Schwerpunkt: From D-Day to the Fall of the Third Reich (24 page)

While Monty was still fighting for Caen, the Americans got to St. Lo. After chipping away at the maniacal Kraut defenders, on July 18
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we entered the town and got rid of all the remaining Kraut resisters by the next day. On July 19
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, St. Lo’s rubble, along with the critical cross roads, was now in our hands. From here, we had a base where we could launch attacks and since it was right at the shoulders of the Cotentin Peninsula, we could aim our attacks anywhere. That was the good part. The bad part was that the battle for that little town was enormous. General Bradley and our extraordinarily brave boys captured St. Lo but at the cost of 5,000 casualties in just the last six days. Since the first of the attacks on July 3
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, the U.S. First Army had lost 40,000 men. Was it worth it? I’m not a general so I can’t answer. Seems catastrophic to me but maybe we saved more men than this cost. How do these commanders go to sleep at night?

Now that St. Lo (and the roadways that the fight had cost) were available to us, Brad became fixated on getting us out of the bocage. We’ve been bogged down in this goddamn hedgerow country for far too long and the Germans have taken every advantage of it. It had to stop. Brad needed to get out of the muck and mire that hemmed him in. Since Montgomery’s Operation Goodwood failed to put Caen solidly in our hands, Brad was devising a plan to make some progress on his end which, if truth be told, wasn’t setting any land speed records either. He had to clear the remainder of the Cotentin Peninsula at least to Avranches and when that was accomplished, he intended to let loose General Patton and his Third Army. With Cherbourg taken, two more towns were on our radar. If Monty could leave Caen and head down to Caumont and if Brad could get to Avranches, we’d have a triangle from which to expand our march into Brittany, Southern Normandy, and then on towards the Fatherland.

General Bradley saw the time was just about right for our break out because of our position and because of the “Rhinoceros” contraption. Outfitted with these things, our tanks were starting to make some progress uprooting the trees that were in our way. It was a goddamn shame nobody had invented that modification about two months earlier, before we got here. Without all the delay and carnage in Hedgerow Hell, I could have been home by Halloween.

The infantry was breaking through and when the area was secured, our tanks started rolling towards the outer perimeters of hedgerow country. During the third week in July we found ourselves far enough south and moving through the Cotentin Peninsula making more progress now than we’ve made all summer. Moving out of each plot of land quicker than ever, we were sure that pretty much nothing was going to stop our breakout even if more Jerry divisions of men or tanks were moved back west. Brad’s men were almost to the terrain where the farmers didn’t have million year old hedgerows dividing each and every parcel and plot of land which meant we were so close to breaking out of the hedgerows and into open tank country, we could taste it. We just needed a plan because we didn’t yet have one to get us the hell out of Dodge. General Bradley assessed the current situation and came up with what we needed to get out of the bocage country once and for goddamned all. His plan was being called
Operation Cobra
.

What he figured out was that if we bombed the shit out of a small five mile section of our front and then immediately brought up infantry soldiers to make the most of that opening, we could break out. And as Tonto says to the Lone Ranger when he tells him, “We are surrounded by hostile Indians”, “What do you mean ‘we’ Kimosabe?” The “we” Brad was talking about was General Patton. He was now in France, chomping at the bit to lead his men into battle and himself into immortality so who better to exploit the gap and drive right through the broken Kraut defense line than General Blood and Guts? If it worked, it would lead to the break out that we so desperately needed.

The operation called for now what is to be the heaviest tactical show of air power in the war so far and it was almost all directed against the Kraut General Bayerlein’s Panzer Lehr Division. Using St. Lo as a jumping off point, Brad ordered more than 2,500 planes to bomb an opening west of St. Lo with about 4,200 tons of bombs which he calculated would allow six divisions to break out through that opening. I’ll bet you dollars to donuts Monty is going to try to take credit for this idea, but just let me tell you that Bradley’s plan to break out of the bocage was different from Monty’s tactics around Caen. Brad was not going to bomb the shit out of the section he wanted destroyed because his tanks would be impeded by the debris which is exactly what happened in Caen. Secondly, Brad wasn’t going to wait to exploit the gap made by the bombs. He wanted an immediate drive out through the gap so he was keeping his men nearby. He also figured that if he played his cards right, he might be able to bag a whole bunch of Krauts he saw milling around just in front of him. Brad’s plan to bust out was enthusiastically welcomed by one and all. “Lightening Joe” Collins was to go in, draw the enemy to the area and fight like hell. Bombs would drop and Patton would get rid of the German survivors. With the area cleared of our foe, we could break through and be out of the shit we’ve been in for the last six weeks. We’d be out into the open where a man can breathe and tanks can move. Free of the hedgerows, our guys would head to Coutances and Avranches, then wheel towards Hitlerland.

Brad set Cobra to go off on July 24, 1944, but because the weather was shitty that day, he postponed it knowing that our bombers wouldn’t be able to see their targets accurately. Brad got so irritated with the weather that he said if the rain didn’t stop pretty soon, he was going to court martial the Chaplain. The operation was cancelled that day but not before some of the planes took off. They were called back but not until some had already dropped their payloads. Word reached us at headquarters that a few of the bombers fell short of their objective. Waiting on the ground was the 30
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Division who got hit by these short bomb drops. We found out that 25 of our men were killed while another 130 were wounded and the operation hadn’t even officially started. This wasn’t a particularly good start to the operation and we were all sick about it.

Brad had wanted our bombers to bomb parallel to the road, but somebody at Army Air Force decided he had a better idea and the bombs dropped perpendicular to it. Brad said he had no idea his orders were not going to be carried out as issued and he was a wreck about what happened. So when the next day brought better weather and the bombers took off again, we were watching their progress carefully but goddamn it if they didn’t keep to their plan of bombing perpendicular to the road, again dropping their loads short and hitting more men of the 30
^th
on the ground. We learned that General McNair, Chief of US ground forces here, was killed in today’s fiasco. He is the highest ranking Allied officer killed in Normandy so far and it is a terrible loss. In defense of the Army Air Force, they had so many bombers in such a small area, that when their bombs dropped, there was too much smoke for the next guys to properly see. They also said that they didn’t think our guys were going to be so close to the bombed area but Brad said he needed them close by so they could get through the breach as quickly as possible to prevent the Krauts from regrouping their defenses like they did when Monty waited so long after the bombs were dropped on Caen. Christ on a cross! It’s bad enough when we hit the mark and innocents are killed but when mistakes cause even more unwarranted deaths to our own guys, I gotta say I want to just puke. I know no one is perfect and I have to keep reminding myself of how good a job our guys are doing 99% of the time but this news was truly hard to stomach. Those poor bastards!

The first day, there was no break out west of St. Lo. We attacked with bombs galore but we couldn’t break through those goddamn Kraut defenders. They have to have iron balls, those guys, although we’re hearing that there are Nazi henchmen who threaten their soldiers with execution if they hesitate to do what they’re told. Jesus. And they want to live in this kind of a country? Anyway, we bombed the Krauts, we attacked them with everything we had and still those who were left continued to man a defensive line that we couldn’t seem to penetrate. But then, on the second day of the offensive, “Lightening” Joe’s guys gained six miles and finally crashed through the previously uncrashable German line. After General Collins pushed through, the German defenses just seemed to crumble and the breakthrough was complete. Brad sent as many men as he could through that breach and soon, the Krauts couldn’t take it anymore. Within two days, we were at Countances with Avranches as the goal. The American troops who were concentrated in the Cotentin Peninsula after the fall of Cherbourg were to converge around Avranches and then spread out to secure the towns and port cities below. If this plan works, I could be home by Armistice Day. Wouldn’t that be fitting?

With the Hun fighting for every inch of ground and with us dropping bombs and exploiting the gaps, Brad’s plan worked. I heard the Krauts just about lost their Panzer Lehr Division in Cobra and they didn’t even stop us. We later calculated that 12 bombs were dropped for every German soldier in the targeted area. His plan began with heavy air fire and ended with breakout. Miracle of miracles: we were moving out of the hedgerows. The roads were open for us to move which meant it was time to let loose General George S. Patton who had been waiting for this moment probably his whole life. Patton received orders to move out with the commencement of Cobra on July 25th. He was so proud, you’d have thought he had two peckers.

Our infantry exploited the gap and gained two miles on the first day and five the day after that. This was more rapidly gained territory than we’d seen in a long time. We watched their progress with hope and admiration and then finally, on July 27th, we received news that our troops were out of the hedgerows of Normandy and on the road to the Fatherland. They were on the move in open country. Patton, true to form, got four of his armored divisions through the gap and out of the bocage. Their hedgeless journey towards Coutances was successful and by July 28
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after seven weeks of brutal fighting in Normandy, we were notified that Coutances was securely in our hands. Monty’s original DDay plans called for the Americans to have broken out of by Peninsula June 23
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. We weren’t completely out until July 28
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but now, Baby, watch out. We’ll be making up for lost time and we’ll be in Berlin in no time. It’s just that no one had accounted for the time consuming agony we had to endure moving from one boxed in field to the next for the last seven weeks. With the fall of St. Lo to the right of the peninsula and now Countances on its left, the way is wide open for a rapid advancement, unfettered by hedgerows anymore, to LeMans and then Paris.

The relief around here is palpable. Cobra was the break that our sore nerves and the nerves of a President, a Prime Minister and a million men needed. With the wind in their hair, our men moved and Avranches was taken two days after Countances. Brad’s plan for a break out was as successful as anything in this man’s war. And he was still eyeing the Krauts in front of him. General Patton was ordered to take the Brittany Peninsula along with its ports. Our glacial progress was picking up speed. Now let’s see what damage we can do to Fortress Europa especially since up until a couple of weeks or so ago and 200 miles away, the 15
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German Army was sitting idly by waiting for the “real” invasion. I was sitting idly by waiting for a letter from my brother.

July 18
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, 1944

Hello Frank,

We’re on the march through the northwest coast of France. It seems to me that there aren’t as many Jerry soldiers as before but those that we encounter are better armed, stronger and more diabolical than those we came across earlier. We’re still in tree country but we’ve been told we’re going to be leaving this godforsaken terrain for the open road soon.

We were trained to conduct a mobile advance through open country. I mean we spent days in England practicing this maneuver but I haven’t seen any open country since I left jolly old England. What we ended up fighting here was a crawling advance through bocage which has to be French for “boxes” because that’s what we were in. Boxes of small farm parcels, fenced in by thick, stinking trees.

Time to spare right this second so wanted to write you while the writing is good. Who knows when I’ll get the next chance? So the big news is that our Combat Infantry Badges came and you know what that means! Ten bucks a month more in pay, big brother! I feel like an old timer now. Remember how scared I was when I first got here? We’ve been in so many tight places since then, it’s becoming second nature though I still admit to getting scared when I’m first getting into them. Then something takes over and I just react. I don’t even think I think about anything.

Right now, we are to hold the intersection of two main roads against all enemy attacks until relieved. It sounds worse than it is and since it was pretty quiet, I went into a house where I found some cheese, milk! and cider. That was the best meal I had since I left England, I think. It’s funny how something as silly as milk can make you so happy. Then add fresh cheese to it and we’re talking about a meal fit for a Combat Infantry man. We’ve been without the little pleasures of life for so long now while just trying to do as ordered and stay alive in the process, that when one of these little things pops up, it makes you glad. Now I just wish I had more chocolate. Every town we pass through has kids in it just begging for food and chocolates. They’re as cute as bugs’ ears too and I can’t help thinking what a raw deal they got being born into this mess. At least they’re kids though. What about the 20 year olds who are sabotaging railroads and stuff? When they get caught, I’ve heard their whole town suffers. Hope it won’t be too much longer before that rat Hitler gets what’s coming to him. Doesn’t seem to faze him though when his young soldiers buy the farm. Wonder how he’ll handle it when his turn comes.