To Lose a Battle (67 page)

It did not put us in any such danger as later accounts have suggested. Guderian dealt with it himself without troubling me, and I only heard of it the day after.

Doubtless Guderian had his own motives for not informing
Kleist, but the fact remains that the German High Command knew nothing of de Gaulle’s counter-thrust until the order to resume the advance had already been promulgated. Considering its state of extreme nervousness, if de Gaulle’s blow on the southern flank
had
been forceful enough to make itself heard at Rundstedt’s H.Q., the reaction of the German High Command would almost certainly have been such as to impose an extension of the ‘halt order’. For the relative impact of de Gaulle’s attack on the German breakthrough, one is reluctantly reminded of Johnson’s dictum: ‘A fly, Sir, may sting a stately horse and make him wince; but one is but an insect, and the other is a horse still.’ Under the circumstances and with the force available to him, it seems unlikely that de Gaulle could have been expected to inflict
more
than an insect bite,
¹⁰
and he certainly led his division at all times with the utmost personal courage. But the facts hardly justify his own elliptic boast made in London on 1 March the following year:

I know of a certain armoured division, improvised in the midst of combat, which inflicted on the Germans exactly the same treatment that their eleven
Panzer-Divisionen
inflicted on us…

French A ttacks from the North

On paper, the attacks on the northern flank of the ‘Bulge’ which Georges had decreed for the 17th, to link up with de Gaulle’s action, sounded impressive enough. But in fact, for reasons already outlined, they amounted to nothing. The 1st Armoured had ceased to exist – although Georges still remained ignorant of its true state – and what forces might have been available had been deprived with one stroke of their starting-point by Rommel’s night advance to Le Cateau and thrown on the defensive. Still dispersed over a wide area behind the Oise, the French tank battalions of General
Bruché’s 2nd Armoured Division were given no chance to regroup themselves before Kleist’s halt order came into effect, and were simply committed in packets guarding various crossing-points. Shortly after dawn they were attacked by advanced elements of the 2nd Panzer and succeeded temporarily in beating them off from the bridges in the vicinity of Moy, although the 1st Panzer managed to seize the important Oise bridge at Ribemont just as Guderian and Kleist were in the midst of their wrangle. The French 2nd Armoured remained throughout the 17th a division without a commander, with General Bruché frantically roaming around in search of his lost sheep, and himself in turn being vainly sought by General Giraud. Meanwhile Giraud’s 9th Motorized Division, part of his former command, also found itself dispersed during the night of the 16th in consequence of Rommel’s ‘Avesnes Raid’. Arriving on the Oise, it received no order from Giraud to hold the bridges and fell back as soon as the enemy presented itself, abandoning the bridges at Hirson and Guise. With Landrecies and Ribemont already in German hands, this meant in effect that the line of the Oise-Sambre, on the retention of which Georges had placed so much store the previous day, was already compromised. General Didelet’s 9th Motorized managed to regroup during the course of the 17th, and was instructed (hopefully) by Giraud to destroy ‘the few squadrons of German tanks’ (i.e. Rommel’s) which were reaching out towards Le Cateau. Giraud then added: ‘I order the bridge at Landrecies to be taken by a night attack.’ The other division from the ‘old’ Seventh Army, the 1st D.L.M., much depleted from the fighting around Breda, was also in no position to attack that day. Thus once again what had been designated as a day of counter-attack by the French High Command ended with the forces everywhere (with the exception of de Gaulle) on the defensive.

Rommel Consolidates

One of the legion of prisoners to be taken by Rommel during his ‘Avesnes Raid’ was Lieutenant Georges Kosak of the 4th
Light Cavalry, who had already had one lucky escape from Rommel’s advance guard east of the Meuse on the 11th. Captured at Maroilles, some six miles west of Avesnes, Kosak managed to escape a second time by wading down a stream in water up to his neck. Reaching Wassigny, he was rushed to General Giraud’s H.Q. where he was cross-examined. Giraud and his staff appeared astonished to learn from him that the Panzers were already in force at Maroilles. So, for that matter, was Rommel’s own corps commander, General Hoth, who that morning, to Rommel’s amusement, ordered him to ‘continue’ his attack
towards
Avesnes. For Rommel, the 17th was spent in consolidating his gains of the previous night and early morning and rounding up prisoners, but it was not devoid of excitement. There was an anxious moment in the early morning when, after halting outside Le Cateau, Rommel discovered that in fact ‘only a small part of the Panzer Regiment and part of the Motor-Cycle Battalion’ had been following his lead. Displeased, he sent an officer back to the rear at once:

Then I tried myself to drive back to establish contact, but soon came under anti-tank fire from Le Cateau and had to return. Meanwhile, Rothenburg with part of Panzer Battalion Sickenius had been in action with French tanks and anti-tank guns on the hill east of Le Cateau, but had soon disposed of them. I returned to the Panzer Battalion, which had meanwhile formed a hedgehog.

After further elements of the Motor-Cycle Battalion had arrived, Rommel felt that the situation at Le Cateau was secure, and still believing that the rest of the division was somewhere close behind, he hastened off in his signals vehicle, escorted by a single Mark III tank, to bring it forward:

On the way we came across several stranded vehicles belonging to the Motor-cycle Battalion and Panzer Regiment, whose crews told us that it was wise to go carefully in Landrecies as a number of our vehicles had been fired on there by enemy tanks. I then drove on [eastwards] at high speed to Landrecies, where the Panzer III, which was in the lead, lost its way in the town. When at last we reached the road to Avesnes, we saw a German vehicle standing in the road, a hundred yards ahead, where it had been shot up by enemy guns. There must have been a French tank or anti-tank gun somewhere around, but we had no time for a long palaver and so – through! As we drove past, wounded motor-cyclists shouted frantically to us to take them along. I could not help them, unfortunately – there was too much at stake.

Then, near Maroilles where Lieutenant Kosak had fallen into German hands, the escorting Mark III broke down. It could hardly have been a more awkward moment, for

Alongside the road there were French officers and men bivouacked close beside their weapons. But they had apparently not yet recovered from the fright which the German tanks had spread and so we put them on the march so far as we could by shouts and signs from the moving vehicle. There were no German troops to be seen. On we went, at top speed, through Maroilles. East of the village we suddenly discovered a Panzer IV, which had been stranded by mechanical trouble and had its 75 mm. gun in working order. We sighed with relief. A Panzer IV was a strong protection at such a moment.

A short time later Rommel spotted a motorized rifle company on the horizon, travelling fast down the road from Marbaix, midway between Maroilles and Avesnes. Thinking that this meant further detachments would be following in its wake, Rommel pushed on further towards Avesnes, ‘but found nothing’. At this moment,

a French car came out of a side-turning from the left and crossed the road close in front of my armoured car. At our shouts it halted and a French officer got out and surrendered. Behind the car there was a whole convoy of lorries approaching in a great cloud of dust. Acting quickly, I had the convoy turned off towards Avesnes. Hanke swung himself up on the first lorry, while I stayed on the crossroad for a while, shouting and signalling to the French troops that they should lay down their arms – the war was over for them. Several of the lorries had machine-guns mounted and manned against air attack. It was impossible to see through the dust how long the convoy was, and so after 10 or 15 vehicles had passed, I put myself at the head of the column and drove on to Avesnes.

Here Rommel at last encountered the lagging elements of the 7th Panzer. One can imagine that they were administered a rigorous dressing-down. It was not until approximately 1500 hours that Rommel’s own H.Q. reached Avesnes and unit after unit began to occupy the territory overrun the previous night. In the course of this move, Rommel tells us that his gunners

successfully prevented 48 French tanks
¹¹
from going into action just north of Avesnes. The tanks stood formed up alongside the road, some of them with engines running. Several drivers were taken prisoner still in their tanks. This action saved the 25th Panzer Regiment an attack in the rear by these tanks.

Having arranged the deployment of the 7th Panzer to his satisfaction, Rommel says he then ‘took an hour and a half’s rest’. But he was soon restored, and (according to one of his tank officers) at Le Cateau that evening, Rommel

gathered together the Panzer commanders and gave orders in his classic manner: ‘Our further line of march – Le Cateau–Arras–Amiens–Rouen–Le Havre!’ We were somewhat shocked by this unreasonable demand, because we were completely exhausted by the battles of the last days and lack of sleep. It was thus almost welcome to us that the execution of this order initially failed, because our tanks had almost no more petrol.

Between the long narrow tongue formed by Rommel’s foray and the hernia formed by Reinhardt’s and Guderian’s Panzers in the Oise bend, on the 17th German infantry divisions smashed through the Anor and Trélon gaps, thereby breaking the last of the ‘Maginot’ extension along the Belgian frontier. Guarding the first, the remnants of General Hassler’s 22nd Division were scattered into the Forêt de St Michel; at Trélon, it was the 1st North African Division, sent down as reinforcements from the First Army on 15 May, which suffered, and by the following day two of its battalions had been reduced to some 260 men each.

On Reinhardt’s front, crossing tracks with the 6th Panzer,
the 8th had at last entered the battle and was pushing along the upper Oise south of La Capelle before the halt order came into effect. To the south, tanks of the 6th under Colonel von Ravenstein seized an undestroyed bridge at Origny against weak resistance. That evening its bridgeheads at Hauteville and Neuvillette were sharply attacked by ‘B’ tanks of the 2nd Armoured. Once again, the official German accounts relate how ineffective the German anti-tank weapons were against the thick French armour; one ‘B’ tank was apparently hit twenty-five times before it was immobilized by a shot in the tracks. The 6th Panzer War Diary adds scornfully that ‘if German crews had been sitting in those superior French tanks’, the bridgeheads would have been hard to hold. Finally, by nightfall, they were secured by bringing up those deadly 88-mm. flak guns.

Before the halt order came into effect, Guderian’s 1st Panzer had taken Ribemont on the Oise and Crécy-sur-Serre.
¹²
By nightfall on the 17th, the Germans were in occupation of most of the promontory of land contained within the rivers Serre, Sambre and Oise. From Landrecies southwards to Moy on the Oise, some six miles north of its confluence with the Serre, the various Panzer commanders, under guise of the ‘reconnaissance in force’ permitted by Kleist, had established a number of important bridgeheads across Georges’s river barrier. Guderian for one was poised ready to resume his march towards the Channel the moment Kleist gave the signal.

German Infantry Man the Flanks

Meanwhile the German infantry divisions, whose role in ‘picketing’ the walls of the ‘Bulge’ formed so vital a part of the German design, were at last beginning to reach their positions during the day’s halt. At Stonne, far back at the root of the breakthrough where the French were still attacking, General Forster’s VI Army Corps had arrived, which meant
that the motorized divisions of General von Wietersheim’s XIV Army Corps could now move forward to hold the flank at Rethel, where de Lattre was fighting resolutely, but defensively. Also at last released from its defensive role at Stonne was Guderian’s 10th Panzer, which now hastened forward to rejoin the main armoured phalanx. In the course of the 17th it was already passing Rethel to its south. Two days later Wietersheim would once again be ‘bumped’ westwards by the arrival of the Brandenburgers of III Corps, marching south-westwards from Charleville-Mézières. And so it continued, with the German flank protection divisions always coming up just before the French reinforcements, bombed and strafed on their approach routes and generally disorganized, could possibly insert themselves in the vacuum between the Panzers and the following echelons, as Hitler and Rundstedt had feared they might.

The manning of the flanks of the ‘Bulge’ (or the ‘Panzer Corridor’, as it was about to become) was undeniably an organized triumph on the part of Halder and the O.K.H., and its contribution to the overall success of
Sichelschnitt
has perhaps never received sufficient acclaim by historians. But it also reflected a notable triumph of endurance by the ordinary German foot-soldier. During those days, on every highway to the rear of the advancing Panzers the picture is the same: on one side of the road, the endless dejected columns of French captives limping eastwards; on the other, the companies and battalions of young Germans, bare-headed and with sleeves rolled up, as always singing on the march ‘
Sollte ich einst liegen bleiben auf blutdurchtränktem Feld’
¹³
or that old favourite from by-gone times, ‘Siegreich wollen wir Frankreich schlagen’
¹⁴
– and marching, marching, marching. For them
, there is little motor transport. Supplies and baggage are brought up on horse-drawn drays, but the infantry move on their feet – an illustration of how, behind the thin armoured veneer of the superb élite forces in the Wehrmacht, relatively few in number, in 1940 the great mass of its divisions were
probably less well equipped with the panoply of modern war than either the French or British. Up and down the marching columns dart the
Feldwebel
, keeping route discipline, herding on the stragglers, while at their back are the battalion commanders, Rundstedt and ultimately Hitler, all exhorting the hard-pressed infantry to greater efforts. In the heat and dust of that relentlessly sunny May, the strain of the prolonged marches day after day is immense; wrote one German footslogger, ‘The first fifteen kilometres a day are a country walk, the next ten an exertion and the remainder – into the evening – sheer torture.’