Altered States -Volume III. Hinge of Fate

Chapter 36

The German effort on the second day was heavily concentrated in the town itself. The 98th Mountain Regiment consolidated positions near the Moorish Castle while Grossdeutschland Regiment began to push south from the Civil Hospital towards Governor’s Parade. As they did so, units from the 98th Mountain Regiment would extend south along the line of the higher ground to the east to hold the flank of this advance. This enabled the Germans to keep considerable force in the attack, which was difficult house to house fighting.

The weak area of the British defense was the area known as the Devil’s Gap that lay between the town itself and the Rock. The Germans seemed to instinctively know that this was the place to attack, and by so doing they could split the British defenders into two groups. To the west, in the town itself, the 4th Devonshire Battalion, with a company from the 2nd Somerset Light and another of Royal Engineers, put up a stolid defense but, outnumbered three to one, they continued to be attacked by fresh troops.

In the east the remnant of the 2nd Kings Rifles had retreated up the rising knees of the rock to defend the naval batteries and old siege tunnels there. With the Gate House of the Moorish Castle breached, only the tall battlement of the Tower of Homage remained in British possession, and was now defended by a company of the Black Watch. It was to be Gibraltar’s Hougoumont, the farmhouse and gate that was defended by the Coldstream Guards at Waterloo and stubbornly held throughout that great battle. Yet unlike the gates of the farmhouse that were bravely forced shut in the heat of that struggle, there was no gate here, and no way to get inside the tower itself from below. It was simply a massive stone square, with two tiers of crenulated battlements at the top where the bravest of the Black Watch took turns firing down at the German mountain troops.

Inside the top portion of the tower were four stone rooms where fresh ammunition, water, supplies and more men huddled in defense. The Germans fired round after round against the tower with their 150mm infantry gun, blasting away a fragment here a battlement there, but still the Black Watch fought on. Men emerged from the inner tower rooms to drag the wounded back to safety, while others took their place on the battlements. One after another they fought and died, Corporal Robert Cord, Privates Nick Mulligan, Jon McIntyre, Alex Jones and Bill Barclay. A squad of German mountain troops tried to hurl up grappling hooks to begin a medieval style attack, but were cut down by a rifle team led by Lance Corporal David Nichol. The Germans hurled grenades and the British threw them back again. MG-34 machineguns would rake the battlements for long minutes, but the instant the German squads advanced, every embrasure spit fire at them from above. It was soon clear that the position would not fall easily, if at all.

General Kubler was watching the action with his field glasses, gritting his jaw when he saw the latest attempt to scale the tower wall fail. A man as rugged as the mountain itself, he shook his head with dismay. “Tell the assault team to enfilade that tower,” he said. “No hammer will break it, or the men inside. That place will not fall by direct assault.” He knew the old game of scissors, paper, rock well enough. What he could not smash with the rock of his mountain troops could be taken by a paper like envelopment, which he ordered at once. The Germans now moved to scale the green, tree sewn slopes to either side of the tower, well concealed by the thick foliage, and inside the Tower of Homage the Black Watch held on, defiant, enduring and resolute to the last man.

To the west of this position, the fighting in the town itself was going much better for the Germans. This was no ordinary regiment of soldiers at work, but the elite Grossdeutschland Regiment, and they knew their business well. Governor’s Parade and Residence was taken by 10:00 and fighting was particularly bitter near the Cathedral and Convent, the holy places desecrated by the deathly rattle and shock of war. Another two hours hard fighting cleared most of the town as far south as the edge of the Grand Parade, and soon the rifle squads were again creeping through the hallowed ground of Trafalgar Cemetery, where every grave and tombstone told a story.

A gritty Sergeant and two German Privates crouched low near one grave site, dedicated to Thomas Worth and John Buckland of the Royal Marine Artillery. One man knew the English and read the inscription aloud: “The brightest ornaments of their Corps… Killed by the same shot on the 23rd November, 1810 while directing the Howitzer Boats in an attack on the enemy’s flotilla in Cadiz Bay.”

The Sergeant gave him a sour look. “Yes? Well spread out and keep your heads down or you will both join them here!”

Captain Thomas Norman of HMS Mars and Lieutenant William Forester of HMS Colossus must have turned over in their graves as the Germans slowly fought through their burial sites. Both men had died in the famous Battle of Trafalgar that had lent its name to this place.

Soldiers of the 4th Devonshires fought a losing battle, their numbers dwindling until they were eventually holed up in the buildings around the Main Wharf and docks. The elegant Alameda Gardens felt the stain of war and death when a platoon of grenadiers made a brave rush over that area to reach the sand pits near Upper Witham’s Road. Meanwhile, the 98th Mountain Regiment had begun to push up onto the Devil’s Gap, intending to reach the main north south road there. It was very hard fighting to clear the gun positions at Princess Caroline’s Battery and Princess Anne’s Battery, but all these were finally taken, the British Engineers spiking the guns before they fell back to the entrance of the underground Upper Galleries.

The King’s Rifles were now shut inside the Rock, and General Liddell knew he could not hope to hold the remainder of the ground to the south through Rosia Bay. At 02:00 he finally gave the grim order that all service troops and battery crews on Windmill Hill and Europa Point should make their way into Saint Michael’s Cave, a natural labyrinth where stalagmites grinned like stony teeth. There they would stolidly hold their ground, accepting this self imposed internment rather than surrender, unless order to do so by higher authorities.

Lieutenant Dawes was shut inside Saint Michael’s cave with all the rest. In the heady retreat up the steep ground he had come across a fallen private, noting the patch on his shoulder-4th Battalion, Devonshire Regiment. It had once been called the 11th Regiment of Foot, formed in the year 1667, with a long and storied history. The Regiment fought in Holland, Spain and Austria, it’s powder blackening the air at battles like Fontenoy, Warburg, and Kampen. During the years when Napoleon loomed as the great threat in Europe, it fought as a Marine unit at the Battle of Cape St. Vincent, at the siege of Malta, in the Peninsular War, and the famous Battle of Salamanca. There it took on a well earned nickname-the Bloody Eleventh, and carried it on through the Great War, in Italy, Macedonia, Egypt, Palestine and Mesopotamia. It went ‘over the top’ at the battle of the Somme, and then one day the 4th Battalion found its way here-to the Rock of Gibraltar.

Dawes looked down at his own shoulder patch, the 10th Anti-Aircraft Regiment, Support Group, realizing that this was the first engagement his unit would have fought in-and it would most likely be the last. The fallen Private lay on a cart, where men had been taking the wounded and dead in to give them some form of decent burial. Dawes looked at the man, seeing him like a fallen Prince, and not a mere Private. The man was still cradling his rifle, and the Lieutenant was possessed with the urge to take up arms.

I don’t deserve it, he thought, berating himself. I’ve done nothing to earn it. But the impulse was simply too strong, and he found himself reaching for the rifle. Nearly three hundred years of history had carried that rifle here to this place, or so he thought. He had no right to touch it; no right to desecrate the sacrifice made by that brave young Private. Just last night he had been so rattled that he could barely light a cigarette, and he came to feel a coward.

Then the Sergeant he had spoken with the previous night at Europa Point came up, recognizing him, and folded his arms.

“Heading up to Saint Michael’s, Lieutenant?”

Dawes jumped, his reverie and self recrimination broken by the Sergeant’s voice. “What? Why yes, we’ve got the order right from General Liddell. All service troops and gunnery crews are to report to the cave.”

“Then you might want to take that with you.” The Sergeant pointed at the fallen Private’s rifle, seeing how Dawes had been eyeing it, and knowing what might be in his mind.

Dawes gave him a nervous look. Then he slowly reached for the rifle, seeing a stain of blood there, which gave him a shudder. He took the weapon up and the rifle changed hands from the dead to the living, like a dying man passing a torch. The Bloody Eleventh had just taken in its latest recruit.

Dawes shouldered the rifle trying to muster some sense of determination, but in a moment of self-confession he spoke his greatest fear. “I must tell you Sergeant, that I’m not a very brave man. It doesn’t really feel fitting that I should-”

“Now none of that talk, if you don’t mind my saying so, sir. You’ll do fine when the time comes. You just point the damn thing at the other fellow and pull the trigger-before he pulls his.” The Sergeant smiled at him. “Good luck, Lieutenant. Look for that Barbary Ape I told you about! I expect I’ll be up there soon myself, and if I get the little weasel, he’ll lead me right to the promised land.”

In modern times the tunnels of Gibraltar were a maze like warren that wandered nearly 30 miles beneath the Rock-and this beneath a physical area measuring only a mile wide and a little more than a mile long! They were layered with galleries and connecting communications passages one on top of another, like the history that had built them. Some dated back to the Great Siege of 1779 to 1783, mainly those overlooking the airfield and North Front area. Others had been built to create underground reservoirs and magazine storage areas, and when the airplane became a military threat, to create bomb shelters. By WWII even more space was drilled out to store food, generators, fuel, equipment, and ammunition.

Parts of the old fortifications and gun embrasures still bore their original names, such as King’s Lines, Queen’s Lines, Winsdor Battery, and there were halls named for Cornwallis and St. George. At the turn of the century, when old battleships began to drop anchor at the port, the Ragged Staff Cave bordering the harbor area was turned into a naval magazine. With no natural source of water, the Rock also had vast areas devoted to the collection of rainwater in great catchments.

Yet all the work done by 1939 amounted to little more than seven miles of tunnels. Artisan Engineers arrived early in this new history, drilling hard through the limestone to create another mile or two by the fall of 1940, mainly to connect existing galleries and tunnels. In the history Fedorov knew, the tunnels were not extended to a length of about 25 miles until the end of WWII. In this history they might never reach that scale, yet for the moment, the existing galleries and caves were enough to shelter the modest force garrisoned there.

The entrance nearest the British defensive positions was at Hay’s Level, between the Moorish Castle and the 18th century Siege Tunnels. It was defended by two companies of the 2nd Somerset Light on the line, and a single reserve company of the Black Watch near the entrance itself.

Farther south a company of the 4th Devonshire battalion and most of the service troops and gun crews were holed up in the famous Saint Michael’s Cave. This enormous network of natural caverns and passages had been set up as an emergency hospital, and scores of wounded sat in sullen groups beneath the tall spires of rock, and the striated falls of Stalactites from the high ceiling above. Legend lay heavy on that place, once thought to be the gates of Hades by the ancient Greeks. It was also said, just as the Sergeant had told it to Lieutenant Dawes, that the entrance to a hidden tunnel could be found there, one that would wind deep beneath the Straits of Gibraltar to Spanish Morocco, a secret pathway known only to the Barbary Apes, the monkeys who had used it to come here ages ago.

Now the caves were part of the last stand of modern British power in the Western Mediterranean, and by day’s end most of the remaining garrison was sealed up in the old siege tunnels of the Rock. Liddell knew there would be no relief any time soon, though he had supplies enough to hold out for months. If the Germans wanted the place they would now have to fight from one subterranean passage to another, clearing the tunnels and hidden stone rooms with shock and fire.

They tried to take the main entrance by storm, thinking the defense might not yet be prepared, and as it happened Lieutenant Dawes had only just come in through the arched gate after a long climb up. There came a sound of gunfire, a warning to all that this place was no safe sanctuary. The fire of war would burn through the maw of this cave, and death would follow sure enough.

Dawes crouched behind a rock, frightened, weary, and losing hope. There he saw three men of the 4th Devonshire desperately struggling to get two wounded soldiers into the cave before the Germans could gun them down. They had fought for nearly 48 hours, grudgingly giving ground in the face of superior numbers, even though for many this was their very first engagement. Their faces were blackened with soot, uniforms soiled and bloodied.

Dawes felt the sudden burn of shame that he had not done more-not done much of anything at all! I took the first shots in my harbor tower, he thought, but all I’ve done since is get jostled from one AA gun position to another while these brave men fought and died to keep me safe. And here I am holding a rifle of the 4th Devs, and I haven’t the first idea how to use it!

He could hear the sound of the German attackers getting closer, calling to one another in harsh voices. One of the Devonshire riflemen fired at them, trying to buy enough time for the other two men to drag their wounded comrades inside the entrance. Dawes crouched behind his rock, closing his eyes, shuddering when bullets from a submachine gun raked the position, to cut the soldier down. Then he heard a dull clink, opening his eyes by reflex to stare in horror at a German grenade!

The next five seconds felt like an eternity, but in those brief and fleeting moments, the last of his life, Dawes found the one thing he had chided himself for lacking-his courage. There it was, the cold metal stick of death that would explode at any moment and take them all, the two wounded men and their comrades trying to drag them to safety. And there it was, with only one thing to do that might save them.

Dawes moved, as if on instinct, and the newest recruit of the Bloody Eleventh leapt atop the grenade, taking the full force of the explosion to die a hero, while shielding the soldiers who had fought so bravely to give him that chance.