D-Day: The Battle for Normandy

delayed the departure of the SS Leibstandarte for Mortain. The tank crews of the British 33rd Armoured Brigade with the 51st Highland Division had a ‘last supper’ of bully beef and hard-tack ‘dog’ biscuits, mugs of tea made foul with over-chlorinated water and a rum ration out of a large stoneware bottle. It was a hot night, so tank crews wore little more than a pair of shorts under their denim coveralls. Most felt the usualchill up the spine and an empty feeling in the guts at the prospect of battle.

At 23.00 hours on 7 August, a bombing raid on the flanks of the advance began with 1,000 Lancasters and Halifaxes. Without waiting, the offensive started with seven mobile columns of tanks and Priests carrying the infantry. An artillery bombardment, advancing at ninety yards a minute, preceded them. Each column — three British on the east of the road and four Canadian on the west — proceeded with four tanks abreast. They had practised keeping formation at night. ‘Blimey! Square-bashing in tanks,’ commented a radio operator with the 1st Northants Yeomanry on the left.

To help the tank drivers in the dark, ‘artificial moonlight’ was created by reflecting searchlights off the cloud above and Bofors guns fired green tracer over their heads to point the way. But the pall of dust thrown up by the shelling and bombing, and the craters in their way soon put paid to the column formation. A number of tanks toppled into craters in the dark. Over the uneven ground, the Shermans and Cromwells rolled and dipped like ships in a heavy sea. Flail tanks led the way to explode mines. There was much stopping and starting, with frequent hold-ups usually caused by hedgerows which had to be breached in the dark, with a dismounted crew member directing the driver with the glow of a cigarette tip.

Asordered,the British columns forged on even though heavy fighting continued in their rear for La Hogue and Tilly-la-Campagne. The Canadians also had trouble finding their way in the dark and dust. On the right flank, the Calgary Highlanders encountered well-sited 88s as they advanced on May-sur-Orne, and the Black Watch of Canada also suffered in their attack on Fontenay-le-Marmion. The 2nd Canadian Division’s lack of battle experience contributed to its heavy casualties. The Germans resisted fiercely. They were already under pressure from the British 59th Division, which had just gained bridgeheads across the river to their rear in the Foret de Grimbosq.

One of the 59th Division’s infantry battalions, the 7th Norfolks, had crossed the Orne, following a very tall officer, Captain Jamieson, who had marched in to see if they could wade across. During the day of 7 August, the 26th SS Panzergrenadier-Regiment from the Hitler Jugend had counter-attacked. Sergeant Courtman of the Norfolks managed to knock out two Panthers and a Mark III Panzer with his anti-tank gun, which had greatly boosted morale. That night in the forest the Norfolks could hear more tanks moving about ahead of them, so they called for artillery support. The rapid fire of twenty-five-pounder batteries convinced many German soldiers that the British had invented an artillery version of the machine gun.

The next morning, the panzergrenadiers launched another counterattack on the Norfolks. Captain Jamieson, wounded in the right eye and left arm, won a Victoria Cross for leading the defence of D Company. As they were about to be overrun, he called down artillery fire on their own position. Fortunately, radio communications were working well and again their artillery support was excellent. It was also sympathetic. ‘The artillery has an awfully easy job compared with the infantry,’ a young gunner officer noted in his diary. A medical officer with the 59th Division described the battle from a hill west of the Orne: ‘A magnificent view of the Orne valley running down to the small town of Thury-Harcourt. There were fires burning in the woods on the far side of the valley caused by shells or mortar bombs.’

The Orne sector continued to be a heavy slog after the capture of Mont Pincon. ‘Here on the British front,’ wrote Myles Hildyard at 7th Armoured Division headquarters, ‘[the Germans] are slowly being driven back but [they] fight very hard, naturally, or we should encircle them. It is tiring, unexhilarating fighting, but it pins down Germans and kills them.’ Throughout Operation Totalize, soldiers on field punishment from the 5th Wiltshires continued to bury their dead from the battle for Mont Pincon. ‘During these days, I seemed to be doing nothing but burials,’ their padre wrote. But he was uplifted by the astonishing resilience of French civilians in the face of suffering. ‘The further on we go,’ he wrote, ‘the more wonderful the spirit of the French, for whom “liberation” usually means loss of everything.’

Either side of the Falaise road, most of Simonds’s columns had reached their objectives by dawn on 8 August. East of the road, the 1st Northants Yeomanry and the Black Watch had taken up positions in woods and orchards just south of Saint-Aignan-de-Cramesnil. They were very close to Gaumesnil, where Oberfuhrer Kurt Meyer, the commander of the 12th SS Panzer-Division Hitler Jugend, had set up an observation post. This was the critical moment of the whole operation. Simonds, certain that the Germans had established a strong second line with the 1st SS Panzer-Division, had organized a second bombing raid for soon after midday. His two breakthrough armoured divisions were ready to move, but now had to wait for the bombers.

‘Panzer’ Meyer had driven forward, alarmed by inaccurate reports that the 89th Infanterie-Division had collapsed under the onslaught. Standing upright in his Kubelwagen, he was horrified to see soldiers from the 89th fleeing towards Falaise. He claims to have jumped out of his vehicle and stood alone on the road, armed with just a carbine to shame them into turning back to defend Cintheaux. General Eberbach, still commanding the Fifth Panzer Army before handing over to Sepp Dietrich, came forward to meet him. He promised to send in the 85th Infanterie-Division as soon as it arrived, but its leading elements were still a dozen miles away. Meyer had already received news of the 1st Polish Armoured Division on the east side of the road and the 4th Canadian Armoured Division to the west. They were halted in their assembly areas, waiting for a new phase of the offensive.

Meyer said that their only hope was to confuse the enemy with a sudden counter-attack. Eberbach agreed. They both knew that if the Canadians and British broke through to Falaise, the Seventh Army, still trying to relaunch the Avranches counter-attack, would be cut off.Meyer decided that he must pull the panzergrenadiers of the Kampfgruppe Wunsche out of the Foret de Grimbosq to face the Canadians.

Meyerwent to Cintheaux to brief Waldmuller, his other Kampfgruppe commander for the counter-attack, and the panzer ace Wittmann, who was to support him with his Tiger company. Meyer claims that as they were discussing the plan, they saw a single American bomber appear overhead and drop a marker. Knowing what that signified, they ran for their vehicles. If they advanced immediately, they would miss the worst of the bombing to come. From the northern edge of Cintheaux, Meyer watched Wittmann’s Tigers roll forwards as fast as they could go towards Saint-Aignan, even though the Allied artillery had begun its bombardment. Waldmuller’s panzergrenadiers followed rapidly in their half-tracks. A machine-gunner yelled to Meyer, pointing to the north. The American bombing force was approaching. Meyer claims that one of his young SS soldiers, a Berliner, called out, ‘What an honour! Churchill is sending one bomber for each of us!’

Four Shermans from the 1st Northants Yeomanry were well concealed behind hedgerows and in an orchard south of Saint-Aignan. Suddenly they heard their troop leader over the radio. ‘View Hallo! Three Tigers moving north, line ahead.’ The armoured monsters were following a small lane parallel to the main road. The troop leader ordered them to hold their fire. At that range the Sherman’s 75 mm gun against the armour of a fifty-six-ton Tiger ‘would be like a pea-shooter against a concrete wall’. The Shermans needed to wait until the Tigers were closer. The three with 75 mm guns would smother them with fire, while the one Firefly tank with the powerful seventeen- pounder, would try to pick them off.

Knowing the oft-repeated statistic that a single Tiger usually accounted for three Shermans, the tank crews found their throats go dry in fearful anticipation. Each loader checked that they had an armour-piercing shell in the breech, not high explosive. The gunner, peering through the telescopic sight, traversed the motorized turret slowly, following their target which the troop leader had allocated. The first and last Tigers were the immediate priority.

After an unbearable wait, their prey came to within 800 yards. The troop leader gave the order over the radio. Wittmann and his Tiger crews, unable to see their ambushers, were taken by surprise. As they came under fire, the Tigers shot back, but they could not identify the concealed Shermans clearly. The first two Tigers were set ablaze, the third, the one in which Michael Wittmann probably was, blew up completely. The Sharpshooters ambushed at Villers-Bocage had finally been avenged by a fellow yeomanry regiment.

The Sherman tank crews from the Northants Yeomanry could hardly believe that they had managed to knock out three Tigers for no losses.[62] But there was no time for jubilation. Mark