come up against the 2nd French Armoured Division — the 2eme DB — advancing north from Alencon, with the 5th US Armored Division on their right. Soon after dawn on 13 August, the 2eme DB received a shock when several Panthers, probably from the 116th Panzer-Division, blundered into their headquarters. French Shermans dealt with them at close range.
Leclerc’s division continued that day to clear the Foret d’Ecouves, nearly capturing General von Luttwitz in the process. One detachment came across two ‘badly disguised’ civilians pushing a cart. On the cart were two sacks filled with their Wehrmacht uniforms. The French soldiers roared with laughter at their prisoners, who seemed to be relieved that the battle was over for them. ‘
There was a considerable amount of confusion on the Allied side too as other divisions tried to fight their way north, only to find themselves blocked by a neighbour moving across their front. General Leclerc of the 2eme DB showed a lofty disregard of corps orders in the attack on the Foret d’Ecouves. When he took over the main route to Argentan allotted to the 5th Armored Division, chaos ensued because it prevented the American division’s fuel trucks getting through.
A deadly game of hide-and-seek developed in this forested area, with neither side clear where the enemy was. American recce groups would take up ambush positions round a crossroads and wait to see what turned up. On one occasion, a senior German officer who was clearly lost halted his staff car and climbed out with his map to study a signpost. The ambushers took great pleasure in making him jump by blowing up his staff car just behind him. When they ambushed a convoy and raked the trucks with fire, they would occasionally get a surprise themselves when one of the vehicles, carrying fuel and ammunition, went up in a massive explosion.
In the confused situation, the FFI and ordinary French civilians helped whenever they could with information. A tank battalion of the 5th Armored was warned just in time by a small boy about an 88 mm anti-tank gun concealed in the village they were about to enter. But the French were also taken aback by the casual manner of some American troops when it came to killing. In one small town, a Frenchwoman asked what she should do about four Germans hiding in her house. ‘There was no one to take care of them,’ reported a lieutenant with the 10th Tank Battalion, ‘so we put them up against a wall and shot them.’
The lead regiment of the newly arrived American 80th Division was held up both by the 2eme DB and then by the 90th Division of Haislip’s corps. Colonel McHugh, its commander, went up in a Piper Cub spotter plane to try to see what was happening. A destroyed bridge proved another obstacle, and he needed to search for an alternative route. ‘A Frenchman came up to me and in perfect English gave me proper directions to a bridge not far distant,’ McHugh reported. ‘I was so impressed that I took him along with me. Later, I found that he was an American serving in our Strategic Services [OSS] branch, and had been in that area for several months.’
McHugh had the usual problems with a green formation in combat. ‘This was our first real fight and I had difficulty in getting the men to move forward. I had to literally kick the men up from the ground in order to get the attack started, and to encourage the men I walked across the road without any cover.’ Then German tanks appeared. ‘The commanding officer of my leading battalion panicked and the battalion took fright from him. It was necessary to replace his entire battalion to restore their nerve.’ The 80th also suffered from the same mistakes in the replacement system. One regiment ‘received seventeen cooks, when they had suffered no casualties in that department’. They could not send them back, so they had to send these unfortunate cooks into battle as infantrymen, despite their lack of training. Three days in action cost the regiment 523 casualties, of whom eighty- four were killed. On 13 August, McHugh, on hearing that part of the French 2eme DB was ‘having a great tank battle near Carrouges’, went up again in the Piper Cub to watch it from above. Armored Group D and the American 90th Division were fighting the 2nd Panzer-Division and part of the
Another armoured group of the 2eme DB then attacked a detachment of the 116th Panzer-Division in Ecouche. As the French Shermans entered the town, a priest leaned out of a window and shouted, ‘
The 2eme DB had already suffered close to 600 casualties, including 129 from a bombing attack on 8 August before they had even got to grips with the enemy. As a result, they wasted no opportunity to pick recruits from among the hundreds of young Frenchmen who rushed to enlist. At Ecouche the division even enrolled an Alsatian deserter from the
On the afternoon of 13 August, a French fighting patrol entered Argentan, but was soon forced back. Another part of the 116th Panzer-Division had arrived, and the town’s defences were now stiffened with the remnants of the 24th Panzer-Regiment, a flak regiment with quadruple 20 mm cannon and some 88 mm guns. The 116th had orders to hold Argentan at all costs to prevent a thrust up the road to Falaise. The 2eme DB remained in place to the south of the town acting as a ‘solid cork’.
The evening before, Patton had just issued orders to Haislip to continue the advance north. ‘Upon capture of Argentan push on slowly direction of Falaise… Upon arrival Falaise continue to push on slowly until you contact our Allies.’ He had then spoken to Bradley by telephone from his advance headquarters near Laval, begging to be allowed to close the gap, but Bradley refused. Soon after midday on 13 August, Patton tried again, but was told categorically by Bradley’s headquarters to halt Haislip’s XV Corps at Argentan. ‘This corps could easily advance to Falaise,’ he wrote in his diary on 13 August, ‘and completely close the gap, but we have been ordered to halt because the British sowed the area between with a large number of time bombs. I am sure that this halt is a great mistake as I am sure that the British [
An advance north might not have been quite as easy as Patton believed. The 5th Armored Division, like the 2eme DB, encountered well-sited 88 mm guns and lost many men and vehicles as it probed forward. But Bradley did not want to move his forces into an area allocated to Montgomery’s 21st Army Group. Both he and Eisenhower were extremely concerned about American and Canadian forces bombarding or bombing each other as they advanced from opposite directions.
Bradley also feared that XV Corps was too weak to hold the Falaise- Argentan gap against the German divisions desperate to escape. And he worried about its open left flank towards Hodges’s First Army, the one where Hitler expected Eberbach to launch his counter-attack. All one can say is that the decision to try for a short envelopment between Argentan and Falaise was a mistake. Yet Montgomery afterwards received far more criticism in many quarters for refusing to change the boundary between the British and American army groups to allow Patton to strike north.
The failure of Operation Totalize to take Falaise has generated more debate than almost any other aspect of the battle for Normandy. Montgomery made a major miscalculation when he expected the Canadians to reach Argentan before the Americans. He had assumed that the Germans would switch more formations to defend their southern flank against Patton. He had also underestimated once again the difficulties of sending untried armoured divisions against a strong screen of 88 mm guns. The Allied obsession with Tigers and Panthers obscured the fact, unrecognized at the time, that they lost rather more Shermans and Cromwells to German anti-tank weapons and
Whatever the precise reasons which contributed to the failure to close the Falaise-Argentan gap, the fact remained that the Americans were furious, and none more so than General Patton. A killing ground for the retreating German armies now had to be found further east.
26. The Hammer and Anvil
On 12 August, Major Neave with the 13th/18th Hussars, still pushing forward in the Orne valley, noted in his diary, ‘Very hot — not good fighting weather however — the infantry stream with sweat and dust, and we just roast inside our tanks’. But they consoled themselves that it would soon be over. ‘The bigger picture is terrific, old “Blood and Guts” [Patton] is plugging on towards Paris and here in Normandy the Boche must be very nearly surrounded.’
The Germans, however, were not nearly surrounded. A gap of some twenty miles still existed between
