D-Day. The Battle for Normandy

ground between Lisieux and Caen without air attack. Apart from the reconnaissance battalion and the panzergrenadiers sent on ahead, the bulk of the division could not move until nightfall.
     
    Although Sword beach, between Lion-sur-Mer and Ouistreham, was secured rapidly, the advance inland was unnecessarily sluggish. An astonishing number of soldiers, tired from wading in through the waves and relieved to have survived the landing, felt that they had earned the right to a cigarette and a mug of tea. Many started to brew up on the beach, even though it was still under fire. The naval staff yelled at them to get inland and chase the Germans off.
    Both Canadians and Americans were bemused by the British Army’s apparent inability to complete a task without a tea break. They also noticed a widespread reluctance to help other arms. Infantry refused to help ‘fill a crater or get a vehicle out of difficulties’, and when not engaged on an engineering task, sappers failed to fire at the enemy. Whether this demarcation mentality arose out of the trade union movement or the regimental system - both of which cultivated an ideal of collective loyalty - the basic fault often came from a lack of confidence among young officers.
    The failure of the British 3rd Infantry Division to seize their objective of Caen on the first day soon proved critical. A vast amount of effort and ingenuity had been invested in planning the assault on the coast, but little thought had been put into the immediate follow-up phase. If Montgomery had intended to seize the city, as he stated, then he failed to put in place the equipment and organization of his forces to carry out such a daring stroke. One could well argue that as soon as the presence of the 21st Panzer-Division was established, his stated objective became far too optimistic.
    In any case, to reach Caen in a single day, the 3rd Infantry Division would have needed to send forward at least two battlegroups, each with an armoured regiment and an infantry battalion. The infantry should ideally have been mounted in armoured personnel carriers, vehicles which the British Army took another twenty years to acquire. With only a few honourable exceptions, the British Army was woefully unprepared for infantry-tank operations. Much of the problem stemmed from the regimental system and thus a reluctance to imitate the German panzergrenadier system, with closely knit armoured infantry and tank forces working together on a permanent basis.
    The plan was for the 8th Infantry Brigade to seize the Périers ridge. Then the 185th Brigade, with three infantry battalions and only one armoured regiment, would pass through them and on to Caen. The 2nd Battalion of the King’s Shropshire Light Infantry had been supposed to mount the tanks of the Staffordshire Yeomanry in the assembly area near Hermanville, then lead the advance south to Caen. They were to be supported by the 2nd Battalion of the Royal Warwickshire Regiment on the right and the 1st Battalion of the Royal Norfolk Regiment on the left.
    The three infantry battalions were ready at Hermanville by 11.00 hours, but there was no sign of the Staffordshire Yeomanry. An unusually high tide had reduced the depth of the beach to little more than ten yards, leaving no space for tanks to manoeuvre. And as German artillery was still shelling the routes south, traffic jams tailed back all the way to the beaches when vehicles were set ablaze. Minefields prevented the tanks from going a cross country. The brigade commander agonized over whether to launch the attack on foot and without tank support. After waiting an hour, he ordered the infantry to set off.
    Meanwhile the 8th Brigade found the attack on the Périers ridge greatly hampered by two strongpoints codenamed ‘Hillman’ and ‘Morris’.Morris, which had four 105 mm guns, was taken quite quickly, its dispirited defenders surrendering after an hour, but Hillman proved a far more formidable complex. Spread out over 400 yards by 600 yards, it had ‘deep concrete pillboxes and steel cupolas with a complete system of connecting trenches’. Lacking the planned naval gunfire support, because the forward observation officer had been killed, the 1st Battalion of the Suffolk Regiment faced a terrible task crossing minefields and barbed wire covered by artillery and machine guns.
    The Suffolks asked for tank support and a squadron of the badly needed Staffordshire Yeomanry was diverted to help them, reducing