The enemy artillery, whose shots hitherto have fallen far behind Balan, have adjusted their fire forwards, and now it is very close behind the attackers. Enemy infantry in front of us, behind a separating river, artillery bombardment behind us, here it is impossible to move either forwards or backwards. Unexpectedly, over to the right appear engineers, men hard as iron, who bring up assault boats. There Oberfeldwebel S.P. decides to risk it with the engineers. He had three of his men spring forward and leap into one of the boats. In a second the boats are in the water… they are on their way to the safe shore. The second boat follows with reinforcements and the Battalion Adjutant, Lieutenant M. By the time a third boat is about to enter the water, the artillery has adjusted its fire so far towards the Meuse that the assault boat is destroyed. The engineers fall. But a small group of ten to twelve men has made it. The first on the other side of the Meuse. They lie close up against an enemy bunker. What are they to do? If there is any French counter-thrust they are lost.
From the Balan side of the river, Schulze then observed that the enemy bunker appeared to be knocked out, having received a direct hit from a German gun a short time previously. A German officer was seen to disappear behind the bunker:
soon he comes back with five prisoners, the bunker was still occupied – then they lay out white sheets, because from the other side, our own troops are often still firing; they have no idea that our own people are already over there. Meanwhile hours pass by; while Oberfeldwebel S.P. has crossed the Meuse, the company is stuck in the water, pinned down by the enemy fire.
Schulze’s platoon falls back on Balan that evening, and is told to stand by as reinforcements:
The enemy artillery shoots on Balan. We are sitting in our wet uniforms in safe cellars. There was no thought of sleep, for the evenings are bitterly cold. Teeth chatter and limbs tremble.
As far as Schulze’s immediate front was concerned, by nightfall on the 13th the prospects did not look brilliant. That the 10th Panzer obtained a foothold on the opposite bank at all that day seems to have depended largely on the initiative of individual detachment leaders of the assault engineers such as Feldwebel Rubarth. Specially equipped with explosive charges for knocking out bunkers which had survived the Stukas and flak, Rubarth and his section of eleven men assembled their gear in the private park of a mansion near Balan. Across the wide stretch of open meadow where Schulze had been pinned down, Rubarth could clearly recognize the enemy strongpoints on the river at Wadelincourt; but he noted ‘the terrain is extremely unfavourable for an attack’. Moving down to the Meuse over this dangerously exposed ground as H-Hour arrived, Rubarth records:
Immediately we were met by strong machine-gun fire. There are casualties. With my detachment I reach the bank of the Meuse under cover of a row of trees and a sports-ground.
He appears to have had available only two small rubber dinghies designed to carry no more than three men. Cramming four into each, however, Rubarth paddled out under a hail of fire, into the sixty-yard wide river. Because of the extra weight, plus their heavy equipment of wire-cutters, grenades and hollow charges, the water came perilously close to the gunwales of Rubarth’s dinghy. He ordered his men to throw out all unnecessary ballast, entrenching tools included, remarking grimly: ‘No digging in for us – either we get through, or that’s the end.’ To upset the defenders’ aim during their crossing, the Feldwebel ordered his driver, Corporal Podszus, to blaze away with a machine-gun into the weapon slits of a particularly menacing-looking bunker immediately to their front, using another man’s shoulder to steady his aim in the wildly unstable dinghy. On landing (near Wadelincourt), Rubarth speedily finished off this bunker. His own story continues:
The enemy artillery is now laying down heavy artillery fire on our crossing. Crawling past the next bunker in dead ground out of reach of its guns, the section attacked it from the rear. I made use of an explosive charge. In the next second part of the rear bunker wall is ripped out by the power of the explosion. We utilize the opportunity to reduce the occupants of the bunker with handgrenades. After a brief fight they appear with white flags, and a few seconds later our Swastika flag flies over the bunker. From the other bank the sound of loud cheers from our comrades comes over to us. Thus encouraged we fling ourselves at two further field-works we had spotted some 100 metres half left of us. To get to them we have to go through a patch of swamp where part of the time we stand up to our thighs in water. With reckless audacity Corporal Bräutigam alone attacks the left bunker and through a clever action captures the occupants. Together with Sergeant Theophel and Corporals Podszus and Monk, I take the second bunker. Thus the first line of bunkers immediately behind the Meuse is broken through over a stretch of some 300 metres.
The facility with which Rubarth and his few men succeeded in knocking out this row of bunkers, one after the other, suggests the state to which the French defenders had already been reduced. What were the ‘interval troops’ entrusted with guarding the vulnerable flanks of these important bastions doing? There is virtually no mention of them in Rubarth’s accounts; where were they? All was clearly not well with the river defences at Wadelincourt.
Rubarth’s own account continues with his detachment pushing forward to the railway embankment a hundred yards or so from the river bank. Here, for the first time, he came under such strong fire ‘that temporarily we have to seek cover’. Taking stock of the situation, Rubarth ascertained that the other dinghy bringing his section across the river had been hit in midstream, its occupants presumably killed. Thus
with one sergeant, four men and the group of infantry which were covering our right flank, I am alone on the far side of the river. Moreover, our ammunition is exhausted, so that we cannot continue our attack. In order to bring up reinforcements and ammunition, I go back to the crossing place and discover that the crossing operation has been interrupted by very heavy enemy fire. The dinghies are partly deflated or shot to pieces. Four men of my detachment have been killed there. My company commander, who is still on the other side of the river and has watched the course of the battle, immediately orders the bringing-up of new dinghies and appoints new crews.
While waiting for these reinforcements under the blazing sun, Rubarth’s Corporal Bräutigam, who spoke French, ordered one of the prisoners to go back into his bunker and get something to drink. He returned with a bottle of wine. During the interval the Wadelincourt defenders suddenly rallied and launched a surprise attack on Rubarth. They were beaten off, but Bräutigam was killed, and Corporals Monk and Podszus wounded. Shortly after this critical moment, an infantry group arrives, and Rubarth joins up with it. With fresh reinforcements of assault engineers reaching him at last from the east bank, he then goes on to blast a gap in the second line of bunkers. By nightfall, exhausted and having lost six dead and three wounded out of his original eleven men, Rubarth, together with riflemen of the 86th Regiment, had reached his objective on the heights above Wadelincourt. For his achievements Rubarth was immediately awarded the Ritterkreuz, and a lieutenant’s commission.
Thus, by dusk, the 10th Panzer had a firm but small toehold on the west bank, between Wadelincourt and Pont Maugis.
1st Panzer
With the tremendous concentration of firepower supporting it, the 1st Panzer was having a somewhat easier time. On its left flank, the job of clearing the western suburbs of Sedan and then rushing the La Marfée heights fell to the Grossdeutschland Regiment. One of the élite fighting units of Nazi Germany, the Grossdeutschland could trace its origins in the 1870s as the Berlin ‘Guard Regiment’. In the turbulent 1920s it was employed to put down any attempted putsches in the capital, while in more peaceful times its principal function was to march three times a week, with bands thundering out Deutschland über Alles, to change the guard at the Brandenburger Tor, and to provide guards of honour for such visiting dignitaries as Ciano of Italy and Horthy of Hungary. Just three months before war began, Hitler had issued a proclamation changing the regiment’s name to Grossdeutsch
land as a martial symbol of the unity of all Germans within the new Reich. Officers of the Regiment Grossdeutschland (which later in the war was expanded to a division, and eventually to an army corps) were specially selected from the rest of the Army. As with the British Brigade of Guards, the men had to be over a certain height, and the regiment always fought as a separate unit, its name proudly emblazoned on the sleeves of its members. Regarded as an élite force set aside for especially tough operations, the Grossdeutschland had been earmarked by Guderian ever since February for the role of smashing a hole in the French lines through which the Panzers could then pour. At that time Guderian had evidently made some disparaging remarks about infantry who ‘slept instead of advancing at night’, to which the regimental commander, Lieutenant-Colonel Graf von Schwerin, rose testily, betting Guderian a case of champagne that this would not happen with the Grossdeutschland. All through April it had undergone rugged toughening-up exercises: marching on short rations, river crossings on the Moselle, and night attacks.
At midday on the 13th, the shock troops of the Grossdeutschland had been issued with their iron rations, their field-flasks filled with coffee, and weapons inspected. Then Colonel von Schwerin had arrived, jauntily carrying a stick, and the regiment had set off through Floing less than a mile from the appointed crossing area. Senior Lieutenant von Courbiere, commanding No. 6 Company, which was to be second over the river, was struck by the unnatural stillness at Floing: ‘Not a shot falls, the inhabitants have fled, dogs and cats roam through the streets whose destroyed houses bear witness to the fearful force of this war.’ Apprehensively, he wondered whether the silence of the French guns meant that they ‘had already been hit so hard, or are they just waiting for the moment we get moving to cross the river?’ Then, as his company reached the cloth factory, with its blue-tinted black-out windows overlooking the river, where it was to embark,
at last the French recognize the danger threatening them, and begin to fight back, without worrying about the bombs exploding around them. The engineers bring up their assault boats, but they cannot reach the river. Despite our covering fire the enemy can watch all movements out of his bunkers and hits back at us. Assault guns roll up, but even their shells can do nothing against the concrete and iron. Valuable time is lost, until finally a heavy 88-mm. flak silences the enemy. Once again the assault boats are brought up, but this attempt also brings down enemy fire. The young lieutenant of the 7th Company, Lieutenant Graf Medem, and two engineers are killed. The wounded are brought back – once again a heavy flak is brought into action. Under its protection the first sections of the leading (No. 7) company cross the Meuse. The crossing has succeeded! Swiftly, as we had already practised in the winter, 6th Company follows.
A little over two miles ahead, Courbiere could clearly make out the forward slopes of La Marfée. The Stukas were still hurling their bombs into the fortifications on top of it, often apparently only a ‘hair’s breadth’ from the leading attackers. Approaching the main Sedan–Donchery highway, Courbiere saw the first French appear, with their hands up. At the same time, No. 7 Company on his right was coming under heavy fire from several bunkers along the road:
A quick reconnaissance shows that a large bunker with six weapon slits some 200 yards south of the road, on the edge of a vegetable garden, offers good prospects of approach… after a short fight the bunker is reached by a sergeant and two men. The enemy are smoked out by hand-grenades; they are completely vanquished; they come out. Their faces reveal the psychological strain of this fighting. Close to each other they stand with their backs to their bunker and raise their hands; ‘Tirez!’ they cry…
Courbiere’s company then cleaned out a second bunker, and an anti-tank position concealed in a barn. Here to their delight they discovered a cache of soda-water bottles with which they slaked their thirst in the sultry heat of the late afternoon; after a short rest, they were even more delighted to make contact with elements of Lieutenant-Colonel Balck’s 1st Rifle Regiment, which had also successfully crossed the Meuse. It was now about 5 p.m. After some savage hand-to-hand fighting, just as daylight was fading Courbiere’s company reached their objective atop Height 247, not far from where Moltke had directed the first battle of Sedan seventy years previously.
Together with the Grossdeutschland, it was the 1st Rifle Regiment21 that was to play so important a role in the early phases of the breakthrough at Sedan. Its commander, Lieutenant-Colonel Balck, came of a long military line; as an officer of the ‘King’s German Legion’, his great-grandfather had served on Wellington’s staff during the Peninsular War; his grandfather had served in the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, while his father had been a personal friend of General Sir Ian Hamilton of Gallipoli fame. Himself a tough front-line soldier who had gone through Verdun and been wounded five times during the First war, Balck was a most forceful personality (Chester Wilmot rates him, perhaps too harshly, as ‘a notorious optimist with a reputation for ruthless aggression’, while the American official history, The Lorraine Campaign, portrays him as a swashbuckling martinet), and there were certainly not many Second World War commanders who could exact more from their troops. After Sedan, Balck’s hitherto slow rise was vastly accelerated, and there were few campaigns from which he was absent: a divisional, then a corps commander in Russia; an army commander in Poland and Hungary; finally, as a full general, an army group commander in the later stages of the retreat from France. On the 13th and the next two days his qualities as a leader undoubtedly contributed most significantly to Guderian’s success.
Balck’s orders for 13 May were to cross in the Glaire–Gaulier area, in the tracks of the Grossdeutschland, push up on to the northern slopes of La Marfée, then swing round it to thrust along the main road running southwards from Sedan to Vouziers. The Grossdeutschland having borne the brunt of the fighting, Balck’s riflemen had perhaps the easiest time of any of the German assault units that day. According to Guderian, watching at Floing and chafing with impatience to get over the Meuse himself, their crossing developed
as though it were being carried out on manoeuvres. The French artillery was almost paralysed by the unceasing threat of attack by Stukas and bombers. The concrete works along the Meuse had been put out of action by our anti-tank and anti-aircraft artillery, and the enemy machine-gunners were forced to keep down by the fire of our heavy weapons and artillery. Despite the completely open nature of ground, our casualties remained light.
Balck himself, who had the impression that the French gunners had already begun to desert their batteries, noted that the cessation in French artillery fire had a remarkable effect on the morale of his riflemen: ‘A few minutes before, everyone was seeking refuge in slit trenches, but now nobody thought of taking cover. It was impossible to hold the men…’ An hour and a half after H-Hour, Balck with the leading elements of his regiment had reached the railway line running from Sedan to Donchery; another hour (1730 hours), and he had beaten his way through to the main road lying parallel to it, thus breaking into the main French line of defences. Meanwhile, the division’s motor-cycle battalion which had crossed over the Meuse loop at Iges had cleaned up the whole Iges peninsula, rejoining Balck on the banks of the canal that traverses its root. By 1930 hours, the 1st Panzer had elements of six battalions established in a substantial bridgehead. A large part of the all-important La Marfée heights, crowned by pine woods, First War cemeteries, and a monument to a French infantry regiment which, in August 1914, threw back the Germans on the Meuse by a contre-attaque à la bayonnette, had already fallen into their hands.
On the west bank of the Meuse, however, Guderian still had no tanks, anti-tank guns or artillery. Like Rommel to the north, he faced an anxious night during which the French might prepare an armoured riposte to crush his unprotected infantry before the first Panzers could be pushed across the river. Every priority was now devoted to rushing the construction of ferries and bridges. While the east bank was still under machine-gun fire from the bunkers opposite, Lieutenant
Grubnau, commanding a special bridging company of the engineers, had already reconnoitred ‘a completely level field with firm dry ground and good approaches to the river bank… But there is no cover.’ It was close to the cloth factory at Gaulier, under cover of which the engineers assembled their heavy equipment. The Meuse is here approximately seventy yards wide. Although some of Grubnau’s transport had been held up in the Ardennes, by 1630 hours, while Balck’s riflemen were still struggling across in their assault boats, work was already beginning on the first pontoon bridge. ‘The engineers leap from their vehicles and unload the pontoon trucks,’ recorded Grubnau, adding in surprise at the lack of anti-tank obstacles:
It is astonishing how easily heavy bridge-building could be carried out today. An enemy bombing attack causes everyone to take refuge in the little cover that is at hand. Our nine light machine-guns fire… the bombs fall far from us. With undiminished strength the construction continues. Now enemy artillery fire begins. The enemy artillery plane is, however, driven off by our fighter cover… It seems that the French are expecting our bridge to be built at another place… shells fall fifty yards from us… fortunately, the village of Glaire hinders any observed fire.
Throughout the afternoon, the young sappers, half-naked and their steel helmets cast aside in the torrid heat, worked away at the bridge in almost casual detachment despite the intermittent rain of shot and shell. In the record time of thirty-eight minutes, Grubnau’s men had the first light ferry operating; shortly before midnight a sixteen-ton bridge was ready, with a tremendous concentration of armour queuing up behind it on the east bank.
2nd Panzer
To Lose a Battle Page 35
