By the time he reached the artillery position, the Matildas and their infantry had already overwhelmed the rest of his camp. The survivors of his six infantry battalions had retreated to the guns as well. They were forming a perimeter around the 65mm howitzers. This was the last ditch. Maletti knew it; the only hope of holding it was the guns of his artillery battalion. The Matildas had seen the way the Italian infantry had fallen back to consolidate their position. They changed their majestic progress through the camp to assault it. Once again, the streams of tracers lashed through the darkness. They raked any defensive positions that revealed themselves. This time, though, the machine gun fire was answered by the flash of the 65mm artillery pieces. Manetti cheered. One of the first shots struck an advancing Matilda full on its frontal armor.
For a moment, he thought the tank was killed. It stopped. Its turret swung backwards and forwards, as if the tank were trying to clear its head.
Then it started moving forward again. Its machine gun sought out the artillery piece that had struck it. Another shell hit square on the front of the turret. That had as little effect as the first hit. Manetti had heard of how the heavilyarmored Matildas had plowed through the Germany infantry at Arras. Now he saw it for himself. His 65mm guns were useless. They scored hit after hit on the Matildas, but nothing seemed to stop them. A few were damaged, tracks broken or engines stalled, but he knew they would be repaired.
The lack of damage didn’t stop his gunners. They fought their weapons to the muzzle; often firing their last shells at ranges of a few meters, before they and their guns were crushed under the tracks of the British tanks. With the guns methodically destroyed, the tanks swung around. They started to move along the infantry defense lines, crushing the hastily-dug foxholes with their treads. Maletti knew this was pointless slaughter; the ability to make any meaningful defense had died with his guns.
He took a white shirt, stabbed it on to a bayonet and waved it in the air.
A Sergeant saw the gesture and advanced carefully, his rifle trained on Maletti. Maletti waved his surrender flag more vigorously. He saw the Sergeant nod. Around them, the battle seemed to pause. “I am General Pietro Maletti, commander of this battlegroup. I ask you to accept the surrender of my command.”
“Sergeant Joe Solomon. You’d better talk to my officer.”
Around them, the fighting was already dying down. The Italian survivors were being collected together. The sun was rising with the speed typical of a desert dawn. Maletti could see the large number of his men who were being herded into an extemporized detention area.
“Sir, I have a General Maletti here. Says he wants to surrender his command.”
“Ah, thank you, Sergeant. Return to your unit.”
Maletti looked at the immaculately-dressed brigadier before him and was painfully aware of his dishevelled state. “Brigadier, our position is hopeless and I would like to surrender my command.”
“Quite. I accept your surrender, General. I trust we will have no naughty tricks?”
Maletti knew what the British Brigadier meant. The Blackshirt militia divisions had a habit of fake surrenders that served little purpose but increased casualties, mostly their own.
“No tricks, Brigadier. This was a battle honestly won and we will abide by it.” Maletti looked at the scene. British trucks were already pulling up and refuelling the Matildas. Crews were gathered around the handful of stalled tanks, repairing damage. “May I ask how many men you lost today?”
“So far, eight officers and 48 men. I’ll let you know how many of your men are lost as soon as I find out. All I know is that, so far, we have taken around 2,000 prisoners here.”
Maletti did the maths. His command had numbered 2,500 men; at least 500 were dead or wounded and the rest captured. This hadn’t been a battle; this was a disaster.
“This beats the old bird.”
The voice over the intercom caused Squadron Leader Mannix to lose concentration for a moment. He cursed to himself. The ex-French Martin Maryland had replaced his old Wellesley a few days before. He was still trying to get used to the American-built aircraft. Normally, he would have had a conversion course lasting months. These were not normal times. An American civilian pilot from the Glenn L. Martin Corporation had familiarized him with the cockpit and the aircraft’s general layout; then Mannix had been left to his own devices. It didn’t help that the aircraft was so cramped that his first flight in the Maryland had, by definition, been solo. He’d left his crew behind, in case it was also his last flight in a Maryland.
He’d been relieved to find out that, while the Maryland was a hot ship, it was also docile and relatively easy to fly. It cruised 20mph faster than the maximum speed of his old Wellesley and carried twice the bombload. It was also much better armed; four fixed forward-firing machine guns instead of one, and two machine guns aft in each of the upper and lower positions. Better still, he had a dedicated bombardier in the glazed nose. It was the new man, Warrant Officer Charles Cussans, who had interrupted his concentration.
“Have you sighted the target, Cussans?”
Mannix’s voice was icy. In the rear turret, his gunner cringed. Many people claimed to run a taut ship; Mannix was one of the few who actually did. An icy question was usually the prelude to an impressive dressing-down.
“Dead ahead. Yanks make a good bombsight and the view from here is fantastic. Makes the old Bombay seem sick.” Cussans sounded positively cheerful and quite oblivious to the trouble he was talking himself into.
Mannix was about to make a sharp reply about chattering on the air when Cussans spoke again. “We need to come to port, about one degree. I’ll take the aircraft on five. One… two… three… four… five. Pilot, I have the aircraft.” The idle chatter had gone from the voice and it was purely professional.
“All aircraft, we are under bombardier control. Form on me; drop when we drop. Gunners, keep a keen eye open. There are CR.42 fighters and reports of some G.50s here.”
Mannix scanned the sky around him. One of the problems with the Maryland was that it only had a single gunner to man the two rear firing positions. A little early warning meant the gunner would man either the upper or the lower guns as the situation demanded. Still, there seemed to be no fighters around. Probably the fighter pilots are still having breakfast, like normal civilized people.
This time his concentration was broken by an unexpected whine. It was the bomb bay doors opening. RAF aircraft had their bomb bay doors on rubber bungee cords but the Maryland had doors that were opened mechanically. The aircraft lurched as four 500-pound bombs dropped from the bay. The whine was repeated as the bomb bay doors closed.
“Pilot, I will return the aircraft to you on five. One… two… three… four… five. Pilot, you have the aircraft. My God, look at that!”
Far below them, the parking area at the Zauiet airfield erupted in a mass of explosions. Mannix assessed them coldly. It was a nice, tight pattern; well-placed on the parking apron. With a little luck, the bomb pattern had done a lot of damage. He wondered how well the other flights of 47 Squadron had done. These raids were supposed to keep the Italian Air Force’s heads down, so the armored column attacking the Sidi Barrani area would be free of Italian air attack.
He was turning the Maryland as quickly as he could, given the tight formation of aircraft. The Italian gunners had woken up at last. There was a scattering of black puffs around them. I wonder if they thought we were SM.79s? The first series of bursts were way off target. The second were much closer; near enough to cause the Maryland to jolt.