Just a few weeks earlier, Rommel had been back in thrall to Hitler, his faith restored, but it had been chipped away by the dispute over the command of the panzers and had completely dissolved since the invasion. Rommel was either full of vigour and energy, bristling with confidence, or consumed by a dark cloud of despair. He had shown this repeatedly in North Africa and again in Italy.
On 12 June, Rommel spoke to Feldmarschall Wilhelm Keitel, the head of the OKW, at Berchtesgaden and painted a bleak picture, as had von Rundstedt the day before. He implored Keitel to send someone senior from the OKW to the front to see for themselves. ‘I’ve already briefed the Führer about it,’ Keitel told him.2 ‘You’re going to get two panzer divisions from the Eastern Front.’ These were to be the 9. and 10. SS, and would join 2. SS ‘Das Reich’, ordered up from the south of France, and 17. SS-Panzergrenadier, now mostly at the front. This was something, but these two divisions wouldn’t reach the front for a couple of weeks. On the other hand, still within spitting distance in 15. Armee, were 1. SS and 116. Panzer-Divisions, ready for a second Allied invasion in the Pas de Calais that was never going to happen. Once again, the German command structure, the inadequate use of intelligence and the intractability of Hitler, still stuck away in Berchtesgaden, was proving a terrible handicap.
As if to drive home the point, the German counter-attack on Carentan failed. Launched early in the morning of 13 June, and using a combination of newly arrived assault guns, panzer-grenadiers and artillery of 17. SS, plus a handful of von der Heydte’s Fallschirmjäger, they ran into American paratroopers of the 506th PIR, including Dick Winters’ Easy Company. Winters himself was still commanding his men, despite the wound he had received in his leg the day before. ‘June 13,’ he noted, ‘was about the tightest spot of the war for Easy Company.’3 Despite coming up against StuGs, Marders and other tracked assault guns, they managed to hold their positions. Their fellows in the 2nd Battalion had also been having a stiff fight. So too had Fox Company, who actually had been up ahead and had knocked out at least two enemy assault guns before falling back to be better in line with Easy and Dog Companies. The German attack, planned and executed under the orders of Brigadeführer Ostendorff, had not had the approval of von der Heydte, however. In order to maintain surprise, Ostendorff had insisted there should be no reconnaissance of enemy positions beforehand, nor any kind of artillery barrage before the attack in case this alerted the Americans. In fact, the American airborne troops had picked up on German planes, so were preparing to launch their own assault when the 17. SS attacked; Ostendorff had badly misread both his new enemy and the situation. Although the Americans initially struggled to contain the attack, the SS men very quickly became disorganized and commanders began losing control of their units. Von der Heydte reckoned it was clear the attack had failed by about midday. By 4.30 p.m. it most definitely had, as the recently arrived US 2nd Armored Division entered the fray alongside fresh infantry from the 29th Division.
The failed counter-attack by the 17. SS-Panzergrenadier-Division underlined another of the many problems facing the Germans. There has been a tendency to cast all these units as ‘elite’, when in fact all contained a fair number of troops new to combat and with varying degrees of training. The Panzer-Lehr could be considered ‘elite’ – or, at least, among the very best in the Wehrmacht, while 12. SS ‘Hitlerjugend’ were certainly well trained and disciplined. General Geyr von Schweppenburg reckoned the best included those two plus 2. Panzer and 9. SS-Panzer-Divisions. Of some of the others he was more critical. ‘The division was bled white in Russia,’ he said of 1. SS-Leibstandarte, the original Waffen-SS division, for example, ‘and was unable to refill gaps resulting from casualties … Discipline was a sham; the NCOs were poor.4 The division did not have time for thorough training before the invasion.’ By discipline, he meant training and combat discipline; 1. SS remained very well equipped and supplied, and every soldier would rigidly do as ordered. They remained a powerful force, but they were simply not as ‘crack’ or ‘elite’ as their reputation suggested.
Nor did 17. SS get a great write-up by Geyr, who thought it was poorly equipped and of questionable combat efficiency. In fact, it had only been formed the previous November and by 1 June, although 17,321 men strong, it lacked some 40 per cent of its allotted officers and NCOs. Most of the ordinary men were new to combat and had only had limited training. As a division it was woefully short of trucks, and had begun heading to the front from Thouars in central western France with just 245, a shortfall of a staggering 1,441 – around 80 per cent – which meant there was no way the division could move as one to the front. Only four of the six panzer-grenadier battalions could get moving on 7 June and not even all of those were fully motorized, while the remaining two had to move up to Normandy by bicycle – and it was over 200 miles from Thouars to Carentan. As a result, the division was arriving piecemeal, and had been thrown into battle before those leading elements had had a chance to get the lie of the land and operate as a whole. It meant their striking power was affected. Although not to the same degree, the same had been true of Panzer-Lehr and 12. SS.
The lack of mobility was why 18-year-old Willi Müller, of the 17. SS-Panzergrenadier-Division’s Pioneer – combat engineer – Bataillon, had moved as far north as Saumur on the River Loire then remained where he was. Instead of heading on to Normandy, the engineer battalion had been ordered to build a temporary bridge across the river. Like many of the current crop of soldiers in the Waffen-SS, Müller had volunteered aged just sixteen. From the Bohemian town of Pikowitz, he had been packed off to basic training a few months later and then posted to the newly forming 17. SS, and specifically to the pioneers. Even now, in June 1944, his training remained fairly rudimentary.
A couple of days after those units now in Normandy had been thrown back from Carentan, Müller and his fellows were keeping watch on the Loire from their makeshift aerial observation stand when, at around 7.40 a.m., over a hundred enemy bombers appeared and bombed their newly built bridge. Looking through his binoculars, Müller thought the falling bombs looked like heavy rain. With the bombers gone, he and Oberscharführer Unger were sent forward to inspect the damage. As they neared, the smoke and dust began to settle and they were amazed to see the bridge still standing, although only just – large parts of it had collapsed, but they reckoned a motorcycle could just about still get across. Unger strode on to the bridge, but as Müller followed he noticed an unexploded bomb poking out a few inches above the main bridge deck. Bending down, he saw there were letters on it, but as he wiped clear the dust with his hand, another bomb detonated on the shore. Hastily he called Unger and, warning him about the UXB, they both hurried clear. ‘As soon as we reached the shore another detonation took place,’ he noted.5 ‘It was the bomb I had dusted off.’ Being on the banks of the Loire that morning had been almost as hazardous as being at the front.
While Rommel was desperate for someone from the OKW to visit the front, there was no shortage of Allied dignitaries arriving in Normandy, much to the chagrin of Montgomery, who, now firmly ensconced at his caravan camp at the Château de Creullet, was not at all interested in exchanging pleasantries and entertaining VIPs. Being charming and hospitable to his superiors was never something with which he felt particularly comfortable in any case. ‘It is not a good time for important people to go sight-seeing,’ he complained to James Grigg, the secretary of state for war.6 ‘I do not want to take my eyes off the battle.’ On 12 June, Churchill himself had descended, accompanied by General Alan Brooke, the chief of the Imperial General Staff, and the South African General Jan Smuts, former Boer War enemy but now ardent anglophile. It meant Monty cancelling a conference with Bradley, which annoyed him. It was a lovely June day, the sun shining down on them brightly. They lunched in the grounds of the chateau, Churchill enjoying himself enormously and relieved finally to have reached Normandy; it had been his intention to cross on D-Day itself until the king had personally intervened, pointing out the unnecessa
ry risk of doing so. Churchill asked Monty how far they were from the front. About 3 miles, Montgomery replied. The PM wondered whether that was a continuous line, to which Monty replied, ‘No.’ ‘What is there then to prevent an incursion of German armour breaking up our luncheon?’7 Churchill asked. Monty told him he thought that unlikely.
Three days later, however, Général de Gaulle arrived for a visit. British and American relations with de Gaulle were still not going well. Roosevelt continued to be mistrustful and de Gaulle remained resentful at the Allies’ refusal to acknowledge his provisional government and at having been excluded from OVERLORD. Churchill and the British War Cabinet, however, had agreed to Eisenhower’s proposal that de Gaulle be brought over from Algiers to be properly briefed. ‘I am hopeful that your conversations with General de Gaulle will result in inducing him to actually assist in the liberation of France,’ Roosevelt had written to the PM on 27 May, ‘without being imposed by us on the French people as their Government.8 Self-determination really means absence of coercion.’
De Gaulle had only reluctantly flown to London on 4 June and when he met with Churchill had been furious to learn the Allies had been making preparations for administering civil affairs themselves and even introducing invasion currency printed in the US. The reasons were entirely pragmatic: there could be a lot of refugees, some form of law and order needed to be maintained, and, if the Germans decided to retreat using a scorched-earth policy and burned French money, it would not do to be caught short. De Gaulle had not seen it this way, however. Even Churchill lost patience with him when the Frenchman insisted on withdrawing all French liaison officers attached to Allied units in protest.
Now, finally, on Wednesday, 14 June, de Gaulle embarked for Normandy on the French destroyer La Combattante. They landed near Courseulles at around 2 p.m., de Gaulle silent and apprehensive, smoking incessantly. Since Montgomery was the Allied army C-in-C, it was only right that Creullet should be the first port of call, although it is hard to think of two other people in such positions both lacking the essential skills of tact and charm. At Tac HQ, they had been told to prepare a four-course meal, including sticky cakes. ‘It was explained to the Chief,’ noted Carol Mather, ‘that this formed an indispensable part of a Frenchman’s midday meal.’9 Monty was having none of it, however. Any meal would be given on his terms, not de Gaulle’s. Three courses would be more than enough.
On arrival, de Gaulle spoke to Montgomery at length in French. It was a good job Monty couldn’t understand, because de Gaulle was explaining how, now he was in France, he was in charge. Eventually, when he abruptly stopped talking, his ADC stepped forward and said, ‘The General thanks you for your gallant liberation of France.’10 After their somewhat strained lunch, de Gaulle and his retinue sped to Bayeux, where the general stepped out of his Jeep and began walking the streets. ‘At the sight of General de Gaulle,’ he wrote, speaking of himself in the third person, ‘a sort of amazement seized the inhabitants, who then burst into cheers, or into tears.’11 Men, women and children surrounded him until quite a crowd had grown, stopping all traffic. ‘We thus walked on together,’ he added, ‘fraternally, overwhelmed, and feeling the joy, pride and faith in the nation surging again from the abyss.’ He then gave a speech, declaring the CFLN were now liberating France with the help of the Allies.
The liaison officers from Tac HQ accompanying him painted a somewhat different picture, but it was unquestionably a big moment for de Gaulle, whose frustrations were entirely understandable, even though not helped by his ability to appear self-important, arrogant and ungrateful. It didn’t occur to him, for example, that while walking through the streets and creating a throng he was holding up military traffic heading to the front around Fontenay and Tilly. Nor did he ask permission to make an unscheduled visit to Isigny and several other villages along the way. The Allies, and Monty especially, were all glad when he headed back across the Channel.
Despite de Gaulle’s relegated status in the invasion, Frenchmen throughout the country were more than playing their part to help the Allied cause. As in Italy, Yugoslavia and elsewhere, something close to civil war had been erupting in France. There were still plenty of pro-Nazi and pro-Vichy men, and women, fighting on the side of the German occupiers, with battles raging between Maquis groups and other resisters – or ‘terrorists’, as the Germans called them – and the Milice, the French paramilitary anti-partisan force. Klaus Barbie, for example, the head of the SD – the Sicherheitsdienst, the SS secret intelligence service – in Lyons, had hundreds of volunteers still working for him, nearly all of whom were French. ‘I was only a lieutenant,’ he commented, ‘but I had more power than a general.’12
The balance was definitely shifting, however, as increasing numbers joined the Résistance movement. Motives varied: many were escaping obligatory service in Germany; others now simply sensed the time had come to choose what appeared to be the winning side. Others passionately believed in the cause. East of the invasion front, in the Surcouf area, Robert Leblanc was rapidly losing heart. On D-Day and the days immediately after it, he and his Maquis Surcouf experienced a frenetic time of high excitement, fear, adrenalin and then mounting disappointment: shoot-outs with Germans, the capture of collaborators, the exhilaration of taking precious German weaponry, the shock of losing close friends and colleagues, and the sense of guilt that came with it. The farmer who had hosted them on the eve of the invasion had been shot by the Germans. Leblanc had warned him not to return home for a few days and instead encouraged him to lie low and see how events worked out. But the farmer had cows to milk and the day-to-day chores of the farm, so he ignored the advice. The Germans were tipped off and the farmer killed. ‘Poor people, but I can’t be blamed for that,’ Leblanc wrote in his diary.13 ‘We’ve got so many dead to avenge. The bastards, they kill innocents!’
On the 7th, a German car was shot up and five Germans killed, but that same day Tintin and Bernard, two of his best young men, lost their lives in turn. That evening, in yet another barn, with the rain hammering down outside and having dodged a Milice patrol, Leblanc sat down to write his diary once more. He had been expecting Allied troops to land just to the south of the Seine, but so far there had been no sign and only rumours about what was going on further to the west. ‘I must confess we are disappointed,’ he wrote.14 ‘I am disappointed. That’s not how I had foreseen the big day. I expected a swarm of planes dropping arms and men. I am concerned about what comes next. But now we are almost 250 and we can only arm 100 men with minimal equipment!’ He feared the worst.
The next day, Leblanc moved his headquarters again. More men were killed, then they moved yet again, walking 9 miles overnight and arriving at a farmhouse in the village of Thierville at 3.30 on the morning of the 10th. There was still no sign of any arms drops, nor any response to their frantic radio messages. Ammunition was now running low, as was food; it was hard to feed some 200 men when all were effectively on the run. By Sunday, 11 June, they were still holed up in Thierville, with the Milice patrolling the villages, arresting or shooting anyone suspected of resistance or ‘terrorist’ activities. Leblanc had a heavy heart. ‘We used to say, “How smashed were we going to get when they are here!”’15 he noted in his diary sadly. ‘Sure, they are in France, but not here. I feel down.’ He also cursed the British and the Americans. He couldn’t understand why they hadn’t relied more on the Maquis. Didn’t they realize the Résistance groups were primed to rise up and rid France of the Nazis? They were willing to lay down their lives for the cause, but they couldn’t do it without weapons and bullets. ‘Whatever happens next,’ Leblanc scribbled, ‘I will never change my mind: the Allies have underestimated us.16 They have screwed up the liberation of France!’
It was no wonder he felt so hung out to dry. A massive gulf existed between the resisters’ expectations and reality. Leblanc and his men had simply assumed that the moment the Allies landed, planes would come over dropping gargantuan quantities of arms; the Maquis would take up t
hose arms and a glorious battle of liberation would ensue, in which they would personally drive out the Nazis, string up the traitors and bring freedom and liberty once more. It had been intoxicating to think about and had been the focus of all their thoughts over the years, months, weeks and days leading up to the invasion. Leblanc had been swept away by the heroism of it, the romance even. In reality, they were on their own, with limited communications to the outside world and not really part of Allied plans at all. Few had military experience or very much weapons training; they were dependent on passion, patriotism, bare-faced courage and their own wits and intelligence. That was not enough for the Allied leadership, who wanted the local knowledge, courage and heart of the Résistance but only on their own terms. Those groups, like the Maquis Surcouf, without SAS or Jedburgh teams or SOE liaison officers, were seen as the ill-disciplined, politically febrile rabble they were. In the political vacuum of liberation, having lots of young politically active Frenchmen close to the front, armed to the teeth but without any training, held no appeal to the Allied leadership.
On Tuesday, 13 June, Leblanc accepted the inevitable. His Maquis was unsustainable until fresh arms drops reached them, and so, gathering all his men, he told them they faced three choices. They could stay with him and fight, they could go home, or they could go into hiding. Sixty-two decided to stay with him and sixty-two opted to go home; twelve went into hiding. ‘Tears come to my eyes,’ noted Leblanc, ‘when a guy like Morpion says, “Robert, your old ones will never let you down.17 With or without weapons, we will follow you until the world’s end.”’
Meanwhile, the various Jedburgh and SAS teams were also working hard to train the Maquis and bring some kind of organization to their frequently ramshackle efforts. Major Bill Tonkin of 1 SAS, leading a mission code-named BULBASKET near Limoges, scored a spectacular success on 12 June. A local railway worker arrived in their camp near Pouillac and told them that a railway siding south-west of Châtellerault was jam-packed with eleven trains, all carrying fuel. This was destined for the Normandy front and specifically for 2. SS ‘Das Reich’, which had been ordered from Montauban, just to the north of Toulouse. A brutal culture of violence and intolerance existed within what was one of the original Waffen-SS divisions. Although containing a lot of new recruits, its beating heart – its officers and NCOs – were battle-hardened veterans of the Balkans and Eastern Front and it was these men, fanatical Nazis, who set the tone. They had also been brutalized by their experiences on the Eastern Front, where operations had been plagued by Russian partisans, who in turn dealt with any captured SS men with equally vicious violence. As far as the ‘Das Reich’ veterans were concerned, most resistant types were communists and therefore the scum of the earth and should be dealt with accordingly. This view filtered down to the new men who had joined the division since moving to France.
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