Hammer of God (Kirov Series Book 14) (13 page)

“Well you might have asked for
mine before you yanked on the leash during Operation Compass and shipped my 4th
Indian Division off to East Africa!” O’Connor smiled.

“They’re back now. With the
Germans thickening up here, I’m going to order both the 7th and 11th Indian
Brigades in with the 5th to support the attack on Syria.”

“That’s the ticket! Then with
Kinlan’s troops on the coast road, or in the center going for Rayak, we have a
good left hook to go with that right cross. Speaking of Kinlan’s troops—any
word from the Gurkhas?”

“They’re going to put in an
attack tonight,” said Wavell. “Now we’ll see if they’ve kept their backs
straight all those years on. They’ll be up against the French Foreign Legion.”

Even as he said that, a runner
came up in a huff, his cheeks red with haste. “Message from Sabre Force,” he
said. “Major Popski reports German troops coming on the line west of Damascus,
and they look to be in good strength!” he handed off the message, and Wavell
looked it over with concern.

“Fallschirmjagers,” he said. “Get
me that map over there, General. Where is Qatana?”

It was right on the road to the
high pass at Jebel Mazar. “That’s the left flank of this business the Gurkhas
are about with tonight. Who do we have there? Have the Free French come up on
that flank?”

“No. They’re southeast at Kiswah.
As far as I know that flank was just being screened by Popski and those Russian
Marines, and the chaps off the
Argos Fire
—the mobile force we sent to
Habbaniyah.”

“Well, they did a bang up job
there,” said O’Connor. “Started a stampede and sent a full Iraqi brigade packing
in less than an hour.

“If you could call that rabble a
brigade,” said Wavell. “This time they’ll be facing down some of the best the
Germans have. Popski has good eyes, and he seems to think they’re up against
two full battalions.”

“I see,” said O’Connor. “Let’s
hope they have those helicopters handy.”

Part V

Lap
Of The Gods

“
Whether and in what way it may be possible to
wreck finally the English position between the Mediterranean and the Persian
Gulf, in conjunction with an offensive against Suez Canal, is still in the lap
of the Gods…”

-- Adolf Hitler:
Führer Directive 30

Chapter 13

The Germans
had done
everything possible to move men and equipment to the shores of the Levant. In
spite of the sudden turnaround forced upon planners by Hitler, the OKW staff
adapted with characteristic efficiency. Much of the work for the assault on
Crete would form a sound basis for Operation Anvil. They already had obtained
good aerial reconnaissance photos of Cyprus, and identified the best potential
landing sites for Student’s troops. The men of the 5th Gieberg’s division had
already been assigned to makeshift convoys from Greece, where the Germans had
scraped together small flotillas of Greek “Caiques,” wooden motor cutters used
for fishing and other commercial purposes. The engineers had skillfully adapted
them by adding wooden ladders, iron reinforced ramps, and rope nets to allow
them to function as landing craft. A few old captured steamers were added to
this to move the infantry in what one soldier called “
an assortment of scarcely seaworthy Greek coasting
tramps and some larger rusty death traps.”

Yet
there had also been extensive planning and preparation for the invasion of
England, and there an aircraft designer named Fritz Siebel had been working at
an airfield in northern France when a Lieutenant Colonel from a Pioneer
battalion asked him if he could haul off a store of old gasoline containers.

“What
in god’s name for?” Siebel asked. “Tell me that and you can have the entire
lot.”

“We
need a way to get over that damn channel,” said the officer. “Maybe we can get
these to float beneath some light welded beams and wood planks. We’re trying
everything we can find, wine barrels, canvas sacks, even tree trunks.”

“Why
not just use river bridging pontoons?”

“We
tried, but the beams and bolts are too weak and they can’t stand up to the wave
action.”

“I
see…” Siebel had a sudden idea. What about the
schwere Schiffsbrücke,
he
thought to himself? These were much bigger heavy bridging pontoons, and the
army had accumulated a good number. So Siebel got hold of a few and joined them
with beams and a wood plank deck to build a kind of catamaran raft. He mounted
a couple surplus aircraft engines, but found them inadequate. But he kept
strengthening and modifying his design, improving the deck and adding four more
diesel truck engines. In time he doubled the speed to 8 knots and had a
platform that could stand up to force 6 wave strength.

The
“Siebel Ferry” had been born, and twelve of them had been constructed and moved
to Greece by rail for this mission. They would prove themselves in Operation
Anvil as stable ferries to move the artillery, flak guns, and light vehicles of
the 5th Mountain Division to the Levant. The only question was whether they
could slip past Royal Navy patrols, particularly with the moon still near full.

The
first convoy of wooden
Caiques made
it through undetected, landing at Tripoli. The Siebels followed soon after,
narrowly running afoul of a British destroyer, which had the crews unlimbering
several 88mm flak guns to use in defense, but the destroyer was hotly attacked
by
Stukas
flying night cover, and driven off. This allowed the 5th
Mountain Division to get its 85th Regiment to Tripoli, along with the division
recon battalion and a battalion of twelve 105mm howitzers. They were onto the
waiting trains and quickly en route to Damascus to arrive in the nick of time. The
100th Regiment, formerly with the 1st Mountain Division at Gibraltar, was
re-assigned to the 5th and soon followed. Their assignment would be to backstop
the French defense before Beirut, another full regiment of veteran troops, with
the division Pioneer battalion and flak units.

While
this was going on, the Ju-52 transport planes had not sat idle. A massive air
ferry operation was constantly underway, with planes returning to Rhodes from
their successful air drops on Cyprus, refueling and then flying on to Greece,
where the crack 22nd Luftland Division was waiting in reserve. They would then
reverse this journey, hopping to Rhodes, refueling, and then flying by night to
the big French Aerodrome at Rayak in northern Lebanon. Situated midway between
the two anchors of the French defense, Damascus and Beirut, the base would be a
perfect mustering point for the steady buildup of German troops.

Like
a fire that was slowly building in strength, the plan for a “quick campaign” in
Syria to dispatch the Vichy French was now becoming a growing vortex of war.
The German plan called for the whole of the 22nd Luftland Division to be
deployed, and as soon as Cyprus was secure, the Ju-52s would base there to make
the 7th Flieger Division the new theater reserve.

On
the British side, the 7th Australian Division had already been reinforced by
one brigade, and the single 5th Indian Brigade was now to be joined by the rest
of that division, the 7th and 11th Brigades. Beyond that, O’Connor’s plan to
discretely move elements of the 7th Armored Brigade was met with hearty
approval from Kinlan.

“I
like the plan,” he said. “It certainly beats trekking through that damn desert.
It will take some management, but that rail line is a godsend.”

So
it was that the 7th Brigade turned over its post at Siwa and Giarabub to the
18th Indian Motor Brigade, and returned to Bir el Khamsa, the scene of its
first stunning victory over the Germans. From there, selected units could be
moved to Mersa Matruh, the place Kinlan had thought to go to all along. The
railhead was cleared out, and secured by Kinlan’s forces, and a special train
soon arrived from Alexandria.

Kinlan
had decided to mix up his battalions into smaller combined arms combat groups.
He took the 1st Highland Mechanized Infantry Battalion and split it into three
companies of 15 Warrior IFVs each. To each of these he added a troop of five
heavy Challenger II tanks for support, one Titan bridge layer and a Trojan engineering
tank. A number of FV432s, several tracked Javelin ATGM carriers, and a
maintenance and supply unit of Royal Engineers in Mastiff Armored trucks
finished things off. It was basically a heavy Mech company with the addition of
the armor troop, and he was sending all three companies.

Fifteen
more Challengers went to strengthen the three companies of the Mercian Mech
Battalion, but this unit was retained near Sidi Barani. That left him 30 more
heavy Challenger IIs in the Royal Scots Dragoons, and this unit was also retained
in Egypt, along with Reeves’ 12th Royal Lancers. Whether the addition of the
Highlanders to the order of battle for Operation Scimitar would make a
significant difference was soon to be seen.

The
French defense had been more tenacious and spirited than anyone expected, and
now that German troops were arriving, they fought all the harder. By the time
that the British and commonwealth troops began to approach Damascus, they found
well entrenched positions behind the river, and occupying the heights beyond.
To make matters worse there, the little civil war between Senegalese troops on
both sides had begun to dampen the ardor of the Free French brigades. Wavell’s
decision to send in the last two brigades of the 4th Indian Division was both
timely and necessary. These troops would join the Free French to plan an attack
across the river at Kiswah, but the real danger on this front was massing on
the left flank near the small village of Qatana—a village that Popski and
Troyak were now approaching in a thin column of trucks and jeeps.

* * *

The
column sped along the rough
dirt road, the engines of the jeeps and trucks laboring, gears shifting to
negotiate the difficult terrain. Popski and Troyak were in the van, riding
together with Litchko on the machinegun in the back of the lead jeep. They had
approached the old village of Qatana on a winding mountain road, working their
way around a high 1800 meter hill to a place where the original settlement had
clustered around Jandal Castle. The name meant “stone,” and the old fortress
was made of Jurassic limestone brick, with wrought iron bars on the windows. It
had been built in a depression between the high brown hills, meant to bar the way
to a pass that led west. There the mountains rose in steep, stony terraces to
the icy peaks of Mount Hermon, ‘the Mountain of the Chief,’ which was the highest
point in the region at 2,814 meters, over 9200 feet.

The
main town of Qatana was on the lowlands below, a small settlement of fewer than
3,000 people in WWII, with orchards and vineyards on its southern approach, and
the high ridge of Jabal al W’ar to the northwest. It occupied a very strategic
position, for roads ran due east to Artuz in the valley leading up to Damascus,
and due north where the main road and rail links wound through the high pass at
Jebel Mazar.

“Stop
here,” said Troyak, his eyes puckered with the dust kicked up by the jeep. He
reached for a pair of field glasses, studying the terrain ahead and the town
below.

“That’s
Qatana,” said Popski. “Gurkhas will put a company in there within the hour.”
They could see the column moving on the road below. “Their remaining two
companies will deploy east to Artouz with some of those tanks.”

“We’ll
need at least one troop here,” said Troyak. “Too open on the left flank, but I
think we can cover it if we occupy that hamlet there.” He was indicating the
small outlying village of Mabayya, a little over a kilometer west of Qatana.
“See those orchards. They must follow a wadi bed or a stream running off from
this high ground. Put your Argonauts there. They can spread three squads along
that orchard, and put the last two in the village on the right flank. We’ll
deploy in that other settlement just behind their extreme left.”

 “See
those dust columns out there?” said Popski. “That will be the Germans coming
from the last report I received—several battalions. “Nice to be out of the
thick of things up here.”

Troyak
just gave him a hard edged smile. “German mountain troops coming? Well, don’t
get comfortable. This is where they’ll try to flank that hamlet. We’ll need the
Scimitar troop between our position and the Argonauts. The Germans will come
tonight and try to take this ground to flank Qatana. They’ll get a nasty
surprise if we’re ready for them, and we will be. Then tomorrow they’ll
reorganize for a deliberate attack. So tonight you need to have those X-3 helicopters
up looking for their artillery. That’s the one thing we have to worry about.”

“Good
enough,” said Popski. “I’ll see if I can get through to their Lieutenant Ryan.
“They did a hell of a job against the Iraqis.”

“These
aren’t Iraqis,” said Troyak with an edge of warning. “We fought these devils
before, and they’re good.”

The
column moved out, down the winding road to the villages they had planned to
occupy. The ‘orchards’ were thin and scrubby at this time of the year, but they
did offer the Argonauts some cover, and they dug in. The locals were none too
happy to see these tough looking men in black appear in their strange vehicles.
War was coming to their sleepy villages, and they hastened to gather up their
animals and melted away in the dusk, off to find relatives further east towards
Qatana and Damascus. There would be no peace their either.

It
started just after sunset, as Troyak predicted. Small squads of German mountain
troops were rushing forward to occupy a few scraggly outlying vineyards north
of Mabayya. Troyak could see the men moving on his night vision goggles, and
told Popski they should hold their fire, until the enemy made a closer
approach. He could see the Germans move in well coordinated groups. A machine
gun team deployed, then a rifle squad moved up to scout the way ahead. These
men knew what they were doing, but they had not yet taken the measure of the
men they were now about to face.

The
Germans waited until they had what looked to be two platoons forward, with a
third back. Then they began to advance on the positions held by the Argonauts.
He watched, breathlessly, and the first assault teams began to move toward the
long orchard straddling the wadi. The Argonauts were lying low, their black
camo suits blending into the shadows beneath the trees, then at 200 meters they
opened fire with their automatic weapons and the battle began.

Though
they were few in number, these were no ordinary troops. Each five man squad had
L85A2 Automatic Rifles with under-slung grenade launchers. Two men carried the
L108A1 Light Machinegun, two others had the AT4 84mm Anti Tank weapon, and the
fifth used the L115A3 Sniper Rifle. Each man had both H.E. and smoke grenades.
They had tritium powered illumination sights on their assault rifles for
daytime use, and Advanced Combat Optical Gunsights with up to 6x magnification.
In darkness, the men were equipped with head mounted night vision systems, and
VIPER 2 thermal imaging weapon sites. Three light laser modules allowed for
pinpoint target acquisition. And every man wore both Kevlar reinforced helmets,
body armor and a personal radio receiver. In terms of firepower, situational
awareness and command control, they were an order of magnitude above even the
very best of their enemies, but there were just those 50 men, backed by
Troyak’s 20 Russian Marines.

The
advancing German infantry thought they had the cover of darkness, but they were
easily seen, and the first German squad was cut down on the move. Most of the
second squad went to ground and immediately began answering with rifle and SMG
fire. It was soon apparent that they were outgunned, and too exposed, and they
heard the harsh shouts of non-comms barking orders to fall back.