He allowed his voice to quieten. “We face our darkest hour,” he said. “Last night, the Germans launched their offensive against our lines, spearheaded by units that we know and have learned to dread. We know that the 7th Panzer leads one of the attacking prongs, and we know that Das Reich leads the other, both units that have achieved a enviable reputation on the battlefield. We know that within the next few days, the fate of England will be determined… and the Nazis shall never win! They must be made to understand that one fact, above all others; Britain has never been a victim, but a country that can and will fight to defend its hallowed freedoms!
“Out there, the men of the British Army, the Home Guard, and even brave British citizens caught behind enemy lines are fighting to stem the tide,” he proclaimed. “Out there, they are fighting desperately to save us all from Hitler’s hordes, and they will succeed! The Germans think they’re winning, they think that because some lines have proven themselves weaker than others, they can punch through and win. We have had years to prepare for the day when the Germans came, and our tactics have been prepared well in advance. The Germans will be beaten!” Applause from the MPs caused him to pause.
He’d given them hope. Now he would confirm it. “And it is my pleasure to announce to the House that the units of the Royal Navy, the Mediterranean Fleet, and the Eastern Fleet, have united and have started to prepare for an all-out offensive to crush the German Navy once and for all. That force will retake the English Channel and break the German supply lines, leaving them with no option but to surrender. Britain will be free!” The gathered officials vociferously applauded.
“And so I speak now to the Germans who are currently occupying our fair lands,” he said, softly. “We are watching you. Any act committed against British citizens will be repaid tenfold. We will find the guilty and we will punish them. Your position in our land is temporary and we will recover it, taking back what you stole from us. Your days are numbered… and, just as you have refused to behave in a decent manner towards the citizens of Britain, we shall refuse to behave in a decent manner towards you. Act now, or face the consequences of not acting; the justice of a strong and democratic nation.”
He stood and stared around the chamber. His eyes lit on faces he knew and faces that were barely familiar to him. All of them, for the moment, were united. If the Germans broke through, whatever else happened, that would change but for the moment they were his, and he knew it. “We will fight them, if we must, even through the streets of London itself, but we will never be defeated.” The walls shook as the thunder of the standing ovation washed over the chamber.
The Speaker coughed as Churchill resumed his seat. “Under the circumstances, it has been agreed that the new Leader of the Opposition will forsake his speech,” he said. Churchill smiled to himself. Labour was in disarray following Atlee’s death and facing the rage of a public that blamed them for the invasion. “I ask all members of the House, now, to join me in a prayer for those fighting on the front lines and asking God for his help in defeating the scourge of Nazism.”
* * *
Alex DeRiemer had listened to the speech from the public balcony and felt his chest swell with pride when Churchill finished his words. He joined in the brief prayer and then ran down to meet up with the Prime Minister as he emerged from the chambers. They headed at once to the tunnel system that linked the House of Commons to the War Office. It had surprised DeRiemer when he’d first seen it — a person could walk from one end of London to the other without ever stepping above ground — but it made a certain kind of sense. These days, the tunnels were hardly secret; there were squads of soldiers at every possible location, desperately preparing in case the Germans managed to break into Central London.
“That was a good speech, sir,” he said as Churchill climbed the steps into the War Office. It was impossible to put his feelings into words. “Do you think they bought it?”
Churchill gave him a reproving look. DeRiemer realised, in a flash of sudden understanding, that Churchill believed every word he had said. DeRiemer had regarded intelligence work as a puzzle that needed to be solved, with no real hatred for the Germans; for Churchill, the fight against Hitler and his men was something very emotional. He would have fought beside the soldiers to prevent Hitler and his men from profaning the very core of Britain, and he would have refused to bend until they burst through and killed him. Hitler wanted him alive for a show trial, like he had done with Stalin, but Churchill had no intention of being taken alive.
“The Members of Parliament do not often understand military realities,” Churchill rumbled, after a long moment. “They see disaster and fail to understand how even disaster can be turned to Britain’s advantage.”
DeRiemer nodded, with the private thought that sometimes Churchill didn’t understand military realities as well. He’d started life as a reporter and had picked up a romantic idea of war that had never quite faded, despite knowing more about the barbarities of Hitler’s men than most Britons. He had liked Rommel, because Rommel suited Churchill’s idea of a good and honourable General.
“Yes, Prime Minister,” he said, after a long moment. “The field marshal is ready to brief you on the progress of the war.”
The massive chart on the table was being updated rapidly by a small army of female assistants; Churchill peered down at it and allowed his mouth to tighten in displeasure. It did look bad, DeRiemer agreed. Hitler’s forces had enveloped Colchester and were heading south, trying to punch through the secondary lines and hit London itself. The German positions weren’t as permanent as they were hoping, he saw. They’d trapped thousands of dug-in British soldiers behind their lines, and those soldiers were proving nearly impossible for the Germans to dig out quickly.
The air battle was raging backwards and forwards with no clear winner, but both sides were throwing everything they had into air supremacy missions. The issue of supporting the troops was starting to take a back-seat to just keeping the other side’s aircraft off the bombers and attack aircraft. Monty had said that that would be a good thing; the Germans relied more on their aircraft as flying artillery than the British. He hoped that Monty was right.
Field Marshall Alexander conducted the briefing. “Prime Minister,” he said. “The Germans attacked late last night and punched through the first defence lines at their weakest spot, as we anticipated. Colchester itself is under siege, but we have thousands of men dug into the city and have left them plenty of supplies, so they can hopefully hold the Germans for weeks. The Germans mounted a pair of infantry attacks, which were slapped back with very heavy losses, and have since grown more circumspect about operating near our forces.”
Churchill smiled. “How long can the cities hold out?”
“Weeks if the Germans commit everything to attacking them,” Alexander said. He smiled grimly. DeRiemer had a mental vision of civilians caught in the middle of burning cities, trying to flee as two rival armies battered away at each other. “The handful of panzers the Germans tried to send into the city were destroyed within minutes, so they’ll have to clear them all house by house, while we know everything about the city and the ways of moving through it. Eventually, they’ll fall, but they’ll bleed the Germans white as they do.”
That’s if the Germans are stupid enough to attack them directly, DeRiemer thought coldly, and looked up at Churchill. The Prime Minister was standing there, looking more confident than DeRiemer had expected; did he know something that DeRiemer hadn’t been told? The losses would be appalling, but if he was reading the map properly, the German army was on the verge of bogging down.
“Excellent,” Churchill said finally. He peered down at the map. “What are the Germans going to do now?”
“General Montgomery believes that the Germans will endeavour to clear enough space to allow themselves to reinforce and march on London,” Alexander said. “That’s not going to be easy, as we have men prepared to sneak out of the cities and hit the German supply lines, but they have n
o choice. If they can punch through and take London, they might be able to win the war even with the fleet taking back the Channel or inflict enough damage on the army that we have to make a compromise peace.”
“There will be no compromises,” Churchill stated flatly. “How long until we know, one way or the other?”
“I’m not certain,” Alexander admitted. “The Germans are currently pushing hard against the defences here, which are currently holding firm, but once they break through, they’ll be facing the might of 1st Armoured, under the direct command of Montgomery himself. If they break through those lines, their advance will still stall until they can handle their rear area, and that won’t be easy at all. That gives us time to bring up the reserves and execute Montgomery’s counter-attack plan.”
“Very good,” Churchill said. “I expect every man to be reminded that the fate of England herself depends upon them.”
He strode away into a side room before Alexander could say anything, and DeRiemer followed in his wake, unsurprised to see Major-General Sir Stewart Menzies and Sir Percy Joseph Sillitoe waiting for the Prime Minister. He nodded once to Menzies, his former boss, and stood well behind Churchill, wondering what was about to happen. Churchill had been organising the meeting well before the German offensive had begun, and he was hardly going to allow a little thing like a German assault to prevent him from holding the meeting. Churchill was personally fearless and respected that same lack of fear in others.
“Gentlemen,” he said shortly. “What progress have you made towards identifying the worm at the core of our apple?”
“Not enough,” Sillitoe admitted, after a brief pause. “We reviewed the files of all possible figures who were in a position to know information, but we failed to locate any real suspects. If it’s someone who was unknown to us and never worked for us, we don’t know anything about them. People who were known to be sympathetic to Nazi Germany, or were associated with Nazi Germany in some way, have been rounded up and a handful of them were indeed spies, but none of them led us to Skorzeny. I think we’re looking for a very deep cover agent indeed.”
Churchill rumbled his displeasure. “We have the most dangerous man in Europe somewhere within London,” he said. “I want him found and incarcerated, quickly!”
“London is a vast city,” Sillitoe said sharply. He wasn’t that fond of Churchill. “Unless we get lucky, Skorzeny can remain hidden for weeks, maybe even months, until he either escapes or tries to hurt us in some way. We do not have the manpower to search the entire city for him. All we can do is cover the areas he is most likely to attack.”
In the distance, the guns boomed.
Chapter Forty-One
Near Colchester, England
“Everyone out, now,” Sergeant Henry Wilt commanded, as the lorry screeched to a halt. The Company spilled out of the lorry, clasping their weapons in one hand as they advanced rapidly towards the defence line. The soldiers there seemed relieved to see them. They knew that with Colchester enveloped, it wouldn’t be long before the Germans turned their attention to breaking through the lines.
Captain Harry Jackson smiled to himself as he reported to the Colonel in command of the line. The British had dug in heavily, using a small village as a base and expanding it, even to the point of knocking down some of the houses and using the rubble as cover. The Germans, he’d been told, were being careful about engaging dug-in soldiers, but they must punch their way through the village to use the main road. The heavy road had been built to transport soldiers and the Germans wanted it… and he was determined that they wouldn’t get it.
“Take up your positions and wait,” the Colonel ordered.
The man had looked stressed enough for ten men, handling the remains of dozens of units that had been streaming into the rear areas. They were given a quick bite to eat and some more ammunition, and then pointed back into the lines. The Germans had ground through the first defence line, but their rear would never be secure, and they would have to secure the road network to move supplies up for their assault on London.
The defence line was the strongest he’d seen yet. The engineers had worked in concrete blocks and other impediments to tanks, ensuring that the German Panzers wouldn’t be able to just charge at them and punch through by the sheer fury of their offensive. The villagers who had been evacuated to the west had created an entire series of shelters and basements for their proud homes, all of which the engineers had gleefully adapted into a blocking line. The Germans would have to dig them out or the road would never be safe.
Jackson sucked in a breath as quiet fell. The battlefield wasn’t silent — everywhere, he could hear the sound of guns and explosions in the distance — but he was suddenly aware that the noise had fallen sharply. The Germans were probably catching their own breath, preparing their attack before the British could mount a counter-attack Jackson waited as his soldiers prepared themselves to fight. It wouldn’t be long before the Germans came at them and then they would have to hold. He was determined. Whatever happened, there wouldn’t be another retreat.
The Colonel ran over to him from his command post in the basement of one of the smaller houses. “I just heard a report from one of the observation patrols,” he said, gasping for breath. He was a reservist and it showed, even though Jackson couldn’t find much to fault in his deployments or his grasp of the situation. “The Germans are advancing towards us.”
Jackson shoved the Colonel down into the trench as he heard the whistle a moment before the shells crashed down . The ground shook and heaved as the shells came down in an endless stream, destroying the few remaining houses. Jackson glanced upwards, risking his eyesight, and saw the faint shape of the German spotter aircraft, high overhead. The German pilot had been watching them and calling in the heavy guns. A moment later, a force of aircraft roared overhead and added their own bombs to the carnage. The ground seemed to be caught in the grip of an earthquake, not entirely unusual in some parts of England, and he felt the colonel squirming under him as the bombardment slowly tailed off, seeming to end.
“Stay down,” he shouted, trusting the observers in the forward trenches to report if the Germans were on the verge of launching an attack. He hadn’t seen the trick before, but he’d heard about it; the Germans had a nasty habit of trying to catch British soldiers, popping up after the first attack, with a second attack. The trick was thoroughly unpleasant, and it had worked more times than he wanted to admit. “Stay down…”
He covered his ears desperately as the shriek of German rockets reverberated through the air as the ground began to shake again. The rockets were terrifying, but they didn’t actually cause much damage unless there was a direct hit. They didn’t possess the terrifying explosive power of a heavy German shell, let alone a direct hit with a bomb. The Germans used them more to terrify and confuse their opponents than actually relying on them to destroy their enemies. But if caught in the open, any unprotected man would swiftly be torn to pieces by the explosions and the flaming wreckage.
The Germans might be more civilised than some of the insurgents he’d faced in India, but at least the insurgents hadn’t possessed such weapons or such a skilful hand with the weapons they had. They been no match for the Ghurkas, or the other soldiers of the Indian Army, all of which had tended to regard the insurgents as idiots.
“Now,” he said, as a whistle blew. The bombardment was coming to an end, and he scrambled to his feet, seeing German vehicles approaching from down the road. He’d seen their panzers before, but this time he was determined; they were going to hold. “Take aim and hold your fire. Choose your targets…”
He smiled as the Germans raced closer. “FIRE!,” he thundered.
The men with antitank weapons fired as one, sending their PIATs directly towards the Germans and smashing into the most vulnerable areas on the Panzer. The Germans had heavy frontal armour that took a great deal of luck to burn through, but the treads, the sides and the rear were not so well protected. The German tanks cam
e to a sudden halt and one of them blew up as the PIAT weapons struck home. Their machine guns opened fire, forcing the British to keep their heads down. Another German tank appeared, heading around the disabled panzers, and four PIATs struck it, sending it up in a massive fireball. The damaged panzers were unable to move. He watched, wondering if the Germans would try to escape before his mortar crews loaded and opened fire.
He smiled as the mortars fired, their rounds going up in the air and coming down around the Germans. Three of them scored direct hits and punched through the weaker armour on the turret of the panzers, the others fell down around them, scattering German infantrymen who had been trying to sneak up on the British position, using their own panzers as cover. The British soldiers shot them down ruthlessly as they fell to the ground, sniping back with their own weapons and advancing carefully; a mortar round fell among the main group and reduced them all to a bloody mess. Jackson shook his head as he watched; the Germans might be bastards, but they were brave men.
The spotter reported over the radio, “We’ve got trouble, boss. The panzers are preparing to encircle you and they’re bringing up a dozen trucks of infantry.”
“Understood,” Jackson said, grimly. The Germans were going to try to storm the village, while their panzers cut the British off from any possible retreat. That was fine by him; he was damned if he was going to retreat again. “Keep us informed of what they’re doing and buzz me once they start their advance.”
He shouted the warning up and down the line. His soldiers, prepared to meet the offensive. They hadn’t had enough time to familiarise themselves with the full scale of the defences, but the presence of the German infantry and the lack of any possible line of retreat would ensure that they held or died. The radio buzzed once as the German troops appeared in the distance, spread out and advancing slowly. He cursed as he saw the line of German rockets rising in the distance, trying to knock out his men before they could hold off the Germans.
The Invasion of 1950 Page 36