D-Day: The Battle for Normandy

the cooks, who were used to collect bodies and then had to go back to prepare meat. Perhaps the most gruesome job of all was to remove the unidentifiable remains of tank crews from the insides of a burnt-out turret. ‘As gruesome as it may sound, a mess kit cup and spoon were the tools of the trade.’

The weather was equally familiar in that wet summer. It was overcast, with drizzle and intermittent showers, which once again prevented air support and hindered artillery observation. The 29th Division’s advance picked up after a slow start. Spearheaded by a battalion of the 116th Infantry supported by tanks, it found a gap in the line held by the German 9th Paratroop Regiment and reached Saint-Andre-de-l’Epine. But the 115th Infantry on its right, astride the Isigny road, was slow off the mark and then came up against well-defended positions, which it found hard to outflank. Major General Gerhardt, the divisional commander, warned General Corlett of XIX Corps that evening that ‘the stuff ahead is pretty stout’. But the 116th had reached part of the Martinville ridge, while the Texans of the neighbouring 2nd Division seized Hill 192 after heavy fighting. This was a great relief to the Americans. Hill 192 had given the Germans a clear view into the rear of the V Corps sector and all the way to the right flank of the British front.

The 2nd Division had been planning this operation since 16 June. On 1 July, taking advantage of the German tendency to withdraw the bulk of its front-line strength at night to avoid casualties from an early-morning bombardment, one of its battalions slipped forward during darkness and occupied all the German trenches. This was a calculated risk, because the Germans always had their own front-line positions registered as mortar and artillery targets. But it proved well worthwhile. This sudden advance provided the division with a good line of departure for the operation which they had been forced to postpone on several occasions. Time had not been wasted during the long wait. Battalions were withdrawn from the line in rotation for intensive tank-infantry training with engineer groups attached. They knew that they needed all the expertise and help they could get. They were up against part of the German 3rd Paratroop Division, which had been honeycombing the hedgerows on the hillside with concealed fire positions, tunnels and earth bunkers. German 50 mm mortars were targeted on every approaching hedgerow and 20 mm anti-aircraft guns commanded the road below. Heavy artillery and tanks to the rear on the south side of the Bayeux road were always ready to provide support.

The 2nd Division put the harsh lessons learned so far in the bocage to good use. Their supporting tanks all had telephones mounted on the rear of the vehicle so that infantry platoon commanders could indicate targets to the crew inside without having to climb on to the turret, exposing themselves dangerously. And the whole attacking force was divided into infantry-armour teams, each with its own engineer explosives group ready to blow holes in the hedgerows. The Shermans would bombard each hedgerow intersection with their 75 mm main armament, then spray the hedges in between with machine-gun fire, while the infantry advanced. All this was combined with a more flexible rolling barrage, which could be adapted to unexpected delays in the rate of advance. Each hedgerow when taken was to be treated as a new line of departure.

Perhaps more than any previous bocage operation, the 2nd Division’s advance went according to plan, but it remained a ‘grim job’. Even when it seemed that a hedgerow system had been thoroughly cleared, German paratroops would again emerge from hidden entrances to shoot at their backs. The western shoulder of Hill 192 was the most fiercely defended and was dubbed ‘Kraut Corner’. It was finally outflanked after an hour and fifteen prisoners were taken. ‘Three enemy paratroopers who still held out were eliminated by a tank dozer which buried them under five feet of dirt.’

Nearby, the hamlet of Cloville was cleared by house-to-house fighting amid the ruins from the artillery bombardment which had failed to destroy an assault gun and a tank supporting the German paratroops. A Sherman managed to knock out the two armoured vehicles to secure the objective. The advance continued shortly before 1200 hours. To avoid being slowed down again, the hamlet of Le Soulaire, half a mile further on, was bypassed, and by 1700 hours the leading platoons began to leapfrog across the Bayeux road in tiny groups. Their tank support could not stay with them because of anti-tank guns still concealed in the rough woodland on the reverse side of Hill 192.

While they were under fire, an unknown senior officer appeared, inspecting their positions. A GI called out to him to get down immediately or he would be killed. ‘Mind your Goddam business, soldier!’ the officer roared back. It was General George Patton, conducting a personal reconnaissance to familiarize himself with the terrain.

In the centre, the Shermans kept up with the infantry. They were even able to enter the woods on the side of the crest because the saturation of white phosphorus shells in the opening bombardment had almost burned it to the ground. They met only ‘scattered opposition’ and advanced down the southern slope. Although unable to cross the Bayeux road by nightfall, they were firmly dug in just north of it.

On the left flank of the attack, the 23rd Infantry had a very hard fight, sustaining many casualties near a re- entrant dubbed ‘Purple Heart Draw’ on the north-eastern slope of the feature. This had proved impassable for tanks, and far too exposed for infantry on their own, because German artillery and mortar batteries had registered every target in the area. Germans in houses a few hundred yards to the left, which should have been hit in the American bombardment, also contributed a withering automatic fire until two Shermans from the 741st Tank Battalion advanced to within thirty yards and blasted the foundations, causing the buildings to collapse on to the German machine-gun teams inside.

Closer in towards the summit, the right-hand company of the battalion perfected a technique of firing fragmentation rifle grenades to explode as airbursts over German machine-gun pits. By the end of the day, the battalion had advanced 1,500 yards and had reached the ridge, but it was still 400 yards short of the Bayeux road. One of the most unexpected achievements of the day’s infantry-tank cooperation had been that not a single Sherman was lost. And on 12 July, the advance continued in the centre and east, so that the 2nd Division held all its objectives north of the Bayeux road. With the capture of Hill 192, the Americans now had observation posts with a clear view over Saint-Lo and its surrounding area.

Just to the east on the 1st Division’s sector south of Caumont, an interesting contrast to the bitter fighting for the Bayeux road had just taken place. The Americans arranged a truce on 9 July with the 2nd Panzer-Division to hand over a second group of German nurses captured in Cherbourg. ‘This second transfer and the chivalrous treatment of these nurses,’ wrote their commander, Generalleutnant Freiherr von Luttwitz, ‘made at that time a deep impression upon the entire division.’ Luttwitz informed Rommel, who then decided that this would be the place to make contact with the Americans to negotiate a ceasefire in Normandy should Hitler continue to refuse to end the war. Rommel’s discussions with his commanders on taking unilateral action against the regime was running in parallel, but separately from preparations for the assassination of Hitler at Rastenburg.

The unblooded 35th Division on the east bank of the Vire had to begin the 11 July offensive with a complicated manoeuvre, because of the L-shaped line it was holding. Then, almost immediately, the commander of its leading regiment, the 137th Infantry, was wounded by machine-gun fire. The Germans had fortified both a chateau and a church near Saint-Gilles in that sector, which held out despite a heavy battering from the divisional artillery. Machine-gun emplacements in the cemetery walls and in the church itself pinned down the battalion trying to attack it. When it was finally stormed the next day after another bombardment, ‘only three prisoners, two of them wounded, were taken on this hotly contested ground’.

Yet according to General Bayerlein, the 17th SS Panzergrenadier-Division Gotz von Berlichingen was ‘in a poor state and had no will to fight’. Only the paratroopers and the Das Reich Kampfgruppe were dependable. This was perhaps helped by the way a Das Reich commander, Obersturmbahnfuhrer Wisliczeny — ‘a giant, brutal man’, according to Bayerlein — stood behind the line with a stick and beat anyone who tried to run back.

West of the Vire, the 30th Division, recovering from the Panzer Lehr attack, advanced with Combat Command B of the 3rd Armored Division, supported by the divisional and corps artillery firing 14,000 rounds. They reached the northern edge of Pont-Hebert and Hauts-Vents at the cost of another 367 casualties.

Bradley’s general advance on 11 July extended along almost all of the First US Army front. Towards the Atlantic coast of the Cotentin, in the VIII Corps sector, the 79th Division, aided by heavy air attacks, pushed forward west of La Haye-du-Puits and took the high ground near Montgardon. The 8th Division captured Hill 92 and carried on another mile south.

The 90th Division, having finally taken the Mont Castre ridge the day before, began to clear the forest on its reverse slopes. Its men were terrified of advancing against the well-camouflaged 15th Paratroop Regiment in thick underbrush with no more than ten yards’ visibility. Contact between platoons, even between individuals in the same