D-Day. The Battle for Normandy

some soldiers resorted to self-inflicted wounds, a smaller, unknown number committed suicide.
    Military doctors also had to cope with the mundane. Flea bites from farmyards and barns could become infected. Many needless accidents were caused by a combination of exhaustion and raw Calvados, which GIs called ‘applejack’ or sometimes ‘white lightning’ because of its strength. The number of cases of diarrhoea rose alarmingly, but constipation was also a problem, especially among armoured crews. The over-salted contents of K-Rations were hated. Even the lemonade powder with Vitamin C was used instead for cleaning and scouring. A running joke developed that German prisoners of war were claiming that forcing them to eat K-Rations was a breach of the Geneva Convention. Men dreamed of ice cream, hot dogs and milkshakes. Their only hope of such comforts came when they were in reserve and the American Red Cross doughnut wagon turned up, run by young women volunteers. Its appearance also added the promise of a chat with a girl from back home. But when resting, soldiers resorted to more masculine pursuits. Paydays would see every form of gambling, with dice or seven-card stud. And if they had no money, they played for cigarettes, like before when waiting for D-Day.
    Personal cleanliness in that humid summer was also hard to maintain when there were few opportunities for washing. Some French women clearly could not restrain their curiosity, to the discomfort of American modesty. ‘I find it a bit hard getting used to women here looking at the men taking a bath,’ wrote a medical officer in his diary. ‘There were scores of GIs bare as the day they were born washing and swimming in the water round the mill house - and two women sat around quite nonchalantly, at times standing, overlooking the scene.’
    To preserve anything from the rain that July required ingenuity. A sergeant in the 1st Infantry Division recounted that he always kept a dry pair of socks and some toilet paper in the top of his helmet liner. Soldiers also needed to hang on to their kit, because fascinated children were often trying to make off with their own souvenirs. Little French boys pestered them, requesting ‘ cigarettes pour Papa ’, only to go off and smoke them themselves. They were constantly hanging around the mess tents in rear areas, despite orders to clear them away. But American soldiers always indulged them: ‘French kids used to come around, with their little tin pails and stand at the mess line, and we always made sure we had extra food to give them.’
    A gendarme in Caumont, behind the 1st Division’s lines, was persuaded to try a piece of chewing gum. One of his main tasks was to cope with soldiers searching cellars for wine and Calvados. He and his men had the idea of scrawling ‘Mines’ on the walls by the entrance. But while he was ready to forgive soldiers who felt a desperate need for alcohol, he was deeply shocked, on finding his first dead Allied soldier, to see that someone had already stolen his boots. ‘I know we lack everything, but even so!’ he wrote. Looting by the townsfolk made him look at his fellow citizens afresh. ‘It was a great surprise to find it in all classes of society. The war has awakened atavistic instincts and transformed a number of law-abiding individuals into delinquents.’
     
    While the German Seventh Army feared that Périers would be the immediate focus of the next American offensive, Bradley was still determined to take Saint-Lô from the Martinville ridge, just to the north-east of the town.
    German commanders were concerned about the Martinville ridge sector because Schimpf’s 3rd Paratroop Division was being ground down. An Ultra intercept provided Bradley with the information that Meindl’s II Paratroop Corps had lost 6,000 men. Rommel had been left in no doubt about the gravity of the situation when he visited General Meindl at II Paratroop Corps headquarters on the evening of 14 July. (On that day of foul weather, Rommel had been able to drive around without fear of Allied fighters.) Meindl warned him that Hitler’s demand to hold the present front line at all costs could well prove disastrous. Less than a week later, Meindl complained to General Kurt Student, the commander-in-chief of the paratroop army, that two requests for reinforcements had not been answered. Those who arrived were often unfit for battle and became casualties immediately, as both the Americans and British