Page 33 - History of War - Issue 05-14

AFTER D-DAY

BLOODBATH

IN

THE BOCAGE

Second World War: LLIED PLANNERS HAD of Caen, the country was open – but too BA CKST OR Y
BACKSTORY
For all the heroics of spent so much time open. Here, Capriquet airfield extended With the war in
With the war in
east to west across any advance to the
its fifth year, the

D-Day, there was still solving the problems of south the Canadian 3rd Division might Allies had taken the
getting troops ashore
a long way to go before on D-Day that virtually make, and the Germans were busily initiative, invading
France en masse
defending the southern side of the
the Allies’ overall no attention had been runway. Further west, the British on Gold with the intention
paid to the problems
of driving out the
objective was met. As they might encounter once they were Beach, and the Americans on Omaha German occupiers
and Utah, faced very different problems.
Bernard Montgomery’s off the beaches. The soldiers had and, ultimately,
trained in large armoured formations
forcing a surrender
forces battled their way on Salisbury Plain, Dartmoor, Exmoor Massive force by the Axis forces.
across Normandy in and the North York Moors, preparing From Capriquet, and extending to the
marshes of the Cotentin Peninsula,
for the type of mobile warfare that had
an attempt to retake characterised operations in North Africa. lay the bocage, a patchwork of sunken
occupied towns and On the extreme left of the beachhead, lanes and fields bounded by ancient
6th Airborne had established a small
hedgerows that rose to a height of 15
cities, they were met bridgehead across the Orne, overlooking feet. Farmhouses studded the land, their
with fierce opposition. country not unlike that of Salisbury Plain. thick-walled buildings relics of the time,
five centuries earlier, when Normandy
However, the bridgehead was considered
And nowhere was too small to allow armoured divisions to had been a battleground during the

this more deadly concentrate there in any strength, and Hundred Years War. Ten miles inland,

the country rose to a tangle of hills that
certainly not in secret. To the immediate
than in the unforgiving west, the situation was even worse. the Normans called “Normandie Suisse”
bocage region… Here, the British 3rd Division faced the because of its resemblance to the
Alpine foothills. In short, the Normandy
industrial suburbs of Caen, which the
Germans were defending. All armies countryside was an attacker’s nightmare
disliked attacking into cities, because it and a defender’s paradise; a network
was bloody and took time. To the west of natural and man-made obstacles.
Erwin Rommel knew that if the
beachhead was to be destroyed, it must
be attacked quickly and with massive
force. He ordered the 21st Panzer
and 12th SS Panzer Divisions to strike
a coordinated blow, but both were
already fighting piecemeal with the
Allies and could not disengage. By dawn

THE NORMANDY

COUNTRYSIDE

WAS SEEN AS

AN ATTACKER'S

NIGHTMARE AND
A US patrol advances through the
bocage. Combat took place at very
short range, and it was hard to tell A DEFENDER'S
what was going on in the adjacent
field, let alone a few miles away PARADISE
HISTORY WAR 33
of