All Hell Let Loose_ The World at War 1939-1945 - Max Hastings [338]
The whole company drove as a body, at high speed and without any stops, in a broad front … After a muffled bang and a swaying, as if a track had been ripped off, the vehicle came to a stop. When I looked to the left, I happened to see the turret being torn off the panzer driving on the left flank. At the same moment, after another minor explosion, my vehicle began to burn … Paul Veith, the gunner sitting in front of me, did not move. I jumped out, then I saw flames coming out of the open hatch as if from a blowtorch … To my left, other burning panzers … The crews burned without exception on their faces and hands … The whole area was under infantry fire.
Within minutes seven Panthers were destroyed by anti-tank guns; their commander returned from receiving treatment for wounds inflicted in an earlier action to find his regiment sorely depleted. He was exasperated by the attack’s futility: ‘I could have cried with rage and sorrow.’
The Americans fought a series of hard battles to secure the Cherbourg peninsula, where the small fields, steep banks and dense hedges of the bocage country enabled the defenders to inflict heavy losses for every small gain. ‘We had to dig them out,’ said a US infantry officer. ‘It was a slow and cautious business, and there was nothing dashing about it. Our men didn’t go across the open fields in dramatic charges … They did at first, but they learned better. They went in tiny groups, a squad or less, moving yards apart and sticking close to the hedgerows on either end of the field. They crept a few yards, squatted, waited, then crept again.’ Soldiers of the US airborne divisions, who had expected to be withdrawn from combat after D-Day to prepare for another assault, instead fought on in Normandy for five weeks; they displayed an energy and commitment lacking in some infantry formations, and made a vital contribution. An operational report from the US First Army highlighted ‘the urgent need for the development of an aggressive spirit in the infantry soldier … Many units do not acquire this attitude until long after their entry into combat and some never acquire it. On the other hand units containing specially selected personnel such as Airborne and Rangers exhibited an aggressive spirit from the start.’
Whenever the Germans attempted to attack, they were devastated by artillery, fighter-bombers and anti-tank guns; but the strategic imperative to advance rested upon the Allies. The British lost vast numbers of tanks in a series of unsuccessful attempts to break through to Caen and beyond. Local successes were often undone by enemy counter-attacks. ‘We were essentially defensive and the Germans essentially both attacking by nature and also fighting for their existence,’ wrote Major Anthony Kershaw. ‘We are not very dashing soldiers and the English cavalry has never been very good.’ Allied infantry assaults were unimaginative, coordination with armour poor.
Mass, generalship and the institutional effectiveness of armies chiefly influence battlefield outcomes, and so they did in Normandy. But the quality of rival weapons systems, especially tanks, also played an important role. The British and US armies had excellent artillery. The Americans equipped their infantry with a good automatic rifle, the M1 Garand, but a poor light machine-gun, the BAR. Their 2.36? hand-held ‘bazooka’ anti-tank rocket – named for a weird wind instrument invented by American comic Bob Burns – lacked adequate penetration. The British Army boasted a reliable rifle, the .303 Mk IV single-shot Lee-Enfield, and the much-loved Bren light machine-gun.
The Germans had better weapons; in particular, they could generate extraordinary