The Sudan Assault

I have always found it to be intriguing how in the world wars soldiers had to fight just to advance by a few meters. These were little battles fought to make up the big wars as in WW1 and WW2. In this article I found it outrageous how unprepared the French army was and how prepared they were to give up. Some were spies for the Nazis. The most brave were the Partisans.

The Germans in this case had to cross the Meuse River which was very difficult, but they had to if they were to take France and establish their occupation. At night small groups of German soldiers under Rommel crossed the river in inflatable boats. This river was apparently a huge tank obstacle.

An Anonymous French soldier at Sedan described the onslaught as follows. "The noise from the sirens of the diving aircraft drilled into your ears and tore at your nerves. You wanted to scream." The city had actually already been won by the Germans, but there was still a considerable amount of French soldiers in fortified bunkers.

The German movement was slow and and they would've liked to use their heavy artillery to deal with these bunkers, but most of the horse - drawn guns were stuck in the rear and taking ages to get to them. As a result they called in the Luftwaffe to speed up their intentions. The Luftwaffe sent 1000 warplanes, mainly Stuk as and Dorniers.

This was the biggest onslaught ever. The desperate French army called for air support, but was told that none was available. The air attack lasted for about 5 hours, but strangely did little damage in war terms. 56 of the French were injured or killed. None of the bunkers was destroyed, but the continous bombing accompanied by awful, screaming of the Stukas, shattered the moral of the French. They didn't move, just kept their heads down. 5 Hours was enough torture. They became incapable of reacting to the approaching enemy infantry. Attribution : General Edmund Ruby. Many fled, others were totally dazed and bewildered. It became more disastrous when individual units started moving independently of each other.

Communications were grossly interrupted. There was no coordination at all. They lacked orders and this added to the chaos. They heard stories of German tanks being everywhere. This was not true. The tanks were still struggling to cross the Meuse.

Entire units abandoned their guns. Command posts destroyed their own telephone exchanges and burned code books. The Germans established a bridgehead and drove a wedge between the 2nd and the 9th French armies that would never be united again. And that was the fall of Sudan.

Sources: National Geographic, Webster, Pixabay, Unplash.