Stormtide Rising

Chapter 19

The pitch that gushed forth from the “spring” between Kufa and Basra was oil, and somehow the artisans of the 12th Century found a way to use it as a pigment to create that ‘Black Marble’ finish that now lined the baths of Baghdad. Oil had been at the root and stem of Iraq’s importance for decades, ever since Otto von Bismarck pushed hard to see the construction of the Berlin to Baghdad railway. Oil was becoming the life blood of modern industrial economies, and therefore, the life blood of war.

Von Bismarck also saw the rail line as a way to connect Germany with its colonies in Africa, and German engineers like Wilhelm von Pressel were retained by the Turks to help construct the lines within Turkey—the very same railroads that Germany had spent a long year refurbishing to make Operation Phoenix possible. The threat this rail line posed was now quite apparent to the British. It was a steel line bisecting her empire, threatening to bring the Germans between Egypt, Palestine, and the Crown Jewel colony of India.

This is partly the reason why the British fought so hard to neutralize the Ottoman Turks in Syria and Arabia in WWI, and to curtail German access to the oil of ‘Mesopotamia’ and the Persian Gulf. The fabled ‘Lawrence of Arabia’ made attacks on these steel rail lines his calling card in the Great War, becoming a champion of the Arab thirst for independence after it concluded.

Victorious in WWI, Britain cemented these restrictions into the Treaty of Versailles, rescinding German ownership of the Berlin to Baghdad Railway. The Kingdom gained exclusive rights to oil development in Mesopotamia and southern Persia for its Anglo-Persian Company, and the British Army extended the rail line from Baghdad all the way to Basra.

The Sykes-Picot Agreement signed after WWI then saw the victorious Allied powers slicing up the Middle East and giving territories away as protectorates as if they were pieces of cake. Britain would gain control of Palestine, all the way to the River Jordan, and of all Southern Iraq. France took control of Northern Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and even portions of Southern Turkey. Russia’s shadow fell over Istanbul, the Turkish Straits, and Armenia. The borders drawn in the sand, long straight lines to define all these new states, would cut right across ethnic and cultural enclaves, and sow the seeds of dissention and strife in this region for decades to come.

It was the beginning of a long romance and marriage the West would have with the oil of the Middle East, and this was not the first time armies would struggle in the sands for control of that vital resource. That battle was still being fought in 2021, in a far off future that only a very few ‘interlopers’ could perceive in 1943. Oil was the reason Brigadier Kinlan had been sent to Egypt in 2020, and therefore the reason his brigade endured the impossible circumstance of being blasted into the past to make a most significant contribution to Britain’s survival in 1942.

Oil was the reason the British endured the torturing heat and privation of the Syrian Desert, obtaining rights to build their pipelines under the sand to reach the Mediterranean coast. It was the reason the Arabs were denied their independence for so long, and it remained the smoldering source of conflict in the region for the next century. The oil of Baba Gugur and other key sites would fuel the engines of war yet again in WWII, and it was the reason that Heinz Guderian was now standing in the smoky dim shadow of the city founded by Abu Ja’far Abdallah ibn Muhammad al-Mansur, the 2nd Abbasid Caliph.

Al-Mansur had called the place ‘Madinat al-Salam,’ the Round City, which became the core of old ‘Baghdad’ when it was later renamed. The name meant “God’s Gift,” and others called it the “City of Peace.” That was a commodity that would soon run short in Baghdad, from this day and forward through the decades to the 21st Century. Guderian gave the order to begin the attack two hours before sunrise on the 22nd of February.

1st Brandenburg Regiment met the most stubborn defense that morning. The road they were on was constricted by a deep marsh on the right, and crossed by a canal leading to a water pump station on the river. This created a bottle neck no more than 500 meters wide, and into that narrow passage went all three battalions abreast. That might be the frontage for a single battalion on attack, and it made for too many bodies in too open an area, so the companies ended up moving forward in waves. Behind them Konrad’s entire Lehr Regiment was forming up, meant to exploit into the Kazimiyah district, a more heavily built up area to the east.

When the attack slowed to a crawl, quite literally, with the rifle squads on their bellies in the open ground, the Germans then sought to flank the position with 2nd Regiment attacking south of that marsh. They would swarm into the smaller suburb of Al Haditha, named after the town Guderian had taken nearly two weeks earlier at the junction of the Tripoli / Haifa pipelines. This position was guarded by troops of the 1/10 Baluch Rifles in a large walled factory with looms and weaving equipment. They fought hard for four hours, the bullets snapping against those white stone walls and ricocheting off the looms at close quarters. Then the Germans brought up their PzJager battalion, a special unit attached to this regiment that had 12 Panthers and an equal number of Marder III’s.

The long barreled 75mm guns on the Panthers blasted away at the factory buildings, which was simply too much for the Indian rifle squads to endure. That site was right on the main road, and when it fell, it would open the way into the hamlet of Zidan, with its lush palm lined gardens and date trees. 7th Battalion had already been fighting its way through this area, opposed by the men of 3/15 Punjab Rifles. Behind it, just south of the main road below Zidan, was yet another factory processing grain, and 4/8th Punjab had thrown up walls of grain bags and fortified the whole site. The tall concrete silo brought back bitter memories of Volgograd for some of the veteran German infantry who had fought there.

The Germans wasted no time bringing up engineers, assault pioneers attached to Obersturmführer Duren’s regiment, and he watched through his field glasses as his troops made a classic attack on that silo. By noon, both the Spinning & Weaving Factory and the Grain Factory had been taken, save one building on the south side of the complex where a company of 4/8th Punjab still held out. Yet the British were not about to give up that easily. The 6th Indian Division, defending in all these areas, had a battalion of Royal Engineers, and they were sent in to try and retake the grain silos. They got over the wall on the eastern side of the complex, then three companies attacked, supported by artillery.

It was a gallant attack, the Royal Engineers pressing forward, Bren guns spitting fire at the soldiers of the 9th Brandenburg Battalion. They reached the silo, set charges against one wall to blow a hole, and then stormed in. For the next hour, they had the silo back again, their fire so hot that two German companies had to retire west of the outer wall for cover, where they immediately began regrouping for a counterattack. It was what Guderian had feared, a heavily built up area, with good concrete and stone buildings, and it would be back and forth for hours to reduce that strongpoint.

With 8th Battalion in reserve, the Germans sent it forward, fresh troops to press an attack against the southern wall of the Grain Factory. At the same time, they moved up more of their own Pioneers, with six panzerfaust teams ready to blast away at the silo. The Royals held the position, braving heavy fire, but events were transpiring east of the Tigris that would soon make a mockery of their gallantry.

4th Panzer Division was on the move, pushing over a narrow watercourse that arced around the outlying city settlement of Adhamiya. It was there that 17th Indian Brigade under Brigadier Jenkins of the 8th Division held the line, but they were about to endure the wrath of a full German Panzer Division on attack, something that was quite outside their wartime experience.

The Germans, mounted in halftracks, were organized into three heavy kampfgruppes. Closest to the Tigris, KG Rosenfeld had two battalions of Panzergrenadiers, backed by the Panzerjager company and 2nd Battalion of the 35th Panzer Regiment. They quickly pushed the enemy off their sandbagged positions on the watercourse, forcing them to retire to the outskirts of Adhamiya.

Further east KG Schafer, structured along the same lines as Rosenfeld, came forcefully up a secondary road, and followed a north-south canal the led them to a hole in the enemy lines. Schafer sent his panzers on through, dismounting infantry to try and widen the breach. They had help on their left from a battalion of the 78th Sturm Division, which had finally come down from Kirkuk in time for the attack.

The built up area of Adhamiya was relatively thin, no more than 400 meters, and once beyond it, a secondary road ran south through open fields and local cultivation that washed up against the thicker settlement of the Al Zamiyah District. That district harbored several key objectives. It was accessed by the Kazimiyah Bridge to the west, (called the Aa’mah bridge in 2021), and the Royal Mausoleum of King Faisal was nested further south behind the prominent domed mosque of Immam Al Azam, two schools, and a hospital. There was also an important fuel depot in the district, which is why 8th Indian commander General Russel had placed a second line of defense on the northern fringe of Al Zamiyah. On the far right, the whole district was protected by two elevated ‘bunds’ above flooded, marshy canal zones. They roughly followed the lines of what was once the old city wall in ancient times, and now they stood as lines of defense in this new war.

The importance of this sector could not be underestimated, for it if was overrun, it would mean the Germans would already be cutting off General Thompson’s 6th Indian Division on the western side of the Tigris, still stubbornly defending Kazimiyah. The vital bridge that bore that same name was the one link that connected the two divisions, and it had to be held. With Jenkins’ 17th Indian Brigade embroiled in the fight for Adhamiya, its lines penetrated by KG Schafer, and with Brigadier Ford’s 19th Indian Brigade fighting off a heavy attack over the canal and bund line to the east, the fate of the Al Zamiyah District now rested with that second line of defense, the 21st Indian Regiment under Brigadier Purves.

The German halftracks had already come barreling up that secondary road, racing across the open fields, and smashing right into a company of 3/15 Punjab, which shattered and began a hasty retreat. It fell back to artillery that had been brought too far forward, and soon the German machineguns were raking those batteries, sending gun crews scrambling for cover. The other companies of that battalion were shifted west to try and seal the breech, but it was riflemen against armored Panzergrenadiers and tanks.

The one battalion of British regulars in this brigade, 5th Queen’s Own Rifles, had been posted along the shores of the vital Kazimiyah bridge and nearby ferry sites. They had not expected to be threatened from the rear, and now the men were looking nervously over their shoulders, hearing the growing sounds of battle behind them.

“Look to your front!” growled Color Sergeant Kemp, though even he could not help but turn his head and cast a wary glance to the east. The mid-day sun gleamed off the golden dome of the Mosque of Imam Al Azam, and they could hear the rising and falling call to prayer from the onion capped spires of the ‘minarets,’ a word derived from the Arabic word for a lighthouse. Yet these tall towers would not call out to distant ships at sea, but to the sea of the faithful, surrounding the mosque on every side. They were thought to be ‘gates joining heaven and earth,’ which is why their tall thin spires strained upwards to the sky, much like the towers of Western Cathedrals.

Sergeant Kemp and his men would not be answering the call to prayer that day, but the Lieutenant soon came with an order for the battalion to form ranks and prepare to move east. It was no more than 1,500 meters to the fighting, and the battalion soon formed up its companies on the eastern edge of the Al Zamiyah District.

“Company…. Fix Bayonets!”

The rattle of the steel bayonets was heard all along the line, and many a private took heart in that. It was a throwback to an earlier time, when the rifle and bayonet would form the heart of any infantry attack. Yet now the enemy was coming in armored beasts that could not be pierced or harmed by those gleaming metal barbs. In this war, the bayonet was mostly a psychological weapon, and the order had the desired effect on the men, bolstering their courage for battle.

“Battalion! Advance!”

Three companies had formed in a long line, and they now swept forward towards the breakthrough on that secondary road. The last was held in reserve near the British “Sport Club” building a few hundred meters to the south. Thrown into the breech, that battalion would take very heavy casualties over the next hours, but they would also hold that line, and slow the German advance.

About four kilometers to the east, there were to natural defense lines that jutted at a 30% angle like a pair of open scissors. The roughly followed the lines of marshy watercourses and canals, the outermost called the ‘Army Canal,’ which was backed by an elevated Bund. At one point, there was a small settlement known as the “Arab Hikmat,” a seething souk on the outskirts of the city. It was now entirely overrun by the troops of the German 78th Sturm Division, supported by KG Kufner of the 4th Panzer Division. That was the enveloping pincer of this attack, finding that settlement to be the one gap in the canal line that might be exploited by armored vehicles.

The Sturm Regiments had done their job, clearing the souk and sending the Arabs scattering wildly in all directions. They secured a small bridge over the canal, and Kufner’s recon companies started across, one racing down the road through a gap in the lines to come right at Brigadier Ford’s HQ of the 19th Indian Brigade. The General and his staff retreated quickly down the road, and that made it clear to him that things were not going well. What was happening to his men on the outer bund? Then he looked over his shoulder and saw a sight that brought a broad smile to his leathery features—British tanks!

Kingstone had been the first man to greet them. His Kingforce had turned over the positions now occupied by the 8th Indian Division, and moved well south and east along the lower reaches of the Army Canal. They had been watching the long column of General Briggs’ 5th Indian Division arriving on the road to Baqubah, very happy to see this much needed reinforcement. When the tanks of the 9th Armored Brigade came clattering up along the inner bund road, Kingstone repeated his exclamation, beaming ear to ear—“bloody marvelous!”

The light tanks of the 3rd Hussars swept by in a dusty column, soon followed by 34 Shermans of the Warwickshire Yeomanry. It was not a brigade padded and heavily reinforced as with those in O’Connor’s 8th Army. While his massive 23rd Armored Brigade had 300 tanks, this one would field about 90, with a dozen AEC-III armored cars and a score of light armored carriers. It also had a full battalion of lorried infantry, the 11th Kings Royal Rifles, with four companies. Those men came up to man gaps in the inner bund line where Brigadier Ford had retreated, and the first two tank battalions charged up the road towards that breech to attack KG Schafer. They arrived just in time to save Sergeant Kemp and the 5th Queen’s Own Rifles from being overrun near the Sports Club.

The Shermans quickly blasted several halftracks, sending the rest of the 1/I 33 Panzergrenadier Company reeling back, until two panzer companies attached to this kampfgruppe came up to give challenge. Between them, they had 28 Pz-IVF2’s and a sharp firefight ensued. The Germans found the lighter M5’s easy pickings for the long barreled 75s on those F2’s. The Shermans had tougher armor, but it could still be easily penetrated by those guns. It would come down to experience, where the Germans possessed a decisive edge, with men who had fought off hordes of T-34s in Russia the previous year. To them, this was no great challenge, and the British would soon learn lessons the Russians had taken over many long months of fighting.

Chapter 20

When word reached Jumbo Wilson at the British Embassy, he looked at the breakthrough by KG Schafer with some alarm. “This puts 24th Indian Brigade in the Kazimiyah District west of the Tigris in a bad way,” he said. “If we can’t stop that attack, and I mean throw it back completely, then Le Flemming’s entire brigade will be cut off, and useless to us for all intents and purposes. I think we should order those troops back over the bridge. They will strongly reinforce the Al Zamiyah District, and then I think we can stop these brigands. For that matter, Barker’s 27th Indian Brigade is getting squeezed against the river bend near the Tayfiyah Ferry. Let’s get that unit back as well. The ferry site doesn’t matter, as long as we hold the east bank landings. Order the 27th to fall back towards the main rail yards.”

“Very good, sir,” said the staff officer. “And what about the Kazimiyah Bridge?”

“If it can be safely wired for demolition in the midst of all this hubbub, then do so. We should have had charges placed on all these bridges long ago. See to it.”

Those orders would soon put a stop to the fighting at the Grain Factory, and the stubborn bottleneck that had held back the 1st Brandenburg Regiment all day would soon be uncorked. Guderian was so bothered by the lack of success there, that he had given orders to Konrad to begin taking his Lehr Regiment around the marshy ground to instead follow the main road and rail lines where 2nd Brandenburg was attacking through the Spinning and Weaving Factory. That order would bring a strong surge of German troops to the Gardens and Grain Factory, just when those orders from Wilson to withdraw would come in the middle of that difficult fight.

24th Brigade was able to disengage and fall back to the Kazimiyah bridge, their scattered companies falling into line and waiting to cross behind a thin rearguard. They would be giving up the bottleneck, the Al Kazam Mosque, Post Office, and Hospital, where a few companies still held forth as part of the rear guard.

Further south, the German assault on the Grain Factory had just pushed the Royal Engineers out of that silo again. The British were doggedly organizing ‘for another go,’ when the orders finally came to withdraw with the 27th Indian Brigade and cover the main rail yards. Only 16 of an original 27 squads were left in the battalion, with many walking wounded among the living.

The sun was low and the shadow of evening now crept over the city, the long day finally coming to a close. Under cover of darkness, the Germans would move forward to occupy all of the Kazimiyah District west of the Tigris. But the real crisis point was still the breakthrough by KG Schafer towards Al Zamiyah. The defense of the outlying neighborhood of Adhamiya was completely compromised, the last solid British battalion, the Royal Fusiliers, finally abandoning their well sandbagged positions and falling back.

Kingforce, on the lower Army Canal, was getting confused reports of the action, and the Brigadier was given reason for concern. The breakthrough at the Arab Hikmat had roughed up Ford’s 19th Indian Brigade, which had been unable to stop the Germans from crossing the canal and bund line, though they were still holding on the inner bund. If that attack pushed due south, it would have the effect of slowly compromising Kingstone’s own positions on the outer bund-canal line. He got on the radio to Wilson to see what was up.

“Good news,” he reported. “5th Indian Division is coming through our lines right now. Briggo is taking them up the rail line towards the city center.”

“And in the nick of time,” said Wilson. “Do the men look like they still have any fight in them?”

“Well, they’ve had a long march, and may need a good night’s rest, but they’ll fight,” said Kingstone. “I’m worried about Ford’s Brigade near the Arab Hikmat. The Germans did us a favor and finally cleared that rat’s nest out, but that attack will compromise my positions on the outer bund.”

“It may,” said Wilson, “but I want you to hold there tonight. You know how the Germans shuffle about after dark. I don’t want them thinking they can swing south. Keep a good eye out for me, will you Joe?”

“Right-O,” said Kingstone. “Nothing gets round my flank that I won’t know about, and if necessary, I’ll send out the armored cars to patrol tonight.”

“That would be wise. Where is Glubb Pasha? He’s a good man in a situation like this.”

“God only knows,” said Kingstone. “The last I heard, he was west of the Tigris.”

“Well, if he can be found, you might want his Dusky Maidens to have a look about tonight.”

“I’ll see what I can do, sir.”

So Kingstone would stay right where he was. But he did put out a radio call in code that only Glubb would hear and understand. He was indeed west of the Tigris, down near Al Haj Kadhm, where the river made a sharp hairpin bend. The rail line ran down around that bend, before continuing south to eventually reach Basra. Since the 10th Indian Division had pulled itself in tight to defend the Royal Palaces, Glubb’s little Arab Legion was the only force watching the rail line now. He had been mixing about with the local Arabs, using his amazing knowledge of the language and culture to see if he could drum up some support from the local tribes, and possibly fill out his ranks a bit.

In many ways, Glubb Pasha was even more skilled as an ambassador to the Arabs than Lawrence of Arabia had been. He could hear every subtlety in the language dialects, and one look at an Arab’s headdress, the way he might wear and tie off his waist sash, his every mannerism, were like an open book to him. He could speak back to the Arabs in that very same dialect, knowing it intimately, and thus made quick and easy friendships, gaining many followers.

Kingstone had tweeted to him that night, obviously wanting him to report, though his men had detected no German movement towards that river bend. Glubb’s men were the only thing stopping the enemy from simply heading south, but he instinctively realized that the Germans could not do that while Baghdad was still in British hands. So he asked the locals to send men to places he knew well if the Huns came that way, and then he took his detachment east, following the road along the river that would eventually take him to one of the real great prizes in this battle—the Al Dayrah Oil Center, which would later come to be called the Dora Refinery.

This facility had really taken root after the war, but now it was a depot and oil storage area, with some small refining capacity. Oil previously refined near Basra was railed up to this depot, and stored in growing tank farms there to serve the needs of the city, and the military. It was a prize that would put good, usable fuel into the hands of Heinz Guderian for his drive south if he won this battle, and Glubb Pasha saw it as the most important objective of the fight.

That’s where he was taking his Arab Legion, and considering that Kingstone seemed to be asking for his support, he resolved to go find the man and see if he could turn things around. He wanted to convince Kingstone that he should be looking to the defense of those valuable oil stores, but he would not find him that night.

As the darkness thickened, the evacuation of the Kazimiyah District was completed, with 24th Brigade coming over the bridge in good order and taking up positions in the Al Zamiyah District. The Germans kept up a desultory shelling of the bridge area, which was just enough to prevent the Royal Engineers from getting any real work done to try and set charges. Further south, two companies of the 27th Brigade under Brigadier Alan Barker got pinned against the river near the Al Tayfiyah Ferry, but otherwise, that force retired to take up a new defensive line screening the main rail yards. It was to be their last night of relative calm.

That rail yard was one of Guderian’s main objectives on this side of the river. He wanted it to keep his clearing and control of the Baghdad rail line moving along, to gain the workshops, engineering bays and fuel sites there, both for oil and coal. For this attack, he had moved Konrad’s Lehr Regiment through the lines of 2nd Brandenburg Regiment, and that night they would rest and prepare for a renewed assault at dawn.

So we are now masters of the west bank as far south as that rail yard, thought Guderian, pleased with the day’s work. Except for the delay imposed on the 1st Regiment at the bottleneck, his troops had fought hard and well to clear the two factory sites and garden area, finally reaching the river. Now he knew that he had cut the 6th Indian Division in two, with part of it east of the river in the north retiring over that bridge, and the rest defending the rail yard.

KG Schafer’s breakthrough at Adhamiya was the key moment east of the river, he thought. Now that Hans Hube has finally come up with Westhoven’s 3rd Panzer Division, that attack can really gain momentum tomorrow. But the British surprised us a bit there when they brought up armor. We had no reports of enemy tanks up until now, and that changes things. I must determine what these units are, but I cannot imagine that they will stop Hube here, not with two good panzer divisions under his command. He’ll be like a charioteer, with two strong steeds pulling him to battle. I expect good results at Al Zamiyah tomorrow, and hopefully we can clear that district quickly.

So both attacks on the 23rd will converge on one area. I want Konrad to focus his efforts north of the rail yards and drive right for the Royal Ferry site and main bridge. I want Hube to ride his chariot due south, cutting off Al Zamiyah, and he is to aim for the Royal Palace, one of many in this city, or so it seems. Perhaps this plan can bag a good chunk of the Indian troops in Al Zamiyah. We shall see how nimble they are today.

Guderian would spend the night in the Spinning & Weaving Factory, consulting with General Beckermann of the Brandenburg Division and laying out what he wanted from him the following morning.

“The Lehr Regiment will do the work tomorrow,” he said. “Swing them north of the rail yard and go for the bridge. Send Duren’s 3rd Regiment right into the yards as a holding force to keep the enemy in play there. I want those yards cleared by tomorrow night. You can bring down Langen’s 4th Regiment to follow the Lehr Regiment.”

“What about the north?” asked Beckermann. “Will you want me to mount a river crossing operation there?”

“No. Secure the west bank of the Kazimiyah Bridge, hold the ferry sites and get a few assault boats there, but otherwise, you can rest your 1st and 2nd Regiments in the morning. I may have work for them in the afternoon.”

“Then Hube will clear Al Zamiyah?”

“He’s got both panzer divisions now. I think he’ll force the British to give us that whole district by noon. It will either be that, or we bag all those forces an cut them off.”

“That will mean we’ll have to hold them there, and plan to reduce that pocket. It will take some steam out of our engine.”

“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!”

Wilson looked over his situation map, seeing that the lead battalions of the 5th Indian Division’s 29th Brigade had come up through the heart of the city, bound for the barracks where they thought they were to be fed and rested. But there would be no rest for the weary that morning, and no breakfast either.

“Alright,” said Jumbo. “I’ve got Reid’s 29th Brigade close at hand. I’ll send them over the main bridge to cover that sector. See if you can extend your line and make contact with them.”

Brigadier Alan Barker was no slouch. He had been with the Indian Army since the first war, fought in the Anglo-Afghan war, and slowly rose in the ranks until they gave him the 27th Brigade. He was known throughout India as “Tochi Barker,” and much respected by the men he commanded. He would later go on to distinguish himself in the fighting in Italy, but for now he had a real whirlwind on his hands.

He had only just reached the Locomotive Bay when he was aghast to see what looked like a full battalion of German troops forming up to attack the place. He was reluctant to give it up, but he knew it could not be held with the small platoon sized HQ staff he had at hand, and by extension, he knew that his brigade had been shattered by this ferocious and very heavy attack being put in by the Lehr Regiment.

Barker had no choice but to withdraw deeper into the rail yard, crossing the thick lines of the heavy steel railed tracks, past the fueling depot and workshops. Along the way, he came upon the remnants of a company from 4/8 Punjab Rifles, ordering them to hold the fuel bunker as long as possible. The help he had asked for had finally come, filing over the main bridge, called Jsar al Qitar at this time, and renamed the Alsarafiyah Bridge in 2021. Now, at a crucial moment, he could see the lines of the 29th Brigade moving forward from the bridgehead they had established on the west bank, and taking up blocking positions astride the main road.

Two more battalions of the Punjab Rifles advanced, catching a company of the Lehr Regiment that had broken through, well ahead of the rest of its regiment. The Royal Engineers that had fought so stubbornly for the Grain Factory found themselves cut off as they withdrew, but now they attacked to try and reach friendly lines, and soldiers of 2/9th Gurkhas joined in from the other side, hoping to open a hole and save their comrades.

Barker went out, watching the artillery firing from their new post near the central supply depot. He surveyed the left flank, mostly manned by Lt. Colonel Selby’s 28th Indian Brigade, which had a high proportion of solid Gurkha battalions in its ranks. That line was holding, from the town of Shalchiya, down to the Khir River that flowed on to the outskirts of the Airport Settlement and formed the southwest boundary of Al Muthana Field. He heard a battery of 25 Pounders firing from the edge of the airfield, and realized the Germans must be probing at that tributary for weak points. There would be no reserve for that sector if anything got through.

In fact, even with the timely arrival of Briggs’ 5th Indian Division from Kirkuk, the British were still stretched to their limit to hold the line and stop up gaps and breakthroughs. When General Briggs came up from the back of his division column, he learned that Wilson had already taken the two leading brigades and put them into action. Reid’s 21st Brigade had crossed to support Barker and cover the main bridge and Royal Ferry, and Langran’s 9th Brigade had been sent way off on the right flank to fill a gap between Ford’s 19th Brigade and the lines of Kingforce on the outer Bund and Army Canal line.

That left the General with only Finlay’s 10th Brigade, and one of his battalions had already been sent in to help halt the advance of KG Kufner, which had come through the Arab Hikmat and was threatening to flank the inner bund along another line of marshy ground. So Briggs had but two of Finlay’s battalions in hand, the solid 2nd British Highland Light, and 4/10 Baluch Rifles. Where would the next crisis point come?

Then word came from Kingstone that he had just greeted the 7th Armored Brigade, the cavalry riding to the rescue in the heat of this hard fought day. It had finished up in the south, boarded trains in Basra, and then moved by rail up to a point south of the city before offloading the tanks and vehicles for ground movement. The brigade had 32 M5 “Honeys,” 33 of the newer Shermans, and 24 older M3 Grants. That evening they would be approaching the city center after stopping at a fuel depot near the Al Jisir Bridge to top off. That gave Wilson and Briggs a little heart, though Jumbo wondered if the Germans would continue the fighting after dark.

They’re relentless, he thought. That Brandenburg division has the strength of two of my Indian divisions combined, and then some. But this attack from the north has me worried. 9th Armored Brigade has been expended. I’ll need to pull them off the line to fuel up and replenish ammo. Thank God for the 7th. I can put that unit in before dawn, and see if we can hold. They tried to pinch off everything we had at Al Zamiyah today, and almost succeeded. I’ve got six brigades committed in the north, and our lines are thickening up. What I need now is news from Basra. He rang up General Grover to see what was going on.

“Well,” said Grover, “we’ve only just come up, but the rail was cut, so we’ve had to detrain south of the city.”

“Who cut that bloody line?” asked Wilson.

“Arabs say that German Commandos infiltrated last night. There wasn’t much damage, but it would be six hours work to re-lay a section of that track, so I just told my boys that we’d hoof it from here. We’ll assemble just south of the Rashid Airfield.” That was the other big airfield, southeast of the city, and it would become very important now, as the Germans were already throwing artillery onto the main Al Muthana field west of the Tigris.

“Well how soon will you get here?”

“I’m afraid I can’t move out tonight. We’re still offloading the trucks and heavy equipment. It will be another24 hours, maybe less.”

“Good enough,” said Wilson. “We’ll need you, and it’s good to know you’re at hand. What about the 7th Indian?”

“They’ve got to hold out at Basra and Abadan. I think it best we leave them there. In another four or five days, the 18th Division ships in from Perth.”

“We may need them here as well,” said Wilson. “It’s been thick.”

“I understand, sir. We’re coming.”

But what else does Fritz have in the bag to throw at us, Wilson wondered?

Guderian was looking at the same question. Thus far, he had two good days of fighting, though his plan for day two had been foiled. Hube jumped the gun, he thought, but he achieved good results in spite of that enthusiasm. We did not expect they would have tanks here, but it seems they had something down south that came up last night. No matter, my panzers will still do the job. The attack by Konrad’s Lehr Regiment was outstanding. They nearly reached the main bridge, and I think they’ll get there in the morning. We’ve cleared Kazimiyah, taken that bridge, but they pulled out of the Al Zamiyah District before our pincers could close. 1st Brandenburg will cross at the bridge there tonight and mop up Al Zamiyah.

Tomorrow a good deal rests on Hube’s shoulders. His divisions will just have to grind their way into the city. If I had one more infantry division to cover their sector, I’d send both panzer divisions east and south in another wide envelopment. But I will probably stand with ten other officers bemoaning the lack of good infantry these days. The 78th Sturm Division has given us good support, but they can only cover so much ground. The British certainly do not lack for infantry. Even these Indian divisions fight surprisingly well. Those troops down near the rail yard, the men with those long flashing knives, have held their ground against every attack put in against them. That was another surprise.

Yes, they fought hard today. But tomorrow we should clear that rail yard and be looking at the airport. As for 10th Motorized down south, their progress has been slow. The British are fighting Schmidt hard there to keep those two royal palaces. Perhaps I deployed that division too far south. He might do better if I sent him up against the airport. That could force the enemy to give up the palaces if they want to defend that end of the field. Yes. I’ll have him move tonight.

We’ve shown that we can push them, but they’re getting a lot of support up from the south. I didn’t think they would fight so tenaciously for this city. I had hoped to get here quicker, run rings around this place, and get them to withdraw like we did on the Euphrates. Well, they aren’t stupid. They know the value of holding this city, and they are putting all their chips in on this number. It will be as I feared. Baghdad will be my Moscow in the desert, and if I cannot go around it, then I must simply fight my way through it, as much as I would wish to do otherwise.

I will still have the 901st Lehr Regiment, perhaps in another day as they come down on the Mosul Rail. Then I must see if there is any more fruit on the tree with a call to OKW. But I must take Baghdad first. Give Hitler this city, and he will be much more inclined to give me another division to garrison it. If I lose this fight and fail to push them out, then I think this Operation Phoenix stops here, and I will get no further support. So everything depends on this—everything.

That evening, a combined kampfgruppe from elements of both panzer divisions smashed their way into the British Sports Club building, which was now a burning wreck. Reinhardt’s Company of Kommandos worked its way south through the snout of Al Zamiyah and slipped over the high stone walls around the Royal Mausoleum. He was soon standing on the tomb of old King Faisal.

The next morning, the Lehr Regiment renewed its assault towards the main bridge and Royal Ferry site. They broke through south of the bridge, exploiting in both direction to a depth of about 750 meters, but the British 2nd Suffolk Battalion remained cool under fire, the Sergeants moving their platoons back into a good defensive arc just 250 meters from the Royal Ferry terminal. Brigadier Reid had set himself up in the Ginning Mill just a couple hundred meters from the east end of the bridge, and he ordered the position reinforced with Assyrian Levy troops. He also had a small SAS company under Lieutenant More, and he sent them across to set up a defensive position at the west end of the bridge.

His battalion of 25-Pounders boomed away at the Germans in that breakthrough zone, hoping to add to the chaos as their fast moving companies rushed into the breech. That attack had actually broken through the lines of Reid’s troops, and it forced his Punjab battalion to fall back south towards the Brick Kilns in the rail yard. For all intents and purposes, they were now part of Brigadier Barker’s 27th Brigade. He had asked for them the previous day, and now they were his to command from a tactical perspective.

Just east of Al Muthana Air Field, there came the sound of firefighting in the Airport Settlement. Hauptmans Feller and Schultz had taken their two Kommando units along the winding west bank of the Khir, and they found a small foot bridge leading into that settlement. Two companies of the 3rd Brandenburg Regiment had followed them, crossing behind them to fan out through the hovels and shacks, scattering the local Arabs like a flock of crows.

At the same time, Schmidt had moved his 20th Motorized regiment north to that sector as Guderian ordered the previous night, and now they had two battalions ready to support that attack. The defense there was part of the 10th Indian Division, under the man that Joe Kingstone had brow beaten on the Euphrates for his inept and sluggish deployments.

Alan Bruce Blaxland had been given the job of defending Al Muthana Airfield, and the two Royal Palaces three kilometers to the south. He was headquartered in the King’s Western Palace, sitting behind a gorgeous polished mahogany desk in a large marble tiled room, with luxurious thick woven rugs—quite comfortable.

Thus far the Germans had seemed to want to evict him from his plush appointments, so he had placed the whole of 21st Indian Brigade right on top of an elevated railway embankment that ran east of the palace grounds, the men lying prone in a good defensive position for a rifleman. He had his 20th Brigade watching the two good bridges over the Khir, but mostly centered on the second palace, that of the Crown Prince, a smaller estate about a kilometer north of the King’s Palace. Well-watered by the Khir, both estates were surrounded by verdant gardens, and the grounds were meticulously manicured, with well-trimmed hedges and pruned shrubbery.

His last Brigade, the 25th under Brigadier Edward Arderne, was the one that mattered now, because Schmidt was shifting his division north, though Blaxland did not surmise this from his sumptuous post. Arderne had moved his HQ company into the Airport Hotel, about two kilometers from the Airfield Settlement, across the broad open flats of the tarmacs and runways.

A career officer, Arderne was with the King’s African Rifles at Arusha, Tanganyika, before the war, where he spent a good deal of his time indulging in a favorite hobby, big game hunting. He found himself in the Western Desert with O’Connor when the war broke out, gave a good account of himself at Tobruk, and won the DSO and a hefty promotion to his present position. He was a good officer, and so when he heard the sound of his own 25-pounders firing at the far end of the airfield, he got up from his breakfast table, got into a staff car, and sped off to see what was happening.

Soon he saw streams of Arabs fleeing across the broad expanse of the airfield, and knew exactly what that meant. He got there just in time to assess the situation, and order his companies to tighten up their lines and concentrate in the settlement, where it was now house to house fighting—or rather hovel to hovel. Standing with his field glasses, he was astute enough to pick out the two different uniforms of the attacking enemy troops, so he got on the radio to Blaxland.

“I think Jerry moved last night,” he said. “He seems to be throwing his left shoulder at the airport settlement. It looks like there’s men from that 10th Motorized Division here.”

“Well, have you covered the position?” asked Blaxland.

“Yes sir, I’ve pulled in two of my three battalions. The 5th Maharatta is still on the railway embankment.”

“Very well. Keep me informed.”

That was all Blaxland had to say, and then he went back to his own breakfast of two poached eggs, biscuits with marmalade, and a stout cup of tea.

“Anything of interest, sir?” asked his adjutant, a Lieutenant Fitch.

“Oh, that was just Arderne running about on the airfield. Nothing to get bothered over. Any more activity on our front?”

“None to speak of, sir.”

“Good. Looks like they don’t want any part of us. I was Johnny on the spot when I spied that good railway embankment. They won’t get in here, that’s for sure.”

It certainly was. General Schmidt was somewhere else.