—SAINT MALO/DINARD, BRITTANY—
AUGUST 13, 1944
The GIs cannot rest long. While most of General Patton’s Third Army turns east toward Paris, a part of Third Army—the Eighty-third Division—turns west into Brittany, moving through Coutances and Avranches toward the coastal towns of Saint Malo and Dinard. The VIII Corps, led by General Troy Middleton, begins its westward drive to capture Brittany’s ports. Brest is their major target, the ancient city of Saint Malo their first objective.
“Okay, men, listen up. The word is that the Germans are holed up in a fortified citadel. They’re well-armed, tough fighters who have plenty of battle experience in Normandy. They’re commanded by a Stalingrad vet, Colonel von Aulock. The troops call him ‘the Mad Colonel’—not to his face, I’ll wager. He’s sworn never to surrender, defending the port to his death.”
“Maybe we can help him on that score,” someone says.1
• • •
The quick dash across Brittany creates logistical problems for the VIII Corps. Communications prove difficult, as well as keeping a rapidly moving army supplied with food, equipment, and ammunition.
On August 13, the 333rd Group is attached to the Eighty-third Division and heads north to the Brittany coast, part of Germany’s Atlantic Wall defense system. Their assignment is to consolidate Saint Malo and mop up Dinard.
“Word has it,” Stewart tells Adams, Forte, and Davis, “they’ve got thousands of Germans in Saint Malo.”
“Yeah, I hear hundreds of civilians are being held hostage behind the city’s gates with little food or water,” Adams says.2
“This will be a slugfest,” Captain McLeod tells the men. “So hitch ’em up. The Germans are dug in and ready. How about it, Charley Battery—are you ready?”
• • •
On the fringe of Saint Malo, within ten thousand yards of the fortified citadel, the troops settle in, digging straddle trench latrines, readying their equipment, and preparing for an intense fight. The day before, an infantry battalion battled the Germans, suffering heavy casualties. The 333rd finds the orchards and foxholes filled with dead bodies, strewn with body parts, and littered with bloody helmets, boots, and debris. The summer wheatfields are pockmarked with deep black craters from a steady storm of exploding bombs.
Signalmen string telephone lines, stepping cautiously around undefused German mines. “Communication established,” they report when finished. The ammunition sergeant unpacks, sorts, and stores ammunition by lot, placing it on and covering it with tarpaulins to protect it from moisture and sun. In a notebook he records all ammunition at the site, tabulating receipts and issues and reporting on ammunition expenditures. The fuses and primers are stored in dry places, a short distance away from components of the ammunition. Powder charges, kept in moisture-proof containers, are placed in a dry and ventilated area. Circulation sentinels inspect the area, ordering individuals, animals, and vehicles away from howitzer positions.
Charley Battery begins weapon emplacement, leveling the ground for the 155s, building wheel platforms and firing-base supports. With massive camouflage nets, they conceal the howitzers from enemy ground and air observation. Chief mechanics inspect the howitzers and matériel, testing the machinery and, if necessary, making repairs. Sentinels stand by, ready to guard and protect the weapons when gun crews take scheduled breaks.
The chief of Piece Sections, holding a notebook, prepares to keep current information on each gun, listing calibration corrections, base deflections, range of elevation, and data for defensive fires. Each gun book is required to show the number of rounds fired, as well as the weapon’s defects and repairs. The recorder prepares a journal to list all fire commands, reports, and messages.
The 333rd Field Artillery Group is a well-oiled machine, camouflaged, set up, and ready to load, position, and fire at a moment’s notice.3
• • •
Colonel von Aulock had been very specific when assuming his command, making a devoted vow to Hitler: “I was placed in command of this fortress. I did not request it. I will execute the orders I have received and, doing my duty as a soldier, I will fight to the last stone. I will defend Saint Malo to the last man even if the last man has to be myself.”4
He is now holding, to the death, the walled seaward fortress of Saint Malo. The impressive sharp spire of the twelfth-century Cathedral of Saint Vincent towers over the city. The Citadel, an ancient fortification heavily reinforced with concrete by the Germans, is set up with underground tunnels, storage areas, power plants, ammunition dumps, living quarters, and a hospital. The Citadel’s thick granite walls, designed in the Middle Ages to withstand surprise sieges, are impenetrable. The four hundred German troops inside are well supplied, comfortable, and safe.
• • •
From the beginning, the fighting is fierce. Allied and German troops shower the city with incendiary shells, damaging, burning, and destroying hundreds of stately granite houses built on winding cobblestone roads. Steady clouds of smoke rise from the gentle pasturelands as planes drop bombs that explode and dig up the ground. GIs enter Saint Malo with tanks and trucks pulling heavy howitzers through the mud, driving past crumbling stone buildings and dodging villagers riding bicycles on narrow roads. The two sides exchange hours of deadly artillery fire. In the midst of the chaos, confused old women and children hurry through the city in wooden wagons drawn by worn-out horses. Adams and other medics treat injured soldiers, bandaging their wounds, splinting broken limbs, and loading them into dusty brown ambulances.
Able, Baker, and Charley Batteries’ gunners are hit by stray bullets. The slightly wounded walk to battalion aid stations. Others are treated by medics on the site. Some are seriously wounded and removed by litter. Others are killed.
Firing, however, is never stopped when one of the gun crew is hurt or killed. The man is quickly replaced, the firing too important to interrupt.
After the troops breach the walled old city, the VIII Corps bombards the thick-walled Citadel. A group of GIs and French Resistance volunteers scale the side of the fort, being careful not to alert the enemy inside. They crawl to the top, preparing to invade. But just as they begin to move inside, they are blasted by machine-gun and mortar fire from the enemy within the fortress, as well as artillery fire from an off-coast island.
“The Citadel is well built and heavily fortified,” McLeod tells Kelsey. He runs his hands through his thick dark hair. “I don’t think we can penetrate it.”
“Let’s give the howitzers a go at it,” Kelsey advises. “At close range.”
The Americans move the 105mm and 155mm howitzers within fifteen hundred yards of the fortress, firing at the concrete-fortified walls at point-blank range.
“Fuse impact . . . three rounds . . . fire!”
The ground quakes as four barrels from each battery spout tongues of flame at the fortress. But when the smoke clears, the bulwark is solid, the hundred-pound shells hitting the wall again and again and simply bouncing off.
For two long days without ceasing, the howitzer crews pummel the Citadel. They fire directly into the fortress’s portholes and vents. But it has no effect. The Citadel stands strong, intact, and undamaged, still harboring the well-armed enemy within its bowels.
“Suspend firing!” an executive finally shouts. The howitzers grow quiet. Gunners wipe their foreheads and rub their eyes. Thick white smoke fills the air.