by Bodie Thoene
Andre felt the loss of control. Through the windshield, the world started to spin. Instinctively he lunged toward the passenger side, forcing his body into the tiny space below the seat. The driver’s side flipped upward, and everything went black.
***
The medic in the passing convoy watched in horror as the Citroën rolled over, bounced in the air, and rolled again. It came to rest right side up, just off the shoulder of the road.
“Stop!” the medic called to the driver of the truck. He hurried out of the truck and toward the wrecked Citroën.
The man inside was unconscious, trapped in the tiny space in front of the passenger seat. The medic was amazed the man wasn’t dead. He whistled when he saw the insignia of rank designating the bleeding man as a colonel.
A truck was detailed out of the unit to act as an ambulance, carrying the colonel to the military hospital at the Ecole de Cavalerie at Lys.
***
In spite of the cramped accommodations, the trip from Brussels to Ostend proved to be an interesting one for Josie. Twenty kilometers west of Brussels, the train was shunted onto a siding as a troop train sped by, headed in the opposite direction.
Juliette and Yacov did not mind the delay. Both were fascinated with the green parakeet named Petit Chou, or Little Cabbage. Petit Chou chirped in the small cage that was held by its portly owner named Madame Hasselt. To Josie’s delight, the old woman entertained the children by putting the cage in front of her moonlike face and pretending that she was trapped inside the bars like the bird.
When she chirped and cheeped, Petit Chou responded. Even little Yacov laughed a great baby belly laugh, but Josie noted that his eyes were still swollen from a morning of hysteria.
There was no tea trolley on the train and no dining car, but Madame Hasselt shared her black bread and cheese. Josie tried to pay her for the food, but she would not have it.
She was going to Ostend to catch the ferry to England, where her son worked in a Belgian shipping firm. She had been planning the journey a long time before today, so it was an unpleasant surprise when the Germans finally broke their long silence. But Madame Hasselt believed with every certainty that the Boche would be turned back this time, that they would not have their way with Belgium as they had done in the last war. Madame Hasselt did not like the Boche, she confided to Josie. They were dark-hearted beasts. But she would not say more lest she frighten the little ones.
As the train finally lurched forward again, Madame Hasselt allowed Juliette to put her hand in the cage. Petit Chou perched on her finger. Little claws tickled her knuckles, and she giggled. When Juliette laughed, so did Yacov. His joyous howls were infectious, making Juliette laugh harder. This was perhaps the first happiness in an otherwise dreadful day, much to the delight of all the other passengers in the compartment. It was assumed that the two children belonged to Josie and the French colonel. Everyone commented that most certainly this pretty little Juliette looked like her father. There was no mistaking, they noted, that Juliette had the eyes and coloring of the handsome Frenchman.
“My maman always said that also,” Juliette agreed, although the implications of that statement did not seem to register with her.
And as for Yacov! Madame Hasselt said she had never seen such a good-natured baby. And after such a terrible day!
Josie agreed that Yacov was a delight and silently wondered what desperation must have forced the child’s mother to send such a remarkable little boy so far away.
The playful atmosphere onboard the train came to an abrupt end with the arrival of a German Heinkel. Returning to its base from having completed its bombing mission, the warplane was evidently looking for targets of opportunity when it spotted the train.
Josie barely noticed a dark shape heading for the tracks like an arrow flashing toward its target. She had glanced back at Yacov as he burst out with another peal of laughter, when the significance of the onrushing plane crashed in on her.
The bomber opened fire with its machine guns, raking the length of the train forward from the compartment just ahead of where Josie and the children were riding. The sound of shattering glass and a loud pounding noise, as if someone were swinging a hammer against the metal of the train’s skin, mingled with terrified screams.
The Heinkel roared over, pulling up on the far side of the tracks. The train engine’s whistle gave a long, drawn-out cry, as if the iron beast had felt the damage inflicted on it.
The bomber made a lazy turn, in full view of the passengers, then swept back toward the train again. Josie pulled a sobbing Juliette down to the floor and covered the girl and Yacov with her own body.
This time the bullets clattered into the car just behind Josie’s, killing two people and wounding a third. When the Heinkel climbed into the sunlight after the second pass, it soared away toward Germany.
Incredibly the brakes on the train squealed and the forward movement slowed, even as all the passengers were urging it to speed up and get them away from the killing zone. A pair of conductors came through the cars, asking for doctors or nurses to help with the wounded.
“But why have we stopped?” Josie pleaded. “Can’t we go to Ostend and find medical help there?”
“Regrettably, Madame, what you suggest is not possible,” said one of the trainmen. “Attention, everyone,” he continued in a louder voice. “The train has stopped because the engine has been damaged. It is impossible for us to continue onward. Everyone must get off.”
“And what will we do then?” Madame Hasselt asked.
The conductor shrugged. “I myself will walk back to Brussels. I suggest that you do the same.”
PART II
It’s jolly to look at the map
And finish the foe in a day.
It’s not easy to get at the chap;
These neutrals are so in the way.
A.P. Herbert, Punch magazine, April 1940
12
The Arrival of Blitzkrieg
David “Tinman” Meyer’s squadron had moved to a new aerodrome near Reims, in part to provide air cover for the headquarters of the Advanced Air Striking Force that was located there. The transfer had only been completed late on the night of the ninth of May, and A flight was supposed to have the morning to sleep.
It was with irritation that David found himself being awakened. “What’s the idea, Corporal?”
“Beg pardon, sir, but the balloon’s gone up. Jerry is attacking in force, and the squadron is ordered to cover our bombers.”
Shortly afterward two flights of Hurricanes climbed through a thick mist to twenty thousand feet, heading northeast toward the Meuse River. The shadows cast by the early morning light and the swirling ground fog made picking out landmarks difficult.
As the sun grew higher and the mist cleared some, David could see the bend of the river and the town of Sedan on the east bank of the Meuse. He could also see an enormous formation of tanks and artillery that cluttered the main road into the city and stretched back to the far horizon. This had to be the same panzer formation he had seen eighty or more miles away when his plane had crashed. They had crossed all of southern Belgium and were now across the border into France.
“Where are those Blenheims we’re supposed to be protecting?” Hewitt questioned over the radio transmitter.
“Perhaps they didn’t like the odds and went home,” Simpson replied. “No matter. We’ll find plenty to occupy ourselves. Dorniers at twelve o’clock, angels five.”
“Cheeky buggers, flying so low,” Hewitt muttered. “Don’t think much of French antiaircraft fire, do they?”
The formation of forty pencil-shaped bombers was plastering their target, the French artillery emplacements west of Sedan. David scanned the skies, locating the fighter cover he was sure accompanied the Dorniers. “Two flights of Messers flanking the Does, angels twelve.”
“Roger that, Tinman. And more fighters at angels thirty orbiting north of the town and just waiting to pounce on us.”
In all there were more than a hundred enemy aircraft facing a dozen Hurricanes. “Slash and run is the ticket,” Simpson ordered. “B flight to engage the 109s flying low cover, A flight to bust through and have a go at the Dorniers. Good hunting, chaps. We’re off!”
In contrast to the tactics practiced earlier in the war, the enormous disparity of numbers meant that the RAF rarely had the luxury of ganging up on a single German bomber with a whole section of fighters. As soon as David’s section swooped into the middle of the Luftwaffe formation, it was every man for himself.
David selected a Do 17 to attack. He curved in toward it from above and commenced firing at three-quarters’ deflection. The angle of his assault propelled Annie over the bomber from its port side. The Hurricane’s machine guns drew a double line across the German plane’s left engine, which began spewing a white cloud of vaporized glycol coolant.
David’s pass carried him toward the tail of the next bomber in the formation, which had seen the attack coming and was turning away, climbing into the sun. He had just an instant to loose a burst into its tail surface before he was below the elevation of the Dorniers and had to regain some altitude.
The Hurricane pulled out of its dive and mounted upward when the ME-109s jumped him. A pair of the fighters attacked Annie from above, and a burst of machine-gun fire jolted the fuselage in back of the cockpit. The first enemy plane flashed past him, and the second came in fast. David kicked his fighter into a climbing turn. He could not get around quickly enough to face the oncoming Messerschmitt, but the move got him out of its sights. By now, however, the first attacker had reversed its dive and was on David’s tail.
Bullets whistled by the cockpit as David banked sharply left, then dove, attempting to shake off his pursuer. The Hurricane’s slower speed meant that it would take superior maneuvering to get away, and it had to happen soon or the partner of this pair would return. The two Germans could play him like a pair of foxes driving a rabbit back and forth between them.
“Tinman!” came Hewitt’s urgent voice. “On two, break hard left. One! Two!”
David was in no position to question Hewitt’s instruction. As soon as “Two!” was pronounced, he yanked the spade grip over, pulling the fighter’s right wing up and throwing his plane into a tight left-hand turn at the same moment. This gave an instant in which he was free of the 109’s guns and provided Hewitt, who was on the German’s tail, a clear shot.
Hewitt’s gunfire converged at the optimum range of 250 yards, raking the fuselage of the Messerschmitt from its tail all the way forward to its engine. The Luftwaffe plane rolled over and dove, belly-up, toward the Meuse River.
Hewitt laughed over the radio transmitter. “You’re my witness, Tinman. Scratch one Messer, and you owe me a—”
He never had a chance to utter the word drink. Pulling out of his spiral, David saw the second 109 rejoin the battle from below. The Messerschmitt’s gunfire tore the right wing off Hewitt’s Hurricane. It dropped sideways out of the sky, like a duck falls after being blasted by a shotgun.
“Get out of there, Hewitt!” shouted David.
There was no response. David never saw the hatch open. No chute appeared as Hewitt’s plane dwindled to a falling speck.
David and the remaining Messerschmitt fired at each other twice more as the aerial combat carried them far north of Sedan. Then David’s guns were empty. He put Annie on the deck and swept toward the base to rearm.
***
The arrival of Blitzkrieg on Mac’s doorstep changed his plans some. He was stuck in Brussels all day on the tenth, unable to get transport toward the front as the trains were all requisitioned for troop movements and the roads were packed with military convoys. The Belgian authorities would not give him a pass to ride with their soldiers.
The news Mac heard on the morning of the eleventh of May, as he finally managed to hitch a ride with a passing BEF troop lorry, was good and bad. It was good because the Wehrmacht was doing exactly what they were supposed to do. According to the Allied plan, which had not changed since 1918, the French and British troops would advance rapidly into Belgium to meet the invaders head-on.
But if the good news was good, the bad was fearful. The Nazis were slicing through Holland like a sharp knife through Dutch cheese. And the mighty fortress of Eben Emael, which had been Mac’s destination a short time before? Its unprotected roof had received a gliderload of German paratroops, who blasted their way in. The fortification had already surrendered.
Mac was not even sure how the Allied advance was progressing.
“We was held up crossin’ the border from France into Belgium,” remarked a private who wore the unicorn emblem of the Fiftieth Northumbrian Infantry Division. “Them border guards wasn’t told that we was invited!”
“How’d it work out?” Mac asked.
“Sergeant Major Quinn pointed a Bren gun at the guards and told ’em that the lorries could either go around ’em or over ’em—their choice. The barricade got moved double quick!”
The area assigned to the BEF was a length of the Dyle River just east of Brussels. The troops were supposed to arrive there in one day, but with the road packed with fleeing refugees, it did not look like that could possibly happen.
There was a roar of airplane engines over the highway. Mac’s experience in Poland made him jump up, ready to stampede from the lorry into a nearby ditch. The Northumbrians pointed at him and laughed. “What’s the matter, mate? Got the wind up already?”
The heavily lumbering warplanes were not Messerschmitts or Stukas. They were Fairey Battle bombers and Blenheims belonging to the RAF.
Mac’s face was red as he sat back down, but his mind was still churning an observation. Why wasn’t the Luftwaffe challenging the Allied advance? Where were the dive-bomber attacks that had so paralyzed the Polish military movements? It was almost as if the Germans were allowing the Allies an opportunity to get moved into position. Such consideration on the part of the Nazis worried him.
***
Josie and Madame Hasselt had started their trek toward safety in tandem and had remained together through the first two harrowing days. Juliette, clutching her doll in one hand and carrying the cage of Petit Chou in the other, tried to keep pace but tired quickly. Their little group split off from the larger group, seeking shade beneath the leafy plane trees. In a ditch beside the road they found a child’s wagon, and soon Juliette and Yacov were being pulled along among the hundreds of thousands of civilians attempting to flee Belgium. But where to go?
All the ports of Belgium and Holland were under heavy attack from the Luftwaffe. Ostend had been bombed. The ferries to England were sunk with many drowned, refugees reported as they streamed back from the coast. And Brussels? Bombing had increased at such a rate that those fleeing the capital predicted it could become another Warsaw. Auxiliary train routes were being systematically smashed to halt the movement of troops and equipment.
The Nazi strategy of civilian panic was working with complete success. After the initial advances, French, British, and Belgian troops on the highways slowed to a crawl as they faced hordes of frantic people on every lane. Little Luxembourg had vanished into the Nazi maw. Grand Duchess Charlotte had already fled to France.
It was this final news that shifted the movement of the frightened herd of refugees south toward the border of France. The human tide along the main road swelled and overflowed.
***
The roads into the interior of Belgium were filled with traffic going in both directions. The troop lorry of artillerymen in which Mac hitched a ride stopped on the road from Brussels to Leuven when a Bren-gun carrier in front of them broke down. Bren-gun carriers always reminded Mac of toy tanks with the turrets torn off. As capable as they were at crossing fields or traversing marshy ground, when the tracked vehicles stalled on roadways, they were almost impossible to push by hand.
The four soldiers who traveled in the small, open-topped machine jumped off. When their attempt to shove the machine
was futile, they appealed to the men in the truck with Mac for help.
“One try, mates,” the artillery lieutenant warned. “Then we use the lorry to push her out of the way.”
Besides the British troops moving toward the front, heading the opposite direction was a family of refugees. Their dusty shoes were no strangers to the unpaved dirt lanes. They threaded between the troop lorry and the stalled Bren carrier.
Leading the group of civilians caught amid the warring armies was a young man carrying a baby. The youth might have been in the army himself; he looked old enough. As he passed, he yanked his cloth cap low on his forehead and turned away, as if fearful that the soldiers might challenge him for being out of uniform.
But the attention of the Bren-gun crew was focused on the second figure in the eastbound parade. A pretty blond woman in her early twenties pushed a four-wheeled pram loaded with blankets and clothing. She looked tired but determined. The British would have loved to offer her a ride; they hoped that the fellow carrying the baby was her brother and not her husband.
That this family had been prosperous before the war was demonstrated by the figure who came next. The head of the household, wearing his best suit coat and tie, also pushed a baby carriage loaded with belongings. This pram sported a double-chrome bumper and a satin lining, but its rightful occupant had been displaced in favor of a gramophone and a mahogany mantel clock.
Beside the man walked a woman in a heavy, expensive coat, even though the day was warm and the May sun bright on her grim face. Mac wondered how far they could have walked in the two days since the war started and where they would end up before they were through.
A pair of servants in plain black dresses completed the cavalcade. The cook and a maid perhaps? They carried carpetbags over their shoulders and toted two suitcases apiece as they trudged along. From the sour expressions on their faces, it seemed that they had started to wonder whether they would still be paid for all the extra effort.