D-Day. The Battle for Normandy

had reached their advanced command post three miles north-east of Avranches on the afternoon of 29 July, found a disastrous situation. 59 Nobody had issued orders to blow any of the bridges and no landline communications existed. As a result of the German retreat away from the coast, which had so infuriated Kluge, the American 6th and 4th Armored Divisions were now virtually unopposed.
    In Granville, on the coast, the Germans began blowing up the port installations at 01.00 hours and it continued for five hours. The local commissariat de police reported that German soldiers were looting and stealing every vehicle they could find to make their escape south. One American tank platoon even passed within 100 yards of the Seventh Army command post without spotting it. At midnight, Oberstgruppenführer Hausser and his staff pulled out to withdraw east to Mortain.
    There was consternation at La Roche-Guyon and at the Wolfsschanze in East Prussia. General Warlimont at Führer headquarters recorded that Kluge was given ‘urgent orders to prevent any penetration into Avranches. Everybody saw that the whole front in Normandy was breaking up.’ Hitler was also concerned about the fate of the 17th SS Panzergrenadier-Division Götz von Berlichingen , which appeared to have been ‘virtually swallowed up’ during the retreat. ‘Nobody ever knew or could figure out what happened to it, despite frantic enquiries. Naturally we were especially interested in this division because the subject of the fighting qualities of an SS division was a “hot iron” - something you could not touch. Hitler was inclined to believe everything which was favourable about his SS troops. He never permitted any reproach against his “black guards”.’
    The bulk of the German forces had withdrawn in the direction of Percy. An American reconnaissance troop, trying to find an undefended route to Percy, searched the side roads, but found they were all blocked. On one small country lane, the sergeant in the lead Jeep spotted some German soldiers creeping behind a hedgerow. ‘Pour it to them!’ he yelled to the soldier standing in the back, manning the .50 machine gun. The gunner swept the line, killing most of them with ‘incinerator’ (tracer) bullets. He joked afterwards that the bullets were humane, as they sterilized the wound going in and the one going out the other side. Many soldiers saw it as payback time after all the hard fighting in the bocage .
    The Germans had virtually no forces left to defend the coast road. A field replacement battalion on the south side of the River Sienne had rounded up stragglers who had managed to slip through the American screen. The 6th and 4th Armored Divisions, already under Patton’s direction, were well on their way to Avranches. Patton did not accept any excuse for delay. ‘The thing to do is to rush them off their feet before they get set,’ he wrote in his diary on 29 July. He was in an exuberant mood. Breakthrough had been achieved. The breakout, which he felt belonged to him by divine right, was about to begin.

22
    Operation Cobra - Breakout
    On 30 July, when the 4th Armored Division was in striking distance of Avranches, Montgomery launched Operation Bluecoat. He did not usually mount an offensive in such a hurry. It seems that, once again, the initiative had come from Dempsey, but that did not stop Montgomery from implying that it was his plan. He sent a signal to Eisenhower: ‘I have ordered Dempsey to throw all caution overboard and to take any risks he likes, and to accept any casualties, and to step on the gas for Vire.’
    The 13th/18th Hussars were in reserve, carrying out some much needed maintenance work on their tanks, when their brigade commander ‘grinds to a halt in his jeep’ and tells one of their officers that the regiment is due to take part in a battle on Sunday morning. They were to move out at 06.00 hours the next morning. Their tank engines were all in bits and they had to start reassembling them frantically. Some units received only thirty-six hours’ warning.
    To move two corps from the Caen front to attack in the far west of the British sector in less than forty-eight hours was a nightmare with the narrow roads. Many units received their operational orders only as they were approaching their start-lines. One of the 13th/18th’s squadron leaders heard a rumour from headquarters and recorded it in his diary: ‘Monty is determined to make us catch up on the Yanks who are