Normandy '44

by James Holland

  From his blocking position, Hans von Luck could see the endgame of the Normandy battle being played; he had a grand view and watched the Jabos swooping down and the mushroom clouds of exploding bombs. He recalled an old Crusader knight’s poem: ‘“Man, horse, and truck by the Lord were struck.”’24 It had come to his mind twice before – near Moscow in December 1941, in North Africa in 1943. And now.

  Charlie Martin, meanwhile, was in Maizières, a few miles to the north-east of Falaise. He had already seen his fill of carnage and destruction, but what he now witnessed was on an entirely different scale. The sunken roads were littered with the dead, with burned-out equipment and vehicles. ‘This was an awful price of war,’ he noted, ‘the bodies of enemy soldiers, dead horses and cows, broken wagons, disabled anti-tank guns and burned trucks.’25 The stench was overwhelming. Much to his distress, he saw too many civilians among the dead. Liberty was coming at a very heavy price in Normandy as one town or village after another was flattened and lives were destroyed. The levels of destruction were truly titanic: Caen largely obliterated, along with Saint-Lô, Coutances, Vire, Aunay, Villers-Bocage and Falaise, birthplace of William the Conqueror. In between, far too many villages had been completely erased. The typhoon of war had, indeed, been terrible.

  The gap was finally closed on the afternoon of Saturday, 19 August after the Poles, who had learned valuable lessons of combat in quick time, had taken the key Hill 262, Mont Ormel, up which one of the prime German escape routes wound its way. From here, all the way down to the Dives Valley, the road was thick with carnage. Truly, this was a scarring picture of defeat and the very terrible cost of war. But the battle for Normandy was over.

  Postscript

  On 22 August, Flight Sergeant Ken Adam saw the battlefield himself, three days after the gap had been closed and the last German troops had managed to get away. The squadron had been given a rare day off, so he and a number of other pilots took a truck and drove over to the Falaise area. He soon wished he hadn’t. Their truck became stuck among a long British armoured column moving at a snail’s pace through the devastation. The road – or what was left of it – was choked with wreckage, swollen corpses and dead cattle and horses. ‘The smell was terrible,’ he recalled, and although they all put handkerchiefs over their faces, it did little to help; the sickly sweet smell of death stuck to their clothes for days to come.1 ‘This was my first contact on the ground with the dead and what had been the enemy,’ he said. In the air, most pilots were somewhat removed from the realities on the ground. Being so close to the horror came as a profound shock. Strangely, however, Adam felt more affected by the sight of bloated, rotting horses and cows than he did the many enemy dead. As a German Jew, he and his family had been cast out; they were no longer his countrymen lying there, but the enemy, just as they were to everyone else in the squadron. It really was, though, a pitiful and appalling sight. Just beyond Saint-Lambert-sur-Dives, for example, was a lane that ran down to a ford in the river, from which another winding, narrow road, lined by hedgerows, ran up to the village. The lane on either side of the ford and the crossing point itself were absolutely filled with the carnage. It was impossible to walk a clear path through the density of corpses, broken wagons, abandoned Panthers, assault guns, field guns and other detritus. Black-and-white photographs survive of this destruction and, even though there is no colour and no smell, it is hard not to bring a hand to the mouth at the horror of it all.

  Some did get away. Willi Müller was one and so was Hauptmann Helmut Ritgen, who had been pulled out of Normandy along with the rest of the Panzer-Lehr survivors before LÜTTICH. The newly promoted Oberführer Kurt Meyer also got away, although only just and with only a handful of men; he had been fortunate that the division had been stationed in that area before the invasion and he knew the lay of the land well. Eberhard Beck was captured on 21 August, his ordeal finally over.

  For the victors, there was little rest, particularly not for the armoured units, who now sped forward in the most rapid extended advance in history. At no other time in Europe have attacking armies covered quite so much territory – it eclipsed even the astonishing German advance across France back in 1940. The River Seine was crossed by 25 August; that same day Paris fell, and without being destroyed by the retreating Germans first, as Hitler had ordered. Among the first troops into the city were those of Général Leclerc’s French armoured division. By 10 September, the Allied armies had liberated Belgium and stood at the borders of Germany and Holland, helped by the speed of the American tank destroyers and British-built Cromwell tanks. These lighter tanks and TDs often get hauled over the coals for not being Panthers or Tigers, but those mechanically unreliable monsters could not have achieved what the Allies did in the days that followed the end of the battle for Normandy.

  Much criticism has been poured on to the Allied efforts in Normandy, but this has often been made by armchair historians too quick to be dazzled by rapid-firing machine guns, big tanks, fiendish anti-tank guns and the supposed tactical acuity of the Germans. The British and Canadians have been blamed for being too stodgy, too ponderous and too scared to take risks. Even the Americans have come under the cosh for unimaginative tactics and for being too slow in the hedgerows. This criticism is, however, both misplaced and unfair. For all the Allies’ fire-power and incredible logistics arm, it was the infantry and the armour who had to take most of the ground and no one can justifiably criticize these men – mostly conscripts from democratic countries rather than from totalitarian militaristic states – for being slow. The risks were simply enormous, the sacrifice immense. The Sherwood Rangers Yeomanry, for example, lost 44 officers even though the full establishment was only 36. A further 175 men of other ranks were lost from 200 in tanks in the regiment during the Normandy campaign. The 116th Infantry lost 100 per cent of its fighting strength. The incredible conveyor belt of replacements kept them going, but these units in the front line in Normandy suffered appallingly. Of course mistakes were made, and different decisions might have made a difference, but, on the whole, these citizen armies performed incredibly well.

  By any reckoning, it was certainly a great Allied victory. Just 50,000 Germans and two dozen panzers escaped the Falaise Pocket. Johannes Börner, of the 3. Fallschirmjäger-Division, was one of only twelve men from his company that made it. Two entire armies – 7. Armee and 5. Panzerarmee – had been effectively annihilated, including almost all their guns and 2,500 tanks, and it had been achieved in 74 days, or 77 if one includes the final bit of fighting in Normandy, which ended on 22 August – that was, in fact, nearly two weeks better than Montgomery had surmised before the invasion. It is true the campaign did not pan out exactly as he had predicted, but Monty and all the senior commanders who signed up to the OVERLORD plan could be forgiven for assuming that the Germans would retreat in stages as they had in the past. As Rommel pointed out to Hitler at Margival on 17 June, it made no military sense to fight so close to the coast while in range of Allied naval guns. Rather, the criticism of the day from Tedder et al. was a result of frustration with the V-1 campaign, Montgomery’s unfailing ability to get up the nose of his peers and his inability to admit the campaign was going anything other than entirely to plan. It wasn’t, but it didn’t really matter because, in the end, they did better than anticipated. That should not be forgotten.

  Time, however, allows a more nuanced and balanced picture, and one in which the operational level of war, so often ignored, is reinserted. The management of these armies, air forces and navies was truly astonishing. As the Germans discovered, it was very difficult indeed to fight offensively in Normandy, especially when their enemy was so much better at fighting wars than they were. As Michael Wittmann’s blaze of glory showed at Villers-Bocage, it was not much use pulling off a small tactical engagement if every other part of the war effort was found wanting. At almost every level, the Germans were failed by their high command. They simply never had enough of anything and were forced to dance to the Allies’ tune, not
the other way around. The grinding down of their celebrated panzer divisions, drawing them into battle in detail and before they were ready, ensured they could never manoeuvre and operate in the way they were designed to do. For far too long, the picture has been painted of the British, especially, banging their heads against a brick wall of panzer divisions, when in fact it was the other way round.

  The German command structures were ridiculous – unwieldy, divisive and deeply unhelpful to the men and generals forced to work around these parallel commands, vacillations and hash of orders. Not only was Hitler too far away, but for much of the time so was Rommel, then von Kluge and the army commanders. While Monty and Bradley camped out near the front, Rommel remained at the luxurious chateau of La Roche-Guyon. Even once it was plain where the main invasion was, he still stayed put. Had he not been endlessly driving back and forth to the front, but actually closer to where he should have been, he might have avoided the near-fatal shooting he suffered on 17 July.

  Churchill was incredulous over how so many Allied mouths could be kept regularly fed. The logistics were mind-bogglingly complicated and quite superbly executed. By 4 September, for example, the Mulberry B had delivered 39,743 vehicles, 220,231 personnel and, in total, 517,844 tons of supplies. Then there were the beaches, which on average, collectively, continued to deliver some 16,000 tons of supplies per day. Enough fuel was provided to keep over 100,000 Allied vehicles on the road. On average a tank used 8,000 gallons of fuel a week and an entire armoured division some 60,000 per day. It was an incredible amount and yet it was provided, mostly by four ship-to-shore pipelines that were built in each beach area and which allowed a tanker to discharge 600 tons of fuel per hour. Code-named ‘Tombola’, it was another ingenious innovation. In mid-August, the PLUTO pipeline was laid under the sea from England and also became operational. That was a further technological breakthrough, as it needed to be strong enough to withstand the pressure of lying on the sea bed while also large and sturdy enough to cope with a constant flow of fuel. The Germans, meanwhile, had focused much of their innovative energy on weapons such as the V-1s, which killed a fair number of civilians but not one combat serviceman at the front.

  In all, thirty-seven German divisions fought in Normandy, amounting to some half a million men, and by the end of it well over 300,000 had been killed, wounded, lost or captured. Exact figures are impossible to confirm; one army record claims the 12. SS lost just 8,000 from their original strength of 20,500, but this is a low figure for a division that escaped from the Falaise Gap before it was closed by the Allies with no more than a few hundred men at the absolute most. The 12. SS had effectively ceased to exist by the end of Normandy, while 21. Panzer lost its entire arsenal of 167 tanks and assault guns along with some 350 officers and 12,000 other ranks. In fact, of the seven panzer divisions trapped in the Falaise Pocket, only around 1,300 men and just two dozen tanks escaped – from 140,000 of the best-equipped and best-trained divisions the Germans had and a total of around 2,500 panzers that had been sent to Normandy. Those are staggering statistics and a demonstration of just how crushing the defeat of the cream of German units really was.

  The Allies lost some 209,000 casualties out of over 2 million brought across the Channel, 83,045 for 21st Army Group and an even higher 125,847 from the US ground forces, of whom around 37,000 were killed. In addition, the Allied air forces suffered some 16,714 dead, a huge number, while the suffering of the French amounted to 15–20,000 dead, mostly as a result of Allied bombs. Excluding German POWs, that amounts to a daily casualty rate of around 6,870, worse than the Somme, Passchendaele and Verdun in the First World War, three battles usually viewed as a benchmark for wanton slaughter.

  Of the men and women featured in this narrative, most survived, although many only just. Henry Bowles recovered from his six bullets and rejoined his brother in the Big Red One in time for the Battle of the Bulge in December 1944–January 1945. Bob Slaughter made it back too, as did Richard Blackburn. Others were wounded later on, such as Bob Roberts and John Raaen, although the latter remained in the US Army and rose to become a general. Hans von Luck survived the war and then ten years in a Gulag in the Soviet Union, and later became a highly successful businessman, importing coffee from South America. He also became a favourite contributor to British Army battlefield studies and staff rides. ‘He was absolutely charming,’ recalls Dr Peter Caddick-Adams, who knew him well from those tours, ‘and could drink absolutely anything without any apparent effect.’2 A regular of Canadian battlefield studies post-war was Hans Siegel, who also recovered from both wounds and the war. Richard von Rosen also survived and later married the daughter of Caesar von Hofacker, who had been executed for his part in the July plot against Hitler. He died in 2015, aged ninety-three. Helmut Ritgen was another guest of the Soviet Union but survived, as did Cornelius Tauber, Willi Müller, Eberhard Beck, Karl Wegner and Franz Gockel. Wegner and Gockel regularly returned to Normandy in later life and struck up friendships with former adversaries.

  Kurt Meyer was captured in September 1944 and taken to Britain, where in bugged conversations with other prisoners he revealed the depths of his devotion to National Socialism. After the war, he was tried for war crimes, and specifically for the murder of Canadian prisoners at the Abbey d’Ardenne on 8 June. Although he was cleared of issuing direct orders for their execution, Meyer was none the less found guilty of their deaths as the commanding officer of the men who carried out the execution. Sentenced to death, he was reprieved and given a life sentence, which was then commuted. By 1951 he was back in Germany and was released from prison in 1955. Two years later, he published his memoirs, Grenadiere, which painted a picture of heroic duty and airbrushed any notion of criminality. They remain, though, a vivid account of front-line action with the Waffen-SS.

  Of the pilots and aircrew, Bert Stiles finished his bomber tour, transferred to fighters and was killed in action in November 1944. Gabby Gabreski clipped a wing during a ground attack in Germany in July 1944, crashed his plane and was captured. It had been his last flight before flying home. After the war, he stayed in the United States Air Forces and flew in Korea. So too did Dick Turner, who was posted home soon after the Normandy campaign was over. Ken Adam remained with 609 Squadron until the end of the war and went on to become a celebrated filmset designer. He was responsible for most of the early Bond production design, as well as that of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, and later won an Oscar for The Madness of King George. His Oscar stood in a corner of his study next to a scale model of his Typhoon. Both Truman Smith and Ken Handley finally completed their tours just before the end of the Normandy campaign and survived to live long and fruitful lives. Stanley Christopherson also made it to the end of the war. By this time, the Sherwood Rangers had collected sixteen battle honours since the invasion and over the course of the war became the single unit in the British Army with more battle honours than any other. Later in life, this unfailingly charming and cheerful fellow suffered terrible bouts of depression brought on by his wartime experiences. So too did John Semken; his war came to an end after five long years in March 1945 when he suffered a complete breakdown.

  Charlie Martin returned to Canada with his English wife; so too did Bob Roberts, although he later moved back to Britain and spent much of his married and professional life on the south coast of England. Yogi Jenson remained in the Royal Canadian Navy before retiring to Nova Scotia and becoming a much-loved artist and writer. Robert Woollcombe survived the war and wrote several books, including a timeless classic about his time in the war, Lion Rampant. Reg Spittles also survived and lived a long life, handwriting his memoirs and donating them to the Bovington Tank Museum. Ken Tout got through the war, married, had children, and had a long and successful career working for various charities, before retiring to the Sussex coast. Ambrose Lampen, whose efforts creating the Mulberry at Arromanches can still be seen today, emigrated to California. Denis Edwards, Hubert Fauré and Frank Wright all made it through, as did Richard Todd, who be
came one of Britain’s best-known film stars. He portrayed Guy Gibson in The Dam Busters and even took the role of John Howard in the movie The Longest Day about D-Day. Mary Mulry continued nursing until the end of the war, then married and settled in England.

  Orion Shockley also made it through the war, as did Carl Rambo. So too did Mark Alexander and Dick Winters. The latter became world-famous after the release first of Stephen Ambrose’s book Band of Brothers and then the internationally acclaimed and successful HBO TV series of the same name. Walter Halloran went through the rest of the war and later served in Vietnam too. They all lived to old age. The legendary war correspondent Ernie Pyle, however, did not. Offered the chance to go to the Pacific, he was covering the Battle of Okinawa in April 1945 when he was shot and killed by a Japanese machine-gunner. He was deeply mourned in America, where he had become one of the best-loved writers in the country.

  Of the commanders, Günther von Kluge committed suicide on 20 August 1944, while Rommel recovered from his accident only to be implicated in the Hitler plot. Visited by two SS men at his home in October 1944, he was given a choice: to swallow cyanide right away and have a state funeral, or to allow himself to be arrested, put on trial, found guilty and executed for treason. After bidding his beloved wife and son farewell, he took the cyanide. After the war, Speidel tried to make Rommel out as a great hero and committed to ousting Hitler, but there is, in reality, no proof at all that he was involved. Speidel himself somehow survived the post-July-plot witch hunt and later served in the West German army. Fritz Bayerlein commanded a corps and later an army, and was, like Heinrich Eberbach and Geyr von Schweppenburg, captured at the end of the war. All three later helped the Americans with interviews and written studies of German perspectives in the war.