Deaths on the Nile

by Scott Palter

  The lads were still surprised at how easily this gent talked to rankers. Billy was used to Money-Penny’s style. Man didn’t need petty things to establish his rank. He could beat any man in the squad senseless one on one. Probably two on one, maybe three. Money-Penny was tough, strong, smart. The rank badges were just accessories for him, not what made him a superior. “Yes sir. Neither the Eyeties nor the Hun ever make raids back. So the lanes through the minefield are marked before every raid goes out, and the markers don’t go down until they are all safely back. I’ve seen the raiders even send details back behind our front and then out again before daylight.” Billy stopped at Money-Penny’s knowing smirk. “Yes, sir. No trench raids. No artillery down on the retreating raiders. Fritz wants us fat and happy. Which goes against everything command is telling us … ”

  “The same command that told us the airborne attack on Malta didn’t matter, that the real invasion was coming by sea? That couldn’t manage an orderly evacuation from the Grand Harbor? That got Western Desert Force savaged by an enemy attack several times their size? That hasn’t gotten London to send dick-all as reinforcements?” Money-Penny didn’t bother keeping the disgust and sarcasm out of his voice. “Your old regiment, Billy. Guess how many fresh drafts they have given to rebuild it?” Billy shrugged. He hadn’t a clue as he was never went back. Been afraid they would ignore his new posting and keep him. “Four men. Men, not drafts. Two retired NCO’s returned to colors, and two men who were in hospital. Four men who were already in Egypt. No one from home.”

  The two pro’s exchanged knowing looks while the other two men huddled down trying to take this all in. Bad things were coming. Thankfully their sergeant would see to them. This officer seemed to have his head screwed on right. Damned upper class accent, but a proper bloke for all that.

  1100 hours local; 1000 hours CET

  23 October 1940

  Finance tent, Brigade Strauss cantonment, rear of Italian XXI Corps line

  “Choose one son. We need one of them for an active combat detail.” Major Albert Witt was shocked to hear this. He and his boys were a detachment from the Interior Ministry, not real soldiers. Yet here was Brigadier Strauss changing the terms of this African safari. One boy was going forward to get shot at.

  Witt played for time, hoping his brain would get in gear enough to protest. “One son? To do what, where? Why?”

  “Brigade goes into combat after the main attack launches down south. If everything works right, Major Steiner here will lead his schnell battalion through with the Naval Detachment. They go to the port in Alexandria. That part may work, may not. It’s war. If the air recon idiots are for once right, there’s nothing on the hundred and twenty or so kilometers to the city except two military police roadblocks. The Division in front of us has a half-kilometer-deep battlefront with two lines of trenches and eight more kilometers of artillery and support positions. In effect a crust with no reserves.”

  The boy Major came in almost as soon as the commander finished speaking. To Papa Witt he looked like a schoolboy set among adults … until you noticed the officer’s rank tabs and the Iron Cross First Class. Witt willed himself to ignore the youthful voice, stutters and breaks and all, to focus on the content. “Your son will be with my Battalion. A special Kampfgruppe makes the breach. Oberstleutnant Gorlov’s battalion exploits the breach out through the battle and administrative areas, with the part of Lieutenant Colonel Di Salo’s battalion that isn’t in the break-in group. My Battalion supported by Sturmbannführer Peiper’s does the dash to Alexandria. His has the Italian flame tankettes added. Your son and the Alexandria naval detachment go in as part of our force. The son is needed as a guardian of funds. A portion of the money should be up with us in case we need to start hiring quickly for the rebuilding of the port.”

  Witt stood there pensive. Deciding which son to risk in battle is not an easy decision. The Witts were professionals who worked in offices. Sure they did military service, but this was supposed to be administrative support work. If the one he chose died …

  “I’ll go, Papa.” Uwe was the younger son. He’d always been more adventurous than his more dutiful older brother Arne. “Brigadier Strauss, Major Steiner, do I report someplace else now?”

  “No. However, starting tomorrow you present yourself at my Battalion area after breakfast. We are putting you and the navy men through an abbreviated weapons and vehicles training course. It’s all basics, but you should be able to handle your personal weapon, our standard machine-guns, drive one of our trucks, things like that.” Steiner was glad he had a volunteer. This was going to be awkward enough with the navy men, most of whose officers had trouble accepting they were under the command of a teenager. Schellenberg’s office had been queried via Leutnant Smith for how much money to send with the spearhead. Klaus wasn’t sure he liked the plan. He was quite sure his opinion didn’t matter. This trick by Gunter and the Italian Oberstleutnant either worked or it didn’t. Steiner’s troubles only started if it did. Then it was dash down a highway, burst through the two roadblocks, and take one of the largest ports in the region. What could possibly go wrong?

  2000 hours local; 1900 hours CET

  23 October 1940

  Klaus and Greta’s tent, Brigade Strauss Cantonment

  This would be their last night together. Gunter had told Klaus he would be kept up all of the next night to transition him to being fully awake at night, sleeping during the daylight. The always optimistic Gunter admitted to the inner circle that this plan they had proposed to Rommel required more than a bit of luck to pull off. Klaus accepted the risks as just being part of war. Greta found it harder to quietly smile at her husband-to-be taking risks even Gunter felt where near insane. Greta wasn’t sure if she exactly loved Klaus. Her views of what love was ran to romantic movies and whispered girlish conversations with her peers back home in Romania. Something long on bright sunshine, raging hormonal rushes of utter joy, and chirping birds. Greta was aware that this was a childish view. She was a woman now, as her family never stopped reminding her. Her Betar girls also gave her more practical advise.

  Yes, she was no longer the silly virgin she had been back at the Ploiesti airport. The man she had given her maidenhead to had actually pledged to marry her, which was not how the stories about fallen women ran. She was to be a wife and mother … or perhaps mother and then wife, given how often they had sex. She liked Klaus well enough. She was happy around him, and happier still at how he treated her. She just had this nagging feeling that love was something more, something she had never experienced and perhaps never would. Still, he was her protector and he was about to risk his life in battle again. She was hiding her fear … and apparently doing a poor job of it.

  “Greta, what’s the matter?” Klaus was a clueless teenager – but then, most males find female moodiness mystifying.

  Greta wanted to tell Klaus that nothing was the matter. She tried and failed. Instead she started sobbing and couldn’t stop. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry … ”

  “Sorry for what, darling?”

  She had to get words out. The sobs didn’t stop but she began to whisper. “I’m afraid for you in the coming battle. This plan sounds insane. Repainted vehicles. Di Salo’s English accent. It seems something out of an adventure movie.”

  Klaus held her tight, stroking her face. “Yes, darling. Gunter’s part, Joey’s, Di Salo’s. The crews of the tanks and the armored cars. The boys on the vehicle tops pretending to be returning raiders. Even the first follow-on company. Maybe Uncle Ivan’s battalion clearing out the immediate rear. Thousand things that could go wrong. By the time Peiper and I pass through its’ worked or it hasn’t. We drive down a paved highway, shoot up two roadblocks and go on into the city. One of the mechanics Joey recruited on Malta will be with me. He lived in Alexandria for half a dozen years. So I won’t even get lost finding the port. Won’t be any fighting there. British will have blown it up and been long gone.” He caught himself calling Ivan Uncle.
Mentally, Klaus shrugged. Betrothed was close enough. Besides, her people had all said he was family now.

  She struggled to get words out. “Just be careful! I love you and want you to come back!” There. If she kept saying it maybe she would finally feel it. She then did what she usually did when at a loss with Klaus. She fucked his brains out.

  As they finally drifted off to sleep, she decided she would ask Mary Collins. Mary had been a soldier’s woman. Maybe she would know about all this. Mary had been younger than Greta when sold to her soldier.

  0600 hours local and CET

  24 October 1940

  Cleared field southwest of Garua, Cameroun (once German Kameroun and currently under nominal Gaullist control)

  They could hear the transport planes just as dawn was breaking.

  “Now would be the right time, Feldwebel.” The middle-aged Major had been a Hauptmann here in the Kaiser’s War. Recalled by the Abwehr, he had spent years in what he believed was an absurd waste of time, assembling a small team of prior Africa hands and suitable younger men as a contingency should Germany’s interests again turn to its old colonies.

  The Feldwebel had been more than happy to have forgotten Africa. Civilian life had been much more appealing in the 1920’s than Africa’s relentless sun, endemic diseases, and endless variety of nasty insect life. Then came the Depression. When the nice man from the Abwehr looked him up, he’d jumped at it. Steady pay and the possibility of a pension was the lure. And now he was back in the African savanna. At least it wasn’t the jungle. That horror was well to the south. He fired off the signal rocket. His squad of Schutztruppe veterans clustered around him. This kind of flare gun was new to them. They learned better by watching than lectures in the pidgin German creole they barely remembered from their military youth.

  The four young HJ glider pilots were far from expert. After the transports cut them loose, they just lined up on the quite broad field and landed. This landing didn’t need any special talents. The field was clean and clear enough. No one was shooting at them and there was precious little wind. They had volunteered, hoping to be heroes like the HJ’s who had flown with the Reich’s hero, Steiner, when Luqa was seized in the Malta operation. They hoped for similar glory. They also saw marching around this colonial land as much more fun than the Heer recruit barracks that would otherwise be their fate. On the ground, they helped the African porters unload the cargo. That done, they were now Gefreiters in this unit. Perhaps they might even get a chance at an encounter with bare-breasted jungle women. It had been stressed to them that the Race Laws did not apply to Africa.

  At the edges of the landing field, a middle-aged man kept watch. He had been a professional hunter and safari operator before he had prudently returned to Europe in 1938. Everyone had expected war over the Sudetenland. Germans in French or British Africa would be interned. Back in Europe he found the winters even worse than his memories. The Abwehr recruiter had no problem signing him up. His duty would be as a scout and food provider via his hunting skills. Anyone who can track lion can easily track men.

  At his side was a young man in his late teens. The Abwehr recruiter was quite understanding that the man with useful African skills might wish to take along a protégé. Such relationships had been common in the SA and Party before the Blood Purge. They were now frowned upon, but that was for Europe. What happened in Africa … This Thomas from Finland seemed a muscular, healthy Aryan specimen. The hunter would of course educate his ‘companion’ in the bush skills that formed his CV. Thomas seemed to be of a somewhat artistic temperament. Right now he was sketching muscular African boys recruited as porters.

  By noon the commander had formed up the column. He debated burning the gliders, but decided against it. His mission was distraction and presence. The Free French were supposedly short of men. Let them find the gliders and give chase. He would be many kilometers away, showing the German flag and recruiting. If pressed he could fall back on the new French conquests across the river in Nigeria.

  1200 hours local; 1100 hours CET

  24 October 1940

  Army General Headquarters Middle East (GHQ-ME), Grey Pillars (House), “Number Ten” Sharia Tolombat (aka Tolombat St. 10), Garden City, Cairo

  The briefing was supposed to have been at 0730 hours. Many things were no longer happening on schedule these days. The staff colonel assigned to this task had just spent ten minutes apologizing before General Cunningham cut him off. “Jack, I accept that you will be amending these numbers for days, that the updates will cascade. Just give me what you’ve got and let’s stop dancing. As soon as dusk gets the enemy air to return to base, I’ve got to scoot back to the battle HQ. I’m juggling two headquarters, and will be till we are out of Egypt.”

  “About that, sir. I will assign a military police company to escort you. Please bring it back along with an army one. The roads have gotten that bad. Lone British vehicles are seen as targets.”

  That one brought the rolling disaster home to General Cunningham. “Do we have an Iraq?”

  “Not quite yet. We’ve got maybe a third of the Egyptian army confined to barracks because of officers we don’t trust.”

  “What about the King and court?”

  “King’s content to wait for his Italian friends. Court? Some already left for India and points East. Some have vanished back to their estates to ride it out. The rest think they have enough Italian connections. The official evacuation was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Rumor had us leaving for almost two months, but now it’s out in the open. We have churches sacked, Europeans waylaid, even military being sniped at. The police and bureaucracy are melting. We have had to promise to evacuate thousands, and give priority to their families now. Between those families and the British community, there’s jack-all we can do for the other Europeans, the Empire peoples, the minorities.” If the boss wanted the unvarnished truth, the colonel would get it all on the table. “As is, we’ve needed cooperation from the enemy. They aren’t attacking the rail lines or the bridges. Probably want to be sure they are there to be used by them. I simply must have more troops or it will all implode.”

  Cunningham had been aware this was coming. He’d rather just have evacuated the Alamein position and made a run for it. The ambassador, Sir Miles Lampson, would not have it. By a two to one margin, the committee of three backed him. Civilian evacuation first, then the Army. Lovely in theory. If London’s super spy was right, the offensive wasn’t due till at least the 30th. “My battle staff expected as much. Here’s what we can give you. We have six near-worthless brigades. The rebuilds from Malta. The local recruits aren’t really soldiers, but they can wave bayonets at rioters. Five of them are in positions north of the attack anyway. So here’s what we can send. The least bad of the six brigades, Fleming’s. A battalion each from the other five. It will be their worst, but … ” Cunningham paused, trying to keep his disgust out of his voice. This was all so wretchedly stupid, but needs must. “We can get these to you over the next two nights. Just men and rifles. The machine-guns will have to stay. Third night we’ll send a company from each of the remaining battalions. Add in some odds and sods, and that’s 14 more companies.”

  “Sir, does this mean more families we have to get out?”

  “If you don’t make at least a pretense of it, half of them will desert. It’s the same problem you have with the police. They are still with us to get their people out, and because they are too tainted by serving us to live long once the Muslim Brotherhood and the Nationalists are free to settle scores.”

  “And I send these families up the Nile?”

  “That’s policy, and we both know it’s bunkum. Everyone who can will try for Palestine. Tell the officers on the Suez Bridge, at Mitla Pass, at the other Sinai traffic checkpoints, to just let anyone through. O’Connor’s staff will scream. Too bad. Up the Nile will only happen when it all falls apart, and the fleeing mob will latch onto any army unit they see for protection.”

  The problem o
f getting the endless administrative and service detachments in Cairo and the Canal Zone to exit Egypt, was left to lesser staff officers. This should have been done months ago; but again, higher civilian authority had worried about imperial prestige. It was a pity that prestige had not resulted in a larger garrison with real artillery and air support. Empires are expensive, and the London government was run by accountants more concerned with maintaining sterling’s value in gold.

  2000 hours local; 1900 hours CET

  24 October 1940

  Open space behind repair area, Brigade Strauss, rear of Italian XXI Corps position

  Clara Fischer had run out of excuses to avoid the Italian officer’s Spanish whore. Now the bitch was going on at endless length, trying to ideologically justify her concubinage. “Just shut up, you idiot bourgeois slut. None of that matters.”

  Coxita stopped in midflight of convoluted rhetoric. Had she fallen so low as to be addressed like this ... “How dare you! You’ve opened your legs the same way I have!” She was shaking with a mix of rage and fear. John had warned her about the limits of his infatuation. The thought of being stranded on the docks of Naples was terrifying.

  “Yes. I have. I just don’t dance around it. Stop using ideology to justify your life. You aren’t even working-class, you spoiled little princess.” There. She had said it instead of biting her tongue.

  “Class origins can be put aside for Party members, for the vanguard. Marx, Engels, Lenin were all revolutionary saints and none of them ever held a job where they sweated.” She’d been assured that Leninism allowed for an intellectual, revolutionary vanguard. “I was a loyal Party member, a member of the local Cheka. I served at the front for almost two years as a Company Commissar. Those credentials supersede my birth!”