Author guest post from Tim Saunders.

The 2nd London Rifle Brigade was formed during the Doubling of the Territorial Army and shortly renamed 8th Battalion, The Rifle Brigade (8 RB) before being posted to the newly formed 11th Armoured Division. Here they became the motor battalion in 29 Armoured Brigade in winter of 1941-42. Training and retraining took place on open army areas but for larger exercises they were mainly confined to roads.

The presence and a detailed description of the bocage is to be found in virtually all pre-D Day intelligence summaries issued in the days before embarkation. However, there appears to have been little time in that final period before heading to the ports for consideration of the issues it raised or training. This was one of the necessary penalties of keeping the ‘where and when of D Day’ so secret.

Within days of the invasion of Normandy the British were fighting in the bocage country on the right flank of the Second Army to the south of Bayeux. Unlike the far more open country further east around Caen, the veterans of XXX Corps found themselves in increasingly thick country, dominated by small fields and orchards, surrounded by thick banks and hedges; this was the bocage. For the soldiers of the 7th Armoured Division and the 50th Northumbrian Division who had both fought in North Africa, the nature of the country was a shock. The Official History summarises the essence of the problem in the hedge-bound

bocage country [which] was new to the ‘Desert Rats’ and the enemy’s small infantry detachments, each with a tank or anti-tank gun or two and a couple of ‘eighty-eights’ lurking in the background, were able to cause considerable delays by skillfully exploiting the close country. Some, hidden in the hedgerows, tried to lob grenades into the tanks’ turrets or to fix ‘sticky’ bombs on them as they moved through the deep lanes.1 Fortunately … their bombs were not lethal enough to cause major damage, but it was clear that our tanks must have infantry to work with them.

Trooper Dinning of 4 CLY described the problems presented by the bocage from the armoured perspective.

Poke your nose round corners where sitting a few yards up the road was a bloody big Tiger, Panther or a self-propelled gun, literally waiting for you and BANG! You had no chance. It only needed one shot from an enemy tank or SP, whereas we had to put multiple shots in the side or the rear of the Panthers. We hadn’t a hope in hell of penetrating the front with a [lowish velocity] 75mm gun.

For the infantryman the challenges were little different with a sergeant of the Green Howards noting in his illicit diary ‘Give me the good old desert any day.’

Fighting through the lanes and hedgerows for Tilly-sur- Seulles and Point 103 was far more difficult and costly than the planners had estimated. Consequently, the demand for infantry and tank crew replacements mounted with further actions in the bocage, such as 151 Brigade’s attack on Verieres and the counter-attack by the 21st Panzer Division on nearby Essex Wood, adding to the need for reinforcement.

Following their first experience of the bocage after D Day, the rebuff at Villers Bocage and withdrawal from ‘The Island Position’, the 7th Armoured Division were already circulating, after action reviews stressing the need to battlegroup the infantry and tanks according to the ground and enemy. This included the assertion that the allocation of a single motor company of infantry per armoured regiment was insufficient in the bocage. However, little further thought was given as the Second Army’s main effort returned east to the more open country for Operations EPSOM and GOODWOOD where the 11th Armoured Division and 8 RB fought their first bruising battles. Consequently, it was not until ordered back west to take part in Operation BLUECOAT, the 11th Armoured Division considered the problem of the bocage. Major General Pip Roberts addressed the issue of battle grouping his regiments and battalions in the hedgerow country, along with the lessons of the division’s two major armoured battles. In the aftermath of GOODWOOD, the division’s commanding officers met to discus forthcoming operations in the bocage. The divisional war diary recorded that:

For the advance which was to start at 0700 hrs on the next day fresh brigade groupings were adopted. The experience of 7 Armoured Division and the Americans in the bocage country had demonstrated the necessity for the closest co-operation of tanks and infantry. In this region of thick woods and narrow roads winding between impassable hedges and ditches, a number of local engagements were anticipated and under these conditions reasonable progress could be assured by the infantry moving with the tanks on all routes and often actually riding on them.

The divisional historian noted that in addition to the 8th Battalion, The Rifle Brigade (8 RB), the other infantry battalions would be grouped with the armoured regiments into two balanced brigade groups:

We now attempted a closer cooperation than had yet been tried within an armoured division. The division, therefore, moved in Brigade Groups: 29th Armoured Brigade Group on the left consisting of two of their armoured regiments (23 H and 3 R Tks), the motor battalion (8 RB), and one infantry battalion borrowed from 159 (3 Mon); and 159 Infantry Brigade Group on the right with their remaining two units (4 KSLI and 1 Hereford), one armoured regiment (2 FF Yeo) and the armoured reconnaissance regiment (2 N Yeo), now as usual employed as a normal tank unit. For the reconnaissance and contact which our role demanded we were again allotted an armoured car regiment; this time it was the Second Household Cavalry [2 HCR].

Operation BLUECOAT

Unlike XXX Corps, 11th Armoured and 15th Scottish divisions of VIII Corps, attacked a relatively thinly held section of the line on 30 July but even so breaking through the crust of defences took time and cost casualties to both men and equipment, the latter often to mines. However, once through the enemy defences, progress made by the battlegroups was not measured in the yards of the previous two month’s fighting but miles. Despite initially being in reserve 8 RB, the 3rd Royal Tank Regiment (3 RTR) advanced 5 miles to enter St. Jean d’Essartiers following the collapse of enemy resistance. Despite a long day, that night 8 RB were ordered forward another 3 miles to St Martin des Besaces, with G Company leading and 3 RTR following but after less than a mile they encountered the enemy. Major Bell wrote:

Shortly afterwards the Company took the lead and, pushing south, arrived before a small village [la Morlecheess le Mares] just as dusk was falling. Enemy had been observed in the village and we were ordered to clear it as quickly as possible. The gunners, having laid on plans for an impressive “Stonk” on the place, informed me just before the attack was due to begin that they could not get permission to fire as higher formation did not think there were any enemy there; and, having no time to argue as darkness was fast coming on, I made a hasty arrangement with the troop leader of the 23rd Hussars [sic – 3 RTR] to pump some shells into the village and the attack went in as previously planned.

The attack was a success and by dawn the battlegroup was probing St. Martin but in attack up a steep railway embankment they were checked. At first light the assault on this stoutly held village was launched with the fire support of the tanks of 3 RTR. Progress was slow but having focused the enemy’s attention at the east end of the village, 4 Kings Shropshire Light Infantry (4 KSLI) having infiltrated south attacked the Germans from the rear.

Meanwhile, 2 HCR had found an undefended track, on a German divisional boundary, through the Forêt l’Eveque. Thanks to this German staff failure the division was able to push south a further 6 miles to form a bridgehead on the River Souleuvre. The following day 8 RB were again in the lead and for the first time being greeted as liberators in Le Beney Bocage and St. Charles de Percy.

Subsequent days saw regular brushes with the Germans who were doing their best to delay the 11th Armoured Division, which was now way ahead of the rest of VIII and XXX corps. Progress south through the bocage remained good but with the tanks or 8 RB’s carriers leading, they never knew when they were going to run into the enemy. As General Roberts changed the composition of battlegroups according to need, armour/infantry tactics were refined and close and trusting relationships grew.2 This included the Royal Engineers, whose recce parties were normally well forward when either 8 RB or the tanks reported the inevitable blown bridge. Many of these were wider that the span of the brigade’s Valentine bridge layer and needed a Bailey bridge before the advance could resume.

Le Bas Perrier

By 2 August the 11th Armoured Division had advanced some 25 miles south beyond Pressels and were still out on their own. However, on the other side of the hill, Hitler had ordered the concentration of his remaining panzers to counter-attack the American breakout. The US divisions forging south on a narrow front along Normandy’s west coast were vulnerable to the panzers, which were to fall on Mortain. However, to get to their concentration areas, 8 RB and 23 H overlooking the road west to Vire, had to be delt with. As the panzer divisions approached the 11th Armoured Division’s battlegroups were ordered to pull back a mile.

Still standing in the way, the defensive box occupied by 8 RB and the Hussars came under attack by elements of 21st Panzer Division and Kampfgruppe Weiss of the 9th Hohenstaufen SS Panzer Division, which included the Corps’ remaining Tigers. Surrounded by the enemy on a hill near le Bas Perrier. Major Bell of G Company described the opening hours of the battle:

The expected dawn counter-attack to our surprise, did not materialise, but it was not long, however, before we realised that we were in for a warm day. German infantry could be seen streaming back into Preseles, thus cutting our centre line, and shortly after this, tanks and self-propelled guns, most concealed in sunken roads, opened up from all sides. ‘Moaning Minnies’ [nebelwerfers] added to the fun and soon tanks began ‘brewing up’ and casualties began to mount.

Over the following three days combat supplies could not be got forward, and the growing number of casualties could not be evacuated but despite being pounded by artillery, tanks and mortars the riflemen hung on. Sergeant Hicks commanding a mortar detachment, in the cover of his small quarry, recorded his feeling as the days progressed.

Finding ourselves cut off from the rest of the Brigade group was not a very pleasant feeling to experience. We felt more than a little naked as if we had been caught with our pants down and in addition our vehicles were much too closely grouped together on the side of the hill and presented a very vulnerable target as not all vehicles could find adequate cover or be suitably camouflaged.

We soon became aware of our vulnerability as both Tiger and Panther tanks in the valley began to pick out their targets on the hillside with some accuracy. One of our support Churchill tanks [one of six AVREs], one of the largest and heaviest tanks, was parked on the road barely 20 yards from our position. It must have been either visible through a gap in the hedge or silhouetted against a lighter background but whatever the reason an 88mm armour piercing shell hit it causing serious casualties and completely wrecking it.

During the night of 3/4 August the defenders of le Bas Perrier were relieved by 2 Warwicks and pulled back a mile to some scarcely less healthy trenches in Pressels, where they were subject to bombardment for another five days. Finally, 8 RB and the tanks were withdrawn to prepare for the next phase of the battle.

The Pursuit

Following the failure of the Mortain Counter-Attack, Hitler finally authorised the withdrawal of 5th Panzer and the 7th armies to the River Siene. This decision ushered in a new phase of the campaign that began on 13 August in which the Germans conducted a withdrawal to the south east of about 10 miles per day. A pattern was quickly established in which the enemy abandoned his defences, typically on a river or stream, before dawn and headed for the next significant obstacle, where he would stand again. To buy time, several delaying positions would be deployed on the obvious routes for the 11th Armoured Division’s armour through the bocage. The typically consisted of some or all of these elements; blown down trees and mines to block the road, anti-tank weapons and infantry. Major Bell described the riflemen’s advance with A Squadron 23 H.

After a quiet morning on the road leading south to Vassy, we passed through the leading group, and it was not long before the first tank was ‘brewed up’ outside the village of Canteloup, referred to over the radio as ‘the fruity village,’ which was found to be held by the enemy.

Nestling in a valley, Canteloup was largely obscured by foliage, and it was initially difficult to establish if it was occupied by the enemy who held their fire until the Hussars Shermans got just too close.

An attack, supported by the tanks, was launched and 11 Platoon on the right pushed into the village without meeting serious opposition; 10 Platoon, however, on the left were held up and suffered casualties, three of them being fatal. With darkness coming on, it was decided to withdraw the motor platoons, leaving 9 [carrier] Platoon to consolidate on the cross-roads on the outskirts, while the remainder of us went firm farther back.

The advance continued in a similar vein through increasing evidence of German collapse, with 8 RB noting that ‘We now began to get into the area where the RAF had been strafing enemy vehicles and from then till our next rest there was an average of one wrecked enemy veh every 100x [yards] of road.’ Having crossed the River Orne, during 19/20 August the division was on the southern edge of the Falaise pocket. Rifleman Jefferson of E Company, 17 Anti-Tank Platoon, described what he saw in his journal:

We moved forward slowly. The whole scene became increasingly more indescribable. The whole area was strewn with dead Germans and horses and wrecked transport, guns and knocked-out tanks of every description. We had to pick our way through the wreckage. Sometimes there was no other way through the devastation but to drive over the corpses. The stench was overpowering. Prisoners were giving themselves up in their hundreds.

Leaving other divisions to close the Falaise Pocket the 11th Armoured was directed east towards the Seine via Argentan, beyond which on 22 August after over three weeks of fighting they were ordered to halt. The division remained at L’Aigle for some days before being ordered forward to the Seine and the dash to the Somme bridges at Amiens but that is another story.

Recommended reading

Battle for the Bocage – Normandy 1944

Hill 112 – The Key to Defeating Hitler in Normandy