by Will Belford
At 3:30pm, Sergeant Reg Winkler took off in his Fairey Battle with four other planes. After the six Battles in the dawn sortie had all returned unharmed, the RAF had decided to make one all-out raid in the afternoon, committing seventy-one Battles and Blenheims to a single raid.
The German fighters that had chased them since they took off had been kept at bay by their Hurricane escort, but as they neared the bridge, Winkler’s wireless operator and rear gunner, Len Clarke, spoke through the intercom.
‘Gerry fighters are buzzing off sergeant.’
Even as he spoke the Battle was rocked by a nearby explosion and fragments of the flak shell rattled against the plane with the sound of pebbles being dropped into a tin can.
There was only a moment to be afraid though, as Len Clarke pushed the slow single-engined bomber into a steep dive. Looking through the rear of the canopy, Len saw another Battle hit by flak and fall sideways out of sight, smoke streaming from its engine.
As the four bombs left the racks the Battle leapt upwards, then took a flak shell square in the engine. Hungry flames leapt into the cockpit.
Reg Winkler slid back to the canopy and stood up, ‘Bale out, and make it snappy.’
Len needed no urging. He jumped and pulled the ripcord of his parachute. As he drifted down, around him he could see the rest of the squadron being annihilated.
Back at Chauny, Air Marshal Arthur Barrett awaited the news. By 5pm he knew the bitter truth. Of the seventy-one bombers the RAF had sent on that raid, only thirty-one returned. Not one of them had managed to hit the bridge.
By nightfall on the 14th of May, the Germans had moved 60,000 men and 22,000 vehicles across the river. The entire 1st Panzer Division was now racing through the gap in the French defences and on into the plains of Belgium.
Chapter Eighteen
France, 15 May 1940
For General Flavigny the day dragged interminably. Reports arrived every half hour of German breakthroughs and further delays in getting his tanks into position. It seemed that as soon as one of them was refuelled it broke down.
Brocard reported by messenger that he could only muster 27 of his 61 heavy tanks and that some of them still needed refuelling. There was now no way he could attack before 1500 hours, nearly a whole day later than originally planned.
Flavigny strode up and down, frustrated by his inability to carry out his orders. They had specifically required him to counter-attack en masse immediately “with the most brutal energy and in utter disregard of casualties”. Yet here he was with his hands tied by mere logistics. Surely the attack he had ordered that morning would succeed? He’d told his 213th Infantry Regiment to secure the heights at Bulson, and given them tank support. Battle reports had already shown that the French tanks, particularly the Somua S35 and the Char B1 were more than a match for the panzers. The shells of the 37mm guns mounted on most of the German tanks simply bounced off the heavy armour of the French tanks. Yet for all their invulnerability, they were useless unless he could engage them with the enemy. It was becoming clear that in this war, mobility was more important than heavy armour.
At 1300, his adjutant came in.
‘Some officers of the 213th Infantry Regiment would like to speak with you sir.’
‘Very well, show them in.’
An hour later, Flavigny walked outside and looked up despairingly at the sky. The officers he’d seen were broken men. One captain had described in terror how the Germans had smashed their attempt at a counter-attack.
‘No orders came sir, so we waited,’ recounted the captain. ‘When the order finally arrived we started advancing, but that was about four hours later than we were expecting. Then we were slowed by the state of the roads: mon General, it is one huge jam of vehicles and civilians trying to get away. When we finally reached our starting line, the 205th regiment that was supposed to support us was nowhere to be found, and although we knew the tanks were coming, they were also late. By the time we had advanced to the ridge before Bulson, the Germans were already in the town.’
‘What happened then?’ asked Flavigny, ’did you press the attack?’
‘Oui. When the tanks arrived we attacked, but the Germans had already brought machine guns and anti-tank guns over the river. When our first assault faltered they counter-attacked with panzers. Our tanks fought bravely and destroyed many German tanks, but they were picked off by anti-tank guns and the survivors had to retreat. While the tanks were fighting on our left flank, we were attacked on the right by flamethrowers. They forced us into the woods and many men surrendered rather than be burned to death. We only escaped because the woods caught fire and the smoke covered our retreat.’
Flavigny pondered everything he’d heard that day. It was nearly 14.30 now, the main armoured counter-attack was due to start in half an hour. It had to succeed, or the front was broken.
Then General Paul Bertin-Boussu, the commander of the 3rd Armoured Division’s tank brigade walked into the headquarters. Flavigny looked up in astonishment.
‘What are you doing here?’ he asked incredulously, ‘are you not about to attack?’
‘The attack cannot start at 1500 hours because the tanks have not yet taken on supplies,’ replied the general, ‘furthermore, there are only eight Char B1s available.’
‘You have an order. Carry it out!’ spluttered Flavigny. ‘You have twenty of the light Hotchkiss tanks, attack with those.’
Bertin-Boussu looked at the man before him. He was clearly beyond reason. Attacking a panzer division with so few tanks was an utterly futile gesture that would only lead to men dying pointlessly. He turned to go.
‘As you say, mon General,’ replied. He had no intention of ordering the attack.
And so the last chance for a concentrated counter-strike on the bridgehead at Sedan passed by.
~ ~ ~
A telephone was ringing and was ignored. It stopped, rang again and was ignored. Then came the knocking on the door.
The man rolled over and clung to the remnants of his dream—a pleasant one involving a curvaceous young woman and several bottles of champagne—but it was no good, the knocking didn’t stop.
Winston Churchill, waking on only his fifth day as Prime Minister of Great Britain, groaned and thumbed his temples to assuage his hangover. He slowly hauled himself into a sitting position and growled ‘Come.’
His bodyguard entered and stood at the door.
‘Well, what the hell is it? What bloody time is it?’ grumbled Churchill.
‘It’s 0730 sir,’ replied his bodyguard, ‘Mr Churchill sir, the French Prime Minister is on the phone, he says it’s urgent.’
‘Reynaud up at 7.30? It must be urgent then. Alright, put him on.’
‘Very good sir.’
Moments later, Churchill picked up the telephone beside the bed, and a voice spoke in accented English.
‘We have been defeated.’
Churchill didn’t reply. He’d only just woken. He couldn’t fathom what Reynaud was talking about: the invasion of Belgium had only started two days ago.
‘We are beaten; we have lost the battle,’ came the voice.
‘Surely it can’t have happened so soon?’ asked Churchill in disbelief.
‘The Front is broken near Sedan,’ replied Reynaud, ‘they are pouring through in great numbers with tanks and armoured cars.’
‘Very well then,’ said Churchill, ‘I expect I will have to come over and see for myself.’
He hung up the phone and, for a moment, stared at the floor. France, declaring itself defeated after just two days? What could have happened? What had gone wrong? Most importantly, what did this mean for the British troops in Belgium, his best, his only army?
He rang the bell beside his bed. The time had come to go to war.
Chapter Nineteen
France, 16 May 1940
The Char B1 tank lumbered down the centre of the road. French infantry huddled behind it, peeking around the flanks for a sight of the enemy. German mach
ine gun and rifle fire clattered against the tank’s frontal glacis plate like hailstones on a roof and ricocheted harmlessly away.
In the ruins of the village, soldiers from both sides crouched in the rubble, surrounded by the punctured and flayed bodies of their comrades. Boys of 19 and 20 had been shot, bayoneted and blown apart by hand grenades in brutal hand-to-hand combat. The German assault on Stonne had met stubborn resistance, with every building being taken, lost and recaptured, only to be lost again hours later. In two days of vicious close-quarter fighting the village had already changed hands nine times. After days of advancing against pockets of weak resistance, the Germans had been stunned by the ferocity of the French defence and had been forced to dig in, just to hold their gains against the constant counterattacks.
Now the French were giving them a dose of their own medicine: tanks. And not the small, lightly-armoured types that mostly equipped the Wehrmacht, these were monsters with two cannons and a machine gun.
Erich and Reiner had been cut off from their grenadier unit and found themselves in a ruined house with a Panzerjaeger anti-tank squad.
‘You can protect our left flank against the poilus,’ said the Feldwebel in charge of the 37mm gun.
‘Jawohl,’ replied Erich, taking a position in the shattered bricks with his MG34, covering the approach from the next house.
‘I can hear engines. Ready? Roll the gun out,’ yelled the Feldwebel to his men.
The crew of three grabbed the gun trails and pushed the small cannon into position, its barrel protruding through a hole in the wall.
‘Target 100 metres, take aim and fire when ready.’
A private squinted through the gunsite, adjusted the elevation wheel, then pressed the firing lever. The shot crashed out and the gun reared on its wheels, the trails thrusting into the rubble piled behind them.
The shell slammed into the front of the French tank, and bounced harmlessly away, leaving a silver scar in the painted metal.
The crew ejected the shell, thrust a fresh round into the breech and the gun roared again. The shell struck the tank’s hull and bounced off again.
‘Again,’ cried the Feldwebel, ‘try the turret.’
The gun layer adjusted his aim and pulled the lever again. This time the shell hit the turret right on the gun mantle, but the shell whistled off into space. Now the tank stopped and began to turn, lining up its hull-mounted gun with the location of the anti-tank gun.
‘They’ve spotted us. Aim for a track, quick,’ urged the Feldwebel.
The gunner fumbled with the controls and fired again, but once again the shell bounced off the heavy armour.
‘Get out of here,’ screamed the Feldwebel, ‘they’re going to fire.’
The crew leapt up and raced for the back of the house. Seconds later a tongue of flame erupted from the tank’s hull gun and the front wall of the house disintegrated. A million brick fragments pelted Erich and Reiner as they cowered behind the far wall. Choking dust rolled over them, leaving them coughing and gasping for air.
Behind the tank, the French infantry cheered. After running from the panzers for days, their own tanks were finally hitting back.
Reiner crawled over to Erich, who had been blown onto his back and was half buried under smashed brickwork.
‘Are you alright Erich?’ he yelled, still deafened by the explosion.
Erich nodded and struggled out from under the bricks.
‘Let’s go before they decide to storm the building,’ he replied, ‘no point in dying for this scheisse town.’
‘Come on you two,’ called the Feldwebel, ‘crawl over here, get on with it, the tank’s advancing.’
Wincing at the sharp points of the shattered bricks, Erich and Reiner dragged their MG34 out of the building and made a dash towards the edge of town. Back on the road, the French tank accelerated and began rolling forward, firing methodically into each house. Behind it a second tank appeared. Within minutes the German infantry along the road had abandoned their useless anti-tank guns and were in full retreat.
For the moment, Stonne remained in French hands, but it couldn’t last: the Luftwaffe was coming.
~ ~ ~
Smoke from the cigar swirled upwards, insinuating itself into the cloud that obscured the ceiling. The French officer sitting across the table steepled his fingers and drew in a breath. Generalissimo Gamelin, in charge of the entire French army, was about to ask a favour, something he was not used to doing.
Across the table, flanked by two officers in khaki uniforms with red and gold braid on their epaulettes, sat a large man in a navy suit. The cigar was stuck between his teeth and as the man puffed at the rolled leaf, fresh plumes of smoke rose into the air.
‘M’sieur Churchill, can you not spare us your fighter planes for one more month? Without their cover the Luftwaffe will destroy our columns as they retreat to France. Can you sit aside and watch the destruction of the glorious French army?’
‘Retreat?’ guffawed the British Prime Minister. ‘You can’t seriously be talking about retreat already? You have nearly a million men under arms. They can’t all be in Belgium. The Nazi tanks must be almost out of fuel by now. Man the Marne forts with the reserve and launch a counter-attack.’
The small French general only looked at him despairingly. Exasperated, Churchill switched to his imperfect French.
‘Ou est la masse de manoeuvre?’
The general spread his hands and shrugged, ‘Aucune’.
‘What?’ said Churchill, rising from his seat, ‘No reserve? What happened to it?’
‘We sent it into Belgium two days ago,’ replied Gamelin, ‘it is part of the rest of the French army now,’ he added miserably, ‘cut off by the Germans.’
‘My God,’ muttered Churchill almost to himself, ‘then it really is hopeless. France is going to fall, it is only a matter of time. How did it come to this in just a few days?’
‘What can I say? Inferiority of numbers, inferiority of equipment, inferiority of methods.’ The generalissimo paused. ‘And the RAF m’sieur? You see now how desperately we need them.’
‘My dear general, if France is to fall, we have to think of our defences in England. If the Germans have the Channel ports we will need every plane and every pilot to prevent an invasion. We have already committed all but a handful of our squadrons to France and we do not have enough planes to defend England. The RAF will be leaving France at the first opportunity.’
The general leapt to his feet, his face reddening.
‘So France is to be thrown to the wolves then? After all our two countries endured together in the Great War, Britain will abandon its ally to the Hun?’
Wrenching the cigar from his teeth, Churchill banged the table.
‘You sir, are the commanding general of the French army, supposedly the greatest army in the world. If anyone is responsible for this … this debacle, it is you. Do not lay your own failure at the feet of England, look to the future of the country you have laid low through your own poor decisions. The RAF leaves on my order.’
With that, the British Prime Minister stood and turned to leave, stopping only to deliver a final retort.
‘Good day to you sir, pray that history is kind to you.’
The French general and his officers watched the suited man and his generals leave the room.
‘Well gentlemen, what are we to do? What are we to do?’ asked Generalissimo Gamelin, wringing his hands.
~ ~ ~
Just kilometres away in the French Foreign Ministry, Prime Minister Reynaud, having been in his position only two months, was now facing a difficult decision. He had never had a great deal of faith in Gamelin as a general, but the man’s incompetence had been brought into sharp focus in the past few days. On the night of the 12th, with German tanks bypassing General Corap’s defences all along the southern front, Gamelin had somehow managed to sleep soundly for nine hours. Having failed to appreciate the significance of the German method of attack, he had then blundere
d the attempt to get his troops back from northern Belgium in time, condemning half the French army to captivity. Only the night before, in his report to the government on the state of the defences, he had said, ‘The front is broken and many of our divisions are cut off. As for Paris, I disclaim all responsibility from now.’ This, from the commanding general of the French Army, less than a week after the invasion had started.
Reynaud knew he had to get rid of the man, but who should replace him? General Corap had allowed his entire 9th army to fall into ruin in the face of the German attack in the south, and would have to be sacked; General Billotte would have been perfect, but he had been killed in a car accident of all things; General Huntziger was cut off in Belgium. The only man available in whom Reynaud had any faith was General Weygand, and he was in Morocco.
Reynaud turned to his assistant.
‘Get Weygand on a plane here, right now.’
He looked out the window. Gamelin’s comment about Paris had leaked out, and the government departments were like disturbed ant heaps. On the manicured lawn of the courtyard below him, a vast pyre had been built, from which flames leapt dozens of feet into the air. Out of the windows on every floor, clerks were frantically hurling bundles of classified documents into the courtyard, where other staff raked them into the flames. He’d heard that the pillar of smoke could be seen all across the city. God only knew what that was doing for civilian morale.
If Weygand could get here in time maybe they would be able to hold the Germans off. In the meantime, he needed to plan what the French government would do if Weygand failed.
Chapter Twenty
France, 20 May 1940
Only ten kilometres from the border with Belgium and Luxembourg, deep below the fields of Longuyon, lay Fort Fermont. At the northern tip of the Maginot Line, the fort covered the main roads heading east to Longwy, west to Montmedy and south to Verdun and Metz.
From ground level the fort was almost invisible: a few concrete casemates and scattered domes that would rise out of the ground to bare their cannon or machine guns. Twenty metres below ground level though, the fort stretched for miles, and was home to 600 men, one of whom, Private Henri Dupont, sat staring into blackness. The power had gone out again and Henri couldn’t see his hand before his face. He wondered how the coal miners could stand it, being underground, knowing their only real hope of getting out was the lift. Henri longed for daylight and fresh air, but there was no chance of that: the Germans were outside the fort.