Dark Earth: The Siege of Charlotteville

The Siege of Charlotteville Part 4


GHQ Africa Command
Nairobi, Kenya, British East Africa

Lieutenant-General Sir Ian Freeland looked out of the window of his office high up in the keep of Kenya Castle, surveying the well-ordered city of Nairobi below. The red telephone on his desk desk rang sharply, breaking the stillness of the African late afternoon.

“Yes?”

“Sir, Major Cooper at Communications. We’re getting flash traffic in from Elizabethville regarding Operation Motorman. A Company 1st Connaught Rangers is reporting an imminent engagement with a significant force of Simbas at Charlotteville."

“I see. Thank you.” The General rang off, then dialed in a new number.

“Operations.”

“Execute Operation Thunderchild.”

“Yes, Sir.”

He put down the telephone and sipped from his tea. The original intent of Motorman had been to eliminate the Simbas from Congolese Katanga and test the capacity of a number of weapons, systems and tactics in the field, but those objectives had been superceded by the events of the past day. Before the operation, it seemed a strong possibility that the Simbas could be lured in by a seemingly weak force at Charlotteville, at least to the staff planners and diviners attached to GHQ Africa. As such, a contingency plan had been put in place - Thunderchild. It had been made more difficult by the loss of the bridge at Kiambi, which seemed almost too skillful for the damned Simbas, but assets had been put in place in order to deal with surprises. The sheer bloody murder done to the wretched Congolese villagers hadn't been foreseen, though; the southern Simbas hadn't previously displayed the savagery of their northern brothers. There would be a reckoning for that and it would occur in the successful execution of Thunderchild.

Within ten minutes, an RAF airship would be taking off from Entebbe to provide aerial surveillance of the battleground, followed by the ready battalion of Paras from RAF Eastleigh that was already loading up. An armoured column of the 2nd Ulsters, the Rhodesian Mounted Rifles and the Shangani Horse would begin the drive up from Mitwaba to Charlotteville, whilst the other two battlegroups of the 8th Brigade would recommence their own advance towards their targets. The QRF company of the Rhodesian Light Infantry would be able to fly up in two hours once the RFC Rotodynes could be moved up to Elizabethville, but that had been delayed by weather. That would effect the tactical fighter and bomber squadrons in Rhodesia somewhat less as they would ferrying directly to their destination, Kamina, along with the special flight from South West Africa.

That would give the garrison at Charlotteville quite a bit of support, but it still stuck in his craw to leave them for the night before the reinforcements and planes could get there in the early hours of the morning. Hmmm…1542. The Britannias would be loaded for take off in two hours or so, then would take another three and a half to fly down to Katanga. Surely there must be something quicker…Yes! That would do it. He reached once again for his red telephone.

“Communications? Get me AOC-in-C Middle East Air Force in Cairo. Say it’s urgent.”

Within a minute, the phone rang once more.

“Air Marshal Prickett? General Freeland in Kenya. Well enough, but things down in the Congo are getting a tad sticky. Where’s your nearest ready flight of TSR-2s? Aden? Perfect. If you can send them down, my fellows can top them up and vector them in over Tanganyika. Specials? No, I don't think we'll need it - we've got our men and some civvies there, so aren't too keen on warming them up too much. Just the usual mix. Wonderful, thank you.”

Excellent. The four Eagles would be over Charlotteville in two hours. That would do nicely.

………………………………………………………

“What I’d give for some arty right now, Sergeant-Major.”

“A battery of 25 pounders would blast the buggers back to the pit where they belong, Major, no doubt of it.”

Milling around the edge of the trees to the north, south and east, now substantially further back than when A Company had first arrived, were hundreds upon hundreds of men clad in a haphazard array of ANC camouflage, older Force Publique greens and ragged civilian garb in all the typical colours of the African rainbow. Their characteristic bizarre headwear seemed to mark them as the foe, but something seemed awry.

As he scanned the groups with his powerful Zeiss binoculars (a trophy he had acquired from a female German corporal in Normandy, who indicated they had a heck of history from an old flame who had given her the flick), he noted that their bearing and discipline seemed rather different than the intelligence pictures of the Simbas he had seen back in Salisbury. Rather than their accustomed mix of former Belgian SAFN-50s and French MAS-45s, they were carrying a lot more Soviet guns and modern ones to boot - AK-47s, RPKs and PKs. Off through the trees appeared to be men bringing up heavier machine guns.

“Where d’you think he has his mortars, Captain Quinlan?”

“South. The ground is too open to the north and too difficult to the east, so he’d want them behind that treeline on either side of the road about a mile away.”

“You’re right. I want all four of ours to give that location an almighty plastering the moment we open fire. The WOMBATs are to focus on the observer groups on the hillsides - if their commanders are stupid enough to loiter in the open within range of our guns, then we can oblige them.”

“Sir.”

“Once it kicks off and we give them the welcoming surprises, then I want to hammer their east force with as much machine gun fire as possible in order to drive them up to the north. The more we can push them there, the better. Any further sitrep from the Ulsters, Dornan?”

“They have a platoon ready to take off and will be 52 minutes, whenever you make the call, sir. Anything heavier is waiting on the Rotodynes, which are having to sling the long way around due to a nasty weather system over Northern Rhodesia. The rest are heading up from Mitwaba as fast as possible.”

“Sir, looks like they’re getting ready to come from the east!”

“Lieutenant Baker!”

The Simbas on the east began to break from the trees at a run, firing wildly from the hip as they came.

“B Platoon, make ready! At 800 yards, Present! FIRE!”

The eastern trench line opened up with a thunderous cacophony of fire from their rifles, Brens and Gimpies, punctuated by the steady chatter of the .625” Vickers heavies and the pounding thump of the Maxim Guns. The Simbas fell like wheat before the scythe in their dozens, with the heavier autocannon blowing great holes in their ranks and blasting through the trees, but they charged onwards, supported now by heavier machine guns firing from the tree line. Four jeeps with machine guns mounted on their back burst through into sight, but barely made fifty yards before the concentrated fire of the Maxims blew them into shattered smithereens of fire and blood.

As the fighting erupted on the east, the crews of the two WOMBATs sprung into action, firing their guns at the groups on the hillside as fast as they could, sending their 125mm rounds crashing into their target with a flash of fire and a tremendous crash. Yet the Simbas on the hills did not simply cooperate in their demise and scrambled up the slopes as fast as their legs could carry them, inadvertently saving some of their lives. For the WOMBAT, for all its power, was far more limited in its angle of elevation than a genuine field gun, with its lightweight gun shield further constraining its effective reach.

This first burst of fighting lasted barely two minutes before the enemy began to break back for the whatever shelter the treeline could provide, covered by heavier fire from Dushkas that smashed hand sized chunks of stone out of the walls of the compound and sent Hughes and others scrabbling for cover. From the trees came a ragged volley of rocket propelled grenades, most of which fell well short of the British wire, but several struck into the parapets of sand bags on the trench line. Before they could even catch breath, now came the high pitched whistle of mortar fire.

“INCOMING!”

Half a dozen mortar bombs impacted around the compounds, one striking the roof of the ruined bar and sending it to the world of the spirits. A Company’s mortars now responded at their maximum rate, sending 2.5” bombs screaming down upon the southern woods. The suspicions of Quinlan and Hughes had proved to be accurate, as the Simba mortar fire quickly petered out, their surcease sped substantially by every fourth British bomb having been a white phosphorus incendiary round. The cloud of white smoke billowing from the trees would have seemed almost bucolic had it not been accompanied by the agonizing screams of the maimed and expiring.

Whether in Africa, the Orient or Europe, death by fire sounds much the same in every language.

Now the foe came charging down from the north, their advance by waves lead by more jeeps and a battered old American M8 Greyhound. Forth they swept with greater weight of numbers pushing forward despite the bloody execution wrought by the defending machine guns, until they passed the 500 yard line and came abreast with three large tussocks of wild grass about what looked to be ant hills. As the Simbas surged forward, the flame fougasses carefully emplaced under Major Hughes’s orders were set off, seemingly enveloping the whole field in a leaping sheet of sudden flame. Yet even as this would seem to tie the day into one of tears unnumbered by the Simba, a new sound punctuated the brightening late African afternoon, amid the screams and the crackle of the burning.

It was a strange note, first of a lower, heavier howl than the mortars, coming in from the north, accompanied in this perverse duet by a sharper, tearing shriek.

Hughes looked up into the sky and saw the piercing arrows of fire slicing through the sky towards them.

“ROCKETS! COVER!”

Lordroel

As said to Steve above, yes, it is overkill, but the idea that they would be discussed is meant to be a pointed message to Moscow and indeed several other capitals.

An overall comment, with notes to follow:

As can be inferred from Thunderchild and the dispatch of forces from across an entire continent, the British were prepared for complications and have assembled the makings of a trap. Their men on the ground are far from isolated and lightly armed Irish troops and have relief on the way.

If they were simply facing the Simbas from @, then they’d go through them like a hot sword through rather soft butter in the summertime. These seem to be different, at least insofar as their arms are concerned; I really wish that I could say the same for the savagery of their conduct, but sadly, that is accurate enough to their historical record.

It would seem on the surface to be a case of Soviet arms = Moscow backed forces, but it isn’t quite as clear cut. Nor is it a matter of another party like France or the USA using them for Machiavellian purposes. Instead, there is a new entity at play; the reasons for the historical ‘wars of national liberation’ are still around across Africa and the different world and different tides of decolonisation have resulted in some movements/groups that did not exist in the same form in @.

I believe I’ve dropped the line that harsh repressions and executing a lot of anti-colonial/independence leaders could come back to bite the imperial powers in Africa in Timeline posts back from the 40s and early 50s and now that tree is mature and bearing bitter fruit. Imagine a more united front in Africa, lead by men with the moral scruples of Lenin, the humility of Bokassa, the kindness of Mugabe, the ambition of Nasser, the vision of Toussaint Louverture, the military talent of Bonaparte and the stability of Idi Amin…