by Mark Zuehlke
On the right flank of the Scottish advance, ‘A’ Company commander Major Plows watched a Staghound armoured car flying the bright red and yellow pennon of the British Inns of Court Regiment race across the sand dunes towards la Valette. This British reconnaissance unit had landed on Juno with the mission of quickly dashing inland to seize several bridges and road intersections to deny them to the enemy. Plows was just thinking that the armoured car’s speedy and very exposed advance showed that its crew commander had more pluck than brains, when there followed the heavy crump of an 88-millimetre gun and the Staghound “just disintegrated.” Plows looked around in time to see a puff of smoke coming from a haystack off to his right.25
Cursing himself for not noticing the haystack earlier and having his men check it out, Plows ordered Lieutenant Bernard Clarke to knock out the gun. “Who, me?” Clarke replied, before quickly ordering his platoon forward. The lieutenant and his men crawled across seventy-five yards of open ground to gain a small knoll overlooking the haystack. Reaching the top just ahead of a group of Germans crawling up the other side, the Canadians quickly disarmed the enemy soldiers without firing a shot. Leaving half his men to guard the prisoners, Clarke and Sergeant W.A. Paterson led a charge towards the side of the haystack that faced away from the beach. As they closed in, Clarke realized the haystack was actually a concrete gun emplacement with hay piled on its roof for camouflage. One of his men yanked the back door open and tossed in a grenade that killed the gun crew. Turning from a job well done, Clarke and his small band were astonished to see that in charging the gun emplacement they had overrun a network of slit trenches without realizing it contained about fifty Germans—all now standing up with hands raised in surrender. Captain Bill Matthews, ‘A’ Company’s second-in-command, ran up. “What the hell are you trying to do? Win the V.C.?” he shouted at the lieutenant.26
Having lost about twenty minutes waiting for ‘A’ Company to take out the gun position, Cabeldu hurried the men towards ‘C’ Company’s position in front of St. Croix. He was also issuing urgent requests by radio for the 1st Hussars to marry up with him.
ON THE BEACH, congestion was nearing gridlock as infantry battalion support vehicles, self-propelled guns, engineering unit vehicles, ambulance teams, and a host of other men and motorized equipment piled off landing craft and started seeking a route inland. The 12th Field Regiment, Royal Canadian Artillery had unloaded its Priest 105-millimetre guns at 0900 hours and immediately started firing on enemy targets as directed through radio links with the regiment’s forward observation officers serving alongside the infantry battalions. The FOO and reconnaissance teams landing to establish gun positions had taken disproportionately high casualties because the whip antennas of the radios served as beacons for German snipers. Major E. Pickering, the regiment’s second-in-command, Major J.D. Ross, commander of 16th Battery, Captain G.M. Wright, Lieutenant E.C. Gothard, and Gunner A.A. Ellman had all been wounded, while Signalman E.G. Swan was killed. The 12th Field’s SPGs started firing, sometimes over open sights, on targets either assigned by the FOOs operating inland or spotted by the gunners themselves. The regiment’s commander, Lieutenant Colonel R.H. Webb, wrote later, “to the confusion of men and vehicles on the beach was added the roar of the guns, firing from the water’s edge, with RHQ [Regimental Headquarters] behind them literally in the water.” The 12th Field was the first artillery regiment to “bring down arty fire from land,” he proudly noted.27
Frantically looking for a way over the water obstacle behind the sand dunes were the tankers of ‘C’ Squadron, 1st Hussars that were to support the Canadian Scottish. Battle Captain Brandon “Brandy” Conron led a group of Shermans through a gap in the dunes he had discovered about two hundred yards left of their original assigned exit. Topping the final dune, they had a short firefight with a group of Germans entrenched in a fortification. After wiping this position out, the tankers had to cross a thousand yards of heavily mined ground to reach a bridge spanning the water.
Conron jumped off his tank and started dragging a wire obstacle free while machine-gun fire “clipped the ground all about him.”28 When the wire was clear, he ran back to the line of tanks and jumped onto the back of No. 2 Troop commander Lieutenant Bill McCormick’s Sherman. “You can’t use that,” the twenty-four-year-old troop commander told Conron, as he pointed at the rickety bridge. The battle captain agreed that it would never handle the weight of tanks and was just going to report as much over McCormick’s radio when a mortar bomb landed alongside the tank and shrapnel struck him in both legs. While Conron climbed around to the front of the tank for protection, McCormick quickly wheeled the Sherman about and carried the wounded man to the Regimental Aid Post.29 The lieutenant led the tanks back to the original beach exit, where ‘C’ Squadron waited impatiently until the engineers managed to clear the mines and obstacles to let it through the gap in the sand dunes. Once through the dunes, the engineers spanned the water obstacle by driving an Ark tank into it that mounted steel bridging ramps on its deck in place of a turret. After trundling over the bridge and gaining the road on the other side, they headed off. Shortly thereafter, the tanks linked up with the Canadian Scottish facing St. Croix.
In a hasty Orders Group, Cabeldu directed ‘A’ Company with ‘C’ Company following to pass between St. Croix and Banville to reach Colombiers-sur-Seulles and then make for the village of Pierrepont. Clearing St. Croix and Banville would be left to the Winnipeg Rifles and its supporting elements of 1st Hussars. As Cabeldu finished issuing his orders, ‘D’ Company reported its two bridges secure and that the reserve platoon and headquarters section were several hundred yards south of Banville where the Banville-Tierceville road intersected with one coming from St. Croix. Wanting to consolidate his company’s hold on the bridge at Colombiers, Major MacEwan dispatched the reserve platoon on the remaining bicycles to reinforce Lieutenant A.C. Peck’s platoon, leaving his small headquarters section to follow on foot.30
When Cabeldu’s two-company force, with ‘C’ Squadron of the 1st Hussars, advanced into the gap between villages, it found the route “hazardous… as we were moving through thick grain fields and this appeared to be our only protection from many machine gun posts still held by the Jerry.” In the middle of a field, a machine gun opened up on the section in which Private Jack Daubs served. The long burst of fire caught the man on point, missed the two behind him, struck down the next man in line, missed another, then hit the soldier directly ahead of him, missed the private, and killed the man following him. Everyone who had been missed dived for cover and stayed put until another section of the platoon wiped the gun position out.31
Few of the German gunners proved as good a shot as this one and even fewer chose to fight to the death. A pattern quickly emerged whereby the Germans opened up with sustained bursts but immediately surrendered when closed upon. Once they surrendered, the Germans proved so passive that fifty or more could be safely escorted back to the beach by one guard—a fact that Cabeldu, with his battalion’s ranks badly thinned by casualties, greatly appreciated.32
Meeting no opposition from German tanks or self-propelled guns, ‘C’ Squadron had a “picnic steadily taking out machine-gun nests and entrenched positions whenever the infantry bogged down. The tanks scurried back and forth working madly behind and on the flanks of the infantry.”33
Meanwhile, Major MacEwan’s ‘D’ Company headquarters section on the Banville-Tierceville road heard the sharp sounds of gunfire from the direction of Cabeldu’s advance and turned in time to see a small German car barrelling down the road from St. Croix towards them. Sergeant J.D. Blacklock killed the driver with a head shot and the vehicle “did a somersault off the road. A short while later,” MacEwan later recounted, “a second car rushed along. A shot at this one wounded the driver who stopped and was placed in a ditch. By now we could see more people coming out of the village… Captain J.T. Bryden, my 2 IC, with our two runners stood behind the parked car and as the Germans, in ones and twos on bicycl
es—and one on a motorcycle—rushed away from the village… we stepped out and held them up.” Eventually, after sending a bag of prisoners back to the beach, MacEwan and Bryden decided they could use the captured car to overtake their bicycling platoons. Bryden “drove and after grinding a gear or two got underway. To avoid being shot by our own troops,” MacEwan wrote, “I stood up with my head out of the open top. This was fine until a sniper took a potshot at us and we left the car very quickly.”34
MacEwan soon reached Colombiers and tied in with the ‘D’ Company platoons holding the bridge there. When Lieutenant Tom Butters radioed from the bridge near Reviers that the Regina Rifles were passing his position to the east, MacEwan ordered him to rejoin the rest of the company, as there was no longer any German threat to the bridge. Cabeldu’s force was nearby, looking out from a knoll astride the Banville-Tierceville road towards the medieval fortress village of Creully to the south of Tierceville. “By this time it was about 1:30 in the afternoon,” Cabeldu wrote, “and my clothes were starting to dry out… but my cigarettes wouldn’t puff, they were still too wet. We had now taken the crossings at Colombiers-sur-Seulles and also a battery of heavy German artillery guns intact… Our fellows were in good fettle.”35 As well they should be, for, despite heavy casualties, the Canadian Scottish Regiment had secured the right flank of Juno Beach with its rapid advance inland.
TO THE LEFT of the Canadian Scots, the Winnipeg Rifles had made their way through “mortar and artillery fire of astonishing accuracy” to clear Banville and St. Croix. Whereas Banville proved to be largely abandoned, the Germans in St. Croix offered stubborn resistance to ‘A’ Company that was only quelled when ‘A’ Squadron of the 1st Hussars went to its assistance. The Winnipeg war diarist wrote admiringly that the tankers, “with cool disregard for mines and anti-tank guns, beat down the machine-gun positions and permitted ‘A’ Company to mop up and advance to the south.” With these two villages clear, the Winnipeg Rifles hooked right across the line of advance being taken by the Canadian Scottish to follow the BanvilleTierceville Road to Tierceville and then south to secure Creully. Meeting only scant resistance, the advance proceeded quickly with few casualties.36
For the Regina Rifles, leaving Courseulles-sur-Mer after the seaside town was secured proved no easy task. Once the main German resistance was silenced, civilians emerged from cellars to clog the streets and press flowers, wine, and precious food upon the marching men. The company commanders hustled the men along and by 1215 ‘C’ Company reported it was in Reviers and that ‘D’ Company’s forty-nine-man force had arrived a little earlier. The rest of the battalion began consolidating on this village for the next stage of the advance, which would begin once 8th Canadian Infantry Brigade—having faced a tough time subduing the Germans in Bernières-sur-Mer and St. Aubin-sur-Mer—came up on the left flank.37
[ 17 ]
An Awful Shambles
THE ADVANCE FROM Bernières-sur-Mer had been badly delayed by difficulties the engineers encountered constructing vehicle exits through the seawall and an increasing state of general confusion as ever more units poured onto the beach with nowhere to go. Contributing to 8th Canadian Infantry Brigade’s problems renewing the offensive was the fact that the reserve battalion, Le Régiment de la Chaudière, had suffered grave misfortune during its landing—beginning a trend of ill luck that was to dog the French-Canadian unit the rest of the day. Not only were most of its LCAs damaged or sunk by mines, but the soldiers were also lashed by mortar and artillery fire. Every LCA carrying ‘A’ Company foundered so far off the beach that the men were forced to discard much equipment and weapons to enable them to swim to safety.1 The other companies fared little better. ‘B’ Company lost almost all of No. 11 Platoon either killed or wounded to a mine that sank its LCA. Although suffering from wounds to his head and arms, Lieutenant D. Paré managed to get the survivors ashore and then reorganize them as a functioning unit. “Most LCAs have been sunk,” wrote the Chaudière war diarist, “and there are many dead and wounded.”2
‘A’ Squadron of the Fort Garry Horse attempted to join the infantry’s advance from the beach, but was caught in a massive traffic jam that had built up despite efforts by the beach masters to limit access to the primary vehicle road running south out of Bernières. Dozens of infantry Bren carriers, ambulance jeeps, 105-millimetre Priests from the 14th Field Regiment, and engineering vehicles clogged the route, snaring the tankers in a gridlock. Captain Eddy Goodman, ‘A’ Squadron’s battle captain, “decided to cut across some open fields and circumnavigate the infantry vehicles. I came to one ploughed field and saw a sign reading Achtung Minen. Somewhere in the back of my mind I remembered an intelligence officer saying that often instead of mines the Germans put up signs to slow the enemy’s advance. I decided that this was one of those times and went bowling across the field, only to blow up my tank, completely destroying the right track… I grabbed together another tank and [led the squadron] to my support position with the Régiment de la Chaudière.”3
According to the brigade plan, the Chaudière Regiment was to have passed through the Queen’s Own and taken over the advance inland from Bernières through Bény-sur-Mer, Basly, and Colombysur-Thaon, on to the Anguerney heights. The QOR would be close behind in support.4 At 0940 hours, the Chaudières, the Fort Garry Horse’s ‘A’ Squadron, a battery of the 14th Field Regiment’s 105-millimetre Priest self-propelled guns, and a heavy machine-gun section of Cameron Highlanders of Ottawa aboard Bren carriers congregated in an orchard on the town’s west flank. This was the forming-up position for the advance on Bény-sur-Mer, a little over two miles away. As they passed through Bernières, the civilians were delighted to discover that among the liberating troops were men who spoke their own language. They greeted the French-Canadians enthusiastically, “some standing gamely among the ruins of their houses.” Much of the town, the Chaudière war diarist noted, was “in ruins with numerous houses aflame.”5
‘C’ and ‘D’ companies of the Queen’s Own Rifles were also gathered in the orchard, so the area was quickly choked with people and machines. Rifleman Jack Martin was waiting impatiently for the Bren carrier with his three-inch mortar to arrive when a German machine gun suddenly opened up. He and a dozen or so other soldiers hit the dirt behind a nearby carrier’s bogey wheels while they tried to figure out the enemy gun’s location. The battalion’s Lieutenant Colonel Jock Spragge stumped over and glared down at the prone men. “For Christ’s sake,” he barked, “you don’t duck for every one of them.” Martin and the other men got sheepishly to their feet, as a section of riflemen went to work wiping out the German gun position.6
Because a dug-in 88-millimetre gun near the town cemetery blocked the line of advance, nobody was venturing up the road into the wheat fields beyond the orchard. So when Martin’s Bren carrier arrived with the rest of his mortar team and its weapon, he quickly got it firing at the enemy gun. After loosing only a few rounds, Martin turned for another mortar bomb only to find that the rest of his crew had disappeared. He presumed they had gone for more ammunition, but it still meant laboriously firing the mortar single-handed.
Born in Toronto’s East End, Martin had joined the 48th Highlanders of Canada in 1939 at age sixteen, but had been dismayed to discover that, at the slightest provocation, Highland regiments insisted on their pipers squalling away on the blessed pipes. He had jumped at the chance to transfer to the Queen’s Own. Soon after joining the battalion for training at Camp Borden, Martin had been rendered deaf in his left ear by a Bren gunner who fired several continuous bursts from his weapon right next to his head. Martin’s hearing worsened with every mortar shoot—a fact he was at pains to prevent the medical officer discovering, lest he be sent back to Canada on a disability discharge. He was a skilled mortarman and so the task of re-aiming after each round, dropping in a new charge, and then firing it at the hidden gun position was completed at a pace not much slower than if his mates were present. Whether the fire had any effect or not, however, was
impossible to tell.
Off to his right, four Priests from the 14th Field Regiment were strung out in a field on the opposite side of the coastal road that ran westward from Bernières to Courseulles-sur-Mer. One of the Priests was only about a hundred feet from Martin’s mortar.7 Around the SPGs, the Chaudières were forming up by companies in preparation for an attack on the gun position.8
The four Priests were an ad hoc formation, drawn two each from ‘A’ Troop and ‘C’ Troop of the 66th Battery under command of ‘C’ Troop’s Lieutenant Garth Webb. These four SPGs had managed to unload from the LCTs more quickly than the rest and so formed a temporary combat group. Webb had been directed to the position by the battery’s command post officer, Lieutenant Al Lee, who had landed earlier aboard an LCA with the Queen’s Own Rifles to scout out safe firing positions for the battery. At the time, Lee had been more worried about open fields being mined than the possibility of the Priests coming into range of enemy antitank guns, as there was no sign of such opposition about. “You don’t need to worry about mines,” the lieutenant said as he pointed out the field the guns were to occupy, “because here’s this cow.”
Observing that the animal was fastened to a six-foot tether, Webb replied, “It doesn’t look like that cow would hit very many mines if that’s all the distance he can move.” Then he got busy deploying the guns according to directions given by Lee to bring them into a firing line towards likely inland targets that lay in the path of the advance.
Like all the Priests landing on Juno Beach, those of the 14th Field Regiment were heavily loaded with extra ammunition for the 105-millimetre guns, cases of bullets for the infantry, and mines and other explosives for the engineers. Webb and another man were out in front of the guns, lying on the grass in order to set up aiming markers, when the Priest on the far right of the line exploded.9