Three Kings (Kirov Series) by John Schettler Page B

trenches just as
the Matilda’s of the 7th Royal Tank Regiment came rumbling into their camp,
along with infantry of the 11th Indian Brigade.
    The
Italians had a battalion of light tanks in their Maletti Group, consisting of thirty-five M11/39 medium tanks and an equal number of
L3/35 light tankettes . Their crews were just settling
in to morning breakfast when the attack came in. Twenty-three of the better
tanks had been deployed to guard the entrance to the camp, where no mines had
been sewn, and this was where the 43 Matildas of the 7th RTR were heading. They
caught the Italian armor completely by surprise, their 2 pounder guns brewing
up one tank after another in the opening salvoes, some before the shocked tank
crews even had time to reach their vehicles.
    General Maletti ran from his dugout field bunker and was cut
down before he could utter a single order, so he did not see the systematic
destruction of his unit, wiped out in just ten minutes by the heavier British
tanks.
    As the
alarm was raised, frightened Italian soldiers grabbed any weapon they could
find. Some fought, others ran for cover. Frantic artillery crews tried to turn their
field pieces on the British tanks, firing at near point blank range, yet they
were astonished to see their rounds simply could not penetrate the heavy armor
on the Matildas. Faced with an enemy they could not kill, the camps fell one by
one, the first easily, the second more stubbornly, but the outcome was the
same. The Matildas would breach the enemy perimeter, and the Indian infantry
would follow them in, rooting out one fox hole and machine gun nest after
another.
    Along
the coast, a mixed force of 1800 troops under Brigadier General Selby was
coming up from Mersa Matruh .
They had been busy earlier building dummy wooden tanks inland in the desert as
a good target for the Italian planes if they showed up, all a part of the
deception O’Connor had planned.
    By mid
day the inland encampments had fallen and the British were mounting up the
infantry in lorries to move on the coastal town of Sidi Barani . The thirsty Matildas had refueled and taken
on fresh ammunition, and the bulk of all the 7th Armored Division’s artillery
was setting up to support this renewed attack. By nightfall the town had fallen
and the British column had reached the sea, bagging several Italian divisions
that were now cut off from any escape.
    The
Italians began to surrender en masse, causing a snarl as groups of 2000 men
might be herded off by no more than a platoon of British soldiers to watch
them. The fight had simply gone out of them. They were conscripts, sent by
Mussolini to conquer Egypt, but had little real stomach for combat once cut off
and with no sign of relief anywhere apparent.
    “O’Connor’s
Raid” had been a resounding success, yet it was not over in spite of an
unexpected setback when General Wavell radioed to inform O’Connor that the 4th
Indian Division must now be withdrawn for duty in the Sudan.
    O’Connor
was surprised by the news, as he had not been told about this in advance, and
it was most disconcerting. He would get the 6th Australian Division as a
replacement, but not for some days, which meant he would have no infantry
support. Any other commander would have stopped his offensive there and then,
but O’Connor was determined to exploit his initial successes, and decided to
press forward with 7th Armored Division alone. He would soon turn the Italian retreat
into a rout of historic proportions, a debacle in the desert not replicated
again until the 1st Gulf War when half a million Coalition troops routed the
armies of Saddam Hussein in Kuwait.
    But
O’Connor did not have half a million men. He had begun his offensive with no
more than 30,000 against a force of 150,000 Italians. He had destroyed 73
Italian tanks, 237 artillery pieces and bagged over 38,000 prisoners in the
first round of fighting. In doing so he had taken only 70 casualties. Now his
numbers were cut in