D-Day. The Battle for Normandy

communications network. But then he claimed that the objective had not been to break through the German positions, but simply to penetrate them. Journalists threw back at him what they had been told before the offensive. Next day, Dempsey’s chief of staff made another attempt to explain away the situation using impenetrable military jargon. An American correspondent caused roars of laughter by demanding a translation.
     
    The heat became oppressive on the morning of 20 July and then the rains came again. Under an almighty downpour, the dust turned to sludge and slit trenches filled with water. Tracks were eighteen inches deep in mud. The conditions were so terrible that they provided an excuse to call off Goodwood officially.
    For the troops who had taken part, the situation was a bitter disappointment after all the promises. An infantry officer with the 7th Armoured Division was bivouacked with his battalion near Démouville in ‘a field strewn with German dead’. ‘Countless flies swarmed over the corpses. Maggots seethed in open gash wounds. It was revolting, yet I could not take my eyes off a lad who could not have been much more than sixteen years of age; only fluff on his chin. His dead eyes seemingly stared into infinity, his teeth bared in the agony of death. He would not have hesitated to kill me, yet I was saddened.’
    For some the strain had been too great. The squadron leader with the 3rd Tanks recorded that three senior sergeants asked to be relieved from tank duties. ‘There comes a time when the bank of courage runs out,’ he observed. Tank crews in other formations were also shaken by the losses inflicted on 11th Armoured Division. ‘Either it was just gross bad handling on the part of senior commanders,’ Major Julius Neave in the 13th/18th Hussars wrote in his diary, ‘or else very bad “crystal gazing”. They may have thought there was only a thin crust and once through it they could bum on. However, I feel it is monstrous that a division trained for three years - very highly - should lose two thirds of its tanks in its second battle.’
    Their only consolation during the deluge of rain was to stay relatively dry inside their tank or under a bivvy alongside it. ‘Thank God I am not an infanteer who has to choose between keeping “dry” aboveground or dodging the mortars by jumping into a trench with three foot of water in it,’ noted Major Neave.
    The 3rd Infantry Division’s field ambulance was established in Escoville, next to the troublesome minefield. ‘It rained and there were mosquitoes, and you’d wake up in the morning with your face all puffy,’ wrote a medic with them. ‘It was here that we had a tremendous number of [combat] exhaustion cases. Some of our own men went down with it which was rather disturbing. Then at this point it seemed as though there was a jinx because casualties would arrive in quite good shape and then for no reason whatever they would begin to fail and flicker. And more died under our hand there than in any other place.’
     
    The British and Canadians had suffered 5,537 casualties during the brief operation. This took their losses in Normandy to a total of 52,165. Goodwood had failed for a combination of reasons. There had been a lack of clarity in the thinking behind the operation and a lack of frankness in the briefing. While Dempsey still dreamed of a breakthrough, Montgomery had put pressure on O’Connor to be cautious. But a half-hearted charge was almost bound to lose more tanks than an all-out attack. O’Connor’s biggest mistake was not to have accepted that they could never have hoped to hide the operation from the Germans. They should have cleared the whole minefield. Only then, with a greatly accelerated advance, could they have fully exploited the shock effect of the heavy bombers.
    The bombing itself, in spite of its intensity, was also far less effective than had been imagined. Army officers complained to the RAF afterwards that more bombs should have been dropped on the Bourguébus ridge and fewer on the nearer targets, but this failure in priorities was largely the responsibility of the army intelligence staff. The RAF,on the otherhand, was incandescent with rage. Tedder,Harris and Coningham felt that they had been badly misled by Montgomery. He had promised a dramatic breakthrough to secure the support of their heavy-bomber squadrons, yet secretly he was considering only a very limited offensive. The row continued long