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Critical early rear-area fighting also raged in the bright tulip fields around The Hague, which the Germans bracketed with parachute parties in an apparent attempt to surround and capture Queen Wilhelmina and her Ministers.* One band was mopped up near Valkenburg. The Dutch troops with light arms and fast U. S. cars were directed to the "fallen angels' " landings by military and commercial radio.
They gave the invaders red-hot hospitality with bullets in it.
Crushed Counter-Thrust. The Lowlands were not fighting alone. Ninety minutes after receiving their call for help, the Royal Air Force and French Air Corps took wing en masse to harry the oncoming German columns in Belgium and Holland, to bomb the Rhineland, including Essen, heart of the steelmaking Ruhr, in retaliation for German attacks on France's industrial centres.
To race for new lines along the Maas and Moselle, three Allied Armies protected overhead by fighter craft and on the ground by anti-aircraft guns spotted along the roads, started from bases along the Belgian border. The French IX Army wheeled right, into position in the Ardennes Mountains. They settled down at Arlon near the Luxembourg border before the Germans got there. The British Expeditionary Force, 200,000 strong and placed in the centre, rolled smoothly out of the Sambre Valley, heading northeast for Liege and the Albert Canal which its advanced forces reached, festooned with flowers from Belgium's women, within 48 hours. The French I Army on the left made for the Albert Canal. The French VII Army, mechanized, whirred up the West Flanders highways through Antwerp to Dutch Breda. The advanced forces of all reached their objectives much faster than most experts had expected.
This was help for Holland, but as the hours wore on, it was not help enough. The French feared they would have to pull out of Breda before they had arrived there in force. On Sunday the Dutch were forced back to their secondary Grebbe Line, after being blasted out of their Ijssel Line by German field pieces fired pointblank into their blockhouses. This week the Germans broke through the Grebbe Line, drove to the sea near Rotterdam, cutting The Netherlands in two. Crown Princess Juliana fled to London with her husband, Prince Bernhard and their children. Princess Irene, aged nine months, traveled in a gasproof box. The Dutch cause shook when it was admitted that resolute Queen Wilhelmina had fled to London, too, and her Government had left The Hague.
Retreat In Belgium. The quick fall of Eben Emael fortress, great new strongpoint of the Liege corner, was a heavy blow, whether brought about by a "secret weapon" (see p. 28) or sheer power. Three bridges across the Albert Canal went with it, one when an officer about to order the bridge's destruction was killed by a bomb and his successor hesitated to act. Another Belgian officer darted back over another captured bridge and blew himself up with it. Through these holes the Germans poured before the mass of the Allied force could reach the prepared outer defenses. Beginning Sunday night, things began to look bad for the Allies, not only in Holland but all down through the Ardennes Forest, where the Germans ripped open with terrific air attacks supporting their Panzer (armored columns).