Negatives #11... killed by incompetence

I received my great uncle's army records on Tuesday and I passed them on to cousin A.

Great Uncle A joined aged 16 as a boy soldier in 1937, became a private once he reached the age of 17, and was posted in September 1939 aged 18.

From researching his batallion I found that he served in France, marched to Belgium and was there for 24 hours before having to turn round and march back through France to be evacuated at Dunkirk. He survived that ordeal, his batallion being amongst the last to escape the hell of those beaches.

After that he was sent to Africa.

Having watched a highly informative, almost 3 hour long documentary on YouTube, put together from source material, I found that his death was, in no small part, due to the incompetence of numerous commanding officers in that area, which culminated in an assault led by Rommel himself.

He was killed during the Battle of Gazala, in the days prior to which, commanding officers were squabbling between themselves, failing to attack when they were supposed to, and denying that Rommel's tanks were approaching, despite them being in full view of the British soldier who was notifying them.

The 150th Brigade, of which my great uncle's batallion was part, ended up surrounded on all sides by tanks and troops, in addition to which they were bombed from the air, whilst running out of ammunition themselves. The British desert air force took the day off and did nothing, other offensives supposedly coming from the north and east to assist, were called off.

He didn't stand a chance; a victim, like so many of his colleagues, of the petty mindedness and incompetence of his so called 'superiors'.