Read Online Killing Rommel by Steven Pressfield - Free Book Online
Authors: Steven Pressfield
Ads: Link
to grind uphill in creeper gear, making about a mile per gallon. In the crush I spotted a familiar command pennant and scrambled on foot to the Grant belonging to Major Mike Mallory, our 2/IC (second-in-command), who retained his fitterâs truck, two HQ tanks and nothing else. âHell, Chapman, youâre the first familiar face Iâve seen in forty-eight hours!â Mallory crayoned my map, indicating Sidi Rezegh and Bir el Gubi in the desert ahead as objectives, marking positions with yellow for enemy and red for friendly.
âOf course that was yesterday,â he said. âThe colours may have switched round by today.â
From the frontier wire a few miles ahead, Mallory said, we were still eighty miles out of the fight, which was raging round Bir Hacheim, the French-defended southern anchor of the Gazala Line. The Fighting French and the Legionnaires were putting up a heroic defence, but Rommel had sent his 21st and 15th Panzer Divisions, along with the Italian Ariete (âBattering Ramâ) armoured division, in a wide, sweeping move to the south. If this succeeded, the French would have no choice but to withdraw. That was all Mallory knew, except that our orders were to find Rommelâs Panzers and stop them, if it meant sacrificing every tank we had.
Two days later my troop, following a line of markers, at last stumbled into a formation we recognised. The regiment lay in a dispersed formation, spread over miles, just east of El Adem in the flat, stony desert south of Tobruk. Tanks, armoured cars, infantry lorries and âBâ vehicles straggled in continually from the rear, altering the shape of the disposition as they came up and worked themselves in, so that it took most of a day to locate my post, refuel and carve out a few hours to replenish oil and fluids, tighten tracks and snatch a spot of grub and sleep. My troop-sergeant, Hammond, had badly smashed both hands when a hatch crashed on to them; he was evacuated to the rear, his place taken by a corporal named Pease from 5th Royal Tanks whom we had picked up en route along with his A-13 and who was the closest thing to an old sweat we could muster. Squadron leader was Captain Patrick McCaughey, whom I had known at Magdalen. The first dawn our battalion was called to aid 150th Infantry Brigade and 1st Army Tank Brigade, who were under ferocious attack by the Afrika Korpsâ 90th Light Division in what the Germans called a
Hexenkessel,
a witchesâ cauldron, of minefields near the Knightsbridge box north of Bir Hacheim. By the time we got there, Rommelâs right hook had outflanked the French.
Bir Hacheim fell.
The 15th and 21st Panzer divisions were racing round our flank.
From that hour, the retreat started. It didnât end till Rommel was beating at the gates of Alexandria.
In the cinema, itâs always the enemy tanks that advance first. In real armoured warfare, the form was the opposite. First came the enemy scout infantry on sidecar motorcycles. After the bikes you saw armoured cars, the four-and eight-wheeled SdKfz-222s and 234s that served as screens and recce units for the armour and as assault elements against foot troops and soft-skinned transport. Behind these came the motorised infantry, on trucks and in armoured half-tracks. The Afrika Korpsâ infantryâs role was to take on our unarmoured gun crews and transportâanti-tank guns, artillery, echelon vehiclesâand to protect their own A/T, the low-slung Pak 38s and the high-profile, long-barrelled 88s. The latter were enormous, with barrels as long as entire tanks; they sat high, ten feet off the desert floor, and were manned by crews of seven. Once you heard the sound of an 88, you never forgot it. The gun had been designed originally as an anti-aircraft weapon. It fired an extremely high-velocity, flat-trajectory shot that could penetrate 150mm of armour at two thousand yards. The thickest steel we had, on heavy Matilda infantry tanks,
âOf course that was yesterday,â he said. âThe colours may have switched round by today.â
From the frontier wire a few miles ahead, Mallory said, we were still eighty miles out of the fight, which was raging round Bir Hacheim, the French-defended southern anchor of the Gazala Line. The Fighting French and the Legionnaires were putting up a heroic defence, but Rommel had sent his 21st and 15th Panzer Divisions, along with the Italian Ariete (âBattering Ramâ) armoured division, in a wide, sweeping move to the south. If this succeeded, the French would have no choice but to withdraw. That was all Mallory knew, except that our orders were to find Rommelâs Panzers and stop them, if it meant sacrificing every tank we had.
Two days later my troop, following a line of markers, at last stumbled into a formation we recognised. The regiment lay in a dispersed formation, spread over miles, just east of El Adem in the flat, stony desert south of Tobruk. Tanks, armoured cars, infantry lorries and âBâ vehicles straggled in continually from the rear, altering the shape of the disposition as they came up and worked themselves in, so that it took most of a day to locate my post, refuel and carve out a few hours to replenish oil and fluids, tighten tracks and snatch a spot of grub and sleep. My troop-sergeant, Hammond, had badly smashed both hands when a hatch crashed on to them; he was evacuated to the rear, his place taken by a corporal named Pease from 5th Royal Tanks whom we had picked up en route along with his A-13 and who was the closest thing to an old sweat we could muster. Squadron leader was Captain Patrick McCaughey, whom I had known at Magdalen. The first dawn our battalion was called to aid 150th Infantry Brigade and 1st Army Tank Brigade, who were under ferocious attack by the Afrika Korpsâ 90th Light Division in what the Germans called a
Hexenkessel,
a witchesâ cauldron, of minefields near the Knightsbridge box north of Bir Hacheim. By the time we got there, Rommelâs right hook had outflanked the French.
Bir Hacheim fell.
The 15th and 21st Panzer divisions were racing round our flank.
From that hour, the retreat started. It didnât end till Rommel was beating at the gates of Alexandria.
In the cinema, itâs always the enemy tanks that advance first. In real armoured warfare, the form was the opposite. First came the enemy scout infantry on sidecar motorcycles. After the bikes you saw armoured cars, the four-and eight-wheeled SdKfz-222s and 234s that served as screens and recce units for the armour and as assault elements against foot troops and soft-skinned transport. Behind these came the motorised infantry, on trucks and in armoured half-tracks. The Afrika Korpsâ infantryâs role was to take on our unarmoured gun crews and transportâanti-tank guns, artillery, echelon vehiclesâand to protect their own A/T, the low-slung Pak 38s and the high-profile, long-barrelled 88s. The latter were enormous, with barrels as long as entire tanks; they sat high, ten feet off the desert floor, and were manned by crews of seven. Once you heard the sound of an 88, you never forgot it. The gun had been designed originally as an anti-aircraft weapon. It fired an extremely high-velocity, flat-trajectory shot that could penetrate 150mm of armour at two thousand yards. The thickest steel we had, on heavy Matilda infantry tanks,
Similar Books
