Deaths on the Nile

by Scott Palter

  Klaus did know that he was expected to use initiative and intelligence. He had mortars. Uncle Isaak had shown the crews how to fire them. No one had exactly trained Klaus in what were worthwhile targets. Klaus decided the solution was to bring the tubes to the artillery officer.

  The night was dark, with intermittent flashes of moonlight. There were more frequent flashes of weapons fire to his southwest. Most were a bit distant. A bit was much closer. He’d seen muzzle flashes fairly close up. One round had sliced off the bill of his cherished baseball cap. These British must be early arrivals. Scouts? Skirmishers? There was some technical term from his instruction manuals. For now, he just used the Bren gun in a center mount on his vehicle to hammer the space the flashes had come from. His lads were doing the same. Klaus was abstractly aware that this meant they were slinging hot metal around his unit’s own positions. That didn’t seem right, but neither did not firing back. Klaus made a mental note to ask Gunter what the proper answer was. Gunter was an experienced front fighter.

  Klaus chuckled softly to himself. A year earlier he had imagined that he might be afraid in battle. Turned out he wasn’t. He was aware he could die, could be horribly maimed. He’d seen enough of it on Malta. That didn’t really concern him when the bullets were flying. What terrified him was fucking up. Did this make him a hero? A fool? Both?

  Klaus decided that such deep thoughts were for someone older than his 18 years. His schoolmates wouldn’t be called up for the Army for a year or so. Then they would endure recruit barracks, screaming training Feldwebels, and all the rest. Klaus was getting his chance to die a few years early. He also had his bedroll occupied by a bouncy girl friend who brought him coffee in the morning. If he ever met his old classmates or the boys from his HJ unit, Klaus thought he would love comparing notes. Dead was dead, maimed was maimed. Major or recruit private, the metal shredded flesh the same way. At least he Klaus wouldn’t die a virgin. He laughed at the callow child he’d been less than three months earlier. Two new muzzle flashes, real close. One round singed his hair going by. Klaus returned fire. He was a hero.

  0030 hours local; 2330 hours CET

  11 September / 10 September 1940

  Central headquarters area with the five falcons and the unit treasury, Three Crosses Camp

  Major Gregor left the rest of what was happening to the other officers. His mission was simple. Defend the loot. He had two squads of machine-gunners with the old 08/15’s he remembered from the Real War. Problem was that he was defending a tent, not a bunker.

  Leutnant Greta had appeared with Naiomi and her girls. Gregor thought that he had no need of a bunch of hysterical females. However, they didn’t seem frightened. One of the Yid bitches, a large-boned plain girl with Gefreiter’s insignia seemed to be in charge. Girl was already larger than Gregor. Looked like the type who’d go to fat with middle-age and a couple of kids. Her voice was shrill but loud, very loud. She had everyone running around. She even started giving orders to poor Hans. These Hebrews had no concept of rank or discipline.

  They were hauling wooden crates over. Rations, building supplies, spare parts from the vehicle repair bays. Piling them three deep, three high in a line. A line that stretched 15 meters in a roughly straight direction, then did ninety degree turns. The light came on in Gregor’s head. She was building him a fighting position. Others were coming in now, hauling freight dollies piled high with ammo boxes for his machine-guns, boxes of grenades, ammunition for the MP-38’s these girls all carried, medical supplies.

  He saw one of the Jews he didn’t recognize using big lanterns. Must be one of the Malta crew, as he knew the faces from Bari. A truck came up, was directed around back. The cook was back with her kids and the Arab boy. Abdug, Abraham, something like that. She started getting the truck unloaded. Big urns of coffee. Big jugs of water and wine. Someone drove the truck off, with the motorcycles following.

  Gregor walked up to the girl. If she was in charge, he needed directions, and rank be damned. She saluted him and asked if he had suggestions to make for improvements? He thought fast. Said keep extending to behind the tent, and then finish the box off. She nodded, and called out orders in Yiddish. Gregor knew a bit of street Yiddish. Enough to ask directions, order coffee, things like that. Serving with the Kaiser, he’d learned a hundred fast words of maybe twenty tongues. The big girl clearly also spoke German. He asked her where she got the idea. The answer amazed him. She had been a university student in history. Some fight the British had with African savages. Greatest number of their highest decoration in one fight. She didn’t remember the name, but the concept stuck in her mind. Medal was their version of the Blue Max. A Victoria something-or-other.

  Gregor sent out a half dozen of his boys to see if they could find more machine-guns and maybe one of those British anti-tank rifles the Malta group had ‘liberated’. Crates wouldn’t stop bullets like sandbags, but they were the best he was getting tonight. He had a position to defend and troops to do it. He laughed at the thought of commanding Yids, women, and some Sand Niggers in battle. A part of him wanted to be offended. The Movement were supposed to clean up Germany of all these foreign elements. Well, this rocky plateau wasn’t Germany. He’d command monkeys and dogs if it advanced his mission. With his handicaps, he couldn’t maneuver anymore. This collection of halftrained fools would come apart even on a simple set of moves, anyway. So it was stand and die. He started singing the national anthem and was amazed at how many of his ‘troops’ knew enough to fake it. Heil Hitler, Heil Göring, and Hoch Der Kaiser. He’d learned this game well enough on both fronts in the Kaiser War.

  0040 hours local; 2340 hour CET

  11 September / 10 September 1940

  Rear of Peiper’s position

  So much for expecting action front. What seemed like a battalion of British infantry backed by a platoon of armored cars had come around to the rear. Peiper had faced his men about and had at them, with the Major’s German guns firing over his head at the British vehicles. It was a swirling mass of close combat, with three British Roll Royce armored cars on fire and one of his rendered immobile and smoldering. Then suddenly a mass of new vehicles arrived, firing into the British rear. The enemy broke and leapfrogged back, covered by machine-guns and what were probably two mortars.

  The new arrivals were Klaus Steiner, bringing up their own mortars. The hero Major barely noticed Peiper, going into immediate conference with his sort-of father-in-law, the other older Major. This gave Peiper time to take stock. He had taken 4 dead and 10 wounded. The LAH men weren’t cowards after all. Given a coherent mission and led by someone they had faith in, they had fought off maybe 12 times their own number. It made Peiper proud.

  The ill-dressed mechanics were swarming his smoldering vehicle. The whole thing looked as though it could blow at any second, but it didn’t stop them. In two minutes they had the fire out. The boss, this Hauptmann Bats, trotted over with his woman. Bats started to give a long, technical description in hard-to-understand and near-childish German. His woman talked over him. Made him slow down. Corrected his words till they made sense. Kept telling him no one needed all the fine details. What could the damaged cavalry tank do? Answer was, it couldn’t move. For now the turret worked, but one more good pounding would end that. However, the machine-guns were operative. So think of it as an armored pillbox, and site the gun for a line of fire that would be of use when the turret failed. Peiper thought it was a strange sort of teamwork on a battlefield, but it was getting him some use out of the partial wreck.

  Jochen took stock of the situation. He’d lost 14 men repulsing one attack. Three more and he’d be out of men. It occurred to him that the camp had not been entrenched. The general orders stressed that they were a rear-area service position, and that no British attack was expected. It hadn’t occurred to him to question these orders. Then again, he’d only served in combat for six weeks before this. Surely his superiors here knew better. Then again, this being a militia unit, perhaps they didn’t. F
ood for thought.

  ……….

  Isaak was grateful to Klaus for the mortars, more so for the rescue. The question was, now what? Gunter refused to leave the position he was in. Claimed there were other British forces to the east. Isaak didn’t like the position he had, didn’t know how many British he was fighting, and was reasonably certain his ‘unit’ would fall apart if he tried to move it.

  It felt like Galicia in ’16 during the Brusilov Offensive. The reminder of how much worse that had been cheered him up a bit. Stray mortar rounds were nothing compared to Czarist field guns. The men he had under him, even the Nazi swine with Peiper, were more reliable than the Slavic Landwehr conscripts he’d had guarding his two batteries then. He’d been leaking runners every hour of that four-day debacle. If more refugees from overrun units hadn’t kept appearing out of the chaos, he’d have been lost on the first day. His supposed commander had eaten his pistol. He’d been the over-educated scion of a noble Hungarian family. Isaak was sure he’d been an excellent courtier at some higher headquarters. Commanding a line artillery battalion was beyond him. Forced to make decisions, all he’d wanted to do was run. Isaak had found him a horse and said leave. The dolt was too afraid to do that either. Something about family honor. Good thing he hadn’t. The horse made good eating till a German corps had restored the line.

  Klaus had wanted to stay. Isaak overruled him. Sent him with his cars and the wounded to the rear. Someone had to clear out their camp. There were British loose there. As he left, the mortars stopped firing. New attack, or were the British shifting their positions? He’d find out soon enough.

  0045 hours local; 2345 hours CET

  11 September / 10 September 1940

  Headquarters area, Three Crosses Camp

  Gregor was aware he should have gotten his people started digging in earlier. He’d gotten out of the old habits after so many years of just street fights, and then more years of peace. The British were coming at his position out of the dark. It wasn’t pitch-black but between clouds, dust, and gunsmoke there wasn’t much light. He was under fire from what seemed to be four machine-guns, and a few hundred men were working their way in on him in rushes.

  The crates were slowing bullets as much as stopping them. He’d had to go up and down the firing line smacking his gunners to wait for targets, to squeeze short bursts. He laughed to himself. They were as green as he’d been at Ypres, going in with the barely trained youth volunteers in 1914. Everyone remembered the dead schoolboys, but there had been more working-class lads like himself, all patriotic and every bit as good a German as the fancy-pants ones. The old training cadre they had, had taught them how to fight like it was the Old Kaiser’s French war. Big thick lines and charge. British had shot the shit out of them. The British regulars fired so fast that it seemed as if every man had his own machine-gun.

  The only one who didn’t need training was the Arab boy, Abduh. He treated each round as if it cost a hundred marks. Took his time, made sure he had a target, and drilled them right in their chests. The idiot could barely speak German, and didn’t know from personal cleanliness. Worse that way than a Pole. But he followed simple instructions and knew his marksmanship. Gregor guessed that made him worth feeding.

  Suddenly there was a scream of grenades! Gregor threw himself flat, pulling Hans down. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a large figure jumping down over both grenades, then getting blown a meter up by the twin blasts. The Arab cried out that he had shot one of the throwers. Two machine-gunners both claimed the other. He looked to see who the fool hero had been. Have to thank him for saving Hans and himself. Correction, thank her. Only she was past hearing it. It was the big girl who would now never go to fat. She was stone dead, her body a mass of butchered meat. Asked one of the others what her name was. Esther. Now he had a name for the grave marker. He yelled at his idiots for letting the two Brits get this close.

  Firing died down. The British were pulling off. Vehicles were coming, firing into the retreating Brits. Klaus was back. Gregor felt stupid reporting to a child, but Gunter had established the order of rank. Among the Majors, Gregor was last. Only absent Adolph ranked lower. Klaus took the report and got back on the radio. Was pulling Peter and most of the northern guard in. Asked Gunter to do the same. Gunter refused. Gregor knew what a mule the man could be. He directed the cook to find pallets for the wounded. Gregor felt the British would be back.

  0050 hours local; 2350 hours CET

  11 September / 10 September, 1940

  Headquarters Western Desert Group, Bagush Box

  Major General O’Connor was again wishing he could shoot every officer he had over the rank of major. The brigadier sent to attack the camp of some ill-organized militia had been given two first-rate British infantry battalions and two regiments of South African armored cars who had some experience in skirmishing. First he gets lost. Next he mishandles his attack. This in turn provokes a mutiny from the two South African commanders. They are claiming the idiot tried to use machine-gun firing armored cars as infantry tanks. They obeyed. Once. They refused pointblank to repeat this. Instead they invoked the right of Commonwealth commanders to refer orders to their home government. ANZAC’s insisted on this from memories of Gallipoli in the First War. Others said ‘me too’. Which was sort of workable for the Australians and New Zealanders, each of whom had sent a corps headquarters so one was dealing with fellow professionals. South Africa had sent two armored car regiments. Nearest South African general was up on the Somali border north of Mombasa. It was even worse with the Rhodies. They had sent a few platoons of home-made armored cars, and their nearest senior commander was home in Salisbury. Which was why they were left on permanent outpost duty, thank you very much.

  So a man with four battalion-sized units cannot fight a militia, and is about to lose two of those units to de facto mutiny. O’Connor had tried reasoning with both South African lieutenant colonels. Tried despite his being sure they were right and the brigadier was wrong. Their vehicles simply couldn’t survive closing with good artillery. There was dispute on the size of the guns they were facing, but any field gun could punch holes in an armored car. What was the idiot brigadier thinking?

  Even then he wasn’t the worst idiot commander this night. Beresford had clearly ordered the northern brigade to break out south WEST. The new idiot decided on his own to go south EAST as this was the shortest route to his supports. Yes. It was. It also put him in the easiest position against which the German Panzer division that had savaged the unsupported tanks, could intercede. Unsupported, in violation of clear orders the relieved brigade commander had been given.

  The Panzer division had intercepted the move, as could have been predicted. Brigade was now mostly pocketed and screaming for help. The only possible help was the center brigade, which was in turn being menaced from the north by other elements of the same Panzer division. What an utter balls-up. Nothing for it but to order the south brigade to reinforce the center.

  Easy to get the two armored car units to drive away. They were refusing brigade orders anyway. Extracting the infantry might prove interesting, in several nasty senses of ‘interesting’. When this was over, O’Connor promised himself a full purge. He doubted Wavell would back him, but the thought gave him a happy glow.

  0100 hours local; 2400 hours CET

  11 September / 10 September 1940

  One kilometer north of headquarters tent, Three Crosses position

  Hauptmann Peter thought Klaus’s order absurd. Pull back the bulk of his force where, precisely? To do what, precisely? Drive in trucks to Gregor before finding out where the British were? Peter had been getting evening lessons from Pappa Isaac and Uncle Ivan. This went against everything they had taught.

  Thinking the orders stupid, wasn’t the same as not following them. Both elders had preached the same thing. Obey till it is proven wrong. In battle, the side run by a debating society lost. When in doubt, do something.

  He had given hasty instructions to th
e two platoons he was leaving behind. Don’t get overrun. Radio when the British hit you, then dance out of the way. He was leaving them with two machine-guns. He was taking the Boys antitank rifles and the eight eight gun section. So they were to treat all engine noises as tanks until proven otherwise. Observe, report, stay alive.

  The main group in their trucks and motorcycles hadn’t gotten fifty meters when there were suddenly large numbers of engine noises to their south and southeast. Both were coming for him, which made no sense. The camp was in the opposite direction. But it was happening. Dozens of armored cars were bearing down out of the dark. Peter got everyone out of the vehicles. Ordered the two guns to deploy. He trusted the crews knew how to do it, because he didn’t. The Luftwaffe Leutnant saluted and started barking technical orders to his crews. Peter had been around big equipment since before he was ten. Each type had their own jargon. Peter knew better than to think he spoke ‘gunner’, so he focused on deploying the Boys rifles. His gunners weren’t good enough for direct hits at over a hundred meters. The volley caused the armored cars coming straight at him to sheer off to the east. Peter ran up and down the line, swatting machine-gunners who were wasting ammo shooting at the retreating British. He let the Boys fire one more volley and stopped them. No need reducing the ammunition supply. They hadn’t hit anything in two tries. Or at least Peter couldn’t see any cars that had stopped or caught fire.

  He radioed Gunter and then Pappa. The armored cars were going away. Peter hadn’t a clue as to what that meant in terms of a battle. He was content to let the adults puzzle it out. He’d seen bar fights that showed more organization than this shambling dance in the dark.