AAR - West Front - "Fighting Frenchmen"

[RAF]

This is the fourth AAR in a series.

The earlier entries are:
(1) "And We Shall Stand"
(2) "Dortmund"
(3) “Foretaste of Disaster”

With the battle for Neufchateau winding down, it did not take long for headquarters to give me new orders. I had to travel north again, this time to Liege, Belgium. There, I was to meet with the 5th/4 Panzer Brigade under the command of General Sachs.

I had until morning, and we managed to clear the enemy out of Neufchateau a little early. This meant that I had an opportunity to try to find somebody to carry another batch of intelligence to the allied lines. I had no idea if my efforts were doing any good. I certainly would not be able to go around killing officers everywhere I went – somebody will get suspicious. Yet, if anybody found these documents, and interrogated the person who had them for a description of the person who provided them, that would not do me any good either.

I knew that most of my countrymen would call me traitor for what I did. They would be angry with me if they found out. However, for a country under the grip of somebody like Hitler – who wanted the whole world under that same grip, I simply felt that I had to decide between betraying my country by fighting against Hitler, or fighting for Hitler and betraying the whole of humanity.

Yet, there are risks in war. I look around at the bodies that get piled up around me and I know that others are taking risks as well. Certainly, it is no argument against taking action in war time that one might get hurt. Again, I looked for a young and confident woman whose husband, as far as I could determine, was a soldier. Such a woman would be patriotic and determined to do as much for her country as her husband did. I gave her my stack of notes to smuggle to the allies, then I moved on.

It was a 200km trip up to Liege from Neufchateau on the normal route. In order to make a safer trip, we took a route further east, through areas that were more secure. We still faced constant roadblocks and calls to provide our papers, which delayed us even further. Consequently, a trip that should have taken us less than three hours ended up taking almost six.

I was able to get some sleep as I lay in the sidecar of the motorcycle. When I was not sleeping, I worked on my report, in which I praised Lieutenant Colonel Balck highly. He was dead; I did not need to disguise how good he was. The Germans would not be able to use the information. I also gave praise for Lieutenant Colonel Kramer; his slow and costly efforts to take Neufchateau made him just the type of German leader that the Allies sorely needed.

In the morning, I let my driver and bodyguard sleep, while I joined the army moving west.

The 5th/4 Panzer Brigade had reached Hannut. It had been somewhat chewed up in earlier fighting and average wear and tear. 6 Company II/36 Panzer Battalion, for example, entered the battle missing two of its eight Panzer IVD tanks. However, the brigade was substantially intact, at least for now, and ready to fight.

General Sachs’ plan was to first use the 35/5th Panzer Regiment (located on the north side of Hannut) to cut the road from Thisnes to Crehan. The 36th/5 Panzer Regiment would cut the road southwest of Crehan. Then, the 12th/4 Motorized Rifle Regiment would move in and take the town. From there, the armor would continue on to take the high ground southwest of town.

I decided to travel with the 35/5th Panzer Regiment. Its leader, I was to discover, was a Colonel Kramer. I never got a chance to ask if he was related to the Lieutenant Colonel that had fought at Neufchateau.

[RAF]

In thinking back to my previous acts of treason, the only time that I was confident that my efforts had gotten information into enemy hands was in Norway. There, I delivered it myself to enemy soldiers who were watching us while our troops moved up the road. At Chebrehez, we spiraled in on the town so that, by the time we took it, the enemy had been cleared out of the countryside. At Neufchateau, our forces simply kept pushing out until the enemy had been driven too far away to be a threat.

What I needed to do was to get into the fight. During the confusion of battle, I needed to find an enemy soldier, hand him the papers, and tell him to retreat and get them to his commanding officer. Looking at the map, the best hope would come from being among the lead infantry units into Wasseiges or Branchon. Of course, that meant getting shot at, since I would be in my German uniform.

Another hope was to approach the enemy troops at Thisnes or Merdorp – which General Sachs hoped to bypass as being irrelevant to the day’s objectives.

I went ahead with 6 Company, II/35 Panzer Battalion on the right flank. The company had eight PzIVD tanks; some of the best guns on the field. Its initial orders were to travel west, to the hills overlooking Thisnes. Thisnes was one of the towns to be bypassed, but there was value in looking at what was there first.

While we crossed the open field, the enemy opened up with their artillery. The enemy had a LOT of artillery, and they had focused it on the town of Fond Overnas, north of Hannus.

General Sachs had pulled his infantry back, waiting to find out what the Panzer battalions discovered before committing his infantry. The 2nd/7 Recon Company of armored cars had gone through the town, and somebody must have spotted them. However it happened, the enemy considered Fond Overnas to be enemy territory and lobbed every shell they had onto the village.

This immediately said two things to me.

First, if the enemy had that many guns here, then they probably had a lot of other things to go with those guns. Out there in those fields, they had set up for a battle.

Second, if they had that many guns, then they had weapons that could punch holes through armor. Rifles and machine guns could not do much to a tank; but a 75mm infantry gun was a different story.

For a moment, I thought about the possibility that General Sachs could be entering into a trap, and that I should let him. However, I had a job to do and if I performed poorly then I would be replaced, and there was no telling how I would end up. I radioed my observations into headquarters.

With all of the artillery, it would be murder for our infantry to spend any time at all in one place. They would either have to be hidden, or moving. If the battle lines became stagnate, we would suffer.

I thought about the situation in Longlier where it took a Kampgruppe Balck considerable amount of time to surround and overrun an enemy stronghold in the center of town, and Kampfgruppe Kramer getting stalled at Sart east of Hamipre. If those situations arose here, with the enemy capable of bringing all of that artillery to bear, the results would be catastrophic for the infantry.

[RAF]

As soon as we showed up on the hill looking down on Thisnes, the enemy opened up on us. Shells started bouncing off of the Panzer IVD tanks of 6 Company II/35 Panzer Battalion. I ducked behind one of the tanks.

However, the company held firm.

They spotted two anti-tank guns poking their noses out of the buildings where the road entered town, about a kilometer ahead – one on each side of the road. III Platoon took the gun on the left, while IV Platoon took the gun on the right. It took III Platoon only minutes to find its mark. The building it targeted went up with a shower of burning splinters. They fired some additional shells into the debris for good measure. IV Platoon had a little more trouble finding its mark. The shed on its side was so thin that the shells passed through to explode on the other side, until the platoon finally hit something with a little more substance. When the Panzer IVD tanks quit firing there was silence.

At least, there was silence where we were at.

West of us, 5 Company II/36 Panzer Battalion moved through the south side of Crehan and moved forward where it could look down on Thisnes from the southeast.

Recall that 35 Panzer Battalion, the battalion that I was traveling with, was to take control of the roads west of Crehan, while 36 Panzer Battalion took control of the roads south. 5 Company was on the northern flank of 36 Panzer Battalion. So, even though 35 Panzer Battalion was engaging the enemy at Thisnes (without a loss), 36 Battalion suffered the only loss.

The enemy had a large anti-tank gun on that approach to the city as well. It ripped through a PanzerIB tank and left it a pile of rubble on the hillside. That was one of two sets of guns that had been spotted on the south side of Thisnes.

Our Panzer IVD tanks were ordered south to confront this threat.

One sad fact is that, at this time, we did not have any artillery yet. It had not reached the map. Therefore, we had no way to call in a barrage against the enemy. We did have a squadron of Stukkas who were ready to offer support. However, General Sachs wanted to save those for enemy artillery that we may spot outside of the normal range of our guns.

Our gunners did well. III Platoon, 6 Company II/35 Panzer Battalion – the same platoon that so quickly dispatched its gun a few minutes earlier, got into position to take out another battery of guns on the southeast side of Thisnes, and scored the destruction of two more guns – this time at a range of over a kilometer.

Meanwhile, 5 Company II/35 Panzer Battalion inched ahead to take on the guns that had destroyed the Panzer IB from 4 Company. They were already within a kilometer of their target – they only needed to get around some trees that were in the way. The enemy guns fired first at the Panzer IBs. With the first enemy shell to bounce off of one of the tanks. The driver put the tank in reverse and retreated into Crehan. This panicked the rest of the platoon. It took a few minutes of frantic shouting for the Lieutenant in charge to get the platoon stopped and turned around, but the panic spread no further than this. The other tanks in the platoon did edge forward. III Platoon started drawing enemy fire once I Platoon had retreated into town. Yet, they moved forward and pumped 20mm shells into the enemy positions.

One thing I noticed, that I thought important enough to tell headquarters, is that these were not the standard 37mm anti-tank guns that we were accustomed to using in the German army. (In fact, we had a company of these guns hiding in Hannut waiting for the order to come forward.) These were larger – 47mm guns, which had the power to do real damage to our thin-skinned Panzer IB and Panzer IIF tanks.

[RAF]

General Sachs changed his mind. He decided that he wanted to capture the enemy town of Thisnes. I bit my tongue. It was within my power to call General Sachs and recommend alternatives. As a matter of fact, I agreed with his earlier plan to reserve the infantry to capture Wasseiges and Branchon. Because I disagreed with this plan, I kept my opinions strictly to myself.

General Sachs’ plan was to clear a path free from enemy fire down to the east side of town. Trucks would rush elements of the II/12 Motorized Rifle Battalion in, unload the infantry, than rush out again, clearing the way for the next group of trucks. As the number of German soldiers in the city grew they would force their way through town.

Besides the fact that he would be weakening companies of infantry that he might need elsewhere, General Sachs’ plan would put the infantry under risk of enemy artillery.

Before moving the infantry up, General Sachs had to make sure that he had cleared the enemy out of those locations where they might fire on the approaching vehicles. He ordered the tanks of II/35 Panzer Battalion forward for a closer look.

5 Company II/36 Panzer Battalion moved up on the southwest side of town. The enemy had fired some 47mm anti-tank guns from this area earlier and destroyed a Panzer IB from 5 Company II/35 Panzer Battalion. Now that those guns had been silenced, the area appeared quiet. However, Sachs wanted to make sure. 5 Company moved closer, firing into the line of trees. Two Panzer IIIF tanks moved up the road. They had almost reached the area where the enemy anti-tank guns were when they were met by machinegun fire. One of the Panzer IIIF tanks went up in a huge fireball. The driver of the other tank put it in reverse and backed away from the enemy.

On the northwest side of town, 6 Company was also approaching to the very edge of the city, firing at places that the enemy would likely use for cover. One likely location was the area where the road entered the town, where 6 Company had already destroyed two anti-tank guns. A platoon of five Panzer IIF tanks rolled up the road at this location. Just as they were about to enter the city, they too drew machinegun fire.

Sachs needed to drive the enemy away from these locations. He had all of his available weapons fire on these two locations. The enemy was well dug in, and showed little signs of wanting to give up their defenses. For a while, it appeared that they might hold. He ordered the tanks to advance on the enemy – to meet them nose to nose. Given the fate of the Panzer IIIF, the drivers were reluctant, but they did obey.

Eventually, spotters saw the enemy machine gunners pick up their weapons and retreat. 6 Company was able to rake a couple of machine gun teams as they fled, taking them down.

With the road to Thisnis now cleared, Sachs sent in the infantry. Trucks sped down the road to the edge of town, dropped 7 Company, II/12 Motorized Rifle Battalion off at the edge of town, then fled. While 7 Company was getting organized, another batch of trucks came to the edge of town carrying 6 Company, II/12 Motorized Rifle Battalion. While the company commanders got these units organized and ready to enter the city, 8 Company (machine gun and mortar platoons) prepared to make the next run across the open and into town.

Company commanders assigned objectives to platoon commanders. Platoon commanders gave quick orders to their company commanders. Every expected enemy artillery to start falling any minute – particularly if they stayed out in the field. Orders were given, and 300 soldiers went running into town.

[RAF]

Two companies of infantry and two companies of tanks started their march through Thisnes. The infantry moved from building to building. One squad would move ahead and set up positions. Then the next squad would move ahead and set up positions. All the while our tanks would roll down the middle of the streets, firing at anything that looked like enemy resistance.

Our forces moved faster than the enemy soldiers holding the town could retreat. We took a few prisoners; other enemy soldiers were simply shot to save the platoons the effort of dealing with the prisoners. Of course, the German command liked prisoners, and the officers tried to maintain discipline to gather as many prisoners as possible.

The two machine gun platoons that we had driven back from the edge of town tried to set themselves up inside of town. They would introduce themselves by firing on our soldiers making their way through the city. Then the tanks would find a target and fire. Typically, the enemy had already picked up and retreated further by then.

On the right flank, the enemy had not moved fast enough. 7 Company II/12 Motorized Rifle Battalion caught up with enemy teams scrambling to set up machine gun emplacements on the far side of the road. Some quick bursts from some German machine guns, and the enemy positions were silenced.

The left flank moving through Thisnes – made up of the 5th Panzer Company and 5 Motorized Rifle Company – were not able to catch up with their prey. The enemy soldiers retreated through the southern side of town and into some emplacements that they had prepared on the southwest corner of town.

I was still riding with the Panzer IVD tanks of 6th Panzer Company when we rolled into town. We moved passed the two anti-tank emplacements that once protected this approach. What had once been enemy defenses now had enemy soldiers sitting or standing, disarmed, closely guarded while they waited to be processed as prisoners.

I sensed an opportunity here to get some of my notes over to an enemy soldier who could then carry them off to enemy intelligence, but I would have to travel with the infantry rather than the tanks. I hopped off. An instant later, I was flat on the ground, my ears were ringing, and . . . for a while, I could not figure out where I was. I was surrounded by explosions – another shock wave ruffled my clothes and unsettled the dirt around me.

Blinking the dust out of my eyes, I saw the Panzer IVD tanks had turned their turrets to the northwest and were firing. Heavy enemy shells hissed passed. We were under attack from another set of anti-tank guns that had been set up northwest of the city. The tanks took care of them quickly.

I checked myself for wounds. I seemed okay. One of the enemy guns had apparently fired a high-explosive round (though armored-piercing would have been better against the tanks), and I had gotten caught in the blast – enough to be knocked off my feet, but not harmed. I was lucky.

It was time to join the infantry. I Platoon, 7 Company, II/12 Motorized Rifle Battalion was heading off through a residential section of town to the west. They were checking houses as they went, down both sides of the street. I saw a couple of German soldiers stuffing something into their pockets as they came out of one of the buildings. They saw me. I looked them square in the eye with the intention to report them later as possible looters. This was a professional army, with rules, even though they were not always closely obeyed (and would be less so as time went on).

Our street ended at a small river – a creek, really, that flowed through town. As the first units reached the end of the road, the buildings erupted in small explosions. Brick and mortar flew about. Another set of enemy anti-tank guns, set up to protect the town from an assault from the north, had turned their guns on us.

We were not the only ones advancing through town. II Platoon was on our left, and on the other side of the creek. We drew fire, while II Platoon drew closer. They were able to attack the enemy from behind. We got the anti-tank guns, actually, Snipers attached to our platoon managed to take out the gunners just across the river. II Platoon took out the infantry support. Enemy soldiers came out of the defenses with hands up.

There were still a few enemy squads driven back to the far south-western corner of the town. Other than that, Thisnes was in German hands.