[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.He was sorry about the crew, of course, but shrugged off theaccident philosophically. Just goes to show how quickly it cancome to you, he told Lucie.157 david irvingThe Comingof CrusaderIt is a rainy night three months later Þö in mid-November 1941.Libya is having one of the worst rainstorms in years.Long, drywadis have become torrential rivers that roll boulders onto thetroops bivouacking in them and wash away tanks and trucks; air-fields are flooded and telephone lines torn down.At thirty minutes past midnight, half a dozen shadowy fig-ures run toward the squat two-story Prefettura building at BedaLittoria, built on the coast near Cyrene, in a cypress grove.Theyjump the German sentry guarding the entrance and force theirway in.They are British commandos.A British officer living inthe town in the disguise of an Arab has identified the building tothem as the headquarters of Rommel s Panzergruppe Afrika.Thesentry tries to raise the alarm.A salvo of shots spread-eagles himin the corridor, but the shots wake the men in the ground flooroffice of the chief armorer s section.Technical Sergeant Kurt Lentzen looks out with a flashlightÞö a burst of Sten gun fire hits him.Lieutenant Kaufholz drawshis revolver, but the Sten gun splatters him in the chest and arms.Hand grenades are tossed into the room and explode with a158 the trail of the foxshattering roar.The lights of the whole building go out Þö itselectricity generator has also been blown up.The noise has alerted the Panzer Group s chief engineer,Major Barthel, and Rommel s assistant quartermaster, CaptainWeiz, both in conference upstairs.They sound the alarm, lockaway their secret files and grab revolvers.By flashlight they cansee a body lying outside the office downstairs Þö so they both re-port later in writing to Rommel Þö and firing is still going onaround the building.They wait awhile, until the firing andshouting cease.By the time they get downstairs, the body has gone, leaving atrail of blood.The chief armorer s office is a shambles Þö waterfrom a shattered radiator is already an inch deep on the floor,mingling with the blood of the other men.Here is PrivateKovacic, his stomach torn open by the blast.There is Kaufholz,moaning barely audibly: I m bleeding Þö bleeding to death. Bothmen die soon after.Outside, patrols find Lieutenant Jäger Þö shotdead as he jumped out of the window.Farther away is the body ofa British major.The blood trail evidently came from him.Nearbyis an injured British army captain, dressed, like the dead major, inkhaki overalls and crepe-soled shoes.Of the other intruders thereis no trace.Rommel s staff examine the contents of the two men sknapsacks Þö more explosives, fuses, detonators, grenades.On themajor s body they also find Egyptian and Italian money, a girl sphotograph, a leather diary Þö which identifies him as MajorGeoffrey Keyes, leader of a twelve-man commando killer squad Þöand other trappings of his trade.Both he and the prisoner haveseveral days growth of beard.The Panzer Group s investigationsestablish that they and their companions were landed some daysback from British submarines, with orders to eliminate Rommeland Bastico and to blow up an important telegraph mast on the159 david irvingeve of a major British offensive.Keyes was killed by one of his ownmen in the confusion, and the daring raid collapsed.Rommel scanned the reports and shook his head in puzzlement.Why Beda Littoria, of all places? Did the enemy really believe thathe, Rommel, would lead his troops from a safe headquarters 200miles to the rear? The Italians had, admittedly, given him theaustere Prefettura building, and he had dutifully set up his Pan-zer Group headquarters there on August 14, 1941, but he had in-stantly disliked it.The food was too good Þö he remarked that hefelt like a real military plutocrat Þö and the scenery, 2,000 feetabove sea level, was too lush.Beda Littoria was well out of dangerÞö well out, he impatiently told Lucie.After just ten days therehe handed the Prefettura over to his quartermaster s staff, andloaded his own grumbling officers onto trucks to take them to anew headquarters much closer to the battlefields, in the square,white-painted cantoniera Þö roadhouse Þö at Gazala. From thereI ll have more influence on the course of events, he wrote.Major Keyes was buried with full military honors a few daysafter the fiasco, side by side with the four men from Rommel squartermaster staff who also died.The joint military funeral wassymbolic of the chivalry that Rommel encouraged in his men.Rommel s own manuscripts fall silent after Sollum and do not re-sume their narrative until the spring of 1942.But I shortly chancedon a fascinating, very useful document.In an archive guide I saw areference to a notebook of an adjutant at an African headquar-ters and asked to see it.An hour later it was lying before me, stilldusty and unopened these last thirty years or more Þö a grubby,Italian-made notebook with a black calico cover.Its 270 pages werecovered with shorthand writing, but isolated words stood out Þö To-bruk, commander in chief, the names of Rommel s generals.160 the trail of the foxIt proved impossible to find anybody conversant with both thisshorthand system (in Germany there are half a dozen systems) andSecond World War terminology.A sample transcript of two pages,done by a specialist firm in Bavaria, proved unacceptable.The heapof shorthand pages tantalized me for many months, until my ownsecretary, a woman born in Düsseldorf, caught sight of them andannounced: I think I can transcribe them! It s not easy to inter-pret a stranger s shorthand, but for 200 hours she worked at it, dic-tating her transcript to me while I typed it.Over the next year wekept going back to the more stubborn portions, until we hadcracked the whole document.It turned out to be the long-lostRommel diary.It had been dictated by Rommel and his staff eachday and taken down by his secretary, Corporal Albert Böttcher.Thiswas a find of considerable significance, and it yielded many sur-prises.On Rommel s return to Bardia from Rome in August, his doctorshad diagnosed jaundice and prescribed a bland diet and muchrest.He adopted the diet but ignored the other advice.Remarka-bly he survived his own obstinacy Þö but he was not well, and heknew it, suffering particularly from the gastric disorders thatplagued both friend and foe.(In September he wrote to Luciewith a forced humor that he had been stricken again: It s goingto be the usual three-day race, he said.) His troops heard that hewas ill and sent him gifts of fruit, eggs, potatoes and live chickens,bought after hard bargaining with haggling Arabs.His commanders might grumble, but his troops loved him.They were not a hand-picked elite, but somehow he gave themthe feeling that they were.Major Friedrich Wilhelm von Mellen-thin, the amiable cavalry officer who was his new intelligence offi-cer, put it like this: Between Rommel and his troops there wasthat mutual understanding that cannot be explained and ana-161 david irvinglyzed, but which is the gift of the gods.The men knew that Rommel was the last man Rommel spared; they saw him in theirmidst, and they felt, This is our leader. He knew how to makethem feel somehow immortal.Take this spontaneous remark byRommel to the cameramen of a propaganda company, recordedby his interpreter Wilfried Armbruster in his diary: Tell yourmen to shave off their beards
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]