D-Day. The Battle for Normandy

August, the 12th Infantry Regiment and its ‘incredibly weary troops’ returned to the 4th Division to rest. It appears that their commander, Major General Barton, did not fully appreciate what his men had been through. He was more concerned about ‘the attitude of “silent mutiny” which recently appeared among some men who up to now had been good soldiers. These men have decided that they’re being pushed around, that nobody cares about them and they have decided that they are through and will quit trying.’ The officers, he implied, were partly to blame for not keeping their men ‘in fighting spirit’.
    When Warlimont reported on the failure of Operation Lüttich, Hitler listened to him for almost an hour in the Wolfsschanze in East Prussia. ‘Kluge did it deliberately,’ was all he said when Warlimont had finished. ‘He did it to prove that it was impossible to carry out my orders.’

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    Operation Totalize
    While the American 30th Division fought desperately to hold on to Mortain, the newly constituted First Canadian Army launched another major attack down the road to Falaise. This was Operation Totalize. Montgomery did not think much of its commander, Lieutenant General Henry Crerar, and made it abundantly clear. He saw him as a gunner of the First World War, uninspiring and ponderous. Crerar’s rigidity had not been admired by the Canadian 1st Infantry Division in Italy, who much preferred serving under experienced British commanders from the Eighth Army.
    There was also a political dimension. Crerar was determined to defend Canadian interests. Monty saw this as a challenge to his command. Senior Canadian officers detected a supercilious attitude towards them, which was not helped when Montgomery sent some of his staff officers to Crerar’s headquarters to supervise the operation. Montgomery also regarded Major General Rod Keller of the 3rd Canadian Division as ‘quite unfit to command a division’. On the other hand, he greatly admired Lieutenant General Guy Simonds of II Canadian Corps, who planned and commanded Totalize.
    Because of the shortage of Canadian troops, First Canadian Army was made up to strength with I British Corps and also the recently arrived 1st Polish Armoured Division. The attack was to begin just before midnight on 7 August. The 51st Highland Division, now returning to their earlier high standard, would advance down the east side of the Caen- Falaise road, while the 2nd Canadian Division advanced on the west side. General Crerar, aware that stories of the SS killing Canadian prisoners had spread to his newly arrived troops, issued a strong order against committing excesses ‘to avenge the death of our comrades’.
    Simonds had learned from earlier British mistakes, especially those made during Goodwood. He decided to launch a night attack to reduce losses from the Germans’ vastly superior 88 mm anti-tank guns. He also mounted leading infantry units in armoured vehicles. To obtain a sufficient quantity of carriers for them, the 105 mm artillery guns were removed from self-propelled ‘Priests’, which were dubbed ‘defrocked Priests’. This would help the attacking formations to move forward with infantry immediately the bombers had finished saturating the German front-line positions.
    Simonds, however, was misled by information gathered from a Yugoslav deserter who had slipped across the lines from the 89th Infanterie-Division to surrender. This man reported that his division had just replaced the 1st SS Panzer-Division. Simonds, not realizing that the Leibstandarte had been diverted to the Mortain counter-attack, assumed it had simply been withdrawn to stiffen the second line between Saint-Sylvain and Bretteville-sur-Laize. This influenced his view of the battle. He decided that the second phase, led by the Polish and Canadian armoured divisions, should not begin until after another bombing attack at 13.00 hours the following day.
    The start-line for Totalize was along the Bourguébus ridge. The Canadians had already lost many men hammering away at the villages of Verrières, Tilly-la-Campagne and La Hogue, where their attack had in fact delayed the departure of the SS Leibstandarte for Mortain. The tank crews of the British 33rd Armoured Brigade with the 51st Highland Division had a ‘last supper’ of bully beef and hard-tack ‘dog’ biscuits, mugs of tea made foul with over-chlorinated water and a rum ration out of a large stoneware bottle. It was a hot