Of the three Meuse crossings only Reinhardt’s XLI Panzerkorps was still held up at the river on 15 May. Here the French 41st Corps, under General E. A. Libaud, had pinned the Germans down in spite of everything the Luftwaffe threw at them. Yet in the wooded valley the German bridge remained intact and the forces in the bridgehead were getting more and more powerful.
For men of the French 102nd Fortress Division, the German pressure was becoming too strong. A fortress division was without transport and therefore a prey to added fears. Before dawn on the morning of 15 May combat engineers of b. Pz. Div, using flamethrowers and with artillery support, renewed efforts and got through the bunker line of French defenses. The French began to withdraw, but, lacking transport, had to abandon many of their heavy weapons. German motorcyclists and tanks began to move across the bridge. Elated by this first sign of success, after such a long time bottled up in the bridgehead, the Germans hit the withdrawal with enough force to scatter it ¦ From The Rommel Papers, edited by B. H. Liddell Hart.
And turn it into a rout. A French truck, bringing the antitank mines for which the soldiers had been pleading, was hit by a German tank gun and blown to pieces.
At Nouzonville, to the south, the Germans were still held up at the river line. Reinhardt refused to let the b. Pz. Div help them, realizing that the breakthrough alone must force the French back. That afternoon the infantry at Nouzonville was also across the river. Working feverishly the engineers got a 16-ton bridge completed that night.
While the 6.Pz. Div and its supporting infantry moved across the bridge at Montherme, S. Pz. Div was lined up for the Nouzonville bridge. Traffic jams here brought tanks and trucks to a standstill. Although the panzer units had priority for the crossing, infantrymen filtered past the stalled vehicles and moved over the river westward along roads assigned to the tanks.
At Montcy an intact bridge was discovered and more infantry moved over that. By now a whole infantry division had nosed in sideways at the Nouzonville bridge. Foot soldiers added to the chaos, which also extended to the far side of the river. They blocked the roads, hindering panzer units and supply columns trying to reach the advance elements of 6.Pz. Div, which, by nightfall, were far west of the Meuse and separated from the rest of the corps.
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