by Scott Palter
The southern column was a makeshift brigade of two battalions of British infantry and two understrength South African armored car regiments. This force had a specific target, the barren flatland where a prior Panzer advance had left three absurd metal crosses. Corps command saw this as important. Beresford for the life of him couldn’t see why, but felt that this unit should be able to do the job. Except it now appeared to be lost. Scouts had the Germans back in that place, but no British column. The column claimed to have arrived in the proper place, but found neither Rhodesian scouts nor foes.
The two northern brigades both were reporting victories. Each claimed to have destroyed a brigade or more of Germans. That part was good. Beresford decided the only solution to the southern problem, was to motor up to the central group and assess the situation. If the victory was as great as claimed, he could detach a force to rendezvous with the scouts. Corps headquarters was getting decidedly forceful on this matter, and he had nothing good to report. This business of so many levels of command having radios was wonderful for artillery coordination. (Beresford had previously been the divisional artillery head.) Unfortunately, the radios also meant that higher commanders, or probably their staffs, could meddle in things best left to commanders on the spot. However, he couldn’t make that argument without actually being on the spot himself. His driver had brought his Rolls around. Seemed like a good night for a drive.
2040 hours local; 1940 hours CET
10 September 1940
Three Crosses position south south east of Rommel
Gunter Strauss was glad he had taken personal command of the forward pickets. The fools had been letting the British scouts far too close to the main position. The British were using a Canadian version of Dodge small truck, armed with machine-guns, as scout vehicles. When pressed they simply drove away. Unless discouraged by heavy weapons fire, they would then return. His boys were not trained in this sort of dancing brawl, but proved fast learners under his tongue-lashings.
……….
Peter Schwabe regarded his Hauptmann’s rank as an amusing family joke. He’d been a crew boss in the oil fields since not long after his balls dropped. With his size and as pappa Isaac’s son, he had quickly made roughnecks acknowledge his authority. He’d posted himself on the north side of the perimeter. Gunter was handling the east and southeast. North was where radio traffic said the nearest large British units were.
He’d laughed at the fleeing trucks full of SS men, all with tales of huge British hordes on their heels. The SS were physically large enough, but men who ran away from a fight didn’t impress him. They were so terrified they hadn’t even bothered to slow up nearing the brigade’s positions. Peter had had to use his quite loud voice to avoid his own nervous little virgins opening fire before they were sure what they were shooting at. The twits couldn’t tell German trucks from British tanks. He’d added swats with his large fists to make the point. The SS cowards he’d directed to Peiper. They were his service. Let him gentle down the silly gang of schoolgirls.
2100 hours local; 2000 hours CET
10 September 1940
1st Libyan position on the first plateau
General Maletti was amazed that the idiot British had not brought up artillery. All his position was being hit with was mortar fire. Maybe a dozen tubes, and no serious effort at spotting or adjusting fall. Now the British infantry was coming on, supported by well-sited machine-guns and led by two dozen of their monster tanks.
Under his orders his gunners had held their fire until the armored vehicles were a hundred meters out. His old pre-WW1 Austrian 77mm cannons were obsolete pieces of junk. Poor Italy simply hadn’t spent the money to equip his men better. Instead, fortunes had been wasted on a useless navy. Typical.
His machine-gunners and mortar men had forced the enemy infantry to ground. At close range the guns were at least doing some damage to the clanking metal elephants. Two were stopped with damage and a third was on fire. The screams of the crew being burned alive inside rose above the battle’s din. The rest kept coming, destroying five guns and creating a huge mess before inexplicably retreating. While they rampaged around, his men had pushed vehicle mines under the tracks of two more, rendering them unable to move. The crews had bailed out and surrendered. His men were trained in how to treat white men. There was no gunning down of the stranded Britishers.
Maletti had toured his battle line. The arrogant SS officer was dead. One of the stray mortar rounds had found him. Battle was like that. Several of his men had left position, been among the ones who had swarmed the Matilda's with mines and grenades. Maletti decided that he’d credit the officer with their actions, put him in for the military cross for valor – posthumous, of course. If Italy were to be yoked to these German bastards, best to be courteous.
2120 hours local: 1920 hours CET
10 September 1940
Von Manstein’s command vehicle, 60 kilometers back in an endless traffic jam
Erich von Manstein ignored the lack of progress of his stalled command vehicle. A mass vehicle movement on unfamiliar terrain in intermittent moonlight, was by definition going to be a stop-and-go nightmare. Instead he focused on the precis of the signals traffic. The Libyan Division and Rommel were engaged. Rommel had as usual ignored orders and commandeered the SS motorized battalion, which he had proceeded to lose. Typical. The man was simply sloppy in his command style. Von Manstein would file a protest with Berlin, but didn’t expect anything to come of it.
More interesting was that Strauss was reporting only very light contact. This could mean the British were bypassing him. However, that only made sense if the British were aware that Strauss’s ‘brigade’ was a collection of half-trained militia reinforced by small propaganda components from the other services. It was doubtful that British intelligence was that good. Propaganda from the Malta operation had labeled Strauss’s command an elite unit of Volksdeutsche that had prior victories against the Soviets in Romania. No, the next British blow would be on Strauss. He had that Oberst radioed to be on alert, to expect a British attack in brigade or larger strength backed by tanks. Von Manstein also had his operations officer draft an order to General Hausser, to forward a Kampfgruppe to Strauss as quickly as the traffic situation permitted.
The final signal was a missive to Luftwaffe General Keller’s advance headquarters, requesting a maximum effort at first light. The British had come out from their fortifications, and thus from under the protection of the anti-aircraft guns. That meant columns of vehicles in plain sight at daybreak. Which needed Me-110’s to strafe and Ju-87’s to dive-bomb.
The report to Berlin was left till real information had been assembled. However, a warning message was sent that the first battles had begun. As a courtesy the message was copied to SS General Wolff in Rome and Italian Comando Supremo. Von Manstein presumed that the Italians would have sent their own messages to Rome, but it never hurt to be courteous.
2130 hours local: 2030 hours CET
10 September 1940
HQ Western Desert Force, Bagush Box
General O’Connor again had cause to wonder if the British Army promoted people on the basis of anything beyond bloodlines and ingrained stupidity. He appoints a man divisional commander of a serious attack. The man leaves his headquarters for a moonlight drive to survey one of his three brigades, without leaving a firm operational plan with his staff. The fool gets ambushed by remnants of the German motorcycle infantry screen. In the meantime, the Rhodesian scouting force locates the missing division strike force which had somehow arrived southwest of its attack point. That brigadier radios Division for instructions. Should he retrace his steps to his original jump off line northeast of his current location, or just attack from where he is? The idiots at 4th Indian Division are now dithering, losing precious minutes of darkness before dawn and hostile air attack. His staff has to intervene and state the obvious. Attack from where you are instead of wasting time. Where did London find these twits?
2200
hours local; 2100 hours CET
10 September 1940
In the rear of the forces assaulting General Maletti on the lower plateau
Erwin Rommel was in his element. His Panzer battalion had destroyed large numbers of British supply trucks. He had captured hundreds of British and Indian personnel. The Libyan Division had the British attack force fixed in place. As a guard against them reversing course, he’d posted this Italian truck gun battery and the company-sized Waffen SS motorized infantry force he had ‘acquired’. For now, he was pushing back up the path towards Bagush, running down more enemies. This felt like France.
2220 hours local; 2120 CET
10 September 1940
Three Crosses camp, southwest defense sector
Company commander Jochen Peiper had been gifted with the LAH fugitives. He had initially been elated. This was his old unit from France. He felt honored to command them. That feeling had lasted less than two minutes after the shaken LAH men had descended from their trucks. Mary Collins and her people had quickly gotten a refreshment line up. Hot coffee and little buns with canned meat, and some silly nut mix the British seemed to have had tons of in depot. The nuts had come both in bagged form mixed with other edibles, and as a spread. All could be folded with slices of the tinned meat inside dough and quick-cooked. As the ‘bully beef’ tasted and chewed like rubber, Mary found that adding one or both of the nut foods made it less disgusting to eat and equally nutritious for soldiers doing heavy labor. Infantry had always been loaded up like mules, back to the days of the Roman general Marius. Mary didn’t know Romans. She knew her Irish corporal, whose field kit often weighed near as much as he did. She’d been a soldier’s ‘lady’ since her early teens. Whenever the gods that wore shoulder boards allowed, give the men caffeine and calories.
Peiper’s original men were a mix of middle-aged SA and middle-teen HJ. An SS NCO made a crack about grandpas and infants. The SA men were mostly WW1 vets, usually combat branches. Most had served in the Freikorps, and all in the political street battles of the late Weimar period. None were willing to take shit from cowards who had run away from the British. Since arriving in North Africa, Peiper’s unit had spent most days out on patrol with the Malta hero Steiner’s elite warriors. They had skirmished with the British and never run away. Words were exchanged.
Peiper had come running out, bellowing at everyone to shut up. He had a proper command voice. He also had visions of the death cells, with no reprieve from Lina Heydrich this time. He shouted down almost every fool. German military men know that tone, and when it is linked with an officer’s uniform it almost always works. Almost. One LAH fool chose to make a crack about how this must be soft duty, as the grandpas had hauled around subhuman field whores. Enough of the rest of the LAH started to laugh.
Mary’s German was perfunctory at best. She heard ‘whore’. That word she had learned in many languages over her life. The word didn’t bother her. She’d been a concubine, not a whore. Besides, in this unit, she had armed protectors with rank. Let the fools laugh. They couldn’t touch her body or the bodies of her children. Even when reduced to beggary on Malta, she had set up a tea stand, not sold her body. She was quite willing to be a concubine again, but knew whore was beneath her. She was proud of this, and nothing a bunch of cowards who had fled from the Indian Army could change that. She thought it amusing that she was on the other side from ‘her people’, but war was funny that way. After all, think of how India had ended up British, with India’s warriors fighting for their white masters.
Kali is a fickle goddess with a nasty sense of humor. Within hearing range, Clara was leading two squads with their newly clean machine-guns out to the perimeter where they could test-fire their results. She expected problems, as some of the kids had been less thorough on the cleaning than her instructions had told them was necessary. She was trained as a teacher. She saw this as a learning technique. Same as letting a child make a mistake with fractions at a blackboard, after which you went over the correct method again. Her teacher’s school professors said people learned better this way.
Clara had spent seven years eating insults from any Nazi clod with a uniform. There was no choice. Resistance would just lead to her being raped and jailed, to ‘her’ kids being homeless again. That had supposedly ended by becoming Joey’s woman, by joining this gang of fascist killers. Clara turned, MP 34 in hand, and marched up to the SS NCO. She asked one word, “Whore?”
The idiot tried to bluster, called her a cheap slut and loudly inquired, “How much for me and my buddies? A mark each?” He followed this up with the start of a nervous laugh.
It was only the start of the laugh because she swung the machine pistol at him, smashing in half his front teeth. She followed up jamming the barrel into the back of his mouth, forcing him to his knees to avoid having his throat ripped out.
Two of his friends started forward to help him. They froze in place as seven machine-guns, a mix of MG-34’s and MG 08/15’s, trained on them. The bearers all looked eager to test out their weapons.
Clara leaned forward and spat into the fool’s face. “Suck on it, faggot. Lick that barrel hard or I’ll let it come in your mouth. Want to bet whether I can manage single shot, or just blow twenty rounds through your empty skull?” As he frantically tried to comply, she kept him at it while he first pissed and then shat himself. Laughing loudly, she pulled the barrel out, and gave him a good football kick in his testicles. He fell over shrieking, cupping his crushed manhood. She then turned on the others asking, “Anyone else want a session with the slut?” As they all shrank back, she sweetly asked where her five marks for doing him and his buddies was. One of Mary’s kids came forward with a camp-made baseball hat, into which all the SS men dropped bills and coins. When this was done, Clara turned her voice back to classic schoolteacher tone: “We don’t have whores in this unit. We don’t have sluts like your League of Soldier’s Mattresses that your Movement trains. We have fellow soldiers, some of them officers. The ones that want boyfriends already have them. The rest don’t bed down with cowards just because you have good bodies. Learn how to fight like men, and maybe you’ll eventually get a woman … after the grandpas and infants who are battle-tested comrades. You insects probably became headquarters guards because you lacked the balls to mix it up with real men like the Red Front. The SA may have been swine, but they fought like men. Worthy opponents.”
With that she turned sweetly and led her trainee machine-gunners away while bellowing out her song in a perfect alto,
“Wacht auf, Verammte dieser Erde
Die stets man noch zum Hungren zwingt!
Das Recht, wie Glut im Kraterherde,
Nun mit Macht zum Durchbruch dringt.
Keinen Tisch macht mit den Bedrängern!
Heer der Sklaven, wache auf!
Ein Nichts zu sein, tragt es nicht langer,
Alles zu werden strömt zuhauf!
Volker, hört die Signale!
Auf zum lezten Gefecht!
Die Internationale
erkämpft das Menschenrecht!”
2230 hours local; 2130 hours CET
10 September 1940
Western Desert Force HQ, Bagush Box
Major General O’Connor had to work hard to keep himself from relieving the division commander and all three brigadiers in this night’s operation. The southern brigade was ‘reorganizing’, but had yet to move. The center brigade had dispatched a party to retrieve their divisional commander, but he had not yet turned up. In the meantime, the brigadier had remained in place except for sending a battalion north to investigate a report of a Panzer division. If it truly was a Panzer division, it would make a quick snack of a motorized infantry battalion with a few Matilda's. If it was a light raiding force, there was no way infantry in trucks could catch it. Plus, trying to do so would just separate the trucks from the slow tanks.
The northern brigadier, however, earned top prize. He claimed to have been stopped by an Italo-German corps with heavy
artillery support. He alleged there was a German Panzer division marauding in his rear. His solution was to send his Matilda's, with no supports, off to fight the division while he awaited ‘reinforcements’. He was asserting that he needed the cruiser tank brigade, a second brigade of infantry, sappers, and the full artillery of 4th Indian to defeat this ‘corps’. So he wanted a fresh ad hoc division that would have to fight through a Panzer division to reach him, and could not see the contradictions in any of his actions and requests.
O’Connor would have liked to relieve all four of them. It would feel so good. However, the problem was, who on Earth to replace them with who might do better? If his infantry generals couldn’t master combined arms, why should the generals from the tank division do any better? And these were the two best divisions left to the British Empire! O’Connor silently bemoaned the two decades after 1918, which Britain had spent swearing it would never again do mass warfare against a serious enemy. The army had mentally retreated to a late-Victorian mindset. That was what the nation had wanted. Pity world events had not cooperated.
2300 hours local; 2200 hours CET
10 September 1940
Blocking position covering Rommel’s rear, lower plateau