Normandy '44

by James Holland

  The men of the 1st Northants Yeomanry learned what this was going to be on the afternoon of 7 August, as the sun beat down, strong and warm. Lance Corporal Ken Tout had been stripped to his waist as he zeroed the gun sights on their Sherman. They had known all day they were going into battle that evening – a night attack was part of Simonds’ innovative approach; certainly a combined-arms nighttime attack was something new in Normandy.

  ‘Do you think the Germans will really stay asleep with all this lot chugging around the countryside in the dark?’3 one of the lads had asked. The answer was no, but Simonds hoped the German infantry, very new to the line, would be thrown by a surprise assault in the dark. Lieutenant Bobby McColl, the troop commander, joined them by their tanks at around 5.30 p.m. Everyone stood up.

  ‘Business this time, lads,’ he said.4 ‘For real. Orders are simple. Keep rolling. Keep moving. Keep in sight of the tail light of the tank in front.’ All the villages had been fortified by the Hun, he told them. If anyone got lost, they should follow the green tracer from the Bofors guns firing over them. The colonel, David Forster, and squadron officers then arrived for a briefing and pep-talk. Colonel Forster seemed to struggle to find the right words; he quite openly hated sending his young charges into battle. ‘The Germans are now almost surrounded,’ he told them.5 ‘We are being asked to slam the door on their retreat.’ He reiterated that they were to keep moving. The objective was the village of Saint-Aignan-de-Cramesnil, code-named ‘Fly By Night’, and they were expected there by 3 a.m. Forster tapped the silver regimental badge on his black beret. ‘Our little silver horse does not look very savage,’ he said.6 ‘But he can gallop across country. Good luck!’

  The plan was to try to smash through the first line of German defence this coming night, then at first light consolidate and wait for the heavy bombers to blast a way through the rest of the German lines. Two columns of all arms – armour, mobile infantry and anti-tank artillery – would make the night assault, the infantry in half-tracks and new armoured personnel carriers, developed by the Canadians from Sherman chassis, called ‘Kangaroos’. Then the armour, including the newly arrived Polish Armoured Division, would strike on towards Falaise. Night advances were fraught with difficulties, but searchlights, flares and radio beams would help Forster’s columns navigate their way through. A second wave of infantry would then follow up and finish off the enemy forward lines, while the two columns of armour surged ahead after the bombing.

  9.15 p.m. ‘Driver, start up!’7 said Snowie Snowdon, Ken Tout’s tank commander. The Northants Yeomanry and the rest of the 33rd Armoured Brigade were partnering with infantry from the 51st Highland Division, while on the other side of the road the Canadian column would be led by the 2nd Infantry and 2nd Armoured Brigade; this time, Charlie Martin, Bob Roberts and the men of the 8th Infantry Brigade were not in the spearhead.

  Tout and his fellow crew all wore their tanker overalls, black berets and a variety of non-regulation shoes: hobnailed boots were no good in or on a tank. Some wore rubber-soled plimsolls; Ken Tout had a pair of brown shoes from Stead & Simpson. Headset on – simple headphones over the top of his beret were the only way they could communicate over the din of the engine, the gun and the barrage already booming behind them. They trundled up the slope from Cormelles. Much of the ground round about was churned up, cratered and blasted, but they advanced through cornfields, following the green Bofors tracer – then suddenly someone appeared to have turned on a light switch. Looking through his periscope from inside the Sherman turret, Ken Tout thought it seemed eerie, almost inexplicable.

  ‘That is artificial moonlight,’ said Snowdon.8 ‘Searchlights shining on the clouds. It should help a little.’

  It was at around midnight that the first wave of bombers came over, some 660 Lancasters and Halifaxes dropping about 4 tons each, pounding the ground and villages on the flanks of their advance. Huge concussive waves pulsed through the ground and into their tank as each cluster of bombs detonated. The light was strange – dim and grainy close by, but up ahead brilliantly clear as spouts of flame rose above the trees. Tout sat in the turret next to Snowdon, watching, and saw a tank thrown lazily into the air then plunge back down again into the trees. ‘The physical sensation here on the turret,’ wrote Tout, ‘is that of standing on a beach during a cyclonic storm.’9 Warm, foul-smelling air rushed over them and dust blew in their eyes. And this a thousand yards from the bombs.

  They pressed on, past burning trees and fires, across the pitted, desolate, devastated lunar landscape of GOODWOOD, up and down craters, the tank swaying and lurching, until eventually they emerged into still largely untouched countryside of hedges, sunken lanes and fields. By 1 a.m. the fighting had begun and by 1.20 a.m. Tout was answering Snowdon’s instructions, spinning the turret, his eye to the telescope, pressing his foot on to the firing button, then on the co-axial machine-gun firing button. HE rounds, and the gun crashed, the breech hurtled back, jamming against the springs, then slid forward again into position for another round, the automatically opening breech spewing out choking cordite fumes. Another shot, then another and another, dust, smoke and grit swirling up, creating a second darkness and obscurity around the darkness of the night. For all involved it was deeply confusing, chaotic and cacophonous.

  By 3.15 a.m. they had reached Fly By Night – Saint-Aignan-de-Cramesnil – and the regiment paused. Tout was able to clamber out of the turret and stretch his legs. Earlier he had struggled to keep images of murderous SS hordes and Tiger tanks out of his mind, but now it was a bit calmer and there were some Black Watch infantrymen about to talk to. ‘Behind us and to our right rear the moonlit night is ruddy with flashes,’ noted Tout.10 ‘But here all is doom quiet, silver frosted. Is it possible that the Germans have not realised that we are here?’

  They had, but had been simply blown away; the 89. Infanterie-Division, low-grade, poorly trained and equipped, had arrived only three days earlier, hastily shipped in from Norway, and had now largely ceased to exist, its men fled, killed, wounded or captured by the combination of air power, artillery and monstrous mechanized all-arms columns. All the first objectives had been taken, and the British column had suffered just forty casualties, the Canadians a number more – some 340 – but a penetration of 4 miles wide and 5 deep had been achieved. The next phase was to consolidate these gains by mopping up any enemy pockets, wait for the bombers to come over at 1 p.m. and blast a hole in the next line of German defences, then to push through two more armoured divisions, the 4th Canadian and the 1st Polish.

  In fact, the first part of TOTALIZE had been so completely successful that, had the two columns pressed on, they might well have bludgeoned their way through the 12. SS, still woefully understrength and completely thrown by the sudden rupture of the front. This, however, was where the constraints of wealth played a part. General Simonds and his commanders were not aware of just how successful his plan had been and did not have a clear enough picture to change tack and go hell for leather right away without the help of the bombers due an hour after midday. In any case, the bombers could not be so easily cancelled at short notice, and they did represent a lot of explosive power. So, instead, the attack force sat around on their objectives twiddling their thumbs.

  Kurt Meyer had hurried forward towards Bretteville-sur-Laize soon after he heard the first bombs falling, only to find the village impassable. He was also shocked to see terrified German soldiers pouring back down the road. Speeding off in his Kübelwagen, he recognized that if anyone was going to halt this attack it was going to be his 12. SS ‘Hitlerjugend’ Division; he certainly couldn’t rely on the rabble streaming back from the front, nor on the 85. Infanterie-Division, also newly arrived and of equally poor quality as the 89. Meyer reached Standartenführer Mohnke’s SS-Panzergrenadier-Regiment 25 CP a short while after and a little later was joined by General Eberbach, who had also come up to the front to see the situation for himself. Together they agreed a plan of action. Meyer had just forty-eight panze
rs in all, since some of his arsenal had already been sent to Mortain – the rest of the division had been due to follow – so had to make do with Kampfgruppen of grenadiers, panzers, anti-tank guns and mortars. Two were sent to take back the high ground around Saint-Aignan and west of Saint-Sylvain, and a third was told to occupy and defend the high ground to the west of the road.

  The Northants Yeomanry had moved forward out of Saint-Aignan on 8 August, with C Squadron in fields due south of the village. No. 3 Troop, including Snowie Snowdon’s tank, were sitting on the edge of some trees. Directly in front of them, a track led down into a narrow, curving gully, perhaps 15 feet deep and a football pitch wide, before climbing again to a mass of hedgerows and, beyond that, a farmstead, marked Robertmesnil on the map. Stretching away from their position were cornfields running all the way across to the main Caen–Falaise road, and beyond that the wall of a small country chateau. No. 2 Troop had pushed down into the gully, planning to climb out again into the hedgerows to watch on Robertmesnil. No. 4 Troop were on the left, spread through the edge of the wood, while No. 1 Troop were beyond them. An orchard stood to the immediate left of Snowdon’s tank, where the Black Watch were digging in. A Squadron were spaced out on their right and B Squadron behind. They were, they knew, in the vanguard of the TOTALIZE advance and were waiting for the SS men to counter-attack, part of the consolidation before the heavy bombers of the Eighth Air Force came over. But right now, mid-morning, absolutely nothing was happening.

  ‘Sitting here like this,’ said Stan Hicken, their driver, ‘we might just as well be watching a cricket match.11 Nothing happening, nobody moving, bloody monotonous soul-destroying waste of time.’

  Hicken had clearly been tempting fate, because soon after, at around 10.30 a.m., there came a loud slam and crash, and from the chatter on the battalion net it seemed the CO’s tank had been hit. In Snowdon’s tank they could only speculate on whether the colonel and his crew were badly hurt or worse, but then B Squadron’s commander was hit too. All remained quiet in their little sector, though, until around 11.15 a.m. Corporal Stanley in 2 Troop suddenly came on the net. ‘Hallo, Roger 2 Baker.12 Alert! I seem to see movement half-left, a hundred yards left of roof but cannot yet identify. 2 Baker, over.’ Everyone liked Stanley. He had grown a small Hitler moustache for a laugh and was very much the squadron joker. He kept everyone cheery. From the gunner’s position in the turret of Snowdon’s tank, Ken Tout peered through both his periscope and the more magnified telescope, traversing the gun as he did so.

  A sudden shuddering wham, loud and close across the background noise of artillery fire.

  ‘Two Baker, I’m bloody hit!’ shouted Stanley. ‘Bail out! Hornet at … Gawd!’

  ‘Hornet’ meant an enemy tank or assault gun. But where did he mean? Tout traversed again, frantically searching, then saw something, solid-topped, between the hedges. He stamped on the firing button, the breech whammed backwards, the muzzle spouted fire and the Sherman rocked in recoil. Multiple flashes now hammered into the far hedge beyond the gully. Eventually Snowdon ordered ceasefire. They were worried about Stanley, but there was no sign of a fire or of a Sherman brewing up. Maybe he had got out. Perhaps they all had. Beyond in the hedgerows, though, smoke was rising – thick smoke with no flames. The German gun. Then more waiting.

  Heading towards Saint-Aignan that same day, Tuesday, 8 August, were the Tigers of Schwere Panzerabteilung 101 commanded by Sturmbannführer Michael Wittmann, the celebrated panzer ace, feted throughout the Reich and only just back with 12. SS after being called to the Wolf’s Lair to be awarded the Swords of the Knight’s Cross by Hitler himself. Wittmann’s fame and celebrity had grown since his one-man shooting spree in Villers-Bocage a week after the invasion, but either over-confidence and recklessness or the pressing orders of Kurt Meyer to grab and hold the high ground had led him to advance towards Saint-Aignan directly across the open fields in front of the 1st Northants Yeomanry a little after 12.30 p.m.

  They were first called out by 3 Charlie, A Squadron’s Firefly with its big 17-pounder, and the words sent tremors of fear through Ken Tout.

  ‘Hullo, Oboe Able to 3 Charlie,’ Tout heard the A Squadron troop leader say.13 ‘I see them now. Keep under cover and hold fire until about 800 yards. Then fire at the last one while I pepper the others. Over.’ The idea was to hammer the enemy with HE, not with much hope of destroying any of them, but to confuse them and cover them in smoke, making them continue hatch-down. Hopefully, their visibility would then be so poor they wouldn’t be able to fire back very effectively.

  ‘Oboe Able to 3 Charlie. Near enough. Fire! Over.’ The commander of 3 Charlie acknowledged and ordered his gunner to fire. The big gun blam-crashed and hit the last Tiger, which now erupted into flames, much to the delight of the Yeomen, then 3 Charlie reversed into cover while the 75s of A Squadron fired their HE rounds and the Tigers began firing back blind. Blam-crash again, the Firefly’s shell hissing towards its target in less than a second.

  ‘Oboe Able to Oboe. Second Tiger brewing. Am keeping third busy while Charlie brings to bear. Over.’

  ‘Oboe, bloody good show. Over.’

  The third Tiger’s 88 and 3 Charlie’s 17-pounder now fired almost simultaneously, but the panzers, including a fourth, were also being attacked by the Sherbrooke Fusiliers from behind the wall by the chateau and, although all Shermans rather than Fireflies, they were firing from only around 150 yards. A moment later a third Tiger was hit. Tout saw flames erupt beyond the trees in front of him.

  Who exactly hit Wittmann’s tank has been the subject of feverish debate ever since, but what is clear is that a shell penetrated the main part of the tank, which was almost fully loaded with ammunition, igniting the shells inside, which, combined with the immense kinetic energy, generated a massive explosion that blew the entire turret, weighing some 15 tons, high into the air and, with it, Wittmann and his crew. Lower-velocity 75mm guns could destroy a Tiger, but generally only at weak spots like its backside or by knocking out tracks. Everything about the violence of the Tiger’s end points to it being that of a high-velocity gun. And the only one of those firing at that moment was 3 Charlie, whose gunner was Trooper Joe Ekins.

  That was not the end of the firefight, however. Not long after, some twenty Panzer IVs began engaging them, the squadron net alive with frantic chatter as enemy tanks were hit and they then began being knocked out in turn.

  ‘Two Charlie! Behind you!14 Behind you, I say! 2 Able, traverse right! Charlie! Charlie!’ came the frantic voice of one of 2 Troop’s commanders. ‘Oh my God, 2 Charlie is brewing. 2 Able, can’t you traverse right? Right! Traverse … Oh my God … bail out … bail!’ Suddenly, Snowdon’s tank seemed horribly exposed, with Tout desperately traversing the turret and peering for all his life’s worth through the telescope. ‘The day degenerates into chaos, noise, flame, smoke, grilling sunshine, stinking sweat, searing fear, billowing blast,’ wrote Tout, ‘and our tank shuddering and juddering even as it stands still on the exposed, oh so exposed ridge crest.’15 They now moved forward, slowly, Tout and Snowdon craning their eyes to see a sign of the enemy panzer that had knocked out all of 2 Troop. Then Tout saw it, in among the trees and hedge at the edge of the gully – a box-like shape that didn’t fit.

  ‘Hornet! Hornet! Hornet!’ shouted Snowdon. Tout elevated the gun, crosswires on to the shape, then stamped down his foot and boom! The gun fired, crashing back and forward again. While the tracer of his round shot through the air, another flash came back and a further tracer sped towards the panzer. The German shell was wide, but Tout’s and the second shell seemed to have hit – a puff of smoke, a shape jerking backwards and then thick, black smoke tinged with flame. Tout fired again, then one further time. The panzer was dead.

  The firing died down, but soon after the bombers arrived – 681 heavies, Fortresses and Liberators, the first bombs landing worryingly close to Tout and his comrades. The tank men fired off yellow smoke and then the bombs began falling further on, where
they were supposed to – another giant hammer blow of carnage, obliterating yet more French villages in the process, and while this latest rain of bombs was whistling down, two more Mk IVs were engaged and brewed up near the Falaise road. Then the bombers were gone and suddenly the battlefield – their battlefield around Saint-Aignan – fell silent again. Tout was able to pause and think about what had happened and what might happen to him, to his crew, if they were hit. Fear gripped him once more. ‘The clutching feeling at the heart,’ he wrote, ‘piercing sensation in the throat, ice-cold prickles up the nape of the neck and under the ears, burning fire behind the eyes, within the cheeks and across the eyebrows.’16

  Meanwhile, away to the west, despite demands from Hitler to renew the attempt to strike for Avranches, LÜTTICH was getting nowhere. The panzer divisions had been savaged the previous day, 7 August, from the air. Eighty-one panzers were destroyed, fifty-four damaged and a further twenty-six simply abandoned for lack of fuel, mechanical failure or because the crews bailed out rather than face the relentless attacks from the air. Hundreds of trucks, armoured cars, half-tracks and other vehicles were destroyed.

  Willi Müller was now in the ruins of Mortain, his pioneer battalion just a few hundred strong and attached still to the 2. SS ‘Das Reich’ Division – or what was left of it. They were not able to achieve very much – mere bit-players while the armour was slaughtered, holding Mortain while the Americans stubbornly clung to Hill 317. Elsewhere, American divisions continued to chip away, although not without suffering casualties of their own. On 8 August, the 47th Infantry of the 9th Division was in action near Saint-Pois, between Vire and Mortain, fighting back against LÜTTICH. Lieutenant Orion Shockley was hit twice – first when an American tank opened fire and its shell killed his runner and sent a piece of fizzing shrapnel into his back. Fortunately for Shockley, it wasn’t too bad; the shard was removed, his back patched up and he continued leading his men. Next, his company was ordered to take a hill position. Crossing a road, his canteen, hooked on to his waist, was hit, soaking his leg. Later, the Germans called a truce in order to get their wounded clear. Shockley went forward to meet the delegation and discovered that the German medic holding the makeshift flag of truce had emigrated to the States before the war, but had gone back to Germany to visit family in 1939 and been conscripted. He had no wish to fight at all, least of all against Americans, which was why he had become a medic.