Falaise: The Flawed Victory - The Destruction of Panzergruppe West, August 1944 - читать бесплатно онлайн полную версию книги автора Anthony Tucker-Jones (Chapter 15 Falaise

Chapter 15 Falaise – The Killing Grounds

Army Group B’s weekly situation report on 14 August 1944 noted that since 6 June they had destroyed 3,370 tanks and 475 aircraft. In this war of attrition it had not been enough to halt the impending encirclement. After two long months, Panzergruppe West, in the face of OKW’s insistence that no ground must be given up, even to regain the initiative and escape the Allied naval guns, had done all it could to stave off defeat.

North of Falaise, Lieutenant General G G Simonds’ Canadian II Corps could muster nearly 700 tanks by 10 August. The remains of Panzergruppe West and 7th Army facing them had just thirty-five panzers. Southeast of Falaise at Argentan, the Germans had just seventy tanks with which to fend off 300 American Shermans. The reality of pitting 105 panzers against 1,000 enemy tanks meant the Falaise salient was now a panzer killing ground.

The Falaise salient

Major General Wade Haislip’s US XV Corps drove on Alençon and Argentan on 12-13 August, with its spearhead formation, the French 2nd Armoured Division, seizing the bridges over the Sarthe in a night attack. The US 5th Armoured Division burst into Sèes on the Orne on the 12th and headed north for Argentan, tightening the noose. Both Alençon and Sèes fell on the 12th, despite resistance from the remains of the 9th Panzer Division and 708th and 352nd Infantry Divisions.

By the 13th, XV Corps was less than 25 miles (40km) south of the Canadian 1st Army, which was struggling to take the town of Falaise and close the gap. General Patton instructed Haislip to take Argentan and then push on Falaise. However, General Bradley ordered Haislip to remain at Argentan. It was this decision that partly ensured Falaise was a flawed victory. Criticism was later heaped on Montgomery for not urging the Canadians and Poles on, but what more could they have achieved in the face of such dogged German resistance?

On 13 August, 1st SS and 2nd Panzer were thrown piecemeal into the fight. The 10th SS launched a counterattack against the Americans the following day. It was supposed to have included 1st SS between Carrouges and La Ferté-Macé, 2nd Panzer in the Ecouché area and 116th Panzer in Argentan, but with only seventy panzers remaining these kept being siphoned off to plug emerging gaps along the southern front. The 10th SS met an American attack on the 14th with a small and short barrage followed by a counterattack deploying just eight panzers supported by panzer grenadiers north of Domfort. The following day, this weak force was driven back, but not without a fight and the exhausted 10th SS was finally removed from the line.

Trapped in the Falaise salient was the cream of the German tank forces, including elements of the 9th, 21st, 116th, 2nd SS, 9th SS, 10th SS, and 12th SS Panzer Divisions. By now, 116th Panzer was down to only fifteen tanks, 1st SS had just nineteen tanks, the 10th SS eight and 12th SS about twenty. The 116th Panzer Division tried to hold up the Americans, but the Germans had lost 100 armoured fighting vehicles.

By mid-August, along the northern shoulder of the pocket were the 21st, 1st SS and 12th SS Panzer Divisions fending of the British, Canadian and Polish forces. To the south the 10th SS, 9th, 1st SS, 2nd, 116th, 2nd SS Panzer Divisions and 17th SS Panzergrenadier Division were deployed from west to east respectively, resisting the Americans

The western end was defended by elements of seven Infantry and one parachute division lying north to south: 326th, 3rd Fallschirmjäger, 363rd, 331st, 353rd, 243rd, 84th and 275th. Notably the 363rd was holding positions east of Flers, 22 miles (35km) west of the Falaise-Argentan Road. Behind these forces were the 2nd SS and 9th SS Panzer Divisions.

On the northern edge of the pocket also lay the 276th, 277th, 271st and 89th Infantry Divisions. The commander of the 276th, perhaps sensing all was lost, ordered all those men not needed, some 4,000 soldiers from an original strength of 13,500, to withdraw on 14 August. The only infantry to the south with the remains of the panzers were weak elements of the mangled 708th Infantry Division. About a half of the rapidly-contracting pocket lay west of the Orne, while the other half lay west of the Dives.

The various Corps staffs found themselves scattered throughout the salient, unable to maintain effective control of their formations. At the western end, deployed north to south, were General Meindl’s II Parachute Corps and Elfeldt’s LXXXIV Corps. Along the southern edge, west to east were Krüger and von Funck’s LVIII and XLVII Panzer Corps, while to the north was Straube’s LXXIV Corps with Priess’ I SS Panzer Corps lying east of Falaise. In reality, many of the radio trucks had been lost and staff members were cut off from their HQs; those HQs that did retain any cohesion found it extremely difficult to get through to the divisions under their command. Only Bittrich’s II SS Panzer Corps in the middle of the pocket was able to withdraw while still exercising control of its divisional assets.

Beyond the northern shoulder of the Falaise salient, resting on Morteaux-Coulibuef, was the German 85th Infantry Division, struggling to hold the Polish 1st Armoured Division at bay; north of them, Hans von Obstfelder’s LXXXVI Corps was facing three British divisions. The 51st (Highland) Division was pushing toward St Pierre-sur-Dives, while the 7th Armoured and 49th (West Riding) Divisions were pushing on Mézidon. They were over the Dives and the Vie, driving toward Lisieux by 19 August. This sector was held by the German 272nd Infantry Division, which was able to withdraw from Normandy in good order.

General Bradley, fearing his troops might be trampled by the fleeing enemy, refrained from driving on to Falaise. This meant the two German armies trapped in the Falaise pocket were able to struggle eastward for another week. To the north, the German defenders held up the Canadian advance, known as Operation Tractable, for two days before they reached Falaise. There, 1st SS was on its last legs and similarly 12th SS had only fifteen tanks left. Canadian soldier Duncan Kyle recalled the carnage:

Germans charred coal-black, looking like blackened tree trunks lay besides smoking vehicles. One didn’t realise the obscene mess was human until it was poked at. I remember wishing the Germans didn’t have to use so many horses. Seeing all those dead animals on their backs…The road to Falaise was nauseating. I felt like puking many times, what butchery. The air force did its job well.

Fighting retreat

On the night of 14/15 August, Army Group B ordered all anti-aircraft artillery to be withdrawn from the pocket. Lacking support from the Luftwaffe, 5th Panzer Army (as Panzergruppe West had been known for the past week) was on its own and at the mercy of Allied fighter-bombers. Panzer Lehr had withdrawn on the 13th, but had left behind Kampfgruppe Kuhnow, consisting of a tank company, a howitzer battery and elements of Panzer grenadier Regiment 902. This crossed the Orne at Mesnil-Jean on the night of 16/17 August and joined the 12th SS. The German position became completely untenable on the 15th when the Allies landed in the south of France. The 11th Panzer Division, conducting defensive combat, withdrew to Alsace to defend the Belfort Gap in September.

Officer-cadet Kurt Misch and his comrades of 12th SS soon realised that, after all their tough resistance to the advancing Canadian and Polish forces, they were surrounded. Misch remembered the sense of apprehension:

On the night of 15 August we were marching in an unknown direction. During the night we suddenly saw Verey lights [flares] on three sides; we looked at each other knowingly – surrounded? Next day, we were sure. We tried to keep it from the men as long as possible. But they realised it as soon as the field kitchen did not turn up and the rations got smaller. Something new, unknown, takes possession of us. All the usual joking is silence. We are all inwardly preoccupied, wondering how to meet the situation, as individuals. If it does not mean death, being taken prisoner will mean a long separation from home. We ‘old’ ones stick together. Our Chief leaves no doubts in our minds about the gravity of the situation, and I come back from the conference deep in thought. The Verey lights hang like great signs in the heavens. The front lies beneath them in a breathless silence. Low-flying German planes drop rations, and a large container of chocolate lands near me. A nice surprise, and a greeting from the outside world. We have not yet been abandoned.

The truth was that Panzergruppe West, Panzergruppe Eberbach and 7th Army were well and truly trapped. The French Maquis were also active in the pocket, blocking roads with felled trees, harassing stragglers and, where possible, negotiating the surrender of isolated pockets of troops. Tired and hungry columns of Germans would often be greeted by a new roadblock with locals nonchalantly hanging around.

Those commanders that could make it, including von Kluge, Hausser and Eberbach, assembled at Nécyin the early hours of the 16th. All talk of a decisive counterattack was now completely forgotten; there was no way the Avranches/Mortain operation could be resurrected. Eberbach recalled the grim reality of the situation now engulfing the senior German command:

Each of us told him [Kluge] that an attack with divisions now bled white, without air forces, and without a safe supply service, was unthinkable. Only a quick withdrawal from the encirclement could, perhaps, avoid catastrophe. Kluge was now ready to give all orders for evacuation of the ‘finger’, as we had proposed, but only after having communicated with Hitler’s headquarters. Without its approval, he did not dare to make such a far-reaching decision. The people there, he said, lived in another world without any idea of the actual situation here, as he knew from our reports and what he had experienced himself in the last 24 hours.

Hitler grudgingly agreed to let the German Army withdraw through the Argentan-Falaise Gap. The II SS Panzer Corps (2nd SS, 9th SS, 12th SS and 21st Panzer Divisions) were to hold the northern flank against the British and Canadians and XLVII Panzer Corps (2nd and 116th Panzer Divisions) were to hold the south against the Americans while the remains of 7th Army, 5th Panzer Army and Panzergruppe Eberbach conducted a fighting retreat.

Field Marshal Walther Model replaced von Kluge as C-in-C West on 17 August, the latter committing suicide the following day. Model gained a reputation as Hitler’s ‘fireman’, being sent to stabilise various areas of the vast battlefield. He had fought in Poland, France and Russia, most notably he commanded the 9th Army on the Eastern Front. While von Kluge got permission to retire beyond the Orne, his replacement ordered a withdrawal behind the Dives. He also launched the 2nd SS Panzer against the British moving southward towards Trun on the eastern side of the Dives, just north of the main crossing point at St Lambert.

Model arrived at La Roche Guyon on the evening of the 17th, bumping into Bayerlein, commander of Panzer Lehr. ‘What are you doing here?’ enquired Model. ‘I wish to inform Field Marshal von Kluge of my departure, for what’s left of my division is to be withdrawn from the front to rest and refit, replied Bayerlein. Model was not amused: ‘My dear Bayerlein, in the East divisions are rested at the front, and in future that will be the practice here’.

It would take three nights to get the westernmost troops over the Orne and at least one night to complete the withdrawal over the Dives. In other words, the mouth of the pocket had to be kept open for at least four days, at all costs. This had to be done under constant Allied artillery and fighter-bomber bombardment and Maquis attack.

The Americans and British were slowly heading for each other and the Falaise salient was steadily squeezed from all sides as the Germans valiantly held open the neck. By the 17th, the pocket was only twenty miles (32km) wide by ten miles (16km) deep, containing about 100,000 men, remnants of fifteen divisions with elements from at least twelve others, all trying desperately to extricate themselves from the developing chaos. While the panzer divisions managed to hold the Americans and Canadians at bay, the vast columns of retreating Germans were decimated by the fighter-bombers and artillery, the roads becoming choked with burnt out vehicles, adding to the confusion.

Flying Officer J G Simpson, RAF 193 Squadron, recalled that it was tricky picking friend from foe:

We turned out to stop the German Counterattack at Mortain when the Germans tried to cut off the Americans and we were involved in the destruction of a lot of transport etc, during the Falaise Gap operation.

This involved quite tricky map reading as it was essential to know exactly where you were. The battlefield was pretty fluid and you didn’t get a lot of time to identify the tank you were attacking. Being a bomb squadron we did not do so much of this although quite often we bombed a nominated target like the edge of a wood or the end of a village. Then did a range around with our cannon which could do a lot of damage. Our chief problem was that the Germans were pretty good at camouflage – they even re-routed roads so that [they] sat under the cover of the apple orchards and you thought the roads were empty. Of course, all their tanks were under the trees. It was quite revealing how much of the German Army relied on the old horse rather than the famous Panzer. We chased them all the way across the River Seine; had some fun trying to catch them going over this river.

SS-Untersturmführer Herbert Walther, 12th SS, experienced the full terror of being trapped in the pocket:

My driver was burning. I had a bullet through the arm. I jumped on to a railway track and ran. They were firing down the embankment and I was hit in the leg. I made 100 metres, then it was as if I was hit in the back of the neck with a big hammer. A bullet had gone through beneath the ear and come out through the cheek. I was choking on blood. There were two Americans looking down at me and two French soldiers, who wanted to finish me off.

The Americans took him to an aid station and he eventually had thirteen bullets removed from his leg.

For three days sixty members of the 12th SS clung on in Falaise in the face of repeated Canadian attacks; when the town fell only four wounded prisoners were taken. When the Canadians finally entered on 17 August they found three Tigers from SS-Sturmbannführer Weiss’s Schwere SS-Panzer Abteilung 102 waiting for them. After fighting in the area of the cathedral, the panzers retreated with two assault guns covering their retreat toward Necy the following day. One immobilised Tiger was towed to the southern edge of Abbaye, while the northwest exits were blocked by the assault guns. The Canadians were beaten off and its crew destroyed the broken-down Tiger before they withdrew.

It was every man for himself now as Abteilung 102 abandoned its rearguard role and made for the assembly area at Vimoutiers, way to the west on the River Vie. The remaining Tigers made for Trun to the southeast and were harassed all the way by artillery and fighters. Finding St Lambert choked with vehicles and under low-level attack, they bypassed the village and sped for Chambois further south. Just outside the town, Will Fey’s Tiger had to be destroyed after it spluttered to a halt. Shortly after, SS-Sturmbannführer Weiss, having been wounded twice, was captured when the ambulance half-track he was travelling in came under fire.

When Falaise fell, the Allies had two options; a short hook or a long envelopment, the latter requiring a blocking force along the Seine. The Americans opted for the short hook, although Patton’s 3rd Army was already sweeping toward the Seine. At this point the Polish 1st and Canadian 4th Armoured Divisions had crossed the River Dives to the east of Falaise. Both were poised to strike for Argentan but were now directed to Chambois, about 10 miles (16km) northeast of Argentan.

Closing the gap

Montgomery now sought to block the corridor further east by blocking the narrow valley between the villages of Trun and Chambois. He demanded the Trun-Chambois gap be closed and on 17 August ordered:

It is absolutely essential that both armoured divisions of II Canadian Corps, i.e. 4th Canadian Armoured Division and 1st Polish Armoured Division, close the gap between 1st Canadian and 3rd US Army. 1st Polish Armoured Division must thrust past Trun and Chambois at all costs and as quickly as possible.

The Canadians and Poles were soon pressing hard on the Germans flanks. The Poles occupied Mount Ormel, the high ground east of Chambois. Although the Germans cut them off for three days, they kept shelling the fleeing troops below. This became known as ‘the corridor of death’.

The RAF were already doing Montgomery’s bidding; Wing Commander Johnnie Johnson was in the thick of it:

When the Spitfires arrived at Falaise, over the small triangle of Normandy bordered by Falaise, Trun and Chambois, the Typhoons were already hard at work. One of their favourite tactics against the long streams of enemy vehicles was to seal off the front and rear of the column by accurately dropping a few bombs. This technique imprisoned the desperate enemy on a narrow stretch of dusty lane, and since the transports were sometimes jammed together four abreast, it made the subsequent rocket and cannon attack a comparatively easy business against the stationary targets. Some of the armoured cars and tanks attempted to escape their fate by making detours across the fields and wooded country, but these were soon spotted by the Typhoon pilots and were accorded the same treatment as their comrades on the highways and lanes.

The Germans did everything they could to escape the pocket. Major-General Sir Francis de Guingand, Monty’s Chief of Staff, found that Allied pilots were presented with a dilemma:

During this time pilots reported a large proportion of the enemy’s vehicles were carrying Red Cross lags and emblems. It was obvious that this was merely a ruse to avoid having their transport attacked. I believe these lags were even seen on tanks. What were the pilots to do? The decision was to avoid attacking them, for it was thought that the Germans in their present mood might well take reprisals against our prisoners and wounded. A difficult decision, but probably the right one.

The Free French forces fighting alongside the Americans were given a bloody nose by rearguard units of the 9th and 116th Panzer Divisions, but Patton was driving all out for the Seine. His US 3rd Army was on the line of Orleans-Chartres-Dreux, facing little or no opposition, by the 16th. The drive was continued, hoping to swing north to seal off the Germans trapped against the river. US XV Corps, though, was held up by determined resistance as the retreating Germans fought desperate rearguard actions along the Seine. Nonetheless, the US 79th Division from XV Corps managed to secure a bridgehead over the Seine at Mantes-Gassicourt on 19 August. That day, supported by Sherman tanks, the Canadians seized St Lambert-sur-Dives, right in the path of the fleeing Germans.

On the night of 16 August, Eberbach had transferred his wholly inadequate command post to the staff of II SS Panzer Corps in Montabard, north of Argentan, while the staff of 7th Army shifted to Nécy. The following day, when Falaise fell, 116th Panzer reported that its forces east of Argentan had been driven off, the enemy had taken Le Bourg-St Léonard and Chambois was now impassable due to very heavy artillery fire.

Eberbach recalled:

During the night, I received a wireless message stating that Field Marshal Model, who had relieved Kluge, would like to meet the Commanding Generals of both Armies and me next morning at 0900hrs at 5th Panzer Army headquarters in Fontaine-l’Abbé. The distance was 47 miles (75km). I needed from 1500hrs until 2300hrs for the trip, primarily because I got caught up in II SS Panzer Corps’ movements. We saw grievous pictures. Bittrich’s attempt to reach his divisions and lead them against Trun failed….

Model wanted to withdraw behind the Seine and use the panzer divisions to hold open the bottleneck at Trun and Argentan. Eberbach goes on:

Instead of SS-General Hausser, Chief of Staff of 7th Army, Colonel von Gersdorff was present at the conference. With him, we came to an agreement that I should immediately leave for the Staff of II SS Panzer Corps near Meulles, in order to lead Corps to the combat area near Trun. The distance to Meulles was 22 miles (35km). I was, however, so often attacked by fighter-bombers and my car pierced through by bullets that I contrived to arrive at the staff of II Panzer Corps at 2200hrs. There I was informed that the British and American troops had met south-east of Trun, and had thus completed the encirclement of 7th Army.

Hausser, 7th Army’s commander, was shot through the jaw and Eberbach, taking charge, ordered Bittrich to get his troops either side of Vimoutiers ready to strike southeast of Trun to help the break-out, knowing full well that this was unlikely to happen. Bittrich had been unable to contact his divisional staff and in any case his men lacked ammunition, food, fuel and radio equipment. Eberbach then made his way to the HQ of 5th Panzer Army to get his decision confirmed by Sepp Dietrich, coordinate efforts with 7th Army and get II SS Panzer Corps supplies.

In the meantime, Otto Henning’s Panzer Lehr reconnaissance battalion did what they could to help their comrades escape:

We had to rescue a large troop contingent because it had been surrounded. Their commanding officer wanted to break through in a westerly direction but this was impossible and we took them to the north. There were so many people on the roads, whole headquarters units, medical staff, even ordinary cars with French civilians in them. During the day they didn’t dare show themselves but chose instead to travel at night. The retreat moved towards Falaise and we also drove in that direction; the roads were very crowded and the attacks constant. Oberfeldwebel [Staff Sergeant] Keichel told me: ‘We are pretty much surrounded, only one road is still open but under heavy fire, we will try to night to break out along it.’ We tried and came under heavy artillery fire but we pressed on and managed to get out at the last moment.

SS-Brigadeführer Theodor Wisch, commander of 1st SS Panzer Division, suffered a terrible wound and was only just rescued by one of his staff officers, SS-Hauptsturmführer Hans Bernhard. The latter recalled:

We were at the edge of a wood with the Corps commander – a Wehrmacht General – Freiherr Hans von Funck [XLVII Panzer Corps]. There was a big discussion – they were shouting at each other, everybody wanted to be right but nobody knew what was going on. Then the commander of the division [Wisch] and I set off across a field – eastwards – towards a village. There was an old stone bridge across the river there and I had an instinct that the enemy would fire on it. I told the commander, if I was in charge of the guns, I would fire in this direction. He didn’t pay any attention and then suddenly there was an explosion. He was hit and his leg gone. There I was -he was much bigger than me – he weighted 90 kilos or more. I was helpless. A Schützenpanzerwagen [armoured half-track] drove by -I knew the driver and ordered him to help us, ‘the divisional commander is wounded and we have to get him out of here.’ So we drove the SPW to the edge of the village where there was a big barn with a hayloft. I put him there and the staff doctor came to look at him and then we put him back in the SPW and set off toward the east.

A unit of the 9th SS then helped them escape the pocket.

On the night of the 17/18th, the 353rd Infantry Division, which had been acting as a rearguard, crossed the Orne. It then gathered in the Forêt de Goufferns with some 5,000 troops, less than half its strength, successfully escaping. Late on the 18th, the 271st Infantry Division broke contact with the British and its combat elements gathered northeast of Chambois, escaping with in excess of 5,000 men before the pocket was finally closed. In June its manpower had stood at 12,600.

Also on the 18th, the British were poised to drop the Special Air Service into the open mouth of the Falaise pocket by glider to seal the trap. Operation Falaise was to harass those units, especially the transport, that were escaping. Four gliders were actually in the air when the mission was called off. This may have been part of Operation Transigure, which proposed dropping American, British and Canadian airborne troops in the Paris-Orléans Gap as a blocking force. The SAS were to form the reconnaissance element, but these plans were overtaken by events on the ground.

Schwere Panzer Abteilung 503’s I Kompanie, trapped in the pocket, destroyed four Tigers on 18 August and two more two days later. Near Chambois, the last few Tigers of SS-Panzer Abteilung 102 found the town under a ‘dome of fire’. Reports also indicated that the road to Trun had been cut and that there was no escape.

Coming under enemy fire, the tanks loaded up as many fleeing troops as they could and drove clear. Everyone’s fighting spirit was now all but broken as Will Fey recounts on the 18th:

Our mood was completely depressed. No one spoke anymore, and a gloomy silence covered us. In Chambois we had to push a burning vehicle aside just to get through. Our soldiers in field grey streamed north, with dry throats and sweat dripping faces. We stopped on a hill and contemplated the situation before setting up a small kampfgruppe at a large farm. Our commander took over the command panzer, and we felt better again. An Oberst of the paratroops contributed a handful of men, and so the afternoon passed. The noise from the tanks on the road nearby got louder. This caught our interest and made us want to take some action, but we could not endanger the last Tiger of our small Kampfgruppe.

Instead, the commander and his radio operator crept forward with panzerfausts and knocked out a Churchill tank, thereby holding up the advancing column. Withdrawing at nightfall, they bumped into elements of the reconnaissance battalion from the 2nd SS, confirming that they had escaped the Falaise pocket.

The escape route was just five miles (8km) wide by 19 August, though it would not be completely sealed for another two days, and the rapidly-shrinking pocket measured just seven miles (11km) by six (9km). Under pressure from German paratroops within the pocket, the Poles were forced to relinquish control of some of the roads and up to 4,000 paratroops, supported by three tanks from 2nd SS, escaped. Kluge left La Roche Guy on at dawn on the 19th and after lunch, having failed Hitler, took his own life using cyanide.

Canadian armour probed the German defences at St Lambert-sur-Dives, losing two tanks on the 18th. The next morning they attacked, seizing half the village and then held on for thirty-six hours in the face of dogged counterattacks by the remains of 2nd Panzer to dislodge them. Germans fleeing over the river came under constant fire and at one point the Canadians called artillery fire down onto their own positions.

Escape from the cauldron

Jupp Steinbüchel from the 1st SS remembered the desperate drive to cross the Dives via the ford at Moissy, which, although in German hands, was under heavy Allied artillery fire, becoming a ‘corridor of death.’ His experiences encapsulated those of many of the men trapped in the Falaise salient, witnessing the horrifying death throes of the German forces as they sought frantically to escape the Allies deadly embrace:

After we had crossed the Falaise-Argentan road, the whole mess descended on us. Artillery fire, the likes of which we had never known, rained down upon us. We raced forward, trying to escape this area. Here and there panzers took hits and burst into flames. We just kept driving. Stopping meant certain death. Right next to us, the air was full of planes. The roads were jammed. We drove straight off through the fields, not caring what happened to the vehicles. Infantry fire alternated with artillery, only to be replaced by anti-tank guns. The horse-drawn units raced through the area. Horses hitched to driverless wagons went wild and ran, dragging everything behind. Wounded men groaned and screamed.

We loaded some onto our vehicle. One died on it. After that, he protected us from countless pieces of shrapnel.

On our route between Ville-de-Dieu and Tournai-sur-Dives, the enemy artillery had a direct shot at us. I need hardly describe what that felt like. Shells fell just in front of us, beside, or behind our panzer. We coursed over that road as fast as we could.

We reached a village. The town was a traffic jam of horse-drawn wagons, panzers, and automobiles. The enemy tanks were now firing into that mess with high-explosive shells. One can hardly imagine the chaos which reigned. Guns without crews. Panzers without drivers. Everyone trying to flee. Men running around and finding no way out. Fire from all sides. Our retreat was stuck; the enemy forces were too strong. Then someone found a new way. On we went. Enemy guns fired at us from six hundred metres away, but they missed. We saw the Canadians standing at their guns wearing white gym shorts.

The number of vehicles abandoned or burning kept on growing. One could barely move forward on the road. Off we went again through the fields. If we had not been in tracked vehicles, it would have been all over for us.

Then came the last step, the so-called ‘Road of Death.’ It was the most terrible part of the whole trip. No one can describe what we saw and lived through here.

Eberbach returned to Bittrich on 19 August, to find he had received no fuel and what ammunition had arrived was insufficient. Fuel did arrive the following day and the 9th SS and 10th SS were finally ready for action, though between them they could only muster twenty panzers. The II SS Panzer Corps found their way impeded by the debris of war. Eberbach noted: ‘One road of advance was packed with burned-out vehicles to such an extent that the tanks had first to clear an alley before passing’.

The 10th SS was right in the middle of the Falaise pocket. It was comparatively fortunate in being one of the formations which managed to escape over the River Dives before the rapidly narrowing gap at Chambois was finally closed by the US, Canadian and Polish armour. By the end of the third week of August it was everyman for himself in what seemed to be a state of increasing bedlam.

Nevertheless, German discipline held; rarely did whole units bolt and stragglers and units cut off from their parent formations were willingly welded into the ubiquitous battle groups or kampfgruppen. Members of 2nd, 12th SS and 116th Panzer found themselves fighting alongside each other. In the meantime, elements of the withdrawing 277th Infantry Division were east of Falaise by the 19th, enabling 2,500 men to break out to reach the rest of the division outside the pocket. The 363rd managed to withdraw 19 miles (30km) to the east and head south of Trun, escaping with 2,000 men.

Although wounded, General Freiherr von Lüttwitz resolutely led a kampfgruppe of 2nd Panzer through the chaos. Oberfeldwebel Hans Erich Braun was with them:

That night of 19 August, we heard our passport for escape from the cauldron. It was, simply ‘Forward’. Forward with a mixed battle group of tanks, self-propelled guns, flak and mounted artillery, scout cars, light tanks, and armoured troop carriers packed with Grenadiers, Paratroopers, and soldiers of all kinds of units. Forward through hell, but also towards the enemy, past the dead and the wounded. We had been tempered, like the steel plating of our tanks, and inside us now there was hardly any human feeling left. We were alive, but inside we were dead, numbed by watching the horrible scenes, which rolled past on both sides, just like a film. The Grenadiers sitting on their vehicles cowered low, grasping their weapons and holding on to the wounded. Anyone dying on top of these rolling steel coffins was just pitched overboard, so that a living man could take his place. They were sitting behind their tank guns, their lak guns, behind their automatic weapons, with one thought in their minds – to destroy the enemy who would soon appear now, to be without mercy, just like him.

The road taken by the remnants of 2nd Panzer and its grateful hangers-on was like a scene from hell; civilisation had abandoned them to the industrialised killing of the twentieth century. Braun felt numb as they drove by the wretched creatures that had once formed Hitler’s invincible Wehrmacht; members of the Heer, Waffen-SS, Luftwaffe and Fallschirmjäger. Braun watched:

The never ending detonations – soldiers waving to us, begging for help – the dead, their faces screwed up still in agony – huddled in trenches and shelters, the officers and men who had lost their nerve -burning vehicles from which piercing screams could be heard – a soldier stumbling, holding back the intestines which were oozing from his abdomen – soldiers lying in their own blood – arms and legs torn off – others driven crazy, crying, shouting, swearing, laughing hysterically – and the horses, some still harnessed to the shafts of their ruined wagons, appearing and disappearing in clouds of smoke and dust like ghosts – and the horses, again, screaming terribly, trying to escape the slaughter on the stumps of their hind legs. But also there were civilians lying by the roadside, loaded with personal belongings, often of no value at all, and still clinging to them in death. Close by a crossroads, caught by gunfire lay a group of men, women and children. Unforgettable, the staring gaze of their broken eyes and the grimaces of their pain distorted faces. Destroyed prams and discarded dolls littered the terrible scene.

Oberst von Gersdorff, 7th Army’s Chief of Staff, having lost contact with the Panzergruppe, was completely lost on the night of 19/20 August. Arriving at the southern entrance to St Lambert at around 0400 he found a column of vehicles and quickly took charge. Enemy armour and anti-tank guns were dominating the Trun-St Lambert-Chambois road, destroying anything that attempted to use it.

Gersdorff rallied two Mark IV Jagdpanzers from 2nd Panzer to clear the route. Following in his Kubelwagen, Gersdorff led a column of panzers, assault guns, self-propelled guns and half-tracks. The enemy anti-tank gunners were taken by surprise and surrendered but the advance was held up after the lead panzers were knocked out.

In a nearby orchard, Gersdorff took stock and found he had a kampfgruppe of six to eight tanks, four to six assault guns, twenty-five to thirty armoured personnel carriers and a number of Hornisse 8.8cm self-propelled anti-tank guns and Hummel 15cm self-propelled artillery under Major Bochnick, commander of Panzerjäger Abteilung 228, 116th Panzer. There were also about 1,000 infantry under SS-Sturmbannführer Brinkman from the 12th SS or 17th SS.

Elements of all the units controlled by XLVII Panzer Corps were involved in the breakthrough groups. Between 0600 and 0700 on the 20th, the corps staff, 1st SS and 2nd Panzer Divisions reached the Chambois-St Lambert area. Following the breakout of the 353rd Infantry Division and its successful escape over the Dives, the Allied artillery fire intensified, causing a great loss of men and material in the Chambois-St Lambert zone.

Gersdorff was determined to fight his way to safety, noting:

After brief preparations, the battle group thus formed set out at 0600hrs from the area approximately less than a mile (1km) north of St Lambert to attack and drive northwestward. Again and again, enemy tanks attempted to obstruct the advance, or to attack the flanks of the assault group from the hills, but were effectively taken under fire by our own armour-piercing weapons, ten-fifteen enemy tanks being set afire. Without any delay worth mentioning, the attack reached the elevated terrain around Goudehard [Coudehard], so that a breach had been laid in the enemy-encircling ring. Upon returning at about 0900hrs, as far as circumstances permitted, to search for the Army Commander, and to arrange for protection of the flanks in the gap created, the Chief of Staff found that the entire region between Chambois and St Lambert was now under terrible intense artillery fire. Nevertheless, the enemy, who was preoccupied with attacks by other breakthrough groups which were taking effect at Chambois as well as at and north-west of St Lambert, for the time being made no attempt to close the gap again. An endless line of Infantry and vehicles now flowed along the road through the gap.

On the night of 19/20 August, General der Fallschirmtruppen Eugen Meindl and his Chief of Staff, Oberst Ernst Blauensteiner, each led a kampfgruppe of survivors from the II Parachute Corps, 3rd Fallschirmjäger Division (which had been decimated), 7th Army HQ staff and some SS tanks in a final effort to escape.

Battle for St Lambert

Inside the corridor, 2nd Panzer with their remaining fifteen tanks attacked toward Canadian held St Lambert and found the bridge intact. Their commanding officer recalled: ‘The crossing of the Dives bridge was particularly horrible, the bodies of the dead, horses and vehicles and other equipment having been hurled from the bridge into the river formed a gruesome tangled mass’. The 10th SS and 116th Panzer managed to cross the river Dives via the St Lambert bridge and drove the encircling Allies away. The 116th escaped with just fifty vehicles.

Notably, at St Lambert Lüwittz’s 2nd Panzer met fierce resistance in the form of enemy tank, anti-tank and infantry fire. The tanks of 2nd Panzer had to renew their efforts to break out, while from midday enemy armour resumed trying to penetrate the town. Lüttwitz, now wounded, ordered his men to break out in separate groups. In particular they discovered an open road between Chambois and St Lambert heading northeast.

Panzer Lehr’s Kampfgruppe Kuhnow broke out on the 20th and the following day gathered at Senlis, north of Paris. Elements of the 1st SS, with the 277th Infantry and 3rd Fallschirmjäger Divisions, also escaped the pocket. However, the staffs of the controlling LXXXIV Corps, including General Otto Elfeldt, Oberstleutnant Friederich Creiger and Major Viebig, and those of the 84th Infantry Division were not as lucky. Remarkably, these were the only two staffs out of twenty higher-level staffs that did not escape. The 84th, which was valiantly acting as a rearguard, suffered some 5,500 casualties.

General Elfeldt mustered some of Panzergruppe West’s last remaining panzers for a final escape attempt:

By the time we had got back to the Orne the whole front had become much narrower than before, so my Corps headquarters had become superfluous and was temporarily withdrawn from the line. But the following morning the Canadians broke through southwards to Falaise and I was at once ordered to form a front to check them. The available troops were very scanty and we had no communications. The Canadian artillery fired all day into my head quarters, but fortunately did no damage at all although they fired about a thousand shells. These fell all round the small house in which I was, but no one was hurt. During the day I was able to re-form a continuous line, but beyond my right flank I could see the British tanks driving down the other side of the River Dives towards Trun. Thus our line of retreat was blocked.

The next day I was ordered to break out northeastward, behind the backs of these armoured forces. It was soon clear that this was not possible, as the British were now there in strength. So I proposed to the Army commander General Hausser, that my troops should be placed at the disposal of General Meindl, who was commanding the parachute forces, to help the latter to break out near St Lambert, southeastwards. It seemed to me that one strong thrust might have a better chance than a number of small ones. Meindl succeeded in breaking out, but when I reached St Lambert myself next morning the gap was again closed. I tried an attack with all I had left – a couple of tanks and two hundred men. It started well but then ran into part of the 1st Polish Armoured Division. After a two-hour fight our ammunition began to run out. Then the troops which were following behind me surrendered, thus leaving me with a handful of men at the cut-off tip of the wedge. So we had to surrender in turn. The commander of this Polish division was a fine-looking man and a gentleman. He gave me his last cigarette.

Outside the mouth of the pocket on 20 August, II SS Panzer Corps finally attempted to reach the trapped remnants of 7th Army. Directing the attack from its HQ at Vimoutiers, the corps launched the operation at 0400 hours. To the south of Vimoutiers two kampfgruppen of the 2nd SS struck toward Neauphe-sur-Dive and St Lambert. The much weaker 9th SS, which had lost an entire battalion fighting the Poles, was launched along the Champeaux road toward Trun.

For the counterattack Will Fey and the last Tiger tank joined men from the 9th SS and 12th SS equipped with nothing heavier than panzer fausts, holding defensive blocking positions on the Vimoutiers-Trun road. He recalled how they bumped into the Polish 1st Armoured Division near Champosoult; knocking out two Shermans and forcing the rest to retreat, they pressed on. The kampfgruppe broke through almost to Chambois, reaching some of those trapped. Fey noted:

At full speed, we fired salvos from our MGs [machineguns] at the transport convoys of the enemy, joyfully welcomed by German soldiers who already had one foot in the prisoner of war camp. Our enemies stared at us with fearful faces as we broke into the encirclement of Falaise, a wild and daring chase. We experienced things we never had before, such as knocking out a Sherman that suddenly showed up from a side street, at a distance of eight metres! We had achieved our mission to open up the encirclement. The whole staff of our Panzer Army with its Commander-in-Chief, Hausser, which was still inside the encirclement, was able to escape being taken prisoner! But then we had to get back if we did not want to lose contact with the withdrawal operation!

The 2nd SS, with just twenty panzers, were unable to achieve much and the Polish 2nd Armoured Regiment halted the 9th SS. The counterattack came to a stop before a series of hills: 258, southwest of Les Champeaux; 240, east of Ecorches; 239, west of Champosoult and 262, northeast of Coudehard. The SS could get no further and at Hill 239 the 2nd SS were counterattacked by sixty enemy tanks and a bitter tank battle followed; 9th SS panzer grenadiers, lacking tank support, got as far as the heights of Les Cosniers.

Nevertheless, II SS Panzer Corps’ efforts were an unwelcome distraction for the Allies and eased the pressure on some of those inside the pocket. A gap was forced and 2,000 men streamed through as well as twenty-five tanks and fifty guns. Having completed its mission of briefly opening up the pocket, Fey’s Tiger, covered in panzer grenadiers, drove west toward the Seine.

In the meantime, General von Schwerin’s 116th Panzer, covering the rear of the XLVII Panzer Corps during the afternoon of the 20th, had got as far as Hill 168 without being molested. In St Lambert the 116th was greeted by abandoned and destroyed debris strewn everywhere. At dusk on 20 August the brave Canadian defenders in St Lambert-sur-Dives, calling down artillery fire, were able to destroy the gathering German forces before they could even mount their attack.

During the bitter two-day battle for the village the Germans suffered 300 dead, 500 wounded and 2,100 captured, including some of the officers and men from 2nd Panzer Division, who laid down their arms under the watchful eye of Canadian Sherman tanks. During the close-quarter fighting seven panzers, forty other vehicles and twelve 8.8cm guns were destroyed.

Clearing a way through the choked roads between 2300 and 0100 on the night of 20/21 August, the survivors of the 116th Panzer Division, with about fifty combat vehicles, broke through without notable loss. The division managed to escape with eleven Panthers, four Panzer IVs, three StuGs, and two Wespe and one Hummel self-propelled guns.

One group were not so fortunate. A kampfgruppe at Argentan found itself left behind and tried to fight its way through at Trun, but was not successful and surrendered. Elements of Panzer Lehr, supporting the 331st Infantry Division, also remained behind north of Grôce, defending the Gráce-Vimoutiers road.

The 9th SS vainly tried to break through again on 21 August, using two massive King Tiger tanks, but these were swiftly knocked out. The Allies now began to mop up the remaining Germans trapped west of the Dives and about 18,000 troops went into the ‘bag’ that day. The Allies found the surrounding countryside a charnel-house, the air fouled by the stench of rotting corpses, cattle and horses. Incredibly, despite the desperate situation, in less than a week between 14 August and 21 August, the German Army and Waffen-SS claimed to have destroyed 293 Allied tanks. Liquidating the pocket had come at a terrible cost in men and matériel.

Horrendous destruction

Second Lieutenant Stuart Hills, Nottinghamshire Sherwood Rangers Yeomanry, 8th Armoured Brigade, followed the British 11th Armoured Division through the Falaise pocket via Chambois to L’Aigle. There he witnessed the devastation:

The scenes in the Falaise pocket, where Allied air power had wreaked such destruction, were horrendous. The various German divisions had a terrible pounding in the Normandy battle, Panzer Lehr, for instance lost all its tanks and infantry units, while about 50,000 of the enemy had been killed and some 20,000 taken prisoner. Thousands still lay unburied within the pocket: the roads and fields were littered with German dead in various stages of decomposition. Then there were the carcasses of cows and horses, the smashed vehicles and abandoned carts laden with loot. Many of the human and animal bodies had swelled grotesquely in the summer sun, and the stench was awful. ‘Who in God’s name will do what about this lot?’ asked Padre Skinner. It was a fair question.

Similarly, The Times’ war correspondent was aghast at the destruction wrought in the Falaise pocket. He recalled:

Nearly every yard of ground must have been pin pointed by batteries of all calibres: coming down from Trun there is hardly a yard of road, along which sporadic fighting was still going on yesterday, that does not tell its grim tale. The ditches are lined with destroyed enemy vehicles of every description…

For four days the rain of death poured down, and with the road blocked with blazing tanks and trucks little can have escaped it. Nothing can describe the horror of the sight in the village of St Lambert-sur-Dives, an enemy graveyard over which his troops were struggling yesterday in an effort to break through the cordon hedging them off from the seeming escape lanes to the Seine.

Lieutenant Hills was staggered by it all and recorded that the public back home were perhaps rightly spared the full reality of the butchery:

Press and news photographers certainly recorded the grisly scene, although I myself have never seen the results of their efforts: I can only surmise that the sheer horror of it all may have placed constraints on the publication of such material. For this was strong medicine, even for those of us who were more accustomed than those at home to the hideous visions of war. For my part, I was simply dazed and dumbfounded at what I had witnessed. If it had not been before my eyes, I would have felt it to be utterly unreal.

The Times reporter observed Hitler’s armoured forces were completely spent: ‘Within an area of about a square mile hundreds of tanks and armoured cars, great trucks and guns and horse-drawn wagons, lie burned and splintered in hideous disarray.’ Anything salvagable was quickly retrieved as the correspondent witnessed: ‘All manner of enemy vehicles that had escaped the destruction were being driven back to our own lines under white lags or hastily designed white stars.’

General de Guingand, like many senior Allied officers, went to view the scene at first hand:

The destruction caused to the enemy was terrific. I have never seen it equalled before or since. The tens of thousands of prisoners, the wounded and the dead. Thousands of tanks and vehicles lying all over the countryside. Some burnt out, some abandoned. The roads that were still open to them were packed with transport, nose to tail. Our aircraft had got to work and record bags had been obtained by our pilots. There were hundreds of dead horses rotting in the hot sun. Never have I seen such a scene of desolation. I flew over the area once or twice in a puddle jumper. It was an unforgettable sight, and the smell of decay was strong in the air above. It seemed difficult to imagine how any army could survive a defeat of this sort.

General Dwight Eisenhower, Allied Supreme Commander, was also taken on a tour:

Forty-eight hours after the closing of the gap I was conducted through it on foot, to encounter scenes that could be described only by Dante. It was literally possible to walk for hundreds of yards at a time, stepping on nothing but dead and decaying flesh.

He was rightly pleased with the crushing defeat of the Nazi war machine and recalled in his memoirs:

German commanders concentrated particularly on saving armoured elements, and while a disappointing portion of their panzer divisions did get back across the Seine, they did so at the cost of a great proportion of their equipment. Eight Infantry and two panzer divisions were captured almost in their entirety.

During this final battle the Wehrmacht lost approximately 10,000 killed and 50,000 captured, though Eberbach estimated the number killed during 10-22 August at about 20,000. The Americans counted in their zone of the pocket 380 tanks and 160 self-propelled guns as well as 5,000 vehicles. In the British, Canadian and Polish areas were littered 344 armoured vehicles. The 2nd Tactical Air Force claimed to have destroyed or damaged 190 tanks and 2,600 vehicles during its sorties over the battlefield.

Typhoon pilot Flight Lieutenant H Ambrose, 175 Squadron, was amazed by the coordination of the air attacks and disgusted by the smell of death:

[Wing Commander] Charles Green was absolutely brilliant about the Falaise Gap. He had sorted it all out. He saw what was going on and warned the AOC [Air Officer Commanding] and the Army that this was a situation that had to be arrested pretty quickly. Some of the German Army did escape, of course, but the Typhoons and some Spitfires, made mincemeat of the German Army at Falaise. They just blocked roads, stopped them moving and just clobbered them. You could smell Falaise from 6,000 feet in the cockpit. The decomposing corpses of horses and flesh – burning flesh, the carnage was terrible. Falaise was the heyday of the Typhoon.

The Germans claim that 40,000 troops escaped, although many of them were killed before they crossed the Seine and, crucially, they only took twenty-five panzers with them. Eberbach thought less than half this number of men escaped the pocket. The Germans had lost all their equipment and it was seen as their worst defeat since the Battle of Stalingrad.

Colonel David Belchem, Head of Montgomery’s Operations and Planning Staff succinctly summed up the desperate nature of the battle:

The stubborn Falaise pocket was finally closed on 19 August, when American troops driving from the south towards Chambois met 4th Canadian Armoured and the Polish Armoured Divisions converging on the town from the northwest and northeast. As the noose tightened, this tiny area of Normandy contained the shattered remnants of some eighteen German Army formations. The battle for Falaise lasted for nearly two weeks. Initially the beleaguered enemy retained some degree of organisation – the infantry units fighting in the west while the remnants of the panzer divisions battled desperately to keep open the narrow escape route at the neck: but by 16 August the situation was chaotic. For some time after 19 August, the Allied formations were fully occupied in rounding up the dispersed groups of confused enemy survivors – each group containing, perhaps, members of up to a dozen different units. The wreckage and confusion within the ‘pocket’ is difficult to describe: enemy transport vehicles, guns and tanks were found packed nose to tail in a landscape of total devastation.

In contrast, Colonel Ralph Ingersoll, historian of General Bradley’s 12th Army Group summed up Falaise with an air of deep regret:

The failure to close the Argentan-Falaise gap was the loss of the greatest single opportunity of the war. The news would have come hard on the heels of the attempted assassination of Hitler… and would have been accompanied by the news of the liberation of Paris [less than a week later]. But as long as any of the German Army escaped, Hitler had a chance to cover up the extent of the disaster.

This he would do in spectacular fashion.