Trapped in the Falaise salient was the cream of the German tank forces, including elements of the 9th, 21st, 116th, 2nd SS, 9th SS, 10th SS, and 12th SS Panzer Divisions. By now, 116th Panzer was down to only fifteen tanks, 1st SS had just nineteen tanks, the 10th SS eight and 12th SS about twenty. The 116th Panzer Division tried to hold up the Americans, but the Germans had lost 100 armoured fighting vehicles.
By mid-August, along the northern shoulder of the pocket were the 21st, 1st SS and 12th SS Panzer Divisions fending of the British, Canadian and Polish forces. To the south the 10th SS, 9th, 1st SS, 2nd, 116th, 2nd SS Panzer Divisions and 17th SS Panzergrenadier Division were deployed from west to east respectively, resisting the Americans
The western end was defended by elements of seven Infantry and one parachute division lying north to south: 326th, 3rd Fallschirmjäger, 363rd, 331st, 353rd, 243rd, 84th and 275th. Notably the 363rd was holding positions east of Flers, 22 miles (35km) west of the Falaise-Argentan Road. Behind these forces were the 2nd SS and 9th SS Panzer Divisions.
On the northern edge of the pocket also lay the 276th, 277th, 271st and 89th Infantry Divisions. The commander of the 276th, perhaps sensing all was lost, ordered all those men not needed, some 4,000 soldiers from an original strength of 13,500, to withdraw on 14 August. The only infantry to the south with the remains of the panzers were weak elements of the mangled 708th Infantry Division. About a half of the rapidly-contracting pocket lay west of the Orne, while the other half lay west of the Dives.
The various Corps staffs found themselves scattered throughout the salient, unable to maintain effective control of their formations. At the western end, deployed north to south, were General Meindl’s II Parachute Corps and Elfeldt’s LXXXIV Corps. Along the southern edge, west to east were Krüger and von Funck’s LVIII and XLVII Panzer Corps, while to the north was Straube’s LXXIV Corps with Priess’ I SS Panzer Corps lying east of Falaise. In reality, many of the radio trucks had been lost and staff members were cut off from their HQs; those HQs that did retain any cohesion found it extremely difficult to get through to the divisions under their command. Only Bittrich’s II SS Panzer Corps in the middle of the pocket was able to withdraw while still exercising control of its divisional assets.
Beyond the northern shoulder of the Falaise salient, resting on Morteaux-Coulibuef, was the German 85th Infantry Division, struggling to hold the Polish 1st Armoured Division at bay; north of them, Hans von Obstfelder’s LXXXVI Corps was facing three British divisions. The 51st (Highland) Division was pushing toward St Pierre-sur-Dives, while the 7th Armoured and 49th (West Riding) Divisions were pushing on Mézidon. They were over the Dives and the Vie, driving toward Lisieux by 19 August. This sector was held by the German 272nd Infantry Division, which was able to withdraw from Normandy in good order.
General Bradley, fearing his troops might be trampled by the fleeing enemy, refrained from driving on to Falaise. This meant the two German armies trapped in the Falaise pocket were able to struggle eastward for another week. To the north, the German defenders held up the Canadian advance, known as Operation Tractable, for two days before they reached Falaise. There, 1st SS was on its last legs and similarly 12th SS had only fifteen tanks left. Canadian soldier Duncan Kyle recalled the carnage:
Germans charred coal-black, looking like blackened tree trunks lay besides smoking vehicles. One didn’t realise the obscene mess was human until it was poked at. I remember wishing the Germans didn’t have to use so many horses. Seeing all those dead animals on their backs…The road to Falaise was nauseating. I felt like puking many times, what butchery. The air force did its job well.
Fighting retreat
On the night of 14/15 August, Army Group B ordered all anti-aircraft artillery to be withdrawn from the pocket. Lacking support from the Luftwaffe, 5th Panzer Army (as Panzergruppe West had been known for the past week) was on its own and at the mercy of Allied fighter-bombers. Panzer Lehr had withdrawn on the 13th, but had left behind Kampfgruppe Kuhnow, consisting of a tank company, a howitzer battery and elements of Panzer grenadier Regiment 902. This crossed the Orne at Mesnil-Jean on the night of 16/17 August and joined the 12th SS. The German position became completely untenable on the 15th when the Allies landed in the south of France. The 11th Panzer Division, conducting defensive combat, withdrew to Alsace to defend the Belfort Gap in September.
Officer-cadet Kurt Misch and his comrades of 12th SS soon realised that, after all their tough resistance to the advancing Canadian and Polish forces, they were surrounded. Misch remembered the sense of apprehension:
On the night of 15 August we were marching in an unknown direction. During the night we suddenly saw Verey lights [flares] on three sides; we looked at each other knowingly – surrounded? Next day, we were sure. We tried to keep it from the men as long as possible. But they realised it as soon as the field kitchen did not turn up and the rations got smaller. Something new, unknown, takes possession of us. All the usual joking is silence. We are all inwardly preoccupied, wondering how to meet the situation, as individuals. If it does not mean death, being taken prisoner will mean a long separation from home. We ‘old’ ones stick together. Our Chief leaves no doubts in our minds about the gravity of the situation, and I come back from the conference deep in thought. The Verey lights hang like great signs in the heavens. The front lies beneath them in a breathless silence. Low-flying German planes drop rations, and a large container of chocolate lands near me. A nice surprise, and a greeting from the outside world. We have not yet been abandoned.
The truth was that Panzergruppe West, Panzergruppe Eberbach and 7th Army were well and truly trapped. The French Maquis were also active in the pocket, blocking roads with felled trees, harassing stragglers and, where possible, negotiating the surrender of isolated pockets of troops. Tired and hungry columns of Germans would often be greeted by a new roadblock with locals nonchalantly hanging around.
Those commanders that could make it, including von Kluge, Hausser and Eberbach, assembled at Nécyin the early hours of the 16th. All talk of a decisive counterattack was now completely forgotten; there was no way the Avranches/Mortain operation could be resurrected. Eberbach recalled the grim reality of the situation now engulfing the senior German command:
Each of us told him [Kluge] that an attack with divisions now bled white, without air forces, and without a safe supply service, was unthinkable. Only a quick withdrawal from the encirclement could, perhaps, avoid catastrophe. Kluge was now ready to give all orders for evacuation of the ‘finger’, as we had proposed, but only after having communicated with Hitler’s headquarters. Without its approval, he did not dare to make such a far-reaching decision. The people there, he said, lived in another world without any idea of the actual situation here, as he knew from our reports and what he had experienced himself in the last 24 hours.
Hitler grudgingly agreed to let the German Army withdraw through the Argentan-Falaise Gap. The II SS Panzer Corps (2nd SS, 9th SS, 12th SS and 21st Panzer Divisions) were to hold the northern flank against the British and Canadians and XLVII Panzer Corps (2nd and 116th Panzer Divisions) were to hold the south against the Americans while the remains of 7th Army, 5th Panzer Army and Panzergruppe Eberbach conducted a fighting retreat.
Field Marshal Walther Model replaced von Kluge as C-in-C West on 17 August, the latter committing suicide the following day. Model gained a reputation as Hitler’s ‘fireman’, being sent to stabilise various areas of the vast battlefield. He had fought in Poland, France and Russia, most notably he commanded the 9th Army on the Eastern Front. While von Kluge got permission to retire beyond the Orne, his replacement ordered a withdrawal behind the Dives. He also launched the 2nd SS Panzer against the British moving southward towards Trun on the eastern side of the Dives, just north of the main crossing point at St Lambert.
Model arrived at La Roche Guyon on the evening of the 17th, bumping into Bayerlein, commander of Panzer Lehr. ‘What are you doing here?’ enquired Model. ‘I wish to inform
Field Marshal von Kluge of my departure, for what’s left of my division is to be withdrawn from the front to rest and refit, replied Bayerlein. Model was not amused: ‘My dear Bayerlein, in the East divisions are rested at the front, and in future that will be the practice here’.
It would take three nights to get the westernmost troops over the Orne and at least one night to complete the withdrawal over the Dives. In other words, the mouth of the pocket had to be kept open for at least four days, at all costs. This had to be done under constant Allied artillery and fighter-bomber bombardment and Maquis attack.
The Americans and British were slowly heading for each other and the Falaise salient was steadily squeezed from all sides as the Germans valiantly held open the neck. By the 17th, the pocket was only twenty miles (32km) wide by ten miles (16km) deep, containing about 100,000 men, remnants of fifteen divisions with elements from at least twelve others, all trying desperately to extricate themselves from the developing chaos. While the panzer divisions managed to hold the Americans and Canadians at bay, the vast columns of retreating Germans were decimated by the fighter-bombers and artillery, the roads becoming choked with burnt out vehicles, adding to the confusion.
Flying Officer J G Simpson, RAF 193 Squadron, recalled that it was tricky picking friend from foe:
We turned out to stop the German Counterattack at Mortain when the Germans tried to cut off the Americans and we were involved in the destruction of a lot of transport etc, during the Falaise Gap operation.
This involved quite tricky map reading as it was essential to know exactly where you were. The battlefield was pretty fluid and you didn’t get a lot of time to identify the tank you were attacking. Being a bomb squadron we did not do so much of this although quite often we bombed a nominated target like the edge of a wood or the end of a village. Then did a range around with our cannon which could do a lot of damage. Our chief problem was that the Germans were pretty good at camouflage – they even re-routed roads so that [they] sat under the cover of the apple orchards and you thought the roads were empty. Of course, all their tanks were under the trees. It was quite revealing how much of the German Army relied on the old horse rather than the famous Panzer. We chased them all the way across the River Seine; had some fun trying to catch them going over this river.
SS-Untersturmführer Herbert Walther, 12th SS, experienced the full terror of being trapped in the pocket:
My driver was burning. I had a bullet through the arm. I jumped on to a railway track and ran. They were firing down the embankment and I was hit in the leg. I made 100 metres, then it was as if I was hit in the back of the neck with a big hammer. A bullet had gone through beneath the ear and come out through the cheek. I was choking on blood. There were two Americans looking down at me and two French soldiers, who wanted to finish me off.
The Americans took him to an aid station and he eventually had thirteen bullets removed from his leg.
For three days sixty members of the 12th SS clung on in Falaise in the face of repeated Canadian attacks; when the town fell only four wounded prisoners were taken. When the Canadians finally entered on 17 August they found three Tigers from SS-Sturmbannführer Weiss’s Schwere SS-Panzer Abteilung 102 waiting for them. After fighting in the area of the cathedral, the panzers retreated with two assault guns covering their retreat toward Necy the following day. One immobilised Tiger was towed to the southern edge of Abbaye, while the northwest exits were blocked by the assault guns. The Canadians were beaten off and its crew destroyed the broken-down Tiger before they withdrew.
It was every man for himself now as Abteilung 102 abandoned its rearguard role and made for the assembly area at Vimoutiers, way to the west on the River Vie. The remaining Tigers made for Trun to the southeast and were harassed all the way by artillery and fighters. Finding St Lambert choked with vehicles and under low-level attack, they bypassed the village and sped for Chambois further south. Just outside the town, Will Fey’s Tiger had to be destroyed after it spluttered to a halt. Shortly after, SS-Sturmbannführer Weiss, having been wounded twice, was captured when the ambulance half-track he was travelling in came under fire.
When Falaise fell, the Allies had two options; a short hook or a long envelopment, the latter requiring a blocking force along the Seine. The Americans opted for the short hook, although Patton’s 3rd Army was already sweeping toward the Seine. At this point the Polish 1st and Canadian 4th Armoured Divisions had crossed the River Dives to the east of Falaise. Both were poised to strike for Argentan but were now directed to Chambois, about 10 miles (16km) northeast of Argentan.
Closing the gap
Montgomery now sought to block the corridor further east by blocking the narrow valley between the villages of Trun and Chambois. He demanded the Trun-Chambois gap be closed and on 17 August ordered:
It is absolutely essential that both armoured divisions of II Canadian Corps, i.e. 4th Canadian Armoured Division and 1st Polish Armoured Division, close the gap between 1st Canadian and 3rd US Army. 1st Polish Armoured Division must thrust past Trun and Chambois at all costs and as quickly as possible.
The Canadians and Poles were soon pressing hard on the Germans flanks. The Poles occupied Mount Ormel, the high ground east of Chambois. Although the Germans cut them off for three days, they kept shelling the fleeing troops below. This became known as ‘the corridor of death’.
The RAF were already doing Montgomery’s bidding; Wing Commander Johnnie Johnson was in the thick of it:
When the Spitfires arrived at Falaise, over the small triangle of Normandy bordered by Falaise, Trun and Chambois, the Typhoons were already hard at work. One of their favourite tactics against the long streams of enemy vehicles was to seal off the front and rear of the column by accurately dropping a few bombs. This technique imprisoned the desperate enemy on a narrow stretch of dusty lane, and since the transports were sometimes jammed together four abreast, it made the subsequent rocket and cannon attack a comparatively easy business against the stationary targets. Some of the armoured cars and tanks attempted to escape their fate by making detours across the fields and wooded country, but these were soon spotted by the Typhoon pilots and were accorded the same treatment as their comrades on the highways and lanes.
The Germans did everything they could to escape the pocket. Major-General Sir Francis de Guingand, Monty’s Chief of Staff, found that Allied pilots were presented with a dilemma:
During this time pilots reported a large proportion of the enemy’s vehicles were carrying Red Cross lags and emblems. It was obvious that this was merely a ruse to avoid having their transport attacked. I believe these lags were even seen on tanks. What were the pilots to do? The decision was to avoid attacking them, for it was thought that the Germans in their present mood might well take reprisals against our prisoners and wounded. A difficult decision, but probably the right one.
The Free French forces fighting alongside the Americans were given a bloody nose by rearguard units of the 9th and 116th Panzer Divisions, but Patton was driving all out for the Seine. His US 3rd Army was on the line of Orleans-Chartres-Dreux, facing little or no opposition, by the 16th. The drive was continued, hoping to swing north to seal off the Germans trapped against the river. US XV Corps, though, was held up by determined resistance as the retreating Germans fought desperate rearguard actions along the Seine. Nonetheless, the US 79th Division from XV Corps managed to secure a bridgehead over the Seine at Mantes-Gassicourt on 19 August. That day, supported by Sherman tanks, the Canadians seized St Lambert-sur-Dives, right in the path of the fleeing Germans.
On the night of 16 August, Eberbach had transferred his wholly inadequate command post to the staff of II SS Panzer Corps in Montabard, north of Argentan, while the staff of 7th Army shifted to Nécy. The following day, when Falaise fell, 116th Panzer reported that its forces east of Argentan had been driven off, the enemy had taken Le Bourg-St Léonard and Chambois was now impassable due to very heavy artillery fire.
Eberbach recalled:
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br /> During the night, I received a wireless message stating that Field Marshal Model, who had relieved Kluge, would like to meet the Commanding Generals of both Armies and me next morning at 0900hrs at 5th Panzer Army headquarters in Fontaine-l’Abbé. The distance was 47 miles (75km). I needed from 1500hrs until 2300hrs for the trip, primarily because I got caught up in II SS Panzer Corps’ movements. We saw grievous pictures. Bittrich’s attempt to reach his divisions and lead them against Trun failed….
Model wanted to withdraw behind the Seine and use the panzer divisions to hold open the bottleneck at Trun and Argentan. Eberbach goes on:
Instead of SS-General Hausser, Chief of Staff of 7th Army, Colonel von Gersdorff was present at the conference. With him, we came to an agreement that I should immediately leave for the Staff of II SS Panzer Corps near Meulles, in order to lead Corps to the combat area near Trun. The distance to Meulles was 22 miles (35km). I was, however, so often attacked by fighter-bombers and my car pierced through by bullets that I contrived to arrive at the staff of II Panzer Corps at 2200hrs. There I was informed that the British and American troops had met south-east of Trun, and had thus completed the encirclement of 7th Army.
Hausser, 7th Army’s commander, was shot through the jaw and Eberbach, taking charge, ordered Bittrich to get his troops either side of Vimoutiers ready to strike southeast of Trun to help the break-out, knowing full well that this was unlikely to happen. Bittrich had been unable to contact his divisional staff and in any case his men lacked ammunition, food, fuel and radio equipment. Eberbach then made his way to the HQ of 5th Panzer Army to get his decision confirmed by Sepp Dietrich, coordinate efforts with 7th Army and get II SS Panzer Corps supplies.
Falaise: The Flawed Victory Page 22