Free Three Kings (Kirov Series) by John Schettler

not
stopped, he will soon pose a threat to Tripoli as well.”
    “Who is this man you speak of?
You make him out to be a demigod!”
    “General O’Connor.”
    “O’Connor?” Hitler may have been
briefed on the matter, but it was one of those many minor details of the war
that slipped from his mind. “Why should I worry over a single British General?
They were no bother in France.”
    Volkov smiled, then he was deadly
serious again. “Listen to me,” he said. “Forces are present in this world that
could unhinge everything we have been planning if they are not countered. This
man is dangerous. He must be stopped, and I have every faith that you can
handle the matter. It may need a good general of your own to match him, and
German troops. And do not be stingy! If you send any force to North Africa, it
must be strong. Don’t think the Italians will ever take Egypt for you, not
while that man remains undefeated—General Richard O’Connor.”
     
     
     
    Part
III
     
    Compass
     
    “Because your own strength is unequal to
the task, do not assume that it is beyond the powers of man; but if anything is
within the powers and province of man, believe that it is within your own
compass also.”
     
    ― Marcus
Aurelius

 
     
    Chapter 7
     
    General Archibald Wavell
was a singularly important man in the hierarchy of British war plans late in 1940.
After a wave of bitter reversals, it was his theater that would have the honor
of launching the first counteroffensive against the Axis forces, and much was
riding on its outcome. The British had been looking for some way to get back on
their feet after the hard knockdowns they had suffered in the early rounds with
Germany. The most recent setback at Gibraltar was a hard right cross to the
chin that had been delivered by Operation Felix, a blow that evicted the Royal
Navy from one of its oldest and most important bases. The whole of the Western
Mediterranean was now lost, with enemies on every shore until the tempestuous
waves washed ashore over a thousand miles to the east on the tiny island of
Malta.
    Wavell, the nominal Commander of
all British Operations in the Middle East, was soon to be thrust into the fire
of war, with threats on every side. On his immediate western front The Italian
10th Army under General Rodolfo Graziani had crept across the wire into Egypt,
setting up a series of armed camps as they came, and pushing all the way to Sidi Barani on the coast. Behind
him, across the searing deserts of Jordan and Arabia, the coup de tat staged by
the Golden Square and Rashid Ali in Iraq was now threatening R.A.F. Habbiniyah and the British Petroleum oil concerns near
Basra. North on the borders of Palestine, a hostile Vichy French presence in
Syria threatened to become a danger to his right flank if reinforced by
Germany, and the wolves were coming, slowly devouring the Balkans as columns of
tanks and infantry pressed a relentless attack that had swept all the way to
Greece as the bitter year of 1940 began to wither and die.
    With threats on every side, and a
supply line that stretched over 12,000 miles, all the way around the Cape of
Good Hope, Wavell was now at the center of a gathering storm, and with
impossible orders issued from Whitehall—attack!
    Churchill had promised him more
armor, sent the 6th Australian Division, and troops from India had been rushed
to fill the ranks, yet with no more than five divisions, he was opposed by two
times that number in General Graziani’s force, and also faced with an active
war front to his south in the Horn of Africa. It was a typical case of finding
oneself surrounded by threats on every compass heading, and something had to be
done.
    The solution would be to take on
the most imminent threat, and turn his own compass needle due West against the
encroaching Italians. He knew Whitehall was correct in prodding him to action.
To sit there and wait for his enemies to slowly invest Egypt in a stranglehold
of steel would invite