by Scott Palter
Poor Clem had the reverse problem. Labor’s factions cared only for ideology. There was a Jew-ridden Marxist wing up in arms over something or other involving China and Japan. Bevin had been in War Cabinet, but Winnie had been vague as hell on details. It hadn’t seemed important then, only now the usual fellow travelers of Moscow were baying for blood. The 1922 Committee chaps had explained this in terms of China trade. The coastal parts of China were prosperous enough to import. The interior wasn’t, and was most inconvenient to reach anyway. So, back the Japanese and this Wang chap to preserve markets. Bevin felt he’d won a few concessions on trade union rights in the key ports. Symbolic for now, but a start to build on. The semi-Bolshies wanted fraternal alliance with Stalin and Chiang. The same Chiang they had spent the better part of a decade wanting boycotted because he had broken with Moscow in the 20’s. Most annoying.
What was worse was Morrison’s old wing. They included many ex-Liberals, and were – to Bevin’s mind – a collection of cranks and kooks. Vegetarians, legalists, internationalists, pacifists, single-issue fanatics of various stripes. The left side of smug British eccentricity. They didn’t want an orderly expansion of the welfare state, geared to sound finances and the needs of this war. They wanted it all now. They wanted to argue every detail of every program. They wanted total moral purity in every British alliance and foreign association. These same idiots had argued for the League, and thus against Italy over Ethiopia. Which had lost Italy for the anti-German block. They then turned around and howled to save the Spanish Republic, while opposing rearmament. Right now they were baying at a point of the German proposed peace terms. The Huns had demanded all of Iraq. The representatives of the 1922 Committee had talked them mostly around to a partition of the place. Germany gets Kirkuk and that oil. Britain keeps Basra to protect the adjacent oil fields in Persia and Kuwait. Baghdad was still in dispute. The idiots wanted to argue Iraqi sovereignty. International law. Humanitarian rights for minorities. A thousand points of drivel. They could not be made to see that once the front collapsed in Egypt, Germany’s price for peace would rise again.
In the meantime, getting a reinforcement convoy started for Egypt had to be the next order of business. RN was pleading that they first had to finish some Gaullist demonstration off West Africa. Bevin recalled Winnie being enamored with some plan or other in that direction. He asked for details. RN and Dill got into a tiff on who should provide them, and there the matter rested.
Chapter 8
0300 hours local; 0200 hours CET
22 September 1940
A back-stairs room in a fine Alexandria mansion
The mansion oozed respectable wealth. It was a dowry gift of the householder’s father-in-law, a formerly great man fallen on hard times with the coming of the Depression. His high-social-status young daughter had thus been wed to a man a bit more than twice her age, whose wealth was vast but the sources of which did not bear close inspection. As arranged marriages went it had been successful. The father-in-law’s debts were quietly bought up. Father of the bride was now a well-paid front man for his less reputable son-in-law. The daughter had produced heir, spare, and a few daughters. She lived well but quietly, devoting herself to her children and parents. She displayed herself on her husband’s arm as, when, and where required. Otherwise they led essentially separate lives.
Lieutenant Commander James Money-Penny had known of this man prior to the war. Since his return from Malta he had become in many ways this man’s minion, his expediter with the British military as it were. Money-Penny was wise enough to realize he was scarcely the only one. However, he was the one tasked with expediting this gentleman’s departure from Alexandria as and when necessary. Right now he was trying to advance the day these services were rendered. “You and your money need to leave now. Line almost gave out as soon as Jerry made a serious push. Can’t for the life of me see why they stopped. Word is that they wanted a sure thing, that they are trucking up supplies and the like. Jack-all we can do to stop them. Next big battle, the line goes and British Egypt goes with it. You must be aware. Your wife, kids, in-laws and your own mother, are all up in Beirut. You’ve got properties there. You’ve transferred a lot of wealth. I’ve helped facilitate it. Forms, official stamps, armed uniformed guards. Yet here you sit with that big yacht of yours in the harbor.”
The big man had grown this wealthy by knowing how to work many angles, cut many dark but profitable corners. “There are still large sums to be made. More every day, as movable wealth gets converted into fixed assets by those who think their Italian connections are solid enough. Same in reverse, by those who see Java or Malaya as more secure places of abode. You will know when the line is on the verge of collapse. You get here with enough of your uniformed gang, your ‘Villains’. You get myself, my gold, and my yacht to Beirut. I make you richer. That is the arrangement.”
“You are presuming I can break free at just the right moment.”
“I presume that if you cannot, others can. I pay well.”
The discussion went on till dawn when they adjourned for coffee, still at stalemate. Money-Penny needed this cash flow to work his other magic for Fleming’s brigade. The wheeler-dealer had an iron nerve for risks, and trusted his gut. He planned to leave at the last possible moment.
1000 hours CET
22 September 1940
Comando Supremo, Palazzo Vidoni, Corso Vittorio Emanuele II, Rome
The Prince having grown weary of dealing with SS General Wolff, Air Marshall Balbo took this meeting himself. Wolff wanted to discuss the nuts and bolts of Italian war propaganda. Strange thing to be a major matter of state.
Wolff had a few dozen examples of Italian articles, all from the new Egyptian front. His complaint, or to be more precise Berlin’s, was that Italian censors were too liberal in letting the exact geography into the article. Berlin felt that this put pressure on local commanders to avoid allowing operational or tactical retreats, for fear of appearing to be ‘defeated’. Blood was precious and should not be wasted. Best to focus on heroism, but avoid making keeping special worthless dirt a ‘matter of honor’. Balbo agreed just to terminate the meeting. He then had his staff alert General Geloso to expect von Manstein to raise the issue with him.
1130 hours local; 1030 hours CET
22 September 1940
Bagush Box, now under Panzer Army ownership
The command conference had three senior generals (Geloso, von Manstein, and Messe) plus a veritable galaxy of translators, aides, and clericals. The wall map in what had once been O’Connor’s office, showed the front line as an overlay of recon photos. The key issue at hand was Rommel’s salient. Many issues were more important. None was as time-sensitive.
“Can any of you see any logic in the British behavior?” General Goloso was a very professional officer. The terrain in question appeared to have absolutely no military value. The adjacent ridge mattered. A few square kilometers of waterless wilderness simply didn’t. He knew people who knew the key British commanders personally. These British generals were wasting valuable trained men on these nightly attacks. This wasn’t a question of blooding green troops. This wasn’t some historic town that had national emotional significance.
Von Manstein had actually seen stupider behavior. Then again, in his opinion virtually everyone on the planet was an idiot compared to his exalted self. His Kaiser’s War experience had seen attacks endlessly repeated because no one wanted the blame of ordering them stopped. He’d missed First Ypres by his unit having been redeployed to East Prussia just in time. He had friends who had not been so fortunate. Many had died or been crippled, because of a similar refusal to believe that the next attack wouldn’t fail the way the last eight had. “Forget why they are doing this. Why are we rising to the bait? I shut down General Rommel when he could probably have breached their lines. Breached, but little more. We need 5-6 weeks to resupply and redeploy. I propose we pull out today and be done with it. Yes, it a minor propaganda victory for the Bri
tish. This isn’t a war where neutral opinion matters. If our papers don’t report the withdrawal, then it is as if it never happened. Let us save the shells and men for that late October push.” He looked around the table to see two nods. He then unrolled a map on the conference table. It showed a two-corps push at the south end of the front. Messe’s corps just south of the east-west ridge with the DAK extending the line south to up against the northern fringes of the Depression. Both of these behind the Italian XXIII Corps. He would let a pair of Italian divisions breach the lines of the 8th Division, which (based on prisoner interrogations) seemed to be mostly third-rate militia. Messe would exploit the breach. There were obvious east-west ridges that the British would redeploy on to face this. Messe would make the short swing to that east-west axis, with Steiner’s division coming up behind to deploy on Messe’s right while Hausser’s oversize division followed on to keep extending ever eastwards until the British couldn’t match the movement. Hausser’s division was the size of a corps. It would have a number of modern tank battalions by then. Good upgunned Mark III’s and IV’s. Those would form the spearpoint to roll up the new British line, while Klingenberg’s new fast regiment kept sweeping northeast to break the British lines of communication to Cairo. The British position would implode in a disorderly flight, or they would bag the entire British Army. Either was acceptable. Von Manstein saw the approving glances of the two Italians. He took this as proof that they appreciated his genius. He was not a good reader of minds or body language. They were both separately thinking, that any competent Capitano on his first staff course could have put this together, given terrain and relative size of forces deployed.
Messe was left to ask the obvious question. What about Rommel and Strauss? Did von Manstein think so little of Italian prowess, as to believe they needed German reserves to hold their line – as if they were Ottomans? Von Manstein found himself forced to explain that Rommel was in reserve as punishment. All three shook their heads at the petty personal politics of higher command.
No one was really that concerned with why Berlin took a special interest in Brigade Strauss. It had performed well, but was a minor unit in a large army. If Berlin wanted it near the coast so the men could go swimming, who cared?
1850 hours local; 1750 hours CET
22 September 1940
I Australian Corps forward HQ, northeast of Rommel’s salient
The reports had at first not been believable. Blamey had sent multiple officers he trusted forward to observe and verify. The enemy was pulling out. They were shielding the movement with massed artillery fires, but the nose of the salient was vacated. British patrols had confirmed this. Even the boobytrapping wasn’t all that severe.
From observation and noise reports, the rest would be vacant by morning. He had ‘won’. The question, of course, was what now. He would have to occupy the vacated ground and dig in at least one of his newly-arrived British brigades. The same staff idiots who had asked for nightly attacks, were now making difficulties about the obvious urgent needs – mines, wire, timber to construct bombproofs. If these weren’t available, why in the nine names of Hell had they been so keen to take these worthless acres back? More and more he was convinced that a Home Counties accent was a guide to who the idiots were.
1600 hours local; 2200 hours CET
22 September 1940
Apartment of a Revisionist sympathizer, Flatbush, Brooklyn
Ze’ev Jabotinsky felt himself lucky to be alive to take this meeting. His heart had almost given out on him in early August. To think, he had almost died just when such wondrous things were happening. His movement had found powerful friends. The first armed units of Betar were in Egypt, on the road to Palestine.
The Betar delegates from the Palestine Camps in Poland arrived with German diplomatic passports. Their Nazi minders accompanied them. He’d been allowed private meetings with his followers. The Germans were very businesslike with him. They were along to prove that the promises being made to him in Germany’s name were genuine.
He was being offered the presidency of a Jewish state on both banks of the Jordan. Not all of Palestine. The Germans were concerned with the oil pipeline, not the rest. He was to get German north Palestine and the Italians were to get south Palestine. Europe’s Jews would be sent home. As long as German wishes were respected, he and his party could rule as they chose. Rebellion would be dealt with by harsh measures. Ze’ev could visualize what the Nazi definition of harsh was.
The Germans were not sure if the Italians had contacted Ben Gurion. They really didn’t care one way or the other. He and Ben Gurion had their differences, yet had come close to merging their movements back in 1935. There was still Western Union service to Palestine. Some of the stations were down from the war, and the rest outside the US were under British control. So it had to be some simple code. Send so and so to Istanbul to meet his cousin such and such. The Germans assured him they could get any cadre he named from the camps to Istanbul in four days’ time.
This was not the future for the Jews he had dreamed of. But still, it was so much closer to that dream than anyone else was offering. There had been much worry on the fate of Europe’s Jews, and now he would be their savior. The convoluted story of how Betar and the Nazis had become allies made little sense, but these were days of wonder.
0900 hours local; 0100 CET
23 September 1940
Soviet submarine Shch-117, East China Sea
The target had been a merchant ship. The positioning made its probable destination Shanghai. It had no escort. It wasn’t zig-zagging, and was sailing with full running lights. Best guess made it eight kilotons, so the commander had fired two torpedoes. Somehow he’d managed to miss with one. The other hit the aft of the merchant ship, which broke apart. The aft went down at once. The rest took maybe 10 minutes to sink beneath the waves. The captain didn’t think it was worth surfacing to move the process along faster by cannon fire.
……….
The US radio intercept station in Shanghai picked up the distress signal from the SS Wayne County out of Seattle. The USN lacked China Station assets for a rescue. The Japanese out of Okinawa did not. Only six lives were lost, thanks to prompt Japanese response. US accusations against the Soviets were met with bland denials. The Soviets simply said the pirate submarines that had previously attacked shipping bound for Loyalist ports in Spain, must have relocated. As everyone knew those submarines were really Italian, Italy and Germany promptly denied blame. US opinion on this split by party lines. The insult to the flag would go on to be a campaign issue.
0700 hours local; 0600 hours CET
23 September 1940
Joey’s office at the metal and vehicle repair depot, Strauss Brigade, behind the Italian lines at Alamein
Being summoned to the office meant trouble. Lothar was not looking for more trouble. Since his talking-to by Paul Schwabe, he’d done his work and kept his head down. He’d tried to find his guys for a beer once, and been warned off by Peiper. Shit! It had been getting lonely. Now some Army asshole wanted to see him. Another perfumed dandy with a staff stripe on his pants. Lothar still regretted Röhm’s death. Despite having been a Strasser man, he’d hoped for much from the promised Second Revolution, where the fancy boys would all be bumped off.
Fancy boy ignored Lothar’s salute and waved him to a chair. “I’d rather keep this informal, if you don’t mind. I’ve been tasked with expediting your transfer to Steiner’s division. His HQ is arriving today. Don’t know if the General will be with them, but this isn’t business at his level. I’ll look up some junior serving under his Ia. If I am going to sell you, I need some questions answered.”
Lothar tried to keep his big mouth shut. Intelligence lost to aggressiveness. “If this is man to man, then fuck you very much. I can march over there and ask for a place on my own.”
The staff jerk actually laughed at Lothar. “Go ahead. Just makes one less thing on an endless to-do list for me. The line cadre of this divisi
on is mostly SA. The staff is holdovers from a Heer division that’s been demobilized. They won’t pay any attention to an aged SA veteran with bad-conduct marks.”
“Bad conduct! The little pansy has less right to be a field officer than my dead hound back in Hesse. All he’s good for is defiling his race with the Jew whore, and displaying his lack of manhood sucking off his commander. Are you another boy-lover, or just a damned part Kike!” Lothar knew he was burying himself. He was too enraged at the entire situation to fully care. He’d be mad at himself later … but that was later and this was now.
