Citizen Soldiers by Stephen E. Ambrose

Montgomery was satisfied with Goodwood’s results. Eisenhower was not. He muttered that it had taken more than 7,000 tons of bombs (about half of the explosive power of the Hiroshima bomb) to gain seven miles and that the Allies could hardly hope to go through France paying a price of a thousand tons of bombs per mile. Not to mention sixty tanks and 400 casualties per mile.

Tedder was so angry he wanted Monty fired. But this was not an option. Monty was popular with the British press and public and, more important, with the troops. Besides, he had accomplished what he insisted was his objective-to pin down German armour on the eastern flank so as to give the Americans an opportunity to break out on the west. And it was not his fault that no one knew how to use heavy bombers in an artillery role. Those 7,000 tons of bombs caused havoc, misery, and considerable destruction, but after the bombs stopped falling, most German soldiers were able to come up out of their dugouts and man their weapons.

Goodwood showed that there would be no breakthrough on Monty’s front. It was too heavily defended, by a too skilful and well-armed and numerous enemy. As that also appeared to be the case on the American front, every Allied leader was depressed and irritable. After seven weeks of fighting, the deepest Allied penetrations were some 45 to 50 kilometres inland, on a front of only 15 kilometres or so, hardly enough room to manoeuvre or to bring in the US Third Army from England.

DURING THE four weeks of hard fighting since D-Day, the 82nd and 101st Airborne divisions took heavy casualties, close to 50 per cent overall, higher among junior officers. In the first week of July, when the 30th Division relieved the 82nd, Lieutenant Sidney Eichen reported that he and his men stared in shock and awe at the paratroopers who had inaugurated the battle a month earlier.

“We asked them, ‘Where are your officers?’ and they answered, ‘All dead.’ We asked, ‘Who’s in charge, then?’ and some sergeant said, ‘I am.’ I looked at the unshaven, red-eyed GIs, the dirty clothes and the droop in their walk, and I wondered. Is this how we are going to look after a few days of combat?”

Infantry in the line, advancing from hedgerow to hedgerow, also suffered brutally. In the 1st, 4th, 29th, and other divisions the turn-over in junior officers in the first month was almost total.

Major G.S. Johns of the 29th described a typical hedgerow action “with a machine gun being knocked out here, a man or two being killed or wounded there. Eventually the leader of the stronger force, usually the attackers, may decide that he has weakened his opponents enough to warrant a large concerted assault. Or the leader of the weaker force may see that he will be overwhelmed by such an attack and pull back. Thus goes the battle-a rush, a pause, some creeping, a few isolated shots, some artillery fire, some mortars, some smoke, more creeping, another pause, dead silence, more firing, a great concentration of fire followed by a concerted rush. Then the whole process starts all over again.”

The Germans were able to inflict heavy casualties because they were on the defensive and also took advantage of their skill in warfare. Many of the German officers and NCOs were veterans of the Russian front, and nearly all were veterans of some battles, while this was the first for most of the GIs. The Germans were bolstered by a weapons system that was much better suited to hedgerow defence than the American weapons were to attack in such terrain.

The Germans had more mortars, and heavier ones, than the Americans. Their MG-42 machine guns fired 1,200 rounds a minute, the American counterpart less than half that. The handle on the German “potato masher” hand grenade made it easier to throw further. The Germans had the nebelwerfer, a multibarrelled projector whose bombs were designed to produce a terrifying wail when they flew through the air-sixty or seventy virtually simultaneously. The GIs called them Moaning Minnies. There was no American counterpart.

Then there was the panzer faust, which was far superior to the American bazooka. It did not have the range of a bazooka, but that hardly mattered in hedgerow country. It was operated by a single soldier and was so simple that no special training was required, while the bazooka required a trained two-man team. The panzerfausts bomb had greater penetrating power than the bazooka’s.

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