by Mark Zuehlke
When Wotherspoon protested losing the anti-tank gunners, he was offered empty assurances that 9th Brigade would arrive imminently. Instead, this brigade’s regiments and supporting tankers advanced at a snail’s pace. The first North Nova Scotia Highlanders finally arrived at Point 117 at about 2100 hours, and over the next two hours the battalion deployed so that it had one company in Neauphe-sur-Dives, one on Point 117, another in Saint-Lambert, and the fourth in a farm east of the village.
During this time, 2nd SS Panzer Division’s von Lüttwitz, after nine hours conducting operations at Saint-Lambert, left the town after a remnant of tanks, self-propelled guns, and vehicles of 116th Panzer Division passed through.25 This was the last organized motorized column to escape the pocket.
As the sun rose on Monday, August 21, the Argyll’s Private Arthur Bridge observed that the “Germans able to escape had already gotten by us; those who couldn’t were either prisoners or dead, and eventually the shooting and shelling stopped.”26
Currie had not slept for almost three days. He was discussing the handover of Saint-Lambert to the North Novas during the late morning when Sergeant John Gunderson saw him “actually … fall asleep on his feet while he was talking … one of the boys caught him before he could fall to the ground.” All the courageous defenders of Saint-Lambert were in similar condition. One delay following another, 9th Brigade’s relief dragged on interminably. Not until late afternoon were the infantry units released, and it was the morning of August 22 before the South Albertas left. “When we had come to St. Lambert,” Currie recalled, “it was a neat, small, quiet French village.” By the time they left, “it was a fantastic mess,” the “clutter of equipment, dead horses, wounded, dying and dead Germans, had turned it into a hell-hole.”27 Currie was unaware that his bravery at Saint-Lambert had been noticed. He would be the first Canadian in the Northwest Europe campaign awarded a Victoria Cross.
NORTHEAST OF SAINT-LAMBERT, fighting continued through the morning of August 21. But the Germans were increasingly desperate and disorganized. On Point 239, the Foot Guards and Superiors had awakened to an utterly quiet morning. Not a sign of Germans anywhere. Consequently, at 0815, the tankers dismounted and began cooking breakfast. That was precisely when a German mobile column rolled up the narrow road in the valley bottom. The German tanks and self-propelled guns opened fire, while infantry manning heavy machine guns mounted on half-tracks also blazed away. Foot Guards commander Major E.M. Smith’s Sherman was hit and burned. Jumping clear, Smith directed the regiment’s fire from the ground despite having a bullet graze his scalp.
The fight proved no real contest. Confined to the narrow road, the Germans could only try to shoot their way through. But the Foot Guards, as their regimental historian noted, “and their friends from the Lake Superior Regiment and the antitank gunners were able to enjoy the most frequently encountered German method of doing battle—that of sitting back on a good defensive position and picking off the attackers as they advanced.”28
One 75-millimetre SPG quickly “ brewed up,” another was damaged, and two more were abandoned. A dozen half-tracks and trucks were destroyed. Thirty Germans surrendered and another fifty were killed or wounded. Besides Smith’s minor wound, the Foot Guards had only one other casualty. Only Smith’s tank was lost.29
The Foot Guards on Point 239 were not only keeping the road below closed, they backstopped the advance of the two other 4th Armoured Brigade regiments. At 0800 hours, the Grenadier Guards with the Lake Superiors’ ‘B’ Company had set off on a two-phase move that first passed Point 239 and then proceeded for a 2,200-yard push through to Maczuga.30 The British Columbia Regiment followed them into the valley between Maczuga and Point 240—held by the Algonquin Regiment—and then veered southward to Hill 262 (South).31
For the first half-mile, the Grenadier advance was hindered only by wrecked German vehicles. Then, as the tankers reached the valley floor, two SPGs opened up and knocked out three Shermans of No. 1 Squadron’s No. 3 Troop. Troop commander Lieutenant Leonard Manning Hobday and Corporal James Reginald Leney were killed. Sergeant Henry Watters Macdonald, commanding the only No. 3 tank remaining, deliberately drove into open ground to pinpoint the German position. Although his Sherman was hit, he was able to accurately direct fire that destroyed the two SPGs. Major Ned Amy’s No. 1 Squadron was now reduced to just three serviceable tanks. So Lieutenant Colonel Bill Halpenny ordered Major Hershell Smith to join Amy with his nine tanks. No. 2 Squadron remained behind to “guard the line of communication.”
Firing smoke to supplement the cover offered by the rain and low clouds, the Grenadiers and Lake Superiors “sped down the valley.” Coming into Coudehard, immediately south of Maczuga, the column lost one tank to enemy fire. Machine-gun fire from virtually every house forced the Superiors to dismount and begin clearing buildings. “With all guns blazing,” the Grenadiers “beat down the infantry” they could see and set buildings on fire with high-explosive shells. Captain Bernard Ghewy took on a Mark IV and a Panther. It should have been an uneven shootout for one Sherman, but Ghewy emerged victorious. Two more Panthers were eliminated by the Grenadiers. By battle’s end, virtually every building and even the gardens between were ablaze.32
It was about noon, and the Grenadiers and Superiors paused to regroup for the charge to the summit of Maczuga. The Poles, unaware that deliverance was close at hand, had detected a slackening in the ferocity of attempts to overrun their position. But they were unaware that the Germans were leaving. Throughout the morning they had repelled continual “bloody and stubborn battles” that gave them no cause to believe the siege was ending. “By this time shortage of ammunition, water and food supplies became exceedingly acute. A great many of our injured men died,” wrote Lieutenant Colonel L. Stankiewicz.33
Around the same time, a small battle group of 10th SS Panzer Division had reached Generalleutnant Eugen Meindl’s headquarters near the base of Maczuga. Its commander informed Meindl that his would be the last men out of the pocket. Meindl started readying his paratroopers and the remnants of II Panzer Corps to pull out. At 1600 hours, the Germans began leaving.34
The Grenadiers had finally managed to reach the Poles about two and a half hours earlier. Advancing up a narrow track through dense woods, the leading Grenadier tank found the way blocked by a burning Mark IV. “Turning off to avoid it, our leading tanks, crashing their way through the bordering trees, were suddenly confronted with two advancing Stuarts. Recognition was immediate: these were the last remaining Polish tanks making a final dash for help, and here we were. The delight on both sides was a sight for jaded eyes. Almost the first question the Poles asked was: ‘Have you a cigarette?’ Everything, even snipers, was forgotten in the relief of the moment.”
On the summit, “the scene was … the grimmest. Scores of corpses were scattered all about. The road was blocked with derelict vehicles. Several hundred wounded and some seven hundred loosely guarded prisoners were lying in an open field. The Poles, isolated for three days, cried with relief.” Soon a convoy of five Priests under command of the Grenadiers’ Captain George Sherwood arrived. Each vehicle was full of food, medical supplies, ammunition, and fuel. The regiment’s medical officer, Captain S.A. MacDonald, was also aboard. He began preparing Polish wounded for evacuation. Through the rest of the day and ensuing night, Sherwood’s Priests made a total of ten round trips that greatly relieved the Polish situation on Maczuga.35
Late in the day, the Highland Light Infantry and 1st Hussars linked up with the Poles in Chambois after advancing out of Saint-Lambert. Total Polish casualties during the three-day battle numbered 325 killed, 1,002 wounded, and 114 missing. This contrasts starkly with 1st Polish Armoured Division’s losses during the rest of the August fighting, which totalled 656 killed, wounded, and missing.36
Northeast of Chambois, the Dukes put in the last Canadian attack to close the Falaise Gap. Hill 262 (South) overlooked a deep valley in which lay a small collection of houses. The tankers were to seize th
ese buildings and then the summit. After pasting the buildings with a heavy main-gun bombardment, the tanks rolled in to find only Germans dead, wounded, or wanting to surrender. Hill 262 was equally seized without a fight.
Captain Douglas Harker looked upon the scene. “The little cluster of houses had taken an awful beating. Besides the pounding our guns had given it, a squadron of RAF Typhoons had … strafed and bombed it into dust. Gargantuan pieces of field equipment lay in twisted masses on the road. Blasted mobile 88’s, shattered cannons and overturned tanks, self-propelled guns, assault vehicles, trucks and staff cars mingled with the bloody ripped carcasses of rotting horses and men. Bodies floated face downwards in the muddy ditches and water-filled shell craters. Ammunition, food, and quartermasters’ supplies littered the roads and fields and in the midst of it all, pale, feeble wounded Germans weakly waved white cloths and pointed to the lacerated stump of a leg or arm, or to an oozing red smear. There were no houses left in that ‘village,’ just dust and charred wood and at the crossroads, where the market square had been, stood a Crucifix.”37
BY MID-AFTERNOON OF August 21, Falaise Gap was closed. This concluded the great battle in Normandy. Another two days passed before the last Germans trapped inside the pocket were disarmed and sent to prisoner-of-war cages or medical facilities. First Canadian Army reported that, during the period August 18 –23, it took 208 officers and 13,475 other ranks prisoner. Many more were taken by the other Allied armies.
Just how many Germans managed to escape from the pocket would never be accurately determined. German reports were widely contradictory. One claimed that 40–50 per cent got away.38 Yet on August 25, Fifth Panzer Army—which had Seventh Army under command—reported combined total fighting strength at 17,980 men, 314 artillery pieces, and only 42 tanks and assault guns. One report stated 12th SS Panzer Division’s total strength on August 23 at 300 men, 10 tanks, and no artillery.39 These figures were roundly refuted by the division’s chief of staff Sturmbannführer Hubert Meyer (no relation of Kurt Meyer). He reported on August 22 that the division was 12,500 men strong, of which about 2,500 were men in supply units. Because the division had no combat-ready tanks, SPGs, or armoured personnel carriers and barely any artillery, Meyer conceded it was no longer “ready for action as a divisional fighting unit.”40
There were approximately 100,000 Germans in the pocket, and of these about 10,000 were killed and 40,000 to 50,000 either taken prisoner or listed as missing. Certainly fewer than 50,000 escaped, and a high percentage of these were supply and service personnel rather than front-line fighting troops. But the disaster that befell the Germans during the Normandy Campaign must take into account not just the numbers who did or did not escape through the Falaise Gap. That was merely the endgame in a long, bloody campaign that raged from June 6 to August 21.
Again, no clear tally for German casualties exists. But most reports roughly agree with General Dwight D. Eisenhower’s conclusion that by August 25, the Germans had “lost, in round numbers, 400,000 killed, wounded, or captured, of which total 200,000 were prisoners of war.” Of the prisoners, he believed, 135,000 were taken in the period between July 25 and the closing of the gap.
German losses in equipment, particularly within the pocket, were terrific. Overall, Eisenhower reported the Germans losing 1,300 tanks, 500 assault guns, 1,500 field and heavier artillery, and 20,000 vehicles. Within the Falaise Gap area alone, Britain’s No. 2 Operational Research Section found 187 tanks and self-propelled guns, 157 lightly a rmoured vehicles, 1,778 lorries, 669 cars, and 252 guns—a total of 3,043 guns and vehicles.
Allied losses in the Normandy Campaign were also high. By the end of August, total casualties had reached 206,703—124,394 of those American and 82,309 British and Canadian. The numbers of Canadians killed, wounded, or missing was high relative to overall committed strength. Most casualties were suffered by the troops in the three divisions and single armoured brigade. Together, these had a strength of about 52,500 men. From the storming of Juno Beach through the breakout and closing of the Falaise Gap, there were 18,444 Canadian casualties, of whom 5,021 were fatal. Within Twenty-First Army Group, the divisions that suffered the highest casualty rates were 3rd Canadian Infantry Division followed by 2nd Canadian Infantry Division.41
A campaign as vast, long, and costly as Normandy inevitably becomes a source of endless debate on the comparative strategies, tactics, leadership abilities, and fighting quality of the various forces involved. These debates began even before the guns ceased firing. No question that the Canadian soldier fought as well or better than any other. The Germans would insist that they were always outnumbered and outgunned—this being the real reason they were defeated. The truth is that Canadian infantry, reduced to half or less their normal number, repeatedly attacked heavily defended positions held by forces of equal or superior strength and won. The same was true for Canadian tankers. Strategists generally argue that three-to-one force superiority is required for an attacker to overcome a prepared defence. The Canadians seldom enjoyed a ratio greater than one to one. Yet they prevailed.
Simonds emerged with a solid reputation. No Allied operation had gone even close to plan, but Totalize and Tractable were both considered at the time to have contributed significantly to the Allied breakout in Normandy.
Battle casualties among senior officers were shocking—Major General Rod Keller critically wounded, one brigadier killed, three others wounded; two out of eleven armoured regiment commanders killed or wounded; fourteen infantry commanders from twenty-four battalions lost due to wounds or illness.42
On August 18, the three Canadian divisional commanders had enjoyed a brief drink together. Dan Spry, Charles Foulkes, and George Kitching had all served in the Royal Canadian Regiment and were toasting that coincidence. Foulkes was down at the mouth, though, “quite sure … that he was going to be relieved … because he … felt that Simonds was ‘on the warpath’ and was going to fire someone!” Kitching felt Foulkes was safe, a hero even. Spry joked that having just arrived, he, at least, could hardly be fired. All agreed that Kitching was secure.
Yet on the afternoon of August 21, with the Falaise Gap safely closed, Simonds informed Kitching he was replacing him with 7th Canadian Infantry Brigade’s Harry Foster that very evening. Foster’s first words were, “What the hell’s gone wrong, George—you and Guy Simonds were so close?”43
“Shortly afterwards General Simonds told me what he had done,” his aide-de-camp Captain Marshal Stearns later said, “and that it was the most difficult thing he had ever had to do; that he had tremendous confidence in [Kitching] because of their close association in Sicily and Italy and almost loved him as he would a brother, and admired his great courage and personal ability; that he found it impossible to understand how things in the 4th Armoured had got so out of control. He felt he had no other choice than to replace him; that lives were at stake and he could take no more chances.”44
Lives were at stake. For even as the Normandy Campaign was brought to a successful finish, First Canadian Army began marching. Normandy was but the beginning. As August 21 closed, Algonquin Major George Cassidy looked from Point 240 out over the Falaise Gap. “As far as the eye could see lay the Valley of Desolation, palled in smoke from a thousand fires, alive with the stench of dead and burning flesh. Through the valley and beyond it, back along the battered road to Caen, the eye of the imagination could see once more the dust-laden air, shimmering in the August sun, and in that dust, swimming up to face us again, the shapes of those we had had to leave behind. Was it imagination that their fingers all pointed east, urging us on to the end for which they had died?”45
[ EPILOGUE ]
The Normandy Campaign in Memory
IT’S A WARM sunny day in late May, and the surf rolls gently onto the sand of Juno Beach in front of the resort hotels of Courseulles-sur-Mer. Across the bustling little harbour, the modernistic Juno Beach Centre—its shiny steel exterior and sharp, jutting angular roofline looking slightly menac
ing—is crowded with French school groups and busloads of Canadian and British tourists visiting the Normandy invasion beaches. Since its opening on June 6, 2003, the centre has become a must-visit attraction for the thousands of Canadians who come here each year. Some have relatives who were involved in the landing or the long summer of fire that followed in Normandy. But this is not true for most. In recent years, Canadian tourist visits to the invasion beaches has risen dramatically and show no sign of tapering or even levelling off.
Inside the centre, I meet a couple in their sixties from Halifax. The man’s father came ashore as a reinforcement nine days after the invasion and saw the war through to its end. There is also a middle-aged man and his elderly father from Regina. The elderly man is not a veteran, a little too young for that. But his brother was. He served in Italy and then the Netherlands as an artilleryman in a 1st Division regiment. Neither the father nor his son have been to Italy or the Netherlands and have no plans to go. Normandy is the draw, particularly the beaches. Juno Beach is the Canadian star of World War II remembrance.
Later, on the beachside promenade at Saint-Aubin-sur-Mer—where the North Shore (New Brunswick) Regiment landed—I stand near a restored German 50-millimetre gun battery. Not so covertly I overhear a conversation between a young family from Vancouver and their privately hired French tour guide. He describes the problems this gun gave the North Shores and Fort Garry Horse tankers that momentous day, until three tanks silenced it with a joint attack. Even the youngest daughter about age ten listens with rapt attention to the guide’s vivid retelling.