Hedge Rows

There was a British government appeal during WW2 for recent holiday snaps of areas of German occupied Europe which would supplement aerial photographs.

 

Looking at those pictures one can really get an "idea" of how cumbersome the bocage really was for offensive action.

 

It was never expected that the Allied would have to fight for any length of time that close to the beaches.
The US sectors were very 'bocage' but most of the Commonwealth area was fairly open. The BLUECOAT area was more like the US bocage.
First pic US sector. Second pic Commonwealth area.

 

Alright, alright! I'll pour myself a Calvados!

 

Holy Cow.!
Hundreds and Hundreds of French made booby-traps and fields of doom.
2 machine guns, and a couple guys with a box of "tank-fists" roaming around.....they could have held-up, and played Hide And Seek with The Ally Army for days.

 

Fighting in hedgerows kind of reminds me of urban fighting. You have to take each one, one at a time. There's not much you can do to except either blast your way through (which would take time if the core of the hedgerows was stone) or fight your way through. Especially since each one was practically occupied by the Germans and a fighting zone. Bombing may help somewhat,but I don't think it would have a major impact.

 

I wonder...

Given that the stone walls and ditches beneath the hedges were the area's particular type of field boundary/division...

How much effort did it take for the French to repair the wartime damage done to them in the years following the war???

 

While that's certainly true...the area was far more livestock oriented then than now, it's gotten to be very arable. I remember reading personal account of 1944 that mentioned the all-pervading reek of rotting flesh in the weeks after D-Day because of all the slaughtered livestock bloating in the summer sun. I wonder how they dealt with re-closing the field enclosures - and all the unspent munitions laying around?

We know all about mine clearance after the war...but somewhere like the Bocage there must have been a lot else too...

 

It could very well be!

 

That may be so with the advantage of hind sight. The infamous phase lines were just interpolations between d day and the D+90 target lodgement area. .
http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/UN/Canada/CA/Victory/sk/Victory-4.jpg

There is quite a lot of close country in France. The whole US sector is pretty much hedgerow country in the D - D+17 lines. The US advance West into Brittany would all have been through stone wall and hedgerow country. Although the area between caen and Falaise is open country, the area north east of Falaise and between the Dives and Seine is all woods and hedgerows.

 

Maybe Naplam would have been a good weapon against the dug-in Germans of The Bocage.?

 

More likely handheld WP, like the WP grenades used for bunkers in the Pacific.

 

Isn't that true with any weapon.?
You mark a map (these four fields here) and tell the pilots to burn it to the ground.
Would it be different than ay other time Napalm was used.?
Thank You