D-Day. The Battle for Normandy

in the operation, finally persuaded Oberstgruppenführer Hausser to relieve Schwerin, even while the battle continued.
    Kluge was close to despair. The Canadian offensive, Operation Totalize, launched towards Falaise on the night of 7 August, meant that he could extract no more forces from the Fifth Panzer Army. He had also counted on the 9th Panzer-Division joining the attack on Avranches, but now found that it was desperately needed to their rear. The American Third Army had sent one of its corps north towards Alençon and the supply base of his own Seventh Army. ‘It was quite clear,’ wrote Gersdorff, Hausser’s chief of staff, ‘that this was to be the knockout blow and the end of the army and the whole of the western front.’
    Encirclement was now a real threat, yet Hitler insisted that the Avranches offensive should be renewed. On 9 August, General der Infanterie Walter Buhle from the OKW arrived at Seventh Army advance headquarters near Flers to ensure that this happened. ‘He insisted on seeing General Hausser personally,’ wrote Gersdorff, the chief of staff. ‘He asked Hausser in a direct question on Hitler’s orders whether he considered “that a continuation of the offensive could be of any success”. Hausser answered in the affirmative.’ He presumed that any other reply would lead to his instant dismissal. Generalfeldmarschall von Kluge, even though he knew that the operation was leading them to disaster, was also in no position to refuse. He ordered Hausser to relaunch the attack with what was now called Panzer Group Eberbach. Both men knew that even if their forces reached Avranches they would never have the strength to hold a position there.
     
    In Mortain itself, Lieutenant Colonel Hardaway, the commanding officer of the 2nd Battalion of the 120th, managed to slip out of the town on the east side, but was captured trying to climb Hill 314 to rejoin his men.
    At 18.20 hours, a Waffen-SS officer, accompanied by an SS trooper carrying a white flag, approached one of the battalion’s perimeters. ‘In formal manner’, he stated that he was offering the Americans on the hill the chance of an honourable surrender. They were surrounded and their position was hopeless. If they did not surrender before 22.00 hours, his forces would ‘blow them to bits’. The reply came back that they would not surrender as long as they possessed ‘ammunition to kill Germans with, or a bayonet left to stick in a Boche belly’. The SS attacked with panzers that night, apparently shouting ‘Surrender! Surrender! ’, but they were halted with anti-tank guns and bazookas. Only one tank broke through and took a single American soldier prisoner.
    The Abbaye Blanche roadblock also fought off numerous attacks, including one with flame-throwers. In an attempt to help its defenders and to control the road north out of Mortain, efforts were made to seize the road junction on Hill 278, halfway between Mortain and Saint-Barthélemy. Part of the 12th Infantry Regiment brought down from its rest area in Brécey tried to force back the northern Kampfgruppe of the SS Das Reich . They were then to turn south into Mortain to relieve the beleaguered outposts of the 30th Division. The 2nd Battalion of the 12th Infantry had nearly reached the key crossroads when it was struck ‘a stunning blow’ by Leibstandarte panzers. They pulled back west of a stream and tried to bring up tanks and tank destroyers across the boggy ground, but it proved impossible.
    On 9 August, the Germans attacked again in the early-morning mist south of Saint-Barthélemy. SS panzergrenadiers were seen wearing bits of American uniform and carrying American weapons. One group wore ‘American shoes, leggings, field jackets and helmets’. At times the fighting consisted of close-quarter combat, with panzergrenadiers throwing themselves at the 12th Infantry in their foxholes. German artillery fire was unusually intense. ‘For the first time we sustained heavier fire than we gave,’ an officer observed afterwards. The strain of four days of desperate fighting told after so many weeks of combat: ‘The Regiment had some 300 exhaustion cases during the period.’
    The frenzy of the fighting is indicated by this extraordinary report from the 12th Infantry. Private Burik of E Company, 2nd Battalion, heard a tank approaching from the north. ‘The tank he could see was coming down the road toward the orchard. Grabbing his bazooka he loaded it and stepped out