To Lose a Battle (54 page)

Terror at Rotterdam

Holland was at her last gasp. During the morning of the 14th negotiations for a cease-fire had begun between Dutch and German representatives outside Rotterdam. Meanwhile the
Luftwaffe was preparing a ‘terror’ blow against the city in case the Dutch there continued to resist. At 1400 hours, sixty He-111s bombed the old centre of the city for twenty minutes, utterly unopposed, as the Dutch Air Force had been annihilated. The Germans have since claimed that efforts were made to call off the raid, but the planes, already airborne, never received the signals. Whatever the explanation, it was a brutal act which shocked world opinion at the time. Just under 900 people were killed, but in the terror of the moment the Dutch Foreign Minister put the figure at 30,000, an exaggeration which in itself only added to the paralysing alarm felt in France at the apparently invincible ferocity of the German war machine. Shortly before 10 o’clock that night, Parisians listening to their radios heard Holland announce the news of her capitulation.

Tank Battle in the Gembloux Gap

On the front in northern Belgium, the B.E.F. had faced its first serious challenge on the 14th. Bock’s forces attempted to take Louvain, but were repulsed by a fierce barrage from the 60-pounders of Montgomery’s 3rd Division. But it was further south, on the French First Army’s front, that the heaviest fighting again took place. The previous night Prioux’s Cavalry Corps had withdrawn, after the savage tank battles of that day, behind the Belgian anti-tank obstacle running south of Perwez. Shortly after dawn on the 13th, Hoeppner’s Panzers began to smash through it, supported by powerful concentrations of artillery. They succeeded in forcing a 200-foot breach, but by throwing in every gun, tank and soldier Prioux managed to push them back. By late afternoon Blanchard’s First Army had at last established itself in position in the Gembloux Gap. The role of the Cavalry Corps was now fulfilled, and in the late afternoon it was pulled back for reorganization in the rear of Blanchard’s main line. The first great tank battle of the campaign was over. In Paris the papers claimed victory, and indeed Prioux’s tank crews had fought with fiercest determination – something very different from the
performance already evinced on the French Second and Ninth Army fronts. But Prioux’s losses had been appallingly heavy: one-third of the new medium Somuas and two-thirds of the Hotchkisses had been knocked out, with some units losing up to 60 per cent of their effectives. The strategic impact of this on the course of the battle as a whole was not to be underestimated. That night Gamelin was contemplating the concentration of all armoured and motorized forces on the right of the First Army so as to attack the northern flank of the Ardennes breakthrough. The crippling of the élite Cavalry Corps now rendered this proposition hardly feasible.

Gamelin Ill-informed

Back at G.Q.G., Gamelin’s light had been observed burning well after midnight on the 13th–14th. The next morning he visited Georges’s H.Q. at La Ferté, and again in the afternoon. In his memoirs he says that his ‘presence there was necessary from the point of view of morale’. Georges had evidently not recovered from the breakdown which Beaufre had witnessed the previous night – no doubt exacerbated by the debilitating effects of his old wound. However shocked he was by what he saw at Les Bondons, Gamelin nevertheless also admits elsewhere that, at the time, the situation at Sedan seemed to him less grave than it really was. For this Huntziger’s over-optimistic reports, to which General Georges had added his own rose-tinted glaze, are to be blamed. At 0730 hours, Georges had fed the following misleading fragments of information to the Generalissimo:

Ninth Army: The counter-attack at Houx did not succeed, the infantry not having followed the tanks… Second Army: The breach at Sedan has been plugged on the halt line… counter-attack with serious forces was unleashed this morning at 0430 hours…

At 1030 hours, fuller reports gave G.Q.G. the impression that the Second Army was ‘in hand and that the troops are holding’. Then a couple of hours later, Captain Beaufre telephoned
some rather more disquieting news: ‘Panic, with the 5th Light Cavalry Division. The Germans are at Omicourt, on the Bar Canal…’ At 1625, Gamelin heard the first news that Rommel had got his tanks across the Meuse. Late that evening he received a disagreeable
canard
(part of the Germans’ skilful deception plan) about an imminent enemy attack through Switzerland; Goebbels was reported as having declared that ‘within twice twenty-four hours there will no longer be any neutral states in Europe’. Could it indeed be, for all its apparent force, that the attack at Sedan was
not
in fact the main German effort? The Wehrmacht communiqué of the 14th certainly still continued to make no great capital out of the Meuse crossings. Were the Germans perhaps keeping up their sleeves a flanking attack on the Maginot Line from the Swiss end as well? Obviously, one had to remain cautious about moving reinforcements from behind the Line. The day ended for Gamelin with a last unrealistic report about Sedan from Les Bondons:

Not much has changed since the last report. Still some small infiltrations in the area of Mézières–Charleville. There has not been any counter-attack at Sedan, but violent aerial bombardment and blocking action. The German advance appears to be blocked… All the prisoners indicate the fatigue of the German troops.

Says Colonel Bardies acidly of Georges’s optimism:

It aimed at nothing but minimizing the setbacks, at reassuring General Gamelin, and above him the Government, and above the Government, public opinion… one has the impression that G.Q.G. did not yet believe in a disaster, and as a result did not envisage any means of major scope to counteract it.

For all the reassuring noises emanating from La Ferté and Vincennes, there were those in Paris who on the 14th already sensed that all was not well at the front. Alexander Werth of the
Manchester Guardian
noted in his diary: ‘Gloom at the office… The parachutist who descended on Paris yesterday was only a deflated sausage balloon.’ Paul Baudouin, the Secretary to Reynaud’s War Cabinet, relates how he had just been to

a lunch in honour of the Prime Minister and the Foreign Minister of Luxembourg and of the Belgian Foreign and Finance Ministers, and I was just coming out when Colonel Villelume said that he wanted to speak to me urgently. At that moment I was walking on the big lawn of the Quai d’Orsay in glorious sunshine, but a chill came over me… The news was very bad; Huntziger’s Army had been violently attacked and some fortifications in the Sedan district had been lost. We felt that the situation had suddenly become tragic.

A meeting of the War Cabinet was convened at the Élysée that afternoon at which Gamelin confirmed that the news was bad. (But just how bad he did not say, for the simple reason that he did not know.) He admitted he was ‘surprised’, but externally continued to show every sign of Joffrian sangfroid.

In London, the British Government also remained oblivious of the full gravity of events.

Chapter 14

The Break-Out

15 May

If our tanks are distinctly superior to those of the enemy, our fighters dominate perhaps even more the enemy air force.

Le Temps,
16 May

Responsible circles lay stress on the fact that north of Sedan, inclusive, a war of movement is in progress, and the conflict must therefore inevitably sway to and fro until the main bodies get to grips and a continuous front is established… Under a seemingly endless torrent of bombs, backed up by artillery barrage from the French forces, the Germans wavered and then began to fall back. They found the roads to their rear choked and blocked in many places by wrecked and overturned lorries, tanks, armoured cars, and supply transport.

The Times,
16 May

Upon the crossing of the Meuse in the area of Sedan, with the closest co-operation of the Luftwaffe, the protective wall of France – the Maginot Line – has been broken in its extension to the north-west.

Wehrmacht communiqué, 15 May

Corap: Another Terrible Day

14 May had been a terrible day for General Corap. What the incessant bombing by the Luftwaffe, which had concentrated its attention on the Ninth Army that day, had done to the morale of his battered divisions made a deep impression upon him. But most of all he was concerned at the growth of Rommel’s pocket west of Dinant; and now Guderian was slicing deep into his other flank. Late that night he took a fatal decision, and at 0200 on the 15th he was telephoning Billotte to report that he intended to abandon the whole line of the Meuse. He proposed withdrawing the Ninth Army behind the French frontier positions which they had left just five days earlier in fulfilment of the Dyle Plan. Billotte raised no objection
in principle, but instructed Corap to ‘establish an intermediate stop-line on the line of Walcourt–Mariembourg–Rocroi–Signy–l’Abbaye’ – roughly along the main road running north to south from Charleroi to Rethel. But Billotte’s ‘intermediate line’ existed solely on paper, and in the chaos of communications inside the Ninth Army this order marked the beginning of its disintegration. Some of Corap’s units only received orders to halt on the barrier position which General Martin had been trying to establish behind Florennes the previous evening; others duly pulled back to the ‘intermediate line’. Some were unable to move at all; others, receiving no orders, simply disbanded and straggled westwards of their own accord. In a state of high emotion, Corap telephoned General d’Astier begging for air support at dawn to cover his withdrawal. Although his orders were to devote all forces to Huntziger’s front, d’Astier said he would see what he could do; but Corap was even unable to tell him precisely where his own front lay.

Such was the situation at Army level as dawn broke on the 15th. In effect, Huntziger the previous evening had opened one sluice-gate; Corap was now opening the other. Through the pair of them the flood was about to burst into France.

Rommel Strikes Again

Opposite Rommel’s bridgehead, the ‘stop-line’ decreed by Corap ran close by Philippeville, some twelve miles from where Rommel had come to a halt on the 14th. But his orders to the 7th Panzer for the 15th were to ‘thrust straight through in one stride’ to the Cerfontaine area, eight miles to the
west
of Philippeville. Rommel himself intended to ride with Rothenburg’s tanks so as to direct operations from up forward, leaving divisional H.Q. in the hands of his senior staff officer, the extremely able Major Heidkaemper who was to end the war as a lieutenant-general. Guarding his right flank, but still slightly behind, came Colonel Werner’s tanks from the 5th Panzer. At about 0800 hours a Luftwaffe liaison officer informed Rommel that Stuka support would be available for the 7th Panzer that
day. Rommel called for them to go into action immediately just ahead of his tanks, which were already beginning to move forward. Within the next hour they came up against General Bruneau’s 1st Armoured Division, positioned near Flavion, in what Rommel describes as a ‘brief engagement’.

On reaching its concentration area late on the night of the 14th, Bruneau’s tank battalions had adopted a defensive stance of
‘rassemblement gardé’
while waiting for the arrival of the fuel tankers which Bruneau had mistakenly placed at the rear of his column. Agonizingly the hours ticked by and still the tankers, held up by the appalling chaos on the roads, did not arrive. Finally, Bruneau had told General Martin that he could not possibly attack at dawn, as prescribed by XI Corps. Refuelling, he now reckoned, would only be complete by the end of the morning. Accordingly, he sent back his artillery, deploying one lone battery out of six in support of his immobilized armour.
¹
Soon after dawn, Bruneau learned that his units were being heavily dive-bombed. Then at 0830 hours his two battalions of heavy ‘B’ tanks were caught by a dense concentration of Rommel’s Panzers just as they were refuelling. A confused action ensued at close range. One French squadron managed to counter-attack, inflicting noteworthy losses. Once again the Germans discovered that their 37-mm. guns could not penetrate the massive ‘B’ tanks, and that their best bet lay in shooting off the tracks. But many of these superb instruments, tragically immobilized like hobbled elephants by their lack of fuel, simply had to be set on fire in haste by their own crews.

With that magical feeling for the situation which characterized all his movements, Rommel then swung round Bruneau’s flank to continue his thrust towards the west. Having struck one first hard blow at the 1st Armoured, he left it to the approaching 5th Panzer to administer the
coup de grâce.
Bruneau, making an accurate appreciation of Rommel’s intent
from the consequent lull in the fighting, at 1400 ordered his division to regroup north of Florennes, facing south-east. But by the time the order reached his tanks they were inextricably engaged in heavy fighting – this time with Colonel Werner’s ‘Red Devils’
²
from the 5th Panzer. What that afternoon’s armoured battle was like from the French point of view is well described by a subaltern fighting in a ‘B’ tank of the 37th Battalion:

‘En avant!’
orders the
Adour,
the Captain’s tank… The
Gard
is on my right, the Captain is to the right of the
Gard
… At that moment, a shell strikes the armour on the left side! Towards the road, red lights flare up on the level of a low hedge; another shell in the armour plate! I hesitate to shoot back, because I thought it was a mistake by one of ours; then I traversed my turret towards the flames, and shoot off five high-explosive shells at the hedge, after which nothing moves any longer. I continue my advance and arrive at the woods which mark the edge of the plateau, and it is there that the battle begins. The driver shouts: ‘A tank on the edge of the wood in front of us!’ It was certainly an enemy! A Mark IV on which I directed the fire of the 75… Near a burning German tank, men are climbing and crawling towards the undergrowth. The whole of our left flank is crowded with big German tanks; I can make them out more or less indistinctly, because they are camouflaged, broadside on and immobile.