course, the young SS fanatics were the least likely to surrender even when surrounded, but the figure is nevertheless striking.
Unlike Simonds’s forces attacking Falaise, General George Patton’s Third Army, rampaging through the German rear seventy miles to the south, did not have to worry very much about 88 mm anti-tank guns. Patton’s main concern was keeping his army replenished. ‘The forces are so large,’ he wrote, ‘twelve divisions to me alone — that the supply system is colossal.’ According to General John C. H. Lee, the chief of SHAEF’s rear services, Patton tried to ‘appropriate the whole of fuel resupply for his own army’. He flattered the truck drivers, handing them Third US Army patches, and sometimes he even commandeered the trucks to shift his infantry rapidly. This provoked exasperation and admiration in his colleagues.
The United States Army was the most mechanized force that the world had ever seen, but that brought its own problems. A single tank on average consumed 8,000 gallons of fuel a week. The 3rd Armored Division estimated that just following the road, the division required 60,000 gallons a day. If the division had to go across country, the figure soared. (One 3rd Armored quartermaster calculated 125,000 gallons for the whole division to move 100 yards.) On top of the fuel, an armoured division required thirty-five tons of rations per day for 21,000 men, including all those attached to it, and, depending on the intensity of the fighting, a far greater tonnage of ammunition.
The Americans met the challenge with ruthless prioritization. ‘Supply trains’ with fuel and oil received absolute priority. Each M-25 transporter carried 16,000 gallons. They even used ammunition trucks from the artillery to haul more gasoline. Military police and Piper Cubs were employed to monitor the progress of every convoy, and engineers worked round the clock to improve roads and bridges. At Le Mans, they built the biggest Bailey bridge so far in France and called it ‘Miss America’. It was hardly surprising that the Germans were enviously amazed by what they called ‘a rich man’s war’.
On 8 August, while the battle for Mortain and Operation Totalize were at their height, Bradley became taken with the idea of trapping the Germans between Argentan and Falaise. Eisenhower, who was visiting his headquarters at the time, approved. Another visitor that day was Henry Morgenthau, the Secretary of the Treasury. Bradley, excitedly showing him the map, said, ‘This is an opportunity that comes to a commander not more than once in a century. We’re about to destroy an entire hostile army.’
Bradley rang Montgomery to outline the plan. Montgomery agreed somewhat hesitantly. He preferred a longer envelopment just short of the Seine. (If Bradley’s idea had been proposed twenty-four hours later, once it was clear that Simonds’s attack had stalled, Montgomery might well have rejected it.) Patton, who also preferred to catch the retreating Germans on the Seine, was even more dubious, but he agreed to divert Haislip’s XV Corps north from Le Mans towards Alencon and Argentan, ready to meet up with the First Canadian Army coming south from Falaise. He felt that he could always set a second trap later.
Meanwhile, Patton’s XX Corps was clearing his southern flank along the Loire valley. As they approached Angers, a company of Shermans cut off a small German convoy and found that they had captured ‘the pay of an entire division’. On 9 August, part of the corps attacked Angers with three battalions abreast. They were held up by a large anti-tank ditch. Engineers with bulldozers filled in sections so that the tanks could cross and soon they were into the town. The three bridges over the River Mayenne had been blown, but the engineers managed to make one useable. On the night of 10 August, the Americans began crossing to the east bank. The 5th Division’s 2nd Infantry Regiment set about clearing the town. ‘The French beat up the collaborators,’ reported one lieutenant, ‘and although we took them away they would take them back and beat them up some more.’
German attempts to defend their southern flank seemed doomed to failure amid the chaos. The 9th Panzer- Division was badly mauled and the 708th Infanterie-Division completely smashed. Only sixty stragglers appeared later.[64] The local commander at Le Mans was accused of having ‘lost his nerve’, and faced a court martial.
Kluge and Eberbach had no clear idea where Patton’s spearheads had reached. But on 10 August, the Germans intercepted a radio message of the 5th Armored Division. This confirmed their fears that the left flank of Patton’s Third Army was swinging north towards Alencon, threatening both their rear and their main supply base. Scratch units were made up in the town from ‘supply troops, maintenance platoons, and tanks under repair’ from the remnants of the Panzer Lehr Division. Panzerfaust launchers were distributed to mechanics and cooks alike. But Alencon was doomed.
On 11 August at midday, Eberbach reached LXXXI Corps headquarters north-east of Alencon for a meeting with Kluge and Hausser. They heard that the 9th Panzer-Division had been badly battered and was retreating to the woods north of the town. The 9th Panzer, now reduced to little more than an infantry battalion, an artillery battalion and six tanks, would not be able to hold out much longer. The Americans would overrun the corps headquarters very soon. The senior officers present made preparations for a hurried departure to the east. There was now not even time for Eberbach’s counter-attack on the southern flank with the panzer divisions withdrawn from Mortain. As soon as they arrived, they could do nothing but try to form a defence line. The German military order in France was collapsing around their heads, yet Hitler was still insisting, ‘The counterattack against Avranches must be carried out!’ Eberbach was almost speechless with rage. ‘It was inconceivable that OKW could not see this trap, especially after Stalingrad, Tunis and the Crimea.’
Suddenly, tank guns could be heard nearby. ‘Enemy shellfire began falling in the area,’ wrote Eberbach. ‘All around us smoke clouds were arising from burning cars. Not until darkness were we able to break camp. As we passed through Sees, I noticed a bakery company taking up defensive positions. All the streets were flooded with rear services streaming northwards.’ Feldgendarmerie and roving courts martial to deal with deserters were deployed round road junctions. Most of the stragglers were formed into improvised combat teams.
Next day, on Eberbach’s orders, the 116th Panzer-Division, the first to arrive from the Mortain sector, moved towards Sees, but it blundered into the French 2eme DB, which had just joined Haislip’s corps. That evening, Eberbach heard that the division had been almost wiped out by artillery and tank fire and that the Americans were forcing their way towards Argentan. Eberbach’s small staff escaped again, but it took them six hours to move twenty miles. The narrow roads were jammed with Wehrmacht vehicles which moved at walking pace. The loss of the supply base near Alencon meant that both the Seventh Army and Panzer Group Eberbach had to be supplied by the Fifth Panzer Army, which was itself dangerously short of fuel and ammunition.
News of the destruction of the 9th Panzer-Division had not yet spread among the divisions retreating east from the Mortain sector. They thought the southern flank was now protected. Allied fighter-bombers continued to target soft-skinned vehicles, especially supply trucks. It proved an effective tactic. The lack of fuel forced the 1st SS Panzer-Division
Further south, Gefreiter Spiekerkotter and the small group of pioneers who had escaped through Avranches now headed east, just ahead of Patton’s columns. In the back of their Soviet six-wheeler, the soldiers had hidden a small barrel of Calvados among the mines. Their commander, Leutnant Nowack, who found his men again in a small village square, unfortunately also discovered their hidden barrel of spirits. It was not long before he was drunk and making the ironic toast, ‘Calvados still in German hands!’
Using mortar bombs or any other explosive, the pioneers continued to prepare bridges for demolition. In one small town, they had just finished their work when an SS assault gun, acting as rearguard, trundled over the bridge and ripped up all the wires with its tracks. Before the damage could be repaired, a Sherman tank appeared and started to turn on to the bridge. The SS assault gun hit it with the first shot and it burst into flames. The SS commander, an
Of the divisions withdrawing from the failed Avranches counter-attack, only General von Luttwitz’s 2nd Panzer-Division was in any sense battleworthy. It was given the task of holding the Ecouche sector, where it was to
