Second Front: The Allied Invasion of France, 1942–43 (An Alternative History)

by Alexander M. Grace

  What Marshall needed was time. He stared at the map at it screamed at him what needed to be done. It seemed at that moment that he had been studying terrain maps all his adult life, and the contours, splotches of color, and snaking river lines spoke to him as clearly as printed words on a page. There were locations that the Germans would absolutely have to occupy in order to break out of the Massif onto the open ground of the coastal plain. The town of Mende controlled the bridges over the Lot River on Route Nationale 9 to the south, and Le Puy-en-Velay controlled the bridges over the upper Loire to the southeast and also the gap between the Loire and the Allier Rivers that the Germans could use to move south if the Loire were blocked to them. If those two points could be held, the Germans would be limited to picking their way through forty miles of the toughest terrain in the Massif. It would have been folly to think that they couldn’t do it, just as it had been to assume that they wouldn’t attack in the Massif in the first place, but it would take time, and Marshall would then have a chance to throw together another line ahead of them.

  He turned to one staff officer after another, dictating orders. The 10 1st would go to Le Puy-en-Velay by truck immediately, but it would be the French who would have to hold Mende. Meanwhile, he sent a message to Patton to fly to Avignon to discuss what they might do on a more permanent basis to deal with the problem. Then he went to get a message to Montgomery. There was no point in appealing to the Prime Minister until he had first at least gone through the proper chain of command.

  1800 HOURS, 28 MARCH 1943

  NEAR MENDE, FRANCE

  Colonel Franz Heussen had commanded the Reece Battalion of the Afrika Korps all across Libya and half of Egypt, right up to the gates of Alexandria, over hundreds of miles of daunting terrain with only one serviceable road, and that under constant harassment by enemy naval gunfire and air attack. He had not considered it a particularly difficult assignment to lead the corps less than one hundred fifty miles along RN 9 to the sea. But he was finding the Massif Central a rather different playing field than the Western Desert.

  The initial French resistance had cracked like the shell of an egg, and there had been little behind it. His armored cars and half-tracks had raced through the streets of St. Flour even while the infantry shock troops had fought with the bayonet against artillerymen and clerks at the French corps headquarters there, and raced on southward. That had been the last thing that had gone right. Heussen felt like the engineer of an express train with a tight schedule who was constantly plagued by minor delays at every station or switching shack, and he could feel the traffic piling up behind him along the single two-lane road.

  In the desert, whenever an army, either the Allies or the Axis, had been pushed out of a position, they would naturally retreat at full speed to their supply base, usually several hundreds of miles to the rear, lest they be cut off and starved quickly into submission. Here, every damned company of infantry, artillery battery, or section of tanks he encountered along the way had dug in, right across the road, and had to be blasted and maneuvered out of position. Every stone farmhouse turned into a fortress, and every bridge or culvert was blown. And, here, it wasn’t like the desert where the only real problem with leaving the road was the chance of losing your way in the trackless, flat, emptiness. Here there were forests, gullies, and mountains that sometimes even his eight-wheeled vehicles could not negotiate, and the odd logging trail or farm track could start out in the right direction but then bend around and lead you back the way you had come. The reconnaissance done by the scouts had provided some useful hints, but Heussen was finding their maps to be less than accurate and sometimes downright misleading. The thin, cold rain that continued to fall was welcome in that it kept the enemy fighter-bombers away, but it also turned every stream into a torrent and every field into a bog, and limited his own vision so that his first indication of an enemy position was usually a flash of gunfire and the explosion of one of his vehicles.

  His orders had called for him to be in the town of Mende by noon, already in possession of the bridge over the River Lot, and here he was, six hours later, still miles away and fighting a hot little action against what appeared to be a scratch force of French infantry, policemen, and farmers armed with shotguns, with nearly half of his vehicles already smoking wrecks dotting the road all the way back to St. Flour.

  2000 HOURS, 28 MARCH 1943

  LE PUY-EN-VELAY, FRANCE

  Colonel William C. Bentley, commander of the 2nd Battalion, 509th Airborne Infantry, was getting thoroughly tired of this war. He was on the verge of his third major battle and he had yet to strap on a parachute. Once more, he and his men had been trucked, like a load of potatoes, to the front to fight like poor, bloody infantry rather than as the elite force of strategic envelopment that they were. To add insult to injury, he was now only a few miles from the site of his first battle, not much progress at all.

  The 509th, along with about half of the 82nd Airborne had been added to the 101st, and told to dig in in a tight arc around Le Puy-en-Velay, denying the enemy the road, the bridge over the Loire, and also passage south along this side of the Loire. The G-2 officer of the 101st had informed them that their counterparts on the German side would be a full corps of SS panzer troops. Since Bentley remembered only too well how he had had his butt kicked by a mere brigade of the SS just three months before, he was not looking forward to this at all.

  At least this time it wasn’t just his own battalion hanging out on the line. There were at least 20,000 American paras, most of whom had seen some combat, plus two tank battalions, the 751st and 752nd, the 5th Artillery brigade, and the 333rd Field Artillery Battalion, the first unit of black soldiers Bentley had seen at the front, plus a host of motorized anti-tank, engineer, and other units. They were all frantically digging entrenchments around and inside the town, while the civilian population streamed south and the engineers wired the bridge with explosives. Even Bentley himself had pitched in, heaving sandbags as they built up a second wall behind the wall of the sacristy of the Church of St. Laurent, his command post, which gave him an excellent view of the little bridge over the narrow Borne River, a stream really, that ran along the northern edge of town. The bridge carried the Route Nationale 102, the main enemy avenue of advance from Clermont-Ferrand, straight to his door.

  In the distance, Bentley could hear the rattle of gunfire, and the horizon to the north was occasionally lit by flashes reflected off the low clouds. In another setting he might have thought it could have been thunder and lightning, but not here. He knew that the French 14th Division had been encircled about ten miles to the north and had refused a German offer of surrender. It wouldn’t take long for a panzer corps to deal with perhaps five thousand infantrymen, but the fighting had been going on for a couple of hours thus far and was obviously not over yet. He knew that, when the northern sky went quiet, he would have about an hour. He turned and grabbed another sandbag, moving a little faster.

  0200 HOURS, 29 MARCH 1943

  BRIVE-LA-GAILLARDE, FRANCE

  Abrams did not like the idea of a night advance over a road that had not been reconned, but no one had asked him. The word from division, corps, and from Patton himself had been to “hang a right and keep going.”

  When word had first come through of the German offensive to the east, in what was now being referred to as “the Bulge,” Abrams and everyone else in I Corps had assumed that they would be pulling back all along the line, then shifting units to meet the German spearheads face to face. But that had not been Patton’s style. He had apparently not learned that a flank march in the face of an enemy is one of the most dangerous and difficult maneuvers in the military repertoire. That had been true enough in Napoleon’s time, but with the immense logistical tail that modern mechanized forces had evolved over the years, it was almost an impossibility to change direction 90° at speed. But that was exactly what they were being ordered to do.

  Allegedly, the Polish Corps would spread out, along with the Americ
an V Corps, to cover the current front, however thinly, while the rest of the American forces would form a compact mass to drive directly into the western flank of the German advance. On the map this looked logical, with the predominantly infantry VII Corps centered on Aurillac driving east through Murat to cut behind the right-wing German column, while I Corps, now just the 1st and 2nd Armored Divisions, farther to the north, would rush northeast along the upper edge of the Massif Central on Route Nationale 89 to the headquarters of German Army Group B at Clermont-Ferrand and beyond. Supposedly, they would be met by a similar thrust westward from the Allied Forces in the Rhone Valley, resulting in the “pocketing” of more than 100,000 Germans. That would be great, if it worked out. After the disaster of Stalingrad and the defection of Italy, it seemed to Abrams that Germany couldn’t survive another such body blow. That was assuming, of course, that the Germans hadn’t foreseen all of this and were simply sitting back, waiting to kill them all.

  The key to everything would be the weather. If the skies cleared, Abrams was confident that the Allies could beat off the Luftwaffe and lay a carpet of bombs from here to Clermont, blasting any German foolish enough to stand in the way. At the same time, they could ravage the German armored columns now driving south, keeping them from turning to meet the new threat and also keeping reinforcements from arriving from Germany itself. But, as Abrams leaned back against the turret ring of his Sherman, which was crawling forward in a thick column of vehicles flanked by files of marching infantrymen, the sky above was absolutely black, no sign of the moon or even a single star.

  0600 HOURS, 29 MARCH 1943

  MENDE, FRANCE

  Special forces had fallen into a kind of disrepute in Germany after the fiasco in Vichy in which Otto Skorzeny had lost his life, but there would always be a place in modern warfare for troops who were willing to change out of their uniforms and cross into enemy territory to do a one-off job. Major Luther Markoff sat against the cold, sweating wall of the basement of a house in Mende, one of two adjacent structures owned by an Axis sympathizer that were now crammed with about forty nervous members of the Brandenberger Regiment. They wore French Army uniforms and had managed to join the fleeing columns heading south from St. Flour. They had then abandoned their captured vehicles and, avoiding the military policemen trying to round up stragglers, had drifted by ones and twos to this address over the previous day and a half. A technician had run a thin antenna up along the rainspout of the house, and Markoff now sat next to the radio operator, listening for the coded message from the German vanguard which would tell them that the time had come for them to join in the battle for the key river town.

  Markoff was getting concerned, and he could tell from the murmuring of his men that they were as well. The lead elements of the 21st Panzer Division should have been storming the town’s northern defenses by early the previous evening, and there was still not the least sound of fighting around the town. The previous afternoon, the French had blown two lesser bridges over the Lot, and his scouts had informed Markoff that the main highway bridge, the one less than a hundred meters from their hiding place, had been wired for demolition, but its destruction would cut off the French troops still resisting the German advance. There had been a steady flow of refugees, both civilian and military, across the bridge until a few hours before, and Markoff had noted the passage of a company of American-made tanks heading north, but things had been relatively quiet for some time.

  The timing of his move would be everything. If he assaulted the bridge too soon, the French would be able to overcome his understrength company in short order. If he moved even a few minutes too late, they could blow the bridge in their faces, and the German advance would be stalled, perhaps fatally. A lookout was posted in the attic of the house, where he had carefully removed a few shingles, giving him a view of the bridge and the highway leading to it. If the codeword didn’t come over the radio, and one could never be too sure of a radio signal getting through, the lookout at least should give them the word of an impending German assault. But no messages arrived, even now, as Markoff began to hear the thumping of heavy guns, still far off, but getting closer.

  0700 HOURS, 29 MARCH 1943

  NORTH OF MENDE, FRANCE

  Heussen directed the fire of his own Puma armored car’s 47mm gun at a dark patch on the slope ahead from which tracer rounds had been hammering a half-track stuck in a bog off the side of the highway while high explosive shells and smoke rounds peppered the hill and German infantry tried to pick their way forward. He had ceased to be leader of a recon element, and was just another part of an all-out assault on prepared enemy positions that spread half a mile on either side of the highway. A full panzer regiment and a battalion of grenadiers were also on line, backed up by several batteries of self-propelled guns, but their progress in the last two hours could be measured in tens of meters. A regiment of the French Foreign Legion had dug in across the highway and also had support from tanks and artillery, although not as much support as the attackers had. Twice now tanks had penetrated the trench lines, but all had been destroyed or disabled by point-blank fire from anti-tank guns hidden on the reverse slope of the slight ridge or by satchel charges hurled directly under their bellies by the Legionnaires in suicidal rushes. There remained only about three miles to go to the bridge at Mende, the last obstacle on the route to the sea, and the French obviously knew that and were holding on with their teeth. Heussen had seen the Legion fight at Bir Hakeim in the desert in similar circumstances, and he reminded himself that they had never actually been driven out of their positions.

  The bridge was important, of course, but not vital. Two separate bridging units accompanied the 21st Panzer, and the rivers here in the Massif were just rising, still fairly narrow, if swift. The only problem was that every minute that passed gave the French that much longer to bring up reinforcements to man the far side of the river, making an assault that much more difficult. Only when a bridgehead had been established could the engineers begin to lay the steel sections and pontoons necessary to get the tanks across. And now Heussen scanned the sky nervously. It was full daylight, and he found the sky filled with a diffused white light, not the looming gray of even high noon yesterday. The cloud cover was higher and thinner, still too much, perhaps for flying weather, but it was clearing.

  0800 HOURS, 29 MARCH 1943

  MENDE, FRANCE

  Colonel d’Ormesson nodded to the soldier dressed in a postman’s uniform, and the man began to trudge along the street, a heavy leather sack over his shoulder. At the door of the house d’Ormesson had been observing, he knocked lightly and then left a large parcel on the doorstep before continuing down the street and around the next corner. No one had entered the building for hours, and d’Ormesson was confident that they had as many rats in the trap as they were likely to get. The enemy had been very cautious in infiltrating this far, but it had apparently not occurred to them that the owner of the property was a known Axis sympathizer, with a son in the Legion des Voluntaires Fraincaises with the Wehrmacht on the Russian Front. Mende was a small town, and everyone’s business was known to all. The house had been under surveillance by the gendarmerie since the Allied intervention, and the arrival of several, then dozens of hardy-looking young men furtively during the night had raised the alarm. The fact that the house was so close to what was arguably the most important bridge in France at the moment was too much of a coincidence to ignore.

  Still, d’Ormesson’s stomach turned. He half expected some golden-haired child to open the door just as the explosive planted by the false postman went off, but he had no choice. He raised his gloved hand and brought it down with a chopping motion, and a dozen soldiers hidden with him behind the hedge in the garden across the street from the target house stepped back and hurled their smoke grenades into the street. At the same instant a sharpshooter fired a round into the parcel, blowing the heavy double door off its hinges. Soldiers charged across the street and into the building while machine guns raked the
upper story windows and a bazooka demolished the door of the adjoining building.

  In an instant, d’Ormesson’s straining ears could detect the snarling rip of the Schmeisser machine pistols carried by the enemy and he nodded. There had been no mistake. Blasts inside the building blew out whole rows of windows, and black smoke began to issue from the half-windows of the basement. He drew his own pistol and dodged across the street behind an armored car that he moved up to cover any possible escape routes with its machine guns.

  In the few moments it had taken him to reach the doorway, the firing had died out, and panting soldiers had already begun filing back out of the building. Bodies were scattered in every hallway and in every room, a few French, but mostly German, and the stench of burning flesh wafted up from the basement stairway.

  “No prisoners,” grunted a sergeant who had an angry pink scar that ran diagonally across his forehead and left eyebrow. D’Ormesson was about to berate the man for denying him the chance of prisoners to interrogate, but the sergeant tossed the colonel a dented helmet. “They were wearing these.” It belonged to the 92nd Infantry Regiment, d’Ormesson’s old unit.