But another factor complicated the LAH’s progress to Normandy: a lack of trains to move men and supplies. Most of the local engines and wagons had been taken over to the east, where, since the middle of May, Peiper’s SS comrades were busy rounding up Hungarian Jews and transporting them to Auschwitz. Racial cleansing, the ‘ideological war’ of the Nazis, was a greater priority at this crucial stage than the logistics of moving men and materiel to the new front opening up in France.
The result was that Peiper did not reach his assembly point south of Caen until 5 July, a month after D-Day.
Garbo had slowed the LAH reinforcements down, and crucially its tanks had failed to make it to Normandy in the early days of the campaign. But they were still dangerous. The Allied advance of Operation Epsom, bogged down around Hill 112, had ground to a halt. The stage was set for another British attempt to encircle Caen, Operation Goodwood, this time striking around the east and south of the city.
Where Peiper and the LAH would be waiting for them.
A few days before the launch of Operation Goodwood, Monkey Blacker received news that depressed him: he was being relieved of his command of C Squadron and being made second-in-command of the regiment. No longer in the front line with his tank crew, his job was effectively to act as a replacement for the colonel in case he became a casualty in battle. There was little time to feel sorry for himself, though, and he accepted the decision as best he could.
His replacement as C Squadron leader was Major Bill Shebbeare. A former president of the Oxford Union and editor of Isis, Shebbeare had been a Labour councillor for Holborn and was a Labour parliamentary candidate. Now an officer in the 23rd Hussars, he had written a short book on his military experiences – a manifesto for a democratic army which he called A Soldier Looks Ahead, and which he signed anonymously as ‘Captain X’. With a rose-tinted view of the Soviet Union, he was a convinced anti-Nazi and secretly – like his contemporary Denis Healey – a member of the Communist Party.
On 8 June Shebbeare had been ordered to stay behind in Aldershot while the rest of the 23rd Hussars set off for Normandy, but now he had managed to get himself over and was keen to see some action.
‘Small and slight, with a head that seemed too big for his body, complexion pasty, his full lips could break into a most charming smile which lit up his whole face. He looked very like a garden gnome.’
Despite holding different political views, Blacker and Shebbeare had become close friends.
Now Shebbeare was to take over C Squadron, and one of the first things he did was to scribble a note to Blacker.
‘I do indeed believe C Squadron’, he wrote, ‘to be the best armoured squadron in the army and everything I have seen of the men’s spirit here confirms me in this. It makes me feel such a usurper to have taken over ready-made and without any effort on my part, a squadron that you have taken three years to create. I feel that when we go into action again that I need have no worries except my own ability to give them the leadership they deserve.’
Operation Goodwood, the biggest tank battle in the history of the British army, began on the morning of 18 July. At around half-past five over 1,000 Lancasters bombed the German positions. These were followed by American B17s and an artillery barrage. The bombardment lasted for several hours, driving many of the German soldiers that survived it mad. Others committed suicide.
And yet the bombing was not wholly effective, failing to reach the German tanks further back that would later prove so lethal.
The forty-six Panthers and fifty-nine Mark IV’s of Jochen Peiper’s regiment were practically unscathed. And now they knew what was coming. Peiper’s commander used a trick he had picked up on the Eastern Front of putting his ear to the ground to listen for the rumblings of an approaching tank assault. The dust kicked up by the hundreds of Shermans now moving slowly towards them confirmed that this was the beginning of a major Allied offensive. The German tanks moved into position and waited.
Ahead of the British were a number of small villages and hamlets lying in open, flat countryside, while beyond was a low promontory – the Bourguébus ridge, quickly renamed ‘Bugger Bus’ by the approaching Sherman crews.
After long delays caused by traffic jams of tanks stretching for miles as they tried to squeeze through minefields and over bridges, the battle began. The 11th Armoured Division was at the forefront of the attack, made up of the 3rd Royal Tank Regiment and the Fife and Forfar Yeomanry, with Blacker’s 23rd Hussars coming in reserve behind them. Bill Shebbeare, now wearing the helmet and goggles of a tank commander, had waved to Blacker as he set off at the head of C Squadron, with Blacker tagging along in his own tank alongside that of the regimental commander.
As they moved ahead it became clear that the bombing raid earlier in the morning had only had a partial effect. While some German defenders emerged from their dugouts looking shaken by the experience and only too willing to surrender, further on Tiger tanks were waiting in some of the villages. The 23rd Hussars were ordered to deal with them as best they could, before being relieved by another regiment behind them. By the time they caught up with the Fife and Forfar things were already beginning to turn for the worse.
On the German side, Jochen Peiper was working closely with the LAH divisional commander, Teddy Wisch, on how to deal with the British advance. Some of Peiper’s tanks were to take up positions on the Bourguébus ridge, while a battalion was to move down and engage the enemy directly and push them back over the railway line that they had recently crossed.
It was Peiper’s first proper military engagement since Kharkov back on the Eastern Front. Now, finally, after the delays and changes of order by Hitler himself, he was here in Normandy, fighting against the British. The Anglo-Americans might enjoy air superiority and have better artillery, but man to man, tank to tank here on the battlefield, their army was no match for the 1st SS Panzer Division. It was time to show what the best forces in the Wehrmacht were capable of.
By the time Blacker and the 23rd Hussars caught up with the vanguard tank regiments, it was too late.
‘We could soon see the tail of the Fife and Forfar’, Blacker wrote, ‘sitting in the middle of an open plain which gave them no more cover than a polo field. But why was there no sign of activity and why in any case were they just sitting there? There was something unreal about their stillness. As we motored closer we realised that they were all dead, burnt out. The only sign of life came from blackened, dishevelled parties on foot, tending wounded or trickling back.’
The Fife and Forfar had become the day’s first victims of Peiper’s Panthers. In a matter of minutes twenty-nine Shermans, including that of their commanding officer, had been destroyed.
A survivor of the massacre came up and spoke to Blacker.
‘I don’t think we have more than four tanks left in action,’ he said. ‘Both the 3rd Tanks and ourselves have been stopped by armour and guns up there on the ridge, and as you can see there’s no cover, so I should watch out.’
It was a desperate situation. Already, as they spoke, tanks of the 23rd Hussars were also being shelled. Spewing out a smokescreen for cover, they hastily beat a retreat behind the railway line, which provided some protection.
But the word soon came from command: they had to press on. There was too much at stake. The Bourguébus ridge had to be taken by nightfall.
Both A and B Squadrons had already suffered losses. Now it was time for C Squadron, Blacker’s former command, to push ahead. There was no time for thinking about tactics or planning: the situation was urgent. It was only early afternoon on the first day and already Operation Goodwood was turning into a disaster. Bill Shebbeare was told to hurry forwards, capturing a village just ahead of them called Four, and from there proceed towards the ridge.
Eager and excited, Shebbeare set off with the tanks of C Squadron, crossing the railway lines and charging towards the German positions.
Then all at once the firing started, coming, it seemed, from all directions. Blacke
r had to sit back as his former command was torn apart by Peiper’s guns.
The first to go was the tank of Mike Pratt, who had come to the regiment almost straight from school. His Sherman quickly blew up after a direct hit, killing all inside. Next was Jock Addison’s tank. Addison, who later in life became an Oscar-winning film composer, managed to get out, but his driver, co-driver and gunner were all dead. His operator was only wounded and Addison managed to pull him out.
Inside Blacker’s former tank, the gunner watched in terror as shell after shell targeted his comrades’ Shermans. ‘Our turn next,’ he said. From the turret, however, there were no orders forthcoming. He looked up to Bill Shebbeare, expecting him to tell them what to do. But Shebbeare had fallen into a state of shock: ‘transfixed, speechless, frozen in a horrified stare at the appalling scenes ahead’.
Moments later, Peiper’s men scored a direct hit on C Squadron’s leading tank, the shell smashing into the turret. Bill Shebbeare was killed instantly. The gunner, Sam English, the driver and one other managed to get out of the tank, but caught fire as they did so. Their flesh burning, they put the flames out as best they could by rolling furiously on the grass.
C Squadron was now leaderless, with most of its tanks on fire. Many men were dead, others had horrific burns on their hands and faces. Within minutes, almost all the remaining Shermans had been destroyed by the German onslaught. Those that were still operational offered a minimal fightback, taking out a German anti-tank gun and a Tiger tank, before heading back to the cover provided by the railway line.
In all, C Squadron lost twenty tanks in the few minutes of the battle and was effectively wiped out.
First the Fife and Forfar, now this: the LAH had had a very successful day.
Operation Goodwood continued for another couple of days, with more tank victories for Peiper and the other German forces, successfully defending the area south of the city of Caen. Finally, on 20 July, the offensive had to be called off. The British had lost around 3,500 men and hundreds of tanks. German losses, by comparison, were minimal.
It was clear that if Monkey Blacker had not been promoted to second-in-command on the eve of the battle he would probably have suffered the same fate as his friend Bill Shebbeare. In later years Blacker would sometimes wonder what might have become of Bill.
‘Personally known to Attlee, almost certainly eventually a junior minister in the post-war Labour government, he had a brilliant mind and would have started on level terms with others of his age and with a Service background such as Denis Healey. Too nice, perhaps, for politics, but beneath the charm there was a tough streak. Anyway – it was not to be.’
32
Normandy, July–August 1944
JOCHEN PEIPER HAD demonstrated the superior destructive force of his Panzer unit. Yet despite inflicting a heavy defeat on the British during Operation Goodwood, the LAH had suffered casualties of its own, and unlike the Allies – who seemed to have an endless supply of tanks to replace the ones lost on the battlefield – the Germans had to use what they had. Most Panthers or Tigers that were successfully ‘brewed up’ by the enemy constituted a complete loss for the Germans: there were practically none in reserve to take their place.
There was little time to rest or recover from battle. Allied troops could be relieved by multiple waves of reserves coming over the Channel. But for German soldiers in the front line this was a luxury they could not afford. Millions were involved in the fighting on the Eastern Front, while the whole 15th Army was still waiting in the Calais region for the Allied assault that must inevitably come from Dover and south-east England. The men fighting in Normandy were practically the only combatants that the Germans had available.
Then there were the incessant artillery bombardments and attacks from the air. Even hardened officers, like Peiper’s former commander in the LAH, Sepp Dietrich, found the conditions worse than when fighting the Red Army.
‘Normandy, in July and August ’44,’ Dietrich wrote, ‘was the worst time I have spent in my fighting years . . . It used to take me six hours to move ten kilometres from my headquarters to the front.’
Peiper was also suffering. After the flush of victory at the Bourguébus ridge, he found himself under frequent bombardment. He had set up his regimental headquarters at the chateau of Garcelles-Secqueville, where the basement had been fortified and turned into a shelter. Radio silence had to be maintained at all times for fear of alerting the Allies to their position. Nonetheless, British ships in the Channel pinpointed him and fired shell after shell. The roof fell in, and two SS men were killed.
Peiper had two Panthers parked outside the chateau with ditches dug underneath as shelters in case his HQ came under bombardment. His men could dive out of the windows and take cover, the steel of the tanks offering more protection than the bricks and mortar of the building itself.
One day, during such an attack, a member of the motorcycle reconnaissance platoon found himself lying next to Peiper under one of the Panthers:
‘I remember very clearly how one day I, too, found myself under this command tank of Peiper’s. I had just arrived with a report from Kuhlmann when a formation of enemy bombers “laid down a carpet”. A second and third wave followed, and bombs rained down. The bombs were bursting at such short intervals that Peiper – in spite of his famous calm and imperturbability – said, “Now’s it’s time to get out and under the tanks!”
‘We lay there close together – Peiper, Hans Gruhle, signals commander Helmut Jahn, and I – and waited. And then, in that depressing atmosphere, Peiper said, “They’re trying to finish us off here and now – (pause) – but I believe we will win this war, just like the First!”
‘These words by Peiper did not have a shocking effect on me. I had also had serious doubts about our chances of winning the war since the previous winter’s difficult battles . . .’
After years of heavy fighting, and now at the receiving end of a merciless Allied bombardment, Jochen Peiper was close to cracking up.
More fighting was to come, however. Caen was finally in the Allies’ hands, but after Operation Goodwood, they once again launched an offensive designed to push south from the city towards the town of Falaise – Operation Spring.
Peiper’s tanks, as before, were in their way, and as before, they put up fierce resistance. At the village of Tilly-la-Campagne it was the turn of the Canadian 3rd Infantry Division to receive the brunt of the LAH’s force, and it suffered heavy casualties. A similar fate awaited armoured divisions that tried to attack the LAH near Rocquancourt.
As with Operation Goodwood, the Allies had made only small gains and at a high cost. But the bombardment and stress of command had finally taken its toll on Jochen Peiper. He was having a nervous breakdown. By 2 August he was relieved of his post as commander of the 1st SS Panzer Regiment and sent from the front to recover.
It was clearly embarrassing for a man of such high military repute to have a nervous condition: it did not fit with the SS ideas of a warrior-officer bravely and calmly leading his troops from the front. So the real reason why he had been relieved was covered up: when he reached the SS hospital he was officially diagnosed as suffering from ‘jaundice caused by an inflammation of the gall bladder’.
Back at the front, however, things were developing quickly. While the LAH had been holding back the Canadians taking part in Operation Spring, further west the Americans had timed their own big push south to coincide. So while the British and Canadians had to fight against the best German forces in Normandy, including over six Panzer divisions, the US troops only faced one and a half German armoured divisions.
The result was that General Patton, now relieved from playing the head of FUSAG – the imaginary army group dreamed up by the deception planners in London – managed to push out of the Cotentin Peninsula into Brittany and further south.
His point of breakthrough, however, was narrow, and there was only a thin corridor of US-held territory linking the Cotentin and the newly libe
rated areas. It was here that Hitler decided to launch a counter-attack. Operation Lüttich was designed to be a master counter-stroke, splitting the US army in two and halting its advance deeper into France.
Hitler’s best forces, who until this point had mostly been fighting in the eastern sector against the British and Canadians, were now ordered west to fight the Americans. The tanks of the LAH, but without the respected and admired Jochen Peiper to lead them, moved out from their positions south of Caen and headed towards the US lines.
Operation Lüttich – what the Americans called the Mortain counter-attack – was a disaster for the Germans. Most of the divisions involved, including the LAH, were under strength, and many failed to reach their assembly areas in time for the attack owing to Allied air attacks whenever they tried to move across country. As a result the operation had to be delayed by a day. When finally things got going, during the early hours of 7 August, the Germans enjoyed some success, but once daylight broke, and the tanks could be spotted from the air, RAF Typhoons swarmed over them, causing havoc. In one day the LAH alone lost thirty-four Panthers and ten Mark IV tanks.
Operation Lüttich was called off. The German army in north-west France was in disarray and on the run.
Now that the LAH had been moved westwards to fight the Americans, the British and Canadians finally broke through and started heading from the area south of Caen towards Falaise. Meanwhile US forces were coming up from the west and south, encircling the German 7th Army, along with units from the LAH and other Panzer divisions, in a lethal pocket. Tens of thousands of German soldiers raced to get out to safety before the gap at the eastern end of the pocket was closed. Many did make it, but the majority – over 50,000 men – were trapped. The result was a bloodbath, and the biggest defeat for the Wehrmacht since Stalingrad a year and a half earlier.
The Battle of Normandy was lost: all they could do was fall back. The LAH as such now barely existed. It had lost some 5,000 men, along with all of its tanks and artillery.
The Spy with 29 Names Page 23
