Breakout from Juno

by Mark Zuehlke

  Shortly after the first attack, a force of Sherman tanks, which the Canadians quickly identified as being Polish, appeared about two miles distant and headed towards the hill. As it came within a mile, the Germans shifted artillery and tank fire away from the Canadians and onto the Poles. Ignoring this fire, the Poles continued to close on the Canadian position and began shelling it while on the move, until the Algonquins released yellow smoke that identified the hill as being held by friendly forces.45

  At about this time, Worthington apparently lost faith in his ability to hold out. “All the tanks that can still run will make a dash for it, return to original [forming-up position]; use fire and movement,” he ordered by wireless. Eight tanks busted out of the fortress. Fortuitously covered by the Polish tanks firing smoke, all managed to escape. Left behind were four immobilized Shermans that could still fight.46

  When the Poles closed to within three hundred yards, they broke up a forming attack with machine-gun fire. But a number of the Polish tanks were burning along their line of advance, and the survivors turned about and withdrew. Within minutes, the German fire “began again on us, if possible, with even more intensity,” Monk wrote later.

  “By 1730 hours, no Polish tanks were in sight, none of ours were in action. In fact, most of them were burning furiously, many with their dead crews still in them. The exploding ammunition in the burning tanks added to the noise and danger. Our mortar detachments were out of action. The field was a mass of shell holes. The trees and shrubs were cut to pieces from shrapnel. The smell of burning flesh, the odour of exploding enemy H.E. [high-explosive] mingled to make most of us nauseated.

  “The continuous crash of exploding shells and mortar bombs began to have its effect, first among the wounded and then the rest of us began to get ‘battle wacky.’ We had run out of morphine and bandages. Many of the wounded men were delirious, shouting and screaming, jumping out of their slits, having to be pulled forcibly to cover again. Things looked pretty grim.”

  Another attack formed at 1700 hours. This time infantry were joined by tanks, “monsters, camouflaged, moving very slowly and staying at ranges of over 600 yards.” From this range, the Panthers savaged the field with high-explosive rounds.

  At 1730 hours, Monk saw Worthington “in the open, walking casually across the field.” A mortar bomb whistled in, and the force commander “fell dead into a crater in the northeast corner of the field.”47 Another mortar round killed Major Baron.48

  MacPherson joined Monk. “We should pull out,” he said. Monk agreed to go, but not until night could cover their escape. Increasingly tormented by his back wounds, MacPherson panicked. Taking four men, the major attempted to escape down the northwest slope. A machine gun killed MacPherson and three of the men while badly wounding the other.

  Several tanks gained the high ground overlooking the field at 1800 hours and started raking it with machine guns. This fire concentrated on the Algonquins’ ‘C’ Company. After four hours under this withering fire, Lieutenant Robert Saville pulled the survivors back to ‘B’ Company’s lines. Lieutenant Rod Blais and his platoon were left behind, shortly overrun, and taken prisoner.

  The Germans closed in with the gathering darkness. A tank rolled into the southwest corner of the field and swept the hedge and gorse with fire. Lieutenant Dutcher sent a message to Monk that his No. 10 Platoon was unengaged at the southeast edge of the field. Monk quickly ordered what remained of Worthington Force to escape through that hole. Dutcher’s men led the way, while Monk and his company headquarters section took Brens and lay down a steady fire towards the Germans. The last men out were Lieutenants Ken Gartley, Saville, and Fisher and Major Monk. At the last minute they “ceased fire and crawled through the gorse. The minute our firing stopped, the German infantry stood up, they were about 50 yards away, coming in, talking loudly.

  “We left many dead and wounded men on the position and others were pinned down in their slits unable to move and were captured.” Those who escaped stumbled blindly through the darkness, until searchlights lit the sky and “made a great guide for direction … In small groups we crawled north through the gorse and wheat and cautiously made our way back to our lines, dodging enemy patrols and posts here and there and eventually reaching the Polish lines at dawn.” In Monk’s party were forty-two Algonquins and ten tankers. Many were wounded. The Poles gave them hardtack and bottles of Calvados. Then the men marched to 10th Brigade headquarters at Cintheaux and from there to the Algonquin rear area at Rocquan-court. “We were exhausted, filthy, and covered with dust and grime, aching from minor cuts and bruises. We swam in a river, washed, and fell asleep.”49

  While Monk’s group had been the largest to escape, it was not the only one. Lieutenant Harvey McDiarmid and Lieutenant A.E. Biddle-comb commanded the two remaining undestroyed tanks. Biddlecomb’s was the reconnaissance Stuart with its light 37-millimetre gun—useless against German armour. It hardly mattered, as neither had ammunition. With a Tiger closing to within a hundred yards, McDiarmid and Biddlecomb ordered their crews to abandon the tanks. Gathering together a dozen tankers, the two officers “told them to split up into groups and make their way back to our own lines.” After holding the hill for about fourteen hours, they slipped away at 2100 hours.50

  Worthington Force’s losses were disastrous. In their first battle, the Dukes had 47 tanks—44 Shermans, 2 Stuarts, and 1 Crusader anti-aircraft tank—destroyed. Personnel casualties totalled 112—40 killed, 38 wounded, and 34 taken prisoner. The Algonquins counted 128 casualties—45 fatal, 38 wounded, and 45 taken prisoner.

  “Such losses would have been deeply regrettable even had they been the price of success,” the army’s official historian wrote. “Unfortunately, they were suffered in the course of a tactical reverse which did much to prevent us from seizing a strategical opportunity of the first magnitude.”51 Point 195, which Worthington Force was expected to easily capture during the night advance, remained in German hands, and the road to Falaise was still blocked.

  IN THE EVENING, Algonquin Major George Cassidy, who was acting second-in-command, learned he commanded the battalion. Brigadier Jim Jefferson said “there was only the vaguest of reports of the unit’s whereabouts, although it was believed that they were on or near Point 195.” This belief was based on Captain Lewis’s report. Hoping for more information, Cassidy visited Brigadier Leslie Booth, who confirmed the “situation was very obscure” and there had been no contact with the British Columbia Regiment for hours. Acquiring a scout car, Cassidy followed the Caen-Falaise highway until encountering the Algonquins’ ‘D’ Company at Bretteville. “This was very heartening, as now at least there was a nucleus and the machinery for reorganizing if need be,” Cassidy wrote. ‘D’ Company’s Major Keith Stirling told Cassidy he was convinced Captain Lewis was mistaken about Worthington Force being on Point 195. Stirling believed the force had strayed into the Polish sector. Returning to 10th Infantry Brigade headquarters, Cassidy located Captain Lewis. Using a map and avoiding “leading questions,” Cassidy had him walk through the route Worthington Force had taken and confirmed it had indeed wandered into the Polish sector.52

  UPON RECEIVING WORTHINGTON’S initial report, Booth had set about filling the gap between Halpenny Force at Bretteville and Point 195. At 1030, he ordered the Governor General’s Foot Guards to get through to Worthington “as quickly as possible.” The Algonquins’ ‘A’ Company and its remaining 3-inch mortars were to support the tankers along with a New Brunswick Rangers machinegun platoon, 5th Anti-Tank Regiment’s 96th Anti-Tank Battery, and a troop of Flails. This force “was to by-pass all opposition and make for the objective with all speed.”53

  The assigned support units had to assemble alongside the Foot Guards, and most were not in place until early afternoon. When Booth urged Lieutenant Colonel Murray Scott at 1345 hours to make haste, the tank commander said they would advance at 1430 hours. He “was not about to charge pell-mell along a single narrow axis in full view of the enemy to a likely st
rongpoint, Bretteville-le-Rabet, and then up a long open slope with only his tanks—all in broad daylight, without any reconnaissance having been done and with no smoke to screen their movement,” Scott declared.54

  At 1430 hours, advancing without having called for any covering smoke, the tankers led with the Algonquins’ ‘A’ Company trailing the third squadron. Passing Bretteville, the column was turning west towards Point 195 when it came under anti-tank gunfire from Quesnay Wood. Three Shermans were knocked out.55

  “Keep going, don’t stop,” Scott ordered.56 The column shrank into an orchard and re-emerged about 1,500 yards distant. But tanks and infantry were now higher than the woods with nothing but open fields between. Realizing the tanks were ducks in a shooting gallery, Scott ordered the Algonquins to assault and clear Quesnay Wood. When Captain Clark Robertson demanded to know what support the Foot Guards were offering, the lead squadron commander, Major Robert Hall Laidlaw, said it would be suicide for the tanks to accompany the infantry, and they had no communication with artillery regiments. Robertson bluntly refused to advance. As the two officers walked back to inform Scott, Laidlaw was killed by a shell.

  Robertson understood Scott’s “quandary.” Damned if he didn’t go forward, facing certain slaughter if he did. The infantry officer suggested setting up a defensive position in the orchard.57 Even then, under constant anti-tank fire, the tankers lost twenty-two tanks.58

  Those surviving, however, served as mobile artillery supporting an advance by the Lincoln and Welland Regiment towards a spur extending from Point 195. As it was clear Worthington Force had never reached the feature, this move was a prelude to a renewed assault. Not only did the Lincs gain the spur but, when their ‘D’ Company wandered off course to the west, they wrested the village of Saint-Germain-le-Vasson from the control of what turned out to be only a dozen Germans.59

  Simonds was deeply dissatisfied with the day’s gains, which had created a line running from Vimont east through Saint-Sylvain to Bretteville-le-Rabet and then Saint-Germain on the western flank. There would be no pause, he declared. Point 195 must be secured immediately by 4th Division and the advance continued one and a half miles to Point 206, overlooking Potigny from the west. The Poles were to capture Point 140, west of where Worthington Force had met its end. They would then cross the Laison River and clear the heights by Olendon. In this way, First Canadian Army would end Operation Totalize looking over Falaise.60

  Despite having committed the entire division during the day, Kitching ordered Point 195 taken in a night attack. With no fresh reserves, he turned to the least worn out infantry battalion—the Argylls.

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  What a Stupid Place

  WHEN TOLD TO take Point 195, Lieutenant Colonel Dave Stewart “mentally wrote the Argylls off.” Even if they had heavy artillery and an accompanying tank regiment, Stewart was certain a traditional attack would see the regiment decimated. At 2200 hours, Stewart, looking “cool and confident” held an O Group. “This is what is happening,” Stewart said, “and the first company moves … in twenty minutes.”1 No artillery, no tanks. Instead, a single file following a circuitous route that would gain the hill by its northeast flank. Lieutenant Lloyd Johnson’s scout platoon would lead, marking the route as it went.2

  ‘B’ Company’s Major Don “Pappy” Coons grinned. “Piece of cake, we’ll take it.” Coons went up a notch in Stewart’s estimation. Major Bill Stockloser of ‘D’ Company took Stewart aside. “You’re sending us to our death.” Stewart had thought Stockloser made of sterner stuff. “He let me down,” Stewart said later.

  Stewart’s plan did not rest on bravado. Captain Pete MacKenzie of the support company thought it audacious but well conceived. Stewart “was a pretty independent thinker in the way he went about things, and while he always kept the objective in mind, he went about getting it in his own way. [Stewart] was always very conscious of casualties and did his best to avoid them wherever possible.”

  “We’re going to lead the battalion up this hill single file,” Lieutenant Johnson told his scouts, and then simply led them into the pitch-black night just before midnight.

  Corporal Gord Boulton helped lay tape to mark the route. If a junction still seemed unclear, a man was left to point out the right way. Although everyone tried to move quietly, Boulton could hear several hundred Argylls “coming single file … behind us … [W]e could hear the shovels hitting the rifles and things like that … and they were supposed to be muffled, but with that many men” it was impossible.

  Stewart was at the head of the main body, wearing his trademark tam-o’-shanter. “You can’t win battles being behind,” he claimed. There was no talking. If they were detected, it would be impossible to shake out into a coordinated battle line before the Germans tore the battalion apart. Private Bruce Johnson, a ‘B’ Company sniper, passed the “torso of a Canadian officer. Where the rest of his body should have been was tank tracks. Just completely obliterated. I knew he was a Canadian officer by the shoulder pips.” The image would haunt Johnson ever after.

  Private Mac MacKenzie saw nothing. Since he suffered from night blindness, others had to “lead [him] around by the bloody hand.”3

  At 0430 hours on August 10, the Argylls found Point 195 undefended. Dawn was breaking. Stewart directed the company commanders to the areas where each would position his men. “Dig like hell,” he ordered. After six inches of soft loam, the shovels and picks struck chalk. Getting below two feet proved impossible, so the men dug outward—creating rectangles one or two men could lie in.

  Not long after the Argylls started digging, they heard the grinding of tracked vehicles. Noisily, the support company arrived with the battalion’s 6-pounder anti-tank guns and 3-inch mortars. A 5th Anti-Tank Regiment troop armed with 17-pounders and the New Brunswick Rangers (MG) No. 3 Platoon with its heavy Vickers machine guns also rolled in. Having walked in, Captain Bill White-side had already selected positions for the supporting arms.4

  He placed the 17-pounders overlooking the long, gentle slope to the west. That was the most likely approach for tanks. The 6-pounders, of no use against armour, were spread out among the infantry. Not worth “a pinch of coon shit,” Stewart said of them.5 The heavy machine guns were arrayed to provide “flanking protection” for the infantry.6

  Point 195 had no peak. It was a plateau with rows of tall cypress trees bordering wheat fields, small groves, and thickets of brush. Too much ground to occupy, so Stewart positioned each company where it had a reasonable field of fire towards one line of approach. With the Lincoln and Welland Regiment to the northwest on the long spur running from near Saint-Germain to Point 195, that flank was protected. The Argylls still had to defend three other flanks.

  Arriving undetected and without losing a single man seemed little short of a miracle. As another blistering hot August day was born, however, “the enemy awakened to the situation and began to react violently. He opened on our position,” the Argyll war diarist wrote, “with heavy mortar fire [and] sent out a force to deal with one of our 17-[pounders]. ‘A’ Company and the scouts were dug in beside this gun. “In the ensuing skirmish the enemy was beaten back and 27 prisoners were taken.” Intelligence officer Lieutenant Milton Howard Boyd was interrogating these men when the first 88-millimetre shell struck and killed him.7

  Point 195 had been lost due to carelessness and lack of manpower. Now the Germans were determined to win it back. Artillery and mortar fire grew constant. Lieutenant Ken Frid “lost a whole section, which is one third of my platoon, as fast as you could bat an eye. They were just dishing out their noon meal when two 88-mm. shells landed right among them. It was an awful mess and sort of took the wind out of our sails. I lost two more men when their nerves went to pieces after seeing this sight … that hill turned out to be another hell-hole. We stayed all that day in our slit trenches while [the enemy] tried to knock us off the hill with shells and mortars.”

  Whiteside saw German tanks firing from Quesnay Wood. Transformed into a f
ortress by the 12th SS Division, the wood teemed with infantry, and from here most of the counterattacks emanated. The Germans “would come out of the woods quite broadly spaced … 150 yards from side to side. And [they would] start walking up the hill toward ‘A’ Company … it became almost like shooting fish in a barrel … the machine guns had a field day.”8

  On the other flanks, German crews pushed and pulled 88-millimetre guns through woods and brush to within five hundred yards. After firing a few rounds, they dragged the guns to a new location before the 17-pounders could range in. It was a deadly game of hide-and-seek the Germans played well.9

  BY 0800 HOURS, the Governor General’s Foot Guards, the Lincs, and part of the South Alberta Regiment had spread out through orchards in front of Grainville-Langannerie and Saint-Hilaire Farm to the north to establish a supportive base for the Argylls on Point 195. The Canadian Grenadier Guards were ordered to advance from here first to Point 195 and then to Point 206, overlooking Potigny.10 At 0815, Major Pete Williamson’s No. 2 Squadron led the way with the rest of the regiment following in line. During the night, Tiger tanks had been reported in the orchards of Saint-Hilaire Farm. Lieutenant Colonel Bill Halpenny was confident, however, that these had withdrawn. This erroneous conclusion was dispelled when a shell cracked through the lingering ground mist and punched a hole in the front of his command tank. Although Halpenny’s Sherman remained operational, two other Grenadier tanks were knocked out by the Tiger. This signalled the start of a mile-long race that cost the Grenadiers six tanks before they reached Point 195 at 1130 hours.

  Having gained the hill, Halpenny had the three squadron commanders and the artillery officer form their Shermans around his in a box formation in the middle of a cornfield two hundred yards north of Point 195. To their right, a Sherman that had ventured too far beyond the infantry was “ominously brewing.”11