Deaths on the Nile

by Scott Palter

  “For Cairo. The city is in chaos. Their king has approached ours about rescuing the city. There will be an airborne drop after dawn. So where do we send Rommel?”

  Von Manstein considered an honest answer, which was to send the deceitful prima donna to the devil. Wouldn’t do. Rommel’s luck was still with him. “Deep rear of 8th Army behind the positions of Australian First Corps. If he can either take out their artillery or force it to flee … ” Out of a further hour’s discussions, a new battle plan began to form.

  0320 hours local; 0220 hours CET

  2 November 1940

  Vicinity of second British Roadblock on coast road to Alexandria, 2 kilometers west of El-Hamam Egypt

  His infantry had dismounted 300 meters from the contact point. They were maneuvering well by platoons to find the flanks. Sturmbannführer Jochen Peiper was maneuvering his ‘armored forces’. Ten AMC-35’s, six Italian flame tanks, one repaired British Rolls Royce Armored Car, and five Kübelwagen with mounted ZB-53 machine-guns.

  The British roadblock had been designed for traffic control. The only prepared positions seemed to be some slit trenches (whose near-random positioning made clear that their purpose was someplace to seek shelter during air raids), and a headquarters shack that by now was in flames.

  Visibility was poor. Moon was close to setting, and mostly hidden by cloud cover and smoke from the combat. The defenders seemed to have been in Company strength. Peiper guessed a Platoon of whatever the British called their chain-dogs, backed by a pair of infantry Platoons. They were well provided with machine-guns and seemed to have a few antitank rifles. Two burning trucks and a damaged AMC-35 testified to those. No enemy mortars or artillery engaged. Peiper had a mortar section, but was using them for illumination rounds.

  Jochen was maneuvering his vehicles carefully. He had already left six AMC’s and three flametanks behind with mechanical issues. Alexandria was still over a hundred kilometers away. In his mind, preserving his strength mattered more than a bit of wasted time. So he lined up his machine-gun carriers and AMC’s, using them as a base of fire. He then spent five minutes beating down the British till the return fire essentially stopped. He doubted he had hit many enemy soldiers, but they were kissing the bottom of their trenches to stay alive. He continued the machine-gun barrage as he sent two flame tanks forward, one each to approximately where the ends of the fairly linear British position seemed to be.

  Some British officer must have had a trench periscope … or been especially brave. An antitank rifle fired at the flame tankette to the right. First round missed. Second knocked out a track. The crew sensibly bailed out before their immobilized vehicle turned into a torch and fried them.

  Second one got to within 10 meters of the first slit trench and belched fire. The horrid screams that followed showed it was on target. Screams and disgusting smell of fried human. Peiper had smelled such in France along the Aa Canal. French or British troops, or even Belgian civilians. In that chaos one would never know.

  Suddenly there were white flags showing from the British position. ‘Flags’ was a generous statement. White undershirts, a white napkin, and God knows what else. Peiper was immediately on the radio telling his units to cease firing. Let his infantry clean up the British position. A few dozen enemy would run away to the rear. It was the way of such things. Men with rifles and little water, were not enough of a danger to waste much time on.

  Suddenly he saw road movement. A German column led by Panhard armored cars was advancing. Advancing at speed straight through the wooden traffic control arm, knocking it flying. He clicked to the frequency he and Klaus had agreed to keep open for communication between them. “Klaus, what are you doing?”

  “Going on to Alexandria.”

  “Klaus, give me half an hour and we can go as a unit.”

  “Half an hour is fifteen or twenty kilometers we can be down the road. We both know the British will try to destroy the harbor. The faster we arrive, the better the chance we interrupt the process and save some of the facilities.”

  “Klaus, let’s contact Gunter.”

  “You contact him. I have a radio. He can always order me to halt in place till you catch up.”

  Klaus knew he was pushing the limits of his authority. In his mind this was what proper commanders did. The only General he really knew was Rommel. Who led from the front and overran every halt line. Greta’s family had accepted him as her husband-to-be. Time to be a hero and prove worthy of the honor. Wasn’t this what should be expected of a Commercial Director who was also a Party member and SS officer? Klaus had spent years in school and the HJ, being indoctrinated in Aryan superiority and leadership by willpower. More had stuck than his instructors had realized. The boy Major was trying to live up to multiple heroic images – the State’s, the Party’s, and of course his princess Greta who was now an official Aryan.

  0330 hours local; 0230 CET

  2 November 1940

  Headquarters I Australian Corps, rear left of main British positions on Ruweisat Ridge

  The Australians were nonplussed by the arrival of Mason’s bedraggled ‘last survivors’. General Blamey insisted on a briefing. Mason himself was in some of the last vehicles. After a quick review, Blamey had rung up Eighth Army headquarters. Cunningham was ‘too busy’ to come to the phone. Instead, a staff colonel was arguing with the two commanders over the open line. “Good God Mason, you are a Guards officer. Enough of that rubbish. A British division does not come apart this way. Get a hold of yourself, go back and restore the line.”

  Mason had by now no illusions that he had a career to salvage. “Relieve me if you choose, but no. Fuck no! Seventh was at best a courtesy division. You have been milking it for days for security detachments in the rear. So what we had was a shell. Fritz seems to have gotten wind of your troop movements. They made a push and it imploded. The bulk of those men never signed up to fight, and for sure we never took the time to train them to. You never gave us the heavy weapons or artillery to be a real division. I’m sure you had your reasons. Doesn’t matter. It’s gone. Eighth Division collapsed yesterday. Get your Army out while you still have one. I watched the Frenchies slow-walk their responses this spring. Cost them the war.”

  “The general will be informed in good time. I’ll ring up Seventh Division HQ to restore your front. In the meantime. I am giving you a direct order!”

  “Sod off, you inept clown! Use the remaining hours of darkness to move.”

  Mason slammed down the phone. Blamey put down his more slowly. He turned to Mason. “What do you suggest, colonel?”

  “Get your corps out of here. Give me a battalion of guns to back up what’s left of my lads. We’ll fight it out here, buying you as much time as we can. I served with you folks on the Somme in ’16 and again in ’18. You are top notch, or at least your fathers were.”

  Blamey beamed. “I was there for those battles. Some day when this is all over we should have drinks and compare stories.”

  Mason sadly shook his head. “I’m for the grave or the cages before the sun sets. I’ll try to get your guns out at the end, but no guarantees. They are the only thing I’ll have to keep the Jerry tanks from overrunning my lads. Half of mine are the sort of untrained newbies I told the staff idiot about. They are only here because they latched onto a real captain or sergeant. Best I can give you is a hard fight from fixed positions. I wish … ” Mason’s voice trailed off.

  Blamey understood. The rot, the slapdash expedients, the half-measures, it was all coming due for payment. All this Guards officer could provide was a version of the Birkenhead Drill. Reminded Blamey of some of the good British officers he had soldiered with in the Last War. Needs must. Thank God he’d had his staff doing plans for a quick skedaddle. He turned to his staff and barked out, “Variant three. Implement NOW!”

  0340 hours local; 0240 hours CET

  2 November 1940

  Breakthrough sector of what had once been Mason’s brigade

  General Rommel
was screaming at Gunter. Again. Gunter had been put on traffic control duty by an icily angry General von Manstein. The corps commander had been nastier than anyone Gunter had ever seen, but had neither raised his voice nor cursed. Gunter’s unauthorized operation had made a grand traffic control mess. Gunter’s own Brigade, Rommel’s division, three Italian Divisions, and Italian Corps troops were all trying to crowd through an opening made by a Company to allow successive Battalions to traverse. Von Stauffenberg’s fast group from Rommel’s Division had gone through before von Manstein’s radio dressing-down. To Rommel this obviously meant his entire Division must follow in support. Follow immediately as top priority.

  Rommel was a Divisional commander. Von Manstein was a Corps commander. Von Manstein had decreed that the Italians came first, starting with the 1st Libyan Division. Rommel could sit there until the Italians announced that they were done. Then his Division could move, with the remainder of Brigade Strauss.

  One of Gunter’s radio clerks came running up with something ‘urgent’. Rommel had a fit at being interrupted while yet again explaining that his order must be obeyed regardless of what the Corps Commander had decreed. Before the clerk could get out more than Peiper and Steiner, Gunter yelled at him, “NOT NOW! Find Oberstleutnant Gorlov. Have him take his Battalion up to Sturmbannführer Peiper and Major Steiner to sort out whatever the problem is. And NEVER interrupt a General officer like this again.”

  Rommel went back to his tirade about his higher rank than Gunter’s. Gunter kept directing snarled traffic while repeating over and over the respective ranks of Rommel and von Manstein. The clerk was left to try to find someone who knew where on Earth Oberstleutnant Gorlov, or even his Battalion, was? That Battalion had dropped off the radio nets near to an hour ago.

  0400 hours local; 0300 hours CET

  2 November 1940

  British Embassy, Cairo, Egypt

  The phone call was from Eighth Army Headquarters. Ambassador Lampson was not liking what he was hearing from General Cunningham. “What do you mean, the position has collapsed? Four hours ago your staff was assuring mine that today’s fighting had gone rather well.”

  “It had, Ambassador. Our line was taking attacks from the main enemy forces. We were punished by their artillery and air, but within expected parameters. Their infantry had only made minor lodgements and those were contained. Since midnight, a secondary attack has collapsed Seventh Division. I’ve got two armored divisions loose in our rear. The Australian Corps has begun pulling out, citing instructions from their home government.”

  “What instructions? The Australian Government assured us their men would fight. I’ll have the Foreign Office wire Canberra at once to get this reversed.”

  “Between the two of us, Ambassador, I think the Australian General, Blamey, is inventing these instructions. Presume the Foreign Office contacts his government and gets a cable back. Then they send one to you and you call me. Then we get Blamey on the line. Six hours from now, if we are lucky. More likely 18 to 24 hours. Without the Australians in the line, the rest of the Army is pocketed and lost. It’s over. By all means, start the process to fry General Blamey. However, I am beginning to pull the rest of the army out of the line. I cannot give you orders, but I strongly urge you to evacuate the embassy and start south before dawn.”

  “How could that division have collapsed?”

  “You knew our three line divisions were glorified militia mixed with rebuilds of shattered units from Malta. So at best they were an obstacle to a serious attack. Then came your riots. We robbed 7th and 8th to provide your security units.”

  “You assured me it was safe to do so.”

  “Please re-read my memos that I sent after each round of troop movements. It was all a calculated risk based in good part on the Axis plans London sent us being accurate. Eighth was dead anyway, so making it weaker shouldn’t have mattered. Seventh wasn’t to be attacked, so thinning that out shouldn’t have mattered. Eighth was a staff failure here. You’ve been copied on the report to the War Cabinet. Seventh was bad intelligence. The big thing remains this African war. They have gotten the reinforcements we needed. London made priority decisions, and we were not a priority. I hope that when Montgomery takes Dakar, the Cabinet will not repent of their decisions. That’s for the future. By dawn all of Cairo will know that the army is in retreat. If you don’t get yourself and your people out of Cairo, you may all be lost.”

  “But there’s no way to get all the remaining civilians out by dawn.”

  “Sir, there are going to be massacres of Empire civilians. Some of my service and support people will get destroyed by air attack. More will be lost from partisan ambushes. Fortunes of war. It’s over.”

  Lampson was furious. “My last cable to the Cabinet will hold you personally responsible for this debacle.”

  Cunningham’s voice showed just how weary he was. “I serve at the pleasure of the Government. They can have my head anytime they choose. Until then, I will preserve the last army that Britain possesses. I’ll be lucky to get half my men and a quarter of my firepower back to Upper Egypt. So be it. Now you must excuse me. This was a courtesy call, not me asking for permission. There is work to do. Dawn is in a bit less than two hours.”

  The line went dead. Lampson allowed himself five minutes of vivid cursing before giving orders to evacuate the city. He thought to himself that he was going to be remembered for the worst cock-up in the history of the Empire. Why the lure of Dakar and a few lesser French African cities had kept the Cabinet in a lost war was beyond him. Then again, why promise Poland to fight, when Britain couldn’t and France wouldn’t?

  0420 hours local; 0320 hours CET

  2 November 1940

  Royal Navy Headquarters, Alexandria, Egypt

  The captain was sure that whoever this fool Lieutenant Commander Money-Penny was, the man was a poltroon. Rear areas were always full of such self-important types. Nonetheless, the captain had been chosen for this assignment because of a long history of painstaking attention to detail. So he was phoning around. The police were reporting disturbances in the city. A liaison officer reported that the Egyptian army units in the city – including what had once been the large garrison in the Western Desert – were forming up to pull back to Cairo. The liaison officer said he’d be motoring to RN Headquarters with a small vehicle convoy. They ‘no longer felt safe’ around the Egyptians.

  The port area was sealed, but crowds were forming. Indians, Chinese, Jews, Greeks, Maltese, anti-fascist refugees, Egyptians known for their British sympathies … the street telegraph was saying, run to the last British positions in the city for protection. This didn’t look good. He tried the Embassy again. The Cairo telephone exchange told him the Embassy was no longer answering, but they would try to find him someone in authority. In the meantime the usual Egyptian port workers – the tea ladies, the shoe-shine boys, the office help – either had not turned up or in many cases were suddenly sick and needed to get home. This was so not looking good. He resolved to wake his admiral early.

  0445 hours local; 0345 CET

  2 November 1940

  Di Salo’s Battalion, 3 kilometers east of the original lines of Mason’s brigade

  In theory the battalion was guarding the breach point against British counterattacks. Once the initial defenders had been cleared out, there had been no British response at all. Most unusual. Lieutenant Colonel John Di Salo, his company commanders, and Coxita were clustered having a tea break when the communications runner found them. He was looking for Oberstleutnant Ivan Gorlov or, failing finding him personally, one of his units. All had dropped off the comm net and seemed to have vanished.

  Coxita was trying to prove herself useful. She was still quite frightened of being dumped in Naples or Alexandria. “Lieutenant Colonel Di Salo.” She was being formal here in public, instead of asserting her rights to use familiar terms of address. “Let me take the Catalan company forward. We don’t have any heavy vehicles to slow us down. We can fi
nd our two spearhead battalions and report back on whatever the problem is.”

  John was liking this new Coxita. Let her be subordinate in public … and feisty in his bed. “Capomanipolo Pio Ronconi, do you feel qualified to lead such an expedition?”

  Pio Ronconi was not about to plead lack of capacity, leaving his unit to be led by his commander’s concubine. “I can do this. There is no need for the young lady … ”

  “She is my eyes and ears, as well as a combat veteran. Coxita, you are not in command. You will observe for me. Now off, both of you. This is excellent Ceylonese tea and it’s getting cold.”

  0520 hours local; 0420 CET

  2 November 1940

  RN HQ Alexandria, Egypt

  The admiral was not accustomed to being on duty in the predawn chill. However, he was much more decisive than his night-shift captain. He issued quick, clear orders. The crowds in front of the gates were admitted, and escorted under guard to some of the many empty warehouses. When the Mediterranean Fleet had left, any and every spare part and other useful supply had been taken along. There hadn’t been shipping space or time for everything, and time was of the essence. As is, the warships were crammed to the point where fighting would have been difficult. Merchant ships were impressed for the rest. The only stores still plentiful were food and fuel of various types. The British Empire had both in abundance. No need to haul away extra, and thus abandon things that needed manufacture or personnel with skills.