D-Day: The Battle for Normandy

with 30,000 cases of combat exhaustion in Normandy. By late July, there were two 1,000-bed centres in operation. Doctors had initially been shocked by commanders talking of the need to get green troops ‘blooded’ in action, but a gradual introduction was clearly better than a sudden shock.

Nothing, however, seemed to reduce the flow of cases where men under artillery fire would go ‘wide-eyed and jittery’, or ‘start running around in circles and crying’, or ‘curl up into little balls’, or even wander out in a trance in an open field and start picking flowers as the shells exploded. Others cracked under the strain of patrols, suddenly crying, ‘We’re going to get killed! We’re going to get killed!’ Young officers had to try to deal with ‘men suddenly whimpering, cringing, refusing to get up or get out of a foxhole and go forward under fire’. While some soldiers resorted to self-inflicted wounds, a smaller, unknown number committed suicide.

Military doctors also had to cope with the mundane. Flea bites from farmyards and barns could become infected. Many needless accidents were caused by a combination of exhaustion and raw Calvados, which GIs called ‘applejack’ or sometimes ‘white lightning’ because of its strength. The number of cases of diarrhoea rose alarmingly, but constipation was also a problem, especially among armoured crews. The over-salted contents of K- Rations were hated. Even the lemonade powder with Vitamin C was used instead for cleaning and scouring. A running joke developed that German prisoners of war were claiming that forcing them to eat K-Rations was a breach of the Geneva Convention. Men dreamed of ice cream, hot dogs and milkshakes. Their only hope of such comforts came when they were in reserve and the American Red Cross doughnut wagon turned up, run by young women volunteers. Its appearance also added the promise of a chat with a girl from back home. But when resting, soldiers resorted to more masculine pursuits. Paydays would see every form of gambling, with dice or seven-card stud. And if they had no money, they played for cigarettes, like before when waiting for D-Day.

Personal cleanliness in that humid summer was also hard to maintain when there were few opportunities for washing. Some French women clearly could not restrain their curiosity, to the discomfort of American modesty. ‘I find it a bit hard getting used to women here looking at the men taking a bath,’ wrote a medical officer in his diary. ‘There were scores of GIs bare as the day they were born washing and swimming in the water round the mill house — and two women sat around quite nonchalantly, at times standing, overlooking the scene.’

To preserve anything from the rain that July required ingenuity. A sergeant in the 1st Infantry Division recounted that he always kept a dry pair of socks and some toilet paper in the top of his helmet liner. Soldiers also needed to hang on to their kit, because fascinated children were often trying to make off with their own souvenirs. Little French boys pestered them, requesting ‘cigarettes pour Papa’, only to go off and smoke them themselves. They were constantly hanging around the mess tents in rear areas, despite orders to clear them away. But American soldiers always indulged them: ‘French kids used to come around, with their little tin pails and stand at the mess line, and we always made sure we had extra food to give them.’

A gendarme in Caumont, behind the 1st Division’s lines, was persuaded to try a piece of chewing gum. One of his main tasks was to cope with soldiers searching cellars for wine and Calvados. He and his men had the idea of scrawling ‘Mines’ on the walls by the entrance. But while he was ready to forgive soldiers who felt a desperate need for alcohol, he was deeply shocked, on finding his first dead Allied soldier, to see that someone had already stolen his boots. ‘I know we lack everything, but even so!’ he wrote. Looting by the townsfolk made him look at his fellow citizens afresh. ‘It was a great surprise to find it in all classes of society. The war has awakened atavistic instincts and transformed a number of law-abiding individuals into delinquents.’

While the German Seventh Army feared that Periers would be the immediate focus of the next American offensive, Bradley was still determined to take Saint-Lo from the Martinville ridge, just to the north-east of the town.

German commanders were concerned about the Martinville ridge sector because Schimpf’s 3rd Paratroop Division was being ground down. An Ultra intercept provided Bradley with the information that Meindl’s II Paratroop Corps had lost 6,000 men. Rommel had been left in no doubt about the gravity of the situation when he visited General Meindl at II Paratroop Corps headquarters on the evening of 14 July. (On that day of foul weather, Rommel had been able to drive around without fear of Allied fighters.) Meindl warned him that Hitler’s demand to hold the present front line at all costs could well prove disastrous. Less than a week later, Meindl complained to General Kurt Student, the commander-in-chief of the paratroop army, that two requests for reinforcements had not been answered. Those who arrived were often unfit for battle and became casualties immediately, as both the Americans and British had found. Some of these paratroop replacements had been trainee pilots unable to complete their flying courses back in Germany due to the critical shortage of fuel.

Rommel was well aware of the dangers. He had been warned that the boundary between the Seventh Army and Panzer Group West (which corresponded with the British-American boundary) might well ‘burst a seam’. In fact, reserves were desperately needed all along the line, especially when a full-strength formation, such as the 353rd Infanterie-Division, was reduced to under 700 men after eleven days of fighting. And this had been during a period when the weather had grounded the US Air Force for most of the time.

The Americans were also worried about heavy casualties, as well as the slowness of their advance. Along the east bank of the Vire, the 35th Division had attempted to push forward, while the 30th Division on the far side of the river had also tried to break through with little success. The earlier disruption to the 9th Division, slowing it down, had left the 30th with an exposed right flank. The 30th found that it was also facing groups from the 2nd SS Panzer-Division Das Reich.

The situation only began to improve on 15 July, the day of Corlett’s ‘Sunday punch’. XIX Corps was at last able to profit from air support with P-47 Thunderbolts strafing and bombing German positions. Unfortunately, a pair of Thunderbolts misidentified a detachment of Combat Command B and knocked out an American tank and a half- track. But the 35th Division, using a well-prepared feint that morning, managed to break the German line and force a retreat. Pressure all along the XIX Corps front, with powerful counter-battery fire from its artillery, had forced the Germans to use up almost all their ammunition. The 30th Division’s commander described the day as a ‘slugfest’.[40]

All eyes in the American command structure were on the 29th Division, responsible for the sector which was the key to Saint-Lo. Its flamboyant commander, General Gerhardt, was determined to make the most of the opportunity. Gerhardt did not attract universal respect. Bradley Holbrook, a war correspondent from the Baltimore Sun, attached to the 29th Division, had observed Gerhardt’s longing for publicity as the battle for Saint-Lo progressed. ‘I remember going up there one morning where he was standing,’ he recounted later. ‘The casualties were mounting and it just seemed useless as hell to me. And I asked him why are we taking so many casualties when we can just go around this place and go on. And he turned and looked at me and said, “Because that’s a name everybody is going to remember.” And I thought, “Oh, shit, what kind of a war are we fighting?”.’

Gerhardt, like Patton, was also a stickler for correct turnout in the field. He could do little about the unkempt state of his men, because opportunities for shaving came only when a battalion was in reserve. But with more justification, he was exasperated that most soldiers fastened the strap of their steel helmet round the back and not under the chin. This came from the misplaced fear that a nearby explosion would pull their head off if the helmet was securely fastened. Gerhardt himself always wore his steel helmet correctly buckled, and was hardly ever seen in other headgear, apparently because he wished to hide his baldness.

His division’s immediate objective was the hamlet of Martinville on top of the key ridge. It consisted of no more than a handful of Norman stone farmhouses, with walled yards either side of the unpaved road which ran from west to east along the ridge. The hedgerows were as thick and as high as elsewhere in the region, and the densely planted apple orchards provided complete cover for vehicles and enclosed gun pits from air observation. The German paratroops had again dug themselves in deeply and cleverly in bunkers covered with logs and earth, which would survive almost anything except a direct hit from a large-calibre shell or bomb. They had been reinforced with combat engineers as well as other companies from their division, plus remnants of the 30th Mobile Brigade with machine guns and mortars, some remnants of the 352nd Infantry Division and well-camouflaged assault guns sited to fire down hedgerows.

The American attack was supported by thirteen battalions of artillery, together with P-47 Thunderbolts dropping 500-pound bombs on 88 mm batteries. But on almost all axes of advance, German fire inflicted heavy casualties. At 19.30 hours, General Gerhardt ordered another last push before dark, with the call, ‘Fix bayonets! Twenty-nine, let’s go!’ The 116th Infantry struck along the ridge from the east with three battalions almost abreast.