Holding Juno

by Mark Zuehlke

  Contributing to Dietrich’s anxiety was the heightened level of activity on the front where 12th SS (Hitlerjugend) Panzer Division faced the 9th Canadian Infantry Brigade, falling as it did to the immediate left of the tanks concentrating near Anguerny. Here, Brigadier Ben Cunningham had launched an aggressive program of patrolling during the night, with two battalions sending company-sized patrols out to prowl no man’s land and wreak havoc behind the German front held by 25th SS Panzer Grenadier Regiment. The Stormont, Dundas and Glengarry Highlanders sent ‘B’ Company out into the dangerous ground between les Buissons and Vieux Cairon, while ‘A’ Company swept the cluster of farms designated as le Vey, a little to a mile northwest of Vieux Cairon, to ensure against German infiltration to their rear. While not venturing into Vieux Cairon, the first patrol circled the village without detecting any Germans.3 At 0140 hours, the second patrol filtered through le Vey, passing a line of abandoned German slit trenches on the edge of the clustered buildings. A careful sweep turned up no further signs of the enemy and only a single civilian the patrol decided was harmless. By 0230 hours, the patrol had returned to the battalion lines at les Buissons.4

  Cunningham had grander plans for the Highland Light Infantry, instructing that a company-strength fighting patrol probe Buron during the night of June 10–11. A total of one hundred men were mustered for this operation—the eighty-eight strong ‘C’ Company supported by twelve sappers from 18 Field Company, Royal Canadian Engineers. Their orders were not only to check enemy strength in the village but to undertake the “engagement and destruction of enemy and equipment.”5 The patrol was to pass through the Glens at les Buissons and travel cross-country to Buron.

  When Major R.D. Hodgins reported to Lieutenant Colonel H.S. Griffiths, he found the HLI commander staring out into the darkness on the edge of les Buissons. “Brigadier wants a night fighting patrol of company strength taken through to stir things up. Hodge, I want you to take that patrol.” Still getting used to being a combat company commander, Hodgins’s first thought was that he was out of his depth with responsibility for “all these guys.”

  He also considered it crazy to go out into no man’s land with such a large force on what was supposed to be a stealthy mission, and argued “to just take about twelve people as over 100 was too many, some would get lost. I didn’t want to take any radio sets either as they crackled too loudly. Griffiths allowed me to cut back to three Platoons of twenty-five men each [plus the sappers]. We worked out a set of signals using Very pistols and flares.”6

  With faces blackened and stocking caps on, the patrol slipped out of les Buissons at 2223 hours. Thin cloud obscured the moon and Hodgins hoped to hell it stayed that way until this business was finished. A short distance out, the pointman spotted a clutch of Germans digging away and talking to each other in soft voices. The word “minen” kept cropping up, so it was easy to figure the men were planting mines. Not wanting to tip his hand so early, Hodgins quietly backed away from the Germans and pushed on for Buron.

  Outside Buron, Hodgins and his men looked over the situation and noted four machine-gun positions set up on each corner of the village. There seemed to be a small number of Germans dug in around the houses on Buron’s northern edge. Pressing into the village itself, several buildings were found to contain bodies of dead Germans, but there seemed to be no military equipment or ammunition stored anywhere.

  As the patrol began pulling out of Buron, the clouds abruptly parted and an almost full moon beamed down on “all these guys strung out behind me.” In for a penny, Hodgins thought, and ordered the company to spread into an assault line as they headed for a German forward outpost that had been bypassed on the way in and now stood between them and a safe extraction route. From behind, gunfire suddenly broke out. Looking over his shoulder, the major saw tracers flashing to and fro. Then someone reported that one platoon was missing, apparently locked in a firefight with some Germans.

  That left him with fifty men and most of the sappers. But everyone “was armed to the teeth,” so he figured that number would suffice and led them into a sharp firefight that ended when the Highlanders over-ran the position. At one moment in the battle, with bullets cracking through the air all around, someone started yelling “Major Hodgins, Major Hodgins.” The officer wished the lad would shut up because “the Germans are going to shoot for this Major Hodgins guy!”7

  With the enemy position silenced, Hodgins ordered his men back to les Buissons. They dashed back, pursued all the way by searching German mortar fire that was able to keep the large force spotted in the moonlight. But the fear of fire paled in comparison to tripping over rotting corpses of North Nova Scotia Highlanders and Panzer Grenadiers who had been killed during the withdrawal from Buron on June 7. Several times, the mortaring drove Hodgins to dive into slit trenches or craters and each time he shared the hole with dead men.8

  Arriving back at les Buissons at 0330 hours, Hodgins found the missing platoon had already made it home. They had bumped into and killed a two-man German mine-laying party.9 This had initiated a running fight between the platoon and some Panzer Grenadiers that resulted in Lieutenant R.L. Harvey and Corporal Hedrich being slightly wounded. They, however, were the patrol’s only casualties. Hodgins looked around at his men and noted that “everyone was high as a kite… first action and made it back!”10 The HLI war diarist wrote in conclusion that “it would seem a fighting patrol of this size is too unwieldy and could well have got into serious trouble, if there had been enemy [in force] in the village.”11

  NOT LONG AFTER this patrol had set out, Dempsey—concerned about the report that the Germans were teeing up a counterattack into the gap to the left of 9 CIB—decided to look more closely at 3rd Canadian Infantry Division’s planned two-day offensive. The scheme worked up by 2nd Canadian Armoured Brigade’s Brigadier Bob Wyman called for clearing of the Mue valley from Vieux Cairon through Rots to la Villeneuve on June 11, followed by a second-phase drive from Bretteville-l’Orgueilleuse through to the Cheux hill feature on June 12. This limited drive towards Cheux was now discussed in detail, with Dempsey’s primary concern using this operation to support the larger British offensive.

  By the end of that meeting, Dempsey reached a decision that drastically impacted the Canadians, but nobody from 2 CAB or 3 CID was consulted.12 Nor was the revised role Dempsey envisioned for the 2 CAB attack passed immediately down the command chain to inform Wyman and his staff that the current operational plan needed to be reconfigured and rescheduled.13 Deciding 2 CAB’s schedule was too slow to benefit his grander operation, Dempsey instructed Crocker to order the Canadians to carry out both phases concurrently. Doing so would ensure that the 1st Hussars–Queen’s Own Rifles drive to the Cheux hill feature conformed with the June 11 offensive by 7th Armoured Division and 50th British Infantry Division to the right. The decision, made in haste and based on faulty intelligence, would have tragic consequences.

  Although Dempsey stated his intentions sometime before midnight on June 10, the process by which these instructions wound through the command chain to the affected battalions proved tortuously slow. Only at 0300 hours did Crocker’s staff signal 3rd Canadian Division that 2 CAB, with one 8 CIB battalion under its command, would advance “not before 1200 [hours] 11 Jun[e] along axis Bretteville-l’Orgueilleuse, Norrey-en-Bessin, St. Mauvieu, Cheux, to [le Haut-du-Bosq].”14 Here the orders inexplicably rested until 0730 hours when divisional staff informed 2 CAB that it was “to advance the timing of the attack towards Cheux, and carry it out as early as possible today, instead of tomorrow.” With No. 46 Royal Marine Commando and its supporting squadron of Fort Garry Horse tanks already moving from near Anguerny to begin clearing the Mue valley, Brigadier Wyman had expected to put finishing touches to the Cheux phase of the attack that afternoon. Accordingly, he had scheduled a move of 2 CAB headquarters forward from Basly to Bray, where he would be close to the action developing during either phase of the offensive.15 This move was already underway when the new orders ar
rived, but Wyman quickly alerted Lieutenant Colonel Ray Colwell at 0800 hours that the attack schedule was changed and the 1st Hussars “were to attack at 1300 hours.”16 Colwell, who had returned from an earlier O Group held in Basly at 0400 hours with assurances to his staff that they would have twenty-four hours to prepare for the forthcoming attack, was stunned. With the operation to begin in only five hours, the 1st Hussars began a frenzied attempt to get ready.

  Fortunately, during the late evening of June 10, the regiment had received twenty tanks from the rear and the loan of an additional seven tanks and crews from the Fort Garry Horse. This brought the 1st Hussars’ total Sherman tank strength to seventy-six, enabling Colwell to reconstitute the regiment’s third squadron—‘B’—under command of ‘C’ Squadron’s second-in-command Captain Harry Harrison.17 As many of the new crews who arrived with the reinforcement tanks had never seen combat, tank crews were shuffled to ensure that all had at least one or two veterans.18

  The seven Fort Garry Horse tanks and their crews on loan were not the first that this regiment had provided to bolster the 1st Hussars. On June 8, Captain Cyril Tweedale’s tank troop had been assigned to the Hussars and reported to ‘C’ Squadron’s Major D’Arcy Marks. They had served with this squadron ever since.19

  Within an hour, Colwell received further instructions to attend a final O Group convening at 1100 hours at 2 CAB’s new headquarters in Bray.20 Before departing, Colwell advised his staff to have all the squadron commanders and other relevant officers gathered for a last briefing on the attack plan at noon.21 It all seemed dangerously accelerated.

  The Queen’s Own Rifles were even more surprised than the 1st Hussars to learn that the attack was advanced a day, for they had only arrived at their new assembly area of Neuf Mer—about a mile northeast of Bray—the previous evening. At 1000 hours, the battalion war diarist wrote that the day was to be “spent in clean up and further digging of slit trenches—rumours of an attack to be put in but nothing definite as yet.” That all changed in a matter of minutes when Wyman signalled Lieutenant Colonel J.G. “Jock” Spragge with instructions “that the battalion will attack and seize the high ground south of Cheux. This is to be done by ‘D’ Company passing through the Regina Rifles at Norrey-en-Bessin and seizing le Mesnil-Patry. The balance of the battalion will then swing through them and bypass Cheux, seizing the high ground at [le Haut-du-Bosq].”22

  At 1100 hours, two very worried lieutenant colonels reported to Wyman at his newly established Bray headquarters. Again, the brigadier set out the attack plan and schedule. Spragge and Colwell both protested against embarking on the operation so hastily. There were many problems, not the least being that the Queen’s Own and 1st Hussars had never worked together. Both commanders pointed out the other three glaring flaws in the plan. “First, no time was allowed for reconnaissance; secondly, no artillery preparation was provided despite the fact that it was known that the place [le Mesnil] was strongly held; and thirdly, the men were expected to go riding on tanks through flat wheatfields, thus providing perfect targets for the defenders.”23 That the tanks would also be dangerously exposed to antitank fire was a given that Wyman and Colwell both recognized. After hearing the commanders out, the brigadier told them the orders held and they were to “get [the attack] in at once.”24 Realizing nothing could be done to delay the operation, Spragge and Colwell rushed back to their units.

  BY THE TIME Wyman had started his final briefing for the Cheux assault, the first phase of 2 CAB’s operation to clear the Mue valley had been underway for almost three hours. The Fort Garry Horse’s ‘A’ Squadron under command of Major Harry Blanshard had married up with No. 46 Royal Marine Commando at about 0800 hours in front of the hamlet of Barbière just east of Thaon. The plan was simple. From Barbière, the commandos and tankers would bear down on Vieux Cairon and clear any Germans out of this stubborn stronghold that threatened 9 CIB’s right flank at les Buissons. Once Vieux Cairon was secured, the combat team would advance in two prongs, with one crossing to the west side of the Mue to sweep Lasson while the other stayed on the east bank and moved through Rosel. Beyond these villages, the two groups would rejoin and go up either side of the creek to break into le Hamel and Rots simultaneously. Upon capturing Rots, the team would complete the operation by pushing on to la Villeneuve astride the Caen-Bayeux highway.

  ‘A’ Squadron numbered five troops of three tanks each—including one Firefly—and a two-tank headquarters section. Blanshard commanded one of the headquarters tanks and Captain E.A. Goodman the other. Goodman, who had joined the army in 1940 after finishing university, had always been nicknamed Eddy before assignment to the Fort Garry Horse. As that regiment was already awash with Eddys, some WAG took to calling him Benny, after the bandleader Benny Goodman, and it stuck. When the tankers met the No. 46 at Barbière, most of the commandos proved to be Scots, who immediately insisted on calling him Jock.

  The commandos seemed a rough and ready bunch, but also acted like very professional soldiers. Numbering 24 officers and 440 NCOS and other ranks, each marine commando group was subdivided into seven troops and a small headquarters section. No. 46’s commander was Lieutenant Colonel C.R. Hardy. Normally employed on coastal assaults and raids without lingering long on dry land, the commandos were equipped with only light weapons and almost no vehicles. Although the men were mainly Scottish, their commander was “a very soft-spoken Englishman,” who seldom raised his voice to be heard even in the midst of combat.25

  From Barbière, the commandos advanced with No. 1 Troop under Lieutenant N.S. Rushforth providing close support, while the other tanks held back some distance in order to serve as mobile artillery if needed or to quickly come up to cover the flanks should German tanks be encountered. The ground was thickly wooded from Barbière to Vieux Cairon, so the Shermans were confined to a narrow track that hugged the creek. If the commandos wanted a section of forest or a building subjected to a few 75-millimetre gun rounds, they fired flares to mark it as a target.

  With the road switching occasionally from one side of the Mue to the other via narrow bridges, the first problem the tankers encountered came when Blanshard’s tank skidded off the side of one to dangle precariously over the water, with the main body of Shermans stuck behind it. A considerable delay ensued as the tankers ran cables between the major’s Sherman and several of the others to winch the tank off the bridge. Throughout this effort, the men outside the tanks were under sporadic fire from several well-hidden German snipers, but no casualties resulted.

  When the forest opened up beyond the bridge, Lieutenant J.G. Jeffries came up beside Rushforth with No. 5 Troop, and the six tanks accompanied the commandos towards Vieux Cairon. Resistance stiffened as scattered pockets of Germans fighting from dugouts attempted to delay the advance, with support from a number of heavy mortars firing from somewhere south of the village. Rather than get held up clearing the dugouts, Lieutenant Rushforth radioed No. 2 Troop’s Lieutenant D.M. McPherson and asked him to carry out mop-ping up these positions so the commandos and lead tanks could maintain the attack’s momentum. McPherson readily agreed, and with guns blazing, he and sergeants E.H. Crabb and H.S. Strawn roared into the German positions. As McPherson’s tanks wiped out the German dugouts, Blanshard brought the remaining two supporting troops of tanks into a line and “shot up the town” while the commandos moved in among the buildings and swept the Germans out of Vieux Cairon. A number of prisoners were taken in this action and identified as forward elements of a company from the 12th SS, 26th Panzer Grenadier Regiment.26

  The Panzer Grenadiers had abandoned any plans to defend the northern part of the Mue valley in strength, opting instead to mass available units into a strong defensive line centred on Rots. Here, Obersturmbannführer Wilhelm Mohnke had deployed one company of Panzer Grenadiers, a company of escort troops, a platoon of pioneers, two 75-millimetre antitank guns, and the Panther VS of No. 4 Company from the division’s 12th Panzer Regiment. From a barn’s loft out front of Rots, a forward
observation officer of the iii Artillery Battalion enjoyed an ideal view of “the valley of Mue creek, running northeast and covered with trees and bushes, as well as the open terrain in the direction of Rosel and Vieux Cairon.”27 In Rots, Panzer commander Hauptsturmführer Hans Pfeiffer had set several Panthers in well-covered positions near the village’s school and church, from which they had clear fields of fire to the north and northwest. Other tanks were massed into a quick reaction team standing at a road junction on the corner of a little park on the southern edge of Rots. The village itself was a long, narrow stretch of buildings straggling along the highway that linked Vieux Cairon to la Villeneuve.

  Holding Rots was considered vital. Its position three quarters of a mile north of the Caen-Bayeux highway meant that a strong German presence there threatened the left flank of the Regina Rifles at Norreyen-Bessin and Bretteville-l’Orgueilleuse. Maintaining control over this penetration into the Reginas’ flank somewhat mitigated the effects of the deep thrust Norrey represented into the heart of the 12th SS lines, which had so disrupted the Germans’ attempts to regain the initiative. The infantry commander in Rots, Hauptsturmführer Helmut Eggert, had established strong defensive positions inside the village and along a line facing the Reginas extending south to la Villeneuve, so that his defensive front was directed to the northwest. But the commandos and Fort Garry Horse tanks approached from the northeast, driving into the Panzer Grenadier rear from the right flank. With his forces already stretched thin, Eggert had to pull men from his main line and send them rushing through Rots to meet this suddenly appearing threat to the whole position.28

  The commandos and tanks easily brushed aside the German screening forces between Vieux Cairon and the villages of Lasson and Rosel, with Hardy reporting them secure at 1500 hours. Capturing these villages concluded three-quarters of the planned operation. Until now, all had gone much as expected; the next stage was more uncertain. No intelligence estimates of German defences in the villages of le Hamel and Rots had been collected, but recent probing attacks by the Reginas had met stiff resistance.