by Bodie Thoene
“I believe you are who you claim to be, Colonel. Otherwise I would have had you arrested. But why haven’t you approached your own High Command—General Georges or General Billotte—with this information?”
“I tried to, sir. I am either ignored or not believed. In the case of the new commander in chief, Weygand, I am told that he is too busy getting the ‘big picture’ to be bothered with ‘tactical details.’ No one else wants to make a decision this important without testing it for the approval of Weygand, so on and on it goes.”
Gort was a hearty, bluff man. Straightforward in his speech and actions, he also was angry with politicians who played at things military and generals who had political motives. He put his hand to his square jaw and pondered a moment. “I can understand your frustration, Chardon.”
The new French Commander in Chief Weygand, age seventy-three, had been recalled from the Near East to replace General Gamelin. Since his appointment to the Supreme Command, he had issued no new orders and spent his time “acquainting himself” with what was a rapidly deteriorating situation.
“All right, Colonel. What is this urgent secret news?”
“The German drive will pivot north tomorrow. Guderian will continue on to the seacoast near Abbeville. Rommel will swing toward the Channel at the Belgian border to cut off any port of resupply and reinforcement. Wehrmacht Army Group B will pinch in from the northeast.”
Gort swung his chair around to study the map that remained on the wall behind him. “At the rate they have been gaining ground, we should begin pulling back immediately to save any Channel port at all,” he mused, “even for evacuation.” Then, despite Andre’s presence, he said, “It makes sense. They have us in a bag, and they would like to draw the string around the top. You must know that a rescue operation may be our only remaining option.”
Andre nodded. This was exactly the situation he knew Gort would recognize and the reason he was willing to exceed his authority in sharing the secret Enigma message. “Here is one piece of good news from the same source: Rommel’s division is stretched quite thin in the vicinity of Arras, General. And behind him in the line is a brand-new, untried SS infantry division.”
Gort saw the opportunity. “I could order General Franklyn to attack south, try to break through at Arras. But to do so will mean weakening our forces engaged in supporting the Belgians. How can we be certain that your information is correct?”
“I’ve thought of that, sir. According to our intelligence, Guderian is about to divide his forces. First Panzer will aim for Calais and Second Panzer for Boulogne. This separation will confirm that our intercepts are true.”
“And what is the identity of the new unit joining Rommel?”
“They are called the Totenkopf—the Death’s Head Division.”
“Very well, Colonel. If your predictions are confirmed today, then I will order an attempt to break the German advance at Arras. Perhaps we will force our way out of this box.”
20
Determining Factors
On the twenty-first of May, Seventh Panzer was just south of Arras, the capital of the French province of Artois. Only sixty miles separated it from the English Channel. Rommel was ordered to turn north. The movement would cut off the retreating Allies from possible reinforcement or evacuation through the ports of Boulogne and Calais. The general was not happy about the order because it meant that Guderian’s force, heading due west for Abbeville, would reach the coast first.
Seventh Panzer was running low on fuel and spare parts. The tanks in particular were being kept in operation by a supply line that stretched over two hundred miles back to Germany. It was the Luftwaffe domination of the skies that allowed the Junkers transports to keep pace with the advance of the Wehrmacht. Otherwise many of the machines would have broken down. As it was, Rommel’s forces were a thin string that encircled the southern boundary of the shrinking area still occupied by the Allies.
Horst was at the front of a column of armored cars and motorcycles, reconnoitering for the tank battalions. Behind the tanks were the rest of the Seventh and the newly arrived motorized infantry of the SS Death’s Head Division.
It was midafternoon when the British launched their counterattack, using a mixed force of light and medium tanks. Some of them were the new Matildas with heavier armor plating. Two British columns emerged from the forest in a surprise movement that struck the line of SS transports.
Horst was ordered to go immediately to the assistance of the infantry. His armored car crossed a hilltop toward the assault, just in time to see a high-explosive shell from a British Matilda tank make a direct hit on a troop carrier. The truck exploded with a roar, scattering bodies below a billowing cloud of flame and black smoke. Everywhere over an area of several miles, there were prostrate bodies and burning vehicles.
Pulling up below the brow of the hill, Horst was next to an antitank battery. The lieutenant in charge was feverishly working his men, demanding that they reload and fire: “Schneller, schneller!” Even the skinny cannons seemed to be in a hurry as they barked out their eighty rounds per minute.
A line of men passed ammunition up to the Panzerabwehrkanone. The weapon coughed its defiance of the British tanks, and an instant later the 37 mm rounds scored two direct hits on the front armor of the Matilda. The tank paused, like a lumbering bear that has been hit by a tree limb. Then it clanked straight ahead again, its machine gun mowing down more German soldiers.
“The shells bounce off!” the antitank lieutenant exclaimed in despair. “We have scored six times on that same machine, and still it comes on!”
The impact of the shell against the tank’s steel skin had scarcely damaged it but seemed to have angered it. A high-explosive round from the Matilda arched over the German guns, bursting in the grapevine-covered hillside. A second shot followed, detonating on the ground immediately in front of one of the antitank weapons. The gun barrel twisted like a strand of spaghetti, and six crewmen lay in shattered pieces.
There were at least fifty British tanks in sight, and more were appearing over the northern horizon. The danger was immediate. If the Allied flank attack was successful, a larger rupture would pierce the German advance, splitting the tanks from the weaker elements. If a way south was opened for the Allies, it would trap the forward component of the panzers between the enemy and the sea, instead of the other way around.
“General,” Horst radioed Rommel, “we need Stukas, and we need them now!” Quickly Horst explained the situation and its urgency.
Two more antitank weapons were destroyed before the first dive-bombers appeared. In further exchanges of fire, two tanks of the SS division that had joined the battle were also reduced to flaming pyres.
At last black dots appeared high overhead. They fell screaming out of the sky, releasing their deadly burdens. The first wave of four Stukas attacked in a row, like a formation of diving pelicans. Each released a pair of bombs that threw up eruptions of earth, showering the tanks with debris.
One of the British machines took a direct hit. Horst watched the bomb release, saw it arc toward the target, saw the impact. The explosion blew the Matilda apart as if it had been made of tinfoil. Horst blinked at the instant of the burst. When he looked again, only the two treads, looped like giant discarded ribbons, gave any sign of where the tank had been.
But the BEF crews could not hear the sound effects that had been so terrorizing to the Polish and French infantries, and they took no notice of near misses. Even after several waves of planes had destroyed two squadrons of the British tanks, still they rolled forward.
Horst again contacted Rommel.
The general seemed unruffled. “Duly noted,” he said calmly. “Do you know the whereabouts of the closest antiaircraft battery?”
“I passed one about a mile back, General. But we have not seen any Allied aircraft, except a few of their fighters. No threat to us.”
“Bring the battery to the front, and have them engage the British armor,” Rommel ord
ered.
Horst sent Lieutenant Borger back to locate the battery and bring them up at once.
The ungainly Fliegerabwehrkanone weapons had long barrels and cumbersome mechanisms for achieving the elevation needed to shoot down warplanes. Flak guns looked like a poor choice for the flat shooting required to engage tanks. Horst hoped that Rommel’s plan was not one borne of desperation.
The arrogant captain of the antiaircraft unit was eager to show what his section could do. “Step aside, Major,” he said, with scarcely any deference to Horst’s rank. “Watch what something with some muscle can accomplish.”
The 8.8 cm shells were more than twice as big as those for the antitank guns, but at one-fourth the rate of fire, Horst was still skeptical. The first shot fired ripped the left-hand track off of an advancing Matilda. The crippled machine shambled in a clumsy circle as its undamaged tread tried to move it forward. A second shot impacted just under the Matilda’s stubby gun, tearing the turret completely off the tank.
But the British armor continued to advance. Their gunners loaded and fired with precision, and they stayed constantly in motion, making them difficult targets for the slower-firing German cannons. They were making for the center of the line of troop transports, German trucks and half-tracks filled with members of the SS Death’s Head Division.
The SS troops had cheered the Stukas. They had applauded the results of Rommel’s novel use of the antiaircraft guns. Now they were stunned. The German army was unbeatable; was it not? The SS in particular thought of themselves as the elite, the unstoppable, the invincible.
A high-explosive shell landed in the middle of a circle of SS trucks. The canvas covers were shredded, and so were the men inside. All along the line, SS soldiers were hiding in ditches, taking cover behind half-tracks, bailing out of burning vehicles. They stared in dumbfounded horror at the approaching tanks; many did not even bother to reload their rifles. Horst was unpleasantly reminded about the lesson of Cambrai: Terror and intimidation were fully as powerful as the cannons of the British tanks.
As Horst looked on, the SS division wavered, then broke and fled. Streaming to the rear, their retreat opened a gap in the German line. For the first time since the war began, Blitzkrieg was in jeopardy.
***
The third wave of Stukas that came over released their bombs short of the line of tanks. Whether by accident or design, the explosives fell in the woods from which the British advance had emerged and in which more units were waiting.
The terrible screaming of the dive-bombers made Mac keep close to a ditch or a particularly solid-looking tree. He lay in the bottom of a creekbed now, cinching up his helmet strap with one hand and hugging his camera with the other.
Mobile artillery. That was how the Wehrmacht used the Stukas. It was the reason the Germans did not have to wait for their heavy cannons to arrive before launching an attack. It was the factor that had negated the Ardennes as a defense. The planes were used with surgical precision and were almost impossible to shoot down. Mac had never seen one crash because of ground fire, and he had seen no Allied fighters all day.
When the aerial assault ended, Mac was behind a British tank destroyer unit being moved into position. It gave him a panorama of the battlefield of Arras. He could see the spearhead of British Mark I and Mark II tanks rolling over the German opposition in spite of the Stukas and the German antitank weapons.
“Why haven’t you Brits done this before?” he asked a gunnery sergeant.
“Blimey, guv, that’s what I’d like to know. Mind now, the day ain’t won just yet. Them Jerries will be jumpin’ on us with their own bloomin’ great tanks. Our job is to keep ’em off long enough for our boys to open a big ’ole. Then we can celebrate.”
Mac filmed the scene of burning German equipment. Smoldering bonfires made up of troop transports and half-tracks littered the nearer fields. At the far edge of the scene he could make out Nazi soldiers running from the advancing tanks.
“See there,” said the sergeant, pointing a greasy finger toward the farthest hill. “Them dark spots is Jerry tanks. They aim to ’it us in the flank, same as we done them.”
“Couldn’t you use some more tanks to get in and mix it up with the Germans? I understand that they don’t like to fight tank-to-tank battles.”
“Right you are. But the problem is, you’re lookin’ at all we got just now. Cobbled together on short notice, don’t you see.”
“Aren’t there any French tanks available?”
“I’m sure I don’t know the answer to that. You ’ave to ask the Frogs. In my opinion, it’s best to leave them out of it anyway. The Froggies got no radios in their tanks. You can’t tell them where they are needed. Once they get started, it’s just like windup toys . . . they keep rollin’ and firin’ till they get blown up or run out of things to shoot.”
***
Horst watched the SS soldiers streaming away from the Arras battlefield. He felt a curious sense of satisfaction at their precipitate retreat, as if every doubt he had about their vaunted courage was confirmed. Himmler had insisted they be included in the conduct of the Blitzkrieg so they would share in the glory. Evidently Reichsführer Himmler had thought the campaign was so well in hand that his untried troops could not fail. Instead they now jeopardized the entire operation.
Colonel Neumann, commanding a Seventh Panzer tank battalion, arrived on the scene. He stood upright in the turret of his PzKw-IV tank, commenting to Horst on the scene before them. “Look at those dogs run! It seems that enthusiasm for the party one week does not make for heroic actions the next. They would run all the way back to Germany, and perhaps we should let them!”
Neumann was waiting for an intelligence report from Horst’s motorcycle patrol before leading his tanks in a flank assault of his own. He was to strike the center of the Allied line, split it, and then chew up the broken halves. The problem was the light. It was nearing seven o’clock in the evening—already too late for more Stuka attacks and soon too dim for tanks.
Neumann did not seem concerned. “We will pierce the line; then we will pinch the first half into a pocket to destroy at leisure. The rest will certainly retreat.” He said something to his driver, and the deeply rumbling engine revved up.
“Do you not want to wait for my lieutenant to get back from recon, Colonel? We don’t know what else is behind those Matildas in the cover of the trees.”
The colonel squinted at the setting sun, then shook his head. “We can deal with whatever it is. Right now the determining factor is daylight.” Neumann gave the order to his column of tanks to attack, and the PzKw-IV ground into forward motion, its tracks clanking. He was wasting no time. The muzzle of the 75 mm gun was already swiveling, seeking its first target.
The tank plunged down the hill. At almost the same moment, Lieutenant Borger arrived beside Horst. “Recon report, Major,” he said, saluting. “Warn Colonel Neumann that there are a couple squadrons of French Somua tanks concealed behind the farthest hedgerow and two or three tank destroyer units just emerging from the woods. I do not know if they are French or British.”
Horst turned to the handset of the radio that Sergeant Fiske was already offering. Still in Horst’s line of sight, Neumann was no more than a hundred yards forward. The tall colonel was still standing; he had not yet buttoned up the hatch.
The first round of antitank fire struck the PzKw-III that was immediately behind Neumann’s tank. The projectile shattered against the sloping armor, but the burst reached out in a deadly star-shaped pattern to embrace the colonel. His back was riddled with shrapnel. When he slumped over the hatch, his body pivoted limply and he hung on the edge of the turret. Other rounds began striking the German line. Two tanks exploded in flames.
The entire column halted. Horst ran forward, catching Neumann’s body as it slid to the ground. He pulled the colonel’s lifeless form out of the way and jumped up on the hatch. “Go,” he shouted to the driver. “You cannot stay here. The advance will be cut to pieces i
f you do not destroy those guns.”
The radio operator looked shaken. “The colonel did not have time to tell us his plan. The second in command has just been reported killed as well. What do we do?”
Horst had never directed a tank in battle before, let alone an entire column of tanks, but he had a clear picture in his mind of the terrain and the reported location of the Allied weapons. He jackknifed into the commander’s seat. “Radio,” he ordered. “Squadrons three and four attack the center of the British line as planned. In column, high speed, fifty-meter intervals. Squadrons one and two form two waves, fifty meters between tanks and one hundred meters between waves, and follow us!”
The inside of the tank smelled of fuel, hot oil, and unwashed bodies. Machine-gun bullets pinged off the steel armor. The sound reminded Horst that if the enemy antitank gunners selected this particular PzKw to target, his career as a tank commander would be very brief.
“Pivot left thirty,” he ordered the driver. The man operating the machine gun was firing short bursts, distracting the antitank crews as they sought cover for themselves. But so far the main gun had not fired. “What are you waiting for?” Horst demanded.
“Not in range yet, Major,” the gunner replied. “This 7.5 cm gun throws a seven kilo shell, but it doesn’t throw it very far.”
“Radio, tell tanks two and four in each wave to drop back fifty meters from their present positions. I want to make us as hard to hit as possible.”
“Acknowledged,” returned the radio operator. “Major, second squadron reports that tank four is out of action with a track knocked off.”
Through the periscope, Horst could make out the edge of the woods ahead and the row of antitank guns. He instinctively flinched at a muzzle flash and braced himself for an explosion, but the shot was long and burst behind them.
“We have range now, Major.”
“Target left forty-five.”
“I have him.”
“Fire!”
