On 4 August, 50th Division took Villers-Bocage, completely flattened since the leading tanks of the Desert Rats had pushed into the town on that early morning in June. The same day, the 6th KOSB were back in action. It was blisteringly hot as they attacked the leeward side of a ridge near Montchauvet into stiffening resistance. Nebelwerfers screamed over, mortars exploded and the tanks of the Welsh Guards were engaged with Tigers. As dusk fell, Captain Robert Woollcombe watched the entire crest burning, as hayricks, farmsteads and undergrowth all flamed furiously. ‘A profusion of Nebelwerfers wailed over the scene,’ he wrote, ‘and A Company were unable to capture their objective for the simple reason that it was on fire.’19 By the morning, however, with the rest of the division moved up and more Crocodiles come to lend a hand, they were over and beyond.
Further east, Dempsey had finally lost patience with Bucknall and Erskine and both were sacked. It was Dempsey’s call, not Montgomery’s as is usually claimed, but it had Monty’s backing. It was the right decision too, for while it was much better not to sack commanders in the field, occasionally it was needed. Collins and Bradley had made changes at 90th Division, for example – twice now, because Major-General Eugene Landrum, Mackelvie’s replacement, had also been removed – but those had been the only ones. Both Dempsey and Montgomery were deeply mindful of not pushing their troops too hard, but it was a narrow line to walk: go too soft and the battle would drag on, resulting in even greater casualties; push too hard, however, and there could be slaughter, setbacks, a major dip in morale, or worse. Yet at Aunay, XXX Corps had not been facing 21. Panzer for long; the latter had been replaced in the line by another poorly equipped infantry division. What’s more, the cross-over should have given 7th Armoured an opening to strike hard. It was essential Dempsey had confidence in his commanders; he had lost that with Bucknall and Erskine. Bucknall was outraged, which rather underlined the rightness of the decision, and was replaced by Lieutenant-General Brian Horrocks, who had commanded a corps under Monty in North Africa before getting wounded.
Aunay did finally fall to the Desert Rats, however, by which time only the church and one other building were still standing; engineers had to be brought in to clear the rubble and debris. Dead Germans littered the streets but, as they had retreated, the enemy had laced the place with booby traps and mines, something they had become fiendishly good at in Italy; it was a very effective way of slowing an Allied advance. A little to the west, meanwhile, the 4th Dorsets were called forward on the morning of the 4th to attack and take the village of Ondefontaine. Resistance was stiff. The advancing infantry of D Company were cut down by machine guns and mortars, and artillery shelling continued all day. Walter Caines was struggling with a severe shortage of manpower and, for once, a lack of equipment; they had used so much wire since 30 July that he had almost none left. It was up to Lance Corporal Harris and himself to keep the entire battalion in contact and they had to do so while dodging the shells. Harris had his helmet badly dented by a piece of shrapnel at one point; only a mug of tea given to them by a cheerful company runner did anything to restore their composure. Later, and in quick succession, Caines was shot at by a sniper then forced to leap for his life as a volley of shells came over. ‘I really did feel scared,’ he confessed, ‘probably because I had been without sleep for so long.20 Somehow, I felt I should say a prayer, so laying on the ground, clasping my hands tightly together, I quietly prayed.’
The following day, with contact to brigade broken, he was sent back on his motorbike for instructions. They were to attack Ondefontaine again, this time with the full weight of artillery behind them, as well as the support of the Sherwood Rangers Yeomanry. It was a sombre O Group that Caines attended later that morning: hardly any officers were left and no replacements had reached them over the past few days; casualties across the entire battalion had been heinous. ‘The unit had certainly taken a knocking,’ noted Caines, ‘a blow on the jaw I will never forget, but we were not downhearted, every man was prepared to rise and box on.’21
Major John Semken’s A Squadron of the Sherwood Rangers led the attack that evening, but had to advance down the one and only approach road – always a deeply nerve-racking experience for the lead tank – and in view of the high ground on their flank on which the Germans had their OP and tanks. Unable to take the village that night, they tried again the following morning, the 4th Dorsets and Sherwood Rangers going in together after another heavy artillery barrage. Stanley Christopherson’s friend, Peter Seleri, the commander of C Squadron, was wounded in the process by a mortar fragment; it was not life-threatening, but it meant another officer had been lost for the time being. Seleri was ever cheerful and Christopherson knew he would miss him greatly, although perhaps not his radio style when in action. ‘He was prone to using long and ponderous words,’ wrote Christopherson.22 ‘Instead of saying, “In wood to my left front, three enemy tanks moving left to right, am engaging,” he would monopolise the air by reporting, “I can without question discern three moving objects in yonder wood, which give me an unquestionable impression of resembling three Tigers which appear to portray hostile inclinations. It is my intention to offer immediate engagement,” much to the frantic impatience of the other tank stations.’
The attack, however, was successful and that morning they moved in among the ruins of the village, over yet more dead Germans. ‘Ondefontaine,’ wrote Caines, ‘was now in the Fighting Fourth’s hands.’23 So too was Mont Pinçon, finally captured the same day, 6 August, by the Wessexmen after a brutal fight against 21. Panzer. The 5th Wiltshires, down to just two companies, had only sixty-three men standing by late afternoon; it was their sister battalion, the 4th Wiltshires, who eventually claimed the crest with the help of bold action from the 13th/18th Hussars.
BLUECOAT had run its course, but it had been a huge success for Second Army, who had demonstrated a new level of tactical verve and flexibility, harnessed to operational skill of the highest calibre; it proved hard lessons had been learned during the past two months of vicious fighting. For all the frustrations of the Allied high command, eight weeks was really not very long, especially not in the context of the entire war, and what had been achieved deserves greater accolades than have often been awarded. By the beginning of the second week of August, the Allied forces in Normandy were on the cusp of a stunning victory. There was, though, one more twist to be played out in this bitter battle.
CHAPTER 33
LÜTTICH
Leutnant Richard von Rosen had missed the British attack south to Aunay and Mont Pinçon because immediately after the GOODWOOD battle he had been given three days’ leave in Paris. German troops were rarely given time off and especially not during a big battle, but with most of his tanks in the workshop and nothing much for him to command, he and the adjutant, Oberleutnant Barkhausen, could be briefly spared. They were still in Paris when Hauptmann Scherf arrived at their hotel to tell von Rosen that his surviving panzers had been handed over to 2. Kompanie and that he was to report to the troop training depot at Mailly-le-Camp near Châlons along with the rest of his 3. Kompanie to pick up some new Tigers. Having reached Mailly-le-Camp, however, it turned out his precious new Tigers had yet to leave Germany – it was ever thus at this stage of the war – and not until 3 August did they finally arrive.
Nor were they Tigers but Tiger IIs, or Königstiger as they were better known – more than 70 tons of the heaviest and thirstiest combat tank in the world. It was an awesome, huge beast, earmarked for a battle that was already lost and where there was precious little fuel or the infrastructure needed to keep this monster in the fight. Really, at this stage of the campaign, it is hard to think of a more pointless weapon of war to send to Normandy; if anything mechanical went wrong with these tanks, they would be going absolutely nowhere. As it was, they had arrived at Mailly with a large amount of their equipment missing.
Von Rosen thought he ought to present himself at the battalion CP to report on the situation. ‘On this journey,’ he noted, i
n which he passed through the area of the Maquis Surcouf, ‘I came into contact for the first time with the French Résistance movement, the Maquis.1 There was some danger, but I came out of it unscathed.’
All over France, the Résistance was performing heroically and proving of great help to the Allied cause, but it was notable that these sabotage efforts were far more successful where there was some kind of higher Allied control. Decisions over where support was given varied, but for the most part it was focused on areas where sabotage could be most effectively applied to stop or hinder the movement of enemy troops. On the other hand, it was also important there were not hordes of over-armed Résistance fighters getting in the way of the Allied breakout when it finally happened, one of the main reasons why the Maquis Surcouf had been rather abandoned.
Still no arms had arrived since D-Day, and they were struggling. Robert Leblanc, their beleaguered leader, continued to spend much time moving from one hiding place to the next, all the while contending with increasingly fractious members of his group. Resisters were being denounced and arrested, while Leblanc was dealing with those known to have betrayed them with equal brutality. One lady, ‘Madamoiselle XX014X’, had been suspected of being a spy and had then backed up a German who had been accused of rape. ‘I decide that this old shrew will be hanged,’ scribbled Leblanc in his diary.2 ‘First, because she deserves it. Secondly, because everybody in Campigny will be relieved. And it will make an example for those who consider denouncing us. We are at war, I make war!’ He sounded like the Germans or the Milice. The mademoiselle was killed on 4 July by seven of Leblanc’s men, who hit her on the head with a rifle butt, though initially not hard enough. Fighting back, she bit the hand of the man, who grabbed her and screamed for help, but they hit her again – and again – and then hanged her from a tree. Father Deuve, the sacristan at Saint-Étienne-l’Allier, who was accused of denouncing some of the Maquis Surcouf, was also hanged, but from the church tower. Another man accused of denunciation in Fourmetot was snatched, brought before the town mayor, publicly beaten, then hanged from a street lamp in front of the town hall. It was barbaric.
Meanwhile, more of Leblanc’s men were getting arrested, while another splinter group of resisters were robbing others in the name of the Maquis. ‘It’s anarchy,’ wrote Leblanc on 6 July.3 It certainly was, and it was not clear how they were achieving anything very useful in their quest to help the Allies and liberate France from the Nazi oppressors.
The BBC had been urging the people to demonstrate against the Germans on Bastille Day, 14 July, and Leblanc dutifully obeyed by organizing a large service at the graves of some of his fallen comrades. The night attack they had planned, however, had to be cancelled because there were too many Germans about – alerted, no doubt, by the demonstrations of defiance earlier in the day. By 3 August, Leblanc was still on the move, this time to his thirty-fifth hideout. The news from the front sounded better, but life was still as tough, dangerous, and his Maquis Surcouf, short of arms and ammunition, was achieving little apart from fuelling the local mood of mistrust and violence. As if to prove the point, three more of his best maquis were caught and killed, with others arrested the following morning. ‘Pelican, Jean l’Abbé, Raspail dead!’ he wrote.4 ‘All the liaisons cut! Mireille and Raymond arrested! What a disaster!’
One area where resistance was proving very effective was in Brittany, where the Allies had focused a lot of effort. Here, they had pumped the Maquis and FFI full of arms. The French SAS team had also been parachuted in there on D-Day, while Général Pierre Koenig, head of the FFI from Britain, was based at SHAEF and had been in regular contact with Bradley. The new 12th Army Group commander now announced that all the resistance in Brittany would come under the direct orders of General Patton and his Third Army, but should carry out sabotage and guerrilla activities through the region. On 3 August, the BBC made repeated radio announcements urging the FFI and Breton Maquis to rise up and begin such action. By the following day, however, Patton’s other armoured spearhead, 6th Armored Division, had already sped off down the peninsula in a cloud of swirling dust, so Koenig asked permission to parachute in his designated commander, Colonel Albert Eon, and deputy, Colonel Passy, from England, right away so that they could take control of Résistance operations. This was agreed, albeit on the understanding that Eon and Passy did so at their own risk, as neither had yet carried out a single practice jump. Both men landed successfully the following night, 4 August, as did a further 150 French from 3 SAS, who parachuted in to protect the railway bridges at Morlaix, east of Brest. On the night of the 5th, ten US gliders then landed between Vannes and Lorient, packed with Jeeps, weapons and ammunition for the FFI, while the next day, 6 August, contact was made with an American armoured patrol.
By that time, however, most of the peninsula of Brittany had been cleared, much to the befuddlement of General Middleton, the VIII Corps commander, which was now part of Third Army. Ever since his armour had gadded off into the distance, Middleton had had little idea of where they were. On 2 August, he had learned they had sped on past Saint-Malo, which Middleton had ordered to be taken first, as he worried the hinge there, between Normandy and Brittany, looked weak. Patton, on the other hand, had ordered him to go hell for leather for Brest, which was exactly what 6th Armored had done. Middleton now couldn’t locate Patton to argue for a greater concentration on the Dinard–Saint-Malo area and so felt he had to appeal to Bradley.
‘Some people are more concerned with the headlines and the news they’ll make than the soundness of their tactics,’ huffed Bradley.5 ‘I don’t care if we get Brest tomorrow or ten days later. If we cut the peninsula, we’ll get it anyhow. But we can’t risk a loose hinge.’ If the Germans now decided to counter-attack with three divisions, he added, they would make them look very foolish. It would be embarrassing for Patton too. Middleton suggested they turn 79th Infantry down towards the hinge. Bradley was not happy about having to overrule Patton, but Middleton was right – the 79th was closest and there was no time to lose. Bradley later chastized his Third Army commander, but Patton shrugged it off. ‘Brad went over the situation,’ noted Hansen, ‘and George laughed, put his arm round the old man, told him he did the right thing.’6 So that was all right. In the meantime, his 4th Armored had surged towards Rennes, which they encircled the following day.
This lightning fast cavalry charge across Brittany was very much the Patton way. His arrival into the fray could not have been more perfectly timed, as the situation was ideal for the kind of warfare he preferred. ‘Self-confidence, speed and audacity,’ were his watch-words.7 With Bradley now 12th Army Group commander and his former deputy, General Courtney Hodges, having taken over First Army, there had been a sudden and dramatic surge in the number of US forces in France. Among the newcomers were two more entire corps, XV and XX, which had been held back since mid-July, and also XII Corps, which was currently staging into Normandy as the surge south took place. For the first time, French units were arriving too; now landing with XII Corps was Général Philippe Leclerc’s US-equipped 2nd Armoured Division.
Nor was that all. XIX Tactical Air Command, which had been operating under IX TAC, now became operational too. Mary Coningham’s Second TAF Headquarters moved across the Channel and set up shop in Normandy, while Ninth Air Force Headquarters was due to follow. More men, more tanks, more guns, more fighter planes, more bombers. The full might of American industry, begun a mere four years earlier after a series of meetings between President Roosevelt and certain leading captains of industry, had in barely comprehensible rapid time transformed itself into a Titan of mighty war-materiel manufacturing. It was unprecedented in world history and utterly remarkable. For the Germans, it must have seemed as though the American forces were like some horrific Hydra’s head; no matter how many Nebelwerfer rounds they fired, or how many 88s or Panthers or machine guns they dragged into the battle, there were yet more Americans coming towards them.
The biggest challenge, it seemed, was getting
these immense numbers of American troops and quantities of materiel south and into the open where they could manoeuvre and begin the giant wheel towards the east. Most troops were still landing on Omaha and Utah, then heading down through the wreckage of Saint-Lô, Coutances and Avranches. Only two routes were realistically usable; they converged both at Coutances and at Avranches before splitting again, and both were lined with dead Germans, dead horses, upturned carts, burned-out tanks and vehicles, and the rubble of destroyed buildings. However, bulldozers were hurriedly sent south to clear paths through this wreckage and, once again, the incredible Allied logistical system ensured those vital bits of equipment, as well as the engineers and service corps to man and oversee such work, were readily and swiftly available.
By 1 August, it was blindingly obvious to all the senior German commanders in Normandy that the battle was lost, and when Eberbach suggested to von Kluge that they rapidly pull out and retreat behind the River Seine, he was echoing the thoughts of Hausser, Dietrich et al. There was some good sense to such a move. Normandy was clearly lost, yet much of Germany’s 15. Armee was still behind the Seine, because only now that Patton had arrived with the US Third Army did the Germans finally accept there would be no Allied invasion in the Pas de Calais. They could salvage whatever they could of their 7. Armee, with Panzergruppe West holding the eastern flank as they did so, then the remaining armour of I. and II. Panzerkorps could also pull back. With much of 15. Armee already behind the Seine, there was less travelling for those divisions to do, which was a good thing given the Allies’ total domination of the skies – a domination that was becoming more evident with every passing day. As nearly two months’ fighting had proved with crystal clarity, the more German troop movements, the more they would be chewed up just in the process of getting from A to B.
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