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    Normandy 1944: The Battle of the Hedgerows: Photographs From Wartime Archives
    Normandy 1944: The Battle of the Hedgerows: Photographs From Wartime Archives
    Normandy 1944: The Battle of the Hedgerows: Photographs From Wartime Archives
    Ebook215 pages1 hour

    Normandy 1944: The Battle of the Hedgerows: Photographs From Wartime Archives

    By Simon Forty

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    About this ebook

    With rare wartime photography, this WWII history presents an in-depth look at one of the most grueling and vital battles of the Normandy campaign.

    After storming the beaches on D-Day, the US First Army labored to advance through the Norman bocage country in the west. The lethal struggle that developed there was a defining episode in the Normandy campaign, and this photographic history is a vivid introduction to it.

    The Germans mounted a tenacious defense from the high hedgerows. But the Americans adapted their tactics and brought in special equipment including bulldozers and tanks with hedgerow cutters to force their way through. In spite of appalling losses, First Army overcame their tactical problems and ground their way to Saint-L.

    Through a selection of over 150 carefully chosen and meticulously captioned wartime photographs, Simon Forty traces the course of the battle and gives the reader a graphic impression of the conditions, the terrain, and the experience of the troops.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Integrated Media
    Release dateApr 30, 2018
    ISBN9781526723727
    Normandy 1944: The Battle of the Hedgerows: Photographs From Wartime Archives
    Author

    Simon Forty

    Simon Forty was educated in Dorset and the north of England before reading history at London University’s School of Slavonic and East European Studies. He has been involved in publishing since the mid-1970s, first as editor and latterly as author. Son of author and RAC Tank Museum curator George Forty, he has continued in the family tradition writing mainly on historical and military subjects including books on the Napoleonic Wars and the two world wars. Recently he has produced a range of highly illustrated books on the Normandy battlefields, the Atlantic Wall and the liberation of the Low Countries with co-author Leo Marriott.

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      Book preview

      Normandy 1944 - Simon Forty

      IMAGES OF WAR

      NORMANDY 1944

      THE BATTLE OF THE HEDGEROWS

      The bocage—the Americans called it the ‘hedgerows’—allowed German defenders to frustrate First Army’s attacks for nearly two months. Bradley called it ‘a line of defense more formidable than any even Rommel could have contrived.’

      IMAGES OF WAR

      NORMANDY 1944

      THE BATTLE OF THE HEDGEROWS

      SIMON FORTY

      First published in Great Britain in 2018 by

      PEN & SWORD MILITARY

      an imprint of

      Pen & Sword Books Ltd,

      47 Church Street,

      Barnsley,

      South Yorkshire.

      S70 2AS

      Copyright © Pen & Sword Books Ltd, 2018

      A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library.

      ISBN 978 1 52670 xxx x

      eISBN 978 1 52672 372 7

      Mobi ISBN 978 1 52672 373 4

      The right of Simon Forty to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

      All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission from the Publisher in writing.

      Pen & Sword Books Ltd incorporates the

      Imprints of Pen & Sword Aviation, Pen & Sword Maritime,

      Pen & Sword Military, Wharncliffe Local History,

      Pen & Sword Select, Pen & Sword Military

      Classics and Leo Cooper.

      For a complete list of Pen & Sword titles please contact

      Pen & Sword Books Limited

      47 Church Street, Barnsley, South Yorkshire, S70

      2AS, England

      E-mail: enquiries@pen-and-sword.co.uk

      Website: www.pen-and-sword.co.uk

      Abbreviations

      CCA/B/R Combat Command A/B/R

      CG commanding general

      CLY County of London Yeomanry

      CP command post

      ECB Engineer Combat Battalion

      FA field artillery

      FJR Fallschirmjäger = German paratrooper

      GR Grenadier Regiment (German infantry)

      KG Kampfgruppe = battle group, ersatz combinations of troops that happened to be available at a given time. Usually named for their commander

      OB West Oberbefehlshaber West = C-in-C West

      OKH Oberkommando des Heeres = Army High Command

      OT Organisation Todt

      PIR parachute infantry regiment

      PzGr Panzergrenadier = armoured infantry

      RCT regimental combat team

      RHA Royal Horse Artillery

      (SS-) sPzAbt (SS-) schwere Panzer-Abteilung = heavy tank battalion (Tiger Is or IIs)

      SdKfz Sonderkraftfahrzeug = special purpose vehicle

      TD tank destroyer—could mean towed antitank guns or tracked (M10, M18 or M36)

      Note

      Dates are 1944 unless specified otherwise.

      Photographic Sources

      The photographs in this book are predominantly from US National Archives. They have been sourced via Battlefield Historian, without whom this book could not have been undertaken or direct from National Archives, College Park, Maryland. Captioning is always made easier with reference to Photosnormandie’s excellent Flickr photostream. The US official maps are from the various ‘Green Books’ which can be found online at the US Army Center of Military History.

      Contents

      Introduction

      Chapter One

      The Bocage

      Chapter Two

      The Opposing Forces

      Chapter Three

      Advance from Omaha

      Chapter Four

      The Cotentin

      Chapter Five

      The July Offensive

      Chapter Six

      The Battle of Saint-Lô

      Chapter Seven

      British Actions in the Bocage

      Further Reading

      The countryside of southern England, particularly Dorset, Devon and Cornwall, is very similar to that of Normandy, as is the climate. Above, an incident at Kingsbridge; Below, training at Torcross, both locations in Devon. Note the hedgerows, and the sunken lane.

      Introduction

      Did the Allied planners spend too much time worrying about the beachheads and too little thinking about how they were going to fight inland through the bocage? It’s a good question and one that’s difficult to answer. Training in the fields of Great Britain, with its own version of the hedgerows, was certainly as close to the real thing as one could get outside France. Perhaps a better question is whether the Allies’ operational and tactical doctrine was deficient. It is often suggested that German tactics and NCO-level leadership were better than those of the Allies. Unsurprisingly, this might well have been true when green Allied units were blooded for the first time—such as the 90th Infantry Division, who started badly but would go on to live up to their ‘Tough ’Ombres’ nickname. Attrition, however, was a great leveller, and the Germans were losing as many or more men than the Americans. It’s also difficult to compare like for like when one side executed one soldier for desertion while the other despatched anywhere from 15,000 to 50,000 depending on whose figures you believe. And while the Germans tactics may have been good, their strategic decision-making, particularly with Hitler at the helm, was no match for the Allies.

      Was the German equipment better than the Allies? For many years opinion on this has ranged decidedly in the favour of the Germans. At the time questions were asked in the House of Commons by MP Major Richard Stokes about what were seen as substandard British tanks. (One waggish MP queried: ‘Will the Prime Minister be prepared to take charge of a Churchill tank and allow the Hon. Member for Ipswich [Stokes] to take charge of a Tiger tank?’) In A Soldier’s Story, Bradley emphasises the disparity: ‘the Tiger could both outgun and outduel any Allied tank in the field.’ But the thing was that there weren’t many Tigers, and those that were in Normandy were ranged against the British and Commonwealth troops who had the Sherman Firefly and were developing better antitank ammunition. The most numerous German AFVs were the PzKpfw IV and StuG III, both of which were no better than the Allied Shermans, although the Panther was. But tanks are only as good as their crews—as von Manteuffel’s inexperienced Panther crews discovered at Arracourt—and an awful lot of the veteran German crews were dying. On the other hand, Allied artillery, much more significant than armour in the hedgerow battles, was certainly better, more numerous, more accurate and, crucially, very effective. So too was Allied transport: as opposed to much of the German Army in 1944 which still used horses.

      The battle of Normandy, pored over for 75 years, still prompts many questions. In the end, however, the qualitative differences between the equipment and the men is irrelevant. The Battle of the Hedgerows posed significant problems for the US Army, questions they answered. They won. Emphatically. They gained the initiative and held it. From the morning of 6 June when Allied paratroopers landed, the Germans were reactive, unable to take the initiative. First the cutting

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