The Battle of Britain Five Months That Changed History, May—October 1940 by James Holland (z-lib.org).epub

slopes rose sharply. There were also broken bridges, which they had hoped
to take intact. Hans and his men felt their way slowly into the valley, but
soon came under well-directed small-arms and heavy-artillery fire.
In fact, it was the Werner Advance Detachment, troops of the 5th
Panzer Division, that had first reached the Meuse, although, because 7th
Panzer was so far ahead of the rest of 5th Panzer, these men had been put
under Rommel’s command. Luftwaffe aerial support had reported that the
bridge at Yvoir, some seven miles north of Dinant, was still intact, so the
Werner Detachment had hurried on towards it. At 5.25 p.m., two German
scout cars sped on to the bridge and were halfway across when the frantic
Belgian engineers managed to blow it, sending the structure and the
Germans on it into the water below.
Although that crossing attempt had been scuppered, it was later
discovered that less than a mile to the south at Houx, near to Hans von Luck
and his men, there was a weir and a lock system, strung either side of an
island in the middle of the Meuse. Incredibly, the footbridge over the weir
and lock had been neither destroyed nor blocked. At 11 p.m., men of the
Werner Detachment crossed the river at Houx and, although they soon
attracted enemy fire, were able to establish a small bridgehead. The first
German crossing of the Meuse had been achieved.
Even so, it would require more than one crossing point and one wider
than a footbridge to get the entire division across. Rommel himself had
reached his division’s reconnaissance regiment just before first light on the
13th. Arriving in his six-wheeled armoured car he immediately asked them
what the situation was.
‘Held up by artillery fire,’ Hans von Luck’s commander, Major
Erdmann, replied.
Rommel asked to be shown where it was coming from and, standing up
in his car, peered through his binoculars. It was a little after 4 a.m.
Eventually, his face still calm, he turned to the reconnaissance men and
said, ‘Stay put. This is a job for the infantry.’
From his position on the wooded, rocky heights above the Meuse, Hans
watched the sun rising over the valley. Soon elements of the division’s lead
infantry, the 7th Rifle Regiment, began scurrying down the hill,
accompanied by engineers with rubber dinghies. Further to the south, at
Dinant itself, Hans learned that the 6th Panzer Grenadier Regiment was also
about to attempt a crossing.