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By Root 1100 0

in Normandy, the Anglo-American armies held a secure perimeter twenty miles inland. But bad weather impeded air operations and the landing of supplies. Every small advance demanded huge effort and cost casualties on a scale that thoroughly alarmed the Allies, especially the British. When Operation Epsom at the end of June failed to envelop Caen – originally planned as a D-Day objective – Montgomery summoned heavy bomber support: Lancasters duly devastated the city on the evening of 7 July, enabling British and Canadian troops to move into the northern ruins. On 18 July, a formidable armoured force was committed to Operation Goodwood, designed to take Falaise. Montgomery broke off this attack at the end of its second day, after losing 4,000 casualties and five hundred tanks, one-third of all British armour in Normandy. The Shermans were replaced readily enough, but the attackers were chastened by their failure. ‘Our nerves were shot,’ wrote tank commander John Cropper of the mood in his crew at the end of July. ‘Ritchie and Keith started an argument, on music I think. Within seconds they were literally screaming at each other. I had to be very firm with them to break it up … It was a long time before either of them uttered another word.’

Meanwhile on the Allied right, Gen. Omar Bradley’s First Army progressed painfully through the bocage, where difficult conditions were worsened by German flooding of low ground. The Americans lost 40,000 casualties in two weeks, before reaching dry ground around Saint-Lô from which a major armoured assault could be launched. Operation Cobra was preceded by a massive heavy bomber attack, which crippled the German Panzer Lehr Division in its path. On 25 July, the Americans began an advance on Coutances which met little effective resistance: the German army in Normandy was crumbling. Bradley’s forces were soon racing south, with the Germans falling back ahead of them. Avranches fell on 30 July, and seizure of an intact bridge at Pontaubault opened the way west into Brittany, south to the Loire, east to the Seine and the so-called Paris– Orleans gap. Patton, commanding the newly activated US Third Army, dispatched a corps on a dash south-eastward to Mayenne and Le Mans, reaching the latter after advancing seventy-four miles in a week.

Yet although senior German officers now recognised strategic retreat as essential, most of their line held. Hitler insisted on a new counter-attack, disclosed to the Allies by Ultra: in darkness in the early hours of 7 August, Rommel’s successor von Kluge launched a major counter-offensive designed to separate the US First and Third Armies. During the night the panzers retook Mortain and pushed forward seven miles. With the coming of daylight, however, disaster fell on them. Allied fighter-bombers quickly destroyed forty out of seventy attacking tanks. For four more days the Germans strove to regain momentum, but US infantry held their positions supported by massive artillery fire.

On Montgomery’s front, progress remained slow. Late on 7 August Crerar’s Second Canadian Army attacked south of Caen. In darkness, his tanks made some headway, before the assault ran out of steam soon after daybreak. Canadian and Polish armoured units took over, but their inexperience, and a bungled bomber strike which devastated several spearhead units, halted operations once more; inconclusive fighting continued on the road to Falaise until 10 August. Montgomery’s formations faced the bulk of the surviving German armour. It was nonetheless painful for them to progress so sluggishly, when the Americans in the west were sweeping forward in triumph.

With Patton’s forces moving so fast, Bradley saw an opportunity to trap an estimated twenty-one German formations – or, more accurately, their remains. If Third Army swung north to Alençon and the Canadians could reach Falaise, only fourteen miles would separate them. Montgomery accepted the plan. One of Patton’s corps dashed for Alençon against negligible opposition, and pushed through the town to reach the outskirts of Argentan on the