Chapter I: Part XVII
Chapter I: The Hammerblow
Part XVII
January 25, 1936
2700 meters over the German-Belgian frontier, the attack force for Operation Rentier lumbered through the air toward the glider-release point. Ten Ju-52s each towed a prototype DFS P230 glider packed with an assault squad and its explosives.
Known as Sturmabteilung Bräuer after the officer in command of the mission, the attack force was comprised of eighty-one elite paratroop candidates hand-picked by Kurt Student. They had trained diligently and tirelessly since the day Sturmabteilung Bräuer had been formed. The men had been awake since at least 0130 hours, but each had been issued stimulants to increase combat readiness. Additionally, the gliders carried 6 portable machine guns, 4 flamethrowers, 5 signal pistols, 7 ladders, 13 Nazi flags, 3 radio sets, 71 tools of various kinds, 600 hand grenades (mostly fragmentation, some smoke, and a smaller number of specialized types), 2300 kg of blasting explosives and more than thirty thousand rounds of ammunition.
In the Trupp 1 glider, Major Bruno Bräuer checked his watch and altimeter. 0410 hours and 2700 meters. The pilot of the towing Ju-52 signaled to the glider’s pilot to release. There was a jolt, and the glider bucked and slowed, now powered only by gravity as it began its eleven minute descent to Eben-Emael.
From the glider window, Bräuer counted each of the other nine gliders as they separated from the Ju-52s. The ground below sparkled with signal fires and colored searchlights to guide the pilots to the Belgian border. To the west, Belgium loomed below as black as the sea.
As the drone of the tow-planes’ engines faded, the interior of the glider became eerily silent. The only sound was the faint whistle of air against the glider’s frame. They began to descend.
A decorated veteran of the Great War, Bräuer was already nearly forty-three, but remained in peak physical condition. He ran five miles a day, and maintained this regimen in addition to the demanding training for Operation Rentier. He was rather short, but had nonetheless beaten all comers at the hand-to-hand combat practice that the men of Sturmabteilung Bräuer had engaged in. Bräuer looked around. Most of the men of Trupp 1 sat almost motionless in the frigid glider -- awake but silent, preparing themselves for the combat to come.
Bräuer slipped up to the cockpit. “How is she coming?”
The pilot nodded. “We’re down to five hundred meters, Major. Ready the men.”
Bräuer signaled to Oberjäger Keppe, leader of Trupp 1, to begin preparations for landing. Soon, the glinting snake of the Albert Canal could be seen in the dim sliver of moonlight. Fort Eben-Emael was just beyond it.
Considered the strongest fortification in Europe if not the world, Fort Eben-Emael commanded the strategically vital canal and the surrounding bridges. The fortress mounted an almost invulnerable battery of artillery capable of reaching the German border and inflicting devastating losses on VIII Armeekorps if not silenced. According to intelligence, Eben-Emael had ten principal gun emplacements dotting the top of a heavily fortified hill -- one to each squad.
The Führer had personally revealed to Student and Bräuer the means by which the assault pioneers would disable these emplacements. Highly advanced charges known as Hohlladungwaffe had been developed in utmost secrecy, and would be able to penetrate even the reinforced concrete fortifications of Eben-Emael. The technology was in its very infancy, however, and several charges would be required to punch all the way through the artillery cupolas.
Beneath the gun emplacements was a vast underground complex housing the fortress’ 1,200 defenders. This subterranean level was believed to be so strongly fortified that Sturmabteilung Bräuer would be forced to merely blind it to the outside world and seal in the defenders until relief could arrive. How quickly that would occur would depend entirely on whether Eben-Emael’s artillery could be knocked out before it destroyed the vital bridges that the fortress was built to protect.
Plan of Fort Eben Emael, as rendered to the Abwehr by Spanish sources.
Bräuer checked the altimeter again. Two hundred meters. Bräuer patted himself down to double-check that his gear and ammunition were in order. One hundred fifty meters. He tightened his helmet-strap. The dark outlines of individual trees were now visible. One hundred meters. The pilot called out from the cockpit. “Prepare for landing!” Fifty meters. The pilot called out again. “Brace positions!” The men of Trupp 1 braced for landing.
During practice at Emplacement Ajax, the men had grown accustomed to hard landings, but now the glider seemed only to glance across the ground. Almost immediately, Bräuer realized why. Rain all through the previous day had rendered the landing area nothing but mud. The pilot fishtailed the glider to lose speed. At last, it came to a stop in deep mud, far overshooting Trupp 1’s objective. Bräuer leapt out of the glider and surveyed the top of the fortress. The Belgians seemed to have indeed been taken by surprise. There were no sweeping search lights; there was no crackle of machine gun fire from the turrets.
Bräuer unslung his MP34 submachine gun and trained it on the nearest machine gun emplacement as Trupp 1 struggled to unload their charges and equipment. Three of the gliders were now on the ground. Truppen 3 and 4 scrambled out of their aircraft and assembled a hundred meters away. A fourth glider made a rough landing, digging into the muddy earth and beaching itself sideways. Bräuer ran towards the damaged glider, but stopped short as he saw the silhouette of a fifth glider landing just forty meters away from the fourth. Unable to stop, this glider plowed into the other with a sickening crunch.
The dying had begun. Bräuer ordered Oberjäger Keppe to direct efforts to assist the casualties, and himself rounded up Trupp 1 and led them to their objective: an artillery emplacement designated ‘Maastricht 2’ after the city which it was oriented to fire upon. As the men began setting the first charge, an alarm bell sounded from the hillside below. Bräuer scanned the top of the fortress. He counted seven gliders landed, including the two that had collided.
The men cleared the top of Maastricht 2. The charge obliterated itself in a brilliant gout of flame and a muffled crack. Upon inspection, the blast had only cut several inches into the thick concrete of the casemate. Bräuer instructed Trupp 1 to continue using their charges until the position had been knocked out, and raced to the gully where Trupp 7 was assembling.
“Steier! There’s an alarm being raised down below the fortress. Get your men and follow me down there. We’ve got to silence it.”
Oberjäger Steier nodded and signaled to his men. “On you, Major.”
The alarm droned on and on, joined now by the a wailing siren. Led by Bräuer, Trupp 7 hurriedly made its way down the steep slope, and found two large wooden buildings with their lights on. The nine men covered the remaining distance in a single dash and lined up in a ditch under one wall of the nearer of the two buildings. A powerful speaker crackled to life. An officer’s voice was issuing sharp commands in French. Bräuer turned to the men and shouted over the din. “Peiper, what is he saying?”
The lanky Bavarian was known to be fluent in French. “
Attaque massif -- I think that means 'attack on the mountain or rock outcropping', Major.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I don’t know, Major! Probably --”
A loud crack rang out over the wail of the sirens. Bräuer snapped his head towards the source of the shot. A surprised-looking Belgian infantry private stood in the light, holding a rifle. The major aimed his MP34 and fired a single shot. The soldier crumpled. Bräuer felt a tap on his shoulder. It was Peiper. “Major, you’re bleeding!” He pointed to Bräuer’s leg.
Sure enough, a dark circle of blood stained his right thigh.
By God, the dirty dog shot me.
Several more shaped charges went off in the distance. Bräuer felt the wound with his finger. It was only bleeding lightly, and did not hurt at all yet. He stuffed a handkerchief into the hole in his pants, but could otherwise do nothing about it. He signaled to the other men in the ditch, and with a roar they scrambled over the embankment and stormed the building. They moved quickly through what appeared to be an administration building of some kind, shooting two more Belgians before they even had a chance to surrender. Six more were taken prisoner, and Trupp 7 marched them out of the building before setting fire to it with incendiary grenades.
Sporadic fire popped from the second building, which was also stormed in short order. The voice sounding the
attaque massif was abruptly silenced as Steier and two others burst into the room. There, the sirens were also quickly disabled, though another one still sounded in the distance. Bräuer summoned Peiper, and soon the young corporal was reassuring the garrison via loudspeaker that there had merely been a munitions accident, and they were to remain sealed in the underground redoubt until further notice.
Having left Oberjäger Steier and four men at the administration building with the prisoners, Bräuer led the remainder of Trupp 7 up the slope to its initial objective: the artillery casemate designated Visé 2.
All ten gliders had now landed, with no further incident aside from a hard landing that broke a glider’s wing without injuring anyone aboard. On the whole, Operation Rentier had proceeded remarkably smoothly. Dawn was approaching.
Trupp 3 had successfully knocked out Maastricht 1, and under Oberjäger Unger, set up a command post in the shattered casemate. There, medical attention was given to the casualties from the collision of what Bräuer learned was the glider of Trupp 8 into that of Trupp 5. Nine men had been killed, and six wounded.
At the command post, Bräuer conferred with several of his squad leaders. Maastricht 2, Visé 1 and Couple Sud had also been disabled. Sporadic fire was coming from one of the heavy southern blockhouses, but it so far had caused no casualties. The sound of the Hohlladungwaffen being detonated against the remaining casemates grew to a steady drumbeat. Bräuer ordered Truppen 1, 3 and 10 -- which had already accomplished their primary objectives -- to attempt the destruction of the Mi-Sud and massive Coupole 120 emplacements, which had been initially assigned to the men of the decimated Truppen 8 and 5.
Visé 1 and its field of fire.
Dawn had just broken when the three squads reported their objectives accomplished, with liberal use of two of the flamethrowers to disable Coupole 120. More troubling was the stiffening resistance at the north and east ends of the fortress. Machine gun fire was now raking the top of Eben-Emael from several emplacements along the line of the Albert Canal. Fortunately, no heavy artillery had yet been fired, but Couple Nord 1, Coupole Nord 2 and Mi-Nord all remained operational.
Bräuer’s leg wound had begun to throb. He managed to gather Truppen 1, 2 and 4 and the three squads set off along the edge of the fortress to assault the blockhouse that had been firing since before dawn. They had not crossed a hundred meters when they were met by heavy fire from an anti-aircraft emplacement near the blockhouse. Under cover of smoke, they advanced to a berm some forty meters from the guns. Several hand grenades suppressed the crew long enough for Trupp 1 to flank the position and assault it directly.
Two men had been hit, including Oberjäger Keppe who had taken a 7.65 mm round to the neck and died in the arms of the corporal who tried to help him back to the command post at Maastricht 1. The remaining men used ten 25kg charges against the vulnerable top of the blockhouse. Though the explosives did not fully penetrate the concrete, the blockhouse stopped firing.
Throughout the morning, the three squads assaulted and disabled Coupole Nord 1 and Coupole Nord 2 -- the latter of which turned out to have been a dummy emplacement, and nothing more than an empty cupola over a concrete pad. By 0830, only Mi-Nord remained firing. Casualties between Bräuer’s
ad hoc assault group and a similar one that had subdued a southwestern blockhouse with phosphorus grenades, now totaled six more killed and five wounded.
After conferring with the major, Oberleutnant Erich Braudel, Bräuer’s second-in-command and leader of Trupp 6, led his own squad along with Truppen 9, 10 and 2 in an attempt to flank and destroy Mi-Nord. Two of the three radios had been damaged in the glider collision, and the third had been mysteriously malfunctioning. From the command post, Bräuer at last managed to radio headquarters at 0902: “Artillery subdued. Sixteen dead. Twelve wounded. Request additional explosives.”
Bräuer dispatched teams to drape flags over the neutralized emplacements for aerial reconnaissance to observe. Machine gun fire crackled from the direction of Mi-Nord. Bräuer tried to distinguish what was taking place through his field glasses, but Braudel’s assault group was out of his line of sight.
A corporal arrived at the command post, herding a dozen Belgian prisoners. Oberjäger Steier had been forced to withdraw to the top of the fortress when power to the administration building had been cut.
Bräuer led this new batch of prisoners to the casemate in which Steier’s prisoners were being kept. The sum total was now eighteen Belgians captured. Most of them were quite young, though a few were markedly older men. Half of them were in their uniforms, the rest in nightclothes or various degrees of undress. One of them made eye contact with Bräuer and asked him in perfect German: “Why are your men attacking neutral Belgium?”
The major flinched. He had been told the wild stories, but knew them to be fabrications. “Soldier, we both cannot question such things. Such is war.” He thumped a palm on the young private’s back.
One of the glider pilots careened into the casemate out of breath. “In-in-in. Fantry.”
“What?” Major Bräuer clasped the man by the shoulders.
“Belgian infantry are. On. The fortress.”
Bräuer climbed out of the improvised prison, and took stock of the situation. No enemy soldiers were visible, but smoke drifted over the southern slopes of the fortress. According to one of the radiomen, Trupp 4 had set up a light machine gun and was engaging Belgian forces. Rallying Truppen 3 and 7 -- the only intact squads remaining -- Bräuer led sixteen men and two machine guns down the slope.
Several dozen Belgians were at last reaching Eben-Emael from their billets at Wonck. The combined firepower of three squads with automatic weapons made short work of them, but they advanced piecemeal, with little apparent coordination. This was a good thing, Bräuer reasoned, because it meant that the Belgians could not effectively assault the German positions, but also a bad thing, because it meant that much of the ammunition was wasted on lone soldiers dodging and weaving up the hillside.
By 1215, firing from Mi-Nord had ceased. Bräuer hurried in that direction to inquire why Braudel’s men had not returned. He arrived to find the concrete pocked in numerous places by the charges, but breached nowhere. The faint sounds of gunfire emanated from the casemate. Bräuer cautiously peered into one of the machinegun slits and found a German soldier sitting inside applying pressure to his shattered knee. “Witzig! What’s happened in here?”
The soldier looked up into the brightness of the slit and blinked. “We managed to kill the entire crew at this position. They weren’t able to seal access to the lower levels like they did at the other positions, so Oberleutnant Braudel has taken his men down into the fortress.”
Such luck was truly encouraging. Bräuer managed, with help from the injured Witzig, to reopen the steel door to Mi-Nord, and descend the steep stairs into a surprisingly still-lit tunnel. At the end of it, he found Braudel’s men trying vainly to pry open an armored door that blocked further progress. They were out of explosives.
Vowing to return with the needed charges, Bräuer found when he reached the command post that nearly all of Sturmabteilung Bräuer’s explosives had been expended. At 1440, two Ju-52s were sighted coming in to resupply the men by parachute.
Anti-aircraft fire lanced up towards them from the opposite side of the Albert Canal. Through his field glasses, Bräuer watched as one of the lumbering transports lost an engine and plunged to the ground in a massive explosion. The second plane made it through, though trailing smoke, and dropped several crates of ammunition, food, morphine and explosives.
Even as he sent men to bring Braudel the needed explosives, Bräuer could see that the situation in the south was worsening. Several companies were now pressing the attack against the three dug-in German squads, and ammunition was running dangerously low.
Racing to the makeshift prison in Maastricht 2 -- which now contained twenty four dazed Belgians -- Bräuer ordered the prisoners to be marched in front of the German positions in the south. Three soldiers forced the captured Belgians out of the casemate and down the slope at gunpoint.
Bräuer returned to the command post to request urgent resupply and reinforcement. Unteroffizier Ritter was already on the radio. “Repeat. Twenty-four prisoners taken. Seventeen privates, three corporals, one sergeant, two captains and one major.”
Bräuer snatched the transmitter from his hand, grabbing him by the scruff of the neck. “Ritter! How did you discover that one of those men is a major?”
The radioman quailed. “I -- Oberjäger Ganze questioned the men, Major.”
“This fortress is commanded by a Major Decoux. Was that this major’s name, soldier?”
“I don’t know. I think so.” Ritter was starting to cry.
“It’s alright. Pull yourself together and request immediate resupply. Understood?”
Without waiting for an answer, Bräuer sprinted towards the motley group of captives that was being herded in front of the Belgian gunfire.
“Which one of you is Major Decoux?” The line of prisoners came to a halt, but none of them turned. Bräuer shouted the question again. A stern, middle-aged man in pajamas pointed at Bräuer and then at his own ear and shook his head. “Are you deaf?” Peiper spontaneously translated Bräuer’s questions from a nearby foxhole. The man began sputtering something in French. Bräuer grabbed the man and threw him roughly into the foxhole, pointing the MP34 at his forehead.
When Bräuer awoke, he was lying face-down in reddish mud.
What happened?
The man in pajamas was gone. Bräuer propped himself up on his arms. His clothing was shredded. Peiper’s head lay more than a meter from his ruined body. The foxhole had been enlarged by a sizeable crater.
Artillery.
Bräuer only noticed that he had lost his hearing when it began to return. He stood up in the foxhole. A line of Belgians was sweeping up the slope, firing. Geysers of muddy earth fountained from the top of the fortress as more shells landed.
The German squads were already falling back towards the command post. Bräuer threw two hand grenades in the direction of the Belgians and ran upslope to rally his men. The command post and surrounding area was overflowing with wounded.
Quickly evaluating his defensive options, Bräuer ordered all able-bodied soldiers to fall back to Mi-Nord. The wounded were to destroy the remaining Hohlladungwaffen and any sensitive equipment and surrender the position when the Belgians arrived.
Bräuer wished the men luck, and -- together with the twenty-one men from Truppen 1, 3, 4 and 7 that were unhurt -- made the long run to Mi-Nord.
Only nineteen of them survived crossing of the artillery-raked top of Eben-Emael. Bräuer ordered the survivors to clear the machine gun slits and set up their own light machine guns from the inside to defend the position. Racing down the long tunnel, he found that Braudel’s men had made little progress. They had blasted through one layer of armored doors, only to be faced with another set of them.
The lieutenant pulled his major aside. “Blasting through the second door will take the very last of our charges. I did not want to give the order until you had approved.”
“Thank you, Oberleutnant. Yes, give the order.”
The men cleared the tunnel. There was a thunderous clank that echoed for many seconds. Acrid smoke filled the chamber. When they descended again, they found the doors blasted open. Several Belgians lay dead or dying on the other side. After Braudel had ordered his men through the breach, Bräuer returned to the Mi-Nord casemate.
The machine guns had driven off very halfhearted efforts to assault the position. The Belgians seemed content to pound their own fortress with heavy artillery. A wounded man was moaning on the floor. With a start, Bräuer realized that it was Major Decoux.
“How the --” Bräuer swore. He cast about the grimy, sweaty faces of his men. “How did he get here?”
Oberjäger Steier held up a bandaged hand to get the major’s attention. “van Wingerden and Pölke weren’t badly hurt and broke out of the command post with the radio. They overtook that guy on the ground between Maastricht 1 and here, and shot him. He’s hurting, but it’s not too serious, Major.”
To have captured the garrison commander within minutes of landing and not been able to exploit that fact for many hours made Bräuer’s face run hot. He pulled Decoux off the ground and laid him on one of the cots in the casemate. “How many men are in the area of Eben-Emael?”
“No speak German, sorry.”
“French?”
The mustachioed Belgian frowned.
“Hell, Flemish?”
Decoux grinned at Bräuer despite the pain and drew his thumb and forefinger across closed lips.
Bräuer had simply had enough. He turned to Steier. “Give him a lethal dose of morphine.”
“No!”
“So you can speak German, then?”
Decoux nodded. Bräuer drew his Luger P08 sidearm and shattered the garrison commander’s nose with the barrel. “How many of your men are in the area?”
“One thousand five hundred.” His German was actually rather good.
“How can I speak to the garrison via the public address system?”
“The fortress command post has a system.” Blood streamed from his nose.
“Where is that?”
“Near the center of the fortress. All that is sealed now, and it is useless trying.”
Ten minutes later, Decoux had been carried down the tunnel on a litter and watched as Braudel’s men tried to breach another series of armored doors with hand grenades. It was beyond useless, though, and the explosions were fouling the air with noxious fumes. Decoux alternatingly taunted his adversaries and winced from a worsening kidney wound.
Bräuer was quickly running out of options. Just after nightfall, Belgian infantry at last attacked Mi-Nord in force. After a fierce and protracted firefight, they eventually forced the defenders to retreat deeper into the fortress. By 1940 hours, Sturmabteilung Bräuer was completely cut off from the surface.
Only thirty-seven men in fighting condition now controlled a section of tunnel stretching between Mi-Nord and the entrance to the ruined Visé 1 gun emplacement. Medical supplies were exhausted, ammunition precariously low, and grenades in short supply. The men had now been fighting continuously for almost fourteen hours without rest or food. Even the rations dropped by parachute had been captured when the command post at Maastricht 1 was overrun. Bräuer instructed Steier to contact the Belgians under a white flag of truce and surrender the German wounded so that they could be properly cared for.
The Belgians accepted the wounded, and the passage was resealed at 2250. Dull thuds could be heard outside the passages, filling the men with apprehension. Almost inexplicably, the lights in the tunnel stayed on.
Bräuer’s eyes traced the line of bulbs along the tunnel ceiling. The cable crossed one wall of the tunnel and terminated in a large power box. Opening the glass casing, Bräuer began to laugh hysterically. The switch that controlled the armored doors was on their own side of the tunnel, and had been closed to seal access from outside Visé 1.
The surviving assault pioneers laughed and wept when they heard the news, only to be quieted by more thuds from the outside. Braudel ordered his men into position as Bräuer threw the switch. The doors swung open with a tortured groan, and what remained of Sturmabteilung Bräuer charged through the portal.
Based on gunpoint directions from Decoux, the depleted squads stormed down the passageways, shooting the few defenders they encountered. They were able to advance more than 250 meters before resistance stiffened.
Several men with rifles had erected a makeshift barrier out of sandbags and started taking potshots as the Germans rounded a corner. Bräuer flung himself to the ground. Bullets were ricocheting the length of the tunnel. A man cried out, shot through the groin.
Bräuer signaled to the squad leaders, and as one, they charged. Bräuer led from the front, emptying two magazines in the short distance to the barricade. Fighting degenerated into hand-to-hand grappling, as a powerfully built Belgian sergeant swung a shovel at Bräuer’s head. The major blocked it with both hands and tore it from the Belgian’s grip, beating him over the head with it until he fell.
Another squad of Belgians was charging up the side tunnel. Braudel drew his pistol and dispatched all of them with a single shot each. But there were still more. As soon as they had subdued the first group of Belgians, the assault pioneers hurried down the main tunnel toward the fortress command post.
A brief but vicious firefight secured the large main room, and Sturmabteilung Bräuer -- now thirty-three men -- barricaded itself within. Decoux reluctantly provided access to the fortress’ public address system.
“Major Decoux, you will either order the garrison to surrender or we will release chlorine gas into the ventilation system.” It was a desperate bluff.
“They have masks.” The Belgian commander was as defiant as ever.
“Very well.” Bräuer turned to Steier. “Tell Trupp 7 to prepare the odorless gas canisters instead. We do not want the garrison to have warning.” A significant look told Steier to nod and carry out the order as though the gas existed.
“Wait.” Major Decoux was growing paler. “I will instruct the garrison to surrender. It will not to you any good though. They will not surrender without --” Decoux suddenly wretched violently and began coughing.
“Without what? Look at me!” Bräuer shook him.
Decoux’s voice had fallen to a whisper. His jaw hardened. “The code word. But you’ll not get it from me.” Before anyone could stop him, Decoux snatched Bräuer’s pistol from a desk and shot himself through the mouth.
The shot reverberated through the command post. Bräuer could hear the Belgians in the outer passage yelling.
Bräuer spun around and scanned the communications equipment. “Rendel!” he called, summoning the best living speaker of French in Sturmabteilung Bräuer, “contact Belgian Army Headquarters on the military telephone line.”
Rendel figured out the equipment remarkably quickly.
“Inform them that you are an officer in the garrison and Germans have broken into parts of the fortress. Tell them that a mysterious voice is transmitting a surrender codeword over the public address system, and you are not sure if it is correct.”
Sweating profusely, Rendel managed to get through via voice telephone. He relayed Bräuer’s message in French.
“Ask for the correct code,” Bräuer urged.
“
Aigle.” Said Rendel, repeating what the voice at Headquarters told him. “Good. It seems the Germans were just putting us on after all! Thank you, captain.”
The command post erupted in a single jubilant shout.
Soon, Rendel had taken to the public address system: “This is Major Decoux’s deputy. The Germans have released poison gas from within the fortress. I repeat: poison gas in the fortress. We have been ordered by the Army Command to cease all hostilities at once. Code word
Aigle. I repeat: code word
Aigle. Don gas masks and file out of…” Rendel checked the map of the fortress, “Bloc 1. I repeat, the Army Command has ordered surrender.”
As Rendel repeated the commands, Bräuer signaled for the other men inside the command post to prepare to assault the Belgians directly outside, who would surely not believe the voice ordering them to surrender. Some of the men were reduced to their service knives, having expended all their ammunition. At Bräuer’s command, the men bracing the thick bulkhead doors opened them, releasing the charging assault pioneers into the tunnel. A furious fusillade met them and several fell in the doorway. Bräuer urged them onwards, entering the tunnel in time to shoot a Belgian who had forced one of the glider pilots to the ground and was choking him.
Bräuer felt warm liquid trickling down his sleeve. He had been hit again. Though the battle raged for several minutes as his men chased down the remaining Belgians, he stood still against the tunnel wall, totally spent. It was nearly dawn again.
At 0645, Bräuer received the surrender of Fort Eben-Emael and its garrison from Captain Lemecq. Only twenty-nine Germans had emerged from the fortress on their own power. Twenty-six had been killed and the same number seriously injured. Fifty-one of the defenders had been killed, and several times that number wounded. In all, 1,014 men were taken prisoner and marched into the barbed-wire enclosure surrounding the Mi-Sud casemate. Ju-52s had dropped fresh supplies during the night, including badly needed medical supplies. In the end, they were not necessary -- the wounded of Sturmabteilung Bräuer received care in Fort Eben-Emael’s own infirmary from the captured garrison doctors.
Overlooking the Albert Canal from Eben-Emael.
Major Bräuer perched on a silent gun turret overlooking the Albert Canal. Operation Rentier had succeeded against all odds, and the way to Liége was open. In the bluish, hazy distance, he could see the columns of VIII Armeekorps filling the eastern horizon.