Grand Alliance (Kirov Series) (24 page)

He got on his Sabre channel and
passed the word. “Tally Ho, gentlemen. We’re leading in the charge. Follow me!”

The deep engine growled and the
heavy tracks lurched the tank forward. They came out of the defile and onto the
stony plain, gathering speed like a storm of steel. Thermals were hot, picking
up enemy positions ahead, and he could hear his men tracking, marking targets,
and firing. In the heat of battle he had to remind himself of one last order
from Kinlan’s briefing. They had to watch their ammunition count very
carefully. He got on the radio to remind his tankers of just that.

“Be stingy with main gun fire,
boys. Use it only if you must. We’ve got Warriors right behind us.”

Off in the distance the Germans
infantry of the 5th Machinegun Battalion could see and hear the awful thunder
of those fifteen Challengers on attack. The dust rose, still red in the ruddy
dawn, and something was coming at them from another world, a bolt from the blue,
a power that no man among them could ever redress in this first mad hour. The
tanks would crash into the German line like elephants treading down ant hills.
The Germans watched them come, their machine guns and 37mm AT guns firing
furiously, but to no avail.

And so it began…

Chapter 20

The
shock of the attack
was complete. Even though the Germans were a well trained and disciplined
force, they had no answer for the storm that came out of the blood red morning
that day. The 88s had been positioned on and around a hill feature designated 198
on Bowers’ map. It lay to the left of the thin track that ran north, with the
wadi on the left. The first three Challengers to be engaged had taken out the
AT guns with accurate return fire, and three guns had managed to retire behind
the hill heading north, their crews shaken to see their rounds striking the
enemy tanks, but unable to harm them in any way. The best German defense
against tanks had been defeated almost before it could acquire a target!

As the tanks led the charge onto
the more open ground, the infantry of the 5th and 8th Machinegun Battalions
quickly called for supporting artillery fire, as Streich had planned. Streich
was dead, but his orders were still alive. The gritty Sergeants on the line radioed
back for artillery fire, and the rounds came in soon after. Yet they were
immediately answered by lethal counter battery fire. Radars were watching and
recording the arc and fall of the incoming shells, and computers were
calculating the position of the guns for the AS-90s. Six guns went into burst
mode and quickly put 6 rounds each on the German gun positions—36 heavy 155mm
rounds that wreaked havoc. The hasty defense had not given the Germans time to
dig their guns in. Realizing what had happened, the only defense was to move
the artillery or be destroyed, and by the time they reached a new location the
attack would be over.

The Challengers led the way, followed
closely by the Warriors with their new 40mm Bofors guns putting deadly accurate
fire on the German infantry positions. They were ideal for taking out small AT
and infantry guns, and behind them the company self-propelled mortars were
laying down good fire with their 81mm tubes. Then they got the first surprise
of the morning with the sudden appearance of enemy tanks.

“Thermals
right!” A gunner in the leading three Challengers on that flank called the
warning. “Tanks! Tanks!”

“Gunner
track right. Engage!” The Challengers saw the Panzers coming in at just over
2000 meters, and their big turrets rotated, guns firing as the tanks moved.
That was a feat the Germans could not duplicate, as they needed to stop to get
a stable firing solution on a target, though that really didn’t matter.

* * *

Hans
Kummel had been waiting with his company of Panzer IIIGs
near an old cairn site, and when the action began he led his tanks out through
a low depression, intending to move south and then turn west to take the advancing
British on the flank. He thought he might get at the enemy artillery, but had
no idea it was almost twenty kilometers to the south. Now his tanks emerged
from the purple shadows of the higher ground behind him, charging in to engage,
but what he saw was not British 25 pounders, but tanks!

 Kummel
would need to charge forward another full kilometer to get into optimal firing
range, and before his eighteen tanks had covered half that distance, the three
Challengers had put needle nosed armor piercing sabot rounds through six Panzer
IIIs. He was lucky his own tank had not been hit.

“Kruschinski!
Find cover! Look at those monsters out there! Albers!” He shouted to his gunner
now. “Can you hit them?”

Albers
loaded furiously, sweat dotting his forehead even though the morning chill was
still on the air, and the temperature inside the tanks had not reached that
awful scalding boil that they often suffered. But he knew his Company commander
well, and he could hear the desperate edge in his voice. Kruschinski had backed
up to maneuver behind a sandy hummock covered with low desert scrub, and now
Albers saw what Kummel was shouting about. A massive hulk loomed in his sights,
well lit by the rising sun, a tank unlike anything he had ever seen. He knew
the enemy armor silhouettes well, and what to expect at this range. He could distinguish
the tall, squarish shape of a Matilda easily from the lower, flatter profile of
the cruiser tanks, but this was something else.

He
looked at his range finder, thinking they were much closer than he thought. How
could it be so huge? The tank was easily twice the size of a Matilda. Then he
saw another Panzer III on his left stopping to fire, recognizing the number as
Schuber’s tank. The thin barrel of his 50mm gun spit yellow flame at the enemy,
but he watched in shock as the round simply glanced harmlessly off the enemy
turret, which now rotated ominously in their direction. The gun barrel was the
size of a tree trunk, or so it seemed. It had to be an artillery piece! No tank
gun in the world could be that size. And then it fired, blasting Schuber’s tank
to pieces with a single round.

“Back!
Back! Back!” Kummel’s strident order could barely be heard over the noise of
the explosion. He had seen all he needed to know. Now their only hope now was
to get back behind the knobby protrusion of a wind scored rock formation. The
engine strained and the Panzer III jolted, backing furiously way a just as the
massive enemy turret and gun began to rotate his way.

The Germans took heart, suddenly
seeing platoons of their own tanks charging from the shadow of a long
elevation, Hill 209 to the east. But their jubilation was short lived when they
saw one tank after another blasted apart, turrets flung wildly into the air
with the impact of devastating rounds. Just three enemy tanks had stopped the
entire German formation. The Panzers had fired bravely, but their guns did no
more damage than the 47mm guns in the Panzerjager units. Dismayed to see that
even the powerful 88s had no effect on these new British tanks, a barely
restrained panic set in.

All
down the line it was much the same. The Challengers stunned the defense,
eliminating any potential threat to the lighter skinned infantry carriers. The
Warriors stood off and used the range and firepower of their 40mm cannons to
pound the German infantry positions. Kummel survived, making the shadow of the
hillock just in time, but the 5th MG Battalion was now being decimated by these
fierce new British armored vehicles. 8th MG Battalion to the east fared little
better.

Ten
minutes later Bowers had his Challenger II up on Hill 222 where Streich had
taken up his position that fateful morning. From there he could see the enemy
retreat was now well underway. Pockets of infantry scurried back from their
holes, seeking the protection of a low escarpment on his right. The thin track
he was on headed that direction, and his digital map showed it would work its
way about four kilometers north through increasingly broken ground to a place
called Bir el Khamsa.

2nd
Sabre was on that flank mopping up the enemy tankettes that had attacked them.
That was how he saw the Panzer IIIs, and could not imagine what possessed the
enemy to dare an attack against his Challengers with vehicles that light. Then
he remembered his briefing, shaking himself to try and get the message. Those
weren’t Egyptian radicals out there this time. The evidence was plain to see
all around him now—two mangled heavy guns, a third abandoned, and men lying
dead in the rising sun, all wearing the uniforms of the German army from the
Second World War.

“Hey
Lieutenant,” said his gunner. “Just who are these guys? Those tanks we hit
looked like relics.”

Bowers
looked at him, saying nothing. “Just watch your thermals, Mister Alten. I don’t
care who they are while they’re shooting at us.”

He got
on his comm-link radio, seeing 2nd Sabre was well ahead of his position now,
rounding Hill 205 and approaching a water cairn site south of Alam Uweida on
the right. “Sabre two, any further opposition? Over.”

“Looks
like we have them on the run, Lieutenant. Shall I push on to Bir El Khamsa?”

Bowers
had been told what to expect in the briefing before the fight, but he could not
believe it. Yet now the evidence was all around him, littering the ground with
the carnage of what was once a fairly well established enemy position. He had
been told to break it, and move it, and that he did. Yet a quick check with HQ
on the situation handed him an order to stop in place and await further orders.
He remembered Kinlan’s final admonition about conserving ammo, and suspected
that it was the real reason behind that order.

I could
take my tanks right on through, he thought. But my God… what’s out there? This
whole damn thing is true! What in the mad hatter’s world has happened to us? Then
he realized that men in all his tanks, and the soldiers in the Warriors that
were now deploying to work over the ground around them for any threats, would
all have this same bemused question. Now he knew why Kinlan was stopping here.

Yes.
Easy does it, he thought. Kinlan wants to wade in gently here, and expose the
men to this madness by slow degrees. In the heat of battle you move and fight,
picking targets, firing, a thing of synapse and long hours of training and
drill. Now, here, on this blasted hill with the wreckage of war all about them,
the questions come, whispering up like the ghosts of these men laying dead
here.

He knew
that every man out there would soon be asking them, just as his gunner had—what
was going on here? Who were these men they had fought this day? What had
happened to us? He keyed his headset and confirmed his order.

“Rodger
that, Brigade. Holding in place and awaiting orders. Sabre Three standing by. Over
and out.”

* * *

The
Afrika Korps was not holding in place. The line had been smashed.
605th Heavy Flak was down to three guns now. 5th and 8th Machinegun Battalions
had retreated in the face of the enemy attack, barely making it to their
vehicle parks where the disheartened men were scrambling up onto the trucks and
hoping they still had fuel to get north. Kummel’s company came out of the
action with seven of his eighteen Panzer IIIs intact. He soon learned that the entire
battalion had been beaten up, with third company all but destroyed.

Rommel
had seen one flank of the enemy attack from his hilltop position, aghast as the
heavy armor blasted away his defense. His mind was awhirl, the shock of the
battle on him as heavily as it was on his men. He heard the frantic calls for
artillery, the resounding crash and swell of the battle, and he knew the sounds
of his division well enough. This was one he had seldom heard before. There had
been those hours, in the headlong rush across Cyrenaica, when Streich would
stop and complain about the fuel situation, or columns would be lost and immobilized
in the drifting sand, but this was something else—it sounded like a word he
would stubbornly refuse to speak aloud, even in his own mind—defeat.

He knew
his flank had been crushed, and now he had two divisions strung out for over
fifty kilometers between this place and the roads leading to Tobruk. How big
was this force that had attacked him? From all reports the men seemed to say
they had seen no more than ten or fifteen British tanks in any given place. But
what were they? He listened to the wide eyed reports of his officers and
Sergeants as he passed among them, and they all said the same thing. These were
massive, unstoppable heavy tanks, something altogether new. Yet in spite of
their size and power, they could move like gazelles, firing at the gallop, and
hitting targets with deadly precision. They had torn the German defense apart
in ten minutes. Then the smaller vehicles came, fast and furious, with a lethal
flak gun that was chopping up the infantry positions. Any time they tried to
get a heavier gun into position to engage, the long, evil barrel of those tanks
would rotate and fire, blasting it away at impossible ranges with pinpoint
accuracy.

Rommel
had heard quite enough, and through the shock and dismay he realized now that
discretion was the better part of valor. If he didn’t act quickly, his Afrika
Korps could disintegrate into a mass of confusion and disorder. Any thought he
had about pressing further east was now gone. It would be all he could do to
save his two divisions and get back to Tobruk.