The Collapse

Bundesarchiv

"The Boche are behind us." Sgt. Brasseur said this as he sat heavily on a crate which Guillaume had found in a nearby farmhouse. Brasseur looked stunned, as if his entire world had just ended.

Guillaume said nothing at first, he was trying to picture the unit's position in relation to the rest of the 9th Army. He knew they were facing to the east, towards the Ardennes. They were expecting the Germans to hit their lines at any moment. The idea, the very concept, that they had broken through the lines to their south was hard to grasp.

Finally, Guillaume asked, "Surely they are not through in enough force to be a concern?"

Brasseur looked up, sighed, then said, "Two panzer divisions is a pretty large force."

Guillaume looked over the lip of the trench and said one word, "Merde¹."

"Fall back, Corp? We just got here!" Private Len Blaisdell protested as he gathered his kit.

Billy Wallace's first inclination was to yell at Blaisdell, but the lad had a point. "Well laddie, the Belgies have come apart and now the Froggies have collapsed to our south. The whole bloody 9th Army has surrendered. If we stay, odds are pretty certain we'll be buried here, or spend the rest of the war in a bloody Hun prison camp."

Sgt. Greaves poked his head into the room where the squad was bivouacked, "We ready Billy?"

Billy looked around, "We're ready Sar'nt. Where to?"

"Back towards the coast, where I don't know yet. Lorries are waiting, let's move it."

Unteroffizier Willi Hoffmeister now commanded his own tank, a Czech vehicle which was known in German parlance as the Pzkw 38(t). Bigger gun than the vehicle he drove in Poland, bigger crew. That plus the promotion made Willi a happy Panzertruppe.²

However, the slog through the hilly Ardennes had been less than idyllic. Stop and go traffic for miles, fortunately the Luftwaffe controlled the skies. He had seen what had to be French reconnaissance aircraft twice, why they hadn't been followed up with bombers was beyond him. (Little did he know that the French had sent bombers in, they had been decimated by the German fighter forces.)

There had been a pause for nearly a day, it seemed that the general staff officers in Berlin were getting cold feet, as was their own Panzergruppe³ commander, Ewald von Kleist. But Schnell Heinz⁴ had deliberately disobeyed orders for a reconnaissance in force by sending three panzer divisions in to completely rout the French armies.

Willi and his crew - Gefreiter Fritz Weber (driver), Panzerschütze Horst Krebs (loader), Panzerschütze Ulrich Neuhäuser (bow gunner/radioman) were on the flank of the 7th Panzer which, so Fritz claimed, was commanded by a madman.

"He's a f**king Swabian of all things, name's Rommel, commanded Hitler's escort in Poland. Some say he's a Nazi, some say he's just crazy good as a soldier." Fritz laughed over the intercom as he related what he had heard. "Had a buddy in that outfit, the Führerbegleitbrigade,⁵ he really liked the guy, said he took good care of his men. Great War hero too, won lots of medals killing Italians in the Alps."

"Um Gottes willen⁶! What the Hell is that thing?" Krebs yelled out from his gunner's position. 

When Willi looked to see what he was yelling about, he saw what had to be the biggest tank he had ever seen. "It's a French Char B, potent, but clumsy." Already the radio was filled with commands from the platoon leader, Willi's platoon began to spread out into the fields either side of the road.

The Char was trying to keep pace. But it was slow, still, Willi nearly shit himself when the Char's cannon lined up on his tank. Seeing the muzzle flash, Willi only had time for a quick prayer. But the Frenchman's shot was high.

The enemy tank was maneuvering to try and bring its hull cannon to bear but the German 38s were much quicker and quickly spread to either side of the Frenchman.

Willi could well imagine what the poor French tank commander was going through. He had to command the tank and load and fire the turret gun, 4.7 cm compared to the bigger gun (7.5 cm) mounted in the hull.

Willi had his 3.7 cm cannon laid on the target and fired. The shot ricocheted harmlessly off the Char's thick frontal armor. But another tank in the platoon, he thought it was probably Manfred Hertz, a real wizard with a tank, put a round into the Char's engine compartment, followed by shots from the rest of platoon, including Willi's tank, which put the Frenchman out of commission.

Three of the four man crew bailed out only to be taken under fire by the infantry accompanying the German tanks. All died atop their vehicle, the commander was already dead, he had been killed by a shot which penetrated the rear of the Char's turret.

"Heilige Scheiße⁷!" was all Willi had to say. He noticed that his hands were shaking badly.

"Mein Gott Uffz! That could have been the end of us. That thing was huge!" Ulrich's voice was unsteady. In reality the entire crew had been badly frightened by the big French tank. Only their training and their platoon commander's quick action had kept them all alive.

Guillaume was part of a long column of prisoners being marched back to Germany. Whereas his father and uncles had fought the Boche to a standstill over four long years of war, Guillaume's participation in this war lasted about 254 days. On only three of those days was there actual fighting between Guillaume's unit and the Germans. He himself had scarcely fired a shot.

Surrounded and overwhelmed, his leaders had surrendered them to the tender mercies of the hated Boche. From what Guillaume had seen and experienced, he had no idea how France could stand against the armored onslaught he had been told about. He knew that his army had more tanks than the Germans, but he hadn't seen a single one during his brief participation in combat.

Now he wondered what it would be like to be a prisoner of the Germans. How long would this war last before he could go home again?

He wished he knew as the POW column was again herded off the road to make way for German vehicles moving to the front. Guillaume noticed that most of them were horse drawn, not trucks, not tanks, but wagons. How did we lose to these people, he wondered?

"Du Franzose! Hör auf zu träumen und marschiere!⁸" The German who barked at Guillaume also shoved him with the butt of his rifle.

While Guillaume didn't understand the words, he understood what was required. He put one foot in front of the other and left tomorrow to itself. In order to survive the war, he had to first survive this march.

¹ Shit.

² Tank trooper

³ An army-sized unit consisting of armored and motorized units. Later in the war these became armies.

⁴ A nickname for Panzer General Heinz Guderian, "Fast Heinz"

⁵ The Führer Escort Brigade

⁶ For God's sake!

⁷Holy shit!

⁸ Hey Frenchy! Quit daydreaming and march!