The Necessary War Volume 1 by Tim Cook

Author:Tim Cook [Cook, Tim]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Canada
Published: 2014-09-08T21:00:00+00:00

A Hunt Class destroyer firing in support of Canadians on the beaches. The destroyers had little impact on the battle.

The advance was harder on the western side of the river, where the Sasks were soon pinned down at the only bridge across the Scie. It was covered by enemy mortar and machine-gun fire. Bodies piled up. Watching the Germans gain the initiative as the Canadians were cut down crossing the 24-metre bridge, Lieutenant-Colonel Cecil Merritt, the youthful commander of the South Sasks, whose moustache lent only slight gravity to his baby face, moved up from his forward headquarters on the beach and rallied his men. Merritt raced back and forth as bullets and shrapnel whirled through the air and, at around 5:50 A.M., led his men across the bridge, shouting encouragement and somehow escaping unscathed. Many of his men were not so fortunate, and soon the bridge was heaped with bodies. Merritt survived and continued to throw himself into battle, later racing forward into heavy fire before tossing a grenade and blowing up a machine-gun position. Their colonel’s inspiring leadership notwithstanding, the South Sasks who crossed the bridge made little progress.

Back at the beach, the Queen’s Own Cameron Highlanders of Canada landed late, at around 5:50 a.m. They took fire from about 1,000 metres out, bullets ringing off the steel hulls of the landing craft. As men cringed inside the fragile vessels, a brave piper stood up on the fo’c’sle to inspire his comrades. Much of the skirling wail from his instrument was lost in the unremitting noise of battle, but the Highlanders charged into the fight. Their commanding officer, Lieutenant-Colonel Alfred Gostling, was shot down by machine-gun fire almost as soon as he hit the beach.

The Highlanders pushed forward, platoons and sections fanning out from the landing sites, driving through Pourville and engaging a number of enemy defenders who had been bypassed by the South Sasks. About 1.5 kilometres inland, a series of houses hid enemy riflemen. Company Sergeant Major George Gouk remembered that an ad hoc Highlander battle group “got busy … and were doing a fairly good job cleaning them out with rifles and grenades when all of a sudden they opened up on us with their mortars.” Casualties mounted, but “there was no stopping the boys then, they were seeing their pals for the first time being killed and wounded at their side and the only thought that seemed to be in everyone’s mind was to have revenge.”30 The houses were cleared with bombs and bullets.

Around 9:30 A.M., with the Germans now holding much of the high ground along the headways and cliffs that separated the main beach from the Pourville landing site, the Canadians began their methodical retreat. It was now that the most conspicuous flaw in Mountbatten’s plan was revealed. Once engaged with the enemy in close-quarters combat, the two Canadian battalions had no way to withdraw to the landing craft unless a sizable force was left behind to cover the retreat. Moreover, as

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