A Most Unlikely Outcome - An Italian AAR

1939 pt 17​

9 June 1939

Day by day, the noose tightened around the neck of the British Eighth Army. With no hope of relieving or evacuating the beleaguered garrison, the British General Staff resolutely directed the surviving British to resist the marauding Italians for as long as possible.

Almost in spite of the battle’s utterly-predictable finale, however, the players on both sides decided to perform their parts with legendary ferocity and almost godlike heroism, the British in particular unwilling to resign themselves to frivolous fatalism as they fought to give their ends a majestic meaning. No soldier desires to be a slave to predetermination, and while most of British entertained delusions of grandeur that salvation would arrive at the eleventh hour in the form of some mythical, crusading army alighting from the air, in the end the spirited British resistance merely prolonged the suffering of the infirm & wounded and did little to alter the course of the war. Tales would no doubt be told of their gallant stand against Italian fascism, their backs to the Mediterranean, no hope of rescue, fighting to the last bullet and bayonet thrust, but secretly each man realized that those tales would be monumentally overshadowed by the larger issue of the overall British expulsion from North Africa by the unexpectedly competent force of Mussolini’s misfits. Most depressing of all for the British, the final stand of their 8th Army did not serve any greater strategic purpose; the reduction of the Alexandria pocket did not tie down large numbers of Axis divisions, nor did it divert Italian focus away from other beleaguered British commands in East Africa or elsewhere. Despite having no purpose, no rationale for resistance, and no hope for rescue, the British fought on anyway, determined to act as masters of their own destiny, meeting their fate as slaves to their own stubborn pride rather than invoking mystical divination.


British 8th Army, under the command of General Harold Alexander, still had a sizable group of constituent divisions to maneuver in an increasingly constricted space; his X Corps, comprising the relatively-intact British 54th, 59th, and 52nd Infantry Divisions, still held ground to the west and south of El Alamein. Despite the presence of twelve enemy divisions in this sector (the entire Italian 5th Army, plus the 43rd Corps of 10th Army), Alexander was not worried about this flank failing first, as the X Corps possessed most of their men and equipment and, in addition, retained strong defensive positions along a narrow front.

The remainder of his command comprised six divisions spread evenly between the British XXX and XIII Corps; most of these divisions had been shattered in the first few days of the war and had only superficially reinforced near Cairo before the surprise attack of Italian 41st Corps had scattered them again a few days later, driving them back west across the Nile. Most 8th Army units had retreated in disarray and left behind their heavy weapons, and many units had absorbed stragglers from different units; as a result, many of the 8th Army divisions had lost their distinctive ethnic composition – defending a major Nile crossing near the Ahmad Ibn Ţūlūn Mosque, survivors of the 4th Indian Division’s 11th Sikh Infantry Regiment, largely wiped out in during a desperate holding action south of Bir Hakeim on 8 April, found themselves fighting alongside a mixed battalion from the Royal Natal Carabineers of the 1st South African Division and the last survivors of the elite 28th Māori Battalion of the 2nd New Zealand Division. All along the front, similar instances were repeated as area commanders attempted to conscript any available local manpower in order to defend their sectors. Fighting under unfamiliar commanders, oftentimes with incompatible ordinance, many of the 8th Army formations fought as isolated pockets rather than as part of a cohesive overall defense, a deficiency which prevented mutual fire support and a vulnerability which the Italians were only too eager to exploit.


Looking down at his tactical map from his command room on the third floor of Montaza Palace, General Alexander felt that he had at least a sporting chance of driving off, or perhaps merely delaying indefinitely, the Italian invaders; the map showed a veritable fortress of Allied formations ringing Alexandria harbor, with regiments and brigades covering every conceivable crossing of the Nile to the east and dug in along the southern and western fringes as well. Unfortunately, many of the units represented on his maps were formations in name only, leaving huge gaps in the front line. Moreover, no amount of preparation could have steeled the British against the amount of firepower the Italians were prepared to expend in the capture of Alexandria. With the Mediterranean clear of British warships and the British Mediterranean Fleet still trapped in port, the might of the Regia Marina was put to use ferrying supplies and ammunition to Italian forces; nonstop supplies of ammunition and fuel arrived by the truckload from the Tel Aviv and Tobruk docks all day and all night. Anxious to seize their share of the glory, the Regia Aeronautica also committed all of its available aircraft to captured airfields near the battle area as well. Not content with merely clearing the skies of enemy aircraft, Italian pilots flung their armada of bombers into the fray despite the still-formidable anti-aircraft defenses clustered near the harbor.


Powerfully motivated for his own share of the laurels, General Rudolfo Graziani whipped his 63rd and 65th Infantry Divisions into the attack several hours prior the battle plan, unleashing his artillery onslaught against suspected British positions with a severity so far unseen in the war. Blazing arcs of blinding canon fire burst into the moonless black night sky, and from over 100 divisional and corps artillery tubes, unrelenting destruction streamed down upon the hapless British defenders. Having been briefed on the scattered deployment of the British forces by his reconnaissance teams in the week leading up to the attack, Graziani concentrated his artillery against strategic targets in the city and along the docks, annihilating the nascent command and control network and wrecking additional Royal Navy ships. Under the cover of this continual barrage, Graziani’s soldiers surged across the river in assault boats and infiltrated the gaps between the disparate British units.


The light of dawn crested above the thousand minaret towers of Cairo, illuminating the flat quarter mile expanse of dried riverbed between the Nile River and the Ahmad Ibn Ţūlūn Mosque on the west bank. From inside an ornate alcove on the western end of the mosque, 24-year old British Captain Lars Beckett surveyed the twenty five soldiers that comprised his “battalion,” momentarily staring at each in turn, prepared to issue what he believed to be his first and final orders.

Beckett had been assigned to the mosque for six days, and in that time, he and his men had done little but observe a company of soldiers belonging to the Italian 65th Division’s 10th Regiment on the eastern bank of the Nile. He had been told that it was vital to hold the mosque position, due to the presence of a concrete highway bridge spanning the Nile nearby, and he had been promised reinforcements, ammunition, functioning radios, and food. None of them had arrived. The mosque and its small courtyard were surrounded by a low stone wall hastily thrown together and repaired during the nights by Beckett’s men. Mercifully, none of his men had been injured so far. It still stung a little, to be in control of men’s lives—he had never anticipated attaining a command assignment so quickly, and he had been most surprised by how quickly he felt responsible for the well-being of his soldiers, but the expectations of men hardly matter during war.

A lustrous copper dawn gleaned over distant Cairo in the east, and Beckett could feel the eyes of the soldiers boring into him expectantly. It was pointless to try and downplay the intensity of the Italian barrage to his men; he knew that the final attack would begin today, and probably within the hour. Rivulets of masonry dust streamed from the ceilings as the ground shook from faraway artillery impacts, covering Beckett‘s men in a thin layer of pulverized white plaster. Beckett made a final mental photograph of the men standing in a semicircle before him; his soldiers wore a bizarre assortment of uniforms, some khaki, some green, tan shorts, torn shirts, ripped fatigues; some wore berets, while others donned helmets, and a few of his Indian auxiliaries wore what appeared to be tightly-bundled strips of linen around their heads. As the finality of battle seethed through him, Beckett suddenly realized that he had not prepared anything to stimulate the men’s courage in the upcoming battle; he had thought of no rousing motivational speech, no heartfelt words of encouragement, no remorseless, xenophobic mantra to whip the men into a frenzy of reckless bloodlust. The intensity of distant heavy artillery smashing into Alexandria 15 km to their rear and the ceaseless droning of Italian heavy bombers had filled the group with a nervous anticipation, and with unnerving clarity Beckett felt the sick realization that his men would all die very soon. His lack of a prepared speech only drove home the point that he was woefully unprepared for his assignment.


To his right stood a short, blond-haired rifleman named Russell Jameson, a thirty-year old Boer from Durban, South Africa that had formerly been a backcountry trapper and hunter prior to being drafted into his country’s military in 1937. Though only a private, Jameson was older, more skilled, and more experienced than Beckett, and in private the two men spoke as equals, quickly forsaking the constraints of the chain of command for the sake of collective survivability. The relaxed nature of their professional relationship had quickly matured into a genuine friendship, and in part due to the grim nature of their posting on the front line, the pair often joked with each other in excessively vulgar terms, like brothers who had known each other for a lifetime. Almost in spite of the hopeless military situation, Jameson and Beckett would stay awake long into the night, scouring over maps and discussing strategy intermixed with lively debates regarding the philosophical ramifications of anal sex or the best positions to use during a ménage à trois.

In the six days since the group had arrived at the front, Beckett had exhausted Jameson’s memory on every military subject he could think of, spending most of his waking hours concentrating on tactical topics such as positioning and concealment due to the fact that his orders required him to hold the mosque against all attacks. Having never shown any aptitude for command, Jameson had been happy to impart his knowledge and experience on Beckett, convinced in a very narcissistic way that by helping Beckett, he increased his own chances for survival. For his part, Beckett had buoyed his consternation by telling himself that his position was only temporary; certainly he would soon be relieved when HQ sent a higher-ranking officer to assume command of his strategic outpost. Now, with the inevitability of battle upon him, Beckett began to realize how foolish his hope had been.

A brief lull in the Italian shelling found Beckett gazing at the floor, absentmindedly fingering an old Zulu iklwa spear tip tucked into a front pocket of his pants. The relic had been a gift from Jameson, allegedly recovered by the British following their victory at Rorke’s Drift in South Africa almost 60 years prior. Jameson had given the iklwa to Beckett several nights earlier during a late-night fireside conversation in which they had candidly discussed their chances of survival; Jameson had been trying to instill a measure of confidence in the young captain by elaborating on the history of the famous battle. Jameson had hoped that his account of the British victory would give Beckett the mettle and courage to face the upcoming battle with valor; he then placed the totem in Beckett‘s open palm. “Perhaps it will bring you good fortune,” Jameson had told him, and after a short pause, elaborating further, “well, better fortune than it offered the previous owner” with a snide chuckle. Beckett had been at a temporary loss for words, unsure of how to graciously accept such a gift before Jameson, noting his awkward discomfort, had muttered “its just an old spear, ya wanker” and jabbed him in the shoulder.

Still standing in front of his men, Beckett ran the pad of his index finger along the edge of the spear in his pocket, feeling out the groove between the wooden shaft and the iron tip. Over and over in his mind, Beckett dwelled on the significance of the battle of Rorke’s Drift; the small band of British soldiers had held out against legions of bloodthirsty Zulu warriors and had prevailed, against all odds. The victory had actually been the definitive turning point in the war, a war that had to that point been defined by numerous British defeats. The similarity between the past and the present was obvious, even to the green and distracted British captain. Would such hallowed deliverance once again grace the Crown? Beckett mused.

A nearby Italian artillery impact shook the ground nearby, again causing the mosque to shudder violently; fountains of masonry dust surged from spiderweb cracks in the tiles far above. The collapse of the mosque domes seemed imminent, and Beckett quickly realized that his wistful intrigue concerning the unlikely British victory over the Zulus had little to do with his current predicament. He turned to his friend and said “Jameson, take nine men and cover the South wall.” There was a slight pause as the two men stared at each other momentarily, and then the briefest of nods before Jameson raised his right arm in salute, the casual, forehead-level outward chop typical of South African soldiers. The solemn glance between the two men smoldered with respect and gratitude; Beckett knew that he would likely never see his friend again, and Jameson’s brave deference to the order made Beckett’s decision all the more painful. Jameson quickly barked out the names of nine nearby riflemen and charged out the door, exulting his men to follow close behind.


Beckett looked over to one of the New Zealander soldiers, a Māori giant whose powder grey-tinted skin, intricate facial tattoos and large whalebone nose ring were curiously out of place on his faded and torn khaki drill fatigues. As with many men under his command, Beckett had never spoken to him. Beckett could not recall ever hearing the man speak, but he did seem to recall that several other men had been clucking derisively at him during a twilight card game several evenings prior. That was typical, Beckett thought; despite their fearsome warrior culture heritage, Māori natives had a reputation for an adamant adherence to their ancient warrior customs and, as a result, most were considered primitive and unsophisticated by the standards of their fellow soldiers and commanding officers. He had also heard rumors that the Māori sometimes consumed the bodies of their fallen enemies, an act that Beckett was certain the man was capable of – the man’s sheer size, coupled with the sophisticated pattern of dotted black lines etched into both of his cheeks suggested that the man had garnered a healthy amount of glory for his clan during battle. Furthermore, the normally-menacing Bren light machine gun draped over his shoulder appeared comically undersized on his muscular frame. He cleared his throat and, in his best attempt to speak deliberately, as if explaining to a child who did not speak English, said “Private, I want you on the roof with your machine-gun.” He emphasized the order by pointing at the ceiling, as if to say ‘The roof is up there.’

“Actually, it’s Lieutenant, sir,” the Māori giant replied, his islander accent neatly accentuated by the distinctive Sandhurst rising inflection typical of many Royal Military Academy graduates; there was no trace of the droll cockney accent that Beckett had anticipated, though to be honest, he would have been surprised if the man had spoken any English at all. The two men held each other’s gaze for several moments before Beckett abruptly dropped his eyes to the floor.

“Right, right,” replied Beckett, furrowing his brow and fidgeting nervously, his attempt to project magnanimity by acting dismissive failing miserably. Internally, Beckett seethed in anger; I had a fucking LIEUTENANT in my outfit this whole time??? How am I just now finding out about this? Beckett‘s anger was quickly replaced by suspicion; what else had HQ forgotten to mention? After a few moments of uneasy silence, Beckett quipped “Bob’s your uncle,” before looking away.

The Māori bull plodded out of the alcove, slowly making his way for the internal staircase; Beckett had to shift to his left slightly to avoid being shouldered. Beckett then fixed his eyes on his other “platoon” leader, a tall ethnic Bavarian named Kurt Löwenbräu that had served with distinction in the 1st South African Division. Though the two had not had opportunity to converse often, Beckett had been informed that before the war, Löwenbräu had been a well-known big game hunter in Southern Rhodesia, successfully stalking over 40 different species over an eight year period. He often boasted that his small home overlooking Cape Town was packed with more gazelle and cheetah pelts than he could count, all accented with hippopotamus skulls and elephant tusks in a dizzying array of colors and sizes. He had eventually wearied of stalking beasts on the African savannah and volunteered for the South African Army for the opportunity to kill the most dangerous trophy beast of all, man. Löwenbräu was in his early 30’s, had no family, kept souvenirs from his victims, and had apparently notched his rifle butt for each of his kills. From their few short conversations, Beckett suspected that the man enjoyed the satisfaction of watching creatures die rather more than the thrill the hunt. Even looking at him made Beckett feel uneasy – Löwenbräu’s wiry beard and deeply sunken eye sockets gave him the forlorn look of a heavily-medicated mental patient, which Beckett thought neatly complemented, in his mind, the man’s bizarre, deviant personality. I’ll have no remorse sending you to meet your end, Beckett thought before muttering, “Löwenbräu, take seven men and cover the North courtyard.” Beckett knew that the location was nearest the main Nile crossing and would receive the brunt of the enemy attack.

Löwenbräu nodded, grinning radiantly; the man seemed curiously oblivious to the danger that would be focused against his position. He quickly clasped the shoulders of the seven dark-skinned Punjabi riflemen standing behind him and sauntered out of the alcove, leaving Beckett alone with the last four men of his command group. Beckett knew that the five of them would constitute the “battalion’s” mobile reserve, but was unsure of how to phrase orders for them. Basically, when the other guys die, we go in and take their place, thought Beckett, unsure of how to phrase it better to the men. An uncomfortable calm hung in the small alcove, and Beckett looked beyond the four men standing near him, into the still-dark western Saharan desert. A violet shroud of fog still clung low to the windswept dunes, and the desert chill still had yet to dissipate. The flat, amorphous expanse of desert suddenly seemed inviting to Beckett, a boundless, shadowy realm in which a man could quickly lose himself forever. A man could hide out there for eternity…If I started running now…Before fanciful thoughts of self-preservation managed to ensnare the young British captain, the impact of rifle rounds against the far side of the mosque quickly snapped Beckett back to reality. The commotion of his men rushing to their positions was soon punctuated by mortar rounds impacting inside the stone courtyard. Beckett rushed into the center of the courtyard, binoculars pressed to his face as he surveyed a mass of Italian soldiers on the far bank converging on the bridge. Dropping the binoculars and flipping his head to the left, he spotted one of his “mobile reserve” soldiers crouching the unit’s mortar pit; Beckett screamed “FIRE!” at him with all the urgent intensity he could muster.

Immediately, the Indian soldier dropped to a prone position inside the pit and covered his head with his hands; even in the chaos of battle, Beckett quickly realized that the man had never operated a mortar in his life. Making matters worse, at the same time, Löwenbräu’s squad manning the stone rampart on the left flank had also heard the “Fire” command and had begun to shoot into the mass of onrushing Italian soldiers; still over a half kilometer away, the Italians were far out of range and undeterred by the British volley. Worst of all, however, in standing in the open with binoculars barking orders, Italian spotters on the other side of the river were able to discern the British commander. By failing to issue just one command succinctly, Beckett had wasted valuable ammunition, given away the position of half of his riflemen, and gravely endangered the commanding officer holding the unit together. It was a lot of errors for Beckett’s first moments of command during combat.

In the blink of an eye, wave after wave of Italian bullets began to surge into the compound, tearing into the mosque’s walls above Beckett and chipping slivers of stone from the low outer wall. Beckett threw himself to the ground with enough force to crack the glass in his binoculars. The British soldiers in the compound felt reverberations from bullet impacts ricocheting inside the enclosed area and kept as low to the ground as possible. However, as the volume of Italian indirect fire intensified, mortar impacts began to fill the air with plumes of black dirt, and the British soon realized that were no safe areas anywhere to be found within the compound walls.

Partially covered by the awning of one of the mosque’s porticos, Beckett lied prone against the ground and positioned his right forearm in front of his face to deflect the incoming shrapnel and rock fragments. Inhaling a deep breath of cordite-tinged air, he tried to yell out commands to his nearby soldiers, but his voice was drowned out by the intensity of the Italian shelling. Covered in a thin layer of dirt and sand, he laid with his right ear to the ground, his teeth involuntarily chattering as nearby detonations racked through his body. To his left some 50 yards distant, he could discern most of Löwenbräu’s fire team cowered behind the stone wall, the men hugging the earth as if trying to sink into the sand as Italian bullets streaked over their heads; one of the riflemen was slumped over the stone rampart, clearly shot through the head. Löwenbräu himself, however, had punched a stone out of the wall near the bottom and had inserted his rifle into the slot; he was returning fire in measured shots and, if his maniacal grinning was to be believed, he was scoring many hits.

The whine of more incoming mortar shells forced Beckett to curl his body into a fetal position and reflexively cover his helmet with both of his arms; milliseconds later, a booming explosion close behind him shuddered through his body, momentarily deafening him and distorting his vision. Beckett quickly regained his senses, however, as a light shower of debris and rock began to lightly pummel his exposed back. In horror, he realized that some of the stones hitting him were actually human teeth; the unnamed Indian soldier that had been crouched in the mortar pit had taken a direct hit.


Having crossed the bridge and encountering only light resistance, the Italian forward platoons began to fan out in order to envelop the British outpost from the north and south. While the main mass of the Italian formation had moved to within 200 yards of the mosque, the Māori Lieutenant on the roof of the mosque waited patiently, allowing the Italians to come with range of his Bren light machine gun. He had discerned a flat area midway between the riverbank and the mosque in which the Italians would be most vulnerable, a featureless zone with no cover whatsoever. When the majority of the Italians had entered this area, he finally opened fire, pouring rounds into the enemy vanguard. From his elevated position above the level of the wall, he was able to scatter the leading Italian troops with concentrated bursts, stunting the momentum of the attack momentarily. Caught in the open field between the mosque and the bridge, leading Italian soldiers turned and fled towards for the cover of the bridge and the western riverbank; as these soldiers retreated, they ran headlong into soldiers advancing from the bridge, creating a dense bottleneck. The Māori lieutenant targeted thick knots of Italian soldiers and was rewarded with several heaps of writhing wounded and dead; sporadic return fire was inaccurate and infrequent as the Italians struggled to find defensive positions. A short period of chaos ensued, fueled by the terror of the retreating Italians and the anxiety of the advancing Italians; only decisive intervention from the staff officers prevented a general rout from the field. Leaving behind over twenty men, the Italian force withdrew to the bridge, out of firing range.


Rising to a crouch, Beckett realized that he could hear the wind again; the Italians had withdrawn out of rifle range, and his men were wisely conserving their ammunition. Absent the sound of gunfire, and the grotesque chaos of battle, Beckett was astonished to realize how little time had passed. The Italian attack had seemed to take an eternity, but from first the initial barrage to the stilted infantry assault that followed, less than seven minutes had passed. The only real gauge that Beckett had of the passage of time was the rising sun, which still had yet to crest Cairo in the east. It was going to be much harder to distinguish targets with the sun blinding his men, Beckett realized, now aware and thankful of the slight Italian miscalculation. From the center of the courtyard, Beckett slowly rose up and peered towards the east, above the level of the stone wall; despite his fatalistic misgivings, from his vantage point, it looked like the Italian’s first foray across the river had actually been decisively repulsed.

Tucked behind the earthen embankments on the west bank of the Nile, the Italian company counted its losses and regrouped for the next attack; medics swarmed over the wounded while commanders reassured the uninjured and gave additional orders. Beckett took advantage of the reprieve and did the same, pulling the green & red identity disks from his 3 dead soldiers and issuing the last few dozen spare rifle cartridges to both Jameson and Löwenbräu to distribute amongst their riflemen. Out of breath from low-crawling the length of the courtyard, Beckett fell back against the perimeter wall near Jameson’s position and looked up towards the roof, where he could just make out the Māori lieutenant hidden in the gap between two domes near the eastern edge of the mosque roof. Maneuvering his arms and hands in a complex sequence of chops, pointing, and gestures similar to charades, he was able to inform Beckett that approximately 100 Italian soldiers were affixing bayonets and preparing to advance. The Māori lieutenant followed up by pulling a fist away from mouth and simulating an overhand toss; the Italian assault teams had been issued grenades as well. Beckett acknowledged the message with hand signals of his own and then inched closer to Jameson; he felt confident that another torrent of mortars targeting the machine gun position would precede the next Italian attack, and he wanted to get Jameson’s opinion on how to effectively react to this possibility.

Jameson cleared the breach on his rifle and slotted a new magazine before slapping the bolt closed. He then looked at Beckett and said loudly enough for his squad to hear, “I recommend changing station, sir—those saucy eye-talians are going to have this position zeroed in.” The recommendation was measured and professional, meant to buttress Beckett ‘s illusion of authority, but the lack of color in Jameson’s face betrayed the dread the man felt about remaining on the wall; clearly, the request had been a disguised plea for his commanding officer to move his men out of harm’s way.

Unfortunately, both Beckett and Jameson knew that there was no fallback position; Jameson’s recommendation for falling back was in actuality a thinly-veiled request to withdraw from the field. They could retreat into the mosque itself, but the few windows, wide hallways, open floor plan, and lack of furniture or any other obstacles meant that it would confine the defenders rather than impede the attackers. In addition, the rooftop domes and foundation had all been damaged during the morning’s bombardment, and threatened to collapse at any time - defending the mosque from within would result in a bloodbath. In order to hold the position as dictated by his orders, the low stone wall lining the courtyard had to be held, which meant that Beckett had a very difficult choice to make: flee immediately, into the desert, and potentially save some of his men, or hold the line and almost certainly die with everyone else.

As he moved to reorient his body towards Jameson, Beckett felt the tip of the iklwa spear point dig into the skin of thigh, spurning his memory, reminding him of peering into the vast, windswept dunes to the west just before the battle; it seemed like the desert had been almost beckoning him to escape, affording him an opportunity to diffuse into anonymity. It would be the easier choice – after all, he had held the mosque against one attack already, and defended against a much larger force at that. He could retreat to Alexandria with his head held high, knowing he had done his duty. And once there, his command would doubtlessly be attached to another unit, relieving him of the crushing burden of making command decisions. As before, he could feel his mind’s force of self-preservation once again urging him to flight, but once again, an Italian artillery barrage shook the young captain from his contemplation. Beckett slowly peered over the lip of the stone wall and saw Italian assault teams skillfully forming up for an advance on his position. He was out of time; he had to make his decision at once.

He looked over his right shoulder at Jameson, who was adjusting the sights on his rifle for maximum range. Beckett could tell that the veteran soldier was terrified; even with the ground shaking from a constant storm of mortar detonations, he noticed the almost imperceptible yet constant trembling in Jameson’s hands that persisted even during the brief moments when there weren’t explosions in the courtyard. Yet for all the fear coursing through the man’s body, Jameson held his ground, ready to fire when ordered. Beckett realized that this man was willing to sacrifice his life in order to carry out HIS orders. It was a humbling epiphany, a realization that drove home the crushing psychological burden that military commanders had to bear. It was at that moment that Beckett realized that in the end, he served his men, not the other way around.

Beckett silently cursed himself for his selfishness; in witnessing Jameson’s devotion to his commander, his oath, and his responsibilities, Beckett now understood that withdrawal was the right decision, even if it was not the right decision for himself. Though he had commanded men in battle for less than 10 minutes, Beckett suddenly realized that his life was worth less than the lives of the men that served under him. He turned to face Jameson, holding his attention with an unblinking stare; clasping Jameson’s left shoulder, he whispered, “Prepare to fall back.”

Jameson sighed loudly, the color suddenly returning to his face. He turned to his right and relayed Captain Beckett’s order down the line to his men. Jameson watched as his men leapt up from the shadow of the stone wall and low crouched-waddled towards the mosque, leaving only Jameson and Beckett on the wall. Still hunched over, Jameson hefted his rifle to his chest and grinned widely before saying, “Sod off commander, I’ll watch your back.”

Beckett smiled at his subordinate’s uncouth request but remained sitting, his back to the wall. Instead of rising with the rest, he pulled his service revolver from a holster and inspected the drum, spinning it with his thumb to ensure he had a full magazine before snapping it closed with a flick of his wrist. For several moments Jameson squatted by the wall, alternating his attention between his commanding officer and the Italians forming up for the attack near the bridge; the sound of Italian commanders directing their heavy weapon crews drifted on the soft Nile breeze in the distance. Jameson stared at Beckett for another moment before, with his mouth agape, he finally came to the realization that Beckett had decided to remain on the line. He started to object but Beckett spoke first; “Bugger out of here ya’ tosser.” Before Jameson could again interject, Beckett added, “That’s an order.”

At that moment, a tremendous explosion crackled from the direction of the mosque; Beckett swiveled around just in time to see a huge dust cloud erupt from the roof, followed by crumbling pieces of an ornate slate dome collapsing inward. That was no mortar round thought Beckett anxiously; the Italians were bringing up regimental artillery, likely 105mm howitzers. The ear-splitting crash was quickly followed by a low din of collapsing supports and falling masonry, temporarily deafening both Jameson and Beckett. A wall of dust and debris rolled outward from the damaged mosque, creating a surreal, sepia landscape that magnified the effects of the mild concussion that the artillery impact had caused. In the dusty mist the British captain could see Jameson yelling and attempting to pull him away from the wall, but Beckett only heard an impossibly strong wind blowing past his ears and the magnified sound of his heartbeat thrumming in his head. After a short struggle, Beckett wrestled himself free of Jameson’s grasp and began to run for Löwenbräu’s position; despite the nauseous feeling of falling, he knew that he only had a few moments of obscurity before the dust from the explosion dissipated.

Beckett dove to the ground near Löwenbräu’s position just as the Māori lieutenant on the roof began to fire into the onrushing Italian assault troops. Löwenbräu’s squad was already on the wall shooting into the mist, and Beckett backed up against the wall to lower his silhouette. He noticed erratic jets of flame spitting out from the rooftop machine gun and wondered how the Kiwi lieutenant had survived the artillery impact, but after noting some of the tracer rounds traveling well high of their intended target, Beckett realized that he had most likely been wounded to some degree. Undeterred by the British defenses, the Italians riflemen unleashed a scorching torrent of white bullet contrails through the sky above the wall.

A violent spray of Italian semi-automatic rifle fire peppered the stone wall opposite Beckett, flinging shards of rock sailing onto and over him. This volley was followed by the concussion impacts of two grenades falling just short of the wall and exploding harmlessly on the eastern side. The Italians were nearly on top of them, and their relentless advance would not be slowed by anything the Beckett or Löwenbräu had to throw against them. Through the smoky haze Beckett could see that Löwenbräu was down to just one other functioning rifleman; each was popping up above the rampart only long enough to fire a single round before dropping back down behind the wall. Beckett was pleased to note that Löwenbräu ‘s intensity had not diminished– if anything, his lust for killing had only been whetted by the Italian attack, and even in the dusty smog of war, Beckett could clearly see his blue eyes blazing with an unquenchable fervor. Several additional mortar rounds exploded on the roof of the mosque, and Beckett noted distressfully that he could no longer discern the sound of the Bren Light Machine Gun firing anymore above the din of combat.

Beckett knew that he still needed to buy time to allow Jameson’s squad to escape. Unsheathing his revolver, he swiveled and rose in a single movement and unloaded the drum magazine quickly and without taking time to aim before dropping quickly back behind the wall to reload. Beckett’s rounds sailed between the nearest Italian soldiers scarcely 15 yards away, but the unexpectedly-quick salvo forced the leading elements of the Italian force to reconsider their haste. Beckett used that time to thumb six additional bullets into the chambers of his revolver, his hands shaking nervously as he fumbled to force them into the magazine. A torrent of Italian rifle fire ripped through the air above him, punctuated by the clatter of mortar explosions and the gritty rain of sand and rock falling back to earth.

Wiping the sweat from his brow, Beckett again turned and emptied his revolver with six quick trigger pulls; due to the tight grip with which he held the weapon, all of his shots pulled to the right and missed their targets. Alert Italian riflemen covering the leading assault troops had been anticipating Beckett’s maneuver, however, and before Beckett could lower himself below the level of the wall, an Italian bullet punched through his skin just above the left clavicle. The force of the impact slammed Beckett to the ground; flailing wildly on his back, he clutched at the wound with both hands. Dust swirled above and all around him while Italian artillery continued to pummel the mosque and courtyard. The yelling of the advancing Italians became more distinct, more confident-sounding, even aggressive. Beckett’s head rolled to his left; despite the debris-laden air and the searing pain stabbing into his neck, several yards away he could see Löwenbräu’s radiant blue eyes clearly boring into his own. At first, Beckett was confused by the expressionless look on Löwenbräu’s face; he was lying prone, rifle cradled in his arms, his head tilted south towards Beckett, as if expecting new orders—why is he just lying there, staring at me? Why is he not firing? It took several more moments before he was able to break his focus on his eyes, but when he was finally able to do so, he noted a pool of deep crimson puddled beneath Löwenbräu’s head, mostly hidden in the shadow of the stone wall. As Beckett’s gaze adjusted to the low light, he was able to discern a grapefruit size hole in the side of Löwenbräu’s skull from which the oily white pulp of his brain was slowly dripping onto the sand.

Italian grenades began to explode within the courtyard perimeter, and Beckett’s body began to shudder from the shock of his wound. Cowered behind the wall, the last of Löwenbräu’s Punjabi riflemen noted Beckett’s thrashing and finally succumbed to fear, tossing his rifle away and leaping to his feet before beginning to run towards the mosque. His lunge brought him above the level of the wall, and the soldier succeeded in taking a single step before a trio of neatly-clustered Italian rifle rounds bored into his lower back; the man cartwheeled forward listlessly, his face thumping loudly against the packed sand of the courtyard.

Near catatonic due to loss of blood, Beckett willed his head to tilt upwards and look towards the stone wall. There, silhouetted by the light of the rising sun, six black orbs hung motionlessly in the air, macabre and disconcerting visages that filled him with sinister apprehension. As the amorphous forms slowly moved towards him, Beckett wondered if he should be thinking of grandiose sacrificial notions, such as dying for King and Country, or for the cause of freedom; instead, as a dozen black hands reached out for him, only one word repeated itself in his mind as he tightened his grip on the tip of an iklwa spear nestled inside his palm.

Jameson.

27 June 1939

Il Duce repeatedly tapped the rim of his crystal goblet with the serrated edge of his knife, filling the palatial dining hall with a cacophonous, resonating trill that silenced conversations down the entire length of the banquet table. Ornate, bejeweled chandeliers hung low over tightly-packed platters covered in all manner of Mediterranean delicacies ranging from to the shimmering skin of a Tyrrhenian swordfish to bowls of pitch-black caviar. Temporarily unaware of his own strength, or perhaps slightly less than accurate with his aim on account of having consumed six glasses of robust Valpolicella in less than an hour, Mussolini continued to clang his silverware against his glass far longer than was necessary, eventually rocking and then knocking the goblet onto its side and spilling the contents onto the white linen tablecloth. His enthusiasm momentarily getting the better of him, Mussolini continued to bang the overturned glass for several seconds more, clumsily stabbing at it with absentminded, distracted disinterest, almost as if he had forgotten what he was doing while he was doing it; luckily Il Duce had been practicing drunken debauchery for several months now, and if his slothful posture and slurred speech were any indication, he was getting quite good at it. His actions may have been considered borderline uncouth, but for speeches like the one he was about to deliver, it was best to be thorough when ensnaring the attention of one’s audience, and the Italian Emperor had thought it best to thoroughly drown his inhibitions before his imminent address.

Mussolini noticed dozens of pairs of glassy eyes fixated upon him, and shortly thereafter he obliquely rose from his chair, pausing for both dramatic effect and to steady his footing on what appeared to be a slightly undulating marble floor. The eyes arrayed around him at the banquet table belonged to select foreign ministers, various magistrates, regional dukes, barons, and other Fascist dignitaries. As always, his son in law and Minister of Foreign Affairs Galeazzo Ciano sat to his right; the Count gazed up Il Duce expectantly, already captivated by the impending speech. To Mussolini, the eyes represented the glorious culmination of his vision, visible proof of the successful Fascist political experiment, the unstoppable ascendancy of the Roman Empire, and the glory of the indomitable Axis heralding 1000 years of Mare Nostrum and the Latin way of life. Mussolini swayed back and forth almost unperceptively, like a slowly-oscillating dreidel, or the axial tilt of a small planetoid in space; in his effort to stand, the Italian dictator lamented distressfully that he appeared to have acquired several additional kilograms of robust body heft over the previous few months, no doubt due to the stress of shouldering the needs of his people. His exquisite tan linen Field Marshall’s uniform, festooned with contrived medals and badges fictitiously earned in battles that he had never fought in, beaded with droplets of spilt wine and small bits of half-chewed food that had escaped his churning maw, while his forehead glistened with sweat despite the cool evening breeze that circulated from the room’s outer doors that opened onto a poplar-lined terrace.

“My brothers,” Mussolini began, “we have sacrificed much, and we have gained much! The whole world bows to our glorious mastery of warfare!” He punctuated his opening by thrusting a fist into the air, and his guests rose to the occasion, erupting in spontaneous cheers of Bravo! amid a tepid outburst of applause and light table-banging. Mussolini smiled but remained silent as the chorus of adulation washed over him; he could feel his adrenalin beginning to overpower the effects of the alcohol in his system, clearing his mind. After a suitable pause, he continued, “we have smoted the English and their pitiful band of slovenly half-wit battle thralls, and we have silenced the bleating French sheep-lovers!” Whistles and cheers erupted after the mentioning of the first victims to fall to the Italians. “We have safeguarded our people underneath the gleaming shield of our Regia Aeronautica, our Regia Marina, and our Regio Esercito!” Bellowing ovations threatened to shatter the beveled glass of the French doors lining the pavilion as deafening cries of Hurrah! roared throughout the hall. Mussolini took advantage of the crescendos to grab his refilled wine glass and chug the contents before raising his voice above the level of the clamor in the room, “We have reclaimed the Irredenta! We have reclaimed our sacred Spazio Vitale!” The thunderous cheering, whistling, and foot-stomping threatened to drown out Il Duce, but Mussolini brought his fist down upon the table with an ear-splitting crash as he whipped the crowd into an even-greater frenzy, “A Glorious new Roman Dawn is upon us!!!” The Italian dictator again slammed the bottom of his fist against the table in unison with the final word “us,” causing a mounted ceremonial Fasces bundle to fall from a nearby wall; the ax blade fell neatly through a platter of croissants on a table situated below the Fascist ornament, eliciting a resounding chorus of cheers from the crowd.

Shouting and cheering continued as Mussolini continued to enrapture the crowd, “From the deserts of Numidia and Cyrenaica to hills of Narbonese and Cisalpine Gaul, from Massila to Gratianopolis, from Cemenelum to Telo Martius, our armies will safeguard the Patria from our enemies!” While most of the dignitaries lining the table continued clapping, many of their faces were draped in confusion, and the bewildered guests looked to their left and right only to receive blank expressions in return. Only the most academic of the Fascists leaders knew from where the place names originated.


“And very soon, the whole of the African continent will be ours!” Some of the more militant ministers applauded this with great enthusiasm, with a handful of generals rising to their feet to celebrate the announcement, but the majority of the guests slowed their applause to slow hand claps; clearly the conquest of Africa was not something that they had expected or envisioned for the future. Many wondered if Italy could effectively govern such a large area.

“And very soon, we will sacrifice offerings of bull and grape to Mars the Bringer of Victory!” Clapping in the room still continued, but at a reduced rate, with an almost polite, respectful tone. Many at the table exchanged cautious glances with one another, each trying to discern on his or her own whether Mussolini was merely acting a part or if he had truly embraced an overdeveloped impression of his own godlike indomitability. Peripherally noting the concerned looks darting amongst his guests, Mussolini could feel the crowd slipping away from him. Adlibbing from his prepared speech, he pandered to the crowd’s drunkenness and roared, “Let us give thanks to Bacchus for his glorious bounty of mead!” Il Duce then grabbed his refilled wine goblet and in full view of his transfixed audience once again swallowed the contents in one gulp. Once finished, he flung the empty glass against the wall behind him, where it angrily shattered against a marble bust of the Emperor Commodus. This act elicited mild enthusiasm from the crowd, especially to those that noted the ironic similarities between the two emperors who both sought to emulate a resurrected Romulus, but it was clear to even Mussolini that he had enflamed the passions of his guests to the absolute limit of his abilities. Reluctantly, the Italian sovereign roared, “Now let us feast!” before finally settling into his chair. On cue, a harpist began to strum her instrument in an adjoining room, and as the rancor subsided, the gentle, melodic chords facilitated the transition from political rally back into the trappings of civilized society.

Low mumbles and quiet conversations began to fill the room, and black-clad attendants silently scurried about, presenting platters before each of the guests. Katsunori Abe, the new Japanese ambassador to the Italian Court, had been seated to the left of Il Duce; his rancorous applause had been by far the most fervent during Mussolini’s speech, and Benito felt obliged to honor his guest of honor with the first conversation of the evening. Just above the din of silverware softly clattering against fine china plates, Mussolini leaned over towards Katsunori Abe and said, “We are honored by your visit, Katsunori-san. I have heard much of you and your country from my son-in-law, who has told me of your island and its very small people.” Count Ciano nodded approvingly; during his two years in Tokyo, he had been present at many of the planning meetings prior to the 1937 invasion of Northeastern China in his capacity as military liaison officer to the Empire of Japan.

Mussolini took a measured sip of wine and leaned towards the Japanese man; Katsunori could feel the Italian’s fetid breath wash over him, and there was something familiar to the stench, like flower petals, rotting. Slurring his words slightly, and unconsciously speaking with a slight Asian inflection in which he unnecessarily emphasized monosyllabic words, Mussolini continued, “I have been very impressed to hear of your Emperor’s success against the mud peoples of the China region.” Pointing to himself, he continued, “I would like to hear more of these cleansing operations, if it pleases you to speak of them.”

Most of the guests nearby had begun to slice into the main course offering of braised wild boar and mushroom risotto; despite pretenses of polite conversation with their nearby guests, however, nearly all of them were focused on listening to the Japanese ambassador. Mr. Abe smiled at Mussolini and said, “I think that there is much we can learn from each other.” He wrung his hands on his napkin and draped it gracefully across his lap before proceeding; “Have you heard of our most recent acquisitions, Il Duce?”


As Ciano had warned Mussolini beforehand, Katsunori Abe was an accomplished diplomat, and the masterful way that the Japanese envoy encapsulated the Japanese conquest of Shanxi left Mussolini feeling both envious and awed simultaneously. The Japanese Army, as related by Abe, had fallen upon the Chinese host and massacred their unfortunate soldiers in numbers so great as to defy comprehension. Heaps of their dead littered the fields of Taiyuan, Xinzhou, Datong, and a thousand others, in such quantity that “one could walk on a road of corpses from Chengde to Yuncheng without his feet ever touching the ground.” In detailing the bloodshed and in describing the impending annihilation of an entire ethnic group, however, Abe was disarmingly blithe almost to the point of being cheerful. His smile never changed while he talked about attempted genocide in the same tone as a monk would read a haiku to a child, or as a fisherman would relate an exaggerated tale of his latest catch to his closest friends. More than a contest or battle, Abe made it seem as if the Japanese conquest of China was a task to perform, gruesome and tedious in its own way, and with its own share of depravities and toil, but certainly not something that was, or ever would be, in doubt. Mussolini and Ciano both had the distinct impression that the invasion of China was a character building exercise for Japanese young men, and, in a nationalistic sense, a charitable excursion to improve the Earth by removing Chinese weeds from a potentially-spectacular garden.

Conversations at the end of the table nearest Mussolini had dwindled to the occasional utterance, and most of the guests had abandoned all pretense of politeness in order to hear the Japanese ambassador more clearly. Yet for all his cheeky bravado, Katsunori was gifted and perceptive; he knew not to harp on his country’s achievements more than was necessary. After all, he was a guest in the court of an Emperor with dominion over territory far more vast than his own Emperor’s territory, and beyond that, Hirohito had expressed a willingness to work with, and draw influence from, the Italian leader.


Seated to Abe’s left, Mussolini noticed that German foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop was scribbling furiously into a leather-bound notebook. To the left of Joachim, a stunning woman clad in a nearly-transparent white linen dress was demurely cutting small pieces of boar; the woman seemed utterly uninterested in the conversation of Japan’s military conquest, and it soon dawned on Mussolini that the gorgeous Aryan woman that had accompanied von Ribbentrop to the evening’s dinner was not his wife. Mussolini momentarily forgot all about Abe and stared at the German minister’s consort – waves of curly blond hair framed a delicate porcelain face, her large doe eyes focused downward on her plate as she primly cut through small pieces of boar with impossibly dainty hands adorned with several emerald rings set with stones cut in several different shades and shapes . Il Duce’s eyes followed slender hands up her smooth arms up to a pair of small, angelic breasts that seemed too soft to protrude outward against the dress’s diaphanous fabric, yet almost in defiance of their small size, the woman’s unsupported cleavage swelled to a supple shelf just below her exposed neck. Though a small voice in the back of his head advocated discretion, a much louder voice near his crotch overruled the desire for tact, and Mussolini leaned in towards the woman and breathed, “why hello there my dear, I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure.”

Von Ribbentrop briefly cocked and eyebrow and glanced at the Italian dictator, but quickly resumed taking copious notes on the Japanese envoy’s discussion of his army and its capabilities. With aggravating yet captivating deliberateness, his female companion slowly brought up her eyes to meet Mussolini; keeping her face tilted downwards towards her meal, her long eyelashes fluttered repeatedly as she gazed up at the Italian leader, revealing shimmering jade eyes, a small, upturned nose, and lithe red lips. Thin crescent eyebrows arched upwards dramatically, giving her a perpetually inquisitive look regardless of expression; it was a calculated feature meant to both feign interest and entice others into telling more than they should. Just the kind of look a spy would want to cultivate, thought Mussolini as he breathed in the strange woman’s unfamiliar perfume. Mussolini shifted in his chair in order to adjust to the increasingly constricted area in the front of his pants. Groping himself shamelessly, he ventured, “What is your name, my dear?”

The woman coyly dabbed the corner of her lustrous red lips with the corner of her napkin before responding, “I am Fräulein Poon, Herr General.” The woman’s face shimmered in luminous candlelight, highlighting smooth Bavarian facial contours and the slightest hint of an impish smirk.

Mussolini seemed to consider this for a moment, staring at her while absentmindedly sliding the base of his wine glass clockwise against the surface of the table. After a momentary pause, his curiosity got the better of him and, his brow furrowed painfully, he asked, “What kind of name is Poon, anyway?”

Fräulein Poon covered her lips with three fingers and giggled bashfully before responding, “Comanche Indian.” Mussolini nodded knowingly, having no idea what a Comanche was but somehow knowing that her explanation sounded plausible. After thinking about it for another moment, Mussolini realized that her explanation had sounded a little TOO plausible, perhaps the rapidity with which she had said it was a little too quick, as if she had practiced her response just a little too long. Just like a spy would do, thought Mussolini gravely. But he wasn’t sure what he was dealing with, exactly, so he decided to press the issue, just a little.

Von Ribbentrop continued to scribble in his notebook, and his nubile young escort looked to be nearly finished with her entrée. Il Duce took the opportunity to deftly mutter, “Fräulein Poon, I hope you will leave enough room for desert…” he paused, ensuring he had her full attention before continuing, “…I hear that it is moist, bulging with cream, and effortlessly slips between parted lips.” The Italian slowly ran the tip of his tongue along the outer edge of his lips, grinning decadently as he drew out the last word with a serpentine ‘ssssss.’

The comment had the desired effect; Mussolini could see that Fräulein Poon was momentarily startled by the comment, unsuccessfully suppressing a petite cough and a mild blush, but she recovered quickly. A bit TOO quickly, he thought – a whore might banter with such a comment, but a spy has to remain in control. He decided to interrogate further. Completely oblivious to everything except the Japanese ambassador, von Ribbentrop began to ask Katsunori Abe a question regarding the next stage in the Japanese offensive into the Yellow River Valley, and Mussolini took the opportunity to lean forward and quietly say to Fräulein Poon, “I’d like to get all up in that ass of yours, girl.” Fräulein Poon’s grasp of Latin finally failed her, and she looked at Mussolini with a quizzical look that straddled the innuendo that she had hoped for and drunken confusion that she had expected.

With eyebrows stretched to her hairline, Fräulein Poon said, “Pardon?” She leaned forward across the table towards Mussolini in an attempt to hear him better, in the process allowing him a spectacular view of her pert yet supple breasts. Mussolini responded in a louder voice, enunciating, “I said you’re as sassy as a burnt pearl,” in the same inflection as before. Fräulein Poon considered this for a moment, and then acknowledged Il Duce’s comment with an evasive wink. To Mussolini, it was obvious; she was a spy. A true prostitute would be on her hands and knees under the table by now, he reasoned. She must be dealt with. Severely. Possibly even paddled, or whipped, or spanked, or a combination of all three.

Mussolini motioned to a pair of guards that stood at attention in the shadows several feet behind him; the men wore sculpted black metal body armor, deep purple capes, and red-plumed full-facial galea helmets. As they marched towards their commander, Il Duce rose and pointed at von Ribbentrop’s dinner companion as he scathingly shrieked, “Seize her!” A silence fell over the table and the twin centurions moved behind Fräulein Poon’s chair. “She is a spy,” Mussolini announced noncommittally, aware that once again all of the eyes in the room were upon him; “take her to my chambers. For questioning. Yes, questioning, er, I mean interrogation.” The guards grabbed Fräulein Poon underneath each armpit and drug her up to her feet. As the guards and their charge passed Mussolini, Mussolini muttered to the nearest centurion, “see that the prisoner is properly attired for her interrogation.”

The pair of centurions led Fräulein Poon from the banquet hall. Mussolini could see that his guests were nervous and agitated, not the least of whom was the German foreign minister. Il Duce began his slow descent into his chair, making sure to maintain eye contact with von Ribbentrop while doing so; the German foreign minister seemed both confused and defiant over the nationalization of his dinner companion. Amid the clatter of voices expressing surprise and shock over Fräulein Poon’s suspected treachery, von Ribbentrop raised his voice above the level of conversation in the room and, his voice seething in anguish, said, “Benito, this act…this is madness! She is no spy!”

Mussolini stared at von Ribbentrop impassively, fully aware that, once again, all conversation down the length of the table had stopped. The Italian leader waited several moments in order to establish the proper atmosphere and then leaned in towards von Ribbentrop yet speaking loudly enough for everyone to hear, “I have yet to determine your level of involvement in this crime, Herr Ribbentrop, but I will say that your outburst just now leads me to believe that you are complicit in her operation.” Mussolini’s eyes bored into von Ribbentrop’s, and the German minister’s resolve quickly buckled. Despite being an envoy for the mighty Third Reich, von Ribbentrop’s power and influence were restricted when in Mussolini’s court, and though he had been looking forward to an evening with the stunning Fräulein Poon, his desire for self-preservation quickly overruled his desire for copulation. With a mixture of deference and submissiveness tempered by diplomatic civility, von Ribbentrop responded meekly in saying, “A thousand pardons, Il Duce. I meant no disrespect. I trust Fräulein Poon will be dealt with appropriately.”

Mussolini relaxed and leaned back in his chair. He was smiling as he responded, “Oh yes, she will be dealt with. Rest assured, I will not sleep until I have probed her to the limits of human endurance.”


By degrees, the crowd settled down and returned to their seats. Mussolini signaled the head waiter to initiate the desert course, and gradually, the rancor of the earlier accusations diminished and tempers simmered and cooled. Platters of apricot cannoli & cinnamon gelato were set before each person, and as sensuous melodies from the harpist began to once again fill the hall, Il Duce looked to his right and seemed surprised to notice that Count Ciano was still there. Mussolini took a measured sip of limoncello from a fluted glass and, setting it down, said, “Galeazzo, my son, regale our guests with tales of our Empire’s epic conquests!”

There was nothing spontaneous about the request; Ciano and Mussolini and planned far in advance to save their report for last in order to leave a lasting impression on the foreign dignitaries in attendance. Ciano led off with an account of the final battle for Alexandria, which admittedly had ended over a week prior, but it would have been folly to not at least stroke the fancy of the crowd by reliving the epic battle one last time.


Ciano rose to his feet, a mask of resolute gravitas plastered to his face. “Alexandria is a gutted ruin; the entire British Eighth Army lies bound in chains. There is no one left in the Mediterranean to oppose us,” Ciano proclaimed. It was a powerful opening, and Mussolini noticed that everyone had dropped their forks to hear what the Italian foreign minister had to say, exactly the effect Mussolini had intended. Down the length of the table, all eyes were fixated on Ciano as he continued, “Causalities amongst our soldiers were minimal, as were losses of equipment. We are having considerable difficulty in feeding such a horde of prisoners, however. There is also insufficient housing for them; as the Sahara is nice this time of year, we have elected to contain the majority of the prisoners in cattle stockyards until we can get them to construct their own housing; using stockyards will have the added benefit of already having containment systems and feed distribution systems already in place, solving two problems at once. I have already made arrangements with the International Red Cross to release large quantities of nutritious cattle fodder to us for use by the British prisoners, and we are reclassifying their status as bovine in order to obtain economies of scale on stocks of oats and barley from markets abroad.”


Several of the Fascist magistrates chuckled at Ciano’s comments, and many others thought that the cheeky remark was an attempt at joviality and smiled in spite of the dark humor. Unfortunately for the British, it was not a joke; in recent weeks, Ciano’s relentless focus on efficiency had become a driving force in his life, and if the only way to feed thousands of British prisoners meant that they had to eat cattle feed from a trough in order to survive, then so be it. Ciano knew that as foreign minister, he would be judged for the deaths of POWs, and as he described enemy soldiers as BPUs, or British Prisoner Units, rather than people, it became clear to all in the room that Mussolini’s son in law was concerned with units and numbers and tonnage far more than he was concerned with the individual or their living conditions. Count Ciano droned on for several more minutes regarding the need for large scale investment in the expanding AOI, culminating his address by imploring his fascist brethren to use all of the resources at their disposal to care for the surviving BPUs in the most efficient, Spartan way possible. Ciano even advocated utilizing the hulk of the capsized HMS Illustrious, which had sunk only a few meters into the shallows of Alexandria harbor sand, as a temporary housing facility that would also double as an offshore prison. Ciano added a final point, “and, in the unfortunate event that the Illustrious slips off the sandbar and sinks completely, killing all of the BPUs onboard, we can always claim later that they were killed during the attack on 5 April.”


The crowd grumbled audibly, and Mussolini could feel his skin bristling in anxiety over Ciano’s last comment; clearly Ciano had deviated from the planned speech. Quickly switching gears, and in his final attempt to instill Italian dominance over their German partners, Mussolini loudly addressed German foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop and offered him the opportunity to laud on any recent German victories or struggles, if any. Despite the superficially benign entreaty, Mussolini knew from his SIM spy network that very little was going on in the vaunted Third Reich, and he felt that showcasing German lethargy and idleness would only increase Italian prestige in the eyes of the world.

Joachim, like Mussolini, was privy to the same basic information regarding German endeavors since the fall of France; unfortunately for the press and guests assembled in Mussolini’s court, there was not much going on in the Third Reich to brag about. It was hardly a secret, but von Ribbentrop’s primary intention for the evening had been to collect information on the way German’s allies conducted war, not to disseminate information on German achievements or conquests. Von Ribbentrop shuffled some loose papers in front of him and reordered a few pages of his notes, observing that as he flipped from one to another that almost all of them contained the names of Chinese towns or Japanese generals. Finally, near the front of the stack, von Ribbentrop found the pages he had been looking for and racked the stack against the surface of the table, ordering the disorderly swath of pages into a structured slab of hand-scribbled notes. Like Ciano had done with Alexandria, von Ribbentrop had planned to recount past conquests in Poland and France; however, given the enormity of Italian acquisitions, slow pace of the Polish victory, and the Italian assistance needed to finally overcome the French, von Ribbentrop suddenly decided to pursue a different tack. Rather than get in a direct pissing match with the Italian dictator, von Ribbentrop decided, quite on his own, to focus his discourse on the future. He rose from his chair and cleared his throat before proceeding.

“We Germans are a simple people,” von Ribbentrop began, his fingers laced together and head hung low as he continued, “at heart, we are a peaceful race of shopkeepers and farmers, for the most part; we invented fairy tales, beer, Protestantism, and the glockenspiel, and the one thing we desire above all else is to enjoy these things and coexist peacefully with our neighbors.” Several abrupt coughs erupted simultaneously from the audience, including a few fake sneezes that sounded suspiciously like the word ‘Bullshit,’ but von Ribbentrop persisted as if he had heard nothing.

“Ever since the nefarious sneak attack by the sanctimonious Polish and their British and French imperialist allies so many months ago, we Germans have been trying to figure out how we were able to defeat them so easily, so decisively.” Joachim stroked his chin pensively, as if pondering a question he already knew the answer to. “Was it perhaps our strong national physique, our hardened bodies conditioned by years of rigorous state-mandated exercise?” Von Ribbentrop tightened his left tricep and curled his arm behind him; as he looked over his left shoulder, the taut slab of muscle between his collarbone and elbow pulsed rhythmically beneath the cloth of his tailored shirt, stretching the fabric when flexed.


“Was it perhaps the assistance and friendship of our alliance partners in Italy that made our victory possible?” Von Ribbentrop beamed a huge toothy smile and looked down at Mussolini; grasping his wine glass, he toasted his host and then sipped the contents, maintaining eye contact with the Italian Emperor. Several of the guests nodded their heads in agreement, though those close to him could see plainly that von Ribbentrop was still seething with thinly masked hostility.

Von Ribbentrop’s voice began to deepen, and his tempo increased. “Or, was our victory the inevitable result of German National Socialism creating a new breed of superhuman Teutonic warriors, proving once and for all the glorious truth of our leader’s Aryan vision for the future?!?! THIS, I believe, is what happened in Poland, and in France, and will happen to all of our enemies!” Von Ribbentrop’s voice shuddered as he clinched his fists and raised his voice to fever pitch, “Death awaits all who oppose us!”

Gentle, polite clapping followed von Ribbentrop’s oration, and the German foreign minister took a few moments to collect himself before continuing, “our Fuhrer believes that it is a combination of all three factors that have lead us to victory in Europe. Nevertheless, in our continuing effort to safeguard the Reich and its benevolent citizenry, we have ordered new conscription measures to ensure a plentiful pool of candidates for the glory of our Wehrmacht, Kriegsmarine, and Luftwaffe. This will ensure our safety and freedom today, tomorrow, and forever. After all, it is the children that will eventually shoulder the burdens of the Reich.”


“This is not to suggest that we will compromise on our famously high standards for individual soldiers, however,” von Ribbentrop continued, casting a dismissive sneer in order to preemptively dispel potential rumors of sub-par German quality. “Not just anyone will be accepted into the Wehrmacht, of course,” von Ribbentrop added, his eyes scanning the room as if judging the predominantly-Italian guests as unable to reach the requisite level of physical fitness. “The Reich will continuously inspect all soldiers to ensure that only the best specimens maintain their elite status.”


Mussolini suddenly began to feel drowsy; having heard similarly pompous German rhetoric many time before, he rested his chin on his left hand while his right hand thrummed the arm of his chair in a repeating pattern. Von Ribbentrop was just beginning to enumerate the exacting height and racial background requirements for the infantry when Mussolini groaned loudly and muttered, “is there anything New to add, Joachim? Any enticing intelligence? Any riveting current event news?” Before von Ribbentrop could respond, he added, “And is there anymore wine? Shit-fuck! I’ll get it myself”

Before he could stand, a steward with a bottle of Abruzzi Montepulciano rushed to refill Mussolini’s glass, and von Ribbentrop interjected, “Jawohl, Herr General, there is much hearsay and conjecture to report. For example, our spies in Whitehall report that the British so fear a German invasion of their Isles that they are fitting innocent kinder as young as 14 months into self-contained underwater demolition suits. It is rumored that they will use these suicide children to detonate our landing craft as they approach their beaches. Truly their situation must be desperate!” Von Ribbentrop appeared to be mortified by his own report, even a little disgusted as he spat out the last few words, but there was a trace of smugness to his voice, a subdued yet gleeful hint of satisfaction that betrayed the pride he felt in his country reducing the mighty British into conscripting child soldiers.


Von Ribbentrop’s report definitely piqued the interest of the Italian Emperor; this was unexpectedly useful information. Though he did not want to alert his German allies, Mussolini had already begun plans for the invasion of Malta, and if the British were truly as weak as von Ribbentrop claimed, then perhaps the operation would not be so difficult after all. Eager to see what else von Ribbentrop would offer up, Mussolini presssed the German minister again; “what else do you have for us, Herr Ribbentrop?”

“Herr Mussolini, it has come to our attention that our neighbors in Sweeden have begun mobilizing their reserves; I’m not sure how useful this information will be to you, but given the fluid nature of alliances in the European theater, I felt it best to inform you that it appears that Sweeden will join one of the three main factions soon. If the Sweedes join the Allies, then it will force us to rethink our plans for the conquest of Norway and threaten our supply of iron ore as well.”


Mussolini seemed to weigh the German minister’s comments with great seriousness, as if he had just received incredibly distressing information. With furrowed brow and much stroking of the beard, Mussolini sat hunched over in his chair for several minutes and appeared to dwell on the repercussions of Sweden entering the war. No one disturbed him, and the room remained quiet with the exception of the occasional spoon clattering against desert plates at the far side of the table.

In actuality, however, Mussolini thought of nothing but Fraulein Poon and the sick, depraved things he would do to her once he got back to his room. Mussolini had always had a vibrant, vivid imagination, and as he pictured himself on top of her, naked, her back covered in red candle wax, visions sprang to life in his mind and he began to mutter softly to himself; oooh yeah girl…im gonna wreck that shit…ooh you like that?...who’s the king baby?...uuhhhh, yeah, you like that?...beg me to do you again…put that in my mouth…use both fists this time…yeah…mmmmmm…oh that’s tight…nice…

The combination of relaxing comfortably in his chair and the case of alcohol in his gut finally caught up with Mussolini, and while he thought he was muttering quietly in his own head, in actuality he was speaking loudly enough for those nearby to hear exactly what he was saying. Il Duce only realized that he had no control over his inner monologue when he happened to look up and see horrified masks of incredulity on the faces of those nearest to him.

Acting quickly in an attempt to salvage the situation, Count Ciano blurted out loudly enough to rouse Mussolini from his fantasy, “I’m sorry Il Duce, we couldn’t quite make that out—what was that again?”

Perturbed but unashamed, Mussolini rose from his chair and said, “Bunga Bunga” before walking out of the room, his two Praetorian Guards in tow.

Nathan Madien said:

A very good update.

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Nathan Madien said:

Man, you can really taste the desperateness of this situation.

Click to expand...

Thanks for sticking around Nathan!
Apologies for infrequent updates; something always seems to come up every time i think i'm going to have time to write.

19 August 1939

As had happened every morning since the beginning of the war, Lt. General Italo Gariboldi bolted awake from a phantasmal nightmare that had been, in fact, a vision.

Despite the arid cool of the Sudanese morning, sweat coursed from Gariboldi’s scalp as he struggled to control his breathing. Though he knew he was awake, he still saw the after-images from his dream on the backside of his eyelids every time he blinked. The confusion of Gariboldi’s surreally vivid nightmare mingled with the unmistakable feeling of relief at finding himself alive, and as a result Gariboldi struggled to grasp onto anything that seemed real, almost as if he was trapped between two worlds simultaneously. In the moments before waking, Gariboldi had been only moments away from certain death – during his vision, he had been swept away by the current of a large river and awoken a split second before his death. In wiping the sweat from his brow, the tactile sensation of touching water amplified the authenticity of his experience, and as his eyes rolled back in their sockets he again saw vivid images from his experience. The river in his dream was massive, nearly spanning his field of vision as he sluiced down rapids and corkscrewed through troughs as waves from every direction slapped his face with oceanic might. Gariboldi remembered struggling to stay afloat as black tidal surges and currents threatened to drag him under the waves.

After a few minutes, Gariboldi realized that he could see more of the river, almost as if he was being lifted to a higher plane in the water or as if he had developed a more resilient buoyancy. He soon thereafter realized that his improved vantage point was due to the fact that the slope of the land upon which the river flowed was angling downwards. As the momentum of the water increased to an impossibly high velocity, Gariboldi realized why this was so; the river was about to crest over a ledge, and there was nothing he could do to prevent himself from going over the falls. All before him, lush grassland of an African savannah landscape opened on both riverbanks while thick nests of serpentine vines hung low from trees lining the banks.

As he neared the precipice, Gariboldi had grasped the gnarled trunk of a waterlogged tree that had become ensnared in a small whirlpool; he had managed to cleave his fingers into the damp bark and provide himself a small measure reprieve. Soon thereafter, however, the strain of his weight on the bark began to pull it from the smooth trunk, and Gariboldi had to flail about in order to claw his way onto another section of the bark before it detached. As the new section also began to pull away from the trunk, Gariboldi soon found himself fighting for every inch as every grasp pulled more and more bark from the tree in an attempt to hoist himself out of the water. Gariboldi remembered struggling for each breath, as the swirling river rocked into his face over and over, filling his lungs with water during each inhalation. His exhaustion had been nearly debilitating, and it seemed that all would soon be lost. In that instant, Gariboldi had resigned himself to Fate, and he looked over into the churning eye of the whirlpool. In contrast to the thrashing tempest battering his broken body, the eddy currents near the singularity at the middle of the vortex were calm, almost inviting. Gariboldi remembered loosening his grip and going limp, and very soon he was clutched by the suction of the maelstrom and pulled towards the center.

Gariboldi soon experienced a viscous free-fall as he was suctioned downward with terrifying force into the eye of the whirlpool. Instead of fighting the powerful pull of the eddies, Gariboldi allowed the whirlpool to take him where it wanted, and after riding through an interminable series of cyclonic chutes with no end of sight, his lungs seething for air, Gariboldi had bolted upright on his cot in the Sudan, drenched in sweat and convulsing as if frostbit. As Gariboldi calmed himself from his ordeal, he began to wonder what his vision had meant this time – he could not be entirely sure, but in the minutes after collecting himself he began to formulate several conclusions. As he had done during the battle at Adwa, Gariboldi sensed a forbidding specter of doom hovering above him. Was the river perhaps an allegory for the war in general, or for his personal command only? Was the waterfall and whirlpool supposed to represent the futility of choice, the British defenses, or perhaps some other looming disaster? He finished lacing his right boot and walked out of his tent into the Sudanese dawn, confounded by a myriad of questions but knowing somehow that his dream meant the difference between victory and defeat.

Gariboldi’s recently-reinforced troops were dug into the low ridgelines on the East bank of the Blue Nile commanding the eastern approach towards Khartoum. Viceroy Amedeo had ordered Gariboldi to attack on 15 May, despite the latter’s vehement objections; Gariboldi would have preferred to starve the British forces into surrender in order to spare his remaining soldiers further bloodshed, and consequently, he took as much time as possible in meticulously positioning his forces for the final attack against the remnants of the 7th Armored Division. Using the last of their remaining fuel, British General Montgomery had withdrawn his troops from the Adwa battlefield into the more defensible area near the regional command post in Khartoum.


Mussolini had maintained pressure on Viceroy Amedeo di Savoia for several weeks to force a decisive final battle in Khartoum, even going so far as to award Gariboldi’s command with the honorary title, the Felix Legion in hopes of encouraging the men for one last push. Though it was intended to be a motivational moniker evoking the ‘luck’ that had preserved the unit during the fierce battle of Adwa, Gariboldi’s men joked that the designation only served to highlight how undermanned the two divisions were, noting that the combined totals of both the 32nd and 44th Militia Divisions were less than the full-strength complement of a single Marian legion of approximately 5,000 men. Many also quipped that the ballistae and gladius swords that the Roman legions of two millennia ago fielded were far more effective weapons than the motley collection of muskets and outdated artillery that the Italian militia troops were reduced to using.

Observing Khartoum through binoculars from atop a small rise near a bend in the Blue Nile, Gariboldi scanned the formidable defenses of the Sudanese outpost and looked for weaknesses in Montgomery’s deployment. Gariboldi was unable to see into the city itself, but he was able to discern areas where it seemed British engineers had been at work constructing roadblocks and obstacles outside the walls. It seemed apparent to commanders on both side that the aerodrome would be the main objective, as it was the only source of supply for the beleaguered British, and indeed the British appeared to have concentrated most of their remaining armor in concentric belts surrounding the landing strip, which was located near the southwest corner of the city just outside the city walls.

Khartoum’s strategic importance lied in its location at the confluence of the Blue and While Nile Rivers, which joined just north of the city; consequently, the Northern, Western, and Eastern approaches to the city were protected from direct assault, forcing attackers to battle the intricate defenses of the massive Southern Massalamieh and Kalakala Gates. From what Gariboldi could discern, a dense network of trenches, barbed wire, and obstacles radiated outwards from the Southern approaches, and furthermore, the majority of the British foot appeared to be stationed on or in front of the wall. Behind the wall, the modern grid layout of the city established by British Major-General Herbert Kitchener following his 1898 capture of the city allowed long and unobstructed fields of fire for machine guns at each intersection. A direct assault on Khartoum would not be easy, and it appeared that the British were aware of this and were prepared to resist despite their meager rations and small quantity of serviceable armored vehicles.


Other considerations plagued Gariboldi as well; he was keenly perceptive regarding the morale of his men, and knew that the upcoming battle would be difficult even with the 7th Armored battered and understrength. Without having to ask or inquire, he knew that many of his veteran Italian officers felt that they had endured more than should have been expected of them already in this war. He knew that they felt isolated, half a world away from their homes, and even more importantly, his men felt like they had expended all of their luck in repelling Montgomery’s attack over three months prior, and would be unlikely to survive another battle against punishing British firepower. Despite the surprising resiliency of his some of his colonial levies, the Eritrean militia in particular, if Gariboldi were to order his troops forward in a set-piece frontal assault he felt that there were good odds that the majority of his troops would rout. Finishing his scan of the enemy defenses, Gariboldi allowed the binoculars to drop to his chest; dropping to his knees, he sketched a diagram of Khartoum with his finger in the sand. As Gariboldi had done prior to previous battles, he turned to the past in order to obtain inspiration for the future.

Gariboldi knew that the last time Khartoum has been successfully besieged was in 1885, when its Anglo-Egyptian garrison had been indiscriminately massacred by Mahdist insurgents almost within sight of a British relief column. The gallant British commander, General Charles George Gordon, had been decapitated and his severed head thrust aloft from the ramparts by a spear at the end of the battle. The key to the Mahdist victory had revolved around, in part, the low level of the Nile on the night of the attack that had allowed the insurgents to cross the swampy delta on foot and attack the weaker defenses to the North, East, and West of the city. Gariboldi knew that this was not a possibility for the upcoming battle, as the lowest ebb for the Blue Nile occurred in January, but as with all fortified positions, Gariboldi knew that a strong defensive outpost invariably possessed certain deficiencies often overlooked by the opposing commander. Fixed fortifications¸ Gariboldi mused, recalling a passage in a biography of American General George S. Patton that he had read just prior to the outbreak of hostilities, are a monument to the stupidity of man. Of course, Patton had been referring to aggressive armored maneuvers entirely unsuited to his plodding militia regiments, but Gariboldi, as always, fixated upon the immobile nature of British forces and adapted the essence of exploitation to suit his needs.

Gariboldi traced a long furrow in the sand east-to-west underneath the diagram of Khartoum; at the westernmost point, he curled the line northwards and, at a point corresponding with due west, curled it right at a 90 degree angle again and drug it towards the city from the west. As was the case in 1885, Gariboldi realized that the key to sacking Khartoum was not a direct attack against the town’s defenses, but rather by striking circuitously, and in this case it meant taking the forts near the town of Omdurman on the western bank of the White Nile. Dredging his finger into the coarse sand, Gariboldi circled a point that lied just to the left of the inverted ‘V’ that represented the two rivers covering Khartoum’s northern half; from the heights near Omdurman, Italian artillery could enfilade the British front line with relentless plunging firepower and negate many of the British defenses as well as bring the airfield and its precious transport aircraft under fire. If Gariboldi simply circumvented Khartoum from the South and circled around to attack Omdurman from the west, his forces stood a good chance of bottling up the 7th Armored inside the city. Given Montgomery’s force disposition, Gariboldi’s plan had other advantages as well. The British infantry were armored assault soldiers and thus trained to attack in mechanized vehicles; dismounted, they would be less capable when constrained by having to defended static positions. Additionally, with his immobile armor concentrated around the airfield and acting essentially as fortifications, Montgomery’s infantry would be left without a reliable counterattack force, allowing Gariboldi’s legionnaires the ability to choose when and where to attack at their leisure. If everything went according to plan, Gariboldi could besiege Khartoum from the heights near Omdurman and force the British to sally forth to meet them; if that happened, Gariboldi could choose where the two forces would do battle, thereby negating the defenses integral to Khartoum. Assuming that the battle went well and that the Italians were victorious on the field, Gariboldi could assault the weakened city gates and force the British back towards the rivers; in theory, once the British realized that they were hemmed in by the Nile and had nowhere to escape, they would surrender en masse and prevent the Italians unnecessary bloodshed. It was a sound plan, Gariboldi thought, but like the battle for Adwa, his only real advantage was impudence, and in the back of his mind he knew he could only sustain a minimal threshold of causalities before his militia soldiers would lose heart and flee the field. Nevertheless, it was the best plan he could come up with.


Within Khartoum’s crenelated battlements, however, bloodshed was already fast becoming the norm. While the British may have been excellently trained and equipped to endure the hardships of combat, the squalor, deprivation, and misery of Khartoum threatened to break the spirits of even the toughest soldier. Walking wounded milled the sandy streets in Khartoum proper in interminable swaths stretching east to west and from riverfront to riverfront; unable to quarter the influx, the men of the 7th Armored and stragglers from the Eight Army that had managed to escape staggered from building to building seeking refuge from the suffocating heat and medical assistance for wounds. Most found no succor for their ailments. Many men, reluctantly accepting the inevitable conclusion that no aid would be forthcoming, reclined or collapsed against the walls of the Magistrate’s residence, which had been commandeered by Montgomery’s personal physician and designated as the divisional hospital. Inside, British surgeons worked feverishly to mend broken bones and stitch wounds fast enough to allow them to treat those waiting in the queues. Despite their efforts, there were simply too many casualties and too few doctors; for each soldier that successfully navigated the medical process, four more took their place. Potable water was rationed at the astonishing rate of 500 milliliters per soldier per day, which was nowhere near adequate given the climate and season of the southern Sudan region.

Italian 1st Corporal Giovanni de Natale was one of the lucky ones. Ironically, the savage beating that he had received after being shot three and a half months prior may have ended up saving his life. His caravan of stragglers from Eighth Army had arrived in Khartoum just prior to Montgomery’s 7th Armored Division at the beginning of August. De Natale’s tattered uniform, sandblasted by months of exposure to the unforgiving Western Desert, soiled in dried blood and ripped from the punishing physical assault by enraged British infantry, had been mistaken for a Commonwealth uniform, and as a result of the tattered remnants of chevrons stitched on his sleeves, de Natale had received immediate medical attention even ahead of other British officers upon their arrival in Khartoum. By the time Montgomery and Gariboldi’s troops had arrived in the area two weeks later, de Natale’s condition had recuperated to the point where he experienced occasional episodes of lucidity from time to time, and due to his improved condition he was transferred to an officer’s observation ward in nearby Omdurman for continued recuperation.


De Natale stretched comfortably on a low wooden cot, extending his hands over his head and feeling the chipped masonry of the wall against his fingertips while at the same time thrusting his toes outward underneath the cover of the thin blanket covering his lower half. The Italian corporal has scarcely experienced greater contentment in over three months, and satisfaction radiated outward from a sheepish grin plastered to his face. A needle wedged into a vein in his left arm pumped small doses of morphine into his bloodstream, and several feet away, a Sudanese medical auxiliary repeatedly fanned a large palm bough to circulate cooler air through the room filled with British officers in various states of recovery. Through the open window just above his head, de Natale could hear the strange shouting in peculiar dialects, bizarre chirping of exotic riverine songbirds and the rattle of wooden-wheeled carts trundling over an uneven dirt road outside.

It was not simply luck that had delivered de Natale through his ordeal; a capable grasp of the English language had allowed him to fake his way through occasional conversations with British doctors and medical staff, and his northern Italian facial features proved just Continental enough to appear non-Latin in origin to the casual observer. Unlike most of the citizens of Turin, de Natale’s parents were not members of the city’s massive industrial sector; de Natale’s father was a tour guide at the Basilica of Superga and led groups through the tombs of the kings and princes of the House of Savoy interred there. Similarly, de Natale’s mother worked as a curator in the Mole Antonelliana, the world’s tallest museum oft visited by delegations from English-speaking nations. Prior to de Natale’s military service, the family had spoken in English often during evening meals to hone their conversational repartee; as a result, de Natale knew enough about English to know when to act dismissive or respectful and, in certain dire cases, when to feign illness or severe pain.

The midmorning sun arched ever higher into the arid Sudanese sky, and oppressive August heat began to seep into the dank, cool mosque. Next on de Natale’s schedule was a well-deserved nap, and despite a heavy cloth bandage covering most of his upper chest around the hole in his left shoulder, he rolled over on his side and was shortly thereafter dozing comfortably. After only a few moments, however, he felt an acute, stabbing pain in his stomach; he opened his eyes and quickly focused on a native African soldier looming above him. He looked over just in time to see watch the soldier push the butt of a rifle into his side a second time.

“Get up Englishman,” muttered the soldier through grit teeth and with a heavy Amharic accent; even only semi-conscious, de Natale could tell that the man was stringing together a sequence of words that he had been ordered to repeat, and likely had no real knowledge of the English language. Another quick jab with the rifle butt brought de Natale to a sitting position and additional situational clarity; the soldier was wrapped in a single long length of tan linen, his only ornamentation consisting of a necklace of incisors polished to a high sheen. De Natale’s gaze shifted to the man’s ancient bolt action rifle; its age and appearance suggested an Italian origin of the type used during World War 1. Something is amiss, De Natale thought; he knew from firsthand observation that Montgomery did not arm his African colonials, at least all the ones he had come across so far. It was rumored that ever since the disaster at Adwa had destroyed most of the division’s munitions and fuel, Montgomery had only issued the 7th Armored Division’s small arms and ammunition to combat-effective personnel. Inside de Natale’s head, alarm klaxons were blaring – who is this man, and why is he addressing me as ‘Englishman?’ Have they discovered my true identity?

No sooner had de Natale risen to his feet than three other men entered the room from the street outside. Unlike the tar-complected conscript before him, the three new men removing their caps were Caucasian Italian officers, two of which appeared to be lieutenants and one of whom appeared to be a general. De Natale stared at the distinctive yet unfamiliar shoulder patches on each man while they stood illuminated in the doorway; each emblem was obviously new and stood in stark contrast to the weathered condition of the uniforms. As the men strolled towards the center of the room, de Natale could see that an orange lion dominated the middle of each man’s shoulder patch, its flowing mane surmounted by the characters ‘IIII Legio Felix’ in irregular Italic script. De Natale made a quick scan of the room and noticed several other native soldiers dispersed around the room strategically intermixed between the cots, and all wearing the same patch; slowly he began to put the pieces together.

The General in the group spoke, loud enough for everyone in the room to hear, “Gentlemen, you are now under the protection of the Roman Empire. Please do not struggle or attempt to escape. I am General Italo Gariboldi, and my men here will do all that they can to make your stay here as comfortable as possible.”

From every corner of the room, British Empire officers in various states of repose bolted upright in incredulity; shouts of “What?!?!” and “Italians? Here?” resonated inside the room amid a cacophony of shocked shouting. Gariboldi’s Eritrean colonials quickly hefted their rifles up to their shoulders but wisely held their fire; the rancor would die down quickly, their general had informed them, once they got over the initial shock. Within moments, when the British realized that they would not be harmed, and in fact very little would change for them, the room quieted down significantly. Omdurman had been selected by Montgomery for a field hospital because Khartoum lied between it and the direct Italian axis of advance from Adwa, and as a result it was considered a safe refuge behind the main battle line; as the British officers gradually came to grips with their situation, many of them actually expressed mild admiration for the Italian general’s tactic of bypassing the static defenses of the citadel, in effect acting like commentators in a war that they were no longer part of, like soccer players ejected from a match early the first half. Singularly and in pairs, de Natale and the wounded British officers returned to their beds.

Satisfied that order had been restored, Gariboldi turned to leave and had started walking out the door when de Natale cried out “Generale!” Despite his misgivings over forcing an attack against a withering opponent, Gariboldi nevertheless had a battle to wage, and needed to return to the front immediately in order to demonstrate his willingness to carry out Viceroy Amedeo’s orders; nevertheless, something about the man’s accent suggested a trace of regional Lombardy dialect, and Gariboldi felt intrigued enough by the familiar accent of his ancestral home to pause briefly. As if he needed another reason, another moment or two in the cool air of the dimly-lit mosque was an excuse to avoid the sweltering morning heat outside. Hands on his hips, Gariboldi strolled over to de Natale, his two lieutenants following closely behind.

“Yes, what is it corporal?” Gariboldi’s voice was sour, tinted with notes of impatience and indignation, but he eyed the wounded officer with respectful curiosity as he dropped to a knee beside him.

De Natale managed a meek smile before replying, “I am first corporal Giovanni de Natale, General.” He moved his hand towards his head in order to affect a casual salute before adding, “Savoy Machine Gun Battalion, 10th Grenadiers Regiment, 65th Infantry Division.” De Natale paused a moment to catch his breath before continuing, “thank you for coming to my rescue, General.” De Natale’s simple smile trembled with fatigue, and his chest heaved noticeably underneath his field dressing due to the temporary exhaustion of speaking loud enough to be heard.

Gariboldi stared at de Natale quizzically while rising to his feet slowly, as if he had suddenly noticed that the man sitting languidly on the cot was covered in Bubonic Plague sores. “It may startle you to discover that I am not in the habit or business of rescuing everyone that claims to be a corporal, de Natale.” Gariboldi scowled fiercely at his alleged countryman; it seemed unlikely that a soldier from the 65th could make it so far from his parent unit, which Gariboldi knew was still performing garrison duties near Alexandria over 1,500 km away. However, despite the highly dubious matter of his arrival in the Sudan, Gariboldi was inwardly compelled to believe that the man was who he claimed to be—his accent, casually-formal deference to authority, and ambiguously northern-Italian facial features all seemed to validate de Natale’s claim.

Curious, Gariboldi decided to play along; “Tell me, de Natale, are you the only Italians soldier here, or are there others just like you? Hmmm?”

De Natale could see plainly that Gariboldi’s sarcasm-infused voice did not match his eyes, which were boring into him expectantly—he may still be suspicious, but he clearly wants to know more about me, de Natale thought. After a momentary pause, de Natale replied, “Yes…as a matter of fact, there are many others from the 65th here, along with thousands of British wounded.”

“Aye, of course. Thousands, yes. Your unit gave the Brits quite the thumping at the Ruweisat Ridge as I recall. Right up until the moment you all had your tickets punched. You buckled, like a belt, didn’t you, de Natale? Run away, did you?”

The pair stared at each other for an uncomfortable moment when, without warning or escort, Viceroy Amendo de Savoia walked into the room behind the clutch of Italian officers; his mere presence had the effect of immediately spurning Gariboldi’s professionalism, sapping his capacity for witty banter. Suddenly possess by a need to exemplify the seriousness with which he took his orders to attack, and before de Natale could retort, Gariboldi blurted out, “Tell me, de Natale, how, exactly did you come find yourself in Khartoum? Sorcery? Dereliction of duty? Or are you perhaps a scheming Allied spy, at long last finally returned to the fold?”

De Natale winced as if in pain, understanding Gariboldi’s seemingly idle postulations to be the insults that he, in fact, had intended. De Natale had not held his post until literally the last man and suffered nearly unceasing physical and emotional agony for 3 months afterwards only to have his loyalty doubted by a miserable backwater general. Piedmontese rage swelled within de Natale and in mere moments boiled over; with vitriolic wrath tempered only by the vaguest notions of the chain of command, de Natale lashed out, “ARROGANT ASS, I WILL KILL YOU!” De Natale began to flail against his blanket and bandages while extending his fingertips into the air towards Gariboldi’s neck, though due to his injuries in the end he was unable to even maneuver into a sitting position.

Gariboldi was not surprised by the outburst; in fact, he had expected nothing less from one of his countrymen. Long had Italy been inhabited by passionate, hot-blooded and easily-manipulated men such as the seething mess writhing around the cot below him, and Gariboldi now felt convinced that the man was indeed a fellow Italian. Gariboldi turned to face his men and the Viceroy, stating, “I believe this man is who he claims to be.” Gariboldi betrayed the extent of how he had baited de Natale when he added further, “Sir, I believe the reports stating that the entire Savoy Machine Gun Battalion had been overrun and wiped out during the battle for Alexandria may have been in error—it would appear that some British units did indeed escape Graziani’s trap and find their way here with some of our officers.”

Though Viceroy Amedeo had come late to the conversation regarding de Natale’s arrival in Khartoum, he nevertheless was perceptive enough to appreciate the potential implications of the machinegunner’s observations from inside the enemy’s camp. Amedeo pushed his way between Gariboldi and his flanking lieutenants and rested a hand on de Natale’s shoulder. He applied firm pressure to the wounded man while reassuring him, “My friend, I am Viceroy Amedeo, Prince of Savoy, Duke of Aosta, regional magistrate and commander in chief of the armed forces of the AOI. Do you understand?”

De Natale’s outburst immediately fizzled, and he acknowledged Amedeo’s question with a meek assent. The Viceroy continued, “What is the condition of Montgomery’s command? How are the defenses in Khartoum laid out? How many combat-effective soldiers does he have? How many troops arrived from Alexandria? How many tanks…”

De Natale began to shake his head and soon spoke over the Viceroy, “no, no, no, Sir…Khartoum is not a fortress—it’s an infirmary.”

And then all the pieces suddenly fell into place – it was no coincidence that de Natale had found his way to Omdurman of all places, or that Gariboldi himself had skirted around Khartoum rather than attack it directly, as he had been ordered. Gariboldi realized that both the maelstrom and the waterfall from his vision were inescapable forces equally capable of destruction its own unique way; choosing one over the other, despite the former’s more appealing appearance, was irrelevant; each of the two choices offered in his dream resulted in death or defeat, metaphorically speaking, as had his vision at Adwa. Gariboldi now realized that his dreams only foretold doom if he did nothing, or continued on with the plan as usual – it was up to him to come up with an alternative. At Adwa, he had attacked Montgomery’s supply columns rather than wait for his attack; now at Khartoum, he needed yet another alternative initiative, this time a substitution for a frontal assault or a lengthy siege.

De Natale’s observation concerning the wounded finally clarified what Gariboldi needed to do. Instead of forcing an attack he probably would not win or defying a commander he didn’t want to disappoint, Gariboldi realized he could accomplish both of his goals, namely the immediate reduction of the British redoubt and the preservation of his troops, simply by offering clemency to the besieged.

“Send an envoy to the British commander,” ordered Gariboldi to one of his young lieutenants, “he has one hour in which to surrender unconditionally—he is over a thousand miles from the closest friendly unit, fights without ammunition or fuel, and has no possible hope of escape. If he surrenders immediately, make sure he knows that we will provide care for his wounded.”

Gariboldi strutted out the door without waiting for a response. Behind him, he could hear the wounded British officers clapping.


Gariboldi had his response within 15 minutes. Defiant to the last, in the end Montgomery had been sacked by his own officers, who had, in some cases, literally fell over each other in order to surrender as quickly as possible. All of them knew what had happened to the British Eight Army when they had tried to hold the line at Alexandria, and none of them held onto any notion that they would be able to withstand the Italian attack any better than General Alexander had been able to. True to his word, Gariboldi entered the open city gate as a liberator, distributing parcels of food, canteens of water and supplies of medicine amid enthusiastic applause by the surviving British personnel. Unsatisfied with his mutinous officers, Montgomery slipped away when the men detailed to guard him rushed to join the throng of men clamoring for Italian handouts. Eager to fight again another day one day, Montgomery scavenged all of the available fuel in the now deserted motor pool and, in stripping every non-essential item from a Stuart light tank found enough room to hydrate the vehicle with enough petrol to travel a few hundred miles. During the commotion at the main gate, Montgomery slipped out a secret portal on the city’s eastern side, drove southeast to cross the Blue Nile at the bridge that Gariboldi’s forces had used only hours before, and then pressed south towards Rabak; at Rabak he could cross the White Nile via the bridge there and pick up the road to N’Djamena, which would eventually lead him to Port Harcourt and the small British naval base that overlooked the harbor.


With the capitulation of Montgomery’s 7th Armored Division, the British no longer had any sizable combat formations left in Africa. The South Africans would doubtlessly be the next target for the Italians, and there was little the British could do to assist them.


Officially, Adolf Hitler’s travel log for 19 August 1939 noted a short day trip to Goslar to ‘pay respects to the Guderian and Siemens family estates in order to show appreciation to two of the leading supporters of the Third Reich for their dedication to National Socialism.’ It was a credible rationale, after all – things could have gone very differently in the war without either one of the families, and the convenience of having both ancestral homes in the same town in Lower Saxony made it seem all the more plausible. Other than the mild commotion of his SS bodyguards securing the train station just prior to his arrival and the small throng of awestruck locals waiting just beyond them on the platform as his special armored train steamed into the station, Hitler’s visit was unremarkable in almost every way.

Hitler’s motorcade slithered through the winding roads of the Saxon Hills, eventually arriving at a non-descript farmhouse tucked in one of the shadow of the massive Brocken Mountain. Despite its pastoral appearance, the farmhouse was actually a security bunker disguised to appear as a conventional mountain residence, and in the surrounding forests beyond, a small army of engineers had similar residences hidden amongst the picturesque glades and dales of the Harz. Much more so than meeting with the stogy old Siemens clan or the pompous elites of the Guderian family, Hitler was eager to meet the men in charge of the Advanced Weapon Design Bureau, the scientists and developers who would produce the vehicles that would win the war for the Axis.

The tires of Hitler’s Mercedes Benz staff car ground into the soft dirt of the unimproved track leading from the road, and soon thereafter an adjutant from the farmhouse rushed to pull the door open. Hitler stuck his head out of the car, his nostrils flared as if sniffing for danger. Deliberately, Hitler placed one foot on the ground and timidly tapped it with the toe of his boot before pulling himself from the automobile, the short black visor of his WWI corporal’s cap slung low enough to cover his eyebrows as his eyes darted back and forth underneath. As always, Goering followed closely behind his master, his arms laden with several capes, coats, and other fine garments lined in fur and in a dizzying array of colors and textures as he slinked out of the automobile; upon his mighty hump he carried a satchel filled with various scepters, staffs, and ceremonial swords, all protruding through a crudely-torn hole in the top of the canvas pack and threatening to spill out at the slightest provocation.

Shrew-like, Hitler approached the unfamiliar adjutant, his tongue rapidly flitting in and out of his mouth as he tested the air for potential threats. A crisp national socialist salute from the adjutant preceded a formal “Guten Tag mein Führer, we are expecting you in Das Fuhrerbefestigung III-B.“

Hitler returned the salute and scanned the nearby treeline before turning to Goering and declaring, “Trident.” Goering quickly rifled his hands through his satchel and promptly drew forth a silver triple-tipped spear approximately 4 feet long, which he handed to Hitler lengthwise upon upturned palms. Thus equipped, the trio began to march into the woods as bodyguards from the SS Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler Motorized Infantry Regiment fanned out to patrol the area; the black-clad soldiers had been issued explicit orders to bayonet each tree and bush that they came across in an attempt to root out an evil Leprechaun that Hitler believed inhabited the forest.


A quarter mile into the forest, the adjutant stopped in front of a nondescript tree and pressed firmly on a gnarled knot protruding from the center of the trunk. Shortly thereafter, a four foot wide ribbon of flowered forest floor dropped down about 6 inches and then retracted horizontally into a slot, revealing a staircase that descended into a brightly-lit laboratory. Hitler and Goering stepped down into the subterranean lair to find all manner of technicians and engineers wearing gleaming white lab coats working busily at a number of drafting tables and chalkboards; beakers and vials full of colored fluids lined the walls, and catalogued drawers of punch cards signified the use of rudimentary computers nearby. Hitler noticed that each work area had one of his personal sketches framed in glass nearby; each crudely-drafted diagram, most completed in crayon and usually complemented with rambling anti-Semitic mantras in the margins, served as the inspiration for the development of new weapon systems.

Hitler and Goering approached the first work area, which showcased an angled drafting table covered with engineering blueprints and schematics for a new armored transport vehicle as proposed by a delegation of technicians from Volkswagen. It was well-known throughout the scientific community that the Fuhrer still reviled the Poles for their completely unwarranted attack into Germany at the outbreak of hostilities; in particular, Hitler was enraged the most at how the light Polish cavalry had forded supposedly-secure water barriers such as rivers and streams and sullied the Reich with their equine filth before escaping unharmed back onto Polish soil. Hitler had made it clear that the vaunted panzer divisions, at their current stage of development, were too unsophisticated to traverse water obstacles with the same degree of efficiency as simple Polish horse-lovers; as a result, Hitler had drawn a diagram of a gigantic armored horse and issued it to the Advanced Weapons Design Bureau, with the caveat that Germany must never again be threatened by inferior species like horses and Polish People inscribed at the top. In the bottom right-hand margin of Hitler’s sketch, a bearded Polish man hungrily kissed the tongue of a horse; upon closer inspection, a dagger was thrust into the back of the human’s head, and the horse had a Star of David nametag that said “Gluden”, which apparently indicated that the house was somehow Jewish and would soon be rendered into glue.

Hitler walked up to the head engineer for the group and asked, “How soon until the prototype transport is ready for testing, Herr Wissenschaftler? As you know, I have stated a project completion date of no later than Monday the 37th of Hitlober for this project.”

The scientist responded with an unexpectedly-high level of enthusiasm, momentarily frightening the Fuhrer, who backed away slowly while the scientist responded, “Mein Führer, the prototype is ready for testing now! It is already at the proving grounds and awaiting your order to begin trials.”

“Excellent,” mumbled Hitler tapping his fingertips together repeatedly.

1939 pt 20​

The unforgiving topography surrounding Trieste as seen from Yugoslav forward positions on the Istrian Peninsula​

2 October 1939

British Commander Ronnie Tod gritted his teeth as yet another icy gust of frigid wind stormed down the slopes of the Učka mountain range behind him, and in disgust he noted the faintest traces of windswept snow mixed in with torn husks of leaves as the glacial blast rushed towards the sea. The Autumn frosts had begun early in the northwestern corner of Slovenia, which only served to reinforce Tod’s anger over the Yugoslavian’s delay in initiating the long-awaited attack against the Italians in the Veneto. For months Tod had lobbied that the Yugoslavians should attack immediately, while the Italians were completely occupied with the British forces in Africa; now, under overcast, leaden skies, Tod had learned that both Alexander and Montgomery’s commands had been eradicated, during which time the Yugoslavians had lost their most opportune time to attack. Tod glared across the Bay of Trieste at the Italian port on the far side, the bustling sea traffic of trawling trade ships belying a harbor almost bereft of warships; if it were possible to destroy something with simply a look, Tod’s volcanic hatred for the Italian city would have long ago reduced Trieste to fuming cinders and blackened ash.

All around Tod, his squad of commandos lied dispersed and prone a few meters inside a treeline overlooking the Italian frontier, each covered in a thin sheath of ice crystals and pine boughs while they awaited the final command to advance. Over the past few weeks, his men had noticed cracks in Tod’s normally marble facade. The man who could not feel pain had indeed been pressed to the breaking point recently, not only due to his frustration in liaising with the intractable and stubborn Yugoslavians, but also due to a telegram that he had received from his father several days prior. There had been no official word as to whether his brother, corporal Stanley Tod of the British Eighth Army, was alive or dead, but it had been confirmed that he had not made it out of Alexandria before the fall. Inwardly, Tod blamed himself for not convincing the Yugoslavians to attack sooner, leaving his brother to face the combined might of the Italians; Tod vowed that his brother’s heroic last stand would not be in vain, and if had to slit the throat of every Italian between Slovenia and Rome to avenge that sacrifice, then so be it. In his mind Tod found that he would often envision himself splitting Mussolini’s skull with a hatchet, happily relishing in the feel of his soupy warm flesh underneath his pulpy scalp as he pulled the skin from his skull…Tod looked down to see the fingers of his right hand tense and fully extended, almost as if he were holding an imaginary basketball. Tod immediately regretted his emotions distracting him from his mission - there will be a time for vengeance before this war is over, he reminded himself, steeling his nerves once again for the grim task at hand.

Howling wind muffled the intermittent crunch of boots passing through the thin frost coating the promontory upon which Tod stood. Tod declined to acknowledge the man’s presence until he reached the edge of the cliff beside him, almost as if he already knew who it was and the purpose of his visit. Long before the Yugoslav corporal had arrived, Tod had noted in the wind the robust odor of someone that had not bathed in many weeks, and, coupled with the languid, casual gait of the interloper, already discerned the likely meaning of the intrusion - Another delay. Tod felt the fingers of his right hand clenching involuntarily inside his coat pocket. Perhaps I should prepare for cleaving Mussolini’s skull by killing this bloody messenger, Tod thought broodingly, but decided against it. After all, he needed the Yugoslavians more than they needed him, even if they were all a gaggle of dimwitted, water-headed, inbred racist retards.

Tod could barely contain his astonishment when the corporal announced that the attack would begin less than an hour.


Meanwhile, on the other side of the Adriatic, Mussolini was presiding over the first official Triumph of the war. Packed blocks of uniformed legionnaires threaded the Via Dell’Impero between the Coliseum and the Piazza Venezia with regimented synchronicity and epic, unprecedented fanfare. Shimmering white rose petals hung the air like Lapland fog, held aloft by the exultations and cheering of the senate and people of Rome that lined the edge of the avenue, their applause punctuated by the methodical harmony of thousands of boots striking the pavement in unison.

Mussolini had intended for the triumph to be a spectacle unmatched in the annals of history, and had instructed his Fascist Grand Council directors to plan without thought to expense. Most of the other ministers planned lavishly, requisitioning reckless amount of money from the swollen and bloated Imperial treasury. Count Ciano was the lone exception to this trend; increasingly, he had been dealt the lion’s share of responsibilities for running the Empire due to Mussolini’s increasing love for celebration and entertaining foreign delegations brought on by his nation’s unprecedented success in the war thus far. It was ironic that, as more and more time went by, the two men appeared to be absorbing each other’s responsibilities; more than anyone else in Rome, Ciano knew the real facts concerning manpower, resources, industrial might, and expenditures while Mussolini personally pandered to guests and increasingly planned parties for visitors, and though Ciano shared his father in law’s wish that the soldiers be honored in a triumph that properly acknowledged their sacrifice, inwardly he lamented the reality of the situation in that, vis-à-vis the West, his country was still exposed and venerable. In a shrewd compromise between managing the cost of the triumph and mitigating his commander’s penchant for excess, Ciano eventually came up with several unconventional ideas that increased the pageantry of the event while simultaneously reducing cost, with the further caveat that reportage of the triumph would directly showcase Italy’s newfound splendor to the world.

High atop a balcony overlooking the Piazza Venezia square, Ciano stood to Mussolini’s right as the pair observed infantry from de Stephanis’ 23rd CCNN Division file past, their black uniforms twinkling with gleaming medals earned in combat during the reduction of the El Alamein pocket. Intermixed with the returning veterans, hunchbacked captive British soldiers struggled to keep pace under the oppressive weight of steel neck clamps, each of which was linked to other prisoners by thick links of chain. Ciano smiled at the sight of the haggard remnants of the British 54th Division filing past; the captured soldiers, or BPUs, cost nothing to parade, and their miserable condition added to the glory of the returning Italian soldiers’ military prowess. Ciano had further saved capital and resources by transporting ship anchor chains from the hulks of British warships floundered in Alexandria harbor instead of unnecessarily burdening the Italian economy with the production of slave chain. Wary of placing too much emphasis on the degradations of war, however, Ciano thought that the plight of soldiers struggling against their confinements would be moderated by the sight of several troops of white bulls pulling wooden carts loaded with exotic spoils of war from the conquered territories; foreigners and Romans alike gasped at the intricate hieroglyphics and geometric perfection of felled Egyptian obelisks and colorful Kushite-era Nubian sarcophagi and Coptic funeral totems as they trundled down the boulevard. Intermixed among the captured caravan of booty, nubile young Tuscan schoolgirl volunteers wearing fluttering white togas tossed handfuls of Abyssinian coffee beans into the cheering crowd, signifying the excess with which the Empire now regarded the heretofore prized commodity. Black-clad trumpeters blared Fascist-approved clarion pomp amongst the milling crowds that undulated under madly flapping green, white and red Tricolore flags.


Riding atop a white Arabian stallion at the head of his Felix Legion’s 1st Cohort, General Italo Gariboldi slowly approached the balcony of the Piazza Venezia to receive Mussolini’s salute. Unlike the typical blistering Sudanese heat that he was used to, temperatures in the Imperial capital were almost surreally utopian. The Roman mid-morning was pleasantly tepid, the ferocious heat and humidity of the Laziali summer having recently given way to the languid cool of the Apennine Autumn, and Gariboldi smiled warmly at his countrymen while gripping the reins of his mount tightly. To the crowd, Gariboldi seemed content, powerful, even confident. Not even his officers knew of the consternation Gariboldi felt, however; though Gariboldi’s face presented a mantle of colossal satisfaction for a returning war hero, his current disposition was only a marmoreal mask to hide his true dread for what he felt would occur this day.

In the weeks following his bloodless victory at Khartoum, Gariboldi had enjoyed an uninterrupted spat of restful sleep devoid of visions or nightmares; during the night of 1-2 October, however, Gariboldi had once again found himself struggling in a bizarre, surreal dreamscape in which he had been forced to fight for his life. During the night, he had fled from packs of wild dogs hunting him in a burned out town; everywhere, smoldering wreckage surrounded him, and innumerable plumes of smoke rose from charred wreckage. Agonizing cries of anguish echoed down rubble-strewn avenues while the sadistic barking of prowling Rottweilers drove Gariboldi relentlessly onward. Gariboldi could still hear the gnashing of teeth and the heat from the dog’s breath on his skin as they finally caught up to him near a small bridge; drug to the ground, the dogs piled onto him, sinking their teeth into his flesh and tearing the skin from his bones. At the end of his vision, the crumbling chimney of a burned out house suddenly collapsed, showering him with chunks of broken stone and soot; his last image before bolting awake had been of angry and bloody fangs framed by a galaxy of black grit and masonry falling upon him.

Shaking his head, Gariboldi tried to focus on the troopers in front of him, infantrymen from de Stephanis’s 11th CCNN Division, attempting to force the ghastly images of death and destruction from his mind by force of will alone. In the back of his mind, however, he knew it was a futile effort - his visions always held a purpose, and until he discerned what that purpose was, he would be tormented by their possible meaning.

As his battalion neared the Piazza Venezia, Gariboldi noticed a troop of soldiers wearing unfamiliar uniforms and exhibiting distinctive lightning-embossed shoulder patches standing at attention underneath Mussolini’s balcony. Accustomed to his usual menagerie of archaic weaponry and second-hand equipment, Gariboldi felt astonished to encounter Italian soldiers sporting the reportedly-outstanding Beretta Model 38 submachine gun in large quantities. I would trade every rifle in my Legion for just one of those guns, thought Gariboldi as his horse passed through a clutch of several girls holding lamps filled incense; he soon recognized the girls as Vestal Virgins, keepers of the Sacred Imperial flame, and he watched in wonder as the girls wafted the fragrant smoke towards his men. Finally near enough to see Mussolini and Ciano in the balcony above him, Gariboldi riveted his head to the right and extended a formal right hand Fascist salute to his Emperor. Behind him, his men followed suit.


Somewhere in the thick crowd lining the boulevard, Gariboldi heard the unmistakable sound of a dog barking. Startled, Gariboldi abruptly dropped his salute and peered into the crowd, searching for the source of the haunting noise. Gariboldi felt suddenly uneasy, and his desire to detect the offending canine took on a priority altogether inconsistent with his current situation. Though the crowd continued to cheer and toss white roses in the path of him and his men, his distracted attempt to distinguish the phantom dog soon attracted the attention of his superiors.

Maintaining his arching salute and smile, out of the corner of his mouth Mussolini uttered, “Geleazzo, what does Gariboldi think he’s doing?” Ciano had noticed the odd behavior as well and, after an additional moment of observation, remarked, “I haven’t the slightest idea--it’s like he looking for something or someone.” Mussolini tried not to seem bothered by the slight breach of decorum, and though he tried to act as if nothing was amiss, he felt himself involuntarily shifting his gaze into the sky with increasing frequency. Though Gariboldi’s visions were common knowledge amongst the men of the Felix Legion, to most beyond that formation they were rumors and exaggerated tales, and certainly nothing to imply clairvoyance or foretelling the future. Surely he doesn’t suspect anything…Mussolini thought pensively.

Gariboldi failed to detect any dogs at all in the throngs of people lining the road. He soon noticed that the aromatic tendrils of incense were threading their way into lungs, and he coughed involuntarily. From further ahead in the Triumph line, Gariboldi noticed young girls dressed in white prancing merrily, their hands extended gracefully skyward; as his eyes adjusted to distance, he could see that the girls were actually part of the troop that was tossing coffee beans into the crowd. Gariboldi, however, saw something else entirely. The combination of the sound of dogs, smoke from the incense, and small black objects raining from the sky intermixed inside his mind to produce images from the previous evening’s nightmare, triggering a fight-or-flight response. Gariboldi had long ago realized the futility of trying to ignore his visions; something terrible was about to happen, and it was going to happen soon. There was no time to try to interpret the meaning of his vision. Spurring his horse, he bolted from the procession and galloped into the crowd, his horse dramatically leaping over the first row of onlookers.

Confusion only briefly preceded alarm in the area around the Piazza Venezia; though the Folgore paratroopers stood their ground, blocking the entrance to the palace, most of Gariboldi’s soldiers followed their commander through the hole punched in the crowd by his horse. The train of men following the Felix Legion halted on the Via Dell’Impero, unsure of what was going on ahead of them. Trumpeters ceased their music and the commotion of the crowd diminished as those nearest the events attempted to explain what was happening to those further out. In this comparatively tranquil atmosphere, the distant droning of aircraft engines suddenly manifested.


Mussolini looked up in time to glimpse a flight of twin-engine aircraft approaching. Assuming that they were Italian planes arriving to take part in the festivities, most of the crowd swelled with pride in observing their tight formation and low altitude. Ciano, on the other hand, flipped madly through sheets on his clipboard, searching to find any reference to a group of aircraft due to approach from the east. Uncovering nothing, Ciano dropped his notes and began to shove Mussolini away from the balcony and into the palace. “We have to get into the basement at once!” he shrieked, “Those aren’t our planes!” From the crowd’s vantage point, the sudden flight of their leader from the balcony could mean only one thing, and the masses bolted towards the narrow side streets that snaked into the Via Dell’Impero.

Moments later, Yugoslavian bombs smashed into the heart of the Roman Empire, devastating sections of the Imperial palace and surrounding areas and killing scores of Roman civilians. Foreign correspondents and their film crews recorded the unprecedented spectacle in eviscerating detail; screaming and maimed Italians, their faces caked in blood and soot, struggled to lift marble columns off of family members as additional explosions resonated down the narrow cobblestone streets. Showers of ash and gravel replaced the buoyant white rose petals drifting in the air, while choking cordite fumes darkened the whitewashed columns of the Government Quarter structures. Off camera, belatedly-scrambled Italian interceptors raced to join the presentation aircraft already aloft; those planes already airborne were loaded with colored smoke canisters rather than ammunition, however, and the improvised air wing was only marginally faster than the nimble Yugoslavian DO-17’s, most of which eluded pursuit. Within a half-hour enough Italian planes were in the air to deter a second wave of bombers from reaching the capital, and several Yugoslavian planes were destroyed with no Italian losses, but by that point the damage had already been done.


Innumerable small fires were quickly snuffed out by frenzied Roman civilians; casualties had been extreme, but the volume of packed Triumph spectators meant that there was more than enough manpower to assist the Capital’s beleaguered fire brigades, and within 2 hours the worst of the attack’s effects seemed to have passed, allowing medical personnel to attend to the dead and wounded. The dastardly nature of the Yugoslavian attack infused the populous with patriotic fervor, propelling ordinary Roman citizens to heroic feats fueled by adrenalin and hatred for the supposedly-benign Yugoslavian backstabbing. Even more damaging to the city was the injury to the Empire’s favored son; flanked by two heavily-armed lieutenants from the Folgore airborne division, Count Gelezzao Ciano lied among the wounded at a triage center erected near the base of the Piazza Venezia. Mussolini and the other fascist leaders had reached the palace’s bomb shelter in time, but Ciano, lingering behind Mussolini in an attempt to press his hefty commander away from the balcony, had received the full concussive force of a nearby 500 lb bomb detonation; though shielded from the shock wave by the concrete balcony of the Palace, the force was still sufficient to flatten the Italian foreign minister against an interior wall. To add insult to injury, in this case literally, crumbling masonry ceiling chunks loosened by the blast had fallen on and around Ciano, rendering immediate medical assistance impossible. Preliminary reports pronounced his prognosis as ‘grim.’

Hours later, muted light from a late-afternoon sun wreathed by smoke and haze greeted a somber Mussolini as he ventured onto his palatial balcony for the second time in a day. The majesty of his Imperial capital had been reduced to a blighted, ashen cacophony of wailing wounded and distant sirens. Everywhere before him, aid workers and civilian volunteers flitted about carrying stretchers and moving heaps of rubble. He gripped the coarse masonry of the balustrade and leaned forward as he had done so many times before during his speeches, only now there was no one in the plaza before him to listen to his words.

Two streets over to the west, Mussolini saw men carrying water-laden buckets over the roof of a small chapel church in the Monteverde quarter of the city. It appeared that the fire had been mostly extinguished, but from his vantage point several stories above street level, Mussolini could see that the men still worked fervently and with reckless alacrity. Such crazed passion, Mussolini thought to himself, these people risk everything to save an old hovel filled with meaningless relics. The fools.

Mussolini, like many Fascist zealots, felt at odds with the true nature of faith and religion; this disconnect, or perhaps duality of loyalty, was much more pronounced in the individual that was, by right, supposed to be the head of the Fascist party and, by extension, the corporal God figure for the entire Roman Empire. Decades earlier, in matters of grief and confusion, Mussolini would have turned to his Faith for comfort with questions that could not be answered; despite the misgivings for the political power of the Catholic Church that his father had instilled in him, Mussolini had been reverent and humble enough during his early adulthood to supplicate himself before a higher power when the need arose, even for a time after he had become head of the PNF. His consideration for religious toleration had been one of the many reasons that he had unified Italy behind a single Party, as the Lateran Treaties that he had spearheaded had made plain. But things were different now. Since the war began, Il Duce had become to see himself as more and more of a heroic Apollonian deity, someone who did not need to pray for good fortune because he manifested all the luck he needed on his own. Increasingly, Mussolini saw the church as a mechanism for civil population control, something that could be manipulated to further the aims of the Party and the State. Mussolini’s weekly trips to Sunday Mass, his children’s baptisms, and even his marriage had all been for show. He knew in his heart that his faith was a sham. And, in moments of clarity, the worst part about it was that he was ok with it.

Mussolini squinted as the waning auburn sun glinted off Monteverde rooftops to the west, the copper tiles of his Eternal City stained in garish scarlet hues like the blood caked to the cobblestone streets below. He wrung his hands absentmindedly, allowing the cool late-afternoon breeze off the Tyrrhenian Sea to flutter through his steadily-receding though still pitch-black hair. Wraithlike, from the shadows within the staircase, General Mario Roatta approached from behind to stand alongside Mussolini, and the pair stood in silence and watched the setting sun dip below the horizon before Roatta spoke.

“It worked.” Roatta’s voice seethed with smug satisfaction. “The people of Rome clamor for more war. They want to pull Prince Paul’s still-beating heart out of his face. They want airplanes full of dynamite to crash into every Slavic crotch.”

Mussolini stared into the distance; he noticed that there was far less smoke emanating from the chapel he had observed earlier. He waited for several minutes before responding, “Ciano wasn’t part of the plan.” Mussolini’s head fell forward and hung low for another moment before he added, “I don’t know if I can run this Empire without him.”

Roatta had expected this; even though he had known for weeks of the impending Yugoslavian attack, the injury to Empire’s favored son had nevertheless been unanticipated. Roatta’s unconventional mind, however, had a way of focusing on the unexpected benefits of this detrimental information. “Il Duce, the maiming of our esteemed and beloved foreign minister only riles up the passions of our countrymen all the more. They will conduct a punitive expedition into Yugoslavia with even greater enthusiasm and bloodlust, and it will result in an even quicker campaign, thus saving thousands of Latin lives. His sacrifice will not be in vain; his sacrifice will bring untold glory to Rome!” Roatta smiled, his nostrils flared widely and eyes gleaming like exploding gemstones; Mussolini was unaware that Roatta’s enthusiasm was in part fueled by cutthroat ambition, and that Roatta’s mind focused primarily the fact that there was one less Fascist fiefdom with which compete for resources, at least for the foreseeable future.

Inwardly, Mussolini knew that Roatta was correct, though the possibility of his son in law dying stirred unexpected feelings of shame and regret deep within his soul. “Of course, Mario. Of course.” Il Duce patted the shoulder of his intelligence chief and then turned to the door, his hand remaining on Roatta’s shoulder as they walked out together. “His sacrifice will serve to whip our soldiers into a frenzy. Our troops along the frontier are prepared and waiting for the Slavic attack. They are walking into a trap, and will soon be butchered by the thousands…”


Mussolini spoke casually of the military preparations on the Illyrian front, but his mind lied elsewhere. As he muttered superficial fascist dogmatic mantras to Roatta, his mind only focused on one thing, the memory of the shadow of a glimmer of true compassion that he felt for another human being. After years of slavishly driving himself to become master of an Empire and concentrating only on himself for as long as he could remember, it was a strange experience to privately focus on the well-being of someone else. Silently, and for the first time in countless years, Benito Mussolini prayed for the soul of another.


“So Mister Bundt, you thought you could outwit the mighty Gestapo, eh? Thought you could infiltrate the Duncan Heinz Guderian family bakery, learn the secrets of our mighty cookie recipes?”

In contrast to the dimly-lit, windowless chamber, a radiant spotlight illuminated the contours of an alleged American spy chained to the corner of a stone dungeon cell. The man had been stripped down to a pair of Jolly Green Giant-themed boxer shorts, and he squinted in the harsh glare of a pair of ceiling-mounted lamps. Standing just beyond the halo of light around the American captive, Adolf Hitler thumbed through the agent’s confiscated wallet; he had already inspected a US State Department ID certifying that “Klaus Bundt” was a “Historian” from the “University of Cake & Brownies” in Hartford, Connecticut, and to the shrewd German Gestapo agents, that could only mean one thing: that Mr. Bundt was a spy.

Hitler pulled several scratch-and-sniff stickers from the wallet, each cut into the shape of a cake or pie, and sniffed each one; each savory inhalation forced Hitler’s eyebrows up and outwards, and the American agent noted that the pleasure smeared across the German chancellor’s face seemed almost perversely erotic. “Yes, we Germans do love our cake and brownies…and frosting…delicious, delicious frosting…” a small rivulet of drool collected in Hitler’s lower jaws before continuing, “but none for me, thanks. All those calories…right to the hips.” Hitler seemed to disregard Mr. Bundt as he obsessively prodded and kneaded his lean stomach, apparently dissatisfied with it. With a final finger poke of his abdomen, Hitler returned to the wallet and flicked between several other identification cards: he cursorily scanned Mr. Bundt’s Confectionary Technician-Level 3 achievement card issued from the Annapolis Dessert Stacking Institute, a copy of his Marriage Certificate to an African-American woman curiously named “Aunt Jemima,” and what appeared to be a photograph of his son “C. Chaplin Bundt” who looked startlingly similar to Hitler.

Hitler carefully put the cards and photos back in the wallet and then tossed it to the stone floor in front of Bundt. Extending his palms, he furrowed his eyebrows and exasperatedly exclaimed, “You guys aren’t even trying anymore, are you? I mean, what’s your cover story, exactly? That your family invented the Bundt cake and that you’re trying to see if we Germans are working on anything better?”


Mr. Bundt twitched overtly. He knew that his training had been minimal, and his mental and physical conditioning was virtually non-existent. The United States spent over $53.45 a year on covert international espionage, and Bundt had received the lion’s share of that budget with the 4-day night class offered by the State Department at the Smithsonian Botany Society Learning Annex. Nevertheless, he knew that he should resist Hitler’s invasive questioning for as long as possible; inside his mouth, he flicked a pre-positioned tablet glued to the back of one of his molars. The pill had been stenciled with the word “Sayanide.” Bundt gritted his teeth and said “I’ll never reveal my secrets to the likes of you!”

Hitler gestured theatrically towards a menacing pair of men standing in shadow against the back wall; each was attired identically to each other in a grey ankle-length trench coat and black fedora. “Mister Bundt, allow me to present the German agents who captured you.” Turning back to Bundt, he continued, “Incidentally, they are the same agents that moved that iceberg into the Atlantic to sink Titanic.”

Without even a moment’s hesitation, Bundt glowered at the nearest gestapo agent and blurted out, “That was you?” Beads of sweat had already begun to coalesce on the American’s forehead.

The gestapo agent clearly had not anticipated speaking to the prisoner, but a quick assenting nod from Hitler quickly persuaded him to respond. He avoided eye contact while muttering, “…yes…yes it was. Uh, you stupid American shitlicker. Shut your face.”

The Gestapo agent’s harsh words wounded Bundt deeply, and his fickle skills of resistance began to waver precipitously. Hitler sensed the vacillating confidence in his victim and pressed his advantage, using a scolding but respectful tone of voice to ask, “Well Bundt? Are you going to tell me why you are here? Clearly we Germans are capable of great evil, as your friends on the Titanic…” Hitler suppressed a low chuckle before continuing, “…found out the hard way.” Agent Bundt’s eyes were now wide and bloodshot; clearly the pressure was getting to him, but he still refused to talk, though his jaw twitched open every few seconds as if he were about to say something, almost as if he were whimpering. Hitler closed his eyes and muttered, “So…it’s to be torture then.” Slowly, he removed a wooden spatula from an interior pocket of his coat and lightly popped the concave ladle against the palm of his other hand.

Finally, underneath the overwhelming pressure of mildly-invasive questioning, revelations of implausibly-diabolical villainy, and a potential ass paddling, Mister Bundt finally cracked and blurted out, “OK! OK, I’ll talk!” Hitler gloated with glee; the Gestapo agents noted that the Führer had arched his heels and was standing on his toes. Bundt continued, with shame permeating his voice, “I…I was sent to find out what made the German’s so happy…we watch your newsreels, and everyone over here just seems so happy and athletic, so we figured it had to be your deserts, some kind of sugary delight that provides pep, something that might motivate people to volunteer for our Army.” For several moments, Hitler stared at Bundt, saying nothing.


Despite Hitler’s speechlessness, Bundt gushed, “We don’t really even have an army! We have a single cavalry division to protect the entire southern half of our country! We have more troops in Guam than we do in New York City! We don’t even bother stationing any troops in Hawaii!” One of the Gestapo agents walked up to Hitler and whispered into his ear. Hitler’s face sagged in apparent disappointment, and he turned back to Bundt. “Yes, yes, ok, well there’s no way that any of that could possibly be true.” Hitler scowled at Bundt’s obvious attempt at disinformation. “Getting back to reality, we assumed you were trying to trace our supply routes in order to determine where we had large concentrations of troops.”

Bundt composed himself and seemed to consider Hitler’s contention for a moment before replying, “hmmmmm…that’s a much better idea than what we came up with.”

Hitler sighed, apparently satisfied with the information he had extracted from the American agent. He turned to leave, saying to the Gestapo agents as he walked out, “Gentlemen, see to it that our guest is dealt with appropriately.” Hitler added a menacing inflection to the word ‘appropriately,’ causing Bundt to rapidly soak the front of his Jolly Green Giant-themed boxers with, ironically, broccoli-scented urine.

The Gestapo agents moved with threatening leisureliness towards Bundt, and in that moment, with the sadness of his betrayal apparent, and the fear of his impending doom apparent, he made the fateful decision to end his life. He flipped his tongue to dislodge the capsule in his mouth and quickly bit down. He chewed several times, but instead of the harsh chemical hiss that he had anticipated, his mouth was filled instead with a salty mixture of chewy sweetness.

“Fuck me…,” smacked Bundt, “…its taffy,” as the Gestapo agents led him away.

1939 pt 21​

18 November 1939

Italian espionage chief Mario Roatta plunged his hindquarters deeply into the plush leather of his staff car’s rear seat cushion. He sighed languidly, lounging comfortably as only those with a repetitive appreciation for the finer things in life can truly comprehend. Roatta believed that the luxurious suppleness of the Mercedes G4 upholstery was one of the high points of his country’s collaboration with their Aryan allies to the north, but the automobile’s heater was definitely a close second, especially at that moment in the frigid, windswept forests of northwestern Croatia. The car’s cabin was filled with a rushing torrent of warm air permeating from grates in the floor that obscured the interior glass with a thick film of murky condensation; Roatta wrung thick leather gloves from his hands and cupped his palms over one of the vents. Despite the visual opaqueness, however, there was nothing else to see due to a hazy winter fog that shrouded the Alpine forest on the outskirts of Rijeka in a cocoon of silent white frost.

Seated across from Roatta, a man known simply as “Antonio Serdar” waited in respectful silence, his hands folded neatly on his lap, his eyes boring into Roatta with respectful yet forced tranquilly. Roatta returned the stare and took the opportunity to size up his erstwhile colleague. Antonio’s severely-fractal facial features tapered to an iron jaw supported by a powerful neck and broad shoulders; for a 50 year old native Slav, Serdar certainly epitomized the youthful fascist ideal, if not in ethnic purity then at least in a physiological sense. For the briefest of moments, Roatta’s mind fluttered to the pistol he always carried in the front pocket of his greatcoat, and he made a conscious effort to remember if he had loaded a round in the chamber. Quickly retracing his steps in his mind, he felt immediate relief when he recalled cocking the slide during his walk to the car. Still, Roatta reasoned, Serdar’s imposing girth could quickly become an issue in the cramped car cabin if the upcoming negotiations turned sour. Deftly sliding his hand into his pocket, Roatta met Serdar’s gaze and smiled.

“Your Ustaše are to be commended, my friend…they fought with great vigor and spirit” Roatta remarked evenly, though the apparent eagerness of his delivery betrayed the slightest hint of surprise. This, as with everything Roatta did, was calculated and intentional; while superficially impressed with the performance of Serdar’s militia troops in assisting the Italian Army’s invasion of Yugoslavia, Roatta needed to cement Italy’s ascendant military position as the arbiter of what constituted ‘impressive,’ especially now, as the war with Yugoslavia entered its death throes and the spoils of war would quickly follow. Negotiations would soon commence as to how to carve up Yugoslavian territory with Italy, Germany, Hungary, and the proposed new state of Croatia, and Roatta wanted to be sure that Serdar and his Ustaše guerrillas soldiers knew their place in the new order. Roatta continued, “Not only did your men provide excellent intelligence on Yugoslavian troop movements, but their sabotage in the rear areas did much to aid our forces in the pivotal races for Sarajevo and Belgrade.” Roatta made sure to emphasize the words “intelligence” and “sabotage,” rather than using terms such as “combat” or “conquest” in his praise for Serdar’s men, with the implication that all of the actual fighting had been done by the Italians. The unspoken message was therefore that Serdar and his men, acting in a purely support role, would receive correspondingly less at the negotiation table.

Serdar took the opportunity to thank Roatta, saying “It bring us great honor to work alongside our fascist brothers. As you know, we have gone to great effort to model our Ustaše squads on the excellent example provided by your Camicie Nere.” Serdar’s iron jaw relaxed momentarily into a listless smile, though inwardly he fumed at the dismissive tone in which Roatta spoke of his men’s intelligence gathering; though he was careful to betray nothing to his counterpart, inwardly Serdar fumed, if it hadn’t been for my Intelligence, you never would have known that an attack was coming!

Roatta graciously accepted his colleague’s flattery by saying, “Our Camicie Nere Blackshirts merely provided the template. It was your men’s bravery and political-reliability that paved the way for our victory. In the north in particular, your Ustaše delayed Serb divisions rushing to the front and created maddening chaos within their lines. In effect, your valiant men opened the front door for us.”

Though his remarks were high praise coming from a member Mussolini’s inner circle, Roatta was actually dramatically understating the aid that Serdar’s men had provided. Forewarned of both the Yugoslavian attack and the Italian preparations, Serdar had shrewdly stationed his Ustaše squads in anticipation for the main, and predominantly Serb, Royal Yugoslavian Army units that would arrive from the south; once hostilities began, Serdar’s Ustaše paramilitaries had taken control of vital road junctions, train terminals, and logistical supply points behind the front lines. Acting in collusion with disaffected Slovenian and Croatian units that had mutinied from the overwhelmingly-Serbian Yugoslavian Army, Serdar’s Ustaše sabotage prevented the Yugoslavians from mounting any kind of coherent or contiguous defense. Even worse for the Yugoslavians, under Serdar’s influence, regional magistrates in Split, Dubrovnik, Zadar, Rijeka, and even Zagreb revolted from the rest of the country and declared the independence of the state of Croatia on the first day of the war, in effect isolating Serbian divisions attacking Italy from Slovenia from the rest of the country. Less than a week after the Yugoslavians had charged headlong into the teeth of a well-prepared Italian defense, Gariboldi was unleashed into Slovenia with the German 9th Army charging southward out of the Alps on his left flank. The Axis forces, spearheaded by reconnaissance units from the 2nd Gebirgsjäger Division and elements of Gariboldi’s Felix Legion, had reached Belgrade before the end of October.


Gariboldi’s troops had advanced along a narrow front far ahead of the rest of the Italian forces surging out of the Veneto. In addition to receiving several new divisional vehicles and an attached reconnaissance company, many of Gariboldi’s Felix Legion troops had been issued new weapons since the end of the Abyssinian Campaign, and in effect the Felix Legion now operated as more of an infantry division than a militia formation. Gariboldi made good use of these new weapons, in particular the mobility afforded by his small contingent of motorized troops, to plow through the disorganized Slovenian frontier defenses into Bosnia ahead of the German spearheads. Gariboldi’s relentless, headlong charge into the Yugoslavian interior unhinged the defender’s attempts to fortify secondary positions; Yugoslavian reinforcements arriving in Slovenia and Croatia disembarked from trains only to find out that they were behind the front lines in Italian-occupied territory. Most were too bewildered to resist and soon surrendered, with the balance slogging southeast on foot between Gariboldi’s advance troops and the follow-on Italian main force. Those that were able to keep up with Gariboldi’s intense around-the-clock pace remarked that the man seemed possessed, driven by a fanatical compulsion to eliminate the Yugoslavian threat by stabbing at their heart with all the speed he could muster. Many soldiers on both sides were overheard mumbling that the General never slept, and indeed would not sleep until the infernal demons that tormented his dreams were satisfied with final victory.


Beads of perspiration began to coalesce behind Serdar’s ears, and with mounting angst he began to note the stifling temperature and confined space of the Mercedes’ compartment, a sickening, constrictive sensation that quickly began to wear on the veteran insurgent’s composure. A man accustomed the deprivations of operating on the fringe of society, comfort and privilege did not suit Serdar, and he struggled to remain stoic and impassive in the car’s acrid humidity. As his heavy canvas pants became moist with perspiration, Serdar struggled to remain rooted to the plush leather seat, causing him to twitch ever so slightly and further cracking his dignified countenance. Though mindful that decorum stipulated he should wait until his reward was offered, the oppressive conditions in the cabin quickly persuaded him otherwise. Outside, a fierce gust of Alpine wind shrieked through evergreen needles but was only barely audible behind the Mercedes’ thick glass windows.

“Roatta, I am pleased that my men were able to aid you in your conquest of Yugoslavia. However, I feel the need to ask once more - do you intend to honor your part of the agreement and recognize the new nation of Croatia, with me as the Head of State?” Though Serdar had no reason to suspect treachery, Roatta’s reputation for chicanery and deception was well-known even in the Balkans; Serdar strained to resist tapping his boot or fidget with his fingers. As he expected, Roatta’s eyes bored into him with a curious mixture of disappointment and expectancy. A man used to creature comforts, Roatta was perfectly at ease lounging in the car, his relaxed posture indicating that he had anticipated all that had transpired. He said nothing, holding Serdar’s gaze with practiced diplomatic sanctimoniousness.

After several uncomfortable moments had passed, Roatta opened a briefcase on the seat next to him, slowly swiveling the top of the lid towards Serdar to conceal what lied inside. Serdar betrayed the panic he felt by involuntarily twitching his body, visibly revealing thick sheets of tensed muscle beneath his uniform as he deftly pivoted his body’s left side towards Roatta in a defensive posture. Roatta chuckled softly as he pulled a small canister of mascarpone and a small butter knife from the briefcase, lying them on the seat next to him before extracting a sleeve of circular crackers. With practiced precision Roatta slathered mascarpone evenly across the surface of a cracker before extending his arm towards Serdar. “You look hungry Antonio--tell me, have you eaten? You look rather flushed.”

Serdar waved off the cheese cracker, mumbling gratitude while inwardly cursing himself for betraying his ineptitude. His overreaction to Roatta’s offer of refreshment drove home how inexperienced he was in regards to political intrigue and tactful negotiating. He had a lot to learn if he was going to be the ruler of a country, he realized.

Outside, Serdar noted the unmistakable sounds of aerial combat; he wiped condensation from the door window and peered through to see a flight of Italian fighters pursue a Royal Yugoslavian IK-3 interceptor at treetop level over a clearing in the forest to the south. The maneuverable Yugoslavian aircraft juked wildly in an attempt to elude a trio of Italian Fiat G.50’s, their low-slung wings clipping the tips of trees and flinging fountains of snow into the air in their wake. From his position, Serdar could just make out the black circle fuselage insignia and black cross upon a white field of the fin flash; he instantly recognized the markings from his time in Barcelona during the Spanish Civil War and deduced that these aircraft were piloted by veterans from the Aviazione Legionaria, the Italian contingent that operated with Germany’s Condor Legion. The aircraft were visible for only a few brief seconds before hurtling from view, disappearing into low clouds just beyond the next valley. Serdar turned away from the window; during the short spectacle, Roatta had consumed several cracker’s worth of mascarpone before producing a document from the briefcase, blithely unconcerned with the apparent air battle raging outside.


Roatta closed the briefcase and placed the document on top. Serdar tried to read the document but quickly realized he could not decipher upside-down Italian, and waited for Roatta to speak. “Antonio, there will be a price for diplomatic recognition; every year you must raise one division’s worth of Croatian soldiers to fight for the Roman Empire. We will help train and equip your countrymen, of course, and your sons will fight alongside great Italian generals, gaining plunder and tribute across the globe, spreading the promise of fascism far and wide, and earning glory for your new nation. I think this is a fair bargain, don’t you, Antonio?”

Inwardly, Serdar shuddered; he knew that there was going to be a cost for Italian aid and recognition, but he had not expected so steep a price. Fifteen thousand men per year, plus reinforcements…for a small country like Croatia, it would be a monumental burden; most of the fledgling economy would be absorbed in fulfilling and supporting such a formation, to say nothing of follow-on units in subsequent years. But the alternative would have been continued subjugation underneath the Serbian boot in Belgrade, or perhaps worse, an inevitable invasion from Germany, or even Italy. In the end, Serdar really had no choice; he could either collaborate with the new Roman Empire and attempt to retain some semblance of Croatian cultural identity under Italian jurisdiction, or he could allow his people to be swept away, dashed against the boulders of destiny in a sea of global annihilation.

Serdar shook these thoughts aside. Maybe the war would be won quickly. Perhaps his men would only be consigned to occupation duty, or form the static garrison of a backwater coastal province. There was even a chance that Il Duce would want to keep his Croatian battle thralls in Croatia as a reserve, or perhaps they would even be allowed to conduct anti-partisan patrols in Serbia. Yes….Serdar pondered shamelessly…finally we would have the freedom to destroy the fucking Serbs…


Roatta coughed softly, and Serdar quickly stifled his rapacious thoughts of bloodlust against the hated Serbs. Upon reflection, Serdar knew better than most that Fascism, be it the National Socialist type of Germany, Mussloini’s own PNF National Fascist Party, the Spanish Falange, the Romanian Iron Guard, or the style perpetuated by the Ustaše, it didn’t matter, because there would be no coexistence with other forms of government. It quickly began to dawn on Serdar that the fate of his people were now inexorably tied to Axis; after word of his betrayal of the Serbs got out into the open, the rest of Yugoslavia, the rest of the Balkans, and even the rest of the free world would never forget what he had done.

The droning of aircraft returned, and Serdar once again turned his gaze outside towards the south. A menacing trio of Italian Fiat fighters were still pursing the Yugoslavian IK-3, but smoke now plumed from the latter aircraft’s engine nacelle. There did not seem to be any haste on the part of the Italian pilots, their perfectly-spaced right echelon formation was unaffected by the crippled Yugoslavian fighter maniacal juking and attempts at evasion. Serdar’s eyes were fixed to the action as the Yugoslavian planes struggled to maintain altitude during its egress down the valley to the south. The Italian pursuit was relentless and measured. Belching clouds of black ash, Serdar briefly wondered if the Yugoslavian pilot might use the unintended smokescreen to its advantage when the trio of Italian planes suddenly surged forward for the coup de grâce. A short spatter of 12.7mm gunfire from the leading Italian interceptor pummeled the rear of the Yugoslavian fighter’s cockpit, immediately after which the hapless plane corkscrewed into the snowy ground below. Serdar at once marveled at and was disgusted by the icy mechanical proficiency of the Italian pilots; they had perversely toyed with their prey before executing the unfortunate Yugoslavian pilot with a shooting accuracy he did not think was possible from an airborne platform. Mussolini has grown powerful indeed, Serdar thought whimsically, suddenly feeling that his bargaining posture was even more precarious than it had been several moments before.

Rousing his guest from an apparent trance, Roatta gestured to the final line of the document as he spoke, “Sign here Antonio.” As Serdar leaned forward to sign, Roatta continued, “And use your real name for once.”

Roatta halted for a moment, feeling the aftershocks of secondary explosion produced by the downed Yugoslavian fighter reverberate through his body, before inscribing ‘Ante Pavelić’ in flowing cursive at the bottom of the document.


Concealed within a thick matting of pine nettles and packed snow 50 yards inside the tree line, British commander Ronnie Tod observed a lone figure exit the Mercedes staff car and trudge away in the direction of a pair of Guzzi Superalce motorcycles. Peering through binoculars, he instantly recognized the butcher, bomber, insurgent, and assassin Ante Pavelić’ as he rejoined his escort and soon thereafter motored off in the direction of Zagreb. Tod noted the time in a leather-bound notebook, reflecting on the grisly film footage that he had viewed several years ago of Serbian King Alexander’s assassination as he wrote down details of Pavelić’s demeanor, attire, and gait. Everything Tod knew of Pavelić’ indicated that he was a devious and talented terrorist who would stop at nothing in order to dismember Yugoslavia and form his own independent Croatia. Given the military disaster Tod had observed over the past month on the Illyrian Front, Tod reasoned that his dream must not be far from fruition.

As soon as Pavelić’s motorcycles were out of sight, the Italian staff car also departed, headed west down an unimproved dirt track in the direction of Trieste. Tod was not sure who the car’s other occupant was, as whoever Pavelić’ had come to meet had not stepped out of the car, and the vehicle’s tinted glass and fogged windows had prevented Tod from peering into the interior. Tod surmised that Pavelić’s meeting was likely with Foreign Minister Count Ciano and probably regarded the absorption of Croatian territory into the Roman Empire. He would need to disseminate a report on what he had observed to his superiors immediately.

Tod shifted his weight onto his left shoulder and glanced to his right; the prone body of his executive officer Maynard Toboggan glinted with weak sunlight reflecting off of small piles of pure white snow that had sifted down between the pine fronds. Reaching into an interior pocket of Toboggan’s overcoat, Tod extracted a full glass bottle of Vat 69 scotch and turned it up, draining most of the contents in a single pull. With solemn incredulity, Tod realized how infuriatingly whimsical and fickle the Gods of War could be, that an artillery impact would shatter his friend’s body but leave a glass bottle unscathed. “Cowards die many times before their deaths, but the valiant never taste of death but once,” muttered Tod as he clasped Toboggan’s right cheek with his right hand, staring into the pale lifeless eyes of his friend one last time before pulling both eyelids closed with his thumb. Tod finished the bottle in a final draught and flung it over his shoulder before standing up in the foliage and snow-covered glade; the two other survivors of his unit following suit. As soon as they had brushed lingering snow and pine nettles from their fatigues, the 3 British soldiers marched off to the east, making for neutral Romania.

Overhead, Tod heard the sounds of more Italian bombers headed southeast towards the front; he instantly recognized the nauseating yet unmistakable droning of the ubiquitous tri-engine SM.79 Sparvarios. At this stage in the conflict, Tod wondered what was left to bomb; steadying himself against the crushing weight of the overall Allied failure in Illyria, the personal failure of allowing most of his men to be killed in combat, and the liter of scotch coursing through his system, Tod consoled himself by reasoning that at least the conquest of Yugoslavia had been mercifully rapid. In the end, however, as he trudged through knee-high snow drifts, Tod’s true despair stemmed not from his professional failings, but rather from his failure to look after his younger brother, or to even know if he were alive or not. Recognizing that his life still had purpose, Tod soldiered on underneath a frosted canopy of ice and pine, establishing a punishing yet emotionally-purging pace that would hopefully deposit his small troop into the desolate Zagorje region of Northern Croatia by the end of November.


Meanwhile, across the bleak Ukrainian steppes, down the length of the vast Volga, throughout the primordial Baltic forests and boundless, amorphous Siberian permafrost, a new evil was manifesting itself in the Soviet Union.

Though it had taken several months for the postal donkey caravans to reach Moscow, the sudden news of successful Italian, German, and Japanese expansionism had vexed the Soviet oligarch to the point of physiological anguish. Long cemented in his position as the absolute ruler of the Soviet Union, paranoid tyrant Josef Stalin nevertheless plotted for even more supreme power to counter the growing threat posed by his neighbors, and rather than suggest to his people that the fascist empires surrounding the USSR were in a position where they could threaten sacred Communism, his machinations instead turned to fabricating a new, supernatural peril that would require more State-sponsored protection for the Motherland.

Dissatisfied with merely persecuting and confiscating the wealth from his generals, kulaks, Mensheviks, former-Tsarist loyalists, Ukrainians, Jews, successful famers, merely subsistence-level farmers, cabbage-eaters, overly-prideful and/or miserly turnip connoisseurs, tractor owners, Cossacks, suspected-subversives, criminals, homosexuals, individuals who had impure thoughts regarding the Communist Party, Trotskyites, those of suspected Polish descent, owners of horses with suspiciously “Western” sounding names, those who criticized the purity and positive-rehabilitative aspects of the Gulag System, Tartars, Crimean nationals, composers who produced music with vaguely-sounding Wagnerian overtones, Chechnyans, Lithuanian separatists, individuals with possible ties to the bourgeoisie living abroad, left-handed people, the infirm and disabled, jazz-lovers, soothsayers, elitist and/or ill-tempered fish mongrels, Mongols, members of the Intelligentsia, reporters of news whose writing could be construed as perhaps suggesting an alternative viewpoint to Stalinism, unrepentant potato-hoarders, narcissistic hair-combers, and, of course, the hated Dutch, Stalin unveiled the latest threat to the Soviet people: gigantic feline beasts, broad of shoulder and sharp of tooth.


During a clumsily-choreographed five minute broadcast in which Stalin’s stilted diatribes were intermixed with his voice dubbed over the speeches of other members of the Politburo without even trying to mask his accent, the leader of all Soviets praised the tireless effort of his NKVD squadrons in tracking down the newfound feline menace. In his typical droning, mongoloid, monotone style, Stalin stated that dozens of new motor rifle divisions would be needed to exterminate the rampaging felines; at the present moment, the Gigantic Evil Fascist Cats, or GZFK’s in Cyrillic, had already overrun large swaths of Derkaderkastan, Kreblakistan, and Romanovia, eradicating the native Russian pioneers in those areas while reducing their infrastructure and industrial capacities to zero. Many in the audience experienced involuntary surprise as their hands shot up to cover their mouth in apparent disbelief--though no one had ever heard of those areas before, mainly because they did not in fact exist, their names sounded so intrinsically Russian that their loss hung heavy on the hearts of the average Soviet citizen. Subtly, in small groups, the tiny delegation of hand-picked peasants at the 18th Party Congress of the Politburo began to sheepishly clamber for more troops, all the while oblivious to the cost that would fall squarely on their hunchbacked, malnourished shoulders.

Despite NKVD containment of the infestation to those areas, Stalin nevertheless believed that a reorganization of the Red Army would be necessary, and millions of additional peasants would be conscripted over the following weeks and months to fill the new quotas. Stalin ended his speech by mumbling, “Only through the strength of the glorious Red Army of Workers and Peasants will we triumph over this despicable new villainy!”

As usual, Stalin put the petition for expansion of the Red Army up for a “parliamentary” vote. There were no dissenters.


Meanwhile, 12,000 km to the southwest, British general Bernard Montgomery was fleeing from another menace entirely; better, or perhaps worse, depending on your perspective, Montgomery’s menace was entirely delusional, as his nemesis Italo Gariboldi was almost 6,000 km away in Yugoslavia. Nevertheless, the troubling phantasm of unending pursuit by the deific Italian commander weighed heavily on the defeated and disgraced British general as he pressed himself ever-harder to reach Port Harcourt in British-administered Nigeria, the last bastion of true Britishdom in the whole of Africa.


Gariboldi may have forgotten about Montgomery, but Montgomery certainly had not forgotten about Gariboldi. Spurned by a mix of anger over his defeat Khartoum, a fear of pursuit that pushed him to punishing feats of near-inhuman exertion, and a lust for avenging his loss in an inevitable rematch with the Italian general at some indiscriminate point in the future, Montgomery was surprised to look down on a map and discover that he had traveled into the Ugandan area of the Protectorate of Kenya. Long bereft of his light tank and driver, both of which he had sold to Zanzibari slave traders in Kampala in exchange for food and a new black beret, Montgomery had no opposition to crossing Lake Albert via a rope bridge in order to save time.

The only break Montgomery had allowed himself during his whirlwind trek from Khartoum had occurred a week earlier during a brief two-night stay in Malakai for rest and obligatory medal polishing, which had begun to tarnish in the static heat of the tank’s cabin; after sending his uniform with a porter to have it suitable cleaned and starched, he had traveled to the local custom house and transmitted a brief coded Morse Code message to the British High Command regarding his whereabouts and his destination and further requesting a new armored division to be ready for him upon his arrival. Having received no reply to his message before he left, he continued his journey southeast towards Kampala, arriving a week later, at which point he sold his adjutant and vehicle to a barrel-chested, tar-colored fellow named Saran’rap for a sackfull of tea leaves, 12 pounds of dry-aged camel meat, and a new cover.


Reaching the western shore of Lake Albert, Montgomery rejoined the Entebbe-Buta highway and was pressing on towards the northwest when a rickety old man supported by a gnarled 7 foot tree branch hobbled towards him from the other side of the path and called out for Montgomery to stop. Upon exchanging respectful greetings, the old man explained that his transmission from Malakai had been received, and a forwarded copy of the message acknowledgement had just now been received in Kampala, which he handed to Montgomery and which simply read, “BM, received, God Speed. Stop”. The old man went on to say that there was another message intended for the British general and rooted in a different pocket and produced another telegram which he handed to Montgomery:




Montgomery read the telegram several times over before deciding that divine Providence was shining upon him; this was the answer to all of his prayers and hopes. Without warning, Montgomery grasped the old man and flipped him around; forcing the man’s spine into an inclined position, Montgomery wrote on the back of the telegram the following words: I am extremely interested (stop). Please let me know what I must do (stop).


Mercifully, and with a mixture of both relief and anxiety, Mussolini looked up and realized that he was the only one still working. It had been an exhausting day, one of the busiest he could yet remember. The true magnitude of just how ably his injured foreign minister and son-in-law performed his job awed Il Duce to no end; absorbing Ciano’s responsibilities in addition to his own duties was going to be a gargantuan task. One of the only bright spots during the entire day had been a medical report showing that Count Ciano’s condition had stabilized and that his prognosis appeared to show a full recovery.

Mussolini affixed a stamp to an envelope addressed to Josef Goebbels and his wife Magda; tucked inside was a thank-you letter for a homemade Bundt cake recipe. He felt it strange that the recipe had called for 1 cup of something called “strained American Secret Agent juice,” but nevertheless, it was the thought that counted, and Mussolini may be many things, but he was not a neglectful or impolite when it came to sending thank-you letters. Did the Americans even have secret agents? wondered Mussolini idly, or was this some sort of twisted Nazi joke? Il Duce knew that his spymaster Roatta had broken the American diplomatic code fairly easily, and as a result he had low opinion of American clandestine operations, especially so given the ease with which he had manipulated the hapless Bonner Fellers during Operation Ramesss. Still, it plagued him somewhat to think that the Germans knew something he didn’t; he made a mental note to probe Roatta about what was going on in the Third Reich after his return from his Croatian meeting with Pavelić’.

Mussolini dropped the sealed letter onto the top of his ‘Outbox’ pile, which was now so high that it leaned precariously over the end of his table, and then reclined backwards into his chair. Completing routine paperwork was one thing, but strategizing for the future of the Roman Empire was quite another endeavor altogether. For good reason, Mussolini felt as if he had accomplished more than he ever dreamed possible in 1939; as great as that feeling was, however, he knew that he could not rest on his laurels for long, and that he needed to take advantage of the strategic initiative if the Roman Empire was to survive and flourish. Specifically, he felt anxiety regarding his Empire’s next major operation, the planned amphibious and airborne invasion of Malta, which he had given the blatantly non-enigmatic codename Operation Sol Invictus. Mussolini felt that the double-entendre of Apollonian and solar connotations coalesced nicely with his own indomitable, or “Unconquered,” performance in the war so far, with the additional caveat that the term “Sol” dovetailed nicely with the use of “Sun” and “Son,” whereby he intended the operation to be some measure of satisfaction for the near-mortal wounding of Count Ciano. Nevertheless, despite how pleased he felt at the naming for his operation, he still felt that there simply wasn't enough time to properly plan the specifics of the invasion.


Despite conquering sizable swaths of territory in North Africa and the Middle East, very few centers of petroleum production had been acquired in the war thus far, and as a result the Roman Empire’s naval operations were still considerably restricted due to the high cost of fueling his warships. Mussolini realized that he would have to be selective with the warships he sent to support the invasion so as not to disrupt continuing operations by Italian 23rd Corps, which was even now pressing through British defenses on the Iraqi front. Lieutenant-General Giuseppi de Stephanis, commander of the 23rd Corps, had reported that Iraqi/British defenses were practically non-existent along the Syrian/Iraqi frontier, and that he expected his Blackshirt divisions to reach Baghdad within the month, with follow-on operations for the capture of the oil-rich regions of Basra and Kuwait to follow immediately after. Mussolini knew that the capture of Iraq and Kuwait would go a long way towards satisfying the Empire’s thirst for oil, and while he was tempted to wait for that operation to conclude before launching the invasion of Malta, he nevertheless felt that keeping the strategic initiative on two fronts was more important, even if it did drain the Empire’s pitifully small oil reserve. As a result, Mussolini made the decision to conduct both operations simultaneously; rather than pull Admiral Campioni’s 9a Squadra di Marina from its escort and supply mission for the 23rd Corps in the eastern Mediterranean, Mussolini decided to assemble another fleet for the assault on Malta, one perhaps that could safely involve larger, slower ships due to the close proximity to naval and air bases in Palermo and Naples.

Il Duce scanned a recent document from the Italian Navy Chief of Staff Domenico Cavagnari, which detailed the current condition of all the ships in the Regia Marina; he was pleased to note that repairs to the heavy cruiser RM Zara and destroyer RM Tirago were nearly complete, but after scanning these first two entries, his eyes began to blur to the point where he had difficulty in focusing on the typed characters. Burrowing the pads of his thumbs into his eyebrows, Mussolini realized that he was literally at the limits of his endurance. Standing, or rather staggering to his feet, Mussolini motioned to his salon attendants at the other side of the room to have his personal relaxation suite prepared.


Upon entering the secret chamber, which could only be accessed via a false wall behind a floor-to-ceiling reproduction of an ancient Pompeian fresco depicting the Roman god Priapus holding a set of scales underneath his engorged phallus, Mussolini’s vigor quickly returned. Seated on a felt-cushioned step stool just inside the door, the Roman Emperor gazed fondly on the mesmerizing beauty of Satya, the stunning Persian-hued infiltratoress perched seductively on all fours wearing a transparent pink slip, her dazzling hindquarters thrust magnificently into the air, the arch of her spine taut and graceful, reminiscent of a pulled violin bow. Just beyond the scantily-clad Corvo di Notte, Mussolini noted the fair Aryan features of his erstwhile dinner companion Fräulein Poon, her supple, milky-white skin clad in seamless bands of black silk and leather as she stood prone and helpless in the center of the room. Poon’s arms were pulled back, and her wrists were covered with thick, fur-lined handcuff bracelets linked by a silver chain; though she presented the appearance of a prisoner being held against her will, the smile on her face at seeing Mussolini approach suggested that the exact opposite was in fact true. A slender black riding crop on the table behind Poon, seen in conjunction with several parallel rose-colored bruises lashed across her rear, suggested that some disciplinary measures had been administered upon Miss Poon prior to Mussolini’s arrival.

Mussolini’s eyes darted from the leather whip to Satya; “I see that you have been continuing our interrogation of the German spy, my dear.” Satya said nothing, biting her lower lip and eyeing Mussolini’s front zipper hungrily. Reasserting control over her wanton, carnal desires, Satya finally answered, “Yes, darling…I have discovered many new facets of our traitorous captive, many new despicable, dirty traits…filthy even.” Satya blushed, unable to control her swollen, erotic cravings, and she took a moment to lick the drool from the corners of her mouth before adding, “I can see only one way of getting her to talk; we must deliver the ultimate punishment upon her immediately. Possibly twice, if she resists...”

Mussolini’s unbuttoned linen shirt billowed behind him, the clasps long since detached in a practiced yet frenzied symphony of brute animalistic grace. He approached the twin vixens ravenously, his hands prowling outwards towards their oiled and vulnerable bodies as he swaggered towards them; somewhere deep within, a thunderous fountain of new energy had been discovered, and it’s seething, frothing vitality threatened to quickly cascade forth and burst outward.


Fräulein Poon minced towards Mussolini, pretending to struggle against studded ankle restraints connected via another silver chain. Upon reaching Mussolini, Poon stared deeply into his eyes. “Have you had a hard day, daddy?” Poon purred into his ear, lathering her tongue against the smooth surface of his tympanic membrane. The lobe moistening had an immediate and electric effect, and Mussolini’s body shuddered in frantic anticipation.

“Come, my Nordic Edelweiss of Smoldering Enrapturatude,” beckoned Mussolini as he moved towards one of the room’s many beds, “and you too Satya, my sensuous lotus petal of joyous sensationality, my delectable enchantress of vexing magniminity, for I shall lay you low upon the ardent altar of your iridescent succlentness.” The two women immediately met each other’s gaze, momentarily confused by Il Duce’s sudden eloquence.

“And after that, the ultimate punishment, right?” pleaded both Fräulein Poon and Satya expectantly.

“Of course, my dears,” responded Mussolini with a grin, “of course.” At once, Fräulein Poon’s eyes rolled back in their sockets, her body shuddering in ecstatic expectation, while Satya grabbed hold of the riding crop.

Nathan Madien said:

Oh, I'm used to it by now. :laugh:

His updates tend to follow a pattern: they start off serious, becomes silly after a while, and becomes NSFW at the end.

Click to expand...

Thanks for sticking around Nathan, and yes, for all concerned, that sequence as you described does tend to be that pattern of late.

Note that, for what it's worth, i go to great lengths to restrain my wanton penchant for excess description of suggestive subject matter, (hopefully) writing it just vague enough to let the reader's mind fill in the gaps rather than gushing torrents of raw visual description. Maybe depicting scenes of heightened sexual tension isn't exactly normal (or even desired) in WW2 AAR's, but I guess i want to illuminate the whole 1940's era for all of its emotion, not just bravado, revenge, heroism, and/or tragedy, which is why i occasionally touch on clandestine subterfuge, nefarious backroom plotting, and, sometimes, amorous entanglements. (Also...as far as the war itself goes, there's not much going on :laugh: )

For new readers, i feel i should relate that this HOI game has long since been completed, with most of the major (i.e. interesting) action starting in 1945. Between now and then i'm trying to provide a (somewhat) believable pretext/backstory for what occurs later. That may take a while, but even the 'silliness' will become clear as the story progresses; i know where the story ends, and i'm simply trying to make it interesting as we move along, but trust me when i say that Mussolini's proclivities are necessary to complete the tapestry that is AMUO.

Next chapter is 1940! Things have slowed up at work, so i'm going to try to update more frequently.

1940 pt 1​

6 January 1940

Italian Corporal Attilio Scalari yearned to plunge into battle, but not for the typical reasons of bravado or reckless impetuousness that drove most men to surge headlong into combat.

A paratrooper in the new 186th Regiment of the “Folgore” Parachute Division, the 23 year old Scalari had grown to detest his unit’s preferred method of transport, the SM.82 tri-motor aircraft. On the best of days, the rickety fuselage would relentlessly pummel Scalari’s scrawny frame, leaving him with huge sores that covered his back and legs. During inclement weather, such as they type that mercilessly buffeted his aircraft over the Tyrrhenian Sea on the morning of 6 January 1940, the agony was intensified many times over. Now, as his aircraft shuddered and plowed through the air 11,000 feet above the Sicilian Coast, more than anything, Scalari just wanted to get out of the damn plane. He didn’t even care where; even dropping into the sea below would be preferable to another hour of tumbling through a heaving and undulating cacophony of turbulence and misery.

Three dozen transport aircraft, each filled with 34 heavily-armed paratroopers, had taken off from aerodromes near Messina into the pre-dawn gloom; as they passed the western coast of Sicily, they were met by several squadrons of G.50 interceptors acting as escorts, who eased into the position ahead of the transports as the first wisps of morning light spattered through the distant line of squall clouds covering the western horizon. Overhead, additional squadrons of SM.79 Sparvieros and an expeditionary kampfgeschwader of German HE-111 tactical bombers winged towards Malta, intending to hit targets just ahead of the paratrooper drop. As the Sicilian coast receded behind them, the attack bombers bled off their altitude to increase their speed as they dropped as low as possible; their goal was to knock out British anti-aircraft defenses around the planned landing zones in order to protect the paratroopers during their vulnerable descent from the transports.

Far below the aerial armada, a powerful fleet of Italian warships plowed through white-capped swells as they maneuvered to engage the shore batteries ringing Valletta harbor. Spearheaded by the new battleship RM LIttorio, Admiral Cavagnari‘s fleet also consisted of the modernized battleship Giulio Cesare, and heavy cruisers Gorizia and Bolzano, all screened by a picket line of 3 light cruisers and 4 destroyers of the swift Soldati class. Elsewhere, still marooned in port, a further eight Italian transport ships filled with soldiers from the 11th, 21st, and 61st divisions waited inside the cramped cargo holds until the landing beaches had been secured; lacking dedicated amphibious marine troops, and in order to protect his infantry from Allied air power, Mussolini had decreed that the amphibious invasion troops be held in Palermo until the paratroopers had secured the areas around the landing zones. There was no great cause for concern, of course, given Allied fleet losses in the battle for Alexandria; Mussolini estimated that there would be few remaining warships in Malta to oppose the Regia Marina, and he felt confident that the Italian fleet would be able to deal with any British sortie from the naval base as well as conduct a ruthless bombardment of the island’s defenses with equal lethality.

Nevertheless, from an oil consumption standpoint, the mission was proving to be harrowingly expensive; Admiral Cavagnari’s warships were drawn from anchorages ranging from Naples to Trieste, and the cost of staging these vessels in the battle area approached 100,000 barrels of processed petroleum. The aerial squadrons of the Regia Aeronautica added a further drain on already-meager petroleum rations, and many of them could be expected to conduct multiple sorties before the operation was completed. The entire campaign was a calculated risk by Mussolini that had essentially come down to balancing number of transports the British on Malta would sink over the course of the war verses the amount of oil that would be expended in the capture of Malta. Foreseeing that the current war would play out over several more years, the potentially exponential nature of the former part of the equation seemed to outweigh the rather static nature of the latter, and the decision to launch Operation Sol Invictus became a surprisingly academic affair.


Scalari had no idea how much effort had gone into Operation Sol Invictus, and thus was completely ignorant of the concurrent aerial and naval support that complemented his mission. Ground crews had blacked out the row of coin slot-shaped windows on the upper plenum of the fuselage in order to reduce any chance of glare reflecting in the sunlight, and the only light that filtered back to Scalari was diffuse sunlight as it passed through the tinted glass of the cockpit’s windshield. Most operational details of the assault had been kept from the rank-and-file paratroopers, which maximized overall mission security in case Italian troops were captured and interrogated, but it also left Scalari and his comrades in the dark as to what to expect on the ground. Only a few Folgore officers knew all of the details of the entire plan, and most of them felt that Il Duce expected far more from his elite paratroopers than they could provide.

Perhaps due to an overdeveloped sense of confidence in the elite new paratrooper division, perhaps due to the short window in which to plan the operation, or perhaps due to the rampant rumors that Mussolini spent an egregious amount of time cavorting with women of ill-repute in his private chambers rather than seeing to the important details of complex military operations, the men of Operation Sol Invictus had been tasked to capture the island of Malta more or less single-handedly.


Scalari’s commanding officer, Second Lieutenant Marko Starace, slowly made his way from the cockpit down the length of the aircraft, stopping between each pair of paratroopers to tug on parachute pack straps or offer words of encouragement to the men. Scalari sat halfway down the aisle, head slung low, his hands absentmindedly fumbling with his standard-issue model 1939 dagger. Upon reaching Scalari, Starace reached down and tightened his helmet strap, muttering what sounded like a inspiration Fascist intonation for the upcoming battle, though Scalari had difficulty in making out the words over the droning of the engines and clanking of carabineers against the hull. Despite the fierce look of determination stained upon Starace’s face, Scalari could see fear and doubt permeating from within his commanding officer. Scalari returned a quizzical look, cocking his head sideways and shrugging his shoulders in a universal expression of incomprehension, and Starace stuttered before trying to explain once again how everything was going to be fine as long as his men followed the plan. His explanation lacked conviction, however, and Scalari felt that his attempt to instill courage had only made things worse.

The men shared an awkward stare for several moments before a red dome light suddenly activated on the cockpit bulkhead behind Starace, illuminating the cabin of the plane in a dim crimson glow. Starace marched back up the gangplank to the pilots, who informed him that they had just passed over the surfaced Italian submarine RM Archimede, which served as the air group’s primary navigational beacon between Sicily and Malta. The short-range radio transmitter affixed atop the submarine’s superstructure indicated to the pilots of the aircraft that they were on course and had only a few short minutes before they would disgorge their cargo of paratroopers upon the island.


From that moment, Scalari’s melancholy and doubt dissipated as the adrenalin rush of imminent combat swept over him. Almost immediately, the young Italian paratrooper’s idle thoughts were overwhelmed by training, further encouraged by his officers’ sudden shouting of orders and the general clamor of his comrades standing and clipping onto the static deployment line. There was no time for Scalari to worry about what was going to happen, nor was there opportunity to ruminate over his commanding officer’s apparent consternation regarding the mission. There wasn’t even time to proudly consider that he would be among the first men to jump into combat during Italy’s first wartime paradrop. It was time to kill Tommys, and Limeys, and of course any Maltese that happened to get in the way. Imbued with a mixture of valor, intrepidness, and more than a little curiosity, Scalari shuffled towards the aircraft’s side door to await his turn.

Scalari had only a moment’s hesitation at the door before he followed the paratrooper in front of him into the breach, but in that instant he observed more action that he could have possibly anticipated. Far below him, the capital ships of the Regia Marina were engaging the Maltese coastal batteries; massive broadsides from the Littorio and Giulio Cesare illuminated the silhouettes of the Italian ships in the murky, cloud-covered pre-dawn darkness. Scattered amongst the pair of Italian battleships, smaller craft punctuated the shroud of opaqueness with ribbons of flame erupting from their own canon. As Scalari tumbled through the air, he noted that Admiral Cavagnari had directed his ships into a concave semicircle around the harbor, with the monstrous Italian battleships clustered at the center; from their position, the Littorio and Giulio Cesare would take advantage of their superior range and pulverize the Valletta shore batteries at distance. All along the island’s shore, brilliant explosions hinted at the massive destruction already wrought by the Italian ships as shore installations burned uncontrollably. Through the haze of early-morning darkness, jets of flame continued to erupt from the Italian fleet offshore. In marked contrast to the Italian barrage, British return fire seemed sporadic and ineffectual, indicating that Operation Sol Invictus had achieved some measure of operational surprise.


Despite the ethereal, shadowy calm of the early dawn light, the staccato bursts of light from explosions below mingled with the roar of distant artillery blasts, giving Scalari a good impression of the battle as he slowly drifted downwards. The ruffled canopy of his parachute briefly dulled the approach of several Italian interceptors roving nearby; several thousand feet below them, a flight of Sparvieros ascended dramatically after dropping several tons of bombs on a suspected British command and control facility. Jostling around in his harness, Scalari managed to twist his body southwards towards his planned landing zone near an RAF fighter aerodrome at the capital’s southern periphery. Italian and German aircraft had uncontested mastery of the skies above the small island; Heinkel, FIAT, and Savoia-Marchetti machines flitted about at different altitudes and ranged as far afield as Scalari’s vision would allow.

Looking downward towards his objective, Scalari next focused on where the prevailing winds were dropping his comrades. Some members of the initial drops were already on the ground, and the rapid clatter of small arms fire soon mingled with the deafening roar of the larger caliber canon near the coast. Scalari scrutinized the airfield in the last moments before landing, knowing that the vantage point of his altitude would offer him some tactical advantage in the battle to come. In contrast to the battered condition of many of the Maltese coastal batteries, the air field below him looked to be relatively intact. As Scalari prepared his body for final impact with the ground, he noticed several squads of British soldiers rushing towards sandbag-protected anti-aircraft positions inside the airport’s perimeter. As soon as his boots hit the ground, he heard the distinctive ‘pom-pom’ rapid-fire of 40mm Bofors cannons firing into the air at the Italian transport aircraft.


Scalari quickly rolled up from his well-executed landing and began to collect his parachute, noting that the dawn’s early light was slowly beginning to seep through the squall clouds on the eastern horizon. As the sunlight slowly intensified in strength, Scalari realized in horror that the second and third transport squadrons were perversely illuminated against the black sky directly above. Complicating matters, from his position atop a small rise about 500 yards away from the aerodrome perimeter, Scalari could see British aircraft taxiing onto a dirt airstrip. Realizing that something had to be done about the British defenses immediately, Scalari set out to find Lieutenant Starace.

Scalari raced through waist-high grass, his Beretta Model 38 submachine gun cradled in both hands high on his chest. Descending down the gentle slope of a small hill, Scalari saw three unfurled parachutes strung out in a field before him, each still tethered to the pack of a paratrooper. With mounting dread, Scalari approached the nearest paratrooper, fearing the worst; it was the first duty of any paratrooper to police his chute immediately upon descent, especially in a dawn attack where the semi-reflective material might reveal the squad’s position. Reaching the prone body of the Folgore paratrooper, Scalari frantically flipped him over to reveal several pieces of artillery shrapnel embedded in the man’s face and chest. It was the first corpse that Scalari had ever encountered, and the effect on him was profound and traumatic. It took several moments before he could lie the body back down on the ground, even with the sounds of intensive combat raging all around him. Following the shock, there next came the ignorance of what to do next; the Paracadutisti training school at Tarquinia had trained soldiers for battlefield triage and first aid, but not for dealing with the deceased. Only the extremely close takeoff of a pair of British Hurricane fighters directly overhead lulled Scalari out of his dazed, nearly-catatonic state. Taking a deep breath, he ran to the other two figures in the field and discovered that each of them had perished as well.

There was no way to tell what, exactly, had killed his comrades. It could have been British artillery, an errant Italian naval shell, or even errant fragments from a German bomber’s payload. Scalari increasingly began to wonder about how long he might survive on a battlefield with so many concurrent threats from all axes. The third body that he had come to was Lieutenant Starace—Scalari’s commanding officer had nearly been decapitated by shrapnel from a nearby explosion; a hideously-misshapen fragment of burnt steel had torn through his collarbone and nearly severed the spinal column before stopping at the base of the jaw. Scalari almost didn’t recognize the man; the rank insignia on his uniform, and his position at the head of the chalk, as he had jumped from the plane first, was the only real indication to whom the body belonged.


The ear-splitting sound of explosions roiled all around Scalari – naval gunfire continued to punish the British coastal defenses nearby, intermixed with chilling, shrieking whines preceded the aerial bombardment detonations around the airfield, while the colossal roar of British artillery shells pummeled the scattered Italian paratroopers. Scalari reached into the inner pocket of Starace’s jacket, pulling forth a folded map of Malta with several points encircled in red grease pencil marks. Unfolding the map, he laid it down upon his commander’s chest, raking grit from the surface while he scanned for noticeable landmarks. He identified his chalk’s rally point near the town of Luqa; his battalion objective had been the capture of the RAF aerodrome situated nearby.

Scalari could not be sure, but given his observation of the battlefield during his drop, he presumed that his transport had strayed too far north, with the result that his fellow paratroopers had fallen closer to the southern periphery of Valletta rather than airfield at Luqa. He could see no other paratroopers nearby; if other members of his squad had managed to survive the drop, they were not visible. It was entirely possibly that his comrades had entrenched themselves, hoping to weather the storm of British artillery while they waited for the 2nd and 3rd waves of paratroopers to reinforce them before advancing. He could hear intensive rifle fire to his north, and despite the likelihood of encountering friendly forces if he moved in that direction towards Valletta, Scalari vacillated between following his orders and rallying near Luqa in the south, or moving north and potentially finding friendly forces.

Looking up, Scalari noted that the second wave of paratroopers was beginning to descend from their transports. As he had feared, Scalari noted that many of the transports were not in formation; many aircraft limped along, apparently damaged, and several transports had broken out of formation completely, disgorging paratroopers at irregular intervals and during erratic, possibly evasive, maneuvers. British anti-aircraft fire seemed to have intensified since the attack began, and the sky above Malta was filled with flak fragments and splotches of black smoke. Making matters worse, several pairs of British fighters marauded through the transports, careening above and below slower-moving groups of Italian aircraft, taking advantage of the confusion to evade Italian interceptors and still strike and the vulnerable transport aircraft. The skies above appeared sewn with absolute confusion, Scalari thought to himself as he scanned the map again. The red grease pencil circle around Luqa seemed darker, more menacing in color, and it took Scalari a moment to realize that blood from one of Starace’s gut wounds had stained the underside of the map and was permeating onto the other side. As he watched, the red circle around Luqa slowly filled until it was completely covered. To Scalari, the message was clear. He folded the map and tucking it inside his pocket; hefting his weapon, he ensured that the safety was disengaged and made his way south towards Luqa.


From the topmost observation point in the belfry of St. Andrew’s cathedral in Luqa, British corporal Stanley Tod observed Scalari’s movements with the aid of a pair of binoculars. Though thousands of yards away, Tod could see the Italian paratrooper’s movements in stark contrast to the deserted and streets and fields around Luqa; the entire population of the town, and of the entire island for that matter, had descended into Malta’s extensive network of air raid shelters at the first wail of the alarm sirens, and as a result, any outdoor movement at all was clearly evident to the casual observer. Dense smoke plumes rose from distant Valletta, some five kilometers north, though so far the attack had seemed to spare Luqa.

Tod had ascended into the wrecked bell tower before dawn, and as a result, he had witnessed the very beginning of the Italian attack from an exceptionally-advantageous vantage point. Like most of the British soldiers that had managed to escape from Alexandria prior its fall, Tod was wounded and in poor spirits. The unimaginable magnitude of the British defeat in North Africa was the least of his concern, however; disturbing him most was the knowledge that the man that had saved him from almost certain death in the trenches south of Alexandria had not just been killed, but murdered by a suspected Italian agent. Gerald Gallatin, an American radio technician working with the recently-murdered US military liaison officer Colonel Bonner Fellers, had pulled the wounded Tod from a trench just moments before Italian assault troops had overrun the area. In similarly dramatic fashion, Tod had been placed on the last flotilla of ships that had escaped from the blockaded Alexandria harbor before Italian forces had stormed the city. Eight months later and still nursing an injured left arm, Tod had convalesced on Malta primarily because the small squadron of corvettes and transports that had managed to slip out of Alexandria were destroyed in Valletta harbor only days after discharging their human cargo. Tod’s surviving superiors had assured him that Malta was an impregnable fortress, and indeed for a while, it seemed as if the Italian war machine would bypass the island altogether.

Since arriving on Malta, Tod had gotten into the habit of rising before dawn and trudging up a narrow spiral staircase to the magnificent ruins of the St. Andrew’s cathedral campanile; from his perch, Tod could command vast vistas of the surrounding terrain, which he sketched and illustrated with a small notebook and a dozen colored pencils gifted to him from one of the cathedral’s Franciscan monks. Tod had a real talent for bringing depictions of Malta’s picturesque patchwork of fields and farms to life, but Tod’s real impulse for surmounting the bell tower stairs was the solace and quiet afforded by its isolation. Drawing on its ancient Knights Hospitaller heritage, Malta featured over 25 major hospitals on the island; despite the prevalence of medical wards, however, the nave, choir, and transepts of St. Andrews were filled with wounded and non-ambulatory injured. The cathedral’s cavernous walls ceaselessly echoed with the anguished cries of the infirm and afflicted. There was no shortage of wounded in the British Empire, and the tiny island was filled with causalities from Egypt, East Africa, and the Middle East that had managed to evacuate before rampaging Italian armies could overrun those areas. Tod had little stomach for the suffering of others, and regimented soldierly life held little appeal to him, despite his family’s rich military heritage.

Stanley Tod had realized from a very early age that he was not like his older brother Ronnie. Whereas Stanley would be content with reading a book or solving a crossword puzzle, Ronnie’s swashbuckling demeanor and intimidating physical size only served to further differentiate the age difference between the two. Though only separated by 3 years, when seen in public, Stanley and Ronnie were frequently mistaken for father and son rather than brothers who had gone to the same preparatory school for two years. Stanley did not consider himself a coward by any stretch, and he went great lengths to prove to his older brother that he was a capable and dependable, but most of this was for effect rather than an indication of his intrinsic character. While Ronnie had volunteered for the Army years prior to the outbreak of hostilities, Stanley had been drafted scarcely three months after the beginning of the war; Ronnie had used all of his considerable influence to get Stanley assigned to a front-line unit, hoping to help his little brother see the action that he thought Stanley wanted, but Stanley’s performance with the British 8th Army resulted in no promotions or recognition, and only served to prove to Stanley that he had no business in a front-line military unit. For the majority of his time in North Africa, Stanley Tod filed reports for the XXX Corp’s quartermaster.

Tod continued to watch Scalari slowly approach the town’s northern frontier; there was not much in the way of cover for the Italian paratrooper, and Scalari alternated between sprinting amongst the low stone walls that separated different family fields and protracted observation from concealment. For a brief moment, Tod considered illustrating the scene with an abstract charcoal action sketch; he rapidly flipped through several filled pages in order to find a blank page, passing by several unfinished attempts to draw a passable visage of his brother. It has been two years since they had last seen each other, and Stanley realized with painful clarity that he was slowly forgetting what Ronnie looked like.

Tod turned back to look north again, noting that the Italian paratroopers appeared to be well trained, utilizing cover and moving quickly in order to avoid detection and/or enemy fire, but that he appeared to be alone. Is he a scout? Separated from his unit? Is he trying to surrender? Tod wondered passively about the invader’s motivations before the gruesome realization that he could be another Italian assassin struck him like a runaway truck. An image of ‘Lambchop’ Gallatin fluttered before his eyes; Tod had only met Gallatin briefly, but his eager smile had stained itself into Tod’s memory. All of his comrades had spoken highly of him, and his courage under fire had been nothing short of legendary.

Slowly, and with excruciating deliberateness, Stanley Tod lowered his binoculars and reached for his rifle.

For a brief moment, Tod wondered if he was capable of harboring the same killer instinct that so relentlessly drove his brother, as if it were heredity birthright that they both shared. He had never killed anyone before. In actuality, he had never even fired his weapon in combat; the sheer violence of the Italian attack in Alexandria had left him near-catatonic in the bottom of his squad’s trench. Centering the scope’s reticle on Scalari’s head, Tod sighed heavily, willing himself to overcome his natural inclination for passivity while simultaneously recalling his marksmanship training from years prior.


Scalari squatted behind yet another stone palisade; he was still several hundred yards from Luqa proper, and would be a difficult target for Tod to hit even while stationary. Adjusting the sights for maximum range, Tod zeroed in on his quarry, noting with surprised disgust that at that range, even the slightest gust of wind or body twitch caused Scalari to disappear from view. Alone with his thoughts, Tod began to question the un-sportsmanlike nature of sniping someone that had no idea they were even being targeted. Shooting someone that was unaware of danger did not make sense in his mind; his brother had always made war seems like a glorious enterprise, a physical struggle of strength and endurance. As Scalari crept ever closer to the town, finally leaving the protection of the rock palisade, Tod tracked his movements with his rifle but removed his index finger from the trigger.

In a frantic dash, Scalari finally crossed the outermost Luqa street and penetrated into the town’s perimeter; he pressed his body against the side of a small cottage and jerkily peered down the alley that separated him from the next row of buildings. High above, Tod centered his sights on his unwitting prey. Through his scope, Tod could finally see Scalari’s face; he was breathing heavily, his chest heaving severely underneath the thick green fabric of his paratrooper tunic. That was unsurprising considering how far he had traveled across the barren field in so short a time, but Tod noticed something else in the contours and grimaces on Scalari’s face. It was an expression Tod knew only too well. Scalari was afraid.

It was only a matter of time before the other British soldiers in Luqa would notice Scalari; the bombardment would subside in time, at which point the troops tasked with the defense of the town would emerge from their shelters and return to their bunkers and trenches. The more Tod thought about it, the lone Italian paratrooper’s apparent anxiety seemed to indicate that he was looking for other members of his squad, and that perhaps Luqa was his rally point. Scalari’s face now filled most of Tod’s rifle scope, and Tod could clearly see matted perspiration clinging to the Italian’s eyebrows and forehead. At that point, Tod realized that he simply couldn’t summon the strength to kill.

Taking aim at the house opposite Scalari, Tod fired a single round into a ceramic roof tile. Shards of masonry ricocheted onto Scalari, causing him to shield his face with his left arm. Tod believed that the shot would drive off the Italian and send him fleeing back to the north, but rather than retreat, the Italian paratrooper began looking for the shooter. It was a rather foolish action, Tod thought, to expose one’s face towards the suspected direction of a sniper’s position. Nevertheless, the Italian scanned south into the city, eventually focusing on Tod’s position in the belfry as the most likely position of his assailant.

Tod dipped his rifle downward, disengaging himself from the scope to see with his normal vision. His eyes locked with Scalari, and for the briefest of moments, there was a recognition or understanding of sorts between the two men. Distant bombs falling into Valletta shook both men back to the reality of the situation, and Tod motioned to Scalari with his finger and then pointed back across the northern plain. It took a moment for Scalari to comprehend that the British sniper was trying to save his life.

Legions of bombs cartwheeled into the Maltese soil further north, pounding installation, machines, and men into dust. Scalari scampered his way back into this churning cacophony of swirling death, grateful for the second chance given to him through the benevolence of an unknown British rifleman.


Klaus Bundt’s naked body shivered violently in the frigid Bavarian air. Convulsions wracked his scrawny frame repeatedly as he squatted in the crook of a gigantic granite staircase, furiously rubbing his palms against his skin in an effort to product warmth. Though the encroaching twilight threatened to drop the temperature even more, Bundt chattered out an almost inaudible prayer of thanks for the coming cloak of darkness. Against all odds, he had somehow managed to escape from the clutches of the dreaded Gestapo.

During an exceptionally inconceivable series of events, Bundt had seemingly circumvented all layers of Gestapo security at their formidable Augsburg Stapostellen in southern Bavaria. Over the previous several weeks, Bundt had been subjected to the very worst in psychological torture at the hands of his Gestapo guards. On the day after his personal interrogation by Hitler, he had been thrown into a dungeon cell wearing only his soiled underwear. In the middle of his cell was a very high table with a plate of warm chocolate chip cookies on top, but no matter how hard he tried, Mr. Bundt was unable to reach them. Warm tendrils of moist, baked chocolate magnificence wafted down to him for hours on end, but there was no relief for the American secret agent, as the legs of the table had been liberally slathered with high-viscosity motor oil, thus preventing Bundt from ascending. Eventually, Bundt sat down on his cot to mull his situation, but no sooner than he reclined backwards did he discover that both of his pillows had been stuffed with cotton candy sealed with a thick plastic pillow case. Bundt clawed at the pillow, trying to release the puffed sugar from its transparent prison, but to no avail. He took to bashing the pillow against the floor, the wall, even the legs of the gigantic table that dominated the center of his room, but the plastic casing was simply too thick. Bundt sat back down on the couch and began to cry softly to himself. “Is there no end to your depraved cruelty???” he wailed aloud before finally passing out from exhaustion.

The following weeks were filled with even more exquisite forms of torture for the hapless Mr. Bundt. At the end of the second week of captivity, his Gestapo captors began purposefully preparing his standard breakfast omelet without cheese. Further adding to his torment, dinner table salt shakers often had their caps purposefully unscrewed, resulting in several ‘accidental’ spills atop Bundt’s evening meals. Later that same week, the nefarious Gestapo led a 3-week old declawed ferret into Bundt’s one room cell while he was asleep. Bundt awoke to find the predator perched upon his midsection, gently kneading his blanket and purring threateningly, at which point Bundt violently erupted from his bed and fled to the other side of the cell, screaming indecipherably. On the other side of a one-way glass mirror, Gestapo agents howled in laughter as Bundt shrieked around the room until finally knocking himself unconsciousness after slipping on one of his many magazines and falling face first onto the floor.

By the end of December, Bundt’s captors had grown so complacent that they rarely even checked on him. Having exhausted their capacity for sinister depravity, many of the Gestapo agents focused their efforts on captured foreign agents from nations that were actually at war with Germany, or suspected subversives from inside the Reich. On 6 January, an opportunity for escape finally presented itself when Bundt’s custodial specialist arrived for what the Gestapo called Die Morgen Bettlaken Sanierungsprozess, or “the morning bed-sheet refurbishment process,” at which time Bundt’s undergarments were also replaced. A 92-year old French wet-nurse (retired) named Audra had been conscripted for ‘volunteer’ custodial duties shortly after the German occupation of Strasbourg, and immediately after walking into Bundt’s cell, she was overcome by a unexpected case of the Vapors and fainted, leaving the door to the outside corridor open. Without a moment’s hesitation, Bundt scampered over to the door and peered outside. Bunt observed a long, dim hallway adorned with torch-lit oil portraits of various medieval torture devices spaced between what could only be doors to other interrogation rooms. There was no sign of any guards in either direction.

Bundt looked back at the prone body of Audra, his erstwhile maid, whose rumpled frame lied contorted on the stone floor. “What fresh hell is this?” he murmured as he puzzled over her sudden afflicted state. Bundt felt tempted to go to her aid, to relax the straps on her restrictive torso girdle, or perhaps loosen the comically-oversized 40 pound weight ball that the Gestapo goons had chained to her leg in order to prevent her escape. As he stared at her, however, Bundt was suddenly struck by an epiphany; Audra’s simple and formless green shift dress, combined with her austere aura, a chain draped at her feet, and vaguely feminine features stoked a powerful similarity to a stricken Lady Liberty, almost as if a visage of the Statue of Liberty was lying here before him. To Bundt, the allegory was clear; as much as he wanted to help his beleaguered comrade, a sudden infusion of patriotic duty compelled him to believe that reporting his conversation with der Führer to the US Government would be a much better use of his time. Filled with nationalistic American fervor, Bundt expressed his gastrointestinal distress one last time before flinging himself into the dark hallway, mutedly humming the lyrics to The Star Spangled Banner as he crept.

Fortune smiled on young Klaus Bundt, and he managed to avoid detection during his hallway slinking excursion. For several minutes, Bundt fumbled around, sometime backtracking, oftentimes hitting a dead end, but he kept moving as silently as a wraith in his bare feet as he slunk through the deserted dark caverns of the enormous building. An abrupt drop in temperature alerted him to an open door nearby, and moments later he came across a half-open service gate. Dark green canvas duffel bags filled with SS uniforms lined the inside of a large loading bay. Through the space between the doors, Bundt could tell it was dusk outside, and he slipped into an exterior courtyard unnoticed.

Bundt slinked towards the area of darkest shadow in the building’s service courtyard, which happened to be in the crook of a gigantic granite staircase. Bundt bided his time patiently, doing whatever he could to keep warm while he waited for an opportunity to escape. It wasn’t long before a vehicle approached, and two porters from inside the massive building emerged to unload it while the driver strode off to smoke a cigarette. Between loads, Bundt crept back into the loading bay and into the vehicle, hiding himself underneath a pile of soiled uniform bags. Moments later, he felt a violent lurch as the vehicle’s engine sprung to life.


As the transmission underneath clanked into successively higher gears, Bundt allowed himself a small reprieve from the near-constant state of agitation he had impressed upon himself during his escape. Combined with the loss of adrenalin, the warmth afforded by the multitude of uniforms mingled with the droning of the engine to induce an almost inescapable slumber. Before finally fading into sleep, Bundt drowsily mumbled, “Wherever I’m going, it can’t be any worse than that place was.”


Over 10,000 kilometers to the southeast, the German Führer relaxed on the shores of a secluded tropical beach on the northernmost Zanzibari island of Pemba. It was mid-summer in the southern hemisphere, and gentle breezes swept through a lush swath of palm trees and high grasses with a perpetual, almost mystic regularity. In the turquoise lagoons just offshore, long-snouted gulls dove into the surf, emerging with skewered fish trailing from their talons, while distant avian shrieks further down the coast tranquilly accented the nearby waves crashing onto boulders scattered along the beachfront nearby.

Over his seven years as absolute ruler of the Third Reich, Der Führer had allowed himself few extravagances. In fact, many, if not most, would claim that Hitler spent far too little effort on his own indulgences; while it may be a noble pursuit to totally devote one’s self to an occupation, Hitler’s zeal for chancellorship far exceeded passion or loyalty. To many of his closest comrades, Hitler’s dedication to National Socialism reminded most of them of someone possessed.


Supporters would claim that Hitler had little to worry himself with at the current stage of the war; the British were still reeling from their defeats in France, the Mediterranean, the Middle East, and increasingly, in sub-Saharan Africa, where Italian troops continued to press south from recently-secured Abyssinia. Nevertheless, Hitler continued to pressure his industrial plutocrats to ever-greater feats of productive greatness by unceasingly prioritizing technological innovation in all aspects of the German economy. Prior to his departure, Hitler had formally consolidated all of the disparate Army Command Advanced Weapons Design Bureau enclaves into a single Nazi fiefdom entitled the Citadel aus Heeres Erweiterte Waffendesign Büro Achsenmächte Kollektiv Anreicherung, or simply CHEWBAKA for short. Hitler had explained that the collectivization was necessary to prevent unnecessary expenditure of effort along divergent design paths, but most had no delusions about his reason for reorganization and recognized that Hitler simply didn’t trust anyone else to run a ministry of such importance to the Reich.

In much the same way as Mussolini had pitted the different ministries against each other in order to solidify his own position, Adolf Hitler was constantly shifting resources between his various subordinates. Even though the war was going well for Germany at the moment, there was still fierce competition between Himmler and Goering to secure the best recruits, even if they didn’t need them. Goering’s Luftwaffe, for instance, only had so many planes to find pilots for, and his continental flak batteries could be manned with school children and women if need be, but that wasn’t going to deter him from trying to get as many troops allocated to the Luftwaffe as he could get; Goering’s planned Luftwaffe field divisions would need many officers, and would not only project German power over all of Europe, but also solidify his position as the second most important citizen of the Reich. Similarly, the ambitious Heinrich Himmler’s Waffen SS currently fielded only three total mechanized divisions, but this was insufficient for the planned political army of arguably the third most important persona in Greater Germania; in addition to his extensive internal security deployments, Himmler also wanted to enhance his position in the Third Reich, and as a result he drafted as many men as he could into the burgeoning arena, without really having a need for them, by placing impossibly-high physical and psychological requirements for new all Waffen SS recruits to ensure that only the best men were admitted. Minister of Production Albert Speer, who was responsible for Germany’s factories, infrastructure, and manufacturing, also had a need for skilled graduates and engineers, as, of course, did the Wehrmacht and Kreigsmarine for their own activities, but Hitler did not want to jeopardize the vital research and technology establishment with petty internecine political conflicts, which is why the director of CHEWBAKA was not a minister at all, but Hitler himself.

Der Führer’s unceasing lust to expand the dominions of the Third Reich did not stop at simply fostering technical innovation and efficiency, however. His trip to Zanzibar, ostensibly for relaxation, was actually a calculated political maneuver intended to recover sovereign German territory. Unbeknownst to almost everyone in the OKH and OKW, or to any of his other ministers, the real purpose behind Hitler’s clandestine holiday excursion to Pemba was the reconstitution of the former German East African colony of Tanganyika.

Hitler had long claimed that the Tanganyikan campaign waged against the British during the First World War was something that should be glorified and added to the burgeoning epic mythos of growing Aryan invincibility; now that the territory was for all intents and purposes back on the winning side, he felt strongly that the area should be re-Germanized to honor the 3,500 brave shultztruppen that had toiled and sacrificed in the unforgiving African jungle in order to tie down over 180,000 Allied soldiers that otherwise would have fought against the valiant soldiers of Fatherland back in Europe during World War One. Hitler was well versed in the military exploits of General Paul Emil von Lettow-Vorbeck, one of the most celebrated German heroes of WWI, who successfully fought against British forces that massively outnumbered his colonial garrison for several years. Hitler firmly believed that only the return of this sovereign German territory would atone for its unrighteous usurpation by the rapacious Versailles victors at the end of World War I.

In an infuriating sort of way, travel to the African east coast was greatly facilitated by the Italian conquest of North Africa and the Levant; since the fall of Alexandria, air and naval traffic through the Mediterranean and Red Seas had become a placid and worry-free as a Sunday afternoon drive along a Prussian Autobahn. From Berlin, Hitler and his entourage had traveled to successive Italian airbases in Trieste, Tirana, Alexandria, and finally Assab before finally landing in the great Indian Ocean port of Dar-es-Salaam. Hitler had grand intentions for Tanganyika; much like his push to bring Sudeten, Czech, and Alsatian Germans back into the fold, many ethnic Germans still lived in the area and, according to Hitler, his fellow Aryans needed the protection that comes with full Reich citizenship. The great port of Dar-es-Salaam also offered a large base for the imminent expansion of the Kriegsmarine, with the further advantage of providing a well-protected halfway-point for ocean transport between Germany and her allies in the Far East. Of far more importance, of course, was the elimination of the Leprechaun menace that Hitler believed emanated from Zanzibar. Heavily armed troops of SS Leibstandarte bodyguards, clad in prototype tropical Green Erbsenmuster tunics, prowled the treeline at all times. Their objective was to protect der Führer from all enemies, real and imagined; occasionally, coconuts were subjected to bayonet thrusts due to Hitler’s insistence that they were “Leprechaun Eggs” upon seeing them for the first time.


Caressed by the soft tendrils of his palm frond hammock, Hitler gently rocked back and forth, the sound of the distant surf rising and falling with his oscillations. In a small sketchbook perched in his lap, he outlined his latest idea for crushing the hated British. He had drawn a truly massive armored fighting vehicle; protruding from the front of the tank was a massive variant of the formidable 88mm Flak gun, while a flat-front turret with 8” of armor protected the crew inside. Wide tracks enabled easier cross-country movement, and offset bogey wheels helped to dissipate the heavy weight of the vehicle, which Hitler had estimated at approximately “65 standard Hitler-tons” on a note in the margin. Hitler had drawn the main gun so large that, per his marginal notes, secondary armament would not be required. Long streaks of fire emanated from the vehicle’s canon, indicating that the tank was in action; along the right margin of the page, several crudely–drawn huts adorned with blue Stars of David burned furiously, while several yarmulkes and menorahs appeared to be crushed beneath the treads.

Satisfied with his sketch, Hitler dropped his charcoal pencil into the crease of his sketchbook and scanned his surroundings. “I must come up with a name for this new harbinger of deliverance,” mumbled the Führer, “something that conveys its animalistic fury and indomitable strength.” Overhead, tropical songbirds squawked harmonious melodies underneath palm canopies while the distant surf slapped the shores of the nearby beach. Looking over his right shoulder, Hitler scanned the distant inland forest, searching for inspiration. As his eyes adjusted to the dimmer light of the forest, he spied a jungle puma leaping from a tree branch onto an adjacent tree trunk, a fluid movement rife with sublime grace and agile purpose. Hitler briefly considered the animal before abruptly dismissing the puma as not lethal enough. Leaning up and looking behind him, Hitler observed the jungle directly south. After a moment of careful scanning, Hitler’s patience was rewarded with the chance glance of a lynx falling from a stone outcropping onto an unsuspecting Zanzibari wildebeest; the lynx made short work of the wildebeest, quickly tearing open the victim’s throat with a savage claw swipe. Hitler watched the spectacle in mild amusement, stroking his clean-shaven chin deliberately as the lynx angrily vivisected the sputtering hog creature, before finally muttering, ”No….’lynx’ won’t do…not terrifying enough.”

Anguished, medieval mewing and the sounds of thrashing soon dissipated, and Hitler turned towards the northern fringe of the inland jungle. At first, he saw nothing but placid jungle foliage, with dense palm tree branches casting a muted green haze over a forest floor perfumed in a low-lying mist. Moments later, Hitler spotted a creature perched on a branch just over the heads of two camouflaged SS Leibstandarte soldiers making a Leprechaun sweep. Before he had time to yell a warning at his bodyguard soldiers, a jungle panther leaped down and attacked both soldiers simultaneously. The panther wasted no time in shredding the skin of both soldiers in a visceral death-orgy of destruction. Millennia of violent instinct tempered by survivalist calculation, paired with a taut and supply body made exclusively to supports its place at the top of the jungle food chain, resulted in a beast that was nearly unstoppable. The fight was over quickly; the panther’s razor-sharp claws and terrific, bounding strength resulted in a creature that was more a factory for churning out cadavers than anything else, and the heavy armament of the SS Leibstandarte soldiers proved no match for the unleashed brutality and savagery of the panther attack.

Faint screams were quickly silenced by powerful throat clawings of the type that native Zanzibari animals was apparently quite fond of, and Hitler once again found himself deep in thought as to the new name for his prototype tank. “Hmmmm…,” Hitler thought wistfully, “ ‘Panther’ might work…but is there something bigger and more ferocious than a panther? ” Hitler looked again at his drawing; it seemed so much bigger than the houses and Jews that it was crushing. It needed a name that appropriately suited its colossal size and capability for complete annihilation.

As if on cue, a distant howling bellowed through the trees, momentarily silencing the breaking surf. Hitler looked back towards the south and, far in the distance, could see trees parting as something massive plied its way towards the beach. Even the panther took a momentary pause from teething on human flesh to look over his shoulder towards the onrushing danger. Another triumphant roar emanated from the jungle, closer this time, and Hitler began to slowly slink from the hammock towards the beach. Several of his SS soldiers now stood nearby, weapons raised and pointing towards the crashing calamity coursing through the trees. The sand beneath their feet began to vibrate; Hitler looked down to see a multitude of grains levitate into the air, which remained aloft as the impacts drew nearer.

A pair of massive trees crashing to the ground near the panther’s human feast heralded the arrival of the nefarious creature, a massive, dual-tusked African elephant with a tiger and a leopard impaled upon its opposing horns. The fearsome creature brandished sinewy grey skin every inch as think a medium tank’s armored steel plate; colossal legs stamped steamship funnel-sized chasms in the ground, while its serpentine trunk brazenly roared while whipped through the air like an epileptic composer’s baton at some kind of bizarre seizure-awareness convention.

Hitler was at once catatonic and impressed. He took in the spectacle before him, noting all the different creatures mingled together in a bizarre menagerie “Leopard? Hmmm….Tiger? Now ‘elephant’ might work,” he stuttered through chattering teeth as the elephant shifted menacingly towards them. Even to Hitler it was obvious that his nearby bodyguard, armed with 9mm MP-38 submachine pistols, had insufficient firepower to stave off an enraged elephant charge.

It was at that moment that Viceroy Amedeo di Savoy, Duke of Aosta and Viceroy for all of Italian East Africa, arrived on the scene at the head of his diplomatic delegation. Rolling up in a pair of German-issue halftracks with sand tires adapted for use on Pemba’s coastal terrain, the Viceroy quickly sized up the situation and deployed his small contingent of bodyguards forward towards the gigantic elephant with the intent of driving it off. Rapid fire from his squad’s automatic rifles ensued, which were shortly thereafter joined by the Leibstandarte’s soldiers’ own attack. Within moments, the monstrous pachyderm’s assault abruptly halted, and a well-placed headshot from Amedeo’s own elephant gun brought the beast crashing down onto the beach.

The Italian and German groups trepidatiously converged on the stricken animal; Leibstandarte soldiers were careful to stand between their Führer and the Italian soldiers, despite the alliance between their empires, and an uneasy silence descended over the scene as the men absorbed the leviathan-esque enormity of the felled jungle giant. Rather than gaze at the stricken elephant, Hitler glared at his counterpart, attempting to feel out the Italian prince. Foreign Minister von Ribbentrop had informed Hitler that Viceroy Amedeo di Savoy was highly regarded by both his government and his people, had a penchant for hunting, was an accomplished aviator with a distinguished combat record, and had demonstrated great fortitude and charisma in holding the Italian East African forces together in the face of Montgomery’s violent assault at the onset of the war. Hitler reminded himself that this was no backwater regional magistrate that he was dealing with here; he would have to frame his argument for the reconstitution of Tanganyika in a cogent, compelling, and altogether logical manner.

“I want this island back. Also I want that one over there,” blurted Hitler as he gestured towards what he thought was Zanzibar but was actually just an offshore atoll in the wrong direction. Hitler coughed impetuously before adding, “also, the mainland area up to the Belgian Congo territory.”

The Italian Viceroy smiled contemptuously as the German Chancellor rattled off his demands; hands rooted to his hips, his eyes pressed to slits, Amedeo waited for Hitler to finish and then waited longer, his silence allowing the ascendant Italian prestige in the war to date to disseminate far more efficiently than mere words could convey. Amedeo had learned from his studies at Oxford that the individual that can walk away from a negotiation is in the superior position, and he played the role of the indispensable patron magnificently, allowing doubt and uncertainty to filter into Hitler’s mind without so much as a word or overt action from the Italian viceroy.

Amedeo had been briefed on Hitler during his last visit to Rome, when he had looked in on the recovering Count Ciano; Ciano had revealed his lackluster impression of Hitler garnered from their several meetings, reminding Amedeo that the Führer was prone to inexplicable personality shifts and intense, sometimes insane, outbursts. Consequently, Amedeo knew at least as much about Hitler as Hitler knew about Amedeo. Careful not to unnecessarily enrage one of Hitler’s deviant or volatile personalities in close proximity to so many armed men, Amedeo finally spoke to Hitler, his voice soaked in sanctimonious cynicism, “Welcome to Italian East Africa. Please join us for dinner. We’re having fish.”

Hitler briefly furowed his brow in apparent beguilement before quickly bubbling over with glee. “I like fish,” he spat out unreservedly. The group began to walk to the halftracks, and Amedeo nodded before responding, “After dinner, we can talk about your little requests.”