To Lose a Battle (69 page)

Recalled to Duty: Weygand and Pétain

Reynaud had now made a firm decision to get rid of Gamelin. But when he broached the subject at a Cabinet meeting that day, Daladier once again sprang to Gamelin’s defence, and, just as at the stormy session of 9 May, no conclusion was reached. Reynaud, however, had already taken other steps in utmost secrecy. The following telegram had been dispatched to seventy-three-year-old General Maxime Weygand, commanding the French forces in the Levant:

The gravity of the military situation on the Western Front is increasing. Please come to Paris without delay. Make suitable arrangements to transfer your functions to the high authority you may choose. Secrecy of your departure is desirable.

Weygand received it in Syria on the 17th, and immediately packed his bags.

Meanwhile, Reynaud had also sent a special envoy by night train to Madrid to bring back the French Ambassador there, another old soldier of renown – Marshal Philippe Pétain.
¹⁷

Chapter 17

The Dash to the Sea

18–20 May

They never knew. Nobody knew anything. They were evacuating. There was no way to house them. Every road was blocked. And still they were evacuating. Somewhere in the north of France a boot had scattered an ant-hill, and the ants were on the march. Laboriously. Without panic. Without hope. Without despair. On the march as if in duty bound.

ANTOINE DE SAINT-EXUPÉRY
,
Flight to Arras

As for the German armoured column so often mentioned during the last few days… this column seems to have gone astray, inasmuch as it moved straight forward for too long and ultimately found itself too far away from the mass of the German army.

Daily Telegraph
, 18 May

It may be assumed from the reticence of the French communiqués, and from the sibylline ring of French newspaper comment, that General Gamelin has his counter-thrust ready.

The Times
, 18 May

Every day which elapses without a catastrophe must be regarded as a day of victory.

L’Epoque
, 19 May

The high point of the crisis is over… our soldiers are now accustoming themselves to the German methods of attack and know how to counter them.

Paris-Soir
, 20 May

Panzers Advance Again

As soon as day broke on the 18th, the Panzers resumed their advance. Over the ensuing three days ‘the hideous, fatal scythes’, as Churchill so aptly called them, now encountering steadily lessening resistance in their path, moved with a new and terrible impetus. Such was the acceleration of events that entries in the war diaries on both sides are reduced to a minimum.
Bursting out from its bridgeheads on the Oise, Guderian’s 2nd Panzer Division rushed forward to grab the big city of St Quentin ten miles to the west by 0800 hours. On its left, the 1st Panzer, once again in the lead, reached Péionne and the important nearby bridges over the Somme at the end of the morning, after sweeping forward some thirty miles. More columns of retreating French troops were taken by surprise and rounded up, including several staffs who, according to Guderian, ‘had arrived at Péronne to find out what was happening’. Meanwhile the 10th Panzer was drawing level, in order to provide mobile ‘blocking detachment’
(Sperrverbände)
along that sensitive, ever-lengthening southern flank. Northwards from Guderian, Reinhardt’s 6th Panzer pushed out from its bridgeheads to make the welcome discovery that the ‘B’ tanks of Bruché’s 2nd Armoured, which had given it such a hard battle the previous day, had now ‘disappeared’ in a west-south-westerly direction. Reinhardt reported back:

The enemy does not represent a very serious danger… and his local attacks are nothing more than pin-pricks, deprived of any unified command. There is only one mission for the XLI Army Corps: to push on without bothering about either the right or the left.

Towards the middle of the afternoon, however, the 6th Panzer’s ‘Combat Group Ravenstein’ ran into heavy resistance around Le Catelet. Once more the superiority of the French ‘B’ tanks made itself felt. For two and a half hours the fighting raged. Finally the last coherent units of the French 2nd Armoured, under the command of Lieutenant-Colonel Golhen, were submerged by sheer weight of numbers. Ravenstein’s tanks surged into Le Catelet, where they overran the headquarters of the ill-fated Ninth Army. The entire H.Q., including the Army Chief of Staff, was taken prisoner. Only the Commander himself, General Giraud, who happened to be away at his advanced command post,
behind the Panzers
, managed to escape – temporarily. By nightfall Reinhardt’s corps had established itself astride the main road some six
miles south of Cambrai. Summing up the day’s events (after the war), the reluctant Kleist admitted that Ravenstein’s engagement had been ‘the only noteworthy incident’ to confront the Armoured Group.

On the northern flank of the ‘Panzer Corridor’, the 5th Panzer (still lagging behind Rommel) captured the fortress of Maubeuge and encountered fierce resistance in the Forest of Mormal from the 1st North African Division and the 1st D.L.M., which had been sent down from Prioux’s Cavalry Corps for the abortive French counter-stroke of the 17th. Confused fighting continued in the forest during the next day.

Rommel too fought one brisk engagement that day. Shortly after midnight on the 17th he had received orders to push on towards Cambrai, fifteen miles down a ruler-straight road from Le Cateau. Some six hours later, however, the adjutant of Rothenburg’s 25th Panzer Regiment, still stuck out on the tip of the tongue left by Rommel’s ‘Avesnes Raid’, arrived at H.Q. to report that ‘a powerful enemy force’ had established itself midway between Landrecies and Le Cateau. He had managed to get through under cover of darkness in an armoured car, but Rothenburg’s line of communications was now threatened, and he was in urgent need of petrol and ammunition. Rommel promptly set his remaining Panzer battalion in motion towards Le Cateau, ‘with orders to push through to the regiment and get the ammunition and petrol up to it.’ Needless to say, he then followed closely in its wake. He soon caught up with it, and found its tanks in action against French armour barring their way. Says Rommel:

Violent fighting developed on the road and there was no chance of outflanking the enemy position on either side. Our guns seemed to be completely ineffective against the heavy armour of the French tanks.
¹

After watching the action at close range for some time, he disengaged the tank battalion and struck out with it south-westwards. Again they ran into French armour and slowly fought their way through. It was not until midday that
Rommel finally reached Rothenburg, who reported that he had held his ground against heavy enemy tank attacks, but was ‘now incapable of further movement’. For some reason, the petrol and ammunition column had not followed Rommel; thus

I was not at that moment in a position to help him… Meanwhile, French heavy artillery had begun to lay down a heavy barrage on our hedgehog position. Their fire was accurate and part of the position had to be vacated.

Despite the evident precariousness of his situation, Rommel – like Reinhardt – appears to have recognized that the French attacks represented desperate ‘pin-pricks’ rather than any serious, co-ordinated counter-attack. Accordingly, he ordered Rothenburg’s Panzer Regiment to ‘form up’ for the attack on Cambrai even before the arrival of the supply trains was assured. Revictualling of the main body of Rothenburg’s regiment did not take place until some hours later, towards the evening. In the meantime a composite battalion of motorized infantry was already streaking out towards Cambrai, led by only a few tanks and two troops of self-propelled flak guns. It was a calculated risk,
²
typical both of Rommel and of the revolutionary dynamism of the Wehrmacht, which had already carried so much before it. According to Rommel:

the battalion advanced over a broad front and in great depth straight across the fields to the north-west [of Cambrai], throwing up a great cloud of dust as they went. Tanks and A.A. guns scattered fire at intervals into the northern outskirts of Cambrai. The enemy in Cambrai, unable in the dust to see that most of our vehicles were soft-skinned, apparently thought that a large-scale tank attack was approaching the north of the town and offered no resistance.

By nightfall the town was firmly in Rommel’s hands. Following along his route later, a German war correspondent described a twelve-mile swathe of wreckage:

tanks, trucks, guns, command vehicles, horses and also human beings – in fact everything that found itself retreating on this road. Most numerous of all are the vehicles, which were surprised in the middle of the road by the advancing Panzers, and which drove into the ditches and were dispatched. It was a picture of horror that no one could ever forget.

Here and there were French tanks with whole slabs of their turrets ripped away, presumably the result of near-hits from Stuka bombs detonating their ammunition, while on one airfield near Cambrai some forty-two French planes were counted, shot up on the ground by the Luftwaffe. The 7th Panzer’s losses for the 18th amounted to thirty-five killed, including four officers.

Hitler Comes Round

Back at the German High Command, oblivious of events at the front, the argument of the previous day had meanwhile continued on an even higher note. At 0900 hours, there was a meeting at Hitler’s H.Q., attended by Brauchitsch and Halder, at which (according to Halder) there was ‘an extremely unpleasant discussion.’ Hitler was still displaying ‘an incomprehensible anxiety’ about that southern flank : ‘He rages and bellows that we are on the way to wrecking the whole operation and heading for the danger of a defeat.’ Then, around midday, news arrived at O.K.H. that Antwerp, Cambrai
³
and St Quentin had been captured. Apparently without further
reference to Hitler, Halder issued orders for the Panzers to ‘win the line Cambrai-St Quentin’, and push on westwards with reconnaissance forces. At a second meeting with Hitler at 1700 hours, Halder explained the new situation ‘and demanded freedom of movement. This was accorded.’ (By this time, however, it could do little to alter operations at the front.) Thus, says Halder acidly and with a certain smugness; ‘the correct thing finally came to pass; but with ill temper all round and in a form that, seen from the outside, gave the appearance of being a measure concluded by the O.K.W.’ – i.e. by Hitler.

The following day the German radio announced the capture of St Quentin and Le Cateau and claimed that since 10 May 110,000 prisoners had been taken – not including the Dutch Army.

Giraud Captured

On the French side, there was no sign of any consolidated effort on the 18th. There was in fact but little available for one. General Georges’s armoured divisions had virtually ceased to exist : the 1st had been destroyed by Rommel; the 2nd, split in two, had been blotted out piecemeal; the 3rd, reduced to a fraction of its strength, was still operating feebly and fruitlessly in the Stonne area; while de Gaulle’s
ad hoc
4th Armoured Division, licking its wounds from its blooding on the 17th, was preparing for a second action on the 19th. As for the 6th Army, Touchon’s ‘blocking’ force formed behind the Aisne, it stood guarding the unthreatened road to Paris, but as its function was purely defensive it could in no way influence the tide of the Panzers flooding to the coast. The futility of its role is depicted by Hans Habe, an Austrian refugee who had volunteered for the French Army and whose division had been pushed up into the Le Chesne sector, at the root of the ‘Panzer Corridor’, just twenty miles south of Sedan. ‘Our officers, to be sure, spoke of a counter-offensive’. he says, ‘but no one believed them.’ For three weeks they sat passively on their position :

They said we were going to spend some time in the Forest of Noirval… we seriously discussed where we should be sent on furlough after forty days in the front line.

It sounded like the Phoney War all over again.

Of the other hastily constituted ‘cork’, General Frère’s new Seventh Army on Touchon’s left, the 23rd and the 3rd Light Division arrived on the morning of the 18th, but could get only as far as the wrong side of the Crozat Canal between Ham and La Fère before having to dig in to meet the rapidly approaching enemy. North from Ham almost as far as Douai, forty miles distant, stretched a gaping hole in which lay the now worthless fragments of the French Ninth Army. Between this hole and the Channel, nothing – except for two British Territorial divisions. These, the 12th and 23rd, had been in France a month; neither fully equipped nor trained, they had been employed on line-of-communications duties between the B.E.F. and its rear bases. Their strength was equivalent to little more than half that of a normal division, and many of their field-pieces could fire only over open sights because of the lack of proper instruments. Now they too, the only units available, were flung into the hole in the dyke. The 23rd was given the task of holding sixteen miles of the Canal du Nord, from Douai and behind Cambrai where Rommel was pressing forward; the remaining fourteen miles, southwards to Pèronne, was to be occupied by Frère’s troops – who could never arrive in time. The British 12th Division was distributed in small packets guarding the widely separated centres of Abbeville, Amiens, Doullens and Clèry-sur-Somme. It was not much to set in the way of seven highly experienced Panzer divisions. On the evening of the 18th, a light detachment of Guderian’s 1st Panzer made their first contact with British troops, the Royal West Kents, just outside Péronne. Temporarily the Germans withdrew into the town, but the British were ordered to fall back on Albert as night fell. Meanwhile, a train carrying a brigade of the 12th Division was hit that afternoon during the first Luftwaffe air raid on Amiens.