Hammer of God (Kirov Series Book 14) (26 page)

“It’s
no good pressing the matter for that airfield,” said Nichols. “The Germans
can’t use it—in fact it’s been under fire for two days, and the landing strip
is badly cratered, and of no advantage to them.”

“Yes,
but what can we do here now? Fight it out, with another bloody regiment of
German troops arriving tomorrow?”

“We
can try to slug it out here,” said Nichols, “but what have we got, five
battalions in all, and the enemy has at least four now, perhaps three more
tomorrow, and with the advantage of good prepared positions on defense. It’s
been bloody house to house in that town so far, and we’ve paid dearly for every
position we’ve taken.”

“This
fight is looking like one fine stalemate,” said Kingstone.

“We
could pull out while we can,” Nichols suggested. “It’s clear we can’t push on
to Homs.”

“Yes,
any further move east is impossible now, not with a force this size here. We’d
have no way to get supplies through.

“Can
we get more air support?” asked Nichols. “What in blazes has been flying about
up there? What are they firing? Looked like rockets to me.” Neither he nor Kingstone
were in the know as to the nature of the weaponry deployed on the helicopters,
and neither man had even set eyes on the aircraft that had been tormenting the
German heavy weapons positions.

“God
only knows,” said Kingstone, “but we should be thankful for it. As it stands I
don’t think a squadron of Wellingtons would even do us much good here. The
enemy is simply dug in too well. We’d have to destroy the place to force them
out, and see all those lovely Roman ruins out there pounded to dust.”

Nichols
nodded grimly. “We’ll need a lot more reinforcements here to have any chance to
take this place. I can ask my men to have another go, but it was a long slog
here through that desert, and hard fighting ever since we got here. If you want
my mind on it, we’ll need another full brigade—possibly two.”

“That
would be nice,” said Kingstone, “if Wavell was a magician and could pull
something out of his hat. The 20th Brigade of the 10th Indian Division is
running up the Euphrates, and they’ve run into trouble as well. The Germans are
at Dier-ez-Zour—another full regiment, just like this lot here. Word is they flew
in to the airfield there, so this whole envelopment operation has ground to a
halt. We took a good swing at them, but the pick axe has hit hard stone now, and
we’ll have to re-think things. I’m requesting a conference with General Clark
at T3. That Russian Captain can meet us there. This little war out here was
going along swimmingly, but with the Germans in the thick of things now, it’s a
whole new game. All I can see to do here now is to get the lads into a good
position to pull out.”

Chapter 26

Wavell
met with Brigadier
Kinlan to discuss the operations now underway in Syria. They had implemented
O’Connor’s plan, moving not one, but two heavy infantry battalions north at
night on the empty desert roads to the railhead south of Mersa Matruh. The area
had been cleared out, and Kinlan was given free rein to supervise the loading
operation for the waiting trains. It was a lot to move, but they would take one
battalion the first night, the Highlanders, and the trains would return by day
to load the Mercians on the second night. The trains could quickly move these
vital troops all the way to Haifa, and Acre, where they again off loaded under
cover of darkness and moved out along pre cleared roads to their assembly
points.

Wavell’s
regret over not assigning stronger forces to his center column was now to be
corrected. Both heavy battalions, as they were now being called, would assemble
south of Merjayoun, where the French had put in a strong counterattack that had
stopped the Australian advance cold. The appearance of Renault 35 tanks had
caused a near panic, as the troops had no effective AT gun to oppose them—but
that was about to change.

The
Highlanders led the way, organized in three companies, each with fifteen
Warrior AFVs mounting the improved 40mm gun. To back them up, five Challenger
IIs had been added to each company, and this was a force the French were not
prepared to face or resist for very long.

They
never saw what hit them. In a sudden night attack, the Highlanders detected the
enemy positions and vehicles using their sophisticated night optics and thermal
sensors, and then they opened up in a sudden barrage of deadly accurate fire.
The shock was stunning, and the Highlanders smashed through the enemy
positions, making short work of the ten Renault-35s that had so bewildered the
Aussies. Then they pushed on up the winding road that led them north into the Bekaa
Valley, and a storm of panic preceded them. French rear area posts were flooded
with alarming calls that the enemy had moved up a full armored division, and it
could not be stopped.

After
breaking through positions that had held for days against the Australian
advance, the battalion found that the narrow road, more than any significant
French resistance, proved their only obstacle. At one point the French thought
to use demolition charges to create a landslide and block the road, but the
Highlanders also had an engineering tank section, and one of the massive
multi-bladed Trojan AVRE tanks was able to power through and clear the way in
little time.

Beyond
that point there was little opposition, and the distance to the vital aerodrome
at Rayak was no more than 75 kilometers. It was only about 25 kilometers on the
narrow mountain road, and soon the lead elements had scouted forward to Lake
Qaraoun, where the road descended to the broad cultivated farmland of the Bekaa
Valley. Another five kilometers took them to Joub Jennine, where they
encountered the first elements of a gathering defense.

Lieutenant
Horton had the lead section, with five warriors, a Javelin ATGM vehicle, one
up-armored FV-432, and a single Challenger II in support. Vehicle 1 out in
front had picked up movement and thermals ahead and radioed back the position.
The company had found the German recon battalion of the 9th Panzer Division. It
had detrained north of Rayak, moved south just in time to stop a raid by
British commandos attempting to sabotage the airfield, and then pushed south
intending to reinforce the French armor, and lead a counterattack that
following morning. The armor it found, however, was something entirely
unexpected.

Horton
brought up his five warriors in a line abreast along some broken ground between
the Litani river and the slowly rising ground to the east. They assumed a hull
down position, and watched as the German column emerged from the town ahead.
“Let them come,” Horton radioed his men. “Tommy? Are you in position?”

“Roger that,”
came the
voice of Lieutenant Tom Wilkes in return. He was in the sole Challenger II,
ready near the road and blocking the route south like an implacable steel
boulder that had fallen from the heights above.

“Mark
your targets… You do the honors Tommy. Get that nice fat armored car out in
front. We’ll chime in with the chorus. On my word…
Commence Firing!”

The
sharp crack of the big 120mm gun on the Challenger split open the night, and
the German armored car, an SdKfz 231 Schwerer Panzerspahwagen, was the first
unfortunate victim. It was a 6.6 ton, eight wheeled vehicle, and it was
literally lifted from the ground by the hit it took, the wreckage blasted off
the road. Behind it came three smaller four wheeled SdKfz 221s, which veered
off the road and ran into a hail of 40mm fire from the Warriors. The British
were over a kilometer away, easily seeing and hitting the vehicles in the column,
and with deadly results. The whole point of the column was a flaming wreck in a
matter of minutes, but now the Germans realized they had hit something much
stronger than they expected, and Captain Weichert stopped his advance and
immediately dispersed his remaining troops into the town.

Lieutenant
Horton saw what they were doing, and wanted nothing to do with a deliberate
attack in an urbanized setting. He wanted to keep his squads buttoned up in
their vehicles, and keep moving. He radioed back to the AS-90 Braveheart battery
assigned to the Highlanders, and immediately ordered artillery fire, watching
the barrage fall right on target in the town ahead. Then he gave the go sign
and moved his section up. Two more sections had already come up behind him, and
the full company was now available. He knew the main infantry of this force
would be in trucks behind these armored cars, and he wanted to get at them
before they had a chance to deploy into the town. So he gave the order to move
out, and the Warriors gunned their engines, tracks grinding on the broken
ground and churning through the fields ahead.

His
formation raced west and around the town, immediately seeing the long column of
vehicles on the road behind the hamlet. There was good open farmland between the
road and the river, and he ordered his section to advance in echelon, with the
Challenger anchoring at the rear. They raced along, turrets rotated and firing
as they blasted one truck after another. At one point the Germans frantically
tried to deploy a Pak 3.7 AT gun section, and managed to get two of the three
guns into action just as the Challenger II came into view. They fired, both gun
positions seeing their shells hit and ricochet harmlessly off the heavy frontal
armor. Then the big turret rotated ominously in their direction, and the
enormous gun fired, ending the duel with fire and smoke.

Horton
had no intention of stopping. He was going to press on with all speed, fighting
anything he encountered on the run. Behind him came 2nd and 3rd companies of
the Highlanders, and they passed the German column like the teeth of a buzz saw
cutting into wood. The shock and speed of the attack was so fierce that the battalion
was all but destroyed, its surviving remnants fleeing east to try and find a secondary
road and get north by any means possible.

The
Highlanders raced north up the Bekaa Valley, reaching El Marj in half an hour, where
they had to fight a hot action in the village against a well positioned German
rearguard of two platoons of dismounted infantry. Their MG 34s made no
impression on the British armor, and the return fire of the 40mm autocannons
decided the action in short order. Now they halted, seeing the lights of two
larger settlements ahead. These were the bigger towns of Zahle on the western
fringe of the valley, and Rayak to the northeast. They did not know it at the
time, but Zahle was strongly held by a battalion of the 5th Mountain Division
that had arrived the previous evening from the coast. And up ahead, taking up a
defensive position just south of the aerodrome at Rayak, was the first regiment
of the 9th Panzer Division under Generalleutnant Alfred Ritter von Hubicki.

The
division had been arriving piecemeal, and he had the 10th Regiment of Panzergrenadiers,
and a single company of tanks from the 33rd Panzer Regiment, mostly 20mm PzKfw
IIs with a section of better armed PzKfw IIIs, with 50mm guns. They were not
going to stop the Highlanders any more than the recon battalion had been able
to halt the lightning advance. But it would take a much more deliberate attack,
and Lieutenant Horton radioed back the situation to battalion commander Holmes,
and it was decided to deploy the entire battalion in the attack, behind an
extended barrage from the AS-90s. The Bravehearts would pound the enemy with
heavy, accurate fire before the attack would begin.

The
battle for Rayak was now underway, and behind the Highlanders, the full Mercian
battalion, each company also reinforced with five Challenger IIs, was racing
forward up the long road in support. Behind Kinlan’s force, Wavell had
committed the whole of his last two brigades of the 6th Infantry division,
which had been in reserve in Palestine. If Rayak and Zahle could be taken, it
would shut down the main enemy aerodrome and cut the road and rail lines to
Beirut.

To
the right of this position, the Germans had also deployed the regiment of the
5th Mountain Division that had been fighting to screen the Barada Gorge where
the rail lines and roads made their way from this region to Damascus. Now that
Dentz had decided to pull out of the city and retreat north, the two battalions
that comprised this regiment withdrew towards Rayak. Their brother regiment was
arriving on the left from Beirut, leaving the defense there to the French, and
so now the flanks of the Rayak defense were to be held by the mountain troops.

Brigadier
Kinlan had a conference with Sims and the battalion leaders to set up the
attack. “This is the situation,” he began. “We’re in a nice little punch bowl
here, with rugged mountains on either side of the valley that are all but
impassible. The valley itself is open farmland, and the Litani River runs right
down the middle. It’s not much, but the ground west of the river is broken by a
lot of irrigation canals that will slow movement too much. So I plan to put the
attack in east of the river where the ground is more open. I’ll want the
Highlanders on the right, with your right flank against this thumb of high
ground here.” He pointed to the map. “The Mercians will be on the left against
the river.”

“Alright,”
he continued, “Both battalions will deploy two companies forward, one in
reserve. The reserve companies will front their Challenger II sections into one
heavy platoon of ten tanks, and these will be committed to the most advantageous
point in the attack to effect a breakthrough. The entire action will be
preceded by a good saturation barrage from the AS-90s. Ammunition is a factor
here,” he concluded. “We’ll commit to 20% of available stocks, and then hold
another 5% in reserve for opportunity fires if needed, but that finishes off
over 30% of our artillery munitions, and we’ll have to hold the rest tight. The
British 6th Division is behind us, and they have 25-pounders to take up the
slack. I’m sending over a liaison team with radio communications to feed them
grid coordinates, but don’t expect anything they throw to be spot on like our
AS-90s.”

“Where
do we stop?” asked Colonel Sanderson, the commander of the Highland Battalion.

“Punch
through and take that airfield, Sandy,” said Kinlan. “Don’t worry about mop-up.
I want a hard, fast attack right in the center of their defense. Once you
overrun the airfield, ascertain the strength remaining in the town behind it,
and we’ll determine what to do. If the opportunity presents itself, envelop
that town with maneuver and cut the road and rail connections north to Homs.
The Germans have been concentrating here, so there could be more troops
arriving. Any questions?”

“What
about that high ground on my right?” said Sanderson. “If they have positions up
there it will give them good fields of fire as we advance.”

“Don’t
worry about it,” said Kinlan. “The Gurkhas are coming up to join us from
Damascus, and they’ll be in position on your right by midnight. They had some
hard fighting in the city, so I’ll rest them until 04:00. Then they’ll begin
pre-dawn infiltration on that ground to look for enemy positions and set up OPs
for the artillery. Your attack goes in at 06:00. That’s zero hour.”

“Then
we won’t be attacking this town?” Colonel Laws, commander of the Mercian
Battalion pointed to the large settlement of Zahle on the left, hugging the
knees of the folded mountains on the road to Beirut.”

“That’s
not on our dance card,” said Kinlan. “The British 6th Division will be moving
one brigade up on the other side of the river, and that is their turf. Our
exclusive objective is the airfield and town of Rayak, and I’ll want a
lightning fast attack here. Don’t stop, gentlemen. Hit hard and keep moving.
We’ll use speed and sheer firepower to punch right through their main line of
resistance. I want no infantry deployment until we get to Rayak. If, by chance,
you should lose any vehicle in this action, either to enemy fire or for
mechanical reasons, don’t forget that the reserve company is right behind you.
They’ll be sanitizing the ground all around you as they move through, so if any
vehicle is disabled, the orders are to sit tight, button up, and wait for the
extraction team to come up with the Titan. We leave nothing on the field,
gentlemen. After the reserve company, the Gurkhas will come in and sweep the
ground behind the whole attack, along with the Titans, so any vehicle that has
trouble will have plenty of infantry support.”