D-Day. The Battle for Normandy

Routes further north were so blocked in the breakthrough corridor that advance elements of the 4th Infantry Division’s headquarters were ‘on the road all night’. Bottlenecks were caused in each case by ‘a knocked out enemy vehicle standing partially across the road at a bad muddy spot’. Engineers could not find a way past to clear the obstacles. In one case, a staff officer commandeered a bulldozer and shifted a burnt-out vehicle himself. Some French, working furiously to help fill in craters, refused to accept any pay, insisting ‘that they did it to help us shoot more Boches’.
    Major General Huebner of 1st Infantry Division, the ‘Big Red One’, was determined not to allow anything to slow his advance. He insisted that ‘only one-way traffic would prevail’ along the narrow Norman roads. Not even ambulances would be allowed to return: ‘Casualties would have to be cared for as best they could along the route of advance.’ The armoured infantry of the 3rd Armored Division climbed on to the tanks so that their half-tracks could be filled with cans of gasoline, ammunition and other supplies. The 6th Armored Division on the coast had also decided that this was no time for supply dumps or distributing rations in bivouac areas. ‘Hell, within a couple of days,’ one officer remarked, ‘we were passing out rations like Santa Claus on his sleigh, with both giver and receiver on the move.’ The Sherman crews seldom halted to cook or relieve themselves. They kept going on boiled eggs and instant coffee. A medical officer said of their pudding-basin tank helmets, ‘they crapped in them and cooked in them’. Another medical officer with the 2nd Armored Division noted an additional advantage of the rapid advance. There were very few casualties from mines and booby-traps. The Germans had had little time to leave behind any of their nasty surprises.
     
    On 29 July, Rose’s combat command A from the 2nd Armored Division had a hard fight on the road south to Villebaudon. They came up against a Kampfgruppe of Lüttwitz’s 2nd Panzer-Division at the crossroads of La Denisière, with nearly twenty tanks and two companies of panzergrenadiers in half-tracks. Lüttwitz’s division and the newly arrived 116th Panzer-Division had been ordered to strike west to cut off the American advance, joining up with the amalgamated SS Division. But Lüttwitz perceived that this was impossible. He decided that it was more important to protect the flank along the River Vire, which was under pressure from the American 30th Infantry Division. American tank destroyers knocked out several panzers and forced the rest to withdraw eastwards to Moyon, where a much tougher battle took place.
    A column of tanks from Rose’s combat command, with their attached infantry from the 4th Infantry Division, advanced into the small town of Moyon, while Captain Reid led a patrol from his company round the east side. Reid’s men shot down an anti-tank gun crew, then found themselves being fired at by a German tank. Private Sharkey, a ‘bazooka hound’, stalked it from the far side of a hedgerow and knocked it out with their second-last round. Another tank appeared close to the first one and began firing its machine gun. Captain Reid crept back along the hedgerow, stood up and lobbed a white phosphorus grenade on to the top of the tank and another underneath it. The tank was soon ablaze.
    In Moyon itself, however, another German tank knocked out one of the Shermans. The tank battalion commander decided to pull out of the town and shell the place with high-explosive rounds. He told the infantry platoons in front to withdraw too. Just before they pulled back, Private Sharkey fired their last bazooka round at another German tank, the lead vehicle in a column with infantry approaching the town. He scored a direct hit on the turret ring. Captain Reid called out, ‘Let’s get out of here before they zero in on us!’ But Sharkey’s blood was clearly up. He remained standing at the hedgerow, firing with his carbine at the German infantry. A burst of machine-gun fire from one of the other tanks ripped off the side of his face, but Sharkey was able to retreat with the others, ‘the flesh hanging down over his chest’. He walked standing upright, while the others crawled back.
    They were cut off by another German column led by tanks. Reid had only two white phosphorus grenades left, but he managed to set the lead tank ablaze. The smoke acted as a