In his book Infantry Attacks, Chapter 4: Attack in the Charlotte Valley page 58.
The situation is that he found a gap in the French wire and led a platoon or two through. Now the French were advancing on his west and east. His men are low on ammunition.
"Now for a decision! Should we break off the engagement and run back through the narrow passage in the wire entanglement under a heavy cross fire? such a maneuver would, at a minimum, cost fifty percent in casualties. The Alternative was to fire the rest of our ammunition and then surrender. The last resort was out. I had one other line of action: namely, to attack the enemy, disorganize him, and then withdraw. Therein lay our only possible salvation (Rommel 58-59)." Bottom line, his men attacks, pushed the French back and they only had to deal with harassing fire from the east, where they were too far to have any precision in their pop shots.
This is before he was assigned to the mountain battalion
The situation is that he found a gap in the French wire and led a platoon or two through. Now the French were advancing on his west and east. His men are low on ammunition.
"Now for a decision! Should we break off the engagement and run back through the narrow passage in the wire entanglement under a heavy cross fire? such a maneuver would, at a minimum, cost fifty percent in casualties. The Alternative was to fire the rest of our ammunition and then surrender. The last resort was out. I had one other line of action: namely, to attack the enemy, disorganize him, and then withdraw. Therein lay our only possible salvation (Rommel 58-59)." Bottom line, his men attacks, pushed the French back and they only had to deal with harassing fire from the east, where they were too far to have any precision in their pop shots.
This is before he was assigned to the mountain battalion