Crescendo Of Doom (24 page)

The Germans reorganized at noon, then resumed their tireless advance that afternoon, with fresh battalions moving through the gap in the outer defenses to strengthen the push north. To make matters worse, the Panzer Regiment of 5th Light had now moved in to support this attack, and soon Monty was reaching for every spare unit he could get his hands on. All his remaining artillery began to pound the German advance, and flak units positioned near the airfields, to either side of the road leading to King’s Cross, were sent forward in a last ditch defense. To these he added two battalions of Royal Marines, the Layforce Group that had come in by sea on the previous night.

By now, the Carpathian Brigade had finally footed it up from Gambut, and was taking up positions on the eastern flank of the German advance, and far to the east, the trains had been laboring all through the previous night to deliver the last reserves that the British could count on. Only the onset of darkness carried the hope that the embattled garrison of Tobruk might hold on.

As the sun set on the 8th, the battle in the south had also ground to a halt. The infantry clash on the left of the German advance had resulted in a stalemate, hot and furious at times, with squads of German grenadiers making concerted attacks, only to be countered by waves of British infantry, charging over the desert with fixed bayonets. In places the fighting was hand to hand until, under orders from Rommel, the 15th Panzer Division pulled back to form a defensive night laager.

“Any sign of those heavy British Tanks?” Rommel had been keen to learn where and when the enemy might play their last Ace. Yet thus far, there had been no reports of these unstoppable goliaths anywhere along the front. The first British attempt to envelop 15th Panzer Division fell right astride the prepared defenses of the Grossdeutschland Regiment, and the enemy was stopped cold, with heavy casualties, and forced to withdraw into a defensive laager of their own. So the battle in the south had resulted in a stalemate that day, which is exactly what Rommel had planned. Thus far everything seemed to be going as he wished.

I’ve stopped O’Connor with my 15th Panzers, he thought, and Grossdeutschland is standing like a rock on that southern flank. We’ve pushed into the fortress with my shock troops, and tomorrow should decide that issue. Conrath must drive right over those airfields and take the port, and that will bag the whole of the 9th Australian Division. But where are those big enemy tanks? We’ve seen scores of Matildas, and a new small cruiser tank, but no sign of the demons that fell on us at Bir el Khamsa. One more day, that is all I need. If I can take that port tomorrow, the British will have no recourse but to withdraw.

* * *

That
night, O’Connor was on the radio to Kinlan at Sidi Omar. Was his force ready for operations? Could he move quickly west to Bir el Gobi? Was there anything he could send to Tobruk? Kinlan mounted a fast vehicle with Lieutenant Sims and sped up the road after dusk, intent on meeting with O’Connor at Bir el Gobi to plan their next move. It was close to midnight by the time he got there, saluting as he arrived at XIII Corps headquarters.

“Good to see you, General,” said O’Connor. “I hope you’re coming with more than those three trucks out there.”

“Stand easy,” said Kinlan. “The Highlanders and Mercians have arrived by rail, so I’ve got my whole brigade together again. They’ve been assembling at Sidi Omar since 04:00, and I’ll be making a night march here, if this is where you want my men.”

“Excellent. We’ve been in a bit of a boxing match with the German 15th Panzer Division all day.” O’Connor leaned over the map on the briefing table, his face weary with the hour, but the light of battle still in his eyes.

“Now then, my envelopment maneuver ran right into Rommel’s men this morning, about here, and it’s been tooth and nail ever since. I jogged left with a brigade, but found another German unit in well prepared positions there.”

“Sounds like Rommel planned it that way,” said Kinlan. “He knew you would try that end around.”

“Quite so. In the meantime, he’s punched right through the Tobruk perimeter near the main road, and the fighting reached King’s Cross by dusk.”

“I’ve sent my light infantry battalion on to Tobruk by rail as you requested,” said Kinlan. “It’s just one battalion, but these men will fight, and then some.”

“Good enough, because no matter what happens tomorrow, I plan to hold on here. We simply cannot lose Tobruk. Rommel thinks he can compel me to withdraw if he gets a firm hold there, but I’ll hear none of that. Montgomery is manning the line with artillery, flak units and rail workers, so that battalion will be more than welcome. In the meantime, you and I must decide how to handle things in the south, and we’ll need to move quickly.”

“My brigade will be here by dawn,” said Kinlan. “I assume you have a plan?”

“Well, we’ve two options as I see things. You might swing down here…” O’Connor fingered the line of a long wadi that ran southwest from the vicinity of Bir el Gobi. “There’s a road along that wadi, and it will take you here, down past my 7th Division headquarters and in a good position to swing round Rommel’s flank.”

“Isn’t that exactly what he expects us to do?”

“More than likely. It’s what I tried to do late this afternoon, but my 7th Brigade wasn’t able to carry it off. Your brigade, however, is something more. Now, we’ve had a good while to scout that flank. Jerry had a brigade sized defensive laager there, and further east, there’s a line of fixed gun positions—most likely his heavy flak batteries.”

“Sounds like he’s expecting visitors.”

“Indeed, and I’m also told the Germans have been busy laying minefields on that flank. They clearly expect us to try them again, and are digging in.”

“Any other options?”

O’Connor pursed his lips. “This segment here, just north along the wadi from where my 7th Division is posted… I’ve got 2nd Armored there, just two brigades, but they put in a spoiling attack on the German flank in that area. Ran into another line of flak units and mixed it up all afternoon, but those damn 88s are just good enough to stop even our Matildas. As for our cruiser tanks, they go through them like paper. Yet, as I see it now, that defense was hastily mounted, and not anywhere as well prepared as the German southern flank. That move by 2nd Armored was the one thing Rommel didn’t expect today, otherwise I’d say he’s read my damned operational orders to the letter. The road running northwest from here could put your brigade right behind my current positions with 2nd Armored.”

Kinlan nodded. “An attack there would cut off everything the Germans have to the south.”

“Precisely. Rommel expects me to swing left again around that flank, and by God, sending in your boys along with my 7th Division would see all the Desert Rats taking it to the enemy in one glorious rush. But if there is one thing I’ve learned out here, it is not to do what the enemy expects. My 7th Hussars has had a good long look at that German position on the southern flank. I don’t like it. They’ve had two days to harden that defense, while this segment here opposite 2nd Armored Division is much weaker. I say we hit them there.”

“Agreed,” said Kinlan. “I can have my column up by dawn, shake them out, and be ready to attack in little time.”

O’Connor smiled. “And I’ll put on a good show tomorrow morning on that southern flank, to keep Jerry guessing as to what we’re up to. The only rub is this—can Montgomery hold out at Tobruk? ”

Kinlan smiled. “General, if I had to give odds on that, I’d bankrupt anyone who bets against me. Monty will hold.”

* * *

King’s
Cross was being held by 16th Light AA Battalion, the 1st Carpathian Battalion and a company from the Ulhans Recon Battalion. To the west the other two battalions of the Carpathian Brigade stretched out in a line reaching towards Gabr Casm. Beyond this, the rail line that the British had labored all spring to complete wound its way through the crumbling edge of an escarpment and down past a line of three inner forts, Pilistrino, Solaro and Ariente, the old fortifications built by the Italians. Montgomery had stripped away their scant garrisons, including any flak batteries he could round up, and put them on the makeshift defense line he was forming south of the port.

“Our back is against the wall, gentlemen, so I expect we shall have to leave off civility and become something more. Here we stand. There is to be no further retreat from this line. We fight here, or we die. Sergeant Major!”

“Sir!”

“I see no rifles here for my headquarters staff. Fetch anything you can find. I’m partial to the old Martini & Henry myself, but under the circumstances, one can’t be picky.”

“I think we can fill that order sir,” said the Sergeant Major. “Would a Martini-Enfield do?” The crisp salute and click of the heels set the tone of the hour. In all the annals of military history, through countless wars over the centuries, there had been a thousand other moments like this, where men banded together in some crucial fort or redoubt, or on a hill forsaken by time and the whims of man until that hour. They huddled in trenches, hunched in the cellars of forgotten hamlets, shivered in a cold, nameless forest, and held a line. One side or another would prevail, and history changed with their sweat and toil, wrenched by their bones and muscle, washed with the shedding of their blood.

This was one such moment, where the fall of Tobruk might cascade to unforeseen consequences that no man could see, or read about, as this was all new history being written that day. It may have echoed and mocked the battles fought in this place, all well chronicled in Fedorov’s history books, but here was a chapter where the outcome hung in the balance, and could not be found all neatly resolved at the end of a typeset paragraph.

Yet there was something strangely macabre about the whole scene. Here were men that had all left homes, wives, children, family and friends, and then traveled half way around the world to this place, a bleak and barren desert, all to form lines in the heartless sands, and to kill one another.

Across the deadly interval between the lines, other men crouched with their squad mates, hands tight on the hard steel and wood of their rifles, helmets pulled low on their foreheads. It was Major Kluge’s
Wachbataillon
, three companies under Zillmann, Krohn and Trukenmüller opposite King’s Cross that day. On their right was Burchardt’s battalion from the Sturm Regiment, on their left were Heydt’s troops from that same unit. Between them a salient was holding out with a company of Engineers from the 1st Army Tank Brigade, and 1/74th Flak, with four 3.7 inch AA guns.

Kluge was getting up some fire support from the 5th Light, as 605th Panzer Jaegers had sent up a number of tracked 47mm guns. By noon he was ready to make his attack, and the men that had been handpicked by Goering himself, to first stand a watch over his lavish Karinhall estate, would now be thrown at Montgomery’s last dogged defense. They were just one small link in the chain of battle that stretched for miles in all directions, but this attack would carry weight far in excess of the numbers actually involved.

Yet something was happening just east of this crucial crossroads in history, when a train arrived at the edge of the Tobruk perimeter and the “Little Men” of Kinlan’s tough Royal Gurkha Rifle Battalion leapt from the rolling stock, ready for action. The very presence of that rail line itself was yet another anomaly in the history, for the connection between the railhead at Mersa Matruh and Tobruk had not been finished by the British until 1942. This time, however, they had used the interval from February to May to feverishly extend that line, and it was a most timely decision.

There were fewer men in the Light Battalion now, with 17 dead and another 20 wounded in Syria. Colonel Gandar had the men formed by companies in ten minutes, and now he looked to get some sense of what was happening on the battlefield ahead. The sun was well past mid day when he led his men forward, feeling the battle ahead of him with senses keened by many years of military service. He was listening to it, smelling it, and coming to some sense of what he was now leading his men into.

His companies possessed a great deal of firepower, but here, in these open spaces, with little more than bare scrub for cover, the men would be vulnerable to all the many banes of infantry, chief among them being enemy artillery. He looked south with his field glasses, spying the distant squat shapes of the block houses that marked the outer perimeter. In his mind he now saw them as an archipelago of stony islands, perhaps the only cover he could find within miles. There his battalion might be able to work its way from one strongpoint to another, and he elected to move in that direction. In so doing he was going to launch his companies at the southernmost anchor of the British Commonwealth defense, like a man arriving at a beleaguered fortress, and then shouldering his way against the breach in a desperate effort to shut the gate.

* * *

It
took a good part of the night for Kinlan’s force to motor up from Sidi Omar, moving slowly along the desert roads to Bir el Gobi, and then turning northwest on the road running a few kilometers east of Wadi Nullah. They moved over the wadi, the obstacle bridged by the engineers, and began to assemble behind the lines of the 2nd Armored Division. The action had slackened off on all sides, troops exhausted and needing rest. Even the position inside Tobruk quieted down, as assault squads re-assembled, and the weary troops tried to get some food and rest before the day that would surely decide the battle.

Early evening came with Kinlan’s two heavy mechanized infantry battalions largely assembled and ready, the Scots Dragoons behind them. Any troops of the 2nd Division that saw them gawked at the sight of the Challenger IIs. They had heard rumors that the army had a new tank, but wondered where it was. Now they knew. It had their back in the fight that was coming, and O’Connor and Kinlan met with Division Commander, Michael Denman Gambier-Parry, or simply GP to the men. He was another fish that had slipped through history’s net, for he was supposed to have been captured by the Germans the previous month, along with Norrie and O’Connor himself. Yet all these men were free and at large, a good windfall for the British at this crucial juncture of the desert war.