D-Day. The Battle for Normandy

group of terrified, disorientated lads - battle shocked, jittering and yelling in a corner’. ‘Several SS wounded came in - a tough and dirty bunch - some had been snipers up trees for days. One young Nazi had a broken jaw and was near death, but before he fainted he rolled his head over and murmured “Heil Hitler!”.’
    In field dressing stations, those doomed to die were taken away to another tent and injected with morphine. Medical staff became worried about the shortage of blood left for transfusions. They were also horrified by the ignorance of troops on how best to handle the wounded. Soldiers did far more damage moving those with severe fractures rather than leaving them where they were until trained stretcher-bearers could splint them up. ‘All the lessons of the First World War seemed to have been forgotten,’ wrote the same doctor with 210th Field Ambulance. Like the rest of his exhausted colleagues, he was afraid that his judgement was impaired by lack of sleep.
     
    The ‘Führer order’ that Caen was to be held at all costs was followed for all of 8 July. Only that night did General Eberbach agree to Kurt Meyer’s insistence that the mangled remains of his Hitler Jugend should pull back to the southern part of Caen across the Orne. Eberbach felt the withdrawal could be justified to OKW because they were virtually out of ammunition and it was impossible to send forward any more.
    On 9 July, the city still lay under a pall of smoke and dust. André Heintz was woken at 05.30 hours by a companion in the Resistance. ‘The Germans are leaving!’ he told him. They watched the convoys pulling out through the town, yet no British guns fired. Their leader, Commandant Gilles, distributed the last few Sten guns and sent his members off northwards in pairs to act as guides for the Allied forces. Heintz put on his brassard, a tricolore with the Cross of Lorraine. Suddenly seeing a German soldier near what had been the university swimming pool, he snatched it off again. But the German was dead, frozen in position, having been killed by blast. The brassard was recognized by the first British soldiers he encountered, who gave him the thumbs-up sign.
    So great was the destruction that, even with their maps, the British and Canadians found it impossible to work out where they were. Most routes were impassable and there were isolated snipers left behind. A column of Canadian armoured cars descended the rue Saint-Martin. The commander, whose orders were to cross the town as rapidly as possible to try to secure the bridges, asked a bystander, ‘Where is the River Orne?’ He climbed on to the armoured car to give directions, but a German defensive position further on opened up with machine-gun and anti-tank gun fire. The armoured car went into rapid reverse, and their French guide had to leap off and hide in a doorway.
    The Hitler Jugend , having pulled back to the south of the Orne across the only bridge left standing, rapidly prepared it for demolition and established defensive positions. They forced locals at gunpoint to dig them trenches in the convent gardens of Les Petites Soeurs des Pauvres and cut down apple trees to improve the fields of fire for their machine guns. Cellar entrances were also sandbagged, ready for defence. The bridge was blown as soon as the leading Canadian platoon came into sight.
     
    At the northern edge of Caen, the British civil affairs team under Lieutenant Colonel Usher had to abandon its vehicles. ‘At last,’ wrote one of his officers. ‘Entered Caen with party of officers. The north end seems utterly devastated. Pile after pile of rubble and a deathly silence punctuated only by occasional bursts of machine gun fire.’
    An officer from civil affairs told André Heintz that they intended to set up their headquarters in the Hôtel d’Angleterre. Heintz guided them to it, knowing that the only evidence of its former identity was a remnant of the royal arms with ‘ Honi soit qui mal y pense ’. He resisted the temptation to say that the British should not have destroyed it, but the officer himself recognized the black irony. He let Heintz lead him to the only area of the city where some buildings were relatively undamaged, but then asked if they would be able to have a bath. Heintz explained that Caen had been without water since the first bombing on 6 June. The liberators still seemed to have no idea what the city had suffered, despite the evidence around them. The