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The new attack of First Army was
delivered on a ten-mile front, with the main effort by the 29th Division aiming
at the ridges along the St-Lô-Bayeux highway and then at St-Lô itself. On its
right, the 35th Division was to exert pressure between the Vire and the
Isigny-St-Lô highway; its objective was the right bank of the Vire, in the
elbow made by that winding stream just northwest of St-Lô. Advance here would
help the 30th Division on the other side of the Vire, by covering its flank
along the river. On the 29th Division's left, an assault against Hill 192 would
be made by the 2d Division of V Corps. Capture of this dominating observation
point would be of prime importance in the attack on St-Lô.
The battle east of the Vire on 11
July opened early in the morning and, unexpectedly enough, with small but
severe German attacks at two widely separated points. Within a few hours, it
was apparent that these were limited local efforts to rectify defensive lines,
and had no connection with Panzer Lehr's major attack beyond the Vire.
But for those hours the situation was unclear, and higher command echelons had
to figure on the possibility that the enemy was attempting to throw XIX Corps'
new effort off balance.
The 1st Battalion of the 115th Regiment
[29th Division]received one of the
German attacks, described later by Major Glover S. Johns, battalion commander,
as "beautifully executed and planned." After sending through a patrol
to cut wires, the German paratroopers of the I Battalion 9th Parachute Regiment laid down a box barrage of
mortar and artillery fire (88-mm and 105-mm); then followed the barrage at 50 yards' distance. The
115th's outposts were immediately overrun, and the enemy achieved almost
complete surprise. The 1st Battalion was holding a broad front with all three
companies in line, and the main enemy effort hit a gap between A and B
Companies. The commander of Company A was stunned by a grenade, the CP was
overrun, and two platoons were reported cut off and destroyed. Company B lost
some positions, and both units were fighting desperately in small detached
groups, with no coordination possible. Major Johns had no reserve, his
communications were out, and Regiment (with all three battalions on a front so
broad that a gap of 600
yards separated the 1st and 3rd Battalions) was equally
impotent. For two hours, rear CP's were receiving alarming rumors, heightened
as some Germans penetrated to the mortar positions and drove back their
personnel. Colonel Goodwin Ordway, Jr., commanding the 115th [29th Division], organized some of the
retreating weapons men as infantry to protect the rear areas. On his left, the
116th Regiment [29th Division] was
alarmed by the possibility of a breakthrough in the gap between its units and
the 115th and took steps to fill the hole with Company A. Enemy artillery fire
ranged into the 116th's assembly areas, causing about 30 casualties.
But the attack did not spread beyond
the sector of the 1st Battalion of the 115th [29th Division] and by dawn the 1st Battalion had weathered the
storm. Cut off and apparently surrounded, the remnants of A and B Companies had
held their positions; with coordination and direction impossible from higher
headquarters, "NCO's and lieutenants, gunners and privates, fought in
small groups and won that battle." By 0730 the enemy had given up and
retired. The 1st Battalion lost over 100 men; the Germans (reported by a
prisoner to be attacking in strength of four companies) lost about the same
number. The 1st Battalion, scheduled to jump off at 0600 in the 29th Division's
attack, was delayed several hours by the necessity for reorganizing.
Maj. General Charles H. Gerhardt [29th Division] planned his attack for
11 July with the main effort on the left, in close proximity to the corps
boundary and the assault of the 2nd Division on Hill 192. Here, the 116th
Regiment was to attack on a narrow front, in column of battalions, straight
south; then turn west toward St-Lô and the initial objective areas. These lay
on two ridges that run west from the hill mass of Hill 192 almost to the Vire.
The axis of attack during the next phase of the action was to follow the line
of these ridges, roughly that of the Bayeux-St-Lô highway. The ultimate
objective was the high ground just east and southeast of the city; General Gerhardt
wished to avoid costly street fighting and believed the Germans would be forced
to evacuate, since the American troops threatened to encircle St-Lô and held
all the surrounding hills. On the right, the 115th Regiment [29th Division] was assigned the area of
la Luzerne as objective; its action would protect the flank of the main effort
and threaten the enemy with loss of the high ground north of St-Lô. Initially
in division reserve, the 175th Regiment was held ready to exploit successes
achieved in either of the regimental attack zones. Five battalions of
artillery, two light and three medium, were to give support for the attack,
beginning with a concentrated preparation between H-20 minutes and the jump-off
at 0600.
The 29th Division had already had much
and bitter experience of the difficulties of hedgerow fighting and to meet
them, like other units, spent a great deal of time and effort in planning and
training for the big attack. Under the direct supervision of Brig. General
Norman D. Cota, Assistant Division Commander [29th Division], the infantry, tank, and engineer elements of the
division rehearsed (in fields near Couvains) a tactical procedure for reducing
the effectiveness of hedgerow defenses. Particular attention was paid to the
necessity of training infantrymen to cross the open centers of hedge-bordered
fields, rather than moving along axial hedgerows. This method of maneuver aimed
at avoiding enfilade fire along the axials; in the past squads and platoons had
been too often pinned down by German automatic weapons that were usually set up
at field corners.
Each battalion of the 116th Regiment
[29th Division]went into the attack
with an attached company of engineers from the 121st Engineer Combat Battalion [29th Division]. The 2d Battalion (Maj.
Sidney V. Bingham, Jr.) of the 116th [Regiment,
29th Division] was to lead off the advance, hitting along the axis of the
Couvains-la Calvaire road, skirting the division boundary, and bypassing
strongly organized enemy positions at St-André-de-l'Epine. The 2d Battalion
would start on a two-company front (E and F Companies); each assault platoon in
these companies was teamed with a platoon of medium tanks from the 747th Tank
Battalion. The plan for the opening phase involved operating in small teams, each
with a comparatively broad front: one infantry squad and one tank per field,
and a squad of engineers to each infantry platoon.
Coordination of
infantry-tank-engineer teams, working in these small groups, had been carefully
rehearsed. The tanks were expected to give great assistance, by their fire
power, in dealing with hedgerow strongpoints, but there was always the problem
of getting them through the embankments fast enough to maintain their support
through the endless series of fields. Movement along the road was prohibited by
German antitank defenses. To get the armor through hedgerows, new devices and
methods were being tried out. One was to equip the tank with iron prongs welded
to the final drive housing. These prongs could--and did--rip holes right
through the upper part of small embankments, but the prongs might be bent and
disabled by much heavy work of this sort. They had still another use: that of
making holes for placing demolitions. The engineers in the assault teams
carried explosive charges of TNT loaded in discarded canisters of 105-mm
shells. In the tactics rehearsed, the infantry would seize hedgerow fronting
the axis of attack; a tank would then lumber forward toward a place where the
engineers desired to make the gap. Driving into the hedgerow, the tank would
force the two prongs into the earth, and at the same time deliver a blast of
fire from its automatic weapons on the field and hedgerow ahead. When the
prongs were withdrawn from the bank, two waiting engineers would rush forward,
fix the prepared charges in the holes, make the necessary primacord
connections, and light the fuze. Additional TNT charges were carried close
behind the assault teams on "weasels" (M-29's). Obviously the
engineers' task was dangerous; they were so heavily involved in the task of
carrying explosives that they could not engage in individual combat and must
rely on the fire power of tanks and infantry for protection.
The test of plans and training came
in the attack of 11 July. In the first few hours, things moved very slowly, and
the situation looked unpromising. The effects of the heavy concentrations of
artillery, preceding the jump-off, seemed to be minimized by the hedgerows; at
any rate, the 2nd Battalion encountered immediate and determined resistance
from the prepared enemy positions along the first hedgerows. Mine fields and
booby traps were encountered, and flanking fires came from St-André-de-l'Epine
and the Martinville Ridge. The attacking troops experienced the old difficulty
of spotting the exact source of enemy fire. It was only after severe fighting
that the 2d Battalion got past the first main obstacle, a sunken road heavily
protected with antipersonnel mines. But once beyond this, the assault troops
began to find grim evidence of the work of American artillery in the large
number of enemy dead and wounded scattered through the next few fields. This,
as an observer noted, was an unusual sight, because the Germans ordinarily
evacuated casualties before they were reached by our advance.
The 2nd Battalion kept the pressure
on. By 1100, with heavy support from artillery and effective use of the methods
for getting tanks through embankments, the battalion was six hedgerows beyond
the LD. The engineers of Company B, 121st Engineer Combat Battalion [29th Division] were helping the
infantry through mines, and the 4.2 mortars of the 92d Chemical Mortar
Battalion were holding down the German fire from the Martinville Ridge (Hill
147). A German self-propelled gun on the north-south highway had lost a duel with
our tanks and was left behind, wrecked.
Only 600 yards had been
gained, but enemy resistance suddenly eased, then cracked. Major Bingham's
troops now made rapid progress until they reached the junction of the ridge
road leading west toward Martinville. Here the battalion wheeled right, on a
90-degree change in direction of attack. The enemy was still hanging on,
southward, and the exposure of the battalion's left flank during the turn made
for rough going. Nevertheless, the troops were able to push forward astride the
ridge road.
So far, the attack had made
excellent progress. The infantry later gave much credit to the work of
supporting tanks, which had speeded the advance. As always, the tanks had drawn
enemy artillery fire, but their use of prongs to break through embankments had
saved much time as compared to the sole use of demolitions. The 116th was also
greatly aided by the fact that its axis of attack lay along an enemy boundary
between units, the II and III Battalions of the 9th Parachute Regiment, where the
defensive positions were not well consolidated.
During the afternoon General
Gerhardt took steps to enlarge the attack and get through as far as possible in
exploitation of the success. Given a company of tanks in support, the 3rd
Battalion of the 116th [29th Division] at 1300, was on its way to
follow up the 2nd Battalion, and was moving through St-André-de-l'Epine toward
objective area "B" on the Bayeux-St-Lô highway, near the corps
boundary. This move would protect the south flank of the 2nd Battalion during
its attack west. The 1st was right behind the 3d, prepared to pass between the
other two when the occasion offered. The 175th Regiment [29th Division] was still in reserve, but was alerted for possible
use along the corps boundary. To the east, the 2nd Division was having enough
success on Hill 192 to remove any serious worries about the left flank.
The going was harder as the day wore
on and as the leading battalions neared their first objectives. As late as
1920, General Gerhardt gave orders to "push on, if possible take
St-Lô," and all units pressed hard until darkness forced a halt. The 2nd
Battalion had gained more than a mile along the Martinville Ridge, though it
was still short of Hill 147. The 3d Battalion had swung south and was on the
edge of its objective area, along the St-Lô highway, meeting stubborn
resistance. The 1st Battalion was close behind, and a battalion (2nd) of the
175th Regiment [29th Division] was
moving down the road toward St-André-de-l'Epine, attached to the 116th [Regiment, 29th Division] for the night
if needed for protection of the division flank. The 175th was alerted for
movement to attack through the 116th next morning.
The 115th Regiment (Colonel Ordway) [29th Division] had been less fortunate
during 11 July. Besides having been thrown off stride and delayed by the night
attack of the paratroopers, the 115th was hitting squarely at main German
defenses and found no weak point in the enemy system, such as that exploited by
the 116th. La Luzerne was the regimental objective, but it was considered
necessary to take Belle-Fontaine first. The 1st Battalion was to come
downstream along the headwaters of a small creek on an approach that could
outflank Belle-Fontaine. The 3rd Battalion was to attack directly south toward
Belle-Fontaine, but by order of Colonel Ordway was to wait until the 1st
Battalion had moved into position on its left flank. The 2nd Battalion,
echeloned to the right rear, held defensive positions west of the Isigny
highway. Holding as it did a wide front, the 115th disposed of no reserves.
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