The French First Army of General Blanchard, earmarked to fill the ‘Gembloux Gap’ between the B.E.F. and Corap’s Ninth Army, was not so well off. Moving up from Valenciennes, Major Barlone sombrely noted meeting Belgian refugees racing towards France from the Liège area: ‘The news these people bring is pessimistic… Treachery and the Fifth Column are the sole topics of conversation.’ On reaching Gembloux, General Prioux of the crack Cavalry Corps was ‘dumbfounded’ to discover how little the Belgians had done to fortify this vital area; it seemed a completely open plain offering itself to the German Panzers. Meanwhile, a staff captain had brought him grave news from Liège; mighty Eben Emael had fallen, and the Germans were already flooding across the Albert Canal line. By the afternoon the Germans were in Tongres and reaching out to Waremme some six miles west of Liège, thus threatening it from the river. At this rate, Prioux reckoned that his corps would never have time to establish itself before the enemy was on top of it. Early that afternoon he reported to Blanchard that ‘in view of the feeble Belgian resistance and superiority of the enemy aviation, the Dyle Manoeuvre appears to be difficult to execute and it would seem to be preferable to resort to the Escaut Manoeuvre’. Blanchard passed this on to Billotte, attaching his own recommendation. Billotte, always the staunchest supporter of the Dyle–Breda Plan among the French hierarchy, was shocked. Visiting Prioux that night in person, Billotte told him that the Dyle Plan could not possibly be put into reverse; he would speed up the advance of the bulk of the first Army, but meanwhile Prioux would have to hold fast until D+5, 14 May.
Holland
In Holland, the defences were crumbling at a terrifying speed. Rumours of Fifth Column treachery were multiplying: hand-grenades were reported to have been filled with sand instead of explosive, bunkers crumbled because the concrete had been ‘cut’, children were ‘poisoned’ by chocolates dropped from the air. Panic was everywhere. The Dutch Army was still valiantly attacking the pockets held by General Student’s airborne troops, but the Dutch Air Force had been all but wiped out, and the 9th Panzer Division had now got its tanks across the Maas (via the bridge at Gennep captured by the ‘Brandenburgers’) and was rapidly striking westwards, towards Rotterdam. The advance guard of Giraud’s mechanized divisions reached its destination at Breda, only to find that the Dutch Army to whom it had come to ‘extend an arm’ had been forced to withdraw northwards covering Rotterdam. By lunchtime on the 11th Giraud had run into the 9th Panzer, in the vicinity of Tilburg. Shaken by this unexpected encounter, his armour turned about, falling back in the direction of Antwerp, now savagely strafed and bombed by low-flying German planes. Thus within thirty-six hours of the opening of battle, Gamelin’s ‘Breda Variant’, upon which was wagered his irreplaceable mobile reserve, had already been rendered null and void.
French High Command
Back at Vincennes, Gamelin’s eyes were still kept riveted upon the north by the crescendo of events there. In London, General Spears was told by the French Military Attaché (on the 11th and again on the 12th) that G.Q.G. was convinced that the Germans were making their main effort between Maastricht and Liège, while, on the 11th, the Times Military Correspondent (obviously also fed by a similar tuyau from Vincennes) declaimed confidently that ‘This time at least there has been no strategic surprise.’ General Ironside recorded sanguinely in his diary: ‘… we shall have saved the Belgian Army. On the whole the advantage is with us. A really hard fight all this summer…’ To outer commands such as General Weygand’s in Syria, French G.Q.G. concluded its summary that day: ‘The Allied manoeuvre is developing favourably.’ If there was any diminution of Gamelin’s optimism that day, it lay in disappointment at the rapid disintegration of Dutch resistance and at the unexpectedly poor quality of the Belgian defence preparations. As Gamelin admits in his memoirs, during the first three days of the battle ‘I was above all preoccupied with Holland.’
Yet the indications were mounting steadily that something serious was also afoot in the Ardennes. Already by the morning of the 11th, both French and R.A.F. reconnaissance reports had contained such items as ‘numerous columns on the road from Euskirchen to Prüm and on the Belgian road network to the west of Luxembourg,’ the unloading of tanks north of Neufchâteau, and considerable motorized forces deploying towards Arlon, while in his midday bulletin General d’Astier stated: ‘The enemy seems to be preparing an energetic action in the general direction of Givet.’2 It was the actual numbers of the Panzer divisions operating in the Ardennes that continued to elude G.Q.G.’s Deuxième Bureau in composing its enemy order of battle. The effectiveness of the German fighter umbrella against reconnaissance intruders, and the leafy natural camouflage of those ‘impenetrable’ forests into which whole divisions could melt without trace from one hour to another, all conspired to this end, while the forcefulness with which Bock was brandishing the ‘matador’s cloak’ north of Liège certainly suggested that more than just a quarter of the German Panzer strength might be deployed there.
Nevertheless, it would not be true to say that, even as early as 11 May, the French High Command had received no warnings of the danger in the Ardennes, or that they were not reacting to these warnings. On that afternoon, General Georges issued an Instruction No. 12 in which he ‘foresaw’ the need to ‘push up on to the second position behind Sedan the 2nd and 3rd Armoured Divisions, the 3rd Motorized and the 14th, 36th and 87th Infantry Divisions’, all belonging to the general reserve. The orders for the transportation of these units would be passed on between the 11th and 13th; but as events were soon to prove, they would come too late.
During the afternoon of the 11th, Gamelin visited General Georges at his headquarters of Les Bondons. The previous day he had, on his own initiative, delegated to Georges powers to deal directly with King Leopold as Commander-in-Chief of the Belgian Army. Now he was astonished to discover that Georges in his turn had sub-delegated these powers to Billotte, to whom he also wanted to pass his ‘powers of co-ordination’ over Lord Gort’s B.E.F. It was, said Gamelin crossly, ‘an abdication’, yet he did nothing to attempt to alter his subordinate’s decision. When he returned to Vincennes that evening the tangle of the Allied command network had in no way been simplified, nor were relations between Gamelin and Georges any friendlier.
Chapter 11
On the Meuse
12 May
The Germans announce that one of the forts of Liège is in their hands. Even if this claim is true, its significance is diminished by the announcement that a captain and a lieutenant have been decorated for it. That would indicate that… the fort was only a bunker or a small pill-box.
New York Herald Tribune, 12 May
DESPAIR IN BERLIN
Sunday Chronicle, 12 May
The attack of the German Wehrmacht in the west made good progress on 12 May.
Wehrmacht communiqué 13 May
The Low Countries
Allied newspapers on the morning of Whit Sunday, 12 May, generally gave the impression that the German offensive had been stemmed by the Dutch and Belgians – as indeed, according to Gamelin’s plans, it should have been. But in fact by that morning the situation in Holland was already desperate, and in the course of the next twenty-four hours it became hopeless. In the extreme north, the German ground troops reached the eastern shore of the Zuyder Zee; in the centre, advancing beyond Arnhem, which the airborne troops had captured on the first day, they broke through the Grebbe Line at Rhenen after some hard fighting, whence the very heart of the country could be threatened; in the south, the 9th Panzer was pushing towards the great bridge over the Maas estuary at Moerdijk, to link up with the German paratroopers still holding it. By the evening of the 12th, Moerdijk was captured and with it vanished all hope of assistance from Giraud’s Seventh Army. Holland was cut in two and the Dutch Army, though it continued to fight on with bitter desperation, was left with no option but to retreat into Vesting Holland, the area containing the main cities, The Hague, Rotterdam, Utrecht and Amsterdam, with their
backs to the sea. Only one airworthy bomber, a Fokker, was left to the Dutch Air Force, and this was shot down over Moerdijk the following day. General Giraud’s fine mechanized units found themselves in a menacing predicament: heavily hit both by Stukas and German armour, their right flank was increasingly threatened by the 9th Panzer, ammunition was running short, and many of their tanks were still moving up through Belgium on flat-cars. Losses had been heavy. Giraud decided to withdraw from all but a tiny corner of Dutch soil, and try to hold a line from Bergen op Zoom to the Turnhout Canal, covering Antwerp.
After General Prioux’s alarming account of the state of the Dyle Line on the 11th, Billotte had ordered Blanchard’s First Army to speed up its advance so that it would be established in position twenty-four hours earlier than previously stipulated, on the 14th instead of the 15th. Moving by day instead of during the short May nights, the French mechanized columns now came under systematic Luftwaffe attack for the first time. In the forced marches necessitated by this acceleration of the timetable, much of the artillery was left behind. Meanwhile, during the morning of the 12th the Belgian Army was in full retreat from the Albert Line and attempting to take up position on the line Antwerp–Malines–Louvain, linking up with the B.E.F. on its right. The Belgian withdrawal in turn exposed the forward elements of General Prioux’s Cavalry Corps to attack from the armour of General Hoeppner’s XVI Panzer Corps. In the general area of Hannut, roughly midway between Liege and the Dyle, preliminary blows were now exchanged in the first major tank battle between the French and Germans. On that opening day Prioux’s tanks gave a good account of themselves. The armoured forces of both sides were over-extended, and the German infantry were moving up so slowly behind that the harassed Belgian command was given a badly needed breather in which to effect its withdrawal without precipitating a real crisis. By the evening of the 12th, Prioux’s armoured screen was still clinging to its forward positions, though precariously. The day’s fighting had been indecisive, but it seemed to show that, on anything like equal terms, French armour could hold its own against the German Panzers. From army, army group, and back to Gamelin at G.Q.G., Prioux was showered with flattering praise for these first – alas premature – results. But by the end of the 12th no more than two-thirds of the First Army had reached the Dyle, and it looked as if the main weight of Hoeppner’s two Panzer divisions might hit Prioux on the morrow.
The B.E.F., entrenched along the Dyle from Louvain to Wavre, enjoyed another quiet day. That afternoon, Gort’s Chief of Staff, General Sir Henry Pownall, attended what the British official historian describes as ‘a momentous meeting’, at the Château de Casteau, near Mons of 1914 fame. Present were King Leopold and his chief military adviser, General van Overstraeten, Daladier (still Minister of National Defence), Georges and Billotte. Under pressure of this first crisis confronting the three embattled allies, all now agreed to General Georges’s earlier proposal that Billotte act as his ‘delegate’ to ‘co-ordinate the actions of the Allied forces in Belgian territory’. One of the first practical results of the Casteau conference was to resolve the defence of Louvain, which, since 10 May, as one further consequence of the poor liaison with the Belgians before the offensive began, had been duplicated by both a British and Belgian division; the sector was now handed to the B.E.F. In effect, however, the terms of reference within the Allied command remained vague, and with Billotte increasingly overwhelmed by the responsibilities heaped upon him by his large command, he was to have little time for ‘coordinating’ the Belgians and the B.E.F. with the French forces. Henceforth, Gort for one would have to carry on virtually without directives from above, a neglect that was to have its repercussions at a critical stage in the battle ten days later.
The skies on that brilliantly sunny Whit Sunday once again saw the main Allied air effort concentrated in the north. It was the Maastricht bridges and the stretch of road leading from them through Tongres that attracted particular attention. Here Hoeppner’s Panzers were pouring towards the Dyle Line, presenting (apparently) far more threatening and obvious targets than the many times larger force ‘lost’ in the Ardennes. At 0600 on the 12th, Billotte called upon French Fighter Command to lend all its support that day to flying cover for the bombers attacking the Maastricht bridgehead. According to General d’Astier, the French bomber squadrons were still not yet ready for action. The crack ‘ground-level’ attack unit, Groupe I/54, for instance, which had been ordered to shift bases on 10 May, had been lacking some vital bomb-release accessories right up to the night of the 11th–12th, when these had actually been fetched by truck from the factory itself. Therefore, on the morning of the 12th, Astier was forced to call again on the R.A.F. to shoulder the main burden against Maastricht. Out of nine Blenheims bombing columns between Tongres and the Maastricht Bridges, seven were shot down by Messerschmitts.
By midday on the 12th, Groupe I/54 was at last ready for its first action. Flying with its leading flight of six Bréguets, Sergeant-Gunner Conill gives a graphic account of a low-level attack on an enemy column at Tongres that typified the experience of many Allied bomber crews during these May days. On approaching Liège, Conill’s formation was ordered to dive to zero altitude:
In front of us the Major flew his Bréguet with incredible daring, skimming the roof-tops, brushing the trees, jumping obstacles. A grand game!… The roofs of Tongres rose up in front of us… A main road was there, the one we were looking for, flanked by trees and ditches. And what a sight! Hundreds and hundreds of vehicles rolling towards France, following each other at short intervals, mobile, and travelling fast. A lovely target!… at 350 [kilometres] an hour, right down the axis of the road, flying at tree top level, the Major attacked… Suddenly white and blue flashes sprang up underneath us and there was a hell-like outburst of fire and steel and flames, which grew bigger. I saw clearly the bursts of small-calibre shells climbing towards us by the thousand. Each one of us felt they were aimed at him personally…
Ahead, Sergeant Conill could see the German flak ripping into the Major’s plane; suddenly it ‘tipped on one wing’, tore through some poplar branches, ‘and crashed in the midst of the German troops, right on the road’. Conill then turned to see his wing-man plunging earthwards in flames. Undismayed, however, the pilot of Conill’s plane, Lieutenant Blondy, managed to drop his bombs squarely among a group of lorry-borne infantry, before his Bréguet too was riddled with flak. On one engine the Bréguet limped back to make a belly-landing in a French field. The plane was a write-off, but none of the other five planes of the flight returned.
The effectiveness of the 20-mm. and 37-mm. flak, and the speed with which the Germans had managed both to bring up and mass these weapons around important passages, provided a singularly disagreeable shock to the French Air Force that day. The severe losses (eight out of eighteen planes in all) suffered by Groupe I/54 was also to bring a virtual end to the ground-level attack technique. That evening a dozen Léo bombers from Groupement 6 again attacked the Tongres road network, but this time prudently from an altitude of 2,500 feet, while the flak still forced them to take such evasive action that accuracy suffered badly. All the Léos returned, though none was undamaged. Meanwhile, during the afternoon, Air Marshal Barratt, under constant pressure from Billotte and fully realizing how suicidal future attacks on the well-guarded Maastricht bridgehead would be, took the exceptional step of calling for a volunteer effort from No. 12 ‘Battle’ Squadron. The whole squadron, well nicknamed the ‘Dirty Dozen’, volunteered. Under a strong cover of Hurricanes, five ‘Battles’ went out. Only one crippled plane was brought back, after the pilot had ordered his crew to bale out; the other four were never seen again. Flying-Officer Garland and Sergeant Gray in the leading aircraft were posthumously awarded the V.C., the first to be awarded in the campaign. One truss of the Veldwezelt bridge was knocked down. Pulled out of the burning wreck of his plane, one of the survivors was told by his German captors:
You British are mad. We capture the bridge early Friday morn
ing. You give us all Friday and Saturday to get our flak guns up in circles all round the bridge, and then on Sunday, when all is ready, you come along with three aircraft and try to blow the thing up.
It was not an unreasonable judgement.
According to General d’Astier, altogether that day R.A.F. bombers made 140 sorties and lost twenty-four planes, while French bombers flew only thirty sorties, losing nine planes. French fighters flew about 200 sorties, losing six planes and claiming twenty-six of the enemy, while with its 124 Me-109s that had pounced upon the Maastricht Blenheims, the German Fighter Group 27 alone chalked up as many as 340 sorties that day, losing four planes for a claimed twenty-eight. As regards the results achieved by the sacrificial Allied efforts against Maastricht, the war diary of Hoeppner’s XVI Panzer Corps admits that it caused ‘considerable delays’. But at what a cost! And why were the Allied air forces continuing to waste their precious substance upon this purely secondary threat?
To Lose a Battle Page 29