D-Day. The Battle for Normandy

dismissive attitude towards the large numbers of prisoners they were taking. Middleton’s VIII Corps had taken 7,000 prisoners in just three days, out of the whole First Army’s bag of 20,000 in six days. When a battalion of the 8th Infantry Division captured a couple of hundred Germans, they sent them back with just one guard. Sometimes they returned weapons to Polish and Russian prisoners and told them to escort the Germans, which may well have led to several of the latter failing to reach the stockade alive. Empty supply trucks going back north were also used. ‘We passed columns of prisoners, on foot and in trucks, but all under guard,’ noted an officer with the 29th Infantry Division near Percy. ‘They seemed low-spirited as to the older ones. The only defiant ones were the young.’ Over-optimistic rumours had meanwhile begun to spread in German units that they were to be withdrawn behind the Seine.
     
    On 2 August, fighting continued in the southern part of Villedieu after most of the town was cleared. American tanks drove a group of German infantry armed with Panzerfaust launchers into the railway station. The Shermans fired at the building with their 75 mm main armament until they had demolished the whole structure on top of them.
    On the road towards the Forêt de Saint-Sever, where many German units were reorganizing, heavy fighting continued on the hills either side, especially Hill 213. Lieutenant Colonel Johnson was taking his battalion round the side of the ridge to outflank the Germans on the summit. ‘As we came over the crest and saw the road I rubbed my eyes,’ he wrote. ‘I thought we must have got our directions mixed. The whole road was jammed with traffic of the 3rd Armored Division bumper to bumper - tanks, trucks, Jeeps and ambulances. I looked across the road and saw a medical station.’ Nobody seemed to realize that a major battle was going on just 500 yards away. The 12th Infantry, one of their other officers observed, was ‘so tired they could hardly walk up the hill, let alone attack up it’. German artillery fire from the Forêt de Saint-Sever to their east was very heavy and caused many casualties. This, combined with Luftwaffe attacks at night, kept men ‘in a state of jitters’, resulting in an increased rate of combat fatigue.
    While some Germans fought ruthlessly in retreat, others respected the rules of war. Captain Ware, the battalion surgeon, reported that two men hit on patrol had not been found. Four medics, led by Corporal Baylor, set out in a Jeep with a large red cross flag to find them. ‘One man stood on the hood and held the flag open so it could not be overlooked. The jeep rounded the bend of the road [and] reached the first casualty. He was dead. As the aid man was examining him the Germans fired a machinegun which hit Cpl Baylor in the chest. The other three crawled back under fire dragging the wounded man and leaving the two bodies and the jeep.’ Captain Ware decided to abandon the attempt. ‘But just as this decision was reached a German wearing a Geneva [Red Cross] brassard and carrying a white flag came round the bend of the road walking toward them. He was promptly covered. All the American weapons present were pointed at him but fortunately no shot was fired. As the German came up we could see that he was sweating profusely. But he did not falter. He handed me the attached note which no one present could read. A German speaking soldier of the anti-tank platoon was sent for. The German told him that he had been sent by his lieutenant to apologize for his soldiers firing on the American medics. The German was still sweating [and] kept removing his helmet to mop his brow. He said he had volunteered for this mission. He also told us that both the American casualties were dead. The German said that the note from his Lieutenant assured us that we might return and remove our casualties as well as the jeep and that the Germans would not fire again. We asked the German if he would like to stay with us now that he was across the lines. He laughed and said he supposed it made no difference which side he stayed with, but he pointed out that if he did stay it would look bad for the Americans since the Germans would think he had been detained by force.’
     
    The American advance was still slowed by traffic jams on the narrow country roads and also by attacks from groups of German stragglers. ‘The small number of Germans are causing us difficulty out of