Streich will be happy, he thought. He can siphon some petrol from his flack units and dust off his tank tracks. Then he set about to see how much of his division was within arm’s reach. He would collect what he could and plan his attack for the following morning. It would be a long and sleepless night, and Rommel was upset that things were not going as he had planned. Somehow the British had managed to read his intentions and stolidly move blocking forces into position to frustrate him.
I should go right around them, he thought, but the more he circulated among his troops, the more he came to hear the same complaint. They were running low on fuel. The movement east from the Egyptian border had already taken them nearly a hundred kilometers on fuel tanks that weren’t topped off when they started. The Panzer III Medium tanks that constituted his primary striking force for maneuver had a range of about 165 kilometers, and now they needed fuel. Streich had been correct, as much as Rommel hated to admit that. So he issued orders that all non-essential vehicles should be cannibalized for fuel to support the combat elements, and he would take the night to catch his breath and prepare a renewed offensive for the following morning.
“Where is that Hungarian?” Rommel looked over his shoulder, rattling the old map he had been brooding over.
“You mean the Sonderkommando?”
“I want him to have a look south and east tonight to see where the enemy flank is. The British cannot have very much more to throw at us. Something tells me this is the end for them. This Hungarian has good desert eyes, does he not? Send for him at once.”
The man with good desert eyes was the enigmatic figure of Hauptmann Laszlo Almasy, commander of an elite unit of long range scouts operating with Rommel’s force, the Sonderkommando. Almasy knew these deserts well, and had explored them before the war when he launched several expeditions with other British explorers to search for a legendary lost Oasis in the Libyan desert called Zerzura. The place was rumored to be a fertile, hidden valley, accessible only through a hidden wadi that ran between two mountains. There it had been reported that strange men held forth, tall, blue eyed and with very unusual speech and weapons. One legend held that they were Crusading knights who had become lost in the desert on the way to Jerusalem, and founded a city of bleached white stone that ran with fresh water from hidden springs and wells, the fabled land of Zerzura.
Almasy had searched for it in 1932 and the spring of 1933, and had also crossed the Great Sand Sea, and explored the other well known oasis sites like Kufra, Bayhira, Giarabub and Siwa. He was the Deutsche Afrika Korps’ answer and foil to men like Popski and the British Long Range Desert Group, and had actually worked with many of the men now serving in those units before the war. He met and traveled with Godfrey Jones Penderel, a WWI ace who was presently flying reconnaissance with No. 201 Group R.A.F., and Sir Patrick Clayton, who became the official
surveyor of the Libyan Desert and later joined the L.R.D.G.
Almasy did not know it at the time, but at that very moment, Major Clayton was out with T Patrol with 30 men and 11 trucks of the L.R.D.G., in a planned operation against the Italian Held Kufra Oasis. His small band would be spotted by an Italian airplane, and soon engaged by a much larger force of the Italian Auto Saharan Company, and Clayton would be wounded and captured that very morning.
The intrepid Hungarian arrived at Rommel’s command tent just after midnight, eager to get new orders directly from the General.
“Here,” said Rommel, fingering his map. “The Carpathian Brigade was seen in this area. I want you to get over there tonight and have a good look around. But take your time. Move south with the other Oasis Patrols, and see what you find. Note the condition of the ground. Find the enemy flank, and then find me a way to move east around their left shoulder. I’m told you’re a man of some experience in these deserts. You should know what to do.”
Hauptmann Almasy saluted, assuring Rommel he would return before dawn, and that he had every confidence that he could find an easy way around the enemy flank.
It was the last thing he ever said that he thought he could be sure of, for this would not be another simple night reconnaissance for his Sonderkommando. The border zone he was about to scout now was the edge of oblivion, and the enemy looming like a vast shadow on that frontier were apparitions from another world.
