Deaths on the Nile

by Scott Palter

  Ike would raise a Philippine battalion with the promise of pay at US wages as if they were white men. MacArthur was commander-in-chief in the Philippines. He would scream, but Marshall now outranked him. Plus it would help the Philippine Army in the medium term. Blooded junior officers and NCO’s would be worth their weight in gold.

  1200 hours local; 1100 hours CET

  17 September 1940

  General Headquarters, Cairo

  What a difference a day can make. The news came in on the teletype just after dinner yesterday, marked Top Secret. Winston was out, at long last. Replaced by Ernie Bevin of all people. The new War Cabinet was making fast decisions. So fast O’Connor’s head was whirling.

  Fifth Indian Division was to come north to Egypt as fast as First South African Division could replace it in Sudan. Second South African would be brought north to Kenya as replacement as quickly as it could be formed, but the whole movement starts now, not waiting for Second. Kenya would be left naked if needs be. If Egypt were lost, the new 8th Army (renamed from being Alamein Force) would retreat to Nigeria from Sudan if and as needs must.

  The compromise on the Fleet was over. The submarines and the remaining destroyers were to leave within the next two weeks, after evacuating all but a remnant of the Cyprus garrison. A cobbled-together force from the Cyprus regiment would maintain order for now. London would try to magic together a joint Greco-Turkish occupation to replace this, but the understrength British brigade that made up the garrison was coming out to Alexandria, and as many Empire nationals as wished to leave would evacuate by boat to Haifa.

  The Australian First Corps, with 2 Australian divisions and the British First Cavalry Division, were to be sent to the Alamein front. London was working on getting Canberra’s permission so no more threats of mutiny. O’Connor with Western Desert Force was for Jerusalem. The WDF would be renamed British 9th Army. Headquarters 7th Armored Division would come over to Palestine with him. It was to be rebuilt as circumstances permitted. 7th would join Second New Zealand Corps with its single New Zealand Division, plus as much Jewish militia as could be mobilized for home defense. The simmering Arab revolt would be met with force. The day for kind words was over. The other half of his army was coming from India. Third Indian Corps with 10th Indian Division, followed by 8th. Also an Australian contingent once that Dominion agreed to it. The Indian troops would start to move now, but the command and organizational details would wait on the new Viceroy, Churchill, and the new C-in-C India, Claude Auchinleck, both en route via Africa.

  Winston Churchill, the arch-opponent of Indian independence, would be a rude shock to the Indian political establishment. To make this happen, the guiding principle must have been the need to get him out of London. There was no way this strange new government would seem real with Winston on the floor of the House of Commons, waiting for a comeback. Lloyd George in that role was bad enough.

  O’Connor was also warned that an Iraqi revolt was all too possible. His instructions were to stall for time, until he had at least one Indian division. Then he was to move, stripping the Iraqi military of its artillery, aircraft, and armored vehicles. If there was resistance, he could disband the Iraqi forces and recruit new levies. The same levies the British had abandoned to their fate in the 1930’s when the idiots in the Foreign Ministry had taken the League Mandate seriously enough to offer something close to independence. The French had not been so stupid in Syria. Thank God London had seen the light before trying it in Palestine. No peace deal or partition would have survived ten minutes after British departure. The Arabs wanted the Jews dead, or at least gone, not some messy power and land sharing.

  Now O’Connor had clear instructions. Save Iraqi oil and the sea connection to India. If possible save the Hashemite dynasty. If not possible, save the royal family. Both of these took hind place to not losing his army.

  There was one sticky wicket. In the event of major retreats, priority was to evacuate British troops, officials, and nationals first. Other Empire peoples would come on a space-available basis … except the Palestinian Jews, who were not wanted elsewhere. No evacuation was to be permitted. If necessary, deadly force would be used. Hostages could be taken to assure obedience. Nasty. More so as Britain was using their men as both line troops in Egypt and as occupation troops in Palestine. O’Connor understood the imperial politics involved. If you evacuate them, you must bring them someplace; and no one wanted more Jews. The logic of empire was not for the squeamish.

  1130 hours CET

  17 September 1940

  New Malpensa industrial park, vicinity of Milan, Italy

  The ever-so-polite SS emissary Wolff had disrupted the government of Italy yet again. Had met the two rulers, himself and the Prince, three mornings ago with yet another poison pill from that fiend Heydrich. Germany was making a major research effort in something called nuclear physics. Led by the German Nobel laureate Heisenberg, they were going to use this magic of what until recently the Party had called Jewish Science, to bring cheap electric power to Europe.

  Wolff had announced that this was to be focused on electric power generation. Italy’s leading physicist, Professor Edoardo Amaldi from the Sapienza University in Rome, had been playing Army tenente in Libya. An S79 transport, from the squadron reserved for servicing senior government people, had quickly shuttled him home. Amaldi revealed what Wolff had significantly neglected to mention – that the same physics could also make hugely destructive bombs. The theory said these would be deadly enough that one bomb could kill Milan. Amaldi admitted this was all very speculative, so perhaps the Germans had simply declined to waste money chasing a possible mirage. As he put it, Heisenberg could well have induced Germany to spend a fortune chasing the cutting-edge-science version of the Philosopher’s Stone or the Fountain of Youth. All anyone had to go on was a lot of complex mathematics, buttressed with theorizing. It was supposedly validated by one set of experiments by a couple of refugees. In the end it could all lead to nowhere, beyond a few Nobel prizes. Balbo admitted to himself that this could be true, but governments plan for worst case. There was no way Italy could allow itself to be excluded.

  What’s worse, Italy’s best expert on this strange field, Enrico Fermi, had been chased to the US by Il Duce aping Hitler’s Jew manias. Fermi had a Jewish wife. The bulk of the worldwide experts in this branch of knowledge seemed to be some combination of Jews, Magyars, and Marxists.

  Heisenberg would do his work in Germany, but Heydrich proposed that a European companion project be set up in Italy. The polite wording was that Jews et cetera would find Italy more socially congenial than some German facility where they would be oppressed by the race laws and harassed by the local National Socialist Party militants.

  Yes, Italy had long known how to have special rules for special people. Easy enough to pass the word to the right people – these few hundred (or few thousand, as the program grew) were to be treated like nobility, not commoners. It was a social and administrative matter. He had a hundred good subordinates who could smooth over such a situation, given clear authority from Rome and the ability to make a few very visible examples. Your Marxist half-Jew scientist really wasn’t expecting to be invited to go hunting at the local baron’s villa anyway.

  Indeed, a very polite invitation to Fermi could be made. He might not come, but word of the offer would spread. Other lesser people, who lacked his tenured position at such a fine university as Columbia, might migrate back.

  The big problem was the damned French. Turned out they had even better physicists than Germany. Wolff made clear that Italy’s participation was voluntary. If they opted out, the institute would go in Lorraine near Metz; and the directorate would be Franco-German instead of Italian. He and the Prince were in agreement. Italy must not be cheated of this prize.

  So a first class institute would be set up on Lake Garda at the Hotel Victoriale Deligo Italanini. It was near Salo, a luxury vacation district which should appeal to the senior researchers. This would sh
ow that CERN, Consiglio Europeo per la Ricera Nucleare, was considered a prestige project. The local heads of the Fascist party, and the local notables, were quite pleased with getting a new population of highly-paid year round residents.

  That left de facto co-ruler Italo Balbo here at Malpensa. The facility was coming along nicely. The new Jewish and Magyar labor was working with speeds normally not seen on Italian projects. Balbo was now telling the project managers to adjust their plans for a large CERN installation. The thinking elite would go to Salo. The administrative backup, the technical shops and whatever else would be needed, would go here. You don’t put a major facility in a vacation town. You set it near Italy’s financial and industrial heart in Lombardy. His subordinates would oversee this, but the local grandees needed his presence to impress on them just how important Rome rated all of this. He had had to do the same when starting the whole Malpensa development project, including the huge airfield. He also reviewed the progress on the massive Malpensa railway loop project. Major industrial development needed rail transport with good links through Switzerland to Germany. The new cartel system depended on this.

  2000 hours Central Daylight Time; 1200 hours CET

  17 September 1940

  Ft. Benning, Georgia

  Thank God for long distance telephone calls. Temporary Captain Benjamin O. Davis, Jr. had been alerted by his Brigadier General father that George Patton was going to recruit a Buffalo battalion of colored troops for his China expeditionary force. Dad telegraphed him to get his ass from Tuskegee, where Junior was an ROTC instructor, to Ft. Benning to present himself as a candidate for executive officer of this battalion. It was a stretch for a young man only a temporary captain for a few days, but most such juniors did not have the only Negro general officer in US service as their father. A father who could work the Army version of the old boy network for all it was worth. The interwar Army officer corps was a small, very clubby institution. Who you knew and what strings you could pull, counted far more than notional fitness reports.

  Junior had followed orders … up to a point. However, he had also been making phone calls on his own. He had the flying bug since going up with a barnstormer as a boy. The Air Corps had rejected him out of West Point, because that service was all white. At the height of the Depression, near to the entire officer corps was white; and white opinion intended to keep it that way.

  That was then. This was now. Now was an election year. Franklin Roosevelt would need massive turnouts of black votes in Chicago, New York, and the other big Northern cities to win a historic third term. Blacks would need to be motivated. FDR also needed segregationist Dixie. So he would do nothing substantive about Jim Crow or lynchings or any of the real issues. Enter symbolism. Enough of the civil rights establishment were incrementalists. Through the Tuskegee faculty, Junior had introduction to A. Philip Randolph of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters. That man heard the young officer’s excited proposal for a Colored Lafayette Escadrille to fight for Jesus in China. He in turn had immediate phone access to the First Lady, who championed the idea to her husband within an hour of being told the concept.

  It fit FDR’s political needs. It undercut a Republican campaign issue. It gave a symbolic victory to the civil liberties champions, while tacitly reminding Dixie voters that Republicans kept proposing anti-lynching bills that could use Federal power to kill Jim Crow. The temporary captain now had a telegram with the authority of the commander-in-chief to enlist black pilots and mechanics, to set up a flight training program at Tuskegee for reinforcements. The official line was to apply ‘separate but equal’ to the air. Claire Chennault, a retired Air Corps officer with Chinese connections, would create the white flying unit. Junior would create the Negro, starting with existing pilots who could be enlisted as specialists outside normal Army channels. The officer corps would bury the project if given a chance. An officer reporting directly to the White House could evade this gaming. There were enough Colored crop dusters, barn stormers, and private flyers for the opening round of enlistments. The key was moving fast before the bureaucracy could find reasons to shut this down. It was amazing what could be done in an election year when large blocs of votes were at stake.

  0800 hours local, 18 September 1940

  2400 hours CET, 17 September 1940

  The Lodge, Deakin, Australian Capital Territory

  “I’ve already rejected a National government. You know damned well my party leftwing won’t stomach it.” John Curtin, leader of the Australian Labor Party, was a fine judge of what the coalition of factions that made up his nominal party would and would not do. He and the Coalition PM, Pig Iron Bob Menzies, knew each other and somewhat respected each other’s ability to ‘play the game’ as it were.

  “So we phrase it differently. Advisory War Council or some such government speak. I’m PM on the strength of two independents who could bolt to you on a whim, and London knows it. They have made a most interesting set of offers, but insist that it be crossparty. Otherwise they correctly fear Australia can keep the goodies, while you declare on assuming office you aren’t bound to the commitments.”

  “What now?” Curtin had let Menzies get away with committing conscript Australian Militia to policing duties on the Dutch outer islands such as Bali and Timor. The Labor left saw this as a backstab. The promise had been conscription only for home defense. “I cannot let Militia be sent further afield.”

  Menzies made placating noises. “The Militia’s safe. Indeed, I may be able to get those withdrawn … mostly. It’s a complicated deal. Defects first. London’s reviving the old Japanese Alliance … ”

  “Shit! No! It is your damned Pig Iron shipment a thousand times worse.” Menzies had the name from a labor dispute over shipping pig iron to Japan for their China War. The dock unions saw the Japanese as war criminal barbarians in China. The Communist cadres in those locals fanned the flames and produced a mess that would stain Menzies till the day he died. Curtin was not eager to be hung with the same.

  Menzies shrugged. “They will do this with or without us. The two are jointly backing a new Chinese government in Shanghai. Chiang’s gone Bolshie again. Thrown out the missionaries and their flocks. London and the Yanks back the god pilots. Who are starving. London is proposing that we feed them. We are awash in food, with no ships to send our wheat, meat, offal, and the rest to Europe. China will buy it all. Send junks to move the stuff. London guarantees payment.”

  Curtin’s head came up like a shot. “How much food?”

  “All of it. We will have to tin the meat, as no reefer ships come with the deal. Your ever so Red dock workers won’t have to load that many Japanese ships. The part going to Japan will get crossloaded in China. But agriculture and mines. Whatever we can produce. London is willing to be a bit expansive on prices. Supposedly this is to cover bringing more expensive marginal production on board. In fact it’s a sweetener, and a hedge against postwar inflation. We get paid in pounds. War’s expensive. Postwar prices on British manufactures may be higher than prewar.”

  “Dock workers’ wages?”

  “How does a 15% raise on Australia signing the deal, and doubletime for overs sound?”

  “Sounds like I’m being asked to swallow a lot of bitter medicine to get the sugar treat.”

  Pig Iron Bob had saved the tough stuff for now. “Our corps in Palestine is going to be ordered up to Egypt, ready or not. Our general will protest. We back London. We don’t let our boys bear an inordinate share of the blood price of battle. No idiot Gallipoli. But they fight and bleed, same as our corps did on the Western front.”

  The prime minister paused for a sigh. He didn’t like this bartering of blood, but needs must. “London thinks the next battle will go no worse than the last. Lose some men, lose some ground. They admit they expect to lose Egypt, but with a river as wide as the Nile as a fallback position they don’t see how they can lose it quickly. Indeed, they think it will take the Huns the winter to crack the Alamein line. I would note they
haven’t been right yet in this war, but that might be unkind.”

  “So we now have three divisions to be hammered at the front.”

  “Five. They want 8th Infantry and 1st Armored sent to Palestine via Basra along with every tank, artillery piece, armored car, and plane in Australia. Even the ancient stuff and training pieces. All these get replaced out of future US and Canadian production, but in the interim the Militia becomes a force of riflemen in trucks. The two divisions sent to Palestine leave Australia untrained, and do their workups as Imperial garrisons. London claims no risk partially disarming the Militia, as invaders cannot march here. They have roped the Japanese and US fleets into their China combine. This makes us safe. Indeed, they are about to make us safer still. The Japanese are sending a destroyer squadron through the Panama Canal and leaving most of the rest of their Fleet with skeleton crews dockside at their home bases. RN officers will verify all of this with daily updates. The Americans have quietly agreed to match this. All their carriers, except the old Langley, go to the Atlantic plus most of their battleships. The Pacific starts edging closer to living up to its name. Mother Country protects us with brilliant diplomacy, whatever happens in Egypt or Palestine.”

  “Is this all?”

  “Nope. Most of our Militia in the East Indies comes home. The officers and enough senior sergeants remain. The rank and file get replaced by refugees fleeing Egypt and elsewhere. We may have to teach these chaps English, but plenty of time in garrison.”

  “White Australia is not subject to negotiation.” The unions were adamant on this, and Curtin agreed with them. Immigrants were simply cheap labor for strikebreaking.