Holding Juno

by Mark Zuehlke

  To his right, Private Cliff Douglas “blasted away at the tanks with his Bren gun, hoping to spray a few bullets through one of their machine-gun ports. At the same time Bill Chaddock… equipped with a sniper’s rifle, was trying to achieve the same thing with his telescopic sight. Cliff Douglas and Ralph Mokelki were ripped through their thighs by the tanks’ medium machine guns. They were helped and patched up with tourniquets by Private Eddie Mallon.”30

  When the tanks and infantry pulled up outside PIAT range rather than rolling forward to overwhelm the paratroopers, the Germans started their artillery and mortar barrage again. The Canadians were subjected to withering fire from the infantry and tankers to their immediate front, and a simultaneous rain of shellfire. Every few minutes, the shelling would ease off and the infantry would make an attempt to close on ‘C’ Company’s position. Each attack was immediately scattered as the paratroopers opened up with intense and accurate fire.

  “That’s where the company’s soldiers earned their greatest credit,” Hartigan later wrote. “With no way to effectively attack the enemy’s superior numbers or heavy equipment and with no trenches in which to protect themselves, the paratroopers refused to give up an inch of ground. They held their positions and fought back from the edge of the forest floor with their machine guns, their… PIAT antitank guns and their little 2-inch mortars.”31

  Hartigan’s section of No. 7 Platoon was taking a beating as the battle dragged on. A heavy mortar that had found their range was pounding the position and the only cover the seven soldiers had was the three-to-four-foot-high bramble bushes in front of the woods. When one round struck a tree behind Hartigan and Chaddock, chunks of shrapnel ripped into Chaddock’s back. Moments later, a storm of shellfire erupted behind Hartigan and he was struck by five bits of steel. By now, five men in the section were wounded badly enough that they could barely function. The only uninjured man was Mallon. Chaddock was dying, too badly wounded for the company medics to save. No. 7 Platoon had a dozen men needing evacuation, and a half dozen paratroopers in the other platoons were as badly off. Douglas and Mokelki were too badly wounded to walk. Hartigan was bleeding less heavily than these two men and still mobile, so he had Mallon concentrate on the other two men.

  Then Hartigan tried to help Chaddock. “I slit open his camouflaged battle smock and his trousers and pulled off his boots. He was terribly injured from head to foot. I gave him an ampoule of morphine… and put a tourniquet and sling on his upper left arm.

  “My section was a shambles… I wanted to cry but had no time. Nine out of the ten of us who had landed six days earlier on D-Day were now dead or wounded. Lieutenant Sam McGowan came and examined my right foot, hit by four of the five shell fragments my body had taken. He ordered me off the battle-line immediately. ‘In ten to fifteen minutes you’ll be of no more use here,’ he said. ‘You won’t be able to walk.’” Hartigan and one of the other wounded men took turns carrying Chaddock towards the company headquarters. Other walking wounded carried those who were unable to move independently, while anyone who could manage a hobble fended for himself. As Hartigan’s decimated section moved out, Eddie Mallon picked up his gun and prepared to defend a sixty-yard-wide section of the perimeter single-handedly.

  At company headquarters, the wounded were collected into a group and then sent on foot towards a British aid post a quarter-mile behind the front line. The place was packed with Black Watch and paratroopers suffering every imaginable wound. “Men with missing legs or arms or both. Men hit in the lungs, bleeding from their mouths. Men groaning, gurgling or crying, because they were in unbearable pain or suffering from… battle exhaustion… Men vomiting, others chewing on bread, others dying or dead.”32 Hartigan was soon evacuated to a hospital in England.

  By the time he and the other wounded paratroopers reached the aid station, the German attack against ‘C’ Company had petered out. The enemy tanks growled off past the château with the infantry in tow, and the artillery fire slowly wound down. ‘C’ Company triumphed, holding the line that had threatened to collapse and expose the River Orne bridge crossings to German attack, but at a terrible cost. Of its sixty men, twenty-three had been killed or wounded. Late that night, the 6th Airborne Division launched a massed counterattack of its own through ‘C’ Company’s line that succeeded in wresting Bréville from the Germans and straightened out the dangerous inward bend. With the morning, the remaining soldiers marched back to le Mesnil crossroads and took up their positions on the still embattled 1st Canadian Parachute Battalion front line.33

  As Madden took his place in a slit trench facing the enemy, he looked around at the remnants of the company and was struck by how determined they still looked despite all they had endured since jumping into Normandy such a long time ago. Before that jump, the invasion planners had promised the paratroops they would only have to fight for four days at the most and then would be withdrawn in keeping with the doctrine for use of airborne divisions. They were shock troops, not to be wasted in protracted combat or defensive operations. But there was no sign they would be relieved anytime soon. Madden knew that the men felt somewhat betrayed that they had been kept in the line, but he knew nobody would hesitate to do his duty. They would hold the crossroads as long as they had to and if necessary to the last man.34

  ACROSS THE BREADTH of 3rd Canadian Infantry Division’s front, June 12 saw a stalemate develop with neither side capable of anything more than sending fighting patrols to harry the other. An uneasy quiet settled over the battlefield. Conditions on the front lines remained rough. There was nowhere for soldiers to wash, shave, or clean and mend uniforms. Men sported ragged beards. Rations were limited and hot meals rare. Sleep was something snatched fitfully between stands on watch, patrols, and the persistent harassing fire of artillery and mortars. The stench of death permeated the air, with hundreds of corpses still strewn across no man’s land.

  In the Regina Rifles sector at la Ferme de Cardonville, Captain Gordon Brown decided something had to be done about the German dead lying close by the farm. Although the Germans had ceased trying to overrun ‘D’ Company’s position, the farm remained a fortress around which 12th SS Panzer Grenadiers roamed with deadly intent towards anyone venturing from its protective walls.

  Brown and his second-in-command, Lieutenant Dick Roberts, stared out at the thirty to forty corpses near the farm walls and discussed what to do. Finally, after consulting with Company Sergeant Major Jimmy Jacobs, they agreed that “a carrying party made up of mature soldiers would handle the dead bodies.” Arranging to borrow a bulldozer and operator from the Royal Canadian Engineers, they set about the grim job. While the bulldozer carved out a large trench in a field next to the farm, screened by the railway embankment from German observation, Roberts led the carrying party out to retrieve the bodies on stretchers. As the Germans were brought in, Jacobs and Brown “would remove all id tags, the wallets or other personal belongings, package them up with the dog tags and then bury the bodies. We all went about our tasks in something of a daze. It was a numbing experience, this first time burial of dead enemy soldiers. Some had tried to bandage themselves, apply tourniquets… in order to try to save their lives.”

  The captain looked at the corpses and was saddened to see that they “were so young, these blond, handsome German boys. They were fanatical Nazis, victims of the brainwashing they had received. What a senseless loss of life on both sides.”

  When the job was done and the bulldozer had completed covering the dead with earth, Brown, Roberts, and Jacobs walked back to the farm. They drafted a report that detailed the number of Germans buried and provided map references for the burial ground, which was sent up to battalion headquarters along with the personal effects and identification. Brown hoped the personal effects would eventually find their way to next of kin in Germany, but doubted that receiving them would lessen the pain of having a son dead in a foreign land. The three men then “decided that perhaps we should try some of the local Calvados to help us forg
et.”35

  He could not, however, push aside the memory of how many Regina Rifles—most little older than the boys they had just buried—had fallen during these past six days. The ferocity of the fighting still shook him. Later he would say, “the fighting in Normandy… against the SS… had a bitterness about it that did not prevail in later battles against the regular German army units.”36

  Although they had given as good as they took, the price in Canadian lives was terribly high, which had also served to fuel the fierce nature of the fighting. Between June 7 and June 12, Canadian casualties suffered holding Juno Beach totalled 196 officers and 2,635 other ranks. Of these, 72 officers and 945 other ranks died.37 Added to the 340 dead and 574 wounded on D-Day, the infantry battalions and the supporting tank regiments of 2nd Canadian Armoured Brigade were barely fit for action. They could hold, but the impetus of any offensive would have to come from elsewhere.

  In fact, none of the divisions that had assaulted the beaches on June 6 remained capable of more than holding actions. But in their determined defence of the beaches, these Canadian, British, and American soldiers had ensured the survival of the Allied beachhead in Normandy. For on the beaches behind the infantry, tankers, and artillery gunners engaged in bitter battle inland, a great tide of men and matériel had poured ashore. By the night of June 11–12, 326,547 men, 54,186 vehicles, and 104,428 tons of supplies had been landed.38 The Allies were ashore, and there was no longer any chance they could be thrown back into the sea. The battle to hold Juno and the other beaches was won.

  [ EPILOGUE ]

  In the Shadow of D-Day

  ISTAND IN BRETTEVILLE-L’ORGUEILLEUSE looking at the side of a three-storey triplex that stands close to the street. The outside wall is stuccoed and brightly whitewashed, but the distinctive roofline that cuts sharply down from the third storey to a single storey at the building’s back is impossible to mistake. Sixty years ago, Rifleman Joe Lapointe of the Regina Rifles waited until a Panther V tank rumbled just past this outside wall, and then fired his PIAT gun. An army photographer later shot an image of the knocked-out Panther with the roofline of this building clearly visible in the background. Its brick walls were unpainted then, window shutters on the front of the building splintered by battle, doors torn off hinges by soldiers conducting a hasty search.

  Nearby, Bretteville’s church, which had all but one side of its steeple blown down in the battle, has been mostly restored. The steeple is square and incomplete-looking, however, because the elegant belltower that originally rose above the wider base column was never replaced. Across the street, the château that served as headquarters for the Reginas throughout the June 7 to 12 fighting has been fully restored as well. There is a plaque commemorating the events of those days.

  Norrey-en-Bessin also has a plaque, although the village itself has few buildings from the war remaining. One such structure still carries the scars left when Lieutenant George “Flash” Gordon rolled his 1st Hussars Sherman against its side during the retreat by ‘B’ and ‘C’ squadrons on June 11. The church here also had its steeple blown off, but it has been rebuilt. From here, I take a right turn and follow the route travelled by the tankers and ‘D’ Company of the Queen’s Own Rifles out into the farmland that stretches off to le Mesnil-Patry. Passing through Norrey, it is hard to see how difficult the tanks found navigating its narrow streets, as they have been widened and straightened.

  Today, the grain fields are carefully tended, crops recently harvested rather than growing wild and abandoned to heights of four and five feet. No perfect cover for SS Panzer Grenadiers now. There is little relief to the ground, just wide flat fields. The Norman farmer seldom borders his land with hedgerows these days, as they would impede the manoeuvring of large tractors and other machinery. Most of the orchards that once grew here are also gone, given over to grain fields instead.

  In le Mesnil-Patry, a modern church stands. Outside is a memorial plaque that bears the badges of the 1st Hussars and Queen’s Own Rifles, with a dedication to the men who fell on June 11. Plaques and monuments abound inland from Juno Beach wherever young Canadians fought and died during those six blood-soaked days that followed D-Day. In les Buissons, a plaque notes that this is Hell’s Corner and bears the inscription “In grateful memory of the soldiers of the 9th Canadian Brigade.” It was erected in 1984 on the invasion’s fortieth anniversary. Authie has a grey limestone memorial to the North Nova Scotia Highlanders and a sobering little blue sign that denotes one street as Place des 37 Canadiens in memory of the thirty-seven Highlanders and Sherbrooke Fusiliers murdered in the village by the 12th SS on June 7. In Buron, a small square is flanked on either side by flagpoles—one the Canadian maple leaf, the other the French tricolour. Two monuments stand in the square. One for the Sherbrooke Fusiliers and the other the Highland Light Infantry, who paid heavily recapturing this village on July 8, 1944 and appropriately dubbed it “Bloody Buron.”

  East of Buron, the ground rises towards St.-Contest. From atop this low rise, barely more than thirty feet higher than the ground below, it is easy to see how such a low profile still dominated the battleground. The Norman landscape between Juno Beach and the Caen-Bayeux highway is a study in subtle topography. There is the long slow rise from the coastline, with few undulations. The Canadians could never escape the watchful German eye. To the east of the ridge, the favoured outpost of Kurt Meyer and 12th SS artillery spotters stands. The Abbaye d’Ardenne where twenty Canadians were executed has been mostly restored to its former grandeur. Its great cathedral with wide shoulderlike balustrades is as imposing as it would have been on June 8. In the garden where the murders took place, a monument commemorates the eighteen soldiers killed on the night of June 8–9 and two others who died while prisoners on June 17. The names of the men are inscribed on the memorial.

  Elsewhere across the breadth of the Canadian battlefield there are other plaques, other interpretive signs that explain various events during the six days’ fighting. Memory of the battle to hold Juno Beach—the so-called bridgehead battle in official military parlance—is alive and well here in France.

  Hardly so in Canada. Mention Normandy and, after the media frenzy of the sixtieth anniversary celebration coverage in 2004 combined with endless television reruns of Saving Private Ryan—most Canadians will recall that the D-Day landings happened there. A far smaller number will be aware of some of the more infamous battles that followed during the long summer of fighting to break out from the beachhead. Verrières Ridge and the Falaise Gap might be recognized. Putot-en-Bessin, Authie, Buron, le Mesnil-Patry? Probably not. Outside of the regimental memory kept alive by the units that fought these battles little attention has been shone on them.

  The official history by Colonel C.P. Stacey allowed this period of battle fifteen pages of text and maps. Most other histories of the Canadian participation in the Normandy campaign grant it far less space, if bothering to mention it at all. Bookended by D-Day and the greater battles of July and August, the fighting of June 7–12 was reduced to little more than a footnote in the historical record. Yet over 1,000 men who were the sons, brothers, husbands, and fathers of many Canadians died here in just six short days. About 1,700 more carried the scars of wounds suffered for the rest of their lives. There were also the mental scars so many soldiers bore afterward, for as Captain Gordon Brown of the Regina Rifles later noted, there was “a bitterness” to the fighting, as the Canadians squared off against the 12th SS in this battle, that was uncommon to other engagements.

  If the June 6 to 12 fighting is ill remembered, there is greater knowledge of the murders of Canadians that took place during this time. The subject of several documentaries and books, the 12th SS atrocities are usually linked almost exclusively to Standartenführer Kurt Meyer. Most veterans I interview forget that Meyer was not yet the divisional commander of the 12th SS. Only on June 14, when shrapnel from a naval shell killed Brigadeführer Fritz Witt, did Meyer assume its command. But Meyer had the misfortune to be captured
on September 6, 1944, and was the only 12th SS officer to be tried for war crimes by Canada.

  An unrepentant Nazi even after the war’s end, Meyer’s stony and dismissive composure during the proceedings did little to advance his claims of innocence in any of the killings. Presided over by Major General Harry Foster, who had commanded 7th Canadian Infantry Brigade and had many of his Royal Winnipeg Rifles and some Regina Rifles murdered at the time, the court returned a guilty verdict on three of five counts. Meyer was sentenced to death by firing squad, but Canadian Army Occupation Force commander Major General Chris Vokes commuted the verdict to a life sentence. Vokes thought the evidence that Meyer was directly responsible for specific murders was vicarious rather than direct. Confined in New Brunswick’s Dorchester prison, Meyer served only five years before being released in 1954. He returned to Germany and worked for a brewery while becoming a prime advocate for Waffen-ss seeking military pensions, until his death from a heart attack in 1961 at age fifty-one. More than five thousand veterans, mostly former SS, attended his funeral.

  The Canadians killed by the 12th SS are mostly buried in the Canadian War Cemetery at Bény-sur-Mer. Here lie 2,043 Canadians in tidy rows, one after another. Only five servicemen from other countries are buried here, so the evenly spaced white headstones overwhelmingly bear the official maple leaf national emblem used by the graves commission. Enlistment number, rank, name, regiment, date of death, and generally age are listed. A cross, or less commonly, Star of David might also be engraved below the vital statistics. Whether religious affiliation was indicated rested with the family, who were also able to add a personal inscription not exceeding sixty-six characters if they wished.