Montgomery, meanwhile, still tried to pretend that everything on his side was proceeding according to plan. On 14 June, the day after the disaster at Villers-Bocage, he wrote to Churchill, ‘Battle is going well at junction of the two armies in the general area Caumont- Villers-Bocage-Tilly.’ He also found it hard to acknowledge the true consequences of the great storm in the Channel which hit them less than a week later. The weather had not just halted the landing of supplies, it also put back the arrival of VIII Corps, the battering ram needed for a breakthrough. In the meantime, the Germans were reinforcing their front opposite the British with their most powerful panzer divisions. Ultra gave warning that the II SS Panzer Corps was on the way from the eastern front. For the moment only small attacks could be mounted because of the shortage of artillery ammunition. Although costly in lives and unrewarding in ground gained, they fitted Monty’s new plan of tying down the Germans while the Americans took Cherbourg.
On 16 June, a battalion of the King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry, supported by a depleted squadron of Shermans, attacked Cristot: ‘We formed up in a lane near a farm with banks on either side.’ The men’s nostrils curled at the stench of rotting cows. They were to advance across another open cornfield. ‘Suddenly, out of nowhere appeared the Padre and we all knelt down and prayed.’ As they moved forward, their supporting artillery fired over their heads, but then the Germans played their trick of firing mortar shells into the leading troops to give the impression that their own artillery was falling short. Officers passed back orders for the barrage to stop and the German trick was revealed. But one soldier who had thrown himself flat during the mortar ‘stonk’ suffered a terrible fate. A piece of shrapnel ignited one of the phosphorus grenades in his pouch and ‘he died terribly in minutes’.
Three days later, when the great storm was beginning, the rain was so heavy that fighting came to a halt. The infantry sat disconsolately in their trenches, the water dripping from their groundsheets worn as ponchos. Tank crews were luckier. They dug trenches to sleep in, then reversed their tank over the top to keep them dry.
On 22 June, the third anniversary of the German invasion of the Soviet Union, the first phase of Operation Bagration began. This was the massive Red Army attack in Belorussia to encircle the Wehrmacht’s Army Group Centre. Having drawn German attention to a possible offensive in the Ukraine, with a brilliant exercise in maskirovka comparable to Plan Fortitude, the Soviet armies achieved surprise. Within three weeks they would kill or capture 350,000 Germans. Bagration would take the Red Army to the gates of Warsaw by the first week in August.
After several delays, mainly due to the weather, the major British offensive, Operation Epsom, was finally ready. Eisenhower was fuming with impatience, yet Montgomery refused to be hurried and 21st Army Group headquarters provided SHAEF with exasperatingly little information. Apparently Montgomery said to Dempsey on several occasions, ‘There’s no need to tell Ike.’ Monty liked to keep his objectives vague, often with Delphic cricketing metaphors, so that if there was a breakout he could claim credit for it and if the operation ran into the sand he could say that they had simply been tying down German forces to help the Americans.
Altogether 60,000 men were to take part, mainly from VIII Corps, which included the 15th Scottish Division, the 43rd Wessex and the 11th Armoured Division. Most had never been in battle before, but they were determined to prove themselves alongside the Desert veterans. The plan was to attack to the west of Caen and establish a bridgehead south of the River Odon before advancing to the River Orne. This deep salient to the south-west of the city would then be used to threaten the whole German position. The key feature between the two rivers was Hill 112.
On Sunday 25 June, XXX Corps on the right again attacked the Panzer Lehr Division. The 49th West Riding Division and the 8th Armoured Brigade forced them back, but although they inflicted heavy losses, the Germans held on to the village of Rauray. An armoured reconnaissance regiment was protecting their flank that day near Fontenay-le-Pesnel. ‘The German trick,’ wrote a Canadian officer with a British reconnaissance regiment, ‘was to abandon their weapon pits and go into the corn when we approached.’ Sometimes they crept back to their positions and opened fire again, but in most cases the ‘Huns still pop up out of the corn but are no potential danger’.
The southern end of Fontenay was still held by the Panzer Lehr Division. The following morning, a Sherman of the Sherwood Rangers, ‘on turning a corner in the centre of the village came face to face with a German Tiger tank trundling along the road. Fortunately [the Sherman commander] had an armour piercing shell in the breech of his 75 mm. gun which he released at 30 yards’ range and then followed up with another six shells in quick succession, which brewed up the Tiger.’ The next day, the Sherwood Rangers cleared Rauray, after losing several of their tanks. Their greatest prize was an abandoned Tiger tank in perfect running order. They even painted their brigade sign of a fox’s mask on it, but orders came down from XXX Corps headquarters that it must be sent back to England. It was the first to be captured intact in Normandy.
That day, 26 June, the SS began clearing the French inhabitants of villages behind the lines. Their concern was spying, not the safety of civilians. This was not mere paranoia. The British 7th Armoured Division and other formations had been receiving very useful intelligence from Frenchmen and women slipping through the lines.
The fighting was also bitter round Tessel. There, a battalion from the ‘Polar Bears’, as the 49th Division was called from its shoulder badge, came up against the Panzer Lehr Division at close quarters. ‘The order came to us while we were at Tessel Wood, “No Prisoners”,’ claimed a member of the King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry. ‘That is why we were called the Polar Bear butchers by Lord Haw-Haw.’[29] An Ultra intercept picked up Panzer Lehr’s report that it had suffered ‘heavy losses’ on the first day of the battle.
The main phase of what Montgomery called the ‘show-down’ began on 26 June, with a massive bombardment of field and naval artillery. After a night of heavy rain, the cloud was so low that few air sorties could be flown. The Scots of the 15th Division advanced rapidly. As men were shot down in the pale green wheat, comrades would mark their position for medical orderlies to find. They took the wounded man’s rifle with fixed bayonet, rammed it upright into the ground and placed his helmet on top. One observer remarked that these markers looked ‘like strange fungi sprouting up haphazardly through cornfields’.
Fierce fighting took place in several villages, especially in Cheux, where the Glasgow Highlanders lost a quarter of their strength in a single day. In Saint-Manvieu on the left flank, the 43rd Wessex Division and the 4th Armoured Brigade fought off the Hitler Jugend.[30] The Royal Scots Greys knocked out four Panthers as they emerged from a wood. The Greys, attached to a newly arrived brigade of the 43rd Division, ‘were much amused over our infantry. This was evidently their first battle and they were doing everything according to the book: their faces were blackened; they had cut off all badges of rank; and they talked in whispers. ’But the two fresh divisions were proving rather more effective than the veterans. By dusk, the 15th Scottish had almost reached the Odon in its thickly wooded valley. A Frenchman watching the battle that night from Fleury, on the southern edge of Caen, wrote, ‘It’s a vision out of Dante to see the whole horizon lighting up simultaneously.’
29
Lord Haw-Haw was the British name for William Joyce, who broadcast from Berlin like ‘Axis Sally’.
30
The commander of the 4th Armoured Brigade, Brigadier John Currie, was killed that day. He was replaced by Brigadier Michael Carver, aged only twenty-nine.