ancient castle was the aiming point. Windows with any glass left in literally exploded from the concussion of the bombs. In the convent of Notre Dame de Bon Secours, the homeless seeking refuge there were blinded by dust and felt the bitter smoke in their throats: ‘We had the impression of being thrown around on a ship in distress, beaten by a horrible storm and about to founder.’ The only remaining candle was extinguished by shock waves. In a calm voice, the Mother Superior kept blessing them ‘with a relic of the True Cross’.
As buildings collapsed all around, the sick lying in cots reacted to the noise and tremors with dilated eyes. Nuns offered sips of water with one hand while fingering their rosaries and praying rapidly. The housekeeper of the priest of Saint-Jean-Eudes cried out to him a hurried confession as she was being carried away on a stretcher: ‘Monsieur le Cure, go into the garden. I buried for you a shirt and a dozen handkerchiefs. If I hadn’t you would have given them all away.’
When the bombing finished, young civil defence volunteers arrived at the convent, urging them to depart immediately. They left by the only door which could be opened. The Mother Superior led the way along the Fosses Saint-Julien, carrying the sacred ciborium, ‘a grandiose procession in an unforgettable setting under a magnificent sky dotted with stars, fires all around giving off a red glow, sparks falling all around and delayed action bombs still exploding’. They had to climb over great trees knocked down by the bombs as they made their way to the Bon Sauveur led by a member of the Defense Passive. One youth returned to the convent to guard it against looters and hide the large silver statue of Notre Dame de la Delivrande.
In Caen that evening, the university on the rue Pasteur was almost completely destroyed. Inhabitants sheltering in old cellars, who thought they were safe, were buried alive. In the rue de Geole, over thirty died, and another fifty in a shelter in the rue de Vaugueux. British officers were horrified to hear from their own civil affairs division that 6,000 had died, but this would have represented nearly half of those left in the city. Another figure given at the time was 2,000. In fact the true number was close to 350 deaths, [38] which was still a terrible loss considering that over three-quarters of the population had left the city and that most of those who remained were sheltering in deep cellars.
Inhabitants of Caen had feared the worst, having heard German officers declare that the city would be the ‘French Stalingrad’. Yet they were then encouraged by clear signs that the Wehrmacht was preparing to withdraw. On 26 June, rear troops began to pull out. The Gestapo returned to destroy evidence of their massacre of Resistance prisoners. And on 6 July, German engineers began to destroy the port installations in Caen along the ship canal. That day the Feldkommandantur also gave orders for the remaining civilians to evacuate the town, but once again that had little effect. Only a screen of SS
The bombing was a double disaster. It had failed to destroy most of the German positions around the northern fringe of Caen and instead inflicted massive damage on the city. The RAF’s fear of hitting the British troops waiting to advance had shifted the bomb-line south towards the city centre, missing the German positions. The mistake was similar to the American failure to hit the beach defences at Omaha. Few except Montgomery ever believed that the bombing had been militarily effective. The only troops who appear to have been hit belonged to a detachment of the Luftwaffe 16th Feld-Division which had taken over from the 21st Panzer-Division near Lebisey, as well as two tanks and a mortar section of the
The reason given for bombing on the evening which preceded the attack was said to have been a fear of bad weather the next day. But the meteorological reports for 8 July do not support this. And even allowing for the delayed-action bombs, the German defenders were given all the time they needed to reorganize. Losses suffered by British and Canadian units advancing into and around the city were far higher than expected, despite the heavy artillery bombardment. Lebisey wood was smashed to the point where it looked like something out of the First World War.
The
Stretcher-bearers taking wounded to the rear became exhausted. ‘There were all sorts of casualties,’ recounted a member of 223rd Field Ambulance with the British 3rd Infantry Division. ‘There were legs without feet, there were knees without kneecaps, there were shoulders without arms. I remember one sergeant major brought in with half of his head blown away, yet he was still conscious, and the MO said to me: “Give him two grains of morphia: it’ll finish him quickly”. But it didn’t. And chest wounds, shocking chest wounds. On that one day we treated 466 British casualties and 40 Germans.’
In the advanced dressing station of 210th Field Ambulance, the doctors and staff also had to deal with a wide variety of battle casualties. They included ‘a group of terrified, disorientated lads — battle shocked, jittering and yelling in a corner’. ‘Several SS wounded came in — a tough and dirty bunch — some had been snipers up trees for days. One young Nazi had a broken jaw and was near death, but before he fainted he rolled his head over and murmured “Heil Hitler!”.’
In field dressing stations, those doomed to die were taken away to another tent and injected with morphine. Medical staff became worried about the shortage of blood left for transfusions. They were also horrified by the ignorance of troops on how best to handle the wounded. Soldiers did far more damage moving those with severe fractures rather than leaving them where they were until trained stretcher-bearers could splint them up. ‘All the lessons of the First World War seemed to have been forgotten,’ wrote the same doctor with 210th Field Ambulance. Like the rest of his exhausted colleagues, he was afraid that his judgement was impaired by lack of sleep.
The ‘Fuhrer order’ that Caen was to be held at all costs was followed for all of 8 July. Only that night did General Eberbach agree to Kurt Meyer’s insistence that the mangled remains of his
On 9 July, the city still lay under a pall of smoke and dust. Andre Heintz was woken at 05.30 hours by a companion in the Resistance. ‘The Germans are leaving!’ he told him. They watched the convoys pulling out through the town, yet no British guns fired. Their leader, Commandant Gilles, distributed the last few Sten guns and sent his members off northwards in pairs to act as guides for the Allied forces. Heintz put on his brassard, a tricolore with the Cross of Lorraine. Suddenly seeing a German soldier near what had been the university swimming pool, he snatched it off again. But the German was dead, frozen in position, having been killed by blast. The brassard was recognized by the first British soldiers he encountered, who gave him the thumbs-up sign.
So great was the destruction that, even with their maps, the British and Canadians found it impossible to work out where they were. Most routes were impassable and there were isolated snipers left behind. A column of Canadian armoured cars descended the rue Saint-Martin. The commander, whose orders were to cross the town as rapidly as possible to try to secure the bridges, asked a bystander, ‘Where is the River Orne?’ He climbed on to the armoured car to give directions, but a German defensive position further on opened up with machine-gun and anti- tank gun fire. The armoured car went into rapid reverse, and their French guide had to leap off and hide in a doorway.
The
At the northern edge of Caen, the British civil affairs team under Lieutenant Colonel Usher had to abandon its vehicles. ‘At last,’ wrote one of his officers. ‘Entered Caen with party of officers. The north end seems utterly devastated. Pile after pile of rubble and a deathly silence punctuated only by occasional bursts of machine gun
