by Will Belford
The underground barracks was alive with rumours. He’d heard that a large German force had attacked Fort La Ferte only twenty kilometres away and wiped out the entire garrison. Only a few days before one of their own patrols had not returned. Twenty-five men: Captured? Killed? Who knew? That was the trouble with being underground, you had no idea what was going on in the outside world.
The lights came back up to a dull yellow glow and Henri jumped as the alarm began ringing. In the corridors around him, men came to life and started running to their posts. Henri quickly climbed the ladder into the stuffy concrete room where the fort’s main artillery were situated: two 75 mm guns mounted in a rotating turret. Taking his place beside the ammunition loader with his fellow loader Private Jean Roussin, Henri looked quizzically at his sergeant, who was holding the command phone to his ear.
‘A German supply convoy is approaching along the Longwy road,’ said Sergeant Luc Bigeard, ‘I am awaiting the order, prepare to fire.’
Henri pulled open the first cannon’s breech and hauled on the chain that lifted the heavy shell into position. Manoeuvring the shell carefully forward, he pushed it into the maw of the gun, swung the breech closed and locked it. Meanwhile, Jean repeated the operation for the other gun.
‘Ready to fire,’ called Henri.
‘Ready to fire,’ said Sergeant Bigeard into the telephone, ‘stand back.’
An electric engine buzzed and the entire platform holding the two guns began to rise. The cannons swung around, their barrels rising slightly, then Henri could see daylight through the gaps where the barrels protruded through the armoured turret.
A signal buzzed and the two cannons fired together, crashing back on their recoil cylinders then sliding up again into position. Henri and Jean unlocked the breeches on both guns, ejected the shells and loaded fresh ones.
‘Ready to fire,’ announced the sergeant through the intercom.
The cannons crashed out again, and Henri and Jean began the steady rhythm of re-loading. They fired nearly a hundred rounds before the order came to cease fire.
‘Well done men, good work,’ said Bigeard.
‘Let’s hope we hit something,’ replied Henri.
‘The way this war is going we should be happy we got to fire at all,’ said Sergeant Bigeard, ‘I expect this fort will have to surrender soon, we’ve been completely outflanked.’
‘Surrender?’ said Henri in horror, ‘surely not?’
‘Well what else can we do if there are no targets for us to fire at?’ said the sergeant, ‘This fort hasn’t seen a lot of action has it? Why would the Germans attack us from the front when they can come in from the back and stay out of the line of fire of our guns? I don’t understand why we haven’t already retreated.’
‘Sergeant, you’d best not speak like this, it’s defeatist,’ said Jean in alarm.
‘Defeatist?’ said Sergeant Bigeard, ‘realistic is more like it.’
Henri shook his head in disgust and began tossing the shell cases down the chute in the floor. He couldn’t believe that mighty France could be defeated that easily. He refused to believe it.
~ ~ ~
The British colonel slammed the phone down in frustration.
‘Bloody useless Frogs!’ he exploded. ‘First the Germans are in Louvain and we must counter-attack there, now they’re near Ypres and we must hit them there. How the hell are we supposed to counter-attack if we don’t know where the damned enemy is?’
The main hall of the hotel de ville had been turned into a makeshift headquarters: tables were strewn with maps, and radios squawked, the static punctuating the rumble of voices. The officers of the 4th Battalion of the 7th Royal Tank Regiment were waiting to hear whether they were to advance or retreat.
A radio operator took off his headphones and carried a note over to his C.O.
‘Panzers spotted in force approaching Arras by God,’ said the colonel. ‘Saddle up boys, it’s time we did some fighting. Captain Valentine, get your recon men up the road to Arras now, it’ll only take you ten minutes. I want to know what type of tanks Gerry has, how many and where, and whether there’s any infantry in support.’
The captain saluted and ran from the room. Behind the town hall his squadron of six Humber armoured cars were parked alongside the road.
‘Let’s go, let’s go,’ he yelled, running across the road, ‘Panzers spotted in Arras, we need numbers, types and positions. Move it.’
Nearby, the commander of the 3rd tank company, Captain James Tanner, climbed into the turret of his Matilda II heavy tank and checked that his signal flags were in place. He still couldn’t believe that these tanks, the best the British Army had, did not carry radios. When he wanted to signal to his troop he had to stick his head out of the turret and wave the flags to make the most rudimentary of signals: ‘Advance left’, ‘Engage the enemy’, ‘Withdraw’. This was fine on an exercise range, what would it be like under fire on a battlefield?
He’d tried to instil the principles of initiative and independent action in his commanders, but the Matildas were so slow that any kind of action was difficult. Designed as an infantry support tank, the Matilda had nearly three inches of armour on the front and sides and was impregnable to all known anti-tank guns, but as a result, it had a top speed of only nine miles an hour. On top of that, most of the tanks were armed with a light 2-pounder gun that only fired solid armour-piercing shells. One tank per squadron carried a 3-inch howitzer instead that fired only high-explosive shells and was designed as mobile artillery for the infantry. The theory was that the anti-tank gunners would keep the enemy tanks away while the howitzer tank backed up the foot-soldiers.
That was the theory. In the chaos of the last few days, any kind of theory had been abandoned. The tanks had driven this way, then that, and still had not actually encountered the enemy. Tanner wondered if today was the day he would finally see some action. At his order, the Matilda lumbered forward down the road towards Arras, into the dust of the armoured cars. The rest of the tanks of the squadron fell in behind and, in finest cavalry tradition, the armoured fist of the British Army drove off to meet the enemy.
Of the 88 tanks that attacked that day, only 28 would return.
Chapter Twenty-one
Belgium, 21 May 1940
Right across Belgium, the Allied forces fought bitter defensive actions, only to find themselves outflanked and forced to retreat again and again. Days of constant movements since the breakthrough had brought Joe’s regiment to a new position west of Brussels, behind the Escaut River. It was not a well-prepared defensive position, but they’d done what they could with limited time.
Northwards, the trench zig-zagged towards a curve of the Escaut river, whose waters sparkled in the sunshine. Over those sparkling waters they could see the panzers coming for them again, grinding their way towards the river. Behind them, German infantry were disembarking from their half-tracks and disappearing into the folds of the ground.
‘No green conscripts these bastards,’ Joe thought to himself. He looked up and down the trench: men clutching their weapons knelt in firing positions on both sides of him. Twenty yards to his left the Bren gunner was training his weapon and tightening his trigger finger.
‘No firing,’ yelled Joe. ‘Everybody get out of sight. The gunners in those tanks can’t see far, get out of their way and let them go past. Our job is to get the infantry, alright? Sergeant, make sure the men leave the bloody tanks alone.’
Then the artillery came down. Heavy mortars, fired from nearby and viciously accurate; then 150-millimetre cannon, fired from miles behind the lines, the explosions bigger than the humbled soldiers thought possible. For two hours they scrabbled and gasped in the dirt as the blasts shook the ground and showered them with earth; two hours of hideous violence trying to shred and tear their pathetic bodies; two hours of men disintegrating, men disembowelled and dismembered, left screaming for their mothers in an agony of blood and dirt.
When the barrage finall
y lifted and they looked up, the tanks were floating across the river on pontoons. Two had already reached the bank and groups of German infantry were leaving their inflatable boats and racing up in support.
‘Get some artillery on them,’ Joe yelled to Private Kelly.
As the first ranging shot fell on the riverbank, an MG34 began to chatter and mortar shells started raining on the trenches once again; amidst the ear-shattering din of explosions, the squeal of tank tracks and the thrum of heavy diesel engines grew to a clamour around them.
‘Where’s that bloody artillery?’ screamed Joe over the racket.
‘I’ve just called Fire For Effect sir,’ yelled Kelly, ‘should be any second now. We’d better get down, there’s not much distance between us and the ranging shot.’
Across the field, the lead tank nosed through the grass, its turret swinging from side to side. To Joe it looked like a monstrous goanna clawing along, sniffing for carrion with its tongue, threatening with silent menace.
Then a whistling sound heralded the British artillery and the whole field erupted in smoke and flames. The ground shook and huge gouts of dirt were flung skywards as the 25-pounder shells bracketed the ranging shot. The guns were bang on target, and the two tanks that had crossed the river took direct hits.
‘Nice work Ned,’ yelled Joe, clapping Kelly on the shoulder.
Then the barrage ended as suddenly as it had begun. As the smoke cleared they heard an engine roar, and the snout of a Panzer II emerged from the haze and began moving forward, its machine gun stabbing out at the trench line. Private Simpson began firing slowly at it with the Boys anti-tank rifle, but the .50-calibre shells just bounced off the front of the tank like split peas. The tank drove up to the trench and lunged across, its engine racing in low gear as the tracks grabbed at the loose earth and dragged it up and over the other side. To Joe’s left, another beast lurched across the gap, but this one turned its turret and sent down a stream of bullets, followed by a high-explosive shell that blew in one side of the trench.
Joe threw himself down as screams came from his left. A third tank had crossed the trench directly above the Bren gun position, and the trench was collapsing. He saw Mason the gunner screaming, clawing at the soil trying to clamber out from under the grinding tracks, but the walls of the trench crumbled under the terrible weight and his screams cut off abruptly. The 20-ton beast gunned its engine and climbed out, leaving a red smear in the dirt as it drove on.
Joe stared, appalled, his gorge rising in his throat. Adrenaline coursed through him, screaming at him to run. It was a sensation he’d felt before, and abruptly the scene changed. Joe found himself face-to-face with the wild sow and her piglets that he’d run to ground in the bush when he was fifteen. The sow was huge, the size of a Great Dane, with bunches of muscles, thick black bristles and curved tusks. She’d stared at Joe with her small eyes and pawed at the ground, then put her head down and charged.
Armed only with a sharpened stick, Joe felt his heart belting at his ribs. His veins were bursting, his stomach was a cavernous hole and his bowels turned to hot water. Joe had never felt like this before, but he knew what it was: fear. Fear of death, fear of being torn apart, sliced and left to bleed to death slowly and painfully.
Then the sow was upon him and everything returned to lightning speed. With the massive sow just a foot away, Joe sidestepped, dodging the deadly tusks, and threw himself to the ground. He looked up to find the beast had turned in its own length and was charging back at him even as he rose. Falling back, he held the stick up, bracing one end against the ground as his father had told him. The sow ran right onto it with a high-pitched squeal and kept coming, right up the spear, giving him some savage gashes on his left arm and shoulder as she thrashed about. Joe pulled himself out from under her bulk and watched as she rolled and screamed in her death throes.
Coming out of his trance, Joe’s hand went to his webbing and pulled off a grenade. He turned to his right where another tank was negotiating the trench, engine roaring. Taking his Webley pistol from its holster, Joe ran towards the tank. He had felt the fear; he had recognised it; now he had to overcome it. On a mechanical level, his mind was cold now, clear and lucid, but under the surface it was the slave of a ravening creature, mad with rage and focused on one purpose: revenge for his murdered gunner.
He ran up to the churning tracks and, pulling the pin, thrust the grenade into the slowly grinding spokes of the rear bogie. Throwing himself back and down, he covered his ears and a second later felt the thud of the concussion as the bomb exploded. Pieces of shrapnel scattered around him and he turned to see the tank’s track rolling off the front wheel as the engine whined in protest at the sudden lack of resistance.
A shot fountained the dirt inches in front of his face and he looked up to see a German pulling the bolt on his rifle to reload. Joe turned, took aim with his Webley and shot the man in the chest. He disappeared over the lip of the trench without a sound. Joe looked around: most of the tanks had crossed and his surviving men were now standing at the parapet, firing at the infantry following up behind.
‘Good boys. Give it to the bastards!’ he yelled, although he could barely hear his own voice above the racket of the battle.
He ran to the collapsed foxhole and found the Bren gun and a bag of ammunition, intact, but covered in a mass of intestines, blood and flesh. Swallowing hard, he wiped the gore away, checked the gun, cocked it, placed it and looked for a target. Sixty yards in front, two Germans were worming their way forward through the grass; to his right another pair were setting up a machine gun on a tripod behind a tree.
To his left, a German stood up and swung his arm back to lob a stick grenade towards the trench. Joe loosed off a short burst that sent the man and grenade tumbling. By the time the grenade exploded, Joe had turned to the machine gun team and was laying down a suppressing fire of short bursts, keeping their heads down.
That didn’t stop the German riflemen though. Bullets started to come in from all angles, kicking up dirt around the muzzle flash of the Bren. Somewhere to his left he could hear a man screaming horribly over the rattle of gunshots, explosions and straining diesel engines.
‘Sergeant Harris? Harris?’ Joe yelled, looking about him. He grabbed the heavy Bren and the ammo bag, ducked around the corner of the trench and tripped over a leg, sprawling headlong in the dirt.
Hauling himself up, Joe put his hand right into the soft, pureed brains of Sergeant Harris. He gagged, then threw up violently all over the corpse. Coughing out the acid vomit, Joe rolled away and huddled in the trench, retching and shaking with terror. His bowels loosened and a stream of warm shit tricked down his left leg. The wounded man nearby was still screaming and the explosions were coming closer now, shaking the earth. Joe closed his eyes tight; he wanted to be anywhere else but here; he wanted to be with Yvette; he wanted to be at home with his mother; he wanted to be anywhere else, but a familiar voice calling from far away made him open his eyes.
‘Lieutenant Dean, Lieutenant Dean.’
He closed his eyes again, then forced himself to open them. ‘Whose voice is that?’ he wondered, ‘it’s Corporal bloody Smythe.’
‘Lieutenant. Where the bloody ‘ell are you?’
‘Here Smithy,’ he called out.
‘Sir, we need to get some fire onto that MG. You need to rally the men sir.’
Joe took a deep breath and swallowed. He looked around him for the ammunition and found the Bren loader’s canvas bag, half buried. He pulled out the curved cartridge cases and laid them on the side of the trench, then plucked out the empty magazine and thrust in a fresh one.
‘I need a loader,’ he yelled, looking up again to see dozens of Germans racing from cover to cover, seemingly immune to the rifle fire coming from the trench. He started to lay down an angling fire: a burst to the right, burst to the left, a burst straight ahead, sweeping one way then the other. The Germans hit the ground, but the bullets continued to come his way. The machine gunner
was always the first target.
Two grenades soared from the trench to his right and burst in clouds of dust and shrapnel around the German MG team. The rapid-fire bursts stopped abruptly, but the rifle bullets continued to thud into the earth around him.
‘We’re going to be overrun in a minute,’ Joe thought to himself and made a decision.
‘Smithy,’ he yelled, ‘get the men down the commo trench and into the woods, I’ll give you some covering fire. By the way, Harris just bought it, you’re a sergeant now.’
He clicked in another magazine, moved a few yards right and resumed his pattern of fire. The sound of rifle fire around him died out as the platoon retreated behind him. He risked a look behind him: the tanks were a couple of hundred yards past now and driving on, oblivious to the firefight going on behind them.
‘If we’re lucky, we might just make it,’ Joe muttered. He stopped firing, reloaded and, bent double, moved towards the centre where the communications trench led towards the cover of the trees. Private Billy Simpson was sprawled there on his back in a puddle of blood, his left leg blown off above the knee, his body riddled with shrapnel punctures, hands still clutching the useless Boys anti-tank rifle. His blue Irish eyes stared sightlessly into the summer sun.
Then the Germans stopped firing; the sudden silence was deafening.
‘Here they come,’ thought Joe, placing his last grenades on the parapet in front of him. Sure enough, after about 30 seconds of silence, a fusillade of rifle fire descended on the spot he had been in a minute before and grenades burst around the area. Simultaneously, a dozen Germans soldiers leapt up on the far flank and rushed forward under the covering fire of another machine gun.