Lessons Of Carpiquet

Discussion in 'NW Europe' started by canuck, Mar 30, 2011.

  1. canuck

    canuck Closed Account

    Lessons Of Carpiquet: Army

    Legion Magazine

    March 28, 2011, by Terry Copp

    The battle for Le Mesnil-Patry, which proved so costly for the Queen’s Own Rifles of Canada and First Hussars, was part of a larger attempt to expand the Normandy beachhead. The Canadians, with 114 fatal casualties in what the Hussars call their “Charge of the Light Brigade,” were no harder hit than British divisions on either flank. The 51st Highland Division suffered heavy losses in the Orne River bridgehead, including an entire company of the 5th Black Watch. Both 50th Infantry and the 7th Armoured were roughly handled in the attempt to reach Villers-Bocage.
    General Bernard Montgomery decided to pause in front of Caen, ordering General Sir John Crocker’s 1st British Corps, including the Canadians, to practice “aggressive defence” without risking large casualties. As overall ground commander, Monty ordered the Americans to push hard for Cherbourg while the British built up their forces and launched a new attempt to seize Caen.
    Lieutenant-General Sir Richard O’Connor, Britain’s outstanding tank general, was preparing Operation Epsom, a three-division attack designed to encircle Caen from the west. Epsom was delayed until June 26 partly because of the great storm of June 19-20 which wrecked the American Mulberry harbour, but also because Montgomery was torn between his desire to wait until he could stage a large-scale, set-piece attack and his fear that German reinforcements would arrive and force the kind of stalemate everyone remembered from the First World War.
    The German high command was even more uncertain. Hitler and his propaganda machine had claimed they were eager to face and defeat the Allied invasion. Now that the Allies were safely ashore, the key question was whether a second landing would strike closer to Germany in the Pas de Calais region of Northern France. Hitler and his generals greatly overestimated the number of Allied divisions available. This belief was encouraged by reports from agents who were in fact controlled by the British. The German high command accepted intelligence estimates that General George S. Patton would lead a second amphibious assault north of the River Seine. Given this threat, future reinforcements for Normandy could only be drawn from distant theatres, Poland, Norway, and the south of France. The German 15th Army, a few hundred kilometres away, was to remain largely intact until August.
    [​IMG] PHOTO: LEGION MAGAZINE ARCHIVES
    A Canadian soldier inside the ruins of a church at Carpiquet.

    When Hitler met his generals in France on June 17 he expressed complete confidence and noted that the V-1 rocket attacks on London would soon demoralize the British. This, he insisted, was a more important goal than attacks on the British embarkation ports or the beaches of Normandy. Promises of greater air support were made, but the Luftwaffe proved incapable of challenging Allied tactical airpower, confining itself to nuisance night raids. Among German soldiers, the Luftwaffe was now a joke. “If it’s white it’s American, if it’s Black it is British, and if you cannot see it, it is the Luftwaffe.”
    One result of the Hitler conference was the decision to transfer II SS Panzer Corps with 9 and 10 SS panzer divisions from Poland to Normandy. This powerful force began moving west just days before the Soviet Army began its summer offensive, operations which led to the collapse of Germany’s Army Group Centre and more than one million German casualties. There would be no more reinforcements for Normandy from the eastern front!
    News of the movements of II SS Panzer Corps reached the Allies via Ultra, the top secret system of decoding German wireless messages. This prompted Montgomery to begin Epsom before more German armour arrived.
    The start line for Epsom was a 12-kilometre stretch of countryside west of the Canadian position at Norrey-en-Bessin. Heavy bocage (hedgerows) on the right flank forced O’Connor to try to squeeze his three untried divisions, 15th Scottish, 43rd Wessex and 11th Armoured, through a relatively open kilometre-wide corridor leading down to the wooded valley of the River Odon. Once the river was crossed, a low, flat-topped ridge, known as Hill 112, dominated the battlefield and the southern approaches to Caen. Controlling that position would force the Germans to abandon the city.
    [​IMG]
    The river was crossed and for several hours it appeared as if Hill 112 could be taken. However, the arrival of lead elements of II SS Panzer Corps, announced by Ultra, forced O’Connor to dig in and meet the enemy’s counterattacks.
    The 3rd Canadian Division’s artillery supported O’Connor’s 8th Corps in the first phase of Epsom, and then prepared a fire plan for Operation Ottawa, an attack intended to secure the village of Carpiquet and its airport. As part of Epsom, Ottawa made a good deal of sense because the capture of the airport, and especially the southern hangars, would deny the enemy observation over the Odon bridgehead. But Operation Ottawa was cancelled when the scale of the German counterattacks prompted a new defensive role for the gunners.
    Once the enemy was beaten back, Ottawa became Operation Windsor, a 3rd Canadian Div. advance on Caen. This too was cancelled, and as Montgomery and General Sir Miles Dempsey, his army commander, made up their minds to stage Operation Charnwood—a new three-division frontal attack on Caen—Windsor became a separate operation to take place four days before the main attack. The 8th Canadian Infantry Brigade, with the Fort Garry Horse and the Royal Winnipeg Rifles under command, were to advance with the help of 500 guns from 21 regiments of artillery. The 16-inch guns of His Majesty’s Ship Rodney would soften up the defences with the help of two squadrons of Typhoons in support. Flails, Crocodiles and Petards, specialized armour from the 79th British Armoured Div., was also available.
    All the impressive firepower allocated to Brigadier Ken Blackader’s brigade was poor compensation for a plan that defied both experience and common sense. Why order a single brigade into a salient allowing the enemy to focus on one small part of the front? Broad front attacks that split the enemy’s defensive fire had been advocated and employed since 1916 and there was no excuse for such attacks in 1944. To make matters worse, the Royal Winnipeg Rifles, tasked to seize control of the hangars south of Carpiquet, were really fighting a separate, isolated battle.
    At 5 a.m. on July 4, the North Shore (New Brunswick) Regiment and Le Régiment de la Chaudière began to advance across open fields. The barrage, timed to lift 100 yards every three minutes, was a classic First World War “creeper.” The Germans replied, as they had in 1917, by firing artillery and mortars just behind the advancing line of fire. Both battalions kept moving forward despite heavy casualties and the inevitable loss of men who simply could not get up and keep going. Major J. E. Anderson of the North Shores later described his experience: “I am sure that at some time every man felt he could not go on. Men were being killed or wounded on all sides and the advance seemed pointless as well as hopeless. I never realized until Carpiquet how far discipline, pride of unit and, above all, pride in oneself and family can carry a man even when each step forward can mean possible death.”
    The Chaudières, attacking in the centre, were spared much of the fire directed at the North Shores. The village was in ruins and the surviving Germans in the northern hangars were persuaded to flee or surrender by the first bursts of flame from the Crocodiles. The two battalions dug in under continuous fire. “Carpiquet was an inferno,” the Chaudières reported. “The bombardment was so intensive that hardly anyone dared leave the trenches and shelters.” At 11 a.m., the Queen’s Own Rifles moved towards Carpiquet, prepared to follow a new barrage to the control buildings on the far side of the airport. Blackader was under pressure from divisional commander Major-General Rod Keller who was in turn being pressed by the corps commander to continue an advance that would place the Queen’s Own at the very tip of a deep salient.
    The Royal Winnipeg Rifles attacking the south hangars were exposed to fire from the south side of the Odon as well as the airport. The Winnipegs advanced with only indirect fire support from tanks, as the single available squadron of the Garrys was also designated as armoured reserve. One troop was later sent forward with several flame-throwing Crocodiles to attack the bunkers, but in that open country, the tanks were vulnerable at long ranges, and two out of the four were quickly destroyed.
    The Winnipegs were told to make a new effort with the remaining tanks, “executing a sweeping attack by the lower ground around the enemy’s left flank.” This manouevre was based on assurances that British troops from 43rd Wessex Div. had occupied Verson and could support the Canadian advance. The British apparently did briefly enter Verson, but this offered no defence against a counterattack from the southeast. The Garrys’ armoured sweep ran into a battle group of Panthers and was overwhelmed.
    The enemy was unwilling to accept the loss of Carpiquet village and counterattacked from Franqueville shortly after midnight. The North Shores and Chaudières beat back all attacks, and at first light the artillery settled the issue, forcing the Germans to concede that the village could not be retaken. Canadian casualties in this operation, 365 of which 118 were fatal, made Operation Windsor one of the costliest brigade-level actions of the Normandy Campaign. The enemy, unwilling to settle for a defensive victory, also lost several hundred men, including a considerable number from the 3rd Battalion of 1st SS Panzer Div. which had been attached to 12th SS. Their attempt to overcome the North Shore Regiment’s defence of the north side of Carpiquet resulted in “considerable loses” to two companies who were “smashed” by artillery defensive fire, and North Shore small arms. The medium machine-guns of the Camerons of Ottawa were well positioned to deal with attacks from the north side of the salient and so they also had a major role in repelling the enemy.
    Both sides conducted post-mortems on Carpiquet. The Germans concluded that the main Allied attack to take Caen would shortly follow. Rommel wanted to get the 12th SS Div. out of the city before it was completely destroyed, but only the supply and support units could be withdrawn. The 12th SS would have to face one more onslaught from fixed defensive positions.
    The Canadian response to Carpiquet was to circulate a “lessons learned” review, which included an implicit critique of the plan for Operation Windsor. The brigade noted that on a battlefield where a well-entrenched enemy employed a series of interlocking defensive positions, and relied on “large concentrations” of observed fire from mortars, “attacks must be launched on a broad front” simultaneously so that the enemy “cannot fire in enfilade from localities not being attacked.” Broad front attacks, the report added, would also split the enemy’s defensive fire.
    This was not the kind of common sense British senior commanders wished to hear in 1944. Crocker, who had made a series of dubious decisions as a corps commander, blamed the Canadians for the “failure” of Carpiquet. On July 5, before the full outcome of the battle was known, Crocker sent a letter to the Army Commander, General Miles Dempsey, claiming that the limited success of Windsor was due to lack of control and leadership from the top.
    “Carpiquet,” he wrote, “proved to me conclusively” that the divisional commander, General Keller, “is not fit to command.” Both Dempsey and Montgomery endorsed this view despite a growing awareness that all three infantry divisions in Crocker’s corps were highly critical of his willingness to order a series of isolated brigade or battalion actions. The 3rd British Div. was particularly bitter about the struggle for Chateau de la Loude which they described as “the bloodiest square mile in Normandy.” The historian of 51st Highland Div. described the sense of relief everyone felt when the division left 1st British Corps.
    The Carpiquet battlefields are largely intact. The town, which was pretty well destroyed, is much larger today and the airport modernized, but if you stand outside the Aero Club at the western end of the airfield much can be seen and understood. On one of our battlefield tours Lieutenant-General (retired) Charles Belzile, who was then President of the Canadian Battlefields Foundation and Honorary Grand President of The Royal Canadian Legion, was asked how would NATO armies take Carpiquet today? He paused and said, “Well not in isolation and not with infantry across such open ground.”
     
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  2. WhiskeyGolf

    WhiskeyGolf Senior Member

    Thanks for sharing Tim. It's extremely disheartening to see such a loss of life occur from the cockup of the powers that be that sit behind their desks in their cosy offices. A very poignant photo though.
    WG
     
  3. canuck

    canuck Closed Account

    I just finished reading Marc Milner's, “D-Day to Carpiquet The North Shore Regiment and the Liberation of Europe”.
    The book covers the actions of The North Shore Regt during the period from the 6th of June until the 5th of July. The battle of Carpiquet on July 4/5 is described in great detail. Milner takes a more positive view of the battle, highlights some overlooked aspects and presents new information on the scale of the German forces committed and the their losses. I had not been aware of the five futile and costly counterattacks launched by the 1st and 3rd Battalions of 1st Panzer Grenadier Regiment of the 1st SS Panzer LAH. This action destroyed the only operational reserve the Germans had in the Caen sector.

    Milner:
    “Operation WINDSOR is usually regarded as a dismal failure because the southern hangers and control buildings were not taken, and because Canadian casualties were so high compared to those of the Germans. And the Canadian assault on Carpiquet village itself is often viewed as an example of bungling Allied methods: four full battalions supported by massive firepower and tanks attacking a depleted German battalion resulting in minimal success and heavy losses. It is generally assumed that the Germans lost 155 men in the first two days of fighting at Carpiquet, a figure which contrasts sharply with the 377 Canadians who were killed, wounded, or missing.

    “However, although disappointing, particularly in its failure to secure the southern hangers, Operation WINDSOR was a significant tactical, operational, and even strategic success. Indeed, the battalions of the 8th Brigade held onto Carpiquet and drew both a maelstrom of fire and savage German counter-attack onto their position. At a certain level, that was entirely the point. The Allies, including those diehards of the NSR who made it to the village, knew that the Germans would fight fanatically to retake it. The SS attackers in the early hours of July 5 were told that no one could withstand the constant shelling and that they would find Carpiquet empty. As Major J.A.L. Robichaud said, the Germans "got a very sad surprise."

    “Not only did the Germans fail to dislodge the Canadians from their salient, they also suffered heavily at Carpiquet. The figure of 155, routinely quoted by historians on both sides as the German count of killed, wounded, and missing, refers to only those admitted to by the 26th PzG Regiment of 12th SS, and is inaccurate. By some accounts, German losses around the southern hangers attacked by the RWR amounted to 150 men, while the reinforced third company of the 3/26th in the village was virtually annihilated: the NSR captured fifty-five and counted about thirty-five SS dead in the wheat field. How many died in the village is unknown, but there must have been some. Those figures amount to 240 from the 12th SS alone. More importantly, for some unknown reason, losses to the 1st SS Division during the morning of July 5 are never tallied in the Carpiquet figures. According to their own history, the 3rd Battalion of the 1st SS PzG Regiment lost 115 infantry (killed, wounded, and missing) plus about twenty tanks. This figure is corroborated by B Company of the NSR, who counted about one hundred dead and wounded in front of its position at dawn. These losses bring German casualties for July 4-5 to about 340. But the real figure is probably higher still. The Germans provide no casualty figures for their supporting tanks and other units, none from the three attacks by the 1st Battalion of the 1st SS PzG Regiment at all, and we can only speculate on the casualties from the artillery fire brought down on formations preparing to attack, such as the 3rd Company of the III/1 st SS just outside Franqueville at the start of the first attack. Based on all this, casualties on both sides were about even, and the SS paid dearly for their fanatical disregard for life, especially their own, and for their arrogance in the face of Anglo-Canadian defensive firepower.

    “More importantly, in trying to retake Carpiquet the Germans committed their only available operational reserve in the Caen sector, and it was destroyed. As the Canadian Army's official post-war narrative reveals, four out of five of these attacks fell on the North Shore Regiment, and the fifth was stopped by their intervention. It was their fire, and that of their supporting elements, that crushed the elite of Hitler's personal guard and shattered German hopes of holding Caen. The old North Shore may have died at Carpiquet, but it took a lot of Germans and its enemy's plans for the defence of Caen with them. As Major Bill Harvey reflected, "There was never the like of those North Shore men for sheer guts and durability."”

    To add to what Marc Milner wrote, the losses of the 1st Bn of 1st SS is given in the book “The Leibstandarte IV/1” by Rudolf Lehmann and Ralf Tiemann as 19 dead, 76 wounded and 21 missing. This brings the known German losses to more than 450.

    Another part of Operation Windsor was a raid conducted by A Sqn of the Sherbrooke Fusiliers commanded by Radley-Walters. The SFR Sqn’s start line was near Villeneuve. They shot up German positions at Franqueville, Authie and Gruchy and crossed back through the Canadian’s lines near Rosei. They destroyed two German anti-tank guns and accounted for some 75 German troops from 25th Pz Gn Regt., with no losses to themselves. This brings the German losses during Operation Windsor to well over 500.
     
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  4. canuck

    canuck Closed Account

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    canuck Closed Account

  6. canuck

    canuck Closed Account

  7. canuck

    canuck Closed Account

  8. canuck

    canuck Closed Account

    Louis Antoine Tremblay

    I come from the Saguenay region. We boarded the landing craft in England on June 3. We were supposed to get there on the 5th but since the sea was tumultuous, and there was a storm, they delayed us by a day and we arrived on the 6th. We left England on landing craft and we travelled a distance of 140 kilometres. When we arrived within sight of the coast of France, we understood the extent of the situation. As far as the eye could see on the water, there were ships. Five thousand ships participated. There were thousands of planes in the sky. Both sides were being bombed, the Germans as well. We got out in the water since our landing craft could not come ashore. We made it to solid ground. We lost people, for sure. Some were killed and others were injured. Most of the troops were able to make it to solid ground. We took the town of Bernières-sur-Mer. We went to sow and reap death. It’s as bad as that.
    We crept along the houses, in the streets because the Germans had put obstacles everywhere. Some were hiding with machine guns. To avoid being shot, we crept along the houses. At one point, there was a French woman, the first French person that I had seen. She was hiding in her basement. She had heard us speaking in French. She said to us, "Do you speak French?" I told her that we did. She asked whether we would be staying or leaving. She thought we were just lending a hand, like at Dieppe. I told her that we were here to stay. She came out of her house with a bottle of Calvados. She gave us each a small glass of Calvados, we spoke for a few minutes and then we had to be on our way to get back to our job. When I went back 40 years later, I met the same woman and I chatted with her. We shared another glass of Calvados.
    The first evening that we arrived, we were near Carpiquet, near Fontaine-Henry. It was there that we had encountered the Germans’ first major counter-attacks. We only had canned food. For weeks at a time we hard sardines Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday; sardines all week. The guys would get sick of their cans of sardines and throw them away. This led to some small thievery. It was prohibited but they would steal eggs from chicken coops. It was a change for them. They were not supposed to, but I would look the other way and say, "Don’t get caught." One guy named Theriault, he came along one day with his steel helmet full of eggs and three or four bottles of wine in his arms. He ran into a French woman and she said to him, "My God, have the Canadians come here to save us or to steal from us?" Well, you know how French Canadians speak; lots of bad words. So he replied to her, "Both, goddammit!"
    In the end, there was only one soldier left standing [of “A” Company]. His name was Roy, L.V. [Louis Valmont] Roy. He had been loading the gun alone and firing at the tanks. Finally, he died too, still manning his gun. I say he saved the regiment. We were almost surrounded. We were there for four days, and we spent two days without eating. No water, no food, nothing. We managed to maintain our positions. We had sixty-eight casualties and hundred or so wounded. When Carpiquet was finished, we had taken the airfield and all of that. I said to myself, "Even if the war lasts ten years, I won’t be killed." It could never be as bad as that, it was dreadful. It was never as bad as that. We had some tough battles but nothing like Carpiquet. We had our first rest period after 39 days.
    We had landed in the water and our clothes dried on our backs. We only took our boots off after 39 days. Our feet were rotting in our boots. After 39 days they took us to the rear of the front line. They gave us dry clothes and let us take showers and eat a good meal. The next day, they took us back to the firing lines. That was the only break we got. It was like that until the end of the war. When we got to the city of Rouen, members of the French resistance who gave us information. They told us that the Germans, as an act of reprisal against the Resistance, had tied up 13 men and women, probably chosen at random. They had tied them to posts and shot at them. When we arrived, those people were still tied to the posts.
    The ground was, Holland is below sea-level. We tried an amphibious landing but we couldn’t. They saw us coming. So we spent the day hunkered down in the rushes, with our feet in the water, and then on ground when we could. Because the minute the Germans saw the cattails moving even slightly, they would fire off rounds with their machine guns. So we couldn’t move. We would stay there during the day and then get onto the dike at night. We made a bit of headway each day. We liberated the west bank of the river up to Ostend, Belgium. The east bank was where the English-Canadian regiments were.
    It found it hard my entire life, since I never forgot my friends who died. I think about them every day. I was the one of the eldest. I had young men who were 18, 19, 20, 21 years old. When I lost one of my men, it was as if I had lost one of my own children. I returned after 40 years. I cried when I saw the beach where we had landed, I asked myself a lot of questions. How did I manage to get through that? I visited the small cemetery at Bény-sur-Mer. I saw the names of my men who died. I thought to myself, "How can you have been sleeping here for 40 years, but I am still standing?" Once I returned to civilian life, I felt destitute and alone. All of my friends from before were either married or doing their own thing, they had their own lives now. It was hard. Thank goodness that I had a wife who helped me a lot because I don’t know what would have happened to me. It was as hard as the war. Because mentally, I felt disoriented. I had a wife who helped me a great deal and I adore her, I still do.

    http://www.thememoryproject.com/stories/947:louis-antoine-tremblay/
     
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  9. canuck

    canuck Closed Account

    "Major J.E. Anderson of the North Shores spoke for everyone when he wrote, I am sure that at some time during the attack every man felt he could not go on. Men were being killed or wounded on all sides and the advance seemed pointless as well as hopeless. I never realised until the attack on Carpiquet how far discipline, pride of unit, and above all, pride in oneself and family, can carry a man even when each step forward meant possible death."

    http://scholars.wlu.ca/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1487&context=cmh
     
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