by Mark Zuehlke
Although the 12th SS held the ground at le Mesnil-Patry, it paid a heavy price. The 26th Panzer Grenadier Regiment reported 18 dead, 32 wounded, and one missing, while the pioneer battalion had 29 killed, 49 wounded, and 5 missing. Losses among the 12th Panzer Regiment’s tankers tallied one dead, 7 wounded, and 5 missing. In all, the division had suffered 189 casualties in the fight for the village.8 While the 1st Hussars’ war diarist reported that the regiment “knocked out definitely 14 tanks, 11 of them Panthers and many probables,” the 12th SS admitted losing only the three Mark IV Panzers of Obersturmführer Hans Siegel’s reconnaissance group.9 The diarist was wrong, however, for there were no Panthers on the June 11 battlefield. One of the Mark IV tanks was subsequently repaired and returned to duty.10
NO SOONER was the battle concluded than the surviving Queen’s Own and 1st Hussars began trying to understand why it had gone so badly wrong. Rifleman Jack Martin heard various Queen’s Own officers “put it down just to plain lousy intelligence” that led to a belief that le Mesnil-Patry was either abandoned by the enemy or only lightly held.11
There was an immediate scramble by brass all the way up the command chain to justify the operation. On June 12, First Canadian Army waded in with a minute to the 1st Hussars from Lieutenant General Guy Simonds, commander of II Canadian Corps, under whom 3rd Canadian Infantry Division and the 2nd Canadian Armoured Brigade normally served. “While the battle yesterday seemed futile, it actually put a Panzer Div[ision] attack on skids, thereby saving 7 CIB from being cut off and in the broader picture it helped 7 British Armoured Division to advance on our right flank.”12 Even the media pitched in, with one English newspaper summing the action of June 11 as “a modern version of The Charge of the Light Brigade.”13
It was all nonsense, of course, for there was no offensive brewing on the German front facing the Canadian and British beaches. By the end of June 11, the 12th SS was so depleted by casualties it could barely man its defensive front. Panzer Lehr was fully engaged trying to stem the offensive launched by the British from Gold Beach to the Canadian right. On the morning of June 11, before battle had been joined in either the Mue valley or at le Mesnil-Patry, the 12th SS reported having suffered about 900 casualties, of which 220 were fatal. It had also lost at least 25 tanks, or 13 per cent of its entire armoured force.14 The ensuing fighting in front of le Mesnil-Patry and in the Mue valley cost the division a further 256 dead, wounded, or missing. Although the division had a full strength of 20,540 men and officers, only 12,000 were part of its “bayonet strength” and assigned to combat sections. So by day’s end on June 11, the division had lost slightly more than 10 per cent of its total fighting strength.
While Second British Army and 3rd Canadian Infantry Division commanders strove to justify the operation against le Mesnil-Patry, the surviving Queen’s Own and 1st Hussars mourned comrades lost and looked forward to revenge. Platoon Sergeant Dave Kingston in ‘C’ Company of the Queen’s Own noted that the morale of the battalion was high after the battle. “The attitude was, ‘Let’s go.’ Exact opposite of what you would expect. Instead it was, ‘We’ll pay those bastards back.’”15
These feelings only intensified after ‘A’ Company Sergeant Major Charlie Martin led a three-man patrol towards le Mesnil-Patry on the morning of June 12 and discovered some men from ‘D’ Company who had obviously been executed. With him on the patrol were the company’s two snipers, riflemen Bill Bettridge and Bert Shepherd. The three men crept through the grain right up to the village and were surprised to find that the SS seemed to have withdrawn. It was ghostly. No wrecked German vehicles or dead German soldiers could be found anywhere. But strewn through the grain and hedges in front of the village and in its streets were many Canadian corpses.
Crossing one wheatfield, Martin came across Sergeant Tommy McLaughlin and his five-man section. They lay in a row close to a low stone wall, and the CSM immediately thought the entire thing looked wrong. Each of the men had a field dressing covering one wound or another. Lying on the ground beside every man was the pocket-sized New Testament soldiers were given. Looking closer, Martin saw that each man had been killed by a single shot to the temple. He could only surmise that the section had been initially machine-gunned in the advance, taken cover behind the wall to treat their wounds, then surrendered. Realizing they were to be murdered, the soldiers had sought comfort in their Bibles before one of their captors fired the fatal shots. Lying beside Sergeant McLaughlin were Corporal J.E. Cook and riflemen P. Bullock, J. Campbell, E.W. Cranfield, and G.L. Willett.16
Soon after Martin returned from this patrol, he said to one of ‘D’ Company’s few survivors, Rifleman Jim McCullough: “Well, if that’s how they want to play the game that’s how we do it.”17 It was a feeling shared by many Queen’s Own and 1st Hussars as news of the atrocities committed against their comrades filtered through the ranks. Padre H.C. Creelman moved to head off the dangerous mood simmering in the 1st Hussars by counselling the men during a commemoration service on June 12 “not to seek revenge by doing likewise.”18 In the end, men like Charlie Martin could not steel their hearts to mercilessly execute men who surrendered. This humanity, the CSM realized, was one of the things that ultimately separated the Canadians from the fanatic Hitler Youth they had fought.19
THE MURDEROUS IMPULSE within the 12th SS had made itself felt on Le Régiment de la Chaudière on June 11 when one of its patrols ran afoul of the enemy near le Hamel. Corporal P. Desbiens had led seven men out from Bray towards the village in the Mue valley in the early morning, before the assault by No. 46 Royal Marine Commando and ‘A’ Squadron of the Fort Garry Horse got underway. The patrol was to test enemy strength along the route the Chaudières were to take in order to reinforce or relieve the marines once they had completed their attack. As the patrol would be operating in open country during broad daylight, Lieutenant Willy Foy’s platoon positioned itself well forward to provide support if the small group ran into trouble. Also in a covering position was Captain J.Y. Gosselin’s mortar platoon.
Desbiens and the men met no opposition and saw no sign of the enemy during the passage cross-country into the streets of le Hamel. But the moment they entered the village, the eight soldiers were brought under heavy fire by what seemed to be a full company of Panzer Grenadiers. Watching from Foy’s position, Major George Sévigny ordered Gosselin to cover the patrol as it began a desperate retreat from le Hamel. Desbiens had just four men with him as he fled the village. The other three men had been too badly wounded to get back unaided—something that the other men, all walking wounded themselves and returning gunfire to keep the Germans at bay, could not provide. As it was, one of the men with Desbiens collapsed from loss of blood halfway back to the Canadian lines and had to be abandoned.
When Desbiens told Foy that he had lost a man on the way back from le Hamel the lieutenant headed alone into no man’s land. Foy found the wounded soldier moments before several Panzer Grenadiers arrived from the opposite direction. A short firefight between Foy and the Germans ensued until they backed away. Scooping the man up, Foy dashed “under a rain of bullets” back to safety. His actions earned a Military Cross while Desbiens won a Military Medal.20
In the early morning hours of June 12, the Chaudières pushed through le Hamel en route to relieve the badly mauled commandos and discovered the bodies of their three missing soldiers. Each showed signs of having been wounded in the firefight and then murdered instead of being taken prisoner and given first aid. One of the men had been finished off with a bayonet or knife.
Major Hugues Lapointe led his ‘A’ Company with a detachment of antitank guns in support through the streets of Rots at 0300 hours on June 12. Uncertain how much of the village was in the hands of the commandos, the men “searched every house, every courtyard to avoid ambush. Here is the confirmation of how ferocious last night’s battle must have been. The commandos lie dead in rows beside the dead SS. Grenades are scattered all over the road and in the porches of the houses. Here we see
a commando and an SS man, literally dead in each other’s arms, having slaughtered each other. There a German and a Canadian tank have engaged each other to destruction and are still smouldering, and from each blackened turret hangs [a] charred corpse. Over here are a group who ran towards a wall for shelter and were shot down before they got there. And then, near the church, as the advance guard of [the] company and the carriers turn the corner there are three Germans. One of them instantly draws his pistol and hits one of our men. A Bren gunner kills two of the three SS men, but the survivor does not surrender; he dodges us and gets away. Now we understand with what kind of fanatic we have to deal.”21
After this encounter, Lapointe reported to No. 46 Royal Marine Commando commander Lieutenant Colonel C.R. Hardy and was told the unit had only a tenuous hold on Rots and le Hamel. He expected a counterattack at first light and wanted ‘A’ Company to stand in reserve so that it could move immediately to meet the Germans wherever they might strike his lines. Lapointe thought Hardy “felt far from certain of holding the village if the counterattack took place.”
With the dawn, no counterattack proved forthcoming and Lapointe was just moving to take over responsibility for le Hamel’s de-fence so that the commandos could concentrate their strength in Rots when Hardy told him the marines were pulling back to Vieux Cairon. As the commandos withdrew, Chaudière commander Lieutenant Colonel Paul Mathieu moved the other companies into a defensive ring centred on the two villages. When the battalion intelligence officer, Captain Gérard Leroux, arrived at the new battalion headquarters in le Hamel that evening, he was called over to the house across the street by its owners Monsieur and Madame Lalonde. Although the retreating Germans had looted their home of most of its food and carried off their livestock and any objects of value, the woman had somehow rustled up ingredients to bake a cake. Engraved on its top in sugar were the words, “Vive le Canada!”22
Leroux was touched by her generosity and also surprised that the woman had managed to calmly go about baking a cake in her kitchen during a day when the 12th SS were relentlessly shelling the two villages with artillery and mortar rounds.23 The Chaudières dug their slit trenches deep and were thankful that the Germans facing 3rd Canadian Infantry Division seemed content to confine themselves to such fire rather than counterattacking to regain the ground lost the previous day.
THAT THE GERMANS were determined to keep up the pressure on the Allies holding the beachhead was made clearly evident on June 12 to the paratroopers of 6th Airborne Division, in fierce fighting centred on the dangerous inward bend in its front line at Bréville. The day before, the Black Watch, 5th Battalion had carried out an attack intended to eliminate this German stronghold and walked into a tragedy. Advancing at 0400 hours towards the height of ground on which the village stood, the battalion was ripped to pieces by intense machine-gun fire. In mere minutes, almost two hundred men were killed or wounded, while every man in the leading platoon “died with his face to the foe.”24 This brought an abrupt halt to any chance that the 51st British Infantry Division might achieve a major breakout through the lines of the airborne troops holding east of the River Orne.
Falling back from the Château St. Côme–Bréville, the Black Watch dug in beside the remnants of the 9th British Parachute Battalion, with woods on one flank and the estate grounds to their front. The battleground was dormant at first, but then at about 1500 hours on June 12, the Germans counterattacked on the heels of a forty-five-minute artillery and mortar barrage with a battalion of infantry supported by half a dozen tanks and self-propelled guns. Falling primarily on the Black Watch positions near the château, the Germans overran several forward platoons. A distress call for reinforcements was issued, and Brigadier James Hill raced to the brickworks at le Mesnil crossroads. “Could 1st Canadian Parachute Battalion send a reaction force to relieve the Black Watch?” he asked Lieutenant Colonel George Bradbrooke.25
The Canadian commander was badly pressed by his own depleted ranks and the need to continuously meet probes against the crossroads by the Germans, but he agreed to send ‘C’ Company. Replacing its section of the line with every man he could free up from headquarters company, Bradbrooke sent Major John Hanson’s men marching. It was a pitifully small force, just sixty strong. At the head of one of the company’s three platoons was Lieutenant John Madden.
When he led his men through the Black Watch and saw one Scottish sergeant major bugging out for the rear despite showing no signs of being wounded, Madden “wondered what the hell we were getting into.”26
Ever a fire-breather, Hanson had no intention of merely taking up positions in front of the Black Watch and waiting for the Germans to grind his small force down through attrition. The best way to meet overwhelming force, he figured, was to hit it head-on with a spoiling attack of your own. Hanson decided to clear the woods on his flank.
Having double-timed the march from le Mesnil crossroads to reach the position before the Black Watch were overrun, Hanson barely gave his paratroopers pause before leading them through the British troops towards the forest. “Here come the Canadians!” many of the obviously exhausted and dispirited infantry called out as the paratroopers entered their lines. Then, as they realized Hanson and his men were going to keep right on going, some cautioned, “You chaps should not be going into that forest.”
But the paratroopers never hesitated and soon were fighting the Germans spread through the woods at close quarters. Corporal Dan Hartigan quickly noted that “as soon as they recognized that they were faced with paratroopers… they backed out of the woods completely.” Having shaken up the enemy sufficiently to buy a breather during which his men could take over the Black Watch position in an orderly manner, the major ordered the company to fall back. As the battered Black Watch trudged gratefully off to the rear, ‘C’ Company’s little force pulled tight into a horseshoe-shaped defensive perimeter facing both the château and its spacious grounds and retaining a toehold on the edge of the woods. In the short fight to clear the Germans from the trees, only Private C.A. Allen had been wounded, his abdomen torn open by a burst of MG 42 fire.27
During the wood-clearing operation, Madden had lacked sufficient time to get a good feel for the lay of land on the other side of the trees that obstructed his northeasterly view. Deciding he would like to gain a better appreciation of the area, the lieutenant took his runner and ventured into the woods. Encountering no opposition, the two men were soon on the other side looking out across a large horse pasture about six hundred yards wide. In front of some brush on the other side, a German half-track was parked, and next to it a cluster of troops was setting up a large mortar. Madden’s Sten gun had a maximum range of only about three hundred yards and the runner’s Lee Enfield would be shooting almost beyond its effective range at that distance, so he decided to leave the Germans unmolested and head back to the defensive perimeter.
Just as the two men started back into the woods, Madden heard the thump of the mortar firing and then the piercing shriek of a falling round that exploded mere yards away. Realizing the Germans had spotted them, Madden yelled, “We better get the hell out of here.” By running a few yards and then throwing themselves flat, they managed to outrun the exploding rounds that chased them all the way back to the Canadian line. The runner had taken a small piece of shrapnel in his back near the kidney, but said he was okay. Madden bandaged the wound, then set his platoon up in a mortar pit that the Black Watch had dug well out to the front of their main position.
The pit was about six feet by six feet and strewn around inside it were boxes of rations the British soldiers had left behind in their hasty withdrawal. Food had been in short supply at le Mesnil crossroads, so Madden and his men pounced on the boxes, ripping them open with wild abandon. “To have all these lovely goodies, particularly the many chocolate bars, was wonderful. We dug them out and ate them like we were at a kid’s feast.”
Even more valued than the food were the couple of Vickers .303-calibre machine guns and plenty of ma
tching belted ammunition that the British had left behind, which seriously boosted their fire-power. Madden also gathered in several German MG 42 machine guns from no man’s land and added these to his automatic weapon strength. By the time they were finished setting up the weapons, half his platoon were armed with machine guns.28
In order to reach the Black Watch as quickly as possible, the Canadians had travelled light, taking with them nothing more than weapons, ammunition, and grenades. Figuring they would be taking over prepared positions, Hanson had given no thought to picks, shovels, or entrenching tools. But the Black Watch positions were out in the open rather than right up on the edge of the woods, and Hanson had no intention of backing off and letting the Germans control the treeline. So other than for the few men from Madden’s platoon using the gun pit, the paratroopers hunkered down behind fallen trees and scraped out what holes they could with rifle butts and helmets.
They had barely started this process when the Germans opened a heavy artillery and mortar barrage. Madden and the five men with him huddled deeply in their hole as “shells crashed all around and trees fell down.” The lieutenant was thinking how one shell falling smack into the middle of the dugout would kill them all when his batman ran up and shouted that he had found a good shelter for Madden and himself that had overhead cover. He led Madden at a run to what turned out to be a three-ton truck. There was nothing to do but crawl in under the truck to escape the rain of shrapnel and hope nothing scored a direct hit. When the barrage lifted a few minutes later, Madden looked into the back of the truck and stared at a full load of crates containing three-inch mortar bombs. “Jesus, what overhead cover,” he barked at the sheepish runner.29
As soon as the shellfire ceased, the Germans counterattacked in strength from out of the château grounds and through the woods. Several tanks and self-propelled guns backed up the infantry. One tank stopped just outside of effective PIAT gun range and started raking the Canadian lines. Hartigan lay on the ground as bullets chopped off bramble bushes above his head. “We pressed our cheeks into the turf and rolled our eyes upward to watch the brambles being mowed down as though by a scythe about a foot above our faces.”