Gold From Crete (26 page)

Telephones were ringing wildly that morning at Sandhurst and Hawkhurst, Tenterden and Cranbrook, as devoted volunteers along the Rother reported the German advance; more than once the messages were cut short abruptly, and the listeners at the other end could hear the sound of shots coming over the wires from the dangling instruments, beneath which the speakers who had telephoned now lay in their blood. Those lovely lanes of Kent and East Sussex, beautiful in the level light of dawn, echoed to the rumble of the German armour. Parties of German infantry, pushing forward with cautious haste, left wide tracks over the dewy meadows of the Rother Valley.

Newenden fell almost at once, pinched out by turning columns to right and left. But Bodiam Castle stood a siege - the first for centuries, where a desperate garrison held out behind the thick walls, sheltered from the armour by the moat on which the water lilies bloomed in their summer loveliness. The garrison, however, could do nothing to hinder the repair of the bridge, and the small forces at the main road bridge at Udiam could do little more. Once over the river the German forces could roll vigorously forward. Now there were diverging lanes and tracks by which strongpoints could be turned and isolated and attacked from the rear; the general newly in command of the German armour could display his talents in his bold handling of his columns. That was how Sandhurst was taken, by a thrust to the rear from Sandhurst Cross, although the volunteers there fought to the last in defence of their homes, as the volunteers did in so many places.

The loss of Hawkhurst is not so easily explained, for it was held by two battalions of regular troops from good regiments. But they apparently were mishandled, and paid with their lives for their general’s mistake; as the general in question met the same fate it is perhaps best not to inquire further. Certain it is that the news of the capture of Hawkhurst, which reached headquarters in London at four in the afternoon, produced a most disturbing effect. We know now that the decision was very nearly reached to let loose Bomber Command upon the invaders with the stores of poison gas accumulated in the country as a precaution in case Hitler were ever to use it. Luckily it was decided to wait a little longer, so that England was saved from the odium of having initiated poison-gas warfare, and the weapon remained unused.

Within a few minutes the situation cleared. Constant air reconnaissance, carried out with ease in the absence of German air cover and the almost complete absence of German antiaircraft artillery, at last brought conviction as to the weakness - unbelievable until now - of the German forces. First and Second Armoured divisions began to come into action, the first clash of armour taking place in the extremely difficult tank country between Hawkhurst and Flimwell; the road there is a defile hemmed in by extensive wooded areas in which the headlong German attack was easily checked. There was a whole British infantry division to defend Cranbrook by now, and the attack launched by Von Rundstedt there with two brigade groups and an armoured battalion was beaten back before nightfall.

‘The fact remains,’ said the American news commentator that night in New York, ‘that there is still a German army on British soil. It does not seem to have advanced very far, but Berlin is emphatic about the capture of numbers of prisoners, and perhaps tomorrow may see London in grave danger. On the other hand it seems quite certain that, despite the loss of the
Hood
, the Royal Navy has destroyed the German fleet and has regained command of the Channel. And if the Air Ministry claim that two thousand four hundred German planes have been destroyed during the present fighting is anywhere near correct, then the Luftwaffe has lost command of the air and Von Rundstedt is cut off from all supply and reinforcement. We can only wait and see.’

The commentator was speaking at ten o’clock at night in New York. It was early in the morning in England, and already in those dark hours before dawn the troops were moving up and deploying for the day’s battle. Von Rundstedt was dozing uncomfortably in the tent that his staff had set up for him in Iden Wood, a mile or two out of Rye. This was his command headquarters, hidden among the trees, for he had no desire at all that another bombing attack should bring about another involuntary change of command of the invading forces. There was a constant droning of planes overhead to disturb his sleep and to warn his wakeful chief of staff of this imminent possibility. As the birds began their first song the first messages began to come in from the units at the front, and with the first light the battle exploded.

The heavy tanks fought out their battle in a slogging match that ranged from Hurst Green to Goudhurst - it was within sight of Goudhurst Station that a British field-gun battery knocked out the three German tanks which advanced nearer to London than any other part of the German forces. The figures as ascertained now make it clear that the Germans were outnumbered here, where eighty-one tanks engaged sixty-five Germans in a battle of mutual annihilation while the infantry forces fought it out along the line extending eastward from Cranbrook. The German tanks gave a good account of themselves despite the frightful handicap of constant air attack; the German infantry held fast throughout the morning against the converging attacks delivered upon them. It was a brigade of cruiser tanks that broke the deadlock, turning the German left flank by a sudden advance from Battle.

Where the heavy armour was all engaged, the light armour could sweep forward unchecked, so that all Kent became a cauldron of action, friends and foes intermingled. The scanty German reserves fought desperately - we have only today to look at the ruined remains of Brede village to see how desperately - but the numerical odds against them were overwhelming; the eight British divisions which ultimately took part in the battle outnumbered the German infantry by nearly three to one. At noon Von Rundstedt knew he had lost the battle.

At four o’clock in the afternoon a BBC announcer’s calm voice came on the air. ‘We interrupt our programme to bring you the news that Colonel-General Von Rundstedt, commanding the Nazi forces in England, has just been made prisoner by our light armoured forces. The fighting continues.’

It was the evening of the next day that the prime minister made his historic speech. ‘An hour ago the last organized unit of the Nazi army in England made its surrender among the ruins of Rye. There are still scattered German soldiers hiding from our forces in the woods and fields of Kent and Sussex. Their lives will be spared, and I call upon the Local Defence Volunteers to be merciful, however justified they may think they are in exacting vengeance for our burned villages and slaughtered civilians. Let us reserve our vengeance for Hitler and the guttersnipe crew who surround him. Today they know the first taste of defeat, and that is a taste with which they will become more and more familiar in the days to come.’

It has been remarked over and over again that the defeat of the Invasion of Britain was the turning-point of the war, but it will do no harm to stress this statement again; it will be of advantage, in addition, to indicate how the battle was of such importance. Perhaps the most important consequence was the one least susceptible to exact definition - the moral effect. It was Hitler’s first failure, and it was no small one; it was something that could not possibly be covered up or excused after the fanfare of publicity with which it was initiated by Goebbels. There was a negative importance too; as long as invasion was only threatened and not attempted, no one could be sure of its failure. It might succeed, and England might be overthrown. That possibility could have bolstered up for some time Hitler’s prestige at the dizzy height to which it was raised by the conquest of France; as it was, the failure more than nullified the preceding success, and contributed enormously to Hitler’s rapid decline in the face of the subsequent military disasters.

These latter stemmed, of course, directly from the defeat. The enormous losses in the air robbed Germany of most of her military potential. It is noteworthy that by the invasion date Britain was already building faster than Germany in the air, and the swing of the pendulum was naturally very wide. It was England’s overwhelming air superiority that made the reconquest of Norway in the spring of 1941 so comparatively easy; the German garrisons in Norway were, as a result of England’s superiority by sea and air, as isolated from each other as if they had been stationed on as many different islands and they were easily reduced, one by one. The loss of Norway, of Swedish iron and - just as important - of the command of the Baltic sealed Hitler’s fate.

The losses of the German army - elements of a few divisions - during the invasion were practically negligible save for the moral effect, but the naval losses were of the greatest importance. Three-quarters of the German naval personnel were killed, drowned or captured; three-quarters of the German U-boats were destroyed. Had it not been for these losses, it is conceivable that Hitler might have built up his U-boat force to constitute a serious threat to British sea communications by 1941, and certainly by 1942; as it was, he had too few seeds left to grow a large crop. Incidentally, his surface navy, if it had survived, would have been a powerful auxiliary in such a campaign. As it was, he had too small a force left to permit any serious expansion, and the denial of the Baltic to the U-boats as a training area put the capping stone on his difficulties in this direction.

The destruction of so much - estimates run as high as eighty-five per cent - of Germany’s inland shipping is another factor to be taken into account. Even by the time the invasion was launched, the mere withdrawal of that tonnage had done serious harm to Germany’s internal economy, and despite Hitler’s desperate attempts to replace it - efforts that had an important bearing on his whole armament programmes - the situation was never stabilized before the end came. The crippling local shortages that contributed so much to the disillusionment of the German people would hardly have developed. In sum, it is hard to escape the conclusion that Hitler’s decision to attempt the invasion was most important in shortening the war and hastening his own destruction.

The End