Saturday, August 8, 2020

Remnants

On the watch for Allied aircraft
Bundesarchiv

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.

National Archives

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
Bundesarchiv

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.


National Archives

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

National Archives

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.

Bundesarchiv

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.


National Archives

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.

National Archives

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.

National Archives

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

38 comments:

  1. Ah, the Thunderbolts. It must have sucked to be German when we threw in and decided to end them. I'm pretty sure they didn't like the YAKs and other bolts on the eastern front.

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    1. Enemy air is always an unwelcome sight!

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    2. At least an infantryman stood a small chance against a YAK. Against a Jug? With a rifle, even a MG-42? Slim to none.

      With the airbases set up just south of the beaches, as long as the weather was even just better than marginal the P-47s and Typhoons roamed and killed, roamed and destroyed.

      I think, as the text above shows, that the biggest thing they killed was morale.

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    3. As Napoleon once said, "The moral is to the physical as three is to one."

      Yup, morale is important.

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  2. A good part of the German Army moved by horses yet, sounds those poor animals made as they were wounded and dying on the battlefield.....not what I's like to hear. Those are all photos I've never seen before Sarge, such utter destruction.

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    1. Death from the air. Always sobering.

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    2. (Don McCollor)...It is often forgotten how much the mighty German war machine still depended on horse-drawn transport. In contrast, the Americans had enough motorized vehicles that (in theory) every soldier in the American army could have ridden at once...

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    3. The Germans had huge numbers of horses in there Army.

      The British Expeditionary Force in France in 1940 had also been completely motorized. Many don't know that.

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    4. I think the British military was the first completely motorised in thevworld. But there were a lot of requisition civil vehicles. The US had the first fully motorised army, with all military vehicles. It is good to be the country, with 48% off the industrial potential of the world.

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    5. I think you're right.

      Only 48%, we need to try harder.

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  3. In the paragraph where the cook is about to surrender, should "harm" be "harmed."

    My thoughts keep returning to the SS man, and I see a parallel in some of today's youth.
    I'm also thinking that the modern education system is bearing bitter fruit.

    Well done.




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    1. Yup - fixed it first thing this morning. No matter how many times you look a piece over, you'll always miss something, the brain sees what it expects to see!

      Yes, the youth may discover that indoctrination and education are two separate things. But don't blame the system entirely, it's up to the parents to keep track of what their children are learning. Parents can't expect the schools to do the job for them, which, unfortunately, many do.

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    2. We're already seeing that. Those two female lawyers charged federally with tossing molotovs that magically appeared in their hands and are facing 35 years, they have this look on their face of utter disbelief, much like many of those German prisoners, and keep saying things like, "Why us?" and "I don't believe they arrested us."

      I wouldn't put it past them to hang themselves as their whole world is over.

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    3. The chickens coming home to roost.

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    4. And it's funny. Kids that got arrested locally and released without charges are suddenly gobsmacked when they are arrested federally and are facing, well, big time charges with big time consequences.


      Something we growing up on military bases and federal reservations all knew. That speeding ticket? The one that is just a civil fine in the rest of the country is now possibly a felony. Boozing while underage? Not on Base because felony. Screwing around with a gun? Felony. Or at least the possibility of a felony. Only complete boneheads pushed the system when I was growing up.

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    5. I keep seeing the photo of the female "protester" being taken into Federal custody. The look on her face tells me that life just slapped her in the face and told her, "Time to pay the piper."

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    6. Beans and Sarge. (that could be an MRE entree after a trip through Google translate)
      I did some internet digging on the backgrounds of the two lawyers, but I only ended up shaking my head even more.
      This from the federal prosecutor, Ian Richardson, speaking of Mattis. "He's a person with an extraordinary career that was just starting in the law. He attended prestigious universities, he had some of the best education that you can have in this country and yet he risked everything -- everything -- to drive around in a car with Molotov cocktails attacking police vehicles,"
      The same article mentions the Rahman is the primary caregiver for her ill mother.
      https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/17/us/brooklyn-molotov-lawyers-protests/index.html
      Yes, CNN but it reads fairly neutral.

      As I said, I don't get it.





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    7. It's hard to understand the mind of a true fanatic.

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  4. So where does the story go from here, Sarge? Are you leaving us to wonder about SGT. Brandt et al.? No worries if so, just have really enjoyed the story - been educational and well written.
    As to Nylon's comments about the photos of destruction, reminds me of the Highway of Death pics from Desert Storm of the retreat of Sadaam's forces from Kuwait. Somehow I think if the photos from the Falaise Gap had been shown to the American public in 1944, there would not have been any inclination to stand down from further destruction of the German forces as there was by Bush 41. That hesitancy to finish the fight led to the second gulf war and the mess that came with it. Sigh...

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    1. When I saw that Highway of Death in 1991 I thought "WOW!......now lets see more of that." Instead the American public and politicians of 1991 were much different that their counterparts from 1941 even taking into account a foreign nation's attack on American territory 50 years earlier. Tom is right about the results of that First Gulf war.

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    2. Tom - The war isn't over by a long shot. Sgt Brandt and the others still have to drive the Germans out of France, the Low Countries, endure the bitter winter of 1944, and fight on across the Rhine. It's a long way to the Elbe River. The Battle for Normandy is over, the Battle to defeat the Nazis in the West is just beginning.

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    3. Nylon12 - I remember hearing at the time that the President wanted a clear cut victory - topple Saddam, seize Baghdad, and end the war the old fashioned way - with victory. Certain generals, Colin Powell most prominently, convinced him otherwise. Remember, President George H W. Bush was from the generation which decisively defeated the Nazis and the Japanese Empire. His generals were from a generation who didn't know what victory was. I lost all respect for Colin Powell when I heard that.

      Our flag officers continue to fail the Nation today, I would retire 99% of them at the O-6 level and bar them permanently from working in the defense industry or in any government role. They're nothing more than bureaucrats and politicians in uniform.

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    4. Yep about the destruction from the air. Never ever ever loose air superiority. And never run. It just gets you shot, stabbed, bombed in the back.

      As to the Colin, yeah, slick move there, General Powell. Didn't help that Saudi Arabia and our Coalition Allies didn't wand final war. I thought the Road was the perfect start. So much for That!

      But, no. We let them diddle around, rearm, store caches of weapons that shot us in the back later, rebuild and use their chemical and biological weapons, and do something that made the sewers of Bagdad radioactive (but, of course, there were no weapons of mass destruction especially no nuclear weapons or dirty weapons (cough, seen the radiation burns, cough.)

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    5. Hey AFSarge;

      The media and the democrats got weepy after the highway of death and pushed for us to stop. We had kicked the Iraqi's out of Kuwait and were expecting to go into Iraq and into Baghdad to get Saddam. We had the force in country to do it. Not all of the coalition would have been excited about it mind you. But H.W. Bush Under the recommendation of General Powell who was a political general persuaded Schwartzkopf to stop the Army after 100 hours. We felt like we got robbed. I remember feeling pissed off, I know that we would have to go back again and after the Uprisings and Saddam using his helicopters and surviving republican guards to put it down after we encouraged them to try to overthrow his ass. I didn't feel very good about the entire thing. I was proud that we went and save Kuwait, but the ending could have been much better.

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  5. Defeat is one of the most horrible weapons an enemy can use, because all they have to do is start it. It grows within.

    The Falaise pocket... well, at least most of the prisoners survived to return to Germany, if they wanted, unlike the prisoners from the Eastern Front.

    I don't know how you do it, but you capture the emotional feel of the moment very well. From the desperation of the Landings to the astonishment by Sgt. Brant's troops at the utter destruction, to, well, the emotions of the Germans culminating in this episode.

    Amazing job tying the photos into the storyline. You, sir, continue to astound me.

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    1. Sometimes a photo will make me think, that along with all that I've read over the years and it leads me to a story.

      The initial research, much of which is "what happened during this time," not to the units but to the folks on the ground, and I have a kernel to work from. Then it all kind of plays out in my head, like I'm watching it happen. It's fun, but it's sobering at times as well.

      Thanks Beans.

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    2. I finally got time this morning to read your post. After reading it, I opened comments to enter mine. Scrolled to the bottom...And Beans stole my comment! Bastige!

      That having been said, after reading this post, I thought that you had done an excellent job of making the people seem real and alive! Better than some relatively famous and often published authors, even. Well Done!

      Now, Get Back To Work and get this thing published, retire on your royalties and start on the morning talk show circuit.

      With Face Mask...of course!

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    3. It's not finished yet, lots of war to go.

      Maybe a book series?

      Thanks juvat!

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    4. Please remember that some of us may not be here when this is finished. Why, I'm hardly here right now. What was it I was going to say? Oh yes. We'll miss the cry of "Drinks - all around. Bar keep! First for strength and then for courage!"

      Marvelous read.

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    5. Thanks Dave. Stick around, I'm going as fast as I can. 😉

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    6. Beans compliments Old Sarge's writing style. Indeed, Sarge's style is the only thing that keeps me coming back to read of this subject. Like I had said some days ago, I was reluctant to read more of the horrors in this campaign. But it is Sarge's great ability in weaving the story that keeps me here.

      I know it sounds weird to say that the telling presents a compelling personal touch although somewhat depersonalizing the events. Don't ask me to explain that. All I could say is it is a palatable storytelling.

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    7. Thanks Rick. I try hard to get it right, and make it interesting. History, at it's most basic level, is the story of people.

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  6. What I believe you've done, Sarge, is turn the numbers from Normandy (and other battles) into persons and that makes it all very real.
    Thanks!

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    1. Studying the history of war and battles without looking at the people who were there, who fought, suffered, and often died, seems an injustice to those who made history by their sacrifices.

      Thanks Skip.

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  7. Excluding Sarge, Just curious as to how many of the commenters have been in actual combat in Korea, Nam or Mid East?
    Sarge - You have an empathetic & true perspective on this subject.

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    1. (Don McCollor)...You do indeed Sarge. A confession, I was never even in the military, but enjoyed military history ever since as a kid. The problem is that WW2 was too big and widespread. to cover. Individual stories stand up like islets in the accounts historians usually gloss over...little things like why red lipstick was flown high priority after D-Day-issued to medics so they could mark the forehead of a wounded soldier to tell that they had been given morphine...

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Just be polite... that's all I ask. (For Buck)
Can't be nice, go somewhere else...

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