Once beyond the Meuse the Panzers met with only sporadic resistance – the frantic firing of a few shells from artillery pieces, a rattle of machine guns, an irregular thump of mortar bombs falling somewhere. The general drove his division forward non-stop along the main road, thundering across France in a cloud of dust while the early summer sun beat down on the iron column. Away from the road, women working in the fields stopped to watch that dust cloud which rose like a smokescreen against the hot blue sky. It was a beautiful morning, the sky cloudless, the sun building up the intense warmth which suggested leisured ease rather than total warfare. Some of the women thought that the dust cloud marked the progress of a French column, although it was travelling in the wrong direction. Others stood and wondered, a feeling of depression and fear clutching their hearts, but still not able to accept the fact that the German army had broken through.
For this is exactly what it had done – it had broken clean through the French lines where the Ninth and Second Armies met – the least defensible point along any continuous front. And so far, since the dive-bombers had smashed all resistance on the west bank of the Meuse, there had been no fierce battles, none at all. Because the general was young, in the prime of life and endowed with enormous funds of energy and optimism, his sixth sense was beginning to tell him something. It was a matter of keeping going, of not stopping for anything. This mood was not shared by Colonel Hans Meyer.
There was an ugly scene when the general’s tank halted briefly in the centre of a French village. Behind him four more heavy tanks rumbled into the square and halted, their huge guns revolving slowly round the upper windows of the old square, menacing even the thought of resistance. Meyer climbed down from his tank and approached the general, who remained in his turret, still standing erect, his face expressionless as he handed down his map.
‘Meyer, the patrol has taken that road,’ he pointed with his gloved hand, ‘but is it the right one? They have assured me that it is – what do you think?’
Meyer examined the map quickly, looked round at the exits from the square, consulted his own map, and handed the other back to the general.
‘I’m sure they are right, sir.’
‘We’d better check with the locals. You speak French. That man over there – ask him.’
The general took off his glove, unbuttoned his holster flap, extracted his pistol, and pointed it at a middle-aged man with a grey moustache. It was an astonishing scene: the sun shining down so that it was almost hot, the inhabitants standing in the old square rigid with fear, like waxwork figures out of a tableau. Only five minutes earlier they had been going about their daily routines with a touch of anxiety but with no real fear. Then it had happened – the scared boy running into the square shouting something about a huge dust cloud. He had hardly finished telling his story when the motor-cyclists had flashed across the square, tyres screaming at the corners, vanishing as they raced off to the west. People had come out of their houses at the commotion, completely bewildered. A woman had seen German soldiers in the side-cars, helmeted figures carrying machine-pistols. Arguments had broken out. She must be mad, must be seeing things. And while they argued and wondered the general had arrived with five tanks. The village was paralysed as he unsheathed his pistol and aimed it.
The man with the moustache stepped forwards and sideways, presenting his body to the pistol muzzle, shielding a woman instinctively. His wife. A hush of horror fell on the sunlit square. Even Meyer was disturbed. He spoke quickly.
‘That won’t be necessary.’
‘Ask him, Meyer.’
The gun remained levelled at the man’s chest. Meyer stepped forward, his face stiff with anger. He even placed his own body between the man and the pointed muzzle as he addressed him in excellent French.
‘Which is the direct route to St Quentin? You see what we have with us, so think carefully before you reply. The direct route to St Quentin.’
The Frenchman moistened his lips and glanced sideways as an Army truck drove into the square. Before it had pulled up men were jumping out of the back, German soldiers armed with rifles and machine-pistols. Their sergeant held a map in his hand, a detailed map of the district. He glanced around quickly, pointed, and a detachment ran into a building. Outside in the square, the moustached Frenchman had taken his decision: he had his wife to consider, and the other villagers. He pointed in the direction the motor-cyclists had taken, his hand wobbling.
‘That is the way to St Quentin – the only direct way. I swear to God.’
Meyer nodded and turned round, his body still shielding the Frenchman while the general put away his pistol.
‘He says the route is down that street. He’s telling the truth, I’m sure of it.’
‘Good, good. As long as we’re sure.’ The general turned round in his turret and called out to the sergeant who stood by the truck with several of his men.
‘Tell them we come as liberators. Tell them also that at the slightest sign of resistance they will all be shot.’ He broke off impatiently. ‘You know what to say, I should hope. We are pressing on.’
He issued the order to his driver and the tank rumbled away from the square, leaving Meyer to scramble up inside his own vehicle while the villagers stood perfectly still, not yet able to grasp the nightmare which had arrived in brilliant sunshine.
I’m right, the general told himself as the tank advanced into open country beyond the village, I do believe I’m right. He allowed a little of the exultation to well up inside him. There isn’t going to be any real resistance. Those people in the village were symbolic: the shock of the armoured hammer had smashed French morale, had brought on a state of psychological paralysis. We must keep moving, on and on. And on and on raced the German spearhead, a spearhead tipped by the 14th Panzer division, commanded by General Heinrich Storch.
The tank crew had been entombed inside the tunnel for over twenty-four hours and the strain was telling. In spite of the fact that they had spent over two-thirds of their time in back-breaking toil, removing large boulders with their bare hands, carting away hundredweights of debris with the shovels they carried on the tank, their state of near-physical exhaustion still couldn’t prevent them from thinking, and the longer they remained trapped inside the hill the more they began to wonder whether they would ever leave the tunnel alive. Barnes paused to lean on his shovel, wiping sweat from his dripping forehead as he looked at his watch in the headlights. Seven o’clock in the evening of Friday May 17th.
They had driven into the tunnel at eleven o’clock on the morning of the previous day and there was still no sign that they had more than scraped the surface of the landslide. At the rock face, its impenetrable solidity, only too apparent in the pitiless headlight beams, Davis and Reynolds wrestled to haul out a massive boulder from the left-hand side of the wall. The two men were working together as a team while Barnes and Penn wielded the shovels – a sensible division of labour since the two troopers were easily the strongest men in the crew. Barnes stood back and watched them working while he began his fifteen-minute break. He had organized the work routine so they had fifteen minutes off in every hour, and he had further arranged that the breaks should be taken in pairs, so that each man had someone to talk to, but at the same time he was encouraged by still seeing the work in progress. Four men resting at the same time, all voicing their fears, could have a disastrous effect on morale.