Normandy '44

by James Holland

  There was now a lull in the fighting as infantrymen cleared each of the houses, working their way up from the ground floor first. Pyle followed. Puddles lay in the middle of the road, the few shops were boarded up and then, suddenly, walking towards them past the wrecked truck came a small column of Germans with an officer at the front waving a white flag – the men from the last strongpoint. Robert Capa sneaked out and took a photograph. American infantrymen, still on high alert, stood in doorways clutching their weapons and looking around them, but they let the Germans, some carrying two wounded on stretchers, walk on past them to the hospital. The objectives had been successfully taken and mercifully, on this occasion, without too many casualties.

  Later that day, von Schlieben, Konteradmiral Walter Hennecke, the German Naval Commander, Normandy, and some 800 troops all surrendered; after that, most organized resistance ceased. Even so, in the western side of the city there was still the mighty thick-walled arsenal to overcome. The following morning, 27 June, the 47th Infantry were due to launch an assault with three battalions but, after an ultimatum was broadcast to the defenders, white flags appeared and a further 400 men surrendered. It was a significant victory for the Americans.

  With the MARTLET and EPSOM battles raging, the 101st Hospital near Bayeux was filling up quickly. On her particular ward, Mary Mulry was now overseeing some thirty-five patients, including Germans, Welsh, Londoners, Poles, a couple of Free French, a civilian member of the Résistance, one Latvian and two Americans. Her friend Chezzy was proving a great help translating. ‘Hans brings me a cup of tea as I sit at my desk to read the night report,’ she wrote in her diary.13 ‘This multi-national microcosm of a Europe at war is interesting and sad.’ She had overheard a wounded Cockney say, ‘Thanks, mate,’ to Hans as he handed him a mug of tea and fixed his pillows. ‘Why are they all so tolerant of each other inside this canvas tent, and killing each other outside?’

  A couple of days later, a new consignment of battledress and also khaki knickers arrived; these were from the many thousands of different supplies that had to be delivered to waiting ships on the south coast of England, then taken across the Channel, unloaded and transported to the right location in a field in the middle of Normandy. Yet the system was working, despite the ever-urgent need for more tanks, shells, ammunition and gargantuan amounts of rations to feed hundreds of thousands of men each day. ‘These pants are hilarious, huge and elasticated at the waist and legs,’ noted Mary, ‘but we could hardly have expected army supplies to have equipped us with glamour cami-knickers.14 It will be blissful to feel clean.’

  On the 27th, a badly wounded young Englishman reached the 101st Hospital in a terrible state. Blind, stinking, covered in gunshot and shrapnel wounds, ‘Len’ none the less barely stopped talking, and quite cheerfully too, as Mary and her friend Taffy worked on cutting him out of his uniform. ‘He completely ignores the appalling state he is in,’ she noted.15 ‘The British are renowned for the stiff upper lip but this is ridiculous.’

  He told them what had happened to him. On D-Day, he had nearly drowned after being knocked into the sea. Someone had dragged him out of the water and he had collapsed on the sand next to a dead German. He had been fighting ever since. Then that day they had been attacking and he had dived into what he thought was a German slit-trench only to discover it was an enemy latrine. Moments later, a shell landed nearby, blinding him and spattering him with shrapnel. ‘Although he is too shocked to realise it yet,’ wrote Mary, ‘most of his right leg has been blown off.16 His face is completely blackened from impacted shrapnel.’ He had managed to crawl out of the latrine and take shelter by a British tank, shouting for help as he did so. Someone came to his rescue and together they tied a tourniquet around his thigh. He was then strapped to the bonnet of a Jeep, which was very bumpy, until another shell screamed over and blew the Jeep off the road, with Len still strapped to it. The Jeep was somehow righted and, incredibly, Len, still alive, was brought to the tented hospital. ‘I fix him up with intravenous plasma and give him a shot of morphine,’ wrote Mary.17 ‘He will need sleep to prepare for major surgery in the morning.’

  Only a dozen miles or so from the 101st Hospital, the fighting continued for that other Allied objective, Caen. By midnight on the 26th, Standartenführer Kurt Meyer had been feeling desperate. Earlier, when he had seen the slaughter of his young grenadiers, he had been unable to stop the tears streaming down his face. ‘The heavy fighting,’ he wrote, ‘had caused high and irreplaceable losses.18 A breakthrough could not be prevented unless we had new units.’ Those units were on their way: II. SS-Panzerkorps, with 2., 9. and 10. SS-Panzer-Divisions were all closing in, but, realistically, it would be the day after tomorrow before they could actively enter the fray. That meant 12. SS had to hold out along with support from 1. SS on their right and elements of Panzer-Lehr and 276. Infanterie for another day at least. That was a big ask, as Meyer was keenly aware.

  His only cause for solace was the reappearance of his valet, Michel, a Cossack who had loyally stuck with him for several years. Michel arrived with a letter from Meyer’s wife telling him she was pregnant with their fifth child. New life was developing among all this death, but by the following morning, 27 June, the desperation of the situation returned with vivid clarity with the onset of heavy British shelling.

  Just a few miles to the north-west of Meyer’s CP, Obersturmführer Hans Siegel’s four panzers were still in position and had now, by first light, improved their situation further by spreading themselves out behind the embankment they had discovered the previous evening. In the grey light of dawn, Siegel could see it was actually a dried creek, known locally as the Ruisseau de Sabley, which straddled the Cheux–Grainville road and was, by chance, the most obvious axis of advance for the British as they resumed their efforts to cross the Odon and reach the high ground of Hill 112. It really was the ideal defensive position and, while four Panzer Mk IVs hardly constituted a major defence force, their hull-down position, machine guns and 75mm main guns presented a formidable obstacle to any British troops trying to get past them.

  Siegel was already up and about, out of his panzer after only snatched moments of sleep, and checking what troops were on their flanks. He found the first some 300 yards to the left and tried to reassure them. Heading back, he was approaching the first panzer when enemy shells screamed over – a dawn chorus laid on just for him, it seemed. Fortunately, all fell wide and, although some hit the tree tops behind, most landed harmlessly in the wet soil. Then, to his horror, his men started up their tanks and began moving out. Only after he had run around waving his arms furiously did they stop. Rather apologetically, they explained that with him gone and under attack, they thought they ought to pull out. Siegel immediately ordered them back; they had a British advance to halt and they were most certainly not going to cut and run.

  They were back in position in the nick of time, because up ahead a British attack was beginning. Now back in his panzer and connected to the other three by their radio sets, Siegel told his men to wait for the Tommy infantry to get close and then to use only the MGs – and on his command only; he didn’t want to betray their presence by the use of their main guns. ‘We let them come close and then hammer,’ noted Siegel, ‘at short distance, concentrated fire from four machine guns at the massed attackers.’19 In moments, the enemy infantry was pulling back, turning in panic. Soon after, tanks appeared and Siegel gave the order for them to open up with their main guns. Several British were hit and the rest pulled back, disappearing behind the crest of the rise.

  As the sun came up, Siegel spotted movement away to his right. Fearing an outflanking manoeuvre, he decided to risk moving his panzer from its concealed position in order to get a better view. Having moved out, he peered through his field glasses and saw a group of Tommies dropping heavy packs on the ground; he couldn’t understand what they were doing, but then one of his panzers fired, the shell tearing into them, a massive explosion and men cartwheeling into the air. So, tho
ught Siegel, they were engineers handling explosive charges.

  Meanwhile, Kurt Meyer had ordered some seventeen Panthers to counter-attack towards Cheux. Shorn of infantry, the Panthers were operating largely on their own and hit a wall of British anti-tank guns that were ready and waiting. For all the notoriety of the German 88mm gun, the British 17-pounder had an even higher velocity and at ranges of up to 1,400 yards could stop a Panther in its tracks – as they did this morning. The destruction of the Panthers and the failure of the 12. SS counter-attack illustrated yet again the huge difficulty of making any ground when on the offensive; in the Panther and Tiger the Germans might have had superior tanks in terms of fire-power and thickness of armour, but the British could bring to bear considerably more high-velocity guns of a similar potency.

  The only slight solace for Meyer was the escape of some twenty men from his engineer battalion, which had been largely decimated the previous evening; the Panther attack had allowed the shattered survivors to avoid certain capture. Their commander, Sturmbannführer Müller, had reported to Meyer at the division CP soon after. ‘His deep, sunken eyes told all,’ noted Meyer.20 ‘He no longer had an undamaged bit of uniform on him. His knees were bloody and lacerated; his face was hardly recognisable under the dust. One arm was in an improvised sling.’

  Obersturmführer Hans Siegel and his four panzers were still successfully holding the line south of Cheux, however, when at 10.30 a.m. yet another assault wave of British infantry and armour pressed forward – the fourth of the day. Soon they were firing both their machine guns and main guns and, fully occupied with the attack up ahead, neither Siegel nor anyone in his crew spotted the outflanking manoeuvre away to the right. A lone British tank managed to get close enough to fire at the side of Siegel’s panzer and an anti-tank shell suddenly ripped through the lower right-hand side. Frantically, Siegel ordered the turret to traverse to three o’clock, but while it was still moving a second shell slammed into them, hitting them front-right, and immediately the panzer was engulfed in flames. Hatch covers opened, the gunner bailing out to the left in flames, the loader to the right. Siegel tried to climb through the top of the turret but was caught by the throat by his microphone wire. Increasingly frantic, with flames licking the inside of the tank and choking smoke rapidly filling the belly of the beast, he tried to escape through the side hatch but bumped heads violently with the radio operator, who had had the same idea because his own hatch was blocked by the half-traversed gun. Pushing the radio operator through the hatch, Siegel was then engulfed in flames for a second or two before following, jumping to freedom only to nearly hang himself from the microphone wire. Dangling from the side skirt of the tank, thrashing for his life, he finally managed to snap the wire and collapse to the ground. Only the driver, Sturmmann Schleweis, was unable to escape, burning in the inferno, while the gunner, lying on the ground in flames, was leaped on by the others and the fire smothered. That Siegel was not more badly burned was entirely down to the leather clothing they were wearing, which had been purloined by Wünsche just for his own men. ‘It was booty from Italian navy supplies,’ noted Siegel, ‘and saved the lives of quite a few men.’21 His own included. They now looked on as spectators while the remaining three panzers continued to hit British tanks and once again forced them back. For the fourth time that day, just four Panzer IVs had repulsed British efforts to reach the Odon.

  With the battle dying down once more, Siegel handed command to his senior NCO and drove himself and his wounded crew in the Kübelwagen back to the CP in Grainville. There he reported once more to Wünsche, who slapped him on the back as a medic gave him a painkilling injection of morphine. Siegel would soon be back, but his burns were bad enough to keep him out of the battle for the time being. By then, however, seventeen Panthers had arrived and more panzer divisions were fast approaching the front.

  A couple of miles to the north, the 6th KOSB were bivouacked in a field north of Cheux. Lieutenant Robert Woollcombe had been put in charge of a burial party; for sanitary reasons as much as anything, the dead were buried swiftly, in mass graves. Most were Highlanders. He found one officer, a young platoon commander like himself, looking slightly surprised and without a mark on him except for a dark stain near his kidneys. In his breast pocket was a slab of chocolate and a photo of his wedding, taken just before the invasion. Another man had a neat hole in his forehead, blue eyes still staring in amazement. Others were more badly smashed about. There were Germans too. It was a grim business.

  That same day, the 43rd Wessex Division began moving in and taking over positions from the Canadians who had been holding the line a little to the east of the main EPSOM attack. The 4th Dorsets, though, were for the time being in reserve. Sergeant Walter Caines was among the lead units as they moved up a little after 9 a.m. Getting the battalion communications up and running was a priority. Caines drove up on his motorbike to the new battalion CP, which was in a farmhouse, and, with the signal truck arriving shortly after, began setting up the signals office in a barn so that field telephone lines and radios were in good working order within an hour. Everyone at Battalion HQ was wondering when the enemy would start shelling them as the Canadians had warned, but the Germans, it seemed, were holding on to their ammunition that morning. Instead, it was their own artillery that opened fire first. ‘This was the first time we had heard such a thunderous barrage from our own guns,’ wrote Caines.22 ‘It kept up all day and at times one could hardly hear oneself speak.’

  Later that day, Meyer’s 12. SS lost Rauray, although not the Rauray Ridge, which still lay tantalizingly just out of reach for the attackers. A basic rule of thumb was that, the more dominant a piece of ground, the heavier it would be defended precisely because it was dominant. And because high ground meant the occupiers had eyes on anyone trying to approach, it was accordingly much harder to capture. The Sherwood Rangers were once more in the thick of the action that day, although casualties were mounting again. With the infantry, they managed to battle their way into Rauray by around midday, discovering a number of abandoned and knocked-out enemy tanks, including Panthers, Mk IVs and even a Tiger, hidden among some scrub, and apparently completely undamaged. Christopherson found a crew who had earlier lost their own Sherman and, having painted out the German crosses and replaced them with their own fox’s head, added it to the regiment’s arsenal. Sadly for the Sherwood Rangers, however, XXX Corps HQ swiftly claimed it instead to send back to England. The Sherwood Rangers were most put out. Christopherson was even more distressed by the losses, including several officers and men who had been with him and the regiment since 1939. ‘The capture of Fontenay and Rauray,’ he wrote, ‘had proved most costly.23 B Squadron could now only muster two officers and only seven out of their sixteen tanks.’

  A couple of miles to the east, that same afternoon, leading infantry and armour of the 11th Armoured Division did succeed in reaching the River Odon, down a narrow, winding road. They found a bridge still intact and managed to emerge up the steep slopes beyond to establish a shallow bridgehead. Just a couple of miles to the south lay the dominant Hill 112, from where Caen could be clearly seen, as could the Bourguébus Ridge, Carpiquet airfield and even Mont Pinçon, 12 miles to the south-west. The plan was for 11th Armoured to push on the following day, secure this key piece of vital high ground and then possibly drive on, sweeping in a wide left hook, cross the River Orne a few miles further to the east and fold up the enemy around Caen.

  This might have sounded simple enough, but it was a lot for one division to carry out, especially when it was known II. SS-Panzerkorps were about to join the battle. Overnight, they managed to get leading infantry and armour successfully across as planned, but by this time the 1. SS-Panzergrenadier-Regiment of the 1. SS-Leibstandarte ‘Adolf Hitler’ Division had arrived and, by morning, and now under temporary command of Kurt Meyer, they were ready to counter-attack. That day, Wednesday, 28 June, saw confused and scrappy fighting. Some twenty-five British tanks and accompanying infantry managed to
reach the summit of Hill 112, but because of the narrow crossings over the Odon, the rubble, mines and the German counter-attack, not enough of 11th Armoured was able to get through and support an onward drive towards the River Orne, nor even sufficiently secure the hill.

  That same day, Dempsey flew across the battlefield to confer with Bradley, who planned to renew his strike southwards on 1 July – although Cherbourg had fallen, there was still vicious fighting going on around Cap de la Hague in the north-west tip of the peninsula. In the evening, Dempsey issued orders to Pip Roberts’s 11th Armoured to push on to the Orne, but he was well aware that in the ‘Scottish Corridor’, named after the 15th Scottish Division, that had been established from Saint-Manvieu south across the Odon, there was still plenty of fighting. ‘15 Div,’ he recorded in his diary, ‘is still involved in clearing up the situation at Grainville and 43 Div is in the area Cheux-St. Manvieu.’24 It was great that Hill 112 had been taken, but it was clear they would still need to watch their backs. The last thing Dempsey or anyone wanted was to find his spearhead pinched out on a limb, cut off and surrounded. As Monty had not tired of pointing out, there could be no reverses.

  To the west on the Cotentin, on 29 June, with the capture of Cherbourg complete, the 9th Division turned west to clear the last pocket of resistance in the Cap de la Hague. Orion Shockley found it a tough fight. Enemy machine-gun fire made progress slow and by dusk he and his men discovered themselves caught in a minefield. One man trod on a Schu-mine. ‘Others started to get him,’ noted Shockley, ‘but I ordered them to stop until we could probe a path to him which was clear of mines.’25 Fortunately, the man was still alive by the time they got to him, although he had a badly mangled foot and leg, and he was safely evacuated. They pressed on through the night and the next day, 1 July, captured a German weather station and strongpoint, finding it only recently deserted. With that, the fighting at Cap de la Hague was finally over.