Breakout from Juno

by Mark Zuehlke

  At 0500 hours on August 19, Currie set his stubborn sights on Saint-Lambert. The night’s light rain had stopped at dawn.4 Grey mist clung to the ground as ‘C’ Squadron and the Argylls’ ‘B’ Company descended through open fields towards the village. Major Ivan Martin commanded the Argylls. Technically a lieutenant, Martin had been raised to the rank of acting major due to severe officer casualty rates during the past two weeks.5

  The western end of the village consisted of two rows of opposing houses bordering the highway until coming to a square anchored on the mayor’s office. Another cluster of houses on the eastern side encircled a church next to a narrow stone bridge over the Dives River. The riverbank was bordered by trees and dense brush.

  The three surviving Shermans of the troop that had tested Saint-Lambert the previous evening led, with the infantry following on foot. Currie walked alongside Martin. Three hundred yards into the village, the lead tank was hit by an armour-piercing round. The three men in the turret bailed out fast, but the driver and co-driver suffered serious burns before escaping.6

  On foot, Currie lacked any wireless to report the positions of the Mark IV and Tiger tanks that had fired. Realizing Currie needed communications fast, Captain John Redden, ‘C’ Squadron’s rear-link officer, jumped into the major’s tank and ordered it forward. Spotting the Mark IV, Redden pointed it out to Trooper Roy Campbell, who fired a high-explosive round into the tank’s tracks and then sent it up in flames with six armour-piercing shells. This was the South Albertas’ first confirmed tank kill.7

  With a Tiger still lurking, Martin and Currie agreed that the Argylls would continue alone. Lieutenant Gil Armour’s No. 10 Platoon on point, ‘B’ Company advanced. The few German infantry encountered were methodically killed. Closing on a lane that ran south to the bridge, Armour spotted a Panther tank pressed against the side of a building. When he called for volunteers, Corporal S.N. Hannivan and Privates Jimmy LaForrest and H.W. Code stepped forward.8 More reluctantly, Private W.F. Cooper also volunteered. Armour had a reputation for being “a little wild, but the guys wouldn’t hesitate to follow him,” Cooper said later.9

  Closing on the tank, Armour silently crept up onto it, intending to drop a Type 36 grenade through the open turret hatch. He was just starting to pull the pin when the crew commander’s head popped into the open. Armour dropped the grenade, grabbed the man, and yanked him out. The German drew an automatic pistol and the two men grappled until Armour threw the commander off the tank. Flailing for balance, Armour was helpless to defend himself as the German raised the pistol. Before he could shoot, Private LaForrest fired his rifle. The German fell seriously wounded.

  Turret hatches slammed shut, the Panther’s engine fired up, and the tank lurched back about twenty-five feet. Here it stopped, 75-millimetre and machine guns aimed to protectively cover the fallen crew commander. Hidden in some nearby brush, Armour’s men waited until the small hatch left of the main gun opened and a man’s head appeared. Hannivan fired a Sten-gun burst that hit him in the forehead. Before anyone could close the hatch, Armour ran over and dropped in a fragmentation grenade.10

  By mid-morning, the village was cleared. Currie disposed the infantry and tanks so that Armour’s platoon held the crossroads with three supporting tanks. The rest of the tanks and ‘B’ Company set up in the western part of Saint-Lambert. They numbered fifty infantry and twelve Shermans.11

  AT 1100 HOURS, Lieutenant General Guy Simonds conferred with his four divisional commanders. Just arrived from Italy, Major General Dan Spry now led 3rd Infantry Division, Brigadier Ken Blackader returning to 8th Infantry Brigade. Simonds had belatedly acquiesced to Major General George Kitching by promoting Bob Moncel to command 4th Armoured Brigade. Simonds’s orders were straightforward. The encirclement was to be completed and “no Germans were to escape.”12

  As II Canadian Corps had focused on closing the gap, Simonds reported, Lieutenant General Harry Crerar had started I British Corps eastward on August 17. Within two days, meeting only slight resistance, 51st (Highland) Infantry and 49th Infantry Divisions had established bridgeheads across the Vie River, while 6th Airborne Division (including 1st Canadian Parachute Battalion) gained the outskirts of Cabourg and Dozule. A snaking front now stretched from Cabourg on the coast southward to a point about five miles east of Saint-Pierre-sur-Dives. These advances were the first step in First Canadian Army’s joining the developing Allied drive to the Seine.13 Montgomery had already announced his intention to complete “destruction of the enemy forces in north-west France. Then to advance northwards, with a view to the eventual destruction of all enemy forces in north-east France.”14 First, however, the pocket had to be eliminated.

  Inside the pocket, “the German agony continued.” By mid-morning of August 19 the skies had cleared, the mist dissipated, and fighter-bombers returned in earnest. Long columns straggled along the remaining byroads and narrow lanes running towards the gap. Allied Expeditionary Air Force flew 2,535 sorties that returned “enormous claims … against military transport and tanks.” British 2nd Tactical Air Force sortied 1,321 times, claiming 52 tanks destroyed and 92 damaged, with 617 other vehicles wrecked and 981 damaged.15

  In addition to fighter-bombers, the Germans were now within range of First Canadian Army’s artillery and that of the Americans to the south. “The pocket is … being drawn closer on what is now known as the Falaise trap,” wrote 15th Canadian Field Artillery’s war diarist. “It is as if the Americans and British were huge brooms sweeping the Germans into the dustpan that at the moment is the [Canadian Army].” From the heights north of the Dives, FOOs from every regiment, looking down on “the slaughterhouse,” were “having a field day.”16

  Every gun in II Canadian Corps roared unceasingly, responding to targets provided by observers on the ground and orbiting overhead in planes.17 The 19th Field Regiment’s historian wrote that “by walking a few hundred yards ahead of the guns one could look down into ‘the pocket’ and see the targets … It was breath-taking to watch the scenes of destruction. The guns would roar, shells would whistle overhead, then far in the distance little orange spurts of flame would blossom out. A few seconds later clouds of smoke would start to rise followed by raging fires.”18

  Inside the cauldron, Seventh Army commander SS Obergruppen-führer Paul Hausser decided to attempt a mass breakout past Chambois at dawn on August 20. Sitting on the edge of a ditch a mile south of Trun, Hausser issued his orders to Standartenführer Kurt Meyer and other senior commanders. Hausser, who had lost an eye at Moscow, gravely bid the others farewell. None expected to reunite.

  “The misery around us screamed to high heaven,” Meyer wrote. “Refugees and soldiers from the defeated German armies looked helplessly at the bombers flying continuously overhead. It was useless to take cover from the bursting shells and bombs. Concentrated in such a confined space, we offered once-in-a-lifetime targets to the enemy air power. The wooded areas were full of wounded soldiers and the sundered bodies of horses. Death shadowed us at every step. We stood out like targets on a range. The guns of the Canadian 4th Armoured and Polish 1st Armoured Division could take us under open sights. It was impossible to miss.”

  Meyer was out of touch with most of 12th Division, but his Hitler Youth continued to fight in isolated, uncoordinated groups around Trun, Saint-Lambert, and Chambois. Chaos reigned.19

  Beyond the gap, the situation was little different. General der Panzertruppen Hans Eberbach—who had emerged from the gap a couple of days earlier—was ordered to coordinate a II SS Panzer Corps assault back into the pocket to open an escape route for Seventh Army. Eberbach had reached II Panzer Corps headquarters on the evening of August 18 after dodging fighter-bombers and having his car “pierced by bullets.” Obergruppenführer Wilhelm “Willi” Bittrich reported the corps “torn asunder in consequence of the night marches and air attacks. Until now he could not contact any of his division staffs, but he knew that his troops had neither fuel, ammunition, food, nor signal equipment. He co
uld not tell when the corps would again be ready for action.” Eberbach told Bittrich he must attack no later than the evening of August 19 –20 with 2nd and 9th SS Panzer divisions advancing southeast towards Trun.

  Returning on the afternoon of August 19, Eberbach learned that Bittrich “still had nofuel and had received very insufficient quantities of ammunition,” but still hoped to attack that night.20

  THE GERMANS BEGAN fleeing pell-mell into the gap on the morning of August 19. About three miles north of Trun, on Point 259, the Grenadier Guards covered a road running towards Vimoutiers. Guardsman Stuart Johns and three comrades had been ordered to a hill a quarter-mile distant in hopes of linking up with the Americans reportedly nearby. Finding the mission fruitless, the men were walking back when a German convoy appeared on the road between them and Point 259. As the tanks opened fire, “suddenly Germans popped up all over the place. They had been walking through at night and hiding during the daytime. There was a very low hedge in front of us. The other three guys ran around it and I thought, ‘I’m not going to run around it.’ I tried to jump over it. Just as I jumped over and was coming down a German in a camouflage uniform stood up and we collided.” As Johns rolled clear, he realized the individual wearing a camouflage smock was SS. Gaining his feet, Johns levelled his Sten gun. Suffering a bad leg wound and using two tree branches for crutches, the young SS trooper glared back at him.

  Johns gestured to two nearby surrendered Germans to carry the wounded man. But when they approached, the man waved one of the branches threateningly. “What’s going on?” Trooper McDonald shouted. “I’m trying to take this guy prisoner and he doesn’t want to be taken,” Johns answered. McDonald strode over and punched the German in the mouth, knocking him flat. The other Germans picked the stunned man up, and everyone ran for Point 259. By the time they gained the summit, the convoy was burning.21

  The area around the Grenadiers quieted down after that. “It is wonderful to stop for a bit of a rest,” the war diarist said, “and get a chance to eat and sleep.”22 The Grenadiers were not alone in an unexpected quiet day. Both the Governor General’s Foot Guards and British Columbia Regiment found themselves in areas of little action. Brigadier Moncel spent the day reorganizing 4th Armoured Brigade’s headquarters and visiting the regiments. It was evening before he ordered the brigade to “advance to a position on high ground overlooking Vimoutiers.”23

  While not engaged themselves, the tankers were constantly aware that a great battle raged nearby. The Foot Guards could see the Poles to the southeast, and at one point several of their tanks “burst into flames and for an hour or more the crews—as spectators of a drama in a great amphitheatre—watched while tank after tank of the Poles was destroyed in a bitter battle … Close at hand, green hills slumbered in the sunlight and the birds sang.”24

  August 19 saw the beginning of almost seventy-two hours of hellish fighting for the Poles. Their 1st Armoured Regiment with two companies of the Highland Battalion fought through heavy opposition to win Maczuga—Hill 262 (North). The combat group comprised of 2nd Armoured Regiment and 8th Infantry Battalion, which had wandered astray the previous day to near Les Champeaux, arrived in the evening to strengthen this position. Meanwhile, the 10th Dragoon Regiment—likely the one watched by the Foot Guards—fought fiercely for Chambois. The town fell at 1930 hours.25 Roads leading into Chambois and its streets were “jammed with German armour already alight or smouldering, enemy corpses and a host of wounded soldiers,” one Polish officer wrote.26 The Poles rooted hundred of prisoners out of orchards, ditches, and battered buildings. “Shortly afterwards, this group established contact with American infantry which moved up to Chambois from the south,” Lieutenant Colonel L. Stankiewicz recorded.27

  The actual link-up was made by Captain Michael Gutowski’s 10th Mounted Rifles squadron and Major Leonard Dull of 2nd Battalion, 359th Infantry Regiment, 90th U.S. Infantry Division. Dull’s men advanced past burning houses, German corpses, and dead horses.

  Suddenly, Poles and Americans spotted each other. Guns rose momentarily before recognition came. An American captain ran to one Polish officer “and lifted me in the air as if I had been a child.” Major H. Zgorzelski, commanding 10th Polish Dragoons, arrived. Captain Laughlin Waters, commanding ‘G’ Company, 359th Regiment, represented the Americans. Zgorzelski spoke English, but when asked his name said, “Here, give me a book and pencil. You’ll never be able to pronounce it anyway so I’ll write it down.” A scrap of paper was ripped from a notebook and he scrawled his name. Waters reciprocated. A bottle of Polish vodka appeared and toasts were drunk.

  Then Gutowski got down to business. “Our position is very flimsy,” he told the Americans. “We are out of food. We have no water, no gasoline and no ammunition. Some tanks have no more than five or ten shells left. For machine guns there is maybe ten minutes’ firing.” After interminable negotiations up the American command chain, Dull secured 4,000 gallons of fuel, 140,000 rounds of m achine-gun a mmunition, and 18975-millimetre rounds.28

  These supplies were welcome, but they only served the Poles in Chambois. Those on Maczuga remained cut off and under relentless artillery fire. Their situation by nightfall looked increasingly grim.29

  SIMONDS HAD PLANNED for 4th Canadian Armoured Division to reach Chambois coincident with the Poles. As the mist burned off in the early morning of August 19, however, the South Albertas’ ‘C’ Squadron and the Argylls’ ‘B’ Company became deadlocked in Saint-Lambert. Hundreds of Germans streamed into surrounding orchards or advanced on the village. Most wanted to surrender, and soon the volume of prisoners posed a logistical nightmare. Others, however, came looking for a brawl. With so many prisoners, it was easy for the brawlers to infiltrate alongside them. Captain John Redden was wounded trying to take the surrender of a fighting convoy that had driven into the village under a white flag.

  Lieutenant Colonel Wotherspoon maintained his regimental headquarters on Point 117 to provide a firm supportive base while advancing ‘B’ Squadron, under Major T.B. “Darby” Nash, to Point 124. To protect Currie’s rear, he moved ‘A’ Squadron to where the Trun-Chambois road crossed a small stream called the Foulbec. The tanks also blocked any German attempt to cross the Dives between Trun and Saint-Lambert. ‘B’ Squadron spent the day shooting up German vehicles on the roads running towards Vimoutiers immediately east of Saint-Lambert.

  At noon, another German convoy entered the village, preceded by an officer in a motorcycle’s sidecar. Surprised by Argylls, the officer surrendered. Present were photographers from No. 1 Canadian Army Film and Photographic Unit, hoping to capture the Canadian link-up with the Americans. Instead, cameraman Donald I. Grant shot the German officer’s surrender to Major Currie—possibly the most famous Canadian photograph of the war.

  Soon after the film unit departed for safer climes at 1300 hours, the entire village erupted in a wild, disorganized firefight. Germans swarmed Saint-Lambert with guns blazing. ‘C’ Squadron tanks whirled frantically to engage them with machine guns and main guns. Currie asked Wotherspoon to fire artillery on his positions and warned everyone to take cover. Expecting 25-pounder fire, he was horrified when 4.5- and 5.5-inch medium shells exploded. These could easily knock out his tanks. “Is [the artillery] killing more Germans or more of your people?” Wotherspoon asked. Currie conceded the Germans were doing the dying. His men suffered no casualties.30

  Wotherspoon asked Brigadier Jim Jefferson of 10th Infantry Brigade for infantry reinforcement. Jefferson, whose three battalions were stretched thin around Trun, could only round up the Argylls’ understrength ‘C’ Company, along with ‘C’ Company of the Lincoln and Welland Regiment. They marched for Saint-Lambert in the late afternoon.31

  From Trun to Saint-Lambert the Germans, in complete confusion, were “attempting to break out en masse,” as one army report put it. Throughout the day the Lincs at Trun, along with medium machine guns of 4th Division’s New Brunswick Rangers, had “held off continuous attacks as column after c
olumn of madly shouting, grey-clad men tried to force their way through only to be cut down at point-blank range by the medium machineguns … It was fantastic to watch so dreadful a slaughter, then to see the remnants reforming and attack again only to fall as the sustained machine-gun fire smashed through them.

  “The whole battlefield by sundown [was] an unholy panorama of burnt-out vehicles and unburied dead.”32

  The two companies sent to reinforce Saint-Lambert arrived at dusk. The Lincs were commanded by Major R.F. Willson, while the Argylls were under Major Gordon Winfield. Willson blended his platoons with the Argylls of ‘B’ Company.33 For some unexplained reason, Major Winfield marched his Argyll company through Saint-Lambert and out the other side.

  Private Arthur Bridge of No. 14 Platoon thought they were headed for Chambois. “By now it was quite dark. The glare from burning houses and vehicles that had been knocked out along the road provided us with some visibility.” Everyone was “having a ball scrounging through the trucks along the way.” At Moissy, a hamlet halfway to Chambois, the pleasant night stroll ended with the screech of an MG-42. “We were spread out single file, and the company commander and two or three others were hit by this burst. As the firing continued and we couldn’t tell where it came from, we took to the shelter of the ditch, and started shooting back at the unseen enemy, who were obviously close by as they began throwing hand grenades at us. One grenade fell among several of us in the ditch and exploded, making a lot of noise but causing little damage.”