If some of Rommel’s success was due to the way in which his roads to the Meuse skirted the northern edge of the Ardennes Forest, then some of Reinhardt’s troubles were due to the route right through the heart of it. Here too there was the added complication that the forest continued ahead of him far to the west of the river Meuse.
Reinhardt’s approach roads could not be compared with the wide flat roads which Hoth’s XV Panzerkorps had used. Here the roads were narrow and meandering as they wound their way over steep wooded hills. At Montherme the forest dropped steeply down to where the Meuse looped around a piece of land that the Germans came to call “the breadroll.” There was time enough to find names for local landmarks, for here the Germans ran into fierce resistance and were halted for three days. The Luftwaffe failed to appear and the French 102nd Fortress Division—one of the few regular army divisions in Corap’s Ninth Army—met every attempt to force a way over the partly destroyed bridge with devastating fire from the hillsides.
At 4 P. M. on 13 May, riflemen of the b. Pz. Div got across the river at the Place de la Mairie in Montherme by using inflatable boats. The metal girder bridge had fallen into the shallow river, and soon men began to scramble over that too. After dark, inflatable boats and wooden planks were lashed together and strapped to the buckled girders, enabling infantry to cross without getting their feet wet.
Overlooked on all sides, the Germans at the river came under fierce fire from the machine guns of French colonial troops, who fought for France with more determination than most other units. German infantry—brainwashed with Nazi stories of racial superiority—found this situation an unpleasant surprise. No matter how hard they tried, they could not get a foothold in Bois de Roma at the base of the peninsula, and until they did, there could be no chance of getting tanks across the Meuse.
The difficulties that the planners had foreseen for Reinhardt’s forces in this hilly wooded terrain had persuaded them to assign only one panzer division to this crossing. Reinhardt’s other armored division— S. Pz. Div—was to cross farther south at Nouzonville.
The traffic jams on these approach roads (resulting from Kleist’s order that Guderian change the axis of his attack) had already caused great confusion. Very little of S. Pz. Div had got to the Meuse at Nouzonville, and neither of its two motorized divisions was yet there. Instead, an infantry division was trying to make the crossing assisted by a few tanks from S. Pz. Div. The inadequacy of the attacking force, and the fierce resistance of the French along the opposite riverbank, made the task almost impossible.
Stuck at both his crossing places, Reinhardt was advised by his subordinates to reinforce the b. Pz. Div bridgehead for a strong southward thrust that would threaten the French rear at Nouzonville. Reinhardt refused. He knew that his success or failure would be measured by movement westward. He wanted b. Pz. Div kept intact and concentrated for a breakout, which would by-pass the Nouzonville defenders and leave them to wither away. 41
Meanwhile, Reinhardt’s advance forces in the bridgehead and approach road were suffering heavy casualties, while his Feldgendarmerie (Military Police) units tried to untangle miles of traffic jams.
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