by Mark Zuehlke
There was no question in Learment’s mind that ‘C’ Company had to be rescued from its precarious position in Authie. Hoping to break through with a relief force, the major ordered ‘B’ Company and remnants of the scattered No. 15 Platoon of ‘C’ Company that had returned to Buron onto carriers, which attempted to dash through the German fire. “As soon as the vehicles pulled clear of Buron they came under heavy shell and mortar fire and it soon became obvious,” he wrote later, “that Authie could not be reached.” The infantry were ordered back into their previously dug slit trenches and Learment ordered Captain E.S. Gray to take his dangerously exposed carriers back to the battalion’s headquarters at les Buissons. By now he was gloomily assuming that the troops in Authie had been overrun, as all radio communication with them had ceased.31
IN FACT, THE NORTH NOVAS in Authie were still fighting, but were aware that their situation was desperate. A civilian had just guided Lieutenant Jack Veness to a gravel pit on the south side of the village, where about fifteen wounded Sherbrookes and Cameron Highlanders had managed to find shelter from the shelling. Several of the men were obviously dying, but he ordered the platoon stretcher-bearer to do what he could for the rest. Next to the gravel pit was one of the Camerons’ carriers, with a mounted Vickers machine gun that was undamaged. The carrier was in perfect running order, but its crew lay dead beside it. Veness started the carrier up and drove it back to ‘C’ Company’s defensive lines, which were concentrated on the edge of an orchard behind a thick hedge. The lieutenant was pleased with the addition of the Vickers, which augmented the machine guns stripped from two destroyed Sherbrooke tanks.
Looking about for Fraser, he discovered the captain aboard one of the wrecked Shermans, trying to use its radio to contact Learment. Fraser shouted that he wasn’t having any luck. A couple of tankers, who had survived the destruction of the Firefly tank Fraser was standing on, were inside trying without apparent success to repair the damaged main gun’s traverse system to bring it back into action. But Veness, with optimism born of combat naïveté, remained confident that they could hold, his belief bolstered even more when Lieutenant Lou Sutherland of ‘A’ Company marched out of Authie into the orchard with his entire platoon behind. But rather than being a relief force, Sutherland reported, he and his men had become separated from the rest of ‘A’ Company and were only in Authie by mistake.
Stiffened by this sudden infusion of almost forty men, however, the officers set about reorganizing their defence. Shaped in a rectangle, the orchard had “one long side bordering the main street of the town and a shoulder-high hedge all around it. Sutherland’s platoon was placed along the street side. Veness had the end towards the enemy and half the other side. Langley had the rest. The extra Brownings from the tanks and the Vickers were mounted in the hedge on the side away from the town.”32
Looking southwards, Veness saw about a dozen men in single file approaching the orchard through an open field that stretched out on the other side of the hedge. Knowing that Lieutenant Bob Graves had gone off in that direction in search of his missing platoon, Veness figured he had found the men and was coming back in. Wanting to avert any chance of a friendly fire accident, Veness ran out into the open, “shouting and waving his arms. He was out about one hundred yards when he suddenly saw there were more than a section, more than a platoon. And they were wearing green uniforms. Germans!”33 Germans who immediately opened up on him with a hail of fire through which Veness somehow managed to zigzag safely back to the hedge.
Back under cover, Veness saw that the Germans had broken out of their single-file formation to form an assault arrowhead and were coming on in a wave that seemed to him as large as a battalion. Suddenly the 17-pounder gun on the disabled Sherman belched a shell towards the Germans, the turret traversed slightly to acquire a new target, and the gunner began blasting off rounds of high explosive. Just as the Firefly went into action, the orchard erupted under a heavy enemy artillery barrage filling the air “with flying earth, shrapnel and splinters of wood. Orchard trees seemed to bounce from their stumps and float in the air… The tank gun was firing as fast as it could be reloaded. The Vickers and Brownings took tremendous toll. But the Germans came on like fanatics. Soon they were within one hundred yards. Every Nova was shooting and the Germans were dropping so fast it did not seem that any could get through. But shells were blasting gaps in the hedge and Veness suddenly heard new firing. He swung around to see a green wave of massed Germans flooding into Sutherland’s position. Sutherland and a few survivors were falling back, fighting as they went.”34
Realizing the only way to safety was to fight their way back to the battalion, Veness gathered the twelve men left in his platoon and “led a dash at the ring of green uniforms,” blasting a path “through with grenade and pistol and rifle butt.”35 Behind him, twenty North Novas, now completely surrounded by Hitler Youth, fought on. Langley was shot down when only three of his men were still standing. These were cut down a moment later. Locked in a point-blank shootout with several German tanks, the Firefly gunner smashed three opponents before his own tank exploded into flame. Nobody escaped. Captain Fraser, a handful of North Novas, and a couple of Cameron Highlanders still manning a Vickers kept firing until each in turn was killed.36
Lieutenant Sutherland saw Fraser fall as he and the remnants of his platoon scrambled into the cover of a house on the edge of Authie. German tanks were careering into the village, some smashing through stone buildings and walls to gain the main street. Leapfrogging his men across the same street under the nose of one tank’s gun by using the smoke from an exploding shell to conceal them, Sutherland snaked through houses and backyards to gain the northwest corner of the village. From here, they slipped into the tall fields of wheat and crept off on a wide circuit that took them almost to the village of Gruchy before looping back to the safety of Villons-les-Buissons.37
Behind them, Authie was a cauldron of smoke and fire. Seemingly dazed young German soldiers in green camouflage smocks wandered about. Veness and his men were still in their midst, shooting a bloody path that carried them to the northeast side of the village without loss. In the distance, they saw ‘A’ Company dug in behind a hedge two hundred yards distant, but the ground between consisted of two pastures broken by a hundred-yard-wide field of high grain. Their only hope was to try sprinting to safety, but they immediately came under fire from a German tank that had moved up on the east flank of the village. Only Veness and four of his men made it to ‘A’ Company.38
Other small groups of North Novas were fighting their way back through Authie. A section of Sutherland’s platoon under Sergeant Bill Gammon had been cut off while covering the escape of the rest. They kept firing until the Germans were only ten yards away and every weapon but Gammon’s Sten was out of ammunition. As his men lowered their rifles to surrender, the sergeant used “the clouds and smoke hanging over the main road” to slip away. Dodging into a side lane, Gammon came face to face with two Germans. Quickly killing one with a burst of his Sten, he swung the gun barrel towards the other, only to have the weapon jam. Before the still startled German could bring his rifle to bear on Gammon, the sergeant smashed him in the face with the butt of the Sten and escaped into the wheat.39
In ones and twos, some North Novas fought on, while others surrendered after being surrounded or overrun. Two brothers—Sergeant Earl McKillop and Corporal Walter McKillop—were among a section of five men under the sergeant’s command when their position in the orchard was overrun and they gave up. Then a great burst of fire from an unidentified machine gun in the hedge caused their captors to dive for cover. The McKillops and two others broke for it and made their way through the wheat back to safety.
Private Arthur Gould, who had been captured near Sergeant McKillop’s overrun position, watched the successful escape. His captors coolly kept their guns on him, offering no such opportunity. Lance Corporal W.L. MacKay, bleeding badly from a bullet wound to his face, and two other men were also forced to su
rrender. Their young captors were in a rage, screaming with hate at the Canadians, for they had expected their baptism of fire to result in an easy victory and instead had been badly blooded.40
Despite the delay that Meyer’s III Battalion had faced in driving the Canadians out of Authie, he remained confident that the regiment could fight its way to the coast as ordered. From his vantage in the abbey tower, it seemed the North Novas were “totally surprised.” And now his other two battalions, heavily supported by tanks, swept towards Buron to wipe out that pocket of resistance. Victory seemed within his grasp.41
[ 7 ]
Don’t Do Anything Crazy
ON THE SOUTHERN EDGE of the thin line of North Nova Scotia Highlanders gathered in front of Buron, Lieutenant Jack Veness brought ‘A’ Company’s Major Leon Rhodenizer the grim news that ‘C’ Company had been destroyed in Authie and the Germans were likely to strike his lines in “overwhelming strength.” Artillery and mortar fire was already bracketing the company line, and Rhodenizer’s men were huddled deep into slit trenches positioned behind the cover of a hedge. The carrier Rhodenizer had used for a command vehicle lay in a wrecked pile nearby. Beside it, the company’s wireless signaller sprawled dead on the ground. The major thought on Veness’s news for a moment, but there was nothing he could do to better prepare for the imminent assault. “Okay,” he said. “Grab a rifle and start shooting.”1
Having learned from Veness that Lieutenant Lou Sutherland’s platoon had been wiped out in Authie, Rhodenizer knew he had only two platoons left for the fight. After deducting the men who had been badly wounded by the incessant shelling, that meant fifty to sixty soldiers. To his front, the ground crawled with German infantry, but the more immediate threat came from a clutch of tanks closing in on ‘A’ Company’s position. Still well outside the range of the Canadians’ PIAT, the tanks halted and began taking potshots at the North Novas. Lieutenant Percy Smith’s platoon, holding the flank reaching out towards Authie, took the brunt of this fire. Nine of his men died.
When the tanks momentarily ceased firing, the Panzer Grenadiers tried to swoop in, only to be driven off by the deadly accurate rifle and machine-gun fire the North Novas threw out. One assault after another was thrown back, as the Germans repeatedly tried the same tactic. Soon the ground in front of the Canadian position was scattered with twisted bodies clad in green camouflage, while the trenches behind the hedge filled with dead and wounded men dressed in bloodstained khaki.
Veness had taken a rifle and ammunition web belt off one of the wounded and was firing whenever he saw a target moving through the wheat. A glance at his watch showed that ‘A’ Company’s fight had been going on for an hour. The men were looking increasingly desperate, counting the few bullets they had left.2 They had gone into the day with fifty rounds apiece and twenty-five magazines for each Bren gun spread amongst them.3 Too little for the intensity and duration of this fight.
Captain Joe Trainor, ‘A’ Company’s second-in-command, came up behind Veness and shouted over to Smith, “Percy, how many men have you?”
“Six that are all right,” Smith replied.
Out on the other flank, one of Lieutenant Jack Fairweather’s Bren gunners stopped firing. The twenty-one-year-old lieutenant from Rothesay, New Brunswick crawled over and discovered the gunner had taken a bullet through his skull. The gun was also broken. He scavenged the few remaining magazines from the dead man and distributed them to the platoon’s other two Bren gunners.
With so many men down and ammunition running out, the rate of fire the soldiers could put out was slacking off alarmingly, allowing the Panzer Grenadiers to crawl in on them through the cover of the tall wheat. German bullets were whipping through the air and the occasional grenade arced over the hedge to spray shrapnel down its length. All the time, the Panzers kept pounding them with high-explosive rounds and raking the hedge with machine-gun fire.
Rhodenizer’s wireless set had stopped working, so he couldn’t call for artillery. Not that there had been any available earlier. The company kept shrinking its lines in from the flanks, dragging the wounded into the centre of their little nest, trying to hold together as a unit.
Fairweather was unloading a damaged Bren magazine and jamming the rounds into the magazine for his Lee Enfield when his batman shouted, “They’re behind us, sir!” Over his shoulder, Fairweather saw a large number of SS soldiers rise out of the wheat. The lieutenant rammed the magazine into the rifle and aimed it at the approaching Germans just as Captain Trainor called out, “Come out. It’s all over.”
“It was strange that the end of the road should be reached so suddenly,” Fairweather later recounted, and he “wondered what his folks would think.” During the prolonged firefight he had felt no fear, but now Fairweather suffered a flash of panic before he raised his hands high. “An SS gunner glanced at him and shifted his weapon as if to kill, then leered horribly and gave his attention to others. Cold fear returned to Fairweather.”4
Veness had been looking to his front when Trainor ordered the surrender. The baffled lieutenant spun around and saw about twenty Germans all armed with Schmeissers covering his position. To his right, Fairweather and his men were standing with their hands up. Despite feeling suddenly sick to his stomach, Veness forced himself to calmly drop the rifle and raise his arms.
As he did so, Rhodenizer also rose from his slit trench and with visible anguish etching his face cried, “No! No! What’s going on here?”
Trainor responded sharply, “Don’t do anything crazy. We haven’t a chance.”
Grumbling under his breath, the major slowly lifted his hands. ‘A’ Company was finished.5
FROM HIS VANTAGE on the outskirts of Buron, Private Jack Byrne watched the German infantry and tanks coming across the fields towards ‘B’ Company’s perimeter “and knew we were in trouble.” Byrne had formerly spent more than a year as one of the crack sergeants running officers through the Canadian Combat School in England before wangling his way back to the regiment in time for the invasion by taking a voluntary demotion to private. Until this afternoon, Byrne had figured the training he and the officers of 3rd Canadian Infantry Division had gone through at the school gave them a fighting edge, but he now reckoned that the North Novas were doomed no matter how well prepared they were for combat.6
For sure, the troops in Authie had been wiped out. Now there were men in green uniforms swarming towards them from ‘A’ Company’s lines, so those guys were probably gone. That left it to companies ‘B’ and ‘D’ to hold the line, or the whole invasion might be driven right back into the sea. The rate of fire coming at them was terrific—the air above No. 12 Platoon’s fighting position was scythed by bullets and shrapnel from exploding artillery, mortar, and tank rounds.
A little way over from Byrne, Captain A.J. Wilson, ‘B’ Company’s acting commander, thought the “situation appeared desperate” and consequently had “organized his defences for a last-man, last-round stand” based on holding a German antitank trench that cut across the road running through Buron from Franqueville to les Buissons. The ditch provided his men with a deep, continuous trench from which to fight rather than being isolated in shallow slit trenches hastily carved by soldiers operating in twos and threes. Wilson had two platoons of ‘B’ Company with him, the other having been left with Major Learment. The major was using that platoon to shore up the remnants of ‘C’ Company that had escaped Authie into some semblance of a fighting unit charged with holding the immediate front of Buron. ‘D’ Company was out to the southeast of Wilson’s men, defending the badly exposed left flank. Behind the infantry, the few still operational Sherbrooke Fusiliers tanks were lined up in the cover of a large wood about a quarter-mile north of the village. Alongside Wilson’s men stood two three-inch mortars and a six-pound antitank gun manned by men from the North Novas’ support company, and several Cameron Highlander carriers mounted with Vickers machine guns.7
Back at his les Buissons headquarters, Lieutenant Colonel Charlie P
etch turned to his Sherbrooke Fusiliers counterpart and said, “Mel, my boys are going to try to hold Buron and les Buissons.” Gordon promised all the support he could muster and rushed back to his badly shot-up regiment. There was no longer any squadron integrity; the tankers had simply formed “into little groups… two tanks from this squadron, one from another till we had another troop and we were given an officer or NCO to command.”8
Petch, meanwhile, continued attempting to bring up artillery support for his beleaguered battalion, but the 14th Field Regiment was having problems of its own. Having set off in its 105-millimetre self-propelled Priests at noon to gain a firing position that would bring Authie within range, the regiment had progressed in stages by troops to ensure continuous fire support to 9 CIB. But this made the advance ponderous. Authie remained out of range and Buron was also beyond the maximum shooting distance of 10,500 yards that the Priest could lob its heavy shot. Most of the gunners had welcomed being equipped with the American Priests for the D-Day invasion, but now they longed for the trusty old British 25-pounders that could range shot out to 13,400 yards and would have easily put them within firing range. When the regiment finally reached its new firing position in the late afternoon, the area was subjected to “continuous mortar fire” from the Germans still holding Douvres-la-Délivrande’s radar station.9
Radio communication from the North Novas through brigade to the supporting regiments was badly fragmented throughout the afternoon by static interference, and disrupted even further by the English-speaking German signaller breaking into the net to sow confusion with a series of orders for various units to retreat.10