Ironfall (Kirov Series Book 30)

by Schettler, John

  Lyne’s Provisional Brigade put up a good fight from their prepared positions, until 4th Royal Sussex Battalion broke and retreated back to his HQ post. Red faced and shouting, he rallied the men and reformed the companies. Then he saw what had driven them back. 1st Battalion of the Wiking Panzer Regiment had 16 Lions with the 75mm main gun, 17 more Pz IV-F1’s, and 18 lighter Leopards with 50mm guns.

  Soon both Dobie and Fitch were engaged to the right of Frost’s position, though no attack had been put in on the 44th Recon Battalion of the Provisional Brigade. The Germans were picking their targets, massing both tanks and highly skilled supporting infantry at selected spots in the line. Frost was just unlucky enough to have been “selected.” That handful of 6 Pounders had never made it up to his front. They were still back near the rail line waiting for trucks, but there were a few Deacon 6-pounders mounted on truck beds with that Achilles battalion, and they rolled his way to give him some much needed AT gun support.

  Unfortunately, the German tanks fired back and made short work of them. Of the dozen that came up, only five were left in twenty minutes’ time.

  * * *

  Alexander had finally realized that this was Rommel he was up against, and the man would seldom come at you where you expected him. The wily German General had been completely undeterred by operation Gladiator, and he had raced south towards Damascus behind the long mountain ridge, cutting his rail line back to the city. Cut or not, he could still use it to get troops south, and he had ordered Keller’s 1st Armored Brigade and the 150th Infantry Brigade of the Northumbrian Division to move as quickly as possible by rail.

  They were arriving on the morning of the 29th, as Combe’s 2nd Armored Brigade was in the thick of a big fight with 2nd Panzer Division. Rommel had ordered those troops to attack northwest into the valley to try and cut the main roads south and isolate Damascus.

  Everything was cascading south and east to Ad Dumayr, where Lyne’s Provisional Brigade and Frost had held out a full day in their blocking positions. But slowly, the great weight of the Wiking Division was building up behind that dyke, and organizing for an attack the following morning. Behind them, the first regiment of the 2nd Panzer Division was arriving, having been relieved of its position defending Mihassah Gap on the ridge line.

  The German attack pushed Dobie’s 1st Battalion off the flank of 44th Recon, and it was soon clear that the Germans had seen this sector as ripe for envelopment. Fitch, with 3rd Battalion, was driven into Frost’s lines, and had only five squads left. While Lyne was fighting to hold his position, he could see that the Paras were simply too lightly armed to hold his flank. His situation was further complicated when he learned that the Germans had pushed northwest to Al Qutayfah, cutting the road to Damascus from the north. Now any help coming down by road or rail would have to get through the 16th Panzer Division, and he was alone to face the wrath of the Wikings.

  He would have to fall back, realizing the Free French were still behind him, and that might be enough if he got his troops back to their lines. That night he would fall back 15 kilometers down the road to Adhra, which was still 20 kilometers from Damascus. The rail line diverged south away from Ad Dumayr, eventually swinging south of Damascus. So he got his Provisional Brigade set up between Adhra and those cold steel rails, with the Paras now out of the lava beds and into a dry lakebed. Behind them there was more cultivated ground, with many small farms fanning out from Damascus.

  That night Rommel pushed a supply column down the road to Ad Dumayr, making that road and rail junction his new forward depot. The ground rumbled with the arrival of the three Schwere companies attached to the 101st Panzer Brigade. There were 34 of the VK-75 Lions, and 15 of the rare new prototype model, the VK-90 with the new experimental 90mm main gun.

  Once it had been the British to stun and awe their adversary with tanks so advanced they could not be stopped. That season was ended, and as a consequence, Germany had put tremendous effort into its Armor development programs. All these new tanks were the result.

  Behind those tanks came the rest of 16th Panzer Division. Rommel was going to now use 16th Panzer to hold off all of Alexander’s reinforcements, and then double down on his main drive for Damascus by throwing on 2nd Panzer.

  Alexander was also rushing anything he could find to Damascus by road, rail and airlift. That amounted to the 2nd Brigade of 1st Para Division under Brigadier Downs, and Number 2 and 4 Commandos also came in by rail from Heifah.

  The battle for the city had begun.

  Part VI

  Foolish Fire

  “ Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp ,

  Or what's a heaven for?”

  —Robert Browning

  See: Damascus-Map2

  Available at www.writingshop.ws

  Chapter 16

  The night of March 30th Rommel ordered Lübbe of 2nd Panzer to build a Kampfgruppe and send it on a wide envelopment of Damascus. They would make their way through the dry lakebed, battling the soft ground and the darkness, but for Rommel, this was par for the course. He had made these night maneuvers over the shifting sands of Libya for the last two years, and he knew how to read the ground, and direct his columns along the best routes.

  Air reconnaissance showed that the free French Division had been deployed just east of the city in a defensive arc, but appeared to be pulling back, even as the Provisional Brigade and British Paras fell back on the city. So Rommel was intent on getting south and then west to enfilade their lines.

  General Lübbe assembled a Kampfgruppe consisting of the 304th Panzergrenadier Regiment, one battalion of his Panzers and supporting elements from the Recon Battalion and pioneers. The rest of his division would have to remain engaged against the growing British pressure on the long line of communications back to Palmyra. 1st Battalion of 304th Panzergrenadiers were the first to approach the city, catching British airborne troops fresh off the trains from Haifa at the main railway.

  The British were shocked to find German troops this far behind the main front, but Brigadier Down of the 2nd Para Brigade was quick to react. The rail depot, and the main airport behind it, were both vitally important to the defense of the city, and so he committed his entire brigade to drive the Germans back. It would mean his troops would not be able to immediately reinforce the city, where the Wiking SS Panzer Division was forming up to launch Rommel’s main attack.

  The Germans were approaching the workshops and locomotive hangars on the eastern fringe of the rail yard when they began to receive fire. A Piat popped off and struck one of the leading halftracks, the round landing just short as it exploded in the dry earth. Then the Paras began firing their 3 inch mortars.

  Brigadier Downs set up his HQ post at the Police post adjacent to the oiling station for the trains. There were a lot of valuable facilities to protect, a military barracks where he posted his company of Royal Engineers, an armaments shop, and an important flour mill. 6th Para Battalion held the rail station workshops, with 4th and 5th Battalions deploying to the north to screen the rail yard and occupy the Al Aswad district, the southernmost tail of the city as it reached down to the rail yards. His brigade was fairly well concentrated, on a front of 1500 meters, so that single German battalion was not going to push through on his watch.

  Damascus was not the wide concentric sprawl of a city in 1943 that it is today. The main city was still concentrated around old Damascus, which was bisected by the Barada River Canal. It was here that most of the major facilities lay, Parliament, Public Works and government buildings. Just outside the city on its western edge, and hugging the Barada Canal, was the University, Public Gardens and Presidential Compound very near the grounds that would become the first International Expo pavilions in 1954. That area, behind the university, was now the grounds of a military encampment, with the principle ammo dumps and supply stores for the region, garrisoned by three French Marche Battalions.

  From the Barada Canal, the city then reached northwest towards the high mountainous terrai
n of Jebel Qasioun, and washed against its stony flanks, running northeast in a series of settlements that slowly thinned and diminished. Then another segment of the city descended roughly due south from the main city, reaching to Brigadier Downs position at the Rail Yards.

  Brigadier Lathbury’s 1st Para was in the sprawling fields and orchards just east of that long tail—date farms, almond orchards and olive groves. There was a gap of about a kilometer between his brigade and that of Downs, but Number 2 Commando had just landed at the main airfield, and its five companies were already marching to fill that hole. They were led by a most colorful figure, one Lieutenant Colonel John Malcolm Thorpe Fleming "Jack" Churchill.

  No direct relation to the Prime Minister, “Fighting Jack Churchill” as he was called was nonetheless out to make himself worthy of the name. He was a gritty, hard-nosed brawler, given to going into battle with a longbow and a Scottish Highlander’s Cleybeg, which was a basket hilted broadsword, always at his side. It was proper dress code for any officer, he would exclaim, and to complete the picture, he owned and often used a good set of Scottish Bagpipes.

  He was playing them that morning, a scurl to wake the dead and announce the coming of “Mad Jack” and his minions of doom. Where stealth was often stock in trade for the Commandos, Mad Jack forsook it that day. He wanted the Germans to hear him coming, and think twice about their designs on this city. It would not be taken, he boldly pronounced. “Not while I can wield my Cleybeg with a good right hand.”

  This was the British defense in the south, largely screening and holding the long “Cat’s Tail” as the soldiers came to call that segment of the city. The cat itself, “Old Damascus,” was soon to be confronting a rather dangerous wolf. Brigadier Downs would be faced with two more battalions from KG Krefeld of the 2nd Panzer to even the odds, and they were coming with tanks. On their right, following the road that led towards Old Damascus, was the Nordland Regiment of the Wiking Division. Gille had arrayed all three regiments abreast, Nordland in the south, Germania in the center, and Westland in the north.

  The four battalions of Brigadier Lyne’s Provisional Brigade were covering most of the main city, deployed along its eastern edge. He and his men had finally redeemed themselves by putting up a very stalwart defense earlier at Ad Dumayr. Behind them was the Free French Division, mostly around the city center and Presidential Compound. They had not yet been built up to a real fighting division, being mostly garrison troops formed into “battalions” that might have the fighting power of a British company at that time.

  The best of them was the French Foreign Legion, about 18 squads occupying the stout buildings of the prison, right in the heart of the city. They found the accommodation much to their liking, for many had been recruited from wards and jails all over Europe and the Middle East.

  Down’s mortar fire convinced that lead battalion of KG Krefeld to fall back and wait for the rest of its regiment. The real battle would start farther north as the Germania Regiment sought to clear and occupy the outlying settlement of Al Jobar. According to Gille’s map, the Russian embassy was just behind that settlement, right on the road, and he could imagine the mad dash being made there as he sent his men in, the Russians scrambling to burn anything of potential value to their enemy and flee to the city proper.

  Just north of the Barada River as it flowed in a tangled web of small tributaries east of Damascus, the town of Al Jobar was being held by 2nd Highland Light of Lyne’s Provisional Brigade. SS Obersturmführer Manfred Schönfelder was leading in the Germania Regiment, and he hit the town with a single battalion, supported by a company of the Sturmgeschutz Battalion. He was aiming right for that Russian Embassy.

  B Company of the Highlanders could not hold, falling back under cover fire to the embassy, where they saw the last of the staff there speeding away west into the city. The position at Al Jobar had only been meant as a tripwire defense. The Highlanders preferred to hold at the edge of the city proper, where the Barada River would screen their right flank. 44th Recon was on their left, and they also fell back to the edge of the main city, as the overture of this battle began to play. A few rounds of French 105’s greeted the Germans as they pushed into Al Jobar, arcing over the heads of the British lines and bucking up their morale when they saw them fall among the Germans.

  That was one thing Lyne sorely needed—artillery. His provisional Brigade had not brought any of its heavy weapons when it abandoned Crete. As such, he was a “Light Brigade” in every sense of the word, with nothing more formidable than a 3-inch mortar to throw at the Germans. The French had twelve 105’s, and the two Para Brigades had only had brought eight 25 pounders, which was not much for indirect fire support.

  The German attack geared up in the morning on the main road to Old Damascus. They took the Russian Embassy, and Germania Regiment wanted to drive right up that main, also fanning out to the north to flank that district. At the same time, Westland put in a hard concentrated attack in the north near the rugged mountains, coming up on the road that would later be called Highway M5 to Homs. That was defended by 4th Royal Sussex Battalion, a segment of the town called El Charkasia. They gave a little ground, displacing several city blocks, but reformed their line, determined to hold.

  Most of the weight of the attack was with Germania, where Gille had also concentrated the bulk of all his division assets. He put in the Sturm Battalion, three Companies, and that was augmented by the single company of Panzers he had forward, 12 roaring Lions, with the 88mm gun. Schönfelder had cleared Al Jobar, and was continuing to push on the outskirts of Old Damascus. He was testing the line everywhere, but found a fairly solid front, with a few French units filling in the holes in Lyne’s line. So he opted for attrition, massing all his armored vehicles on the road from Ad Dumayr, and sending them in to support the Panzergrenadiers. Gille radioed to tell Schönfelder he could have the full weight of the Division Artillery.

  “I want to make a quick thrust into the city center, so push hard. I’m putting all the artillery at your beck and call. Use it.”

  Schönfelder would be happy to oblige. That afternoon he threw his regiment at the line again, and the thunder of those guns punctuated his attack. Lyne’s center was getting hammered, and it was all falling on the Highland Light.

  South of Gille’s main attack, below the rump of the main city, Colonel John Frost sat with a bemused look on his face, chewing on a piece of straw he had pulled out of a convenient bail set out for farm animals. Lathbury had posted him to the Date Farm east of the Cat Tail, but he had to give that up and move back to the Almond Orchard when KG Krefeld moved past his flank to the south enroute to the rail yards. His position had been probed early that morning by a battalion from the Nordland Regiment, but no real attack developed.

  All that morning and into the afternoon, he could hear the sounds of battle, very heavily to the north near the old city, and also to his south at the end of the Cat Tail. He had his battalion well positioned in the orchards, the men using their spades to dig field positions, b ut no attack ever came his way. What were the Germans up to?

  It was just common battlefield sense, really. Everything the Germans wanted was either south near that rail yard, or along the main road to the old city, so that was where they were attacking. Around 4:00 in the afternoon, he got another message from Lathbury—move your battalion back another 500 meters to link up with the flank of Number 2 Commando in the Cat’s Tail.

  That was all it said.

  There were olive groves behind him, and so he would pass the word to his companies to get ready to move. They had found the date farm offered a nice sweet addition to their morning breakfast, and the almonds were good on the side for lunch with tea. Now he would get to sample the olives for dinner.

  Darkness fell, and the sounds of the fighting subsided a good deal. Even Vikings needed rest, and they had come a long way from Palmyra. Around Midnight, there came a sudden outburst of 20mm AA guns. The mobile flak company had maneuvered close to the northern ti
p of the 2nd Sussex Battalion, which was holding all the ground south of the Barada River. They had been posted further east at the edge of the city, but moved back with Frost and Fitch to keep their lines even with those of the beleaguered Highland Light Battalion north of the River. A Company of the 2nd Royal Sussex, closest to the river, suddenly had its positions peppered with that loud AA fire.

  The men grabbed their helmets and rifles, squinting into the dark, expecting a night attack to emerge from the buildings to the east at any time, but nothing came. They were getting snookered. That flak unit had just been ordered to make noise, so it would screen a little operation the Germans had underway a few hundred meters to the north on the river. Gille sent in his pontoon bridging engineers, and they quickly threw down a small bridge suitable for infantry. While A Company was hunkering down, fingers tight on the rifles and waiting for that attack, the German infantry of 9th and 10th Germania companies, and the dismounted motorcycle infantry, all crossed that little bridge. They were soon 200 meters behind A Company, flanking the entire line of 2nd Royal Sussex.

  ‘We’ve been buggered!” called a Sergeant when he discovered what was happening. “Jerry has snuck right over the bloody river!”

  Then they heard the whoosh of nebelwerfers, and the attack that company had been waiting for finally came, only from three sides now, east, north, and west, behind their positions. The men scrambled to move a Vickers, smashing out windows in the building they occupied to get it set up to try and cover their rear. Thankfully, the French had troops from their 13th Demi Brigade, and they came up from the vicinity of the prison to the west to lend a hand. 2nd Royal Sussex was able to hold its positions, but they had just learned a lesson from their crafty enemy that would keep them sleepless the rest of the night.