Overlord (Pan Military Classics) (53 page)

‘I protested long, loud and violently,’ Wood said later. He believed that he could have been in Chartres in two days. ‘But no! We were forced to adhere to the original plan – with the only armor available, and ready to cut the enemy to pieces. It was one of the colossally stupid decisions of the war.’
¹⁵
But Middleton confirmed Wood’s orders, and so also did Patton’s Chief of Staff, Gaffey. Gaffey told Middleton that his general ‘assumes that in addition to locking the roads . . . you are pushing the bulk of the [4th Armored Division] to the west and south-west to the Quiberon area, in accordance with the army plan.’
¹⁶
Patton, desperately
anxious not to become entangled in a wrangle with Bradley when his own position remained that of probationer, had no intention of crossing his wishes. 4th Armored spent 6–10 August standing before Lorient, attempting to induce the German garrison to surrender. It was 15 August before the division was once more pushing east.

There is little doubt that the commitment of major forces in Brittany was ill-judged, when resistance was so slight and – after the example of Cherbourg – the prospect so small of the port being in early use. Bradley lies open to the charge of lack of imagination in failing to adjust the original OVERLORD plan to meet the changed situation and the great new opportunity in the west. If the Germans had now behaved rationally, recognized the threat of envelopment to their entire front and begun a full-scale retreat east, then Bradley could indeed be accused of losing his armies a great prize. But, driven on by Hitler’s delusions, they did nothing of the sort. They prepared a major counter-attack and, even when it failed, were so slow to begin pulling back that Bradley’s divisions had all the time that they needed to reach around behind the German rear. The diversion into Brittany may have been poor strategy, a future source of grief to staff college students. But the ultimate prize at Falaise was as great as it was ever likely to be, whatever course the American had adopted. It is also useful to remember that, while the Channel ports were in Allied hands within a month, making those of Brittany largely unnecessary, Bradley still had too much respect for the German army at the beginning of August to be confident that its collapse was total. Almost every witness at American headquarters to the events of early August agrees that their finality only became apparent later. There was no immediate conviction that the end in France had come, that von Kluge was not merely defeated, but routed. Many officers still expected to be fighting around the Seine – if not further east – come September.

On the night of 6 August, von Funck’s XLVII Panzer Corps launched a major attack against the positions of the 30th Division around Mortain, which had fallen to 1st Division on the 3rd. The Germans advanced without a preparatory artillery bombardment, for they still cherished the illusion of surprise. Armoured columns of 2nd SS Panzer and 17th SS pushed forward from north and south to seize the town, and by noon of the 7th were close to St Hilaire in the south-west. Von Luttwitz’s 2nd Panzer overran two companies of the American 117th Infantry. Elements of 1st SS Panzer were also committed as they arrived on the battlefield. 116th Panzer’s commander pleaded the difficulty of disengaging on his existing front to explain his own formation’s absence from the start-line. But within a few hours, German units were within nine miles of Avranches. If they could break through to the coast, they might cut off the 12 American divisions south of the junction from their lifeline of fuel and supplies.

Yet from the moment on the night of 6 August that Ultra provided a brief warning to Bradley’s headquarters of the Mortain counter-attack, the Americans perfectly understood this as an opportunity, not a threat. The Germans had plunged enfeebled forces into battle against powerful American formations which were not not merely confident of withstanding them, but expected to destroy them. Bradley told the visiting Henry Morgenthau: ‘This is an opportunity that comes to a commander not more than once in a century. We are about to destroy an entire German army.’
¹⁷
The veteran US 4th Division, in VII Corps reserve, was deployed to seal the German flanks while 3rd Armored’s CC B went to the aid of the hard-pressed 30th Division. Haislip’s XV Corps was ordered to press on with its push south to Le Pau, then swing north-east to Alençon and Argentan. Third Army’s great sweep was not to be impeded by the Mortain battle. Collins’s VII Corps would handle the business of repelling von Funck’s panzers, with formidable assistance from the Allied air forces.

Hitler had personally dispatched to von Kluge detailed plans for the armoured attack, Operation LUTTICH. ‘We must strike like
lightning,’ he declared. ‘When we reach the sea the American spearheads will be cut off. Obviously they are trying all-out for a major decision here, because otherwise they wouldn’t have sent in their best general, Patton . . . We must wheel north like lightning and turn the entire enemy front from the rear.’
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It will remain one of the great enigmas of history, not that the German generals could have accepted the invasion of Poland or the mass murder of the Jews, but that so many sane men could have borne obediently with fantasy such as this. The Commander-in-Chief of Army Group B, too weak to reject the plan as absurd, determined that if it was to be launched at all, the armour must move immediately, before the American envelopment had rendered any move impossible. He could not wait, as Hitler demanded, for the full weight of panzer forces to be transferred westwards. Of 1,400 tanks committed to battle in Normandy, 750 had already been lost. The panzer divisions initially committed to the Mortain thrust – 2nd, 1st and 2nd SS – attacked with only 75 Mk IVs, 70 Mk Vs, and 32 self-propelled guns.

From the outset, they ran into difficulties. 2nd Panzer on the right left the start-line on time, at midnight on 6 August, but 1st SS Panzer’s armour was seriously delayed by a fighter-bomber which crashed onto the leading tank in a sunken lane, creating an impassable road block. It was daylight before the SS tank crews had reversed out of the shambles and found a new road to Mortain. After promising early gains beyond the little town of St Barthélémy, 1st SS met CC B of the US 3rd Armored and were quickly in deep trouble. 116th Panzer, which appeared on the scene only late in the afternoon, was stopped dead by an American anti-tank screen. Only 2nd Panzer seemed to be making good progress. ‘Bad weather is what we need,’ said Luttwitz’s operations officer. ‘Then everything will work out alright.’
¹⁹
But as the early morning mist lifted, out of the sky came the first aircraft of the greatest concentration of fighter-bombers yet deployed in the west, Quesada’s Thunderbolts supported by the RAF’s rocket-firing Typhoons. They caught 2nd Panzer at Le Coudray. The promised Luftwaffe air cover
never materialized. Almost every approaching German sortie was intercepted by Allied fighters. The ground attack, begun with little hope even among the most formidable remaining formations of the German army, foundered in disarray and destruction. Far from creating even temporary relief from the threat of encirclement, von Kluge’s divisions had driven themselves deep into the destructive embrace of the Americans.

Yet for the men in the path of von Kluge’s offensive that week in August, it was difficult to view the situation as enthusiastically as did Bradley’s staff. Corporal George Small of 465th Anti-Aircraft Battalion, covering the Pontaubault bridges against the resurgence of Luftwaffe activity, was appalled to find his unit’s triple A A guns being issued with armour-piercing ammunition: ‘Then we were really scared.’ The 30th Division bore the brunt of the. German attack. Most men had been roused from their rest area on the night of the 6th, aware of a German attack but not of its details, and marched forward under the full moon to relieve infantry of the 1st Division. Guides showed them the foxholes and trenches that they were taking over. Then the men of ‘The Big Red One’ padded away into the darkness, leaving the newcomers to meet the enemy, supported by a sprinkling of tanks and tank destroyers. On Hill 317 east of Mortain, 700 Americans of the 2nd/120th Infantry and K Company of the 3rd/120th fought surrounded for five days, supplied by erratic air drops, by the end losing 300 killed and wounded. The four rifle companies were reduced by repeated attacks to 8, 24, 18 and 100 men respectively. Men grubbed in the village gardens for radishes and potatoes when their rations were exhausted. By 3.07 p.m. on the afternoon of 7 August, the 120th’s Regimental CP was reporting German tanks within 200 yards. One of them was knocked out with a bazooka by a telephone operator, Private Joe Shipley. A platoon commander of the 1st Battalion, Lieutenant Lowther, called to a driver from his company standing on the far side of a hedge to join him immediately. ‘I can’t,’ the
driver called back unhappily. ‘I’m captured.’ The 2nd Battalion’s aid station was captured by the Germans on the night of the 8th. An SS officer carrying a white flag approached the Americans’ positions on Hill 282 to demand their surrender – without success. Soon afterwards, they were called upon to withstand a fierce attack. Medical supplies were fired into the American positions by artillery shell. Brigadier-General William Harrison, deputy divisional commander, moved from battalion to battalion urging and encouraging his men as he had on the first morning of COBRA. To one of his officers, he seemed to possess ‘the radiant face of a confident shepherd, for that is what he was to us in those difficult, horrible days’. The little stone farmhouse where he had his command post was known to the Americans as ‘Château
Nebelwerfer
’.

At Abbaye Blanche, 150 men and the company mascot – a tiny dog named Mobile Reserve – held a junction where five roads converged. One private soldier, Robert Vollmer, used a bazooka to demolish in succession an armoured car, a motorcycle, another armoured car and a fuel truck. A soldier named Estervez was wounded by a grenade taking men to the rear in a jeep, but returned for a second journey on which he was killed. The defenders were disturbed to find small-arms fire rattling at them from the rear – a classic German infiltration movement. But they held their ground with the support of a steady trickle of stragglers who found their way into their lines. Some men found a rocky cave beside the road, and took refuge in it when the German shelling became intense. Sometimes as they lay in their foxholes they could hear the sound of German voices. Every few hours there was a grinding of tracks or wheels as a vehicle approached up the road, and a brief exchange of fire as an American tank destroyer or anti-tank gun engaged it – and almost invariably, destroyed it. One man somehow found the means to get himself hopelessly drunk. When another soldier declined to take up an exposed position, the drunk said promptly, ‘Sure, I’ll go,’ and attempted to man a bazooka and a machine-gun simultaneously.

The American command handling of the battle suggested a new
maturity and grip within Twelfth Army Group. From beginning to end of the German push, officers at every level responded with vigour and sureness. Hodges’ First Army diary for 7 August reported: ‘The boche is attacking . . . The air went after the enemy armor with a vengeance . . . The general is not too worried over the situation, although there is admittedly the strongest kind of pressure.’ On 8 August, the diary first noted a visit from the actor Edward G. Robinson, then added: ‘The situation appears a bit better tonight . . . 9th Div repulsed several small local enemy counter-attacks . . . The 30th Div was heavily engaged . . . 35th Div advanced against very light resistance.’ Next day, Hodges was greeting Henry Morgenthau, then: ‘Tonight, as before, the General issued orders for all troops to “button up tight” for the night, and be prepared for anything, although it appears to be the General’s feeling that his [von Kluge’s] main effort is over, and that it has been decisively broken.’

On the night of 12 August, the 35th Division at last broke through to relieve the 120th. Lieutenant Sidney Eichen of the 2nd Battalion’s anti-tank platoon felt overcome by a great surge of relief as the files of fresh troops marched through their positions: ‘What a sight they were, coming off the hill.’ War correspondents and photographers swarmed over the positions, eager to interview the tired survivors of the fine American stand. Around the road junction at Abbaye Blanche, they found 24 wrecked German vehicles. As the Americans cleared the Mortain battlefield, they counted over 100 abandoned German tanks.
²⁰

Hitler, with his unerring instinct for reinforcing failure, now did so yet again. In the south, where Haislip’s XV Corps was hastening towards the Loire, for 100 miles from Domfront to Angers there was only one panzer and one infantry division in its path, along with a few security battalions. Yet Hitler ignored Hausser’s vehement protests, and ordered the armoured division – 9th Panzer – shifted north for a renewed attack towards Avranches on the 10th. Hausser called this movement ‘A death blow not only to Seventh Army but also to the entire Wehrmacht in the west’. Von Kluge said simply: ‘It is the Führer’s order.’
²¹
But as the new attack was about
to be launched, the Caen front also began to buckle. The despairing von Kluge asked Hitler that the panzers might be ‘temporarily transferred from the Mortain area to . . . destroy the enemy spearheads thrusting northwards’.
²²
Hitler gave his grudging assent on the 11th, but still declined to countenance any general withdrawal. Von Kluge’s weekly situation report declared baldly: ‘The enemy’s first main objective is to outflank and encircle the bulk of the 5th Panzer Army and 7th Army on two sides.’
²³
As late as 8 or 9 August, von Kluge could readily have executed the only sane movement open to him, a withdrawal to the Seine covered by a sacrificial rearguard. Hitler, and Hitler alone, closed this option to him and presented the Allies with their extraordinary opportunity. The climate within the German high command plumbed new depths of fantasy and grotesque comedy. The Luftwaffe had been lamentably directed for years by Goering, but at last its failure at Mortain drove Hitler to turn upon his old henchman.