Deaths on the Nile

by Scott Palter

  “They are against the regime?”

  “God no. That would mean having a firm opinion. They are neither for nor against the Party. Their opinion was that politics is for fools. Support whoever had power and stay out of trouble, unnoticed. All they cared about was me volunteering instead of waiting to be called up. Then there was choosing a combat branch. They had my future all worked out. Finish my degree. Get a job establishing my credentials as a clerical. On call-up, be sure those qualifications were listed so I could become a company clerk. My male relatives all served. They just tried to be where no one was shooting at them. My parents would have insisted that there was no need to be a hero. Clerks, warehousemen, and paymaster’s assistants also serve the Fatherland. That the only military award that mattered was an honorable discharge.”

  Siegel was foreseeing problems. “So they won’t be happy at reading about your marital plans?”

  Klaus sadly shook his head while his new in-laws clustered around him. Peter asked the obvious question. “Would the problem be that my cousin is a Jew? Because now she isn’t.”

  “No. Marrying into your family would be seen as wonderful by my parents. Except I was marrying the wrong girl.” Klaus just kept shaking his head. Greta looked hurt. He didn’t wish her pain, but couldn’t lie to her. “My parents were as indifferent about race as they were about politics. Jews who spoke good German were fine with them, same as Poles who Germanized. On the Oder we had enough of both. They would curse me for an idiot, for marrying the boss’s niece instead of one of his daughters. Marrying up to professionals who own a successful business they would see as smart. The sort of career move they would approve of. But the daughter’s husband would rank over a mere niece’s. When the next Depression comes the son-in-law gets fired last. In their lives they have seen two wars and two economic collapses. In their mind you live your life trying to protect yourself from disasters that are sure to come. And they see me as just blundering from one youthful mistake to another.” He shrugged. “They have stopped writing, so I am spared their ill-wishes. Greta, at least by being the niece you are spared my mother pushing you to have a child at once so I can be the father of the first grandson and further secure my position.”

  Greta gently took his face in her hands and gave him a tender kiss. Her poor Klaus. How had he survived his boyhood?

  1600 hours CET

  16 October 1940

  Fouga factory, Béziers

  The factory hall had been erected in 1920 to handle the repair of rail stock; then in 1939, with the war, it was designated as a site for the construction of the Lorraine 37L, a fully-tracked vehicle to supply food, fuel, and munitions to the front. Nothing had been ready by the armistice, and little work had been done since, but that was now to change.

  German engineers had several vehicle drawings on a table. Their French counterparts looked them over. One, labeled Panzerjäger I, was a Czech 4.7 cm anti-tank gun mounted on a Panzer Mark I hull. Splinter protection was provided for the gun crew. It had seen some service in France. Courtesy of the Sons of Oran, it was known that this vehicle was in service in North Africa right now. The other vehicle was labeled Nashorn. Alkett in Germany was working on the vehicle now and intended it to mount the fearsome 8.8 cm flak cannon.

  “What is your best anti-armor gun?”

  Charts were pushed across the table comparing French 37mm, 47mm, and even the venerable 75mm first produced in 1897. Apart from the engineers stood two officers, one French and one German. The two field officers were to observe the proceedings on the exchange of information ... and each other. There was talk of alliance, cooperation; but mere months ago the two nations were bitter enemies, and there was still no formal peace.

  The newer 47mm gun was better, but not hugely so. One of the German engineers had an idea: “We could change the munition on the 75mm.”

  A French engineer suspected he knew the answer. The Edgar Brandt company had been working on armor-piercing discarding-sabot rounds, but their key people had fled to the United Kingdom. A brief colloquy between the German and French engineers followed about the merits of the munition.

  In their corner of the room the French officer suppressed a sigh and his German counterpart chuckled. Engineers tended to live in their own worlds. The idea of state secrets, and that perhaps the Germans were not to be fully trusted, didn’t enter the head of the French engineers.

  “While fascinating, it’s a pity that your Brandt people aren’t here. We have another idea in mind, high-explosive shaped warheads – or, ‘High Explosive Anti-Tank’. The primary advantage is that armor penetration is the same at any effective range,” a German said enthusiastically. “This munition would greatly improve the power of the 75mm at long range.”

  Now it was the turn of the German officer to groan. It appeared the Reich engineers could be just as clueless. After a few moments the French and German officers shared a chuckle at their mutual discomfort. Despite orders from Berlin and Vichy to cooperate, there were generations of mutual suspicion and rivalry to overcome.

  With the weapon settled, the conversation turned to how to mount the weapon on the French munition tractor. Like the German designs, splinter protection would be provided for the gun crew. Best of all, only a few months would be needed to make the changes and have the weapons ready. Perhaps even sooner.

  The SS minder for the meeting made careful notes. He would add to them a query as to whether to offer the 88mm multipurpose cannon.

  1500 hours Eastern Daylight Time; 2100 hours CET

  16 October 1940

  Executive Office Building, Washington DC

  Franklin wasn’t well enough for an extensive schedule. So the duties of repairing the damage with the leaders in Congress, had been split between days and people. Today was the House, and tomorrow the Senate. Morning was FDR shining his light on the top people, rambling and bantering. Such bonhomie was an important social lubricant in politics.

  This afternoon was when things got down and dirty. The new Speaker of the House, Sam Rayburn, had brought along his protégé and bagman, one Lyndon Baines Johnson. Mr. Sam set huge store on his personal integrity. Back to his days in the Texas legislature, he wouldn’t take a dime of even the ‘honest graft’ of legal fees from interested parties in state business for his law firm. Instead his partners in the firm split those revenues … and saw that the right people got their cut. Money is the mother’s milk of politics. With Rayburn’s recent ascension to the Speaker’s Chair, Johnson had done the dirty work of shaking the money tree and parceling out the cash.

  Hopkins felt it should have been Farley drinking with these two powerful Texans. Franklin had ruined that with his fan dance on the third term. Whatever. Needs must. “I appreciate you gentlemen taking the time to discuss matters with me.”

  Rayburn was a gentleman by old time small town standards. The brash, crude Johnson was not. “You shoved ten tons of shit down our throats, and now we get to come back after election day for another helping.”

  Johnson was winding up for a long oration. Hopkins had neither the time nor patience. “Mr. Johnson, you did your patriotic duty yesterday. Now you are here to get paid for your labors.” He could see Johnson clam his mouth shut while turning an ugly shade of purple. “You will want contracts for your friends at Brown and Root. You will want special favors for a host of people and interests through the South and West. All can be accommodated, and more easily than your crude shakedown of five-thousand-dollar checks out of Texas these past few weeks.” Both Texans had gotten very quiet. The campaign money games they had played were supposed to have been secret. “I’ll use crude terms because that seems to be all your protégé here understands. If you want to run with the Big Dogs, time to learn how the game is played. Lyndon here used telegrams. Hoover monitors damned near everything anyone of importance does. I can tell you the amount of each check and how you parceled it out.” He paused to let that sink in. “It was pin money. Dewey’s Wall Street pals proved that yesterday.
When they want to, New York, Boston, and Philadelphia between them can yank the chains of every big-dollar interest in the South or West. The New Deal has changed that a bit, moved some of the power to DC. Some. Far from most. You are all economic colonies of the Eastern Moneyed Interests. This is what Franklin and I have spent the last eight years fighting against, the Economic Royalists.”

  Mr. Sam Rayburn was a soft-spoken but forceful man. It had brought him from the Texas legislature to the Speaker’s Chair. “Yet you allied with them against us this week. And you propose to do so again.”

  “Against some of your idiot members, yes. Accept that politics stops at the water’s edge. The world is at war and we, gentlemen, are not ready. We slept after the Great War. Starved our military. There is now a world of armed wolves out there, and we are the fattest cow waiting to be slaughtered.”

  “We have spent ungodly sums for defense. We just authorized limitless more money. Has it truly all been wasted?”

  “No. By 1944 or 1945, we will be armed and relatively safe. Right now the giant fleet that will keep war beyond our shores is building. The first huge wave was funded in 1938. Battleships and aircraft carriers take time to design, to build, to be trained up after they are completed. The flood of warships starts in late 1943. The army would have trouble assembling a single combat division. Our Air Corps is a giant training program lacking the planes, airfields, and all the rest needed to be a world-class air force. Germany and Japan started in the early 30’s. The British and French started by 1937. We are just getting rolling. We need time. In the interim, we need the British as a shield against the Germans, the Japanese as a bulwark against the Soviets.”

  Johnson was never the type to let others talk. “Thought you liked the Reds.”

  “To a degree, I do. Fellow Progressives, same as the Fascists are. Not total scum like the Nazis. ‘Like’ doesn’t matter in the affairs of government. Bridges was a Red, probably a Communist. If not, then IWW or Anarchist. We shut him down hard. We’ve doing the same to the Communist Party. They waged war on the US to support Moscow.”

  Rayburn returned to the part that burned worst. “Why these new states? We will not be comfortable sharing our hallowed institution with the sort of gentlemen Hawaii and Puerto Rico will elect.”

  The ‘sort of gentlemen’ meant their color. Hopkins was aware. “Blame your Isolationist idiots, House and Senate both. They kept screaming that none of these places were US soil and we couldn’t send draftees. So we are solving that. They are the United States. Philippines are not. Five more years, the Philippines are independent. We’ll keep a few bases. The garrisons can all be volunteers if necessary. That’s for Congress to decide. But Puerto Rico, Hawaii, Samoa, Wake, Guam will be US soil. Same as Texas.”

  “Come next year are we dealing with you, or whoever Willkie gives your job to?”

  “Coin toss. The fools in your caucus who say punish us, what they will do is put Willkie in. You want to deal with Wall Street without us as a buffer, go right ahead. You can probably throw a few border states to Willkie. See how you like dealing with Dewey. Speaking of which, the next time you need serious campaign dollars, stop here first. I can get you all you need without involving the telegraph office. I pass the word, and the checks appear. All word of mouth.”

  Rayburn nodded to Johnson who produced a list. Hopkins waved the list aside. He didn’t care who got the dollars. All he wanted was a total. He saved the last comments for the quite ambitious Johnson. “I know you are sniffing around lining up support for a Senate try. Tell me how much you need to start getting an organization in place.”

  “That’s two years from now.”

  “And I can get you the money to have a permanent Texas machine, not just one cobbled together for each round of elections. The same big money people who twisted arms for Dewey will quietly give me funds as an insurance policy. This is where the Big Dogs run. Welcome to the pack.” Hopkins’ stomach was giving him such pain that he could not have stood to save his life. He suppressed any sign of it while spending two more hours arguing contracts and jobs. Needs must.

  0700 hours local, 0600 hours CET

  17 October 1940

  Headquarters 7th Panzer Division, east of former British Bagush box base and west of Brigade Strauss HQ

  The overnight flight from Berlin, with the last refueling stop outside Bari, had been choppy. Rommel’s Bursche had been airsick multiple times. The general had a cast-iron stomach and a frontfighter’s ability to sleep anywhere. In combat you slept when you could, and comfort be damned. Sleep deprivation was one of the perpetual problems in modern war. Old-fashioned battles took a day. Really big battles might take two or three. Now the fighting could run on for weeks or months with no letup for night or weather. Even the magic stay-awake pills only kept fatigue off you for a few days, after which (while still ‘awake’) your intelligence and reaction times both crashed. Under fire this could frequently be fatal.

  The handover from von Stauffenberg and von Thoma had taken only a few minutes. They had had two days warning of his arrival. An exchange of handshakes, followed by a two-minute briefing, was all that had been required. Rommel would need a few days to have his division under firm control, but as the two other officers remained with 7th Panzer working for him, that shouldn’t pose a problem. More so as the division was out of the line and slated as an army-level reserve for the upcoming offensive. The odds were that Rommel wouldn’t alter the training schedules or administrative arrangements that had been set up in his absence.

  Instead the General had arranged for Brigadier Strauss and Oberstleutnant Gorlov to meet him for coffee. Rommel did not like being in reserve. He had an idea ... “Welcome, gentlemen.” He graciously returned their salutes and pointed to chairs. His Bursche saw to coffee service. Nothing elaborate, but good American stocks that were part of a large gift bundle the general had brought back from Berlin. Something about American aid and approved wastage rates. He let the two subordinates settle in and begin sipping their cups. “I wanted to thank you again for your proposal on breaching the Palestinian lines last month. I made sure the right people in Berlin knew of it, and that you were both credited for it. The Reichsführer was impressed.”

  Rommel was surprised to see the two exchange meaningful glances, after which Strauss as the senior spoke. “It’s funny, you bringing that up. The British have been staging raids on Italian XXI Corps. The core of the units doing this are Palestinian Jews from those two brigades. Veterans of some joint anti-Arab raiding force from a few years back in Palestine. We have been providing counterattack patrols in aid of the Italians. We also have been taking prisoners. Even recruited a few. We were going to request an appointment with you.” Strauss could see he had the General’s undivided attention. “The raids frequently use a few British tanks and armored cars. Our maintenance unit has gathered a park of abandoned British vehicles. We’ve got a dozen in good working order. Not a lot of cannon ammunition, but their machine-guns use a round they borrowed from the Czechs, who borrowed it from us. Solved that problem. We’ve staked out the minefields. British are getting lazy on reconfiguring those. So we know a path. We’ve also been swiping passwords. Passed a few patrols through, testing. Yiddish-speaking troops with an officer with the right British accent have gotten kilometers into their rear and out again without much trouble, if we time it around their raids.”

  “You have such an officer?”

  “Lieutenant Colonel Di Salo is British by schooling and prior residence. His mother’s English. He was raised multilingual. His accent sounds ‘officer’ to British troops, the way an East Elbian Junker’s accent does with ours.”

  “So you can breach their lines?”

  “Yes, General. The problem comes afterwards. We are tasked to aid the navy in the occupation of Alexandria. If we make your penetration of the lines for you, will you allow us to take off down the road to the port? Instead of retaining us to aid you in rolling up the British front?”

  �
�I take it you have a plan?”

  “The raiding forces are platoon-to-company size. So we can push through a company using their types of AFV’s, firing back towards our lines as they withdraw. As soon as they make a practicable breach, our brigade follows in a column. Your advance force arrives in a parallel column. We do this after the offensive has begun down south. This should pin their interest. Your division and the Italian Libyan Division, also in reserve here, should be enough to roll up a Division of second-line British troops and maybe a Battalion of Palestinians.”

  “How do you propose to handle our higher headquarters?” Rommel knew that von Manstein had a signed relief order sitting in his office. Rommel was out of excuses for arbitrary actions.

  “All you are doing is following up on our action. Afrika Korps HQ gets daily reports on our patrol actions and raids. We don’t treat it as a big deal, and they don’t show much interest. Everyone knows we are mostly Militia, so we describe this all as ‘field training’. You are just exploiting a breach we made outside your Division. Being ready in case we accomplished what we claim ... can be explained as prudence, no?”

  Rommel sat there thinking, sipping his beverage. This could just work. If he started posting reaction reserves to back up the raids, but never actually used them, his staff and Afrika Korps would get accustomed to this. Victory covered a multitude of sins. Perhaps he could take Cairo, or at least bag a major British headquarters. It was worth risking his command. He was a storm officer, not a staff swine.

  Chapter 9

  0800 hours CET

  18 October 1940

  Headquarters, Grossdeutschland Regiment, Potsdam

  Göring’s boast on the loyalties of this unit had rankled OKH head Halder sufficiently that he had booked a surprise drop-in. He would assemble some field-grade officers for a ‘chat’ over coffee. Only none were present. Indeed there was no one here except an Oberleutnant and some senior Feldwebels. Halder asked the Leutnant the obvious question.