Gregory received these tidings with very mixed feelings. It was good that the two countries had decided to fight. Their Air Forces were, unfortunately, negligible but Holland could put 600,000 men in the field and Belgium the best part of 1,000,000. True, the Dutch equipment was not very up to date but they were a stout-hearted race who had proved their courage many times and took a place second to none in the annals of those nations which had fought and endured to secure their independence. As a nation the Belgians were a much younger people and they were a mixed race of Flemings and Walloons, so Gregory doubted if they had the solidarity of the Dutch; on the other hand, their Army was not only larger but was said to have been greatly improved in recent years. Taking even the most cynical view, he felt that this 1,600,000 new enemies which Hitler had acquired overnight would at least inflict considerable damage on him before they could be put out of action—which was something definitely to the good.
As against that, he well remembered the manner in which Sir Pellinore had laid down the law to him less than a week ago on the subject of strategy in the Low Countries. He had made it very clear that as long as the British stood upon the Franco-Belgian frontier it would be extremely difficult for the Germans to inflict a major defeat upon them; but that once they moved out of their fortified zone they would have to meet the Germans tank for tank, gun for gun and man for man.
In the evening he learnt that in addition to innumerable Dutch and Belgian cities the Germans had also bombed Nancy, Lille, Colmar, Lyons, Pontoise, Bethune, Lens, Hazebrouck, Abbeville and Calais, but that the Dutch had blown up the bridges on the Yssel and Maas so that the first onslaught of the northernmost German Army had definitely been checked.
The Germans were reinforcing their troops in Rotterdam harbour by landing men from seaplanes and they had captured the great bridge over the river, but the situation in the centre of the city remained obscure. Gregory did not think the fighting was very near, but salvoes of bombs were being launched from time to time near enough for him to hear them whistling through the air. At ten-past ten a big fellow falling about a hundred yards away shattered the window of his cell. It was not pleasant to remain locked up during almost continuous air-raids, but the Police Headquarters was a massive building and Gregory felt that he was infinitely safer there than he had been at Andalsnes and managed to get some sleep between raids.
On the Saturday morning news came which put him into a more cheerful frame of mind. At nine o'clock the previous evening Chamberlain had announced his resignation and Churchill was the new Premier. It was good to think that Chamberlain had proved equal to the emergency and that Britain at last had a war leader worthy of her.
The local news was also good. The Germans had not succeeded in making any deep penetration into Holland and were being held at Delfzyl, the key position at the extreme northern end of the new greatly extended Allied line. In the previous day's fighting the small Dutch Air Force had behaved with great gallantry and more than a hundred German planes had been brought down over Holland, while a further forty-four had crashed on French territory. Hitler was certainly not getting it all his own way.
After Gregory had lunched, Inspector Fockink, now begrimed and unshaven but still resolute, entered the cell. He told Gregory that in the normal course of events he would have been taken before a magistrate the previous morning, but that with enemy troops holding various key positions in the city all normal judicial procedure had had to be temporarily suspended.
Gregory asked, jokingly, if there was such a thing as a writ for habeas corpus in Holland, and, on the Inspector's inquiring what he meant, he explained that it was an ancient law, considered by Englishmen to be the keystone of their liberties, by which a man could not be held in prison for more than twenty-four hours unless he was brought into court on a definite charge laid against him.
The Inspector said that in Holland the liberty of the subject was protected by somewhat similar measures, but in the present instance he was quite certain that they would not be operative.
No replies had yet been received to either of the telegrams and the telephone lines to The Hague had been cut by saboteurs so it was impossible to ring up the British Legation; but Fockink seemed quite friendly and having accepted a drink from Gregory's small private bar gave him the latest details of the fighting. The Fortress of Maastricht, in the extreme south of Holland, had fallen with the loss of 3,000
men and the Germans had overrun Belgian Limburg; they had also captured Malmedy and Vitry and reached the Albert Canal. This seemed amazingly good going after a bare day-and-a-half and Gregory could only pray that the Belgians would be able to hold the line of the Canal, which was their main defence, until the British came up.
The Dutch had been forced back towards Arnhem and it had now become apparent that the maximum German pressure was being exerted in this area with the objective of driving a wedge right through to the coast, and thereby cutting the whole of north Holland off from south Holland and Belgium. In the meantime, desperate fighting was taking place out at the Schipol air-port as the Dutch had now brought up strong reinforcements of their Regular troops in an attempt to recapture it.
In the evening Gregory heard that the Dutch had succeeded in retaking the aerodrome after a most bloody action in which they had lost a thousand killed and three times that number wounded. His warder was very cock-a-hoop about this victory and also about the fine exploit of the Dutch warship, Jan van Galen, which had made its way through a minefield laid by the Germans and shelled several of their troop-carriers which were landing reinforcements on the shore, causing them great loss. At nine o'clock Gregory went to bed to spend another uneasy night constantly broken by violent explosions.
On the Sunday his routine did not differ from the preceding days. The police were much too occupied even to give him an hour's exercise in the courtyard so he spent the day trying to shut out the now monotonous din while he attempted to read or follow on his war map the progress of the great battle that was raging.
The Germans had pierced the Albert Canal in two places and were making a rapid advance through the Ardennes. They had also launched another attack on the French front, between the Forest of Warndt and the Saar, while in Holland they had driven their central wedge past Arnhem and south of that town were reported to be within fifty miles of the coast.
During the day all sorts of stories came through about the Germans' Fifth Column activities. Apparently the Gestapo had established secret arms-depots in practically every town in Holland and organised the Dutch Fascists and other political groups to sabotage their country's own war effort when the day came.
Many of these groups had also had secret stores of Dutch military and police uniforms, the use of which enabled them to issue false orders and spread defeatist rumours from what appeared to be authoritative sources.