The Times arrived. General Sir Henry Maitland Wilson, the British commander in Persia and Iraq, sat down to the only indoor amusement which, at 61, he finds really worth while. The issues in the bundle from the Army post office were wrinkled and limp after the long journey from London, and they were many days old. But they still were full of the only news fit for a Briton of Sir Henry's stamp. His heavy face intent, his huge body hunched and at ease, Sir Henry took up the oldest issue in the packet. He read it through, column by column, then proceeded to the next issue, and the next, in scrupulous chronological sequence. Refreshed, restored and as well up on events as a man so far from London could be, Sir Henry returned to his job of building the army which may yet have to save Britain and her Allies, including the U.S., from disaster in World War II.
This disaster would be the loss of Persia, Iraq and the whole Middle Eastern bridge between the main land masses of Europe, Africa and Asia (see map, pp. 34-35). Marshal Timoshenko. fighting for the Volga and the southern Caucasus (see p. 36), is also fighting to avert that catastrophe. So is General Alexander, at his gate to Egypt and Suez (see p. 34). If either fails, or both fail, "Jumbo" Wilson will find the enemy on his bridge. His task is to assume that both will fail, and to do all that can be done to retrieve their failures.
So long as Sir Henry holds his bridge, neither defeat in southern Russia nor defeat in Egypt can be final. At the inner core of the Middle East, Allied armies will still be where they can get at, hold off and thrust back the Axis armies. There will still be an Allied wall between the Germans in Europe and Africa and the Japanese in Burma or India. But, if the Allies lose their Middle Eastern bridge, they will then be on the outer fringes of the greatest land mass ever controlled by one power or group of powers. The Axis will have its oil. It will have Russia, boxed and all but impotent. India will be isolated or conquered. By all the ordinary rules of warfare, the war will be lost.
Sir Henry's patron and Britain's greatest soldier, General Sir Archibald Wavell, said last year: "The Caucasus, Iran, Iraq and Syria may well prove to be the great battlefield of 1942." He knew, and Hitler knows, that 1942 is the Germans' one year to fight for the bridge. The year is running out, and Hitler's armies are still at the approaches. The Allies' hope is to hold the Germans there. If the Germans reach the bridge this year, the Allies will probably lose all the Middle East.