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The brief respite of the division
in England ended on July 2nd with division units
assembling in the Plymouth and Falmouth areas,
loading onto LCI’s, LCT’s and LST’s
for the cross channel trip to France. On July
5th through choppy waters, we arrived at Omaha
Beach where twenty-nine days before the 1st and
29th Division had barely survived their blood
bath. As the landing craft approached the sandy
beaches, ramps dropped, doors opened and the Santa
Fe men waded ashore, fascinated by the still menacing
bluffs, cliffs, pillboxes, gun emplacements, broken
equipment and debris that covered the landscape
and dominated the landing areas. Everywhere men
were bustling, moving equipment and supplies,
loading trucks – but all carefully avoiding
the white tape lined minefields that had not yet
been cleared. Gunfire could be heard in the distance
where the British and Canadians were still fighting
around Caen. Up ahead was a long upward sloping
dozed road along which infantry single filed past
abandoned machine gun emplacements, shattered
concrete fortifications, trenches and barbed wire.
On everyone’s mind was the scary question,
“How did anybody ever make it?” Looking
far to the East beyond the end of the sandy beach,
perhaps two miles or more distant, could be seen
long rows of wooden crosses extending over the
crest of a distant hill. We could only guess that
these must mark the graves of those who hadn’t
made it through. This is now the site of the very
beautiful American Cemetery at Colleville-Sur-Mer,
but then it was a sobering sight for newly arriving
green troops who were soon to see an even more
sobering sight, the hedgerows of Normandy. These
were ancient checkerboards of small fields –
one, two, three acre tracts lined by trench-like
dirt paths and narrow cart sized roads, bordered
by mounds of dirt, stones, trees, and almost impenetrable
hedges, some five to as high as thirty feet high,
all providing a lattice work of miles of ready
built trenches which would limit sight and movement,
and make it possible for determined defenders
to fight a World War I trench type of warfare
with the potential for enormously high rates of
casualties. Reports of these had already begun.
Everywhere were likely machine gun positions,
ideal hidden sniper spots, and invisible mortar
sites. We moved ever closer to the front lines
and into an assembly area.
The division was now attached to the First Army under Gen.
Omar Bradley, and assigned to Maj. Gen. Charles H. Corlett’s
XIX Army Corps which was about to launch an attack to reach
St. Lo, some seven miles away. St. Lo, with 12,000 inhabitants
was the third largest city in this part of France, a transportation
center and the likely base for any major German counter offensive.
If captured, St. Lo could be the launching area for the Americans
to break through the encircling German lines and launch the
expected attack through France, perhaps even giving the Germans
a taste of their own blitzkrieg tactics. The attack on St.
Lo could not be avoided, but it soon turned into a nightmarish
slugfest.
St. Lo Overlook
The XIX Corps consisted of the battle weary 29th
Division on the left and the battle tested 30th
Division on the right. To the West were the American
VIIth and VIIIth Corps with the following Divisions:
the 83rd, 4th, 90th, 82nd, Airborne, and 79th
Divisions and also the 3rd Armored Division. East
of the 29th Division was the 2nd Infantry Division,
and further to the East the British Army still
held up at Caen. To strengthen the attack on St.
Lo to the South, Gen. Corlett ordered the 35th
Division to move into the front line between the
29th Division and the 30th Division. On the night
of July 9th, the 320th Infantry took the left
and the 137th Infantry the right as they each
replaced a regiment of the other division. On
the next day the commanders could look out over
the lines where they would attack the next morning
at 6:00 a.m. During the night, H Company of the
137th took the first fatality in the division,
Pvt. Owen McBride, by a direct hit by an 88 on
his foxhole.
At 5 a.m. on July 11th, 1944 the artillery barrage
commenced with 200 guns. At 6 a.m. the infantry
moved out to the attack. The Corps’ attack
immediately ran into deep trouble. The hedgerows
were even worse than a fortified position as visibility
was so severely limited even to the artillery
observers in their light little planes. From D-Day
to July 10th, the entire American Army in Normandy
had suffered 30,000 casualties. In the eight days
thereafter, the XIX Corps with its supporting
3rd Armored Division and the adjacent 2nd Division
took almost 11,000 casualties. The 30th Division
suffered 3,934, the 19th - 3,708, the 35th Division
- 2,437. This operation was named the Battle of
the Hedgerows. The entire line had jumped off
on time but nobody got very far, as we all ran
into a German main line of resistance with 75mm,
88mm, and 150mm cannon fire, light and heavy machine
guns and machine pistols, and both light and 80mm
mortars. We ran into land mines, booby traps and
Mauser equipped snipers and riflemen. The enemy
were all veteran troops and included the 2nd and
3rd Parachute Divisions, the 629th Infantry Regiment,
the 352nd Infantry Division which had caused so
much havoc on Omaha Beach, and three Panzer Grenadier
Regiments, the 897, 898 and 899th, and the Panzer
Lehr Armored Division, probably the best Panzer
division in Europe. Regardless of how we might
well disparage the cause of the German troops,
we cannot question ever their tenacity, their
skill, their equipment, their zeal and discipline,
and their supreme confidence in Adolph Hitler.
The troops in front of us were part of what was
considered the finest infantry in Europe, perhaps
in the world. And it required our utmost teamwork
of the many American arms, including the Air Force,
to overpower and wear down the German divisions
in front of us throughout the war. Every G.I.
learned to respect the Wehrmacht and the fighting
qualities of the German soldier.
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