We learned later these were the troops of the Wehrmacht’s 7th Parachute Division.
“This has taken a while to confirm, General,” Lorenzo went on. “But instead of punching inland, the German paratroopers are almost doubling back, moving east, paralleling the channel inland, toward Dover and Deal. The 134th has been hit hard.”
“Behind our beach lines,” Clay commented, his finger following Lorenzo’s. “They’re trying to roll us up.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Any reports yet of landings on the Thames estuary?”
“Nothing.”
Clay spoke with General Hargrave for a moment, then turned to Captain Branch. “Get me Carsen.”
At 10:18 Clay was connected to Roderick Carsen, commander of the 5th Infantry, at his headquarters near Canterbury. Clay plugged an ear against the increasing noise. He spoke with Hargrave again. Clay’s deputy, Lieutenant General Patrick Neil, joined them and added a few sentences. I couldn’t hear much of what was said. Then Clay spoke again into the phone to Carsen.
He waved over another stenographer and said, “I have approved advances of the 5th Antitank and the 19th Field Artillery battalions and the 10th Infantry Regiment to the south on a line corresponding to the Canterbury-Dover Road, the mechanism left to Carsen’s discretion. Read it back.”
The steno did so, then left for Branch’s desks. Yet another stenographer replaced him. They had been trained to run in relays.
At 10:23 one of Clay’s secretaries announced, “General Stedman is calling.”
Clay pointed to one of Lorenzo’s telephones, and a few seconds later it buzzed. He put on his spectacles, lifted the phone, bent over Lorenzo’s map, and said, “I’m putting my G2 on the line, Arthur.”
Lorenzo lifted a telephone. He pulled over another map and began tacking colorful markers on it.
Clay said, “A diversion, you think, Arthur?… Too heavy?… Where’d they come from?… Do you need anything from my end?”
Clay was learning of another prong of the German attack, the landings at Lyme Bay.
The general continued, “I’m going to order the same thing, Arthur, as much as it eats at me. What does Alexander say?”
Alexander was commander in chief of Joint Army Operations, Clay and Stedman’s superior.
“I’ll hear from you soon, Arthur. We’ll make it.” Clay lowered the receiver onto its brackets.
While Lorenzo took more reports, Clay walked out of the dining room. He lit a Pall Mall, then said to nobody, “Stedman will be my Eugene, my Jackson.”
Clay was immodestly referring to the most successful military partnerships in history: Marlborough with Prince Eugene of Savoy, and Robert E. Lee with Stonewall Jackson.
At 10:28, General Hargrave approached Clay again. Hargrave had left his pipe somewhere. I was startled. I did not think he had an existence apart from his pipe. His mouth was a thin line. He said quietly and precisely, “We have lost contact with 9th Infantry Regiment and the 15th Field Artillery Battalion near Hastings. I presume they have been overrun.”
Hargrave was interrupted by a signalman who handed him a report. He glanced at it, then said, “Colonel Williams of the 38th Infantry has requested pullout of his regiment to positions inland. Burt Jones has approved. Williams estimates the 38th has a seventy percent casualty rate. Two battalion commanders, Lieutenant Colonels Halperson and Lawton, have been killed.”
“We’ll go with Jones’ decision,” Clay said with a curled mouth, as if from an acrid taste.
At 10:33 David Lorenzo waved for Clay. His cluster of red tags had moved inland on his map. He said, “Generals Girard and Hammond on the line.”
Clay took the telephone. He listened for a moment to the commanders of II Corps and the 35th Infantry, then said, “Did any battalions get out?… Any companies?… All right, move right now to save remaining shore regiments. Pull them back. Don’t reinforce defeat by throwing in your reserves. I will get back to you within ten minutes.”
He put down the phone, pointed at the map, and said, “The enemy punched through and enveloped the 137th Infantry and two regiments of the 60th Artillery. The Wehrmacht arrived just in back of 60th’s positions, destroying supply and signal. Those units are lost.”
By 10:36 David Lorenzo had his team in place and his large map pinned on the east wall of the dining room. G2 clerks stood in front of it much like Wrens before a RAF filter room map table. Messages flooded Bilswell Manor. Lorenzo’s staff, now numbering about fifteen in the manor house, sorted and routed them. Divisional level communications were immediately given to the G2. Others were studied by Lorenzo’s subordinates, who would order a change on the maps if necessary. Other clerks logged the messages.
Bulletins from the line were unremittingly bleak. Breaking through, flanking, encircling, pursuing, the AEF was on the wrong end of it all. Red flags, moving progressively inland, showed the tenacity of the assault. Our coastal wall was proving to be porous. Each tiny shift of a red flag represented a mad melee, a cosmos of terror and death.
Without looking away from G2’s new map, Clay ordered, “Captain Branch, put me through to the War Ministry. And tell Lieutenant Gupka to keep his seat. We don’t have time for the niceties.”
Clay and Hargrave and Lorenzo discussed the evolving map for a few minutes. At 10:52, Branch yelled from the dining room, “The prime minister and Generals Barclay and Alexander are on the line, sir.”
Clay again lifted the telephone. He briefly summarized reports. Then he said, “I advise we establish a new defensive line from Worthing inland to Horsham, then east to Uckfield, Tenterden, Ashford to Canterbury, then south to the channel again at Dover.”
With those words, the general admitted he could not hold much of the southern counties. The new perimeter would be ten to fifteen miles inland from the channel.
Clay said, “Yes, Prime Minister, I fully realize that I propose to cede a third of the English soil between the channel and the city. It is an exchange of land for time.”
He paused for a moment and said to Hargrave and Lorenzo, “Winnie and the others are arguing among themselves.”
The general lowered his chin to the telephone again. “Yes, Prime Minister, I understand England does not have a thousand miles of steppes to cast before the enemy, as the Russians did before Napoleon.”
He paused, then argued, “U. S. Grant gave ground at Shiloh.”
Clay waited again, then said, “Yes, sir, I’ll henceforth keep my American history to myself…. No. We will hold Ramsgate and the peninsula because I can turn my 5th Infantry around slicker than hell, and I don’t think the German can cut through to the Thames estuary there. The line will run from Canterbury to the channel.”
Another moment elapsed, then he said, “Good. I’ll issue the orders immediately. I also request that the Canadians be released to my command.”
The Canadian I Corps was in reserve just east and south of the London.
Clay listened for a moment, then argued, “I don’t give a good goddamn if Henry will have a fit. I don’t want to quibble with that quarrelsome Canuck about committing them when the time comes.”
The general grimaced, then said, “I hope you’ll get back to me on that quickly, General Barclay. And XI Corps?”
The British XI Corps had been held inland until the day before, when it was ordered to reinforce the North Sea coast. It had done an about-face that morning and was now returning south in a daylight march. It was suffering murderous losses to the Luftwaffe.
Clay listened, staring at a point above the entry to the dining room. “General Barclay, I’ve got to have those soldiers under my command. Our area of exposure is now known to us and all the rest of God’s people. It’s my area. Troops of my 35th Division are as green as an Englishman’s teeth, and I’m going to need your people right now.”