D-Day_ The Battle for Normandy - Antony Beevor [320]
19
Patton felt that the sacking of commanders was becoming excessive. ‘Collins and Bradley are too prone to cut off heads,’ he wrote. ‘This will make division commanders lose their confidence. A man should not be damned for an initial failure with a new division.’
20
This was probably at Taganrog in southern Russia. At the beginning of 1942, the division also murdered 4,000 Soviet prisoners.
21
The commander of Panzer Lehr’s repair and maintenance company later wrote that the figure of eighty-four half-tracks lost applied to the whole month of June.
22
Churchill evidently could not deal with the twenty-four-hour clock or just hated it, so ‘C’, the head of the Secret Intelligence Service, used to cross out each timing and insert the more familiar twelve-hour version with a.m. or p.m.
23
Montgomery’s ‘Forecast of Operations’ had predicted that the British Second Army would be five miles south-east of Caen by 14 June.
24
In fact the four men were Colonel de Chevigné (appointed regional military delegate), Commandant de Courcel (de Gaulle’s personal aide since 1940), Monsieur François Coulet, whom de Gaulle had appointed the night before to be the Commissaire de la République for the region, and Commandant Laroque, who would be his chief of staff.
25
In stark contrast, part of the American press, incited by the White House, was saying that while American boys were dying for the liberation of France, de Gaulle was playing politics to gain power for himself.
26
For an excellent Ministry of Defence study of the question see David Rowland, The Stress of Battle, London, 2006, pp. 48-56. The best-known work on the subject, Men Under Fire, was written after the war by the American combat historian Brigadier General S. L. A. Marshall. Although Marshall’s use of his source material has been challenged, notably by Professor Roger Spiller in the RUSI Journal, (Winter, 1988), his overall picture is undoubtedly accurate.
27
He was, of course, referring to the prominent black and white stripes painted round the fuselage and wings of all Allied aircraft to prevent exactly this from happening.
28
Even after Cherbourg had been captured and made operational, the Americans managed to land much more over the beach than through the port. In the month of August they landed 266,804 tons and 817 vehicles at Cherbourg, 187,973 tons and 3,986 vehicles at Utah and 351,437 tons and 9,155 vehicles at Omaha. The British averaged 9,000 tons a day at Arromanches. They were also able to use small fishing ports which the Germans had not destroyed.
29
Lord Haw-Haw was the British name for William Joyce, who broadcast from Berlin like ‘Axis Sally’.
30
The commander of the 4th Armoured Brigade, Brigadier John Currie, was killed that day. He was replaced by Brigadier Michael Carver, aged only twenty-nine.
31
It is still not clear whether the warning of the attack of II SS Panzer Corps came from the captured plan or from two signals intercepted by Ultra on 29 June, one of which was communicated to the Second Army within four hours. But if the intelligence did come via Ultra, then it is hard to believe that Dempsey had not been told.
32
One war correspondent on this front, Bob Miller of United Press, wrote, ‘in comparing the average American, British or Canadian soldier with the average German soldier, it is difficult to deny that the German was by far, in most cases, a superior fighting man. He was better trained, better disciplined, and in most cases carried out his assignment with much greater efficiency than we did . . . The average American fighting in Europe today is discontented, he does not want to be here, he is not a soldier, he is a civilian in uniform.’
33
According to Bayerlein’s own figures, his panzer regiment had been reduced from 2,200 men and 183 tanks down to just 400 men and sixty-five tanks by the time he reached the American sector in 7 July. The 901st Panzergrenadier-Regiment was reduced from 2,600 men to 600, and the 902nd Panzergrenadier-Regiment from 2,600 to 700.
34
The Maschinengewehr