1939 pt 16
Lethargy and postponement reign on the Illyrian Front
15 May 1939
His swollen fingers throbbing in the frosty evening air, Dr. Mantis Toboggan nevertheless deftly tugged another half-foot long splinter from the skin of his commander’s hand, his tweezers coaxing the thin wooden shaft from Capt. Ronnie Tod’s mangled, half-clenched left fist. Finally sprung from flesh, the hemlock shard dropped languidly to the earth below, adding to a small pile of about a dozen other similar, blood-stained splinters. Toboggan’s operation was taking place in less than ideal conditions; the pair were sequestered in a one-room hovel atop a windswept promontory above Kvarner Bay in northwestern Croatia. Flurries of icy wind from the nearby Učka mountain range swept beneath the walls of the structure with tidal regularity, and the two British officers had long since donned their outdoor winter gear even while inside. As the doc probed Tod’s hand for the next plucking, he briefly looked up and noticed the detached expression on the British Captain’s face; it never ceased to amaze Toboggan how Tod seemed to be immune to pain. While removing splinters was not exactly a surgical procedure, most men would at least fidget, or mumble, or show some sign of discomfort during Toboggan’s removal of foreign objects. With Tod, though, there was nothing, not even a wince. Perhaps it was the blur of so many long years the pair had served together in the 1st Battalion,
Argyll & Sutherland Highlanders Infantry Regiment, or perhaps it was his advanced (for a soldier anyway) age affecting his memory, but for the life of him, Dr. Toboggan could not remember his commanding officer ever reacting to an injury. It was almost as if the man had no nerves at all, and no matter how many times Dr. Toboggan put Captain Ronnie Tod back together, the icy look of a man bored out of his mind while he removed shrapnel, set a broken bone, or sutured a wound never failed to surprise him.
Which is not to suggest that Tod lived a charmed, auspicious existence either; Toboggan had personally witnessed Tod in a multitude of morbid situations in which lesser men would have pleaded for death - far too many to count - but Tod had never once uttered even so much as a whimper during any of them. Toboggan spied another subcutaneous fragment and began his next extraction, folding back the skin on either side of a splinter while recalling faded memories of missions past. A particularly harrowing mountain orienteering training over a decade earlier came to mind, a memory stroked by the lance-shaped hemlock splinter he was currently plucking. Then a newly-minted lieutenant, Tod had, in leaping for and missing a handhold on a sheer face of Aran Fawddwy Mountain in Northern Wales, fallen some sixty feet to land in a patch of granite stones at the base. Upon descending to his aid, Toboggan found Tod relaxing comfortably, reclined against a small boulder, taking measured drags from a Lucky Stripe cigarette while a newly-splintered shin bone projected neatly through the torn skin of his left leg. The doctor remembered distressfully the perplexing frustration he had felt observing Tod’s injury and his demeanor; according to the medical logic that Toboggan subscribed to, Tod should have been wallowing in agony, unconscious, or dead.
Nothing can hurt this man, thought Toboggan as he drew out yet another splinter,
then as now.
Well…his mind clarified…
there are SOME things that do cause him pain…the earlier postponement of the Yugoslavian attack on Italy had made that plain. His torment over the delay was not simply the concern for the fate of the British Army in North Africa; rather, Tod had received no communication from or about his younger brother, trapped in besieged Alexandria, for several weeks. Every day that the Yugoslavians delayed their attack meant that the Italians inched that much closer towards exterminating the balance of British forces in North Africa. Toboggan began to wrap a Yugoslavian Army-issue bandage around Tod’s fist, recalling his outburst a half hour earlier when the Prince’s emissary informed the British officers that the attack had once again been delayed. Once again, despite pledges and promises of action, Prince Leka had decided to scrub the next day’s dawn attack against the perceived exposed flank of the Italians in the Veneto. This latest postponement, the regent had explained, was necessary in order to allow more time for the Yugoslav Air Force to mass its squadrons in Slovenia and Croatia and provide proper air cover to the alleged nine infantry divisions still massing near Ljubljana. As always, Tod had forced a respectably calm demeanor while the envoy explained the reasons for the delay, nodding politely whilst the man spoke in broken English that seemed to deteriorate by the day for some inexplicable reason.
My God, Toboggan remembered thinking of the ethnic Bosnian cavalry officer¸
you give the same excuses for not attacking every single day-- how can you possibly be getting worse at it?
While Toboggan was unsurprisingly disappointed by the delay, there had been subtle indications of violent rage swelling beneath Captain Todd’s diplomatic visage, and Toboggan was the best there was at noticing them. No sooner had the emissary walked out the door uttering his now-predictable exultations for a renewed attack the following day than Tod had smashed his fist into the planks of a rickety table, perforating his fist against the wood with such force as to snap each of the four legs and collapse the flimsy structure into a heap of broken lumber. Already forewarned of what was likely to happen via Tod’s body language, Toboggan had already opened his lid of his surgical kit; it was times like these that he realized why Tod had chosen a medic to be his executive officer.
Yugoslav infantry arrive by the camouflaged, armored trainload in rail yards outside of Ljubljana
Tod stood up just as Doc Toboggan finished wrapping the bandage. Walking out into the chilly evening, Tod peered south into the dim violet mist gathering above Rijeka harbor below. Faint wisps of burnt orange sunlight feathered through low hanging indigo squall clouds above the Adriatic horizon to his right, and in the gathering twilight Tod could just make out a faint pair of red aft navigation lights on a lurching commercial trawler headed out into the murky black sea. Tepid surf surged against the fractured Dalmatian coast far below, the distant, diffuse crashing of waves intermittently drowned out by the parsed squawking of a flock of gulls lining the crags of the sheer cliff below him. A shrill whistle in the port pierced the roiling surf, drawing his attention away from the quicksilver crest of waves flooding in towards Rijeka. Though only faintly illuminated in the shadowy dusk, a trio of small tugboats were heaving themselves against a large, blacked-out vessel, violently thrashing the water as they struggled to move the ship into a new mooring. Tod knew that Prince Paul had warships tucked away in the heavily-fortified inner harbor—the question was, would he use them now, while Hitler and Mussolini’s attention was fixated elsewhere, and while they could still prove useful? Or would the regent continue his insistent dawdling and squander his only opportunity to potentially inflict a mortal blow to the nefarious, lethal Axis?
And, most importantly of all, would they act in time to save his brother?
Yugoslavian machine gun troopers muster near the Illyrian/Venetian frontier
Two thousand kilometers to the southeast, the largest battle of the war was just beginning.
The Forsaken Crucible: Alexandria
The eminent confrontation between the Italians and British at the gates of Alexandria promised more bloodshed than the battles for Addis Ababa, Warsaw, Adwa, and France combined. British forces, ragged from exhaustion, their backs to the Mediterranean, surrounded on all sides, overlain with causalities and fighting with a haphazard assemblage of shattered divisions, had only partially cleared the wreck of the RM Rex from the harbor entrance; transport ships anchored offshore were able to ferry minimal supplies into the beleaguered city and evacuate small clutches of wounded on their return runs, but the majority of the capital ships of the British
Mediterranean Fleet remained effectively impotent, bottled up inside the harbor until the wreck could be cut from the channel. Worse, British ships that neared the Alexandria harbor area were within artillery range of Italian artillery batteries on the outskirts of the city; as the Italians crept ever closer, supplying the city became as precarious as defending in the front lines. All around the city, huge swaths of earth were churned over in gigantic, remorseless artillery barrages; methodically, the British retracted their lines with each Italian push, trading space for time, hoping against all odds that the
Fleet would somehow come to their rescue.
Italian Artillery pummels the last remnants of British forces in North Africa
While still a formidable force on paper, the British fleet was unable to prevent Italian raiding on a colossal scale while trapped inside Alexandria harbor; Italian Captain Inigo Campioni and his
9a Squadra quickly rectified earlier reverses by hunting down scores of British transports. Scorched islands of burning British hulks soon dotted the Mediterranean, an infernal archipelago portending grim tidings for the future.
In the desert wastes west of the city, the remnants of British
X Corps still held the high ground south of El Alamein against repeated yet unenthusiastic raids by General de Stephanis’
23rd CCNN Corps. The small scale of the Italian probes, in addition to their reluctance to engage units in larger than company strength, convinced the remaining British leadership that the Italian
5th Army forces approaching from the west were content with conducting spoiling attacks until they could coordinate a final offensive in conjunction with General Graziani’s
41st Corps in Cairo. With growing disillusionment, British infantry realized that the forces arrayed against them were simply biding their time, taunting their trapped quarry before attacking in overwhelming strength at a time of their choosing. Grim as their task may have been, however, the valiant British fortified as if expecting Deliverance; defensive positions were prepared, remaining stocks of petrol and ammunition dispersed, and most importantly, the fallen were interred or evacuated to hospitals near the shore as quickly as possible, lest the sheer size of British causalities undermine troop morale.
British scouts await the inevitable attack of the Italian 23rd Corps south of the Ruweisat Ridge
It was in one of these waterfront British military hospitals, as far removed from the combat zone as was possible, that Gerald “Lambchop” Gallatin found himself unceremoniously pressed into service as a medical orderly. As the only surviving representative of the US delegation sent to observe the British Army in North Africa, Gallatin had been evacuated to the Alexandria dock area to await priority transport out of the city. On several occasions over the previous three weeks, he had been offered a seat on an outgoing transport; unfortunately, due to the dire supply situation and the critical needs of the multitude of wounded, he had not been able to secure stowage space for the body of his friend and commanding officer, the late Major Bonner Fellers, on any of the transports. Gallatin had argued vehemently with the dock quartermaster, alternating between pleading, demanding, and begging, but to no avail—as Italian shells whistled intermittently into the harbor, misting the briny and grizzled soldiers lining the gangways with gigantic plumes of oily water, the aquatic impacts drowning out the crush of staggering soldiers shouting and forcing their way towards the transport queues, Gerald came to quickly realize that none of the British officers had any time to deal with the sentimental machinations of a foreign communications officer and his already-deceased cargo. In part due to a dogmatic sense of loyalty towards his former commander, and in part due to his belief that his status as an official non-combatant US observer would prevent the Italians from imprisoning him, Gallatin had given up his seats one after the other, instead choosing to remain at nearby BMH Alexandria, the safest place, he reasoned, to await a response to a written appeal sent to the city garrison commandant.
Relatively unharmed in the attack that had killed Fellers and the rest of the British High Command in North Africa almost a month prior, Gerald’s idleness eventually caught the eye of a British surgeon, and Gerald, only too eager to assist his British comrades, took to his new charge with a reckless enthusiasm fueled, in part, by his craving for distraction. Every day for three weeks, Gerald raced stretchers into and out of the hospital building, held IV’s aloft, compresses down, and streaked around incoming enemy fire to bring morphine serrates and bandages to the aid stations near the front, his sleeping measured in thirty minute naps and all the while taking breaks only so long as it took to check on the status of Feller’s transport appeal. Gallatin quickly obtained a reputation for valor and courage under fire, in particular during an incident on 30 April in which he had pulled the unconscious body of a wounded British corporal out of an evacuated slit trench and delivered him to an aid station. The British squad’s lieutenant briefly entertained the idea of awarding a Gallatin a commendation for his rescue under fire of Corporal Stanley Tod, but wisely decided against it in the end, given the potential political ramifications to US neutrality. Despite the lack of official decoration, however, Gallatin’s selfless reputation had begun to spread amongst the British defenders.
In the fading daylight on 15 May, after a particularly arduous supply run to a forward position, “Lambchop” Gallatin had plopped down on a crumbled piece of masonry in the middle of a deserted downtown intersection for a short break, deeply stroking the lean calf muscles in both legs with both hands in an attempt to relieve the soreness that never seemed to subside. The distant sound of combat resonated diffusely down the long corridor of shattered office buildings lining both sides of the street; staccato reverberations of distant small arms fire echoed down the once tree-lined avenue now filled with piles of crumbled mortar and broken glass. Nestled comfortably in the shadow of some of Alexandria’s few remaining downtown buildings, yet surreally illuminated from numerous small fires peppering the large shell of a bombed-out department store behind him, Lambchop inhaled deeply on a cigarette, absentmindedly rubbing his legs and squinting his eyes against the low Saharan sunset. He had saved many lives today, he knew, and the knowledge that he was making a real difference sustained him in a very spiritual way, but the strain of physical exhaustion left him weaker than he had ever been, and for many moments he stared directly into the waning western sun, too tired and too apathetic to avert his gaze.
As his eyes adjusted to last burning embers of the sun, a black form eclipsed a portion of the sunset. The splotch gradually swelled in size and began to take on form. For the briefest of moments, alarm bells clanged in Gerald’s psyche; almost immediately, however, fatigue began to set in, and Gallatin relaxed and stared at the coalescing form with idle wonder.
Final Curtain: Operation Ramesses
Corvo di Notte was not sure if Gerald Gallatin knew who she was, but one thing she was perfectly certain of was that he had to die, and soon. Perhaps ignorance was a flimsy justification for murder, but Satya had not achieved her status and reputation by being careless. It was a logical assumption that Fellers and Gallatin conversed. Her job was to eradicate all vestiges of the link between the US State Department and the Italian
SIM intelligence directorate. Consequently, Lambchop was a potential threat, and Satya dealt with threats as if her life was at stake, which of course it was. In the end, the decision making process was all rather simple, really.
Even with her hair threaded into knots by the powerful Saharan winds, when framed by the backdrop of a broken city, Satya’s beauty almost defied comprehension. Attired in what basically consisted of a slightly-oversized yet tailored black silken shirt with ethereal, billowy sleeves, Satya’s extraordinary beauty stood in marked contrast to the desolation and destruction arrayed all around her. A dusty brown newspaper fluttered upwards in her wake as she made her way towards Gerald, her arms folded primly across her chest, a calculated maneuver intended to draw attention away from her arms and to her pert, immaculate breasts.
As the black form melded into the figure of a beautiful, exotic woman before him, Lambchop’s eye’s widened, the sight of her fair Persian features arousing in him a heretofore untapped well of energy. As his weight shifted forward in preparation to stand, Satya fluidly unsheathed the blade of a curved knife from inside the cuff of her ruffled left arm sleeve with her right hand. Seemingly gliding over the pockmarked and cratered city street, Satya reached Gerald just as he was rising to his feet. Satya’s eyes pulsed with an erotic hunger, a limitless, abyssal cobalt-colored ocean of intrigue radiating outwards, ensnaring Gallatin’s attention, distracting him from her intentions. Gerald never saw the blade concealed just beneath the fluttering material of her sleeve; he found himself unwittingly transfixed by her eyes, so resplendent, so mesmerizing. As he opened his mouth to speak, Satya slung the knife in a wide arc, the blade neatly slashing through his neck in a single elegant movement. As Gerald collapsed in a heap, Satya continued walking, never breaking stride or altering her gait. By the time she had she had dropped the knife into an exposed shell hole on the other side of the street, Gerald Lambchop Gallatin was already dead.
Whatever suspicions the British leadership in North Africa may have harbored towards Fellers did not extend to Gallatin; indeed, “Lambchop’s” reputation in the Alexandria garrison was singularly distinguished, even revered. Most everyone knew of the disavowed US “volunteer” with the distinctive chin-length sideburns who had sacrificed multiple opportunities to flee the contracting cauldron of Alexandria to bravely stand alongside his stalwart British compatriots. His presence had instilled a much-needed morale boost amongst the British defenders, and his murder struck at the very core of British leadership; officers of the RAF contacted their counterparts in the United States almost immediately upon hearing of his death, and before Gallatin’s body was cold, an aircraft had been dispatched from Liberia to recover the bodies. Two days later, a US Army Air Corp DC-3 transport plane departed from an Alexandria aerodrome still under British control along the northern fringes of the city. Onboard were two coffins. Forewarned of the flight itinerary and cargo, and perhaps mindful of unnecessarily enraging the Americans prematurely, General Graziani allowed the flight to land and depart unmolested
Fellers and Gallatin are reassigned to Arlington
Still further south, British General Bernard Montgomery was planning a funeral of his own, and the guest list was increasing by the minute.
Disheveled, irritable, and often seen seething with rage, Montgomery could not imagine a more lamentable position. His magnificently trained and lavishly-equipped troops had been rooted to the small hamlet of Adi Abun in Italian East Africa, unable to attack the weak Italian forces in Adwa nor retreat due to a chronic lack of fuel. Montgomery’s supply situation had steadily deteriorated following the Italian
41st Corps capture of the Suez Canal several weeks prior; though minimal replenishment was still possible via the Cape/Horn of Africa route, the considerable distance involved and rapacious Italian plundering reduced the amount of supplies reaching British-held Kenya to a trickle. Of that trickle, even less reached the
7th Armored Division quartermaster in Khartoum, which meant that the airdrops for Montgomery’s ground forces were infrequent at best; as a result, most of Montgomery’s tanks had an effective range of less than 15 km before they would have to be abandoned. Overwhelmed by the incredulity of his situation, Montgomery’s normally noble demeanor had been supplanted by wide-eyed, frenzied lunacy, and his frequent outbursts and accusations stretched the aura of British authority to the absolute limit. Many of his men felt that summary executions were not far off.
Idle Matilda tanks of the 7th Armored Division await Gariboldi’s next move
Compounding
7th Armored’s difficulties were the influx of several thousand ‘refugees’ that had managed to escape before the Alexandria/El Alamein pocket closed. Inexplicably, the British had also brought with them around 30 captured Italian officers in various states of health; these men added an additional drain on already meager resources. Of this group, Italian 1st corporal Gionvani de Natale clung desperately to life in critical condition under the care of a British surgeon. The sole member of his squad to survive a British assault 20 days earlier, de Natale drifted into and out of consciousness with disturbing regularity. The British has removed the bullet from his left shoulder and sealed the wound as skillfully as conditions would allow, but the lack of fluids and medicine resulted in frequently spiking temperature and nearly non-stop sweats for the Italian corporal. De Natale’s official prognosis did not extend much further than the following week, according to British charts.
Just beyond the looming crest of Ras Dabita Mountain 7 km to the southeast, Italian General Italo Gariboldi was calmly reviewing the first reinforcements to reach his frontier command since the beginning of the war. While the majority of the new men and equipment that had arrived since May 1st had been detailed to the
14th, 15th, and
30th Divisions defending the vital port of Assab, an improved situation there, due to the lack of supplies reaching the attacking British
6th and
50th Divisions, had resulted in the release of several artillery batteries and a fresh division of militia soldiers to Gariboldi. Leaning backwards against the stone wall of a building, one hand on his hip, the other absentmindedly tweezing the curl of his distinctive imperial-style moustache, Gariboldi observed several mule-drawn heavy weapons as they began to roll into the town. As the caravan passed single-file past him, headed northwest towards the front, Gariboldi was able to see the weapons in detail, and the elation he had felt earlier quickly soured. The archaic weaponry, Gariboldi noted, was of a First World War design, hardly the type of equipment needed to menace the heavily-armored British.
His disgust momentarily getting the better of him, Gariboldi strode up to the next passing artillery piece; as he suspected, the gun was an obsolete
Canone da 105/28, probably purchased from France over 25 years ago. Keeping pace with the mule, Gariboldi streaked the pad of his finger along the inside of the barrel, expecting to find rust along the grooves of the rifling and finding none. Furrowing his brow, he superficially examined the rest of the canon for warped metal, bulges, and other signs of potential danger.
Relief finally arrives for the dogged defenders of Adwa
Suspiciously surprised, though fearing that he may have found the misfortune of discovering the single operational artillery piece in a ruined menagerie of patched together museum pieces, Gariboldi rambled over to the next piece in line and gave it the same cursory inspection. Finding no problems with that one, he went on down the caravan, inspecting half a dozen more guns before finally coming to the conclusion that however old his new weaponry may be, at least it was battle-worthy. Towards the end of the caravan, Gariboldi had difficulty restraining his jubilation when he discovered a single battery of anti-tank guns and cartloads of high-velocity AT ammunition. Perhaps we do have the tools we need to tackle the British, Gariboldi reminisced pensively.
The last mule-drawn canon entered the city, and Gariboldi looked southeast, peering into the amorphous, dusty wastes that separated Adwa from the interior. In the distance, a diffuse grey streak of dust rose from the ground along a narrow desert track, herald of the arrival of
48th Militia Division’s 207th Infantry Regiment. Eager to get a better view of the arriving contingent, Gariboldi walked to a nearby church and climbed an internal staircase to the crenelated roof of the southern transept; upon reaching the roof, Gariboldi was surprised to see that several other soldiers had beat him to the Southern parapet and were eagerly monitoring the approach of the
207th. Apparently, many of his soldiers were already anticipating their improved fortunes in the battle for the vast Abyssinian desert and wanted a first-hand look at their Salvation.
Gariboldi’s troops welcome the approach of the 48/207 Regiment
By the time the lead troops of the
207th reached the edge of Adwa, a large crowd had gathered on the street and on rooftops of buildings on both sides of the dirt path that constituted the town’s main boulevard. Many of the Italian soldiers cheered, raising hats and rifles in welcome while others, perhaps more apprised of the tactical situation, muttered ‘
Welcome to Hell’ and other sullen, fatalistic quips. Striding confidently out to greet what he assumed was the regimental commander, Gariboldi was extremely surprised to recognize Viceroy Amedeo di Savoy beginning to dismount from his horse. Momentarily stunned, Gariboldi quickly recovered from the shock and rushed to assist the Prince, mindful of the prestige that the Duke of Aosta brought to his command. However, Gariboldi’s swollen pride sobered as he realized that the presence of the governor-general of the entire AOI at the front could only mean one thing – a resumption of combat was imminent.
Amid the rancor of cheers and whistles, Gariboldi quickly ushered the Viceroy into a side entrance of a nearby church and shut the thick wooden hatch closed behind them. For several moments the pair strolled wordlessly down the southern aisle, only the sharp echo of their boots against the marble disturbing the tomb-like silence of the thick stone walls; the Duke, normally unaccustomed to craning his neck due to his height, found himself suddenly in awe of the earth-tone Byzantine mosaics lining the walls of the arcade as they walked eastwards towards the South Transept. The intricate craftsmanship of the piers and arches had the effect of drawing Amedeo’s gaze ever upward as they walked, and by the time they reached the end of the aisle and approached the nave, the dour sepia tiles transitioned to glorious gold and blue before extending into the sunlit half-dome apse that comprised the eastern terminus of the building. Colored sunlight glittered through a concave series of stained glass windows recessed into the half-moon outer wall. The puzzled sense of childlike wonder plastered on Amedeo’s face told Gariboldi that the Viceroy had not expected such beauty to remain in the devastated remnants of Adwa, and Gariboldi himself wondered at the good fortune that would allow such a splendid structure to somehow endure the previous month’s epic battle.
Despite being bathed in a hallowed, iridescent glow, Amedeo nevertheless had ugly business to attend to, and his presence at the front had a definite purpose. Despite the deafening silence, in hushed breaths the Duke of Savoy explained that he was eager to take the war to the British as soon as possible; Gariboldi’s plan to starve the British into submission, however effective it might have proved so far, was not working fast enough. Roving colonial forces operating out of British Somalia were menacing the undefended southern border of the AOI with increasing boldness; the Viceroy wanted Gariboldi to spearhead an offensive into British dominions in Kenya and Sudan with all speed, trapping off the British forces in Mogadishu against the sea and then, later, returning to eradicate them. Before this could happen, however, Montgomery’s tanks would need to be neutralized.
Gariboldi maintained that an attack was ill-advised. His scouts had confirmed that the British on the other side of Ras Dabita were near-starving and low on water. Even more encouraging, none of the
7th Armored’s vehicles had changed position in several days. Lax discipline and deficient training were doubtlessly reigning in the British camp. More importantly, even without fuel, it would be difficult, if not impossible, to defeat Montgomery’s tanks. Respectfully, Gariboldi cautioned, “even wounded, a lion like Montgomery will not be easily defeated. He will fight to the bitter end to preserve his legacy. The unforgiving desert will do our work for us if we let it.”
Amedeo di Savoy was prepared for this kind of counter; he had encountered similar reactions to his orders many times during his career. His close relationship with Mussolini, however, had afforded him with the perfect response for situations such as these, something that plucked at the heartstrings of the Italian
machismo to the very core. “Italo, nothing worthwhile is ever achieved without sacrifice.”
Gariboldi winced; Amedeo’s response was diplomatically crafted to leave him no room for bartering.
How does one argue with such a statement? he thought. It was plain that he had no choice in the matter –
Ours is not to reason why, ours is but to do and die. Gariboldi shuffled his feet absentmindedly, momentarily at a loss for words. With all the skill of a practiced politician, Amedeo stared impassively, holding Gariboldi’s gaze with a slight, benign smile that, while friendly, clearly expected an eventual response.
Recovering his confidence, he thought,
and who knows, trusting in Fascism led to victory in Adwa; perhaps it will again.
Awash in a halo of colored light, Gariboldi breathed in deeply and stood as erect as possible, so as to be as near eye level as possible with the Viceroy. With a grin borne from utter assuredness of victory, Gariboldi declared, “We’ll put ‘em in the ground.”
Fresh and veteran Italian militia stage for the final push against the British 7th Armored
Unbeknownst to everyone, both in the Axis and the Allies, a group of 60 French engineers had entered the boundless wastes of the northern Sahara desert, carrying with them only a coding cipher machine, an assortment of industrial blueprints, a half-ton of gold coins, and as much water as they could stow upon the two dozen camels they had purchased. Led by a pair of Bedouin brothers, the motley band traveled southeast from Algiers, following ancient desert tracks hidden amongst the interminable dunes. Outfitted in multiple layers of lightweight linen cloth, from a distance the engineers and scientists resembled the Berber tribespeople of the region; nevertheless, despite the flowing robes covering them from head to foot, it would not have taken much scrutiny for one to note the thick hair, pale complexion, and abundant spectacles throughout the group. Many questions might be asked of such a well-equipped troupe of Continentals dashing off into the middle of the largest desert on earth, were one possessed enough by curiosity to ask. As luck would have it, however, most of citizens of Algeria were mired in the throes of insurrection, simultaneously fearing Italian or Vichy occupation, or in the case of the native French residents, open rebellion from the indigenous Arab population. In the end, no one noticed the caravan of Frenchmen calmly disappearing into the sea of sand south of Algiers.
French engineers ply through the Northern fringes of the Sahara
Back in the occupied French homeland, German Major Jochaim Kredel, former captain of the
4th Brandenburger commando battalion, reclined back in the worn leather chair that had formerly supported the robust and portly girth of the French Deputy Director of the Interior. Recently promoted due to his sensational display of leadership in capturing two road spans over the river Vistula during the German offensive in Poland, Kredel had been promoted and reassigned to the German
17th Army, which had as its primary function the defense of the Channel coast in Normandy from Cherbourg to Dieppe. Given the horrendous British losses in the war to date, and the corresponding inconceivability of a British attack at any point within the next year, Kredel accepted his new posting for what it really was – a vacation.
Government offices in occupied Paris are commandeered for German General Staff use
A gentle springtime breeze wafted along the
Place Beauvau, lifting the melodies of chirping songbirds and faint wisps of savory fried beignets through Kredel’s open window. It was pleasantly cool in Paris this time of year, Kredel noticed – there had been daily rain showers every afternoon since the fall of city, but despite the gloomy overcast and mild temperatures, Spring nevertheless seemed determined to burst forth. Like many other German officers in palaces and ministries scattered throughout Paris, Kredel had real difficulty concentrating of paperwork in such idyllic conditions.
A few days here, and I’ll forget all about Innsbruck, Kredel thought to himself, reflecting on the dismal surroundings of his previous posting high in the Austrian Alps.
Comfortably reclined, Kredel next slung his flawlessly-polished jackboots onto the top of his massive new desk, the thud of the heel impacting the surface echoing off the 20 foot ceilings inside the massive palatial office. The thought of actually working was the furthest thing from his mind. What concerned Kredel the most was figuring out a way to summon a beignet to him without getting out of his chair.
Just beyond his reach on the desk was a sheet of paper; swiveling the chair to face away from the window brought it within his grasp while still allowing him to keep his feet on the desk. Grinning moronically, Kredel grabbed a pen from the drawer and, bending across his body so as not to disturb his relaxed positioning, scribbled out “
Hey you stupid surrender monkey frog, bring up two dozen pastries to the Minister of the Interior’s Office Immediately or I will have your whole family executed” in French. After beginning to fold the sheet of paper into an airplane, Kredel finally noticed that there was writing on the other side of the sheet. Slowly unfolding the crudely-folded airplane, he noticed that it was correspondence addressed to him that he had somehow forgotten to notice. He read the words slowly; the letter was written by a Doctor at a military convalescence hospital outside Dresden, and it explained that Kredel’s friend, Captain Helmut Braun, had taken a turn for the worse. The letter ended with a prayer and encouraged Kredel to visit Braun quickly if he wanted to have closure.
Memories of the operation at Deblin flooded into Kredel’s mind. Braun had been on another bridge, but acting quickly, his bold decision to rush the southern bridge before the chaos of action at the northern span reached his squad had saved the operation; acting with complete disregard for his own personal safety, Braun had led from the front and inspired his men with exemplary courage, driving into the teeth of the Polish defenses before they had time to realize what was happening. Now, despite the countless lives his decision had saved, it appeared that the cost was his own.
The letter fell from Kredel’s hands. As the sheet fluttered towards the ground, his next memories were of Braun’s broken body towards the end of the battle. As their men were mopping up the Polish cavalry troopers on the east bank and forcing them back towards the city, Kredel had walked over to Braun’s truck and seen his sacrifice firsthand. His driver, of course, was long since dead, a cauterized, donut-shaped hole the size of a watermelon where his chest should have been, victim of a direct hit from a Polish light anti-tank gun. The impact had severely wounded Braun as well; he suffered from a massive concussion, head trauma, and multiple open wounds where superheated metal shards from the shell’s impact with the truck’s engine compartment had scorched his exposed skin. Braun was a macabre specter to behold, bleeding from head to foot, out of his nose and ears, the left side of his uniform blackened from heat. Yet he had lived, either unconsciously or by divine providence rolling from the cab of the truck and falling to the surface of the bridge before more rounds could injure him. Unattended for several hours, upon reaching the smashed truck and finding Braun alive, Kredel had immediately called for his personal physician to attend the wounded captain. And, though it was small comfort to Braun or his family, Kredel had lobbied for and received numerous awards, including the Iron Cross first class, to lift Braun’s spirits during his recovery.
A frosty gust of wind slapped the wooden shutters behind him, and the colors in the room began to deepen in hue. The afternoon rain storm was coming. Suddenly possessed by a craving to safeguard the Reich, and reeling from the guilt of his own idleness in the midst of a global war, Major Jochaim Kredel decided that he would do all in his power to emulate the sacrifice of his friend. Reaching into the bottom drawer of his desk, tucked underneath several personal sketches of hummingbirds and a half-eaten husk of French bread, Kredel retrieved a report entitled
Festung Europa and began to eagerly leaf through the pages.
Germany begins to fortify the Atlantic Wall