Schwerpunkt: From D-Day to the Fall of the Third Reich (22 page)

The American troops in the west were still bogged down in the Bocage, also struggling for the opportunity to break out. General Bradley formulated a plan, code named Operation Cobra, which successfully led to the breakout. The Allied front now rapidly expanded while the Germans continually lost more and more significant Normandy territory. By the beginning of July, the front ran almost west to east across northern France. It took another month of heavy fighting, but by the end of July, the Americans were out of the hedgerows, Patton’s Army could be utilized and the advance through France was underway.

By July 2
^nd
, we got reports that just about a million men were now in France through the beaches secured less than one month ago. We brought in over a half million tons of supplies and something close to 175,000 vehicles. I played such a minuscule role in all this that I can say without fear of boasting, we did one hell of a job. We may not have been racing through the country since then, but we had built up our troop numbers, they were moving, and they were being resupplied.

While progress is definitely being made, it’s going way too slowly and all around me I hear fears that we’re stalling. Officers from the Great War in 1917 were comparing our progress in Normandy to the “No Man’s Land” battles of Verdun and the Somme. I know I’m not the only one who is sick to death of how goddamn slow Monty makes the Brits move since I’ve heard others complain to Ike about it as well. I guess Ike can’t sack Montgomery, him being the general who beat the “Desert Fox” and all, but how much goddamn longer is this guy going to be allowed to rest on his laurels? I did hear Ike say one time that Monty should just get on his bike and ride. That’s putting it mildly. Ike continues to urge Monty to get a move on to bring Caen into the “Have” column. So far, it’s been a “Have Not.” If he would just move for Chrissakes! We need more room to maneuver because we’re stacking up like firewood on the beaches and we still got units in England twiddling their thumbs waiting for the word to hop aboard a ship and get ready to kick some Heinie.

One of the major problems is still Caen. “Caen” Monty ever take that city?! Since it wasn’t taken on DDay as scheduled,
Operation Epsom
was launched but thwarted last month, not only because Monty didn’t coordinate the air attack with the ground follow up, but because two more Kraut Panzer divisions came in and beat the hell out of him. Fighting for that goddamn city, which still remains in German hands, has occupied almost all of his efforts for the last month. Ike had gone over to Normandy during the first week of July, a month after DDay, touring the scenes of the battles we’ve fought so far and pretty much just getting the lay of the land. He can’t understand what’s taking Monty so long to get Caen and I heard him and Beetle discussing what should be done. Ike decided that maybe a letter to Monty from the Supreme Commander telling him to go in on “a major full-dress attack” just might get him off the dime so that’s what he sent. That was quite unusual because Ike rarely interferes with what his officers do or how they run their battle plans. But enough is enough and if we don’t move pretty goddamn soon, Hitler’s going to die an old man.

Monty went back to the drawing board and finally planned a frontal attack in Operation Charnwood. Monty kept trying to bypass the enemy in Caen while everybody was trying to tell him to go for the attack. Everyone, of course, was not nearly as brilliant as HSS (“His Supreme Self”) Montgomery and so not until July in
Operation Charnwood
is he finally doing what we’d been telling him to do for the last month. He’s finally decided he’s not going to try to take it from the side like the two times he’s tried before. This time he’s apparently going straight in for a good old fashioned frontal assault. He’s a genius.

His plan was to take the bridges over the Orne River. To get there, Monty planned for the capture of Hill 112, as that goddamn pile of earth still wasn’t in our hands definitively. We held it, we lost it. We held it again and lost it again. This time we needed to take it and keep it so that a mad dash to the Orne River could be made where the bridges, assuming they hadn’t been destroyed by now, were the new keys to securing Caen. The ultimate goal was the Bourgebus Ridge leading to the plain of Falaise, which meant the Tommies would be out of the hedgerows of Hell.

Set to go off on July 7
^th
, this time he’s counting not only on air cover but destruction of the whole goddamn city by bombing it with more fire power than we’ve ever thrown at the Hun so far. His plan called not only for aircraft to bomb even more of Caen but for the naval guns to deliver their loads to whatever is left of the city as well. With all the destruction being rained down on this city, I’ll be surprised if our worst injuries aren’t sprained ankles from falling over the rubble. Unless the Krauts have some kind of defense I don’t know about, it’s going to be almost impossible for Monty not to get this city in our hands after this operation is over. I know he didn’t plan on being involved with Caen for so long, but since he was, he might as well put his concentration on that city to good use and make Rommel deploy fewer troops to where other battles were taking place. Just please don’t let him come in here shouting that this was his plan for this Operation as well.

The July 7
^th
plan called for a massive bombardment of the area around northern Caen which was followed by two days of brutal fighting. After approximately 6,000 bombs dropped more than 2500 tons of explosives, Monty began his ground attack. But he waited six hours AFTER that major air attack and of course he was too late. The Krauts are nothing if not masters at defending their positions in Normandy and they fight like hell no matter what the cost. Waiting that long to follow up did nothing but give Jerry more than enough time to fortify and reinforce. Within that six hour time period, and because of Monty’s cautious wait, we found out later that the Germans moved the 21
^st
Panzer and the 12
^th
SS Hitler Jugend Panzer Divisions into solid defensive positions around that city.

Once the British started their ground fight, they fought gallantly but they fought virtually to a standstill. The Canadians fought for the nearby airfield and after two days, Carpiquet, the village where the Caen airport was located, was taken by the Canucks. This position was being defended fanatically by only a relatively small number of Kraut troops. Later, information came in from prisoners taken that these defenders around the airfield were almost all still teenagers. But as further reports came in, it seems the best we can say is that although the Krauts lost the village of Carpiquet, they still held the critical airfield. And alls I can say about this is that the operation was a success but the patient died. What the hell good is Carpiquet if we don’t have the goddamn airfield? And maybe, if and when we do get the airfield, our engineers might be able to get the bombed out runways back in order. If they can, this may still be beneficial to us but if and until then, we still don’t have an airfield. We need this area yesterday.

Fighting for the whole city continued for two days, until July 9
^th
. That was when the British linked up with the Canadians and Caen was almost, but not quite, in British hands. Monty only conquered half the city. Charnwood started with the heaviest aerial bombardment of the war. After more bombs than ever before were dropped on the city, we found out that just about the only Kraut casualties in this part of the operation were strained necks from when they turned around to look behind them to see where the bombs were dropping. The bombs were dropped too far back and accomplished nothing more than razing an already destroyed city. In point of fact, the heavy bombing probably caused more harm than good since with such massive destruction, the tanks couldn’t navigate over the rubble and broken buildings. When Monty’s troops did enter Caen, their hold on it was not secure enough to seize the whole city.

Monty went into the city less than eight miles before he was stopped again. Technically, I suppose, he liberated the northern part of Caen but there was still strong German resistance in the southern part of Caen which prevented him from declaring the entire city to be in our hands. Well actually the facts didn’t prevent him from declaring that Caen was liberated even though only the north part was. Monty called the operation a success; we called it useless. An after-investigation showed there were no Germans to speak of in the northern area where the bombs were dropped and almost no enemy guns, equipment or tanks were found up there either. We heard it made our men stand up with pride when our bombers flew overhead, but maybe we should just have a parade if no strategic benefit is gained from unleashing all that destruction. And as we’ve scrutinized reports and accounts of Charnwood, it’s becoming clearer and clearer that no strategic benefits were gained from bombing even more of that city into a rubble heap and still the city remained in German hands. God only knows how many civilians were killed or wounded. The costs in civilian damage has to be sky high. I hope the people still living there heeded the leaflets we dropped on them telling them to pack up and go but I’m sure a lot of men didn’t and I’m sure a lot of innocents died.

As the days of this battle went by, the coveted Hill 112 changed hands so many times, we lost count but at the end of it all, the hill was not taken. After fighting with a more than 3:1 advantage, Monty could still not break through the German defenses. 6,000 bombs! 5 million pounds!! And still we lost more than 80 tanks and 3,500 men for a gain of six or seven miles. Brilliant wasn’t it? I know Ike was fuming and I heard him wonder out loud if just short of a million pounds of bombs per mile was worth it. Caen was not taken and the gruesome and costly fight had been for naught. Unless you count Monty holding down German troops for the sole benefit of protecting Brad out west which none of us do. But since HDS (“His Deceptive Self”) Montgomery still hadn’t taken the city, what did he do? He literally told everyone that he DID break out.

When it became clearly apparent that he did not secure the entire city, what with the area still being filled with Krauts and all, he turned around and said that a breakout was not the plan. He said his plan all along was to pin down the German defenders so the Americans could break out in the Cotentin Peninsula. I knew he was going to do something like that if his plan went south since that’s the excuse he gave the last two times his plans failed to accomplish the objective. He’s always got to have a victory even if it’s entirely different than the objective he outlined earlier. Don’t get me wrong. It’s good to have German troops tied down but it’s also mysterious to me how Monty thinks we’re going to believe this was his master plan all along.

If Monty could or would have taken Caen right away, his front to the east would have been wide open causing at least some degree of heartburn to the Krauts since we’d have a wide open route to get to the fatherland. They could not have moved all their big guns to harass Brad out west unless they were willing to give up protecting the territory towards their border which makes no sense, especially for a Kraut. So planning not to take Caen just so he can tie down German troops is horse shit in my opinion. Then add this to the mix: even if those goddamn Germans did move west, with Monty on their ass end, they’d have faced immediate encirclement. No. I don’t care what that son of a bitch says. He wanted to break out and when he couldn’t, he came up again with a ghost plan so he wouldn’t have to admit he ran shit out of luck and failed to achieve the designated objective. Plans that nobody knew anything about at the time they were made suddenly came to life when the other plan failed. He does this all the time!

So even though this current rain cloud was not Monty’s original plan, there still was the proverbial silver lining which I guess we can count as a positive consequence to the otherwise unfortunate situation that Monty
still
had not taken Caen: while the Brits and Canadians were still slugging it out over Caen, and because Operation Fortitude was still obviously working, the fact remains that the Jerries did not bring in sufficient reinforcements to the western part of Normandy. I know Brad was happy that he didn’t have as many Krauts to face, but he still faced plenty and was also having a dickens of a time getting to St. Lo. We all know that shit happens and we’ve all heard about the best laid plans of mice and men. Well the plans for Caen and St. Lo are perfect examples of that.

By the first week of July, after a month of fighting in France, General Bradley found his army still in the Cotentin Peninsula with strong enemy defenders still in possession of key towns. We continued to fight from field to field in the bocage terrain and Monty’s original plan for DDay objectives had pretty much come on hard times. As Monty was going balls to the wall with
Operation Charnwood
, Brad was trying to take St. Lo. But the hell of the hedgerows bogged Brad down again and he didn’t make it. Because of prisoners captured, we found out that two Panzer divisions, Panzer Lehr and the 2
^nd
SS Panzer Division, had made it to Brad’s neck of the woods so contrary to Monty’s statement that he held the Krauts to his front around Caen, two divisions obviously managed to find their way to the peninsula to fight Brad.

We held Caumont but we still didn’t have the hill called Hill 192 which is what we needed for the advantage that being on a high hill gives when you can look down at your enemies. Only after devastatingly high losses of some 1,200 men were we able to take that high ground. From all the defense the Krauts were giving, you’d have thought they had troops to spare. After fighting for five years, we knew they should have been scraping the bottom of the barrel but their barrel must be bottomless. The German fat lady was clearing her throat but she sure wasn’t singing.

But I got a letter from my brother so that makes me feel good, at least for 10 minutes.

July 1, 1944

Hi ya Frank,

I just wanted to tell you that I am still good. I’ve turned the corner from being an unblooded grunt to a soldier. I knocked out one Kraut this morning and after the mayhem of the battle, I took the belt buckle off the dead guy. It says, “Gott mit uns”. The guys wanted to see it and when they read it, some wisenheimer said, “No...I got gloves.” Probably not as funny in writing and maybe you had to be there but it made all of us laugh which none of us have done in a long time.