Tel El Kebir > EL TAHAG < El Qassasin, Egypt

(MEF 18 Area, 77 Sub-Area)

Compiled by: Bake, Head Baker at theBAKERy (aka Keith Baker), 2023

There are numerous mentions of "El Tahag Camp" in unit histories and personal accounts of those who served with the Middle East Forces in North Africa and
the Mediterranean during WWII. Many of these are just passing comments by individuals who transitioning through the camp, either on initial arrival in the
Middle East enroute to their respective operational units or troops already in North Africa transitioning to their next field of operations.

While some knew it by name, most didn't know exactly where El Tahag was, only that they were entrained and/or trucked to somewhere in the middle of the
desert west of the Suez Canal. However, enough evidence exists to place its location between El Qassasin, Egypt, about 33kms (20 miles) west of Ismailia on
the Suez Canal and Tel El Kebir a further 16kms (10 miles) west of El Qassasin, on the north side of the Sweet Water Canal and a vast open desert area at the
time. Evidence also points to its initial origin being at Tel El Kebir and extending back toward El Qassasin as the two camps grew.

The name El Tahag is a bit of an enigma. It doesn't appear to have been a named location on maps of the time and doesn't appear on modern maps either. A
search for "Tahag" in The National Archives (TNA) WO 169 War Office: British Forces, Middle East: War Diaries, Second World War 1939-1946 seems to return
just two results: 305 Prisoner of War Camp El Tahag, WO 169/593 December 1940 and 379 Prisoner of War (POW) Camp Tahag (1946). This is significant as
POW Camp 305 was at Tel El Kebir and Camp 379 at El Qassasin.

The WO Diary date of December 1940 above is significant in that it is 6 months before the initial 3 sq mile (7.7 sq kms) open desert site was chosen and
building commenced on the MEF Pioneer Corps Base Depot (PCBC) and training camp at El Qassasin. According to "A War History of the Royal Pioneer Corps
1938-1945" by Major E. H. RHODES-WOOD, the camp was to house, train and distribute the planned recruitment of 100,000 to 150,000 Colonial Pioneers from
Africa and India to support the MEF operational units throughout the North African, Mediterranean and Middle East war zone.

Interestingly, the name El Tahag doesn't appear once in the Pioneer Corps document, but it does provide an excellent description of the inception and growth
of the Pioneer Corps Base Depot and Colonial Pioneer training camp at El Qassasin. Excerpt from the document:

"Since the many thousands of Colonial Pioneers to be produced from this vast campaign of recruitment were to be despatched as speedily as possible to
Egypt it became obvious that a depot would be required there to receive, equip and train the men, and in due course to disperse them in companies to the
operational areas in which they were needed. A site was selected for this purpose in the Sweet Water Canal area of the Canal Zone and here on 1st June,
1941, the Pioneer Corps Base Depot, Middle East, was opened. So states the official record, but seldom was a statement more misleading. Most remote of
all the military camps in the Canal Zone, set deeper in the desert than any other, nothing in all the bleak landscape was already more “open” than the
three square miles of desert at Quassasin now designated as a “Base Depot.” Open to the burning sun of day and the bitter winds of night, open to the full
force of gritty sandstorms and stinging dustwhirls; bleak, barren, desolate. Here and there an occasional, newly erected, empty cookhouse broke the
monotony of the landscape; a rusted length of piping projecting nakedly from the sand showed where water had been laid on; and huddled together in a
few rows of tents 800 disconsolate Palestinian and Cypriot Pioneers, survivors of the campaigns in Greece and Crete, as forlorn as the prospect which
surrounded them. Such was Quassasin on the first day of June in 1941."

There are several snippets on the WW2 Talk Forums El Tahag Camp Discussion Thread that also help pinpoint El Tahag:

▪ "… El Tahag is 20 miles west of Ismailia and about 5 miles east of Tel El Kebir. So it must be somewhere along that road? Perhaps not too far from El
Qassasin (or El Kasasin)";

▪ "The troops detrained about dusk at El Qassasin, a village on the Sweetwater Canal, and reached the tented transit camp at El Tahag in transport vehicles
about half an hour later";

▪ "... from Port Tewfik by train to El Quassassin and thence onto Tahag camp, a huge tented area 40 miles from Cairo. At Tahag the battalion was visited by
the Prime minister Winston Churchill..." (see below)

▪ "…From there the brigade entrained and travelled to El Qassassin and then moved by lorry to El Tahag camp for training…"

The Imperial War Museum holds photos of Winston Churchill's visit to Tel El Kebir on 9 August 1942 entitled MR. CHURCHILL VISITS ARMOURED UNITS AT TEL-
EL-KEBIR. Both photos are captioned but neither mentions the name El Tahag.

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Cheering troops lined the road to welcome Mr. Churchill during his tour of During his tour of tank units at Tel-El-Kebir, Mr. Churchill spent much time
tank units at Tel-El-Kebir. with the tank crews. He is here seen enjoying himself among the tanks.

Excerpts from The Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) website description of Tel El Kebir War Memorial Cemetery:

"Tel El Kebir lies 110 kilometres north-north-east of Cairo and 75 kilometres south of Port Said. The War Memorial Cemetery is situated about 175 metres
east of the railway station and the Ismailia (Sweet Water) Canal".

Measuring the distance by road today (which doesn't appear to have deviated much, if at all, from maps of 1940's) it is 96 kms from the centre of Cairo and a
further 16 kms on to Qassasin, which is about 112 kms from Cairo.

"During the First World War, Tel el Kebir was a training centre for Australian reinforcements and the site of a very large prisoner of war camp.

"The War Memorial Cemetery was used from June 1915 to July 1920 and was increased after the Armistice when graves were brought in from other sites,
including 15 from the International Christian Cemetery at Zagazig, where there was a Supply Depot."

"During the Second World War, Tel el Kebir was a hospital centre and a great ordnance depot was also established there, with many workshops for the
repair of armoured cars and other weapons of war."

"The cemetery contains 65 Commonwealth burials of the First World War and 526 from the Second World War. There are also 84 war graves of other
nationalities in the cemetery. "

Again, no mention of El Tahag per se.

An R.A.M.C. account places 305 POW Camp and the 27th General Hospital MEF at Tel-El-Kebir. The Canal Zone website also places 305 POW camp at Tel El
Kebir and 379 POW Camp at El Qassasin.

There was also a hospital at El Qassasin. A War History of the Pioneer Corps confirms this as it was the Depot Commandant Lieutenant-Colonel H. G. L. Prynne
who was instrumental in getting it built and staffed, with the assistance of the Director of Medical Services of the Union Defence Force (South African Army), in
readiness for the expected influx of Colonial Pioneers in the latter half of 1941.

Hospital arrangements, too, had to be made. British military hospitals in Egypt could not accept Colonial troops because the medical staffs did not know

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 Hospital arrangements, too, had to be made. British military hospitals in Egypt could not accept Colonial troops because the medical staffs did not know
the many languages of the men and so could not diagnose or treat ailments with certainty, nor were many of them conversant with tropical diseases-and
General Headquarters, Egypt, refused to provide a special hospital. In desperation Colonel Prynne turned to the Director of Medical Services of the Union
Defence Force (South African Army)…

The arrival of this South African hospital caused something of a furore in Cairo. General Headquarters insisted that they could not accommodate it, nor
would they approve of Colonel Prynne’s offer to erect a complete 1,000-bedded hospital from spare tentage which he held in store. Since, however, the
South African medical staff was on the spot and a compromise had to be reached they finally agreed to the Depot Commander erecting the hospital
temporarily until proper accommodation could be provided-which was done just before the first big draft of Pioneers arrived…

Largely due to Colonel Prynne’s initiative in the first place the South African Parliament voted a sum of money to be devoted to the welfare of British
Colonial Pioneers and the Union Forces carried out the task on a scale that was far ahead of anything that was done for British troops at that time…

Both the POW camp and hospital are clearly visible and annotated in the following aerial photos from the Luftwaffe Target Dossier dated September 1942.
Flight Plan ET 25 11 showing the El Qassasin Depot (materiallager), POW camp (kriegsgefangenlager) and Hospital (lazarett). While a little further down, Flight
Plan ET 10 131 shows the El Qassasin Airfield (landeplatz).

While the first aerial photo doesn't show the El Qassasin Camp proper, the outline of a separate target area is shown on the overall Target Flight Plan map and
annotated; Um Tabaq ET 1345. Unfortunately this flight plan is not amongst the Target Dossier collection. However, The high-level flight plan map shows Um
Tabaq ET 1345 target area generally following the now Ismailia El-Kasasin Road (not there on maps in 1942 but possibly the same route the internal camp road

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Tabaq ET 1345 target area generally following the now Ismailia El-Kasasin Road (not there on maps in 1942 but possibly the same route the internal camp road
took connecting El Qassasin and El Tahag), from around the Ash Sharqia & Ismailia Governorate boundary line of today (about 7kms east of Qassasin), running
generally west south west for at least 18kms, an average of about 2 kms wide and nearly double that at Qassasin.

The site of the hospital at Qassasin sits just outside the centre of the camp outline on the southern side and directly above the township of El Qassasin (now El-
Kasasin) about 1.5km away, with 379 POW Camp on the north side of the railway line and Depot on the southside extending back to the Ismailia-El Zakazik
Road and Sweet Water Canal. The Um Tabaq target area outline is shown open ended at its most western extremity, maybe 4-5 kms short of Tel El Kebir,
suggesting that the target area in all likelihood extended through to Tel El Kebir, which in essence would be the bulk of the El Tahag transit camp.

There is second high-level flight plan covering Tel El Kebir, with the coversheet dated 23 Oct 1940 (2 years earlier) However, this is only partially completed and
the associated flight plan map shows just the airfield at Tel El Kebir labelled "TEST'. There are no other surrounding targets or associated aerial photos of the
area, just two hand-drawn sketches of the airfield and surrounds, which interestingly are both annotated in English.

Back at El Qassasin, the other target flight plan and aerial photo mentioned earlier is of the El Qassasin Airfield about 8 kms ENE of El Qassasin Depot/Station
and immediately adjacent to the eastern end of the Um Tabaq ET 1345 target area. A small part of this appears in the following aerial photo, with the area to
the north of the airfield almost entirely covered with tents.

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A War History of the Royal Pioneer Corps gives some insight into the size of the camp at El Qassasin:

"Despite the fact that the recruitment campaign aimed at the enlistment of 100,000 to 150,000 Colonial Pioneers, and the project was already in train and
gaining momentum, Colonel Prynne’s original instructions were to prepare for the reception of 1,600 men. Audaciously, and with a clearer perception of the
reality of future events, he laid out a Depot for ten times that number, with additional spare accommodation nearby should it be required, a course of action
which more than justified itself, when under the command of Lieutenant-Colonel G. Richmond, M.C., the Pioneer Corps Base Depot at Quassasin reached an all-
rank strength of 23,000 men and became in all probability the largest Army unit on record."

In all likelihood, El Tahag Camp had its origins at Tel El Kebir and in the early part of WW2 comprising a major ordinance and armoured maintenance depot and
camp for the likes of RAC Tank and RA Regiments, RASC Transport and troops transitioning to operational areas throughout North Africa and beyond, growing
in capacity and extent in the direction of El Qassasin. In fact the camp at Tel El Kebir may have been the same area used as a training camp by the Australian
Imperial Force (AIF) in WW1. While in the latter half of 1941 the new Pioneer Corps Base Depot and training camp grew for the influx of Colonial Pioneer
recruits, extending both east and west of El Qassasin and in all probability met up with El Tahag in the west to effectively form what would appear on the
surface to be a single desert camp some 24kms (15 miles) long.

This also seems to be borne out by the below sketch map posted on the WW2 Talk Forums El Tahag Camp Discussion Thread entitled Middle East Base.
Covering the North-East corner of Egypt, it marks the location of water filtration plants and pumping stations in the area, with 5 filtration plants along the
Ismailia-El Zakazik Road section of the Sweet Water Canal servicing Tel el Kebir (2), El Qassasin (2) and 1 in between labelled Tahag.

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So, based on the evidence gleaned from the various Luftwaffe Flight Plans & aerial target photos, sketches, descriptions and other snippets, the giant WW2 El
Tahag Camp probably look like this:

Finally, perhaps the origin of the name El Tahag may be found in the Arabic word for difficult or hard; TAHAG’ARA. It certainly seemed to live up to that name
by all accounts. Alternatively, there is an area of high ground on the eastern side of Tel El Kebir named GEBEL UMM TABAQ, which loosely translates to
something like; Mother (Umm) platter or dish (Tabaq) hill or mountain (Gebel). The Luftwaffe flight plan (map base in English) annotated the desert target area
between El Qassasin and Tel El Kebir as Um Tabaq. Tabaq and Tahag look very similar when written in lowercase which might suggest that "TAHAG" may have
originally been a misinterpretation of "TABAQ". But then that's just supposition.

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