Schwerpunkt: From D-Day to the Fall of the Third Reich (16 page)

Your Cousin,

Paul

As the first days went by, France began welcoming our soldiers who, in the process of linking up, were liberating French towns and villages all along the coast. Our troops made good progress at first, even though few of Monty’s original goals were achieved. Within the first week of fighting, Monty’s stated objective was to get the Krauts out of the Cotentin Peninsula, take the city of Caen, and “increase our holdings further inland from the beaches,” whatever the hell that means. The first week has come and gone and the Krauts are still in Cherbourg and they still own Caen. If Ste. Mere Eglise is “further inland from the beaches,” then we’ve increased our holdings. I’m pretty confident we’ll be increasing them even more since we keep receiving Ultra decrypts. One message showed that an attack was planned by some Jerry general who intended to drive a wedge between Sword and Juno. The British commanding officer was able to place three lines of Sherman tanks in the breach. The Tommy tank drivers just sat patiently until the arrival of the expected Panzers but once they arrived, most of the Krauts who left that fight were the dearly departed. Other deciphered messages from June 6
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and 7
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showed nothing but confusion and guessing. Luckily for the good guys, their guesses led them to believe exactly what we wanted them to believe and Hitler graciously kept his 15
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Army and some extra Reserve Panzer divisions from the June 6
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landing sites knowing they would be needed to repel enemy invaders when the real, what they call “Schwerpunkt,” came on the beaches of Calais.

But even with Ultra decodes, we’re making shitty progress now because we’re fighting in the boxes of Normandy farmland. One of the key objectives was taking Cherbourg which was critical because of its port which we were going to be relying heavily on to bring in supplies from England. We had to have that city but that wasn’t going to happen until we took control of the whole Cotentin Peninsula. I mean, look at a map for Chrissakes. We were never going to get to the chewy center of Cherbourg without licking the Krauts who were defending the peninsula. And to lick them, the Cotentin Peninsula had to be sealed off in order to prevent any more Kraut reinforcements from being brought in to strengthen the German defense of Cherbourg and all the other towns leading up to it. Brad had ordered General Collins to cut off the neck of the peninsula and the Merderet River. Well actually the marshes around the Merderet River. This river has been the scene of fierce fighting ever since Brad’s order was issued. The Germans continue to try to overrun it and we continue to try to kill them so they can’t.

Because closing off the neck of the peninsula was critical, we had to take the city of Carentan where the road heads up to Cherbourg. The Krauts were dug in all along the way and their fixed defenses have been keeping us at bay far too long. There were reports of heavy German resistance and our guys did not make as much progress as General Bradley’s headquarters had hoped for. Our troops entered the area around Carentan the night of June 10
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and fought like hell, even going from house to house to clear out the Kraut defenders. This went on for two full days at a tremendous loss of lives. We got one report from a Parachute Infantry Regiment that of the 700 men who started the fight for Carentan, just about 130 men were left at the end of the two day battle. According to prisoners we took around Carentan, we faced the maniacal Parachute Regiment of Colonel von der Heydte. If the fighting spirit of these guys is anything like what’s left in the rest of the Jerry army, we have a long road to hoe. And here I was under the impression that the Krauts thought it was almost over and they were just waiting for the fat lady to yodel.

And because of an Ultra decrypt, she almost did yodel for one bigwig Kraut general named von Schweppenburg. I heard that we knew exactly where he had his whole Panzer Group headquartered and that we sent in the RAF in to do their duty. We learned that even though we missed killing him, we still killed several other high ranking officers and we certainly did some damage to his tanks and vehicles. A couple of days after that, our forces from Utah and Omaha linked up and then we were finally able to secure Carentan. By then, our beachhead was 42 miles wide and the Americans drove up the road to do battle for Cherbourg while the Tommies tried for a second go at taking Caen.

From the first day of the landings on June 6
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, the British fought to take and control Caen. The Canadians on Juno were to have captured Caen by day’s end but now, even at the end of June, the city is still in German hands. It could have been in even stronger German hands but the Krauts failed to press home a distinct advantage they had but didn’t know they had. They didn’t get their reserve units to Caen quick enough during the stormy days right after the landings. Storms mean our planes can’t fly which prevented us from giving Caen the proper air cover it deserved. Our intelligence reports revealed that Hitler waited about a week after the invasion to order two Panzer divisions from Russia to Normandy. Now I don’t know but I’ve been told, the road from Russia is long and cold. Even in summer, they weren’t getting here anytime soon especially since Resistance Fighters were sabotaging the railroad lines carrying these tanks. We also heard that he ordered the 1
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SS Panzer Division to move from their posh position around Brussels to where the real fighting was taking place in Normandy but again (and thank God) it was too little too late.

When Monty’s initial push for Caen was repulsed, he figured out another way to get it but that involved taking an intermediary step which just so happened to be the high ground around a town called Villers-Bocage. With a name that has Bocage in it, you know it can’t be good. The name alone sounds like it’s going to make us lose. If the operation would have gone off earlier, it might have surprised a few key people, namely the Kraut commanders. But because of delays for perfect planning, Monty’s plan to exploit a weak spot in the German line towards Caen ended disastrously. On June 12
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, the Brits set off and got to within a distance where I could have almost hit Villers-Bocage with my 3 wood. But they stopped for the night and then delightedly entered the welcoming town the next morning. It wasn’t the town that was important strategically, however, it was the high ground to the northeast. Moving on without having taken the full measure of what lay ahead, the Brits in the field were ordered to capture that high ground. I’m not sure who thought that the Germans hadn’t thought for themselves of just how important that high ground was but obviously they had and the place was crawling with some very capable Kraut talent.

In fact, we came to learn that the British 7
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Armoured Division found itself fighting against one of the most notorious Panzer tank commanders that we’ve heard about. His name was Captain Michael Wittmann. He apparently saw the opportunity and attacked the British with his Tiger tank. The reports we were getting said he personally knocked out 25 Armoured vehicles in the spearhead of the flank column. It was annihilated. And while I cannot believe this part to be true, it was reported that the annihilation of the British tank column took him five minutes. As if that were not bad enough, it seems that Wittmann left the battle but reappeared later in the day with several other Tiger and Mark IV tanks and either killed or took prisoners of virtually all the remaining British troops. We calculated that there were maybe 30 survivors who made it back to our lines and one guy specifically told us about this horrific story. And he didn’t make it back right away. He told us he was hidden by a French butcher’s family and only now has returned to the British sector. We verified his tale and actually found one British unit who had five killed, four wounded and 76 captured.

We later found out that Wittmann came back a third time. Three strikes and you’re out, right? But that’s baseball, not Wittmann. Later in the day, the Brits had loaded anti-tank guns all along the avenue and when he reappeared, they let him have it. However, he and several other tank commanders evacuated their tanks and escaped, maybe living to fight another day. I for one sure hope not.

Added to that, we found out later that a whole Jerry Panzer division had moved into the Caen sector and we didn’t even know about it. Seems the 2
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Panzer Division moved out from around Amiens showing up to come to the aid of the party. Rommel’s 2
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Panzer Division was outnumbered at more than 3 to 1 but the Hun held his own for at least the rest of this day and the next. Monty’s current offensive to capture the city of Caen was a rout. A rout that went the wrong way.

The battle for Villers-Bocage lasted for three days. The British troops were ordered to withdraw during the night of June 14
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and the town, which had so warmly welcomed them three days earlier, now lay in ruins from the bombing runs which had been called in to destroy the Germans. Not only were the Germans not destroyed, they retained control of Villers-Bocage. With the order to withdraw came an end to the possibility of taking Caen from the west. And therein lies the problem. Without Villers-Bocage in the plus column, Monty doesn’t have very many more options on how to take that goddamn ville.

On top of the news that Caen is still in enemy hands, we’re dealing with the weather which sure as hell has not been cooperating with us. On June 19
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, there was a goddamn hurricane that blew through the Channel. This storm probably did as much, if not more, damage to us than the Krauts have done during the last two weeks. The rains came in buckets, the clouds were disastrous, and the water in the Channel churned into white caps. This storm was a doozy. It knocked the shit out of the Mulberry Harbors that were so painstakingly carried over the day after DDay and God knows if they’ll ever get fixed. What is it with French weather and storms, anyway? It just smashed those docks and upended and sank the boats tied to them. Without these Mulberries, no more supplies are coming in by ship and we’re facing real problems keeping our troops in ammunition and all the other supplies they need to fight this man’s war. I’m sure the Krauts are using this bad weather to redeploy their troops who otherwise wouldn’t be able to move a mile in daylight without getting strafed and pummeled by our aircraft. And here I thought the dark and stormy night of June 4
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was bad! Cherbourg is now more of a priority than ever and the fight is probably going to be even harder since we lost air support to keep the bastards from bringing in even more reinforcements.

I shouldn’t have mentioned reinforcements because now I’m hearing that Monty is telling everyone that his plan all along has been to use Caen as the sacrificial lamb which would keep as many Jerries as possible engaged in protecting that town so that the Americans would face less opposition in taking the Cotentin Peninsula in general and Saint Lo and Cherbourg in particular. Does this man have no grip on reality? I know he had specific plans for the estimated time tables it was supposed to take to get each specific town into Allied hands. He went over all this at the St. Paul’s briefing with Churchill and the King. Caen was supposed to be taken by his British and Canadian troops by day’s end on June 6, 1944. Well, since we needed Caen and it wasn’t taken on DDay as planned nor did he snatch it by way of Villers-Bocage two weeks ago, Monty has been busy planning and squaring up “Operation Epsom,” his new and improved plan to capture Caen and its airfield. This new offensive is set to go on June 25
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. The plan is to come in from the west, head south of Caen and close off any thoughts the Hun may have about bringing in any supplies or reinforcements from the cross roads south of the city. Then, I guess, Monty assumed his troops would enter the city and force out the defenders, all the while moving for an encirclement of not only the city but the escaping Krauts. Oh, and just since he was in the neighborhood, he told his troops to capture the airfield at Carpiquet whilst they were at it.

Epsom called for more than 60,000 men, more than 500 tanks and 675 artillery guns. Just prior to Epsom, on June 22
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, Monty attacked for Hill 112, part of the high ground between the two rivers leading into Caen from the southwest. The ferocious struggle for this hill lasted three days through probably the heaviest fighting the Brits have seen so far. The toll was horrendous for both sides since the hill changed hands about a hundred times.

The first day of Epsom was stormy and therefore the Brits, comprised mostly of Scotsmen for this Operation, were bogged down just when they needed to gear up and move in order to cross the Odon River to go get Caen. As the operation started, the initial reports coming in were disastrous. Monty’s intent to encircle Caen counted on covering aircraft, not more bad weather that kept all aircraft grounded. Besides the goddamn rain and storm, Monty ran up against a strong German defense, thanks probably to that bastard Rommel. I’ll say one thing. Those Krauts sure know how to use the landscape for every ounce of strategy they can squeeze out of it. Reports came in that the Krauts who were fighting there were so well camouflaged that virtually each survivor of the preliminary bombings became a sniper. They used their defensive positions offensively and soon, the Jerries launched a counterattack with somewhere in the neighborhood of 200 tanks. The British fended them off but sustained heavy losses which Monty could ill afford and Epsom was called off the next day.

So never mind that this time, the Germans were outnumbered something like 6:1. Even with those odds Monty couldn’t take the goddamn city. So guess what His Royal SHA (“Saving His Ass”) Montgomery is now saying. Yep. That it was never his intention to take Caen by offensive action during Epsom. He said the plan all along was only for him to attract the attention of the Germans and to defensively draw in Rommel’s Panzer reserves so the Americans under Bradley could breakout.

That “after-the-fact” statement stinks like forty day old cheese since first of all, the Americans were not yet prepared for any breakout and second of all, because he contradicts himself with stuff he wrote and said earlier. One thing that I will give him credit for though, is that he plans operations to coincide with one another and this keeps the Boche (I just heard that name and like it almost better than the “Hun”) off balance. By continuing to alter the center of gravity between their right and left flanks, he did compel the Germans to continually move their forces between one crisis point and another which actually did help Brad by tying down the Krauts around Caen. In this instance, he launched Operation Epsom just about the time the Americans were ready to head up to Cherbourg. Why couldn’t he take well deserved credit for that? True, these two operations didn’t exactly overlap but in his defense, the storm played havoc with the timing. Why, when he has to save face, does he always have to re-explain his plan so that it jives with the end result? What just gets my goat, every goddamn time he does it, is that he doesn’t admit when his operation as he initially planned goes south. By now, you’d think I’d be used to it! I don’t know how Ike puts up with him.