The Germans took heart, suddenly seeing platoons of their own tanks charging from the shadow of a long elevation, Hill 209 to the east. But their jubilation was short lived when they saw one tank after another blasted apart, turrets flung wildly into the air with the impact of devastating rounds. Just three enemy tanks had stopped the entire German formation. The Panzers had fired bravely, but their guns did no more damage than the 47mm guns in the Panzerjager units. Dismayed to see that even the powerful 88s had no effect on these new British tanks, a barely restrained panic set in.
All down the line it was much the same. The Challengers stunned the defense, eliminating any potential threat to the lighter skinned infantry carriers. The Warriors stood off and used the range and firepower of their 40mm cannons to pound the German infantry positions. Kummel survived, making the shadow of the hillock just in time, but the 5th MG Battalion was now being decimated by these fierce new British armored vehicles. 8th MG Battalion to the east fared little better.
Ten minutes later Bowers had his Challenger II up on Hill 222 where Streich had taken up his position that fateful morning. From there he could see the enemy retreat was now well underway. Pockets of infantry scurried back from their holes, seeking the protection of a low escarpment on his right. The thin track he was on headed that direction, and his digital map showed it would work its way about four kilometers north through increasingly broken ground to a place called Bir el Khamsa.
2nd Sabre was on that flank mopping up the enemy tankettes that had attacked them. That was how he saw the Panzer IIIs, and could not imagine what possessed the enemy to dare an attack against his Challengers with vehicles that light. Then he remembered his briefing, shaking himself to try and get the message. Those weren’t Egyptian radicals out there this time. The evidence was plain to see all around him now-two mangled heavy guns, a third abandoned, and men lying dead in the rising sun, all wearing the uniforms of the German army from the Second World War.
“Hey Lieutenant,” said his gunner. “Just who are these guys? Those tanks we hit looked like relics.”
Bowers looked at him, saying nothing. “Just watch your thermals, Mister Alten. I don’t care who they are while they’re shooting at us.”
He got on his comm-link radio, seeing 2nd Sabre was well ahead of his position now, rounding Hill 205 and approaching a water cairn site south of Alam Uweida on the right. “Sabre two, any further opposition? Over.”
“Looks like we have them on the run, Lieutenant. Shall I push on to Bir El Khamsa?”
Bowers had been told what to expect in the briefing before the fight, but he could not believe it. Yet now the evidence was all around him, littering the ground with the carnage of what was once a fairly well established enemy position. He had been told to break it, and move it, and that he did. Yet a quick check with HQ on the situation handed him an order to stop in place and await further orders. He remembered Kinlan’s final admonition about conserving ammo, and suspected that it was the real reason behind that order.
I could take my tanks right on through, he thought. But my God… what’s out there? This whole damn thing is true! What in the mad hatter’s world has happened to us? Then he realized that men in all his tanks, and the soldiers in the Warriors that were now deploying to work over the ground around them for any threats, would all have this same bemused question. Now he knew why Kinlan was stopping here.
Yes. Easy does it, he thought. Kinlan wants to wade in gently here, and expose the men to this madness by slow degrees. In the heat of battle you move and fight, picking targets, firing, a thing of synapse and long hours of training and drill. Now, here, on this blasted hill with the wreckage of war all about them, the questions come, whispering up like the ghosts of these men laying dead here.
He knew that every man out there would soon be asking them, just as his gunner had-what was going on here? Who were these men they had fought this day? What had happened to us? He keyed his headset and confirmed his order.
“Rodger that, Brigade. Holding in place and awaiting orders. Sabre Three standing by. Over and out.”
The Afrika Korps was not holding in place. The line had been smashed. 605th Heavy Flak was down to three guns now. 5th and 8th Machinegun Battalions had retreated in the face of the enemy attack, barely making it to their vehicle parks where the disheartened men were scrambling up onto the trucks and hoping they still had fuel to get north. Kummel’s company came out of the action with seven of his eighteen Panzer IIIs intact. He soon learned that the entire battalion had been beaten up, with third company all but destroyed.
