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to demonstrate against the Maginot Line in the south, twenty-nine to seize Holland and northern Belgium, and forty-five including seven panzer to attack in the centre, then swing north-west towards the Channel coast after crossing the Meuse, cutting off the French and British in Belgium. Only half of the German attacking troops were fully trained, and more than a quarter were reservists aged over forty. The principal burden of defeating the French army rested upon 140,000 men of the panzer and mechanised divisions making the vital thrust across the Meuse. The first German troops reached the river at 1400 on 12 May, having seen scarcely a French soldier since they broke clear of the Ardennes; they had thus far conducted a march rather than an attack. The Meuse line was defended by reservists of Charles Huntziger’s Second Army. On the morning of 13 May, these French troops suffered a devastating bombardment by more than a thousand Luftwaffe aircraft, attacking in waves. This, the first such attack of their war, did little material damage but impacted severely on morale. A soldier wrote: ‘The noise of their engines is already enormous and then there is this extraordinary shrieking which shreds your nerves … And then suddenly there is a rain of bombs … And it goes on and on! Not a French or British plane to be seen. Where the hell are they? My neighbour, a young bloke, is crying.’

A French staff officer at Sedan wrote: ‘The gunners stopped firing and went to ground, the infantry cowered in their trenches, dazed by the crash of bombs and the shriek of the dive-bombers; they had not developed the instinctive reaction of running to their anti-aircraft guns and firing back. Their only concern was to keep their heads well down. Five hours of this nightmare was enough to shatter their nerves.’ Soldiers, like most human beings in all circumstances, react badly to the unexpected. Through the long winter of 1939–40, there had been no attempt to condition the French army to endure such an ordeal as it now experienced.

Most of the command telephone system was destroyed in the air attacks. Early that evening of the 13th, there was a ‘tank panic’ three miles south of Sedan. The local commanding general left his headquarters to investigate wild shouting outside, and found a scene of chaos: ‘A wave of terrified fugitives, gunners and infantry, in cars, on foot, many without arms but dragging kitbags, were hurtling down the road screaming “The tanks are at Bulson.” Some were firing their rifles like lunatics. General Lafontaine and his officers rushed in front of them, trying to reason with them and herd them together, and had lorries put across the road … Officers were mixed in with the men … There was mass hysteria.’ Some 20,000 men decamped in the Bulson panic – six hours before German forces crossed the Meuse. In all probability, their flight was prompted by frightened men mistaking French tanks for enemy ones.

The first German river-crossing parties suffered heavily at the hands of French machine-gunners, but handfuls of determined men reached the western shore in dinghies, then waded through swamps to attack French positions. A sergeant named Walther Rubarth led a group of eleven assault engineers to storm a succession of bunkers with satchel charges and grenades. Six of the Germans were killed, but the survivors opened a breach. Panzergrenadiers ran across an old weir linking an island to the two banks of the Meuse, to establish a foothold on the western side. By 1730, German engineers were bridge-building, while rafts ferried equipment across. Some French soldiers were already retreating, indeed fleeing. At 2300, tanks began clattering across the first completed pontoons: the German sappers’ achievement was as impressive as that of the assault troops.

The French response was painfully sluggish, absurdly complacent. It was suggested to Gen. Huntzinger that the German assault was unfolding like that on Poland. He shrugged theatrically: ‘Poland is Poland … Here we are in France.’ Told of the Meuse crossings, he said: ‘That will mean