Second Chance

Chapter Fifteen: Ruler of the Waves

Combat Zone

Egypt

24^th July 1940

There were two ways of looking at the world, Field Marshall Graziani knew; the Mussolini way and the real way. Despite his attempts to warn the Duce of the dangers, the Italian Army was advancing across the desert, stripped of most of its equipment. At the urging of Herr Obersturmbannfuehrer Strudel, the German officer who’d been assigned to help them, he’d stripped every unit of their trucks and tanks, merging them into a single fast force, leaving the other units to make their way forward as best as they could. Despite that, a single British air raid, using one of the old aircraft, no less, had crippled their supply lines; the Italian army was moving ponderously to refuel and rearm the mobile force, which had dug in near Mersa Matruh, a small town in Egypt.

I suppose the blasted German comes in handy, he thought dryly, as the sounds of German-accented Italian rose up from outside. Obersturmbannfuehrer Strudel – what sort of rank was an Obersturmbannfuehrer, he wondered – might or might not have served with Rommel as he claimed, but he certainly understood military matters. The Italian Artillery, the most well-trained service the Italians possessed, were learning new tricks from him. They’d already heard about how tough British Matilda-class tanks were; now they knew the German trick of massing their artillery and allowing the tanks advance to break under their fire.

He wished the same could be said for the rest of his army. Obersturmbannfuehrer Strudel had said a lot of sharp things about it – and he had to admit that most of his complaints were justified – but there wasn’t the money or the resources to equip the Italian Army with better tanks, or even to train like the war was coming tomorrow. He’d tried to warn Mussolini that the army would be unlikely to succeed in making it to Cairo against serious opposition, but the Duce had been adamant; Italy needed victories and it needed them now. They had to appear equals to the Germans, or else Hitler wouldn’t take them seriously.

Graziani snorted bitterly. After Obersturmbannfuehrer Strudel made his report, he suspected that Hitler wouldn’t take them seriously anyway. He was training as fast as he could with the waiting troops, but there was no way that they would be ready for modern war. Not for the first time, he cursed the adventure in Spain; it had cost the Italian Army strength for no reward at all. Franco had refused to become involved in the war; if he’d shut down Gibraltar the problem of Egypt would have… gone away.

We’ve never faced a British army, Graziani thought angrily. The Italians had faced colonial troops, stiffened by a handful of Englishmen, in Africa before, but General Sir Archibald Wavell commanded a real army. The Germans had defeated a British army, but the British had been allied with the French, whom Graziani hated. Without German support, Graziani suspected that the attack on Egypt was doomed, but at what price would that support come?

A polite knock, the form of politeness that suggests rudeness, started him out of his thoughts. Obersturmbannfuehrer Strudel had come to complain about something else, perhaps the supply lines, which were… not in the best of shape. If the Navy had kept its word, then they would have been able to land directly onto the shore, but instead they were dependent upon Tripoli. Just as he called for the German to enter, he remembered where he’d heard the rank Obersturmbannfuehrer before. It was an SS rank.

What is an SS officer doing in Libya? He wondered, as Obersturmbannfuehrer Strudel entered the office.

Unbeknownst to either Grazini or his German advisor, a small pilot-less drone hung high over their heads, watching them. Light, nearly transparent, radar-invisible, the only sign of the drone’s presence was the steady stream of information it was broadcasting back, with a flagrant disdain for security precautions that would have cost its operator his or her career back in 2015. In 1940, nothing the Axis had could even detect the UHF signal, let alone launch a missile that would home in on the signal and kill the drone.

“They’re still strung out,” Cadet Younghusband observed. Normally, the British Army would have refused to send someone who was a cadet – particularly one with as little experience as Younghusband – into combat, but there was a grave shortage of people. Nineteen years old; Younghusband was demonstrating technology to men many years his senior, including some out of history. General Sir Archibald Wavell – commander of the Contemporary Forces and future Viceroy of India – and General Robert Flynn, Commander of the 2015 forces, stood behind him, staring down at the field laptop. The system, developed for the Iraq War, could be turned into a mobile command centre with ease.

“It looks as if they’ve outrun their supply lines,” Wavell said. “I intended to face them at Mersa Matruh; your people insisted that I fall back.”

That wasn’t entirely true, General Flynn knew. Admiral Cunningham had urged Wavell to fall back when the Contemporary Forces hadn’t known exactly what had happened in Britain. If Wavell had stood, without the forces he’d possessed later during Operation Crusader, which had been averted by the Transition, he might have lost.

“That is hardly the point,” General Flynn said, as diplomatically as he could. Wavell’s missing eye, lost during Ypres, seemed to glare at him. “We now have an opportunity to cut them off and crush them utterly.”

“And your forces are going to do it,” Wavell said. “What are my men here for then?”

“Support,” Flynn said. “General, Archie, I understand as well as you do just how… inconvenient this entire situation is. Rest assured that I intend to see your people brought up to spec as fast as possible; they’re already refurbishing older tanks to press into service. We are retooling some of our factories to produce AK-47s for your people; you will not be denied your chance to fight.

“At the same time, your forces have been seriously demoralised,” Flynn continued. He’d insisted on waiting until his forces had arrived before making the announcement about the Transition to the British troops already on station. The sight of the Harriers, the helicopters and the strange, powerful tanks had convinced many where words had not. The Indian soldiers hadn’t been that bothered, but the other soldiers, British, New Zealander and Australian, had been horrified. Already, there had been seven suicides; men who had lost their wives and children forever. Other men were taking refuge in drink; there had been several drunken riots already.

“I know that,” Wavell snapped. His own wife had been lost forever. “My troops are not babies or Italians; they can fight under any circumstances!”

Flynn nodded grimly, understanding. Wavell wanted to lash out at someone, anyone. An intensely disciplined man, Wavell was under terrible strain; he dared not let go for anything.

“General, with all due respect, your troops can only move at walking pace,” he said, not entirely correctly. “You have a force of Matilda tanks” – fortunately they’d been in transition when the 1940s Britain vanished – “and some lorries, but your force as a whole can only move slowly. My force can punch around them here” – pointing to Mersa Matruh – “and destroy their supply lines, here and here.” He tapped the map. “Once that’s done, the forces in Mersa Matruh can surrender or die of thirst.”

“And my troops will accept their surrender,” Wavell said firmly. Flynn nodded. It was a small concession to make and it might start the long process of repairing the moral of the troops.

“As soon as Admiral Turtledove sends the signal, we attack,” Flynn said. He smiled; with the reconnaissance information from the drone, it would be very hard to lose.

Ionian Sea/Taranto Harbour

Mediterranean

24^th July 1940

After the attack on Kiel, the Trafalgar had been hunting u-boats, killing five before being summoned back to the Royal Navy’s main base for reloading and dispatching to the Mediterranean. Their success at Kiel might have come with a price, the PJHQ had warned them; the official war stocks of the Royal Navy included five hundred Tomahawk missiles; and they’d burnt through nearly a hundred of them, bombarding German positions.

“Up mast,” Captain Tyson ordered. It was nearly noon; he’d wanted to delay launch until evening, but the plan for a joint offensive – using Contemporary Forces as well as 2015 – required the land attack to be launched in the day. “Radar scan…”

“No sign of anything apart from the Contemporary Forces, twenty kilometres due south,” Lieutenant Patel reported. The Contemporary Forces, Admiral Cunningham’s forces, had been equipped with improved radar, communications and air support, courtesy of Royal Navy Harriers that had been based on Malta. Their task was to interdict the sea-lanes; even through two nuclear submarines could have remained on station for weeks, if necessary. He’d heard that plans to refit the battleships were under development, but he wasn’t certain if the Royal Navy could even begin to handle such a task.

Captain Tyson chucked. The Contemporary Forces had been delighted with their new fire-control radars – even though they’d had basic fire-control radars anyway – and were looking forward to the next German or Italian air raid. No one had had the heart to tell them that the basic algorithms had come from a wargame from a PC game company; Battle of the Giants.

“Admiral Turtledove has just cleared the attack,” Lieutenant-Commander Davidson said. “We are receiving a feed from the orbiting drone.”

“Show me,” Tyson ordered. The screen cleared; the Italian harbour at Taranto loomed ahead of them. Battleships and cruisers floated at anchor, protected by a flight of German aircraft; there were no Italian aircraft orbiting. The display altered as more information was downloaded; identifying each of the battleships by name and linking to the stored information in the fleet’s database.

Lieutenant-Commander Davidson smiled. “Conte di Cavour, Giulio Cesare, Andrea Doria, Caio Duilio, Littorio and Vittorio Veneto,” he said. “The pride of the Italian fleet, hiding in the harbour and cowering from an inferior foe. If they’d bothered to develop their radar system, they would have proved a match for Admiral Cunningham. The Germans should have just taken it over and crewed it themselves; no one ever accused the Germans of lacking in competence.”

“You’ve been reading up on this,” Tyson said wryly. “The other ships?”

“Zara, Fiume, Pola and Gorizia are all heavy cruisers,” Davidson said. “Three of them are due – were due – to be sunk a year in the future at the Battle of Cape Matapan.” He changed the display. “In all, six battleships, seven heavy cruisers, two light cruisers, and eight destroyers.”

Tyson shook his head. “Good God, we don’t even have a terminology for this,” he said. “Mr Exec, designate targets… and fire!”

Vice-Admiral Inigo Campioni, newly confirmed as the commander of the fleet-in-being that waited at Taranto, kicked his cigarette into the water. He’d commanded the fleet in the Battle of Calabria, which had been an Italian victory no matter what the Germans and British said, and the news that a newer and dangerous Britain had appeared – and trashed the German shipyards at Kiel – had alarmed him. More alarming were the two German divisions that had appeared in Italy, officially to train the Italian army to German standards. Unofficially…

Unofficially, they were a German dagger pointed at Italy’s heart. The King, several of the less competent ministers and almost all members of the opposition, such as it was, had been placed in their custody. Mussolini, bolstered by their presence, had announced yet another efficiency drive – using German aid and advisors. In some ways, it was helping Italy; he’d heard that a new Italian radar system would be going into mass production soon, but it came at a cost. Italy’s would become nothing, but an adjunct to the German war machine – in pitiless combat with a super-advanced Britain. He’d heard that the King had planned to move against Mussolini, but it had been too late; the Germans were in control.

When are you going to attack the British? They keep asking, he thought bitterly. Do they not understand that the Navy is the only thing that Italy has of value; it must not be squandered. It’s the only bargaining chip we have; the one thing the Germans do not have…

He scowled grimly. Several hundred Kriegsmarine officers – the survivors of the Kiel attack that were not shell-shocked or wounded – were on his ships, helping to train the Italians and improve their systems – and, he suspected, to provide a cadre for a German take-over of the fleet. It was surely no coincidence that half of the crewmen had been ordered to remain on shore, rather than onboard their ships; they’d been forbidden to practice rapid crewing of the ships in case of a quick sortie.

We’re prisoners of the Germans, he thought, and then Conte di Cavour literally blew out of the water. A thunderous explosion shattered the battleship’s hull, blasting chunks of debris across the port, and then detonating its ammunition. In seconds, the battleship that had once carried the King to America had been blown to fragments. An air raid warning sounded, too late, as black dots swooped down from the sky, precisely targeting and slamming into the battleships, killing them one by one. Other missiles targeted the facilities; the half-empty oil tanks, the ammunition dumps, and…

Vice-Admiral Inigo Campioni had only seconds to realise that he’d escaped the Germans forever before a missile blew him and the docks into very tiny pieces of rubble.

Combat Zone

Egypt

24^th July 1940

The tanks powered their way across the desert at very high speed, carefully avoiding the main Italian concentrations at Mersa Matruh before angling around to move along the Italian supply lines. Behind them, their support vehicles and infantry IFVs held back, waiting for the tanks to complete their part of the mission. Further behind them, every lorry and transport that General Wavell had been able to move up was also moving; heading directly for the Italians.

“Targets ahead,” the driver said. The tank commander checked the scope; it was several Italian lorries and a handful of the piss-ass tanks they were driving, ones that could never have stood up to a Matilda, let alone the Challenger main battle tanks that the British were deploying.

“Gunner, load high explosive,” he said formally. There was no point in wasting armour-piercing rounds on the crappy little tankettes. “Fire!”

“Firing high explosive,” the gunner said, and the tank shuddered. A single round shot over the desert and slammed into the Italian tank. It exploded in a single blast; killing the crew instantly.

“Fire two,” the commander ordered. “Kill them all.”

“Aye, sir,” the gunner said, as the other tanks commenced firing. One by one, the Italian tanks were picked off, the British shooting from well beyond the Italians’ range. There was no attempt to fight as the tanks slowed; the Warrior AFVs moving up to surround the lorries.

“Surrender or die,” the infantry officer shouted, as the infantry disembarked. The Italians showed the same willingness to die that the Iraqis had, seventy-odd years in the future. Trapped in a hopeless position, they surrendered quickly, even offering to drive their own lorries to the British camp.

“Time to move on,” the tank commander said. “Reconnaissance shows more convoys moving across the desert, and we don’t have any time to spare.”

He checked his GPS system. Losing the satellites had hurt their navigation, but now, with several navigation beacons set up, they could locate their position with a high degree of accuracy. “According to Recon, there’s a second convoy moving east ten miles west of us,” he said. “Let’s go put them in the pen.”

A second whistle echoed in the air and an ammunition dump exploded with an uncanny precision. Field Marshall Graziani shuddered; he didn’t know how the future British were doing it – he’d never heard of laser targeting from a high-attitude drone he didn’t even know existed – but they were slowly stripping away his forces from far out of his own range.

“Field Marshall, there is a British armoured car waving a white flag,” his Lieutenant said. “Perhaps they want to surrender.”

Graziani shook his head. The young man was naive; they’d lost all of the convoys that had been supposed to reinforce them from the irritating hen-pecking attack that was steadily wiping them out. Their shells – he was wondering if it was only one gun rather than the hundreds that had fought in the Great War – were diabolically accurate.

“Let’s see,” he said, lifting his vintage binoculars and peering through at the strange armoured car. It seemed tough enough to be a tank in its own right; he recognised the man sitting on the roof. General Wavell himself. “Put up a flag of our own,” he ordered. “I’m going out to meet him.”

The Lieutenant didn’t protest. Grazini walked behind him, allowing him to carry the flag. He hadn’t realised yet; hadn’t realised that the British officer was here to demand their surrender. He was dimly aware of Obersturmbannfuehrer Strudel joining him; his German uniform glinting in the sun.

“Good afternoon,” Graziani called, as Wavell jumped off the armoured car with a sprightliness that belayed his age. “What might I do for you?”

Wavell’s one good eye fixed him with a stern look; the upper-class Briton looking down his nose at the foreigner. He remembered that Wavell had served as an ally before, and that Italy had kicked the British while they were struggling for their lives. He scowled, cursing Mussolini with all the viciousness he could inside his head.

“I will not bandy words with you,” Wavell said finally. “Our… descendents have pushed their armoured units all the way into Libya and are advancing on Tripoli. Many of your units have been encircled, as you have been here, and have been rendered helpless…”

“We’re not helpless,” the Lieutenant said hotly. Obersturmbannfuehrer Strudel nudged him, not gently.

“You are helpless,” Wavell said. “I am assured” – there was a dark note in his voice – “that picking off your men one by one is possible, and it will be done if necessary. You have lost the puny tanks you sought to deploy against us; your supply lines have been cut, and you will die of thirst in a few days, sooner if we blow your water tanks open with a well-placed shot.”

A man hopped out of the armoured car. Graziani stared at him; he wore black body armour and carried a weapon that seemed to be almost as tall as he was. “I am prepared to accept your surrender,” Wavell said. “Your men will be well-treated, although you will understand that we have very little food at the moment. If you do not surrender, we will wait until you all die and walk in and take over.”

Graziani felt what was almost relief. The responsibility would be over. “In that case, I surrender,” he said finally.

“No,” Obersturmbannfuehrer Strudel snapped, and lifted his pistol. Time seemed to slow down as he pointed it at Graziani, his finger tightening on the trigger, and then the strange soldier fired his weapon. Obersturmbannfuehrer Strudel fell back, a neat hole appearing in the back of his head.

“I accept your surrender,” Wavell said. “Please, have your men parade, so we can handle this with a little dignity.”

10 Downing Street

London, United Kingdom

24^th July 1940

Hanover examined the map with considerable interest as the computer updated it. The armoured columns were advancing at a considerable rate, supported by naval gunfire and Marine raids from the sea. The Italians simply could not muster any resistance; Tripoli was screaming to be allowed to surrender after the Warspite had shelled the city and its defences. With supply lines cut, quite firmly, the Italians were going to lose and knew it. Even the brutal air raids on Britain were seeming to slack off, giving the RAF some much-needed respite.

And then, Algeria – or French North Africa as its called here, he thought, and smiled. It wouldn’t be long before the fields of Libya and Algeria were teeming with crops, thanks to an imported genuine 2015 desalination plant; one had already been moved to Egypt to make the desert bloom. The British forces in the field would never have to worry about shortage of water again, nor would Egypt need to build costly dams, like the one the Israelis had blown open in 2010.

We’ll have to set up a council of local dignitaries, he thought, reading through the papers from the Oversight Committee. Avoiding the debacle that had followed the historical invasion of North Africa would be important; ensuring that the Africans were allies would be even more important. The prospect of a British-allied Africa, developed to 2015 standards, would solve many of the world’s problems. Proper government would solve so much; a ten-year plan to develop and then leave them as independent nations; the expatriates from Britain had already showed an interest in working to avoid Africa’s slow slide into chaos.

“Prime Minister?” His assistant said. She’d been appointed by Smith and he hadn’t bothered to replace her. “You have an important telephone call from Ambassador Heekin. Sir, apparently something’s gone very wrong in Ireland.”