milner - reflections on caen, bocage and the gap - a naval historian's critique of the normandy...

7/31/2019 Milner - Reflections on Caen, Bocage and the Gap - A Naval Historian's Critique of the Normandy Campaign

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Marc Milner

As the son of a Normandy campaign veteran Ihave lived with - and relived - the campaignfor as long as I can remember. When I began toteach military history the Normandy campaign

found a p rominen t p lace in my c lass roomanalysis of WW II battle practice. By then I hadalso largely bought into the two dominantparadigms of the Normandy fighting. The firstwas that while the Americans ground their waydoggedly (if ineptly) through the bocage, theexcellent tank country around Caen was wastedby the Anglo-Canadians. The second paradigmfollowed naturally from the first. The Allies foughtpoorly in Normandy while the Germans foughtsuperbly. We had won through what John Elliscalls "brute force."1

My comfortable notions about the Normandycampaign were profoundly altered by a tour ofthe Anglo-Canadian battlefields in 1991, and bya second one this past spring which venturedinto the American zone. The experience soshatter ed my assu mptio ns that it is hard to knowwhere to start. But perhaps it is best to beginwith the ground.

Gordon A. Harriso n, a uth or of the US Army'sofficial history, Cross-Channel Attack, broke theNorman topography into five areas:

the north Cotentin (rolling uplands north ofValognes), the south Cotentin (generally flat andwell watered), the Bes sin (the coastal str ip lyingbetween Isigny and Bayeux), the Bocage (hillywooded country extending south of the Bessinand Cotentin nearly to the base of the BrittanyPeninsula) and the relatively open Caen countryfrom Bayeux east and southeast.2

The Bessin west of Bayeux and the southernCotent in were seized quickly fol lowing thelandings, and the northern Cotent in was astrategic dead end. The Bocage and the open

ground around Caen lay between the Allies anda b r e a k - o u t o f t h e b e a c h h e a d , t h u s t h e ycommand attention in the Normandy literatureand are the focus of this paper.

Illustrations (see next page) serve better th anwords to describe the bocage (which seems to beused synonymously with "hedgerow country").A Canadian, familiar with the great open areaaround Caen, is struck by the nature of theground south and southeast of Bayeux in whatbecame the British sector. The ground aroundVillers-Bocage and Caumont is steeply rolling,

with open fields guard ed by hedgerow s a nd deep,wooded valleys. The American bocage furtherwes t o f Bayeux i s even more b roken byhedgerows.

The ground sou th and wes t o f Bayeuxprofoundly shaped the character and tempo ofthe battle. The British bocage is noteworthy fortwo major offensives. The first was a thrust southof Bayeu x tha t com men ced on 11 Ju ne . It cameto a hal t two days later when leading eleme nts ofthe 7th Armoured Division were stopped byMichael Wittman's Tiger tank outside Villers-

Bocage: the spearhead of Panzer Lehr Division.The British reacted by flattening Villers-Bocagefrom the air and cancelling the advance.3 Thesecond, Operat ion "Bluecoat" - the so- calle dBri t ish breakout on 30 July - was launchedagainst an enfeebled enemy. Nonetheless, theBritish found their own bocage tough going:

Canadian Military History, Volume 7, Num ber 2, Sprin g 1998, pp. 7-1 7. 7


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An aerial photo showing the

typical bocage that covers much

of Normandy. The ancient

patchwork of individual fields

formed by the hedgerows whichbound them proved a serious

tactical problem for both the

American and British armies.

The height of the hedgerows is

indicated by the length of the

shadows, in many cases, taller

than the buildings at the lower

left.

WLU Air Photo 305/4042

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enough that the crisis in British infantrycasualties was attributed to it.4 It is interestingto note, however, that they launched only twomajor operations in the bocage in nearly twomonths of continuous fighting (to be fair, theopening stages of "Epsom" passed throughbocage as well): a point I shall return to. The"real" bocage fighting, of course, fell to the US

Army slogging its way south along either side ofthe Vire River. But here , too, there were very few(two?) major operations. I had always thought itodd that there were so few distinguishable"battles" in the American Normandy campaign.

In contrast, action in the open groundaround Caen was characterized by quite distinctoperational level battles: "Epsom," "Charnwood,""Goodwood," "Spring," "Totalize," "Tractable" andothers. Indeed, the difference in the structure ofthe campaign on the two fronts lends credenceto the criticism that Montgomery preferred set-piece battles, which were a sign of his cautionand the ineffectiveness of British fighting ingeneral. Meanwhile, the dogged Americans,buoyed by greater personnel reserves and drivenby a more aggressive doctrine, moved steadilyagainst the Germans through the hedgerows.

It is a comfortable image, a nd one popularlyaccepted. But the ground had a profoundimpact on the shape of the campaign, and somehistorians have noted that. So long as theGermans retained any reserves of manpower andthe ability to move men and equipment, and solong as the Allies were stuck to the roads, fightingin the bocage was simply a grinding, murderousbattle of attrition. In the case of the US Army, itwas possible to grind forward through the bocagein battalion or regimental level operations, andit did so - as its casualty statistics reveal (UScasualtie s by the end of the Normandy campaignwere significantly higher than those of the Anglo-Canadians).

The ability to infiltrate the hedgerow countryhad, in fact, been seen as one of the benefits of

fighting in the bocage in the first place. In suchterrain it would be har d for the enemy to preventgradual infiltration, and once the Allies were in,extremely hard for the Germans to knock themout with a single, strategic counterattack.5 So,before 6 June 1944 the bocage looked good - orat least planners were able to put a positive spinon it.

The idea tha t broken, heavily wooded groundwas suitable for infiltration was not limited toNormandy or to the Allies. The ground in frontof the main German Gothic Line position innorthern Italy, between the Metauro and FogliaRivers, i s rugged, hi l ly country-perhapsquintessentially Italian-with deep, heavilywooded ravines cutting into sharp hillsides,

narrow winding roads, picturesque villages,and razor-backed ridges. Looking at the groundfrom the village of Montemaggiore (south of theMetauro) in 1985 I hazarded a guess that adetermined enemy could delay an attacker forweeks over such ground. Dominick Graham, aveteran himself, a distinguished gunner andmilitary historian, and leader of the tour merelyfrowned. Gazing at me over the rims of hisglasses he said wearily, "Yes, and you couldslip the whole bloody Chinese army through!No good fields of fire, Marc!-Too hard todefend. Wait till you see the main position."

When we reached the southern edge of theFoglia valley I understood precisely what hemeant. The main German position was laid outnorth of the river, on wide, totally open, rollingground, sloping towards the river like the glacisof some great fortress. The broad open valleyin front of that fortress was a killing ground,and there was virtually no cover up the grassyslopes beyond. Infiltration was no t possible. Herewas ground that could be defended with fire.

If open ground can be defended by fire, thenthe bocage had to be defended by men and itcould only be won by men fighting at close rangein a steady brawl. When I saw the ground itimmediate ly became apparent why theAmerican advance was so und ram atic . No greatwind-up, followed by a crash of army groups ofartillery and a mad dash by whole divisions andcorps for some distant strategic objective.Rather, the US advanc e was characterized by asteady grind and then the "sudden" capture ofplaces: Carentan, St. Sauveur, Barneville,Valognes, Cherbourg and, finally, the high

ground west of St. L.I had read about all of this, of course, but

rather typically for a Canadian I ascribed thisrather featureless campaigning to the lack ofany serious opposition to the US Army. Afterall,all the ta nks were opposite the Anglo-Canadian

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armies around Caen, all the US faced wereinfantry, a few tanks and a few SPs.

This was, of course, not what the Americanshad bargained for. The bocage threw the burdenof battle on the infantry when so much of currentdoctrine relied on support from the tanks.Harrison described the frustration during theadvance of V Corps towards St. Lo in mid-June ."One of the prime difficulties faced by theAmericans in this terrain was in coordinatingtanks and infantry." German defences consistedof anti- tank guns heavily supporte d by machineguns, and mortars, all well concealed in thehedgerows. "Tanks could not go forward toknock out the machine guns," Harr isonobserved, "nor could the infantry spearhead theadvance to take out the anti-tank guns."6

Not surprisingly, the advance was slow.David Eisenhower captured the frustration ofAmerican troops - and the mood of subsequenthistorians - when he opined that in the bocage"the superior mobility of the American Shermanwas being nullified on a battlefield carved upinto 150-yard plots."7 In such a static battleand at short ranges the advantage went to the"slower, more heavily armed German Mark Vand Mark VI Panther-Tiger tanks..." whichEisenhower claimed were appearing "in largenumbers [?]..."8 by mid-July. It is clear that

David Eisenhower and many Americans thenand now felt that if they could only get clear ofthe bocage their Shermans could run free.

The ground, of course, dictated otherwise.Bradley's one serious attempt at strategicmobility in the bocage prior to "Cobra," thelaunching of Middleton's VIII corps towardsCoutances in early July, was expected to be "aslow, costly overland battle of attrition, through'perfect defensive terrain.'"9 And so it was. Bythe 10th Middleton was effectively stalled andthe offensive became, in the end, a battle for a

good start line for "Cobra."

In the end, the US Army achieved strategicmobility west of St. L on 25 July as a resu lt offive factors: attrition of the enemy to a pointwhere the front was held by a veneer with noreserves a t the operat ional level ; theconcentration of German Panzer forces to theeast around Caen; a high degree of co-operationachieved with supporting tactical air forces

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(much more effective tha n contem porary Britishpractice); good training provided to experiencedtroops; and the astonishing mobility given tothe Americans in the bocage by invention ofhedgerow cutters for tanks.

None of this could be pu lled magically froma hat, or even from previous experience, priorto 6 Ju ne 1944. It is tempting to think that theGerman army could have been beaten by somelightening strategic strike in the summer of1944, following which they all would havesurrendered . But that was not the character ofthe German army. As in the final Allied push of1918, in 1944 the Germans had to be ground-down at great cost. If fighting in the hedgerowswas costly and frustrating for the Americans,it was no less so for the Germans.

Fighting in the bocage was also, ultimately,successful for the Allies. As Brigadier A.L.Pemberton commented in the War Office historyof British artillery, "despite the difficult 'going'"the British experienced in the bocage duringthe initial stages of Operation "Epsom" in June,"the rate of advance was faster than had beencustomary in the mountains of Italy" to whichhe compared the worst of the Normancountryside. 10 This may not have been whatthose in France wanted to hear, but it issuggestive of the larger problems of the era.

The close countryside of the bocagenonetheless made the open ground aroundCaen look ideal for a rapid advance. Good tankcountry, vast open spaces, rolling wheat fieldsideally suited to mechanized forces. Some havesuggested that had the two Allied armies beenreversed in posi t ion-the caut ious Anglo-Canadians in the west and the fire-breathingAmericans in the plains aro un d Cae n - thewhole campaign would have gone much better,and the breakout achieved much sooner. Theground suggests otherwise.

The area in a radius often to 20 miles aroundCaen itself and stretching down the highway toFalaise and south along the Dives River is arolling plain. Although it is cut by wooded rivervalleys and dotted by compact stone villages, thedominant feature is the broad, prairie-like fields,wide vistas, flat crests and d istan t horizons. Thiswas the ground chosen by the Overlord plannersfor airfields, and the ground over which


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Two views of "good tank country. "

Above: A crossroads on the Caen-Falaise highway. The open, rollingnature of the plain is evident. Alliedvehicles cover the landscape as far asthe eye can see - an 88 gunner'sdelight.

Right: An oblique aerial photo showing

the same area from a different angle.The Caen-Falaise highway is visible atthe right along with the quarry at

Hautmesnil. The forested area at thetop is Quesnay Wood.


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Montgomery is alleged to have wanted to "crackabout in tanks." It is, in no small measure, theground the Americans eyed with envy.

But instead of "cracking about" in tanks,the Anglo-Canadians stalled around Caen, and

Monty - true to form - resorted to a series of set-piece battles at the operational level: usingmassive firepower in lieu of tactical sophistry.The result was a different kind of battle ofattrition, no strategic breakout, and enduringcriticism of Montgomery. Montgomery laterclaimed that his offensives in the Caen areawere never intended to break out. Rather theirpurpose was to draw the weight of Germanarmour onto that front in order to free theAmericans for their break-out. The groundsuggests that both of these assumptions arefar too simplistic. So what happened?

The open terrain in the eastern beachheadis a natural glacis easily defended by fire. Herethe Germans not only had the advantage ofground, they also had two others. First, theywere usua lly defending. Second, they had a vastnumber of powerful, high velocity, long-rangetank and anti-tank guns. All of these, like thevaunted 88 mm of the Tigers and the towedvaria nts, the long-barrelled 75 mm of the MarkIV and Panthers, and even the small 75 mmtowed Pak 40, had muzzle velocities in excessof 3,000 feet per second.11 All of these could

pierce the front armour of a Sherman at morethan 1,000 yards, and in the case of the largerguns -like the 88's - could take out most Alliedtanks at twice that range.12

Powerful gun s allowed the open fields aroundCaen to be defended by fire against armour: asituation which cut both ways. For example,every German armoured assaul t failed. The first,on D-Day when some 40 tanks of the 21st PanzerDivision attacked the wes tern flank of 3rd BritishDivision near the beaches, was seen-off smartlywith heavy losses by both tanks and anti-tankguns.13 That assault, and one the next day onthe leading elements of the 3rd CanadianDivision near Authie, were delivered by Mark IVs,tanks roughly equivalent to the Shermanalthough with perhaps a better gun. In the caseof the attack on the Canadians near Authie, twocompanies of Mark IVs of the 12th SS (HitlerYouth) Panzer Division were engaged by theShe rma ns of the Sherbrooke Fusiliers Regiment

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on open ground in a swirling action. TheSherbrookes claimed somewhere between 31and 41 Mark IVs destroyed at a loss of 21 oftheir own tanks.14

So much for the Mark IVs. But the Mark Vs -

the legendary Pan ther - fared no better. On 9June , as part of a series of vicious countera ttackson the Canadian 7th Brigade, which got astridethe Caen-Bayeux highway, the 12th SS PanzerDivision committed two companies of Panthersin a desperate attempt to clear the road after anumber of intense infantry assaults failed.

The armoure d assault , advancing over openground on The Regina Rifles' position straddlingthe road at Bretteville-l'Orgueilleuse and Norrey-en-Bessin, failed. Canadian fire stripped Germaninfantry away from their tanks, which were met

with a hail of anti-tank fire. "We were surprised,"Kurt Meyer, the 26th Regiment's commander,recalled later, "by heavy anti-t ank weapons. " Fora while the Panthers were reduced to a petulantshelling of Bretteville from 300 yards and whenfinally they entered the village, "The Canadiansswarmed the advancing armour." 1 5 TheCanadians claimed 12 Panthers destroyed, theGermans admitted to six.

Undaun ted, Meyer sent 12 Panther s out thenext morning to attack the advanced position ofthe Reginas, a single company dug in at Norrey-

en-Bessin just south of the rail line. Once againconcentrated small arms and artillery fire drovethe German infantry to ground, but the Pantherspressed on. As they closed on Norrey, thePanthers tur ned slightly south in order to presen ttheir frontal armour to the 6-pounder anti-tankguns at the crest of the gentle slope running upto Norrey. Just then nine Shermans of the FortGarry Horse , incl udi ng sev eral Fireflies -Shermans re-equipped with the British 17-pounder gun - deployed south of Bretteville, jus t1,000 yards from the attacking Panthers. Sevenof the Panthers were destroyed in minutes. The

German attack collapsed. So much for thePanthers.

As Hubert Meyer, Chief of Staff of the 12thSS Panzer Division, observed, "The anti-tankweapons around Bretteville were so powerful thatoutflanking movements to the north and southwere thwarted."16 As Oliver Haller concluded inhis superb analysis of the action, "It became


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A 12th SS Panther knocked out by Canadian infantry in Bretteville-l'Orgueilleuse.

evident that offensive operations had becomedangerous undertakings - a reality that wouldplague the Allies for the remainder of theNormandy campaign...."17 When Kurt Meyerreported to General Geyr von Schweppenburg,commander of Panzer Group West, on 9 Junethat his best tanks could not budge Canadianinfantry from their fortified villages, vonSchweppenburg answered, "My dear Meyer, thewar can only now be won through politicalmeans."18

So the best of the m asters of mobile warfare,equipped with the best tank of the campaignand led by veterans of the eastern front failedin the earliest days of the Normandy campaignto loosen the front and achieve a decisivestrategic result . Indeed, tanks failed atBretteville and Norrey to achieve even a tacticalvictory. Inexperience, you say? The men whosaw the m off were the utterly inexperienced andrather ordinary citizen soldiers of the 3rdCanadian Division.19

The Germans fared no better when theylaunched much larger armoured assaults. Thelargest of the Normandy campaign sawelements of five Panzer divisions hurled againstthe west ern flank of "Epsom" at the end of Jun e.These attacks were destroyed "by massedartillery fire with devasta ting effect, and all butone of their attacks were dispersed beforereaching our forward infantry positions."20

It has been customary to apologize forGerman failure, noting that they never had achance to mass armour for a proper assault andwere hounded from the air. But these are weakand perhaps spurious arguments. It cannot beclaimed that the Allies fought poorly and at thesame time assert th at the failure of the Germansto organize themselves sufficiently for a majorcoun teratt ack was an act of God, or the air force.Steady Allied pressure on the front counted forsomething. In any event, as Pemberton pointsout, the attack on "Epsom" was stopped by gun s.

The Panthers at Bretteville and Norrey werebeaten by anti-tank fire. In the end, fully 63 to65 per cent of the German tanks destroyed inNormandy fell to gunfire: tactical, battlefieldfighting.21 So if the Germans, particularly thePan thers, could not move effectively against Alliedanti-tank fire, what hope did regiments ofShermans have against the tremendous numberof German high velocity guns?

The stalemate around Caen was, therefore,the res ult of open grou nd wholly dominat ed bysuperior fire. Movement simply invited instantdeath from as much as 3,000 yards away. Thatgreat and powerful armoured phalanx calledOperation "Goodwood" was shaped by thevulnerability of Allied tanks and the superiorityof German f i re . Numbers and massivesupporting fire support - delivered from land,sea and air - was the only way to cut throughthe German defences, which were typically

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deployed in depth, with mutually supportinglines of dug-in tanks and anti-tank guns. Inthe case of "Goodwood" there were 11 suchlines, with hun dr eds of high velocity anti- tanksguns aimed at vulnerable targets. So the Anglo-Canadians led with infantry, set objectiveswithin range of suppor ting field artillery, rus hedforward anti-tank guns and a FOO and waitedfor the counterattack - very much the way theGerm an arm y was fought to a bloody shamble sin 1917-1918.

In no small way the fighting around Caen isexemplified by the ill-fated Canadian attack upVerrires Ridge on 25 July, Operation "Spring."The Canadian II Corps had won the first bit ofhigh ground south of Caen in the final stages of"Goodwood." According to historians, what laybefore them was the excellent tank country ofthe Caen-Falaise Plain. The ground is, in fact,not flat, bu t a series of gently rolling hills of greattactical significance. As a rule, the Germans heldthe far crest with anti-tanks guns and dug-intanks and machine guns, with powerfularmoured and Panzer Grenadier forces inimmediate reserve. It was the Canadians' taskto roll down the slope from their own position,across the bottom of the bowl and up the far

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Canadian soldiers examine the deadlyGerman "88. " A shell (visible at centre)

fired from this gun was capable ofdestroying Allied tanks at virtually anyrange.

side before getting killed. This waseasier said than done.

Plans for Operation "Spring" calledfor two brigades of Canadianinfantry to breech the forwardGerman defences, and then twoBritish armoured divisions wouldpass through and "exploit." Thetask was, however, much more thansix battalions of infantry couldaccomplish. The Caen-Falaise Plainwas defended by the 1st SS Panzer

Corps, with support from elementsof the 2nd SS Panzer Corps whichoverlooked the Canadian attackfrom across the Orne River (onground the British could not holdduring "Epsom"). Directly in frontof the Canadians lay an awesomearray of the firepower. Around

Verrires village itself was 1st SS [LiebstandartAdolf Hitler) Panzer Division, reinforced by the101st SS Schwer Panzer Abteilung (Tiger I); the12th SS Hitlerjugend Panzer Division was justout of the action to the east. The western endof Verrires Ridge was held by the very ordina ry272nd Infantry Division, but it was powerfullyreinforced by elements of the 10th SS PanzerDivision, the 9th SS Panzer Division and anarmoured kampfgruppe from the 2nd PanzerDivision, with the "Koenig Tigers" (Tiger II) ofthe 503 Schwer Panzer Abteilung in immediatereserve behind the front. Providing direct firesupport from across the Orne onto VerriresRidge were the 10th SS Panzer Division andthe Tigers of the 102nd SS Schwer Panzer

Abteilung. The 2nd Panzer, 9th SS Panzer and

116th Panzer Divisions were in immediatereserve behind the front. Thus, most of theestimated 650 tanks and assault guns on theBritish front were within firing range or a fewminute s driving distance of the Ca nadian a ttackon 25 July 1944. The number of towed antitank guns avai lable to the Germans isunknown, to me at least.

The Canadian attack failed. While the leadingelements of "Cobra" were slogging their way


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Sherman tanks of the Fort Garry Horse left to rust on a hillside near Tilly-la-Campagne. These tanks weredestroyed during Operation "Spring," and this photo was taken the following year.

through the bocage, Canadian infantry surgedacross the open, fire-swept ground south of Caentrying to get to the enemy before the barrage liftedor they were shot down. The infantry gained alasting foothold only in Verrires village itself.There the Royal Hamilton Light Infantry dug inabout 1,000 yards from their start line andmoved up their own 6-pounder anti-tank guns,

while towed 17-pounders and two squadrons ofBritish tanks were deployed in depth behind -all firing over open ground. Savagecounterattacks by the 1st SS were beaten offby massed artillery, machine gun, anti-tankand tank fire. Verrires was retained, but itremained a thin salient on the crest of the ridge.To the east, along the valley of the Orne Riverwhere the enemy had excellent observation andfields of fire from across the river, the Germancounterattacks were more successful. Tanks,assault guns and panzer grenadiers drove asfar north as the original Canadian start line

on Point 67 before being driven back.

Operation "Spring" is either ignored inaccounts of Normandy or, if mentioned at all,portrayed as another example of ineffective"British" fighting and lack of commitment, orboth.22 Anyone who walks t he slopes of VerriresRidge, counts the barrels pointed in theCanadian direction and assesses the natural

strength of the German position can only wonderat why the a ttack was m ounted in the first place.There is an on-going debate among Canadianhistorians whe ther "Spring" was a holding actionor a legitimate attempt at breakout. Whatever itwas, the fighting was brutal and bloody: thesecond bloodiest day of the war for Canada (afterDieppe). The feint in support of "Cobra" cost

Canada nearly 2,000 wounded, including almost500 dead, about the same casualty bill as thatsuffered by the two US divisions on Omaha beachon D-Day. It is significant that when FieldMarshal Kluge had to chose between which frontto visit on 25 July 1944 he ended up on theslopes of Verrires Ridge.

It is curious, in retrospect, that this rollingpiece of open farmland - the prized avenue for astrategic breakout south of Caen - was given tothe Canadian Corps to tackle. One gets a sensethat the British wanted out. Indeed, after

"Goodwood" the good ground s ou th of Caen wasleft to the Canadians, the Poles and a couple ofBritish divisions to handle. The main Britisheffort shifted - inte rest ingl y eno ugh - to thebocage country south of Bayeux! Perhaps Major-General George Kitching's meeting with GeneralSir Miles Dempsey, commander of SecondBritish Army, is revealing on this point. Kitchingcommanded the 4th Canadian Armoured

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Division, which became operational as part ofII Canadian Corps at the end of July. The firstthing Dempsey asked Kitching when they metin Normandy was "Are your tanks petrol ordiesel?" As Kitching recalled, "When I told himthey were petrol , he seemed

disappointed...General Dempsey wished thatour tanks were diesel and, as we becameinvolved in battle, so did we."23 Petrol driventanks caught fire easily when their enginecompartments were pierced and tank crewsdisplayed an understandable reluctance toexpose themselves to enemy fire. Maybe theBritish felt they were better off in the bocage:the short ranges largely overcame the limits ontheir own guns and , besides, nothing was proofagain st the "88. "24

The essential problem was that the enemy

had the long range, high velocity anti-tank gunsand we had the little tanks that burned. TheAllies also had to attack. The Canadian solutionto the problem south of Caen was to adoptmassed armoured assaults - dense phalanxesof tanks and armoured personnel carriers - inpoor visibility with massive fire support,including strategic bombing. "Totalize," launchedon 8 August at night, Operation "Tractable"launched amid smoke and dust on 14 Augustwere qualified successes against what was, bythen, a much weakened enemy (although onestill well equipped with scores of anti-tank guns).

The Canadians eventually exploited theirsucce ss, push ing down beyond Falaise, towardsTrun, St. Lambert-sur-Dives, Chambois and,perhaps, Argentan. Why they went is, to me atleast, most inconceivable. By then, of course,the Germans were on the run and we weretrying to link-up with Patton's Third Armyadvancing from the south. In between lay therump of the Germ an Seventh Army and PanzerGroup West, which were trying to pass throughthe same ground, while strong German forcesattacked from the east to hold the Falaise-Argentan Gap open. When Bradley was askedif he would push his armies north of Argentanand stand in the way of the German escape herejected the idea. "Better a solid shoulder atArgentan than a broken neck at Falaise!" washis justly famous response. So what were theCanadians and Poles doing south of Falaise,wrestling with the most lethal tide of hum ani tythe west has ever witnessed?

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Many Germans were able to slip throughthe noose because the area south of Falaise,particularly in the Trun-Chambois area andbeyond, is-well-bocage. It strikes one asgenuinely odd looking over the countryside fromthe Polish monument at Mount Ormel that,

while the Americans fought desperately for twomonths to get out of the bocage, the Canadian"breakthrough" sou th of Caen led them straightinto it!

In fact, one look at the ground south ofFalaise explains why the Germans fought sofiercely to the north. Martin Blumensonsuggested many years ago that, "The Germansmassed their forces [around Caen]. . .notbecause Montgomery drew them there butbecause they were trying to fulfil a purpose oftheir own."25 Blumenson argues, quite rightly,

that the Germans wanted to use the good tankcountry around Caen to launch their ownsingle, knock-out blow. But it is also true thatit was easier to defend the open ground aroundCaen with fire, than to prevent a steady Alliedinfiltration of the bocage country to the south.

It has been suggested that the Anglo-Americans relied too heavily on artillery, limitedtheir thinking to a few thousand yards andfailed to exploit their suc ces ses . Not only wouldthe Germans have done it better, the Russians,too, would not have penny-pinched their way

forward.26 I used to subscribe to those viewsbut now I think they merely obscure the realstrengths and the real problems of the Anglo-Americans in the Normandy fighting.

Whether it was because of their expertisein artillery or the dreadful weakness of theirtanks, the Allies fought a grinding battle ofattrition in both the bocage and in the openaround Caen. The army that was whittled away,often in near suicidal counterattacks wasGerman, not Allied. To argue that the westernAllies ought to have fought like Germans orRussians is, in the end, pointless. There is astrong element of cultural determinism in theway all armies fight, even if they adoptorganization and doctrine derived from otherarmies. In any event, German armour ed attacksinvariably failed. And there was no room, northe reserves to adopt a Russian-style armyFront scale operation.


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So, would the US Army have fared better inthe open fields around Caen? Hard to say. TheUS equivalent of the 17-po under anti-t ank gun,the 3-inch gun, features so little in the literatureit is hard to get a feel for its ability. If it is thesame gun as that in the M-10 tank destroyerthen the 3-inch was perhaps not up to the task

of handling German armour in the open at longranges (the success of the 3-inch in the closecountry around Mortain is another matter). The17-pounder in particular, with a muzzle velocityin excess of 3,00 0 ft per seco nd in either the towedor th e Firefly versi on - an d firing the new APround (which even the infantry battalion level 6-pounder could fire) was a match for Germanta nk s if well han dle d. In tha t sens e, Max Hastingis adrift when he said that "the towed anti-tankgu n was of little value to troop s in attack."27 Giventhe Germ an doc t r ine o f coun te ra t tack , theCan adia n response (much as it ha d been in 1917-

1918) was to seize ground, lay on defensivesupporting fire, move the anti-tank guns up andkill Germans. It worked, but it wasn't fancy andanalysts have carped about it ever since.

Even without the 17-pounder the US Armyfighting aro un d Caen would not have bee n driveninto the sea. Naval gunfire support would havecrushed German armoured onslaughts i f thearmy 's artillery ha d not done so already. Rommelknew that, and after 9 June 1944 so too didSchweppenburg . But those l i t t l e US ArmyShermans would have brewed-up just as easily

ar ou nd Caen as th ose of the Anglo-British armiesdid. And so the US Army would have resorted tolarge, set-piece battles to overcome the problemof open ground dominated by superior enemyfire. British historians would be carping aboutthe cau tio us Americans , a nd whining th at if onlyMonty had had the open ground around Caenthey would have been in Paris by the end of Ju ne .

Or maybe not: its the ground, you see! - orhave I missed something here?

Notes

This paper was originally presente d to the North Grea t PlainsHistorical Conference, Bismarck, ND, 25 September 1997.

1. Jo hn Ellis, Brute Force: Allied Strategy and Tactics inthe Second World War (New York: Viking, 199 0), F o r a

good summary of conventional wisdom on Normandy,see the account in Gerhard Weinberg's majestial AWorld at Arms (New York: Cambridge University Press,1994).

2 . G or don A . H a r r i s on , Cross-Channel Attack(Washington: Office of the Chief of Military History USArmy, 1977 (1951)), p.180.

3. For a detai led des crip tio n of the actio n see Eric Lefevre,Panzers in Normandy Then and Now (London: Battle

of Britai n Prints Ltd., 1990).4. Carlo D'Est, Decision in Normandy (New York: E.P.Dutton, Inc., 1983), ch.16.

5. Max Hasting, Overlord (New York: S imon an d Schus ter,1984), p. 146.

6. Harrison, p.3 83.7. David Eisenhower, Eisenhower at War, 1943 -1945 (New

York: Random House, 1986), p.346.8. Ibid.

9. Ibid., p .347 .10. A.L. Pemberton, The Second World War, 1939-1945,

Army, The Development of Artillery Tactics and

Equipment (London, War Office, 1951), p.222.11 . Handbook on German Military Forces (Washington: US

War Depart ment, 1 990(194 5)).12. See for example the table in Terry Copp and Robert

Vogel, Maple Leaf Route: Falaise (Alma, ON: Maple LeafRoute, 1983), p.25.13. Ellis, pp.203-204.14. OP. Stacey, The Victory Campaign: The Operations in

North-West Europe, 1944-1945 (Ottawa: The Queen'sPrinter, 1960), pp. 126- 132.

15. Oliver Haller, "The Defeat of 12t h SS : 7-10 J u n e 1944 ,"Canadian Military History, Vol.3, No.l (Spring 1994),p .20 .

16. Quote d in Haller, p. 23 .17. Haller, p. 24.18. Quote d in Haller, p. 23 .19. Michael Reynolds, in Steel Inferno: 1 SS Panzer Corps

in Normandy (New York: Sar pe do n Books , 1997),describes the defence of Bretteville and Norrey as "oneof the finest small unit actions of WW II." See page 85.

20. Pemberton, p.222.21 . Ibid.

22. See, for example, Eisenhower, p.38 1.23. George Kitching, Mud and Greenfields: The Memoirs of

Mqjor-General George Hitching (St. Catharines: Vanwell,1993), p. 188.

24. David Fletcher, The Universal Tank: British Armour inthe Second World War, Part 2 (London: Her Majesty'sStat iona ry Office, 1993), p. 100.

25. quoted in D'Est, p.33 8.26. Rom an Jarymow ycz, pap er to the RMC Military History

Conference, March 1997.27. Hastin g, p. 189.

Marc Milner is Professor of History at theUniversity of New Brunswick and is bestknow n for his works on the Royal Cana dia nNavy and the Battle of the Atlantic.

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milner - reflections on caen, bocage and the gap - a naval historian's critique of the normandy...

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