Afrika Korps!

This is coolbert:

You get ideas for blog entries from the most interesting places.

Thanks in this instance to the Englishman Michael Palin.

And yet once more an extract and comment from the book: "Life of a Nazi Soldier".

Those German troops and the German military across the board when deployed to north Africa encountering the difficult conditions of the Saharan desert for the first time?

"Newcomers to the Desert"

"'No war games or even more  modest exercises had examined tactical problems. The orientation, the training and the armament of the force that finally disembarked at Tripoli were entire those of a formation designed for European conditions/'"

That German soldier in a locale totally unfamiliar to him unprepared and even at odds with the environment, a novitiate with a long and hard learning curve?

PERHAPS NOT!

French Foreign Legion [FFL] troops for a period of at least one hundred years prior to 1939 having a long and storied military experience in the desert conditions, of north Africa, the Sahara, etc.

That FFL predominantly [?] comprised of ethnic Germans as has been noted by various authorities. There WAS among those of the German Afrika Korps a cadre of personnel that previously had served with the FFL in the desert of north Africa and WERE familiar with the terrain, the environment, the particular difficulties as might be encountered during desert warfare.

A devoted reader to the blog is familiar with this more so than I am?

During those decades PRIOR to 1939, the British, the Italians and even the French [?] had experimented and been successful in developing techniques for mechanized warfare in the desert. This is so! And the German having absorbed "lessons learned" from at least the Italians and also [?] members of the FFL found the "learning curve" to NOT BE so long and steep?

coolbert.