents a very detailed account of the desert explorations of the members of the Zerzura club, both before and during World War II. |
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Kelly notes that the Libyan Desert, which is as large as the Indian subcontinent, "is like a great sea and the history of its exploration resembles that of maritime discovery." (2). Between 1922 and 1927 explorers mapped a number of oases in the central region of the Libyan Desert (below latitude 22). In 1929 Major Ralph Bagnold, "the greatest of the Libyan Desert explorers" (15) and others searching for Zerzura founded the Zerzura Club in a café in Wadi Haifa. This group of primarily British individuals, who had explored the desert, were joined by Almasy and several German, Italian, and Egyptian adventurers. Using primarily cars they traveled thousands of miles, discovered archeological evidence of ancient inhabitants, and mapped oases and passage ways through the Gilf Kebir, a massive plateau along the border between Egypt and Libya which covers an area of almost 4000 square miles. In contrast to the novel and film The English Patient, the explorers never discovered the Zerzura oasis and there was no love affair between Almasy and Lady East Clayton because Almasy was a "homosexual hunter of boys and men" (50). Kelly suggests that the struggle against the inhospitable desert provided the explorers a "pleasant distraction" from the routine of peacetime service. |
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In 1939, however, the explorers "went to war with one another" (133). The British were worried that the Italians using the southern desert route might attack the vital Aswan dam and Wadi Haifa on the Nile. Bagnold was instrumental in the creation of the Long Range Desert Club Group, by gathering most of the British members of the Zerzura club in order to use their knowledge of desert travel to penetrate Libya through the Gilf Kebir and the desert. Working with Free French forces from Chad, Bagnold's units raided the Italian positions in Fezzan, Libya, causing the Italians to withdraw troops from Uweinat thereby eliminating any danger of an Italian attack on Wadi Haifa. The unit also prepared accurate maps of Cyrenaica and Tripolitania and, according to the head of the British Military Intelligence, their most important contribution was that the intelligence they gathered on Rommel's supplies confirmed what the British were learning from Enigma (the code breaker). Almany offered his knowledge of desert travel to the Germans in North Africa. In Operation Salam in May 1942, he carried two German agents across 1400 miles of desert to Assiut on the Nile. The two agents made it to Cairo, but they proved to be a total failure, spending most of their time and money "in the fleshpots of Cairo" (222) before they were arrested by the British on July 24, 1942. The failure of this operation, according to Kelly, deprived Rommel of information about the British defenses at El Alamein. The author concludes that the British members of the Zerzura Club won "the battle for the inner desert" (249) in large part because the Germans, unlike the British, could rely on only one member of that club.. |
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This work is valuable as a supplement to books on the North African campaign by such authors as Barrie Pitt (The Crucible of War: Western Desert, 1941, London, 1980), and C. Barnett (The Desert Generals, London, 1960). It is also useful in providing a balanced background to specific studies of the Long Range Desert Group by Robin Jenner, David Lloyd Owen, and William B.K. Shaw. Half of the book provides an extremely detailed account of the desert travels of the members of the Zerzura club before 1939, and the rest deals with their adventures in the Libyan and Egyptian deserts during World War II. Unfortunately, because of the lack of detailed maps (only one map is provided) and guidance, this book will be of limited use to undergraduates or the general reader. The jumble of names and places is discouraging even to those who are generally familiar with the area and the topic. But with the help of numerous student map assignments to illustrate Kelly's travel stories The Lost Oasis could graphically reveal the enormous challenges the Libyan desert presented to explorers and soldiers both before and after 1939. |
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| Mississippi State University |
Johnpeter Horst Grill |
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