Winter Storm (27 page)

“I
understand,” said Volsky. “Well, Admiral. I may no longer have command of my
ship to offer you consolation, but I did not come here entirely empty handed.
Our Mister Fedorov has given me a mission, and I am happy to say I will now
fulfill it. He entrusted this to me, and I was told to deliver it to you at all
cost. Here it is.”

Volsky
reached into the secret pocket, fumbling about for a moment to get hold of the
strange key, and then he proudly handed it to Admiral Tovey. “I’m told you
would be most gratified to receive this, though I have no idea what this is all
about.”

Tovey
looked at the key in his hand, realizing what it might be, yet not
understanding how Fedorov could have found it. “My Lord,” he said. “If this is
what I think it is, then I am a very rich man with this gift. I shall have to
get back in touch with Miss Fairchild and spread the good news.”

“May I
ask what that is?” said Volsky.

“I
suppose we both might ask that,” Tovey answered. “It’s not what this is that
stumps the mind, but what it might open, or lock away. Your Mister Fedorov gave
you this? How in the world did he come by it? Did he tell you as much?”

“Not a
word. He simply pressed it upon me to deliver it safely here.”

That
alone spoke volumes to Tovey. If Fedorov knew of the importance of this key,
then he had to be the same young, enterprising man he had already met. Yet
Volsky was different, unknowing, a man made new. How was this possible?

“Admiral,
I have a very great deal to share with you now, so please make yourself
comfortable, and we’ll have a long chat over tea. One thing I do know—this key
is very important, and having it in hand could make a world of difference in
the days ahead. Now then, let me tell you everything I have come to know…”

Tovey
spoke for a very long time, relating all that had happened under his watch,
their time in the Atlantic dueling with the Germans, the sortie in the Med, the
strange events in the North African desert, the arrival of Brigadier Kinlan and
his troops, and then the events of the previous May, and the appearance of that
little fleet of modern day auxiliaries.

“I’ve
sent those ships on to Alexandria, as much to get them far away from England as
anything else, and far from any questions they might raise.”

Volsky
was astounded to hear it all, just as he was when Fedorov had tried to fill his
head with stories it might have taken someone a score of books to write. When
the long briefing was finally over, Volsky looked at the translator, a wry
smile on his lips.

“Enough
there to keep you awake a good many nights,” he said with a wink.

“Indeed,”
said Tovey, “but as I’ve said, this man is completely reliable. He’s my latest
recruit—a little clan I’ve started called the Watch. That makes him a member of
a very select group.”

That
was very true, for only a handful of people knew the entirety of all these
events, and how the dots connected. And as for Tovey, the baton now passed, he
was also a member of a very select group. The Admiral was now a Keyholder.

At that
moment there came a knock on the door, and a messenger came in with a signal,
handing it to Tovey with a salute. He read it with concern obvious in his eyes,
but the light of battle kindling there at the same time.

“Well
Admiral,” he said, “it seems the Germans have grown tired of wallowing in
French ports. This is news from our Captain Patterson on
King George V
.
The
Hindenburg
has just sortied with a large battlegroup and is running
out into the Bay of Biscay. I shall have to catch a fast plane for a long bumpy
ride out to
Ark Royal.
Care to join me? I can certainly use an old naval
hand like yours at the tiller.”

Volsky
smiled.

Churchill
had had quite enough of Wavell’s sloth since the decisive
victory at Tobruk the previous May. Coming as it did at the height of the
action in the North Atlantic that drove the German fleet back to French ports,
he was elated at first, and eager to exploit the opportunity to make
significant gains in North Africa. Yet Wavell continued to argue that he needed
more and better armor, which frustrated Churchill to no end, for what more could
the man want beyond the awesome power of Brigadier Kinlan’s Heavy Brigade.

He kept
reading the latest communiqué from Wavell, shaking his head. “Reserve Force
deemed too valuable for regular use in front line operations… Reserve Force?”
Churchill looked at Alexander, a man he was considering for a new post in the
Middle East to possibly replace the recalcitrant and calcified thinking of
Wavell, or so Churchill put it to himself in his own mind. Alexander was one of
a very select few who had been brought under the umbrella, and knew the real
nature and identity of Kinlan’s Brigade.

“What
good are these tanks if we can’t use them?” said Churchill, his frustration
evident. “We stopped Rommel at Tobruk, and then let him gracefully sit on his
Gazala line and fan himself the whole summer through! Word is the Germans have
been pulling one unit after another from his force and sending them to Russia.
Now he’s down to only three or four German divisions there. I see no reason why
we cannot kick him out of his defensive laagers, and then summarily chase him
all the way to Tripoli. That would flank the German base at Malta, and give us
every opportunity to take the place back.”

“Without
question, sir,” said Alexander, “but the general thinking is that to use the
Reserve Force in an offensive role would risk expending it before our own army
has sufficient strength to stand on its own. This is why Wavell has waited for
the convoys to strengthen his armored force, and quite frankly, both Montgomery
and I concur with this strategy.”

“Yet
the Brigade is virtually unstoppable,” Churchill complained. “Why not use it as
a hammer to simply break down the door, and then withdraw it as our boys shoulder
their way into Rommel’s kitchen? Once we break that position, then he’s no other
choice but to withdraw to El Agheila, and then we simply repeat that
performance and send him packing for Tripoli.”

“Yes
sir, that is all sound thinking, but consider our own situation. Suppose he
does pull back to El Agheila. What do we pursue him with? Such a move requires
us to cross the entire base of Cyrenaica again, and that needs tanks in the
vanguard, trucks with infantry behind them, and lots of petrol to keep them
moving. It’s taken these last several months for the Army to lay in those stores.
You realize the deliveries have been slow in coming all the way around the Cape
of Good Hope, but now that I say that, don’t lose heart, Mister Prime Minister.
Wavell indicates that he’s very nearly ready to tee off with his Operation
Crusader.”

“He’s been
saying as much for weeks,” said Churchill.

“Yes,
but we’ve finally built up 1st and 32nd Armored Brigades to full strength, and
the 22nd has been added to 7th Armored Division to bring that unit up to full
strength. We’ve all of a thousand tanks available now, and things are ready to
go.”

“Excellent,”
said Churchill, “I’d fly over there again to see to the matter, but now I have
urgent business with Mister Roosevelt. So I’m leaving things to you, General
Alexander, and I’ll be very blunt about it. I want Benghazi before the end of
October, and El Agheila by mid-November. No equivocation and hand wringing. I
understand it will be O’Conner and Montgomery leading this attack?”

“Correct,
sir. Montgomery proved his worth at Tobruk. He was very stubborn there, and
should make a fine field commander. He’ll take three infantry divisions and
break in through Gazala to sweep them out of Cyrenaica. That’s XIII Corps, and O’Conner
will command XXX Corps with the two armored divisions and one motorized
infantry division in support. Wavell will coordinate the whole party from
Alexandria.”

“Well
then,” said Churchill, somewhat satisfied. “You’re to do everything necessary,
everything possible to light a fire under our Generals in the field over there,
and do it as quickly as you possibly can.”

“I
leave tomorrow morning, sir, and I will do all you request, and more. The plan
in question was originally designed to relieve Tobruk, but that was
accomplished when we stopped Rommel last May. He’s had no keen desire to sit
outside the wire and invite our attack, but he hasn’t gone far. Now that plan
has been dusted off, revised and extended to deliver the very same objectives
you mention, and with sufficient forces of our own making in hand to do so
without having to expend the Reserve Force. Oh, it will be there as before,
just in case anyone should trip on his own boot straps, but the idea is to beat
the Germans ourselves, as far as possible. And I think we can bloody well do
so.”

“I like
your spirit, General. Just make sure Wavell catches it too.”

The
plan, like all plans, had been laboriously drawn up over the long hot summer,
and meticulously prepared by both Wavell and Montgomery. After his setback at
Tobruk, Rommel fell back to prepared defensive positions that stretched from
Gazala on the coast, through Alem Hamza and down to Bir Hacheim. By stubbornly
refusing to cede control of Cyrenaica, Rommel had salvaged some measure of his
damaged pride, and satisfied Hitler that his enterprise in North Africa still
had some merit. He was holding many valuable airfields, and a concerted effort
had been made to strengthen and develop the port capacity of Benghazi in the
west. This allowed Rommel to use the good coastal road to bring up supplies
through Derna to Gazala, and he had also established a heavily fortified depot
at Mechili, with good land links down through Tengeder to Bir Hacheim.

Yet all
through the summer, he watched his army shrink as Hitler pulled one unit after
another from his ill fated operations in the Middle East. The Grossdeutschland
Regiment was the first to go, built up to a full division much earlier than it
had been in Fedorov’s history, and then sent to the southern wing of Operation
Barbarossa. Steiner’s 5th SS was pulled from Syria, and then Goering’s tough infantry
had also been reclaimed, again to be built up to a full division before being
shipped off to the Eastern Front.

Now
Rommel was left with no more than his original force, with 21st and 15th Panzer
Divisions, the 90th Light Motorized Infantry Division, and the Italians. Though
he pleaded for fresh troops to replace his losses, none had come, though that
was soon about to change.

The
Germans had been refitting several Panzer Divisions in France, restructuring
them with the newest tank designs that were now rolling off the production
lines in increasing numbers. The coming of Brigadier Kinlan’s force had far
more impact than either Volsky or Fedorov had first believed, and the early
development of the Löew-55, and the new Leopard medium tank had already been
field tested in the fighting in Russia. Hitler was determined to have his cake
and eat it too. So he ordered the existing Panzer IIIs in the 2nd, 5th, and 10th
divisions to be quickly sent east to reinforce the sagging tank numbers in his
front line divisions. Then the 2nd Panzer Division was entirely refitted, along
with one division from Hoepner’s force, and one from Hoth’s. All three were
already in the thick of Operation Typhoon, as that winter storm now broke upon
the Russian defenses before Moscow.

The
last two divisions, 5th and 10th Panzer, had been initially slated for Rommel,
though Hitler never informed his desert warrior of this. He waited to see if
Rommel could hold, and so the British need to reorganize and rebuild their own
armored force in North Africa played in Rommel’s favor. Seeing that Rommel
still held all of Cyrenaica, Hitler eventually ordered that the new tanks
assigned to the 10th Panzer Division be painted in the desert camouflage
scheme. The Führer had it in his mind to see how his new tanks would fare
against this British heavy tank, mistakenly believing that his own design was
the equal of anything the British could have come up with. So he would finally
answer Rommel’s plaintive calls for support, and even had a mind to further
augment his force with the 5th Panzer Division should events warrant.

10th
Panzer Division arrived at Benghazi just before the British were moving their
armored forces up to the start line for Operation Crusader. But there was one
other thing in the holds of the cargo ships unloading at Benghazi, crates of
ammunition, or so the soldiers believed as they were loading them onto the
trucks…. But they were something more.

*

The
column pulled up to the main company HQ billet, with 21st
Panzer Division, and the Sergeant stepped out, stretching his back after the
long ride from Benghazi through Derna, looking for fresh water. He strode off,
a clipboard under his arm, intending to first report his cargo to the company
commander.

“Delivery,”
he said, saluting to the man, a sallow faced Oberleutnant in the 104th
Panzergrenadier Regiment.

“What
is it this time? More biscuits? Tin cans of fish and beef? More of that god
awful hard tack?”

“No
sir, I have 48 crates of munitions of some sort.” He extended the clipboard,
and the lieutenant eyed it briefly. “Where do you want them?”

“The Sergeant
here will show you the way.”

And
that was that.

Neither
man discussed it further, and the crates were offloaded that afternoon, stacked
in trenches under thick netting, and left there until that evening when the
Lieutenant decided to go and see what he actually had. He was more than
surprised when he had a Corporal open the first crate, his eyes alight with
curiosity when he saw the strange looking weapons it contained.

“What
in the world is this?” he said aloud as the Corporal spied a folded paper and
handed it to his officer. Lieutenant Beyer was the first man in the field to
lay eyes on Germany’s latest innovation, a weapon that was helped along greatly
in its development by one small oversight, a careless moment in the haste of
their withdrawal when Fedorov and Troyak took off from the high fortress tower
at Palmyra.

“Look
sir,” said the Corporal, pointing at the letters stenciled on the inner lid of
the wooden crate. It is called a
Panzerfaust
. What is it, Lieutenant?
Some kind of new mortar?”

*

It was
the brainchild of one Doctor Heinrich Langweiler who had been dreaming up new
theories of propulsion for weapons munitions as early as 1939, something he
called the “Impulse Propulsion Principle.” He was experimenting with
hyper-velocity for small arms munitions, and his research was suddenly given a
most welcome shove in the right direction when a man delivered a strange
looking object to his factory site the previous March. Now, some 6 months
later, he had studied it with utmost care to discover its secrets, information
that was instrumental in bringing his latest dream to life.

Langweiler
worked with a company called HASSAG in Leipzig, and one of his ideas involved
the development of “rocket bullets” fired from a smoothbore weapon. But an
enterprising Colonel Wolff from the 7th Flieger Division in Syria knew he had
something very unusual when he discovered the strange weapon in Palmyra,
apparently left behind by British Special Forces in their raid. The colonel had
it crated up and immediately sent to division headquarters, with a letter
explaining his find.
“Appears to be a new British hand-held anti tank
weapon,”
he wrote.
“DO NOT FIRE! Contents and design of round must be
examined by qualified personnel. Recommend immediate transport to Germany.”

His
instructions were followed, and the RPG would soon come to the attention of
Langweiler himself, having a dramatic impact on his thinking and design for the
weapon that would soon threaten to rewrite history yet again. The
Faustpatrone
42
was well into its development, but now its bigger brother would arrive a
whole year early, the
Panzerfaust
. Langweiler used the RPG-7 as a model
for his own ideas to coalesce around, and soon had a prototype, which tested
with very good results. It was going to be something no one on the Allied side
expected, a grain of sand that would soon start an avalanche.

The
Lieutenant studied the diagrams, indicating how the weapons were to be deployed
and fired, by a single man. How very odd, he thought. How could something so
simple in design do anything at all against its intended target, the premier
weapons of the desert war, the panzers? He soon learned that a special liaison
officer had been assigned to his company, and the same for every company in
both battalions of his regiment.

The
next day he learned what this new weapon was all about, when the training
officers led his men to a special site. He saw three captured British Matildas
sitting in a dry wadi, as though the lumbering beasts had become stuck there in
the silt and sand. There was a slit trench some 30 meters from the three tanks,
and on the officer’s command, a helmeted soldier popped up, one of the strange
new weapons on his shoulder. He quickly took aim and fired. What happened next
stunned every man who witnessed it. The thick frontal armor of the Matilda,
some 78mm that was very difficult for the Panzer IIIs to penetrate or harm, was
completely blown through!