less likely to collapse. ‘The Corps psychiatrist and commander 21 Light Field Ambulance confirm that cases of feigned battle exhaustion by soldiers of Armd Divs are negligible. The main offenders are infantry units. The greatest number of cases come from 43 Division. During 3 or 4 days about 10 July some 360 cases came from that formation. Units particularly affected were 4 Dorsets and 7 Hamps.’ General O’Connor wrote to Thomas about this ‘most serious offence’, ordering him to make it ‘quite clear that anyone found guilty of feigning illness under this heading will be tried by [Field General Court Martial] for desertion’.
Infantrymen appear to have suffered the most because of the effects of German mortars and Nebelwerfer batteries firing concentrated salvoes at unexpected moments. A close miss sent many men into shock. At 129th Infantry Brigade headquarters, three men, including a sergeant major, suffered from battle shock from Nebelwerfer bombardments. ‘Two of them during an attack did not stay in their slit trenches, but just ran around wildly screaming “Get me out of here!”.’ Another contributing factor to the sense of helplessness and disorientation was the lack of information. In the words of one soldier, they suffered from ‘ignorance, stupefying, brutalizing ignorance. You never knew where you were or where the enemy was, or what you were supposed to be attempting to achieve.’
Tank crews appear to have been much less susceptible to combat fatigue, not just because of the protection offered by their armoured vehicle, but also because they were part of closely knit groups. British infantry, just like their American counterparts, suffered from the vulnerability of their replacements. The British system was no more imaginative than the American. A subaltern sent as replacement to the Somerset Light Infantry after its mauling on Hill 112 described how a moustached major at their reinforcement camp near Bayeux addressed the new officers: ‘Gentlemen, your life expectancy from the day you join your battalion, will be precisely three weeks.’
18. The Final Battle for Saint-Lo
On 6 July, while the Americans were still bogged down in the general advance south towards Saint-Lo, General George S. Patton arrived in France. He was to command the Third US Army as soon as it was activated on Eisenhower’s order.
Stuck in England for a month since the invasion, he had been ‘awfully restless’. ‘It is Hell to be on the side lines and see all the glory eluding me,’ he had written to his wife on D-Day. He started wearing his shoulder holster ‘so as to get myself into the spirit of the part’, then packed for France even though there was no immediate prospect of being called over. For the time being, he had to play his part as commander-in-chief of the fictitious First US Army Group, that vital part of Plan Fortitude. The Germans were still convinced that he would command a second invasion around the Pas-de-Calais.
Patton was grateful to Eisenhower for having twice given him another chance. The first time was after he had slapped a soldier suffering from combat exhaustion in Sicily, the second being his gaffe in a speech in England, saying that the Americans and the British were destined to rule the world. But he never respected Ike ‘as a soldier’. When he accompanied the supreme commander on a tour of divisions in the south-west of England, he described his friendly manner with the troops as that of ‘an office seeker rather than that of a soldier’. ‘His theory is that by this method one gets on a level with the men. A commander cannot command and be on the same level. At least that is my opinion. I try to arouse fighting emotion — he tries for votes — for what? However he was very pleasant [to me].’
Patton also despised Montgomery, whom he called ‘the little monkey’. But he had felt a certain gratitude on 1 June, just before the invasion, when Montgomery insisted twice to Bradley that ‘Patton should take over for the Brittany, and possibly the Rennes operation’. The next morning, he noted in his diary, ‘I have a better impression of Monty than I had.’ Patton, who followed events in Normandy with intense frustration, felt that Bradley’s attempt to advance on a broad front was wrong. Constant minor attacks to win ground, in his view, led to far more casualties in the long run than a concentrated offensive.
German commanders agreed. ‘I cannot follow the reasoning,’ wrote Generalleutnant Schimpf of the 3rd Paratroop Division, ‘that these tactics were supposed to have helped avoid bloodshed, as I was told by captured American officers. For although losses on the day of attack could be kept comparatively low, on the other hand the total losses suffered through the continuous minor attacks launched over a long period, were surely much heavier than would have been the case if a forceful attack had been conducted.’ Elsewhere he wrote of American battalion attacks: ‘For our troops, this type of defence against continual assaults was an excellent training and acclimatisation to the fighting ways of the enemy.’ With impressive foresight, Patton wrote on 2 July that they should be attacking down the west coast towards Avranches with ‘one or two armored divisions abreast’, supported by air power.
At last on 4 July, his Third Army headquarters began to embark. Patton himself flew over two days later in a C-47 to the landing strip above Omaha beach. His plane was escorted by four P-47 Thunderbolts, the fighter-bomber which would later support his astonishing advance across France. As soon as he reached French soil, Patton was on exuberant form. News of his arrival spread instantly among the soldiers and sailors of Omaha beach command. His presence was supposed to be a closely guarded secret, but they crowded around with cameras, taking photographs as if he were a movie star. Patton stood up in the Jeep sent for him and addressed them in his inimitable style: ‘I’m proud to be here to fight beside you. Now let’s cut the guts out of those Krauts and get the hell on to Berlin. And when we get to Berlin, I am going to personally shoot that paper-hanging son of a bitch, just like I would a snake.’ His audience loved it, cheering and whooping wildly. Patton and Eisenhower were indeed unalike.
The next day he had lunch with Bradley, Montgomery and his chief of staff, the charming General Freddie de Guingand. ‘After lunch, Montgomery, Bradley and I went to the war tent,’ Patton wrote in his diary. ‘Here Montgomery went to great lengths explaining why the British had done nothing.’ Despite his earlier support for Patton, Montgomery now did not want the Third Army to become operational until after Avranches had been captured. This, the Americans suspected, was an attempt to keep Bradley under the command of his own 21st Army Group for longer. Bradley studiously refused to answer. As soon as Patton’s Third Army was activated, he would in practice become independent from Montgomery, since he would then command the US 12th Army Group, with Hodges and Patton as his two army commanders.
Bradley and his staff were beginning to thrash out ideas for Operation Cobra, which became the great breakthrough towards Avranches and Brittany. But in the meantime Bradley insisted on continuing the general advance to take Saint-Lo and the road west to Periers. Lying beyond the Cotentin and Bessin marshlands and
At the same time as the Panzer Lehr offensive in the early hours of 11 July, the German 5th and 9th Paratroop Regiments east of the River Vire had attacked the 29th Division and its neighbour, the 2nd Division. But while the Panzer Lehr assault against the 30th Division had disrupted its preparation for the general advance on Saint-Lo, the 35th, the 29th and the 2nd Infantry Divisions were still able to start their operation at 06.00 hours.
The overall American plan consisted of an advance on a broad front. While XIX Corps attacked south with the 30th, the 35th and the 29th Divisions, V Corps to the east was to help by sending the 2nd Infantry Division to take Hill 192, the main feature along the long ridge overlooking the road from Saint-Lo to Bayeux. The topography of rolling countryside, with small fields and orchards, bordered by impenetrable hedgerows and sunkentracks, was horribly familiar to all except replacements and the newly operational 35th Division.
For the graves registration teams it was a grisly business. A lieutenant reported that they had found seventy bodies along a single hedgerow. ‘I saw US troops who had been mined by the Germans,’ he went on.
‘They put boobytraps in the hollow part of a dead man’s back. We had to blow those cases and that mangled the bodies, but we could still identify them.’ Germans sometimes attached a concealed grenade to the dog-tag chain, so anyone who yanked at an identity disc would detonate it.
Bodies became swollen in the heat. One of the 4th Division teams explained that you had ‘to relieve the body of the gas’ by rolling it on to its front, and apply pressure with a knee in the middle of the back. ‘One develops a strong stomach quickly,’ he remarked. Another observed that the ‘sickening stench’ of ‘human death’ was tough on
