Knight's Move (Kirov Series Book 21)

by John Schettler

  Alexander gave him a stern look, but silently nodded. “I got a message off to London yesterday. In view of the fact that we’ve no air support any longer, the Navy is fighting with one hand tied behind its back. They can only sortie at night, and the Germans will be on to that soon enough. I asked the Prime Minister if he wanted us to stand our ground here, and by so doing expend this force, for I cannot see any way we can hold out without supply. So yes, Colonel Frost, that is why I called this meeting. That is the question. Do we hold, and make this our war, riding out the balance in a Jerry P.O.W. camp? Or do we fight our way west and try to hold Tenerife?” He folded his arms, looking the men over, waiting.

  “The lads have fought hard,” said Stockwell. “We’ve held the line from here to San Mateo, and beaten off attacks at high odds. That said, when the bullets are gone, I don’t much fancy the thought of a P.O.W. Camp. I say we fight our way west,”

  “Right,” said Frost. “We’ve still got two or three days supply in hand. If we move now, and fall back in good order, the line will strengthen as we withdraw west. See how the mountains run up towards Galdar? That town would be the tip of a cone, with the north coast one side, the mountains the other, and our present line the wide base. Our line will compress in length as we withdraw. I’m sure we could hold.”

  “Getting the entire force off from the west coast won’t be easy.” Alexander raised an eyebrow, thinking.

  “We did it at Dunkirk,” said Stockwell. “We can do the same here. Get everything that floats or swims to any port worth the name.”

  ‘Those are just small fishing ports—bays and beaches. We’ll have to leave all the vehicles behind.”

  “We won’t need them on Tenerife.” Stockwell stated the obvious.

  “Yes… And when we get there we’ll have a ticket to the very same show we’ve just sat through here.”

  “Well at least that gives the navy a chance to get supplies to Tenerife,” said Frost. “I say we fight, and if they kick us off there, then we fight them on Palma.”

  General Alexander shrugged. “That was the decision I came to last night, but I’m glad to hear you both concur. As for General Thomas and his 7th Brigade, he’ll have to get back to Maspalomas. Johnny, you’ve got San Mateo. Hold it, then you get the exciting mountain trek west to San Nicholas.”

  “My pleasure sir,” said Frost with a smile and a nod.

  “We leave nothing of use to the enemy behind. I’ll want the quays demolished, and all harbor facilities, and I obtained permission to mine the city and harbor. The old escorts Malcom and Broke are still here, and if they can get the wounded off, so much the better. They’ll make a run for it tonight. The F.A.A. gave it to the French good this morning. They’ve lost Dunkerque, and will have their hands full pulling men out of the water. So I don’t think we’ll be under their naval guns today. Now’s the time to make our move. Make all the arrangements, gentlemen. We pull out as soon as possible.”

  * * *

  As often happened in war, the planned withdrawal would meet with unexpected difficulties. To begin with, stores of petrol were very low, which meant that most of the artillery could not be moved. General Alexander had no choice but to fire off all the remaining rounds they had, and then spike the guns. 2nd Lancaster Fusiliers was given the task of standing as rear guard, and there was fighting in La Palma all that morning.

  German air strikes were also very heavy the next day, as the Luftwaffe seemed angry that the British carriers had slipped in an attack while their guard was down earlier that morning, and Goring no doubt got an earful from Admiral Laborde after the sinking of Dunkerque. German fighters were prowling over the island, diving and strafing anything that moved, which made the withdrawal a dangerous adventure. The regular army battalions had the most difficulty. The Commandos, being lighter afoot and trained for long open country marches, made better time.

  As they moved west, they found that there was more German strength behind them than they anticipated. In addition to the three battalions of Falschirmjaegers that had parachuted in the pre-dawn hours, the Germans sent in two more machinegun battalions that had been in reserve on Fuerteventura. As British units arrived on the scene, sporadic fighting erupted in the northwest corner of the island. Battalions of British troops would encounter enemy company strength positions attempting to block the roads, and so the British were forced to deploy and attack. The five Commandos swept inland, with the regulars along the coast, and with the Germans threatening Puerto Nieves, some units near San Nicholas to the south humped it up the road to reinforce the engineers there.

  Not a man from 2nd Lancs would get back, fighting stubbornly to hold the main strength of the Germans at bay near La Palma. They would make their last stand on San Lorenzo Ridge about five miles west of the harbor, fighting until the last round was expended, and by so doing, buying the valuable time the remainder of the force needed to make the withdrawal west.

  Stockwell’s 5th Northumbrians were also forced to deploy as a rear guard that afternoon, fending off the advance of a battalion from the German 327th Infantry Division. Colonel Frost held San Mateo until he realized the Germans were not interested in it, then began the long hard trek up into the highlands to the west. By dusk, his men had trudged some 20 miles over very difficult terrain, and Frost himself had led the way, reaching a point only five miles east of San Nicholas.

  To the south, Brigadier Thomas was also forced to leave most of his artillery behind, managing to get only one battery safely to Maspalomas where it boarded a small transport that night under cover of darkness. Fishing boats, dinghies, and transport shipping timed their arrival on the coast just after sunset when the risk of German air attack was lowest, and the 7th Brigade would get off intact, living to fight another day. The Germans were less energetic in pushing south after them, still focusing their main effort near the Grand Harbor to the north.

  As the Germans were still quite scattered from that pre-dawn air drop, the Commandos were able to shoulder them north towards the coast. Ramcke was present, and he moved from company to company, organizing the defense. By dusk he was holding a segment of the northwest, about four to five miles deep and twelve miles wide from Puerto Sardinia in the west to San Felipe in the east. The British had no intention of tangling with them further. They merely wanted to open a path to Puerto Nieves, and the coastal road leading south to San Nicholas. That was the only way they could get anyone off the island, and they succeeded in securing that route by the following morning.

  They would be two more days getting the men off, mostly at night. In this the destroyers of Force C were an invaluable aid, rushing in to arrive after dusk, and making several trips by night, their decks laden with the Commandos as they slowly embarked. Stockwell’s troops were the last to leave, and they left many behind that had fallen in those hard fought rear guard actions. But the British would get all of 7th Brigade, five Commandos, three battalions of Royal Marines and Frost’s entire Parachute Regiment safely to Tenerife. There, weary, disheartened and bedraggled, they would set about organizing the defense of that island, principally around the main harbor at Santa Cruz.

  For their part, the Germans would take Gran Canaria after eight days hard fighting. They found the harbor docks and quays demolished, the port mined, and the old WWI destroyer escort Broke scuttled in the main channel to block large ships from docking. The nearby airfield had been mined and craters by demo charges, and it would be weeks before the Germans would get any use out of their new conquest. In the short run, they would focus mainly on sweeping the island for stragglers, consolidating, repairing the damage done by the British engineers, and lifting as much war supply as possible by sea and air.

  Three of the seven islands had now been secured, though only Tenerife and Palma offered the British any facilities that could pose a threat. But Halder’s warning to Rader was now made a hard reality. The Germans were going to have to secure all these islands to make use of the principle ports and airfields they now contr
olled without constantly having to fight off possible enemy attacks from airfields on the others. Raeder had his prize, but it had come at great cost, and that night a beleaguered French Admiral would rue the day France ever cast its fate to the service of Adolf Hitler.

  * * *

  Admiral Laborde was incensed. Gensoul… this was the second time the man had seen his battleships torpedoed to oblivion, and now look at what was left of the French navy! Both Strasburg and Dunkerque gone, along with Bretagne and Provence. Lorraine and Paris interned by the British, though they were too old to matter much in this war. Richelieu was another matter, blasted to hell off Fuerteventura, along with three cruisers lost in this damn operation. Jean Bart was lucky to have slipped away unscathed, and Normandie is laid up at Casablanca, forced to anchor out in the bay because she’s just too damn big to dock there. I’ll have to send her to Gibraltar, where she can stew with the rest of the German ships beaten to near hulks there.

  In the Pacific, we’ve lost Bearn, our only functioning aircraft carrier, and the Germans have cannibalized every other ship we had on the dry docks. We’ve spent ourselves in the service of that demon of a man in Berlin, and all because the damnable British thought they could simply order us about, seize our ships, demand we sink them to deny them to the Germans. Well, that was not to be.

  In spite of these terrible losses, we’ve managed to hurt any force we were up against. We taught the British to respect us off Dakar, and they lost Barham there. We fought them hard off Casablanca, and then came that awful battle off Fuerteventura, all so the Germans could get their greedy hands on these islands. So here we sit, with no more than two good battleships we can put to sea in the foreseeable future. If I leave those ships in the Atlantic, what will their eventual fate be? Admiral Raeder will certainly find good use for them, as he has for all the rest of our ships on the bottom of the sea. Can I refuse?

  He considered that, thinking how he might extract his last two battleships from this fruitless campaign, and send them home to Toulon. From there they might at least weigh in with the Italian Navy to neutralize Cunningham’s fleet in the Eastern Med, and for what? To keep Herr Rommel supplied.

  That is all we are now, he thought, a covering force and fetch and carry service for German operations. Moving Normandie would be accomplished easily enough. I can simply say she needs work that can only be accomplished at Toulon. Jean Bart can hold on at Casablanca, but if I leave her there, Raeder will want that ship out to the Canary Islands any time he musters up a supply convoy. Yes, the Germans may eventually take those islands, but now they must keep all those troops supplied by sea. They certainly can’t count on the Bismarck any longer, not for at least six months. And the Hindenburg will likely be nursing her wounds in Gibraltar for 90 days.

  He shrugged. I suppose Jean Bart will have to stay, otherwise how do I support the colonies in West North Africa? The Germans have made themselves right at home there as well, but we may need them soon. The Americans are in this war now, and so it is only a matter of time before they begin to plan operations against us. I have little doubt that our colonies will become the first battlefields, along with Gibraltar. It is going to be a very long, hard year…

  He sighed, the fatigue of these last days heavy on him, his thoughts a muzzy ache behind his forehead, seeing nothing but pain, loss, and further humiliation ahead for France.

  Yes, the Yanks and Brits will lock arms now, and they’ll come. What will we do when that happens? What will be left of France when this is over? Germany may still look invincible now, but something tells me we are on the wrong side in this war, and that is something we will have to pay heavily for, in both blood and honor.

  Part XI

  Encounters

  “Ships that pass in the night, and speak to each other in passing, only a signal shown, and a distant voice in the darkness; So on the ocean of life, we pass and speak to one another, only a look and a voice, then darkness again and a silence.”

  ― Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

  Chapter 31

  Captain Gordon MacRae stood on the bridge of Argos Fire, thinking. They had gone south to look for that British Convoy as planned, and were now well off the Cape Verde Islands. But the replenishing operation had taken far longer than planned at Madeira, the engineers sorting out a few difficulties below decks. They laid in a stock of ten Harpoons, and were taking some time to see how they could adapt them to the underdeck silos. MacRae did not want to go to sea without them, for he would be little more than a radar picket with two deck guns.

  That thought gave him more than a few troubled nights. Those ten Harpoons were now all the real punch he had, and soon, if the ship was committed to any further air defense scenarios, he would be looking at the same situation on his SAMs. They were just weeks into 1942, and the war might have three more long years to play out. At this point, it was not yet even certain that the Allies would prevail, and that thought gave him a chill. In spite of all the advanced technology aboard the ship, he felt as though they could not really do all that much to nudge the outcome in a favorable direction.

  “Our Sampson radar is likely to be the most significant edge we can offer these people,” he had said to Mack Morgan, the ships swarthy intelligence officer. Morgan gave him a look, clear eyed, his mind always thinking yet one more step ahead, like a good chess player, plotting out his moves.

  “Aye,” said Morgan. “We can make a difference in a situation like this, where the Royal Navy has to get after a surface raider. A pity we were so long getting down here. It looks like the trail has gone cold.”

  By the time the missiles were rigged out to be made operational in the silos, they were too late to stop that German raider from sinking its teeth into Convoy WS-15, and then too late to prevent them from slipping away when the old battleship Royal Sovereign came on the scene.

  “Well this is our watch now,” said MacRae. “We’ve topped off our fuel, though that tanker might only fill us up a few more times.”

  “It’s a damn miracle those ships fell through,” said Morgan. “They call them ‘The Funnies.’”

  He was talking about the modern flotilla of auxiliary ships that had suddenly appeared in the midst of that tense duel with the Germans at sea. Someone lit off a nuke, most likely the missing Russian submarine, which had never been seen since. To their great surprise, in exchange they found a small convoy that had been bound for Mersa Matruh, strangely linked to Kinlan’s 7th Armored Brigade. They were supposed to be his ride safely back to the continent, but the war broke out, the missiles came, and so did Kinlan, blown 80 years into the past, just in time to give Erwin Rommel nightmares for months on end.

  There were four Roll On – Roll Off ships to move his heavy armor, Hurst, Hartland, Anvil Point and Eddystone, and a civilian ferry sailing under an Irish registry was also along, the Ulysses, capable of lifting 2000 personnel and over 1300 vehicles. The RFA repair ship Diligence had proved to be most useful, with engineers and extensive shops to make repairs. When HMS Invincible showed up with that head wound, MacRae had suggested he give the lads on Diligence a crack at working on her shattered bridge, which is what they were doing even at that moment. Invincible would also get a very nice surprise when the job was done, for Diligence had the modular workings for one of Britain’s new radar sets, the Type 997 Artisan 3D.

  Artisan stood for Advanced Radar Target Indication Situational Awareness and Navigation, and if the engineers could figure a way to integrate it with Invincible’s antiquated power generation systems, they could literally built it right into the newly repaired upper conning tower superstructure. Intrigued by the idea, Tovey ordered the venerable battlecruiser to the Azores, where it now road at anchor right next to Diligence, with scores of modern day engineers working the problem, and the repair job, day and night. When they finished they would give Invincible her night eyes, an all seeing radar system, to be manned by trained personnel from the Funnies. It could range out 110 nautical miles, and track 900 simultan
eous targets the size of a tennis ball traveling at Mach 3. Those were night eyes, to be sure.

  The last ship in the Funnies was the versatile RFA Fort Victoria, with double duty as an ammunition stores ship and replenishment oiler. At 33,675 tons displacement, she exceeded the weight of the Revenge Class battleships of this era, was 50 feet longer, and also wider abeam. It had its own night eyes in a Type 993 3-D Surveillance radar, and the ship’s ample aft helo deck could hold five aircraft. Better yet, three of those were already in the helo bay, AgustaWestland AW101 Merlins, capable of carrying up to 45 troops each, as well as Sting Ray torpedoes. So the ship could function in an ASW role, a perfect convoy escort command ship if ever there was one for this era. This was what MacRae pressed upon Admiral Tovey once he took stock of what they had in those ships.

  “I know that ship well,” said Morgan. Worry not, Gordie, old Fort Victoria can help keep us at sea for a good long while, god bless her. They were going to retire her in 2019, but the deteriorating political situation gave them other thoughts. So they laid in more room for stores and fuel, even fresh water generation—and one more thing. There was a company of Royal Marines aboard that lassie, all fit as fiddles. At the moment, they have them pulling security details on the Funnies, but for my money, they’d make a nice little hit and run outfit on those Merlins.”

  “Hit and run at what?” said MacRae. “That ship will most likely be used for convoy escort. Those helos will do a fine job on German U-Boats, at least while the torpedoes last.”

  “Aye, the same old problem,” said Morgan. “We’ve a nasty bag of tricks here, but only for a while. Yet there’s nothing stopping them from using weapons from this era. The only rub then will be the aviation fuel. You can’t just pour anything into those engines.”