Saving the Light at Chartres

by Victor A. Pollak

  Griffith, as senior operations officer, was in charge of corps plans, operations, and air support and the situation map—issuing orders to lower commanders and seeing to it that those commands were carried out. The G-3’s primary responsibility was to construe the tactical plan into step-by-step objectives for individual units of men and matériel to carry through in a unified effort.

  Walker outlined the situation in the meeting: At Chartres, the corps expected German resistance, with approximately eight hundred enemy troops in the city and French Resistance fighters and FFI active in the area. The American attack would be carried out by two groups: Combat Command A (CCA), a cavalry unit—poised two miles outside the city in Le Coudray—would skirt the city and circle counterclockwise from the south across the Eure River and attack from the east. Combat Command B (CCB) would attack into the city from the southwest and head northwest from positions in the wheat fields around Luisant, two miles outside the city, to be divided into two task forces: Force 1 (commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Leslie Allison) of the Twenty-Third Armored Infantry Battalion, to be assigned to the northern part of the city, and Force 2 (commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Robert Erlenbusch) of the Thirty-First Tank Battalion, to be assigned to the southwest around the railroad station. The order to attack would come at 3:30 p.m. on August 15.

  The battle would prove fluid and complex and extend over four days, and for the first part of the battle, Griffith began by attaching himself as corps HQ observer/representative to Allison’s Twenty-Third Armored Infantry Battalion.

  Following the staff meeting, the workforce again broke down the CP camp, including tents, food, and other supplies and command and communications equipment, to transport them to the site of new CP 7 in a patch of woods thirty miles east outside the town of Courville-sur-Eure, thirteen miles west of Chartres. Griff knew that the task would require more than a half a day.

  By midmorning, he climbed into the worn jeep passenger seat and told his driver, William L. Dugan, to drive to the site of new CP 7. Griffith’s and Dugan’s gear bags rested in the back of the jeep. Dugan fired up the jeep’s engine and turned onto the mud-tracked highway D323. With thunderstorms threatening, the two men headed northeast along shell-scarred pavement toward Remalard through green but pockmarked and foxhole-studded countryside. From there, they would turn east toward Courville-sur-Eure on the road toward Chartres.

  Griff had something to do.

  He and Dugan would be in Courville-sur-Eure before noon. Griff had decided they would drop their gear at the site of CP 7 and then head forward to the armored bivouac area at Luisant two miles southwest of Chartres, where Griff needed to check with Brigadier General Thompson to be sure Thompson was clear with his orders. The corps’ attack on Chartres was to start at 9:30 the evening of the fifteenth.

  One of General Walker’s standing orders within Twentieth Corps was that senior officers were to frequently go forward to check on the progress of operations or administrative matters at the front. All members of the Twentieth Corps staff followed this practice, from the commanding general and his chief of staff on down. The practice stood in contrast with those that had been employed by many French and British commanders in World War I, when commanders had often relied on reports from returning soldiers and junior officers (a large portion of whom were the first to be killed), which often had resulted in the commanders ignoring true conditions. Some staff officers would come to regret such practice. For example, July 1917 saw the beginning of the Third Battle of Ypres (Passchendaele), during which rains had turned the ground into seas of mud, with tanks sinking in the mire, resulting in British troops gaining a mere five miles of ground at a cost of 325,000 casualties. When senior officers had finally visited the front, they had been horrified that they had sent men into such conditions.

  Griffith and Dugan drove through rolling plateaus and valleys of oak and beech forests dotted with ponds. From the open-topped jeep, Griffith could see a series of high plateaus cut by valleys and marsh floodplains interspersed with cider-apple orchards, followed by the first of what would become seemingly endless wheat fields farther to the east.

  They arrived at Courville-sur-Eure, a small village on the Eure River west of Chartres, before noon, where preparations were under way for setting up the CP 7 tents beneath camouflage netting in a woodland one mile west of town.

  When Griffith and Dugan arrived, the site for the CP had been secured but was abuzz with talk of an encounter with the enemy the previous evening. The two men learned that around 8:30 p.m. the night before, an American reconnaissance platoon had arrived in the village and skirmished with retreating German troops who lay in wait just beyond the river with a view of their approach. The Germans had fired machine guns, mortars, and cannons, immediately killing an American first lieutenant, James O. Gomer of Arkansas. The Americans had returned the fire. The Germans had then retreated behind an embankment, where they were silenced by fire from a field artillery battalion. Following the engagement, the Germans had retreated further toward Chartres. The American forces had bivouacked in Courville-sur-Eure for the night.

  To slow the advance of Allied troops, the Germans had detonated a series of three explosions that destroyed bridges over canals and at the zoo in Courville-sur-Eure and had downed trees that had lined the road along the cemetery in Lancey, the town to the east.

  Griffith and Dugan left their gear at the CP site in Courville-sur-Eure. There Griffith also met with Lieutenant Colonel Melville I. Stark—Griff’s former deputy who’d since been promoted from major and was now preparing the new CP. Lieutenant Colonel Stark, then twenty-nine, the deputy G-3 officer under Griff, was short and thin and had a bushy black mustache and matching eyebrows. He was a respected and capable strategist, so Griffith instructed Stark to hop in the jeep for the twelve-mile drive toward Chartres.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Battle Prelude, First Probe of the Cathedral: La Ferté-Bernard and Chartres, August 1944

  COLONEL GRIFFITH, HIS DRIVER, WILLIAM L. DUGAN, AND LIEUtenant Colonel Melville I. Stark together left the Courville-sur-Eure CP to meet up with the Seventh Armored Division and confirm that orders had been communicated and would be carried out by General Thompson’s armored battalion.

  The three men drove toward Chartres from the southwest, and Griffith could see over his left shoulder the Perche forest receding behind them. While Dugan guided the jeep, Griffith could see over the wind-shield to the right the beginning of the low Beauce region spreading south and east from Chartres. The Beauce is a 1.5-million-acre area that changes from rolling hills into flat, rich farmland, comprising the granary of France, reminiscent of the wheat fields that had been rapidly created from cattle ranches in predustbowl North Texas when Griff was a boy.

  As they approached, the two towers of the cathedral dominated the wheat fields from a surprising distance. From Griffith’s vantage point, getting larger and larger upon their approach, the towers of Chartres Cathedral were the most imposing structure in the area, just as they must have seemed to approaching pilgrims in the Middle Ages.

  On most days, the cathedral towers are visible from more than fifteen miles away, and from their perch they provide a clear view of positions of troops and equipment in the wheat fields. In addition, the Chartres airfield was run by the Luftwaffe during the occupation, supporting night-bombardment units that engaged in operations over England, a commando unit capable of dropping parachutists, a day-interceptor unit operating against US Eighth Army Air Force daylight bombing raids, and a night interceptor unit operating against Royal Air Force night-bombing attacks. Also important in Chartres were an antiair-craft flak-training school and an operational flak unit. The city was also economically important as a market town, with industrial flour milling, brewing, distilling, and ironworking; leather, perfume, and dye manufacturing; and studios producing world-famous stained glass.

  By coincidence, on the afternoon of August 15, the German army sector headquarters conducted a planning meeting in
Chartres with the commander, General Kurt von der Chevallerie, who had just arrived. At issue was how newly arriving units might reinforce the defenses west of the Seine in general and the defenses of Chartres in particular.

  Hitler had ordered that his 48th Division from northern France and the 338th Division from southern France arrive in Chartres to defend against the Allied advance. This meeting occurred at the time the Seventh US Armored Division was approaching. The Seventh encountered three thousand German troops, including the flak battalion and scattered antitank strong points with an estimated fifty antitank guns and heavy antitank-mortar, machine-gun, and scattered-artillery pieces, along with rifle and bazooka strong points and sporadic minefields.

  Chartres was a German “report station” or absorption point for disorganized and beaten units and stragglers withdrawing east from other surrounded and battered units. As a result, an estimated two hundred to three hundred men per twenty-four-hour period would reinforce the garrison. The German commander at Chartres was taking control of the defeated elements and, using the airfield and rail hub, resupplying and reorganizing those units for counterattack. Several German infantry and armored battalions were preparing to defend Chartres, along with personnel from the Luftwaffe flak-training center located at Chartres and two already-trained flak battalions operating on the south edge of Chartres that had been defending the airfield. In the last few days, the flak school had been transformed into a mixed flak regiment.

  As Griffith, Stark, and Dugan drew closer, the city entered into view, clustering around the cathedral-topped rocky hill. The late afternoon sun breaking through the approaching storm clouds would have illuminated the cathedral’s western facade.

  The Seventh Armored Division maintained a position in the wheat fields west of Chartres.

  Neither the Germans nor the Americans were expecting any early major encounter as of the time the American Seventh Armored Division lead elements began probing at Chartres’ outskirts. When the Seventh had arrived, it overran the defenses along the Eure River to the south of Chartres, but soon it became evident that Chartres was well defended. The corps had seriously underestimated the size of the defense force. The expected eight hundred troops had turned out to be 3,500 and growing.

  At around 2 p.m., Griffith and the other men arrived in their jeep at the bivouac area on the plateau of Seresville, two miles south of the city, where an armored battalion and accompanying mobile artillery units were gathering. Reports had surfaced that the Germans in the city were starting to evacuate and were leaving many of their wounded behind. In the American armored column’s approach to Chartres so far, it had encountered relatively light resistance, but now—despite the reported German evacuation—it faced determined opposition. The commander of the column had halted its forward progress to permit consolidation. Griffith told Dugan to wait with the jeep while he and Stark went to talk with General Thompson, in charge of the bivouacking units. With artillery shells landing in the vicinity, soldiers questioned whether the Germans were using either of the cathedral towers as an observation post from which to guide artillery fire toward Allied forces.

  Griffith probably had several things in his mind at the time. He hoped for action, and he had been impressed with the young people and in particular the Resistance fighters he had encountered so far in France. The FFI were active all along the Americans’ line of advance, often taking towns ahead of the armor and contributing valuable information on the strength and distribution of German forces. And last, Griffith was determined to do what he could to minimize the risk of the cathedral being fired upon by Allied forces.

  What went through Griff’s mind after meeting with Thompson at the bivouac area as he prepared to head back to the CP? Was he thinking about the briefing reminders to avoid shooting near the cathedral and his own fears of hitting it? Had he grown irritated with trigger-happy commanders who might lose sight of General Eisenhower’s order to protect monuments, fearing that they might just shoot at it and be done with it? He’d no doubt heard the motto “It’s easier to apologize than to get permission.” Did he learn that more Germans had been sighted withdrawing from the city, giving him the notion that he and Stark might somehow surreptitiously work their way close enough to the building to listen and observe whether there was any enemy activity up in the towers?

  We don’t know, but he likely told Dugan to wait while he and Stark climbed into another vehicle driven by a Seventh Armored Division driver. They probably pulled out of the bivouac area and headed east for the counterclockwise swing around the city to reenter from the east while the fighting was to get under way from the east.

  Griff, Stark, and their driver reached the southwest suburb of Lucé. From there, they slowly and quietly worked their way toward the center of the city along Rue du Maréchal Leclerc, heading toward the main square, the Place des Épars. The streets were empty, townspeople hidden in their homes, listening for the next of the small explosions that had popped up from time to time.

  Griff would likely have ordered the driver to maneuver them quietly toward the cathedral so he and Stark could get close enough to observe whether there was activity up there. And likely they advanced close enough to scope it out but saw nothing. The driver jockeyed them into side streets to avoid German roadblocks that they expected to be positioned both at that square and at the railway station a few blocks before the beginning of the hill leading to the cathedral. They proceeded slowly, looking for German positions and snipers, but encountered none. The German defenses were concentrating near the series of bridges across the river, which ran north along the east side of the hill, and the area around the cathedral seemed very quiet, even as tanks, armored trucks, and infantry battled their way into the outskirts of the ancient town.

  Then they may have told the driver to hide the jeep in an alley and stay with it while Griff and Stark took off on foot to get closer, ducking inside shaded doorways in the flat light under threatening storm clouds to stay out of sight. Stark and Griff probably decided it would be best to slowly approach and try to sneak inside the cathedral to confirm whether any Germans were in the building. The two men edged out in careful steps, guns drawn, looking around for German positions and snipers.

  They inched their way toward the cathedral, looking through binoculars for any sign of German spotters in any of the windows of the twin towers of the cathedral. The two approached and searched for any snipers in the windows of the cathedral’s roofs or towers or on any of their balconies or parapets. They saw no snipers and no other soldiers, nor did they see any sign of German observation equipment in or on the cathedral.

  They advanced doorway by doorway. Covering each other, they prowled along the buildings of Chartres toward the cathedral, darting from cranny to cavity for shelter, finally arriving at one of the doors of the cathedral itself.

  The late-morning Mass had ended hours before, and twilight vespers would not begin until 6:00, and no one was going in or out of the cathedral. It was now midafternoon, so the parishioners who had participated in morning Masses and other activities had dispersed; yet the cathedral was open, and they entered through the heavy wooden doors into the darkness, hearing only the dim echoes of distant artillery shells exploding to the south of the city.

  Griff would have seen the ramparts that had been constructed over each of the cathedral’s portals. He may have thought, Something isn’t right about this place, because nothing but peace and quiet pervaded the building—even in the middle of the city still occupied by the Germans, with more coming in by the hour, into what he knew would erupt before midnight into a firefight and terror not only on the occupiers but also on the town, its people, his own men, and possibly the cathedral.

  They conducted a rapid search and found no sign of Germans; they couldn’t enter either tower because the stairway doors were locked and no priests or caretaker were evident. They had to get back to the CP, so, finding the church clear of apparent use by German forces, the two men returned on foot to the
ir jeep and drove quickly away to head back to the bivouac area. Griff looked back. The cathedral quickly shrunk in size, but its towers continued to stand out against the darkening sky behind them, like a giant owl with wings high, watching over the area.

  As Griffith, Stark, and Dugan drove back toward Luisant, groups of young French Resistance fighters were busy at work against the Germans. They drew fire to ferret out and eliminate German snipers from buildings, fired small arms and tommy guns at retreating Germans, threw grenades to disrupt German trucks and troop movements, and reported enemy positions to the Americans, all in spite of the threat of brutal retaliation.

  For the American Seventh Armored Division, H hour, the hour to launch the operation, would be at 21:30 hours that night, August 15, 1944. A severe rainstorm was approaching.

  With tanks and self-propelled guns, the combat commands breached the German defensive lines and drove through into the heart of the city. The mayor and citizens welcomed them as liberators, but after a brief interval of fighting, the German garrison counterattacked and drove the tanks back. The Germans beat up the mayor, which would cause the townspeople to hesitate to cooperate with the Eleventh Infantry when it arrived two days later.