By now we had no shells left and so I ordered my men to fix bayonets and prepare to repel the assault. After five tense minutes the smoke cleared and suddenly I heard one of my men shout, ‘We have captured four Germans. What should we do with them?’

‘Good news,’ I called back, thinking this meant we had beaten off the attack.

The four Germans belonged to a scouting party sent out by Altmann and discovered by my people after firing at one of my MGs. They had become trapped in our barbed wire hedge and were forced to stand up shouting, ‘Don’t shoot, comrades!’ They took off their helmets and belts, threw them aside and raised their hands while looking at us. Two of my men helped them out of the entanglement, and what did the paratroopers do next? Sat down in a corner and got out a pack of playing cards. And this was war?’

Although Altmann knew roughly their location and was bombing and shelling it, Schaumans’s men kept defending doggedly despite having little means of doing so. Schaumans went on:

“More formations of aircraft came from the direction of Maastricht. A Stuka began to circle over Commandant Philips’s command post. Then it dived, the siren making an appalling noise, aiming for my position. The bomb flattened a nearby MG-nest. Hardly had we recovered from the shock when a second one came for us. Instinctively we opened fire on it with our MGs and carbines in the certainty that this was a matter of life and death. When the Stuka was only twenty metres up it dropped a bomb which exploded close by, tossed us into the air and then showered us with stones and pebbles. Miraculously nobody was badly hurt. Then came a third Stuka. Pijke had had time to fit another magazine and resumed firing. We had had no opportunity to leave the trench and so threw ourselves to the floor, taking whatever cover there was for when the bomb was released. After the explosion we embraced, still lying down, joyful to be still alive. Not only that, but we shot down the third Stuka, which crashed near the trenches occupied by Detièges troops²⁹. We paid a high price for it: the machine-gunners in the forward line all died after being raked by fire from the guns of the first Stuka.

We held on, and next fought off the attack of the paratroop scouting party, then the three Stukas and finally an He 111. In the latter case we remained perfectly still in our trench to avoid being ‘cleansed’. We had survived. My last defensive act, in which once more I interfered in Altmann’s plans, was to shoot down a German observation balloon over the eastern side of the bridge close to the Dutch customs post. Pijke had no difficulty picking it off with the MG. The hail of shells behind us did not cease, but the balloon we had just shot down undoubtedly housed the spotter directing their fire.”

They could not resist much longer. Schaumans and his men had to pull out. “Shortly afterwards relief came. My lieutenant, Oscar Devalkeneer, suggested I should drink something to restore my strength, then told me to update the commandant as to the situation. Before I left, I explained to him how we had been able to ward off the repeated attacks of the Germans all morning. I promised to bring him some ammunition on the way back, but at the commandant’s command post they told me that ammunition was now very scarce. I was on the west side of the road near Kip van Hees, and although I tried to rustle up more men and ammunition, everything seemed lost.”

Shortly before 1630 hrs³⁰, the first German infantry of 2.Bat/Schützen-Regt 33 began to reach the bridge and contact the paratroopers directly, and fresh help arrived at the bridgehead in the shape of a heavy MG half-platoon and two mortars. The bridgehead had already extended westwards a distance of one kilometre when the infantry reached the bridge. While they were securing the trenches to the south of it, men of 3.Comp/zbV100 Bat. joined them.

Despite these reinforcements the Belgian counter-attacks continued. One of these was organized by the troops under Lt.Bailleux, who had four light T-13 tanks to strengthen the positions at Veldwezelt. The Stukas renewed their attacks in an attempt to crush these Belgian plans. At 1645 hrs from his command post at Vroenhoven, Koch requested VIII Fliegerkorps to lend Stuka support to Altmann. He promised Altmann he would help him hold out. At 1715 hrs Altmann repeated his request for air support, but this time the Stukas did not make it and so the paratroopers took the initiative by attacking with anti-tank guns and 3-kg charges. Later, using a captured heavy anti-tank gun, they destroyed two tanks and so brought the counter-attack to a standstill.

At 1740 hrs Koch told Altmann by radio that he “had to hold the trenches at all costs”, for reinforcements were on their way and coming as fast as they could but “the destruction of the bridges at Maastricht is holding up the arrival of the heavy guns”. Koch assessed matters more gloomily than they really were. At 1800 hrs for example he stated that German forces must have suffered high casualties at both Kanne and Veldwezelt which weakened resistance. As we shall see, this estimate was correct for Kanne, but not Veldwezelt.

At 1800 hrs, Belgian 21-cm guns began shelling the bridge. Nobody was hurt but Altmann’s key objective remained under threat from the defenders. At 2030 hrs when one and a half German companies arrived, the Belgians ceased fire and the paratroopers relaxed. At 2135 hrs a major led a battalion of German infantry across the bridge. The bridgehead was now secure, as Schaumans confirmed: