Captain Carol Mather, part of Montgomery’s 21st Army Group Tactical HQ staff, did not come ashore until late in the evening on Wednesday, 7 June. He had not been on the same ship as his chief – Tac HQ had been spread out over a number of different vessels – and had lain off shore through much of the 7th, reading the wartime chapters of Vera Brittain’s Testament of Youth. He couldn’t help ruminating on the enormous casualties, less than thirty years earlier. ‘What would be our fate?’ he scribbled in his diary.7 ‘Only time would tell.’ It had been encouraging, though, to arrive at the Normandy coast and discover neither enemy aircraft overhead nor shelling. He landed on the beach, jumping ashore into a couple of feet of water, while Monty’s staff car glided in and then emerged, dripping, on to the hard, damp sand. From the sea, the shore had seemed unnaturally tranquil, but once on the beach the urgency of battle was all around. ‘There was the acrid, pungent smell of powder,’ he recorded, ‘of damp clinging dust thrown up from tracks and ruined buildings; then of evening earth and herbage, mingled with petrol fumes and tank exhausts.’8
The journalist Ernie Pyle had also come ashore on D plus 1, reaching the battle-scarred beach at Omaha. ‘Submerged tanks and overturned boats and burned trucks and shell-shattered Jeeps and sad little personal belongings were strewn all over those bitter sands,’ he wrote.9 ‘That plus the bodies of soldiers lying in rows covered with blankets, the toes of their shoes sticking up in a line as though on drill.’ He then took a walk along the beach, marvelling at the enormous wastage, and not just the bodies still floating in the water. He was shocked to see entire landing craft knocked upside down, the remnants of Rommel’s beach obstacles, and partly sunken barges. Piles of shells, rolls of wire, stacks of unused life jackets could be seen on the beach. It was, he thought, a ‘shore-line museum of carnage’.10 He also found tins of shoe polish, toothbrushes, a pocket Bible with a soldier’s name in it, and even a tennis racket. ‘On the beach lay, expended, sufficient men and mechanism for a small war,’ he wrote.11 ‘They were gone forever now. And yet we could afford it.’ Later, Pyle clambered up the bluffs and took his turn to look at the vast armada still out at sea and be awestruck by the spectacle. A group of prisoners were standing nearby, guarded by a couple of Americans. They too were gazing out to sea, as if in a trance. None of them spoke. ‘They didn’t need to,’ wrote Pyle.12 ‘The expression on their faces was something forever unforgettable. In it was the final, horrified acceptance of their doom.’
Overnight on 7/8 June, Karl Wegner and his comrades, who the day before had been defending Omaha, were ordered to fall back a short distance. They had also come under command of a new Obergefreiter, Paul Kalb, who arrived at their lines with an Iron Cross First Class on his chest, as well as the ribbon of the Iron Cross Second Class and an Eastern Front Medal. Their mission, he told them, was to hold the Americans where they were until reinforcements arrived. Every field, he said, was to be made into a fortress. Furiously, they began digging behind the dense hedgerows of the bocage. Wegner was scared and rather overawed by the Rangers he knew were opposing him. ‘Willi and I were too jumpy to try and get sleep with these men against us,’ he said.13 At one point they heard the familiar ‘brrrrp’ of their machine guns coming from the American lines and briefly hoped they had broken through there. Obergefreiter Kalb soon put them right, however. ‘Wegner,’ he said, ‘the Amis are using MGs they captured from us so keep your foolish head down.’14
Captain John Raaen had been expecting a German counter-attack all night, but because of the new dispositions it never came. In fact, Generalleutnant Kraiss had recognized that his beleaguered 352. Division was too stretched, too short of ammunition and too depleted to mount any more counter-attacks. For that to happen, they needed far greater reinforcements, which were not obviously forthcoming just yet. His division was collapsing and clearly he needed to fall back to the secondary defensive line his men had prepared. This would mean losing the stretch of coast between Omaha and Pointe du Hoc – a vital piece of land with commanding views across the invasion front – but as far as Kraiss was concerned that couldn’t be helped. If he pulled his men back to the second defensive line, they would be behind the River Aure, which ran roughly west–east from Isigny, and a large part of the line would also be behind the flooded part of the Aure Valley that ran almost halfway to Bayeux.
At around 2 p.m. that day, Thursday, 8 June, General Marcks arrived at 352. Division HQ and there Kraiss told him he had already ordered some of his units to withdraw, fully aware that in doing so he had already disobeyed the Führer’s orders not to give any ground at all. He told Marcks that if the no-retreat order were imposed, then his division would not be able to hold and the line would collapse. Marcks was silent for a moment, contemplating the potential enormity of this decision. At length he told Kraiss his men should continue to hold on to any coastal positions until the men there ran out of ammunition and that the division should be ready to help the arriving armour in a major counter-thrust towards Bayeux planned for the following day, 9 June. Kraiss agreed, although did not tell Marcks that he had already lost contact with all the remaining strongpoints.
So it was that, earlier that morning, Captain Raaen had sent out patrols and then had been preparing to push towards Pointe du Hoc when the American relief force, including armour, arrived. ‘And we took Pointe du Hoc,’ he said.15 ‘What was there was the worst mess you have ever seen in your life. There was not a blade of grass, there was not a leaf, there was not a tree standing. Everything there was shattered.’
Carol Mather had woken to a gorgeous sunny morning and after a brief council of war had headed off on a recce of the Tac HQ. The first choice, Croix, had been rejected by Monty, so now Mather and Major Trumbull Warren, Monty’s Canadian PA, headed to the Château de Creullet on the edge of the town of Creully, some 5 miles inland from Gold Beach. It seemed to fit the bill. It was secluded, had ample grounds behind a wall and iron gate, as well as plenty of outhouses. There was no question of occupying the house itself – that was far too First World War; rather, they would set up their caravans, trucks and tents under trees in the grounds and liberally drape them in camouflage nets. Tac HQ was designed to be highly mobile, spare but comfortable enough, efficient and highly pragmatic.
The chateau was only a few miles north of Bayeux, which had fallen that morning, Thursday, 8 June. Among the first to pass through the city had been the Sherwood Rangers, whose tanks were supporting the infantry of 56th Brigade. Stanley Christopherson’s A Squadron had pushed into the town early on the 7th and, much to his relief, the Germans had already pulled back, part of Kraiss’s withdrawal to the next line of defence. ‘We were given a most enthusiastic and spontaneous reception by the inhabitants,’ noted Christopherson, ‘who appeared genuinely delighted to welcome us and demonstrated their joy by throwing flowers at the tanks and distributing cider and food among the men.’16 One enemy machine gun stubbornly held out in a house to the south of the town, however, but the building went up in flames after the Sherwood Rangers opened fire. Soon after, Christopherson was startled to hear a clanging bell followed by the Bayeux fire brigade hurtling past in their shiny helmets. Despite the machine-gun fire, they held up the battle, stormed into the house and put out the fire, then re-emerged with the machine-gun team as prisoners.
The following day, 8 June, they pushed on south, crossing the main N13 highway and, after a further 6 miles or so, were ordered to make a right hook towards the village of Audrieu and take up positions on a ridge, Point 103 on their maps, overlooking the villages of Saint-Pierre, Tilly-sur-Seulles and Fontenay-le-Pesnel down the other side of the hill. Along the top of the ridge a track ran roughly east–west, lined by beech trees, with woods beyond. Beyond Tilly lay the next ridge, which, although not especially high, offered a commanding position with clear views to the long ridge that barred the route south and which ran all the way past Saint-Lô, some 25 miles to the west. Moving his tanks forward of the track, Major Christopherson ordered them
into fire positions in the trees beyond, directly overlooking Saint-Pierre. All seemed quiet down in the village but he sent Captain Keith Douglas, his second-in-command, and one of his troop commanders, Lieutenant John Bethell-Fox, down in their Shermans for a reconnoitre. There they discovered most of the civilians hiding in their cellars, but eventually they persuaded one old man to come out and he told them Germans were already in the village and tanks in Tilly. Agreeing discretion was the better part of valour, Douglas and Bethell-Fox beat a hasty retreat towards their waiting tanks only to walk straight into a German patrol. Both parties were so surprised they each turned and fled, Douglas firing his revolver wildly as he ran.
These were the vanguard of Generalleutnant Fritz Bayerlein’s Panzer-Lehr-Division, which was finally reaching the front after a predictably torrid march from the Le Mans area, a distance of around 110 miles. The first air attacks had occurred soon after they had got moving on 6 June, leaving casualties of around twenty men and more than that number of vehicles. Bayerlein himself came under attack at around 7 p.m. They had pushed on overnight, but at dawn he had warned Dollmann again that to keep going during the day was courting trouble. Again, Dollmann insisted the Panzer-Lehr carry on. By 5 a.m. on the 7th, they were through Argentan, some 40 miles to the south-east of Caen, which they had found heavily bombed and burning. Just getting through the town had been difficult enough as a number of roads had become blocked. The next air attack arrived at around 5.30 a.m. as they were approaching Falaise. ‘The main road Vire-le-Bény,’ said Bayerlein, ‘was so bad that it was called a Jabo Rennstrecke, or fighter-bomber racecourse.’17 7. Armee had insisted they move in total radio silence, as though this would prevent the Allied air forces from spotting them. Instead, it just prevented the divisional command from having clear contact with the various units and state of advance. Bayerlein found himself repeatedly having to dispatch officers and even drive to the units himself to find out what was going on.
Late on the afternoon of the 7th, Bayerlein split off and drove to meet with Oberstgruppenführer Sepp Dietrich, the commander of I. SS-Panzerkorps, to whom Panzer-Lehr, 21. Panzer and 12. SS-Panzer were now subordinated. He caught up with the leading elements of the division near Thury-Harcourt, about 25 miles south-east of Bayeux. Along the way, Bayerlein passed dozens of wrecked vehicles, most of which were nothing more than smouldering steel skeletons. ‘The section between Caumont and Villers-Bocage,’ said Hauptmann Alexander Hartdegen, Bayerlein’s aide, ‘was the road of death.18 Sitting along the road were burnt-out trucks and bombed field kitchens and gun tractors, some still smouldering, the dead lying beside them. This horrible scene was the backdrop to our journey.’ Soon after, they were attacked again, fighters hurtling down the road straight at them, cannons blazing. Not for the first time, they found themselves jumping out of a still-rolling car, headlong into a ditch. On this occasion, the fighters made several passes. The BMW staff car was destroyed and their driver killed. Bayerlein escaped with cuts and bruises and was able to get a lift in a Kübelwagen to his new HQ at Proussy. Panzer-Lehr had begun the journey even better equipped and supplied than 12. SS-Panzer, but losses on the way to the front were: 84 half-tracks, prime movers and self-propelled guns out of 700; 130 trucks, more than 10 per cent of their total; and five tanks. ‘These,’ Bayerlein pointed out, ‘are serious losses for a division not yet come into action.’19 More importantly, of the trucks destroyed, forty had been carrying vitally precious fuel.
Also heading north-west with the Panzer-Lehr was Hauptmann Helmut Ritgen, supply officer and deputy commander of the II. Bataillon, Panzer-Lehr-Regiment 130. Twenty-eight years old and married, with a young wife back home in Paderborn, Ritgen was, like all the officers in the Panzer-Lehr, a vastly experienced tank commander, having served with the 6. Panzer-Division in France in 1940 and later on the Eastern Front. Then in March 1943 he had been posted from a course at the Battalion Commander School in Paris, not to his old regiment but as a company commander to the newly formed Panzer-Lehr-Regiment at Wünsdorf near Berlin. His initial misgivings had been swiftly dispelled, as his fellow officers were all first-class, as was his panzer company. Furthermore, he immediately took to his new battalion commander, the urbane and aristocratic Major Prinz Wilhelm von Schönburg-Waldenburg.
They had now been together for over a year and Ritgen had every confidence in the Prinz, in his men, in the entire division, most of whom were alte Hasen – old hands. Not surprisingly, though, he was heading to the front with a heavy heart. ‘We knew it would be difficult,’ he wrote.20 And like everyone else in the Panzer-Lehr, his first taste of the front was from the air; even once darkness fell, their column still had to circle continually around bomb craters and wrecked vehicles, which slowed progress. By morning they were nearing the small town of Villers-Bocage when the Jabos came over again, hitting one of the precious fuel trucks and sending a column of thick black smoke high into the sky, which drew even more enemy aircraft to them. Ritgen found the noise and confusion hellish. His supply company eventually reached the village of Parfouru-sur-Odon, a mile or two east of Villers-Bocage, and, using the woods and well-rehearsed camouflage techniques, Ritgen’s men managed to get everything hidden away and comparatively safe. Meanwhile, the battalion’s Panzer Mk IVs all pushed on towards Tilly-sur-Seulles, from where they were expecting to drive towards Bayeux.
Bayerlein’s orders on finally reaching the front were the same as those of 12. SS-Panzer and 21. Panzer: to drive the enemy into the sea and destroy them. Panzer-Lehr was due to join the left flank of 12. SS-Panzer at Bretteville-l’Orgueilleuse and attack towards the sea at Courseulles. They were just moving up, completely unaware even that Bayeux had already fallen, when his leading troops bumped into Keith Douglas and John Bethell-Fox of the Sherwood Rangers in Saint-Pierre.
From Omaha, the Americans continued to make steady progress. The Big Red One was moving south from Colleville, with the 18th Infantry pushing towards the town of Formigny. Tom and Dee Bowles were busy scuttling between units laying telephone wire. It was always a dangerous job, as they had to run, crouching, from one place to another and hope they weren’t out in the open when the shelling began or if a sniper suddenly got a bead.
On the morning of 7 June, Dee Bowles and his buddy, Private Kirkman, had been laying wires and were heading back down a track towards one of the battalion’s companies when a hidden German machine-gunner opened fire from 20 yards. Kirkman was shot through the ribs, while Bowles was hit twice in the arm, the back and his side. The force knocked them both backwards, off the road and into a ditch that ran alongside. Incredibly, both were still fully conscious; lying there, Bowles felt numb and was unsure where he had been hit or how badly. Together they managed to crawl about 50 yards until they reached some shrubs out of sight of the enemy gunman. Somehow they then both got to their feet, walked back up the road and managed to get some help.
Dee’s twin, Tom, had been lying in a ditch trying to get some sleep when he was told the news. Hurrying up to the aid post, he found his brother still conscious but lying on the ground.
‘Are you going to be all right?’ he asked.21
‘Well, I think so,’ Dee told him. Medics were giving him morphine and checking his condition.
‘Can you lift yourself on to the stretcher?’ one of the medics asked Dee.
‘Yeah, sure,’ he told them, but when he tried to lift himself up, he found he couldn’t really move at all. Having been placed on the stretcher, Dee turned to Tom and asked him to take off his belt and canteens, which they had filled with whisky before heading across the Channel. ‘I won’t need that Scotch after all,’ Dee told him. Tom was relieved that his brother could still joke. Perhaps Dee wasn’t too badly hit. Perhaps he would be OK soon enough. Even so, they both realized Dee would be heading straight back to England.
‘Well, so long,’ said Tom. Then Dee was put on to a Jeep and taken away.
For all his cheeriness in front of his brother, Dee had been seriously wounded. Soon
after, he passed out and when he woke up again he was already on a ship back across the Channel. There were stretchers of wounded men all around him and he was struggling with a desperate thirst. ‘But they wouldn’t give me no water,’ he says. ‘They didn’t know how badly shot I was.’ Eventually, after much pleading, they gave him a wet rag to put in his mouth. The next thing he knew, he was at the naval hospital in Southampton, where he underwent a number of operations. ‘Only one of those bullets was real,’ he says. ‘And that went clean through my arm. The rest were all wooden. It’s probably what saved me.’
Left in France, Tom worried about him. ‘Of course, I thought about him all the time,’ he says. ‘If I’d have ever met a German at that time, I would have shot him – I wouldn’t have taken no prisoners.’
There was little let-up for Tom Bowles and the rest of the 2nd Battalion. By the evening of 8 June, they had taken Formigny and Mandeville across the River Aure, where, fortunately for them, there was no flooding, and were pushing south again, the network of fields and the high bocage seeming denser with every passing yard.
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