Lieutenant General Jean-Baptiste Piron stood on top of a concrete cuploa at the fortress of Eben-Emael. His aide, Colonel Bastin stood beside him. The German border was not far in front of them.
"Have you been satisfied with the inspection so far General?" Bastin asked as they took in the contours of the site and its fortifications. There was a long pause.
"No Emil, I am not satisfied at all. These forts are antiquated."
Bastin looked slightly surprised at this and swung his arm over the vista, "But Sir, these fortification are only just over ten years old."
"These may be but the defences of Antwerp date back to 1906, our grandfathers built the fortifications at Liège. These are like dinosaurs, they have little utility now. Its like re-equipping our Chasseurs with horses and swords. I doubt in a real war they would last more than a few days at most and we have six regiments tied up under concrete, another four divisions along the coast."
Bastin shrugged, "but that would buy us time to get our reserves into place. Our strategy has always been to hold the enemy at the border and deny him the lines of communication to penetrate further into the interior and then to use our armour as a counter-attacking tool. We are a small nation, what else can we do, we can't trade space for defence so easily."
Piron opened up his notebook, "Emil, these old forts would barely stop a modern mechanised Army like the Germans have. They have had concrete-piercing shells and heavy mortars since before the Great War. Shells have come a long way since, there are reports of rocket-boosted shells which with a high angle trajectory could punch through our heaviest concrete. The English have the 'squash head' round that can rip through heavy armour. Against aircraft with heavy bombs and rocket-projectiles we have even less hope. There is no doubt the Germans have all our heavy turrets and cupolas accurately plotted on their firing charts. Their first salvos would be deadly and we can move bunkers, our firepower is static. Paratroopers good easily be dropped behind our lines and isolate our forts one by one. My idea is to restore mobility to the Army. You know of the CATI?"
Bartin nodded, "Of course General, an unarmoured tracked carrier with a 90mm gun than cannot carry more than a few rounds on its own. Quite frankly many in the General Staff do not believe in the project. They are fine for the Ardennes but it the scenario you outline they wouldn't last long here. Even with what the Americans call 'shoot and scoot', they would be highly vulnerable. And our T-21s are only adequate at best, fast but not up the Standardpanzers of the Germans. They only have 75mm guns remember."
The General paced around, "for the price of all this concrete we could have brought hundreds of modern tanks, self propelled guns and better planes for air support too. We have to make the best of what we have. My plan to put to the General Staff is simple, we use the outer line of forts to soak up pressure but we only keep the most relevant anti-tank and fire-support elements of the forts operational, we could easily halve our manpower sucked up in them. Who knows, if we are smart about it the Germans might think they are still fully operational and that will throw their plans off. Meanwhile we expand our armoured brigade and start to get the rest of the Army on wheels and thinking about fighting in manoeuvre instead of sitting in bunkers on their fat asses. Then if we were invaded we could use a series of fast punches from different directions to block the enemy and defeat him."
His aide shrugged, "its not a bad plan General, but its hard to change a generation of thinking, can the General Staff be persuaded?"
Piron turned to walk back to the concealed hatchway to descend back inside the fort, "They have to be persuaded."
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18 May
Friday, April 19th 2024, 3:36am
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