After several hours of heavy losses, Gerhardt reluctantly halted them with instructions to dig in and hold the ground they had won. But the order took a long time to reach Major Bingham, commanding the 2nd Battalion. By the time it did and he had rushed forward on foot to catch up with his leading company, they had reached their objective of La Capelle on the Bayeux road. Bingham never considered retreat. He immediately ordered his battalion to dig foxholes in all-round defence. Martinville itself on the ridge above had been cleared, but German paratroops, following their practice, had infiltrated back in again so his force was out on a limb.
Gerhardt was astonished to hear that the 2nd Battalion had got through. He did not want to pull them back, yet they were in a very exposed position with the ridge still partly in German hands. He ordered the 115th Infantry on the right to advance at dawn the next day, 16 July, as rapidly as possible down the road from Isigny to Saint-Lo. If they got through, then the Germans on the ridge would probably be forced to withdraw. But the 115th came up against such heavy fire from mortars, machine guns and assault guns that it was forced to go to ground.
Bingham’s beleaguered force down by the Bayeux road managed to repel a counter-attack, but it was running short of ammunition and supplies. Water was not a problem, as there were two wells, but the battalion had thirty- five wounded and only three inexperienced aid men to tend them. An artillery spotter plane dropped plasma to them, but several men died who would have survived if they could have been evacuated. Bingham’s battalion was nevertheless extremely lucky. Bad communications on the German side meant that their position had not been clearly identified by German artillery, which during that day, to the delight of American observers, had been shelling their own troops almost as much as their enemy.
The 1st Battalion up on the ridge, a quarter of a mile to the east of Martinville, suffered ferocious counter- attacks from German paratroops armed with flame-throwers and supported by three tanks. The American infantrymen emerged from their foxholes to make sure that they shot down the heavily laden flame-thrower teams before they came within range to use their devices. A Company of the 1st Battalion, which was on the right, had lost all its officers on the previous day. It was now commanded by Private Harold E. Peterson, because the survivors had elected him commander. A young lieutenant was sent across to take over, but since he was new to combat, he sensibly did what Peterson told him.
The Germans attacked yet again from Martinville. This sortie had a tank in support, which blasted the hedgerow in which Peterson’s men were concealed. The bazooka team was knocked out and others who took over the weapon were targeted. The survivors had to run for it, dragging wounded men behind them ‘like a sled’. But they rallied under the leadership of Peterson and another soldier, a full-blooded Native American ‘known simply as “Chief”’. Peterson then stalked the tank with rifle grenades, which were hardly armour-piercing. He scored six hits on the exterior, and the noise alone must have convinced the crew of the tank that it was better to turn around and scuttle back to Martinville. Peterson’s skeleton company then reoccupied their positions.
That night, Peterson gave the order that one soldier in each two-man foxhole should stay awake while the other slept. Early next morning, he crept off to check on the other foxholes. In some of those where both men had fallen asleep, he found that their throats had been cut. The enemy raiding party of paratroopers, some fifteen strong, was still nearby and Peterson attacked with grenades. He was forced back, but then managed to site two light machine guns and a bazooka to keep the German paratroops pinned down. In fact their fire cut the enemy, in some cases quite literally, to pieces. Every German was killed. During all of this time, battalion headquarters had no idea that Peterson was in command.
During the night of 15 July, General Gerhardt ordered his deputy, Brigadier General Norman Cota, to assemble a task force ‘on three hours’ notice to complete the occupation of Saint-Lo’. This was perhaps a little premature, considering the ferocious battle on the ridge and the division’s shortage of artillery ammunition. Also that night, 269 replacements arrived, and were instantly sent forward to strengthen the 1st Battalion of the 116th Infantry on the ridge. This was a brutally abrupt baptism of fire, contrary to the recommendations of the divisional psychiatrist, but Gerhardt did not want to lose the initiative.
The 3rd Battalion, commanded by Major Thomas D. Howie, was also seriously under-strength, but it received only a handful of new officers. Howie’s battalion was to attack westwards before dawn, along the southern slope of the ridge, to join up with Bingham’s men and then advance together into Saint-Lo. To maintain surprise, he ordered his men to rely on the bayonet. Only two men per platoon were authorized to shoot in an emergency.
Howie’s battalion ‘jumped off’ on 16 July when there was only a pre-dawn glimmer of light. It advanced rapidly in column of companies. They were lucky to be shrouded by an early-morning summer mist, but, presumably reacting to sound, German machine-gunners opened fire in their direction. As instructed, Howie’s soldiers did not fire back. Good discipline and rapid footwork took them through to their objective next to Bingham’s battalion by 06.00 hours. Howie reported to their regimental commander by radio. He was told that their task was to push on immediately to the edge of Saint-Lo, little more than half a mile to the west. ‘Will do,’ he answered. His men rapidly shared their rations with the famished 2nd Battalion, though they could not spare any ammunition. But just after Major Howie gave the order to advance on Saint-Lo, a German mortar shell exploded among his headquarters group. Howie was killed instantly. Captain H. Puntenney, the executive officer, took command and tried to push the attack forward. German artillery and mortar batteries, however, had finally identified their position and also began shelling that stretch of the Bayeux-Saint-Lo road.
The 3rd Battalion dug foxholes rapidly to shelter from the bombardment and prepared to receive a counter- attack. One eventually came in at the end of the afternoon, but they fought it off. German tanks could be heard in the distance, so an air strike was requested before dark fell. The 506th Fighter Bomber Squadron was scrambled and zeroed in on the armour concentration. The results were demoralizing for the Germans, but provided a great boost for American morale. Some of Puntenney’s men discovered a German ammunition dump nearby. This was a relief, as the force had only one bazooka round left. Teller mines were taken and planted along the Bayeux road and on the minor north- south route which crossed the highway at La Madeleine. It was an anxious night. Puntenney felt that they were only holding on through bluff. But the next morning, 17 July, they received a miraculous surprise. An Austrian doctor suddenly appeared, wanting to surrender. He was able to save the lives of several of the wounded by using the plasma dropped the day before.
On the ridge above them, the 1st Battalion continued its attack on Martinville, using a small force with an anti-tank gun and a tank destroyer to take up position on the eastern side of the hamlet. The 29th Division’s other two regiments, the 175th further up the Bayeux road and the 115th still trying to push down the road from Isigny, made little progress that day. One battalion of the 115th managed to veer off to attack the Martinville feature on the north side, but that afternoon it was hit heavily by a German mortar concentration, and many wounded men died that evening without medical attention. The shortage of aid men right along the front had become critical, mainly due to heavy casualties and a lack of trained replacements.
The battalion of the 115th, shaken by its casualties, had begun to dig in that night east of Martinville when the regimental commander arrived. To their disbelief, they were ordered to continue the advance without delay. ‘This order caused great consternation in the battalion,’ remarked their regimental commander. But once the grumbling was over, they moved on again at midnight. To their even greater surprise, they found themselves advancing forward along the western slope of the ridge towards Saint-Lo without encountering heavy resistance. The Germans seemed to have melted away in the night.[41]
The two battalions, Bingham’s and Puntenney’s, isolated at the bottom of the ridge near La Madeleine, could now be supplied by a lifeline over the saddle from the north. But this supply route remained a hazardous enterprise under the deadly fire from guns sited south of the Bayeux road. Private Peterson’s company was reinforced with eighty-five replacements and a new commander, Captain Rabbitt. New arrivals were mixed in with veterans so that they would not panic. This company then manned the lifeline down from the ridge, with small groups in every field armed with machine guns. To their astonishment, they suddenly sighted a column of German soldiers being marched down in the open past them. The machine guns opened up and they mowed them down.
During the night of 17 July, the Germans evacuated the ridge and the withdrawal proved even more widespread. Outflanked on the Bayeux road and the Martinville ridge, they had to pull back on the sector facing the 35th Division, even abandoning a considerable amount of equipment and weapons. General Corlett told Gerhardt on the morning of 18 July to take Saint-Lo, which American troops now called ‘Stilo’. Brigadier General Cota’s task force, with reconnaissance elements, Shermans, tank destroyers and engineers, was ready to move. ‘Looks like we’re all set,’ Gerhardt reported to Corps headquarters. At 14.30 hours, Cota sent the message, ‘Ready to roll.’ His column began to move down the Isigny road into Saint-Lo, where they were joined by a battalion of the 115th Infantry. After the heavy fighting of the last few weeks, German resistance seemed comparatively light. There was harassing fire from German artillery positions south of Saint-Lo and groups from the 30th Mobile Brigade fought a
