Solomon snorted, guessing that limiting a fight was hoping for too much. He was about to say so when he was interrupted by an express train roar; one he recognized as inbound 15-inch gunfire. “You didn’t say we had battlewagons in support, sir.”
“We haven’t. That’s the monitor Terror and three gunboats. They were in the Red Sea, but they came through the Canal and have been moving up to support us. Should even things up a little, I reckon. Especially since we captured the plans of this place at Sidi Barrani. We know the exact positions of each one of those bunkers.” Oswin grinned at his Sergeant. “And if the Navy pounders, no less. We may be a demonstration, but we’re not lacking for support. Anyway, get your men ready to move out, Joe, on the whistle.”
Solomon carefully looked at the ground he and his men would have to cross. There was a continuous antitank ditch, with a steep, 200-foot embankment on the opposite side. The slope was festooned with barbed wire and heavily mined. Once at the top, there were company-and platoon-sized strongpoints with antitank and machine guns. Each of them had its own antitank ditch and there was a second line of strongpoints behind them. All in all, it was a well-designed defensive system.
Solomon was glad he and his men wouldn’t have to fight their way through it. All they had to do was to reach the ditch, then use the captured Italian picks and shovels they’d been issued to break down the banks. That would convince the Italians that the Matildas were coming. They would have to move their own forces to match them. Stories of the battles further east and the sight of invincible Matildas plowing through the defenses had spread worldwide; the Matilda was now an iconic image of the war being fought here in the desert.
The huge roar of the 15-inch shells seemed to slacken slightly. The three gunboats more than made up for that by hammering a rapid tattoo of sixinch shells into the Italian defenses. Overhead, Solomon heard the drone of a Lysander circling to spot for the artillery fire. As if the sound was the signal for the attack, a blast of whistles ran along the front. The Australian infantry rose to surge forward. Solomon yelled out “Come on you lazy bastards, we’ve got some digging to do.” There was little need for it. His men were already up and out of their jump-off positions.
By the time they reached the antitank ditch, the Italians were beginning to return fire. There was dead ground from rifle and machine gun fire at the foot of the escarpment, but the 65mm howitzers in the strongpoints at the top dropped shells on to the infantry beneath. Solomon’s men were hard at work. Their picks broke up the hardened sand of the trench sides. Others with shovels spread the dirt out to form ramps for the tanks that they hoped the Italians believed were coming.
The light cracks of the 65mm guns were supplemented by the roar of the Italian big guns. A bit down the line from Solomon’s platoon, 150mm shells slammed into a group of Australians who were working on another section of the ditch. Those that weren’t killed outright were buried in the sand as the shells caved the walls in on them.
“Screw this for a game of soldiers. Up and at ’em, lads.”
Solomon didn’t know who had yelled out the words, but its effects were immediate. His men dropped their picks and shovels. They started climbing the embankment. Some grabbed the posts of the wire entanglements to help them make the ascent.
“Stop, get back here!”
Lieutenant Oswin shouted the command. He was speaking to the backs of his platoon, already swarming up the slope. He shook his head and looked at Solomon helplessly. “We’re in command here. I suppose we’d better follow them.”
“Just as safe to go forward as back,” Solomon agreed. He followed his officer up the slope. The platoons on either side of them had already seen his men starting the climb up; they dropped their tools to follow suit. Off to their left, there was a break in the embankment where the coast road led into Bardia. It was blocked by barbed wire entanglements and a concrete redoubt.
The roadblock was already under assault from the Australians. Whatever the brass had thought about this being a simple demonstration, it was turning into a full-blooded assault on what was probably the most heavily defended part of the Italian perimeter.
It was a hard climb up the embankment. Solomon was gasping for breath by the time he reached the top. When he got there, he could see that the Italians had made a bad mistake. The two rows of strongpoints were individually well-sited, but there was too much space between them. They weren’t mutually supporting. Each could be isolated from assistance and taken. There was a well-established drill for that. Each position would be subjected to six-round concentrations from the artillery, while the infantry moved into place. Then, the Bren gunners would keep the defender’s heads down. The grenadiers would move up and start lobbing grenades into the defenses. The concrete walls would keep the fragments in and turn the positions into death traps. With the defenses silenced by the grenades, the riflemen and Bren gunners would move in and take the position. It was a simple drill; well-tried and very effective.
The Australians were having none of it.
They were simply swarming forward, overwhelming the strongpoints with a mad rush. They jumped the concrete walls and killed the defenders with the bayonet. Solomon was appalled. All it would need to turn this situation into a blood-drenched catastrophe was a single Italian officer with the presence of mind to take a brief pause, compose himself and launch a coordinated counterattack. The Australians would be caught out in the open, between the hammer of the counterattack and the anvil of the remaining strongpoints. They’d be lucky to escape with just a massacre. About the only good thing at this point was that the gunfire from offshore had stopped. The Lysander crew overhead must have seen what was happening and radioed an emergency ceasefire order through to the ships.
Solomon was already up with his men, trying to bring them into some sort of order and start the process of reducing the strongpoints in a rational manner. By which, he meant according to the book. He was quick to realize that the book had already been thrown out of the window. Nothing he or Lieutenant Oswin could do would get it back. The only hope now was to keep up the momentum of the assault and not give the Italian officer he feared the moment he would need to get control of the battle.
A brief look around told him two things. One was the tiny number of figures in khaki lying on the ground. For all the insanity of the assault, so far, the casualties were remarkably few. The other was that the Australian breakthrough was spreading sideways, ripping an ever-larger hole in the Italian defenses. Already, the coastal road was being opened up as the defenses fell to simultaneous attacks from front and rear.
Then Solomon saw what he dreaded. Italian tanks. At least a halfdozen of them rumbled towards the milling mass of Australians. His men had no antitank guns; nothing that could stop them. Now it’s our turn, he thought; remembering how the Matildas had crushed the Italian infantry under their treads. The tanks continued to advance. Solomon tried to get his men under control and into the overrun Italian fortifications. There might be antitank guns or rifles there. Now that’s a slim hope at best.
Over on his left, a Bren gun carrier had seen the risk. It tried to engage one of the tanks with a peppering of machine gun fire. Gallant but useless. He doesn’t stand a chance.