on most of their heavy arms and equipment in crossing back over the Seine.
Kluge was then sacked. On the way home he was found dead in his car, having swallowed a poison capsule—as his Chief of Staff explained, ‘he believed he would be arrested by the Gestapo as soon as he arrived home’.
It was not only on the German side that stormy recriminations arose within the High Command. Fortunately on the Allied side had no such serious consequences on the issue or to individuals although they left sore feelings that were of ill effect later. The biggest ‘blow up’ behind the scenes occurred over a near break-out by the British a fortnight before the Americans actually burst open the front at Avranches. The British blow, by the Second Army under Dempsey, was struck on the extreme opposite flank, east of Caen. It was the most massive tank attack of the whole campaign, delivered by three armoured divisions closely concentrated. They had been stealthily assembled in the small bridgehead over the Orne, and poured out from it on the morning of July 18, after an immense carpet of bombs had been dropped, for two hours, by two thousand heavy and medium bomber aircraft. The Germans on that sector were stunned, and most of the prisoners taken were so deafened by the roar of explosions that they could not be interrogated until at least twenty-four hours later.
But the defences were deeper than British Intelligence had thought. Rommel expecting such a blow, had hurried their deepening and reinforcement—until, on the eve of the attack, he was himself caught and knocked out by British aircraft, near the aptly named village of Sainte Foye de Montgomery. Moreover the enemy had heard the massive rumble of tanks as the British armour moved eastwards by night for the attack. Dietrich, the German Corps Commander, said that he was able to hear them over four miles away, despite diverting noises, by pressing his ear to the ground—a trick he had learned in Russia.
The brilliant opening prospect faded soon after passing through the forward layers of defence. The leading armoured division became entangled amid the village strongholds—instead of bypassing them. The others were delayed by traffic congestion, in getting out of the narrow bridgehead and the spearhead had come to a halt before they came on the scene. By the afternoon the great opportunity had slipped away.
This miscarriage has long been enshrouded in mystery. Eisenhower in his report spoke of it as an intended ‘breakthrough’, and as a ‘drive . . . exploiting in the direction of the Seine basin and Paris’. But all the British histories written after the war declare that it had no far-reaching aims, and that no breakthrough on this flank was ever contemplated.
They follow Montgomery’s own account, which insisted that this operation was merely ‘a battle of position’, designed to create a ‘threat’ in aid of the coming American break-out blow and secondly to secure ground on which major forces could be poised ready to strike out to the south and south-east, when the American break-out forces thrust eastwards to meet them’.
Eisenhower in his post-war memoirs tactfully glides over the matter by avoiding any mention of this battle, while Churchill makes only the barest reference to it. Yet anyone behind the scenes at the time was acutely aware of the violent storm that blew up. The air chiefs were very angry, especially Tedder. The state of temper is revealed in the diary of Captain Butcher, Eisenhower’s naval aide. ‘Around evening Tedder called Ike and said Monty had, in effect stopped his armour from going further. Ike was mad.’ According to Butcher, Tedder next day telephoned Eisenhower from London and conveyed that the British Chiefs of Staffs were ready to sack Montgomery if requested, although this is denied by Tedder in his own account of the affair.
It was thus natural that on Montgomery’s side the immediate reaction to such complaints should have been to assert that the idea of a break-out on this flank had never been in mind. That assertion soon became an article of belief, and has since co