Beckermann expected the British to put up a fight there, and he had planned to send Gruber’s Recon Battalion, and the entire 1st Regiment of the Brandenburgers to plow right on through. At the same time, he would order Konen’s 2nd Regiment to pass north of the Euphrates in a wide enveloping maneuver, the sort of which had so unsettled the Indian divisions earlier. They simply could not react quickly enough to run with the fast moving hit and move tactics of the Brandenburgers, soon finding themselves bypassed, cut off, and in full retreat. Konen moved quickly, and he already had his artillery battalion set up well north of the airfield, the first ranging salvos starting to fall there.
The Second Battle for Habbaniyah was now underway, only this time there would be no helicopters with mini-guns, no Argonauts in Talos assault suits and the Black Death led by the intrepid Sergeant Troyak. This time it was men of equal caliber, perhaps not as well armed or possessed of that modern technology, but arguably among the finest fighting infantry in the world.
That same hour, Volkov’s troops came done from the high mountain passes east of Kirkuk and surrounded a Kurdish Levy posted on the road north of the city. At the same time, the Iranian Army crossed the border at three locations, two divisions moving from the Kermanshah Sector, another from Khorramabad, and two other near Al Amarah. For them it was nothing more than a land grab, territories promised to them by the Reich if they would agree to support the German invasion. They were also promised handsome payment for their oil, which would be wrenched from the greedy hands of the British Petroleum Company, and made theirs to sell as they pleased.
In the south, there was fighting on the lower Tigris at a refinery on that river between Abadan and Basra. The Iranian 1st Division was moving up from Abadan toward the prize facilities just northwest of Basra, but they were going to meet more than they bargained for. The British 9th Armored moved from Basra north of the river, then swung over and came down on the Iranians like a hammer. 6th Infantry Brigade was right behind it, and the British intended to smash this enemy force and push right on to Abadan.
Up country, Brigadier Kingstone had replenished from stores and hidden ammo caches on the border with Arabia, and he was leading Kingforce up through Karbala to Alexandria. Behind him, stretched out in a long column for over 40 miles, were the last two battalions of the Free French, followed by the 10th Indian Division. They had all been forced to move south of the mass of Lake Razzazah, and so now they would be approaching Baghdad from the south, a much welcome reinforcement.
At Habbaniyah, the British were forced to quickly abandon the field, seven Maryland bombers and a few Spitfires blasted by that German artillery. Only four Spits got out, speeding away to Rasheed airfield, where the RAF had converted the old racecourse east of the city to a landing field. Flanked to the north, the 19th Indian Brigade fell back towards Fallujah, demolishing any bridge after they crossed. Their mission had been to force a delay upon the enemy, and now they fell back to the main line of resistance behind Fallujah.
As this was going on, Glubb Pasha had led his Arab Legion over a narrow isthmus between Habbaniyah Lake and the marshlands to the south. The Brandenburg Kommandos had come down along the northern edge of that lake, and this put the two sides into direct confrontation, a wild scene where the Arabs, most mounted on horses, were charging wildly over the scrubby desert, shooting from the hip with rifles and flashing their long cruel scimitars. They were met by the elite Kommandos in desert Cammo, crouching low and firing with submachine guns from the wadis and other depressions where they went to ground. It had the air of a wild west Indian attack, with the German Kommando company outnumbered three to one.
That did not last long, for other battalions of Brandenburgers were racing up on trucks, scout cars in the van with machineguns barking out a warning. Gruber’s armored cars came up, and that took the fire our of Glubb’s Arabs. That wild action around Fallujah concluded the day, largely a preliminary sounding out of the battle to come. The Brandenburgers had flowed down the road from Ramadi like a steel river, and met the berm thrown up by the 8th British Indian Division under General Russel.
The General had his division deployed in a wide arc northwest of Baghdad, with Brigadier Ford’s 19th Brigade at Fallujah, Brigadier Purves 21st Brigade on their right along a canal flowing to the Tigris to the east, and Brigadier Jenkins had his 17th Brigade way off to the north of Baghdad at Al Taji, the city Schneider’s 4th Panzer was tasked with taking.
That division was only now arriving in the wake of the Brandenburgers, the halftracks, trucks and tanks rolling past Habbaniyah airfield, north of the river. At the same time, Brigadier Kingstone’s column was arriving at the edge of the main Baghdad airport right at dusk. His AEC-III armored cars were a welcome sight to the infantry of 6th Indian Division posted there. He wanted to get up to see Jumbo Wilson that night at the British Embassy in the heart of the city. Behind him the weary 10th Indian followed in column of march, but as all these forces converged on Baghdad, the defensive prospects for the city seemed much brighter.
Chapter 14
“Joe… Good to see you, but you’re looking a little worn from the road.” Jumbo Wilson stood to shake hands with Kingstone, knowing him well.
“Worn isn’t half a word for it,” said Kingstone. “General, I hope you’re ready for a fight here. Jerry ran circles around us on the Euphrates. I’ve never seen troops move like that. Damn good motorized infantry, and we’ll need to keep our wits about us.”
“Our infantry will do better here at Baghdad,” said Wilson. “Not that you didn’t pull your load. They caught us napping, and we paid for it. Now it’s time to get back on our feet.”
“What’s the situation up north?” Kingstone had heard no news at all. In fact, he didn’t even know if Briggs and 5th Indian had safely arrived in Iraq.
“5th Indian made it to Kirkuk, and they’re digging in for the long haul. Jerry brought in another infantry division on the main rail from Mosul—they’ve got that place now. And they’re pushing patrols over to Arbil as well. I ordered the Levy battalion there to move to Kirkuk.”
“Briggs did his damnedest to link up with us earlier, but Jerry got right between us. As for Blaxland… You might want to keep a firm rein on that one. Word is that he was sitting down to tea at the T1 Station when Jerry came for the airfield.”
“I see…” Wilson said nothing more. He could see that Kingstone was a bit agitated, and certainly worn out from two weeks fighting and 300 miles on the road. The Brigadier had more he wanted to say.
“General, you can’t try to hold a cohesive front with this lot. They’ll pick one spot on the line and punch right through. Then they go like bats out of hell on the other side. An don’t count on them hitting you from this side of the Tigris. They’ll look for a good crossing point and try to flank the city from the north. This isn’t just any division we’re up against here. It’s the bloody Brandenburgers, and we’ve identified at least five separate motorized regiments in this lot.”
“Five regiments?”
“That’s a fact. So they can hit your line with full division strength and still have two regiments to get round either flank. General, if they do get through your lines, you mustn’t waste a moment getting the men back here—to the city. We can make them pay for their lodging if they fight us here. And another thing—they’ll fight night and day; right round the clock, and by God, they want to win. So you can’t spread out along an extended front. That’s just an invitation to disaster with this bunch at our throats. Concentrate your brigades on key objectives. If it means we fight out of the corner, so be it. Better there than in the center of the ring. This bunch hits harder than Max Schmeling, so look to your ribs when he closes to attack.”