by Bodie Thoene
A whistling sound suddenly screamed high overhead, and a German artillery round blasted a crater in the vineyard beside the road. The shell exploded with a roar, and Mac’s three-quarter-ton ride leaped forward as its driver popped the clutch.
“Time’s up, lads!” the lieutenant shouted.
The troop lorry rammed the Bren carrier as the soldiers trying to shift it tumbled out of the way. “Come on! Get aboard!” the officer ordered. It took no further suggestion to get the soldiers to move as a second and third high-explosive shell slammed into the roadway, bracketing the travelers. The refugees scattered into the vineyard, throwing themselves away from the highway and deserting their possessions.
Mac swung onto the truck as it backed up hastily from its collision. The soldiers jumped for the running boards, using the motion of the vehicle to swing themselves up, like trick riders in a rodeo. The lorry roared off, carrying four new occupants.
When Mac looked back, he saw no bodies lying in the road. Maybe there were no casualties this time. One of the prams was overturned in a ditch. The other had been crushed by the wheels of the truck. Pieces of smashed mahogany clock and splintered gramophone littered the ground in silent company with the abandoned Bren-gun carrier.
That the Germans were close enough to shell the road to Leuven meant that they were already across the Dyle. Whatever defensive positions the British finally adopted would surrender a huge chunk of Belgium to the Nazis.
***
The last of the tinned milk was used, and Josie and Madame Hasselt were making little progress. With only a word of agreement between them, they left the main highway and, entering a wooded glen, came upon a dirt track that led to a deserted barn. That night they slept in a hayrick, where the war seemed to be only a bad dream. The star-streaked sky and the scent of hay reminded Josie of her childhood back home. Madame Hasselt prayed quietly and sang the children to sleep. Josie drifted off with them. . . .
Before dawn Josie was awakened by the munching of an abandoned Jersey cow whose udder was swollen with milk. There was a halter on her head, and a lead rope dangled from the leather buckle. What had happened to her owner?
Josie simply reached out and grasped the line, and the cow was captured. As Madame Hasselt held the grateful animal and Juliette stroked the velvet muzzle, Josie milked her. The foursome breakfasted on sweet, warm milk shared from a small tin pot Madame Hasselt had carried with her. The old woman still packed a variety of fine cheeses, two pounds of ham, and chocolate, which she had intended to present to her grandchildren in England.
“A few miles across the border in France there is a boys’ cavalry school,” Josie said. “I know the chief riding instructor, Paul Chardon. He will help us get to Paris if we can make it that far.”
“It will take us several days if we stick to back roads. You see; we are alone here. But look.” Madame Hasselt gestured to a thick plume of smoke that billowed up over the treetops a few kilometers to the east. “If we are careful, our provisions will last.” Madame Hasselt soaked her feet in a shallow stream at the edge of the pasture. “And this cow? She is sent from heaven.” The old woman winked at Juliette. “My dear child, how would you like to ride to France like a princess, on the back of a pretty brown-eyed Jersey cow?”
Juliette conceded that she would like it very much, and so she and her doll were placed atop the sweet-tempered creature. Yacov was perched in front of her. Juliette wrapped her arms around his middle. The cage of Petit Chou was set between the jutting hip bones of the cow. The bird chirped back at other birds in the trees.
“Very well!” the old grandmother declared, cheerfully loading the rest of their belongings into the wagon. She pointed at the dirt lane that meandered through the pasture and into a deep wood. “France is that direction; I am certain.”
13
A Harvest of Destruction
The view of the Meuse River valley was anything but encouraging to Horst von Bockman as he stood beside his half-track north of the Belgian town of Dinant. Since his reconnaissance teams had first arrived at the river, French artillery had been bombarding the east bank. Horst had no weapons powerful enough to silence the guns and had ordered his men to pull back while he studied the scene and mentally prepared a report for General Rommel.
On May 12, after two days of offering no opposition to the Wehrmacht’s sweep across Belgium, the German forces had finally reached a position that the Allies intended to defend. Small-arms fire crackled from the far shore, shattering the peace of the Sunday afternoon. The Belgian and French soldiers were dug in along the water’s edge and prepared to deny any crossing by the Panzer unit. The bridge across the river had been dynamited—a fact Horst was not looking forward to recounting. Rommel had wanted that crossing taken intact. He needed it to keep his vow to von Rundstedt that Seventh Panzer would be first across the Meuse.
Without the bridge, the Meuse in spring was no small obstacle. Draining waters from the Langres Plateau in France all the way to the North Sea, the Meuse at Dinant was deep enough and broad enough for commercial vessels. Tanks got bogged down in marshy ground; in water higher than their treads, they sank like stones.
Horst signaled for a fast scout car to pick him up for the journey rearward to locate General Rommel. The driver took off at high speed, expecting to find the division commander back near the center of the Panzer column advance that stretched for five miles back from the river.
Instead Rommel’s specially equipped command vehicle, bristling with radio aerials, was sighted before Horst had traveled even a mile. Unlike most division commanders, Rommel wanted to see the battlefront firsthand.
“Report, Major,” Rommel ordered tersely.
Horst explained the situation regarding the bridge and the French artillery, then waited while Rommel pondered.
“Engineers and infantry to the front,” Rommel said at last. “We will attempt a crossing by rubber boats. Major, you send a company upstream. See if there are any other suitable openings. Speed is important, and not only because of our present need. Great things are happening. Our paratroops have landed in Rotterdam, and the fortress of Eben Emael has been taken. We must not miss our share of the glory. We must have at least one unit across the river tonight!”
***
On the French-held side of the Meuse, north of Dinant, a rifle company commanded by Captain Hugo Ney was dug in beneath the willows overlooking a flood-control weir and an island. The rushing water was soothing, and the shade made this a pleasant place to wait for the war.
Papa Jardin, whose head was too small for his helmet, resembled a turtle peering out from his shell. He leaned back against his cumbersome pack and lit a cigarette as Captain Ney paced and lectured and gestured in the direction of the booming French artillery.
“Listen, men! It is the sound of French victory! Two miles from where we sit, our armee is beating back the Boche. History in the making! And here we sit!” The captain, who claimed to be a distant descendant of Napoleon’s great General Ney, was a strutting, irritating young fellow. Every man considered him a fool. Today the Grand Captain Ney was unhappy that his company was missing the glory of battle.
Jardin leaned close to his friend Furfooz, whose eyelids were heavy in the warmth of the day. “This is what I do not understand,” Jardin whispered. “Why is it that a French poilu is paid only fifty centimes a day and the English soldier is paid seventeen francs a day? I have two small children in Paris who must live on such poor wages. Do they eat less than the English brats?”
“It is the British who got us into this war, and they sent only ten divisions!” Furfooz jerked his head at the ranting Captain Ney. “And for that we must endure this!”
Jardin nodded. “Our Grand Captain,” he scoffed. “Even seventeen francs a day would not be pay enough for this!”
Ney raised his hand and pointed at the weir. His voice was tremulous with lust for battle. “Perhaps we will not miss everything! If we are lucky, we will be able to pick off a few stray B
oche. If they would only try to cross the river here! They shall not pass!”
Jardin shrugged. “They shall not pass? That is what they have been saying at the Maginot Line. On the Maginot the poilus sleep indoors. They eat hot food at tables. They have huge guns pointed down the throat of Germany. But this is not the Maginot, Furfooz. This is a river. Suitable for fishing. For eating a picnic. For making love with a woman beside the rushing waters. But I do not fancy shooting across it at someone who might shoot back.”
The eyes of Furfooz narrowed into hostile slits as he eyed Ney with contempt. “I tell you who we should shoot first. . . .”
Ney took a stance imitating the great Napoleon: head lofty, legs slightly apart, fingers slipped between the buttons of his tunic. “We shall hold the Boche here, men!”
“He is posing for a bronze,” Jardin remarked. “He hopes to die a hero’s death.”
“Paris has too many statues already,” Furfooz commented.
Ney’s eyes were alight with imagination as he spoke to the backdrop of the distant booms of artillery and the fire of conflicting tanks. “I say to you, loyal French patriots . . . they shall not pass!”
“He is repeating himself.”
The volume of Ney’s speech increased. His eyes were wild. His face was flushed with patriotic ardor. “We shall stand our ground here! We shall die to the last man before we let the Boches get by our rifles! France shall revere our memories.”
“That is a new thought,” Furfooz said glumly. “Now it is not only that the Boche shall not pass, but the Grand Captain adds that we are supposed to all die to stop the Boche from crossing the Meuse.”
Jardin wagged his head beneath the shade of his helmet. “I am not for that part of his plan, Furfooz.” He drew deeply on his cigarette. “What is the point of that, after all? If we die for France, then what good is France to us?”
Ney stood on a fallen log. “. . . and so, my brave soldiers, remember what it is you fight for! Vive la France!”
***
The scream of a French artillery shell made Horst duck inside the hatch. The concussion of the explosion rocked the armored car as it sped away. North of Dinant, the river gorge was narrow, with no possibility to deploy the division in strength along a wide front. The terrain west of the river was higher in elevation than that held by the Germans. Allied artillery could, by raining down from behind the shelter of the far line of hills, make it impossible for the column of tanks to remain.
“Pull up,” Horst told the driver. Through his field glasses he inspected a flood-control weir built across the Meuse. The rock dam was topped with a skinny path. It led from the near shore to an island midstream and then carried on across a still-intact bridge to the far side. It was far too small to support vehicles, but it might work for men. If enough firepower was moved quickly across the stream, a bridgehead could be established from which infantry could circle behind the French artillery.
Horst radioed Rommel to explain his plan and request that additional motorcycle troops be sent forward. “Approved,” Rommel’s voice crackled back in agreement. “Pass the coordinates, and we will lay in some mortar fire.”
“Any chance of Stukas?” Horst asked, remembering the effectiveness of the dive-bombers in the Polish campaign.
“Negative,” came the reply. “I already asked. Enigma transmission from von Rundstedt says the air support has all gone to General Guderian. Even so, I depend on you, Major. The first wave of inflatable boats has been thrown back. Get across!”
Below a concealing rim of willow trees, Horst assembled his troops. A great spiral of 750 cc BMW motorcycles gathered in a clearing, like the coils of a lethal snake preparing to strike. The men were armed with rifles, Mauser machine pistols, and MG-34 light machine guns.
“There will be no further reason for reconnaissance if the division doesn’t get over the river,” Horst said. “So we are going to dismount and make a dash for the island. Once there, we’ll dig in and probe the defenses on the other bank. There is only room to go single file; who will volunteer to be first?”
Captain Grühn raised his hand. “I claim that privilege, Major.”
The explosions of the French artillery shells continued from downstream. It was plain that the direct attack by boats was not going well, and the day was winding down toward late afternoon.
“Go!” Horst shouted.
Grühn led off, Mauser in hand. He was followed by five men carrying a pair of machine guns and ammunition boxes. Horst himself led the second wave. The old stone weir looked like a rotting jawbone with some teeth sticking up and many empty sockets. Horst felt naked as he tried to hurry across the slippery rocks, watch his footing, and keep an eye on the far shore—all at the same time. With every running step he expected the rattle of machine guns and thought he would see the west bank of the river erupt in a blaze of rifle fire.
Amazingly, no shots were fired at all. Horst’s men slipped into the scrub brush and trees that marked the halfway point. They set up MG-34s at the far ends of the rocky island and another pair behind an old lock gate that controlled the outflow of water past the weir.
At a signal from Horst, Grühn waved his arm for his men to follow him across to the other shore. The instant Grühn stood up on the edge of the riverbank, a machine gun began to chatter from the French-held side, and he was cut down without making a sound.
The battle of the weir was joined. A line of bullets stitched the ground beside Horst, and he flung himself behind a pile of boulders at the water’s edge. He fired his Mauser through a gap in the rocks until the clip emptied, then reloaded and emptied it again. Fragments of stone rattled off Horst’s helmet as the French fired back.
The first rush of firing stilled as both sides realized that their targets were well concealed and protected. Horst studied a map and scribbled some coordinates on a piece of paper. This he handed to Sergeant Fiske, who had been at his elbow throughout the assault. “Get this to the mortar squad.”
Fiske jumped up and ran back across the weir. He jogged from side to side as bullets traced his progress, slapping into trees and kicking up dirt beside his path. When he disappeared from view, the firing stopped again. Horst watched him go, turning when Lieutenant Gelb spoke to him from behind the wall of the lock gate. “Major? Grühn is dead, sir.”
“What other casualties?”
“Two wounded, neither serious. What next?”
“Sit tight and wait. We’ll see if some mortar rounds won’t stir things up a little.”
Five long minutes passed; then a shadow flitted back to Horst’s side. In the gathering darkness the returning shape of Fiske drew only a single shot that ricocheted against a rock and whined off down the canyon. “Fiske! I did not tell you to come back across!”
The sergeant grinned. “You didn’t tell me not to, Major. Where else should I be?”
The deep cough as the first mortar shell launched was joined by others in quick succession, until that noise was drowned out by the detonations of the high explosives as they landed among the French positions.
***
The Grand Captain Ney continued to exhort his company as another round of German mortar fire found its mark on the French side of the Meuse. Willow trees exploded, flinging huge splinters that impaled soldiers to the embankment. Earth and rocks rained down to cover the men. A machine gun on its tripod soared like a rocket into the air.
Jardin burrowed beneath his pack and pressed his face into the ground as though trying to crawl beneath it.
“Remember France!” shouted Ney. “Vive la France!”
Between deafening detonations the scene was still not silent. Furfooz covered his ears with his hands and let out one continuous scream, pausing only to fill his lungs with cordite-thickened air.
“They shall not pass!” Captain Ney shrieked. “Stand like men!” He stood among his crouching troops. “Get up! Open fire! Hold the Boche! For France!”
Furfooz, clutching his rifle beneath him, turned on h
is side, took aim, and fired. The Grand Captain, his hand still high in the air, opened his mouth and eyes as if in amazement. His knees buckled, and he fell to the ground.
“Save yourself!” Jardin howled as he turned his back to the river. “Sauve qui peut!”
At least twenty men joined him and Furfooz in the mad retreat up the embankment.
Bullets nipped at Jardin’s heels. To his right, four men shrieked in agony and fell back. Ten paces ahead, Furfooz clawed upward. Spinning around, he stretched his arms out as if in appeal, then tumbled past Jardin and slid back to land on the body of Captain Ney.
Jardin clutched his helmet to his head and strained toward the top of the hillside. Behind him the others scrambled over the bodies of their companions in their headlong flight from the Boche and the River Meuse.
***
Horst saw the French fighters running up the far slope of the canyon.
“Now!” he yelled. “Machine guns open fire! Rifle squads, across the river!”
Twenty minutes later, four companies of Seventh Panzer were rounding up French prisoners and planting their machine guns in new defensive positions. Horst radioed General Rommel that the division had its bridgehead on the west bank of the Meuse.
14
The Long and Hard Road
By the thirteenth of May it was clear that the German thrust into Holland and northern Belgium was a device to keep the Allies pinned in a corner. Meanwhile, the real major offensive was hammering at the gates of France, having successfully navigated the Ardennes and crossed the Meuse.
The Allies gave ground grudgingly in Belgium, but the clear danger to their southern flank meant the necessity of withdrawing to a less exposed position. There was never any chance of breaking completely free of Wehrmacht Army Group B and going to the assistance of the embattled French troops in the path of the panzers.