Schwerpunkt: From D-Day to the Fall of the Third Reich (27 page)

The Americans’ attack on St. Lo continued all through 18. July and fierce fighting persisted to the next day when, on 19. July, the city finally fell into enemy hands. The Americans have captured St. Lo but, given the disparity between our supplies and theirs, St. Lo held out for far longer than any of us had expected. Of course, Herr Hitler was beside himself with rage at the loss but no one can make him understand that it takes more than wishes and desires to win battles. Men and equipment to support one’s desires are critical components and these are in short supply.

Back on the day of 15. July, just as General Rommel did every other day, he had his driver Karl Daniel take him to visit our commanders in a targeted sector. This day he was going to discuss the area around Caen. The ride was apparently frightful as it was a lovely day outside which meant it was a good day for flying. And if it was a good day for flying, that meant it was a good day for strafing or bombing. The road he had to traverse made the trip even more alarming as it included a stretch where French Resistance fighters are especially active and keen on blowing up German vehicles. General Rommel has one man in the car whose sole job is to act as a lookout for enemy aircraft. The poor lookout’s neck should have been made of rubber as he looked from the sky to the roadsides to the front of our car to the rear of our car and back again to the skies.

General Rommel told me that when he arrived and talked to the 346
^th
Infantry Division Commander, he was told that they were only down 800 soldiers and we took this as good news indeed. The bad news was that they were severely short of ammunition and weapons, including guns and anti-tank weapons. A visit to the 21
^st
Panzer Division headquarters revealed that they too were pretty well set, all things considered. We had more than four Panzer divisions circling Caen along with four infantry divisions as well so if the British were to attack Caen today, we’re as ready as we can be. But it probably isn’t good enough and the fear all around us is that they will break through our defenses if they bring any real speed and might to bear. We simply do not have the strength we require to hold off any concentrated enemy attacks.

General Rommel devised a plan to hold the enemy back for as long as our resources allowed, fully anticipating that there was going to be another major attack by the enemy, for now the what? Fourth time? We were all but certain the enemy would start off their next attack for Caen with either a diversionary bombing run (unless they used them all up during their last attempt) or small attacks around the city. We knew that it was the Englishman Montgomery who was in charge of the enemy’s plans for taking this city and General Rommel knew his adversary from the old days in Afrika not to mention the three recent attempts he’s made to secure Caen. After thinking about what Montgomery would do in this situation, he figured that the Englishman would send in his armored corps to penetrate the holes in our line. If those gaps could be exploited and if their tanks could get through them, they would then be in flat tank country. What the Englishman didn’t know was that we had over two hundred tanks positioned in these “holes.”

General Rommel and General Eberbach planned to have every available tank and infantry division well placed for virtually whatever could come our way. Anti tank guns were camouflaged and heavy artillery was called to action. Defenses were arranged to a depth of 10 or more kilometers with reserves in strategic positions. I believe this was the strongest defensive line we had put into place since the invaders landed. Herr General Rommel established not one but five defensive zones figuring that he needed to spread out his men as thinly but defensively as possible. He had quickly ordered the 1
^st
SS Panzer Division “Leibstandarte Adolph Hitler” and the 272
^nd
Infantry to be brought up to the area surrounding Caen. He further ordered his troops to stand their ground around Caen before he left for a meeting with the 277
^th
and 276
^th
Infantry troops and a meeting with SS Gruppenführers Bittrich and Sepp Dietrich on 17.July. 44, a day that was to become the worst day of the war so far.

During General Rommel’s meetings that day, he learned that General Dietrich had determined that enemy tanks were moving eastwards so he alerted our Luftwaffe Field Division to be ready. We knew what the enemy was doing because even though there was apparently radio silence imposed on the advancing tanks, the enemy foolishly fired heavy artillery barrages which did nothing but confirm for us where they were planning to launch their attack. The enemy thought that they would prevent us from suspecting anything by moving what came to be hundreds of tanks to Caen under cover of darkness. Tank movements, especially large concentrations of moving tanks, can be heard even through bomb attacks. General Dietrich told us that he learned a trick while on the Eastern Front. He said to put your ear to the ground and if tanks are moving, they will make a rumbling noise that you can feel, even if bombs are dropping all around you. He was discussing this with General Rommel who then left the meeting in order to return to headquarters. This is when he must have received word of the St. Lo Offensive because he was apparently on his way back to La Roche Guyon but he did not return that night.

While General Rommel was absent from our headquarters, the enemy again attacked Caen, as he knew they would. The British didn’t attack on the 16
^th
as we thought they might. They waited until the 18
^th
when we were also concentrating on the simultaneous attacks on the city of St. Lo. We were again forced to fight against another two front offensive. But the Tommies’ delay of two days gave us more time to put our men and tanks into the positions which, I am proud to say, were pretty much point on to where they needed to be. As it turned out, Herr Rommel almost perfectly anticipated the Englishman’s plan for Caen and clearly saw through his offensive tactics. General Rommel had devised a battle plan which assumed a preliminary enemy bombing raid. He had gone over in detail with all our commanding officers what to do next. He had ordered our men to secure each and every little village in the area surrounding Caen so that we could attack from behind houses and buildings. He thought, and everyone agreed, that if we could so successfully defend from behind trees in the bocage, defending from behind buildings would be equally successful.

As the enemy attack was launched, it began with the expected carpet of bombs. I’m not sure if the name has anything to do with it or not, but Battle Group von Luck had fortuitously planned to station many of their tanks and most of their troops in an area which proved to be just outside of the expected area of bombing. General von Luck was just leaving Paris after visiting his fiancée when the attack started and as he made his way back towards Caen, he reported to us that he encountered enemy tanks while moving through Cagny. The report was less than clear but what I was able to surmise is that he found himself facing over fifty enemy tanks. He knew he could not out fight them with only the forces he was commanding at the time but reported that he saw an anti-aircraft FLAK unit nearby. He ordered the FLAK Commander to take on the quickly approaching enemy tanks but the commander said his orders were to wait for enemy aircraft and to shoot them out of the sky. General von Luck inquired as to whether the commander saw any aircraft in the sky at that particular moment and his answer was “No.” General von Luck then ordered him again to take on the quickly approaching tanks and again he refused. At this point there was something about a pistol and an inquiry as to whether the commander would like to die waiting for enemy aircraft or accept a field decoration for valor by destroying the enemy tanks immediately. Since I saw no mention of the commander’s name on our casualty reports, I can only surmise the brave fellow chose the latter option. Lending even more credence to this assumption were the reports that General von Luck succeeded in destroying many enemy tanks and that he held this position until reinforced by the 1
^st
SS Panzer Division.

General von Luck then watched as the enemy tanks advanced past where he had houses fortified with experienced and well armed troops. The enemy tanks rolled by and were soon engulfed by our anti tank weapons. I know that General von Luck considered counter-attacking the enemy but he didn’t have the resources. The earlier bombing had incapacitated many of our tanks, including our Tigers, and so while he couldn’t attack, he could still eliminate and destroy as many enemy tanks as possible. Von Luck ordered whatever surviving troops and remaining tanks he could find to move into position and form a new defensive line on the Bourgebus Ridge. These troops and tanks heroically defended from the high ground and caused such damage to the Englishman Montgomery’s soldiers that we later calculated there were more than a thousand enemy dead or wounded and they lost probably 200 or more of their tanks.

The British around Caen continued to fight the next day and the day after, making small gains but incurring heavy losses. It’s a small wonder their progress was so slow since our two best tank divisions had met up and were both fighting to keep the enemy from gaining an open route to the Falaise Plain. The 1
^st
SS “Leibstandarte Adolph Hitler” Panzer Division and the 12
^th
SS “Hitler Jugend” Panzer Division stood firm, in full compliance with der Führer’s orders, and fought off the British attempt to drive out of Caen towards Falaise. Also assigned to the defense against this fourth major attack on Caen was not only the 346
^th
Infantry Division but the 16
^th
Luftwaffe Field Division. What a Luftwaffe division without any real combat experience was doing under a ton of enemy shells with no anti tank guns and no training on how to use them even if they did have them was curious and says to me that we’re still not getting the qualified replacements necessary to defeat our enemies in the west.

When the British attacked the city of Caen, we were utilizing all available reinforcement troops but there were not nearly enough if we were to comply with Hitler’s order to hold Caen at all costs. Our surviving troops and tank commanders went to work, including our ace tanker. Oberstürmführer Michael Wittmann, and they masterfully shot out numerous enemy tanks and killed hundreds of enemy soldiers. We eventually came to find out that the enemy had apparently planned to have more than 850 tanks and more than 8,000 motorized vehicles drive over the Orne River and then over the Orne Canal, neither of which was wide enough to accommodate anything other than a line, a few abreast, of loud, rumbling tanks. Apparently, the Englishman’s plan then called for these tanks to be driven right under the high ground which we controlled, to an objective something like 15 km away. Their tanks moved far too slowly which allowed us to knock them out as if we were at a shooting gallery. Heavy bombing preceded the ground attack which meant there was a lot of smoke and dirt in the air. Admittedly, many of their bombs did find their targets and many of our troops were destroyed. But as the bombings continued and while our observation of the enemy’s movement was affected by all the smoke their bombing created, it had to have been far worse for their bomber pilots who probably could see little to nothing from the air. We are confident that some of the bombs missed us and hit their own troops.

Our defenses held in spite of attacks by this vast number of enemy tanks and the British bogged down just as General Rommel expected they would. Because of the resistance our troops put up and because of the counter-attacks General Rommel ordered, the enemy lost hundreds of tanks on just the first day of this battle. As was reported by the commanders in the field on 18.July.44, General Rommel’s plan succeeded masterfully. The defensive strategy held our line and the British moved outwards towards the river rather than inward towards the city. And all this was accomplished without General Rommel leading the operation himself. Where he was, no one knew.

As successful as our defense was, we could not hold off the superior forces of the enemy forever and his troops marched into the city of Caen though the city itself was not yet in his control and the villages surrounding the city on the way to the Falaise Plain were still firmly in our hands. Our Luftwaffe launched some bombing runs of their own and many enemy dead were reported. Inexplicably, the British did not send in more troops to exploit the gains they had made and Gott sei Dank they didn’t. General Eberbach was able to order regrouping and counter-attacks and we actually regained control of one of the few surrounding villages we had lost yesterday.

Whether it was or was not the strongest defensive line General Rommel had ever put in place, his strategy to defend Caen and hold the paths to the Falaise Plain worked spectacularly and the English General’s scheme to open the way for his drive to Paris did not succeed. The enemy’s fourth attempt to capture the city was yet again rebuffed and the coward Montgomery called off the attack on 20. July, two days after starting it. His soldiers retreated and the city still remained in our hands, but only just.

When the After Reports came in, it showed that the Tommies outnumbered us in tanks at more than 3 to 1 but with our new Panther and Tiger tanks, the enemy’s guns could not easily pierce them. The most amazing element to this tale is that we’ve heard the cost to the British in their fight for Caen was as many men in these six weeks as they thought they would have lost reaching Berlin, as if that is going to happen. We all presumed that it was this terrific loss of tanks and the huge loss of their soldiers that caused the enemy generals to cease their offensive the next day. This is simply amazing news because it was heard around here (though not too loudly) that if the English had pressed on, our defense of Caen would have collapsed. Panzer Commander Hans von Luck sent us a letter later saying that his troops could not have lasted another day.

I have to say, having spoiled the British attack yet again was uplifting. It seemed our despair was vanishing but as my Oma always told me when I was a boy, good news walks hand in hand with bad and today, we received the worst possible news ever. We were notified that Field Marshal Rommel and his driver were on their way home from yesterday’s meetings in his beloved Horch automobile when it was strafed by a pair of British fighter bombers! His Horch was forced off the road and our General was found unconscious and lying many meters away, in a pool of blood. He was immediately taken to a Military Hospital and we were told that Herr Rommel was injured quite severely but that he was still alive. Gott mit uns! God truly
is
with us because even though our General sustained injuries to his head and face and although he was unconscious, he was not killed. Field Marshal Rommel was taken to the Luftwaffe Hospital in Bernay where he is being treated after miraculously surviving the accident that killed his driver and my friend, Karl.