Stormtide Rising (Kirov Series Book 29) Page 17

  I might swing around the city from the north, and see what prospects that might offer. There are a series of canals there, and a long berm the British call the “bund.” Those will be real obstacles for the panzer divisions, so I may need those regiments of the 78th to fight their way across and get me little bridgeheads for the mobile forces to cross the canals unmolested. After that, we take the fight to the city, and it will undoubtedly be house to house in places.

  I have in hand perhaps the best and most experienced street fighters in all of Germany—the Brandenburgers. Fresh troops for the Lehr Regiment came in by rail on the first train from Mosul yesterday, and now that regiment has four good battalions. Most of these men cut their teeth in Volgograd, and this can be no worse. I’m told the British can be stubborn and tenacious on defense when they dig in their heels. We shall soon see.

  What about the 22nd Luftland Division? There being no apparent threat to Dier-ez Zour and Haditha, I’ll leave the 47th and 65th Regiments there, and bring the 16th Luftland Regiment forward for a reserve infantry force. Lastly, there is one more arrival promised me this week on the next train from Mosul, and most timely. The good news I’ve sent Hitler has prompted him to cherry pick yet another fine unit from the Russian front. I will get the 901 Lehr Motorized Regiment, men I fought with in my drive for Serpukhov in 1941. As an independent unit, I can see why it caught Hitler’s eye. Oberst Georg Scholze still has that outfit, with good grenadier battalions under Kurt, Kübler and Schumer, a Panzerjager battalion under Hauptmann Klein, and my friend Alfred Muller with the Sturmgeschütz-Kompanie. I know them all. That will come in good time, and be most useful here.

  Guderian looked at his watch, feeling the warmth rising with the early dawn. 1st Brandenburg Regiment will push right into Kazimiyah and try to get me my next bridge. That leads to the Faisal Mausoleum down where the river makes that sharp bend, and it covers the Al Safina Ferry site on the other side of the river. Once we have that, then we have two good crossing points, the bridge and the ferry sites.

  Further south, I will send in 2nd Brandenburg Regiment along the main rail line. They’ll need to take the Spinning & Weaving factory, then push on through the palm gardens to Al Tayfiyah Ferry. 3rd Regiment will be on their right, south of the gardens, and they must root the enemy out of the grain silos and factory buildings there. As for 10th Motorized, they drive though the outlying town of Al Mansur, take and threaten to take those royal palaces. That will put them in a good position to flank that airfield.

  It begins now….

  NOTE: Maps of all Guderian’s operations are available at Writingshop.ws on the pages dedicated to Stormtide Rising.

  Part VII

  Baghdad

  “ Thence we travelled to Baghdad, the Abode of Peace and Capital of Islam. Here there are bridges like that at Hilla, on which the people promenade night and day, both men and women. The town has eleven cathedral mosques, eight on the right bank and three on the left, together with very many other mosques and madrasas, only the latter are all in ruins. The baths at Baghdad are numerous and excellently constructed, most of them being painted with pitch, which has the appearance of black marble. This pitch is brought from a spring between Kufa and Basra, from which it flows continually. It gathers at the sides of the spring clay and is shoveled up and brought to Baghdad….”

  — Ibn Battuta of Tangiers

  Chapter 19

  22 FEB, 1943

  The pitch that gushed forth from the “spring” between Kufa and Basra was oil, and somehow the artisans of the 12th Century found a way to use it as a pigment to create that ‘Black Marble’ finish that now lined the baths of Baghdad. Oil had been at the root and stem of Iraq’s importance for decades, ever since Otto von Bismarck pushed hard to see the construction of the Berlin to Baghdad railway. Oil was becoming the life blood of modern industrial economies, and therefore, the life blood of war.

  Von Bismarck also saw the rail line as a way to connect Germany with its colonies in Africa, and German engineers like Wilhelm von Pressel were retained by the Turks to help construct the lines within Turkey—the very same railroads that Germany had spent a long year refurbishing to make Operation Phoenix possible. The threat this rail line posed was now quite apparent to the British. It was a steel line bisecting her empire, threatening to bring the Germans between Egypt, Palestine, and the Crown Jewel colony of India.

  This is partly the reason why the British fought so hard to neutralize the Ottoman Turks in Syria and Arabia in WWI, and to curtail German access to the oil of ‘Mesopotamia’ and the Persian Gulf. The fabled ‘Lawrence of Arabia’ made attacks on these steel rail lines his calling card in the Great War, becoming a champion of the Arab thirst for independence after it concluded.

  Victorious in WWI, Britain cemented these restrictions into the Treaty of Versailles, rescinding German ownership of the Berlin to Baghdad Railway. The Kingdom gained exclusive rights to oil development in Mesopotamia and southern Persia for its Anglo-Persian Company, and the British Army extended the rail line from Baghdad all the way to Basra.

  The Sykes-Picot Agreement signed after WWI then saw the victorious Allied powers slicing up the Middle East and giving territories away as protectorates as if they were pieces of cake. Britain would gain control of Palestine, all the way to the River Jordan, and of all Southern Iraq. France took control of Northern Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and even portions of Southern Turkey. Russia’s shadow fell over Istanbul, the Turkish Straits, and Armenia. The borders drawn in the sand, long straight lines to define all these new states, would cut right across ethnic and cultural enclaves, and sow the seeds of dissention and strife in this region for decades to come.

  It was the beginning of a long romance and marriage the West would have with the oil of the Middle East, and this was not the first time armies would struggle in the sands for control of that vital resource. That battle was still being fought in 2021, in a far off future that only a very few ‘interlopers’ could perceive in 1943. Oil was the reason Brigadier Kinlan had been sent to Egypt in 2020, and therefore the reason his brigade endured the impossible circumstance of being blasted into the past to make a most significant contribution to Britain’s survival in 1942.

  Oil was the reason the British endured the torturing heat and privation of the Syrian Desert, obtaining rights to build their pipelines under the sand to reach the Mediterranean coast. It was the reason the Arabs were denied their independence for so long, and it remained the smoldering source of conflict in the region for the next century. The oil of Baba Gugur and other key sites would fuel the engines of war yet again in WWII, and it was the reason that Heinz Guderian was now standing in the smoky dim shadow of the city founded by Abu Ja'far Abdallah ibn Muhammad al-Mansur, the 2nd Abbasid Caliph.

  Al-Mansur had called the place ‘Madinat al-Salam,’ the Round City, which became the core of old ‘Baghdad’ when it was later renamed. The name meant “God’s Gift,” and others called it the “City of Peace.” That was a commodity that would soon run short in Baghdad, from this day and forward through the decades to the 21st Century. Guderian gave the order to begin the attack two hours before sunrise on the 22nd of February.

  (See battle maps 1 and 2)

  1st Brandenburg Regiment met the most stubborn defense that morning. The road they were on was constricted by a deep marsh on the right, and crossed by a canal leading to a water pump station on the river. This created a bottle neck no more than 500 meters wide, and into that narrow passage went all three battalions abreast. That might be the frontage for a single battalion on attack, and it made for too many bodies in too open an area, so the companies ended up moving forward in waves. Behind them Konrad’s entire Lehr Regiment was forming up, meant to exploit into the Kazimiyah district, a more heavily built up area to the east.

  When the attack slowed to a crawl, quite literally, with the rifle squads on their bellies in the open ground, the Germans then sought to flank the position with 2nd Regiment attacking south of that m
arsh. They would swarm into the smaller suburb of Al Haditha, named after the town Guderian had taken nearly two weeks earlier at the junction of the Tripoli / Haifa pipelines. This position was guarded by troops of the 1/10 Baluch Rifles in a large walled factory with looms and weaving equipment. They fought hard for four hours, the bullets snapping against those white stone walls and ricocheting off the looms at close quarters. Then the Germans brought up their PzJager battalion, a special unit attached to this regiment that had 12 Panthers and an equal number of Marder III’s.

  The long barreled 75mm guns on the Panthers blasted away at the factory buildings, which was simply too much for the Indian rifle squads to endure. That site was right on the main road, and when it fell, it would open the way into the hamlet of Zidan, with its lush palm lined gardens and date trees. 7th Battalion had already been fighting its way through this area, opposed by the men of 3/15 Punjab Rifles. Behind it, just south of the main road below Zidan, was yet another factory processing grain, and 4/8th Punjab had thrown up walls of grain bags and fortified the whole site. The tall concrete silo brought back bitter memories of Volgograd for some of the veteran German infantry who had fought there.

  The Germans wasted no time bringing up engineers, assault pioneers attached to Obersturmführer Duren’s regiment, and he watched through his field glasses as his troops made a classic attack on that silo. By noon, both the Spinning & Weaving Factory and the Grain Factory had been taken, save one building on the south side of the complex where a company of 4/8th Punjab still held out. Yet the British were not about to give up that easily. The 6th Indian Division, defending in all these areas, had a battalion of Royal Engineers, and they were sent in to try and retake the grain silos. They got over the wall on the eastern side of the complex, then three companies attacked, supported by artillery.

  It was a gallant attack, the Royal Engineers pressing forward, Bren guns spitting fire at the soldiers of the 9th Brandenburg Battalion. They reached the silo, set charges against one wall to blow a hole, and then stormed in. For the next hour, they had the silo back again, their fire so hot that two German companies had to retire west of the outer wall for cover, where they immediately began regrouping for a counterattack. It was what Guderian had feared, a heavily built up area, with good concrete and stone buildings, and it would be back and forth for hours to reduce that strongpoint.

  With 8th Battalion in reserve, the Germans sent it forward, fresh troops to press an attack against the southern wall of the Grain Factory. At the same time, they moved up more of their own Pioneers, with six panzerfaust teams ready to blast away at the silo. The Royals held the position, braving heavy fire, but events were transpiring east of the Tigris that would soon make a mockery of their gallantry.

  (See Battle Map 4)

  4th Panzer Division was on the move, pushing over a narrow watercourse that arced around the outlying city settlement of Adhamiya. It was there that 17th Indian Brigade under Brigadier Jenkins of the 8th Division held the line, but they were about to endure the wrath of a full German Panzer Division on attack, something that was quite outside their wartime experience.

  The Germans, mounted in halftracks, were organized into three heavy kampfgruppes. Closest to the Tigris, KG Rosenfeld had two battalions of Panzergrenadiers, backed by the Panzerjager company and 2nd Battalion of the 35th Panzer Regiment. They quickly pushed the enemy off their sandbagged positions on the watercourse, forcing them to retire to the outskirts of Adhamiya.

  Further east KG Schafer, structured along the same lines as Rosenfeld, came forcefully up a secondary road, and followed a north-south canal the led them to a hole in the enemy lines. Schafer sent his panzers on through, dismounting infantry to try and widen the breach. They had help on their left from a battalion of the 78th Sturm Division, which had finally come down from Kirkuk in time for the attack.

  The built up area of Adhamiya was relatively thin, no more than 400 meters, and once beyond it, a secondary road ran south through open fields and local cultivation that washed up against the thicker settlement of the Al Zamiyah District. That district harbored several key objectives. It was accessed by the Kazimiyah Bridge to the west, (called the Aa’mah bridge in 2021), and the Royal Mausoleum of King Faisal was nested further south behind the prominent domed mosque of Immam Al Azam, two schools, and a hospital. There was also an important fuel depot in the district, which is why 8th Indian commander General Russel had placed a second line of defense on the northern fringe of Al Zamiyah. On the far right, the whole district was protected by two elevated ‘bunds’ above flooded, marshy canal zones. They roughly followed the lines of what was once the old city wall in ancient times, and now they stood as lines of defense in this new war.

  The importance of this sector could not be underestimated, for it if was overrun, it would mean the Germans would already be cutting off General Thompson’s 6th Indian Division on the western side of the Tigris, still stubbornly defending Kazimiyah. The vital bridge that bore that same name was the one link that connected the two divisions, and it had to be held. With Jenkins’ 17th Indian Brigade embroiled in the fight for Adhamiya, its lines penetrated by KG Schafer, and with Brigadier Ford’s 19th Indian Brigade fighting off a heavy attack over the canal and bund line to the east, the fate of the Al Zamiyah District now rested with that second line of defense, the 21st Indian Regiment under Brigadier Purves.

  The German halftracks had already come barreling up that secondary road, racing across the open fields, and smashing right into a company of 3/15 Punjab, which shattered and began a hasty retreat. It fell back to artillery that had been brought too far forward, and soon the German machineguns were raking those batteries, sending gun crews scrambling for cover. The other companies of that battalion were shifted west to try and seal the breech, but it was riflemen against armored Panzergrenadiers and tanks.

  The one battalion of British regulars in this brigade, 5th Queen’s Own Rifles, had been posted along the shores of the vital Kazimiyah bridge and nearby ferry sites. They had not expected to be threatened from the rear, and now the men were looking nervously over their shoulders, hearing the growing sounds of battle behind them.

  “Look to your front!” growled Color Sergeant Kemp, though even he could not help but turn his head and cast a wary glance to the east. The mid-day sun gleamed off the golden dome of the Mosque of Imam Al Azam, and they could hear the rising and falling call to prayer from the onion capped spires of the ‘minarets,’ a word derived from the Arabic word for a lighthouse. Yet these tall towers would not call out to distant ships at sea, but to the sea of the faithful, surrounding the mosque on every side. They were thought to be ‘gates joining heaven and earth,’ which is why their tall thin spires strained upwards to the sky, much like the towers of Western Cathedrals.

  Sergeant Kemp and his men would not be answering the call to prayer that day, but the Lieutenant soon came with an order for the battalion to form ranks and prepare to move east. It was no more than 1,500 meters to the fighting, and the battalion soon formed up its companies on the eastern edge of the Al Zamiyah District.

  “Company…. Fix Bayonets!”

  The rattle of the steel bayonets was heard all along the line, and many a private took heart in that. It was a throwback to an earlier time, when the rifle and bayonet would form the heart of any infantry attack. Yet now the enemy was coming in armored beasts that could not be pierced or harmed by those gleaming metal barbs. In this war, the bayonet was mostly a psychological weapon, and the order had the desired effect on the men, bolstering their courage for battle.

  “Battalion! Advance!”

  Three companies had formed in a long line, and they now swept forward towards the breakthrough on that secondary road. The last was held in reserve near the British “Sport Club” building a few hundred meters to the south. Thrown into the breech, that battalion would take very heavy casualties over the next hours, but they would also hold that line, and slow the German advance.

  About four
kilometers to the east, there were to natural defense lines that jutted at a 30% angle like a pair of open scissors. The roughly followed the lines of marshy watercourses and canals, the outermost called the ‘Army Canal,’ which was backed by an elevated Bund. At one point, there was a small settlement known as the “Arab Hikmat,” a seething souk on the outskirts of the city. It was now entirely overrun by the troops of the German 78th Sturm Division, supported by KG Kufner of the 4th Panzer Division. That was the enveloping pincer of this attack, finding that settlement to be the one gap in the canal line that might be exploited by armored vehicles.

  The Sturm Regiments had done their job, clearing the souk and sending the Arabs scattering wildly in all directions. They secured a small bridge over the canal, and Kufner’s recon companies started across, one racing down the road through a gap in the lines to come right at Brigadier Ford’s HQ of the 19th Indian Brigade. The General and his staff retreated quickly down the road, and that made it clear to him that things were not going well. What was happening to his men on the outer bund? Then he looked over his shoulder and saw a sight that brought a broad smile to his leathery features—British tanks!