touch with Bradley to see what he should do next. Patton, apparently controlling his exasperation, told him that ‘throughout history it had always been fatal not to cross a river’. Although he did not take over command officially until noon the next day, he made it very clear that VIII Corps was to cross immediately. Soon afterwards, a message came in to say that the bridge at Pontaubault had been captured. It was damaged but passable. Patton told Middleton to send the 4th and 6th Armored Divisions across as fast as possible.
South of Pontaubault, the road divided. One route led south and west towards Rennes and Brest. The other headed east towards the Seine and Paris. Patton went to bed at one in the morning of 1 August knowing that, eleven hours later, the Third Army would be fully operational under his command with four army corps, Middleton’s VIII Corps, Haislip’s XV Corps, Walker’s XX Corps and Cook’s XII Corps. The XV Corps immediately issued to its three divisions a warning order which clearly revealed the Patton style: ‘As many troops as possible to be motorized and tanks to lead throughout.’ Also at midday on 1 August, Bradley became commander-in-chief of 12th Army Group, with General Hodges taking over the First Army, which would continue the attack towards the line of the Vire and then on to Mortain.
On 1 August, Kluge was at Seventh Army forward headquarters with Hausser and his new chief of staff, Oberst von Gersdorff, when they heard of the American seizure of Avranches. According to his aide, Oberleutnant Tangermann, he said, ‘Gentlemen, this breakthrough means for us and the German people the beginning of a decisive and bitter end. I see no remaining possibility of halting this ongoing attack.’ Some of his colleagues felt that the effects of his serious car crash in Russia the year before had started to show. He was losing the determination he had shown when he took over from Rundstedt.
As soon as the news reached the
Kluge warned that the withdrawal of panzer divisions would lead to a collapse of the whole front, including the British sector. He proposed instead that German forces should be withdrawn behind the Seine, abandoning western France entirely. The panzer divisions could protect the retreat of the infantry divisions without motor transport. Hitler rejected this furiously and insisted that if his orders were carried out there would be ‘certain victory in the end’. Kluge sensed that this would be a catastrophic decision, but there was nothing he could do. Hitler, obsessed with his maps but with no idea of the reality on the ground, had begun to plan Operation Luttich, the great counter-attack from Mortain towards Avranches. But the enemy was breaking out into the open. By noon, the American 4th Armored Division was across the Selune and ‘round the corner into Brittany’.
The Americans found German resistance much tougher on the left, with heavy fighting round Percy and Villedieu, which the 3rd Armored Division had bypassed. The 4th Infantry Division called up four battalions of artillery to deal with German positions. The 155 mm ‘Long Toms’ fired a total of three ‘serenades’, the most intense bombardment on offer, and finally the German guns fell silent. Late in the afternoon, the 4th Division’s reconnaissance squadron entered Villedieu.
Tessy was also captured that day after heavy and bitter fighting. The Germans in retreat could resort to the brutality of the eastern front. According to Lieutenant Colonel Teague, commanding the 3rd Battalion of the 22nd Infantry Regiment, ‘One of our trucks (an ambulance) was sent up the road north from the aid station near La Tilandiere toward Villebaudon. The Jerries, attacking toward the highway, captured the truck, shot six wounded men in it, and made a road block out of the truck.’
Front-line troops adopted a very dismissive attitude towards the large numbers of prisoners they were taking. Middleton’s VIII Corps had taken 7,000 prisoners in just three days, out of the whole First Army’s bag of 20,000 in six days. When a battalion of the 8th Infantry Division captured a couple of hundred Germans, they sent them back with just one guard. Sometimes they returned weapons to Polish and Russian prisoners and told them to escort the Germans, which may well have led to several of the latter failing to reach the stockade alive. Empty supply trucks going back north were also used. ‘We passed columns of prisoners, on foot and in trucks, but all under guard,’ noted an officer with the 29th Infantry Division near Percy. ‘They seemed low-spirited as to the older ones. The only defiant ones were the young.’ Over-optimistic rumours had meanwhile begun to spread in German units that they were to be withdrawn behind the Seine.
On 2 August, fighting continued in the southern part of Villedieu after most of the town was cleared. American tanks drove a group of German infantry armed with Panzerfaust launchers into the railway station. The Shermans fired at the building with their 75 mm main armament until they had demolished the whole structure on top of them.
On the road towards the Foret de Saint-Sever, where many German units were reorganizing, heavy fighting continued on the hills either side, especially Hill 213. Lieutenant Colonel Johnson was taking his battalion round the side of the ridge to outflank the Germans on the summit. ‘As we came over the crest and saw the road I rubbed my eyes,’ he wrote. ‘I thought we must have got our directions mixed. The whole road was jammed with traffic of the 3rd Armored Division bumper to bumper — tanks, trucks, Jeeps and ambulances. I looked across the road and saw a medical station.’ Nobody seemed to realize that a major battle was going on just 500 yards away. The 12th Infantry, one of their other officers observed, was ‘so tired they could hardly walk up the hill, let alone attack up it’. German artillery fire from the Foret de Saint-Sever to their east was very heavy and caused many casualties. This, combined with Luftwaffe attacks at night, kept men ‘in a state of jitters’, resulting in an increased rate of combat fatigue.
While some Germans fought ruthlessly in retreat, others respected the rules of war. Captain Ware, the battalion surgeon, reported that two men hit on patrol had not been found. Four medics, led by Corporal Baylor, set out in a Jeep with a large red cross flag to find them. ‘One man stood on the hood and held the flag open so it could not be overlooked. The jeep rounded the bend of the road [and] reached the first casualty. He was dead. As the aid man was examining him the Germans fired a machinegun which hit Cpl Baylor in the chest. The other three crawled back under fire dragging the wounded man and leaving the two bodies and the jeep.’ Captain Ware decided to abandon the attempt. ‘But just as this decision was reached a German wearing a Geneva [Red Cross] brassard and carrying a white flag came round the bend of the road walking toward them. He was promptly covered. All the American weapons present were pointed at him but fortunately no shot was fired. As the German came up we could see that he was sweating profusely. But he did not falter. He handed me the attached note which no one present could read. A German speaking soldier of the anti-tank platoon was sent for. The German told him that he had been sent by his lieutenant to apologize for his soldiers firing on the American medics. The German was still sweating [and] kept removing his helmet to mop his brow. He said he had volunteered for this mission. He also told us that both the American casualties were dead. The German said that the note from his Lieutenant assured us that we might return and remove our casualties as well as the jeep and that the Germans would not fire again. We asked the German if he would like to stay with us now that he was across the lines. He laughed and said he supposed it made no difference which side he stayed with, but he pointed out that if he did stay it would look bad for the Americans since the Germans would think he had been detained by force.’
The American advance was still slowed by traffic jams on the narrow country roads and also by attacks from groups of German stragglers. ‘The small number of Germans are causing us difficulty out of all proportion to their numbers,’ the headquarters of the 4th Infantry Division recorded. ‘However it is probably part of the plan to leave the enemy in position on our left flank in the hope of an encirclement.’
This assessment of Eisenhower’s and Bradley’s thinking was premature, but close to the mark. The original plan was to storm through the Avranches gap and seize ports in Brittany to speed the Allied supply lines for the advance to the Seine. But now a huge opening lay between the German Seventh Army and the Loire. On 3 August, Major General John Wood’s 4th Armored Division swung round the west side of Rennes to the south. He was low on fuel and ammunition, so could not seize the city, but he had now sealed off the whole of the Brittany peninsula. Facing east, he sensed that the Germans had no reserves to block a charge straight towards Paris and the Seine. Eisenhower and Bradley both came to a similar conclusion. It offered an opportunity rare in war. German generals
