Tim Saunders - Arras Counter-Attack, 1940

Arras Counter-Attack 1940

Dedication

This book is dedicated to the soldiers of the Durham Light Infantry and their successors in todays Rifles.

Tim Saunders

First published in Great Britain in 2018 by

PEN AND SWORD MILITARY

an imprint of

Pen and Sword Books Ltd

47 Church Street

Barnsley

South Yorkshire S70 2AS

Copyright Tim Saunders, 2018

ISBN 978 1 47388 912 5

eISBN: 9781473889149

Mobi ISBN: 9781473889132

The right of Tim Saunders to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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In writing this book I am particularly indebted to my friend and colleague Richard Hone who not only made his extensive library of books on armour and the Durham Light Infantry available to me but provided some unique pictures, particularly those of the Experimental Mechanised Force. In a similar vein, my thanks and appreciation must go to Keith Brigstock, guardian of the Royal Artillerys living history, who not only introduced me to the Mark I 25-pounder gun but also to the works of Gun Buster who, as an officer working under a pseudonym, left a detailed and revealing account of the Gunners part in the Arras counter-attack.

Regimental headquarters, their historians and museums have, as usual, helped significantly by providing the very necessary personal accounts and photographs for which I am exceedingly grateful.

As ever, the very existence of The National Archives and their most helpful staff was essential to this project. It is, however, clear that very few historians in general accounts of the campaign in specific chapters on the Arras counterattack have actually consulted the war diaries. These primary sources are, of course, important for a work looking at the operations of 21 May 1940 in detail.

Finally, as always, I am also most grateful to Matt Jones, Pamela Covey, Roni Wilkinson and Sylvia Menzies, the Battleground team with whom I have enjoyed working for more than fifteen years.

Tim Saunders

Warminster

November 2018

There was at the time, and there still is, some confusion of ideas about what is commonly known as the British counter-attack at Arras. These words published in Major Elliss Official History of the 1940 Campaign in 1953 still apply today! Was it a counter-attack or was it a limited clearance operation that simply ran into the flank of a panzer division? The essence of the continuing debate is that the operational and tactical aims south of Arras on 21 May 1940 were muddled and contradictory. Operationally, it was the beginning of the British part in a proposed Anglo-French counter-attack to sever the panzer corridor that ran north to the Channel, but tactically it was to secure Arras and gain elbow room for a subsequent operation, i.e. the proposed counter-attack. That it ran into the flank of the 7th Panzer Divisions infantry strung out in column of route was pure luck on the part of the British and the result of risk-taking on the part of Rommel.

Aside from the debate over what the Arras counter-attack was or wasnt, this book is essentially about blitzkrieg, with an overview of the ten to twelve days that saw the Panzer Arm ( Panzerwaffe ) executing the sickle cut, as originally proposed by von Manstein, from the Ardennes across northern France in a decision-seeking operation.

Blitzkrieg or Lightning War was, however, in much of the German army of the 1930s a discredited concept, with the 1914 Schlieffen Plan that envisaged defeat of the French army within forty-two days being seen as the overambitious reason for Germany facing her geostrategic nightmare of a war on two fronts. Indeed, before the Second World War there are only a few occasions on which blitzkrieg can be found mentioned in any German military document or periodical. Many today, particularly in Germany, argue that blitzkrieg as an operational concept did not actually exist in the Wehrmacht in the late winter and early spring of 1940 and that the stunning victory in May/June of that year was brought about by circumstance rather than through a conscious strategic doctrine for the use of the new and very much still developing Panzerwaffe .

My aim in writing this book is to examine the battle in detail and get to the bottom of as many of the conflicting tales as possible to produce a balanced view of what actually happened. In addition, there is a battlefield tour instruction with not just a marked map but GPS-usable longitude and latitude to help navigation through the maze of villages in the Scarpe Valley and some that are now on the outer fringes of Arras.

I have also, with very scant information, tried my best to acknowledge the significant part played by French troops who fought among and alongside their Allies on 21 May 1940. British commentators often dismiss French participation as non-existent or ineffective when in fact it was neither. A lack of effective liaison is also blamed on the French but, of course, liaison is a twoway process and that it didnt happen is symptomatic of the disintegration of command structures, both British and French, rather than any wilful negligence that is often implied.

The correct terminology of the time for the Royal Tank Regiment (RTR) units and sub-units was battalion and company. I have, however, for the sake of clarity referred to RTR companies as squadrons because with at various stages in the battle, infantry companies and the tanks being on the same ground along with a multiplicity of A, B and C companies is simply too confusing for the author, let alone the reader!

Again for clarity, I have referred to the main tanks used by the two Royal Tank Regiment battalions at Arras as the Mark I (Mk I) and the Mark II as the Matilda. The proper designation for these tanks is Infantry Tank Matilda Mark I and Infantry Tank Matilda II.

The story of the development of armour in Europe during the interwar years is, of course, inseparable from the tactics put into effect by the Germans in May 1940. In this chapter the development of weapons, equipment and tactics between the final phase of the First World War and the retreat to Dunkirk is discussed.