He raised his field glasses, surveying the dry terrain to the east and west. The long thin road led due south from Aleppo, where the bulk of the division was cleaning up the last pockets of local resistance and getting ready to form regimental shock columns to begin Operation Phoenix.
The Brandenburg Division was now a large Motorized Division with a massive structure. While the typical German Motorized Infantry Division would consist of two Motorized Regiments, this division had four, part of the restructuring at Volgograd where it gave up its armor and converted to an infantry formation for the street fighting. When it did so, it increased in size dramatically with the infantry components, and now, as a special addition for this operation, it had a fifth regiment attached, the Lehr Regiment Brandenburg, which was a fast moving scouting unit for general reconnaissance and intelligence gathering. Many of the elite commandos that had been the root of the division long ago were assigned to that unit, and Gruber operated closely with them now.
The Lehr Regiment had the Abwehr Stamm Battalion, a special unit charged with interfacing with the local tribes in this region, recruiting and gathering intelligence. Then there were two Legionärs Battalions, their ranks filled with former members of the Vichy French Foreign Legion that had remained loyal to Germany after the debacle the British inflicted on their cause in Syria with Operation Scimitar. All these men had specialized skills, some Kommandos, others language specialists, mountaineers, and some with para jump training.
When fully assembled, the division had more than twice the strength of two German Motorized Divisions, including one battalion of Panzerjaegers that had mobile 88s, six Nashorns, and twelve of the latest model Panther tanks that came off the production lines. Hitler had lavished the pick of all the best equipment on these elite troops, and they would be his spearhead leading the attack east towards Iraq, and the distant allure of all those oil fields.
The man in charge of the Division was General Beckerman, a Zombie if professor Dorland would have ever tried to look him up. Something in the long chain of causality between 1908 and 1943 had twisted to give birth to the man, though he had never been born in the real history. Zombie or not, Beckermann was well suited to the task. He had come up through the ranks of the Brandenburg Kommandos, conducting raids all over Persia in 1941, and he had also spent the last year of the war in Russia, in some of the most intense combat on the front. He was a fighter, but also a master of the art of maneuver, and he would get on very well with Army Commander Heinz Guderian.
I am told the General is riding with 3rd Panzer Division, he thought. They were pretty worn down with all the fighting Model put them through, but lo and behold, we find all new equipment waiting for us at Odessa, not to mention those four big Zeppelins hovering over the city. It is hard to believe that they will be part of our mission here, as they seem such a throwback to the last war. Yet they may be useful in a reconnaissance role, and for delivery of needed supplies and ammunition to forward units.
I intend to be one of those units, the tip of the spear. There is a lot of ground out here, plenty of room to maneuver, though very few good roads. So I may have to do a little cross country running. We’re going to take the division east to Raqqah, and then follow the line of the Euphrates River south. That’s a distance of nearly 300 miles to the Iraqi border, and then another 200 miles to Baghdad if we take that route. Who knows, General Beckermann may take us further east. I am told the Führer wants Mosul, and Kirkuk as well. Yes, the Führer wants all that oil, but what will he do if he ever gets his hands on it?
The British have crisscrossed this desert with pipelines, but they end at Tripoli and Haifa. I don’t think our ships will be making regular calls on those ports, so these pipelines will be of limited use. I studied the map well last night. The northern line runs from Haditha on the Euphrates through the central town of Palmyra. I think we must have that. If we can use those pipelines to pump the oil that far, then moving it north to Aleppo shouldn’t be all that difficult, and from there it goes by rail through Ankara and Istanbul and right into Bulgaria for distribution to the Reich. That’s what this is really all about—the oil.
First things first…. I need to get south and scout out this road and rail line to Hamah. 10th Motorized and 3rd Panzer will be to the west on the main road. Once we take that, then Homs is the next objective in the south, and Palmyra is about 90 miles due east of that. I want to be there in a week.
Gruber leaned forward and rapped his gloved hand on the armor of his 321-8, signaling the driver to move on. We caught them completely by surprise, he thought, but now they damn well know we are here. It remains to be seen what they can try to do to stop us here, but if Rommel’s experience is any guide, the British will be tenacious fighters.
His column moved out, and not five kilometers further down the road there came the pop of small mortar fire. Most likely a delaying force, he thought. And reached for his radio handset to report the blocking force and bring up his armored cars.
Chapter 14
The British had indeed been taken by surprise. Bletchley Park picked up the movements of the Brandenburg Division as far as Odessa, and took particular interest in the reports that came in on the Zeppelin attack on Novorossiysk. When the Germans stormed the Crimea, the Soviets fought like hellcats against Volkov’s troops to take that city and its port. They needed a haven for their Black Sea Fleet, and that was the only good port that still remained under Soviet control.
“Damn irregular,” said Alan Turing to Peter Twinn as they were looking over the intelligence intercepts. “The Russians tell us they were attacked by some kind of rocket propelled bombs, and they said they were very accurate.”
“I don’t see why they should be at all surprised,” said Twinn. “After all, they invented the damn things.”
“Indeed,” said Turing. “But now the Germans seem to have them. I think we’d better have a look at the material we gathered on this facility at Peenemünde. That may have something to do with the German R&D on these weapons.”
“Say, where’s that Russian ship that was all chummy with Admiral Tovey?” asked Twinn.
“In the Pacific,” said Turing.
“Drat. We might ask them about that facility. It seems they’ve been a fairly reliable source of good intelligence in the past.”
Twinn was “in the know” concerning the Russian ship and crew, and he was suggesting that they could save them a good deal of time by simply spilling the beans about Peenemünde. Fedorov had been reluctant to say too much, knowing he had to let the men of this era find their way forward, groping like blind men in the dark. He was the man with the flashlight, but there were others, equally bright and capable, and men like Turing and Twinn were perfect examples.
A key figure at Bletchley Park, Alan Turing had been aware of the real nature of Kirov for a good long time. This man was not quite the same one who had first gone to the Admiralty, and found a sympathetic ear with Admiral Tovey. That man had been instrumental in solving the riddle of how Kirov must have moved in time, for it had vanished off St. Helena one day, and was then seen off the coast of Australia 24 hours later, a distance impossible to traverse through space alone, unless the ship could fly. Kirov could not fly, but it suddenly seemed to Turing that it could do something even more amazing—it could move in time.