D-Day. The Battle for Normandy

was divided into infantry-armour teams, each with its own engineer explosives group ready to blow holes in the hedgerows. The Shermans would bombard each hedgerow intersection with their 75 mm main armament, then spray the hedges in between with machine-gun fire, while the infantry advanced. All this was combined with a more flexible rolling barrage, which could be adapted to unexpected delays in the rate of advance. Each hedgerow when taken was to be treated as a new line of departure.
    Perhaps more than any previous bocage operation, the 2nd Division’s advance went according to plan, but it remained a ‘grim job’. Even when it seemed that a hedgerow system had been thoroughly cleared, German paratroops would again emerge from hidden entrances to shoot at their backs. The western shoulder of Hill 192 was the most fiercely defended and was dubbed ‘Kraut Corner’. It was finally outflanked after an hour and fifteen prisoners were taken. ‘Three enemy paratroopers who still held out were eliminated by a tank dozer which buried them under five feet of dirt.’
    Nearby, the hamlet of Cloville was cleared by house-to-house fighting amid the ruins from the artillery bombardment which had failed to destroy an assault gun and a tank supporting the German paratroops. A Sherman managed to knock out the two armoured vehicles to secure the objective. The advance continued shortly before 1200 hours. To avoid being slowed down again, the hamlet of Le Soulaire, half a mile further on, was bypassed, and by 1700 hours the leading platoons began to leapfrog across the Bayeux road in tiny groups. Their tank support could not stay with them because of anti-tank guns still concealed in the rough woodland on the reverse side of Hill 192.
    While they were under fire, an unknown senior officer appeared, inspecting their positions. A GI called out to him to get down immediately or he would be killed. ‘Mind your Goddam business, soldier!’ the officer roared back. It was General George Patton, conducting a personal reconnaissance to familiarize himself with the terrain.
    In the centre, the Shermans kept up with the infantry. They were even able to enter the woods on the side of the crest because the saturation of white phosphorus shells in the opening bombardment had almost burned it to the ground. They met only ‘scattered opposition’ and advanced down the southern slope. Although unable to cross the Bayeux road by nightfall, they were firmly dug in just north of it.
    On the left flank of the attack, the 23rd Infantry had a very hard fight, sustaining many casualties near a re-entrant dubbed ‘Purple Heart Draw’ on the north-eastern slope of the feature. This had proved impassable for tanks, and far too exposed for infantry on their own, because German artillery and mortar batteries had registered every target in the area. Germans in houses a few hundred yards to the left, which should have been hit in the American bombardment, also contributed a withering automatic fire until two Shermans from the 741st Tank Battalion advanced to within thirty yards and blasted the foundations, causing the buildings to collapse on to the German machine-gun teams inside.
    Closer in towards the summit, the right-hand company of the battalion perfected a technique of firing fragmentation rifle grenades to explode as airbursts over German machine-gun pits. By the end of the day, the battalion had advanced 1,500 yards and had reached the ridge, but it was still 400 yards short of the Bayeux road. One of the most unexpected achievements of the day’s infantry-tank cooperation had been that not a single Sherman was lost. And on 12 July, the advance continued in the centre and east, so that the 2nd Division held all its objectives north of the Bayeux road. With the capture of Hill 192, the Americans now had observation posts with a clear view over Saint-Lô and its surrounding area.
    Just to the east on the 1st Division’s sector south of Caumont, an interesting contrast to the bitter fighting for the Bayeux road had just taken place. The Americans arranged a truce on 9 July with the 2nd Panzer-Division to hand over a second group of German nurses captured in Cherbourg. ‘This second transfer and the chivalrous treatment of these nurses,’ wrote their commander, Generalleutnant Freiherr von Lüttwitz, ‘made at that time a deep impression upon the entire division.’ Lüttwitz informed Rommel, who then decided that this would be the place to