Flames over France

by Robert Jackson

  “I said if necessary, gentlemen,” he reminded them. “That task will be assigned mainly to the Morane squadrons, whose aircraft, unlike ours, are cannon-armed. I do not think our peashooters would make much impression on the Boche tanks.”

  Villeneuve paused and looked around the assembly, his expression grave. “Make no mistake, gentlemen, we are embarking on what may be the final battle in the struggle for our homeland. Each of us must give of his best, so that no matter what the outcome, men will say that we fought bravely to the end. Frenchmen, Poles, British — ” he glanced at Armstrong and at Kalinski, who was standing next to the Englishman “ — we are all together in this endeavour. And even if we fail, even if France should fall, we must continue the fight from other shores. There must be no place in our thoughts for the word surrender. That is all; we must now await further orders. Good luck to you all.”

  They came to attention and saluted him; he returned the gesture, then turned on his heel and walked briskly towards his office. Armstrong was left with the uncomfortable feeling that the Frenchman had just delivered a valedictory address.

  “Do you think it’s all over, Ken?” Kalinski asked him, as they sat on the grass a while later, chewing rolls and drinking milky coffee out of glass bowls. “Do you really think we’ve lost? Armstrong shrugged.

  “It doesn’t look too promising,” he admitted. “The trouble is, as I see it, that we’ve precious little left to fight with. Have you noticed any replacement aircraft and pilots coming our way lately? I haven’t.”

  Kalinski thought for a while, then said quietly: “If France does go down, which seems likely, do you think England will sue for peace?” Armstrong snorted.

  “Not on your life! We’ll go on fighting, you can bet your bottom dollar! We won’t let that little bugger Hitler dictate any more terms to us. Mind you, I’m not sure about this new prime minister of ours, Churchill. He made some awful blunders in the last war, or so I’m told. My father can’t stand him. But people reckon he’s got staying power, and won’t let himself — or his country — be pushed around. Maybe if we’d had somebody like him in charge a few years ago, we wouldn’t be in this mess now.”

  “What will you do?” Kalinski wanted to know. “I mean, if France surrenders. Will you try to get back to England?”

  “Too bloody true I will! I have no intention of sitting around waiting to be taken prisoner. There’s got to be some way. If France packs it in, I intend to make for the coast, and failing that I’ll head south. Try to make Gibraltar, maybe. Of course, the quickest way out would be by air. Steal an aeroplane, perhaps. After all, the French won’t have much use for ’em if they aren’t fighting the Germans any longer. What about you?”

  Kalinski looked at him, and there was a gleam in the Pole’s eye. “The idea of England is very appealing, my friend. Most of my Polish comrades think so too. So, before you go off and do something dangerous by yourself, consult with me first. Is that a deal, as the Americans say?”

  Armstrong grinned at him. “That’s a deal, Stan. Don’t get yourself killed in the meantime, though.” They shook hands solemnly.

  Colonel Villeneuve emerged from his command post and walked towards his aircraft. He was now wearing his flying overall, and he nodded to Armstrong and Kalinski as he went past. “We take off in ten minutes. Tell the others. Our orders are to patrol the battlefront. Nothing more than that.”

  They climbed away into the blue and gold June morning, heading north towards Amiens. The Hawks were leading, the Polish Caudrons some distance behind, the aircraft rising and falling gently on the currents of warm air. At 15,000 feet they levelled off, on the alert now for signs of danger. Far below their wings the land was speckled with woods, intersected by winding roads and railways joining the towns and villages: Beauvais, Breteuil, Montdidier, and finally Amiens itself, lost in the haze that covered the northern horizon.

  Here, though, the air was fresh and clean, with near-perfect visibility for miles. Away to the left was Dieppe, with the Channel gleaming in the rising sun. The Channel! How easy it would be to reach it, Armstrong thought, to fly on for another hundred miles or so, to the Sussex coast, and home.

  He tore his gaze from that direction, looking at the flights of aircraft around him, their blue, white and red roundels — the reverse of the RAF’s — standing out against their drab camouflage. They were flown by men who had become firm friends, men to whom he had a duty. He would see it through, no matter what. And if his destiny was to end his life among them, so be it.

  “Here they come. Messerschmitts, above and to the right. Turn to meet them, and spread out.”

  Villeneuve’s voice set every nerve tingling. A sensation like an electric shock passed through Armstrong’s body, then all at once, as usual, he was icily calm, focusing his eyes on the silvery shapes that came tumbling out of the north-eastern sky like hawks stooping for the kill. The two formations closed with phenomenal speed and then they were upon one another, racing through a maze of smoky tracers as they opened fire simultaneously. Armstrong picked an Me 109 and stuck doggedly to his course, firing in short bursts as the enemy fighter filled his windscreen. Suddenly the German pilot’s nerve broke and he flicked away to the left, exposing his pale blue belly to Armstrong’s fire. Something fell off the 109 and narrowly missed Armstrong’s cockpit canopy as it whirled away.

  There was no time to see what had happened to the Messerschmitt. The sky was filled with whirling, twisting aircraft. Armstrong climbed hard, trying desperately to get above the melee?, to arrive at a vantage point from which he could obtain a better tactical picture of the air battle. Over the past weeks he had taught himself a formula: first gain altitude, then pick your target, then hit him in the dive at speed, and get out fast. It seemed to be a recipe for survival.

  He saw that he was still accompanied by his two wingmen, which brought considerable relief. At 18,000 feet he turned out of the climb and dipped his wings in succession, looking down to make sure that nothing was climbing after him and his two colleagues. But the sky at this altitude was empty, and he took a few moments to make a careful survey of what was happening below.

  Here and there smoke trails twisted down towards the green-and-brown landscape. Looking hard, he saw a couple of parachutes, circular white dots that looked for all the world like nails that someone had studded into the ground. But the nails were drifting, and underneath each one swung a pilot, thanking his God for deliverance, but perhaps wounded, maybe even dying.

  Checking his map, he saw that his climb had taken him north of the Somme, well into enemy-held territory. In just a few minutes more he would be over the town of Albert. There was no sign below of any aircraft, either enemy or friendly, and he decided that it was time to head for safer skies. Circling towards the south, with his wingmen sticking to him like glue, he spotted some columns of smoke rising in the distance and drew the attention of the other two pilots to them.

  The three Hawks went into a shallow dive, crossing the Somme again. As they flew on, more smoke burst into the sky from the ground, and Armstrong knew that he was witnessing a bombing attack. A couple of minutes later he picked out the aircraft responsible, diving and then climbing steeply above the smoke, and he knew them for what they were. He pressed the radio switch and yelled into the microphone, all R/T procedure forgotten in his sudden excitement.

  “All French fighters, concentrate on the Montdidier sector,” he cried. “Allied forces under attack by Stukas. I repeat, Stukas — and with no fighter escort!”

  He and his two fellow pilots were going to be first into the battle. They continued their dive, building up their speed, and headed towards the middle of the beehive of enemy dive-bombers. Picking a section of three Junkers 87s that were still flying in formation, preparing to dive on whatever target lay on the ground, they closed in rapidly and opened fire.

  The Stuka in Armstrong’s sights suddenly went into a steep turn, its pilot alerted to the threat by his gunner. It flew straight into th
e path of Armstrong’s bullets. The RAF pilot kept his finger on the trigger and raked the dive-bomber from the yellow spinner at its nose right through to its tail. The long glasshouse cockpit shattered into fragments and then he was streaking over the rapidly disintegrating bomber like a flash of lightning.

  He pulled up hard and stall-turned, arrowing down to make a second attack. It was not necessary. The Stuka, its pilot probably dead at the controls, was fluttering earthwards like a falling leaf. Two other Ju 87s were going down, the victims of his wingmen, one a ball of blazing fragments, destroyed by the explosion of its own bomb.

  Armstrong selected another target, a Stuka that was weaving uncertainly ahead of him. He closed in to point-blank range, ignoring the tracer that sprayed at him from the German’s rear gun. For the first time in air combat, he felt a burning, murderous anger against the men he was going to kill. Up to this point his feelings had been dispassionate; he had even felt sorry for the crew member of the Dornier whose remains had been spattered over his fighter weeks earlier. This was something different. He wanted to kill these men, to strew their charred remains over the French countryside. Now it was France; tomorrow it would be England that lay at the mercy of their bombs.

  Not if he could help it. Bastards, he thought, and pressed the trigger again, literally chopping the Stuka to pieces from a range of fifty yards. The rear gunner was dead, a bloodstained bundle sprawled over his gun. The Stuka was in shreds, flames licking back from its engine. The front section of its cockpit canopy flew off and whirled away in the slipstream. The dive-bomber lost speed. Armstrong saw the pilot trying to struggle clear.

  Armstrong throttled back. He raised the Hawk’s nose a little, put his sights squarely on the luckless German, and squeezed the trigger, intent on blowing the man apart.

  Nothing happened. He was out of ammunition. A red veil of rage crossed his vision and he inched towards the Stuka. Madness possessed him as it filled the sky ahead. He was going to ram it.

  Then the enemy pilot dropped away from the doomed aircraft and reason returned. He hauled on the stick and pulled the Hawk away, averting a collision by a hair’s breadth. Sweating and shaking, aching in every limb, he looked down, seeing the German’s dark shape tumbling towards the ground. He saw no sign of a parachute.

  Suddenly, the sky was full of aircraft as more Hawks and some Caudrons joined the combat. He called up his wingmen and headed for Paris, his presence useless now that he had no bullets left. Behind him, dark columns of smoke, like tombstones, marked the last fiery plunge of a dozen Stukas. The remainder dropped their bombs haphazardly and fled, harried by the French fighters, who only gave up the chase when they were forced to do so through shortage of fuel and ammunition.

  The destruction of the dive-bombers was the single biggest success of 5 June, a day in which the French fighter groups flew 438 sorties and claimed 40 enemy aircraft for the loss of 15 of their own. In the afternoon, as Colonel Villeneuve had predicted, the cannon-armed Morane units were ordered to carry out ground-attack missions, and at 1400 six aircraft made a low-level cannon attack on a column of about seventy enemy tanks; one tank was knocked out but all the Moranes were hit and two of their pilots wounded.

  At 1700 eight more Moranes set out to attack the same column. This time ten Me 109s were waiting for them and a fierce dogfight flared up over Royes, in the course of which two Moranes and two 109s were destroyed. The last lighter ground-attack sortie of the day was carried out between 2000 and 2030 by nine Moranes escorted by nine D. 520s of GC I/3 and II/7. The pilots of I/3 shot down four Me 109s and a Henschel 126 observation aircraft; one French pilot was shot down and killed and a second wounded.

  It was not the first hectic air battle involving I/3 that day. Earlier, at 1705, six aircraft had been sent out on an air cover mission in the Braye-sur-Somme sector. They were accompanied by eight more D.520s of GC II/7, flying at a higher altitude. At 25,000 feet over Compiegne the latter were suddenly ambushed by fifteen Me 109s; twenty-five more enemy fighters circled watchfully at a distance, ready to pick off any stragglers. The 109s swept through the French formation in a dive, shooting down two D.520s and badly damaging a third on their first pass.

  The three pilots of II/7’s lower flight turned to meet the attackers head-on and one of them, Sous-Lieutenant Pomier-Layragues, set a 109 on fire with a short burst. The pilot bailed out; he was Hauptmann Werner Moelders, commander of a squadron of the elite German fighter unit, JG 53. At that time his score stood at twenty-five French and British aircraft destroyed. Taken prisoner by French artillerymen, Moelders at once asked if he might be permitted to meet the man who had shot him down.

  He was too late. Even as the German ace parachuted to earth, Pomier-Layragues found himself in a desperate single-handed fight against four Me 109s. He shot one of them down, but in the following moments his fighter was torn apart by the shells of six more Messerschmitts. A ball of fire, it crashed in the suburbs of Marissel and exploded. The pilot had not bailed out.

  At Le Bourget, Armstrong and his fellow pilots flew two more missions in the course of the day, both escorting Potez 63s which were assigned to photograph the movement of German forces across the Somme bridges. During the second mission, the French aircraft were attacked by ten Me 109s and 110s, which broke through to shoot down the Potez in flames.

  A swirling air battle developed, with the French and German pilots striving to gain a height advantage. In the end, from the ground, the twisting fighters seemed no more than silvery midges against the sky’s deep blue.

  German troops paused in their march to watch the combat, hearing the scream of tortured aero-engines and the distant rattle of machine-guns. In the midst of the melee they saw a sudden flare, a starburst of light, followed by a pencil-line of smoke that raced towards the earth. The doomed aircraft fell arrow-straight, its engine still howling. It fell for an eternity, the noise of its passing growing louder with every moment, until it streaked out of sight behind a clump of trees on the horizon, the point of its impact marked by a great geyser of smoke and earth.

  Troops who reached the spot found only a smoking crater, with a few scraps of twisted metal lying around. Of the pilot, not a relic remained.

  It was, perhaps, the way in which Colonel Pierre Villeneuve would have wished to die.

  Chapter Eleven

  The battle in the north continued its inexorable course. On 6 June General von Kleist renewed his advance, but once again the French stopped him. One of his armoured corps had over half its tanks disabled after two days of fighting. Once again, it was Rommel who kept the offensive going. Exploiting the gap he had created, he raced on to cover another thirty miles, advancing as far as Forges-les-Eaux on the Beauvais-Dieppe road and slicing the French Tenth Army in two as he did so. On the 7th his meteoric progress continued as he drove the centre of the Tenth Army before him in what was fast becoming a rout, and at 0200 on the eighth, after a brief halt, his tanks reached Elbeuf on the River Seine.

  In the picturesque villages, many inhabitants gazed in bewilderment as the Panzers rolled through, unable to comprehend the speed with which disaster was overtaking them. Only a few hours before, they had cheered and thrown bouquets of flowers at the men of their own 3rd Armoured Division, now pulling back over the Seine. Such was the confusion that in Elbeuf a woman came up to Rommel’s command vehicle and asked the general if he was English.

  Rommel’s dash did not succeed in securing the Seine bridges, which were blown one after the other. The town of Rouen, however, fell that same morning to General von Hartlieb’s 5th Panzer Division, the tanks and personnel carriers rumbling in a long column up Autoroute 28 and entering the town unmolested. Meanwhile, on Rommel’s other flank, and infantry corps under General Erich von Manstein had succeeded in forcing a passage through to the lower Seine.

  The German drive to the Seine, and the splitting of the French Tenth Army, had effectively sealed off the French Ninth Corps — which included the British 51st Highland Division — in
the Rouen-Dieppe pocket, with their backs to the sea, and their encirclement was completed on the 9th when the 5th and 7th Panzer Divisions swung north-westwards from the Seine. The next morning, Rommel and von Hartlieb launched a concerted attack on Ninth Corps, which had set up a hasty line of defence around the perimeter of St Valery-en-Caux, where the 51st Division and the remnants of the French forces expected to be evacuated by sea, as had happened at Dunkirk. This, however, was prevented by the fog and by the Germans themselves, who by noon on the 11th were in a position to shell both the Allied ships offshore and the beaches at St Valery.

  The Highlanders and most of the French now had less than half a day’s rations left. On the morning of the 12th, General Ihler, the Ninth Corps commander, ordered the French forces at St Valery to surrender, and although this raised bitter protests from the Highlanders, who were prepared to fight on, they were compelled to do likewise soon afterwards. Over 8,000 British troops fell into the German net; the total bag of Allied troops that day was 40,000, including no fewer than twelve generals.

  Rommel’s tanks clattered into Le Havre on the morning of 14 June. There they rested for forty-eight hours before pushing on towards Cherbourg, covering as much as 150 miles in a single day. There was no longer any opposition, and on 19 June Rommel accepted Cherbourg’s surrender. For the incredible 7th Panzer Division, which alone had taken close on a 100,000 prisoners in its headlong dash from the Meuse to the sea, the Battle of France was over.

  Meanwhile, on 9 June, the German Army Group A had attacked on the River Aisne, the weight of its offensive falling on the newly-formed French Fourth Army Group, comprising the Second, Fourth and Sixth Armies and commanded by General Huntziger. Ever since the German breakthrough on the Meuse, the French Second Army had been under relentless pressure, striving to hold some sort of line between the Bar and the Meuse and so prevent the outflanking of the Maginot Line. Losses were heavy, and reserves were continually being drained to make good the attrition. Despite this, the Second Army had been compelled to withdraw during the last week of May, and as a consequence part of the Maginot defences had to be abandoned.