Chapter III: Part XLVIII
Chapter III: The Lion’s Den
Part XLVIII
December 8, 1936
A pure white blanket of snow had fallen over most of southern England on the night of the seventh, and the countryside of Hertfordshire was dazzlingly bright. Oberst Fridolin von Senger und Etterlin swept the powder from the top of a low fieldstone wall, and rested his elbows. Flexing leather-gloved hands for warmth, he raised his Zeiss glasses to his eyes and surveyed the open country beyond. His body heat had fogged the lenses, so he wiped them with a handkerchief and peered out onto the landscape once more.
“Rolf,” he said. “I daresay our opponents are just as aware as we of the strategic significance of that little strip of macadam.”
Major Lippert came up from behind. “MacAdam?” his protégé said, unfamiliar with the English term. “Who --”
“Poured asphalt. The A10 is the femoral artery that runs all the way up to York in the far north. This was the Romans’ Ermine Street. Then, this was the aorta of the whole island. This. This, Rolf.” von Senger trailed off. It was both too cold and too early for history lessons.
“What do you anticipate?”
The Oberst raised his field glasses again. “A fight. Very probably a fight.”
After taking Colchester on the evening of December fifth, von Senger had allowed his men to rest only as long as it took to refuel, rearm, and repair his panzers. As soon as more infantry could be brought across the Colne to secure the city, the tankers were to set out again. But their destination had yet to be fixed.
Just 6 kilometers to the west of Colchester lay Marks Tey, a vital junction between two of the most important highways in the East. If the panzers bore left, they would follow the A12 southwest to Chelmsford, the last important city before London. If they bore right, they would take the A120 -- the old Roman Stane Street -- due west, and into the open country north of the capital.
From Berlin, HKK was urging an immediate thrust toward Chelmsford. The German grip on the Channel was slipping every night, and the high command wanted to put pressure on London immediately. Yet von Senger had serious reservations. Luftwaffe pilots could see civilians streaming out of Chelmsford
en masse. That probably meant that the British intended to make a fight of the city. It was the most logical choice, after all. The field fortifications that had been hastily constructed over the past months were strong at Chelmsford, and there was not an equally defensible position until the dome of St. Paul’s was in sight.
There was good reason to believe the city was well-defended, too. Chelmsford housed a full brigade, and the garrison had swollen with field reserves, auxiliaries, and forces that had retreated in the face of the initial landings. As a result of German air superiority, the strategic reserves in the ring around London seemed to have been largely paralyzed. The railroad system in that part of England was nonfunctional, and the roads, where they were still passable, could only be safely used at night. For this reason it seemed to be in British commanders’ best interest to use their forces more or less in place, rather than shunt them around in search of the invaders.
This appeared to von Senger an excellent opportunity. Since the overall goal was to pressure London, he could drive westward and cut the A10, nearly sixty kilometers distant, without having to commit to a set-piece battle on the enemy’s terms. The fortified stop lines became lighter and shallower as they turned northward, and if von Senger could punch through, he might be able to recreate Hausser’s legendary dash into Paris at the start of the war.
Yet his superiors could not be convinced of this. Chelmsford was a closer objective, lying just over thirty kilometers down the A12, and the men in Berlin -- few of whom had spent time on this ground before the war -- saw it as no more than a little red circle on a map, that could be easily overcome. It wasn’t that von Senger doubted that he could take Chelmsford. But it would be a nasty fight, and even if his men managed by their striving and bleeding and dying to lay the capital bare, tantalizingly close, they would no longer have the force to take it.
So as panzerworts bathed themselves in sweat getting his armor back in fighting condition, von Senger had boarded a Fieseler Stoch observation plane and taken off from a field outside Colchester. After crossing a strangely dark and quiescent Channel, he had landed outside Calais to plead his case to von Rundstedt personally. The Senior General had congratulated von Senger on his efforts at Colchester, and listened carefully to what he had to say. He raised concerns that a thrust as deep as the one von Senger was proposing might risk counterattack and encirclement. But the Oberst had expressed confidence that the British units in Essex were no longer mobile enough to react in time. von Rundstedt seemed largely satisfied. They had telephoned HKK together, and settled on a new course of action: elements of Generalmajor Raschick’s 12. Infanterie would feint down the A12 toward Chelmsford, and von Senger would be free to drive westward. The former Rhodes Scholar had landed back at Colchester, without delay, and set his panzers going again in the still-dark morning.
They had found Marks Tey lightly defended, and soon, the long German column was barreling westward along the A120. Intelligence had warned of partisan activity along that road, but von Senger had placed greater faith in his men’s firepower than in their ability to cross broken country in the dark. That was a good way to get his panzers scattered like sheep, he knew, and the ground was soft and soggy.
Where the highway ran through the town of Braintree, they found a battalion of Royal Norfolks dug in with field artillery. Several Panzer Is and IIs were destroyed, and the armor had pulled up to let the infantry assault the town. The battle had dragged on all day and into the night. Finally, surrounded and battered by the full weight of 6. Panzer-Regiment, the remaining defenders had surrendered just before midnight. The delay was costly, but could not be helped.
The panzers weren’t able to continue to their westward push until after first light on the seventh, but they made up lost time. The A120 was clear, and the villages they rumbled through offered no resistance. By nightfall, they had rolled into Bishop’s Stortford -- within smelling distance of the A10 -- only to find the River Stort swollen in its brick-lined channel, and all the bridges blown. As the engineers worked through the night to enable a crossing, the first flurries of snow began to fall.
“Yes, Rolf. This will surely be a fight.” Now, they had crossed the Stort, and overlooked the objective from a captured farm. To the left rose the frosted eaves and chimneys of Braughing village, almost a gingerbread idyll. Yet about a hundred enemy soldiers waited within, and perhaps twice that number in the village of Standon a couple kilometers to the south -- at this very minute watching through binoculars as the distant panzers coughed brown exhaust into the morning air.
German Panzer I, Hertfordshire. December 7, 1936
“Rolf, look ahead.” He pointed. A pair of dark shapes overlooked the A10 from a wooded knoll on the far side of the roadway. “First, those are most surely not piles of cordwood. They are machine gun nests.”
“Ah.”
“And secondly, do you see the way those trees are missing half their snow? Broken branches low to the ground?”
“Yes.”
“That is where they took their armor off the road, or I am no panzerman. It is almost certain to be gathered on the other side of the woods. If I were them, in nothing less than company strength. More, obviously, if they have it available.”
“Naturally.”
“And according to the map the rail line crosses under the highway right here. They’ll surely have infantry waiting down the embankment. And -- aha! -- right in front. I scarcely even saw it. A stand of old trees has been felled right between the roadway and us, to give them a better field of fire.”
“So what do you propose?”
“We cannot flank them readily, because of the men in those two villages to the south. And there’s another village to the north that seems to be defended as well. If we attack the villages on their own, the armor can come up in support, where our guns shan’t be of any use.” He lowered the binoculars and stood straight. “So we must draw the armor out from its den, and knock it out with our own guns. The engineers are cutting a way for our prime movers to get the 10.5s into proper position, and they shall be unlimbered by 1000 or 1100. As you know, I don’t trust even our Panzer IIs against their tanks head-on, so we shall hold our own maneuver force in reserve, and when their armor is subdued, I want to bring ours down to secure the roadway in both directions. By nightfall, I wish to have driven on to Hitchin, where we shall sever the A1, and a major rail line leading north out of London. We can set up defensive lines there until tomorrow.”
And so, as Major Rolf Lippert returned to his battalion, von Senger gathered his staffers and returned to the nearby farmhouse for breakfast. Hobb, the farmer, was hostile, but the German Oberst knew he could expect little else. von Senger ordered him unbound, and the poor man sat in sullen silence as foreign officers heaped foreign jam and foreign sausage on his table and gobbled it off his humble china.
At 1050, a junior officer entered and saluted. “Herr Oberst, Hauptmann Schrell reports the 10.5 cm artillery in place and ready to commence bombardment.”
von Senger stood. “Thank you, Leutnant. Gentlemen?.” In English: “Mister Hobb, by your leave.”
Back at the fieldstone wall where he’d stood earlier, von Senger telephoned his orders. Hearty booms sounded from behind him, echoing thunderously around the silent, rolling countryside. Trees cracked in the woods beyond the highway. Flashes of fire. Puffs of black smoke.
In time, though, von Senger no longer even flinched at the sound. It was high morning, and the guns were getting too hot, but still no sign of the enemy tanks. He could see the skeptical looks on his staffers’ faces. But the tanks were there. The enemy commander was simply cleverer or more disciplined than he had bargained for.
“Send the Schützen into Standon,” he ordered. Through the early afternoon, the German infantry assaulted the village, until the companies defending it pulled back across the A10 highway just after 1330. The British armor had not counterattacked.
von Senger was not a man given to cursing, but his officers were doing it for him.
He sent men on horseback over the highway in search of the enemy. They did not return.
Soon, the short daylight would be spent. von Senger radioed Generalleutnant von Weichs radioed at III Armeekorps headquarters in Harwich, requesting reconnaissance by air, but none was available.
It was an abominable way of thinking, but his infantry were more expendable than the panzers right now. He ordered the Schützen to press their assault across the A10 in force, and then sweep up north in search of the British armor.
It had warmed above freezing, and trickles of water were beginning to run over the fieldstones. At last, the crackle of small arms drifted out over the woods. A small flock of birds fluttered into the pale blue sky. For ten minutes, the fighting carried on out of sight.
“Oberst, look!”
von Senger trained his binoculars where the adjutant was pointing. The unmistakable silhouette of a British Mark II tank was rounding the edge of the woods, and coming down onto the A10. Then another. And more behind.
An officer was shouting ranging into a telephone. The 10.5 cm artillery boomed, followed by the lighter cracks of the 3.7 cm PaKs. Dark spouts of earth tore up from the snow-covered ground.
The underside of the first enemy tank appeared as it climbed off the roadway and toward the German positions. As it leveled, the QF 2-pounder in its turret spat fire and a ring of smoke that curled into the air. The round whined over Hobb’s farmhouse and exploded somewhere in the rear. Even at 1,000 meters, von Senger could make out the kettle-shaped helmets poking up over the embankment and joining the tanks. The Schützen dug in ahead of him opened up with their MG34s.
The tanks were all shooting now, and some of the ordnance was landing close to von Senger and his wall, sending fine sheets of snow down around them. “Herr Oberst, please, you should retire behind better better cover.”
“No, Oberleutnant. Here is fine, thank you.”
The battle was progressing agreeably. One of the tanks had been hit broadside, and black smoke boiled from within. A platoon of Schützen was advancing behind the felled trees, trying to engage the British infantry from the flank.
But three of the Vickerses kept chugging over the snowy ground straight towards the farmhouse. The heavy guns couldn’t hit them, and the PaK rounds were hitting too obliquely. The tanks’ machine guns flickered, kicking up snow around the German MG34 teams. von Senger saw several of his men fall.
Stone splinters burst to his right as a 2-pounder gouged into the top of the fieldstone wall. von Senger felt his feet leave the ground as staffers grabbed him under the arms and manhandled him into his command car.
As they drove away from the fighting, he raised Major Lippert on the radio, and ordered his panzers into the fray.
Fifteen minutes, the driver kept him parked outside a little ivy-fringed inn a few hundred meters back from the farmhouse. At last, word came over the radio that the tanks had been stopped. Lippert met him at the inn, and got into his car to tour the results.
Along the wide snow-covered fields between the farmhouse and the A10, von Senger counted five stricken tanks. One of them was one of his Panzer IIs. There were casualties on the ground here and there, but the enemy’s numbers had not been as great as it had first appeared. When they reached the highway itself, he saw two more disabled Mark IIs. von Senger got out of the car, and Lippert followed him, staff in tow.
“They’re safe now, Herr Oberst. All the ammunition has cooked off already.”
von Senger crossed the tracks and walked onto the roadway. The nearest Mark II was a mangled hulk, its turret torn wide open and billowing gasoline-fed flames. Droplets of burning fuel and molten rubber spattered out of the cracks where the hull plates had separated. Even the asphalt had melted in several places, pooling into irregular shapes around the tracks. The heat was painful, even from a distance.
A twisted piece of metal was lying on the ground in front of him, smoking faintly. von Senger bent down and nudged it with his riding crop. “Excellent shooting, Major Lippert. Your people surely did the trick on these poor fellows.”
“Thank you. We got three more of their tanks on the other side of the forest, in return for three of our own -- but two of ours are reparable. The Schützen lost over thirty men at last count, but they fought bravely.”
von Senger said a silent prayer, then called von Weichs at Harwich to relay the news: “Herr General, 6. Panzer has successfully cut the A10 at Standon village. We intend to secure our grip on the road, and to take due measures to render it impassible to the enemy. We shall proceed in force westward with the A1 as our next objective.”
“Outstanding, Oberst. Your men have my congratulations.” Something about his tone, even over the frail band of the radiotelephone, told von Senger it was the best news he’d had all day.