“I’ll be in the W/T Room,” he said. “Come about to take that course and go to thirty knots at once.”

“Aye sir, off we go.” Bennett gestured to a Watch Officer and the order was passed to the helm. HMS Invincible was heading south.

 

* * *

 

“Well Fedorov,” said Admiral Volsky. “It appears we have not worn out our welcome yet.” He had just received the message from Nikolin. Admiral Tovey had sent a code on a special channel they had arranged and was requesting that Kirov resume the Watch on the Denmark Strait for the next 24 hours.

Fedorov had seen all the other message traffic, and put the puzzle together. “I guess we can tell Narva they will not be seeing anything north of Iceland,” he said. “The Germans have just announced themselves at the Faeroes!”

“That they have. What do you think this is, Fedorov? Could it be a diversion?”

“In once sense it is,” said Fedorov. “They showed us Alfargruppe just north of the Denmark Strait first. Now we know that is comprised of only two ships, and I think that is the real feint here. This business at the Faeroes, that is Jötnargruppe, the giants, and from the list of ships we decoded in that Enigma signal it will be Bismarck and Hindenburg. Yet in my opinion, this is also a diversion.”

“Oh? What else can the Germans throw at the British? Hindenburg is their biggest ship. Yes?”

“They can throw three crack regiments at Gibraltar, sir. I believe this is a ruse aimed at keeping the British Home Fleet well occupied for Operation Felix.”

Volsky sighed heavily, folding his arms.

“Correct, Fedorov. The only question I have now is this: what should we do about it?”

 

Chapter 29

 

“I’m afraid we are a little too far away to do much about Gibraltar,” said Fedorov. “Besides, what could we do? It will not be a naval operation. The French Fleet might also cause some trouble for Force H, but if Admiral Somerville is sharp he already has his ships up on four hour steam. He won’t want his battleships sitting at anchor if the Luftwaffe comes calling, and this they will certainly do if they mean to attack Gibraltar.”

“But surely that operation is of greater significance than our post here,” said Volsky.

“True sir, but again, what could we do? Gibraltar’s fate now lies with the mettle of its garrison. I don’t suppose you are contemplating putting Troyak and his Marines ashore there.”

Volsky smiled. “No, I think they have done enough with this latest mission. It is good to have them all safely aboard the ship again—including Orlov. But I can see that you were surprised it succeeded.”

“I was,” said Fedorov. “Especially after what Director Kamenski suggested. If Troyak could destroy the back stairway at Ilanskiy, then how did I find it and go down it in 1941? How did Ivan Volkov do the same in 2021? But yet, Troyak reports his demolition was a success.”

“How is this possible, Fedorov?”

“It’s a real mystery sir, like so much of what has happened in these last months. I have been muddling over it for some time.”

“Yes, I have seen you muddling, young man. I noticed your heart was not in the recent fire drill exercises.”

“I’m sorry sir, my mind was elsewhere, and it concerns Captain Karpov.”

“Or is it Admiral Karpov now?” said Volsky. “That man sees no limits. In his present position he can still do a great deal of harm.”

“Did you see Troyak’s full report sir? He noted that there were several airships present when they arrived; some belonging to the Orenburg Federation. I find it curious that they would be that deep inside Free Siberian territory. Troyak says there was a battle underway, both on the ground and between those airships. Yet we only just learned of the Omsk accord. What was that about?”

“Apparently that accord was not entirely successful.”

“Yes sir. Fighting has broken out between the Siberians and Orenburg again. A major offensive is underway.”

“It is very likely that Karpov and Volkov met at that meeting in Omsk,” said Volsky.

That gave Fedorov a start. “If they did meet,” he began, “do you think they would have recognized one another?”

“Who knows?” said Volsky. “Volkov was a young man when they first met aboard Kirov. He would be a man of my age now, ready for the pasture.”

“Don’t underrate yourself.” Fedorov said quietly. “You have many years of service left. But this is what I was worried about when I hatched that scheme to send Troyak off to Ilanskiy. If Karpov did realize Volkov was the same man he met on Kirov, then the next question he would ask would be a very dangerous one. He would want to know how Volkov came to be here, and that could lead him to discover it had something to do with Ilanskiy. That was, after all, where Volkov would have first appeared if he went back to 1908 as I did.”

“True,” said Volsky, “but haven’t we already solved that problem? You were just telling me Troyak was successful.”

“Yes, but I find it very suspicious that there was a battle underway at Ilanskiy. It leads me to conclude that both sides must know there is something significant about that place.”

“Well now that that stairway has been destroyed, you can rest easier, Fedorov.”

“I wish I could, sir. I was certain that something would happen if Troyak succeeded in destroying those stairs, but… nothing happened at all! I thought it would have prevented Volkov from finding them in 2021, and therefore prevented the rise of the Orenburg Federation. In fact, I was deathly afraid that we would be swept up in the whirlwind of change Troyak’s demolition would cause, but… here we still are. So I can only assume the stairway must have been rebuilt sometime before I first found it in 1941, and that prospect still has me very worried. For the time being, we have eliminated the grave and serious threat that someone could pass through that time rift to alter the past again, and by so doing compromise our own status and fate here in this time. Yet we must keep a close watch on this situation. The problem is not resolved.”

“Do you expect me to send Troyak in a blimp every other month to have a look?”

“No sir, that would be impractical, and dangerous. But this battle at Ilanskiy has dark implications. I think it means Volkov and Karpov both know about that stairway.”

 “They had no great love for one another when they first met in 2021, so it does not surprise me that any agreement they may have reached at Omsk has fallen apart. Now they will tussle over Ilanskiy like a pair of dogs quarreling over a bone.” Volsky smiled as he continued.

“That accord, as you call it, would have been very bad news for Sergei Kirov. It would mean Orenburg could have transferred all the forces it now has deployed against Siberia to the Volga front. One side or another must have gone back on their word. Perhaps it was Karpov, which would fit his character well. If so, he has done us a great favor. You were telling Admiral Tovey about the possible German attack on Russia in 1941, and we both know the Soviet Union’s chances of surviving that are not good without the support of both Orenburg and Siberia.”

“Agreed.” Fedorov shrugged, seeming very disconsolate.

“You are looking as pale as Admiral Tovey,” said Volsky.

“I suppose I am, sir. Your remarks to him about the problem we face come July next year still weigh heavily in the equation. Yes, our candle is burning here. We are the light that shines twice as bright in this era, yet we both know the other end of that—we also burn twice as fast. Here we are talking about Gibraltar and the ground war in Russia and, in spite of all the advanced weaponry we possess, it seems we are powerless to influence these events, even a minor division scale action like Operation Felix where no more than three German regiments will make the actual attack.”

“We are a naval power,” said Volsky. “There is only one thing we can assure wherever we stand a watch, and that is control of the sea. In many ways that will decide whether the Allies ever can begin their counteroffensive. They must control the Atlantic and Pacific to bring the power they have to face their enemies on land. At this point in the war, control of those seas is hanging in the balance, and so you may take heart and believe we have some vital role that we may play here. Nothing can match us on the sea. Yet all power has limits, Fedorov. This is something you and I must know, and the one thing that Karpov forgot while he was here.”

“He remains a grave problem, sir—Karpov. Something tells me that there may have to be a reckoning with him in all this if we remain here.”

There was a moment of silence between them, as each one pondered that. Then Volsky nodded, speaking the thing they were both now considering. “We are a naval power,” he said, “but Karpov has established himself on land. And look now, Fedorov. He is at war with Volkov and the Orenburg Federation! Yes, Karpov is a threat, and a very dangerous one. But how is it said, Fedorov? The enemy of my enemy is a friend.”

“I see what you mean, Admiral, but given Karpov’s nature, the squabble between Karpov and Volkov may not be permanent. He is an opportunist, and he will do whatever is necessary to further his advance. One minute he signs an accord with Volkov, the next sees the two sides battling at Ilanskiy.”

“Yet this wedge between them is to our advantage,” Volsky pressed. “We must consider how to use their newfound enmity to strengthen our position—Kirov’s position.”

“Are you suggesting we try to contact Karpov and sound him out on this?”

“The thought has crossed my mind. As you said yourself, he may suspect we are here if he thinks we used Rod-25. He is now at war with Volkov, and though we do not know how that will turn out, we do know one thing—as long as those two fight one another, Sergei Kirov’s position is strengthened. You see, Karpov may call himself an Admiral these days, but he is really a general. He’s a force on land. If we could find a way to get him to see the importance of preserving Soviet Russia, then we could do much to affect the outcome of this war. Perhaps he can still be reasoned with.”

“Could we ever trust him again?” Fedorov asked the most obvious question. “He’ll do whatever it takes to further his interests.”

“So we must show him that it is in his interest to preserve Soviet Russia. Otherwise Germany will crush our homeland. Make no mistake, Fedorov. Hitler will smile and shake hands with Volkov until he has defeated Sergei Kirov. But Volkov is sitting on the one thing Hitler really needs—the oil fields in the Caucasus and Caspian region. He wants that oil. Do you think he will simply ask for it politely? No. Once he defeats Soviet Russia, Orenburg will be next on his list. I think we can get Karpov to see this, and to realize his fate would be the same unless he sides with the Allies.”

“You forget how headstrong and arrogant he can be,” said Fedorov. “He knows what we have in the magazine, and he will argue that we should use the full measure of our power here. I can hear it now.”

“Indeed,” said Volsky. “I suppose we could sail down there and deliver a nuclear warhead on the German assembly area in Spain if they are staging for this operation. The troops in Gibraltar would have quite a show, and the Germans would gasp in utter awe when they see their elite regiments evaporate before their eyes. Then I suppose we could send an ultimatum to Herr Hitler and tell him he gets more of the same if he does not relent and call off the wolves.”

“That is what Karpov would probably do,” said Fedorov.

“Yes, Karpov sees power as a blunt instrument. He exercises considerable guile to get himself into a position to use it, but when the time comes for its application, he fails miserably. Do you think Hitler would make peace if we stop his attack on Gibraltar this way?”

“No sir, I do not. Look what the Americans did to Japan when they first firebombed Tokyo, then dropped the bomb on Hiroshima, and still that was not enough. It required Nagasaki as a further demonstration that annihilation was at hand should the Japanese not surrender. They did not know how many atomic weapons America possessed at the time. There were only three, but they might have had fifty for all the Japanese knew.”

“Interesting,” said Volsky. “We have only three—the same power that the Americans will have five years from now. Would they be enough to win this war, or at least bring it to a halt? This is the nightmare I have considered ever since we made the decision to stay here and side with the allies. Yes, it means that we might kill a great many people if we use these weapons. Then I weigh that against the millions that will die in this war, and think the cost may not be too high. It is a real dilemma, Fedorov.”

Then Volsky summed things up. “So on the one hand we see the limitations of our Moskit-II missiles, and how powerless we are to effect events involving land operations. Then on the other hand we hold a hammer that could smash Berlin and probably even kill Hitler in one blow.”

“But would it end there sir? Would we also have to smash Orenburg and Volkov, and then Karpov too? And what about Imperial Japan? Their empire begins from a much stronger position in the Pacific than they had in our history. Might it not take all our warheads to tame that dragon?”

“I see what you mean,” said Volsky. “We get dropped into the midst of the greatest war humanity has ever fought. Sometimes I feel like that fellow in the American shark movie.”

“Shark movie? Oh yes—you mean Jaws?”

Yes, the one where he is throwing chum over the side and the great shark suddenly appears.”

“Who can forget that scene.” Fedorov smiled.

“Well I see this war,” said Volsky, “and in spite of all the power we have now, I sometimes think we are going to need a bigger boat. Tovey and the British know this to be true. They know they cannot defeat Germany on their own. All they can do is try to hold on as best they can.”

“Agreed, sir. They desperately need the Americans to enter the war as soon as possible. They are the bigger boat I think you speak of. But if Karpov doesn’t get them to declare war on Germany early as he did once, then it will be up to the Japanese to light the fire that prompts the United States to enter the war.”

“Pearl Harbor? Do you think it will happen in this time line, Fedorov?”

“That is a very real possibility, but as Tovey said, it will be a long wait until December of 1941, and we may have to face our hour of paradox before then.”

“So here is something you can put that scheming mind of yours to work on, Fedorov.” Volsky tapped his Captain on the shoulder. “How can we get the United States into the war as soon as possible?”

“They seem likely to sit for some time while they build up their armed forces, sir. But America can be roused to sudden anger, as we have seen. When their old battleship Maine blew up mysteriously in Havana harbor, they used it as a pretext to go to war with Spain. ‘Remember the Maine, to hell with Spain’ became their battle cry in the Spanish-American war. Then there was the sinking of the Lusitania in 1915. It was a British ship, but there were 128 Americans aboard, and it enraged the country, hastening their entry into WWI. Pearl Harbor had an even more dramatic impact.”

“Indeed,” said Volsky. “Then how could we create a similar incident here if the Japanese do not take the matter into their own hands?”

“You mean sink an American ship?”

“I know it sounds treacherous, Fedorov, but we must consider all our options now. This war is simply too big for us to manage. It is too big a weight for Britain to carry. You know this. It will be a year or more before they can even contemplate real offensive operations that could make any difference in this war. And what will they do? They cannot invade France alone. In fact, they could not even invade North Africa alone to deal with the Vichy French. Tovey was just telling us that. We need a bigger boat, Fedorov, and there is only one nation on this earth that can build it—The United States of America. Only they can build the planes tanks and ships that will eventually stop Germany and win this war.”

 

* * *

 

A bigger boat… A bigger bomb. That had been the mentality that drove the nations of the world to the edge of annihilation. General MacArthur would sum it up in a speech to the nation after Japan’s surrender when he said of the use of war to resolve disputes: “We have had our last chance. If we do not now devise some greater and more equitable system, Armageddon will be at our door.”

Yet here, in the year 1940, Armageddon was still impossibly far away, over years of struggle and difficult sacrifice to be made by millions. For now, it was still about that bigger boat, the ships that Germany and Great Britain had built in their arms race before the outbreak of hostilities. And the largest and best ships on either side were now locked on a collision course to meet in the crucible of war.

 

 

 

Chapter 30

 

Admiral Lütjens had signaled farewell to Graf Zeppelin two hours ago, just before he made his bombardment run past the Faeroes. The vital aircraft carrier would not be risked in an Atlantic sortie at this time. Its role was restricted to provide air superiority on this mission, something Marco Ritter delivered with his characteristic bravado and skill. The carrier would return to Bergen with an escort of light cruisers and destroyers, and the heavy units would press on at high speed to make their breakout run to the Atlantic.

Ritter lingered in the skies over the Faeroes until he was satisfied that the British had no surprises there. They had not seen a whisper of enemy carrier based aircraft, leading Lütjens to believe that they had caught the British by surprise. Satisfied that the operation was successful, it was now time to find a friendly deck to land his 109-T, but strangely he signaled to his two wing mates to follow him south.

“Where are we going?” Klaus Heilich called on the short range radio channel.

“Just follow me, and you will see in good time.” Ritter banked away, his wing mates following smartly, and all three planes dove to a lower altitude. It was not long before they broke through the low clouds, heading east away from the Faeroes, skimming right down on the deck above the fitful sea. The roar of his planes engine thrummed with reassuring power, and Ritter smiled as he rode the wave tops. Then, looming out of a fog bank ahead, he saw the ship he was looking for, laughing when he heard the surprised voices of his wing mates.

“A little secret, Klaus,” he called on his radio. “That is the Goeben, our Flugdeckkreuzer, and we are all going to join them. Some of our best pilots are on that ship for this mission, Hafner, Brendel, Ehrler, so you had better mind your business!”

The ship was one of Admiral Raeder’s little surprises, a hybrid between a fast cruiser and a light escort carrier, with a small air squadron of 12 planes. There were already six fighters aboard, and three Stukas. Ritter’s flight would complete the squadron and, as the three fighters gained a little altitude to overfly the ship, they gawked at the sleek lines and unusual design. The forward section looked like one of the new Panzerschiffe cruisers, with a typical conning superstructure, a single stack, and two twin gun turrets forward with 28cm guns, just like those on the Scharnhorst. The barrels had been designed as spares for the battlecruisers, but had been worked into this design and put to better use instead of leaving them in the warehouses. Aft of this section the remaining two thirds of the ship was a flight deck, about 20% shorter than the deck of the Graf Zeppelin.

“That’s a short deck down there, so be careful,” Ritter called. “Now you know why I was drilling you on landings all last week. Make sure you don’t miss your hook up!”

The Goeben had been east of the main group, and much farther ahead, keeping a watchful eye on the Iceland passage in case there were any nosy British cruisers about. It was the only ship of its type built, out to sea for the first time after an extensive training run in the Baltic. Its four 11-inch guns would make it a match for most any 8-inch gun cruiser it encountered, but it also had tremendous speed on its long cruiser hull, and could work up to 36 knots to run from any ship it could not safely engage.

Designed as a scout ship, the Goeben had Germany’s latest naval radar on her mainmast, and its nine BF-109T fighters would provide a strong fighter shield over the battlegroup. The three Stukas would give the ship just a little more sting, one flown by Ritter’s newest recruit, Hans Rudel. The ship was already well south of the Faeroes, out in the vanguard to trailblaze the way for the battleships.

Rudel was on the flight deck when the last of Ritter’s three planes landed. “Good job in rough seas like this,” he said, congratulating Ritter as he jumped down from his cockpit.

“I’ve practiced that twenty times,” said Ritter. “Just as I made you do the same last week! Everyone wanted to know why they had to train for landing with a short hookup cable. Now you know.”

“I was not aware we even had this ship!” Rudel was elated to be among the elite team of pilots chosen for this mission.

“That’s because it was kept secret, Rudel, and listed as a seaplane tender. They had the ship in an enclosed berthing at Kiel, and even its trial runs in the Baltic were kept a secret. I was only told about it last month.”

“How do you hide a ship like this, Marco?”

“Ask the Russians how they hid that rocket cruiser of theirs, eh? Well, we have a few tricks up our sleeve too. Right about now the big ships will be pounding the British on the Faeroes. In thirty minutes we go up again, this time to look for the convoys. You’ll get all the fun, Rudel. I’ll have to be up there on overwatch again.”

“Good to know you’ll be there, Oberleutnant!

It was only Commodore Ritchie’s sad fate that his convoy, HX-69, was in the wrong place at the wrong time when Rudel and the other two Ju-87 Stukas came calling. Ritchie was on the weather deck of Ulysses with his field glasses supervising the detachment of all ships bound for Methil. They would have to go up and over Dunnet head on the north cape of Scotland, and were among the first detachments after receiving orders to scatter the convoy a day early.

He heard the planes before he saw them, craning his neck up to scour the grey clouds. Then the sound of the engines increased, gathering strength and power, and he heard a chilling wail when he saw the first plane diving out of a cloud bank like a falcon. It was Hans Rudel, leading in his birds of prey, and he bored right in on the number three ship in the first line, Voco, a small 8600 ton tanker carrying lubricating oil. True to form, he put his 500 pound bomb right on the target, blasting right through the deck and igniting the volatile cargo below in the holds with a broiling explosion.

Kelbergen, the number one ship in the second steaming row was the next to be hit by Rudel’s wing mate, a Dutch freighter carrying steel scrap. The 500 pound bomb missed and straddled the ship, but the pilot had also dropped the two smaller 100 pound wing mounted bombs, and one struck home to start a fire on the aft section near the main cargo access. The third Stuka straddled the Lylepark with its 500 pound bomb, and the hit was close enough to hole the hull.

“Where in blazes did they come from?” Richie kept looking nervously about, dreading more planes falling from the sky, but none came. If Graf Zeppelin had been ordered in, the heavier strike wing aboard would have had a real feast here, but in Ritchie’s mind the damage to Voco was bad enough.

“Send to R.A.F. Stornoway,” he said to his First Watch Officer. “Tell them we bloody well need fighter cover out here. Jerry has pulled a rabbit out of his hat. Those were Stukas!”

 

* * *

 

R.A.F. Stornoway got the plaintive call, but they had little more than a few Avro Anson bombers at hand to do anything about it. The base was still under construction, being built on a former golf course in the windy northern Isle of Lewis off the coast of Scotland. There were also 12 Fairy Albacore bi-plane torpedo bombers stationed there in 827 Squadron, but neither plane was likely to be sent to mix it up with German fighters or Stukas.

The storm crows were just the heralds of more trouble to come. An hour later Ritchie heard a strident call from the forward watch. A ship had been sighted on the horizon, and now he was staring through his field glasses at what was obviously the rising silhouette of a warship. His one hope was that it was a Royal Navy battleship sent to bolster their escort. What else would be at large on these waters? HMS Arrow, out in front, was sent to see about it, advancing at high speed and signaling by lantern.

What they got back was the bright roar of distant guns, and the unwelcome plumes of heavy shells, two big rounds falling into the sea ahead of the destroyer. The battleship Hindenburg had just fired its first shots in anger.

“Signal all ships, emergency turn! Thirty points to starboard!”

The signal flags went up, followed by a frantic message from the W/T room: HX-69 under attack by German dive bombers and large enemy warship. It would soon have to be amended. There was more than one wolf in the pack that had found his sheep. Krutschmer’s U-99 had signaled the position of the convoy, and the information was quickly passed on to Lütjens.

Now the hunt began.

HMS Winchelsea was the first ship to be hit. The old Admiralty W Class destroyer had been laid down in 1917, and had little more than four QF 4.7-inch guns to challenge the oncoming enemy. But it did have speed at 34 knots. The ship had done little in the war thus far, except to pick up stranded sailors sunk by German U boats in the Western Approaches. Now it faced a real minute of horror as it realized the size and nature of the enemy threat. Hindenburg turned its extensive secondary batteries loose on the British, and the destroyer was soon hit and burning from three 5.9-inch guns. Winchelsea thought it might get close enough to get a few of its 21 inch torpedoes in the water, but that was not to be. The destroyer was suddenly struck by a bigger round, and not from one of the battleships.

A sleek, dark ship came surging ahead of the main German force, its battle ensign snapping stiffly in the breeze as it took the lead position in the formation. It moved so quickly that the British thought it was a fast light cruiser, but it was something quite more, the new German battlecruiser Kaiser. At 35,400 tons, it was as heavy as a Revenge Class British Battleship, yet could work up to the amazing speed of 36 knots. Designed like a pocket battleship, it had two twin-gun turrets forward and a third aft. Originally meant to be an improved Deutschland Class ship, it was supposed to get the same 11-inch guns, but soon evolved into something better when Raeder proposed they use the same turrets that had been designed for Bismarck, with a total of six 15-inch guns assigned to the ship.

Raeder had originally planned to build twelve Panzerschiffe, each with 11-inch guns, but the larger weapons simply proved to be much more effective, and the shipyards could not build out the whole Kreutzer program. Only two had been built, Rhineland and Westfalen, and they were now escorting Graf Zeppelin home. But Kaiser had been born of the same litter, bigger, faster, more powerful, and it was the ship that broke the back of HMS Winchelsea with one smashing 15-inch round.

When Commodore Ritchie saw the destroyer blow up, he knew the fate of his convoy was sealed. HMS Arrow launched herself bravely at the oncoming German ships, but soon got pummeled by the combined fire of forty 5.7 inch guns between the three German warships. Ritchie gave the frantic order for all ships to scatter at once, and the feeding frenzy was on.

Kaiser began blasting away at the slow merchant ships, striking the British ships Barrdale and Martland soon after the Arrow went down. Then came Bismarck, next in the line with her eight 15-inch guns feasting on the gasoline tankers Tornus and Pontfield, and ripping them apart with raging fire consuming the ships when they were hit. Finally came the Lord of the Manor, looming up like a massive steel castle, the mighty Hindenburg.

Now 16-inch guns were turned on the convoy, blasting the steel carrier Penrose, and three other merchant ships. Tall columns of thick black smoke rose into the grey sky, as the carnage continued. They died in great numbers, Beaverdale, Roxby, Bridgepoole, blasted away and keeling over in fiery wrecks. Lord Byron would not make its appointed delivery of grain to Methil, and the Benzene in Dosina was burning on the sea.

Commodore Ritchie watched in horror as one ship after another came under those fearful guns, blown up, burned, their cargo and crews scuppered into the sea. As the heavy rounds began to fall near Ulysses, he called out in desperation. “Where’s the bloody navy! God help us!”

A 5.7-inch round struck his ship, jarring the bridge. Another gave the ship a hard thump amidships, and a bigger 15-inch round fell just twenty yards off his port side, the blast enough to rock Ulysses with its heavy swell and splinter the weather decks with shrapnel. The W/T room was still sending out its frantic S.O.S when another round silenced the radio, killing every man there. Ulysses was burning, and tears streaked the face of Commodore Ritchie as he watched his flock cut down, ship by ship.

Kaiser had put on speed to get down near the last ranks and was busy sending the crude oil tanker Taron to its fiery doom, and the sulfur on Olympos would never reach Belfast, nor the fuel oil on Tricula. It would be the greatest single tonnage lost for cargo ships in the war thus far, with 28 ships lost before Commodore Ritchie spotted even more misery bearing down on them. Another dark silhouette was on the horizon, coming up behind the German ships, and he saw the glow of fire from them as well. To his great relief and surprise, the shells they fired were not aimed his way, but at the German battleships instead!

All that night Captain Patterson’s task force had been laboring through the heavy seas, and the long hour of agony when the Germans slowed to feast on the convoy had given him just the break he needed. King George V and Prince of Wales were on the horizon, and the Royal Navy was coming to fight.

Aboard battleship Hindenburg, Lütjens had been watching the carnage unfold, not unmoved by the plight of the men he was putting into the sea, but this was what he had come here to do, the hard edge of war. When the first rounds came in they were well short, but he turned and studied the fall of the shells. Very strange, he thought as he saw the close pattern of four shells abreast. Two twin-gun turrets would almost never land their shells with such precision in a single line like that. He first thought he was dealing with the older British Battleships in the Revenge Class, but the British ships were getting closer, and coming much too fast. He turned to Captain Adler with a question in his eyes.

“These look to be something new, would you agree?”

“They do, sir. Most likely the new British King George V class ships we’ve seen working out on trials. Shall we turn and give battle?”

“Those ships have twenty 14-inch guns,” Lütjens considered.

“And we have fourteen 15-inch guns with Bismarck and Kaiser, and our eight 16-inch guns will make all the difference,” said Adler.

“Possibly,” said Lütjens, “but our orders were to get after the convoys, and this we have done. Look, Adler! There must be thirty ships burning and sinking out there. No. We have done enough for one day, and a fight with the Royal Navy here is not part of our operational plan. Come to 220 and give me thirty knots at once. Signal all ships to follow.”

“But sir!” Adler’s eyes were sharp and on fire as well, his dark hair and aquiline features grim and set. He wanted to sink his talons into something more than a merchant ship, and saw great advantage here. “We outgun them!” he complained. “We should fight!”

“Yes, we certainly do, but you do not outgun me, Captain, unless I have miscounted the stripes on my jacket cuff. Second my order! We are moving south into the Atlantic.”

Adler stiffened under the polite but pointed rebuke, and turned to his Executive officer. “Come to 220 and thirty knots. A pair of British battleships has the Admiral worried he might miss his tea.”

Lütjens turned slowly, eyeing the Captain with an unfriendly look. “It may interest you to know that there is more going on here than a Sunday jaunt through this convoy. There is a war on, Captain, and a major operation is getting underway even as I take the time to explain myself here. We have a part to play in that campaign, and that is exactly what we will do. And if you ever make such a remark to me again, particularly on this bridge, I will have you sent down to the brig for insubordination!”

Adler raised his chin, lips tight, but knew better than to say anything else.

“I beg your pardon sir, I only meant—”

“We both know what you meant, Adler. Don’t worry, something tells me you will get your battle with the Royal Navy soon enough.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Part XI

 

The Rock

 

“Look at a stone cutter hammering away at his rock, perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred-and-first blow it will split in two, and I know it was not the last blow that did it, but all that had gone before.”

 

—Jacob August Riis

 

Chapter 31

 

The Spanish called it Jebel Tariq, the name of the imposing limestone mountain that stood as one of the Pillars of Hercules, and to the rest of the world Gibraltar had long been called “the Rock.” It had been Britain’s impregnable fortress for generations, honeycombed with miles of tunnels packed with supplies, and capable of withstanding a siege for months. It had withstood fourteen sieges since the 11th Century, with walls, fortifications, bastions and more modern gun casemates studding the craggy limestone rock on every side. But in spite of this venerable reputation as an unconquerable fortress, British war planners knew the invincibility of Gibraltar was certainly a myth now in modern times, and they saw it as highly vulnerable to any concerted attack.

To begin with, it had only one airfield at the far north of the five kilometer peninsula, dominated by a prominent limestone mountain, and this field lay on exposed ground that could be easily brought under enemy guns on the other side of the Spanish frontier and put out of action in a matter of hours. In 1940 Spain did not permit offensive planes there, and so the British had no fighters or bombers to speak of beyond those assigned to reconnaissance roles, and a few Sunderland seaplanes floating in the harbor anchorage. This also left the Rock open to bombing missions, though it endured these with surprising ease, the latest being a 64 plane raid mounted by the Vichy French in reprisal for the attack on their fleet. The French managed to sink a tug and coastal lighter docked in the harbor but did little more than this.

Companies of Royal Engineers still drilled through the innards of the rock, with quarrymen and Artisan Engineers still tunneling to create a warren of underground rooms that could shelter thousands of troops, unfortunately the garrison was not that large in 1940. At the outbreak of the war only two battalions were in the garrison, the 2nd Battalion, King’s Regiment and the 2nd Somerset Battalion. These were augmented by two more battalions by August of 1940 with the arrival of the 4th Devonshire Battalion and the 4th Black Watch Battalion. These troops, plus an assortment of 3 inch and 3.7 inch AA guns, including ten 40mm Bofors were all that manned the labyrinthine tunnels, with one battalion holding the lonely frontier near the airfield, and three farther back in the town and fortress Rock.

The strength of Gibraltar did not lay in its sheer limestone cliffs or gun batteries, like the old 9.2 inch naval guns that covered the straits, nor did it rest in the sinew of the four battalions deployed there. The powerful Royal Navy units of Force H that used the harbor as their primary base were the real strength of the Rock. A battleship that might risk the 9.2 inch shore batteries and run the strait with impunity would not dare to even contemplate such a move while ships like Rodney and Nelson were anchored with guns that could range out all the way to Spanish Morocco. As Sir Alexander Godley once stated: “With His Majesty's ships controlling the harbor we may rest assured that this important jewel of the Crown is in safe hands.” Thus if Gibraltar were to be taken, the Royal Navy would first have to be forced out to sea.

 This was the task handed to Goering’s Luftwaffe, a task he believed he could undertake with every chance of success, for there were no squadrons of Spitfires and Hurricanes waiting to oppose his bombers. So it was that the Luftwaffe became the real spearhead of the attack, while the army assembled its substantial force of two full corps staged on the Spanish border near Bayonne. The ground element would cross the frontier even as the first bombers assembled at French airfields for their preliminary raid, with six squadrons of Ju-88As flying from Bordeaux to target British vessels anchored at Gibraltar.

* * *

 

Lieutenant Douglas Dawes had been up on O’Hara’s battery most of the day, taking in the spectacular views of the bay while he served as supply liaison officer for the Royal Artillery. A relative newcomer to the Rock, he was “fresh off the boat” as the old sods would say, and still given to walking about in his officer’s jacket. A tall, handsome man, he had come to the service the easy way, through connections that were well established in the convoluted British aristocracy. Now Dawes was making his way down the weathered stone steps, his duty here finished as he was turning over the clipboard to a new young Lieutenant and heading to a new post the next morning.

I’ll miss the view from up here, and the nice cool breeze, he thought. Tomorrow he was going down to the harbor to report for a stint as Duty Officer on the North Mole. At least he’d get a nice close look at the battleships, he thought. From way up here they looked like toy boats in a bathtub, but he expected they would be quite impressive once he got right down on the water’s edge.

That night he took a last meal at Bleak House, the Officer’s Mess on Europa Point at the southern end of the Rock. “Off to mingle with the cuttlefish?” said another young officer. They were often given to hang names like that on the rankers, the enlisted men or throngs of sailors that would come ashore when the big ships came into the harbor. That was one thing Dawes never got the hang of himself. Yes, he was an officer, and accustomed to certain privileges that came with his Lieutenant’s bars. There was nice fine linen on the tables here. Decent wine was served with the meals, and brandy after. The rankers would get none of this when they lined up in the mess halls aboard those ships, but Dawes was not one to lord his position over any other man.

“I’ve heard things are a bit busy on the Mole,” the other man said. “You’ll have to get in the swing of things right off the bat.”

“That I will,” said Dawes, but he had no idea just how busy he would be after a last restful sleep and early rising to take his post. “I’m to report at 05:00.”

“Ungodly hour,” said the other man.”

“Which is why I’ll need my beauty sleep tonight,” said Dawes.

Another officer, a man named Cornwell, had listened in from across the table and spoke up. “Well you’d better hit the bunk soon, Mister Dawes. From what I’ve heard Force H is weighing anchor just after sunset.”

“Is that so, Corny? Drat. I had hoped to get a good close look at old Rodney or Nelson tomorrow.”

“Then you’d best get down to the mole after supper. Something’s up, I tell you.”

Dawes raised an eyebrow. “Probably just another run out to Malta. HMS Glorious left some days ago. I’ve heard they’re still trying to ferry planes out to Malta in case the Italians find their backbone and want to do anything about it.”

“Not bloody likely,” said the man.

Dawes emptied his wine glass, setting it down and dabbing his lips with a napkin. “Well gentlemen, no brandy after dinner for me, and I’ll have to have my evening smoke on the way to the barracks.”

He excused himself and was out the door, glad in some respects to be away from the banter at table. People were always teeing up ideas over what was going on in the war, but no one ever really knew anything. But the rumors tonight began to take on new meaning when he took a brief stroll past the old Moorish lookout and along Windmill Hill barracks until he could get a decent look at the harbor.

The officer had been correct. Something was afoot. He saw that three destroyers had already slipped their berthings at the Destroyer Camber and were out through the main harbor entrance into the bay. That was standard operating procedure if Force H was about to sortie again. The destroyers were always first out the gate, sent to sweep the bay and snoop about in the channel to the south just in case an enemy submarine might be lurking. There were quite a few destroyers there at the moment, but he could already see two more getting underway.

So where is the Royal Navy off to tonight, he wondered? Corny was spot on with his remark. He could see that both Nelson and Rodney had good steam up, and all the cruisers. The whole fleet was putting out to sea tonight, which could only mean that someone was going to be sorry they decided to pick a fight with the Royal Navy. The sight of the battleships made him feel proud.

Perhaps I should have signed on with the Navy, he thought. Here I ended up with the Royal Artillery, a bloody Support and Logistics Officer. It was hardly the sort of post a man would boast about after the war. All he had been doing was shuffling about at a few 25 pounder batteries up on Windmill Hill, and coordinating with the bigger shore batteries.

Ah well, he thought. I suppose I should be grateful that I’ve a nice warm bunk to be settling into, with a nice glass of wine in my belly tonight. It really doesn’t seem much like there’s a war on. The French got their dander up and raised a ruckus here last month. That was all the excitement we’ve had out here. There’s been a lot of talk at Officer’s Mess about the French Fleet these days. Word has been going round that there was a scrap down south and a couple of our ships took a few hard knocks. Come to think of it, I haven’t seen the two older battleships lately. Both Barham and Resolution are still out to sea. Now these last three here will be joining them. The battleship Valiant also had a good head of steam up, so that will empty the cupboard here.

What could be going on that needs all these ships at sea at one time? Were the rumors true? Was there a battle on with the French Fleet down south? And what about all the talk that Admiral North was being relieved and heading back to England?

Well that settles it, he thought. Just like me to get a post at the North Mole right after all the big ships slip away. Now I’ll just be sitting up there in that dreary tower watching rusty old merchant ships and fishing trawlers. It will be no fun at all. He had a ten hour shift the first day out—just sit there, keep a lookout on the mole and answer the phone. It was going to be a very boring assignment, or so he thought.

But he was very, very wrong.

 

Chapter 32

 

Just after 01:00 on the 15th of September the sirens began to wail when Gibraltar’s lone early warning radar, one of only three presently in the Mediterranean, picked up the inbound German raid. Almost immediately the long thin columns of the searchlights reached up into the dark skies, probing the soft late summer night for any sign of the enemy. Troops rushed to the 3.7 and 40mm batteries, elevating the thin barrels skyward as the first, distant rumble of the aircraft engines could be heard. The crews had scored their very first kill the previous month against the French, shooting down a single plane, and swiveled their guns into action with a jaunty confidence that would soon dissipate as the whistling bombs began to fall.

Dawes was awakened by the noise, sitting up bleary eyed in his bunk and hearing the haunting wail of the sirens. What in blazes? Are the French at it again? Then the bombs began to fall and he had the presence of mind to get dressed and look for a pith helmet.

Outside he ran towards the Naval Signals Station where he could get a good look at the harbor and town on the west side of the island. It was nearly a full moon, so he could see the town and harbor easily enough, and noted the dark shadows of the ships that remained anchored. There didn’t seem to be any trouble in the harbor for the moment, and the lights of the town itself had all been blackened. The sight of the searchlights fingering the darkness gave him an eerie feeling. Then he heard the thrum of engines and a sound unlike any plane he had heard before. It was a screeching wail, like a demon from hell, a howling sound that chilled his blood. Then came the first awful crash of the bombs.

There were explosions down at the southern end of the town, and a fire there. He could soon see that bombs had fallen near the Grand Parade, a wide area where troops would stand in ceremonial parade, and the navy bands would play. The light from the fire soon illuminated a warship there, so there was still some remnant of Force H at hand. Moments later he saw bright tracer rounds leap up from the harbor area, and heard the sharp crack of gunfire. The ship was firing, her stacks now getting up steam that drifted up to be illuminated by the pale moonlight.

The bloody French, he thought, but that wasn’t so.

These were German pilots, veterans of many grueling runs over English soil where they had faced intense anti-aircraft gunfire along with the superb aerial defense of the R.A.F. The fire put up that night seemed light by comparison, and the German planes soon began to pound known gun installations, the harbor district, the fortified line of pill boxes, and mined wire at the north end of the airfield. The big 9.2-inch gun at O’Hara’s Battery where Dawes had finished his day the previous evening on the top of the Rock got particular attention from the Stukas, receiving three hits within the first hour until it was put out of action. In other places the damage was far less than Goering had promised, though it was immediately clear that he could at least claim one boast—the airfield was pot marked with craters, the main hangers on fire and the old rifle range buildings to the north and east flattened by direct hits.

Now the truth behind the rumors became apparent. Forewarned that the German troops in Southern France were on the move, Force H had slipped its moorings at sunset and taken its heavy units out through the straits and into the Atlantic, where they hovered under the thin air defense umbrella provided by HMS Hermes.

The German Ju-88 night raid was augmented by squadrons of Ju-87 Stukas protected by Bf-109s, and their mission was to target and silence British artillery positions and deal with any ships that remained behind in the anchorage. These were the planes that Dawes had heard, the scream of their diving runs so very jarring to the nerves as they came in. If ever there was a sound that warned of imminent danger, it was the wailing sirens of the ‘Jericho Trumpets’ when the planes swooped in like dark evil crows.

 Only one destroyer was left in the harbor when they arrived, the Hotspur, and though it was straddled by two near misses and badly splintered with bomb fragments, it was otherwise unharmed. Lieutenant Dawes stared at the scene, realizing that the war might not be so dull and uneventful after all. It went on for the better part of an hour, and several fires had started down in the town before it was over. When planes began to home in on Windmill Hill Dawes realized he had better get to a shelter.

He huddled there for some time, until the all clear was finally sounded after two in the morning. Rumors passed like fire in the shelter. These were not the French. Talk went round and round about it until a gritty Sergeant, a man named Hobson, finally chanced to speak up and interrupt the two other officers that had been debating the issue.

“If I may, sir,” the man said darkly. “If the Germans have gone to all this trouble to pay us a visit, we may very well be in for more trouble ahead. I’ve heard 2nd Kings Rifles has all been called out to the wire. Mark my words. They’ll be coming across the lines in due course.”

“I should certainly hope not, Sergeant,” said another Lieutenant in the Artillery. He was one of the officers that always seemed to lay on the old ‘chin chin’ a bit too thick for Dawes’ liking.

“I had my mind set on watching a good filly run the race course tomorrow morning.” The Lieutenant was referring to a makeshift racing circle out beyond the airfield and very near the frontier with Spain. The officers often ran horses there, and bet on the outcome while they had a good smoke, watched by men from the 2nd King’s Rifles, who sat behind their Vickers machine guns in their bunkers guarding the wire, and cheered the horses on.

“Well sir,” said the Sergeant. “If you do go out to the lines tomorrow, I can only hope you have a very fast horse.”

Something about the remark carried a hidden warning, and when the all clear was finally sounded, Dawes kept thinking about it as he finally settled back into his bunk to try and get back to his fitful sleep. What did the Sergeant mean by that? Was he suggesting the Germans might be coming with more than an air raid?

He only managed another two hours sleep before he had to get up and on his way down the hill and up through Buena Vista east of Rosia Bay to the harbor. There he saw that the German pilots were much better at their jobs than the French ever were. There was damage near the Destroyer Camber where Hotspur had been finally driven out to sea, and he saw the wreckage of several buildings off Grand Parade, the smoke from the fires still hanging in the air.

As he continued on, up past the Coaling Island and the old fortified position known as ‘King’s Bastion,’ he heard men talking in small groups by the wharfs and quays, and with worried faces. Soon he came to his tower south of the North Mole, and climbed up to report for duty. He was relieving another haggard looking Lieutenant

“Busy night,” said the man. “Didn’t get a wink of sleep. Well, At least you’ll have the day shift, and no bother with German planes buzzing about your ears. I was afraid they would put one of those bloody bombs right on my head!”

Dawes gave him a thin smile, then took his seat in the still warm chair, eyeing the telephone on the desk with some misgiving.

“That’s it,” said the other man. “Any problems and you just ring up the Colonel on the other end of that line. It’ll be dark another hour, so mind your orders should you hear anything out of the ordinary. You can expose the Mole with searchlights, but I wouldn’t get too jumpy. The sun will be up soon, and it’s almost breakfast!” The man smiled, and left Dawes sitting alone in his tower.

 

* * *

 

The German planes finished their work and landed at airbases near Seville, where supplies and air fuel had been secretly forward deployed to allow them to replenish and be available for rapid sortie turnover. They would have plenty of time to pound British positions, demolishing the radar station, knocking out several gun batteries, striking Devil’s Tower Camp and the barracks further south at Europa Point. They deliberately avoided targeting the main wharf and docking areas but soon drove the intrepid Hotspur out of the harbor—all this while the land assault force moved south.

The frontier gates on the Franco-Spanish border had been thrown open five days earlier, at a little after sunset on September 10, 1940, a full three months earlier than the initial plans had envisioned. It would be slow going at the outset as the long winding columns of motorized infantry made their way through the high mountains to Pamplona, some 60 kilometers away. Two days later the R.A.F. had seen them in the mountain passes, and the alarm had been secretly wired to General Liddell at Gibraltar, allowing Somerville to discretely move Force H out of the harbor.

They were through that town and on their way south through Navarre and then on to Soria. By dawn the Germans had demonstrated the lightning fast ground movement they had been famous for in France during the Blitzkrieg, and were passing through Guadalajara just northeast of Madrid. From there they surged due south to Granada, planning to approach Gibraltar along the coast of the Alboran Sea. It would be a journey of some 650 miles in all, with the columns averaging 30 miles per hour on good roads, slower in the mountainous regions.

By nightfall on the 15th of September their mad rush south was complete, and they had spent some time resting and assembling the front line units at La Linea. There they met up with forward elements that had been flown in to Spanish airfields to begin surveying the British lines and sighting for mortars and artillery. They worked closely with Spanish troops who knew this ground and could show them areas offering the best cover for infantry assault. They took particular note of the British bunker positions, assigning support fires and demolitions teams to each attack.

By the time the Luftwaffe got about their business that night, the element of surprise was long gone, except for a few little tricks of the trade the German army would bring with them. One would be the swift pre-dawn assault on September 16th, by a forward deployed unit of the elite Brandenburg Commandos. This 150 man contingent slipped into the bay in jet-black rubber swift boats and were approaching the prominent North Mole of the Harbor. Others had secretly moved in as frogmen, and were already lingering near the mole. One plan called for them to approach in the hold of a merchant ship claiming to have been the victim of a torpedo attack, but it was discarded in favor of a bold night attack by boat.

They waited until the pre-dawn hour, when the waning gibbous moon that was still near full would be very low, and already behind the 1700 foot high mountains overshadowing Algeciras across the bay. As soon as the moon was below the highest peak there, the first boats came in quietly, the black paddles dipping silently in the still waters. But there was just enough light for the sentry on the mole to catch the wet gleam on the sides of the lead boat. He stopped, peering into the darkness, and called out a time honored challenge, the litany of the Chief Warder of the Tower of London as he made his final round with the Keys each night to lock His Majesty’s Tower.

“Halt! Who goes there?”

Silence. Then came a voice in proper English saying they were seamen off a Spanish lighter that had been towed in to the smaller harbor of Algeciras to the west. The proper response to the challenge was, of course, only two words: “The Keys.” Had that response been given, the sentry would have asked: “Whose Keys?” to which the unexpected visitors should have answered: “King George’s Keys.” That done the sentry would have simply said: “Pass King George’s Keys, all’s well,” and carried on with his watch, but instead he quickly unshouldered his rifle to take aim.

Unfortunately the Germans had already taken aim as well. The crack unit was armed with sub-machine guns and there came a short, sharp burst that cut the sentry down. Then the first boat came scudding against the mole and the Brandenburgers scrambled up with demolition charges, wearing dark black uniforms and caps and racing swiftly along the Mole. They reached a narrow viaduct, which ran just north of the seaplane moorings and connected the mole to the shore at a spit of land that was once called “The Devil’s Tongue.”

The gunfire had just broken the silence when the telephone jangled at the harbor observation tower. Lieutenant Douglas Dawes was on duty that morning, still bleary eyed after a fitful night’s rest on Windmill Hill. Now he was Harbor Defense Officer for his ten hour shift in the North Mole Tower, peering into the shadows through the dirty glass windows when the phone rang.

“Yes? Duty Officer, North Mole.”

“What in blazes is going on there? Was that gunfire? Is there movement on the Mole? Expose! I should have you court martialed!”

“Right away sir!” Dawes put down the telephone and gave the order: “Expose the Mole!” Searchlights switched on, bathing the whole area in bleak white light, and Dawes could see men running in a crouch along the viaduct, and the slow rotation of one of the 6-inch naval gun batteries there—which suddenly went up in a tremendous explosion. The Brandenburgers were there to lay charges on the guns that could face north at the German assembly area and put them out of service. Now they were racing across the viaduct to the Devil’s Tongue.

A lone machine gun opened up from a sand bagged position on the tongue, and Dawes saw three of the German commandos fall. Then he heard the lead commando squad returning fire in sharp bursts with their sub-machine guns, and a firefight was on. The Germans ran for the cover of warehouses on the north end of the tongue, tossing in Model 24 grenades, the famous “Potato Mashers,” before bursting in with their guns blazing away. Others threw a variant that had been modified to produce smoke, which rolled like a thick white fog, masking the narrow viaduct. Lieutenant Dawes watched, almost in awe at the precision and ruthless advance of the Brandenburgers.

They were led by Leutnant Wilhelm Walther, the man who had captured the Meuse Bridge with an eight man team from this very same unit during Operation Fall Gelb in the battle for France. Walther already had 25 men over the viaduct and into the warehouses, and they were systematically clearing those buildings. More grenades soon silenced the chatter of the British machinegun and suddenly Dawes realized he was in a most precarious position, alone in his tower watching the steady advance of these elite German commandos.

Another 6-inch naval gun, positioned just south of the Devil’s Tongue, rotated and blasted away at the warehouses at near point blank range. It was at this point that Dawes thought he had better get down from the tower, just as a spray of small arms fire shattered the glass windows. He scurried down the ladder, with rounds snapping off the metal tower legs with bright sparks, and then leapt to the ground, the whine of ricocheting bullets frightening him out of his wits. Taking a deep breath, he crawled behind a shed at the edge of the Harbor Recreation Ground, then raced across the field into the edge of the town near the Gibraltar Post Office. Eventually he made his way south to the King’s Bastion near the Harbor Coaling Island, where he reported to the Flag Officer there for new orders.

“What was wrong with your old orders?” The man bristled at him, but with level British calm he folded his arms and simply said: “Well sir, the Germans seem to have shot my observation tower to pieces, and very nearly skewered me at the same time.” King George’s Tower had fallen.

The Flag Officer finally looked at him, seeing the soiled uniform from his long crawl to safety on the recreation field, and noting a nick on his left shoulder, and the stain of blood there. “I see… Then get yourself to the Hospital and see about that shoulder, Lieutenant. You can report back when you’ve had proper medical attention.”

Dawes saluted and was on his way. His wound was not bad, a mere scratch from a grazing bullet, but it would not be the last he would receive in the next 72 hours as the British Garrison dug in its heels and began to fight for its life, and the life of Britain’s position in the Western Mediterranean. On that day, September 16, 1940, Spain made a formal announcement that they had joined Italy, and Vichy France as a member of the European Axis powers.

High on the hills of the upper Rock, a troop of jittery Barbary Macaque monkeys chattered restlessly. The German bombers had frightened them badly the previous night and, sensing imminent danger, they deftly skittered down the craggy slopes and over the Devil’s Tower Road towards the shore. No man on the airfield watch saw them go, nor any man of the 2nd Battalion, King’s Rifles on the frontier line. Somehow they slipped through the minefields and wire unnoticed, scrabbling along the rocky shores of Mala Bahia and leaving the high, bomb scarred limestone cliffs of Gibraltar behind. With them they carried away the legend that as long as these troops of monkeys held forth on the Rock, the territory would remain under British rule. No man in the garrison knew it just then, but the Barbary Macaques were leaving.

 

Chapter 33

 

Captain Christopher Wells was on the bridge of Glorious, and well on his way to the Azores, having been hastily summoned to this new post by Admiral Tovey. There he was to meet with HMS Furious and a small convoy, escorted by two cruisers and twelve destroyers. His own task force would provide air cover for the newly planned and renamed Operation Alloy, and his heavy escort in the battleship Valiant with four more destroyers would provide any needed naval muscle for the landing.

“Look out Captain,” said Lieutenant Woodfield. “This signal has just come in from Gibraltar. It looks like the Germans are going to have a go at the Rock!”

Wells took the message, eyeing it darkly as he learned the air strikes had begun and German troops were reportedly massing on the Spanish Frontier just north of the territory at that moment. Here he was heading west to the Azores, with his first outing as nominal task force commander, and looking fitfully over his shoulder and wishing he had his ship back with Force H for the real fight that was brewing up.

“Damn,” he swore. “We slip out the back door just as Jerry comes knocking. I’ve half a mind to get back there and give them what for.”

“Don’t go getting a big head, Welly,” said Woodfield. “Leave that row to Somerville and Force H.”

“But he hasn’t any real air cover now,” said Wells. “Hermes can throw up a few fighters, but something tells be the Germans will becoming full on. I’ve a bad feeling about this.”

“Right,” said Woodfield. “Why do you think we’re out here anyway? If we lose Gibraltar we’ll need anchorages down this way, and the Azores are a good place to start. We ought to go ahead and take Madiera and the Canary Islands as well, before the Germans get ideas about them.”

“We may indeed,” said Wells. He had received a secret briefing on the operation he was now providing cover for. Two ocean liners, SS Karanja, and the Polish Merchant liner Sobieski, were packed with the 1st and 5th Royal Marine Battalions and the 8th Battalion of the Argyll & Sutherland Highlanders. They had been held in readiness in British Ports and reinforced at the last minute by 2 Commando, with the whole contingent code named “Paradox Force.” Commanded by Brigadier General Morford, their mission was to seize Fayal Island and Porto Del Gada Harbor, as well as San Miguel Harbor at Horta. The Commandos would land and occupy Terceira as a suitable place to begin building an airfield.

“Three battalions to grab these islands,” said Wells. “They might do a world better if they were on their way to Gibraltar now. The garrison there is fairly light.”

“No since throwing good money after bad,” said Woodfield. “Pardon that remark, but if the Germans come in great strength, as I believe they will, then it’s only a matter of time for our boys on the Rock. Better we get something in return, so buck up, Captain. You’ve been in on all our offensive operations thus far, and this time I think we’ll pull things off without a hitch.”

“Yes? Well it’s not a real fight. We won’t find anything there but the local militia or island police. At least at Dakar we were ready to have a go at the French, until those bloody battleships showed up. Something tells me we have a long way to go before we can really get in the ring with the Germans again.”

“Tell that to the Black Watch tonight,” Woodfield admonished, and Wells gave him a nod, his thoughts with the troops back on the Rock now, knowing what they would likely be facing in the days ahead. He also knew that Force H would have put to sea immediately, and there would be no way off the peninsula for any man in the garrison.

 

* * *

 

The Germans were bringing the equivalent of a full division to the assault, composed of tough, veteran troops, while two more motorized divisions watched their back and flank along the Portuguese border. The planners gave far too much credit to their adversary that day in accounting for a possible British landing on the Portuguese coast. The Royal Navy and Army were still fiddling about with a far less ambitious plan to take small Atlantic island outposts instead, and barely managing to scrape up the troops and transport shipping necessary for those modest operations. A larger landing in Portugal was out of the question.

High on the North Face of the Rock, up past King’s Lines and Pidsley’s Advance, there was a hidden observation post with a long view slit cut into the limestone. It had a spectacular view of the whole airfield, and the men inside soon heard the boom and thunder of artillery fire, and saw the first rounds kick up dust and clumps of earth on the field. The initial barrage lasted twenty minutes, ending with rounds of smoke fired by German Nebelwerfer batteries that enshrouded the whole scene.

Down in one of the forward pill boxes, the troops heard what sounded like the rumble and rattle of armor. “Tanks!” came the warning shout, and a few old 2 pounder guns began to fire. Soon there came the booming sound of explosions, which heartened the troops when they thought their defensive fire had scored hits. As the smoke thinned, however, they gaped at the scene, seeing what looked like squadrons of miniature tanks grinding their way forward into the minefields and wire, and then blowing up, one after another.

“What in blazes?” One man said as he stared at the diminutive tanks, no more than five feet long and just under two feet high. The Germans called them the Leichter Ladungsträger, or ‘light charge carrier,’ with a 60kg demolition charge that was designed to be deliberately detonated to clear mines, barbed wire, blow bridges or blast pill boxes and buildings. Designated the Goliath, the German troops called them “Beetle Tanks,” and they were crawling in great numbers over the mined area, blowing themselves to smithereens.

Behind them came the German assault engineers, all experts at clearing mine fields, and two full battalions in strength. They would soon be followed by the hardened troops of the 98th Regiment, 1st Mountain Division, the Edelweiss Division that would have conquered Europe’s tallest peak at Mount Elbrus in the history Fedorov knew. They were advancing towards the area known as ‘the racetrack, a roadway that circled the airfield runway and rifle range in the flat land north of the Rock. There several detachments of 2nd Kings Rifles held forth in slit trenches and improved positions behind an anti-tank ditch that cut across the road near the small Passport Office building. Needless to say, the men they saw advancing on their positions were not carrying passports to gain entry, but rifles, machineguns and demolition charges.

Finally alerted to the danger, the 25 pounder artillery positioned at the old Windsor Battery on the rising slopes of the Devil’s Tower, and 5.25-inch QF naval guns around Princess Anne’s battery on Willis Plateau, began to fire. One gun there had been damaged by the German Stukas, but three more began firing at the exposed ground crawling with enemy troops and engineers.

The Germans endured losses from artillery and mines that the Goliaths had not cleared, but pressed doggedly forward, finally reaching the anti-tank ditch, which now gave the infantry excellent cover. There they rushed at the British defensive positions in well coordinated attacks, the rattle of MG34 machineguns answered by Vickers HMGs resounding from the imposing sheer cliffs of the Rock. At times the fighting was hand to hand, but the weight of Germans numbers carried the position.

One battalion each of engineers and mountain troops focused attention on an area known as ‘North Front,’ on the western side of the isthmus where the Passport Office was. A second kampfgruppe of two battalions were assaulting the hangers and service buildings at the north center of the field in the Race Course area. Squad after squad raced forward, weathering intense defensive fire to get close enough to fling demolition satchel charges and grenades at the line of the defense. The casualties were heavy, but the Germans would take both positions within the hour, forcing the remainder of the King’s Rifles to withdraw back over the runway in a mad dash to the cemetery where their main line of defense was established.

There were two burial grounds, one dubbed the Jewish Cemetery in the west and the main cemetery in the center, where pathways meandered through the crosses and tombstones, which now provided cover for the second line of defense held by a company of the 2nd Somerset Light Infantry Battalion. As the King’s Rifles withdrew, these men peeled off and jogged right along the line to cattle sheds on the east end of the isthmus.

The Jewish cemetery was open ground, and too exposed, so the line bent back as far as Devil’s Tower Road, then through the main cemetery to the cattle sheds. By 11:00 the Germans had brought up elements of the Grossdeutschland Regiment, and a company of the 3rd Battalion of the mountain troops made another daring assault by boat on a narrow sandy beach near the Slaughterhouse. The place was well named, as Vickers machineguns positioned by the Somersets in the Cattle Sheds and Devil’s Tower Camp exacted a very heavy toll on the beach, decimating the leading platoon before both artillery fire and two well timed Stuka attacks silenced those guns. The remaining infantry quickly occupied the Slaughterhouse, now eyeing the tall sheer cliffs ahead.

There was only one defile that they could climb, and it would be one for the record books in the annuals of war. 2nd platoon led the way, with Leutnant Groth urging his men on. Ropes with hooks were fired up in special mortars, and though several failed to take hold, others were lodged in the craggy rocks. The men began to climb. The defile would take them up to the Great Siege Tunnels, on the upper galleries of the north face of the Rock.

Dating from the 18th century, the tunnels had been dug by British engineers during the time of the American Revolution to withstand an assault by French and Spanish troops, the fourteenth attempt to seize Gibraltar, and the last until Groth and his mountain troops showed up. The tunnel had been built to reach an inaccessible crag known as The Notch, and place a battery there. Now the hidden tunnel housed generators to power the 3rd Searchlight Regiment. From there a stone stairway led down to the Middle Gallery below, deep inside the massive limestone mountain.

At places the cliff was so sheer that it was near vertical, but the mountain troops continued their climb, up 650 feet to the 200 meter line on their terrain maps, taking only sporadic fire from the cattle sheds. The first squad of seven men led by Groth himself flung their demolition charges through the embrasure openings that overlooked the airfield and cemetery, blowing away the rusting iron bars, and then they began to work their way in through those same openings. The Germans were inside the Rock with this single squad, and their mission was to find and destroy any useful enemy facilities they could, and eliminate any observation posts near that location.

Far below, the 2nd Kings Rifles were fighting for their lives in the cemetery, with the newly dead lying atop the cold stone grave plates in a macabre scene. The batteries at Governor’s Lookout and the Prince William Battery gave them as much support as they could, while under ceaseless attack from the screaming Stukas. It was soon clear to General Liddell that the position was lost, and he ordered his men to begin a gradual withdrawal through the cemetery, across Devil’s Tower Road and through some makeshift facilities that had once been used as an Isolation Hospital. They would reform near the old Moorish Castle, which blocked the switchback road leading up to the tunnel complex entrance. The north face of the Rock itself was a near vertical cliff, which could not be climbed by anyone without special equipment and training. So the action shifted west towards the Land Port.

By 01:00 the Germans had overrun the two forward defense lines and taken the whole of the airfield. Now the grenadiers of the Grossdeutschland Regiment focused their effort on the inundated area just south of the Jewish cemetery. There was a narrow causeway that crossed the inundation to an area known as the Land Port, very near the position already occupied by the Brandenburgers. As if by pre-arranged plan, the commandos now renewed their assault, fighting their way across the market square against opposition by B company of the 2nd Somerset Light. It was their intention to clear the area south of the causeway and so allow the grenadiers to cross the inundation.

With ruthless efficiency, the Brandenburgers stormed the Grand Casemates, silencing the guns there. The grenadiers surged over the causeway, led by their tough recon battalion, and the Germans built up enough strength to force B Company back towards the old Moorish Castle where the exhausted King’s Rifles were taking up new positions.

By 02:00 the Germans were preparing to attack this position, as the remaining two battalions of the Grossdeutschland Regiment rolled south and heavily reinforced the area taken near the Grand Casemates. Soon their assault teams were working their way in to the north town area, opposed by the 4th Devonshire Battalion and elements of 2nd Somerset Light in house to house fighting. It was here that the training and recent combat experience of the Germans made all the difference. They had fought in Poland, and in the lightning dash across France, all while the Devonshire Battalion languished at Gibraltar. The German troops were among the best in their army, and they pressed home a relentless attack, pushing past the Post Office to the Civil Hospital where they flanked the end of the 2nd Somerset’s line at the Moorish Castle, which climbed the hills behind it in fortified tiers of tower and wall.

First built in the 8th century and then restored again in the 11th century, the castle walls and complexes once reached to the edge of the sea. Yet by 1940 only the prominent square Tower of Homage and the Gate House below remained, climbing the steep knees of the towering mass of Jebel Tarik, the name of the mountain which was once called the Rock of Jebel, and has since come to be known as Gibraltar. Its tower stood higher, its Kasbah Keep bigger than any other Moorish fort built on the Iberian Peninsula. It had endured numerous sieges over the years, shrugging off the cannon fire of previous eras. Now the Germans brought up light infantry guns and began to systematically blast away at the old castle walls and abutments, but the tower stood stolidly unbroken, the crenulated teeth of the stony walls now manned by British troops firing from above. There the proud Union Jack flew from a tall flagpole and the 11th siege of the castle was soon well underway.

 The Germans saw that their 75mm infantry guns would make little impression on the hard masonry of the gate wall, and so they called for bigger guns, waiting an hour while troops brought up a 150mm battery from the rear. The Gate House was the first obstacle, which stood as two imposing squarish legs of stone built up in layer after layer of limestone brick. The center receded to a walled off gate with a single vertical embrasure where the barrel of a Vickers machinegun spat fire and steel at anyone approaching. Yet the gun could not be rotated left or right, which made it easy for engineers to approach from the sides of the embrasure and lay demolition charges. The troops that had demolished the massive impregnable fortress of Eben Emael were now about to be tested again.

A massive explosion shook the Gate House, blasting away part of the wall that surrounded the embrasure and shocking the gun crews behind it senseless. Dust and smoke billowed up in a huge mushroom, and engineers pushed on through the soot and broken rock to penetrate the breach.

High above, the wail of a diving Stuka was heard, which delivered a 500 pound bomb to score a direct hit on the nearby Queen Charlotte’s Battery. By 03:00 the ancient fortification that had stood for over 1200 years was being reduced with the fire and steel of modern weapons it had never been built to oppose.

Meanwhile, Groth’s mountain troops had gained access to the upper gallery but, as the alarms went out, Liddell rushed a platoon of the Black Watch, his reserve force inside the Rock, to block their migration down to the Middle Gallery. The pipes played the quick march with drum and skirl, and the strains of “Highland Laddie” echoed through the labyrinth, giving heart to the defenders outside. But as the sun fell lower and the long shadows of the mountains behind Algeciras began to creep over the waters of the bay toward the harbor, it was clear that the weight of the German forces was becoming decisive.

They now had three battalions of combat engineers, the 98th Mountain Regiment and the Grossdeutschland Regiment all on the line, with the Brandenburgers mixed in and fighting their way down the west coast to take the King’s Bastion near the old Coaling Island. Sir Clive Liddell was evacuating the Governor’s residence where he had set up his headquarters, and heading for the relative safety of the tunnels under the Rock.

Outnumbered three battalions to one, the 4th Devonshires were slowly pushed back, and Liddell had to make a crucial decision. Should he order them to fall back through the town, continuing to bar the way to the main wharf, or should he pull them east up the switchback roads that climbed to Devil’s Gap and the Signals Station beyond? That choice would see his entire force pressed back against the Rock itself, and eventually shut inside. It would also leave the Destroyer Camber, Main Wharf and docks, and the whole of Rosia Bay open to the enemy advance. All the service troops, shore batteries, and AA guns on Windmill Hill and Europa Flats would be effectively thrown to the wolves, along with any hope that the Royal Navy might land reinforcements in the south. He was literally between the Devil and the deep blue sea, now, or more to the point, between the Rock and a hard place.

Liddell was not yet ready to concede all that ground and lock his infantry up in the fortress tunnels, and so he ordered the 4th Devonshire Battalion to fight for every building, store, and house in the town. The one burning question in his mind now was what had happened to the Royal Navy? The force that Gibraltar was there to support and maintain had seemingly deserted the men of the Rock in their hour of greatest need.

Yet that was not so.

 

 

 

Part XII

 

Valiant

 

“You are well aware that it is not numbers or strength that bring the victories in war. No, it is when one side goes against the enemy with the gods' gift of a stronger morale, that their adversaries, as a rule, cannot withstand them.”

 

― Xenophon, The Persian Expedition

 

 

Chapter 34

 

Lieutenant Dawes had spent two hours at the hospital and finally had his shoulder wound cleaned up, stitched and bandaged. The medic seemed upset to be bothering with him, and Dawes had the distinct feeling that the man bore him some animosity. This was confirmed when he slipped on his officer’s jacket and began making his way to the door, pressing through the crowded room past men with much more serious wounds.

“Bloody officers,” he heard the medic mutter under his breath. “Sit about while the rest of this lot carries the burden, eh?”

Dawes gave the man a look over his shoulder, but said nothing. In fact he felt a bit wilted by the remark, and resolved to try and find something more to do. There were men here that looked like they would surely lose an arm or leg, and others with head wounds that still darkened the bandages with clotted blood. Then there were those silent stretchers, where men lay with their faces covered with woolen blankets, and all too many of them.

Dawes had retreated from the hospital as the Germans closed in, the harsh tang of blood and death on the air, and was soon swept up in the general withdrawal south through the town towards the Main Wharf. It was there, by Dock Number 3, that he finally came across a senior officer, a colonel in the 9th AA Regiment. He stepped up smartly and saluted, but the Colonel was too busy shouting at a 3.7-inch gun crew to notice him. Finally he gave him a sour look.

“Yes?”

“Lieutenant Dawes, sir. I was Duty Officer on the North Mole Tower, but have no assignment now.”

“North Mole? The German’s took that this morning.”

“Right sir. Well I’ve been pushed out with all the rest, and I’m looking to take a new post.”

“Well you might get up Breakneck Stair, or down to Europa Point to see what’s going on. They’re moving the 25 pounders north, and you could lend a hand.”

“Good enough sir. I know the Windmill Hill area fairly well.” Dawes saluted again and was off, feeling just a bit better now that he had some sense of direction and purpose again. He remembered there was a battery of 25 pounders sited near the Georgian building known as “Bleak House,” which had become the R.A. Officer’s Mess. He had eaten there a few times, but had come to feel it was too posh for his liking. Some of the officers even took to dining in their dress uniforms, which he felt a bit odd given the more casual atmosphere of Gibraltar, where one was just as likely to see a subaltern running about bare headed and shirtless on the job.

Breakneck Stair was well named, a circuitous and sometimes steep route up the flanks of a long plateau that sat beneath Saint Michael’s Cave. As the road doubled back on itself, you would just keep craning your neck and looking up to see how much more of a trek it was before you got to the top. But Dawes decided to head for Windmill Hill by taking the road down past the other two military hospitals, and the Naval Signals Station. It would take him right up through a notch to the Windmill Hill, and from there he knew of a rickety old ladder down the side of the ridge that would land him very near the battery he had in mind.

The farther he got from the town and docks, the better he felt, and he realized the sound of the fighting, and sight of the wounded men, had jangled his nerves a bit. He went down the road past Buena Villa east of Rosia Bay, mixed in with a stream of men slogging their way towards the Naval Hospital. The sun was low and dusk at hand, and he realized how very hungry he was. It was worth taking a peek at Bleak House to see if anything was being served, and he didn’t think anyone would be swanking about there with a war on today.

Before he got there, however, he passed by the Naval Signals Station where there seemed to be quite a stir. Men were cheering and seemed well worked up over something, so he stuck his nose in through the door to see what was happening.

“What’s up here?” he ask a ranker by the door.

“Royal Navy’s coming, sir!” The private gave him a toothy grin. “Just got the signal in a moment ago. There’s to be no searchlights switched on after midnight.”

Dawes raised an eyebrow. “Good show,” he said. Then he was on his way again. The Royal Navy had scooted out 24 hours before the Germans launched the attack. That told him the up and ups knew what Jerry was about, and now, with this news, he realized the move must have been well planned all along. He smiled, his steps just a little lighter, and soon became part of the news bustling south along the cobblestone roads as he made his way towards the ladder down to Europa Point.

The Royal Navy was coming home again! Let’s see how the Germans like it when old Rodney and Nelson let loose with those big 16-inch guns.

 

* * *

 

Admiral Somerville had taken Force H out into the western approaches to the straits, where the twelve fighters off HMS Hermes had sparred briefly with the Luftwaffe that day. When the Germans had achieved their primary goal in driving the British fleet off, they then turned the weight of their air power on Gibraltar itself. As darkness fell on the first day Somerville paced on the bridge of the battleship Nelson.

The news coming from the Rock was grim after the first day of battle. The Germans had overrun the airfield and cemetery, seized the North Mole, Grand Casemates, and were blasting away at the old Moorish Castle. Some few had managed to scale the precipitous north face and were inside the upper gallery, though that incursion had been contained by the timely arrival of troops from the Black Watch. It was the British position along Devil’s Road and the high ground behind it near the old Windsor Battery that seemed to be the focus of German attention now, along with continuing house to house fighting in the town itself.

To make matters worse, the French had sortied with the battleship Normandie from Dakar, and this ship had sailed north with lighter escorts to join with Jean Bart off Casablanca. Somerville believed the move to be defensive in nature, and an attempt to forestall any possible British move against Casablanca, but the fact remained that these two dangerous ships were at large to the south, and Force H would have to post a watch. The Admiralty had already been forced to cancel O.A. and O.B. series convoys out of the UK, and several already at sea had been ordered to disperse over 100 ships. There were also 97 merchantmen at sea in three northbound convoys in the SL series out of Sierra Leone and bound for Liverpool. That was a lot of merchant traffic to look after, and there would be no help coming from Home Fleet. The Germans were also on the move.

Now the Admiralty was in a quandary over what to do about Gibraltar. The situation reports, and plans already underway to occupy the Azores, were ample testimony to the fact that Their Lordships did not believe Gibraltar could be saved. Though Churchill bristled at the thought of losing the Rock, a long time symbol of British power, the practical necessities of war now weighed heavily in the matter. He first lobbied to advance the scheduled October departure for WS3, a “Winston Special” troop convoy planning to deliver reinforcements to Egypt. Might these troops get down to the Rock instead?

The Admiralty was of a mind that they would be at grave risk trying to reach Gibraltar and laid out the situation in no uncertain terms. The convoy was comprised of fast troop liners, like Georgic, Duchess Of York, and other smaller liners like Oropesa, Dorset, Highland Brigade and Perthshire. The harbor was presently contested, and so the ships would have only lifeboats available to try and put troops ashore, all under German air attack from Stukas and also exposed to shore batteries in Spanish Morocco.

The memory of the great disaster during the evacuation at Brest was still too fresh in the Admiralty’s mind. There the liner Lancastria had been sunk by German bombers with her decks packed with troops, and over 5800 died in one awful blow. It could not be allowed to happen again. A reinforcement for Gibraltar was therefore deemed impossible at this time, and quickly put out of the question.

Churchill then turned his eyes on further operations against the Cape Verde and Canary Islands with these troops, but the Admiralty argued that the reinforcement might best remain on schedule for Egypt, which would now need all the support it could get. What about the forces still lodged at Freetown from the aborted attack on Dakar? Might they have another go there? At this the Admiralty reminded Churchill that the battleship Richelieu was still anchored at Dakar from the latest intelligence reports, making a landing there another chancy prospect.

Churchill was at his wits end. “Here we have two Royal Marine Brigades sitting about on their thumbs in this dire hour, and doing nothing!” He continued to demand that every effort be made to make use of these troops, and so all the plans that had been spun out for Operation Puma and the Canaries, and Operation Shrapnel for the Cape Verde Islands were suddenly being put in motion.

In the meantime, Somerville rankled at the thought that he had been forced to slip away with Force H just when Gibraltar most needed him. He knew that he had to keep a strong force at sea, but he had three battleships, and proposed that he send one in a daring night raid to pound German positions and at least make a showing. The Admiralty waffled at this, pointing out that the moon was full and the Germans had been mounting continued night raids with JU-88s. They finally gave their grudging approval, urged on again by Churchill, who saw the move as almost a necessity. “The thunder of the guns of the Royal Navy must be heard to echo through the corridors of that embattled fortress, and will resound on through all the years to come,” he argued with styled elegance. HMS Valiant was therefore selected and ordered to detach on the night of the 16th of September.

To guard against the possibility of U-boat attack, Valiant would be given a strong escort of destroyers, and a light AA cruiser, Coventry, for added air defense. The mission was to make a quick run through the straits, let the guns roar in reprisal against German positions in the north and La Linea, and then get out with equal alacrity. They were on their way at 20:30, just after sunset, with the full moon already rising low above the horizon to the east and painting the way in a shimmering glow on the sea.

The move actually caught the German Luftwaffe by surprise, as they did not expect the British would risk capital ships in the strait under these conditions. A Ju-88 raid with 36 planes based at Seville had been scheduled for midnight, which is when the British ships planned to be south of Gibraltar after a four hour run at Valiant’s best speed from their starting point about 120 kilometers east of Tangier. When shore watchers there reported sighting the British raiding force approaching the strait, it was moved up an hour to attack the British ships as they approached.

The planes found the British squadron steaming on the moon drenched sea and began their bombing runs. The Ju-88 had been designed as a fast heavy dive bomber, or Schnellbomber, which became a workhorse of the Luftwaffe, affectionately called Mädchen für Alles, the maid of all work. The Germans would press it into service in great numbers as a reconnaissance plane, dive bomber, level bomber, night fighter and even a torpedo bomber, but tonight it was the heavy dive bomber role that was called to task. The fast twin engine planes came roaring out of the dark sky, and the air alert was raised throughout the squadron.

HMS Coventry was quick into action with her five 6-inch guns able to double as AA guns, augmented by two 3-inchers, and two 2 pounders. Valiant herself had even more firepower, with ten twin 4.5 inch dual purpose guns that soon began to blaze away with four octuple QF-2 pounders, and four more quad Vickers machine guns chattering away.

The destroyers added their wrath to the flak with Hotspur leading in the van, keen to get back at the Germans after her ignominious eviction earlier. Greyhound followed in her wake like a faithful hunting dog, while Fearless, and Forester flanked the big battleship, screening Valiant from torpedo attack, and the destroyer Fury churned in the wake of the entire formation on ASW watch.

Coventry scored the first kill when one of her 3-inch guns caught a German plane a little too eager to get in close, and blasted off the right wing, taking the engine off in the bargain and sending the plane into a cartwheeling splash into the sea. The lead destroyers danced ahead, too nimble for the Germans to get any hits on them, but Valiant was another story. A venerable old Queen Elizabeth class ship, Valiant had fought at Jutland in her youth, but now found a strange new foe in the Ju-88s.

The bigger ship was running full out at 23 knots, all her AA guns firing, but was soon straddled by a string of bombs falling along her port side. The ship rocked away from the blast, her heavy side armor taking most of the damage and shrugging it all off as Valiant labored on. Her gunners took down another Ju-88 before the next near miss fell just forward of the ship, but her Captain Rawlings pressed on and ran right over the fuming spray, heedless.

The squadron was now coming in range of Gibraltar and Captain Rawlings heard the call from his mainmast watch, the range finders calling out 28,000 yards. The ship’s main 15-inch guns had recently been modified to allow them to elevate to 30 degrees, allowing Valiant to fire out 32,000 yards, and seeing that the target was stationary, Rawlings ordered the guns into action at a few minutes before midnight on the 16th. The boom of the main batteries was indeed heard in far off Gibraltar, like the rumble of thunder heralding a fast moving storm of steel.

Valiant had been sent to do more than buck up the morale of the beleaguered garrison. Somerville had been discretely told that the main wharf and docks were fair game. Seeing as it was well behind British lines that night, however, Rawlings was reluctant to fire at that target from any great range. The British had spotters up on Signal Hill and the Weather Station up on Devil’s Tower, and they called the shots as it were, seeing the first salvos coming in four enormous splashes right in the harbor itself near the North Mole.

Sergeant John Miller of the 4th Battalion Black Watch saw the first rounds fall. He had been ordered as part of his company to reinforce the battered positions near the old Moorish Castle, which was still under assault from the Grossdeutschland Regiment at that time. When he saw the big geysers of water shoot up in the bay he rallied his squad. The troops on the front line thought they were German bombs at first, having been hit the last several nights. Then someone else realized what was happening and shouted out that the navy was back.

 “Right mate! It’s the bloody Navy!” Miller called out. “Listen to that, me Boyos! Those are nice fat fifteen inch guns, and the sweetest sound in the world to my ears tonight.”

 

Chapter 35

 

Lieutenant Dawes did not see the first shells land, as it was well after sunset and he was already down the ladder to Europa Point, with no view of the main harbor. But he certainly heard them, a loud roar and the long whistling fall of the heavy shells. He also thought it was a German bomb falling at first, thinking to find any cellar at hand to get under cover. The Stukas had been pounding the hill all day off and on but, from the sound of the planes overhead, these were the twin engine German bombers at hand. Then he caught a bright flash to the south, where the dark Straits of Gibraltar became the gateway that had long been known as the Pillars of Hercules. It suddenly seemed as though Hercules was there himself, roaring in anger, and Dawes immediately knew what he was seeing now.

The Royal Navy had kept its appointment. That was a battleship firing out in the channel, and he ran to the edge of the ridge to get a better look.

“Bloody marvelous!” he said to a Gunnery Sergeant there. It was Sergeant Hobson, the same man he had huddled with in the bomb shelter the previous night, the one who had the cheek to suggest the officer’s planning to watch the horse races that morning might hope they had fast steeds. He had stopped his loading of a nearby lorry to gawk at the ships out on the moonlit waters to the south.

“Lucky the Germans didn’t get smart and put artillery over there on Spanish Morocco,” said the Sergeant. “The Navy’s doing it right this time. They snuck in right in the lee of those hills.”

“Let’s see how the Germans sleep tonight under the guns of Rodney and Nelson.” Dawes smiled with an eager nod of his head.

“Oh, that’s not Rodney, sir. And it looks to be only one battleship that I can make out. That other ship is most likely a destroyer. My guess is that HMS Valiant is out there tonight, with a pair of valiant souls stuck on the Rock here to watch her do her business.”

“Wish I could say I belonged to that club,” said Dawes, just a bit dejected. “I’ve bounced about from the North Mole to the Hospital to the Signals Station, and then down here. Jerry took a whack at me this morning near the mole, but I haven’t done much of anything since.”

“I shouldn’t worry about that, sir. We’ll all have more than enough to do before this gets settled one way or another.”

That suddenly put a new fear into Dawes’ head, and he realized that this would have to resolve somehow, and he wondered how it would all turn out. The Germans had hit the Rock very hard that day. They had chased him from his tower, nearly put a bullet into him and set him on line with what looked to be sixty other men waiting for medical care. Now, with Valiant firing out there, her massive volleys rolling out with bright orange fire and a terrible roar, it was easy to think he might wake up tomorrow and find the Germans gone, but he knew that was not likely.

That thought jangled his nerves again. My God, he thought, what if we lose? What happens to every man jack of us here if those guns aren’t enough to make the difference? We’ll either be killed or taken prisoner and marched off to Berlin… and that thought gave him no comfort at all.

“What do you say, Sergeant?” he asked. “Will the Germans take a good knock tonight and give up the ghost?”

The Sergeant grimaced. “Not bloody likely,” he said heavily. “I was at Dunkirk…” He didn’t need to say anything more.

Dawes watched the battleship firing, trying to take heart with every salvo, but the ache of fear was on him now, and he found himself worrying about his fate, and the lives of everyone else in Gibraltar. The Sergeant seemed very calm, however, and so he asked his question again.

“Do you think we’ll hold, Sergeant?”

“We’ll do our bloody best.”

“But will it be enough?”

“If it isn’t then you can join the Royal Engineers, sir, and dig yourself a nice little tunnel under the Straits. Either that or you might get lucky and find the one already there.”

“Already there? You mean we can get out that way?”

The Sergeant winked at him. “Just a legend, sir. But find me the right Barbary Ape and stay on its tail when things get hot. You might be surprised!” He was up, rolling up his shirt sleeve on the warm late summer night.

“Well I’d best see to my lorry. The boys will be needing this ammunition soon enough.”

Dawes nodded, but he sat there, spellbound with the sight of the battleship firing and finally realizing what a horror this war was going to become. We build these massive steel leviathans to hurl shot and shell at the enemy, and all the while the Germans are coming out of the night in those planes like banshees. His pulse was up and there was a thrill of excitement, edged with yawning anxiety. Here he was watching the battle being joined, with the issue still gravely in doubt. HMS Valiant probably never thought she would be directing those guns at the very harbor she would drop anchor on. The Navy is out there bawling away like someone who’s come home from the town and found a burglar has broken into his home.

Now the fight was on, and at least all he could see of it was good British steel firing away for a change. Yet that doubt was still there, a cold spot in his stomach that made him very afraid. He was not a fighting man by nature. Dawes had come in an officer, and the most rigorous thing he had ever done in his brief time in the service was a good long workout on the “Hardening Course.” Pushups and sit ups were one thing, the shock and sound of real combat quite another.

He remembered how he had looked forward to settling into a comfortable bed after that long workout. He had been stuck on the course with the rankers, and on the morrow he would swagger back into the Bleak House and belly up for a good breakfast, basking in the privileges that came with his Lieutenant’s rank.

The thought of food invariably led him to think of what might happen to them if they got holed up in those dark, dusty tunnels. If the Germans don’t kill us all first, they’ll bloody well starve us in time. He knew they had nearly nine month’s supplies laid in, but that would be a long and agonizing haul. The thought of becoming a tunnel rat did not seem at all appealing. He watched HMS Valiant get off another salvo, and then got up on unsteady legs. He needed a smoke, reaching into his pocket to fish about for his cigarette pack and lighter, and when he had them out he realized his hand was shaking so badly that he could barely get one lit. The words of a poem by Rudyard Kipling came to his mind with their sad, mournful song.

To the legion of the lost ones, to the cohort of the damned;

To my brethren in their sorrow overseas…

We're poor little lambs who've lost our way,

    Baa! Baa! Baa!

We're little black sheep who've gone astray,

    Baa—aa—aa!

Gentlemen-rankers out on the spree,

Damned from here to Eternity…

 

* * *

 

It did not take much for the spotters on the weather station hill to correct the fall of those shells. Plus 400, right 1000 and the guns were right on target, striking the Land Port at the base of the Devil’s Tongue, with the next salvos corrected to fall right on the cemetery, which was now occupied by the Germans. One round struck the silent tombstones, sending chunks of granite into the air and cratering the graves of generations past. The gunners at the Windsor Battery had been taking a pounding from the Germans, but now they cheered gleefully as the spotters slowly walked the 15-inch barrage back over the runway and across the old British lines right into La Linea, Britain’s first fire in anger to strike Spanish soil.

The intent was to get at the German artillery there, and though no one on the Rock knew it at the time, the British had some success in knocking out several German guns. Then Valiant began to make a wide turn, her lease in the relatively narrow waters of the strait run out, coming about to head back west. The German planes continued to make their diving runs at her, with bombs straddling the ship, splintering the weather deck and churning up the sea, but Valiant sailed right on through. Her aft batteries again found the bay near the North Mole, and were expertly walked due east right across the German lines, through the cemetery, and right off shore when the last rounds fell in the sea near the Cattle Sheds.

Meanwhile, the dogged Hotspur had surged on ahead with Greyhound, racing past the southern tip of Europa Point where they saw British AA gunners firing to lend their support against the German planes. Lieutenant Dawes was there with them, watching the bright tracers streak across the sky, and the night was deafened by the sharp crack of the gunfire. Commander Herbert Francis Hope Layman led the ship from the exposed weather bridge, and he saw the men waving and saluting from the flagstaff at Europa Point.

“Hoist colors!” he ordered, showing the garrison the flag, which immediately set the men to cheering. Hotspur and Greyhound raced up the eastern side of the Isthmus, past the Governor’s Cottage on the flank of Windmill Hill and on towards Sandy Bay. They surged on past the hamlet at Catalan Bay until they were off the coast near the Slaughterhouse. There Commander Layman saw the boats on the shore, where the German mountain troops had stormed ashore to cut off the Cattle Sheds and make their daring ascent up the sheer rocky walls of the Devil’s Tower. She had only four 4.7-inch guns, nothing to speak of compared to Valiant’s broadside, but Hotspur was valiant too, and she poured it on, setting three landing boats ablaze and blasting the hillside cliffs where Signal Hill had reported German mountaineering operations were still underway. Half a squad of the 2nd Company, 3rd battalion 98th Mountain Regiment, was blown from their rocky perches and blasted clean off the hill.

The gallant rush of the destroyers did more to bolster British morale than any real harm to the enemy, but that was enough. They wheeled about at Catalan Bay, circling once as if to dare anything German to challenge them, guns blazing all the while. Then the nimble destroyers turned south and ran to rejoin the British naval squadron.

When the destroyers rounded Europa Point, Lieutenant Dawes looked to see the looming shadow of Valiant heading west through the straits, big guns still firing. There was a small fire aft where the battleship must have been finally struck by a 500 pound German bomb, but it did not look serious. The Ju-88s had emptied their bomb bays and had little to show for their effort.

Dawes watched as the two destroyers raced in the big ship’s wake, the white foam of their bows glistening in the moonlight. They followed like a pair of faithful hounds coming home to the hunter, and Dawes took off his cap and waved farewell. Some inner sense took hold just then, and it told him he had seen the last of Force H and the Royal Navy in this gallant attack, but what a sight it was.

The inner sense became a feeling of dreadful doubt again, and he took another drag on his cigarette, noting the tremor in his hand and feeling ashamed. Dawes chided himself, knowing that he had been little more than a spectator in this whole affair. What’s gotten into me, he asked himself? That nick on your shoulder is nothing to worry about. You saw that battleship out there, and how those destroyers came in with their fists shaking, ready for a fight. Buck up man, and get a grip on yourself. This party is only just beginning, and something tells me you’ve more than one more dance left on your card. Nobody gets in on something like this without good reason, he thought, and it gave him some small comfort.

Suddenly the smell of the air and the whole scene on the bay filled him with a sense of life and purpose. He was here for some reason, by chance or fate, and he would see it through. He dropped the half smoked cigarette, stepping on it and breathing deep, trying to chase the jitters away. There was no sense standing here gawking any longer, so he turned and started back up the rise, suddenly feeling very drained and weary, and intent on finding someplace relatively quiet where he might get some sleep.

All that was on his duty roster for the day had been that ten hour shift in the North Mole Tower that was cut short just before dawn. Just sit up there and answer the telly—that was what his mates had told him at breakfast.  It had been a very long day. Baa—Baa—Baa…

 

* * *

 

Valiant had come boldly on through the strait, braving a thickening enemy air attack the whole while, and now she was heading for the open sea again, though not yet safe from harm. Lurking in the waters just off the mouth of the straits, another threat was waiting silently for the courageous ship, which had lived up to its name in every respect that night, Valiant in name and deed.

The Italian Submarine Bianchi had been hoping for a chance to get torpedoes in the water, intending to put them right down the path of the oncoming battleship, but her inexperienced Captain, Adalberto Giovannini, had not counted on the skill and speed of the British Destroyers. Fury had taken the lead, and was well out in front of the battleship sniffing with her asdic sonar equipment when she got wind of the Italian sub. Lieutenant Commander Terence Robinson had the ship in fine trim. In these familiar waters, the crews had learned the depth of the sea lanes well and had excellent charts. Robinson took a very good guess as to where the contact must be, and then began to churn up the sea at top speed, ready to raise hell.

Indeed, hell had no fury like that ship on this moonlit night. The destroyer surged ahead, while the Bianchi veered off her firing angle, realizing her peril too late to evade. Captain Giovannini got his periscope down and gave the order to fire, then put his sub into an emergency dive, but to no avail.

The torpedoes were too widely spaced and Fury veered violently, thrashing up the sea before turning and running right between the two torpedoes. The fish had been jostled about by the maneuver, just enough to set them off their intended course. Then it was time for hell to unleash her fury. The destroyer had a rack of 20 depth charges and Lieutenant Commander Robinson put them all into the water, causing a series of wrenching explosions that found and tore Bianchi to pieces. There was a last explosion, the sea welling up like a boiling pot, and then subsiding before wreckage from the broken sub bobbed to the surface.

So Valiant was kept safe from harm, her octuple mounts saying a last goodbye to a lingering Ju-88. Then her aft turrets fired one last mighty salvo of four rounds, which came in right on Devil’s Tower Road, hurting the Germans that had been assembling there. Hotspur and Greyhound came following behind the big ship, and the British squadron withdrew at 20 knots, their daring mission accomplished.

Captain Rawlings soon received a signal in thanks from General Liddell on the Rock, which was quickly passed on to Somerville and the Admiralty. The battleship had hit the North Mole, Land Port, Cemetery, Cattle Sheds—all occupied by German troops when the big rounds struck home. Beyond that, they had put the Spanish Government on notice that England knew her enemies as well as her friends. HMS Valiant had just tapped Franco on the chin with the few salvos that she managed to put on German positions in La Linea, but it was a promise of retribution, and a day of reckoning that would surely come before this war would be concluded.

For his part, Captain Rawlings aboard Valiant would be ‘Mentioned In Dispatches’ for his courageous raid under intense enemy fire, delivering timely and much needed fire support to a hard fighting garrison force on the Rock.

Admiral Somerville had been pacing on the bridge of Nelson throughout the engagement, dreading more bad news and the possible loss of yet another battleship in the hastily mounted raid. But no bad news came that night. This one was chalked up for the Royal Navy, and Somerville sighed with relief when he got the signal: HMS Valiant now west of Tangier, and all is well.

 

 

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 Kübler 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.

 

 

Epilogue

 

That night there came a lull in the fighting. The Germans secured positions around the Main Wharf where the remnant of two companies of the 4th Devonshire Battalion were now holed up. Then the gunfire abruptly stopped at 08:00. Soldiers approached the entrance to Saint Michael’s Cave under a white flag, and asked to pass a message to the British commander. It would offer terms, with fair treatment and medical care for all wounded upon surrender, and internment in Spain under decent conditions for the duration of the war. Liddell replied that he had no such orders, but if the Germans would abide by the temporary cease fire he would pass the matter up the chain of command.

The signal went to Somerville, still at sea with Force H, who contemplated it grimly when he was handed the message at 10:00. The enemy had taken several vital facilities at Gibraltar: fuel supplies, airfield, power station, gas works, and the plant for distilling seawater. Yet Liddell indicated he believed he could hold out, and asked for as much support as the navy could give him. As to the German surrender terms, Churchill would not hear of such a thing at this point. He railed that the fortress must be held as long as possible, and urged the War Cabinet to do everything in their power to assist the garrison.

The night raid made by Valiant had given Churchill the hope that if more force were applied by the Royal Navy, the Germans might be shelled senseless. Somerville had been at sea for days, and his home port was now largely in enemy hands. He knew that he had only a few more days fuel to operate, and the French Navy was still at sea, finally spotted some 200 miles to the south off Casablanca. Lingering in the western approaches to the straits was also dangerous, and German U-boat activity was becoming an increasing threat. That morning the destroyer Firedrake had engaged a suspected undersea target without results, and Somerville knew that with each passing hour the enemy might concentrate more resources against him.

He laid the matter out in no uncertain terms. “We have three U-boat sightings today – Expect continued air attack this evening and have inadequate air cover – Two French battleships remain at large off Casablanca and could pose an immediate threat to convoy SL-46 and SL-47.”

Should he mount yet another night raid to bolster the garrison at Gibraltar, or move south to deal with the French? He signaled the Admiralty to seek clarification as to his orders—what was Their Lordships pleasure? In spite of Valiant’s success the previous night, the Admiralty felt it unwise to risk Somerville’s battleships in the straits again. Liddell was told to play for time and hold out, a bone thrown to Churchill. The Royal Navy, however, would do the one thing it was best at, and operate at sea.

At midnight on the 17th, Somerville got his orders. He was to find and engage the French, clear the convoy routes and become master of the waters off Casablanca. Plans were underway for dramatic events yet to come. Admiral Tovey got the word that same hour. Britain would now try to salvage some small measure of advantage while she could, and go on the offensive.

Orders were sent to Wavell in Alexandria that he should make every effort to drive the Italians from Egyptian soil. Liddell would hunker down beneath the imposing limestone fortress of the Rock, Somerville would steam south to engage the French and avenge the loss of Barham off Dakar, and the Azores would be seized the following morning with thunderclap surprise, after which HMS Glorious would return to support Force H. The troops at Freetown, and De Gaulle’s Free French fighters were also put on notice that they would not sit idle any longer. A mission was being planned to throw them at the Cape Verde Islands as soon as the French Fleet was properly dealt with.

Britain, down on one knee, bruised and bloodied by her foes, was getting up and ready to answer the next bell. Yet far to the north, Admiral Raeder was setting his own plans in motion. The German Jötnargruppe was cutting through the seas and heading south into the Atlantic, with the battleships of the Royal Navy in hot pursuit. Speed was now the order of the day, and the Germans slipped slowly away, until one ship loomed off their starboard bow, unexpected, undaunted, and ready to do everything possible to stop the German fleet. This time Lütjens would fight, but he was about to confront an adversary that would prove to be far more resourceful than he or any of his planners in the Kriegsmarine could imagine.

 

* * *

 

As the sun rose on the 18th of September, smoke charred the skies above Gibraltar. Fires were burning in the town, and south near the Main Wharf. The last remnants of the 4th Devonshires were still fighting, some holed up in sheds, houses and cellars, others huddled behind the heavy walls of the Main Wharf buildings, mostly held by 2nd Somerset Light. The Brandenburgers were at the Destroyer Camber, and the harbor itself, always bustling with activity with upwards of twenty or thirty vessels on any given day, was strangely empty now.

The Germans sent a motorized battalion of the elite Grossdeutschland Regiment down through the Devil’s Gap, led by their reconnaissance battalion. There they eyed the ridges and slopes leading up to a place called the Breakneck Stairs and Mount Misery. The entrance to St. Michael’s Cave was also in this area, where most of the remaining service troops, porters, artisan engineers, and other non-combatants were now huddled. Even the big 9.2-inch batteries on Windmill Hill and Europa Point had been abandoned, the guns disabled as the crews retreated to the cavernous passages of Saint Michael’s.

There Lieutenant Dawes had fallen to his fate, a hero in the end, dying to save the men that could carry on the fight. Sergeant Hobson saw them carry in the body, what was left of him, and took a long breath. He was tired, weary beyond measure, and the loss of the Lieutenant he had taken under his wing affected him deeply. He sat, head down, dreary and mournful, and losing hope, as were many others around him. Then he heard the quiet chattering of a Barbary Ape, and turned to see a solitary Macaque skittering into the cave. A Corporal threw it an orange peel, and Hobson smiled.

It was just what he had told Dawes about—the Barbary Ape he could follow to the promised land. Yet now he thought to catch it and hold it fast, so that Britain might still hold the Rock. But this one seemed unhappy with the meager fare it had received from the Corporal, and Sergeant Hobson watched it scrabble away over a few rocks and into a passage he knew led nowhere.

“See here,” he called after the Macaque. “Where are you off to? That’s a bloody dead end! You’ll not get out that way—in fact you’ll not get loose at all once I get my fat fist on the scruff of your neck!”

He got up, following the ape, feeling his way in the dark and expecting to catch it just round the next bend. This tunnel led south, down the last of the rocky spine of Gibraltar until it ended somewhere beneath Windmill Hill. It went on for just another few hundred yards, and he could hear the chatter of the Macaque up ahead, but it was very dark. Then he came up short, surprised to reach an impasse in a great boulder that blocked his way.

 He knew this rock, as it marked the end of the passage but his Macaque was nowhere to be seen. Hobson fumbled about his shirt pocket for a lighter, holding it up to cast a wan, flickering light on the eerie carved rocks of the cave walls. He remembered the old legend that said there was a hidden tunnel that went all the way under the straits to Spanish Morocco, though he knew that was folly. Then he keened up his senses, looking about when he heard the echo of his quarry resounding, hollow and very distant.

“Now where have you gotten to?” he said, hearing only the echo of his own voice. There was no sign of the beast.

The Barbary Ape was gone.

 

The Saga Continues…

 

Altered States: Volume IV ~ Three Kings

As Admiral Tovey struggles to stop heavy German units breaking out into the Atlantic, the embattled garrison of Gibraltar is holed up beneath the Rock. Now England launches operations against Atlantic island outposts in a race to occupy those vital squares before the German 22nd Air Landing Division can claim them for Germany.

Meanwhile, General Wavell launches Operation Compass against the Italians, while Admiral Cunningham prepares a daring attack at Taranto, but it is soon learned that someone is leaking word of these operations directly to the Germans and Italians. The Axis counter is a sudden new blitzkrieg into the Balkans and the Italian invasion of Greece. Soon only Turkey will stand between Germany and the vital oil supplies of the Caucasus controlled by the Orenburg Federation.

As British fortunes reach a desperate state, Volsky and Fedorov soon learn of two powerful newcomers on the vast field of battle, and a triumvirate of powerful ships rises to the challenge, three Kings of the sea to stand as mighty champions in crucial theaters of the war.

The war effort on every side is soon focused on the Middle East. Now representing the Soviet Government, Admiral Volsky accompanies John Tovey to a fateful conference in Palestine to meet with General Wavell and an enterprising new British General named Montgomery. Like three Kings of the West meeting on the field of battle, they plan the future course of the war and struggle to find some way to stop the relentless Axis juggernaut before its shadow darkens the world. Yet to do so they must also reckon with the three Kings of the East, Sergei Kirov, Ivan Volkov and Vladimir Karpov.

 

Action, mystery and intrigue pulse through this compelling continuation of the amazing Kirov Saga!

THE KIROV SERIES ~ BY JOHN SCHETTLER

 

Kirov

The battlecruiser Kirov is the most power surface combatant that ever put to sea. Built from the bones of all four prior Kirov Class battlecruisers, she is updated with Russia’s most lethal weapons, given back her old name, and commissioned in the year 2020. A year later, with tensions rising to the breaking point between Russia and the West, Kirov is completing her final missile trials in the Arctic Sea when a strange accident transports her to another time. With power no ship in the world can match, much less comprehend, she must decide the fate of nations in the most titanic conflict the world has ever seen—WWII.

 

Kirov II – Cauldron of Fire

Kirov crosses the Atlantic to the Mediterranean Sea when she suddenly slips in time again and re-appears a year later, in August of 1942. Beset with enemies on every side and embroiled in one of the largest sea battles of the war, the ship races for Gibraltar and the relatively safe waters of the Atlantic. Meanwhile, the brilliant Alan Turing has begun to unravel the mystery of what this ship could be, but can he convince the Admiralty? Naval action abounds in this fast paced second volume of the Kirov series trilogy.

 

Kirov III - Pacific Storm

Admiral Tovey’s visit to Bletchley Park soon reaches an astounding conclusion when the battlecruiser Kirov vanishes once again to a desolate future. Reaching the Pacific the ship’s officers and crew soon learn that Kirov has once again moved in time. Now First Officer Anton Fedorov is shocked to learn the true source of the great variation in time that has led to the devastated future they have come from and the demise of civilization itself. They are soon discovered by a Japanese fleet and the ship now faces its most dangerous and determined challenge ever when they are stalked by the Japanese 5th Carrier Division and eventually confronted by a powerful enemy task force led by the battleship Yamato, and an admiral determined to sink this phantom ship, or die trying. In this amazing continuation to the popular Kirov series, the most powerful ships ever conceived by two different eras clash in a titanic final battle that could decide the fate of nations and the world itself.

 

Kirov Saga: Men Of War ~ Book IV

Kirov returns home to a changed world in the year 2021, and as the Russian Naval Inspectorate probes the mystery of the ship’s disappearance, Anton Fedorov begins to unravel yet another dilemma—the secret of Rod 25. The world is again steering a dangerous course toward the great war that blackened the shores of a distant future glimpsed by the officers and crew. Fedorov has come to believe that time is waiting on the resolution of one crucial unresolved element from their journey to the past—the fate of Gennadi Orlov.

Join Admiral Leonid Volsky, Captain Vladimir Karpov, and Anton Fedorov as they sleuth the mystery of Orlov’s fate and launch a mission to the past to find him before the world explodes in the terror and fury of a great air and naval conflict in the Pacific. It is a war that will span the globe from the Gulf of Mexico to the Middle East and through the oil rich heart of Central Asia to the wide Pacific, but somehow one man’s life holds the key to its prevention. Yet other men are aware of Orlov’s identity as a crewman from the dread raider they came to call Geronimo, and they too set their minds on finding him first…in 1942! Men of war from the future and past now join in the hunt while the military forces of Russia, China, and the West maneuver to the great chessboard of impending conflict.

 

Kirov Saga: Nine Days Falling, Book V

As Fedorov launches his daring mission to the past to rescue Orlov, Volsky does not know where or how to find the team, or even if they have safely made the dangerous transition to the 1940s….But other men know, from the dark corners of Whitehall to the KGB. And other men also continue to stalk Orlov in that distant era, led by Captain John Haselden and the men of 30 Commando. The long journey west is fraught with danger for Fedorov’s team when they encounter something bewildering and truly astounding, an incident that leads them deeper into the mystery of Rod-25.

Meanwhile, Kirov has put to sea and now forms the heart of a powerful battlegroup commanded by Captain Vladimir Karpov. He is soon confronted by the swift deployment of the American Carrier Strike Group Five out of Yokosuka Japan in a tense standoff at sea that threatens to explode into violence at any moment. The fuse of conflict is lit across the globe, for the dread war has finally begun when the Chinese make good on their threat to secure their long wayward son—Taiwan. From the pulsing bitstream of the Internet, the deep void of outer space, the oil soaked waters of the Persian Gulf and Black Sea, to the riveting naval combat in the Pacific, the world descends in nine grueling days, swept up in the maelstrom and chaos of war.

This is the story of that deadly war to end all wars, and the desperate missions from the future and past to find the one man who can prevent it from ever happening, Gennadi Orlov. Can the mystery of Rod-25 and Orlov be solved before the ICBMs are finally launched?

 

Kirov Saga: Fallen Angels ~ Book VI

The war continues on both land and sea as China invades Taiwan and North Korea joins to launch a devastating attack. Yet Kirov and the heart of the Red Banner Pacific Fleet has vanished, blown into the past by the massive wrath of the Demon Volcano. There Captain Karpov finds himself at the dying edge of the last great war, yet his own inner demons now wage war with his conscience as he contemplates another decisive intervention.

After secretly assisting the Soviet invasion of the Kuriles and engaging a small US scouting force in the region, Karpov has drawn the attention of Admiral Halsey’s powerful 3rd Fleet. Now Halsey sends one of the toughest fighting Admirals of the war north to investigate, the hero of the Battle off Samar, Ziggy Sprague, and fast and furious sea battles are the order of the day.

Meanwhile tensions rise in the Black Sea as the Russian mission to rescue Fedorov and Orlov has now been expanded to include a way to try and deliver new control rods to Kirov from the same batch and lot as the mysterious Rod-25. Will they work? Yet Admiral Volsky learns that the Russian Black Sea Fleet has engaged well escorted units of a British oil conveyor, Fairchild Inc., and the fires of war soon endanger his mission.

All efforts are now focused on a narrow stretch of coastline on the Caspian Sea, where men of war from the future and past are locked in a desperate struggle to decide the outcome of history itself. Naval combat, both future and past, combine with action and intrigue as Volsky’s mission is launched and the mystery of Rod-25 and Fedorov’s strange experience on the Trans-Siberian Rail is finally revealed. Can they stop the nuclear holocaust of the Third World War in 2021 or will it begin off the coast of Japan in 1945?

 

Kirov Saga: Devil’s Garden ~ Book VII

The stunning continuation to the Kirov saga extends the action, both past and present, as the prelude to the Great War moves into its final days. The last remnant of the Red Banner Pacific Fleet has fought its duel with Halsey in the Pacific, resorting to nuclear weapons in the last extreme—but what has happened to Kirov and Orlan?

Now the many story threads involving Fairchild Inc. and the desperate missions to find Orlov launched by both Haselden and Fedorov all converge in the vortex of time and fate on the shores of the Caspian Sea. Fedorov and Troyak lead an amphibious assault at Makhachkala, right into the teeth of the German advance. Meanwhile, Admiral Volsky and Kamenski read the chronology of events to peek at the outcome and discover the verdict of history. Can it still be changed?

Turn the page with Admiral Volsky and learn the fate of Orlov, Fedorov, Karpov and the world itself. Follow the strange and enigmatic figure of Sir Roger Ames, Duke of Elvington as he reveals a plot, and a plan, older than history itself on the windswept shores of Lindisfarne Castle.

 

Kirov Saga: Armageddon ~ Book VIII

The lines of fate have brought the most powerful ship in the world to a decisive place in history. Driven by his own inner demons, Captain Karpov now believes that with Kirov in 1908 he is truly invincible, and his aim is to impose his will on that unsuspecting world and reverse the cold fate of Russian history from 1908 to the 21st century. But it is not just the fate of a single nation at stake now, but that of all the world.

Shocked by Karpov’s betrayal, Anton Fedorov plans a mission to stop the Captain before he can do irreversible damage to the cracked mirror of time. Now Admiral Volsky must do everything possible to launch this final mission aboard the nuclear attack submarine Kazan. The journey to the Sea of Japan becomes a perilous one when the Americans and Japanese begin to hunt Kazan in the dangerous waters of 2021.

Join Anton Fedorov, Admiral Volsky, Chief Dobrynin, and Gennadi Orlov aboard Kazan as they launch this last desperate mission to confront the man, and the ship, that now threatens to change all history and unravel the fabric of fate and time itself.

 

Kirov Saga: Altered States

Kirov and Kazan move forward yet find themselves stuck in the midst of WWII once again, only the world is not the same! The consequences of all their interventions in history have now calcified to a new reality. The political borders of nations have been re-drawn, Colonial powers vie for control of the undeveloped world, and Russia itself is a divided nation. Discovering they still possess a decisive edge in weapons technology they must now decide which side to take to end a long and terrible war that threatens millions more lives.

 

Altered States ~ Volume II: Darkest Hour

The first rounds have fallen, heavy shells smashing against the armored conning tower of HMS Hood, stunning the ship and its stolid Admiral Holland. Yet Hood fights on, her guns raging in reprisal as the pride of two navies meet in the largest naval engagement since Jutland. Even as Admiral Tovey reaches the action, the shadow of Hoffmann’s battlegroup looms over his shoulder and the odds stack ever higher against the embattled ships of Home Fleet. Off to the north the Stukas rush to re-arm aboard carrier Graf Zeppelin, while far to the south another ship hastens north to the scene, from a time and place incomprehensible to the men now locked in a desperate struggle raging on a blood red sea that may decide the fate of England in 1940. Can they engage without shattering the fragile mirror of history yet again?

Learn the outcome and follow Kirov north as it heads to home waters, determined to meet the man that may have changed the course of all history, Sergei Kirov. Meanwhile the action moves to the Med where the young Christopher Wells is dispatched to Force H. The British must first prevent the powerful French fleet from falling into enemy hands. The fighting has only just begun as Altered States continues the retelling of the naval war in an exciting second volume.

 

The Altered States segment of the Kirov Series continues in the book you now hold: Darkest Hour, to be followed by Volume III: Hinge of Fate. Further titles are planned as the days slowly tick off toward “Paradox Day” the fateful day and hour when Kirov was to have first arrived in the Norwegian Sea on July 28, 1941.

 

Altered States: Volume III ~ Hinge of Fate

As Alan Turing pursues the baffling discovery of the strange cache of information code named Geronimo, Admiral Volsky sails to meet with the British on the Faeroes, bearing an offer of formal alliance between Soviet Russia and Great Britain. There Tovey learns the startling truth behind the mysterious ship that has haunted him all his life.

Sergeant Troyak’s mission aboard airship Narva faces danger and mystery on the Stony Tunguska, even while elements of two other airship fleets converge on the inn at Ilanskiy—the hinge of fate.

Meanwhile, Hitler hopes to secure another vital ally so that he can breathe life into Admiral Raeder’s long advocated Mediterranean strategy. It will begin with Operation Felix the assault on Gibraltar. As Britain steels itself for possible invasion, the Royal Navy must now rally  to the defense of the embattled garrison at Gibraltar, England’s Rock in the Med, another hinge of fate that could turn the entire course of the war should it fall. Opposing them are the three elite regiments of the German Army, and a resurgent Kriegsmarine led by a fearsome new gladiator, the Hindenburg.

 

 

Like Alternate History / Time Travel by John Schettler?
Don’t miss his five volume Meridian Series!

 

 

The Meridian Series (Time Travel / Alternate History)

 

Book I: Meridian – A Novel In Time

ForeWord Magazine’s “Book of the Year”

2002 Silver Medal Winner for Science Fiction

The adventure begins on the eve of the greatest experiment ever attempted—time travel. As the project team meets for their final mission briefing, the last member, arriving late, brings startling news. Catastrophe threatens and the fate of the Western World hangs in the balance. But a visitor from another time arrives bearing clues that will carry the hope of countless generations yet to be born, and a desperate plea for help. The team is led to the Jordanian desert during WWI and the exploits of the fabled Lawrence of Arabia. There they struggle to find the needle in the haystack of causality that can prevent the disaster from ever happening.

 

Book II: Nexus Point

The project team members slowly come to the realization that a “Time War” is being waged by unseen adversaries in the future. The quest for an ancient fossil leads to an amazing discovery hidden in the Jordanian desert. A mysterious group of assassins plot to decide the future course of history, just one battle in a devious campaign that will span the Meridians of time, both future and past. Exciting Time travel adventure in the realm of the Crusades!

 

Book III: Touchstone

When Nordhausen follows a hunch and launches a secret time jump mission on his own, he uncovers an operation being run by unknown adversaries from the future. The incident has dramatic repercussions for Kelly Ramer, his place in the time line again threatened by paradox. Kelly’s fate is somehow linked to an ancient Egyptian artifact, once famous the world over, and now a forgotten slab of stone. The result is a harrowing mission to Egypt during the time frame of Napoleon’s 1799 invasion.

 

Book IV: Anvil of Fate

The cryptic ending of Touchstone dovetails perfectly into this next volume as Paul insists that Kelly has survived, and is determined to bring him safely home. Only now is the true meaning of the stela unearthed at Rosetta made apparent—a grand scheme to work a catastrophic transformation of the Meridians, so dramatic and profound in its effect that the disaster at Palma was only a precursor. The history leads them to the famous Battle of Tours where Charles Martel strove to stem the tide of the Moorish invaders and save the west from annihilation. Yet more was at stake on the Anvil of Fate than the project team first realized, and they now pursue the mystery of two strange murders that will decide the fate of Western Civilization itself!

 

Book V: Golem 7

Nordhausen is back with new research and his hand on the neck of the new terrorist behind the much feared “Palma Event.” Now the project team struggles to discover how and where the Assassins have intervened to restore the chaos of Palma, and their search leads them on one of the greatest naval sagas of modern history—the hunt for the battleship Bismarck. For some unaccountable reason the fearsome German battleship was not sunk on its maiden voyage, and now the project team struggles to put the ship back in its watery grave. Meet Admiral John Tovey and Chief of Staff “Daddy” Brind as the Royal Navy begins to receive mysterious intelligence from an agent known only as “Lonesome Dove.” Exciting naval action and top notch research characterize this fast paced alternate history of the sinking of the Bismarck.

 

Golem 7 Introduces Admiral John Tovey as a primary historical character, and he figures prominently in the long Kirov Saga novels that followed this book.

 

Historical Fiction

 

Taklamakan ~ The Land Of No Return

It was one of those moments on the cusp of time, when Tando Ghazi Khan, a simple trader of tea and spice, leads a caravan to the edge of the great desert, and becomes embroiled in the struggle that will decide the fate of an empire and shake all under heaven and earth. A novel of the Silk Road, the empire of Tibet clashes with T’ang China on the desolate roads that fringe the Taklamakan desert, and one man holds the key to victory in a curious map that guards an ancient secret hidden for centuries.

 

Khan Tengri ~ Volume II of Taklamakan

Learn the fate of Tando, Drekk, and the others in this revised and extended version of Part II of Taklamakan, with a 30,000 word, 7 chapter addition. Tando and his able scouts lead the Tibetan army west to Khotan, but they are soon confronted by a powerful T’ang army, and threatened by treachery and dissention within their own ranks. Their paths join at a mysterious shrine hidden in the heart of the most formidable desert on earth where each one finds more than they imagined, an event that changes their lives forever.

 

The Dharman Series: Science Fiction

 

Wild Zone ~ Classic Science Fiction – Volume I

A shadow has fallen over earth’s latest and most promising colony prospect in the Dharma system. When a convulsive solar flux event disables communications with the Safe Zone, special agent Timothy Scott Ryan is rushed to the system on a navy frigate to investigate. He soon becomes embroiled in a mystery that threatens the course of evolution itself as a virulent new organism has targeted mankind as a new host. Aided by three robotic aids left in the colony facilities, Ryan struggles to solve the mystery of Dharma VI, and the source of the strange mutation in the life forms of the planet. Book I in a trilogy of riveting classic sci-fi novels.

 

 

Mother Heart ~ Sequel to Wild Zone – Volume II

Ensign Lydia Gates is the most important human being alive, for her blood holds the key to synthesizing a vaccine against the awful mutations spawned by the Colony Virus. Ryan and Caruso return to the Wild Zone to find her, discovering more than they bargained for when microbiologist Dr. Elena Chandros is found alive, revealing a mystery deeper than time itself at the heart of the planet, an ancient entity she has come to call “Mother Heart.”

 

Dream Reaper ~ A Mythic Mystery/Horror Novel

There was something under the ice at Steamboat Slough, something lost, buried in the frozen wreckage where the children feared to play. For Daniel Byrne, returning to the old mission site near the Yukon where he taught school a decade past, the wreck of an old steamboat becomes more than a tale told by the village elders. In a mystery weaving the shifting imagery of a dream with modern psychology and ancient myth, Daniel struggles to solve the riddle of the old wreck and free himself from the haunting embrace of a nightmare older than history itself. It has been reported through every culture, in every era of human history, a malevolent entity that comes in the night…and now it has come for him!

For more information on these and other books please visit:

http://www.writingshop.ws or http://www.dharma6.com

 

 

 

DEAR READERS:

 

“All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really happened, and after you are finished reading one you will feel that all that happened to you and afterwards it all belongs to you: the good and the bad, the ecstasy, the remorse and sorrow, the people and the places and how the weather was. If you can get so that you can give that to people, then you are a writer.”

― Ernest Hemingway

 

Thank you for reading! I hope I have given you something here that rings true as I continue that never ending journey, and hope one day to call myself a writer.

 

JS