Bradley had expected a hard sell of his air plan for COBRA, especially after GOODWOOD, but it was received enthusiastically and carefully thrashed out. Fighter-bombers of the Ninth would strike first, hitting German defences immediately south of the Saint-Lô–Périers road at H minus 30. Then Spaatz’s heavies would bomb the 7,000-yard width and to a depth of 2,500 yards behind the German main line of resistance, which was the road, with each bomber carrying forty 100lb bombs. This meant the entire 7,000 by 2,500 yard area would be saturated with some 72,000 bombs. Nor was that all. The heavies were to be followed by medium bombers, then yet more fighters. ‘General was pleased with what he had gotten,’ noted Hansen.22 In all, the Panzer-Lehr, the division holding that sector of the line, would be pasted by 1,800 heavies, 300 medium bombers and 350 fighters. If the Germans had had any remaining doubt about the overwhelming fire-power of the Allies, they would no longer have any after this attack.
Also discussed was exactly where the troops should be behind this awesome bombing effort. Bradley wanted them as close as possible, so that they could sweep in before the Germans had had a chance to recover, but the air men suggested they should be at least 3,000 yards away. Bradley countered with 800 yards; they eventually settled on 1,200. Then came discussion over the angle of attack. Bradley and Quesada argued that it should be west–east, parallel to the start line; the bomber men had other ideas, however, pointing out that trying to get the planned force of bombers into an area just 1½ miles wide would be impossible. Other considerations of navigation, radar and enemy flak all came into play, but the most pressing was the narrowness of the width. Heavy bombers took up a lot of air space. Leigh-Mallory, who had no real experience of bombers, disagreed and sided with Bradley and Quesada, but the conference ended without the matter being properly resolved.
By 5 p.m. they were done and flew back to Normandy, from where they took another quick flight from airfields A-1 to A-3, and then on to see Collins at VII Corps HQ. Bradley had already grown to trust Collins and gave him considerable leeway to plan for COBRA. Collins and his staff had been working hard over the previous week, but had divided the operation into three phases. First would be the breakthrough, and he wanted 9th and 30th Divisions on the left and right, with 4th Division in the middle. The 9th and 4th would head southwards to Marigny, then the 9th would swing to the west and strike towards Coutances near the coast; this way they might envelop 2. SS, 17. SS and various infantry units, cutting off their retreat. It was a daring and exciting proposition. Meanwhile, the 4th would fall into reserve, protecting against any counter-attack from the south. The 30th Division would drive south and then east, protecting the left-hand flanks. Then could come the armour – 2nd and 3rd Armored Divisions with the Big Red One loaded up into vehicles. This would be the exploitation phase and dramatic speed of action was key. The third phase could be consolidation as his forces struck for, took and held key towns and nodal points.
‘Everything is now committed,’ noted Hansen on the evening of 19 July.23 ‘Tight squeeze to get it into line in time but it can be done.’ Six divisions would be used, supported by over 1,000 artillery pieces and 140,000 shells stockpiled and ready for VII Corps’ drive, plus a further 27,000 put aside for VIII Corps, which would follow with its own thrust south a little to the west. In all, some 1,269 Shermans, 694 Stuart light tanks and 288 tracked tank destroyers were available. It was an immense amount of force, greater than anything yet concentrated for one operation in Normandy. As they were about to leave, Bradley told Collins he was planning to have fighters drop belly tanks of napalm on to the assault area too. ‘That’s giving them the works all the way around,’ added Hansen in his diary.24 It certainly was. The following day, Collins issued VII Corps Field Orders 6.
CHAPTER 31
COBRA
‘This was meant to be the day of the attack,’ jotted Chet Hansen on 21 July, ‘but we are weathered out.’1 The rain was sheeting down, turning everything quickly to mud. The previous evening Eisenhower had been over. ‘When I die,’ he had said, peering out from Bradley’s tent at the rain, ‘they can hold my body for a rainy day and bury me during a thunderstorm, for this weather will be the death of me yet.’2 Airfields were inoperable and much of the front seemed to have ground to a halt. The fighting never completely stopped, though, with plenty of shelling still going on and, east of Caen, clashes between the Canadians and 1. SS-Panzer-Division. Troops were being shifted around after GOODWOOD, with most of Second Army moving back west of Caen and the bulk slotting in next to the Americans in the middle of the line. The area around Caen was now the domain of First Canadian Army, operational under Lieutenant-General Harry Crerar, who had been brought over to Normandy by Lieutenant Yogi Jenson and the crew of HMCS Algonquin.
In all, there were some 640,000 British and Canadian troops in Normandy and 812,000 US troops. The Germans, by comparison, had sent 490,000 troops to Normandy, but had already lost nearly 117,000 and had received a measly 10,078 replacement troops. This meant the Allies had a 3.8:1 manpower advantage, which was much healthier than it had been on D-Day and the days that had followed.
Despite this, Montgomery was hopeful but not confident of an American breakthrough with COBRA, so was keen to keep up the pressure. Fighting continued around Hill 112 and, on 22 July, the 43rd Wessex Division attacked again in what was called Operation EXERCISE. It was an example of how the Allied armies were learning in this difficult campaign. Time was given to planning, forward reconnaissance was carried out, and infantry, armour and artillery agreed a plan beforehand that they were then able to execute. ‘It has been said of this battle,’ noted the division war diary, ‘that it was a set piece in which all the precepts of the training manuals were fulfilled.’3 Two Wiltshire infantry battalions, working in tandem with Churchill tanks, overwhelmed the enemy, captured and then secured the village of Maltot, a wreck of a place that had changed hands several times over the past fortnight; this was where Walter Caines and the 4th Dorsets and 1st Hampshires had suffered so badly. On the 22nd, however, the inevitable counter-attacks were dealt with and seen off, and some 400 prisoners taken, which somewhat offset the loss of 300 Canadians the day before. Casualties among the attackers were, all things considered, slight. The dead of the earlier fighting were still strewn in the village, which was little more than piles of rubble. The stench was appalling, but at least the clear-up could now begin. The Wessexmen’s battle here, small in scale, was none the less important. It showed they were both adapting and learning.
The following day, Sunday, 23 July, was also misty and grey, with yet again no possibility of launching COBRA. Three days of clear weather, Bradley reckoned he needed. Quite rightly, he wasn’t prepared to jeopardize this battle through impatience; it wasn’t D-Day, after all, with its constraints of tide and moon. It was still frustrating, though, with everyone keyed and raring to go.
‘Dammit,’ Bradley muttered as he looked up at the sky. ‘I’m going to have to court-martial the chaplain if we have very much more weather like this.’4
Instead, Bradley had a meeting with General George S. Patton, who was now in Normandy and itching to get into the battle. A God-fearing, swearing, no-nonsense shooter from the hip, Patton remained America’s best-known general in theatre. Always immaculately dressed, he was definitely a firebrand and a career cavalryman who had served in the Mexican War as well as in France in 1918. In Tunisia, he had been commander of II Corps before handing it over to Bradley so that he could prepare for the invasion of Sicily, where he had commanded US Seventh Army and commanded it well. Patton believed in aggressive action and, tactically, was pretty astute, although he also had the shortest of fuses and a tendency to blow up before pausing to see the other person’s point of view. This had got him into trouble, not least after the Sicilian campaign when he had slapped a man suffering from combat fatigue, a condition with which Patton had no truck whatsoever.
Eisenhower, having sacked Patton after this incident despite being a long-standing friend, h
ad brought him back to lead Third Army, which was always going to be brought into the battle at a later stage. ‘It is Hell to be on the side lines,’ Patton had written to his wife on D-Day, ‘and see all the glory eluding me.’5 Nor had he been particularly impressed with Bradley’s handling of the campaign, which he had been following in forensic detail; but although Patton got results, he was certainly more willing than most Allied commanders for his troops to die in the process. So desperate was he to get into the fight that he offered to pay Eisenhower $1,000 for each week earlier than planned that Ike brought him over. Third Army had not been given the operational go-ahead yet, but Patton had come over on 4 July, landing in a C-47 at A-21, Saint-Laurent-sur-Mer, and immediately heading down to Omaha Beach in a Jeep. Word soon spread and, because of all the unloading still going on, quite a crowd quickly gathered. ‘I’m proud to be here to fight beside you,’ he said, standing up and speaking in his curiously high-pitched voice.6 ‘Now let’s cut the guts out of those Krauts and get the hell on to Berlin. And when we get to Berlin, I am going to personally shoot that paper-hanging son of a bitch, just like I would a snake.’ Those listening lapped it up. Patton was nothing if not a showman.
He had been back and forth a few more times since then. He had as many high hopes for COBRA as Bradley, because as soon as First Army reached Avranches, his Third Army would start moving down south from its build-up and staging areas in western Normandy. South of Avranches, Patton’s forces would sweep into Brittany, where they would clear the Brest Peninsula and then turn eastwards. They were, Hansen admitted in his diary that day, far behind schedule, which was one of the reasons for Patton’s impatience – before the invasion he had expected to be over in the fight long before now – but there was real hope for COBRA. Palpable hope.
This sense of hope was conveyed to Ernie Pyle and other war correspondents when Bradley called by to give them an informal briefing. He didn’t hold back, explaining in graphic detail what he was going to do with the help of the air force. Pyle was thrilled, and although the army commander didn’t actually mention the word ‘breakout’, those accompanying him did. ‘This is no limited objective drive,’ Pyle was told.7 ‘This is it. This is the big breakthrough.’
By Friday, 21 July, in anticipation of the action, Pyle had joined the 4th Infantry Division, who were to be in the middle of the attack. He spent that first night comfortably enough in a tent at the division’s command post, the second in a rickety old farmhouse a little closer, then on Sunday, 23 July, he kipped down in an orchard even closer; but then when the attack still didn’t happen, for the next night he moved even further up to the start line and dug himself a hole behind a hedgerow so an 88 wouldn’t get him.
COBRA was due to be launched that day – 24 July – with H-Hour at 1 p.m. Leigh-Mallory had flown over but, having arrived, felt the sky was too overcast and visibility not good enough, so promptly ordered a postponement. The air armadas, however, were already on their way and although most got the message and turned back, not all did. Three groups of fighter-bombers still roared over, parallel to the start line, and so attacking lengthways, west–east. Although the first formation of heavies then arrived, they turned back because of bad visibility, while of the second formation only thirty-five dropped their loads, not from a parallel course but at right angles, north–south. So too did the 300 bombers of the third formation, who dropped some 550 tons of bombs. Tragically, twenty-five men from 30th Division were killed and 131 wounded, although less because the men were too far forward and more because the bombardier of one box of bombers had had trouble moving his bomb-release mechanism and had inadvertently released some of his load by mistake; the fifteen aircraft behind him had then followed suit.
Bradley, Collins and Quesada had watched this half-attack with mounting horror. ‘How the hell did it happen?’8 Bradley asked Quesada. But Quesada had no idea, nor did he find out until he finally got through to Leigh-Mallory, now back at Bentley Priory. As far as Bradley and Quesada were concerned, Leigh-Mallory had agreed on a west–east parallel attack, which, they had assumed, would bring less risk to the men below. This was not quite correct, nor had it ever been resolved after the 19 July conference; heavies were just as liable to bomb wide as they were short. Leigh-Mallory now told Quesada that Spaatz and General Jimmy Doolittle, the commander of the Eighth Air Force, had insisted on a perpendicular attack, north–south. The west–east approach was impossible – there wasn’t enough space, nor could that many bombers attack in a narrow corridor in just an hour as Bradley had insisted. So a choice had had to be made: the heavies would attack north–south or cancel. Bradley had to acquiesce. Now that a half-hearted attack had alerted the Germans, it was, he believed, essential that COBRA be launched as soon as possible. That meant 1 p.m. the following day, Tuesday, 25 July. ‘The human truth,’ commented Quesada, ‘is that people heard what they wanted to hear.’9
Even before the Panzer-Lehr had left Tilly for the westward move, General Fritz Bayerlein had lost over 5,000 men from the 17,000 he had had before the invasion, and a large proportion of those were fighting men. Then there was the disastrous counter-attack that had been imposed upon him, in which he had lost a further twenty tanks and more than 500 men. With almost no replacements coming through, this meant that by 24 July, the Lehr, just seven weeks ago one of the best-equipped and -manned divisions in the entire Wehrmacht, had already been reduced, before COBRA’s launch, to a skeleton force. Repeatedly, he proposed withdrawing. ‘It was hopeless,’ he said.10 ‘We were ordered not to yield a foot of ground.’
By 24 July, Bayerlein had one regiment in reserve and the rest forward. His aide, Hauptmann Alexander Hartdegen, sensed something was up and suggested to Bayerlein that they might well come under a major attack, but the general wasn’t so sure. When the bombers approached at 1 p.m. that day, Bayerlein thought they would be heading further south, but then the bombs began to fall. His command post was an old chateau at Le Mesnil-Amey, which was only about 3 miles south of the bombing zone and due west of Saint-Lô. Fortunately, it had very thick, medieval stone walls and Bayerlein was able to climb the tower and watch through the arrow slits and castellations with comparative impunity. He saw artillery positions blasted and the front line appeared to have been wiped out. All communications with the forward troops was gone, so once the bombing was over he sent out dispatch riders to investigate the situation, while he drove as far forward as he could then walked the last part to the CP of Panzergrenadier-Regiment 902 in La Besnardière, a mile or so west of his castle. The commander had virtually nothing left. He then walked to Hébécrevon and learned that 275. Infanterie-Division had also been effectively destroyed. Eventually, he managed to get a line through to Generalleutnant Dietrich von Choltitz, who had taken over from Marcks as LXXXIV. Korps commander, and told him he could not possibly hold the front without reinforcements from at least one other regiment. Choltitz told him he had nothing to spare, but reiterated the Führer Order: there was to be no withdrawal.
Among those who had flown on 24 July was Lieutenant Truman ‘Smitty’ Smith, on his first flight as 1st pilot. After their mission on 14 July, a long trip to the Alps, Moon Baumann, the man who had piloted them on their first thirty-two missions, had got drunk and later woken up Smith and other crew mates screaming, ‘Bail out!! Bail out!! We’re on fire!! Bail out!!’ He had then jumped off his bed, sheet clasped to his chest like a parachute, and hit his head on the concrete floor, which knocked him out and gave him a big gash.11 He had been grounded for his trouble and Smith given the 1st pilot job on their crew.
Ten days on from this dramatic incident, they were heading to Saint-Lô, with a new co-pilot whom Smith neither liked nor trusted and a different bombardier, as Eut Eutrecht was also still hors de combat. ‘Based on what I had seen of my co-pilot’s abilities,’ noted Smith, ‘I was reluctant, make that “scared”, to let him fly.’12 But hand over controls he did, only for the new boy to nearly ram the bomber in front. Smith was about to grab the contr
ols when his co-pilot grinned and pulled back; he had done it on purpose to scare him. It was hardly the time or place for such a joke. Half an hour later, Smith took over again and vowed to keep it that way. Then, over Saint-Lô, there was too much cloud and they turned round and went back. Now they were heading over again, although this time Smith had told the co-pilot that he would do all the flying and that all he required was for him to watch the oil-pressure gauges.
Down below to the north of the kick-off line, Ernie Pyle was watching from a farmyard about 800 yards back. ‘And before the next two hours,’ he wrote, ‘I would have given every penny, every desire, every hope I ever had, to have been just another 800 yards further back.’13 Also watching were Bradley, Quesada, Collins and other assembled generals and senior staff officers. ‘We sat in a little café partly destroyed in earlier fighting,’ wrote Collins, ‘adjacent to the command post.14 Starched lace curtains hung in the open windows.’ First over again were the fighters, 350 in all, who roared in, parallel, dropping bombs on quite specific targets with what appeared to be unerring accuracy. Pyle watched them peel down in groups, bombs cracking, machine guns chattering, engines whistling and screaming. ‘It was all fast and furious,’ noted Pyle, ‘yet distinct.’15 Then they became gradually aware of a rising drone, deep and filling the air.
It was the heavy bombers. Huge strips of coloured cloth had been laid on the ground below to denote the boundary.
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