He paused to listen to Himmler’s reply. “They’re landing paratroopers at Arnhem,” he snapped, when Himmler had finished. “Mien Fuhrer, I have hardly any communication with forces west of Arnhem; they’re gone, or they’ve been cut off. The road and rail network is in shambles, utterly ruined. Mien Fuhrer, we have to start moving troops north from France.”
Himmler protested that it had to be a diversion. “Mien Fuhrer, if they can make a diversion on this scale, we’ve lost anyway,” Kesselring protested, wishing that Himmler would return to being his cold calculating self. God alone knew how many deaths the Wehrmacht and the SS units had suffered; the British seemed to take delight in targeting the SS units from the air. “We have to move now, before we lose the capability to do anything at all…”
Himmler reluctantly gave his assent. “Thank you, Mien Fuhrer,” Kesselring said. “I’ll report to you as soon as I can.”
He put down the phone and turned to the map, which was being updated as fast as the information flew in through the telephone lines, which themselves were being hammered. The entire western region of the Netherlands had been marked in red, even though basic logistics suggested that the enemy had only just begun to land his real armoured force. The paratroopers had to be counter-attacked as swiftly as possible and he barked orders, knowing that the older forces near Germany’s borders with the Netherlands were only just up to the task.
“Get me General Adolf Galland,” he snapped. “Now!”
He waited impatiently, snapping out other orders. The operator had to work hard to set up the connection; the direct links to the forward air bases had been severed by the British attacks. He frowned as he looked at the map, bringing the forces from the West Wall back to Germany would not be hard, but the forces assembled in France had taken a pounding. He issued orders for them to return and issued similar – illegal – orders to the forces near Denmark.
“We need a mobile reserve, now,” he snapped. “Move it.”
“General Galland, Herr Field Marshal,” the operator said. Kesselring took the phone and listened.
“Adolf, this is it,” Kesselring said. “It’s the real invasion, it has to be.”
Galland spoke with a heavy heart. “They’ve knocked out some of our bases,” he said. “I can only put two thousand planes in the air.”
“Only two thousand,” Kesselring said. He remembered when two thousand planes would have seemed like a miracle. “Send them, General; send everything you can. We need time and the Luftwaffe has to buy it for us. We need intelligence and the Luftwaffe has to get it for us. We need air support, and the Luftwaffe…”
“I understand,” Galland snapped. “We will do what we can, Herr Field Marshal.”
Galland didn’t bluster, like Goring, or make false promises. Kesselring knew that he would do what he could. “Thank you, Adolf,” he said. “We know that you will give us your best.”
“Enjoy the war,” Galland snapped. “The peace is going to be terrible.”
He put the phone down. Back in his headquarters, Kesselring returned to worrying about the future. There just wasn’t time!
The AWACS operator called in the contacts in a stunned tone. Squadron Leader Shelia Dunbar took one look at the display and started to bark orders, ordering her formation to prepare for the fight of their lives. She cursed the efficiency of modern radar; she hadn’t wanted to know how many enemy aircraft there were, making their way towards the invasion zone.
“Two thousand,” Flying Officer James Brooke breathed. He sounded dazed. “Two fucking thousand.”
“Silence,” Dunbar snapped. The speed was closing far too fast for the AWACS; she knew that she had to issue orders on her own authority. “Activate datalink; share targets.”
There was a short pause as entire squadrons linked into the data network that was being built between the RAF aircraft and the Royal Navy ships near the coast. “Select targets with ASRAAMS, stand by to fire,” Dunbar said. The AWACS controller said nothing; Dunbar smiled at the thought of the roasting he would get from his senior officers later. It wasn’t as if the AWACS was in any danger.
“Fire,” Dunbar ordered. Almost every aircraft in the air launched missiles, sending a wave of unstoppable missiles towards the German aircraft, hacking them from the sky with ease. The Germans had learnt much, deploying counter-measures with skill and verve, and they had some successes, but not enough. The wall of ASRAAM missiles found their targets… and Germans died by the thousands.
“Here they come,” Brooke said. The survivors hadn’t given up; they were still attempting to close. The RAF closed in on them, firing cannons and a handful of missiles, attempting to defeat them as the wall of Luftwaffe planes slammed into them. For a long chilling time, Dunbar lost track of everything, but the desire to kill…
“The ships are engaging,” the AWACS controller said. The Royal Navy ships were firing massive blasts of machine-gun fire into the sky, each one guided by a sophisticated radar network that picked German planes up with ease. Dunbar cursed as she ran out of ammunition, blowing the tail end off a JU-88 bomber that had been attempting to bomb positions in Amsterdam itself.
Suddenly, chillingly, the sky was clear. Dunbar and the rest of the RAF let the surviving Germans go; the slaughter on both sides had been horrific. Dunbar checked the timer; the entire battle had lasted only ten minutes.
“It felt longer,” she muttered, as she sent a notification to the AWACS that she had run out of ammunition and was returning to base again. “Dear god, it really did feel longer than ten minutes.”
General Robert Flynn set up his command post in Beverwijk as the day drew to a close. The battle had been shockingly brutal, far more brutal than he’d really expected, but the Germans had fought bitterly. SS units, in particular, had fought to the death; there were still holdouts in Amsterdam and Rotterdam.
“Fuck me,” he muttered, as he collapsed into a chair. The SAS paratrooper division had fought hard at Arnhem, seizing one of the bridges that would be needed intact, and they’d made it, holding out against increasing German pressure. He’d feared he was going to lose them when the Germans had begun their major air offensive, but they’d held.
He shook his head in awe. They’d bled like nothing on Earth, but they’d held, and a mechanised infantry battalion had finally relived them from fears of losing the bridges they’d seized. He wasn’t certain how useful they would be, but having them intact counted for something, didn’t it?
He smiled to himself, and then allowed himself to think of the future. Almost the entire stock of precision weapons had been poured onto the landing zone and Germany. Admittedly the damage they’d inflicted would take the Germans weeks to repair, but the Allies had their own problems to overcome.
He shuddered. The long hard road into Germany still lay ahead…
Chapter Thirty-Six: Containment
Fuhrerbunker
Berlin, Germany
3rd June 1942
“They have successfully secured a lodgement on the mainland,” Kesselring said. Himmler seemed to be taking the news calmly. “Despite the Luftwaffe’s brave sacrifice, we have been unable to do more than shell from a long distance the enemy positions. In effect, they control most of the Netherlands, and we assume that they are repairing the ports.”