deterrent to others tempted by the idea of desertion.
The chaplain attached to the 4th Dorsets spoke to one of their prisoners called Willi, ‘a little German stretcher-bearer, a studious looking lad with glasses’. He could not understand why the British did not break through with all their artillery and tanks. German soldiers, he said, were waiting for the chance to surrender, provided their officers and NCOs were not looking. ‘Then it is a pity,’ the chaplain replied, ‘that several of your comrades came out with their hands up and then threw grenades at our men.’ The young German’s lip trembled, ‘and he looked as if he were going break into childish tears at this betrayal by his fellow-countrymen’. Like other captured medical orderlies, Willi impressed British doctors with his skill and willingness, helping both British and German wounded while still under mortar fire. Yet despite the chaplain’s lecture about German soldiers breaking the rules of war, the British frequently killed SS soldiers out of hand. ‘Many of them probably deserve to be shot in any case and know it,’ a XXX Corps report stated baldly.
While some parts of the countryside seemed to have been virtually untouched by war, in others the scenes of destruction were terrible. Almost everyone who saw the large village of Aunay-sur-Odon was shocked to the core. The place had been bombed several times from 11 June and was now smashed again by XXX Corps artillery. ‘Apart from the church spire and three shells of houses it is razed to the ground,’ a cavalry officer noted in his diary. An artillery officer was appalled by his own part in it. ‘You really had to disassociate yourself from that because there was no way you could carry out your military duties,’ he observed later. ‘The only thing you could do was to shell and hope to God the French had gone away.’
The survival of civilians in towns ruined by bombing and shellfire always seemed a miracle. Andre Heintz, from the Resistance in Caen, had followed the mine-clearing teams to the ruins of Villers-Bocage. There he saw German and British tanks smashed into each other from the battle in June. He described them as an ‘imbroglio of steel’. At the Chateau de Villers on the edge of the town, he found that the local mayor, the Vicomte de Rugy, had sheltered 200 people in a tunnel-like cellar under the building. They were in a ‘pathetic’ state. In another small town, a soldier from the 4th Somerset Light Infantry went off to relieve himself. His hobnailed army boots slipped when crossing a pile of rubble. As he fell, his hand encountered something soft. It was the severed hand of a girl. Just then came the call from their patrol commander: ‘Fall in you lads, it’s time to move on.’ All he could do was scratch a cross on the slab and RIP.
Soldiers, often sentimental about animals, were also touched by the plight of abandoned livestock. Unmilked cows were in agony. They stood still to avoid the pain of any movement which would make their udders swing. Those from farming backgrounds would milk them straight on to the ground to ease the pressure. A medical officer was also moved by a sad scene: ‘a little foal walking in a small circle round his recently killed mother. He had worn a path in the grass and refused to leave her.’
While the 11th Armoured Division on the right continued to fight off the 10th SS Panzer-Division
The attack was scheduled for Monday, 6 August. Many soldiers and NCOs remarked on the fact that it was Bank Holiday Monday back in England. The thought conjured up images of their families and the seaside, but they were given little time to daydream. The aggressive Major General Thomas of the 43rd Wessex Division continued to exert maximum pressure on his subordinates, as the commanding officer of one of their supporting armoured regiments noted: ‘Brigade and battalion commanders in the 43rd Division were somewhat fearful of Von Thoma, who at the same time infuriated them, as he insisted on “fighting their battles” and would not leave them alone after the final operational orders had been issued.’
Julius Neave, commanding a squadron of the 13th/18th Hussars, was resigned to another hard battle: ‘Our intention is to capture M[ont].P[incon] — the biggest feature in Normandy — with a very depleted infantry brigade and a tired armoured regiment.’ Even during their orders group at brigade headquarters they found themselves under a ‘fierce stonk’ from German mortars.
The infantry were even more depressed by the prospect. ‘The nearer we got to our objective,’ wrote Corporal Proctor, ‘the more awesome our task appeared. The lower slopes were cultivated farmland divided into small fields by huge hedgerows. Higher up was woodland. The top appeared to be covered in gorse. Out of sight over the brow of the hill were German radar installations and these had to be destroyed. At the foot of the hill was a small stream we would have to cross.’ The day was oppressively hot.
The artillery barrage began at 15.00 hours. The 4th Somersets advanced on the left and the 5th Battalion of the Wiltshire Regiment on the right. About 100 yards beyond the stream, they came under heavy machine-gun fire from the flanks and in front. All the leading companies were pinned down. Some broke back to seek shelter under the bank of the stream, but it became crowded. ‘It was soon obvious that too many people were seeking too little protection,’ wrote Sergeant Partridge with the Somersets. The Somersets and Wiltshires expected the Germans to run out of ammunition, but the rate of fire never seemed to slacken. The Wiltshires were hard hit and their commanding officer killed.
Partridge’s company sergeant major had his nose shot off. As he staggered back holding a field dressing to his face, Partridge helped him to the regimental aid post near battalion headquarters. There he heard that Major Thomas, the commander of B Company, had been killed while single-handedly rushing a German machine gun. ‘Very gallant,’ observed Partridge, ‘but I had long since learned that dead soldiers do not win battles, and my prime duty was to stay alive and preserve the lives of as many others as possible.’
A sharp order arrived from their commanding officer saying that there were too many NCOs back at the aid post. ‘Please rejoin your troops.’ Partridge acknowledged that it was a well-deserved rebuke. He returned to 17 Platoon to find ‘four fellows in an abandoned trench crying their eyes out’. These newcomers were not striplings, but men in their late thirties — ‘far too old to live our kind of life’. They came from a disbanded anti-aircraft unit and had been sent forward without infantry training as part of the desperate attempt to man front-line battalions.
Shortly before dusk, a Sherman of the 13th/18th managed to cross the stream and give covering fire, but the German machine-gun positions were well camouflaged. A different plan was adopted. Once darkness fell, the companies were reorganized. They began to move forward behind a smokescreen in single file as silently as possible. Each man’s equipment was checked to make sure that nothing would rattle.
Never believing that they would get through unobserved or unheard, they continued to move up the slope. They could hear German voices on either side, but fortunately never stumbled on to one of the machine-gun positions. The first two companies of the 4th Somersets made it to the plateau and were soon followed by the other two. They tried to dig in, ready for the inevitable German counter-attack, but found the ground was rock hard.
Sergeant Partridge then heard what sounded like a Panther or Tiger tank. He sent a whispered message to the anti-tank man to bring over the PIAT launcher, but the soldier was apologetic. The PIAT had been too heavy to carry up the hill and he had left it behind. Partridge showed great self-control by not strangling him on the spot. In fact, the tank which caused them such alarm in the dark almost certainly belonged to the 13th/18th Hussars, one of whose squadrons had found a route up the side of Mont Pincon earlier in the night. In the confusion, they do not seem to have known that the infantry had already arrived, and they were radioing for support. Their commanding officer sent up another squadron, while urgently demanding infantry reinforcements.
By the morning of 7 August, the most dominant feature in Normandy was finally in British hands. In fact, the Germans had melted away. Their withdrawal formed part of a desperately needed attempt to shorten their lines, partly to make up for the transfer of the 1st SS Panzer-Division for the counter-attack being prepared at Mortain.
Bluecoat had been the climax to a bitter battle on both sides. The 4th Somersets had lost ‘more men in five weeks than in the following nine months’ up to the end of the war. Further west towards Vire, the 10th SS Panzer- Division
The next day, when on Hitler’s order Panzer Group West officially became the Fifth Panzer Army, Eberbach reported that there were just ‘three tanks still serviceable’ in the 10th SS Panzer-Division. He had to withdraw it from the line. The ‘fighting spirit’ of his army was ‘unsatisfactory’ as a result of ‘losses, withdrawals and
