Authors: John Schettler
“I just
may have to do that if the 22nd can’t save the day, but remember Kinlan is
still a long way east in Egypt!”
“Very
well, General, the Guards are yours.”
That
night the two brigades that shared the same number both headed south on the
designated road. They were still far from the crisis zone by sunrise, pressing
on with a breakfast of cold biscuits and water. That morning O’Connor also made
the call Monty had suggested, though he had been reluctant to do so, for it
wounded his pride to have to go begging to Brigadier Kinlan again.
“Well,”
he said, “we’ve a bit of a situation on our hands.”
“Let me
guess,” said Kinlan. “Rommel’s got round your southern flank at Wadi Thiran.”
O’Connor
was somewhat surprised. “Well you have it exactly.”
“Alright,
General,” said Kinlan. “My boys have been sitting on their thumbs here too long
as it stands. I’ll put together a battlegroup and get it heading east this
morning.”
“You’ve
a long way to go,” said O’Connor. “So I’ve taken the liberty of arranging for
rail transport from the old railhead near Bir Thalatha to Tobruk. We’ve spent
the last 90 days extending that line, and it will get you up here quick as a
cat.”
Kinlan
signed off, thinking. Damn if Rommel hadn’t beaten the British yet again. Once
I get out west I’ll make sure he’s the only General to have beaten his enemy
three times, while losing every battle! I knew we should have been positioned
well west of the wire into Libya. Reeves is well west at Habata Airfield with
the Recon Battalion. I’ll get him moving at once. And the Gurkhas are manning
the forts on the wire. They might do in a pinch, but I’ll need a good
battlegroup from Scotts Dragoons to finish the job.
“Simms.”
He called for his Chief of Staff.
“Sir?”
“Scare
up that report on our current ammo stores.”
Part XI
The Better Part of Valor
“The better part of valor is
discretion, in the which better part I have sav'd my life.”
―
William
Shakespeare:
Henry The Fourth, Part 1,
Act 5, Scene 4
Rommel
was incensed. When he finally found Ravenstein’s
headquarters on Hill 587, he stormed into the General’s tent, clearly upset.
“What in God’s name are you doing?” he said angrily.
“Trying
to stop the British!” said Ravenstein. “What else?”
“Where
is the Panzer Regiment?”
“Crüwell
ordered it to move south yesterday. The British tried to get round our flank,
but he’s turned the tables on them.” Ravenstein tapped the map on a low folding
table to indicate the position.
“My
God! He’s moved that far south?”
“Right
around their flank,” said Ravenstein. “10th Panzer came up through Wadi Thiran
and he’s got the whole of 15th Panzer down there with it. They’re rolling up
that flank!” He smiled, hoping the news would dispel Rommel’s anger, but it only
seemed to deepen his mood.
“That
idiot!” he said. “Do you remember what happened to us three months ago? We’ve
already fought that battle, doing exactly what Crüwell has done here! Then what
happened? That damn British Heavy Brigade showed up and cut us to pieces! I
spent three months putting this Army back together, and now Crüwell has put the
entire Panzer Korps at grave risk again. You were supposed to hold the panzer
divisions behind the infantry front, and then counterattack the enemy
breakthrough. I authorized no major offensive around that flank! Do you know
what is happening on the coast road? Montgomery is pushing right through the
Italians!”
Ravenstein
gave Rommel a sheepish look., but what was done, was done. “What can I do about
it now? I had no idea Crüwell was not acting in accordance with your wishes.”
“Where
is the nearest radio. Get hold of Crüwell immediately!”
Far to
the south, the weight of the 10th and 15th Panzer Divisions was indeed rolling
up the British flank. The new German tanks were fearsome. I/7th Panzer
Battalion of the 10th division broke through and was storming through the sea
of dust and smoke right toward the brigade headquarters of Jock Campbell’s 7th
Support Group. On his left were the positions of the 4th Indian Division
artillery, and the Lions were about to break clean through.
Campbell
could barely see what was happening, but he instinctively knew danger in the
sound of those oncoming tanks. He rushed through the haze, reaching a battery
of 25 Pounders, and immediately ordered them to level their barrels. “The
enemy’s right there!” he pointed, “give them hell!”
The
frantic gun crews depressed their barrels, which had been elevated for long
range support fire directed beyond Hill 522. That position had already been
overrun by the 15th Panzer Division, and General Messervy, and his entire
headquarters staff, was taken prisoner. Crüwell’s plan looked like it was
working, but he underestimated the tenacity of the British gunners. Campbell
was racing through the field batteries like a mad jinn, bawling orders at the top
of his voice. “Down! Down! Depress your guns to repel enemy tanks!”
The
German tank battalion had found not one, but all three regiments of the 4th
Indian Division artillery, 72 guns in all. The new armor on the German tanks
was very good, but it was now going to receive the shock and shell of all that
massed artillery, and the scene soon became a wild hail of fire, with some
rounds glancing off the German tanks, while others struck hard, with terrible
fire and concussion. Some rounds struck the forward tracks, blowing them off
and immobilizing the tank. Others smashed into turrets as the British gunners
loaded, fired, and loaded again. The Germans blasted away at near point blank
range themselves, sending the heavy guns careening onto their sides in places,
raking the gun crews with deadly machinegun fire in others.
The German
battalion would lose four Pz IVF1s, five Leopards, and seven Lions in that
deadly engagement. Three more Pz III H tanks in the HQ platoon were brewed up
by the heavy fire. Many would have been salvageable if the Germans held the
ground, but that was not going to happen.
Right
in the midst of that wild battle, Rommel got through to Crüwell, raging at him to
get those precious tank battalions back behind the covering terrain of Wadi
Thiran.
“That
is lunacy!” said Crüwell. “We’ve broken through!”
“Yes?
And just where in God’s name do you propose to go? Cairo? You don’t even have
the fuel to reach Tobruk from where those divisions are now. Do you think we
can deliver it to you over that damn wadi? General Crüwell, I am giving you a
direct order now. You are to pull both 15th and 10th Panzer Divisions back at
once! Get west of Wadi Thiran and reorganize there. We have trouble on the
coast, and you’ve scattered Ravenstein’s division across forty kilometers of
desert. Now execute that order at once, or I’ll give command of that Korps to
someone who will obey!”
*
Lieutenant
Reeves pulled up to the low hill labeled 551 on his map,
looking to see what the track leading west was like up ahead. There were no
real roads worth the name here, just places where columns of men and trucks had
once scored the land, leaving tracks deep enough that the desert winds had not
had time to cover them. The ground to his immediate front tumbled down into a
stony field of loose gravel, and he soon met with some Gurkha scouts that
indicated the best way down, as most of that battalion had left the wire forts
the previous day, and they were waiting at this point to link up with the Royal
Lancers.
Reeves
had the light Scimitars, 33 in all, spread over his three squadrons, with
twelve more Dragon AFVs bringing up the rear. With him now were the three
companies of the Gurkha Battalion, which had swelled their ranks by taking on
more of those fierce fighters from this era, training them in the use of modern
weapons and tactics over the last three months. They were motorized now, with
British trucks getting them out here from the wire on the Egyptian border in
good time.
Reeves
looked at his map. They would pass Hill 469 if they continued west, and that
would put them only about 30 kilometers from the fighting. He received a report
indicating that the British had already moved both the 22nd Guards and 22nd Tank
brigades down to plow right into the German turning movement around that
southern flank. They arrived in the nick of time, better late than never, and
were most helpful in stabilizing the situation.
“The
question now is whether to push on or wait for Allen,” he said to himself. That
was the Colonel commanding the heavy tank battalion, following Reeves’ tracks
and now about 80 klicks east. Kinlan had decided he would get his Challengers west
overland just as quickly as the laborious loading operation and train ride up
to Tobruk.
“I’ll
be inside the fence if I take that route,” he told O’Connor. That would put me
in a good position to cover Tobruk on defense, but for my money, I’d prefer a
good counterattack. Better if I move overland and turn up on their flank, just
as we did last May. Can you hold for another day?”
“We’ll
hold,” O’Connor told him. “You can come late if you must, but just be sure you
get there. It was tooth and nail in the artillery park this morning, but then
Jerry pulled back. I’d like to think it was our boys on the 25 Pounders, but
they had another full tank battalion right behind the first, and it pulled out
too. I smell Rommel. He’s up to something, but I can’t imaging what.”
“Very
well,” said Kinlan. “We’re coming as quick as we can.”
By dusk
on the 19th of October, O’Connor could look at his map and pencil in what the
front looked like that evening. 4th Indian, realizing they were in a pickle,
had managed to conduct a fighting withdrawal to the northeast. The weight of
those two brigades he had filched from Montgomery had stabilized the flank in
the nick of time, and now he learned where Kinlan’s lead elements were, and was
much heartened.
“By
Jove, I think we’ve stopped them,” he said aloud. As always, he was listening
to the battle again, and the loud crack of those 25 Pounders he had been
hearing all afternoon was finally abating. Darkness was coming, and with it a
lull in the action. The Germans will either reorganize to hit us again in the
morning, he thought, or they’ll do what they should do now and pull back behind
Wadi Thiran. I’m surprised Rommel tried this same maneuver again. You’d think
he might have learned his lesson.
Implacable
Montgomery was the one who really decided the fate of that battle. His dogged
infantry kept after the Italians, forcing them back and away from the coastal
road, which he now opened to any advance north towards Derna, if he could only
find some troops to throw in that direction. His main effort had been to push
the Italians back through a gap at the western edge of the high escarpment, and
from there he was now in a good position to cut Trigg Capuzzo, a vital life
line that ran west about 40 kilometers to the German depots at Mechili.
That
was the thrust that got Rommel’s attention, and with Ravenstein’s division so
scattered piecemeal along the front, he had no strong force in hand to
counterattack. He knew in his bones that his position was now fatally
compromised. It was no longer a question of holding the Gazala line and punching
off the ropes as he had planned, Crüwell had ruined all that with his wild,
harebrained attack around that flank. Now it was a question of whether or not
he could even safely extricate his panzer divisions. One battalion of
Ravenstein’s 21st was so embroiled with the retreating 4th Indian Division that
it was soon entirely behind the enemy lines. Rommel had to organize a quick
counterattack to break through to it, and get as many of those tanks out as he
could.
He rode
off at dusk, angry and looking for a pound of flesh. Where was Crüwell? Rommel
moved from unit to unit, pointing out where he wanted the men to go, and
slowly, like a madman on a mission, he began to pull his divisions off the line
and get them moving in the dark toward a new defensive position he had prepared
in his mind long ago.
We
can’t hold the Gazala Line, and with that coast road open it will only be a
matter of time before they chase the Italians up to Derna. Now the main thing
is to screen our depots at Mechili, regroup the panzer divisions behind that
infantry screen, and see how much pluck the British still have in them, If
nothing else, we’ve hit back hard, and they had to feel it.
Bitter
with the rebuke Rommel had heaped on him, Crüwell was not yet prepared to
ignore the order he had received. That night he called off his attack and began
pulling back to Wadi Thiran. He got hold of Meindel and saw that his tough
Falschirmjaegers were in a good position to cover that withdrawal, and it was
this force that Lieutenant Reeves would encounter the following morning.
The
Germans saw what looked like a column of cruiser tanks advancing, and they
adopted the infantry holding position tactics that Rommel had drilled them on.
Teams had already sewn mines the previous night, though they had no wire to
deploy, but the men had dug into the dry desert and set up good machinegun
positions, with a screen of troops in fox holes, with the new German
Panzerfaust
.
One such team was well forward, where a large, solitary rock stood like a
monolith in the desert. The private and corporal were hidden there, screened by
the rock, and holding one of the deadly new weapons.
Reeves
decided his 12th Royal Lancers had better keep moving. He wanted to scout out
the way ahead, make sure the road was cleared of any mines, and determine where
the enemy flank actually was. But in desert fighting, that was something that
shifted and changed from hour to hour.
The
morning saw the action start there, with a single Scimitar scouting forward
down the road, looking to spy out the German positions. They came up on that
monolith, and were suddenly surprised when the Germans appeared at the edge of
the rock.
“Look out
cobber! Hostiles left!” shouted the Sergeant as he quickly slapped his MG
around to engage. The light tank’s turret rotated quickly left, ready to fire
the 30mm main gun. But at that moment there was a hiss and a thunk, and the
Sergeant saw what he thought was an RPG in the air. Then it hit the Scimitar
square on the frontal armor plate.
If this
had been a Challenger II, with frontal armor protection equivalent to over
1200mm, the round would have exploded, failed to penetrate, and then the tank
would have simply gunned down those two brave German paratroopers. But this was
not a Challenger II…
The
Panzerfaust
could defeat armor up to 200mm at that range, and the Scimitar had much thinner
aluminum armor. The round blew right threw, killing the driver in the forward
hull position immediately, and sending a hail of deadly shrapnel into the two
man turret to also kill the Sergeant and gunner.
The two
Germans looked at one another, seeing the smoking wreck of the Scimitar, and
grinning at one another. Then they turned and fled back towards their lines in
a low crouch, and there was one less tank in Reeve’s 12th Royal Lancers. The
Lieutenant saw what had happened in his field glasses, about 500 meters back
from that lead tank. It was a bloody ambush, he thought, ordering up the rest
of his troop, which began laying down desultory suppressive fire on any
position or terrain feature that looked suspicious.