The “final cleansing” of the bridge fell to Squad 4. At 0530 hrs they sent the following message to the other groups:

“Objective captured, bunker destroyed, bridge intact. The trenches are being systematically rolled up and a bridgehead built. We have laid out the agreed signal for our aircraft to the effect that we have everything under control.”

Knowing that his effort to eliminate the bunker had met with success eased the pain of Schmitt’s cuts and bruises. There was no doubt he could carry on. In the continuing unexplained absence of Lt Schacht, Oberfeldwebel Hofmann, who was not only Schmitt’s squad-leader but led all the paratroopers at Vroenhoven, ordered Schmitt to cross the bridge with Haas, Stenzel and Ruthsatz to build a small bridgehead. The mission of this so-called Battle group E was to secure the eastern end of the bridge near the Dutch border. The party crossed the bridge without incident. Haas and Stenzel threw handgrenades while Ruthsatz and Schmitt shouted and fired into the air. They had no difficulty in taking prisoner the few Belgians they found in the bridge approaches. They established that there were no fuses or explosive charges to offer a threat to the bridge which was therefore “clean”. Thus Schmitt could report that everything was under control. Finally they could relax…

Heinrich Haas, a medical orderly from Squad 4, bandaged Schmitt’s head and tended to his other injuries. During their pause for breath, Schmitt and his men made contact with Oberjäger Alfred Stolzewski, leader of Squad 8, who had experienced a dramatic landing after being hit by Belgian anti-tank fire. Nevertheless, “Stolli’s” pilot had got the glider down opposite where the Squad 4 glider had landed. The paratroopers removed the obstacles from the bridge with the aid of the prisoners they had taken, having in the process captured a MG and fourteen carbines²⁰.

The Capture of the Flank Casemates

Casemate A was located south of the bridge on the lower Canal slope a little less than 500 metres from the bridge. It had two heavy MGs on the lower floor and a light MG facing the front on the upper floor. The crew numbered nineteen men from 4.Comp/18th.Regt (Lt Bertrand). He and a couple of men watched the landings of the gliders of which one (Squad 5) landed at the edge of the Canal with one wing propped up on the slope. Though thinking it might be an emergency landing, the Belgians all retired into the casemate to be on the safe side. Very soon they realized where they stood when one of them shouted “Germans!”

Oberjäger Walter Röhrich’s paratroopers left the glider swiftly and headed for casemate A, hot on the heels of the Belgians intent on reaching it to be on the safe side. Bertrand, who fired at the Germans, was wounded. The Belgians had telephone contact with Fort Eben Emael, but the fort was currently under attack. As he needed a solution and orders, Bertrand rang Lanaken and was horrified when the voice at the other end demanded of him in German, “What do you need?” Bertrand satisfied himself that all his men were at their posts, but his despair grew when through the viewing vent on the upper floor he saw the explosions at his twin casemate, B.

Without wasting time, the Germans had begun to attack with small hollow charges. The defenders knocked these off the walls with long iron stakes, but they could do nothing to prevent the charges exploding. One of these displaced the MG on the upper floor inflicting burns on several crew members. The same occurred on the upper floor chamber on the south side of the casemate. This forced the men there to retreat to the lower floor. The paratroopers attacked each face of the casemate simultaneously and blew open the armoured door. They rendered the MG in the south chamber on the lower floor unserviceable, wounding several Belgians in the process. Finally they blew in the inner armoured door and threw hand grenades down the shooting ports on the south side. Here Lt.Bertrand and Sgt Ott were wounded, while other men suffered burns.