Commanders cannot reasonably be assessed as either successes or failures without an understanding of the military context within which they fought or the nature of the forces that they commanded.1 Dr Richard Gabriel, in his examination of the great commanders of antiquity found that great leaders appear to be the consequence of two sets of factors coming together at an appropriate time: the ‘traits of personality and character whose presence and exercise permit the development of a mind that understands its environment and can deal with it without paralysing apprehension’ and ‘the historical circumstances in which the potential leader must live out his life’.2 Gabriel concluded, ‘Great men are only possible when there are challenging times that provide opportunities for their greatness to manifest itself.’3
Major General George Kitching had the requisite traits of personality and character. He led his division in challenging times that provided opportunities for greatness yet his reputation as a commander has been defined more by his dismissal rather than what his division accomplished. This suggests a third factor that Dr Gabriel did not mention: a balanced assessment can be made of the leader only when history and historians have gathered together enough relevant information of the true context of his leadership challenge and how he tackled it. The latter has not existed until now for either Kitching or the men of the 4 Cdn Armd Div.
When most people think of an armoured division they visualize a group of tanks moving across a battlefield to capture a piece of ground or vital objective. The reason why the force is there and the fact that it is supported by a complex administrative system of machines, material and people whose mission it is to keep the fighting echelons operational, is often forgotten or ignored.4 The fighting and the support echelons together represent a cohesive system capable of fighting, supporting, fuelling, servicing, repairing, evacuating, and moving the people and equipment that are vital to the fighting capacity of the division under all kinds of conditions. Without the support of the echelon troops, the fighting elements cannot operate, shoot, communicate or provide sustenance to the soldiers who fight. It is with these ingredients that hills are taken, rivers crossed and enemies killed or captured.5 Likewise, understanding the leadership, training, equipment and unit cohesiveness is crucial to assessing the fighting efficiency of the combat formations of the division. An understanding of the entire complex system is vital before any assessment can be made of whether success was possible on the battlefield.
A detailed examination of Kitching’s role in the training of his division revealed significant hurdles which severely tested his resources as both a leader and teacher. Kitching faced significant training challenges that prevented him from attaining the level of proficincy and knowledge he knew his division required for the mobile operations that he was expected to conduct in Normandy. The reasons can be directly attributed to command decisions made at the Corps and Army Group level.
Some decisions were operationally focused, such as deliberately using 4 Cdn Armd Bde in April and May 1944 to bring up the readiness of the assault divisions for the Normandy invasion. Others were administrative such as the order to waterproof all of the divisions’ vehicles. Combined, these decisions severely constrained Kitching’s ability to facilitate the interoperability and combat effectiveness needed between his infantry battalions and tank regiments. Indeed, some would be tasked to work together for the first time in Normandy.
One focus of this investigation has been the effectiveness of the interaction between the GOC, his subordinate commanders, and the two key division staff members, the GSO1 and the AA&QMG. The goal was to determine how well the leadership worked together to facilitate successful combat operations. The evidence strongly supports the conclusion that during the timeframe examined the leadership team, composed of Kitching, Wigle and Proctor and the regimental/battalion command teams, worked well, overcoming significant challenges and obstacles in facilitating and coordinating the combat operations of the division in Normandy.
One of Simonds’ dictates to his commanding officers was to ensure that their subordinate formations were led by competent officers. Realistic exercises based in part from his combat experiences from the battlefields of Sicily and Italy represented the only valid vehicle through which Kitching could evaluate his senior staff officers and commanders. Kitching asked to exercise his division as a division so that he could expose his soldiers and commanders to the demands, chaos, and uncertainty of combat. Kitching’s request were denied in part because there weren’t adequate training areas and the division did not have a high enough priority to get access to the large training areas. Kitching was left to improvise as best he could and utilized skeleton communication exercises and TEWTs whenever possible as his main training methods. Kitching had, therefore, to wait until actual combat operations before he could realistically assess the abilities of his commanders. When the time came, a number were found wanting.
The commanding officer attrition rate within 4 Cdn Armd Div during these twenty-one days is striking. One of the two brigade commanders was lost as a casualty. Of the four armoured regiments that landed in late July, only the SAR retained its original commanding officer (Wotherspoon) by 21 August. Within the three infantry battalions and one motor battalion, only the Argylls retained their original commanding officer (Stewart). Even within his senior staff, Kitching lost one of his two key staff officers during this period (Ganong).
Dealing with this extraordinary level of change in his senior leadership in such a short period of time represented a considerable challenge for Kitching. It is a testament to the quality and training of the officers within the division that the tier of officer who succeeded the original commanding officers all came from within the division and fought successful major battles within hours of taking command. Most stayed with their units throughout the rest of the war.
Kitching’s own battle experience, his research, debriefs from officers returning from theatre, and mining of after-action reports, led him to the conclusion that the doctrine that was being imparted in their training was not what was needed in theatre. He realized that combined arms battlegroups were needed in Normandy. His dilemma: change the doctrine and reorganize the division around combined arms battlegroups – a course of action that would require time and extensive training to develop to a level of effectiveness needed; or continue to work with the current doctrine knowing that it was flawed, hoping that the necessary changes could be made once in theatre. Kitching decided to stay with what they had practised and was known.
The division was able to achieve a level of effectiveness in infantry-tank combined-arms training at the unit and sub-unit level. In the 10 Cdn Inf Bde the level of cooperation and understanding reached a high before entering Normandy. Not so with 4 Cdn Armd Bde. What Kitching really needed was the opportunity to school his senior commanders in the command and control of combined arms battlegroups in actual exercises. His decision to conduct Exercise Iroquois at the beginning of July reveals a desire to expose his officers to the concepts and challenges of battlegroups in an attempt to get them thinking about the issues they would be facing in coordinating the different arms.
The evidence of Kitching’s comprehensive insight into combat effectiveness lies with the amount of effort that went into the training of the division staffs. As a former GSO1, Kitching knew the importance of a properly trained and educated staff to the conduct of successful operations. Staff training was one area where he did have the resources and the means to properly train his people and the evidence indicates that he trained them just as hard under realistic conditions as the combat troops.
The fact that one of his first directives was to get the staff working under field conditions was indicative of the level of importance he placed on staff training. The payback for this effort came during the pursuit phase of the European campaign when, despite all of the administrative and logistical challenges that were present theatre-wide in northwest Europe, the division staff and echelon forces were able to maintain both the combat power of the division and the operational tempo required by the division commander.
Helmuth von Moltke, a famous German military commander of the nineteenth century wrote, ‘. . . no plan of operations will ever extend, with any sort of certainty, beyond the first encounter with the hostile main force.’ Success in battle was gained through the commander’s ability to recognize the changed situation and react accordingly. These and similar dicta stress that victory is won by the flexibly minded leader capable of adapting to the rapidly changing circumstances on the battlefield.6 Unfortunately for Kitching, flexibility was not a feature of Simonds’ plans for Totalize: a plan Kitching found fundamentally flawed. Yet Kitching displayed flexibility, initiative and leadership in bouncing back from the loss of two regiments during his first night of combat by getting his forces on Pt 180 and Pt 195 the next evening.
The tactic that killed momentum altogether in Totalize was not the tying of the ground campaign to a bombing plan, as is commonly stated, but the narrow frontage allotted to the armoured divisions in Phase II. Phase II could not have started any earlier. Allowing the two armoured divisions more space in Phase II could have allowed the armoured brigades to put more combat power up front. This additional power may have been enough to overpower the hastily reconstructed German defences on the afternoon of 8 August 1944. It is not clear, however, whether a different division attack plan for Phase II would have addressed the breakdown in the deployment procedures within 4 Cdn Armd Bde in the rush to launch Totalize.
The loss of Worthington Force was a tragic event and a clear example of the fog of war. While the attack has often been viewed as a tragedy, the fact remains that a battlegroup had broken through and penetrated into Meyer’s rear area, and because of this action Meyer had to respond to this immediate threat. The actions of Worthington Force, it has been argued, facilitated the operations of 9 August by tying up Meyer’s armoured reserve for the entire day denying him the initiative. The possibility for a brigade breakthrough was real had Worthington been reinforced. The inability of the Pol Armd Div to provide any support to Worthington or exploit the tactical situation he had created remains one of those historical ‘might have beens’ that may have changed the entire outcome of Totalize.
Kitching is often blamed for not finding the BCRs but his assets were all engaged by the time it was realized that the BCRs were not on Hill 195. Simonds could have provided additional assets but he seems to have considered it a division problem since no additional resources from 2 Cdn Corps were offered or committed to find the BCRs.7 The lack of communication between the typhoon aircraft, which unbeknownst to Kitching were supporting Worthington, and the ground commanders or 2 Cdn Corps is a glaring indication that 21 Army Group had much to learn with respect to interoperability between the army and the allied tactical air forces.
In Tractable, operational tempo was disrupted by the failure, at Corps level, to consider the Laison River as a tank obstacle and by the degradation of the command and control capability of the armoured brigade through the death of Booth, the wounding of Scott and the destruction of the brigade Tac HQ. Despite the successful attack of the armoured brigade on 14 August, the loss of the coordination function of the brigade HQ, late on 15 August, denied the division its objective for the day. Yet the division units in both Totalize and Tractable generated opportunity and achieved successes that boosted the confidence of the soldiers. Kitching and the division may have suffered setbacks and casualties but their determination to ‘get to grips with the Germans’ never waned.
Other historical accounts of the Normandy campaign have focused on what happened; as opposed to what was intended and then what happened. In a number of cases, these were not the same thing. A case in point is the changing orders received by the division on 15/16 August. Most of the current narratives simply state that the operation to capture Falaise was cancelled and that the division spent 16 August regrouping followed by an advance on 17 August that was to take them to Trun. The actual level of complexity and activity generated by the changing orders to the division in that twenty-four hour period has largely been ignored or simply misunderstood. The impact on the commanders and staffs of the division for example, of having three division Orders Group in less than twenty-four hours, with each O Group sending the division in a different direction with different objectives and tasks, is difficult to fathom. The fact that the division was actually able to launch Op Smash essentially on time in the early morning of 17 August is a testament to the effectiveness of the leaders and men of the division.
There is no doubt that Kitching, Wigle and Proctor were effective leaders. The level of trust between them was evident and Kitching remarked on their individual and combined effectiveness a number of times in his memoirs. Kitching created a command environment in which he gave his intent and the expected outcome for coming operations and left the details to his staff. Kitching trusted both Wigle and Proctor and their abilities to generate what was required from the staff and the echelon forces to meet the intent of his operations. As a former GSO1, it would have been natural for Kitching to have a command style that was more intrusive when it came to what the staff was doing and telling them how he wanted things done. The leadership team was effective, responsive to the changing nature of the operations and was able and willing to improvise. At no point during the timeframe examined did the leadership at the division level fail to provide the guidance or resources necessary for the purpose of coordinated action on the part of the division.
The same cannot be said of the subordinate commanders within the division. The reality of human nature and combat is that you cannot determine, even with the most realistic training, how various people are going to react when under fire. Some of the apparently promising people were complete failures, and by the same token some of the most unlikely people turned into superb leaders. Even those who had survived and had gained experience in previous combat were not immune to the hazards of renewed combat.
Totalize exposed McQueen and Murrell as weak regiment commanders and Booth as a marginal brigade commander. These two regiment commanders were relieved in quick order but the options with respect to Booth became limited very quickly. It is clear that Booth was promoted beyond his level of capability. Booth was a liability to Kitching yet Kitching decided to stick with him. Viewed in hindsight, Booth should have been relieved right away on 8 August but it is difficult to second guess Kitching on a decision he made in the middle of his first major battle. After all, Booth had commanded tanks in battle before, Kitching had not!
The focus must then turn to one question: knowing that Booth had been killed, that Scott had been sent to hospital, and with repeated requests by Kitching for Moncel, why did Simonds allow the 4 Cdn Armd Bde to remain without a permanent leader for four crucial days? His inaction can only viewed as a conscious decision on his part. As such, Simonds failed in his responsibility as a commander to provide his subordinate commander with all of the resources necessary to complete his assigned mission. In this respect, Simonds failed Kitching. Reflecting on the situation afterwards Kitching realized that he had an effective replacement to command the armoured brigade in Brigadier Lane his CRA, but this solution meant robbing his artillery units of Lane’s effective leadership.
While the command environment within the division was based on trust this was not the case within the Corps command environment. The Simonds command paradigm focused on controlling the command initiative of his divisional commanders. Kitching was forced to command in an environment in which higher headquarters produced detailed plans for lower formations and units to implement. Dr Bill McAndrew, a Canadian military historian, aptly called Simonds’ subordinates ‘unconsulted employees’.8
Simonds’ ideas resulted in centralized planning, control at the highest level, staff management of the battlefield, reliance on indirect fire support, little consideration of the concept of manouevre, and cautious exploitation. There was little room for flexibility, initiative, originality or the modification of the plan to meet the emerging demands of the battlefield.9 If the plan failed, the blame was pushed downwards to the units and commanders involved. Stacey summarized the command crisis as follows:
Thus by the end of August 1944, among the nine infantry or armoured brigades in the 2nd Canadian Corps there had been eight changes in command, and only three brigades retained their original commanders. Four changes were due to battle casualties, a fact which reflects the extreme fierceness of the fighting. Two were the result of what higher authority considered unsuitability. Among the commanding officers of armoured regiments, two were changed as consequences of death or injury, and two for other reasons; seven commands remained unchanged. In the infantry and machine gun battalions (24 in number) only seven commands had not changed by the end of August. No less than fourteen battalion commanders had been changed as the result of battle casualty or sickness. Five commanding officers had been promoted, and five removed because considered unsuitable.10
Stacey concluded his study by stating that a ‘great deal had been done’ prior to D-Day to weed out the officers who were deemed not effective in command but the final arbiter despite the best training conditions was the ‘test of battle’.11
The story of Kitching contains an interesting footnote and further controversy. After his relief, Kitching was reduced in rank to brigadier and placed in command of the 13 Cdn Inf Bde in Helmsley, Yorkshire. Kitching held the rank as a major general but this rank was an acting rank which he held as long as he remained in command of the division. He returned to his substantive rank of brigadier when he took over the 13 Cdn Inf Bde. His main task was to retrain volunteers from other parts of the army, technicians for the most part, into infantry soldiers.12 Shortly after word of his relief was known and unbeknownst to Kitching, heavy lobbying was taking place on the part of Lieutenant General Burns to have Kitching take over command of the 1 Cdn Inf Bde. A formal request in the form of an immediate message was sent to Lieutenant General Stuart on 2 September asking for Kitching: ‘If you consider Kitching should have another chance in command Vokes and I would be glad to have him.’13
Crerar weighed in on the debate in a memorandum to Stuart on 4 October 1944 decidedly against the request:
I do not consider the Kitching-Calder ‘swap’ would do other than to suggest ‘horse trading’. It gives no promotion to either – just an indication that what is acceptable to one Corps Comd is not liked by the other. I am opposed to such business.14
In his message to Stuart explaining Kitching’s dismissal, Crerar had stated that Kitching could not be usefully employed in the field in the immediate future.15 This recommendation was almost certainly based on information provided by Simonds. It should also be noted that on 29 August 1944, Crerar had written a personal letter to Simonds warning of the ‘most deleterious general effect on the morale and cohesion of Canadian formations and units,’ brought about by the ‘these frequent changes of command’.16 This particular letter was prompted in part by Simonds’ decision to relieve Ganong with less than a month in command. Simonds’ inclination to relieve senior officers, in this case two in the span of a week, in addition to those that had been relieved in the previous three months, was obviously starting to weigh on Crerar’s mind.
Simonds typically believed that his plans were never the problem. Rather, it was the execution of his plans by his subordinates that resulted in failure. In fact, the plans were a significant part of the problem. The command authority within which Kitching was able to operate diminished as Simonds exerted greater control over his subordinate units and their commanders. While Kitching was given some latitude in the opening operations by 4 Cdn Armd Div against Tilly-la-Campagne, this latitude decreased in Totalize and Tractable. Op Smash represents the only true operation that was planned and executed by Kitching and his division with little apparent oversight by Simonds or 2 Cdn Corps. Examined objectively, the operation revealed flexibility in thought on the part of Kitching in selecting two possible routes depending on intelligence, reconnaissance and German defences. It suggested flexibility and adaptability on the part of Kitching in not trying to force a bad situation at Damblainville but switching to his alternate route at Morteaux-Couliboeuf. The remarkable leadership and flexibility of the division staff was aptly dispayed in fixing the defending German forces in place at Damblainville, switching the axis of advance for the armoured regiments over a significant water obstacle and arranging the subsequent advance with the Pol Armd Div who were already operating in the same area. Effective, adapted and flexible leadership was displayed at all levels within the division during this operation.
Simonds’ management of the Canadian actions to close the Falaise Gap were flawed in part because of his dual responsibility to win the current battle while positioning his forces for future operations. The latter took precedence in Simonds’ mind, which resulted in his questionable order to split 4 Cdn Armd Div placing the under-strength 10 Cdn Inf Bde squarely in the path of a still dangerous German army. Had it not been for the fighting ability and determination of the SAR/Argyll battlegroup the 4 Cdn Armd Div positions along the Dives line may have been completely overrun and lost.
Even after it became apparent that he, and Allied intelligence, had misjudged the potential threat posed by the Germans trapped in the Pocket, Simonds’ response suggests that he still did not grasp the seriousness of the situation. Instead of reinforcing 10 Cdn Inf Bde with 4 Cdn Armd Bde, which could have happened relatively quickly and maintained unity of command along the Dives River line, Simonds ordered 2 Cdn Armd Bde and 9 Cdn Inf Bde who were outside of the area of the immediate battle into the fray. This decision not only delayed the reinforcement of the 10 Cdn Inf Bde but also created a further level of command complexity whereby three division commanders (Kitching, Spry and Maczek) were now trying to control the battle in the confined and confused battlespace in and around the Dives River line. One is again left wondering what might have happened had Kitching been allowed to implement his plan for defences in depth on 18 August along the Dives River with the 10 Cdn Inf Bde and the tanks of the 4 Cdn Armd Bde arrayed behind in support.
There has also been a tendency to judge success and/or failure in operations without a proper understanding of the context within which the operations were conducted. On the days where Booth was exercising proper control, the armoured regiments performed well, as exemplified by the actions on 9 and 10 August. Through a combination of circumstances, leadership was missing on the critical days of 8, 14 and 15 August. As for the remainder of the period, leadership was good from 16–19 August under Halpenny, and from 19 August forward effective leadership was established and retained for the rest of the war under Moncel.
Little has been said about 10 Cdn Inf Bde due mainly to the fact that it had a solid record of success in the August battles particularly in the Pt 180, Pt 195 and St Lambert-sur-Dives battles. Jefferson provided adequate and consistent leadership as the brigade commander, and he had the definite advantage of having two of the best subordinate commanders, Wotherspoon and Stewart, to provide advice. When Jefferson became ill during the pursuit across France, Stewart assumed the brigade commander role with great effectiveness and ease.
The story of the 4 Cdn Armd Div, during the 21 days in Normandy is much more complex than recorded in previous accounts. The 4 Cdn Armd Div led the way in the August battles but as a new division it had to learn how to fight while it fought. The division gained valuable experience in its first actions and so did its commanders.17 The tenets of doctrine had to be tempered by combat experience to provide new concepts in the planning and execution of operations. The members of the division learned quickly at all levels leading to innovation in tactics, combat support, battlefield replenishment, and resupply. The division and its leadership were placed under significant stresses and yet they proved resilient to these stresses, allowing them to function effectively in very difficult circumstances. The leaders and men of 4 Cdn Armd Div do not deserve the negative reputation that they have been saddled with for the past seventy plus years. This book is the first step in establishing a new one.