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

Now, on the evening of 9 May, the battalion received the code word that
told them they would be going into action. This would be no exercise.
Immediately, Hellmuth and the rest of the company gathered their kit and
set off, as they had trained to do, across a rough moor that led them to the
Dutch border. In Hellmuth’s Gruppe he had two MG08s, water-cooled
heavy machine guns that had been the mainstay of the German army in the
last war and were little more than a variation on the original Maxim gun,
invented more than fifty years earlier. Old and cumbersome it may have
been, but the MG08 was reliable, could fire 400 rounds per minute, and had
an effective range of more than a mile. That made it a pretty useful weapon,
even in the fast-developing world of 1940.
Reaching their forward positions, Hellmuth and his men halted. No-one
was sure when they would be ordered to attack, but dawn the following
morning seemed likely. The first big obstacle was the River Meuse – or
Maas as it was called by the Dutch – and the task of Hellmuth and his men
was to find a building whose first floor had a view of the river, set up their
MG, and then provide cover for the assault engineers as they attempted to
cross the water in rubber boats. Feeling tense, apprehensive and expectant,
Siegfried found sleep hard to come by, even though it was a warm, still
night.
It was now just a few hours until the static Sitzkrieg of the past nine
months would be over. The point of no return had arrived. The clash against
the might of Britain and France was about to begin.