Lions at Dawn (Kirov Series Book 28)

by John Schettler

  Behind it, on the road to Tripoli, Rommel set up his own headquarters at the small airstrip of Milga, and he had the 21st Panzer Division gathered there astride the road. If the British tried to flank 7th Panzer and bypass the Tarhuna position, the 21st would be poised to intervene and challenge that move. 90th Light was positioned forward of the 21st with Ramcke and his regiment of Falschirmjaegers on the flank. As for the remainder of the Italian Army, the Trento, Trieste and Superga divisions were placed in a wide arc along the defenses closer to Tripoli, where they were busy improving that ground, adding pill boxes and digging anti-tank ditches.

  It was Rommel’s intention to fight his enemy on the Tarhuna line, and then if necessary, he would fall back on those inner defenses around Tripoli. The commander he would face this time would not be the implacable Montgomery, who would plan a grueling battle of attrition, well supported by supplies and timed down to the second for the introduction of each division. Instead he would again face the dashing General O’Connor, still enjoying his license as 8th Army Commander, instead of the four quiet walls of a prison cell in Italy.

  “We are leaving Buerat,” he said at his briefing meeting prior to the battle.

  “Hitler will have a fit,” said von Bismarck of the 21st Panzer Division. He was a thin man, bespeckled, yet with a wiry strength, even at the age of 52. Rommel knew him well, for he had commanded the motorized regiment of the 7th Panzer Division in 1940 during the dash across France.

  “Then let him have his fit,” said Rommel. “I can think of no good military reason to stand at Buerat. It has no real natural strength, and it can be easily outflanked. The ground we want is here, astride these hills running inland from the coast west of Homs. The Tarhuna line is much stronger, closer to our supplies and airfields, and not easily flanked. I merely threw a bone to the Italians by stopping at Buerat, but, the whims of Mussolini and the Italians are no longer any concern. However, we must hold Tripoli as long as possible. We will serve their interests on the strategic level by doing so, but I will choose the ground, not the Italians.

  “It looks like you have chosen well,” said Lungerhausen of the 164th Light Infantry.

  “You will be here,” Rommel pointed. “The two Italian armored divisions will hold on the coast. You take this high ground and hold their flank. They will push here, but I fully expect them to make a heavy turning movement around Tarhuna to the southwest. That is your post, von Funck. I want you to engage them heavily there. Protect the main road and try and force them south. That’s when they run into Marcks and his 90th Light. And Georg,” he said to Bismarck, “You will backstop both those divisions.”

  It was good ground, and a sound deployment, with hardened troops that had already shown the enemy they could win. There was only one thing still lingering in the minds of the Panzer Commanders, and von Funck was the first to raise the issue.

  “My division will be the only Panzer troops in immediate contact with the enemy,” he said. “What if they use those heavy tanks again? You know we cannot stop them if they mass that unit against us on that road.”

  “That is why you get the lion’s share of all our 88s,” said Rommel. “We can do nothing else but fight them if they come. If they do break through with those monsters, then von Bismarck will meet them here, where the road passes through this defile in the hills. To strengthen that sector, I will place the entire 501st Schwerepanzer Battalion there.”

  They were worrying about nothing, as Kinlan was gone, and not even Lieutenant Reeves and those last two Challenger IIs remained in the desert. The great trump card the British once had in hand was played out, and now they would have to win or lose with their own units. Even as the Germans moved out to occupy the positions Rommel had indicated, O’Connor was meeting with his own senior officers to plan his advance.

  * * *

  “Big of them to give up Buerat and Sirte like that,” said Wimberley, Commanding the veteran 51st Highland Division. General Neil Ritchie had asked for him directly when he was summoned home to take over the 52nd Lowland division to get it ready for operations. A Scott through and through, Wimberley scoured the Army for good Scottish troops to flesh out the ranks of his division, and was often seen in his tartan patterned kilts to the point where he was called “Tartan Tam” by the men. All the patterns corresponded to various Scottish clans, and he encouraged this to build morale and esprit de corps in the division.

  “That was a weak position,” said O’Connor. “I would have gone right around it. Yet now let’s hope they don’t stop here.” He fingered Tarhuna on the map. “I want to push hard now, and see if we can’t run them right out of Tripolitania. Once we get round the bend and up towards Misrata, I want your division in the lead, General Wimberley. You take the coast road right on up through Homs, and 23rd Armored Brigade under Richards will be on your left. General Hughes, will follow with the 44th Home County Division, and 4th Indian follows him.”

  “Well what about 7th Armored?” asked General John Harding, a veteran of the fighting at Gallipoli and Gaza in the first war.

  “Don’t worry,” said O’Connor. “I couldn’t leave you out of it. I want to form a flying column further south, and for lack of any better handle, we’ll just call it Southforce. That’s your division, John, and you’ll have General Nichols and his 50th Northumbrians right behind you for infantry support. Form up and resupply here, at Bene Ulid. Then take this road through the dry country and hit them here, just southwest of Tarhuna. If they do hold up on that high ground with their infantry, Tarhuna looks to be their Hougoumont. We won’t hit it directly. I want to bypass to the left and push up the main road from there to Tripoli. So the whole thing is a big pincer operation, and you’re the left horn.”

  “And my Division?” said General Raymond Briggs of the 1st Armored.

  “You’re the head of the bull,” said O’Connor. “I’ll want you southwest of 23rd Brigade, about here I should think. We’ll want to control the road from Homs to Tarhuna, and once you’re on it, you can move to support either side as the situation warrants. I’ll come up and we’ll have a cuppa to sort things out.”

  “Very good sir,” said Briggs. “Will you be wanting Darjeeling or Earl Grey?”

  Everyone chuckled at that. Tea kept the British going as much as gasoline. At times the soldiers would actually rattle off a stream of MG rounds just to get the barrel hot enough to immerse in water to heat it for tea. Even the tanks had an organic BV, a boiling vessel to brew up tea. With Ceylon taken by the Japanese, tea supplies were feeling the squeeze, and rations had thinned out in the ranks. In time, that necessity would become a luxury, but for now, the tea was still flowing liberally in North Africa.

  O’Connor looked the men over, smiling. “Gentlemen, this is for the prize. 8th Army has wanted Tripoli for as long as Rommel’s had his eye on the Nile. It’s no coincidence that we’re here in Tripolitania, and Rommel is as far from Alexandria as he’s ever been. So off we go, and may the lions at dawn tremble at our approach.”

  That got yet another laugh, but then the General stood quiet for a moment. He took a breath and said something more. “I’d be wrong to say we got here without a lot of hard work, and the blood and guts of a good many men who aren’t here to stand with us now. You’ve all heard the rumors, but let me lay it out for you in the clear. We lost the heavies at Tobruk when the whole place brewed up. They won’t have our back any longer, and seeing as though they were a special lot, we may not see their like here again for some time. That was a hard blow. I daresay I owe my own life to those men, and we owe them a debt for what they did in the heat of battle when we needed them. So this is for them, and all the others who died to get us here. We owe them a victory. Let’s get to it.”

  “Here, here,” said Wimberley. “I say we drink on it, but if you don’t mind, General, how about something a wee bit stronger than tea?”

  He raised a flask of gin.

  Chapter 6

  Hitler leaned heavily over the map, his eyes
restless, searching, as he studied the situation in the Med. He had seen the tide of the enemy advance gobble up all of Cyrenaica, and now it flowed into Tripolitania towards that capital, a city that he now designated “Festung Tripoli,” saying it must be defended to the very last man.

  “If they take that, then they will have all the air fields,” he said darkly. “It is only 300 miles from Tripoli to Tunis or Syracuse on Sicily, and even less to our bastion at Malta. Those airfields are crucial.”

  They might be, thought Halder as he listened. Yes, they might be, if only the Luftwaffe had enough planes to send to them. If Tripoli fell, it would also be a very hard blow for the Italians. They would see Sicily as a viable next step for the Allies, though he believed Kesselring and Rommel could hold Tunisia for some time.

  “And look how they have taken most of the French colonies in West North Africa!” said Hitler. That knocked France out of the war as a useful ally, and they are about to do the same to Italy. Useful idiots, the Italians, but useful nonetheless. It amazes me that I can conquer half of Russia, but this hand full of enemy divisions stops us there in North Africa. We must counterattack!”

  “My Führer, they have stopped us because we have only enough naval capacity to supply the two armies we already have there,” said Halder, stating the obvious.

  “Nonsense,” said Hitler. “Kesselring gave them half the ground they now hold in the west, and Rommel keeps back stepping every chance he gets. What happened to his grand plans of storming in to Alexandria? Haven’t I sent him those new heavy tanks to deal with those of the enemy? Why does he fall back towards Tripoli now, instead of attacking and smashing this General O’Connor? That was why I sent him there in the first place, and all he has done for these last two years is churn up sand and complain he has no fuel, and no air cover. We must find another way. The British are sitting all too comfortably in their Middle East strongholds. They get the oil from Iraq and Iran, and what do we do about it? Nothing! Well, that stops this hour, this very day.”

  “What do you mean?” said Halder, the edge of worry creeping into his tone.

  “Army Group South has taken Rostov, have they not?” said Hitler. “They are pushing into the Caucasus, but the Russian Black Sea Fleet still sits there on the coast and it will prevent us from shipping any of Volkov’s oil to Rumania as planned. It must be destroyed!”

  “But My Führer, we have a only a few U-boats in the Black Sea.”

  “What about the ships Raeder sent to the Med? He has already lost the Hindenburg. What good are the others sitting in Toulon?”

  “They serve as a strong deterrent against any invasion of Sicily.”

  Hitler waved that away like a bothersome fly. “They serve only as targets for the RAF. The bombers come to Toulon twice a week now, and if they get those airfields near Tripoli, they will come round the clock. I will order Raeder to send the remainder of our ships to the Black Sea. There is the force we need to destroy the Russian fleet. It is high time we used it. As for the British, I want a full corps assembled and sent south to Bulgaria and Greece.”

  “What good will they do us there, even if I could assemble troops now to fulfill such an order.” Halder was clearly frustrated with this.

  “We will invoke our treaty rights with Turkey again. I have had the Todt organizations working on those antiquated rail lines for over a year now, and we can move those troops through Turkey.”

  Halder’s eyes widened with the realization of what Hitler was now proposing. “Don’t tell me you have resurrected this old notion of taking Egypt from the north. We already tried that, and you saw the difficulties involved, and the outcome as well.”

  “That was then,” said Hitler. “Admittedly, we were too hasty earlier, and ill-prepared. Now we have better options. Look here.” He pointed at the map. “We can now rely on several good rail lines through turkey, and I will order additional motor transport troops to assist. The Army of the Orient will move quickly, so as not to overly frighten the Turks. We will slip in through the front door, and through their living room before they even know we were there. After that, it will just be supply trains and the occasional reinforcement. Our troops will assemble at Adana, then cross quickly into northern Syria. Raeder’s new German Black Sea Fleet will destroy the Russian fleet, and this will also clear the way for direct landings on the coast of Georgia. From there it is only a hop, skip, and jump into Northern Iran. Isn’t that where that massive oil field is sited?

  “What? You mean Baba Gugur? No, my Führer. It is here, in Northern Iraq, near the city of Kirkuk.”

  “All the better. We will take that, along with Baku, and then we will push all the way through Iraq to the Persian Gulf and take the British oil concerns there as well. This way, an invasion of Iran may not be necessary. In fact, I believe they will join us when they see us come in such force.”

  “But this is madness! Where will we get the troops required to support these operations? We are still locked in a death struggle with the Soviets, and everything else has been frozen on the northern front for the drive on Leningrad in the Spring.”

  “Don’t fret, Halder,” said Hitler. “If you cannot manage the affair, then I will select the divisions required personally. In fact, I don’t think a single Korps will be sufficient. We will need one to move east into Northern Iraq, another to drive through the center and take Baghdad, then move on to the Persian Gulf. The third will move directly into Lebanon and take Damascus in Syria back from the British. This will completely stop their offensive towards Tripoli and Tunisia.”

  Halder took a deep breath, looking over his shoulder and finding Jodl and Keitel. His eyes clearly indicated that he wanted them at the map table, and when Hitler saw them approach, he stiffened his resolve.

  “Do not think you can reinforce your ideas by summoning these other Generals. I have given this a good deal of thought. The British will not expect such an operation. We will take them completely by surprise.”

  “What operation?” Asked Jodl, looking from Hitler to Halder.

  “He has it in his mind to resurrect the old Plan Orient.”

  “That plan was never shelved,” said Hitler quickly, with a wag of his finger. “It was only delayed. And if it will sound better to you, we will call it Operation Phoenix, yes, rising again from the ashes. It is only January, and the campaign in Russia will be frozen solid for another three months. I am told all movement there is impossible now, for both sides. The temperatures are the coldest ever recorded in the last 200 years! In the meantime, while we prepare for the Leningrad operation, I will assemble the forces necessary for Operation Phoenix. In fact, I began these preparations a month ago.”

  “What preparations?”

  “Do not think I rely on you for everything, Halder. If you recall, I flew to the southern front to meet directly with General Manstein in order to discuss the move into the Caucasus. Now that the situation near Kursk has stabilized. I ordered him to begin immediate transfers to the south, so there will be ample forces available for this operation.”

  Halder held up his hands in utter frustration. “He thinks we can now move through Turkey again to invade Syria and Iraq!”

  “I do not merely think this, Halder, I will order it. So you had better stop with this stubborn opposition and instead make yourself useful in support of these plans. If you cannot do so, then I will find someone else to do the job!”

  This infuriated Halder, who had been in a torment for months now as he watch the increasingly difficult situation in Russia. Once he had been approached by conspirators plotting to assassinate Hitler, but at that time he had refused to support them. Yet taking advantage of his position of authority, he often kept a loaded pistol in his service jacket pocket, and spent more than one night awake in a sweat as he struggled with the idea of shooting Hitler himself. That weapon was in his pocket now, but he resisted the urge to reach for it and end this madness once and for all.

  Yet he could not stand there and listen to Hitler b
rowbeat himself and the other senior officers at OKW any longer. “Are you telling me Manstein is behind this?”

  “Of course not,” said Hitler. “Manstein has agreed that the move into the Caucasus could be pressed with greater vigor. To this end, we discussed Operation Edelweiss for the drive on Maykop, and by extension, the occupation of Baku. Of course, such an idea would have never entered your head, Halder. Look at the mess you have gotten us into in Russia! It took my personal intervention, and the considerable skills of General Manstein, to stabilize the situation there.”

  “You blame me for the disaster in Russia? This is intolerable! Now you stand there making these foolish proposals, and most likely without even having any notion of the enemy strength, the logistical demands, the political ramifications of your plan. It cannot be done. Jodl… Keitel, tell him this is madness!”

  “General Halder!” Hitler raised his voice, his hand displaying the telltale tremor as he removed his spectacles. “I have listened to your stupid rationalizations for far too long. You no longer have the aggressive spirit and mentality for a job of this caliber. I want men here who will fight, not those who drivel and whimper about what cannot be done. It will be done! I will order it, and any man who opposes these orders will be dismissed, or worse.”

  Now the frustration and anger in Halder became too much. “My Führer… I have supported you through thick and thin, but this is simply too much. I am leaving. Enough with your threats. You may find someone else to preside over this insanity. I am finished!”

  With that, Halder turned and stormed out, his hand in his pocket, fist clenched on the pistol, his anger seething. Yet he could not muster the resolve to turn about and use it, any more than Fedorov could have pulled the trigger to kill Sergei Kirov.