Meanwhile, Yamamoto would not have to worry about resupplying Efate. The two US Marine regiments, and 1st Marine Para Battalion made short work of the 79th Regiment posted there. The Japanese had landed at Havana Harbor in the north, and when they began to push south they ran right into a Marine regiment. Then, news came of the landings on the east end of the island, where the French 2nd and 4th Tonkin Battalions were watching possible landings sites and the one good airfield near Takara.
Colonel Holmes had landed his battalions at Eton Bay and Pang on the east coast. There they quickly overwhelmed the 2nd Tonkin Battalion, took a small airstrip at Forari, and drove up the coast road through the villages of Lamin and Bong. The Japanese sent one of their three battalions to Takara to stiffen the defense there, but it would not hold against the eventual weight of the entire 6th Regiment.
Colonel Hall’s 8th Regiment had the hardest fighting in the west, scaling the heights of Mount Erskine to root out the enemy, and pushing up “Ring Road” along the coast. The Coup de Grace was when 1st Marine Para Battalion re-embarked to do an end around, storming Havana Harbor behind enemy lines and pushing out the HQ of 79th Regiment there. Exhausted, out of supply, the Japanese holed up in any hillside cave they could find, and the Marines had the bitter taste of the cold soup they would eat in many of these future island battles. They had to burn and blast the Japanese infantry from each cave and bunker, but by the 27th of March, Efate had fallen.
The rapid demise of 79th Regiment put the fear in to General Imamura that his 78th Regiment, from the same reserve line division, would not be able to hold Luganville on Espiritu Santo. Now he regretted the ill-fated sortie to try and seize Vanua Levu, realizing he should have argued for a much more conservative approach, posting 3rd Division on Luganville.
It was now too late for such regrets. The Battle off Yasawa had, for at least the next two to three weeks, paralyzed the Japanese Navy’s ability to impede anything the US Navy would undertake. Nimitz had 1st USMC waiting for transports, and he was going to use those troops as soon as he could.
Half a world away, other events would conspire to cause a dramatic shift in the tides of this war. This time it would not be bold and aggressive moves on the ground, but the sheer obstinacy and foolishness of a single man—Ivan Volkov.
Part III
April Fool’s Day
“A fool may be known by six things: anger, without cause; speech, without profit; change, without progress; inquiry, without object; putting trust in a stranger, and mistaking foes for friends.”
Chapter 7
The incident that triggered the disaster in the Caucasus was a small thing when it began, but that was the way of time and fate. After a complaint that the troops of Orenburg were sitting in their bunkers west of Maykop, and doing nothing whatsoever to aid the battle against Russian forces in the Taman region, the 3rd Orenburg Army was finally ordered to attack. Their line was originally strung out along the Pshekha River, about 10 kilometers west of the mining and oil worker town of Belorchensk. Just beyond the river, the last relatively fresh rifle divisions of the Soviet 44th Army were dug into their positions through heavy woodland. The line stretched south through Aspheronsk and then down to the coast east of Tuapse, which was still held by the Soviets.
Volkov’s troops had been unable to penetrate that line for over a year, and they knew they would not do so now either, but for the sake of putting on a show and silencing German objections, they attacked. Things went predictably bad, with the heavy log bunkers of the Soviets embedded with machineguns and small caliber infantry guns, and surrounded by mines and wire. But then Hansen’s 11th Army, veterans of Volgograd, fought their way through the big river city of Krasnodar on the Kuban, and were soon coming up behind the Russians.
One by one, those positions were reduced from their weak side, and by the 18th of March, the line had largely been overwhelmed. Elsewhere, the fight for Novorossiysk continued, with the tough Soviet Marines putting up strong resistance in that city, but it was only a matter of time. Volkov’s troops had pushed their line another 20 kilometers west of Belorchensk to make their attack, thinking to occupy an outlying oil field near Saratovskaya that they did not think the Germans knew anything about. They would not have known, save for the map Fedorov had sent the German Abwehr, and Hansen had orders to occupy that field before eventually pushing on to Maykop.
Yet now the German complaints had backfired on them. That field was just beyond another small tributary river, the Psekups, which flowed north to the Kuban, and it was there that the 38th Rifle Division of the Orenburg Federation finally met up with the Germans they had heard so much about since the outbreak of the war. Ott’s 52nd Infantry Korps was operating in that sector, and his 339th and 83rd divisions had just swept through Saratovskaya and were approaching that field. It was on a small hill, marked #69 on the German local area maps, but otherwise not noted as the site of any oil development. Ott had simply been told to secure Hill 69, but when his troops got there, they found it already occupied.
With fighting in the area still mopping up the Soviet bunkers, neither side knew that they were not facing their enemies when the first shots were fired. A forward German patrol was spotted and fired on from the top of Hill 69, with one casualty. It fell back, reported the hill to be enemy occupied, and five minutes later, the Germans put in some well-aimed mortar fire. They were only 50mm rounds, for the Germans had been told not to use heavy caliber weapons if they found the Soviets there. After desultory mortar fire, the Germans were surprised to suddenly receive a radio call in the clear asking them to stop. The hill was occupied by troops from the Federation of Orenburg, it said, and the Division Commander sent orders down to impose a cease fire.
A party was sent forward under the protection of a white flag, and a Lieutenant Schubert, who spoke fluent Russian, negotiated. “We regret the friendly fire incident,” he said, but I am told to inform you that our division will now take possession of this hill, and of the village of Saratovskaya to the south. My General asks that you please vacate these positions tonight, and our troops will move in tomorrow morning.”
“That will not be possible,” said the Kazakh Colonel in charge. “I have orders to hold my position here, and our troops have occupied the entire line of the Psekups River as well.”
“But Colonel, we are as yet a very long way from our objective.” In this the Lieutenant was revealing something that was best left unsaid.
“And just what would that be?”
“Maykop. Our Korps is to move there to take charge of those facilities, and you will therefore be free to redeploy elsewhere—perhaps on the Volga.”
The Colonel folded his arms. “Lieutenant, I believe this may be a question that will be resolved well above our pay grade. It is a matter for the diplomats, and not soldiers to decide. In the interest of continued cooperation between our two respective armies, I must ask you to cancel your planned occupation of this hill—at least until such time as I receive orders to withdraw. Would that be acceptable?”
“I will take your request to my commanding officer.”
So it began with a small friendly fire incident, that soon became this exchange of words. But the diplomats were very far away. The Lieutenant went back and passed the news on up the chain of command to eventually reach Generalmajor Martin Ronicke of the 339th Division. He, in turn, passed it on to General der Infanterie Eugen Ott, who kicked it to Hansen for confirmation on what he was to do the following morning. Hansen had been told to secure the port of Tuapse, and then advance through Belorchensk to occupy Maykop. His Mountain Korps was to move into the hills south of the oil center, with the German lines anchored on the coast at the small port of Soche. He repeated those orders to Ott.