“Excellent! And while you do this I have a few preliminaries to take care of here in the Balkans. I have Hungary, Bulgaria and Romania. Yugoslavia is next. We are calling it Operation 25, after my Führer Directive by that same number. I anticipate a swift campaign, but Mussolini has complicated matters by meddling in Greece.”
“That will be to your advantage,” said Volkov, knowing the history of these events very well. The Devil’s Adjutant had more than oil and military support for Hitler. He also had vital information, foreknowledge of how the war played out, and every success and failure. He had sent a message to Hitler earlier when asking for this meeting, and strongly reinforced the need to cow Spain and take Gibraltar. He knew that Turkey would try to sit out the war as a neutral state, with leanings toward Great Britain. That had to be changed.
“Advantage? Mussolini will prompt the British to reinforce Greece, possibly even Yugoslavia. This will complicate matters.”
“No,” said Volkov. “See this as a benefit, not an obstacle. The British can ill afford to reinforce Greece now. They are already weak in the Middle East as it stands, and everything they send there will weaken them further.”
“Yes. I finally convinced Mussolini that he had to take action against Egypt, and that is now underway.”
“It will fail,” said Volkov darkly.
“Fail? Graziani has three times as many divisions as the British now have in Egypt. He crossed the border largely unopposed.”
Hitler stared at Volkov now. They called this man the Prophet, because his predictions have been uncannily accurate, but this one was foolhardy. How could he know this? How could the British defeat the Italian’s so quickly? They were badly outnumbered, not only in the Western Desert, but also in Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa, and he stated as much.
“You place too much faith in the Italians,” said Volkov. “Believe this. You will soon see how little prowess they have at the art of war. The British will defeat them easily in both the Western Desert and East Africa. They are useless! Even the Greek Army will soon have them on the run there. In time you will be forced to intervene to stave off a collapse of their colonial empire in Africa, and this you must do. We are here to discuss Turkey, but remember that the Turks will most likely be strongly supported by Great Britain when we begin our battles there. That is your real enemy for the next six months—the British!”
“Yes, yes, the British. I was planning to invade England, but was dissuaded by my Generals and Admirals. They convinced me to strike at Gibraltar first, which no doubt pleased you, Volkov.”
“That was a fortunate stroke, but you must continue what you have begun in the Mediterranean. There are three kings there. The first you have dethroned at Gibraltar, the second sits on a tiny island at Malta, and that is where you should bend your will to strike next. This will allow you to keep forces in North Africa adequately supplied. Finally there comes the real prize, the Suez Canal and the British position at Alexandria. Three kings. Slay them before June of 1941and you will win this war.”
Hitler smiled. “Another of your predictions, Volkov?”
“Consider it good advice. Whether it comes to pass or not will depend upon your actions. Yes, finish up in the Balkans with this Operation 25 as you call it. Yes, send me as many planes as you can spare, and I will stop Sergei Kirov from getting his hands on my oil in the Caucasus. Then we will smash Turkey, but if the British are not defeated soon, they will become a cancer that will grow in strength in the Middle East and become a major threat. They can read a map even as we do here, and they will do everything in their power to drive a wedge between us and prevent what we are now planning. Slay those last two kings in the Mediterranean, and you can assure your victory, and it will start here.” Now Volkov pointed at the map, fingering the Western Desert and the tiny island of Malta.
Hitler did not immediately see the importance of this. Graziani had just crossed the Egyptian frontier unopposed. He was staging to renew his offensive soon, and with three times as many troops and tanks as the British now had, he should be able to drive all the way to Alexandria. He made this argument again, in an almost offhanded manner, clearly confident and not sharing Volkov’s dark vision of imminent Italian defeat. Italy was on the attack, everywhere, he said again.
“They will be defeated,” Volkov insisted, putting more iron in his tone. “The British will counterattack and destroy the entire Italian 10th Army. There is a man there that you must watch very closely. He is presently commanding the British Western Desert force, and he will be the one who destroys Graziani’s army. He will kick the Italians out of Egypt, and overrun all of Cyrenaica, as far as Benghazi. If he is not stopped, he will soon pose a threat to Tripoli as well.”
“Who is this man you speak of? You make him out to be a demigod!”
“General O’Connor.”
“O’Connor?” Hitler may have been briefed on the matter, but it was one of those many minor details of the war that slipped from his mind. “Why should I worry over a single British General? They were no bother in France.”
Volkov smiled, then he was deadly serious again. “Listen to me,” he said. “Forces are present in this world that could unhinge everything we have been planning if they are not countered. This man is dangerous. He must be stopped, and I have every faith that you can handle the matter. It may need a good general of your own to match him, and German troops. And do not be stingy! If you send any force to North Africa, it must be strong. Don’t think the Italians will ever take Egypt for you, not while that man remains undefeated—General Richard O’Connor.”
Part III
Compass
“Because your own strength is unequal to the task, do not assume that it is beyond the powers of man; but if anything is within the powers and province of man, believe that it is within your own compass also.”
―Marcus Aurelius
Chapter 7
General Archibald Wavell was a singularly important man in the hierarchy of British war plans late in 1940. After a wave of bitter reversals, it was his theater that would have the honor of launching the first counteroffensive against the Axis forces, and much was riding on its outcome. The British had been looking for some way to get back on their feet after the hard knockdowns they had suffered in the early rounds with Germany. The most recent setback at Gibraltar was a hard right cross to the chin that had been delivered by Operation Felix, a blow that evicted the Royal Navy from one of its oldest and most important bases. The whole of the Western Mediterranean was now lost, with enemies on every shore until the tempestuous waves washed ashore over a thousand miles to the east on the tiny island of Malta.
Wavell, the nominal Commander of all British Operations in the Middle East, was soon to be thrust into the fire of war, with threats on every side. On his immediate western front The Italian 10th Army under General Rodolfo Graziani had crept across the wire into Egypt, setting up a series of armed camps as they came, and pushing all the way to Sidi Barani on the coast. Behind him, across the searing deserts of Jordan and Arabia, the coup de tat staged by the Golden Square and Rashid Ali in Iraq was now threatening R.A.F. Habbiniyah and the British Petroleum oil concerns near Basra. North on the borders of Palestine, a hostile Vichy French presence in Syria threatened to become a danger to his right flank if reinforced by Germany, and the wolves were coming, slowly devouring the Balkans as columns of tanks and infantry pressed a relentless attack that had swept all the way to Greece as the bitter year of 1940 began to wither and die.
With threats on every side, and a supply line that stretched over 12,000 miles, all the way around the Cape of Good Hope, Wavell was now at the center of a gathering storm, and with impossible orders issued from Whitehall—attack!
Churchill had promised him more armor, sent the 6th Australian Division, and troops from India had been rushed to fill the ranks, yet with no more than five divisions, he was opposed by two times that number in General Graziani’s force, and also faced with an active war front to h
is south in the Horn of Africa. It was a typical case of finding oneself surrounded by threats on every compass heading, and something had to be done.
The solution would be to take on the most imminent threat, and turn his own compass needle due West against the encroaching Italians. He knew Whitehall was correct in prodding him to action. To sit there and wait for his enemies to slowly invest Egypt in a stranglehold of steel would invite disaster. And so, on this day he met with his Western Desert Force commander, Lieutenant General Richard O’Connor, to see what they could do about the situation.
“We’re to take the matter in hand,” he said to O’Connor, a quiet, self-effacing man who had recently been promoted from command of the backwater 7th Division in Palestine, the same division where he had served as Brigade Signals Officer in the First Battle of Ypres during WWI. Wavell had been there, losing sight in his left eye in that battle. There was no scar, no eye patch. The rugged handsome face still seemed unblemished, but the liability bothered him at times, particularly when the desert sand would blow on the fitful wind.
Wavell was no stranger to the desert. He had braved its tempestuous whirlwinds in his youth, standing with the fabled Lawrence of Arabia when he made his triumphant entry into Jerusalem at the end of that campaign in WWI.
Now Wavell looked to General O’Connor to be his foil in the battle that was looming like a threatening sandstorm in the Western Desert. Mentioned in Dispatches nine times during that war, O’Connor rose steadily in the ranks, achieving his Brigadier post quite early. No stranger to the suffering of war himself, O’Connor’s experience in WWI, where grueling hardship and attrition style battles were the order of the day, led him to believe strongly in a new concept of maneuver in battle. So it was that he soon found service in a new unit pioneering theories of armored warfare between the wars, 5 Brigade under the command of J.F.C. Fuller, an early tank warfare expert.
Theory and practice of combined arms was only then emerging, a craft the Germans seemed to have mastered instinctively. Another General who had literally read Fuller’s book was a man named Heintz Guderian, who had just ably demonstrated his mastery of the craft in the lightning Blitzkrieg across France.
For the British, however, tanks were still thought of as a kind of cavalry unit on the battlefield. Indeed, many existing tank regiments had been born from former cavalry units with long, storied histories in the British Army. As such, the roles they thought to assign to armor were scouting and reconnaissance, infantry support, and the occasional mad charge through any hole in the line the foot soldiers managed to create. It was a fundamental misapprehension of the real virtues of tank warfare—mobility and shock, and O’Connor seemed to be one of the first British fighting Generals to appreciate that point.
“My force is already in position,” said O’Connor. “The Italians have waltzed in thinking we were all asleep, but all they’ve done since is sit about in their lodgments and bake in the sun. It’s high time we hit them—and with thunderclap surprise.”
“Without adequate infantry support?” Wavell was also a veteran of the First Great War, where it was infantry that formed the edge and crest of the battle line. When tanks came on the scene they were simply a means of breaking through wire and fortified positions to allow the advance of the real fighting man on the field, the doughty rifleman. Wavell would write after the war: ‘Let us be clear about three facts. First, all battles and all wars are won in the end by the infantryman. Secondly, the infantryman always bears the brunt. His casualties are heavier, he suffers greater extremes of discomfort and fatigue than the other arms. Thirdly, the art of the infantryman is less stereotyped and far harder to acquire in modern war than that of any other arm.’
“I should think you would want to wait for the Australian Division,” Wavell suggested.
O’Connor had seen the misery and struggle of the infantryman all too well in the first war, where the only tactic seemed to be the direct assault on prepared positions into mined wire, and under the intense fire of machineguns, artillery and sometimes gas. It was no way to fight a war in his mind, and he had no intention whatsoever of fighting this one in that manner. At present he had two divisions in hand, the 7th Armored and the 4th Indian Infantry. The thought of waiting for the 6th Australian Division to come up might cost him days of valuable time, and there was one element he seemed to have a firm grasp on—the importance of time in any battle of maneuver.
“The 6th Australian Division? Well where are they? I’d venture to say they’re still within five miles of the docks at Alexandria—simply too far away. It will take them days to get up here and sorted out, and in so doing they’ll accomplish only one certain thing in revealing our intentions to the enemy.”
Wavell raised an eyebrow, listening, his riding crop tucked under one broad shoulder. “Then what do you propose?”
“A raid. Right now, with whatever I have in hand. We hit them in their encampments, lightning swift. We punch hard, and then move to punch again, like a good boxer with fancy footwork. I’ve 32,000 men—including the two divisions you mention. I’ll be up against ten divisions, but they are not massed on any cohesive front. Our reconnaissance has them strung out from Sidi Barani all the way back to Benghazi. If we move quickly, hit hard, run, and then jog right using the desert, we can give the Italians fits.”
“And the infantry?”
“They can advance along the coast and take advantage of the mayhem I have in mind.” The General was almost up on his toes as he spoke, a restless energy animating his sharp intelligence. He was always an active man, quick on his feet, though never one to seek laurels in anything he undertook. It was enough to do a well reasoned job in the most efficient manner, and that done, it really didn’t matter who took the credit. This was character as hard as the steel in his tanks, and it would soon be put to its first real test in this new war.
“Run off half cocked and you’ll have your tanks scattered all over the desert, and with no infantry support.” Wavell did not yet share the vision in O’Connor’s mind. His was a more carefully prepared chess game, with the pawns advancing and the heavy pieces marshalling in support. But O’Connor saw his mission now as that of a bold knight, leaping past his forward pawns to strike deep into the enemy camp and wreak as much havoc as he could. For this he needed one thing—the element of surprise—and he would lose it if he waited for the Australians.
“Let me go now, and I’ll break up all their forward encampments and send them packing. The Australians can come along and round up whatever remains. I’ve been out with several forward patrols. I know the ground, the enemy’s dispositions, and precisely where I want to hit them—right on the flank.”
“On the flank?” Wavell squinted at the map he held. “Why, they’re digging in around Sidi Barani even as we speak, and that flank is well guarded by these three encampments at Tummar and Nibeiwa.”
“It looks that way,” said O’Connor with a glint in his eye, “but we’ve found a chink in their armor—right here, near Bir Enba.” He pointed out the location for Wavell.
Reconnaissance was an art that O’Connor strongly believed in, and he cultivated the craft through every level of his Corps. His primary recon unit was the 11th Hussars, and they had been roving the no man’s land between British and Italian positions to ferret out information on the enemy’s dispositions. A light armor force with machine gun tankettes, they were given much needed support with an ingenious solution put forward by Brigadier W.E. “Strafer” Gott. He assembled ad-hoc groups of lorried infantry, engineers, a few AT guns and 25 pounders for heavy support, and he ran them about on the heels of the 7th Hussars recon groups scouting out the Italian positions. They came to be known as “Jock Columns,” after Lt. Col Jock Campbell of the Royal Horse Artillery, who contributed the 25 pounders. They soon discovered a weakness in the Italian line.
“One of my Brigadiers, Dorman-Smith happened on it,” said O’Connor, “and I’ve gone forward to see the area personally. We can move along an o
pen wadi through an escarpment masking the position. I’ll run two brigades of the 4th Indian right through, and they’ll be behind those encampments you mentioned a moment ago, and taking them from a most unexpected direction.”
“But surely they have forces along the coast road at Azzizya and Bug Bug. You’ll run those Brigades right into the hornet’s nest, and once they get in how in the world will you get them out?”
“Yes!” O’Connor said exuberantly. “Right into the nest, but we are the hornets, and we’ll take them like a bolt from the blue!”
Surprise was essential to the success of his plan, which is why a cloak of secrecy had been thrown over the whole operation as he worked it all out. He would issue no written orders, confine planning to key staff members only, and not even the troops knew of the impending battle until that very night, just three days prior to commencement of the operation.
Yet it was more than mere secrecy as to timing that would create the element of surprise. O’Connor was taking an otherwise ponderous force in the 4th Indian Division, and giving it a dynamic new axis of attack. Instead of fighting up the coast road to come upon the Italian encampments from the most expected direction, he would send his infantry through an inland gap in an escarpment, and have them drive north, then east to appear suddenly behind the enemy position. His armor would be on the left, driving north towards Bug Bug to cut the main coast road. He explained his thinking to Wavell.
“I’ll have 4th and 7th Armored Brigades right beside them on their left. We’ll punch through, and I’ll send 4th Brigade to Azzizya, and 7th to Bug Bug. Meanwhile the Indian Division takes those encampments from the rear and storms on to invest Sidi Barani.”
Three Kings (Kirov Series) Page 6