“I would,” said Kinlan. “That will force us to invest it, and we’re already short on Infantry.”
“Yet once we get the RAF forward, and west of Derna, we can harass all supply deliveries to that port.”
“Don’t forget,” Kinlan cautioned. “There are two good airfields at Benghazi, and my bet is that they’ll be crawling with German BF-109s.”
“It will be Monty’s problem,” said O’Connor, dismissing the matter and chafing to get moving again. “What I want to do is take both armored divisions and get them moving west by mid-day.”
“Why the hurry? All you’ll be doing is extending your present supply lines by another 200 miles. Look, when you get to the other side of this desert, you won’t be looking at Italians as you found them at Beda Fomm. That’s Rommel out there, and I’m not at all convinced that we’ve beaten him here. You plan on attacking him at the gulf of Sirte? That’s the worst damn ground in North Africa, and by the time you get there, he’ll be dug in deep. They already have prepared positions there.”
“Then why not mass everything and just bull our way through,” said O’Connor. “We can make a phalanx of armor, with your boys right up front, just as we discussed.”
“Yes, we could, but there’s a question of ammunition. We expended a good deal in breaking that armored attack at Hill 498. It hurt both panzer regiments we were facing, but now we have to be a little particular about how we use what’s left.”
“How bad is it?”
“We’ve still got at least one more good fight in hand, perhaps two if we choose our targets well. The artillery will get resupplied with useable rounds from your own stores, but not our tanks and APCs. Our engineers are working back in the UK to see about trying to develop replacement rounds, but even if they do, they won’t be anywhere near as effective as the rounds we still have. There are materials in that ammunition that you simply can’t get your hands on. In fact, you won’t have them for many years.”
“So you’re telling me we have to pick our fights more carefully now, and our own boys will just have to put their shoulders to the wheel.”
“If you want my brigade up front—yes. Consider that you’ll also need at least two or three divisions to properly invest Benghazi. That leaves us with only the 50th Northumbrian and the 22nd Guards to support your armor if we attempt to move into Tripolitania. Rommel won’t put his panzers in the shop window at Mersa Brega. He’ll keep them well back, and his infantry divisions were largely unscathed in this attack. We’d better think this one over.”
O’Connor shrugged. He had the bit between his teeth and he wanted to run, but after two days of hard fighting, his troops would need rest, fuel, supplies, tank replacements. Kinlan was correct. All he would find at the end of another 200 mile run across the desert would be an intransigent enemy in good positions for a stolid defense. They would need the infantry to sweep and secure the Jebel country, re-occupy all the airfields, and then they had to move their own planes forward, and relocate all the artillery, all the forward supply depots. Wavell had promised him another infantry division, the 51st, but it was still en-route.
“I suppose we should sit down with Monty and Wavell and sort this all out,” he said. “But I’ll still want to pony up a strong brigade to shepherd Rommel west. It can act as a screening force as the infantry closes in on Benghazi.”
“I’d agree with that,” said Kinlan, giving O’Connor a sympathetic look. “General, I know how you feel. The job isn’t finished and you want to get after it. But this was a victory here, even if we haven’t forced Rommel to fall back on Tripoli yet. Give it time, we’ll probably be ready to have a go at him again by May. Until then, count your feathers. You’ll soon secure a good many airfields up north, and the RAF is getting much stronger here now. That will matter. Trust me. You win that air duel over Benghazi, and then the Italians will just have to sit there and wither on the vine. We could afford to leave men in Tobruk when Rommel first bypassed that port, but only because the Royal Navy commanded the sea, and the Luftwaffe wasn’t really well established here at that time.”
O’Connor looked at him. “Funny to think you know how this all turns out, don’t you.”
“I know how it all turned out once upon a time,” said Kinlan. “I wasn’t here for that, but neither were you. So the fact that we are here means the book we’re writing now will be quite different. Let’s just count our blessings, and see to the road ahead.”
It was going to be a long road indeed, for Rommel as he looked over his shoulder, quietly picking his ground and planning his lines of defense, and for the British as they struggled to muster the resources to continue pushing him. The next few months would also see a lull in the fighting in Russia, and both weary armies counted their dead, and the Soviets dug in on the new front line won by their stunning offensive. Guderian returned to Berlin to look over production of more new tanks for the battered panzer divisions. Manstein stopped the Russian advance south of Kursk, and then waited for Halder to find him more infantry so he could pull the SS Panzer Korps off the line and get ready for his next big offensive.
There would be some discussion as to how best to proceed, with Halder arguing the bulge in the line near Kursk should be the first German operation after the ground firmed up, and Manstein still casting an eager eye towards Volgograd. That issue would soon be taken to Hitler for a decision, and the Führer would now begin to reset his hopes for a victory in Russia as these operations were planned and debated at OKW. All the Generals were so busy thinking and planning, so caught up in the immediacy of what they were doing, that they failed to perceive what had actually happened, failed to clearly see that the war had reached a decided turning point, and the Allies were finally getting up off the mat and steeling themselves to come out fighting with the next bell.
Yet Kinlan’s remark to O’Connor would prove to be very true. It was all going to be very different now, though some things would still ring true to the history he and Fedorov knew. Half a world away, George C. Marshall was looking over a long list of nearly 400 senior officers in the Army, all arranged in order of seniority. They were all candidates for the position of Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in the west, which he wanted for an American General, in spite of the fact that Britain had carried the burden of the war there for years. His finger would settle on name number 367, a man named Dwight Eisenhower, and he sent him east across the Atlantic to the British forward outpost in the Azores to carry on with the planning for the first major counteroffensive by the unified Allied forces in the European Theater—Operation Gymnast.
The plan would involve the first daring leap by a combined Allied seaborne force, and its principal target would be Casablanca. That port was the only facility deemed as both vulnerable to Allied attack and also suitable as a base from which subsequent operations would be conducted. In the Allied planners mind, its capture would effectively cut the naval and air supply links the Germans were now struggling to build to the Canary Islands, rendering that outpost vulnerable to counterattack if the Germans did not withdraw of their own accord.
As all these plans and General slowly turned in the gyre of war, a man walked slowly down the cold stone corridor, deep underground at a very secret installation on the Baltic coast of Germany, about 112 miles due north of Berlin. He came to a sturdy metal door, where a pair of guards snapped to attention, one saluting as the man handed off his papers. After a cursory inspection, the guard nodded, and slowly reached for the lever that would open the heavy doors.