WHILE THE ROYAL WINNIPEG RIFLES taken prisoner were helpless players in a random lottery that determined whether they lived or died, many of their comrades were loose in the night trying to escape the cauldron of Putot-en-Bessin. Among these was Rifleman Jim Parks of the battalion’s mortar platoon. Parks had considered himself lucky to have narrowly escaped drowning when his Bren carrier sank while disembarking from a LCT on June 6, but now thought surviving this terrible battle would be a sign that he was truly blessed. During the long, blood-soaked afternoon’s fighting in Putot, Parks had become separated from his unit while trying to eliminate a sniper harrying battalion headquarters. When he spotted a number of Bren carriers and transport trucks careening out of Putot and heading for Secqueville-en-Bessin and 7th Canadian Infantry Brigade’s rear, Parks decided the wiser part of valour was to follow suit. Creeping from one hedgerow to another, he followed a course that would hopefully lead him to the Canadian Scottish Regiment stronghold at la Bergerie Ferme.
Having expended all his Sten gun ammunition trying to silence the German sniper, Parks fervently hoped to avoid enemy contact. The young soldier was tired, hungry, thirsty, and dispirited at being alone in a hostile land. His spirits perked up momentarily, though, at the sound of voices to his left. But just as Parks thought to announce his presence, the shadowy images of five heavily camouflaged soldiers wearing distinctive coal-bucket German helmets emerged from the hedge. Faces covered with a mixture of black and sand camouflage paint, binder twine woven through web belts to break silhouettes, the men looked bizarrely like wraiths wrapped in badminton netting. Parks, who had enlisted in 1939 at the tender age of fifteen by outrageously representing himself as an eighteen-year-old, thought the Germans looked even younger than his now nineteen years. But they also looked hard-faced, and each soldier had a Schmeisser slung over a shoulder.
“My first thought was to get the hell out of there,” Parks later recalled. “Even had I had a magazine for the gun there was no way I was going to have it out with them there. So I kept going as fast as I could without making much noise.”1
A few minutes later, he looked across a field and saw the eight-foot-high wall surrounding la Bergerie Ferme on the opposite side. The field was being pounded by German artillery, each shell hurling large clots of dirt ten to twelve feet into the air. Glancing over his shoulder, Parks detected the Panzer Grenadiers flitting about in the hedge about fifty yards away and decided he either risked a run through the shellfire or “these guys” were going to catch him. Sucking down a deep breath, Parks bolted into the field, zigzagging through exploding shells until he banged up against the wall. A Canadian Scottish soldier glanced out at him through a loophole carved into the wall and then a length of thick rope dropped over the rim of the wall. Jumping to catch its trailing end, Parks quickly pulled himself hand over hand up the wall and dropped over the other side.
As he hit the ground, the man who had thrown the rope said, “I’ll switch my rifle for your Sten gun.”
“I don’t have any ammo for it,” Parks replied.
“Don’t worry about that. We’re going into the attack in ten minutes.” Parks nodded and exchanged the automatic weapon for a Lee Enfield. So much for regulations, he thought, knowing that he could be placed on a charge for failing to retain possession of the weapon signed out to his care. He could easily imagine the battalion quartermaster reaming him out in a few days, but also realized the other soldier needed the gun more than he did at the moment. The soldier said his section had seen Parks poke his head out of the hedgerow before starting the dash across the field. They had also spotted the five Panzer Grenadiers and fired at them to cover him. “Don’t think we hit any of them,” the man said, “but they buggered off.”
Parks was walked over to the farmhouse, where some tea stood in a can on the kitchen stove. A steel mug of the bitter brew was pressed into his hand. Stepping out of the kitchen, Parks crouched and leaned his back against the farmhouse wall. The courtyard was filled with Canadian Scottish all checking weapons or breaking extra ammunition and grenades out of boxes to fill every available web pouch or pocket with extra ordnance. It was about 2000 hours. Parks knew the Canadian Scottish were to try breaking through to Putot-en-Bessin to relieve the remnants of his battalion still holding out on the town’s eastern flank. He hoped that they got there in time and that not too many of these brave lads would die doing it.2
Brigadier Harry Foster had decided to throw the Canadian Scottish Regiment into a hasty counterattack on Putot-en-Bessin in the late afternoon after it became obvious the Royal Winnipeg Rifles had been all but wiped out. At 1830 hours, the commander of 7 CIB walked into Lieutenant Colonel Fred Cabeldu’s headquarters in Secqueville-en-Bessin and said he must attack in no more than two hours. The brigadier promised Cabeldu full support by the 12th and 13th Field Regiments, concentrated in firing positions at Bray, and the company of a 1st Hussars tank squadron. Foster then left the Canadian Scottish commander to work out the details of the attack.
“My plan,” Cabeldu wrote, “was a simple one. We were in possession of the la Bergerie Farm woods. This was to be our start line. The road Secqueville-en-Bessin–Putot-en-Bessin was the centre line of the attack, with ‘D’ [Company] right, ‘A’ [Company] left, ‘C’ [Company] reserve right. ‘B’ [Company] was to disengage from its action at Vieux Cairon, be at the start-line as soon as possible and follow ‘A’ [Company’s] axis. Tanks under [1st Hussars second-in-command] Major Frank White were to give right flank protection, our own Carriers left flank protection, and our 3-inch mortars were to fire from just [to the] rear of the start-line. The Camerons were to lay a smokescreen for us with their 4.2-inch mortars. We were on the extreme right of the division and British elements of the 50th [Division] were supposed to be holding the woods north of Brouay in small numbers. The artillery fire plan was difficult in view of the fact that enemy positions were not known, and, according to available information, the Winnipegs’ [battalion] HQ was still in Putot. A creeping barrage commencing 300 yards in advance of the start-line was decided upon with a lift sufficient for a three-mile-an-hour advance, then lifting to concentrations south of the railway crossing and certain known enemy positions beyond. [Defensive Fire] tasks were to be prepared in advance on all crossroads leading into Putot-en-Bessin anticipating a completely successful attack.”3 Following immediately behind the infantry would also be the four 17-pounder self-propelled antitank guns of 248 Battery’s ‘K’ Troop from the 62nd Anti-Tank Regiment to provide close-in support against any tanks or antitank guns the Germans might have deployed.4
Although he considered the plan simple enough, Cabeldu’s men were going to have to scramble to attack on schedule. Only ‘D’ Company was situated at la Bergerie Ferme; the other companies had to start marching almost immediately to have any chance of being in place in time for the advance. Realizing this, Cabeldu had placed ‘B’ Company—almost four miles away in the area of Vieux Cairon—at the back of the attack column. Major R.M. Lendrum would also have to extract his men from the area covertly “in order not to give the enemy any idea that the situation [there] had changed”—nor that the gunners of the field regiments packed into firing positions at Bray were no longer protected by infantry.5
Even as he hastily cobbled his plan of attack together, Cabeldu issued orders summoning the company commanders to an ‘O’ Group at his headquarters. During the short meeting, Cabeldu “impressed on [them] the imperative need for success and haste. The Canadian Scottish must capture and hold Putot. There was no other infantry battalion between the enemy in Putot and the beaches.”6 The creeping artillery barrage would begin at 2030 hours, Cabeldu said, and the leading companies must jump off from the start line then or lose the advantage provided.
So quickly was the attack organized that the 1st Hussars were unable to send an officer to Secqueville in time for the briefing, so the Canadian Scottish second-in-command, Major Cyril Wightman, raced by motorcycle to the tank regiment’s harbour area to personally brief the squadron commander. “I sort of said, ‘Follow me to [the Squadron Leader,]’” he confided to his diary later, turned the bike around, and started heading towards la Bergerie with the Hussars trailing behind in their Shermans.7
Lendrum, who arrived only for the end of the briefing, also rode a motorcycle back to where his men were hotly engaged in a long-range duel with German forces that were pounding Vieux Cairon with artillery, mortar, and heavy machine-gun fire. Pulling out of the area while under fire and without revealing the fact that the village was being left undefended proved no easy matter, but soon Lendrum had his men behind a low rise that screened their movement as they marched “from one battle… cross-country… to get into another.”8
Upon returning to ‘C’ Company, still in Secqueville, Major Desmond Crofton summoned the platoon commanders, while Company Sergeant Major W. Berry organized a distribution of extra ammunition and collected up antitank grenades and other supplies not needed in the attack. Being excluded from the briefing bothered Berry, because if the officers all ended up dead or wounded, responsibility for leading the company would fall on his shoulders and he would have little idea of the plan.9 Among the young officers being briefed by Crofton was twenty-one-year-old Lieutenant Geoffrey D. Corry, who had only taken over No. 15 Platoon the day before as a reinforcement officer. Just getting to know his men, Corry had so far been impressed by their “great confidence and spirit” despite the losses suffered during the landings and advance inland. He listened with growing trepidation, however, to Crofton’s briefly delivered orders. “The Winnipegs have been overrun by the Panzer Grenadiers,” Crofton said sharply, “and it’s the battalion’s job to counterattack and retake Putot-en-Bessin. Our failure will allow the Germans to storm to the beach and jeopardize the whole invasion… There’s no time to lose.” Corry swallowed and thought, “Pretty heavy stuff.” Gathering his platoon section leaders together, Corry explained the situation “quickly but clearly.” Then it “was on with small packs, ammunition, and begin to move out.”10
While waiting for Major Tony MacEwan to return to la Bergerie Ferme from the ‘O’ Group at Secqueville, Lieutenant Thomas Lowell Butters watched increasing numbers of Winnipeg Rifles straggling in from Putot. “They hobbled back, shot up, scared. Each man said that all hell was breaking loose out there.” When MacEwan hustled into the farmyard and ordered ‘D’ Company to saddle up, Butters knew they were going into that hell. With the men marching behind, MacEwan led the way towards the wood south of the farm and “briefed his platoon commanders about what we were doing while on the move to the start line.”11
‘D’ Company arrived at the edge of the wood, and Butters saw Cabeldu already there, staring through binoculars at “streams of troops crossing and running northeast towards [nearby] farm buildings.” Fearing the soldiers might be Germans launching a pre-emptive strike, the lieutenant colonel dispatched the Bren carrier platoon to investigate. Its commander, Lieutenant Joseph James Andrews, quickly radioed back that Cabeldu was seeing Winnipeg Rifles on the run.
As MacEwan marched by at the head of his men, Cabeldu waved them forward and ‘D’ Company’s “advance went in with terrific impetus.”12 The battalion had three miles to go, initially following a narrow lane until it met the Secqueville-Putot main road, and then directly by road to a bridge crossing the railway west of Putot. For the entire distance, the ground was almost perfectly flat and bordered on either side by grain standing four to five feet high, with a few scattered orchards breaking up the open fields until the road intersected the Caen-Bayeux highway. After that, the road passed through three wide grain fields divided only by thin hedgerows.
The company advanced in extended line, with Butters and No. 17 Platoon on the right, Lieutenant A.C. Peck’s platoon to the left, and Lieutenant J.P.R. Mollison’s men astride the road. MacEwan’s company headquarters followed close behind Mollison’s platoon and about fifteen yards farther back, Private R.H. Tutte trundled up the road in the company’s Bren carrier. The carrier was heavily loaded with ammunition and medical supplies, so that it could serve as a mobile supply station. Riding shotgun beside Tutte was Private R.H. Rideout, a company stretcher-bearer. The battalion’s three-inch mortar platoon was also tight on ‘D’ Company’s heels. Given the speed of preparations, MacEwan considered the fact they crossed the start line on time “a miracle.”13
Once on the advance, the lead platoons “spread out on either side of the road in the grain fields” and walked into a murderous rain of steel that the Germans—knowing the creeping barrage screened an attack—cast down immediately behind the Canadian artillery fire.14 ‘D’ Company could only face this intense mortar and artillery fire, as the battalion “learned our first lesson” about German doctrine for meeting attacks. Cabeldu realized that the opening barrage supporting his attack equally betrayed the start line’s position. Now the Germans had it marked and brought fire to bear on each company as it emerged from the wood. But without the artillery, Cabeldu believed his men would be slaughtered when they went forward.15
Even with the artillery support and the cover offered by a thick smokescreen created by the rapid 4.2-inch mortar fire of the Cameron Highlanders, ‘D’ Company started to take casualties. MacEwan was initially confused, unable “to tell whether we were walking into our own artillery or if it was enemy fire.” From his position near the back of the company’s advance, the major could see his leading platoons moving forward, but found it almost impossible to keep in touch with them as the officers were too busy to send regular wireless reports. Sensing that No. 17 Platoon was beginning to veer too far right, possibly in response to the heavy frontal fire it was taking, MacEwan dashed up the road to get directly behind the leading platoons and better control their movement.16
Rattling along behind in his carrier, Private Tutte “could see the full extent of our line, also I could see almost every man that fell and though the enemy fire was so heavy, not one man could I see hanging back. I had never known until this time that we had so many men in our company.” When the first soldiers started falling, Private Rideout jumped off and raced to help the wounded.17 Private W.A.P. Campbell of the mortar platoon later wrote of ‘D’ Company’s advance that “it was really something to see, to watch the boys going across the fields. They just kept right on walking and getting shot down.”18
The smoke boiling over the battlefield thickened, plunging the men into an early twilight through which heavy amounts of tracer rounds being fired by the Panzer Grenadiers to guide their aim “showed up brighter and brighter. The [company] passed through grain fields and orchards, pushing through each sparse hedgerow. Casualties were being suffered all along,” MacEwan later wrote. Wounded himself, the major remained at the head of his men. “We passed over part of the Winnipegs’ position with their arms and equipment left on the ground beside their slit trenches. Further on a German armoured car opened up from behind a hedgerow on the platoon on the left. After several heavy bursts of fire he moved off. Later it was hit and burned on the objective. Just before here I was hit for the second time and was out of action.”19 Lying where his wounds had rendered him helpless, MacEwan tried to draw the attention of second-in-command Captain Jack Bryden and Company Sergeant Major Kilner as the company headquarters section passed by, “but the smoke and flame and roar of exploding shells made this impossible.” MacEwan was later picked up by a stretcher-bearer party and evacuated to the rear for treatment.20
As ‘D’ Company crossed the Caen-Bayeux highway, it entered the even deadlier killing ground presented by the three grain fields that had to be crossed in turn to gain the railroad crossing objective. Immediately, Butters wrote afterward, “the enemy mortaring increased and was supplemented by two or three enemy LMGs [light machine guns] firing from the centre and right edge of the first hedgerow. Casualties crossing the field increased. Similar conditions of opposition were met in crossing the second field, although mortaring appeared to increase in intensity.
“During the crossing of the third field many casualties were suffered. Enemy LMG fire opened up from an orchard on our right flank (about 4 guns)—further fire came from our front (about 2 guns) and fire was experienced coming from our right rear (the row of trees and hedgerow dividing the second and third field).”21 Butters spotted a Panzer Grenadier in a tree blasting away at his men with a light machine gun, rushed the position, and shot the man, whose body plunged to the earth at his feet. But the rate of fire chopping at the platoon barely lessened. All his section leaders were down, either dead or wounded. Not that he needed them to help control the platoon, for only seven of the thirty-seven soldiers who had crossed the start line were still behind him.22
Tutte and his carrier were only about fifteen yards back of the company headquarters group as it moved out into the third field, when Bryden, Kilner, and signaller Private Sinclair “were instantly killed by a mortar bomb landing in their midst. Before I had passed them in the carrier another bomb dropped less than ten feet to my right. I got the dust on the side of my face and a terrific blast. My right ear was deaf for about three hours.”23
A sniper with a light machine gun firing from the hedge behind the battalion concentrated his attention on Tutte, but he hunkered down below the height of the carrier’s low armoured sides and these “turned the slugs away without any trouble. The sniper did manage to get one inside the carrier over my right shoulder, how it ever bounced around as it did inside the small space in the front without hitting me I’ll leave for others to wonder. From there on to the bridge [there was] a lot of noise, smoke and dust, also a terrible ringing in my right ear from the mortar blast. But eventually we reached the bridge. I was only a few feet behind the first few to get there. The road leading to the bridge was a built up road with a drop off on either side, several of the men had taken cover, (the first they’d had) on the right of the road behind a bank facing the railway, so I swung the carrier around sideways and backed it down over the bank to the left of the road. We had reached our objective, now all we had to do was hold it.”24
With MacEwan down and Bryden and Kilner dead, the company’s senior subaltern Lieutenant Peck took over. When the remnants of ‘D’ Company reached the railroad, he quickly got the men digging in. Having managed to reach the objective despite crippling casualties, the lieutenant was determined to meet any German counterattack with extreme violence. Private Campbell and the rest of the mortar platoon meanwhile “set up our mortar out in the open under machine-gun fire. We usually fire at no less than seven hundred yards, but we tore out all the secondary charges from the bombs and were firing at four hundred. We soon ran out of ammunition and were going back for more when Peck came up and told us to let them know there was only twenty-six men left out of the company. What was he to do?”25
FORTUNATELY FOR PECK, ‘D’ Company was not, as the young officer feared, alone. ‘A’ Company had crossed the start line just minutes behind it and was now coming up on the left flank. This company’s passage to Putot had been no less bloody. Stepping across the start line, the men were greeted by “a veritable wall of fire.” With explosions churning up the ground all around, Corporal Bob Mayfield of No. 8 Platoon turned back to his mates with a fierce grin on his face. “Boy, this is going to be one hell of a good scrap,” he shouted.
“That spirit was maintained throughout,” the company’s war diarist recorded soon afterward. “The casualties were naturally heavy, but never a wounded man whimpered, the opposite in fact was the case and time and again badly wounded men had to be ordered back. The air, red and black with flame, shot and shell, was also blue with the imprecations flung at the enemy by the wounded. Sergeant Bob Dickson, badly wounded in the knee, dragged his leg along almost two hundred yards until ordered back. Even then he had to be forcibly detained at the R.A.P. [Regimental Aid Post] after his wound had been dressed and, from then until evacuated, dug slits with other wounded for the most serious cases.”26
‘A’ Company’s platoon leaders suffered exceptionally high casualties during the advance, with Lieutenant Brian Carruthers wounded, along with sergeants Nettleton of No. 7 Platoon and Dickson of No. 8 Platoon. Nettleton’s loss was a particularly heavy blow to the company, as he had been leading No. 7 Platoon with exceptional skill since its commanding officer had been wounded on D-Day. ‘A’ Company’s commander, Major Arthur Plows, however, seemed to be everywhere at once during the assault—dashing back and forth from one platoon to the other to offer direction and chivvy the men onward.27
Private Jack Daubs hunched ever lower as he ran through the hornet storm of tracers buzzing past. Seeing a slit trench with a couple of soldiers in it, Daubs dived in. Noticing their Winnipeg Rifles shoulder patches, he said, “It’s pretty hot, isn’t it?” When neither man replied, the twenty-year-old from London, Ontario looked more closely and realized that both soldiers were dead. Dragging himself out of the trench, Daubs dashed onward to keep up with the rest of the company. Suddenly, he was staggered by something striking his helmet with terrific force and then giving his battle pack a hard yank. Crouching even lower, he paused to check his pack and discovered that a bullet had nicked the helmet and then penetrated the pack, where it had torn the pin off a two-inch mortar smoke bomb before punching a hole through his mess tin. Although the men were supposed to carry rounds for the platoon’s two-inch mortars in pouches on the front of their webbing, Daubs habitually opted to put the two assigned to him into the pack, figuring this was safer than having the explosives draped against his chest. Seeing the damaged smoke round shook him badly because right next to it was a matching high explosive-bomb. Had the bullet struck that, Daubs knew, he “wouldn’t be here anymore.”28
‘A’ Company advanced so fast along a line more directly behind ‘D’ Company than originally planned that its leading platoons overtook Mollison’s platoon and the men became intermixed. This led to Lieutenant Peck thinking his trail platoon had been lost and fearing ‘D’ Company’s situation was direr than was the case. Fortunately for the shaken young officer, Major Plows quickly realized ‘D’ Company’s disorganized state and rather than swinging ‘A’ Company immediately to its objective east of the bridge used his rightward platoon to bolster the other unit’s strength. He also told his second-in-command, Captain W.H.V. Matthews, to consolidate the other two platoons on the objective while he sorted out ‘D’ Company.
When Peck reported that MacEwan had been wounded, Bryden and CSM Kilner killed, and the company almost destroyed in the attack, Plows decided to amalgamate it with his own.29 While Plows tried to bring order to a chaotic situation, some men from the two companies, led by Lance Corporal Stan Kirchin and Corporal Hopkins, dashed across the bridge and established a toehold on the other side. Kirchin was killed moments later by German gunfire. The rest of the tiny force was immediately caught in a fierce firefight with a superior force of well-dug-in Panzer Grenadiers.
The moment Plows heard about this group’s foray across the bridge, he realized that any attempt to reinforce their tenuous toe-hold would only expose the men committed to being “cut off and annihilated.”30 He ordered them to beat a hasty retreat back to the north side of the railroad cutting. He was, however, confident that the cutting’s twenty-foot width made it an excellent front for a defensive position, because it effectively formed a “dry ‘moat’ and was a first-class antitank ditch at the same time.”31
Plows proceeded to walk the length of the two-company defensive line “with magnificent coolness under hellish enemy fire of all kinds… organizing” his positions. “Particularly commendable is the fact that, despite the natural confusion, he bore in mind… that ‘A’ Company would have to leave this place and organized the defence accordingly” so that responsibility for ‘D’ Company’s perimeter could be handed off smoothly once reinforcements were brought forward.32
Captain Matthews later stated that “Plows should have been given a VC [Victoria Cross] for his efforts. His coolness while organizing ‘D’ and ‘A’ companies at the bridge was an inspiration to all. With ‘D’ Company’s headquarters knocked out lieutenants Peck, Mollison and Butters worked strenuously and with complete disregard for their own safety. But it was Major Plows with his cool, calm direction who stabilized the situation.”33
Also showing a great deal of calm under fire was Lieutenant Peck, who mortarman Private Campbell thought “inspired the lesser beings… always walking around and talking to the boys no matter how heavy the fire. He was very English in his speech and the calm, cool way he strolled around and talked you’d have thought he was at a garden party.”34
Shortly after Matthews started organizing the two platoons of ‘A’ Company that he had taken to the unit’s objective, he was rendered senseless by a mortar blast and had to be guided back to the Regimental Aid Post. As there were now no officers other than Plows still functioning, Company Sergeant Major Grimmond took over the company.35
The ferocity of the battle was taking its toll even on the men and officers who were not killed or wounded. For the Canadian Scottish, D-Day had been a comparative walk in the park. Nothing had prepared them for the bloodletting they now endured. By the time he reached the railway bridge, Lieutenant Butters had been “terribly frightened. But I got myself together” and, drawing strength from the indefatigable Plows “who gathered that attack together,” set to getting the men dug into defensible positions.
COMING UP FAST behind the two leading companies at about this time was ‘C’ Company, which had also made a long dash through the gauntlet of German fire. Lieutenant Corry’s No. 15 Platoon had advanced with two sections forward, and the third and the small headquarters section in trail. Corry positioned himself directly between the two forward sections, so that everyone could see him. Soon after the advance was completed, he jotted down some impressions: “Fire beginning to get heavy. Bullets buzzing close. Okay, if you can hear them you’re not hit. How far left to go. 1,000 yards.” The company had reached a small orchard just to the north of Putot and dodged between the trees to gain the southern edge. Here lay another grain field whipped by machine-gun fire and exploding mortar rounds. The 1st Hussars tanks crashed up behind the infantry, shoving apple trees aside that blocked their progress, and started banging off shells towards the German positions, betrayed by their tracer rounds spitting out of their machine-gun barrels.
Convinced that the only way to keep the assault going was to never stop moving, Corry stepped out of the orchard into the field without pause. “Look around,” he wrote. “No platoon. Gone to ground because of the fire. Wish I could do the same. Wave pistol in the direction of the enemy and yell, ‘Come on guys, up the Scottish!’ That gets everyone moving again. Suddenly we’re passing the outskirts of Putot. Pass through an orchard and a hedge. See dead Germans, dead Scottish. See Scottish officer flattened into ground by tank.* Take up position to rear of ‘D’ Company. All hell is breaking loose. Tank, mg, mortar fire coming from everywhere. Can’t tell which side bullets are on. Everyone digs in. Fastest slit trenches made in Normandy.”36
* This was Captain Bryden, who according to some accounts had only been badly wounded until being killed when a 1st Hussars tank ground overtop of him and CSM Kilner.
At the bridge over the railway, the remnants of ‘D’ Company, supported by the ‘A’ Company platoon, were fighting desperately to gain control of the north side of the tracks. Private Tutte had been convinced to abandon his carrier when a sniper managed to get more bullets inside the driver’s compartment. “Ducking behind the carrier I could hear a lot of shooting from the other side of the road, so I dashed across… to see if I could do anything over there to help out. Over on the right of the road, behind the bank facing the railway I found about a dozen of our lads all in different stages of mental [distress]. They were heavily engaged with two machine guns, which were sweeping the top of our covering bank. I was able to sneak around the end of the bank and throw five or six shots back to the position of one of the MGs. Though it was quite dark from all the smoke and dust, we could make out their position from the tracer they were using. Evidently ‘Jerry’ likes bright lights, he does use a lot of tracer. I’m not sure that I hit anything or not, but the MG I fired at did cut off for a moment, so I like to think that I knocked off the gunner and made it necessary for someone else to take his place.
“From under the bridge some of the men captured a German and his MG intact and well supplied with ammo. This turned to our own advantage as our… supply of Bren mags was getting perilously short. Soon after this we had to vacate our position in a hurry. A 3-inch mortar bomb dropped only a few feet behind us. It so happened that it dug [into the] ground and the ground absorbed the shrapnel.
“From this time on all our fighting was on the left of the bridge and here we put in some heavy exchange of fire till about 2330. During this time I was kept well occupied, walking out wounded, searching dead and wounded as much as 500 yards to the rear and all along our front for extra Bren mags. I made four trips of this kind, each time returning with a dozen or more mags and before going out again helping one or two of our own boys wounded out to the side road and putting them as much under comfort as possible in a shallow ditch behind a hedge.
“About 2330 hours things began to quiet down and we started to dig. Not like we used to do on schemes, what I mean is—We dug. Badgers had nothing on us.”
‘B’ Company and battalion headquarters had by now reached the outskirts of Putot and become entangled in a sharp fight with Panzer Grenadiers evacuating a string of ruined farm buildings. Major Wightman, the battalion’s second-in-command, thought the fight for Putot “was quite hectic. One reason, perhaps, [was that] it was our first major attack and, secondly, it certainly was our very, very first night attack, which always leads to some confusion until after many months of experience.”37
The Panzer Grenadiers finally broke just after midnight and fell back to the other side of the railway, digging in some thousand feet to the south. From here, they kept intermittently exchanging fire with the Canadians throughout the early morning hours of June 9. Strung out along the line of advance stretching from the wood south of la Bergerie Ferme to the bridge crossing the railway west of Putot were many dead and wounded Canadian Scottish, but nobody had time to tally the butcher’s bill. That could wait for morning. For now the urgent task was to reorganize so that the battalion could meet any counterattack thrown at it in the morning and evacuate the wounded from the battleground.
While the Canadian Scottish rifle companies readied their de-fences, the headquarters company and ‘D’ Company of the Royal Winnipeg Rifles, which had been holding out on the eastern flank of Putot, withdrew to la Bergerie Ferme—becoming the brigade’s barely combat-capable reserve. In carrying out its hasty and costly counterattack against the 26th Panzer Grenadier Regiment, the Canadian Scottish Regiment had rescued 7 CIB from potential disaster. Had Putot-en-Bessin remained in German hands, the Regina Rifles would have been open to attack from three sides and might have been overrun like the Winnipeg Rifles. That would have effectively eliminated the brigade’s combat effectiveness and exposed the western flank of 3rd Canadian Infantry Division to being turned by the 12th SS Panzer Division.
But the brigade’s tenuous hold on the right flank of the division remained imperilled. Even as the gunfire around Putot dwindled to mere harassing fire, the sound of heavy fighting suddenly erupted from the direction of Norrey-en-Bessin and Bretteville-l’Orgueilleuse. Here, the Regina Rifles had been struck yet again by a 12th SS onslaught. This time, however, the fanatical young Panzer Grenadiers were attacking alongside armoured monsters—the division’s Panther Mark V tanks.