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00:00In 1944, World War II was reaching its dramatic climax.
00:10Rocket ships firing, aircraft flying overhead.
00:14As the Allies waged total war to liberate occupied Europe.
00:19This was a war in which all sides were learning as they went.
00:23From the beaches of Normandy...
00:26The water was full of blood. The water was bright red.
00:30...to the forests of Germany.
00:36Both sides deployed weapons of ever greater power and sophistication.
00:41And this tank suddenly gives the American a real big advantage.
00:45It's a very effective beast.
00:47This is the story of the Western Allies' final campaign.
00:51Told by the men on both sides who were there.
00:55You did what you did. You fire and you maneuver.
01:00He was my brother.
01:10Following the enormous success of D-Day, Allied forces faced a bitter struggle for the French city of Caen.
01:17When the third British tried to capture Caen in Operation Mitten, they were slaughtered.
01:23I knew it was me already.
01:25And when you're like that, you don't think the bullets actually were whipping past by a year old, I can tell you.
01:32A battle that would descend into weeks of bloody, attritional fighting.
01:38A living hell for soldiers on the front line.
01:41There was a battle, I think, over 14 days, with almost daily change of the owner of 112.
01:50One of the toughest battles in France. I'll never forget it. I'll never forget the experience.
01:58One of the toughest battles in France.
02:03June 1944, and Hitler's Germany was on the back foot.
02:08In Russia, it had suffered disastrous defeats at Stalingrad and Kursk,
02:14and now struggled to hold back Stalin's Red Army.
02:17In Italy, the Germans had abandoned Rome, and were retreating north.
02:23While in northern France, on D-Day, the 6th of June, Allied forces had opened the long-awaited Second Front,
02:31fighting their way ashore at Normandy, in the largest operation in military history.
02:37Now, the region's capital, Caen, became the focus of a gigantic slugging match between Allied and German forces.
02:46For the Allies, Caen was the key to breaking out of Normandy, but was proving a hard nut to crack.
02:53The taking of Caen was a very important part of the operation,
02:57because by holding the town, you held the main routes in and out of Normandy, rail and road.
03:04Edwin Bramall was a 20-year-old infantry officer during the Battle of Normandy,
03:10who went on to become the head of British Armed Forces.
03:14All our fighting, to begin with, was in sight of Caen, really,
03:20and which we'd hoped to get the first day, but it didn't work out like that.
03:26Bruce Mallinson, from Nova Scotia, had lied about his age,
03:30so he could be sent overseas with his unit in 1940.
03:34Montgomery and Churchill and then our own generals at that particular time,
03:42they informed us that we were to take Caen in two weeks.
03:47It took us almost two months.
03:51The killing fields of Normandy were the first experience of combat for thousands of Allied soldiers,
04:00often pitched against elite German units, in a costly struggle to break their resistance.
04:06As a young officer, Patrick Delafosse commanded a troop of four self-propelled artillery guns in Normandy.
04:15Everybody put a brave face on it, because we knew it was a war of attrition,
04:20that with a bit of luck, if one of our chaps were being killed,
04:24with a bit of luck, maybe one of the Germans was being killed.
04:27With the Germans rapidly sending reinforcements to Normandy,
04:32the Allies now had to quickly build up their own forces,
04:36fight off the expected German counterattack,
04:39and launch their assault on Caen.
04:42The task fell to Commander of Allied Land Forces in Normandy,
04:48General Bernard Montgomery.
04:50Popularly known as Monty, Britain's foremost general of the Second World War,
04:58was a supremely professional and precise commander,
05:02who distinguished himself early in the war,
05:04by getting his division out of Dunkirk almost unscathed.
05:08Rapid promotion followed, and in 1942, Monty was given command
05:13of British and Commonwealth forces in North Africa,
05:16where he decisively defeated Rommel's Africa Corps.
05:21A prickly character, who many found unbearably arrogant,
05:25he was nonetheless popular with his men.
05:29Montgomery was an extremely capable commander,
05:33with a massive ego, who had the habit, particularly after the war,
05:37of saying that he could pre-plan all his battles perfectly,
05:41and the enemy never had any say in it.
05:43He just carried out his master plan.
05:46The way the Battle of Normandy was fought,
05:48once the initial landings were over,
05:50Montgomery focused entirely on the British and Canadian side,
05:54and he left the Americans, good alliance politics,
05:58to fight their own battle.
06:01While US First Army, under General Omar Bradley,
06:04slowly fought its way through Normandy hedgerows
06:07on the Allied right flank,
06:09Monty began planning the capture of Caen.
06:14For the Battle of Caen,
06:16Montgomery would rely on Lieutenant General Dempsey's
06:19British Second Army.
06:21Initially, it had just the divisions that landed on D-Day.
06:25But more troops were landing in Normandy every day,
06:29including Monty's North Africa veterans,
06:32the 51st Highland, and the famous 7th Armoured Division,
06:36the Desert Rats.
06:41Monty's men could also count on fire support
06:43from Royal Navy warships in the Channel,
06:46including the heavy guns of HMS Rodney and HMS Roberts.
06:51And thanks to the Allies' complete air superiority over Normandy,
06:57there would be close air support from bombers and fighter bombers.
07:03The Allies were currently stalled four miles short of Caen.
07:07Canadian attempts to take the city by frontal attack
07:10had been repelled by the 12th SS Panzer Division, Hitlerjugend.
07:15So Montgomery ordered a pincer attack to squeeze Caen from the east,
07:21with an attack by the 51st Highland Division towards Ranville,
07:25and the west, with an attack spearheaded by 7th Armoured,
07:30towards Tilly-sur-Seul.
07:34He had high hopes his North Africa veterans
07:37would soon secure Caen for the Allies.
07:40But 7th Armoured's advance soon ran into the difficult Normandy countryside,
07:46known as Bocage,
07:48a labyrinth of sunken lanes and hedgerows.
07:53The Desert Rats were one of the few units equipped
07:56with the new British Cromwell tank.
08:00There is a little tendency to judge tanks
08:02as if they're always fighting other tanks,
08:04and the Cromwell is never compared to something like a Panther,
08:08as if it's an equal match.
08:10But it's fast.
08:11It's got the metre engine in the back.
08:12It's got crispy suspension,
08:14which means it's a very smooth ride.
08:16And it's actually got the relatively powerful 75mm gun on it.
08:21Now, one of the issues of the Cromwell
08:23is we could call a design fault.
08:26As you look at the vehicle,
08:28the driver has a hatch above his head,
08:31but if the turret is turned, firing,
08:35it can close over that hatch.
08:37And if the gun or the vehicle is hit,
08:40that means that the driver can't get out.
08:43As 7th Armoured approached Tilly-sur-Seul,
08:46they ran into units of the Panzer Lair Division,
08:49an elite unit drawn from Armoured Warfare instructors
08:53that had just arrived in Normandy.
08:57It's as if, if you look at the map afterwards,
08:59and I have done it,
09:00as if you drew a line across the map and said,
09:02you've got this far.
09:04If you go any further, you're going to fight.
09:05And by golly did we fight.
09:07And we went into Tilly-sur-Seul and we did fight.
09:10And that was our first real combat situation.
09:14I think they had 25 goes at that
09:17before they eventually took Tilly-sur-Seul to the head of a fight.
09:2012th Panzer Lair were there.
09:23They were not easy to deal with.
09:25They would put sticky bombs on tanks and things like that
09:28if they had half a chance.
09:30But I was troop leader for regimental headquarters,
09:35so I was further back.
09:37And the sea squadron was in front of us
09:42and one of their troops turned sideways down a hedge at right angles
09:48and every tank was knocked out.
09:50I saw them a week or two later
09:53and they still had bits of people inside.
09:56The point I've often made to my friends who were there on D-Day,
10:00when you got there, there was no Germans there,
10:02they didn't expect you.
10:04But they were expecting us.
10:06And they had tanks in Cornish Woodhouse, you see.
10:14I hit the deck and the bloke walking near me
10:17must have taken a direct hit
10:18because his hands landed in front of me.
10:20As I hit the deck, a hand landed with me.
10:23The whole arm landed with me.
10:25And I screamed my head off.
10:27Experienced German troops
10:29fought the British to a standstill.
10:32But the situation changed on the 12th of June.
10:36Attacks by the US 1st and 2nd Infantry Divisions
10:40on the British right flank found a gap in the German line.
10:447th Armoured Division advanced through the hole,
10:47making for Villers-Borcage,
10:49in an attempt to encircle Caen from the southwest.
10:53As British tanks arrived in the village of Villers-Borcage,
10:59French civilians came out to welcome them
11:02and celebrate the end of four years of occupation.
11:05And we came in, beautiful day.
11:09People came out on the streets with flowers and cider and calvados.
11:14And we thought, this is great.
11:17No sound of any Germans.
11:20I wasn't particularly worried myself
11:21because the French people said,
11:23no, no, there's no German tanks actually in Villers-Borcage.
11:27It's all in Tracy-Borcage and the other villages around.
11:31So we went through the town quite quickly
11:35and they told us, close up, close up.
11:38And so I was only about 20, 30 yards behind the colonel's tank.
11:44But the French villagers were wrong
11:47and their celebrations were premature.
11:50We'd been told to expect 30% casualties at D-Day,
11:55but we didn't get them till Villers-Borcage.
11:58We didn't get the cars.
11:59Unbeknownst to John Cloudsley Thompson and his squadron,
12:02they decided to pause the advance right next door
12:05to a company of the 101st SS Heavy Tank Battalion,
12:09which was now approaching rapidly from the east.
12:12I was rather busy looking at the map
12:14and trying to work out what was happening.
12:17And then, very suddenly, the tank in front of me
12:23burst into flames with a big explosion.
12:27Their column had been ambushed
12:29by one of Germany's feared Tiger heavy tanks.
12:33I saw this tank come and it moved the 88mm just like that
12:39and wham!
12:40And the shot came.
12:42And I was standing up in the turret
12:44looking through the periscope.
12:46I ducked down and I felt a tingling between my legs.
12:50I thought, well, lucky my legs were apart
12:52because I knew that the shot must have gone between.
12:55In command of the 55-ton steel monster was a Waffen SS legend,
13:01Oberstumführer Michael Wittmann.
13:04He earns his reputation on the eastern front
13:07and is an absolute gift to the German propaganda machine.
13:10Wittmann's Tigers were in France in the summer of 1944
13:15and after the D-Day landings, they are moved up to try and block
13:20British advances around calm.
13:23As part of the advance, the British 7th Armoured Division
13:26races forward to capture high ground around the village of Villers-Bakage.
13:31Now, Wittmann's Tigers have just been offloaded
13:34and they're resting very near that village.
13:37As soon as Wittmann hears that the British 7th Armoured
13:41are parked up on the side of the road, he attacks.
13:44And he knocks out many British vehicles.
13:46Wittmann's 15-minute rampage through the town of Villers-Bakage
13:50knocked out 13 British tanks, 2 anti-tank guns and 13 other armoured vehicles.
14:00And that was actually, uh, pretty horrifying
14:03because, um, you could see tanks being blown up
14:07and then you think, well, it could be me next time,
14:10but then you have to dismiss stuff from your mind
14:12because that's the way life goes.
14:14Wittmann's Tiger was eventually disabled by an anti-tank gun.
14:19But by then, the damage was done.
14:22We'd lost half the regiment in that one day in Villers-Bakage,
14:26which is really disastrous.
14:28German news services quickly leapt on Wittmann's success.
14:33Now, the German propaganda machine immediately inflates this victory.
14:37He's interviewed on German radio that very evening.
14:40This inflates the reputation of Michael Wittmann
14:44and, of course, the Tiger tank.
14:46In actual fact, that battle was much more of a draw,
14:51and Wittmann had lost precious German assets, Tiger tanks,
14:55that could not easily be replaced.
14:59The following night, the British returned to Villers-Bakage
15:03when 300 heavy bombers unleashed devastation on the village
15:07and strategic crossroads.
15:11We saw a lot of bombers coming over
15:15and clouds of smoke in the distance
15:17and masses of these British bombers coming over
15:20to bomb Villers-Bakage.
15:22And that's when it became the most heavily bombed town in Normandy,
15:29or, anyway, in the British sector during the war ever.
15:32It was very, very badly smashed.
15:35Yes.
15:37The Allies could take some comfort from the fact
15:40they'd not had to face these powerful German armoured forces
15:43on D-Day itself.
15:46Army Group B commander, Erwin Rommel,
15:49had wanted these elite units stationed on the coast,
15:52ready to smash the Allied invasion on the beaches.
15:56But he'd been overruled by Adolf Hitler,
15:59who insisted the prized panzer divisions be held back as a reserve,
16:04and used only with his explicit authority.
16:08Under the Third Reich, Hitler wielded complete power over the military,
16:13as both Armed Forces Supreme Commander and Army Commander-in-Chief.
16:17He had no formal training as a tactical commander or officer,
16:21and never rose beyond the rank of corporal during the Great War.
16:25But from 1940 onwards, began to interfere more and more in military affairs.
16:30By 1944, Hitler had certainly gotten very untrusting of the German High Command,
16:37and he wanted to make sure that they were doing what he wanted them to do.
16:40That meant things like giving out stand-fast orders,
16:43where he refused to allow German forces to retreat,
16:47telling cities to hold at all costs, no matter what the Allies did,
16:52and generally getting down to a much lower level than the leader of Germany should have been getting.
16:57Hitler only allowed Rommel three panzer divisions to place along the coast.
17:03The rest were held back for a decisive counterattack,
17:07once it was clear where the main Allied invasion was heading.
17:11But on D-Day, Hitler's order came too late for the panzer reserve to reach the Normandy beaches.
17:17So, on D-Day itself, the Kong sector was defended
17:22by just one weak infantry division of 7th Army,
17:26with 21st Panzer Division as a local reserve.
17:30But within 24 hours, reinforcements began to arrive
17:34from the 1st SS Panzer Corps,
17:36and three weeks later, from the 2nd SS Panzer Corps.
17:40These powerful formations were well-equipped and highly motivated.
17:45The showcase divisions included a number of divisions of the Waffen-SS.
17:51This was the Nazi Party's private army,
17:54independent, at least in structure and organisation, of the German army.
18:00The Waffen-SS formed from originally what had been the SS,
18:05the people who stood as guards for Hitler when he was speaking in the 1930s,
18:10and they had grown up by 1944 into a force of about 30 divisions around the world.
18:18Fighting in Normandy were two of the most remarkable of the German divisions.
18:23The 1st SS Panzer, the Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler, Adolf Hitler's bodyguard.
18:29These were men who were highly committed Nazis and very effective troops indeed.
18:35And the division that was spun off from the 1st SS Panzer Division,
18:40the Hitler Youth Division, the 12th SS Division, Hitlerjugend.
18:44When the Hitler Youth Division was formed in late 1943,
18:48they were looking for experienced officers and non-commissioned officers
18:52to build the cadre around which they would build this particular division.
18:56The rings and files would then be filled by very young men,
18:59and that's why it's called the Hitler Youth Division,
19:01so a lot of people were, well, around the age of 18, some of them even younger.
19:05And most of these experienced cadres came from the 1st SS Panzer Division,
19:10so there was a bit of a relationship between the two divisions.
19:14They were Führertreu, they were true to the Führer,
19:18and their commitment to Hitler and their fighting abilities were second to none.
19:24At the same time, that same commitment made them much more likely
19:27to shoot prisoners or kill civilians.
19:31Now facing the cream of Hitler's army,
19:34it was more vital than ever that the Allies move reinforcements and supplies
19:39rapidly, from ships to beaches and then to the front line.
19:45To achieve this, they'd set up a hugely sophisticated operation
19:49involving thousands of ships, landing craft and amphibious vehicles,
19:54as well as two giant artificial harbours, codenamed Mulberry A and B.
20:00A week after D-Day, the Allies were landing 30,000 troops
20:05and 7,000 vehicles every day.
20:08But freak weather was about to throw Allied plans into chaos.
20:13On the 19th of June, the worst storm to hit Normandy in 40 years
20:20tore through the Channel.
20:23June was selected as being the perfect month for the Normandy invasion.
20:28It turned out to be almost disastrous.
20:31The American harbour on the other side of Aramance broke up,
20:36so that was of no use.
20:38These massive concrete blocks that the harbour was made of
20:42were just tossed around by the seas.
20:45The storm wrecked 800 ships and landing craft,
20:49five times as many as were lost during the actual D-Day assault.
20:54You have to realise that a 3,500-tonne flat-bottomed landing craft,
21:00it's a bit like a shoebox.
21:03You put it on the water and you blow at it and it will go anywhere.
21:07And an LSC of that size, it got blown.
21:14And we got well blown.
21:16The beaches were strewn with wreckage and took days to clear.
21:21The consequence of this particular storm was that Allied logistics
21:26was thrown into disarray.
21:28The logistical resupply of the Allied forces after the storm
21:32is down by 50%.
21:34And this, of course, gives the Germans, you might argue,
21:36a bit of a breathing space.
21:37Of course, the Allies still have sheer superiority in man and materiel,
21:41but if they had had both of these mulberry harbours,
21:45things would have been even worse for the Germans.
21:48The storm forced Montgomery to postpone a new offensive against Caen
21:53by five days.
21:55He knew it could prove a costly delay,
21:58since according to top-secret intelligence,
22:01the enemy were about to receive major reinforcements.
22:07The Germans had what they believed was an unbreakable code
22:10that they could use to communicate.
22:12They used something called the Enigma machine,
22:15which looked like an oversized typewriter.
22:17But one of those Enigma machines had actually fallen
22:20into the hands of Polish intelligence
22:23during the German invasion of Poland in 1939,
22:26and the Poles got it to the British.
22:29Once they got the machine,
22:31the British code-breaking unit at Bletchley Park
22:33worked 24-7 to break the German codes
22:36and make sure that they could read German messages.
22:39For General Montgomery,
22:41what Ultra allowed him to do in the battle for Caen
22:45was understand what German units were arriving in the defensive lines
22:49and how he should respond to them.
22:51Monty was determined to press ahead with his new offensive
22:55before German reinforcements entered the battle.
22:58The attack, codenamed Operation Epson,
23:01began with a monstrous barrage by 700 guns,
23:06including the heavy guns of four Royal Navy warships
23:10firing at a range of more than 10 miles.
23:13I've seen one Tiger tank that was hit by one of the shells from the war spike.
23:18It was turned over rather like a dinky toy, but that was very rare.
23:22Bombardments by both sides were steadily laying waste to the Norman countryside.
23:27Hundreds of farm animals were caught in the crossfire,
23:31their carcasses left to fester in the summer heat.
23:34That's one of the worst things I can remember, really.
23:36And that was really disgusting.
23:38But, you know, you couldn't help yourself. You didn't move.
23:41You had to keep them under cover.
23:43But you might have four or five dead cows in the field.
23:46There's nothing to gash you the smell of death.
23:50In the wake of the massive bombardment,
23:53two fresh divisions from British VIII Corps,
23:56supported by nearly 600 tanks,
23:59would attack south, cross the Odin River,
24:02and swing round to encircle Caen.
24:05Supporting attacks would be made by the Canadian 3rd Division
24:09at Carpique Airfield,
24:11and 49th West Riding Division towards Roré,
24:15but the Germans had organised a skilful defence in depth,
24:23and casualties were high.
24:25We had to go through the countryside.
24:28There was open fields.
24:30So the snipers were having a ball.
24:33You know, they were knocking mainly officers,
24:36because then, when they first landed,
24:38they had their pips up and their revolver,
24:40and, you know, the lobby officers,
24:41so they were going to get the officer.
24:42And they were shooting them.
24:43We had to finish up with one officer.
24:46So there was a lot of fire about,
24:49a tremendous lot of fire, anti-tank fire,
24:52artillery fire.
24:53The 15th Scottish Division had a very difficult battle.
24:57They lost 250 men in the first hour.
25:01We, ourselves, got shrilled a lot,
25:04and we also first met this awful weapon,
25:07the Nabal Werfer,
25:09which is a smoke thrower,
25:11and it's called the Moaning Mini,
25:13and that produced this awful humming sound.
25:16And then all these mortar bombs covered an area about the size of a football field.
25:25Luckily, you had this warning.
25:27So as soon as you heard this awful moaning noise,
25:29you took what cover you could in a ditch or a trench or something like that.
25:33The supporting attack at Rorae also ran into fierce opposition.
25:40We took a couple of villages and we suffered.
25:43We did three attacks in each one of them.
25:46It was large casualties, as all the attacks in Normandy were.
25:50And we were pushed back just as soon as we went forward.
25:55If you made a gain of 100 yards, that was a major victory,
25:59because fighting was beginning to become so terribly intense.
26:05And, uh, our first three attacks, we lost a lot of people.
26:09It took two days of gruelling combat to get across the Odong River.
26:14Then, on the far bank, they faced a battle for a long, low ridge
26:19that soon became infamous, Hill 112.
26:23It was at the highest point on a series of rolling downland.
26:28And it was called 112 simply because it was 112 feet above sea level.
26:35It was in a commanding position overlooking the city of Caen,
26:40which you could see quite clearly.
26:43Rommel himself said that whoever held Hill 112 held Normandy.
26:49We was in the 15th Scottish Division, which was at the side of the hill.
26:53And, uh, that was known as the Scottish Corridor.
26:56Before it was named Death Valley.
26:59We was losing there 100, 150 men a day.
27:02Time and again, British soldiers were ordered to advance across open wheat fields,
27:09just waiting for dug-in German machine gun crews to open up with one of their most feared weapons.
27:16Because the Germans had been there much, much longer than we'd been there,
27:20they had proper, uh, positions that were mainly, uh, guarded properly with sandbags and what have you,
27:27so they were difficult to get rid of.
27:30And their machine guns was knocking our blokes out to our left and centre.
27:33The British were up against the devastating MG 42, nicknamed Hitler's zipper.
27:40The German MG 42-like machine gun was typical of the German design.
27:45Heavily over-engineered, beautifully made, and used an enormous amount of bullets.
27:50It was a very feared weapon, there's no doubt about that.
27:53Allied soldiers remembered the sound of it.
27:55It was just like the sound of tearing paper.
27:59There's no machine gun that fires like an MG 42.
28:02It's a brrp, brrp, brrp.
28:04Like a string of Chinese firecrackers going off next to your ear.
28:08Uh, that's at once, and it...
28:11And they're very rapid.
28:14You have no options. Once it starts, you've got it.
28:16You either get hit or you don't get hit, one or the other.
28:19But the MG 42's extraordinary rate of fire had its drawbacks.
28:28It fired 1,200 rounds a minute, twice the rate of anything that the British used.
28:33And the problem with that is that the more bullets you fire, the more bullets you need to make,
28:38the more you need to supply, the more you need to transport, the more you need to carry into action.
28:43It was a luftgekühltes Maschinengewehr, that theoretically in the minute 3000 Schuss schießen could.
28:51It was technically not possible, because no one was able to carry this 3000 Schuss in a minute.
29:01There were three MG-Schüsse, who had the MG and then two, who only had the Munition.
29:08They had so many pieces, and there were maybe 200 in each piece.
29:14And everyone could two pieces schlepping.
29:16And you can imagine, until there were 200 shots, we needed a bit of time.
29:24So that was a theory.
29:27In four bloody days of attack and counterattack, British Eighth Corps suffered 4,000 casualties.
29:35British Sherman tanks occupied the forward slopes of Hill 112.
29:40But then, astoundingly, they were pulled back.
29:44And they got up to the top, which was a brilliant operation.
29:48And then, like the Duke of York's army, they were told to come down again.
29:52And nobody ever knew why.
29:54And the answer was that Bletchley Park's Ultra had told Montgomery that two powerful SS armoured divisions, panzer divisions, were coming up from the south.
30:08And that if we'd stayed up there, the whole division, the limit, would have been cut off.
30:13And Monty didn't dare risk us at that early stage, so we came down again.
30:19Montgomery, therefore, took the decision to pull back slightly from the upper slopes of Hill 112 to the next safe position.
30:29When the attack up what is called the Roray Spur occurred, the British were waiting for it, and they halted it with heavy German casualties.
30:39Montgomery was ready for them. That's the difference Ultra made.
30:45The SS Panzer Division's counterattack was shattered by overwhelming Allied firepower,
30:52anti-tank and artillery guns, and strafing attacks by fighter bombers.
30:58But despite this, the Allies' swift advance through Normandy had hit an impasse, and Monty couldn't afford to lose momentum.
31:09What happened next was to be one of the most controversial episodes of the Normandy campaign.
31:15Caen was still in German hands.
31:19Montgomery's first two attempts to take the city by envelopment had failed.
31:24In July, he decided to send British First Corps straight up the middle.
31:31Ahead of the assault, codenamed Operation Charnwood, 467 bombers pulverized the northern approaches to the city.
31:40I watched the terrific aerial bombardment of Caen, very close close.
31:47I mean, I could feel the whole ground. I saw the bombers coming over and feel the whole ground shake.
31:52We were very close to the bombing.
31:54One or two got hit by anti-aircraft fire, I suppose.
31:59And one was damaged, but at least he got down.
32:04And we all rushed up the hill to see if we could help.
32:08But he said, keep away, we've still got bombs on board.
32:11So we all ran back down the hill again.
32:12It was blown to bits, Caen was.
32:17We always wondered why we'd bombed it so heavy,
32:21because when you bomb a place, it makes terrific hiding for infantry.
32:27And it makes your job worse and worse.
32:30German positions were then blasted by the 16-inch guns of HMS Rodney,
32:35as well as the 6-inch guns of cruisers HMS Belfast and Emerald,
32:41then strafed by RAF Typhoons.
32:49And we had a real view of the Typhoons going into action.
32:55And what we saw from where we were, we were on the planes overlooking it.
33:00And we could see the Typhoons going in with their rockets,
33:02firing on the Tigers from behind.
33:06The fire they were receiving, I had the aircraft fire, it was terrific.
33:11You know, his morals said they ever got through it.
33:18They did such a, such a wonderful job.
33:22Those Typhoons, used to watch them come and zoom.
33:27Holy mackerel.
33:28Really made you shiver a little bit because of the fact they knew that the enemy was,
33:34was down there, accepting all this, you know.
33:43British and Canadians slowly fought their way through German-held villages,
33:49into the outskirts of Caen.
33:50Between the coast and Caen, there were about seven or eight fortified villages,
33:59where the Germans had fortified everything,
34:01and based large numbers of artillery guns, field guns, anti-tank guns.
34:06And Gaalmanch was one of these fortified villages.
34:11And we fought twice at Gaalmanch, and we had one day where we were without infantry.
34:19Where our infantry had lost so heavily, the colonel pulled the rest of them,
34:23their colonel pulled them out from there.
34:24And B squadron, my squadron of tanks, was in there one day, and we were static.
34:31The Germans were on the high ground in the village, looking down on us,
34:34and could see everything that was happening.
34:37And every time we moved, they were shelling us,
34:40and they were shelling us continuously for a period of about four or five hours,
34:44when we were without infantry. And we had orders to hold it and not to pull back.
34:49So we had to literally sit there and be shot at.
34:52A mortar come over, the most devastating blast I ever, ever heard in my life.
34:58It landed right between Alec Duncan's legs. He was the one in the middle.
35:04I don't remember. I don't remember anything that happened, except for a few minutes later,
35:15Harold Burden, which was on the left of Alec Duncan, said,
35:18How are you doing, Hook? I said, I don't know. I don't know how I'm doing.
35:22And I said, I said, How's Alec doing? He says, Alec is dead. He'd lost both his legs. Both his legs.
35:35On the right of the advance, in house-to-house fighting through the ruins of Caen,
35:41the Canadians were again facing die-hard fanatics of the Hitler Youth Division.
35:47And rumours were circulating of a massacre of Canadian prisoners.
35:55In this Battle of Caen, we were up against Hitler's toughest troops.
36:01The SS troops under General Kurt Meyer.
36:08And he's the jerk that kills 24 of our Canadians in the Abbey.
36:16He murdered them.
36:18Kurt Meyer, seen here, was convicted after the war by a Canadian court
36:23for his part in the murder of Canadian prisoners during the battle.
36:30Well, I'm still mad about it.
36:33I still feel that they didn't fight fair.
36:36I mean, there's a right and a wrong way to fight a war.
36:40Sure, get killed in action or shoot somebody,
36:43not necessarily after he's taken prisoner.
36:47That's, that's wrong. That is, that is very wrong.
36:52Well, I don't forgive and forget.
36:54I just put it in the back of my mind and say,
36:58that's the way they were and they'll,
37:01we're not, we're not going to change history now.
37:05Fighting around Caen assumed new levels of brutality,
37:10with accusations of the shooting of prisoners by both sides.
37:14One of the things that started happening in Normandy
37:17was the regular execution of Allied soldiers by German divisions.
37:22Some of this was from German units that had been brutalized on the Eastern Front
37:26and were extremely violent on the Western Front.
37:28Some of this was from units that were more deeply Nazi-fied and patriotic,
37:34like the Hitlerjugend.
37:35But the result was, as around in the Battle of Caen,
37:39where a number of Canadian soldiers were executed,
37:42was that Allied soldiers were getting shot after they had surrendered.
37:45The response on the part of the Allied soldiers
37:48was often to execute German prisoners in revenge.
37:54After a day of heavy fighting,
37:55the pressure from the Allies was so great
37:58that Rommel decided to abandon Northern Caen
38:01and withdraw his forces across the river Orne.
38:05On the 9th of July,
38:07the northern half of Caen fell to the Allies.
38:11Not much of it was left.
38:16Well, it's just a pile of rubble.
38:18Now the Air Force done a really good job,
38:20because I don't think there's a stone left standing there,
38:22to be quite honest.
38:23They'd more or less wiped it out altogether.
38:26So the combination of the two armies meeting and firing into a town in the centre,
38:32plus the fact that a 1,000 bomber raid was put on it,
38:35meant that the town was a massive ruin and rubble.
38:38When we got through, past the cobbles, we saw the cathedral was standing, and there was a hospital place beside it,
38:49with a red cross marked on it.
38:51And that had missed, the bombing had missed that.
38:55And that's where most of the French people who were in the town had gathered in this hospital, and so they escaped.
39:05There were a lot of people killed, but not as many as would have been if it hadn't been for the sheltering in the hospital, which our bombers had been avoiding.
39:16There was no let-up for the Germans. The next day, Montgomery launched Operation Jupiter.
39:23This time, the 43rd Wessex Division would attempt to capture the strategic hill 112.
39:32We were asked to gain the summit, hold it and keep it, but the Germans were equally determined that we were not going to do so.
39:40So it was a battle of attrition, mostly between armour and armour.
39:44But the infantry were expected to advance over open fields.
39:51There was a battle, I believe, over 14 days, with almost a daily change of the power of 112.
40:03Sometimes we were there, sometimes the Englanders, or the Canadians, who were there also in the operation.
40:09It was very dangerous, a small world that was not yet to be recognized.
40:13The fight around Hill 112 was an incredibly violent and intensive fight.
40:23The Germans had built up a substantial defense in depth, centered around machine guns, anti-tank weapons,
40:30high-velocity anti-aircraft and anti-tank guns, tanks, armored personnel carriers,
40:36and the Allied soldiers had to fight all their way through it.
40:38They knew if they popped their head up, even from a mile away, a German tank or gun might shoot it off.
40:45And so they had to slog their way through it, minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day,
40:51taking enormous casualties as they went.
40:56The inexperienced Wessex Division were up against Waffen SS troops,
41:01supported by Tiger tanks of the 102nd SS Heavy Tank Battalion.
41:05And it became almost a mantra that if you don't know what to do next, go down, dig down,
41:14and get your head under the ground level.
41:18The struggle for Hill 112 decimated the Wessex Division.
41:24And still they couldn't take its summit, left a no-man's land strewn with dead men and destroyed vehicles.
41:31We took around about 4,000 casualties on that period on that battleground,
41:41which was the villages as well as the hill.
41:44As the fighting raged, the Allies struck a lucky blow with potentially huge consequences.
41:50Rommel's staff car was strafed by a Canadian Spitfire and driven off the road.
41:57The driver was killed, and Rommel was left unconscious for a week.
42:01The consequences of that are severe.
42:05Because Rommel had been the driving force in the defense of northwestern France,
42:11behind the establishment of defensive positions,
42:13and of course he had a very clear view of how he wanted to fight the Allies,
42:16because he'd fought them before.
42:18The moment he is wounded, the German command structure is not really thrown into disarray,
42:22but one of the big problems is that the commander, von Kluge, basically now has to double-hat.
42:31And not only is he now responsible for the conduct of all the forces in northwestern France,
42:35but he also takes over Rommel's position as well.
42:37He becomes an extremely busy man, you might say,
42:39and his way of fighting differed quite severely from the way that Rommel wanted to fight.
42:43With German high command in confusion, cautious, methodical Montgomery planned a final push on Kamp,
42:52one which he declared would lead to the long-awaited breakthrough.
42:56But for Allied infantry and tank crews, the fighting would be as brutal as anything they'd faced yet.
43:04The offensive began on the 18th of July, 1944.
43:09Codenamed Operation Goodwood, the first phase would be an attack west of Caen,
43:17to suck in German reserves.
43:19Then the main assault would be launched east of Caen,
43:23spearheaded by 750 tanks of the British 7th, 11th and Guards armoured divisions.
43:30Meanwhile, in Operation Atlantic, Canadian 2nd Corps would take the southern half of Caen.
43:36Allied bombers rained thousands of tons of high explosives onto German positions.
43:45The raid was followed by a gigantic artillery barrage.
43:52Then Allied infantry and armour began their advance.
43:56What for the German soldiers, the most important difficulties were,
44:03the material responsibility of the artillery,
44:06first of all, before the infantry, the enemy, the enemy, the enemy, the enemy, the enemy, the enemy.
44:12At first there was rapid progress through shattered villages and cratered fields,
44:19as German soldiers, dazed by the bombardment, gave themselves up.
44:24But then, from camouflaged positions, the feared German 88s opened up,
44:30picking off British tanks one by one.
44:33Facing the British armour attack at Goodwood is a very strong German defence in depth.
44:41Not only have they got fortified farmhouses, they've got assault guns hidden,
44:46they've got weapons like the famous Pac-43 anti-tank gun.
44:50That's one of these ones here behind me.
44:51It's an 88mm gun, and it can fire a solid-shot armour-piercing round
44:58that would penetrate one of the British Sherman tanks
45:01out to about two and a half kilometres away.
45:04So you have the situation that British tanks are being knocked out,
45:08and they can't even see the enemy that is firing at them.
45:11This exceptionally powerful anti-tank gun
45:15had been designed to take on Allied bombers.
45:18They were the ones that we always feared, the 88s.
45:23They could be used, the 88s, even as anti-aircraft guns.
45:26They were an all-dual-purpose gun.
45:28They could fire tanks against tanks and aircraft.
45:32They were a marvelous weapon, they were.
45:34The Germans first used the 88mm gun as a flat gun,
45:39in other words, an anti-aircraft gun.
45:42And the idea there is they're firing rounds, such as this one here,
45:45to an enormous height to try and knock down a bomber,
45:49something up to about 20,000 feet.
45:52Now, when, in the 1940 campaign,
45:55Rommel says to some flat gunners,
45:58aim your guns, not in the air, but down at some approaching British tanks,
46:02and then the gun becomes a really effective anti-tank gun.
46:05The 88, you would not hear it till it would explode,
46:12and then you'd hear the sound of it coming.
46:16That's how fast it was.
46:18That's the one I told you was unbelievable, that 88.
46:22The ones that knocked our tanks out just like that.
46:24By the end of the day, the British had advanced three miles,
46:32while the Canadian 2nd and 3rd Divisions encircled Caen,
46:36and completed its capture the following morning.
46:41At long last, Caen was in Allied hands.
46:44But Montgomery also wanted the heavily defended ridge lines south of the city,
46:51as a springboard for his breakout from Normandy.
46:55For two days, British and Canadian tanks and infantry struggled to advance
47:01in the face of heavy machine gun and anti-tank fire.
47:05Neither envied the other's situation.
47:08I never wanted to be in the tanks,
47:11and the guy in the tank never wanted to be the infantryman either,
47:14because he looked and saw us with no protection.
47:17It's the same with every guy's job, even the guys in the fighter planes.
47:22We'll look at us and think, God, thank God I'm not down there,
47:25and I think, thank God I'm not up there.
47:27At least I can take a hole in the ground.
47:29You can't do anything. You've got to stay there and take it.
47:32The British and Canadian onslaught was relentless,
47:35giving battered German divisions no time to recover or regroup.
47:40German units were at breaking point.
47:44Divisions moved to the rear for much-needed rest,
47:48suddenly found themselves thrown back into the front line
47:51to fend off the latest Allied attack.
47:54They had very little support in terms of reserves coming up.
48:00They had more or less exhausted their reserves for Normandy,
48:02and simply they were under orders to hold to the last man,
48:07and in many cases they did.
48:09This was a combination of extreme bravery
48:14and just the nature of young men put in a situation
48:18in which if you retreat, your own side will shoot you,
48:22and if you don't, the other side will shoot you.
48:24It's an appalling situation, and it was due to Hitler's order
48:30to halt in place and face the firepower
48:32that the Allies could bring to bear against them.
48:35The six-week Battle of Caen was won at a high price.
48:40Operation Goodwood alone cost 5,500 British and Canadian casualties,
48:45and more than 300 tanks.
48:49The German army also suffered heavy losses,
48:53but incomplete records mean the true number will never be known.
48:58The bodies would be picked up by the medical people, you know, afterwards.
49:03The smell, the scents, that was the Battle of Caen.
49:11That's what you experienced, that's what you seen,
49:14that's what you looked at.
49:16German bodies, Canadian bodies, British bodies,
49:20everything was right there to look at,
49:24amongst the pigs and the horses and the cows and everything else.
49:28That's war. That's war. That's what Caen was like.
49:36As many as 20,000 French civilians also lost their lives
49:42during the Normandy campaign, most in Allied bombing raids.
49:47Their villages, awful, they're totally destroyed.
49:53And there's no reason really why the people who live in Normandy
49:57should be particularly grateful.
50:00We destroyed their countryside.
50:02Caen, the big city, Beers, Bocage, we destroyed them all.
50:06The RAF smashed Caen, which really wasn't strictly necessary,
50:12and we could see it happening.
50:16The capture of Caen did not lead to the dramatic breakout
50:21Montgomery had promised.
50:23The British and Canadians were still penned in
50:25by the heavily defended ridges south of the city.
50:29And Operation Overlord, the Allied invasion of Europe,
50:33was way behind schedule.
50:36But what the Battle of Caen had achieved
50:39was to force German commanders to commit their reserves,
50:43and their most powerful panzer units,
50:45to the eastern sector of the battlefield,
50:48just to hold the line.
50:49Now, 30 miles to the west,
50:52General Omar Bradley's U.S. First Army was about to reap the reward.
50:59By pouring in all their reinforcements toward Caen,
51:03the Germans substantially weakened their defensive lines
51:06facing the American First Army farther south.
51:08And what that meant, as Bradley readied his offensive around St. Lowe,
51:14was there weren't that many Germans facing him on the defensive.
51:18On the 25th of July, 1944,
51:23General Bradley and the U.S. Army launched Operation Cobra.
51:26They would achieve the great breakout that had eluded the British and Canadians at Caen,
51:34and prove their sacrifices had not been in vain.
51:38.
51:51.
51:57.
52:00Transcription by CastingWords