18. Too Many, Too Much and Too Few…
Fields near Lympne Castle
West of Hythe, County Kent
‘S-Day’
Wednesday,
September 11, 1940
Hauptmann Rudolf Witzig crouched by a short tree line and cast his eyes carefully across the open fields that lay before him in the bright moonlight. In the distance he could pick out the darker line that was Royal Military Rd and the canal beyond, running along the southern edge of the fields on its journey between Seabrook and Cliff End. West Hythe lay a short distance away on the far side of the canal, and Lympne stood perhaps a kilometre beyond the low hills to the north: it was difficult to find an open expanse of countryside in Southern England that wasn’t in close proximity to some kind of town or urban centre.
Turning his head to the east, he could already see the faint glow in the sky that warned of the impending dawn, and he checked the luminous dial of his watch for the third time in five minutes. The aircraft they awaited were due very soon, and they had to be completely ready. He gestured to his NCO and the man instantly moved to stand at his side.
“Place the LMG to provide covering fire, and get the rest of the men setting up those flares,” he whispered softly. “Make sure they’re well clear of any trees, and that the smoke’s at its ‘head’.” He didn’t really need to remind the feldwebel; they all knew their job.
“Jawohl, Mein Herr!” The man hissed in return, and he was gone in a moment, organising the placement of the two men manning the squad light machine gun before taking the other six with him out into the open.
The brightness of the flares seemed almost blinding in the darkness as they ignited, and the troop worked quickly, as much for fear of discovery at any moment as the short timetable they were working to. Taking a deep breath and reaffirming his grip on the assault rifle in his left hand, Witzig gestured to another NCO who was carrying the unit’s backpack radio. The man was beside him in an instant and held out the handset, which the officer accepted and lifted to his face.
“Nighthawk, this is Badger: come in please…”
The reply was almost instantaneous. “Badger, this is Nighthawk… we read you loud and clear. How is your position, over?”
“Our position is secure, Nighthawk… there’s been no observable activity for several hours, and we’re activating landing flares now, over.”
“We read you, Badger — deploy your signal please, over.”
He set his rifle down and drew a leuchtpistole from a bulky holster at his waist. Cocking it laboriously with his one free hand, he raised it over his head and aimed for a break in the tree cover above. There was a soft ‘crump’ and some considerable recoil as a bright, shimmering ball of blue-white light hissed skyward, rising several hundred metres into the air.
“We see the flare, Badger… we have a blue light, over.”
“The colour is blue, Nighthawk, over.”
“Thank you, Badger… we have correct bearing onto target now… ETA of first wave approximately five minutes… Nighthawk over and out…”
Witzig took up his rifle once more and drew back the cocking handle, loading a round and then setting the safety. At twenty-four years of age, he’d already served the German military for five years, having joined the fallschirmjäger in 1938. Blessed with sharp eyes and chiselled features, Witzig was a dedicated front-line officer and a well-trained paratrooper into the bargain. As an oberleutnant, he’d participated in a glider assault on the roof of the Belgian fortress of Eben Emael in May of 1940. Part of a larger attack on the installation, the garrison had surrendered the next afternoon, and he’d been awarded Ritterkreuz for his actions.
He’d received a promotion to hauptmann since then, and now commanded the Ninth Parachute Company of the 1st FJ Div. The unit had dropped into Kent four hours ago, leaping at low level from a single Arado transport, the T-1A Gigant howling past at full speed, just two hundred metres above the rolling fields below. They’d subsequently spent the last three hours making a detailed reconnaissance of the area, and had determined there was no notable British activity. All that was to be done now was to await the arrival of the rest of the 1st Fallschirmjäger Division.
The 1st FJ Div was part of the XVI Army under General Busch, which in turn was under the control of Army Group A and the command of Generalfeldmarschall Von Rundstedt . It was the pre-dawn Wednesday morning of 11 September 1940, and landing craft were already underway from dozens of ports along the Dutch and French coasts enroute for the south coast of Britain. Vessels destined to land as far west as Portsmouth and The Solent had already been at sea for a day or more, chugging their way slowly across the choppy waters of The Channel.
The 1st Fallschirmjäger and other airborne forces would lead the way, and carry the first battles of the operation to the British on their own soil, something that would also present the first serious military threat to England and its sovereignty since 1066. Theirs was the most important of the initial actions, and ten thousand airborne troops would soon be dropping all over Kent, their objective to secure the southern flanks of beachheads that would be forced near Dover, Folkestone and Dungeness. The general feeling was that the only real chance the British had of resistance would be during the initial assault phase, where they might conceivably drive the Wehrmacht back into the sea. The 9th Company’s specific mission was to capture the strategically-important Lympne airfield and hold it until reinforcements could be brought in.
Thirty kilometres east above the French coast, the first transports of the 1st FJ Div turned on to their final approach as the flare’s position was relayed to their lead pilot via a lone S-2F FAC observer circling high over the area. In line-astern formation, the first dozen aircraft held their altitude steady, three hundred metres above the surface of The Channel. It was dangerous to fly any higher than necessary: Fliegerkorps had assured that all radar installations in the area had been completely neutralised, but no one was taking that for granted.
As they neared the Kent coast, sixteen kilometres and two minutes from their target, the pilot of the first Gigant activated the red ‘ready’ light inside the cargo bay. At that moment, the senior NCO loadmaster opened the access doors at the port and starboard rear of the aircraft, and all forty of the paratroops inside stood as one, clipping their static lines to the rails running the length of the bay on either side. In tense silence, they made final checks of weapons and equipment and waited patiently. They’d been training for this moment for months, and that training had been intensive: all that was left now was for them to prove themselves in battle.