Deaths on the Nile

by Scott Palter

  He found the clan name ‘Collins’ hard to pronounce. The Collins clan was allied to the great chiefs. His new foster mother gave her loyalty to the Major’s wife, Greta. This meant Abdul was allied to half the fighting men. The fighting men seemed to include some women. Abdul thought this strange until he saw the women handle machine-guns. He’d been taught that Christian women were shameless. Women who could fire machine-guns and small cannons could be as shameless as they wished. This was a powerful warband, and Abdul was now part of it. He’d been given a rifle and two dozen bullets.

  Now they were off to Egypt. There would be a few battles, and then cities to plunder. Perhaps Abdul would find a concubine in the loot of this vast city, Alexandria, which was their destination. His people had fantasized about plundering cities. It was all brags. These Germans were mighty. Better to be with the conquerors than the vanquished.

  1800 hours local; 1700 hours CET

  10 September 1940

  Approaching the position marked with the three crosses (no longer actually there), southeast of Mersa Matruh, Egypt

  Major Klaus Steiner had a water-soaked cloth across his nose and mouth. He had learned about vehicle columns in this idiot wilderness, through all the patrols Gunter had made him lead. The machines kicked up clouds of pebbles, dust, and sand. Klaus’s battalion was behind the five Rommel was leading and ahead of the rest of Strauss’s brigade. In violation of corps orders, the Italian First Libyan Division trailed him instead of the reverse. Rommel, as ever, did things his own way.

  Besides, it sort of made sense. Peter and Uncle Isaak had to begin construction of the base before the Libyan artillery and support services arrived. As is, they’d only have a few hours to do so. The van of the Libyans were right behind Greta and brigade headquarters at the rear of the road column.

  ……….

  General O’Connor had been amazed that the enemy forces were coming straight at him with no halt for regrouping. What would have been a 3-4 day movement exercise for British troops, they were attempting in one day. Nothing for it but to order the attack now. The moon was up. Not yet full, but past quarter. The Axis warplanes were gone. They left in good time to land in daylight, and dusk was less than a quarter-hour away. His screening forces were backpedaling fast.

  General Beresford-Peirse of 4th Indian Division would command his two Indian brigades and the heavy brigade of the 7th Armored Division. The enemy would be blinded by the dust cloud they had created. The balance of the two divisions, including all the cruiser tanks with Selby Force added, would be the follow-on strike force, probably to be released just before dawn in the event the night’s fighting was successful. O’Connor would keep the British 16th Brigade as his personal reserve. Another brigade’s worth of bits and pieces, plus a newly arrived brigade from 6th Australian Division, would hold the camp. The garrisons at Mersa Matruh had been thinned out to two brigades.

  The plan relied on the professionalism of the Empire troops to handle a night-meeting engagement. Night fighting meant a swirl of company and battalion dogfights. It might work. Sitting and waiting to be pulverized, was a sure route to destruction. O’Connor elected to roll the dice, and sent a message to Wavell advising him of what was to follow.

  ……….

  Generale di Divisione Pietro Maletti had been notified by his lead battalion that Rommel had blown past the agreed halt points. He was not especially surprised. The German was self-impressed in the extreme. He was relying on his past exploits as a guide. Maletti expected that Rommel would find the British a tougher nut to crack than French reservists, inept Romanians, or exhausted and mal-deployed 1917 Italians.

  He had his staff notify Army Headquarters that he would follow closely behind Rommel, aiming his deployment at the supposed advance base of Strauss’s brigade. The Germans would not have had time to construct this position. However, it would have armored vehicles, guns. and a firm location on the maps of higher headquarters. It would all work out … unless the British attacked tonight. If they did, he preferred to be concentrated rather than spread out in a linear deployment.

  1900 hours local; 1800 hours CET

  10 September 1940

  On the plateau below Mersa Matruh, Egypt

  The Italian Milmart multipurpose artillery unit was lost. The battery of 76/40 mm gun trucks had been added late to 1st Libyan Division. There had been some confusion over whether that division was to be on the coast road or the plateau. These weapons were designated coast artillery and thus needed for the coast. When First Libyan was settled as advancing on the plateau, the guns had been left there, their mission shifting to more generalized artillery support. The weapons were in fact multipurpose, suitable as coast defense, anti-tank, or field artillery.

  There had been artillery and machine-gun fire, followed by tank noises, and then several dozen German motorcyclists retreating. The German officer had said there was a British brigade with Panzers about five minutes behind them. The battery commander knew his gun trucks couldn’t outrun tanks the way motorcyclists could. So he’d turned inland, hoping the British would pass north of him. Vehicle noises seemed to indicate this had worked. Now what?

  Before the Italian officer could formulate a plan they heard another motorcycle out in the dark. The brief flashes of moonlight made it impossible to see, but the noise was getting quickly closer. The rider was clearly all but flying over the broken terrain. There was no way the driver could know where they were but he made right for them. The rider proved to be a young Italian. Claimed a rank of volunteer officer cadet. He was in German Luftwaffe uniform, but the boy was definitely Italian. It was obvious from his speech. An educated youth, probably from Tuscany. He claimed to be part of an Arditi unit. Said he was Fascist Militia, the same as the gun trucks were.

  The officer cadet confirmed there was a British breakthrough north and south of here. His general was coming north with a regiment, including a tank battalion. The battery commander gratefully followed behind the motorcycle towards someone in authority. The route was almost due east, which seemed to be away from battle and movement noise. Further away from those damned British heavy tanks.

  1930 hours local; 1830 hours CET

  10 September 1940

  Scene of the three metal crosses from the recon excursion, southwest of Bagush Box, Egypt; and southeast of the British Charing Cross fighting position

  Two of the crosses were missing and the third was knocked down, but Klaus had found the place again. Found it in the gathering darkness. Oberst Gunter Strauss was amazed. He’d sent the boy out in the desert to toughen him up. He hadn’t expected the land navigation manual to actually teach him anything. Gunter thought for a few seconds, and chuckled softly. He was aware of Greta’s teaching methods. He reflected on what lengths the 18-year-old Gunter would have gone to, if it had meant getting his rocks off regularly.

  The Oberst left the actual construction project to those that knew such things. He had Isaak, Peter, the SS engineering officer (back on semi-permanent loan), and three Italian engineering officers from General Maletti. Instead Gunter focused on defensive preparations. He pulled Isaak off building-work to place the Army 75mm battery for best effect if British tanks came calling. The massive Matilda's were a definite problem. Gunter had worked up a plan with Isaak and Peter for fighting positions geared to all-round defense, with a central citadel bunker to hold the priceless falcons and bags of gold. He had left Gregor and a reinforced platoon guarding the precious treasure. Gregor knew what they were guarding. The rankers just thought it was some secret gear in crates.

  There was no way most of this construction would be finished by dawn, but the work was in capable hands. So Gunter saw to placing the heavy weapons. Once he had personally sited each crew and gotten them started on digging in, he’d gone off to set up his outpost line. Gunter would command this personally. He simply didn’t trust anyone else. The two generals had all these grand plans. In Gunter’s opinion, the enemy gets a vote. He remembered the British fr
om 1918. Stubborn bastards and hard fighters. Gunter didn’t want to get caught out, the way the British he had attacked during the Michael Offensive had been.

  ……….

  Clara watched a squad of machine-gunners setting up their Spandau 08/15’s near the designated repair area. Joey, Paul, and the mechanical staff were all busy getting everything set up, plus the usual emergency repairs. That left Clara with nothing to do. This wasn’t the time for language lessons anyway. The littles and their minder were back at Camp Gorlov with the guard force, holding down the real estate and thus preventing other units from looting the many tons of stolen British supplies.

  Clara was not raised to prize idleness. After bouncing around through clouds of sand and dust, the machine-guns would be filthy. She had never been a street fighter for the Red Front, but everyone had helped clean the weapons stashes. She found a barrel of the proper machine oil, some relatively clean wiping cloths, and started barking orders. The crews knew her as an officer’s woman. Not exactly an officer, but what ranker wants an officer’s lady as an enemy? She started teaching the guys proper cleaning technique. Klaus walked by, saw what she was doing, and started sending her more crews for ‘instruction’.

  1945 hours local; 1845 hours CET

  10 September, 1940

  Plateau north-by-north-east of the three cross camp

  SS Sturmbannführer Mohnke was bouncing over the Marmarican plain in a Kübelwagen. He was at the head of the column of trucks that carried his battalion from LAH. The SS officer was worried. He was the tail end of Rommel’s Kampfgruppe, so it was not difficult to follow the vehicle tracks and cloud of dust even in the poor light of a barely-more-than-quarter moon, when that moon could be seen past the heavy cloud cover. However, if anything broke that chain of vehicle tracks, he was truly lost. His compass had him heading north by northeast on the lower plateau inland from the first escarpment, in the middle of some forgotten wilderness. Ahead, he could see flashes of light from cannon fire. The British were advancing in force. How many? Heading where? Mohnke had no clue. The German signals traffic was confused and mostly coded. How was he to decipher codes in a moving vehicle?

  What traffic was in the clear, had British infantry in trucks and columns of heavy tanks. The same nasty ones from France. Mohnke’s battalion had no artillery, had no anti-tank weapons of any sort. For reasons no one could quite explain, it had been raised as pure infantry without the usual heavy-weapons support a battalion would have. There were tanks in front of him, Czech T-38T’s from 7th Panzer. There were eight eight’s as well, being dragged by halftracks. Rommel even had a section of the pathetic three-seven antitank guns, the ones that had proven useless at Arras back in May.

  Supposedly there were two platoons of German motorcycle infantry screening his right flank. He could hear intermittent machine-gun fire vaguely in that direction. Sounded like MG-34’s and British Bren guns. Bren guns were a sound he knew well, as his own troops were equipped with Czech ZB-30’s, a quite similar weapon. He was tempted to turn his troops eastwards to confront what was coming but, if he broke contact with Rommel, odds were he would not find the main body before dawn.

  A minute later the problem settled itself. Tank noises to the east followed by the sight of Matilda tanks, slow and deadly. German trucks exploded after being wrecked by cannon and machine-gun fire. The vehicles scattered in every direction except east, while the lumbering monsters picked them off. Behind the tanks trotted a skirmish line of brown-skinned men in British Army tin hats.

  The Matilda's were deadly, but amazingly slow. His boys tried to make a fight of it. (LAH was always more a parade-ground unit than an elite combat formation.) Its specialty was men who looked like Movement recruiting posters. They were tall, well-muscled, athletic. More often than German norms, they were fair-haired and light-eyed. They tried to swarm the slow moving AFV’s, going for mines under the tracks or grenades into the hatches. The British infantry supporting the tanks were professionals. They picked his men off faster than they could inflict serious damage on the Matilda's. Those not crushed by the treads were bayoneted by the South Asians. A few of his machine-gunners got their weapons into action. They gunned down a few dozen Indians, but it was too little too late. The only thing that prevented a total massacre was that the trucks could outrun the Matilda's.

  Mohnke told his driver to flee. The attempt to do so got his vehicle raked with machine-gun fire. The dying driver missed a gully, and the broken Kübelwagen fell over on its side. Mohnke passed out.

  When he came to, he had been pulled from the wreck. His arm felt broken. His spine felt as if on fire from shooting pain. He was seated and barely keeping his head up. He was also a prisoner, one of many. When he’d killed his inconvenient prisoners back a few months ago, it had seemed natural. True warriors don’t let themselves be taken. He hadn’t exactly allowed himself to be taken captive now, but it had happened. He found himself hoping the British were better at respecting the rules of war than he had been.

  2000 hours local; 1900 hours CET

  10 September 1940

  6 kilometers north-north-west of Rommel

  General Maletti was not a trusting soul. He had his doubts about both this General Rommel and the British. So he had advanced with a mixed raggruppamento of a battalion each of artillery and motorized Libyan native infantry, to which he had sensibly added a company each of tankettes, anti-tank guns, and small trucks with open tops and mounting heavy weapons. These armed trucks were a sort of reconnaissance force. The artillery and antitank guns would provide some protection against tanks, and the infantry would keep the gunners alive long enough to do so. He wasn’t sure the tankettes would do anything useful against the much larger British machines, but had brought a few along hoping he’d find a use for them. If nothing else, they would probably be of use for scouting. He wished yet again that Italy had some real tanks, or even assault guns. He had heard the Germans were providing some, but had yet to see one.

  When he’d seen German motorcyclists approaching, he had sensibly gone out of road column into a defensive alignment. The guns were set up on a north-south axis, with the infantry grouped in defensive positions around the guns.

  The senior German motorcyclist was a young SS Untersturmführer. The officer was lightly wounded and covered in dust. He gave a good report of British heavy tanks in pursuit, with strong infantry support. The motorcycle platoons had been slowing these down by repeatedly forcing the truck-mounted infantry to deploy under machine-gun fire, while sensibly keeping out of the way of the ever-so-slow Matilda's. Maletti had a junior officer with him to translate. The preparation had been proven worthwhile. He told the SS man to fall back through his position and rest. The German answered with one simple word, “Nein”. Maletti gave him an inquisitive look, so he went on. “The Waffen SS is an elite service. To retreat until now was sensible. To keep running while mere colonials stand and fight is an insult to our service, to our Aryan blood. We will stay and fight. Where do you wish to post us, Herr General?” Maletti thought the junior officer to be arrogant, rude, and very typically German. He had his men placed on the southern flank, as that was the one he most feared being turned. Signals traffic had more British in that direction.

  2015 hours local; 1915 CET

  10 September 1940

  North of the overrun SS battalion and southwest of Maletti’s position

  Erwin Rommel was surveying the landscape. This rocky plateau was nothing like what he had known in Europe. Equally, it was nothing like the sand seas he’d been told North Africa consisted of. He chuckled to himself. That was the problem with making war via tourist guidebooks. They worked quite well for Belgium and France, but not for these colonial lands. Still, he’d been told by his staff that once past the chokepoint to the east at Alamein, there was terrain he’d understand. Lowland farms, broad rivers, cities built mostly on a European plan. He expected to take several of those, starting with Cairo.

  The SS trucks had overtaken his col
umn some minutes ago. He’d gained most of a company from that lost unit. They seemed decent young men. Pity they were wasted on that bastard new service, instead of being properly enlisted in the Army. He’d fought beside Death’s Head and LAH in the West. Neither had impressed him. Inept officers and poor training. This idiot Mohnke seemed cut from that mold.

  Rommel spent a few tens of seconds considering reversing course to salvage the SS officer’s disaster. As he did so, new fire erupted to his northwest. This now made a nearly 300 degree arc of combat, leaving out only a wedge to the southwest. No, better to stick with his plan. He bellowed out the order to continue north. He did change the order of march to put this new Italian battery upfront with his own eight eight battery. If he ran into those British infantry tanks, best have his only suitable weapons where he would need them.

  2030 hours local; 1930 hours CET

  10 September, 1940

  4th Indian Division advanced headquarters, 15 miles southwest of the Bagush Box

  Major General Noel Beresford-Peirse, General Officer Commanding, was getting more and more frustrated by the signals traffic. His superior, General O’Connor, saw what was happening as a battle. Beresford saw it as a raid. In a battle, he would have been allowed to deploy his artillery and division trains forward to support the advance.

  He’d been allowed a mostly free hand in planning the operation. He had taken two brigades of his infantry, six battalions of Indian Army troops and two British battalions. He’d split these into three columns, each commanded by one of his brigade commanders. The remaining infantry had been left in Bagush under his artillery commander. The northern and central columns were each assigned three Indian battalions and a battalion of Matilda army support tanks. This was the entire strength of 7th Armored Division’s heavy brigade … but not the brigade commander or staff. He’d then assigned the two battalion commanders as tank advisers to the respective brigades, breaking up their battalions into companies under the various infantry battalion commanders. Beresford hoped that this firm subordination to experienced infantry officers, would cure the tankers of their willful refusal to actually coordinate with the infantry they were supposed to be supporting. The after-action reporting from Arras had been extremely critical of these defects.