To Lose a Battle (61 page)

The spirit of the heroic days of 1916 has returned; yesterday, in reconquering an outer fort of Sedan, our troops have shown a bravery worthy of the glorious days of Douaumont.

Chilled by the words, he went off to tell his friend, Joliot-Curie:

‘They are at Sedan.’
‘Sedan? You are dreaming… I did not know you were such a
paniquard.’

But as Koestler left Joliot-Curie’s laboratory,
Paris-Midi
had just come out, with the words ‘We have evacuated Sedan’
blazoned across the front page. ‘That,’ declares Koestler, ‘was the moment when the chair under us broke down.’ That same day, Alexander Werth of the
Manchester Guardian
recorded ‘gloom at the office’, while on the 15th he went to hear Colonel Thomas announce that the situation ‘is not unlike that of March 1918. The situation is serious; but it is neither critical nor desperate.’ To his diary, Werth confided: ‘God, fancy saying that on the second day of the attack on France!’

In the Provinces

In fact, intellectuals like Koestler and journalists like Werth, in sensing the imminence of catastrophe, belonged to a slim minority, and it was not until the 16th that alarm began to assume any serious proportions among the public of Paris. That the picture was similar in the provincial centres of the north is testified by an excellent and detailed account of life in Amiens during these days, provided by Pierre Vasselle. According to its author, that beautiful Sunday of 12 May had passed in the utmost tranquillity. During the next day, Whit Monday, some Belgian cars began to appear in the city, but this was regarded as part of the plan for evacuating the fortified areas of Belgium and provoked no anxiety. Some people, however, thought they could hear gunfire when the wind blew from the east. On the 14th, the delay with which the official communiqués appeared to be reporting events caused some uncertainty, and there was talk about evacuating women and children. The number of itinerant Belgians increased. But life continued unchanged; the shops were full, and children made ready to return to school after the Whitsun holidays. The 15th also passed without incident. There were reports that Arras had been badly bombed during the night; some cars with AF (Aisne) and NA (Pas-de-Calais) number plates now joined in the Belgian traffic, but it still flowed smoothly through the city, and there was no move towards any organized evacuation. The sun continued to shine down, brilliant and hot as in July. The earliest moment of serious disquiet came that evening with the first official admission that the Germans had crossed the Meuse between Namur
and Mézières. Then on the morning of the 16th word got around that it was no longer possible to get St Quentin on the telephone. The cars bearing AF and NA plates multiplied, and those of their occupants who paused at cafés were subjected to intense questioning. By midday, cars were beginning to pour out of Amiens towards the west, greatly favoured by the superb weather.

16 May: Panic Hits Paris

Amiens, however, remained a good deal calmer than Paris that day. From the earliest hours ugly rumours had begun to ripple through the city: ‘Rethel has been overrun’, The Boches are at Laon’, ‘They’ll be in Paris this evening’. For confirmation of the worst, one only had to drive through the Place de la Concorde, where the Ministry of the Marine was frantically heaping its files on to Navy lorries. There was suddenly a tremendous run on walking-shoes and suitcases at the Galeries Lafayette. Senator Bardoux, on his way to the Chamber of Deputies, noted that at half past ten ‘I did not have a bad impression; Paris seemed normal. But at a quarter past twelve, my impression was quite different. The requisitioning of buses, the increase in the traffic and the arrival of refugees had made Paris frantic.’ From every direction the first heavily-laden motor-cars began to appear on the roads, and throughout the day the traffic built up as more and more Parisians sought to escape from the city while there was still time.

There were of course cases of calm, where it seemed that nothing, not even war, could ruffle the immortal face of Paris in springtime; Alexander Werth observed that day ‘several art students on the Quai painting pictures of the Ile de la Cité, one of them in uniform’.

Probably the worst centre of rumours and panic was the Assembly itself. Outside, one of Reynaud’s Ministers was greeted that morning by a group of ‘spivs’, who ‘looked towards the Madeleine, “waiting”, they said, “for the arrival of the enemy”’. Inside, Senator Bardoux on his arrival found that

the corridors were invaded by a disgusting crowd, dirty and badly dressed, malodorous and enveloped in smoke. The gravest rumours were circulating – and hawked about moreover by two quaestors, Barthe and Perfetti. ‘The Germans have entered Laon and Rheims. They are advancing in a motorized column, flanked to right and left by two armoured divisions. They will be in Paris this evening.’

Other prominent politicians assured him that the broken line on the Meuse had been held by two Parisian divisions which had been ‘got at by the Communists’.
⁸
These had ‘disbanded’ after being attacked by tanks and flame-throwers, and the fugitives from them were now marching on Paris ‘to proclaim revolution’. The Paris taxis (shades of the Marne!) were being mobilized for an unspecified purpose that night. Pierre Mendès-France, back on leave from Syria, recalls how one Minister he knew

spent literally the whole morning telephoning his friends to advise them to leave the capital immediately. He was particularly concerned about the Jews, painting a lurid picture of the risks they were likely to run,

while Bois claims that even Herriot told a friend: ‘Before two o’clock I advise you to leave Paris.’

Reynaud Addresses the Assembly

At three o’clock that afternoon, Reynaud was informed by telephone that the corridors of the Chamber were seething with excited Deputies now spreading ‘the wildest rumours’ to the effect that the Government’s departure from Paris was imminent. He decided to go and address the Chamber himself. To Bois, who saw him just before he spoke, Reynaud ‘looked like a man taxed to the uttermost by fatigue, distress and responsibilities’, but he managed to summon up the courage that had apparently deserted him in the morning. With some prevarication, he hotly denied that there was any truth in the rumours that the Government had been contemplating flight, declaring ‘We shall fight before Paris; we shall fight in Paris, if need be!’
When he got up to speak, his manner struck listeners as ‘very noble, very firm’. Hitler, he said,

means to win the war in two months. If he fails he is doomed, and he knows it… The period we are about to pass through may have nothing in common with the one through which we have just passed. We shall be called upon to take steps that only yesterday would have seemed revolutionary. Perhaps we shall have to change both methods and men. For every weakness there will be the penalty of death.

On this draconian line, the Deputies rose to their feet and applauded long and loudly. Herriot, the President of the Chamber, ended this dramatic meeting amid renewed applause with the words: ‘France is alive to the grandeur and tragedy of this ordeal. She will live up to her past and her destiny!’

Churchill in Paris

Such was the atmosphere as Churchill landed in Paris. ‘From the moment we got out of the Flamingo,’ says Churchill, ‘it was obvious that the situation was incomparably worse than we had imagined. The officers who met us told General Ismay that the Germans were expected in Paris in a few days at most.’ Ismay was ‘flabbergasted’. Driving through the streets of Paris, he noticed that ‘the people seemed listless and resigned, and they gave no sign of the passionate defiance that had inspired the cry
“Ils ne passeront pas!”
in the previous struggle… There were no cheers for Churchill.’ At half past five, Churchill’s party arrived at the Quai d’Orsay for a meeting attended by Reynaud, Daladier, Gamelin and various others. ‘Everybody was standing,’ recalls Churchill.

At no time did we sit down around a table. Utter dejection was written on every face. In front of Gamelin on a student’s easel was a map, about two yards square, with a black line purporting to show the Allied front. In this line there was drawn a small but sinister bulge at Sedan.

According to French accounts of the meeting, Churchill expressed surprise at the gravity of the situation, confessing that
‘he did not quite understand what stage had been reached when he heard that the Government was thinking of leaving Paris’. Reynaud, says Paul Baudouin, then

beckoned to General Gamclin, who, like a good lecturer, took his stand by the map, and gave an admirable discourse, clear and calm, on the military situation… His ladylike hand marked here and there on the map the positions of our broken units and of our reserves on the move. He explained, but he made no suggestions. He had no views on the future… While this was going on M. Daladier remained apart, red in the face, drawn. He sat in a corner like a school-boy in disgrace.

Daladier interrupted to admit in an aside to Baudouin: ‘The mistake, the unpardonable mistake, was to send so many men into Belgium.’

Noting that, after Gamelin had spoken for about five minutes, ‘there was a considerable silence’, Churchill continues his recollection of the meeting with an immortal passage:

I then asked: ‘Where is the strategic reserve?’ and, breaking into French, which I used indifferently (in every sense):
‘Où est la masse de manœuvre?’

General Gamclin turned to me and, with a shake of the head and a shrug, said :
‘Aucune.’

There was another long pause. Outside in the garden of the Quai d’Orsay clouds of smoke arose from large bonfires, and I saw from the window venerable officials pushing wheel-barrows of archives on to them.

The air outside was filled with whirling scraps of charred paper – projected pacts, State secrets of the highest order, all intermingled with meaningless inter-departmental memos. Every once in a while another heavy packet of documents, thrown from the upper storeys of the Quai d’Orsay, would strike the ground with a dull thud in front of the Allied statesmen’s eyes.
‘No strategic reserve?’
repeated Churchill.

‘Aucune.’
⁹
I was dumbfounded. What were we to think of the great French Army and its highest chiefs? It had never occurred to me that any commanders having to defend five hundred miles of engaged front would have left themselves unprovided with a mass of manoeuvre… What was the Maginot Line for? It should have economized troops upon a large sector of the frontier, not only offering many sally-ports for local counter-strokes, but also enabling large forces to be held in reserve; and this is the only way these things can be done. But now there was no reserve. I admit this was one of the greatest surprises I have had in my life. Why had I not known more about it…?

Why indeed! The question certainly pointed up an appalling gap in liaison existing between the two Allies. Several times in his bewilderment Churchill returned to the window to gaze distracted at the curling wreaths of smoke rising from the bonfires of French State documents. ‘Still the old gentlemen were bringing up their wheel-barrows, and industriously casting their contents into the flames.’ Then he would return to fire questions at the French leaders: why were the Allied armies retreating from northern Belgium, thereby abandoning Brussels and Louvain? Should they not, on the contrary, be counter-attacking the northern flank of the German breakthrough? Surely, This is the moment to advance and not retreat,’ he reiterated. He hesitated to take the threat of the German tanks so seriously;
¹⁰
as long as they were not backed up by strong infantry units they were just ‘so many little flags stuck in the map’, unable either to support themselves or to refuel.

According to Baudouin, Reynaud, ‘seeing that the English Prime Minister did not appear wholly to grasp the seriousness of the situation’, took over Gamelin’s place at the easel, explaining:

‘The hard point of the German lance has gone through our troops as through a sand-hill.’ He pointed out the importance of the battle in progress in the bulge marked in red on the map. He twice said, ‘I assure you that in this bulge there is at stake not only the fate of France but also that of the British Empire.’

Turning back to Gamelin, Churchill asked point-blank: ‘When and where are you going to counter-attack the flanks of the Bulge?
¹¹
From the north or from the south?’ Gamelin’s reply was: ‘ “Inferiority of numbers, inferiority of equipment, inferiority of method” – and then a hopeless shrug of the shoulders.’ There was no argument. Here was the admission of the bankruptcy of a whole generation of French military thought and preparations.

The French now turned the heat on Churchill to help stop the gap which the Panzers had ripped. He must send still more fighter squadrons. Churchill replied at length, pointing out how disastrously the very outcome of the war might be affected if the defences of the British Isles were denuded. He referred to the grievous losses the R.A.F. had suffered during the daylight bombing of the Sedan bridges, contrasting them with the felicitous results and small losses of the recent night raids on the Ruhr. He revealed that four more fighter squadrons were in fact already on their way to France,
¹²
but ended by declaring firmly (and pointedly): ‘It is the business of the artillery to stop the tanks. The business of fighters to cleanse the skies (
nettoyer le ciel
) over the battle.’ Having lasted two hours, the meeting ended. ‘This was the last I saw of General Gamelin,’ wrote Churchill, dismissing him with the withering epitaph ‘no doubt he has his tale to tell’.