Hammer of God

Chapter 18

Colonel Ferdinand Barre had the duty at Palmyra that night, commanding the 4th battalion of the French Foreign Legion. He was sitting listening to radio reports in the barracks the Legion had built just east of the main town, when he heard the odd thumping sound in the air, like the rapid beating of massive wings. He set down his coffee, listening, then walked slowly to the nearest window, eyebrow raised as he peered into the thickening darkness.

The sound lingered for a time, west towards the old Roman ruins and the Chateau, then it diminished. Thinking it may have been nothing more than a wayward plane, he was just about to return to his radio when the first rounds came crashing in on the nearby airfield. Now he rushed to the door, shocked to see three neatly placed explosions rake across the landing strip, and one round hit one of the two German He-111s parked there, resulting in an enormous explosion. The planes had been overloaded when they landed earlier, and both had damage to their undercarriage, and flat tires. They had just been sitting there for several days now, waiting for German service troops to arrive and fix the problem. A minute later they were no more than hot burning wrecks.

He heard shouts as Sergeants roused the men, and a bugle call summoned the Legionnaires to arms. Now the sound he had heard earlier became a plane in his mind, and he could only think that the British had staged a daring night bombing raid on the airfield to get at those two planes. Yet something did not click with that in his mind. No. Those rounds were too small to be bombs in the range of 250 to 500 pounds. They might have been 100 pounders, but his instincts, long honed by years of service to the Legion, told him this was mortar fire! What was going on?

He ran outside, collaring the first Sergeant Major he saw. “What is happening?”

“We don’t know, sir. But that fire seems to be coming from the west-from the chateau!”

At that moment a man came riding up on a braying camel, one of the Mehariste Cavalry in the Bedouin Camel Company that had been billeted near the Roman ruins. His headdress spilled down onto his broad shoulders, tied tightly about his neck to ward off the growing chill of the desert. Now he pointed. “The fortress!” he said breathlessly. “The Castle of Fakhr-al-Din! Men came from the sky! They have taken the place!” He thumped the flanks of his camel and the animal bolted before Colonel Barre could get another word from the man.

Filthy animals, he thought. Men from the sky? What did this crazy Bedouin mean by that? “Sergeant Major,” he said briskly. “Assemble your platoon and get over there to see about this. The British might be up to something. This could be a commando raid. I thought I heard an aircraft earlier. See about it and send a runner to my headquarters to report. I’ll send 2nd platoon after you.”

“Sir!” The Sergeant saluted crisply, and turned to his men assembling outside the barracks. “Alright you miserable scum, you heard the Colonel. Form up!”

The Colonel wanted to have a look at the airfield and find a working vehicle from the truck park. He had three platoons, two in the city, and one at the airfield. A couple of useless light desert camel patrols provided his only ranged reconnaissance, and those men were far from reliable. Occasionally Fawsi el Quwukji, the irascible desert guerilla, would appear with troops of his Bedouin raiders, but he had no news of him for some time. He had been listening to reports of the fighting around Damascus, growing more concerned each passing day as the British offensive continued. Now the war had come with sudden surprise out of the dark night, and his legionnaires were hastening west towards the Roman ruins.

Men from the sky? That could only mean paratroopers. Would the British be daring and foolish enough to launch such a raid here? The sound of the bugle calls roused his blood, and he stormed back into his headquarters to find his aide de camp.

“Get second platoon assembled and be ready to support Sergeant DuPois at once. I don’t like the looks of this.”

He soon learned that his suspicions, and the crazy Bedouin camel trooper, had both been correct. A runner came in with news that there were enemy soldiers in the high fortress of the Chateau, just as the Bedu rider had claimed!

News of the attack traveled quickly. The telephone line to Homs was still open, and Colonel Barre reported the situation to his superiors there. The Regimental Commander was not present, as he had taken the train south through Rayak and then east through the Barada Gorge to Damascus several days ago, but word of the incident soon filtered through to French Operations HQ where General Henri Dentz was coordinating the defense from Beirut. An attack on Palmyra was the last thing he needed to hear about. The news that it had been made by an airborne force was equally disturbing.

He quickly concluded it must be a small raiding force sent in advance of a large ground movement, and reports from the southwest frontier soon confirmed this assessment. News came in that a column of British and Arab Legion forces had left Rutbah and were heading north into the desert. A second column had been sighted far to the east, advancing along the pipeline route from the vicinity of Abu Kemal on the Euphrates. Now he knew where they were going-Palmyra.

They want to secure the pipeline and pumping stations, he thought grimly. They think they are going to push us right out of Lebanon and open that line to Tripoli again. I was a fool not to establish a stronger garrison out east. A regiment posted at Dier Zour on the Euphrates could have gone south to Abu Kemal in this instance, and made certain the British would not get oil from their Haifa pipeline as well. Both the Tripoli and Haifa pipelines meet south of there. That is a principle reason for this business in Iraq, isn’t it? The British need to protect their airfields and oil interests there. They could care less about Baghdad or anything else in the country, as long as the oil keeps flowing west.

Yet there was nothing he could do about that now. Most of the units from his Northern Syrian command had already been transferred south, and had been pulled onto the line. The situation was becoming serious around Damascus. That damn de Gaulle and his so called “Free French” brigades were taking up arms against their countrymen in a dishonorable attack south of the city. The British also had a strong force on his right, Gurkhas by all accounts, but they were well equipped, strong machinegun units, and they had been pushing relentlessly up the valley from Aartouz after storming that town in a night attack two days ago.

Thank God for the Germans arriving on that flank, he thought. Mountain troops had come in through the Barada Gorge by rail and taken up positions to screen the main road and rail lines to Rayak and Beirut. The fighting there had been rather intense. The British had some new aircraft, not a plane, but a stealthy helicopter by all reports. There were not many, but they had been making devastating attacks, always at night, with accurate and lethal gunfire and a short range rocket weapon. There were tanks there too, and that had been a surprise.

He thought he could trump the British attack by sending in his Chasseurs, the units of the 6th and 7th Battalions, which he had distributed along the line to bolster his colonial infantry. Many times they had made all the difference in the defense when they appeared. The old Renault 35 tanks had a good 37mm gun, decent armor, and the British 2 Pounder AT Guns and AT rifles could not harm them. When they appeared, the enemy had to simply hole up in any trench or building they could find, and his Renaults could operate as they pleased, impervious to enemy fire.

But no longer. Now the British had tanks as well, some new vehicles with a fast firing main gun in the same range as his Renaults. Were these the fearsome new tanks that had been the undoing of Rommel in the Western Deserts of Egypt? From all accounts they were not the invincible warriors he had heard about, but they were very good. In a brief, hot action outside the main Damascus airfields northeast of Aartouz, the two sides had fought a pitched battle.

2nd Company 1/6th African Chasseurs had the old PT-17 tanks, relics from WWI, and had lost three in rapid succession, along with three White armored cars and two Panhards. A second troop of six PT-17s came lumbering up and they were cut to pieces, with all six tanks knocked out in a matter of minutes. The enemy had a gun that ripped out three quick rounds when it fired, and they were deadly accurate, with superb night optics from all accounts. This advantage, and the relentless night attacks made by companies of fierce Gurkhas, saw the defense in that sector crumbling.

Two battalions of Senegalese Rifles had been badly pummeled by these “Night Devils,” as the men now called them. They moved like shadows, until they opened fire with blistering automatic weapons, and some new kind of hand-held heavy weapon that was demolishing bunkers, block houses, gun positions and machinegun nests. A near panic ensued after Aartouz fell, and the airfield was hastily abandoned, the last of the planes taking off to flee north even as the enemy infantry swept over the airfield, their guns nipping at the tails of the lumbering Bloch 210 bombers. The only positions that had held were those of the 2/6th and 3/6th Foreign Legion, on the heights of Jebel Madani. They fell back through the Chasseurs and joined another battalion of legionnaires already organizing a defense at the edge of Damascus.

South of the airfield, the 63rd Battalion of the 7th African Chasseurs was in strength, with 45 Renault-35 tanks. The firefight there had seen the first kills on this new British tank, with one hit by three successive 37mm rounds from the Renaults, and another damaged and forced to withdraw. That success had cost the battalion five Renault-35s, but it appeared the enemy was simply standing by now, in good hull down positions, and daring the French tanks to advance on the airfield.

The local commander had seen enough. With the bridge south at Kisawah taken, and the enemy in the heights beyond, this daring and persistent attack by the Gurkhas in the north would now force a general withdrawal to Damascus. The flank had been turned, but the German Mountain troops were still screening the entrance to the vital Barada Gorge. Reluctantly, General Dentz sent the order to fall back and consolidate in the suburbs of the city.

Now, with this latest report concerning a raid at Palmyra, General Dentz had yet another problem to solve. He had posted the last of the Foreign Legion in reserve there under Colonel Barre. They should be more than enough to handle the matter, but he soon learned that the British had holed up in the near impregnable fortress called the Chateau. He knew the place well, and had often stood on those high stone towers atop the steep flanks of an old extinct volcanic cone, and gazed on the Roman ruins there. News that the British were now advancing on the place with two columns gave him pause. What could he send?

He had the 2nd and 4th Tunisian Rifles at Al Qusayr to the west. But they would be some time getting to Palmyra. Then the telephone rang and he was pleased to hear the German Ambassador to Turkey, Franz von Pappen, with news of the treaty concluded the previous day.

“We have obtained right of free passage through Turkish territory by rail, and use of several airfields! It may entail some concessions concerning your northern border, but I will discuss this with you later. Even now we have elements of our 22nd Air Landing division en route to Iskenderun in southern Turkey. From there they will take trains with their heavy weapons and artillery down through Aleppo to Homs. Other units will fly directly to the airfield at Homs itself. Can you have trucks waiting for them there?”

At last, thought Dentz, another German division! The 5th Mountain Division had only two regiments, and these troops were split between the defensive fronts of Damascus and Beirut, where they had helped considerably. This second division was one of the German tough, veteran air mobile units, and he knew this was the same unit that had been sent ahead of the German advance through Belgium and the low countries. He promised to scrape up every vehicle he could find, and then asked the one real question on his mind.

“What about tanks,” he said. “Will there be anything more I can count on?”

There was a soft chortle on the other end of the line. “I can say nothing more on an open telephone line like this. Messages will be sent to you in short order. Plan your defense, General. We are coming.”

Those three words stuck in the General’s mind. Yes, just as you came at us through the Ardennes and toppled the honor of my nation with those damnable Panzer divisions. I didn’t get to see what happened in France, as I was here in the Levant, but now I would welcome the sight of German tanks, yes, for without them I do not think my Colonial battalions will hold the line much longer. Yet we will be opening the farm gate and letting in the wolves when the Germans come. It was a very odd feeling to fear the very same stroke that promised your salvation.

General Dentz soon learned the details von Pappen could not disclose on the telephone. It seemed Herr Hitler had big plans for the spring campaign before he set his mind on Russia. The Germans were coming alright. They were transferring XIV Motorized Korps from its positions in Bulgaria, through Turkey by rail, to Syria. Yes, the tanks he had hoped for would soon be coming. The German Korps was made up of two notable divisions, the 9th Panzer Division, which had been primarily tasked with linking up with the very same airborne forces von Pappen had just mentioned during the campaign of May 1940 in France. Out in front, it had the distinction of covering more ground than any other German Division in that campaign, unhinging the French defense, taking thousands of prisoners, and storming through Paris under Guderian. Now it would be sent to link up with the 22nd Air Landing Division here.

The other unit was something new. Apparently the Germans had collected many volunteers from the nations they had already conquered in the previous year. A new division was built from these men, volunteers from Denmark and Norway, and others from Belgium and the Netherlands. The new unit came under the control of the elite German SS, and the message indicated the division was now designated “5th SS Motorized Division Wiking.” It was a collection of Germans, Finns, Dutch and Nordic troops, and it would go on to gain a reputation as one of the most fearsome German divisions in the war.

And so as General Dentz leaned over his map table, he could finally sigh with relief and think to himself that this little war might just be won. What we get afterwards, with the Germans casting their dark shadow here, remains to be seen.

Fedorov knew nothing of these plans and maneuvers as he sat that night in the high southern tower of the fortress of Fakhr-al-Din. His bold little plan had worked out quite well at the outset. They had swept in through the gathering night, stormed the Chateau, destroyed the two German planes on the airfield, and shut it down as planned. Now all they had to do was wait for the British in King Column, and Glubb Pasha’s men. The thought that he might soon be facing German troops here was the farthest thing from his mind, a “Catch 22” that he could find nowhere in all his laborious and detailed research.

For this was a new war now, writing a new volume in the history books in blood here. Gibraltar had fallen, along with Malta and Cyprus lately taken by the Germans-things that had never happened before. Now the Germans were coming to Syria to save the beleaguered Vichy French, and the hard stone walls of the fortress, and Sergeant Troyak’s 20 Marines, would soon come to feel all too thin a defense against the storm that was coming.