“Agreed,” said Alexander. “Yet that may be their plan. Remember, this 22nd Luftland Division of theirs is air mobile. We’ve had air superiority thus far, but things are… scattered since the setback on the Euphrates. The squadrons had had to fly off to airfields in Iraq on short notice, and a lot of service crews and supply troops got left in their dust. Some of the planes hopped to Habbaniyah, but we won’t have that for very much longer. As to Northern Iraq, there’s always the added possibility that the Germans could bring in more troops through Turkey. Be aware that the rail line runs all the way through Mosul to Baghdad, so we can’t leave any stone unturned.”
“Can we get anything more from India?” asked Wilson
“I’ve put that very question to Wavell. He’s settling in over there as Viceroy, and General Slim says the Japanese have not been aggressive of late. He willing to send over the heart of his command, British 2nd Infantry Division.”
“Here, here,” said Wilson, slapping the table. “Top notch.” He had commanded that very division in 1940.
“Gentlemen,” said Alexander. “If we can pair the 2nd Infantry up with 7th and 9th Armored Brigades, by God, I think we’ve got a hammer for Iraq. To top it off, Wavell says he thinks he can get us the 7th Indian Division as well.” He smiled. “We’ll have a decent army to fight with over there in short order, but I don’t think Sir Mosley can manage it all. I need a good man, and as General Quinan here has a firm grip on 10th Army, General Wilson, it’s all yours. You are now the official commander of Paliforce. The Auk will handle administrative matters, but you’re our man in the field.”
That was a most wise decision, for while Quinan was a stickler for detail, methodical, and almost laborious in the planning he would make for each and every unit under his command, that style would be ill suited for the battle that was soon to be fought in Iraq, one of maneuver, bold thrusts, and imaginative calculated risks. Guderian was already a master of this craft. The question now was whether Jumbo Wilson could measure that man, and bring him to heel.
As Wilson nodded in acceptance of his new command, he knew he had no intention of fighting such a battle against Guderian, unless he was given no other choice. As if reading his mind, Alexander asked him how he planned to operate.
“Well now,” said Wilson. “I’m going to get everything I can to Baghdad and fight them tooth and nail for that city. I’m going to make them pay for every house and street—a nice little battle of attrition, I should think.”
Alexander smiled.
Chapter 12
Some say it was a proverbial ‘accident waiting to happen,’ and no matter how the cards of fate are shuffled, some things were meant to be. That was to be the case in this history, only the event that some would later call the ‘Stairway to Heaven’ would instead take place a month early, on the night of February 3rd. As it was in the real history, the tragedy was masked in secrecy, hidden from the public for many years after, and subject to cover stories and accounts that varied dramatically from one another.
The East End of London had been hit particularly hard over the years by German bombers. Some families still scratching out a living there could honestly say they had been bombed out of their homes at least three times. During the Blitz, millions of young children were evacuated to safer climes in the country, but many families hung on in London, picking their way through the rubble each day, and ‘tidying up’ as best they could.
The bombing had not been anywhere near as bad in 1943, as the German Luftwaffe was simply too busy elsewhere. But at times, particularly in reprisal for RAF raids on a big German city, Hitler would order a stronger raid into London. The trigger for the event this time was an RAF raid on Berlin to kick off the month of February. In reprisal, the German bombers came for London two days later, and the wail of the air raid sirens droned over the city.
Out in Victoria Park, a quiet little secret was setting up for a test against the very action that was expected that day. It was called a “Z-Battery,” which was a rack of up to 36 new 76mm anti-aircraft rockets. They weren’t very accurate, which was why they were fired as a barrage to have a better chance of hitting something. That day, the drone of enemy bombers was going to send then growling into the grey London sky, with an effect that few ever anticipated.
Peter Waller knew something was up when the radio went quiet, a sure sign of trouble whenever it happened. His job was to get over to the family “Bundle Shop,” which was the nearest little storage place that had been set aside for families to stow away their bundles of bedding. He would fetch the bundle for Liz and the girls, and then get over to the nearest Tube Station to stake out a good spot on the platform below. The others would find him there, and the family could camp out in complete safety. The Tubes had evolved to mini-underground cities in places. Some had little kitchens, hospitals, sanitary facilities, even a library for folks to find something to take their minds off the rumble of the bombs falling over head.
These underground warrens were so safe, that something of inestimable value had been crated away in one for a time, the Elgin Marbles, including the Selene Horse, which hid a secret so dark that no one then alive could hope to comprehend it. By this time, those precious artifacts had all been moved to an even safer place, or so it was believed. They had been secreted away in the guts of the battleship Rodney, for shipment to New York, but the warship never got there….
The sirens wailed, stores, restaurants and pubs began to empty, and soon streams of people were heading for the Tube. It was a common drill, and in spite of the danger, the crowds were very civil, quite orderly, and queued up to use the stairway down into the dark safe underworld beneath the city. Women and children would always get priority, for men were still gentlemen in those days, no matter what their station in life. The Tube close by Victoria Park could hold up to 5000 souls, most everyone living close enough to be using it for shelter that day.
Then it happened. Well down the stairway, an elderly lady had hold of her granddaughter’s hand, and the little girl stumbled on the stairway, not half a flight from the bottom. The grandmother stooped to her rescue, and then she fell, sending two other women into the people ahead, who also fell. A knot formed in the middle of the stairwell, and then the first sound of the bombs falling could be heard above.
There came the sound of a hissing roar, so loud that it reverberated down the long stairwell and echoed in the hollow chambers of the Tube. It was a sound that no was accustomed to ever hearing, and so it caused a noticeable push of anxiety—not a panic, but just enough of a jostling push to put unwanted pressure on that knot at the bottom of the stairs. Then, in a matter of seconds, the stairway to heaven became the stairway to hell. The push sent people down, rippling all along the stairway, and the bodies were soon piled one on top of another, with people screaming, being crushed on the stairs, unable to breathe. Some curled into fetal balls and held on, others were pressed against the walls.
300 would suffer serious injury, and of those, 173 would die, with 60 of them being the smallest and most fragile of the lot—the children. The ‘Disaster at Bethnal Green Tube Station’ had again become the single greatest wartime civilian loss of the war in the UK, eclipsing the death of 107 people when the Germans hit the Wilkinson’s Lemonade Factory in North Shields during a raid in 1941. It was the first, and lesser, of two tragedies that would befall that sector of the city that week, merely a harbinger of what was to come. When it was over, the men, tears streaking their faces, would spend half the morning carrying up the bodies and loading them on to lorries. They never forgot the ghastly purple faces of the dead, smothered and starved of air by the crush before they died.