The Triumph Page 20

  ‘Everything comes to he who waits,’ Allack commented. ‘This time it’s all going our way.’

  *

  The battle commenced at 2140 on 23 October, under a brilliant moon, when the entire British artillery opened fire on the enemy position. The noise was tremendous, even twenty miles away to the south, and the northern sky was repeatedly cut by the flashes of light, while every so often there would be a bright glow from behind the enemy lines, showing that something had been hit. Waiting by his new ACV with Allack and the three squadron commanders, all wearing greatcoats as the desert chill began to spread, Fergus looked out at the stillness around him with a feeling of awe.

  Twenty minutes after the barrage had begun, at 2200, the infantry started their advance in the north, and at the same time Thirteenth Corps infantry moved forward as well. Stand by, came the order to the Armoured Division, and the dragoons manned their tanks. But after that nothing happened. The noise in the north continued to be tremendous, and from snatches of reports and commands over the wireless Fergus gathered that the Australian and New Zealand infantry were advancing steadily, but that in the centre, the Fifty-First Division was meeting unexpected resistance, and taking longer than anticipated to clear a way through the minefield.

  The same thing was happening in the south. Although this was only supposed to be a feint, Montgomery was well aware that the Axis right flank was held mainly by Italians, and he clearly had it in mind that should a dramatic breakthrough be effected, the Desert Rats could be loosed in a conventional swing to the right through the enemy minefields. But the night dragged on, and although there was fierce fighting in front of them, no orders came to the armour to advance; the Italians were defending their ground with enormous resolution. Indeed, soon after daybreak orders arrived from GHQ instructing General Horrocks to break off his attack, but to keep the enemy engaged.

  ‘That’s that,’ Allack said glumly.

  ‘The battle isn’t over yet,’ Fergus reminded him.

  In fact it had hardly begun. Short of fuel and ammunition, outnumbered by two to one, the Germans and Italians continued to fight with enormous courage and determination, and after three days the Allied attack had ground to a halt, with the only positive gains the penetration by the Anzacs of the area just to the north-west of the Miteiriya Ridge, dominated by a hill named Kidney by the Allied soldiers. Montgomery now called a halt to reorganize his forces and prepare for a further advance, and Rommel, hastily recalled from Germany after his replacement, General Stumme, had died of a heart attack, took advantage of this breathing space to launch a counter-attack on Kidney Ridge. The battle flared up again around this position for several days, and to their great relief the Seventh Armoured Division were at last ordered north to reinforce the troops there — operations in the south being at a standstill.

  Fergus found preparations being made for a fresh breakthrough just north of the Anzac position, and this time heading for the coast. For this Montgomery intended to use all three of his armoured divisions. The panzers had suffered so heavily in the battle for Kidney Ridge that they had been withdrawn, and the way seemed clear, but Rommel had also weakened his southern front and pulled some Italians up to the northern sector, and once again the fighting was far more severe than expected. Certainly the Italians had never resisted so stoutly in the past; it was not until after the battle that the Allies learned that there was insufficient petrol left for the Axis forces to use their trucks, so that if a withdrawal became necessary, the Italian infantry knew they were going to be left behind.

  This renewed attack was code-named Operation Supercharge, and commenced on 2 November. The Second New Zealand Division advanced and cleared a path through the minefield, allowing the armour hopefully to debouch. The Ninth Armoured Brigade led the way, while the First and Seventh Divisions waited anxiously for their chance. Suddenly all hell broke loose in front of them, and the most stricken messages returned from the Brigade: it had run into a battery of the deadly eighty-eights and in little more than fifteen minutes eighty-seven of its hundred tanks had been knocked out.

  The heavier machines were then ordered forward. ‘Action at last,’ Fergus told Captain Brown of A Squadron, with whom he was riding.

  Both the First and Seventh Armoured Divisions raced through the gap. The enemy anti-tank battery was quickly overrun — even the eight-eights couldn’t make much impression on the Shermans, and the orders were given to swing up to the north.

  The remainder of the panzers were waiting for them. ‘Tally-ho,’ Fergus bawled. There was no time to say the regimental prayer, as the armour surged at each other. As with so many previous tank battles, once it became a melée it was impossible to decide what was happening beyond a range of a hundred yards or so, because of the immense dust clouds whipped up by the tracks. Comment flowed across the air, and Fergus gave what orders he could, endeavouring to keep his regiment together and under his control, while the gun traversed left and right, and exploded again and again: range-finding was irrelevant as the enemy were so close.

  It was the first time Fergus had used the huge seventy-five millimetre in battle, and the results were stupendous; the panzers were armed only with fifty-millimetre cannon. Yet they fought with all the courage and skill they had always revealed in the past, and although they were finally forced to withdraw, more for lack of petrol, it was later discovered, than by being outgunned, the British armour was itself too short of fuel and ammunition immediately to follow.

  But the battle was won. News came in that the Italian infantry were streaming to the rear, and that even the panzers were racing west — what was left of them.

  Now’s our chance to finish the job,’ Fergus said, drinking tea hastily brewed for him — in half a petrol can — by Sergeant-Major Manly Smith and Trooper Waterman. ‘Where the devil are those fuel trucks?’

  It was nightfall before the replenishments of fuel and ammunition arrived. The dragoons were glad of the rest after the heat and exhaustion of the battle; they and their machines were all covered in sand and dust and oil. But they were nonetheless desperate to get on after the fleeing enemy, and were distressed when no orders came to advance. They buried their dead, sent their wounded to the rear, and Fergus inspected the tanks — he still commanded over forty — while they listened to the RAF droning overhead.

  Montgomery himself arrived the next day. ‘Good shooting,’ he commented, as he gazed at the burned-out panzers. ‘Good shooting.’

  ‘When can we go after them, sir?’ Fergus asked.

  ‘When we’ve regrouped, and got some fuel supplies up. When we advance this time, Mackinder, we aren’t coming back.’

  That made a good deal of sense, but it was galling to be told to sit tight for another eighteen hours while the infantry moved through the remaining minefields and mopped up such Axis forces as remained. It had been a stupendous victory. Some twenty-five thousand of the enemy were dead, and another thirty thousand prisoners of war — more than half of Rommel’s entire army. He had lost three hundred and twenty tanks, and a thousand guns. Once again it was instructive to discover that the British armour had actually lost five hundred tanks, or five to three of the enemy; the losses in Shermans was far less in proportion, but the fact remained that the Germans had again revealed themselves as masters of armoured warfare. The real difference was that the British losses could be replaced, the German couldn’t. The same went for aircraft, where again the British had suffered more heavily, ninety-seven to eighty-four. The big catastrophe for the Germans was the losses in men and guns occasioned by their having to retreat; the British lost only a hundred guns and they suffered thirteen thousand personnel casualties.

  *

  The pursuit was finally launched on 5 November, headed by the three armoured divisions. The orders were to cut across the desert and try to reach Mersa Matruh before the enemy, and complete his destruction, as the RAF weren’t meeting with the success expected. But too much time had been lost, and to make matters more difficul
t, the following day the skies opened and a torrential downpour limited visibility to a few yards and turned the desert into a lake. The supply trucks couldn’t keep up in these circumstances, and the armour soon ran out of petrol, to find themselves stranded in long lines south of the coastal road. Their own inability to move did not stop the Italians from seeking them out, to surrender. It was back to 1940 again, but the infantry had no choice, as they were totally without either food or ammunition. They were sent to the rear.

  Fergus took Bert and went up to the road itself to have a look, at a scene of utter destruction. Presumably the Germans had looked at something like this in and around Dunkirk in 1940. But here, in the brilliant sunshine which followed the rain, it appeared more poignant, the abandoned trucks and tanks, the discarded equipment, which included everything from oil drums to radio sets and binoculars, and the exhausted, crushed groups of men, Italian and German, waiting to be taken prisoner.

  ‘Hell, they’re only men after all,’ Bert commented.

  ‘Aren’t we all, Sergeant-Major,’ Fergus agreed. ‘I imagine we looked like that on the beach at Dunkirk.’

  *

  Fuel finally arrived, and the armour moved forward again. By now they knew they were not going to catch the remainder of the Afrika Korps; it was a matter of driving them back until Rommel was forced to stand and fight. And that that was going to happen sooner than later was made evident when on the second day of the pursuit news arrived of the landing of more than a hundred thousand British and American troops at Casablanca, Oran and Algiers. Despite fierce resistance from French naval units, the invaders established themselves ashore, and it was evident that the end of the Axis empire in North Africa was in sight. Indeed, a ceasefire between French and Allied forces was agreed as early as 9 November, whereupon Rommel, who had been showing signs of standing at Sidi Barrani on the Egyptian frontier, hastily pulled out and began another headlong retreat, to El Agheila at the other end of Cyrenaica.

  The pursuit now began to resemble a road race. The weather having improved, the trucks were able to keep up with the tanks, and the armour careered along the roads, cutting corners wherever possible. Benghazi was recaptured on 20 November, and after a pause to regroup, the advance was resumed, with the result that on 13 December Rommel abandoned El Agheila and withdrew into Tripolitania.

  ‘Well, hallelujah,’ Allack commented as they saw the minarets of El Agheila and realized there was no resistance awaiting them. ‘How many times have we been here, sir?’

  ‘This is the last,’ Fergus promised him. He had no doubt of that now.

  Orders arrived to attempt another flanking movement to see if the Afrika Korps could finally be eliminated, but once again Rommel skilfully evaded the pincers. Yet he had to keep withdrawing to the west, and on Christmas Day the Eighth Army entered Sirte. Just names on the map, for so long,’ Fergus mused.

  By now they were learning of the huge battles being waged on the borders of Tunisia, as the Germans there put up a desperate resistance, and they were anxious to get there to assist their comrades. Early in January they found themselves before Tripoli, where the Afrika Korps were supposed to have dug in. Montgomery now sent a personal message to his weary but still exhilarated troops, calling for a final supreme effort to capture this last Libyan stronghold.

  That the Germans were intending to fight for Tripoli, reconnaissance made clear. But nothing now was going to stop the Eighth Army, and they had been reinforced by the Free French striking north across the Sahara from Chad.

  ‘For Christ’s sake, sir, this is what it’s been all about from the beginning,’ Bert told Fergus.

  Tripoli was stormed on Saturday 23 January. As far as the Royal Western Dragoon Guards were concerned, that finished the job they had been sent to do more than two savage years before.

  8

  Yugoslavia, 1943

  A twig snapped, and the entire forest seemed to freeze. Certainly the men and the woman perched on the hillside held their breaths, peering into the darkness below them, while the very wind that constantly soughed through the pines seemed to drop.

  Murdoch felt a hand on his arm; Kostitch was pointing with his other hand. Kostitch had eyes like a cat.

  ‘How many?’ Murdoch whispered. Taught by Private Edmunds, he had picked up sufficient Croat to enable him to carry on a simple conversation.

  ‘One man,’ Kostitch replied. ‘As instructed.’

  ‘A brave man,’ Murdoch observed. ‘To come to us, alone.’

  ‘No braver than ourselves,’ Kostitch said. ‘To wait for him.’ He stood up, his tommy gun thrust forward. He was a small man, and looked heavier than he was in his winter gear and with his spare cartridges draped round his neck.

  Murdoch followed his example. He too was huddled against the cold, for this early May of 1943 was colder even than February had been. Or Christmas.

  It had been an odd Christmas. Yet he had felt, by then, that he was amongst friends. Certainly he had been welcomed in the heat of the previous August, when he and his three staffers had parachuted into these mountains. They had been spotted and seized immediately by the partisans who held this Montenegran-Serbian border. But the suspicion had quickly changed to welcome when they had identified themselves as British. The guerrillas had supposed they were the advance guard of an invasion force. They had been disappointed there, but had yet been happy to know that they were recognized in London.

  For Murdoch, that had been a bad beginning. His information had been that the Chetniks would be expecting them — but the people amongst whom they had landed knew nothing of that. It had not taken him long to discover that there were several groups operating in the mountains, all ostensibly against the Germans, but also revealing remark-able rivalry, and even hostility, amongst themselves.

  It had taken him several weeks to persuade his new friends — or were they really his captors? — to permit him to make contact with General Mikhailovitch, as the guerrilla leader styled himself. It was Mikhailovitch who had previously been in touch with London; the group led by Colonel Kostitch — another self-created rank, for Kostitch admitted that he had been only a sergeant in the Yugoslav Army before its destruction by the Germans — were afraid that the General would appropriate Murdoch.

  Mikhailovitch had certainly wanted to do that, had insisted on ‘entertaining’ the General for several weeks. It was Murdoch who had refused to abandon his first friends. If, before he left London, he had assumed that he would operate from Mikhailovich’s headquarters — and certainly would have expected Durden to do so — he had not, as it turned out, liked the General, who had an abstract air about him as though he was continually wrestling with vast problems. No doubt he was, but Murdoch had a job to do, and he wanted it done. He was also disturbed by the absence of any great urgency about operations, or indeed any operations at all, against the Germans.

  Mikhailovitch had willingly supplied him with a list of his requirements. It had been as long as his arm, and quite a few of the items had been absurd. He had wanted tanks and aircraft and artillery, with which he claimed he could drive the enemy out of Yugoslavia. But the Yugoslav Army had possessed tanks and aircraft and guns, and still been shattered in a couple of days. Anyway, such items could not possibly be dropped from an aircraft. When Murdoch made these points, Mikhailovitch had noticeably cooled towards him.

  He had cooled even further when Murdoch had told him that part of his mission was to contact the commanding officer of the German garrison in Sarejevo, General Paul von Reger. Mikhailovitch had clearly never heard of General Sir Murdoch Mackinder, and he could hardly suspect a British general of treachery, but he wanted no part of negotiations with the Germans — he said. When Murdoch had insisted that he was going to carry out his orders, no matter what hindrances were put in his way, Mikhailovitch had been happy to let him go back to Colonel Kostitch’s group.

  Kostitch had himself been doubtful, but by then he had realized that Murdoch was a fighting soldier par excellence, and
he was willing to be led. He and his following, which numbered some seventy-five men, women and children, had been subjected to one of the periodical German sweeps into the mountains soon after Murdoch’s return from the north, in late October. Armoured cars had rattled along the road through the valleys, men had leapt out armed with machine guns as well as rifles, and bullets had scythed into the trees as the grey-clad figures had moved up the slopes.

  They had, disturbingly, known exactly where to make their attack. The guerrillas had watched them coming, and had been aghast when the Germans had deployed immediately beneath their current headquarters. If the men would have had little difficulty in melting away into the upper slopes, their wives and families and livestock could not be moved so quickly. It was then that Murdoch had proved himself, taking command of twenty men, and checking the German rush with a series of brilliant little delaying actions, while the rest of the partisans had rounded up their camp followers and seen them to safety. Even so it had been a disaster. Most of the goats had been lost, and several men. Sergeant Evans had died in that brief battle. Yet the group had been saved, and would grow again. And Murdoch had become a hero in their eyes. After that, they would do whatever he wished.

  *

  Not less had Murdoch grown to respect them. He had come to Yugoslavia with at least an equal amount of suspicion, and it had been heightened by their first contact. Here were indeed bearded, badly dressed bandits. But their weapons were new and clean; taken from the Germans, Kostitch proudly explained.

  Murdoch had been more than ever concerned for Private Edmunds’s safety, in the midst of such an uncouth, and desperate, fighting force. But there had been nothing to fear. The partisans expected a man to have a mate for his sleeping bag or blanket, if only to keep warm: but no woman was made to sleep with anyone she wouldn’t accept. If the Englishwoman was a constant source of interest — there was no privacy in the guerrilla encampment and Private Edmunds had different habits to the Serbian women, .who were as interested in her ablutions as their menfolk — no one questioned her right to sleep alone, any more than they questioned Murdoch’s decision to do likewise. Once Kostitch had realized that Edmunds was not Murdoch’s own bedmate, he had introduced him to a buxom young woman and indicated that she had recently been widowed and needed a man. Murdoch had declined with thanks, and she had been accepted by Sergeant Evans, with some apologies. Now she was a widow again.