‘Nonsense!’ Thérèse laughed. ‘It’s because I can speak German. It makes the British suspicious. They don’t want their young soldiers being subverted.’
‘But that’s ridiculous.’
‘People of the village mistrust me also.’ She shrugged. ‘It is human nature.’
Usually arriving late, he would sit by the fire, chatting to Georges or Jeanette and trying to read Le Journal newspaper. Thérèse would appear, work done for the day, hang up her apron and join them for talk. Conversation ranged from politics to the war, village gossip, the weather. Mostly she liked to talk about him, questioning him at length about his childhood in Bolzano, his flight to England, his lost father, imprisoned grandfather, anguished grandmother, and his aunts and uncles divided by ethnicity.
‘It is sad when families divide like this,’ she said late one night. ‘Perhaps we can do something.’
‘What can we do?’
‘Your grandfather, for instance. We could write to the authorities in Rome, perhaps through an intermediary I know, and try to obtain news.’
On another night he talked hesitantly of his relationship with his mother, their difficulties and disputes, the men friends, money problems and the constant nagging.
‘Your mother made great sacrifices,’ Thérèse chided. ‘Leaving her family, bringing her son to a strange country, making sure he has clothing, food, schooling. These are the actions of a courageous woman.’
Theo thought guiltily of Carla. Six weeks after absenting himself from Aldershot, and nervous of discovery, he still hadn’t told her where he was.
‘I could arrange something,’ Thérèse suggested quietly. ‘Through contacts in London. Trusted friends. She could be discreetly notified that her son is safe, without her knowing where you are.’
On one of the final occasions, Theo and Jeanette were playing on the floor with Thérèse’s baby, while torrential rain thrashed the window like thrown gravel. Thérèse came in, wiping her hands on her apron.
‘Bald jetzt,’ she murmured, gazing through the window. ‘Soon now.’
‘Pardon, madame?’
‘Spring. It will come very soon. And then they will come too.’
‘Who?’
‘The Boche. That’s when they will leave their lairs and come at us. And they will come hard, Theodor, mark my words, so your famous BEF must be sure to be ready.’
*
The order finally came on 9 May and for Erwin Rommel, chafing with impatience in his forest hideout, it came not a moment too soon. Sidelined during the Poland campaign the previous autumn, he’d lobbied hard for an active role in the forthcoming assault on Western Europe. Now he’d won his chance, the Führer himself awarding him command of 7th Panzer, one of the formidable new mechanized divisions tasked with spearheading the invasion. Since then he had spent weeks getting to know his officers, practising manoeuvres, testing his men and equipment, and studying every detail of the invasion plan until he knew it by heart.
It was called Fall Gelb – Case Yellow, and involved more than three million men divided into two army groups. One group was positioned up north on the German border with Belgium and the Netherlands. This was where the main Allied forces were, including the British Expeditionary Force, because this was where they expected Germany to invade. But a second army group, comprising forty-five divisions including his 7th Panzer, had for months been quietly amassing in the hilly forests of the Western Rhineland, some 150 miles to the south. Once battle was joined in the north, this second force would make a surprise attack west, advance a hundred miles through the thickly wooded hills of the Ardennes Forest, cross through Belgium and break out into France, whereupon it would wheel north and make for the English Channel, thus encircling the Allies in one giant pincer movement. If successful, the enemy would be crushed and Germany would win a swift and glorious victory in Europe. But if it failed the effects would be catastrophic, resulting in ignominious defeat for Germany and an early end to the war. Fall Gelb was without doubt ambitious, its objectives formidable, and its risks many; several in High Command harboured misgivings, and even Hitler was fearful, so it was rumoured, pacing the Chancellery night after night consumed with anxiety.
Not so Erwin Rommel, whose confidence, skill and daring, so ably demonstrated in the First War, exactly suited this kind of high-risk operation. He believed utterly in the plan, certain that success was inevitable – provided every man played his part, kept his nerve and showed boldness and conviction. Having received the attack order on the 9th he briefed his officers; then he spent the remaining hours visiting his men, moving up and down the columns, checking vehicles and equipment, offering a joke here, assurances there, dispensing good cheer and cigarettes. At midnight the signal came that invasion in the north had begun, and he retired to his tent to study his maps and write letters to Lucie and his children. Then early on the 10th he emerged into the forest’s misty dawn, mounted his command vehicle and gave the order to advance.
But he was soon dismounting again, hurrying forward on a motorcycle to see what the hold-up was. They had anticipated early progress along tortuous forest tracks would be difficult, especially with so many men and vehicles to move, but by mid-morning barely five miles had been covered and the 7th was falling behind schedule. Arriving at the head of the column he found engineers struggling to remove concrete obstructions in the road while being shot at by Belgian units hidden in the trees. Swiftly assessing the situation, he ordered his leading tanks up and told them to bypass the roadblocks, flatten new tracks through the undergrowth and then rejoin the road further on. ‘And for God’s sake, don’t stop!’ he urged. ‘The Belgians will fall back once they see us coming.’
He was right, and the 7th was soon on the move again, covering some thirty miles by the end of that first day. By the end of the second he was more than sixty miles from his starting point, racing through the forests, pulling ahead of his rivals in 5th Panzer and approaching the heavily defended Meuse River at Dinant. Here the plan called for a pause to allow slow-moving infantry units to catch up, but Rommel pressed forward, hoping to surprise the enemy and capture one of Dinant’s bridges intact. He almost succeeded, but as his leading units entered the town, French engineers blew the last bridge. Undeterred and despite the late hour, Rommel ordered scouting parties along the river to search for possible crossing places, and in a while they returned with news of a narrow island midstream, linked to both banks by ancient stone weirs. White water cascaded over the weirs, which were narrow and precipitous; Rommel did not know how strongly the far bank was defended. Watching through binoculars, he sent a few lightly armed scouts forward into the darkness; they picked their way over the slippery stones and reached the far bank undetected. Swiftly reinforcing them with a company of riflemen, the first German bridgehead over the Meuse was secured.
But it was soon sore pressed, coming under heavy mortar and shell fire from Belgian and French artillery positions along the western bank. The imperative now was to reinforce his men with armour, preferably tanks, and for that he needed a proper bridge. Searching upstream he found sappers waiting amid lorryloads of bridging equipment, pontoons and rubber dinghies. ‘Who are you?’ he demanded.
‘5th Panzer Division,’ came the reply.
‘Right, follow me.’ And with that he appropriated them and their equipment and set off in search of a crossing place. Finding one near the village of Yvoir, he set fire to houses along the bank to provide smoke cover, and summoned his tanks forward, directing them to shoot at the enemy across the river. He then sent infantry across in the rubber boats to secure the far bank while the bridging got under way. Repeatedly he crossed and recrossed the river in the dinghies, often under fire, and more than once he was spotted thigh deep in the icy river helping lash pontoons together. By dawn the bridge was nearing completion, but daylight brought increasingly heavy fire from the enemy. German casualties began to mount; Rommel called up more artillery and radioed the Luftwaffe for assistance. As the
Stukas dived in, he waved the 7th on to the bridge, leaping aboard the leading tank as it crossed over.
All day the crossing and the fighting went on. Rommel’s tactic was simple, if contentious. Rather than securing the bridgehead and assembling a force to assault the enemy, he immediately sent tanks forward to bypass their positions, and even circle round behind them, staying off the main roads, skirting towns and villages, pressing ever further ahead, shooting and moving, shooting and moving, spreading confusion and alarm like wolves among sheep. Often he went with them, returning from one such sortie pouring blood from a splinter wound to the scalp. ‘He’s everywhere,’ an orderly marvelled as the wound was stitched, ‘like a whirlwind.’
But at the same time others were voicing concern, particularly in Berlin where High Command was growing exasperated. Not only was 7th Panzer way ahead of the main force, but it was becoming strung out and fragmented. Rommel refused to halt so slower units could catch up, he was always up at the front when he should be coordinating matters from further back, and worst of all he kept ‘losing’ radio contact, so Berlin often had little idea where he and his division were. He’s wrecking the whole invasion, anxious heads warned, yet not everyone agreed, including Hitler who followed proceedings in breathless amazement.
By the fourth day the Panzers were in France and the 7th reached its designated goal of Avesnes, where it was to pause and regroup. But finding weaknesses in the defences everywhere Rommel pushed on, advancing as much as forty miles a day, driving men and machines relentlessly, brushing resistance ruthlessly aside. Whole Allied battalions threw down their weapons in panic; one city surrendered without him even stopping. ‘Come out, French soldiers!’ he shouted as he thundered by. ‘It’s over, you can come out.’ And they did. By 17 May he had taken ten thousand prisoners for the loss of forty men. He left them behind and charged on, never stopping, leading from the front, racing his fellow commanders to be first at the coast. In the north the Allies wheeled to counter this new threat, only to find the northern army hard on their heels. Suddenly the enemy was to their rear and sides, as well as circling round in front. By 19 May the Panzers reached the Somme at Abbeville; by the 21st leading units could see the glittering waters of the Channel, and the encirclement was complete. Rommel’s 7th was among them, and its achievements legend. Feared in battle and fêted at home, the newspapers dubbed it Gespensterdivision – Ghost Division – because nobody knew where it would appear next. The public was ecstatic, Hitler jubilant, even the critics in High Command were silenced. That evening he finally sent them a laconic signal.
‘I’m at the coast.’
What Germany had failed to do in four years of the First War had been achieved in just eleven days.
In the Allied camp disbelief gave way to despair. Churchill flew to Paris to bolster French resolve, only to find the generals burning archives and preparing to flee the capital. The next day, accepting the inevitable and with the BEF surrounded, he began trying to save it. Mass evacuation by sea was the only option. Boulogne was considered, then Calais, but both soon fell to the advancing enemy. The noose tightened; total destruction now loomed, but just as hope was fading there came an unexpected reprieve. For no fathomable reason and to the fury of his commanders in the field, Hitler ordered a halt. The net was perfect: one army group to the north, another to the south; all that was needed was the final drawing of the string. Yet Hitler hesitated, and the neck lay open, leaving the BEF a corridor through to the beaches of Dunkirk. And salvation.
But not for everyone. Such was the speed of the German advance that whole divisions of the BEF had been bypassed almost without knowing it. One such, comprising the ten thousand Scotsmen of 51st Highland Division, was based in Lorraine, thirty miles south of Luxembourg, and so ended up outside the encirclement. Days of crucial wavering followed while orders and counter-orders came and went; then with the stranglehold tightening in the north, the 51st was belatedly rushed to the Abbeville area to try and break it. By the time they arrived events had already moved on, and their task became less about assaulting the enemy’s rear and more about stopping it from turning west. So while 350,000 BEF men escaped across the sea from Dunkirk, the lone Scotsmen dug themselves in along the Somme and prepared for the onslaught. When it came the fighting was sustained and ferocious, featuring infantry assaults backed by tanks and artillery on the ground, and dive-bombers hurling high explosives at them from the air. Casualties were heavy and with no support and supplies running short, the 51st was forced into a fighting retreat westwards.
‘Don’t let them capture Normandy,’ Churchill warned their general.
‘Then for God’s sake send reinforcements,’ came his reply.
One day Theo was sitting in a café by a bridge, listening to it on the wireless, the next he was in a convoy of trucks heading east.
‘Where we going, Corp?’ his friend Kenny asked their platoon commander.
‘How the hell should I know?’ was the reply.
All day they ground eastwards on roads clogged with traffic coming the other way, some of it civilian, much of it French military. That first night they bivouacked in a ditch by the road; the following morning they continued, passing north of Rouen towards Amiens, their progress stop-start in ever-thickening traffic. At the noon halt they disembarked at the roadside to hear the rumble of artillery far to the north. A while later three Hurricane fighters zoomed overhead, wings rocking. ‘Dieppe,’ went the rumour as they boarded once more, but upon reaching the port half their convoy peeled off while the other half, including Theo’s 2nd Platoon, continued north towards Abbeville. Late in the afternoon they began seeing evidence of British troops: a line of artillery in trees, machine-gun emplacements at road junctions, soldiers wearing armbands furiously directing traffic. Finally they entered a village and turned up a track to a large farmhouse. A hand-painted sign read ‘51HD HQ’.
‘Everyone out!’ a Scottish voice barked as they pulled up.
They spent the next hour unloading the trucks into a pen behind the farm. As they worked they noticed men hurrying in and out of the house, many of them officers, some in kilts.
‘Who are these Scottish people?’ Theo asked Kenny.
‘Christ knows, but that gunfire sounds bloody close.’
Having unloaded, they next found themselves loading again, this time back-breakingly heavy boxes of ammunition into Bedford lorries. A quartermaster sergeant directed them, his shoulder bearing the insignia of the Seaforth Highlanders.
‘Right, lads,’ he said when they finished, ‘in you get, four to a truck, tin hats on and keep your heads down, we’ll be getting close to the shooting.’
‘Hear that, Ted?’ Kenny grinned nervously. ‘This is it.’
Four lorries left the farm, following a series of lanes and tracks until they came to another village, smaller, barely a cluster of houses on a road with a church. ‘Oisemont’ a sign said. Slowing to a crawl, two drove on while two, including theirs, parked under trees and switched off. Nothing happened; the breeze rustled leaves, dogs barked, the village seemed deserted and eerily quiet. The sergeant appeared.
‘You two, down here.’
They jumped down. ‘Now listen,’ he went on quietly. ‘See that wall over there? There’s a machine-gun section behind it. You take a box of .303 ammo over. You go quickly and quietly, you keep your heads down, and come straight back. You got that?’
Grasping the rope handles, they manhandled the heavy box to the ground, picked up either end and made to set off.
‘Not yet, for fuck’s sake!’ The sergeant grabbed Theo’s arm. ‘Wait for my signal!’
‘Sorry.’
‘You will be!’ Crouching, he leaned out behind the truck, holding one hand raised behind him. They waited, still hefting the heavy box, while he stared towards a copse of trees at the end of the village. Suddenly he beckoned them forward. ‘Go!’ he hissed, and they were running out into the open. Low sunshine threw them into harsh relief, their boots rang on the
cobbles like hammers, and Theo felt the raw terror of exposure, as if a hundred hostile eyes were suddenly on him, as if every window hid a German with a gun sighted on his head. They made it halfway, grunting with effort, before Kenny stumbled and dropped his end. ‘Christ!’ The urge to leave him and sprint for cover was overwhelming. He heard a hoarse voice urging, ‘Come on!’; he tasted the dryness of his mouth and felt hairs pricking his neck.
Kenny found his feet. ‘Sorry!’ He quickly grabbed the handle and they went stumbling on their way.
‘Jesus, lads, look, they’re sending us wee kindergarten bairns!’
Ducking round the wall, they staggered into a courtyard. Five men were lounging around a Vickers machine gun, which was pointing down a road behind the house.
‘I hope they remembered the ciggies.’
‘Aye, and my evening newspaper.’
‘And some beer and sandwiches would be nice.’
‘Christ, they get younger every day.’
Relieved of their load they made it back to the safety of the lorry. Only to repeat the process with more boxes to more positions all round the village. Everywhere the Highlanders met them with ribald good humour, and some surprise.
‘Who are yous two then?’
‘Oh, um, 2/6th Territorials, the East Surreys.’
‘Jesus, we’ve got the Boy Scouts!’
‘English ones too. We must be desperate.’
By now dusk was falling, and after two days with little food or rest, and still no sign of any enemy, hunger and fatigue were slowing their pace. Their final delivery was boxes of 9-inch shells to a mortar position behind the church. Having delivered them, they jogged wearily back.
‘When do we eat?’ Kenny complained. ‘I’m famished.’
‘Yes, I could—’
A burst of machine-gun fire erupted from the trees, flinging staccato lines of fiery yellow tracer at them which struck sparks from the cobbles all around. Immediately the Highlanders responded in kind, filling the air with furious shooting from all directions. Shocked immobile, they stared about in panic. ‘Keep moving!’ someone bellowed; the next moment Theo felt Kenny dragging his arm and they dashed for the lorries.
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