11. A Not So Phoney War
In England, the Realtime period between September 1939 and May 1940 — the months directly preceding the beginning of the German blitzkrieg in France and the Low Countries — at the time became known colloquially as the ‘Phoney War’. In the seven months following the Allied declaration of war on September 3, 1939, very little activity of any kind occurred on the Western Front at all, the Germans according it their own nickname of ‘Sitzkrieg’. Indeed, the French Army and the British Expeditionary Force sat in relative comfort behind the Maginot Line and the Meuse River, secure in the apathetic ‘certainty’ they were completely safe. Certainly they were a good deal safer at that time than the outnumbered and under-equipped Poles, fighting for their lives and country on the opposite side of Europe: those same hapless Poles over whom the ‘war’ against Germany had ostensibly been declared in the first place.
And while the Polish fought on vainly in defence of their failing freedom, their would-be saviours sat behind their ‘safe’ defences and basically did nothing. It was military ‘fact’ that no one could penetrate the Maginot Line and that no mechanised force could negotiate the heavily forested Ardennes, or ford the Meuse without great delays. If the Wehrmacht came, the Allies would have plenty of time to consolidate and strike at any advancing force while the Royal Air Force and the Armeé de l’Air held the Luftwaffe at bay. So the Allies waited, the Poles were defeated in their lonely stand, and the majority of the Wehrmacht, almost all of which had been fighting in Poland, began to rebuild and re-equip and turned its hungry eyes toward the west.
Four years later, during the course of that same Realtime war, the advancing United States Army would solidify their positions on that same River Meuse in preparation for winter and the arrival of the New Year. They too felt similarly secure in the knowledge that those same Germans, beaten and desperately under-supplied, could never mount a counter-attack through the Ardennes or anywhere else despite some damning and very recent historical evidence to the contrary that the forest could in fact be penetrated quickly by a determined and well-trained armoured force.
In late 1944, as was the case in early 1940, the Allies were proven incredibly and utterly wrong. In 1944, the German counter-offensive that became known as ‘The Battle of the Bulge’ very nearly broke through the American lines as it swung down toward Brussels, the Allies largely deprived of their omnipotent air power due to execrable weather. Had the offensive in the Ardennes not bogged down and totally exhausted supplies and fuel available for the German armoured columns at the last moment, ports on the Dutch coast might well have been recaptured and the allied forces in the west split violently in two.
Of the Realtime ‘Phoney War’ of 1939-40, some historians continue to argue that the French and BEF should’ve gone over to the offensive immediately upon declaration of war in September of 1939. With the greater majority of Germany’s armed forces fighting in Poland and the east, there existed an excellent chance of capturing the Ruhr and the German industrial heartland, putting paid to Hitler’s designs for Grossdeutschland in one fell swoop. Certainly there might’ve been a possibility of suing for some kind of negotiated peace from a position of strength, potentially saving millions of lives.
Little more than twenty-three German divisions stood their ground on the Siegfried Line against one hundred and ten Allied divisions, and yet the Poles’ self-declared ‘saviours’ did nothing. Although less advanced in their organisation and order of battle in 1940, the French alone possessed a marked superiority in numbers of tanks and vehicles, and of that lesser number the Germans did have, there were to all intents and purposes none on the western frontier while the Wehrmacht fought in Poland. Yet the Allies remained complacent and Fall Gelb (Plan Yellow) began in May 1940: fallschirmjäger fell on the Belgian fortress of Eban Emael, German troops and armoured units penetrated the Ardennes and crossed the Meuse in just days, and the Battle for France began in earnest.
For this radically altered Europe of Reuters’ and the New Eagles’ devising, the period between the beginning of July and the first days of September became, apart from just a few notable exceptions, something of a second ‘Phoney War’ in which there was very little by way of major action from either side… in the European Theatre at least. There were of course the usual harassing air raids, and frei jagd fighter sweeps continued across southern England, the latter in particular becoming progressively more productive and deadly as greater numbers of the newer J-4A fighters became available at geschwader strength.
Adolf Galland and Werner Mölders declared their new fighter the greatest ever built, better even than the Spitfire, although in the years to come they’d both review those statements as technology overhauled them and even better aircraft were produced. Combat tallies rose ever upward and aces such as Galland, Mölders, Marseille, Priller and Bär became national heroes, but the ‘kills’ became harder and harder to find as the summer grew older and the RAF became all but non-existent. Fewer aircraft would rise every day from battered airfields to meet the Luftwaffe fighters and bombers that swept at will across England, the attackers choosing their targets with relative impunity. By the end of August, Britain’s military and industrial infrastructure in Southern England was practically in ruins, and the huge majority of the population were very very frightened of what the next few months might bring.
There’d also been much activity at Scapa Flow throughout July, although perhaps not of such an overtly positive nature. Max Thorne grew more accustomed to his new military rank and uniform as July wore on, and he was often kept too busy to think about anything other than the job at hand during his waking hours, although his nights were still plagued either by dreams, alcohol or — with increasing regularity — both. New uniforms arrived for the entire Hindsight Unit: a temperate zone camouflage smock and pants of ‘tiger stripe’ pattern that was accompanied by an offer extended to all to be unofficially inducted into British Paras. To a man — including the Americans — all volunteered immediately, and from that moment on wore their new red berets with pride.
The Australian SAS team was relieved of its communications and surveillance duties and took on the task of field training other combat units, Captain Green and his troop excelling at their task. Officers and NCOs of all the Commonwealth elite forces in Great Britain began to cycle through the Hindsight base at Lyness — an installation that would eventually increase its personnel on staff by almost half again within a month. These newly-trained officers and men would return to their units and pass on what they’d learned, the more advanced ideas and tactics revolutionising some men’s thinking. One of the brighter and more eager junior officers to attend the camp was a young man by the name of David Stirling. Specifically singled out by Thorne himself to undertake the SAS training sessions, in Realtime this man would’ve paradoxically gone on to create the legendary Special Air Service from which Green’s Australian unit would eventually be spawned.