Counter Attacks Against the Germans
Heroes Remember
Counter Attacks Against the Germans
I was associated with one company
of the Regina Rifles who during the
run in on D-Day, let me see,
they had 150 men and only
landed 67 but the ones they landed
were well worth the landing.
Together with the rest of 7th Brigade
they went right up to the railway
embankment that runs by Caen and
the next morning they cut and
held the Caen to Bayeux highway and
for that reason the British 50th Division
was able to take Bayeux without a fight
making that the only town in Normandy to be
captured without a major battle.
Bayeux, it wasn’t fought over because the
Germans couldn’t get reinforcements up to it.
The British 50th Division took it
without a fight and that was,
“Don’t stay to fight on the beach, get inland.”
It was hard, it was hard not to but …
The 12th SS Division was stationed in Rouen,
you will set it not far up here,
and they were the fire department
of the German Army West,
they were a Hitler youth political division,
all young with fully equipped with Tiger and
Panther tanks and twenty one thousand strong.
They were ordered to Normandy to,
as Hitler put it, his words were,
“Smash the landing!”
Well, the 12th SS, they walked all night,
they marched all night and
got to Caen in the morning and found their
petrol supply was a blazing ruin
from our air force, thank God,
but an attack of that unit…
when you are fighting the German Army,
if you take some land from them or
make a penetration you better not sit
down and get comfortable, you better get ready
for an immediate counter attack because
it’s coming, it’s a doctrine.
The first attack they put in was in the
best tradition of the German Army.
I had never seen anything like it.
It was a volcano of gunfire and Authie,
this little town of Authie right here and
them tanks were in the village streets and
grenadiers behind them and all that night
and the day after, all that night,
our artillery, in the morning anyway our infantry,
the survivors were still standing in the line and
the artillery was still firing and the
2nd Armoured Brigade had come up and
they were rounding out the rest of the
tanks and that was the rest of the
German counter attack and from then on
it was just a series of attempts.
That one didn’t succeed,
it was the most severe I think of all.
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