Hammer of God (Kirov Series Book 14) (18 page)

In
the meantime, the campaign in Syria and Iraq also afforded the Germans a dual
opportunity. The French had already cut shipments from the terminal ports at
Tripoli and Banias, and now German interest in Iraq was primarily focused on
the oil facilities and airfields near Mosul and Kirkuk. In the short run, these
objectives could not be held, but while Goering arranged for new
reinforcements, at least some effort could be made at severing the pipeline from
Haditha to Haifa. These were the facilities the British were desperately trying
to secure with this offensive. Goering was under no illusions as to the real
reasons for the British operation.

News
that Palmyra was now a combat zone would make that airfield unsuitable for
troop deployment, but Goering already had his staff busy with plans to heavily
reinforce Junck. The British may have stolen a march on the Germans in Iraq,
but the issue in Syria was far from decided. Prompt intervention by German troops
was now Goering’s highest priority. Word had come that the British were
approaching Mosul, and also assembling forces on the Euphrates. The vast
eastern flank of Syria was wide open to their advance, but German planners knew
there were only a very few routes they might take if they sought to move from
Iraq.

Generalleutnant
Hans Jeschonnek, Goering’s Chief of Staff, chaired the final meeting before
operational orders would be issued. The key problem under discussion was the
stores of available aviation fuel to sustain operations.

“The
British will chase Junck out of Mosul in a few days,” he said. “In the short
run he can redeploy to Dier ez Zour or Ar Rakkah on the Euphrates in Syria. We
have the planes and pilots to reinforce him there, but what about the fuel?
Most everything the French had is centered on their main aerodrome at Rayak. It
may be possible to move something by train up through Homs and Aleppo, and we
can use the airfields there as well. As for the troops, our initial deployment
will be small enough to supply by air, but as we build up strength, it will
take something more. We cannot rely on the French. So it comes down to either
sea transit or overland rail,” he concluded. “The former faces the constant
threat from the Royal Navy, and the latter is impossible unless we solve the
problem of Turkey.”

“The
Führer has plans for Turkey,” said Goering. “The 17th Army has been moved to
the Turkish frontier in Bulgaria, and Von Pappen has been dispatched to make
one final effort at convincing the Turks that their future will be far brighter
as our ally than it will be as our enemy.”

“And
if they remain adamant? What then? We already have the 5th Mountain Division in
Syria, and we are about to sent the 22nd Luftland Division.”

“We
should be able to supply those troops from the airfields in Syria.”

“Granted,
but they will not be enough to settle this matter. The best we can hope for is
a stalemate, and if we have to get those troops out of Syria, it will not be
easy.”

“Do
not lose heart,” said Goering. “I’ve told von Pappen that he can send a
personal message from me to the Turkish Ambassador. We are in Bulgaria, Greece,
Rhodes, Cyprus and now Syria. Soon we will be back in Iraq. There is a ring of
steel around Turkey, and they must not think we will hesitate to use it if they
do not cooperate. I will darken the skies over Turkey with my Luftwaffe in a
massive show of force, and then my little message will tell them that if I have
to send my planes there again, the next time they come with bombs. Begin moving
elements of the Tenth Fliegerkorps at once.”

Chapter 18

Colonel
Ferdinand Barre
had the duty at Palmyra that night, commanding the 4th battalion of the French
Foreign Legion. He was sitting listening to radio reports in the barracks the
Legion had built just east of the main town, when he heard the odd thumping
sound in the air, like the rapid beating of massive wings. He set down his
coffee, listening, then walked slowly to the nearest window, eyebrow raised as
he peered into the thickening darkness.

The
sound lingered for a time, west towards the old Roman ruins and the Chateau,
then it diminished. Thinking it may have been nothing more than a wayward
plane, he was just about to return to his radio when the first rounds came
crashing in on the nearby airfield. Now he rushed to the door, shocked to see
three neatly placed explosions rake across the landing strip, and one round hit
one of the two German He-111s parked there, resulting in an enormous explosion.
The planes had been overloaded when they landed earlier, and both had damage to
their undercarriage, and flat tires. They had just been sitting there for
several days now, waiting for German service troops to arrive and fix the
problem. A minute later they were no more than hot burning wrecks.

He
heard shouts as Sergeants roused the men, and a bugle call summoned the
Legionnaires to arms. Now the sound he had heard earlier became a plane in his
mind, and he could only think that the British had staged a daring night
bombing raid on the airfield to get at those two planes. Yet something did not
click with that in his mind. No. Those rounds were too small to be bombs in the
range of 250 to 500 pounds. They might have been 100 pounders, but his
instincts, long honed by years of service to the Legion, told him this was
mortar fire! What was going on?

He
ran outside, collaring the first Sergeant Major he saw. “What is happening?”

“We
don’t know, sir. But that fire seems to be coming from the west—from the
chateau!”

At
that moment a man came riding up on a braying camel, one of the Mehariste
Cavalry in the Bedouin Camel Company that had been billeted near the Roman
ruins. His headdress spilled down onto his broad shoulders, tied tightly about
his neck to ward off the growing chill of the desert. Now he pointed. “The
fortress!” he said breathlessly. “The Castle of Fakhr-al-Din! Men came from the
sky! They have taken the place!” He thumped the flanks of his camel and the
animal bolted before Colonel Barre could get another word from the man.

Filthy
animals, he thought. Men from the sky? What did this crazy Bedouin mean by
that? “Sergeant Major,” he said briskly. “Assemble your platoon and get over
there to see about this. The British might be up to something. This could be a
commando raid. I thought I heard an aircraft earlier. See about it and send a
runner to my headquarters to report. I’ll send 2nd platoon after you.”

“Sir!”
The Sergeant saluted crisply, and turned to his men assembling outside the
barracks. “Alright you miserable scum, you heard the Colonel. Form up!”

The
Colonel wanted to have a look at the airfield and find a working vehicle from
the truck park. He had three  platoons, two in the city, and one at the
airfield. A couple of useless light desert camel patrols provided his only
ranged reconnaissance, and those men were far from reliable. Occasionally Fawsi
el Quwukji, the irascible desert guerilla, would appear with troops of his
Bedouin raiders, but he had no news of him for some time. He had been listening
to reports of the fighting around Damascus, growing more concerned each passing
day as the British offensive continued. Now the war had come with sudden
surprise out of the dark night, and his legionnaires were hastening west
towards the Roman ruins.

Men
from the sky? That could only mean paratroopers. Would the British be daring
and foolish enough to launch such a raid here? The sound of the bugle calls
roused his blood, and he stormed back into his headquarters to find his aide de
camp.

“Get
second platoon assembled and be ready to support Sergeant DuPois at once. I
don’t like the looks of this.”

He
soon learned that his suspicions, and the crazy Bedouin camel trooper, had both
been correct. A runner came in with news that there were enemy soldiers in the
high fortress of the Chateau, just as the Bedu rider had claimed!

* * *

News
of the attack
traveled quickly. The telephone line to Homs was still open, and Colonel Barre
reported the situation to his superiors there. The Regimental Commander was not
present, as he had taken the train south through Rayak and then east through
the Barada Gorge to Damascus several days ago, but word of the incident soon
filtered through to French Operations HQ where General Henri Dentz was
coordinating the defense from Beirut. An attack on Palmyra was the last thing
he needed to hear about. The news that it had been made by an airborne force
was equally disturbing.

He
quickly concluded it must be a small raiding force sent in advance of a large
ground movement, and reports from the southwest frontier soon confirmed this
assessment. News came in that a column of British and Arab Legion forces had
left Rutbah and were heading north into the desert. A second column had been
sighted far to the east, advancing along the pipeline route from the vicinity
of Abu Kemal on the Euphrates. Now he knew where they were going—Palmyra.

They
want to secure the pipeline and pumping stations, he thought grimly. They think
they are going to push us right out of Lebanon and open that line to Tripoli again.
I was a fool not to establish a stronger garrison out east. A regiment posted
at Dier Zour on the Euphrates could have gone south to Abu Kemal in this
instance, and made certain the British would not get oil from their Haifa
pipeline as well. Both the Tripoli and Haifa pipelines meet south of there.
That is a principle reason for this business in Iraq, isn’t it? The British
need to protect their airfields and oil interests there. They could care less
about Baghdad or anything else in the country, as long as the oil keeps flowing
west.

Yet
there was nothing he could do about that now. Most of the units from his
Northern Syrian command had already been transferred south, and had been pulled
onto the line. The situation was becoming serious around Damascus. That damn de
Gaulle and his so called “Free French” brigades were taking up arms against
their countrymen in a dishonorable attack south of the city. The British also
had a strong force on his right, Gurkhas by all accounts, but they were well
equipped, strong machinegun units, and they had been pushing relentlessly up
the valley from Aartouz after storming that town in a night attack two days
ago.

Thank
God for the Germans arriving on that flank, he thought. Mountain troops had
come in through the Barada Gorge by rail and taken up positions to screen the
main road and rail lines to Rayak and Beirut. The fighting there had been
rather intense. The British had some new aircraft, not a plane, but a stealthy
helicopter by all reports. There were not many, but they had been making
devastating attacks, always at night, with accurate and lethal gunfire and a
short range rocket weapon. There were tanks there too, and that had been a
surprise.

He
thought he could trump the British attack by sending in his Chasseurs, the
units of the 6th and 7th Battalions, which he had distributed along the line to
bolster his colonial infantry. Many times they had made all the difference in
the defense when they appeared. The old Renault 35 tanks had a good 37mm gun,
decent armor, and the British 2 Pounder AT Guns and AT rifles could not harm
them. When they appeared, the enemy had to simply hole up in any trench or
building they could find, and his Renaults could operate as they pleased,
impervious to enemy fire.

But
no longer. Now the British had tanks as well, some new vehicles with a fast
firing main gun in the same range as his Renaults. Were these the fearsome new
tanks that had been the undoing of Rommel in the Western Deserts of Egypt? From
all accounts they were not the invincible warriors he had heard about, but they
were very good. In a brief, hot action outside the main Damascus airfields
northeast of Aartouz, the two sides had fought a pitched battle.

2nd
Company 1/6th African Chasseurs had the old PT-17 tanks, relics from WWI, and
had lost three in rapid succession, along with three White armored cars and two
Panhards. A second troop of six PT-17s came lumbering up and they were cut to
pieces, with all six tanks knocked out in a matter of minutes. The enemy had a
gun that ripped out three quick rounds when it fired, and they were deadly
accurate, with superb night optics from all accounts. This advantage, and the
relentless night attacks made by companies of fierce Gurkhas, saw the defense
in that sector crumbling.

Two
battalions of Senegalese Rifles had been badly pummeled by these “Night
Devils,” as the men now called them. They moved like shadows, until they opened
fire with blistering automatic weapons, and some new kind of hand-held heavy
weapon that was demolishing bunkers, block houses, gun positions and machinegun
nests. A near panic ensued after Aartouz fell, and the airfield was hastily
abandoned, the last of the planes taking off to flee north even as the enemy
infantry swept over the airfield, their guns nipping at the tails of the
lumbering Bloch 210 bombers. The only positions that had held were those of the
2/6th and 3/6th Foreign Legion, on the heights of Jebel Madani. They fell back
through the Chasseurs and joined another battalion of legionnaires already
organizing a defense at the edge of Damascus.

South
of the airfield, the 63rd Battalion of the 7th African Chasseurs was in
strength, with 45 Renault-35 tanks. The firefight there had seen the first
kills on this new British tank, with one hit by three successive 37mm rounds
from the Renaults, and another damaged and forced to withdraw. That success had
cost the battalion five Renault-35s, but it appeared the enemy was simply
standing by now, in good hull down positions, and daring the French tanks to
advance on the airfield.

The
local commander had seen enough. With the bridge south at Kisawah taken, and
the enemy in the heights beyond, this daring and persistent attack by the
Gurkhas in the north would now force a general withdrawal to Damascus. The
flank had been turned, but the German Mountain troops were still screening the
entrance to the vital Barada Gorge. Reluctantly, General Dentz sent the order
to fall back and consolidate in the suburbs of the city.

Now,
with this latest report concerning a raid at Palmyra, General Dentz had yet
another problem to solve. He had posted the last of the Foreign Legion in
reserve there under Colonel Barre. They should be more than enough to handle
the matter, but he soon learned that the British had holed up in the near
impregnable fortress called the Chateau. He knew the place well, and had often
stood on those high stone towers atop the steep flanks of an old extinct
volcanic cone, and gazed on the Roman ruins there. News that the British were
now advancing on the place with two columns gave him pause. What could he send?

He
had the 2nd and 4th Tunisian Rifles at Al Qusayr to the west. But they would be
some time getting to Palmyra. Then the telephone rang and he was pleased to
hear the German Ambassador to Turkey, Franz von Pappen, with news of the treaty
concluded the previous day.

“We have obtained right of free passage through Turkish territory by rail,
and use of several airfields! It may entail some concessions concerning your
northern border, but I will discuss this with you later. Even now we have
elements of our 22nd Air Landing division en route to Iskenderun in southern
Turkey. From there they will take trains with their heavy weapons and artillery
down through Aleppo to Homs. Other units will fly directly to the airfield at
Homs itself. Can you have trucks waiting for them there?”

At
last, thought Dentz, another German division! The 5th Mountain Division had
only two regiments, and these troops were split between the defensive fronts of
Damascus and Beirut, where they had helped considerably. This second division
was one of the German tough, veteran air mobile units, and he knew this was the
same unit that had been sent ahead of the German advance through Belgium and
the low countries. He promised to scrape up every vehicle he could find, and
then asked the one real question on his mind.

“What
about tanks,” he said. “Will there be anything more I can count on?”

There
was a soft chortle on the other end of the line.
“I can say nothing more on
an open telephone line like this. Messages will be sent to you in short order.
Plan your defense, General. We are coming.”

Those
three words stuck in the General’s mind. Yes, just as you came at us through
the Ardennes and toppled the honor of my nation with those damnable Panzer
divisions. I didn’t get to see what happened in France, as I was here in the
Levant, but now I would welcome the sight of German tanks, yes, for without
them I do not think my Colonial battalions will hold the line much longer. Yet
we will be opening the farm gate and letting in the wolves when the Germans
come. It was a very odd feeling to fear the very same stroke that promised your
salvation.