Chapter 670: Dead End

The sound of the 2nd vehicle’s commander came through the headset: “Understood, 2nd vehicle acknowledges!” And so, this German armored detachment continued its advance, at a speed so fast they couldn’t even send out reconnaissance units to check the enemy situation.

The last armored car to pass the Panther that had been hit by two shells stopped. There weren’t many soldiers on it, but it was piled with a heap of strange parts. The commander and crew of the lead tank had already opened the engine hatch, taken out the air filter, and carried it over to the parts transport vehicle. They then handed over two precious barrels of gasoline to the armored car behind them.

“When driving long distances in the desert, there are two places on a tank that are most likely to break down. One is track wear, and the other is that the engine’s air filter is not easy to clean. Keep these as spares!” The original commander, the captain of the 1st tank, waved his hand magnanimously at the soldiers on the armored car and said with a smile, pointing at his own tank, “Don’t worry, there shouldn’t be any large-scale American routed troops nearby, and battalion headquarters is not far behind.”

“Then we’ll be on our way. Rest assured, we’ll definitely take out a few more American tanks for you! Hehe,” the soldier driving the armored car said with a smile, giving a traditional military salute. He then drove off to catch up with his main force.

Sure enough, it wasn’t long before the battalion’s cars and armored cars caught up. Standing in a captured jeep with an Iron Cross painted on it, the German battalion commander looked at his subordinate’s tank parked on the side of the road, then helplessly called over the officer in charge of the repair team. “Do you still have any desert-specific air filters? After you replace it, have this tank follow the battalion. The fuel truck will refuel them on the side of the road. Don’t delay the other vehicles!”

That evening, the vanguard of the German armored forces once again clashed with Patton’s troops. The two sides committed thousands of soldiers to the battle. In the end, the German army was victorious. Patton could only abandon an already heavily damaged American division as a rear guard, once again leaving it to the tenacious German vanguard.

This battle took place near Cairo. Not since Britain had taken effective control of Egypt had any other army set foot here. But now, this place had become the very front line. The battlefield was littered with the bodies of at least 500 soldiers from both sides.

In the end, Patton had misjudged the situation in the battle for Damanhur. He thought he could capture the city and annihilate the German paratroopers, but he had only managed to wear down 2,900 of them. He had also not expected that the German armored forces would dare to pursue his troops so frantically before Alexandria had even been captured.

As a result, he could no longer escape to Suez unscathed. In order to preserve the few elite troops he had left, he had to once again abandon a portion of his soldiers and retreat in haste with the 8th Armored Division and some mechanized infantry.

As for the majority of his infantry, they had either been mercilessly abandoned on the flank of Alexandria and had long since become German prisoners, or they had been left behind to struggle towards Cairo. This group consisted mostly of British colonial troops. They had been ordered to defend Cairo to the death to buy time for a counter-attack. But in any case, the number of troops Patton could bring back to the Suez Canal would not exceed 30,000. And opposite them, the victorious North African army numbered over 500,000, with a frontline strength of 310,000.

Of course, although Patton was sad now, he still had the capital to make a comeback after retreating. More frustrated than him was Montgomery, who was trapped in Alexandria. He now stood with his hands behind his back on the desolate docks of Alexandria, quietly watching the waves wash back and forth against the heavy concrete pier.

For this 51-year-old middle-aged general, Montgomery looked slightly old. His hair was already graying, and his complexion was not very good. In the heart of this general, who had been commanding troops in North Africa and fighting with Rommel for half a year, the most painful thing was not that the British Empire, to which he had dedicated his life, had lost the crucial territory of North Africa, but the deep-seated despair that the British Empire had lost everything it had.

It was now the end of October. In a few days, it would be Montgomery’s 51st birthday. When he was 27, Germany had signed the Treaty of Versailles, and the British Empire still stood proud over the world. Now, 24 years had passed. The German army had swept across Europe, invincible, while the once-great British Empire was now just an exiled His Majesty the Emperor overseas.

The British had exhausted their last drop of blood in North Africa. The supplies stockpiled here were, in fact, Britain’s last large-scale overseas asset. The 200,000 British troops under Montgomery’s command were also Britain’s last large-scale elite force with a core of homeland troops. Now, the last bit of confidence the British had was the 30,000 main force troops under Lord Mountbatten in India.

“Now, it’s all over. We’ve lost. Defeated cleanly by the Germans,” Montgomery muttered to himself with a bitter smile. The ending that awaited him was not very optimistic. Either he would be captured by the Germans and become a guest of honor in a concentration camp, or he would flee back to Iceland and be hanged by those bureaucrats as an example. In any case, he would never again be able to lead a large army to fight a decisive battle with an opponent on the battlefield, as he had today.

He looked at the distant sea, then turned around, letting the smoke-filled positions come into his view. The Italians, hearing that the German army on the flank had won a great victory, had raised their fighting spirit to a new level. Now their offensive was coming in wave after wave, as if they had truly rediscovered the shadow of the all-conquering Roman legions.

But in Montgomery’s eyes, there was an added sense of sadness at being fooled by a weak opponent. Because in a corner of his heart, he firmly believed that as long as the Germans didn’t come, it would not be surprising if the Italians lost all of North Africa. Even he himself found it incredible that, without realizing it, he had added the strange assumption “if the Germans don’t come.”

It had been two days. When he had seen the German bombers and transport planes swarming over the sea not far from Alexandria that morning, he knew that the battle in North Africa was over. They had exhausted their advantage. From that moment on, the situation was completely in German hands.

From the moment the Germans had defeated the British Home Fleet and landed in Britain, from the moment Spanish and German troops had marched into Gibraltar, from the moment the German army had captured Malta at all costs and surprise-attacked Crete, the North African supply line could only barely be maintained by taking the long way around the Cape of Good Hope.

It was also from that time that the British, and the Americans in North Africa, had actually been running on their old capital. To maintain the fundamental interests of Britain and America in the Middle East, Britain, the United States, France, and other countries had deployed a large number of troops near the Middle East, and had even built arsenals to reduce the cost of stationing troops. The result was that all these things had now been consumed by the Germans. Perhaps the Americans might still have some replenishment, but the British army, having lost its homeland, had truly used up everything.

Behind him, abandoned Matilda tanks were parked in squares. With the fall of the homeland, these tanks could no longer be repaired in time. Most of them had engine and transmission failures and were parked here waiting for spare parts from Cairo and other places. Further away, soldiers were already pushing the irreparable tanks and armored cars off the docks and into the sea to create some trouble for the Germans who were about to occupy this place.

“General! A message from the fleet flagship. They say they will take any British troops who are willing to leave. They are asking when you will board. The fleet is heading to India, where it will be re-designated as the Indian Ocean Fleet and continue to fight,” a staff officer said, walking over from the distance. His voice was a little hoarse. It seemed the ordeal of the past few dozen hours had been an unforgettable experience for every Briton in Alexandria.

“I won’t be boarding. After all, someone has to stay behind to take responsibility for this war, and I think I am the best candidate,” Montgomery said with a bitter smile. “Tell those British officers who are preparing to go to India not to listen to the Americans’ foolish talk about defending Suez. The homeland is lost. Even if we hold Suez, it won’t change anything. The proper thing to do is to hold on to the obedient place of India!”

“But General, what about our interests in the Middle East? If we give up the oil fields, we will be truly finished…” The staff officer said this and then didn’t know what else to say. The British Empire was about to lose too many things now. Which one wasn’t important?

Although the hostile activities in the Balkan region against the German-Italian-Turkish partition were very frequent, and both Turkey and Italy were caught in an endless guerrilla war, once the dust settled here in North Africa, the Balkans would be completely surrounded by these countries. Without the support of outside forces, the resistance movement here would probably not last long.

With North Africa changing hands, Egypt lost, and the Suez Canal becoming the front line, the British government-in-exile’s control over the Middle East and India would continue to decline. When the day came that the Germans really did meddle in the Middle East, the nearby British forces would probably be wiped out immediately. At that time, the British government-in-exile would only have a pitiful Canada to rely on. Let alone counter-attacking the British homeland, it was hard to say whether they wouldn’t be sold out to Germany by the Americans.

“The things you’re worried about are things that will happen after I’m dead and gone, so I can’t be bothered with them,” Montgomery said, forcing a smile. He reached out and patted the staff officer’s shoulder. “The road is not peaceful either. It’s not been just a day or two that German submarines have been laying mines near the Suez Canal… When you get to India, remember to give my regards to General Mountbatten. Help me thank him for his unstinting support for the North African front!”

Published: 2025-09-16T09:41:52.000+00:00
Last Edited: 2026-02-15T17:01:04.000+00:00
URL: https://www.patreon.com/caleredhair/posts/mtr-c670-dead-139013007

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