Posts Tagged ‘The Normandy Campaign’

Operation Spring, 2nd Canadian Corps’ second attempt to secure Verrières Ridge, began in the dark during the early hours of July 25, 1944.

General Bernard Montgomery’s “armoured blitzkrieg,” Operation Goodwood, and its Canadian component, Operation Atlantic, ended in rain and confusion on July 20, 1944. The next day, Montgomery and his army commander, Lieutenant-General Sir Miles Dempsey, met to consider their options. News of the failed assassination attempt against Hitler was discussed as was the postponement of Operation Cobra, the major American offensive originally scheduled for July 20. The two British generals agreed they could not wait for the Americans; they would launch their attack south of Caen as soon as possible.

The Canadian part of Operation Goodwood/Atlantic began well. The veteran 3rd Canadian Division fought into Caen’s industrial zone south of the River Orne while 4th Brigade from 2nd Cdn. Div. won a difficult battle for the village of Louvigny. The 3rd British Div. on the left flank of the bridgehead also gained its initial objectives, but the two leading British armoured divisions lost close to 200 tanks without reaching the vital high ground south of the city.

On the afternoon of July 11, 1944, Canadian Corps Headquarters once again became operational on the soil of France. Lieutenant-General Guy Granville Simonds assumed responsibility for 7,280 metres of front in the Caen sector of Normandy. There was little time or inclination to mark this event or link it with the memory of the vaunted Canadian Corps of First World War fame because there was too much to be done.

Operation Charnwood, the July 8-9, 1944, attack on Caen, Normandy, by I British Corps, was a multi-phase advance. The first part, intended to collapse the city’s outer defensive perimeter, required Canada’s 9th (Highland) Infantry Brigade to capture Buron, Gruchy, and Authie, three villages that the 12th SS had fortified during the month-long pause in the Caen sector.

The battle for Le Mesnil-Patry, which proved so costly for the Queen’s Own Rifles of Canada and First Hussars, was part of a larger attempt to expand the Normandy beachhead. The Canadians, with 114 fatal casualties in what the Hussars call their “Charge of the Light Brigade,” were no harder hit than British divisions on either flank. The 51st Highland Division suffered heavy losses in the Orne River bridgehead, including an entire company of the 5th Black Watch. Both 50th Infantry and the 7th Armoured were roughly handled in the attempt to reach Villers-Bocage.

All those involved in the planning for D-Day knew there were two quite separate problems in securing a beachhead. The first task, breaking through the crust of defences known as the Atlantic Wall was rightly seen as the major challenge, but preparation and rigorous training was also required to carry out the advance inland to widen and deepen the bridgehead. The 9th Canadian Infantry Brigade, known as the Highland Brigade, had been selected to lead the Canadian advance, so Brigadier D.G. “Ben” Cunningham and his battalion commanders prepared detailed plans.