The Falaise Gap

Not to make light of a serious topic, but my father once told me that one of the worst things that could happen in battle was to run out of rum. Below is his description of events on the evening of August 19, 1944. His Company Sgt. Major, George Mitchell, who my father says was a very brave soldier, described this patrol to Moissy as "terrifying":

“‘B’ Company [of the A&SH of C] was holding the houses at the extreme south end of St. Lambert, and for some reason we kept going down the road, out of town, towards Chambois which is about a mile and a half further on. By now it was quite dark. The glare from burning houses and vehicles that had been knocked out along the road provided us with some visibility. Since we had not been made aware of the gravity of our position, we were having a ball scrounging through the trucks along the way, with no particular feeling of concern (the rum perhaps?). We had covered half the distance to Chambois, to a hamlet called Moissy, when a machine gun opened up on the front of the column.”



Kieran

 

for years after the war,the remains of famous canadian armd regts were still visable as a testament to the fighting on the verrvile ridge.lee.

 

Canada's Legion Magazine has an excellent article this month:

Breakthrough To Falaise: Mistakes On The Road To Success


A Sherman tank of the 1st Polish Armoured Division prepares to cross the Orne River, France, August 1944.

 

Here's a link to the final installment in Legion Magazine's series of articles on the Falaise Gap.

http://legionmagazine.com/en/index.php/2013/09/the-cork-in-the-bottle-canadians-and-poles-at-the-falaise-gap/

 

I went up through the falaise gap.. And have posted elsewhere a full description of what it looked and felt like. The stench of death was unbearable.

 

Sapper we love you! You know that.

 

Falaise was no more than a bloody massacre. The rear of the bag was a ferocious place to be. Now I don't wish to harp on about it. But it is a fact that in places to cross the road, you had to step on bodies. One thing it did show up, once and for all. That was Monty's strategy was right. The battle for Normandy ended in a great victory with the enemy being slaughtered. The armchairs generals back in Whitehall were confounded,. after they had been safely at home, snapping at Monty's heels. In the end Normandy was taken ten days to a fortnight ahead of schedule.

Me? Oh I look back on those distant days and think. Did I do all those things.... Yes! I damn well did...And paid the bloody price for the rest of my life. But it does seem like another world. Another time. that has nothing to do with anyone today. It is all history now. What is more!... I am a left over from those times. For there are precious little of us left. all my close and dear friends have departed , so that in many ways, I feel isolated. Daft isn't it?

I am hoping to get through this winter, and be able to celebrate the 70th anniversary of those mighty battles. Then I shall be a modem methuselah....
Cheers everyone!

 

Brian, do you plan to be in Normandy for the 70th anniversary next year?

 

Sadly no. I have never returned to Europe. When I was wounded the second time, in Holland, after operation "Aintree" it was for good... that Hitler bloke made a good job of putting me out of action "permanently" With multiple in injuries, lost me left knee, fractured my spine, leg smashed so bad that The genius that invented the hip joint op that so many folk have now.

He was a major then in the RAMC at Shaftesbury military hospital, I helped him make his gear. He saved my leg by bone grafting and plating ....Genius, and I have a lot to thank him for .He died years ago..I have been In touch with this widow. Lady Jill Charnley. I can do very little, and have great difficulty in just standing, and then only with crutches.... Bit of a heart break that I have never been able to return.... But there is one difficulty, where do I go? For we lost men all the way from sword to the ultimate end in Bremen.

I do have some very dear and wonderful friends that lay a wreath for me very year at the Hermanville war cemetery. And for that. I am so grateful..
The wonder of it all is that I am near 89 , have had tussles with the old man with the scythe and the grey beard.... while all my fit veteran mates have departed this mortal coil. All I do is write about those times.

 

Thanks for your service, Sapper. We are very grateful.

 

Maybe the blame lies with Eisenhower? The commonwealth forces were facing an established defense, while the US forces had chaos in front of them as they completed the encirclement. US forces could have closed the trap, but were held back... for what reason?

 

The way I see it holding back Haislip's 15th Corps closing Falaise Pocket in Argentan was a tactical decision of Bradley. He assumes responsibility fully in his memoirs. He thought it was as sound decision and I tend to agree with him. The trick of successful commanders in Western Armies during war that they knew what their men and their units could do and couldn'. Men like Bradley or Montgomery knew or had to assume what could be their maximum effort and performance from their armies and how could they balance that expectation with actual missions and how they could be adapted to achive operational and strategic goals. Could 15th US Corps reach Argentan in 15 August and close the gap ? Probably. Could that result destruction of entire 5th Panzer Army and 7th German Army as wished ? I think no. German veterans fought best when they were cornered , got extra effort and and better motivated trained and experienced especially in close combat with small formations and they would definetely try to break out encirclement. Result would be significant numbers of Germans would escape again except Allied casaulties would be higher probably at German break out sector. Bradley (I think correctly) assumed neither 15th Corps nor Canadians in north were strong enough to provide a complete encirclement and any eventual German break out to east couldn't be prevented , cause heavier US / Canadian casaulties and lower morale/self confidence of Allied troops who were just acquinted to war. He summarized the situation like this : "I preferred a “solid shoulder at Argentan than a broken neck at Falaise."

It is the confidence of commanders on their troops abilities that creates efficient operations. Bradley rightly did not trust his men enough that they could withstand an attack from inside and outside pocket even if they closed Argetan gap sooner. He was not facing demorilized Italians retreating Western Desert and trapped at Beda Fomm in 1941. He and Canadians were up against highly motivated and skilled Waffen SS and German paratrooper units this time.

 

I think, and this is not to denigrate the fallschirmjager or SS Panzer units, that people overlook the fact that the vast majority of fighting was done by regular Heer infantry units. They, when properly equipped and led(which they often were), were very capable.

I salute Fritz, Joe(not Johnny or Billy), Ivan, Tommy and the rest, They had more in common with each other than their ruling elite.

 

What I do find amusing, Is that they now have architectural digs to find out what we did 69 years ago. The idea that we are that old they now have to dig to find what we experienced is just ODD.....Fortunately I have a wonderful long term memory, and do not need a shovel to learn about it.

 

aha a thread resurrected after nine years....

One point which is forgotten is that Falaise was one of several pockets and attempts to encircle chunks of the German army in France in 1944. Falaise was the enciclement of the 7th Army, (14-20th Aug) but even when that was under way, the Allies were trying to encircle both the 7th Army and the 5th Panzer army holding the shoulders with the lesser well known Seine pocket, an attempt to trap the Germans on the West Bank of the Lower Seine. (20-31st Aug). There was a also the Mons Pocket (1st week sep) and the failed attempt to isolate the German troops in the Western Netherlands by Op market Garden

Trapping the Germans wasn't as easy on the ground as it appears on paper.

1. The Germans had a lot of practice at avoiding being surrounded on the Eastern Front where surrender meant death or Siberia (which was much the same).

2. At times military formations may be able to move by "quantum physics" and apparently escape from a secure pocket. Soldiers and historians often talk about military formations as if they can be represented as a single thing represented by a map symbol to to be in one place. But a "Formation" is really a collection of men and equipment scattered over a large area connected to a replacement and reinforcement system which adds or returns resources to the formation. Only the fighting elements will be within a mile of the front line, and these might be C. 2,000-3,000 infantrymen, forward observers and AFV crews out of a division of 20,000. The bulk of the formation its artillery and logistic tail may be miles away. So 12 SS Pz Div which was inside the pocket also had elements outside the pocket based on its replacement units and workshops which then fought against the US armour on the west bank of the Seine. So to a map marker, the "12 SS Pz Div" appears to make a quantum leap as its centre of mass moves from inside the pocket to outside.

3. Air forces claims of AFV casualties were systematically over claimed by C 100% and the airforces were much less effective in preventing movement across rivers than thought at the time.

Arguably the Falaise and the Seine pockets were both partial successes, costing the Germans almost all their armour and heavy weapons and C 50,000+ prisoners and forcing the Germans to abandon France to the liberating allies. A further 10k Germans from the 7th army were captured in the Mons Pocket in the 1st week of September.

More debatable is the failure to cut off and round up any of the following large bodies of following troops moving on foot, the loss of which might have prevented the Germans from creating a defensive line on the Siegfried line along the German border.

1. The German 15th Army was withdrawing along the coast. Had the British pushed North from Antwerp they could have isolated Walcheran and the lower Scheldt estuary.

2. The German 19th Army was withdrawing on foot from the South and SW France, pressed by the Allied 6th Army group. Had Patton headed for the Swiss Border instead of the Moselle and Rhine this army could have been rounded up.

The key problem was that the allies had not thought through how they would follow up the Normandy campaign. Over the critical period mid August Montgomery and Eisenhower argued about the merits of a narrow or broad front strategy. Both were predicated on geographical objectives, rather than the destruction of the remaining German armed forces. .

 

It was such an outstanding observation I ended up joining this forum to complement you for it.

Yes, physical exhaustion plays its part in the outcome of these battles. It irritates me to see people critical of Meade at Gettysburg for not destroying Lee's army before it reached Virginia. Same for the failure of the German army at the beginning of WWI to complete the Schlieffen Plan. Exhaustion had its role in the evacuation of Dunkirk; the Germans were simply worn out at that point and couldn't continue on without seriously risking their forces. At the time the bulk of the French army was unsubdued and on their flank. Hitler didn't let the British and French armies in Dunkirk out of some sort of misplaced respect for his foe, as I've seen lots of people say.

Yes, it's true the Canadians were slow to fill their end of the gap, as I've heard many times. But what people fail to do is realize how exhausted the typical soldier is after weeks of combat. I vaguely recall in earlier readings the existence of dysentery in the Canadian units but the source you cited really brought home how debilitating this condition was. It is mentioned in regard to several individual commanders as well.

Thank you for such an edifying entry.

I tried to send you a message, but the system told me I couldn't.

 

Thank you, jarthuroriginal. Not my observation of course, but George Blackburn's. I have read many memoires, autobiographies, and biographies which because of the nature of humans means most include fighting and war. Maybe it was a female perspective but despite the attempt by some writers to glorify the image of someone, it was always apparent to me that there was a cost, not just death, but physical and mental and emotional exhaustion. A cost that exceeded the time of specific conflict. It should be readily apparent really to all of us that the limit of any military engagement is going to be based upon the physical and mental limits of the combatants. Historically, it has been documented again and again - whether in war or any disaster situation - that the superiority of equipment, supply chain, and ability to replace manpower as they are injured or exhausted will improve morale and make success more likely.

Really when we look at WWII in general it is the change in the quality of equipment, its ability to be replaced, and the availability of manpower as well as to a degree the will behind it that made the it swing from the Axis to the Allies advantage.

My Dad was a Veteran of the Falaise Pocket/Gap and it was the only place he was very specific about fighting there and where he described a part of his experience. As mentioned by others, the horrors of the sights of bodies, body parts, smells, the bloated and decayed bodies of animals. I only heard this though when I was over 30 and he was in his late 60s, and he saw me reading about the Falaise Pocket. I always knew though that he had paid a price for his wartime experiences beyond his physical scars.

The Canadians from the beginning had the will, but did not have a large population base to create a continuous supply of replacements for the men. The soldiers did not go home after they were injured if there was any chance they could be healed and returned to active duty. My Dad was injured by a parachute bomb in the South of England in 1942 and was not with the 16th Battery 3LAA when they were at Dieppe. He recovered, but carried the scars on his throat from where his face was reconstructed and as well as his legs, and he learned quickly to walk and run again so that he rejoined the 3LAA. He was not sent back to Canada. He got to continue training, anti-aircraft duty in England, and then be part of the fight for NW Europe through May 8 1945. The 16th Battery and other units of the 2nd Division was subjected to friendly fire during July and August of 1944, as well as the fire of the enemy. There would always be shortage of replacements.

The Allies in general were restricted in their supply chain until Antwerp was freed. This meant that during the battles for Caen and Falaise that the further they got from the Normandy Beaches the further they got from easy access to supplies. The Canadians already were using the Sten gun which was not known for reliability, they were limited in some of the other supplies they required for physical wellbeing. The first couple of years they were in England - they got to eat mutton for 2 out of 3 meals every day because that was the the supply arrangement made by someone back in Canada for economy - not for the wellbeing or best diet for strength and energy of the soldiers. In the field, it would certainly not be much better.

They also suffered from a dearth of experienced senior commanders, the result of a reliance on a militia-based army. Because the army between the wars had not been very large, most senior officers stagnated at lower levels and by the time they were at war, most were basically considered to be too old and inexperienced for the senior ranks they attained. Those who were promoted were usually unlikely to have experience in actual warfare and may not have attended War College in England which at the time was Canadian senior officer's finishing school. Others were promoted up through the ranks because of their inate ability. General Montgomery also tended to micromanage the Canadian Generals and in general held them in some contempt, something that usually did not go over well with the strongly held ideal of a national identity. Stubborness seemed to be part of that identity and they were going to keep going to their objective as long as they could despite failing equipment and bodies. That they did not always meet the objective in as timely a manner as latter day critics who are looking at them as chess pieces on a board or characters in an online game is because they were people who did the best they could under the circumstances in which they found themselves.

Looking again at the links where someone referred to Terry Copp's writeups in the Canadian Legion magazine, the Canadians were also made up units that spoke French, English, and Polish - that was the official languages, plus they probably included within their ranks immigrants from every nation on earth some whose English was pretty sketchy. Getting cohesive instructions must have been a challenge. There is reference to what happened on Hill 195 with the Worthington Force, as they ended up in the wrong place to far into German lines instead of holding part of the pocket in place the pushed it outward, and the Polish forces they were supposed to line up with were unable to communicate with them.

I have gone on for a long bit here for someone who has been away from the Forum for awhile. I should be citing sources - the falais gap: a soldiers story by General Dennis Whitaker, Fields of Fire Terry Copp, The Gunners by G.W. Nicholson, the Blackburn books, the transcipts of the official historians available from DND history and heritage, commentary heard and read over the years, The Generals by Granatstein (sp?), and Montogomery's autobiography. I synthesized some of my own opinion from what I've read and my focus was the human component - not the fine tactical aspects of who should have been on what line and whether or not Patton's operation was enabled by the Canadians and British divisions tying up German troops that would have responded to the drive up from the South of France.

I will be back to see respsonses later. I have a wedding for my stepson to work on this next week, but now I am back will try to fit in more time here again.

 

Macrusk,
Don't forget that many of the men who served in the 1st Canadian Army were British units. This includes the 1st Corps and a lot of artillery. There is a tendency sometimes to ignore them in the haste to fly the maple leaf flag everywhere.

I recently took a group of British army reservists to see where their predecessor unit served in Normandy. Captain Marsh, one their officers was awarded an MC for his work as an FOO to David Currie in the action at St Lambert for which he was awarded the VC. The citation states that the fire of Marsh's medium guns enabled Curie to hold his position and that German prisoners gave the medim artillery as their reason for surrendering. This was signed by two Canadian Generals Simmonds and his boss Craerer. Here is a link to an article about the tour. http://www.theobservationpost.com/blog/?p=945 The role of British troops is not mentioned anywhere on the information panels at St Lambert.

 

I was going to mention the British units in my comments, but ran out of time.

The Canadian books I've read do acknowledge the British units that served with them. The Canadian forces inability to fill their own losses with Canadians meant in order for the 1st Canadian Army to be at strength, it had to be filled with other units - one of the reasons for the Polish units being with them as well as British.

Not all information panels and memorials acknowledge all the units which took part in various actions. As I mentioned above, my Dad's battery was at Dieppe, along with other units of the 3LAA and the 4th Artillery Regiment - yet at Dieppe there is no memorial to them and it is rarely acknowledged that there were Canadian Artillerymen on the ground at Dieppe - some who died and some who were captured. Just as it is rare for there to be acknowledgement that Canadians of the 1st Division, including artillery were at Dunkirk.

As Sapper noted earlier, he was also at Falaise with the British. The flag waving of the Canadians these days has a lot to do with them being largely ignored for what they did during WWII in history books, etc, unless there is a reason to maligne them. Newer Canadian writers are trying to redress this with producing well researched books that do not suffer from the ongoing influence of the past self-denigration that was a hallmark of our national identity in earlier decades, but I do not think that those I have read have gone to the other extreme.

Another note about Falaise, is that sometimes people are surprised to see the photos or read about the number of dead horses and mules. So much has been made of the might of the German tank, particularly in movies, that most do not realize how heavily the Germany army was dependant on horses. Always, petrol or the lack of it was an issue - in the same way as it was an issue for the Allies as the moved away from Normandy up into the Netherlands.

Blackburn and Whitaker both do a very good job of describing the conditions from June to August; from Carpiquet through Verrieres Ridge, Caen, and Falaise. Found another interesting resource, where there is significant acknowledgement of the inter-cooperation of the British and Canadian forces during Operation Goodwood. http://www.canadiansoldiers.com/history/battlehonours/northwesteurope/bourguebusridge.htm

 

51st Highland Division was also fighting under command of 1st Canadian Army at the time, right through to the Rhine crossings.