Three Kings

Rommel was right in the vanguard with the main body of his division when it moved, making sure that his orders were actually happening on the ground in a well coordinated way. Tonight the dance would begin. He was going to throw a battlegroup of Italian tanks right up the main coastal road at the point of the British column he knew was assembling there for a move west. At the same time he was going to take his own division south, then east in a wide envelopment maneuver, and turn north to cut the British lines of supply.

Even this simple maneuver was something that had never been successfully executed by the Italians before, and therefore it carried an inherent element of surprise. The key was speed and well coordinated movement, and Rommel would ride about to assure proper deployment of the units in the dark, and round up any stragglers or misdirected columns. When he came up on a unit of armored cars parked by the narrow road he got out of his vehicle and angrily asked the Leutnant why he was stopping. The men were squinting at a map, their eye goggles high on their foreheads, and Rommel simply pointed.

“There!” he said firmly. “That way. Don’t bother with the maps, follow your nose! Find the edge of the battle out there and get round its flank. Now move!”

He was pushing his men and machines hard, like a rider giving the horse the whip at the opening bell, and he was out in a fast armored car, racing from unit to unit to make certain the division was finding its stride and working up a good lather. In this he was very much like his British counterpart, circulating on the battlefield to make his presence felt, and galvanizing any unit he found that was not making a purposeful advance.

But even though O’Connor could not see the Germans coming in the darkness, he could hear them. The longer O’Connor listened to the battle, the more he realized it was something much more than a chance meeting in the desert. No. This was a well planned enemy advance, and he could hear it spilling out to the southern flank, as columns of armored cars, motorcycle infantry, tanks and trucks began to raise dust that soon caught the early rising sunlight and cast a strange red hue over the whole scene. He ran to his own armored car, an older Marmon Herrington that he had taken a fancy to, and rapped loudly on the steel siding with his riding crop as he leapt up onto the sideboard.

“South!” he yelled. O’Connor was doing the one thing any good cavalry officer could do by instinct-ride to the sound of the guns.

It did not take long for him to realize what he now had on his hands. The sounds of the battle seemed to stretch out for miles from his position at an insignificant crossing of barren desert tracks calledGieuf elMatar, and all the way west to the coast where his column had been set to advance, over forty kilometers away.

The tactics of his adversary had shaped the battlefield. Rommel had the bit between his teeth and, after throwing theAriete Armor division right up the ViaBalbia at the point of the British column, he had taken his own 5th Light Division on his flanking maneuver, where they now surged north to try and surprise the British.

Instinctively, or perhaps more by necessity, the brigades of the 6th Australian Division behind the leading armored units had begun to break out of their road columns, dismount their infantry, and deploy in a series of hastily established positions to cover that long, exposed flank. A battalion driven by a more aggressive Lieutenant would get to some decent ground, perhaps no more than a series of undulations in the terrain, dappled with scattered scrub, and the companies would begin to dig in. One by one, the other battalions of its brigade would come up to one side or another and do the same. A Staff Sergeant would wrangle away a 6-pounder anti-tank gun and post it any place that offered reasonable cover to support the infantry.

The troops were digging in the dry earth and sand, their kit shovels battling with the parched stony ground in places, and mortar teams were setting up their tubes, fixing sights, now that they finally had them, and firing a few test rounds for range. Little by little the line of men and guns extended east behind what was once the point if O’Connor’s column. The men could sense that this was something more than a chance engagement as well, and they were getting ready for it, like men sand-bagging before a storm.

It was not long before that storm turned to find them, and one column after another in the German flanking move began to probe north. The British line kept extending east, and the instant O’Connor realized what was happening he sent up orders that the armored point of the column should disengage and fall back through the defensive positions of the Australian 16th Brigade astride the main coastal road.