by Mark Zuehlke
In short order, the Canadians were individually escorted from the stall in which they were being held through a narrow passageway that led into a garden. There, a sergeant armed with a machine pistol summarily shot each man in the back of the head. Privates Walter Doherty, Reg Keeping, Hugh MacDonald, George McNaughton, George Millar, Thomas Mont, and Raymond Moore were all executed in a matter of just ten minutes. When the killings were completed, the sergeant responsible exited the garden and casually reloaded his gun.
After the killer walked away, a young eastern European conscript named Jan Jesionek crept into the garden with three friends and found the Canadians lying in a ragged pile, around which a large pool of blood was forming. With grim irony, Jesionek, who had overheard Meyer’s admonishment about having to feed the prisoners, noted that standing near the murdered soldiers was a bulky British ration canister.2
Whether Meyer ordered the killings or not was unclear. Certainly, his mind was barely focussed on such matters, for although Witt had showered Meyer with a wealth of armour and mobile artillery, he could do nothing to relieve the paltry offering of Panzer Grenadiers available for the upcoming attack. All three of Meyer’s regular battalions were currently tied down in front of the 9th Canadian Infantry Brigade’s front around les Buissons. Reluctant to pull any of these units away from there for fear of opening up a route for the Canadians to break through to Carpiquet airport, Meyer could only ante up small change in the form of No. 15 Motorcycle Company. Even this reconnaissance battalion unit had to be pulled out of the line and the resulting gap filled by a company of heavily armed but less mobile engineers. Despite his paucity of infantry, the cocky Panzer Grenadier commander remained confident that speed and the sheer weight of armoured firepower would overwhelm the Reginas. Accordingly, Meyer mounted the majority of the infantry onto the hulls of the Panzers, with one platoon saddled up on their motorbikes. The tanks and motorcyclists were to go hell-bent for leather through Rots and along the Caen-Bayeux highway straight into Bretteville.3
Lacking a wireless link with Mohnke, Meyer teed up his attack absent any coordination with the 26th Panzer Grenadier Regiment. He was confident of success. Exultantly, Meyer drove from tank to tank “calling out to the boys” in the crews and the mounted motorcycle troops. Having promised during training exercises in Belgium that he would personally accompany No.15 Motorcycle Company into its battle-field debut, Meyer made it clear he would now honour that pledge.4
Going into the attack were several officers who had fought many campaigns at Meyer’s side. Haupsturmführer Horst von Büttner commanded the motorcyclists. And Obersturmbannführer Max Wünsche—the 12th Panzer Regiment commander—personally led the Panthers in the absence of the battalion’s leader, who had yet to reach the battlefield. Meyer swung onto the pillion behind his dispatch rider Helmut Belke, while in the sidecar next to him was Dr. Stift. Belke had been at Meyer’s side since 1939. So, too, had Wünsche. “We know each other,” Meyer later wrote, “there is no need for discussion. [A] look, a sign, and the tanks are rolling into the night.”5
As Meyer passed the tanks, he saw that the grenadiers sheltering behind the turrets of each Panzer “were waving to me… They slap each other on the back and probably remember my promise. They point to my motorcycle and shake their heads. My ‘conveyance’ seems slightly worrying to them.”6
Belke gunned the motorbike out to the front of the column, so that Meyer led it at the Panthers’ top speed to Rots, finding the village empty. The Panthers ground single file through the narrow streets, but on the other side spread into a wedge shape, with one company either side of the highway and two Panthers on point, barrelling along the road itself towards the next village. Coming within range of Bretteville, the Panthers began “firing round after round from their guns, shooting down the road to clear it for us, clanking into the village at full speed on their tracks. This is the way we fought in the east, but will these same surprise tactics achieve the same for us here?”7
MEYER SOON REALIZED the Reginas were unsurprised by the nighttime assault. Instead, the thorough reconnaissance his veteran officers and regimental scouts had conducted during the daytime, in order to know “every fold” of ground, had been detected by the Canadians, closely monitored, and its intent correctly interpreted. Lieutenant Colonel Foster Matheson cautioned his company commanders to expect an armoured night attack and insisted all troops maintain a state of full combat readiness despite the fact that everyone was verging on exhaustion.
That such precautionary measures were justified was confirmed at Norrey-en-Bessin shortly before Meyer’s assault force hammered down on Bretteville. In Norrey, ‘C’ Company’s No. 13 Platoon reported movement on its perimeter and Major Stu Tubb scrambled over. Standing next to Lieutenant Ray Smith, the company commander listened “to some highly suspicious noises in the darkness towards le Mesnil-Patry. There was talking and occasional calls back and forth, followed by sounds of pounding. We decided that someone unfriendly was starting to dig in and that we should put a stop to it, hopefully without disclosing our own position.
“Accordingly, two of 13 Platoon’s Bren gun teams slipped off to the right to open fire. This ploy worked, as their opening bursts a few minutes later brought astonished shouts and, as they continued, sounds of a hasty retreat.”8 The Germans brought under fire were part of Mohnke’s 26th Panzer Grenadier Regiment attempting to execute Witt’s order by securing Norrey and linking up with the 25th Panzer Grenadiers.
While this action was playing out in front of Norrey, Meyer’s combined force of tanks and infantry launched its attack and ran into an immediate hail of Bren gun fire from ‘B’ Company’s position astride the Caen-Bayeux highway just east of Bretteville. Some of the mounted Panzer Grenadiers were shot off the tanks before the rest could dismount and scurry to the cover of roadside ditches. Using the ditches for cover, the Germans then advanced on the town by bounds as one section covered the forward movement of another, then passed through that section while it covered the next advance.
Casualties were mounting alarmingly as Meyer joined a cluster of Panzer Grenadiers in one of the ditches. He stumbled over a dead Canadian and heard someone groaning on the road to the left. Bren gun and Vickers fire from some of the surviving Camerons ripped towards the Germans. Meyer managed to reach the wounded man and looked down in horror at his old friend von Büttner. The motorcycle company commander had been shot in the stomach and was lying on his back. He squeezed Meyer’s hand and said, “Tell my wife, I love her very much.” Meyer knelt beside von Büttner as Dr. Stift dressed the wound, while Helmut Belke covered them with fire from a position off to the right. Suddenly, a Canadian dashed across the road and Belke killed the man with a head shot before sprawling to the ground himself. When Belke failed to stand up, Meyer ran over to find that he too had been shot in the stomach. Meyer tried to assure Belke he would survive, but the veteran soldier knew better. “No, I know this kind of wound,” he said. “This is the end. Please tell my parents.”
Tank commander Wünsche had meanwhile determined that his Panthers were not simply going to overrun the Canadians holding Bretteville as they had so many Russians in the past. He ordered one of the two tank companies to swing around the town’s southern outskirts and attack it from the west, while the other struck it head on. The Panzers met an immediate wall of rapid and fierce fire thrown out by the six-pound antitank guns of 3rd Anti-Tank Regiment’s 94th Battery, but still overran ‘H’ Troop’s positions and killed or wounded all but twelve of its gun crews. ‘G’ Troop, however, was located more snugly inside the Regina perimeter and subjected the Panthers to fire that surprised the Germans with its accuracy.
Unable to locate the Canadian gunners, the Panzer company commander attempting to break into Bretteville from the east ordered his tankers to use incendiary rounds and set houses on fire for illumination.9 The sudden eruption of burning buildings on the town’s southern outskirts also glaringly illuminated the other company of Panzers swinging ar
ound Bretteville. Despite mounting casualties, ‘G’ Troop swung its guns onto these new targets with deadly effect. Sergeant Herman Dumas single-handedly hauled his six-pounder along a hedge to fire round after round at almost point-blank range into the Panzers. Bombardier Cyril D. Askin managed to clear a jammed and abandoned gun, bringing it back into action for several accurately placed shots before being mortally wounded. Dumas would win a Military Medal, while Askin received a post-humous Mention in Despatches.10
The antitank guns pounding the Panthers zeroed in on one troop with shots that struck all three tanks at virtually the same moment. One tank exploded in flame when its engine compartment was pierced, and the crew narrowly escaped being burned alive. Another round punched through the troop commander’s turret, blinding the loader and breaking many of his bones. The tank’s electrical system failed. Quickly seizing command of the third tank, which was unscathed despite several hits from the six-pounders, the troop commander radioed a report to his company commander. He was ordered to break off the attack and withdraw, while the rest of the company would continue its flanking effort.11
The Panzer Grenadiers to the east had by now bogged down on the edge of Bretteville and, according to platoon leader Untersturmführer Reinhold Fuss, were forced “to withdraw under the vast enemy fire superiority.”12 Meyer hastily reorganized the battered infantry and flung one platoon at the town’s far right, while the other tried to infiltrate through the outskirts to the left rather than drive directly up the main street to the church. Their objective was to rally on the church tower, where, if they found no Canadian tanks in place, they would fire signal flares and the Panzers and remaining infantry would then invest the town. Fuss commanded the rightward probe. The two-pronged attack failed as the leftward platoon was discovered and thrown back by ‘A’ company within minutes of its attempt to push into the town. Fuss, meanwhile, managed to reach the main square, but had only six men left “after a lot of violent shooting.” Seeing no tanks, he fired the signal flare and hurried his men into the dubious shelter of the church to await the Panzers.13
JUST BEFORE MIDNIGHT, Captain Gordon Brown, who had only assumed command of the Regina Rifles’ ‘D’ Company that morning, looked out a hole in the wall surrounding la Ferme de Cardonville and saw his “worst fears… realized.” Several massive tanks from the company trying to outflank the Bretteville defenders ground along the Caen-Bayeux highway directly towards the old farm. The captain cursed these Germans for not playing by the book. Sound military doctrine held that any armoured attack against the farm should have come from the open ground to his west, certainly not from out of the very middle of the Reginas’ battalion area. Brown’s antitank guns were all facing the wrong direction. Suddenly, from Bretteville, a salvo of small flares shot into the sky and in their glare Brown saw even more tanks heading to attack Bretteville from the east. “So much for the book,” he thought.
Brown was about to run over to the gun crews and order them to swing the six-pounders around when he glanced one more time out a hole in the east wall of the courtyard. “Right in front of my eyes, a very large gun barrel appeared. It was mounted on a giant tank that moved very quietly along the little road beside the wall.” The captain realized that the “tanks were using the rail crossing just a few yards to our left to move toward Bretteville, apparently oblivious of our presence in the farm.” Uncertain “if they were aware of us or ignoring us, I realized the precariousness of our situation.”
He was also surprised to see that the tanks appeared unaccompanied by any Panzer Grenadiers, rendering them better prey for anti-tank gunners or infantry armed with PIATs or antitank grenades. What the Panthers hoped to achieve baffled the young officer, for without “infantry support, the tanks were asking for a lot of trouble and could not hold, especially at night, any ground they might seize. It was against all the principles of tank warfare, as we understood them, to use armour in this fashion. I thought perhaps there was a glimmer of hope as I walked past the barn and through a hole in the wall into the orchard.”
Brown made directly for the 13th Field Regiment’s Forward Observation Officer, manning a radio aboard his Bren carrier, only to discover the FOO sitting perfectly upright but sound asleep despite all the flares and gunfire in the distance. Shaking him, Brown snapped, “For God’s sake stay awake. We’re being attacked by tanks. Try to get through to battalion HQ or to your regiment. We haven’t been able to raise anybody back there at all.”
“Sorry sir, I’m just so bloody tired. But I’ll stay awake now,” the young lieutenant said, and got busy with his radio. Brown moved next to the antitank gunners and, still unsure of his authority as a company commander, asked them politely to move their weapons to the other side of the orchard and open fire on the tanks passing the farm en route to Bretteville. “They opposed the idea on the grounds that we might draw enemy fire. I was exasperated and explained that the battalion HQ was in grave danger of being overrun in which case we would have little or no chance of survival.” The sergeant in charge grudgingly agreed to move the guns as quickly as possible.
Dashing back to the farmhouse, Brown reported what he had done to his second-in-command, Lieutenant Dick Roberts, who confirmed that nobody had yet seen any Panzer Grenadiers accompanying the tanks. With a nervous grin, Roberts assured Brown that, in accordance with Matheson’s advice, “he was doing his best to ‘ignore’ the tanks.” Brown was impressed by the Regina native’s steadiness and equally heartened to see that Company Sergeant Major Jimmy Jacobs, who seemed a “rough and ready NCO seemingly unafraid of anything,” was also calmly going about organizing the company.
The company command post was set up in a lean-to attached to the stone farmhouse, with the wireless sets, telephone, and other equipment on a heavy wooden table. Brown found his signaller here trying to raise battalion, but “the phone line was dead and there was nothing but noise on the radio.” Suddenly, the signaller shouted that he had Major Tubb over at ‘C’ Company on the wireless. Brown grabbed the microphone like a drowning man snatching at a rope, and asked how things were in Tubb’s area. “Oh, we’re fine,” Tubb said. Brown wondered what they should do about the tanks “roaming all over the place?”
“Well, there’s not much we can do, is there?” Tubb replied, with “no hint of alarm in his voice.” Brown was certain Tubb’s “calculated approach to battle was the way in which a first rate company commander should function. My trouble was that I lacked experience, that I had been away from infantry training for a year, and I felt I did not have Stu Tubb’s and Dick Roberts’s dedication and courage.” The worried officer wished his friend good luck and the two cleared the airwaves in hopes of hearing some news from battalion.
By now, about twenty tanks had passed the farm. Most were standing outside Bretteville, hammering the town with their 75-millimetre guns and machine guns. A few, however, appeared to have pushed in among the buildings and Brown worried that Matheson’s headquarters had been overrun. Even in the best-case scenario, the men at battalion HQ “were in a fight to the death, and it seemed possible to us that we might never hear from them again.”14
CHAOS REIGNED IN BRETTEVILLE, as the Reginas’ ‘A’ Company and headquarters personnel fought the Panthers at point-blank range. The first tanks roaring into the outskirts caught the Bren carrier platoon and the Cameron Highlanders of Canada’s No. 4 Platoon digging into a fresh position.15 Their own machine guns totally ineffectual against the thick armour, the Camerons suffered as the Panthers raked them with machine-gun fire. Several of the carriers were set ablaze by the powerful 75-millimetre guns. In disarray, the survivors scrambled through the streets to the dubious shelter of the perimeter established by ‘A’ Company and Matheson’s headquarters troops across from the historic church.
In his command trench behind the farmhouse serving as battalion headquarters, Matheson saw several tanks push up the streets leading into the town from the east and halt three hundred yards off. Turrets swivelled, like a dog’s snout
pursuing the source of a tasty scent, and then the guns belched fire. For the next hour and a half, the Panthers slammed shot after shot into one building after another, while their machine guns ripped off continuous streams of bullets. The din of exploding rounds and collapsing buildings was terrific. Smoke and flame boiled in the streets.
At midnight, two Panthers prowled towards the headquarters building. From a slit trench about ten yards to the front of Matheson’s command trench, Lance Corporal Bill Burton and Regimental Sergeant Major Wally Edwards watched helplessly as the two tanks “penetrated right up to the front gates” of the farmhouse’s courtyard. The lead Panther started punching shells up the street towards the building and raking the courtyard with machine-gun fire. Hidden in a slit trench behind a stone wall next to the gateway, riflemen Gil Carnie, Clarence Hewitt, and Joe Lapointe waited until the Panther was directly beside them. Then Lapointe, knowing the thick armour protecting its front was virtually impenetrable, rose up and fired a round from his PIAT at the tank’s more thinly protected flank from a range of just fifteen yards. The small two-and-a-half-pound hollow-charge explosive bomb struck home. The tank hesitated before rolling on another thirty yards as Lapointe and the other two men reloaded the awkward infantry antitank grenade launcher. When the rifleman’s second round struck the Panther, it swivelled about and began withdrawing, but Lapointe quickly fired a third round that caused the big tank’s rear end to slew into a wall. Here, RSM Edwards had stacked a necklace of Type 75 antitank grenades, intending to string it across the road in the event of a tank attack, but had been unable to finish the job before the tanks arrived. As the back of the tank struck the stack of explosive charges, it set them off and lit the Panther’s engine compartment on fire. As the crew attempted to escape, the Reginas cut them down.16
“During this incident,” Matheson wrote, “the second Panther had remained further up the road. Seeing the fate of its companion, it commenced to fire both 75-millimetre and MG wildly down the street ‘like a child in a tantrum,’ doing no damage whatsoever except… to the first Panther.”17 For his part in killing that first Panther, Lapointe was awarded a Military Medal.
