Behind them on the beach, successive waves of hovercraft continued to pour in as the troops already on the ground began to push north and south and expand the embarkation area to make room. Flak vehicles, self-propelled guns and rocket artillery joined the men already on the ground, although the Wirbelwind AA vehicles would find more use for their quartets of 23mm cannon against ground targets that day than the non-existent RAF. They took casualties as the defending enemy began to concentrating their forces, but those losses were comparatively light all the same, and the seemingly endless stream of men and armoured vehicles continued to arrive as attack planes and gunships howled overhead, firing their cannon and releasing bombs and rockets with impunity. Although the battle in that area would continue into the morning, in truth it had already been won.
The men of 7RTR and the rest of the 1st London Division could hear the muffled sounds of artillery, and see the eerie flashes of explosions as they lit up the grey cloud that skirted the eastern horizon. Battle reports from the local area command were sketchy at best, partly due to the requirements of censorship, and partly because they simply didn’t have better information. The gravity of the situation was nevertheless clear enough and chilling in the extreme. Engagements with enemy paratroopers had been confirmed right along the Kent and Sussex coast during the night, and there were now reports of a large landing force on the beaches near the Romney Marsh. Davids had heard of plans to flood the marsh and set it alight with oil, should invaders land, but it seemed the enemy force there had already secured the beaches with little or no opposition. By all accounts, German paratroopers had already seized control of many key strategic points in that area, and many of the planned invasion defences had either failed or had been rendered significantly less effective as a result.
Their dug-in position across the A20 were less than a dozen kilometres from the nearest beachheads, and a good deal closer than that to some of the pitched battles that had been fought against fallschirmjäger earlier that morning. As such, they expected to see action at any moment… depending on how fast the beach defences collapsed. As it happened, the defences at Smeeth were provided a few hours grace as the bulk of the 3rd SS Shock turned north and pushed up the coast, slamming into the outnumbered but well dug-in defenders around Hythe and Folkestone. The resulting engagements were short, but were also particularly intense as mechanised troops were forced to dismount their IFVs and engage British defenders in vicious house-to-house fighting. Both towns had fallen within hours, and the Wehrmacht had eventually held the field of battle, but the victory had come at a higher cost. The 3rd SS lost a number of tanks damaged or knocked out, and took heavy casualties among their grenadiers, although their enemy was ultimately wiped out entirely in return.
Civilian casualties were also incredibly high, as many hadn’t considered evacuation until the last moment, and had subsequently been caught up in the invasion itself. Many had been killed or wounded by bombardments from the division’s self-propelled rocket launchers and artillery guns as they reduced huge sections of Folkestone to rubble prior to any advance. What remained of the city was little more than a smoking ruin, but the division’s first major objective had been reached, and Folkestone’s port had been captured basically intact. Freighters and transports would arrive within the hour carrying more troops, armoured vehicles and supplies.
With enemy resistance in the area finally crushed, the 3rd SS was ordered to dig in and await resupply and reinforcement by the rest of Von Rundstedt’s Army Group A as it steamed toward them across The Channel’s narrowest point. The division had also linked up with sections of the 1st Fallschirmjäger near West Hythe during their advance, and as the fighting there subsided, news reached the division commander that the paratroopers were in danger of losing their hold on the vital Lympne airfield, ten kilometres inland from Folkestone. Schmidt was immediately given orders to take 3rd Company west along the Hythe Road at full speed to provide heavy armour support against any counter-attack. As the intensity of the fighting near Folkestone began to wind down, the eyes of the Wehrmacht area commanders turned inexorably toward Dover; the next vital objective on their list.
Much like the rest of the area commands in Southern England, the local British HQ at Dover Castle had placed the city defences on immediate alert as ‘codeword Oliver’ had been broadcast, just before dawn. Luftwaffe air activity had been intense, with fighters, attack aircraft, transports and heavy bombers constantly passing overhead in both directions, yet there’d rather unexpectedly been no attacks on Dover itself… something that hadn’t gone unnoticed by the local commanders. They were grateful for the small respite, all things considered, as many of the soldiers ostensibly manning defences there that day were instead tied up acting as glorified police officers, forced into vain attempts at controlling a mass exodus of the civilian population.
Like numerous other towns along the coast, many of the town’s residents had decided to remain until the last moment in the ill-considered opinion there’d be ample time to evacuate, should the need arise. Of course, now the invasion warnings had finally come, the huge majority were now attempting to leave at the same time, clogging the streets and lanes leading west into the countryside with masses of terrified people, many of whom were also trying to bring what seemed on the face of it to be their entire life’s belongings into the bargain. Roads were jammed by every imaginable form of transportation. Cars and trucks, motorcycles and bicycles, horses, drays, hand-drawn carts… all were squeezed together as a chaotic sea of human beings forced its way slowly out of the city.
The High Street and Maison Dieu Road were at a standstill as they headed north-west toward the London Road, the A2 and the relative safety of Canterbury beyond. Castle Hill Road was also gridlocked heading north toward Deal, as were most of the city’s cross-streets as confusion and panic reigned. No one dared take the risk of making an escape to the south-west. Rumours that were based on a good deal of solid truth were already circulating of enemy landings on the Romney Marshes, and that an armoured division had already taken Hythe and was pushing down on the outskirts of Folkestone, just twelve kilometres away. The stories were backed up by the dull thud of distant artillery from that direction, and few were willing to risk suicide by taking the Folkestone Road that morning.
The lack of aerial attention came to an end perhaps an hour after the 3rd SS had hit the beaches near St Mary’s Bay. Seeräuber medium bombers and the ubiquitous S-2Ds were among the first waves to hit the town, sweeping in from across the water at extremely low level before hitting the docks and surrounding areas with bombs and cannon fire. Their intelligence prior to the attack was excellent, and many gun emplacements and defensive positions believed to have been well hidden were destroyed in that first attack.
The retreating aircraft also served to distract the defenders on the ground, and as they fired back in retaliation, the streams of tracer reaching into the sky gave away their positions to the gunships of III./SHG1 as the insect-like helicopters powered in from The Channel in the wake of their fixed-wing colleagues. Splitting into pairs, they formed into wide, ‘figure-8’ flight patterns as each helicopter took its turn to dive in, engage with cannon or rockets, then climb away again, circling around to come back onto their target as their wingmen made their own attack runs. Fires burned around the entire harbour, and towers of thick, black smoke streamed up into the sky to taint the lighter grey of the clouds above.