Stopping the Panzers: The Untold Story of D-Day by Marc Milner

Author:Marc Milner [Milner, Marc]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History
ISBN: 9780700625246
Google: -DTNswEACAAJ
Goodreads: 22256416
Publisher: University Press of Kansas
Published: 2014-11-03T00:00:00+00:00

Canadian POWs march past the newsreel cameraman to an uncertain fate, 7 June 1944. The footage was taken near the Abbey d’Ardennes, whose walls are just visible on the right. (British Pathé)

Perhaps the most reprehensible incident occurred when a Red Cross truck from 12th SS swerved across a wide road and deliberately ran into a group of Canadian POWs: two Novas died. Even the Germans were so appalled by the incident that they publicly announced that Privates R. MacRae and D. Tobin died of wounds, and buried them with full military honors at Bretteville-sur-Odon—in front of German newsreel cameramen.51

As the position in Buron crumbled under the weight of two over-strength battalions of Hitler Youth, dozens of 12th SS tanks, and elements of 21st Panzer, the surviving members of the 9th Brigade vanguard retreated. “We watched as one tank would move back,” Radley-Walters recalled, “then another two and some infantry.” When his squadron commander, Major Walsh, ordered Radley-Walters to retreat as well, he had to pick up Walsh and his crew en route after the major’s tank broke down. As Radley-Walters rolled back, he passed a slit trench with a dead German soldier lying on the lip with a commando knife in his back. “In the trench beside him was a sergeant from the North Novas,” Radley-Walters recalled, “and as I went by him he smiled and gave me the victory sign.”52

As the tanks pulled back, support from 14th Field Regiment, RCA, finally arrived in the form of a FOO party led by Major A. W. Duguid, commander of 34th Battery. Doug Hope, an ardent amateur historian who has pursued the story of 14th RCA on 7 June for a decade and a half, interviewed many veterans. Two of these, Glen Clemet and Don Jamieson, were with Major Duguid on 7 June and were sent forward late in the afternoon to support the vanguard. As Hope writes, “They were just coming up and getting ready to begin observation at the anti-tank ditch north of Buron, when the Sherbrookes’ tanks were pulling back from Buron to les Buissons. They were sure that this was at the same time as the tanks’ withdrawal, because one of them came tearing through a hedge and almost ran over Glen Clemet.”53

In the event, Major Duguid withdrew his FOO party to les Buissons and began to call down fire. The 14th RCA war diary reports its first targets of the day—“Mike” targets, the whole regiment firing—at 1800 hours. David Struther, the gun position officer for C Troop of 14th RCA on 7 June, told Doug Hope that these were “scale 50”: fifty rounds per gun, which put more than a thousand 105mm shells on a single target.54 Where they fell we may never know, but there is a fair chance that they landed on Germans. Certainly, Canadian POWs trapped in Buron and Authie reported intense artillery fire on the villages by early evening.

By about 1900 hours on 7 June 1944, what remained of the 9th Brigade vanguard stood to around the antitank ditch halfway between Buron and les Buissons ready to meet the enemy.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.