Breakout (Kirov Series Book 38)

by Schettler, John

  Old Ironsides would take the road northwest, bypassing the forest, but intending to turn north at Carrouges and take the road to Argentan. Unfortunately, KGs Mauss and Berlichingen would beat them to that town, and the following morning they would scout forward to find the road north crowded with enemy troops on the march.

  The Germans were also moving all night, following Patton’s troops north on a parallel track to the east. By dawn, Berg would be about 10 kilometers due east of Argentan, with 10th Panzer an equal distance to the southeast. In the west, the 77th and 91st Divisions were all tramping north on the roads to Argentan, which now looked to be the next point where both sides would soon collide. These were strong forces on Patton’s flanks, and his headlong rush north and contempt for guarding those flanks were two factors that introduced an element of danger in Bradley’s mind.

  Patton had been told to take Alencon, and he had it in hand 24 hours later. But a bridgehead over the Seine was now his primary objective. Give him orders like that, thought Bradley, and all hell could break loose. He had been collecting the morning recon photos, and particularly those from the two engagements 3rd Armored had fought against what looked like a new German outfit. More and more reports from those actions were stacking up, and they told the same dark story.

  ‘Enemy unit of considerable strength… with new armored vehicles, particularly heavy tanks, never seen before on any front…. Heavy casualties were sustained, with severe losses to tank battalions engaging this unit, where enemy tanks opened fire as far off as three kilometers….’

  That was ample testimony to a real powerhouse tank out there somewhere, thus far in small numbers, and only seen in this single unit. But he was worried. He drove to find Patton that night, wanting to know his mind, and found him at ‘Lucky Forward’, which had moved right into downtown Alencon. Patton was at the Basilica of Notre Dame, admiring the magnificent flying buttresses.

  “George, I know I’m the Army Group worry wart, but take a look at these recon photos. That’s the new Kraut outfit that busted up Rose two days ago. Now it’s swinging north on our right.”

  “Looks to be nothing more than a regiment—maybe a brigade. I’m rolling north with five divisions.”

  “Right, but we could get hurt, just like Maurice Rose. The Germans are pulling back their entire wing on our left, and they’ve already beat Harmon to Carrouges. My bet is that they’re all headed for Argentan like we are. They know they have to hit us somewhere, and with gasoline supplies being low like this… well, I’m worried.”

  “Hell, they’re the ones who should be worried,” said Patton. “I’ve already notified Harmon and told him to swing east on the road to Sees. There’s good open country in that area, and he can cut north to Argentan that way. That’ll put two good armored divisions on that objective by noon tomorrow. If they want a fight, that’s exactly what I’ll give them. Besides, the Provisional Armored Division has all those new M-26’s I received. We’ve got a new tank too.”

  “Glad to hear it, but I’ve been reading the after action reports on this new German heavy. Rose said his tankers got hit before they could even see the damn things. They opened up on him at three kilometers. That’s some optics, and by god, they were getting hits out that far. He says the turrets just started flipping right off his Shermans.”

  “Brad, you don’t want to get rattled. War is war. Men and machines die. All we have to do is kill more of them than they kill of us, and thus far, our score is pretty damn good. We’re going into Argentan tomorrow, and then let’s see what they’ve got. Why don’t you get ahold of the air liaison and make sure we’ve got plenty of P-47’s loaded for bear in the morning. Wait until they get a taste of that napalm.”

  Berg’s Brigade had already had a taste the previous day, and the burn went deep. The Jabos had put both fire and steel on his troops, and losses were slowly mounting. He now had 36 operational Leopards, with three battlefield recoveries under repair. So that meant six of his initial 45 heavy Panzers were gone, hauled off so the enemy could not get to them, and sent back to Versailles where he sent some engineers to strip them for anything still useful, and then demolish the remains. None had been killed in fire fights with the American tanks, but those 1000 pound bombs were deadly. Even if they had near misses, the shrapnel and blast effect would wreck external sensors, cameras, and optics on his vehicles. If the hit was real close, it could even flip a heavy tank, or simply shock the crew senseless, even if the vehicle survived intact.

  It was the one trump card the enemy could play, and his missile inventory was running thin for air defense. His lighter vehicles had also suffered, and he had mounting casualties. Training for war back home was one thing, but actually fighting one, and seeing good men and women die, was quite another. Even with the advantage he had on the field, the taste was bitter, and there seemed to be no end of enemy tanks surging north towards Argentan. His drone reports showed the roads simply packed with them like a long herd of elephants lined up trunk to tail.

  The enemy was racing to get to the city, but he knew he would get there first with his fast moving units. KG 2 was in the lead, under Hauptman Fuchs, and he told him to get into a good blocking position at the edge of the city, and stop the enemy column.

  “We’ll come in hard on his right flank,” he finished.

  In just moving those ten kilometers, Fuchs had his column hit three times by the Jabos.

  * * *

  Patton wasn’t going to get to Argentan that week. Berg’s heavy Panzers formed up just outside the city, and then the Leopards raced south at high speed. It was going to be a shock attack, at high speed, so as to make it difficult for the enemy to register artillery. Like the Medieval heavy knights of old, he would sweep everything before him. The cavalry elements of 2nd Armored were driven back, their wheels being the only protection they had.

  Patton had gone forward to spur his men on, but now he was leaning heavily on the side of a jeep, listening to the radio calls. It was soon clear to him that his tankers had run into something they simply could not handle.

  “Goddammit!” he swore. “The Krauts brought up that heavy brigade Bradley was warning me about. Pull that cavalry out of there, and hold our tanks where they are. Get division artillery on that road, and saturate the damn thing. Pull in every fighter on call.”

  He instinctively reached for the only weapons that mattered. The Shermans were reacting to cover the cavalry, firing hot “Willie Pete” rounds which bloomed in into massive deadly flowers of white phosphorus. The M-20 armored cars fell back, through the covering smoke, and then the heavy 155mm rounds came screaming in, creating a forest of black smoke and fire laced with steel shrapnel. But Berg would not rush blindly into the trap.

  Berg’s brigade had radar that could literally track the arcing path of the incoming rounds, and he could see where they were predicted to fall. A tap of his command console screen could halt his Leopards at any moment, letting the Americans churn up the road and adjacent fields, while his tankers slowly reversed, falling back to a predetermined defensive line. Once again, the bold thrust of an American armored division had been stopped by his Panzers, but now it was becoming a question of ammunition. Some of his heavy tanks had expended a quarter or more of their rounds, and he was thinking that this war was far from over.

  He turned to Kluge, this thought in mind as he explained what he was doing. “We’ve closed the road to Argentan,” he said. “I suggest my people fall back into a supporting position now. We must be careful with our ammunition.”

  “Understood,” said Kluge. “Look there on your right. Those are your great grandfathers, the original 21st Panzer Brigade. It seems you have finally met up with your division. Let us see if they can seal off this breach. The 91st Division is coming up from the south as well, and I think we can stabilize the situation. But knowing this General Patton, he will simply hit us somewhere else soon. Stand ready.”

  Kluge was very correct.

  Chapter 18

&n
bsp; O’Connor would call it the nightmare on the Loire. He had had all things going his way earlier, punching through the enemy lines and exploiting up the road. The broken enemy infantry divisions fell back, all heading for the many crossing sites, and he was confident he would get a good bridgehead in a day or so. But that was not the case.

  The river was, on average, about 800 feet wide, with hidden sand shoals that could hang up assault boats that tried to cross. The Germans had blown all the bridges, and they kept the south bank under near constant artillery fire. His engineers had to cluster near the river under those guns, and try to get some kind of bridge afloat and in one piece, and it was difficult and deadly work.

  He had obtained a small bridgehead northwest of Sully-sur-Loire, but the Brandenburgers had contained it in a loop made by the river. He was able to take that town itself, but found the enemy dug in and intractable on the far end of the town.

  It was the French that showed a glimmer of success, forcing their way over the river west of Jargeal only to be stopped by a violent counterattack led by the newly arrived 15th Panzergrenadier Division. It had moved by rail under the grey skies the previous day, and reached Orleans by the morning of the 22nd of May. Hour by hour, the defense on the north bank seemed to strengthen, and to compound matters, his supply situation was not good.

  “This started well,” he said, “but it’s become quite a mess. Even if I were able to waltz across the river, with the Germans playing strings the whole way, I wouldn’t get another twenty miles without more gasoline in hand. We’ll simply have to stop here and wait for supply. In the meantime, we’ll pool the artillery and plan one big push when we get replenished.”

  “What about 5th Infantry, sir? Half the division is in the few small bridgeheads we’ve been able to obtain.”

  “If they can hang on, so be it, but if casualties become unacceptable, pull them out after dark. We’ll have to bunker in, as Monty would say. There’s nothing else for it. But we’ll try to mount one more cross-river assault with 3rd Infantry.”

  “Very good sir. Shall I inform SHAEF?”

  “No, I’ll do that. You just see to positioning that artillery, and inquire about gasoline and ammunition.”

  It was now abundantly clear to O’Connor that his war of maneuver was over in the east, at least for the time being. The Loire represented a considerable obstacle, particularly if defended, and he knew it could be some time before he would get across and begin moving north. That night he persisted, sending his 3rd Infantry Division across the river east of Sully, and that attack caught the Germans by surprise. They simply did not have enough troops to picket the entire length of the river, and the 3rd Division was able to get well established on the north bank, pushing about two kilometers.

  The inevitable reaction came when the Brandenburg Brigades appeared the following morning, clamping a steel lid on that small bridgehead. Then O’Connor got news that the pontoon bridge his engineers had thrown up west of Gien was now open, and elements of his 6th Armored had crossed. He resolved to get to work on a similar bridge behind the 3rd Infantry bridgehead, and by the 23rd he found that he had four separate toe holds north of the Loire.

  In the meantime, Guderian and von Rundstedt were giving Patton a lesson on the concept of elastic defense. If Hitler had been alive to prevent the many withdrawals they had ordered, both men had no doubt that a disaster would have ensued. Patton had forced three separate breakthroughs since the 5th of May, but each time, the German Army was simply pulled back. The terrain in France was superb for defense, and both the Loire and soon the Seine would become walls of water in the castle the two generals were now planning to rebuild.

  O’Connor stared at his tea on the boil that morning, knowing that was the only thing he could do—keep up the pressure on each one of his kettles, and wait to see which might blow a lid. He could sense that the sheer weight of his Army was laying heavily on the enemy now, and still had confidence, in spite of his supply difficulties. At the moment, it was work for his dogged infantry, and he would see it through.

  * * *

  In two weeks’ time, Patton had pushed 70 miles, but he was still about that same distance from Rouen and the Seine. While the Germans had taken significant losses, particularly with the 7th and 116th Panzers, the front was still intact. It had not collapsed, and the ground lost had been given to the enemy to assure the cohesion of the army. Le Mans had been sacrificed, but Chartres had been well covered, and Orleans was still in hand, with O’Connor stopped on the river. If there was still any danger, it lay in the west, where the front between Argentan and the coast near Caen was still very fluid. In fact, there was no consistent front there at all, just four German divisions pulling back, abandoning Normandy, which would now see nothing more of the war.

  The lost souls of all the men who had once fallen there in the old history were restless, wondering where they might now be laid to rest in this new telling of their tale. But strangely, the front now looked much like it once did in August of 1944, only this time it was the firebrand Patton where Montgomery once stood, and Monty stewing in the east, without fuel and supplies, which was the very same fate Patton had to deal with in the old history.

  The French had an old proverb that summed up the situation perfectly: “The more things change, the more they stay the same….”

  There were certain factors that were bound to remain consistent, even in a history so obviously changed as this recounting of these events. One of them was the ice cold hand of logistics on the necks of Generals on both sides. Fighting men had to eat, their guns needed ammo, and their tanks needed fuel.

  It was just this grim necessity that Montgomery had come to discuss with Eisenhower, finding him in a battered old hotel in Dunkerque. The conversation was blunt, to say the least, with Montgomery showing little deference for Eisenhower’s rank, and even less for the strategy he was insisting upon, the broad front approach.

  “Unconscionable,” said Montgomery, being one of the few Generals under Eisenhower’s command who might have such an arrow in his vocabulary quiver. “I simply find it unconscionable that you cannot see and appreciate the advantage of my current position. I’m sitting 150 miles from the Rhine, and all while Patton and Bradley are still eyeing Paris and contemplating the Seine. I have fine divisions under my command, and there they sit, completely idle for lack of fuel and supplies. It is simply outrageous incompetence, and I’ll not stand for it!”

  “Now, now,” said Ike. “Calm down, Monty. You can’t talk to me like that, I’m your boss.”

  “Well, I must say that if I had been left in command on the ground, free to allocate resources and supplies as I saw fit, then we would be a damn sight closer to Germany than we are at the moment. I warned you that the Brittany ports would be too far in our rear to matter.”

  “Yes, and that was the very reason Overlord landed in the Pas-de-Calais, was it not? And that was with your strong recommendation.”

  “They have yet to break out there,” said Monty, “and its 70 miles to Antwerp from their present lines. That operation will need precise focus, and frankly, unless you also take Walcheren and Beveland Islands, and clear the Scheldt, that port will be useless as well. Supply is becoming the crucial factor now. We’re squandering it on this broad front approach you’ve insisted upon. Why is Patton attacking west of Paris? Where in god’s name do you propose to send him next, and, I might add, with my gasoline?”

  “His offensive has had great success,” said Ike, defending his firebrand. “We’ve just levered the German 7th Army right out of Brittany and Normandy. In time, we’ll force them back to the Seine, and possibly take and open Le Havre. To answer your question, I’m bypassing Paris. It will be nothing but an administrative nightmare. If Georgie can get me a bridgehead over the Seine, possibly at Rouen, then I plan on sending him to Amiens. That will put him in a good position to make a linkup with 1st Army, and after that, I envision the campaign like this: 1st, 5th and 7th US Armies go right through
Belgium—first to the Meuse, then to the Rhine.”

  “Well, as I read the map, Patton is 200 miles from the Belgian frontier at this moment, and 300 to the Meuse near Aachen. I’m half that distance from the Rhine now.”

  “I understand that, but you can’t get there on your own, Monty, not even with O’Connor. If that were true, we might as well pack up everything and go home. Then you can fight the war any way you please. But as long as I’m in command, and with over 30 American divisions committed to this thing, then we’re going to fight it my way. Look, insofar as the supply situation goes, I was well aware that we would run into the law of overstretch in time. I’m trying to keep five armies fueled and supplied so they can stay in this fight. Now… What is it, exactly, that you propose to do?”

  “I should take Dijon, and as soon as possible. To support me, O’Connor should drive on Troyes after he gets over the Loire, then we both go for Nancy and meet there. After that, it’s a straight shot to Saarbrucken, bypassing Metz to the south. From there I can drive to Frankfurt, Kassel, Magdeburg and Berlin. End of story.”

  “I can see how that looks like it would make perfect sense,” said Eisenhower, “but look at the difficulty we’re having with supply as things stand. Try that, unsupported by 5th and 7th Armies, and the Germans will fight you tooth and nail. The truth of the matter is this: if I follow your lead and go for one full blooded thrust, as you put things, then I have to starve our boys to keep you rolling. Haven’t I just demonstrated that by feeding Patton’s Operation Thunder, and starving you? Believe me, if I had the gasoline, you would have it by now. Dijon is 275 miles from Marseille and Toulon. Those ports might still support you to the German border, but not much beyond that. You argued it yourself—we need Antwerp, and with it, the most direct route we could take would be to swing up through Hanover to Berlin. See why I have to send Patton west of Paris now? We can open up Cherbourg, Le Havre, Dieppe, and we already have the three Channel ports in the Pas-de-Calais. Antwerp is the key, and then we can link up all three US armies for the push I’ve described.”