Impossible Victories

by Bryan Perrett

  As the morning wore on, 102 Battalion’s Tigers returned to spearhead the attacks while other tanks engaged the wood with high explosive, their shells bursting among the trees and sending a shower of jagged splinters hissing downwards into the slit trenches, for which there had been no time to provide headcover. The southern thrust of the German attack ran into a particularly violent storm of artillery fire controlled by a Lysander air OP, pinning down the panzergrenadiers. The Tigers, though enjoying some protection in the sunken lane up which they were moving from Esquay, were hit repeatedly. The high explosive shells could not penetrate the thick armour, but they could cause damage to the exposed running gear and the transmitted shock of exploding medium calibre rounds could cause internal problems such as ruptured fuel, coolant and lubrication lines or unseat machinery that would ultimately render the vehicle inoperable. For the moment, however, the Tigers were still capable of fighting. They broke into the paddock, blowing apart the anti-tank guns that tried to oppose them, then, while some engaged the Greys’ Shermans in a one-sided duel, others systematically destroyed the DCLI’s Carrier Platoon, which had come forward to deliver supplies and evacuate as many of the wounded as possible. Yet, with their own infantry still pinned down and mindful of their experience during the night, they did not attempt to penetrate the wood. One Tiger did not return from the attack and it may well have been this which approached the Somersets and was immobilised by one of the Greys’ Shermans, almost certainly a Firefly.7 When the crew came forward to surrender a few men opened fire on them, killing three. It was the act of those who were in action for the first time and had not yet come to terms with the bestiality of war. Having, in earlier attacks, seen friends of years’ standing literally blown apart in their trenches by the main armament of the enemy’s tanks, they were at that moment possessed by a blinding hatred for their crews. What had occurred was uncharacteristic and it was subsequently regretted.

  It was about this time that Colonel James, having again climbed a tree the better to spot for the gunners, was shot dead by a burst from a German machine gun. The news that their young and popular commanding officer had been killed deeply saddened the Cornishmen, but it remains unclear precisely what happened next. Certainly there were very few senior officers left in the battalion and, for the moment, central control seems to have lapsed. The men were terribly tired, having been three nights without sleep, and their dead lay throughout the wood. Somehow, the rumour spread that orders to withdraw had been received and the companies complied; the source of the rumour has never been identified but one theory suggests that it might have been German.

  The 4th Somersets, dug in some way to the rear, had become accustomed to the trickle of Cornish walking wounded passing through their position, but at about 11:00 this suddenly expanded as groups of clearly unwounded men, some running, others supporting wounded comrades, began heading for the rear. The suggestion of panic was emphasised by a DCLI officer trying to halt them; no one could understand what he was shouting because part of his lower jaw had been shot away. One of the Somersets’ platoon sergeants, noting how unsettled his own men were by the sight, threatened to ‘shoot the first bastard who moved.’ None of the ‘bastards’ did. It was Lieutenant-Colonel C. G. Lipscomb, commanding the Somersets, who recognised that the Cornishmen were not out of hand but simply confused, exhausted and near the end of their physical and mental resources. He rallied them quietly and divided them into their company groups, none of which were more than a platoon strong. Major Roberts, Major Fry, Captain Gorman, the adjutant, and the few remaining senior NCOs then led them back to the wood, where they reoccupied their positions. Half a dozen or so panzergrenadiers had moved into the trees during their absence but they had had enough and quickly surrendered. Meanwhile, anxious to reassure the Somersets that the crisis had passed, Lipscomb and Brigadier Mole seated themselves on their walking sticks and chatted amiably for a while, apparently heedless of their own safety.

  For a short period the DCLI were left in comparatively undisturbed possession of the wood. At about 14:00, however, the enemy fire intensified in obvious preparation for another attack. This time it came in from the direction of Maltot, spearheaded by Hohenstaufen’s assault gun battalion.8 Some anti-tank guns remained to the Cornishmen on this flank but because of the configuration of the slope they could not be depressed sufficiently to engage the low-slung vehicles. The artillery was requested to lay smoke and under cover of this Lieutenant Bellamy had one of the 17-pounders manhandled forward until it would bear. Despite the fact that he and his crew were only able to fire a few rounds before the gun was put out of action, they seem to have scored several kills, for in his report the German commander records that three of his assault guns were knocked out and three more received direct hits, the latter probably by artillery fire. That left four to complete the task, but in the event it was to prove sufficient.

  By 15:00 Roberts had been wounded and the battalion’s strength had shrunk to about 100 men. Gorman had been despatched to inform the brigade commander personally that the position was becoming untenable. The assault guns were closing in, slamming high explosive shells into the wood and raking it with machine gun fire. With casualties mounting and close quarter anti-tank defence now limited to a handful of PIAT bombs, Fry, now the senior surviving officer, sent a runner to brigade with the recommendation that the remnant of the battalion should either be relieved or permitted to withdraw behind the crest. No answer was received.

  He was now on the horns of a terrible dilemma. To abandon the position without orders could result in serious personal consequences; on the other hand, the Army’s code would support him if, as the man on the spot, he acted with considered judgement in the light of the prevailing circumstances. Only two alternatives existed. Either he could withdrew his men, who would then form a nucleus upon which the battalion could be reconstructed; or, he could fight on in the certain knowledge that the position would be overrun in a few minutes. Whatever he decided, the wood was about to fall into German hands, anyway. In the circumstances, he decided to withdraw and, under cover of a smoke screen, the Cornishmen pulled back, carrying their wounded with them, to take up a new position behind the 4th Somersets. For the rest of his life Fry was haunted by the thought that he should have hung on and fought to the bitter end, but that would only have resulted in annihilation to no purpose. As it was, 5 DCLI had incurred 320 casualties in fifteen more or less continuous hours of battle, and of these 93 lay dead in and around the little wood; with justifiable pride, the regimental history records that only one man was taken prisoner. Incredibly, the heroism and tenacity of so many of the battalion’s officers and men was not recognised by the award of a single decoration.

  The withdrawal of 5 DCLI marked the virtual end of Operation Jupiter. True, the summit of Hill 112 remained a no-man’s-land, but the operation had achieved its strategic objective of tying down the German armour. Fighting erupted again during the night of 15 July and continued for the next fortnight. While the summit of the hill was masked by smoke and high explosive, the 43rd, 15th and 53rd (Welsh) Divisions in succession, supported by the Churchills of 31 and 34 Tank Brigades and Crocodiles, mounted a series of heavy raids on the nearby villages – Le Bon Repos, Esquay, Evrecy and Maltot. These, as intended, provoked fierce counterattacks which further wrote down the German armour. On 18 July Operation Goodwood, a drive by three British armoured divisions north of Caen, was halted by a strong anti-tank defence but convinced the German High Command that the Allies intended breaking out on the British sector. On 25 July the American breakout, codenamed Cobra, began and soon the US Third Army was sweeping round the German left flank. Simultaneously, the British and Canadians were driving in the enemy’s right. By the middle of August the German armies in Normandy, held fast within the jaws of a trap, had been systematically destroyed.

  It would be difficult to overemphasise the part played by the sustained and costly pressure maintained on the Hill 112 sector in achieving this comp
lete victory. Forced by events elsewhere to withdraw, II SS Panzer Corps left the area during the night of 3/4 August. A few days later some members of 5 DCLI’s Assault Pioneer Platoon erected a board on the summit showing the regimental badge and the words CORNWALL HILL JULY 10th-11th 1944. Other regiments, too, felt that they had some claim on the hill but they knew what the Cornishmen had been through and not only let the board stand but also referred to the little wood as Cornwall Wood in their own histories. Later, the 43rd Division, which was to fight many battles but none so bitter as that for Hill 112, erected its own granite memorial on the same site.

  The story had a postscript. In 1945, following the German surrender, Major Roberts became commandant of a prisoner of war camp and had the opportunity of interrogating two SS men who had fought at Hill 112. One had served in 102 Heavy Tank Battalion and he recalled that of the nine or ten Tigers that had attacked the wood during the night only two returned undamaged. The other was one of Frundsberg’s panzergrenadiers, who stated that the regiment which had borne the brunt of the fighting had been reduced to five or six men a company. In fact, by the time of the final German collapse in Normandy Hohenstaufen and Frundsberg had each been reduced to the strength of a weak infantry battalion with only the former retaining a few of its tanks and guns. The once-mighty II SS Panzer Corps, now a skeleton of its former self, was sent to Holland to refit.

  Notes

  1. See Against All Odds! Chapter 2.

  2. See Seize and Hold Chapter 5.

  3. Ellis, Major L. R, et al, Victory in The West Volume 1, The Battle of Normandy, HMSO, London, 1962.

  4. The tank destroyer was essentially an anti-tank gun housed in an open-topped turret mounted on a tank chassis. Those serving with the British and Canadian armies in Normandy were the MIO, known in British service as the Wolverine, armed with a 3-inch high velocity gun, and the Achilles, which was the MIO upgunned with a British 17-pounder anti-tank gun. The Royal Artillery, responsible for anti-tank defence at the higher levels, was lukewarm about the concept of tank destroyers but recognised that in the close bocage country they not only possessed the ability to engage over the hedge-topped earthen banks but could also be got forward to support the infantry in a newly-captured position much more quickly than towed guns; during set-piece infantry/tank attacks, too, their powerful armament went some way to redressing the balance between the undergunned Churchills and the enemy’s armour. For these reasons, therefore, the Royal Artillery’s anti-tank regiments were equipped with a proportion of tank destroyers.

  5. The Army Group Royal Artillery (AGRA) generally contained one heavy and three medium regiments but was flexible and could also include one or more field or anti-aircraft regiments with the latter firing on ground targets. AGRAs were usually allocated on the scale of one per corps plus one in reserve.

  6. The Crocodile’s flame fuel was housed in an armoured trailer. This apart, the vehicle was virtually indistinguishable from a Churchill gun tank save at very close quarters. The defenders of Eterville can hardly be blamed for failing to evaluate the purpose of the trailer.

  7. A Sherman upgunned with a British 17-pounder, usually issued on the basis of one per tank troop.

  8. Assault gun units were primarily intended for the close support of infantry operations and were composed of artillerymen. There were many types of assault guns, the most common being based on the PzKw III chassis, a 75mm gun with a limited-traverse mounting being housed in a low, enclosed superstructure at the front of the vehicle.

  9. Both divisions were still refitting at Arnhem in September and were responsible for the isolation and defeat of the British 1st Airborne Division during Operation Market Garden. During these operations the 43rd (Wessex) Division again clashed with Frundsberg in the area between Nijmegen and Arnhem. Subsequently, although Hohenstaufen took part in the Battle of the Bulge, neither SS division achieved much and both ended their days on the Eastern Front.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Dak To –

  Ngok Kom Leat and Hill 875,

  South Vietnam, 1967

  For most of its existence the American Military Assistance Command in Vietnam was haunted by the spectre of Dien Bien Phu, the battle which in 1954 had resulted in the destruction of the cream of the French strategic reserve in Indochina and led directly to the establishment of the communist regime in the north. With a vociferous anti-war lobby at home and a largely hostile media covering its conduct of the war, the one thing MACV dreaded most was the overrunning of a major American unit, the result of which would be to generate such intense political pressure in Washington that the United States’ withdrawal from Indochina would take place before the South Vietnamese Army (ARVN) had been trained to a standard at which it could be expected to cope with its opponents.

  In one respect, however, the approach of American commanders in the field differed radically from that of the French. They recognised from the outset that beyond the cities and towns the holding of ground for its own sake meant nothing and was therefore counter-productive; as far as warfare in the Vietnamese countryside was concerned the terms front, rear and flanks were meaningless. What mattered most was bringing the enemy to battle wherever he was encountered and killing him at a rate he found unacceptable. Fire support bases (FSBs) were established throughout the country, capable of supporting each other or infantry operations in the immediate area. Any contact would result in the communist guerrillas being shelled, attacked from the air and their retreat cut off by rapid response units airlifted into a blocking position by helicopters.

  The US Army deployed two specialist airmobile formations to South Vietnam. The larger of these, the 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile), distinguished itself during a series of hard-fought battles in the la Drang valley, Pleiku Province, during October and November 1965. The second was the 173rd Airborne Brigade (Separate), consisting of the 503rd Parachute Infantry Regiment,1 which retained and sometimes used its parachute capability, and supporting arms.

  The brigade had already seen action in the Iron Triangle, to the north of Saigon, and in Operation Junction City when, in early November 1967, it began moving to Dak To in the Central Highlands to reinforce Major-General William R. Peers’ 4th Infantry Division, which was coming under increasing pressure from local Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Army (NVA) units. The terrain consisted of heavily forested hills up to 3,000 feet in height, separated by steep valleys containing free-flowing streams. To most of the Sky Soldiers, as the brigade’s men called themselves, the move was welcome. They had served there briefly in midsummer and been grateful to be released from the energy-sapping humidity of the plains. Even so, in November the noonday temperature in the Central Highlands could reach beyond 90°F, dropping to what felt a distinctly chilly 55°F during the night.

  The intelligence picture at this period indicated the arrival in the area of the NVA’s regular 1st Division, consisting of four rifle regiments (the 24th, 32nd, 66th and 174th) with a total strength of between 4,500 and 6,000 men, and one artillery regiment equipped with heavy mortars. A deserter indicated that the division’s objectives were the Special Forces Camps at Dak To and Ben Het, which had long been a thorn in the communists’ side. After preliminary clashes between 4th Division troops and the 32nd Regiment, however, the NVA forces simply disappeared and it was concluded that, having taken note of the 173rd Airborne’s arrival, they had simply abandoned their attack on the camps and gone to ground. As far as it went, this conclusion was correct, although it failed to take into account that the NVA commander might well have alternative plans. Like the Americans, he considered the holding of ground to be pointless; in fact, such a concept ran quite contrary to his army’s theory of revolutionary warfare. On the other hand, he was also well aware of the American political sensitivity to heavy casualties and, knowing that his opponents would mount search and destroy operations against his troops, he decided to use these to entrap battalion-sized groups. A number of hilltops west of Dak To had already been fortified in depth.
Mutually supporting bunkers protected by alternate layers of logs and earth several feet deep were linked by communication trenches and concealed by allowing the natural jungle cover to grow back over them. Aware that these hilltops were natural objectives for American search and destroy operations, the NVA commander visualised a situation in which the attackers would be pinned down in front of the defences, taken under additional fire by mortars on adjacent hills, then attacked from the rear by a manoeuvre force concealed nearby, and wiped out. This provided a reversal of the normal situation prevailing in Vietnam in that it was the communists who were seeking to bring the Americans to battle with the object of inflicting massive casualties.

  To some extent they would be assisted by the 173rd Airborne’s own philosophy, a product of rigorous training that instilled aggression from the outset, which more often than not led to attacks being delivered ‘right up the middle.’ There were, in fact, many officers in the brigade who felt that, whatever the value of aggression, this approach was not suited to every situation in Vietnam and could lead to needless casualties, contrasting it with the tactics employed by line infantry, who would execute small scale probes until the extent of an enemy position had been established, then neutralise it with sustained artillery and air strikes before going in.