Chapter 1
A month after the Normandy invasion, progress inland lagged far behind schedule. In the second half of July, Montgomery’s British Second Army launched two major attacks at opposite ends of the British front line in Normandy. The second of these was Operation BLUECOAT, in an area of difficult terrain where an assault was totally unexpected. The first, Operation GOODWOOD, also involved logistical challenges. And here the assault came as no surprise at all.
BRITISH STRATEGY
The Allied invasion plan did not envisage becoming bogged down in Normandy. But by the end of June, a combination of dense terrain and unexpectedly tenacious defenders threatened a return to First World War-style static warfare.1 The huge cost to the defenders in manpower and matériel was not readily apparent to the Allied high command; the cost in British and American lives was all too evident, with little visible gain. A deadlocked battle was militarily and politically unacceptable. The overarching need was breakout: a dramatic rupture of the German lines which would restore mobility to the Allied armies.
In military terms, the campaign can be likened to a ‘meeting engagement’. From the day of the invasion, both sides began a race to reinforce the battle for Normandy. The Allies won the race. Up to the beginning of July, newly arriving German armoured formations were thrown straight into the line of battle. Meanwhile, growing Allied strength enabled British armoured divisions to be withdrawn into operational reserve (while much American armour was held in parks behind the congested battlefield). However, the longer the Normandy deadlock continued, the more time there was for German infantry divisions to complete their march up to the invasion front. These newly-arriving infantry formations threatened to replace the Panzer divisions in the line and permit the defenders to assemble their own strategic strike force in reserve. And if this were to happen, Montgomery was determined to hold any German strike force in the eastern, British sector, permitting the Americans in the west to erupt out of the Normandy bocage into the relatively open country of Brittany, opening the door to central France, the Seine, and Paris.
The principal goal of GOODWOOD was to make disengagement of the Panzer divisions from that sector unfeasible. That clarity of that simple goal has been clouded by debate as to whether GOODWOOD itself was a breakout attempt. Whatever his true intent, Montgomery certainly allowed his superiors (and many of his troops) to believe that a breakout was being attempted. But Montgomery’s true intents are, as ever, hard to divine: in his accounts of the campaign, he consistently maintained that whatever happened was exactly what he had intended from the outset.2
Eberbach.
GERMAN STRATEGY
The German forces in front of Caen had no doubt that an attack was coming their way. The only questions were: from where; and exactly when? I. SS-Panzerkorps commander ‘Sepp’ Dietrich had turned a blind eye to the unauthorized (though entirely sensible) withdrawal of the last elements of 12. SS-Panzerdivision, the ‘Hitler Youth’, from the rubble of Caen. With all defenders now on the eastern banks of the Orne river, Dietrich felt that he could at last ‘concentrate on essentials’. The river was the front line. In front of the Bourguébus ridge was his Main Line of Resistance, a checkerboard of small villages and farm complexes turned into fortified outposts. Whichever way the inevitable attack was delivered was almost immaterial. Whether over Hill 112 to the west, through Caen itself in the centre, or from the British airborne bridgehead to the north, the same defensive plan held true.
With this strategy, Panzer Group West commander Eberbach and Army Group commander Rommel were broadly in agreement. They had little alternative. The German armour had been committed as it arrived in Normandy, piecemeal; its attacks had been reactive rather than strategic. The offensive ‘edge’ of the Panzer formations was daily being dulled. Montgomery harboured fears of a classic German counterstrike, a daring gamble risking all against the prize of inflicting a serious blow on the invaders. But even the will was now lacking. Hanging over all was Hitler’s 8 July edict that any strategic offensive in Normandy should be avoided until ‘sufficient’ forces could be accumulated. Given that daily losses of men and materials outweighed new arrivals, this was never going to happen. Yet neither were local commanders free to adopt a logical defence: Hitler explicitly forbade any phased retreat to the Seine. So were strategic options closed off.
GERMAN DISPOSITIONS
The German front east of the Orne was covered by two corps. Changes of organization within each immediately prior to GOODWOOD had gone unnoticed, or at least incorrectly evaluated, by the British. South of Caen was SS-Obergruppenführer ‘Sepp’ Dietrich’s I. SS-Panzerkorps, up to mid-July home to the powerful first and twelfth SS Panzer divisions: the ‘Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler’ and the ‘Hitlerjugend’. The latter had ended the long defence of Caen city on the night of 8-9 July, its last elements pulling back across the Orne for a long overdue period of rest and refitting. On the eve of GOODWOOD, the tired but still potent Hitlerjugend was in receipt of orders to move north to defend against the further invasion which Hitler was convinced was coming between the mouths of the Seine and the Somme rivers.3 Meanwhile, on the night of 13-14 July, the first elements of Generalleutnant Schaek’s 272. Infanteriedivision completed the long journey from the Mediterranean coast. By 14 July, three of its infantry battalions were in the front line, beginning the relief of the LAH. The British observed the withdrawal of the armour, but by 18 July had failed to identify the newly-arrived infantry division. So, quite fortuitously, the disengagement of Dietrich’s 1. SS ‘Leibstandarte’ and 12. SS ‘Hitlerjugend’ divisions from the front line was recognised by British intelligence, but in fact the German defences had been reinforced, and the continued presence of the SS Panzer divisions in the vicinity increased the depth and resilience of those defences in the face of the coming British hammer blow.
SS-Obergruppenführer ‘Sepp’ Dietrich a pace behind Generalfeldmarschall Erwin Rommel.
The boundary with General von Obstfelder’s LXXXVI Armee Korps ran roughly along the line of the Chemin de Fer Minier (see Appendix 1). Obstfelder fielded three infantry divisions. 711. ID (Generalleutnant Reichert) covered the front from the mouth of the Seine west to Franceville, just east of the mouth of the Orne. 346. ID (Generalleutnant Diestel) held the front from the coast south along the high ground as far as Touffréville. And across the gap between Touffréville and Colombelles, directly in the intended path of VIII Corps’ tanks, stood the unfortunate 16. Luftwaffenfelddivision (Generalleutnant Sievert). British intelligence noted the disengagement of 21. Panzer Division from the front line. It seemed logical that a division which had been continuously engaged since 6 June should be rested. But the deduction was wrong. The 16. LFD was ill-trained, ill-equipped, still reeling from heavy losses suffered since 8 July, and in no state to hold the front alone. It was in reality no more than a ‘veil’ (‘Infanterieschleier’), screening the armour. Far from disengaging, 21. Panzerdivision remained vital to the defence of the sector.
Tactically, there endured the disagreements inevitable in a force so riven by faction and influence. As will be seen, Rommel personally intervened across lines of command to order the placement of certain armoured reserves further forward than standard doctrine would have considered prudent. Also at lower levels of the organization, expediency was the order of the day. Within LXXXVI Korps, the true role of the weak 16. Luftwaffenfelddivision was recognised by its nominal subordination to GeneralmajorFeuchtinger; in practice the laisser-faire general left his subordinates to work out the details. So it was that Major von Luck exercised loose command, within his ad hoc Kampfgruppe, over elements of 16. LFD; and Major Becker claimed to have tactical authority over batteries of 16. LFD artillery4.
THE PLAN OF ATTACK
British Second Army commander Lieutenant-General Miles Dempsey was an enthusiast for a British breakout attempt, and had championed the idea of risking the logistical difficulties of a major push around the east of Caen. On 13 July, Dempsey arrived at VIII Corps headquarters to present the GOODWOOD plan, including a new corps structure, to VIII Corps commander Lieutenant-General Richard O’Connor. By 15 July, the VIII Corps plan was complete. Only recently escaped from imprisonment in Italy, O’Connor had come to Normandy with something to prove. While he languished in a prisoner of war camp, the desert war had continued, new lessons being learned and new faces promoted. Presented with a plan of attack for his corps, O’Connor’s role was reduced to its tactical implementation. The complex logistics of GOODWOOD left simply no room for manoeuvre. So it was that O’Connor’s divisional commanders felt themselves ‘micro managed’ by a general keen to demonstrate his competence.
Lieutenant-General Richard O’Connor.
General Sir Miles Dempsey.
Faced with a virtual fait accompli, the three divisional commanders had different reactions. Second in line, Allan Adair’s Guards Armoured Division was facing its first battle, and the general was content to take his orders and enthuse his troops. With their 7th Armoured Division third on the roster and last in line, the desert veterans General Erskine and Brigadier Hinde kept their counsel and accepted the orders as given. General Roberts of 11th Armoured had other ideas.
General Allan Adair
ROBERTS AND HIS ORDERS
There was some history in the relationship between Roberts and O’Connor. By 1944 Pip Roberts was a highly experienced armour leader. Commissioned on leaving Sandhurst in 1926, his immediate goal was the job of adjutant: ‘a very important one’ in which ‘if you played your cards right you could have a very great influence in a regiment.’5 Plainly, a man with ambition. Though it took him thirteen years to achieve that seemingly modest achievement, the period was an invaluable apprenticeship in the armoured arm. In the desert war, he advanced more rapidly. As Brigade Major, then as divisional staff officer, he rubbed shoulders with leading exponents of tank warfare. As commanding officer of a regiment (3rd Royal Tanks), as a brigadier (with 22nd and later 26th Armoured Brigade) and briefly of a division (7th Armoured, for a single week) he became an experienced and highly capable armour leader. By 1944, he was not only the youngest general officer in the British Army (at thirty seven), but had spent longer in the turret of a tank than anyone of similar rank.
General Pip Roberts.
With experience came a characteristic self confidence. Roberts had gained early experience of working alongside senior officers, and his own memoirs make clear his ability to form rapid judgements of his superiors. In his first brigade conference as acting brigade commander, ‘I was slightly nervous;’ however, ‘I need not have worried; it went off all right, though the Divisional Commander made one or two comments which seemed to me rather irrelevant and I therefore made a rather non-committal reply.’6 Later, attached to the American 1st Armoured Division after the disaster at Kasserine, he quickly assessed the divisional commander as, ‘to my youngish mind, rather elderly… a very pleasant man but not, I thought, very forceful.’ Outgoing corps commander Omar Bradley ‘did not look much like a soldier, more like a college science master,’ though, Roberts conceded, ‘very sound and sensible’. The incoming George Patton however ‘was too brash for me; obviously very forceful but making a lot of noise about it.’7Youthful self confidence won the approval of newly-arrived General Montgomery and of visiting Prime Minister Churchill; it was not diminished as Roberts returned to England with a second bar to his DSO and the prospect of commanding an armoured division.
Monty
Roberts’ first experience of leading 11th Armoured Division into combat was largely successful, though hampered by the corps commander’s interference in divisional operations. By mid July, Roberts’ frustration with O’Connor was evident. During Operation EPSOM, Roberts’ highly trained division had been split up. Separated from its own infantry brigade at O’Connor’s behest, the division’s tank regiments had been expected to fight alongside the infantry of 15th Scottish Division, with unfortunate results. Particularly hurtful was O’Connor’s remarkably tactless aside in his letter of 8 July to Roberts, summing up that operation. It is hardly a coincidence that Roberts included the letter in full as an appendix to his memoirs, with its closing comment that ‘you may find that for a period you may be forced to do the work more properly allotted to an Armoured Brigade.’ To a confident divisional commander, this slight rankled. To an armour leader with advanced ideas about cooperation between infantry and tanks, the corps commander’s tactics appeared unsound. Nor did Roberts hold British 2nd Army commander Dempsey in high regard. Denied permission to sack his infantry brigade commander after EPSOM, Roberts did not hesitate to go over the heads of both O’Connor and Dempsey to seek Montgomery’s approval for the change. Monty concurred (he liked youthful initiative, within limits).
O’Connor’s GOODWOOD plan again separated the brigades of 11th Armoured Division. As well as charging its tank regiments with driving a wedge through the German lines, he also gave the division the task of securing the west-flank villages and woods of Cuverville and Démouville and the east-flank town of Cagny. This would preoccupy Roberts’ entire infantry brigade. ‘So, right at the outset, I was going to be minus almost half the division… a severe handicap to my further operations. As it were, one hand behind my back.’8 He protested. ‘Feeling rather strongly about it, I put it all on paper and sent it to the corps commander. I got a reply that the present plans could not be changed and if I felt they were unsound, then he would get one of the other divisions to lead.’ In such a battle of wills, Roberts did well to achieve even a partial concession from his superior, and the concession reflected well on O’Connor’s sense of fair play. Still, Roberts knew his judgement was right and felt no reason to be grateful. ‘He would only ask me to “mask” Cagny, not to take it. I really had no alternative but to accept… but still think it was a stupid arrangement.’9 Seeds of resentment were sown which would bear bitter fruit once the battle got under way.
References
1
Though total British Army casualties in the Second World War were far fewer than those suffered in the First, nevertheless daily casualty rates suffered by the Allies in the Normandy campaign equalled and exceeded the worst days of 1914-1918. This is well covered in ‘Raising Churchill’s Army’, David French, 2000, ISBN 0-19-924630-0, p 147.
2
The origins of the GOODWOOD plan are considered in detail in ‘Operation GOODWOOD: The Great Tank Charge’, Ian Daglish, 2004, ISBN 1 84415 030 5.
3
Daglish, ‘GOODWOOD’, p 62
4
See Appendix 7 for personalities and units. The relationship between von Luck and the tank battalions of 21. Panzerdivision is unclear: von Luck’s claims of seniority were later disputed by surviving armour commanders. As will be seen, the operations of 22. Panzerregiment and 503. schwere Panzerabteilung were severely disrupted by the 18 July bombardment; on the day, their coordination with the Panzergrenadiere appears to have been minimal. In his turn, Alfred Becker even states in his own diary that from the arrival of 16. LFD, its commander Generalleutnant Sievert subordinated his own artillery to Becker, the general even moving into Becker’s artillery headquarters in order to benefit from its superior wireless and telephone equipment.
5
‘From the Desert to the Baltic’, G P B Roberts, 1987, ISBN 0-7183-0639-2, Roberts, p 11.
6
Roberts, p 92
7
Roberts, p 134
8
G P B Roberts, interview at Staff College, Camberley, 1979
9
Roberts p 171
