“And my Division?” said General Raymond Briggs of the 1st Armored.
“You’re the head of the bull,” said O’Connor. “I’ll want you southwest of 23rd Brigade, about here I should think. We’ll want to control the road from Homs to Tarhuna, and once you’re on it, you can move to support either side as the situation warrants. I’ll come up and we’ll have a cuppa to sort things out.”
“Very good sir,” said Briggs. “Will you be wanting Darjeeling or Earl Grey?”
Everyone chuckled at that. Tea kept the British going as much as gasoline. At times the soldiers would actually rattle off a stream of MG rounds just to get the barrel hot enough to immerse in water to heat it for tea. Even the tanks had an organic BV, a boiling vessel to brew up tea. With Ceylon taken by the Japanese, tea supplies were feeling the squeeze, and rations had thinned out in the ranks. In time, that necessity would become a luxury, but for now, the tea was still flowing liberally in North Africa.
O’Connor looked the men over, smiling. “Gentlemen, this is for the prize. 8th Army has wanted Tripoli for as long as Rommel’s had his eye on the Nile. It’s no coincidence that we’re here in Tripolitania, and Rommel is as far from Alexandria as he’s ever been. So off we go, and may the lions at dawn tremble at our approach.”
That got yet another laugh, but then the General stood quiet for a moment. He took a breath and said something more. “I’d be wrong to say we got here without a lot of hard work, and the blood and guts of a good many men who aren’t here to stand with us now. You’ve all heard the rumors, but let me lay it out for you in the clear. We lost the heavies at Tobruk when the whole place brewed up. They won’t have our back any longer, and seeing as though they were a special lot, we may not see their like here again for some time. That was a hard blow. I daresay I owe my own life to those men, and we owe them a debt for what they did in the heat of battle when we needed them. So this is for them, and all the others who died to get us here. We owe them a victory. Let’s get to it.”
“Here, here,” said Wimberley. “I say we drink on it, but if you don’t mind, General, how about something a wee bit stronger than tea?”
He raised a flask of gin.
Chapter 6
Hitler leaned heavily over the map, his eyes restless, searching, as he studied the situation in the Med. He had seen the tide of the enemy advance gobble up all of Cyrenaica, and now it flowed into Tripolitania towards that capital, a city that he now designated “Festung Tripoli,” saying it must be defended to the very last man.
“If they take that, then they will have all the air fields,” he said darkly. “It is only 300 miles from Tripoli to Tunis or Syracuse on Sicily, and even less to our bastion at Malta. Those airfields are crucial.”
They might be, thought Halder as he listened. Yes, they might be, if only the Luftwaffe had enough planes to send to them. If Tripoli fell, it would also be a very hard blow for the Italians. They would see Sicily as a viable next step for the Allies, though he believed Kesselring and Rommel could hold Tunisia for some time.
“And look how they have taken most of the French colonies in West North Africa!” said Hitler. That knocked France out of the war as a useful ally, and they are about to do the same to Italy. Useful idiots, the Italians, but useful nonetheless. It amazes me that I can conquer half of Russia, but this hand full of enemy divisions stops us there in North Africa. We must counterattack!”
“My Führer, they have stopped us because we have only enough naval capacity to supply the two armies we already have there,” said Halder, stating the obvious.
“Nonsense,” said Hitler. “Kesselring gave them half the ground they now hold in the west, and Rommel keeps back stepping every chance he gets. What happened to his grand plans of storming in to Alexandria? Haven’t I sent him those new heavy tanks to deal with those of the enemy? Why does he fall back towards Tripoli now, instead of attacking and smashing this General O’Connor? That was why I sent him there in the first place, and all he has done for these last two years is churn up sand and complain he has no fuel, and no air cover. We must find another way. The British are sitting all too comfortably in their Middle East strongholds. They get the oil from Iraq and Iran, and what do we do about it? Nothing! Well, that stops this hour, this very day.”
“What do you mean?” said Halder, the edge of worry creeping into his tone.
“Army Group South has taken Rostov, have they not?” said Hitler. “They are pushing into the Caucasus, but the Russian Black Sea Fleet still sits there on the coast and it will prevent us from shipping any of Volkov’s oil to Rumania as planned. It must be destroyed!”
“But My Führer, we have a only a few U-boats in the Black Sea.”
“What about the ships Raeder sent to the Med? He has already lost the Hindenburg. What good are the others sitting in Toulon?”
“They serve as a strong deterrent against any invasion of Sicily.”
Hitler waved that away like a bothersome fly. “They serve only as targets for the RAF. The bombers come to Toulon twice a week now, and if they get those airfields near Tripoli, they will come round the clock. I will order Raeder to send the remainder of our ships to the Black Sea. There is the force we need to destroy the Russian fleet. It is high time we used it. As for the British, I want a full corps assembled and sent south to Bulgaria and Greece.”
“What good will they do us there, even if I could assemble troops now to fulfill such an order.” Halder was clearly frustrated with this.
“We will invoke our treaty rights with Turkey again. I have had the Todt organizations working on those antiquated rail lines for over a year now, and we can move those troops through Turkey.”
Halder’s eyes widened with the realization of what Hitler was now proposing. “Don’t tell me you have resurrected this old notion of taking Egypt from the north. We already tried that, and you saw the difficulties involved, and the outcome as well.”
“That was then,” said Hitler. “Admittedly, we were too hasty earlier, and ill-prepared. Now we have better options. Look here.” He pointed at the map. “We can now rely on several good rail lines through turkey, and I will order additional motor transport troops to assist. The Army of the Orient will move quickly, so as not to overly frighten the Turks. We will slip in through the front door, and through their living room before they even know we were there. After that, it will just be supply trains and the occasional reinforcement. Our troops will assemble at Adana, then cross quickly into northern Syria. Raeder’s new German Black Sea Fleet will destroy the Russian fleet, and this will also clear the way for direct landings on the coast of Georgia. From there it is only a hop, skip, and jump into Northern Iran. Isn’t that where that massive oil field is sited?
“What? You mean Baba Gugur? No, my Führer. It is here, in Northern Iraq, near the city of Kirkuk.”
“All the better. We will take that, along with Baku, and then we will push all the way through Iraq to the Persian Gulf and take the British oil concerns there as well. This way, an invasion of Iran may not be necessary. In fact, I believe they will join us when they see us come in such force.”