D-Day_ The Battle for Normandy - Antony Beevor [161]
On the ridge above them, the 1st Battalion continued its attack on Martinville, using a small force with an anti-tank gun and a tank destroyer to take up position on the eastern side of the hamlet. The 29th Division’s other two regiments, the 175th further up the Bayeux road and the 115th still trying to push down the road from Isigny, made little progress that day. One battalion of the 115th managed to veer off to attack the Martinville feature on the north side, but that afternoon it was hit heavily by a German mortar concentration, and many wounded men died that evening without medical attention. The shortage of aid men right along the front had become critical, mainly due to heavy casualties and a lack of trained replacements.
The battalion of the 115th, shaken by its casualties, had begun to dig in that night east of Martinville when the regimental commander arrived. To their disbelief, they were ordered to continue the advance without delay. ‘This order caused great consternation in the battalion,’ remarked their regimental commander. But once the grumbling was over, they moved on again at midnight. To their even greater surprise, they found themselves advancing forward along the western slope of the ridge towards Saint-Lô without encountering heavy resistance. The Germans seemed to have melted away in the night.41
The two battalions, Bingham’s and Puntenney’s, isolated at the bottom of the ridge near La Madeleine, could now be supplied by a lifeline over the saddle from the north. But this supply route remained a hazardous enterprise under the deadly fire from guns sited south of the Bayeux road. Private Peterson’s company was reinforced with eighty-five replacements and a new commander, Captain Rabbitt. New arrivals were mixed in with veterans so that they would not panic. This company then manned the lifeline down from the ridge, with small groups in every field armed with machine guns. To their astonishment, they suddenly sighted a column of German soldiers being marched down in the open past them. The machine guns opened up and they mowed them down.
During the night of 17 July, the Germans evacuated the ridge and the withdrawal proved even more widespread. Outflanked on the Bayeux road and the Martinville ridge, they had to pull back on the sector facing the 35th Division, even abandoning a considerable amount of equipment and weapons. General Corlett told Gerhardt on the morning of 18 July to take Saint-Lô, which American troops now called ‘Stilo’. Brigadier General Cota’s task force, with reconnaissance elements, Shermans, tank destroyers and engineers, was ready to move. ‘Looks like we’re all set,’ Gerhardt reported to Corps headquarters. At 14.30 hours, Cota sent the message, ‘Ready to roll.’ His column began to move down the Isigny road into Saint-Lô, where they were joined by a battalion of the 115th Infantry. After the heavy fighting of the last few weeks, German resistance seemed comparatively light. There was harassing fire from German artillery positions south of Saint-Lô and groups from the 30th Mobile Brigade fought a rearguard action in parts of the town.
Cota’s task force entered ‘a shell of a town’, smashed both by the original Allied bombing of 6 June and by artillery fire during the recent battle. Sky could be seen through the upper windows of the roofless buildings. The streets were blocked with wrecked vehicles and rubble, and this brought most traffic to a halt. Different groups were assigned to seize key points and fight house-to-house battles against the stay-behind groups from the 30th Mobile Brigade. By 19.00 hours, Gerhardt was able to claim that the place was secured. The engineers and dozer tanks got to work clearing streets to allow free movement, but the harassing fire did not stop. A forward controller of the divisional artillery was planning to use one of the twin spires of Saint-Lô’s small cathedral as an observation post, but before he and his men could get into position German artillery had brought down both towers. Brigadier