Tides of Valor by Peter Albano

Author:Peter Albano
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2014-05-29T21:04:10+00:00

VII

The Western Desert

August, 1941

Brigadier Lloyd Higgins hoisted himself through the hatch of the Matilda II tank, planted his feet on the thin cushion of his seat, adjusted his earphones, and unsnapped the top of his binocular case. Bringing his glasses to his eyes he swept the barren desert that stretched endlessly in every direction. Dug in on the reverse slope of Bir Fuad Ridge so that only the turret of his tank would be exposed to an advancing enemy, Lloyd’s Matilda was the center tank of the nineteen survivors of the Fourth Armored Brigade. At two-hundred-foot intervals, he could see his command’s cast-steel turrets stretching to the north and south like a line of armored pillboxes, two-pounders pointed to the west, commanders standing like statues, most with their binoculars to their eyes. Every man knew this brigade—now reduced to company strength—was the key to the Eighth Army’s rear guard.

Lloyd regarded his Matilda like a man evaluating his longtime mistress—there were many things he liked about her, but, on the other hand, time had revealed many flaws he would change. Since, at the moment, she was the best the newly formed Eighth Army had to offer, he had to live with her. Lloyd liked her turret, which was cast, well-shaped, offering no shot traps to the enemy. Hydraulically driven, it had a 360-degree traverse. He liked her armored skirting protecting the five twin bogie assemblies on each side, the large return rollers, idlers, and sprockets. With seventy-eight-millimeter armor fitted to the front of the hull and turret and a high-velocity two-pounder gun, Matilda was as formidable as most of her contemporaries. In fact, her thick armor had made her all but impervious to any Italian or German guns until the devastating German eighty-eight appeared on the scene. But Matilda was slow; very slow, and as designed, she was incapable of bringing her weapons to bear on attacking aircraft.

Lloyd had personally modified all Matildas under his command. He had begged new high-compression pistons, raising the horsepower of the two Leyland diesels from 190 horsepower to 210. With modifications to the eight-speed gear box and injectors, speed was increased from sixteen miles an hour to twenty-two, which was three miles an hour slower than the Afrika Corps’s Panzer (Panzerkampfwagen) III. The single coaxial machine gun fitted in the mantlet did not provide enough small bore firepower and its field of fire was limited to the plus or minus ten degrees of elevation of the two-pounder. He begged Besa Mark I, 7.92-millimeter machine guns from Supply in Cairo and had every tank in his command fitted with one on a post just outside the hatch where the tank commander could man it. Only 1,125 rounds of ammunition in four boxes could be carried, but the new weapon had an unlimited field of fire. In July the first Stuka was shot down by a squadron under air attack near Halfaya Pass.

The Italians had nothing that could stand up to the Matilda, but the Germans were a different show.

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