FOR MORE THAN a day, some 200, 000 Allied soldiers had been ashore at Normandy and were steadly fighting their way inland, pushing the Germans back. Panzer units were finally moving toward the action, only to be decimated by Allied fighter-bombers patrolling the skies overhead. In those areas where the paratroops and glider troops had landed, they were still cut off but continued fighting—in most cases without tanks, heavy weapons, operable radios, food, and medical supplies, and trying desperately to hang on to their gains.
In the British sector at 2130 hours on 7 June, Brigadier S. James Hill, with his 3rd Brigade headquarters now located at Le Mesnil, told Terence Otway that the Commandos were coming to relieve his battalion and to pull his men out that night and take up defensive positions around another manor house: the German-controlled Château du Saint-Côme, near Bréville, about a mile south of Amfréville East. A large gap existed between Bréville and Le Mesnil that the Germans were likely to exploit to retake the Orne bridges, and Hill wanted 9th Para to plug it.
Otway’s battered and depleted unit marched through the dark into strange country. No rehearsals had prepared the battalion for this part of the operation; each man had to be constantly aware of the dangers around him and be ready to react quickly in order to survive. Skirting the enemy-held town of Bréville, at 0130 hours on 8 June, the 9th took up positions in the woods near the stately château known as the Bois des Monts. When dawn broke, Otway realized the strategic importance of the location: whoever held that high ground had a clear view of the Orne Bridges off to the west.1
Sure enough, Otway’s men were subjected to probing attacks by German forces, who wanted the high ground for themselves. Throughout 8 June and into the 9th, the number and frequency of German attacks grew, but by now Otway’s battalion had been enlarged to about 270 men, thanks to the arrival of more stragglers. The stragglers had arrived just in time, too, for on 10 June the Germans hit the battalion’s position with artillery and three ground assaults, one of which included panzers. It took naval gunfire on the 10th to break up the third attack.2
WHILE SOLDIERS SOON become emotionally hardened to seeing their comrades killed and wounded, the plight of innocent animals caught up in the horror of war always strikes a tender chord, in even the most gore-stained veteran. So, it was on the evening of 9 June when Otway’s men got into a battle with Germans in and around the Château du Saint-Côme. A PIAT round struck the stable, where a number of thoroughbred horses belonging to the château’s owner resided, and set the structure ablaze. Despite the bullets and flames, two of the British soldiers dashed into the inferno in an attempt to set the animals free. While some did manage to escape the fire, many more burned to death. For weeks after, the horses that managed to escape roamed the fields and forests, many falling victim to bombs, shells, and bullets.3
ON 11 JUNE, the 5th Black Watch Regiment of the 51st Highland Division reached Otway’s wooded position, and from there it launched an attack to take Bréville. However, the attack was unsuccessful, and the survivors fell back to the Bois des Monts to regroup and replan.
One of the British soldiers, Charles S. Pearson, a Bren gunner with the 12th Parachute Battalion that was in Division Reserve at Amfréville East, recalled that on 12 June, “We formed up in an area only three-quarters of a mile from Bréville and came under terrific mortar pounding from the Germans. As darkness fell, our artillery opened up in support of us and soon the night was lit up by tracers and the deafening din of artillery from the Allied lines and counterfire from the German mortars.”
The battalion was supposed to begin its attack after dark, preceeded by an artillery barrage at 2200 hours. An artillery shell, believed to have been fired from a gun of the 51st Highlanders, fell short of Bréville just as the attack got underway and exploded near a group of senior British officers observing the assault. The explosion killed the 12th’s commander, Lieutenant Colonel A. P. “Johnny” Johnson and seriously wounded Brigadiers Lord Lovat and Hugh Kindersley, the latter the commander of the 6th Air-Landing Brigade.*
Pearson said, “As we stormed up towards [Bréville], one after another of our men fell on the way, but we went on, determined to do the job we had been given. Despite the killed and wounded, we eventually fought our way into Bréville where the battle raged on at close quarters until Jerry was driven out. Then we started our next job with no respite—digging in frenziedly to await the inevitable counterattack from the mortars! We were not disappointed. Within a quarter-hour the inferno began and the entire village seemed to be ablaze. The Germans knew its importance as much as we did! But we clung on, despite everything.
“I remember at the height of the bombardment we lost the sergeant major and our colonel,” continued Pearson. “The colonel [Johnson] was dashing about rallying everyone, and shouting, ‘Dig in, you—–, or die.’ Shortly afterwards he was killed—and many of our lads and my comrades did die. One lad was lucky—he had his helmet blown open just like a tin can. He was wounded, but he was lucky to be even alive after a hit like that. Throughout the long night we waited for the German counter-attack against what was now a shambles of a village—not with mortars now but with infantry. It never came. Not until prisoners were interrogated later did we learn that we had given them such a hammering that they had neither the strength nor the will to make another effort. But we didn’t know that at the time and so through the next day and night we stuck it out and after two days, very tired and weary, we were relieved.
“Incidentally, I carried out the lad who had his helmet blown off and took him to a jeep to get him out of the line of fire,” recalled Pearson. “But when I got to it I found the rear tyre was ablaze and I had to put it out by smothering it with horse or cow manure…. It was at this time that I realised I had been wounded in the leg. I hadn’t had time to notice until then! By this time the church and everything else was on fire. Shells from our own artillery were hitting us as well because apparently the officer directing the shelling had been killed and so we got both lots: British artillery and German mortars!”4
ON THE MORNING of 12 June, seaborne elements marched into the Bois des Monts with food, ammunition, and medical supplies—and not a moment too soon, for on that day the Germans launched a heavy assault with artillery, infantry, and armor. Brigadier Hill personally led re-inforcements (including Canadian troops) to the battlesite, supported by tanks from the 13/18th Royal Hussars, the first unit to land on Sword Beach. Fire from HMS Arethusa’s six-inch main guns also helped disrupt the German attack and send the survivors fleeing.
During their five days at the Bois des Monts, Otway’s 9th Paras lost another 150 men killed or wounded. Ordered to fall back to Le Mesnil, only 126 men were able to answer the call. They would remain in Normandy until August.5
But the Battle of Bréville, as this action was called, was the turning point for the fight for the Orne bridgehead. Never again would the Germans seriously threaten this sector. In the American zone, the turning point at the La Fière Bridge was rapidly approaching.