Even as those two men spoke, Lieutenant Gruber had that business right in front of him, a roadblock at the tiny hamlet of Abu Ad Duhur, about 40 kilometers south of Aleppo. The road he took south had followed the rail line to the larger cities of Hamah and Homs. He had moved very quickly, down through Saybiyah and Rassef, and now he ordered up the Armored Car Company to see if they might blow right on through this enemy position. As soon as they moved, a flight of three British Hurricanes appeared overhead, and they came swooping down to attack.
It was a strafing run, their machine guns blazing away and churning up a lot of dust at the head of the column. Moments later Gruber would learn they had taken their first casualties, a SdkFz 221 light armored car that was shot up so bad that it had to be pushed off the road. Just outside the hamlet, lying low in a thicket at the edge of a small cultivated area, a company of the Frontier Horse were ready to open fire. They didn’t have much to hurt those armored cars, but the few 2” mortars they had were firing for all they were worth.
Gruber studied them briefly, peering through his field glasses. His troops had stood like a stone wall in the face of massed Soviet attacks that would send three or four divisions against the line at one time, supported by droves of armor. He shook his head, a sneer on his lips, then looked at his map.
“Sergeant!” he said over his shoulder.
“Sir?”
“Get back and tell Leutnant Kramer to take his motorcycle company east five kilometers, then south to secure a small airstrip. We’ll be needing that soon. The motorized company can come right on up.”
The SkdFz Schwerer Panzerspähwagen was the latest of the production lines in that category, a fast eight wheeled armored car with a 20mm quick firing main gun. It could theoretically put out 280 rounds per minute, as it was based on the 20mm flak gun, though it was seldom ever put to that test. The suppressive quality of that stinging fire was immediate, and the guns quickly silenced those mortar teams. Gruber could see his column pushing through with no difficulty, and he whistled to wave up his infantry. An hour later he learned his motorcycle company had secured the small air strip, and then pushed on south another 20 kilometers to Abu Darikah.
As they continued south through the dry stony country, the three companies fanned out, looking for any further sign of organized enemy resistance, but finding the land barren and empty. Yet the sky about that ground was not empty, and it was immediately clear to Gruber that the enemy was going to have air support in this battle. The Germans had several squadrons of Me-109s up, but only 86 fighters between them, and they were scarcely seen. What was seen were the Hurricanes, Kittyhawks and even a few squadrons of Spitfires. Coningham had over 200 fighters up that day, and he was clearly taking out his frustrations with a ruthless hold on the skies over this battlefield.
That will make a difference, thought Gruber. The Luftwaffe once seemed invincible, but not any longer. Here in the West, Goring is spread very thin, and a lot of our fighters went to Luftflotte II and Fliegerkorps X for the Crete operation. Well, we will have to make do with what we have.
He waited astride the rail line south, watching the trucks of 1st Brandenburg Motorized Regiment moving past him now, the long column of vehicles off to the east. There were thin trails of smoke in their wake, like candles that had been blown out, the smoke curling up into the windless sky. That was where the enemy planes had struck, but thus far, they were making very swift progress south nonetheless.
Far to the east, the Brandenburg Lehr Regiment under Obersturmfuhrer Konrad was also racing along the main road that led from Aleppo to Ar Raqqah on the upper Euphrates. That was the town that Fedorov, Troyak and the Russian Marines had fought for, with the help of the Argonauts. There they had foiled the efforts of the German Paratroopers with their fast moving helicopters, and the withering support fire that could put out. They met no opposition until they reached the town of Meskene after a blistering 80 kilometer road march. The frontier horse were there too, but they met with the same sad fate that Gruber had dealt out further west.
Konrad’s group had three special Kommando units with them, and one was sent to secure the bridge over the Euphrates at Kesfra, while the other two occupied two old abandoned French air strips along the main highway at El Aboud and Jirah. This regiment was acting like Gruber’s force, clearing the way ahead, securing the line of communications and probing towards Ar Raqqah. It would be followed by Motorized Regiments III and IV under Duren and Langen, the main force intended for the battle they expected at the city.
Luftwaffe reconnaissance had identified a strong enemy presence there at Ar Raqqah. It was a major bridge over the Euphrates leading north to the Turkish frontier, and the British had an airfield there that Konrad was to take at his earliest opportunity.
In his way, would be Brigadier Legentilhomme and his Free French Division, a force that was really about the size of a single brigade. It had one battalion of Foreign Legionnaires, four more Senegalese Marche Battalions, a mechanized company of five old armored cars, and 12 antiquated Char H-39 French tanks. The area was seen as such a backwater region that it had never been built up with better equipment. Two batteries of 75mm guns rounded it off, with one battalion of Marine Fusiliers posted on the two main bridges. These six odd battalions were about to be visited by three regiments of the Brandenburgers.
Wavell was going to have a long day, and a very sleepless night. The only thing that looked promising was Coningham’s control of the air. On the ground, the Germans had pushed boldly over the Turkish Frontier and were racing south an east, with a preponderance of their infantry forces near the coast. He had the two British infantry divisions of General Edward Quinan’s 10th Army. Anderson’s III Corps was their operational HQ, with 5th Division deployed from the coast at the port of Baniyas and covering a 100 Kilometer front east to screen the city of Hamah. The 56th Division was centered on Palmyra further south and covering a similar front that included postings at the T3 and T4 pumping stations for the Tripoli Pipeline. That was vital infrastructure, and it was soon to become a battleground.
Between The populous city of Homs and that T4 Pumping station, there was a 90 kilometer gap that was only lightly patrolled by the 56th Division Recon battalion. If the enemy had the force to engage the 5th Division, they could bypass Hamah to the east, and flow right into that gap. It had to be filled, and by troops that had some ability to contest the ground in what might soon become a fast battle of maneuver.
The only force he had for that was the Indian 31st Armored Division, a relatively inexperienced unit, though the troops were resolute and loyal. That force was at Damascus, and he could move it swiftly north by rail to Homs. Then he would have to move something into Damascus, for that major city could not be left without a standing garrison.
Most of the armor had been east of Damascus, running about on drills as they trained in their new equipment, but he would get the recon battalion, two motorized Infantry battalions, an artillery battalion and the 32nd Madras Engineers moving north on the trains right away. When word came down that the unit was going into battle, the men were quite excited.
“Anand!” came the cry of a young sapper. He was just a Sepoy, or a Private of engineers, looking for his Platoon Halvidar, the Sergeant with a very long name—Anandsubramanian. Anand meant happiness, bliss or joy, a common given name in India. The surname Subramanian hailed from Southern India, a combination of two Sanskrit/Tamil words that might be loosely translated as “worthy jewel.” An amiable man, the Sergeant was often called by his first name by the men he knew best, Anand.