If Britain Had Fallen (17 page)
‘They’re going to blow us all up!’ shouted someone and rushed to stamp out the fuse, but before she could reach it the crate exploded in a burst of flame which set the pews and fittings of the church on fire, and fatally burned anyone who came near it. Within minutes the building was filled with a thick, choking smoke that left everyone inside groping blindly – for their children, for a door, a window, for any way out – until with merciful rapidity most of them collapsed. When the screams and shouts from inside had ceased, the Germans threw open the door, brought in bales of straw dragged from a nearby barn, and strewed it all through the building and on the heaps of bodies, and set fire to it. Then, locking the door again, they climbed back into their trucks and continued their journey through the Sussex countryside, conscious of a job well done for Führer and Fatherland.
Much later, one man whose work had taken him several miles from Winter Hill that day arrived back, to be puzzled by his empty house and then, as he explored, by the deserted cottages nearby. Finally, the smoke still rising from the ruins and the steadily growing smell of burned human flesh had led him to the church, where, climbing over the bodies of his male neighbours, lying in a row outside, he had unlocked the church door and, after waiting for the smoke to clear, had gone inside. At first no one seemed to be alive, but then he heard a faint cry and discovered a baby which had evidently crawled under a pew and by some strange freak of ventilation had received enough air to save its life. A few minutes later, seated outside on a gravestone nursing the baby and trying to summon up resolution to go back inside, the same man had discovered another survivor, for a young girl, dress torn, face blackened and fingers bleeding from earlier efforts to escape, rose suddenly to her feet from a small mound of bodies lying below one window. When she had ceased shaking from shock, she managed to tell him what had happened. The Germans, she explained, had machine-gunned the few people who had not been burned to death or asphyxiated in the first few minutes and who had succeeded in reaching a window and climbing out, but when her chance came, they had been engrossed in shooting at a small baby which the woman beside her was trying to drop to safety and which provided them with an unusually interesting target. Both the mother and her child
had been killed and the girl had fallen to the ground beside them, hardly appreciating herself that she had not been hit. When realisation had come, she had stayed where she was, hoping the Germans would take her for dead, and after a cursory glance at the other two bodies lying beside hers, and the bloodstains from their injuries on her dress, they had moved on without firing a final burst as they had done at anyone still moving in the church.
When, after a long delay, news of the Winter Hill massacre reached the government in London, via an auxiliary ‘unit’ of the underground resistance, the Cabinet debated long and earnestly whether to release the news, balancing the added impetus it would give the efforts of every man still fighting against the damage it might do to civilian morale. Eventually the decision was taken out of the government’s hands, for news of the affair reached an American correspondent who, as a neutral, was able to get into the battle zone and confirm the rumours for himself. His despatch, which won him a Pulitzer Prize, was syndicated all over the United States and carried in full by every radio station. The German ambassador, driving to the State Department to receive a strongly-worded protest, was pelted with bricks when his car stopped by a building site, and was lucky to escape with his life. An SS lieutenant-colonel was too powerful a man to be relieved of his command but he was left in no doubt of his divisional commander’s displeasure. Such conduct, it was hinted, might go unnoticed in Poland, but some show of decency was expected in England, at least until the British were finally beaten.
The day the news of the atrocity was released, Winston Churchill made one of his most vigorous broadcasts. The true nature of the beast was now disclosed in all its full and loathsome detail, he told his listeners. Mourning their murdered fellow-countrymen and punishing those who had committed this dastardly crime, which would have caused the name of Germany to stink in the nostrils of every decent human being throughout the world if – a Churchillian pause – it had not already done so, must come later. The need now was simply to kill any German whenever the chance occurred, even if it was the last service to one’s country one lived to perform. The message of the hour was ‘Take one with you!’ Soon printed posters bearing this slogan in bright red letters appeared on hoardings all over unoccupied Britain. In the occupied zone there were no posters, but the same words were still to be seen, chalked after dark on pavements and walls, scribbled on menus in the few restaurants that were still open, traced in the mist on steamed-up windows and in the grime on unwashed cars, sometimes shortened to ‘T1W’, or simply to the letter ‘T’.
If the SS officer responsible supposed that he had thereby crushed all
resistance in his area, he was soon proved wrong. Two hours after Churchill’s broadcast another of the battalion’s motor-cyclists ran into the same trap which had precipitated the massacre of Winter Hill, but this time the wire had sagged and it merely flung him from his machine with a broken leg. As he lay there helpless, the unknown civilian who had sprung the trap removed the injured man’s machine-pistol and ammunition and carefully poured over him the contents of a Molotov cocktail. When the next vehicle came down the road it found the rider, now burned to death, and his machine still blazing merrily by the roadside. Chalked on the road by the funeral pyre the Germans found the letters ‘R.W.H.’, which they took at first to be the initials of the unknown desperado or of some new guerrilla leader. An unfortunate field security sergeant spent a busy night studying a voters’ list commandeered from the nearest post office and compiling a list of suspects from ‘Hay’ to ‘Hyland’. It was not till morning, which revealed a rash of ‘R.W.H.’ signs chalked on walls and trees and even on the sides of German vehicles, that the Germans learned that the letters stood for ‘Remember Winter Hill’.
The German advance on 30 September, of which the Winter Hill atrocity had been only one small incident, convinced the Commander-in-Chief, Home Forces, that he could delay his counter-attack no longer. Although the Germans’ air superiority made it almost impossible to move his forces by day, delay would make the situation worse, not better, and on 1 October the decision was taken to move against the west of the occupied zone, now far too large to be dismissed as a bridgehead, since it was on this flank, General Brooke believed, that the break-out was most likely to occur. The immediate aim of the attack was to disrupt the German build-up, its secondary objective to recapture Newhaven, the major port serving the German Seventh Army, thus denying it to the enemy and splitting the German forces in two.
The offensive was carefully planned. Its chief striking force was to be 1st Armoured Division, which had been brought up to strength with tanks and supporting weapons, and which it was intended, after moving up to the area between Maresfield and Uckfield as its jumping-off point, should attack the German left flank and drive almost due south in the direction of Lewes. It would be supported on its left by the 42nd Division, whose start-line would be the A272 from Framfield to Blackboys, and still further to the left, between Blackboys and Heathfield and thus directly opposite the SS battalion whose commander was now the most hated man in Britain, would be the 1st Canadian Division. The infantry, it was intended, should advance roughly parallel to the armour, along the line of
the railway from Heathfield to Horam and Polegate, and thence to Lewes, the key to the defence of Newhaven.
At 0500 on Wednesday 2 October, a fine, dry day, the advance began and almost at once the British were in contact with enemy outposts. By 0700 the first objectives had been reached and during the late afternoon, as the hitherto blue skies began to cloud over, the 1st Armoured Division reached the outskirts of Lewes. Soon after sunset, 1934 British Double Summer Time, the British commanders reckoned up their gains and losses. The infantry had lost 350 dead and 1250 wounded but they had advanced nearly three miles during the day, and were now dug in on a front five miles wide from Halland, via East Hoathly, to Horam. The armour, pulled back to the area around Spithurst and Isfield for the night, to avoid getting too far ahead of its supporting infantry, had advanced a similar distance for the loss of sixty tanks. The men’s spirits were high, but they did not yet know of the naval disasters that had occurred that day. Two cruisers and a strong force of destroyers, bearing down from the North Sea towards the eastern invasion beaches, had almost all been sunk by mines or air attack, while in the west a powerful force led by the battleships
Nelson
and
Rodney
and the battle-cruiser
Hood
had, in a tremendous battle off Portland, sunk every German destroyer in sight, only itself to suffer heavy losses from air attack, including the sinking of the
Hood.
At dawn on 3 October the British offensive was resumed and by midday armoured units were on the outskirts of Newhaven, while British infantry, not far behind, commanded the crossroads by Lewes Prison. But two hours later the German counter-attack began and, with the Luftwaffe sweeping down whenever a unit moved, the British were virtually immobilised and had to fight where they stood. At dusk the only alternative to being cut off was for the forward units to retreat, and retreat they did. By midnight, with nothing but heavy casualties to show for the offensive and the loss of 150 precious tanks, the three divisions were back on their start-lines and digging in. Next day Field Marshal Karl von Rundstedt crossed the Channel and set up his advanced headquarters in a hotel at St Leonards-on-Sea; the result of the invasion, his arrival suggested, was no longer in doubt.
The following day General Brooke recognised that to prepare another counter-attack he must make another withdrawal, this time to behind the strongest natural obstacle in the country. On 5 October VII Corps, facing the Germans all along the ‘Sussex’ line from Uckfield to Etchingham, was ordered to retreat behind the Thames, where other units had for several days past been assembling. Withdrawal, as the German commanders joked, was one operation at which the British generals were expert and as
patrols, probing forward, again found only undefended territory in front of them, Army Group A was for the second time ordered to make a general advance. The new line would be very little short of the ‘Supreme Command objective’, laid down long ago by the
Sea Lion
planners, and ran from Portsmouth to Petersfield and thence to Dunsfold, Sevenoaks, Maidstone and Chatham, and the new advance gave the Germans possession of the former RAF airfields at West Mailing and Tangmere, long since knocked out by bombing and, the greatest prize of all, Portsmouth, though this was only secured after a violent battle. As the smoke from burning stores of fuel drifted across the ruined docks and berths littered with wrecked or sinking ships – for here at least the work of demolition had been thoroughly done – the British commanders recognised reluctantly that they no longer had a mere ‘bridgehead’ or ‘lodgement’ to contend with. The whole of the south-east corner of England was now in enemy hands and, unless the Germans were soon driven out, the entire country must rapidly be at their mercy.
After gaining the first operational objective, the further task of the Army will be as follows: to defeat the enemy forces still holding out in Southern England.
Instructions of the Commander-in-Chief Army,
30 August 1940
With most of Kent and Sussex and a substantial part of Hampshire safely in his hands, and winter already approaching, Field Marshal von Rundstedt decided that there was nothing to be said for delay. As the armoured and motorised divisions of his follow-up forces flowed in smoothly through the captured ports, from Dover to Portsmouth, already partly in operation again despite the recent demolitions, they were rapidly moved forward. Tunbridge Wells was reinforced with the 8th Motorised Division, and an even more formidable force, the 7th and 10th Panzer Divisions, was established around Petersfield, while, with little fear left of interference by the RAF, squadron after squadron of the Luftwaffe was flown into Britain to support the coming assault or transferred to bases just across the Channel. By mid-October, three weeks after S Day, more than 3000 aircraft were assembled in England or Northern France, half being earmarked for direct support of the Army, a role in which the German Air Force already excelled, and the rest being sent further afield to attack railways, bridges, fuel dumps and ordnance factories, and to disrupt the whole supply and communications network on which the defence depended.
The original
Sea Lion
instructions had been vague about the Army’s long-term objectives. After the initial lodgement, Army Group A had been told, its task was ‘to defeat the enemy forces still holding out in Southern England, to occupy London, to mop up the enemy in Southern England and to win the general line Maldon–Severn Estuary’. Further ahead than that the High Command’s planners had not looked, promising merely that ‘orders concerning further tasks will be issued at the proper time’, though unhindered by false modesty they had conceded that ‘if favourable circumstances allow the operation to be speeded up, our very mobile and flexible Command will be able to adapt itself to this favourable situation as quickly as in former operations’. The ‘favourable situation’ had now occurred and shortly before midnight on Monday 14 October, an ominous date for the British for it was the anniversary of the Battle of Hastings, the first German divisions began to close up towards the Thames.
The Germans now faced that ‘opposed river-crossing’ which they had anticipated ever since June but, unlike the Channel assault, it presented no particular terrors for them, and cautiously but confidently, the troops advanced to occupy the right bank of the river from Wallingford to Windsor. They had half-expected that the British, a sentimental race as everyone knew, might try to deny them the use of the latter town due to its long association with their royal family, but advanced patrols reported that the streets were empty of troops although Windsor bridge had been blown up.
