Before he did anything, he sent a message to General Randow, telling him to bring any uncommitted unit of his 15th Panzer Division to Tarhuna immediately. There were several highland roads he could take, one through Sidi Salem, and another through Ras er Rumia about eight kilometers further east. Then he fired his crossbow and sent von Bismarck into action. He had identified the location of most every major formation in the 8th Army. Now Rommel wanted to mass the fire and steel of all three panzer divisions against one sector of the advancing enemy force, and attempt to achieve a decisive advantage there. Funck was already holding Tarhuna, now the other two divisions would join to create a strong mailed fist.
It was the same plan he had the impulse to put in play earlier, only now his patience had paid him good dividends. There would be no surprises. He knew where his enemy was. Now it was time for the primary principles of mechanized warfare to come into play—speed, concentration of force, and all out shock in the attack. He put in a call to the Luftwaffe, asking for any Stuka support that might be available. Then he telephoned General Funck and ordered him to attack south with any force he deemed sufficient to engage the Northumbrian Division.
General John Sebastian Nichols had served ably in the first war, where he came to be called “Crasher” by his fellow officers for his headstrong application of force whenever he attacked. He was already one of the heroes of this war, having fought in Syria and Iraq with “Habforce” in the race to relieve the beleaguered British airfield at Habbaniyah. After that he had moved to the 151st Brigade of the 50th Division when it arrived in the Middle East. Now he had been bumped up to division command.
Crasher Nichols was about to have a very bad day. His division had come up in column, deploying its three brigades, but a series of escarpments had served as a breakwater as he advanced. He ended up with one brigade north and east of that terrain, and the other two in hand to the south and west. The lone brigade, the 150th, had already run right into Funck’s Panzergrenadiers dug in south of Tarhuna, and now the Germans were counterattacking there. I/25th Panzer Battalion went right around them, pushing between the 150th and that high escarpment, and overrunning the 74th Royal Artillery that was just getting set up.
Now, as the crossbow fired, the 1st Battalion of von Bismarck’s 5th Panzer Regiment came bolting up the road, saw the breakthrough already underway, and followed it. As if instinctively knowing how to best support one another, Funck and von Bismarck had masterfully chosen the one spot in the advancing enemy line that was most vulnerable. Unable to contain himself any longer, Rommel leapt to a staff car and ordered the driver to get him forward up that road, pressing hard through the dust of 21st Panzer Division.
Rommel was on the attack.
On the road from Homs to Tarhuna, General Briggs was set to advance on that screen of tanks when, to his surprise, they surged forward to attack him. Cool in battle, Briggs regrouped his lighter armored cars and pulled them back, sending up two battalions of tanks, the Bays and 10th Hussars, both equipped with the new M4 Medium tank from the Americans. He had his 1st Armored Division deployed in a horseshoe formation, and the action was right at the bend. It looked to be a situation he could easily control, but what the General did not realize was that the German tank battalion was nothing more than a spoiling attack.
While Briggs was setting up his artillery, screening his left with light MG troops, setting out his AT guns, mustering his armored cars, that German tank battalion had been sent only to thumb his nose and to get him to do exactly that. The German attack there was a delaying force, a holding force, meant only to gain the attention of Briggs and his division, for the real attack was much farther west, and due south of Tarhuna.
Confusion is one of the worst enemies on any battlefield. In spite of frenetic radio communications all over the airwaves, no one really knew exactly what was happening in all that smoke and dust; who was holding, who was really seizing the day. Officers stood on the highest ground they could find, eyes puckered in the cups of their field glasses, trying to see what was happening, assess its importance, and determine what to do.
General Nichols could hear the distress from his 150th Brigade, which had met an unhappy fate when it was overrun and captured at Gazala in the old history. Now it seemed that Fate was tapping its shoulder yet again, with Panzergrenadiers to its front, and enemy tanks breaking through and sweeping past its left flank. Those tanks and the high escarpment were now between that brigade and the remainder of its division. In effect, it was being cut off, and was now struggling to extricate itself from the enemy attack, falling back on Hill 402.
Nichols got on the radio himself, ringing up his commanding officer, General Horrocks. “I’ve a bit of a situation on my hands. 150 Brigade is cut off on my right, and Jerry is throwing the kitchen sink at me. I’ll have to pull my other two brigades back, and that’s going to expose your right flank.”
An armored cavalryman through and through, Horrocks knew that his attack against KG Ramcke for that airfield had to be suspended immediately. “Alright,” he shouted, one eye on the map, his hand holding the earpiece to his head. “I’ll throw a right cross your way, and swing round Point 7.”
That was the small ruined outpost site of G’sar Teniza, right at the southernmost tip of those hilly escarpments that were bisecting Nichol’s division. Horrocks reasoned that the Germans had found a weak point in the line and they were ‘pulling a Rommel’ on Nichols, so he was going to move like quicksilver with his 7th Armored Division, boldly to his right and rear. He had it in mind to swing right below those escarpments, and possibly catch the enemy breakthrough on the flank.
That airfield could wait.
Chapter 29
Speed, concentration and shock—those were the hallmarks of the deadly art of blitzkrieg that the Germans had set loose upon the world in 1940. It was a craft that Rommel had mastered long ago, but one he had been forced to forsake in the face of an invincible foe that had forced him to adopt WWI style tactics, relying on terrain, wire, mines, artillery. He had been fearful of even committing his precious panzers to any offensive operation, and even now, after the decisive check he forced upon the British near Mersa Brega, the shadow of his earlier defeats at Bir el Khamsa, Tobruk, and the Gazala Line still darkened his way. Yet at heart, he was a gambler, willing to risk all for the sake of grasping the one moment in a battle that could turn it from a grueling battle of attrition, to one of maneuver, dash and bravado, dramatic advances that were sure to draw the Führer’s eye. For that he needed his old high art of the blitzkrieg—speed, concentration and shock.
Funck’s 7th had jabbed the cumbersome British 1st Armored Division on the nose as it came up the road from Homs to Tarhuna. Rommel’s crossbow had fired, and now the whole of von Bismarck’s 21st Panzer was through a narrow three kilometer gap in the line and breaking out into the open ground beyond. 15th Panzer had been moving all night along the narrow mountain roads through the high country, snaking their way inexorably south. They would emerge east of Tarhuna, some twelve kilometers from the town, and they would swing right around the horseshoe formation Briggs had pointed their way, using the speed of their faster Leopards and Lions relative to the Valentines, Cromwells, and American M4s.
The ill-fated 150th Brigade would now find itself surrounded on all sides in the swirling chaos of that dark desert night. The battalions were still trying to withdraw to the rear, but ran right into Rommel’s 501st Heavy Tiger Battalion. They were cut off, confused as to what was happening, lost in the silt and shadow of that terrible night.
Yet Horrocks’ instincts before dusk had set him on the right course. He knew approximately where the 150th Brigade had been advancing, and therefore knew the location of the enemy breakthrough. Now he was moving with all the speed he could muster, pulling 7th Armored Division out of its attack on that airfield, and racing for the pass behind him that would lead to the flank of the presumed enemy thrust. It extended from the ruin of Gsar Teniza below that escarpment, through a
low depression to the solitary spike of Hill 357, called Tummet by the locals.
The Germans had seen the gap, looking ahead in this mad game of chess, and there they had posted their AT battalion and the Pioneers of 21st Panzer Division as a blocking force. Brigadier Roddick’s 4th Light Armored Brigade was leading, with mostly M5 light tanks, a few medium Grants, and several dozen armored cars. They pushed up to the ruins, sent in infantry to occupy them, and then called for artillery to range in on the German AT guns.
Roberts 22nd Armored Brigade was on their right, closer to Tummet. They had the medium Grants, with a few Crusader IIIs, but found no enemy had as yet reached that hill. The map indicated a road up ahead to the east, and Roberts had little doubt that the Germans were using it that night. It would be two more long hours, with both sides feeling their way forward in the darkness towards the barest hint of a soft red glow on the far horizon.
As dawn broke on the 14th of January, the Lions were raging east towards that rising sun. The entire 150th Infantry Brigade had been overrun and bypassed by the concentrated sweep of Rommel’s mobile forces. The 15th Panzer was around Briggs’ horseshoe formation and already flanking the 1st Armored Division. Horrocks and General John Harding had moved the 7th Armored smartly, and by now it was engaged with defensive units the Germans had assigned to cover the pass between the ruins and Tummet. Further east, Funck’s Lions at dawn were on the prowl.
The question now was where they might be going? It was 40 kilometers to the coast road, across open desert broken occasionally by studded hills, long abandoned shrine sites, the occasional bir, and a network of wrinkled wadis. It was here, at his moment of triumphant breakthrough, that the Desert Fox had to be very wily.
Rommel had been up on Hill 410, about 10 klicks west of Tarhuna. From that height he could see the wide swath of dust that marked the progress of his bold enveloping maneuver, and clearly make out the vast horseshoe of the British 1st Armored. He was receiving reports from his leading units and learned that 15th Panzer had a battalion of tanks, its recon element, and the pioneer battalion well past the lowermost end of that horseshoe. It was time to change their direction and turn them north towards the road to Homs.
Well south of that sector, three companies of the 1st Battalion 25th Panzer Regiment in Funck’s division were free to follow the road south and east if they wished. It would dog the long winding course of a deep wadi for over 35 kilometers, and then lead to a broken region of rugged hills, more wadis, and ragged escarpments. Even there it would be another 40 kilometers to the coast, and by the time those panzers got there, they would be out of fuel and over 100 kilometers from any supporting supply units.
No, thought Rommel. The action at Mersa Brega taught me that this British Army is simply too large to try and bag it like that. If I order such a move, O’Connor will do exactly what he did in that battle. He’ll stubbornly hold his ground, and dare me to try and get to the coast. And he undoubtedly has one or even two more infantry divisions back there in reserve. We’ve seen nothing of the Indian division, or the South Africans. So what I must do now is fight these armored divisions and wreck them. We don’t want the coast road. We want to hurt them again, just as we did at Mersa Brega. It’s time to fight. I’ve got the two British Armored divisions isolated from one another. Perhaps I can destroy both!
He got on the radio and sent out another coded order for the 90th Light to advance on the remaining two brigades of the Northumbrian division. KG Ramcke was ordered to go with them, and he had the special units of Sonderverband 288 on his extreme southern flank to move into action as well.
As the morning wore on to mid-day, the situation changed. O’Connor did have a reserve division at hand, the 4th Indian, and it had been motoring up from a point well south of Misrata on an inland track that ran parallel to the coast road, finally reaching the front. Randow’s 15th Panzer was turning Brooks’ flank from the south, when the Central Indian Horse came up on a company of his 8th Panzer Regiment. The full division was not far behind it, advancing on two roads in column of march.
It was too late to stop the turning attack, which had already surged north to find the artillery park and headquarters of Brooks’ division. It was a wild hour, with the Brigade HQ of Fischer’s 22nd Armored dug in on Hill 422, and the division headquarters itself under direct attack. Four battalions of artillery were in that area, and some had to depress their barrels to engage the German tanks at near point blank range. The road to Homs and the coast was cut when a company of Lions stormed into the hamlet of Gasar Da’uun, but O’Connor was only 7 kilometers from the action up on the higher promontory of Hill 455. There he had a very good view of the battle, and he could also see that his reserve division was about to make a most timely arrival.
Randow was going to smash the southern arm of the horseshoe position, but soon find his own flank seriously compromised by the arrival of the 4th Indian Division. It was this sort of rollicking chaos that was now taking hold, as units emerged from the smoke and dust of the battle, blundered into other units, some friendly, some enemy.
Meanwhile, the action on the coast road took a turn for the worse for the Italians when the combined weight of 51st Highland, the two brigades of 44th Home County, and the heavy tanks of 23rd Armored Brigade finally broke the their defense. Littorio was shattered, its battalions falling back and struggling to regroup. The town of Negazza was overrun, and even the two battalions of Randow’s Panzergrenadiers were forced to withdraw. The British were now through the narrow defile and advancing onto the widening coastal plain on the road to Castelverde.
When Rommel got the news, he swore… The Italians again. Yet, like a good chess player, he had kept a piece or two in reserve himself. The Trento Motorized Division was east of Tripoli where it had been improving defenses and digging an anti-tank ditch. He immediately gave it orders to advance along the coast road through Castelverde to reinforce that flank. He would not see all that he had won with his panzer divisions lost in an hour by the Italians, but he had no German troops available to answer the crisis. The Trento Division had proved reliable in the past, and he hoped they could at least put a cork in the bottle and buy him some time.
* * *
Reports were coming in faster than O’Connor could read them, but he was most eager to learn what was happening far to the south with Horrocks. There, the turning attack had run into the bulk of 21st Panzer and was getting nowhere, and now O’Connor gave the order for Southforce to plan a withdrawal.
“Our tanks are damn near empty,” said Horrocks on the radio. “I’ve got some fuel trucks up, but it will take me several hours to get things moving again.”
“What happened to the Northumbrians?”
“I’ve two of his brigades in hand, along with my own motorized infantry brigade. Jerry has brought up the 90th Light against them, but we’re holding. Stores for the artillery are running low, and the men need water.”
“Well get them out of there. It was my fault, Joe. I simply deployed you too far south and Rommel ran right into the gap between you and Briggs. You had the good sense to move east as you did, but the Germans just got there first. We’ve got the 4th Indian Division up now, and if you can move south and east, you should make contact with them tomorrow. After that, we’ll see where things stand and try to sort it all out. We couldn’t win through, but they aren’t pushing me back to Mersa Brega either. No, I’ll stand my ground and force Rommel to accept a stalemate here.”
Horrocks thought that the inverse might be true, but he said nothing more. The arrival of the 4th Indian had, indeed, closed off any possibility that Rommel could turn for the coast, and with that any chance for a real dramatic victory. As before at Mersa Brega, the two armies could clash and hurt one another, but neither was really strong enough to decisively beat the other.
On the 15th, Rommel shifted Randow’s division north to reinforce his attack on Briggs’ 1st Armored, and had good results. That was the last day of hard fighting, as both sides were
running low on fuel, ammo, and other supplies. A three day fight was about all either Army could carry forward, though when Monty had made this advance in the real history, he had dumped ten days supplies in his forward depot, and even then, could proceed with only half his army at any one time. He prevailed because in that telling of events, Rommel’s morale was at its lowest ebb of the war. Had Kinlan and his brigade been there, they might have made all the difference, but now it was an even playing field for both sides, and the Germans actually had the edge where armor was concerned—not in numbers but certainly in the quality of their tank designs.
O’Connor had ten days supply in hand at the outset of the battle, but he had thrown far more divisions at the enemy than Monty did, and so it was all burned up much faster. 7th Armored found the fuel and water trucks it had been waiting for nowhere in sight. Harding’s inability to move left him in a precarious position, and he found he had to rely on the three brigades of infantry to hold out in a stubborn cauldron and await further developments.
4th Indian Division eventually came up and it was occupying the ground between the two British armored divisions. General Briggs finally realized how badly beat up his division was, and began to try and extricate himself and fall back along the road to Homs. His situation was so bad, that O’Connor was forced to withdraw 23rd Armored from the coastal attack and begin moving it towards Briggs. Aside from that sector on the coast against the two Italian Armored divisions, the British had been decisively checked everywhere else on the field. Now the removal of that armor, and the arrival of the Trento Division on the other side, would see that advance halted as well.
Stalemate….
Rommel was more than satisfied with his achievement. He had held the Tarhuna position, largely destroyed the 150th Infantry Brigade of the Northumbrian Division, stopped both British Armored divisions, hurting each one in the process, and also managed to stabilize the coastal sector. It was a victory as far as he could see things, though not the decisive battle he might have hoped for in earlier years. The memory of Bir el Khamsa still haunted him, but he noted that in all these actions, there had been no sign of that unbeatable British heavy armor.
Lions at Dawn (Kirov Series Book 28) Page 25
