by Bodie Thoene
The high-explosive round landed short of the mark, but the concussion cartwheeled the tank destroyer gun twenty feet in the air. Even so, there was no time to exult in a single well-placed shot.
“Target right ninety.”
The gunner had picked up the next location as quickly as Horst, and the turret pivoted smoothly the instant he finished speaking.
All the rounds being launched were high explosives, since their targets were not other tanks but men and equipment without steel covers that required armor-piercing shells. Horst was so impressed with the competence and skill of the crew that he was already searching for the next objective even before the last shot had been fired. Just after the gun roared again, Horst commanded, “Reload with HE. No! Check that! Hard right! Load armor piercing, target right forty-five!”
What Horst had seen was a line of French Somua tanks emerging from behind the thick row of hedge across the field. The purpose of the panzer attack was to break through the British line of armor. Even if it meant sacrificing himself, his battle group had to now counter this new threat to the main German thrust.
Somuas were the best tanks the Allies possessed: faster than the German panzers and, even so, more heavily armored. They did not mount as large a cannon but had almost twice the muzzle velocity with greater range and striking force. The only positive thing Horst could think of was that he saw only four of them.
“We are within their range already,” the gunner reported to Horst, “but not ours.”
There was nothing to do but charge ahead, zigzagging in the hope of escaping a lucky hit until able to shoot back.
The leading Somua’s muzzle erupted in flame, as did the second and the third. Once again, Horst prepared for the expected shock, but no blow fell.
“Major!” the radio operator said with excitement. “Second Squadron reports that the Somuas are firing at their own tank destroyers!”
21
A Two-Pronged Attack
Mac’s camera watched the approach of the German tanks. He saw them divide their force into a two-pronged attack, one of which aimed for the heart of the British charge. The other was coming right toward him, straight down the throat of the tank-destroyer unit.
The British gunnery sergeant was very methodical as he went about the business of loading, aiming, and firing. At each recoil, the antitank gun jumped up on its rubber tires like a warhorse rearing in the excitement of battle.
With an enemy approaching head-on, there was no need to adjust for the speed of the quarry; it was enough to steadily reduce the elevation as the oncoming panzers roared straight in. The two-pound shells were having a dramatic effect. A PzKw-III burst into a ball of fire. It continued rumbling forward for a time, trailing a flag of thick, black fumes. Orange flames shot into the evening sky. Eventually it rolled to a stop, and the pursuing cloud of dark smoke caught up and enveloped it completely. No one emerged from the pyre.
A second tank was hit low in the left-hand track as it was at the edge of a slanting culvert. The sudden loss of half its footing made the PzKw-III roll over sideways. As Mac watched the machine ponderously revolve, it occurred to him that a viewer seeing this film would assume that it was captured in slow motion. The tank came to rest upside down, its tracks still futilely turning, like an enormous turtle flipped on its back and helpless. Moments later three men emerged from the carcass. One of them was shot down at the edge of the culvert while the other two huddled below the lip of the ditch.
An approaching PzKw-IV fired a shell that fell short in front of the tank destroyers. The sergeant smoothly redirected his weapon to take on the new challenger. The first round sailed over the tank. The sergeant was calmly readjusting the height when another incoming projectile exploded into the British line from the side. Two more followed, tearing through the antitank weapons like a scythe through a handful of wheat stalks. The impact tore the first gun into ragged chunks of metal that spun across the intervening yards.
“Flank attack!” the sergeant yelled to his remaining squadron of guns.
The next detonation flung Mac into a cavity left from one of the first shells to reach its target. On the theory that lightning would not strike twice in the same spot, Mac stayed in the shallow depression, operating his camera over the lip of the crater. The camera lens and the top of his helmet were the only things that protruded above ground level. Mac thought that an observer could now compare his appearance to a turtle.
The tank destroyers fired in a continuous staccato popping. Against the muzzle blasts of the tanks, it sounded weak and almost silly, but when Mac cautiously peered into the eyepiece, he could see that it was effective. One of the attacking tanks was stopped dead, a gaping hole torn in its front surface. Another was still firing its machine gun, but its main weapon was broken off short and contorted from taking a direct hit.
There was something odd about its shape. Mac studied the outline. German tanks from the smallest PzKw-I to the new model IV had a similar profile: The turret was mounted directly above the level of the tracks. These machines were built in three stages: tracks, body, and then turret perched on top. They were . . .
“It’s the bloody Frogs!” the sergeant bitterly cried. “Our allies have busted us to pieces!”
“Cease firing,” Mac yelled, as if he were an officer instead of an onlooker.
“Cease nothing!” corrected the sergeant. “We can’t stop shooting unless they do or we’ll be blown to kingdom come!”
***
The view through Horst’s periscope showed an amazing scene. The newly arrived French armor was blasting away not at the German tanks but at the detachment of British antitank guns. The British, not knowing the identity of their new attackers, pivoted their weapons and replied to what was for them a much nearer danger than Horst.
“Turn!” Horst shouted. “If they keep each other occupied, we will hit the British Matildas from behind!”
Squadrons three and four of the German column were mixing it up with the English tanks in tank-to-tank combat. The Brits were still trying to maintain order and complete their breakthrough of the SS division, but the new strike from the rear surprised them.
Horst knew tanks were not well protected at the back, and the older British units were especially vulnerable there. The first blast of Horst’s 7.5 cm gun tore a Mark I in half, scattering debris over half an acre.
The second Mark I targeted received an armor-piercing round that must have struck the ammunition hold after penetrating. The turret lifted straight up in the air like the lid of a teakettle. The chain reaction of exploding shells then ripped the tank to pieces from the inside out.
Horst was indicating the position of the next Mark I when a shell hit the panzer from behind. The solid shot burst low in the bowels of the tank, killing the driver and the machine gunner instantly. A shrapnel spear sliced into Horst’s upper arm. Jagged metal protruded from both sides of his bicep. He stared at it stupidly for a moment, remembering the splinter of metal that had struck his hand during the shelling in Poland. Then he passed out.
When he came to, Horst was lying on a stretcher next to a row of German antiaircraft guns. They were lowered to flat trajectories and blazing away. General Rommel hurried from gun to gun, personally directing the target search of each. He acted as if he wished he could hold each cannon to his shoulder like a rifle.
Rommel paused beside Horst, where a medic was swabbing his wound with something that smelled terrible and burned even worse. “So, you are awake? And what do you have to say for yourself?”
Horst was certain that he was going to be shot. Now that the excitement was over, Horst knew that he had exceeded his authority and botched it. He was sure that he had led the German tanks into a trap and that he would be court-martialed. “Herr General,” he began weakly, “I do not know what to say.”
“Say nothing!” Rommel grinned. “Save your strength. After your brilliant attack, you have left me nothing to do but mop up the stragglers! There will be a Knight�
��s Cross for you in this, Major, and a new job, too!”
***
Andre was in Lord Gort’s headquarters, waiting for word about the outcome of the counterattack at Arras. Gort was late getting back from a meeting with Supreme Commander Weygand, the Belgian king Leopold, and French general Billotte.
When he finally returned, he was in a foul mood. “Did not even wait for me!” Gort stormed into his office and threw down his cap with disgust. “Gave me no notice of this conference until it was too late to reach it on time, then departed before I even arrived! God spare us from allies such as these!”
Noticing the presence of the French Intelligence officer did not make Gort apologetic. “I’m glad you waited, Colonel, so you can take a firsthand report to somebody. General Billotte was killed tonight.”
“Bombing raid?”
“Killed when his car skidded into a truckload of refugees moving on the highway at two miles an hour! He was the only other officer besides King Leopold who knew Weygand’s plans. And I’m not sure how much longer Leopold can be relied on to hold. How can we coordinate any counterattacks now?”
Andre waited patiently while Gort unbuttoned his tunic and settled into his chair.
Finally Andre asked, “Is there any news from Arras?”
“Yes, the only positive light in this miserable tunnel. Two columns of our armor hit Rommel hard, scattering the SS division.”
“Did they achieve a breakthrough?”
Gort shook his head slowly. “No, but they have punished the German flank and accomplished, I think, part of our purpose. Herr Hitler is full of boundless enthusiasm for war, so long as he is winning. Even a small setback worries him, makes him rethink his plans. Now he will worry about overextended supply lines. He will order his panzers to slow down for consolidation. He might even force them to halt temporarily.”
“And you will withdraw Franklyn’s force?”
Again Gort shook his head, even more ponderously, as if a great weight were pressing him into his seat. “Not yet. If they remain where they are, the Germans will have to consume another twenty-four or thirty-six hours mopping up. If Franklyn’s force is seen as expendable, it will make the Nazis believe that we have more armor than we do. That deception can buy us some time—time we desperately need.” The general pivoted his chair to stare up at the map. “Did you know that Guderian reached Abbeville on the Channel? Boulogne and Calais are next.”
Andre followed Gort’s view to a tiny corner where the French and Belgian frontiers met—a small city and a harbor named Dunkirk. The eyes of the two men met.
“Colonel, there is more you should know. You have greatly exceeded your orders in bringing me valuable information and could be in severe difficulty with your own High Command. That I cannot permit.”
Andre’s gut tightened. “I don’t understand what you mean, General.”
“I have backdated a request to Commander in Chief Weygand, appointing you my new liaison officer. Welcome to my staff, Colonel.”
***
The meeting was buzzing with excited speculation. After the two-day battle at Arras, Seventh Panzer had been ordered to halt for repair, resupply, and reinforcement. With the race to the sea already won by Guderian, even Rommel admitted the wisdom of such a move. After all, his tanks had taken 50 percent casualties, counting dead, wounded, and equipment out of action.
His newest tank battalion commander, Horst von Bockman, had also been grateful for the chance to recuperate. His arm was healing well, though it hurt like the devil whenever he tried to lift anything heavier than a piece of paper.
Horst had tried to dissuade Rommel from giving him the new command. He had pleaded ignorance of tank operation and tactics, but the general was not swayed from his decision.
“Anyone who is as good an instinctive leader as you cannot be allowed to go to waste,” Rommel concluded. “You handled the columns like an old-time Prussian cavalry officer. It was beautiful.”
Horst could hardly plead ignorance of cavalry tactics. So here he was, officer over twelve of the new PzKw-IVs, together with all their men and machinery.
For over two days the division had rested. Now, on the twenty-fifth of May, it was ready to jump off again. The speculation in the meeting of brigade and battalion leaders ran the gamut of possible next moves. Richter, the senior tank officer present, held out for an immediate attack on the BEF troops at Hazebrouck. Colonel Eckberg, the chief of the division’s artillery, was certain that the target would be Lille, where the remaining French forces in the north were said to be concentrated. Horst, feeling very junior to the rest, kept his mouth shut, but privately he believed the Seventh would pivot directly toward the Channel. He had heard some rumors from interrogated French prisoners that the British had gotten a bellyful and were ready to call it quits. If true, they would certainly fall back toward the coast to attempt an evacuation.
All the men stood when General Rommel entered the room. Horst could tell the general was seething with anger before he spoke a single word. Rommel’s jaw was clenched and his face drawn in a very uncharacteristic frown. He waved the officers to their seats, but it was some seconds before he could allow himself to speak.
“We are ordered to halt for two more days. The division will not advance. Our units that have already crossed . . . already crossed,” he repeated, as if he could not believe the words, “the canal will be pulled back. That is all, gentlemen.”
As soon as Rommel stalked out, the rising flow of conjecture overflowed its banks. “It is Göring’s fault,” Eckberg complained bitterly. “He wants to cover his flyboys with some glory, now that we have done all the work. When the Allies in the pocket surrender, we will see that the Luftwaffe gets all the credit.”
“I disagree,” Richter said. “The ground ahead is marshy—much more so than what we have crossed already. It is belated caution setting in. Or perhaps the armored units are just being saved for the next phase of the campaign. After all, it is about time the infantry do some work, too.”
Horst remained silent. But he knew there was more to this than met the eye. When you have an opponent on the ropes, you finish him as quickly as possible. Otherwise you risk letting him escape or get his second wind. Making the Allies a present of the time to regroup was not something that Rommel would have permitted. And neither would Tank Battalion Commander von Bockman.
***
Together with British troops from the Second and Fifth Gloucester Regiments, Mac found himself on the road to the Channel. Two thousand men were ordered to defend an important stretch of the southern perimeter of the Allied defenses, centered on the city of Cassel.
Mac watched a young lieutenant, who spoke no French, trying to explain to a baker and his wife that their home was needed as a fortification. Eventually they were persuaded to leave, but Mac felt sure that they did not understand fully what was happening. The message became clear to the couple only after the lieutenant ordered a squad to knock a hole in the wall of the ground floor to make an emplacement for an antitank gun.
When Mac asked them how they felt about the war, the baker shrugged and said nothing. But the wife took off like a rocket. “What has happened to the Phony War?” she demanded. “What has happened to the Maginot Line? What do the politicians say now? And the vaunted British—is this what they call ‘coming to our aid’? L’Anglais ou L’Allemand . . . je ne saisis pa la nuance. British or German, I do not see the difference.”
Cassel was a hilltop town only eighteen miles from the coast. It was also in the middle of some of the flattest, best operating country for tanks between the Germans and the sea. That both sides regarded it as crucial was no surprise.
So it was back to business as usual, as Mac saw it. The story of this whole campaign for the Allies had been dropping back and trying to hang on to a strongpoint. Arras had been the best shot at changing all that, but here it was again.
The lieutenant continued in his efforts to carry out orders. He had another squad of men build
a barricade. Soon a pile of milk cans, a horse-drawn plow, and an overturned manure spreader blocked the main road. As a work of art, it would have been titled Nineteenth-century Farming. Mac was sure that it did not belong in twentieth-century warfare.
The work of fortifying the town of Cassel was as complete as imagination and muscle power could make it. Several homes besides the baker’s now sported holes in their walls from which machine guns protruded. A Bren gun sat picturesquely on top of a commandeered chicken coop, and the men at the barricade counted a Boyes antitank rifle among their arsenal.
“Fat lot of good it is, too,” remarked the sergeant who had charge of it. “Shells bounce off the Jerry tanks.”
“Don’t you have anything else?” Mac asked.
“Sure we do,” replied the sergeant sarcastically. “Here, Castle. Take this gentleman and show him the heavy artillery.”
Mac was led to a fenced depression behind the front row of houses. By its smell the previous occupants from whom it had been requisitioned were pigs. The center of the low spot was occupied by a three-inch mortar and a crew of three men. The soldiers took turns leaving their position and going to the edge of the hill for fresh air.
At midnight the hum of airplanes was heard coming from the northwest. Mac guessed that there was very little chance they would be friendly. Cassel’s position on the highest knob of land in the area was particularly attractive to bombers. Long before the sound of the planes had arrived directly overhead, Mac and all the soldiers had taken what shelter they could find in cellars and slit trenches.
Mac was crouching in a recently dug hole next to his tour guide. Lance Corporal Castle may not have been a religious man, but he kept up a constant litany just the same. “Here they come. We’re gonna catch it now. We surely are. What’s to stop ’em? They’re right on top of us. Here they come. . . .”
Mac found himself wishing that something would happen, just to provide a change from Castle’s monotonous refrain. When the steady drone of the engines neared the hilltop, Mac and the corporal ducked below the level of the slit trench. Mac’s world was suddenly reduced to a space scarcely more than one foot wide and three feet deep.