Unbekannte Sahara: Almasy’s MemoirĪlmasy’s Abwehr assignment resulted directly from the 1939 German publication of his memoir, Unbekannte Sahara: mit Flugzeug und Auto in der Libyschen Wüste (Unknown Sahara: With Airplane and Automobile in the Libyan Desert). Medium in height and slightly stooped, reed thin and desert tough, the 47-year-old Almasy had lived in Egypt 13 years before the war, and was a published desert explorer, mobility expert, and celebrated aerial discoverer of the Lost Oasis of Zerzura.įifty years later, Almasy would acquire posthumous celebrity of another sort as the title character in the 1992 novel and 1996 Academy Award-winning film The English Patient starring Ralph Fiennes. Reed Thin and Desert Toughĭriving the lead vehicle, a small tricolor fluttering from its whip antenna in deference to Italian theater command, was the mission leader, Hauptmann Graf (Captain Count) Ladislaus Eduoard de Almasy, Royal Hungarian Air Force, seconded to the German Abwehr (Foreign Intelligence). For the next three weeks, they would hide in plain sight, concealed in the vastness of the greatest desert on the planet, the Sahara. Their mission was clandestine rather than covert. The six passengers were in nondescript khaki shorts and shirt uniforms with unobtrusive insignia, the minimum to avoid being shot out of hand as spies. In accordance with the rules of war, the two Canadian Ford station wagons and two trucks captured from South African forces sported the German Balkenkreuz (straight cross) and Afrika Korps 21st Panzer Division palm tree stencils, partly rubbed out and sprayed with dust, however, and barely visible in the camouflage paint scheme. On the morning of May 15, 1942, a strange motorcade rolled out of Campo Four, located 170 hot, dusty miles south of the Italian base at Jalo oasis in northeast Libya.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |