These conversations also enabled the field Ics to update their overnight reports. When they were finished von Mellenthin wrote his report for Rommel, and took it to the command vehicle. He discussed it with the chief of staff, who then presented it to Rommel.
The morning discussion was brief, for Rommel had made his major decisions and given his orders for the day during the previous evening. Besides, Rommel was not in a reflective mood in the mornings: he wanted action. He tore around the desert, going from one front-line position to another in his staff car or his Storch aircraft, giving new orders, joking with the men and taking charge of skirmishes—and yet, although he constantly exposed himself to enemy fire, he had not been wounded since 1914. Von Mellenthin went with him today, taking the opportunity to get his own picture of the front-line situation, and making his personal assessment of the Ics who were sending in his raw material: some were overcautious, omitting all unconfirmed data, and others exaggerated in order to get extra supplies and reinforcements for their units.
In the early evening, when at last the thermometer showed a fall, there were more reports and conversations. Von Mellenthin sifted the mass of detail for information relating to the counterattack predicted by Sphinx.
The Ariete Armored—the Italian division occupying the Aslagh Ridge—reported increased enemy air activity. Von Mellenthin asked them whether this was bombing or reconnaissance, and they said reconnaissance: bombing had actually ceased.
The Luftwaffe reported activity in no-man’s-land which might, or might not, have been an advance party marking out an assembly point.
There was a garbled radio intercept in a low-grade cipher in which the something Indian Brigade requested urgent clarification of the morning’s something (orders?) with particular reference to the timing of something artillery bombardment. In British tactics, von Mellenthin knew, artillery bombardment generally preceded an attack.
The evidence was building.
Von Mellenthin checked his card index for the 32nd Army Tank Brigade and discovered that they had recently been sighted at Rigel Ridge—a logical position from which to attack Sidra Ridge.
The task of an Ic was an impossible one: to forecast the enemy’s moves on the basis of inadequate information. He looked at the signs, he used his intuition and he gambled.
Von Mellenthin decided to gamble on Sphinx.
At 1830 hours he took his report to the command vehicle. Rommel was there with his chief of staff Colonel Bayerlein and Kesselring. They stood around a large camp table looking at the operations map. A lieutenant sat to one side ready to take notes.
Rommel had taken his cap off, and his large, balding head appeared too big for his small body. He looked tired and thin. He suffered recurring stomach trouble, von Mellenthin knew, and was often unable to eat for days. His normally pudgy face had lost flesh, and his ears seemed to stick out more than usual. But his slitted dark eyes were bright with enthusiasm and the hope of victory.
Von Mellenthin clicked his heels and formally handed over the report; then he explained his conclusions on the map. When he was done Kesselring said: “And all this is based on the report of a spy, you say?”
“No, Field Marshal,” von Mellenthin said firmly. “There are confirming indications.”
“You can find confirming indications for anything,” Kesselring said.
Out of the comer of his eye von Mellenthin could see that Rommel was getting cross.
Kesselring said: “We really can’t plan battles on the basis of information from some grubby little secret agent in Cairo.”
Rommel said: “I am inclined to believe this report.”
Von Mellenthin watched the two men. They were curiously balanced in terms of power—curiously, that was, for the Army, where hierarchies were normally so well defined. Kesselring was C in C South, and outranked Rommel, but Rommel did not take orders from him, by some whim of Hitler’s. Both men had patrons in Berlin—Kesselring, the Luftwaffe man, was Goering’s favorite, and Rommel produced such good publicity that Goebbels could be relied upon to support him. Kesselring was popular with the Italians, whereas Rommel always insulted them. Ultimately Kesselring was more powerful, for as a field marshal he had direct access to Hitler, while Rommel had to go through jodl; but this was a card Kesselring could not afford to play too often. So the two men quarreled; and although Rommel had the last word here in the desert, back in Europe—von Mellenthin knew—Kesselring was maneuvering to get rid of him.
Rommel turned to the map. “Let us be ready, then, for a two-pronged attack. Consider first the weaker, northern prong. Sidra Ridge is held by the Twenty-first Panzer Division with antitank guns. Here, in the path of the British advance, is a minefield. The panzers will lure the British into the minefield and destroy them with antitank fire. If the spy is right, and the British throw only seventy tanks into this assault, the Twenty-first Panzers should deal with them quickly and be free for other action later in the day.”
He drew a thick forefinger down across the map. “Now consider the second prong, the main assault, on our eastern flank. This is held by the Italian Army. The attack is to be led by an Indian brigade. Knowing those Indians, and knowing our Italians, I assume the attack will succeed. I therefore order a vigorous riposte.
“One: The Italians will counterattack from the west. Two: The Panzers, having repelled the other prong of the attack at Sidra Ridge, will turn about and attack the Indians from the north. Three: Tonight our engineers will clear a gap in the minefield at Bir el-Harmat, so that the Fifteenth Panzers can make a swing to the south, emerge through the gap, and attack the British forces from the rear.”
Von Mellenthin, listening and watching, nodded appreciation. It was a typical Rommel plan, involving rapid switching of forces to maximize their effect, an encircling movement, and the surprise appearance of a powerful division where it was least expected, in the enemy’s rear. If it all worked, the attacking Allied brigades would be surrounded, cut off and wiped out.
If it all worked.
If the spy was right.
Kesselring said to Rommel: “I think you could be making a big mistake.”
“That’s your privilege,” Rommel said calmly.
Von Mellenthin did not feel calm. If it worked out badly, Berlin would soon hear about Rommel’s unjustified faith in poor intelligence; and von Mellenthin would be blamed for supplying that intelligence. Rommel’s attitude to subordinates who let him down was savage.
Rommel looked at the note-taking lieutenant. “Those, then, are my orders for tomorrow.” He glared defiantly at Kesselring.
Von Mellenthin put his hands in his pockets and crossed his fingers.
Von Mellenthin remembered that moment when, sixteen days later, he and Rommel watched the sun rise over Tobruk.
They stood together on the escarpment northeast of El Adem, waiting for the start of the battle. Rommel was wearing the goggles he had taken from the captured General O’Connor, the goggles which had become a kind of trademark of his. He was in top form: bright-eyed, lively and confident. You could almost hear his brain tick as he scanned the landscape and computed how the battle might go.
Von Mellenthin said: “The spy was right.”
Rommel smiled. “That’s exactly what I was thinking.”
The Allied counterattack of June 5 had come precisely as forecast, and Rommel’s defense had worked so well that it had turned into a counter-counterattack. Three of the four Allied brigades involved had been wiped out, and four regiments of artillery had been captured. Rommel had pressed his advantage remorselessly. On June 14 the Gazala Line had been broken and today, June 20, they were to be-siege the vital coastal garrison of Tobruk.
Von Mellenthin shivered. It was astonishing how cold the desert could be at five o’clock in the morning.
He watched the sky.
At twenty minutes past five the attack began.
A sound like distant thunder swelled to a deafening roar as the Stukas approached. The first formation flew over, dived toward the British positions, and dropped their bombs. A great cloud of dust and smoke arose, and with that Rommel’s entire artillery forces opened fire with a simultaneous earsplitting crash. Another wave of Stukas came over, then another: there were hundreds of bombers.
Von Mellenthin said: “Fantastic. Kesselring really did it.”
It was the wrong thing to say. Rommel snapped: “No credit to Kesselring: today we are directing the planes ourselves.”
The Luftwaffe was putting on a good show, even so, von Mellenthin thought; but he did not say it.
Tobruk was a concentric fortress. The garrison itself was within a town, and the town was at the heart of a larger British-held area surrounded by a thirty-five-mile perimeter wire dotted with strong-points. The Germans had to cross the wire, then penetrate the town, then take the garrison.
A cloud of orange smoke arose in the middle of the battlefield. Von Mellenthin said: “That’s a signal from the assault engineers, telling the artillery to lengthen their range.”
Rommel nodded. “Good. We’re making progress.”
Suddenly von Mellenthin was seized by optimism. There was booty in Tobruk: petrol, and dynamite, and tents, and trucks—already more than half Rommel’s motorized transport consisted of captured British vehicles—and food. Von Mellenthin smiled and said: “Fresh fish for dinner?”
Rommel understood his train of thought. “Liver,” he said. “Fried potatoes. Fresh bread.”
“A real bed, with a feather pillow.”
“In a house with stone walls to keep out the heat and the bugs.”
A runner arrived with a signal. Von Mellenthin took it and read it. He tried to keep the excitement out of his voice as he said: “They’ve cut the wire at Strongpoint Sixty-nine. Group Menny is attacking with the infantry of the Afrika Korps.”
“That’s it,” said Rommel. “We’ve opened a breach. Let’s go.”
It was ten-thirty in the morning when Lieutenant Colonel Reggie Bogge poked his head around the door of Vandam’s office and said: “Tobruk is under siege.”
It seemed pointless to work then. Vandam went on mechanically, reading reports from informants, considering the case of a lazy lieutenant who was due for promotion but did not deserve it, trying to think of a fresh approach to the Alex Wolff case; but everything seemed hopelessly trivial. The news became more depressing as the day wore on. The Germans breached the perimeter wire; they bridged the antitank ditch; they crossed the inner minefield; they reached the strategic road junction known as King’s Cross.
Vandam went home at seven to have supper with Billy. He could not tell the boy about Tobruk: the news was not to be released at present. As they ate their lamb chops, Billy said that his English teacher, a young man with a lung condition who could not get into the Army, never stopped talking about how he would love to get out into the desert and have a bash at the Hun. “I don’t believe him, though,” Billy said. “Do you?”
“I expect he means it,” Vandam said. “He just feels guilty.”
Billy was at an argumentative age. “Guilty? He can’t feel guilty—it’s not his fault.”
“Unconsciously he can.”
“What’s the difference?”
I walked into that one, Vandam thought. He considered for a moment, then said: “When you’ve done something wrong, and you know it’s wrong, and you feel bad about it, and you know why you feel bad, that’s conscious guilt. Mr. Simkisson has done nothing wrong, but he still feels bad about it, and he doesn’t know why he feels bad. That’s unconscious guilt. It makes him feel better to talk about how much he wants to fight.”
“Oh,” said Billy.
Vandam did not know whether the boy had understood or not.
Billy went to bed with a new book. He said it was a “tec,” by which he meant a detective story. It was called
Death
on
the Nile.
Vandam went back to GHQ. The news was still bad. The 21st Panzers had entered the town of Tobruk and fired from the quay onto several British ships which were trying, belatedly, to escape to the open sea. A number of vessels had been sunk. Vandam thought of the men who made a ship, and the tons of precious steel that went into it, and the training of the sailors, and the welding of the crew into a team; and now the men were dead, the ship sunk, the effort wasted.
He spent the night in the officers’ mess, waiting for news. He drank steadily and smoked so much that he gave himself a headache. Bulletins came down periodically from the Operations Room. During the night Ritchie, as commander of the Eighth Army, decided to abandon the frontier and retreat to Mersa Matruh. It was said that when Auchinleck, the commander in chief, heard this news he stalked out of the room with a face as black as thunder.
Toward dawn Vandam found himself thinking about his parents. Some of the ports on the south coast of England had suffered as much as London from the bombing, but his parents were a little way inland, in a village in the Dorset countryside. His father was postmaster at a small sorting office. Vandam looked at his watch: it would be four in the morning in England now, the old man would be putting on his cycle clips, climbing on his bike and riding to work in the dark. At sixty years of age he had the constitution of a teenage farmboy. Vandam’s chapelgoing mother forbade smoking, drinking and all kinds of dissolute behavior, a term she used to encompass everything from darts matches to listening to the wireless. The regime seemed to suit her husband, but she herself was always ailing.
Eventually booze, fatigue and tedium sent Vandam into a doze. He dreamed he was in the garrison at Tobruk with Billy and Elene and his mother. He was running around closing all the windows. Outside, the Germans—who had turned into firemen—were leaning ladders against the wall and climbing up. Suddenly Vandam’s mother stopped counting her forged banknotes and opened a window, pointing at Elene and screaming: “The Scarlet Woman!” Rommel came through the window in a fireman’s helmet and turned a hose on Billy. The force of the jet pushed the boy over a parapet and he fell into the sea. Vandam knew he was to blame, but he could not figure out what he had done wrong. He began to weep bitterly. He woke up.