Hill 112_The Battle of the Odon

by Tim Saunders

  ‘We… reached our objectives… without too much difficulty. A number of Germans surrendered, some withdrew, and some had yet to be mopped up. The mopping up was done by C and D Companies, which was not so easy, as the garden and field hedges were high and the foliage thick, and soon enemy troops, who had been quiet to start with, opened fire on us. The enemy then began to shell and mortar us very heavily, and he kept this up all the time we were consolidating, making the whole job very difficult.’

  This account’s understatement is revealed by the Dorset’s casualties in Eterville and by the fact that its author, Major Symonds, was himself wounded during the consolidation phase and awarded the Military Cross. His was not to be the only MC awarded to this Battalion in Eterville.

  As soon as it became apparent that the enemy had secured a foothold in Eterville, Grenadiers of 12th (Hitler Jugend) SS Panzer Division, in reserve in the woods to the east of Maltot, immediately counter-attacked. This was standard German practice but hastily attacking into a fluid battle, their advance soon lost momentum amongst the hedges and buildings of Eterville. SS-Mann Zimmer was with them:

  Grenadiers of the Hitler Jugend during the ormandy fighting.

  ‘…Tommy attacks with great masses of infantry ^ and many tanks. We fight as long as possible but we realize that we are , in a losing position. By the time the survivors try to pull back, we realize that we are surrounded. In our sector, we have been driven back by the British infantry attack and they had bypassed us to left and right. I moved as fast as I could under the continuous firing. Others who tried to do the same failed. When the small-arms stopped our own guns got going. I lay there in the midst of it all. I still can’t understand how I escaped, with… shell splinters tearing around my ears… Suddenly three Tommies appeared and they took me prisoner. Immediately I was given a drink and a cigarette. At the concentration point for prisoners I met my Unter-scharführer [SS Sergeant] and other comrades belonging to my company….’

  SS-Mann Zimmer was lucky to survive the battle unwounded. Others on both sides were not so lucky. The situation in 4/Dorsets’ Regimental Aid Post at the church was dire. The number of Dorset casualties would have overwhelmed the RAP staff and the attached RAMC field ambulance section on their own but there were also an almost equal number of wounded SS soldiers needing treatment. The Padre courageously went forward towards the enemy position under a flag of truce to find German medical personnel to help. Together the SS and British medics worked to treat casualties of both sides, all thewhile under fire and in danger from falling masonry, as the shells gradually reduced the church to a ruin. Soon the RAP was overflowing with casualties, and soldiers of both sides were being wounded for a second time while they lay on their stretchers in the churchyard awaiting treatment or evacuation. Seldom have medics had to fight their battle to save comrades’ lives in such harrowing circumstances. Soldiers and medics from both sides, who had worked together for many hours on that day, are on record as having expressed mutual respect for their opposite numbers’ professionalism and impartiality. For his courage under fire and for his personal example and leadership, the Battalion Medical Officer, Captain Thompson, earned a very well-deserved Military Cross.

  A Field Dressing Station in the Odon Valley region where the wounded of both sides were treated.

  In the open country beyond Eterville and its surrounding or chards, the tanks of C Squadron 9/RTR were watching the open flanks. On call just behind them, were the M10 tank destroyers from 129 Battery, 86th (5th Devons) Anti-Tank Regiment RA. The RTR’s Churchills were heavily armoured; however they only mounted a 75mm gun, which wasinadequate in a tank to tank duel with all but the oldest German panzers. The M10 on the other hand mounted a 17-pounder gun, which was arguably the best Allied anti-tank gun of the war, but they were lightly armoured and consequently had to keep out of danger. Sergeant Jim Stephens of E Troop explained:

  ‘The plan was that our self propelled 17-pounders were to advance and give protection to the Churchills, who were completely and always outgunned by the German 88s. Our 17-pounders would even things up – in theory!’

  Having spent three years training to defend captured ground, an impromptu change to an offensive role that they were neither trained nor equipped to perform, did not impress Sergeant Stephens. Surely a tank to match the Panther and Tiger in its own right would have been better?

  ‘E Troop moved out with C Squadron 9/RTR to support 4/Dorsets to attack Eterville, which was soon taken. We were called up to shoot up houses from the outskirts of the village that were holding the enemy; taking out OPs and machine gun nests.’

  The disadvantage of the M10 was that the turret top was a five-foot open square. During the morning, in a forward position on the objective south of Eterville …

  ‘One M10 had a mortar bomb drop straight into it killing instantly the Number 1 Sergeant, the gunner and loader … The Wireless operator and driver were badly burnt but managed to bale out and make it back to the RAP.’

  Another M10 was knocked out of action by an airburst shell that wounded virtually all the crew before they had even seen an enemy tank.

  The attack on Eterville had gone well. The objective was reached on time but the German response of shelling and counter-attacks had slowed the progress of detailed clearance and consolidation. In addition, Headquarters 130 Brigade had underestimated the amount of time that even the well-trained 4/Dorsets would need in practice, to clear a real enemy out of a built up area. The Division’s inexperience was showing. The main problem was that the strongpoints that had been bypassed, needed clearing by the follow up companies who had little idea of where it was safe to move and which areas were still covered by enemy fire. In the village, equally determined West Country and SS infantrymen fought a bitter struggle for each room of every building. Casualties mounted quickly on both sides.

  9/Cameronians followed 130 Brigade out of the Odon valley with orders to relieve 4/Dorsets as soon as they had taken the village of Eterville. The regimental history describes the situation:

  ‘Lieutenant Colonel Villiers halted the Cameronians in Fontaine Etoupefour, about 1,000 yards from Eterville, while he went forward to contact the 4th Dorsets. On arrival at Eterville he found it a most uninviting spot. It is a large straggling village, much overgrown with trees and orchards. There was practically no observation. The only approach for vehicles was by a sunken lane, which at the time was blocked by several of the Dorsets’ carriers, all of which were in flames. The Dorsets were still fighting for possession of the far side of the village itself, which was being continually mortared by the enemy. As a defensive position Eterville was a tactical nightmare. Lieutenant Colonel Villiers decided none the less that the Cameronians must start taking over immediately in order to relieve the Dorsets for their next operation.’

  The Cameronians were about to undertake one of the most complicated operations in warfare; a relief in place while in contact with the enemy. The relief was to be made that much more difficult as the Cameronians had immediately to defend the village, without the benefit of recconnisance. Positions chosen from maps and air photos before the operation proved to be unsuitable as the thick hedges and trees denied the Highlanders a decent field of fire. To the tremendous credit of this battalion, they had relieved 4/Dorsets by midday allowing the Dorsets to concentrate, by 13.00 hours, as 130 Brigade reserve located near Horseshoe Wood. Wounded Scotsmen, mainly hit by mortar fire, started to join the West Countrymenin the RAP at the church. C Company 9/Cameronians took up position in a wooded part of the village centre and the other three rifle companies were completing the trenches begun by the Dorsets. The soundness of these defensive positions was to be fully tested before the end of the day.

  The M10, with its 17-pounder gun, could take on the German Panthers and Tigers but, because of its relatively light armour and open turret, its crews had to exercise extreme caution.

  The original plan was that by mid morning 4/Dorsets, as brigade reserve, were to have moved up
behind 7/Hampshires. If they had been immediately available, as planned, to confirmand exploit 7/Hampshire’s success, the day may have turned out differently. But that is anticipating events.

  Attacking across the Odon River

  129 Brigade’s attack on Hill 112

  While 130 Brigade was preparing the way for 4 Armoured Brigade’s exploitation to the Orne between Hill 112 and the river, 129 Brigade was to advance on a broad front. Its objective was the key ground (to both sides) of Hill 112. To take the feature, 129 Brigade was to attack simultaneously with all three of its battalions, supported by two squadrons of 7/RTR and Crocodiles of 79th Armoured Division. Their task was different from that of 130 Brigade, in that there were no villages to be taken, just the broad open slopes of Hill 112 that rose gently from the restricted Odon valley. On the left, alongside 5/Dorsets at Chateau de Fontaine, were 4th Battalion, The Wiltshire Regiment (4/Wilts) and in the centre was 4th Battalion, The Somerset Light Infantry (4/Somerset LI), who had the task of taking point 112. The Brigade’s third battalion, 5/Wilts, was on the right with the task of capturing the slopes between Hill 112 and the hamlet of le Bon Repos. 129 Brigade’s plan was for the three battalions to take the Eterville to Evrecy road as their initial objective and, in a second phase, clear the ridgeline. Having taken the feature, they were to establish observation posts and battle outposts before falling back to a defensive position on the rear slope of the Hill. H Hour for the attack was, as with 130 Brigade, 05.00 hours.

  4/Wilts

  Things started to go badly for 4/Wilts before the attack had even started. Captain DIM Robbins MC of B Company recalls the inauspicious start to the day:

  ‘We lined up in the open in the FUP and over zoomed the artillery. It was very noisy and quite exciting. Suddenly some heavier artillery started coming whistling towards us like a train. I thought that this was unusual and that it may land near us and it surely did. It was our 5.5 inch medium guns dropping short. They wrote off our leading platoon. I remember men from 11 Platoon lying all over the place and one chap being carted off in a wheelbarrow with no legs. The company commander said ‘We can’t go into battle with the SS like this’. The CO, Ted Luce, came up and said ‘What’s left?’ and I remember saying ‘Ten men from that platoon and a few from this.’ ‘Well,’ he said, ‘Form up, we haven’t much time. We are going over. At 05.00 that depleted company went over.’

  Captain DIM Robbins MC

  The Wiltshire men advanced up the open slope, not dissimilar to the chalk hills of their home county.

  ‘After the drop shorts you couldn’t blame the men for being a bit jumpy as we advanced straight into corn fields expecting to have great rows of machine guns firing at us. But we got into the enemy position relatively easily and then we started meeting the SS who were well dug in.’

  The Battalion’s history recounts that:

  ‘...their objective was the area of the road junction on top of the ridge of Hill 112 but east of the summit top... against dug-in SS, in elaborate deep dugouts in the centre of a web of roofed over crawl trenches leading to weapon pits with Spandaus.’

  Lieutenant Colonel Ted Luce, pre-war

  Without cover from hedges and banks, the SS Grenadiers had resorted to the type of defensive positions that they had used on the open Steppe of the Eastern Front, where they had been fighting little more than a month earlier. However, under cover of a barrage of fire from 8/Middlesex’s Vickers machine guns and the tanks of A Squadron 7/RTR, 4/Wilts managed topenetrate the enemy outpost line and the main defences. The Battalion’s history continues:

  ‘It was a confused soldiers’ battle with many individual actions, flushing out SS in dugouts, verifying the "deadness" of corpses, watching for hidden snipers or bypassed Spandau teams or mortar positions. Lieutenant JP Williams was shot by SS as enemy raised their hands in surrender, some of them wearing Red Cross armbands. Corporol Frank, one of the stretcherbearers with B Coy, tried to succour Lieutenant Williams who died in a few minutes. Frank was attacked by two wounded SS men so he had to shoot them.’

  Captain Robbins experienced some problems as he moved through the enemy position with B Company’s headquarters.

  ‘Some of the SS let us go over their well-concealed trenches; some of them in one man slit trenches, a sort of cylindrical hole in the ground. Then they would pop up and shoot you from behind or have a go at the reserve company, who were hoping that the front company had done what was necessary. I remember seeing one of our company stretcher-bearers, a very gentle fellow, having an awful time tending an officer. He got very angry as some Germans attacked him while he was doing this. He took his Sten gun from around his neck and shot them up.’

  German answer to the American Bazooka - the Panzerschreck.

  Major John Duke, Battery Commander of 224 Battery, 94th Field Regiment, in his White half-track, enjoyed an elevated position above the corn and saw the early stages of the advance.

  ‘We quickly ran into heavy mortar fire and found many wounded men crawling around in the standing corn, and dead German SS anti-tank gunners lying around their guns. Bombardier Nobbs was soon able to report to RHQ on his wireless that we had reached the first objective and Gunner Cox got a German Spandau and opened fire on some enemy infantry who appeared over the Hill. [It was] a tremendous relief to see at last over the hill and to get some shooting on a wide range of targets.’

  Panzerkampfwagen VI (Tiger) tanks arrive on the battle scene.

  Major Duke was wounded shortly after reaching the top of the hill by some new arrivals on the battlefield - Tiger tanks.

  II SS Panzer Corps were fearful that the Frundsberg’s mounting casualties and the likely loss of their forward positions on Hill 112 would compromise the Corps’s entire position north of the Orne. They decided to deploy their decisive weapon, at what they saw as the crucial stage of the battle. It was supreme bad luck for the Wyverns that the delayed Operation JUPITER was launched the day after II SS Panzer Corps’s Tiger Battalion arrived at the Normandy front. Twenty-eight of the fifty-six ton Tiger tanks, armed with the dreaded 88mm gun, had arrived by road at the village of St Martin, on their own tracks. This was only two kilometres from the crest of Hill 112 and 4/Wilts at the centre of the British attack. 43rd Wessex Division’s deception plans and operational security had clearly been lax.

  SS-Mann Heinz Trautman as a junior member of 3rd Platoon, 1st Company 102 Heavy Panzer Battalion, was on guard:

  ‘something was on... the MGs were rattling away and the thunder of the artillery rose minute by minute to a howling crescendo. And this “Schützenfest”, this firework display, seemed to be only a few kilometres from our resting place.’

  Preparing for their first battle together (some were veterans; others were little more than raw recruits) the Tiger crews were found by British artillery shells while they were still preparing to move to their standby positions. SS-Rottenführer Willi Fey ordered Trautmann and the crew into the tank:

  ‘Gunther Hensel and I were packing all the blankets and coats into the “Africa box” and we were late obeying orders. There was the scream of a shell and I was hit in the leg. I saw Gunther sprawling in a flowerbed, the back of his head torn open. He lay there, curled up as if asleep. Gunther, who had been looking forward to his first operation.’

  First Company’s Tigers moved to positions that dominated 130 Brigade’s advance across the low ground to the east. Meanwhile, Second Company assembled in positions where they could counter-attack onto the open ridges of Hill 112, threatened by 4/Wilts. Eventually the order came to go into action, as the British approached the 10th SS Panzer Division’s ‘Stop Line’. SS-Hauptsturmführer Endemann’s Second Company, with its seven operational tanks organized into an HQ and two platoons, advanced into the clouds of smoke that shrouded the slopes of Hill 112, heading up the spur onto the plateau, towards the only visible feature; the isolated group of trees to the southeast of the crest. As the Tigers crossed the ridge, 4/Wilts’s antitank guns engaged them from t
he east. The first shots struck with such force that tank 213 was spun round, but Tiger 212 destroyed one of the anti-tank guns before the British gunner could lay the hairs of his sight on a second target. As time passed, a stalemate set in between 4/Wilts and 21 SS Panzer Grenadier Regiment, despite the intervention of the Tigers who were holding a part of the eastern crestline. On the northern, slope 4/Wilts, supported by the 17-pounder guns of 129 Battery 86/Anti-Tank Regiment RA, maintained a tenuous toehold on the plateau’s edge. A hull down Tiger, with only its almost impregnable 80mm thick armoured turret visible above the crestline, pinned down Lieutenant Franz Wallerstine’s troop of undergunned 7 RTR Churchills. He sent his troop sergeant, Bill Taylor, back down the hill on foot to summon a tank destroyer to take on the Tiger with its 17-pounder. In charge of the supporting M10s was a pre-war Devon Territorial soldier, Sergeant Cummings. He knew only to well the likely result of an ill considered intervention in the lightly armoured M10!

  A knocked out Tiger on Hill 112. This Tiger is a Platoon leader’s tank from 2nd Company 102 Heavy Panzer Battalion.

  A 6-pounder anti-tank gun and crew in Normandy.

  ‘I was told by a sergeant from the Tanks that they had a problem for me to sort out. Four Churchills had been knocked out by a Tiger that was hull down a few hundred yards away. So I recced the way forward, decided the range was 400 yards, went back and under cover and gave orders to the driver and gun layer. We went out steadily and the layer spotted it right away. I gave the order to fire and we got the Tiger with the first shot. I don’t think it had a chance to see us, as we came right out of cover and fired! We went back but we were later called forward to have a go at some machine-gun nests that were holding up the infantry.’