by Mark Zuehlke
At 0700 hours, Lieutenant Colonel Donald Buell ordered ‘A’ Company to lead the way towards the radar station by first clearing the woods immediately to the south of Tailleville that bordered the road to Douvres-la Délivrande. For support, the North Shores had Major William Roy Bray’s ‘C’ Squadron of the Fort Garry Horse Armoured Regiment and could call upon the guns of 19th Army Field Regiment.2 Also moving up alongside the infantry were the Bren carriers of No. 7 Platoon of the Cameron Highlanders of Ottawa, equipped with 50-calibre Vickers heavy machine guns, under the command of Lieutenant Sharp.3
Casualties on D-Day had whittled ‘A’ Company down by about 25 per cent and the survivors were still badly shaken by the loss of their popular commander. Considered the elder statesman of the North Shores, Major Archibald McNaughton had almost been rejected as too old to lead his men into the invasion. The forty-seven-year-old from New Brunswick’s Black River Bridge refused to be shunted off to a reserve command and waded ashore at the head of the company he had commanded since before the war. But McNaughton had been killed by a machine-gun burst during the fierce battle for control of Tailleville and now Captain J.L. Belliveau led the company towards the woods. Belliveau was a competent officer, but had not yet had the chance to win the confidence of the troops.4
Thirty minutes out of Tailleville, ‘A’ Company ran into opposition from Germans, who had reinfiltrated into the woods during the night.5 At the same time, a number of German snipers popped up inside Tailleville itself, bringing the rest of the battalion under fire in the middle of forming up for the attack. A stray round or mortar shell fired from the radar station scored a jackpot when the battalion’s ammunition dump, set up during the night inside the village, was detonated. This caused a brief but complete stall of the advance while the battalion reorganized its rear area and cleared the snipers out of the village.6
Belliveau and his men, meanwhile, continued working slowly through the woods in the face of strong German resistance. Before its capture the previous day, Tailleville had been a regimental headquarters for the 716th Infantry Division and the entire town was riddled with underground bunkers connected by a maze of tunnels. This system extended well out into the woods that ‘A’ Company was trying to clear, so it was easy for German snipers and light machine-gunners to use the tunnels to get in behind the advancing Canadians. Lacking “the confident touch Archie [McNaughton] would have provided,” Belliveau was unable to prevent his men from going to ground when they came under persistent fire from all sides.
Finally, Buell “became irked at the slow progress, and prompting on my part did not seem to produce any faster results.” Badgered by his own commander, Brigadier Ken Blackader, to get going, Buell dispatched Lieutenant Blake Oulton of the headquarters section “to find out what was causing the slowness.”7
Running alongside the road, Oulton met up with Lieutenant Cyril Mersereau, whose platoon had just finished clearing a section of wood and was now forming a reserve for the other two platoons of Belliveau’s company. Wishing his friend luck, Oulton pressed on into woods that proved “honeycombed with trenches, shelters, and tunnels.” When he caught up with the other two platoons, Belliveau told him the woods were pretty well cleared, opening the way for the battalion’s attack on the radar station. On his return trip, Oulton was dismayed to see that “Mersereau had been badly wounded during the few minutes that I had been forward.”8
The moment Buell received Oulton’s report, he sent ‘C’ and ‘D’ companies forward. As Major Ralph Daughney’s ‘C’ Company pushed past the woods, small-arms fire from another line of scrub brush and straggly trees to the left of the road ripped into the leading platoons, joined by heavy mortar and artillery fire from the radar station. Shrapnel and high-explosive rounds plastered several of the Camerons’ carriers that were moving beside the infantry.
The intense fire knocked out two carriers, including Lieutenant Sharp’s command vehicle. Among those wounded were Sharp’s batman Private Ladouceur, who was hit in the rear and legs by shrapnel. Another Cameron, Private Boucher, was critically wounded and only saved from death when Sergeant Gravelle slung the man over his shoulder and sprinted back to the North Shores’ Regimental Aid Post. Sharp was chagrined to see his bedroll and dress kilt, both carefully packed into a box strapped to the back of the carrier, burned to a crisp.9
For protection from the intense gunfire ripping into his company, Daughney moved up the line by darting along the right side of the carriers, from one to the next. Following on his heels was Private Joe Ryan, his radio signaller. It seemed to Ryan that while the gunfire was primarily originating from the left side of the road, the mortar and artillery shells were shrieking in from both flanks. Suddenly a hail of shrapnel and ricocheting bullets scythed the air around the two men, who both jumped over the bushes bordering the road in a desperate search for cover. Losing hold of the stock of his Lee Enfield, Ryan hugged the ground and recoiled in shock as a chunk of shrapnel sliced the rifle in two at the point where the stock joined the breech. A second later, another shrapnel shard deeply slashed his right forearm while a piece of metal, possibly from a bullet shattering against the Bren carrier, pierced his right hand at the base of the index finger. “It hurt right away,” he said later. “I knew I was hit. Bleeding very badly. Yelled out that I had been hit. There were guys on that side of the bush, but no medic at that time. Blood was running down my arm and off my hand. Someone put a bandage on and told me to get back to the beach.”
Having lost track of Daughney during those terrifying seconds, Ryan was unable to tell him he was leaving. Setting off alone, the twenty-one-year-old from Kingston, Nova Scotia started working his way back to the rear. Staggering across an open field, he “stumbled and fell and just as I did a MG opened up and bullets went across the field. Could hear them snapping over me.” Measuring the timing of the bursts, Ryan would leap up and run a few strides, then throw himself flat again just before the next rounds rent the air. Finally, he gained the protection of a wood and eventually found a dressing station where the medical staff treated his wounds and assigned him to a cot inside a bell tent.10
Frantic to get the attack moving, Buell jumped onto Major Roy Bray’s Sherman and suggested that he join the tanker inside the turret. He quickly outlined a plan for the tank to carry out a reconnaissance ahead of the infantry in an attempt to find some weak point in the German lines. Bray told his driver to get rolling, and with a troop of three Fort Garry tanks in trail moved out towards the radar station. “We made a trip around the western edge of the wood, to the southern extremity, the German end,” Buell later wrote. “There we halted and Roy and I dismounted, got into bushes on the east corner and had a good look with our glasses at both the radar station and the adjoining countryside. To my amazement there seemed to be a steady stream of troops moving from Douvres-la-Délivrande into the radar station. There appeared to be a certain amount of movement in the wood itself and there was undoubtedly movement south of the wood. We remounted in the tanks, wheeled around and went back to our side of the wood.”11
Directing ‘A’ Company to concentrate its efforts on the east side of the wood, while ‘C’ Company pushed into the west side, Buell watched fretfully as the North Shores made extremely slow progress forward. It didn’t help, as morning passed into a grim afternoon with gains measured in mere yards, that his supporting arms were being steadily siphoned off. First, the Fort Garry Horse tanks were called to race towards Anguerny because of reports that a major counterattack was slamming into the leading elements of 9th Canadian Infantry Brigade. Not that the tankers had been of much use, with the German artillery at the radar station positioned in heavy fortifications, enjoying an ideal field of fire from a dominating height that rendered any armoured approach suicidal.
Finally, the woods were cleared and at 1600 hours the radar station lay before them, surrounded by a 100-foot-deep stretch of open ground. Behind it stood “a labyrinth of concrete works and tunnels” and the bristling guns of the Ge
rmans. The moment the North Shores emerged from the woods, a wall of fire lashed them. Lieutenant Charles Richardson, in command of a ‘B’ Company platoon, found himself lying shoulder to shoulder in a ditch with Major J. Ernest Anderson, who commanded ‘D’ Company. “We were helpless,” Richardson said later, “we couldn’t do anything.”12
With Lieutenant Colonel L.G. Clarke of the 19th Artillery, who had just dashed up to his position, Buell managed to gather a couple of his company commanders together for a huddle. The North Shore commander was intent on saturating the German position with artillery fire, but Clarke quickly disabused him of that notion when he apologetically reported that he had just been ordered to swing the guns away from the North Shores. All four of the division’s artillery regiments and every available naval gun were being directed towards driving off the German counterattack developing on 9 CIB’s front, the artillery officer said. That was the last straw for Buell. He radioed Blackader and stated flatly that “he had insufficient troops to do the job.”13
While Buell started arguing with Blackader over whether he would be reinforced or permitted to withdraw the battalion from its exposed positions, many North Shores were realizing they were caught in more than German crossfire. Shortly after dawn on June 7, the British 51st (Highland) Infantry Division had begun landing on Sword Beach to increase the strength of Second British Army. Because the 3rd British Infantry Division’s 9th Brigade had been tasked away from its original duty of anchoring alongside the Canadians, the 51st’s Black Watch, 5th Battalion was dispatched with instructions to clear the radar station. Somehow communications between the divisional commanders had broken down, so that none of the British generals at Sword had the slightest idea that the North Shores were attempting to seize the same objective.14
Major Anderson was attempting to get ‘D’ Company extended into a proper fighting line within the woods when a flurry of tank shells coming from the left flank screamed overhead, causing several tree-splintering explosions that immediately drove his men to ground under a rain of wood and steel shrapnel. Out of a fogbank of smoke, Anderson saw the leading elements of the Black Watch supported by tanks emerge, both infantry and tankers “firing on our troops in the woods. I ran across the field to one of the tanks and got the tank fire stopped but the infantry carried merrily on through the woods. I fully expected to find few of our men alive, but casualties were surprisingly light.”15
Hunkered down in the cover of two knocked-out Cameron Highlander carriers, Lieutenant Charles Richardson, Lieutenant George Fawcett, and Major Bob Forbes were discussing how ‘B’ Company was to be relieved by ‘C’ Company when “a jaunty English major arrived and asked who was in charge.” Forbes said he was.
“‘What’s holding you up?’ demanded the British officer, and he was told and shown the casualties.
“‘Well, well, we’ll soon fix that. Bring up a Petard,’ he said.”
Soon a turretless Churchill tank fitted with a short-barrelled twelve-inch demolition gun called a petard clattered up. It fired a forty-pound, square-shaped shell nicknamed a “flying dustbin,” intended for destroying fortifications or breaching obstacles such as concrete walls. Forbes and Richardson both cautioned the major that there was no way they could cross the open ground, “but the major got into the tank… and away the Churchill rolled across the wheatfield.”
“It was one of the most unrealistic scenes of the war,” Richardson said. “In one moment that huge Churchill tank was chugging across the field. The next instant there was a terrific blast and when the dust settled, the grain was blowing gently in the breeze and there was absolutely no sign of the tank. A shell… had hit the Petard fairly and the double explosion wiped out the tank completely. Afterward, a classic remark among us was, ‘Bring up a Petard.’”16
By the time this tragic farce concluded, Buell had received orders to extricate his battalion from the area of the radar station and move to a covering position immediately north of Anguerny. Although the North Shores were more than happy to hand off the radar station attack to the British battalion, they found the condescending manner of the troops and officers of the Highland regiment irksome, for they seemed to think that taking the position would be a simple task. In the end, however, the Germans besieged there would hold out for ten more days before surrendering.17
North Shore Padre R. Miles Hickey thought the ill-supported attack on the radar station had been “like blowing bubbles against Gibraltar. The huge construction was three stories underground, and there three hundred Germans sat, laughing at us no doubt.”18 It was a bitter setback for the New Brunswick regiment, but one with which Blackader sympathized even as he called them away to their new position.
“It should be stated,” he wrote after, “that the widespread operations of North Shore Regiment, which included forming a wide flank for the [No. 48 Royal Marine] Commandos, maintaining a firm left flank for the [brigade] and continuing to move forward at the same time… made matters very difficult for them, so that their performance under the circumstances was most creditable.”19
THE NORTH SHORES were not the only Canadian battalion putting in a creditable performance in the face of grave adversity this day. To the south, out on the far left flank, the North Nova Scotia Highlanders with the Sherbrooke Fusiliers in support had advanced directly into the maw of a major ambush tripped by the 12th SS (Hitlerjugend) Panzer Division in the late afternoon. For these battalions, June 7 would forever be a day of infamy.
On the evening of June 6, the North Novas spearheaded 9th Canadian Infantry Brigade’s advance towards Carpiquet airport with a flying column of tanks and Bren carriers. This had enabled the battalion to rapidly move inland despite being much delayed in departing the beach for its D-Day objectives. Darkness had forced the column to hold up on the northern outskirts of Villons-les-Buissons, and it was from this point that the advance was renewed at 0745 hours on June 7.
Having enjoyed such success with the flying column on June 6, Lieutenant Colonel Charles Petch decided to implement the same technique to break through to Carpiquet airport. North Novas’ ‘C’ Company commander, Major Don Learment, was temporarily detached from his command so that he could direct the column’s advance as he had the previous day. In the column’s van were the Sherbrooke Fusiliers Reconnaissance Troop’s Honey tanks under Lieutenant G.A. Kraus. Immediately behind, the North Novas’ Bren carrier platoon had loaded ‘C’ Company up on its eighteen vehicles. Then came No. 11 Platoon of the Cameron Highlanders, with its Vickers heavy machine guns mounted on carriers. Following closely behind was a troop of M10 tank destroyers from the 3rd Anti-Tank Regiment, two assault sections of the North Novas’ pioneer platoon, one section of its mortar platoon, and four of the battalion’s anti-tank guns. Temporarily in charge of ‘C’ Company was second-in-command Captain Frederic Charles “Hank” Fraser. Heading up the carrier platoon was Captain E.S. Gray.20
Learment’s column was out on the tip of a wedge created by the North Novas and Fusiliers. While it moved directly along a country lane denoted on maps as GC220 that ran in an almost straight line from Villons-les-Buissons via les Buissons, Buron, Authie, and Fran-queville to Carpiquet airport, the rest of the infantry and tanks spread out close behind but well out on the flanks. To the right, ‘A’ Squadron of the Fusiliers had ‘A’ Company riding on its Shermans, while on the left, ‘B’ Company was aboard ‘B’ Squadron. Coming up behind Learment’s column, ‘C’ Squadron carried the infantry of ‘D’ Company.
At only twenty-five, Learment had enjoyed a path of rapid advancement since enlisting in the spring of 1940. In his third year at Acadia University, the native of Truro, Nova Scotia had been studying economics and was enrolled in the Canadian Officer Training Corps when he heard the news that Germany had invaded Belgium, Holland, and France. Realizing that the “Phony War” that had followed Poland’s invasion in September 1939 was now over and not wanting to face probable conscription, Learment went to Amherst and enlisted at the North Novas’ headquarte
rs there.
Learment had gone to England as a lieutenant commanding a platoon in ‘A’ Company, but in late 1942 was assigned to headquarters as the intelligence officer and then adjutant before going to brigade for a stint as brigade adjutant. Returning to the battalion as a captain, he was appointed second-in-command of ‘A’ Company and then ‘C’ Company before being promoted to major in December 1943 and becoming the latter company’s commander.
Learment never felt the weight of command lay too heavily on his shoulders because he “had the support of everyone else.” The North Novas were a tightly knit regiment and the officers worked well together. Even Lieutenant Colonel Petch, who came to the regiment from a non-Highland unit and had been initially viewed with some suspicion because he wore “a flat cap instead of a Glengarry,” had soon won their trust. This was helped in no little part by his quickly acquiring a kilt and other requisite Highlander kit.
The North Novas were also used to working with their Fusilier tankers, for they had started training together in late 1943 and been bivouacked in the same camp. Learment noted that “there was good camaraderie between us. We messed together and were very close.”
Within ‘C’ Company, Learment was blessed to have a stable of competent, solid officers, with Fraser as his second-in-command and lieutenants Herb Langley, Jack Veness, and Bob Graves running the three platoons. Company Sergeant Major James Mackie was a rock upon which Learment and his officers knew they could always lean. Consequently, he was entirely comfortable having Fraser handle ‘C’ Company while he guided the flying column’s advance.21
Learment’s real “concern was to drive straight ahead while keeping in touch with battalion [headquarters] and brigade as well. The flank companies were in charge of protecting the axis of advance.” The major assumed that the artillery regiment that was to support the brigade would be “keeping apace of the advance,” so its guns would be able to range on any heavy enemy resistance encountered. Learment considered that aspect a “big picture” detail, though, and therefore not his worry. “What I was concerned about was getting to Carpiquet.”22