by Jeff Shaara
T he lunch had been enjoyable, one of the first meals that seemed to agree with his tender stomach. It was a good sign, and Rommel leaned back against the pillow, probed his abdomen with his fingers, touched the sore places, particularly the right side. A bolt of pain shot through him, a surprise, and he groaned, said aloud, “Damn! Not again! What must I do?”
He saw them coming, the nurses responding quickly. It was the luxury of being the Great Rommel that every one of the staff would rush to him when he called. His liver problems were still acute, the doctors as frustrated as he was, and they all knew that should something disastrous happen to him, the first inquiries would come from the Gestapo.
The nurses had begun to gather, then stood back, made way for the doctor, a short, stocky man named Besser.
“Your liver again?”
“Yes, dammit.” Rommel paused. “Doctor, you must understand. I came here believing I would find rest and rejuvenation. It has been three weeks, and I am not much better than when I arrived. Three weeks, added to a year.”
Besser said, “Sir, this sort of ailment requires time. You should remain here for two months, perhaps longer.”
“I do not have two months, Doctor.”
“Sir!”
Rommel looked toward the woman’s voice, the nurse coming toward him in quick, precise steps.
Besser said, “Yes, what is it?”
“Excuse me, Doctor. Field Marshal Rommel has a telephone call. They say it is very urgent, sir.”
Rommel felt the pain again, the dull ache as he sat up. He looked at the soft face of the nurse, thought, she’s afraid. Good God, what do they think I’m going to do to them?
Besser helped him to his feet, and the nurse moved close, put a soft hand beneath his arm, said in a low urgent voice, “Sir, it’s the Führer’s headquarters! It is General Keitel himself!”
Rommel felt his stomach reacting to the name. His lunch was turning over inside him, and he shuffled in slow steps toward the door. There were more nurses, and he saw the small office, the place where the telephone waited, knew Keitel’s reedy voice, the field marshal whose ability was to function perfectly as Hitler’s office boy. Rommel stared down at the earpiece, tried to calm himself. There is only one reason he would call me, he thought. It has begun.
The second call came from Hitler, several hours after the first news from Keitel. Hitler had asked the same question Keitel had: Are you well enough to return to command? Rommel was surprised that Hitler himself seemed genuinely concerned, that should Rommel feel unfit, there would be no order. But the urgency was clear, and Rommel would never have refused. He was going back to Africa.
The first sign of Montgomery’s attack had come from the British artillery, wave upon wave of shelling that poured over the German and Italian positions, followed by massive night and early-morning bombing from unstoppable swarms of British bombers. The combined assaults had blown great gaps in the defensive line, some Italian units simply melting away, conceding the ground to whatever Montgomery was sending toward them. Rommel knew that Hitler’s headquarters would not know what was really happening, not yet, not until it was over, when the reports were written, the numbers tallied. But the first report from Keitel was less about facts and figures than the one piece of news that Rommel found hard to fathom. Somewhere in the midst of the British attack, Rommel’s temporary replacement had disappeared. Keitel had used the appropriate word of course: missing. This one detail gave Rommel the worst agony, kept him awake throughout the endless night. When the Panzerarmee most needed the strength of a leader, Georg Stumme, the man whose critical job was to coordinate the defense, had simply vanished.
NEAR TEL EL AQQAQIR, EGYPT—OCTOBER 25, 1942
The plane had taken him directly to Rome, where he had been given the details that had been relayed from El Alamein. He knew not to depend on the reports of the fighting itself, that desert war was fluid, situations changing constantly. For that, he would see it for himself. But far worse was the confirmation that came from the supply officers. No matter how much effort had been put into transporting fuel to Rommel’s army, the British bombers and torpedo planes had continued to find their mark. Much of the available gasoline meant for his armor was being sent to the bottom of the Mediterranean.
When he reached the airfield at Qasada, he made the last leg of the flight himself, in the Storch, his own small plane. He stayed low, skimmed the smooth surface of the desert, had ignored anything that might be flying high above him. The Storch was small enough that it would be ignored as well, no squadron of British fighters caring much about a single slow-moving spotter plane this far in the German rear.
The smoke drew him to the landing site, the sky smeared with black and gray, but he did not scout anything, had no interest now in observing the movement of his panzers. With the sun a deep red in the west, he brought the plane in slow, touched down. As he pulled himself stiffly out of the plane, the first man he saw was Westphal.
“G eneral Stumme is dead, sir. We found his body this afternoon. There were no wounds. He apparently…fell out of his command vehicle. His heart stopped, possibly.”
Rommel kept moving, saw the other officers gathering outside the tents. Westphal followed him closely, said, “Sir. I’m not sure what else we could have done.”
The words punched Rommel, and he stopped, spun around, had never heard that kind of hesitation from the young man before. Westphal seemed to flinch, and Rommel stared hard into his eyes.
“Done about what, Colonel? What did you not do?”
Westphal glanced past him, and Rommel knew the others were listening. Rommel had no patience, the agony in his gut rolling over like bricks of ice. He knew there would be fault somewhere, someone on the line, someone in these tents panicking because of Stumme, because the army had become headless.
“What happened, Colonel?”
“Sir, the British gave us every indication they were massing for an assault to the southern flank. Our scout planes located fuel depots there and we easily spotted an enormous number of vehicles parked under camouflage. Large numbers of troops were seen marching to the south. For weeks they had been constructing a pipeline, which the observers believed to be a fuel line. Every indication was that the enemy was intending to attack us in that direction.”
Rommel closed his eyes, thought of Montgomery. “And, instead, the enemy struck to the north.”
“Yes, sir.”
Rommel was beginning to see it in his mind, tried to imagine a grand plan, something he might do himself. He had wondered about Montgomery’s delay, why the British had allowed the Panzerarmee to dig in, why there was so much time to repair the tanks. Now it made sense. Montgomery is…Rommel mulled the word…meticulous.
He turned, looked at the others, said, “If you easily located vehicles parked under camouflage, is it not possible that the enemy intended you to locate them? After all that has happened here, do you not believe the British are proficient in the use of camouflage? Do you not recall what we accomplished in Tripoli? When I arrived here, we had almost no armor! We constructed wooden tanks, covered Volkswagens in cloth and wood, so the British observers would believe we had strength, when we had almost none! It gave us the advantage! Now, you have given it back to them. You have been seduced by the same strategy.”
His energy was gone, drained by the frustration. He looked at Westphal, scanned the faces of the others, burned and dirty, all watching him.
“You don’t even know what I’m talking about. You weren’t in Tripoli then. None of you.”
He moved slowly toward the tents, ignored the darkness, smelled food, sickening, tightening his throat. No, they do not remember what it took to come this far, all that we did. It has been, after all, twenty months. A lifetime ago. Thousand of lifetimes. He thought of Stumme, the fat man swallowed by the desert, a commander who’d accomplished nothing. Rommel knew Westphal was behind him, would always be there. He wanted to say something to the young man, felt bad for scoldin
g him. But dammit, they should have known. They should have been out there, probing, scouting, testing the lines, finding the strength. How could Stumme, how could any of them have allowed the enemy to fool us so badly?
“What do we know of the enemy’s movements, Colonel?”
The question was answered by the sound of a vehicle, voices, and outside the tent there was a quick flash of lantern light, a single loud voice.
“Is he here?”
Westphal moved quickly, said, “He is here, this way, yes, sir!”
Rommel knew the voice, the hard energy. It was Ritter von Thoma, the most recent addition to Rommel’s army. Von Thoma had been there barely a month, had taken command of the Afrika Korps, the armored divisions, had answered only to Stumme. Now, he would answer to Rommel.
He burst into the tent, a flashlight flickering briefly, searching the darkness. Rommel blinked from the light, noticed a chair to one side, sat heavily. Von Thoma was a tall, angular man, nearly Rommel’s age, who knew as much about tanks as any man in the German army. Rommel had liked him immediately. He was so much like Rommel himself, with one difference: he had only been in the desert for a short time, and so, he was still healthy.
“Sit down, General.”
Von Thoma obliged, leaned close to Rommel, said, “We are holding the line in the north. Some of the Italians have given way, but overall, the infantry has held as well as we could have hoped. The enemy has attempted to drive forward in the darkness, with some success. But the night can be an ally, and we have stopped him. For the most part. Our armor is causing heavy damage to the enemy, the antitank screen is very effective.”
He stopped abruptly, and Rommel waited for more, had not yet heard anything he didn’t already know.
Von Thoma glanced behind him, and Rommel said, “Speak your mind, General.”
“There is one significant breakthrough. The enemy has captured Hill 28. The Fifteenth Panzers have lost a great deal of strength. Reinforcements are essential.”
Rommel stared into darkness, thought, I must have maps.
“Colonel, arrange light in here. General, do you have…”
He saw the roll of paper now, von Thoma holding it toward him. Rommel took the map, moved to a small table, and the light was there, two aides holding flashlights. He unrolled the paper, saw the lines, a mess of scribbles, circles, numbers. He waited for von Thoma to begin, heard a new sound, distant and low. Suddenly there was a shout from Westphal, and the flashlights went dark. Rommel stared into blindness, could hear it plainly, the roar growing louder, the heavy rumble of bombers. The bombs came now, thundering in the distance, flashes lighting the walls of the tent. He felt the quiver in the ground beneath him, heard men scrambling to the trenches, shouts, Westphal grabbing his arm. Von Thoma pulled him as well, and Rommel followed, moving quickly outside the tent. The flashes sprayed out to the north, and he stopped, fascinated, could see the streaks of antiaircraft fire surging upward, could hear the bombers moving away.
“How can they do this? It is dark, for God’s sake.”
Westphal was still close to him, said, “Every night now, sir. It never stops.”
NOVEMBER 2, 1942
He had ordered the bulk of his armor to reinforce the breakthrough along the northern flank, to strike back at the massive British thrust. Montgomery’s advance was checked, Rommel’s antitank guns punching great holes in the British armor, the desert littered with blackened hulks of tanks and trucks and the men who drove them. Rommel’s counter had seemed to work, and true to form, the British commander seemed to grow cautious. The British advance halted, and Rommel could only assume that Montgomery had paused, baffled by Rommel’s hard defense. But then word filtered through the lines, and from pilots as well, those brave enough to fly into the skies so utterly dominated by British aircraft. Behind the first line of the British position, more than eight hundred tanks and heavy armored cars sat unused, not yet committed to the fight. Rommel knew that once Montgomery made his next move, Rommel had no force that would be strong enough to hold the enemy away.
For nearly a week the fight had spread across the minefields and infantry defenses on both sides, the British taking more than a two-mile bite out of the ground once held by Rommel’s men. As the fight wound down, Montgomery now controlled hills and defensive positions that Rommel’s troops had been forced to concede. Rommel had no choice but to order the rest of the German armor to concentrate toward the northern flank, to add strength to a counterattack that might drive the British back or, at best, cause Montgomery to delay even further.
Rommel’s only ally now was time, the time needed to transport precious fuel and ammunition ships to feed the needs of his army. Kesselring had responded to the crisis by sending some supplies by air, cargo planes that somehow survived the gauntlet of British fighters that controlled the air lanes over the Mediterranean. But the big ships continued to go down, and with them sank any hope that Rommel’s tanks could go on the offensive.
To the south, along the minefields and infantry positions that stretched toward the Qattara Depression, the German and Italian lines had virtually been stripped of any defensive strength. That part of the line was manned only by Italian and German infantry, light armored trucks, and outdated Italian tanks. Once Rommel had ordered his panzer units northward, the tank commanders knew, as did Rommel himself, that there was simply not enough fuel to send them back again. If Montgomery shifted his attack southward, there would be nothing to hold him back.
Montgomery had not held still for long, the renewed thrust pounding straight into the tanks and heavy guns that Rommel had hoped would drive the British back. No matter how much British armor was destroyed, there was more to replace it.
WEST OF HILL 28, SOUTHWEST OF EL ALAMEIN—
NOVEMBER 3, 1942
Rommel had driven along the coast road, had found a small hill, a perch that allowed him to see across toward the British position, the lines that had once been his, where now the enemy continued to gather its vastly superior strength. Von Thoma had joined him, Westphal keeping close to the command trucks, where the radios continued to chatter, urgent calls, reports, the audible chaos of the battle that was consuming more and more of the German position. All out in front of him, the smoke rolled forward, obliterating the hills to the east, black clouds that hugged the ground, unending, a carpet of fire and destruction that extended beyond the horizon to the south. Rommel scanned the skies, said, “No bombers. Just…artillery, ground forces.”
Von Thoma scanned through his binoculars as well, said, “The bombers will return. Very soon. It has been this way every day. Their artillery begins, and then the planes come. When it began, Stumme would not order our guns to return fire. We did not have the ammunition reserves. We have less now.” Von Thoma paused, and Rommel thought, he will not simply stand here and watch this, not for long. The enemy is coming, and he will face them…out there.
Von Thoma lowered his glasses, said, “We cannot hold this line, sir. No matter how much destruction we inflict on them, the enemy has no shortage of will.”
Rommel lowered the glasses, fought through a chill in his chest and arms. “The enemy has no shortage of anything.”
Von Thoma turned away. “I must know…forgive me, sir. I must get to the radio.”
Rommel said nothing, raised the glasses again, could see swarms of vehicles emerging from the smoke, German vehicles, regrouping, making a stand. The smoke covered them again, and Rommel judged the distance, one mile, perhaps a mile and a quarter.
The words came to him, rising up from a dark place in his mind.
We are being crushed by the enemy’s weight…. We are facing very difficult days, perhaps the most difficult that a man can undergo. The dead are lucky. It’s over for them.
He had written the words to Lucy, one of so many letters he regretted now, words that were too honest. Mail was the one cargo that seemed to get through, as though the British allowed it on purpose, hoping word of what was happening at
El Alamein would reach every corner of Germany. He lowered his head, thought, do I not tell her? There are so many lies, but I cannot lie to her, not to her. She would know something of this, surely. And if she does not, if the newspapers continue to lie, then I will tell her the truth. There is a time for propaganda, to inspire the people by exaggeration of our glorious exploits. But there is no glory here, not anymore, nothing to exaggerate except our destruction. And that is not exaggerated at all. It is real, and it is happening right out there, right in front of me.
He glanced back toward the trucks, saw von Thoma talking into a radio, the man animated, furious, waving his arms. Rommel turned again, raised the glasses, saw only smoke now, heard a steady rumble, sharp thumps, and low rolls of thunder. There was nothing else to see, the sounds telling him what he already knew, the battle rolling forward, coming toward him.
He could not fight it, could not hold the black mood away. It was too real, the failures, the mistakes, the brutally horrible incompetence that had strangled his army. No matter the latest attempts to airlift the precious fuel, restock the ammunition supplies, no aircraft could hope to bring anything to compare to what the big ships carried. And even the aircraft will not get through, not for long. Just the letters. He tapped his pocket, felt the folded paper, had kept the note he had just received that morning. It came from Rome, from Comando Supremo.
Il Duce conveys to you his deepest appreciation of the successful counterattack led personally by you. Il Duce also conveys to you his complete confidence that the battle now in progress will be brought to a successful conclusion under your command.
The letter had been too ridiculous to inspire anger. He didn’t know why he had held on to it, why he hadn’t simply ripped it to small bits, tossed it into the dirt. So, Il Duce, this is how the world appears to you. We are not yet obliterated, so we must be winning.
