Iron Sniper: A World War II Thriller

Chapter Thirty-Four

From the hills above the valley filled with German troops, artillery shells rained down. To the west was Canadian artillery, to the eastern side was Patton's 3rd Army. The Germans were effectively fish in a barrel.

The men in the artillery units stripped off their shirts and worked in the hot August sun, streaming sweat. Such destruction was hard work. Shells poured down into the valley below, killing and killing.

As the noose enclosed what was left of the German 7th army and 5th Panzer narrowed, artillery shells loaded with leaflets encouraging the Germans to surrender were fired into their positions. The sheets fluttered everywhere, snatched out of the air by desperate Wehrmacht troops. The SS threatened to shoot anyone they caught reading the leaflets.

Those who sensed the inevitable were likely hoping to stay alive long enough to do just what the leaflets suggested. Other Germans were focused on escaping. A few insisted on fighting — and dying — until the bitter end.

It was a point of consternation to many Allied officers that the bulging gap had not been pulled shut like the drawstring of a tobacco pouch, catching the Germans neatly inside. By now, just two miles of territory was left to German forces. Through this opening, the Wehrmacht continued to escape.

General Omar Bradley and the other Allied commanders had their reasons not to rush to close the gap, chief of which was worry over the confusion that might result among different units from different nations operating in close proximity in the heat of battle. Allied forces were arranged across from each other in what could easily become a circular firing squad. In their frenzy to kill Germans, they might very well kill one another. The Allied high command feared the toll that friendly fire would have on sensitive Allied alliances.

All in all, it was safer to let a few Germans escape than to take a chance that American, Canadian, Polish, and British troops might bombard one another by mistake.

In the middle of the artillery bombardment, an unusual drama unfolded.

Up on the heights, an American unit watched a German soldier galloping away on horseback. It was insanity that he would even try to cross that killing field. Machine-gun fire churned the narrow dirt road. At one point, a shell landed so close that dirt sprayed across horse and rider, but still they kept going.

Some of the soldiers stopped shooting and cheered him on.

With a last surge of power, horse and rider disappeared into the trees and relative safety.

A ragged cheer went up.

"What the hell's going on?" an officer wanted to know, red-faced. "How do you know that son of a bitch wasn't shooting at us on Omaha beach?"

"Sir, we just—"

"I don't want to hear it, soldier! Put some hurtin' on those sons of bitches!"

The firing recommenced.

It was likely that the horseman was trying to retreat down a road that would become known as "The Corridor of Death" — and with good reason. Dead horses, burned trucks, smashed tanks, and bodies — many, many bodies — lay thick on the road.

Thousands of fleeing troops using the one available road away from the Allies had to make their way across a narrow ford, known as the Gue de Moissy. In a sense, the Wehrmacht forces trying to cross the ford were like the camel trying to pass through the eye of a needle. Under relentless artillery fire and air attacks, somehow thousands of troops still managed to slip away. If there was a story to be told of courage under fire from this battle, it was at the ford. Their determination and order despite the chaos were some of the German Army's greatest accomplishments at Falaise, even in defeat.

The gap closed August 19 when U.S., British, Canadian, and Polish forces finally completed the Allied line. The tobacco pouch had been drawn shut.

The next day at 1200 hours the Normandy campaign was declared to be over. Seventy-seven days had passed since the D Day landing. Some thought that the war was essentially over after the disastrous German defeat, but that was wishful thinking. The fighting and dying would go on for another several months, with awful ordeals like the wintry Ardennes and Bastogne still ahead.

Around Falaise and Argentan, the numbers of dead were astonishing. At least 10,000 were killed. The Germans were comfortable with horses and had made use of them to pull wagons filled with supplies, or simply to ride. Now, dead horses lay everywhere. For days after the bombardment and retreat, witnesses described a gray haze over the valley. The haze came from swarms of flies settling over the dead men and horses. The unlucky men assigned to bury the dead sometimes had to shoot the bloated corpses to release enough of the putrid gas so that they could handle the bodies for burial. Some would suffer nightmares about such grisly sights for years to come.

With the battle won, General Eisenhower was one of those who came to tour the scenes of destruction. Much of Argentan, like other towns caught up in the fighting, lay in ruins. And yet, odd things had survived. Navigating the rubble, Ike's motorcade passed the bombed-out shell of a building, all of its windows shattered and the stucco pockmarked by bullets and shrapnel, but with its proud sign proclaiming "Ecole Maternelle" entirely intact.

Ike was awestruck by the human carnage. He later wrote, "The battlefield at Falaise was unquestionably one of the greatest killing fields of any of the war areas. 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."

With so many dead, it seemed miraculous that vast numbers of Germans somehow managed to survive the bombardment.

At least 20,000 and maybe more escaped into Germany.

Another 10,000 men became prisoners. Some might say they were the lucky ones, having survived the final battle and avoided the ones still to come. Long columns of prisoners marched endlessly with hands on heads, wearing greatcoats despite the summer heat. Veteran soldiers knew that come nightfall or winter, they would be glad of a coat.

Some Americans, out of curiosity, struck up conversations with the Germans, many of whom spoke some English. They found the Germans friendly, relieved that the war was over, and eager to talk about their families back home, as were the Americans. The soldiers had a great deal in common. Both sides came away from these conversations wondering what they'd been killing each other for.