Chapter 16
CHAPTER 16: LIFE IN THE BRIDGEHEAD
From mid-June onwards we were continuously in action. There was a succession of hard fought battles over the whole British front, from Caen on the left flank to Caumont on the right. The early break-out had been decisively repulsed. The Germans were bringing up more armour to reinforce the four Panzer Divisions that faced the British. Rough weather in the third week of June held up Allied supplies that should have been landed at the artificial harbours - 'Mulberries’ - that were being constructed off the Normandy coast. Monty maintained the initiative, attacking now on one sector of the front, now on another. Infantry and armour were flung into one attack, relieved by others, and regrouped for fresh attacks. The artillery remained in action without respite, supporting whichever troops were in the thick of the battle.
It seemed to us that we were constantly trying to break out again from the bridgehead and were constantly being thrown back. Had we broken through, no doubt the advance would have been exploited with the whole weight of the Second Army. Later military histories tell us, however, that the strategic objective was to engage the bulk of the enemy armour on our front so that the major advance could take place, against weaker opposition, on the American front to our right.
We had little rest during this period. Even when the whole of the infantry and tanks of 7th Armoured Division were taken out of the line for a few days’ recuperation, we were put under command of 43rd Division and continued with our life of constant action. This life was uncomfortable and tiring. It is true that we rarely engaged in night firing. But the nights were short in the Normandy midsummer. ‘Stand-to’, a routine drill to guard against enemy attack demanded full alertness in the hour before dawn and the hour before darkness. The interval between dusk and dawn, three or four hours at most, spent in the relative security of the narrow space under the Sherman, seemed all too short, and was often disturbed by enemy bombing. The disagreeable wakening from dreams of peace time to the pre-dawn stand-to was made more tolerable by early morning ‘gunfire’, the Army term for the first cup of tea of the day. As in Italy, the regiment had access to a generous rum ration, designed to stiffen the resolution of the troops. It certainly improved the tea, and raised our morale at 3.30 a.m. when we woke, after a short night of uneasy sleep, to another relentless day of discomfort and danger.
Day by day the bridgehead became more overcrowded as more and more men and material poured ashore into the confined area that extended only four or five miles from the coast. The torrent of reinforcements increased in volume as the Mulberries were repaired after the storms of mid-June. Every field, every farm, every orchard, every wood, was crammed with troops, tanks, guns, supply vehicles. The roads and tracks were one perpetual traffic jam. We enjoyed superiority in the air: it was a joy to see the Spitfires and Hurricanes sweeping the skies. However, we were occasionally visited by German fighters and bombers who could hardly fail to hit some target in the crowded bridgehead. In consequence there were usually a few vehicles burning quietly away. The long straight road between Caen and Bayeux was a favourite alley-way for Messerschmidts that machine-gunned everything on this route. When you saw them coming, you jumped out of your vehicle and dived for the convenient roadside ditch.
Life must have been equally unpleasant for those Normandy farmers and their families who remained at their home, only to see their fields ravaged and their cattle slaughtered by shells and bombs. The stench of the bloated decomposing cows mingled with that from burning vehicles to provide an unattractive cocktail of the smell of war. The locals, not uniformly enthusiastic at the onset, must by now have regarded the Allied invasion as a mixed blessing. In spite of this they sometimes offered us the products of their farms and orchards, notably cider and Calvados (known to the troops as fire-water), and Camembert cheese. By happy coincidence a Camembert fitted neatly into the empty brass shell case of a 25-pounder. One shell case could hold a number of the round cheeses: several were carried with us in this way until long after their shelf-life had expired.
By mid-July there were over a million men in the bridgehead. Not all were fighting troops. We had been followed by the ‘administrative tail’, from field hospitals to mobile bakeries and laundries. Our own RHQ had been split into the forward (tac) HQ and the more numerous rear contingent under the command of RSM ‘Dusty’ Millard (the nickname, traditionally applied to the Miller clan, had descended to him by association). With his distinguished record of gallantry, dating from the early BEF in France and the Dunkirk evacuation, he was not amused by being relegated to a landing on D plus 28. We gained little ground by all the fighting in this period. In fact, in one sector we made a planned withdrawal in order to straighten the line. But gaining ground was not the name of the game.
“GOOD TANK COUNTRY”: OPERATION ‘GOODWOOD’
By 10th July Canadian troops were at last fighting their way forward through the ruins of Caen. Most of the city had been reduced to rubble by Street fighting and Allied bombing. The bombing had done more damage to the city and its remaining citizens than to the defending Germans. It had probably increased the difficulties of the attacking Canadians. Nevertheless the way was now open — or so it seemed — for the 2nd Army to concentrate its enormous strength of armour in the ‘good tank country' to the south of Caen where the bocage gave way to wide open cornfields in a rolling landscape. This countryside would enable the armour to engage the enemy at longer range. Our Cromwells could reap the advantage of their superior speed and power of manoeuvre. Against this were the heavier armour and more penetrating fire-power of the Panthers and Tigers, and the lethal power of the German 88 millimetre gun, able to operate in either anti-tank or anti-aircraft role, and probably the most effective weapon of the war.
The British armour to be thrown into the battle consisted of the Seventh, Eleventh and Guards Armoured Divisions. Over the previous two years a Division of the Guards had forsaken their traditional infantry role and had been equipped with tanks. They had been kept in England, first to withstand the threatened invasion, second to re-equip and train for armoured warfare. Most of them were seeing action for the first time in July 1944 — in marked contrast to our own battle record.
The attack of Operation Goodwood was to be launched on 18th July. The preparations involved a formidable movement of tanks and supporting arms across the River Orne. On the left flank of the bridgehead, airborne troops had captured ‘Pegasus’ bridge over the river on D minus 1. Three Bailey bridges, constructed by the Royal Engineers, had now been added. Even so, the passage of three armoured divisions across the Orne was a logistic challenge of the first order. As squadron after squadron nosed their way through the narrow lanes of the bocage we must have formed one of the biggest and certainly one of the most impressive traffic jams in the history of transport.
Once in position over the Orne, our guns were prepared for their role in the artillery barrage that was to soften up the enemy's defences before the attack went in. The barrage was a set-piece bombardment across the whole front along which our troops were to advance. Hugh Timms and I got our survey team into action. We worked out detailed map co-ordinates for each of the three batteries, and accurate bearings to line up the twenty-four guns. In all, seven hundred and sixty guns were lined up ready to bring down an advancing curtain of fire from zero hour. Each crew had dozens of shells at the gun site ready to be loaded. Each command post had the calculated range and line for the salvoes that would herald the attack by infantry followed by the main tank force.
At dawn on 18th July, the Allied air forces carried out a tremendous bombardment of the German forward positions. Soon after, every gun opened up and sent the first salvo crashing into the German lines. Once the barrage had started there was nothing more to be done at RHQ. I accompanied Colonel Peter as he toured the gun positions in his Sherman, giving moral support to the gunners. The noise was deafening, the familiar reports from the 25-pounders mingling with the deeper roar of the medium guns and the rumbling of the heavy artillery. Even in our tank we could feel the earth shaking beneath the tracks. We were exhilarated by the tremendous power that we were unleashing over the enemy lines. The infantry and tanks prepared to advance as the barrage lifted. No doubt, any exhilaration they felt was tempered by a degree of trepidation.
In the earlier stages of the battle, the leading troops advanced against little opposition from the dazed survivors of the bombing and shelling. By the afternoon our tanks were operating on the rolling plains to the south, with 5RHA batteries in their normal role of support by observed fire. The Germans threw their armour into the battle, and the biggest tank battles of the campaign raged throughout the day. By nightfall we had lost 150 tanks, 120 of them from the 11th Armoured Division. It was a convincing demonstration of the superiority of the German tanks and anti-tank guns.
That evening, enemy reconnaissance planes flew overhead, followed by repeated bombing attacks throughout the night. Among other unpleasant things, the planes dropped anti-personnel butterfly bombs. We had strict orders to sleep below ground level in our slit trenches. Colonel Peter began to show signs of strain: by this stage of war he had his fill of being bombed and shelled. He fortified himself by swigs from his private whisky bottle. By dawn, he was himself again.
We spent the two days of the fiercest tank battles next to Brigade HQ and an RAE liaison crew. This enabled the Brigade to call for close support from Typhoon rocket-firing fighters. Their fire-power was the most effective way of dealing with the Tigers and Panthers that were causing mayhem among our own tanks. We could direct a Typhoon from the waiting ‘cab rank' to attack an individual tank. We could watch it take off, dive out of the sky towards the target, fire its rockets, and zoom off More often than not, a column of smoke rose up as the enemy tank went up in flames. By the second afternoon, the landscape was littered with burning tanks of both sides — but many more British than German. The battle had reached stalemate.
From 20th to 24th July we stayed more or less where we were, under regular air bombardment and increasingly heavy artillery fire. The Germans had recovered from the shock and casualties inflicted by our opening barrage. Our narrow and shallow front was very congested and under observation both from air reconnaissance and from the high ground to the south — the Bourgebus ridge — from which we had been unable to dislodge the enemy.
On the 25th we renewed the attack, again under cover of air bombing and artillery barrages. The Canadian Armoured Division, emerging from the ruins of Caen, joined the fray only to fare no better than the British armour. At this stage the enemy strength was estimated at 350 tanks, mostly Panthers and Tigers, 150 self-propelled guns and 300 anti-tank guns — a formidable force for the defence of a narrow front. There were more heavy losses of tanks on both sides. We advanced a few thousand yards. The Germans counter-attacked on the night of 26/27th, gained some ground, and thereafter remained on the defensive. Stalemate again. Thunderstorms, torrents of rain, mud, and clouds of mosquitoes, added to our misery. We had been issued with anti-mosquito cream to apply to any skin exposed. The Divisional Commander with his Tac HQ had taken temporary cover in a farmhouse when a stray shell brought down the ceiling. His batman, arriving with morning tea, failed to recognize the General whose face and whiskers were covered with plaster adhering to the mosquito cream.
By 29th July the British armour had fought to a standstill. We handed over our sector of the front to the Canadian Armoured Division and returned to our old fighting ground in the bocage south of Bayeux. We drove back over the Orne, and nosed our way laboriously through the dense traffic jam that now filled the bridgehead.
Total British tank losses from Goodwood were 493 Cromwells and Shermans. These could be easily replaced. Not so their crews. But more encouraging news came from the American sector on our right. The Short History of the Division summed up the situation as follows:
“For very nearly a fortnight three Allied Corps had been fighting hard and suffering heavy casualties, to secure an advance of little more than six thousand yards at its furthest point. But, during this period the Americans had broken out of the Cherbourg peninsula, and the entire German line from Caumont to the sea was in danger of being turned. In the meantime the enemy had been forced to keep the best part of five armoured divisions, much in need of rest and replacement, in action, suffering heavy casualties in men and guns, and a steady drain in tanks, particularly from air attack. It would not be an exaggeration to say that the tank fighting on the Caen sector, however fruitless it appeared at the time, had a decisive effect on the battle of the bridgehead in that it forced a vital delay on any plans to concentrate the German armour to meet the American threats.”
We had thought that operation ‘Goodwood’ was intended to be the decisive attempt to break out of the bridgehead with the British armour. The code name suggested that we should go racing through the enemy lines. It was difficult to believe that the strongest concentration of Allied tanks ever assembled should be launched into the grimmest of battles with any other purpose. Our morale would not have been improved by the knowledge that we were hazarding our finest troops and equipment against the flower of the German Panzers in order to enable the Americans to win the prize of the break-out from the bridgehead.
Argument on the Allied strategy still rages in military and historical circles, coloured by rivalry between British and Americans about who should claim the main credit for the break-out. Monty's statement of objectives for ‘Goodwood' specified that the main aim was to engage and destroy as many as possible of the enemy tanks and to prevent Rommel from switching them to the American front where the break-out was planned. The Americans faced only one German armoured division. Rommel feared an advance towards Paris by the British armour in the Caen sector, and still expected a second landing in the Pas de Calais. The first flying bombs (V 1's) had been launched towards London from that area in June. The launching sites would be an obvious objective for the Allies.
The German armour facing us in ‘Goodwood’ was greatly outnumbered by ours. For the achievement of stalemate, full credit must be given to the courage and skill of the Wehrmacht, especially their tank and anti-tank crews. We accorded our foe a grudging respect, but felt a great deal of bitterness about our inferiority in quality of equipment. Our tanks were simply no match for theirs, particularly when the Germans were on the defensive. The British public was kept in ignorance of this. Monty discouraged any discussion of it. One M.P. who spoke out in the House of Commons won the admiration of all of us who served in armoured divisions. This was George Stokes, a wealthy industrialist who was the Labour member for Ipswich.
Away from the battlefields, German confidence was shaken by two events in July. Rommel was severely wounded in an air attack during ‘Goodwood’. The following week saw the unsuccessful bomb plot against Hitler. We knew nothing of either event.
Next: Chapter 17: Back to the Bocage