Normandy '44

by James Holland

  On just her second day, she had woken to the news of the invasion. ‘Tremendous buzz of excitement,’ she wrote in her diary, ‘clusters of people talking about the news.’7 Her brother, Michael, had joined the US Army and the two had met up in London a few weeks earlier – it was the first time she had seen him since he emigrated. Now, a week on from the invasion, she wondered whether she might see him over in Normandy. Their move across the Channel was now certain – they would be heading over there in a matter of days. First, though, she had to get back to Hatfield in one piece without being hit by a doodlebug.

  Britain’s war leaders were not quite so phlegmatic. The 1,000kg of Amatol the V-1 delivered was a destructive warhead and the British people, after long years of war, were understandably dismayed to find themselves facing a renewed Blitz. ‘This new form of attack imposed upon the people of London was a burden perhaps even heavier than the air raids of 1940 and 1941,’ noted Churchill.8 ‘Suspense and strain were more prolonged. Dawn brought no relief, and cloud no comfort.’ It was all the more reason to smash the enemy in Normandy quickly and charge across France to overrun the launch sites of these new terror weapons. Although the damage done was far less than anything wrought by the Blitz, the V-1 menace had now, at long last, arrived, and it hovered over the Allied – and especially British – war chiefs like a heavy shroud.

  One even fell a little too close for comfort to General Eisenhower. Around 1 a.m. on the morning of 16 June, now back at Widewing, his SHAEF HQ at Bushy Park on the edge of London, he was reading in bed when the siren rang out. His friend and naval aide Harry Butcher hurried along to his room and suggested he head for the shelter. Eisenhower refused his entreaties, however, until they heard the clatter and bang of a V-1 exploding comparatively nearby. ‘They say you have two seconds to find shelter when the hiss and put-put stop,’ noted Butcher.9 ‘So I decided that at least Butcher would retire to the shelter.’ A few minutes later, Eisenhower joined him.

  Certainly, the V-1 attacks almost immediately added a level of pressure and impatient expectation to the Normandy campaign that was out of all proportion to the actual damage they were causing – which was, in the big scheme of things, comparatively small. ‘The Air Ministry estimates that the enemy is capable of launching 90 tons on the London area,’ Brereton noted, ‘which is cause for grave concern.’10 It was, however, very small beer indeed when compared with the gargantuan amounts of ordnance being dropped on Germany. The following day, for example, 617 Squadron alone dropped 1,230 tons of bombs on S-boat pens at Le Havre. The previous evening Bomber Command had hit a synthetic-fuel plant near Gelsenkirchen with 303 heavy bombers each carrying around 4 tons of bombs; this attack alone led to a loss of 1,000 tons of fuel per day for several weeks to come. Meanwhile a staggering 1,357 American heavies from the Eighth Air Force, each carrying around 2 tons of bombs, attacked a wide range of targets; Lieutenant Smitty Smith and his crew were among those hastily dispatched to hammer ‘buzz-bomb’ launching sites at Florennes in northern France. A sense of proportion was needed with regard to this new German pilotless blitz.

  None the less, leaders in England were starting to get a little impatient. ‘Last night,’ noted Butcher on Thursday, 15 June, ‘Ike was concerned that Monty couldn’t attack until Saturday.11 Ike was anxious that the Germans be kept off balance and that our drive never stop.’ In fact, the drive hadn’t stopped. The Allies were indeed pushing forward; it was only a week and a half since D-Day, and the people back in London, looking at the two-dimensional maps with sea marked up as a flat, constant blue, were forgetting the many challenges the invasion had thrown up and continued to hurl at them. The build-up of supplies had been slower than anticipated; currently, the backlog was two days, which meant, for example, that the 150 British tanks of 33rd Armoured Brigade were reaching the front two days later than anticipated, which, in this early stage of the campaign, made quite a difference to the Allies’ ability to punch through the gathering German defences with the kind of force that was needed. What’s more, the enemy were showing no sign at all of retreating in stages as they had done in North Africa, Sicily and southern Italy, but rather seemed determined to hold on to every yard, even though this meant they remained in range of the Allies’ enormous arsenal of offshore naval guns.

  Even so, ten days after the landings, the Allies had reason to be fairly pleased. They had a continuous bridgehead, which was among the greatest short-term priorities, now some 50 miles long and between 8 and 20 miles deep. In the centre, on the boundary between the British and Americans, the US 18th Infantry were just over 20 miles inland, holding a salient around the town of Caumont. ‘It was mainly little skirmishes,’ recalled Tom Bowles.12 ‘The Germans would try and push us back and we would fight them off.’ Two, three, or more times a day, he would be sent up to the front to repair telephone lines. In fact, such had been the speed of advance of the 1st Division, who had fortunately pressed southwards into a gap between the Panzer-Lehr on the left and 17. SS-Panzergrenadier and the shattered remnants of the 352. Division on their right, that a chance for the Allies to unravel the entire German line was emerging. Yet the 1st Infantry Division, at this stage, did not have the armour, the artillery support or the reserves to be able to push beyond Caumont.

  At the eastern flank, meanwhile, the mixed force of airborne and Commando troops were having a torrid time. They were rapidly becoming bogged down in the kind of attritional and largely static fighting for which such special coup de main troops were most definitely not designed. They were now holding a line that ran along the Bréville Ridge and roughly halfway between the Orne and Dives Valleys, and down through the village of Amfreville to the north and across to the Orne River; and which then cut across to Sainte-Honorine and on to the edge of Colombelles and the eastern outskirts of Caen. Both sides were furiously digging in, sniping and hurling shells and mortars at each other, with worrying echoes of the Western Front during the last war. ‘At “stand to”,’ wrote Denis Edwards in his diary on Sunday, 11 June, ‘Jerry gave us his customary dawn hammering and our lines took a thorough working-over, an exercise we called a “stonk”.’13 He and the rest of the Ox and Bucks were now holding Hérouvillette. Edwards found that during the day he and his mates were smoking heavily – it was something to do and calmed the nerves, but they were now running low on cigarettes. That night, there were a lot of enemy patrols and they began to sense a counter-attack was on its way. The key bit of land, as Edwards was well aware, was the Bréville Ridge with its commanding position and views over the whole area and down to both valleys.

  The paras still held the crest, but not strongly – just to the left of the Ox and Bucks were the men of 7 Para, including Lieutenant Richard Todd, who, like Edwards, had not enjoyed being ‘stonked’ regularly for the past few days. Succour was at hand for him, however. Sunday, 11 June was his twenty-fifth birthday and orders arrived promoting him to captain and posting him to General Windy Gale’s 6th Airborne HQ as GSO III (Operations). After a slap-up birthday lunch with fellow officers, he climbed into a Jeep with all his kit, bade his friends in the 7th Battalion farewell and sped off back to Ranville, stopping briefly en route at the field ambulance centre to get his still unhealed hand seen to.

  The following day, the 12th, the weather was sunny and warm. Reinforcements had been arriving from a brigade of the 51st Highland Division, a veteran unit from North Africa and Sicily, which eased the pressure on the paras and Commandos, although not a moment too soon. Later in the day, 21. Panzer launched another counter-attack, with Major Hans von Luck’s battalion now reinforced with Nebelwerfers, two motorcycle companies from the reconnaissance battalion and also some of Major Becker’s assault guns. Kampfgruppe Luck opened the attack with the Nebelwerfer – ‘Moaning Minnies’, multiple rapid-firing mortars – and artillery, swiftly taking their objective, the village of Sainte-Honorine, from the Canadian paras. Von Luck went in close behind the motorcycles and saw the enemy lines for the first time. He was amazed by what appear
ed to be hundreds of broken gliders lying all around. As they quickly dug themselves in, he hoped they could use the slopes of Sainte-Honorine as a starting point for an attack on the ridge. ‘Then began,’ noted von Luck, ‘the heaviest naval bombardment we had known so far.’14 He could actually see the warships out at sea firing, great stabs of flame erupting from their guns, followed by the scream of shells. The Jabos followed, swooping down apparently unhindered. ‘A veritable inferno,’ he added, ‘broke over our heads.’15

  His Kampfgruppe had also attacked further to the north between Bréville and the hamlet of Oger, where the French of No. 4 Commando were dug in. Some German troops managed to get within a few hundred yards. Lieutenant Hubert Fauré lost five men in his troop that afternoon. Another man, Bégau, was hit by a piece of shrapnel that blew away half his face. ‘There were only his eyes left,’ said Fauré.16 ‘It was horrible. The blood was bubbling.’ Bégau was still alive, although caught out 50 yards ahead of their lines. No one moved, so Fauré jumped up and ran over to him, picked up the wounded man and carried him on his back. The Germans could have shot him easily, but he reckoned they respected him for picking up a wounded comrade and so left him alone.

  Back at Divisional HQ, Captain Richard Todd found the atmosphere absolutely electric. There was great concern that the ridge might fall, but General Windy Gale now decided to counter-attack in turn, while the Germans were exposed and getting hammered by the naval guns and air forces. The attack would go in that night, at 10 p.m., with 12 Para leading, supported by the 13th/18th Hussars and preceded by a heavy artillery barrage. As darkness fell, the villages of Amfreville and Bréville were ablaze against the night sky. At Sainte-Honorine, the Canadians also counter-attacked and, after close, hand-to-hand fighting, von Luck was forced to recall his men and give up the village again. ‘What more could we set,’ he wrote, ‘against this superiority in naval guns and fighter bombers?’17

  Bréville was taken and the ridge secured, but at a grievous cost to both sides, and especially 12 Para, who suffered 141 casualties out of the 160 with which they began the attack. The 5th Black Watch had also sustained around 200 casualties since their arrival the day before, massive losses that were already symptomatic of the brutal attrition of the fighting in Normandy. Von Luck was devastated by the day’s fighting. ‘We now finally gave up hope,’ he wrote, ‘of making any impression on the British bridgehead, let alone eliminating it.’18 Stalemate had arrived at the eastern flank, and the men began digging in along a line that would not budge for the next ten weeks.

  Montgomery and Dempsey were, however, already launching Operation PERCH, their first attempt at a decisive breakthrough. This had been thought about before the invasion as a contingency in case Caen was not swiftly captured on D-Day or immediately after. Dempsey planned that 7th Armoured Division, the Desert Rats who had fought all the way through the North Africa campaign, would spearhead this drive towards Tilly. Another idea, code-named WILD OATS, involved a dash towards Caen by 7th Armoured and also the 1st Airborne Division, now waiting back in England to enter the fray. Leigh-Mallory had nipped that idea in the bud, however, and, because of delays and the weather, the Desert Rats hadn’t been ready until 10 June in any case, by which time the Panzer-Lehr had arrived at Tilly. Dempsey’s intelligence on that day reckoned there were about 500 enemy tanks now in Normandy and all the German divisions in the line had been correctly identified. ‘A concerted blow by these formations is already overdue,’ ran the Second Army intelligence summary for up to midnight on 9 June, ‘and the enemy’s choice of schwerpunkt is becoming increasingly difficult as the advance from Omaha continues.’19 The massed enemy counter-attack arriving before sufficient Allied forces had been built up had always been the biggest worry once they had achieved a toehold. Now that they had successfully established a firm bridgehead, the desire to push forward for a decisive breakthrough was balanced by concern that when the enemy counter-attack was finally launched, they had to be ready to meet and defeat it decisively.

  However, the US 1st Infantry Division’s taking of Caumont, 20 miles inland, the intense fighting around Tilly, and the 12. SS’s defence of Carpiquet and the west of Caen meant a second gap had emerged. If the Americans could not realistically push further than Caumont, then perhaps the 7th Armoured Division could get their skates on and push through between Panzer-Lehr and 12. SS ‘Hitlerjugend’ instead. Their immediate target was the small market town of Villers-Bocage, some 15 miles south-west of Caen.

  As hoped, at around eight o’clock on the morning of Tuesday, 13 June, an armoured column of the 4th County of London Yeomanry and 1st Battalion Rifle Brigade rolled into the town. This was the spearhead of the Desert Rats, which had hurried forward, throwing caution to the wind, without the usual probing reconnaissance units. With no sign of the enemy anywhere, this collection of Sherman and Cromwell tanks, half-tracks and trucks spread out in a long line along the main road through the town and paused, enjoying the enthusiastic reception of the townspeople, while the regiment’s A Squadron pushed on to a notable knoll to the east of the town, labelled on their maps as Point 213. The gap, however, was only really a half-gap, because many of the Panzer-Lehr’s support units – including those of Helmut Ritgen’s II. Bataillon, Panzer-Lehr Regiment 130 – were still based a couple of miles to the east, not west, of Villers-Bocage.

  Unbeknown to the British, watching this from just south of nearby Point 213 were Tiger tanks of the Schwere SS-Panzerabteilung 101 (101st Heavy Tank Battalion), rushed into the area ahead of other Waffen-SS panzer units and due to join the ‘Hitlerjugend’. Commanding the Tigers was the panzer ‘ace’ Michael Wittmann, who decided to send three into action immediately, two against the British tanks on Point 213 and himself to the town. While the British column was standing motionless in the main street, Wittmann rumbled forward and attacked at almost point-blank range and with complete surprise. An entire troop of three Cromwell tanks and one Sherman was knocked out in a matter of minutes, along with a number of half-tracks, trucks and carriers of the Rifle Brigade. As Wittmann pulled back and climbed out of the town, leaving a scene of carnage, his Tiger was disabled by a British gunner and he and his crew had to scramble away on foot. It had been an entirely opportunistic attack, without infantry support, and he had been very lucky that a British anti-tank gun, pointing directly at his Tiger in the opening moments of the attack, had not fired because the gunner was, at that very moment, relieving himself nearby; it could have all be so different.

  Meanwhile, on Point 213, the now isolated British tanks were gradually picked off. The battle did not stop there, however, as more British and German troops arrived. In the afternoon, the roles were reversed as the Germans, carrying out their usual counter-attack, were ambushed in turn, losing six Tiger tanks and a similar number of Panzer Mk IVs. Since the Germans had only 36 Tigers in Normandy at that time, this was a substantial blow. Overall, the British lost 23–27 tanks, the Germans between 13 and 15.

  Unfortunately for the Desert Rats and the British Army’s reputation, the Germans had some press photographers hurry over to Villers-Bocage and take photographs of the devastation. Burned-out tanks, dead tank men and mangled vehicles made a sorry picture. The fact that just about any road behind the German lines, or in any place where they had been overrun, would have revealed an even grimmer picture of carnage on their own side was, understandably, kept quiet. So too were the facts that 21. Panzer had lost the best part of an entire battalion on D-Day and that, on 8 June, the Canadians had pushed back 12. SS ‘Hitlerjugend’ and had retaken Buron, Authie and then Kurt Meyer’s HQ at the Abbey d’Ardenne, swiftly destroying thirteen of his tanks in the process.

  At this difficult time, the people of the Reich needed some good news. Nazi propaganda had long had a penchant for elevating individuals as though they were movie stars, and Michael Wittmann was already a celebrated hero. The Nazi regime liked ‘aces’. There were fighter aces, Stuka aces, U-boat aces, artillery aces and, of course, panzer aces
. Pictures of these men looking square-jawed, wholesome and devilishly handsome – and it really was amazing how often they conformed to the Aryan ideal – were plastered on the front covers of magazines or featured in the Deutsche Wochenschau newsreels shown in the cinemas. They became household names, the pin-ups of the Reich. There were, of course, two major problems with this. The first was that, usually, these elevated individuals were actually part of a team. Wittmann never fired the gun on his Tiger, for example – his gunner did. Nor did the U-boat commander press the trigger mechanism on the torpedo. The second, perhaps bigger, issue was that all too often these aces then got themselves killed, which was very much bad, not good, PR.

  At any rate, Wittmann’s efforts at Villers-Bocage – good PR aside – achieved comparatively little. In truth, it has become one of the most over-blown episodes of the entire war, let alone the Normandy campaign, and really needs looking at not through the lens of dashing tactical chutzpah but through a wider prism. Was it really a massively wasted opportunity by 7th Armoured Division? Could the British have driven a terminal wedge into the gap between Panzer-Lehr and 12. SS? Probably not.