Deaths on the Nile

by Scott Palter

  “Not at issue. The refugees get Dutch quasi-citizenship good only for the East Indies. They get to bring their families. So most of our lads get to rotate home over the next year and half. The rest the year after, as we find sergeants and lieutenants out of the new chums. We show our gratitude on this by getting enough Militia to volunteer for two years in the Shanghai garrison. Enough to cadre a brigade made up of still more refugees, and probably some English-speaking Eurasians.”

  Curtin weighed this all. “Any more stink bombs?”

  “No. We get fat and happy. Most of our conscripts come home fast, and the rest at fixed times. We pay in blood supporting Home Country colonialism over a bunch of wogs we wouldn’t let leave ship in Sydney harbor for more than an overnight bar crawl. However, Labor publicly backs all this. Full vote in caucus so the next Labor government is bound. You sit in some National Council so your hands are as dirty as ours on implementation.”

  Neither man looked forward to selling this to their caucus, much less dealing with the press. Both would do it. It was sound patriotism and sound politics. Menzies was the political arm of the farmers and ranchers. They got their export market back. Curtin was the political front for the dock, mining, and manufacturing unions. This meant full employment and lots of overtime packets. Most important to both, it meant war happened someplace else where their voters didn’t live.

  1200 hours local; 1100 hours CET

  18 September 1940

  GHQ Cairo

  General Wavell was beginning to find this Alamein fighting distinctly unpleasant. He had assigned the remains of 7th Armored Division to 4th Indian Division. The surplus brigade staffs were sent off to join their old commander in Palestine. London swore they would send drafts to reconstitute the division. They just wouldn’t say when.

  General Blamey with his headquarters of First Australian Corps had arrived from Palestine. First Cavalry Division would be up in the next few days. The two Australian divisions were frozen in place in Palestine, awaiting something complicated being negotiated with London. The new War Cabinet was being reticent on details, which probably meant the usual economic and diplomatic dodgy business was afoot.

  He’d flipped the two Palestinian Brigades to 7th Division up towards the coast, with the arriving Cypriot garrison brigade as a stiffener. He’d commanded these Jews in Palestine. He’d made their old friend Ord Wingate a lieutenant colonel, and given him command of a raiding battalion to be formed out of the better-trained Jews who had once worked for him in Palestine. Command in Khartoum had a fit. Sudan Command had been using Wingate to build up for some guerrilla raid into Ethiopia. Local commanders saw such narrow tunnels. They didn’t see the theater as a whole.

  The Jews on the coast, meant both Malta garrison brigades could be sent to replace the Jews with the 8th Division in the south. At their core these had storied regular battalions. They should be able to whip their quite poorly trained fillers into some sort of shape. Good captains and good corporals can make even totally raw privates function.

  The Australian Corps would be given the salient battle. 4th Indian, 1st Cavalry, 6th Australian, and the three independent brigades. Alamein Force would be renamed 13th Corps; he appointed General Godwin-Austin to command it. With Churchill gone the cloud over this man from Somaliland passed. Winston had demanded more blood from a lost cause. It was so good to have Winston out.

  The problem was the salient fighting. He simply wasn’t budging the enemy. By company and battalion his men were performing. By brigade and division they were being outgunned. Eighth Army, as the newly expanded Alamein forces were now named, couldn’t afford to play Haig in Flanders. Attrition favored the enemy. Wavell wanted to break these attacks off and preserve his men for the next enemy offensive. London asked for one more try. One more it would be.

  1300 hours local; 1200 hours CET

  18 September 1940

  French artillery positions in the rear of what had been Rommel’s salient, Alamein lines

  General Jodl’s Kampfgruppe Jodl was still in transit. The Maltese unit would arrive over the next two weeks. Oberst Maurice’s deletions, to make up two battalions for Ramcke’s division, would take another month or two to be made good. The first of the four heavy-gun battalions, the 15 cm howitzers, would arrive the first week in October. When the other three would appear was still being described by OKW in vague terms. Jodl had previously run that headquarters. Such weasel words meant that likely these units only currently existed on paper.

  He was in Egypt today to observe a French weapon, the 12 cm mortar, in action. The French brigade had a battalion of these as well as one of 15 cm guns. They used their more widely available seven five’s as heavy infantry weapons instead of artillery. The deployment was a battery in each line battalion as anti-tank and general purpose artillery. Unlike the German eight eight’s they could not do further service as flak.

  This total air superiority was proving most interesting. The French guns had nothing to fear from British counter battery – British guns that fired, exposed themselves to circling aircraft. They were immediately bombed. Worse, their positions were relayed by radio to waiting Panzer Army artillery units. The British guns could not ‘shoot and scoot’. Exposing themselves by moving during daylight was near-suicide. The trucks towing the guns would die, as would the trucks carrying the ammunition. The surviving British had learned to seek good overhead cover before dawn, and to remain there until dusk.

  In reverse, the Störche and the Italian Breda Ba.88 Linces were up by dawn to direct the Panzer Army’s artillery fires. It was almost like working on a range with spotters doing corrections. With the little coastal ports opening to lighter traffic, artillery munitions could be brought almost straight to the front in massive quantities. Gone were the days when batteries were rationed to a daily maximum of shells.

  This was much better for the gunners than WW1. Given a few weeks for redeployment, Jodl had no doubt that his guns and the others working with him could crack any British position. The key wasn’t week-long bombardments such as the British had used on the Somme and at Ypres. Bruchmüller had written the outlines for what Jodl was going to do, in 1917-1918 – hurricane bombardments and the forward observers. These days the forward detachments were not dependent on easily-cut phone lines and forever-late runners. They had pack radios. Meanwhile, the 12 cm mortars were worthy of serious study. Mounted on a Panzer I, they could perhaps keep up with the spearheads.

  1400 hours CET

  18 September 1940

  Prinz-Albrecht-Straße, Berlin, Germany

  Schellenberg caught himself laughing at von Manstein’s invention of the rank of Brigadier. Using the excuse of Schellenberg’s own rank of Oberführer, he had conjured up a grade between Oberst and Generalmajor. It took just a flick of Schellenberg’s pen to approve Stauffenberg for this rank, and approve the rank for the NL in general. That led to a consideration of promotions and awards for the Reichsführer’s pets.

  Strauss was favorably mentioned in all reports. So it was easy to make him a Brigadier, more so as the size of his unit was being increased again. His subordinates Gorlov, Schwabe, and Voss all were mentioned well, so they become Oberstleutnant’s. Steiner was his usual self. Send a letter from the Reichsführer, but no promotion this time. Otherwise he would be a Generaloberst by the end of the campaign. Major was enough for an 18-year-old. Decorations? Strauss and Voss had both levels of Iron Cross from the Great War, but would have to start the ladder again at 2nd. Pity, but no one had been thinking of this unit being permanent back in the earlier battles. Give the four Iron Cross seconds, and start them up the ladder.

  Peiper? Frau Heydrich had asked for an update on him. Husband of one of her friends. Good reports, so promote to Sturmbannführer. Check what decorations he had and give him the next one. Raise his unit to a full battalion, and formally make it part of Strauss’s brigade.

  Mohnke? Schellenberg was inclined to blame the initial disaster on Dietrich. He or some staff dro
ne of his palmed off a battalion with no heavy weapons company, no anti-tank guns, nothing beyond infantry in trucks. Silly to waste a promotion on the man till it was clear if he’d recover from his wounds. Knight’s Cross, and a note to LAH that the new volunteer battalion would have the full weapons suite, and to which was to be added a 75mm battery for anti-tank work. There were enough surplus guns from the spring campaign.

  This led seamlessly to Hausser’s division. A letter of commendation from the Reichsführer was in order. This Klingenberg who had taken the British fortified camp? Jump him two grades to Obersturmbannführer, and make his provisional unit official. It was now the fast regiment of SS Division Reich. The SS Personnel Office could fill in the missing pieces of the units his men had come from. Knight’s Cross as well, and a letter from the Reichsführer.

  All this was within his authority. He’d rubber-stamp the boss’s signature. Heydrich had too much to do to deal with this trivia personally. More and more work got done this way.

  1700 hours local; 1600 hours CET

  18 September 1940

  New Strauss Brigade base to the rear of Italian 61st Division Sirte, near the coast road and 20 kilometers to the west/behind the Alamein front

  The air was deathly hot. Worse than a blacksmith’s forge in high summer. Also quite dry, even this close to the sea. Company Commissar Menachem Begin was still getting accustomed to this strange land, after several days in a truck to reach this place. The welcome-in was by a Jewish Lieutenant Colonel in Yiddish. The German Brigadier in charge also said a few words of welcome, again in Yiddish. The Lieutenant Colonel was fluent. The Brigadier was not. Spoke street Yiddish with a New York accent. Didn’t matter. The Nazi in charge spoke street Yiddish, did not look down his nose at a new battalion of Jews. Perhaps there was something to the Nazi promises about a new home in Palestine.

  When the formation was dismissed, he’d asked around among the Betar officers and commissars. They were all convinced the promises were real. A Jewish home in Haifa, Galilee and up the pipeline. They would be part of the German Empire, yes. Why would real Germans, with their race obsessions, want to live in a furnace full of Arabs? There would be a few to boss the Jews who would rule the Arabs. Why else bring Jewish petroleum experts along?

  The Oberstleutnant invited Begin to his tent. Had a glass of wine with him, and introduced his niece. The niece it turned out was a nominal Leutnant. The rank didn’t matter. Her status as mistress to one of the chief German officers did. She spoke with his voice, with the voice of command. The Oberstleutnant had a task for Begin. The niece wanted a crash course in Revisionist Zionism. She was mixed in with Betar, but knew absolutely nothing beyond Zionism meant Jews go back home to Palestine. Oh, and she knew the name Jabotinsky. Niece seemed like a nice Jewish girl. Turned out to be politically clueless. Also extremely uninterested. She didn’t care about the rights or wrongs of Zionism, or its various schools of thought. She just wanted to know the right things to say, to do, to believe. She actually cared, but it was all surface things. Her man was sure they were going to Zion, and it was to be their home. Begin resolved to make this young lady a special project. Politics worked by milking connections. She took her meals with the senior officers.

  2300 hours local; 2200 CET

  18 September 1940

  Reserve position, Rommel’s salient, Alamein lines

  The man who pretended to be General Kellermann of Napoleonic fame tightened the chin strap of his helmet. The Australians and Indians had pushed in the nose of the salient. He was going in with the Legion battalion to restore the line. General de Lattre knew that leading an assault battalion was beneath his rank. He simply didn’t care.

  France had been ruined by chateau generals sitting comfortably tens of kilometers behind the front, issuing meaningless orders. Meaningless, because by the time they reached the real fighting men the orders were hours old and hopelessly out of date. He had a staff to do the administrative idiocy. His job was to manage a battle.

  He’d made his dispositions in daylight. He knew the British had at least one more push in them. He’d spent the day supervising the work on the strongpoints, preregistering the artillery on the likely British staging areas and their probable attack lanes into his position. His bet had been on just this push at the nose. Their prior attacks had failed at the base of the salient and at its flanks. The nose was the next step. If there were to be more after that, it wouldn’t be his problem. The plan was to relieve his men with Felix Steiner’s regiment of Balts, plus an Italian division tomorrow.

  It was time. The star shells went up to illuminate his move. The guns began their hammering at the preset locations, plus the one overrun strongpoint. The legionnaires formed up behind him. To a harsh cry of Vive la Legion!, Vive la Republique! they followed him at the trot. This was not going to end the way that putrid spring campaign had. France would avenge Oran.

  0800 hours Eastern Daylight Time; 1400 hours CET

  19 September 1940

  White House, Washington DC

  FDR was doing a whistle-stop tour of the Great Lakes states. He had at last begun to take seriously the threat from Willkie. Lindy was barnstorming the same states doing football stadium rallies. Each appearance provoked riots. The street brawls in turn showed Franklin as the candidate of the Jews and Reds. The non-Communist left was mostly interventionist, and the Communists were being fairly quiet this election cycle. Hopkins felt they simply found it hard to reconcile their Japanese War and Hitler Alliance with their prior Popular Front propaganda from the Spanish War. The true believers would follow the backflips decreed by Moscow. The much larger mass of fellow travelers found it difficult.

  The US Navy, in the form of the Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Stark, had just presented Hopkins with a most complex fait accompli. The Japanese Navy was sending a task force through US waters. A light cruiser and eight destroyers would be stopping at Pearl Harbor en route to the Panama Canal.

  For decades the Japanese Navy had been the main threat to the US … at least as far as the USN was concerned. The Japanese agreed to reduce their fleet to mostly unmanned ships at anchor. The US agreed to match this. Our carriers would go to the Atlantic to guard against the Nazis. The main battlefleet would go to Norfolk, from Pacific Fleet home base San Pedro.

  Stark saw this in terms of the naval balance in the Pacific. The US was building the ships for a Two Ocean Navy, but they were years from being ready. This gave the US a maritime defense in the Atlantic without taking on risk in the Pacific. The Japanese had even agreed that the old obsolete carrier Langley would be left in the Pacific to ferry planes for the new US buildup in China.

  Hopkins saw the politics. A more peaceful Pacific would be well regarded by the Isolationists. There had been arguments when the draft bill passed, on whether conscripts should be forced to serve in the various Pacific bastions. Many objected to sending them to the Philippines or Guam. Some objected to Hawaii as well. A few idiots had argued that Alaska really wasn’t US soil. Now those garrisons could be left to regulars, because many fewer men would be needed. The same would be done in the new Pacific bases such as Rabaul and Guadalcanal. The Marines had been recruiting in the Danzig special zone. The US had gotten a string of bases from Britain and Australia as part of the Bombers for Bases Deal. The Commandant was sure he could recruit many more men for Pacific service if permitted. These could man that set of installations, providing a lifeline to Manila if this agreement with the Japanese unraveled. The State Department would whine about adherence to dead treaties, but the Secretary of State was a Dixie fossil with no political clout. Hopkins would rubber-stamp FDR’s name to begin this. The draftees would stay in the forty-eight actual states, plus the Caribbean garrisons like Panama and Puerto Rico. FDR would be for continental defense, not a new AEF and foreign wars to serve foreign interests. Hopkins felt this was within his authority. If it wasn’t, Franklin could fire him for all he cared. Hopkins saw himself as a man juggling knives in a vaudeville sho
w. He’d signed up to help manage the New Deal, to bring social justice to the US. Now he was assistant president, doing all the things Franklin was too busy being a candidate to bother with. The strain was killing Hopkins, and he knew it. He was willing to die for his country if needs be, but he’d do the best job he could while he was still above ground.

  0830 hours local; 0500 CET

  19 September 1940

  A Congress Party safe house in New Delhi, India

  The secret impending arrival of Churchill as the new viceroy had of course leaked. There was too much protocol and red tape involved in a twin handover of the viceroy’s office and command of the Indian Army. Too many offices had to be given at least pieces of the news for a smooth transition. Offices that all had Indian staff, from senior administrators to clericals and trash collectors. It was less that Britain ruled India, than that the mostly-Indian pillars of the regime were headed by white Britishers. The machine was too big for a few hundred thousand white men to really run it on their own.

  Nehru, the practical head of the party, was clear on what must be done. Congress could not allow Bose’s national liberation war to eclipse them. So far, all that the ‘war’ had to show for itself was pinpricks. A few police commissioners shot, a handful of bombs in shops or cafés frequented by whites, several small riots. How insignificant these were across a sub-continent didn’t matter. The politics of the deed would always attract a following. A following gained at the expense of Congress, from among its youth wing, its labor radicals.

  The problem, as ever, was Gandhi. His militant pacifism meant the official Congress campaign must be presented as a species of noncooperation. This left Nehru walking the delicate line of encouraging more activist interpretations, while not quite leading to a breach with the irreplaceable Gandhi. So the banners would read ‘Quit India!’. He, Gandhi, and the rest of the presidium would be imprisoned. Verbal messages would pass to the outside via attorneys and prison staff. The second and third echelons would know what to do. He had spent the day before briefing enough people who would each pass the word. No written directives. Just a perpetual war of flea bites against the British, till the police and army defected. It was time to leave to make the speech. Odds said he’d be arrested before he finished it. So be it. The die was cast.