Breakout from Juno

by Mark Zuehlke

  Because 4th Armoured Brigade’s communications net was broken, the Foot Guards were unaware that the British Columbia Regiment and Lake Superior Regiment were close by. These had pushed out of Damblainville at about 1700 hours. With orders to pass through the Grenadiers at Point 118, they eventually found it “too dark … to read maps, so rather than proceed into enemy territory we stopped for the night near Les Moutiers-en-Auge,” reported the BCR war diarist. During the advance, tanks and Superiors had lost each other.17

  When the tanks stopped, Captain Jim Tedlie and his crew, like everyone else, were exhausted. Tedlie thought they would be okay in a fight, but staying alert posed a challenge. He was nodding off when there was a loud crash, and a shell screeched overhead. Seconds later a 17-pounder gunner came up on the regimental net and confessed that, as he was falling asleep, his foot had depressed the firing button. “That woke us up,” Tedlie muttered.18

  The Superiors’ ‘B’ and ‘C’ Companies had in fact lost contact with each other, in addition to the tanks. Unable to establish wireless contact with the Dukes, both companies “spent the night independently in ‘No man’s land.’”19

  Left of 4th Canadian Armoured Division, 1st Polish Armoured Division had enjoyed a deep and fast advance on August 17. In two formations, the 10th Regiment of Motorized Riflemen, 10th Dragoon Regiment, and 10th Uhlan Regiment had swept forward. By evening, one formation had reached Hill 259, a short distance north of where the Grenadiers were bedded down.20 The other, more southerly formation gained the hamlet of Neauphe-sur-Dives, directly east of Trun and about three miles short of Chambois.21

  As night fell on August 17, II Canadian Corps was poised to begin closing the Falaise Gap. Although 4th Armoured Division had a long extended open flank to its right, Simonds was unconcerned. Behind it, 3rd Infantry Division maintained a firm base on the hills above the Ante River, and 2nd Infantry Division was arrayed around Falaise. Simonds considered the Poles “well on the way to Chambois,” which Montgomery had emphasized should be taken quickly. His 4th Canadian Armoured Division was ready to capture Trun. To provide the tanks with infantry strength, 10th Infantry Brigade was to be relieved that night from its positions around Damblainville and Morteaux-Couliboeuf.22

  On the opposite side of the gap, the Americans had idled August 17 away. Generals Omar Bradley and George Patton, independently of each other, had attempted to get an advance on Trun going in accordance with Montgomery’s instructions. Acting at cross purposes, their orders left the divisional commanders uncertain about who actually commanded them. Finally, Bradley declared them under First U.S. Army’s V Corps, commanded by Major General L.T. Gerow. The following morning, Gerow deployed his divisions accordingly. Between Ecouché and Argentan, 2nd French Armored Division held the American left flank. In the centre, 80th U.S. Infantry Division would isolate Argentan from the left, while 90th U.S. Infantry Division would close the gap to the right of this division by advancing through Le Bourg-Saint-Léonard to Chambois.23

  As the Americans sluggishly began stirring, increasing numbers of Germans were escaping. Generalfeldmarschall Walter Model arrived at the Fifth Panzer Army’s battle headquarters at 0900 hours on August 18 to impress upon everyone that a “coherent front” must be re-established and that Seventh Army and General der Pan-zertruppen Eberbach’s Panzer Group had to be “extricated as quickly as possible” from the gap. “Shoring up the walls of the escape corridor” required II SS Panzer Corps, just having come through the gap, to turn about and attack the Canadians and Poles.24 The corps was to do this with 2nd and 9th SS Panzer Divisions. Still inside the pocket, 12th and 21st Panzer Divisions would shore up the gap’s northern wall.25 The 2nd and 116th Panzer Divisions would do the same to the south. August 18 marked the point where the German with-drawal through the gap reached “full flood.”26

  THE GRENADIER GUARDS spent an eerie night on Point 118. It seemed extraordinary that the Germans were ignorant of their presence. They expected a counterattack or at least testing probes, but the night passed quietly. An ominous silence prevailed. There were no signs of fighting to the north, where the Poles supposedly pushed for Chambois. Behind them, everything was equally quiet. Yet to the southeast “towards Chambois, to the south beyond Trun, and all down the valley towards Falaise the lights of a hundred fires—blazing vehicles, ammunition dumps and buildings—made it very evident that the Regiment was out in front, the spearhead in the gut of the gap.”27

  At first light, Major Ned Amy’s No. 1 Squadron and Major Her-shell Smith’s No. 3 Squadron advanced to a road running north from Trun to Vimoutiers. German infantry on foot, vehicles, and many horse-drawn wagons clogged the road, and the tankers ground through these with “their guns chattering.” Gaining the heights to the east, the Grenadiers proceeded to shoot up anything coming along the road.

  This was good work, but not their day’s purpose. That was to take Trun. Although the Lake Superior Regiment had been scheduled to appear during the night, there was still no sign of it. So the tankers kept the road to Vimoutiers closed and waited impatiently.28

  At 0530 hours, the British Columbia Regiment’s squadron commanders had briefed their troop leaders while everyone ate cold rations and sipped tea. Major Jack Worthington and Captain Jim Tedlie held opposite ends of a large topographic map so ‘A’ Squadron’s troop leaders could see their route. The objective was to cut the Trun-Vimoutiers road by seizing Hordouseaux, three miles north of Trun. Suddenly, an American P-47 Thunderbolt fighter-bomber shrieked down with machine guns blazing, and a 50-calibre round “caught Jack … right in his throat and blood spurted just like a fountain from him,” Tedlie said later. “I hit the ground and I’m holding the other end of the map, so that pilot missed me by inches. Then I jumped up after they passed and we threw out smoke showing we were friendly and hoped they would recognize it this time. I put a field dressing, with the idea of staunching the flow of blood, on his neck. He couldn’t speak because his vocal chords were … shot away. And he finished the O Group [by] writing with a chinagraph [grease] pencil on the top of the map to finish his orders. I had given him a shot of morphine to ease the pain and you could see his writing trail away. We were close to the Poles and a first-aid team from the Poles picked him up and took him back. He subsequently died. That was a very brave thing to do, because most wounded people think of themselves. But he thought of the well being of the squadron to make sure that I had everything he had received from higher headquarters. I’m very proud of him.”29 The regiment’s two Worthington brothers had been killed within the space of nine days. Trooper Albert Hallmark was also fatally wounded by the friendly fire.30

  For the British Columbia Regiment, the tragedy of Worthington’s death during the briefing was the only difficulty faced that day. The squadrons carved a path through the retreating Germans. Hundreds of prisoners were taken. The roads to Hordouseaux were “littered with enemy dead, equipment, and horses, knocked out by our Typhoons.”31

  The regiment reached the village to find it abandoned an hour earlier. “We parked right up on top of a hill in an orchard and if there had been fewer trees we could have commanded a view of the whole countryside for miles,” Captain Douglas Harker wrote. “So we just spent a quiet night with the usual guards amidst a cloudburst that lasted all night.”32

  Prior to August 17, the Germans had avoided daylight movement because it inevitably attracted Allied fighter-bombers. That day, however, thousands moved in long columns towards the gap. Allied Expeditionary Air Force flew 2,029 sorties and claimed to have destroyed or damaged hundreds of vehicles. At 1030 hours on August 18, fighter-bombers again swarmed over the pocket to attack the thousands of panicked Germans. More than 3,000 sorties were made this day, with 2nd Tactical Air Force alone claiming 124 tanks destroyed and 96 damaged; 1,159 transport vehicles wrecked and 1,724 damaged.

  Given the fluid battlefront, inevitably some fighter-bombers strafed or bombed Allied forces. Deeper into the German lines than anybody else, the Poles suffered
most. Between the 16th and 18th they had 72 men killed and another 191 wounded.33

  The Governor General’s Foot Guards kept as wary an eye on the skies as they did the ground during their August 18 advance. With only twenty-two Shermans and three Stuarts operational, the regiment’s fighting ability was greatly limited. But they met only light opposition en route to Point 118, which lay a short distance east of Louvières-en-Auge and provided a firing point onto the Falaise-Trun and Trun-Vimoutiers roads.34

  All 4th Armoured Brigade’s regiments were severely reduced. At 1300 hours, when the Superiors’ ‘A’ Company joined the Grenadiers, Major Smith’s No. 3 Squadron had only seven tanks. It and the Superiors moved at 1400 hours to cut off Trun. Crossing the highway between Trun and Saint-Lambert-sur-Dives, they came under fire from 88-millimetre anti-tank guns and several multi-barrelled 20-millimetre guns mounted on half-tracks from the high ground southwest of Trun.35 The Superiors went to ground and Smith advanced to Trun alone, finding the Superiors’ ‘C’ Company had already taken the village.36

  By late afternoon, 10th Infantry Brigade was firming up around Trun. The village had been badly shot up by Allied fighter-bombers, and much of it was still burning when the Lincoln and Welland Regiment’s ‘A’ Company and a troop of South Alberta Regiment tanks relieved the Superiors at 1500. “Trun continued to burn all night.”37 The Lincs expected a counterattack, but instead gathered in five hundred prisoners who had entered the village to surrender.38

  East of Trun, the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders considered the battle over and that “it had become a pursuit, a rout.” Less ‘B’ and ‘C’ Companies, which were under South Alberta Regiment command and directed towards Saint-Lambert-sur-Dives, the battalion’s role for the next three days entailed taking surrenders and gathering great quantities of loot. As the Argyll’s regimental historian wrote, “Any soldier who had a ‘small smitchin’ of enterprise sported the coveted Luger or P-38. One could find any number of cameras, watches and binoculars and of a variety extensive enough to please the most particular taste. Germans looking for places to give themselves up were everywhere, in our lines, in the woods and on the roads. Few ever showed arrogance or fight, for they were beaten. Sometimes our men herded them together and sent them back towards the rear, where they could find their own way to the prisoner of war cages. The whole thing failed to make sense, but it was a fantastic sort of heaven for the average Canadian infantryman, who had seen only the seamy side of war.”39

  BY EVENING ON August 18, Falaise Gap had narrowed to less than three miles. The Germans still fleeing funnelled into the ground separating Trun and Chambois to the north and the large, dense Forêt de Gouffern to the south. This forest stretching from immediately north of Argentan across to Le Bourg-Saint-Léonard was largely impassable to transport.40

  For 1st Polish Armoured Division, the day’s advance had been confused and bloody. The Poles “were already exhausted in fighting alone, without support, and so bearing the brunt of engaging enemy forces to the east of River Dives.” Despite this, Major General Stani-slaw Maczek had dispatched an armoured column at 0200 hours to break through to Chambois. Comprised of 2nd Armoured Regiment, 8th Infantry Battalion, and an anti-tank battery, it had advanced through an “extremely dark night and most difficult, roadless terrain, lost its direction and arrived in the early hours at the locality of Les Champeaux [on the Trun-Vimoutiers road], where it took the Germans by surprise, it is true, but at the same time became engaged with the infantry and anti-tank units, regardless of the terrain being difficult for the maneuvering of tanks. The stories about the Germans being taken by surprise, running around in the woods in their pyjamas and trying to board our tanks, thinking they were their own, circulated for a long time among our soldiers,” Lieutenant Colonel L. Stankiewicz wrote.

  When Maczek realized the formation had become lost, he ordered the 10th Armoured Brigade commander to dispatch a rescue force. Its attempts to locate the column proved fruitless. The column, however, managed to extricate itself from the Germans and withdrew southward.

  Abandoning hope that this column would ever reach Chambois, Maczek assembled two other formations in the early morning. One, dubbed the western formation, comprised of the 24th Uhlan (Lancers) Regiment, 10th Dragoon Regiment, and an anti-tank battery preceded by the division’s reconnaissance unit, the 10th Regiment of Mounted Infantry, was to advance from near Louvières-en-Auge to Hill 137 and then on to Chambois. The second or eastern column, made up of 1st Armoured Regiment, the Highland Infantry Battalion, and elements of the anti-tank battalion, would advance on a more northeasterly axis, using Hills 259 and 240 as intermediary objectives, with Hill 262 its final goal.

  Hill 262 was really two hills separated by a narrow valley. The northerly hill was sometimes referred to as Mont Ormel, after a nearby hamlet, or as Hill 262 (North) with the southerly hill being Hill 262 (South). During a wireless discussion, Maczek mentioned that the map contour lines made the northerly hill resemble the pommel and the southerly one the shaft of a mace. The Poles consequently designated the north hill “Maczuga,” Polish for mace.

  Meeting stiff resistance, the two columns were short of their objectives by nightfall. The western column stopped on Hill 137, a little more than a mile north of Chambois, while the western column was on Hill 240 and about two miles short of Maczuga. Ahead of the western column, a 10th Mounted Infantry squadron and an anti-tank battery reached the northern outskirts of Chambois by late evening, but found it heavily defended.41

  The Germans fully understood the threat the Poles posed. So critical was the situation that Fifth Panzer Army reported that the Allies had succeeded “in advancing past Trun and past Argentan with strong forces and in completing a still loose encirclement of Seventh Army Group and Panzer Group Eberbach.” Generalfeld-marschall Model believed the Canadians had advanced “past Trun to St. Lambert, where he established contact with the enemy forces from the south which had broken through at the edge of the wooded area [ Forêt de Gouffern] east of Argentan (about 2 kms south of Chambois). Thus he has closed the bottleneck, though for the moment presumably only with light forces.”42 The Americans and First Canadian Army had in fact not yet met, but clearly time was running out.

  Inside the pocket, Seventh Army pulled away from the Orne River during the night of August 18. Nipping at its heels were three British Second Army divisions and two American divisions. Despite severely depleted numbers and critical shortages of fuel and ammunition, the army’s rearguard prevented it from being overwhelmed. Overall, the German divisions moved in a disciplined and orderly manner towards the gap throughout the night of August 18–19. In the morning, however, rearguard forces were pushed across the Falaise-Argentan road on the north flank by the British 53rd (Welsh) Infantry Division. With Allied bombing increasingly augmented by shelling from artillery regiments coming within range, a “wholesale abandonment of destroyed and damaged vehicles and guns” began, and the cohesion “was largely lost.”43

  Maintaining cohesion also proved increasingly problematic for First Canadian Army. Around Falaise, 2nd Infantry Division had established a stout, well-organized barrier through which escape was impossible. To the east, 3rd Infantry Division controlled the north bank of the Dives River from Morteaux-Couliboeuf to Trun. In principle, this enabled 4th Armoured Division to push on from Trun to Chambois with 1st Polish Armoured Division descending from the north on the same objective.44 In fact, the situation facing these two divisions on the evening of August 1 8 –19 was decidedly less tidy. Regiments were scattered.

  The Grenadier Guards, for example, moved during the early morning hours of August 19 to Point 259, about three miles north of Trun, to overlook the Trun-Vimoutiers road.45 No. 2 Squadron then advanced a mile closer to the road, with orders to close it to German traffic. The squadron numbered only eight Shermans. Guardsman Stuart Johns thought they were terribly vulnerable in the dark with no covering infantry. The commander of Johns’s tank deployed his crew, save the driver,
to provide an infantry screen. They dug a slit trench and settled in. As the night wore on, they heard a couple of small convoys grinding past. When the men prepared to open fire with their Stens, the crew commander stopped them. “It’d be suicide. You fire and they dismount and attack us, the whole regiment’s done for because we don’thave any infantry,” he said. Johns listened morosely to the German convoys roll by, knowing they were escaping.46

  [ 28 ]

  A Little Wild

  AT 1800 HOURS on August 18, the South Alberta Regiment’s ‘C’ Squadron had left Trun for Saint-Lambert-sur-Dives and then Chambois. Fifty-five men of ‘B’ Company, Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, rode on the tanks. Quickly reaching Saint-Lambert, Major Dave Currie sent one tank troop into the village with the infantry following on foot. Passing the first house, the lead tank was knocked out by an anti-tank gun, its crew bailing out safely.

  Contacting Lieutenant Colonel Swatty Wotherspoon by wireless, Currie proposed dismounting all but three tank crews to serve alongside the Argylls as infantry in order to clear the Germans out of the village. Wotherspoon instead ordered a thousand-yard withdrawal westward to Point 117 for the night rather than step into a potential hornet’s nest in the dark. Here Wotherspoon rendezvoused with Currie’s force, bringing up his headquarters troop, the reconnaissance squadron, ‘B’ Squadron, and a troop of 5th Anti-Tank Regiment’s 17-pounders.1 “ It began to look as if a big show were coming off,” the South Alberta war diarist wrote. “Infantry and everybody stood … awaiting … some movement which would start things flying.”2

  Growing up in Saskatchewan, Currie had experienced the typical hardships wrought by the Great Depression. Unable to afford university, he attended technical school instead, subsequently earning a living as an auto mechanic and welder during the “Dirty Thirties.” When war broke out, he was married and a father but immediately joined the militia. Two years later, he enlisted in the regular army. He “wasn’t a brilliant tactician, but he was very stubborn,” Wother-spoon said. “If you gave him an order to do something that was within his capabilities, he would do it—period.”3