Deaths on the Nile

by Scott Palter

  One of his riders returned with a contact report. The contact was clanking in behind him. Two Panzer II’s and four 37mm anti-tank guns being towed by captured Polish trucks. They were Seventh Panzer, and quite lost. Mohnke suggested keeping them to avoid an overrun such as he had experienced. Klaus had more respect for the word General, plus he’d seen Rommel in action on Malta. One did not hold back his reinforcements. Not and expect to live through the follow-up encounter. Klaus detached two of his motorcyclists to guide the new folks to their General.

  Peiper took Mohnke off before matters deteriorated. Snagged some tea from the hospital tent and sat his fellow SS officer down for a serious talking to. “You have to remember he’s really that young. Also no formal military training. He’s our superior officer, even when he fantasizes that moving a couple of hundred meters matters with modern weapons. If you hope to resurrect your career, stay on his good side. The Brigade commander and the Reichsführer have adopted him like a pet. Those 37’s were useless. Everyone saw that in the West. Bounced off British tanks like pebbles from a kid’s slingshot. You’ll need French 75’s or 105’s. Not sure if the issue cannon company 75’s will work. You speak to Major Schwabe. You pretend he’s Volkdeutsche like his papers say. You ignore that he’s a Yid. Berlin wants us to play pretend. Man knows his guns. Shot up some British armor for me earlier tonight.”

  Mohnke had his head down. He was acting the beaten man. “The report will never reach Berlin. All they will hear is that I lost a battalion to a British attack. I’m ruined.”

  Peiper considered slapping the man to get his attention. That would be a bit extreme to do to a fellow SS officer, even one who had clearly lost his balls. Instead he grabbed his undamaged arm, jerking him around to shout at him. “Get hold of yourself! You are an SS officer, not some effete subhuman. This is a warzone for the Reich, not some degenerate Weimar cabaret. I thought we had cleansed the Movement of this kind of unnatural behavior after the 1934 Blood Purge.” Peiper paused to see Mohnke start to snap out of his funk, to remember he was an elite specimen of Aryan, not some multiracial transvestite degenerate from the dark days before the Movement had taken power. Peiper assumed a more comradely tone. “We have our own liaison officer. Reports go straight to Oberführer Schellenberg’s desk, where they are hand-carried to the Reichsführer. Oberst Strauss and I will polish the report. You’ll get a new battalion, better equipped than before. The Reichsführer’s pets don’t have defeats. I have two dozen of what were once yours, to write commendations for. Recognition of their service under my command and Schwabe’s. The propaganda people will feast on this. Your unfortunate engagement will get lost in the weeds. Handle yourself well over the next few days and we’ll get you a Wehrmachtbericht for something. This is a matter of the Reichsführer’s prestige. Can you manage this? Can you act like a proper graduate of the Junker Schools? If not, I’ll take over the remnants of your battalion and ship you home in disgrace.”

  Mohnke looked up at Peiper. He had presumed Peiper would steal his command. It was the smart career move. Peiper read his face and replied to the unspoken question. “I’ll get my own command raised to a Battalion before this is done. Have to get formally transferred to Strauss’s Brigade. Strauss has me sending direct reports to Berlin as well. My wife is socially friendly with Frau Heydrich. Stick with us and we’ll get you a career. But we start with how you lost your Battalion. I need the unvarnished truth so we don’t make the same mistakes twice. It was lack of proper anti-tank guns and no scout element, right?” Mohnke sadly nodded his head, decided to entrust his professional future to Peiper, and began the story.

  0445 hours local; 0345 hours CET

  12 September 1940

  Command vehicle Western Desert Group, southeast of Charing Cross position [now abandoned]

  Dawn was a bit less than an hour away. Daylight meant air attack. Normally. However the last thirty minutes had seen the start of a khamseen, the fierce sand and dust storms that would spring up in this area from time to time. General O’Connor had a decision to make. Hopefully this would shield the Empire forces from the Axis warbirds. Hopefully. It would certainly impede such attacks. For as long as the storm lasted. Which could as likely be minutes as hours or days.

  Two things were certain. His attack simply wasn’t pushing the enemy back far enough fast enough to matter. Saving some of the lost men was better than losing them all. The signal he had sent was sauve qui peut, save what you can. All units were to head east, converging on his force and using the sand for cover. He had instructed his base area at Bagush to start broadcasting so as to provide a direction. He was having the Rhodesians east of the camp with its corps-sized garrison do the same. Everyone had been warned there was an active mobile corps there that had savaged a brigade-level assault earlier. The third aiming beacon was his own corps radio.

  Not every vehicle had a radio. Not every one of those which did, would manage to use them as directional aids. Needs must. He had given the order. Breakout east by southeast. Good god what a balls-up!

  0500 hours local; 0400 hours CET

  12 September 1940

  Three Crosses Camp

  Titularrang-Oberst Klingenberg had gotten his column to the camp just ahead of this idiot sand storm. If the Reich was to be a world empire, its legions must learn to campaign in all climates, in all types of terrain. He accepted this in the abstract. He merely didn’t wish it on himself now. He still had great deeds to accomplish, promotions and decorations to win.

  He’d hoped for a chance to get a heads-up from the three Waffen SS officers supposedly at this barely constructed base. Two, Peiper and Mohnke, were absent to the north, undoubtably winning victories. That left Hauptsturmführer Max Seela, the engineering officer detailed here from Hausser’s division, plus an NL ‘major’ who freely admitted his prior command experience ended at company command as an NCO under the Kaiser. He’d been SA but only a mid-rank NCO there. Major Gregor Voss was quite content to have Klingenberg in charge. Issue was, in charge of what?

  The British attacks had ended hours ago. The few British scout cars to the east had seemed content to keep their distance. Voss had focused on entrenching, while seeing to the supply needs of the absent combat elements via truck convoys loosely guarded by some motorcycle troops.

  The radio was near exploding with message traffic. Mostly in the clear because of time constraints and chaotic conditions. The British were apparently using the storm as cover for some type of disorganized mass breakout back to their own lines. Klingenberg knew better than to charge off into the teeth of this storm. For now he’d just see to refueling his vehicles. But let the storm just lift a bit, and many great things could be done. And he felt himself the man to do them.

  0530 hours local; 0430 hours CET

  12 September 1940

  Hospital tent position

  Klaus, and to a lesser extent Peiper, had by now some experience with these sand storms. You hunker down on the leeward side of a vehicle with a wet cloth over your face. You keep your breaths as shallow as possible to avoid breathing in too much of the sand, dust, and grit. You pray the storm isn’t big enough, long enough to suffocate you or bury you alive. Mohnke was not experienced outside of camp, where there had been buildings or at least tents to hide in. His Battalion hadn’t been sent on Strauss’s desert missions. Besides, the man was barely functional and his Waffen SS ex-prisoners not much better.

  The British were counterattacking out of the walls of flying dust. Or they were doing something. Truckloads of them would careen through the position at high speed. The drivers couldn’t see. The trucks frequently lost traction. They were all headed more or less east, if east could be described as a hundred-and-twenty-degree arc around the true heading. If the combined German forces fired so much as a pistol at a truck, its occupants would spray fire in a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree arc.

  Klaus and Peiper were being sensible about all this. Stay in the windbreak formed by their vehicles, parked cross-hatch
ed in two lines running northeast to southwest. They’d deal with whatever British were still left once the storm broke. Mohnke, on the other hand, would lead parties out of the windbreak’s relative safety, to brave the elements and battle truckloads of stalled or wrecked Indian Army men. The man seemed determined to win the Knight’s Cross. He was coughing his lungs out so badly that he was bringing up blood, and still he kept at it. He was also killing off his own men, who were following him enthusiastically. Klaus decided he should be grateful the man was at least taking prisoners. Führer Göring had decreed such treatment even for the brown-skinned mercenaries the British had recruited in Asia. The Waffen SS had a bad reputation on prisoners, even white Nordic ones. Klaus had been warned by Strauss and Smith both. Told he would be held responsible if things were done in his presence, regardless of whether he had ordered it or not.

  Suddenly there was a loud crash. Klaus forced himself to stand up and peer into the wind. A British truck had slammed into a parked French ‘cavalry tank’ at speed. Klaus led out a squad to take the survivors of the crash prisoner. The wounded who could walk were pointed at the hospital tent. The others were made as comfortable as they could be, which amounted mostly to providing water for a shirt over their faces as a breathing aid. He saw two walking wounded hobble towards the medical area, each holding up a more injured comrade on one side. They were mostly there when yet another truck growled into sight and ran them down. Mohnke led a squad out to deal with it. Klaus went back to hunkering down. Crazy land to fight over. Who would want it?

  ………..

  General Maletti had ordered his men to hunker down as soon as the wall of blowing sand hit. He and his Libyans knew the weather, the terrain, and how to survive both. The Germans intermingled with his troops mostly ignored the orders. Maletti had never believed this ‘any order from a general’ fantasy Rommel had given him. Germans! Hearts and heads of iron.

  ……….

  Ivan Gorlov had pulled his screen of fighting units back to Isaak’s guns. The idea of fighting to the death against all odds had been burned out of him fighting the Reds in Ukraine. Higher orders were often absurd. You saved your men for another day, and if possible the equipment. When worse came to worst, you ran for it. At least the officers and key cadres did. The Reds would shoot all of them anyway. The helpless peasants in the ranks would just switch sides. More often than not his rankers had served in every army one time or another – Czarist, Kerensky, Constituent Assembly, White, Red, Green, Black. Flags came and went. The war goes on forever.

  Isaak knew the game from the Habsburg side. Make a circle. Stand by your guns. Outrunning the Russians rarely worked. Having Ivan’s troops fold in on his was second nature. The insane storm wasn’t. He made a windbreak with the vehicles and rotated people on the guns. They couldn’t last more than ten or fifteen minutes and still breathe. A few British tanks had rumbled up to try gun duels. These ended badly for the English. Vision was difficult in a tank normally, and near impossible in these conditions.

  Suddenly a mass of vehicles appeared traveling in some approximation of eastwards. A few hit the German vehicle barrier, but most passed north of the circle. And ran into the huddled mass of British tanks. The combat that followed was more heard than seen. Four minutes of every weapons discharging at any target, real or imaginary, before quiet came. The flickering light of burning was vaguely seen through the clouds and the first vague lights of the coming dawn. Isaak was content to lob some eight eight shells in the right general direction and trust to fate. Two generated large secondary explosions, which was gratifying.

  ……….

  Erich von Manstein had ordered his units to hold in place pending a return to some level of visibility. Hausser’s command reported compliance, as did the Corps troops. Von Thoma with the main element of Seventh Panzer admitted they had lost control of a number of subordinate units. Rommel’s forward headquarters truck admitted they had lost track of their General. Typical of the man. The Luftwaffe agreed to hold flights until conditions improved. Their airfields were outside the storm, but there was no way to distinguish friend from foe in this mess.

  0800 hours local; 0700 hours CET

  12 September 1940

  Comando Supremo, Palazzo Vidoni-Caffarelli, Corso Vittorio Emanuele II, Rome

  Prince Umberto and de facto ruler Italo Balbo were having the ever-polite SS General Wolff to coffee. There had been a message from Berlin regarding the new fighting. The two Italians found this strange, as their own commanders in Libya had sent no report yet. Wolff had politely explained that the Deputy Chancellor’s staff had their own liaison staff forward. The actual battle reports were still cryptic and confused. Mobile battle was frequently like that. However, General Rommel wished to give posthumous decoration to an Italian battery whose entire complement had died heroically at their guns repulsing many times their numbers of large heavy British tanks. He would write up individual decorations, but wanted to know if the revived Blue Max could be awarded to an entire unit as a permanent pennant – in the manner of traditional battle honors. These Militia artillerists had died in the manner of the Spartans at the Hot Gates. He was also asking that the unit be rebuilt and made part of his division. He was raving about the success of their Italian gun trucks.

  Wolff was instructed to convey the issue for Italian input. Berlin saw the new decoration as one from the united Europe, which Heydrich was calling the European Union, and felt the decision should be jointly made. The two Italians were noncommittal on the decoration. The German obsession with these mystified them. They understood the propaganda aspects, but simply didn’t see why it was worth the time of people at their level. If the Germans wanted a unit honor attached to the flag of the reconstituted unit, they had no objections in theory. The particular form of battle honor was strange but not a problem. Italy was getting the highest honor, not an inferior grade for lesser allies in the manner of a colonial force.

  They found the European Union more worthy of their attention. What would this mean in terms of Italian sovereignty? Wolff was at his placating best. Europe had three powers. Germany, Italy, and Vichy would deal with each other as nations. A more formal structure was needed for the three powers to supervise everyone from Finland to Portugal to Turkey. The idea was a Union. Headquarters in Vienna, because it had so many underutilized government buildings. A German head. An Italian second. In time a French third. A League of Nations-type transnational staff to handle the production cartels, technical issues on such as safety standards for consumer goods, joint educational standards, and the like.

  The Italians found the idea of Vienna repellent. They found Italy as deputy ruler of Europe fascinating. The idea of France being elevated was a dish of unique flavors to them. They didn’t trust the French. They expected the French to try to usurp Italy’s position as Europe’s second power and the main colonial and naval member of the alliance. Plus, this was all happening with no notice as yet another strange diktat from Berlin.

  Wolff had to keep gently reminding them that so far these were just proposals. Perhaps Italy would care to send a staff from the relevant ministries to Berlin to make sure the structures saw to Italy’s interests as well as Germany’s? The Italians kept the discussion at generalities. When Wolff took his leave, they spent the rest of the day discussing this together. If this could not be avoided, there were endless details that needed to be arranged to Italy’s satisfaction. Heydrich was offering Italy a major hand in these decisions, but only at the price of accepting the basic concept. Could Italy avoid this? Should it be seen as trying to?

  0900 hours local; 0800 hours CET

  12 September 1940

  Various places in the Western Desert

  The khamseen had about blown itself out. These storms came and went with precious little warning. What remained was transient and localized, but visibility was still poor from the dust thrown off by thousands of vehicles and more thousands of exploding artillery rounds. General Maletti split his division
in two. He left the bulk of it under his chief of staff to police up the battle area. Most of the enemy had fled, but enough men remained to be rounded up, enough equipment to salvage. He split off his original fast group plus the various stray Germans he had acquired, and started off for Rommel’s last known position.

  ……….

  Oberst Wilhelm Josef Ritter von Thoma had wanted to command a Panzer Division since leading the ground component of the Condor Legion in Spain. Nominally he was Rommel’s Ia, the operations officer. However, the higher levels of the Army officer corps was a small town gossip net for the military aristocracy. He’d been warned that Rommel left command to his Ia. Rommel was upfront somewhere doing something with his advance guard brigade or whatever he was calling it. No one knew where, and the supposed commander had not bothered to call in even a position reference. Fortunately, 1st Libyan Division and the advance camp command had both provided enough data to pinpoint the boss within a half dozen or so square kilometers.

  Theoretically von Thoma was under orders from von Manstein to hold in place. Orders at his level of rank were an interpretive game, not a matter of blind obedience. As soon as the storm started to lift, von Thoma had Seventh Panzer subunits in motion. The trains were to rally on the advance camp, called Three Crosses on the staff maps for no reason anyone had told Seventh Panzer. A medical column with armed escort had been sent off to take charge of the captured British hospital with its recaptured German wounded. Some militia unit or other was there now

  Von Thoma was in-gathering the rest of his combat elements, piece by piece, on a basic progress of northwest to southeast. He wouldn’t find everyone. He expected to find most of his wayward lambs and lead them to refuel at this advance base. Von Manstein’s staff had mentioned a large column of fuel trucks in progress there before the storm.