by Scott Palter
Major Klaus Steiner decided he owed Gregor a good bottle of something strong. Man had put together a small supply convoy for Klaus. A fuel truck, a truckload of machine-gun and Bren gun ammo. A second truck of generalized supplies including some boxes of illumination rounds for the mortars. Someone had been scavenging what the British had abandoned on their retreat after attacking the base. Even some urns of coffee and large jugs of mildly chlorinated water. Alas, no more cannon rounds. Also half a dozen motorcycles with light machine-gunners in the sidecar.
The Kampfgruppe needed it all. It was getting hammered by an organized attack force out of the Bagush camp. No artillery or tanks, thank God, but accurate mortar fire, good machine-gun covering fire, and well-trained infantry that came forward in rushes.
The long ‘training sessions’ with Greta and the manuals were paying off. The immediate rewards were obvious to any teenage male. That was for late night in their tent. Right now he was a Battalion commander, not a sex-obsessed manchild. The manuals were quite clear that mobile forces should use their mobility to avoid getting pinned down in close-in dismounted action. Klaus was not about to let these attackers get into range for grenades and a final rush. His orders specifically tasked him to avoid losing his unit, all three weak companies of it. So he was using mobility to keep leap-frogging back a few hundred meters. Half the force would move, get into position, and then cover the other half while it pulled back to join them.
The problem was the SA idiots. They would refuse to move at all if sent first, and hold their positions too long if left with the rear guard. Unless Klaus or Peiper personally kicked ass, no one else would move when the SA balked. It had become ‘a matter of honor’. Peiper’s cadres were SA also, and not willing to leave their fellow servicemen hanging. Klaus’s Betar were not about to live down to being cowardly Jews in the eyes of these Brownshirts. He was taking avoidable losses to accomplish nothing but an extra few minutes delay. He made himself a promise. When this combat was over, he was sending to the rear every remaining SA officer and senior sergeant. If he had to cross-mix the vehicle crews between the Panhard units and Peiper’s boys, so be it. If Gunter didn’t like it … Klaus caught himself and laughed. The idea that he could stand chest to chest with Gunter like a schoolyard fight was laughable. He guessed he was starting to get comfortable with the idea of actually being a commander.
2130 hours local; 2030 hours CET
12 September 1940
O’Connor’s command vehicle, some miles to the east of the last segment we visited them
The Australians claimed they had tried. They were patting themselves on the back for driving this Panzer division back a mile or so. Now they were veering off northeast of the Barrel Track. They felt they had done their duty and now must save themselves. The two brigades still at Bagush had blunted the attack of that Panzer division, but were starting to pull out. They said they would try to destroy stores and equipment that couldn’t be moved. Their priority would be using night to get their units back to Alamein through the endless wrecked and abandoned vehicles on the coast road. They were not optimistic.
O’Connor had wasted forty minutes in a spitting fight with London as relayed through Cairo. The now-awakened War Cabinet could not grasp the speed of modern warfare. Their minds were still in 1917, when four miles was an excellent day’s advance. Motorized units could move that far in ten minutes. He’d been cajoled with fancy words and threatened with the sack. Neither moved him an inch. If Cairo wanted to send a replacement forward, let them do so.
London’s next ploy was to promote Creagh, GOC 7th Armored, to succeed him. Creagh’s reply was priceless. He refused the new command unless formally ordered to take it. He also announced that he would do exactly the same thing. Sauve qui peut. Bagush was lost. Losing Western Desert Force as well was the same sort of half-measures blundering that had plagued Britain since Hitler’s rise. Creagh’s comments were NOT well received in London. O’Connor had been ordered to relieve him, which he refused to do until everyone was back behind the Alamein lines, after which he would accompany Creagh into ignominy and retirement.
The Force was facing probes from German mixed combat groups to their south and southeast. Nothing for it but to push past the rear areas of the division the Australians had been fighting. O’Connor dreaded another night battle, with all the ensuing chaos; but needs must.
2300 hours local; 2200 hours CET
12 September 1940
Three Crosses Camp
Fräulein Greta was taking a break from the endless labor details Gregor kept everyone jumping with. He’d stood down the women about 20 minutes ago. Told them to take a light supper and a nap. He’d started rotating people this way a few hours back, and now it was their turn. So she and Naiomi had the Betar girls at a table sipping watered wine and trying to relax enough to fall asleep.
She only noticed Mary Collins come up because two of the girls turned their heads. Turning in her own chair, Greta saw the Asian woman waiting for permission to speak. Wondering what the problem was, Greta motioned for Mary to talk. “Frau Steiner, I would like to talk with you about what happens when the war ends.”
Frau Steiner? “It is Fräulein Greta. Klaus and I aren’t married.”
The Asian woman gave a sad smile. “I’m Mary Collins, but my Irishman never formally married me. Concubine becomes wife in an everyday sense. Until your Major gets a formal wife, to me and the world you are Frau Steiner. It’s the way the world works.” She saw Greta’s confusion, but kept talking. It was obvious Mary had rehearsed this speech and was trying to get it all out properly, that this was something quite important to her. “You hired me on Malta because your skills don’t include cooking. Mine do. Your man is Catholic so your household will be Catholic, any children will be as well. I cooked for a Catholic man and raised our children in his Church. I learned Irish and British cooking styles. I can learn German cooking as well. Learn his holiday dishes, what Saint’s Days he celebrates, his regional cooking styles. I am asking you to consider me remaining as your cook after the fighting ends. As long as my children are properly fed and clothed, I wouldn’t need much in salary. Just a little pocket money plus something to send home to my father every month for his debts, for his old age. What are tiny sums to you, ease the life of a poor man in Bengal more than you will ever be aware. Poor means different things in Asia than Europe.” Mary looked frightened, but also glad she had managed to get the entire speech out to an officer’s lady. Mary’s German language skills were still a work in progress.
Wife? In a strange sense Greta could cope with wife better than ‘after the war’. She knew she was more than a mere whore. Wife? Mistress? The word concubine was strange to her outside of Bible stories, but maybe it fit. She’d ask her aunt when the civilians caught up with the unit in Egypt or Palestine. She and Klaus never spoke of ‘after’. The war just was. They just were. You didn’t think of someday when any day, any hour you could die or be sent to different places or … or far too many things, most of them unpleasant to say the least. “I will ask my man.” Mary stammered thanks and backed away quickly.
The Betar girls focused on a different matter. “Catholic?” Greta shrugged. She’d never asked and he never mentioned, yet somehow this Mary Collins knew. Naiomi as usual spoke for the platoon. “So you convert. So you baptize your children. Your blood is still Jewish, and so will theirs be.”
Children! Greta knew how babies came, but at war you lived in the moment. Still, if she wasn’t pregnant now, she would at some point be with child. Would Klaus still keep her? Why was life so complicated? Naiomi caught her confusion, and sent one of the ladies for brandy to get the quite startled Greta to sleep. Gregor had only allotted two hours for a nap. Best to make use of it.
0015 hours local; 2315 hours CET
13 September / 12 September 1940
KG Steiner’s position, 2 km south south west of the Barrel Track
In all his young life, Klaus had never heard this many vehicle
s at once. He couldn’t exactly see them. The few illumination rounds he had risked, had been met with so much return fire that he didn’t repeat the mistake. Still, he was able to confirm to Rommel and the other generals that the British Army was retiring south of him in a huge mass. His small force was a tiny German island in a sea of enemies. His possible salvation was that they were probably too preoccupied with retreat to waste the time exterminating an irritation as small as this Kampfgruppe.
The Panzer Army’s advance had been more vehicles than this. Klaus was objectively aware of that; but he hadn’t seen them all, or even most of them. Still less heard the growl of this many engines laboring at once.
He’d used the quiet time to load his wounded onto trucks. Klingenberg had taken a large medical complex in the British camp. Enough personnel had remained behind to see to the British wounded and sick. His couple of dozen injured men would get top notch care, or so he’d been told by radio. In reverse, a team of artillery and Luftwaffe forward observers had arrived to be in position for morning.
The observers were junior to him in rank, but five to ten years older. They regarded the situation as insane. There were still British up at the Barrel Track. There was a large organized British corps retreating roughly a kilometer to the south, being harried by Rommel’s advance forces. This small battalion with nothing more in firepower than a few mortars was standing its ground. They politely asked the Major why. He was young. Perhaps he did not see the danger. They noticed the Iron Cross he wore, and feared he was a glory-hound chasing more decorations.
Klaus’s answer wasn’t at all about glory. It was duty. His superiors knew the situation and told him to remain. He told the forward observers they were free to leave. He offered written orders to the rear if that was what they wanted. He spoke loudly, telling his men he’d do the same for any of them who wanted to withdraw back to Bagush. He was staying. It was his duty to the Reich. There were perhaps a hundred men willing to be the third man who asked. There were twenty who would have been the second. No one was willing to be first. Klaus knew he would reflect on this someday, when things were calm again. He could ask Isaac and Ivan. Gunter still frightened him on these things. He had no idea that hundreds of men were looking on him as a heroic, noble figure. He was just Klaus, a young man who was no longer too poor to have coffee every morning. Seven years of the Third Reich had burned patriotism into even the least likely people.
0200 hours local; 0100 hours CET
13 September 1940
15 miles in advance of the El Alamein lines, along the coast highway
Lieutenant Commander James Money-Penny had wisely kept a party with the three needed languages monitoring signals traffic. He lacked the fine details of the evolving debacle. His men could only sample the message traffic, and then only copy down messages sent in clear. It didn’t matter. The outline was clear. Half a division of Australians, plus minor bits of this and that, were going overland between the two roads … and running out of fuel.
He’d assembled a small relief column. Six fuel trucks and three wreckers. He didn’t wait on permission. That wasn’t his way. He simply informed the Fleming brothers, and left dealing with the office wallahs to them. Money-Penny had the social skills to do their work. It merely bored him, and he hated to be bored unless well paid to do so.
Getting onto the Australian command frequency was ever so easy. Establishing his bona fides was somewhat more difficult. Money-Penny was reduced to social name-dropping from prior excursions in the East Indies and New Guinea. Apparently one of the fifteen names he dropped registered with someone. He’d been met by a forward patrol, escorted to headquarters, and grilled on the name. Money-Penny’s memory for people wasn’t quite photographic, but it approached those levels. He could describe personal tic’s, favorite cigar or whiskey, and taste in bints, on people he’d known for a few days a decade back if the man had seemed important.
The Australians were grateful for what Money-Penny was offering. Not just the fuel and mechanical help. The commando officer had dropped men with red blackout lanterns every few hundred yards, back to a small gap in the minefields in front of 6th Commando Division. No need to say the gap was there because Cairo had shorted the Commandos on mines. Things were in short supply, and the former regulars from Malta in the 7th Division that covered the coastal route were seen to first. As is, 6th was treated better than the two Jewish Brigades that made up the 8th Division. It wasn’t even conscious with the staff types. They just saw to their own first and the Sheenies last. Their minds were still stuck in peacetime class prejudices. What a war!
0400 hours local; 0300 hours CET
13 September 1940
General O’Connor’s command caravan, 25 miles west of the Alamein lines
The tap on his shoulder awakened him. General O’Connor had been dozing in the bouncing Leyland Retriever that was his command vehicle. After nearly two days without anything more than cat-naps, bad coffee, and stay-awake pills, he would drift off whenever not needed to make decisions. Right now the decisions were being made by majors and captains. Between night-time darkness and exhaustion, all the decisions were being made at battalion level and below. No visibility, no terrain or tactical intelligence, and severely degraded reaction times as sleep-deprived troops struggled to cope with the tempo of round-the-clock action.
The situation hadn’t changed since his eyes had betrayed him by closing some twenty minutes ago. The Australians had been sent help by some commando unit from 6th Division. He would have his aides track down this Money-Penny and give him a gallon of good Scotch for using initiative. He seemed the only one awake in the whole of Alamein Force. Cunningham had been brought up from Kenya to run this. Wavell had too much to do as a theater commander to also run a field corps. Kenya and its settlers were a backwater of the empire known mostly for wild parties and flagrant adultery. Both seemed to stem mostly from boredom. Cunningham was well regarded in Army circles, but he and his staff seemed to have imported Kenyan sloth with them. Not that Cairo needed much help in that direction.
O’Connor’s staff wasn’t really sure which division sector they were going to run into. Neither corps HQ nor any of the three divisions had come up with helpful replies. No one except this Money-Penny, who worked for some other naval type named Fleming, had done the obvious – sending out a patrol to establish contact. Cairo had been even more unhelpful. The key men all seemed to work banker’s hours. The overnight staff seemed to be low-ranking Territorials who knew how to do nothing beyond making placating noises.
The Panzer division whose rear he was moving through seemed to have pulled in their supply trains to Bagush. The combat element seemed preoccupied with chasing the Australians. All Western Desert Force had to contend with was a reserve regiment centered on the vicinity of the Barrel Track. The other Panzer division was nipping at the heels of the two brigades from Mersa Matruh, both of whom were claiming their rear guards were hard pressed. That left the Panzer force to his south and southeast. O’Connor’s right flank was skirmishing with them, but the main force seemed to be racing him to Alamein. It was a race he could not afford to lose.
0515 hours local; 0415 CET
13 September 1940
Kampfgruppe Strauss, half a kilometer from the advanced outposts of British 8th Division, Alamein Lines
Oberst Gunter Strauss wanted to be sure he understood precisely before he sent the radio signal. “Tell me again, guys. You’re sure?”
The oldest of the Betar involved, a Leutnant of twenty-four, spoke for the platoon. “It was dark. They couldn’t see our uniforms. You had us forward on scout, observing. The patrol was talking Yiddish. Litvak dialect, but Yiddish. I’ve got a Litvak aunt by marriage. I can sort of fake the dialect. I called out and said we went lost. Claimed I’d forgotten the password. They were a bit suspicious, but I claimed to be from a kibbutz in Galilee one of my uncles migrated to. He sent enough letters and pictures where I could describe it well enough. Seems the British recrui
ted a division of Palestinian Jews. Guys out of the special Night Squads, Haganah and anyone who did military service in Europe. He warned me about the minefields but told me the landmarks for where they end. Gave me the challenge and password. I invited him to dinner at my uncle’s when this is all over. Dawn’s coming too soon to try it now. Wait till it gets dark tonight, and I’m pretty sure I can talk the unit through. No one can really see uniforms at night. If we leave the helmets off, or, still better, put on British tin hats. They’re a different shape from German. We put our captured British trucks up front. Anyone calls out, we answer in Yiddish. Even you speak it enough, sir, to be some New York assimilated type who suddenly went Zionist.”
Gunter spent a few minutes weighing his options. Then he left Ivan and Isaak in charge while he set off to find Rommel. Some stories you don’t risk to wireless. Codes could be broken. This had to be face to face.
0600 hours local; 0500 hours CET
13 September 1940
Fleming Brigade position, El Alamein lines
Sergeant Billy Lincoln was in command of the section that had filled in trenches so the Australian column could drive through. The Australians had sent a large labor detail to help. The work had gone quickly. Billy was aware that digging the position back out would be far harder work … and probably without the Australian helpers.
