“It ain’t over until we say it’s over.” – Animal House
After one victory, I threw my ball into the crowd. The people at the bowling alley did not like that.
This is not going to be a typical Wednesday post. I had one planned out, notes ready. Then, while smoking soon to be worthless Federal Reserve Notes™ while drinking one my last bottles of Leftist Tears© from 2016, I changed my mind about what I was going to post about. I think you’ll like it. And the best part is I already have notes for next week.
I first heard about the following story from Lindybeige. His video is below. It’s long, at nearly an hour. It also has the very best commercial for ear buds (in the middle of the video) that I’ve ever watched.
On February 26, 1943, German forces in Tunisia began an attack toward the west.
American and British troops were to the west of Tunisia in Algeria, and British troops were to the east, based out of Egypt. The idea of the attack was to cut off the British and American troops in the west, so the British troops coming out of Libya and Egypt could be defeated in the east.
North Africa was a mess for the Germans. The British were doing a magnificent job sinking Axis supplies, so they were running out of stuff they needed to make war. The Axis had also lost most of its territory: the Italians and Germans had been kicked out of Libya and were just barely hanging on in Tunisia, whereas the British were desperate to take Tunisia so George Lucas could film Star Wars® there in 1975.
Fun fact: Star Wars© is closer in time to World War II than it is to 2020.
Of course, in the last interaction I had with the police, it was the goat they were looking for.
The Italians hadn’t switched sides yet, so they were still fighting alongside of the Germans in North Africa. Like Mitt Romney, the Italians tend to switch sides quite a bit. I heard a rumor that the Italians were going to switch sides and join with COVID-19 and fight against humanity this August, but that hasn’t happened.
Yet.
Anyway, the German operation had the super sexy name of Operation Oxhead, which also describes the operational name I gave to my divorce. Also, like my divorce, it was a last ditch effort to maintain my sanity. The German word for Oxhead is “Ochsenkopf” which is what I imagine Germans yell at each other during sex.
As part of the Operation, a German colonel named Rudolf Lang was given command of a pretty significant body of tanks and troops. He had 77 tanks. For a battle in North Africa, that was a pretty sizable force. He also had a technical advantage – of those 77 tanks, 20 were the new Tiger tanks.
Tiger tanks were big and slow, but they were well armored and likely the most technically advanced tanks in North Africa at the time. Heck, they might have been the best tanks in the world at the time. To have 20 of them was quite an advantage. And the Tiger was far better than the Swiss tanks, which were always in neutral.
I’m really into turrets. I love tank tops.
Lang was supposed to attack up a mountain pass, Hunt’s Gap, and the only thing in his way to achieving his objective was the 5th Battalion of the Hampshire Regiment and the 155th Battery of the 172nd Field Regiment Royal Artillery. Certainly that sounds pretty impressive if you don’t speak military, but the 5th Battalion probably was somewhere between 400 and 600 soldiers and officers, whereas the 155th Battery was 130 soldiers and officers. So, somewhere between 600 and 700 guys.
Lang had 300 guys just sitting in tanks. There were at least another 13,000 soldiers, many of which had already seen combat on the Eastern Front. All of Lang’s troops were headed for those 600 or 700 guys.
At least the British were highly trained, right?
No. Those 600 or 700 guys who were trained in lightning fashion and mostly hadn’t seen any combat besides a fight over a girl in a pub. So, unless you counted numerical superiority, experience, or weapons superiority, the British had everything possible going for them.
There is a moment in time that you know that life is about to become very challenging. That happened for the British troops around 6:30am on February 26 when they came under mortar fire. Mortars are those tubes that you see soldiers drop ammunition in before it goes “fwoop” and shoots up in a ballistic arc. The German mortars had a maximum range of about a mile.
Was this the 1943 version of a “free continental breakfast”?
The guns the 155th Battery had were 25 pounders, but they only had 8 of them. These had a range of ten miles. For a fight to occur with the enemy at less than a mile wasn’t what they were set up for.
The German mortar fire was accurate. But the British held.
Then? All the things that you might imagine if you were living a nightmare where you were waiting for happened. The Tiger tanks showed up around 11AM. And the British took out four of them. The Germans withdrew, until 1PM when they showed up again, within 600 yards with thirty tanks. And they had company, with 8 Bf-109 Messerschmitt fighters, who generally shot up the place, setting the British ammunition and explosives on fire.
The British, realizing they had to have ammunition, actually unloaded the ammo from the burning trucks. The British knocked out another three tanks. Again, the Germans withdrew.
At 5:30PM the next attack began. Tank fire took out British cannon, one at a time, with some fighting between tank and 25 pounder taking place at 10 yards or less. I personally can’t imagine the courage that took, launching an artillery shell designed to go miles at a tank right in front of you. Since they were using armor-piercing shells, the also had to use the highest propellant load.
Courage, plain and simple. The last voice message on the radio was, “Tanks are upon us.”
I can’t find casualty figures for the infantry. I’m sure the numbers were horrible. The survivors eventually broke and escaped to the west, probably not long after the 5:30PM attack started.
The artillery? When the day started, there were 130 men, as I mentioned. Nine made it back to British lines, and seven of those were wounded. Several were taken as POWs, and survived the war, but I don’t have a definitive number.
This is the same model that was used by the 155th.
It sounds like this might have been a useless activity, but it wasn’t. The actions of the 155th Battery slowed the Germans down long enough so that the British were able to put together a defense to turn them back. This blunted the German attack, and the last German offensive in North Africa was over. A few months later, 250,000 Axis troops would surrender in North Africa. This was at least partially because the 155th held.
Their sacrifice turned the tide of battle. Whenever you feel that you can’t win, well, you might not win. But continuing to fight the good fight for as long as you can may help others win.
Rudolf Lang, the German commander, even got a nickname from his own troops after the battle – Panzer Killer – I was able to find the dispatch online which was sent to Berlin where it was mentioned by his superior officer. Now, that sure sounds like a cool nickname. But when it’s given to you by guys whose job it is to drive Panzers?
Not so much.
I said the last voice message from the 155th was, “Tanks are upon us.” That, however, wasn’t the last message the 155th sent. There was one more message, in Morse code:
. . . –
If you think of this as a sound, think of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, that’s the sound, and that dot-dot-dot-dash was played on every BBC broadcast during the war. It’s a letter.
. . . – is the letter V.
For Victory.
Your effort matters.
I get what you’re saying. Does this mean I have to send more money to Wayne Lapierre?
I’d spend more money on brass, lead, and powder. But that’s just me.
I wonder what the Brits holding their position would have done if you showed them videos of what London looks like in 2020.
Agreed. Makes you wonder what changed?
Hmmm.
Testing anti-tank weapons was my job before I retired. By no means am I detracting from the bravery of the British troops, but the style tank warfare they engaged in is completely obsolete. The US has manufactured and has in storage a mind-boggling number of CBU-105 cluster bomb munitions and you do NOT want to be in a tank when the decision is made to use these things on you. It is astounding how much steel armor these things can penetrate and the effect molten metal has on the inside of a tank. The tank may look undamaged with just a small hole in it. Nevertheless, it has been destroyed.
Enjoy the music.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ng32n0fdK2c
The average American has no idea of what cluster bombs can do and the sheer number and variety of them in the American arsenal.
http://www.the-monitor.org/en-gb/reports/2019/united-states/cluster-munition-ban-policy.aspx
The future will be even worse because killer robots…
https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidhambling/2020/06/01/why-new-us-armys-tank-killing-drone-swarm-may-be-a-weapon-of-mass-destruction/#7dcb2f12ece8
But your point is not about the rise of technology, it is about the importance of courage and commitment. You’d better be right.
https://www.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/2020-08-11%20%281%29.png?itok=SaCybLcR
Artillery is obsolete until you establish an effective air defense system. Or fight in a city. Or a forest. Then, suddenly, artillery is king again.
Well, the Air Force is trying to get our fighter force down to one super-invincible jet. It only costs $3 trillion and 40 years to build.
Courage and commitment is all we have. I don’t think I’m wrong . . . because just the readers here are proof that freedom has fans.
John,
Thanks for putting it in such stark terms. We should all make our peace with that.
For those who need a similar story with a better outcome, I recommend “The Damned Engineers”. It’s the story of the 291st Engineer Battalion and how they blunted the German advance during The Battle of the Bulge.
Opie Odd
Thanks, Opie! There are so many stories of bravery out there, I’m glad you shared that one.
The Germans should have took Malta instead of Crete. Rommel never got a full stock of supplies because Malta was an aircraft carrier, submarine base and it was Eastern Front Über Alles to the Austrian corporal AKA Der Führer.
Those troops who got away at Dunkirk later harassed the Deutsche Afrika Korps (DAK) and the wasted army at Stalingrad could have been useful in North Africa.
The plan was to go beyond Stalingrad and then advance through Russia to the middle east to meet up with Rommel. There is also a huge oilfields stash just beyond what is now known as Volgograd. No war making without the petrol.
The Fallschirmjäger (Paratroopers) were only used as ground troops after the pyric victory at Crete. It also depleted the supply of Junkers Ju-52 trimotor supply planes which were able to bail out the Demyansk/Cholm pocket in Russia.
There was an attempt to relieve Stalingrad with these supply planes but it was doomed to fail.
You have to have some grasp on the big picture even if it is a small portion of the overall panorama.
Hitler had none and was so doped up by Dr. Morrell who was dubbed the Reich’s Injection Minister that victory was not an option.
I think the petrol was important. If that had been the main objective of Barbarossa? Different outcome?
“There was one more message, in Morse code:
. . . –”
Dang it’s dusty in here
Brave men. The world needs ’em. They’ll be back again.
Done my work, not yet time to make supper, and I sit down with my mind julep to read Wednesday Wilder.
No question you had a Better Idea with this one.
Thank you! That other post may never be written. But I had to write this one.
John,
Are you starting a new product line?
Maybe an endorsement deal in your future?
https://www.providentmetals.com/30-gram-silver-rubber-duck-pez-wafers-dispenser-pamp-suisse.html
Strange times.
I LOVE IT! If only it came in gold and lead.
“Tiger tanks were big and slow, but they were well armored and likely the most technically advanced tanks in North Africa at the time. Heck, they might have been the best tanks in the world at the time.”
According to some of the reading I have been doing lately the reputation that the Tiger and Panzer tanks had is somewhat overblown. They were fuel inefficient meaning that they couldn’t operate without long supply chains and maintenance heavy, meaning they could not operate for long without being worked on. The Sherman, although lighter and with less armor, could (and did) operate for days without much maintenance and could travel significant distances on a single tank of fuel.
The German tanks got their reputation because they were fighting a defensive war. Heavily armored and heavily gunned is an advantage if you are digging in to prevent the enemy advance.
The Tigers had great armor and a really, really great gun. Yup, slow, and they had transmission issues at first. But I would have rather been in a Tiger than a Sherman.
Years ago I saw Saving Private Ryan. It was an extraordinary film that moved me deeply, and made me ask questions. I had been asking questions for some time, in my quest to understand What Was Going On and How Did It Get To Be This Way When There Was So Much Potential?
I did not always find answers.
That being said, some of the questions I asked were of veterans I would encounter in my job (at the time) working for a busy moving company. I would encounter elderly persons, determine that they had served (usually in WWII), and establish a rapport with them. Being genuine with people sets them at ease, and I am blessed to possess that facility.
What I asked them were essentially variations on the following:
When you enlisted, or went off to war, you were told certain things about why it was necessary, and what the objectives were. With everything you have seen since, is what you see around you now worth those sacrifices? Is this what you had in mind when you joined the fight? Are you happy with where we have got to, in our society, in our social developments, in the way we live and do things?
In every case, the answer I received was uniformly No. They were deeply concerned with the direction they saw things taking, for different reasons and from different perspectives, but every one of them was also extremely disappointed.
I have never forgot this.
The difference between the calibre of citizens that stood for something, and those today that will fall for anything, is astonishing.
Thank you for bringing this story forward, Mr Wilder.
That’s a heck of a story – it’s been running around my head since I read it. I think you’re right – a typical family in 1940 would be appalled by the morality in evidence today.
Patton apparently was toward the end of the war . . . .