Private Gerard Ascher, a 27-year-old New Yorker who worked in the family business until he was drafted in 1943, was one of countless thousands of infantry replacements shipped to Normandy in June 1944 in anonymous packages of 250 men, to be directed wherever casualties dictated. One of his group gazed around at Normandy for a few minutes after their landing, then declared decisively: ‘This is no place for me,’ and vanished from their ken for ever. Ascher reached the 357th Infantry in darkness with an unknown young Mississippian, to be greeted by a lieutenant, who said simply: ‘You two stay in this hedgerow – the others are in that one.’ The New Yorker’s memories of the campaign were above all of disorientation, of utter ignorance of their purpose: ‘I really couldn’t fathom the whole thing – I couldn’t understand what it was all about. I never remembered seeing the battalion commander except at ceremonies.’11 If all infantrymen in all armies share something of this feeling, and if Ascher was uncommonly unlucky to be sent to the 90th Division, his sentiments reflected a problem that afflicted much of the American army in north-west Europe. Very many soldiers respected their NCOs. But in sharp contrast to the British army, in which most men looked up to their officers, few American rankers admitted to thinking well of theirs. Corporal George Small wrote of ‘this nearly universal scorn of American soldiers for most officers’.12 Above all at platoon level, the ‘90-day wonders’ – the young lieutenants upon whom so much junior leadership depended – seldom won the confidence and respect of their soldiers.
The men of Bradley’s army might not be privy to ‘the big picture’, but in early July 1944 they felt a deep sense that much was going wrong. ‘We were stuck,’ said Corporal Bill Preston of the 743rd Tank Battalion: ‘Something dreadful seemed to have happened in terms of the overall plan. Things were going very awry. The whole theory of mobility that we had been taught, of our racing across the battlefield, seemed to have gone up in smoke.’ Sergeant Bill Walsh of the 102nd Cavalry thought that the struggle between Germans and Americans resembled ‘a pro fighter taking on an amateur who didn’t want to fight. None of those American infantry boys wanted to be over there.’ Lieutenant Philip Reisler of 2nd Armored felt that the campaign had become ‘like an interminable succession of Thermopylaes. In every engagement, we were only able to present one tiny unit to the enemy at a time.’
Yet even as First Army’s difficulties seemed at their greatest, the transformation of American fortunes was at hand. Together with General Collins of VII Corps, Bradley had conceived a new plan. To clear the way for a major offensive, Collins’s men began to push forward to the St Lô–Périers road. By 20 July, they had reached positions commanding it. On 18 July, at a cost of 3,000 casualties in the 29th Division and more than 2,000 in the 35th, the Americans gained the vital heights of St Lô. The battle for the shattered rubble of the town was one of First Army’s outstanding feats of arms in the campaign, driving back General Eugene Meindl’s II Parachute Corps yard by yard, despite constant casualties. The body of Major Thomas Howie, killed leading the 3rd/116th Infantry to the rescue of the 2nd Battalion on the outskirts of St Lô, was laid on a bier of rubble outside the church of Notre-Dame. Hill 122 joined a host of other Norman map references among the American army’s battle honours. The German 352nd Division, whose presence had wrought such havoc with American plans on 6 June, was now in ruins. Even Meindl’s paratroopers had cracked. The stage was set for the supreme American military achievement of the Normandy campaign, Operation COBRA.
It was symbolic of the contrasting approaches to war by the two principal Allies in Normandy that the British codenamed their greatest efforts after race meetings, while the Americans adopted a symbol of deadly killing power. Montgomery’s official biographer has recently argued that it was the C-in-C of 21st Army Group who produced the essential framework for COBRA, in a declaration of future intentions dated 13 June. After discussing immediate objectives for that period, he continued:
f)
to capture ST LO and then COUTANCES
g)
to thrust southwards from CAUMONT towards VIRE and MORTAIN; and from ST LO towards VILLEDIEU and AVRANCHES
h)
all the time to exert pressure towards LA HAYE DU PUITS and VOLOGNES, and to capture CHERBOURG.
‘This was,’ declares Montgomery’s biographer, ‘town for town the layout for the American Operation “Cobra”.’13 [emphasis in original] If this assertion arouses ire among the ghosts of the First Army, it is also true that, after the event, Americans were too eager to write into history the view that COBRA was expected from the outset to lead inexorably to Lorient, Le Mans and Argentan, and that from its launching the rest of the campaign was preordained. In reality, of course, it would have been extraordinary to plan it as anything of the sort. It was an ambitious, well-conceived blueprint for a major offensive. Considering the proven difficulties of wrestling ground from the Germans, and the earlier failure of many equally high hopes, it could never have begun as more than that. To suggest that the Americans now consciously embarked upon a completely new phase of the campaign – ‘the breakout’ – is to pretend that they had not been trying desperately to escape from the bocage for many weeks already. What took place in late July on the American flank was that First Army launched an offensive that worked, assisted by the absence of most of the best of von Kluge’s army, who were engaged with the British and Canadians in the east. They then pursued and exploited their success with dramatic energy.
No earlier statement of objectives by Montgomery can diminish the personal achievement of Bradley, whose plan COBRA was. During the weeks since 6 June, there had been a subtle but steady shift in the command relationship between 21st Army Group and the Americans, reflecting both the growing weight of US strength now deployed in Normandy, and the shrinking confidence of First Army in Montgomery’s superior wisdom and experience. There was still the closest consultation between the Allies, and great care was taken to mesh British and American plans. Montgomery confirmed American intentions in crisply-worded written orders. There is little doubt that his negative authority over First Army was undiminished: he could have prevented, the Americans from embarking upon a course of which he disapproved. But he could no longer expect to exercise positive authority, to compel them to initiate operations for which they felt disinclined. A study of Montgomery’s files for this period, his successive orders to the armies, might give a different impression. But in real terms, while the Americans accepted his co-ordinating authority, it would be inaccurate to describe him as their commander, in the sense that Bradley was commander of First Army.
The American Secretary for War, Henry Stimson, visited Bradley’s headquarters on 17 July, and recorded in his notes: ‘Plan Cobra – attack by 2 infantry divisions (30th and 9th) followed by 1st Infantry and 2nd Armored to the left. Break through and turn to right, enveloping 5 or 6 divisions. If successful would have easy going to the SW end of the bocage.’14 In the event, between Stimson’s visit and the COBRA jump-off, the thrust of VII Corps south-westwards from the St Lô–Périers road towards Coutances was strengthened by the addition of the 4th Division in the centre. In contrast to the usual American preference for broad front assaults, this was to be a narrow, concentrated attack on a 7,000-yard front, immediately preceded by a massive air bombardment. The fighter-bombers would concentrate on hitting forward German defences in a 250-yard belt immediately south of the road. Spaatz’s ‘heavies’ would bomb to a depth of 2,500 yards behind the German front, accompanied by the artillery fire of 1,000 guns.
The Americans’ principal secret weapon for COBRA was the ‘Rhino’ – a set of steel tusks welded onto the front of many of the Shermans, which so equipped had been found capable of battering a path through the Norman hedgerows in heartening fashion. Within weeks, the name of Sergeant Curtis G. Culin, of 2nd Armored’s 102nd Cavalry Reconnaissance, echoed across America as the imaginative young American who had devised the battle-winner. The reality, as usual in these matters, was touchingly a littl
e different. Every American armoured unit had been puzzling over the hedgerow problem, and one day Captain Jimmy de Pew of the 102nd summoned a ‘bull session’ of his men to chew it over. A Tennessee hillbilly named Roberts asked slowly: ‘Why don’t we get some saw teeth and put them on the front of the tank and cut through these hedges?’ The crowd of men roared with laughter. But Sergeant Culin, a notably shrewd soldier known in the unit both as a chess player and a man impatient of army routines, said: ‘Hang on a minute, he’s got an idea there.’ Culin it was who put Roberts’s ill-articulated notion into effect, and directed the first demonstration: the tankers – and shortly afterwards General Bradley – watched in awe as a hedgerow exploded before their eyes to make way for the Sherman bursting through. In great secrecy, steel lengths stockpiled from the German beach obstacles were salvaged and used to modify hundreds of First Army’s tanks. It is difficult to overstate the importance of the ‘Rhinos’, as they were called, for they restored battlefield manoeuvrability to Bradley’s armour. Henceforth, while the German tanks remained restricted to the roads, the Shermans possessed the power to outflank them across country. Culin was later summoned to appear before a press conference in Paris. An honest man, he tried hard to give some credit to Roberts. But the weight of the great propaganda and publicity machine was too much for him. He became a very American kind of national hero.15
Another kind of hero was lost to First Army on the very eve of COBRA – 54-year-old Colonel Paddy Flint, the hoary old commander of the 39th Infantry who had made himself legendary for the reckless courage which now killed him. Irritated by the slow progress of his 2nd Battalion approaching the COBRA start-line, he strode impatiently forward under heavy mortaring to galvanize them into life. He sent a message to his executive officer from the battalion CP: ‘Strangely quiet here. Could take nap. Have spotted pillbox. Will start them cooking.’ He reached the front line with his headquarters group to be greeted by a German with a machine pistol whose fire ripped Flint’s trousers. Flint ordered a tank to move forward, and when its commander told him that he could not do so as he had turret trouble, Flint exploded: ‘It isn’t often you’ll have a colonel for a bodyguard!’ The reluctant tank and a cluster of infantry advanced up the road with their colonel. At one point, when he was standing on the Sherman’s hull directing the driver, German fire began to ricochet off the steel, and Flint was induced to step down into cover. The ‘bodyguard colonel’ now advanced with his little group towards the Germans, disdaining their hand grenades: ‘I don’t mind that – they can’t hit me anyway.’ His driver was wounded, but while he was being taken to the rear Flint kept up heavy fire with the two carbines and M1 rifle with which he was now armed, and of which his unhappy staff officer sought to relieve him. The colonel was standing in a doorway lecturing a sergeant on infantry tactics when there was a single shot, and he pitched forward, hit in the head. The sergeant spotted the German sniper and worked forward until he shot him out of a tree. Flint was given morphia and a cigarette, and murmured as he lay: ‘You can’t kill an Irishman, you only make him mad.’ He died in the field hospital. In one sense, Flint’s performance was suicidal and wildly unsuited to the role of regimental commander. But in another, given the chronic difficulty of inducing the infantry to employ ‘Indian fighting’, to get to close quarters with the enemy, it was a magnificent example. George Patton acted as one of Flint’s pallbearers, and said with uncommon accuracy that he was sure that this was how his old friend would like to have gone. Flint was one of the great characters of First Army, cast in a mould of leadership that filled his men with immense pride.16
The launching of COBRA was delayed for some days by the same torrential rain and low cloud that sealed the fate of GOODWOOD. On 24 July, the order was given and 1,600 aircraft had already taken off for the preliminary air bombardment when the weather closed in again. Some were successfully recalled, or declined to risk bombing through the overcast atmosphere. But others again poured down explosives destined for the path of the American attack. The results were disastrously erratic. 25 Americans were killed and 131 wounded in the 30th Division, and the Germans were provided with final confirmation of the American intention to move on the St Lô–Périers front. Some enraged American units, such as the 2nd/120th Infantry, opened fire on their own aircraft, a not uncommon practice among all the armies in Normandy when suffering at the hands of their own pilots.
The next morning, the forecasters’ promise of brighter weather was fulfilled. At 7.00 a.m., 901st Panzergrenadiers telephoned divisional headquarters to report: ‘American infantry in front of our trenches are abandoning their positions. They are withdrawing everywhere.’ As similar reports reached Bayerlein from all along the front, his operations officer, Kurt Kauffmann, said cheerfully: ‘Looks as if they’ve got cold feet. Perhaps Seventh Army is right after all.’ Hausser’s staff had confidently predicted, despite every indication from Panzer Lehr to the contrary, that the major Allied attack would come south of Caen. Then the field telephones in Bayerlein’s farmhouse at Canisy began to ring again, reporting: ‘Bombing attacks by endless waves of aircraft. Fighter-bomber attacks on bridges and artillery positions.’17 At 9.38 a.m., the fighter-bombers opened their first 20-minute assault on the German front line. Behind them, high above the dust and smoke, 1,800 heavy bombers of 8th Air Force droned slowly towards the target area, their glinting wings watched by thousands of expectant young Americans in their foxholes and tank turrets below, massed ready to move when the airmen had finished.
As we watched [wrote the war correspondent Ernie Pyle], there crept into our consciousness a realization that windrows of exploding bombs were easing back towards us, flight by flight, instead of gradually forward, as the plan called for. Then we were horrified by the suspicion that these machines, high in the sky and completely detached from us, were aiming their bombs at the smokeline on the ground, and a gentle breeze was drifting the smokeline back over us! An indescribable kind of panic comes over you at such times. We stood tensed in muscle and frozen in intellect, watching each flight approach and pass over us, feeling trapped and completely helpless.
Bradley had asked that the bombers attack east–west, out of the sun and parallel to the front on the St Lô–Périers road, to reduce the risk of ‘short bombing’, or ‘creepback’, as the British called it. The airmen, for their own reasons, came in north–south. Despite desperate efforts by the ground troops to identify their positions with yellow panels and smoke markers, there was wild bombing by 8th Air Force, with appalling consequences for the men below. ‘The ground was shaken and rocked as if by a great earthquake,’ said Lieutenant-Colonel George Tuttle of the 30th Division. ‘The concussion, even underground, felt as if someone was beating you with a club.’18 Ernie Pyle wrote of ‘that awful rush of wind, like the rattling of seeds in a dry gourd’. Lieutenant Sidney Eichen of the 120th Infantry had stood with his men watching the bombers approach with comfortable satisfaction: ‘We thought – “How gorgeous.” Then it was – “Goddamit, they’re coming for us again!” My outfit was decimated, our anti-tank guns blown apart. I saw one of our truck drivers, Jesse Ivy, lying split down the middle. Captain Bell was buried in a crater with only his head visible. He suffocated before we could get him out.’19 111 Americans were killed, including Lieutenant-General Lesley McNair, who had come forward to watch the attack, and 490 wounded. The entire command group of the 9th Division’s 3rd/47th Infantry was wiped out. Maddened men were forcibly carried to the rear. Others merely ran blindly from the battlefield. Maimed men lay screaming for aid. Brigadier-General William Harrison of the 30th Division wrote savagely home that night: ‘When you read of all the great glamour of our flying friends, just remember that not all that glitters is gold!’20 Harrison won a Distinguished Service Cross that day for his part in dragging men from their shock and paralysis, pulling together shattered units, and driving them forward to press on with the attack. He told the commanding officer of the 120th Infantry: ‘Colonel, the attack goes ahead a
s scheduled. Even if you have only two or three men, the attack is to be made.’ Eichen saw his regimental commander running from company to company shouting: ‘You’ve gotta get going, get going!’ Eichen said: ‘Half-heartedly, we started to move.’
General Courtney Hodges, commander-designate of First Army, visited 30th Division’s command post to meet its enraged commander, Hobbs, who, ‘was naturally terribly upset by the air show . . . “We’re good soldiers, Courtney, I know, but there’s absolutely no excuse, no excuse at all. I wish I could show some of those air boys, decorated with everything a man can be decorated with, some of our casualty clearing stations.” ’21
Amid the shambles created by the bombing of their own forward areas, VII Corps’ attack began hesitantly on the 25th, men moving slowly forward to discover, to their dismay, that the Panzer Lehr division before them was battered but still unbroken. Some German troops had even moved rapidly forward to occupy ground evacuated by the Americans to provide an air safety zone – a technique they had also adopted on the 24th. Collins’s troops were even more disheartened to meet fierce artillery fire, which they had confidently expected to find suppressed by the bombing. ‘It was hard to believe that any living thing could be left alive in front of our positions,’ said Colonel Turtle. ‘However on moving to enemy-held territory, our men ran into some determined resistance.’22 Units found themselves entangled in protracted firefights against strongpoints and networks of foxholes held by the customary German mix of a handful of tanks, supporting infantry, and the inevitable 88 mm guns.
Overlord (Pan Military Classics) Page 35
