For the moment, however, another attempt was made to seize Hill 112, the key feature between the Odon and the Orne abandoned during Operation Epsom. The fighting for Hill 112 became pitiless. Germans of the 9th SS Panzer-Division Hohenstaufen soon called the place ‘Kalvarienberg’, the hill of Calvary. The name came from the Croix des Filandriers, a shrine of the crucifixion, which seemed to take on a new significance.
On 10 July, at 05.00 hours, the 43rd Wessex Division attacked from the Odon valley towards Hill 112 in Operation Jupiter. The divisional commander, Major General G. I. Thomas, was ‘a small, fiery, very determined and grim gunner, without a spark of humour’. Thomas, who had just taken over, was determined to shake up his new command. He seems to have been generally disliked. Behind his back, officers called him ‘von Thoma’. One brigade was to attack Hill 112, while the other on the left advanced on the village of Eterville.
The 129th Brigade heading for Hill 112 had to advance again across open cornfields sprinkled with poppies. Nebelwerfer rocket launchers opened fire. Sergeant Partridge with the 4th Battalion Somerset Light Infantry described how, on hearing the scream of the ‘Moaning Minnies’, ‘eleven men dived into the corn for cover. Only one stood up again.’ Whenever they encountered wounded Germans in the corn, there was little they could do except remove the bolt from their Mauser rifle and fling it far away.
After losing most of their men, they became pinned down by heavy machine-gun fire in the corn. The platoon commander ordered Partridge to hurl a smoke grenade so that they could advance again. Partridge thought it a stupid idea, but complied. As soon as he had thrown it, the platoon commander jumped to his feet before the smoke billowed and was shot. He gasped, ‘Sarn’t Partridge,’ then expired. Partridge rounded up the other four survivors and crawled back through the corn some way, dug a pit and made a cup of tea, which they shared between them.
While the 129th Brigade struggled up Hill 112, the 130th Brigade on the left captured Eterville and then advanced towards the village of Maltot. The 7th Battalion of the Hampshire Regiment and the 5th Battalion of the Dorsets, with their supporting tanks of the 44th Royal Tank Regiment, had little idea of the shock awaiting them. The 502nd SS Heavy Panzer Battalion equipped with Mark VI Tiger tanks, the largest and most formidable fighting machine seen on the western front, was converging on the same spot. Unable to see what was ahead, the Tigers of one company smashed through the hedgerow in front and found themselves facing four Shermans. The Tigers’ 88 mm guns turned three of them into blazing wrecks in a moment. The fourth escaped using high reverse. The Dorsets, unaware that the other battalion had withdrawn, were soon engaged in house-to-house fighting in the village. They learned the hard way that when clearing a building you had to go straight for the top rooms. If they went through a farmhouse and into the courtyard at the back, it was too easy for the Germans upstairs to throw down grenades or fire from the windows.
A mile and a half to the west, the British 129th Brigade almost reached the small road crossing the top of Hill 112, but the weight of German fire forced the battered 4th Somerset Light Infantry in the middle to go to ground again. At 17.00 hours, the 5th Duke of Cornwall’s Light Infantry was sent on through the Somersets in another attempt to reach the top. Their advance just over the brow of the hill reached a small wood of chestnuts. There they were cut to pieces by machine-gun fire from the German positions on the reverse slope, then attacked by panzers. Part of the Cornwalls ran back in disorder. A wounded officer tried to halt this retreat: ‘He had been hit in the jaw, so that part of his face had dropped, and he was waving a pistol and trying to shout, making terrible sounds.’ Meanwhile the commanding officer of the Somersets and the brigade commander, trying to maintain an air of confidence in front of their men, sat on their shooting sticks in the open discussing the situation.
Despite the mortar and sniper fire, the Somersets held on in ‘slit trenches scraped out of the bare open slope’. With Nebelwerfer mortar shells exploding continuously, the crews of their supporting armour remained closed down. But one officer was so desperate to relieve himself that he jumped out of his Sherman, grabbed a shovel off the back and raced across to a knocked-out tank nearby, where he proceeded to drop his trousers. Meanwhile, British artillery continued to hammer the summit. ‘Not a metre of ground escaped being ploughed up by shells,’ a member of the SS Hohenstaufen wrote. After nightfall, each company colour sergeant brought up hot food in containers and supplies of cigarettes for the infantry in the forward positions. For once there was more than enough to go around, because ‘no allowance had been made for casualties’. Their only complaint was that the tea tasted of petrol.
Dawn on 11 July did not improve visibility because of a thick mist — ‘eine Milchsuppe’, as the Hohenstaufen described it. But high overhead a British artillery spotter plane appeared just as the 19th and 20th SS Panzergrenadier-Regiments were about to attack. The crews of the Tiger tanks with them feared the worst. They quickly realized that the safest place would be in among their enemy. They charged the British positions, rolling over trenches. With an ironic admiration, they saw British anti-tank crews trying to bring their ineffective guns to bear. ‘They’re brave, the Anglo-Saxons!’ one of them noted.
The monster panzers suddenly emerged from the bank of mist. ‘We had a scene in front of us of which every Tiger dreams,’ a crew member wrote. Barely a hundred yards away was a forward replenishment point with ammunition trucks and other vehicles, including tanks. ‘Our commander called out: “Armour-piercing! Open fire!”.’ Two Churchill tanks in front of them were traversing their turrets towards them, but the Tigers blasted them at close range and they both exploded into flames.
That day, General Eberbach told II SS Panzer Corps that Hill 112 must not be lost under any circumstances. It was a ‘Schlüsselstellung’ — a key position. Frantic telephone calls followed in an attempt to secure replacements of both men and materiel. The panzergrenadiers supported by the Tiger companies held the ridge all day.
After dusk, D Company of the Somersets received orders to ‘infiltrate the enemy position’. ‘The despair I felt when this order reached me can be imagined,’ wrote Sergeant Partridge, who had taken over command of his platoon after the death of their lieutenant the day before. Weapons were cleaned and ammunition distributed. At 01.00 hours, they rose out of their slit trenches and advanced silently. But as soon as they reached the barbed wire on the summit which the SS panzergrenadiers had erected, a murderous fire opened. The platoons threw themselves flat. ‘The tracer bullets,’ wrote Sergeant Partridge, ‘were arcing their way almost lazily through the air, winging their way to pre-selected targets chosen during daylight, and now being fired on “fixed lines”.’
Any attempt to breach the wire ended when a section commander attempted to scramble through. A German bullet hit a phosphorus grenade in his ammunition pouch. ‘Struggling in desperation,’ wrote a corporal watching, ‘he became entangled in the barbed wire and hung there, a living screaming human beacon.’ Sergeant Partridge heard the man’s ‘anguished cries of “Shoot me, shoot me!”’. ‘A single well-aimed bullet from a compassionate but no doubt appalled officer,’ the corporal continued, ‘put the lad out of his blazing hell. Even in death the horror continued as the phosphorus burned into the now mercifully lifeless body.’ Everyone who witnessed the scene was determined never again to carry a phosphorus grenade in their webbing pouches.