Three Kings

What O’Connor did not know was the character and temperament of the man leading this sudden enemy advance. He was well back when the action began, making ready to move forward to 2nd Armored Division and get the lads moving. When the initial reports came in he set aside his maps and clip boards of reports on anticipated supply deliveries, and huddled with his radio operator, listening to the fighting as it began to take shape and form. It was something he would often do-just listen to a battle, as a man might stand in the quiet hush of an oncoming storm, waiting for the thunder. He would hear things in the seemingly routine radio chatter, in the sound of distant gunfire, the movement of troops and trucks. All these sounds would give him subtle clues, the murmur of an army on the move, feeding that inner sense he had about what was happening on the battlefield, and he did not like what he was hearing that morning.

“What’s that?” he said cocking his head, and scratching the back of his neck as he listened.

“1st RTR, sir. It seems they’ve run into something bang off, just as they were moving out to the west.”

O’Connor listened, hearing more in the chatter of the radio traffic than his operator realized. He could pick out the sharp crack of the British 3-inch mortars firing, and then he heard something else, the radio traffic around calls for artillery fire support from a unit further back. It told him the one thing he needed to know just then, and the one thing he did not wish to hear-his attack had stopped, even before it was really underway. The units were on the defense!

The calls for artillery he was hearing were going out to the 16th Australian Infantry Brigade, second in the line of march. If the vanguard wanted supporting fire so soon like this, then they were under attack, no longer advancing as they should be. Now that feeling of restless anxiety came over him, as he recalled the latest reports he had received from Wavell.

He could sense something on the wind, hear it, feel it, and he had the odd notion in his head that it was more than the fate of the troops he commanded now at stake, or even the nation they served. His own personal fate was somehow rolled into the growing rumble of the battle out there, and it was a haunting, eerie feeling.

Chapter 17

The Germans were here. Rommel. Tanks and infantry had arrived some weeks ago in Tripoli, where Rommel had put on a show for any prying eyes who might want to report on his sudden appearance. As the tanks were off loaded, he set them to march, making a little theater along the broad streets near the bay. Then he had the lead units turn off on a narrow side street, double back, and begin the march anew, a circuitous display meant to fool anyone who might be hidden away in the white adobe buildings counting his tanks. They would get an eyeful that day to be sure.

Rommel. The man had been ordered to take up defensive positions, or so the first reports from Bletchley Park had claimed. The code breakers had listened in on the German General’s orders, and were confident he was there to place a screening and delaying force between the British advance and Sirte. But the reports were wrong, and not because of any failure on the part of the code breakers. They were wrong because Rommel himself simply decided to disobey his orders.

He had no intention whatsoever of fighting a defensive battle here. Not Erwin Rommel. Not the man who had dashed across France with his Ghost Division, confounding the French and British at every turn. He had the whole of the 5th Light Division in hand, right next to the ItalianAriete Armored division in the van of his own long column, and he was heading east. He knew it was risky to be so heedless of an order from the Fuhrer, but he was determined to show him he had made the correct choice for this post. By so doing he hoped to not only catch his enemy by surprise, but also snatch a few quick headlines of his own for the newspapers.

He had studied the aerial reconnaissance photos well, in spite of the clever deceptions the British had been erecting in the desert. Planes had overflown what looked to be an unusually large cluster of Bedouin tents just south of the roads near the British outpost airfield atAntelat. They had been sent to bomb the field as a prelude to this attack, but found that their efforts on bombing this site had resulted in little more than a scattering of wood crates over the shifting sands.

Rommel thought the site was perhaps hiding British tanks and vehicles inside those tents, but the deception was even more devious. The “tanks” were nothing more than clever dummies made of old supply crates. He did not know it then, but they were the clever and innovative work of a man named Dudley Clarke, a charming yet devious man that would become a bit of a magician with his sleight of hand in the desert war.