The Invasion of 1950

Chapter Forty-One

Near Colchester, England

“Everyone out, now,” Sergeant Henry Wilt commanded, as the lorry screeched to a halt. The Company spilled out of the lorry, clasping their weapons in one hand as they advanced rapidly towards the defence line. The soldiers there seemed relieved to see them. They knew that with Colchester enveloped, it wouldn’t be long before the Germans turned their attention to breaking through the lines.

Captain Harry Jackson smiled to himself as he reported to the Colonel in command of the line. The British had dug in heavily, using a small village as a base and expanding it, even to the point of knocking down some of the houses and using the rubble as cover. The Germans, he’d been told, were being careful about engaging dug-in soldiers, but they must punch their way through the village to use the main road. The heavy road had been built to transport soldiers and the Germans wanted it… and he was determined that they wouldn’t get it.

“Take up your positions and wait,” the Colonel ordered.

The man had looked stressed enough for ten men, handling the remains of dozens of units that had been streaming into the rear areas. They were given a quick bite to eat and some more ammunition, and then pointed back into the lines. The Germans had ground through the first defence line, but their rear would never be secure, and they would have to secure the road network to move supplies up for their assault on London.

The defence line was the strongest he’d seen yet. The engineers had worked in concrete blocks and other impediments to tanks, ensuring that the German Panzers wouldn’t be able to just charge at them and punch through by the sheer fury of their offensive. The villagers who had been evacuated to the west had created an entire series of shelters and basements for their proud homes, all of which the engineers had gleefully adapted into a blocking line. The Germans would have to dig them out or the road would never be safe.

Jackson sucked in a breath as quiet fell. The battlefield wasn’t silent — everywhere, he could hear the sound of guns and explosions in the distance — but he was suddenly aware that the noise had fallen sharply. The Germans were probably catching their own breath, preparing their attack before the British could mount a counter-attack Jackson waited as his soldiers prepared themselves to fight. It wouldn’t be long before the Germans came at them and then they would have to hold. He was determined. Whatever happened, there wouldn’t be another retreat.

The Colonel ran over to him from his command post in the basement of one of the smaller houses. “I just heard a report from one of the observation patrols,” he said, gasping for breath. He was a reservist and it showed, even though Jackson couldn’t find much to fault in his deployments or his grasp of the situation. “The Germans are advancing towards us.”

Jackson shoved the Colonel down into the trench as he heard the whistle a moment before the shells crashed down . The ground shook and heaved as the shells came down in an endless stream, destroying the few remaining houses. Jackson glanced upwards, risking his eyesight, and saw the faint shape of the German spotter aircraft, high overhead. The German pilot had been watching them and calling in the heavy guns. A moment later, a force of aircraft roared overhead and added their own bombs to the carnage. The ground seemed to be caught in the grip of an earthquake, not entirely unusual in some parts of England, and he felt the colonel squirming under him as the bombardment slowly tailed off, seeming to end.

“Stay down,” he shouted, trusting the observers in the forward trenches to report if the Germans were on the verge of launching an attack. He hadn’t seen the trick before, but he’d heard about it; the Germans had a nasty habit of trying to catch British soldiers, popping up after the first attack, with a second attack. The trick was thoroughly unpleasant, and it had worked more times than he wanted to admit. “Stay down…”

He covered his ears desperately as the shriek of German rockets reverberated through the air as the ground began to shake again. The rockets were terrifying, but they didn’t actually cause much damage unless there was a direct hit. They didn’t possess the terrifying explosive power of a heavy German shell, let alone a direct hit with a bomb. The Germans used them more to terrify and confuse their opponents than actually relying on them to destroy their enemies. But if caught in the open, any unprotected man would swiftly be torn to pieces by the explosions and the flaming wreckage.

The Germans might be more civilised than some of the insurgents he’d faced in India, but at least the insurgents hadn’t possessed such weapons or such a skilful hand with the weapons they had. They been no match for the Ghurkas, or the other soldiers of the Indian Army, all of which had tended to regard the insurgents as idiots.

“Now,” he said, as a whistle blew. The bombardment was coming to an end, and he scrambled to his feet, seeing German vehicles approaching from down the road. He’d seen their panzers before, but this time he was determined; they were going to hold. “Take aim and hold your fire. Choose your targets…”

He smiled as the Germans raced closer. “FIRE!,” he thundered.

The men with antitank weapons fired as one, sending their PIATs directly towards the Germans and smashing into the most vulnerable areas on the Panzer. The Germans had heavy frontal armour that took a great deal of luck to burn through, but the treads, the sides and the rear were not so well protected. The German tanks came to a sudden halt and one of them blew up as the PIAT weapons struck home. Their machine guns opened fire, forcing the British to keep their heads down. Another German tank appeared, heading around the disabled panzers, and four PIATs struck it, sending it up in a massive fireball. The damaged panzers were unable to move. He watched, wondering if the Germans would try to escape before his mortar crews loaded and opened fire.

He smiled as the mortars fired, their rounds going up in the air and coming down around the Germans. Three of them scored direct hits and punched through the weaker armour on the turret of the panzers, the others fell down around them, scattering German infantrymen who had been trying to sneak up on the British position, using their own panzers as cover. The British soldiers shot them down ruthlessly as they fell to the ground, sniping back with their own weapons and advancing carefully; a mortar round fell among the main group and reduced them all to a bloody mess. Jackson shook his head as he watched; the Germans might be bastards, but they were brave men.

The spotter reported over the radio, “We’ve got trouble, boss. The panzers are preparing to encircle you and they’re bringing up a dozen trucks of infantry.”

“Understood,” Jackson said, grimly. The Germans were going to try to storm the village, while their panzers cut the British off from any possible retreat. That was fine by him; he was damned if he was going to retreat again. “Keep us informed of what they’re doing and buzz me once they start their advance.”

He shouted the warning up and down the line. His soldiers, prepared to meet the offensive. They hadn’t had enough time to familiarise themselves with the full scale of the defences, but the presence of the German infantry and the lack of any possible line of retreat would ensure that they held or died. The radio buzzed once as the German troops appeared in the distance, spread out and advancing slowly. He cursed as he saw the line of German rockets rising in the distance, trying to knock out his men before they could hold off the Germans.

The radio was in his hands before he even knew what he was doing. “Snipers, start killing them,” he ordered. A pair of Germans fell. The others threw themselves to the ground and crawled forward while a set of German snipers engaged in a deadly duel with his own snipers. The Germans were advancing as swiftly as they could, but as they came closer, his men shot at them, their weapons forcing the Germans to keep their distance. The Germans threw grenades at the British position while they slipped closer; Jackson gave the order to fix bayonets as the Germans advanced…

And then there was no time left at all for anything but killing.

The British horse was a complete surprise. the Panzer, charging across British fields in a desperate attempt to outflank their defences, crashed into the animal before they even knew that it was there. Hauptmann Johann Bothe was more affected by the death of the horse — it had been a magnificent chestnut beast — than he was by the deaths of hundreds of British and German servicemen. The horse hadn’t deserved to die. He had no idea what it was even doing there. Maybe it belonged to some British General or some British aristocrat who hadn’t believed in the German threat. There had certainly been people like that in France. Some of them had even ended up as the Nazi Regime’s most useful collaborators.

He dismissed the thought and concentrated on driving forwards, smashing across the fields and small streams towards the bridges. The British would have rigged the bridges to blow, they had to drive the British away from them, in hopes that German engineers could be used to disable the charges before they were detonated. If not, they would have to establish bridges under fire. It was something they had trained endlessly to do. 7th Panzer was spread out, it’s units attempting to watch out for British aircraft like the handful of irritating ground-attack aircraft that had buzzed them yesterday, and it was making good progress… when one of the Panzers exploded.

“Load antitank round,” he barked, as the first British tank appeared. British shells were landing all around the panzers, and it was starting to look like a planned ambush. “Fire!”

The British tank exploded with a gout of fire, but three more Panzers were hit, revealing the presence of a series of dug-in British guns, firing down at them from a knoll. Bothe barked orders and the panzers spread out, trying to avoid the British fire. None of them would have been so stupid as to charge right into the teeth of British artillery. The British themselves had taken a long time to learn that lesson. 7th Panzer, always operating at the sharp end, learned it very quickly.

“Call up air support and paste those guns,” he ordered, watching as three of his panzers poured high-explosive shells into the British field guns. They might get lucky and knock out the guns, but only a fool would rely on luck. They’d also moved outside the range of most of their supporting artillery. “I want that position knocked out and…”

“Tank,” the driver reported. Bothe’s head snapped round to see a British tank, and then another, and another, advancing rapidly towards them from the west. The panzer’s turret began to spin round, drawing a bead on the British armour, as he realised that they had stumbled right into the British counter-attack The advancing Centurions looked determined to punch right through the lead elements of 7th Panzer and they might just succeed…

“Fire,” he barked and had the satisfaction of seeing a British tank explode. Their shell had punched right through the frontal armour and detonated inside the tank, igniting the ammunition and sending the tank up like a firecracker. “Reload with antitank round and…”

The interior of the panzer grew very warm for a heartbeat, and time stood still before the panzer exploded as a British tank scored a direct hit on the prow of the vehicle. Bothe died without knowing what had hit him.

The men of the 1st Armoured Division were, in their way, as loyal to Montgomery as the men of the 7th Panzer were to Rommel. Monty had built up the unit from the desperately dangerous days of 1940 to the powerful and capable fighting force it was in 1950, and they would follow him anywhere. Most of them had wondered why they were being held in reserve, but as they were moved into position, it became clear. They had been placed aside for Monty’s master-stroke, a direct armoured attack into the flanks of 7th Panzer. They rumbled on until they made contact and then opened fire, relying on their own self-propelled guns to provide covering fire, punching a hole right into the German positions.

High overhead, almost every aircraft left in the British inventory flew cover, driving away the German fighters and ground-attack aircraft. For the first time since the invasion had begun, the British enjoyed air superiority over a major portion of the battlefield. That advantage rapidly translated into success on the ground as the Germans scrambled to respond to the new and shocking threat.

Jackson ducked as a hail of German bullets splashed into the wall behind him, then sprayed a quick burst towards the oncoming Germans. The British had fought hard, but the Germans had managed to drive them out of the first trench and then out of the second trench, fighting with them down the middle of the village. The British lines were contracting rapidly as both sides bled, but the Germans seemed to have unlimited reinforcements while Jackson only had the five hundred men in the village. He was also now in command. The Colonel had been shot by a German sniper an hour into the engagement, leaving the British more determined to fight on than ever.

The whine of shellfire echoed out again, and he dropped down into the trench. The Germans had shelled them from time to time, using it in expert tandem with their advancing infantry, forcing the British back. He didn’t realise that the explosions had somehow failed to happen until several minutes after his instincts told them that they should have detonated, and he peered out of the trench. The appearance of the German lines was in chaos; had they somehow bombed themselves? In such close quarters, he wouldn’t have been surprised.

”Sir,” Wilt called from his position. His voice was breaking with excitement and relief, the normally controlled sergeant gave vent to his emotions. “Tanks!”

Jackson didn’t understand at first. The Germans had tried a second panzer rush, but that had been stopped dead by his people; they wouldn’t repeat a failed tactic, would they? That would be unlike them. He glanced in the direction of the Germans, expecting to see advancing panzers, and saw, instead, German infantry beating a retreat. He glanced around, puzzled, and saw the mighty force of advancing British tanks, charging directly at the Germans and scattering them. His men were cheering and he joined them; whatever else had happened, the Germans had just been knocked back on their heels. Even the sight of an exploding tank, hit by a Panzerfaust, failed to destroy his relief; the tanks had saved them and secured the road for the British!

The image on the map told it all; the British armoured force had struck deep into the heart of 7th Panzer, bringing the Germans to a halt amid a confused battle that raged back and forth with no clear front-line, or indeed a clear winner. The British defences hadn’t broken at the new points of contact. Instead, they were working to pin down 7th Panzer while the supply lines were torn apart and the Centurions ripped through the infantry. 7th Panzer wasn’t used to defeat, and indeed they might still be able to win the battle, but only in a sense that would ruin the overall invasion.

Oberst Frank-Michael Baeck looked over at Rommel. Did he know that?

“Fall back,” Rommel sighed, finally. He wasn’t used to defeat either, but the fighting in North Africa had see-sawed back and forth before he’d finally been able to punch through the British defences and race to Cairo. “I want the infantry to remain in place and bleed the British if they attempt to leave the cities or advance too far forward. I want the panzers to mass again behind the front lines and prepare to cut off any British force that comes too far forward.”

His eyes met Baeck’s eyes. Surprisingly, he smiled.

“This isn’t defeat,” he stated after a moment. “Their lines have been hammered and we have trapped many thousands of their soldiers in their fortress cities where they can do us little harm. We are in position to launch a second offensive, and the British don’t have the resources to launch an offensive of their own. This is not defeat, Frank, this is the beginning of victory.”

Baeck looked down at the map and hoped that Rommel was right.

It just sounded like bravado to him.