Normandy '44

by James Holland

  Dazed men, struggling to regain their senses, began emerging. Von Rosen had lost two Tigers from his company; one had been flipped upside down and was sitting on its turret. Both crews were dead, most of them eviscerated. His maintenance detachment had also been killed and their equipment destroyed. Platoon leaders congregated around him; von Rosen knew he had to act swiftly. Some Tigers were still in working order, but others had tracks broken or trees across them. Behind his own tank, just a few yards away, was a huge crater that would have swallowed him whole had the bomb been released a nano-second earlier.

  Once the tanks and infantry of 11th Armoured Division got going they initially made good headway, following behind a rolling artillery barrage. However, the closer they got to the bombed areas the harder progress became, as they had to pick their way through the large number of craters. From the start position just to the west of Escoville, it was between 6 and 8 miles to their first objectives, which might not have looked so very far on the map but was quite a lot of ground to cover, especially now that much of it had been churned up by the bombing. The 3rd Royal Tank Regiment and other leading tanks had reached villages around Bourguébus by around 10.30 a.m., but as they neared Hubert-Folie they were suddenly on their own, beyond the range of the artillery and terribly exposed. Enough Germans had emerged from their slit-trenches and enough artillery, self-propelled guns and panzers had survived to give the leading British armour a hammering.

  It wasn’t long before Leutnant von Rosen and his men heard the sound of enemy tanks getting near. Radio contact with the battalion command post was down and his men and tanks too shattered by the experience to be able to think clearly, let alone fight. Scrambling over craters and debris, von Rosen hurried on foot and eventually found Hauptmann Fromme, who ordered him to get what tanks and men he could ready as soon as possible and create a blocking force between Manneville and Cagny. Enemy naval shells were now screaming over and repeatedly von Rosen had to take cover as he scampered back towards the remnants of his company. His III. Platoon still had all its tanks; three Tigers of I. Platoon were write-offs; and II. Platoon hoped to get two up and running soon. Whether this would be soon enough was anyone’s guess. All the Tigers had suffered damage of varying degrees and needed to go to the workshop, but that would have to wait, and by 10 a.m. they had six roadworthy.

  An hour later, several Shermans appeared in front of them. Opening fire, the Tigers’ shots were horribly wide; the bomb blast had recalibrated their guns. Von Rosen now planned to hit the enemy in the flanks, so ordered his Tigers to head south-west towards Cagny, then turn west to the farmstead of Le Prieuré, but en route two more of his Tigers were hit and brewed up, so he ordered his remaining four to pull back by 200 yards. When the fighting seemed to die down for a while, he hurried on foot to the battalion CP at Manneville. By this time, he had sixteen dead.

  Major Hans von Luck only reached the battle at around 9 a.m., so missed the bombing. Having been awarded the Knight’s Cross, he had been given a few days’ leave in Paris, where he had been reunited with his beloved fiancée, Dagmar. By the time he finally arrived at his regimental CP and met his I. Bataillon commander, the news was grim. The officer seemed all at sea; all contact with the rest of both I. and II. Bataillons had been lost. Fuming, von Luck abandoned any thoughts of breakfast and instead ran to a panzer Mk IV that was at his disposal, yelling at his adjutant to contact Division HQ and ask for reserves to be sent forward urgently. Then, having offered his driver a cigarette, he told him to take the main road to Caen. At Cagny he was appalled to see British tanks fast approaching and with no sign of anyone firing back. Finding some abandoned 88mm flak guns, he ordered them to be moved into the northern end of the village and, telling the gunners to keep firing, he headed back to his CP.fn1 Having feared that half his regiment had been destroyed, he was relieved to find Major Becker with news of his assault-gun batteries.

  ‘One battery has been completely knocked out by bombs,’ Becker told him.9 But, he explained, two batteries on the left flank were intact and were currently supporting the grenadiers of I. Bataillon. The other two batteries were about to go into action any moment on the right flank, where Major Kurz, using his initiative, had set up a defensive blocking position with his II. Bataillon men. Soon after, the adjutant returned. Feuchtinger had no reserves but was sending the reconnaissance battalion. Von Luck’s orders were to prevent any breakthrough to the east along the ridge.

  Meanwhile, the Canadians had been brought in to clear the south-eastern outskirts of Caen, and particularly the industrial area of Colombelles and the village of Giberville, both on the eastern side of the Orne. The Queen’s Own were given Giberville as their objective on what was to prove a difficult day for the regiment. A Company attacked from left of the village, C and D from the right, and, making the most of the bombing to mask their advance, were approaching the village by around 7 a.m. They came under heavy machine-gun and small-arms fire and all three platoon commanders were killed, while one of Sergeant Charlie Martin’s great mates, George Bennett, took five bullets in the stomach and two of his other pals were wounded.

  The village was taken later that morning along with the capture of a large number of 16. Luftwaffen-Felddivision troops. One wounded prisoner had had his leg patched up but, as the stretcher-bearers took him away, he pulled out a pistol and shot several of them, killing one and wounding two more. Charlie Martin and several others jumped on him, grabbed the pistol, broke his arm and roughed him up before a group of prisoners took him away with a note attached explaining what he had done. ‘A cruel and inexplicable act,’ was Martin’s verdict.10 ‘But we never heard anything further.’

  Later in the day, some of the A Company men pushed forward south from the village and took up positions along the railway line. They were soon counter-attacked, however, as at least two companies of Germans burst through from behind a thick hedge that had screened them. Seeing what was happening, Charlie Martin sent one man off to Company HQ to call in artillery and mortar support, then, his men giving him covering fire, he hurried forward to warn those still holding out by the railway embankment to fall back out of the way quickly. Most were able to pull back successfully, although largely because Buck Hawkins remained behind on the Bren to cover their retreat. Hawkins, though, was hit in the chest and killed just as he was finally about to withdraw himself. Martin was distraught – the whole company was. Hawkins had been quite a figure; at thirty-nine, he had been a lot older than most, married with children back home. But he was also a stalwart with a quick sense of humour and utterly fearless, a man who seemed to embody the spirit of the company. ‘No words could express our feelings for Buck,’ admitted Martin.11 ‘The pain that day cannot be described.’ The company was now down to about 50 per cent strength. They had taken their objective but at a terrible price.

  Also suffering had been the lead units of 11th Armoured Division. The 2nd Northants Yeomanry had been waiting to follow up behind the 3rd RTR and were moving forward by around 11 a.m., although as they passed near Démouville they engaged and destroyed two German self-propelled guns. Not until 4.30 p.m. were they ordered to go to the rescue of 3rd RTR. In A Squadron, Corporal Reg Spittles and his crew had already pushed up the railway embankment that ran south-east out of the city, his 2 Troop taking the lead. Moving on through the arches, they rumbled past the Cormelles factory complex, stopping around 500 yards further on, along some rough ground behind bushes, to look at their objectives. Almost immediately they came under fire and the troop sergeant’s tank was hit and brewed up. Spittles moved his tank forward and, jumping down, helped the troop sergeant to get the gunner and loader clear. He then drove back to their start point with the crew on the back, deposited them and headed back once more. It had not been a good start.

  While fighting continued around Bra and Hubert-Folie, further east the British attack had run out of steam. Hans von Luck reckoned the worst had been halted by around midday and reported as much via a restored radio link to
Feuchtinger. The divisional commander, in turn, told him 1. SS-Panzer-Division was being urgently brought back into the line, while Kurt Meyer’s 12. SS was also being brought back up. ‘The 1. SS will arrive today in the late afternoon,’ Feuchtinger told him, ‘the 12. SS not before midday tomorrow.12 We must hold until then.’ In fact, von Luck was not far wrong, although by this time the British and Canadians were on to the ridge and over the other side. The infantry of 3rd Division, operating on the left flank of the attack, had pushed into Troarn, where the Paras had blown the bridges on D-Day, while the Guards and 7th Armoured Divisions had overrun Cagny despite von Luck’s best efforts. They then pushed on, over the ridge to the village of Bourguébus itself, quickly renamed ‘Bugger’s Bus’ by the Tommies. 11th Armoured Division were still holding Bra and Hubert-Folie, while the 2nd Canadian Infantry Division had pushed south from the city.

  None the less, by 4 p.m. the fighting seemed to have quietened down in the Manneville area and, with 1. SS-Panzer-Division on its way, Hauptmann Fromme told Richard von Rosen to take his surviving Tigers back to the maintenance teams, using the roadworthy ones to tow those that were knocked out. Before his Tiger 311 set off, von Rosen had another look at the upturned Tiger 313 and it now occurred to him to check the escape hatch on the turret. Seeing it was slightly ajar, he leaned over and called out, and was amazed to get a reply. The hatch was wedged, though, and no matter how hard he tried to move it, he could not make it budge. Nor could the trapped men inside. Eventually, with the help of three others, they managed to ease it open enough for those inside to inch their way out. ‘We brought them out more dead than alive,’ noted von Rosen.13 ‘Now it was time for us all to get the hell out of there.’

  Fighting continued all the way along the ridge and beyond. General Eberbach was furiously trying to make sense of what was going on, but not until mid-afternoon were the dazed and confused Germans able to mount any serious counter-attack, and even then they were hammered in turn by Jabos, naval shelling and anti-tank guns. Flight Sergeant Ken Adam, for example, flew twice that day, attacking enemy gun positions in the morning and then carrying out an armed reconnaissance and shooting up 1. SS-Panzer-Division as they moved up to the front. At around 6.30 p.m. Corporal Reg Spittles finally rejoined his squadron at Bra, where they engaged the 1. SS now entering the fray. They were finally pulled back for the night at around 11 p.m., although were back in action the next day.

  By this time, however, General Dempsey had accepted there would be no dramatic breakthrough. Eberbach was amazed the British didn’t push on through overnight, but it was impossible to coordinate fighting of this scale in the dark, even with flares, and the casualties were considerable. The following day he kept pushing the gains made on the 18th, but the front was stiffening again as more German reinforcements arrived, including those two SS panzer divisions. Reg Spittles was back in action in Bra on the morning of the 19th, when his tank was hit on the back by an enemy shell. Because it was in the first salvo, they were not closed down, so he, his gunner and loader were all hit by shrapnel, albeit not badly. Everything on the outside of the tank was stripped off, however, including the radio aerial, and Spittles no longer had any comms at all, either internal or external. He set off to find the 7th Armoured Division and a unit of Cromwells to see if they could help. ‘This they did,’ he noted, ‘fitters sorted the tank, the Medical Officer patched our wounds up.’14 They rejoined the regiment the next day, by which time it had begun to rain and GOODWOOD had been brought to a halt, to the relief of the soldiers on both sides.

  Later that Thursday, 20 July, Spittles was wounded again. The Germans began to shell their leaguer. Because of the heavy rain, he and his crew decided against sleeping in a sodden slit-trench under their tank and so were trying to get some rest in a lorry instead. As soon as the shelling began, they quickly got out of the vehicle, but not before another nearby, on which boxes of ammunition were stored, was hit and exploded, shrapnel flying everywhere. ‘Unfortunately,’ scrawled Spittles, ‘one rather large part found me, almost breaking my back and one arm.’15 With severe bruising and a bad gash, he was evacuated to a field hospital.

  Of all the British battles in Normandy, GOODWOOD is the one for which Montgomery has suffered the most criticism. It has been pointed out that some 400 British tanks were lost that day, and for a mere 7 miles’ gain. Four hundred tanks! In one day! Eisenhower, for one, was furious. As he pointed out to Harry Butcher, 1,000 tons per mile seemed excessive even for the resource-rich Allies. Tedder was also seething and, had he had his own way, would have sacked both Montgomery and Leigh-Mallory, who he felt was increasingly plotting behind Coningham’s back. ‘On 20 July,’ wrote Tedder, ‘I spoke to Portal about the Army’s failure.16 We were agreed in regarding Montgomery as the cause.’

  Some qualification here is needed. First, from Montgomery’s point of view GOODWOOD achieved exactly what he had expected and was not a failure. Second Army enlarged the bridgehead east and south-east of Caen, and the battle got his troops on to the Bourguébus Ridge. It also chewed up large numbers of German troops and brought 12. SS and 1. SS rushing to the rescue, which meant there would be no more panzer divisions heading into the American sector. It wasn’t a great battle plan, but it was Dempsey’s, not Montgomery’s, and that was why they were unable to push on; without proper infantry support, the armour was too much out on a limb. The British armoured divisions were designed for exploitation, for advancing fast and wide once the breakthrough had been achieved. It was the independent armoured brigades that were supposed to achieve that breakthrough, operating hand in hand with the infantry. Unfortunately for Second Army, however, because of the terrain and because the Germans had fought, on Hitler’s orders, so close to the coast, the armoured divisions had been used in a way for which they had not been designed or created.

  Then there was the matter of tank losses. Reg Spittles pointed out that the 2nd Northants Yeomanry lost thirty-seven tanks at GOODWOOD out of fifty-two in the battalion. Of the 185 men manning those tanks, however, only 25 were casualties, which suggests most of the tanks that were knocked out of action did not brew up. In fact, the figure of 400 tanks for the day also needs re-addressing. Detailed reports by the Military Operational Research Unit (MORU) examined all tank casualties and categorized them into those destroyed and burned; those badly damaged but repairable in rear-area workshops; and those repairable near the front but taking longer than 24 hours. Their findings confirmed that, although 493 tanks suffered some kind of damage, only 156 were written off. In all, only 136 tank crew were killed, although the infantry, which was supposed to be preserved, lost 3,432 killed, wounded or missing between 18 and 22 July in the GOODWOOD battle; 300 of those, however, were Canadians who found themselves entirely encircled and forced to surrender to the 1. SS-Panzer-Division on 21 July.

  That final figure of tank losses, however, rather illustrates why the Allies were winning the war, because a phenomenal 218 of those tanks were back in action within just twenty-four hours of being reported knocked out, and a further 62 within a matter of days. As darkness fell, swarms of British tank wreckers and gun tractors had poured on to the battlefield and retrieved all but the blackened, burned-out hulls. LADs and workshops toiled furiously with an abundance of tools, winching gear and spare parts and got them ready again. Montgomery had 3,500 tanks on the eve of GOODWOOD. Some 156 permanent losses were something they could easily absorb. And 156 was a long way short of the 400 usually bandied about when GOODWOOD is discussed.

  German losses amounted to eighty-three tanks and assault guns, the strength of one entire panzer division, and included twenty-six Panthers, seven Tigers and three 72-ton King Tigers, the only ones in Normandy. General Eberbach had to accept that the remaining, battered, half of 16. Luftwaffen-Felddivision had been ‘swept away’, as had elements of 21. Panzer.17 ‘The local reserves had been annihilated or shattered,’ he added, ‘their guns smashed before they ever fired a shot.’

  Montgomery might have been
quick to take the plaudits and bask in the glory when it came his way, but he also took the flak on the chin. He had been in a tricky position before GOODWOOD and, when it fell some way short of Eisenhower’s expectations, he made no effort to point the finger of blame at anyone else; the more ambitious plan, and the use of the armoured divisions in a striking role, was Dempsey’s, after all. GOODWOOD had, in fact, more than achieved all Monty’s expectations for it, and, all things considered, at quite a small cost. He would ride out the storm, however, as he had known he would; back home in England, he had a powerful supporter in General Sir Alan Brooke, the British chief of the Imperial General Staff, who knew there was no one else ready to take Montgomery’s place, nor, frankly, anyone better to handle the largely civilian armies of which he had charge. What’s more, Montgomery had the people’s vote. No one was going to sack Monty.

  Yet once again, whatever crisis seemed to be facing the Allies, it was as nothing compared with that confronting the Germans, for on Thursday, 20 July, as the GOODWOOD battle petered out, an assassination attempt was made on Hitler’s life, and it very nearly worked. This stunning event would fling the German defence of Normandy into even further disarray.

  CHAPTER 30

  Saint-Lô

  No matter that GOODWOOD achieved Montgomery’s ambitions for the battle, there is no doubt that by the third week of July morale was taking a dip across all the Allied forces, and that was a potentially dangerous state of affairs. Most troops at the front had no idea just how parlous the condition of the German forces really was; as far as most were concerned, they were hitting a brick wall of fanatical, highly trained Nazis. In fact, the opposite was closer to the truth: the Germans were hitting a brick wall of immense Allied fire-power and slowly but surely bleeding themselves to death, and now that Hitler had survived an assassination attempt, the German commanders in charge could expect even tighter – and more disruptive – interfering from the top.