In the run up to D-Day the 21st Panzer Division was far from idle. With its limited, and in some cases antiquated, resources it made every preparation it could for the anticipated Allied attack. Nineteen year old Gefreiter Werner Kortenhaus recalled:
In April 1944 we were still stationed in Brittany but were then moved to the area of Caen at the end of the month. I believe that this was at the order of Rommel himself. In the weeks that followed we actually occupied ourselves less with military training, but more with manual work because we had to dig holes in which to bury our tanks, so that only the gun barrel was above the earth. It was very strenuous physical work for young people, and when we had finished that, there were still the lorries and munition stores to dig in. And added to all this was also the fact that the large lat plain where we were was expected to be a site for enemy air landings, so we stuck lots of trees – chopped down trees – vertically into the earth. We called these ‘Rommel’s asparagus,’ because it was Rommel who had ordered them.
Petrol and ammunition shortages, though, greatly hampered training; while each panzer had its full complement of 100 shells, for live firing the crews were only allowed to expend one or two rounds. Like all soldiers food became a preoccupation with the men constantly grumbling about the rations, or rather the lack of them, and their quality. Understandably, the local French farmers did not go out of their way to supply the division and in the name of good discipline Feuchtinger’s Officers did all they could to prevent theft and looting. It was made clear that anyone caught stealing would be imprisoned.
Despite all the hard work and lack of supplies, 21st Panzer’s morale remained high. In the back of the panzertruppen‘s minds they knew that strategically, following Stalingrad and El Alamein, things were not going well; the task in front of them was another matter and they were confident about that.
The 21st Panzer Division’s organisation was largely unique in Normandy; unlike the other panzer divisions (with the exception of 10th SS) it had no Panther tank battalion. Instead it had an assault gun battalion and an anti-tank battalion with towed 8.8cm guns. In addition, each of its infantry regiments had one battalion equipped with armoured half-track personnel carriers. At the beginning of June 1944 the 21st had a total of 104 Panzer IVs, including six with the short barrel 7.5cm gun. In manpower terms it was almost at full strength, nearing some 17,000 men.
The II Abteilung of Panzer Regiment 22 was also equipped with a variety of captured French tanks, while Panzer Artillery Regiment 155 and Sturmgeschütz Abteilung 200 were armed with self-propelled and assault guns, also converted from French tanks. The latter, under Major Alfred Becker, were not in reality Sturmgeschütz as they had open fighting compartments and could not really function as assault guns. Based on the French Hotchkiss H-39 chassis, armed with a 7.5cm or 10.5cm gun plus additional armour, these vehicles were perilously over loaded. They were unable to engage Allied tanks on anything like equal terms and when the time came could do little more than conduct a fighting withdrawal.
The chain of command for 21st Panzer was a horrible muddle that made little sense. While Feuchtinger was responsible to Schweppenburg’s Panzergruppe West, he was immediately subordinate to the 716th Infantry Division under Generalleutenant Wilhelm Richter. The latter wanted anticipated Allied airborne landings swiftly mopped up and had a free hand with Feuchtinger’s infantry and guns, but he could not commit Oppeln-Bronikowski’s tanks, which were considered part of Rommel’s reserves, and at the crucial moment the latter was on his way back from Germany. To further complicate matters Richter’s division was subordinate to General Erich Marcks’ LXXXIV Corps.
Invasion: they’re coming!
At 0020 hours, D-Day, 6 June, the quietness of the night was shattered as the gliders of the British 6th Airborne Division landed by the Caen canal bridge at Bénouville and the Orne River bridge near Ranville. The paratroopers leapt from their gliders and after a short sharp exchange with the startled German guards, both bridges were successfully secured. Other units also succeeded in destroying the Merville battery and seized the four bridges over the River Dives and its tributaries. This secured the left flank of the British invasion.
At the same time Gefreiter Kortenhaus and four of his comrades were patrolling north of Falaise. Little did they appreciate the significance of the birthplace of William the Conqueror or realise that the British 6th Airborne was in the process of securing the important crossings over the Orne and Caen Canal. Although they were used to aircraft droning by high above, the noise was much lower and Kortenhaus assumed that fifth columnists were being dropped in the darkness. They found no parachutists and the sound of aircraft engines did not abate so they returned to their unit, which they found awake and alert.
Kortenhaus felt a sense of apprehension but also had more mundane things to worry about:
As we got close to the village where our tanks were dug in, the moonlight was coming through the clouds, and we could see that the crews were at their tanks. This was unusual because most of them would normally be asleep. ‘What’s going on?’ I asked. It occurred to me that it might be some sort of night exercise. They said, ‘No, it’s an alarm.’ This was about 00.45. As the others prepared the tank, I remembered that my laundry was still with the French woman who did ourwashing. I woke her and said, ‘I need my clothes straight away.’ She said, ‘But they’re still wet.’ I said, ‘I must have them anyway,’ and paid for them, and ran to my tank.
After months of waiting, Kotenhaus finally found himself going to war with wet laundry. His division was ready in remarkably quick time, but now the dithering of the German high command took a hand in ensuring that the British and Canadians did not find an unpleasant surprise waiting for them just behind the beaches.
From General Feuchtinger to the lowest panzertruppen, a sense of frustration ultimately permeated the division. Kortenhaus and his comrades were baffled beyond belief; after all their anti-invasion training they just sat there kicking their heels:
I would say that we were ready to march at 2am at the latest. As well as the earlier alarm, news of an airborne landing at Caen had meanwhile come through on the telephone, and we were ready to go. The engines of the tanks were running, but we didn’t receive any marching orders. We thought, ‘If we have to march, let’s do it now while it’s dark and the enemy planes can’t see us.’ We waited for orders, and we waited. Just stood there, inactive by our tanks. We couldn’t understand why we weren’t getting any orders at all.
In the meantime, all General Richter could do was order Panzergrenadier Regiment 192’s II Abteilung into action against the British in Bénouville at 0200. Oberleutnant Hans Höller, commanding a section of 7.5cm self-propelled guns in the 8th Schwere Kompanie of II Abteilung drove east from Cairon and fought his way into Bénouville, held by the 7th Parachute Battalion. Under the cover of darkness they later withdrew to Lebisey.
Glider Pilot Alexander Morrison, 6th Airborne Division, who landed east of the Orne in the Ranville area recalls:
In our briefing, we had been told that the German 21st Panzer Division was located further east of our position and that the anticipated armour counterattack would first come from them. Accordingly when at 4am we could distinctly hear the sound of tracked vehicles, we realised that we were now ‘for it’ because a 45-ton Tiger tank presents a formidable proposition! But miracles happened and this time we were saved by the Navy. Warned of the danger, an Army spotter plane was airborne at first light and located the squadrons of German tanks assembling for the attack. Fortunately, the pilot was in direct communication with the Navy who promptly alerted HMS Warspite which was standing offshore. After a couple of sighters, she let loose with tremendous shelling and heavily blasted the whole area.
It was a fantastic experience to witness the terrible firepower of this battleship and to hear the huge shells roaring overhead like express trains to land with devastating effect right on the German assembly. The carnage must have been appalling and the severely damaged t
anks shortly abandoned their attack and retired on Caen.
Feuchtinger was in Paris and eventually his performance would cost him dearly. Hastening back to his command he recalled:
I waited impatiently all night for some instructions. But not a single order from a higher formation was received by me. Realizing that my armoured division was closest to the scene of operations, I finally decided at 6.30 in the morning that I had to take some action. I ordered my tanks to attack 6th Airborne Division which had entrenched itself in a bridgehead over the Orne. To me this constituted the most immediate threat to the German position.
Hardly had I made this decision when at 7 o’clock I received my first intimation that a higher command did still exist. I was told by Army Group B that I was now under the command of the 7th Army. But received no further orders as to my role. At 9 o’clock I was informed that I would receive any future orders from LXXXIV Infantry Corps [General Marcks], and finally at 10 o’clock I was given my first operational instructions. I was ordered to stop the move of my tanks against the Allied airborne troops, and to turn west and aid forces protecting Caen.
The upshot was that the British 6th Airborne was spared a nasty mauling and the bridges it had secured remained in Allied hands. In the meantime Feuchtinger, Kortenhaus and their comrades miraculously were not strafed or bombed as the 21st trundled toward Caen. The city itself was not so lucky. As Kortenhaus related, they were on borrowed time:
The long road from Falaise to Caen rises to a hill where one can suddenly get a view over Caen, and as we drove over this hill we got a shock because the city of Caen was burning. I had never seen the city before, never been there at all, and all I could see was a huge black cloud over Caen as though oil had been burnt. At that point, I realized for the first time that I was at war. As we got closer to Caen our tanks had difficulty getting through the city because the streets were covered with rubble. So we lost a lot of time while some tanks went west around the city and others went east.
Despite all the chaos, the British landings remained vulnerable as Feuchtinger manoeuvred into position to attack. Between the British beach codenamed Sword and the Canadians’ Juno beachhead to the west, the Germans held a four-mile (6km) wide strip that ran all the way to the coast. British Royal Marine Commandos had been unable to force their way through at St Aubin and Lion-sur-Mer to link the two. Feuchtinger’s artillery was on the ridge above the village of Périers, south of Hermanville and Lion, protecting the salient and providing a potential springboard for a German counterattack against either the British or Canadians.
Major General T. G. Rennie’s British 3rd Infantry Division, having landed on Sword, was driving on Caen from the north and Major General R. F. L. Keller’s Canadian 3rd Infantry Division, which had landed on Juno, approached from the northwest. Luckily for the 21st Panzer, Rennie’s division showed a complete lack of flare; having captured Hermanville, it dug in instead of trying to outflank the Germans at Périers. It did not reach 6th Airborne at the Bénouville Bridge until the end of the day and only got to within three miles (5km) of Caen.
In the northern outskirts the 21st Panzer found itself struggling through a tide of frightened French refugees. Hauptmann Herr’s twenty-five panzers of I Kompanie reached the area between Lebisey and Biéville at about 1500. Hauptmann Wilhelm von Gottberg with the II and III Kompanies reached Périers ridge at about 1600 while the I Abteilung, Panzergrenadier Regiment 192, headed for the coast. Feuchtinger found the odds not to his liking:
Once over the Orne river, I drove north towards the coast. By this time the enemy, consisting of three British and three Canadian Infantry Divisions, had made astonishing progress and had already occupied a strip of high ground about six miles (10km) from the sea. From here, the excellent anti-tank gunfire of the Allies knocked out eleven of my tanks before I had barely started. However, one battle-group did manage to bypass these guns and actually reached the coast at Lion-sur-Mer, at about seven in the evening.
Into action
Feuchtinger had started the day with 124 tanks. However, while manoeuvring from the southwest of Caen northwards to attack the invaders, he lost thirty-four to Allied air attack and mechanical problems. By 1600 the British had reached Biéville, but beyond the village in Lebisey wood, just two and a half miles (4km) from Caen, they bumped into forty panzers under von Oppeln-Bronikowski.
Before the attack, Oppeln-Bronikowski was briefed by General Marcks, commander of LXXXIV Corps, who placed him under no illusions about the seriousness of his mission. ‘Oppeln, the future of Germany may very well rest on your shoulders,’ he said, adding, ‘If you don’t push the British back to the sea, we’ve lost the war’.
Feuchtinger and Marcks watched the tanks go in. The 21st finally counter-attacked in two places; thirty-five panzers under Gottberg struck at the Périers ridge four miles (6km) from the coast, while von Oppeln-Bronikowski with another twenty-five tanks tried the ridge at Biéville.
Tanks of the British Staffordshire Yeomanry south of Biéville reported German panzers rolling northward at 1600. They were well prepared, supported by 17-pounder anti-tank guns of the 20th Anti-Tank Regiment, Royal Artillery, and 6-pounder anti-tank guns of the Shropshire Light Infantry. The four lead panzers were ‘brewed up’ and the rest swung away for the cover of some nearby woods. The British gave chase and the panzers swung east towards the Périers ridge.
They bumped into another squadron of the Staffordshire’s tanks hulled down on Point 61 and in the following firefight the 21st Panzer lost another dozen tanks. Bronikowski lost six tanks and Gottberg ten. They had little choice but to dig in. While Feuchtinger claimed he only had seventy tanks left by the end of the day, the British only counted twenty abandoned panzers, with RAF Typhoon fighter-bombers claiming another six on the outskirts of Caen. Only six panzers and a handful of infantry made it as far as Lion-sur-Mer.
In the meantime Kortenhaus and his company had been detached to secure the Orne against the activities of 6th Airborne Division. By 2000 hours Feutchinger’s divided command was ready to push down the open salient, but at that point a massive Allied airborne reinforcement arrived and the panzers wavered. East of the Orne these airborne reinforcements bumped into seventeen tanks of IV Kompanie, which formed part of Kampfgruppe von Luck. Luckily darkness was falling and in the confusion the panzers advanced on their own panzergrenadiers and the attack was called off.
During the fighting on the 6th, Panzer Artillery Regiment 155 lost two batteries, leaving just seven batteries to cover a 15 mile (25km) front. This meant that the assault gun battalion and the infantry had to give up their batteries and self-propelled guns, respectively, to the artillery.
Feuchtinger then tried to coordinate his efforts with the 12th SS Panzer Division, recalling:
About midnight, Kurt Meyer [commander 12th SS Panzergrenadier Regiment 25] arrived at my headquarters. He was to take over my left and we were to carry out a combined operation next morning. I explained the situation to Meyer and warned him about the strength of the enemy. Meyer studied the map, turned to me with a confident air and said, ‘Little fish! We’ll throw them back into the sea in the morning’.
By day break, though, the British and Canadians had closed the gap and 21st Panzer had lost it golden opportunity to rupture the bridgehead. In reality, any attack would probably have been hemmed in and decimated by naval gunfire and Allied fighter-bombers.
While Feuchtinger and Oppeln-Bronikowski may have wrung their hands in despair over the lack of firm direction and lost time, they had thwarted the British securing Caen on day one of the invasion. Although the 6th Airborne had valiantly secured the Allies’ left flank, the British 3rd Division had failed to take Caen, a major D-Day objective, thanks to the presence of 21st Panzer. Similarly the Canadians failed to capture Carpiquet airfield three miles (5km) west of Caen.
The city itself was pivotal to the British break-out and all the time it remained in German hands it was an obstruction to General Montgomery’s plans
. The fate of France and indeed Panzergruppe West now rested with the outcome of the battle for Caen and 21st Panzer’s ability to hold onto it.
Kortenhaus was shocked at the rapid rate with which the division lost its tanks:
My company was under the control of Kampfgruppe von Luck. We made two attacks, one on 7 June and one on the 9th, and had a lot of losses – of our seventeen tanks, only one survived. The rest were destroyed. That had a big effect on us, and we sat around afterwards very crushed in spirits. It was now clear to us that we weren’t going to do it, we weren’t going to push the Allies back. The Allied attacks were too strong, particularly because of their air superiority. There was hardly any chance of avoiding a bad ending. But when an order came to attack we still did it – it must have been the same on the Allied side – because if a commander says, ‘Attack!’ or ‘Tanks advance!’ no one could say, ‘I am not doing it.’
Trooper Peter Davies, 1st East Riding Yeomanry, found himself up against the 21st Panzer on 7 June:
We had a nasty time at a tiny hamlet of a dozen places called Galmanche [northwest of Caen]. We were mortared all day by German infantry, and shelled by artillery, and we had to hold it without infantry. We fought there for five hours. It was said afterwards that we were lucky we weren’t annihilated, that B Squadron had taken the brunt of the battle. We lost a lot of commanders dead or wounded. I think it was eleven out of nineteen in one day…
The Germans had the greater firepower. We were outgunned on a number of occasions. Their tanks were better than ours, their guns were better than ours – I don’t think their crews were better than ours. I have to say that, but I believe it was true. We were faster, we could manoeuvre better – we could survive better…
Falaise: The Flawed Victory Page 6