by Mark Zuehlke
Major C.F. Kennedy and his men of ‘D’ Company were frantically trying to fend off the German infantry using the cover of a heavy mortar and artillery bombardment to crawl by the dozens towards them through the tall wheatfield fronting their position. Some of the Germans were shouting in English, “Surrender, Canada.” Then Kennedy’s No. 18 wireless set squawked with a message from someone speaking perfectly unaccented English instructing ‘D’ Company to immediately withdraw towards les Buissons. When Kennedy demanded to know the identity of the officer giving the order, the man just repeated that ‘D’ Company must retreat. Kennedy decided he was speaking to the enemy and shouted for his men to stand firm.11
At about 1830 hours, Learment suddenly saw Panzer Grenadiers moving around inside the village itself behind his position and realized his flank had been turned. “They were engaged with rifle and Bren gun and for a few minutes repulsed,” he wrote. “However, they soon got an MG 42 into position from where it could fire from a flank right into the dug-in positions of the infantry. This had the desired effect of keeping our heads down, but not before most of our ammunition had been used.
“The first intimation I had of the enemy being close was when an SS trooper armed with a Schmeisser appeared over the rim of the trench and ordered us out. He was shot by someone in a trench behind us and rolled away in the wheat. In the meantime, I was able to get another magazine on the Bren gun and [to] fire it. As I went to fire the fourth and last magazine, the gun jammed and the same time another Hun put in his appearance. This time there was no alternative but to come out with our hands up.”12
By now, casualties had reduced Learment’s force to only about ten men. As the men wearily emerged from their slit trenches, Learment saw that the field around their position “was literally alive with camouflaged Germans.”13 They all seemed very young. While most of the Germans set off in the direction of ‘D’ Company’s lines, a small escort party forced Learment and his men to run into Buron. Once inside the village, they were lined up against a wall in a small square and a MG 42 was positioned on either flank of the prisoners. Learment looked at the German soldiers manning the machine guns, considered the fact that none of the men had been searched for weapons, and decided they were about to be executed. “They were just raving crazy. You couldn’t talk to those people.”14 Suddenly, a German NCO rushed into the square bellowing at the SS troopers.
As the machine-gunners stepped back from their weapons, the others rushed forward and started roughly searching the prisoners. “They were grabbing our wallets and had our wristwatches off before we could move. One grabbed my steel helmet and just shoved it off the back of my head.” Learment and his men were repeatedly punched and kicked during the search. Then suddenly one of the Germans pointed to a grenade dangling forgotten from the web belt of Private Jack Metcalfe, who was standing alongside Learment. “The German raised his Schmeisser and as Metcalfe turned toward me he was shot three or four times in the back and fell screaming at my feet. The German then stepped over him and placing the machine-pistol at Metcalfe’s head, shot him again. No notice of this was taken by the other Germans who continued their search as if nothing had happened.”15
The Canadians were then marched out of Buron and along the road leading to Authie. A short distance out of the village, the small column came under shellfire and Learment realized the Canadian gunners had finally gotten within range. It was not propitious timing and several “were nicked by near bursts. Private Jeffrey Hargreaves was wounded in the legs and could not continue the march. We were not allowed to help him and he was shot as he lay on the ground. My batman, Private James MacNeil, was also slightly wounded but was able to continue, although we were not allowed to assist him in any way. As we neared Authie we saw some members of the two forward platoons of ‘C’ Company. They were all dead and three of them were laying close together in such a manner, with no weapons or equipment near them, as to suggest that they had been shot after capture, and this was later confirmed.”16
Two Canadian corpses lay on the road and Learment saw Panzers deliberately grind over them.17 One of the bodies was that of Corporal Thomas Davidson of Stellarton, Nova Scotia. Davidson had been among eight prisoners from ‘C’ Company executed in Authie by an impromptu firing squad comprised of three SS soldiers. After the killings, the Germans dragged the bodies of Davidson and another man out onto the road to ensure that passing traffic would run over them.18
Learment and the prisoners with him were hustled through Authie and marched to the SS regiment’s headquarters at the Abbaye d’Ardenne. Along the way, there would be more killings as Panzer Grenadiers of the 25th Regiment’s III Battalion, which had captured most of the Canadians during the fighting at Authie and Buron, went berserk.
The 25th SS Panzer Grenadier Regiment’s Standartenführer Kurt Meyer considered this unit shaky because its battalion commander’s battle experience was limited and none of the company commanders had previously been in combat. Thirty-three-year-old Obersturmführer Karl-Heinz Milius had won both the Iron Cross First Class and Second Class fighting as a sergeant in France in 1940, but had then been assigned to a series of instructional postings until his transfer to the 12th SS. Before the war, Milius had served in several Death’s Head units guarding concentration camps. This included two years commanding a platoon of guards at Dachau. SS efficiency reports on Milius portrayed him as overly aloof, reluctant to heed advice, and overconfident. Three of his company commanders had been drawn from the Wehrmacht, but like all fifty of those officers assigned to the division they were devoted Nazis with past experience as Hitler Youth leaders. All, however, had seen service only in support units rather than combat companies. The same was true of the other company commander, SS Obersturmführer Georg-Walter Stahl.19
Under this uncertain leadership, III Battalion had faced its baptism of fire. Trained to believe they were elite troops in the finest traditions of the Waffen-ss, which considered itself the best fighting unit in the world, the young troops had faced a grim awakening. In the day’s gruelling battle, the battalion lost twenty-eight soldiers killed, seventy wounded, and another twelve missing. Five of the wounded were officers.20 Assured they were invincible, the teenagers had been forced to recognize their own precious mortality as they saw bullets and shrapnel cut down comrades by their side. Perhaps it was this cruel awakening to reality that whipped the soldiers of III Battalion into a killing frenzy.
In one incident after another, soldiers of III Battalion, often behaving like “maniacs,” murdered small groups of Canadian prisoners. Lance Corporal W.L. MacKay of North Novas’ ‘A’ Company had feigned death while watching in horror out of one slightly open eye as one trooper bayoneted Private Lorne Brown while he was trying to surrender. In Authie, a German officer had beaten in the brains of Private William Nichol, immobilized by wounds, with the butt of a rifle and then shot him for good measure.21
THE ELIMINATION OF Learment’s force left companies ‘D’ and ‘B’ virtually surrounded and exposed to attack from Buron itself. At the antitank ditch, ‘B’ Company’s acting commander Captain Wilson had been directing fire from his two mortars and one remaining operational six-pound antitank gun onto the Germans carrying out the frontal assault on ‘D’ Company. Now the weapons were swung to engage the enemy coming out of Buron on the road running to les Buissons. The Cameron Highlanders of No. 11 Platoon pitched in with fire from their heavy machine guns, but return fire killed their commander, Lieutenant J.S. Couper.22 Cameron battalion second-in-command Major Roger Rowley, who had come forward to assess the situation at Buron, took over the platoon. The heavy-weapon fire from the antitank ditch sent the Germans scrambling back into the cover of the village, but when the guns fell silent, Wilson realized ‘B’ Company had shot its bolt. Rowley agreed, telling him that the Camerons were completely out of ammunition and the mortars also spent.
Wilson quickly lined the company Bren carriers up on the road, boarded all his men, and made “a break for it.” Lance C
orporal H.L. Fraser volunteered to stay behind and cover the withdrawal from the antitank ditch with his Bren gun. Once the carriers were well down the road to les Buissons, he followed them for a short way and then paused to burn off a magazine to keep the Germans buttoned in Buron. Fraser continued to dash a short way up the road, swivel, and fire off a magazine from his hip and then run again until he reached les Buissons. “His courageous act,” Wilson wrote, “was a boost to the morale of everyone.”23
Wilson had expected to find nothing at les Buissons but the tattered remnants of the North Novas, but instead the area was teeming with the entire Stormont, Dundas and Glengarry Highlander battalion. Mixed in amongst their ranks were pitifully few North Nova survivors who had escaped the overrunning of Authie and made their way back to the battalion’s headquarters. The reinforcement battalion’s Lieutenant Colonel G.H. Christiansen, noted as the 9th Brigade’s most competent battalion commander, had established a defensive position to one side of the village, with ‘D’ Company “in front of a church, ‘C’ Company near some isolated houses, [and] ‘B’ and ‘A’ companies… astride the highway.” That highway led straight to the one running from Villons-les-Buissons through Bény-sur-Mer to Courseulles-sur-Mer. If the Germans got past his battalion, Christiansen knew there was nothing to his rear to stop them from carrying right on to the beach but the Highland Light Infantry, which formed the brigade reserve at Villons-les-Buissons.
As his men worked feverishly to dig fighting positions, some damaged Sherbrooke Fusilier tanks limped by on their way to the repair unit in the rear. Christiansen watched them pass and then issued instructions for his men to “let tanks go through but that not one infantryman was to be allowed to pass.” The lieutenant colonel was concerned that those North Novas making it back to les Buissons might understandably be of a mind to keep right on going, but he needed every available rifle on line to hold the Germans back.24
Christiansen need not have worried, for although the North Novas were badly shaken by the long day’s battle and terrible losses, few were as yet broken of spirit. And out on the edge of Buron, ‘D’ Company was still locked in battle. Five times the Germans threw attacks at Kennedy’s badly shredded company, and each time were thrown back.25 There were Panzers in Buron now and others standing off to the east, all hammering the company perimeter with 75-millimetre guns. German mortar rounds spattered down like raindrops.
Trying to keep the Panzer Grenadiers at bay, Kennedy radioed a request for artillery to be fired directly to the front of his lines. Petch, who had just learned that the 14th Field Artillery now had its guns in range, agreed. A few minutes later, the first 105-millimetre rounds ranged in on the company and Kennedy reported the fire on target. The gun batteries then opened with a heavy, rapid concentration of shells. But the German attack continued. The battalion’s war diarist wrote: “Under this fire enemy infantry advanced and penetrated the forward slit trenches… It was impossible to stop them as [the men] had to remain in their trenches to avoid our overhead fire and also the enemy’s. They had no field of fire due to the high grain. Machine-gun fire and grenades were fired into the slits and… 16 Platoon, having run out of ammunition were forced to surrender and were rounded up. Under our heavy artillery fire… the captors went to ground and in the moment afforded by this break two sections of 16 Platoon escaped and returned to their company.”26
It was about 2000 hours, the light fading from the day, when Kennedy heard the Panzers in the village clanking his way. From the wheatfield and town, Panzer Grenadiers rushed towards the Canadians. Those Germans armed with rifles had fixed their bayonets. Desperate, Kennedy pleaded for immediate tank support. Petch called Gordon, who turned to Captain Sydney Valpy Radley-Walter and told him to take the tanks under his command into the fray. The son of a small-town minister from the Gaspé Peninsula, Radley-Walter was normally ‘C’ Squadron’s second-in-command, but now he led a Sher-brooke polyglot of just seven tanks out of the woods towards Buron. “I could see all the dead and dying [of both sides] where the Germans had come right across them,” he later said.27
The Shermans rolled through Buron with their machine guns and 75-millimetre cannon blazing, barrelled right over ‘D’ Company’s slit trenches, and punched into the Panzer Grenadiers coming through the wheatfield. Raked by the machine guns, the German infantry broke and fled for cover. Lieutenant C.F. Thompson wheeled his tank around to run back through Buron and saw a German tank “hiding behind a wall. We fired and hit it.” The tank exploded in flames.28
Radley-Walter saw “one Canadian sergeant in the North Nova Scotia’s group… in a trench. I waved to him as I passed and he pointed to a dead German hanging over the side of the trench with a bloody knife in his back from the close fight.” Some of Kennedy’s men followed the tanks back into Buron and managed to drive the remaining Panzer Grenadiers out. The Germans scattered towards Authie. A jubilant North Nova war diarist scribbled: “Many casualties were inflicted by the tanks’ guns and in some instances, the enemy being so numerous, were run over by them.”29
Watching the Sherbrooke Fusiliers attack from his position near les Buissons, the Stormont, Dundas and Glengarry war diarist was moved to write, “Attack magnificent! Words cannot express such courage and determination!”30
When Buron was cleared, the Panzers to the east pulled back, grumbling off towards St.-Contest. Thompson followed Radley-Walter’s Sherman back to the woods and on to a field where the tanks lined up to shell St.-Contest. As soon as Thompson’s tank halted, a mortar round hit it and a shrapnel splinter slightly wounded his co-driver. “The mortar fire was very heavy but we shelled till our ammunition was all gone” and then returned to the wood.31 By now, virtually every Sherbrooke tank was out of ammunition. The regiment had lost twenty-one tanks during the day’s fighting and had seven others badly damaged. Sixty tankers had been wounded, twenty-six fatally. But despite being outgunned, the Sherbrooke Fusiliers had knocked out at least thirty-one Panzers and prevented the German armour from driving through to the beach.32 As well, noted the regiment’s diarist, “many [self-propelled] guns, half-tracks, light transport, infantry and other weapons were knocked out or destroyed.”33
‘D’ Company still defiantly clung to Buron, but Petch, with Brigadier Ben Cunningham’s concurrence, had decided that the village must be given up. When darkness fell, he organized a small relief force in les Buissons and, accompanied by a single Sherman, went out to Buron to bring Kennedy and his men back. Putting the wounded onto the tank, the infantry marched briskly away from the smouldering ruin of the little village. The North Novas’ long fight of June 7 was over, a pyrrhic victory won. At the cost of 84 dead, 128 taken prisoner, and 30 wounded, the North Novas had thwarted the 12th SS Panzer Division’s intention to drive through to the coast.34
To a man, those who survived were badly shaken by the day’s experience. Private Jack Byrne thought he and everyone else in the battalion was in shock. His own platoon of ‘B’ Company was down to eighteen men. Byrne looked into the eyes of many of his friends and saw the pupils were dilated. Men who were usually of a quiet nature jabbered on about nothing. There was a lot of patting each other on the back, as if the men needed to confirm physically that they still lived and breathed.35
The brave stand by the North Novas had given the Stormont, Dundas and Glengarry Highlanders time to organize their “fortress” next to les Buissons, so they could meet any enemy advance with a coherent defence. Until shortly before D-Day, the regiment had been known by the awkward moniker of the Glengarrians, but one night when Christiansen and Major Fred Lander were sitting over a pint in a pub, the barmaid had remarked, “There are a lot of you Glens around here.” The two officers liked this new contraction so well they raised their mugs and shouted, “Up the Glens!” A rallying cry was born.
Peering out into the darkness, Christiansen calmly awaited the expected onslaught by the 12th SS once it reorganized around Buron. German artillery and mortar fire was already intensifying and casu
alties starting to be taken. One officer from an attached antitank unit supporting the Glens reported that his gun positions were so exposed that he was losing too many men wounded and must withdraw. Christiansen laughed softly and shook his head. “Hell no. We’re staying right here, son,” he said. The battalion’s padre Captain Ted Brain echoed the lieutenant colonel more stridently. “To hell with withdrawal, we’ll lick those bastards!” he growled.36
At 2115 hours, the Panzer Grenadiers sallied out of Buron towards les Buissons and Christiansen bellowed that there would be no withdrawal. From the slit trenches came a general shout of “Up the Glens!” Then rifles and machine guns spoke and a hail of small-arms fire combined with concentrated artillery ripped into the ranks of the advancing Germans. Several times, the SS troops attempted to renew the assault before finally pulling back beyond Buron to lick their wounds.37
From 3 CID’s divisional headquarters in Bény-sur-Mer, Major General Rod Keller sent a wireless report to First Canadian Army commander Lieutenant General Harry Crerar that omitted mention of the reverses suffered at Authie and Buron. Instead, he played up the success of the 7th Canadian Infantry Brigade in gaining its DDay objectives by 1030 hours and said his troops “continue to stake out our claims… Courage, dash and initiative of the Canadian soldier truly amazing.”38
MEANWHILE, NOT FAR from Buron, Standartenführer Meyer watched with mounting agitation as his attack slowly petered out. Throughout the afternoon and long evening, he had dashed this way and that around the battlefield astride a motorcycle, trying to sustain the momentum of the assault. At one point, Meyer had been knocked from the motorbike by the blast of a shell. The motorcycle was mangled and he cowered in a hole beside a lost Canadian until the artillery concentration lifted. Then the two men went separate ways. Meyer found another motorcycle and continued dashing about. Even on the Eastern Front, where the Russians so loved their artillery, Meyer had never experienced such heavy and accurate artillery fire. Watching the shells smashing Buron “with enormous masses of steel,” he was reminded of the legendary furor of artillery used by both sides at Verdun during the Great War.39