had been born in the great castle. Again they faced their fanatical opponents in the
To the east of Falaise, the Polish 10th Mounted Rifles reconnaissance regiment, supported by the 12th Dragoons in Cromwell tanks, had secured crossings over the Dives on 15 August. Their success was a fitting celebration on the anniversary of their victory over the Red Army in the Battle of the Vistula in 1920. That night the Poles in their bridgehead fought off counter-attacks, while the reconnaissance troops pushed down the road towards Trun. On 16 August, Simonds wanted to send his 4th Armoured Division towards Trun as well, but the whole of the following day was lost as they pulled out and reorganized. Their divisional commander showed little initiative or drive. The consequent lack of support to the exposed Polish armoured division forced it to halt less than eight miles from Trun.
Ultra was still reporting that the Germans intended to counter-attack against the Americans in the south and break through between Argentan and Sees. This confirmed Montgomery in his view that they should revert to an envelopment on the Seine, rather than cut off the Germans south of Trun. As a result he made the mistake of failing to reinforce the Poles with the 7th Armoured Division, which he had ordered to advance on Lisieux. The critical lack of detailed liaison with the Americans at this stage was more Montgomery’s fault than Bradley’s. Between them they had failed to decide clearly where to cut off the Germans. It was only on 16 August that Montgomery decided to revert to sealing the pocket between Trun and Chambois. But by then part of Haislip’s corps had set off towards the Seine.
General Patton was far more interested in developments in that direction. On 16 August, Major General Kenner, SHAEF’s chief medical officer, was invited along for the ride to visit Haislip’s XV Corps, which had just taken Dreux. Patton was on exuberant form. He had just visited two evacuation hospitals that morning and found that ‘for the first time our wounded wanted to go back and fight’.
They set off in two Jeeps, one of which carried a heavy machine gun. Patton’s bodyguard Al had also brought a Browning automatic rifle. Kenner, clearly concerned for Patton’s safety in this dash across wooded country full of retreating Germans, suggested that he should go in front. ‘No, by God,’ came the reply. ‘No one rides in front of me.’ According to Kenner, ‘Haislip nearly had a fit’ when he heard how they had come. He insisted on providing an escort for the return journey, but Patton swore at the idea. In any case, he wanted to see how things were progressing with XX Corps at Chartres.
When they reached the command post of the 7th Armored Division, Patton asked when they were going to take the town.[70] He was told that there were still Germans fighting in parts of it and it might take some time. According to Kenner, Patton retorted, ‘There are no Germans. It is now three o’clock. I want Chartres at five or there will be a new commander.’ Kenner was impressed by Patton’s ‘instinct about the enemy’, but Patton was wrong. American intelligence sources had estimated the defenders as only 1,000 strong, but another German security regiment had been rushed into the town the day before.General der Infanterie Kurt von der Chevallerie, the commander-in-chief of the First Army south of the Loire, had been holding a conference there when the 7th Armored’s tanks were sighted advancing on the city.
One task force had managed to clear most of the city three hours before Patton arrived, but the other task force had been compelled to withdraw as the Germans resisted strongly in the outer part of the town. The Americans had brought up artillery, but it was instructed to fire only on targets in direct sight: ‘All effort was made to spare the destruction of historic buildings.’ The battle was, however, completed the following day, when the second task force attacked the Germans who had withdrawn into the wheatfields outside. This unequal battle turned into a massacre. Mortar platoons dropped white phosphorus shells ‘all over the place and as the fields burned, the Germans started running out like rats. While this was going on the tanks were having a field day killing dismounted Germans all over the place,’ 7th Armored Division reported. ‘The entire operation was a huge success: this small force knocking out numerous anti-tank guns, capturing around 400 of the enemy, and killing several thousand of the enemy at a cost of four tanks and 62 casualties of their own.’
In any event Wednesday, 16 August had indeed been a memorable day for Patton. Divisions from his Third Army had entered or captured the major towns of Dreux, Chartres, Chateaudun and Orleans. He was also to have full credit for his exploits after all the secrecy created for Operation Fortitude had been lifted. This security restriction had exasperated the war correspondents, who longed to write about Patton’s exploits. Eisenhower had just publicly stated to a press conference that the drive to the Seine was led by the Third Army commanded by Patton himself. ‘Old blood and guts’ immediately became an international star. And finally on that day, Patton heard that he had been confirmed in the permanent rank of major general, backdated to the previous year.
While Patton’s Third Army raced towards the Seine, the Americans suffered a day’s delay from confusion when reorganizing their forces round Argentan. On the evening of 16 August, General Gerow, the commander of V Corps, received orders from General Hodges of the First US Army to take command of the three divisions — the 80th, the 90th and the 2eme DB — which Haislip had left round Argentan. The Ultra warning of a German counter- attack prompted him to drive through the night to Alencon, where he set up a temporary headquarters at the Hotel de France. He could not find out where XV Corps headquarters were supposed to be. Finally, he heard from the commander of the 80th Division that Patton had sent his chief of staff, Major General Hugh Gaffey, to command the three divisions. He found Gaffey at a temporary command post north of Sees and the two senior officers hammered out an agreement. Gaffey would carry out the attack north ordered by General Patton for 17 August, then Gerow would take command that evening. But after confusing messages between Hodges and Patton, General Bradley stepped in and told Gerow to take over immediately.
Patton flew to see Bradley on 17 August to sort out the muddle. He had left his Third Army staff with the instructions that the attack north to seal the pocket was to go in straight away under Gerow’s command if he rang through with the phrase ‘Change horses’. At 12.30 hours, Patton called from 12th Army Group headquarters with these words. He then added that once the original objective was taken, the three divisions should continue ‘thence on’. His chief of staff asked what ‘thence on’ meant.
‘Another Dunkirk,’ Patton joked. This typically thoughtless remark was later picked up by war correspondents and reported far too freely as: ‘Let me continue, and I’ll drive the Limeys into the sea.’ In fact the changes of command at this crucial moment succeeded only in allowing the Germans another twenty-four hours to extricate more men and vehicles from the pocket.
By chance on that same day, Thursday, 17 August, stories of Eisenhower and Bedell Smith’s renewed irritation with Montgomery had filtered back to Downing Street and Buckingham Palace. Sir Alan Lascelles, King George VI’s private secretary, had a long talk with general ‘Pug’ Ismay, Churchill’s military adviser, and recorded his thoughts in his diary: ‘Ismay takes a sane and broad-minded view of the Americans — they have won their spurs, and the days are past when we could treat them as green and untried soldiers; in fact he went so far as to say that we might well have something to learn from them, and that maybe we have been a bit too “staff collegey” in our conduct of the war.’
Tensions were also building up with another ally as American troops approached Paris. After General Philippe Leclerc had heard that the 2eme DB was to stay at Argentan while the rest of XV Corps advanced towards the Seine, he went to protest to Patton. ‘Leclerc of the 2nd French Armored Division came in, very much excited,’ Patton wrote in his diary. ‘He said, among other things, that if he were not allowed to advance on Paris, he would resign. I told him in my best French that he was a baby, and I would not have division commanders tell me where they would fight, and that anyway I had left him in the most dangerous place. We parted friends.’
Leclerc, who got on well with Patton, was far from reassured. Both he and General de Gaulle, who was on his way to France, were deeply concerned that Bradley might want to bypass Paris. They both feared that a rising in the capital by the Resistance would be exploited by the Communists. And in the event of civil strife, the Americans would almost certainly try to enforce their own military government, as President Roosevelt wanted.
27. The Killing Ground of the Falaise Pocket
While 16 August had been a great day for Patton, Hitler declared that ‘the 15th August was the worst day of my life’. He had become convinced that Generalfeldmarschall von Kluge was entering into secret negotiations with
