Leutnant Siegfried Knappe and his 24th Artillery Battalion were now in France at long last. As part of Army Group A, they had taken part in what had seemed like an impossibly long and exhausting march, which had begun near Cologne. Ahead of them, they had often been able to hear the sounds of battle, and as they passed first into Belgium and then France, they could see the evidence of fighting too: burned tanks, blown-up bridges, dead livestock. Pontoon bridges had already been built across most of the rivers they came to, and felled trees pushed from their path. At Bra, in Belgium, they had to leave behind their first horse. ‘Other candidates for exhaustion,’ noted Siegfried, ‘were the battery blacksmiths.’ This was how most of the German army moved: by horse, by bicycle and on foot.
Siegfried’s battalion crossed the Meuse at Rommel’s crossing point south of Houx then, once in France, was assigned to Panzer Group Kleist. The scenes of battle grew steadily worse. ‘Dead cattle and other livestock were everywhere,’ he noted, ‘the victims of bullets, mortars, artillery shells and bombs. Their bloating carcasses lay in the fields with their legs sticking up. I learned that the smell of rotting flesh, dust, burned powder, smoke, and petrol was the smell of combat.’ He was also shocked by the sight of his first dead soldier. They had been trained to deliver death quickly and efficiently and, of course, he knew that in wars people get killed. Indeed, comrades of his had died in Poland, but it had always had a clinical connotation for him; he mourned their loss, but now seeing a bloodied, stinking and mutilated corpse that had recently been a living, young human being was quite a shock. The men he saw were French Moroccans, their eyes and mouths open, limbs skewed in grotesque fashion. ‘The experience was impossible to forget,’ he wrote. ‘From that moment on, death hovered near us wherever we went.’ And he was also shocked by the numbers of refugees, traipsing along the roads with their paltry belongings and clearly without much idea of where they were headed. ‘I felt sorry that we had to do this to them,’ he noted. ‘They were paying a terrible price because France had declared war on us.’
When Hitler heard the news that Guderian had reached the Channel coast he was beside himself with joy, and immediately began to occupy his thoughts with peace terms. ‘We are seeking to arrive at an understanding with Britain,’ Halder noted after a Führer Conference the following day, ‘on the basis of a division of the world.’ That same day, Hitler met Grossadmiral Erich Raeder, C-in-C of the Kriegsmarine – German navy – and the admiral asked Hitler whether he had any plans for an invasion of England. Beforehand, the Führer had made it clear that he preferred an economic blockade and naval and air attacks to bring Britain to her senses. Nonetheless, Raeder had ordered a preliminary investigation into the feasibility of an invasion the previous November. So, too, as it happened, had OKH. For now, though, Hitler told Raeder not to think in terms of invasion, but to continue the economic blockade and to intensify naval warfare against the British Isles. In a directive a few days later, the Luftwaffe was given ‘unlimited freedom of action’ against Britain just as soon as sufficient forces were available. The Naval Staff certainly welcomed these directives. They ‘indicate clearly the object of this war’, noted the OKM War Diary, ‘the annihilation of the main enemy, England. The way to her defeat lies through the destruction of France, her Continental sword, to the starvation of the British island empire and to the ruination of her economic fighting power.’
In the meantime, Hitler needed to finish off France, Belgium and the British forces there. Late on the 21st, Guderian at last received orders to continue his advance, now in a northerly direction with the capture of the Channel ports as his objective. This did not begin in earnest until the 23rd because the day before, 1st and 2nd Panzer had been ordered to secure the Somme bridgeheads and wait for the rest of von Wietersheim’s mechanized divisions to catch up from Sedan, but the following day, in lovely early-summer sunshine once more, each of Guderian’s panzer divisions was beginning its assault of the key Channel ports of Boulogne, Calais and Dunkirk. 10th Panzer, briefly taken out of his command the day before, had now been handed back once more, and so he ordered it to press on to Calais while 2nd Panzer attacked Boulogne and 1st Panzer made straight for Dunkirk, a mere twenty-five miles to the north-east. Three divisions, three towns. The arithmetic was very simple.
Guderian had good reason for optimism, even though the British troops trapped in Boulogne and Calais were fighting fiercely. Soon all three ports would surely be in German hands. And once that happened, there would be no chance of escape for the French, Belgian and British troops trapped in the encirclement.
Since the Allied commanders barely knew exactly what was going on half the time, it was not surprising that most on the ground had only a sketchy idea of what was happening, most of which was fed by rumour after rumour. At the farmhouse where the 4th Heavy Anti-Aircraft Regiment was now based to the south-east of Lille, Stan Fraser heard first that Amiens had fallen and then that Arras had too. In fact, Arras was not abandoned until the night of the 23rd, but Stan and his colleagues knew enough already to know that, whatever the truth, things were far from going well. They hastily busied themselves strengthening the defences of their farmhouse HQ, creating barricades with abandoned ploughs, a threshing machine and other farm implements.
Nor had they received any rations for several days. The farm was thus the best place to be as there were pigs and sheep to kill and cows to milk – which they did as often as they could to relieve the poor animals. The countryside around them was now deserted of civilians. More rumours arrived, this time that they could expect parachutists any moment; it was not only in Britain that parachutist fever had taken grip. Occasionally enemy bombers came over, in which case they opened fire, but with ammunition low they had to conserve what little they had. The rest of the time, they had to stay where they were and anxiously wait.
On the night of the 22nd/23rd, the northern flank of the BEF fell back to the French–Belgian border as planned. Second Lieutenant Norman Field, just twenty-three and newly married before he was posted to France the previous September, had just been appointed adjutant of the 2nd Battalion Royal Fusiliers. Part of 4th Division in III Corps, they had followed the lead units into Belgium and then had, bit by bit, retreated again. Occasionally they had seen some action, but nothing much. Neither Norman nor the rest of the battalion could really understand it. ‘We merely had some skirmishes with the Germans,’ says Norman, ‘until we were told to withdraw again. We wondered why we were going backwards all the time.’
Now they were digging in again at Halluin, a village south of Menin on the French border. They were all exhausted, having marched thirty-one miles through the night all the way from the Escaut. The battalion was stretched over about one mile in a south-easterly direction with the canal in front of it until it linked up with the South Lancashire Regiment. The 23rd was spent consolidating their positions, preparing sangers and laying anti-tank mines. Civilians were encouraged to leave. There were some defences there already. ‘We were back on the line we had previously prepared,’ says Norman. Like the men of the 4th HAA Regiment, it was then a question of waiting for the enemy to catch up. By leaving during the night and covering such distances, they had given themselves a bit of time; it would take the Germans a while to gather their strength and move forward. A day, maybe two. Then the Fusiliers could expect a fight on their hands.
Also now fallen back along the French border was 1st Border Battalion, part of 42nd Division in I Corps. They too had had a long night march and by the morning of the 23rd were digging in either side of the village of Lezennes, just to the east of Lille. Now attached to ‘C’ Company was Sid Nuttall, a twenty-year-old Yorkshireman from Halifax. Sid had joined the Supplementary C Reserve before the war, created especially to establish a reserve of mechanics should it come to war. ‘There were no camp duties, no training, no uniforms given out,’ says Sid, ‘but we would be the first people to be called up and put into the trade if and when they required us.’ He had been duly cal
led up shortly before the declaration of war and was soon after posted to 14th Army Field Workshops, part of the Royal Army Ordnance Corps, or RAOC.
Soon after, he found himself in France, but early the following year he got frostbite in his hands and toes whilst trying to recover a broken-down truck in freezing winter weather. ‘My fingers had swollen up and were all touching each other,’ he says. ‘My feet were like balloons.’ Packed off to hospital in Dieppe, several of his toes were nearly amputated but, by a piece of serendipity, the doctor was his same doctor from home in Halifax, evidently now called up too. Sid pleaded with him to save his toes, and Dr Hendry did just that.
But once passed fit again, Sid was not sent back to the 14th Army Field Workshop but posted instead to the 1st Border Battalion as a mechanic. As the battalion moved into Belgium at the start of the offensive, he accompanied it in that role, following behind the infantry with the B Echelon, the supply section of the battalion, and moving up by night to take away and repair trucks and Bren gun carriers. In the subsequent retreat to the Escaut, however, the battalion managed to lose most of its transport and so, no longer needed as a mechanic, Sid suddenly found himself being made into ‘C’ Company runner instead.
The only problem was that he had had absolutely no infantry training whatsoever. He had never even fired a Lee Enfield rifle. Nor did he have even a bayonet or an infantryman’s webbing; instead, he had been issued with small First World War-era five-round pouches. The company was on the banks of the Escaut at Tournai when it came under fire. ‘Can you use your rifle?’ the company commander asked him.
‘I can shoot a gun,’ Sid replied, ‘but I’ve never shot this one.’
‘Do you know how to load it?’ the captain asked.
‘Yes,’ Sid replied.
The CO then pointed out a house at the edge of a wood on the far side of the canal. ‘If you see any German soldiers on that side,’ he told Sid, ‘fire at them. But only if you see them in that area.’
Sure enough, eventually he did spot a German, recognizing the distinctive enemy helmets. Taking aim, he squeezed the trigger and fired, but to Sid’s surprise the German kept on walking; he never even ducked. The lance corporal hurried over. ‘Have you just fired?’ he asked. Sid told him he had.
‘Did you hit him?’
‘No.’
‘Let’s have a look at your rifle.’
Sid passed it to him and the lance corporal looked at it. ‘Your sights are set to six hundred yards. That shot will have gone miles over his head.’ He put Sid’s sights back to one hundred yards.
Later, on the night of the 21st, ‘C’ Company had taken over positions held by the Lancashire Fusiliers. ‘We were walking up in the middle of the night,’ says Sid, ‘and it was pitch black and suddenly a Lancashire voice comes out of the darkness, saying, “I shouldn’t go up there, mate – they’re killing one another.”’
Now the battalion was back inside France and this time, when the enemy caught up, he would be at the sharp end, not behind with the rest of B Echelon. He’d only been an infantryman for a few days. His was a crash-course training, learning on the job.
Momentous decisions were now about to be made on both the German and British sides, decisions that would have far-reaching consequences in the days and weeks to come. Running south-east from Gravelines, just ten miles west from Dunkirk, lay the River Aa, which south of St Omer joined La Bassée Canal. This was the Canal Line that was protecting the southern – or right – flank of the BEF and the French First Army. By the morning of the 24th, Guderian’s 1st Panzer Division had reached this line and by midday had secured crucial bridgeheads across it in three separate places. As at the Meuse, getting safely across a key water feature was the key to an operation; so as far as the buoyant Germans were concerned, the path to Dunkirk was now well and truly open, particularly since the bulk of the BEF was still south-east of the port. Calais and Boulogne had already been isolated and were expected to fall any moment, so it seemed to Guderian that the BEF and French First Army were now completely trapped with nowhere left to run.
Then, at 12.45 p.m., Guderian received an urgent order, from the Führer no less. North-west of Arras, all German forces were to halt along the line Lens–Béthune–Aire–St Omer–Gravelines. In other words, along the Canal Line. Hitler wanted ‘all mobile units to close up’. First Panzer wasn’t the only unit to have already won bridgeheads across the Canal Line. So, too, had the SS-Totenkopf Division at Béthune, for example. ‘We were utterly speechless,’ wrote Guderian. ‘But since were not informed of the reasons for this order, it was difficult to argue against it.’
In fact, the origins of this fateful order could be found the previous day, when von Kleist had told Army Group A and OKH that his units were now quite widely spread, conducting attacks along the Canal Line and the Channel ports, and protecting their own southern flank. He told von Rundstedt that his panzer strength was down to 50 per cent, which was actually a far more pessimistic assessment than was the reality. He thus warned that if the enemy counter-attacked in strength then he believed his lead divisions might have some difficulties. However, there was no sign of any major counter-attack and nothing about the performance of the French or British suggested one was imminent.
Nonetheless, General Günther von Kluge was alarmed by von Kleist’s message. Although commander of the Fourth Army, which included Rommel’s 7th Panzer and Panzer Corps Hoth pressing north from Arras, he had also been given overall command of all the mobile forces on his left – i.e. all of Panzer Group Kleist. At 4.40 p.m. on the 23rd, he spoke to von Rundstedt and suggested a close-up order be issued, halting the fast-moving mobile forces while the infantry divisions such as 87th Division, of which Leutnant Siegfried Knappe was a part, caught up.
This was the same old concern that had repeatedly reared its head ever since the plans for the offensive had first been drawn up; and it represented the same doctrinal differences between the old-school conservatives and the progressives such as Guderian, Halder, Reinhardt and Rommel. Von Rundstedt, a conservative, agreed with von Kluge, and issued an order at 8 p.m. on the 23rd that the following day the panzers were to interrupt their advances for twenty-four hours while the infantry caught up. Most of the divisions already attacking the Canal Line were furious. Guderian’s 1st Panzer largely ignored this order, however. After all, had he listened to the orders of von Kleist and von Rundstedt so far, they would have been yet to reach the coast.
Hitler would not have become involved, however, had Halder and von Brauchitsch not now become embroiled as well. Annoyed by von Rundstedt’s decision, Halder came to the conclusion that Army Group A had become too unwieldy – it was now seventy-one divisions strong; ‘I have a good idea,’ he noted, ‘its staff has not been energetic and active enough.’ As a result, von Brauchitsch now issued an order that as of 8 p.m. on 24th May, the whole of Fourth Army, including all the panzers, would switch to the command of Army Group B, whose task it would be to finish the encirclement in the north, while Army Group A henceforth concentrated on confronting French forces to the south.
Needless to say, von Rundstedt took exception to this order and, when Hitler visited him the next day, made his disgruntlement clear. It was, however, the first Hitler had known about it: the decision had been taken by von Brauchitsch without his knowledge. Annoyed that such an important order had been issued without his say-so, Hitler immediately rescinded it and then confirmed von Rundstedt’s close-up order of the previous evening.
The order prompted immediate and sustained outrage from nearly every single commander now pressing the Canal Line, as well as from Halder, whose plans were being badly compromised. Oberstleutnant Ulrich Liss, one of Halder’s staff officers, saw his boss at the briefing that night. ‘He was livid with anger,’ noted Liss, ‘such as I have never seen him before.’ Their anger was justified. It was the southern British front that was vulnerable: the British left flank was now dug in along the border making the most of previously prepared defen
ces and in good order. Along the right flank it was a different story altogether, and it was here that Halder’s main strike force – his mobile forces – were now massing for their final strike. Yet more than that, it was abundantly clear that neither the British nor French were in any position to make a major counterattack. German reconnaissance planes could sweep over the enemy corridor at will; the chaos within this pocket would have been all too apparent. And just where were the Allied troops there going to get their supplies from? Only Dunkirk remained. Cool, rational thinking should have revealed to von Rundstedt that the ammunition supplies of the enemy trapped there must surely be small indeed.
Yet von Rundstedt was demonstrating what he had made clear all along: that he neither understood nor approved of the kind of fast, mobile warfare Guderian and the progressives had been preaching. Hitler was showing – as if any more proof were needed – that he had no understanding of modern warfare either. His decision to rescind von Brauchitsch’s order was made because he felt his authority had been challenged – how dare von Brauchitsch make such a decision without clearing it with him first! He had always mistrusted the OKH and now he had been humiliated in front of von Rundstedt. Incredibly, Hitler, a hair’s breadth away from achieving one of the most complete and remarkable victories ever, was prepared to sacrifice this to his desire to impress his authority over his subordinates. His compulsion to put von Brauchitsch and Halder back in their boxes over-rode any sound military logic.
The Battle of Britain Page 23