But first, in order to do that, we must take St. Lô as a base for our next move, the breakout to the south.
By July 3, D + 27, we had passed through our beachheads, English and American, into Normandy a total of 929,000 men, 586,000 tons of supplies and 177,000 vehicles. Bradley’s share was about half that total; he had already ashore four corps composed of eleven infantry divisions and two armored divisions, a total of thirteen, a very respectable army, well armored, well supplied.
Even before he had all that, and as part of the original Overlord Plan program, Bradley had started to batter his way into St. Lô, which he had to have before he could ever stage a breakout to the south. And Rommel and his Seventh Army just as fiercely resisted. St. Lô, a most important road junction, had been expected to fall into our hands by D + 5. It hadn’t. Before St. Lô, Rommel massed everything he dared take from Montgomery’s front at Caen, even to his 2nd Panzer Division, the only armored division he had elsewhere than before the British. A continuous battle for St. Lô ensued until June 18 (D + 12) when Bradley called a halt there—he could no longer afford an offensive on St. Lô—he needed everything he had for the assault on Cherbourg. St. Lô, important as it was, would have to wait.
But immediately Cherbourg had fallen, Bradley threw his whole weight again at St. Lô. He didn’t get through—St. Lô didn’t fall, as had Isigny, Carentan, Montebourg, and Valognes, almost within a day.
The difference, actually was neither in the guns or men we put into the attack, nor even in the defense put up by the Nazis. The difference lay in the fact that for the first time since D-day a heavy attack was being thrown at a town blocking a vital road, where that town was not within range of the sea, and battleship guns could not swiftly flatten it and its defenders out for us. The battle for St. Lô became a terrific slugging match, probably the longest drawn out and bloodiest in the whole campaign from the Normandy beaches to final victory on the Elbe. Bradley had to get through there, if ever he were to break into open country; Rommel was determined he should not.
So tanks, artillery, machine guns, and infantry on both sides fought each other to what looked likely to become a stalemate. But it didn’t. The weight of superior artillery and ammunition on Bradley’s side, and one other item that occurred on July 17, finally combined to give us entry into St. Lô on July 18. That day St. Lô fell into our hands; it was a completely shattered town, but invaluable as the heart of a network of highways we had to have prior to any breakout to the south.
What had occurred on July 17 was that after that day, Rommel, Germany’s best field general, was no longer any part of Bradley’s problem in Normandy, or for that matter, beyond it, either. The day before we took St. Lô, July 17, while Rommel was returning from an inspection of his front lines, a strafing Allied fighter plane spotted a Nazi staff car trying to make its way inconspicuously along a back road near the front. Down like a diving falcon came that fighter on the road, its guns going all out. A bursting shell hit the left side windshield pillar of that car, sent it crashing against Rommel’s skull, tore the driver to pieces, and started the car careening into the ditch, while Rommel, unconscious, was pitched into the road.
French surgeons saved his life, something Rommel soon had no cause to be thankful for. Three days later came the actual attempt to assassinate Hitler, with its regrettable failure to result in a satisfactory job. Hitler, quickly recovered, started Himmler looking for all those in the plot and began hanging all German generals suspected of being involved on meat hooks like slaughtered hogs.
Rommel’s involvement with the conspirators was soon discovered. But that discovery put Hitler in a terrific dilemma. What would be the effect on the average German if it should come out that the man whom Hitler himself had built up as the military hero par excellence, the ideal Nazi soldier, had finally concluded that the best thing he could do for Germany now was to help eliminate der Fuehrer?
No, that would never do. It might start too many other Germans to thinking that if the national hero had come to that as the only logical solution for Germany’s difficulties, then it must be logical for them also so to conclude—and act.
No. Rommel must die. But his death still must serve the Fuehrer.
So with his ultimatum Adolf Hitler sent to the convalescent Rommel’s home near Ulm two of his SS generals whom he could trust to murder their own mothers should he so order. They had with them a powerful poison, practically instantaneous in its action; Rommel could go with them in the staff car in which they had come, ostensibly for a conference, and take the poison, after which it would be announced he had had a sudden hemorrhage resulting from his wounds and died. Or he could if he so preferred, die hung up on a meat hook, with ensuing dire reprisals on his wife and his son. Der Fuehrer would much regret being driven so far—the poison was better—but Rommel could choose for himself.
Rommel chose the poison, said goodby to his wife (whom he told also what was about to occur), and went for the ride. In fifteen minutes, he was dead.
Hitler decreed a state funeral for his hero and sent Frau Rommel his “deepest sympathy.” Then with a keen eye to that pageantry on which he had built the Nazi regime, and on which now more than ever he had to rely to bolster his tottering grip on power, he ordered Field Marshal von Rundstedt whom he had just incontinently tossed on the military rubbish heap and who was in total ignorance of what really had occurred, to Ulm to deliver the funeral oration over the body of his former subordinate. While all over Germany at Hitler’s order every flag was flown at half-mast in mourning, von Rundstedt, deeply’ moved, haltingly read the script prepared for him, apparently by Dr. Goebbels himself, never realizing as he laid at the feet of his late comrade in arms the tremendous wreath sent personally by Adolf Hitler, the diabolic irony of the concluding words:
“His heart belonged to the Fuehrer.”
To avoid future repercussions, the body was cremated.
So passed Rommel, the major stumbling block in our path into Europe from the moment we encountered his obstacles on the beach off Omaha to the day his troops solidly sealed off our road into St. Lô. There at least, when finally it was man to man and armor to armor with no naval guns to settle the issue, we never passed while Erwin Rommel was on his feet to command.
With the death of Rommel, the elimination from the scene of the enemy top command in Normandy whom we had faced on D-day was complete. Von Rundstedt had been removed, Rommel had been murdered, Dollmann had dropped dead, and Marcks had been killed in action. The defense of Normandy rested now in the hands of Field Marshal von Kluge from the Russian front, and his newly chosen set of generals.
CHAPTER 37
We entered St. Lô on July 18.
The fiercest and longest-drawn out battle ashore we had so far fought, or were ever to fight in France, ended in our favor. The Artificial Harbors had performed magnificently in supplying what was necessary to let Bradley first hold his own at St. Lô against the German armor while he was taking Cherbourg and then to break through. And, in spite of what the storm had done to Omaha, it had still all been done over the beaches. Cherbourg, already in our hands for three weeks, had no part in this crucial victory; oddly enough, not till the eve of the entrance of our battleworn troops into St. Lô did those struggling with the mines in Cherbourg Harbor manage finally to clear even the narrow pathway required to allow passage for some Dukws to enter for a landing on a bathing beach inside.
Hardly were our troops in St. Lô than Bradley went on to his next step. For the whole of the six weeks since D-day, we had after all been contained within the cordon drawn by Rommel (now out of the picture) to block us off from movement into the open in France. The Overlord Plan was weeks behind schedule—here it was, D + 42, when Patton should already have had the Britanny ports and we should be starting on the Quiberon Bay harbor, and Bradley had as yet not even staged the breakout which was to furnish the gap in the cordon through which was to be poured Patton and his newly constituted Third Army. Immediate action was
necessary.
Running westward from St. Lô to Périers and on to Lessay on the seacoast at the western shore of the Cherbourg Peninsula was the St. Lô-Périers highway, easily visible from the sky. To the northward of that road now lay Bradley’s army. Just to the southward of it, from St. Lô from which they had just been driven, all the way to the seacoast, von Kluge had disposed his forces, determined that Bradley should get no further.
But Bradley had to. However, after his long drawn out experience in breaking into St. Lô, he neither wished or could afford so long and costly a delay to his breakout.
So picking out a spot on that St. Lô-Périers road some three miles to the westward of St. Lô, he marked off a rectangle just to the south of the highway, three and a half miles along the road and a mile and a half deep southerly from it. That “carpet,” as he denominated it, was heavily defended by the Nazis to prevent any movement southward along the two highways crossing it from the north.
Bradley decided to drench that carpet with bombs so thoroughly as to obliterate entirely the Nazi troops and armor facing him there. After that, with a striking force composed of four of his infantry divisions and two armored divisions he would smash through the gap and race southward toward Avranches and the corner of Britanny before the shattered Nazis could re-form. At that point, on August 1, Patton would take over the new Third Army, turn west to capture or contain the Brittany ports, and then allow us to proceed with the installation of our temporary harbor on Quiberon Bay.
But in view of the total failure of the air bombardment on D-day of the Omaha Beach, Bradley, freed now of all considerations of tide and dawn in fixing his day and hour for attack, decided this time it would be a daylight attack and only in clear weather, not through cloud cover, so the bombers could see a target they should never miss. The air attack was to consist of 1500 heavy bombers, 400 medium bombers, and 350 fighter bombers, to drop a total of 60,000 100-pound fragmentation bombs from the heavy bombers alone. The attack would be nearly five times as big as that aimed at the beachhead. And this time Bradley left the date flexible. He would wait for a clear day, intending that the attack should take place only on such a day as the bombardiers could see their target and that road to Périers. This time he would insure both that they hit what they were aiming at south of the road and didn’t hit our own troops north of it. And to doubly insure that last, Bradley would draw his men to the north three-quarters of a mile back from the road before the bombs were dropped.
That requirement of clear weather tied knots in Bradley’s proposed assault; he would have been ready to move a couple of days after entering St. Lô on July 18, but not until one abortive attempt, called off on account of cloud cover on July 24, did the skies clear enough on July 25 for the actual assault.
Over 2200 warplanes came over from Britain, an awe-inspiring air armada, with the 1500 heavies flying at 8000 feet. But regardless of beautiful visibility and no clouds, again the heavy bombers fumbled their attack. In spite of that east-west road plainly marking the division line between our troops and the enemy, and the 1500 yard safety zone on our side of it, the first reports Bradley got stunned him. Both his 9th and his 30th Divisions, waiting to jump off, had been bombed by a drop short of the road—some hundreds of G.I.’s had been killed, his spearhead had been blunted and knocked off balance. And a little later, he learned also that Lieut. General Lesley McNair, an observer on our own front with those G.I.’s had been killed by a direct hit on his foxhole.
The disorganized assault, which should have followed through immediately on the heels of the last bomber, was now difficult to get started at all, as our front line troops, badly shaken at having been bombed by our own planes, cleared away first their own dead and wounded. By night fall, the dismayed General Bradley was uncertain as to whether his carefully prepared breakout was not a total failure. So far, he had made little progress. And the enemy, once the bombing had ceased, might well have been given time enough to rush in new troops to plug the gap altogether.
But fortunately for Bradley, von Kluge had no longer any reserves, no new troops in Normandy ready to rush in anywhere. The nearest uncommitted Nazi forces still lay behind the Pas de Calais, fifteen divisions of them, 150 miles away, poised to repel the attack from Patton and his mythical First Army Group supposedly stationed in southeastern England.
While ironically now Patton himself, completely hidden by a thick security blanket, was actually there on the Cherbourg Peninsula with his whole staff, just behind Bradley’s front, waiting only for the breakthrough to take command of a new army to be formed from some of the very divisions poised for attack there. Oddly enough, the reputation alone of a mythical Patton still sufficed to keep from von Kluge the divisions that might, had they been moved in time to Normandy, have stopped the real Patton from ever getting there.
Von Kluge had no reserves at hand to plug that gap, though, unintended by Bradley, he was given time enough. When finally Collins and his reorganized troops moved forward to the St. Lô-Périers road, they found that most of those 60,000 bombs had landed as intended—regardless of what they had done to Collins, they had obliterated completely the enemy in that carpet. Nothing alive was left in it. It was an area only of corpses, burned out tanks, dead cattle, and absolute desolation. Against practically no opposition Bradley poured through this St. Lô-Périers gap his four infantry and two armored divisions. By July 26, next day, they were all through and rushing pell-mell along every road leading southward.
The First Army had now nothing before it but the shattered left flank of the enemy line stretched between St. Lô and the sea. It had taken Bradley’s G.I.’s five weeks to make the last five miles into St. Lô. Now in five days they went forty miles through a broken enemy line to turn the corner at Avranches into Brittany.
And there on August 1, the augmented American forces were divided into two, with Hodges relieving Bradley as Commander, First Army; Patton becoming Commander of the new Third Army; and Bradley, made now the equal of Montgomery, assuming command of both First and Third Armies under the name of the 12th Army Group.
With that army reorganization in effect, it was time now to tend to Brittany and to undertake the capture of its three ports, Brest, L’Orient, and St. Nazaire, whose possession months before had seemed so important to the success of the Overlord Plan. And to set up, pending their rehabilitation, our vast temporary harbor on Quiberon. Patton’s Third Army was to turn westward to do all that, while Hodges’ First Army was to hold von Kluge off his back.
But seven weeks of fighting in France had changed a great many ideas. With the sour taste of the husks of Cherbourg Harbor in their mouths, neither Eisenhower or Bradley was now enthusiastic over biting into the Brittany ports. It was obvious, if Cherbourg was any sample, that Brest, L’Orient, and St. Nazaire might be of use to us in World War III, but as for helping win World War II, it was ridiculous to waste time and men in taking them.
And now further to offset what once had seemed a sine qua non, more ports to support the invasion, the Artificial Harbors on the Normandy beaches were going great guns. On August 1, Omaha Beach alone, crippled as it was by the loss of its pierheads, still had handled 16,000 tons ashore, twice its designed capacity. If pushed, it could do that every day, perhaps more, on up to November. By that time, we should be wanting ports like Antwerp in Belgium, not those far in our rear in Normandy.
So it was now obvious we didn’t need Brest, we didn’t need L’Orient, we didn’t need St. Nazaire as ports to supply our armies. Neither was there any longer the slightest need to set up another harbor on Quiberon Bay. And there was sound basis for arguing that we didn’t even need Cherbourg, which we already had. It wasn’t going to do us any good whatever in the immediate battle for France; if it weren’t already ours, it was questionable whether the effort being spent there in rehabilitation would not pay greater dividends on some other port further east.
The Mulberry Harbors, which originally it was hoped would keep us going, hanging
on by our fingernails so to speak, for the thirty days it should require to take Cherbourg and restore it to service as a port, were performing beyond the fondest dreams of their military customers. It was plain now that they alone could keep the armies going throughout the Battle of France. So why now waste time and men going west simply to match an outmoded Plan? The enemy lay to the east.
Eisenhower could see no reason why he should—he was safe now in jettisoning all thoughts of more harbors in Brittany and on the Bay of Biscay. He didn’t need any more ports whatever. And as his enemy lay to the east, there he would go. The rest of the Overlord Plan went immediately into the waste basket. And its elimination put the major movement into France itself practically back on schedule.
George Patton, a genius for mobility, was told to send only a containing force into Brittany to seal it off—with the bulk of his forces, and especially with his armor, he was directed to drive eastward into the open country of France, south of von Kluge’s Seventh Army, in a vast pincers movement,
Eisenhower would put von Kluge between Montgomery’s British army to the north and Patton’s Third Army to the south. Field Marshal von Kluge, if he had sense, would have no option then save to fall back immediately to the Seine to save himself. All northern France, up to the Seine, should fall promptly into our hands.
There was, of course, some risk to us in this. Von Kluge, instead of evacuating, might choose instead to stage a drive of his own westward to Avranches and the sea, and thus cut Patton and his Third Army off from their line of supply. But to counter that, if tried, Hodges and the First Army were left before Avranches. Should von Kluge try such a move, unless immediately successful, he would have his Seventh Army in a trap. He would have Montgomery on the north, Hodges on the west, Patton on the south. Should Patton and Montgomery close on his rear, to the east, the Seventh Army would be doomed. No sensible general would hazard that.
The Far Shore Page 34