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man stood on the hood and held the flag open so it could not be overlooked. The jeep rounded the bend of the road [and] reached the first casualty. He was dead. As the aid man was examining him the Germans fired a machinegun which hit Cpl Baylor in the chest. The other three crawled back under fire dragging the wounded man and leaving the two bodies and the jeep.’ Captain Ware decided to abandon the attempt. ‘But just as this decision was reached a German wearing a Geneva [Red Cross] brassard and carrying a white flag came round the bend of the road walking toward them. He was promptly covered. All the American weapons present were pointed at him but fortunately no shot was fired. As the German came up we could see that he was sweating profusely. But he did not falter. He handed me the attached note which no one present could read. A German speaking soldier of the anti-tank platoon was sent for. The German told him that he had been sent by his lieutenant to apologize for his soldiers firing on the American medics. The German was still sweating [and] kept removing his helmet to mop his brow. He said he had volunteered for this mission. He also told us that both the American casualties were dead. The German said that the note from his Lieutenant assured us that we might return and remove our casualties as well as the jeep and that the Germans would not fire again. We asked the German if he would like to stay with us now that he was across the lines. He laughed and said he supposed it made no difference which side he stayed with, but he pointed out that if he did stay it would look bad for the Americans since the Germans would think he had been detained by force.’

The American advance was still slowed by traffic jams on the narrow country roads and also by attacks from groups of German stragglers. ‘The small number of Germans are causing us difficulty out of all proportion to their numbers,’ the headquarters of the 4th Infantry Division recorded. ‘However it is probably part of the plan to leave the enemy in position on our left flank in the hope of an encirclement.’

This assessment of Eisenhower’s and Bradley’s thinking was premature, but close to the mark. The original plan was to storm through the Avranches gap and seize ports in Brittany to speed the Allied supply lines for the advance to the Seine. But now a huge opening lay between the German Seventh Army and the Loire. On 3 August, Major General John Wood’s 4th Armored Division swung round the west side of Rennes to the south. He was low on fuel and ammunition, so could not seize the city, but he had now sealed off the whole of the Brittany peninsula. Facing east, he sensed that the Germans had no reserves to block a charge straight towards Paris and the Seine. Eisenhower and Bradley both came to a similar conclusion. It offered an opportunity rare in war. German generals saw the implications with horror. The news that an American armoured division had reached Rennes, wrote Bayerlein, ‘had a shattering effect, like a bomb-burst, upon us’.

23

Brittany and Operation Bluecoat

Brittany, as the Allies knew well, was one of the great centres of resistance in France. This was why the first Allied troops to drop in France had been the 2ème Régiment de Chasseurs Parachutistes just before midnight on 5 June. By the end of June the Gaullist-led Resistance in the FFI and the Communist-led FTP mustered a total of 19,500 men. By the end of July they had 31,500, of whom 13,750 had weapons.

On 4 July, General Koenig, who commanded the FFI from London, had summoned Colonel Eon to his offices in Upper Grosvenor Street. Eon was to command Resistance forces in Brittany. His second in command would be de Gaulle’s chief intelligence officer, André de Wavrin, always known by his codename of Colonel ‘Passy’. They would receive a staff of twenty officers and be supported by nine extra of the three-man Jed burgh teams to help train and direct their forces. Weapons would be provided for 30,000 men. But with the apparent stalemate on both the American and the British fronts at