D-Day_ The Battle for Normandy - Antony Beevor [143]
Inhabitants of Caen had feared the worst, having heard German officers declare that the city would be the ‘French Stalingrad’. Yet they were then encouraged by clear signs that the Wehrmacht was preparing to withdraw. On 26 June, rear troops began to pull out. The Gestapo returned to destroy evidence of their massacre of Resistance prisoners. And on 6 July, German engineers began to destroy the port installations in Caen along the ship canal. That day the Feldkommandantur also gave orders for the remaining civilians to evacuate the town, but once again that had little effect. Only a screen of SS Hitler Jugend panzergrenadiers was left in Caen itself.
The bombing was a double disaster. It had failed to destroy most of the German positions around the northern fringe of Caen and instead inflicted massive damage on the city. The RAF’s fear of hitting the British troops waiting to advance had shifted the bomb-line south towards the city centre, missing the German positions. The mistake was similar to the American failure to hit the beach defences at Omaha. Few except Montgomery ever believed that the bombing had been militarily effective. The only troops who appear to have been hit belonged to a detachment of the Luftwaffe 16th Feld-Division which had taken over from the 21st Panzer-Division near Lebisey, as well as two tanks and a mortar section of the Hitler Jugend in the villages just north of Caen. Worst of all, the attack, like the German bombing of Stalingrad, turned much of the city into amass of rubble which impeded the advance of vehicles and provided an ideal terrain for the defenders.39 General Eberbach described the city as ‘a heap of ruins which was hard to cross’.
The reason given for bombing on the evening which preceded the attack was said to have been a fear of bad weather the next day. But the meteorological reports for 8 July do not support this. And even allowing for the delayed-action bombs, the German defenders were given all the time they needed to reorganize. Losses suffered by British and Canadian units advancing into and around the city were far higher than expected, despite the heavy artillery bombardment. Lebisey wood was smashed to the point where it looked like something out of the First World War.
The Hitler Jugend emerged from their cellars and bunkers with Panzerfaust grenade launchers to take on the Shermans and Crocodile flame-throwers at close range. Riflemen climbed trees and tied themselves in. Their main target appears to have been the commanders of tanks which were‘ shooting in’ the infantry. The marksmanship of the SS panzergrenadiers was evidently far superior to that of ordinary German infantry divisions. On that day alone, the East Riding Yeomanry lost five crew commanders and a squadron leader from snipers.
Stretcher-bearers taking wounded to the rear became exhausted. ‘There were all sorts of casualties,’ recounted a member of 223rd Field Ambulance with the British 3rd Infantry Division. ‘There were legs without feet, there were knees without kneecaps, there were shoulders without arms. I remember one sergeant major brought in with half of his head blown away, yet he was still conscious, and the MO said to me: “Give him two grains of morphia: it’ll finish him quickly”. But it didn’t. And chest wounds, shocking chest wounds. On that one day we treated 466 British casualties and 40 Germans.’
In the advanced dressing station of 210th Field Ambulance, the doctors and staff also had to deal with a wide variety of battle casualties. They included ‘a group of terrified, disorientated lads - battle shocked, jittering and yelling in a corner’. ‘Several SS wounded came in - a tough and dirty bunch