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1917-February-5-12
''Grenade!'' I shouted while throwing a grenade through a window.
I hurled the explosive and, the moment I saw it disappear inside, I immediately heard terrified British soldiers screaming in panic. A loud explosion followed seconds later along with agonizing cries of pain screamed at the top of their lungs.
Watching from the corner of my eye, I noticed the British running around without any direction at all. Some were still half asleep in nothing but their underwear while carrying rifles.
Raising my submachine gun, I squeezed the trigger and felt the stock hammer against my shoulder as I fired carelessly, not worrying about ammunition while cutting down every life I could see.
After emptying the magazine and feeling sweat running down my forehead from all the movement and exertion, I ducked behind cover and changed magazines while hearing the chaos around me, hundreds of submachine guns firing along with several machine guns unloading into the city.
We had used artillery flare rounds to illuminate the area before attacking one of the British forward positions with the intention of breaking through their line and pushing toward the Suez.
It had taken a long time to adapt to the climate and study the terrain to coordinate this assault, especially because of the Ottomans and their pasha refusing to launch the offensive. Only General Friedrich Kress von Kressenstein insisting on it had finally convinced them, since my proposal of beginning a major offensive while remaining as mobile as possible after softening the defenses with sniper harassment had worked well enough for the general to support it.
So this offensive involved around fifteen thousand troops since it was being carried out with horses and camels, using many of the Ottomans' valuable draft animals, which made it a risky offensive that was somehow working.
Locking the new magazine into place and noticing there were no British left in the area, I kept moving while hearing the footsteps of several of my soldiers behind me as we pushed deeper into the city.
Peeking around a street intersection, I saw several British troops watching the streets trying to cover the retreat while others stumbled out of the houses where they had been sleeping, throwing on whatever clothing they could find while rushing out carrying rifles.
Before I could act another group of soldiers appeared and immediately opened fire on the British, the sound of shell casings bouncing off the stone streets echoing through the night.
The British were cut down, riddled with bullets without mercy, and we continued advancing while trying to exploit the surprise as the British troops remained in complete disarray because of the night attack.
We pushed deeper into what looked like the more important sector where the train station stood, which meant the higher ranking British officers were probably there along with the most valuable targets we had to capture.
It didn't take long to completely surround the city as originally planned, although the stubborn British defense forced us to adapt if we wanted to win.
I quickly began directing the clearing of buildings throughout the city where the use of grenades was proving extremely useful.
''Watch out!'' I shouted while ducking and shielding myself from one of our grenades that had been thrown back out from inside the building we were clearing.
The explosion shook the street and I saw several of my men struck by shrapnel.
Without hesitation I rushed to the window, shoved my submachine gun inside and fired blindly into the house, hearing British soldiers screaming as they died while I emptied the magazine.
Pulling another grenade from my pack, I armed it and threw it inside. Once the explosion shook the building, shattering the windows and throwing dust into the air, I ordered the others to move in and finish off the survivors.
The fighting quickly turned into urban combat, something many of us now had plenty of experience with after endless hours of training without rest, practicing specifically to fight partisans, which now seemed to be paying off.
While wiping sweat from my face, calming my breathing and focusing more on leading than personally fighting, trying to finish the battle before it dragged on long enough for British reinforcements to arrive, we noticed many British soldiers beginning to flee instead of continuing the fight.
''Tell the Ottoman officer to pursue the ones running. We can't waste the opportunity to hand the British a decisive defeat'' I said while noticing the British trying to escape before the encirclement fully closed.
Between gunfire, screams and explosions we kept moving until we reached the heart of the organized British resistance inside the city where they were fighting as hard as they could in a desperate attempt to prevent what already looked completely hopeless.
But while they resisted the Ottoman troops finally arrived, covering the gaps our limited numbers couldn't hold and helping prevent the British forces from escaping the area.
The sound of gunfire continued while the urban battle raged in every direction, although we had finally achieved the first objective of encircling the city and preventing several thousand British troops from escaping.
We were still having problems finishing the job because we couldn't clear everything as quickly as I wanted with those idiots entrenched inside the last sectors they still controlled, but I wasn't about to waste my best men doing that work. That's what the Ottomans were for, and I couldn't afford to lose Jaegerkommandos just to clear a few buildings full of stubborn fools who refused to surrender.
The flares were already beginning to fade, so we focused on occupying the city's buildings while covering every possible British escape route because it was only a matter of time before they surrendered. They had no water and even less supplies since most of those were located around the train stations, which were already under our control.
Because of that we simply allowed the Ottoman troops to do their work while we handled our wounded and dead, preparing everything to continue pushing forward since we couldn't waste the opportunity created by having the British Egyptian Expeditionary Force trapped in such a difficult situation where their main forces had been cut off from water and indirect communication after the telegraph cables had been severed.
Because of that we could now hear the Morse code frequencies they were transmitting between one another, fully exploiting the situation.
We rested briefly before returning to the horses and camels, and it didn't take long before we began moving west since we had to secure as much ground as possible before reinforcements closed off our advance.
As we pushed westward we found Ottoman troops already returning with British prisoners while large groups of half dressed British soldiers, some missing pieces of their uniforms, staggered back toward our lines with their hands raised in surrender.
So we continued moving, running into smaller British logistical nodes along the Mediterranean coast while searching for a way to reach the Suez and somehow shut it down.
For hours we simply kept advancing and, once we started spotting British patrol movement, we split into multiple smaller units to harass those patrols, break them apart and force them to retreat toward safer positions.
We were the spearhead of the Ottoman offensive until sunrise because once daylight came hell itself would fall on top of us after they learned about the night assault and started hammering us with the artillery pieces that, unfortunately, we had failed to capture. Apparently they had not been inside the settlement we attacked and had been positioned somewhere else, and for the moment we had no information about where the British artillery batteries were located, which we needed to disable before any successful offensive could continue.
The farther west we moved the more urban areas we encountered, slowing any attempt to move unnoticed while also confirming we were getting closer to our objective.
But while all of that was happening the sun began rising and with it our mission came to an end since operations after sunrise were far too risky.
So we simply secured the territory we had advanced through, leaving the Ottomans responsible for holding the smaller towns scattered throughout the region while we dispersed back into the desert to continue our harassment campaign.
Instead of remaining the spearhead we became the thorn in their side because it didn't take long before British forces started moving to relieve the troops trapped near the front, which meant we began pursuing and harassing every formation moving through the area.
For an entire week we repeated the same work until we forced the British to pull back, although it was no longer as easy as before. With more troops available and a clear intention of hunting us down, carrying out the same operations had become increasingly difficult since artillery bombardments now followed almost every time they identified the area where we operated. Dozens of artillery pieces would pound sand dunes where they believed we were positioned.
They ignored the fact that we only fired a few times before relocating specifically to avoid that sort of response.
Although that created another problem because if the artillery reacted too quickly I could lose one of my veteran soldiers because of a bad calculation, something that had already happened more times than I wanted to admit.
But once again we had the opportunity to launch another offensive since the Ottoman troops had finished capturing the towns we had besieged and were now available to support another night assault, so we identified the next area we intended to attack to continue advancing.
We gathered supplies for the operation, stockpiling large amounts of grenades, huge quantities of submachine gun ammunition and several horse drawn artillery pieces since we needed flare rounds to begin the night assault.
This attack would be better prepared than the previous one, more than just a massive infantry assault, since we had brought around twelve artillery pieces. Much of that artillery had been captured equipment, although compared to the numbers used on other fronts it wasn't anything particularly impressive.
So while we used the sunset to move troops into the combat zone and our harassment campaign kept enemy scouts and guards hidden away, around nine thousand men gathered to prepare for the assault.
And so, the moment the flares were fired and illuminated the battlefield, a brief preliminary artillery bombardment began that would last only a few minutes while the infantry rushed toward the combat zone.
Exactly at 00:00 hours our assault began in full force, smashing the defenses with artillery while we charged toward the battlefield. It didn't take long before the little artillery we had fell silent and our weapons began singing instead.
That was when we started overwhelming the enemy with an enormous amount of submachine gun fire.
While an Ottoman force launched the direct assault against the town blocking the road to the Suez, my men flanked around it to close the encirclement and block any possible escape or reinforcement attempt.
We occupied positions inside buildings surrounding the urban center while also supporting the Ottoman assault attempts.
During the night, beneath the light of the flares, thousands of bullets could be heard flying while grenades exploded and the curses of British and Ottoman soldiers echoed through the streets as the battle unfolded without any concern whatsoever for who was caught in the explosions and overwhelming gunfire from our weapons.
But when the dust finally settled and the sun began to rise, the battle was already over, with British soldiers surrendering and beginning the grim work of clearing the streets of corpses.
While all of that was happening I stood inside a building looking through binoculars and could finally see the Suez.
We were closer than ever to threatening it.
''I just need a better firing position and not a single ship will pass through the canal without running aground'' I said while searching for a suitable place to position artillery and the anti tank gun to block the passage of ships.
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