by Scott Palter
“But what if he fails? Badly fails?”
“Then most of us die. It’s war. His Battalion. Your Company-sized detachment and attached escort Company. Piper’s oversized amalgamated Battalion … ”
“Amalgamated?”
“Peiper was a Company commander when he arrived. He was a success, and his force is being upgraded to Battalion size. Another SS officer, Mohnke, had his Battalion almost destroyed. His few survivors, plus the ones sent to start the rebuild, will be with Peiper when we go in. Means Peiper has an amalgam of two Battalions-to-be. You use what you have when the battle starts. Total force is under three thousand men. That’s spare change, the way higher commands count cost. The probable loss is worth the long-odds gamble that Steiner pulls off another miracle.”
“Yet you are going along … ”
“I volunteered for this theater to stay in combat. I am supposed to be at home healing my wounds and dodging my mother’s attempts to get me married off. If this works, I hope to jump to Major and get my Knight’s Cross. I’ll be the youngest field officer in our branch of the family, since one who served Dem Alte Fritz. We advance the Reich, and our own careers. Isn’t that how war works for our class?”
When the naval officer got done sputtering at this preposterous situation, he trotted off to appraise his commander of the realities. Life was not as it first seemed.
2100 hours local; 2000 hours CET
1 November, 1940
Just behind lines of Mason’s Brigade, 7th Division Sector
The Hebe from Birmingham had been spot-on. Sergeant Billy and half a dozen of his boys watched the nightly raid passing the lines, heading west. They were led by three Matilda tanks and included a cruiser and a half dozen armored cars. Trotting behind them were a hundred or so Poor Bloody Infantry, the PBI. Nothing ever changes. The ‘gentlemen’ way back give vague orders that division ‘interprets’ for brigade as sending men to their deaths because … it tended to get fuzzy there. To maintain their fighting edge. To harass the enemy. Mostly to be seen to be doing something, anything more than sitting in trenches consuming rations while waiting for the next ‘Big Push’ with its miles-long casualty lists and paltry gains.
Billy had his ear to the ground. Brigade command had as little faith in these raids as he did. Hence the flare-pistol code. Billy and his boys had half a dozen by now, all with the proper red flares. Mr. James had given him handy requisition slips signed by another two-star general. Billy wished in retrospect he had found an officer like Mr. James in the last war.
2200 hours local; 2100 hours CET
1 November 1940
Di Salo battalion staging area, rear of XXI Corps lines
It was on for tonight. The ambush KG and the penetration KG had both already mustered and moved out. Capomanipolo Pio Ronconi was in charge of the Catalan company. He had been detailed here and given a promotion to officer rank because he actually spoke that obscure tongue.
Lieutenant Colonel Di Salo was off leading the penetration force. It was a pity he had left his whore behind. Coxita was trying to encourage the Company in the manner she had while fighting for the demonic Reds who had killed Ronconi’s mother. Every man in this unit claimed he had been conscripted by the Spanish Republic against his will. The only honest Red was his commander’s tart. Ronconi didn’t care if he led all these swine to their deaths. What mattered was the success of the mission. God’s Holy Kingdom in Jerusalem was to be recreated.
……….
Coxita had taken the German comrade’s instruction to heart. She spent her time explaining the mission to these men in simple terms. Many claimed to have served on the Ebro with her, others on the Aragon front. So she explained using actual operations as references. They would follow behind the spearhead, clearing out the British rear areas. They would then be resupplied and fall in at the back of the column, marching towards a big city like Barcelona. Their job was flank protection. If they hit serious opposition, there was a Panzer Division available in support.
2330 hours local; 2230 hours CET
1 November 1940
Sortie point for this night’s Palestinian Raid; Mason’s Brigade Sector; 7th Division Sector
There was precious little moonlight through the thick cloud cover. There was a holiday of light some kilometers to the south and west. Artillery duels, illumination rounds, the occasional massive flash as an ammunition dump cooked off. That reminded Gunter of the old days in the Kaiserwar. Riga and Michael. God, was he ever young and clueless back then. Twenty-three years seemed like a hundred to him now. He had memories of that callow lad, but found it hard to relate to that boy really being him.
Gunter was half out of the turret of a British Rolls Royce Armored Car. The design looked like a Kaiserwar antique to Gunter, but Joey had assured him this one was mechanically sound. The welded repairs to prior combat damage wouldn’t stand up to much of a pounding. That shouldn’t matter. The plan didn’t call for much combat. This would all be a fancy trick. The complex stratagem had seemed workable when Gunter and his confederates had pitched it to Rommel. Driving into the British lines now, with his life on the line, the risks suddenly seemed insane. The pressing need to reach Alexandria before the main German forces so as to have privacy to deal with the fence about the bejeweled golden birds now seemed to be childish greed to Gunter. The dead don’t need extra profits to spend.
……….
Sergeant Billy was watching the approaching vehicles and dismounted squaddies. Something didn’t ring true. There was an extra Matilda and two extra armored cars. The slapped-on welded plates over combat holes were in different positions on these vehicles than on the ones that gone out. The PBI was moving too crisply to be the very slapdash Palestinians. The hand signals seemed off. Billy had a tip-of-the-tongue feeling that he had, somewhere, seen troops that crossed ground that way with those signals. It would come to him. Oh, and one of the Matilda's had fired off two rounds behind them, as though to retard pursuit. There never was pursuit, and the tanks had never done that before. Billy and his guys watched every patrol. Mr. James always wanted details. Said it didn’t matter what seemed important. Just get him details. Officers did that sort of deep thinking, Billy supposed.
Meantime, from his perch to the rear he could see the green-as-grass British second lieutenant, with his baker’s dozen of semi-trained Egyptians, coming up to talk to the officer in the lead Matilda.
……….
Di Salo was surprised at how few British were guarding the gap in the minefield, waiting for the returning raiders. No one had asked him for the days-old password he had hoped would still work. Instead they had let his Matilda and Joey’s drive up, had let his accompanying Betar infantry swarm through, plant better markers in the minefield, and prepare for the next step in the dance.
The British officer wandered over. He seemed puzzled about something. Called out, “What unit?”
Di Salo answered, “Palestine brigade.”
The boy lieutenant heard his voice tones. Public school, Oxbridge, City of London. Accent that said highborn superior. The young gentleman snapped to attention. His men saw him do so and did the same. They weren’t trained enough to manage the position of attention particularly well. The young man was puzzled by the situation. This was not the same patrol he had seen out, but this was clearly a British officer. The lieutenant had attended a minor public school, Ewell Castle. He hoped to find a social bond to ask his questions of this obvious social superior. “May I ask where you did your schooling, sir?”
“Eton. But I learned my English from my British mother and a British governess.” Di Salo let a wolfish smile come across his face. “And Italian from my father and most of my family!” Di Salo let off a burst of fire from his MP-38. “Hands up! On your knees, all of you!”
Most of the men dropped to their knees before raising their hands, but regardless of the sequence all complied with both … except the silly boy officer. Instead he fumbled for his flare pistol. He dropped it, b
ent quickly to retrieve it, and collapsed, having been shot multiple times. Gunter, Joey, and half a dozen infantrymen had all responded to the motion by firing their weapons. The flare gun dropped from the lieutenant’s dead fingers. The fool had died a hero, but had not accomplished his task.
……….
Billy remembered where he had seen this infantry drill. German storm troopers in Picardy back in ’18. Shit! He saw the Germans round up the remaining ‘British’. The line was breached. They fired off flares, four blue ones marking the position for the followup waves. Billy motioned to the young men he was with to start fading back. When they reached their motorcycles, Billy would do his duty and warn the rest of Mason’s brigade. But only when he was back enough not to draw accurate fire. Two minutes wouldn’t matter in the larger scheme of things, but could be worth his life. The red flares would attract fire.
Then Billy froze for a second. He saw red flares rising from the south. Then from the north. Then all over the position. It wasn’t a down-the-line assault. He’d have heard combat noises. These panicky half-trained baboons couldn’t even remember the color code on the flares. Blue, red, it hadn’t mattered to them. They saw a flare and shot off their own. Billy hopped into the sidecar on the motorbike and let himself be driven off towards Alexandria. This was shaping up as a worse load of bollocks than Malta.
0120 hours local; 0020 hours CET
2 November 1940
Forward assembly area KG Steiner, formerly sector of Mason’s Brigade, British 7th Division
It was time. Uncle Ivan had cleaned out the administrative zone so fast and so completely that he had even overrun the first British traffic control roadblock some 12 kilometers beyond where the KG currently was. He shook Jochen Peiper’s hand as they wished each other well. Peiper was the lead until the second British road block was reached. The British moved these every day. The Elders told him this was to make it more difficult for drivers to turn inland and avoid the demand for papers. Peiper’s quasi-Battalion had more firepower than Klaus’s, especially the formerly Italian flame Panzers. Klaus would follow with Greta’s Navy Detachment bringing up the rear. Already, important German and Italian staff officers were consulting their watches and muttering. They wanted access to the breach. Klaus could see Italian and German engineering troops widening the mine-free zone. The small pathway Gunter had made would take days for two fresh divisions to pass through. Not his problem. It was time to MARCH!
0130 hours local; 0030 hours CET
2 November 1940
Brigade rally point, Mason’s Brigade, 10 miles to the rear of his original lines, slightly south-by-southwest of Mason’s original Brigade HQ
The trucks had been coming in by one’s and two’s ever since the first warning flares had started going off. Mason found many of the stories laughable. He’d been through the mill too often last time, to take tales of last survivors and overwhelming odds that seriously. Each vehicle load of ralliers had only seen one small piece of the puzzle; and like most men in combat, were abysmal observers.
He’d whittled the numbers down to something believable for his report to 8th Army HQ. It was a three-division assault, two German and one Italian. He refined the reports to what he’d seen in France and Flanders 1914-1918 and again in 1940. The absence of artillery prep was unusual, but the storm troops had engineering and armored fighting vehicle support. Engineers were standard for them in both wars. The fighting vehicles were the norm in 1940. It was a sort of variant on Fifth Army sector in 1918. Using these templates, the breathless reports of his rallying survivors could be hammered into something coherent to pass up the chain of command. The Germans had a battle drill, and the Italians seemed to have learned it. One of Haig’s 1918 armies could have beaten it back same as they had done several times in ’18, before the glorious advance that was the Hundred Days.
Army HQ was, as usual, clueless. So Mason just told them he was moving his brigade remnant back to First Australian Corps headquarters. He’d fought beside them several times in the last war. Crack troops. They’d find some use for his ‘brigade’. It was more like a battalion at this point. He’d send the men here with his number 2. He’d stay in place himself for a bit to see if anyone else was coming. God what an utter, complete load of bollocks. Even an inept shell of a division should have held longer than this. Haig’s men had known how to fight.
0140 hours local; 0040 CET
2 November 1940
Downtown Cairo, Egypt
Anwar Sadat could hear the sounds of combat from the area around the British Embassy. Nasser had insisted on leading that attack, and Sadat had deferred to him. Taking the Embassy would be glorious. It also was not going to happen. There were at least two battalions defending the place. All attacks by mobs and militia would accomplish, was a pile of dead Egyptians for a building the occupiers would vacate tomorrow or the next day. The verdict of history was visible. Every office the British or their lackeys occupied, had mammoth burn-barrels sending sparks flying into the night sky.
Sadat was seizing the key places needed to keep the city functioning. He had already taken the main power plant, the water works, and the other key utilities. He’d been repulsed at the Misr Station, Cairo’s main railroad station, and at the telephone exchange. He had led those two probes himself. Each time he had broken off once real resistance was met. Taking installations reduced to ruins, was not the optimal solution. Better to screen each position and try to seize them as the enemy pulled out. The demolitions would only come at the very end, when most of the British were already in their vehicles fighting their way out. In the meantime he was marching on the radio studio. If he could seize that, the Egyptian Islamic Republic could be proclaimed.
0200 hours local; 0100 hours CET
2 November 1940
Gisht Ari Pasha’s Villa, Alexandria, Egypt
Sergeant Billy had phoned ahead from the roadblock. It had cost a carton of cigarettes to jump the line and use the telephone. Seventh Division was gone. Which meant the Alamein line was gone. The enemy would be in Alexandria by day’s end. The Pasha still refused to be rushed. He was upstairs having tea with a clique of lieutenants who had purchased his operations. Everything else was packed on the trucks, and ready to be off to the yacht basin.
In the meantime, Money-Penny would pretend he was still a serving officer. He had rung up the harbor defense office. Name-dropping his two fictitious commanding generals had gotten him the senior man on the overnight shift. Pity the dullard was a blockhead. “Captain, I accept that you won’t wake your admiral on a mere lieutenant commander’s word. Send a party down the road to confirm my report. The line is gone and German motorized troops are on the march for Alexandria. It’s time for final demolitions.”
“Listen here, Lieutenant Commander whoever-you-are. My orders from the Admiralty are, no demolitions without express orders from the Ambassador in Cairo. I tried ringing them up after your last call. Telephone exchange is under attack. So is the embassy. Eighth Army headquarters denies that the line has gone. They say battle in progress. So go spread your defeatism somewhere else. My admiral will have words for your general tomorrow. If I were you I would get those three ships of yours out of my yacht basin before that happens, as you are likely to be before a court-martial for panic-mongering if they can still find you here.”
Money-Penny put the phone down. He had tried. Malta all over again. When would these clods ever learn?
0245 hours local; 0145 hours CET
2 November 1940
Italo-German Panzer Army Headquarters, behind the lines of Italian XXIII Corps
The two Generals sat quietly facing each other, each waiting for the other to speak first. The entire battle plan had just blown up. Somehow Rommel’s Division and Italian XXI Corps were on the march. Brigade Strauss might have done an operation on their own hook. They were Berlin’s pets, and moved to a music only they could hear. Four divisions plus Corps troops … do not go into action without anyone at higher headqu
arters having an advance warning.
The staring contest could have lasted forever. What broke it was a communications officer with updates from Claus von Stauffenberg for von Manstein. Geloso looked at the German and politely said, “Shall we share our knowledge and plan our battle?”
Von Manstein relaxed slightly. “Yes, I had warnings. Multiple. I have an ‘observer’ in the Strauss Brigade. Nominally he is assistant Ia.” He saw Geloso’s wary look. “Yes, a brigade with such a large operations department. Most unusual, but so is everything about Strauss’s formation. Strauss and his officers know he’s mine. As nothing was said about it, I presume the Reichsführer did not object. My man rated the plan as possible but risky. The failure seems to be at our level. Air reconnaissance and signals intercept seem to have missed out their 7th Division being drawn down to a shell of itself. The attack was on a Company’s frontage, and the entire Brigade collapsed. The other Brigade and the rest of the division are attempting flight. Your Corps seems to have pocketed them. Shall we now discuss your Libyan Division? That is set to follow in Rommel’s wake, and seems bound for the British deep rear.”
