The Invasion of 1950

Chapter Twenty-One

Near Ipswich, England

Captain Harry Jackson clutched the ground with both hands as the German shelling came down around them, scattering down over the British positions and shaking the ground with its endless thunder. He wanted to cover his ears as the pain grew worse, but somehow he didn’t dare move his hands, or even dare to move at all. The clamour of combat was growing ever more intense, suggesting that the shellfire was either landing closer or the volume of fire was being increased; how much more could his men take? He hadn’t been alive to fight in the Great War, but he’d heard that shellfire had sometimes shocked men out of their minds; would that happen to them? The firing grew louder… and then it faded and died.

He rolled over and clutched his assault rifle as he stumbled into position. Most of the company had survived the experience, but he could see flames and smoke rising from all over Ipswich and the surrounding area; the German bombardment had been mainly targeted on the defences. He glared up at a German aircraft, floating through the sky with a nonchalant lack of concern for the British anti-aircraft fire, and then took up his firing position; the Germans would have been sending in their infantry while the British had been keeping their heads down. The defences hadn’t been anything like strong enough to deter them from attacking, and if they could take the town at a rush, they would force the British to withdraw as quickly as possible.

The gun felt heavy in his hand as the smoke and dust cleared. The briefing they’d received only an hour ago had confirmed that there were two major German forces advancing towards the town. Despite the use of tanks and British shellfire to deter them from advancing, and the Germans would be on them within an hour.

Their orders had been simple; hold the line for as long as possible, kill as many of the Germans as they could, and then fall back in the direction of London. Jackson privately suspected that if the Germans broke through the lines, the British forces were going to be encircled and would have very real problems escaping, but the alternative was being captured. They’d heard enough rumours of what was happening in the east to dread capture.

There, he thought as he saw them. The Germans knew that the defence line was here, all right. They were advancing on their bellies and bringing up armoured cars in support. Jackson whispered a command to the company’s sniper as he spied a German officer. He saw the sniper wiggling away to find a place where he could fire a perfect shot.

Snipers had the worst job in any army; they were, in theory, protected by the laws of war, but they tended to be shot out of hand anyway, as most soldiers hated enemy snipers. The Germans were no different; Jackson had seen some of the files from Russia, where the SS had been particularly inventive when it came to punishing enemy snipers.

“Fire on my command,” he ordered. He could hear the dull pounding of another barrage in the distance, bombarding the advancing Germans, but the Germans didn’t seem to have been put off by the artillery. They kept advancing, moving with a calm focused precision that Jackson almost envied. He muttered a second order to one of his men, cursing their shortage of mines, and then carefully sighted in on one of the Germans.

“Fire,” he barked as he followed his own command. The German he’d selected as his target jerked once and lay still, the other Germans started and rolled over, firing back towards the British positions. One of them was either very good or very lucky; a bullet buried itself in the earthworks just in front of Jackson; he flinched and then continued firing. His men were all disciplined — the Home Guard taught them to take care of their ammunition supplies, as they might not be able to re-supply quickly — and burst after burst of controlled firing rippled out, scattering the Germans and leaving many of them dead. He didn’t dare think that they would actually hold the Germans, but as the Germans fell back, he allowed himself a second of hope…

Which was dashed as the armoured cars opened fire, sending a hail of machine gun bullets over their heads, and ripping away the foliage that had hidden them. The Germans couldn’t get their guns low enough to actually tear up the earthworks themselves, but they could force the British to keep their heads down, long enough for the infantry to advance. Sergeant Wilt picked up a PIAT, one of the latest designs, and took careful aim, exposing himself only long enough to fire the small projectile towards the lead armoured car. The German vehicle was hit; Jackson smiled as it blew up, killing its crew. The other cars fell back, revealing a line of panzers that were advancing right towards their positions.

Jackson cursed as the tanks spread out. A pair of rockets were launched by British soldiers, but one of them missed as the panzers closed in, firing as they broke through the British lines and charged on into the distance towards Ipswich. Jackson felt stunned and disorientated for a moment, barely remembering the German soldiers before they advanced rapidly, their weapons flaring at the remains of the British soldiers.

A whistle blew in the distance. “Fall back,” Jackson shouted, and the cry was taken up by the sergeants and other officers. The Germans were seeing a British company running for its life, rather than a semi-planned retreat; they would be encouraged long enough to stay on their feet as the British guns opened fire. The second defence line included some small artillery weapons, which opened fire and cascaded shells down on to the advancing Germans, scattering red-hot shrapnel through the air. He thought he heard screams over the noise of the shells, but there was no way to know for certain.

The German assault was getting bogged down up ahead, he saw, as three panzers exploded in quick succession. General Barron might not have had many antitank guns, but the weapons he’d had were carefully positioned, concealed from the Germans watching from the air, and only used when the German panzers had finally broken through the outer line. The Germans were falling back as their infantry advanced, their own shellfire trying to knock out the antitank guns as they reacted faster than Jackson would have believed possible. The Germans were the masters of war and it showed.

“Get down,” Wilt shouted at him as machine gun bullets strafed through the company. Jackson hit the ground hard enough to jar every bone in his body; the remainder of the company wasn’t so lucky as a dozen men were killed by the German aircraft, a strange spinning autogyro-like craft firing down at them from a controlled hover. Jackson had seen the RAF use something like it, but this was the first one he’d seen in an assault role - and it was on the other side.

A hail of machine gun fire glanced off the heavily armoured autogyro before something broke and the craft fell out of the air, crashing into the ground and exploding. A burning pilot staggered out of the craft before collapsing on the ground. Jackson winced, then walked over to the officer, put his pistol to the screaming German’s head and pulled the trigger. There had been nothing else he could do for the man.

A second whistle blew and Jackson joined the line of retreating men. He saw, vaguely, a major trying to direct the retreat as the Germans pushed through the gap they’d created, sending in more of their autogyros and panzers; he saw one of the autogyros firing rockets into a British trench before a hail of machine gun fire cut it out of the air. The Germans were punching through the defence line and, judging from the noise in the distance, had done it at more than one location.

Ipswich was falling to the Germans.

The edges of Ipswich rose up in front of Hauptmann Johann Bothe as the panzers reached their first targets. They’d been warned that the British would build an inner defence line within the city itself, as the Russians had done on too many occasions, but at first, there didn’t seem to be any sign of resistance. The British defence line had been stronger than they’d anticipated, and Rommel had used the panzer units as his scalpel for digging into the British position, but Bothe was feeling quietly confident. They’d made it through the chaos and survived, so far.

The British infantrymen were falling back as well as his tank engaged a few of them with machine gun fire. One of them took aim at the panzers with what looked like an early model Panzerfaust and was rapidly cut down before he could open fire, but the others scattered and escaped the tank. It was one of the problems with panzer warfare, despite the German army’s rapid development of all-mobile military units; the panzers would break through, but then the infantry would have to mop up the defenders and the defenders would have a chance to escape. Rommel had formed units of British vehicles to transport infantry into the battle, as the main shipping effort had concentrated on panzers, but even so, there was a gap between the damage the panzers had caused and the infantry securing the victory. The channels were buzzing with information, most of it irrelevant as far as Bothe was concerned, but British units that had been scattered by the panzers were reforming and sometimes giving the advancing German infantry a bloody nose.

He checked his position quickly, uncomfortably aware that he was far too close to all kinds of possible cover than he would prefer, too close for comfort. The British might be trying to sneak snipers up from the town, or sending them up into tall buildings to take aim at his forces, despite the possibilities of German retaliation. Ipswich wasn’t an older German town, or one of the new towns that had been created out in the east; it was just uncomfortable enough for his forces to have very real problems identifying a threat until it opened fire. He knew what the SS would have done, in such a situation, but he liked to think that the 7th Panzer was more of a disciplined unit than an SS security patrol. Besides, Rommel would have had him punished if he had caused more damage to the town than was absolutely necessary.

A line of trucks pulled up and disgorged a company of infantrymen, forming up rapidly into platoons as they massed outside the town. Bothe saw their commanding officer and held a quick consultation with him; the infantrymen would try to take the town without a fight, but the panzers would accompany them, just in case of trouble. The town would have a large population of civilians, Bothe knew; if there was a fight in the centre of the town, like at Leningrad, there would be a bloodbath. Ideally, the British would see sense and surrender, but there was no telling what a cut-off unit would do.

He glanced down again at his map as the radio updated him. The town was now surrounded and most of the British forces in the defence line had been captured, killed, or driven away. They would have to reach their next command post and defence line before it was too late, but if they made it, they would face the Germans again with much more experience. The Werhmacht trained as it planned to fight, and he understood from the Abwehr that the British tried to do the same, but there was nothing like an experienced unit for holding their ground. They would have seen the elephant.

“Advance,” the infantry Oberst ordered, and the infantry moved forward. Bothe had half-expected a formal military parade, but that would have to wait until the town had formally surrendered or all resistance had been cleared out; until then, the soldiers would have to comport themselves as if they were going to be attacked at any moment. More infantrymen arrived as they pushed through buildings, breaking in and searching them in a hasty attempt to spring any ambushes before they stuck their head too far into the noose.

The panzer rumbled forwards behind the infantrymen and Bothe watched carefully as he saw the first barricade. The British had been busy; they’d dragged cars, lorries and even a military vehicle of some kind and turned them into a barricade. The cars looked like the Fuhrer-cars Volkswagen had been producing for the German people, the car that Hitler himself had backed; had they been sold over in Britain as well? He nodded once as the infantry commander issued an order and repeated it to the gunner; a moment later, a high explosive shell shattered the barricade and the infantry raced forward.

The fighting surged backwards and forwards as the British fought for every inch of ground. The fire-power of the panzers wasn’t held back after the first few moments, and Bothe’s crew put shells into every building that the British were using as firing points, reducing them to rubble. The British used the wreckage as shields and kept fighting, forcing the infantrymen to clear them out. A PIAT came close to killing Bothe and his crew; a second tank was set on fire by a Molotov Cocktail, dropped from one of the handful of remaining buildings. After that, they cleared a bloody path towards the centre of town, avoiding sniper fire and advancing in a hail of devastation. If Rommel had hoped to take Ipswich intact, his hopes had been dashed…

A shell landed near a building; a moment later, a small group of school-aged children fled from the remains, scattering out over the city. Bothe barked an order and the panzers ceased fire; the British, he noticed with some relief, did the same. They’d hit a school, he realised; the reports had suggested that the basement of a school was sometimes used as a bomb shelter, but he hadn’t realised what they’d been shooting at until it was too late. How many children had they killed?

A British officer stepped forward into the silence, blood streaming from one eye, carrying a white flag. Bothe watched as his infantry commander came forward, and the two officers talked briefly; the soldiers took the brief truce as a chance to catch up on their reloading and take a breath.

The reinforcements were already spreading into the city; he could still hear short bursts of firing as units bumped into their counterparts or aircraft duelled in the sky high above. They hadn’t seen much in the way of British aircraft — the Luftwaffe was clearly doing a good job keeping them off the panzers backs — but all it would take was a single aircraft pass with rockets, and half his column would be reduced to flaming wreckage.

“They’re surrendering,” the infantry officer shouted finally, a shout that was picked up by his people and the panzers. The firing in the distance ended abruptly as the word was spread through the streets. Bothe watched as a line of British soldiers, most of them wounded, came out of the rubble and were escorted rapidly towards the edge of the town. They looked as if they’d been through hell, and Bothe could understand their grief and despair; it was possible that they had accidentally killed some of their children. How many more civilians had died unnoticed in the fighting? Was there any way of finding out?

Dismissing the thought for the moment, he ordered his men to take up their planned positions. The main task now was to secure Ipswich and ensure that the roads and rail links were reopened as soon as possible. The army engineers would already be on their way and they would want protection; Bothe and his men would have to provide the support for the soldiers on protection duty. Rather more worrying, an SS occupation force would be coming into the city and they would take control of its day-to-day existence, not a fate that Bothe envied the British.

He glanced down at his map. The British lines had been broken and Commonwealth forces were on the run, fleeing back towards London. It wouldn’t be long before Rommel realised that a panzer unit wasn’t really cut out for securing a town and would send them down after the British, or maybe find them some other task to do when it came to mopping up the remains of the defenders. There were still pockets of British troops out there, and they would have to be dealt with before they could escape and join up with their fellows.

“They forced us back,” Jackson admitted finally. It was a painful confession to make, even to a man he had come to respect in the last two days. “They broke the line and forced us back.”

“That was expected,” General Barron said, shortly. His face revealed nothing of his own inner stress, or his fury at having to vacate his command tent and move down south to Handyman Hall. “They have the fire-power advantage for the nonce.”

He shook his head. “I have some particular tasks for you and your men,” he said, looking over at Jackson. “Get some sleep, and then report back to me; the Germans are going to need a reminder, from time to time, that they’re in our country… and I’m calling on you to deliver that reminder.”