The most dangerous enemy to fight is one with their back against the wall.
Surrounded and facing annihilation, soldiers will fight to stay alive with everything they’ve got,
and sometimes, this makes all the difference. In this video, we shed light on three Allied
units that, through sheer ferocity, battled their way out of certain death.
Not every battle has strategic consequences,
and many are fought by chance rather than clever strategy. But that doesn’t mean the
soldiers fighting these battles can’t pass into military legend for their heroism.
This was the case during the Battle of Stalingrad, in a position known as Pavlov’s House.
On the western embankment of Stalingrad’s Volga river stood a totally normal apartment building
overlooking a square. The four-storey house had excellent all-round visibility,
and its sturdy construction allowed it to survive the aerial obliteration of the city mostly intact.
The Soviets captured the house from the Germans during a quick and dirty fight on September 27th
1942. It had changed hands more than once before,
and the Wehrmacht assumed it would again, but they made a terrible mistake.
Stalin had issued his famous order “Not one step back!” and the officers of the 42nd Guards
Regiment had ordered the position defended to the last grenade, bullet, and drop of blood.
Lieutenant Afanasiev took charge of fortifications, laying minefields around
the building and barbed wire at the entrances. A communication trench was dug to headquarters,
and inner walls were knocked down to facilitate movement. Degtyaryov and Maxim
machine-guns were set up in the windows, and a PTRS anti-tank rifle was emplaced on the roof.
The Wehrmacht assaulted the house several times each day for over a month. Early in the siege,
Sergeant Pavlov took command after Afanasiev was blinded.
Initially, infantry tried to storm the place, but machinegun fire directed by Pavlov forced
them back. After several unsuccessful attempts, tanks rolled in to finish the job. However,
their thin rooftop armour was no match for the high-calibre anti-tank rounds of Pavlov’s PTRS.
The Germans were continually forced back, coming back stronger each time.
Fighting day and night whittled the defenders down to just 25, but these men were following Stalin’s
order to the letter and fought with everything they had. After 60-odd days of siege, the Red
Army advanced and Pavlov’s house was secured. The tenacious defence became a symbol of dogged
Soviet resistance in the Battle of Stalingrad, and Pavlov was later made a Hero of the Soviet Union.
Early in the Second World War, the French didn’t have the greatest reputation. After the abysmally
orchestrated defence of France, many believed the Frogs simply weren’t cut out for a modern
conflict. That all changed in June 1942, when the French more than proved their courage and skill.
Facing Rommel’s relentless eastward advance on the Libyan city of Tobruk,
the Allies formed the Gazala Line. Composed of a series of defensive boxes, this line stretched
from the Mediterranean Sea all the way to a tiny, insignificant southern outpost called Bir Hakeim.
Not expecting a fight that far south, Allied command sent a single brigade, Général de brigade
Marie-Pierre Kœnig’s 1st Free French Brigade, to guard it. Kœnig had 3,600 soldiers. Half
were Foreign Legionnaires, and the other half were colonial volunteers from Chad, the Congo, Central
African Republic, Senegal, Equatorial Africa, and Madagascar. Since around half of the entire French
Foreign Legion had defected to the Axis, the British were dubious about the brigade’s loyalty.
Coupled with racist contemporary views on the effectiveness of African troops,
Kœnig’s brigade wasn’t looked highly upon. This all changed when Rommel attacked.
Aiming to surprise the Allies, Rommel advanced south with the 15th Panzer,
21st Panzer, 90th Light and Italian Ariete Divisions. On May 27th, 37,000 men with 164
armoured vehicles attacked Bir Hakeim. French anti-tank guns demolished Rommel’s Panzer
spearhead, and accurate rifle fire checked his infantry advance. In the skies, the British Desert
Air Force flew hundreds of sorties, shooting down German bombers and air-dropping supplies.
Before long, Bir Hakiem was surrounded in all directions by burning vehicles.
The Axis attacked daily, but the French held the line, inflicting massive casualties on
Rommel’s force. By June 10th, after the fiercest fighting yet, they were nearly out
of ammunition. They pulled out that night, escaping with 2,700 men to British lines.
Generalmajor Friedrich von Mellenthin wrote, “In the whole course of the desert war, we
never encountered a more heroic and well-sustained defence.”
After Bir Hakeim, no one doubted Free French resolve
and the French Foreign Legion became synonymous with the world’s most diehard soldiers.
In 1799, George Washington wrote,"offensive operations are the surest means of defence.”
This ancient adage is probably as old as war itself, and it was as true for Washington as
it was for British forces in the Iraq War. Not the Iraq War you’re thinking of, but the
lesser-known one fought between Axis-backed separatists and the British Empire in 1941.
On April 3rd 1941, the Arab nationalist Rashid Ali took over the Kingdom of Iraq in a coup d’etat.
He replaced the pro-British prince regent, 'Abd al-Ilah, with a government backed by
Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. Winston Churchill took a hard line,
deeming Rashid’s government “illegal”. But there wasn’t a lot the British could do.
They had only 84 obsolete and training aircraft, a Rolls-Royce armoured car unit,
and about 2,000 Christian Assyrian volunteer militia in-country. With the Western Desert
Campaign against Rommel, the Battle for Greece, and the East African Campaign all still raging,
just one Palestinian battalion and one Indian infantry brigade could be spared to defend Iraq.
The Brits were positioned at RAF base Habbaniya and surrounded by between six
and nine thousand Iraqi soldiers. On May 1st, the base commander, Air Vice Marshal Smart,
was given an ultimatum: cease all military operations or face the consequences.
The Iraqi commander believed the understrength and undersupplied British would quickly surrender,
but he couldn’t have been more wrong.
Later that day, Smart received a message from the British Ambassador. It read:
“If you have to strike, strike hard. Use all necessary force.” The base was dangerously
exposed to Iraqi artillery, and a few lucky shells could put it out of action for good.
But Smart wasn’t going to give them the chance. At five AM the next day,
his obsolete aircraft launched their first attack. They bombed and strafed Iraqi positions,
aiming specifically for the artillery. While the Iraqis took cover, other RAF planes flew to enemy
airfields and destroyed scores of Luftwaffe and Regia Aeronautica aircraft on the ground,
knocking out the enemy’s ability to hit them back. Planes flew on a tight roster,
meaning the Iraqis were continually under attack. By the day’s end, they had flown 193 sorties.
The Iraqis were utterly unprepared for such a fierce British attack.
The commanders had earnestly believed that, since they were outnumbered and surrounded,
the Brits would negotiate a peaceful resolution. Consequently, many soldiers thought they were
on a training exercise and weren’t at battle readiness. The first air raid happened to coincide
with morning prayers, and the devoutly Muslim Arabs took this as an affront. When the Grand
Mufti of Baghdad found out, he declared a Jihad against the British in Iraq. But this was really
nothing new for His Majesty’s Armed Forces; they continued obliterating the Iraqis from the air.
The air raids continued until May 5th, when the British launched their first ground attack.
Together with the Assyrian militia, the garrison attacked Iraqi positions around the base.
Supporting them were two 4.5-inch howitzers that had originally been
decorating the Officer’s Mess but were quickly put into working order.
Facing constant attacks from a determined enemy, the Iraqis pulled out on May 6th.
The next day, British recon teams discovered most of their equipment had been left behind.
Habbaniya airbase was bolstered by six Czechoslovakian 3.7-inch howitzers
with 2,400 shells, one 18-pounder gun, one Italian tank, ten Crossley armoured
cars, 79 trucks, three 20mm anti-aircraft guns with 2,500 shells, 45 Bren guns,
11 Vickers machine guns, and 340 rifles with 500,000 rounds of ammunition. Not a bad haul.
The Iraqis suffered between 500 and 1,000 casualties during the battle, with an additional
408 men captured by the British days later. The defenders suffered just 13 killed and 21 wounded.
THOSE were three stories of units that refused to give in, even when faced with dire odds.
They fought back, attacking and defending with such ferocity that the enemy was forced to pull
back. But what do YOU think? Why do YOU think Pavlov’s House was so tough to take?
What do YOU think would have happened if the French had lost Bir Hakeim quickly? How many
times do YOU think there’s been a Jihad declared on the British Army? Let us know in the comments!