THE FORESIGHT WAR

by Anthony G Williams

  ‘To Crete, you mean?’

  Taylor nodded. ‘The Navy is standing by at some of the southern ports. I think the decision to evacuate will be taken soon.’

  The contingency had been carefully planned for; Don Erlang’s warnings about the danger of airborne invasion had been heeded. Four squadrons of Reapers had been assigned to Crete to cover the withdrawal from the mainland ports nearly two hundred miles away; six squadrons of Spitfires were also in place ready to defend the island from the expected attack. Air Vice-Marshal Park, fresh from his successful defence of South-Eastern England in the Battle of Britain, had instituted a scaled-down version of the air defence system, with radar coverage of the northern coast feeding information to a fighter control centre.

  The Navy was also prepared. A force of frigates and destroyers, all with heavy anti-aircraft armament, escorted the vessels evacuating troops from Greece then patrolled the north coast of Crete. On the ground, the airfields, the weak link in Don Erlang’s time, were heavily defended with batteries of 3 inch and 40 mm AA guns, with the perimeter of the fields guarded by Comet AA tanks, backed up by well-emplaced troops armed with heavy machine guns. If the Fallschirmjäger attempted to land this time, they would be greeted with an annihilating reception.

  ‘Seems as if everything is in order.’ Don was feeling particularly relaxed, enjoying a quiet Sunday morning in the apartment. He waved the latest report from Geoffrey Taylor, who had now moved to Crete.

  ‘Do you think they’ll try to invade this time?’ Mary gave up trying to catch up with the latest opinion in the Sunday papers; the occasional groans and snorts of derision from behind the newsheets had been indicating a certain lack of patience with the jingoistic editors.

  ‘Suicidal if they do; Hitler is bound to be aware of the appalling casualties his paratroops took last time and he will know that we’re much better prepared now.’

  ‘The papers seem to have got over their shock-horror at Britain’s first defeat. Now they’re going on about how the despicable Nazis were unsporting enough to send far more troops than our brave boys could deal with. Good news from Algiers, though.’

  ‘Brilliant. Now the Free French are in charge of all of France’s African empire, the rest of their possessions will fall into line soon.’

  ‘What effect will the German takeover of the rest of France have?’

  ‘Hard to say. They’ve really given themselves more of a problem. Now there isn’t a legitimate French government to collaborate with them, they have to run everything themselves. And they weren’t quick enough to seize the French ships in Toulon before they could be scuttled. While we have picked up the much stronger fleet in Oran as allies again.’

  ‘How cooperative is de Gaulle likely to be now he has a large power base of his own?’

  Don laughed. ‘Time will tell. He’s still almost completely dependent on us for arms, and desperate to see the liberation of France. I think he’ll work with us until that’s achieved.’

  The insistent ringing of the telephone woke them early the next morning. It was Harold Johnson, on duty in the Ops Room. At first, Don was too groggy to grasp clearly what Johnson was saying.

  ‘They’ve invaded, you say? Must be mad, with all our preparations. What d’you say? Not Crete? What…Malta?’ As the enormity sank in, Don was temporarily speechless. Mary deftly acquired the phone and asked some crisp questions, then hung up. She talked swiftly as they dressed.

  ‘They’ve thrown everything at it. The radar stations were taken out by special forces – presumably landed by U-boat – before dawn, then the paratroops went in at first light. They’ve succeeded in seizing at least one of the airfields and there are reports of transport planes delivering reinforcements, but reports are very confused. There are continuous air raids.’

  Don was still bewildered. ‘But why Malta? It doesn’t make sense.’

  Mary shrugged. ‘Pre-emptive strike. Make it harder for us to invade Sicily.’

  They found that Charles Dunning and Peter Morgan had already arrived at the Ops Room and were in the middle of an intense debate with Johnson. Charles turned to them. ‘It’s not looking good. After we kicked the Italians out of North Africa the Middle East Command judged that the threat to Malta had dropped to negligible levels and switched most of the forces to Greece and Crete.’

  Morgan nodded grimly. ‘There were only three squadrons of Spitfires left. Some of them managed to get airborne but without the early warning from the radar they were sitting ducks as they tried to take off. Most of them have already had it. The Luftwaffe has complete air superiority.’

  ‘What about the AA defences?’

  ‘Doing a good job as usual, but around the airfields they’re distracted by having to fight off the paratroops.’

  ‘What do we have in the way of ground forces?’

  ‘Not much. And there’s hardly any armour. There are some Comets at the airstrips and they chewed up quite a few of the gliders, but most of them seem to have been taken out by Panzerfausts.’

  Mary looked at Johnson. ‘What about the Navy?’

  ‘Nothing but light forces, MTBs and the like. The destroyers are all around Crete. There are some subs there and the last report said they had sailed to intercept any Italian convoys, but there’s such intense air cover that they stand little chance in daylight.’

  The crew of the 57 mm Bofors gun were close to exhaustion. From their location under the massive stone walls of Fort St Elmo, by the entrance to Valletta’s Grand Harbour, they had borne the brunt of air attacks designed to ensure that the naval forces could do nothing to interfere with the invasion convoys. In this, the Luftwaffe had been successful, but at a price: three Stukas had fallen to this Bofors gun alone in a day of almost continuous fighting. Now that the long-prayed-for dusk was falling, the crew began to relax. They were too tired to think of clearing away the piles of spent cartridge cases littering their gun pit.

  Suddenly, the alarm bell rang again, followed by a unanimous chorus of groans from the various locations the members of the crew had chosen to lie down and rest.

  ‘I don’t believe it! They’re not going to bomb us in the dark as well?’

  The sergeant in charge of the gun listened to the field telephone for a few moments, then held his hand up.

  ‘Listen, this is different. There’s a report of naval activity, coming this way.’

  Reluctantly, his crew gathered around the gun, heaving fresh three-round clips of ammunition close to the breech. Night fell with Mediterranean swiftness. The incessant noise of sirens, aircraft, bombs and anti-aircraft guns fell away, leaving only the more distant hammering of small arms from the embattled ground troops.

  The Sergeant sat crouched over the telephone, listening. ‘Range four thousand yards and closing,’ he said quietly. Tension began to grow, adrenaline pumping away weariness yet again. The barrel of the Bofors slowly tracked across the entrance to the harbour, duplicating the actions in half-a-dozen other gun pits around the entrance.

  Only because they were listening for it did the crew hear the coughing bark of a mortar, then several more. They held their breaths and waited. The parachute flares blazed out over the approaches to the harbour, throwing everything into sharp, black and white relief. For a moment, nothing was visible, then the stealthy movement of sleek, low-lying craft approaching the harbour caught the eye of the crew. Searchlights snapped on, wavered, held the craft, which began firing back at them; tracers streaking across the harbour.

  ‘Open fire!’ The order was hardly necessary. The Bofors began its harsh thumping, a rhythmical two rounds per second, each shot a curving arc of tracer across the bay, joined by others from neighbouring guns. Like candle flames to a moth, thought the Sergeant crazily, as the shells hit home on the frail Italian MAS craft, shattering them before they could make their escape. The slaughter was brief but complete, the last of the craft burning as the last flare guttered out. The crew were beginning to relax again when they were disturbed by a
new sound; the booming of heavy naval gunfire.

  By the evening, no-one had left the Ops Room and the atmosphere was dulled by prolonged tension. The map of Malta, hastily retrieved from storage, showed the relentless, creeping progress of the German forces, spreading out from the airfields to join the German and Italian troops landed by sea later in the day, once air superiority had been assured.

  ‘It’s a wall-by-wall, street-by-street, battle of attrition, now.’ Charles’ mood was sombre. ‘At least this has kept down the air attacks on our troops. The forces are so intertwined no-one can tell where the front line is.’

  ‘Any news of our reinforcements?’

  ‘We’ve got some Reapers flown into Tripoli. They’re beginning to mix it with the Luftwaffe, but our nearest naval forces are too far away to do much about cutting off the German supply ships. We have few forces of any sort west of Alexandria.’

  The telephone rang, and Mary picked it up. After identifying herself she listened in silence for a while, but the others saw her body language and began to gather round.

  ‘Thank you. Yes, please keep us informed.’ She looked round the circle of faces, grinning broadly. ‘It’s the Free French! They sailed from Oran as soon as they heard the news. The Dunkerque and Strasbourg have already hit a major Italian supply convoy, and now their whole fleet is pounding the German forces on Malta. They borrowed some tank landing craft from Tripoli and their armoured regiment is about to land!’

  The room erupted in amazement and delight. The Dunkerque and Strasbourg were the pride of the Marine Nationale, fast and powerful modern battlecruisers. Don was jubilant. ‘I knew it! I knew I was right to fight Churchill over his plan to sink the French ships!’

  By late evening the outcome was becoming clear. The Reapers had managed to provide air cover for the French operation until nightfall had removed the threat from the Dorniers and their guided bombs. The Germans were still resisting bitterly but were being driven back by the defending forces and the Free French, who were fighting with a ferocity born of hate and frustration.

  Dawn brought the final messages to the bleary-eyed gang in the Ops Room. The last German troops had been cornered and surrendered. They had suffered sixty percent casualties; among the Fallschirmjäger, seventy-five percent. The German airborne had been broken as an effective fighting force.

  Hitler looked coldly around the table at his senior commanders, reserving a particular glare for Admiral Raeder, who had been the strongest proponent of the Mediterranean strategy.

  ‘So much for the grand ideas about conquering the Mediterranean and encircling Russia from the south! Without Malta, there is no chance of proceeding. We have even lost the chance of causing the British trouble from Syria, now it has declared for the Free French.’

  Raeder stirred uncomfortably, but decided not to point out that that had been the almost inevitable consequence of the termination of the Vichy government and the total occupation of France by German troops. Hitler went on to his favourite theme.

  ‘Now that the southern situation has subsided, we can concentrate on our two main objectives; the subjugation of Britain and the conquest of the USSR!’

  Göring saw his opportunity. ‘We continue to mine the approaches to British ports, and our raids on dock facilities are continuing virtually every night. They are receiving very little in the way of food or other supplies. As for Russia, we can switch our bomber forces to the east in twenty-four hours, as soon as you give the word.’

  Raeder was not to be outdone. ‘The new Type Ten Elektroboote, and the smaller Type Eleven coastal version, are now in full production and will replace every other type in service over the next few months. Already they are having a dramatic effect on the British convoys; they can slip in to attack at will. When we have a full force in operation, the convoys will be massacred.’

  Herrman listened to the boasts with a weary cynicism. Raeder he respected, but he knew that the British would have anticipated the Elektroboote and would have counters to prevent their complete dominance. As for Göring , he had delicately tried to warn Hitler of his casual incompetence and inflated confidence, but to no avail. He was too valuable to Hitler as a trustworthy and popular colleague. Herrman was feeling uncomfortable; this rare meeting of the OKW – Hitler usually preferred to see his senior commanders separately – was being held in the Fürhersonderzug ‘Amerika’, the special command train currently parked in a mountain station in Austria. The bitter winter cold outside caused the windows to steam up, adding to the claustrophobic effect.

  ‘Very well. We will leave sufficient forces to invest Britain, but will otherwise concentrate on the Soviet Union. Once we have defeated the Slavs, Britain will have to surrender. And I would rather they surrendered than were invaded and beaten, since then their empire would collapse and fall into the hands of Japan and America. I want a full-scale attack on the Soviet Union to take place as soon as the weather permits.’ He turned to Brauchitsch. ‘How soon will you be ready?’

  The Army C-in-C tensed, and Herrman felt a glimmer of sympathy. Chosen by Hitler for his acquiescence to the Fürher’s demands, Brauchitsch had a nervous disposition and suffered torments as a result.

  ‘By the spring. Military production is now at a maximum and we will have twenty-five armoured divisions fully equipped with the Panzer Four entering service. There will also be a full complement of self-propelled guns and other armoured vehicles. A further seventy-five infantry divisions will also have full equipment, including Panzerfaust anti-tank weapons and automatic rifles, and we have stores of clothing and other goods for both summer and winter fighting. Lorries for keeping supply lines open are being stockpiled now.’

  Göring stepped in. ‘Needless to say, we can launch a thousand heavy bombers, both Heinkel One-seven-sevens and Dornier Three-one-sevens, with another thousand Junkers Eighty-eights. To cover them we have two thousand fighters, mainly Focke-Wulf One-nineties and One-eight-sevens.’

  ‘Quite so,’ interposed Himmler smoothly, ‘but land conquered has to be held, without fear of insurrection. Plans for that are well in hand.’

  Herrman felt a surge of uneasiness. He found the Gestapo leader every bit as chilling as his reputation and hated to challenge him, even with Hitler’s protection, but felt compelled to speak.

  ‘For the defeat of Russia to be certain, the subject states must be peeled away from their side and onto ours. It is important that we do nothing to dissuade them.’

  The others looked at him with carefully concealed expressions and Herrman suddenly felt that he had been dropped into a snakepit full of spitting cobras and crushing pythons. He knew that they regarded him with a mixture of jealousy at his influence and contempt for his weakness, and that he only survived because of Hitler’s protection. Stadler had once commented, in an unguarded moment, that, left to himself, Himmler would have quickly extracted every item of useful information from Herrman before eliminating him as a disruptive influence. With a feeling that he had nothing to lose, he battled on.

  ‘We may not be finished with the Mediterranean yet, either. Britain will be keen to get Italy out of the war, and may yet invade Sicily.’

  ‘Without American help? Surely not.’ Göring was scornful.

  Herrman shrugged. ‘Who can tell? They are well-equipped and determined, and we all know about the morale of the Italian forces after their uninterrupted string of defeats.’

  Hitler turned to Brauchitsch. ‘Keep an eye on the situation, but I don’t want to be deflected from Russia if at all possible. In the meantime, bring me your plans for the invasion. I want to go over them in detail.’

  ‘One other thing.’ Himmler was smoothness itself. ‘Has Professor Herrman anything to say about the Leipzig experimental work towards producing an atomic bomb?’

  For a moment, Herrman froze. He had known that this was bound to happen sooner or later, and had prepared his reply. He collected his thoughts and spoke carefully. ‘I know about this work, of course, and it does eventuall
y lead to weapons of high explosive power. The technical difficulties are enormous though, and in my time were not solved for many years; certainly too late for this war.’

  Himmler persisted. ‘Can the Professor not help us to shorten the period?’

  ‘Unfortunately not. The technical details were the most closely guarded of military secrets. Even to try to reveal them earned an immediate death penalty. And I was only a historian, not a scientist.’

  Hitler nodded understandingly and the meeting broke up. Herrman walked slowly back to his quarters, trying to put out of his mind Himmler’s thoughtful, predatory stare. He knew that the Gestapo chief had not believed him.

  Churchill gazed benevolently around the Oversight Committee. Don reflected that with his love of planning military strategy, he probably enjoyed these visits more than anything else; certainly more than the frustrating sessions with his Chiefs of Staff, who had the irritating habit of deflating his most brilliant inspirations by pointing out the risks and problems.

  ‘Well then, we seem to have reached a temporary stalemate. I propose we end it immediately by launching a new offensive in the Mediterranean, to take Italy out of the war and bring Turkey in on our side. Before discussing the details with the more conventional bodies, I would like to have the views of this group.’ He turned to Don Erlang. ‘What do you think?’

  Don had, as usual, been giving some thought to the matter in advance, and he was no longer overawed by the pugnacious Prime Minister. ‘I think it would be helpful to start with a SWOT analysis,’ he began, then paused at the blank looks around the table. ‘Strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats,’ he explained. ‘Our strengths are well-equipped and experienced armed forces, capable of standing up to the best that the Wehrmacht can offer, given equal numbers. The country is now safe from the threat of invasion, and our forces in Norway and the Middle East are also secure. We hold the initiative in deciding where to fight the Axis forces next. Our opportunities to do so lie in two main directions: the continuation of the economic war against Germany by blockading maritime supplies and bombing strategic industrial targets, and by direct attack, probably in the Middle East, as you suggest.’