Updated Sunday 15 May, 2011 12:18 PM

Well, this should mark the penultimate part of my Point of Departure series, which has taken almost two years to write and which once got me bawled out by my (happily) ex-boss for daring to write something during my lunch break. This has been my first venture into alternate time lines and I hope that everyone has had as much fun reading this thing as I had writing it. I’m already planning my next, which will hopefully be a hell of a lot shorter.

Hammer blows in the night

It started, to quote some of the more uninspired histories of the war, like a night like any other. But it rapidly became a night like no other.

The Allied invasion of France began at 11.47pm, July 19, 1943, when six gliders filled with British troops materialized out of the night sky and landed next to the bridges over the Caen canal and the river Orne. Feeble German resistance was mercilessly crushed and the bridges were captured intact.

Initial German reactions were hesitant and confused, especially as it was very difficult to contact anyone by telephone. The resistance seemed to be everywhere, blowing up telephone poles, cutting wires and making sure that motorcycle dispatch riders disappeared into the night forever.

Most German radar sites had either been destroyed in the heavy bombing along the entire northern coast of France, but the few working ones were reporting massive jamming.

The confusion became even worse when, after 1am on July 20^th, reports started to come in of paratrooper landings in eastern and western Normandy. The reports mushroomed rapidly, as a sketchy picture emerged of British paratroopers around the Dives and Orne rivers, American paratroopers near St-Mere-Eglise and Carentan and an unidentified mass of violently contested landings south of Bayeaux.

Worried German staff officers started to suspect that this was something bigger than a commando raid. Could it be an invasion? But surely that was going to come in the south of France, or in the Pas-de-Calais? And what about these reports that the Bayeaux landings were really exploding rubber dummies? The few open telephone lines resonated with the cries of Fallschirmjager! and Gummipuppen!

By dawn that morning it was confirmed beyond doubt when large Allied flotillas emerged from the early morning haze. They then started to pour concentrated and extremely accurate bombardments onto German fortifications, ammunition dumps, airstrips troop assembly areas, and anything else marked with a swastika within range of the big naval guns. D-day had arrived and it had started with a bang.

The German defences in Normandy, reeling from the bombardment and already in a state of confused bewilderment, crumbled rapidly as the Allies stormed ashore on five separate beachheads. By midday the US 1^st division had stormed off Colorado beach on the east side of the Cotentin Peninsula and had linked up with the 82^nd Airbourne division. The 12^th Infantry Division had stormed south from Omaha beach, after taking higher than expected casualties on the beaches. At about the same time men of the British 51^st Highland division had marched to Benouville and relieved the Red Devils (as the Germans already called them after a series of stinging attacks during the battle of Corsica) at the river and canal bridges.

On the right flank of the Highlanders the British 3^rd Division, supported by elements of the 1^st Armoured Brigade, equipped with factory-new Centurion tanks, swept forwards to liberate the somewhat dazed city of Caen in the early evening. Five Allied divisions (eight if you counted the British 1^st and American 82^nd and 101^st Airbourne divisions), with elements of 3 others were all ashore in a broad front from the River Orne to the Cotentin peninsula and Allied gains were very nearly in line with Montgomery’s projections.

The German 7^th Army, which was responsible for that sector of the French coastline, reeled under the hammer blows of the invasion. By the end of July 19^th it had already lost a fifth of its strength and was on the ropes.

Although Hitler rants and raves about throwing the Allies back into the sea, it is clear that there were no reserves to do so and that a defensive campaign is inevitable. The few reserves that are available are needed to stem the Soviet advance in the east, not to mention the constant drain caused by the southern front, where Patton is making a pest of himself in the unlikely setting of central Switzerland.

From his headquarters in Paris, Von Rundstedt takes a very jaundiced look at the situation. The 7^th Army was concentrating around the now-unified Allied beachhead, but was under almost constant attack from the swarms of Typhoons, Spitfires, MB5s, Mosquitoes, Wyverns, Mustangs and Thunderbolts that seemed to live in the air over Normandy. The 15^th Army is pinned in place by the threatened attack by the First US Army Group led by Bradley over the Pas des Calais. No help could be diverted from there.

As for the 19^th Army, that was stuck between the devil of the southern front and the deep blue sea of a possible attack by the two Allied Armies still concentrated in Corsica. It could hold the Alpine passes and fight delaying actions on the French Riviera, or it could hold the Riviera and fight delaying actions in the Alps. It could not hold both. No wonder Von Rundstedt looked depressed.

“As I entered the room, the Field Marshall was standing by the map table, looking down at the flags and notations. He was tapping a pen in his hand and seemed totally absorbed in it. After I while I ventured to approach him and passed on the latest dispatches, which were an unrelenting catalogue of doom and gloom. He shuffled rapidly through them, pausing now and then to mark some with a short note for immediate action. Then he looked up and I saw for the first time the immense strain in his eyes. But then he actually smiled at me. “If I was still in training school, this” – he gestured at the map – “would be something to set eager young officers. A defensive situation with no hope of victory or significant reinforcements, set against an enemy with every material advantage. That would quieten those eager little minds.” He frowned and then looked down again at the map. “We’re being hammered to death,” he muttered quietly. “Hammered to death while the Bohemian corporal serenades us with the Ride of the Valkyries.” Otto Lutz, “Staff Officer, Western Front”, pp450-451.

Death ride of the panzers – part two.

Bombarded incessantly by Hitler with orders to mount a major counter-attack, Von Rundstedt assembles a patchwork of units, including the new 12^th SS Panzer division and the badly battered 21^st Panzer division, which had almost been destroyed at the death ride of Kharkov. Both are equipped with the aging mainstay of the German tank formations, the Mk IV.

The plan is to recapture the flat and tank-friendly ground to the southeast of Caen, in preparation for an infantry assault on the city itself. Unfortunately the British, forewarned by Ultra, are waiting, with hidden 3.7in.guns, hull-down Centurion, Comet and Challenger tanks and dug-in 17 pounder AT guns, which are starting to arrive in large numbers, both mounted on the tanks and deployed on the ground.

The Centurion is a very, very nasty surprise for the German divisions, both of which are, for once, outmatched by a British tank. This is the first time in the war that this has happened and it comes as a horrible shock. The attack on Caen on July 25^th is torn to shreds on its start lines. The infantry attack that was supposed to follow the panzers is caught in the open by massed British and Allied artillery and fails with horrific casualties. Von Rundstedt pulls the panzers back and has a rethink.

His time however is running very short for any major planning. On July 26^th a small American battle group from the 1^st Infantry division crests the brow of a hill and find themselves staring at the sea. They have cut the Cotentin peninsular in half. The Americans form a hasty front line to the south and then start to thrust north as quickly as possible.

With the situation deteriorating by the hour, General Terschling, the commander of the Cherbourg garrison, orders all units to fall back to the defences of the port. His orders are promptly countermanded by Hitler, who demands that the defenders hold a line across the peninsular south of Cherbourg. Terschling protests that he doesn’t have the men to do this and is told by Jodl to shut up and obey orders. Terschling reluctantly sends out new orders, causing (literally) terminal confusion amongst his men. Some units get both sets of orders and obey the last one. Some just get the fallback order and start to retreat to the port. Some start to move back, get the new orders and try to return to their old positions. The result is chaos, a chaos that US forces are able to brilliantly use to their advantage. They slip through the holes in the German defences, surrounding some units, bypassing others, smashing northwards.

On the morning of July 28^th a horrified Terschling hears that American units are on the outskirts of the city and that one company of Shermans is perched on a hill and is shelling the roads leading to the harbour. His carefully thought out plan to destroy the harbour facilities is thrown into total confusion and he hurries over to a harbour building to order his engineers to blow everything in sight sky-high. His last act as commander of the garrison is to do a double take at the sight of the strange helmets on the men standing over the bodies of his chief engineer and his men. US forces were much closer than he had realized, something that haunts him on the transport back to a POW camp in South Dakota.

The fall of Cherbourg comes five days ahead of Montgomery’s schedule and is greeted with delight by the Allies. The port suffered some damage, but most of the facilities are intact. Cherbourg is back in business on August 1^st 1943, providing a valuable addition to the smaller ports of Arromanches and Port-en-Bessin as well as the two Mulberry ports in the American and British sectors. The 7th US army starts to build up in the west, getting ready to break out of the bocage country into the plains south of Avranches.

In the meantime the British 1^st Army is fully on the ground, with the Canadian 1^st Army about to enter the fray, having formed up on the eastern flank. The British 2^nd and American 9^th armies are landing in the ports and beaches already as the inexorable buildup continues. The plan is for the British to hold the bulk of the German armoured forces in the east, while the Americans prepare to smash southwards in the west. Churchill wires Roosevelt that he expects great things from “our nest of coiled vipers, which are about to strike the Nazi beast.”

The Germans are also starting to build up. Hitler greeted the news of the fall of Cherbourg with a massive screaming fit, followed by an icy silence. He then gave orders to transfer as many panzer divisions as possible to Western Normandy. The growing bulge of American forces down the western coast of the Cotentin Peninsula must be snuffed out of existence. Panzer formations are quietly stripped from different fronts and sent trundling westwards. Von Rundstedt, who had the effrontery to say that the only thing that Germany could do was make peace, is replaced by Model, who has picked up the nickname of ‘the fuhrer’s fireman,’ because of his career of rushing from place to place, dealing with crises.

Model assembles a four-division armoured fist. Unfortunately it’s a rapidly weakening fist as the Allied planes spot it and lash it with bombs, rockets and cannon fire. Worse, it’s made up of units that have already been through the mangle. One is the 12^th SS Panzer division, which is now little more than a weak battalion in strength. Hitler however doesn’t care. It’s called a division so he treats it like a division. The others include the 7^th, 9^th, and Panzer Lehr divisions, made up of some real veterans of Blitzkrieg. They are mostly equipped with Mark IVs, along with panthers and a small number of tigers.

Speed is vital for the Germans. By August 10^th they have been able to stop the British-Canadian advance south of Caen only at the expense of committing large numbers of inexperienced infantrymen and bleeding whole divisions white. Worse, a third of the force in reserve with 15^th Army has been fed into the battle, weakening it. Montgomery in the meantime is feeding in troops to pin the Germans on the eastern flank. He has high hopes – Simpson is about to activate 9^th Army and punch through on the coast road to Brittany before wheeling to his left and trapping the German 7^th Army in a kessel. More importantly, he is keeping Allied losses to a minimum so far. Taking Caen so easily has provided the linchpin to his plans, providing a deep lodging in the German lines. Wavell is giving him all the support that he needs, allowing strategy to develop and keeping the Combined Chiefs of Staff off his shoulders. He shudders to think of what might have happened if he was still fighting for the city.

Timing becomes critical. The Allies know that Model is preparing to attack the Americans, but Simpson’s attack takes priority. On August 10^th he finally explodes onto the world stage as his 9^th Army pulverizes the German defences at the base of the western side of the Cotentin Peninsular. 9^th Army fans out into the open country to the south and west, hurtling towards Brest and taking the German defenders totally by surprise. American armoured formations also thunder eastward – and by the evening of the 12^th August they are beginning to form a sack.

Model is now in a quandary. He has his armoured fist in place to attack the Americans, but they have just broken out and are causing chaos behind his lines. If they wheel east at the same time that the British advance south, then 7^th Army will be trapped. He ponders how fast 7^th Army can fall back to the River Seine, where a more defensible line awaits.

Hitler, however, will hear nothing about a retreat. He regards the American breakthrough as being a great opportunity to cut the 9^th Army in half by advancing to the sea. Model tries to point out that the Americans will move heaven and earth to stop this happening and, by the way, could he please have some Luftwaffe support as his formations are being bombed 24-hours a day? Hitler tells Model to shut up and attack.

Model’s offensive is codenamed Oxhead, but is rapidly renamed the ‘western death ride of the panzers’ by the few survivors. On August 14^th, the German attack hits a well-warned American defensive screen. Even if Ultra hadn’t passed on warnings of the attack, Simpson and Bradley would still have been ready for it because, as Simpson puts it, “even a total fool would expect an attack on the thinnest part of the line.”

The German attack has a maximum penetration of two miles, at the cost of 30 per cent casualties. Reinforcements cannot exploit this small gain as they are either under attack themselves from the air or are being hit from the flanks. By the morning of August 17^th the offensive has utterly failed and the jubilant American forces are pushing the panzer remnants back.

By now the jaws are starting to close on the German 7^th Army. Montgomery unleashes Operation Supercharge on the same day that Oxhead ends, a massive three-division armoured fist that crushes the German 614^th infantry division from existence and slams south to take Falaise. Two days later a small patrol from the British 3^rd division almost gets involved in a firefight with an unidentified patrol pushing north along a small lane. Lusty Anglo-Saxon swearing is overheard from both sides and cautiously the two patrols get up from their positions. The southern patrol is from the American 30^th Division. Both sides mingle and pass out fags/smokes. The kessel is closed.

“I have seen hell – its name was Falaise.”

A total of 85 per cent of the German 7^th Army is locked within the Falaise Pocket, as it is known in the west. In Germany it is the Normandy kessel. At first the situation is viewed as not being too bad – a breakout can always be ordered, or even a break-in. Then reality sinks in suddenly. The remaining fragments of the 7^th Army are in no fit state to attack. The weakened 15^th Army is still pinned in place by the threat of FUSAG, which could descend any day now. Where are the troops to come from?

Hitler has an idea. Model must use his four-division fist, redeploying it from western Normandy to the Falaise area, where it can break out and then roll back the Americans to the south. Model does a good impression of a fish at this piece of gibberish, but has no choice but to issue the orders.

Sadly, the orders are useless and Dolfuss, the commander of 7^th Army knows this. His army is falling apart rapidly. Supplies are low and communications are appalling within the kessel. Allied planes are everywhere, blowing up tanks, setting trucks on fire and killing marching troops. Most of the roads are blocked. The rail system has been totally dislocated and the RAF and USAAF have discovered the joys of blowing up steam engines. Units are shadows of their former selves, reduced to anything between 20 to 30 per cent of their notional strengths.

Pressured from all sides the 7^th Army becomes a collection of rag-tag makeshift battle groups, trying to find safety and for the most part failing. Ammunition and fuel run low and then run out. By August 25^th conditions have become critical. Dolfuss knows roughly where his regimental and divisional commanders are, but also knows that they are in command of nothing more than rabble. Model’s vaunted four-division fist makes a forlorn effort to break out at Falaise that day, but by now it is reduced to a battalion’s worth of men. The march from western Normandy has seen the fist wither and fall apart in the sheer chaos. The surviving panzers run straight into a Polish anti-tank unit and are all destroyed. By August 26^th, all hope is gone and Dolfuss and his officers march out for captivity at the head of a series of long straggling columns of exhausted, filthy, shell-shocked men.

“I have never, in my life, seen anything like it. You could have walked from one end of the pocket to the other without touching the ground – just treading on the dead bodies, parts of bodies, broken rifles, smashed vehicles, dead horses and all the sorry panoply of the total defeat of an army. Occasionally I saw a Tommy or a GI herding a Jerry prisoner who had the wide and terrified eyes of someone who seen enough death to break a man’s mind.

Every time one of our planes went over the prisoners ducked, with choked cries of ‘Jabos! Schnell!’ until they realized that the bombing and strafing had stopped, and then they would slowly straighten up, some with wet stains on the crotch of their trousers and that dead expression settling back on their faces.

I have seen hell – its name was Falaise. It was hell on earth. And, god help me, I laughed and I shouted ‘Dunkirk’ at the Jerries. Because they had a taste of what they did to us in 1940.” Normandy, the Triumph, pp138-39, Gwyn Richards, 1956.

The race for the Rhine

In Paris Model desperately tries to form a new line on the Seine from the remnants of the 7^th Army that survived the debacle and the few divisions from the 15^th Army that Hitler has, reluctantly, released. However he is overtaken by events. The five armies in the Allied beachhead explode outwards. The Canadian 1^st Army forms the left wing, followed by the newly activated British 2^nd Army, then the battle-tested British 1^st and American 7^th Armies, and finally on the right flank Simpson and his 9^th Army.

The Seine line is impossible to hold and the Germans pull back further, with the Canadians storming into Le Havre on August 31^st. The port is soon back in business. Rouen falls on September 1^st. The British 1^st and 2^nd Armies start to sweep to the north of Paris while the American 7^th and 9^th Armies pass to the south. Montgomery wants to avoid a direct assault on the city, or indeed anything that slows the Allied advance down. He does however agree to a reconnaissance mission from the 50^th Welsh division from 1^st Army to investigate if the Germans are going to fight for what is a major prestige target.

Hitler also has his eye on Paris, if for very different reasons. In a monumental act of spite he issues orders that Paris is to be defended to allow time for it to be destroyed. Everything is to be mined and blown up. Everything. If the Allies take Paris, they must take a mass of burning rubble.

Fortunately the German commander of Paris, General Von Boineburg-Lengsfeld, begs to differ. Horrified at his instructions he agonizes over what to do even as he waves goodbye to Model, who evacuates his headquarters for somewhere safer. Then Von Boineburg makes up his mind. He burns his orders, instructs his staff to get every German soldier out of the city and then sits down in his office to await events. Every hour a telegram arrives from Hitler asking if Paris is burning. He ignores each one. Then he receives the news that British armoured cars are on the edge of Paris. By now the evacuation is complete.

“Every road was filled with French civilians, mad with excitement, waving any flag they could get their hands on. We had wine, bread, women and babies thrust at us as we trundled down the streets, escorted by these delirious Parisians. It was only the fact that we were being guided by members of the French Resistance, stubbled and wielding sten guns, which allowed us to make any progress at all. The baffling thing was that there were no Jerries around. Everyone we asked said the same thing, that Les Boches had gone that morning, that none were left. Still we were pretty nervous. We passed position after position where a troop of boy scouts armed with cap guns could have held us off. But on into Paris we went, until eventually we arrived at what our guides said was the German headquarters.

Nothing was stirring, no guards were outside and even the French police hadn’t yet dared to enter. Papers were blowing about on the steps, signs of a hurried departure. We pulled up by the doors and I got out. Then I saw movement – a German officer was still in the building. He strode out, impeccable in his uniform, clicked his heels and saluted. Then he pulled out his luger and held it out, butt first. “I wish to surrender, as I am the last German officer in Paris,” he said in very good English. It was an odd moment. I hadn’t had time to shave for three days, my beret and jerkin were spotted with oil and you could have grown potatoes on the sides of Rhiannon, she was so caked with mud. The officer seemed to read my mind, because he smiled slightly. “It is the fortune of war, Captain. You and your armoured car look appropriately battle-hardened at least.” Bocage to the Baltic, pp 129-130, Robert Newman, 1977.

The fall of Paris makes headlines all over the world, while in Germany Hitler explodes yet again. Von Boineburg is tried for treason in absentia, and sentenced to death. Fortunately he is heading for a British POW camp in South Wales, where he bumps in Von Thoma and Rommel.

No Riviera holiday

On September 2^nd the other shoe drops in the Mediterranean. The French 2^nd and US 1^st Armies have been gathering in Corsica for months. Now they pounce. At dawn elements of four Franco-American divisions start to land on beaches between Hyeres and Saint-Tropez. German resistance is minimal as the German 1^st Army is spread out over too far an area. French attacks in the Alps from Italy have been increasing steadily and the German reserves are mostly in the mountains. The coastal attack comes as a dreadful shock.

A French probe led by General LeClerc dashes into Toulon on September 3^rd, capturing the vital port intact. Supplies and reinforcements start to pour in and by September 6^th eight divisions are in the beachhead and more are on the way. Blaskowitz, in charge of the German Army Group G, is in an impossible position and he knows it. He has two armies, 1^st and 19^th. But 1^st Army is a shell, made up of three under strength static divisions and just one battle-ready division, along with the 15^th Panzer division which is recovering from its near-extinction at Kharkov, all facing the Bay of Biscay. 19^th Army is larger, with eight divisions, but four of these are static and all of them are being hammered to death by the Franco-American forces. If he stays in place then his armies will be torn apart by the enemy. No reinforcements can come from the Alpine front, as then the French 1^st Army would pour over the border and outflank him. And besides, there is also the possibility that the American forces in the north might spear down and smash into his rear.

What he wants to do is conduct a retreat from the south of France, pivoting on the Swiss front and establishing a firm front in eastern France, hopefully linking up with a cohesive line to the north – that is if anything can be formed out of the rabble who are being routed there.

To OKW his plan makes sense and they try to sell it to the Fuhrer. Hitler has been appalled by the total chaos that has engulfed his western armies and has been bombarding Model with instructions to hold in place and push the Allies back. The fall of Paris means that the idea of a Seine line, already a dying concept, is finally laid to rest. Hitler tells Blaskowitz personally that he should hold the Allies in the south with 19^th Army, gather 1^st Army near Tours and counterattack. Hitler, enraged by what he perceives as treachery and incompetence by the army, is now effectively micro-managing operations himself, examining detailed maps and issuing complex orders about where units should rally, where they should attack, how they should display National Socialist spirit, and so on. OKW looks on in despair.

Blaskowitz pleads that he cannot carry out his orders, that it is suicide and that besides, Tours fell to the US 9^th Armoured division yesterday. He needs to issue orders now, to get the 1^st Army away from the trap that he can see forming. LeClerc is on the outskirts of Marseilles, and Devers, in charge of the US 1^st Army is starting to throw his weight around, punching holes in the increasingly shaky 19^th Army. Finally he snaps, ordering the 1^st Army to make for Lyon at once and the 19^th Army to shorten its’ lines, ready for a pull back up the River Rhone. OKW back him to the hilt and for once, realising that catastrophe is looming in the south, Hitler changes his mind and bitterly agrees to the retreat. In the meantime he redoubles his efforts to stop the rout in the north.

This is easier said than done, but ironically enough the fall of Paris helps out. The city is a major rail hub and is desperately needed by the Allies to route supplies along their ever-stretching supply lines. But the railways have been heavily damaged... by Allied bombing. Plus, now that Paris has been freed, it has to be fed. It will take time to get liberated France back on it’s feet and to get the rail system working again. Until then it’s a matter of using the roads as much as possible.

There’s also the fact that instead of being chewed up and destroyed in a siege of the city, the garrison of Paris is free to rejoin the German forces to the northeast. All of these factors are underlined by the increasingly long and shaky lines of supply that are need to keep the Allied armies on the road. Petrol, oil, ammunition, food, water, all this has to be supplied using the road system as the rail system is at the moment a collection of lines leading to bombed out junctions and marshalling yards. The only ports open in the north of France are Mulberry A, Mulberry B, Cherbourg, and the parts of LeHavre that have been repaired so far. Dieppe is still being fought over by the Canadians and the remains of a cut-off German division, Brest is full of sunken ships left there by the Germans and St Nazaire is still in German hands.

Montgomery and Wavell are becoming increasingly concerned about their supply lines. Both are pleased about the fast progress that their forces are making, but are only too aware of the frail arteries that are supplying them. Some sort of pause will be inevitable eventually. But there are still a few miles left in the advance.

“Those tanks look very odd...”

By now the advance guard of the Allied advance is over the Belgian border. On September 6^th the armoured cars of the Kings Dragoon Guards take Mons and camp for the night near the Lion Mound on the field of Waterloo. On September 7^th, 1943, Challenger tanks of the 1^st Battalion of the Welsh Guards enter Brussels.

“It had been a long night, with a lot of wild rumours going around. The British were somewhere to the south but no one knew where. There were all kinds of mad tales going around, the British were in Louvain (they weren’t) the Americans had landed paratroopers near Antwerp (they were nowhere near the place) and so on. I woke up with a head ringing from too much wine along with not enough sleep and actually had my wife break out our little store of black market coffee. Then I decided to have a shave. I was standing there, lathering my face, when I saw a tank in the window and spat bitterly. A German, I thought, another damn German tank. Then I paused. It didn’t look very German. The colour was wrong and the shape... Then I looked out again. The tank was being followed by a group of men... wearing khaki. And wearing those distinctive soup-plate helmets. They were British. British. I dropped my razor. Then I ran downstairs, my dear wife looking at me as if I was mad and my son and daughter running after me, bewildered. I flung the door open and I looked out at these Tommies as they advanced along the road. I didn’t know I was crying until one big burly sergeant stopped in front of me. “It’s alright, chum,” he said in English. “We’re back. And this time we’re staying until the job’s done.” I still don’t know what I said, because at that moment the bells started ringing in all the churches around us. We were free... and that it a day that I will never forget, because freedom is so precious a thing that it added inches to everyone’s height.” Jean Soult, The Liberation, pp209-211, 1956.

The British tanks sweep on, impeded slightly by the crowds of delirious Belgians that appear around them, celebrating their freedom. As they advance German resistance starts to thicken, thanks to Model’s desperate fight to bring order out of chaos. Montgomery sees the situation start to change and consults Wavell. They both agree that the moment has almost come to pause and get those supply lines sorted out. The news is good otherwise. Advance units of the 9^th Army have made contact with the French 2^nd Army near Dijon, so that the Allies now have a continuous line in France. Simpson has taken Nancy and is advancing on Strasbourg, Auchinleck’s 2^nd Army has taken Liege and Luxembourg is on the point of liberation. The pause must come soon however.

There is one last event before this happens, however. The British 13^th Corps of 1^st Army, under Lt-General Horrocks, is moving north towards Antwerp when a sweaty messenger arrives from the Belgian Resistance. The German garrison has been overwhelmed and Antwerp – and more importantly the docks – are in Belgian hands. But they need support at once. Horrocks, without even waiting to ask for permission to advance from Monty, throws everything he has into the advance. The Guards armoured division smashes the remaining German rearguard aside and advances to Antwerp. After a moment spent looking at his map carefully Horrocks also issues orders to the 51^st Highland division to occupy the southern side of the Scheldt estuary. After all, without the sea approaches, Antwerp is useless. The British 50^th Welsh division takes Bergen-op-Zoom and liberates the Zeeland peninsula, taking Walcheren and North Beveland, an easy operation as the German defences have been built to repel a seaward attack, not a landward one. The northern side of the Scheldt is safe. The Royal Navy starts to sweep the estuary of mines at the same time that Horrocks and the commander of the Belgian resistance are both awarded DSOs by a grateful Wavell. The capture of the intact port of Antwerp is a huge boost to the Allies. The advance should be back on again within a few weeks.

More holes than a Swiss cheese...

The setting might be unlikely, but times have been good for General George Patton. He has got his 3^rd US Army into the forefront of the war (from his point of view at least) and has got his men experienced enough to deal out some significant damage to the krauts. He’s been on the defences for too long however, helping out the Swiss and holding the line. He starts to inspect his maps carefully, looking for a way to get out of these damn mountains. The terrain is not conducive to the kind of warfare he’s been espousing.

At the moment his front line runs from just west of Lausanne, along Lake Neuchatel, to Biel, Sursee and Zurich, where it joins the compact mass of the Swiss Army, which is manning the easily-defended Zurichsee-Walensee-Ratische line, before it links up again with the Italians.

Facing him is the now well dug in German 4^th Army, which is made up of a combination of static and mountain divisions, ranging in quality from good to poor. According to ULTRA, the join between the two corps that that make up the German army lies around the town of Huttwill, not far from a little feeder river that leads to the river Aare. Patton has an idea...

On September 6^th, the surprised German defenders of Huttwill get a nasty shock when a carpet bombardment by American and British bombers obliterate their defences. The shock becomes even greater when an American armoured column sweeps straight through them and down the valley in the direction of Langenthal. Any German resistance is crushed as a large chunk of the US 3^rd Army hustles down the small roads that lead down the valley. Speed is vital here, they cannot afford to get held up at all.

What a jubilant Patton calls ‘my luck’ holds up and the Americans are able to crash into Langenthal, wheel two divisions west and three divisions east and start to roll up the German defences. The western thrust is the most successful, coming to rest on the shores of Lake Neuchatel and trapping the bulk of the German LXI corps, which fails to fight its way out and is forced to surrender. The eastern thrust gets as far as Aarau, mangling two more German divisions, before it grinds to a halt. A jubilant Patton takes a few bottles of the best wine he can find and has a celebratory dinner with his friend Dick O’Connor. Who, by the way, introduces him to a madman called Major Vladimir Peniakoff...

Point of Departure (Part 3)

Hammer blows in the night

The race for the Rhine

No Riviera holiday