Schmitt and the other paratroopers dismissed any idea of surrendering and hurled themselves into the fray. They shouted and kept firing all around them. The gendarme was wounded in the leg; this man and the rest of the bunker M crew and six soldiers of 1.Company (these latter all lost their lives) fled into the bunker, there being no alternative. The Squad 4 glider was apparently one of the first to land, for Penneman saw that “at this time the rest of the gliders were landing near the Canal slope”. That was also confirmed by Dreesen when he maintained: “At this moment I understood what was really going on, mainly because more gliders were coming down in the neighbourhood to a hail of bullets.”

Panic seized the Belgians. Helpless and incapable of reacting, there was nothing they could do to prevent the Germans advancing on the bunker and bridge. Dreesen recalled:

“Through the viewing shafts of the bunker we could see a German officer armed only with a pistol who took cover behind the bridge balustrade¹⁵. We tried to wipe out this paratrooper with all the means to hand, but it was hopeless. The Mills-bombs we threw out through the apertures provided for the purpose were easy to see coming and presented him with no danger whatever.”

Although three paratroopers of Squad 4 under Oberfeldwebel Hofmann¹⁶ had been injured during the landing, the rest ran to the bunker as a group. On the way they had to break down Belgian resistance in the trenches. With no time to lose, Schmitt leapt into a trench. His rifle jammed and so drawing his pistol he pointed it at the first Belgians to confront him. Two other rifles were damaged and failed to work. Everything was happening so fast that in the confusion for a while the paratroopers “fought each other”.

“Ahn, who lay near the glider door, shouted at the top of his voice, ‘Look out!’ When I heard that, I jumped up and saw a soldier facing me wearing all his decorations. I fired and hit him in the arm. His pistol flew up in the air, then he fell to the ground wounded. There was nobody else around. I shouted out for a weapon. Wohlgemuth let me have his MG which I promptly used against the Belgians and prevented them from shooting my colleagues. Then it fell quiet again.

Suddenly a figure who had been cowering behind a corner of the trench attacked me from behind and struck me on the head with his weapon. I saw stars but had enough time to react and boot his shin. As he turned away in pain I called him a blockhead for being so stupid as to hit me on the steel helmet, Then I recognized him as our colleage Jupp Klose from Squad 11¹⁷. At that same moment I saw Helmut Pelz fighting in the trench parallel to mine. He raised his hand as a sign that everything was under control. He had taken five prisoners. I signalled back by hand, asking if he needed any help. The cries of the Belgians and our firing made any understanding impossible…”

While all this was happening near bunker M, Penneman inside it telephoned his Lanaken HQ to inform them that “three aircraft had landed near the bridge” and he was continuing to await orders. At the other end of the connection Lt Boijen attempted to warn bunker N at Veldwezelt but he could not get through. He was able to speak to casemate C, however, whose frightened crew confirmed the German attack and stated they wanted to surrender. Then the connection was broken off. Private Dreesen, one of the Belgians present, described it thus:

“Sgt Crauwels tried to contact Lanaken for instructions. The conversation was garbled, then suddenly cut off. There was a click, and after that nothing. We made several more attempts to contact Lanaken, but in vain.”

Unknown to them at that moment, the Lanaken HQ had been dive-bombed by four Stukas, destroying the command post and telephone exchange, killing twenty-one soldiers, among them Capt. Giddelo, responsible for deciding when to blow up the bridge. This strike “beheaded” the Belgian chain of command. The indecisiveness which paralyzed the Belgians and so favoured the German attack was described thus by Penneman:

“We had no electrical system to activate the explosive charges, and the slow fuses took two minutes to reach the explosives. When the alarm was raised, I personally connected the fuse to the equipment which activated the charges. It was clear to all of us that we had to destroy the bridge in the event of an attack, whether by panzers or other means. But in no case were we to activate the explosive charge just because a neighbouring bridge had been demolished.”

Because he could not contact Lanaken, Sgt Crauwels decided to demolish the bridge and lit the fuse with a lighter. Then he shut the door and the bunker crew went down to the basement to await the explosion. Once there a fierce argument ensued. Some of them did not think that the explosive charges should be set off just for “a couple of German soldiers”. Those against blowing the bridge were six soldiers of the 18th Regt. of the Line under Corporal Nys. Many of them even thought that the gliders might be “shot down Dutch aircraft”. In view of this development and the dithering, Crauwels lost his nerve and attacked one of the mutineers. While this was going on, two soldiers went upstairs to extinguish the fuse.

After the violent skirmish in the trenches, Oberjäger Bading had run with a 12.5 kg hollow charge to bunker M, but was hit in the arm by a round from the bunker. Oberjäger Schmitt collected the charge, crossed the barbed wire zone and reached a blind spot in front of the bunker. At this moment the training as an “integrated team” was put to the test; the man who had the job was hors de combat and within seconds a substitute stepped forward to continue the mission without hesitation, counting on the support of everybody, even the glider pilots. This was no problem for Schmitt:

“After I had arranged things with Pelz, I heard Stenzel shouting in desperation that I should hurry, Bading had been seriously wounded. Stenzel was shouting so loudly that the Belgians stopped shooting for a moment so as to hear what he was saying. Stern our pilot, who had the important task of caring for our wounded and looking after the munitions, had stayed with the glider, said I should go to Bading, he would cover Pelz.

I ran to the glider first to fetch a weapon for when I approached the bunker, but I could see they were all damaged. I thought to myself, ‘Stern, you may have been a genius of a glider pilot in peacetime, but the battlefield is obviously not your thing.’ Ahn and Wohlgemuth lay about twenty metres behind the glider each holding a pistol in the left hand to cover all of us actively fighting. They pointed to where Bading lay. He was seriously hurt. I took the hollow charge which had fallen near him and he reminded me that after priming it I had only ten seconds before it exploded (the detonator had been set to function at ten seconds instead of the usual fifteen). I nodded, ran towards the bunker, telling myself to remain calm.

Because Bading had been shot from the bunker, I planned to cross the ten metres from the barbed wire entanglement as quickly as possible to get out of the field of fire. After that I had to negotiate six metres of obstacles and more barbed wire as though I were an athlete. The barbed wire tore at my smock. When I was halfway through the stretch, the bunker outer door opened to admit two Belgian soldiers. At the same time I heard my squad leader, Hofmann, shout and felt the pressure from a burst of MG fire. Heinrich Haas was covering me. I had a P08 pistol in my left hand which I had been holding since we landed. The outer door remained open, the inner door closed behind the two Belgians. Thus the bunker received me with open arms.”

During all this Schmitt received cover from his Squad 3 and 4 colleagues. He entered the bunker through the outer door, attached the 12.5 kg charge to the inner armoured door, then suddenly noticed a 60-cm long smouldering fuse leading into a metal case. He crawled to the door through which the fuse passed and stamped on it, but to no avail.

“I took time to reflect,” Schmitt recalled. “I brought up the hollow charge crawling forward. If it exploded here and now, it might set off the charges at the bridge. I had to avoid that risk. Was there perhaps some other possibility? Yes. Hofmann, Stenzel and Haas, the paratroopers of my squad giving me cover, were my trump card. One of them, Stenzel, got to me in four seconds. I asked his advice. He pointed to the bridge. It was already in our hands. He suggested piling earth on the smouldering fuse. I told him that was absurd, the danger of explosion would still exist. Therefore Stenzel took my jack-knife, cut the fuse obliquely and threw it out. Hofmann and Haas watched us. Stenzel left and I counted to 300. That meant that Gahno and his Squad 3 pioneers had only five minutes. When I stopped counting, I activated the hollow charge.”

This all happened at a rapid pace. While Schmitt and Stenzel were cutting through the fuse and activating the hollow charge, Crauwels was also trying to “stop” the bridge being destroyed. The bunker crew was in a state of panic and totally bewildered. According to Schmitt, the Belgians were called upon to surrender but they refused. He kept urging them to come out during the five minutes which remained until he set off the hollow charge. His warning was clear: “Come out or you will all be dead within twenty seconds!” These warnings might not have been heard, bearing in mind the language difficulty, the fear, the shouting, the shooting and the state of shock in which the Belgians were engulfed.

The bunker inner door was armoured but the outer entrance door was made of zinc, and could only be closed from the outside. This meant that one could enter the bunker porch while the crew lay low behind the armoured door. The small fortress was a trap, and when the hollow charge went off, it would turn the bunker into a tomb for most of the crew. Crauwels was one of the first to die, for he took the full force of the first explosion. The second explosion a few seconds later killed more men and wounded others, amongst them Penneman, thrown against a wall by the blast. Hand grenades put paid to any further Belgian resistance. Penneman recalled:

“I was badly hurt, but could look out through a shaft and see that the bridge was still standing. I had still not seen any Germans, but the bunker was in flames. Jerome Degryse was near me as I weighed up whether we could still blow up the bridge. There was no choice but to leave the lower section of the bunker. The outer door was open and outside were four Germans armed with pistols and MP’s. They fired at us. Another explosion threw me to the ground. Degryse was hurt in the neck. I tried to get to a ventilation shaft to breathe. I was even thinking of manning the 47-mm anti-tank gun but the box with the shells was on fire. I was exhausted and went out, where I lost consciousness.”

Among those to fall in the hail of bullets while attempting to escape was Gendarme Ignoul and a soldier of 18th Regt. Others such as Privates Cramer and Dreesen survived inside because they had put on gas masks. Shortly afterwards all survivors were taken prisoner.

There is no doubt that Vroenhoven was easier for the paratroopers than Veldwezelt. Nevertheless Schmitt paid a price for his exaggerated haste to attack bunker M. He did not leave himself enough time to reach cover and was hit by the blast ten seconds after the hollow charge exploded. He had delayed trying to close the outer door of the bunker to increase the explosive effect but did not succeed (and neither had the two Belgians who had entered a little before he approached). This cost him valuable time. The blast reached him as he was crossing the barbed wire entanglement. He described this event thus:

“The pressure wave lifted me up as though I were a small bird, and let me drop. The bunker outer door which I had tried to close was torn off its hinges and came flying towards me. I have to thank a small wooden construction, which came flying first and covered me, to save me being hit by the heavy door. I lost consciousness briefly. Heinz Haas awoke me. He was very nervous and urged me to come out from under there because he could not hold the door up much longer. I just wanted to be left in peace, however, for I was warm and dry where I was. Somehow they dragged me clear and brought me to the bunker where I was safe.”

Bunker M had been neutralized and the intact bridge was in German hands. Schmitt was relieved to learn this. Now it was clear that the remainder of the Belgian positions would suffer the domino effect with no great show of resistance.

The Fighting in the Northern Sector

There was little reaction to the glider landings in the northern sector due mainly to Capt. Joseph van Beneden having been the first to fall at his post. He commanded 1.Comp/18th.Regt of the Line which was responsible for defending the bridge. The artillery spotter also fell leaving Lt. Janot, 20th Artillery-Regt, “blind”.

Lt. Stevens had set up two fighting troops south and north of the Maastricht-Tongeren road. His own position was near the mortar post. One of the gliders landed close to the group holding the most northern position north of the road. Sgt.Haeck, leader of this group, led the MG fire from these trenches but both he and his gunner lost their lives as the paratroopers stormed the trenches hurling hand grenades and shooting at anything that moved. When Stevens became aware of the attack he ordered the mortars to open fire, but this achieved nothing. The hand grenades had no detonator caps, as at Veldwezelt.

Simultaneously another glider landed close to the Belgian troops in trenches farther south. The paratroopers took the defenders prisoner without a problem, almost no resistance being offered: the AA positions (Willems) and a trench occupied by 2.Company (Goedert) went the same way. Stevens’s troop was overwhelmed in half an hour, his men being unable to reach bunker M.

An example of the lack of resistance offered by the Belgians at Vroenhoven is demonstrated by the experience of Gendarme Jacobs, who had been assigned with Gendarme Ignoul to the west side of the bridge. When the attack came, he sought refuge in the cellar of Café Mengels no more than fifty metres north of the bridge.

“The soldiers in the vicinity fired only a couple of rounds before they joined me in the cellar I occupied. There were thirty-five of us altogether. At 0815 hrs we were taken prisoner.”

The trenches north of the road commanded by van Male and farther along occupied by Stevens’s troop also offered hardly any resistance. A few soldiers fired a couple of rounds when the attack began. For their part the Germans paid no special attention to these trenches, being more interested in those nearer the bridge. Eventually all remaining resistance in these trenches was eliminated by Stuka attack. The 47-mm guns with which the troop had been reinforced did not fire for lack of an obvious target. Furthermore, neither van Male nor the machine-gunner could raise their heads above the trench parapet for fear of German snipers, and had no choice but to surrender without resistance, which van Male considered “regrettable”. He did manage to rustle up the courage to escape and reach his Company command post, but was disappointed to find it staffed by Germans. One threw a hand grenade at him, but he was unharmed, and then recaptured.

De Poortere’s men lay on both sides of the road in trenches well west of Stevens’s. They failed to react to the German attack and were all killed or taken prisoner.

The death of Company commander Capt. van Beneden and many of his Staff at the very beginning of the attack condemned to failure any effort on the part of the Belgians to resist. De Poortere’s troop surrendered at 0630 hrs after coming under continuous fire from the paratroopers and Stukas. 1.Comp/18th. Regt of the Line ceased to exist within eighty-five minutes.

The Capture of the Bridge

The bridge was captured a half hour after the attack began. The pioneers of Squad 3, under the command of Oberjäger Gahno¹⁸ deactivated the explosive charges intended to destroy the bridge and cleared out the chambers in which they had been stored. As previously noted, Theo Schmitt placed a hollow charge against the bunker door. The ten-second delay before detonation was too short a time for him to get to cover and he was thrown by the blast into the sentry box close to the barbed wire hedge. There he lay stunned. This explosion killed Sgt.Crauwels and the two men with him, Despiegelaere¹⁹ and Corporal Nys. The explosion blew a 50-cm diameter hole in the wall of the concrete bunker. Statements by the Belgians confirm that more explosive charges and handgrenades were tossed inside the bunker to set it afire. Of the twelve-man crew, six were killed either as a result of the explosion or while attempting to leave the bunker. Gendarme Ingoul and the six men of 1.Company all lost their lives.