Sorry about having to release this story. There was a glitch trying to change chapters. I forgot the actual chapter 8 and no matter how much I tried to replace it with the right one it was thinking it was the original chapter 8 (which was chapter 9). From now on I'll forgo all chapter indicators. They aren't needed they were a holdover from way back when I first started in the mid 00s.
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"TAKE COVER!"
The whistling of mortar fire forced the Englishman known as David Stirling to duck his head and dive for cover underneath a dead Lorrie. It was hard to believe that he had found himself in this situation. Malta, a fortress island that had stood for so long under British dominance, was on the verge of collapse.
Incomprehensible was not a word to describe how Stirling felt. To think that it was only three weeks to find him in this situation.
Malta, unlike what many had thought, was done very carefully. The landing was not like Crete. It was done with a significant more subterfuge on the part of the Axis. Gozo and Comino Islands had fallen in the first three days to a surprise landing made by Italian parachutists from the Folgore brigade and Luftwaffe Fallschirmjäger. They captured the docks of Sennant and Xlendi. It wasn't long before the first Kriegsmarine and Regia Marina barges and transports arrived from the built-up forces in Libya and Egypt. Before they knew it, tens of thousands of Germans and Italians had invaded the northern islands. The resistance against the attack was mostly token, the build-up and defence were devoted to the main island.
At first, he and the rest of the garrison command weren't sure what the hell the Germans and Italians had to gain from taking a strategically unimportant section. That was when they spotted him, Erwin Rommel landed on Gozo, surrounded by his fellow commanders including one of which that was an unwelcoming sight.
It was Josef 'Sepp' Dietrich, the infamous head of the 1st SS Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler Division.
His presence meant only one thing. Rommel had taken the poison pill and accepted the political army of the Reich into his theatre. Well, it did not matter, according to the heads in England. Malta was to be defended at all cost. Malta was the last stronghold tying Germany and Italy up from mounting their campaign across the Suez Canal.
But that had been a week ago. Rommel and his men had dug into the island and simply sat there and waited. For two weeks they waited, built up a large attacking force and instead of doing what Rommel did best: Attacking, they instead sat there and waited. No one was sure way they had done so. Perhaps to strain the nerves back home, make the defenders overconfident that Malta was impenetrable to anything the great Desert Fox could throw at them.
Then it happened.
A roar erupted over the island fortress one night at midnight, a strange electrical disturbance. One moment he was sitting under a light writing a letter home, the next the light bulb was dead, as was every single device that required electricity to work; and he meant everything: light bulbs, wiring, radio transmitters, radar towers, and engines in the tanks, jeeps, lorries and aircraft…. It was all completely fried and no one had a bloody clue how such a queer occurrence could happen, and yet just across the short ferry ride to Gozo, everything the Germans had worked still.
The naval, artillery and aerial bombardment commenced almost unopposed to the blinded garrison, but everyone held on, they did their best to fight blindly with zero air cover. By morning, most of the garrison's heavy weaponry had been smashed and the first of the invasion barges and captured ferries approached.
It would be five days of heavy fighting before David Stirling, the last of his SAS regiment, four battered Malta brigades and a handful of scattered royal marine units took refuge in the last bastion of defence on the Maltese island, Fort St. Angelo, bringing livestock to tow in what remained of the British Artillery and munitions that they could salvage from the encroaching Afrika Korps. It was almost as though they had returned to the days of medieval Europe. It wasn't long after that, that the frightened people of Malta tried to seek sanctuary. The best that Stirling could do was to hide them in the Church and just under the fortress in sewers. There he left a platoon of local militia and several marines to keep that tunnel safe.
Pulling himself up from his cover at the renewed light mortar fire, David Stirling grabbed his Bren gun and headed back the winding stairs to the top of the great walls where the rest of his men stood guard, shooting at everyone they could see.
"Sir! Armoured cars are on the approach!" a marine called to him from the watch tower. "We got a self-propelled gun a few hundred meters behind them and moving fast on us!"
"Get that six-pounder up to the opening in the front wall!" Stirling commanded right away as he ducked a renewed machine gun fire which chipped away at the walls they hid behind. "We'll see if we can lure them."
Several of the soldiers obliged the Colonel. Another Maltese corporal dropped down beside him, his eyes wide, his face covered in grime.
"I can count five, maybe six MG-42 nests set up in the adjacent buildings! My squad tried dislodging them-"
The screaming wail of a Stuka dive bomber blared overhead. Above them was a pair of them, aiming at the courtyard of the vast fortress and the walls defending against the attacks. Stirling and the rest of his men scrambled to get out of the way as the two ground attack fighters hit their positions with cannon fire. Several of the defenders was torn to pieces by the heavy round meant to kill tanks, not infantry.
The four 40mm Bofors guns targeted the Stuka's, tearing apart one of the planes and scaring off the other. It gave Stirling a moment to roll over push the torso off his arm and get back up onto his feet. Coughing, he listened to the moans of several of the Malta militia, wounded terribly. Gripping his side, the Colonel turned away.
"Get a medic out here, the rest of you back into positions!"
"BERSAGLIERI!"
Few Italian military units gave Stirling pause. The Bersaglieri were one of those rare units. Amidst the mediocrity that was the Italian Royal Army stood quite possibly the most impressive and flamboyant group of fighter's Stirling had fought coming from south of Germany. They didn't back down, they didn't retreat. They pressed the attack or stood their ground until they were relieved.
Stirling bolted towards the private who made the claim and looked over the side of the wall. Sure enough, there were men clad in black uniforms, wide-brim sandy helmets with trailing cock feathers planted into the side. He would have thought they looked queer had he not known that appearances were deceptive.
Carcano and Beretta fire erupted around their position, catching several of his men. Stirling responded with his Bren, along with the rest of the defenders of the western wall. It was enough fire to kill several of them, but it wasn't enough to slow them down. Before they knew it, the Italians had reached the wall and were hurling hand grenade over the fortress walls as a means to supreme the English.
An explosion rocketed against the side of the wall, shaking where Stirling stood to fight. He looked over and saw the Stug taking potshots in front of the fortress in an attempt to crack the defences. The tank was hit twice in quick succession by the six-pounder. It shrugged off the first blow, the second hit was much more devastating, smashing the vehicle's track off, thereby immobilizing the gun on tracks.
Just as a third shot was to be taken, a platoon of Afrika Korps appeared from around the cover of the buildings surrounding the Fortress, firing and killing the three men AT crew. They surrounded the tank and forced the English defenders to duck while they evacuated the crew and retreated to their cover under the protection of the MG-42 gun nests providing cover.
Suddenly the wall underneath Stirling exploded inwards where the Bersaglieri had been. Stirling could only assume that they had been carrying some sort of shaped charges. It was only a matter of moments before through the smoke came two dozen screaming Italians, laying fire on the anti-aircraft guns and killing the crews before turning back to fight the men on the wall.
Slamming in a fresh magazine, Stirling and his men unloaded on the Italians, who dove for cover as they shot in every direction. With fire coming from inside the perimeter, the English defenders were now ensnared on both sides. Shooting down two of the elite soldiers, Stirling primed a hand grenade and hit the group with a deafening explosion.
It worked, but not in the way that Stirling and the defenders wanted it to do. The Italians pulled out of the courtyard but had bolted inside the nearest doors inside of the Fortress and had simply vanished. Stirling narrowed his eyes and glanced back to his men. On one hand, they had infiltrated the last bastion of defence. On the other hand, he could not let any more Jerries or Italians through the defences. He had to move a Vickers machine gun to where the Bersaglieri had attacked, further stretching out his defences.
"JESUS CHRIST, THREE MARK IV's APPROACHING!"
Any focus he had on the small group of soldiers who broke through was gone. They had stopped those god-forsaken behemoths.
"Mackenzie, take a squad and find them! Eriksson, you and your chaps get down there on the Bofors. They're the only thing keeping the Luftwaffe from shoving a pineapple up our asses!" Stirling laid down the new orders as he reloaded his Bren with the last few magazines he had left. "The rest of you, find anything bigger than a rifle and get back to work! We have to stop those tanks!"
God help him, he should have personally chased those Italians….
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"Crazy, godforsaken Germans, why is it when we tell them that an assault on this place would be too costly do they go ahead and do it anyway? Eight good men dead to open a single fucking door."
Sottotenente Luca Calabrese ignored Carporal Amoretto's grumblings and winced slightly as the much taller, mensur-scarred Austrian stamped past the Italians gathered around. He dropped his helmet and pulled on his brimmed forage cap, his strange rifle, more exotic than Luca had ever seen before raised and ready to fight as he pressed on. Luca turned back to his men and waved them to follow their German commander.
The giant paused and turned back to the footsteps approaching. He dug into his harness and pulled out what looked like an unarmed S-mine. The man bent down and laid the mine near the edge of the corridor. He tugged a line from his belt, attaching it to the firing pin. He carefully rolled it along to the other side of the hallway.
"Hauptsturmführer?" the Sottotenente wondered as the SS captain stood back up from his place.
Otto Skorzeny grinned grimly at the Italian.
"We're being followed, I'm handling them," he simply informed them. "Keep going, we have a deadline to hit and no time to deal with a firefight."
Luca stood there briefly before following Skorzeny down the pathway. It was one thing to plant a minefield, it was quite another to set up a booby trap. The Sottotenente could not help but think this Austrian to be quite possibly the biggest bastard he had ever met.
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The Afrika Korps were certainly annoyed. It did not matter. Those desert dogs could barely keep these Englishmen pinned.
They had come up with a plan they had annexed the local city archives and discovered an old line of sewers running underneath the old fortress that the English had garrisoned. First one to the seen, Sepp Dietrich had overruled the Afrika Korps Major and handed command to the subterranean raid to him, Untersturmführer Otto Günsche, leading a twenty-man assault team consisting of flamethrowers and the newly issued STG-43. The weapons were beautiful, the envy of the Afrika Korps.
As they approached, it did not take long before Bullets smashed the walls of the sewer, forcing Günsche and his team to duck down. The gunshots did not mask the screams of panic. The Lieutenant paid it no mind as he turned to his men, a grenade in his hand only long enough to be thrown around the cover.
"Cover the flamethrowers!" he screamed at the unit. "Hit them with fire!"
The two flamethrower-wielding soldiers glanced at one another; the grenade exploded and bought them a moment to rush the position. Simultaneously they fired, torching every living being within a hundred feet of their nozzles. Still moving, the men fired again, the screams of the unarmed not halting their burning petrol and tar assault on them. They screamed so violently that Günsche could imagine the fighting men above them could have heard what was occurring just below them.
Ignoring that feeling he got when he did something he probably should not have done, he ordered the rest of his unit to follow the flamethrower's advance. They ignored the screaming and the still-moving bodies and continued, up the winding stairs until finally they reached the top levels, the flame throwers hitting each level just to be certain.
The door suddenly flew open, making Günsche and his men duck and take aim. A white handkerchief stuck out at first and then a man disguised as an Italian stood there. Günsche stood up as Hauptsturmführer Otto Skorzeny stood there, his STG-43 resting on his shoulders.
"It took you long enough," the Commando muttered. "The Italians went to harass the English, the rest of the Afrika Korps have broken through…."
Skorzeny trailed off as he noticed the unique camouflage then the runic on their lapels, and finally the smoke of the flamethrower fires burning from where they came from.
"I should have guessed."
Slapping the Hauptsturmführer's shoulder, Günsche leads his unit past the commando and into the courtyard. It was their turn to make the English suffer.
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The battle was lost. The island was on the verge of collapsing. St. Angelo lost the Afrika Korps interest and they moved on, pressing their attack against the rest of the capital. In all, maybe two hundred of the original four hundred survived. Of the fifty SAS men he had, ten were left.
Coughing, David found himself slammed against the wall alongside the rest of his SAS, separated from the regular infantry. Next to them were the civilians, panicked and frightened all of them begging their captures for clemency; Clemency that just wasn't coming.
Nodding, the SS platoon escorted the marines and the Maltese soldiers back to the prisoner rally point, leaving a dozen SS men and twenty or so Afrika Korps men watching the scene unfold after being left to guard what was left of St. Angelo Fortress.
As the last of the prisoners cleared the ruins a Kubelwagen pulled into the courtyard. Stepping out of the vehicle was two men. The first was the driver, who got out first and opened the door for the officer he was with. The officer flicked his cigarette in the direction of the prisoners and saluted the group of SS men waiting for him. They spoke for a while, occasionally glancing back at the prisoners. After a moment, the officer gestured to his driver and they approached where Stirling sat with his men.
"This is Obersturmbannführer Adolf Eichmann, the personal representative of Reichsführer Himmler to this area," the translator spoke, gesturing to the leader.
Eichmann strolled up the line of prisoners placed in front of the wall. He stopped in front of the commandos and arched his brow.
"Herr Eichmann has asked me to inform you that as decreed by the Führer you are to be executed for your involvement in sabotage against the Reich," he informed the soldiers. He turned to the civilians and added. "The rest of you have been summarily convicted of partisan activity, you will be executed as well."
The civilians screamed out. They could not believe what they had heard, that they were to be murdered simply for seeking shelter. The feeling of rage burned a hole through Stirling's stomach. Cowards, Nazi fucking cowards; Although his anger was devoted to the Nazis, his loathing was focused on himself. He should have told the civilians to keep running. He had condemned them.
He turned his head to the Afrika Korps gathered around. They looked unwilling to stop this insanity. They were not the trigger men, the SS were. They wanted nothing, absolutely nothing to do with this.
At least, that was what he thought. A boy stepped forward from his unit. He looked no older than eighteen, his uniform looked clean. He moved past his fellow desert soldiers and most surprisingly did something Stirling had not expected, nor any of the other Germans.
The boy spoke, his words were firm enough to catch the SS off guard. The riflemen looked at one another, and Eichmann stood there. His eyes simply stared blankly at the boy who stood there weaponless. Swallowing the dry knot in his throat, Stirling glanced over to the Heer soldiers watching their comrade standing there protecting the condemned. They were glancing at one another and whispering. The leader stood there, simply watching it as he appeared to debate what to do.
The boy's breath suddenly went shallow, as though he was fighting all the training that taught him not to disobey a superior officer's order, even if they weren't in the same service. His eyes darted to his brother, asking for help, for validation that he was not receiving. The boy seemed to start to plead.
While Eichmann did not appear moved, the Hauptmann certainly did. He stepped forward, past his men and joined the teenager, his expression hard and resigned that he had just voluntarily stepped in front of a firing line.
The actions of the Hauptmann were like a dam bursting. More and more the Afrika Korps troops shouted and tried to get their point across, all of them falling into line in front of the English prisoners, even the ones bitter in feelings toward the English. All of them protecting meant they had fought not an hour ago with their lives. If the situation had been in reverse, he doubted very much he would have done the same.
Eichmann held up his hand, unmoved by the gesture, but still willing to talk to them. The Heer calmed their collective rage to a simmer. Glancing back to his men, the Hauptmann nodded his head. Eichmann merely smiled respectfully. He gestured to the original German teen who stood there and turned to one of the SS riflemen. He gestured to the boy.
The SS rifleman responded by raising his rifle to the boy and blowing a gaping wound through the boy. The soldiers roared out in furious rage. The Hauptmann dropped to his knees and clutched the boy's chest, his jacket pressed into the wound to save him. The rest of the soldiers pushed back, forcing the SS to take a good ten or so steps back.
It was too late, much too late. The kid died before his comrade's eyes. The Hauptmann's eyes were filled with tears, whether it was due to grief or righteous anger, Stirling could not guess. Closing the boy's eyes and wiping his own, The Hauptmann stood up. Eichmann stood there impassively, his eyes scanning all of the soldiers standing before him.
Eichmann erupted in a barrage of German, which Stirling presumed were threats at the nearly mutinous regular army. The threats did nothing to pacify the Afrika Korps. They gathered up in front of rounded-up civilians and enemy troops. All of them looked like they were looking for blood. The SS riflemen looked anxious as Eichmann suddenly shouted at the near-revolting desert troops.
That was all it took.
One of the men behind the Hauptmann roared out. Then it happened. The Afrika Korps unit rushed the SS. Eichmann's men managed to hit one of them with a stray bullet but with so little space between each other, the Heer soldiers hit the political soldiers hard. Fists were flying as the two factions attacked one another as though it had been a pub brawl between Drunk Irish and Scotsmen.
Stirling turned back to his men, all of them looking gleeful at the sight.
"Come on, you lot!" was all he had to say.
Simple words got the exhausted SAS men. They would not kill them all just yet. A fistfight would get the blood pumping.
Stirling dived in and hit one of the fleeing SS men. The soldier struck out and hit Stirling in the jaw harder than David had expected. Still, the giant shrugged off the attack. Faintly Stirling could tell who this was. It was the one who had shot the boy. David wrapped his hands around the executioner's neck. He looked up and found the Hauptmann of the unit had rushed to his side. He grinned slightly at the Englishman as his hands turned to fists, which mashed the SS soldier's face up pretty badly.
There was a sudden roar in German. The entire fight froze, and the civilians froze. Even men like Eichmann and Stirling froze. Storming through the ruins of the fortress walls was Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, the Desert Fox himself, Behind him, several of his Heer adjutants.
His presence brought a great relief to Stirling, as it did to the rest of the prisoners. He would save them all! It was in his nature not to let men like Eichmann get away with things such as this. At least that was what he figured. Regardless, it was amusing to watch the Maltese and Englishmen look on Rommel in the same sort of way Churchill had in his address to parliament, with great fanfare.
The leader of the Afrika Korps detachment stood up, the Hauptmann bruising and bloody. He wiped his face, stood up with the help of a couple of Maltese riflemen and approached Rommel, speaking quickly and furiously to the Field Marshal.
Turning his eyes from the SS rifleman being gestured to by the captain, Rommel turned his attention to the one known as Adolf Eichmann. He stood there, impassive, as though he had not done a thing wrong in his twisted morality. The soldier had disobeyed, so Eichmann ordered him put down like a disobedient dog.
Eichmann looked close to speaking, but before he could, Rommel unholstered his sidearm without a moment's hesitation. Simply shot the Obersturmbannführer clean through the throat, causing the SAS men to jump back startled and the civilians to cry out.
Eichmann fell to the ground, his eyes wide, his face pale as he clutched his throat, his legs kicking in the air as blood pooled out from his mouth. Rommel did not call for a medic. He stood there, his pistol lowered to his side as he watched the man writhe and twitch. He paid no mind to the impressed look David Stirling had, or the shouts of joy the Afrika Korps troops roared out. He simply stood there watching as the man bled out before his eyes.
Eichmann emitted a low, rasping death rattle, his life leaving his eyes.
Stirling listened to Rommel exhale unsteadily, his first sign of regret. The Desert Fox dropped his pistol near the body of the SS Obersturmbannführer and turned away, pulling his peaked cap off his head and running his hands through his thinning hair. He muttered something to himself.
God save his soul, Stirling could not help himself, he suddenly howled out into a fit of laughter at Rommel's plain-spoken reproach. Rommel turned his head to the laughing Englishman and narrowed his eyes, instantly silencing the commando, who felt terrible. It was a terrible time to laugh.
Turning away, Rommel glanced at the shocked SS execution squad and then at his men. It didn't take much to infer Rommel wanted the SS men disarmed. He turned back to his adjutants and snapped his fingers. It was the same officer who acted as a translator for him during their last encounter.
The soldiers obliged, some disarmed the SS, and the others gently moved through the crowd and pulled the civilians out of the POW. To Stirling's amazement, there was no fight to the Afrika Korps actions. They had seen how close to death they could have been in the hands of the SS. To any sane man, the Afrika Korps protecting them was something not to fight.
Exhaling as the civilians left, Stirling stepped forward. He leaned down and collected Eichmann's pistol, a fine piece of machinery. He looked back up and found a dozen Kar 98k rifles pointing at him and Rommel's eyes solely focused on him. Keeping the pistol at his side, Stirling turned back to his men, their hands in the air. He turned to the translator who had pulled back the hammer on his MP-40 and held it at him.
"I guess I got lucky, grabbed his gun before he could stop me," Stirling spoke to the translator. "Tell the Field Marshal that I had to shoot him."
Thankfully the translator was quick to understand what Stirling was trying to do. There was silence as the ragtag and battle-fatigued SAS troopers glanced at one another wearily at the statement offered by their commander. As the excuse was relayed to him, Rommel narrowed his eyes, himself surprised.
"Yeah... You had to do what you had to do... good shot, sir!" a cheery-sounding Scotsmen named McClellan called out to Stirling first. It wasn't long after him that the rest of the unit murmured in agreement that it was Stirling, who gunned down the piece of shit lying at their feet and not Rommel.
Stirling turned properly away from the cheering and back to Rommel. Rommel muttered something in German. It was an order to lower their weapons. As his men obeyed and lowered their rifles. Rommel's expression was an odd... It was thoughtful... almost gracious by the gesture his adversary was doing. The taller, bearded Englishman stepped closer to the older man. Silently, he stretched the butt of Eichmann's Walther out to the Field Marshal, who took it from him.
Taking the sidearm from David, Rommel turned and spoke to the translator.
"There will be an outgoing supply trawler at the dock. Try not to take the crew with you…." Rommel's translator informed the slightly swaying Stirling.
The cheering subsided. Stirling widened his eyes as he wondered if he had misheard the Rommel's statement.
"You'd let us go?" he asked the Field Marshal.
As the translator spoke Rommel stood there for a good moment before finally he nodded his head in confirmation.
"The civilians are free to return to their homes. You and the SAS are all marked men now. There is now an order demanding summary executions for commandos," the Field Marshal's interpretation warned the gathered survivors. "He says that even if he were to capture you and give his word, he can't protect you... so he sees no other choice than to let you go."
Rommel barked an order to his men and gestured to the disarmed group of SS men, who had their hands over their heads with Kar 98K rifles shoved in their faces. Stirling tried not to smile grimly. The SAS men watched as the SS men were marched away. It was unlikely they would face any real repercussion. They belonged to Sepp Dietrich, who would likely raise a fuss.
Glancing back to his men and the civilians being escorted back out of the fortress and into the hands of the Afrika Korps, the Commando nodded. As much as he considered the Desert Fox an enemy, he would oblige his offer. Regretting it, he offered his hand to the Field Marshal, who shook it.
With their business concluded, the Field Marshal left, tucking his sidearm back into his holster and stepping over the dead Adolf Eichmann, leaving behind him a stunned group of SAS men watching several Afrika Korps soldiers as they lifted the body of the boy and carried him off for repatriation, back to Germany if it was possible. Like a true hero.
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