CHAPTER ONE
The German Blitzkrieg in the west, which exploded forward from positions on the Luxembourg frontier on 10 May 1940, is well documented. Responding to the codeword Gelb (Yellow), issued around midday on 9 May the German forces began their astonishing advance across the frontiers of the Netherlands and Belgium towards the French border at 5.35 am the following morning. ‘Plan Yellow’ decreed that the schwerpunkt, the centre of gravity of the attack, would be concentrated in Army Group ‘A’ on the southern flank which had been allotted seven out of the ten panzer divisions then in existence. These were part of the Sichelschnitt, the ‘Scythe Stroke’, a sweeping drive through the Low Countries and France which had the encirclement and complete annihilation of the Allied armies to the north as its objective. At the southernmost tip of the scythe were the battle proven troops of General Heinz Guderian’s XIX Panzer Korps.
At the age of fifty-two, Guderian was an audacious leader, brimming with a self-belief which often led him to disregard and exceed the orders of his superiors. He was the ‘father’ of Germany’s panzers, his theoretical work on the use of massed tank divisions, spurred on by other forward thinkers such as Britain’s Captain Basil Liddell-Hart among others, led to his promotion to command Germany’s first Armoured Corps in 1938. He was a master tactician in armoured warfare and had imbued his divisional commanders with his doctrine of co-ordinated assaults characterised by speed and mobility.
‘I had full confidence in my three divisional commanders; they knew my way of fighting and knew that when the Panzers started on a journey they had a ticket to the terminus. For us the objective was the sea. This was obvious!’
And that is just what they did. It took just ten days for the first of the panzers to reach the sea: the glory of being the first to reach the coast going to the 2 Panzer Division. They had crossed the old Great War killing grounds in a matter of hours and by 7.00 pm on 20 May they had seized Abbeville; the sea almost in sight. Tentatively one tank battalion, the Spitta Battalion, named after its commanding officer, was sent out and reached the sea at Noyelles as dusk closed in. With unconcealed joy the tank crews, who had crossed the Meuse scarcely a week earlier and had covered more than 250 miles in their cramped cockpits, jumped out and filled their lungs with the bracing sea air and drank in the sight of the waves. They had reached the ‘terminus’.
General Guderian
SS troops discuss the developing situation with their comrades of a wehrmacht panzer unit.
Panzer by the sea. Although not directly involved in the battle for Boulogne, elements of Rommel’s 7 Panzer Division, reached their ‘terminus’, at les Petites-Dallas, on 10 June 1940.
The German armour had cut a great swathe through the Allied forces and had created an extended ‘Panzer Corridor’ which had cut vital road and rail communications between the Allied forces to the north and south. As the men of 2 Panzer celebrated their achievements and paused for breath whilst they awaited further orders they wondered where their next ticket take them.
Guderian was eager to press on but his orders were slow in coming. By the time the German Army had issued its communique declaring, ‘Our forces have reached the sea’ on the morning of 21 May, Guderian was ready to go. Word had come through towards the end of the previous day that he was to turn north and he had begun to earmark his divisions for the tasks ahead of them. 1 Panzer was to capture Calais whilst 10 Panzer was to advance towards the line of the Aa and push on to seize Dunkirk. 2 Panzer’s objective was the capture of Boulogne. Events at Arras on 21 May were, however, to alter Guderian’s plans for an early resumption of the attack and ultimately delayed his assault on the Channel Ports. He was later to view the 21 May as a day wasted and an opportunity squandered. The problem was that the British had counter-attacked at Arras with seventy-four tanks and the 6th and 8th Battalions of the Durham Light Infantry, supported by a force from a single French light armoured division.
A Horch staff car containing Luftwaffe personnel passes a knocked out British Matilda, two-man tank, near Arras, the scene of ferocious fighting during the Great War.
The Allied attack was not in itself a huge success, but it had succeeded in. striking a telling blow against the extended northern flank of the ‘Panzer Corridor’. Guderian’s advance had been so swift and decisive that a precarious gap had developed between the armoured and motorised units in the van of the assault and the supporting infantry following on foot, often two days’ march behind. The largely British effort at Arras was proof to Hitler and the German command that the flanks were vulnerable. It had been enough to convince them that Guderian should be made to apply his foot to the brakes, albeit temporarily.
As a result, 10 Panzer was withdrawn from Guderian’s command at 6.00 am on 22 May into Group reserve at Doullens. Guderian was furious. Shorn of a third of his force and feeling somewhat cheated in his grand design to take Dunkirk, Guderian decided to use his remaining two divisions in an advance up the coast to capture Boulogne and Calais. At midday Guderian jumped the gun and ordered 2 Panzer to drive up the N1 towards Montreuil via the line Baincthun-Samer and thence to Boulogne without waiting for orders from General Ewald von Kleist, commander of Gruppe von Kleist, his immediate superior. 1 Panzer were to track their path some five miles inland to provide protection for their eastern flank against attack from Calais. In his opinion he had already wasted five hours with his armour standing inactive on the line of the River Canche. As the afternoon wore on and 2 Panzer came within site of Boulogne, Guderian received the welcome news that von Kleist had restored 10 Panzer to his command. Guderian, realising that the prize of Dunkirk and the encirclement of Boulogne and Calais was again a possibility, reacted with characteristic alacrity. Handing the job of taking Calais to 10 Panzer he decided to redirect 1 Panzer eastward, to pass across the southern face of Calais and race on to cross the Aa Canal and thence to Dunkirk. Dunkirk was the prize. That was where the bulk of the Allied force in the north was heading, a force which included the greater part of the BEF. If Dunkirk were to be taken then the Allied forces to the north of the ‘Panzer Corridor’ would be beaten. The capture of Boulogne and Calais, were not his priority. If the Dunkirk domino fell and the panzers succeeded in isolating any forces which could be landed at the two remaining Channel ports, then sooner or later Calais and Boulogne would tumble.
General Heinz Guderian in his command vehicle during the drive through France. Panzer radio operators decipher a message received on the Enigma encoding machine.
A Panzerkampfwagen MkIII of 2 Panzer Division during the advance through France towards Boulogne.
Five hours later than he had wished, Guderian’s tanks of 2 and 10 Panzer Divisions began their advance up the coast towards Boulogne and Calais respectively to winkle out and mop up the defenders of those ancient ports. In Boulogne the two battalions of Guards the 2 Irish Guards and 2 Welsh Guards had sailed in that very morning to bolster the French defence. Those five precious hours gave them a breathing space, albeit brief, in which to organise, take up their positions and wait for the Germans. Five hours was not long but it was better than nothing and the Guards had the German commanders to thank for it.