APPENDIX I
Each of the three Allied corps taking part in the GOODWOOD battle was destined to fight over distinctly different terrain. The main thrust on 18 July was to run southwards across a flat plain interspersed with small villages and orchards. Meanwhile, on either flank, more-or-less separate battles were to be fought over contrasting landscape. To the east lay wooded hills; to the west a built-up area characterized by factories, railways, rubbled town and suburbs, and crossed by a deep river.
MISCONCEPTIONS
This author was first moved to write about GOODWOOD upon visiting the battlefield and realising that his mental picture of the battleground, based on published accounts, was far from accurate. Even after reading a great many studies of the battle, the reality still held surprises.
Just as familiarity with the terrain assists understanding the battle, so can ignorance of it lead to wrong deductions. One account of GOODWOOD written soon after the war mistakenly blamed the Normandy ‘bocage’ for stopping the British: ‘It was the hedgerow country that lost Montgomery the battle… The hedgerows won over the individual courage and brilliance of soldiers who had survived Africa… but who did not understand the terrain in which they now fought.’1 The writer may be entitled to his opinion that Montgomery ‘lost’ the battle; some would disagree. But his comments betray a lack of knowledge of both the soldiers and the terrain. As far as GOODWOOD is concerned, only a small percentage of VIII Corps’ tank crews were desert veterans, and the ground was largely open. Ironically, and rarely mentioned, there were indeed some stretches of substantial hedgerow crossing the GOODWOOD battlefield; far from hindering, these served to offer the advancing British very welcome protection from German fire.
Even apparently authoritative documents have promulgated similar misconceptions. The BAOR Battlefield Tour document2 and the authorized history of Operations of Eighth Corps3 both state: ‘Between the villages the ground is completely open with no banks or hedges and very few fences.’ (The two documents are virtually contemporary, with no indication which came first.) Little wonder that old soldiers relying on memory might omit mention of such, officially non-existent, features in their memoirs; nor that later writers unfamiliar with the actual terrain have accepted such statements without question.
THE ARMOURED CORRIDOR
The main thrust of Operation GOODWOOD was to run southward, down an open corridor between the industry and suburbs of Caen and the foot of the Bois de Bavent. Most of this was, and remains, rich arable farmland, dotted with substantial, prosperous farm complexes and the occasional small village clustered around a Norman stone church. Today the villages are larger, but the overall feel of the countryside is little changed.
Standing near the 18 July Start Line, the overall impression remains one of wide-open country. In the direction of the armoured advance, flat fields extend as far as the eye can see. Only as one moves further south does it become evident that the distant southern horizon lies on an elevated ridge. Indeed, from the Start Line near Escoville the Bourguébus ridge lies all of eleven kilometres distant, yet barely forty metres higher. This open aspect of the land east of the Orne contrasted with the dense ‘bocage’ country to the west, which had caused so many unexpected difficulties in the first six weeks of the Normandy campaign.
Apart from the industrial estates of Caen which nowadays spread across the western flank of the armoured corridor, the most conspicuous change from 1944 to be noted on a summer ’s day is the appearance of the modern crops. Today’s much-modified strains are designed to direct more of their energy into the edible crop rather than the stem; in 1944 the ripening corn stood much taller. One point which the Battlefield Tour states entirely correctly is that ‘during the battle, the crops were shoulder high and it was hard to locate such field defences as were sited in the intervening ground.’4 Then, as in all previous summertime battles of European history, wheat grew to the height of a man’s shoulder or higher. On a largely flat battleground, this was important.
The ground is well drained. Once the two parallel waterways of the Caen Canal and the Orne River had been crossed, the armoured corridor presented no significant water obstacles. The GOODWOOD planners hoped that the two railways running across the path of the advance would similarly present little problem. This hope was to be disappointed.
The first railway, the single-track line from Caen to Troarn, no longer exists, though most of its path along the northern side of the N175 highway from Mondeville to Banneville is still clearly visible. Aerial photographs and pre-war maps failed to show that much of the length of this railway lay on a small embankment, between one and two metres, and in parts borded by ditches and hedges.5 This was to prove utterly impassable to wheeled vehicles, and a stiff challenge for half-tracks and the light, tracked carriers. Even tanks occasionally had their tracks damaged by crossing the metal rails, until Royal Engineers could come forward and bulldoze earth over the lines. In itself this obstacle was only a minor hindrance, but encountered at an early stage of the advance it caused hold-ups and bunching as vehicles queued for the few level crossings.
Ironically, the dual-track Caen to Paris railway (sometimes referred to as Caen to Vimont) encountered further south caused fewer problems, since by the time it was reached units had deployed onto a wider front and were not so narrowly constrained to following-the-leader. Indeed, as the day and the battle wore on, the shelter offered by its alternating embankments and cuttings was later to prove a welcome haven, the railway itself a rallying line against German counter-attacks. Note that the distortions in several narratives of GOODWOOD are caused by mis-identification of the three railways crossing the battlefield. The 1947 Battlefield Tour document refers to the Caen to Paris railway as having embankments and cuttings with steep banks ‘up to ten feet high’. The statement is true but potentially misleading. There were few points along the railway in question at which the elevation of the permanent way differed by so much from the surrounding ground level, and fewer still where vehicles could not negotiate the crossing. The alternating cuttings and embankments of the Paris railway were generally wide enough that their slopes presented relatively little obstacle to vehicles. Exaggeration of this feature has led to some confusion. A major history of recent years claims, ‘The two railway embankments were also natural barriers... breached only through small tunnels.’6 This is entirely wrong, mistakenly likening the short elevated stretches of the Paris railway to the very different embankments and underpasses of the third, the ‘Chemin de Fer Minier ’.
This third railway deserves special attention. Running roughly north to south, the Chemin de Fer Minier passed over the former two railways and the main Caen to Paris highway at right angles. This railway supplied the massive factory complex of the Société Métallurgique de Normandie between Colombelles and Mondeville. To achieve an even gradient for the heavily laden trains, the line ran for most of its length from west of Giberville to Soliers on a very high and steeply-sloped embankment. The military significance of the embankment was that for six kilometres it effectively blocked lines of sight, and was virtually impassible to vehicles save via a dozen stone-lined underpasses. (Even on foot the ascent of the steep embankment remains today a tough challenge except where established footpaths run diagonally up the side.) Only along a short stretch of slightly raised ground 500 metres due north of Soliers was the bank slightly less steep. Here alone might fully-tracked tanks attempt the crossing, with great care, and of course with the attendant risk that any enemy guns on the other side would be given a brief but attractive glimpse of the tank’s thinly-armoured floor! Southbound, abeam Soliers, the embankment resumes, before meeting the rising ground west of Bourguébus, where the rail line enters a cutting, passes under the road bridge linking Bourguébus and Hubert-Folie, and continues south to the mines.
Two further points of vital importance were missed – or ignored – by the planners. The first of these, covered extensively in histories of the battle, concerns the regular spacing of farm complexes and small hamlets. Giberville and Démouville; le Mesnil Frémentel and le Prieuré; Grentheville and Cagny; Soliers, Four and le Poirier: evenly spaced farms and villages, each a potential mini-fortress, and all arranged checker-board fashion approximately a thousand metres apart, ideal killing range for German antitank artillery.
By contrast, the second point has rarely been mentioned in accounts of the battle though its importance is no less. While the GOODWOOD battlefield was characterized by wide vistas and open space, there were some substantial and lengthy stretches of sturdy hedgerow, running generally east to west and offering considerable shelter to the attacking force. Much of this hedgerow has now been thinned out or completely grubbed-up, and the most important reaches disappeared altogether with the construction of the modern Autoroute de Normandie, which nowadays cuts a swathe across the armoured corridor. One of the few accounts of GOODWOOD to admit the presence of hedgerows does so wholly inaccurately, claiming that ‘hedgerow country… beat the men who had learned their trade on the flat desert’ and that a young American colonel had ‘predicted what would happen to armour in hedgerow country’ in the GOODWOOD battle.7 This nonsense presumably reflected the writer’s unfamiliarity with the actual terrain. In fact, the few stretches of dense hedgerow encountered on the central part of the battlefield provided Heaven-sent refuge to the attacking forces at key stages of the battle.
THE EASTERN BATTLEFIELD: WOODED HILLS
On the Allied left, I Corps was to advance into woodland. The Bois de Bavent is wooded country atop a low, north-south crestline. This line of rolling hills separates the lower reaches of the Orne River to the west from the extensive marshland to the east, the valley of the River Dives, flooded by the Germans as a pre-invasion precaution. Eastwards from Amfreville and Escoville, the ground rises gently upwards and open fields give way to orchards. More or less along the top of the low ridge runs the D37 road, running north west out of Troarn then angling due north on its way to Bréville. The road marks the start of the Bois de Bavent proper, dense woods covering the spine of the ridge and its eastern slopes. These woods remain almost as dense to this day, preserved as a popular area for rural holidays, its campsites and caravan parks interspersed with reserves where French hunters satisfy their passion for shooting wildlife.
On 6 June, 6th Airborne Division was tasked to establish a firm bridgehead to the east of the dual waterways running north from Caen to the sea: the Canal de Caen and the Orne River. For all the glorious capture, intact, of the actual bridges over river and canal (‘Pegasus Bridge’), the remainder of the day’s achievements were disappointing. The Dives River bridges were all blown, but then abandoned with the result that they were quickly rebuilt; the battery at Merville was secured at great cost but then abandoned since no one was equipped to destroy the guns, and the position was back in German hands at day’s end. Also at great cost, the extreme northern tip of the ridge was seized and the village of Amfréville held, but the key vantage point of Bréville remained in German hands. Further advances were to prove more costly still. In the weeks leading up to GOODWOOD, both 6th Airborne and 51st Highland Divisions struggled to make further inroads into the woodland, pushing south and east from the now heavily entrenched landing grounds up into the woods.
For weeks after the 6th Airborne Division landings of 6 June, these woods had harboured tenacious German defenders who opposed all attempts to enlarge the airborne bridgehead. Following 6 June, the Airborne dug themselves into the open ground east of Ranville; the German infantry held the woods above; between them lay an open no man’s land dotted with the hulks of British gliders. Conditions within this ‘airborne bridgehead’ east of the Orne were appalling. Not only were positions routinely shelled by German artillery on the eastern slopes of the woods, but as bad or worse were the persistent mosquitoes that infested the area. One Scot recalled, ‘Battledress was no bar: if a mosquito decided it would dine off your knees, then dine it did, battledress or no battledress; and as it sucked, its friends would be wriggling happily inside your gaiters to nibble your ankles while others clamped down in hordes upon your wrists and face.’8 Some accounts disguise the seriousness of the affliction with humour. But this was a very real and morale-sapping hardship: men were genuinely denied their eyesight or the use of their weapons by swollen faces and hands.
Between Bavent village and the small town of Troarn, the woods are thick. Even after suffering weeks of ‘airburst’, artillery shells detonating in their branches, sufficient foliage remained over much of the area to limit lines of sight, and lines of fire, to short ranges. Only a few straight roads crossed the woods; most of the tracks were narrow paths or fire breaks. Vehicles were limited in their manoeuvrability: even tanks were largely restricted to the few roads, and this was no place for unarmoured vehicles.
This dense terrain might favour either side on the defence. On the evening of 18 June a 21. Panzerdivision counter-attack had been raging for twelve hours. II./Pz. Gr. Rgt. 125 had already forced the 5/7 Gordon Highlanders to concede some ground, when an armoured column threatened to slip behind the right flank of the Scots’ east-facing line. Due east of Escoville, two Panzer IV charged north up the Bréville road (modern D37b). A Royal Artillery 17 pounder took a shot, narrowly missed, and in return was smashed by a High Explosive round from the lead tank. Emplaced (and heavily camouflaged) beside the straight road, the crew of a 6 pounder antitank gun (of the Gordons’ own antitank platoon) watched with dismay as the enemy roared closer. At 500 yards, the gun commander Lance-Sergeant Fraser gave the order to open fire. The first round stopped the first Panzer IV; the following shot destroyed the second tank. Any following vehicles disappeared from view. Taking no chances, the gun crew kept firing, expending thirty rounds until both Panzer IV had convincingly blown up, the lead tank’s turret flying from its hull.9
Over this area, Operation GOODWOOD was not going to introduce any new form of fighting, simply ‘more of the same’, albeit conducted by British troops who had not yet been worn down by the dispiriting woodland struggle.
THE WESTERN BATTLEFIELD: RUBBLE AND RIVER
In total contrast, II Canadian Corps was to fight in a variety of urban terrain. The city of Caen covered far less ground in 1944 than today, but nevertheless was a substantial centre, surrounded by considerable industrial development.
North and west of the Orne River, the city centre itself had been pulverized on the evening of 7 July by the Royal Air Force: 467 heavy bombers diverted from Air Marshall Harris’ strategic campaign against German industry. The sight of this massive airstrike was a tonic to the ground forces due to commence Operation CHARNWOOD the following morning. And though grudging in their support of the Army, the RAF was enthused. By all normal measures, the raid was a tremendous success, with the target being bombed extremely accurately and only one bomber failing to return.10 Sadly, the military impact of the bombing was counter-productive. As a safety margin, the RAF demanded a bomb line 6,000 yards ahead of Allied ground forces. This target area proved too far behind German defences to weaken their resistance; if anything, the rubbling of their rear areas would have hampered any attempts to retreat. And the military failure proved a civilian disaster. Quite apart from the damage done to a fine city (including sites identified before D Day as being of special cultural significance), civilian casualties were substantial.11 It was believed that up to a third of the 60,000 population had remained in the city in the month following invasion. Now the devastation prevented recovery or even numbering of the dead and survivors led a troglodyte existence in the cellars of the city.
Some of the first Allied troops to enter Caen found, ‘…just a waste of brick and stone… The people gazed at us without emotion of any kind; we could hardly look them in the face, knowing who had done this. These were the people we came to free, and this is the price that freedom cost.’12 Others had a more uplifting experience. On 9 July, Canadian skirmishers infiltrated the ruins, edging forward with guns levelled, hugging the walls, to find the streets suddenly full of celebrating townspeople. ‘No Canadian unit,’ states their Official History, ‘recorded any complaint of the warmth of the welcome.’ The welcome was all the warmer when it was found that some of the liberators were French Canadians.13 For the 1st KOSB, on the left flank of 1st Division’s advance on 9 July, ‘Inside Caen, the people who had been under cover since the R.A.F. bombing on Friday night came out of their shell buildings and their cellars to cheer their liberators, tears of joy trickling down their grimy faces. It was the first large-scale spontaneous welcome the British had received in Normandy… made all the more touching by the fact that it was given by people who had seen half their city crumble under the devastating blast of bomb and shell.’14
Ever since 12 June, local authorities and resistance workers alike had been passing messages to the invaders about the numbers of displaced and homeless people gathering in and around the great edifice of the Abbaye aux Hommes and the adjacent Église St-Étienne. The information was noted, and this whole south western corner was largely spared the devastation visited on the rest of the city. Elsewhere the destruction was severe, especially around the university and castle hill in the north and the area around the Vaucelles bridges and the main railway station in the south. While the city centre was largely rubbled, these particular areas were almost entirely razed and deeply cratered.
OPERATION ATLANTIC
By 18 July, II Canadian Corps held Caen and the left bank of the Orne Rive from its junction with the Odon to the Allied bridges around Bénouville. Though completely coordinated with GOODWOOD the Canadians’ part in the operation was given its own title. Since all the objectives of Operation ATLANTIC lay on the right (eastern) bank of the Orne, the river necessarily had to be crossed.
8 Canadian Infantry Brigade led the way, its regiments crossing the southernmost pair of bridges over the Caen Canal and Odon River to reach their Start Line 600 yards south east of le Bas de Ranville. With the Queen’s Own Regiment of Canada on the left and the Régiment de la Chaudière on the right, the initial advance was over open fields. This soon changed. The Queen’s Own, the easternmost regiment of the corps, became embroiled in the ruins of Giberville, and the Chaudière likewise in the château and village of Colombelles. Both places are today immeasurably bigger. In 1944 they were separate villages; now they have been overwhelmed by industrial development and the eastward sprawl of the city of Caen. Some imagination and ideally 1944 maps are required to understand the actions fought there. And still further south, yet another different landscape awaited the remainder of II Canadian Corps.
South of Colombelles, on a plateau above the right bank of the Orne River, with its own port facilities on the Caen Canal, and girt by the sweeping curves of several railway lines, stood the massive steelworks of the Société Métallurgique de Normandie. Of this huge industrial complex little remains today except a very distinctive cooling tower (which was not even constructed in 1944) and two original water towers. Previous attempts by the British 51st Highland Division to capture the steelworks – at least long enough for demolition parties to destroy its tall chimneys – had ended in failure. Throughout the weeks since the invasion, spotters in the chimney tops and the water towers continued to overlook every move the Allies made in the sector. South of the steelworks were extensive railway marshalling yards. Further south still, in the area known as le Plateau, stood row upon row of long wooden huts, resembling military barracks but in fact accommodating the migrant workers serving the steelworks. Many of these were eastern European: Poles and many Russians (the northernmost building in nearby Giberville, its attic used as an observation post by a German battery and its courtyard a park for the battery armoured command vehicle, was actually a Russian family bakery). Beyond these civilian barracks were the homes and amenities provided by the steelworks for the more senior supervisory and management members of this self-contained industrial community.
Further south and west, around a bend in the Orne River, the ground dropped down to the riverside suburb of Vaucelles, the main residential area south of the city, already in 1944 covering an area equal in size to the city centre. In its midst stood the Caen railway station, an important nexus of several lines. Here the Orne River flowed from west to east, dividing Vaucelles from Caen and bordered by wide roads and stone-lined banks. The river itself was here fifty metres wide and three deep, precluding wading. Three road and one rail bridges crossed this stretch. Even before the tragic bombing of 7 July, much of Vaucelles had been devastated by bombs and artillery directed at the area around the main railway station and its extensive marshalling yards. Late on 9 July, the first Allied troops to push through the city as far as the river bank were elements of the Inns of Court and, under their command, two squadrons of 7th Canadian Reconnaissance Regiment. The armoured car patrols struggled forward hoping to find the Orne bridges still standing unblown by the retreating Germans. They arrived to find that the rail bridge had disappeared and two others were down, with some rubble remaining above water. The third bridge was impassible, covered with rubble and mined.15 Only on 18 July, after assault teams had crossed the rubbled bridges to suppress direct enemy fire from the southern side of the river, could the engineers set to work on new crossings. Bridges were hastily thrown across the river to support a bridgehead in the ruins of Vaucelles.
And beyond Vaucelles ran the main highway: straight as a die, slowly gaining height as it ascended the Bourguébus ridge, towards Falaise.
References
1
‘Top Secret’, Ralph Ingersoll, 1946, p. 162-163
2
BAOR BFT, 1947, Section II
3
Jackson, ‘Operations of Eighth Corps’, p 78
4
BAOR BFT, Section II
5
Various accounts mention a ‘six foot embankment’ (e.g., Jackson, p 78), and though the obstacle may have reached this height at certain points it is misleading to suggest this as the average.
6
‘Decision in Normandy’, Carlo D’Este, 1983, p 359-360
7
Ingersoll, p 163
8
‘Battalion’, Alastair Borthwick, 1994, ISBN 1-898573-35-2, p 150
9
‘The Life of a Regiment: The Gordon Highlanders’ vol 5, Wilfrid Miles, 1961, ISBN 0 7232 2785 3, p 259
10
‘RAF Bomber Command’, Denis Richards, 2001, p 237; McKee, ‘Caen: Anvil of Victory’, p 225-230; Stacey, ‘Victory Campaign’, p 157-159
11
Casualties were between 300 and 400 according to Stacey (p 160) and others.
12
Anon, quoted by McKee, ‘Caen: Anvil of Victory’, p 388
13
Stacey, p 163
14
‘Borderers In Battle’, Hugh Gunning, 1948, p 106
15
Stacey, p 162; ‘The Devil’s Own: A History of the Inns of Court Regiment’, D M Hatton, ISBN 0-85131-550-X, p 117