by Scott Palter
That left this British general, Beresford. Von Thoma felt badly for the man. He was a fellow professional done in by the strange nature of this theater of war. Motor vehicles, difficult navigation, and no fixed front lines would mean many people would get captured by accident as he had. There but for the grace of God might go any of us. Von Thoma got the man comfortably situated in his own headquarters, eating from his own mess. He’d try to have dinner with him to show honor and compassion, before shipping him on to some castle in Italy for confinement. The Rolls Royce he appropriated for himself. Rommel wasn’t the type to use a limousine in a combat zone.
……….
Klingenberg had been off like a shot once conditions improved. His fast group was fully motorized. He posted the reconnaissance battalion on his left in the direction the British were likely to be encountered. The rest of his force made up a second column to the right. The SA Major’s forces had attacked the small British screen to the east of the camp, brushing it back to the southeast.
Klingenberg gave himself the objective of the British base camp at Bagush. His left was getting light contact from the stalled, disorganized British attack force. Klingenberg respected the British as foes, but felt they were slow in action. This sort of a war without front lines was perfect for an enterprising fellow such as himself.
……….
Klaus had delegated the handover to the Seventh Panzer forces to Peiper. The SS Haptsturmführer had been through proper officer training. He knew how to do such things. Klaus got the rest of the unit in motion to where Rommel and Strauss were. Mohnke refused to surrender his command. Had a German medic give him a pain shot, plus a few ampules for ‘later’. Klaus had never seen a man so driven. This must be what real officers behaved like. He filed the memory away for future reflection.
When he arrived at the guns, Rommel, Strauss, and Gorlov were all out leading different groups striking at the head and shaft of the stalled British. The British were trying to both defend and reverse direction at once, which for some reason was difficult for them. Klaus chalked that up as another manual to procure and have Greta help him master. Uncle Isaac took time from working his guns, to suggest that Klaus swing wide to the south and join up with some SS Standartenführer’s column. Things were chaotic enough in this sector without trying to insert another battalion into action. Isaac knew Klaus’s limits, and this sort of passage of the lines was well beyond him. Besides, the bulk of his unit was SS and SA. Isaac felt they would be more comfortable with their own then fighting beside Jews and Italians.
……….
Peiper was at the tail end of Klaus’s battalion. He was content to let the boy Major lead on. He’d come to respect the kid’s combat instincts. Some people had them and some didn’t. This boy from the Oder was one of those you followed. Promotions and decorations seemed to trail in his wake.
Mohnke had agreed with him, but the man almost seemed looking for a heroic grave. Peiper mentally shrugged. Mohnke would either snap out of it or buy a bullet. Either way, he’d do nasty things that could get sane people killed. Sane people like Peiper, who preferred life to glory right now.
Chapter 6
1200 hours local; 1100 hours CET
12 September 1940
Various places on the plateau east of the prior locations
Gunter Strauss was in his element. This was Michael in 1918, mixed with the good times in Latvia in 1919. Open warfare with no fixed lines, where mobile elements like the ones he commanded could shoot up artillery and support units. The keys were artillery parks and headquarters. The big guns were the real killers on the battlefield. Taking them out with machine-guns and grenades cost ever so much less than counter-battery work. Headquarters were the nerve centers. Tommy Atkins was a tough fighter, but more ponderous than a German Fritz without clear lines of command. In small unit warfare British would defend well, but lacked the German skill in rapid warfare such as waged by storm units and motorized troops.
Right now his men were cleaning out the last holdouts of what had once been the headquarters of the British 16th Infantry Brigade. The document haul was fantastic. He’d already detailed off twenty of his men carrying British POW’s to the rear. You packed them into captured trucks with German drivers, and followed the trucks with machine-gun-carrying autos. Prisoners who jumped off the trucks got shot up. It usually only took one or two to quiet the rest. The ones who really wanted to fight hadn’t surrendered. Gunter wasn’t stupid enough to chase small packs of fleeing enemies. Stick and run. Steal what equipment you can and torch the rest. Create chaos.
Gunter had thrown himself flat from the sound before he heard the shell explode. Old combat reflexes. Two British tanks firing at about 300 meters. Time to pull back again. The British never chased his pack of raiding wolves far. The ones who tried that in the beginning, tended not to come back. He always kept an overwatch reserve on these forays.
……….
O’Connor was trying to bring order out of chaos. Mostly he was failing. The run-for-your-life orders had gotten under half his attack force out. They came out as platoons and companies with no higher organization. Many came out as lone vehicles. They plowed into the relief force and frequently tried to drive through, heading to the rear. Sometimes they were halted. Sometimes elements of the relief force bolted with them. He had to reverse this ponderous force while getting hammered from the front and jabbed from both sides. There was also a nasty dust cloud to his south, heading for his rear. If this was a race back to Bagush, he dare not lose it.
……….
Klaus Steiner swept the horizons, looking for enemies as his command motored forward. The British were mostly to his left. The SS Brigade was supposed to be somewhere up ahead. He had his company with Kübelwagen in the lead. The SA company of Panhards were second, and the combined NL / SS unit under Peiper was bringing up the rear. He thanked the God whose existence the Party questioned, but whose Church his parents had dragged him to on occasional Sundays, for Joey’s Naples trip and the resulting radios. He, Peiper, and the senior SA officer had send / receive sets. They could talk to each other. He could talk to some other senior officers, at least sometimes. It depended on range, which kept changing in a fast-moving situation. But EVERY vehicle except the captured British ones had receivers, even the trucks. The unit could be made to maneuver by words sent as if by magic.
The original SA Sturmhauptführer had been invalided out with sandfly sickness. The Obersturmführer who succeeded him in command seemed ancient to Klaus. The man must have been at least sixty. He’d been a village blacksmith and was built like an anvil. A little less than medium height with massive muscles second only to Gunter’s in the unit. He was not formally insubordinate to Klaus, but it was obvious he did not regard orders from a teenager as anything more than suggestions. This made things difficult, as his Panhard 178’s had the only cannons along for this jaunt.
Klaus had quickly learned several things about this sort of warfare. No one could hit anything, firing while a vehicle was moving. Most found it hard enough to hit moving targets from a stable rest position. The second was that in the heat of the moment no one could identify vehicles worth a damn. Anything that was neither truck nor auto was a tank. Sometimes even those were confused with tanks. Everyone was obsessed with tanks. Klaus had been schooled by Gunter, Ivan, and Isaac that artillery was what killed you.
Right now he was facing half a dozen British tanks and a few more than that Bren gun carriers. The trick was to shoot the Bren gun vehicles and then scoot out of the way of the tanks. Enter Grandpa Lothar, the SA officer who wanted to shoot it out. Technical discussions of why his French 25mm shell wouldn’t penetrate a British cruiser tank, except from the rear, bounced off his skull. He was an Aryan warrior and he had a cannon. He would fight, and no boy who never deserved his decorations would enforce such an order on him or his men.
So far the score was three Panhard’s brewed up for zero British even disabled. Klaus was forced to again
be a hero. He, Peiper, and Mohnke had chased off the Bren gun carriers and gotten in the rear of the tanks. Klaus had a Boys antitank rifle, ‘liberated’ from the earlier fights by the hospital tent. He had nine rounds. He thought he could make it work, but right now he was hiding beneath the wreck of his Kübelwagen. Machine-gun fire from a British tank had killed his driver and half destroyed the vehicle. It had also blown the remains of his precious lucky baseball cap off and cut three holes in the fabric of his blouse. All he’d lost of himself was skin.
The cruiser tank was closing in for the kill. Klaus let it come on while the near misses from the machine-gun kicked pebbles and sand in his face. He was abstractly aware his face was bleeding. What mattered that? He wanted a clear shot with this silly excuse for an anti-tank weapon. Suddenly the tank stopped. There was someone on its rear deck. Mohnke? How? Despite his wounds, there was the SS officer firing a pistol first at the head of the tank commander, then shooting through the open turret hatch and finally dropping a grenade down. The tank stopped moving. It was maybe 60 meters away. Klaus took his shot. Missed the front but clipped a track. Mohnke tried to drop another grenade but was shoved away, off the vehicle by a British crewman erupting out of the vehicle like an enraged bear. Klaus grabbed up a captured Bren gun and started shooting. He thought he’d hit the were-bear. The Britisher either fell or ducked back into his tank. It tried to move but the broken track made that ungainly and then impossible.
The tank was emitting smoke out of its viewport. However, someone inside was still keen to fire. Klaus rolled away as he saw the turret rotate towards his hiding place. A blast demolished the wrecked Kübelwagen. A side panel near to took his head off. It kissed him with its hot breath in passing. Before the tank could fire again, artillery shells started falling. Klaus crawled to the sidepanel and hid under it. He supposed he should have been afraid of dying. He could cope with that. He was a patriot and soldier doing his national and racial duty. But what would become of poor Greta? Of his unit? The rain of artillery shells continued.
1215 hours local; 1115 hours CET
12 September 1940
Advance headquarters, Italo-German Panzer Army, Sollum, formerly British and now Italian Egypt
General Carlo Geloso was composing his report for Rome. His German ‘subordinates’ had been remiss in making timely reports. He had made preparations to overcome this. He had liaison officers assigned to most German headquarters down to brigade or regimental level. Sadly, he had not included the silly militia brigade, which had ended up a key component of the fighting. He would remedy that immediately.
His army had won the battle. This was clear from the reports from his forward units outside the British fortress at Mersa Matruh. There were explosions as the British were dynamiting what could not be carried off. They would not destroy their own base camp unless they were retreating. As this position had not even been attacked, the retreat must have been caused by events further south on the plateau. The fragmentary reports from von Manstein’s various units, plus 1st Libyan Division, painted a consistent picture. Thousands of prisoners taken. Hundreds of vehicles seized or destroyed. No artillery captured, which was strange. A good number of those nasty British heavy tanks out of action. The Seventh Panzer Division had even captured a divisional general. It was a victory. He would need a few days for a detailed picture, but Rome could be told of this triumph of Italian arms. How much of the deserved credit should go to the Germans, he would leave to higher authorities to debate. His account would be honest. The Libyan division had done quite well, but it was mostly a German victory. Rommel and this Oberst Strauss.
Now was the time to ask for more resources. He needed more sappers, to dismantle the British minefields and get the small port at Mersa Matruh back in operation. The bulk of the Italian army was in garrison back home. Surely half a dozen combat engineer battalions could be spared, for the only war Italy was fighting? Then again, he’d been making the same argument for weeks now – with no success.
1230 hours local; 1130 CET
12 September 1940
Plateau battlefield, KG Steiner
The British had left. Half a dozen more were prisoners, and the rest had withdrawn north and northeast. The artillery fire had ceased as suddenly as it started. Klaus found artillery on a battlefield mystifying. It would descend out of nothing, and vanish the same way. Seemed as if you never would know why. Had the batteries been forced to withdraw? Was ammunition low? He wearily shook his head. Adult life seemed to include a lot of mysteries.
An SS column had arrived. A mixed-arms Battalion Kampfgruppe escorting a supply convoy and a large medical detachment. It was searching for the SS fast group, and had stumbled into Klaus’s engagement. Their arrival was heralded by a large dust cloud growing quickly nearer. Had this provoked the British retreat? Again, Klaus was sadly certain he would never know. Things just happened in battle. Hell, he was the hero of Malta because, lost in midair, he had followed a British plane with a burning engine to an airfield. At that point all Klaus had cared about was not ditching in water and drowning them all.
The medical detachment had a real doctor, not just a hospital orderly. The man tried to see to Klaus’s wounds first. Klaus was a field officer and rank had its privileges. Klaus ordered him to see to the seriously wounded first, and rank be damned. Led the man over to the near-dead Mohnke. As the doctor worked on him, Klaus sent out parties to bring in the injured, even the British ones. Führer Göring had mandated good treatment to these foes. He also scribbled a fast note to be taken back with Mohnke, saying a commendation and write-up for an Iron Cross would follow. That way, if anything happened to both Klaus and Peiper, there would be a paper trail to start an inquiry. Mohnke might have fucked up his initial battle, but he had fought like a hero the next two times. Uncle Isaac had instilled in Klaus the need to reward people who did especially well. Said the rankers noticed this. Said it made for better morale under fire. That the natural tendency was for people to curl up at the bottom of trenches and pray they would live. They had to see that sticking their necks out was noticed and honored.
Klaus had no idea how advance medical detachments worked. The doctor seemed fast, appeared competent. He told Klaus that Mohnke would live. The available ambulances were filled with the most serious cases. The rest went into two trucks. Klaus detached a Kübelwagen and four motorcyclists as escorts. There were stray British all over the rear. Best to be careful.
With those duties taken care of, Klaus allowed himself to remember that he had to deal with his real problem. He motioned half a dozen of his ‘old Malta hands’ to follow him. Told them to grab MG-34’s or Bren guns. They were clueless as to why, but used to obeying him. He marched himself up to where Grandpa was directing his men in salvaging ammo and useful parts from the five wrecked Panhards. Klaus drew himself up to his full, if short, height and told the old SA officer, “You and I need to have a talk. I gave you an order to avoid combat with the British tanks. You disobeyed. Five lost armored cars, plus our other losses because you don’t know how to obey orders!” Klaus was aware he had stuttered a bit and his voice broke twice. This happened when he got angry. He was experienced enough to no longer be embarrassed. He was a hero officer, and his defects were just part of the baggage he carried in life.
The large bear of a man looked down his nose at Klaus and laughed at him. “Go away, you stupid child. Your protector Strauss isn’t here to back up your let’s-pretend officer’s rank tabs. Do you take time out from fucking your Kike cunt to bare your ass to him, or is it that you just suck his cock? Stabschef SA Lutze ran your kind of faggot out of the SA when they bumped off that traitor Röhm and his gang of drag queens. Even those junkie degenerates didn’t pollute their race with Jews. I’ll be reporting on what your gang does, back to Lutze’s office in Berlin. You’ll be in Dachau for race defilement within a month you worthless little runt … ”
Grandpa pulled up short in his rant. He was staring down the barrels of six light automatic
weapons wielded by people who looked forward to an order to fire, to the SA officer making a move that would justify gunning him down. He started to bark orders to his guys to counter, but before they could scramble back to their Panhards, one of Klaus’s guys loosed half a clip from his Bren gun. It was sprayed over everyone’s heads, but not by much. The SA men froze in place. Message received.
Klaus was not quite pointing his own Bren gun at the man, but it wasn’t far off a direct aim either. He simply shook his head and laughed at the man. “Everything that happens here is within the knowledge of the Reichsführer SS. He personally approved my promotions and decorations. Back when our new Führer Göring was Air Minister he famously said of his ministry ‘I decide who is a Jew here’.” Klaus had heard the tale from Strauss, who had gotten it from Schellenberg explaining the whole situation. “NL is the Reichsführer’s creation. So is who we enlist, where we go, how we do it. We are his personal creation. Whereas you are just a pathetic old man in a service that was a fossilized shadow of its once great self until our Reichsführer chose to give you some life again. Your Lutze is just a lesser minion of our patron. Complain as you choose. But you’ll do it elsewhere. You are relieved for insubordination.” Klaus pointed at the next most senior SA junior officer, told him he was in charge. He was looking around for a motorcycle with sidecar, to dump this worthless clown back on Gunter, when the man exploded with rage.