Holding Juno
Page 3
By midday, when it became apparent the landings would succeed in at least winning a toehold on the continent, Eisenhower had handed the release to an aide and announced dryly to a group of journalists that the landings were underway.12 At dusk, he learned that the British and Canadians had managed to put 75,215 soldiers ashore and another 7,900 paratroopers in by air while the Americans had 57,500 on the ground.13
But the victory had been hard won. Although far lower than the feared casualty rate of 15 per cent of the landing force, the price had been stiff enough—approximately 10,000 dead, wounded, or captured by day’s end. Of these, a third were estimated to have been fatal.14
By midnight, the presses throughout the United Kingdom were rolling with massive front-page headlines that blared the news of the D-Day victory to a public long beleaguered by bad news and endless hardship. “Allied invasion troops, surging into France in non-stop waves, have fought their way into Caen, a town ten miles from the coast. Heavy street fighting is going on,” proclaimed the Daily Express.15 Caen, of course, remained firmly under the heel of many a German jackboot, but the pivotal importance of this city’s capture to the Allied operation had obviously been hinted to British journalists. Indeed, Caen served as a vital arterial centre for the network of roads and railways radiating to the rest of northern Normandy and on to Paris.
To British General Bernard Law Montgomery, the mastermind behind Operation Overlord’s strategic plan, the city had always been of “immense strategic importance.” This was not so much for itself per se, but because “it was a vital road and rail centre through which passed the main routes leading to our lodgement area from the east and southeast. As the bulk of the German mobile reserves were located north of the Seine, they would have to approach our bridgehead from the east and would thus converge on Caen.”16
Southeast of the city, the ground between Caen and Falaise flattened into a wide plain, ideally suited for the rapid development of airstrips from which Allied fighters and fighter-bombers could begin operations from French soil. The tactical importance of the Falaise plain and the funnelling of Normandy’s transportation routes through Caen made it impossible for the Germans to allow the city to fall without a determined fight. Montgomery expected that by setting the British Second Army driving hard out of Sword, Juno, and Gold beaches in an arc towards Caen he would force the German divisions rushing south from encampments north of the Seine to concentrate on blocking this advance.17 Failure to do so would not only result in their loss of transportation junctions, but would also leave the gate open by which the Allies could break out of Normandy towards the Seine and Germany itself.
But Montgomery did not intend to immediately achieve a breakout at Caen. Instead, this part of Overlord was an elaborately staged feint to distract German attention and “draw the main enemy reserves, particularly his armoured divisions, into that sector and to keep them there—using the British and Canadian forces under [General Miles] Dempsey for this purpose.” While Dempsey’s Second British Army met—and he hoped destroyed—the heavy German forces counterattacking here, Montgomery planned that the American First Army under Bradley would attack “southwards, and then… proceed in a wide sweep up to the Seine about Paris. I hoped this gigantic wheel would pivot on Falaise. It aimed to cut off all the enemy forces south of the Seine, the bridges over the river below Paris having been destroyed by our air forces.”18
Montgomery not only wanted to push the Germans out of Normandy, he expected to cut off the Seventh Army—defending the coastline south of the Seine—and then destroy it entirely. The plan was a bold one, and for it to succeed the Canadians and the British divisions of Dempsey’s army must bear the brunt of the fight to come.
AT 0200 HOURS ON JUNE 7, 3rd Canadian Infantry Division’s part in that fight started with an attack on the North Nova Scotia Highlanders while they were still in the midst of establishing a defensive line for the night. Having pushed farther inland than any other Allied troops, the lead column of the North Novas had only halted its advance along the highway running from Courseulles-sur-Mer to Caen when night fell. To speed this inland push, the infantry had been mounted aboard every available Bren carrier and had clung to the outside hulls of the supporting Shermans of the Sherbrooke Fusiliers. North Nova commander Lieutenant Colonel Charlie Petch finally ordered his battalion to hold up at a junction where the highway met a road running southwest from Villons-les-Buissons directly to Carpiquet airport. Intending to carry on by this road to the airport objective in the morning, Petch concentrated his companies around the intersection.
About a quarter mile to the left of this position, the Queen’s Own Rifles had a company dug in at the village of Anisy. The Queen’s Own, however, were not in control of a road running directly past the southern edge of the village to Petch’s intersection. Worried that this route provided a perfect line of approach from the southeast for elements of the 21st Panzer Division believed to be lurking on this flank, Petch sent a section of pioneers to establish a roadblock midway between the intersection and Anisy. Accompanying the pioneers on this foray into no man’s land was a detail from the battalion’s Bren carrier platoon commanded by Sergeant Don Baillie.19 Once they reached the mining position, Baillie ordered the carriers parked behind the cover of a hedge from which his men could cover the pioneer party as it strung antitank and anti-personnel mines across the road and along the verges.
It was a lovely moonlit night. Nowhere on the front lines could any sound of fighting be heard, so Baillie and his men were confident that the roadblock party was secure. Dismounting from their carriers, the soldiers ambled out onto the road to get a better view of the fire-works display back at the beach, which outmatched any peacetime celebration they had ever seen. Hovering over the great armada standing offshore from Juno, were the silhouettes of a handful of German bombers that had drawn the ire of hundreds of anti-aircraft gunners aboard the many ships. Thousands of tracers streamed into the night sky, which suddenly brightened with a false dawn whenever an enemy bomb exploded. This far from the beach, the exploding bombs and rattle of anti-aircraft guns sounded no louder than fire-crackers igniting in long strings. But the noise did drown out the night sounds of crickets and the scraping of shovels and picks being wielded by the engineers.
The pioneers were working quickly, eyes down and focussed on the task of laying mines, while the carrier men gazed nonchalantly away from the front towards the beach. Squatting in the middle of the road, arms lazily resting on his knees, Private Ern Jollymore suddenly sensed the presence of something large looming close to his back and glanced over his shoulder. Just up the road, something dark and bulky bore down on the pioneers.
“It’s a Jerry tank!” hissed the man at his shoulder. Jollymore followed him in a mad dash to the cover of a hedge just as the tank’s machine gun spat out a long burst.
Cut off from their carriers by the streams of fire, Baillie’s men were forced to abandon the vehicles. Seeing the shadowy figures of German infantry darting across an open field towards them, the Bren carrier men and pioneers started shooting with rifles and Sten guns while scrambling back to the battalion’s main line on foot. This quick and apparently unexpected response to the German infiltration attempt served to deter the enemy from pressing the attack. After punching a few rounds from its main gun towards the North Nova lines, the tank swerved around and grumbled off into the night with the infantry following close behind.
Meanwhile, in ‘D’ Company’s position, directly astride the intersection, Sergeant Jimmy McInnis spotted a German soldier with a knife clamped in his teeth crawling up on Sergeant Viril Bartlett’s slit trench. Before McInnis could act, the German gripped the knife and dropped into the hole. Fearing he would be too late to save his friend from a slit throat, McInnis grabbed his Sten gun and ran. Seeing the German’s head bob up out of the slit trench, the sergeant shoved the Sten’s barrel practically into the man’s face. The enemy dropped the knife and threw his hands up in surrender. McInnis was su
rprised and relieved to see that, apart from the German, the trench was empty. Casting about, he soon discovered that Bartlett had decided the night was too peaceful and pleasant to spend bedded down with the worms in a slit trench. He had constructed a soft mattress of wheat in the grain field next to their position and still slept soundly. Thinking it a shame to disturb the man, McInnis let him lie and escorted the prisoner to battalion headquarters.20
At battalion headquarters, the captured German was identified as a member of a Panzer Grenadier unit, most likely from the 192nd Panzer Grenadier Battalion of the 21st Panzer Division. Petch was just absorbing this information when ‘B’ Company out on the left flank reported being under attack by German infantry mounted on half-tracks—providing confirmation that the North Novas were squaring off against Panzer Grenadiers.
Highly mechanized infantry, Panzer Grenadier regiments were an integral component of Panzer divisions intended to operate either independently or alongside the division’s armoured regiments. These units generally used heavy infantry carriers known as half-tracks because the vehicle’s rear drive was mounted with dual tracks while the front was fitted with standard wheels. A common half-track used by Panzer divisions was the SdKfz251, which carried a crew of up to twelve men protected by armour ranging in thickness from six to fifteen millimetres. One variant of this half-track was armed with two 7.92-millimetre machine guns, but others mounted lighter machine guns or none at all. Powered by a six-cylinder gas engine, the half-track had an average top speed of thirty-three miles per hour.
One half-track well ahead of the rest rumbled directly towards Lieutenant Fraser Campbell’s No. 10 Platoon. Not realizing that the Bren carrier troops out with the pioneers had abandoned their vehicles, Campbell’s men first mistook the approaching vehicles for the returning roadblock detail. But when a sentry called out a password challenge, the shadowy figures aboard the blacked-out vehicle responded with guttural German shouts and gunfire.
No. 10 Platoon answered with such a heavy fusillade that the half-track swerved away from the line and began circling wildly around in the grain field, dodging behind one haystack after another, before swinging back towards ‘B’ Company’s position. Lance Corporal J.E. Porter looked out of his slit trench only to see the front end of the half-track bearing down on him. Firing several shots from his bayonet-mounted rifle, he ducked deep into the hole just in time to avoid being crushed as the front wheels ground right over the trench. Lying on his back with the rifle pressed against his body, Porter was unable to get the bayonet all the way into the trench and the rear tracks of the half-track snapped the blade like a twig. Then abruptly, the half-track stalled with the track suspended directly overhead, leaving Porter trapped.
With a sitting target to aim at, all of ‘B’ Company blazed away at the half-track with rifles, Stens, and Bren guns. The concentrated fire hammering the lightly armoured hull convinced the four Germans aboard to surrender. One had been wounded during the short firefight, as had two ‘B’ Company men. Porter was only able to escape from his hole when some of the men dug in from the side of one track to drag him out.21
‘B’ Company was just starting to recover from this first incursion into its lines when two more half-tracks roared out of the darkness with MG 42 machine guns mounted on pintles behind the driver compartments blazing. The company commander, Major J.W. Douglas, quickly ordered his men to mark their position with tracer rounds and then radioed for the Sherbrookes’ Sherman tanks standing behind the company to rake the ground in front. Lieutenant S.W. Wood’s No. 4 Troop of ‘B’ Squadron responded instantly with fire that ripped not only into the two half-tracks closing on the position but also the disabled one, setting all three ablaze. Wood’s personal Sherman was the new British-designed Firefly, equipped with a powerful 17-pound main gun in place of the standard 75-millimetre. A shell from the lieutenant’s tank tore one of the half-tracks apart, while another round blew a cow wandering about the field into gore.22 The combined effect of No. 4 Troop’s fire, noted the North Nova Scotia’s war diarist, “apparently discouraged the [Germans], as they withdrew.”23
NO SOONER had this force been repelled than what appeared to be a full company of Panzer Grenadiers mounted aboard more than twenty vehicles plowed into ‘A’ Company of Le Régiment de la Chaudière just outside Colomby-sur-Thaon, a little over a mile back of the North Novas. The attack’s main force fell upon the company’s No. 9 Platoon, commanded by Lieutenant A.P. Ladas. Caught by surprise, the platoon was overrun before it could respond and most of its men were left no choice but to surrender or die, even as Ladas attempted to rally them with the cry, “À l’assaut les boys.” With a grenade in each hand, Ladas charged the approaching half-tracks and was instantly cut down by machine-gun fire along with two of his men.24 The Germans quickly whisked off forty-one other men from the platoon as prisoners, along with ‘A’ Company’s second-in-command, Captain Pierre Vallée.*
The remaining two platoons of ‘A’ Company and two of the battalion’s six-pound antitank gun crews were quickly entangled in a fierce melee with the attacking Germans. “My men were exhausted but they fought like lions,” Major Hugues Lapointe wrote later of his company’s desperate fight. “There was no defensive line as such, our being entirely surrounded. There followed close-combat action with grenades and point-blank firing of weapons. POWS occurred on both sides. Four half-tracks were knocked out and were aflame, their ammunition exploding and whizzing over our heads. It was like daylight as the vehicles burned!”25
The bravery of one antitank gunner ultimately prevented ‘A’ Company’s slaughter. One of the six-pounders had been knocked out of action in the opening minutes of the German attack, and soon all but a single crew member manning the second six-pounder were dead or wounded. The lone survivor, Private L.V. Roy, continued to load and fire the gun single-handed with deadly effect even as the Germans subjected his position to withering small-arms fire. Virtually every well-aimed shot from Roy’s gun sent another half-track up in flames until finally the attack crumbled. When the Germans withdrew, seventeen destroyed vehicles remained scattered throughout ‘A’ Company’s position along with an undetermined number of dead Germans. The Chaudières had been equally battered, due primarily to the capture of most of No. 9 Platoon and the death of Lieutenant Ladas and two of his men, along with the losses suffered by the antitank gunners.
* The Canadian official history by Col. C.P. Stacey lists these Chaudière POWS as casualties suffered by 3rd Canadian Infantry Division on D-Day itself, but they were lost during this engagement in the early morning of June 7. (Stacey, The Victory Campaign, 650)
Not until dawn, however, did other Chaudières check Roy’s gun position. The private’s lifeless body was found draped over the breech of the gun he had served so bravely.*
WHILE HALF-TRACK–MOUNTED Panzer Grenadiers struck the North Novas and Chaudières throughout the length of the long finger of the Canadian left flank, other enemy troops skulked on foot. Some were 192nd Panzer Grenadier Battalion patrols probing for weaknesses or gaps in the lines, and seeking prisoners. Others were 716th Infantry Division stragglers. This coastal defence division had been largely destroyed attempting to defend the beaches on which Second British Army had landed on D-Day. While the survivors from the 716th tended to avoid combat, the Panzer Grenadier patrols posed a significant hazard to Canadians moving along the main road that ran from the front lines back to the beachhead at Bernières-sur-Mer.
Lieutenant Colonel Petch’s jeep driver Private Lloyd MacPhee learned the dangers inherent in such travel during one of the many errands that saw him motoring back to the beach from the junction at Villons-les-Buissons early in the night. His first trip to fetch the battalion’s medical officer from the beach had proved uneventful. Then he returned to Bernières to guide three tanks up to the Sherbrookes. While at the beach, another jeep driver warned MacPhee he had seen some Germans lurking around the road who had fired on several vehicles from the cover of thickets. Shrugging
the danger off, MacPhee drove back to the North Novas at the head of the tank convoy without triggering any enemy reaction. Figuring that this should be enough running about for the night, the private had just set to digging a slit trench when summoned again by the colonel.
* As the only Commonwealth decoration that can be issued posthumously is the politically charged and rarely awarded Victoria Cross, L.V. Roy’s heroism went officially unrecognized, but to the Chaudières in Normandy his sacrifice was viewed as a symbol of devotion to duty, courage, and sacrifice for the whole unit. Today, the Chaudières award the L.V. Roy Trophy annually to the Regiment’s company that obtains the best results in the unit’s military and sports competition.
Petch had four Germans, one of whom was wounded, on his hands and standing orders from 9th Brigade headquarters that all prisoners should be sent there for interrogation. He also had two wounded North Nova stretcher cases. One of the stretchers was laid across the jeep’s hood and the other sideways behind the driver’s seat, while the wounded German was ordered to sit in the back corner. The remaining three prisoners were to walk behind the jeep under the watchful eye of a Sten-toting Lance Corporal Wheaton.
MacPhee crawled out of the North Nova Scotia position at an irritating snail’s pace necessitated by having to match the pace of the Germans on foot. Soon realizing that the party would be lucky to reach the beach before dawn, MacPhee suggested to Wheaton that everyone crowd onto the jeep somehow. Putting one German on the back of the jeep opposite the wounded man, another in the front seat next to MacPhee with the remaining German on his lap, and Wheaton standing on the hood next to the stretcher so he could watch over them all seemed to work well enough.26