Chapter III: Part XV
Chapter III: The Lion’s Den
Part XV
August 31, 1936
“Here comes the artillery, Herr Schwarzbeck.”
Maggiore Ettore Mazzocchi lowered his field glasses and turned toward the German observer.
Rudolf Schwarzbeck looked down into the desolate valley far below. “How do you know?”
“Gun flashes,” the Italian major replied. “You can see them through the haze.”
Illizi, Algeria.
Raising his own binoculars to his eyes, Schwarzbeck scanned the system of Italian trenches and fortifications that held this desolate valley in the Illizi of eastern Algeria. In moments, giant geysers of earth fountained up all around the front line, each dark brown from the soil beneath the lighter sand that covered the valley. After several seconds, the artillery impacts registered as dull thuds on the arid wind. The barrage persisted for several minutes until a cloud of dust hung over the Italian lines.
“Wait. There will be more.”
After riding with the Italian army during its drive to Port Sudan in May, Schwarzbeck had watched from the rear as Germany’s allies underwent a humiliating defeat at the hands of the British 1st Indian Army. Both the Italians and the native Somali Dubats whose lives they threw away so carelessly were repulsed with losses as they attempted three times to take the city. It was not until July fifteenth that Marshal Badoglio, coming up from the south with nearly 100,000 men, had finally captured the vital Red Sea port. Italian attention during the summer had then shifted toward the goal of uniting Libya and Italian East Africa. By mid-august, Badoglio had driven deep into Sudan and was perilously close to linking up with De Bono’s Libyans near the Third Cataract north of Dongola. General Loyd’s battered 1st Indian Army had reformed, though, and with units scraped together from Egypt as reinforcements, had barred Badoglio’s way north. Badoglio’s advance had, however, relieved some of the pressure on the Italian corps driving eastward along the coast toward the town of El-Alamein.
Whether the Italian advance would continue then hinged on a battle being fought thousands of kilometers to the north. Throughout the summer, the RAF had continued to be battered by Luftwaffe attacks, with ADGB dipping below 100 operational fighters by the end of August. As fighting above Britain dwindled in July, Göring had authorized the formation of a special unit that would be detached from the northern theater. The Legion Dietrich von Bern, 300 pilots strong, had been sent to the Mediterranean to aid the Italians in reestablishing air superiority in advance of Mussolini’s bid to reinforce North Africa. Due to German air losses over Britain, all but a single Grupp of the LDvB flew Italian planes, but they were uniformly more experienced and better trained than their counterparts in the Regia Aeronautica. Between one and three Gruppen had been assigned to each of the Italian squadrons operating in the Mediterranean. Together, they had driven up Allied losses for the last week in July and each week in August.
Italian warplanes had again taken the offensive against British shipping, including a daring torpedo attack which had forced the HMS
Queen Elizabeth to put into Malta for repairs that could last until September. As the initiative shifted, Mussolini had begun ferrying troops to Libya as fast as possible.
And so, with the prospect of overwhelming force pushing them out of Algeria and Tripoli, Anglo-French forces had begun preparations for a coutner-offensive against the 25,000 Italians arrayed along a front stretching from the eastern edge of Algeria to the sea. The German Grand General Staff had been of the opinion that the Battle of Illizi would be decisive in the struggle for northwest Africa, and so Schwarzbeck had been flown north to observe.
He now watched as a second artillery barrage pounded the Italian lines. Explosion after explosion rocked the valley floor until Schwarzbeck had lost count. Finally the shelling stopped.
“Now comes their main assault, Herr Schwarzbeck.”
“Have our forces been weakened by the shelling much?” Schwarzbeck put down the binoculars. He couldn’t discern anything anyway.
“I think not,” Mazzocchi said. “And now,” he said, gesturing around at the Italian command post, “we wait. You have already seen quite a bit -- the assault itself will not be very exciting to watch.” The major lit a cigarette and strode back to one of the tents before emerging with a two large paper fans. “You’ll need this.”
Schwarzbeck took the fan stiffly. It was a hot day, but it was already after four in the afternoon and had cooled considerably. Other things were on his mind as he gazed down at the barely visible smudges of armies far below.
“You watch! This will be a stinging defeat for the Allies. Stay there for a minute though, and don’t get yourself killed. Soon our own short-range artillery will open fire, and I have to get our spotter plane his orders.” He turned to leave, but spun around just as Schwarzbeck was about to follow. The broad-shouldered Italian grinned. “We don’t need another Alexandria. The Germans have already bled enough for this little lake, yes?”
Schwarzbeck glowered. Many of the Italians seemed resentful that Germany had not sent the armored corps to North Africa that the Duce had requested. And so the major had made reference to the failed German operation the week before in Alexandria.
Operation Pharos, Schwarzbeck had learned from contacts in the Foreign Office, had been the intended follow-on to Operation Sphynx, which had incited destructive riots in Egypt. The Abwehr had commandeered an oceangoing Italian boat called the
Alfo, modifying its bottom so as to be able to take on and discharge hard-suit divers into the water unseen. With a crew of thirty-six, four of them Panzertauchern, the
Alfo had departed La Spezia in the dead of one night in the middle of August.
The Panzertauchern, Schwarzbeck had been told, were specially trained Kreigsmarine divers, equipped with hard suits normally used for salvage operations. Here, their objective was to enter the naval base undetected and set demolition charges to the hulls of the British warships sheltering there. They would be timed to detonate simultaneously just before dawn, by which time the
Alfo would have slipped quietly out of the harbor.
As it happened, the cruisers HMS
York, HMS
London and HMS
Berwick had all been there, as well as the battleship HMS
Valiant. Intelligence had reported that the ships were not individually torpedo-netted in the harbor. Instead, the Alexandria naval base relied for its defense on a single stretch of torpedo netting along the border between the base and the commercial port, as well as a screen of picket destroyers outside the entrance to the main harbor.
HMS Valiant
in the Mediterranean, 1936.
And so, after several days at sea, the Abwehr raiders had crossed the Mediterranean. Flying a Greek flag as the fishing boat
Ioannis Koniaris, the
Alfo had entered the waters off Alexandria, arriving at the port two hours before sunset, claiming to have a gravely ill crew member onboard. The Abwehr agent posing as the ship’s captain had convinced the British harbormaster to allow the man to be taken aboard HMS
Valiant to have his appendix removed in the battleship’s surgery.
Just outside the torpedo net, the
Alfo waited for nightfall, at last discharging its four Panzertauchern and their explosives. Working in two teams of two, they were to make the pitifully slow walk along the harbor floor to the British vessels in their armored suits -- where they would set charges powerful enough to break the back of even a capital ship. With specially ballasted air lines, they could move undetected just meters below the water’s surface. Each Panzertaucher carried a pair of heavy steel shears to cut through the torpedo net and gain entry to the naval base. They would find their way to their targets by the light of special blue lamps attached to their helmets that were considered virtually impossible to see from the surface.
The first team returned after nearly two hours after a malfunction in the air line had nearly killed one of the divers. It took some time to correct the problem, and at about eleven thirty the divers had again exited the ship for the long slow trudge across the bottom to where the HMS
Valiant was berthed.
An hour after midnight, the second team returned to the ship, reporting that it had successfully placed charges along the keel of the HMS
York. The operation’s rigorous timing allowed them a half hour to rest before setting out for their second target, the HMS
London, which sat in the water directly across from the
York.
Just before two thirty, machinists aboard the
Valiant had heard strange noises from beneath the battleship’s hull. A motor launch was sent out to investigate, shining a spotlight along the
Valiant’s bottom. Dark figures were seen moving beneath the ship’s midsection, and a second launch was sent over to add its own illumination to the scene. General Quarters was sounded on the
Valiant and ships all around the harbor had sprung to life.
It was in this window of time, the British later learned, that their warship was in greatest peril. The Panzertauchern were under orders that if discovered, they were to set the charges for fifteen minutes, get a sufficient distance away from their target and surrender. The flood of light and commotion above them had alerted the divers, who began the process of resetting their charges.
The crew of the destroyer HMS
Valkyrie had been alert, however. Her powerful searchlights had traced a pair of strange cables stretching back from under the
Valiant’s hull to where the
Alfo was sitting with its lights out.
Valkyrie’s captain, Lt. Cmdr. John Wallace Linton, had ordered her into the harbor at full steam, where she rammed the small boat and sent it to the bottom. Their air lines cut, the two divers had been forced to surface immediately, before the charges on the
Valiant could be reset. As they were being taken aboard one of the launches, gunfire crackled across the harbor as nervous gunners aboard the destroyer HMS
Defense sighted armored shapes in the water near the
London. They had fired frantically on the panicking divers as they came up for air, at last killing both with an antiaircraft gun.
Quick thinking by Lt. Cmdr. John Wallace Linton and his watchful crew likely saved the HMS Valiant
from sinking. He was awarded the DSO.
Ten men had been rescued from the water around the
Alfo, and all twelve prisoners were brought onto the
Valiant for questioning. British authorities quickly learned of the charges that had been planted under HMS
York, and sent divers down under both ships, who were able to remove all the explosives without incident. The ten men from the ship, the Abwehr’s best information held, were now locked up somewhere in Alexandria, awaiting execution as spies. The Panzertauchern had technically been in uniform during the operation, so would likely escape that fate.
The British had widely publicized the foiled operation, embarrassing Germany and the Abwehr substantially. Schwarzbeck suppressed a bitter laugh. At least those men had risked everything -- some even given everything -- for the sake of the Nation. What was he doing? Being paid to be flown around and write home about how many other men had died? From Mussolini’s private plane to the officers’ train in Eritrea and Badoglio’s mess in Sudan, he had never even seen the soldiers’ war -- the real war.
“Alright, Herr Schwarzbeck. As soon as he’s back --” Mazzocchi said, pointing back to a two-seater biplane that taxied into view behind him, “-- you’ll be able to make your report on how badly they’ve been hurt by our artillery.”
“I... I...”
“What?”
“I want to go up with him.”
“You’re crazy.”
“I want to go up with him.” Schwarzbeck was astonished that he had actually said it.
The major appeared to be weighing the request in his mind. “You want to get close that badly? Haven’t you before?”
“No.”
Mazzocchi threw his cigarette to the ground and waved for Schwarzbeck to follow. He signaled to biplane’s pilot, who turned off the engine. “This is Herr Schwarzbeck, our German observer. You are to take him up on your flight in the observer’s station.”
Schwarzbeck noticed an empty bucket-like station behind the where the pilot sat.
“This is an Ro.37 Lince. Got them just last year. Very useful little birds.” The Major leaned close to the pilot and said something in dialectal Italian that Schwarzbeck didn’t catch. The two men shared a laugh.
“Thank you,
Maggiore Mazzocchi,” Schwarzbeck said. “Really.”
“Remember, if anyone asks, I didn’t let you go up in that. Anything happens to you and I’ll be stacking tins the rest of my career.” With that, he patted the cloth-covered fuselage almost affectionately and walked off, taking care to steer far around
Tenente Generale De Simone’s command tent.
The pilot leapt out of the Lince and helped Schwarzbeck into his seat, fastening his harness in uncomfortably personal areas. “I am
Sottotenente Salvo, and it’s a pleasure to meet you, Herr Inspektor.”
A Meridionali Ro.37 Lince on patrol over Abyssinia.
Soon the engine was going again, and Salvo brought the aircraft to the back of a short runway that had been smoothed from the top of the hill.
“Are you ready?”
“Yes.” Schwarzbeck swallowed. He had never been in an open-topped plane before.
Salvo opened the throttle just as the successive cracks of the Italian guns signaled the start of the counter-barrage. Various administrative and supply tents sped by, faster and faster until Schwarzbeck felt the Lince’s wheels lose contact with the ground. The wind was fearsome and the engine so loud that further conversation was useless. He peered out to his right as the aircraft climbed, taking in the Italian army’s rear and eventually the trenches at its front. They continued to climb, but even at altitude the roar of battle below became distinctly audible.
They were passing over the Allied lines now, where the air seethed with gunfire. He began to notice the sharp smell of cordite and the somehow richer smell of burning gasoline. Schwarzbeck could see the searing bolts of tracers filling the air around the unarmored Lince.
With three brief pops wood splinters filled the air at the far edge of his field of vision. In three places, the lower right wing was perforated by holes the size of tangerines, around which the cloth was split in the shape of starbursts. He could see all the way through the holes to the ground.
Salvo banked sharply to the right, almost ninety degrees, and with a lurch in his stomach Schwarzbeck looked down and could suddenly see the sweep of the battlefield below.
Great crescent-shaped masses of men -- whole battalions probably -- surged forward across the landscape after the fashion of the Great War. Here and there, muzzles flashed and shells tore into the advancing formations. Bursts of dark brown smoke marked where the Italian howitzers were firing airburst shells at the attacking Allies. A shell impact sent broken bodies scattering through the air. Schwarzbeck looked away. Salvo brought the aircraft around in an entire loop, leveling off when they were again traveling deeper into the Allied lines.
Small arms fire clicked against the fuselage, and Schwarzbeck could hear bullets whizzing through the air all around his head. Screaming without restraint, he sank as low as he could in his seat, hoping that his head was below the lip of the observer’s station. Someone was shooting at
him. The thought felt strange. Several rounds hit the metal struts running along the bottom of the top wing, showering Schwarzbeck with sparks.
“Devil’s blood, that’s getting heavy!” Salvo yelled. “I’m taking us lower!”
Schwarzbeck felt the seat drop out from under him, leaving him weightless. All he could see was the bottom of the wing overhead, and he feared that they would crash while he couldn’t see the ground. For several seconds, he clung white-knuckled to his harness with eyes tightly shut. Just as suddenly as it had begun, the Lince pulled out of its dive, and the seat seemed to slam up into Schwarzbeck’s buttocks. Regaining himself, he grabbed hold of the lip and peered out to his right. They were moving incredibly fast now, no more than twenty meters off the ground. Men and equipment rushed by in a blur, and it seemed that some of them were firing at the plane. Salvo was pulling them in a shallow right turn now, and Schwarzbeck could see lines of Allied trenches below.
Searing yellow tracers caught his eye, coming from behind the aircraft and a little below. They were getting very close, and Schwarzbeck heard one of them snap on the rear part of the fuselage. Salvo heard it too, sending the aircraft tearing into a hard left turn, still just meters in the air.
The German observer was thrown against the left rim of the bucket as his inertia caught him from a direction he wasn’t expecting. His wrist hurt sharply. He looked back over the tail -- whatever gun that was below still had them in its sights, and Schwarzbeck pulled his head in quickly as more tracers whizzed past the airframe. Behind him, he saw a nub that may have once held a machine gun, but it had long since been removed.
Salvo swore just as a series of three rounds dug deep into the engine. It hiccuped once, and then a fourth round slammed into it. There was a momentary bloom of flame from the whole engine block, then miraculously it kept running.
They began to cross over the Allied rear, and the firing dwindled to nothing. Every few seconds, the engine would give a pained cough, but they were still in the air. The relative calm gave Schwarzbeck a chance to reflect on the foolishness of having gone up in the flimsy little plane in the first place. He began to scan the sky all around them for enemy fighters. They could come out of the sun, he had heard, so that their victims wouldn’t even have a chance to react before it was too late. Squinting into the sun, he wondered why they hadn’t had a fighter escort. Why hadn’t Mazzocchi thought of that? How could he be sure they wouldn’t be shot out of the sky at any moment?
“
Sottotenente Salvo!”
“What?” he screamed.
“Do you have any machine guns up there?”
“Sorry! What about St. Beatrice?”
“
Machine guns! Do you have any machine guns up there?”
A deafening explosion probably scant meters from the plane drowned out the pilot’s reply. All he heard now was a stream of colorful profanity.
“What is it?”
“There must be a whole new corps coming into the valley!” Salvo juked the plane down and to the left so Schwarzbeck could see what he was talking about. The far end of the valley was almost black with men and vehicles. De Simone and his staff had evidently been totally unaware of further Allied forces in the area. Black puffs of flak were blossoming all around the aircraft now. Salvo lingered just a few seconds more as he appraised the size of this new force before dropping altitude again and heading for Italian lines. The engine was gasping, and Schwarzbeck began to fervently pray, and even to bargain with God for his life.
There was another burst of flak directly above, tearing great holes through the top wings where shrapnel had passed through them. Schwarzbeck kicked with fear -- and was surprised to find that his foot had moved aside a cloth hanging right in front of him that concealed a small internal space where a navigator was evidently supposed to use his charts. Salvo was forcing the Lince to bob and weave to avoid the flak. Schwarzbeck longed to slip down into the relative safety of the navigator’s compartment but doing so would require that he unfasten his harness, and he feared that if he did he would be thrown out of the plane by the sub-lieutenant’s violent maneuvering.
On the second passage over the battlefront, Salvo merely skirted the edge of the fighting so as to avoid drawing fire. Schwarzbeck could see terrible, smoking carnage along the path of the assault, but it appeared that Italian lines were holding. He wondered whether they could withstand the onslaught of the massive reinforcements that were at that very minute headed up the valley.
At last the improvised airstrip came into view. Salvo reduced speed, setting the Lince down as gingerly as he could. One of the landing gears had been partly shot off but the strut did not collapse on landing, merely igniting a shower of sparks. The plane came to a stop and Salvo shut off the engine. Schwarzbeck saw a series of jagged holes in the engine cowling that were bleeding black oil. When the propeller had come to a stop, he saw that that too had had several chunks torn out by enemy gunfire. That the aircraft had survived was staggering.
As Salvo leapt out to make his report, an Italian sergeant helped Schwarzbeck out of the plane. With both feet on the ground he suddenly vomited.
But I am alive. He had felt the terror of true combat, of being under fire.
And I did not die.
Rudolf Schwarzbeck wiped the bile from his lips, knelt, and kissed the sandy ground below him.
