Hammer of God (Kirov Series Book 14) Page 10

  “This is no good,” said Byrne. “They held fire until we were right in front of them on this exposed ground. Send back that we need bloody artillery support!” The runner was off, a stream of enemy MG fire in his wake that almost cut him down, but he made it back. Soon the 25-pounders of 2/6th Field Regiment responded, laying down a well sited barrage of covering fire to allow 2/31st Battalion to fall back.

  It was some time withdrawing, and at one point three Mark VI tankettes were brought up to provide more covering fire. The two lead tanks were hit by hot enemy fire, the third tank under Sergeant Groves bravely charging to their side to rescue the surviving crewmen. But the incident was enough to allow Captain Byrne to get his company back another 400 yards, harried by enemy mortar fire the whole way. Houston’s last company had to cling to its position until dusk, under fire the whole time, with casualties mounting.

  “So much for waving our hats at these fellows!” said Byrne when he reported to the battalion commander. The Vichy French were going to fight, and Brigade commander Cox knew he would now have to make a deliberate attack, well supported by artillery fire. After watching this preparation some time, the artillery commander made a suggestion that an armored troop of the cavalry be sent up to the village of Khirbe to draw enemy fire so he could better target his guns. It was to be a reconnaissance that they would come to regret.

  Lieutenant Millard got the assignment in 1/6th Australian Cav, and he led his troop, consisting of one light Mark VI tankette and six carriers with infantry, up the narrow road. The detachment planned to split into two groups of three carriers each, with the tank in the middle, and with this modest force they thought to take the town by storm. Lt. Millard deployed his men on the left, and Lt. Florence had the right flank, but both groups immediately came under fire by mortars and machineguns when the men began to deploy.

  “Better tell the lads to get back,” he said to his wireless operator, Corporal Oswell. But when he looked at the man he could see he was clutching a wounded arm with a bloodied hand, and was unable to send the signal. So Millard waved for the men in Lt. Florence’s squad to fall back, then got on the Vickers MG to lay down covering fire on the French positions.

  “I hope the bloody artillery spotters are having a good look at this mess!” he shouted. “Driver, get us back!”

  As the carrier tried to back off, a small caliber mortar shell landed right near the front of the vehicle, rattling it with shrapnel and blowing off a track. Millard and his remaining crew leapt from the damaged vehicle, the ground around them peppered by enemy fire. They made it to a low stone wall, unable to so much as raise their heads further against the enemy gunnery.

  “We’re in the soup now,” said Millard. “Where’s that artillery?”

  “I’ve good legs on me, sir,” said Corporal Limb, his driver. “I think I can sprint back to the carrier and call them on the radio.”

  They waited until the French fire slackened, then Limb ran for all he was worth, shots ricocheting off the carrier even as he leapt inside. Amazed that he was still alive, the Corporal reached for the radio set and found it dead, shot through by a machinegun round. Then, as if in answer to the call he had hoped to make, the Australian artillery fire began to register in on the French positions.

  Lt. Florence got his men safely back, but saw that Millard was still trapped. He jumped into his carrier, gunned the engine, and made a mad dash right up the road towards Millard’s damaged carrier, with no more than a pistol in his hand for a weapon. He reached the scene, finding the carrier empty, as Corporal Limb had used those good legs of his to make it safely back to the wall.

  “Come on!” he shouted to Millard and the others, maneuvering his carrier closer. The men were up and into the vehicle, still under heavy fire, but they all made it safely in, and Florence backed off. By the time they got back, a third of the men in the troop had been hit and wounded, and the carrier itself had taken heavy damage. But they were alive, and glad for at least that. Lt. Millard wiped the sweat from his brow with a bloodied arm.

  “Message from battalion,” said a runner. “We’re to make ready to support the infantry attack.”

  “With what?” Millard exclaimed. He had one carrier and the Mark VI operational, and twelve men.

  Chapter 11

  The German reprisal was swift, as if perfectly timed to counter the launch of Operation Scimitar. The hammer Hitler had spoken of as he berated his Generals was Kurt Student’s veteran 7th Flieger Division. The paratroopers had been at Gibraltar as ground forces, seized Malta by storm, and now had been ferried forward from their bases in Greece to the Italian outpost on Rhodes. From there the Ju-52’s refueled, and the troops made ready to spring on to their real objective, the island of Cyprus.

  A backwater outpost in the early war, Cyprus had seemed isolated from the fires that were burning through Greece and the Western Desert. There the East met West in a mix of Greek merchants, shopkeepers and Turkish farmers, fishermen and craftsmen, though each group huddled in well segregated settlements made of adobe like mud walled buildings. The arable lowlands were covered with fields of barley, wheat and rye, and wild flowers that lent their color to the landscape. Peasant farmers worked the land, carrying their harvest along thin, dusty roads in Ox carts, or on the backs of camel troops. Hills rose in green terraces, dotted with thick vineyards, peach orchards, olive and fig groves, dotting the flanks of higher mountains in the south and west. There were deep shady forests of oak, eucalyptus, cedar, pine, and of course, cyprus.

  In the larger towns of Famagusta, Larnaca and Nicosia, the people mixed in commerce, black-robed Greek Orthodox Priests, tall Turks wearing their distinctive red fez hats, veiled women selling woven blankets at street concessions. The people seemed oblivious to the hardships and privations the war had forced upon others. They lazed in the warm Mediterranean sun, sipping black coffee in the cafes. Over the years the Greek Hoplites had come, and the Roman Legions, and finally the swarthy Arabs and Moors. Ancient ruins of these old empires still jutted from the high hills, old Crusader castles built by the dour Knights Hospitaller, who once held the island as a fortress outpost against Islam, keeping watch on the Holy Lands to the east. The people had seen them all come and go over the long ages, but now men were coming the like of which they had never imagined, tall fair skinned Aryans falling from the sky itself with canisters of rifles, machineguns, and mortars to bring war to this sleepy island.

  III/7th Fallshirmjager Regiment would land west of the capital at Nicosia, seizing two vital airfields. II/7th would land at Famagusta to storm that city and its port facilities, and I/7th would be split, with a single battalion targeting the airfield at Leftonika northeast of Nikosia, and two more landing on the southern coast between Famagusta and Limasol, where there were landing strips at Dkekelia and Kophinu. The R.A.F opposed the landings as best they could, but with so many Hurricanes up in support of the ground operations for Scimitar, the German air assault could not be stopped. Only one formation of Ju-52s was forced to abort when planes off Crete caught it en-route, and successfully dueled with the three Bf-109s in escort. Yet it was an important little victory, for the planes turned back had been carrying the artillery.

  Unlike Crete, Cyprus was not well garrisoned, nor did it have any significant Cypriot militia force beyond a few security companies watching the airfields. The only planes on the island were the remnant of an F.A.A. unit at Larnaca, five Swordfish and five Albacores. The tsland was defended by only two battalions of British troops, the Sherwood Foresters and 2/7th Australian Cavalry. Being hit by a full division of crack paratroops, they would have little chance of stopping the operation, or even impeding it for very long. Churchill heard of the operation while still en route back to England, and remarked that he hoped the garrison would simply take to the rough mountain country in the southwest of the island and organize a guerrilla campaign from there, but it was not to be.

  There were two companies of the Sherwood Foresters at Nikosia when the skies
darkened with parachutes. Their commander could see that he had no chance of holding the town with what looked like a brigade sized force landing to the east and west. So he elected to try and get south on the main road to Larnaca, leading his men out in any lorry they could make operational. Second company at the head of the column made it 42 kilometers until they ran into a battalion of German paratroopers blocking the road near the village of Aradhippou, just north of Larnaca. The 4th company veered off the road and tried to bypass the German position, circling to the west to try and reach a company of Aussie cavalry still holding the port.

  1st Company of the Sherwood Foresters, and a company of the 7th Australian Cav, were surrounded at Famagusta by a well designed German landing on every side of the town. Further west at Limassol, the last company of Sherwood Foresters got the order to take to anything that would float and try to reach Palestine. With this inadequate defense collapsing, it would now come down to how quickly the German troops could occupy the key turf they wanted with leg units.

  Another unit was also on the move that first night, the 85th Regiment of the 5th Mountain Division that had been in Rodos as part of the forces staged there. The convoy put to sea with the French Comandante Teste, a large seaplane tender that had been converted to a troop transport, two captured Greek steamers, and a pair of French Destroyers in escort. They were the real naval thrust to be made at the opening, a small, quiet task force that sped on its way in the shadows, while a second French task force of fast cruisers and destroyers demonstrated by racing through the Straits of Messina and heading west of Cyprus. The smaller task force hugging the Turkish coast wasn’t seen, and made its way inexorably down to the port of Tartus. German infantry were now in the Levant, though the British did not yet know this as they deployed for the battle on the Litani River south of Beirut.

  * * *

  On the inland desert flank, the 5th Indian Brigade had assembled at Irbid, Jordan, and stormed over the border to Daraa. When it became clear that the French were not open to negotiation there either, 3/1 Punjab and 4/6 Raj battalions took the town in a pincer operation, overcoming the resistance quickly and turning the area over to the Frontier Horse companies, many manned by Arab troops. They then pushed on up the road to Sheikh Meskine, intending to take that place and the larger settlement of Ezraa further east near the rugged lava beds of the Jebel Druz. Their mission, as they advanced north, was to cover the long desert flank on the right, and screen the advance of the center column.

  There Kinlan’s “Sabre Force” of Gurkhas and Scimitar light tanks was joined by Popski and the Mobile Force returning from Habbaniyah. Major Popski found the commander of that force, a Colonel Rana Gandar, and told him he was leading a contingent of Russian Marines that would join this action.

  “Russian Marines?” The Colonel wasn’t sure what to make of that.

  “Right-o, mate. I understand you chaps don’t take to one another in your day, but this is our time here, and the Russians are our allies. Make them your allies too. I’ve seen them fight, along with those black suited commandos yonder. They call that lot the Argonauts, and they know their business behind these machine guns as well.” He hefted the assault rifle Troyak had given him.

  Colonel Gandar listened, and said nothing. He was a professional officer in one of the premier fighting units in the world of 2021. The Gurkhas had had a long history in the British Army, tough men all, hardened first by the high mountains of Nepal where they were born, and these were the best of the best. They were ‘bloody good soldiers,’ an understatement, for the Gurkhas had made a sport of war for countless generations. This unit was designated a Light Infantry Battalion, as they did not fight from armored fighting vehicles. Instead they carried the steel in their impregnable souls, and on their back right hip, where each man carried the dread curved Kurkuri long knife in a brown leather sheath.

  Popski knew good soldiers when he saw them, and these men filled the bill. They were not big men like the Russians or Australians, and the British had often taken to calling them the “little Gurkhas.” But they were hard as the hills that spawned them, fierce as the wild wind on the high snowy peaks, though quick to laugh and with a warm, amiable spirit. The Gurkha Sergeants, called Halvidars, were not the bawling haranguing sort with their men. They didn’t have to be that way. Each and every Gurkha was motivated from within, not by the hard hand of a drill Sergeant, and would serve and obey unflinchingly, even unto death. There was no arrogance among the officers, and the unit was a collective of equals at heart, and the officers led only by virtue of their experience and time in the service.

  Popski had known Gurkha infantry in his time, finding them among the fiercest and most steadfast fighters he had ever seen. They seemed to have no fear in battle. They would either live or die, and many in his day still wore a top knot of hair so their Hindu god could reach down and pluck them into the nirvana of some heaven if they fell, but it was never theirs to decide that fate. That quality of fatalistic ardor when it came to battle, and the modern weaponry Colonel Gandar’s troops would carry with them, made them a formidable foe indeed.

  “Where do you want us?” Popski asked.

  The Colonel said nothing, simply nodding and pointing with his chin to a dry hollow some ways off. A Gurkha never pointed, particularly with his finger. He might use a thumb if necessary, or simply his chin.

  His introductions made, Popski went back to Troyak’s squads and spoke to them in Russian. “We’re signed on here with the Gurkhas,” he said. “You men respect one thing in another fighting man, and you’ll see it the minute you lay eyes on this lot—tenacity and skill. They’ve got both in abundance, and you should be proud to stand with them. So any rubbish you may still have in your pockets from your own time needs to be buried, here and now. Today we fight as one.”

  “We had no trouble fighting with those Argonauts,” said Zykov. “It’s what a man does in a fight that matters now, not who he is. They did right by us, and we did right by them. If these here fight alongside us, they’ll be no problems—except for anyone who gets in our way.”

  That produced a swell of approval from the Marines, and they quickly settled in for a field cooked meal, glad to have their feet on dry earth for a time, instead of the swaying deck of the ship. They soon got the word from Popski that they were “going in” through the Golan heights.

  “Tough bones there,” he said. “Hard, stony ground, and beyond that the lava beds of the Jebel Druz country. We’ll turn north before that, and head for Damascus. Our lot is to lead in the Free French, and then we’re to let them have a go at the city and see if they can take it. The Frogs may not want to mix it up, but from initial reports I’ve heard, they’re fighting on the coast road.”

  “We’re ready,” said Troyak, chewing the last of his meal and swilling down a long swallow of water behind it. In another hour they mounted the trucks the British had provided and moved out as a ground force. The Argonauts drew a better ticket and got Dragon IFVs from Kinlan, though no one would say he was playing favorites, even if he was. The helicopters, particularly the three X-3s, would be held in reserve, or used as fast, mobile fire support when called for, or as scouts. The KA-40 would standby as a medical unit and supply ferry asset, though the Russians didn’t care much for that.

  “Think the Big Blue Pig could outgun one of those fancy hybrids the British have?” a corporal asked.

  “Stow that, Rykovich,” Troyak reminded him. “The British are allies now, remember?”

  They moved out, part of the central force that was comprised of six Free French battalions, the Gurkhas and the Scimitars of Sabre Force. The main opposition was from the Vichy 17th Senegalese Infantry Regiment, three battalions, and these units fought nothing more than brief delaying actions as they fell back towards Damascus. One battalion thought to hold the gateway town of Kuneitra, but did not have the strength to occupy the heights of Tel Abu Nida to the west, which were eagerly taken by a company of the Gurkhas. From this wooded height,
they could put well placed mortar fire down on the French positions, a development that did much to discourage further defense.

  At the first sign of a ground attack organizing, the Senegalese pulled out, heading northeast, then east towards the rail line to Daraa. It was there that they ran afoul of the Free French 4th Senegalese Battalion, and a troop of 8 Scimitars that had been leading them up from the Yarmuk River Valley. There was a brief firefight, with Senegalese riflemen on both sides starkly outlining the nature of the little civil war that was now underway. The Scimitar tanks weighed heavily in the outcome, quickly suppressing the enemy MG positions with their 30mm autocannons, and allowing the Free French troops to push on through.

  So while the Aussies fought their way over the Litani River on the coast, “Sabre Force” had crossed the hard ground of the Golan and was now preparing to move into the cultivated land beyond. B Company of the Gurkhas raced ahead and took the bridge over the narrow, winding river Awaj north of Sassa, which flowed east below Kiswah. This allowed two troops of Scimitars to cross quickly over. In time, the whole Gurkha battalion reassembled there, in a good position to outflank the growing French defense further east at Kiswah.

  There the Vichy French blew both the road and rail bridges and dug into well prepared positions. The town itself was on the north bank of the river, and directly behind it there was an imposing hill, Jebel el Kelb, rising to the 840 meter mark. Moving west from there, across a flat valley, was more high ground over 900 meters known as Tel Afar and Jebel Madani, and it was this sector that was now being scouted by small patrols of Gurkhas. If it could be taken, it would unhinge the entire French defense at Kiswah.