General , 57, is British commander-in-chief of the Middle East, a vast theatre running from Egypt to East Africa. A cultivated and taciturn officer, he bears the responsibility of defending the Suez Canal and the approaches to the Near East against Italy with derisory means.
In mid-August 1940, bad news reaches Cairo: British Somaliland is lost. Outnumbered 15 to one, its small garrison fought a delaying action at Tug Argan pass, then withdrew and was evacuated to Aden. The human toll is remarkably light — a few dozen British dead for an entire colony.
It is precisely this lightness that provokes London's fury. , both Prime Minister and Minister of Defence, judges that the troops did not put up a vigorous enough defence: so few casualties, in his eyes, betray a lack of fighting spirit, and deprive the press of a heroic story. On 19 August, he presses Wavell to explain himself, suggesting that a bloodier resistance would have been preferable. Wavell holds his reply at the end of the telegraph wire.
General Wavell, Cairo, 19 August 1940: how to answer Churchill over the low-cost Somaliland withdrawal?
Wavell robustly defends the withdrawal and the low casualty count as good tactics: he openly defends the conduct of the retreat and replies to Churchill, by cable, that 'a big butcher's bill was not necessarily evidence of good tactics'. The formula, of cool defiance, deeply offends the Prime Minister and lastingly poisons their relations. Churchill will not forgive this insubordinate tone; despite Wavell's victories in Operation Compass a few months later, he will transfer him to India in 1941. Wavell's retort has nonetheless become proverbial, cited as the classic defence of a commander who refuses to measure success by the body count. Viceroy of India from 1943 to 1947, made field marshal and then earl, Wavell dies in 1950.
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