Authors: Anthony G Williams
‘Seems as if everything is in order.’
Don was feeling particularly relaxed, enjoying a quiet Sunday morning in the apartment.
He waved the latest report from Geoffrey Taylor, who had now moved to Crete.
‘Do you think they’ll try to invade this time?’
Mary gave up trying to catch up with the latest opinion in the Sunday papers; the occasional groans and snorts of derision from behind the newsheets had been indicating a certain lack of patience with the jingoistic editors.
‘Suicidal if they do; Hitler is bound to be aware of the appalling casualties his paratroops took last time and he will know that we’re much better prepared now.’
‘The papers seem to have got over their shock-horror at Britain’s first defeat.
Now they’re going on about how the despicable Nazis were unsporting enough to send far more troops than our brave boys could deal with.
Good news from Algiers, though.’
‘Brilliant.
Now the Free French are in charge of all of France’s African empire, the rest of their possessions will fall into line soon.’
‘What effect will the German takeover of the rest of France have?’
‘Hard to say.
They’ve really given themselves more of a problem.
Now there isn’t a legitimate French government to collaborate with them, they have to run everything themselves.
And they weren’t quick enough to seize the French ships in Toulon before they could be scuttled.
While we have picked up the much stronger fleet in
Oran
as allies again.’
‘How cooperative is de Gaulle likely to be now he has a large power base of his own?’
Don laughed.
‘Time will tell.
He’s still almost completely dependent on us for arms, and desperate to see the liberation of France.
I think he’ll work with us until that’s achieved.’
The insistent ringing of the telephone woke them early the next morning.
It was Harold Johnson, on duty in the Ops Room.
At first, Don was too groggy to grasp clearly what Johnson was saying.
‘They’ve invaded, you say?
Must be mad, with all our preparations.
What
d’you say
?
Not Crete?
What…Malta?’
As the enormity sank in, Don was temporarily speechless.
Mary deftly acquired the phone and asked some crisp questions, then hung up.
She talked swiftly as they dressed.
‘They’ve thrown everything at it.
The radar stations were taken out by
special forces
– presumably landed by U-boat – before dawn, then the paratroops went in at first light.
They’ve succeeded in seizing at least one of the airfields and there are reports of transport planes delivering reinforcements, but reports are very confused.
There are continuous air raids.’
Don was still bewildered.
‘But why
Malta
?
It doesn’t make sense.’
Mary shrugged.
‘Pre-emptive strike.
Make it harder for us to invade
They found that Charles Dunning and Peter Morgan had already arrived at the Ops Room and were in the middle of an intense debate with Johnson.
Charles turned to them.
‘It’s not looking good.
After we kicked the Italians out of North Africa the Middle East Command judged that the threat to Malta had dropped to negligible levels and switched most of the forces to Greece and Crete.’
Morgan nodded grimly.
‘There were only three squadrons of Spitfires left.
Some of them managed to get airborne but without the early warning from the radar they were sitting ducks as they tried to take off.
Most of them have already had it.
The Luftwaffe has complete air superiority.’
‘What about the AA defences?’
‘Doing a good job as usual, but around the airfields they’re distracted by having to fight off the paratroops.’
‘What do we have in the way of ground forces?’
‘Not much.
And there’s hardly any armour.
There are some Comets at the airstrips and they chewed up quite a few of the gliders, but most of them seem to have been taken out by Panzerfausts.’
Mary looked at Johnson.
‘What about the Navy?’
‘Nothing but light forces, MTBs and the like.
The destroyers are all around Crete.
There are some subs there and the last report said they had sailed to intercept any Italian convoys, but there’s such intense air cover that they stand little chance in daylight.’
The crew of the 57 mm Bofors gun were close to exhaustion.
From their location under the massive stone walls of Fort St Elmo, by the entrance to Valletta’s
In this, the Luftwaffe had been successful, but at a price: three Stukas had fallen to this Bofors gun alone in a day of almost continuous fighting.
Now that the long-prayed-for dusk was falling, the crew began to relax.
They were too tired to think of clearing away the piles of spent cartridge cases littering their gun pit.
Suddenly, the alarm bell rang again, followed by a unanimous chorus of groans from the various locations the members of the crew had chosen to lie down and rest.
‘I don’t believe it!
They’re not going to bomb us in the dark as well?’
The sergeant in charge of the gun listened to the field telephone for a few moments,
then
held his hand up.
‘Listen, this is different.
There’s a report of naval activity, coming this way.’
Reluctantly, his crew gathered around the gun, heaving fresh three-round clips of ammunition close to the breech.
Night fell with Mediterranean swiftness.
The incessant noise of sirens, aircraft, bombs and anti-aircraft guns fell away, leaving only the more distant hammering of small arms from the embattled ground troops.
The Sergeant sat crouched over the telephone, listening.
‘Range four thousand yards and closing,’ he said quietly.
Tension began to grow, adrenaline pumping away weariness yet again.
The barrel of the Bofors slowly tracked across the entrance to the harbour, duplicating the actions in half-a-dozen other gun pits around the entrance.
Only because they were listening for it did the crew hear the coughing bark of a mortar, then several more.
They held their breaths and waited.
The parachute flares blazed out over the approaches to the harbour, throwing everything into sharp, black and white relief.
For a moment, nothing was visible,
then
the stealthy movement of sleek, low-lying craft approaching the harbour caught the eye of the crew.
Searchlights snapped on, wavered, held the craft, which began firing back at them; tracers streaking across the harbour.
‘Open fire!’
The order was hardly necessary.
The Bofors began its harsh thumping, a rhythmical two rounds per second, each shot a curving arc of tracer across the bay, joined by others from neighbouring guns.
Like candle flames to a moth, thought the Sergeant crazily, as the shells hit home on the frail Italian MAS craft, shattering them before they could make their escape.
The slaughter was brief but complete, the last of the craft burning as the last flare guttered out.
The crew were beginning to relax again when they were disturbed by a new sound; the booming of heavy naval gunfire.
By the evening, no-one had left the Ops Room and the atmosphere was dulled by prolonged tension.
The map of Malta, hastily retrieved from storage, showed the relentless, creeping progress of the German forces, spreading out from the airfields to join the German and Italian troops landed by sea later in the day, once air superiority had been assured.
‘It’s a wall-by-wall, street-by-street, battle of attrition, now.’
Charles’ mood was sombre.
‘At least this has kept down the air attacks on our troops.
The forces are so intertwined no-one can tell where the front line is.’
‘Any news of our reinforcements?’
‘We’ve got some Reapers flown into Tripoli.
They’re beginning to mix it with the Luftwaffe, but our nearest naval forces are too far away to do much about cutting off the German supply ships.
We have few forces of any sort west of Alexandria.’
The telephone rang, and Mary picked it up.
After identifying herself she listened in silence for a while, but the others saw her body language and began to gather round.
‘Thank you.
Yes, please keep us informed.’
She looked round the circle of faces, grinning broadly.
‘It’s the Free French!
They sailed from Oran as soon as they heard the news.
The
Dunkerque
and
Strasbourg
have already hit a major Italian supply convoy, and now their whole fleet is pounding the German forces on Malta.
They borrowed some tank landing craft from Tripoli and their armoured regiment is about to land!’
The room erupted in amazement and delight.
The
Dunkerque
and
Strasbourg
were the pride of the Marine Nationale, fast and powerful modern battlecruisers.
Don was jubilant.
‘I knew it!
I knew I was right to fight Churchill over his plan to sink the French ships!’
By late evening the outcome was becoming clear.
The Reapers had managed to provide air cover for the French operation until nightfall had removed the threat from the Dorniers and their guided bombs.
The Germans were still resisting bitterly but were being driven back by the defending forces and the Free French, who were fighting with a ferocity born of hate and frustration.
Dawn brought the final messages to the bleary-eyed gang in the Ops Room.
The last German troops had been cornered and surrendered.
They had suffered sixty percent casualties; among the Fallschirmjäger, seventy-five percent.
The German airborne had been broken as an effective fighting force.
Hitler looked coldly around the table at his senior commanders, reserving a particular glare for Admiral Raeder, who had been the strongest proponent of the Mediterranean strategy.
‘So much for the grand ideas about conquering the
Mediterranean
and encircling
Russia
from the south!
Without Malta, there is no chance of proceeding.
We have even lost the chance of causing the British trouble from Syria, now it has declared for the Free French.’
Raeder stirred uncomfortably, but decided not to point out that that had been the almost inevitable consequence of the termination of the Vichy government and the total occupation of France by German troops.
Hitler went on to his favourite theme.
‘Now that the southern situation has subsided, we can concentrate on our two main objectives; the subjugation of Britain and the conquest of the USSR!’
Göring saw his opportunity.
‘We continue to mine the approaches to British ports, and our raids on dock facilities are continuing virtually every night.
They are receiving very little in the way of food or other supplies.
As for Russia, we can switch our bomber forces to the east in twenty-four hours, as soon as you give the word.’
Raeder was not to be outdone.
‘The new Type Ten Elektroboote, and the smaller Type Eleven coastal version, are now in full production and will replace every other type in service over the next few months.
Already they are having a dramatic effect on the British convoys; they can slip in to attack at will.
When we have a full force in operation, the convoys will be massacred.’
Herrman listened to the boasts with a weary cynicism.
Raeder he respected, but he knew that the British would have anticipated the Elektroboote and would have counters to prevent their complete dominance.
As for
Göring ,
he had delicately tried to warn Hitler of his casual incompetence and inflated confidence, but to no avail.
He was too valuable to Hitler as a trustworthy and popular colleague. Herrman was feeling uncomfortable; this rare meeting of the OKW – Hitler usually preferred to see his senior commanders separately – was being held in the Fürhersonderzug ‘Amerika’, the special command train currently parked in a mountain station in Austria. The bitter winter cold outside caused the windows to steam up, adding to the claustrophobic effect.
‘Very well.
We will leave sufficient forces to invest Britain, but will otherwise concentrate on the Soviet Union.
Once we have defeated the Slavs, Britain will have to surrender. And I would rather they surrendered than were invaded and beaten, since then their empire would collapse and fall into the hands of Japan and America. I want a full-scale attack on the Soviet Union to take place as soon as the weather permits.’
He turned to Brauchitsch.
‘How soon will you be ready?’