dominant features along the high, wooded escarpment which overlooks the River Dives and seals the north-east end of the Falaise plain.
That day, the American 90th Division at Bourg-Saint-Leonard, south of Chambois, received a nasty shock when the
Generalfeldmarschall Model called a conference for 09.00 hours on 18 August at Fontaine l’Abbe. Eberbach, who had set out at 03.00 hours, still arrived two hours late because of the blocked roads. Oberstgruppenfuhrer Hausser of the Seventh Army could not get through, so he was represented by Gersdorff, his chief of staff. Model gave them instructions for withdrawal to the line of the Seine. The panzer divisions were to hold open the bottleneck. But halfway through the meeting news came in that the Canadians had indeed taken Trun. Eberbach left immediately to organize a counter-attack by II Panzer Corps, now outside the pocket, but another shortage of fuel would delay them.
On the road to Vimoutiers, Eberbach’s staff car was strafed by Allied fighters and the general had to shelter in a ditch. The RAF and Quesada’s Ninth Tactical Air Force were out in strength on that day and the next. Flying conditions were almost perfect, and with the remains of two German armies packed into an area roughly twelve miles by five, there was no shortage of targets. Successful Typhoon rocket strikes on vehicles were marked by widening columns of oily smoke. ‘The black mushrooms kept appearing,’ wrote General Meindl, ‘a sign that the enemy planes were having good hunting.’ He felt dazed by what he called ‘the flail of a fabulous air superiority’. He was also furious with the drivers, whose desperate attempts to escape sent up more clouds of dust, attracting the attention of fighter-bomber pilots. ‘It was enough to make one tear one’s hair and ask oneself if the drivers had gone off their heads completely and were hastening to place themselves in the view of the enemy planes until they went up in a blaze.’ There was little anti-aircraft fire to deter the Allied aircrew. Few of the self-propelled flak vehicles had survived, and army units, unlike his paratroops, did not believe in using small arms against aircraft.
There was little sense of pity among the Allied pilots. ‘We rippled the rockets,’ wrote an Australian Typhoon pilot, ‘then separately we did cannon attacks into the massed crowds of soldiers. We would commence firing, and then slowly pull the line of cannon fire through the crowd and then pull up and go around again and again until the ammunition ran out. After each run, which resulted in a large vacant path of chopped up soldiers, the space would be almost immediately filled with other escapees.’ General von Luttwitz of the 2nd Panzer-Division surveyed the scene that day with horror: ‘On the road great heaps of vehicles, dead horses and dead soldiers were to be seen scattered everywhere, and their number increased from hour to hour.’ Gunner Eberhard Beck of the 277th Infantry Division saw a soldier sitting motionless on a rock. He pulled him by the shoulder to get him out of danger, but the man rolled over. He was dead already.
On 18 August alone, the US Ninth Air Force estimated its tally at 400 vehicles, while the RAF claimed 1,159 vehicles destroyed and 1,700 damaged, as well as 124 tanks destroyed and 100 damaged. But these figures were preposterously high. Once again Air Marshal Coningham was furious when he received the Operational Research report later. Their teams had found only thirty-three armoured vehicles which had been destroyed by air attack. The report concluded that the random nature of the Allied air attacks had failed to achieve a decisive degree of destruction.[71] On the other hand, the Allied air attacks had once again panicked German crews into abandoning their vehicles, and their destruction of fuel supplies had certainly contributed to the very high number of armoured vehicles which were left behind.
With so many RAF and American squadrons attacking targets at will on the ground, there were countless cases of ‘friendly fire’. The ironic cry, ‘Take cover, boys, they may be ours!’ took on a new urgency. Bradley’s 12th Army Group headquarters acknowledged that ‘some British armored vehicles had been attacked inadvertently’, but pointed out that British tank crews carried so much kit on the outside that their identifying white stars were often ‘covered with paraphernalia’.
Because of the random air attacks, the Canadian 4th Armoured Division held back from occupying Trun until the afternoon of 18 August. The division was also hampered by the lethargy and incompetence of its commander, Major General George Kitching, and by Simonds’s plan that its armoured brigade was about to break off to lead the advance to the Seine. On the evening of 18 August, a detachment from the division reached Saint-Lambert-sur- Dives, halfway between Trun and Chambois, but was too weak to take the village until reinforced.
The Polish battlegroup heading for Chambois made a serious mistake in map-reading and ended up six miles to the north. It was also short on ammunition and running out of fuel. The 10th Mounted Rifles reconnaissance regiment had reached the edge of Chambois, but did not have the strength to take it. Meanwhile, from the south, the American 90th Division, supported by part of Leclerc’s 2eme DB, advanced to within a mile of Chambois. Both Montgomery and the American commanders seemed to think that the battle could be won with air power and artillery. Yet the screen of Canadian, Polish and American troops was far too thin both to hold back the waves of German forces fighting to escape the pocket, and to face the threat of a counter-attack from behind by remnants of the SS panzer formations.
On 19 August, the Polish 10th Dragoons reinforced their reconnaissance regiment outside Trun and met up with the American 90th Division. Americans and Poles shook hands. ‘They were excellent fighters and very cold- blooded,’ an American lieutenant reported later. Chambois, soon known as ‘Shambles’, was in flames from the bombardment and filled with dead Germans and burnt-out vehicles. Reports of the scale of destruction certainly seem to have increased the sense of complacency among Allied commanders. Even the energetic Simonds, commanding the II Canadian Corps, spent the following morning ‘tidying up official correspondence’ instead of forcing forward his divisions.
Conditions within the pocket were, according to German sources, impossible to imagine if you had not seen it. ‘The roads were blocked by two or three shot-up and burned-out vehicles standing side by side,’ an officer with the 21st Panzer Division wrote. ‘Ambulances packed with wounded were carbonized. Ammunition exploded, panzers blazed and horses lay on their backs kicking their legs in their death throes. The same chaos extended in the fields far and wide. Artillery and armour-piercing rounds came from either side into the milling crowd.’
Gunner Beck with the 277th Infanterie-Division saw teenage infantrymen stumble past: ‘In their faces one could read the utter tragedy of this appalling experience, which they could not cope with.’ Many men went to pieces after days without sleep. Some began to hide in the woods, preferring to be captured than continue such a hellish existence. He could not help feeling sorry for the horses, of whom even more was expected: ‘The heads, backs and flanks of the horses were bathed in sweat, foaming white. We roamed around as if in a slaughter-house.’
During the day, men and vehicles hid in woods and orchards from Allied aircraft. At night, exhausted and famished German soldiers stumbled along, cursing their leaders, who became lost in the dark. Many used French two-wheeled handcarts to carry their equipment or heavy weapons. They found themselves mixed up with soldiers from rear services, including cobbler and tailoring detachments, all trying to escape but without any idea of where they were headed. Magnesium flares and ‘Christmas tree’ illuminations, descending slowly on parachutes, lit up the horizon. They revealed the silhouettes of ruined buildings and trees. There was a continual rumble of heavy guns as American and French artillery battalions continued to target the roads with harassing fire.
On 19 August, Oberstgruppenfuhrer Hausser was urged by both General Meindl and Gersdorff to order a breakout that night east across the River Dives, which ran through Trun, Saint-Lambert and Chambois. The order was passed by radio and word of mouth. Hausser also requested II SS Panzer Corps to attack the Poles and Canadians from behind to open the gap.
At 22.00 hours, the remnants of the 277th Infantry Division received the order ‘
