Barely halfway across the macadamized road, a shout went up in the woods ahead and to their right. As they crashed through some holly bushes along the road, they could see that, in a slight depression off the road, a pair of trucks mounting anti-aircraft guns had been concealed, and one of the crewmen was raising the alarm. Belmont cursed himself as only now he noticed the marks of the truck tires in the mud at the edge of the road, but it was too late.
Both men shed their rucksacks and sprinted through the trees, still clutching the Sten guns the British had parachuted to the resistance weeks before. Bullets snapped twigs off the trees around them, and they could hear more shouting and vehicle engines starting up off to their left as well. Belmont half turned and could see the silhouettes of several German soldiers charging after them, less than fifty meters away. If it had not been for the trees, which suddenly seemed horribly thin and sparse to Belmont, they would have been cut down already.
“Keep going!” Maurice suddenly hissed as he spun about behind the bole of a tree and loosed a burst at the pursuing Germans.
Belmont instinctively stopped as well, but Maurice turned toward him, his face contorted with rage. “I said, keep going, you imbecile!” he shouted. “I have a personal score to settle, and this is as good a place as any to do it. Now, go!”
Belmont remembered what the others had told him of Maurice’s village, although Maurice himself had never spoken of it, and he nodded, crouched low and ran on, tears filling his eyes. He slid down the steep bank of a little stream and dodged along its crooked bed. Short bursts of the Sten gun continued for awhile, punctuated by single shots of German Mausers. Then the throaty cough of a machine gun joined in, followed by one long rip from the Sten. A final flurry of machine-gun fire told him that it was over, but he ran on. He turned uphill now, at a right angle to his previous path, and dove in among some rocks, lying there panting. He peered back to the north, but could see nothing. He lay there a long while, but now only the birds could be heard, indifferently calling in the trees. He slowly pulled himself up and walked around the edge of the rock outcrop where he had taken shelter, and found himself staring into the barrel of a rifle.
Belmont braced himself for the flash, but then he realized that the soldier facing him had on, not the German coal scuttle helmet, but an old French one, the kind with the little ridge along the crest. Rough hands snatched away his Sten gun, but Belmont smiled as he raised his hands.
1800 HOURS, 27 MARCH 1943
VALENCE-SUR-RHONE, FRANCE
General Juin rubbed his jaw thoughtfully as he glanced back and forth between the intelligence report he held in one hand and the large map spread on the table in front of him. His headquarters was in the Hotel de Ville of Valence, and the press of staff officers who rushed about with stacks of papers gave the large conference room a crowded, stuffy feel, even though the tall windows had all been blown out during the fighting for the city in the German counteroffensive.
He had interviewed the breathless maquisard himself after receiving the first reports from the 10th Division headquarters, and it fit all too well with what little other information he had been able to gather. There was always the chance that the man was a plant, one of Laval’s right-wing thugs in the pay of the Germans, even though he had been vouched for by the FFI liaison network, but there was some corroborating information. His was the only specific report of having seen large concentrations of armored vehicles and artillery, even identifying some of the divisions involved, since aerial reconnaissance had been grounded for days; but the Germans had many tanks, and they had definitely not been confirmed as being anywhere else along the line. And his forward units in the Massif Central had reported very heavy German combat patrols all along their front, preventing any scout units from penetrating across the line, a sure sign that something was being hidden. But why in the Massif Central? That was the part that didn’t make any sense.
The roads in the Massif were few and far from the best in France, and the surrounding terrain would be virtually impassible for heavy vehicles, especially during the spring rains. Just like the Ardennes! Juin slapped his forehead with the palm of his hand. How could he have missed it? This was exactly the ploy the Germans had used to tum the flank of the Maginot Line in 1940. They didn’t batter their way across the Franco-German border or attempt a von Schleiffen-like sweep along the coast. They drove through the lightly defended woods and hills of the Ardennes precisely because everyone assumed that it was impossible. That was why the lightly armed French had been given this sector, and even why he had concentrated his own strongest units in the Rhone Valley, because a German offensive couldn’t possibly come through the Massif. What a fool he had been!
Juin began shouting orders at the top of his lungs while he scribbled a report to be transmitted up the chain of command to Giraud, and more importantly, to Patton and Marshall giving them his appreciation of the situation. He needed aerial reconnaissance, and he needed it immediately and at any cost. He knew that the British and Americans had some kind of window into Axis war plans, and he suspected that they had broken one or more of the German codes. If they were holding back vital information about a major offensive on his front in the interests of “security,” there would be no forgiving them. Even some analysis on volumes of enemy radio traffic would be a help, since he didn’t have the capability himself. And he needed Marshall to under stand the absolute need to shift some of his reserves to this sector either from the American or Canadian sectors, as he had precious little in reserve himself.
Then Juin braced himself on the map table and studied his own dispositions. There was not much there to console him. The line from St. Etienne near the Rhone to Carmaux in the west at the edge of the Massif was nearly one hundred fifty miles long and was defended by a thin line of only six infantry divisions. And these divisions were substantially smaller than German ones, less than half the size of their American counterparts, and they were still woefully under-equipped in artillery, with no armor to speak of at all. For political reasons, which Juin understood perfectly well, it had been important for France to field as many divisions as possible, as nowadays these were the units of measure of a nation’s strength. It had been easiest to give the soldiers of the old Armistice Army of Vichy a few days familiarization in American small arms and machine guns, on the assumption that their previous military training would suffice for the rest. Troops who would be using the new American and British tanks and cannon, however, would require much more training, and only Leclerc’s 2nd Armored Division had been formed with this equipment, being composed mainly of men from de Gaulle’s Free French who had been using American and British equipment all along, and this was way over on the right grinding its way toward Lyon in the Rhone Valley. Even his two powerful North African divisions, the 3rd Algerian and 4th Moroccan, were on the right where the serious fighting had been expected to take place. It was true that a portion of this line was protected by rivers, mainly the Loire in the east, but the French units were actually well forward of the Lot River in the west and could be destroyed before they could withdraw behind it, and there still remained a gap twenty to thirty miles wide in the center with no river protection at all. And the Germans were more than capable of forcing a river crossing, as they had done at the Meuse in 1940 to unhinge the whole Allied line.
His only reserve force was a single regiment of the Foreign Legion, although this was arguably the best unit in the army. The remainder of his troops in the Massif were new recruits or former Vichy troops hastily formed into divisions under commanders who had not maneuvered a unit larger than a battalion since 1940. Some of these troops had already cracked once at the first German counterattack, and, while that had been a cobbled together affair with few troops of indifferent quality, Juin had every reason to believe that this new offensive would be Hitler’s last gamble, one that he would back with every resource at his disposal.
Juin grabbed one staff officer after another, giving him concise verbal orders to
rush to the appropriate troop commanders. Koenig was to halt the offensive by his corps and pull the 2nd Armored Division back for resupply and to be ready for a sudden change of front. Three artillery regiments then in training near Avignon were to curtail their courses and move north to Bessèges for possible deployment into the line. The same would go for several tank battalions, anti-tank, and anti-aircraft units that were in the process of being formed into the 1st Armored Division, and the 27th Alpine Division that was strung out along the Pyrenees, was to concentrate at Toulouse and entrain for the front. He dictated a telegram to North African Army headquarters in Algiers that the 2nd and 3rd Moroccan Tabors, the 7th Algerian Division, and the 1st Spahi Regiment were to be embarked immediately for Marseille. The 1st Choc Para Commando Regiment and the 2nd Choc Marine Commandos on Corsica were both to be flown into Valence.
Just as he finished this message, a dull rumble could be discerned over the buzz of conversation and the static of the radios placed about the room. Juin put his hand to his throat. He was too late.
2000 HOURS, 27 MARCH 1943
SOUTH OF ST. FLOUR, FRANCE
General Jean de Lattre de Tassigny, commander of the French II Corps in the center of the Massif Central, remembered the terror of being on the receiving end of a massive artillery bombardment from his service in the First World War. What bothered him most about the experience, however, was not the ungovernable fear that welled up in every man’s breast at being thrown to the ground and then having that ground heave beneath him; it was the sense of helplessness at a time when every second counted. There was so much that he needed desperately to do and he could hardly get to his feet. When the report of the maquisard had passed through his headquarters en route to Juin, de Lattre had taken the precaution of putting his corps on full alert, manning forward positions, and distributing extra ammunition. He had also ordered the commanders of his three divisions, the 10th, 29th, and 36th, to send out strong combat patrols to bring in prisoners for interrogation. Under the circumstances, that was about all he could have done.
Then, about half an hour ago, a series of frantic radio calls had come in from each of his divisions about a massive infantry assault all along the line. No tanks, just a solid wave of infantry that had rushed the forward French lines without artillery preparation, probably catching the combat patrols just as they entered no-man’s-land and overwhelming them. Moments later, a rain of mortar rounds had engulfed the battalion headquarters just behind the front, well-directed fire that had obviously been laid out through a long program of clandestine scouting. And this had been followed by heavier artillery beginning to pound the divisional headquarters and his own command post.
This was blitzkrieg in the classic form. De Lattre needed to get information about where the enemy was penetrating, to shift his scanty reserves to meet them and to get on to the army command for reinforcements, but he could hardly get to his feet as the walls of the country chateau he was using as his headquarters shook, and a steady snowfall of plaster dusted him and his staff. The Germans were pinning his troops all along the line with infantry, drawing in local reserves, and pushing in the forward defenses. Then they would find their weak spot and pour in the armor that would rip open a hole and come streaming into the soft rear areas of the corps. De Lattre had a nauseating feeling of deja vu, as he suspected every man in the French Army was having at the moment. The only question now remained whether the Americans would cut and run for their boats the way the British did when the Germans made their breakthrough at Sedan three years before or whether they would stand and fight.
2300 HOURS, 27 MARCH 1943
LYON, FRANCE
Rommel paced back and forth across the floor of his command post, reading over the shoulders of his radio technicians as they scribbled down reports coming in from the front. Every now and then he would glance longingly at the door to the blast-proof cellar of the Post, Telephone, and Telegraph Building that led up to the courtyard where his “Mammut” armored car was parked, but then he would catch a disapproving stare from General Alfred Gause, his chief of staff, and Rommel merely sighed and continued his pacing. He paused in front of the large table map where staff officers were pushing wooden markers labeled with the designators of the various divisions that made up the offensive, and he nodded approvingly.
Initial reports were excellent. He had hand-picked two veteran infantry divisions from the Eastern Front, the 305th and the 352nd, and these had done a superb job of swarming over the thin French first line of defense, opening the route for the mailed fist he had so carefully amassed. This was divided into two key elements that he liked to think of as a rapier and a battering ram. The rapier was the two panzer and two mechanized divisions of his own beloved Afrika Korps under the command of General Hans Cramer, now fully rearmed with the latest Panther tanks. They would race south along Route Nationale 9, more or less along the seam between the American and French sectors, all the way to the sea near Montpelier. It would take finesse and flexibility to make at least two major river crossings and pick their way through nearly one hundred miles of difficult terrain over an indifferent road net, but he was confident that his men could do it.
The battering ram was comprised of the II SS Panzer Corps under Sepp Dietrich, the three panzer divisions Liebstandarte Adolf Hitler, the Frundsberg, and the Hohenstaufen, plus the Lehr Sturm Panzer Grenadier Brigade, and supported by the 2nd Parachute Division, which he had pulled away from the battle for Lyon and mounted on trucks for the occasion. These troops were the most lavishly equipped in the Reich and were totally indifferent to casualties. They would smash their way through any resistance the Allies might be able to mount, southeast along Route Nationale 102 to the Rhone, Avignon, and then on to Marseille.
Once these thrusts had developed themselves and the French had stretched their line thin to try to cover the gaps, his original armored force around Lyon, the Hermann Göring Division plus one panzer and two more panzer grenadier divisions, would go over to the offensive and drive back down the Rhone, catching the bulk of the French in a giant pincer movement before cutting in behind the British and Canadians along the Italian border. If all went according to plan, the entire center of the Allied lodgment would be gutted and the two halves could be rolled up in tum, driving the enemy back into the sea.
If the Allies would only delay their reaction for two, or at most three days, the German spearheads would break out of the restricting terrain of the Massif and would be virtually impossible to stop in the open ground along the coast, and it would be Dunkirk all over again. If this Allied front could be annihilated, troops could be shifted to Italy to deal with Montgomery, who Rommel viewed as being overly cautious and who might even embark his troops of his own accord. If that could be accomplished, there would be no new front in the West for months, if not years, and all the power of the Reich could be focused on the Russians. Stalin would likely feel abandoned by the West, and might even be in a mood to accept terms, thus putting an end to the war. It all depended on gaining control of a few country roads and a few bridges over the next seventy-two hours. And it depended on the weather continuing to stay overcast to keep the Allied air forces off the backs of the advancing troops.
0600 HOURS, 28 MARCH 1943
AVIGNON, FRANCE
Marshall virtually had to order his aides to drag General Giraud bodily from his headquarters in the old abbey overlooking the old papal city tucked into a sharp bend of the Rhone River. The first few minutes of the visit had been necessary, even productive, as they exchanged information about every possible resource the French could bring to bear on the looming crisis. But then Giraud had merely stayed on, instead of rushing off to lend his own command authority to the frantic efforts at shoring up the breach, and the very last thing that Marshall needed at the moment was the tall, dapper French general leaning over his shoulder providing sage advice, in the form of what sounded suspiciously like orders, on the deployment of the whole Allied army. Now Mar shall tried to shut
out the racket of the ringing telephones, chattering radios, and thudding feet of the staff officers and focus on the problem at hand.
During the night the German assault had shattered at least two French divisions, with at least two more being virtually useless as fighting units, and torn a gap thirty miles wide in the line. They had pored through this gap what appeared to be two armored corps, one each along the only two main highways through the Massif Central with an obvious intention of driving to the coast, cutting the lodgment in two and probably destroying the whole of the Allied Expeditionary Force. It was now Marshall’s task to cram units into the breach and hold back the flood.
He cursed himself for becoming over-confident at the advances being made all along the front in the preceding weeks. He should have known that no major German unit had been destroyed in the battles of January and February, and that the enemy wouldn’t simply roll over and accept the Allied presence in France. Now Patton was strung out halfway across France, and the only units in strategic reserve were currently the much-battered 82nd Airborne and the newly-arrived 101st Airborne Divisions, neither of which were ideally suited to stopping an armored juggernaut.
Well, the first priority was to shore up the shoulders of the German penetration. Juin appeared to be taking the appropriate first steps in that regard, concentrating his best units around St. Etienne and pulling his armor back from the front for a counter thrust. The Canadians could slide two divisions westward to screen Lyon and even free up an armored brigade, artillery, and other support units to back up the French. The American 29th Division had dug in around Aurillac on the western fringe of the Massif to serve as a rallying point for the survivors of the French III Corps, but that still left a huge gap in his center with virtually nothing to cover it. There were the 9th Infantry and 6th Armored Divisions that were hurriedly being assembled near Marseille as units arrived from the States, and a host of scattered French and American units strewn all across southern France, but no cork of a size comparable to the mouth of the bottle. The only thing that even remotely fit the bill was the British XII Corps, with the Guards Armored Division and two infantry divisions, then aboard ship in the Western Mediterranean en route for Montgomery’s front in Italy; but Marshall hated to go hat in hand to the British, especially to Montgomery, who had been taking tremendous heat for his failure to break out of his beachhead, and tell him that the British offensive would have to be postponed in order to pull the Americans’ acorns out of the fire. But it would have to be done. Marshall knew only too well that too many young men were dying at that very moment for him to balk at eating a little crow.
Second Front: The Allied Invasion of France, 1942–43 (An Alternative History) Page 23
