Breakout from Juno

by Mark Zuehlke

  PART TWO

  THE RIDGES

  [ 8 ]

  Offensive Spirit

  LIEUTENANT GENERAL GUY Simonds had two primary tasks. First, he had to prepare II Canadian Corps for its forthcoming role in the breakout southwards from Caen. Second, he needed to integrate 3rd Canadian Infantry Division back into the corps.

  As part of the latter task he must decide the fates of Major General Rod Keller and Brigadier Ben Cunningham. On July 13, Simonds summoned Keller to his headquarters at a château about three miles northwest of Caen. Keller came expecting to talk about Cunningham, and Simonds dealt with that matter first. Simonds said he was unwilling to fire Cunningham before personally assessing the brigadier’s competence.1

  Then Simonds slapped the adverse reports on Keller on the desk before him. After reading them Keller was clearly upset, but his response caught Simonds off guard. Keller, he wrote, “indicated … he did not feel that his health was good enough to stand the heavy strain and asked that he be medically boarded as he felt that he would be found to be unfit.” Instead, Simonds asked him to think it over for a day before making such an irreversible request.

  Keller did so and then expressed a desire to retain his command. During the intervening twenty-four hours, Simonds had toured 3rd Division and been struck by its apparent low morale. Removing Keller would likely only worsen the situation. Keller would have ten days with Simonds looking hard over his shoulder. If he disappointed, Keller would be gone.2

  Simonds tackled the morale issue by calling all 3rd Division and 2nd Armoured Brigade unit commanders together on July 16. “My view is that we will have the war ‘in the bag’ this summer or at least in a matter of weeks if we pursue the advantage we now hold,” he said. “I cannot stress too highly what effect this all-out effort will have on the enemy and its advantages to us … If the war drags out, normal wastage will ensue and casualties will mount up. On the other hand, by making use of an all-out effort our casualties may be initially high, but in the long run they will be less. I think that it is safe to compare the enemy in his present situation to a boxer who is groggy on his feet, and needs but the knockout blow to finish him off.

  “You must always remember that if you rest, so does the enemy; and the final outcome takes considerably longer. You must therefore call on your troops for this all-out effort … We can’t fight the Boche without incurring casualties and every soldier must know this.” If an operation was ended because 50 per cent of the troops became casualties “then I have achieved nothing but a waste of lives; if I continue, and incur a further 20% casualties and bring the operation to a successful conclusion, then the operation is worthwhile.” Such figures, he said, were obviously grossly exaggerated.

  Both 3rd Division and 2nd Armoured Brigade needed to show more battle stamina. “A ‘flash in the pan’ formation is useless. It has to be good to the end. This will only be the case if the commander down to the platoon commander” ensured his troops were physically and mentally fit and showed good morale. Going “easy” on men appearing prone to battle exhaustion was a grievous error.

  Morale hinged on discipline, and Simonds demanded no relaxing of the stern British Army approach. “If you explain to the Canadian soldier what is required of him and give him a good reason for ithe will produce the goods every single time and do it twice as well as any other individual … Every effort must be made to ensure that the discipline and deportment of our troops is kept up to the highest standard.”

  When “things are bad,” Simonds concluded, “the reins should be kept tight. Don’t do nothing. Commence smartening up, holding parades, etc. Discipline … should always be at its highest. It must always be borne in mind that troops are inclined to get morbid after hard fighting.” Saluting was essential. Its absence was “an indication of a lack of morale and the fighting spirit … My experience is that troops like saluting if it is done properly and the custom is properly explained to them. I lay stress on what seem to be little things. Little things are important in battle. In battle men risk lives. You can’t get them to do the big things if they are not made to do the little things.”3

  AS SIMONDS LECTURED, 3rd Division had been withdrawing from the front along the Orne in Caen. The infantry battalions had been promised a rest and chance to absorb reinforcements. Their “rest” areas, however, turned out to still be close to the front or on a portion of it considered quiet. The Canadian Scottish Regiment’s experience was typical. It moved to La Folie, having three men killed and nine wounded in the process, only to still be within German mortar and artillery range.4

  The division’s new location was adjacent to 3rd British Division and included responsibility for holding a sector of the industrial “island” between the Canal de Caen and the Orne. So close were the Germans to the Canadian forward positions that neither side could bring artillery or mortars to bear. Can Scot’s Captain Harvey Bailey considered this “weird situation” unlike anything he had witnessed before. Snipers traded shots across the Orne, firing at the slightest movement. At night, Bailey sent men fluent in German to eavesdrop on German conversations across the river.5 Rations and water could only be brought onto the island at night, manhandled across a “shaky bridge” that was routinely raked by enemy machine guns.6

  Bailey was dismayed by the reinforcements the Can Scots were receiving. “Have you ever fired a rifle?” he asked one group. They shook their heads. “You don’t even know whether it will shoot or how to shoot it do you?” Bailey accused one man awkwardly holding a Lee-Enfield. “No, sir, I don’t.”

  “Ever thrown a hand grenade?” Another negative head shake. “Used a PIAT?” “No, but once a sergeant shot one for us to see,” the man answered.

  “This is just pitiful. To send up people like that. These poor fellows, just haven’t been trained to be soldiers at all,” Bailey told his company sergeant major. Rumours were flying that a big operation was coming. There was no time to lead these men through the basic training they were lacking.7

  If many reinforcements were unready for battle due to lack of training, an equally worrisome problem was that—despite Simonds demanding it not be—morale among the veterans was at a dangerous ebb. More than a month at the front, “and having gone through three major battles in thirty days and losing about half the battalion through casualties in the process, was beginning to tell on the nerves of all ranks,” the Can Scot regimental historian recorded. “The situation in Caen, although static, was generally miserable. The city, with French and German dead beneath the ruins and rubble, exuded an all-pervading smell of death. To this mixture of desolation, smell and dirt, was added continual harassing artillery and mortar fire during the day and night by an enemy who continued to have good observation of the city and its approaches.” At night the Luftwaffe routinely bombed the Allied lines. “This shelling and bombing caused a constant trickle of casualties. Men were hit as they ate or slept or went from one place to another. Reinforcements coming to the battalion were sometimes killed or wounded before they ever reached the company to which they were posted. The ‘old timers’ were cut down also in one and twos every day. The initials ‘PBC’ (Psychiatric Battle Casualty) appearing under a man’s name on the casualty list, if not common, was no longer unique.”8

  On July 17, the Can Scots pulled out of La Folie to an area safe enough to bring in the mobile baths and an issue of clean uniforms.9

  OPERATION GOODWOOD HAD come together rapidly. As a preliminary step, the two British corps on either side of the Canadians had launched advances on July 15. Despite more than 3,500 casualties in two days of fighting, little ground was won. But the Germans were forced to keep 1st SS, 10th SS, and 2nd Panzer Divisions in the line and to recommit 9th SS Panzer Division on the Odon River front. So intense was the fighting on the Odon that the Germans pegged it as the probable point where the next true British breakout attempt would be made. In fact, this was precisely opposite to where Good-wood would fall. Instead, three British armoured divisions would �
��attack in an unexpected quarter from the shallow and congested bridgehead east of the Orne.” Attacking here, the British hoped, would catch the Germans off guard because this was where their defences were strongest and they enjoyed an excellent “advantage of ground observation and fields of fire.”

  Goodwood was a complicated affair. To prevent the Germans from realizing an attack was coming, none of the three divisions’ tanks were allowed to cross to the west bank of the Orne until after nightfall on July 17. Only three bridges between Ranville and the sea were available, so the divisions would have to proceed in single file to the west bank and then go into the attack one behind the other—hardly the hammer blow Second British Army’s Lieutenant General Myles Dempsey had hoped to deliver, but the only course of action possible in such constricted ground.

  Lack of bridges would also limit artillery support. Together the British and Canadian artillery formations possessed twice as many guns as the Germans did. But most of the artillery was positioned west of the river and the Canal de Caen. Only after the armoured divisions cleared the bridges could guns be sent across. This meant that, as the tanks rolled southward, they would be rapidly moving beyond the range of the supporting artillery.

  To offset this handicap, the plan was to unleash “the largest force of both tactical aircraft and strategic bombers … ever employed in direct support of ground forces in a single action.” More than 4,500 Allied aircraft would support Goodwood. Just after dawn on July 18, Bomber Command would strike German defences on either flank of the line of advance. On the left flank, a series of fortified villages would be destroyed and then overrun by 3rd British Infantry Division. To the right, the sprawling steelworks at Colombelles would be smashed. Heavy cratering was permitted in the flank target areas, so they would be struck by 500- and 1,000-pound bombs, fitted with delayed-action fuses, which would bury themselves into the ground and then detonate when the fuse ignited. But Cagny, a fortified village directly in the path of the advance, would be saturated with instantaneous-detonation fused bombs to avoid cratering that might hinder tank movement.

  Four other German concentration points on both the flanks and in front of the advance would be targeted by heavy bombers of U.S. 8th Air Force. Medium bombers from U.S. 9th Air Force would also drench German forward positions with a mix of 500-pound and 260-pound fragmentation bombs. Villages would receive the heavier bombs, while the lighter ordnance was dropped on targets in the open countryside. Also supporting Goodwood would be all fighter bombers of 83 Group, R AF, and six wings of 84 Group. Their targets included a long list of pre-selected gun positions, strong-points, and defensive works, as well as bridges over the Dives and Orne Rivers that could be used by the Germans to advance reinforcements. Each armoured brigade involved in the offensive had air personnel attached who were able to direct fighter-bombers onto specific targets.10

  The bombers were indispensible, but throughout July 17 low fog and dense cloud kept Allied aircraft grounded.11 If the predicted overnight clearing was not forthcoming, one army analyst wrote, “the entire project would have to be called off.” Everything now wound up like a “powerful spring” would have to be “uncoiled without a sign being given to the enemy that anything untoward had been taking place.”12

  At the mercy of the weather, Dempsey could only pray the skies would clear and keep Goodwood moving along its complicated path. This included the pivotal role given to II Canadian Corps of advancing behind the armoured divisions to establish a “very firm bridgehead south of Caen.” The Canadian role, dubbed Operation Atlantic, was to secure the rear and right flank of the advance by the three armoured divisions of British VIII Corps. To do so, the Canadians must capture Caen’s sprawling Vaucelles suburb, the smaller industrial suburb Giberville to the east, and the steelworks and Colombelles to its north. By the end of July 18, Canadian engineers were to have bridges over the Orne within Caen. The Canadian line that Dempsey required by day’s end was to curve from Cormelles on the left, through Fleury-sur-Orne in the centre, and terminate at Éterville on the right. Dempsey considered the bridges a particularly “vital part of the whole operation.” While the Canadians were winning these objectives, the British armoured divisions would have advanced four to five miles southward to the localities of Hubert-Folie, Verrières, and Garcelles-Secqueville. If the Canadians failed in their tasks, Dempsey planned to order the tanks to halt on this line.13

  Operation Atlantic would rest largely on the shoulders of 3rd Division’s 8th and 9th Brigades. Caen’s streets remained so clogged with rubble that it was impossible to position the division for attacks directly across the river into Colombelles and Vaucelles. Instead, the two brigades were to cross to the east side of the river on the bridge next to Ranville. At 2300 hours on July 17, London Bridge would be opened to 8th Brigade. This brigade would then launch its attack from in front of Ranville at 0745 hours. In the ensuing hour, 9th Brigade would cross the bridge. Thereafter it would revert to VIII Corps control.

  Once 8th Brigade captured Colombelles and the steelworks, 9th Brigade would pass through to clear Vaucelles. The division’s 7th Brigade would remain on the west bank of the Orne. Its job would be to conduct a limited amphibious assault to establish a bridgehead capable of protecting the division’s engineers as they erected the required bridges. Two squadrons of tanks from 2nd Armoured Brigade’s 1st Hussars would support the division. Artillery support would come from its three field regiments, 19th Canadian Field Regiment, and two Canadian medium-gun regiments.14

  While 3rd Division carried out the main task, 2nd Division would advance its 4th Brigade west of Caen to clear Louvigny. The brigade would then attempt to cross the Orne. The division’s 5th Brigade, meanwhile, would cross the Orne between Caen and Vaucelles and advance on a southerly line across 4th Brigade’s front to gain the high ground at Saint-André-sur-Orne.15

  DESPITE BRITISH SECOND Army’s elaborate attempts to deceive the Germans, Luftwaffe photo reconnaissance flights on July 15 had detected a buildup under way east of the Orne and even greater activity on the river’s west bank near the Ranville bridges. “The enemy command,” a signal that day predicted, “ plans from about 17 July onwards, the start of an operation across the Orne towards the southeast.”16

  Allied intelligence, meanwhile, was largely in the dark regarding the strength of the divisions against which Goodwood must fall. In the absence of good information, Dempsey’s planners placed their bets on being able to deliver a devastating blow against a thin German defensive crust and then range freely into an undefended rear in the finest cavalry tradition. For staff officers who had spent more than a month measuring gains in yards won only at heavy cost, this was a pleasing image. It was, however, entirely false. In reality, the Germans had constructed a defence in depth that stretched back seven and a half miles from their front lines.

  Dempsey’s staff calculated that they were fielding 1,000 tanks against just 230 panzers—a four-to-one superiority. In fact, the Germans had 377 tanks and self-propelled guns. Generalder Panzertruppen Hans Eberbach had separated 150 of the tanks into two armoured “wedges.” Stationed well back, they would be committed when he felt the time was ripe for a decisive counterattack.17

  German defences anchored on the village of Bourguébus, which stood on a commanding ridge three miles south of the city. The British armour must pierce five separate defensive lines to win. Each line was well defended by infantry from 16th Luftwaffe, 272nd and 346th Divisions. Spread across the anticipated line of advance were seventy-eight 88-millimetre guns, twelve heavy flak guns, 194 pieces of field artillery, and 272 six-barrelled Nebelwerfers. Eberbach hoped to draw the British tanks into a killing ground in front of Bourguébus Ridge, which ran from east to west directly across VIII Corps’s path and had an average height of 1 65 feet. From this commanding ground, his deadly 88-millimetre guns would outrange the guns of the British tanks by at least 1,500 yards.

  Back of this ridge, another defensive zone had been created by transforming vill
ages and farmhouses into strongpoints surrounded by aprons of barbed wire and minefields. These were manned by six 1st SS Panzer Division infantry battalions. And behind this line lurked the two armoured wedges. Those tanks and self-propelled guns not forming part of the wedges were scattered throughout the German defences, mostly in dugouts that increased the protective density of their armour.18

  One handicap that left the Germans reeling was the grievous loss of Generalfeldmarschall Erwin Rommel. Anticipating that an offensive was imminent, Rommel had set out by staff car from his headquarters on the Seine to personally inspect the defences around Caen. It was a journey of almost two hundred miles. Although the coastal region about Caen was fogged in, inland skies were mostly clear. Just outside the village of Sainte-Foy-de-Montgommerie, two Spitfires from 412 RCAF Squadron flying off a landing strip at Bénysur-Mer spotted the car travelling on a main road flanked by trees. Flight Lieutenant Charles Fox began firing three hundred yards off.19 Bullets chewed into the car, the driver lost control, and it overturned. The driver and Rommel, both badly injured, were thrown clear.