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A Fairly Rugged Day

THE 3RD CANADIAN INFANTRY DIVISION’S original invasion plan had assumed that once Bény-sur-Mer was secured 8th Canadian Infantry Brigade’s three battalions would use this as a base for forming a solid foundation halfway between Juno Beach and the Caen-Bayeux Road based on Colomby-sur-Thaon and Anguerny. From this base, 9th Canadian Infantry Brigade would strike out to seize Carpiquet airport just to the south of the road objective. However, the slowness of 8 CIB’s advance and the traffic snarl created by all of 9 CIB coming ashore at Bernières-sur-Mer had thrown the scheduled timing of the entire operation out the window. Further jeopardizing the plan’s successful completion was the fact that the North Shore (New Brunswick) Regiment, held up initially by the St. Aubin strongpoint, had subsequently marched into another protracted firefight—this time for control of the village of Tailleville. According to the plan, the North Shores were to have established a blocking position in front of La Délivrande and Douvres-laDélivrande to prevent any counterattacks from this direction threatening either Juno Beach or the left flank of 9 CIB’s advance. At first light on June 7, the North Shores were then to overrun these villages, with a major objective being a heavily fortified Luftwaffe radio station just west of Douvres.1

Further complicating 8 CIB’s situation was that ever since the initial landing by the North Shores at St. Aubin, all direct radio communication from this battalion to Brigadier Ken Blackader’s headquarters had been lost.2 The only word from Lieutenant Colonel Donald Buell was derived second-hand by way of reports on the fire missions the navy Forward Officer Bombardment (FOB) called in shortly after noon, which consisted of requests for two destroyers to fire their 4.2-inch guns on the château at Tailleville.³ Whether Buell was instinctively softening up the next objective or was aware of strong resistance there remained unclear, leaving Blackader in the dark about the situation on his left flank except for the troubling fact that the North Shores had yet to push out of St. Aubin. The only course open to the brigadier was to chivvy the two battalions leading the main column to make haste in the face of resistance that was proving decidedly more determined than he had been led to expect by divisional intelligence and hope the New Brunswick regiment soon caught up.

As the North Shores formed up by the St. Aubin church on the town’s southern edge, the men could clearly see the village that was their next objective by looking up the narrow road running through a wide expanse of grain fields interspersed by small orchards and cow paddies. In the typical Norman manner, hedgerows fenced in most of these fields. Surrounding the town itself was a twelve-foot-high, three-foot-thick stone wall that hid all but the rooftops and upper stories of the buildings inside. The hulking structure of the château, however, overlooked the wall and offered an excellent view of St. Aubin to any German observation officer in its upper levels, which Buell suspected explained why the beach was still subject to accurate shelling and mortaring. Until Tailleville was cleared, the engineers and other beach party teams on Nan Red would continue to have their work disrupted by the deadly fire that was still killing and wounding men on the beach. With ‘C’ Company only now moving towards Tailleville, all Buell could do to help ease the pressure on the beach was to tell his FOB to continue having the destroyers harass the village with heavy shelling.

At about 1230 hours, Buell instructed ‘C’ Company commander Major Ralph Daughney to begin the advance on Tailleville. Having just returned from a brief reconnaissance up the road aboard a purloined bicycle, the major had discovered no immediate enemy forces and was hoping to get through to Tailleville without a fight. Just in case, however, he had convinced Buell to secure a troop of Fort Garry Horse tanks to support the infantry advance. Following behind ‘C’ Company was Major Archie MacNaughton’s ‘A’ Company, while the Bren carrier platoon commanded by Captain J.A. Currie moved on its tracked vehicles across an open field on the west side of the road to cover the right flank. Lieutenant William Little’s No. 5 Troop provided the tank support.

‘C’ Company set off with one platoon to the right of the road, one on the road itself, and one to the left. The two companies on either side of the road spread out in a line across the fields. Little’s tanks started out in a file on the road behind the infantry platoon there. Captain Hector LeBlanc, ‘C’ Company’s second-in-command, was on the road and bringing up the rear. With him was Sergeant Albanie Drapeau’s three-inch mortar team aboard a Bren carrier.

It quickly became evident that the Germans had opted to lie low and not fire on Major Daughney during his earlier bicycle gambol up the road, as the advancing force started being harassed by sniper fire the moment it moved towards Tailleville. Then mortars and artillery began to dog the advance, which probably would have ground to a halt had it not been for the support provided by Little’s tank troop. The tankers hammered identified German positions with their 75-millimetre gun and machine guns, often grinding out into the fields ahead of the infantry to overwhelm the opposition. Daughney later complimented Little, saying “that without his excellent and energetic support [my] company would not have been able to advance at all.”4

Radio signaller Private Joe Ryan was sticking to Daughney like glue, even though the battery in his radio was dead and the spare battery he should have been carrying was somewhere out at sea aboard the LSI from which they had disembarked, what seemed like ages before. His absentmindedness was embarrassing, but there was little time to think on the mistake, as it took all his concentration to run, dodge, and fall in rhythm to the screaming descent of the mortar and artillery shells that ripped great gouges out of the earth when they exploded. Ryan thought the noise of the explosions was like a cry of agony raised by the earth itself “protesting being raped. The smell of cordite and earth spewed up made me almost sick to my stomach.”5

Just before the village itself, dense hedgerows surrounded a few small orchards. As ‘C’ Company closed on these, several machine guns hidden in the hedges started raking the men. Caught in the open, the North Shores faltered and looked for cover. Daughney, up with the leading platoons as he had been throughout the advance, realized something had to happen quickly to keep the attack going forward. He sent a runner back to LeBlanc with instructions for Sergeant Drapeau’s mortar team to immediately engage the German positions. The sergeant later wrote that LeBlanc “showed me the exact clump of trees he wanted fire brought down on. Luckily I made a quick correction in degrees and the first ranging rounds fell exactly where he wanted them. In a few minutes the mortars had quieted the German machine guns. Luck was with me that day for each time I was able to score direct hits.”⁶

Captain Eloi Robichaud of the North Shore Headquarters Company would have begged to disagree. While still a lieutenant, he had commanded the company of which Drapeau’s mortar platoon was a part. What Drapeau called “luck,” Robichaud countered “was skill. I knew [Sergeant] Drapeau well, and… he was an exceedingly capable mortar sergeant who had a complete knowledge of the weapon and it was not unusual for him to score direct hits even with ranging rounds.”⁷ It was the kind of skilled handling of weapons, honed by years of training, that was repeatedly proving itself in 3rd Canadian Infantry Division’s first day of combat—as brutal a baptism of fire as any Canadian division in World War II may have seen.

Although Drapeau’s precise fire had silenced most of the machine guns, one position remained active and was so sited that it was impossible to knock out from any of the covered positions the company had managed to crawl into. Realizing the advance would remain stalled as long as this gun was able to fire directly across the fields ‘C’ Company had to cross, Private Herbert Butland stood up and charged the machine-gunners while firing his Bren gun from the hip. The MG42 machine gun shrieked a long burst of fire at the running Canadian that clipped the suspenders holding up his web belt right off his shoulders, but miraculously not a slug scratched the soldier’s flesh. Butland closed on the gun and killed its crew with a lethal burst. The private’s bravery was rewarded with a Military Medal.8

While ‘C’ Company rooted out the last German defenders in the fields and orchards north of Tailleville, Fort Garry Horse ‘C’ Squadron commander Major Roy Bray instructed his second-in-command, Captain Alexander Christian, to reinforce Little’s tank troop with three more tanks. Having served a brief stint as an officer on loan to the British 17/21st Lancers during the African campaign in 1943, Christian was one of the few officers in 3 CID with any previous battle experience. He was also in some pain, having had the tip of a finger shot away by a sniper’s bullet shortly after landing on the beach. Christian raced to Tailleville and found the North Shores laying siege to the village.

Daughney and Little were pressed up against the massive wall surrounding the village for cover while they discussed how to break into Tailleville. The infantry major was completely perplexed by the bizarre situation, which resembled something from the days when knights and archers might have attempted to pillage the medieval château, only to be confounded by an insurmountable wall. Daughney could find no way for his infantry to get through or over it. With his company all hunkered against the wall, the Germans were unable to fire directly at the Canadians. Since neither side could see the other, both had resorted to chucking occasional grenades over the wall whenever they heard voices or other sounds that might betray the position of an enemy. The fight had reached a standoff.⁹

Rumbling up in his tank at about 1400 hours, Christian jumped down from the turret and joined the other two officers. Christian and Little quickly conferred and agreed that all the tankers could do to help the situation was to hook around the town with their tanks and shoot over the wall with the hope of somehow dampening the German enthusiasm for the fight. Daughney told them to go to it. As the meeting was breaking up, a German grenade arced over the wall and landed directly between the two tankers. The blast knocked both men flat and left them dazed. Although Christian was unharmed, Little suffered multiple lacerations and had to be hastily spirited to St. Aubin by stretcher-bearers for treatment at the Regimental Aid Post.10

Quickly regaining the protection of his tank turret, Christian led his six-tank force around the village, “carrying out speculative shooting over the high wall.” The Germans responded with small-arms fire that ricocheted deafeningly off the tanks. To better direct the fire, Christian had his turret hatch open and was hunkered down in the cupola peering out while trying to expose himself as little as possible. “Suddenly,” he later wrote, “an impact like a sledge hammer hit the back of my head and I slumped on the floor, but regained consciousness and felt better after a drink of water. A bullet had pierced my helmet, grazed the back of my head and had gone out the other side of the helmet.” After his wireless operator bandaged the wound, Christian went back to harassing the Germans.¹¹

During their foray around the town, the tankers discovered a 75-millimetre gun, several other artillery pieces, and an ammunition dump dug into positions outside the village. They quickly destroyed these, but their fire into Tailleville appeared ineffective. Finally, Christian returned to Daughney, and the two men—whose exploits this day would result in each winning the Military Cross—decided the only solution was to find a viable entry into the village through which tanks and infantry might pass together. Casting about, Christian and Daughney discovered a “group of French inhabitants… huddled below a large solid, wooden gate which was the entrance of the château’s courtyard. I ordered my driver to advance and we battered open the gate and entered.”¹²

Lieutenant Hector Robert MacQuarrie’s platoon dashed through the breach and took up a fire position in the courtyard. Then Lieutenant George Malcolm Fawcett’s platoon slipped through and leapfrogged under the protective cover of MacQuarrie’s men from the château’s grounds into the western part of the village. The tankers set up in the courtyard and blasted targets at close range, while the company’s mortars fired over the wall at targets reported by the two lieutenants. It was quickly discovered that Tailleville was far more than a minor fortified position. In fact, it was the headquarters of the 2nd Battalion, 736th Grenadier Regiment. It had been cleverly constructed so that almost all of its facilities were in underground bunkers beneath the village itself. First aid posts, garages, stables, barracks, munitions dumps, and mess kitchens were all situated in a subterranean complex linked by tunnels. Other tunnels locked in with a series of defensive gun pits and firing trenches scattered throughout Tailleville. Virtually every approach from one street to another was covered by at least one gun pit, and snipers ranged freely through the village’s buildings, using hidden accesses inside that led into the tunnel system.13 The North Shores no sooner entered the village than they were caught in a vicious battle where each platoon’s rear was always exposed to the appearance of Germans using the trenches and tunnels to reoccupy positions just taken.

WHILE ‘C’ COMPANY fought for control of Tailleville, Lieutenant Colonel Buell came up the road with his tactical headquarters to find out what was delaying the battalion’s advance. He was still anxious to push on past the village and establish the blocking position in front of La Délivrande and Douvres-la Délivrande, the North Shores’s final objective, and already the fight for Tailleville was a couple of hours old.

With Buell was Lieutenant Colonel L.G. Clarke, the commander of the 19th Army Field Regiment, which was providing artillery support to the North Shores. The tactical HQ also consisted of Buell’s intelligence officer, Lieutenant Blake Oulton, Buell’s batman, and a radio signaller. As the small party approached Tailleville’s outskirts, a soldier waved them off the road and warned that there was a German sniper still active outside the walls that nobody could locate. Crawling on their stomachs through a field of grain, Buell and his group managed to reach the entrance to the village.

The battalion commander soon found Daughney, who reported Tailleville all but cleared. Buell doubted that, as there was still very accurate German shellfire hitting the beach and he was certain a fire control post within the village directed those guns. He instructed the major to clear the village again until the shelling ceased. “Even if you have to do it four or five times,” Buell insisted. Daughney was visibly unhappy about the order, but to Buell it seemed “obvious that our beachhead was of little value if the enemy could direct fire on all craft landing there.”

Having dispatched ‘C’ Company to clear the buildings they had thought well swept, Buell told Major Archie MacNaughton to follow him through the village. The lieutenant colonel would personally allocate the section he wanted ‘A’ Company to hold and set out the boundary lines between the two companies. Buell’s concern was not only to ensure the entire village was subjected to a house-to-house sweep, but that the two companies not end up in a firefight between friendly forces. “We had not moved more than a few steps on our way through the village,” Buell later wrote, “when an automatic weapon was fired at us at close range. We all went flat on the ground instinctively. I was lying in the middle of the roadway, so I got up in a hurry and ran forward and squeezed into the projection of an archway that led into the château courtyard. While on the ground looking to see where the German was, I heard a movement in the bushes near by, so I fired my Sten into the bushes with no enemy reaction. Then I took a smoke bomb from a pouch and told Archie [McNaughton] that when the smoke emitted he was to move his party back ten yards and around the corner of the château wall, then for him to get a section of his company and we would close out this particular little pocket of resistance. I threw the grenade and it took a little time to emit smoke. Archie moved on the explosion of the grenade and simultaneously another burst of automatic fire occurred. Archie, his runner, and… his signaller fell dead. Another signaller lay wounded. I remained where I was and another burst of fire chipped the stone corner facing just alongside me. The wounded signaller pulled himself across the road to me on his hands, dragging his legs and body, and I started to dress his wounds when from somewhere a bomb was thrown which hit the roof of the archway above our heads.”14

Buell threw himself over the badly wounded signaller to protect him from the falling slate broken off the roof by the explosion. Four more grenades followed the first, but each hung up on the roof and exploded harmlessly there, so the lieutenant colonel guessed that the German wasn’t strong enough to cast them all the way over the roof. Each grenade seemed a bit closer, though, and Buell was anxious to find a way to get himself and the wounded signaller out of the deadly trap they were in. Fortunately, deliverance arrived in the form of a Fort Garry Horse tank that rumbled around the corner and took up a position between Buell and the German machine-gunner who had butchered MacNaughton’s tactical headquarters section.

With the tank slowly backing up behind him so that its armoured hide deflected the German bullets, Buell carried the wounded signaller to safety. A section from one of ‘C’ Company’s platoons immediately moved through the area and managed to kill the men in the machine-gun position and also the grenade thrower. They discovered that the machine-gunners had been firing from a position dug into the street that resembled a manhole access to a sewer system.15

Slowly the resistance in Tailleville was being eliminated, but the process was taking a painfully long time. Yet again the 716th Division, so disdained by Allied intelligence, were proving stout fighters. For every German who quickly surrendered, there were two more willing to fight to the death. Captain LeBlanc attempted to help some of them realize that ambition by having a private packing a flame thrower pour its deadly flame into a suspicious dugout, but was disappointed when all that emerged from the hole was a badly scorched German and an equally burned horse. A Bren gunner put the animal out of its misery and the German was marched to where a growing number of prisoners were being formed into a column for escort back to the beach.

Realizing the tide was turning, some Germans attempted to slip from the south side of the village and flee into a nearby wood, but Captain Currie raced around that flank with several Bren carriers and cut off their escape.¹⁶ After the Bren carriers closed this avenue of retreat, the remaining Germans in Tailleville surrendered. The North Shores rounded up sixty prisoners and estimated about the same number had died in the drawn-out six-hour fight. It was 2000 hours and daylight was fast fading.¹⁷ Buell ordered Daughney’s exhausted ‘C’ Company to continue digging about in the subterranean complex to ensure that no Germans still hid there, while he started organizing ‘A’ Company, under Captain J.L. Belliveau since MacNaughton’s death, to sweep the wood south of the village. The lieutenant colonel had every intention of still trying to fulfill his battalion’s final mission for June 6 of establishing a blocking position in front of the German radar station at Douvres-la Délivrande.

Just as Belliveau’s men were preparing to move out, however, Buell finally established radio contact with Brigadier Blackader, who told him to forget about the final objective and instead consolidate his grip on St. Aubin and Tailleville. With his entire left flank exposed from St. Aubin to Tailleville, Buell ordered ‘B’ Company to dig in to the east and south of St. Aubin to provide immediate cover for the beach. ‘D’ Company was ordered up to secure Tailleville’s eastern flank while ‘A’ Company was positioned on the southern edge of the village and ‘C’ Company in its centre. Soon after each company reported itself in position, a final section of ‘C’ Company emerged from clearing another chamber of the underground warrens with more prisoners in tow. Buell thought it somewhat comical that the latest bag included two wounded German officers sporting monocles, so that they looked very much like Allied propaganda caricatures. The lieutenant colonel was, however, “disappointed at not running through all the objectives planned,” but thought perhaps it was just as well, for the North Shores “had had a fairly rugged day.”18

Just how rugged a day it had been became clear as the companies settled in their assigned positions for the night and started carrying out roll calls. That the battalion had lost a sizable number of men killed or wounded came as no surprise, but the extent of the losses surpassed Buell’s expectations. Total casualties tallied 125 out of about 800 men. Of these, one officer and 33 other ranks were dead, while 2 officers and 89 other ranks had been wounded.¹⁹ The only officer killed was Major MacNaughton, the forty-seven-year-old from New Brunswick’s Black River Bridge. MacNaughton had served with the North Shores so long he was considered a tradition by the rest of the officers, who by comparison were mere youngsters. Immensely popular with the men, well respected by his colleagues, and always durable in the face of the physically demanding task of leading a rifle company, MacNaughton “could not be made to believe he was too old for the job.” It had been a source of pride to him for his company, which was probably the least well turned out during inspections, to always emerge on top during any training exercise or sports activity. Captain Eloi Robichaud later wrote, “it was an irony of fate that [MacNaughton] had won still another first—the first senior officer to be killed in action.”20

Hardly a man among the remaining North Shores was not somewhat astonished to still be alive and unhurt. Private Ian McFarlane felt particularly lucky. As McFarlane had come off the LCA that morning, Private Donald Young had been hit in the shoulder by a bullet and pitched back into the landing craft right beside him. Then he was running for the seawall when Corporal White had been shot down at his side. On the road to Tailleville, a shell landed on his platoon section and killed Private E.R. Palmer and Corporal Fraser. Next, his platoon sergeant, William Girvan, was wounded. In the melee in the village, Private C.W. McLaughlin was shot through the spine and left a paraplegic at the age of twenty-two. There had followed four terrifying forays into the underground warrens of the German headquarters system in search of the enemy, with wild firefights in narrow rooms and passageways that were night black. Through all of this, McFarlane had lived and emerged whole at day’s end. But he could not stop thinking of the chums he had trained with for so long, who had one after the other fallen at his side. It seemed mere chance that determined who lived, who was maimed, who died.²¹