D-Day. The Battle for Normandy

following day, a Canadian captain asked for advice on a good restaurant in Caen, because he was sick of eating army rations.
    Some Germans, who had been cut off, searched for civilian clothes in the ruins to help their escape. Others, especially some Osttruppen , began looting. Commandant Gilles and a couple of his men found two young SS soldiers trying to hide. They handed them over proudly to some Canadian troops on the rue de Bayeux. Care had to be taken in many places, as the SS had left behind booby-trapped grenades.
    Civilians emerged, unable to believe that four years of German occupation was finally over and fearful that the SS might retake the town in a counter-attack. Some greeted the Allied soldiers with real warmth and joy, but far more were still numb from what they had been through. ‘Most of the women were crying bitterly,’ wrote a British sapper, ‘griefstricken and anguished. They lingered by their shattered dwellings, perhaps for a last look at their own personal treasures. A child’s book lay in the garden, its pages idly flipped by the wind. Inside the house, the doors hung creaking on their hinges, the tables lay where they had fallen from that first great concussion.’
    Colonel Usher’s groups set to work rapidly, clearing routes with bulldozers and trying to set up an emergency water supply. Most basic services were not restored until September. A convoy of army trucks with food had been prepared ready for the entry into Caen. Mine clearance was a slow and arduous task, and so was the recovery of bodies from under the rubble of ruined buildings. The stench from decomposing corpses was terrible. In fact, many people in Caen, however hungry, could not face a ripe Camembert for a long time because of the horrible memories evoked by the smell.
    On 10 July, a ceremony to raise the tricolore on the façade of the Eglise Saint-Etienne was held in the presence of Monsieur Daure, the new préfet appointed by de Gaulle’s provisional government. Tears ran down the cheeks of many of those present. Three days later, the British Second Army held what was supposed to be a victory parade in the Place Saint-Martin. A Scottish pipe band struck up, as another tricolore was raised. The bewilderment on the faces of the French crowd was plain. They had never heard the ‘Marseillaise’ played on bagpipes.
     
    Operation Charnwood had been a very partial success, taking just the northern part of Caen. The Second Army had failed to secure enough ground to permit the build-up to continue. The bulk of what was to become the Canadian First Army had to wait behind in England. Exasperation at Bradley’s headquarters and at SHAEF was now echoed loudly in Washington and in the American press. Many blamed Eisenhower for not adopting a firmer line with Montgomery.
    On 10 July, Montgomery held a conference in his command caravan with Dempsey and Bradley. There was much to discuss, with the British blocked round Caen and the First US Army bogged down in the marshes and the bocage to the west. Montgomery suggested that Bradley was trying to attack on too wide a front. What he needed was a concentrated punch. Montgomery, as a result, later convinced himself that he was the original architect of what became Operation Cobra. Dempsey, that morning, decided that he also needed to mount a major offensive, aiming at a breakthrough towards Falaise. Since this was what the Germans feared most, it would also keep German panzer forces on the British front, as Montgomery wanted. This outline plan would become known as Operation Goodwood.
    For the moment, however, another attempt was made to seize Hill 112, the key feature between the Odon and the Orne abandoned during Operation Epsom. The fighting for Hill 112 became pitiless. Germans of the 9th SS Panzer-Division Hohenstaufen soon called the place ‘Kalvarienberg’, the hill of Calvary. The name came from the Croix des Filandriers, a shrine of the crucifixion, which seemed to take on a new significance.
     
    On 10 July, at 05.00 hours, the 43rd Wessex Division attacked from the Odon valley towards Hill 112 in Operation Jupiter. The divisional commander, Major General G. I. Thomas, was ‘a small, fiery, very determined and grim gunner, without a spark of humour’. Thomas, who had just taken over, was determined to shake up his new command. He seems to have been generally disliked. Behind his back, officers called him ‘von Thoma’. One brigade was to attack Hill 112, while