“What was it you were asking of the good Lord?” said Lee as they departed, duly impressed, as he was a very religious man.
“I wrote a letter home last night,” said Patton, “delivering the news no mother or father ever wants to hear. One of my recon troops was out on point, and ran out of gas. The Germans caught them in an open field, and they couldn’t maneuver. He was a fine young Lieutenant, and I was even grooming him for a position on my staff. I prayed that I could find the resources to keep this brave army moving, so I can end this damn war.”
That was the only regression Patton allowed himself in terms of his normally roughhewn language. General Lee nodded, took one more look at the honor guard waiting for him by the limousine, duly impressed. Patton’s deference and pampering of the Quartermaster would pay him good dividends. Lee had told him he was setting up a new series of truck relays, his “Red Ball Express.”
“Don’t worry General,” he had said before he left. “I’m in good standing with the Lord, and he just might see fit to answer your prayer.”
* * *
Patton spent some time looking at the map that night. He had been stalled for two days, with Panzer Lehr now holding the line right astride the road leading northeast out of L’Aigle. The Germans put in intermittent shelling, but there were no big counterattacks. Intelligence said that the Herman Goring Division had pulled off the line and was coming north to the crisis point. That was three good panzer outfits answering the call, and somewhere out there, he knew those heavy tanks waited to prey upon his hapless Shermans.
Fuel deliveries were taking time, particularly getting up the road to his new Eagle’s Nest from St. Colombe while under German artillery. 1st Armored had been the unit that delivered Argentan, and they had therefore taken the first of that gasoline cache. Collins was advancing, following the German withdrawal, but now Patton thought he would give him some of the lightning he was famous for. He summoned him to Argentan for a brief meeting.
“Joe, you’ve done a fine job holding that left flank, but now I want to fire your up corps for some offensive action. 1st Armored is right here, and topped off with that Kraut fuel we found. You and Harmon take that whole division and get after the Germans. Take the road through Falaise, then northeast to St. Pierre Dives. Break through and go for Sieux on the rail line to Le Havre. That’s your next objective. Your job is to get me Cherbourg and Le Havre. If you get stuck, you just call me and I’ll sweeten your coffee with another armored division.”
“Alright General,” said Collins. “I’m sending the 94th into Normandy tonight for Cherbourg. I should be able to report on the status of their defense there in a day or so. Sir…. What about my artillery?”
“It’s yours. Thanks for the loan. We pounded that new Kraut tank outfit real good, but you’ll need it.”
“Excellent,” said Collins. “Don’t you worry, general, we’ll get through, but to take Le Havre, we’ll need bridging engineers and boats to get over the Seine.”
“You get to Sieux, and I’ll have them rolling,” said Patton.
It was a long way to go, but part of his thinking in this plan was to create yet another crisis point that might force the Germans to weaken this gathering of crows in front of him. Harmon reached Falaise the night of June 1st, and set up his HQ there. 4th infantry would patrol out in front of him towards St. Pierre Dives, and he planned to attack at first light.
Patton was shifting his weight to the left, planning to send Truscott with two more armored divisions if necessary. Thus far he had been hammering at the walls of the German front with a sledgehammer, trying to break through in one key sector, but all this did was summon the best units the enemy could muster to stop that inroad. Now he began to look at the situation differently.
His infantry corps on the flanks had been relatively quiescent, but he would now order Middleton and Corlett into action as he had with Collins. Every division was to close up and maintain contact with the enemy. They were to aggressively patrol, locate a weak point in the enemy line, and then attack. The idea now was to chip away at that wall, looking to weaken it in as many places as possible. By creating a series of small crisis point, he hoped he would tax the enemy’s ability to plug the gaps, exhausting any reserve strength he may have behind the line.
As news from Collins came in indicating he had a small breakthrough at St. Pierre Dives, Patton ordered Lucas to get active with some strong probing night attacks against the enemy line west of L’Aigle. Near the town of Gace, Abrams was more than aggressive. He pushed his entire division into the line, intending to break through himself. At the same time, 4th and 5th Armored also launched attacks over the same ground where Berg had stopped them earlier, the troops fighting past the still smoking carcasses of at least fifty Shermans and Pershings. That did little for morale, but they had seen tough battles before, and this was just one more.
The news from Collins electrified Patton that night. It confirmed his suspicions that most of the German front was paper thin and with little in the way of local reserves. Collins had punched right through on June 1st, and on the 2nd, he was already racing his armored cavalry up the road to Sieux. That city was a major road and rail hub, with roads reaching out to all compass points. If he could occupy it quickly it would surely hinder any enemy movement behind the front. In the meantime, he ordered Brooks to get his 2nd Armored rolling immediately, right behind Old Ironsides.
They bunched up on me at L’Aigle, he thought. So I’ll hold them by the nose with Lucas, and then I’ll throw Lightning Joe and Truscott at them where they least expect it—give them a good swift kick in the ass. We’ve been butting heads with the bulls in all this. Who knows, maybe we can stampede this herd by going after the cows instead.
* * *
Patton’s new strategy of broadening his attack and hitting the line at many points was going to get that herd moving on the night of June 2nd. The Americans had gone right through the already weakened 6th Para Regiment at St. Pierre Dives. That attack was going to cut off the defense at Caen, along with the 77th, 708th and 243rd Divisions, the latter on the coast between Ouisterham and Houlgate. 91st division was also being flanked on the other side of the breakthrough, and the attack from Gace by Abrams division was about to break the line there.
Von Rundstedt had no local reserves on that wing of the army. The 17th Luftwaffe Division was 30 kilometers to the southeast but it was too slow to get to Sieux that night. It was stopped at Bernay and told to assume defensive positions astride that city. Only one thing could be done, and that was to order that wing to continue its withdrawal under cover of darkness. It did not have the resources to restore its front, and that was the only other option.
The retreat started just after sunset, with the 243rd abandoning its positions on the coast and trudging up the road towards Trouville. The 708th slipped out of Caen, retreating on the road through Demouville and Roarn. Mosquitoes and other night fighters saw the movement and began to strafe that column, particularly the towed artillery, and 77th Division commander Stegmann would find he would be left with only 12 of his original 36 guns.
The effect on the front was like dominoes tumbling. The 91st Division extended its lines, and refused its open flank. In front of Abrams’ attack. KG Mauss, formerly 7th Panzer, was reduced to three companies.
“Do you want me to move?” Berg asked Kluge.
“The time seems ripe,” said Kluge. “I think this business here against 10th Panzer is just a pinning attack. Besides, Conrath will be here soon with the Hermann Goring Division. Let us take your brigade to Sieux tonight. All roads lead there as I read the map.”
Berg got started immediately, but his columns would be hit seven times that night by American fighters, in spite of the darkness. The sound of his own vehicles and tanks hastening up the long dark road drowned out the greater rumble of movement in the distance. All was in motion that night, and soon, cities and towns that had confounded Montgomery for long agonizing weeks in the old history would
fall into the hands of lightning Joe Collins like ripe cherries.
Frenouville, Ranville, and Caen fell first, the latter defended only by a flak battalion that the 92nd easily dispatched. The division then turned northwest as ordered by Patton, into the ghostly silence of Normandy. At the end of that journey, past the hedgerows that were once made into fortress walls by the Germans in the old history, they would get to Cherbourg and find it defended by only three Ost battalions. They had been attached to the 709th Division, old worn out men that had been collected into these units to be stuffed into concrete pill boxes on the coast. Now they were holed up in Cherbourg, but without the iron will of Adolf Hitler demanding their struggle to the very last round….
Chapter 24
When the rest of the 709th departed for the front, the troops left behind at Cherbourg knew their war would soon end. They were being abandoned to their fate, and they knew the next troops they would see would be the Americans. Hitler was dead, the rest of their army was in retreat, and now they had orders to set up booby traps and rig the harbor for demolitions before the Americans arrived. But the list of things to be done was simply beyond their means to accomplish, even if they had the will.
They had all been conscripted on the Ostfront , most against their will, coerced into service at the point of a gun. Some were pulled right out of the POW Camps crowded with defeated Russian soldiers in the early years of the war. Others volunteered, seeing that as at least some way to get away from the horrors of the Ostfront . For them, France was a paradise, and all they had to do was help build the coastal fortifications. There they were, men from Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkestan, all sent by Volkov years ago. Others were ex-Soviet POWs from the Ukraine, Latvia, and Estonia, and disaffected Siberian Cossacks and Crimean Tatars. Die Osttruppen were as far from the lofty heights of the Brandenburgers as any troops in the Army, so it was no surprise at the way they responded to their fate when left behind in Cherbourg.
Instead, the warehouses stacked high with cases of wine, spirits and fine whisky and Cognac were simply too much of a temptation, as were the all too willing women of Cherbourg. So while some work was done blowing holes in the quays and wrecking a few cranes, the thorough demolition of the port was not accomplished. The men spent more time blowing smoke rings with the cases of cigars they discovered there, than they did blowing up the port. When it came time to fight, with the imminent approach of the American 92nd Division, their defense would lack heart.
The port had been defended by powerful batteries of 11-inch guns against attack from the sea. It was ringed by fortifications built as long ago as the time of Clovis. Through the centuries, warrior kings like William Longsword, Richard III, William the Conqueror and Edward III had fought there. Napoleon had turned the place into one of the great military ports of France, and it was General Erwin Rommel that had taken it for the Germans in 1940. 37,000 German troops had defended it in the old history as “Festung Cherbourg,” all under the steely eyed glare of the Führer. Here, there were no more than 2000 weary, cast-off German soldiers, and no firebrand commander like Karl-Wilhelm von Schlieben to lead them. Admiral Walter Hennecke, who had received the Knight’s Cross for the demolition of the port in the old history, was nowhere to be found, except far away in Norway at the port of Trondheim.
Collins had used the closed fist of his entire VII Corps to take the port in the real history, but here he needed only the 92nd Division. The intense street fighting and bitter defense of Fort du Roule never happened. After a single day of listless resistance, more to assuage their bruised honor than anything else, the Germans raised the white flag and surrendered the port mostly intact on the 5th of June. While over 100 vessels had been scuttled to block the harbor in the real history, here only three sunken wrecks wallowed in the main channel. The electrical plant was still in fine working order, most every bridge was still standing, and most of the damage in the rail yard had been done by Allied bombers.
Now it belonged to Collins, and by extension General George Patton, the docks, quays, deep-water basins large enough to dock ships as big as the Titanic, which had stopped there to take on passengers on its maiden voyage. The massive storage tanks that could hold up to 600,000 barrels of oil were all waiting to be filled. The U-boat pens would soon be used to bring in LST’s. The dry dock was undamaged, the big cranes in good working order, and the warehouses were all intact, teeming with supplies. Everything from bacon to shoes, to soap and silk stockings was packed away in that hoard, perhaps the greatest single cache of “loot” taken by the Americans in the entire war.
Beyond that, it would now come into use much sooner than it had in the old history, dramatically improving the supply situation. It was just 70 miles from Cherbourg to Caen, which would be set up as a new forward depot area for 5th and 7th Armies. By comparison, St. Nazaire was 180 miles from Patton’s front, La Rochelle 200 miles, Bordeaux 300 miles, and Bilbao nearly 500 miles.
Before the end of June, shipments would be re-routed away from Bilbao and the Brittany ports, and all funneled in to Cherbourg, which would become a bustling center of feverish activity, receiving up to 15,000 tons per day. That was busier than the port of New York, or any other port in the world at that time, so Patton’s supply problems would soon be over, at least in the short run. That this glittering strategic prize was so heedlessly ceded to the Americans without a fight, and left intact, was one of the great blunders made by the Germans in the entire war. Cherbourg could, indeed, support 20 full divisions, and the lion’s share of all that supply would be right there for Patton’s enterprising G-4, Muller, to plunder at will.
Patton was going to soon make good on a part of the promise he had made to General Lee when the 92nd invested and quickly delivered that grey city. Never an ingrate, Lee would soon reciprocate. The morning of June 8th would dawn auspiciously for Patton when his orderly reported a long column of trucks arriving at Argentan. A Sergeant walked in, his uniform covered with road dust, and saluted, handing Patton a sealed envelope, and a small parcel.
Overlooking the man’s uniform, Patton opened the letter, finding a brief note from General Lee. “Please accept these in gracious thanks for your recent hospitality, the Good Lord has seen fit to bring you a little something to help you do your job the way you know it should be done.”
Patton beamed ear to ear, for the parcel contained a box of his favorite cigars, and at the bottom of that note, Lee had indicated that this column would be hauling in 300,000 gallons of gasoline, with more to follow soon. The Red Ball Express, sanctioned by Jesus Christ Himself, had just made good on a promise of his own.
* * *
Before that windfall, the attack north of L’Aigle was not meant to merely pin and delay the operations of the German 10th Panzer Division, but to destroy it. 4th and 5th Armored still had over 225 tanks between them of various stripes, and they threw themselves at the enemy line with fury on the 3rd of June. The Panzergrenadiers fought from their field positions, the velvet and orange tracers streaking across the misty fields at sunrise. Their MG-42’s sounded like buzz-saws, but the trees they were aiming for were all made of steel.
Behind that attack, Patton still had two formations in reserve. The first was 3rd Armored, General Watson’s division that had been refueling southwest of L’Aigle. The last was CCB of the 6th Armored Division. CCA of that division was still on the line watching Panzer Lehr .
So now Kluge’s gathering of crows was being preempted. Allied intelligence had seen the column of the Herman Goring Division arriving at Verneuil to the southeast, and knew the Germans were attempting to concentrate here for a counterattack. Patton wanted to jump the gun, and break a bottle over the head of at least one of the German Panzer Commanders before the other two could get into the bar fight. If he could end up tying all three up here in a major engagement, all the better as he saw things. He wanted to give Collins every opportunity to get after those retreating Germans to the northwest.
There, the 243rd went as
far as Trouville on the coast and began redeploying. Just inland from their position, Stegmann’s 77th Division was reaching Pont Leveque, and the General now counted only six artillery pieces left, his infantry battalions also shot to pieces on the long march. While moving by daylight like this was near suicidal, he and his men had only one other choice, death at the hands of their pursuers, or ignominious surrender. They were not yet ready for either.
The 91st Division was supposed to move that day as well, but all its fuel trucks had been blown to hell, and it was heavily engaged with the US 45th Division. So it held its ground, which left a massive 40 kilometer hole yawning open on its right between that flank and Pont Leveque. In the middle of that gap, the leading elements of Harmon’s 1st Armored Division had just pulled into Sieux at noon, the rest of Old Ironsides chugging along behind them. The only mobile force now capable of responding was Berg’s elite 21st Schwerepanzer Brigade, Germany’s soldier sons from a distant future that no man then alive could see or even imagine.
Berg now had 29 Leopards on the field, with 34 Pumas, about 100 Boxers, 80 Wiesels, and 85 Fennek light recon vehicles. Manning them he had 92 assault rifle squads, and men from five more squads in the medical train. It was still a powerful force, the most capable on the field of battle, and it was heading right for Sieux that day in spite of the near constant air strikes. They would attack the city from march, coming in fast and furious, with all guns blazing.
That was the only attack Kluge could count on. Elsewhere on the field, the crisis was deepening. 10th Panzer was in a life or death struggle with two American armored divisions, and west of that battle, another combined armored/infantry force was breaking through the lines of the 709th Infantry Division near Vimoutiers.
When Kluge departed with Berg, the senior commander on the scene was then Bayerlein again. He had just shaken hands with Paul Conrath leading in the Goring Division, a most welcome sight. Bayerlein had been getting radio reports of what was happening with 10th Panzer, and he did not think it would hold back the American tide. He had two choices. The first was to move Conrath’s troops into his positions, allowing him to move laterally and join that fight. The second was to hold his well-fortified line, and instead send Conrath west to aid Angren’s 10th Panzer. That seemed the better choice to him that day, but he told Conrath to go north to Breteuil before turning west at that city.
Breakout (Kirov Series Book 38) Page 20