Deaths on the Nile

by Scott Palter

  In reverse, word was passed to the locals still on base. Anyone who wanted to run, do so now or get sealed in. A few sent for their families. The rest made their apologies and fled.

  The admiral had no more success finding the ambassador than the captain had. The best they could reach was a Commander Fleming. The man claimed he was in command of a brigade of naval commandos. Alleged that the evacuation of Cairo was in progress. Absurd. Surely someone would have notified Alexandria had such a thing occurred.

  0600 hours local; 0500 hours CET

  2 November 1940

  AAA position at the edge of Alexandria, Egypt

  Bain Collins was thrilled to be a real soldier like his Dad had been. Different army, but that didn’t matter to the young man. His father was Irish, his mother Bengali. The British Raj in India was neither of their nation. Soldiers in Bain’s view enlisted with an army and were true to their oath. So he saw nothing unpatriotic in being a German soldier. Soldier was a trade, not a patriotic calling. He was only a recruit now, but if he stayed in for the full thirty years perhaps he could make Corporal or maybe Sergeant.

  Now he was on a motorcycle with his foster brother Abduhl, who was now to be called Abe in the army, manning the machine-gun in the sidecar. Major Steiner had allowed Bain to be with the motorcycle vanguard. He and Abe had ‘language skills’. Bain didn’t see how languages had anything to do with fighting, but that was why the Major was an important officer. They KNEW things.

  Up ahead Bain could see a clump of men lounging at the side of the road. Most probably British soldiers, from the color of their clothing. Abe started to get his Bren gun ready but Bain told him, “Hold your fire, I’m going to try something.”

  Bain waved at the Britishers as he brought his bike to a stop. “What unit?”

  “74th City of Glasgow Ack Ack. You?” The British soldier answering was a lance corporal. Looked to be in his thirties, so probably a Territorial unit. Bain had been brought up to look down on these as ‘weekend soldiers’. He kept the learned disdain out of his voice. “Falcons of Malta. My Major will be up in a few minutes. Needs a word with your officer.”

  The Territorials had never heard of a unit named ‘Falcons of Malta’, but knew a lot of temporary units had been evacuated from that fortress before it had fallen. This Bain had a voice that was Army ranker born and bred. So one guy asked, “What unit were you born into?”

  “Third Bengal Light Cavalry. Born in Meerut Cantonment.”

  Territorials don’t know Indian Army units, and thus missed the joke. They fetched their major just as Klaus came up with the main force of Panhards and Kübelwagen. Bain had Abe fire a burst in the air, and called out, “Hands up. You are now prisoners of the German Nibelungen Legion.” There were curses, and a few men at the back ran off. Abdul gunned two down with his Bren gun and the rest stopped running. Everyone got their hands up. Klaus flagged down the lead touring car with Greta, Naiomi, von Kleist, and the two senior navy officers. “Any of yours have gunnery training?” Klaus saw a nod. “Leave two behind. I’m leaving two platoons. See if you can man these weapons or disable them. Either would do.” Klaus got back in his vehicle. He tried Peiper and Gunter again. No luck. Probably out of range. Off he went, leading the column to the port with Bain in the lead.

  0615 hours local; 0515 hours CET

  2 November 1940

  4 kilometers north north east of initial breakthrough point, former British 7th Division Sector

  The damned Matilda tanks were slow. Almost slower than a walking man. Ivan Gorlov had two of the slow-moving tanks, plus two Companies of his initial Battalion, plus the 20mm AAA battery, operating in support of the Italians pocketing the rest of the British north of the penetration. This hadn’t been part of the plan, but the Italians needed his two AFV’s and extra firepower. The British weren’t fighting very hard. He’d already detailed his other two Companies to prisoner guard duty. The Italian General he was working with kept promising that in a little while the Italian POW guard detachments would catch up and take these off their hands. “In a little while” seemed a flexible term to Italians – meaning ‘in the future but definitely not now’.

  He’d switched his radio to the Italian net to coordinate. Ivan didn’t exactly speak Italian; but he could sort of follow the gist of any Romance language after so many years in Romania, plus his own aristocrat’s French.

  Gunter wasn’t likely to miss him, but just in case he’d sent three messengers with updates on where he was, what he was doing. Right now what he was doing was sitting in place while some German Naval Commando unit escorted a large column of prisoners past. He’d have to ask Gunter about these. Brandenburg Regiment. Fought in British uniform. He’d shared a brandy with their Major. Man had a thick Berlin accent and had served in Denikin’s army after his Freikorps had been disbanded in Kiev during the postwar German retreat. He’d even fought near Ivan at a couple of engagements.

  ……….

  Lieutenant Colonel Orde Wingate was in the back of a truck pretending to be wounded. When a dozen of his Palestinians came to him with this absurd scheme, he’d been half of a mind to just laugh it off. But it was this or go into the bag. The sixty or so German and Austrian Jews were the ones at risk, pretending to be these commando chaps. The originators had all been officers or police. Swore they could play at being themselves, only without circumcision.

  0640 hours local; 0540 CET

  2 November 1940

  3,000 meters over the El Alamein battlefield

  Hauptmann Bruno Dilley had his squadron of Ju-87 Stukas in a holding pattern south of what, by his briefing maps, had been the British positions. The briefing had been chaotic. The south and north sectors of the British lines had vanished. No one was sure if the friendly forces were current on their recognition markings. The color of the day was supposed to be red. Red flares, red panels, big red X’s on the top of AFV’s. So far Bruno had seen red … and green, blue, yellow, and white. The forward air controllers were trying to sort the mess out. There were thousands of vehicles in motion below. This in turn produced rising clouds of sand and dust. Bruno was giving it twenty minutes. If no one came up with a coherent answer, he was falling back on what had been working for the last few weeks. With the RAF essentially absent from the battlefield, friendly units did not shoot at planes in the sky. So anyone firing at his planes from what appeared to be a fixed position, was the enemy.

  0700 hours local; 0600 hours CET

  2 November 1940

  City of Glasgow AAA position

  Peiper’s thirty minutes had proven to be a tad optimistic, as such things often were in wartime. He saw a roadblock with a dozen stopped British vehicles. When he halted to start deploying to take it out, he saw two of the road block party waving him ahead. The mystery was resolved when observation through field glasses showed they were in German uniform. Before Peiper could deal with this new situation, he was in receipt of a frantic radio message from Di Salo’s idiot woman. She was engaged with the rearguard of a large British force that was in transit towards him.

  ……….

  Coxita was on best behavior. She didn’t tell Pio Ronconi more than once that he was moving the Company far too slowly. He was in command. She was an ‘observer’. So she was the one who saw the dust behind them. Some unit was closing in on them. Someone who hadn’t radioed ahead to alert them. She tried to get the nominal Company Commander to pull the Company into a defensive position ‘just in case’. His answer was, “I’m in command.”

  “Yes sir.” She dropped her vehicle back to the rear of the column and faced it so the machine-gun’s pintle mount could be brought to bear on the lead vehicles … which observed her redeployment and fired on her. She returned fire, joined after a minute by her rear-most platoon. The British column swerved inland and looped around the Catalans, firing wildly. It was a noisy two minutes, then the enemy was gone … up the road towards Peiper and Steiner. Coxita decided to risk John’s ire. This was serious. She al
erted Peiper. She couldn’t raise Steiner but she was able to get her man, who said he’d notify Strauss. The next time she and John were alone she would try to politely suggest that this Roman ‘Black Nobleman’ needed a bit more training. The Black Papal aristocracy did not have a great military reputation, and in Coxita’s opinion this boy was living down to it.

  0720 hours local; 0620 CET

  2 November 1940

  2 miles south of Cairo municipal limits, on the main road to Sudan

  The last sniper round had shattered the rear window of the Rolls, and wounded the embassy clerk sitting beside him. Sir Miles Lampson was livid with rage. “How the fuck did it get this bad this fast?”

  The National Liberal Cabinet representative beside him on the other side of the rearmost row of seats was long past cosseting the ambassador, whom he regarded as a blind fool, even if one with nominal viceregal powers. “Because you dithered too long. You. Your class. The London government. Respectable London opinion back to the Versailles Conference at the end of the last war. Empire is not just a pleasant inheritance from the Victorians. It has real costs. If we were not prepared to pay them, we would have been far better off giving Egypt and Palestine independence, and been done with it.” From outside came the sounds of Bren-gun fire hammering the sniper’s probable location. There were mounds of dead people in the streets. Combatants? Rioters? Civilians? Subjects of the Crown? The time for distinguishing among those had long passed. Buildings were burning. People were begging for rides at the side of the road, offering up infants and small children with pleading eyes. Others shuffled along on the verge beside the vehicles, pushing everything from hand-carts to baby prams. Every motor vehicle was stuffed with far too many people, far too much baggage. The column lurched along at under ten miles an hour, with frequent halts for no reason that anyone could see. It was a catastrophe of Biblical proportions. “What the fuck did you expect to happen when it all imploded?”

  Lampson felt wounded to the core of his being. “Independence? Without guarantees on the Canal? On minority rights? It’s just not that simple. Withdrawing is a complex process.”

  “Actually, it isn’t. Your complex process requires we have the strength to continue our imperium. Two divisions and a fantasy air force are enough strength to hold down the King of Egypt. It is not enough to hold Egypt against hostile powers. A small army in Egypt needs a neutral or friendly Italy. Which we had, till we pissed it away over Ethiopia and the League. Italy safeguarded Austria in 1934. Stood with the West at Stresa. The reward was supposed to be Ethiopia. Which neither Western government was willing to say in public. So they supported the League in public and did the noble thing … and here we are.” The parliamentarian forebore mentioning Britain undercutting everything – doing a naval treaty with Hitler, without even alerting its two ‘allies’ first. It was sure to occur to Italy that if everyone was doing their own deals with Hitler, being the last one to negotiate was a poor bargaining position. He shook his head as the limousine continued to inch past the pathetic flood of terrified humanity. “I saw refugee columns like this in the West before Dunkirk. Expect to see the same all the way to Khartoum, possibly to Nairobi.”

  Lampson returned to fuming. The wounded clerk sank rapidly into unconsciousness, and thus was not available to keep reminding Lampson that he must order key facilities to be blown up. The last phone calls from the embassy had been blocked. The rebels by then held the telephone exchange. The plan was to find a military radio unit. All thoughts of that plan died when the wounded man was given a morphine shot. Lampson was far too angry to remember on his own.

  0745 hours local; 0645 CET

  2 November 1940

  Peiper’s roadblock, road to Alexandria

  This had been a Betar position, but now it was his. Peiper’s SS/NL battalion made up most of the men and even more of the firepower. Of course, that wasn’t counting the two British 3.7 inch Quick Fire antiaircraft cannons that the Betar had manhandled into position to fire on the road. It was sort of like the ever-useful German eight-eight. The crews had a few minutes training by the two naval officers. The guns themselves had neither high explosive nor armor-piercing rounds. No one had a clue as to what an AAA shell would do to a vehicle.

  When what was probably the British column appeared, Peiper ordered the naval officers to fire. They bore-sighted each gun against the moving column of trucks, and let fly. One round missed completely and just whizzed away into the distance. The other hit a truck in the engine compartment. No detonation, so either the fusing was improperly done or didn’t work on contact. The truck slewed to a stop, a few hundred meters from the roadblock. Men poured out. The other trucks reversed, picking up the stranded men. Peiper had not even ordered his machine-guns to fire yet, and already the engagement was over.

  0800 hours local; 0700 hours CET

  2 November 1940

  Alexandria Harbor

  Really smart, successful people often think they know everything. James Money-Penny had spent this morning having that problem with his Pasha. The final sale agreement for his criminal syndicate had been paid for in bullion. Gold, silver, even some platinum. Which had to be counted or weighed and then driven to the yacht basin. Through a city already fraying at the edges of riot. Yes, he had enough armed men along to deal with each blockage. But time had been lost.

  Arriving at the three ships triggered a loading problem. In addition to the large quantity of bullion, all quite heavy, another large group of people had been added at the last minute as part of the negotiation, all with luggage. The Pasha had not seen the problem. There was more than enough space on the three ships. The problem was the weight of the bullion. That much extra weight on the yacht meant redistributing other freight and people to the other two ships. The Boss had needed a careful lecture from the yacht’s captain on center of gravity – and what ignoring it meant to a ship at sea. All the valuables were going to be on the yacht where Money-Penny could personally be on board with the Pasha to guarantee delivery to Beirut. The Boss wasn’t stupid. He was pig-ignorant on matters nautical, and more time was lost. Time while the situation continued to deteriorate. Now there appeared to be a riot over on the RN section of the port.

  ……….

  The admiral had heard intermittent firing in the city for some time. Sounded like Bren guns in his opinion, so it must be the military keeping order. Suddenly he saw mobs of people surging past him, racing in terror.

  ……….

  Klaus Steiner’s Maltese guide turned out to actually know the city streets at least as well as he claimed. Perhaps he hadn’t taken the best route. Klaus would need a map and some time later to check. The next time he had to take a city, he wanted maps of his own.

  His unit had been using gunfire to clear the streets. He had said to fire over the heads of the swirling crowds. Some of his men obeyed. Some just fired straight at any concentration of people. His unit’s passage was marked by piles and drifts of dead, and screaming wounded. Klaus knew how poorly trained they all were at city fighting, and decided he would not discipline them later for this. War was a chaotic affair.

  The big mob in front of the naval dock gates fled past the traffic barrier as his column came into view, shooting as they went. Most of the guards ran away. The rest dropped their weapons and raised their hands. The Führer had mandated proper treatment of British captives. Klaus detached a platoon to guard the prisoners and open the gate.

  With the gate open the Battalion followed behind him. Klaus was amazed to see no destruction. How had the British not begun demolitions? Up ahead he saw Bain motioning to him. The young man had raced ahead with his motorcycle to a knot of men in Royal Navy blue. Arriving, Klaus saw that most were officers and several seemed senior. Using Bain as a translator, he introduced himself. “I’m Major Klaus Steiner, Falcons of Malta Battalion. Please order your men to assemble in an orderly fashion. Our Führer has mandated correct treatment for all British prisoners.”

  The two senior Brit
ish officers handed over their sidearms. The admiral was just fuming and glaring. The number two spoke for him. “I’m the Admiral’s second-in-command at the moment. We have thousands of civilians. What is their fate to be?” He looked hopefully at Klaus.

  “Simple situation, sir. If you will certify these civilians as under the protection of the British flag and arrange for them to be assembled, I will treat them as prisoners of war. We were instructed to take the concept of British forces in a broad setting. If they worked for you or are in some way loyal to you, it’s as if they were British, no?”

  “But what happens to them?”

  “A few days where we will jointly need to set up some sort of feeding service, and then they will be taken back to Italy.”

  “Some might be anti-fascists. How will those be treated?”

  “Sir, I’m just a Major. So I am going to make a suggestion and rely on you to carry it out. A base this big must have warehouses full of old uniforms and the like. Just get some sort of uniform on the ones in danger, swear them to your national service. Men, women, oldsters, whatever. A uniform top or a cap or something, and a British officer along to tell the Italians that they are military and … ” Klaus let his voice trail off. On Malta he had not seen the Italians question who was and wasn’t military. “The retired husband of my cook put his British uniform jacket back on, and got swept up on Malta. The Italians may eventually decide retired means civilian, but the odds say the war will be over by then, and then everyone goes home.”