D-Day_ The Battle for Normandy - Antony Beevor [129]
Next day, on the eastern side of the marshes around the River Sèves, the American VII Corps sent the 83rd Division into the attack on the Sainteny sector. To celebrate the Fourth of July, an order went out that every field gun along the front should open fire exactly at midday. Some units also fired red, white and blue smoke signals. The recently arrived 83rd had relieved the 101st Airborne at the end of June. They had been sent out on night patrols ‘to gain experience and confidence’ and reduce the effect of ‘nervous and trigger happy’ troops. But soldiers returning to their own lines found themselves being fired at ‘promiscuously’ by anxious sentries. The paratroopers of the 101st had saturated the newcomers ‘with tall tales about the toughness and fighting ability of Jerry’. The fight for Sainteny proved a bloody baptism. The 83rd Infantry Division suffered 1,400 casualties. They had a lot to learn, as they heard from the few Germans they had taken. ‘The prisoners we captured,’ a sergeant reported, ‘told us we were green troops, because they knew every move we were going to make. They saw us light cigarettes and heard us clanking metal against metal. If we use basic principles, we will live longer.’ The Germans, on the other hand, were keen to take Allied prisoners if only to get hold of their excellent maps, which they themselves lacked.
Two days later, on 6 July, the 4th Infantry Division joined the attack south-westwards. After its hard fighting on the advance to Cherbourg, General Barton remarked, ‘We no longer have the Division we brought ashore.’ This was hardly an exaggeration. The division had suffered 5,400 casualties since coming ashore and had received 4,400 replacements. So many officers had fallen that divisional staff officers were sent back into combat units.
The American attack was hemmed in by the marshes along the River Sèves on the west and those along the River Taute to the east. This made it impossible to outflank German positions and much of the ground was too boggy for tanks. The 37th SS Panzergrenadier-Regiment from the Götz von Berlichingen had a perfect bottleneck to defend. But even the SS panzergrenadiers complained that with the rain and the high water table they were getting foot-rot, with two feet of water in their foxholes.
The young SS panzergrenadiers were also unused to the food. There was plenty of milk, butter and steak, but no bread or noodles. Just over a week before the American attack started, they had received mail for the first time since the invasion. After the costly battle for Carentan, many letters had to be returned to families and sweethearts in Germany with the official stamp on the envelope: ‘Fallen for Greater Germany’. That day also saw the arrival of leading detachments from the 2nd SS Panzer-Division Das Reich, battered from its protracted trek north.
Although the attack in the far west went slowly at first, the Germans suffered a war of attrition under the relentless battering of American artillery. Even a surprise attack on 6 July by part of the SS Das Reich against the American advance into the Forêt de Mont Castre was rapidly smashed by artillery. With every priority awarded to the Caen front, the German LXXXIV Corps received little in the way of reinforcements and equipment to replace their losses. Wehrmacht losses in Normandy up to 25 June had reached 47,070 men, including six generals. Yet their effectiveness in defence provoked a bitter admiration among their opponents. ‘The Germans haven’t much left,’ one American officer said, ‘but they sure as hell know how to use it.’
The constant pressure maintained by the Americans meant that Choltitz had no opportunity to pull units back to rest and reorganize. His only reserve was a single battlegroup made up of elements from the Das Reich and the 15th Paratroop Regiment. Choltitz estimated that his corps lost up to a battalion and a half of men per day from American artillery