by Mark Zuehlke
Captain A.C. Vassar Hall disagreed with Matheson’s assessment that the second Panther’s fire caused little destruction. He arrived in Bretteville from Juno Beach at the same time Meyer’s attack came in and, like Brown at la Ferme de Cardonville, realized the antitank gunners had their weapons pointed the wrong way to meet the tanks. As he tried to help the gunners rectify this error, “from the immediate area of battalion HQ there was a loud explosion and soon flames were visible above the intervening buildings.” Running to the corner of a stone wall that surrounded the church, Hall glanced around it and was “astonished by the sight of a large German tank burning furiously and partially blocking the road right in front of battalion HQ.” He watched “one of the crew scrambling out of the control tower, silhouetted by the flames coming from the rear of the tank. Though momentarily spellbound, I was suddenly aware of a tracer MG bullet coming directly at me, fired from a second tank which had been following the first one. I only had a fraction of a second to pull back to the shelter of the stone wall, but not before I received a blow to my cheek as the tracer clipped the corner of the stone wall. It knocked me down temporarily.” After a sergeant next to Hall applied a field dressing to his wound, the captain hurried into the battalion headquarters courtyard and took shelter in a trench manned by quartermaster Captain Earl Rouatt. Here “we both watched the tracers flying overhead as the tanks stood off and contented themselves with shelling us for the rest of the night.”18
Matheson estimated that twenty-two Panthers were circling Bretteville or making forays into the streets. “Fires and flares lit up the area, and the enemy several times appeared to be convinced that opposition had ceased.” When a German dispatch rider roared past on a captured Canadian motorcycle, Matheson shot the man down with his Sten gun. Sometime later, a German officer “drove his Volkswagen [scout car] up before battalion HQ, dismounted and gazed about for a few seconds until an excited PIAT gunner let fly with a bomb, which hit him squarely.” The officer disappeared in a spray of gore.19
It was 0230 hours of June 9 and the battle for Bretteville was stalemated. Although the Reginas were helpless to destroy the tanks unless they strayed into PIAT range, the tankers were equally unable to control the ground. But the German tankers were tough, determined foes, not given to accepting failure. Captain Brown at la Ferme de Cardonville could see the Panthers prowling outside Bretteville and was increasingly angered by the fact that the antitank gunners in the orchard had still not turned their guns to bring these tanks under fire. Until they did so, there was nothing he could do to help the town’s defence. Stomping into the orchard, he demanded the antitank gun sergeant explain why they had yet to move. “What, sir, are we going to do about the six tanks that now surround this orchard?” the man asked with quiet resignation.
“‘What tanks are you talking about?’ I sputtered and he told me ‘there are enemy tanks at each corner of the orchard and one on each side.’ Peering into the night, I confirmed the tanks were indeed there. In the silence I could hear the quiet idling of their motors.” The sergeant said the Panthers had been there for some time and yet seemed unaware of ‘D’ Company’s presence.
Agreeing this was a blessing for the company, Brown set about spreading the word through the ranks that everyone should hold fire and not betray the position through unnecessary movement until he could organize a simultaneous attack on each tank by the two forward platoons. Envisioning an attack “by two or three men, jumping on each tank and slapping sticky grenades on their turrets,” Brown knew success depended on achieving complete surprise. No sooner had he returned to company headquarters to put the ball in play than a Sten gun’s chatter cut the night. “There goes the old ballgame,” Brown muttered, as the tanks replied with a deluge of fire.
“All hell was breaking loose in the orchard. The tanks were firing wildly and tracer bullets darted everywhere. The barn, full of dry hay… had been set ablaze… [and] would burn to the ground quickly. Inside were two of our soldiers looking after our main ammo supply, which unwisely had been stored there. We grabbed as much as we could and… were able to get most of the ammunition out and over to the house. Then we took cover, as there was nothing we could do now for our comrades in the orchard. The tanks set all the vehicles on fire and were busy mopping up the slit trenches, running over weapons and crushing everyone and everything in their path.”
The only thing barring the tanks from entering the compound itself was a thick, high wooden gate, behind which Brown strung a necklace of Type 75 grenades. No sooner were the grenades in place than “a tank lumbered up and knocked the gate back while we fired machine guns and rifles, the bullets bouncing wildly off the turret.” This meagre response surprisingly deterred the tank commander from pushing into the tight space. Instead, the Panther reversed and rumbled alongside the farm’s east wall. The other tanks joined and ground around the farm like Hollywood Indians attacking a circled wagon train, pounding the wall with gunfire and machine-gunning the stone house. But Brown realized they were afraid to enter the compound without infantry support.
“We adopted an almost passive strategy… partly because we were trying to ignore the tanks and mostly because we couldn’t do anything about them anyway. We no longer had the antitank guns… Some of our men fired machine guns through holes in the walls, just to remind the tank men we were still there.
“Casualties among our troops began to multiply as machine gun and shellfire were taking their toll… It seemed only a miracle could save us.” Dawn was not far off and Brown prayed fervently that its arrival would bring Typhoon fighter-bombers to destroy the Panthers with rockets and bombs. Suddenly, there was a lull and then the tank fire trailed off altogether. Peeking out a loophole in the wall, Brown saw the tanks withdrawing across the railroad towards German lines.
Taking stock of the remnants of his company, Brown counted only fifty men still capable of fighting. “We were a motley looking bunch—uniforms muddy, wrinkled and shabby; several days growth of whiskers accentuated the grim and drawn appearance of the young faces. Most of the soldiers were in their late teens or early twenties, but they were aging rapidly as the horror of what they had seen began to sink in. Some were shivering, not from cold but from exhaustion, and all were apprehensive as to what would happen now.”
A makeshift first-aid station in the house overflowed with wounded, and dead lay strewn through the orchard. Brown clustered the remaining soldiers at various points along the farm walls. “Everyone realized the house with its thick walls had now become a fortress and we were probably facing a fight to the finish… There was no choice but to see it through to the bitter end.” With so few men, almost every man was able to set up behind an automatic weapon—some equipping themselves with German machine pistols. Brown expected the German infantry must have been waiting for the tanks to soften them up, and would come across the railway at dawn. “We didn’t know if the rest of the Regina Rifle Regiment had survived the tank attack. Our prospects… were not encouraging.”20
BROWN WAS UNAWARE that with the withdrawal of the Panthers from the farm, Meyer’s assault had ended. Having thrown his men into the attack with such bravado, Meyer had soon looked upon a battleground where everywhere he turned old comrades from Russia sprawled dying on the ground. Tears streamed down his face. Leaping aboard a motorcycle, he had tried to drive into Bretteville to join the leading elements of the Panzer Grenadiers, only to have the fuel tank riddled with bullets and set alight. Several of the young troopers had grabbed Meyer, who was “burning like a torch,” and rolled him in the muddy roadside ditch to smother the flames—quick action that left the officer uninjured.21
Having committed too few infantrymen, Meyer was unable to support the Panthers properly—a situation that only escalated as the motorcycle troops suffered heavy casualties in the intense fighting. Finally, after six hours of trying to press home the attack, Meyer bitterly conceded failure. At about 0430 hours, with the first hint of dawn tingeing the eastern skyline, the Germ
an force pulled back from Bretteville to a position east of the River Mue, near Rots. When Wünsche dismounted from his Panther, a concentration of artillery fire caught the cluster of tanks and the tank commander was slightly wounded in the knee by shrapnel fragments.
While Meyer received reports on his casualties, the 26th Panzer Grenadiers belatedly appeared on the battlefield stage left with the dawn assault on la Ferme de Cardonville that Brown had expected. The captain was just stepping out of the overflowing aid post when a soldier yelled, “Here they come,” and opened up with automatic fire. Again, Brown was stunned by the attack’s tactical stupidity. “If the infantry had not supported their tanks under cover of darkness, who would launch an attack in broad daylight without artillery or tank support?” he wondered. As Brown frantically tried to establish radio contact with Matheson’s headquarters to seek artillery fire, CSM Jimmy Jacobs reported that there were about two hundred Germans “and they just keep coming.”
“Every automatic weapon along the wall came into play. There was much shouting and cursing as the men called out warnings and there were screams from the wounded Germans as they fell. Guttural commands could be heard through the din.” Lieutenant Roberts quickly rushed several men into the upper storey of the farmhouse, from where they could better bring the railway cutting being used by the Germans for a rally point under fire. Each time a wave was thrown back, the Panzer Grenadiers regrouped and tried again. Roberts pounded down the stairs from the attic and yelled that he had seen “a bunch of enemy crawling through the wheat and probably trying to surround us… We’re in serious trouble.” As the lieutenant ran back upstairs, he shouted over his shoulder that artillery was desperately needed.
Brown knew that, but had been stymied in trying to reach anyone on the wireless or phone. Just then, to his surprise, a voice over the wireless said, “Sunray [code for commander] here.”
“Sunray, I’m sure glad to take this call,” Brown cried excitedly.
His response was met by heavy breathing and then someone speaking English with a thick German accent inquired, “Allo, Englishman… Are you lonely?” over and over again.
Deciding that no divine intervention in the form of artillery was likely, Brown lugged one of the surviving Vickers heavy machine guns up to the farmhouse’s top storey. As Brown, the Cameron gun crew, and a few Reginas began setting up the heavy weapon, a German soldier appeared about twenty yards from the farm wall and fired a burst through the window that Brown planned to use as a firing port. A tracer “snapped past me and struck a Cameron soldier setting up the gun. There was a violent explosion and the Cameron was thrown up to the ceiling. Shrapnel ricocheted around the room. The [Cameron] sergeant was hit and he jumped away from the gun shaking his wounded right arm with his left. Apparently the gunner who was hit had been carrying a couple grenades in the front of his tunic. The tracer had set them off causing a devastating blast in a confined area.” Realizing the Vickers was too vulnerable in the upstairs position, Brown ordered it taken back to the farm compound and deployed in a more traditional manner where it could fire along fixed lines from a dug-in position.
He then fetched a light machine gun and a German rifle from the weapons dump and found a place on the gun line. Infantrymen were more badly needed now than someone trying to exert command control, he reasoned, as he slipped into a trench in front of a loophole in one of the walls. Then a German artillery shell whistled in and ripped several of the heavy tiles off the roof of the house. Recognizing that this changed the balance, Brown decided he had to go back to being an officer and raced for his command post next to the farmhouse. “Shell after shell came over and exploded against the building and stone fences… [CSM] Jacobs and I lay on the floor, arms covering our heads while the barrage pounded around us.” When the artillery lifted, a quick check surprisingly revealed that only two men by one wall had been slightly wounded by shrapnel.
Brown found Roberts still in the attic despite the fact that much of the roof had been blown away. The two men could see Germans forming up for a renewed attack in the cover of a smaller farm about two hundred yards south of the railroad. If he could bring artillery onto that position, Brown could seriously disrupt their preparations. But there was nothing he could do, as the “now familiar line of grey uniforms and bucket style helmets were dashing across the railway toward us again… I went back to the command post as a burst of bullets splattered the wall just ahead of me. A gaping hole in the front wall was allowing the enemy to send MG fire through to the entrance of our post.” Jacobs shouted that there were Germans gathering against the walls and they would soon start lobbing grenades into the compound. The normally unflappable CSM told Brown, “We’re in real trouble.”
Suddenly, the signaller yelled that he had battalion HQ on the wireless and this time it was for real. Brown shouted into the handset that he urgently needed to speak to Matheson. “Gord, is that you?” Matheson asked. “How are you?”
“Sir, we can’t hold out much longer,” Brown replied. “Can you help us? We need artillery and tank support. Heavy infantry attacks on us.”
Without ado, Matheson got 13th Field Artillery’s commander, Lieutenant Colonel F.P.T. Clifford, on the horn. Brown reported that the FOO from the artillery regiment assigned to the company was probably lying dead in the overrun orchard. He then described the situation and read off the map coordinates for Cardonville. “We need a good stonk on the [small] farm and then a barrage back from there to the rail line in front of our position. Can you see on the map what I’m talking about? We can’t last much longer, sir.”
Matheson broke in to ask how long Brown thought he could hold. After a quick consultation with Roberts, the captain said, “About twenty minutes, Sir. That’s it.”
Clifford cautioned that the barrage back from the farm to the rail line would roll up perilously close to Cardonville and “might hit your forward position.”
“We’ll have to take that chance, sir,” Brown said.
Clifford said, “Tell your boys to take cover. They’ve only got a few minutes before the first shells come over their heads.”
Brown and Roberts hurriedly spread the word and just two minutes later, the first 105-millimetre shells “came screeching over the farm and landed squarely in the enemy’s farm. The roar was deafening as the mobile guns poured hundreds of rounds into the target. God Almighty it was marvellous. I’d never been so pleased with anything. It was a work of art. Col. Clifford had instructed his gunners well, as not one shell landed on us, although dozens struck no more than a few yards from our front wall… The concussion seemed earth shattering as the uproar lasted about 10 minutes.”
When the firing lifted, Brown glanced out a hole in the south wall. The ground beyond “looked as though it had been ploughed over in the enemy’s farm… Smoke was still rising from the shelling.” The artillery fire had the desired effect—the Germans made no further attempts to take the farm by storm, confining themselves instead to aggressive sniper harassment and random concentrations of mortar fire. After the ferocity of the night and early morning assaults, ‘D’ Company considered such actions little more than a tiring nuisance.22
WITH 26TH PANZER GRENADIER Regiment’s failure to take la Ferme de Cardonville, the 12th SS attempt to break through 7 CIB’s front to Juno Beach was broken. The division paid a bloody price for the decisive defeat. Even though the 12th SS official statistics were generally overly conservative, the reported losses admitted 152 casualties—43 dead, 99 wounded, and 10 missing. As for tanks, the division confessed to the total loss of six Panthers. The 12th SS divisional historian conceded that while use of mobile, fast infantry, and Panzers organized into small battle groups had proven itself repeatedly in Russia, the tactic failed “here against a courageous and determined enemy.”23
A byproduct of the defeat, Matheson noted, was that “the dreaded Panther, from being an invincible monster, became a clumsy machine which could be dealt with at close quarters by coolness and cunning.” He esti
mated that half the tanks knocked out had fallen prey to PIATs.24
The Reginas counted only their fatal casualties in the battle, with eleven men killed during the night assault and thirty-three more on June 9.25 The Camerons had been hard hit, with ‘A’ Company so badly shredded it was reduced from three platoons to two—No. 3 Platoon at Bretteville had greeted the dawn as a tattered remnant. The company reported eleven killed and ten wounded or missing, most from No. 3 Platoon. This was the heaviest casualty rate the battalion would suffer during any two-day period of the war.26 The 3rd Anti-Tank Regiment also paid heavily, with the 94th Battery reporting that Lieutenant R.D. Barker and seventeen men were missing, five were dead, and five others wounded. Most of the missing had served in the overrun ‘H’ Troop. The regiment’s war diarist dryly noted that, “while these casualties may be considered heavy, the battery gave a good account of themselves during the engagement.”27
Although 7 CIB retained or reclaimed all vital portions of its front line by the morning of June 9, so that the 12th SS offensive was ultimately a complete failure, the Canadians protecting Juno Beach knew the battle was far from concluded. Nobody believed that the Germans were going to now go over to the defensive and abandon further attempts to throw the Allied invasion back into the sea.
[ 13 ]
Potential Menace Removed
ON JUNE 6, THE ALLIES had seized the initiative in Normandy. Seventy-two hours later, the Germans were no closer to tipping the balance in their favour. Although the invasion plan had envisioned far grander inland gains by D+3, the fact remained that simply by holding the bridgehead the Allies bought vital time to build up manpower, weaponry, and supplies inside the walls of Fortress Europe. Each day that the beaches remained secure from German land, air, and naval attack, the Allied position strengthened, proving that the increasingly defensive posture assumed by the invading divisions constituted an effective strategy. It was also about the only possible strategy, with divisions critically depleted by ever mounting casualties that outstripped the rate of reinforcement coming into Normandy from England. Until General Bernard Montgomery succeeded in putting fresh divisions ashore, a major breakout from the beaches towards Cherbourg or Caen was not feasible. Meanwhile, the seaward security of the beaches and the unfettered movement of shipping across the English Channel remained essential to the continued buildup and resupply of the front-line troops.