The panzers slowed as they left the village, waiting for the infantry to catch up with them again, and then Bothe heard a shot. It was aimed at one of his panzer commanders; he saw, astonished, as the commander collapsed into his panzer. The panzers division turned as one and poured a hail of machine gun fire into the nearest building. As the infantry arrived, they were sent into the building. Bothe had hoped that the sniper was dead, but as the infantrymen emerged, he saw that three of them were holding a young man, and others were escorting an older family. A father, a mother, two daughters…
“This is the one who fired the shot,” the infantry leader reported, shaking the younger man. Bothe examined him thoughtfully; he was nineteen, if he was a day, and wore no uniform. He should have been in the army or the Home Guard, but for some reason the lout hadn’t been anywhere, but at home. “This is his family.”
The father proved to speak German. “Sir, my son didn’t mean to fire at you,” he said. “He…”
“Fired at us from ambush, killed one of my men, and did it without wearing a uniform,” Bothe snarled, unwilling to deal with it. A captured British soldier was sent back to the detention camps, where he would be well-treated. An insurgent had no such options. They needed to discourage resistance or the invasion would bog down. “Did you know that he was going to fire on us?”
He didn’t wait for the answer. “Hang him from that tree,” he called to the infantrymen, who went to work with a will. The mother was screaming as she saw her son being dragged over to the tree; his father lunged forward, only to be brought up short by two of the infantrymen, who sat on him as their comrades rigged up a quick rope. Bothe watched dispassionately as they attached it around the young man’s neck, despite his struggles, and pulled. A moment later, it was all over.
Bothe shook his head, unsure of his own feelings. That young man could have been him, if the war had gone a little differently; like all who’d grown up with the Hitler Youth, he was sworn to the defence of Germany. He might have taken up a weapon and used it himself in the defence, maybe even without any formal training or without a uniform. It was easy to feel sorry for the family, but in the end, there had been no choice. If the young man had wanted to fight, he could have enlisted and fought in the army, instead of wasting his life by attacking a column of German panzers single-handedly That had been folly well beyond some of that produced by the Hitler Youth.
He glanced over at the infantry commander. “Is the house empty?”
The commander nodded. There was one final task to perform, despite the damage that had been inflicted on the house already, a task he personally loathed. At his command, the family was escorted away from the house, and Bothe’s panzer put a high-explosive round through the window, sending the entire house up in a wave of fire. It wouldn’t burn down completely, but in the end, it would be ruined beyond easy repair. He looked over at the family and met the cold eyes of the older daughter; they had just made an enemy for life.
His gunner agreed. “We ought to shoot them all,” he muttered, just loud enough to be heard. “They’re not going to change.”
Bothe cast his eyes over the gathering townspeople, noting with grim amusement a weeping girl, barely eighteen years old, who was staring at the body as she sobbed. There was nothing to say, not now; they’d been shown the price of resistance. As the noise of German aircraft high overhead grew louder, he muttered a command and the panzer roared into life, heading out of the village and back towards Ipswich. In the near future, an SS unit would visit them, order them all to register with the German military authorities, and drive home the message about resistance.
An hour later, they reached the outer defence line around Ipswich.
* * *
Ned Archer had kept his face carefully blank as the German soldiers had taken Jonny Atkins, carried him over to the trees, and hung him for taking a pot-shot at them. The young fool had hit one of the Germans, as miraculous as that seemed, but the Germans had reacted quickly and well. They’d had the right to hang Jonny under the laws of war and destroy his house — his family would have to live with other villagers for the moment — but he hoped that it would remind people of just what bastards the Germans could be. He’d fought in the last war and remembered it all-too-clearly. The Germans hadn’t hesitated to punish resistance wherever they found it.
The cable near the village hadn’t been disturbed by the Germans, much to his relief; he’d feared that it would have been cut as the German panzers advanced cross-country. He lifted it, attached a field telephone to the cable, and whispered down the line. Within hours, the story of Jonny Atkins would be on the BBC, and the entire world would know what the Germans had done.
Of course, he knew, they wouldn’t take any notice.
Chapter Twenty-One
Near Ipswich, England
Captain Harry Jackson clutched the ground with both hands as the German shelling came down around them, scattering down over the British positions and shaking the ground with its endless thunder. He wanted to cover his ears as the pain grew worse, but somehow he didn’t dare move his hands, or even dare to move at all. The clamour of combat was growing ever more intense, suggesting that the shellfire was either landing closer or the volume of fire was being increased; how much more could his men take? He hadn’t been alive to fight in the Great War, but he’d heard that shellfire had sometimes shocked men out of their minds; would that happen to them? The firing grew louder… and then it faded and died.
He rolled over and clutched his assault rifle as he stumbled into position. Most of the company had survived the experience, but he could see flames and smoke rising from all over Ipswich and the surrounding area; the German bombardment had been mainly targeted on the defences. He glared up at a German aircraft, floating through the sky with a nonchalant lack of concern for the British anti-aircraft fire, and then took up his firing position; the Germans would have been sending in their infantry while the British had been keeping their heads down. The defences hadn’t been anything like strong enough to deter them from attacking, and if they could take the town at a rush, they would force the British to withdraw as quickly as possible.
The gun felt heavy in his hand as the smoke and dust cleared. The briefing they’d received only an hour ago had confirmed that there were two major German forces advancing towards the town. Despite the use of tanks and British shellfire to deter them from advancing, and the Germans would be on them within an hour.
Their orders had been simple; hold the line for as long as possible, kill as many of the Germans as they could, and then fall back in the direction of London. Jackson privately suspected that if the Germans broke through the lines, the British forces were going to be encircled and would have very real problems escaping, but the alternative was being captured. They’d heard enough rumours of what was happening in the east to dread capture.
There, he thought as he saw them. The Germans knew that the defence line was here, all right. They were advancing on their bellies and bringing up armoured cars in support. Jackson whispered a command to the company’s sniper as he spied a German officer. He saw the sniper wiggling away to find a place where he could fire a perfect shot.
Snipers had the worst job in any army; they were, in theory, protected by the laws of war, but they tended to be shot out of hand anyway, as most soldiers hated enemy snipers. The Germans were no different; Jackson had seen some of the files from Russia, where the SS had been particularly inventive when it came to punishing enemy snipers.
“Fire on my command,” he ordered. He could hear the dull pounding of another barrage in the distance, bombarding the advancing Germans, but the Germans didn’t seem to have been put off by the artillery. They kept advancing, moving with a calm focused precision that Jackson almost envied. He muttered a second order to one of his men, cursing their shortage of mines, and then carefully sighted in on one of the Germans.
“Fire,” he barked as he followed his own command. The German he’d selected as his
target jerked once and lay still, the other Germans started and rolled over, firing back towards the British positions. One of them was either very good or very lucky; a bullet buried itself in the earthworks just in front of Jackson; he flinched and then continued firing. His men were all disciplined — the Home Guard taught them to take care of their ammunition supplies, as they might not be able to re-supply quickly — and burst after burst of controlled firing rippled out, scattering the Germans and leaving many of them dead. He didn’t dare think that they would actually hold the Germans, but as the Germans fell back, he allowed himself a second of hope…
Which was dashed as the armoured cars opened fire, sending a hail of machine gun bullets over their heads, and ripping away the foliage that had hidden them. The Germans couldn’t get their guns low enough to actually tear up the earthworks themselves, but they could force the British to keep their heads down, long enough for the infantry to advance. Sergeant Wilt picked up a PIAT, one of the latest designs, and took careful aim, exposing himself only long enough to fire the small projectile towards the lead armoured car. The German vehicle was hit; Jackson smiled as it blew up, killing its crew. The other cars fell back, revealing a line of panzers that were advancing right towards their positions.
Jackson cursed as the tanks spread out. A pair of rockets were launched by British soldiers, but one of them missed as the panzers closed in, firing as they broke through the British lines and charged on into the distance towards Ipswich. Jackson felt stunned and disorientated for a moment, barely remembering the German soldiers before they advanced rapidly, their weapons flaring at the remains of the British soldiers.
A whistle blew in the distance. “Fall back,” Jackson shouted, and the cry was taken up by the sergeants and other officers. The Germans were seeing a British company running for its life, rather than a semi-planned retreat; they would be encouraged long enough to stay on their feet as the British guns opened fire. The second defence line included some small artillery weapons, which opened fire and cascaded shells down on to the advancing Germans, scattering red-hot shrapnel through the air. He thought he heard screams over the noise of the shells, but there was no way to know for certain.
The German assault was getting bogged down up ahead, he saw, as three panzers exploded in quick succession. General Barron might not have had many antitank guns, but the weapons he’d had were carefully positioned, concealed from the Germans watching from the air, and only used when the German panzers had finally broken through the outer line. The Germans were falling back as their infantry advanced, their own shellfire trying to knock out the antitank guns as they reacted faster than Jackson would have believed possible. The Germans were the masters of war and it showed.
“Get down,” Wilt shouted at him as machine gun bullets strafed through the company. Jackson hit the ground hard enough to jar every bone in his body; the remainder of the company wasn’t so lucky as a dozen men were killed by the German aircraft, a strange spinning autogyro-like craft firing down at them from a controlled hover. Jackson had seen the RAF use something like it, but this was the first one he’d seen in an assault role - and it was on the other side.
A hail of machine gun fire glanced off the heavily armoured autogyro before something broke and the craft fell out of the air, crashing into the ground and exploding. A burning pilot staggered out of the craft before collapsing on the ground. Jackson winced, then walked over to the officer, put his pistol to the screaming German’s head and pulled the trigger. There had been nothing else he could do for the man.
A second whistle blew and Jackson joined the line of retreating men. He saw, vaguely, a major trying to direct the retreat as the Germans pushed through the gap they’d created, sending in more of their autogyros and panzers; he saw one of the autogyros firing rockets into a British trench before a hail of machine gun fire cut it out of the air. The Germans were punching through the defence line and, judging from the noise in the distance, had done it at more than one location.
Ipswich was falling to the Germans.
* * *
The edges of Ipswich rose up in front of Hauptmann Johann Bothe as the panzers reached their first targets. They’d been warned that the British would build an inner defence line within the city itself, as the Russians had done on too many occasions, but at first, there didn’t seem to be any sign of resistance. The British defence line had been stronger than they’d anticipated, and Rommel had used the panzer units as his scalpel for digging into the British position, but Bothe was feeling quietly confident. They’d made it through the chaos and survived, so far.
The British infantrymen were falling back as well as his tank engaged a few of them with machine gun fire. One of them took aim at the panzers with what looked like an early model Panzerfaust and was rapidly cut down before he could open fire, but the others scattered and escaped the tank. It was one of the problems with panzer warfare, despite the German army’s rapid development of all-mobile military units; the panzers would break through, but then the infantry would have to mop up the defenders and the defenders would have a chance to escape. Rommel had formed units of British vehicles to transport infantry into the battle, as the main shipping effort had concentrated on panzers, but even so, there was a gap between the damage the panzers had caused and the infantry securing the victory. The channels were buzzing with information, most of it irrelevant as far as Bothe was concerned, but British units that had been scattered by the panzers were reforming and sometimes giving the advancing German infantry a bloody nose.
He checked his position quickly, uncomfortably aware that he was far too close to all kinds of possible cover than he would prefer, too close for comfort. The British might be trying to sneak snipers up from the town, or sending them up into tall buildings to take aim at his forces, despite the possibilities of German retaliation. Ipswich wasn’t an older German town, or one of the new towns that had been created out in the east; it was just uncomfortable enough for his forces to have very real problems identifying a threat until it opened fire. He knew what the SS would have done, in such a situation, but he liked to think that the 7th Panzer was more of a disciplined unit than an SS security patrol. Besides, Rommel would have had him punished if he had caused more damage to the town than was absolutely necessary.
A line of trucks pulled up and disgorged a company of infantrymen, forming up rapidly into platoons as they massed outside the town. Bothe saw their commanding officer and held a quick consultation with him; the infantrymen would try to take the town without a fight, but the panzers would accompany them, just in case of trouble. The town would have a large population of civilians, Bothe knew; if there was a fight in the centre of the town, like at Leningrad, there would be a bloodbath. Ideally, the British would see sense and surrender, but there was no telling what a cut-off unit would do.
He glanced down again at his map as the radio updated him. The town was now surrounded and most of the British forces in the defence line had been captured, killed, or driven away. They would have to reach their next command post and defence line before it was too late, but if they made it, they would face the Germans again with much more experience. The Werhmacht trained as it planned to fight, and he understood from the Abwehr that the British tried to do the same, but there was nothing like an experienced unit for holding their ground. They would have seen the elephant.
“Advance,” the infantry Oberst ordered, and the infantry moved forward. Bothe had half-expected a formal military parade, but that would have to wait until the town had formally surrendered or all resistance had been cleared out; until then, the soldiers would have to comport themselves as if they were going to be attacked at any moment. More infantrymen arrived as they pushed through buildings, breaking in and searching them in a hasty attempt to spring any ambushes before they stuck their head too far into the noose.
The panzer rumbled forwards behind the infantrymen and Bothe watched carefully as he saw the first barricade. The British had been busy; they’
d dragged cars, lorries and even a military vehicle of some kind and turned them into a barricade. The cars looked like the Fuhrer-cars Volkswagen had been producing for the German people, the car that Hitler himself had backed; had they been sold over in Britain as well? He nodded once as the infantry commander issued an order and repeated it to the gunner; a moment later, a high explosive shell shattered the barricade and the infantry raced forward.
The fighting surged backwards and forwards as the British fought for every inch of ground. The fire-power of the panzers wasn’t held back after the first few moments, and Bothe’s crew put shells into every building that the British were using as firing points, reducing them to rubble. The British used the wreckage as shields and kept fighting, forcing the infantrymen to clear them out. A PIAT came close to killing Bothe and his crew; a second tank was set on fire by a Molotov Cocktail, dropped from one of the handful of remaining buildings. After that, they cleared a bloody path towards the centre of town, avoiding sniper fire and advancing in a hail of devastation. If Rommel had hoped to take Ipswich intact, his hopes had been dashed…
A shell landed near a building; a moment later, a small group of school-aged children fled from the remains, scattering out over the city. Bothe barked an order and the panzers ceased fire; the British, he noticed with some relief, did the same. They’d hit a school, he realised; the reports had suggested that the basement of a school was sometimes used as a bomb shelter, but he hadn’t realised what they’d been shooting at until it was too late. How many children had they killed?
A British officer stepped forward into the silence, blood streaming from one eye, carrying a white flag. Bothe watched as his infantry commander came forward, and the two officers talked briefly; the soldiers took the brief truce as a chance to catch up on their reloading and take a breath.
The Invasion of 1950 Page 19