by Scott Palter
Clara laughed in the dumb little twat’s face. “ ‘Justification by works.’ My, my. Five hundred years later, and we are arguing Luther versus Rome. It doesn’t matter. You have your reasons. I have mine. Our supposed world leader Stalin had his when he licked Hitler’s ass and divided Poland with him. Forget why you got here. You are here. Why are you staying? If your precious Revolution matters to you so much, pick up a gun and attack this unit. You’ll die a martyr to the World Revolution.” Clara gave a sarcastic laugh at the silly little girl’s visible terror.
“I don’t want to die!”
“Neither do I. When the Nazis came into power, some comrades went underground to continue the struggle. Some fled abroad to do so. Neither accomplished anything. Seven years later the Nazis still rule, and all the opposition does is silly pinpricks. The rest of us stayed behind and ate shit from the Brownshirts and the Gestapo. I was reduced from student teacher to Putzfrau. I’d still be scrubbing floors on my knees if an old neighbor of mine hadn’t had the Gestapo recruit me for Joey. You’ll meet Wanda some day. Bootlegger turned brothel owner, but as working-class as they come. The ideologues like you would probably call her lumpen proletariat. Silly category, but a lot of what you Party intellectuals do is absurd.”
Coxita actually was silent for three minutes, digesting all this. “So I must abandon the ideology I learned?”
Clara wearily shook her head. “Tell yourself any pretty stories you want. Just shut up about it. If you are here talking to me, your officer is getting as sick of it as the rest of us. Treat him well. Treat the rest of us with respect and some signs of sisterhood. We all have our reasons for being here. Why doesn’t matter. Here we are. After we are in Alexandria, at least if you leave, you’ll be in a civilized city. It’s sort of half-European, or so I’m told. There has to be a student, Bohemian district where you could wait tables or serve drinks. It’s what pretty girls down on their luck do. It’s less money than streetwalking but I doubt you have the personal fortitude to be an outright whore. First time you pulled attitude, the John would beat you bloody. Plus there’s the whole problem of pimps.” The thought of Miss Precious dealing with a pimp made Clara smirk again.
“Absurd?” Now Coxita was actually curious.
“The big words, the rhetorical gymnastics, none of it matters. Take Communism as it was supposed to be. A world of Workers where no one starves, everyone has a roof over their heads. Equality, brotherhood, no more bosses. The state vanishes and people are just good because they should be. It’s a dream, but it’s my dream.”
This wasn’t ideology. This was low-church religion. Coxita decided to see where it led. “So what do I do?”
“Accept that you are human. You are young and pretty. Being a rich aristocrat’s mistress beats scrubbing floors or walking a street corner in a slum. I don’t begrudge what you did. I despise how you treat the rest of us. You want to be a Communist? Show some class solidarity. Treat Mary like she’s a social equal. Have a kind word for slow-witted Hans. Stop looking down your nose at silly Greta. Especially Greta. Her protectors matter to your man. He’ll dump you if you interfere in those relationships.”
Coxita bowed her head and submitted. Inside she was seething, but more so she was terrified. She could take the rage out on the enemy, especially prisoners.
The world just wasn’t supposed to be this way. The feeling reminded her of how she felt after the defeat at the Ebro. So many had died in their tracks across the Ebro. Her unit had fought hard but pulled back in good order. The 45th International Division didn’t do suicide last stands. That was for others. She had heard later the same had happened in the nasty winter retreat to the French frontier. The COMINTERN had use for many of the cadres she had served with. Herself, she had been cut off in Barcelona. John had saved her from a savage gang-rape by a pack of Moroccan mercenaries out of their minds on hashish, cheap wine, and blood lust. She had never thought a human being could be so frightened as she had been at that moment.
She forgot the prisoners she had condemned to death while a Chekist. To her that was different. They were class enemies. She just knew now that she must learn to pretend to be the creature this Clara described. Pretty and pleasant. Coxita decided to think of it as a mission. She was being sent as a spy into enemy lines. Coxita thanked the older woman, and left to practice her new role.
Clara was just happy to see the idiot’s back. She would again warn her sisters in the unit to be wary of this viper.
0500 hours local; 0400 hours CET
25 October 1940
I Australian Corps HQ, center/rear of Alamein lines
General Blamey had convened his three division commanders. They had executed his movement orders tonight, but wanted to know why they were suddenly clearing out their rear areas of service and support troops, of the sick, indeed of some of their reserve ammunition stocks. “Thank you for rapid work. Sorry for leaving you in the dark. Things have come up, things that cannot be written down. Look around the room. Familiarize yourself with the staff officers here. They will be bringing you orders. Orders that you will send your own staff out to verbally execute.” The three division commanders looked up expectantly. “Cairo has started the pull-out. I’ve got my own connections there. We are not being left behind covering a British skedaddle.”
The three divisional generals looked at each other, aghast. Major General Iven ‘Mister Chips’ Mackay somehow emerged as the spokesman. “I won’t push you for how you get the information, sir. But what are our orders? You had officers doing inspections of the infantry companies – pronouncing as ‘sick’, men with infected bug bites, with bleeding callouses on their hands from digging. Two days ago they would have been on report for shirking had they shown up at sick call.”
“I have no authority to ship out healthy men. So we are taking an aggressive and expansive view of ‘sick’. The cannons and the crew-served weapons have to stay. It’s a thin line between prudence and mutiny. But, before our German friends start the party, the infantry will be down to a thin line of supports for the other weapons. Egypt is falling apart behind us. Cunningham needs an armed company for escort to travel from here to Cairo. Every train to Palestine is overfilled.” Blamey paused for breath. This was why Australia had insisted on a separate corps. “We are saving as many Australians as we can. Across Suez, up through Sinai and out eventually at Basra. ‘Mister Chips’, you get the rearguard when it all goes to Hell. You may get stuck going up the Nile. We are not being slaughtered by the British because they cannot make up their minds whether to fight in Egypt or not. It’s a good position, but where are the planes, the cannons?”
1200 hours CET
25 October 1940
Parachute Forces HQ, Gerbini Aerodrome Complex, Sicily
Generalleutnant Ramcke was getting awfully tired of insane orders from Berlin. He had Oberst Maurice and Major Schmidt in his office trying to find a way to fulfill the latest flight of lunacy.
“Remember that reorganization you both assured me was impossible to make happen in the needed time frame?” Both nodded warily. After Malta, neither had a kilogram of faith that any staff officer in Berlin could find the ground after being tripped. “We are starting from scratch again.”
Schmidt was a Major via rocket promotion. He had gone from aide to the General, to Regimental command in three months. His specialty was as a headquarters weasel. “What do they want now, sir?” Making Berlin happy was Schmidt’s route to being Oberst Schmidt, Knight’s Cross holder.
“The Suez operation has been redefined. Lack of transport aircraft, ranges from airfields to drop zone, shortages of gliders, the usual friction of war. We currently have four parachute infantry Battalions and four heavy weapons battalions, two of them parachute trained. We are now to reconfigure this into two parachute and two glider battalions. They are to take a bridge from both sides at once. Berlin asserts we can drop adjacent to the ends of the bridge, but admits the actual detailed air reconnaissance on the terrain hasn’t
been done. So we must be prepared to fight tanks and artillery, but may have to carry the glider-dropped weapons multiple kilometers.” Ramcke paused for breath. He needed to weigh how baldly to say what came next. Oh hell, he was never going to win a prize for polite, diplomatic statements. His superiors could either accept this in him, or relieve him. “It gets better. What recon has been able to determine, is that the bridge and its African side approaches are usually packed with vehicle convoys. Packed 24 hours of every day. So surprise in any real sense is impossible.”
“Your choices are not enough infantry to take the bridge, or not enough firepower to hold it. To say nothing of not enough ammunition for a prolonged battle if we do take the bridge.” Oberst Hans Maurice was a sardonic veteran of four years as a Kaiserwar artillery commander, and years after as a Freikorps officer. He expected the worst and simply coped. His attitude mixed insubordinate words and energetic results. “I’ve got more experience at the sharp end than you both. Two parachute battalions where you pull an infantry company out of each and replace with a machine-gun company. That gives you the firepower to overrun the initial defenders. My two-battalion regiment of heavier weapons on gliders. You accept that if firepower cannot hold the counterattackers off, we just get overrun. It’s a risk – but all solutions are.”
Schmidt added a point. “Can we get a second drop in the afternoon, perhaps? Just ammunition for the heavy weapons.”
Ramcke thought through the plan Maurice proposed. The man had more line experience than he did and seemed not to have a grudge at Ramcke’s higher rank. “I can live with this. We drop as two Kampfgruppen. One Battalion of each type on each side of the Canal. Hans, you and Alois take the African side. I set down in Asia. Dawn drop. So take off in the dark … ”
They would spend a day refining details. They had only four days before they were staged forward to Fuka in Egypt. Someday they hoped to be allowed to do a properly planned battle. The two older men each separately were grateful that at least so far the battles hadn’t been Kaiserwar-level bloodbaths.
1900 hours Pacific Daylight Time; 25 October, 1940
0400 hours CET; 26 October, 1940
Bakersfield County Court House, Bakersfield, California
It was hot on the podium. Usually the oppressive heat of the region broke in October. This week was an Indian Summer throwback. It was still over 90 degrees this late in the day. The day before the temperature had briefly passed the 100-degree mark. Harry Truman was on a barnstorming tour of California’s small and medium towns. He wasn’t a crowd-pleaser in the likes of Los Angeles or San Francisco. Bakersfield, with its large population of transplanted Okies and other Southerners, was his kind of audience. “Fellow Patriots, Franklin Roosevelt saved you from the Depression. The Economic Royalists bankrolling Willkie, Lindbergh and that bastard Coughlin busted the nation out in 1929. They were content to let you all starve as long as they stayed fat and happy. Now they are screaming, ‘Franklin’s going to send your sons to die in Europe’ I served in Europe in the last war. I’m a combat veteran, unlike that weasel Willkie who only showed up in France after the shooting stopped. We Democrats passed a law that no draftee would serve abroad. We stand by that law. We need arms for continental defense. The world’s gone crazy and we’ve got to keep this wonderful country of ours safe. But no new AEF and no new Republican Depression. Let’s keep everyone working. We need more New Deal, not more Wall Street high-handed theft. Willkie is a Wall Street guy. He’s not one of us! Thank you and God Bless America.”
The crowd cheered. There had been a good turnout. There always was in smaller cities happy to be noticed. Truman knew Roosevelt couldn’t win without California.
1000 hours local; 0900 hours CET
26 October 1940
British Embassy, Cairo
The pall of smoke over the city was bad and worsening by the hour. Virtually every military and civilian installation was burning documents in barrels. Some were burning them in vast piles, loosely held in place by concrete riot barriers. Warehouses were smoldering where the looters had used arson when repulsed from pillaging. Shops in the European districts had been both looted and torched. So were some mansions of the various elites, European and Arab. A dozen churches were gutted wrecks. The streets were littered with bodies where the newly-trucked-in army units had put down riot with massed fire. The Egyptian police and troops had more often used riot stick and bayonet.
“This cannot go on much longer.” The British Ambassador, Sir Miles Lampson, was in high dudgeon. The three-man committee from London, and a staff officer from what used to be Wavell’s staff, were attempting to pacify him. General Wavell was safely in London by this time. General Cunningham claimed that pressing military necessity compelled him to stay at 8th Army battle headquarters. Lampson had spent five minutes previous to this deriding that excuse as pure cowardice. “The Egyptian King had me in for morning coffee. Wants to know what we are still doing here? He knows we have given him away at the peace talks. He’s offering to get us a truce so we can leave in a civilized manner. Anyone got a good reason for why I don’t tell him yes?”
“Because London won’t back you on it, which means we won’t. Absent our consent ... ” The Tory paused to gesture at his colleagues. “The Army won’t obey you.”
The staff officer nodded at the evident truth. “Besides, why would the enemy give us a truce?”
Lampson wondered if the army picked their stupidest men for staff school? “Because why fight for something you can get with a month’s pause? We’ve given the place away. Same with Palestine and most of Iraq. London didn’t see fit to tell me, but the King was kind enough to show me the maps, to indicate what was still at issue, all of it. He has his own issues he’s asked the Italians to address for him at Lisbon. His London funds, his suzerainty over all the Sudan, his protectorship as he sees it over the Palestinian Arabs … ”
“Since when did he give a damn about Palestine?” This from the Laborite solicitor, whose party was the home of most British Zionists.
“Oh, since late yesterday when he was deprived of the pleasure of three of his mistresses, each of whom his guards proved unable to convey to the Palace through the street chaos.” Lampson had emptied his voice of the sarcasm he felt. It seemed to go over the heads of the others, and so wasn’t worth the bother. “Pray tell me we have an actual battle plan. Some stroke of genius worthy of Wellington or Marlborough. Even of Allenby. From where I sit, this is going to be Malta repeated, just with more troops. Fight till you can justify running away.”
The National Liberal man had actually been a pretty good staff officer in France and Flanders back the last go-around. He knew all too well the limits imposed by troop levels and terrain: “The 8th Army men are reasonably well dug in and will give a good account of themselves. Good troops in prepared positions can do that … for a few days. Reality is, not enough guns, planes, tanks. West Africa got the reinforcements you needed. It will take two months to cure this, and we don’t have two months. So the plan is to fight enough to get our support elements out, then leave a rear guard behind to cover an overnight pullback. Each day we stand and each night we pull back. In 1914 we did this from Mons, in Flanders, to the Gates of Paris. Yes, that was before tanks or planes. All Eighth can do is the best they can do. Finest traditions and all that. The Big Names from the 30’s will spend their twilight years blaming each other in the London press. ‘Thin Red Line of Heroes When The Drums Begin to Roll.’ ” He paused both for breath, and in sheer frustration. “You think this is the first time a British diplomat was caught out? Happened twice in Afghanistan. But for Blucher’s Prussians, would have happened in Brussels June of 1815. Before the news of the victory reached the city, there was worse chaos than what you had last night. Read Thackeray – Vanity Fair. Every empire gets caught out every so often, gets kicked in the teeth,” he stated to Lampson.
The staff officer asked the obvious: “I can get you three more brigades of second-raters like you had out on
the street last night. At that point the cupboard is bare. Do you want them? There are also a few brigades of Egyptians from Mersa Matruh that are up in Alexandria. No one ever gave them orders to go anywhere else.” The staff officer’s questions were interrupted by renewed firing. Volley fire, and not far distant. Single rifle shots that were probably snipers. An explosion that was probably dynamite. The ambassador just slumped in his chair and nodded shakily. Cunningham’s forces would be weakened further so Cairo might hold a few days more.
1900 hours local; 1800 hours CET
26 October 1940
Space behind the main repair bays, Brigade Strauss cantonment, behind Italian XXI Corps lines
Clara and Joey had been walking on eggshells with each other since breakfast. Mary Collins had brought the family’s morning meal over herself. While Abdul, Bain, and her other children handed around the food and beverages, she had taken the time to go over some details of a farewell party being put together for the inner circle before the big offensive kicked off. She had started addressing Clara as Frau Bats the day after Greta’s formal announcement with Klaus. Clara hadn’t quite known what to do with this. This time Joey heard. He had shot her a look, so she was clear he had caught it. But he hadn’t said a word about it, hadn’t allowed her a chance to explain it away. She had spent the working day looking for a right time.
This day was even more chaotically busy than usual. Joey, Paul, her brother Carl, all the guys were in constant motion trying to get every repair done before the fighting began. They were also going over the vehicles for the break-in from top to bottom. Motor vehicles were not designed for offroad movement on this type of terrain. Yet lives rode on them all working for a few key hours on a day coming soon, a day that would only be known when it happened. They had to wait for the main offensive, and then a raid of enough size for them to impersonate it.
