Holding Juno

by Mark Zuehlke

  The carriers set off at high speed along a road routinely subjected to heavy sniper activity. When the snipers brought their guns to bear on the carriers, the Camerons ripped into the trees with the Vickers, and Gonder saw several enemy soldiers shot out of the branches during the first quarter mile of their run. Just ahead, the road was crossed by another, and Gillan and Gonder had planned that the carriers should make a sharp turn onto this road, follow it for a ways, and then take another that dogged back to the battalion perimeter. Glancing behind him, Gonder noticed that the other carrier had fallen about fifty yards behind while slowing to take out a sniper. Gonder worried that its driver would fail to make the turn and end up running straight down the current road, possibly driving into an enemy ambush.

  Proper procedure called for a commander issuing orders to other carriers in a column to wave one or the other of specially designated signal flags above the little vehicle’s armoured side while remaining inside its protected cover. Forgetting the flag procedure in the urgency of the moment, Gonder stood up “to wave my hand. The instant I stood up I saw a great flash and it was just as if a giant hand poked me back in the seat and I knew I had been hit.” The driver jammed on the brakes and said, “Oh my God, sir.” Gonder snapped at him to get moving or they would all get hit. The captain was angry, knowing “I wouldn’t have been hit if I hadn’t made this mistake, my silly behaviour. One of my corporals reached over with a knife and cut my clothing right down to the skin and put on the field dressing.”

  Back in the perimeter lines, Gonder walked into the Canadian Scottish headquarters and reported to Cabeldu, who said, “Get somebody else to give your report. You go see the [Medical Officer].” Gonder was so furious with himself that when he got to the Regimental Aid Post he “started gabbling away to the MO, who said, ‘Don’t talk, Hal.’ He was a gentle man and he poked around and told me I had been hit in the throat and he was afraid my vocal cords might have been damaged and so didn’t want me to talk.” Gonder was quickly evacuated to a rear area hospital and from there to hospital in England.14

  As darkness fell, Lieutenants S.R. Ross and I.P. MacDonald formed up No. 11 and No. 12 platoons of ‘B’ Company for the patrol that was to clear the woods. Earlier reconnaissance indicated that the enemy position contained several machine guns and possibly some antitank guns or mortars. To force the Germans to take cover during the patrol’s approach, the rest of the battalion would pound the wood with its 3-inch and 4.2-inch mortars while two troops of Sherbrooke Fusiliers tanks banged it up with their 75-millimetre guns.

  The two officers planned to cross the railway cutting by slipping over the bridge that had been the focus of much fighting during the counterattack of June 8–9. As MacDonald’s No. 12 Platoon led the way onto the bridge, however, it “came under heavy mortar and MG fire from down the track on either side. No. 11 Platoon, less two sections which were held up, made their way across the track, taking out at least one MG on the track and one beyond it. From then on,” a battalion after-action report stated, “the situation was one of very close confused fighting, our troops in the open taking on enemy machine guns in fortified positions and deep slit trenches and trying to avoid mortar fire and fire from our tanks. Two MGs were taken out for certain and losses, at least as heavy as our own, inflicted on the enemy. Our losses were fairly heavy—Lt. MacDonald was killed at the bridge and 17 [other ranks were] killed or missing.

  “Noteworthy during the raid was the aggressiveness of our troops in the face of terrific fire; the skill of the enemy in the handling of his fixed lines of fire… and finally the devotion of the stretcher bearers and patrols sent to look after the wounded.”15 When Corporal A.L. Frost, who was pinch-hitting as MacDonald’s Acting Sergeant, saw his commander shot down and killed, he took over the platoon without hesitation. As he guided the men back towards the north side of the railroad, Frost discovered Private D.W.M. Ives lying on the ground incapacitated by a wound. Frost hefted the man over his shoulder and carried him through enemy fire to safety, an act that won him a Military Medal.16

  The speed with which the patrol had been discovered and torn into by well-hidden German troops provided some telling intelligence, despite the failure to come anywhere close to reaching the strongpoint in the woods. It was clear that the 12th SS Panzer Grenadiers still had strong and determined forces immediately south of the railway and were determined to prevent any major push by the Canadians into that area—sobering news for those planning the 1st Hussars–Queen’s Own Rifles phase of the forthcoming attack.

  JUNE 10 PROVED a day fraught with crisis and frustration for the Germans. East of the River Orne, the counterattack out of Bréville had failed to make any progress, with the grenadiers and supporting self-propelled guns quickly forced back into a defensive position centred on the village. For all their efforts during three days of concerted attacks against the paratroopers, the Germans had failed to gain any ground or to annihilate any airborne battalions. Instead, the forces fighting east of the Orne were tied down in a costly war of attrition with little in the way of reserves to make up their losses.

  The 12th SS (Hitlerjugend) Panzer Division’s 25th Panzer Grenadier Regiment facing the 3rd British Infantry Division and 3 CID’s 9th Infantry Brigade had also been forced back onto a defensive posture, a fact that mightily chafed its aggressive commander. After the disastrous failures of his attacks on Bretteville-l’Orgueilleuse and Norreyen-Bessin, Standartenführer Kurt Meyer knew he lacked sufficient strength to both hold his sections of the line and carry out further offensive actions. Yet the obstacle that Norrey presented, jutting deeply into the German lines, remained, and General der Panzertruppen Leo Freiherr Geyr von Schweppenburg had once again ordered the Canadians kicked out. Although Army Group B General-feldmarschall Erwin Rommel had instructed I Panzer Corps’s divisions west of the River Orne to assume defensive postures, von Schweppenburg still hoped to have that decision reversed. Then on the night of June 10–11, he would commit the 21st Panzer, 12th SS, and Panzer Lehr divisions against the British-Canadian front in one massive assault that might yet hurl the Allies into the sea.

  Accordingly, the 12th SS had scrambled to gather some semblance of a force that could strike Norrey before day dawned on June 10. All that Brigadeführer Fritz Witt could call on, however, was the infantry of the 12th SS Panzerpionier Battalion. Deployed behind the 26th Panzer Grenadier Regiment’s perimeter south of the village, the battalion began a hasty assault unsupported by any artillery or mortar fire. Immediately greeted by withering artillery, mortar, and machine-gun fire, the attack—the battalion’s first—quickly faltered. While some platoons managed to reach the edge of Norrey, none could get in among the fiercely resisting Regina Rifles. Dawn found much of the German battalion helplessly pinned down. Although a withdrawal was ordered, some sections were unable to comply until nightfall because of the intensity of fire directed their way. The butcher’s bill for a fight the Regina Rifles war diarist felt so insignificant as to not mention tallied eighty Germans killed, wounded, or missing.17 The Reginas reported no casualties worth mentioning from the action. While the Reginas were perhaps modest to a fault, one veteran British divisional commander later wrote that: “The Canadian defence of Norrey and Bretteville over the 8th to 10th June must surely go down as one of the finest small unit actions of WWII.”18

  The Regina war diarist did remark with somewhat bland enthusiasm on the welcome presence of Typhoon dive-bombers striking positions near Cheux at about 1900 hours on June 10.19 In fact, despite the continuing cloudy and cool weather, most of the Canadian battalions on the front lines witnessed a great increase in Allied air operations, with fighter-bombers swarming overhead throughout the day. By June 10, Allied control of the skies over Normandy was virtually complete, the Luftwaffe seldom venturing from its airfields to give battle. The Allied air superiority was greatly aided by the fact that air force and army engineers had managed to open several temporary airstrips in the Normandy beachhead to serve as refuelling
stations. These had received their first customers on June 9 when planes from No. 144 Wing, Royal Canadian Air Force set down mid-morning. Later that afternoon, thinking they were the first to carry out such a feat, 401 Squadron, RCAF landed for refuelling and received the disappointing news that 144 Wing had got there first.20

  Plans were afoot for all of No. 144 Wing, under command of the famed fighter ace Wing Commander J.E. “Johnnie” Johnson, to be the first RCAF or RAF wing to set up permanent shop at a Normandy landing strip on June 11. Already an advanced headquarters party was on the ground at St. Croix-sur-Mer. The field, Flying Officer Frederick A.W.J. Wilson of 441 Squadron noted, “was just a bulldozed strip of land. Bulldozers had cleaned up a strip of farmer’s field and made us a little runway.” Tents were set up nearby for use as quarters, mess halls, and supply depots.21

  Now able to rapidly refuel and re-arm in Normandy rather than having to return to bases in England, the fighter-bomber squadrons could spend far more hours conducting operational sorties in the battle zone. For the Germans, this meant that attempting to move by day anywhere in the rear became all the more hazardous.

  The Allies were also able to use airpower to deadly effect due to an intelligence coup by Ultra. Montgomery’s staff received word that Panzer Group West’s headquarters was to be established in the village of la Caine about twelve miles south of Caen, effective the evening of June 9. This report filed at 0439 hours on June 10 included detailed information on which houses the Germans were using.22

  Such precise targeting information was too tempting for Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force to pass up and a hastily planned air strike was launched. Deciding on a maximum effort, Allied Expeditionary Air Force put together a joint fighter-bomber and medium bomber operation that included the B-25 Mitchell bombers of No. 139 Wing, RAF of No. 2 Group, 2nd Tactical Air Force, commanded by Wing Commander Clarence “Larry” Dunlap.

  A thirty-six-year-old Cape Bretoner from Sydney Mines—who traced his Canadian ancestry back ten generations to 1761—Dunlap’s fascination with flight had begun when he was eleven. Adulthood failed to diminish his interest, so at the urging of Royal Canadian Air Force recruiters he enlisted upon completion of an electrical engineering science baccalaureate degree in July 1928. When war broke out, Dunlap was director of armament at RCAF headquarters in Ottawa. Going overseas in 1942, he first commanded RCAF Station Leeming in Yorkshire before taking command of No. 331 Wing, RCAF in May 1943. Posted to North Africa, this Wellington Bomber wing supported the Allied invasions of Sicily and Italy—flying almost 2,200 missions with a loss of only eighteen planes. Appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire for this effort, Dunlap returned to England to take command of No. 139 Wing, RAF stationed in Cunsfold, Surrey, with the rank of Group Captain.

  Dunlap’s wing headed for the target at about 1900 hours on June 10. Although trained for pinpoint daylight bombing attacks, the Mitchells would this evening be forced to carry out a blind drop because heavy cloud cover was encountered the moment the planes crossed the Normandy coast.23 The bombers successfully searched out la Caine, however, and hot on the heels of a low-level strike by four squadrons of rocket-firing Typhoons at 2030 hours, the seventy-one medium bombers dumped their payloads on the little village.

  The attack annihilated the headquarters, turning it into a flaming ruin. While von Schweppenburg, who had arrived minutes before the attack, escaped with minor injuries, his Chief of Staff Generalmajor Edler von Dawans and sixteen others were killed. Among the dead was I SS Panzer Corps liaison officer Hauptsturmführer Wilhelm Beck. Those staff officers who survived the raid were evacuated—the wounded to hospitals, the merely shaken to a new location where the command might slowly rebuild.

  The destruction of Panzer Group West’s headquarters threw the German operational command structure in Normandy into even greater chaos. To fill the gap in the command chain, I SS Panzer Corps was placed under direct control of Seventh Army’s Generaloberst Friederich Dollman, with corps commander Obergruppenführer Sepp Dietrich once again left as the senior commander in the Caen area. Any thought of the Panzer divisions carrying out offensive actions in the next few days died with the destruction of Panzer Group West. Dietrich was increasingly fatalistic, complaining to Rommel after his corps passed to Seventh Army control that no further offensive action was possible and that without major reinforcement by additional Panzer divisions the Germans could hold the existing line around the Allies no more than three weeks. That such a hardened Nazi loyalist would talk with such open defeatism took many of his subordinates by surprise, but one commented later that if nothing else Dietrich had always been “a realist.” Told by Rommel that a limited offensive posture must be maintained, Dietrich growled, “With what? We need another eight or ten divisions in a day or two, or we are finished… I am being bled to death and getting nowhere.”24

  News of Panzer Group West’s destruction hit staff at Oberkommando der Wehrmacht hard, prompting the war diarist there to note that the event caused a “crisis.” Nobody in the German intelligence community had any suspicions that the headquarters at la Caine had been so precisely located through Allied ability to read its wireless codes. Instead, it was believed that either the French underground had reported the location or a British reconnaissance plane spotted circling the village earlier in the day had determined that the village housed a high-value target.

  One thing was clear to everyone, from OKW staffers to Rommel—Dollman was no von Schweppenburg, and without the veteran tanker’s steely leadership I SS Panzer Corps was incapable of delivering the concentrated blow necessary to split the beachhead into two. At best, all that Dietrich could probably muster was the kind of “penny-packet” tank attacks that had frittered away much of the strength of the three divisions.25

  At 12th SS Division’s headquarters, Witt’s staff had managed to canvass its regiments and battalions to determine the casualties suffered during the past four days of fighting. For a division that considered itself a cut above the Canadians they fought, the statistics were grim—about 900 killed, wounded, or missing, with 220 of these being fatal. Twenty-five tanks had been wrecked beyond repair. For all these casualties, the division had achieved precious little. Although they had stemmed the Canadian advance on Carpiquet airport, the Hitlerjugend had failed totally to achieve its intention—a major breakthrough to the landing beaches and victory over the Allies. It was now bogged down in static, defensive warfare—which every Panzer commander knew was a tragic waste of such a division’s armoured potential.

  And there was no doubt June 11 would bring more fighting and increasing casualties. Although the Canadians had been thrown back into a largely defensive posture on their left flank, wireless intercepts by the Hitlerjugend suggested an assault was shaping up around Norrey-en-Bessin. The Reginas’ dagger continued to threaten the German front.26

  [ 18 ]

  Attack at Once

  LATE ON JUNE 10, while still putting finishing touches to his Villers-Bocage offensive, Second British Army’s General Miles Dempsey received an intelligence warning that the Germans were massing a major counterattack from Caen into the still existing wedge between the 3rd British and 3rd Canadian divisions. Anxious to prevent his operation being pre-empted by the German action, Dempsey immediately ordered I British Corps commander Lieutenant General John Crocker to concentrate most of the armour available in the Sword Beach area on the high ground south of Douvres-la-Délivrande to meet any such attack.

  As dawn broke over Normandy on June 11, the sudden buildup of British tanks in the area was duly noted by the besieged Luftwaffe stronghold at the Douvres radar station and reported to Obergruppenführer Sepp Dietrich, the I SS Panzer Corps commander. “Continuous movement, heavy and medium tanks, towards southwest,” the radar station lookouts informed Dietrich by wireless message. “More than eighty tanks counted in one hour.” Somewhat later, they reported about two hundred medium tanks gathering in the Anguerny area “with transport e
chelon facing south.”1

  General Bernard Montgomery happily monitored this buildup of armoured force, hoping the Germans would attempt a counterattack into the gap. If they came, the British armour would fix the German tanks in place and destroy them. “We are very strong now astride the road Caen-Bayeux about the junction of 3 Div and 3 Canadian Div, and if the enemy attacks he should be seen off. I have 400 tanks there,” he said in a note to his Chief of Staff at 21st Army Group.2

  Dietrich, who had neither instructions from Army Group B nor intent to launch a major counterattack into this area, interpreted this concentration of tanks as a sign of a forthcoming major offensive in that area. An alert was sent to his Panzer divisions that they should prepare to meet strong Allied attacks.