[ 14 ]





With Rage and Sorrow

BLOODY TOIL was the order of the day for both the Germans and Allies on June 9, with neither able to gain significant advantage or to wrest control of essential ground from the other. Late the previous day, General Bernard Montgomery had realized that continuing to attempt seizing Caen with frontal attacks was futile. Despite his dislike for altering offensive plans midcourse, there was no alternative. Having established a tactical headquarters for himself in Creully’s ancient castle, Montgomery pondered maps and considered the dispositions of units. “I have decided not to have a lot of casualties by butting up against the place,” he then announced. “So I have ordered Second Army to keep up a good pressure [in front of Caen] and to make its main effort toward Villers-Bocage and Evrecy, and thence southeast toward Falaise.”1

This shifted the impetus of operations from directly north of Caen, where 3rd British Infantry Division and 3rd Canadian Infantry Division had originally been tasked with battering their way head-on into the city, in favour of a flanking attack. Too cautious and shrewd a tactician to believe a single southeast hook could necessarily reach Caen, he decided to simultaneously pass the 51st Highland Division through 6th Airborne Division’s lines east of the River Orne to strike the city from that flank. These two pincers would encircle the city, and when their dagger-like leading edges met, any enemy within the city and environs would be trapped. To ensure that the Germans were prevented from taking flight before the pincers closed on the Falaise plain, Montgomery intended to drop the 1st British Airborne Division in the Odon valley at Noyers and Evrecy to block the obvious escape route.

Montgomery knew he was in a race with his nemesis Generalfeldmarschall Erwin Rommel to develop an offensive plan and be first out of the gate, for surely the German commander was doing precisely the same thing. “If the Germans wish to be offensive and drive in our lodgement area between Caen and Bayeux, the best way to defeat them is to be offensive ourselves and the plan will checkmate the enemy completely if we can pull it off,” he said.2

The biggest threat to success was the necessary delay before his operation could begin. Although the 7th Armoured Division—tasked with executing the right hook—had landed on D+1, the left-hook force of the 51st Highland Division and supporting 4th Armoured Brigade were still straggling ashore. Landings since D+1 had been severely hampered by the continually worsening maritime conditions created by a series of storm tracks. Montgomery complained that the “bad weather is a great nuisance as what we want now is to be able to take quick advantage of our good position by striking deep before the enemy can build up strength against us.”³ Despite these problems, he hoped to kick off the offensive on June 10.

No sooner was his plan formulated than Allied Expeditionary Air Force commander Air Marshal Sir Trafford Leigh-Mallory scotched the airborne drop, scheduled for daylight to avoid the chaos that had plagued the D-Day landings. To adequately protect the planes carrying the airborne division, Leigh-Mallory would have to shift fighters away from the tight protective cap cast over the sea lanes and Normandy beaches to fend off incursions by the Luftwaffe. While the German air force seldom made more than fleeting appearances, Leigh-Mallory refused to take such a risk. It was also true that the air marshal had little stomach for the dangers inherent in dropping lightly armed troops deep in enemy territory, with nothing but the expectation of army generals that a fast-moving armoured division would arrive in time to rescue them from annihilation.

Montgomery considered Leigh-Mallory’s worries baseless, but he also faced opposition from a grave Admiral Sir Bertram Ramsay, who did not like any idea of exposing his precious ships to possible Luftwaffe attack. The airborne troops would hardly be fighting alone, Montgomery insisted, for they would not be dropped until 7th Armoured Division was within reach of Villers-Bocage. Delaying the landings until that moment ensured that artillery regiments would be in range to support the airborne troops. Neither man was swayed by Montgomery’s assurances, and as each was his equal in the power structure of Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF), he had to reluctantly abandon the airborne feature. “Obviously [Leigh-Mallory] is a gutless bugger who refuses to take a chance and plays for safety on all occasions,” Montgomery fumed. “I have no use for him.”4

Although stripped of his desired airborne division, Montgomery remained confident of success. He just had to beat the Germans off the mark.

Montgomery clearly grasped German intentions, but it was the plan of Panzer Group West commander, General der Panzertruppen Leo Freiherr Geyr von Schweppenburg, that he was in a race to forestall rather than Rommel’s. The tank general had little respect for Montgomery, and expected him to dally before launching any major offensive until he had enough strength on the ground that he could attack across a broad front. Rather than passively await the inevitable, von Schweppenburg planned to strike first.

By June 9, he had a battered but still formidable Panzergruppe in Normandy that consisted of three Panzer divisions—the 21st, the 12th, and Panzer Lehr. Driving to the Abbaye d’Ardenne, the veteran tanker ascended the tower that served as Standartenführer Kurt Meyer’s observation post and the two men discussed the situation. He worried that Panzer Lehr’s left flank might be exposed to attack by the Americans, but there was nothing that could be done to alleviate this threat. If he were to gain the initiative, a coordinated attack by all three divisions was absolutely necessary. On the night of June 10, he warned Meyer, all three divisions must press north on a front extending from Gold Beach through Juno to just west of Sword. The focal point of the attack would be along either side of the rail spur running from immediately west of Caen to Luc-sur-Mer on the coast.5

A fundamental weak link in the British Second Army line still existed here, where the opposing flanks of 3rd British Division and 3rd Canadian Division had not been tightly married. 21st Panzer Division had failed due to a lack of strength and determination to break through to the beachhead on the night of June 6. With three divisions applying overwhelming pressure across a wider front, von Schweppenburg believed he could succeed where one division had met frustration.

To narrow the breadth of the front the divisions must attack, von Schweppenburg ordered Panzer Lehr to shift slightly eastwards and assume responsibility for the ground west of the River Mue—essentially the entire front facing 7th Canadian Infantry Brigade’s battalions at Putot-en-Bessin and Bretteville-l’Orgueilleuse. This would enable the 12th SS’s 26th Panzer Grenadier Regiment to hand off responsibility for le Mesnil-Patry and Cristot, and move east of the River Mue to fill the gap between its lines and Meyer’s, which ran from the bank of the Mue east to Franqueville. The 21st Panzer Division’s boundary with the 12th Division’s right flank would remain the Caen–Luc-sur-Mer rail line.⁶

Even as von Schweppenburg decided his final deployments, he expressed concern that Norrey-en-Bessin remained in Canadian hands—jutting dagger-like into the belly of the German lines. He and Meyer agreed that Norrey must be recaptured before any future counterattack could be launched in that area.⁷

MEYER, STILL SMARTING from the defeat handed him by the Regina Rifles, intended to eliminate the nuisance of Norrey with typical decisive, bold action. Just that morning, the 12th Panzer Regiment’s No. 3 Company, consisting of twelve Panther VS, had arrived in the area of Rots as part of the division’s ongoing deployment to the area. Meyer ordered the tanks to attack the village immediately. Lacking any infantry to support the tankers, he promised that the 26th Panzer Grenadier Regiment’s I Battalion would carry out a simultaneous assault from the southwest. Both units were to cross their start lines at 1300 hours.

Obersturmführer Rudolf von Ribbentrop, son of the Reich’s Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop, commanded No. 3 Company, but was unable this day to lead his tanks into action due to a wound inflicted by a strafing Allied fighter-bomber earlier. Although the Knight’s Cross holder had since discharged himself from hospital without permission to rejoin the company, his arm was swathed in splints and commanding a tank was simply impossible. Instead, Hauptmann Lüddemann, the company’s second-in-command, took charge and von Ribbentrop was left to fret on the sidelines.8 Standing beside von Ribbentrop, as the company commander quickly briefed Lüddemann on how to carry out the assault, was 12th Panzer Regiment leader Obersturmbannführer Max Wünsche. Both officers urged Lüddemann to advance at top speed, the Panzers pausing only to fire their 75-millimetre main guns—highly inaccurate when fired on the move—at tactically important targets.

The attack was scheduled for 1300 hours for a reason. German intelligence had noted an almost clockwork pattern to Allied fighter-bomber operations over Normandy, whereby the pilots stood down around noon for a couple of hours. It was as if pilots all took a break for lunch and a quick nap. Whatever its cause, the regular respite opened a window during daylight hours—normally suicidal for movement without overhanging trees to camouflage vehicles—when tanks could roam freely. No. 3 Company used this opening to jump off from close by la Villeneuve towards Norrey, following the Caen-Bayeux railway. For the first five hundred yards, the ground rose gently, then they passed onto a wide expanse of perfectly level meadows and fields. In the middle of this open ground stood the smoking ruin of Norrey. The only cover for the tanks consisted of a hedge that might mask their approach to the village.

Lüddemann knew the company’s only chance was to break into Norrey with lightning speed, allowing no time for the Canadians there to react in a coordinated manner. Drivers slammed accelerators to the limit and the tanks plunged forward and spread out on a broad front, with orders to stop for nothing.

The moment the tanks entered the open plain, the Reginas in Norrey spotted them, but the infantrymen of ‘C’ Company neither panicked nor scrambled to meet the onslaught headed in their direction. Instead, Major Stu Tubb and his men settled back to confidently watch events develop, for at 0515 hours that morning they had been reinforced by an ad hoc force of nine Shermans from the 1st Hussars. These tanks were positioned outside the village on the eastern flank behind a low ridge that screened their presence from the charging Panthers. In fact, as the Germans closed on Norrey, Lüddemann ordered a leftward swing towards the railroad station on the village’s outskirts that brought the tank company to within a thousand yards of the hidden Shermans.

Several of the Canadian tanks were of the Firefly variety. And looking through the aiming sight of Lieutenant G.K. Henry’s Firefly was crack gunner Trooper A. Chapman. When six Panthers bore across his front, Chapman coolly held fire until they lined up like ducks in a row. “Then with Trooper ‘Sass’ Seaman slapping the rounds into the 17-pounder, he fired five times. Five rounds—five Panthers. Before he got to the sixth one another ‘C’ Squadron tank, commanded by Sergeant Boyle, had accounted for it.”9 While the 17-pounders tore into the sides of the Panthers with armour-piercing rounds, the Shermans mounting standard 75-millimetre guns hurled down a heavy, disorienting rain of high-explosive shells that tore up great gouts of earth around the German tanks.

Unterscharführer Alois Morawetz, commanding a lead Panther, heard a muffled bang on the outside of the turret and then the tank swayed as if it had lost a track to an exploding mine. Glancing out of the cupola, he saw an explosion rip the turret off another Panzer. Suddenly, the MG 42 ammunition inside his tank began cooking off and a fire broke out. Morawetz looked down into the main compartment to see that his gunner had been rendered helpless by steel splinter wounds. With flames engulfing the tank’s interior, Morawetz frantically wrenched the turret hatch open, bailed out, fell onto the rear engine compartment, and briefly lost consciousness. When he awoke, smoke and fire poured out of the turret hatch. Several other Panzers burned nearby. Morawetz and the other survivors from the tanks, many badly wounded with severe burns, headed back on foot towards the attack starting point. As he set out for the rear, the officer saw five Panthers withdrawing at speed, firing rapidly as they fled. No. 3 Company’s attack had ended almost as abruptly as it had started. Of the thirty-five crewmen in the seven Panthers that had been knocked out in a matter of seconds, the 12th SS would record two killed, two officers, four NCOS, and eleven men wounded, and one officer, two NCOS, and eleven trooopers missing. The missing were probably immolated in the tanks.10

From near la Villeneuve, Wünsche had watched the Panthers burst into flames and later wrote: “I could have cried with rage and sorrow.”¹¹ Among the wounded was Lüddemann, who was evacuated to hospital and never returned to active duty.¹² As for the Panzer Grenadiers of the 26th’s I Battalion that Meyer had promised would attack at the same time, they never appeared. The tanks had fought alone and been dealt a stunning defeat.

Not only had No. 3 Company utterly failed, but the rapidity of their defeat greatly bolstered the morale of the 1st Hussars. Until now, the Canadian tankers had dreaded the inevitable day they would encounter Panthers instead of the Mark IVS against which they were more evenly matched. Thirty-two-year-old Sergeant Léo Gariépy figured that “such scores made the enemy hesitate about forcing the issue, and boosted our morale as well as that of the infantry. We found our Shermans were much more maneuverable than their clumsy, low-slung tanks, and we could traverse and fire with much greater rapidity. True, they could out-range us by far, but if you were fortunate enough to see him before he saw you, you could easily work circles round him. We could fire three rounds to his one, and in any given position, stopped or going full speed, forward or in reverse; but he apparently had trouble to fire on the run. We saw that we could not only take it, but dish it out, and this we did that day with gusto.”¹³

WHILE THE 1ST HUSSARS had been shooting up No. 3 Company, the 26th Panzer Grenadiers had been about a mile to the west busily launching a series of determined counterattacks against the Canadian Scottish at Putot-en-Bessin. Meyer’s orders that this regiment support the armour were never acknowledged by Obersturmbannführer Wilhelm Mohnke and, given the communication gaps between the two 12th SS regiments and the 26th commander’s unsteady leadership the day before, may not have reached Mohnke.

At first light on June 9, Lieutenant Colonel Fred Cabeldu had walked through the positions established during the previous night’s fierce fighting. Across the Caen-Bayeux railway cutting, the Germans were heavily dug in and likely to counterattack at any moment. Facing the Germans, in front of the bridge crossing the railroad west of Putot, were the remnants of ‘A’ and ‘D’ companies. ‘B’ and ‘C’ companies were positioned out on either side but back of the two forward companies, so they could both guard the flanks and serve as a reserve. The battalion perimeter looked much like an arrowhead. It was an uninvitingly grey, drizzly morning, and the men shivered from the combined effects of cold, damp, fatigue, and hunger.

Cabeldu considered the merits of pulling the two forward companies out of the front and replacing them with those in reserve, but decided a switch now would just create disorganization. If the Germans counterattacked before the switch was complete, disaster was assured. Also he “was anxious to hold a strong counterattack force in hand, and therefore reluctant to use either of my reserve companies to reinforce them at this time.”14 Instead, he told Major Arthur Plows, still commanding both forward companies, that there was to be no retreat. They were to fight in place to the last man. He positioned the antitank, mortar, and carrier platoons where they could give the two rifle companies supporting fire.¹⁵

In his slit trench in ‘D’ Company’s small perimeter, Private R.H. Tutte found “our position in daylight made me wonder a bit. Our whole position took in no more than a piece of ground on the left of the bridge about 200-feet square. Most of our defensive position was in a small orchard between a thick hedge and up to within a few feet of the bridge, this small area under the eye of Lieutenant Butters of 17 Platoon. On the other side of the hedge (away from the bridge) was Coy HQ and most of the remainder of 18 Platoon under Mr. Peck, this all facing the railroad over an open field. Our rear being covered by a few men under Mr. Mollison of 16 Platoon.”16

Smack in the centre of the orchard stood a disabled German half-track with a heavy gun mounted in its troop compartment. The gun’s barrel still covered the road up which Tutte had driven the Bren carrier during the night counterattack. On seeing it, he “wondered how I had ever reached the bridge at all in the carrier.”¹⁷

While ‘A’ and ‘D’ companies took stock of their situation, Private Joe Rumney led a patrol through the wreckage of Putot itself and found that the villagers had abandoned the place. As he led the patrol out of a small orchard, a large force of Panzer Grenadiers came through a hedge on the opposite side. The two startled groups of soldiers immediately opened fire and Rumney pulled his men back on the run, managing to effect a hasty escape without loss except for the wounding of one soldier in the foot. Private G.A. Percival, mindful of his hunger, managed to somehow scoop up two chickens as he dashed through a large flock and quickly broke their necks while on the run.¹⁸

The patrol had no sooner returned to the battalion perimeter than heavy mortar fire slammed down on ‘D’ Company. From his slit trench, Tutte saw Panzer Grenadiers—many armed with light machine guns—approaching under the covering fire’s protection. ‘D’ Company quickly slashed into the Germans and the attack dissolved in the face of this fire, aided by “a bit of fast action from our own 3-inch mortar.”

At 0900 hours, Tutte spotted German tanks prowling behind a hedgerow south of the railroad and Plows was alerted.¹⁹ A few minutes later, the tanks closed to hull-down positions across the tracks and soon “fire from [the] tanks, infantry and artillery [was] brought to bear. Our position was unquestionably critical, the enemy infantry and armour being only 100 to 150 yards away, but the conduct of the men was as usual exemplary and unquenchable. Several times the enemy attempted to launch an attack and each time were forced to retire under the fierce onslaught from our troops small-arms fire. No. 7 Platoon with Sandy Clark was particularly excellent in this regard answering the enemy shot for shot… The position held firm despite a terrific pounding.”20

Although the tanks kept hammering ‘D’ and ‘A’ companies from the other side of the rail cutting, they were unable to cross it and appeared hesitant to try using the bridge. From behind the forward companies, the battalion’s six-pound antitank guns and three-inch mortars replied with rapid fire that succeeded in repeatedly breaking up attacks by the Panzer Grenadiers every time they attempted to cross the cutting.

Just before noon, a shell from one German tank plowed into the knocked-out half-track in the middle of the orchard and set it alight. The vehicle proved to be heavily loaded with ammunition of every conceivable type—possibly including some 88-millimetre rounds—which all started cooking off in spectacular explosions. Machine-gun rounds whipped through the air, tracer bullets sizzled brightly overhead, and shrapnel from high-explosive shells sprayed the nearby slit trenches. Whenever a heavy shell detonated, the carrier skittered back about two feet on its rear tracks. Tutte watched in astonishment as the half-track lurched towards a slit trench occupied by two ‘D’ Company soldiers. The men seemed frozen, unsure whether to risk exposing themselves to all the shrapnel flying about or staying in place and facing the probability of being run over by the vehicle’s steel tracks. Finally, as an explosion chugged the half-track to within a foot of the trench, they broke cover and sprinted to safety just before another shell cooked off and the tracks obliterated their slit trench.²¹

Major Plows, meanwhile, had been calling down artillery fire from 12th Field Regiment to help keep the Germans at bay. Suddenly, his radio ceased operating and, lacking grid coordinates, the guns fell silent. Plows looked over to his second-in-command, Captain W.H.V. Matthews, recovered from the effects of a shell blast that had badly dazed him during the night attack, and held up a coin. When the toss went against Matthews, the captain jumped into ‘A’ Company’s Bren carrier and with Private Hank Morrison at the controls raced through intense fire to reach battalion headquarters and re-establish a link to the artillery regiment.²²

The heavy fire ripping into the company perimeter hit No. 9 Platoon particularly hard, as Lieutenant Bernard Clarke and Sergeant W.A. Paterson were both badly wounded. Then, in the midst of the fury, Private Percival was seen dodging from one slit trench to another, pausing at each hole and “inquiring if anyone had any salt for the chicken he had procured earlier.” None of the other soldiers ever knew if he managed to find the precious condiment.23

When a tank shell exploded practically on top of one of the two six-pound antitank guns firing briskly from behind ‘D’ Company, shrapnel wounded the entire crew, but the men on the other gun split up in order to keep both in action. Finally, the German fire slackened, soon slowing to nothing more than intermittent machine-gun bursts from concealed gun positions and desultory sniping by Panzer Grenadiers who had managed to infiltrate nearby hedgerows.²⁴

Tutte was kept busy during the fight helping the ever mounting numbers of wounded caught in the front-line position. He even managed to whip up a pot of tea and serve it to two casualties in an attempt to bolster their spirits, because the intense fire made it impossible for him to evacuate them in the still operational Bren carrier. When the main attack petered out, he and some other men hurriedly loaded the wounded and Tutte drove them back to the battalion’s aid post. “Some of these wounded men,” he noted, “had been lying out since midnight previous, that they were hard hit was evident though they all took it without a murmur.”²⁵

With the lull in battle, the men turned to eating whatever they could lay hands on. (Presumably Private Percival and his mates in ‘A’ Company’s headquarters section also enjoyed the chicken.) Tutte thought “it was certainly very decent of ‘Jerry’ to allow a pause for refreshments.”²⁶ For most of the men, however, the meal was limited to hard chocolate pulled from emergency rations, as food was in desperately short supply in the front trenches.

The company commanders took advantage of this relatively quiet time to have “all ranks… take off their shoes and socks for the first time since landing and in many cases shrapnel from the beach area was still imbedded in the fleshy part of their legs. Some were quite badly swollen. There was great danger of gangrenous infection in some of these cases and one or two were evacuated.” That these men had borne these discomforts without complaint struck Captain P.F. Ramsay, second-in-command of ‘B’ Company, as “proof conclusive of the morale and determination of these relatively green troops to do their bit and to keep doing it regardless.”27

LIEUTENANT COLONEL CABELDU put what he expected would merely be a short interlude before the battle regained its previous feverish pitch to good use by scrounging the rear area and sending every spare soldier—whether cook, clerk, or driver—forward to support the hard-pressed riflemen in the two forward companies. He also attached Lieutenant Bowen’s Bren carrier platoon to ‘D’ Company, a step that not only beefed up its thinning ranks but also provided the extra fire-power of the Bren guns mounted on the carriers.

Major Larry Henderson had arrived from Juno Beach as a replacement officer, and Cabeldu assigned ‘D’ Company to his command. Although Major Plows remained in overall command of the forward two companies, Henderson’s presence freed the overextended officer from having to attempt to be everywhere at once. Tagging along with Henderson was a Forward Observation Officer from 12th Field Regiment, who introduced himself to Cabeldu simply as Freddie. His presence, and more importantly the accompanying wireless set tuned to the gunners back at Bray, enabled Henderson and Plows to bring down withering fire on the Germans when they attempted another determined counterattack around mid-afternoon.

Henderson noted that the “efforts of our FOO were excellent and very heartening to everyone. Arty support was limited of course when the enemy reached the embankment [railway cutting]. We risked one shoot on the bridge area, which I believe was influential in driving the enemy out, but found it too dangerous to ourselves to repeat. Late in the [afternoon] unfortunately other elements of our arty proceeded to shell us while we were being mortared… at the same time. This, I think, did more to shake our morale than anything throughout the entire day.”²⁸

The intentional artillery fire laid on by the FOO proved decisive. The Panzer Grenadiers ceased further major assaults, returning again to long-range harassment by machine guns and close-in sniping with rifles and Schmeissers. As night fell, Plows asked permission to pull ‘A’ and ‘D’ Company back about one hundred yards from the position virtually on top of the railway cutting, to where they could overlook the ground from a slight rise that offered a better field of fire. The lieutenant colonel agreed, but again pressed on Plows that it was essential no further ground be given up no matter how much pressure was put on the forward companies.29

For ‘A’ Company, noted its war diarist, “it was with a mingled feeling of relief and regret that we gave up that piece of ground so fiercely wrested and so gallantly defended. Balm, however, was poured on our wounds by the fact that we knew that, though we would not be there on the ground, we covered it well by fire, and the Bosche would not have it.”³⁰

Cabeldu was frustrated at not being able to pinpoint German positions and movement due to the fact that many of his men, still short on ammunition for their own weapons, delighted in spraying no man’s land with the vast store of captured Schmeissers and light machine guns in their possession. He sharply demanded this practice cease “because the difference in the sound of the MGs [makes] it difficult for us to pinpoint the German tactics.” He soon ordered a virtual ceasefire altogether, when it became apparent that the SS troops were using the covering darkness to take up positions in the fields surrounding the battalion and then attempting to draw fire with searching shots aimed randomly towards the Canadian lines. Cabeldu issued orders “to withhold all fire unless attacked” to prevent betraying the location of company perimeters.³¹

At last, battalion headquarters had opportunity to take a full roll call and determine its casualties during more than twenty-four hours of near continual combat. The results were sobering, for the Canadian Scottish counted forty-five officers and men dead and another eighty wounded. Most had fallen during the bloody counterassault from la Bergerie Ferme to Putot. Cabeldu grimly noted that, taken together with the eighty-eight casualties the battalion had suffered over the course of D-Day and D+1, one-third of its total pre-invasion strength was now lost.

For the lieutenant colonel’s pivotal role in the long action, during which he responded with strong leadership to one emergency after another, Cabeldu was awarded the Distinguished Service Order. Lieutenant A.C. Peck, who had been wounded during the June 9 German counterattacks but remained on the field until finally ordered by Henderson to report to the regimental aid post, earned a Military Cross.

During the middle of the battle, Padre Robert Seaborn looked about the badly exposed battleground, particularly up the road towards la Bergerie, and noted the many Canadian corpses strewn along it and in the adjacent fields. “Time some of those men were brought in and buried,” he decided, but could find no jeep for such a task, and all the carriers were busy with the more pressing duty of running ammunition up to the front and bringing the wounded back to the RAP.

Normally, Seaborn stayed in the RAP during combat in order to succour the wounded. This could range from lighting a cigarette for those too weak to hold a match, fetching a cup of tea for anyone shivering with shock and cold, or, less commonly, sitting by a soldier’s side and offering either conversation or prayer to help ease his passage into death. But with the rate of casualties slowing, Seaborn felt it time to turn attention to this other essential task of chaplaincy.

Wandering about the farmyard that battalion headquarters had taken over, Seaborn eventually found a horse in a shed. Ranging farther afield, he discovered an old two-wheeled cart standing by a battered stone farmhouse. He then fetched Sergeant Watkins, who ran the officer’s mess, and drafted him as a willing assistant. Horse hitched to wagon, the two men set off and gathered up one wagonload of dead Canadians after another.

Each load was taken to “a quiet little spot protected by a hill that was in an orchard. Here I had some reinforcement troops that had arrived dig some graves and started burying them. The days were hot so I’d wrap them in a blanket and take off their tags and pay books and anything else like personal papers, put these together, and then take the [men] into that field and bury them. Say a few prayers and then I’d sit down and write as soon as I could to the next of kin. It was very exhausting and difficult psychologically. I was pretty young. Didn’t do those letters the next day. What you tried to do was you had the information from their pay book, who the next of kin was. Sometimes I knew them, some I knew fairly well. Others might have come up two days before as reinforcements, so I’d always try and have a word with the company commander, the platoon commander, or someone if I didn’t know them. Then I’d just have to write a letter saying that their son had been killed and where and when. Killed in action, always. Didn’t go into gory details. That wouldn’t make sense to anybody. So I’d just write a short letter.

“I was the Anglican padre so I wrote all letters to the non-Romans. We had a Roman [Catholic] padre too. And I wrote some of the Roman letters if I couldn’t get hold of him. He was at brigade and many of the Romans had been killed. If he wasn’t there to say the Roman prayers [when men were dying or being buried] I would say them. We had the little book, so we could say some of the general ones.”32

Seaborn was somewhat glad that he was not a native of Vancouver Island, particularly Victoria, from which most of the battalion hailed. The thirty-two-year-old son of an Anglican priest had been born in Toronto and taken a classics degree at the University of Toronto, followed by attendance at Divinity School there. After completing divinity training in 1932, he served various parishes in the city before accepting a position as the incumbent of the congregation in Cobourg, Ontario in 1941. A year later, he joined the army when the Queen’s Own Rifles raised a new battalion, but soon after being posted overseas in 1943 was assigned to the Canadian Scottish battalion deployed in England.

One soldier in the battalion described Seaborn as having been the most unpopular man in the regiment before D-Day because his religious zeal was only matched by his nervousness, which seemed to make him incapable of appearing sincere in his desire to be friends with the troops. Then came the invasion, and the same soldier watched with admiration as Seaborn openly faced concentrated machine-gun and mortar fire to bandage and carry wounded soldiers to safety. During one such rescue, he had suffered a flesh wound to the leg, but that never slowed his pace. The soldier wrote his cousin in Canada, saying another man in his section had told him, “Gee, I wish I was half the man that guy is.”33 For his actions on D-Day, Seaborn had been decorated with a Military Cross.

Not being from Vancouver Island, Seaborn found writing the letters to families of deceased soldiers an easier task because “I didn’t know their fathers and mothers. Some of the fellows I got to know quite well and others I just knew by name or even hardly that… Mostly if they died of wounds in the next few hours, I’d just say they were killed in action. I didn’t see any sense in making the people at home feel worse.”

As for missing soldiers, Seaborn and the battalion adjutant determined early on to delay sending notices that men were missing in action as long as possible. This gave the padre time to “go around and try to find out if anybody could tell me what had happened. Sometimes a man would say something like, ‘Yeah, his buddy’s over there or that his buddy had just put him in the ground over there.’ And so we were able to keep those messages of missing believed killed down to a minimum. I thought one of my responsibilities at this point was to see that they were buried and their graves marked and the location sent into the graves commission with a cross reference on a map, so they could be found and later brought into central graveyards.”³⁴

Almost as soon as Seaborn started venturing out into no man’s land, sometimes with Sergeant Watkins in tow and sometimes alone, Cabeldu expressed concern for the padre’s safety. He called Seaborn into his office and ordered him to stop going so far out looking for people. But the padre considered recovering the dead a vital part of his duty. “I’m not able to rush around with a machine gun, but at least I can look after this side of things,” he thought. With careful consideration of his actions, Seaborn avoided answering Cabeldu’s order with either a yes or no. Thereafter, he was “just a little more circumspect because I thought we couldn’t leave them lying out there in such exposed positions.”³⁵