Prologue
The German paratroopers sat silent and tense, crowded together in the wooden and fabric gliders bouncing them to their destination. Any attempt at conversation was drowned out by the roaring engines of their tow planes as the fleet of Ju-52s tugging the gliders sliced its way through the early morning darkness. No one dared to smoke, for the paratroopers were surrounded by thousands of pounds of highexplosive. Each man pondered silently the seemingly impossible task facing them. The mission they were about to undertake had never before been attempted. This small handful of elite soldiers would face more than ten times their number ensconced behind and beneath stone ramparts. Still, the German paratroopers radiated confidence, for they were young and had trained relentlessly for this moment. They were prepared for any contingency and were bringing into play two secret weapons never used before in combat. They were the elite vanguard of a mighty army, the likes of which the world had never seen. Some 136 infantry and armoured divisions, 2,500 tanks and armoured vehicles, and 2,000 bombers and some 1,800 fighters stood poised along the length of the German border, from the North Sea to Switzerland, waiting to sweep across the breadth of Western Europe, from the Low Countries, through France, and all the way to the English Channel.
But first that army, numbering more than two million men, desperately needed the bridges spanning the Maas River which separated Germany and Belgium. Jealously guarding those crossings were a series of ultra-modern forts, the last word in their day of ballistic concrete and steel defence. The queen of those forts and the key to victory was Eben Emael, a behemoth bristling with searchlights, antitank guns, and artillery pieces and occupied by more than a thousand Belgian soldiers.
The success of the entire German Army depended on these eighty-five Fallschirmpionieren, German airborne engineers, a new breed of soldier, led by a new breed of leader – a young and supremely confident lieutenant. His name was Rudolf Witzig and he and his men were headed for Fort Eben Emael. Witzig was immensely proud of his paratroopers. Each was a volunteer, a high-quality soldier of excellent morale. He had personally trained them and had himself developed the loading plans for the gliders they were riding into battle, as well as the tactics, techniques and procedures that would decide its outcome in the coming hours. Their success, and that of the whole German Army, depended on surprise, speed and audacity. This would be, for many, their first major combat action. Ahead lay glory or death . . .