by David Fraser
‘Of course, Herr Frido. It just seems odd, that’s all.’ They drove on. Arzfeld came into sight round a bend in the road. ‘Late March, and the trees starting into leaf,’ thought Frido. ‘A perfect time! A time to treasure in the mind!’ War, even so placid a war as had so far been Frido’s, gave peculiar sharpness and beauty to every beloved scene, gave a sense that it should be valued, savoured, stored, could not be taken for granted, might not last.
Kaspar greeted his son with quiet affection.
‘The girls will be back later. Franz is grumbling at making two journeys but it is nothing. Their train arrives every evening at seven o’clock. Often Lise walks to the station in the morning.’
‘How are – they?’
‘Fraülein Marvell has been here a week as you know. She is charming and Lise is fond of her. It is, of course, not easy – for her. She must miss her own family. One has to say it. And – I suppose – her own country. I have had a talk with the authorities here. She must report her movements, but there is no reason why she should not work at the hospital – in a very subordinate capacity, naturally. It has already been arranged. She will make her home here.’
Kaspar was pleased when Frido gave him General von Kleist’s regards. ‘We were together as young cavalry officers, long ago!’
Frido made no mention of Kleist’s reference to Marcia. And when she arrived in the trap, with Lise, his heart jumped as it always had on the infrequent occasions when he had seen her. His mind went back to his visit to England, to Marcia’s laughing, teasing proximity at dinner at Bargate, to her flushed dishevelment when pursued by that elderly satyr, her uncle. And she looked, after a day at the hospital, a train journey, a drive, as lovely as ever.
‘It is her colouring,’ thought Frido, ‘it is the texture of her skin, smooth like a rose petal. Above all, it is those eyes, so full of laughter and meaning.’ He had prepared a few formal words about Werner – about their Werner. Werner had been, after all, her fiancé. But Frido’s speech was pre-empted. Marcia jumped fom the trap, squeezed his arm and held up her face to be kissed.
‘Darling Frido! Wonderful to see you again!’ He blushed.
‘You – you have started to work with Lise I hear?’
‘That’s it. Florence Nightingales, we!’
‘Who is that?’ said Frido puzzled.
But Marcia disappeared toward her room and Lise wanted to have him for a while to herself. She took his arm.
‘It’s light enough for a little walk.’ She, too, squeezed his arm. It was, thought Frido, a sisterly gesture. As they strolled Lise spoke with enthusiasm of Marcia.
‘I know she really loved Werner. I feel her to be my sister, even though they weren’t married.’
Frido nodded. So far so good.
‘You know there’s someone else now. I don’t blame her. She’s young, Werner was killed seven months ago. She’s lovely, every man must be after her.’
Frido said, ‘It seems rather soon.’
‘There’s a war on. People can’t stand back from life, mourning. Father doesn’t guess anything of course.’
‘Who is it?’
‘It’s a cousin – another Rudberg. Met her in Vienna, at Cousin Rudberg’s house, where she was living. This one is Toni Rudberg. He’s a Panzer officer, just like you.’
‘In a Panzer Division?’
‘Yes, 2nd. I know that because Marcia – well, to be honest, she finally decided to come here because Toni’s Division’s now in the west. She hopes he’ll get leave some time, and be within reach. He seems to be mad about her.’
Frido digested this in painful silence. 2nd Panzer Division had been stationed in Vienna before the war: in fact it was known as the ‘Vienna Division’. He’d seen nothing of them but he had an idea they were in von Kleist’s command. Beneath his attention though such things might be, the old cavalryman might, Frido supposed, have heard gossip in Vienna or elsewhere about the condition of Count Rudberg’s heart.
‘He’s older than Werner – he’s a captain,’ said Lise. ‘I don’t think he’s actually a relation of ours although of course his Rudberg cousins were related to Mama. He sounds very attractive, I must say.’
With the part of his mind still capable of reflection Frido knew that the minutes spent in a small rubber boat crossing the river Meuse on 13 th May 1940 were the longest he had ever experienced.
7th Panzer Division’s march through the Ardennes had not been particularly eventful. There had been some fighting against French covering forces: mostly cavalry, from what Frido had heard. Then there had been a day or two in which they had all rumbled forward, checked now and then by, presumably, some minor action at the head of the Divisional column. But never for long. If a way could be found to bypass an action and keep up momentum it was taken. If a vehicle broke down it was pushed off the road without ceremony. Frido prayed that none in his company would suffer this fate. None did.
But then – only two days after crossing the frontier and starting this remarkable adventure – they had started to wind down the twisting, overhung roads to the valley of the Meuse. Much of the country hitherto had been high plateau, comparatively open and level, chequered by large woods. Here, by contrast, the trees and gradients prevented any movement of vehicles off roads. Traffic flow could be disrupted all too easily by accident or casualty. And here, for the first time, Frido tasted something recognizable as battle. Already his Regiment had advanced seventy miles. As their vehicles moved in the half-darkness of early morning toward the lip of ground below which ran the Meuse, French artillery shells began to fall near the river bank.
The Panzer Grenadiers of Frido’s company jumped from their vehicles and moved down toward the assembly areas where assault boats were to be collected and carried to the water’s edge. They knew that all bridges had been blown, in spite of earlier hopes that somehow a crossing might be rushed. The necessity for an assault across the water had been anticipated, and the operation rehearsed a good many times. Day was already breaking, although a thick mist hung along the river. ‘When that lifts,’ thought Frido, ‘we’ll be sitting ducks.’
Everybody moved fast. The company’s organization was efficient. Practice had paid. Rubber boats were being inflated as fast as the men could manage and the first flight was being manhandled to the water. Heavier assault craft were being marshalled. No shell had fallen for five minutes.
Then Frido heard a sound with which he was to become sickeningly familiar – the rushing, whistling screech of an enemy shell about to explode in the near vicinity. Two men near him threw themselves flat. Frido did not know, afterwards, whether his own instinct to remain upright stemmed from inertia, inexperience, stupidity, some sixth sense that told him the shell would explode at a safe distance, or bravado. The soldiers picked themselves up, exchanging hasty glances, unsure whether they had disgraced the Wehrmacht. More reports sounded from the west bank of the river. Frido shouted an order and the next flight of assault boats were lifted forward. Each boat was meant to carry four men.
‘The lieutenant’s a cool one!’ he heard one man mutter admiringly.
Then, without remembering exactly the sequence of events, Frido found himself on the water. For the first thirty metres, miraculously, there was no hostile sound or sign. The morning mist was still lying mercifully on the river but he could see the shape of the early sun through it, its light masked but its outline clear and menacing. At any moment the protective haze would be cruelly dispersed, thought Frido. He nodded to the soldier wielding the paddle and smiled. Conscious of little but fear and fatigue the man nevertheless registered gratitude. ‘Some of them would shout at you,’ the soldier thought. ‘As if anyone would be pouring out less than his guts to get to the other side!’
It was in mid-stream that Frido could first see clearly the dark line of the west bank. And it was in mid-stream that the French soldiers in bunkers and weapon pits along the line of the west bank could see him. The current was not fast but the boats seemed to be m
aking agonizingly slow progress. The first noise was of French artillery once again. Some shells fell on the east bank.
‘The following flights will catch it now,’ a Feldwebel called out. ‘They won’t hit us on the water!’
There were some nervous laughs. Then Frido heard the sound they all dreaded: from the south, from their left, the insistent, clattering sound of French machine guns on the west bank. The men needed no exhortation to keep as low as possible in the boats but every soldier felt ten feet tall and wide in proportion.
‘Ah-h-h!’
It was a long drawn-out scream from the boat next to them. Frido saw a soldier topple into the water, limbs still moving convulsively. The man wasn’t dead. As he hit the water there appeared to be nothing but a scarlet mask where his face had been. There was another scream, as he threshed with arms and legs, blinded, in agony, about mercifully to drown. The west bank, their destination, looked very far away. There was still some mist. It thinned and thickened here and there, altering their chances minute by minute.
‘Where are our own shells that ought to be silencing those damned Frenchmen?’ thought Frido. He had seen artillery officers move into observation posts on the east bank but German shells were conspicuously failing to give the crossing the support it needed.
Suddenly the French machine guns started again. French artillery fire became heavier. They heard the shells screeching overhead. All seemed to be landing at the exact point on the east bank whence their little flotilla had been launched. Now there were, miraculously, only about forty metres to go, and as far as Frido could see there was no French position at the place on the west bank where they would make a landfall.
‘Paddle, paddle!’
From the northward, from Frido’s right, another machine gun clattered. It sounded disagreeably near. The next thing Frido felt was as if he were sprayed by a warm tap.
‘Herr Leutnant!’ yelled the man with the paddle pointlessly. Frido looked at his uniform and hands, crimson with blood. The soldier who had been crouching in the middle of the little boat looked extraordinary, grotesque. There was something missing. Frido recognized, with a sense which he later recognized as shock in its literal sense, that the man’s head had been almost severed by machine gun fire. His blood had struck his companions like water from a burst pipe. The soldier with the paddle retched but by a remarkable effort, a triumph of fear over weakness, maintained his efforts. At that exact moment Frido heard the sound of the paddle striking the bottom. He shouted –
‘Out! Out!’
The boat capsized as three men leapt from it and threw themselves into the water, wading frantically toward the bank. The headless Panzer Grenadier rolled into the Meuse.
Shouts could be heard along the bank. The mist was now clearing fast. Frido was able to see that a remarkable number of boats appeared to have made the crossing safely. A Feldwebel appeared from nowhere and saluted, reporting numbers. The company’s next objective had been identified from an observation post on the east bank before they started – mist-shrouded, indistinct. Soldiers began running to the planned collecting points. There was much shouting and scurrying.
‘The vital thing,’ thought Frido, ‘must be not just to reach some bit of ground, but to silence those damned machine guns.’ For the sun was now up. The Meuse lay clear and silver beneath a glorious early summer sky. As he looked eastward, Frido could see no sign of the next company starting to embark. French shells were falling on the launch points with unceasing ferocity and machine guns were drumming away. One could see the strike of bullets as well as the grey spurts of shell bursts. ‘I wonder if we’re the first Rifle company across the Meuse,’ thought Frido. ‘I certainly hope we won’t be the last.’
A few hours later he found a moment to thank God for sparing him and a large number of his company. Casualties crossing the river had been surprisingly light. For several hours they had been isolated, as Frido feared, so devastating had been French fire at the east bank. This isolation had been unnerving, but otherwise they had not been much troubled. The French were manning their riverside bunkers, concentrating their fire on German attempts to reinforce, rather than spending blood and time in trying to deal with the enemy already across. And one German company was certainly inadequate, by itself, to attack the French positions firing on the river, widely separated as these were. Frido tried to organize a movement against two of the nearest of the bunkers, but they were difficult to get at. Instruction at officer school and previous practice had not prepared him for the launch of an attack from above against fortified emplacements lying beneath the overhang of a river bank, an attack supported either not at all or by artillery whose observers were all on the far side of the river.
‘The French,’ thought Frido, ‘are winning this round.’
Then the situation changed – quickly and dramatically. There was a lull in the French fire. Suddenly everybody heard and recognized a new sound.
‘Panzers!’
From where he was Frido could see back across the Meuse. He saw, shuffling their noses from small feeder side streets and then moving on to the road running along the river bank itself, the familiar sight of German tanks. There had been tank fire earlier, but from further back. Now the tanks were moving boldly on to the riverside road itself and starting to drive slowly north and south, turrets traversed westward.
First one tank, then another, then all started firing, at point blank range at French bunkers and machine gun nests across the Meuse.
‘My God!’ muttered Frido, ‘they’re dead if the French have got anti-tank guns down here! They look like moving targets on the range!’
But the Panzers were keeping up their fire and Frido could not see one get hit. After a little, a cheer went up from the few men round him who could also watch the scene. From the east bank of the Meuse boats were being launched again! No sound of French machine guns disturbed the sudden peace. The Panzers had done their deadly work, pouring in shell after shell at a distance of only a few hundred metres.
From further to the west could be heard the sporadic sound of French artillery, and shells were still falling: but the mood had changed. Menace had dissolved.
‘We’ll soon sort those gunners out, once more of the Division and the general are across!’ called Frido’s Captain, suddenly appearing, voice and confidence greatly restored. ‘Wait till we raft some Panzers over, wait till we get a pontoon bridge! We’ll soon chase those guns away! We’ll be in their gun positions in half an hour when General Rommel starts!’
Chapter 8
Eight days later.
Eight extraordinary days.
No reminiscences of his father, no instruction, no study of past campaigns had prepared Frido for anything like this. He found himself reflecting how unsurprising it was that man still turned to the evils and hazards of war if campaigning could be as exhilarating as this had been. There was nothing here of the carnage of old soldiers’ tales described from twenty-two years before on the Western Front. No wire, no paralysing artillery bombardments, no muddy, churned-up ground, little physical destruction and, after breaking west from the Meuse Valley, extraordinarily little blood. French guns had at first given a lot of trouble and had hemmed in the German columns trying to debouch from the river valley: this had gone on for two days. But by 15th May, 7th Panzer Division’s advance was meeting little opposition.
One of the biggest problems was how to dispose of huge numbers of prisoners without using an excessive number of men to guard them. As the Division rolled forward a French anti-tank gun sometimes picked off one of the leading tanks and had to be dealt with, but on the whole the enemy seemed keen to surrender and huge numbers of dispirited-looking French soldiers were marshalled in fields beside the road, dejected and bewildered rather than frightened, if their faces were anything to go by. Frido saw few civilians. They seemed to have abandoned their homes and driven or trudged westward. Some ran into the fields and gazed, little huddles of terrified and resentful humanity, at the
driving columns. They made Frido feel uneasy. On the whole his Panzer Grenadiers, tired but exuberant, found these refugees objects of mockery rather than pity.
‘Look at that old cow, wheeling an easy chair strapped to a perambulator!’
‘Did you see the ones who tried to strap a bed on top of a donkey!’
‘Hey – why’ve you left the piano behind?’
The mood was of laughter and gaiety.
War quickly drives out pity, Frido thought. But although he tried, fiercely, to keep part of his mind reflective and principled, he knew that he, like his men, was caught up by the winds of victory, the intoxication of rapid advance deep into the enemy’s land.
Few chances, however, could be taken. It was as often as not judged prudent for farms or villages overlooking the Division’s line of advance to receive one or two well-aimed rounds from a tank gun. Often they burst into flames. Sometimes a few enemy soldiers emerged in consequence – more often not. On one occasion the German advance was held up by a huge refugee column which had become mixed up with French military traffic, with a French force fleeing, making no attempt to deploy or fight; guns, carts, lorries, men, horses, all mingled in inextricable confusion. To make matters worse, the Luftwaffe had taken the column as a target and the road verges were littered with smashed equipment, household goods, and dead and wounded human beings both in and out of uniform, together with the mutilated carcasses of cattle and horses. Somehow the road was cleared, the stench was left behind and the Division raced on. The advance seemed to quicken as the spearheads reached further and further west.
‘At this rate,’ Frido said to his Captain, ‘we’ll soon reach the sea!’
The division’s tanks were now well ahead of the Panzer Grenadiers. Deep into northern France they were skirting the town of Arras, said to contain an enemy garrison and thus to be bypassed and isolated. The country was open and ways around such obstacles were not difficult to find. Frido’s own column was temporarily halted. There seemed some obstruction in a village. Some delay in front? He focused his binoculars north.
