by Mark Zuehlke
Villons-les-Buissons was cleared easily, with the Sherbrooke Honey tanks shooting up several German light trucks that attempted to take flight.23 Outdated American-made Stuart tanks that were lightly armoured and mounted only a 37-millimetre main gun, the Honeys depended on speed and agility to keep out of the range of German tanks, but could wreak havoc on regular transport vehicles.
Beyond the village, the “country was gently rolling plain with occasional clumps of trees, farm hedges and hay stacks. The only feature was the small villages where the farmers lived in groups of small houses, barns and outbuildings surrounding a church, some shops and [a public house.] The inevitable horse pond and a few fruit trees plus stretches of stone wall completed each community.”24
The force had just departed Villons-les-Buissons when ‘A’ Company brushed up against the side of a wood bristling with snipers and machine-gun positions. Major Leon M. Rhodenizer ordered his men to unhorse from the Shermans and set about rooting these diehards of the 716th Infantry Division out of the woods. Among the trees, the major found a network of freshly dug slit trenches and an abandoned self-propelled gun. Then a German, who emerged from some bushes to surrender, led Rhodenizer and his men to a farmyard where four wounded comrades lay on the ground. ‘A’ Company’s stretcher-bearers had just started treating the Germans when two more soldiers walked into the farmyard with arms raised. As the company continued sweeping through the wood, more Germans were flushed and taken prisoner. By the time this process was completed, the rest of the advancing force was almost out of sight.25 ‘A’ Company clambered back onto the Shermans and dashed off in pursuit.
By this time, the Sherbrooke reconnaissance troop was closing on les Buissons. Suddenly, a great cloud of dust was kicked up to the right of the village and a second later one of the Honeys was knocked out. The crew managed to escape unscathed from the wrecked Stuart.26
With a well-entrenched gun covering the road into les Buissons, Learment ordered ‘C’ Company out of its vehicles and into a hasty attack while the rest of the force swung to the left to bypass the enemy position. While Captain Fraser teed up the attack with Bren carrier platoon commander Captain Gray, Learment had the mortar platoon hammer the gun position with a dozen rounds. Then Fraser took ‘C’ Company out on one flank of the gun to distract attention away from Captain Gray and his carrier platoon, which dashed in from the opposite flank to destroy the gun with a shower of grenades.27 Gray personally led the grenade attack, an action that won him a Military Cross.28 Gun silenced, the infantry quickly overran the village and captured a sixteen-barrelled mortar and three half-tracks that had been abandoned during the hasty retreat of what appeared to be an element of the 21st Panzer Division.
While this action was underway, ‘B’ Company and ‘B’ Squadron, out on the left flank, were suddenly smothered by heavy artillery and mortar fire coming from St.-Contest. Set on slightly higher ground than that between les Buissons and Buron, the village provided an ideal German observation and firing position. Until now, the North Novas and Sherbrookes had been under the impression that 3rd British Infantry Division was coming up on that flank in support. Now they realized that they “were far in front with no force visible to support them on either flank. The Seventh Brigade was keeping pace but was so far over on the right that none of its units could be seen.”29
With mortar rounds raining down around ‘B’ Squadron’s Shermans, Major J.W. Douglas ordered his infantry to dismount and take cover. Having never been under heavy fire, many of the men panicked and scattered every which way. While Lieutenant Fraser Campbell managed to keep No. 10 Platoon together, the other two platoons proved difficult to round up when the enemy fire abated and Douglas ordered his men back onto the tanks. Once accomplished, the Germans—patiently waiting for the return of such nicely clustered infantry targets—opened up with another series of salvos.30 Shrapnel wounded several men, including company second-in-command Captain D.L. Clarke, who was hit while talking on the wireless with Lieutenant Colonel Petch about the possibility of getting artillery counter-battery fire directed down on St.-Contest. The captain was the battalion’s first officer casualty.31
Lieutenant Jock Grieve took over as second-in-command, handing his No. 12 Platoon off to Sergeant S.S. Hughes. The German fire was so intense that Douglas ordered his platoons to forget about riding the tanks and to make their way by foot to Buron. When he radioed Petch with a request for artillery support, the North Nova commander said none was available. All he could do was have the troop of self-propelled antitank guns open fire on the village, using the church steeple as an aiming point. This was quickly knocked down by a direct hit, but the German fire continued unabated. Finally, ‘B’ Company managed to gain Buron by carrying out a series of bounding dashes from one cluster of cover to another. Inside the village, it huddled behind the protection of a long stone wall.32
Learment’s force had meanwhile managed to drive into Buron, seizing the village “in a short sharp skirmish.” The major anxiously noted that “the enemy… were showing a growing tendency to fight to the last man rather than choosing to either surrender or run.”33 Although Buron still seemed infested with Germans hiding out in cellars and attics with the intention of sniping at the Canadians, Learment decided the column must push on towards Authie and leave the mopping up to the trailing ‘D’ Company and the Sherbrookes’ ‘C’ Squadron. He was just issuing orders to this effect when a Bren carrier rattled up with Petch and Brigadier Ben Cunningham aboard, seeking a report on what was delaying the advance. Just as Petch dismounted, a shell exploded beside the carrier and the blast knocked the lieutenant colonel flat. Unhurt, Petch heard out Learment’s report and then sanctioned the decision to press on to Authie and secure Carpiquet airport.
With the Honeys still leading, the flying column dashed across a mile of open country, chased by shellfire from St.-Contest the entire way. On the outskirts of Authie, several Honeys were knocked out by antitank fire from the buildings. Learment radioed Petch to report that his leading elements were taking “mortar and shell fire from both flanks and the front.” He “asked for a troop of tanks and some artillery to take it on.”
Petch, who had by now set up headquarters on the edge of Buron, whirled around to his artillery forward observation officer, who said “the artillery was out of range and it would be some time before it could be moved up. The only fire available was a cruiser, which the naval forward observation officer [also travelling with Petch’s headquarters] said could engage St. Contest for twenty minutes.”34 Petch urged the navy’s FOO to get the guns firing and dispatched a troop of Shermans from ‘B’ Squadron under command of Lieutenant Ian MacLean to Learment’s support. While the tanks rolled forward, the navy FOO attempted to establish radio contact with the cruiser. “This fire would have wiped St. Contest out,” the North Novas’ war diarist ruefully noted, “but faulty communications made it impossible to obtain it in time.”35
As ‘C’ Company closed on Authie, the situation became increasingly confused because of the heavy fire being directed at it. Several times, the platoons were forced to bail off the carriers and take cover, so that the advance continued fitfully. When Fraser finally got his men up to the edge of the village, he discovered that one platoon had become completely disorganized during the advance because of the shelling and that it and its supporting carrier section were scattered back along the road between Authie and Buron.36 A little while later, that platoon’s commander, Lieutenant Bob Graves, arrived hoping to find his missing men. He told Fraser that the other companies were also being heavily shelled.37
‘C’ Company’s two lead platoons under command of lieutenants Herb Langley and Jack Veness pushed into the village. Captain Gray sent one section of carriers around the left and then had the second section hopscotch the first to reconnoitre Franqueville, about a half mile away. When light mortar fire bracketed both sections as they were attempting the hopscotch move on the southeast corner of the village, Gray ordered a withdrawal ba
ck to a sheltered field on the northeast flank of Authie.38
Authie was finally cleared in another bitter fight as ‘C’ Company winkled snipers and machine-gunners out of basements and off rooftops. When the tanks arrived and wiped out six machine-gun positions that formed the crux of the German defensive network, Fraser reported the village in his hands. But the mortar and artillery fire kept intensifying, finally becoming so heavy that Lieutenant MacLean’s tanks and the surviving Honeys were forced to hunt for covered positions, while the Bren carriers were moved to the shelter of a hedge before being sent back to Buron at about 1330 hours.39 With the carriers went the separated platoon, which was unable to cross the open ground in the face of heavy fire to link up with the rest of the company. Gray remained in the village with his command carrier “to learn what was happening.”40
Less than a mile off to the east, in the vicinity of the village of Cussy and the Abbaye d’Ardenne, reconnaissance troop commander Lieutenant G.A. Kraus detected the movement of a large number of tanks massing for a counterattack. Back at Buron, Petch, too, was receiving reports that a large enemy force was mustering on his left flank and decided “it was impossible to go on. There was no one within miles of us on either flank or in the rear,” the regiment’s war diarist wrote, “so the flanking companies were ordered to close up on ‘C’ Company and form a fortress.”
The infantry were to dig in and prepare to defend their positions, while the Sherbrooke Fusiliers moved to take the German tanks on head to head, with several troops of ‘A’ Squadron driving on towards Franqueville and Carpiquet airport in an attempt to turn the German flank.41 Acting Major Fraser moved his two platoons slightly south of Authie, with the Cameron Highlanders machine-gun platoon positioned to their rear.42 The tanks carrying ‘A’ Company, meanwhile, had unloaded “in a position slightly south of Buron and to the right of the main axis [the road]. ‘B’ Company was on the outskirts of Buron and almost on the axis, having been mortared off their tanks a short time previous to the report of enemy tanks being received. Both the company commander and second-in-command were wounded and evacuated. Captain A.J. Wilson, the support company commander, came up and took over. ‘D’ Company was dug in astride the axis just outside Authie, about 200 yards behind ‘C’ Company Headquarters position.”43
Realizing there was nothing he could do to further aid Fraser’s almost isolated pocket of troops, Gray mounted his carrier and dashed back to Buron to join Learment and Petch at the battalion’s tactical headquarters.44
None of this ground, overlooked as it was from St.-Contest and the slight rise that ran across in front of Cussy and the Abbaye, was ideal for defence. But the North Novas and the Sherbrooke Fusiliers had no choice. They were now about eight miles from Juno Beach and to their left the British 9th Infantry Brigade was finally marching their way, but still more than three miles distant, with a large force of Germans visible between. The Canadians concentrated around Authie and back to Buron numbered about 1,500, including the tankers and their roughly forty still-operational tanks. No artillery, naval, or air support was available because the guns were either out of range or unable to establish proper radio communications, despite being drawn away from the other battalions of the division, so the immediate fight would be lost or won by these men.
As the North Novas started hacking slit trenches out of the Norman soil with shovels and picks and the tanks growled towards the advancing Panzers, the 12th SS (Hitlerjugend) Panzer Division thundered down the slope with torrential force and the two regiments fought their most desperate of battles.
[ 6 ]
Baptism at Authie
FROM ONE OF Abbaye d’Ardenne’s towers, Standartenführer Kurt Meyer monitored the advance of the North Novas and Sherbrooke Fusiliers through the morning while he organized the 12th SS (Hitlerjugend) Panzer Division’s counterstrike. The 25th SS Panzer Grenadier Regiment commander was grimly confident his young soldiers, most as untried as the Canadians they faced, would “throw the little fish back into the sea.”1
Arriving at the Abbaye at about 0900 hours, Meyer only hoped to perhaps see the coast from its height. Instead, “the country as far as the coast lies before me like a sandtable model… The whole terrain looks like an ant hill.”2 The North Shore (New Brunswick) Regiment could be seen attacking the Douvres-la-Délivrande radar station, along the length of Juno Beach stood hundreds of ships protected by countless barrage balloons, and, more importantly, all the dispositions of the Canadian brigades moving towards the Caen-Bayeux highway—“the swarming ants”—lay before him.
Thirty-four-year-old Meyer was the classic embodiment of the young commanders who had made the Waffen-ss both feared and respected by every Allied army they engaged. A fanatical Nazi, his loyalty to the Führer was absolute, his belief in the superiority of the Aryan race unquestioned. The illegitimate son of a World War I sergeant major who died of his wounds while Kurt was still young, Meyer had become a municipal policeman in 1929. In 1931, he joined the SS and was accepted into its premier division, the Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler, in the spring of 1934, after which he resigned from the police. By 1937, he had risen to the rank of an SS captain. During the invasion of Poland, he commanded a motorcycle company and quickly gained a reputation for his impetuous, daredevil style both in handling his men and riding motorcycles.
Bravely reckless, Meyer also possessed a keen tactical mind that convinced colleagues that he had an instinctive grasp of modern mobile warfare. Out on the leading edge of the Leibstandarte division’s reconnaissance unit, Meyer slashed through France, Greece, and into Russia right up to the Caucasus—almost the deepest penetration achieved by German forces. Thrice cut off and surrounded, Meyer fought his way out each time with only a handful of survivors at his side. His battlefield exploits were rewarded with one decoration after another. By June 1944, Meyer wore the Iron Cross, 1st Class, and the Knight’s Cross with Oak Leaves. He carried, too, the sobriquets “Schnelle [Speedy] Meyer” and “Panzermeyer,” in recognition of his abilities and temperament.3
Obergruppenführer Sepp Dietrich, commander of 1st SS Panzer Corps, considered him a passionate soldier, completely dedicated to the practice of arms. For his part, Meyer increasingly saw battle as “magnificent in the best Wagnerian tradition,” with himself in the role of Siegfried “leading his warriors to their death” and eternal glory.4
That the soldiers he led towards glorious battle were mostly teenagers fazed Meyer not a bit, for these were no ordinary young soldiers. Most had been instilled with Nazi ideology throughout the course of their short lives under the tutelage of the Hitler Youth movement—an organization intended to ensure that National Socialism controlled every segment of life within the German state. Youth movements, particularly those that promoted athleticism and outdoor sports, had always been popular in Germany—perceived as the best means for building good character—and Hitler Youth was just one of many when it first formed. But the Nazis transformed the concept into an ideological one, and in 1933 ensured theirs remained the only viable movement by forcibly seizing millions of dollars’ worth of property from the other movements in an effort to drive them into financial ruin. In 1936, they extended Nazi control by outlawing all but the Hitler Youth and in 1939 conscription of children into the movement became mandatory.
Organized into cadres based on age, German children by 1942 received 160 hours of pre-military training a year, including small-bore rifle shooting and fieldcraft. While this differed little from the cadet corps training offered in Canada and Britain at the time, the Hitler Youth leaders also worked assiduously to indoctrinate their young charges in Nazi thinking and ethnic philosophies.
As the war turned against Germany and manpower shortages became acute, Hitler and Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler decided to form a new division that would “be a symbol of the willingness of German youth to sacrifice itself to the achievement of final victory.”5Its ranks were to be filled entirely by volunteers who had mostly been born in the first half of 1926
. This meant that the youngest of ten thousand who reported in Berlin for the division’s formation in July 1943 were seventeen. At first glance, it would seem that the 12th SS was not all that different from many other divisions formed by either the Allied or Axis powers, where many recruits were aged between seventeen and nineteen years of age. But what made the division unique was that its enlisted ranks were made up almost entirely of eighteen- and nineteen-year-olds. The 1st SS Panzer Grenadier Battalion of Meyer’s 25th Regiment was typical: within its ranks, 65 per cent were eighteen, 17 per cent nineteen, and only 18 per cent twenty or older.6
While the enlisted ranks were overwhelmingly teenagers with no previous combat experience, their NCOS and officers were usually veterans of SS divisions that had seen hard service in Russia, with a sprinkling of personnel from the Wehrmacht added to make up deficiencies in numbers. At the battalion, regimental, and divisional headquarters level, all the officers were battle-hardened SS veterans. The 12th SS Panzer Regiment commander was Obersturmbannführer Max Wünsche, who in the prewar years had been Hitler’s adjutant. Winner of two Iron Crosses, the German Cross in Gold, and a Knight’s Cross, he was considered an outstanding leader and mastermind in handling tanks on the battlefield. Commanding the 26th Panzer Grenadier Regiment was Wilhelm Mohnke, another stalwart member of Hitler’s personal bodyguard, who had commanded an infantry company in the 1940 campaign in France. Although he lost a foot in Yugoslavia and was relegated to command of a replacement battalion, Mohnke was able to parlay his way to a new combat command with the formation of the 12th SS and the shortages of officers that resulted in the SS ranks. Major Gerhard Bremer led the division’s reconnaissance battalion. All these men served under Brigadeführer Fritz Witt, who, like most of his senior officers, was a highly decorated veteran of the early campaigns fought by the SS in France and Russia. Only thirty-six years old, Witt had deep roots in the National Socialist machine and was recognized as a highly capable divisional commander.7 Wehrmacht General der Panzertruppen Heinrich Eberbach, who saw service in close proximity to the 12th SS and came to know its officers well, considered “Witt, Meyer and Wünsche as Waffen-ss idealists but Mohnke and Bremer [were] bullies and brawlers.”8