“We’ll see,” said Guderian. “Just focus on getting me that rail yard tomorrow.”
General Beckermann nodded, his dark hair catching the lamp light. When he concentrated his division like this, it had never failed to produce the desired results. But he much preferred to be out in open country, running his regiments in a fast moving battle of maneuver. He still had memories of Volgograd. The Russians still have pockets of resistance in that damn city, he thought. Let us hope Baghdad does not become that for us here. Hube should attack tonight….
He did.
Hans Hube could read a battlefield as good as any man alive, and what he saw when he arrived at Adhamiya was an enemy defense that had been battered and pushed back, a tank fight that he had to win, and a good fresh division to use for just that purpose. Tempted to rest his men after the march from Al Taji, he circulated among some of the battalion officers, assessing their readiness.
“We’re ready, General,” one man said. “Time for a good night action. We’ll have them on the run before the sun comes up.”
It was not exactly what Guderian had planned, hoping to have both Konrad and Hube jump off at dawn, but Hube had every confidence that he could break through.
That is the beauty of the concept of Schwerpunkt, he thought. I can attack on a narrow front, and use mass and shock to break through only one segment of the enemy line. And that is exactly what I will order my men to do.
When 3rd Panzer Division completed its river crossing at Al Taji, it quickly organized for an attack as Guderian had ordered. But Hube had advanced the timetable by six hours, hoping to catch the British napping, as he said to his staffers. It was just Brigadier Purves’ bad luck that the main attack would come right into the lines of his 21st Indian Brigade northeast of Al Zamiyah. His men had a long hard day, and they were posted where KG Schafer had already broken through, fighting without rest for the last eight hours. Soon he and his men were in a whirlwind of trouble. (Map 4)
3rd Panzer was up to strength, and it came in hard, with four battalions of infantry supported by two panzer battalions. The first wave of the attack fell on edge of the town, the fire from the tanks setting wood frame structures aflame and sending up a pall of grey smoke. The fat gibbous moon was still up, slowly falling towards the horizon where it would not set until twenty minutes after sunrise. In that hour, the sun and moon would hang on both horizons, as if the heavenly Gods themselves were eager to survey the outcome of the battle.
Purves’ men were driven into the lines of 24th Indian Brigade, which had crossed the bridge the previous evening and was resting near the main road. Finding this line of strong reserves behind them the officers soon rallied the brigade, urging them to hold.
That was a mistake.
What the British needed now was battlefield awareness, and the pre-dawn darkness and thickening smoke was clouding Purves’ judgement. He should have moved to his right, attempting to block the point of Hube’s Schwerpunkt, but he stubbornly held his ground. If Hube’s grenadiers could push another 1500 meters, they would reach the river, bagging both the 24th and 21st Indian Brigades. There would be no way out of Al Zamiyah if the British wanted to hold it, save a single ferry at Al Safina that would be under German fire from across the river from two angles.
There were now only 17 of 24 Shermans left in the Royal Wiltshire Yeomanry, and those that remained were down to only two or three shells each. The Warwickshire Yeomanry still had 31 Shermans, and more than half their ammo, so they put in a counterattack, catching a company of light tanks in the 1st Battalion, 6th Pz Regiment. A hump had formed just a few hundred meters to the east, where the infantry of the 11th Kings Royal Rifles had stopped the attack by the 195th Sturm Regiment, but now Hube’s attack was threatening to cut them off as well. Thankfully, an astute Lieutenant surmised the danger, and he blew hard on his whistle, calling on his men to fall back out of the trap.
Then word finally reached 6th Indian commander at his headquarters in the Royal Mausoleum of King Faisal. General Thompson looked pale when he got the news—the Germans were breaking through towards the Sports Club, and if they took it, they would cut the road from the Kazimiyah Bridge.
“Bloody hell!” he exclaimed when he finally found his voice. “Then it’s no good here, and Old King Faisal will have to get some cruder company. We need to move east, and that quickly! Get orders to the 24th Brigade at once, and get ready to move the division headquarters…” He looked over his map. “Here, the Royal Palace. We might hold out there for a while.”
“But sir, what about all the supplies bunkered here?”
“Damn it man, leave them! We can’t burn them, not here in the mausoleum, and we haven’t the time to load them up on trucks. Now get moving.” That didn’t sit well with the Lieutenant, and after he had passed on those orders, he went into one of the storerooms and took a good long piss on a big sack of flour. Let the Germans try and eat that, he thought with an evil grin.
Thompson posted two Assyrian Levies in the mosques, reasoning that they were their holy places, so let them defend them. British troops had made a point of not going into them, even though the tall minarets would have been excellent observation posts. Then he was off to the Royal Palace, about three kilometers on the road leading east and south. He had instinctively seen what Hube was planning, but the orders to withdraw would not reach every company that night, and many would still be on the line when the sun rose.
As 24th Brigade moved east, it would reach the Sports Club in twenty minutes, where an enterprising Colonel Pack would throw the men right at the advancing Germans. He could not yet see them, but he could hear the sharp bursts of their machineguns, and there was no question as to where they were. He practically horse whipped the men of 2/6 Rajputana Rifles, urging them on.
“Come on, you laggards! It’s time we stopped these bastards. Get after them!”
It looked as though this sudden reinforcement at the point of attack might turn the balance, but as the sun began to paint the horizon red with a bloody dawn, the sound of artillery fire resounded from the west.
Konrad was starting his attack on the rail yard.
Chapter 21
Brigadier Alan R. Barker had the 27th Indian Brigade in a tight line from the Tigris in the north, to the banks of a tributary that flowed south of the town of Shalchiya, the small Khir River. His problem that morning lay in Guderian’s order to Beckermann—tell Konrad to focus all his energy on the north end of the line, and go for the main bridge and Royal Ferry site. That was exactly what Konrad did.
Barker’s HQ post was too close to the front, and the wolves were suddenly through his line and at his doorstep. His HQ section, and a battery of artillery, had to make a breakneck retreat towards the Locomotive Bay, which was one of the most sturdy buildings on that end of the rail yard. Yet his entire line was under pressure, the Germans continuing with the same relentless fervor they had displayed the previous day.
The Bloody Brandenburgers, he thought grimly. Our Gurkhas might match them, but they’re all at the southern end of the line. Fritz must have already smashed right through the Baluch Rifles, and that turns the flank of my whole position. So I’ve got to pivot. I’ve got to fold back my lines like a swinging gate. But if I do that, the Germans can run for the main bridge!
He reached for a telephone, ringing up Jumbo Wilson at the Embassy to apprise him of the situation. “Look here,” he began haltingly. “Fritz is getting around my right, and if I fold my line back that way. I’ll expose the river bridge to attack. We need support, and bloody well now!”