Holding Juno
Page 18
A bemused Brown wondered “how one ignored enemy tanks… I was uncertain and very apprehensive. The prospect of being attacked by a bunch of marauding Panthers was almost beyond my comprehension, especially since we had no tank support of our own.”
The company walked out of Bretteville towards the farm and Brown’s combat initiation began immediately, as what seemed to be more than a dozen German snipers started blasting away. Brown and his men crawled on their hands and knees through the cover of the tall grain or hunkered down below and alongside the armour-plated sides of Bren carriers pulling two six-pound antitank guns from the antitank platoon that were to support them. In this manner, ‘D’ Company arrived at Cardonville without loss, which relieved the Winnipeg Bren carrier platoon. The Winnipeg troops left on the double, for the sounds of a heavy gunfire exchange from their lines over by Putot-en-Bessin indicated the Little Black Devils were hotly engaged. Brown figured it would be ‘D’ Company’s turn soon enough and that he had best waste little time establishing a defensive perimeter.
Cardonville was built more like a small fort than a farm. Its two-storey farmhouse faced east and was constructed of two-foot-thick stone walls. An eight- to ten-foot-high wall extended out from the house to enclose a courtyard, barn, several storage buildings, and small field. Pressed up against the north wall was an orchard, while to the south lay the railway track. Bordering the west wall was an open field. Brown instructed two of his platoons to dig slit trenches inside the courtyard but right against the base of the walls running along the north, south, and eastern flanks of the farm. To gain fields of fire, the men hacked holes in the walls through which they could aim rifles and machine guns. Several Bren guns were set up on the farmhouse’s second storey to gain long-range fire fields in every direction except east. That side of the farmhouse lacked any windows, but Brown decided this was acceptable, for in that direction lay the rest of the battalion. With insufficient manpower to defend the courtyard’s almost thousand-yard perimeter, Brown decided to leave the west wall unprotected except by a single Bren gun and several riflemen who could cover the open field from a second-storey window.
Aware of “the conventional wisdom of ‘don’t put all your eggs in one basket,’” Brown and his second-in-command, Lieutenant Dick Roberts, “decided to leave one of the platoons in reserve in the small orchard behind the back (north) wall. We also arranged to leave all the vehicles there except two Bren carriers being kept inside the walls. Finally, we placed our two antitank guns in the orchard to cover a mile of open ground to our right. Some of these decisions we [came] to regret, as we learned that often war is not fought according to the book. In the meantime, the signallers had strung the phone lines into position and communication with the battalion HQ was established. All of this took a couple of hours after our arrival and the departure of the Winnipegs’ carriers” to complete.38 Also positioned in the orchard next to a hedge was a Bren carrier with Lieutenant Ronald Joseph Macdonald, the Forward Observation Officer assigned to ‘D’ Company by 13th Field Regiment. The carrier was equipped with a wireless set that the thirty-year-old artilleryman from Peake’s Station, Prince Edward Island would use to call in fire support for the rifle company. Brown was grateful to have the gunner on hand because his own skills at ranging artillery were greatly limited.
No sooner had ‘D’ Company finished its early afternoon preparations than the gunfire that had been constant from the direction of Putot-en-Bessin rose to a fierce crescendo. Sprinting up the stairs to the farmhouse’s top floor, Brown peered through his binoculars and saw a large German infantry and tank force charging the Winnipeg positions. He was “stunned by the swiftness of the attack” and fearful the Little Black Devils were being overrun.39
[ 10 ]
Now You Die
THINGS HAD BEEN GOING from bad to worse for the Winnipeg Rifles since just before dawn at 0400 hours, when ‘A’ Company’s Major Fred Hodge reported hearing enemy tanks off in the far distance. The racket out to Hodge’s front was generated by a “battle-ready scouting party” of Sturmbannführer Bernhard Siebken’s 26th Panzer Grenadier Regiment’s II Battalion, which was advancing in staggered formation to enable an immediate attack at the first hint of resistance. Unsure of the Canadian dispositions, Siebken opted to bull ahead with fighting teeth bared rather than try to feel out the enemy forward positions first by use of reconnaissance patrols. Siebken’s scouting party advanced so rapidly it left the rest of the battalion far behind, strung out along a narrow road running from Cristot to Putot-en-Bessin. Despite its haste, II Battalion failed to gain the battlefield in time to coordinate with I Battalion’s assault on the Regina Rifles.1 The 26th Panzer Grenadiers’ attack on 7th Canadian Infantry Brigade on June 8 thus developed piecemeal, with each battalion operating without coordination or communication with any other.
Just as a predawn light washed the eastern skyline, the German scouting party rolled through the wheat towards the bridge spanning the railroad on the Winnipegs’ extreme right flank. Heavy artillery and mortar fire saturated the ground well ahead of the advancing force. The ground shaking around them from explosions and the air overhead whirring with steel shrapnel shards, Hodge’s men crouched in their slit trenches. Taking a quick peek out of his hole, Hodge saw a cluster of infantry advancing in a tight pack around several vehicles, one of which was either an antiquated Mark iii tank or a self-propelled gun.
Hodge let the Germans almost gain the bridge before ordering his two platoons to cut into them with Bren gun and rifle fire. Adding to this weight of steel were several Vickers machine guns from a Cameron Highlanders of Ottawa platoon commanded by Lieutenant Ashman. The heavily concentrated fire “swept the enemy infantry away like a scythe to hay,” the Winnipeg regimental historian later wrote, while a six-pound antitank gun manned by Corporal Naylor’s crew knocked out the armoured vehicle and an armoured car.2 Badly blooded, the scouting party fell back and Siebken concluded he faced an enemy “ready to defend.” There would be no easy dash to the beaches. II Battalion must first put in a well-prepared attack to clear the resistance discovered at Putot-en-Bessin.3 Siebken was also painfully aware that his left flank was completely exposed to a possible counterstroke from the 50th British Infantry Division to his west. Panzer Lehr Division was to have covered that flank, but there was no sign of it and no news as to the division’s whereabouts.
Siebken summoned his company commanders to a hastily established headquarters in a château outside le Mesnil-Patry. He ordered No. 7 Company under Leutnant August Henne to strike from the right, with Obersturmführer Heinz Schmolke’s No. 6 Company on the left, while No. 5 and No. 8 companies provided supporting fire. “When should the attack begin?” Schmolke asked. “Half an hour ago,” the battalion commander growled. Dashing back to his men, Schmolke saw smoke from a direct artillery hit blowing slowly away from the position. A single shell had killed two of his officers and left a couple more badly wounded. Hurriedly reorganizing the company command structure, Schmolke led his men towards battle.4
Unbeknown to Siebken, his flank was not threatened as feared, for a strong force of Panzer Lehr Division Panther tanks was already well north of his position grinding along a ridge parallelling the woods at la Bergerie Ferme. Captain Harold Gonder and Lieutenant Gerry Blanchard apprehensively watched this line of nine tanks cross the railroad west of Putot-en-Bessin and rattle towards their position. The 62nd Anti-Tank Regiment battery commander had only two 17-pound antitank guns and two 6-pounders from the 3rd Anti-Tank Regiment’s 94th Battery capable of bringing sights to bear on the approaching Panthers.5
Gonder could hardly believe the cavalier manner of the German tank commanders. They were all sitting tall in their open turrets, looking straight ahead as if on a training manoeuvre. Glancing over at the antitank gunners quietly tracking the tanks with their guns, he thought it should be like shooting ducks in a row for them. The range was closing fast, down to about 1,200 yards, with the tanks approaching the farm in a tightly regime
nted single line. Everything was developing into a perfect ambush until one of his sergeants suddenly shouted in a panicky voice, “Fire!” Before Gonder could countermand the order, every Vickers machine gun in the line ripped off a long burst of fire. “Oh, boy, here we go,” Gonder thought, as “immediately down came the turrets and the German tanks got into action… fast.”6
The jig up, the four antitank guns cracked out an opening salvo that left four Panthers wrecked, and hastened to reload. Even as they did so, the remaining five Panthers swung towards them with long-barrelled 75-millimetre guns barking out rapid fusillades. Gonder watched in helpless horror as the crew of one antitank gun or Vickers machine gun after another was “literally slaughtered” by shells “fused to burst on impact. The uncanny skill of those tankers in finding us and getting the range was ghastly.”7
In seconds, both 17-pounders were out of action, with many gunners dead or wounded. Blanchard rushed to the rear to bring up another 17-pounder and 6-pounder that had been covering the farm’s northern flank, while Gonder shifted his machine guns to new positions not yet zeroed in by the tankers, who were now being supported by German mortar fire that was hammering the wood. “Fearing that the tanks were accompanied by infantry, [Gonder] exhorted his men to keep the guns in action,” wrote the Camerons’ regimental historian. “Sergeant Stanley and Private A.W. Bond picked up a gun whose crew had been disabled, and moving to an exposed bit of ground continued to fire at and around the tanks until the situation had been restored.” The two men were subsequently awarded Military Medals and Gonder the Military Cross for their behaviour in this action.8
The company’s casualties, however, were heavy. Although all his Vickers remained operational, Gonder lacked soldiers to man most of them. Having had their mortars wrecked by the opening salvo of German mortar fire, the surviving members of the Camerons’ No. 13 Platoon jumped in, but were still too few to bring all the guns back on line. Fortunately, a number of the Canadian Scottish troops were “old 2nd Battalion men.” This prewar battalion of the Canadian Scottish Regiment had been briefly reorganized in 1936 into a machine-gun battalion similar to the Camerons. Harkening back to their long unused training, the soldiers reacquainted themselves with the powerful, little-modified, .303-calibre workhorse that had served Commonwealth forces since before the Boer War.9
Smothered by artillery and mortar fire and raked from a distance by the Panthers, casualties among ‘E’ Troop grew to the point where Blanchard ended up “laying and firing one of the guns himself.”10 The rapid fire the British and Canadian antitank gunners kept throwing at the Panthers served to keep them at their distance, so the two sides engaged in a standoff from mid-morning to about 1630 hours. Then the tanks, undoubtedly low on ammunition, turned about and waddled home. The battle for la Bergerie Ferme was over. ‘E’ Troop’s casualties were four dead, seven wounded, and two missing. Blanchard’s cool bravery under fire earned a Military Cross.
When Canadian Scottish Major G.T. “Tony” MacEwan visited his ‘D’ Company platoon positioned in the wood, he was “surprised to find no casualties… although they were all shaken up. The mortars [No. 13 Platoon] were in a bad way [with] their transport—about four trucks—in all… hit and brewing. The MGs had many casualties.” MacEwan’s visit was in the mid-afternoon, and he thought the worst of the fight at the farm finished for the moment. The major reported the attack against la Bergerie as part of the offensive by 12th SS (Hitlerjugend) Panzer Division, not realizing that his men had faced down a probe by Panzer Lehr Division—just beginning to establish a presence on the battlefield. He was little worried about the situation at the farm, but greatly concerned by the ever increasing intensity of fire coming from Putot-en-Bessin. It seemed that the main focus of German attention was shifting inexorably to focus directly on that village.11
MEANWHILE, THE ATTACK ON PUTOT by the 12th SS 26th Panzer Grenadier Regiment’s II Battalion had not developed with great immediate force despite Siebken’s exhortations to his company commanders for haste. Not until about 1000 hours did Major Lochie Fulton spot a large force of German infantry advancing from le Mesnil-Patry towards where the railroad tracks fronted the Winnipeg Rifles’ ‘D’ Company line. Unlike most of the battalion, Fulton’s men enjoyed a good field of fire because they were dug in at a point where the railroad ran across their front at ground level. To the right of ‘D’ Company, the railroad continued to follow a ground-level grade past ‘C’ Company’s front before dropping into a deep cutting to pass ‘A’ Company’s lines. Fulton recognized that ‘A’ Company’s position was the battalion’s weakest defensive link, for the Germans could use the cutting as a deep trench from which to launch massed attacks on the two companies defending the right flank. They could also attempt, as they had earlier, to push armour across the railway bridge to support the infantry coming out of the trench.12
But, apparently unaware of the potential presented by the cutting, the Germans advanced in battle order directly towards ‘D’ Company’s front under the cover of an increasingly violent mortar and artillery barrage. Fulton ordered his mortar sergeant to reply with the three-inch mortars, while No. 17 Platoon, closest to the railway, hit them with Bren gun fire. Meanwhile, 13th Field Regiment Forward Observation Officer Captain Ben Nixon called down a devastating concentration of artillery fire. A fierce firefight ensued between the Panzer Grenadiers and No. 17 Platoon, but after a few minutes of intense shooting the Germans fell back in disorder. The platoon’s wireless operator reported to Fulton that casualties had been heavy and its commander, Lieutenant Jack Benham, was dead. But they had succeeded in staving off the German thrust.13
As Fulton had feared, a different story quickly developed on the front facing ‘A’ and ‘C’ companies. Shortly after noon, another push by No. 6 Company of the Panzer Grenadiers gained the railway cutting despite being smothered by heavy artillery concentrations. The Germans crept out of the trench by ones and twos to take up sniping positions along the railroad embankment south of the town. Hunkered down in slit trenches that faced tall stands of wheat, the Canadian riflemen found their view of the railway blocked, so they were unable to bring effective fire against either the strongpoint or the infiltrating troops. By late morning, the battalion’s war diarist observed that snipers had come “to life in the buildings throughout the town and made it increasingly difficult to move in the whole [battalion] area… there was direct enemy machine gun, mortar, and artillery fire on our light machine-gun posts and individuals in slit trenches.”14 The two companies began taking heavy casualties.
Lieutenant Colonel John Meldram had been free to roam between rifle companies on foot all morning without great fear. Now the sniper fire was so thick he was only able to venture out from battalion headquarters to the front line inside the turret of a Sherman tank used by one of the 13th Field Artillery’s FOOs. During one of their attempts to visit the companies, their tank was straddled by a concentration of 88-millimetre fire and forced to beat a hasty retreat. After this, Meldram decided it was irresponsible to continue taking the risks inherent in maintaining personal contact with his rifle companies, and depended instead on fitful and spotty wireless reports sent by the company commanders.15 He still believed that the situation was under control—sending a wireless report to brigade at 1420 hours that assured Brigadier Harry Foster the battalion should “be able to handle the situation.”16
But even as Meldram sent this report, the defensive wall held by the Royal Winnipeg Rifles started to crumble. Rifleman Robert Smellie of ‘C’ Company’s No. 15 Platoon saw some infantry moving in the grain field south of the railway cutting. As he opened up with his Bren gun, “an artillery barrage started… which gradually swept through our position. One shell landed in a slit trench about 50 feet to my left.” The two men inside were killed instantly. “As the shelling lessened and we put our heads up, I saw a rifleman from [No.] 13 Platoon climb out of his slit trench and run towards the enemy, throwing away his equipment and tearing off his clothes a
s he ran. He was very soon hit by fire from the other side of the rail track. We continued to fire and every time we saw a movement on the other side of the track, I would let go a short burst.”17
The shelling and probes by infantry continued, with each attempt by the Germans to advance in strength repelled by the embattled companies, but casualties mounted and ammunition ran down. It became clear that the Germans had managed to not only surround ‘A’ and ‘C’ companies, but also ‘B’ Company to their rear. Other Panzer Grenadiers had infiltrated the lines of individual companies, cutting platoons off from each other. Fighting was increasingly at close quarters, with the artillery and mortars of both sides posing a hazard to friend and foe alike. All wireless communication within the three besieged Winnipeg companies broke down completely. Meldram lost all contact with most of his battalion and was helpless to regain it.
Major Fred Hodge’s situation was desperate, made even worse by the fact that ‘A’ Company was short a full platoon because that of Lieutenant Frank Battershill was positioned almost a mile distant in Brouay. For his part, Battershill was pinned down by successive assaults that made it impossible for him to move towards Putot. First, a battalion from Panzer Lehr brushed up against his front while groping its way towards that division’s planned forming-up position for a counterattack on Gold Beach. Lost and out of contact with the rest of the division, this battalion established a strongpoint on the southern edge of Brouay and started probing his position in strength. Concentrations of naval gunfire from ships standing off Juno Beach repelled the probes and inflicted heavy German casualties. Shortly after the Panzer Lehr unit had been thrown back, an attack was put in on Brouay by the 26th Panzer Grenadier’s III Battalion. On the approach march, one company from this battalion passed through the area churned up by the naval guns. “Here,” wrote Oberscharführer Hans-Georg Kesslau, “we encountered the most terrible image of the war. The enemy had virtually cut to pieces units of the Panzer Lehr Division with heavy weapons. Armoured personnel carriers and equipment had been ripped apart, next to them on the ground, and even hanging from trees, were body parts of dead comrades. A terrible silence covered all.”18