Hedgerow suprise

Calvados? I Had some for my Christmas meal with apple sorbet . It's the perfect digestive between two courses. The G.I.s who first tasted it thought they were beng poisened, but then they loved it and it was one of the best presents a peasant could offer to their Liberators.

 

I believe it is associated to the Battle of Normandy and this ends with the Fall of the Falaise pocket on August 21st.
Some Historians say it ends after the Battle of Le Have on September 12th.

Invasion of Normandy - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

Oooh - absolutely !

It can be rough, if aged a little, it can be smooth....

One of the culinary delights of a visit to Normandy is to have crepes drizzled with Calvados ; the waiter sets light to it at your table......and it's served with whipped cream.

It is very nice !

 

I see you tasted the famous "crêpe flambée". You should try the Cointreau version.

 

The Bocage was hell...as the figures indicate. Unfortunately the site I took these from in 2003 does not exist anymore.. (I copied them from my earlier post here). And the weapon of choice for Germans was mortar. Every time they retreated behind another Bocage area they had lines ready to tap and inform the mortar crews to fire the previous bocage area where the US troops just had come.

Losses in Normandy:

Germany: 30,000 dead, 80,000 wounded, 210 000 missing ( over 70% of these captured )

UK 11,000 killed, 54,000 wounded and missing

Canada 5,000 killed, 13,000 wounded and missing

US 29,000 dead, 106,000 wounded and missing

the U.S. 90th Division :The division suffered heavy casualties as a result—150 officers and 2,315 enlisted men during June and 310 officers and 5,188 enlisted men during July. More experienced units also suffered terribly in the bocage. A U.S. Army survey of casualties in portions of the 1st, 4th, 9th, and 25th Infantry Divisions between 6 June and 31 July 1944 found that rifle companies lost nearly 60 percent of their enlisted men and over 68 percent of their officers.
Bradley:"we had estimated that the infantry would incur 70 percent of the losses of combat forces. By August we had boosted that figure to 83 percent on the basis of our experience in the Normandy hedgerows." Bradley illustrated his point by noting that, in fifteen days of fighting around St. Lo, the 30th Division sustained 3,934 battle casualties, a loss rate of 25 percent for the unit as a whole but of 90 percent in its rifle platoons, where three out of every four casualties occurred.

 

I added some more details to thse figures.

Germany: 30,000 dead, 80,000 wounded, 210 000 missing ( over 70% of these captured ) + 1800 pows killed when removing mines after the war

UK 11,000 killed, 54,000 wounded and missing (including Poles, Dutch and Belgian units)

Canada 5,000 killed, 13,000 wounded and missing

US 29,000 dead, 106,000 wounded and missing (these figures comrpise the casulaties from the 2nd armored Free French Units under U.S. Command)

to this figures should be added 20.000 civilians

+123 Resistants killed in Normandy between June and August.

 

No worries mate, it's an interesting picture in its own right. If I'm not mistaken (still 6000km from my books), it was taken during trials to see if the MP43 would be usable as a scoped sniper rifle. (Note the scope in the pic)

Interesting thread, makes you think, doesn't it? Who would have thought that some "shrubbery" would prove to be such and obstacle. I visited Normandy last year, and my thought about this "bocage" landscape was: lots of places to hide and lay in ambush!

Kind regards,

Jos

 

No, but if you've got a bottle to spare, please send it along and I'll try it!

 

That's a pretty sobering statistic. Only a few weeks later at Mortain/St. Barthelemy, some elements of the same division had 90%+ casualties again after the German attack on the morning of 7 August. Company B, 117th, 30th IR had only 13 men left on the afternoon of 7 August, while Company A had but 33 men. Those were the two companies on the line when the attack hit. Despite that, they held right there until the battalion commander (Colonel Frankland) ordered them to fall back to a new line only a few hundred yards to the rear, where they continued to hold until the end of the battle 5 days later.

 

The first photo is of the area of the start of of COBRA. Specifically the place of 'Barkmann's Corner' in July






This second view is of the area of EPSOM 26-30 June



Though most of Normandy was enclosed the fields to the west (US Sector) were very small. In the British area some of it was 'close' (BLUECOAT) but a lot was more open. Around Caen was very open country, relatively speaking!

 

After the war many of these hedges were progressively destroyed by industrial agriculture and only recently farmers realised the use of these hedges. They are not only part of the Normandy Heritage, but they also have an ecological use. They host fauna and flora that has disapeared from other places and provides fire wood too, not to mention the natural fences. Nowadays many owners accept to keep a certain percentage of bocage and some were even planted again to keep the tradition high. Tourists, Veterans and re-enactors love the landscape.

 

Judge for yourself.
The original b/w photo (bottom) was taken in 1947

 

This particulary area seems almost preserved (with the exception of the large wheat field on the left) , but others are not. Blight is an excuse used by those who unrooted the hedges . Productivity is the real reason. I have a wild hedge in my garden and it grows like hell, the prune fruits are taken by pigeons and ravens and spit elsewhere in the garden, and if I don't remove the young plants my garden would turn in a forest within a few years.
Oh, and the 2cm+ thorns hurt your fingers badly and even puncture your lawnmower tires.

 

My understanding is that hedgerows were prevelant in England however those like the ones in Normandy only existed in a few areas. One in particular was mentioned (over on a thread in the axis histroy forum I believe) as being available for training but unutilized. I suspect the main problem was people not realizing how much difference there could be in hedgerows.

 

I love this picture with G.I.'s checking the hedges and Germans who just left and abandonned an amno box.