Breakout from Juno

by Mark Zuehlke

  With Winfield wounded, Lieutenant Phil Whitehead and Company Sergeant Major George Mitchell tried establishing a fighting position in an orchard next to a farmyard, only to realize they were surrounded by Germans. Finally, the company snuck back to Saint-Lambert along a narrow side lane that was lined with German tanks. “It was an eerie feeling to be slinking by them in the darkness.” Bridge thought the tankers must have believed they were Germans, for nobody issued a challenge or opened fire. Regaining the village, ‘C’ Company settled down for an uneasy night.34

  THE GERMANS WERE well experienced in escaping encirclements on the Eastern Front. They did so by attacking the weakest point from within and without. In this case, the weak spot was the area between Saint-Lambert and Chambois, where only elements of 1st Polish Armoured Division atop Maczuga stood in opposition.

  The Poles had about fifteen hundred infantry, more than eighty tanks, and roughly twenty anti-tank guns dug in on an approximately one-square-mile perimeter. From Maczuga they could see the entire pocket. But Hill 262 (South) and the lower foothills about it blocked observation to the southeast. The steep ground nearby was also scattered with hedges and woods that denied the Poles clear fields of fire. Preventing passage through the ground immediately to the west and southwest during the day was difficult. At night, it was hopeless.35

  Seventh Army’s breakout began in the early morning hours of August 20 with 3rd Parachute Division advancing under command of II Parachute Corps commander Generalleutnant Eugen Meindl. Two thousand strong, the paratroopers were disciplined, hard fighters. They were to cross the Dives and attack Maczuga at first light. Together with II Panzer Corps, expected to arrive from the east, the paratroopers would maintain a breach through which Seventh Army would pass. At the same time, 353rd Infantry Division—less seasoned and well trained—would seize Hill 262 (South). Close behind the paratroopers and this division would be the remaining armoured divisions. Then—almost entirely on foot—the rest of the army would follow. Everybody was to travel lightly. Only a few non-self-propelled anti-tank guns were taken. After firing off their ammunition, the artillerymen destroyed their guns. Surplus stores, vehicles, and other equipment were either burned or blown up. It was “do or die.” If the breakout failed, Seventh Army could no longer fight.36 For the tanks to escape, the Germans required bridges over the Dives. There were only two possible. One was at Saint-Lambert, the other at Chambois. At 2230 hours on August 19, Meindl’s paratroopers formed in woods by the Dives. “Our crossing stands or falls at St. Lambert,” a 1st Panzer reconnaissance officer signalled his divisional headquarters.37

  “The night was rather hectic with considerable infiltration,” the South Albertas’ war diarist reported. “Small parties of infantry were shot up all night and the bag of prisoners considerably augmented.”38

  While some were stragglers, the paratroopers were deliberately probing Saint-Lambert’s strength. By early morning, Meindl knew what he faced. Saint-Lambert and Point 117 appeared strongly held, but the tanks at the Foulbec lacked infantry protection. Meindl had no intention of tangling with Major Arnold Lavoie’s ‘A’ Squadron. He wanted to filter quietly through. Although at times fired on, Meindl slipped most of his paratroopers past the South Albertas’ screen.

  Towards dawn, the paratroopers—partially concealed by a hot, damp ground mist and light rain—closed on Maczuga. By 0730 hours, the leading elements were engaging the Poles. Meindl happened upon Seventh Army’s Obergruppenführer Hausser, who had also crept past the South Alberta positions. The two men hunkered in a crater and agreed that the paratroopers should circle around the hill and attack it from the north.39

  As dawn broke in Saint-Lambert, the Argylls’ Private Arthur Bridge “realized we were in for a time of it, as enemy activity was apparent wherever we looked.” At 0800, the village came “under constant attack by masses of the enemy.”40

  “It could hardly be called an attack as there was no covering fire plan, simply a mass movement of riflemen,” the South Alberta war diarist wrote. On Point 117, Wotherspoon moved the headquarters tanks to “better fire positions and [they] began to mow down the advancing infantry. Similar activity occurred on ‘B’ and ‘C’ [Squadrons’] sectors.”41

  The attacks still threatened to overwhelm Saint-Lambert. A Tiger ground over the bridge and gained the square by the mayor’s office. Firing armour-piercing rounds, it drove the infantry out of nearby buildings. The tank also set two Shermans ablaze. German infantry waded the river in waves and surrounded the infantry holding the northwest part of Saint-Lambert. Only the fact that most Germans were more interested in fleeing than fighting prevented the Canadians from being overrun.42

  Private Bridge was near a Sherman brewed by the Tiger. The shell had penetrated the turret next to the gun. When the crew bailed out, he realized the gunner “was still inside and the tank was starting to burn.” With the main gun blocking the gunner’s hatch, the man could not escape. Suddenly, ‘C’ Company’s Company Sergeant Major George Mitchell “showed us what a true hero he was. He climbed up on the burning tank in full view of the enemy, aided by Corporal J.R. Holmes, and traversed the turret of the tank so the gun no longer blocked the hatch. A couple more of us climbed up when the hatch had been opened and we pulled the poor driver out. His face and hands were literally cooked from the heat, and the flesh was hanging off him. Although he was still alive, he was unconscious.”43

  With Wotherspoon on Point 117 was 15th Field Regiment FOO Captain Harold Clerkson, who “had never seen anything like it.” Everywhere, Germans marched. “It seemed almost a kind of a dream in a way … all those men down there. My God, what ever brought me to this and what do I do now?” But Clerkson knew. It was a job he did for the next two days and which earned a Military Cross. “I called for a Mike Target [all the regiment’s guns] and that was approved.” After the shells struck, hundreds of Germans emerged from the smoke to surrender. “I sent word back that for every Mike Target we were getting about 500 to 1,000 prisoners.”

  Currie was in regular contact with Clerkson, feeding targets. Major Ivan Martin, commanding the Argylls’ ‘C’ Company, also passed along targets. Fired upon by two 88-millimetre self-propelled guns when there were no Shermans nearby to help, Martin had Clerkson engage them. But the shell fell wide. Unable to accurately situate the SPGs, Martin took the wireless set and, according to his subsequent citation, “went forward alone on foot … to a position from which he could … direct the artillery and neutralize the enemy guns.”44 On Point 117, Clerkson also spent “a fair amount of time running about, exposing myself to fire, in order to effectively direct the fire.” Point 117 was increasingly under threat of being overrun.45 Realizing the danger, Wotherspoon ordered ‘A’ Squadron to return to the hill. When Lavoie’s tanks arrived, “the enemy broke and fled.”46

  By 1000 hours, thousands of Germans swarmed around Saint-Lambert. Wotherspoon warned Jefferson that unless he was reinforced with more infantry, Saint-Lambert might be lost. Jefferson had been promised reinforcement by 3rd Infantry Division’s 9th Brigade at Trun, so he could shift men eastward to Wotherspoon. Delayed by the arrival of their relief, however, 9th Brigade only began moving in the late morning of August 20. Wotherspoon’s force would continue its lone fight.47

  [ 29 ]

  A Hellhole

  THE BREAKOUT ON August 20 had caught 4th Canadian Armoured Division wrong footed. As ordered by Lieutenant General Guy Simonds, 4th Canadian Armoured Brigade had begun moving that morning northeast towards Vimoutiers. The brigade was to secure a crossing over the Vie River to facilitate the expected advance to the Seine.1 The Governor General’s Foot Guards had already reached Camembert when Major General George Kitching instructed Brigadier Bob Moncel to turn the brigade about.2 Moncel ordered the Foot Guards back to Point 258 in order to close the Trun-Vimoutiers road.3 With the brigade so far north, Moncel realized his bestoption was to send the British Columbia Regiment and Grenadier Guards due east to the Poles on Maczuga. Driving into the
midst of the gap, they met bitter resistance while at the same time having to deal with hundreds of surrendering Germans. By 1600 hours, they were halfway to Maczuga, “but the battlefield now presented a confusing picture, fighting was taking place on all sides.” At nightfall, the tanks halted.4

  On Maczuga, the situation worsened throughout the day. Surrounded by 3rd Parachute Division—supported by tanks and self-propelled guns that had escaped the pocket—the Poles clung tenaciously to the summit. “It reminded one of medieval days, when the defence of the battlefield was organized by placing camps in a tight quadrangle,” Polish Lieutenant Colonel L. Stankiewicz wrote. “The densely wooded hills were extremely difficult for observation, as a result of which … German tanks would approach unnoticed, almost up to our positions.” When a shootout between one Panther and Sherman ended, they faced “one another barrel to barrel at a distance of a few metres, both burn[ing].”5

  The Germans kept looking northeastward for II Panzer Corps, but Obergruppenführer Willi Bittrich had only received his fuel at dawn, and so it was not until 1000 hours that 2nd SS and 9th SS Panzer Divisions advanced. The 9th SS moved through Camembert, while the 2nd SS followed the Chambois-Vimoutiers road. Each division had only about twenty tanks. The 9th SS fielded a single infantry regiment, 2nd SS two infantry regiments. Each regiment numbered no more than a hundred men. General der Panzertruppen Hans Eberbach believed the advance possible “only because of the bad weather which hindered the operations of the enemy air force.” The warm drizzle made the roads greasy. The way “was packed with burned out vehicles to such an extent that tanks had to clear an alley before it was passable.”6

  At 1500 hours, 2nd SS Division joined the battle against the Poles. From a nearby hill, a Panther picked off five Shermans in the same number of minutes.7 At 1700 hours, “German tanks penetrated to within a few paces of the defence positions. After a heavy battle they were, however, forced to withdraw with losses.”8 Three Mark IVs burned inside the Polish perimeter.9

  Maczuga remained cut off and heavily embattled as the sun set. On every side, Germans streamed through the gap held open by those fighting the Poles. Standartenführer Kurt Meyer escaped this way. Meyer was soon joined by Obersturmbannführer Max Wünsche, who had brazenly driven a German car right through Saint-Lambert. The two began gathering the badly scattered Hitler Youth and readying them for the next battle. Although seriously wounded by a mortar round, Obergruppenführer Paul Hausser also escaped.10

  The Germans tried to break out across a front that stretched from Trun to Chambois, but those coming up against these two villages were rebuffed, sustaining heavy losses. At Trun, the New Brunswick Rangers “continued firing throughout the morning and into the late afternoon, [when] the battle of annihilation reached its climax,” stated their war diarist. “So great was the slaughter that blood was actually flowing in the gutters.” No. 4 Platoon alone fired fifty thousand rounds.11

  At Saint-Lambert, the South Alberta Regiment and two Argyll and Sutherland Highlander and one Lincoln and Welland Regiment companies fought on in isolation through the afternoon. Major Dave Currie withdrew the entire force to the western half of the village, as the leading elements of 2nd SS and 9th SS Panzer Divisions threatened to overwhelm it. Gruppenführer Heinrich von Lüttwitz, commanding 2nd SS Division, was deeply worried by the Canadian presence. Although Currie’s force was just trying to survive with only five remaining Shermans and an ever-shrinking number of infantrymen, von Lüttwitz believed they were attacking him.

  Currie and Martin were as worried as Lüttwitz. Both moved about ceaselessly, encouraging the men. When a German machine gun started blazing away, Martin asked a private in a slit trench to help him eliminate it. “You’re kidding, of course,” the man replied. Martin headed out with a Sten gun. After a long burst of gunfire, he returned with a shouldered MG-42.12 Moments later, Martin and fellow Argyll Lieutenant Albini Dalpe were killed by an 88-millimetre round. Because he did not receive the only posthumous Commonwealth award, the Victoria Cross, Martin’s heroism went unrecognized until the United States bestowed on him a Distinguished Service Cross.13

  After Martin fell, Currie—with only two other officers remaining—asked permission to pull out. Lieutenant Colonel Swatty Wotherspoon told him to stay put, as 3rd Infantry Division’s 9th Brigade should soon break through to Saint-Lambert. It was a vain hope. This brigade’s closest battalion was the Highland Light Infantry, supported by the 1st Hussars Regiment. They had advanced to about a mile and a half west of Saint-Lambert and immediately south of Neauphe-sur-Dives by late afternoon. Coming under machine-gun fire “from all points of the compass … supplemented by the occasional solid shot and mortar shells … both [regimental commanders] appreciated that it was impossible to move under these circumstances and the move … was postponed till first light.”14

  Inside Saint-Lambert, Currie told the men they had to stick it out. Standing alongside Trooper Jimmy Eastman’s tank, Currie said, “Dig out everything you’ve got, all the shells—everything you’ve got, this is it.” Because it was Currie speaking, nobody questioned the order. Even the Argylls and Lincs, who had never met Currie before, now trusted him. Sergeant John Gunderson, commanding a ‘C’ Squadron troop, felt that “just to go up and talk to him was enough to give us confidence … without his example I do not believe we could have held out. He didn’t give a damn how close the Jerries were, and he always had the same every-day expression, just as if we were on a scheme. He was wonderful.”15

  At 1500 hours, the Canadians in Saint-Lambert were unexpectedly reinforced by two troops of 6th Anti-Tank Regiment. Taking a wrong turn, ‘J’ and ‘L’ Troops had driven into the village by accident. One troop towed 17-pounders; the other rode in 105-millimetre self-propelled M-10s. Both went into “crash action” along the road and “soon had their guns … deployed so as to lend all possible aid.” Once the guns were firing, the two troop commanders set off to find the column from which they had become separated—the one comprised of the 1st Hussars and Highland Light Infantry—and were captured by the Germans.16 With fifteen of the sixteen guns aimed towards the German-occupied end of the village, the anti-tank guns ripped into every vehicle they saw. When a Tiger rolled by at a range of eight hundred yards, one gun punched a hole in it with an armour-piercing shell, then widened this to about a two-foot diameter with high-explosive shells.

  Soon thereafter the gunners stripped their .50-calibre machine guns off the M-10s and deployed them about the perimeter. The machine guns and anti-tank guns greatly strengthened the Canadian position. It was soon estimated that about two hundred German infantry had been either killed or wounded.17 The numbers surrendering grew exponentially, as it became clear that Saint-Lambert no longer provided a safe escape route.

  AS NIGHT FELL, Lieutenant General Guy Simonds personally intervened to close the gap. At 1500 hours, he visited 4th Armoured Division’s headquarters and learned from Kitching that Trun and Saint-Lambert were in Canadian hands. Wanting a closer look, Simonds headed for Saint-Lambert in his Staghound armoured car. About a mile east of Trun, Simonds stopped on a hill and was fired on by a German machine gun. Storming back, Simonds berated Kitching for giving him inaccurate information, brushing aside the general’s explanation that he had never said the ground between Trun and Saint-Lambert was secure.

  After a whirlwind tour of Canadian and Polish headquarters, Simonds directed 4th Armoured Brigade’s Moncel to send his tank regiments and the Lake Superior Regiment immediately to rescue the Poles on Maczuga.18 It was 2000 hours.19 The Foot Guards moved eastward one and a half miles from Point 258 to Point 239 to “dominate the roads radiating from both St. Lambert and … Chambois.” They were supported by a Superior company and a 5th Anti-Tank Regiment self-propelled gun troop. Reaching the hill unopposed, the force spent a “tense night in a high state of alert, with flares constantly dropping on the flanks.” Twice Germans tried to attack the tanks with Panzerfausts but were driven off.20

  The Grenadier
Guards had advanced on Point 240, about a mile due west of Point 239. Major Hershell Smith’s No. 3 Squadron led. Heavy rain was falling, and the tanks clawed their way through mud to the summit. No. 2 Squadron advanced a half-mile farther to Point 147 and blocked a narrow road passing through the draw between Point 239 and Point 240.21

  Understanding that Point 240 was unoccupied, the tankers were surprised to find the Algonquin Regiment had arrived there at 1600 hours and been “having a swell time shooting up German staff cars at long range from the top of the hill.” ‘B’ Company’s Major Lyle Monk had his men “out on the bald slope overlooking a deep valley with a road at the bottom. Across the valley, about two miles away, was another high slope where the [Poles] had been established for almost three days.”22

  Nightfall found the Polish situation on Maczuga dire. Fighting raged on unceasingly. The Poles in Chambois fought off a “furious mechanized attack supported by tanks” that pierced the first line of defence before the force was “almost completely annihilated.”

  Neither at Chambois nor Maczuga were the Poles able to evacuate wounded. These “had to remain amongst our fighting soldiers, and were exposed to the enemy’s heavy artillery and mortar fire” while “the combat lasted [through] the night and the morning of August 21st. Our detachments were using up literally their last ammunition. The suffering of the wounded became almost intolerable. Tortured by lack of sleep and long hours of battle, which lasted without cessation for two days, the soldiers made their utmost efforts,” Lieutenant Colonel L. Stankiewicz recorded.23

  Compared to the Polish situation, the night was comparatively quiet in Saint-Lambert. At 2000 hours, responding to what turned out to be false reports of great masses of German tanks approaching the whole Canadian front, the two anti-tank troops from 6th Anti-Tank Regiment were ordered to join a massive gun screen erected to meet the threat. They went reluctantly, having already accounted for a half-track, an armoured car, one Tiger, one Panther, three Mark IVs, a self-propelled gun, and a large number of infantry.24