Liberation also presented its two faces. ‘The townspeople were so nice to us that I had a hell of a time keeping my men sober,’ a lieutenant reported. American troops found the civilians to be much more friendly in Brittany than in Normandy. But they also witnessed its much uglier side of vengeance against women accused of collaboration horizontale with the Germans. ‘We had a hair-cutting party,’ the lieutenant added. ‘Several girls were in addition kicked in the stomach and had to be hospitalized.’
For the Americans, especially the 6th Armored Division, the Brittany campaign ended in anticlimax. They were left besieging Brest, Saint-Nazaire and Lorient, where the 6th took over from Wood’s 4th Armored, but in fact there was little danger of a sally by any of the garrisons. The FFI battalions, with some American support, were quite capable of keeping the Germans bottled up. Meanwhile the 83rd Infantry Division, which had battered away at Saint-Malo because the force there threatened the rear of operations in Brittany, finally achieved its surrender.
Bradley was well aware of the frustrating situation, but the siege of Brest, although now pointless strategically, had become a matter of pride. ‘I would not say this to anyone but you,’ he confessed to Patton, ‘and [I] have given different excuses to my staff and higher echelons, but we must take Brest in order to maintain the illusion of the fact that the US Army cannot be beaten.’ Patton agreed strongly with this view. ‘Any time we put our hand to a job we must finish it,’ he noted in his diary. Yet both Patton and Bradley had their eyes on the open flank north of the River Loire which led all the way to Orléans and Paris.
Patton could see only too clearly that Brittany was going to be a backwater. He welcomed Bradley’s new order to send Haislip’s XV Corps south-east to Le Mans and Walker’s XX Corps down towards Angers on the Loire, ready to protect their right flank when they turned east. Glory lay towards the Seine.
One of the divisions destined for Haislip’s corps had only just landed on Utah beach. This was the French 2nd Armored Division, which would become famous in France as the Deuxième Division Blindée, or the 2ème DB. It was indeed an extraordinary formation commanded by a remarkable man.
General Comte Philippe de Hautecloque was better known by his nom de guerre of ‘Leclerc’ to avoid German reprisals against his family. He was a devout Catholic of the ancien régime. As chaplains, he had recruited a dozen members of the White Fathers, an order set up in the nineteenth century originally to take Christianity to the Tuaregs. Led by Père Houchet, they were dressed in white habits and wore flowing beards.
Leclerc, a tall, slim man, with crinkly eyes and a rectangular military moustache, was instantly recognizable to his men by the tank goggles round his kepi and the malacca cane he always carried. They revered him for his bravery, his determination and his skill in battle. An austere man, he was acutely patriotic. Like de Gaulle, he felt bitter that, since the disaster of 1940, the British had accumulated so much more power while France had declined dramatically. Both were inclined to suspect that the British took every opportunity to exploit this. In their resentment, they could not see that Britain, despite her apparent strength, had bankrupted herself, physically and economically, during five years of war. It was an unfortunate detail that part of the division had sailed to Britain from Mers-el-Kebir, where Admiral Somerville’s battle squadron had sunk the French fleet in 1940 to prevent it falling into German hands. ‘Even for us Gaullists,’ wrote a young officer, ‘it weighed heavily on our hearts.’
De Gaulle regarded Leclerc and his division as the incarnation of the spirit of Free France. Its ranks included officers and soldiers of every political opinion. Alongside arch-Catholics of la vieille France, Communists, monarchists, socialists, republicans and even some Spanish anarchists, all served well together. This encouraged de Gaulle to believe that somehow post-war France could achieve a similar solidarity, but he was to be sorely disappointed.
It was the Americans, with their military-industrial cornucopia, who had clothed, equipped, armed and trained the 2ème DB (Americans were later irritated when French civilians asked them why the US Army did not have ‘a uniform different from ours’.) Leclerc, despite his old-fashioned views, was no reactionary when it came to warfare. He felt an immediate affinity with Patton and Wood. Patton was keen to help Leclerc, and the French armoured division would not disappoint him in the battles ahead. But de Gaulle’s intention to use the 2ème DB to further French interests above Allied priorities would prove a source of conflict with other American generals.
For the soldiers of the division, the moment of landing in France on 1 August was intensely emotional. The sea had been rough and a few were sick into their helmets, like their American predecessors nearly two months before. British sailors, seeing the condoms on rifle muzzles, made predictable jokes about ‘Free French letters’. Almost all of those coming ashore had not seen their country for four years or more. Some scooped up handfuls of sand on Utah beach to preserve in jars. News of the arrival of French troops spread quickly on the Cotentin peninsula, and soon 100 young men volunteered to serve in its ranks. In ten days, they would go into battle for the first time.
While Patton’s two armoured divisions were charging into Brittany, the British continued with Operation Bluecoat. Roberts’s 11th Armoured Division advanced brilliantly towards the town of Vire, with infantry mounted on tanks. Armoured cars of the 2nd Household Cavalry were halted at one village by the mayor running out, waving his arms. Ahead they saw the road covered with pieces of paper. The inhabitants had watched the Germans lay mines, then as soon as they left they had rushed out to mark each one.
The 11th Armoured still had to contend with the arrival of the II SS Panzer Corps on their left flank. As soon as enemy tanks were sighted, the infantry leaped off. Sergeant Kite of the 3rd Royal Tank Regiment later described the moment of death for his tank when he was severely wounded. ‘Over in the next field the outlines of two Panthers appeared. The wheat had grown high and was almost ripe. Each time they fired the shells cut a narrow furrow through the ears of corn. One of [the Panthers] was knocked out. Suddenly the gun of the other turned and pointed in my direction. I saw the muzzle flash as it fired and the corn bending down along the line of flight of the shell that was about to hit us.’
On 2 August, 11th Armoured was poised to take Vire, when suddenly Montgomery ordered Roberts to turn his division east. Instead of taking Vire, he was to cut the road east from the town and occupy the Perrier ridge. The boundary between the British and American armies had been changed. Vire was to be an American objective. It is still not clear whether Montgomery feared that the division might be cut off by a German counter-attack or he was acceding to an American request.
In any case Meindl, alarmed by the threat to Vire which was virtually undefended, quickly brought up a newly arrived division to fill the gap. Then, because it was untried, he stiffened it with his 9th Paratroop Regiment and 12th Artillery Battalion. He also brought forward two batteries of 88 mm flak guns to deal with the British tanks turning east. The tragedy of Montgomery’s decision, a subject which he tried to avoid after the war, was not just the lost opportunity. Meindl’s reinforcements were in place by the time the Americans put in their attack on the town four days later and they suffered heavy casualties.