The British were hiding, he thought, as he watched from his armoured car. The SS used Pumas to patrol lightly-occupied territories, such as Norway; Stahl's men were safe from anything short of an antitank gun, or a Molotov cocktail in the wrong place. The remains of the Home Guard might be present in the town, holding their weapons and preparing to make a stand, or they might have retreated to Ipswich. Stahl hoped that they would make a fight of it; if he managed to convince the British in the town that their army had failed them, it would be much easier to break them to the yoke. The crushing of resistance, both mental and physical resistance, was crucial to the success of the overall campaign. The British needed to feel that they were beaten before they would submit.
He saw only a handful of British men on the streets – no women – and those who saw him looked once and then looked away, probably trying to hide the expressions on their faces. He’d seen that before, in Vichy France; the French Government might be craven, but the new generation of Frenchmen longed for a time when they would be free of the Reich’s control over their lives. Many young Frenchmen were taking the easy way out and sailing to Algeria; the remainder, sometimes, spent their lives futilely trying to hurt the Reich. The British wouldn’t have learned caution yet, he knew; they might make a fight of it…
But they hadn’t, he realised, as his unit secured the Home Guard barracks without a fight. The barracks had been abandoned quickly, leaving some equipment scattered around, but there were no signs of any Home Guardsmen in the building. They’d probably sensed the tightening noose around the town and tried to break out before it was too late; some of them had probably made it, others had been caught by the infantry units that were surrounding the town and sent to the hastily-created detention camp. Stahl wouldn’t have given two Reich-marks for their future; he knew exactly what fate Himmler had in mind for them.
“Secure this location and remain here,” he ordered after they had completed their search. “I want a regular series of patrols through the town, with weapons and armour displayed openly, and if there is any trouble, handle it decisively.”
“Jawohl,” his subordinate said. “Herr Standartenfuhrer, what do you intend to do now?”
“I intend to secure the remainder of this town and then lay down the law to the Town Council,” he said. He'd sent one platoon to the Town Hall, trapping everyone inside the building, but he didn’t want to go too soon and make the councillors feel that they were important. The SS briefings had stated that the Town Council would have limited control over the town and would therefore only be useful to keep the rabble under control. “Remain here; report to me at once if anything changes.”
The Town Hall was larger than he had expected, but much less grandiose than any similar building in Germany; the British didn’t seem to go in for vast imposing buildings leaking their power and glory into the air. The SS unit that had surrounded it had been carefully briefed and were remaining polite, but very firm; a single handcuffed man had been left by one of the gates. A bruise on the side of his face revealed that someone had punched him.
“He took a swing at Werner,” one of his soldiers said, when Stahl quirked an eyebrow. “We knocked him down and left him there.”
“Carry on,” Stahl said, as he entered the Town Hall, he walked past a small group of civilians into the heart of the Town Hall, the meeting room for seven councillors, three of which faced him as he stared at them. “Which one of you is the Mayor?”
“That would be me, sir,” one of the men said. Stahl had believed that all English Mayors wore chains of office, but this one, carrying himself with an air that suggested that he had seen armed combat, wore nothing but a simple suit. “Welcome to Felixstowe.”
Stahl bit back a laugh at the Mayor’s tone. The Englishman wasn't scared, but he was angry, very angry. He might not try to resist – intelligence suggested that the British civilian authorities had been ordered not to offer any resistance and keep as much of the country running as possible – but he certainly wouldn’t help, at least not until Stahl found a lever that could be used to make him collaborate completely.
“Thank you,” he said, dryly. “As the designated representative of the commanding officer of the local German forces, operating under the authority of Fuehrer and Reichskanzler Adolph Hitler, I am declaring Felixstowe an occupied town under the commonly accepted rules of war. I demand your cooperation in making the transfer to German authority as smooth and painless as possible.”
The Mayor said nothing. “If you refuse to cooperate, I will be forced to administer this town myself, using my storm-troopers to enforce my will,” Stahl said, pressing against their determination to resist. It would be so much easier to operate if the local authorities acceded. “If that happens, I cannot say that the persons in this town will be respected…”
“Enough,” the Mayor snapped. The frustration in his voice almost made Stahl smile. The Mayor might want to fight, but he knew that it was futile. “What are your orders?”
“My orders are very simple, at least for the moment,” Stahl said. “This town will remain under your control, provided you obey orders and work to keep your people peaceful. All remaining Home Guardsmen and soldiers within the town are to surrender at once. All weapons and radio transmitters are to be handed in at once. The people in the town who have work in the docks are to report to them at once for their orders, for which they will be paid a fair wage in Reich-marks; those who have no occupation in the docks are to remain at home unless they have no choice but to do otherwise. The local policemen are to be disarmed and registered, but after that, they are to continue keeping the peace…”
He went on, completing the list of initial requirements; they didn’t have to hear all of them, not yet. They wouldn’t want to assist the SS in rounding up the Jews and everyone else in the Black Book. They would help until they were so implicated in Stahl’s actions that they would have no choice except to make the jump from reluctantly cooperating to outright collaboration. When that happened…
“Please impress upon all your people the importance of obeying these rules,” he said, in conclusion. “You have a lovely town and it would be a shame to damage it.”
Chapter Sixteen
Near Ipswich, England
The tent looked nothing like a secure comfortable base, yet Captain Harry Jackson was absolutely delighted to see it as the remains of the Felixstowe Home Guard staggered towards safety. They were following directions they’d received from a small motorcycle unit that had been scouring the country looking for survivors, but until now there had been no sign of organised resistance. A pair of armoured cars were parked near the tent and hundreds of soldiers were milling about, being organised by sergeants and several senior officers. The entire scene was chaotic, with hundreds of men moving in all directions; even the sight of a small armoured column failed to restore Jackson’s spirits.
The escape had been nightmarish. They’d fallen back, only to be pursued by the Germans, who had chased them right out of Felixstowe. Halfway there, they had been engaged by a force of German paratroopers who had been trying to make their way back into Felixstowe, and had been as surprised to meet the British as the British had been to meet them. Jackson didn’t know what orders he’d given, although he was certain that he had issued orders; his mind was a complete blank. They’d been lucky not to have shot the motorcyclist who’d met them. The rider had told them that several other units hadn’t been so lucky.
A small desk had been set up in front of the tent, and Jackson pulled himself up into a straighter posture as he took in the face of the man sitting there, trying desperately to organise his forces. He ordered Wilt to find his men somewhere to rest for a few hours and walked over to the desk, waiting until the General looked up to salute.
“Captain Harry Jackson,” he said. “Felixstowe Home Guard.”
General Barron returned the salute. “I’m pleased to see you,” he said, his voice grim, but tightly controlled. “What was it like back th
ere?”
“The Germans have taken the port and probably the town,” Jackson reported grimly. “They have some armoured support and have been unloading freighters ever since they landed.”
“I see,” Barron said. “Do you have any idea of the enemy’s strength?”
“I don’t know, sir,” he said. “I think they will have at least a few thousand men. They stopped us outside the gates, sir…”
“We never really expected to have to fight them up here,” Barron said, more to himself than to Jackson. “We ensured that the best equipment and the best training went to the forces near Dover, where we expected the Germans would have to land if they wanted to invade us. They’ve outflanked the fixed defences until they reach the GHQ line surrounding London and half of our communications are down.”
Jackson recognised the offer of absolution and allowed himself to relax slightly. “Sir, they can’t succeed, can they?” He asked. “I mean…there’s the Navy, and the Air Force, and…”
“The Royal Navy was hit pretty badly last night,” Barron said shortly. For the first time, Jackson detected a tiny hint of despair underlying his voice. “I don’t have any details, but the War Office – which was also hit last night – sent a warning to the effect that I couldn’t count on either naval interdiction of the Jerry supply lines or naval gunfire being directed onto the German positions. The RAF sent in a pair of recon aircraft and both of them were shot down; the Germans are not only bombing strategic targets across Britain, but they’re maintaining a constant CAP over their own landing site.”
He paused. “We’re going to need you and your men debriefed by the Intelligence Corps, but at the moment, we think that the main focus of German activity is here, coming towards us from Felixstowe,” he said. “ I have spotters out and we're struggling to establish a line of soldiers to block the enemy from advancing without casualties. The worst problem at the moment is civilian refugees; it’s been too long since we had any drills and that’s starting to show.”
Jackson winced. “What are they doing?”
“The BBC hasn’t been able to formulate any message yet, but the arrival of the Germans is common knowledge in this area and several thousand civilians fled at once for the west,” Barron said. “The people are blocking the roads and trying to catch trains while we’re trying to organise military convoys and reinforcements for here. I’ve used soldiers to clear some of the roads, but mostly the refugees are being urged to return to their homes.”
Jackson shook his head. “They won’t take that advice, sir,” he said, remembering all the horror stories about how the Germans conducted themselves in occupied lands. There would probably be rumours of German atrocities already, even though none of them would ever be confirmed and probably hadn’t happened. “Is there anything else that they might do?”
“A few hundred German refugees and Danes have been lynched,” Barron said. “It’s not something that I can do much about, particularly as many of them might have been spying for the Germans before they landed, but it’s another problem for us.” He shook his head. “Now, before the Intelligence Corps get their hands on you, how many soldiers do you have left?”
“Forty-one,” Jackson said, cursing his own failure. His original company had been decimated; the unit he’d brought out of the chaos had been the remains of several units, all of which had lost over half of their number in the desperate fighting around the port. “Several of them are injured, sir, and we’re low on ammunition.”
“They’ll go into the personnel pool at the moment,” the General said. “The injured ones are to report back to see the doctors, but if they can still fight, we’re going to need them as part of the defence line. They’ll probably end up being formed into a new company with other stragglers and you’ll have command; there won’t be time for proper formalities.”
“Sir, I…”
Barron ignored him. “I have Sergeants running companies and Lieutenants commanding entire sections because of the vast shortage of personnel,” he commented, his voice icy. “I need you to take command of one of the reformed companies and get it back up into fighting trim, quickly.”
“Yes, sir,” Jackson said, pushing his doubts about himself aside. “How long do we have?”
Barron held up a hand as the noise of an aircraft came in from the east. “That’s not one of ours,” he said, his voice hushed. Jackson raised an eyebrow; he’d never been able to tell the difference between a British jet aircraft and a German jet aircraft. “I think that that bastard is up there spying on our positions, which means that they have to know just how weak and disorganised we are, and if they come bursting out…”
Jackson remembered. He’d studied the Nazi campaigns in France and Poland, and one thing had been clear; the Nazis had never given the French or Poles a chance to recover from their early defeats, pushing forward and trying to scatter them before the command structure could recover from the shocks of the first blow. There had still been thousands of armed and dangerous men scattered across the country, but the controlling brains had been stunned and unable to draw their far flung units back into a coherent formation.
The Germans hadn’t knocked the British out with a single punch, but if they could secure their grip on Suffolk, they would be much harder to dislodge. They were expanding their grip on the coast to speed up their unloading operations, and if they built up enough supplies…
He remembered taking part in a training session organised by Basil Liddell Hart, back before Liddell Hart had been placed on half-pay – again – for some unspecified offence. They’d seen, then, what tanks could do and how hard they were to stop, particularly if there were no friendly air units or tanks around to assist in stopping them. The Germans had respected Liddell Hart’s theories and they’d been the ones who’d put them into practice; they would build up, attack, and then start marching to London. They were confined, at the moment, to a small lodgement; could they be destroyed before they could build up and attack?
“Can we not attack them?” Jackson asked, after a moment’s pause. “We could try and knock them back into the sea…”
“We’re too disorganised to mount a proper attack,” Barron said. “We’re pitifully short of armour and supporting elements; we’re having some moved up, but if we hadn’t been holding a training drill, we wouldn’t have had any tanks at all. We can hold the Germans and execute a fighting withdrawal, but actually stopping them will be difficult, let alone launching a counter-attack If we get the divisions we’ve been promised, we might be able to start thinking about a counter-attack, but at the moment, our orders are to hold the line and preserve as much as possible for future operations.”
He tapped the map on his desk. “I’ve distributed recon units, between Ipswich and Felixstowe, and we should have warning of any renewed German push to the west,” he said. “Our main defence line will be here” – he drew a half-circle in front of Ipswich – “as preserving the road and rail connections in the city will be of paramount importance. Your unit, once reformed and rearmed, will join in the defences and hold the Germans.”
“Yes, sir,” Jackson said.
“You’ll be briefed on communications protocols as soon as you reach the line,” Barron concluded. “If we can hold them, we have a chance of putting an end to this invasion before half the country is overrun; good luck.”
“Thank you, sir,” Jackson said, saluting again.
The discussion with the Intelligence Corps office – a person whose face managed to combine attentiveness with a certain rat-like malice – was more like an interrogation. The interview was mainly focused on what sort of forces Jackson had seen, but the officer also managed to get in a few criticisms of Jackson’s operations, and even a hint that Jackson had fled in the face of the enemy. The missing Colonel Felton-Smith was also blasted, although as Jackson suspected he’d been caught by the Germans and either killed or captured, there was little point in ripping apart his reputation.
“This is a waste of
my time,” he concluded, after the fourth suggestion that he had fled. “I don’t know enough for you to make any real recommendations to the General and you are preventing me from getting on with my job.”
The officer managed to look both astonished and suspicious. “It is impossible to say,” he said, in a voice that was more like a whine than a dignified tone, “just what part of the puzzle will allow the rest to fall into place. You may not know what you know, but if I can put it together with the remainder of my information, I may be able to learn something important. I have already learnt that the Germans have moved nine heavy freighters into the port and have sent out all of the ships that we had in harbour that were seaworthy.”
Jackson saw the implication at once. “They might be able to reinforce faster than we expected,” he realised. “Is that what you meant?”
“They have several divisions right on the other side of the Channel,” the officer informed him. “If we know how much tonnage they have at their disposal, we can estimate how quickly they can reinforce their forces and expand their beachhead.”
Jackson scowled at him. “If you’re so smart, how could you not know that the invasion was coming?”
The Invasion of 1950 Page 15
