‘What is your information about the enemy’s dispositions?’ asked the colonel, making a subtle counter-attack successfully, as was proved by the length of time the major-general took to consider his answer.
‘Not too detailed,’ he answered at length, grudgingly. ‘It isn’t easy to get information from the island. Churchill arrested half our agents last week, and contact with the others is bound to be difficult.’
‘The navy and the general want us to seize a harbour,’ said the colonel. ‘What about these places - Dover, Folkestone?’
‘Garrison towns in peacetime, and we believe them to have considerable garrisons now. There would also be large numbers of naval personnel available for defence. And we have heard of a First London Division in the vicinity. But we have all the pre-war gun positions plotted - here ... here... here.’
The major-general’s anxious glances took note of the dubious way in which the colonel was pulling at his chin.
‘What about these troops?’ asked the colonel. ‘Good? Bad?’
‘Churchill boasted of bringing three hundred thousand men back from Dunkirk. But we have every scrap of equipment they took to France. They’ll have rifles by now. Perhaps they’ll have half their establishment of guns.’
‘But they’ll fight,’ said the colonel.
‘You captured Eben Emael,’ the general replied. ‘Can’t you capture Dover Castle? Supposing you drop here, and here, on these Western Heights and on Edinburgh Hill, as they seem to be called. From there you could move down and seize the piers and the breakwater. The navy will have its ships alongside as soon as they are cleared and could land troops and armour by noon of the first day.’
The colonel hesitated longingly before he shook his head. ‘Balloon barrages. In any case, we captured Eben Emael in time of peace,’ he said. ‘We can’t hope for surprise this time. All those buildings will have garrisons and barbed wire. We have to fight our way through, yard by yard, five thousand men against ten thousand. The navy could do nothing until the harbour-defence guns were silenced, and they’re the farthest out of reach. The odds are too heavy, general.’
The major-general nodded reluctant agreement. ‘The navy won’t be pleased to hear about your decision,’ he said. ‘Nor will the general. They want a port.’
‘The Tommies know that as well as we do. They’ll be strong there, and they’ll be alert. We’ll have to find a weak point and take it by surprise.’
‘Yes,’ agreed the general.
They stood looking at the map again.
‘Now what about turning this flank?’ suggested the colonel. ‘That looks more promising.’
The colonel’s pointer tapped its way over the map. ‘Fairlight. Guestling. Udimore. Peasmarsh.’
‘Houghton Green. Camber,’ supplemented the general, warming to the scheme. ‘Then you could isolate these places, Winchelsea, Rye.’
‘I could clear a landing for the airborne troops here,’ said the colonel. ‘Then they can move in on this harbour - Rye Harbour. That might satisfy the navy.’
‘There must be some landing facilities there.’
‘There’s twenty kilometres of beaches within that perimeter,’ said the colonel.
He took a crayon from his pocket and with it marked a bold circle on each road radiating out from Rye and Winchelsea and then swept the crayon round in an arc, joining them from sea to sea.
‘I wonder what the navy will have to say,’ mused the general. He stood staring for several more seconds at that black line drawn so boldly on the map.
MUSSOLINI ENTERS THE WAR, said the headline. That was the clearest proof that France was finished as a military factor. Mussolini would never have ventured into the fighting unless he was sure that the war was almost over.
And that was the day that the fat and elderly barge captain put his wheel over and closed the throttle to allow the Fritz Reuter to turn into the river port on the lower Rhine. What he saw there as his barge went thump-thumping round the corner caused him to open his mouth with surprise. The port was filled with riverboats, more than he had ever seen at one time before in his life. Half the self-propelled barges of Germany - more than half, perhaps - were there, packed in, rank beside rank, and nearly all of them riding high in the water to prove that they were empty. There were friends and acquaintances everywhere, shouting greetings as soon as they recognized him and his barge.
‘Well, we might have expected you!’
‘You’re a long way from home, aren’t you, Hans?’
‘The Fritz Reuter’s here, boys. Now the war can start.’
The barge captain who shouted the last remark cut his words off short, with a note of apprehension in the final syllables, and he threw a frightened glance over his shoulder - the sort of glance which Germans had for years been casting behind them after a rash speech.
The remark had been natural enough, all the same. There was a gigantic battle being fought in France, and here was an unprecedented concentration of river shipping. There must be some connexion between the two; but it might be as well not to comment on it.
REYNAUD CABINET RESIGNS; MARSHAL PETAIN HEADS NEW GOVERNMENT, was the next headline. That meant not merely conquest, but an armistice. The new government would, as far as lay in its power, restrain Frenchmen all over the world from continuing hostilities.
It would simplify to some extent - to a minute extent - the problems confronting the colonel-general at the head of the conference table with the air general and the vice-admiral on either side of him and the half dozen other officers in descending order of rank further down the table.
‘But you admit,’ the colonel-general was saying to the vice-admiral - and those words were proof that accusation was being met by defence - ‘you admit that the British managed to move three hundred thousand men across the Channel three weeks ago.’
The vice-admiral tried not to display impatience. ‘Three hundred thousand men, sir, but not an ounce of equipment. And may I call the colonel-general’s attention to the British Admiralty communique of June 3rd? In that it is stated that two hundred and twenty-two naval vessels took part in the operation and six hundred and sixty-five other craft. And I hardly have to remind the colonel-general that the operation lasted a week.’
‘And how many craft have you?’
‘I hope to assemble nearly as many. Everything that floats. Every barge, every motorboat, every tug. The internal navigation of the Reich is at a standstill. Six weeks from now the consequences will begin to be deplorable.’
‘Six weeks from now ...’ The colonel-general indulged in a moment’s daydreaming before turning his gaze on the intelligence officer down the table. ‘What have you to report?’
‘Our best source of information is the English newspapers via Dublin. The British began to take urgent anti-invasion measures several weeks ago, and the parachute attacks on Eben Emael and Rotterdam have hastened them. It is now forbidden to leave any motor vehicle unattended without first removing some necessary working part. Church bells are not to be rung except in case of invasion. There has been a general roundup of people suspected of favouring our cause, including some of our best friends.’
‘But what about troops, man?’
‘Not so easily discovered, sir. It appears obvious, I am afraid, that they have just brought back most of their First Armoured Division with their equipment. It may be back in its old area near Portland. There is a Second Armoured Division, not fully equipped nor trained, believed to be in the Lincolnshire area. There are about sixteen infantry divisions, including Canadians, in various stages of training, probably all short of artillery.’
‘We shall be short of artillery as well, according to this scheme,’ said the colonel-general, tapping the folder of typewritten sheets before him. ‘What else?’
‘The British have been for some time preparing a muster of all civilians in case of invasion. They are to assemble on the first alarm, armed with old rifles and shotguns and cavalry carbines. They are called the
LDV - Local Defence Volunteers.’ The intelligence officer said these last three words in English and then added a German translation. There was an apologetic note in his voice - for wasting the colonel-general’s time over such trifles.
‘They might cause some loss to the parachute troops,’ said the air general. ‘If so …’
There appeared no need to finish the sentence.
HITLER STATES HIS TERMS, said the headline. But the very day the headline appeared, the terms were already agreed to. At Compiegne Hitler had his greatest hour. With the ceremony over Hitler strode out again. He halted by the monument with its inscription. Goebbels was there and handed him some typewritten sheets.
‘The full translation of Churchill’s speech of June 18th, mein Führer. There is a summary attached.’
Hitler flipped through the pages and called Goebbels’ attention to a sentence. ‘The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us.’ Then there was another one. ‘If the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will say, “This was their finest hour”.’
‘He will eat those words,’ said Hitler.
It was only a subcommittee which sat considering the accumulated intelligence - half a dozen men, by no means of the highest rank - and yet the conclusions they were going to reach might affect all mankind through all subsequent history. In consequence they had to be men of steady nerve and yet men of imagination - nerve at the right moment and imagination at the right moment. It would not do to dwell too imaginatively on their responsibilities, to think about the colossal results of errors on their part. A single bad mistake, or a chain of minor ones, could mean that midsummer would see a triumphal march of panzers and Bersaglieri along the royal route from Buckingham Palace to the Mansion House; certainly that did not bear thinking about too much. But imagination had to be used; thousands of items of information had to be sifted and examined, and decisions reached as to whether they had any significance or not, and then further decisions as to how and by whom action should be taken.
This subcommittee was holding its meeting in one of the rooms in the war headquarters - one of the scores of rooms composing the labyrinth that stretched underground from Storey’s Gate to Trafalgar Square, corridor below corridor, with the sewer pipes and water pipes and gas pipes of London twining through them amid a tangle of electric mains and telephone cables and air pipes. Dante could have fittingly described that war headquarters, from which the war could still have been conducted even if the city of eight million lay in ruins above it.
Inside this particular room the air-conditioning system struggled valiantly against the tobacco smoke that threatened to fill it. There were orderly banks of files against the walls; there were folders in plenty, laid out upon the table round which the subcommittee was seated.
‘Well, gentlemen,’ said the chairman, ‘it looks as if the pieces are fitting together.’
His rapid gaze shot round the table. Each pair of eyes met his in turn. There was something more than tobacco smoke in the air; there was a tension and an excitement even more noticeable.
‘I shall need an appraisal to present to the War Cabinet this afternoon,’ went on the chairman. ‘That shouldn’t be difficult.’
He glanced down at the chart of the English Channel that lay before him. On it were drawn two converging lines - the same two lines as had been drawn on a similar chart which had been discussed some time before by a German naval captain and a Luftwaffe colonel.
‘These minefields which they persist in laying. They indicate an intention to seal off a section of the Channel for their own purposes. Yes? And the most likely purpose is invasion?’
‘I can’t think of any other reason,’ said the naval member;
‘And the German navy - the three big ships and most of the destroyers - is at Wilhelmshaven with all leave cancelled.’
‘They might be planning a massed sortie into the Atlantic.’
‘Or they might be intended to screen an invading force. Yes?’
‘Yes,’ said the naval member.
‘Every barge in Germany,’ went on the chairman, ‘pretty nearly every one at least, is moving to the Channel coast by one route or another. Coal’s already short in Berlin. Can that mean anything except invasion?’
‘No,’ said the naval member.
‘Trawlers and minesweepers and tugs,’ added the chairman, ‘All moving down the Dutch coast. Invasion?’
‘Certainly,’ said the naval member.
‘These air photographs. The Channel ports are full of barges already. Antwerp, Ostend, even Calais, and more waiting their turn. Any possible explanation except invasion?’
‘None,’ said the naval member.
The chairman picked up another folder. ‘These army divisions. More than a dozen of them, with three or four good armoured ones among them. They made no appearance during the fighting in France. Why not?’
‘A strategic reserve?’ suggested the military member.
‘Some of them marched directly away from the fighting. We have this one - the Eleventh - definitely located at Ostend. If you were Hitler, would you line up your strategic reserve along the Channel coast?’
‘No’, said the military member.
‘The Third Air Fleet took no part in the fighting either. It’s been taking over the airfields in Holland and Belgium and Northern France.’
‘That could mean anything,’ said the air-force member. ‘Sooner or later they’re going to attack us.’
‘But they’d be necessary there to give air cover for an invasion?’
‘Oh yes, certainly.’
‘These raids we’ve been having in the southern counties. Reconnaissance? Testing? Or just plain nuisance?’
‘I wish I could be sure,’ said the air-force member. ‘But they’d do their best to conceal their object in any case.’
‘But are they consistent with invasion plans?’
‘They’re not inconsistent, anyway,’ said the air-force member cautiously.
‘There’s a parachute division and at least one air-landing division, and we’ve heard nothing from them since Rotterdam. Any comments?’
‘There are enough planes to transport the whole parachute division at a single drop - say six thousand infantry with mortars and a certain amount of equipment,’ said the air member. ‘The air-landing troops would have to follow, mostly. A few instantly and the rest in a second wave - three hours later, say.’
‘Enough to be a nuisance.’
The chairman turned back to the naval member. ‘How many can they transport by sea?’
‘Depends entirely on how much equipment they bring with them. They might carry forty thousand infantry at one lift, to land on an open beach. Armour would reduce that number. But on the other hand, I wouldn’t like the job of landing armour on an open beach. You want a port with quays and cranes for that, and those ports’ - the naval member stabbed with his finger at the map - ‘are not only defended but prepared for demolition in case of accidents.’
‘Special landing craft?’
‘A few experimental ones only. We’d have heard if they’d started building in large numbers.’
‘So some armour might be landed?’
‘No doubt. A division possibly, although it’s hard to believe it.’
‘Very well, gentlemen.’ The chairman looked at the clock. ‘We are agreed that invasion can come at any moment.’
It was while the chairman was gathering his papers together - at that very same moment - that at the headquarters at St Omer the chief of staff laid the final orders before the colonel-general for signature. The colonel-general turned the pages over with one hand while he held his fountain pen ready in the other. He scribbled his signature.
‘The code word has gone out, sir,’ said the chief of staff.
‘Excellent,’ said the colonel-general.
But he was enough of a romantic to spare a glance at the map on the table which was revealed when the chief of s
taff took the orders away. The road to London; there were strange foreign names upon it, Hawkhurst and Lamberhurst, Tonbridge and Sevenoaks - stepping stones on the road to victory, like Warsaw and Liege and Reims.
Motorcycle dispatch riders were already hurtling at speed over the roads of Holland and Belgium and northern France; they pulled up with a clatter, hurled themselves from their saddles to hand over their sealed envelopes to waiting officers. It took only a second for those officers to read the entire message inside - SEA LION. Sea Lion - Sea Lion - Sea Lion - on airfields and at ammunition depots, in railway stations and in field bakeries, in Calais, Brussels, Cologne, Berlin, those words were heard, and the Third Reich gathered itself for its boldest leap of all.
As darkness closed over the little harbours excitement mounted. Frenchmen and Belgians and Dutchmen, confined to their houses by a strict curfew, lifted their heads to hear, in each little port, a sudden tonk-tonk-tonking as the diesels started up in their hundreds. Mooring lines were cast off, and barges began to nose their way towards the entrances. There were misunderstandings and minor collisions. The orders that had until now been given in quiet executive tones were now being bellowed through megaphones, as if the officers concerned had suddenly realized that there was, after all, no danger of arousing England from her sleep across the water.
‘Keep them moving! Keep them moving!’ shouted the naval officer in charge of the embarkation into his telephone as the reports came in. It was his business to get as many loaded vessels out to sea as could possibly be managed while the tide served. No one knew better than he did the difficulties of the operation he was directing.
The fat captain of the Fritz Reuter spun his wheel urgently to avoid a dark shape looming in front of him. Beside him a young naval officer, no more than a boy, stared down at the faintly illuminated dial of a compass - a very new fitting in the Fritz Reuter - and stammered orders.
‘Thank heavens,’ said the young naval officer suddenly, the relief in his voice contrasting oddly with the apprehension in the fat captain’s mind. ‘There’s the light. Follow it.’