Holding Juno

by Mark Zuehlke

  The presence of this lodgement inside the Allied lines continued to plague movement of vehicles along all roads east of Basly, which were subject to fire from an 88-millimetre antitank gun positioned in front of the radar station.18

  WHILE 3 CID ’s rear areas were judged far more secure by the end of June 9, the same could not be said of its front lines, where a broad gap still existed between 9th Canadian Infantry Brigade on the left and 7th Canadian Infantry Brigade to the right. The latter brigade could do little more than continue holding its own in the area of Bretteville-en-Bessin and Putot-en-Bessin until the rest of the division came up on its eastern flank and 50th British Infantry Division moved up on the other.

  Major General Rod Keller recognized that the only way his division could return to the offensive was to close the gap between his two leading brigades, but it was not possible to cobble together an attack that could succeed with the depleted manpower available. He also needed to regain Authie and Buron on 9 CIB’s front. If he pushed into the Mue valley to secure Vieux Cairon and then advanced through Rots to gain the Caen-Bayeux highway at la Villeneuve, those battalions involved would be in the same left-flank-exposed position that currently imperilled 7 CIB. The challenge was to create a front line that looked like a gradually sloping shoulder running down from a high point at Norrey-en-Bessin through Rots and on to Buron. Such a continuous front would save 7 CIB’s hard-won salient, while providing a firm base from which the division could renew its offensive thrust towards Carpiquet airport.

  Currently, the only screening force in position on that flank was provided by the Sherbrooke Fusiliers, which had tanks positioned on a line of higher ground between Secqueville-en-Bessin and Bretteville-l’Orgueilleuse. Keller had moved the armoured regiment to this position on June 8. Still rebuilding from its heavy June 7 losses, the regiment’s surviving tanks and crews were divided into two composite squadrons, with Major V.O. Walsh commanding one and Major E.W.L. Arnold the other. Walsh’s squadron set up south-east of Bretteville, while Arnold formed up just outside the southern outskirts of Secqueville.

  The most forward tank troop in Walsh’s squadron had rolled up onto a low hill overlooking a large orchard immediately west of la Villeneuve. From this position, the tankers monitored and shelled German vehicles attempting to move along the Caen-Bayeux highway, but were soon targeted by enemy artillery. Having not yet been fully briefed on the dispositions of 7 CIB’s infantry battalions, Walsh decided the accurate artillery fire was likely being directed by a German forward observer using the stately church tower in Norreyen-Bessin for an observation post. Walsh’s gunner quickly shot the tower down with a few well-placed rounds.19 In Norrey, Major Stu Tubb watched with dismay as the “tower crumbled into rubble along with adjacent buildings. It was sad to watch this happening to such an old structure.”20

  Despite the Sherbrooke Fusiliers’ presence on 7 CIB’s left flank, the gap there still greatly worried Keller and his staff. Of particular concern was its threat to the safety of the division’s two artillery regiments dug into firing positions at Bray. Before 7 CIB’s Brigadier Harry Foster sent the Canadian Scottish into the counterattack on Putot-en-Bessin, this battalion had provided security for the gunners. Through the night of June 8, the artillery regiments had been forced to take men off the guns to carry out their own perimeter defence. But with daylight, the calls for artillery support across 7 CIB’s front came in fast and furious, so the gunners were too busy crewing their 105-millimetre Priests to defend their own perimeter, leaving them dangerously vulnerable to a raid by enemy infantry from the Mue valley.

  Although merely a creek to Canadian eyes, the River Mue had spent centuries cutting a comparatively deep valley in the Norman soil that the farmers little bothered to clear for cultivation. It was still densely forested and presented ideal ground for use by 12th SS troops to infiltrate into the Canadian rear areas. Snipers posed a constant hazard to the gunners, and both the 12th and 13th Field Regiments lost men to such fire during the early morning of June 9. In the 13th Field Regiment’s gun position, Sergeant C.R. Fox and Gunner Ronald Casselman, both manning guns in the 44th Battery, were shot by snipers—the latter dying of his wound.21

  Realizing that 7 CIB’s infantry battalions were too depleted and strung out along a hotly contested front to cover the artillery regiments, Keller decided to detach 8 CIB’s Queen’s Own Rifles and put it under Foster’s command. By mid-morning on June 9, he had this battalion moving by truck from Anguerny to clear the Germans out of the woods near Bray.22 With the Chaudières patrolling the division’s rear areas and the North Shore (New Brunswick) Regiment assuming responsibility for securing Anguerny while continuing to protect the division’s eastern flank, 8 CIB was rendered virtually impotent in terms of offensive capability. Second British Army commander Miles Dempsey accordingly placed No. 46 Royal Marine Commando under command of 8 CIB’s Brigadier Ken Blackader. At 1945 hours, as the Queen’s Own disembarked from trucks at Basly, No. 46 Commando reported to 8 CIB headquarters.23

  Although the arrival of the commandos strengthened the brigade, it would still be some time before it was organized for offensive actions, so any attempt to advance the Canadian front meanwhile fell to 9 CIB. This brigade had hardly been sitting on its hands since the North Novas were pushed back from Authie and Buron on June 7. Throughout the following day, the three battalions of the 12th SS Division’s 25th Panzer Grenadier Regiment had repeatedly attempted to wrest les Buissons from the firm grip of the Stormont, Dundas and Glengarry Highlanders. Intensive shelling by German 105-millimetre and 88-millimetre artillery preceded each Panzer Grenadier infiltration attempt. These barrages were hellishly drawn out, with one starting at 1040 and grinding on for two hours.24 Then German infantry were spotted “crawling through the long grass in front” of ‘A’ Company’s front. The Glens drove off this attack with assistance from the Highland Light Infantry mortars stationed at Villons-les-Buissons.25

  Keen to regain the initiative, Keller and Brigadier Ben Cunningham alerted the Highland Light Infantry to be ready for a noon counterattack intended to seize Buron. Lieutenant Colonel F.M. Griffiths informed his company commanders they were to “break out of the Fortress and attack Buron and then push on to our final objective” of Carpiquet airport. “An ‘O’ Group was held, a plan made, and then we were told to hold.” Keller had decided that “it was… too great a risk to advance further until the 3[rd] British Division on our left straightened up the line.”26

  That division’s 9th Infantry Brigade attempted to complete its task in the mid-afternoon on June 9 with a four-phase drive to successively clear Cambes, Galmanche, Mâlon, and St.-Contest. The Royal Ulster Regiment advanced behind a creeping artillery barrage that walked to the outskirts of Cambes, where a small wood faced the village. An immediate German counterattack, however, prevented the battalion from pushing out of the trees into the streets until it was reinforced by the King’s Own Scottish Borderers. The two battalions bullied their way into Cambes. From Villons-les-Buissons, the HLI watched in awe and increasing terror as artillery regiments on both sides turned guns on the doomed village. “A terrific rain of shells fell on the place from every direction. Unfortunately, we were in the middle of the counter battery [crossfire] and many rounds from both sides fell upon our area.”27 Fighting raged until about 0200 hours the next morning before the village was reported cleared by the two British battalions, but by then they were so beaten up that the rest of the offensive plan was abandoned.

  Breaking off the British attack left the Highland Light Infantry, whose positions around Villons-les-Buissons were on the most easterly flank of the Canadian division, still exposed to observation by German spotters operating in Galmanche and St.-Contest. During daylight hours, ‘C’ Company’s men were forced to cower in their slit trenches, for “every time they appear on top they come under fire from enemy mortars, MGs, 88-[millimetre] and whatever else Bosche can throw at them… Our mortars cannot fire except when there is other arty act
ivity as when they do, there is an immediate rain of counter battery fire… [German fire] seems to be pretty accurate, indicating that they had previously taped our positions.”28

  [ 16 ]

  Fix Bayonets

  BY LATE AFTERNOON on June 9, the 12th SS (Hitlerjugend) Panzer Division and elements of the 21st Panzer Division had stymied 3rd British Infantry Division’s attempt to bring 9th Infantry Brigade up parallel with the Canadian left flank. Having blocked the British advance, the Germans redirected the fury of their artillery from embattled Cambes to where the Stormont, Dundas and Glengarry had been holding 9th Canadian Infantry Brigade’s most forward front at les Buissons since the night of June 7. Lieutenant G.D. Utman was killed and most of his mortar platoon were killed or wounded, putting all the tubes out of action. Several nearby soldiers, who had rudimentary mortar training, raced to help the survivors get the weapons back into action.1 9th Canadian Infantry Brigade’s Brigadier Ben Cunningham arrived at that point on a front-line reconnaissance, with the Glens’ Major Archie Hamilton in tow. Seeing the calamity that had befallen the mortar crews, Cunningham dashed through the fire and smoke of exploding shells to personally reorganize the stricken unit. “What a brigadier,” the regiment’s historian later exalted, “a living inspiration to his command!”2

  Casualties mounted throughout the ranks, with Captain Charlie Thom taking shrapnel in the neck and thirty others wounded by shrapnel and concussion. By now, the Glens had taken to calling les Buissons Hell’s Corners, particularly the intersection next to the walled Paix de Coeur Château, where fighting seemed heaviest.

  Realizing these attacks were coming from Vieux Cairon, Cunningham and Glens commander Lieutenant Colonel G.H. Christiansen decided to have ‘C’ Company, supported by a troop of Fort Garry Horse tanks, seize the village. Both men knew this thrust faced stiff opposition, particularly as the Germans had an 88-millimetre gun line dug in to the front of Vieux Cairon.

  While this attack was being teed up, Fort Garry Horse Lieutenant Colonel Ronald Morton strode up to ‘B’ Squadron’s acting commander, Captain Robert D. Grant. “You have to do something to take the pressure off the infantry,” he said. “I want you to go out around in front of les Buissons through the wheatfields and draw fire off the infantry.” ‘B’ Squadron’s Major Jack Meindl had been wounded in action on D-Day and its second-in-command, Captain Jim Hill, killed on June 8 when a German artillery round exploded in a les Buissons courtyard in which he happened to be standing. As the senior surviving officer, Grant had suddenly found himself in charge of the squadron, a job he felt ill prepared for, as he had previously served as the rear-link officer stationed at regimental headquarters.

  Despite his lack of combat experience, Grant thought Morton’s order “seemed… like a crazy idea.” But he also recognized that the lieutenant colonel “was the boss.” Not only had the squadron lost its senior commanders, but it was also so badly shot up that Grant only had four tanks left out of the twenty-one that had come ashore on DDay. Trundling out into the open wheatfields in broad daylight with so few tanks and no screening infantry sounded suicidal.

  Nevertheless, the four tanks growled out into the field as instructed, and promptly achieved the purpose of drawing fire off the infantry and onto themselves, with disastrous effect. After travelling only a half-mile, the Shermans were zeroed in by the 88-millimetre guns in front of Vieux Cairon and all knocked out of action in a matter of seconds. A shell punched through the side of Grant’s tank, passed right between the driver and co-driver, missed the ammunition racks, and then sliced an exit hole in the other side. Everyone in Grant’s tank bailed out before it went up in flames, but one man was wounded. The tankers started working their way on foot back to les Buissons. En route, one of Grant’s troopers butted head-on into a Panzer Grenadier creeping through the tall wheat, and fearing a gun shot would betray their presence to other Germans, strangled the soldier with his bare hands. Grant was grimly impressed, thinking that if he had encountered the German “I’d have dropped dead.”

  Because the wheat was so tall, it was hard for the men to keep track of each other’s location and soon Grant was alone. After about an hour of crawling along, he reached the edge of the field and looked out at the ruins of les Buissons. The air over the village was black with the smoke of dozens of fires burning in the shell-blasted buildings. Several trucks and Bren carriers were also burning in the narrow streets, but otherwise the village looked abandoned. Yet Grant knew that hundreds of infantrymen were hunkered deep in slit trenches all along the front, and he was on the wrong side. As he lay in the wheat pondering how to approach the lines without being shot by a twitchy infantryman, most of the other tankers crawled up beside him. They were all right down on their bellies, knowing the risk they faced. Finally, Grant “stuck my helmet up in the air on the end of my pistol over the wheat to let them know which side I was on.” Creeping through the last few feet of wheat, Grant kept the helmet up as high as he could and was relieved to hear someone from the village holler, “Come on in.”3 The tankers scuttled into the dubious protection offered by les Buissons.

  About the time Grant got back to the village, ‘C’ Company and its supporting tanks kicked off the attack on Vieux Cairon. Captain R.P. Milligan, the company’s second-in-command, led this attack as Major Archie MacDonald was designated Left Out of Battle. This standard policy required a rotating cadre of officers and non-commissioned officers to not participate in an action. In this way, should the unit be wiped out, there would be a leadership reserve around which it could be reformed.4

  Private Mervyn K.R. Williams’s section moved out with the rest of the company, the Bren gunners burning off one magazine after another as they tried to force the Germans to keep their heads down. Williams noticed that the gunners were pouring out such a rapid rate of fire that they had to change gun barrels every three to five minutes because of overheating. Halfway across the open ground between les Buissons and Vieux Cairon, the company was driven to ground by a “terrific barrage of fire” from the 88-millimetre gun line and what seemed a solid wall of machine-gun positions dug in ahead of the artillery.5 At 1900 hours, less than sixty minutes after the attack had started, ‘C’ Company pulled back under fire to les Buissons.

  A short time after the failed attack, Christiansen ordered Milligan to take his company and round up all the civilians still in the village for evacuation to the beach. The lieutenant colonel believed the accuracy of the German artillery resulted from someone relaying information on the battalion’s dispositions over a clandestine wireless set. In addition, the continual pounding to which les Buissons was being subjected was sure to produce heavy civilian casualties, so they would be safer in the rear.

  Williams and the other soldiers led civilians out of homes and basements, loading them aboard several trucks. Older people were put in the trucks first, so that they could sit on the benches for a more comfortable ride. Just as the last of the elderly were put into one of the trucks, a scuffle broke out in its back. When the soldiers jumped on to investigate, they discovered two Germans in civilian clothes, who had attracted the ire of the old people by claiming seats on the benches. They were quickly jerked out of the truck and marched to a POW cage.6

  In the village’s churchyard, meanwhile, a ‘C’ Company platoon commanded by Lieutenant D.C. Stewart discovered an underground air-raid shelter crowded with about a hundred civilians. An elderly midwife was assisting an obviously very pregnant woman who appeared on the verge of going into labour. The soldiers left the two in the shelter and loaded the rest into the trucks, which then headed for the beach. Stewart told Milligan about the two women. When Milligan reported to Christiansen, the lieutenant colonel made it plain that he wanted all civilians evacuated regardless of their circumstances. He particularly didn’t want two women and a newborn baby left on the battalion’s hands in the middle of a bloodily contested battleground.

  A chastened Stewart could rustle up no better transport than a two-wheeled milk
cart to serve as an ambulance in which the pregnant woman could lie while some of his men pushed it back to one of the rear-area surgical units.7 That evening, the men returned with the happy news that she had given birth to a girl—Mademoiselle Roger Maillard—quickly claimed by the Glens as the first “baby of Hell’s Corners.”8

  THE 9TH BRIGADE’s inability to rekindle offensive operations on June 9 corresponded with similar failures all across the invasion front. Virtually every plan for a concerted Allied advance quickly went awry as the committed battalions found the Norman countryside too restricted for tanks and infantry to work well together. Casualties by now had so thinned the ranks of armoured and infantry battalions alike that neither could support the other in significant strength. Fighting from well-fortified strongpoints, the Germans easily blocked any attempt to press home an assault by tanks and infantry working in concert, while either tanks or infantry advancing alone proved easy game.

  The use of heavily prepared fortresses had been adopted effectively by both sides. In the Canadian lines, “fortresses” such as Villonsles-Buissons and les Buissons on the left, and Norrey-en-Bessin and Bretteville-l’Orgueilleuse to the right, had proven unassailable. The 12th SS had been foiled at every turn from gaining an advantage over the Canadians and had been dealt a sharp reversal when the Canadian Scottish wrested Putot-en-Bessin back from its grasp. Counterattacks thrown in by Panzer Grenadiers supported by Panzers, infantry operating alone, or an independent Panzer company had all been roundly defeated. The fact that the Canadians remained intent on renewing the offensive at first opportunity forced the 12th SS to commit forces piecemeal on narrow fronts to forestall the possibility. The Canadian resolve also prevented the Hitlerjugend from weakening one point of its broad line to concentrate forces for a counterattack on another point. These same handicaps hindered the Germans throughout Normandy, so that plans for a major counteroffensive capable of breaching Allied defences in any decisive manner all came to naught on June 9.9