Chapter 315: Yellow Sand Filling the Sky
The order had barely been issued when, at noon, the German aircraft carriers launched the first wave of the offensive.
Dozens of bombers climbed from their flight decks and gathered above the Mediterranean before turning south toward the Sinai Peninsula. Their formations spread across the sky like dark migrating birds, heading directly for the defensive positions around Nekhel.
The commander responsible for the Allied defenses there was British General Willie Lacabull.
From the moment he arrived in Sinai, Lacabull had ordered extensive trench systems constructed around the three principal cities. Dugouts, anti tank positions, ammunition pits, machine gun nests, and concealed artillery emplacements had transformed the desert approaches into layered defensive zones.
Now, watching German aircraft fill the sky, Lacabull merely sneered.
"Come on, you German dogs."
He raised his binoculars.
"Let's see whether your teeth can bite through sand."
The words had barely left his mouth when the first bombs struck.
Boom!
The earth convulsed.
Columns of sand erupted across the city, and Operation against Nekhel began in earnest.
Along the forward line, anti aircraft guns opened fire almost simultaneously. Tracer rounds climbed toward the sky in streams of red light while heavier flak burst among the descending aircraft.
British, French, Australian, and colonial troops crouched deep inside their trenches, helmets pressed low as explosions rolled overhead without pause.
Boom!
Boom!
Boom!
The desert itself seemed to shake.
Sand poured from the trench walls.
The pressure waves hammered against the soldiers' chests so violently that some felt as though their hearts had stopped for an instant.
No one could tell how long the bombardment lasted.
Minutes stretched into something far longer.
Then, gradually, the shriek of diving aircraft faded.
The explosions became less frequent.
Silence did not return, but the battlefield seemed to breathe again.
Several soldiers cautiously raised their heads above the trench.
The Stuka dive bombers that had spent the opening phase suppressing the anti aircraft positions were already pulling away.
For one brief moment, relief flickered across several faces.
Then someone looked higher.
"Aircraft!"
More silhouettes emerged from behind the clouds.
The Stukas had not ended the bombing.
They had merely cleared the way.
Heinkel He 111 medium bombers now approached in formation.
With much of the forward anti aircraft network damaged or suppressed, the German medium bombers descended with almost insulting confidence.
Some pilots deliberately flew lower to improve accuracy.
Bomb bays opened.
Then came the second storm.
Wave after wave of bombs fell across the intricate trench network.
Defensive positions disappeared beneath smoke and sand.
Communication trenches collapsed.
Ammunition pits erupted.
Machine gun nests vanished beneath craters.
The entire defensive belt seemed to be struck with a giant hammer.
When the surviving British and French soldiers finally dared to look up again, the world around them had changed.
Thick columns of black smoke rose into the sky.
Fires burned throughout the position.
The desert air smelled of explosives, fuel, hot metal, and blood.
Their ears, half deafened by the bombardment, barely registered the next sound at first.
A low mechanical rumble.
Then another.
Then dozens.
The noise grew steadily louder.
"Tanks!"
A soldier stumbled toward the firing step.
"Tanks are coming! Open fire! Open fire!"
German armor appeared through the smoke.
More than a dozen tanks raced across the scarred battlefield, their tracks grinding over torn earth and abandoned positions.
Bang!
A German tank gun fired.
The shell struck the edge of a trench.
Sand and debris exploded inward, burying several stunned Allied soldiers beneath the collapsing wall.
"Anti tank guns!"
An officer screamed.
"Bring up the anti tank guns!"
Concealed positions on both sides of the battlefield came alive.
Gun crews dragged their weapons out from behind the dunes, hurriedly turning their barrels toward the advancing Panzers.
But the German pilots had not left.
Several Stukas were still circling above the battlefield, waiting precisely for such targets to reveal themselves.
The moment the anti tank guns emerged, the dive bombers rolled over.
Their sirens began to scream.
Woo!
The sound cut through the battlefield like something inhuman.
Dive.
Aim.
Release.
Boom!
A bomb landed beside an anti tank position.
Crates of ammunition detonated in succession.
The blast tore apart the gun crew and sheared away half the dune, throwing sand high into the air like a breaking wave.
Other anti tank crews survived long enough to fire.
A gunner adjusted his sights.
"Fire!"
The gun recoiled.
The shell screamed across the desert.
Boom!
It struck the track assembly of an advancing Panther.
The tank jerked violently and stopped.
Its track had been torn apart.
The Panther had lost a leg.
But it was still a predator.
The turret rotated.
Its machine gun opened fire.
Rat-tat-tat-tat!
Bullets swept across the Allied trenches, forcing every soldier who dared raise his head back into cover.
The immobilized tank had effectively become a mobile bunker.
A British officer shouted from farther down the line.
"Bring out the new weapons!"
A wooden crate was pried open.
Inside lay several No. 74 anti tank grenades.
Their bulbous shape made them look more like oversized glass bottles than military weapons.
One Indian soldier grabbed one of the grenades.
The men around him stared.
"You mad bastard..."
He ignored them.
Holding the grenade, he climbed from the trench and sprinted toward the disabled Panther.
Machine gun fire snapped across the sand around him.
Somehow, through sheer luck, he reached the tank's flank.
He pulled back his arm, preparing to slap the adhesive grenade against the armor.
Then something went wrong.
The adhesive surface caught his sleeve.
The grenade stuck firmly to his uniform.
The soldier froze.
He shook his arm.
Nothing.
He pulled harder.
Still nothing.
"Fuck!"
It was the last word he ever spoke.
Bang!
A bullet struck the bulbous head of the grenade.
The unstable nitroglycerin inside detonated instantly.
Boom!
The soldier disappeared in a burst of blood, cloth, and flesh.
Several British soldiers who had already taken their own No. 74 grenades from the crate stared at the scene in horror.
Then, almost in unison, they carefully placed the grenades back.
The weapon had been a desperate improvisation from Britain's armaments industry.
Without enough time to overcome the technical barriers preventing them from reproducing Germany's anti tank rocket launchers, British engineers had resorted to a simpler solution.
It had seemed reasonable on paper.
On the battlefield, it was another matter entirely.
As German armored formations continued pressing forward beneath air support, the fate of Position No. 1 was sealed.
By afternoon, the first defensive line had fallen.
Elsewhere on the Sinai front, the French armored units, repeatedly battered in frontal engagements, attempted to change their approach.
The terrain worked against Germany as well.
Sinai's poor road network and broken desert tracks limited the ability of German armored formations to fully exploit their superior mobility.
The commander of the French 18th Tank Brigade saw an opportunity.
Rather than continue striking head on, he ordered his tanks to maneuver around the German flank and attempt an attack against the rear.
On the map, the plan was sound.
The desert, however, was indifferent to maps.
The brigade had advanced barely two kilometers before running directly into a German infantry division moving forward to reinforce the front.
There were no accompanying German tanks.
For a moment, the French thought fortune had finally favored them.
Then the German tank destroyers appeared.
Several had been converted from Panzer II chassis.
Infantry teams carrying anti tank rocket launchers spread out among the dunes.
The French advance immediately became a killing ground.
Rocket trails streaked across the sand.
Anti tank guns fired from concealed positions.
One French tank burned.
Then another.
Then another.
By the time the brigade commander realized the maneuver had failed, more than ten tanks had already been lost.
Under cover of darkness, the surviving vehicles withdrew in humiliation.
Thus ended the first day of the German offensive in Sinai.
Through overwhelming firepower and tightly coordinated air and ground operations, Bock's Middle East forces had advanced rapidly.
Several villages protecting the approaches to Nekhel were already under German control.
But Bock refused to allow the pace of victory to undermine logistics.
As soon as darkness settled over the desert, transport columns began moving toward the front.
Their most important cargo was not ammunition.
It was water.
At the end of April, temperatures across the Sinai Peninsula remained tolerable, generally between twenty five and twenty eight degrees Celsius.
Yet temperature alone could be deceptive.
The endless desert, dry air, dust, and physical exertion drained moisture from soldiers at a frightening rate.
Men became thirsty before they realized they were dehydrated.
Engines overheated.
Radiators demanded constant attention.
A battlefield could be lost not because an army ran out of bullets, but because its men and machines ran out of water.
The earlier British failures in the Middle East had impressed that lesson deeply upon Bock.
North Africa and the Middle East were not Europe.
There were no dense networks of rivers, wells, railways, and towns waiting every few kilometers.
In Sinai, logistics were not merely part of strategy.
They were strategy.
Bock was therefore willing to sacrifice speed for certainty.
Every captured village became a supply point.
Every repaired road shortened the distance between fuel columns and armored units.
Every secured well mattered.
Advance.
Consolidate.
Supply.
Then advance again.
Rommel faced the same fundamental problem farther west, but his answer was different.
Unlike Bock, who was conducting a methodical offensive across a relatively defined axis, Rommel had no intention of concentrating the entire North Africa Army Group directly against the Oasis Province.
Between Libya and the Oasis region stretched enormous expanses of desert and wasteland.
The French had demolished roads and railways during their retreat.
Driving the main force straight through that logistical void would turn German strength into a liability.
So Rommel chose deception.
Inside the North Africa Army Group command post, he studied the operational map for several minutes before speaking.
"Notify the forward formations."
His staff immediately began taking notes.
"Detach an armored force roughly the size of a brigade and have it probe toward the Oasis Province."
Rommel's finger then moved westward along the Libyan coast.
"Transfer the 16th Armored Division toward Benghazi."
The adjutant looked up.
"Benghazi, sir?"
"Yes."
Rommel tapped the coastal city.
"They are to begin an offensive against it."
He paused.
"But make the attack look larger than it truly is. I want noise, movement, artillery, reconnaissance activity, everything necessary to make the British and French believe a major armored assault is beginning."
"Do not, however, commit to a genuine full scale attack."
The adjutant stared at the map.
Slowly, the logic began to emerge.
"Sir, if the force attacking the Oasis Province is only a feint to draw British and French attention, why should the 16th Armored Division also pretend to be launching the main attack?"
Rommel smiled.
"Because I don't want to convince them that the Oasis Province is our main objective."
He tapped the map twice.
"I want them to believe they've discovered the deception."
The adjutant's eyes narrowed.
Rommel continued.
"They lack air superiority. Their reconnaissance capacity is limited. They cannot easily determine where our real concentrations are."
"We will send only a modest force against the Oasis Province. They'll notice that."
"Then they'll see an entire armored division making an apparently aggressive move toward Benghazi."
Rommel leaned back.
"What conclusion will they draw?"
The adjutant answered carefully.
"They'll assume the Oasis attack is the feint and Benghazi is the true objective."
"Exactly."
Rommel's smile widened slightly.
"And once they believe they've seen through us, they will become confident."
He moved several markers on the map.
"They'll try to play along."
"The British and French will leave their prepared positions, attempt to destroy the supposedly exposed force attacking the Oasis Province, and possibly maneuver around the flank toward the rear of the 16th Armored Division."
The adjutant stared at the markers.
Then he understood.
Rommel placed a final marker between them.
"And that is when the main force strikes."
The room became quiet.
"We meet the troops crawling out of their trenches head on."
His hand moved toward Benghazi.
"At the same time, the 16th Armored Division stops pretending to be the bait."
"It becomes the nail."
Rommel drove his finger behind the projected Allied movement.
"It penetrates their rear."
The adjutant nodded slowly.
A double deception.
The enemy would not merely be fooled.
They would be made to believe they had discovered the trick themselves.
After a moment, however, the adjutant raised another question.
"And if they refuse to move?"
Rommel shrugged.
"Then nothing of value has been lost."
He pointed toward Benghazi again.
"The operation still creates a time advantage."
"If they stay inside their fortifications, we simply shift our weight toward Benghazi, turn the demonstration into a genuine operation, and secure the coastal port first."
His expression became serious again.
"Once Benghazi is ours, our maritime supply network advances with us."
"Then we reconsider the Oasis Province from a stronger logistical position."
Rommel looked around the command room.
"Remember this."
"North Africa is not France."
"Here, capturing territory means very little if you cannot supply the men standing on it."
He tapped the map one final time.
"In the desert, supplies are everything."
....
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