It was two hours before dawn and there was still no sign of the impending sunrise above the hills to their rear, but it was coming all the same and Witzig knew that they now had a very tight schedule to work with. With his own Thor reconnaissance vehicle in the lead, the commander of 1FSK had ordered his men ahead at full throttle, well aware that the outcome of the day’s impending battle would be measured in seconds lost or won. Rudolf Witzig didn’t intend to spare the enemy any if they could help it.
The half-dozen men guarding Mitla Pass had been a token force at best, and they’d been dealt with quickly. Every care had been taken to ensure no warning or call for help was broadcast, and there was none, but Witzig was nevertheless expected there would have to be regular status checks throughout the night, and an alert would be raised the moment there was no answer forthcoming from the men watching the pass.
When that next call from Suez HQ would come was anyone’s guess – they might have an hour’s grace or just five minutes – and it was therefore imperative that they push on with utmost haste: there was no turning back now: 1FSK was committed to the battle and running against the clock.
It took them forty-five minutes to cover the thirty or so kilometres between the western end of Mitla Pass and the canal itself, driving dangerously fast with just the moonlight above to guide their way. They could only pray that there would be no unexpected obstacles before them as they roared along the unsealed, stony track down toward the water, the leading drivers well aware that any tribesman or wandering camel they might find blocking their path would be seen far too late for them to do anything about it.
They were fortunate in the end and encountered no such obstructions as Witzig’s lead units mounted the last dunes and the canal finally came into view, moonlight flickering like a myriad of stars across its surface as the black ribbon of water stretched away into the distance to the north and south. Off to the right, the commander could clearly see a faint irregularity in the canal bank on either side that indicated the ferry crossing they’d been making for. There were no lights or movement – he’d have been concerned if there had been any signs of activity – but he was confident all the same that someone was nearby, awaiting their arrival. Witzig instantly called a halt and tuned his radio to the correct frequency.
“Wüstefuchs calling Nachtschwärmer… Wüstefuchs calling Nachtschwärmer… come in please… over…” He held the microphone stalk of his headset close to his lips as he stared out across the silent plain, breath swirling about him in the cold of the desert night. It was just a moment or two before a reply came back.
“This is Nachtschwärmer reading you loud and clear, Wüstefuchs. Code word is Maulwurf … over…” The voice spoke fluent German, but it also clearly carried the accent of someone native to the region.
“Thank you, Nachtschwärmer,” Witzig smiled, recognising the appropriate recognition signal for their mission. “Code word acknowledged – my response is: Sirocco… over…”
“Acknowledged, Wüstefuchs… I can hear engines approaching from the east… are you ready to advance… over…?”
“We’re in sight of the canal now, Nachtschwärmer,” Witzig confirmed quickly, raising a small pair of field glasses to his eyes and surveying the way forward. “We have reached the banks approximately one thousand metres south of the crossing… please show your signal… over…”
As he stared off to the north, the faint, irregular flicker of a blue light quite close to the water’s edge on the eastern bank caught his attention.
“Signalling now, Wüstefuchs… light is blue… over…”
“I see your signal and confirm a blue light, Nachtschwärmer… is area secure? …Over…”
“We have control of the ferry approaches on both banks, Wüstefuchs. Ferry has been disabled but channel is clear for ‘swimming’… Diversions have been prepared to cover your arrival and are commencing now… over…”
“Thank you again, Nachtschwärmer; heading for your position now… We will commence crossing immediately… Wüstefuchs over and out…”
“Acknowledged, Wüstefuchs… awaiting your arrival… Nachtschwärmer over and out…”
Even as Witzig lowered the field glasses once more and gave the order to advance, the unmistakeable dull thud of explosions suddenly reached their ears, and he and the commanders of the vehicles behind him all turned almost in unison toward the south. A horizon that had previously been dark and featureless now showed tiny pinpoints of yellow and red fire in the distance.
The brilliant, almost blue-white flashes of several more detonations flared as they looked on, almost instantly dying away to leave more glowing, yellow ‘embers’ in their place. Whatever was happening in that direction was a long way off, and neither Witzig nor any of the others needed much help in guessing that the destruction they were seeing come to life was happening within Suez itself.
“All right, men,” the CO of 1FSK called over his troop intercom. “Our contact is waiting at the ferry ramp to receive us as planned. We’re going to be swimming ourselves across, so keep your course angled to the north: it’s close to low tide at Suez, so there shouldn’t be much of a current, but keep your wits about you all the same – the last thing anyone needs is to drift too far south of the ramp on the other side and hit one of the mines they laid last month. Keep your weapons ready… by the look of what’s going on down south, there should be more than enough distraction to allow us to get across without drawing too much attention to ourselves, but let’s not take anything for granted.” He quickly lifted the leather flap covering his wristwatch and consulted its luminous dial. “We’re on schedule at the moment but it’s still tight: I expect us to all be across and ready to move out within twenty minutes… let’s move out…!”
His Thor gunned its engine and trundled off across the dunes toward the ferry crossing, the gunner slewing the turret to the left to keep its 23mm cannon trained on the opposite bank. Witzig scanned the same area with his field glasses but found nothing. In contrast to the light tone of desert sand and rocks on their side of the canal, the western side was well irrigated and darkly lush with vegetation.
It was still bitterly cold, but he knew that would change the moment the sun appeared above the hills to the east. It was dangerous to take meteorological reports as gospel at the best of times, but a forecast of strong, dry winds and Centigrade temperatures into the high thirties weren’t difficult to imagine… they were in a desert after all.
‘Sirocco’… a word used to describe powerful Mediterranean winds rising off the Sahara Desert that could blast North Africa and Southern Europe with intense, dry heat and hurricane force, sometimes with a duration of only a few hours and at other times lasting for days on end. He turned back for a moment to consider the chaos already developing to the south as the soft ‘crump’ of more explosions originated from that direction, more felt through the ground below their wheels than actually heard over the growl of their engines.
Lowering the glasses once more, Witzig gave a snort and a half-smile as he considered the code-word they’d used in greeting – the same word chosen as the name for their entire mission. A desert storm was coming all right… one that would scour the British from North Africa until there was nothing left of their presence other than a passing footnote in forgotten history books. His unit was going to be at the head of that storm, and Rudolf Witzig felt his pulse quicken as 1FSK headed once more toward the heat of battle.
III/155th Panzer Artillerie
40km west of Suez, Egypt
It was 5:00am and sunrise was now less than an hour away, but it was still cold as the crews went about their business. Part of the 21st Panzer Division, the Third Battalion of the 155th Panzer Artillery waited patiently in faint but growing light of pre-dawn: twelve huge Hummel (Bumblebee) self-propelled guns along with their attendant supply and command vehicles, all spread out across several square kilometres of rocky desert north of the Cairo-Suez Road.
Like most of the mobile artil
lery units in North Africa, the 155th had re-equipped with the newer-model P-15E variant, which had replaced the venerable old sFH18 field howitzer of the previous P-15B with a longer main gun that was still nominally 150mm in calibre but was lighter, faster-firing and possessed of a far greater range. Set up as they were, ten kilometres behind their own forward units, they were to all intents and purposes invulnerable to Allied counter-battery fire; nothing the Commonwealth forces kept in the arsenals could reach them without setting up well within their own fields of fire.
It wasn’t enemy artillery that the Third Battalion has been assigned as targets that morning however, and all crews were well-and-truly ready as the signal to fire came through across their unit intercoms. With gun barrels already loaded and well-elevated in preparation, it was only a few seconds before all twelve weapons discharged almost in unison, muzzles disgorging huge clouds of smoke and flame as a dozen 40kg high-explosive shells hurtled down-range at almost 900 metres per second.
Twenty seconds later, the guns fired again.
Command Post near Agruda
18km west of Suez, Egypt
The Hindsight convoy had packed most of its gear the night before. The GMC 2½-ton trucks were all fuelled and ready to go and waiting some distance off to the rear, well away from the HQ itself to protect it from the possibility of air raid and all that remained now was for the people themselves to arrive with their personal belongings. It wasn’t completely dark anymore – the glow above the mountains of the Sinai to the east was growing and it wouldn’t be long before it would be possible to see reasonably well without illumination.
Max Thorne knew that he drank too much on occasion. As he stood unsteadily inside his tent and shrugged a thick, black parka on over his uniform, he was damn sure he’d drunk toomuch that particular night before. Two years earlier he’d had problems with alcoholism that had been exacerbated by a period of extreme stress leading up to and following Hindsight’s arrival in 1940. An intervention at the time by Eileen Donelson that had come none-too-soon had brought him back ‘from the brink’, and for a long time after he’d not touched another drop of booze.
Time apart and twelve months spend alone in the United States had caused a weakening in his resolve since then however. The very nature of his mission there and the vagaries of openly being the richest man on earth meant that the work he was involved in was as much political as it was practical, and by definition that also meant he had been required to circulate widely in US political circles – something that made it almost impossible to remain a teetotaller if one was to have any chance of effective interaction.
It would mostly be true to say that he’d not sunk to the same levels of desperation as he had during dark nights spent alone and drinking himself into a stupor in the Officers Mess of the Hindsight Base at Scapa Flow toward the end of 1940, and Thorne could – with reasonable honesty – claim that he was still mostly in control of himself when he did drink to excess, but it was on the infrequent ‘mornings after’ such as the one he was experiencing that particular morning that Thorne began to wonder if perhaps he might once again need to rein in his consumption to a more manageable level.
He shook his head several times as he checked the radio and other equipment clipped to his web belt, as if in the vain hope the movement might somehow ease the thumping migraine that currently felt as if it were attempting to kick its way out through his frontal lobe. He’d taken two aspirin from the small first aid kit he kept in his pack, downing them with a large glass of freezing-cold water to ward off dehydration, but in his current condition he suspected the activity was likely to be about as effective – in his own words – as ‘using a Band-Aid on an amputation’.
With the remainder of his gear packed, Thorne finally decided he was about as ready to leave as he was ever likely to be and shrugged his backpack over one shoulder as he moved toward the exit of his tent.
All packed and ready to run away with your tail between your legs?
“Not in the mood for your shit…” he growled softly in return, pausing for a moment by the closed tent flap. “All I want right now is for you to fuck off and leave me alone…”
To use a saying you yourself were once quite fond of, there was a time when all you wanted was to have a million or two in the bank and to be shacked up with the lead singer of Texas… didn’t get that either, did you? Although… the voice in his head relented somewhat …no doubt your on-again-off-again ‘friends-with-benefits’ thing with Eileen has probably gone some way toward offering a half-decent substitute...
“Now you’re just being creepy…” Thorne shot back far too quickly, leaving him wondering if his own subconscious knew something he didn’t. “The fact that Eileen might bear a passing resemblance to Sharleen Spiteri is completely coincidental,”
Oh, completely coincidental of course… as is her being Scottish… and being able to sing and all…
“Oh, blow it out your arse…!” Thorne snapped dismissively, rolling his eyes in frustration. “Better minds than you have tried to psychoanalyse me in their time and come up wanting…”
True... true… but none of them knew exactly what you were thinking, did they? They ever ask you why you thought your relationship with Eileen didn’t work out… but then, we already know the answer to that question, don’t we…?
“I’m not listening to anymore of this bollocks… I have far more important things to do than –!”
He stopped for a moment as he realised that the rumbling he’d thought was only headache actually had some basis in reality. The crump of artillery shells landing somewhere off to the west caught his attention for a moment, not sounding particularly close but closer than he’d have preferred all the same.
It wasn’t a complete surprise. Random artillery barrages were infrequent but it would be incorrect to say they were actually rare for all that. Both sides sometimes considered it beneficial for their gun crews to keep in practice using live ammunition rather than carrying out simulations, and what better way was there to practise with live rounds, after all, than actually firing them at the enemy. So the occasional bombardment was sent in one direction or the other, and it seemed that it was the Germans’ turn to give the Allied lines a bit of a shake up into the bargain.
Thorne didn’t expect it to last too long – they rarely did – and although he was no expert, by the sound he suspected the shells were falling a little long and were probably missing the Allied front lines altogether. All the better really, if they were; the enemy gunners could have their fun and hopefully no one – or, at least, not too many – would get hurt in the process.
It was at that moment a shockwave struck his tent a hammer-blow with enough force to partially collapse it about its wooden frame, sending a shooting pain across his skull and vision into the bargain as he felt the ground shake about him and the much closer sound of that blast finally reached his ears. He staggered for a moment, fighting to maintain his feet as he fought to untangle himself from the fallen canvas before finally struggling into the open.
He found dozens of soldiers, doctors and female nurses from the casualty clearing station already pouring from their own tents and making for slit trenches all over. There was no need to sound an alarm – everyone was already well aware of what was going on – and Thorne found that a sudden burst of adrenalin was a fine cure for both his migraine and any leftover drunkenness his body might be experiencing as he heard the deafening rip of more artillery shells howling overhead and he joined the swarm of men heading for the nearest trenches.
Desert trenches were in most cases a different beast entirely to those a veteran of the 1914-18 war might have experienced on the Western Front. In the deserts of North Africa, the ground underfoot generally fell under one of two quite different categories: it was either stony, hard-packed and incredibly difficult to dig into to any depth or was alternately comprised in many areas of sweeping dunes of shifting sand, neither choice being one that was generally conducive to building eff
ective trench lines of any great depth or longevity.
There were also salt flats and marshes and, in some cases, dangerous areas of fech fech, a fine and incredibly dry type of sand that could often be found in quite deep deposits hiding barely below a surface crust that appeared quite solid until an attempt was made to either walk or drive across it, much to the detriment of those trying. Fech fech was one of the main contributing factors to the desert phenomenon of quicksand, something that while indeed quite dangerous to the unsuspecting traveller, was in reality something quite a long way removed from the so-called ‘quicksand’ of Hollywood’s imagining that generally gave the trapped hero or heroine the appearance of struggling in a slushy bath filled with a tan-coloured, soupy solution of porridge and shredded cork.
The slit trenches into which the men of the 2/28th sought safety in that morning were barely deep enough to provide any cover at all to a man when standing fully erect, and only at very infrequent intervals had anyone found the time, resources or inclination to construct hardened bunkers of the type that might be able to withstand an actual direct hit from an artillery shell of any reasonable calibre.
That being said, Thorne was as happy to be in any trench at all as the others around him as 150mm shells cratered the entire area, shattering the tents and Nissen huts and – in the case of the CCS – most of the vitally important medical equipment within. He tried several times between shell strikes to raise Eileen – or anyone else from the Hindsight group – on his belt radio but had no luck, something that didn’t make him feel any better.
Two more landed close by in quick succession, the overpressure slamming into his chest and making it difficult for him to breathe. He slumped momentarily to the bottom of the trench, wheezing heavily as his lungs fought for badly needed oxygen.
“Keep your heads down, boys…!” The bellowed instructions came from somewhere up the line, just out of Thorne’s vision as he struggled back into a sitting position and leaned his back against the trench wall. “No need to be curious... go lookin’ to see what’s goin’ on ‘up top’ and the next thing you’ll be lookin’ for is your bloody head!”
Winds of Change (Empires Lost Book 2) Page 64