Remnants

On the watch for Allied aircraft
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Berlin hadn't authorized it, the commander of 7th Army, though considering it, hadn't ordered it. But the troops knew, they knew that the Amis and the Tommies had won, all that remained was survival.

Ten men - three Fallschirmjäger¹, two Panzer men, one Waffen SS artilleryman, two Army foot soldiers, a Luftwaffe pilot, and a cook - had fallen together by chance and were now trying to escape from what they called "der Kessel von Falaise," the Falaise Cauldron.

They were men on the run, it's not that they were cowards, it's not that they weren't good soldiers, it was just that their army had collapsed. Divisions had been reduced to understrength battalions, regiments were now the size of companies, and companies, in many cases, were the size of understrength platoons.

Casualties among officers and sergeants had been heavy. Taught to lead from the front, taught to counterattack after an enemy advance, they had thrown themselves, and their men, against the mechanized might of the Allies. As a consequence, many of them died, or had been horribly wounded, many had been captured.

Where one Panther, or one Tiger, might make a stand, the swarms of Allied tanks would hardly notice, and yet another panzer would stand in flames in the middle of a field, beside a woodlot, or on some backcountry road. The vehicle and its valuable crew lost forever.

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The senior man, by rank an Oberwachtmeister², from a transport unit, was the cook. He had a K98k rifle and perhaps 20 rounds of ammunition. Three days ago he had been in command of a field kitchen, a Gulaschkanone (goulash cannon). Five years ago he had owned his own little restaurant in the Harz Mountains. He loved to cook, now it seemed that he was in charge of this rather ragged band.

German Army Field Kitchen
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In truth he tended to defer to the three paratroopers, though one of them was, as the pilot called him, just a wrench turner with no aircraft to fix. He had indeed been a mechanic on Ju 52s, the venerable three engined Luftwaffe transport know affectionately as Tante³ Ju. Luftwaffe aircraft of all types were rare to non-existent over Normandy these days. In essence he let the senior paratrooper, an Unteroffizier⁴ take the lead, the man was an experienced soldier and knew his business. The other paratrooper was a young man, only a private, but a veteran of the fighting in Italy and in Normandy.

The pilot was an odd duck, a Feldwebel, he had been a Focke Wulf 190 pilot before managing to get himself shot down over the cauldron. He did not like being on the ground. Though he had jumped from his crippled aircraft with his sidearm, one of the infantrymen had scrounged a rifle and some ammunition for him.

The infantrymen kept to themselves and regretted joining up with this little group, much the same as the two panzer men who had no weapons at all other than their sidearms. They also didn't seem too keen at acquiring anything to fight with. Without their tank they felt helpless. Both also had a haunted look about them, both had seen much in their short lives.

The only one of the group who still felt Germany had a chance to win the war was the SS man. He was an SS-Oberschütze, a senior rifleman from an artillery unit which had been completely destroyed during the American carpet bombing before the offensive which had broken them out of the hedgerow country. He had been a Hitler Youth and kept reminding the others of that.

"We must find our way to a fighting unit, we shouldn't be running like this." Though he meant to sound manly and tough when he said that, the cook thought he sounded like a whining little boy. Which, in truth, he had been not that long ago.

"That's the plan boy, we don't intend to wander around France forever, and I have no desire to spend the rest of the war in a prisoner-of-war cage. If they even bother to take prisoners. Hell, you're in the SS, they'll probably shoot you off hand!" The senior paratrooper could be harsh, he hated the SS and the Nazis. He thought this kid combined the worst aspects of both.

"Calm down Fritz," for that was the Unteroffizier's name, "none of us want to go into a cage. We need to wait for nightfall to move, you've seen the Jabos flying around all day. Do you wish to end up like that!" As he said that, the cook gestured at the nearby road, which was strewn with wrecked vehicles, dead men, and dead horses. The smell of all this death was starting to become noticeable.

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Every way they turned they were surrounded by the detritus of war.

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Traveling by night they had so far managed to avoid being attacked by Allied aircraft. Which were so prevalent that they were attacking anything that moved, even single vehicles and small groups of men. They had seen a man on the road yesterday and tried calling out to him, to try and get him to join them under cover. When they finally had gotten his attention, he had started to move in their direction.

The big American P-47 had strafed and killed the man before he had moved ten meters. But the aircraft had not been aiming for the man, he had merely got in the way. None of them had noticed the cleverly camouflaged halftrack in the field near the road, but the enemy pilot had. Swooping down to kill the halftrack, he had hit the man as well. Then moved on to find more victims.

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The morning of the third day, the paratrooper had seen what he thought was a German column on the move. Waiting for the column to disperse as the sun came up, the men stayed under cover. Again the Jabos came, again men died, vehicles exploded, horses died not knowing the why of the thing. It left them quiet and stunned at the end of it. So much destruction, even the SS man kept his mouth shut for once.

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During the day, while the others slept, the young SS man shot himself.

He had been on watch, keeping an eye on things when he saw a sight out on the road which shocked him to his very core, SS men surrendering! He had been taught that the SS never surrendered but always fought to the death. He began to question everything he knew, everything he believed. He felt there was nothing left for him. So he ended it.

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The cook had trouble believing what the young man had done. "Why, why would he do such a thing?"

"Everything he was raised to believe, his very reason for existence is a f**king lie. That's why he did it. See out there," the paratrooper flung his arm in the direction of the surrendering SS men, "even the supermen are quitting. The war is over. F**k Hitler, I say we surrender as well. I'm not sneaking around in the dark for another night. I've had it."

With that the man smashed his rifle against a tree and threw his helmet deeper into the woods. "Let's go Horst, Hermann, I don't care if they kill us, I've had it."

As he said that he began walking towards the edge of the small copse of trees they had been sheltering in. The other two paratroopers threw away their helmets and rifles as well and followed him. The two tankers and the infantrymen looked at the dead SS man, and decided that they too had had enough.

They headed towards the road where they could hear the paratrooper yelling something in a language which they assumed was English, which none of them spoke. But their hands were in the air as they came out of the trees and no one shot at them.

"What do you say cookie? Do we continue running and hiding, hoping we don't get killed, or do we join our comrades? I have no desire to die for the Fatherland today, nor tomorrow for that matter." After saying that, the pilot tossed his rifle and his sidearm into the brush and stood up.

The cook had seen enough, he knew he wasn't a proper soldier, just a man who enjoyed cooking. His rifle stayed where he had propped it against a tree the night before. It seems like the others had made the right choice. He could see an American soldier in the clearing, yelling at them, in very good German, to surrender. Just to come out and surrender, they wouldn't be harmed.

The cook thought to himself, "The war is lost anyway, maybe someday I can go home again." So he followed the pilot into the clearing.

All around the cauldron, Germans were surrendering. They were tired of dying. Some, those further to the east, managed to get away with only what they carried on their backs, very few vehicles escaped. Of the 80,000 to 100,000 troops who had been trapped in the cauldron, 10,000 - 15,000 were killed, 40,000 - 50,000 were taken prisoner, and 20,000 - 50,000 escaped.

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The Germans also lost 500 tanks and assault guns. The 7th Army, which had defended the beaches on D-Day was no more.

More than forty German divisions were destroyed during the Battle of Normandy. No exact figures are available, but historians estimate that the battle cost the German forces c. 450,000 men, of whom 240,000 were killed or wounded. The Allies had achieved victory at a cost of 209,672 casualties among the ground forces, including 36,976 killed and 19,221 missing. The Allied air forces lost 16,714 airmen killed or missing in connection with Operation Overlord. The final battle of Operation Overlord, the Liberation of Paris, followed on 25 August, and Overlord ended by 30 August, with the retreat of the last German unit across the Seine. (Source) 

The Battle for Normandy was over.




¹ Paratroopers
² A rank equivalent to a Oberfeldwebel or master sergeant, used by cavalry, artillery, and transport units. The latter two usually horse-drawn. The German military was no where near as motorized as some people think.
³ German for aunt.
⁴ Sergeant