This was pure fantasy. Hitler was clearly crazy. The German high command knew it, without question, and should have called for the men with the straitjacket. But nothing was done.
NUMBERS OF units and qualities and quantities of equipment helped make victory possible for the Americans, but out in the hedgerows those advantages weren’t always apparent. Besides, all those American vehicles would be idle until the GIs managed to break out of the hedgerows. And that rested on the wits, endurance, and execution of the tankers, artillery, and infantry at the front.
Chapter Two
Hedgerow Fighting: July 1 -24, 1944
WITHIN THREE weeks of the great success of D-Day the ugly word stalemate was beginning to be used. “We were stuck,” Corporal Bill Preston remembered. “Something dreadful seemed to have happened in terms of the overall plan. Things had gone awry. The whole theory of mobility that we had been taught, of our racing across the battlefield, seemed to have gone up in smoke.” And while the American progress was excruciatingly slow, the British and Canadians remained stuck in place outside Caen. Big attacks followed by heavy losses for small or no gains, reminiscent of 1914-18, weighed on every mind.
So did Hitler’s vengeance weapon, the V-l. Used for the first time a few days after D-Day, the radio-controlled aircraft were coming down by the hundreds on London. They were a terror weapon of little military value, except to put an enormous strain on the British public. In June and July the V-ls killed more than 5,000 people, injured 35,000, and destroyed some 30,000 buildings. Worse, Allied intelligence anticipated that the Germans would soon have V-2s-the world’s first medium-range ballistic missiles-in operation.
Naturally there was great pressure on the politicians to do something about the V-ls-a pressure that was naturally passed on to the generals. If nothing else, the public had to have a sense that somehow the Allies were hitting back. So big and medium bombers were pulled off other missions to attack the launch sites. Lieutenant James Delong of the Ninth Air Force, flying a B-26 on a strike against the sites in the Pas-de-Calais area, described his experience: “These were very difficult targets to destroy since they consisted mostly of a strong steel launching ramp. They were difficult to hit since the usual hazy visibility and broken cloud cover made them hard to find, leaving seconds to set the bombsight. They were always well defended.”
The inability to knock out the sites was disheartening to the bomber pilots, and the terror bombings continued. The sites would have to be overrun on the ground to be put out of action. But the Allied armies were a long way from them.
In early July, according to Eisenhower’s chief of staff. General Walter B. Smith, and Deputy Supreme Commander Air Vice Marshal Arthur Tedder, Montgomery was asked to launch an all-out offensive to open the road to Paris. When Monty responded to Eisenhower’s plea to get going, he promised a “big show” on July 9 and asked for and got support from four-engine bombers. The attack, however, failed, and on July 10 Monty called it off.
Commander Harry Butcher, Eisenhower’s naval aide, reported that the Supreme Commander was “smouldering,” as were Tedder and Smith. So was General George S. Patton, Jr, commander of the US Third Army, still in England awaiting its entry into the battle. At Eisenhower’s request Churchill put pressure on Monty “to get on his bicycle and start moving.” On July 12 Monty told Eisenhower that he was preparing for an offensive in six days, code name Goodwood. “My whole eastern flank will burst into flames,” he said as he demanded that the full weight of all the air forces be thrown into the battle. Expectations of a breakthrough ran high.
On July 18 Goodwood began with what Forrest Pogue, the official historian of SHAEF, called “the heaviest and most concentrated air attack in support of ground troops ever attempted.” Goodwood got off to a good start, thanks to the bombardment, but ground to a halt after heavy losses, including 401 tanks and 2,600 casualties. Montgomery called it off. The British Second Army had gained a few miles and inflicted heavy casualties, but there had been nothing like a breakthrough.