Darkest Hour (61 page)

Most of the characters depicted at BEF Headquarters
were real and, thanks to diaries, testimonies and copies of messages and
conferences, it has been possible not only to gather a fairly clear picture of
what was going on at Gort's command post but also to use words spoken verbatim.
I have, however, probably been a bit generous to General Lord Gort. He had many
fine qualities, and it must have been an exasperating and extremely depressing
time, but he also had his faults, not least his insistence on having far more
staff officers than were necessary. Both GHQ and his advance headquarters were
heaving with them, which made for a slow dissemination of orders and did
nothing to improve the already parlous state of Allied communications.
Nonetheless, his decision to act swiftly and unilaterally to evacuate as much
of the BEF as possible, and his system of maintaining strongpoints as the bulk
of his force fell back towards Dunkirk, was courageous and deftly handled.

I'm conscious I have been quite hard on the French,
although I should make clear that any criticism applies more to the commanders
than to the fighting men. Unfortunately, however, the French commanders have a
lot to answer for. In May 1940, France had a bigger army, navy and air force
than Germany, and when one considers that accepted military doctrine suggests
you should not attack unless you have at least a three-to-one advantage in
manpower and materiel, it seems incredible that the Germans should have rolled
over the French so easily. Furthermore, it was an extraordinary gamble on the
part of Germany to launch such an attack against not only France, but Belgium,
Holland and Britain as well. There is not the space here to explain why the
German panzer thrust was so successful, but it is certainly true that France -
and, indeed, many German commanders - thought the war would soon become largely
attritional just like that of 1914-18. Only a few on the German side ever
envisaged the kind of fast-paced highly mobile campaign that became the
reality: as has been proved convincingly by the German historian Heinz Frieser,
there was no 'blitzkrieg' concept as an agreed and fully formed strategy at
this time.

It was because the war was expected to be attritional
that most of France's aircraft were spread out across the country and held in
reserve rather than being near the front. It is also why the French went to
such lengths to build the infamous Maginot Line. No one (apart from one French
government minister) suspected that Sedan, the hinge between the end of the
Maginot Line and the manoeuvrable front that was to enter Belgium the moment
the Germans attacked, would be the point of the German spearhead. As a result,
it was horribly under-defended, with no active minefields whatsoever, poorly
trained troops and incomplete, scarcely manned bunkers.

Despite this, all the French really needed to do was
stand firm at the key nodal points - bridges, key road junctions and so on -
and the German lines of supply would have been cut off, isolating the thrusting
panzer divisions. As it happened, just six German panzer divisions and four
motorized divisions were largely responsible for defeating a French Army of
some two million men; panicking commanders, unable to move their cumbersome,
defensive-minded troops quickly enough, and lacking sufficient radio sets,
became like rabbits caught in headlights. General Gamelin, the French
commander-in-chief until he was sacked, General Billotte, commander of First
Army Group, General Blanchard, Commander of First Army, and General Altmayer,
Commander of French V Corps, were all reported to have broken down in tears at
various points. General Ironside, the British chief of the Imperial General
Staff, even grabbed Billotte's jacket and shook him to try to knock some steel
into him. What
was
needed was resolve,
determination and clear thinking;

blubbing was certainly not the answer. I have made the
point in the novel about the comparative ages of the British and French
commanders and I think it's valid. Most of the French commanders were a bit
long in the tooth, and not only far too ingrained with the military thinking of
the First World War, but physically and mentally too old to deal with the
enormous stresses of commanding a modern army. Few generals have won decisive
battles aged sixty-five plus.

I have tried to depict the main events described in
the book as accurately as possible and all the locations, dates and timings of
events are written as they were. The
Waffen-SS
Totenkopf Division was one of only two SS divisions to see action in France,
and both Eicke and his frustrations in trying to convince the
Wehrmacht
of his division's worth were much as depicted.
The reconnaissance battalion's bulldozing through a retreating French column
was also based on a similar episode, although it was a reconnaissance unit from
7th Panzer Division, rather than the Totenkopf, who were responsible. Timpke,
however, is fictional, although the reconnaissance battalion is not. The
real-life commander was Sturmbannfuhrer Heimo Hierthes, but I did not think it
fair to give him Timpke's many disagreeable qualities when I could find out
nothing whatsoever about him.

Actually, there were French troops in the area near
Hainin where Tanner and his men stole the Totenkopf's trucks; that is, a part
of the French 43rd Division had been trapped to the north of Mauberge after
heavy fighting against the 5th Panzer Division on 17 May. Most of the division
had fallen back to Bavay and then across the Escaut, but those trapped
continued to fight on stubbornly while German troops advanced around them. This
was not an uncommon scenario in the battle for France and it is quite possible
that on 19 May, Timpke's reconnaissance battalion would have missed them
entirely.

I have tried to recount the British counter-attack at
Arras as accurately as possible, but it was complicated and the precise details
are often contradictory. Although the British knew that the Germans were
concentrating forces south of Arras and vice versa, neither Major- General
Franklyn nor Major-General Rommel knew that the other was going to attack in
precisely the same place. Thus, the 25th Panzer Regiment, Rommel's main tank
unit in his 7th Panzer Division, had already thrust successfully north-west of
Arras towards Acq by the time the two British columns were moving south. This
was why German forces were spotted west and north-west of Maroeuil as they
moved south; 25th Panzer hung around near Acq during most of the afternoon of
21 May, until Rommel ordered them south-east again at around seven p.m. so as
to cut off the retreating British. This is why the 8th Durham Light Infantry,
still in Duisans, and the accompanying artillery found themselves under renewed
attack from the north-west that evening.

It is true that Rommel personally directed the German
battery at Point 111. The guns were situated in an old quarry next to Belloy
Farm, just north-west of the village of Wailly, and it is not only still there,
but clear to see why they had positioned themselves in such an ideal spot. It
is also true that Rommel's aide-de-camp, Oberleutnant Most, was killed while
standing right next to him; also, Rommel, in his diary, expressed surprise as
to how it had happened because he was not aware that the position was under
direct attack - rather, the British tanks in front of them and on their right
were aiming at the troops moving either side: the SS Totenkopf on their left
and his artillery and 6th Rifle Regiment on his right.

Tragically, the massacre of the Royal Norfolks at Le
Paradis also occurred much as described, although there was no Timpke egging
Knochlein on to carry out such an appalling deed. There have been all sorts of
suggestions as to why he ordered the executions. One - entirely unconfirmed, I
hasten to add, and without any evidence at all - asserts that it was a revenge
attack for the death of a number of Totenkopf prisoners at Arras. Two men
survived and escaped, although wounded, and were later recaptured and spent the
rest of the war in PoW camps. Afterwards, however, they revealed the truth of
what had happened. Knochlein, who had survived the war, was tracked down, put
on trial, found guilty and hanged.

One brief note about the weapons. Interestingly, an MP28
sub-machine-gun - almost identical to the
Waffen- SS
MP35 - was brought back from Dunkirk and handed over to the Admiralty. With the
RAF, they decided to commission a new sub-machine-gun. The Lanchester, as it
became known, was an almost like-for-like copy of the German model.

Had the French not lost their heads and panicked and
instead dealt with the German attack logically and calmly, the Second World War
would, no doubt, never have become a world war in the way that we think of it
today and would very likely have been over that summer. Sadly, that did not
happen. France was vanquished, and by the signing of the armistice on 22 June
1940, all of continental Europe, from the top of Norway in the Arctic Circle,
all the way down to the southern tip of Spain, lay in Nazi or Fascist hands.
Britain faced five more years of war and the men of the Yorkshire Rangers had
many more battles to come. Jack Tanner and Stan Sykes were needed again all too
soon.

Choky
- prison

CIGS
- chief of the Imperial General Staff (head
of the armed services)

croaker
- badly wounded or dying

CQS
- Company Quartermaster Sergeant

dekko
- look around, observe

DLM
- Division Legere Mechanique, i.e. a
Light Armoured Division

GSO3
- General Staff Officer 3 - a British staff
officer

HMG
- His Majesty's Government

housewife
- small standard-issue linen wallet containing needles, thread, spare buttons,
darning wool and thimble

iggery
- get on with it, move it

Irvin
- thick sheepskin flying jacket made by the Irvin company for the RAF

IO
- intelligence officer

Maggie
- RAF slang for a Miles Magister aircraft

M/T
- motor transport

O4
- German divisional general staff officer

OC
- Officer Commanding

OCTU
- Officer Cadet Training Unit

On
the peg -under arrest

OP
- observation post

ORs
- other ranks (i.e. not commissioned officers)

poilus
- old First World War name for
French
infantry

puggled
- drunk

QA
- Queen Alexandra Imperial Military
Nursing Service

RASC
- Royal Army Service Corps

RTR
- Royal Tank Regiment

R/T
- radio transmitter

RV
- rendezvous

sitrep
- situation report

Spandau
- German light machine-gun; in May 1940, most were MG34s, but British troops
tended to call all such weapons 'Spandaus' after the location stamp marked on
the German Maxim guns of the First World War

Snowdrops
-
RAF Military Police

Stonk – a sustained
artillery barrage

vic – V-shaped formation
of three aircraft, with the lead plane at the point of the ‘V’