Three Kings

The Italians moved with more resolve now, the lead tanks of their newly arrivedAriete Division rattling up the weathered paved road of the ViaBalbia, intent on reclaiming lost honor as much as any ground yielded in their bitter retreat from Egypt. This time, however, they were not alone to face the whirlwind advance of the British. This time a tough, professional force was on their right flank, screening them from the sudden appearance of O’Connor’s tanks, the stolid Matildas that had proven so indomitable in the past. Two battalions of medium tanks were in the van, one with M13/40 tanks, the other with M14/41s.

Five men were huddled inside each tank, three below in the hull where the driver, radio man, and a machine gunner were positioned, with the commander and main gunner in the turret. Together they shared an armored space a little over seven feet wide and just under eight feet long, crowded with levers machine gun belts and over a hundred rounds of ammunition in the desert heat. It was a place of heat, intense noise, and the smell of battle mixed with the adrenaline of fear. No more than two inches of steel protected them from incoming enemy rounds, and if one penetrated, the explosive fury of the round would set off fuel, ammo and fill the tiny space with choking fumes and fire for any who survived the explosion.

And yet, of all the forces now arrayed in the desert, these men at least had that steel between them and the enemy, and their own heavy weapon in the 47mm main tank gun. An infantryman might have only the bare desert scrub and sand, along with his rifle for protection, so the tankers had a feeling of invulnerability relative to their supporting infantry, and the privilege of having a ride through the desert in their armored chariot, no matter how arduous the venture was.

The force they met on the dark desert road that morning was the British 1st Royal Tank Regiment of the 2nd Armored Division. The regiment was not a strong force that day, largely composed of 18 aging Mark VI light tanks, which were really little more than thinly armored machine gun carriers. There were three Matildas with them, the backbone of the regiment with their heavy armor and much stronger main gun, but only three. The two Italian battalions put 35 tanks each in the field, and behind them the road was crowded with more fighting vehicles as the remainder of the division piled up on the narrow way, an armored snake hissing and snarling its way forward in the pre-dawn light.

The encounter was brief, violent, and then burned out quickly as the Italian 47mm main guns knocked out the three lead MarkVIs. The rest fanned out, rattled out streams of machine gun fire, but were soon withdrawing up the road to a point on a low ridge where the three Matildas waited. They could see they were overmatched, what amounted to a light scout detail against a much stronger armored force. But the odds would soon even up, for there, coming up behind them, was a brigade of the 6th Australian Infantry Division, three battalions ready to dig in and meet the coming onslaught from their sandy slit trenches behind the escarpment. As the men hurried forward, harangued by the yammering calls of their Sergeants, they could also hear the clatter of metal tank treads and the growl of trucks off on their left, out beyond the stony wadis in the desert. Some larger force was moving there, like a panther on the prowl ready to pounce.

It was the opening act of the next phase of what would become a long and bitter struggle in the deserts of Libya and Egypt. O’Connor’s men thought they were renewing the heady offensive that had rudely ejected the Italians from Egypt, and chased them all the way across the wide jutting peninsula of Cyrenaica. The British had taken Tobruk along the way, and reached Benghazi on the west coast of that peninsula, where other troops were fortifying that place. The withdrawal of the 4th Indian Division for duty in Sudan had sapped away all O’Connor’s motorized infantry support until the Australians arrived. Now he was ready to move again, with the promise of more troops coming from far off Egypt, as the British gathered men and equipment from every corner of their empire.