Juno Beach

by Mark Zuehlke

  At his headquarters in St. Lô, Marcks had finally received word that Hitler, having at last awakened and been fully briefed, had ordered OKW to clear 21st Panzer Division for offensive action under LXXXIV Corps command. He also learned that Seventh Army’s Oberst-general Friedrich Dollman was working on getting 1st SS Panzer Corps released to him as well. This would bolster his forces significantly by freeing the Panzer Lehr Division and the 12th SS Panzer (Hitlerjugend) Division to support Marcks’s right flank with counterattacks on the British and Canadian beachheads. But, although both these divisions had been ordered to begin moving towards Caen, they would be hours arriving. So for now Marcks would have to make do with the 21st Panzer Division.9

  Marcks immediately informed Feuchtinger that “the bulk of the 21st Panzer Division will attack the enemy forces that have landed west of the Orne; only elements of von Luck’s combat group will attack the bridgehead east of the Orne.”10 Orders issued, the one-legged Marcks jumped into an armoured scout car and raced to intercept the 22nd Panzer Regiment with the intention of personally sending it into battle. Marcks, who had just turned fifty-three in the early hours of June 6, had been instrumental—along with Heinz Guderian, presently serving as Inspector General of Armoured Troops—in developing fundamental aspects of the German blitzkrieg tactics and was no stranger to tank command. When he arrived at 22nd Panzer Regiment’s forming-up area, Marcks grimly approached the regimental commander, Oberst von OppelnBronikowski. “If you don’t succeed in throwing the British back into the sea,” he warned, “we shall have lost the war.”11

  TURNING THE BULK of the Panzer division around and moving in the ordered direction proved chaotic, and it was not until 1200 hours that Feuchtinger could report his force fully assembled and starting towards the beaches. The march itself was hellish. Whereas the tankers and mechanized troops had earlier managed to largely avoid detection by the Allied flyers while moving towards the east side of the Orne, their approach to Caen brought them directly into an area being heavily bombed and shelled. “There was only one usable bridge in Caen,” Feuchtinger later wrote. “A further light bridge was available at Colombelles. The approaches of the various combat teams had to be fixed correspondingly.”12

  To von Luck, the move meant the majority of the division “had to squeeze through the eye of the needle at Caen, [which] was under virtually constant bombardment from the navy and the fighter-bombers.” The major, however, was not concerned about trying to get his own regiment through Caen, for Feuchtinger had given him a more demanding immediate task. His job was to “crush the 6th Airborne’s bridgehead, recapture the two Orne bridges at Bénouville [on the opposite side of the river from Ranville] and establish contact with the coastal units. Elements of artillery will support you. Start of the attack; as soon as all elements have reached you.” In short, he was to carry out Feuchtinger’s original plan with less than a quarter of the division’s available strength. The major’s 2nd Battalion was to be reinforced by the 21st Panzer Reconnaissance Battalion, 200th Assault-gun Battalion, and a platoon of 88-millimetre guns. For tanks, he would receive No. 4 Company of the 22nd Panzer Regiment, but had to send his own 1st Battalion to support the armoured regiment.13

  Complicating von Luck’s problem was that several elements of his 2nd Battalion were already locked in heavy fighting to hold back the attempts by the paratroops to extend their bridgehead. This meant that he could only free some of the battalion to participate in the attack. He was also greatly concerned that his only additional infantry reinforcement was in the form of the reconnaissance battalion, which was lightly armed and “not equipped for direct attacking operations.”14

  It took until 1700 hours for No. 4 Company to show with its tanks. Word came that the assault-gun battalion could not possibly arrive in the area until sometime in the early morning hours of June 7. As the main divisional attack had already started at 1600 hours, von Luck decided to wait no longer. He ordered the reconnaissance battalion to assume the point and start moving. His route would be via EscovilleHérouvillette to Ranville and the two bridges there.

  “The reconnaissance battalion went straight into the attack from its march,” von Luck wrote, “and, supported by the Panzer company, penetrated to Escoville against their surprised opponents. Then all hell broke loose. The heaviest naval guns, up to 38-[centimetre], artillery, and fighter-bombers plastered us without pause. Radio contacts were lost, wounded came back, and the men of the reconnaissance battalion were forced to take cover.”

  From a position just behind the reconnaissance troops, von Luck “saw the disaster” and ran to the commander with fresh instructions. He told the officer to assume a defensive position on the southern edge of Escoville, with the tanks in support to block any advance by the paratroops. Then he radioed Leutnant Liebeskind and said to inform Feuchtinger that he was unable to break through on the eastern side of the Orne.

  Feuchtinger had divided the main part of the division into two teams—one a mixed force of armour and mechanized infantry and the other mechanized infantry supported by artillery. The Armoured Combat Team’s backbone was 22nd Panzer Regiment with the 1st Battalion of the 125th Panzer Grenadier Regiment, while the Combat Team consisted of 1st Battalion of the 192nd Panzer Grenadier Regiment with a company of the 220th Panzer Engineer Battalion in lightly armoured half-tracks. Although the armoured team at first glance appeared quite formidable, its one hundred tanks were mostly outdated Mark IVs mounting short-barrelled 75-millimetre guns with an effective range against armour of only two thousand feet. Still, Feuchtinger intended the armoured team to crash out from Caen along a road passing through Lébisy to Hermanville-surMer and clear the coast from the mouth of the Orne to the eastern outskirts of Lion-sur-Mer. The 192nd Panzer Grenadier’s team, meanwhile, would guard the armoured force’s left flank and secure Lion-sur-Mer itself. With Sword Beach effectively destroyed, the 21st Panzer Division could be reinforced by the 12th SS Panzer and Panzer Lehr divisions in the morning. Then, together, this massive armoured juggernaut could roll up the invasion beaches from the most easterly to the most westerly, with Juno Beach the first marked for elimination.15

  The counterattack enjoyed initial success as the tanks came up sharply on the 2nd King’s Shropshire Light Infantry (KSLI), which was approaching Lébisy in a dash for Caen, and forced it to scramble back a mile to the protection of a ridge at Bieville. Breaking to the left, the German armour swung into a gap between épron and Mathieu to gain Périers Ridge, less than two miles from the open left flank of 3rd Canadian Infantry Division’s main line of advance. It was a move intended to enable the use of the ridge as a screen to protect the tanks from exposure to the antitank guns of the regiments guarding 3rd British Infantry Division’s western flank. But the Germans were unaware that the British and Canadian armoured brigades possessed a new, deadly answer to the might of their Panzers.

  Hidden on the opposing Hermanville Ridge, little more than a mile to the east, were three troops of Firefly Sherman tanks mounting 17-pounder guns. Their commander, Lieutenant Colonel J.A. Eadie of the Staffordshire Yeomanry, had anticipated that the Germans would launch a counterattack precisely into the gap between the Canadian and British divisions and use Périers Ridge to mask the move. As the Mark IVs came over the crest of the ridge, Eadie launched his ambush.16 The big guns ripped into the German tanks at a range of just over 6,500 feet and the Germans were helpless to fight back. Sixteen tanks were knocked out in minutes and the rest scuttled back to the safety of the ridgeline.

  An attempt by von Oppeln-Bronikowski to sideslip his combat group west to evade the British fire turned into a confused muddle because Allied radio-jamming efforts were so effective that he was unable to establish contact with individual tank crews. Progress by the tanks slowed to a crawl and then stopped entirely when the Germans saw hundreds of gliders descending to land in their rear.

  This was the 6th Airlanding Brigade, arriving as scheduled at the end of the day to reinforce 6th British Airborne
Division. When the tug planes crossed the coast almost over the heads of the Panzer troops, they released 228 Horsa and 30 Hamilcar gliders that began their descent. Unable to elevate the barrels of the tank and SPG main weapons to engage the British gliders, the Germans sprayed the air with machine-gun fire. Although Feuchtinger later claimed that this fire brought down 26 gliders, the fact was that the British troops were descending towards a drop zone just north of Ranville, well east of the German division’s rear.17 The main purpose of this landing was to strengthen the airborne bridgehead around the Ranville bridges crossing the Orne and Caen Canal to ensure that this vital position was not overrun by expected German counterattacks on June 7 and 8.

  To the men of 21st Division’s armoured team, however, it seemed eerily as if the Allies had somehow deliberately mounted a stunning coup de main with glider troops to cut off their lines of retreat. Badly pummelled by British tanks that stood far outside the range of their own guns, and now threatened from the rear, the Germans panicked and began a hasty retreat that was quickly endorsed by Feuchtinger.18

  The 192nd Panzer Grenadier Regiment, meanwhile, was already too far forward to think they could escape the illusory trap of the British airborne forces. While the tankers had attempted to work around the deadly Staffordshire Yeomanry tanks, the 192nd Regiment’s commander, Oberst Josef Rauch, had slipped his force along the west flank of Périers Ridge through to Plumetot. From here, it dashed northward along a local road to reach Lion-sur-Mer, and linked up with some elements of the 111th Battalion of the 736th Infantry Regiment dug in before the beach there. But on learning that there was no chance his smaller force would be reinforced by the tank team, Rauch decided he must turn around and withdraw. Poor communications plagued Rauch as badly as had been true for the armoured team and he lost contact with a number of self-propelled guns and the majority of his 1st Company of Panzer grenadiers during the withdrawal. They ended up straying into the lines of the Germans defending the radar station at Douvres-la Délivrande. When Rauch managed to establish radio contact with this lost element and reported their situation back to divisional headquarters, he was informed it would be too dangerous for it to attempt withdrawing and that the troops should strengthen that defensive position until relieved.19

  The confusion that mired the 21st Panzer Division’s counterattack had been greatly exacerbated by the actions of its commander. First, Feuchtinger had shifted his headquarters from outside Caen to a new position at St. Pierre-sur-Dives near Troarn to be closer to the offensive he had ordered executed between the Dives and Orne rivers. This placed him a good twelve miles east of Caen and far from the action when Marcks ordered the offensive directed to the west of the Orne. Belatedly desiring to get closer to where the main strength of his division was engaged in battle, Feuchtinger had taken his entire staff—excepting the division’s first general staff officer—off to Richter’s headquarters on the Caen outskirts. In their haste, nobody had thought to take along a wireless set, leaving Feuchtinger dependent on the telephone for communicating through the staff officer to his fighting units. As the telephone exchanges and lines around Caen had been badly disrupted by massive Allied bombing and shelling, he was often unable to establish a link with his own headquarters.20

  [ 20 ]

  A Great Initiation

  BY THE TIME ‘B’ COMPANY of La Régiment de la Chaudière had finished mopping up the Moulineaux Gun Battery and shepherding the prisoners to Bény-sur-Mer for escort back to the beach, Major George Sévigny’s ‘C’ Company had pushed off towards Basly. And, as had been the case since the company first assumed its position at the head of the column departing Bernières-sur-Mer, it immediately started tripping one sniper and machine-gun position after another. Despite the complaints being registered by officers farther back in the column, Sévigny and his men could do little more than slowly, cautiously close on each cluster of German defenders and either force a surrender or eliminate them. Sévigny was, as he had been throughout the advance, right at the front to ensure the platoon section leaders were as aggressive as possible without recklessly risking lives. Beyond that, there was little he could do to hasten the process of clearing the endless pockets of resistance.

  The remaining Chaudière companies were too confined by the road and its bordering hedgerows to offer any support. To deploy into the neighbouring fields to come up on ‘C’ Company’s flanks would only have further delayed the advance. The 14th Field Regiment’s Forward Observation Officer, Lieutenant J.B. Leslie, was incapable of providing artillery support because the German positions were only revealed when ‘C’ Company was practically on top of them. Trying to shell the enemy would likely cause friendly-fire casualties.1

  Although the German 716th Infantry Division, whose 726th Infantry Regiment was defending this sector, had been declared by Allied intelligence to be of poor fighting quality, the division had proven capable of offering a determined fight from fixed positions. As had been true during the battle for the beach itself, the Germans encountered on the march from Bernières towards Anguerny and Colombysur-Thaon largely lacked armoured fighting vehicles and motorized transport. This meant they could seldom take the offensive or successfully withdraw from a defensive position. Consequently, the German infantry tended to fight stubbornly until the position was on the verge of being overrun, whereupon they generally surrendered rather than fight to the death—a pragmatic approach that still enabled the Germans to effectively hobble the Canadian advance.

  The stiff resistance slowed 8th Canadian Infantry Brigade’s advance to a crawl and left the three battalions of 9th Canadian Infantry Brigade and the Sherbrooke Fusiliers virtually shuffling along on the leading brigade’s heels. It was not until 1645 hours that the North Nova Scotia Highlanders in the vanguard and the Sherbrookes reached their designated forming-up position outside Bény-sur-Mer, codenamed “Elder.” From here, they were to close up on 8 CIB with the intention of overtaking the Chaudières at Colomby-sur-Thaon and passing through in a rapid mechanized dash to the Caen-Bayeux highway and Carpiquet airport.

  In the North Novas ranks, as No. 12 Platoon of ‘B’ Company was forming up for the advance, several civilians came over and offered the men some wine from bottles. “Don’t even think of it, because you never know,” Private Jack Byrne warned the other soldiers. Even though Byrne was only a private, the other men immediately refused the wine. Just nineteen on D-Day, Byrne had been only fifteen when he volunteered in 1940. Being five-foot-eleven, 157 pounds, and an avid athlete, Byrne had succeeded in duping the recruiters into thinking he was of legal age. Posted in England to be an instructor at the Canadian Battle School, Byrne was quickly promoted to the rank of sergeant serving in the school’s demonstration platoon. When Byrne realized the invasion was imminent, he requested a transfer to the North Novas to get in on the show and gladly accepted a demotion to private in order to do so. Upon reporting for duty to No. 12 Platoon’s lieutenant, Byrne recognized the officer as one of many who had gone through Battle School under his tutelage, where the officer had been required to defer to the then sergeant. “I’m here. I’m a private, and I’ll remain that until I leave,” Byrne assured his lieutenant. “I understand,” the officer responded. But Byrne had a natural talent for leadership, and despite his lowly rank and young age the other men in the platoon often turned to him for guidance.2

  While the North Novas were getting organized, the Sherbrookes were busy de-waterproofing their tanks. It had taken the crews two weeks of steady work to install the various waterproofing devices, but the removal required only ten minutes’ effort. When the drivers plugged a strand of electrical wire into a live socket, a series of Cordex explosives were set off that blew the fabric covers that had covered the gun muzzle, mantle, and ventilation ducts. Meanwhile, the crew commander “pulled a trigger and the towering breathing tubes clattered to the ground,” the regimental historian wrote. “The remainder of the crew with wrenches and crowbars tore off the breathing tube mounting fixtures, and opened
the engine compartment door to see how much water had been shipped, but ‘there was hardly enough briny there to make a decent gargle.’”3

  The North Novas by now were anxious to get moving because hanging about the assembly area had attracted the attention of some German mortars, which were firing from a position near the little hamlet of Moulineaux. When the increasingly accurate mortaring seemed to single out Major L.M. Rhodenizer’s ‘A’ Company for particular attention, the platoons started getting intermixed as men ducked for cover rather than marshalling around their assigned tanks. Corporal L.E. Bishop called on the men to stand fast, but was quickly killed by a round when he stepped out into the open road to set an example for the others.4 One other soldier was killed and three wounded in the next few minutes.5

  So when the order to saddle up came, the North Novas did precisely that. Three companies rushed to board the Shermans of the Sherbrooke Fusiliers, while the other climbed onto its bicycles. When there proved to be too little space on the tanks for all the men assigned to them, tankers and infantry rigged up an ingenious sled that could be pulled on ropes attached to the backs of the tanks. For the landing, each tank had been supplied with extra ammunition loaded in a metal canister, which attached to the bottom of the Shermans for release on the beach.6 Dubbed a porpoise, these canisters were about one foot deep, eight feet long, and five feet wide. The tankers now hooked the porpoises back up to the tanks and the North Novas, like Private Byrne, who were still looking for a means of transport jumped on. As the tanks ground up the road, Byrne thought the porpoises slid along behind “just like a sled on snow” despite their heavy loads of as many as twenty men per sled compared to the ten or so that managed to find space aboard each tank.7

  Realizing the mortars were so positioned that they could dog 9 CIB’s advance all the way to Colomby, the Sherbrookes’ Lieutenant Colonel Mel Gordon instructed ‘A’ Squadron to dispatch a troop of tanks to wipe out the position. Major W.L. Arnold assigned the job to No. 1 Troop under command of Lieutenant John H. “Jack” Casey of London, Ontario. Sergeants R.R. Beardsley and T.B. Murray were in charge of the other two tanks in the troop.