The armored cars reported they had made it around the northern edge of the town, and the signal was given to send in the Warwick Battalion, which found only a single German platoon defending that segment of the line. Yet the tough men of the 22nd Luftland were in a well fortified old school house, and they fought tenaciously, forcing the British to send the support company around the position to reinforce the advance on the airfield by the armored cars. The Germans were also reacting with mortar fire, and a wild scene ensued when a line of eight armored cars dashed forward through the fire, their machine guns rattling away as the Bren carriers of the support company followed.
The airfield itself was held by the remainder of the same company, and a second company was further west with platoons investing the fortress. Chastened by their ill fated attempt to assault the place, the Germans had pulled back their pioneers and supporting forces behind Hadrian’s wall, and into positions in the Roman Ruins. Wolff was alerted to the sudden danger to his north, and he immediately sent word to move that second company back to establish a perimeter defense around the field. At the same time he gave orders that the two Heavy Companies that had put so much hurt on King Column the previous day, should be recalled to the north and stand as a ready reserve for the defense of the airfield. The Germans had a tightly concentrated force, and the advantage of interior lines where they could easily shift troops from one threatened place to another, and Wolff was reacting with cool efficiency under fire. He soon redirected his mortar teams to the north, and a battle for the airfield was raging.
The German heavy companies were engaged at the northern perimeter of the airfield, having made a successful counterattack that drove back the rifle squads of the Warwick Battalion and the armored cars. As the sun rose on the 21st, it was clear that the attempt to take the airfield by storm had failed. The British had fallen back to the segments of the town north of the airfield, and they had also cleared the fortified barracks east of the town, but the Legionnaires of Colonel Barre were still in the heart of the city, holding their posts in a tenacious defense. To the south, it was also clear that King Column was not going to be able to push on up the road to the Temple of Bel and Amphitheater, where Wolff was directing the defense.
Kingstone met with Nichols in a captured blockhouse near the main road on the northeast quadrant of the town. There the two men discussed the situation.
“It seems we’ve bitten off more here than we can chew,” said Nichols, and it was a fitting metaphor. The British battalions were stretched in a wide arc all about Palmyra, from Glubb Pasha’s Arab Legion in the south near the palm groves, and up around the town to the north where the troops of the Warwick Battalion and the armored cars were licking their wounds after their failed attack on the airfield. They had taken a good bite out of the apple, controlling most of the northeast quadrant of the town now, but it was clear the hard core of the German defense here would not be easily overcome.
“It’s no good pressing the matter for that airfield,” said Nichols. “The Germans can’t use it—in fact it’s been under fire for two days, and the landing strip is badly cratered, and of no advantage to them.”
“Yes, but what can we do here now? Fight it out, with another bloody regiment of German troops arriving tomorrow?”
“We can try to slug it out here,” said Nichols, “but what have we got, five battalions in all, and the enemy has at least four now, perhaps three more tomorrow, and with the advantage of good prepared positions on defense. It’s been bloody house to house in that town so far, and we’ve paid dearly for every position we’ve taken.”
“This fight is looking like one fine stalemate,” said Kingstone.
“We could pull out while we can,” Nichols suggested. “It’s clear we can’t push on to Homs.”
“Yes, any further move east is impossible now, not with a force this size here. We’d have no way to get supplies through.
“Can we get more air support?” asked Nichols. “What in blazes has been flying about up there? What are they firing? Looked like rockets to me.” Neither he nor Kingstone were in the know as to the nature of the weaponry deployed on the helicopters, and neither man had even set eyes on the aircraft that had been tormenting the German heavy weapons positions.
“God only knows,” said Kingstone, “but we should be thankful for it. As it stands I don’t think a squadron of Wellingtons would even do us much good here. The enemy is simply dug in too well. We’d have to destroy the place to force them out, and see all those lovely Roman ruins out there pounded to dust.”
Nichols nodded grimly. “We’ll need a lot more reinforcements here to have any chance to take this place. I can ask my men to have another go, but it was a long slog here through that desert, and hard fighting ever since we got here. If you want my mind on it, we’ll need another full brigade—possibly two.”
“That would be nice,” said Kingstone, “if Wavell was a magician and could pull something out of his hat. The 20th Brigade of the 10th Indian Division is running up the Euphrates, and they’ve run into trouble as well. The Germans are at Dier-ez-Zour—another full regiment, just like this lot here. Word is they flew in to the airfield there, so this whole envelopment operation has ground to a halt. We took a good swing at them, but the pick axe has hit hard stone now, and we’ll have to re-think things. I’m requesting a conference with General Clark at T3. That Russian Captain can meet us there. This little war out here was going along swimmingly, but with the Germans in the thick of things now, it’s a whole new game. All I can see to do here now is to get the lads into a good position to pull out.”
Chapter 26
Wavell met with Brigadier Kinlan to discuss the operations now underway in Syria. They had implemented O’Connor’s plan, moving not one, but two heavy infantry battalions north at night on the empty desert roads to the railhead south of Mersa Matruh. The area had been cleared out, and Kinlan was given free rein to supervise the loading operation for the waiting trains. It was a lot to move, but they would take one battalion the first night, the Highlanders, and the trains would return by day to load the Mercians on the second night. The trains could quickly move these vital troops all the way to Haifa, and Acre, where they again off loaded under cover of darkness and moved out along pre cleared roads to their assembly points.
Wavell’s regret over not assigning stronger forces to his center column was now to be corrected. Both heavy battalions, as they were now being called, would assemble south of Merjayoun, where the French had put in a strong counterattack that had stopped the Australian advance cold. The appearance of Renault 35 tanks had caused a near panic, as the troops had no effective AT gun to oppose them—but that was about to change.
The Highlanders led the way, organized in three companies, each with fifteen Warrior AFVs mounting the improved 40mm gun. To back them up, five Challenger IIs had been added to each company, and this was a force the French were not prepared to face or resist for very long.
They never saw what hit them. In a sudden night attack, the Highlanders detected the enemy positions and vehicles using their sophisticated night optics and thermal sensors, and then they opened up in a sudden barrage of deadly accurate fire. The shock was stunning, and the Highlanders smashed through the enemy positions, making short work of the ten Renault-35s that had so bewildered the Aussies. Then they pushed on up the winding road that led them north into the Bekaa Valley, and a storm of panic preceded them. French rear area posts were flooded with alarming calls that the enemy had moved up a full armored division, and it could not be stopped.
After breaking through positions that had held for days against the Australian advance, the battalion found that the narrow road, more than any significant French resistance, proved their only obstacle. At one point the French thought to use demolition charges to create a landslide and block the road, but the Highlanders also had an engineering tank section, and one of the massive multi-bladed Trojan AVRE tanks was able to power through and clear the way in little
time.
Beyond that point there was little opposition, and the distance to the vital aerodrome at Rayak was no more than 75 kilometers. It was only about 25 kilometers on the narrow mountain road, and soon the lead elements had scouted forward to Lake Qaraoun, where the road descended to the broad cultivated farmland of the Bekaa Valley. Another five kilometers took them to Joub Jennine, where they encountered the first elements of a gathering defense.
Lieutenant Horton had the lead section, with five warriors, a Javelin ATGM vehicle, one up-armored FV-432, and a single Challenger II in support. Vehicle 1 out in front had picked up movement and thermals ahead and radioed back the position. The company had found the German recon battalion of the 9th Panzer Division. It had detrained north of Rayak, moved south just in time to stop a raid by British commandos attempting to sabotage the airfield, and then pushed south intending to reinforce the French armor, and lead a counterattack that following morning. The armor it found, however, was something entirely unexpected.
Horton brought up his five warriors in a line abreast along some broken ground between the Litani river and the slowly rising ground to the east. They assumed a hull down position, and watched as the German column emerged from the town ahead. “Let them come,” Horton radioed his men. “Tommy? Are you in position?”
“Roger that,” came the voice of Lieutenant Tom Wilkes in return. He was in the sole Challenger II, ready near the road and blocking the route south like an implacable steel boulder that had fallen from the heights above.
“Mark your targets… You do the honors Tommy. Get that nice fat armored car out in front. We’ll chime in with the chorus. On my word… Commence Firing!”
The sharp crack of the big 120mm gun on the Challenger split open the night, and the German armored car, an SdKfz 231 Schwerer Panzerspahwagen, was the first unfortunate victim. It was a 6.6 ton, eight wheeled vehicle, and it was literally lifted from the ground by the hit it took, the wreckage blasted off the road. Behind it came three smaller four wheeled SdKfz 221s, which veered off the road and ran into a hail of 40mm fire from the Warriors. The British were over a kilometer away, easily seeing and hitting the vehicles in the column, and with deadly results. The whole point of the column was a flaming wreck in a matter of minutes, but now the Germans realized they had hit something much stronger than they expected, and Captain Weichert stopped his advance and immediately dispersed his remaining troops into the town.
Lieutenant Horton saw what they were doing, and wanted nothing to do with a deliberate attack in an urbanized setting. He wanted to keep his squads buttoned up in their vehicles, and keep moving. He radioed back to the AS-90 Braveheart battery assigned to the Highlanders, and immediately ordered artillery fire, watching the barrage fall right on target in the town ahead. Then he gave the go sign and moved his section up. Two more sections had already come up behind him, and the full company was now available. He knew the main infantry of this force would be in trucks behind these armored cars, and he wanted to get at them before they had a chance to deploy into the town. So he gave the order to move out, and the Warriors gunned their engines, tracks grinding on the broken ground and churning through the fields ahead.
His formation raced west and around the town, immediately seeing the long column of vehicles on the road behind the hamlet. There was good open farmland between the road and the river, and he ordered his section to advance in echelon, with the Challenger anchoring at the rear. They raced along, turrets rotated and firing as they blasted one truck after another. At one point the Germans frantically tried to deploy a Pak 3.7 AT gun section, and managed to get two of the three guns into action just as the Challenger II came into view. They fired, both gun positions seeing their shells hit and ricochet harmlessly off the heavy frontal armor. Then the big turret rotated ominously in their direction, and the enormous gun fired, ending the duel with fire and smoke.
Horton had no intention of stopping. He was going to press on with all speed, fighting anything he encountered on the run. Behind him came 2nd and 3rd companies of the Highlanders, and they passed the German column like the teeth of a buzz saw cutting into wood. The shock and speed of the attack was so fierce that the battalion was all but destroyed, its surviving remnants fleeing east to try and find a secondary road and get north by any means possible.
The Highlanders raced north up the Bekaa Valley, reaching El Marj in half an hour, where they had to fight a hot action in the village against a well positioned German rearguard of two platoons of dismounted infantry. Their MG 34s made no impression on the British armor, and the return fire of the 40mm autocannons decided the action in short order. Now they halted, seeing the lights of two larger settlements ahead. These were the bigger towns of Zahle on the western fringe of the valley, and Rayak to the northeast. They did not know it at the time, but Zahle was strongly held by a battalion of the 5th Mountain Division that had arrived the previous evening from the coast. And up ahead, taking up a defensive position just south of the aerodrome at Rayak, was the first regiment of the 9th Panzer Division under Generalleutnant Alfred Ritter von Hubicki.
The division had been arriving piecemeal, and he had the 10th Regiment of Panzergrenadiers, and a single company of tanks from the 33rd Panzer Regiment, mostly 20mm PzKfw IIs with a section of better armed PzKfw IIIs, with 50mm guns. They were not going to stop the Highlanders any more than the recon battalion had been able to halt the lightning advance. But it would take a much more deliberate attack, and Lieutenant Horton radioed back the situation to battalion commander Holmes, and it was decided to deploy the entire battalion in the attack, behind an extended barrage from the AS-90s. The Bravehearts would pound the enemy with heavy, accurate fire before the attack would begin.
The battle for Rayak was now underway, and behind the Highlanders, the full Mercian battalion, each company also reinforced with five Challenger IIs, was racing forward up the long road in support. Behind Kinlan’s force, Wavell had committed the whole of his last two brigades of the 6th Infantry division, which had been in reserve in Palestine. If Rayak and Zahle could be taken, it would shut down the main enemy aerodrome and cut the road and rail lines to Beirut.
To the right of this position, the Germans had also deployed the regiment of the 5th Mountain Division that had been fighting to screen the Barada Gorge where the rail lines and roads made their way from this region to Damascus. Now that Dentz had decided to pull out of the city and retreat north, the two battalions that comprised this regiment withdrew towards Rayak. Their brother regiment was arriving on the left from Beirut, leaving the defense there to the French, and so now the flanks of the Rayak defense were to be held by the mountain troops.
Brigadier Kinlan had a conference with Sims and the battalion leaders to set up the attack. “This is the situation,” he began. “We’re in a nice little punch bowl here, with rugged mountains on either side of the valley that are all but impassible. The valley itself is open farmland, and the Litani River runs right down the middle. It’s not much, but the ground west of the river is broken by a lot of irrigation canals that will slow movement too much. So I plan to put the attack in east of the river where the ground is more open. I’ll want the Highlanders on the right, with your right flank against this thumb of high ground here.” He pointed to the map. “The Mercians will be on the left against the river.”
“Alright,” he continued, “Both battalions will deploy two companies forward, one in reserve. The reserve companies will front their Challenger II sections into one heavy platoon of ten tanks, and these will be committed to the most advantageous point in the attack to effect a breakthrough. The entire action will be preceded by a good saturation barrage from the AS-90s. Ammunition is a factor here,” he concluded. “We’ll commit to 20% of available stocks, and then hold another 5% in reserve for opportunity fires if needed, but that finishes off over 30% of our artillery munitions, and we’ll have to hold the rest tight. The British 6th Division is behind us, and they have 25-pounders to take up the slack
. I’m sending over a liaison team with radio communications to feed them grid coordinates, but don’t expect anything they throw to be spot on like our AS-90s.”
“Where do we stop?” asked Colonel Sanderson, the commander of the Highland Battalion.
“Punch through and take that airfield, Sandy,” said Kinlan. “Don’t worry about mop-up. I want a hard, fast attack right in the center of their defense. Once you overrun the airfield, ascertain the strength remaining in the town behind it, and we’ll determine what to do. If the opportunity presents itself, envelop that town with maneuver and cut the road and rail connections north to Homs. The Germans have been concentrating here, so there could be more troops arriving. Any questions?”
“What about that high ground on my right?” said Sanderson. “If they have positions up there it will give them good fields of fire as we advance.”
“Don’t worry about it,” said Kinlan. “The Gurkhas are coming up to join us from Damascus, and they’ll be in position on your right by midnight. They had some hard fighting in the city, so I’ll rest them until 04:00. Then they’ll begin pre-dawn infiltration on that ground to look for enemy positions and set up OPs for the artillery. Your attack goes in at 06:00. That’s zero hour.”
“Then we won’t be attacking this town?” Colonel Laws, commander of the Mercian Battalion pointed to the large settlement of Zahle on the left, hugging the knees of the folded mountains on the road to Beirut.”
“That’s not on our dance card,” said Kinlan. “The British 6th Division will be moving one brigade up on the other side of the river, and that is their turf. Our exclusive objective is the airfield and town of Rayak, and I’ll want a lightning fast attack here. Don’t stop, gentlemen. Hit hard and keep moving. We’ll use speed and sheer firepower to punch right through their main line of resistance. I want no infantry deployment until we get to Rayak. If, by chance, you should lose any vehicle in this action, either to enemy fire or for mechanical reasons, don’t forget that the reserve company is right behind you. They’ll be sanitizing the ground all around you as they move through, so if any vehicle is disabled, the orders are to sit tight, button up, and wait for the extraction team to come up with the Titan. We leave nothing on the field, gentlemen. After the reserve company, the Gurkhas will come in and sweep the ground behind the whole attack, along with the Titans, so any vehicle that has trouble will have plenty of infantry support.”
Hammer of God (Kirov Series Book 14) Page 23
