A Mighty Endeavor (45 page)

Lord Halifax was genuinely bewildered by the newspaper coverage of the war in North and East Africa. He had expected his friends in the Cliveden Set to ensure that he got all the credit for the apparently remarkable turnaround in the military fortunes of the country. Instead, his name was barely mentioned.

“I suspect that Geoffrey Dawson and Robert Barrington-Ward are doing you a great kindness in keeping your name out of this.” Butler sounded sincere. “This whole business will end in tears. Wavell has his troops stretched to the absolute limit there, and he has still done nothing to remove the Italians from Egypt. I suspect that the Italians were not expecting him to attack, so he had the element of surprise working for him. When they counter-attack, we will see another disaster out there; you mark my words.”

“What I see is the Dominions getting all the credit for winning a series of victories out there. They’re taking the credit for a situation that is
my
creation. If
I
hadn’t backed Wavell, he’d never have dared move like this.”

“Prime Minister, the fewer people who know that, the better. Wavell is horribly outnumbered in North Africa and as soon as Mussolini moves against him, his entire position will crumble. With it, the credibility of the Dominions as independent powers will be crushed and they will be forced to come back to us, cap in hand, to rescue them from the wreckage. I would urge, though, that we do not let matters reach that pass. We can approach Signore Mussolini now and offer him a ceasefire; one that returns to the prewar boundaries. We have a window of opportunity here; one where the balance of power is in our favor. We should take advantage of it.”

Halifax looked out of the window, at the miserable darkness of a British winter. There had been plenty of dry weather during December, and the rain that had fallen during the month was mainly light. The temperature was on the way down, though; there had already been several slight frosts. That wasn’t the reason for the grayness that seemed to blanket the country.

Halifax could sense what was really the problem. The atmosphere of reluctance to accept defeat; a resentment at the way the war had been suddenly ended. Now, with the news of the Commonwealth victories in East Africa, there was a growing sensation that the Armistice had been a mistake.

To make matters worse, the demands from Germany were growing. Some of them had been quite reasonable, Halifax had thought at the time. Closer economic ties between Germany and Britain, for example. The Germans were placing large orders with British factories. The shipyards were building merchant ships for German companies; light engineering groups, a variety of supplies. Then, the Germans had asked for the use of a small number of British airfields so they could improve surveillance of the eastern Atlantic. Tangmere had been one such airfield; Manston another. There had been a few more. A handful of German reconnaissance aircraft on a handful of British airfields hadn’t been too high a price to pay for peace.

“Very well, RAB. Instruct our Ambassador in Rome to seek an appointment with Mussolini so we can negotiate a cease-fire.”

Bridge, HMAS
Australia,
off Berbera, Italian-occupied British Somaliland

“Perhaps it was for the best after all?”

Lieutenant Colonel Beaumont sounded almost amused by the situation. Standing beside him, Captain Robert Stewart couldn’t help smiling. Any reply was forestalled by
Australia’s
eight-inch guns crashing out a salvo. A thousand yards a stern, HMAS
Canberra
fired at the same target: an orderly group of buildings that were the home of the Italian garrison. The buildings were empty and deserted. Early in the morning, a Sunderland flying boat out of Aden had dropped leaflets on the area, warning everybody that the base would be bombarded at noon and that anybody who did not want to see what eight-inch shell bursts looked like at close quarters ought to evacuate.

“The warning leaflets?” Stewart shook his head. “I can only think that we’ve got some very good intelligence on this garrison. Otherwise, those leaflets could cost us dear.”

“I meant getting thrown out of the old country.” Beaumont looked back on the last few weeks with almost fond exasperation. His battalion had disembarked from
Australia,
and been divested of all their extra equipment, before being put on trains and sent over to the Pacific Coast. There, they’d been put on a hastily-commandeered liner and sailed for the Middle East. They got there just in time to match up with
Australia
again. They’d been three-quarters of the way around the world to end up more or less where they had started. His thoughts were interrupted by the ship shaking as another pair of broadsides crashed out.

A group of boats was assembling in the water between the two cruisers and the shoreline. They contained two battalions of Canadian infantry; an extemporized expeditionary brigade under Beaumont’s command. It was a mark of just how stretched the Commonwealth was for troops that they were here at all. With the South Africans committed in East Africa, the Indians in Eritrea and Ethiopia and the Australians and New Zealanders in Egypt, these two battalions of Canadian troops were about the only available forces that could be found. It was the old story; wait six months, let the mobilization take effect, wait until the men being trained were ready and all would be well. Only, the war had its own momentum; it wouldn’t wait.

“Sir, the landing force commander wishes to speak with you.” The sparker had a radio set positioned on the bridge for just this eventuality.

“Mark, what’s going on?”

“The Italians are waiting for us.” There was the sound of teeth being sucked around the bridge. The troops having to fight their way ashore had been the worst-case scenario.

“Are they putting up much of a fight?”

“No, sir. They’re drawn up in parade formation on the beach. About sixty of them, waving a white flag.” There was a pause. “Sir, war can be very embarrassing sometimes.”

Beach outside Berhera, British Somaliland

“Sir, I must ask you for your assistance.” Colonel Nerio Amedeo Amerigo was almost completely white and was barely able to stand. “My men are accursed by malaria. Only a handful are in fit condition for duty; the rest need medical attention urgently. I implore you to send as much aid as you can spare. Our own doctor, Rosa Dainelli, is overwhelmed and without supplies.”

Beumont took a horrified look at the desperately ill man before him. His condition was no worse, and no better, than that of the other Italian soldiers on the beach. “You paraded your men in this condition? In the sun?”

“It was necessary for us to surrender honorably.”

Beaumont nodded and turned to his radioman. “Get word to the cruisers and the two transports. Tell them we need every medic and every ounce of quinine here right away. Colonel, we will transfer your men to the transports
Chakdina
and
Chantala
immediately. We will do everything in our power for you.”

GHQ,
Middle East Command, Cairo, Egypt

“We knew it was coming.” Maitland Wilson sounded infinitely depressed. “That Man cannot maintain a purpose from one minute to the next.”

“He’s maintaining a purpose, Jumbo; and, from his point of view, it is a very logical one. He’s trying to gain the maximum credit for his administration at minimum cost. Since our operations began, we’ve cleared the Italians out of Kenya, made a landing in Somaliland and pushed the Italians back in Eritrea. That’s a pretty impressive set of achievements and he wants to take full advantage of them now before they fade away.” Wavell sighed slightly and looked out of his window at Cairo bustling in the afternoon sun. “I think I understand him better for this. That Man does not believe he can win, ever. He assumes that no matter how well things appear to be running, they will always turn around and move against him. So his eyes are set short; to take what advantages he can seize in the short term, for he believes that the long term will always hold worse.”

Maitland Wilson looked at the telegraph message from London and his mouth twisted. “He’s certainly looking at the short term here. We are ordered to cease all offensive actions against Italy immediately, pending the outcome of cease-fire negotiations between London and the Government of Italy. The Ambassador to Rome is seeking an audience with Benito Mussolini today to negotiate the terms of said cease-fire. We all know that that means. Musso will shout and scream, waving his hands like a demented fishwife, then make some appalling threats. That Man will read them and back down, giving Musso everything he wants.”

“I know.” Wavell spoke mildly. “There is, of course, a small problem with that. I report to both London and Calcutta, and my orders from Calcutta are quite clear. They are to stabilize this area, eliminate any Italian threat to our position here in Egypt and ensure than the Italians will not be able to launch a supporting thrust when the main German attack through Turkey and Iraq starts. Tom and Bernard have received more or less similar orders from their governments, with the codicil that they are to subordinate themselves to me.”

“A divided command and conflicting orders. The old recipe for disaster. I feel for you, Archie.”

“No need to. In the final analysis, I am an Indian Army officer; with the split between London and Calcutta, it is to India that I must look for final authority. If I receive an order like this from Churchill in Ottawa, then I have a problem. At the moment, I do not.” Wavell took the telegraph paper, tore it in half and then applied a match to the remains. “Operation Compass starts tonight on schedule.
Warspite
is on the move?”

“She is indeed, with a screen of course.” Maitland Wilson looked at the charred paper in Wavell’s ashtray. “Is it really so easy to break with London? And does Egypt realize it has more or less just joined the British Commonwealth?”

“The Commonwealth of Nations.” Wavell corrected Maitland Wilson reprovingly. “There is more to that than just a change in the name, Jumbo.”

Maitland Wilson nodded and left to issue the orders needed to start Operation Compass. Behind him, Wavell also stared at the burned paper in his ashtray. It hadn’t been easy to break with London at all. Wavell knew his decision this day would haunt him for years to come.

HMS
Warspite,
Off Maktila, North Africa

“Prepare to open fire.” Admiral Andrew Cunningham gave the order to Captain Douglas Fisher with a certain degree of relish. He was well aware that orders had been received from London ordering an end to the offensive, but they meant little to him. Wavell had ignored them and ordered Operation Compass to proceed. Cunningham was throwing his lot in with Wavell and the Commonwealth. His 15-inch guns were about to provide the most emphatic repudiation of the Halifax government in London that it was possible to imagine.

“Ready, sir.” Fisher saw Cunningham nod and he took the gesture as it was intended. “Main battery open fire on designated targets.”

Italian Encampment, Maktila, North Africa

For a brief moment, General Pietro Maletti believed he was back in his childhood, when he had heard the trains passing through his home town of Castiglione delle Stiviere. His earliest memory, one that came from so far back that he could recollect neither time nor context, was of his father lifting him up so he could see the flashing lights of a train passing in the darkness and hear the roar of its passage. The roar overhead was the same overwhelming pitch as those passing trains so many years before. To his shock, it was followed by a rapid series of brilliant flashes of light. He wondered, for one brief second while trapped between sleep and waking, whether he had somehow gone back to his childhood in Lombardy. Then, as the floor of his dugout heaved beneath him, he knew he had not.

The explosions of the shells across the cantonment occupied by Raggruppamento Maletti were drowned out by the thunderous roars of the big shells hitting the Libya Army Group’s command positions. Maletti guessed, by the size of the explosions he was seeing, that they were naval gunfire; almost certainly the British battleship that had been reported in Alexandria. She must have left after dusk and proceeded up the coast to carry out this bombardment. It seemed an insane thing to think, but seeing the great balls of fire reaching into the sky from the 15-inch shells made Maletti grateful for the 18-pounders that were rippling across his positions.

This wasn’t possible. Maletti was having a hard job forming a mental picture of what was going on.
The British were more than a hundred kilometers away, at Mersah Mutruh, where the infantry forming the Italian front line were gathered. They can’t be here. But the guns firing on us are field guns. They have to be here.
A grim lesson was running through his mind, one that had been hammered home by his instructors at Modena but was all too often forgotten.
Amateurs thought surprise was a matter of a radical new weapon or a clever maneuver nobody else had thought of. It wasn’t. Surprise is the overwhelming result of the situation changing faster than the victim that can adapt to it. The most commonplace maneuver will produce a devastating surprise if it causes the situation to develop before the victim can react.
Maletti knew he had been surprised.