The Invasion of 1950

Chapter Sixteen

Near Ipswich, England

The tent looked nothing like a secure comfortable base, yet Captain Harry Jackson was absolutely delighted to see it as the remains of the Felixstowe Home Guard staggered towards safety. They were following directions they’d received from a small motorcycle unit that had been scouring the country looking for survivors, but until now there had been no sign of organised resistance. A pair of armoured cars were parked near the tent and hundreds of soldiers were milling about, being organised by sergeants and several senior officers. The entire scene was chaotic, with hundreds of men moving in all directions; even the sight of a small armoured column failed to restore Jackson’s spirits.

The escape had been nightmarish. They’d fallen back, only to be pursued by the Germans, who had chased them right out of Felixstowe. Halfway there, they had been engaged by a force of German paratroopers who had been trying to make their way back into Felixstowe, and had been as surprised to meet the British as the British had been to meet them. Jackson didn’t know what orders he’d given, although he was certain that he had issued orders; his mind was a complete blank. They’d been lucky not to have shot the motorcyclist who’d met them. The rider had told them that several other units hadn’t been so lucky.

A small desk had been set up in front of the tent, and Jackson pulled himself up into a straighter posture as he took in the face of the man sitting there, trying desperately to organise his forces. He ordered Wilt to find his men somewhere to rest for a few hours and walked over to the desk, waiting until the General looked up to salute.

“Captain Harry Jackson,” he said. “Felixstowe Home Guard.”

General Barron returned the salute. “I’m pleased to see you,” he said, his voice grim, but tightly controlled. “What was it like back there?”

“The Germans have taken the port and probably the town,” Jackson reported grimly. “They have some armoured support and have been unloading freighters ever since they landed.”

“I see,” Barron said. “Do you have any idea of the enemy’s strength?”

“I don’t know, sir,” he said. “I think they will have at least a few thousand men. They stopped us outside the gates, sir…”

“We never really expected to have to fight them up here,” Barron said, more to himself than to Jackson. “We ensured that the best equipment and the best training went to the forces near Dover, where we expected the Germans would have to land if they wanted to invade us. They’ve outflanked the fixed defences until they reach the GHQ line surrounding London and half of our communications are down.”

Jackson recognised the offer of absolution and allowed himself to relax slightly. “Sir, they can’t succeed, can they?” He asked. “I mean… there’s the Navy, and the Air Force, and…”

“The Royal Navy was hit pretty badly last night,” Barron said shortly. For the first time, Jackson detected a tiny hint of despair underlying his voice. “I don’t have any details, but the War Office — which was also hit last night — sent a warning to the effect that I couldn’t count on either naval interdiction of the Jerry supply lines or naval gunfire being directed onto the German positions. The RAF sent in a pair of recon aircraft and both of them were shot down; the Germans are not only bombing strategic targets across Britain, but they’re maintaining a constant CAP over their own landing site.”

He paused. “We’re going to need you and your men debriefed by the Intelligence Corps, but at the moment, we think that the main focus of German activity is here, coming towards us from Felixstowe,” he said. “ I have spotters out and we’re struggling to establish a line of soldiers to block the enemy from advancing without casualties. The worst problem at the moment is civilian refugees; it’s been too long since we had any drills and that’s starting to show.”

Jackson winced. “What are they doing?”

“The BBC hasn’t been able to formulate any message yet, but the arrival of the Germans is common knowledge in this area and several thousand civilians fled at once for the west,” Barron said. “The people are blocking the roads and trying to catch trains while we’re trying to organise military convoys and reinforcements for here. I’ve used soldiers to clear some of the roads, but mostly the refugees are being urged to return to their homes.”

Jackson shook his head. “They won’t take that advice, sir,” he said, remembering all the horror stories about how the Germans conducted themselves in occupied lands. There would probably be rumours of German atrocities already, even though none of them would ever be confirmed and probably hadn’t happened. “Is there anything else that they might do?”

“A few hundred German refugees and Danes have been lynched,” Barron said. “It’s not something that I can do much about, particularly as many of them might have been spying for the Germans before they landed, but it’s another problem for us.” He shook his head. “Now, before the Intelligence Corps get their hands on you, how many soldiers do you have left?”

“Forty-one,” Jackson said, cursing his own failure. His original company had been decimated; the unit he’d brought out of the chaos had been the remains of several units, all of which had lost over half of their number in the desperate fighting around the port. “Several of them are injured, sir, and we’re low on ammunition.”

“They’ll go into the personnel pool at the moment,” the General said. “The injured ones are to report back to see the doctors, but if they can still fight, we’re going to need them as part of the defence line. They’ll probably end up being formed into a new company with other stragglers and you’ll have command; there won’t be time for proper formalities.”

“Sir, I…”

Barron ignored him. “I have Sergeants running companies and Lieutenants commanding entire sections because of the vast shortage of personnel,” he commented, his voice icy. “I need you to take command of one of the reformed companies and get it back up into fighting trim, quickly.”

“Yes, sir,” Jackson said, pushing his doubts about himself aside. “How long do we have?”

Barron held up a hand as the noise of an aircraft came in from the east. “That’s not one of ours,” he said, his voice hushed. Jackson raised an eyebrow; he’d never been able to tell the difference between a British jet aircraft and a German jet aircraft. “I think that that bastard is up there spying on our positions, which means that they have to know just how weak and disorganised we are, and if they come bursting out…”

Jackson remembered. He’d studied the Nazi campaigns in France and Poland, and one thing had been clear; the Nazis had never given the French or Poles a chance to recover from their early defeats, pushing forward and trying to scatter them before the command structure could recover from the shocks of the first blow. There had still been thousands of armed and dangerous men scattered across the country, but the controlling brains had been stunned and unable to draw their far flung units back into a coherent formation.

The Germans hadn’t knocked the British out with a single punch, but if they could secure their grip on Suffolk, they would be much harder to dislodge. They were expanding their grip on the coast to speed up their unloading operations, and if they built up enough supplies…

He remembered taking part in a training session organised by Basil Liddell Hart, back before Liddell Hart had been placed on half-pay — again — for some unspecified offence. They’d seen, then, what tanks could do and how hard they were to stop, particularly if there were no friendly air units or tanks around to assist in stopping them. The Germans had respected Liddell Hart’s theories and they’d been the ones who’d put them into practice; they would build up, attack, and then start marching to London. They were confined, at the moment, to a small lodgement; could they be destroyed before they could build up and attack?

“Can we not attack them?” Jackson asked, after a moment’s pause. “We could try and knock them back into the sea…”

“We’re too disorganised to mount a proper attack,” Barron said. “We’re pitifully short of armour and supporting elements; we’re having some moved up, but if we hadn’t been holding a training drill, we wouldn’t have had any tanks at all. We can hold the Germans and execute a fighting withdrawal, but actually stopping them will be difficult, let alone launching a counter-attack If we get the divisions we’ve been promised, we might be able to start thinking about a counter-attack, but at the moment, our orders are to hold the line and preserve as much as possible for future operations.”

He tapped the map on his desk. “I’ve distributed recon units, between Ipswich and Felixstowe, and we should have warning of any renewed German push to the west,” he said. “Our main defence line will be here” — he drew a half-circle in front of Ipswich — “as preserving the road and rail connections in the city will be of paramount importance. Your unit, once reformed and rearmed, will join in the defences and hold the Germans.”

“Yes, sir,” Jackson said.

“You’ll be briefed on communications protocols as soon as you reach the line,” Barron concluded. “If we can hold them, we have a chance of putting an end to this invasion before half the country is overrun; good luck.”

“Thank you, sir,” Jackson said, saluting again.

The discussion with the Intelligence Corps office — a person whose face managed to combine attentiveness with a certain rat-like malice — was more like an interrogation. The interview was mainly focused on what sort of forces Jackson had seen, but the officer also managed to get in a few criticisms of Jackson’s operations, and even a hint that Jackson had fled in the face of the enemy. The missing Colonel Felton-Smith was also blasted, although as Jackson suspected he’d been caught by the Germans and either killed or captured, there was little point in ripping apart his reputation.

“This is a waste of my time,” he concluded, after the fourth suggestion that he had fled. “I don’t know enough for you to make any real recommendations to the General and you are preventing me from getting on with my job.”

The officer managed to look both astonished and suspicious. “It is impossible to say,” he said, in a voice that was more like a whine than a dignified tone, “just what part of the puzzle will allow the rest to fall into place. You may not know what you know, but if I can put it together with the remainder of my information, I may be able to learn something important. I have already learnt that the Germans have moved nine heavy freighters into the port and have sent out all of the ships that we had in harbour that were seaworthy.”

Jackson saw the implication at once. “They might be able to reinforce faster than we expected,” he realised. “Is that what you meant?”

“They have several divisions right on the other side of the Channel,” the officer informed him. “If we know how much tonnage they have at their disposal, we can estimate how quickly they can reinforce their forces and expand their beachhead.”

Jackson scowled at him. “If you’re so smart, how could you not know that the invasion was coming?”

“Some suspected trouble,” the officer admitted, grimly. “They just didn’t realise how the Germans would spearhead their attack.”

An hour later, Jackson stood on a car and examined the line of soldiers standing in front of him. Most of them were Home Guard; the survivors of his force and some others, a handful were regular soldiers who had been caught away from their regiments and had been co-opted into the makeshift company rather than being allowed to make their way back to their units. Jackson hoped that the army bureaucracy had managed to catch up with this change, or the men were likely to end up facing charges of desertion in the face of the enemy, which carried the death penalty. They would have to prove that the Home Guard had drafted them and that wasn’t going to be easy.

“We’ve taken a beating,” he said, grimly, watching them. They looked despondent, some of them bitterly determined to carry on fighting, others broken and shattered by the experience. The Germans had beaten them off and defeated them… and, for a unit that had never known defeat before, it could be disastrous. “They threw us back and killed hundreds of our friends and fellow soldiers, and they now think that they’ve won.”

He leaned forwards. “They’re dead wrong,” he decried. “We fought well and bravely against those paratroopers, and we chased them away from their targets. We hurt the Germans and now, without their advantage of surprise, we’re going to hurt them again. They’re going to come at us again and this time, we’re going to kick them right where it hurts! This is the sort of fighting we are trained to do, with weapons we understand and well-built positions, and we are going to hold the Germans. This time, we are going to hold!

“They’re going to come at us with tanks and heavy weapons, but we’re going to stop them,” he continued. “We’re going to hold and we’re going to make them regret that they ever came into our country and attacked us. Behind their lines, our wives and children are trapped… and we’re going to free them. Do you understand?”

“Sir, yes, sir,” they shouted back.

“I expect each and every one of you to hold the line until they withdraw or we are given orders to fall back,” Jackson thundered. “If a man should leave his post without orders, I’ll shoot him in the back myself. We are going to hold them, whatever it takes, and win time for our forces to regroup and crush the ratzis like bugs. No one breaks, no one runs; we hold and we fight as a body!”

The march through the countryside was surprisingly quick; they found the defence line, such as it was, without too many problems, although the presence of German aircraft, high in the sky, warned that the Germans were watching them. Jackson saw the German aircraft, so high up that it was barely visible, and wondered what had happened to the RAF. Had the remainder of the country been attacked as well? The General hadn’t said that there had been any other incursions, but if the Germans could have launched more than one, wouldn’t they have tried? The soldiers grumbled a little as they joined in the construction works, but Jackson was starting to realise that he might have made a mistake; the line just wasn’t very solid. They all knew how to dig foxholes and hiding positions for the guns, but when the Germans came down the road towards Ipswich, they were likely to have very few problems in punching through the line.

“I want those antitank guns set up to provide covering fire,” Jackson ordered, pushing his concerns aside while he prepared his lines. The colonel commanding the hundreds of men who were funnelling into the area seemed to have a clear idea of what he was doing, but he was clearly worried about being encircled; the Germans would probably have the advantage in manoeuvre war. They would want to take Ipswich intact, because of the road and rail connections, but they could do that by starving out the town, rather than simply trying to take it by storm.

It made him wonder what preparations were being made in Ipswich itself. Were there Home Guardsmen there being prepared for a siege, or were they considering declaring the city an open city, no soldiers from either side allowed. If that happened, the Germans would probably ignore the declaration, just as they had ignored a similar attempt on the part of the Russians. They had stormed Stalingrad by force and killed almost all of the inhabitants, those who hadn’t bowed the knee quickly enough. They had then gone on to impose their domination on large chunks of Russia, encouraged the Shah of Iran into rebellion, and won the war. Did anyone truly recognise the growing threat before it hit them?

He shook his head. The English countryside looked so safe and tranquil…

But, to the east, the Germans were gathering their forces. Soon, he knew, they would attack.