In the meantime, Otto Henning’s Panzer Lehr reconnaissance battalion did what they could to help their comrades escape:
We had to rescue a large troop contingent because it had been surrounded. Their commanding officer wanted to break through in a westerly direction but this was impossible and we took them to the north. There were so many people on the roads, whole headquarters units, medical staff, even ordinary cars with French civilians in them. During the day they didn’t dare show themselves but chose instead to travel at night. The retreat moved towards Falaise and we also drove in that direction; the roads were very crowded and the attacks constant. Oberfeldwebel [Staff Sergeant] Keichel told me: ‘We are pretty much surrounded, only one road is still open but under heavy fire, we will try to night to break out along it.’ We tried and came under heavy artillery fire but we pressed on and managed to get out at the last moment.
SS-Brigadeführer Theodor Wisch, commander of 1st SS Panzer Division, suffered a terrible wound and was only just rescued by one of his staff officers, SS-Hauptsturmführer Hans Bernhard. The latter recalled:
We were at the edge of a wood with the Corps commander – a Wehrmacht General – Freiherr Hans von Funck [XLVII Panzer Corps]. There was a big discussion – they were shouting at each other, everybody wanted to be right but nobody knew what was going on. Then the commander of the division [Wisch] and I set off across a field – eastwards – towards a village. There was an old stone bridge across the river there and I had an instinct that the enemy would fire on it. I told the commander, if I was in charge of the guns, I would fire in this direction. He didn’t pay any attention and then suddenly there was an explosion. He was hit and his leg gone. There I was -he was much bigger than me – he weighted 90 kilos or more. I was helpless. A Schützenpanzerwagen [armoured half-track] drove by -I knew the driver and ordered him to help us, ‘the divisional commander is wounded and we have to get him out of here.’ So we drove the SPW to the edge of the village where there was a big barn with a hayloft. I put him there and the staff doctor came to look at him and then we put him back in the SPW and set off toward the east.
A unit of the 9th SS then helped them escape the pocket.
On the night of the 17/18th, the 353rd Infantry Division, which had been acting as a rearguard, crossed the Orne. It then gathered in the Forêt de Goufferns with some 5,000 troops, less than half its strength, successfully escaping. Late on the 18th, the 271st Infantry Division broke contact with the British and its combat elements gathered northeast of Chambois, escaping with in excess of 5,000 men before the pocket was finally closed. In June its manpower had stood at 12,600.
Also on the 18th, the British were poised to drop the Special Air Service into the open mouth of the Falaise pocket by glider to seal the trap. Operation Falaise was to harass those units, especially the transport, that were escaping. Four gliders were actually in the air when the mission was called off. This may have been part of Operation Transigure, which proposed dropping American, British and Canadian airborne troops in the Paris-Orléans Gap as a blocking force. The SAS were to form the reconnaissance element, but these plans were overtaken by events on the ground.
Schwere Panzer Abteilung 503’s I Kompanie, trapped in the pocket, destroyed four Tigers on 18 August and two more two days later. Near Chambois, the last few Tigers of SS-Panzer Abteilung 102 found the town under a ‘dome of fire’. Reports also indicated that the road to Trun had been cut and that there was no escape.
Coming under enemy fire, the tanks loaded up as many fleeing troops as they could and drove clear. Everyone’s fighting spirit was now all but broken as Will Fey recounts on the 18th:
Our mood was completely depressed. No one spoke anymore, and a gloomy silence covered us. In Chambois we had to push a burning vehicle aside just to get through. Our soldiers in field grey streamed north, with dry throats and sweat dripping faces. We stopped on a hill and contemplated the situation before setting up a small kampfgruppe at a large farm. Our commander took over the command panzer, and we felt better again. An Oberst of the paratroops contributed a handful of men, and so the afternoon passed. The noise from the tanks on the road nearby got louder. This caught our interest and made us want to take some action, but we could not endanger the last Tiger of our small Kampfgruppe.
Instead, the commander and his radio operator crept forward with panzerfausts and knocked out a Churchill tank, thereby holding up the advancing column. Withdrawing at nightfall, they bumped into elements of the reconnaissance battalion from the 2nd SS, confirming that they had escaped the Falaise pocket.
The escape route was just five miles (8km) wide by 19 August, though it would not be completely sealed for another two days, and the rapidly-shrinking pocket measured just seven miles (11km) by six (9km). Under pressure from German paratroops within the pocket, the Poles were forced to relinquish control of some of the roads and up to 4,000 paratroops, supported by three tanks from 2nd SS, escaped. Kluge left La Roche Guy on at dawn on the 19th and after lunch, having failed Hitler, took his own life using cyanide.
Canadian armour probed the German defences at St Lambert-sur-Dives, losing two tanks on the 18th. The next morning they attacked, seizing half the village and then held on for thirty-six hours in the face of dogged counterattacks by the remains of 2nd Panzer to dislodge them. Germans fleeing over the river came under constant fire and at one point the Canadians called artillery fire down onto their own positions.
Escape from the cauldron
Jupp Steinbüchel from the 1st SS remembered the desperate drive to cross the Dives via the ford at Moissy, which, although in German hands, was under heavy Allied artillery fire, becoming a ‘corridor of death.’ His experiences encapsulated those of many of the men trapped in the Falaise salient, witnessing the horrifying death throes of the German forces as they sought frantically to escape the Allies deadly embrace:
After we had crossed the Falaise-Argentan road, the whole mess descended on us. Artillery fire, the likes of which we had never known, rained down upon us. We raced forward, trying to escape this area. Here and there panzers took hits and burst into flames. We just kept driving. Stopping meant certain death. Right next to us, the air was full of planes. The roads were jammed. We drove straight off through the fields, not caring what happened to the vehicles. Infantry fire alternated with artillery, only to be replaced by anti-tank guns. The horse-drawn units raced through the area. Horses hitched to driverless wagons went wild and ran, dragging everything behind. Wounded men groaned and screamed.
We loaded some onto our vehicle. One died on it. After that, he protected us from countless pieces of shrapnel.
On our route between Ville-de-Dieu and Tournai-sur-Dives, the enemy artillery had a direct shot at us. I need hardly describe what that felt like. Shells fell just in front of us, beside, or behind our panzer. We coursed over that road as fast as we could.
We reached a village. The town was a traffic jam of horse-drawn wagons, panzers, and automobiles. The enemy tanks were now firing into that mess with high-explosive shells. One can hardly imagine the chaos which reigned. Guns without crews. Panzers without drivers. Everyone trying to flee. Men running around and finding no way out. Fire from all sides. Our retreat was stuck; the enemy forces were too strong. Then someone found a new way. On we went. Enemy guns fired at us from six hundred metres away, but they missed. We saw the Canadians standing at their guns wearing white gym shorts.
The number of vehicles abandoned or burning kept on growing. One could barely move forward on the road. Off we went again through the fields. If we had not been in tracked vehicles, it would have been all over for us.
Then came the last step, the so-called ‘Road of Death.’ It was the most terrible part of the whole trip. No one can describe what we saw and lived through here.
Eberbach returned to Bittrich on 19 August, to find he had received no fuel and what ammunition had arrived was insufficient. Fuel did arrive the following day and the 9th SS and 10th SS were finally r
eady for action, though between them they could only muster twenty panzers. The II SS Panzer Corps found their way impeded by the debris of war. Eberbach noted: ‘One road of advance was packed with burned-out vehicles to such an extent that the tanks had first to clear an alley before passing’.
The 10th SS was right in the middle of the Falaise pocket. It was comparatively fortunate in being one of the formations which managed to escape over the River Dives before the rapidly narrowing gap at Chambois was finally closed by the US, Canadian and Polish armour. By the end of the third week of August it was everyman for himself in what seemed to be a state of increasing bedlam.
Nevertheless, German discipline held; rarely did whole units bolt and stragglers and units cut off from their parent formations were willingly welded into the ubiquitous battle groups or kampfgruppen. Members of 2nd, 12th SS and 116th Panzer found themselves fighting alongside each other. In the meantime, elements of the withdrawing 277th Infantry Division were east of Falaise by the 19th, enabling 2,500 men to break out to reach the rest of the division outside the pocket. The 363rd managed to withdraw 19 miles (30km) to the east and head south of Trun, escaping with 2,000 men.
Although wounded, General Freiherr von Lüttwitz resolutely led a kampfgruppe of 2nd Panzer through the chaos. Oberfeldwebel Hans Erich Braun was with them:
That night of 19 August, we heard our passport for escape from the cauldron. It was, simply ‘Forward’. Forward with a mixed battle group of tanks, self-propelled guns, flak and mounted artillery, scout cars, light tanks, and armoured troop carriers packed with Grenadiers, Paratroopers, and soldiers of all kinds of units. Forward through hell, but also towards the enemy, past the dead and the wounded. We had been tempered, like the steel plating of our tanks, and inside us now there was hardly any human feeling left. We were alive, but inside we were dead, numbed by watching the horrible scenes, which rolled past on both sides, just like a film. The Grenadiers sitting on their vehicles cowered low, grasping their weapons and holding on to the wounded. Anyone dying on top of these rolling steel coffins was just pitched overboard, so that a living man could take his place. They were sitting behind their tank guns, their lak guns, behind their automatic weapons, with one thought in their minds – to destroy the enemy who would soon appear now, to be without mercy, just like him.
The road taken by the remnants of 2nd Panzer and its grateful hangers-on was like a scene from hell; civilisation had abandoned them to the industrialised killing of the twentieth century. Braun felt numb as they drove by the wretched creatures that had once formed Hitler’s invincible Wehrmacht; members of the Heer, Waffen-SS, Luftwaffe and Fallschirmjäger. Braun watched:
The never ending detonations – soldiers waving to us, begging for help – the dead, their faces screwed up still in agony – huddled in trenches and shelters, the officers and men who had lost their nerve -burning vehicles from which piercing screams could be heard – a soldier stumbling, holding back the intestines which were oozing from his abdomen – soldiers lying in their own blood – arms and legs torn off – others driven crazy, crying, shouting, swearing, laughing hysterically – and the horses, some still harnessed to the shafts of their ruined wagons, appearing and disappearing in clouds of smoke and dust like ghosts – and the horses, again, screaming terribly, trying to escape the slaughter on the stumps of their hind legs. But also there were civilians lying by the roadside, loaded with personal belongings, often of no value at all, and still clinging to them in death. Close by a crossroads, caught by gunfire lay a group of men, women and children. Unforgettable, the staring gaze of their broken eyes and the grimaces of their pain distorted faces. Destroyed prams and discarded dolls littered the terrible scene.
Oberst von Gersdorff, 7th Army’s Chief of Staff, having lost contact with the Panzergruppe, was completely lost on the night of 19/20 August. Arriving at the southern entrance to St Lambert at around 0400 he found a column of vehicles and quickly took charge. Enemy armour and anti-tank guns were dominating the Trun-St Lambert-Chambois road, destroying anything that attempted to use it.
Gersdorff rallied two Mark IV Jagdpanzers from 2nd Panzer to clear the route. Following in his Kubelwagen, Gersdorff led a column of panzers, assault guns, self-propelled guns and half-tracks. The enemy anti-tank gunners were taken by surprise and surrendered but the advance was held up after the lead panzers were knocked out.
In a nearby orchard, Gersdorff took stock and found he had a kampfgruppe of six to eight tanks, four to six assault guns, twenty-five to thirty armoured personnel carriers and a number of Hornisse 8.8cm self-propelled anti-tank guns and Hummel 15cm self-propelled artillery under Major Bochnick, commander of Panzerjäger Abteilung 228, 116th Panzer. There were also about 1,000 infantry under SS-Sturmbannführer Brinkman from the 12th SS or 17th SS.
Elements of all the units controlled by XLVII Panzer Corps were involved in the breakthrough groups. Between 0600 and 0700 on the 20th, the corps staff, 1st SS and 2nd Panzer Divisions reached the Chambois-St Lambert area. Following the breakout of the 353rd Infantry Division and its successful escape over the Dives, the Allied artillery fire intensified, causing a great loss of men and material in the Chambois-St Lambert zone.
Gersdorff was determined to fight his way to safety, noting:
After brief preparations, the battle group thus formed set out at 0600hrs from the area approximately less than a mile (1km) north of St Lambert to attack and drive northwestward. Again and again, enemy tanks attempted to obstruct the advance, or to attack the flanks of the assault group from the hills, but were effectively taken under fire by our own armour-piercing weapons, ten-fifteen enemy tanks being set afire. Without any delay worth mentioning, the attack reached the elevated terrain around Goudehard [Coudehard], so that a breach had been laid in the enemy-encircling ring. Upon returning at about 0900hrs, as far as circumstances permitted, to search for the Army Commander, and to arrange for protection of the flanks in the gap created, the Chief of Staff found that the entire region between Chambois and St Lambert was now under terrible intense artillery fire. Nevertheless, the enemy, who was preoccupied with attacks by other breakthrough groups which were taking effect at Chambois as well as at and north-west of St Lambert, for the time being made no attempt to close the gap again. An endless line of Infantry and vehicles now flowed along the road through the gap.
On the night of 19/20 August, General der Fallschirmtruppen Eugen Meindl and his Chief of Staff, Oberst Ernst Blauensteiner, each led a kampfgruppe of survivors from the II Parachute Corps, 3rd Fallschirmjäger Division (which had been decimated), 7th Army HQ staff and some SS tanks in a final effort to escape.
Battle for St Lambert
Inside the corridor, 2nd Panzer with their remaining fifteen tanks attacked toward Canadian held St Lambert and found the bridge intact. Their commanding officer recalled: ‘The crossing of the Dives bridge was particularly horrible, the bodies of the dead, horses and vehicles and other equipment having been hurled from the bridge into the river formed a gruesome tangled mass’. The 10th SS and 116th Panzer managed to cross the river Dives via the St Lambert bridge and drove the encircling Allies away. The 116th escaped with just fifty vehicles.
Notably, at St Lambert Lüwittz’s 2nd Panzer met fierce resistance in the form of enemy tank, anti-tank and infantry fire. The tanks of 2nd Panzer had to renew their efforts to break out, while from midday enemy armour resumed trying to penetrate the town. Lüttwitz, now wounded, ordered his men to break out in separate groups. In particular they discovered an open road between Chambois and St Lambert heading northeast.
Panzer Lehr’s Kampfgruppe Kuhnow broke out on the 20th and the following day gathered at Senlis, north of Paris. Elements of the 1st SS, with the 277th Infantry and 3rd Fallschirmjäger Divisions, also escaped the pocket. However, the staffs of the controlling LXXXIV Corps, including General Otto Elfeldt, Oberstleutnant Friederich Creiger and Major Viebig, and those of the 84th Infantry Division were not as lucky. Remarkably, these were the on
ly two staffs out of twenty higher-level staffs that did not escape. The 84th, which was valiantly acting as a rearguard, suffered some 5,500 casualties.
General Elfeldt mustered some of Panzergruppe West’s last remaining panzers for a final escape attempt:
By the time we had got back to the Orne the whole front had become much narrower than before, so my Corps headquarters had become superfluous and was temporarily withdrawn from the line. But the following morning the Canadians broke through southwards to Falaise and I was at once ordered to form a front to check them. The available troops were very scanty and we had no communications. The Canadian artillery fired all day into my head quarters, but fortunately did no damage at all although they fired about a thousand shells. These fell all round the small house in which I was, but no one was hurt. During the day I was able to re-form a continuous line, but beyond my right flank I could see the British tanks driving down the other side of the River Dives towards Trun. Thus our line of retreat was blocked.
The next day I was ordered to break out northeastward, behind the backs of these armoured forces. It was soon clear that this was not possible, as the British were now there in strength. So I proposed to the Army commander General Hausser, that my troops should be placed at the disposal of General Meindl, who was commanding the parachute forces, to help the latter to break out near St Lambert, southeastwards. It seemed to me that one strong thrust might have a better chance than a number of small ones. Meindl succeeded in breaking out, but when I reached St Lambert myself next morning the gap was again closed. I tried an attack with all I had left – a couple of tanks and two hundred men. It started well but then ran into part of the 1st Polish Armoured Division. After a two-hour fight our ammunition began to run out. Then the troops which were following behind me surrendered, thus leaving me with a handful of men at the cut-off tip of the wedge. So we had to surrender in turn. The commander of this Polish division was a fine-looking man and a gentleman. He gave me his last cigarette.
Falaise: The Flawed Victory Page 23