Simonds’s Canadian corps north of Falaise and Haislip’s XV Corps round Argentan. Attempts that day by the 59th Division to increase its bridgehead over the Orne near Thury-Harcourt were frustrated by the German 271st Infanterie-Division and the steep wooded hills either side of the river.
The next morning, 13 August, Simonds briefed his formation commanders for a fresh offensive, Operation Tractable. While the main Can-adianforces attackedagain towards Falaise on Montgomery’sinsistence, the Polish 1st Armoured Division on the left flank would head further east towards Trun. Montgomery does not appear to have discussed plans clearly with Bradley, despite a meeting with him that same day. He seems to have reverted to his earlier idea of encircling the Germans on the Seine. Instead of sending the 7th Armoured Division to reinforce the Canadian attack, he dispatched it east towards Lisieux. Montgomery was already starting to lobby Eisenhower to give him all the supplies and support, so that 21st Army Group could charge through to Berlin.
Simonds launched Tractable just at 11.00 hours on the morning of 14 August. Instead of using darkness to avoid losses from the German anti-tank defences, he organized a heavy smokescreen fired by the artillery. Bombers were also used, despite the mishaps during Totalize. This time most of the medium bomber force of 811 aircraft were accurate, although seventy-seven of them dropped their loads on Canadian and Polish troops to the rear, causing 391 casualties.Unbelievably, the same mistake was made of using yellow target markers from the air and yellow smoke grenades on the ground to identify their own troops.
The Canadians soon found that the River Laizon represented a more serious anti-tank ditch than they had imagined. Some of their armoured regiments suffered heavy losses that day. The Poles to their left advanced with great elan, led by their reconnaissance regiment, the 10th Mounted Rifles.
On 14 August, Panzer Group Eberbach received an order from Hitler, passed on over the radio. ‘The attack ordered by me southward past Alencon is to be effected under all conditions immediately as a preparation for an attack on Avranches.’ Eberbach, furious with Hitler’s continuing fantasy, replied with the tank strengths of his divisions: the
‘The fighting morale of the German troops had cracked,’ wrote Eberbach. ‘They were not just exhausted and weak from hunger. The propaganda promises had all proved false — the invincibility of the Atlantic Wall, the V weapons which would bring Britain to its knees, and the talk of new aircraft and submarines which assured final victory.’ Eberbach became aware of machine guns being thrown away and tanks being abandoned without cause, or even without being blown up. ‘Stragglers without arms were numerous. “Catch lines” to the rear of the front had to be inaugurated [to seize deserters and those fleeing without authorization]. Even the SS was no exception to this rule. The 1st SS Panzer-Division had never before fought so miserably as at that time.’ The Germans also feared an airborne landing in their rear, a plan which the Allies had considered but rejected.
That same day Patton, who had become completely exasperated with the enforced inaction of XV Corps at Argentan, flew to see Bradley. He wanted to drive for the Seine without any further delay. He would send XV Corps to Dreux, XX Corps to Chartres and XII Corps towards Orleans. He was in an exuberant mood by the time he saw Bradley. ‘It is really a great plan, wholly my own,’ he wrote in his diary, ‘and I made Bradley think he thought of it. I am very happy and elated. I got all the corps moving by 20.30 so that if Monty tries to be careful, it will be too late.’ Major General Cook, at his XII Corps command post near Le Mans, received a typically terse message from Patton, delivered by a senior Third Army staff officer: ‘Take Orleans at once.’ Within a few hours, combat command A of the 4th Armored Division had moved out on the road from Saint-Calais to Orleans — a ‘jump of 85 miles’.
Three of Haislip’s divisions, the newly arrived 80th Division, the 90th and the French 2eme DB, were to stay at Argentan while the rest forced east towards Dreux, which lay no more than thirty miles from the Seine. The rapid advance was a huge boost to morale, Patton noted the next day: ‘The number of cases of war-wearies (the new name for cowardice) and self-inflicted wounds have dropped materially since we got moving. People like to play on a winning team.’
The unshaven tank crews of the Third Army had become heroes to the supply troops and others in the rear. ‘A few of the enlisted men even tried to raise beards emulating the combat outfits,’ wrote a doctor with the 2nd Evacuation Hospital, ‘but our commanding officer soon put a stop to that.’
Some people became too carried away by the air of excitement at the apparently unstoppable advance. An American war correspondent, determined to beat his rivals, turned up in Chartres so as to witness the capture of the city. Unfortunately, he was two days early. The German 6th Security Regiment promptly took him prisoner.
Gefreiter Spiekerkotter, still with the pioneer group from the 256th Infanterie-Division which had escaped Avranches, reached Chartres in their battered Citroen. While the garrison troops were organized to defend the town against the approaching Americans, Spiekerkotter and his comrades discovered a Wehrmacht supply depot. It had been abandoned by its staff, but not yet looted. They wandered around, gazing in amazement at the shelves laden with every sort of food, wine, spirits, cigarettes, even electric razors, suede gauntlets and large bottles of eau-de- Cologne: luxuries which the front-line soldier had never seen. ‘We’d have been happy to stay here for the rest of the war,’ Spiekerkotter observed. They loaded the Citroen with tins of food, cigarettes, the suede gloves and a bottle of eau-de-Cologne, and set off to cross the Seine at Melun. They were fortunate not to have been stopped by Feldgendarmerie and forced into a scratch unit to defend the city.
On 15 August, while the Canadians had a tough fight advancing on Falaise, the Poles broke through on the left. Fortunately for them, most of the Luftwaffe 88 mm guns had been withdrawn, but their advance, which took them to the River Dives near Jort, was still an impressive feat. Meanwhile east of Caen, the British I Corps, now part of the First Canadian Army, forced the Germans back to the line of the lower Dives. But as is so often the case in mid-August, the hot weather suddenly ended with heavy thunderstorms and torrential rain. The hard dusty ground turned to ‘a slimy paste’.
Kluge’s headquarters, all too aware of the dangers, wrote that the supply situation was becoming ‘more critical by the hour’. Fifth Panzer Army described their ammunition shortages as ‘catastrophic’. The 85th Infantry Division was reduced to one and a half battalions and the
The invasion of southern France, Operation Anvil, had been key to American planning ever since August 1943. Churchill had fought the idea with relentless obstinacy. He did not want to divert troops from the Italian front, mainly because he dreamed of invading Austria and the Balkans to prevent a post-war Soviet frontier running all the way down to the Adriatic.
President Roosevelt, irritated by what he saw as Churchill’s excessive mistrust of Stalin, outmanoeuvred the British at the Teheran Conference in November 1943. Without warning Churchill, he told Stalin about the plan to invade southern France as well as Normandy. The British were appalled. Stalin approved the idea immediately. He even said that the Swiss were ‘swine’, and suggested that they ‘invade the country on [their] way up the Rhone valley’. A lack of shipping and landing craft stopped the invasion of southern France from coinciding with Overlord, as the Americans had wanted, but they would not be blocked from launching it later.
To the exasperation of Roosevelt, Marshall and Eisenhower, the British never stopped trying to divert Anvil, renamed Operation Dragoon, away from southern France. The heated arguments did more to strain the Anglo- American relationship than almost any other disagreement on strategy. Eisenhower also believed that Dragoon, making use of French divisions from Italy and North Africa, would justify the huge American investment and also bring the French in as partners.
Churchill suddenly suggested to Roosevelt on 4 August that Dragoon should be switched to Brittany, even though none of the ports were in operation and the Allied supply system in northern France was stretched to breaking point. ‘I cannot pretend to have worked out the details,’ Churchill added lamely. Roosevelt firmly rejected the idea. Churchill tried again on 5 August when visiting Eisenhower. ‘Ike said no,’ wrote his aide, ‘continued saying no all afternoon, and ended saying no in every form of the English language at his command.’ Eisenhower was ‘practically limp’ by the time Churchill left.
Events proved the Americans resoundingly right. The landings of 151,000 Allied troops along the Cote d’Azur from Nice to Marseilles were practically unopposed, the major port of Marseilles was secured and the invasion provoked a rapid German withdrawal from central and south-western France. Even Hitler was forced to recognize the necessity, wrote General Warlimont, ‘especially when the first paratroop and airborne operations proved
