The Invasion of 1950 (64 page)

Two miles to the south, the gunners prepared their weapons and checked their targeting coordinates. They had been ordered to plaster the German lines before the assault began and intended to hammer them into dust, but they had to be careful; in places, British and German forces were so close together that fratricide was almost bound to occur.

All along the line, they waited…

***

Colonel Harry Jackson braced himself as the guns fired in unison, a sha
ttering roar that seemed to erupt from right behind him, sending shells arcing up, and down onto the German line. The blinding flashes and deafening explosions in the distance watered his eyes and rang in his ears as the shells detonated, hammering the Germans.

He winced as the first shells crashed down around his headquarters The Germans were shelling them in an attempt to break up their attack before it could be launched. The weight of German shells seemed lighter, somehow, than it had been before; the noise, too, somehow seemed less deafening. Jackson wondered in a moment of dark humour if the Germans had intended to deafen them all. The first taste of shellfire had been terrifyingly loud, but he’d grown used to it.

The first line of tanks rumbled forwards, their commanders watching carefully for any Germans trying to block their path, and Jackson waved to his men. They trusted him now and so they streamed out of the trenches, heading north as fast as they could move behind the tanks. It wasn’t quite certain where they would meet the Germans; their trenches were surrounding Colchester itself and spreading out in a barrier, but no one really controlled the no-man’s land between the two sides. The noise of the tanks was drowned out completely by the shells, still crashing down on the Germans, and Jackson hoped that that would give them the advantage of surprise.

His men kept their heads down as they advanced, following the tanks as they picked up speed, trying to punch into the German lines before the Germans knew that they were there. The streak of a German antitank rocket, coming from a position that might once have been a small hamlet before both sides had fought over it, knocked out one tank, but the remainder kept going and the infantry assaulted the German position, carefully avoiding the machine gun fire from the remains of a house.

“Two prisoners, sir,” Sergeant Wilt reported after taking the ambush position. Jackson nodded. “They’re both infantrymen. The others fought and died.”

“Send the prisoners back to the rear, alive,” Jackson ordered tightly. They didn’t have the manpower to guard them indefinitely, and the two men had to be protected as POWs. He wouldn’t have put it past some of the soldiers to kill them in revenge. “The remainder of us will continue to advance.”

The landscape was torn and cratered. The area had once been a small town, but the Germans had assaulted it during their massive offensive. The Royal Irish Guards who had guarded this town had been added to the lists of heroes of the war. As the tanks spread out, Jackson’s men assaulted the position, knowing that it was a linchpin of the German defences surrounding Colchester. The Germans wanted to keep the forces in Colchester trapped…and now, with the Germans being attacked from the south…

Jackson looked up as the sounds of shooting and explosions from the north redoubled. At a guess, the thousands of infantrymen who had been trapped in Colchester and were turning the city into an impregnable fortress had launched their offensive, stabbing a knife into the German back. The enemy would be wise to order their forces to fall back before they were burned between two fires, but they didn’t seem aware of their danger; they fought and held the remains of the town as tenaciously as Jackson himself had held a similar town.

Inch by bloody inch, the town was cleared of the Germans, leaving nothing behind. The armoured divisions moved on towards the German lines, but the main roads had been blocked and mined. He saw a tank skid to a halt as a mine detonated under its treads, ruining the track. The other tanks headed off the road, around the tank, and continued to advance. He keyed his radio and called in the result, expecting engineers to come forward while the infantry cleared the area of German forces and continued the advance on Colchester.

They advanced, slowly, towards Colchester. He could see the city in the distance, a place he had never visited before and knew almost nothing about save only for the fact that the Germans had surrounded it and the British defenders had refused to allow them to take the city. The fighting was still being waged in the distance, but for the moment, Jackson and his men were caught in a peaceful lull which faded as a German aircraft raced overhead, launching a series of rockets at an advancing British unit. Jackson picked himself off the ground and barked, ordering the men to advance again. They were on the verge of hitting the lines around Colchester and hammering the Germans right where it hurt. The fighting raged on as they encountered a German defence line, one very well dug in and prepared…and then it just broke.

Jackson blinked in confusion. “What the hell?”

Sergeant Wilt understood and said as a long flagpole was extended with a tattered and singed British flag hanging from the staff. “They just got hit from the rear. That’s a British officer.”

The man facing them as the soldiers approached, warily was definitely wearing a British uniform…and was surrounded by other British soldiers, who were securing the handful of German prisoners. The Germans looked battered and scared. Just for a moment, Jackson saw how young most of them were and almost felt sorry for them. Their crimes, however, demanded nothing but the most serious punishment. He watched dispassionately as they were marched away.

“Major Massingbird,” the newcomer said. Rather than saluting, he held out a hand. Jackson gripped it in surprise. “Colchester Home Guard. Welcome to Colchester.”

Jackson laughed out loud.

“Thank you,” he said. “It’s a pleasure to be here.”

Near Colchester, England

Despite himself,
Oberst
Frank-Michael Baeck was beginning to understand how the British must have felt back during the early days of the invasion. They hadn’t known just what was going on, they hadn’t realised where the real threat lay…and because of that, they hadn’t been able to shove the Germans back into the sea before it was far too late.

Now, there were four major assaults going on, two from the south and two from the west, backed up by a massive aerial offensive and an insurgency campaign behind the lines. The Germans had thought that their rear was fairly secure but the British were showing them just how inadequate their imagination was and it wouldn’t be long before Colchester’s besiegers were completely annihilated or captured.

And Rommel was standing there, thinking. Baeck wanted to scream at him, in the desperate hope that Rommel’s genius could get them back out of their hole and back to a position of mastery. The British insurgents hadn’t managed to cut all of the telephone lines to the HQ, either the ones they’d commandeered or the new ones they’d laid to improve their secure communications, and reports kept coming in but Rommel did nothing.

“Field Marshal,” Baeck said finally. “What are your orders?”

Rommel's eyes were elsewhere. Perhaps he was contemplating the complete collapse of his career along with the lodgement. The forces out along the defence line were hopelessly small for the task of blocking every British attack. “They promised that we would have all the resupply...”

His head snapped up suddenly. “I want you to order a general retreat from the Colchester Line and the other outer defence lines,” he ordered. “We’ll fall back on Ipswich and use the defences there to buy time.”

Baeck didn’t want to say it, but there was no choice. Falling back on Ipswich would allow the Wehrmacht to create a smaller defensive line that could be more easily defended once they concentrated their forces.

More reports came in. British aircraft had broken through the
Luftwaffe’s
perimeter and had strafed a company of German soldiers on the ground. “We cannot leave our forces strung out to be destroyed piecemeal. Order
Das Reich
to move forward and cover the withdrawal back to Ipswich. That British assault force is likely to be the most important to foil.”

Baeck nodded and said, “
Jawohl
, I shall issue the orders at once.”

In the distance, the noise of shellfire grew louder. “Field Marshal, should we not prepare our own retreat to Ipswich?”

“I suppose,” Rommel said, his mind clearly heading elsewhere. “Send everyone who isn’t essential to Ipswich now, and we’ll follow them if the British bring this place under direct threat.”

***

Obergruppenfü
hrer
Dolphus Taenberger cursed as he finally received his orders. It had taken nearly a fortnight to reorganise
Das Reich
into something the
Waffen-SS
could be proud of and now he was being ordered to stand his ground and prevent the British from sealing up a neat little trap for the German forces. He’d listened to the reports and read between the line. The British had punched a massive hole in the German defence line and were well on their way to encircling the German forces before they could escape. Whatever shine Rommel tried to put on it, it was defeat, and the best
Das Reich
could do was prevent the retreat from turning into a complete rout.

“Advance,” he barked, and the massive force rumbled into motion.
Das Reich
, like all of the redesigned
Waffen-SS
forces, was almost a small army in its own right. It was a combination of an oversized Panzer Division, an infantry division and a small artillery section. They were supposed to have the best equipment and its own private air force, but with the war situation having taken such a turn, they were forced to improvise more than Taenberger would have liked.

They were already weaker than he cared to be, and some of his men hadn’t trained with the remainder of
Das Reich
  in fact, were little more than glorified thugs and bullyboys. They might have worn the same uniform as Taenberger himself, but they would never have qualified for the
Waffen-SS
. Their only reason for existing was to keep subject populations down. The only men lower than them were the extermination squads.

He raised his binoculars as he peered into the distance. The British assault was fading, judging from the declining number of explosions in the distance, but he was experienced enough to know what that meant. The British advancing forces were so close to the German forces that the British guns were holding their fire, in fear of accidentally slaughtering their own forces.  The British may have beaten 7
th
Panzer, but
Das Reich
was a whole different kettle of fish.

A red-hot pain tore through his shoulder, and he gasped in pain, just as the infantry unleashed a hail of shots into a small tree. An Englishman tumbled out of the tree, breaking his neck as he hit the ground. The infantry dismounted and attacked, discovering several more armed British civilians trying to hide. Taenberger allowed one of the medical corps-men to bandage his wound, commenting on how the Gruppenfuhrer should go to the rear with such a wound, but he glared the corps-man into silence. There were tales of SS men who had fought on despite the most punishing wounds, and he wasn't going to leave his men just because he’d been shot.

The infantry held up the British civilians for his attention. Taenberger dismissed any thought of them being a stay-behind unit at once; their tactical thinking had been appalling. They should have been able to kill him from a much longer range with that weapon; the
Waffen-SS
didn’t think highly of many British weapons, but the Haig Sniper Rifle was definitely respected. There were four of them in all, three of them young men and one young women, all trembling in fear.

Taenberger didn’t bother to mince words. “Where do you come from?”

“Down there,” one of the men said, trying to put a protective arm around the girl. His captor smacked him on the head; Taenberger nodded in approval. Judging from their appearance, they were brother and sister, rather than lovers. “Sir, I…”

“Shut up,” Taenberger commanded. He glanced around at the tree. “Hang them, quickly.”

He ignored their pleading screams, as the infantry strung them up quickly and efficiently. The pain in his shoulder was making it hard for him to think straight. The SS rules of engagement were very clear. A village that harboured insurgents was to be destroyed to discourage the others. Rommel wouldn’t be happy, but judging by the progress of the war, Rommel would likely be removed from command soon. He summoned his orderly, ordered a map, and examined it quickly. they should just have enough time.