Reeves hit the 1st Company of I 25th Panzer, which had 12 VK-55 Lions, three of the new bigger versions, the VK-76, 21 Leopards medium tanks and 9 of the speedy Lynx Pz II recon tanks. The Challengers opened fire, knocking out two Lions and three Leopards, which forced the Germans to fall back and regroup. There were two more companies, equally configured, and they were continuing to flank the position to the right. Then the Germans organized another tank rush with 1st and 2nd Companies, and Reeves was all that stood in their way. Behind them the Germans, II Battalion of 6th Panzergrenadier was coming up in support.
Rommel had been on the scene, racing in his staff car from one unit of the 7th Panzer to another. He pulled together any scattered unit he found, a few flack guns on halftracks, two towed AT guns, a company of motorcycle troops. Building small kampfgruppes like this, he sent them east and north, and battalion by battalion, he had directed the masterful sweep of the 7th Panzer Division in that envelopment. He had reached Al Hunjah just a few hours after he said he would, a testament to the amazing skill he possessed, the ability to see ahead in a battle like a good chess player, judge the terrain, and know what his units could do, where they could go, and how fast. Now he wanted that fuel depot.
46th RTR brushed the recon company it encountered aside and was now assembling just northeast of Popski’s hill. 8th RTR was 2 kilometers to the northwest, moving towards the depot, and 50th RTR was still on the road, another 5 kilometers west near Sidi Azzab. The 4th Indian had been slowly extricating itself from the lines of 15th Panzer Division, falling back north again. Reeves had stopped one company of German tanks, and was hotly engaged by the reinforcing battalion arriving.
The tanks we can handle, he thought. Our Challengers can pick them off one by one if they persist, though I’m down to four scimitars now, and the three Warriors. His own Dragon-90 had taken a glancing blow from a lighter gun, most likely from one of the German Leopards, which still had the 50mm gun. It failed to penetrate at the angle it hit, and Cobb saw the enemy tank, pivoting and blasting it with that 90mm gun. The arrival of 8th RTR was a welcome sight, and when it engaged, he decided to pull his Squadron out, shifting northeast to an ancient cemetery site where the road crossed a wadi bed. When he arrived he could see the Army transport pool truck reserve heading north.
O’Connor now had a most difficult decision to make. The Germans had reached the depot, overrunning the stores and barrels of fuel stockpiled there with two companies of tanks. They now had the bulk of the entire 25th Panzer Regiment on the scene, reinforced by two Panzergrenadier battalions and two battalions from the recon force, which were already bypassing the site, speeding east past hill 430 towards Nofilia some 26 kilometers on. The only thing that could try and stop them was the RAF. The 21st Indian Brigade was still dueling with elements of Sonderverband 288 near Alam al Hunjah, very near the place where Rommel was at that moment. O’Connor ordered the Brigade to withdraw towards Nofilia the way it had come.
As for the rest of his 8th Army, it was clear to O’Connor that he was not going to beat Rommel that day, nor was he going to break the defensive front his nemesis had established here. On the coast, the 51st had broken through the line of the wadi, but then up came the Italian Giovanti Fascisti Brigade, just in time to stop them. Called “Mussolini’s Boys” by the Germans, the Young Fascist unit was fanatical and very stubborn when it went into combat. It was an odd moment, with an Italian unit coming to the rescue of the German 164th Division, and they were enough to hold the Via Balbia closed to further British advance. 50th Northumberland could not break the well-fortified lines of the 90th Light, and so everywhere, the British were on defense.
O’Connor turned to a staffer. “We’ve lost the forward dump, and now the stocks at Nofilia are exposed. Send word to the 1st South African Division at Agedabia. I want then to move west into the bottleneck at once. All units west of Wadi Harawah will disengage and return to their starting positions. This battle is over—unless Rommel persists on this flank. I can’t imagine he can push much farther east, but I’ve been wrong before. I want all of Tenth Corps to retire through Bir Qarinah. We’ll just have to pull ourselves together and try again another time.”
Tobruk gone, and now this, he thought heavily. The whole army is out here, and deflating like a great balloon. If I have to fall back, that’s exactly what it would be like, getting all the air out of that bloody balloon. I’ve a single good road passing through the bottleneck, and the whole area is just four kilometers wide. On the other side, we can’t be bothered. Rommel simply cannot push through the mass of this army as long as I still hold that defile. But something tells me he has no intention of ever trying. No. He’s forsaken Cyrenaica for good now, and while it looked like he was giving us half of Tripolitania with his withdrawal, he snookered me good. He was just luring me out into good ground for a fight. Yes, he can’t fight on the ropes, so he wanted to dance in the middle of the ring again, a weary old champion looking for one last victory. Well, he’s got one now. But we aren’t beaten yet. We’ll fall back, consolidate, hold the bottleneck in tight if we have to. Then it’s simply a matter of replacing our losses before we try again.
That evening he would learn that 2 battalions of 22nd Armored Brigade had been cut off and destroyed, almost to a man. War was hell.
Chapter 24
As night fell, O’Connor realized that any further retreat by the Army as a whole would likely end up in a complete mess. Units would get lost, intermingled, equipment would be abandoned, and worse, morale would ooze out of the Army like air from that balloon. So he issued a stand fast order to all the infantry divisions. They were to consolidate behind a defensive front, begin moving their artillery and local stores, but would make no retreat that night. He did not think the German infantry divisions could threaten or move them in any case. The infantry when well deployed on defense was a sturdy shield.
For his shattered sword, the armored force, he knew that he needed to keep moving. Behind Ulyam ar Rimith, there was a track that ran due east for a little over 20 kilometers. It would parallel the road the German recon units had taken to Nofilia, and so that was where he wanted his armor. He sent Popski on ahead that night, telling him to report in hourly as to the condition of the track, and any enemy movement that might be attempting to cut that route. Then he assembled his Brigadiers and got them all on the same page, telling them what he wanted them to do.
“Nofilia,” he said. “We’ve lost the fuel at Rimith, but there’s a good deal more at Nofilia. Rommel’s headed that way, but he has a long flank to watch, and it gets longer with each mile he moves east. We’ve got the inside track, and so we move east with him, right along this road. It passes the hill at Ras at Tarqui, then crosses the highland here at Ras Kubar. At that point, the Via Balbia is just seven or eight klicks north, and Nofilia no more than fifteen klicks east. We need that ground. We’ve got to block any move by the Germans to the north and secure the depot at Nofilia. Gentlemen, how are your brigades looking after this fight?”