by Alan David
They kept moving forward. Other tanks were hit. Kurt saw them going one by one, and wondered when it would be their turn. They were being systematically thinned out by enemy fire, and the gunners would soon begin to select their targets with more care. It could be only a matter of time before the one that was meant for them arrived.
‘Keep firing, Weilen,’ Kurt ordered, and was surprised that he sounded so calm and dispassionate because deep inside he was screaming silently, deathly afraid and wanting to be out of this death trap. They didn’t have a hope in hell of getting clear yet they had to continue to fight until they were knocked out.
He saw an enemy gun in the trees and called instructions as coolly as if they were on the practice range. But he was trembling uncontrollably and there was a picture of Anna in the back of his mind. He wondered how she would take the news of his death, and tried unsuccessfully to break that line of thought. Their 75mm fired and a shock wave struck the tank as a blinding yellow light erupted. Kurt opened his mouth instinctively to prevent his eardrums bursting, and he heard Hohner open the breech to eject the shell case and then slam home another round.
Peering through the periscope, Kurt saw the strike of their shot and exultation filled him. The 25-pounder received a direct hit and there was just a hole where it had been positioned, with bits of the weapon strewn around and the bodies of its gunners flung aside in careless attitudes of death.
Another tank vanished in a ball of dull red fire, and Kurt fought to keep his attention focused upon the tree line ahead. Stukas were still diving upon the spot, and the concussion of their exploding bombs seemed to rip the very air about them. Then he felt the whiplash of a near-miss, and ducked instinctively as the 25-pounder shell passed the turret. Weilen returned fire and scored another hit, but Kurt knew it would be only a matter of time now. He was filled with despair, for there was nothing he could do about the situation except wait. Yet he could not give up without a fight. They had everything to gain, and he was fighting for his life and existence. There was no thought of Fatherland, honour and glory in his mind.
‘Faster!’ he rapped at Schultze. ‘Give her everything you’ve got.’ He ducked as white-hot tracer slapped against the turret. His own machine-guns replied, and again he heard the unearthly crash of a 25-pounder shell hitting a Panzer. The whole Company was being knocked out of action. They would all be killed. The only safe spot in the entire valley would be in the trees where the guns were situated.
Schultze obeyed him calmly and the tank surged forward. Now Kurt could see khaki-clad figures moving around up there amongst the trees, and he recognised the pudding-basin British helmets the enemy were wearing. So these were the British! He moved his periscope around, looking for the next target, praying that he could hit it before it got them. The bombers had done a good job on the area, for most of the batteries of enemy anti-tank guns had been shattered, although the surviving weapons were still hurling their deadly shells at the clattering tanks.
Smoke shells suddenly burst in front of the tree line between the tanks and the enemy position, and Kurt drew a raspy breath. His eyes and throat stung from acrid cordite fumes, but they were still alive and going forward, and now the vision of those British gunners was impaired by the covering smoke. He chuckled harshly. They were going to get through this after all.
Then the tank was hit by a solid shot which struck the turret. Kurt thought the sky had fallen in upon him. He was flung around like a cork bobbing in the sea and his eyes were filled with a searing white light which seemed brighter than the sun. He could feel heat upon his face, and the world seemed to be spinning crazily. He barely heard the explosion, but the next instant he found himself leaving the turret, and he dimly realised that the tank was burning. There were flames all around him. He could not open his eyes as he went sprawling, falling heavily off the outside of the tank to the hard ground. Pain filled him, spreading through his body, and he instinctively tried to get to his feet to run only to feel a sharp pang of agony in his right leg, which refused to bear his weight. He fell on his face, confused by the overwhelming noise, bewildered by the shattering effects of the explosion.
But strong hands grasped him and he was dragged upright. He cried out at the pain in his right leg, but whoever was holding him ignored his objections and continued to drag him away from the tank, while enemy machine-gun fire flailed the entire area. Then another pair of hands grasped him and he was lifted bodily off his feet and carried. Moments later a number of them fell into a ditch in a heap, and he began to open his eyes, dizzy and feeling nauseous. His ears were filled with a strange buzzing and he swallowed several times in an attempt to get rid of it. A moment later he heard Schultze’s voice, which seemed to come from a long way off.
‘We all got out,’ the driver commented in disbelief, ‘and nobody got hurt except the Sergeant. How is he, Weilen?’
‘Looks like his right leg is broken,’ the gunner replied. ‘He was blown clean out of the turret. There’s a nasty bruise on his forehead. He’s practically unconscious. Let’s do something about his leg then get him out of here. We can follow the ditch back the way we came.’
Kurt opened his eyes and looked up at the smoky sky. There was no pain in him at the moment. He felt completely numb. So his leg was broken! That knowledge pleased him. At least he wouldn’t be getting into a tank again for some weeks, and by that time the war might be over. When he was lifted he groaned, for pain returned to his leg, but he felt strangely lethargic, and they were gentle with him. There followed a seemingly timeless period when he was jolted around as they carried him along the ditch.
Eventually the movements ceased and he heard Captain Zimmermann’s voice, filled with concern, asking about him. Kurt opened his eyes and looked up at the older man, his vision blurred. Zimmermann patted his shoulder, his creased face dusty, his eyes glazed.
‘You’ll be all right, Kurt,’ he said consolingly. ‘There’s an ambulance here and you’ll soon be in a hospital. Your injury will keep you out of the war for a time. I must go. We have to push on. But we’ve lost more than half the Company. This engagement has been a disaster.’
Kurt nodded and closed his eyes. He felt himself being lifted on to a stretcher, and all his cares seemed to fall away. He had a broken leg! The thought kept repeating itself in his dazed mind. That was fine. He would get sick leave and could return to the farm. He could leave the war to those who wanted to fight it. He began to laugh softly to himself, and was barely aware that someone was rolling up his right sleeve. He hardly felt the prick of a needle, and within a few moments he had slumped into blessed unconsciousness.
Chapter Eighteen
A week of fighting the French did nothing to assuage the appetite Max had for killing his bitterest enemies. But the breakneck advances of that first week were slowed because the spearhead of the Panzer divisions was urgently in need of infantry support to clear points of resistance and occupy ground. There followed a series of small mopping-up operations, bitter and bloody, in which Max revelled, and on 20 May the leading Panzers reached the Channel near Abbeville. But their flanks were vulnerable and the British expeditionary force hit the long flanks of the German armoured spearheads with two battalions of the Royal Tank Regiment and an infantry brigade concentrated north of Arras.
The first the Germans knew of the counter-attack was just after 1400 hours on 21 May when the leading British tanks pierced the German flanks and began to deal out terrific punishment. The British tanks, although poorly armed, were so thickly armoured that they were impervious to both German tank and infantry anti-tank weapons.
Max was shocked when the British Matildas burst through and began wreaking havoc, and it was not until German anti-tank gunners organised a stop-line in open country south of Arras, using their 88mm weapons for the first time in an anti-tank role, that the British thrust was brought to a halt. Although only lightly engaged in this attack, SS Vaterland received a shock, for it was the first time they had encountered resistance w
hich stopped them in their tracks, and a healthy respect for the British was born of that engagement.
Major Dantine cursed and raged at his subordinates during a briefing, but to no avail. SS Vaterland had received a bloodied nose, and some seven hundred men of the Division had been taken prisoner by the British.
‘Prisoners!’ Dantine railed at his rigid Company officers. ‘How could SS men be taken prisoner? They are taught not to surrender. What was wrong with our training that men can forget it so quickly? The British are not supermen. They have been pushed back like the French in this campaign.’
‘Mainly because the French on their flanks have given way first, sir,’ Eckhardt ventured. He was second-in-command of the Company again, for a replacement platoon officer had come forward from reserve.
Dantine glanced at Eckhardt with harsh gaze, and the silence which followed was stifling. Outside the command post the sounds of war were blasting ceaselessly, but Dantine was preoccupied with the beating they had taken.
‘I’m relieved that not one man in this Company surrendered to the British,’ he said at length. ‘I give you orders to shoot any man who wavers in the face of the enemy. We are going into the line against the British now, and they are holding Dunkirk. The Führer has decided that the threat to our tanks must be squashed by a direct assault upon the British. I tell you again that they are not supermen, although they certainly know how to fight. But it is the countryside which will prove to be our worst enemy. Come and look at the map.’ He tapped the table before him and the platoon officers crowded around on either side. Max stood at Dantine’s back, peering over the Major’s shoulder. ‘We are up against a formidable position,’ Dantine continued. ‘The British certainly know a defensive area when they see it.’
Max saw how ideally suited to defence was the outer perimeter which the British had chosen to defend. Their flanks were protected by the Le Bassée canal and the upper reaches of the River Lys, and there were marshy areas around the water lines which made the terrain totally unsuitable for tanks to operate.
‘As you can see,’ Dantine rasped angrily. ‘We cannot use our Panzers. In any case, the Führer has decreed that they must be retained for the assault upon the main French armies in the south. The British are merely a thorn in our side which must be removed. Our main objective is to smash the French and occupy all of France. So we are going on the offensive without armoured support. We have never fought such an action before, but it will permit us to gauge ourselves against the British man to man. I will tell you that SS Division König attacked single-handed and unsupported across the Lys and beat off a British armoured counter-attack from the bridgehead it had seized. But they lost almost a whole Company in doing so, and were saved from worse casualties by one of our anti-tank units which finally went to its aid. So you can see that without Panzers we are at a great disadvantage, and the ground is against us. But when we attack I expect the usual standard of battle initiative despite the toughness of the British tanks. We shall have to deal with them personally, and I remind you again that any man who fails to give of his best will be shot.’
Max listened to Dantine’s tirade. He had nothing but admiration for the way the British had counter-attacked, but the thorn in the flesh had to be removed, and he looked forward to the fighting which would develop. The British were determined, did not throw away their rifles when they retreated, and were disciplined. They seemed as professional as the Germans themselves, and Max could feel respect for men who stood up as equals to his own troops.
They attacked on foot but came under accurate artillery and machine-gun fire. The companies moved forward, their platoons in formation, and the battalion was ordered to take its many objectives. Dantine’s Company had to capture a village. The advance was in a northerly direction from Arras, and soon the smoke of war blotted out vision. A British patrol was captured, and when the four men were sent back Max saw them at Company headquarters. One was a sergeant, his left arm bloodied, and all four were impassively defiant. Major Dantine entered the command post and questioned them in his limited English. All he received were the numbers, ranks and names from the men, who were dour and weary.
‘Send them back to battalion headquarters,’ he snapped. ‘But we need all the information we can get.’ He turned to Eckhardt. ‘Go forward to the leading platoon and find out what they’re doing. We should be advancing, not taking cover.’
Leun accompanied Eckhardt and they had to follow a ditch to get to the forward platoon, which was pinned down by British crossfire. The machine-guns were sited to give perfect covering fire to the British front line, and Eckhardt wished the Panzers could have been brought into use. He made an appreciation of the situation and realised that they would need artillery and air support if they were to continue the advance. The village under attack was protected by ditches and an all-out advance was impossible. It would have to be a case of infiltration, cleaning out machine-gun posts, then making a final assault from very close quarters.
Moving back, Eckhardt made a report to Dantine, and his superior raged about the delay.
‘Our timetable is being shot to pieces,’ he rasped. ‘We must push on as we’ve always done.’
‘Sir, I’m ready to go back and lead the Company in a suicide bid, but I assure you that we’ll all be wiped out if we try it. We need support and we’ll have to fight our way in slowly. If we make an open attack they’ll cut us to pieces. The British know what they are doing. They’ve got every approach covered. Even with tanks on our hands we’d have problems. They have 25-pounders sited, and they are ready to give us hell.’
‘Go back up front and see that the attack is handled correctly,’ Dantine ordered. ‘I trust you, Eckhardt. You won’t hang back if there is any chance of going on. I’ll get what support I can, then come forward myself, and we’ll see what we can do.’
Eckhardt saluted, and took Leun with him as he went forward once more to the leading platoon. There he found grave news awaiting him. One of the sections had advanced along a ditch only to be jumped by a British standing patrol. Bayonets were used in a fierce hand-to-hand fight and the German section had been wiped out.
‘These Tommies don’t know when they are beaten,’ Sergeant Meyer reported, shaking his head. ‘Our platoon commander was with that section, sir, and he’s been killed or taken prisoner. I’ve never come across a situation like this before.’
‘We’ll do what we can,’ Eckhardt retorted, using his glasses to check the terrain ahead. He could see the buildings of the village which was their objective, and they seemed tantalisingly close. There were two groups of farm buildings in the foreground, and both were being used by the British as strong points, one covering the other. He quickly realised that if one farm was captured the other would become vulnerable, and that would leave the approaches to the village easier to negotiate.
Stukas came screeching out of the sky, diving upon the farms and the village, and the ground trembled under their thunderous bombardment. Eckhardt indicated that they should try to advance immediately, but the leading sections soon came under effective fire and had to seek fresh cover. He lay in a ditch and studied the hellish scene before him through his glasses. The British were taking everything that was thrown at them while waiting stoically for the ground attack which had to go in to clean up. Their resistance was as strong as ever despite the softening up tactics of the Luftwaffe, and another section was chewed up and badly mauled when it tried a frontal assault on one of the farms.
Dantine came forward and used his glasses. ‘I’ll get those two farms completely flattened,’ he said harshly. ‘We’re not going to be held up by that village, Eckhardt. The other companies are advancing on our flanks and we are dropping behind because we cannot capture this objective. I want us to be the first company into Dunkirk, and nothing will stop us. Keep up the pressure here and get forward if you can. But I’m going to start something now.’
Eckhardt sighed heavily as Dantine departed, and he caught Leun’s eye.
The Sergeant-Major shook his head wearily.
‘I fought against the British in the Great War, sir,’ he said as they lay side by side in the ditch. ‘The harder you hit them the harder they fight. Just when you think you’ve got them beaten they hit you again. We are not going to walk all over them like we did the Poles. This is a different matter.’
Eckhardt nodded. He used his glasses, picking out some of the British defences, and he plainly saw British troops in their easily recognisable helmets.
‘Meyer,’ he called. ‘Get the machine-guns firing at that farm on the right. I can see British troops there. I want them pinned down.’
But the British were firing steadily, and tracer bullets came arcing through the sunny afternoon. Eckhardt tried to get some momentum into an attack, but each time they showed themselves they were hit by accurate machine-gun and rifle fire. Shells began to screech overhead, and soon the two farms were nothing but blazing ruins, but when Eckhardt attempted to lead the men forward there was concentrated machine-gun fire from the ruins and their immediate surroundings, and he cursed as he went to ground again. Could nothing blast out these British?
Dive bombers appeared and devastated the village itself, tearing it apart brick by brick, but still the resistance was there when the German troops tried to move in, and Eckhardt flung himself into cover and lay for a moment, breathing heavily as he considered the situation. They had never come up against such resistance before, and he realised that without Panzers to open up a gap for them they were no better than other determined troops, and the British were determined. Wherever they were pushed out of a position they counter-attacked and tried to regain it.
Dantine came forward again, and seemed to be in a frenzy. After studying the scene through his binoculars he cursed angrily.
‘There’s nothing left of the objective but blazing ruins,’ he ground out between clenched teeth. ‘I’ll lead the attack myself. Get the platoons moving. We are lagging behind badly and Colonel Spaten is screaming blue murder at me for not making maximum effort. Let us get moving, Eckhardt.’
