The Unbelievable Survival Story Of Panzer Ace Ludwig Bauer | Greatest Tank Battles | War Stories

In the Allied plans for the invasion of Normandy, the capture of Caen was the natural next step after the initial landings on D-Day, the 6th of June, 1944. Caen, lying 10 miles from the coast, was supposed to be taken on this first day, but it proved to be 10 miles too far for the troops of the British Second Army and the 3rd Canadian Division, whose task it was to take the town. The British started out too late from the landing beaches in the afternoon, and even more crucially, they had to leave their tanks behind. The British armor was jammed up in the mass of vehicles that were crowding the invasion beaches. This, though, was only the start of the difficulties. When, at last, the tanks managed to move inland, they found that the Normandy countryside seemed to be conspiring against them. The bocage, or box country, close to Caen certainly lived up to its name, with its checkerboard of small fields surrounded by hedgerows and narrow, twisting lanes. The Allied troops had been trained for fast, mobile warfare, but now found themselves embroiled in obstructive terrain, which slowed their progress to a crawl. Worse still, the delay had allowed the bulk of the German armor to move into place and block the way to Caen. From there, the Germans proceeded to put up a ferocious defense that startled the Allies. It seemed impossible that the Germans could resist in such strength and with such vigor at this late stage in the war. At sea, the time when German U-boats had terrorized the Atlantic convoys, bringing vital supplies to Britain, was a thing of the past. By 1943, the predators had become the prey of vastly improved convoy defenses. At home, German war industries had been heavily bombed, and their capacity so severely reduced that production could no longer keep pace with the losses suffered on the fighting fronts. The much vaunted Luftwaffe, which rode the skies of continental Europe virtually unchallenged early on in the war, had become a parody of its former glory. After the Battle of Britain in 1940, when it failed before the RAF, the first modern air force it encountered, the Luftwaffe was never the same again. In Russia, there were early successes, but too much Luftwaffe strength was later bled away in combat with the improving Russian Air Force. By the eve of the Normandy landings, a mere 400 aircraft were all the Luftwaffe could bring to the battle, against 30 times that number of Allied fighters and bombers. Also, Allied bombing of airfields and installations, as well as losses in the air, saw to it that the Luftwaffe was effectively neutralized. After D-Day, the occasional Luftwaffe squadron, 50 aircraft or so, made its appearance in the skies over Normandy. But it was the Allies who held the advantage that most mattered, total command of the air. The year 1943 had already prefigured the ultimate fate of the German war effort. The surrender of General Paulus and his decimated Sixth Army at Stalingrad had been a crippling psychological as well as military blow. Stalingrad proved to be the first step in an inexorable withdrawal that saw the Germans pushed out of Russia, into Poland and over Germany's eastern border. The prestigious Afrika Korps suffered final defeat in North Africa. From there, the Allies went on to conquer Sicily. Next, they invaded Italy, which surrendered at once and went over to the Allied side. The Germans had known all along that one day the Allies would assault Adolf Hitler's fortress, Europe. Keeping them out had been the purpose of the mighty Atlantic Wall that stretched along the north and west coasts of France down to the Spanish border. But where would they strike? An Allied campaign of deception suggesting invasion sites in Norway, Central Italy, the Eastern Mediterranean, the Pas-de-Calais and elsewhere in France had left the Germans so thoroughly confused that they did not know for certain where to expect the attack until the Allied invasion fleet appeared off the Normandy coast. Once the Allies managed to get ashore and started moving off the beaches, the importance of Korps came into focus. Lying on the left bank of the River Orne, southwest of Lave, Korps was at one and the same time a vital linchpin of the German defenses and a crucial target for the Allies. The only town among the myriad villages in this part of France, Korps dominated the undulating plains on which it stood and was the hub of 12 major roads and a vital railway center. If they could hold Korps, the Germans had the chance to confine the invaders close to the Normandy beaches and then throw them back into the English Channel. On the other hand, if the Allies could take Korps, the way would be open to the rest of France and eastwards into Nazi Germany itself. There were no two ways about it. The fight for Korps was going to be make or break for both sides. Already by the end of D-Day, the Allied commanders in charge of capturing Korps had been shown what a difficult task it was going to be. In theory, it might have been even more difficult because the two men in overall command, US General Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, and the British General Bernard Montgomery, commander of the 21st Army Group, were such totally different characters. The fact that Eisenhower and Montgomery managed to work together was a tribute to the Americans' extraordinary tact and forbearance. As was rather overemphasized at the time, Eisenhower was a desk general, an organizer and a strategist, rather than a warrior. He'd spent his career in relative obscurity. Yet in 1942, he was chosen out of 336 other senior officers as the candidate best suited to place in overall command of the Allied invasion of Europe. Eisenhower was to need all his powers to mollify, mediate, and persuade when it came to dealing with Montgomery. The British General was prickly, willful, vain, insensitive, and overbearing. He had a much-criticized tendency to claim the plans of others as his own, and at times took more credit for victories than was due to him. At the same time, Montgomery was an outstanding military leader with a record in the war that few, if any, other Allied commander could match. Montgomery had already proved his caliber during the evacuation of Dunkirk in 1940, and in the brilliant series of victories in the desert of North Africa that began with El Alamein in 1942. Yet he was also capable of making unwise choices. Later on, in September 1944, he clashed with Eisenhower and the Americans over their broad front strategy, and the narrow front, the single thrust into northern Germany, which he preferred. If Montgomery had had his way, U.S. General Patton's Third Army would have been robbed of supplies and support. Eisenhower put his foot down, and the broad front strategy prevailed. This, though, was not the first time Montgomery's tactics were called into question. Three months earlier, his plans for capturing Caen became the subject of serious criticism. General Montgomery and Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, commander of German Army Group B and his opposite number on the German side, were established rivals by the time their forces met in Normandy. They'd already faced each other in North Africa, where Rommel's dynamic style and talent for daring innovation had attracted the respect of his British opponents. At home in Germany, Rommel was tailor-made to be a war hero. Not only was he immensely likable, but the dominance in the desert he enjoyed until late 1942 and the way he consistently outwitted the British generated great excitement in Germany. The desert was pure battlefield with few, if any, civilians and no towns or even villages, and Rommel was well-suited to the fluid, fast-moving warfare this allowed him. But Normandy was completely different, much more constricted, and even more importantly, much more under the control of Rommel's own Supreme Commander, Adolf Hitler. Hitler had never been all that keen on the desert war. The main reason he allowed it to continue was Rommel's popularity and the enthusiasm for the war it created at home. Rommel, however, had an invaluable trait for a Fuhrer who always suspected men of ambition. He was a military commander pure and simple and had no yearnings for political power. If anything, he was politically naive and that suited Hitler fine. Even so, it was a serious weakness for the German cause in Normandy to have military strategy in the hands of an incompetent like Hitler, who paid more attention to his own fancies than he paid to his commanders on the ground. Hitler's lack of military nous had already been responsible for the disaster that overtook the German armies in Russia. Rommel himself had been hampered in North Africa by the lack of military support Hitler had allowed him. Hitler knew nothing of the principles of strategic withdrawal and how it preserved forces to fight and possibly win another day. His answer to untenable situations was the Germans must never retreat, but fight to the last man. It was little wonder that the Fuhrer was the despair of his generals who had to follow orders however impossible and go on fighting battles and eventually a war they could not win. Rommel's glowing reputation preserved him from dismissal, Hitler's usual response to protest, but he was not spared the other drawbacks created by the Fuhrer's scenario for Normandy. Once the Normandy landings had succeeded, the next task for the German defenders was to stop the Allies expanding the beachheads and above all, prevent them from reaching Caen. It was clear that Caen was the next and logical target when a heavy air raid by 600 aircraft of the 8th US Army Air Force struck the town at 1500 hours on D-Day. Caen was transformed into ashes and smoking rubble. Meanwhile, out at sea, Allied ships shelled the town adding to the destruction. However, the delay experienced by the British in setting out from the coast to attack Caen was extremely fortunate for the Germans. It gave them valuable time to organize an iron ring of defenses around the town. The Germans put three divisions in place to form a screen around Caen. The 21st Division, the 12th SS Panzer Hitlerjugend Division and the Panzer Lehr. Their orders were to hold the line at all costs and put up such a barrage of fire that the British and the Canadians who advanced towards Caen on the 7th of June would find it impossible to penetrate. General Montgomery's strategy for Caen was largely conditioned by the plan to take the town on D-Day. His forces therefore were going to make a frontal assault. This Montgomery expected would take them through to Caen and pass the supposedly weak and ineffectual German defenses. Montgomery soon learned otherwise as the fury of the German resistance began to decimate his forces. This led to a speedy change of plan to something more subtle and hopefully less costly. On the 9th of June, Montgomery conferred with Lieutenant General Sir Miles Dempsey and U.S. General Omar Bradley. They agreed that instead of a head-on assault, Caen would be enveloped with the British 2nd Army keeping up pressure on the town while pushing towards Vierbockage, Evressy and then on southeast towards Falaise. Pressurizing Caen in this fashion would also serve to divert German attention from American efforts to capture the important port of Cherbourg. By coincidence, the same day, Lieutenant General Leo Gervon Schweppenberg, commander of Panzer Group West, unveiled a new plan of his own, a concerted push in which the three divisions shielding Caen would hit out at the Allied forces and after the plan was amended by Rommel, recapture Bayeux from the British. What neither side could realize was that their plans canceled each other out with only one possible result, a direct clash all along the battle line. On paper, the balance of military capability in Normandy seemed to favor the Allies. However, in war, any war, it is not necessarily the most mightily equipped or the most numerous side that prevails. Military capability depends on many more factors than this. The British and Canadian forces who opened the battle for Caen in the first week after D-Day were certainly well-trained and well-equipped and their morale was high. Even though the Canadian troops were inexperienced, they drew extra motivation from the fact that they were volunteers rather than conscripts. Unlike the Germans, the Allied troops belonged to a force headed by a unified command with Allied dominance in the air to protect them and a strong, if slow, buildup of men and armaments to reinforce them. These were important advantages and ultimately they were crucial. However, among the Allied commanders, there was a belief endorsed by British Prime Minister Winston Churchill that there were situations in which the Germans outclassed their opponents. Wherever Allied forces confronted the Germans in anything like equal strength, the Germans normally prevailed. Just how frequent that equality would be was an unanswered question as the battle for Caen got underway. On the Allied side in Normandy, the predominant tank was the American Sherman M4. A vast number of Shermans, 49,320, were constructed after production began in 1942, making it the most abundant tank ever known. Compared to the British and some German tanks, the Sherman's speed was high, 26 miles per hour, though at 31 millimeters, the thickness of its armor fell below that of most rivals. The Sherman, which weighed up to 32 tons and was powered by a 500-horsepower petrol engine, carried a 76-millimeter main gun backed up by one 12.7-millimeter and two 7.62-millimeter machine guns and a two-inch mortar. It had a range of 100 miles and a fully transversable turret. There were drawbacks, though. The Sherman's profile was vulnerably high and its armor was too weak to withstand much of the Germans' anti-tank fire. It was virtually helpless before the deadly German 88. After the critical loss of British armor and weapons suffered at Dunkirk in 1940, a replacement for the Matilda II tank was urgently needed. The first Churchill tanks were available within the year, by June 1941, but it took another 12 months to sort out the inevitable teething troubles. However, by March 1942, the six-pounder gun was at last available to replace the less-than-effective two-pounder carried by the first Churchills. After a disastrous debut during the Raid of Dieppe in 1942, when the Churchills became trapped on the Shingle Beach, the tanks went on to prove their ability, particularly the ability to climb hills in the North African campaign. Their maximum 102-millimeter armor also proved relatively impervious to German anti-tank fire. The Churchills, which carried the six-pounder main gun and two 7.92-millimeter machine guns, were somewhat on the slow side, with a maximum speed of just over 15 miles an hour. In the air over Normandy, the most daunting sight for the Germans was a flight of Allied fighter bombers prowling the daylight skies, looking for targets which, more often than not, they destroyed. This was why the Germans soon resorted to moving by night. One of the most prominent of the fighter bombers was the British Hawker Typhoon, which earned special fame in the latter stages of the war as a tank buster. The Typhoon started life as a fighter, but it tended to falter at high speeds, and its Sabre engine proved unreliable. As a result, the Typhoon suffered too many accidents to continue for long in the fighter role. Towards the end of 1942, the Typhoon was restructured and equipped with a new 2,180-horsepower Napier Sabre engine. The new Typhoon possessed a maximum speed of 412 miles an hour, a flight ceiling of 32,500 feet, and a maximum range of 510 miles. It carried a 1,000-pound bomb load and four 20-millimeter cannon. After its makeover, the fighter bomber reemerged to become the terror of Germans on the ground, and eventually formed the offensive spine of the 2nd Tactical Air Force in Europe. Though their bite was deadly, their numbers were relatively small. 3,030 Typhoons were manufactured between 1942 and 1945. The Germans were classed as the underdogs in the struggle for Caen, and the Allies tended to presume that their military capability was in the same state. They were certainly very serious problems. The German 7th Army in Normandy was overstretched. They were constantly harassed by the French resistance. Air cover from the Luftwaffe was virtually non-existent. Losses were difficult, sometimes impossible, to replace. Allied air supremacy tortured the troops on the ground. On paper, the Germans seemed to have everything stacked against them. In fact, their military capability was much greater than this suggested. Many of the German commanders in the field were brilliant operational leaders, able to make the most effective use of their scarce resources. Some of them, like Major General Kurt Mayer, commander of the Hitlerjugend Division, led from the front and personally inspired their men by their example. The longstanding German military tradition ensured that they were highly motivated, whatever the odds, and many of the German units comprised elite warriors who did not shrink from sacrificing themselves for fatherland and Fuhrer. If anything, they embraced it and equated such sacrifice with glory. The Allies considered this attitude fanatical. To the Germans, it was no more than their duty. The German 88-millimeter Flak gun, much in evidence in the battles around Caen, was one of the most powerful and most feared guns of the Second World War. The 88 was originally designed for anti-aircraft service. However, when some of them were converted as anti-tank guns and showed their destructive paces in North Africa in 1941, the 88's reputation as a fearsome destroyer was made. Normandy was the perfect setting for the 88. The Normandy bocage offered maximum chances for a camouflaged 88 to lie in wait for opponents. It was the same at the many fortified villages in Normandy, where some of the 88s were sighted. When mounted on the Tiger tank, the very appearance of the 88 was startling. Allied troops described its 16-foot-long barrel as as long as a telegraph pole. This unusual length made the muzzle velocity of the 88 extremely punishing. Firing at 85 degrees elevation, the 88 used armor-piercing fused shells that moved at 886 yards per second. They could hit their targets and create fire bursts at distances of up to 2,000 yards. An experienced crew was able to dismount the 88 and be ready for action in no more than 20 seconds, then remount the gun to move elsewhere in less than 60. The Tiger II, or Panzer VI, was the tank equivalent of the 88-millimeter gun, which served as its main armament. Like the 88, the Tiger was a superior and much feared weapon. Because of the tank's exploits in Normandy, where 14 of them were used by the Panzer Lehr Division, Allied troops came to believe that three Sherman or four Churchill tanks were needed to challenge one Tiger. And even then, the German tank would dispose of most, if not all of them. Designed as a heavy breakthrough tank to lead assaults by armored divisions, the Tiger II weighed a hefty 75 tons and was powered by a 692-horsepower engine with maximum speed of 24 miles an hour. It was capable of piercing armor 112 millimeters thick at 1,400 yards. The Tiger's own 110-millimeter frontal armor rendered it impervious to most of the Allied tanks and artillery. The exception was the British 17-pounder anti-tank gun, which appeared on the battlefield in North Africa a month before the Tigers arrived. Even the Russian T-34 had to close to just over 1,600 yards before it had a hope of penetrating the Tiger's armor. Understandably, Allied tank crews generally preferred to outmaneuver the Tiger rather than confront it and approach from its more vulnerable rear. Nürbelwerfer, meaning smoke thrower, originally applied to the German chemical mortar. Later, the Nürbelwerfer became a rocket launcher, specifically the 150-millimeter 41 model, which had six launching tubes. Fired at ranges of up to 7,700 yards, the Nürbelwerfer 41 launched its incendiary rockets in sequence to avoid being overturned by the blast. Meanwhile, the Nürbelwerfer's crew had to shelter in a trench at least 15 yards away as the rockets were fired electrically using a junction box. A full launch from the Nürbelwerfer, including loading, took 90 seconds to complete. The sound was terrifying in itself, a high-pitched screeching. For the Allies, the Nürbelwerfer was a truly deadly weapon. It was reckoned to have caused three quarters of the casualties among the infantry. For the Germans, the Nürbelwerfer helped them cope with the serious problem of infantry and artillery shortages in the latter part of the war. The Germans turned instead to massed Nürbelwerfers, which were especially effective in putting up defensive fire. General Montgomery gave the task of capturing Caen to the British Second Army under Lieutenant General Sir Miles Dempsey, who had at his disposal three armored divisions, seven independent armored and tank brigades, eight infantry divisions, and the Canadian First Corps. The infantry divisions consisted of some 18,400 men combined from different regiments together with an artillery brigade. An armored division possessed around 286 tanks, mostly Sherman M4s and Cromwell tanks, and some 15,000 men. Divisions were apportioned into one infantry brigade, which had three motorized battalions and an armored brigade of three battalions. There was also an infantry battalion which used half-tracks. Close support for the infantry was provided by Churchill tanks and by special tanks of the 79th Armored Division. Used by all sections of the British Second Army, these tanks were officially designated special purpose vehicles, but because of their eccentricity, they acquired the nickname of funnies. One of them was the flail tank, which was fitted with heavy chains on a revolving drum and proved very effective in clearing the landing beaches of mines. Another of the funnies was the Churchill crocodile, which featured a flame projector in place of the hull machine guns. The role of the funnies did not end with the Normandy landings. They were also used inland, where the Germans had sown a thick carpet of mines and other obstacles. Given the savagery of the German defense, eliminating their strong posts and pillboxes by flame was often the only way. On the 7th of June, the 185th Brigade received a first taste of just how savage this defense was. Attempting to force their way through Libisi, northwest of Caen, they soon found that their powerful supporting batteries were not enough to prevent them from suffering huge casualties. The brigade's assault ground to a halt. The 9th Brigade did somewhat better at Caen, which they captured after the Royal Ulster Rifles courted death by traversing nearly a mile and a half of ground without cover. The Germans put up such a holocaust of fire that the Ulstermen suffered very heavy casualties and the advance got no further. The 7th Army of Army Group B, whose task it was to defend Normandy, placed its strongest forces around Caen, leaving the coast to be protected by static divisions filled in the main with men who were medically unfit, too old to fight, or prisoners from the Eastern Front, who'd supposedly volunteered for service with the Wehrmacht. The 21st Panzers, the Panzerlehr, and the 12th SS Hitlerjugend Divisions, which placed an iron ring of defenses around Caen, were much more elite forces. They were infused with self-sacrificing loyalty and the resolve and skill to fend off the Allies no matter what the cost. One of these divisions, the 12th SS Hitlerjugend, the Hitler Youth, belonged to the Waffen-SS and comprised the most militarized teenagers in the world. Like the rest of the Waffen-SS, they were volunteers. Familiar with weapons since as early as the age of six, the Hitler Youth had been reared for war and reveled in it. Despite, or perhaps because of, their extreme youth, the Hitlerjugend typified fanatical last-ditch resistance more than any other German division in Normandy. Both the Hitlerjugend and the Panzerlehr had been thoroughly pounded by Allied air attack as they moved up towards Caen after D-Day. The Panzerlehr had left behind a trail of burned-out, bullet-ridden wrecks that included 130 trucks, five tanks, 84 guns, and a staff car belonging to its commander, Lieutenant General Fritz Beierlein. As an elite, however, the Panzerlehr had been given the most up-to-date equipment, including the incomparable Tiger II tanks and the Panther, or Panzer Vs, which outclassed, but did not replace, the German Panzer IV tanks. The Hitlerjugend, whose full battle strength was 21,386 men, had always been treated as special. Later on in the battle for Normandy, in mid-June, Adolf Hitler himself sought to preserve what was left of them by ordering their withdrawal. At that juncture, the parlour state of the Hitler Youth and the two other divisions displayed the grim truth about how they'd fought in the first week after D-Day and what it had cost them. The fighting at Le Bisset and Caen on the 7th of June gave notice that the early battles for Caen were going to be struggles to the death. This set a pattern that was to be repeated in every ferocious encounter that took place around Caen over the next seven days. On the morning of the 7th of June, the 9th Infantry Brigade Group, the forward troops of the 3rd Canadian Division, were advancing towards Carpiquet and its airfield, which were sited west of Caen. Meanwhile, behind them, more Canadian tanks were moving southwest from the direction of Bouron and headed for Oty. The Canadians passed through Oty and set out for Frangvis and Carpiquet. There was no apparent opposition, but it was there nevertheless. The progress of the Canadians had been observed all the way by the 12th SS Hitlerjugend Division, which was under orders to hold their fire until the right moment. Major General Kurt Mayer, leader of the Hitlerjugend, chose his moment carefully. He waited for the Canadian tanks to pass through Frangvis and reach the point where they were just about to cross the road between Caen and Bayeux. Only then did he give the order to attack. Surprise was complete. Tanks were blown apart under close fire. The crews jumped out to save themselves, but ran into a hail of shot. Recovering, the Canadians returned fire and a Panzer IV was hit. Flames funneled up out of its turret. Pushing through the smoke and thunder of combat, the Canadian infantry tried to force their way into Oty, only to find the Germans waiting for them. In the subsequent melee, the Germans seized control of Frangvis and Oty and started pushing back the Canadian forward units. The Canadians reeled under the impact, but the Germans didn't have it all their own way. Violent fighting raged all over the surrounding areas, and when the Hitlerjugend's first battalion, which had been delayed by refueling problems, arrived in the suburbs of Caen, the Canadians were waiting for them with Sherman tanks and heavy machine guns. The Canadian artillery opened up and Allied aircraft weighed in with punishing bombing and strafing runs. The Panzer IVs were outnumbered. They could do nothing to stop the Shermans, and eventually the Germans were forced to dig in. After the furore of battle died down and the cost was counted, the Canadians came off worst. They'd lost 245 casualties and 28 Sherman tanks. Although the Hitler youth could congratulate themselves on their handling of the Canadian challenge, Kurt Mayer was not content to rest on these laurels. Early on the 8th of June, he ordered the 26th Regiment of the Hitlerjugend to advance across the railway line between Bayeux and Caen to tackle the 6th Canadian Armored Regiment, which had captured Bretteville-Haugueilleuse a few hours earlier. The Canadians were now poised to capture Carpiquet Airfield, but the 26th Regiment got in the way and the airfield remained beyond reach. Meanwhile, the 7th Canadian Brigade came under heavy attack at Pouton-en-Bessin. This prompted a speedy counterattack with the Canadians making mammoth efforts to retrieve their positions. At 0830 hours on the 8th of June, Canadian infantry and tanks put up a wall of fire with heavy machine guns and artillery. The 26th Regiment was caught without anti-tank weapons and had to pull back to the nearby railway line. By nightfall, Pouton was back in Canadian hands. The pattern was much the same at Rott in the Meux Valley, close to the Caen-Bayeux Road, where Germans and Canadians killed each other at point-blank range, at Norrie-en-Bessin and Le Menil-Patrie, in fact, all over the battle area. Whichever side managed to advance did so through a storm of counterattacking fire. Attacks halted, resumed, halted again. Gains were made, lost, and retrieved. Here and there, tanks on fire blazed their flames into the summer sky. Some of the crew burned to death inside. Dead soldiers slumped in ditches or lay scattered across the fields. This attrition cost the Canadians nearly 3,000 casualties in the first week of the Normandy campaign. Afterwards, they consolidated the positions that had been so dearly won, but got no further. After four days, General Montgomery was forced to realize that assaulting Caen head-on was futile. The casualties had been too great, and Caen was no nearer to being captured. The solution would not be easy, especially when Montgomery's new plan for enveloping Caen, finalized on the 9th of June, coincided with a German offensive decided on the same day. In these mutually opposing strategies, the British 50th Division and the 7th Armored Division, the Desert Rats, moving out of Bayeux to take Vierbocage, was going to be opposed by the Panzer Lehr, advancing from Vierbocage against Bayeux. In the center, the Hitlerjugend were to advance north of the Caen-Bayeux road, and the Canadian 3rd Division would do the same in the south. The British 51st Highland Division, advancing out of the bridgehead east of the River Orne, was going to encounter the 21st Panzer Division moving into it. General Montgomery, appalled by the losses suffered so far, desperately wanted to avoid more of the same. In the event, more of the same was inevitable. The Panzer Lehr set off along the road to Bayeux, as ordered by Rommel. But they got within only three miles of the town when they were suddenly recalled. An emergency had suddenly arisen at Les Menil-Patry, a weak point in the German lines, where the Canadians were plastering the Hitlerjugend with ferocious crossfire. The Hitlerjugend, for their part, were answering back with heavy machine gun and mortar fire. And eventually, the Canadians were forced to retire, leaving behind 37 tanks and 95 dead. As for Bayeux, on the 10th of June, the alternative German armor ordered to take the city ran into a powerful screen of Allied anti-tank fire and shelling from Royal Navy ships in the channel. Bayeux remained in Allied hands. The Panzer Lehr were now ordered to defend Tilly-sur-Seul against the British 7th Armored Division, which had advanced out of Bayeux. Tilly-sur-Seul, which was already in ruins by the time the Panzer Lehr arrived, lay in a valley to the southeast of Caen. This was no place for mobile warfare and Fritz Bayeux-Lein ordered his Panzergrenadier half-tracks to the rear. The Panzer Lehr's tanks were then set up as mobile strong points, heavily camouflaged from view, with only a small section of turret showing. Care was taken to obscure the marks their tracks had made as they moved into position, so they wouldn't be spotted by Allied reconnaissance planes. The Germans, meanwhile, hid themselves in ditches or in the ruins of nearby houses and waited for the British 7th Armored Division to bring the battle to them. When the fighting got underway, it soon resolved itself into a series of vicious skirmishes. German machine gun fire spat out of the Kopses. British anti-tank fire thundered at the German positions. There was the thud of mortars, the hiss of flamethrowers, and here and there, the sharp sound of a single shot. Every hedgerow, every ditch was a dangerous place for the British. Every innocent-looking cluster of branches and leaves, a possible hideout for one of the deadly German AT-8s. But Thiele was also difficult and dangerous for the Germans. They were continually pounded by the Allied artillery, the naval bombardment, and by mortars. And the hard, stony ground offered only shallow dugouts for protection. Nevertheless, the Panzerlehr managed to hold up against the onslaughts, and despite desperate efforts by the British to dislodge them, they clung on to their positions. What the Panzerlehr could not do, however, was cover a weakness that opened up on their left flank, between Colmont and Vierre-Bocage. Here, there was a huge gap in the German defences, and at around 1500 hours on the 12th of June, the tanks of the 7th Armored Division headed for it. Once they'd surged through, it was as if they'd passed through some sort of time warp. For the first time since the Normandy landings, the way in front of the advancing British was clear. Although the terrain, full of small secondary roads and unmade tracks, meant tortuous going for the tanks and half-tracks, there was a heady feeling that at last they'd made a real breakthrough, and that from now on, in the absence of Germans, it was going to be easy. Despite being held up by an isolated German outpost at Livry, where both the British lead tanks were destroyed, the 7th Armored Division arrived in Vierre-Bocage at 0800 hours on the 13th of June. They were greeted by a mass of cheering, weeping civilians, who believed that liberation had come at last. The British drove on, straight through Vierre, heading for Hill 213, on the high ground to the east of the town. From there, a major road led directly into Caen. What the British didn't know was that they were being watched from a small wood near Hill 213, and the man watching them was the last opponent they wished to encounter. 30-year-old Michael Wittmann was one of Germany's premier tank aces, and a daredevil who'd become something of a legend. In Russia, Wittmann had destroyed six T-34 tanks in a single day. By the time he left the Eastern Front, his total of kills stood at 119. Like many men of great daring, Wittmann was a loner. He frequently operated by himself, and preferred to do things in his own way. For example, when he found the Tiger's rate of turret traverse too slow, Wittmann devised a method of swinging the whole tank round to face his opponents. At 0800 hours on the 13th of June, Michael Wittmann was in a position on Hill 213, together with five tanks, when reports reached him that British armour was arriving in Via Bocage. At once, Wittmann set out on foot for a small wood near the town, and from this cover, he watched the British arrive. It was soon evident that they had no idea that Wittmann or his tanks were close by. As Wittmann watched, they stopped for vehicle maintenance and breakfast. Wittmann had seen enough. He raced back to his tank and alerted his crew. There was no time to contact other tank units. Once again, Wittmann was on his own. He headed his Tiger downhill towards the British tanks and half-tracks, spraying them with machine gun fire at almost point-blank range. The first 12 half-tracks were destroyed. When lightly armoured British honey tanks appeared, Wittmann fired at them with his 88mm gun, then swept past, heading for the centre of Via Bocage. His next victims were three British Cromwell tanks. Next, running up against more British tanks, he backed up and was headed back for reinforcements when a Cromwell caught him and fired two of its 75mm rounds. The shots bounced off the Tiger's frontal armour, and within minutes, the Cromwell had succumbed to Wittmann's 88. The same afternoon, Wittmann was back with two more Tigers, a Panzer IV tank and more Panzer IVs poised to fire in support from Hill 213. This time, Wittmann destroyed an entire row of Cromwell and Sherman firefly tanks, together with several Bren carriers. Wittmann sped on, heading for Via, but there the British had been thoroughly alerted and he found the town very heavily defended. It was too much, even for Wittmann. Three of his four Tiger tanks were destroyed, and his own was brought to a halt when its track was blown off by a six-pound British anti-tank gun. Two more Tigers were destroyed by PIAT projectiles. Wittmann and his crew managed to escape, but they left behind them 25 ruined British tanks, 14 carriers, another 14 half-tracks, and several hundred British dead. That evening, the Germans were able to seize, and hold, Via Bocage. The damage Wittmann had done, and the shock he'd administered at Via Bocage, had serious consequences. The British drive to Caen, which had begun in such exhilarating mood, had been stopped cold in its tracks, and the Germans had managed to close the last important gap in their battle line. Early on the morning of the 14th of June, the 7th Armoured Division disengaged, and withdrew to positions east of Comores, three miles away. With this, a week after D-Day, the early phase in the battle for Caen came to an end. In the immediate aftermath of the early battles for Caen, both sides were utterly exhausted. The tank crews of the 7th Division were so tired, both physically and mentally, that many of them remained asleep throughout the withdrawal to Comores, and didn't even wake up when they reached it. The Germans, in particular the Hitler Youth, were in a similar state, but they at least had the satisfaction of some success. They had not only closed up their line, but defied all efforts to break through it. Grievous casualties had been suffered on both sides. It was reckoned that the 6th Canadian Regiment alone had lost one-third of all their casualties in Normandy in a single engagement at Le Menil Patrie. As for the Germans, one of their battalions, the 25th, was reduced from 700 officers and men to 539, and in the lull that followed Vierre Bocage, they lost a daily total of one or two dead and 12 injured and missing per day in the continuing naval and air bombardment. The Allies' failure to capture Caen in the first week of June 1944 was more than just a moat in the eye of the Normandy campaign. The town's strategic position and the role it played as guardian of the route east into Nazi Germany meant that it could not be bypassed or isolated or simply marooned behind the lines of the Allied advance. Even in its ruined state after the Allied air raid of the 6th of June, when almost three-quarters of the town was destroyed, Caen remained the hook on which success or failure in Normandy hung. Plans for the American conquest of the Cotentin and the subsequent breakout from the beachheads depended on its capture, a key component of General Montgomery's plan of attack had been to pin down the German armour at Caen to give the Americans a better chance. But the events of the second week in June had shown what it would cost and how much Allied strength would be diverted if this stance were maintained for long. By inference then, the capture of Caen was not only the linchpin of Allied success in Normandy, but of the war in Western Europe as a whole. The questions, the doubts and blame that arose out of the fighting around Caen after D-Day centred first and foremost on the overall plan devised by General Montgomery. Montgomery had never been an easy man to like and he had many enemies, but the workings of personal feuds did not entirely explain why his plan came under so much criticism. Partly this was due to a certain inflexibility in Montgomery's style of leadership. Once a plan was made, he insisted on sticking to it. But doing that around Caen had incurred unacceptably high casualties and all in the cause of getting nowhere. In the Allied ranks and the officers' mess, severe doubts were expressed about the wisdom of Montgomery's strategy. No one seriously questioned the genius of the victor of El Alamein, but was his plan for Caen the right one and was it being executed in the right way? There was even talk that Caen had become an obsession with Montgomery, his personal Holy Grail. If Montgomery had an obsession at all, it was his own unswerving self-discipline. Whatever happened, he always maintained an atmosphere of calm and security which reassured his troops that everything was going according to plan. Montgomery maintained this imperturbability even when dealing with Eisenhower, Winston Churchill, or his greatest admirer, Field Marshal Sir Alan Brooke. Nevertheless, there were signs that deep down, General Montgomery was rattled by the disasters that overtook his troops in the early battles for Caen. Unusually for him, he temporized and insisted that his main purpose at Caen had been to divert German attention from the Americans by using British and Canadian forces to keep them occupied. This, of course, was only part of the truth, something which Montgomery was known to manipulate when it served his purposes. The fact remained that somehow the Germans had managed to resist overwhelming firepower, overwhelming numbers, and Allied supremacy in the air so effectively that they'd fought their opponents to a standstill. The problems that beleaguered Erwin Rommel in the struggle for Caen were of a very different order. The trouble went right to the top, to Adolf Hitler and his fanciful orders for the conduct of the battle in Normandy. Hitler was directing the struggle from his Wolf's Lair at Rastenburg in East Prussia with no means of observing its realities. He promised Rommel reinforcements, but Rommel knew perfectly well that they would be understrength and undersupplied. What Rommel really wanted was more personal control over his forces and the authority to order retreats as necessary. Hitler refused, but Rommel would not give up. Together with General Leo Gehr von Schweppenberg, he flew to Rastenburg to confront Hitler in person. They got nowhere with him. Rommel returned to Normandy still determined to change the confrontational tactics Hitler had imposed on him, and adopt instead the principle of giving up ground for the sake of a more manageable defense. Rommel and von Schweppenberg managed to receive the backing of their superior, Field Marshal von Rundstedt, but when he telephoned Hitler to put the proposal to him, he was summarily dismissed. The venerable Field Marshal was replaced by 62-year-old General Field Marshal Gunther von Kluge, whose view of Germany's war prospects was extremely pessimistic. Von Schweppenberg was also replaced, and though Rommel survived, he was forced to accept Paul Hauser as a new chief of the 7th Army. Hauser, aged 64, had already retired as long ago as 1932, only to have his career reactivated after Hitler came to power the following year. Hauser had the same dismal view as von Kluge. It hardly helped the German cause in Normandy, or Rommel's handling of it, that one of the most important command positions was now held by an old, de-rusticated soldier, who had no faith in his chances of success. The struggle for Caen, in the first week after D-Day, had proved to be one of the bloodiest, most destructive, yet most inconclusive of the Second World War. But despite the agonising over-blame on the Allied side, and Erwin Rommel's desperate attempt to give his forces better chances for defence, the battle was not going to change its nature. The imperative for the two sides remained the same. The Allies must take Caen. The Germans must prevent them doing so. And deciding which of them would prevail was going to mean war even more total than before.