Sergie Kirov, and has not yet been rebuilt. What are you doing here? You’re making this a personal little vendetta, when you should be thinking in broader strategic terms. The Germans are about to launch their big operation against the Soviets. You should be back in Orenburg, planning how best to support that attack. Instead…
Vendetta!
Part IV
Return of the Fox
“Destiny always rings three times...”
― Muriel Barbery
Chapter 10
While Troyak and Fedorov were watching the advance of the German 7th Machinegun Battalion at Raqqah, and Karpov and Volkov were vectoring in their forces at Ilanskiy, another warrior was about to rise from the ashes of his own making. Erwin Rommel had been a chastened and brooding general at Mersa Brega, sullen as he watched his mobile troops from the 5th Light Division digging in to hard defensive positions. Memories of the last war haunted him when he saw the men stringing wire and sewing fields of mines. It was a war of trenches, and great thundering artillery, dreadful moments in the space between barbed lines of death, and then came the gas, choking, asphyxiating, maddening.
Rommel had fought with the Württemberg Mountain Battalion of the elite Alpenkorps , where he quickly showed the genius for tactics and quick thinking on the battlefield that was to be his hallmark. His audacious infiltration tactics behind enemy lines had produced astounding results at times, where in one instance he had captured 1500 Italians with a single squad of five men. Then, leading a company of just 100 men, he had unhinged the defense of an Italian strong point garrisoned by 7000 troops! The Iron Cross and the coveted Blue Max that he so cherished were just some of the fruits of that labor. But the war was not all dash and medals. It was dreadful.
It was the tank that had broken the awful, grinding stalemate of the Western Front. The first cumbersome charge of the unwieldy metal land forts was a dismal failure for the British, as shocking as it was to the German soldiers who initially faced those growling behemoths. The tanks were unreliable, slow, ponderous in the mud of the rain sodden fields. They broke down, slipped tracks, found their guns jamming in the heat of battle, and too often caught fire. But the devious minds that had conceived them persisted, and eventually they tried again, and broke through.
Within months the sledgehammer charge of armor was used to batter the deeply entrenched lines of the enemy, breaking through for the infantry to cross that deadly space that came to be called no man’s land, and win the hour. In the years between the wars, the Germans had mastered the art of armored warfare, developing tactics and methods that would prove equally shocking to the British and French when their blitzkrieg was let loose in 1940. Rommel had been one of the grand masters of the panzer divisions, the leader of the fabled 7th Panzers, the Ghost Division. It had advanced farther and faster than any other division in the campaign against France, and Rommel’s exploits, and the favor they gained with Hitler, had led him to this privileged position as commander of the newly formed German Afrika Korps.
He remembered his promises to the Fuhrer all too well, yet now, as he stared at his motorized infantry digging in, his shoulders slumped with unwanted resignation. Before him lay a vast desert which was the perfect open field for his fast moving shock columns of tanks, armored cars and infantry. Yet the very same weapon that had led him to fame and the heights of command here, had also been his undoing—the tank.
This time it was an enemy tank, one so awesome in its power and capabilities that it rendered his entire armored force obsolete in a single stroke. He had advanced with breakneck speed and characteristic dash in the first Libyan offensive, sending the British reeling and then driving right past their last strongpoint of Tobruk and
Vendetta!
Part IV
Return of the Fox
“Destiny always rings three times...”
― Muriel Barbery
Chapter 10
While Troyak and Fedorov were watching the advance of the German 7th Machinegun Battalion at Raqqah, and Karpov and Volkov were vectoring in their forces at Ilanskiy, another warrior was about to rise from the ashes of his own making. Erwin Rommel had been a chastened and brooding general at Mersa Brega, sullen as he watched his mobile troops from the 5th Light Division digging in to hard defensive positions. Memories of the last war haunted him when he saw the men stringing wire and sewing fields of mines. It was a war of trenches, and great thundering artillery, dreadful moments in the space between barbed lines of death, and then came the gas, choking, asphyxiating, maddening.
Rommel had fought with the Württemberg Mountain Battalion of the elite Alpenkorps , where he quickly showed the genius for tactics and quick thinking on the battlefield that was to be his hallmark. His audacious infiltration tactics behind enemy lines had produced astounding results at times, where in one instance he had captured 1500 Italians with a single squad of five men. Then, leading a company of just 100 men, he had unhinged the defense of an Italian strong point garrisoned by 7000 troops! The Iron Cross and the coveted Blue Max that he so cherished were just some of the fruits of that labor. But the war was not all dash and medals. It was dreadful.
It was the tank that had broken the awful, grinding stalemate of the Western Front. The first cumbersome charge of the unwieldy metal land forts was a dismal failure for the British, as shocking as it was to the German soldiers who initially faced those growling behemoths. The tanks were unreliable, slow, ponderous in the mud of the rain sodden fields. They broke down, slipped tracks, found their guns jamming in the heat of battle, and too often caught fire. But the devious minds that had conceived them persisted, and eventually they tried again, and broke through.
Within months the sledgehammer charge of armor was used to batter the deeply entrenched lines of the enemy, breaking through for the infantry to cross that deadly space that came to be called no man’s land, and win the hour. In the years between the wars, the Germans had mastered the art of armored warfare, developing tactics and methods that would prove equally shocking to the British and French when their blitzkrieg was let loose in 1940. Rommel had been one of the grand masters of the panzer divisions, the leader of the fabled 7th Panzers, the Ghost Division. It had advanced farther and faster than any other division in the campaign against France, and Rommel’s exploits, and the favor they gained with Hitler, had led him to this privileged position as commander of the newly formed German Afrika Korps.
He remembered his promises to the Fuhrer all too well, yet now, as he stared at his motorized infantry digging in, his shoulders slumped with unwanted resignation. Before him lay a vast desert which was the perfect open field for his fast moving shock columns of tanks, armored cars and infantry. Yet the very same weapon that had led him to fame and the heights of command here, had also been his undoing—the tank.
This time it was an enemy tank, one so awesome in its power and capabilities that it rendered his entire armored force obsolete in a single stroke. He had advanced with breakneck speed and characteristic dash in the first Libyan offensive, sending the British reeling and then driving right past their last strongpoint of Tobruk and
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