Hitler’s Pre-Emptive War: The Battle for Norway, 1940 (90 page)

The Polish Offensive

The flare from the cruiser HMS
Cairo
at 2340 hours was also a signal for Polish General Bohusz-Szyszkos’ troops to go into action on the Ankenes Peninsula. Their mission was simply to clear the Germans from this peninsula at the same time as the French and Norwegians attacked Narvik, then advance against the village of Beisfjord, and cut the German line of retreat.

While the main mission of the Polish troops was against Beisfjord, the original plan called for Polish units to make a wide encirclement through Skjomdal, Nordal, and Hundal, which would bring them into the rear of Dietl’s forces at Bjørnefjell. A company from the 3rd Polish Bn made a reconnaissance in preparation for this part of the operation. The evacuation plan caused this planned envelopment to be cancelled.

There was some repositioning of the Polish forces before the attack because it became evident that the Germans had increased their forces on the peninsula. This involved the strengthening of Co 8 at Ankenes to where it numbered nearly 180 men and the movement of Co 2, 137th Mountain Inf into the pocket on May 27. The 2nd Polish Bn’s mission was to eliminate the German pocket at Ankenes. The 1st Polish Bn and one company of the 4th Bn (Co 1) were given the mission of attacking Beisfjord. Company 1’s task was to envelop the German positions on Hills 650 and 773 from the south at the same time as the 1st Bn attacked frontally. Parts of the 4th Bn manned positions on Hills 677 and 734 and served as a link between the 1st and 2nd Battalions. The rest of the 4th Bn was located in reserve near Klubban.

The attack against Ankenes started at midnight, when Co 3 on the 2nd Battalion’s left wing attacked along the road towards Ankenes, supported by naval artillery, the British artillery battery, and two tanks. The center company in the Polish line, Co 1, began its attack towards Lyngenes and Haugen from positions southeast of Hill 295 20 minutes later. Company 2, on the battalion’s right wing did not begin its attack in the direction of Nyborg until 0200 hours.

The Polish attack started out well and Co 3 reached the outskirts of Ankenes village around 0200 hours when one of the tanks hit a mine and ended up blocking the road for the second tank. At the same time, the company came under intense crossfire, suffered heavy casualties, and was forced to withdraw towards Emmenes.

Biegański’s account is somewhat different. He writes that one of the two tanks never left the assembly area because of mechanical difficulties and the other tank became entangled in a barricade on the western outskirts of Ankenes. The 2nd Bn Commander, Lieutenant Colonel Dec, who witnessed Co 3’s fight through binoculars, wrote later, “I found with horror that the 3rd company was bouncing back in disarray. Some groups were moving towards Baathberget by road, others were sneaking amidst the shrubbery. Some of the men had no helmets and no arms. Others were dragging the wounded.”
⁸

Company 1’s attack at 0020 hours drove the Germans back, but a space developed between Cos 1 and 3. Lieutenant Hermann Rieger, commanding Co 2, 137th, quickly took advantage of this opportunity. With 15 men, he launched a determined attack between the two Polish companies and captured Hill 295 at 0430 hours with his force, now down to eight men.

Lieutenant Colonel Dec personally directed the defense of this key terrain. He had no reserves and the defenders were members of the battalion staff, orderlies, telephone operators and others that he was able to scrape together. Most Poles on the hill were killed. Only the battalion commander and eight men survived. This was a serious setback for the Poles. Hill 295 was not only a dominant piece of terrain from which Lieutenant Rieger could bring flanking fire to bear on Co 1, halting its attack, but the hill was also the observation post for the Polish battalion commander, the brigade commander, and the artillery.

Company 2 on the right flank did not launch its attack until 0200 hours and it was stopped almost immediately by heavy fire from a knoll to the north of Hill 405. The company was unable to resume its advance until the commander of Co 2, 4th Bn, located on Hill 677, sent two platoons to storm the troublesome German position. Company 2 reached Nyborg around 0900 hours and found the Germans in the process of evacuating the Ankenes pocket. The boats were fired on, two overturned, and several Germans drowned.

Despite this success, the Poles were unable to capture Ankenes on May 28. The German withdrawal decision was caused as much by the success of the landings at Ornes as it was by the unrelenting Polish pressure. The French and Norwegian forces in Narvik threatened to isolate the German units opposing the Poles, much in the same way as the Polish advance threatened to isolate the German defenders in Narvik. It was important for the Germans to hold the Ankenes positions long enough to assist the withdrawal from Narvik since effective machinegun fire could be placed on anyone trying to advance along the harbor road past Fagernes. When this was accomplished, the defenders withdrew under the protection of a covering force that later escaped across the fjord in boats.

Lieutenant Rieger and his men held Hill 295 until 2000 hours when they had used up all their ammunition. They had successfully repelled three Polish attacks. Rieger and his eight soldiers managed to slip away towards Ankenes and tried to make it across the fjord but the Poles saw their boat and sank it with gunfire. Rieger was wounded and captured. Many in his company were killed, wounded, or missing.

The 1st Polish Bn also met determined resistance in its offensive near the base of the Ankenes Peninsula. The operation began around midnight, with Co 1 of that battalion attacking Hill 650 while Co 3 attacked Hill 773. Company 2 was the battalion reserve. The first attack was repelled but the German Co 7 defending this area was so exhausted after weeks of fighting that it was obvious an effective defense could not be maintained for long.

The defenses at the base of the Ankenes Peninsula assumed enormous importance in the successful extraction of Major Haussels’ forces from Narvik, including the defenders in the Ankenes pocket. If the Poles could break through Co 7’s positions, they could advance on and capture Beisfjord village, thereby cutting Major Haussels line of retreat. The Germans would then be caught in a trap.

Major Haussels was unable to communicate with his forces on Ankenes Peninsula as the day passed, but General Dietl was able to establish communication with Co 7 and gave orders directly to this unit since it reported that it was not only hard pressed but unable to communicate with Haussels. Dietl told the company commander to hold his positions as long as possible but to withdraw in the face of overwhelming enemy strength and establish a delaying position east of Lakselv (Salmon River).

Lieutenant Rieger’s daring attack on and capture of Hill 295 now took on an importance out of all proportion to the size of his force and his actions. Like Lieutenant Schweiger’s attack near Hill 457, it became another key to the successful extraction of the Germans from the Narvik area. General Bohusz-Szyszko viewed Lieutenant Rieger’s attack as posing a serious threat to the facilities in his rear area and the line of communications from Håvik. He ordered the 1st Half-Brigade commander, Lieutenant Colonel Chlusewiez, to alter the attack plans and this gave the Germans the precious time they needed to make good their escape.

It is difficult to understand the Polish commander’s concern. Only two platoons of his three-company reserve were already committed. The Poles should have been aware of the limited size of the German force on Hill 295 and it had a company of Polish troops on each side. He was surely aware that the French/Norwegian landings at Ornes were successful. This made the Beisfjord village the key objective in trying to trap the Germans. The Ankenes pocket had become, in the course of events, a secondary objective and the Germans on Hill 295 could easily be contained by the 2nd Bn while the full weight of the half-brigade’s attack was directed against Hills 650 and 773.

Instead of doing so, the 1st Half-Brigade was directed at 0300 hours to move the reserve company located at Klubban to Emmenes. Two hours later, a string was put on Co 1 of the 1st Bn, reasoning that it might become necessary to commit it to restore the situation on the left flank of the 2nd Bn. This effectively left the 1st Bn without a reserve and slowed the tempo of its attack against the two key terrain features that constituted the doorway to Beisfjord.

General Bohusz-Szyszko also requested that General Béthouart release at least one company from his reserve, the 3rd Polish Bn, which was located in Ballangen. The request was turned down because the battalion constituted the only protection against threats from the southwest, according to Sereau. What the nature of the threat southwest was is not explained, but it was probably a concern about possible airborne landings since General Feurstein’s forces in Nordland Province were far to the south and had not yet captured Bodø.

Béthouart did ask Magrin-Vernerey if he could send a company of Legionnaires to help the Poles. This elicited a rather caustic reply according to Lapie, “Do they want the 63 men guarding the luggage at Scarnes?” The state of inter-allied cooperation is further illustrated by another comment attributed by Lapie to the French colonel, “Nothing ever seems to happen in this place [Ankenes] … And to think they want a company of mine to help those fellows! Not a single shot.”
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This was a very unfair observation. The Poles fought fiercely and bravely and took heavy losses at the same time as the French and Norwegians were fighting near Narvik.

While the Germans gained valuable time because of the Polish commander’s action, the situation on Hills 650 and 773 eventually turned precarious. Although he no longer had a reserve that he controlled, Major Kobylińsky, the 1st Bn commander, continued his attack against the two hills but met heavy resistance. A German air attack between 1600 and 1700 hours made things even more difficult.

Company 1 of the 4th Polish Bn was sent on its flanking march by Lieutenant Colonel Chlusewiez as called for in the plan. This unit was able to occupy Hill 606, southeast of Hill 773, making the German positions on the two other hills untenable and this forced a general German withdrawal. They left behind one machinegun and four men on Hill 650 and these managed to hold the hill until 2100 hours, when Co 1 of the 1st Bn stormed it. Hill 773 was occupied at about the same time by Co 3. Co 1 continued its advance after securing Hill 650, occupied Beisfjord village at 0900 hours the following morning, and linked up with a motorcycle troop from the Foreign Legion.

The fighting on the Ankenes Peninsula exacted a heavy toll of both Poles and Germans. The Poles reported that they found 150 fallen Germans on the peninsula. This figure is undoubtedly too high in view of the actual numbers of Germans involved in the fighting. Biegański reports that the German losses in the Polish sector were 190, including 60 captured. Buchner reports that Co 2/137th at Ankenes had 20 killed, five wounded, and 22 missing. No figures are given for Co 7 and Co 8 of the 139th. Polish losses are reported by Biegański as 97 killed, 189 wounded, seven prisoners, and 21 missing.
¹⁰

The French-Polish Drive towards Sildvik

General Dietl and his staff remained in the dark about what was happening in the Narvik area after their communication station on the Fagernes Mountain was destroyed and abandoned at 1215 hours on May 28. They knew that Lieutenant Schweiger’s counterattack had failed to eliminate the beachhead, that Major Haussels had withdrawn his forces towards Beisfjord, that the three companies on the Ankenes Peninsula were under heavy pressure, and that Allied troops, supported by British warships, were pushing east along the railroad.

Dietl had to make some immediate decisions without knowing the location and status of the various units or enemy intentions. A company from the 1st Parachute Regiment, which had arrived on May 26, was sent towards Sildvik around 0400 hours and at 0700 hours, the division ordered naval infantry Regiment Berger to attack westward along the railroad with all available forces except the paratroopers.

By mid-afternoon, the division assumed that the companies on the Ankenes Peninsula were isolated and lost. Naval infantry battalion Holtorf, in positions between Fornes and the rail line needed help and a platoon of mountain infantry was dispatched to his assistance around 1400 hours. Major Haussels apparently used the prearranged code word for the abandonment of Narvik–
Berta
. The code word was intended to be used in a critical situation and called for a general withdrawal to the vicinity of Straumnes. Dietl did not think the situation that critical and he did not want the enemy to reach as far as Straumnes without serious opposition. He therefore sent out messages canceling the order for a general withdrawal.

A messenger was sent to Major Haussels around 2200 hours with orders to establish and hold a line from Lakselv to Hill 1446. General Dietl also decided to energize the leadership of the troops along the railroad by dispatching Captain Walther with a company of airborne troops from Bjørnefjell to the area around Tunnel 3 early in the morning of May 29. In addition, the parachute company in Sildvik (Co 4) was moved forward.

General Béthouart issued orders for the continuation of the offensive in the evening of May 29. The 1st Bn of the Foreign Legion and the Poles would undertake the offensive. The 1st Bn was to advance along the railroad while the 1st Polish Bn attacked across the mountains to link up with the Legionnaires in Sildvik. Thereafter, these forces were to carry out reconnaissance in force in the direction of Hundal.

The French Foreign Legion reached Tunnel 4 around midnight on May 28, but here it was stopped temporarily by units from naval infantry battalion Holtorf. However, Holtorf reported to division that he would not be able to hold unless he received reinforcements.

The situation for the Germans was still very unclear on May 29, primarily because of poor conditions for radio communications. Dietl could only communicate with Captain Walther indirectly and he had no communications with Major Haussels until mid-afternoon on May 29, when the major reported that his troops had occupied the designated positions at 0300 that morning. The lack of communications between Captain Walther and Major Haussels was even more disconcerting since there was a strong possibility that a gap had developed between the two commands that the enemy might be able to exploit. This fear was reinforced by the fact that Captain Walther, after a personal reconnaissance in the afternoon, failed to find any of Major Haussels’ units in the vicinity of Hills 1448 (Beisfjordstøtta) and 970 (Resmålsaksla). Major Haussels’ men had reportedly occupied these heights early that morning and it is likely, in view of subsequent events, that Walther made a map-reading mistake.