Juno Beach

by Mark Zuehlke

  McLeod responded instantly, swinging his tank around and starting back down the hill. No. 2 Troop headed towards home in a two-up formation, with McLeod and Corporal R. Pike’s tanks up front and Gariépy about ten yards behind in trail. The sergeant kept popping smoke the entire way to keep the tanks screened from where he believed the German mortar was positioned on the forested ridge. As the two tanks started coming up on the Reviers–Fontaine-Henry road, Gariépy saw McLeod’s tank suddenly burst into flames. “I halted,” he later wrote, “[and] told my driver to reverse full speed and my gunner to traverse 106 degrees right. When this was almost completed I saw my corporal’s tank blown up in turn.”8

  Scanning the ground around him for the German gun, Gariépy saw a deadly 88-millimetre dug into a hole next to the road between two burning tanks from No. 1 Troop so that it was all but invisible until the muzzle blast kicked up a plume of dust. The range was just sixty yards. Gariépy frantically directed his gunner’s aim onto the enemy gun before it reduced their Sherman to another burning hulk and won the race. His gunner fired two rounds and the second was a direct hit.

  The sergeant radioed Smuck and reported that the other five tanks had been knocked out. He was ordered back to Reviers, but Gariépy said that first he wanted to check for survivors. He wanted also to make damned certain the garrison of that German gun were dead. Despite being warned by Smuck not to take the risk, Gariépy rolled his tank right up onto the gun emplacement “and mercilessly shot all the gun crew of fourteen men who were cowering in the trench.”9

  Despite the fact that all five tanks burst into flames the moment they were hit, most of the crews managed to escape. Although Lieutenant McLeod was wounded, his crew was unhurt. Lieutenant Pease and three of his crew, however, were killed, with only the co-driver escaping. In all, seven 1st Hussars perished in those brief seconds.10

  As Gariépy concluded his grim accounting of the dead, the Reginas came abreast of the scene. A passing officer mentioned that he thought there had been a sniper firing at the tank commanders from a nearby house, where some of the infantry were forming up. Spending most of their time with heads poked above the rim of the cupola of the turret hatch, tank commanders were favoured targets for enemy snipers. Sticking his headphones inside his beret, Gariépy approached the house while poking the phony head out of the turret hatch. Sure enough, a shot came from the attic of the house. The sergeant would have liked to blow the house apart with his main gun, but the infantry were still milling about and seemed not to have heard the sniper shot. Not wanting to risk the sniper escaping while he pointed the German position out to the infantry, Gariépy and his loader/operator jumped out of the tank, ran to the house, and kicked the door in. An old man and woman crouched inside began imploring the two men in German, which neither Canadian could understand. They brushed past the pair, dashed up the stairs, and broke into the attic to find a young woman of about nineteen. In her hands was a German Mauser rifle held low but pointed in their direction. Gariépy gunned her down with his Sten gun.

  “Angry, irritated, probably scared, I could not hesitate,” he later said. “We learned from the old people that this girl’s ‘fiancé’ had been shot by a Canadian tank that morning and she had sworn she would liquidate all crew commanders.”11

  When Gariépy caught up to the other three surviving tanks, he not surprisingly “found the morale of the squadron was extremely low but everyone [was] wishing revenge.”12

  While the tankers were recovering from the debacle with the 88-millimetre gun, the Reginas’ advance continued. Having lost radio contact with both ‘B’ and ‘C’ companies, however, Lieutenant Colonel Matheson was at a loss to know where they were or whether they had run into any difficulty. Hoping to re-establish some link with them, he dispatched the Bren carrier platoon commander with a section of carriers to determine the situation and report back. New communication links were soon established and ‘B’ Company reported that it had entered Fontaine-Henry at 1900 hours. ‘C’ Company checked in thirty minutes later, with a report that it had finished clearing le Fresne-Camilly.

  Leaving the battered ‘A’ Company at Reviers to guard the bridge crossings of the River Seulles and await reinforcements, Matheson set off with ‘D’ Company for le Fresne-Camilly. Soon after this force arrived, the battalion received orders at 2100 hours from Brigadier Foster to consolidate for the night. Fifteen minutes later, ‘B’ Company reported that German artillery fire had hammered its headquarters in Fontaine-Henry and that both commander Major F.L. Peters and his second-in-command, Lieutenant G.D. Dickin, had been killed. So too had been Rifleman A.J. Kennedy. These were the Reginas’ last casualties in what had been an extremely costly day for the regiment. Despite the many terrible setbacks the Reginas had endured, however, they could be, as the regimental historian noted, proud of having reached the intermediate objective. “Get your intermediate objectives on D-Day at all costs,” the officers had been told, and they had done that.13

  THE SAME COULD NOT be said for the 21st Panzer Division or 716th Infantry Division. While the latter had been virtually eliminated in the day’s fighting, the former had put in a disappointing performance, in part due to Generalleutnant Edgar Feuchtinger’s questionable leadership. By 2200 hours, his divisional staff, relying on motorcycle couriers in the absence of a radio link with the fighting units, had managed to reorganize the troops to hold a defensive line extending from north of Buron to the west through épron and Lébisy to Major Hans von Luck’s position at Blainville. This enabled the division to safeguard the approaches to Caen against an advance by 3rd British Infantry Division while also being placed so as to renew the counterattack if that was ordered.14 Responsibility for issuing such an order, however, no longer rested with LXXXIV Corps’ General der Artillierie Erich Marcks. In the late afternoon, Hitler had issued instructions through OKW placing the entire Orne front under the command of Generaloberst Josef (Sepp) Dietrich of 1st SS Panzer Corps.

  Hitler’s late rising that morning had crippled OKW’s ability to react to the invasion in any effective manner. As General der Infanterie Günter Blumentritt later said, “The system of command under Hitler made it impossible for, say, Jodl to make a decision on his own, since Hitler reserved to himself the disposal of every single division. This system had been enforced since 1943; before then the German method of command prevailed and one could act very independently on one’s own responsibility without asking permission.”15

  Having only received a full briefing by OKW staff at the midday meeting, it was not until 1500 hours that Hitler issued orders placing the 12th SS Panzer (Hitlerjugend) and Panzer Lehr divisions under Seventh Army control. Another clarifying order issued at 1540 hours put 1st SS Panzer Corps also under Seventh Army Commander Oberstgeneral Friedrich Dollman’s authority. Finally, OKW was taking the invasion of Normandy seriously.

  Dollman ordered 1st SS Panzer Corps and the two divisions to proceed with haste to the Caen area for the purpose of launching a counterattack against the British and Canadian beachheads, an order immediately confirmed by Commander-in-Chief West von Rundstedt.16

  Dietrich’s staff had received early warning that such an order was likely and the corps commander had himself hastened back from leave in Belgium upon learning of the invasion. Consequently, at 1600 hours, his staff and corps troops struck out for Caen after ensuring that both divisional commanders had received their new orders. By late afternoon, the heavy haze that had hung over Normandy during the morning and hampered operations by Allied fighter-bombers had dissipated. Much of France was now warmed by spring sunshine.

  The corps staff and column of supporting troops were forced by the constantly hovering presence of Typhoons and Spitfires to stay off the main highway from Trun to Falaise to avoid easy detection. Instead, they snaked along narrow secondary lanes that were often covered by overhanging branches of the bordering ranks of trees. “Already there were burning vehicles of all kinds everywhere on the road,” Dietrich’s chief-of-staff General
major Fritz Krämer later wrote. With no anti-aircraft guns positioned to fire upon the Allied planes and nary a Luftwaffe fighter to be seen, Krämer lamented that the fighters “were able to attack as though carrying out exercises. Air attacks had a paralyzing effect on some of our drivers. German soldiers were not accustomed to this type of attack, and it was several days before they became accustomed to it, placed observers in vehicles, and took necessary countermeasures. Whenever enemy fighters approached, the vehicles were raced, if possible, to a house, tree, slope of the road, or other cover, and the crew alighted.”17

  The decision to move a Panzer corps headquarters and two Panzer divisions in broad daylight infuriated Panzer Group West commander General der Panzertruppen Leo Freiherr Geyr von Schweppenburg. While accepting the need to turn 12th SS Panzer Division around and heading in the right direction despite the risks this entailed, he pleaded with von Rundstedt to rescind the order putting Panzer Lehr on the march. There would be no significant delay, he said, if the division waited until night to move. The old officer stiffly refused to countermand his orders.

  On receiving the movement order, the Panzer Lehr’s divisional commander, Generalleutnant Fritz Bayerlein, also pleaded for permission to delay until after nightfall. But von Rundstedt was unshakable, so the tanks and vehicles soon rolled out of their assembly point at Nogent le Rotrou, ninety-five miles southwest of Paris, en route to Caen. No sooner had it started on the march than the fighter-bombers pounced on one of the Panzer Grenadier regiments, destroying 123 personnel carriers and five trucks. Hearing this news, Schweppenburg bitterly reflected that he and Bayerlein “had experienced for years a considerable amount of stubborn Panzer fighting. Rundstedt, Jodl, and Blumentritt had not. The resulting two schools of thought represented the difference between the tactics of horse-drawn divisions of the Napoleonic Age and the 19th Century and that of mechanized divisions of the 20th Century. The tactical methods of one were hardly understandable to the other.”

  He was even more disturbed by the implication of the movement order itself and the fact that his precious divisions were being placed under Dollman’s command. They were, he lamented, to now be “committed in the same manner as a reserve battalion of 1918 might have been thrown in to take back a segment of a trench captured by the enemy. Since Hitler had the last say, one would have hoped that experts were consulted. This was not the case. Neither Panzer Group West [Schweppenburg himself] nor Oberstgeneral [Heinz] Guderian was asked to express an opinion.”18

  When 12th SS Panzer Division’s Brigadeführer (SS equivalent to Generalmajor) Fritz Witt had received the order at about 1600 hours to swing his command around, he could not believe the stupidity. Sending dispatch riders racing up and down the columns with the new instructions, the general steamed and worried while vehicles were laboriously shunted back and forth on the narrow roads to turn them in the right direction. Fortunately, the division had already been heading northwest towards Elbeuf and when a new route was mapped out to get the division to the area of Lisieux near Caen, Witt discovered it was only forty-four miles to the new assembly point. But he also knew that as the division neared Caen and the invasion beaches it would attract the Allied fighters like so many flies.19

  One of Witt’s favourite commanders, Standartenführer (SS equivalent to Oberst) Kurt Meyer, upon learning that the division was to march towards the sound of the guns rather than merely a possible invasion sight, felt a moment’s anxiety. In Poland, Holland, Belgium, France, the Balkans, and Russia, the SS officer had led troops through the carnage of battle. Now he would do so again in France, but this time his men were young teenagers who had never before seen the face of war. They were, he believed, “superbly trained” and highly motivated. While his veteran officers and non-commissioned officers all met the 25th SS Panzer Grenadier Regiment commander’s eyes with gazes filled with the same anxiety he felt, Meyer noted that, in comparison, “the magnificent young grenadiers look at us with laughter in their eyes. They have no fear. They are confident, they have faith in their strength and the will to fight. How will these boys prove themselves?”20

  As the twenty thousand troops of the division moved towards Caen, the fighter-bombers and strafing fighter planes found the SS columns. Tanks dashed across open road junctions in single bounds to avoid the rockets and bombs of the Typhoons and Spitfires. Other fighters hurtled down the roads, raking the strung-out vehicles with machine guns. Meyer watched aghast as the “flourishing life” of his teenage troops was shredded by bullets or torn to pieces by explosions.

  Before them, Caen was wrapped in a dark cloud of smoke. The SS troopers pushed down the Falaise-Caen road against a tide of refugees fleeing the burning ruin. Many of the civilian vehicles were caught in the Allied strafing attacks. Meyer drove past a burning bus. Mangled bodies hung out of the windows and blocked the door, barring the escape of others trapped inside and screaming in anguished pain as they were incinerated.

  On the division went, under almost constant attack. But the orders were clear—they were to stop for nothing; they were to get to Caen and the battleground. Meyer wished he had some information about what lay ahead, anything about the Allied formations and strength that they would fight. He knew nothing, only that many of his soldiers were being killed or wounded long before they reached the field of battle.21

  Elsewhere on the road, 1st SS Panzer Corps’ Dietrich and Krämer met up with Witt. The SS divisional commander “gave some valuable hints about camouflage during marches.” He also provided the corps officers with the whereabouts of 21st Panzer Division’s new headquarters at St. Pierre-sur-Dives. As the corps journeyed deeper into Normandy, Krämer noted that many civilians were aware of the landings. They also gathered “before the doors of their houses in towns and villages. Their attitude was not hostile; rather, they showed a strong resentment towards the Allied air attacks, which oftentimes did not discriminate between German motor- and horse-drawn vehicles and French civilian vehicles. Likewise, the civilians were aware that enemy air attacks had almost demolished Falaise.

  “When Corps arrived at Falaise, it was impossible to pass through the burning town, and we had to detour along a road that the local military police had cleared. This roundabout way was passable for tanks and heavy motor vehicles, so that delay was the only obstacle the air attack created.”22

  At about 2000 hours, Dietrich and Krämer burst into the command post at St. Pierre and were astonished to find nobody of importance there other than the division’s first general staff officer. When the officer nervously related what he knew of the division’s counterattack efforts on both the east and west sides of the River Orne, the two SS men were unimpressed that Feuchtinger would divide his forces in a way that denied them a concentrated impact.

  Then they were told that the division commander was at Richter’s headquarters, but had no radio with him. For a Panzer commander “to leave his headquarters without a radio set was… tantamount to travelling without his head,” Krämer fumed. Equally dismaying was the fact that, because of its move, the divisional headquarters had not yet established a telephone link to Seventh Army in le Mans. Dietrich demanded that such a connection be established forthwith while he consulted with Feuchtinger by telephone to get a better assessment of the Panzer division’s situation.23

  In a conversation frequently interrupted by failed connections and during which Feuchtinger’s voice was often inaudible, Dietrich learned that the hapless commander “had no contact with his combat groups, except through messengers and special-mission staff officers.” This, of course, was because he had no radio. The situation, Feuchtinger admitted, “was vague.” He assured Dietrich, however, that he had sixty tanks ready for action that were sufficiently equipped with ammunition and fuel to return to the counterattack on the corps commander’s order.24

  By the time this call was concluded, a tenuous link to Seventh Army had been established that ran through an exchange in the midst of burning Falaise. The extent of damage to the town was
causing severe problems for the communications people there, and broken connections and complete loss of volume constantly plagued Dietrich’s conversation with Oberstgeneral Dollman. Finally, the two reverted to a ponderous conversation by Teletype in which the army commander urged Dietrich to carry out a “compact attack by Corps as soon as possible.”

  Dietrich responded that it would be impossible for Panzer Lehr Division to reach the area until the evening of June 7 and that a coordinated attack should not be expected before June 8. It would take at least until then to organize the three Panzer divisions with their various support elements for a counterattack on June 8 that would “throw the landed enemy back into the sea.”25

  While Dietrich and Dollman sparred over the details and timing of the counterattack, 12th SS Panzer Division’s Kurt Meyer was tracked down by an ordnance officer from 21st Panzer Division. The SS officer was wanted immediately at the headquarters of 716th Infantry Division for consultations with Feuchtinger. Leaving his regiment of Panzer Grenadiers to make its own way to the assigned assembly point near Carpiquet airport, Meyer hastened towards Caen. The city was ablaze, dazed civilians wandering aimlessly or sifting listlessly through piles of rubble, streets jammed with debris, the air thick with a black and choking smoke.

  Richter’s headquarters was in a bunker dug deep into a sandspit near the river. The corridors were packed solid with wounded soldiers from both the 716th and 21st Panzer divisions. Working feverishly, doctors and orderlies carried out cursory treatments and then readied the men for evacuation in ambulances to hospitals in the rear.

  Just before midnight on June 6, Meyer was ushered into the presence of Richter and Feuchtinger. The Panzer commander immediately launched into a long justification of his actions while simultaneously blaming the confused command structure under which he had served throughout the day as the reason for his initial inaction and then the scattered nature of the eventual counterattack. As Feuchtinger droned on, Meyer thought a pivotal opportunity to seriously disrupt the invasion had been frittered away. “Instead of driving like lightning into the massed concentration of landed enemy forces, the division was condemned to be burnt out in dribs and drabs.” Ruefully he remembered the old-tank philosopher Guderian’s admonishment: “Rather all at once than bit by bit.”26