by Leo Kessler
Now the Indians rallied. They thought they had their surprise attackers on the run. They began to rise from the sand, firing as they did so. McLeod cursed. Urging his men to ever greater efforts, he retreated very slowly, snapping off quick shots to left and right from his big revolver whenever it appeared the Indians were about to attempt to outflank them.
The chatter of the Vickers machine guns grew ever louder. McLeod flung a glance behind him. He could see the tracer cutting the darkness in a lethal Morse, but no sign of the attackers. Perhaps they weren't the Indians after all. Perhaps some local tribesmen, eager for revenge and loot, had joined in the fight on the side of the Indians.
But the dour Scot had no time for such considerations now. His primary task was to get his handful of men back to the relative safety of the ancient armoured cars and back to base. Something had gone seriously wrong and he knew that time was of the essence.
An Indian tried to rush him, cursing fluently, teeth an unnatural white in the glowing darkness. McLeod paused and fired from the hip. The Indian seemed to rise from the ground, his rifle tumbled from suddenly nerveless fingers. Still he remained standing, dark face contorted with unbearable pain. McLeod had no time for mercy. He fired again and this time the Indian went down, bowled over backwards, blood spurting from a great hole ripped in his skinny belly. McLeod and his men pushed on. Later McLeod was never very clear how he had managed it with only one of his little band wounded in the arm, but he did, and then they were clambering frantically on their armoured cars, while the two gunners whirled their turrets round, firing burst after burst into the darkness. Five minutes later they were on their way, leaving the sound of firing behind by the second, and McLeod was at last able to put on the headset and listen to Jeeves personally explaining what had happened that night.
"The bloody balloon's gone up at last, McLeod," Jeeves snorted, voice distorted by static, as if suddenly there were scores of other radios in operation around the great British base. "That treacherous greasy swine in Baghdad has revolted, probably with outside aid. Anyway, our recce planes report – the only bloody two we've got – report he has seized all official buildings in the capital, including our legation etc. and, more importantly, the Iraqi Army has begun to march on us!"
As the armoured car jolted and bumped its way across the rough track, McLeod realised just how serious the situation was. Jeeves wouldn't have talked to him like this in clear if it hadn't been. For the static in the line indicated that some of the Iraqi advance units, probably their signals, were already in position around Habbaniyah and they'd be obviously picking up Jeeves' transmission.
"We need every man we can get back here. You know our rotten position at base, McLeod. Everybody counts."
McLeod did. Jeeves probably had half a hundred aircraft. But they were all obsolete and worn out, used for so long in training young pilots to do their bumps and grinds, but they were the only offensive arm Jeeves possessed, providing he could turn them into makeshift bombers and fighters and that his trainee pilots, some with only a couple of dozen flying hours in their logbooks, were capable of flying offensive low-level missions. It would be a tall order. He could see that Jeeves would need every car of the armoured car squadron to give him extra firepower till relief came to Habbaniyah, if it ever did.
"All right," Jeeves' final words sounded depressed. "You know the score. They're out there somewhere. Watch your back, McLeod." There was a sudden crump, which McLeod recognized over the radio as artillery fire, and for a moment he feared that the position from which Jeeves was speaking had been hit. Then the air commodore came back on the air again with, "They've started shelling us, McLeod... Best of luck... Over and out."
The radio went dead, leaving a worried McLeod to ponder the new problem that had just arisen. Just like the air commodore, he had been expecting trouble from that rat Raschid Ali el Ghailani for a long time now. With Britain's power waning rapidly in the Middle East ever since the Germans had gone into Africa and beaten the Eighth Army, which led to a rising wave of Arab nationalism, one hadn't needed a crystal ball to guess what might happen. But why had Raschid Ali been in such a hurry when the British might still be in a position to send reinforcements from India, as they had done back in the '20s to bolster their forces in Iraq? McLeod knew it was hardly likely that British Far Eastern Command would be able to do so, but he knew his Iraqis. They wouldn't gamble on anything risky unless they possessed all the aces.
As the lead armoured car jolted and bumped ever closer to the base, by peering through the firing slit in vehicle's turret, McLeod could see the dark smoke of the artillery barrage rising on the dawn horizon where the great base lay. He wondered whether Raschid Ali might be expecting new and unexpected allies to be joining him in his new attempt to rid Iraq of the British. Had these mysterious Indians something to do with the matter? Who had dropped them by parachute into the middle of Iraq's waste lands? Was it the Vichy French in Syria, acting on German orders? Admiral Darlan of the French Navy, the real power in pro-German Vichy France, was a notorious Anglophobe. They said it was because his grandfather had been killed by Nelson's fleet at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805.
McLeod allowed himself a tight grin. The reason seemed absurd, but then the Frogs had long memories for such things, just as his fellow Scots had. Then his grin vanished as he pondered the mystery more. But if the French in Syria hadn't sent these strange Indians, who had? Could it have been the Germans in far away Europe, a couple of thousand miles away? But to what purpose? Even if they were somehow to help Raschid Ali, and his revolt did succeed, what good would that do the Huns all that way away? Iraq under the rebels wouldn't have that much influence on the conduct of the war in the Middle East. Naturally, it might affect oil supplies to the Eighth Army in Egypt, but that would be about it.
In the end a puzzled and worried McLeod gave up. There were too many imponderables, too many questions without answers. He concentrated on looking for the first signs of trouble, for he knew that trouble lay ahead. How much, even that old Iraq hand, Squadron Leader McLeod, could hardly have realised on that hot morning in the last week of April 1941.
BOOK 2 – SS Wotan Marches
CHAPTER 6
"Willya take yer eyes off them tits on that Greek girl," Sergeant Schulze ordered, peering upwards at the Acropolis, "and get a gander at that place." He indicated the ruin on the hilltop and added, "That's culture, Matzi. Now we're getting around to foreign parts, you ought to start to appreciate such things, you Bavarian barnshitter."
Corporal Matz of SS Assault Battalion Wotan was not impressed. He preferred the melon-like breasts of the dark-eyed Athenians who were ogling their new German conquerors without the slightest inhibition. "The Tommies must have bombed the shit out of the place," he answered. "It's a real bleeding ruin, ain't it?"
Schulze sighed. "Great crap on the Christmas tree, ain't you frigging ignorant, Matzi! That's not a frigging bomb ruin. That's an ancient temple or something – " He paused abruptly as one of the admiring Greek girls bent suddenly and showed a length of tanned naked thigh. He swallowed hard. "Holy strawsack!" he hissed. "Did you see that – legs going right up to her arse."
The wrinkled little Bavarian corporal grinned and said, "Now yer talking my language, Schulzi. Culture means nothing to yer normal hairy-arsed stubble-hopper. All he wants is his beer, baccy and beaver – especially beaver." He grabbed his flies, as if to emphasize his point. "And when you look at all the free gash around here, Schulze, yer wonder why people waste their time on bits of old stone, when they could be in a nice comfy bed practising the old two-backed beast."
Schulze looked thoughtful, all cultural considerations fleeing his mind immediately, as he visualized himself naked, pumping some nubile Athenian lady – also split-assed naked – full of his love juices. "Ye've said a true word there, Matzi. Sad as it sounds, we've got no time for such cultural matters. When yer common-or-garden stubble-hopper's got a real blue-veiner, a diamond-cutter, a cock that's as sha
rp as a razor, there's only one thing for it..."
"To find some hot baguette, Schulzi!" Matz beat the big, red-faced sergeant to it.
"But where? There's a thousand randy Wotan men on the prowl looking for the same thing, Matz," Schulze objected. "Why should we be the lucky shits who find it, especially as we've been warned to keep our paws off'n Greek women in case their menfolk take offence and do something nasty to yer sexual equipment?"
"Greek men!" Matz sneered. "Warm brothers running around in skirts like them evizoni fellers, or whatever they're called, we fought on the Corinth Canal."
Schulze sniffed as he remembered Wotan's assault crossing of the Greek canal only a week or so before, and the desperate attempt of Greek soldiers in white skirts with pompoms on their shoes to stop them. It had been a massacre, especially when the Vulture, Wotan's CO, had ordered the regiment's flame-throwing tanks into action. As some of Wotan's veterans had called in the crude fashion of the old stubble-hoppers, "Anybody fancy fried Greek for breakfast, comrades?" No one had. "Well, we're finished with fighting for the time being, old house. It's up to us to enjoy ourselves now, whatever the rear-echelon stallions – " he meant the staff – "say. Let's get a skinful and start looking for some of the other. Not much pleasure in life for us poor old broken-down stubble-hoppers, is there?"
"You can say that again, Schulzi," Matz agreed. "Let's get on with it."
But, intent as they were on pleasure this fine April afternoon, the two veterans could not help noticing the activity all around them. Out in Athens bay, the military small craft came and went, bringing in more troops and supplies. Staff cars rolled down the main avenues, filled with self-important staff officers, their briefcases bulging with documents, the red stripe of the Greater German General Staff running down the side of the elegant breeches. As Schulze complained after clicking to attention and saluting yet another monocled senior staff officer, "Holy shit, where are they all coming from? The place's crawling with the rear-echelon bastards in their frigging fancy pants."
Next to him, Matz relaxed and said somewhat mournfully, "Don't ask where they come from, Schulzi. Ask why they're here." He slipped the bottle of ouzo out of his pocket and took a hefty swig at it, his prominent Adam's apple going up and down rapidly like an express lift.
Schulze watched him enviously, licking his suddenly dry lips. "Greedy, selfish bastard," he commented without rancour. "All right, why are they here in Athens, birdbrain?"
"Cos the swine are gonna send Wotan into action again. After all, we are the Führer's fire brigade – always sent where the action's hottest."
"Führer's frigging fire brigade!" Schulze snorted, and made an obscene gesture with his middle finger, which looked like a hairy pork sausage. "Forget it!" he added impatiently. "Let 'em do what they like. We're gonna get ourselves tucked up in bed with a couple of Greek whores down here at the harbour. I'm gonna get my head in between a pair of big Greek tits and know no more pain. Los, Kamerad!"
Captain Kuno von Dodenburg, head of the First Company, which the two comrades belonged to, was equally puzzled that hot afternoon in Athens. Tall, blond, handsome in that typical arrogant supercilious manner of the regular SS officer, he obeyed the summons to attend the briefing at the Hotel St George, the new German Army HQ in Athens. Fingering his new Knight's Cross, awarded for his bravery in the recent fighting, he was puzzled by the sudden urgent summons to a top-level briefing.
Wotan deserved a rest, he told himself. Their casualties had been high during the long battle right through Yugoslavia and down into Southern Greece, before they had finally flung the Tommies out of the country and the Greek Army had surrendered. The regiment needed new equipment, reinforcements and time to regain its strength. Naturally von Dodenburg was as eager as most young SS officers to gain a reputation and ever new glory. For that reason, he was proud of having 'cured his throat-ache' and having been awarded the Knight's Cross by the Führer himself. All the same, he was concerned about Wotan, and in particular his own First Company, and the losses they had suffered in the campaign. Wotan might be the elite of the elite, but he didn't want his men to suffer unnecessarily by being thrown into any new action for which he knew they weren't prepared at this moment.
Blinking a little in the sudden gloom after the bright Mediterranean sunshine outside, von Dodenburg acknowledged the sentries' salute and passed into the foyer of the grand hotel, where the rest of Wotan's officers were beginning to assemble, drifting slowly into the conference room.
The CO, Colonel Geier – known behind his back as the Vulture, due to his name and great beak of a nose, which dominated his sensualist's face – was waiting for them, surveying each new group through his silver monocle, as if he were trying to see something in their young arrogant faces, known only to himself.
Von Dodenburg exchanged a few words with one of the other company commanders, who, like himself, didn't like the CO. Out of the side of his mouth, the former whispered, "He's already gone and got himself a Greek pretty boy. One of the waiters here, they say." He shook his head. "The man's a disgrace to the SS, Kuno. Fancy having a CO who's a warm brother." He meant a homosexual.
Von Dodenburg nodded his understanding. Among the battalion's officers, it was known that on his leaves the Vulture haunted Berlin's railway stations looking for those powdered pretty teenagers with their tight trousers and plucked eyebrows, who catered to the perverted tastes of his kind. But the Vulture had been one of the few regular army officers of the Wehrmacht, with long military training behind him, who had volunteered for the SS at the beginning of the war, when the Black Guard had needed such men. Naturally, von Dodenburg knew that the Vulture had only done so to gain more rapid promotion; the beak-nosed, monocled colonel had no feeling for the holy cause of the New Germany. Still, he had led Wotan to victory after victory in Poland, Holland, France and now here in Greece; and that was what counted for the High Command. His perverted tastes had been overlooked and quietly brushed under the carpet.
Von Dodenburg pulled a face, as if he had just smelled something very unpleasant. The boy, obviously the Vulture's new 'lover', came mincing in, bearing some sort of a message for the CO on a silver tray. He bowed in his too-tight trousers and presented the tray to the Vulture. The latter smirked and von Dodenburg could have sworn it took all the CO's will power to prevent him reaching out and stroking the pretty boy's young cheek.
The Vulture forgot his lover. He clicked to attention and cried in that harsh, high-pitched nasal tone of his, "Meine Herren, geben Sie acht." Immediately the chatter died away; the Vulture was a stickler for discipline in the old Prussian fashion. He expected immediate obedience and he got it from young SS officers.
The CO wasted no time. "You are perhaps surprised that you have been summoned here today. Rightly so. The regiment has fought hard and deserves a rest – you, too." He grinned at them with his horse teeth; it wasn't a pleasant sight. "Unfortunately for you, you're not going to get it. The Führer, in his infinite wisdom, has decided SS Assault Battalion Wotan must carry on the fight – now." Again he gave them his horsey grin.
Von Dodenburg could have punched him. The man took every available opportunity to make fun of Germany's saviour, Adolf Hitler. Didn't he realise what the Führer had done for Germany? Didn't he know that Hitler had restored Germany's faith in itself and had made the Fatherland Europe's leading country in a few short years? The man was an absolute cynic. Soon the time must come when the new National Socialist state had to reckon up with perverts like Colonel Geier.
"Why Wotan, you might ask," the Vulture continued, seemingly completely unaware of the resentment and animosity of his young officers. "I shall tell you. Because we know our business, better than any other formation in the Greater German Wehrmacht. And what is our business?"
Again he answered his own question. "It is to spearhead an attack, the few of us leading the mass of the German Army." He smiled cynically at his listeners, who were now tense, eager to find out what new assignment the V
ulture, pervert that he was, had dreamed up for them.
But the Vulture was not in a hurry to disclose the details himself. Instead he announced, "I have someone who will speak to you first. Give you a few details of the importance and full extent of this operation which we will spearhead." He nodded to the adjutant. The latter went out hurriedly into the former lounge off the conference hall.
Von Dodenburg frowned. It was typical. Geier always played these games with his officers, holding his cards close to his skinny chest. He presumed that the Vulture's attitude was typical of that of other warm brothers. After all, being a "Paragraph 175-er" – that paragraph in German law relating to homosexuals – could mean a long prison sentence in one of the notorious concentration camps where the authorities sent the work-shy, political opponents, habitual criminals and perverted scum, the outcasts of society.
Suddenly the young captain started, his problems with the CO abruptly flung to the winds. The adjutant had returned. At his side there was a smart second lieutenant dressed in a brand-new uniform, as if he had just been commissioned into the Wehrmacht. But it wasn't the smart uniform, which contrasted with their battle-worn ones, that caught his attention. It was the officer's headgear – of a kind that he had never seen before in the Wehrmacht. The young officer was wearing a turban! Above a face that was decidedly very brown – and that colour obviously didn't come from the hot Greek sunshine.
All around von Dodenburg, there were gasps of surprise from the young officers, as the Vulture announced, "Gentlemen, I'd like to introduce you to Second Lieutenant – er – Singh, who will say a few words to you now." He nodded to the turbaned officer, who now proceeded to surprise the SS men yet again. For when he spoke, he spoke in German in an accent that was educated and almost perfect, save that his intonation was slightly un-German.
