Normandy '44

by James Holland

  Montgomery, however, warned against such lofty ambitions and so GOODWOOD was somewhat scaled back on 15 July. However, it was still to be a major effort using all three armoured divisions brought together into Dick O’Connor’s VIII Corps in an effort to minimize the number of infantry directly involved. The Canadians were to play a part, clearing Colombelles and the rest of the eastern outskirts of Caen. Dempsey was also taken with Bradley’s ideas for carpet-bombing ahead of COBRA, something Eisenhower and Tedder were both prepared to support. Once again, however, there was a breakdown in translation. Despite Monty dampening down his plans, Dempsey still made it clear to O’Connor that he thought a breakthrough to Falaise was possible. It was, however, very much in keeping with Dempsey’s command style and belief that it was better to give his men an ambitious objective and not achieve it than not to be ambitious enough and then find themselves unable to exploit success for lack of a plan.

  Trouble, however, was brewing. Montgomery had first signalled Eisenhower about GOODWOOD on 12 July, before the plan had been scaled back. This more positive and aggressive original plan had evoked an enthusiastic response from Eisenhower and Tedder, who reacted by offering him their full support. ‘Eisenhower and I,’ noted Tedder, ‘decided that the reply should be worded in such a way as to make it clear that we expected Montgomery to go ahead, even if the weather ruled out full support.’12 Eisenhower then sent a very positive reply the following day: ‘We are enthusiastic on your plan.13 We are so pepped up concerning the promise of this plan that either Tedder or myself or both will be glad to visit you if we can help in any way.’

  They should have known Montgomery better after all this time. Monty always did what he thought was best, and anything less than a direct order – and Eisenhower’s response was not that – wasn’t going to sway him from his amended, scaled-back course of action. In his mind, Montgomery was very clear about what he expected for GOODWOOD. Dempsey and O’Connor and the Second Army staff still had greater ambitions, however, and Tedder and Eisenhower most certainly expected Second Army to go all out and achieve that decisive breakthrough. In other words, at this vital moment, the Supreme Command, army group and army were all singing from a slightly different hymn sheet.

  Meanwhile, Allied air power continued to be the dominating factor as far as the Germans were concerned. Bad weather had continued to hamper Allied ambitions enormously, yet more airfields were springing up within the bridgehead and so more aircraft were arriving. On 1 July, the advance elements of 609 Squadron had reached Normandy and moved into B-10 at Plumetôt, 4 miles north of Caen. They had landed in Dakotas and had also brought Group Captain Billy, their goat and squadron mascot, to whom they were all very attached. ‘The question of leaving him behind seems never to have risen,’ noted the adjutant, ‘even though his most fervid sponsor, Johnny Wells – who considered that to embark on an operational mission without first saluting Group Captain Billy was sheer stupid bravado – had a week earlier handed over 609 to its first Belgian CO, Manu Geerts, DFC.’14

  Flight Sergeant Ken Adam had not been too concerned about giving up the comfortable existence they had had back in England. After all, it was exciting to be part of this great invasion force and to feel they were finally getting the enemy on the run. Flying in amid vast amounts of dust on 2 July, they were operating from B-10 but camping out at B-5, which was further from Caen and enemy shelling. Adam didn’t mind. His tent was comfortable enough: he and his good friend Norman Merrett had a campbed and sleeping bag each and a canvas washstand to share. They felt a bit vulnerable at night with the odd Luftwaffe bomber coming over, although Adam had slept easier again since going to bed with his tin helmet covering his most vital parts.

  Losses were mounting. Five pilots had been killed in May and four in June, which was around 40 per cent of the squadron’s pilots. ‘Squadron detailed to attack tank concentrations S.E. of HOETOT,’ recorded the squadron diary on 11 July.15 ‘Target located by Red smoke.’ Twelve tanks were spotted and rockets fired. ‘F/Sgt Bliss appears to have been hit by flak after attack and is reported missing.’ Despite there being little action from the Luftwaffe, the dangers to these pilots were still immense. Typhoons were ground-attack aircraft, used to operating at very low altitudes; when they attacked, they might well be doing so at only a few hundred feet off the deck. This meant there was very little room for manoeuvre should anything go wrong, and there was often little chance to bail out. If a plane went in, the pilot invariably went in with it.

  New tactics were being adopted. As well as marauding far and wide, they would also be called in to support specific operations on the ground. In France, where precision was so important, a new system was adopted, copied from the First Tactical Air Force in Italy and introduced by Air Vice-Marshal Harry Broadhurst, commander of 83 Group, and Pete Quesada’s opposite number in Second TAF. This was known as ‘VCP’ – visual control point – whereby an experienced RAF ground controller would travel about the front line in an army tank and, equipped with a radio set tuned to the correct squadron frequency, would direct the Typhoons on to very precise targets, often beside an artillery observer. These were called ‘Rovers’. The pilots, working in flights of four, would operate a ‘cab-rank’ system: with the same maps as the controller on their knees, they would take it in turns to take off, climb to 8,000 feet above their air strip and circle around waiting to be directed on to a target. ‘The controller would say, “Right, here’s the grid reference, and in fifteen seconds you’ll see red smoke.16 Go down and attack,”’ recalled Adam, ‘and then we’d find a Tiger tank or an 88mm gun and fire our rockets.’ Flying so often and at such low altitudes, it was not surprising the squadron began to suffer.

  ‘It was hard,’ admitted Adam of the number of losses.17 To avoid dwelling on such matters, there was a lot of drinking in the evenings and much time spent gambling. If he woke up the following morning with a hangover, he usually found that flying at 10,000 feet with the oxygen on full would soon clear his head. What was absolutely certain, though, was that now the weather appeared to be improving they could expect ever more flying. The Allied commanders on the ground were depending on the tactical air forces more, not less, and this applied to the USAAF every bit as much as to the RAF.

  Lieutenant Archie Maltbie and the rest of the 365th Fighter Group had moved to France at the end of June and were flying almost non-stop. So too were the 354th. On 3 July, Major Dick Turner was asked to provide fighter escort for Pete Quesada and the Supreme Allied Commander himself, General Eisenhower. Ike had asked for a tour of the Saint-Lô battlefield from the air and Quesada had suggested they take a Mustang that the 354th had modified by removing the fuselage fuel tank and replacing it with a second seat, which they used occasionally to demonstrate tactics to new pilots. Turner had taken off to escort the two generals in a brand-new P-51 only to suffer a drop of oil pressure. Much to his acute embarrassment, he had been forced to land hastily back down again. Fortunately, his two other pilots had stuck to the Supreme Commander like glue. Safely on the ground, Bradley thought both Ike and Quesada looked as sheepish as schoolboys. Eisenhower had urged him to fly faster, but Quesada had kept them at around 250 m.p.h. ‘Gosh,’ Quesada told Chet Hansen, ‘I wish I had opened her all the way.’18

  Harry Broadhurst had set up his Tac HQ right next to that of Miles Dempsey, just as Pete Quesada had his next to Bradley. In both cases, ground and air commanders got on very well and would often dine with one another. Chet Hansen and Bradley had certainly become very fond of Quesada and there is no question that, by living in each other’s pockets, the two commanders were better able to understand the problems and limitations each faced and to deal with them better. After the fall of Cherbourg, Quesada had told his men to understand that their work was really only just starting. On 6 July, for example, General Joe Collins asked Quesada for help when his troops below were struggling to get going; this was the same day Carl Rambo and the Shermans of 70th Tank Battalion had been stalled. Two fighter gr
oups, ninety-six fighters in all, flew up and down the battle front. At around 3.30 p.m. they caught some Germans in the open, ravaging them with 1,000 bombs and strafing. They also answered calls to attack specific targets, using 250lb fragmentation bombs that caused minimum craters but sprayed a wide area with shrapnel and blast. This was not pinpoint targeting, but such was the ever-growing paranoia and obsession of German troops with Allied air supremacy that the arrival of Jabos was often enough to stall an attack or ensure they immediately went to ground. It was noticeable that, on days of good weather, the Allied ground troops tended to make more progress than when it was wet and overcast. The trouble was, the weather continued to prove capricious – a day of sun and warmth, maybe two, then the rain clouds would reappear.

  Whatever concerns and troubles Montgomery and the Allies were facing, they were as nothing compared with those confronting the Germans. On the Eastern Front, Marshal Konstantin Rokossovsky’s forces had smashed through the German Heeresgruppe Mitte and now Heeresgruppe Nord was being hammered too. A 50-mile gash had been cut through their lines in just two days of bloody fighting. Unlike at Caen, there was no concentration of panzer forces on the Eastern Front to stop the enemy, while the Luftwaffe was even more absent than it was over Normandy.

  The latest German intelligence picture suggested General Patton was about to launch a cross-Channel invasion at any moment; that wasn’t so far off the mark, although Patton and his Third Army were headed for Brittany, not the Pas de Calais as the Germans expected. On 15 July, Rommel wrote to Feldmarschall von Kluge, his new superior at OB West, that he had now lost 97,000 men since 6 June but had received just 6,000 replacements, while seventeen tanks had been sent to replace the 225 that had been lost. Air power, especially, but also naval and artillery fire, was smashing Heeresgruppe B to pieces. In fact, the real figure was worse than that: over 100,000 men lost by 7 July. Johannes Börner was still dug in near Saint-Lô, but he was one of only 35 per cent of the 3. Fallschirmjäger-Division still fighting, for example. The 353. Infanterie-Division was down to a fighting strength of around 180 men. Rommel asked von Kluge to pass this directly on to Hitler. The two had had something of a rapprochement after their first, explosive meeting. On 11 July, following the fall of Caen, von Kluge had arrived at La Roche-Guyon looking visibly shaken and dog tired, his earlier confidence gone. He now accepted that Rommel’s assessment had been right. Rommel was also bitter that he had been ordered to hold fast at Caen. The 16. Luftwaffen-Felddivision had been smashed and 12. SS gutted. The losses, he felt, had been much higher than they needed to be. There were also incidents of basic ineptitude.

  ‘What do the people think who view the situation so completely differently?’19 Rommel asked over breakfast on the morning of 12 July. ‘One should not act according to wishful dreams, but soberly according to reality.’

  On Monday, 17 July, Standartenführer Kurt Meyer was summoned to I. SS-Panzerkorps headquarters, now in a densely wooded area near Bretteville-sur-Laize, some 10 miles south of Caen. His shattered division was completely out of the line, resting and hoping to refit around Potigny, to the north of Falaise. Travelling to Bretteville should have been straightforward but, once again, his journey was interrupted by the near constant presence of Jabos patrolling the dead-straight Roman road, so he was an hour late arriving. When he did so, he found Dietrich, Eberbach and von Kluge sitting in the shade of a tree, all bitterly complaining about the continued and strait-jacketing interference from the OKW. Invited to join them for lunch, Meyer was astonished to hear Sepp Dietrich, that most loyal of SS men, openly condemning the conduct of the war in Normandy. ‘During the course of the conversation,’ noted Meyer, ‘it became apparent that there was agreement between the commander-in-chief, the commanding general and myself on the impossibility of the present situation.’20

  The reason for his summons was twofold. First, the continuing British operations around Hill 112 had seen the 272. Infanterie-Division pushed back; Maltot, where the 4th Dorsets had been so badly hammered, had fallen; 12. SS was now on alert to return to the front. Second, Rommel was due to arrive and when he did so he made a point of recognizing the efforts of 12. SS since the invasion. He also asked for a frank assessment of the situation. Meyer told him they could expect the British to strike again around Caen any day. The troops defending there would continue to fight, he told Rommel, and continue to die, but they would not be able to prevent the enemy from rolling over them and advancing on Paris. The Allies’ overwhelming air supremacy made any kind of tactical manoeuvring impossible. Even moving the smallest units swiftly could not be carried out because of the control Allied air forces had over anything that moved. He urged Rommel somehow to find them some air support of their own. ‘We are not afraid of the enemy ground forces,’ he told him, ‘we are powerless against the massed employment of the air force, however.’21

  Rommel responded furiously. Did Meyer think he was travelling around Normandy with his eyes closed? Did he really believe he hadn’t been screaming for air support? He had warned the OKW over and over about Allied air power – he had seen it first-hand in North Africa. ‘But the higher-ups know better, of course!’ he snarled.22 ‘They don’t believe my reports any more! Something has to happen! The war in the west has to end! But what will happen in the east?’

  Soon after, Rommel left them. Dietrich warned him to be careful and not to drive along any main road. He also suggested taking a Kübelwagen rather than his big Horch staff car. Rommel brushed away his concerns with a smile and drove off.

  Rommel was sitting in the front seat, next to Gefreiter Daniel, his regular driver. In the back seat were his two aides, Hauptmann Hellmuth Lang and Major Neuhaus, along with Feldwebel Hoike, there specifically to be Rommel’s aircraft lookout. It was around 6 p.m. and they had just left the town of Livarot, heading north back towards La Roche-Guyon, when two Canadian Spitfires from 412 Squadron dived down towards them, sweeping in from the left and behind. From 300 yards, the lead Spitfire, flown by Flight Lieutenant Charley Fox, opened fire with his 20mm cannons, which spattered against the road then hit the side of the Horch, sending splinters into Rommel’s face, while another shell hit Daniel in the shoulder. Badly wounded, the driver lost control of the speeding car, which careered off the road several hundred yards further on and crashed into a ditch. Lang was unscathed, Neuhaus slightly injured and Daniel fatally wounded, while Rommel was thrown forward and smashed his skull.

  The field marshal, unconscious, was taken to a Luftwaffe hospital at Bernay. For a while it seemed touch and go as to whether he would live, but the following day he regained consciousness and the worst appeared to have passed. It did, however, mark the end of his remarkable career as a soldier. Yet another German general had gone, and this was the biggest scalp of them all.

  CHAPTER 29

  GOODWOOD

  Both sides spent considerable energy on developing new tactics, introducing new weaponry and ensuring their men were adequately trained, although the training graph unquestionably showed a downwards trajectory for the Germans, while for the Allies battlefield skills were, for the most part, heading upwards, as well-trained but green troops gradually absorbed the best lessons of all – those learned in combat. Allied memoirs of the fighting and after-action reports often talk about the superb fighting skills of the enemy, while post-war analysis suggested that German fighting soldiers were, man for man, better than any others. These claims have been forensically disproved since, but analysts were also guilty of conflating battlefield skill with a willingness – or, rather, determination – to keep fighting in the face of unspeakable danger and losses. Fighting skill is one thing, discipline is another. If Hitler told his men not to give any ground, generally speaking that’s what happened, from the OKW lackeys that were his mouthpiece, to Rommel, to corps, divisional, regimental, company, platoon and Gruppen commanders. If it didn’t, they would be shot. In the First World War, the Germans executed fewer than fifty men for desertion. In the Second World War,
they would execute 30,000 – or two entire divisions’ worth. And that figure errs on the conservative side.

  On the other hand, if German troops weren’t especially well trained, why was it taking the Allies so long to battle through the hedgerows? Well, largely because it didn’t require a huge amount of training to sit in a foxhole behind a hedge and fire a machine gun, rifle, mortar or Panzerfaust. What was needed was discipline and courage. The Germans, a few Ost-Bataillone excepted, always had discipline; they were from a totalitarian, militaristic state, after all. Then there were the panzer divisions, which varied wildly in training standards and fighting ability, but which were, as Eberhard Beck discovered when talking to men from the 9. SS-Panzer-Division, more willing to fight fanatically than reluctant conscripts like him and his fellows in the 277. Artillerie-Regiment. That meant they were more aggressive, more willing to fling themselves into the firing line. Combine this with decent weaponry, and they were transformed into the so-called fanatical Nazi elite panzer divisions that litter so many eyewitness accounts by Allied troops. Certainly this made them a pretty fearsome enemy, but it didn’t mean they were especially well trained. There is a difference, and it’s one that has often been lost in the narrative.