AS THE LAST DESPERATE STRUGGLES of the trapped German armies to break out of the Falaise pocket were coming to an end on 22 August, 1944, General Sir Bernard Montgomery ordered his British and Canadian Armies to pursue their remnants. Freed of the restriction which held them in position until their still-dangerous enemy could fight no longer, they turned eastwards from Normandy toward the Seine.
Three days earlier, General Harry Crerar, commanding First Canadian Army had explained his plans for the advance to his corps commanders. To 2nd Canadian Corps he assigned an axis from Trun through Vimoutiers to Orbec, Bernay and Elbeuf. It was not to move until he gave the order but, in the meantime, it was to begin reconnoitring in that direction. Guy Simonds, its young commander, interpreted the order with imagination. He despatched his reconnaissance units toward the Seine on 21 August, followed by the entire 2nd Division.
Near the coast Lt-General J.T. Crocker’s 1st British Corps which had not been involved in the fighting at Falaise, had already begun to move. On the left, paratroopers of the 6th Airborne Division were slogging along the roads toward Honfleur and Pont L’Evêque, while inland, the 7th Armoured Division was fighting in Lisieux. Between them, the 49th (West Riding) Division was shouldering aside stiff opposition on the River Touques.
For the first few hours the advance of the 2nd Canadian Division was slowed by large numbers of Germans surrendering but as they began to shake free from these the 5th Brigade in the lead began to meet enemy who were prepared to resist.
At Vimoutiers on the Trun-Orbec road, the Canadian Black Watch came under fire from an enemy rearguard which could only be cleared with the assistance of Le Régiment de Maisonneuve. Passing through them, a company of the Calgary Highlanders encountered a party of enemy in the process of demolishing a bridge. Racing forward, they drove the German sappers from the bridge. Promptly the enemy demolition guard counter-attacked, supported by a tank. The tank was knocked out by a PIAT and the enemy attack was brought to a halt. As units of the 6th Brigade passed through, the company rounded up a surprising bag of prisoners — two officers and 54 men, having themselves lost one man killed and two wounded in action. The result was uncharacteristic of the Wehrmacht in Normandy. It also was the Highlanders’ last inexpensive victory on the way to the Seine.
Next day the Battalion was reminded that the withdrawing enemy had a sting in his tail. Moving through Orbec, they had 18 casualties from shellfire. Ahead, the Fusiliers de Montreal of the 6th Brigade were unable to break through a force of infantry and tanks at St Germain-la-Campagne and the Highlanders were ordered to attack. Flanking the town on the left, B Company was badly mauled by enemy tanks while the Battalion Command Group had to run the gauntlet of a battery of 88mm guns in approaching the town. By the end of the day B Company’s normal strength of some 125 was reduced to two officers and 37 men.1
Having spent the daylight hours of the 25th in the apple orchards of St Cyre de Salerne near Brionne, the Calgaries were boarding their transport when a brilliant light lit the sky overhead. Captain Mark Tennant dived to the ground.
Someone had fired a flare right over our area and then the Stukas came in, their sirens screaming. You could have struck a match on their noses they came so close to the ground. As they pulled up, down came their bombs, not the ordinary kind but containers with five to six hundred bomblets a little smaller than a grenade — grass-cutters. One container landed near me and didn’t explode, thank God.
There’s always been an argument about how many Stukas there were. I think there were three, others say half a dozen, others more. But they only made the one pass. No one had dug in except for Bob Morgan-Deane who was killed next day. He made his platoon dig in and one of those clusters landed right beside them. Not one of them got a scratch. But counting a little skirmish we had next day, we lost five officers and 115 men to those damn Stukas. We all reckoned that it was some 5th columnist who fired the flare that brought them in.2
The Canadian Official History states that:
… resistance to the 2nd Corps had so far been insignificant; the enemy was chiefly intent on getting away, and such opposition as he offered was merely delaying actions by rearguards which withdrew as soon as strong pressure was applied. Indeed, the most memorable feature of these days was the tumultuous and heartfelt welcome which the liberated people gave our columns…. It was an experience to move the toughest soldier.
Generally speaking, the statement was correct and could equally be applied to 1st British Corps. On some routes there was scarcely any resistance, but on the approaches to the three large loops in the Seine, at Rouen, Duclair and Caudebec-en-Caux to the west of the city, it was another matter. Here the enemy was holding a bridgehead to permit the remnants of his armies with their transport, to withdraw beyond the Seine.
From Paris west to the sea the German forces were under the command of Col-General Sepp Dietrich of the 5th Panzer Army. His orders from Field-Marshal Model, Commander-in-Chief West, were ‘to stand fast under any circumstances … in order to safeguard the crossings of the lower Seine. Elements of the 7th Army not needed and all vehicles to be ferried across the river forthwith at high pressure and without let-up.’
Covering the withdrawal across the Seine in the Rouen area was the 331st Infantry Division, commanded by Colonel Walter Steinmüller, a good division which had not been involved in the disaster at Falaise. Its task was to cover the crossings about Rouen and Duclair at the tops of the Seine bends, while behind it a great mass of armoured and other vehicles stood waiting to cross the river. To support it, armoured groups, one from the remnants of the 2nd and 9th SS Panzer Divisions, the other from the 21st and 116th Panzer Divisions lay across the necks of the great river loops.3
Approaching the enemy positions covering the vital Rouen crossings was the 2nd Canadian Division. Intelligence referred to the enemy facing them as ‘nothing more than local rearguards’ and Major-General Charles Foulkes, commanding the Division, was led to believe that the enemy had pulled out and little opposition was to be expected. The 4th and 6th Brigades received a rude shock when they attempted to advance toward the strong enemy positions, well concealed in the Fôret de la Londe.4
For three days the Canadians tried without success to batter their way through the German defences. Then, during the night of 28 August, the German armour withdrew across the Seine at Rouen and Steinmüller’s infantry began to pull back. Early in the morning of the 30th the last elements of the 331st Division crossed the river, their commander claiming that ‘no man and no vehicle fell into the hands of the enemy.’ They were just in time, for patrols of the 3rd Canadian Division were entering Rouen from the east.
The enemy had fought skilfully and well from commanding positions which were excellently camouflaged. His mortar fire was accurate and he frequently changed the positions of his weapons. In the dense woods, it was difficult for the attackers to keep direction or to pinpoint the enemy’s positions. To make matters worse, our maps were inaccurate, our artillery fire ineffective and bad weather limited air support.5
But there was another reason for the 2nd Division’s lack of success which was more fundamental than a failure of Intelligence or the Germans’ ability to fight. It was the lack of trained infantrymen to replace battle casualties.
The 2nd Division had had exceptionally heavy losses in Normandy, and while they had received a large number of reinforcements, on 26 August they were deficient 1,910 ‘other ranks.’
The two French-speaking units were worst off, Les Fusiliers de Mont-Royal being 331 men short and Le Régiment de Maisonneuve 246; however, although these were the largest deficiencies, three other units were short more than 200 men each. An attempt had already been made to improve the situation in the French battalions by ‘combing’ Canadian units in the United Kingdom for French-speaking personnel.6
The 2nd Division was not the only formation suffering in this way. Every Canadian division was affected as were the British, Poles and indeed the Americans. The Allied planners had seriously underestimated the losses of infantry and the armies in the field were having to take emergency measures of their own to fill their depleted ranks.
Already some units, such as light anti-aircraft regiments had been disbanded. Their men had been instructed to take down their artillery badges and replace them with those of infantry regiments; then with little or no further training they were sent to their new units. There they were more of a liability than an asset until, if they survived, they learned the basic skills of the infantry.
Against this background of reinforcement shortages can be judged the shock of the 2nd Division’s experience in the Fôret de la Londe. In it the six battalions principally involved lost another 577 men and some were critically under strength. On 29 August the South Saskatchewan Regiment’s four rifle companies totalled only 60 men. For those who hoped that, with the War entering a new phase, the demand for reinforcements would diminish, more disappointments lay ahead.
On the left of the 2nd Division, 1st British Corps closed up to the Seine on 29 August, and next day, reconnaissance elements crossed and found that the enemy had withdrawn. On the right, two days earlier, the 3rd and 4th Canadian Divisions crossed the river at Elbeuf and Pont de l’Arche. Casualties were heavy as the Germans did their utmost to block any advance on Rouen from that direction. Then, on the 29th, with the arrival of the 4th Armoured Brigade, the Canadians began to push through. In the afternoon of 30 August, Brigadier John Rockingham, commanding his 9th Brigade from the front, drove into Rouen in his scout car and exchanged fire with a party of Germans in the main square. A patrol of the Highland Light Infantry of Canada dealt with them as the streets began to fill with cheering French.
With its two Corps across the Seine, First Canadian Army was now ready to carry out the next phase of the operations ordered by Montgomery on 26 August — to take Le Havre, to secure the port of Dieppe and to destroy all enemy forces in the coastal belt up to Bruges.