Three Kings

“No? Well in France you had friendly forces massed behind you, good rail lines and a road net to move up supplies, and only over a distance of a few hundred miles. Consider that before you plan any offensive east, and remember, your orders now are to fight a defensive battle, nothing more. Stop O’Connor and then let us see what we can do to build up your force for future operations.”

Rommel eyed the map quietly, pointing at a spot near Sicily. “What about Malta?” There it sat, right astride the convoy routes they would need to reach Tripoli with all the troops and supplies that must land there. Keitel raised an eyebrow, not expecting the issue to come up here.

“Yes,” said Keitel. “Malta. It could become a problem. At the moment it is not much of a threat, and the Italians believe they can pound it to dust with their air force.”

“Now they begin to sound like Goring,” said Rommel. “If the British build up strength there, it will choke this supply line you are so concerned about-a nice fat stone in the neck of the goose.”

Keitel was pleasantly surprised to hear such an appraisal from a man like Rommel. “We are considering the matter,” he said. “Student has the 7th Flieger Division itching to do something. We are already knee deep in the Balkans. Some discussion has been going around about opening another route to the Suez Canal from that direction, a nice right pincer to compliment your operations down that long desert road. But to do that we will have to hop from one enemy held island to another-from Greece to Crete, to Cyprus, and then perhaps we can make the final jump into Syria to join the Vichy French. That’s a big operation, and in the meantime, I am trying to interest Student in another plan-Malta.”

Rommel nodded. “Considering that the Italians will be delivering the supplies, I can only find myself hoping their navy does a little better than Graziani. Yet now that we have Gibraltar, what is to stop us from sending our own navy into the Mediterranean? I have heard Admiral Raeder’s arguments about the southern approach across the desert. Will he support me once I get there?”

“I would not count on it,” Keitel admonished, “and we haven’t the merchant shipping in any case. At the moment, we must rely on Regia Marina, or perhaps the Vichy French.”

In this Keitel was being deliberately evasive. He knew of secret plans already underway that would indeed see some rather dramatic developments in the Mediterranean, and one of them involved Malta. In fact, Keitel had worked out a plan with ‘Smiling Albert’ Kesselring and Student, taking it toJodl and Raeder to see what they thought on the matter. What he wanted to know now was what Rommel was thinking. He would be the commander on the ground, and the man most likely to gain or lose on the question of Malta. Was he in favor of such an operation?

“Suppose we forsake Malta, and the British reinforce it with considerable air units. What then? You know damn well that your army cannot live off the desert, nor on captured British supplies.”

Now it was Rommel’s turn to raise an eyebrow, inwardly seeing difficulties in all of this talk of supplies, and wanting nothing whatsoever to do with it. In the history Fedorov knew, he would learn the hard lessons of logistics in the desert, after two long years of bitter struggle there. Only then would he come to write: “The first essential condition for an army to be able to stand the strain of battle is an adequate stock of weapons, petrol, and ammunition. In fact, the battle is fought and decided by the quartermasters before the shooting begins. The bravest men can do nothing without guns, the guns nothing without plenty of ammunition: and neither guns nor ammunition are of much use in mobile warfare unless there are vehicles with sufficient petrol to haul them around.”

Now however, all he wanted to do was to get down to the desert and beat the British. Then he would see how long it took before those oak leaves showed up for his Knight’s Cross.

He put his hand in his pocket. And his finger found the hole there, the one he had neglected to mend days ago when he first discovered it. Now the pocket was useless, and could hold nothing if value until it was sewn. A stitch in time, he thought. Yes… even he could see the shadow Malta cast on his prospects. He had been opposed to the plan when he first heard about it, thinking it would only draw off supplies and troops he might need himself in the desert. But now he passed a strange moment of inward thought, as if he were seeing the long desert road ahead of him, and hearing the melancholy regret that would later inspire those words on the matter of logistics. It was as if an inner sixth sense was warning him now, whispering of a doom he could not yet see or believe possible, but one that would be his undoing in the months ahead.