Breakout from Juno

by Mark Zuehlke

  The 89th Infantry Division slotted into place. “Quietly and without any fuss, the enemy had been able to withdraw [1st SS Panzer Division] … Allied intelligence had no idea where the SS formation had gone and so assumed it had aligned with the 12th SS to form a mobile reserve in the Bretteville-sur-Laize area. The 89th was considered far inferior to the SS divisions. It had been formed in January 1944, deployed from Germany to Normandy, and had not yet seen combat. Still, its strength was estimated at about 10,000 men possessing a full complementof machineguns, mortars and artillery.”52

  The division’s commander, General der Infanterie Konrad Hein-richs, held a Knight’s Cross and had served on the Russian front. Its other officers and non-commissioned officers were experienced combat veterans. About 65 per cent of the troops were nineteen or under. Some were over forty, and others were foreign conscripts of dubious loyalty. What the division possessed was something the SS had lacked all along—sufficient men to “cover the ground.”

  The changeover presented Simonds with a new dilemma. Virtually on the eve of his planned thrust to Falaise, the opposition had changed from one possessing mobile armour to one lacking almost any mobility. This presented new challenges and opportunities that his plan did not take into account. It was also probable that the two SS Panzer divisions would be “used to bar the way to Falaise, or to meet any serious threat to the line.”53

  [ 18 ]

  Jaws Dropped

  ON JULY 18, Lieutenant General Guy Simonds and his aide-decamp, Captain Marshal Stearns, had crouched in a ditch on a hill west of the Orne River to watch Operation Goodwood unfold. “This was a mid-morning attack and within seconds it seemed as though 20 or 30 British tanks were ‘brewing up’ … One could not help but be most impressed with the thickness, camouflage and marksmanship of the German gunners whether in tanks or manning anti-tank guns.” As the two men walked to their jeep, Simonds told Stearn, “When my turn comes, we will do it at night.”1

  His turn arrived on July 29 when Simonds started planning a breakthrough to Falaise. The opposing forces at the time were 1st and 9th SS Panzer Divisions, so Simonds intended to match them armour for armour. As II Canadian Corps had only 4th Armoured Division, he asked Crerar to secure a second armoured division. He also sought another infantry division, so his 3rd Division could be left out of the initial phases. Crerar was able to accommodate relieving 3rd Division by shuffling 51st (Highland) Infantry Division and 33rd British Armoured Brigade from I British Corps to II Canadian Corps command. Then, on August 5, Crerar secured the services of 1st Polish Armoured Division—beginning what would be a long relationship between the Canadians and the Poles.2

  In an August 5 briefing, Crerar described how First Canadian Army faced “the vital northern hinge, or pivot” of the German line before Caen. Their responsibility was “the breaking off of that pivot, or the smashing of that hinge, and to do this decisively and quickly.” A successful thrust to Falaise, he said, could spell “the end of the German Army now assembled in North West Europe.”3

  These were the high stakes around which Operation Totalize was conceived. For Simonds, the stakes were also personal. The only partial success of Operation Atlantic and the failure of Operation Spring had sullied his reputation. He needed Totalize to restore his image as a masterful strategist.4

  Operation Spring had revealed that the Germans’ main resistance line ran across Verrières Ridge from May-sur-Orne to Tilly-la-Campagne. The key to breaking this line was still to punch through to the high ground of Point 122, also known as the Cramesnil Spur. Behind this spur lay the German second line. Believed still under construction, it ran from Bretteville-sur-Laize to Hautmesnil and then east to Saint-Sylvain. At Hautmesnil, the Caen-Falaise highway crossed another commanding knoll. This was where the second line must be broken.5 From Hautmesnil it was then twelve miles to Falaise.

  The Germans held many strong cards, including firmly held, deep defences from which they enjoyed superb fields of fire and observation over the Canadian lines. Simonds planned to trump the Germans by attacking at night. Speed was essential. They must punch deep and at such a pace that the Germans were denied the opportunity to regroup and counterattack. This would inevitably mean outrunning the supporting artillery, while the Germans would fall back on their guns and consequently always have artillery able to range on the Canadians.6 Simonds planned to overcome this problem by having air support that was “genuinely total” and guaranteed for forty-eight hours.

  When Simonds learned that a single infantry division had replaced the SS Panzer divisions, he significantly altered the plan. The first phase would now be conducted by infantry divisions supported by armoured brigades, rather than two armoured divisions. Using the Caen-Falaise highway as a boundary, 2nd Canadian Infantry Division and 2nd Canadian Armoured Brigade would operate to the right. The 51st Highland Division and 33rd Armoured Brigade would be on the left. To achieve surprise, there would be no preliminary artillery. Instead, heavy bombers would “obliterate the area May-sur-Orne–Fontenay-le-Marmion and the wooded area east of Secqueville-la-Campagne.” In the second phase, 3rd Canadian Infantry Division and 4th Canadian Armoured Division would carry the Hautmesnil–Saint-Sylvain line. The third phase would see 4th Armoured Division and the Poles dash to the heights overlooking Falaise from the north.7

  NEED FOR RAPID movement posed the greatest obstacle. Commonwealth infantry attacked on foot. The only Canadian exception was 4th Armoured Division’s Lake Superior Regiment, equipped with M-14 half-tracks. Their armoured protection enabled infantry to advance apace with tanks. While Simonds could borrow some halftracks, they would not be sufficient to mobilize the required infantry battalions.

  Simonds was chewing on this problem one day in late July when he happened upon 3rd Division’s M-7 self-propelled guns. Nicknamed “Priests” because of their pulpit-shaped machine-gun mounting, these M-7s were basically tanks from which the turret had been exchanged for an open top to accommodate a 105-millimetre gun. “I was one day watching some of these vehicles and it occurred to me that, if the equipment were stripped, they would be sufficiently roomy and have adequate protection to provide the sort of vehicle I had in mind,” Simonds wrote.8

  Outfitting 3rd Division’s field regiments with Priests had been a temporary measure to increase artillery mobility during the initial invasion phase. At the end of July, the three regiments began switching back to the standard 25-pounders. This process was completed over the first two days of August.9 The gunners did not surrender the Priests willingly. With a “feeling of great regret … all personnel saw the equipment leave,” 14th Field Regiment’s war diarist recorded. “They had given good service and had proved very satisfactory in the role of assault artillery.”10 The return to 25-pounders by 13th Field Regiment occurred “amid great arguments among the gunners as to their relative merits. The preponderance of opinion was in favour of the [Priests] and some gunners were as downcast as though they had lost their best friends.”11

  On July 31, Lieutenant Colonel Carl Rice Boehm, assistant director of the Royal Canadian Electrical and Mechanical Engineers, was asked by phone how long it would take to remove the gun from seventy-six M-7s and ready them to carry infantry. “That’s a big job,” Boehm replied. “What priority are we going to have?” He was promised top priority and told to finish the job in a week. Boehm had been thinking three weeks at a rush.

  Boehm “rang the panic button.” That evening the army’s senior mechanical engineers—Boehm; his superior, Brigadier G.M. Grant; Major George Wiggan of the Advanced Workshop Detachment; and Major Gil Pointer met literally under a table because of a German air raid. The task seemed insurmountable. But as the men considered problems and developed solutions, they agreed it could work. Defrocked Priests, they first called them, but then Pointer suggested Kangaroos “because they carry their young in their belly.”12

  Wiggan assembled the ad hoc group of about 250 engineers—mostly welders and mechanics—from about fourteen British and
Canadian units. Deploying in two fields near Bayeux, the men had fourteen Priests stripped by the end of August 2.13 The following evening, a test model was ready for inspection. Delighted, Simonds gave his blessing to continue.14

  Former mining engineers, Boehm and Wiggan were used to improvisation in the field. While Wiggan managed the conversions, Boehm sourced required equipment and materials. Both realized there was no point in converting a Priest “unless the engine, transmission and the track equipment were fully serviceable … Ended up that we changed twenty-eight engines with replacement engines.”

  Welding rod was voraciously consumed. Boehm tracked down a source of “liberated … German welding rod” and confiscated it. When official stores of armour plate were exhausted, Boehm led teams to scrounge from unofficial sources. Badly damaged Bren carriers and armoured cars were stripped. The steelworks at Colombelles were plundered. Then Boehm attacked beached landing craft on Juno Beach. Ignoring the complaints of sailors, who had thought to refloat them, Boehm and his men cut away armoured sides and ramps. He had a signed document from Crerar giving him top priority. Nobody could stand in his way.

  Boehm subjected one finished Kangaroo to the ultimate test, hammering it with machine-gun fire. The high-calibre rounds pierced the armour. To increase its density, the engineers added another layer of plate with a space between filled with beach sand, which acted as a shock absorber.15

  With cranes, recovery vehicles, workbenches, guns, engines, steel, welding gear, and men working around the clock, the field “soon resembled a Clyde-side shipyard.”16 August 6 was a Sunday, and at sunrise that morning the engineers delivered seventy-six Kangaroos. For his part in providing the “enthusiasm, initiative and driving force” that enabled completion in “three and one half days of what appeared to be an impossible task,” Wiggan was inducted into the Order of the British Empire. Boehm, who had received an OBE in 1943, was Mentioned in Despatches.17

  Simonds had hoped to give the infantry a week to train with the Kangaroos. Instead they had two days to practise how to board, race to an “imaginary dispersal area,” unload, and attack an objective.18

  Not all of the Canadian assault battalions received Kangaroos. The seventy-two were insufficient. Sixty M-14 half-tracks were added to enable all the troops to be motorized.19 The Essex Scottish received half-tracks, while Kangaroos were assigned to the Royal Hamilton Light Infantry and Royal Regiment. The Rileys were in a foul mood when they started the process, for they had just lost their popular commander, Lieutenant Colonel Rocky Rockingham. Summoned to 2nd Division headquarters on August 4, Rockingham had arrived anxious. Major General Foulkes offered no relief when he told Rockingham to report to Simonds. He found Simonds bent over a large topographic map in a caravan outside II Corps headquarters. Simonds looked up. “Sorry to take you away from the battalion.”

  “Oh God, what’s coming up?” Rockingham wondered.

  “You’ve done pretty well,” Simonds said. “You’re going to command 9th Brigade. Report to General Keller.” Rockingham was still digesting the news, not sure he had heard right, as he stepped from the caravan. Captain Stearns shook his hand. “What did the general say?” Rockingham asked. Stearns confirmed Rockingham’s promotion.

  When Rockingham arrived at 9th Brigade headquarters, an aura of gloom surrounded the staff there. Not only had Brigadier Ben Cunningham been sacked but also two brigade battalion commanders. Realizing he had been handed a problem outfit, Rockingham returned to Simonds. “Would you mind explaining why these people have all left?”

  “There’s no partial commitment in war,” Simonds said sharply. “I told them to do something and they said they couldn’t because they weren’t up to it, so I fired them.” Simonds added that the same fate would befall anybody who failed to measure up.

  Back at 9th Brigade, the staff officers were all nervously gathered. “I’m going to command this brigade,” Rockingham said, “and you’re going to do exactly what I tell you or else I’ll have you removed, too.”

  Rockingham had no issue with Simonds. “You knew exactly where you stood,” he said later. “You did a superior job, you would get promoted and decorated. If you didn’t, you got fired. Oh, I loved Guy Simonds. Got along very well with him. A lot of people didn’t. He told me what to do and how to do it. That’s what I liked.”20

  AT NOON ON August 5, Simonds held a corps-level O Group under the shade of a grove of tall pine trees. “Gentlemen, we plan to attack in depth with armour in the night,” Simonds opened. Brigadier Elliot Rodger saw “jaws dropped” all around. Someone said, “We have never done that before.” Simonds crisply replied, “That is why we will do so.”21

  Operation Totalize was now fully developed. To keep the armoured columns on proper course, the corps’s chief signal officer, Brigadier S.F. Clark, had improvised a directional wireless beam using a No. 33 set that issued a simple dot-and-dash signal along a fixed line. As long as the commanders of guide tanks kept the signal strength steady, the column would be on the correct bearing. If the signal weakened, they were drifting off line.

  Additional guidance would be provided by Bofors anti-aircraft guns firing tracer rounds once a minute on fixed lines, inside of which the columns were to advance. Artillery would also fire night marker shells that would eject coloured flares over specific objectives. Taken together, Simonds and his staff believed these aids should keep the columns on course.

  True to form, the artillery support would be stunning. Although there would be no preliminary bombardment, once the attack began 312 guns would fire for twenty minutes at identified German artillery batteries. Fifteen minutes later, a massive two-mile-wide rolling barrage would advance at a rate of two hundred yards every two minutes to a depth of three and a half miles beyond the German front lines. A total of 720 guns would support Totalize, and they would fire approximately 200,000 rounds in the first phase alone.

  RAF Bomber Command would attack known German defensive concentration areas with high-explosive and fragmentation bombs prior to the first phase. Then the U.S. 8th Air Force would deliver a large-scale attack twelve hours after the opening of Totalize to “pave the way for the armour to crack through the next German line of defence.”

  At first, Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Harris had opposed night bombing for fear of inadvertently dropping ordnance on the advancing Canadian and British troops. It was one thing to carpet-bomb a German city, he said, but quite another to do the same against dark countryside through which thousands of our men were moving. In response, Simonds arranged a demonstration on the night of August 6–7 to prove that coloured artillery shells could mark targets for the master bombers guiding the formations. The bombers flying over the test ground reported they could see their targets clearly and then mark them with flares for the bombers behind.

  Totalize had originally been conceived as a three-phase operation. Now, in addition to swapping armoured divisions for infantry in phase one, Simonds got rid of the third phase. He removed 3rd Infantry Division from its second-phase role and combined the last two phases. Accordingly, 4th Armoured Division and 1st Polish Armoured Division would now advance side by side to Falaise. In the first phase, tanks would advance ahead of the mounted infantry. On either side of the highway boundary, tanks and infantry would advance in four columns.

  On the right side of the highway, the main force consisted of three columns, each based upon a single 4th Infantry Brigade battalion. The fourth column was anchored on the 14th Canadian Hussars reconnaissance regiment. Each column would advance with vehicles four abreast. At the head would be a heavily armoured “gapping force” comprised of two troops of Shermans, two troops of Flail tanks, and a troop of engineers from the 79th British Assault Squadron. The engineers would mark the route with tape and lights. The gapping force was followed by the “assault force.” First came tanks, then the infantry in the Kangaroos, half-tracks, and their battalion’s Bren carriers. Each column would be supported by Toronto Scottish heavy machine-gun teams, anti-
tank guns, and engineers driving bulldozers. At the rear, a “fortress force” of tanks would secure the start line for all four columns and protect the other infantry battalions when they advanced on foot.22

  Brigadier Bob Wyman of 2nd Armoured Brigade had overall command. A tough, no-nonsense tanker, Wyman had commanded 1st Canadian Armoured Brigade in Italy before a short staff appointment at army headquarters. He had led 2nd Armoured Brigade ashore on D-Day.

  Wyman’s force formed up south of Ifs. In the advance, the three 4th Brigade columns would roll up Verrières Ridge in one tightly grouped “lane” to pass west of Verrières village and then also west of Rocquancourt. Four thousand yards south of the latter village, the infantry would dismount far behind the German front. The Essex Scottish, which formed the right-hand column, would hook west into Caillouet, while the Royal Hamilton Light Infantry marched dead ahead to gain a spur running northeast from Bretteville-sur-Laize. On the left, the Royal Regiment of Canada would strike to the east and take Gaumesnil alongside the Caen-Falaise highway. Advancing on a separate axis from Ifs, the 14th Canadian Hussars would hug the highway before hooking across to seize Point 122 just back of Gaumesnil.

  Advancing on foot, 6th Infantry Brigade’s task was to clear May-sur-Orne, Fontenay-le-Marmion, and Rocquancourt. This brigade would be supported by British Crocodile tanks, 4.2-inch mortars from the Toronto Scottish, and limited artillery. Les Fusiliers Mont-Royal would seize May; the Cameron Highlanders, Fontenay; and Rocquancourt would fall to the South Saskatchewan Regiment. The 5th Infantry Brigade would be in reserve.

  In the British sector, the assault force consisted of three battalion groups moving in two lanes that would bypass Tilly-la-Campagne on either flank, leaving it to be cleared by foot infantry. The two groups in the westerly lane would seize Cramesnil and Garcelles-Secqueville, while the more easterly column headed for Saint-Aignan-de-Cramesnil.