I was in the Argentan-Falaise pocket and I still don’t know how I got out of it. We were running in wild fiery circles with artillery and aerial bombs dropping around us. After I got out of there I had to fight partisans and our own soldiers to get on the ferry across the Seine.
The retreating Germans made for the crossings at Elbeuf, Oissel and Rouen, which were under constant air attack. The main crossing point was at Rouen, so holding the wooded river bulge became vital, though with the river unfordable and with all the bridges down they had to rely on boats and rafts. The pontoon bridge at Rouen could only take wheeled vehicles and the bridge at Oissel, having been brought down in May, was likewise makeshift. Many surviving tanks and other vehicles that had been so painstakingly coaxed eastward were abandoned on the dockside. On the 25th bombers attacked the German transport massed on the quayside twice; the following day the fires were still burning both sides of the river.
Outside Rouen, Will Fey and his comrades from Schwere SS-Panzer Abteilung 102 witnessed the fate of the surviving panzers:
All the panzers and artillery had to remain on the west bank of the Seine. They were driven out of the columns, and some were blown up. Some of the Panzers that were still mobile were driven into the stream and sunk or blown up in the woods. We had dragged the panzers, artillery, and valuable equipment away from the front for days across long distances to this river; then we had to leave them there. The crews drifted across the river without panzers and guns. But we could not leave our panzer so easily.
Driving their Tiger into the docks, a boat came to Fey’s rescue:
Just then a navy barge came put-putting across the Seine to solve our problems and take our Tiger to the other shore. Our Tiger with the 001 on the turret, ready for action, rolled onto the barge without problems, and we set out. Was it the 001, the number of the command Panzer, that helped us get across? We were sitting on our Tiger with anticipation and had almost reached the shore when a formation of two fighter-bombers firing from all barrels, came lying at us across the Seine.
This meant that all possible speed was needed, and our driver started the engine before the barge reached the shore. The navy men were jumping off to secure the boat when the next attack by the fighter-bombers began. Full cover was the Only answer to the well-aimed fire from a low-level attack. Before the ropes were fully fastened, the Tiger set out slowly and the tracks were already getting a hold on the harbour wall when the sixty tons of our panzer pushed the barge away from the wall. Our 001 rolled from the deck into the Seine. The stern of the barge stuck out of the water, and there was just enough time for the crew to jump off before Tiger 001 sank into the waters of Rouen harbour like a submarine.
The lacklustre 116th Panzer scored a minor success at Bourgtheroulde, briefly driving the Americans back on the 26th with a combination of tanks and artillery. On the night of 26th/27th the 116th’s Panzergrenadier Regiments 60 and 156 were deployed along the Seine loop near Moulineaux to the north and the Forêt de la Londe in the centre respectively, with 2nd SS holding the left wing near Orival, thereby blocking off the approaches to Rouen. The three self-propelled guns of I Battery, Panzer Artillery Regiment 146, 116th Panzer, rendered inoperable after air attack were pulled out of the line and withdrawn over the Seine on the night of 26th.
The 116th Panzer and a kampfgruppe from the 2nd SS were given the task of holding the Americans at bay at Elbeuf, but on the 26th 2nd Armoured overran the town’s southern outskirts. Having pinned down the Americans, the 116th withdrew at midnight under the cover of fog and rain. Members of the 2nd SS, including Fritz Langanke, escaped by swimming across the river. At daybreak the Americans mopped up resistance and handed the town over to the Canadians.
Some surviving Tigers of Panzer Abteilung 102 reached Elbeuf on 25 August only to find the bridge down, so headed for Oissel to the northeast. There the crews found the area clogged with an estimated 5,000-7,000 vehicles all waiting to cross. Reluctantly the order was given for the remaining panzers to be destroyed. Panzer Abteilung 503 is believed to have lost the last of its Tigers west of the Seine near Rouen at la Bouille. There were no ferries that could take their massive weight and they had to be abandoned. The 10th SS crossed at Oissel on 25–27 August by means of two bridges they had seized, selfishly fending off attempts by other retreating units to use them until all their own troops had crossed.
A withdrawal to the three Seine loops south of Caudebec-en-Caux, south of Duclair and south of Rouen was ordered on the night of the 27th/28th, with the 331st Infantry Division taking over the Duclair and Rouen loops and the dense forest in between.
While the Canadian 3rd Armoured Division crossed at Elbeuf, the Canadian 2nd Infantry Division was required to push through Forêt de la Londe, whose wooded hills stretched northward all the way to Rouen. They suffered almost 600 casualties in three days of bitter fighting. By nightfall on the 28th the Canadian 3rd and 4th Armoured Divisions had taken possession of the hills about a mile inland from Elbeuf, having put the 17th Luftwaffe Field Division to light. The Polish 1st Armoured Division also crossed at Elbeuf on the 29th.
SS-Flak Abteilung 17 crossed the Seine on the 27th, upstream from Portejoie, and made its way to Metz to join the rest of the 17th SS. The battalion’s I Battery at Saumur, although lacking transport, managed to commandeer local vehicles and headed for Tours on the 24th. After defending the bridge there and covering stragglers, the unit finally reached Metz on 20 September.
The remaining survivors of 2nd Panzer managed to cross the Seine on 28 August. Ironically, Otto Meyer, commander of SS-Panzer Regiment 9, having survived all the fighting in Normandy, was killed on 30 August crossing at Duclair. In the early hours that Day the 331st Infantry, acting as rearguard, finally pulled back across the river and the Canadian 3rd and 4th Armoured liberated Rouen.
Model decided that 7th Army would cover the withdrawal of 5th Panzer Army toward Arras, northeast of Amiens and behind the safety of the Somme, where it could be refitted. At Amiens, Dietrich was supposed to hand command of 5th Panzer Army back to Eberbach on the afternoon of the 31st. Dietrich left early and Eberbach, commanding 7th Army in Hausser’s absence, and his staff were surprised by British tanks rumbling into their midst and compelled to surrender. His Chief of Staff, von Gersdorff, escaped but 5th Panzer Army’s guard company, drawn from 116th Panzer, were not so lucky. Eberbach’s only reserves were just five Tiger tanks and they could achieve little in the face of the British 11th Armoured Division. The last remaining operational unit of Panzer Abteilung 503, III Kompanie, finally lost its Tiger IIs near Amiens.
This drove a wedge between 15th Army west of Amiens and 5th Panzer Army to the east. Any hopes Model had of holding the Somme as a main line of resistance were dashed. He was now forced to retreat yet again and the British were soon pushing on Brussels and Antwerp. In the meantime, Dietrich made his way to Model’s Army Group B HQ at Havrin court and was briefly appointed commander of 7th Army.
Also on the 31st a team of panzertruppen, including Will Fey, bravely slipped back across the Seine to destroy the abandoned Tiger tanks on the dockside, as he relates:
Our VW took us into the city and to the harbour, and a boat of the pioneers took us across…A wild chaos awaited us at the crossing point…It was covered with burning and smoking wrecks of vehicles…We comforted the moaning and begging wounded…We spotted the first three Tigers, undamaged, very close to our crossing point. They had been abandoned by their crews.
We pushed the explosive charges, which every panzer carried in case they were needed, into the breech of the 8.8cm gun, poured gasoline from a jerry can into the interior, activated the detonator charge, and threw a hand grenade into the engine compartment to set the fuel on fire. Then we jumped off and took full cover. The explosion followed. All this took only a few seconds, and one Tiger after the other burned with bright flames.
Then, using panzerfausts, they took out two Panthers commandeered by the local Maquis who were trying to operate them, befor
e escaping back over the Seine in a rowboat.
There had been no second Falaise pocket. Frustratingly for the Allies, the bulk of those German forces west of the Seine, some 240,000 troops, 30,000 vehicles and 135 panzers, escaped over the river. German armoured vehicle losses were modest considering the rapidity of the Allied advance, only sixty panzers and 250 other armoured vehicles being left on the west bank. About 10,000 troops seem to have been caught. The surviving staffs of 5th Panzer Army and LVIII Panzer Corps were pulled out of the line and responsibility assumed by 7th Army once more.
Fall of Paris
Hauptmann Helmut Ritgen found himself in Paris overseeing the refitting of elements of Panzer Lehr and missed being trapped at Falaise. There was an air of unreality in the French capital as the occupiers drank champagne and danced. The Allies had hoped to bypass Paris, but this was made impossible by the actions of Charles de Gaulle’s Free French Forces. He was concerned that the French Communists would liberate Paris and got an undertaking that General Leclerc with the French 2nd Armoured Division could enter the city. At this stage, the Supreme Allied Commander, General Eisenhower, felt it best to bypass Paris to avoid being sucked into costly street fighting with General Dietrich von Choltitz’s garrison. Once the Allies were over the Seine, Paris had become a strategic irrelevance.
General von Choltitz, former LXXXIV Corps commander in Normandy, was under strict instructions to deny Paris to the Allies, even if it meant razing it to the ground. Hitler told him the city’ must not fall into the hands of the enemy, if it does, he must find there nothing but a field of ruins’. Choltitz fortunately had no intention of going down in history as the one who torched Paris.
His garrison was weak, consisting of the 325th Security Division, a company of tanks from Panzer Lehr, and twenty batteries of 8.8cm anti-aircraft guns with inexperienced teenage crews, supported by sixty aircraft. This amounted to just 5,000 men, fifty guns and perhaps twenty tanks. The force was about adequate to contain any insurrection, but nothing else. Now that German forces in France were in disarray, help was unlikely to be forthcoming. Hitler had promised two skeleton panzer divisions from Denmark, but they had not materialised.
Since early August, von Choltitz had found the city ungovernable, though the Resistance were under instructions from de Gaulle not to rise up until the arrival of Leclerc’s armour. While 5th Panzer Army and 7th Army were in their final death throes, the Parisians had risen up on 19 August, launching numerous attacks on the German garrison. Securing a one-day truce, it withdrew to the east of the city.
On the 21st Leclerc, ignoring orders, sent a reconnaissance group, consisting of ten tanks and ten armoured cars, toward Paris. Furious, US V Corps commander, Major General L T Gerow, ordered Leclerc to recall them; he refused. However, the Communist resistance had also already risen up a few days earlier, forcing Eisenhower’s hand. On 22 August he authorised the French 2nd Armoured and the 4th US Infantry Divisions to drive on Paris the following day.
Outlying German defences consisted of small numbers of tanks supported by anti-tank guns holed up in the villages and at the crossroads. At Jouy-en-Josas three French Shermans were lost in tank-to-tank engagements. Stiff resistance was also met at Longjumeau and Croix de Berny. German 8.8cm guns at Massyand Wissous accounted for more of Leclerc’s tanks. Similarly an 8.8cm sited in the old prison at Fresnes, blocking the Paris road, held off three Shermans. The first was knocked out, but the second destroyed the gun and the third ran over it. The French lost another four tanks to German anti-tank guns trying to outflank Fresnes. Despite the demoralised state of the Germans, the push on Paris cost the division 296 casualties, thirty-five tanks, six self-propelled guns and eleven assorted vehicles disabled or destroyed.
A French patrol slipped into the city on the evening of 24 August. By nightfall their tanks were within a few hundred yards of von Choltitiz’s HQ at the Meurice. The next day, during five hours of street fighting to clear the German defenders from the foreign office building on the Quai d’Orsay, another Sherman tank was lost. At the Arc de Triomphe a French tank silenced its German counterpart at a range of 1,800 metres. Unfortunately, von Choltitz felt honour dictated he put up at least token resistance before surrendering. In the Place de la Concorde three Shermans were lost after they drove in with their turret hatches open and each received a German grenade.
When von Choltitz finally capitulated there were still 2,000 Germans in Paris and fighting was still going on in the suburbs. Gerow ordered Leclerc to clear them from the northern suburbs and de Gaulle wanted to keep the division in Paris to counter the Communists. He then wanted the division to join the French 1st Army pushing up from the south of France, instead Leclerc got his force reassigned to US XV Corps moving towards Alsace. Unfortunately, Leclerc’s actions in liberating Paris helped prolong the war, for the delay round the city enabled a greater part of Army Group G’s 1st Army to escape over the Rhine.
Counting the cost
The fallout of the Falaise pocket went beyond 5th Panzer Army and 7th Army. General von Salmuth was relieved of his command of 15th Army by Hitler in late August following the disintegration of the German front line. Infantry General Gustav-Adolf von Zangen, fresh from Italy, replaced him. To add to German woes, in the south of France on 26 August Toulon, followed by Marseilles two days later, was liberated with the loss of several thousand dead and 37,000 troops captured. The Allies secured the region between Nice and Avignon as far north as Briançon via Grenoble to Montelimar, effectively destroying General Wiese’s 19th Army, mainly through artillery and air strikes.
The remains of Wiese’s command streamed north to join Chevallerie’s 1st Army, which was evacuating southwestern France and heading for the Belfort Gap. The latter forms the pass between the Jura and Vosges mountains and the Germans knew that if they lost control of it Strasbourg and all Wurtemberg would be exposed. It did not fall until 25 November. Meanwhile, the retreating Germans conducted delaying actions, notably in the Autun and Dijon regions, but ultimately they were now being driven from the whole of France. On 3 September Lyon was liberated and another 2,000 Germans captured.
The situation on the Western front appeared irretrievable for Hitler and the Third Reich. While the Germans had barely 100 serviceable panzers, the Allies could muster 6,000 medium and 1,700 light tanks. It seemed as if nothing would stop their armoured juggernaut; by 4 September they were 200 miles (320km) east of the Seine and in control of the vital port of Antwerp. They were seven months ahead of their schedule.
The Wehrmacht had lost forty-three divisions by September, roughly thirty-five infantry and eight panzer, two more than were originally stationed in northern France. They suffered a total loss of 450,000 men; 240,000 killed and wounded and 210,000 prisoners, as well as losing most of their equipment: 1,500 panzers, 3,500 pieces of artillery and 20,000 vehicles. Some 58,412 are buried in Normandy in the main German cemeteries at Huisnes-sur-Mer, La Cambe, Lisieux (Saint-Désir), Marigny and Orglandes; the largest is La Cambe, which holds 21,400. For the Allies the price of victory was dear, approximately 84,000 British and Canadian, and 126,000 American casualties, consisting of 36,976 killed and 172,696 wounded.
In total the Germans lost about 1,500 tanks and assault guns from an accumulated strength of 2,248 armoured fighting vehicles deployed to Normandy by mid-August. The latter figure includes all the General Headquarters panzer formations and the armoured fighting vehicles of the Infantry Divisions and the Luffwaffe Field Divisions. From 1 June-31 August the Germans had lost a total of 4,050 panzers and assault guns on all fronts. The exhausted panzer divisions lost all their tanks in northern France; in fact, from an accumulated tank force of 1,804 just eighty-six remained. Similarly, the independent tank battalions and assault brigades, from an accumulated strength of 458, could scrape together forty-four vehicles.
Scrutiny of German panzer losses produces some startling results. In the Roncey pocket 122 tanks were accounted for and another forty-six were lost during the Morta
in counterattack. Of the 380 found in the Falaise pocket, eighty per cent had been abandoned or destroyed by their fleeing crews. Another 150 tanks were found west of the Seine. Therefore in total some 638 tanks, tank destroyers and assault guns lost west of the Seine are accounted for. This, though, is far from the total figure; around another 900 were lost in Normandy during June, July and August.
While they remained in range, naval fire support from the Allied warships in the Channel could produce devastating results against the massing panzers. Few members of the German High Command seemed to have fully considered the implications of this; once the effects became apparent Rommel had been swift to call for a withdrawal out of harm’s way, but to no avail. In contrast, the sustained and often very heavy attacks by the Allied bombers and fighter-bombers produced surprisingly mixed results against the armoured fighting vehicles of Panzergruppe West and 7th Army. In fact the bomber raids preceding the Allies’ major offensives often proved more fatal to their own men and hampered the advance because of the damage caused.
Subsequent analysis showed that RAF Typhoon rockets had not caused as much destruction as first thought or indeed claimed. It has been assessed that only about 100 armoured fighting vehicles were actually knocked out by air strikes during the entire campaign; in stark contrast the Allies lost a total of 1,726 aircraft.
Falaise: The Flawed Victory Page 25