The self-propelled 17-pounder M10s of E Troop, 129th Battery, left the start-line with the Hampshires and the supporting Churchill infantry tanks at 5.30 a.m. They had landed in France ten days before, and this was their first action of the war. German mortar and artillery fire began to fall amongst them soon after they set off, and the infantrymen of the Hampshires huddled behind the Churchills and E Troop’s tank destroyers as they crawled forward through the barrage. Sergeant Burnell’s gun was hit a few yards beyond Eterville by a mortar bomb which landed directly in its open turret; just two of the crew escaped wounded. The troop commander’s gun received a direct hit from an 88 mm shell a few yards short of Maltot. Only he himself and an NCO were able to leap down and escape alive. A third gun’s turret was jammed by fire and its aerial shot away. The crew baled out, expecting it to ‘brew up’. When it failed to do so they remounted, with the exception of the wireless operator, who declined to leave the slit trench in which he had taken refuge. Then it became obvious that the attack had failed. The two surviving guns withdrew, bringing back the survivors of the other ruined M10. Of 20 men in the guns which had gone forward, six were dead, four wounded, one missing. Sergeant Jim Stephens, who had served with the battery since 1939, was heartbroken to have been left behind with the echelon, when the troop of which he was so proud went forward for the first time. Now, he looked appalled at the return of the survivors, and the blank and shocked face of the young troop commander, Lieutenant Wimpey. The adjutant had recovered the gun whose turret had received a direct hit. Wimpey told Sergeant Stephens that they must bury its crew. Stephens never forgot the experience.
The explosion of the mortar in that confined space had devastated everything inside. The 17 pdr and .50 calibre ammunition had gone up. Lying on the floor of the turret was what was left of the crew, burnt to a cinder with their teeth bared in some kind of grin. I cried, having known them all for so long – Jimmy Burrell, a cockney whose wife had presented him with a baby a few weeks before D-Day, who used to hang a pair of bootees in the turret every time he went out; Dick Greenwood, no more than 5’ 2”, a Devonian from Newton Abbot who used to be E troop’s storekeeper, but insisted on getting aboard an M10 as a gunner; Phillips, only 18, hardly knew what it was all about. I remember him being sick on one occasion after drinking too much, and me making him clear it all up. With some reverence Lt. Wimpey and I began to lift them out and place them in blankets. In some cases we had to use a shovel to get them off the floor, for so intense was the heat that they had become fused to it. We buried them at Marcelet, by the side of the Bayeux–Caen road. The regimental padre said a few words, the battery carpenter constructed wooden crosses, a few shots were fired, and so we left them.7
It was a little scene played out a hundred times daily on both sides of the Normandy line. Hill 112 was held briefly by Priest’s shattered battalion of the Duke of Cornwall’s Light Infantry, only to be lost to a German counter-attack.
Montgomery was now compelled to endure a crisis of confidence in his leadership which would have cracked the nerve of a more sensitive man. He had always been the object of animosity within the huge headquarters staff at SHAEF in England, and unloved by many of Bradley’s Americans. The tensions now broke into open criticism. Commander Butcher, the embodiment of all gossip-ridden staff officers, wrote after his first visit to France on 1 July: ‘Some of the people I talked to venture that Monty has been too slow to attack and thus permitted the Germans to get set in fixed positions and to bring up reserves.’8 Patton, an unconcealed enemy, wrote venomously in his diary after a trip to Montgomery’s Tactical Headquarters on 7 July: ‘Montgomery went to great lengths explaining why the British had done nothing.’ Eisenhower, himself under intense pressure from Washington and his own staff, frustrated by his own inability directly to influence the events for which he bore the huge responsibility, wrote an unhappy letter to the Commander-in-Chief of 21st Army Group that day expressing his concern about the German build-up: ‘It appears to me that we must use all possible energy in a determined effort to prevent the risk of a stalemate or of facing the necessity of fighting a major defensive battle with the slight depth we now have in the bridgehead . . . We have not yet attempted a major full-dress attack on the left flank supported by everything we could bring to bear . . .’9
The American press had become openly impatient with the lack of progress in France, causing a degree of concern in Washington that, as always, far outweighed the worry the British press could cause any British government. It was being suggested that the western Allies were content to mark time while the Russians did the hard fighting to defeat Hitler’s armies. Even more dangerous to Montgomery’s position was Churchill’s growing impatience. The Prime Minister was at pains to remind Eisenhower, a few days after the landings, that the Supreme Commander had only to express his dissatisfaction with any British officer, ‘no matter what his rank’, for him to be removed. Churchill had convinced himself that if there was no rapid breakthrough after D-Day, it might be a year or more before the Allies reached the Seine. His memory of Flanders haunted all his visions of the battle for France in 1944, especially as he read the infantry casualty lists. On the night of 6 July, Churchill furiously denounced Montgomery to Brooke. He had never warmed to his cold, awkward commander: now, remembering Montgomery’s bold declarations at the St Paul’s briefing about rapid armoured thrusts and the urgent need to ‘peg out claims inland’, he felt that these intentions had been betrayed. Brooke was driven to defend his protégé with equal anger: ‘I flared up and asked him if he could not trust his generals for five minutes instead of continuously abusing them and belittling them.’10
The air chiefs divided their ill-will between Montgomery and the hapless Leigh-Mallory. Tedder felt a persistent lack of confidence in the Commander-in-Chief of 21st Army Group, which he displayed with all the force of his personality. ‘It seemed clear to me that Montgomery did not attach sufficient importance to the pressing time factor. Few weeks of summer remained. Our urgent need was to get across the Seine.’11 Tedder was a man of genuine stature, and it is impossible to saddle him with the personal malice and small-mindedness that afflicted some of his subordinates. He sincerely believed that he possessed an understanding of the priorities of the land campaign which Montgomery lacked. But as Deputy Supreme Commander, he suffered all the handicaps and frustrations that are the lot of a second-in-command in any military organization: he was privy to all debate but lacked executive power. If Leigh-Mallory was not permitted to exercise executive authority, Tedder showed a marked reluctance to do so. He was invariably consulted and frequently intervened in the air debate, but he never accepted full responsibility for air operations. His intelligence and force of personality were not in doubt, but it is questionable whether he was able to employ these to best effect as Eisenhower’s deputy, and whether his understanding of the ground campaign was sufficient to justify his chronic disloyalty to Montgomery, and his promise to Eisenhower of personal support if the Supreme Commander saw fit to sack his ground-force commander.
With all these dangerous currents swirling in his rear, Montgomery sat in the camouflaged caravans of his Tactical Headquarters, surrounded by his pet puppies and canaries, and pondered the course of the battle. One of his biographers, the war correspondent Alan Moorehead, wrote of his supposed conceit and gracelessness, then added that ‘these vices, if they existed in him, had also distilled a virtue which was regrettably lacking at times among the officers struggling up to a high command: he was nobody’s sycophant, he could not be wined and dined into an amenable frame of mind, he could not be impressed by a show of authority nor were his wits clouded by ceremony.’12 Montgomery changed his plans in Normandy, but it cannot be proved that he did so because of the pressure of his enemies and rivals. If anything, the charge against him is that he became too isolated from the political and politico-military realities, too ready to absorb himself exclusively in the battle within the monastic loneliness of his Tactical Headquarters. H
is Chief of Staff talked freely to the Commander-in-Chief when he saw him, but there is no evidence that Montgomery unburdened himself of his innermost thoughts and hopes to de Guingand or any other man. Yet he possessed the great virtue of accepting the battlefield as he found it, and adjusting to its exigencies without complaint. He was seen to considerable advantage at a meeting of his commanders on 10 July, at which Bradley frankly admitted that the American attack southwards had failed.
Monty quietly replied: ‘Never mind. Take all the time you need, Brad.’ [Dempsey related later] Then he went on tactfully to say: ‘If I were you I think I should concentrate my forces a little more’ – putting two fingers together on the map in his characteristic way. Then Monty turned to me and said: ‘Go on hitting: drawing the German strength, especially some of the armour, onto yourself – so as to ease the way for Brad.’13
it seems significant that while Eisenhower became restless and unsympathetic to Montgomery as the Normandy battle developed – or rather, in the Supreme Commander’s view, failed sufficiently to do so – Bradley did not complain about 21st Army Group’s commander. Later, he would become one of Montgomery’s most bitter critics. But ‘during these operations in the lodgement,’ Bradley wrote, ‘where Montgomery bossed the US First Army as part of his 21st Army Group, he exercised his Allied authority with wisdom, forbearance, and restraint. At no time did he probe into First Army with the indulgent manner he sometimes displayed among those subordinates who were also his own countrymen.’14 Harmony between the two men at this stage may also have been assisted by Bradley’s consciousness of the shortcomings of some of his own formations. It was only afterwards, when the Americans had carried out their sweeping dash through Brittany and across to Argentan, that exhilaration about their own achievement and British sensitivity about Second Army’s painful march to Falaise fostered jealousies and resentments that persisted through the campaign.
GOODWOOD
On 7 July, the eve of CHARNWOOD, Montgomery’s chief planner, Brigadier Charles Richardson, submitted a report on more far-reaching objectives than Caen. He argued, first, that it was necessary for Second Army to embark on a major offensive rather than merely to pursue a succession of limited operations; second, that in view of the desperate need to avoid heavy infantry casualties, the obvious course was to embark upon an armoured assault. Tanks were one commodity with which the British were amply provided. Indeed, there was scarcely sufficient fighting room within the beachhead for the proper employment of all the armour they possessed. At that date they outnumbered the Germans by four to one in tanks and two to one in infantry, while on the American front the ratios were eight to one and three to two. Bradley’s men were holding a line 108,000 yards long, compared with the 77,500 yards in the hands of the British. On 10 July, Dempsey outlined for Montgomery a plan to employ massed armour in an attempt to break through the German defences from the constricted Orne bridgehead, still little larger than that gained by 6th Airborne Division early in June. Montgomery approved. The details of Operation GOODWOOD were settled two days later: all three British armoured divisions would attack, under the command of General O’Connor’s VIII Corps, along a corridor blasted open by massed bomber forces. The aim was to strike fast through the German defences while the enemy were still reeling from the air bombardment, seize the Bourguébus Ridge in the first hours and thence race on across the great sweep of open country beyond. The tanks would drive headlong for Falaise. Meanwhile, Simonds’ II Canadian Corps would attack south from the centre of Caen in an effort to secure the rest of the city. I and XII Corps would launch subsidiary infantry attacks, with support from the independent armoured brigades, on the flanks.
‘The Second Army is now very strong,’ Montgomery wrote to Brooke on the 14th, ‘it has in fact reached its peak and can get no stronger. It will in fact get weaker as the manpower situation begins to hit us. Also, the casualties had affected the fighting efficiency of divisions; the original men were very well trained; reinforcements are not so well trained, and the fact is beginning to become apparent and will have repercussions on what we can do . . . So I have decided that the time has come to have a real “showdown” on the eastern flank, and to loose a corps of three armoured divisions into the open country about the Caen–Falaise road.’1 Eisenhower wrote to Montgomery of the GOODWOOD plan: ‘I am confident that it will reap a harvest from all the sowing you have been doing during the past weeks. With our whole front acting aggressively against the enemy so that he is pinned to the ground, O’Connor’s plunge into his vitals will be decisive . . . I am viewing the prospects with the most tremendous optimism and enthusiasm. I would not be at all surprised to see you gaining a victory that will make some of the “old classics” look like a skirmish between patrols.’2 It is interesting and important to notice that after the war Bradley, the most unlikely man to provide spurious alibis for Montgomery, declared that he had never expected GOODWOOD to be anything other than a supporting operation for the American COBRA, which was originally scheduled to jump off at much the same time. Yet if Montgomery’s hopes and objectives were really so limited, it was politically suicidal for him to allow Eisenhower, Tedder and even Brooke to be deluded about them. There was a perfectly sound military argument for the British to mount only a limited offensive. But there is no hint of evidence that Montgomery sought to explain GOODWOOD in these terms to any of his patrons in England, above all Brooke.
Every previous operation that Montgomery had mounted in Normandy was skilfully conceived, soundly based, offering a real prospect of success at its H-Hour. By the time GOODWOOD was launched, for political and moral reasons he was more seriously in need of a victory than at any time since D-Day. Yet from its inception the operation was flawed. It relied heavily upon surprise to gain the high ground which dominated the British line of advance, yet called for the movement of 8,000 tanks and armoured vehicles across the Orne to the assembly points. Until the armour had cleared the start-line, the artillery could not deploy to provide the massive bombardment which was such an important asset to any operation. Days before GOODWOOD was set in motion, 51st Highland Division’s engineers had sown new minefields to cover their own positions, which could not now be properly cleared for the armoured advance. Only narrow corridors would be available through which the tanks could progress. Most damning of all, the Germans were expecting them. Sepp Dietrich claimed after the war that he had heard the British tanks coming by using an old trick he had learned in Russia, of putting his ear to the ground. Perhaps he did. But long before the tanks began to roll from the start-line, German intelligence had achieved one of its few important battlefield successes in Normandy, by alerting Rommel to the imminent British move against Bourguébus. General Eberbach of Panzer Group West reacted by adopting perhaps the most formidable defensive deployments of the entire campaign: five lines of tanks and anti-tank guns, directly confronting VIII Corps’ axis of advance. 36 hours before GOODWOOD was set in motion, Ultra interceptions revealed to the British that Field-Marshal Hugo Sperrle of Luftflotte 3 had signalled a forecast of a major British attack, ‘to take place south-eastwards from Caen about the night of 17–18th’.
In Montgomery’s directive to Dempsey before the battle, all mention of Falaise as an objective had vanished; a sudden onset of caution seemed to have overcome him. But Dempsey himself was still full of brilliant hopes as he transferred his Tactical HQ to a position alongside that of O’Connor, where he could oversee the battle at close quarters. ‘What I had in mind was to seize all the crossings of the Orne from Caen to Argentan,’ Second Army’s commander said after the war.3
Carlo D’Este, the author of an important recent study of the Normandy battle, pays tribute to General O’Connor’s understanding of the vital need for close armoured–infantry co-operation in GOODWOOD. O’Connor sought to employ some of the gunners’ self-propelled chassis as infantry personnel carriers for the battle, and was much vexed by Dempsey’s refusal to let them be used. Yet General ‘Pip’ Roberts of
11th Armoured, probably the ablest British divisional commander in Normandy, suffered deep misgivings when he studied O’Connor’s plan for GOODWOOD, and discovered that the armour and infantry had been given separate objectives. He felt so strongly about the error of this decision that he recorded his view in writing, which caused O’Connor to reply that if Roberts lacked the conviction to lead the attack according to his plan, one of the other armoured divisions could relieve the 11th as spearhead. Robert reluctantly acquiesced. But he believed that O’Connor did not understand the proper handling of armour on a European battlefield.4 Other senior officers echoed Roberts’s lack of confidence not only in the corps commander himself, but also in his staff.
Between 5.30 and 8.30 a.m. on the morning of 18 July, one of the greatest-ever air bombardments of ground forces was unleashed upon Panzer Group West by heavy and medium bombers of the RAF and USAAF. In three waves they attacked the German positions confronting O’Connor’s armoured divisions: tanks were hurled bodily into the air or buried by earth and rubble; men were deafened and stunned for days or blasted into fragments; guns were wrecked and twisted on their mountings; fuel and ammunition exploded. Shortly after H-Hour, a scout car of the Inns of Court Regiment reported exultantly that it was well on the way to 11th Armoured’s objectives, and could see no evidence of opposition. ‘I said “Jolly good show” and didn’t believe a word of it,’ said Roberts tersely.5 His scepticism was rapidly justified.
One of the great surprises of warfare in the twentieth century has been the power of soldiers to survive what would seem to be overwhelming concentrations of high explosive, and emerge to fight with skill and determination. So it was now with the men of Panzer Group West. The leading units of 11th Armoured Division jumped off promptly at 7.30 a.m. and made rapid progress for the first two hours, before meeting heavy and stiffening resistance. Around the village of Cagny, just four 88 mm flak guns of the 16th Luftwaffe Field Division had escaped the air bombardment. At pistol point, Colonel Hans von Luck of 21st Panzer Division compelled their commander to abandon his delusions about his anti-aircraft role, and to engage the advancing British tanks at once. 16 of 11th Armoured’s Shermans fell to these guns alone. It was 4.00 p.m. before the Guards Armoured Division entered Cagny. As other British units crossed the Caen–Vimont railway embankment and attempted to push on towards Bourguébus, they met ruthless German tank and anti-tank fire. The vehicle carrying 11th Armoured’s sole RAF Forward Air Controller was knocked out in the first two hours, with the result that close air support for the advance was lost. Meanwhile, in the rear, the Guards Armoured and 7th Armoured Divisions had been seriously delayed by the huge traffic jam of vehicles moving along the corridors through British minefields. Without support, the British spearhead of 29th Armoured Brigade was already in serious trouble, only 12,000 yards from its start-line and scarcely through the crust of the deep defences. Trooper John Brown was driving a 17-pounder Sherman Firefly of the 2nd Fife and Forfar Yeomanry. He and his crew left the start-line in a mood of excited optimism, after watching the vast air bombardment, convinced that no German position could have survived such appalling punishment.
Overlord (Pan Military Classics) Page 32
