General Charles Gerhardt, the CO, was under great pressure from Bradley to take St. Lo. So far he had already lost more men outside St. Lo than he had on Omaha Beach on D-Day. The 29th’s rifle companies were close to 100 per cent replacements. But Gerhardt figured the Germans were in worse condition and ordered a general assault to take St. Lo, putting all his strength into it.
Major Tom Howie, a mild-mannered teacher of English literature before the war, led the 3rd Battalion of the 116th Regiment. Linked to the 2nd Battalion, he was to drive right on into St. Lo. On July 17, an hour before dawn, the attack began. Howie limited each platoon to two men firing their rifles, and then only in emergency. The others were to use their bayonets and hand grenades. The idea was to achieve surprise, infiltrating by squads without artillery preparation.
In the predawn attack the infantry broke through or passed through the German line and took the high ground just one kilometre from St. Lo. The road into the city was open. Howie called the company commanders to a conference to give them their objectives. “We had just finished the meeting,” Captain William Puntenney, Howie’s executive officer, recalled. “The Germans began dropping a mortar barrage around our ears. Before taking cover in one of the foxholes. Major Howie turned to take a last look to be sure all his men had their heads down. Without warning, one of the shells hit a few yards away. A fragment struck the major in the back and pierced his lung. ‘My God, I’m hit,’ he murmured, and I saw he was bleeding at the mouth. As he fell, I caught him. He was dead in two minutes.”
Captain Puntenney took over just as a counterattack from the Fallschirmjdger hit the battalion. Using the new communications techniques, the 29th called in artillery and a fighter-bomber strike. It broke up the attack, and the men began the charge into St. Lo.
As they crested the hill and started the descent into the town, the Americans were shocked by what they saw. St. Lo had been hit by B-17s on D-Day and every clear day thereafter. The place was a lifeless pile of rubble in which roads and sidewalks could scarcely be distinguished. As they moved into the fringe of town, they began to draw fire from some Fallschirmjdger in a cemetery. A macabre battle ensued, rifle and machine-gun bullets smashing into headstones. Rhino tanks came up through the hedgerows in support and drove the Germans off. The men of the 29th dashed into the town, guns blazing. There was still hard fighting to go before the town was completely cleared of the enemy, but * finally St. Lo was in American hands.
At Gerhardt’s insistence Howie’s body was put on a jeep and driven into the town. Men from the 3rd Battalion draped the body with the Stars and Stripes and hoisted it on top of a pile of stones that had once been a wall in the Saint Croix Church, a block from the cemetery. GIs and some of the few civilians remaining in the town adorned the site with flowers. “It was simple and direct, no fanfare or otherwise,” Lieutenant Edward Jones recollected.
The story caught on with the press. Life magazine featured “The Major of St. Lo.” Howie was famous, too late to do him any good. But he and the other men of the 29th had captured the high ground in that part of Normandy, putting First Army in a position to launch an offensive designed to break through the German line and out of the hedgerow country.
For that offensive Bradley was making plans to use the Allies’ greatest single asset-air power, every bomber and fighter bomber that could fly- in a crushing bombardment that would blast a hole in the German line.
Chapter Three
Breakout and Encirclement: July 25-August 25, 1944
ON JULY 24, seven weeks after D-Day, US First Army was holding an east-west line from Caumont to St. Lo to Lessay on the Channel. Pre-D-Day projections had put the Americans on this line on D-Day plus five.
Disappointing as that was, Bradley could see opportunities for his army. The enemy was sadly deficient in supplies and badly worn down. One of Bradley’s chief problems was that he had not enough room to bring the divisions waiting in England into the battle-not to mention Patton. For the Germans the problem was the opposite-no significant reinforcements were available. A favourable factor for Bradley: six of the eight German panzer divisions in Normandy faced the British and Canadians around Caen.