Around 2200, SS-Panzergrenadier Regiment 25, supported by Panthers, struck toward Bretteville from three directions. The attack from the south resulted in the platoon commander’s tank being immobilised in the town and surrounded. The attack from the southwest was ordered to rescue him, but the lead tank was knocked out and the rest driven off. In the attack from the west, three Panthers were hit simultaneously by concealed Canadian anti-tank guns; two managed to withdraw, but the other burned like a torch, though its crew managed to escape. The following morning the attack was broken off.
During the withdrawal Wünsche was wounded, as SS-Untersturmführer Chemnitz records:
The Panzers were returning from the attack. Since the road ran on top of an embankment, the Panzers had to be directed in order to get onto it. Initially, the commander of the Panzer Regiment, Max Wünsche, did this himself until I took over from him. One of the Panzers had turned around on the road. I stood in front of it directing the driver. Wünsche stood behind me to the right. The orderly officer of SS-Panzer Regiment 12, Untersturmführer Nehrlich, stood behind me to the left. At that moment, the Panther took a shell hit from a Canadian tank to the front armour. Wünsche was wounded in the head by a fragment. I took a shower of small fragments from my head to the knees. Nehrlich was so critically wounded by a fragment that, although he was immediately put into the sidecar of a motorcycle to be driven to the dressing station, he bled to death during the drive.
On the 9th, Panthers of III Kompanie, SS-Panzer Regiment 12, under SS-Obersturmführer Rudolf von Ribbentrop, having missed the attack on Bretteville, moved on Norrey with the Caen-Cherbourg railway embankment protecting their right flank. With Wünsche temporarily out of action, Kurt Meyer probably directed this attack. Ribbentrop had been wounded, so Hauptmann Lüdman led his twelve Panthers. However, once beyond the cover of the railway bank well-concealed anti-tank guns knocked out seven tanks and the advance was halted. Crew losses were also heavy, with eighteen of the thirty-five men involved killed.
The Kompanie moved to Fontenay-les-Pesnel to the west, but, with all its tanks suffering mechanical problems, withdrew to Harcourt. Two days later the division’s tanks claimed thirty-seven Shermans for the loss of three panzers in the fighting south of Le Mesnil
The stark reality of war soon came home to Emil Werner, serving with Meyer’s SS-Panzergrenadier Regiment 25:
Until Cambes everything went well. So far as we were concerned, the village looked fine. But on the outskirts we came under infantry fire and then all hell broke loose. We stormed a church where snipers had taken up positions. Here I saw the first dead man from our kompanie; it was Grenadier Ruehl from the headquarters platoon. I turned his body over myself – he’d been shot through the head. He was the second member of our company to die. Dead comrades already; and we still hadn’t seen any Englishmen. Then the situation became critical. My section commander was wounded in the arm and had to go to the rear. Grenadier Grosse from Hamburg leapt past me towards a clump of bushes with his sub-machine gun at the ready, screaming ‘Hands up! Hands up!’ Two Englishmen emerged with their hands held high. As far as I know, Grosse got the Iron Cross, second-class, for this.
The British and Canadians were dismayed at the Hitler Youth’s apparent fanaticism, little realising that they could expect little else from youngsters raised under the harsh dictates of National Socialism. Sergeant Leo Gariepy of the Canadian 3rd Division saw little reason for leniency toward these Nazi teenagers:
The morale of the men was very low indeed. So many of their longtime comrades had stayed behind on the battle field, the battle itself had been so savage, so furious, that every man felt that the 12th SS Panzer had a personal grudge against our tanks. Silently, grimly, we were looking at each other, knowing exactly what was in the other man’s mind… Mostly, everyone was rather vindictive, and silently swearing revenge.
Colonel H. S. Gillies, King’s Own Scottish Borderers, 15th (Scottish) Division, could not forget the hot reception meted out by the 12th SS at Cambes:
The attack entailed crossing a distance of about one thousand yards of open cornfield, which fell away from Cambes Wood. We had barely crossed the start line when the enemy reacted fiercely, with well-sited machine gun and intense mortar fire, which enfiladed the companies as they moved forward… After a sharp battle at close quarters, the village was cleared at dusk, but we were then subjected to an intense barrage of gun and mortar fire, which caused many more casualties. At best, it was only possible in the pitch darkness to establish a tentative defence system and we expected the enemy to launch a counterattack at the first opportunity. They had now been identified as the notorious 12th SS (Hitler Youth) Panzer Division.
The battle for Hill 112 was a brutal affair. SS-Schütze Zimmer experienced the British attempts to dislodge them on 10 June:
From 6.30 to 8.00am, again heavy machine-gun fire. Then Tommy attacks with great masses of infantry and many tanks. We fight as long as possible but we realise we are in a losing position. By the time the survivors try to pull back, we realise that we are surrounded.
On the 11th, the Canadian 6th Armoured Regiment lost thirty-seven of its seventy-six tanks in the fighting around Le Mensil-Patry. By now the 12th SS had lost about twenty-five per cent of its manpower, twenty per cent of its tanks and ten per cent of its guns. In total about sixty Panzer IV and V tanks remained serviceable. Fritz Witt was killed at Venoix on the morning of the 14th when his HQ was caught in an Allied naval bombardment and shrapnel stuck him in the face. Following his death, Kurt ‘Panzer’ Meyer, took command of the division.
By 15 June it was decided to withdraw the depleted 716th Infantry Division to the south of France and Chevallerie’s 1st Army. In the event this proved difficult as units were with the 346th, 352nd and 711th Infantry Divisions and 21st Panzer. Having suffered 6,261 casualties its withdrawal was not completed until late July and then it ended up with Wiese’s 19th Army on the French Riviera.
Containing Epsom
It seemed that the British Operation Epsom, designed to punch west of Caen on 25 June, could not fail; directly in its path lay the 12th SS holding the line from Fontenay-le-Pesnel through St Marvieu and Cheux, eastwards to Carpiquet air field. Rommel moved the 2nd Schwere Panzer Kompanie (Heavy Tank Company) with Tiger tanks behind SS-Panzergrenadier Regiment 26. The British XXX Corps was to jump off first, followed by VIII Corps the following day. The latter had 60,000 men, 600 tanks, 300 guns and the support of another 400 guns from the flanking XXX Corps, plus naval and air support. It fell to SS-Panzer Regiment 12 and SS-Panzergrenadier Regiment 25 to resist VIII Corps, while just to the west of Caen SS-Panzergrenadier Regiment 25 was facing the Canadian 3rd Division
The plan was for the British VIII Corps to break through between XLVII Panzer Corps and I SS-Panzer Corps, force a bridgehead over the Odon River and take the strategic height of Hill 112. For the British it was a race against time as the II SS Panzer Corps and 2nd SS were heading for the sector; even if the attack pierced the in-depth defences of the 12th SS, the intervention of German armoured reinforcements could kill Epsom.
On 25 June, XXX Corps conducted Operation Dauntless, a subsidiary attack to secure VIII Corps’ western lank before the main offensive carried out by the 49th (West Riding) Infantry Division, supported by the 8th Armoured Brigade. The 49th also conducted Operation Martlet, intended to capture Fontenay-le-Pesnel.
Second Lieutenant Stuart Hills, Nottinghamshire Sherwood Rangers Yeomanry, 8th Armoured Brigade, was then a fresh faced twenty-one year-old who had only been with them since January, having arrived straight from the Officer Cadet Training Unit at Sandhurst. The Sherwood Rangers were assigned to support the 147th Brigade’s attack on Fontenay. Recalling his role in Operation Epsom, Hills remembered a stiff reception from the 12th SS:
The fighting in Fontenay was fierce and confused, with enemy tanks of 12th SS Panzer dug in defensively east of the town, and we did not have enough infantry to take the village. At about four o’clock
in the afternoon the attack had clearly run out of steam, infantry losses had been heavy and we withdrew to the heights of Point 102 above Fontenay to replenish our stocks of ammunition, refuel and have something to eat.
The attack, though, was renewed, Fontenay captured and the road to Caen cut. A Squadron moved forward to attack Rauray. As Stuart Hills relates it was in for a nasty surprise:
As they cleared Fontenay, they were suddenly confronted by an enormous tank coming round the bend in front. It was hard to know who was more surprised, but John [Semken, the Squadron Leader] shrieked, ‘Fire, it’s a Hun,’ and they loosed off about ten rounds into the smoke. As this cleared away, it was observed that the crew were baling out as small flames came from inside the tank. It was a Tiger of 12th SS Panzer, the first Tiger to be captured in Normandy, and made an impressive sight at close quarters as both its size and the thickness of its armour became apparent.
Hot splinters from the driver’s visor had caused the crew to abandon their tank, not the shells from the Rangers’ Shermans. Some of Semken’s tanks included the Sherman Firefly armed with the powerful 17-pounder anti-tank gun and by the end of the day they had accounted for thirteen Panzer IVs, a Tiger and a Panther tank.
Between Tessel Wood and Rauray, ten Tiger tanks were dug in and the SS-Panzer Regiment 26 repulsed the British attack through Le Manoir from Tessel towards Rauray and established positions near Le Haut du Bosc, facing toward Cheux. Assembling across the line Fontenay–Tessel–Bretteville to attack toward Juvigny, the heavy tank company’s actions left SS-Panzergrenadier Regiment 26, which lay directly in the path of the British attack, unsupported. The latter was thrown into a counterattack at 0500 on the 26th
Hubert Meyer, Operations Staff Officer, 12th SS, expecting an armoured attack, tried to get the order rescinded but I SS Panzer Corps would not comply. The results were predictable:
At 0700 on 26 June, this great British attack of about 500–600 tanks on a breadth of about three miles (5kms) rolled over the Pioneers and the Panzergrenadiers. Eventually it came to a halt only because our artillery fire separated the enemy infantry from their tanks. Several pockets of resistance did considerable damage. The battle headquarters of the Pioneer Battalion 12 under Sturmführer Siegfried Müller had been made into a strongpoint which was to be held until well into the night; then the survivors managed to get to the west of Le Haut du Bosc, and were picked up by some of our panzers advancing in a counterattack. As late as 28 June, our operators picked up radio messages from British tanks attacking the remnants of 3 Pioneer Kompanie which still held several strong points in the old frontline between St Mauvieu and Fontenay. We tried to convince I SS Panzer Corps that a well-planned counterattack by tank units from the southwest might restore the original front, or at least, relieve the surrounded units, but fresh forces were not available.
The 15th (Scottish) Division, with 11th Armoured Division and 31st Tank Brigade, also broke through the 12th SS defences. Likewise, the 43rd (Wessex) Division, supported by the 4th Armoured Brigade, reached Mouen. On the 27th, the 15th (Scottish) Division captured a bridge over the Odon and 11th Armoured Division moved to take Hill 112.
On the 28th a hastily-formed kampfgruppe from 12th SS supported by 21st Panzer’s 4th Kompanie, Panzer Regiment 22, which had been redirected from the British airborne bridgehead, attacked along the railway embankment toward Mouen. The young panzergrenadiers broke through and drove the British back.
With the British pouring out of the Odon bridgehead, the Luftwaffe Motorised Flak Unit I/53 armed with 8.8cm dual-use guns, which had been protecting the 12th SS workshops, was moved forward. Its job was to relieve a battalion of 12th SS on Hill 112. What they found was half a company of exhausted teenagers who had fought hard to fend off encroaching British tanks the previous day.
The Luftwaffe’s flak guns were soon engaging British armour coming through the village of Esquay to the southwest. The following day, British tanks and air attacks drove them from the hill. The British 20th Armoured Brigade withdrew from Hill 112 on the night of 29/30 June, not because of the dogged resistance by12th SS but the arrival of II Panzer Corps with the 9th and 10th SS Panzer Divisions, which came into the line between XLVII Panzer Corps and I SS Panzer Corps.
The Germans had succeeded in containing Epsom but at a cost of over 2,600 casualties sustained by the 12th SS. Epsom cost the British VIII Corps 4,020 casualties; the 11th Armoured Division alone lost 100 tanks and suffered 1,000 killed, wounded and missing during 26–29 June.
By early July the SS holding Carpiquet air field were expecting an attack by the Canadian 8th Infantry Brigade. The garrison consisted of just 150 Hitler Youth teenagers drawn from SS-Panzergrenadier Regiment 25; about 100 were on the air field and the rest in the village of Carpiquet itself, supported by a few tanks and an 8.8cm gun. The attack was launched at 0500 on 4 July and the Canadians cleared Carpiquet village and then ran into the panzers and the gun. The Germans counterattacked the following day.
On 6 July panzergrenadiers of the 12th SS deployed to the northern suburbs of Caen. Within two days they and a regiment from the 16th Luftwaffe Field Division were ejected by Montgomery’s frontal assault on the city known as Operation Charnwood, which commenced on the 7th. Initially Caen was heavily bombed and then, on the 8th, German defences were smothered by an artillery barrage. Major General R F L Keller’s Canadian 3rd Division attacked on the German left, L O Lyne’s inexperienced 59th (Staffordshires) in the centre and L G Whistler’s 3rd Infantry on the right.
The Canadians sought to exploit their gains at Carpiquet, striking Caen from the west. To the east, the 3rd Infantry were to secure Lebisey and Herouville, their original D-Day objectives. The bombing, while impeding the progress of the attackers, did not completely neutralise the defenders and 7.5cm and 8.8cm anti-tank guns met the tanks. At La Bijude the 12th SS were well entrenched and it took two attempts before it was firmly in 59th Division’s hands. They were then brought to a halt before Malan.
The British 3rd Division reached Lebisey and Herouville within an hour and brushed aside the 16th Luftwaffe Field Division, only to find Caen an impassable sea of craters and rubble. In the meantime, the 1st SS tried to mass their armour for a counterattack, but air strikes and naval gun fire drove back their thirty-five panzers, which suffered some losses.
At the village of Buron, northwest of Caen, elements of III Abteilung, SS-Panzergrenadier Regiment 25 were surrounded and on the verge of being overrun by Canadian tanks. Kurt Meyer and General Eberbach, Panzergruppe West’s commander, were at the Ardenne monastery. Meyer recalled the dramatically unfolding events:
All available tanks were sent towards Buron. The attack failed to get through. From the [Ardenne] monastery church tower I watched the tank fight as it surged back and forth. Both sides suffered heavy losses. Then, suddenly, enemy tanks appeared from Authie [to the north], heading straight for Ardenne.
The tank kompanie of von Ribbentrop with its fifteen Panthers deployed against this mass of enemy tanks and they shot up the enemy armour, halting its advance. The last enemy tank was destroyed only 100 metres west of Ardenne but von Ribbentrop had saved the command post. His initial instructions had been to relieve the panzergrenadiers and clear the Canadians from Buron, however he was distracted by the Canadian armour to the left of the village and had to send a platoon of Panthers to deal with them. Reaching Buron, von Ribbentrop’s Panthers knocked out several Canadian tanks.
Loathe to enter the village without infantry support, von Ribbentrop quickly found the tables turning as he noted:
Just then a well-camouflaged Canadian anti-tank gun must have opened fire, because two or three tanks to my right went up in flames one after another. There was nothing left to do but pull back to our starting position and support the hard-pressed infantry from there.
The company’s remaining tanks spent the rest of the day under heavy artillery fire around the monastery. Several engagements with enemy armour took place, which prevented the enemy
from advancing any further and enabled the monastery to be held until it had to be abandoned soon afterwards.
SS-Unterscharführer Freiberg, serving with Ribbentrop, found himself in one of the three Panthers knocked out:
We crossed the open field to the wall around the village of Buron at high speed. As we moved past an opening in the wall, there were suddenly two explosions. Sepp Trattnick’s tank and another tank burst into flames. We immediately opened fire with both machine-guns on the opening of the wall. I saw some movement there and then a lash from the muzzle of an anti-tank gun. The round struck our gun mantlet and the solid projectile ended up in the fighting compartment. Our sight was smashed, and the gunner was wounded in the face. I received several fragments in my left arm.
The crew in the turret bailed out at once, and because of the heavy machinegun fire, took cover behind the Panther. My radio operator and driver had not bailed out, and were still calmly sitting in the tank, whose engine was still running.
I therefore jumped back up onto the tank and grasped the throat microphone, which was dangling over the side of the turret. I called to my driver: ‘Back up!’
His tank withdrew to Ardenne monastery, south of Authie, only to be attacked by Allied fighter-bombers. During the fighting in the Buron area 1st SS lost thirteen panzers to a Canadian 17-pounder anti-tank gun battery. Having secured Buron the Canadians took Ginchy, Authie and St Louet as the SS abandoned Carpiquet. During the heavy fighting on 8 July III Kompanie’s Panthers destroyed twenty-seven tanks, eight Bren gun carriers and four antitank guns.
The British, suffering heavy losses, took Malan on the 9th, and the loss of the defensive chain of villages north of Caen now meant that the city itself was open to attack. At this point Kurt Meyer took the decision to withdraw south of Caen and back over the Orne to spare his men further slaughter. To the west of the city he also withdrew from Carpiquet air field. South of the river his men entrenched themselves in the industrial suburbs of Colombelles and Faubourg de Vaucelles.
Falaise: The Flawed Victory Page 10