D-Day: The Battle for Normandy

The other was that, like most young soldiers, he did not want to die a virgin.

Fire missions against British tank concentrations round Evrecy were few, because of the shortage of ammunition. Often their battery was rationed to three rounds per day. With time on their hands, Beck and the other gunners played chess or skat when not under fire. Allied air attacks on their supply lines also reduced their rations. Beck was so hungry that he had the ‘hare-brained idea’ of slipping forward to dig up potatoes by the front line. But, like the British troops on the other side, they almost all suffered from dysentery, which had spread from insects feeding off corpses.

They soon encountered very young SS panzergrenadiers in camouflage uniforms, ‘outstandingly well- equipped’ in comparison to their own infantry. ‘They were not, however, to be envied,’ he felt. ‘They were ambitious and were splendid soldiers. We all respected them.’ But ‘for us the war had been lost for some time. What counted was to survive.’ That was certainly the opinion of the older soldiers. ‘They were more mature, concerned, fatherly and humane. They did not want any heroics.’ Beck and his comrades sometimes had to go forwards with a two- wheeled handcart to collect the wounded, who told them that, as artillerymen, they were lucky not to be in the front line: ‘Up there it is hell.’ The young gunners, when sheltering in their trenches from a bombardment, also discussed the right sort of Heimatschuss which would be just serious enough to have you sent back to a hospital in Germany. ‘My thoughts,’ wrote Beck, ‘were wound, casualty clearing station, hospital, home, end of the war. I wanted only to get out of this misery.’ But the British bombardment, including naval guns which made craters thirteen feet across and six and a half feet deep, provoked psychological as well as physical wounds. When a senior sergeant was blown up by a shell, a seventeen-year-old signaller next to him went completely to pieces.

German infantry losses were so great that a division was ground down within three weeks. Rommel’s headquarters noted that on 16 July the 277th Infanterie-Division near Evrecy had lost thirty-three officers and 800 men in the last few days. They were now reinforced by part of the 9th SS Panzer-Division Hohenstaufen, but even they had lost so many men that they had to reorganize their two panzergrenadier regiments into three weak battalions.

During the night of 16 July, Ultra intercepted a signal from Generalfeldmarschall Hugo Sperrle, the commander-in-chief of the Third Air Fleet. In it he predicted a major attack ‘decisive for the course of the war to take place south-eastwards from Caen about the night of 17-18th’. German air reconnaissance had for once penetrated Allied lines and overflown the Orne bridgehead to photograph preparations. In any case, the British knew that the Germans in the factory district of Colombelles, on the east bank of the Orne, would have observation posts on the top of tall chimneys and could see almost everything in the bridgehead. Yet this clear warning from Ultra that the Germans were well aware of the main British thrust did not make Dempsey re-examine his priorities. Without surprise, their only chance of success was to follow the bombing with a speedy and resolute attack.

General Eberbach of Panzer Group West did not believe that his forces, with 150 tanks, would manage to hold back the 800 British tanks massing against them. When Hausser’s Seventh Army demanded the transfer of a panzer division from the Caen sector, because it had no reserves left to meet the American attack round Saint-Lo, Eberbach said it was ‘out of the question’. Rommel backed him up.

On 17 July, Standartenfuhrer Kurt Meyer, the commander of the SS Hitler Jugend Division, received an order to report to Generalfeldmarschall Rommel at the headquarters of Dietrich’s I SS Panzer Corps. Most of the division had been withdrawn to rest and refit near Livarot after its battering in Caen. Rommel asked Meyer for his assessment of the impending British attack. ‘The units will fight and the soldiers will continue to die in their positions,’ Meyer said, ‘but they will not prevent the British tanks from rolling over their bodies and marching on to Paris. The enemy’s overwhelming air supremacy makes tactical manoeuvre virtually impossible. The fighter-bombers even attack individual dispatch riders.’

Rommel became impassioned on the subject. He vented his exasperation with the OKW, which still refused to listen to his warnings. ‘They don’t believe my reports any more. Something has to happen. The war in the West has to end… But what will happen in the East?’ As Rommel took his leave, Sepp Dietrich urged him to avoid the main road on his return to La Roche-Guyon. Rommel apparently waved away the idea with a smile.

Less than an hour later, Rommel’s open Horch was attacked by two Spitfires on the road near Sainte-Foy- de-Montgommery. He was thrown from the car and badly injured. A Frenchwoman on her way to buy meat had been forced to duck in panic as the fighters came in. She recounted that the locals found it ironic that the attack should have taken place next to a village with a name so similar to that of his opposing commander. Rommel was taken first to a pharmacy in Livarot and then to a hospital at Bernay. He was out of the war.

Eberbach, on receiving the news, set off immediately with an army doctor. At 21.30 hours, Speidel rang Panzer Group West to say that Hitler had ordered Generalfeldmarschall von Kluge to take command of Army Group B while continuing as Commander-in-Chief West. When Eberbach returned, a call came through from Kluge’s staff ordering the transfer of a panzer division to the Seventh Army to help stop the American breakthrough at Saint-Lo. Although his side of the conversation is not included in the log, General Eberbach evidently refused. Within a matter of minutes Kluge himself was on the telephone. Eberbach explained ‘that the Panzer Group was facing a major English attack’. He then went on to specify the threat. The only reserve available was the 12th SS Panzer-Division Hitler Jugend, which had just been removed from him. In what was clearly an ill- tempered conversation, Kluge rejected Eberbach’s demands for reinforcements as out of the question. The record then adds that Kluge reminded him of the situation on the eastern front, with the onslaught of the Red Army’s Operation Bagration. But Eberbach refused to be browbeaten. He returned to the charge over the threat facing his sector and the consequences of sending one of his panzer divisions to Saint-Lo.

That night, the first bombardments began in preparation for Operation Goodwood and also Operation Atlantic. The idea was to cover the sound of tanks moving into position, but it only confirmed what the Germans already knew. Operation Atlantic was the simultaneous Canadian offensive aimed in part at taking Vaucelles, the southern part of Caen and its outskirts. Canadian artillery hit a large fuel and ammunition dump in Vaucelles, causing a huge explosion.

Of all the offensives in Normandy, Operation Goodwood was the most obvious to the enemy. Attempts to conceal it with deception measures, including ‘pre-recorded wireless traffic’ to simulate an attack towards Caumont, were doomed to failure. Even if the Germans had not known in advance from photo-reconnaissance and their observation posts in Colombelles, the dust clouds in the unusually hot weather indicated the movement of tank formations. The signs by the side of the road warning that ‘Dust Kills’ (because it attracted German artillery fire) seemed no more than an ironic reminder as the military police in their white canvas gaiters and white gauntlets waved the vehicles on.

Goodwood also represented a failure in military intelligence. Even with RAF Mustangs flying photo- reconnaissance missions, Dempsey’s staff assumed that Eberbach’s defences had a depth of less than three miles.In fact there were five lines going all the way back to the rear of the Bourguebus ridge, over six miles away. And despite the identification of the 16th Luftwaffe Feld-Division, they had no knowledge of the number of 88 mm guns brought forward with Generalleutnant Pickert’s Flak Corps. Cavalry regiments were later to curse the intelligence staff, whom they dubbed the ‘crystal-gazers’.

The 11th Armoured Division led the way across the Orne bridges into the eastern bridgehead that night. Despite Montgomery’s revision to the plan, Dempsey’s headquarters had done nothing to cool the fever of expectation. ‘We’ll be moving into top gear!’ the commander of a brigade in the 7th Armoured Division told his officers. ‘We are undoubtedly on the eve of a battle much bigger than Alamein,’ wrote a squadron commander of the 13th/18th Hussars in his diary. ‘The crush east of the Orne has to be seen to be believed. There isn’t an orchard or a field empty.’ Memories of the North African victory were perhaps in their minds also because of the great heat, the terrible dust, ‘which we all agree is comparable to the desert’, and the unrelenting swarms of mosquitoes. Soldiers complained that the army-issue insect repellent seemed to attract them even more.

Officers in the Guards Armoured Division were very conscious of the fact that they had not fought in North Africa and that this was their first battle. Rex Whistler, the painter and set designer, although fifteen years older than the other troop leaders in the armoured battalion of the Welsh Guards, had been determined to stay with his squadron. And just because they were at war, he saw no reason to stop painting. Back in England, Whistler had commissioned the local village blacksmith to make him a metal container to fix to the outside of his tank turret to