D-Day. The Battle for Normandy

left flank towards Hodges’s First Army, the one where Hitler expected Eberbach to launch his counter-attack. All one can say is that the decision to try for a short envelopment between Argentan and Falaise was a mistake. Yet Montgomery afterwards received far more criticism in many quarters for refusing to change the boundary between the British and American army groups to allow Patton to strike north.
    The failure of Operation Totalize to take Falaise has generated more debate than almost any other aspect of the battle for Normandy. Montgomery made a major miscalculation when he expected the Canadians to reach Argentan before the Americans. He had assumed that the Germans would switch more formations to defend their southern flank against Patton. He had also underestimated once again the difficulties of sending untried armoured divisions against a strong screen of 88 mm guns. The Allied obsession with Tigers and Panthers obscured the fact, unrecognized at the time, that they lost rather more Shermans and Cromwells to German anti-tank weapons and Jagdpanzer tank destroyers.
    Whatever the precise reasons which contributed to the failure to close the Falaise-Argentan gap, the fact remained that the Americans were furious, and none more so than General Patton. A killing ground for the retreating German armies now had to be found further east.

26
    The Hammer and Anvil
    On 12 August, Major Neave with the 13th/18th Hussars, still pushing forward in the Orne valley, noted in his diary, ‘Very hot - not good fighting weather however - the infantry stream with sweat and dust, and we just roast inside our tanks’. But they consoled themselves that it would soon be over. ‘The bigger picture is terrific, old “Blood and Guts” [Patton] is plugging on towards Paris and here in Normandy the Boche must be very nearly surrounded.’
    The Germans, however, were not nearly surrounded. A gap of some twenty miles still existed between Simonds’s Canadian corps north of Falaise and Haislip’s XV Corps round Argentan. Attempts that day by the 59th Division to increase its bridgehead over the Orne near Thury-Harcourt were frustrated by the German 271st Infanterie-Division and the steep wooded hills either side of the river.
    The next morning, 13 August, Simonds briefed his formation commanders for a fresh offensive, Operation Tractable. While the main Can-adianforces attackedagain towards Falaise on Montgomery’sinsistence, the Polish 1st Armoured Division on the left flank would head further east towards Trun. Montgomery does not appear to have discussed plans clearly with Bradley, despite a meeting with him that same day. He seems to have reverted to his earlier idea of encircling the Germans on the Seine. Instead of sending the 7th Armoured Division to reinforce the Canadian attack, he dispatched it east towards Lisieux. Montgomery was already starting to lobby Eisenhower to give him all the supplies and support, so that 21st Army Group could charge through to Berlin.
    Simonds launched Tractable just at 11.00 hours on the morning of 14 August. Instead of using darkness to avoid losses from the German anti-tank defences, he organized a heavy smokescreen fired by the artillery. Bombers were also used, despite the mishaps during Totalize. This time most of the medium bomber force of 811 aircraft were accurate, although seventy-seven of them dropped their loads on Canadian and Polish troops to the rear, causing 391 casualties.Unbelievably, the same mistake was made of using yellow target markers from the air and yellow smoke grenades on the ground to identify their own troops.
    The Canadians soon found that the River Laizon represented a more serious anti-tank ditch than they had imagined. Some of their armoured regiments suffered heavy losses that day. The Poles to their left advanced with great élan, led by their reconnaissance regiment, the 10th Mounted Rifles.
     
    On 14 August, Panzer Group Eberbach received an order from Hitler, passed on over the radio. ‘The attack ordered by me southward past Alençon is to be effected under all conditions immediately as a preparation for an attack on Avranches.’ Eberbach, furious with Hitler’s continuing fantasy, replied with the tank strengths of his divisions: the Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler had thirty, the 2nd Panzer twenty-five, the 116th Panzer had fifteen and the 9th Panzer was down to a company of panzergrenadiers.
    ‘The fighting morale of the German troops had