D-Day. The Battle for Normandy

in gorse. Out of sight over the brow of the hill were German radar installations and these had to be destroyed. At the foot of the hill was a small stream we would have to cross.’ The day was oppressively hot.
    The artillery barrage began at 15.00 hours. The 4th Somersets advanced on the left and the 5th Battalion of the Wiltshire Regiment on the right. About 100 yards beyond the stream, they came under heavy machine-gun fire from the flanks and in front. All the leading companies were pinned down. Some broke back to seek shelter under the bank of the stream, but it became crowded. ‘It was soon obvious that too many people were seeking too little protection,’ wrote Sergeant Partridge with the Somersets. The Somersets and Wiltshires expected the Germans to run out of ammunition, but the rate of fire never seemed to slacken. The Wiltshires were hard hit and their commanding officer killed.
    Partridge’s company sergeant major had his nose shot off. As he staggered back holding a field dressing to his face, Partridge helped him to the regimental aid post near battalion headquarters. There he heard that Major Thomas, the commander of B Company, had been killed while single-handedly rushing a German machine gun. ‘Very gallant,’ observed Partridge, ‘but I had long since learned that dead soldiers do not win battles, and my prime duty was to stay alive and preserve the lives of as many others as possible.’
    A sharp order arrived from their commanding officer saying that there were too many NCOs back at the aid post. ‘Please rejoin your troops.’ Partridge acknowledged that it was a well-deserved rebuke. He returned to 17 Platoon to find ‘four fellows in an abandoned trench crying their eyes out’. These newcomers were not striplings, but men in their late thirties - ‘far too old to live our kind of life’. They came from a disbanded anti-aircraft unit and had been sent forward without infantry training as part of the desperate attempt to man front-line battalions.
    Shortly before dusk, a Sherman of the 13th/18th managed to cross the stream and give covering fire, but the German machine-gun positions were well camouflaged. A different plan was adopted. Once darkness fell, the companies were reorganized. They began to move forward behind a smokescreen in single file as silently as possible. Each man’s equipment was checked to make sure that nothing would rattle.
    Never believing that they would get through unobserved or unheard, they continued to move up the slope. They could hear German voices on either side, but fortunately never stumbled on to one of the machine-gun positions. The first two companies of the 4th Somersets made it to the plateau and were soon followed by the other two. They tried to dig in, ready for the inevitable German counter-attack, but found the ground was rock hard.
    Sergeant Partridge then heard what sounded like a Panther or Tiger tank. He sent a whispered message to the anti-tank man to bring over the PIAT launcher, but the soldier was apologetic. The PIAT had been too heavy to carry up the hill and he had left it behind. Partridge showed great self-control by not strangling him on the spot. In fact, the tank which caused them such alarm in the dark almost certainly belonged to the 13th/18th Hussars, one of whose squadrons had found a route up the side of Mont Pinçon earlier in the night. In the confusion, they do not seem to have known that the infantry had already arrived, and they were radioing for support. Their commanding officer sent up another squadron, while urgently demanding infantry reinforcements.
    By the morning of 7 August, the most dominant feature in Normandy was finally in British hands. In fact, the Germans had melted away. Their withdrawal formed part of a desperately needed attempt to shorten their lines, partly to make up for the transfer of the 1st SS Panzer-Division for the counter-attack being prepared at Mortain.
    Bluecoat had been the climax to a bitter battle on both sides. The 4th Somersets had lost ‘more men in five weeks than in the following nine months’ up to the end of the war. Further west towards Vire, the 10th SS Panzer-Division Frundsberg had been ground down by the 11th Armoured and the Guards Armoured. Eberbach’s headquarters had reported the night before ‘heavy enemy attacks along almost the whole front’. In a final effort, the Frundsberg had counter-attacked the 11th Armoured south of Presles, hoping to close the gap