James - Hitlers Gulf War: the Fight for Iraq 1941

Also by Barrie G. James

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Previews of Hitlers Gulf War

What a fantastic and enjoyable book, fast moving, entertaining and exciting. I read this in a single dose and loved it. It reads like a thriller yet is a tale of courage, bluff and daring the like of which is rarely seen anymore. The characters that populate the tale are really from another era of heroes from a desperate yet more noble age and the daring of senior leaders causes me to reflect that we have few like this, if any, nowadays. I found it special as I was in Habbaniya often, the last time being March 2008. I was aware of the incident but not the details. I look forward to returning and telling anyone who will stop and listen read Hitlers Gulf War!

Colonel Tim Collins OBE, Gulf War 2003 (the inspirational Eve of Battle speech in Kuwait in 2003, a copy of which reputedly hung on the wall of the Oval Office in the Bush White House.)

Twice in the last twenty years, British troops have been active in a Gulf war. I was Prime Minister during the first war in 1991. I saw events as they unfolded and marvelled at the skill and courage shown by our armed forces. Barrie James reverts to an earlier conflict against a more deadly enemy. It is a stirring story of courage against the odds that would grace the pages of any work of fiction yet this is all fact. It tells the story of a forgotten war that deserves to be remembered and hopefully, through these pages, it now will be. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

The Rt. Hon. Sir John Major KG, CH Gulf War 1991

Intrigue, politics, compelling characters, chaos and courage. Barrie James brings Iraqs history alive, revealing the best and worst of human nature and how individual acts of heroism and bluff combined with tenacious spirit and individual choice determine international events. James is Hercule Poirot in a murder mystery. He deconstructs the whole to make us realise the significance of each clue, each individual foible, each decision demanding us towards the conclusion, compelling us to understand how it all fits together. I read this story in one day and if you want to understand how wars are won and lost, how impossible it is to predict outcomes and gain a personal insight into how timing and one human choice really can tip the balance of history, then read this book. Iraq is still the worlds stage and we are all merely players.

Squadron Leader John Peters, Gulf War 1991 (co-author of Tornado Down )

In the spring of 1941 I was a subaltern in the Royal Horse Guards (The Blues) and a member of A Squadron of the Household Cavalry Regiment which in turn was part of the 4th Cavalry Brigade in Palestine, together with the Wiltshire and Warwickshire Yeomanry. In May 1941 the Brigade, christened Habforce, together with the Arab Legion from Jordan and a Battalion of the Essex Regiment, was despatched across the desert between Palestine and Iraq to relieve the siege of the RAF base at Habbaniya. The siege had resulted from a coup by a pro German faction in Iraq under the leadership of Raschid Ali. The story of that siege and that of the British Embassy in Baghdad is recounted in fascinating detail in Dr. James book. In the course of the relief of both Habbaniya and the British Embassy, two regular divisions of the Iraqi army were defeated by the Brigade group and the valiant efforts of the RAF. I am proud to have taken a small part in the Fight for Iraq 1941 and would like to pay tribute to Dr. James for the research he has undertaken to bring a little known but successful conflict to the knowledge of a wider world than that of those who took part in it.

His Grace The Duke of Wellington KG, LVO, OBE, MC, DL, Gulf War 1941

The British operation in Iraq in 1941 is one of the most interesting and yet least known episodes of the Second World War. It is an extraordinary story of audacity and courage that prompted even Churchill to get excited about the arrival of His Majestys Life Guards and Royal Horse Guards, in armoured cars, across many hundreds of miles of desert. Barrie James well-researched account now tells this intriguing story, and he tells it very well, so that this book reads as much like a thriller as it does the very important historical contribution that it undoubtedly is. I enjoyed the book greatly.

Major General Barney White-Spunner CBE Iraq 2008, GOC HQ, Multinational Division [South East], Basra

Contents

Preface

Hitlers Gulf War is set around the epic story of one of the most remarkable examples of daring in military history and the first real German defeat in the Second World War.

On an isolated, indefensible airfield fifty-five miles from Baghdad a group of poorly armed and outnumbered RAF airmen equipped with obsolete aircraft, together with a few soldiers, outfought the much larger and better-equipped Iraqi forces aided by the Germans and Italians.

It also tells the story of how trucks, taxis, buses and antiquated armoured cars were commandeered to move a small, hastily assembled relief column of cavalry, infantry and Bedouins. They accomplished what no conquering army in history had done. They fought their way across a 500-mile barren, unmapped desert, enduring temperatures approaching 120 degrees to reach the airfield.

In a gigantic game of bluff, fewer than fifteen hundred soldiers, supported by the RAF in their obsolete aircraft, against odds of twenty to one went on to take Baghdad. They foiled a coup, returned a king to his throne and destroyed Axis aspirations in the Middle East.

Following German successes in Greece and the Western Desert in 1941, a defeat in Iraq would have rolled-up Britains position in the Middle East, lost her the Suez Canal and her independent oil supplies and threatened India. This would have provided the Axis with the opportunity to create a land bridge between Europe and Asia. A mortally wounded Britain would no longer have had the capacity to continue her sole resistance against Germany, making it impossible to free mainland Europe from the Nazis.