In the predawn attack the infantry broke through or passed through the German line and took the high ground just one kilometre from St. Lo. The road into the city was open. Howie called the company commanders to a conference to give them their objectives. "We had just finished the meeting," Captain William Puntenney, Howie's executive officer, recalled. "The Germans began dropping a mortar barrage around our ears. Before taking cover in one of the foxholes. Major Howie turned to take a last look to be sure all his men had their heads down. Without warning, one of the shells hit a few yards away. A fragment struck the major in the back and pierced his lung. 'My God, I'm hit,' he murmured, and I saw he was bleeding at the mouth. As he fell, I caught him. He was dead in two minutes."
Captain Puntenney took over just as a counterattack from the Fallschirmjdger hit the battalion. Using the new communications techniques, the 29th called in artillery and a fighter-bomber strike. It broke up the attack, and the men began the charge into St. Lo.
As they crested the hill and started the descent into the town, the Americans were shocked by what they saw. St. Lo had been hit by B-17s on D-Day and every clear day thereafter. The place was a lifeless pile of rubble in which roads and sidewalks could scarcely be distinguished. As they moved into the fringe of town, they began to draw fire from some Fallschirmjdger in a cemetery. A macabre battle ensued, rifle and machine-gun bullets smashing into headstones. Rhino tanks came up through the hedgerows in support and drove the Germans off. The men of the 29th dashed into the town, guns blazing. There was still hard fighting to go before the town was completely cleared of the enemy, but * finally St. Lo was in American hands.
At Gerhardt's insistence Howie's body was put on a jeep and driven into the town. Men from the 3rd Battalion draped the body with the Stars and Stripes and hoisted it on top of a pile of stones that had once been a wall in the Saint Croix Church, a block from the cemetery. GIs and some of the few civilians remaining in the town adorned the site with flowers. "It was simple and direct, no fanfare or otherwise," Lieutenant Edward Jones recollected.
The story caught on with the press. Life magazine featured "The Major of St. Lo." Howie was famous, too late to do him any good. But he and the other men of the 29th had captured the high ground in that part of Normandy, putting First Army in a position to launch an offensive designed to break through the German line and out of the hedgerow country.
For that offensive Bradley was making plans to use the Allies' greatest single asset-air power, every bomber and fighter bomber that could fly- in a crushing bombardment that would blast a hole in the German line.
Chapter Three
Breakout and Encirclement: July 25-August 25, 1944
ON JULY 24, seven weeks after D-Day, US First Army was holding an east-west line from Caumont to St. Lo to Lessay on the Channel. Pre-D-Day projections had put the Americans on this line on D-Day plus five.
Disappointing as that was, Bradley could see opportunities for his army. The enemy was sadly deficient in supplies and badly worn down. One of Bradley's chief problems was that he had not enough room to bring the divisions waiting in England into the battle-not to mention Patton. For the Germans the problem was the opposite-no significant reinforcements were available. A favourable factor for Bradley: six of the eight German panzer divisions in Normandy faced the British and Canadians around Caen.
Bradley was also encouraged by aerial photographs showing that behind the German lines the roads were empty. Behind American lines the roads were nose-to-tail armour, transport convoys, and troops. Huge supply dumps dotted the fields, with no need for camouflage. These were among the fruits of air superiority.
The Ninth Tactical Air Force had a dozen airstrips in Normandy by this time. Pilots could be over their targets in a matter of minutes. They were daredevil youngsters, some of them only nineteen years of age. (It was generally felt that by the time he reached his mid-twenties, a man was too sensible to take the chances required of a P-47 pilot.) They made up to five sorties per day. They dominated the sky and brought destruction to the Germans below.
Another plus for Bradley: his men were tactically much better equipped than they had been when the campaign began. By July 24 three of five First Army tanks had been fitted with a rhino. Ground-air communications were improving daily. Bradley had ruthlessly relieved incompetent division commanders. The frontline soldiers were a mix of veterans and replacements, with relatively good morale, although, like the Germans, badly worn down.
First Army had reached the limits of the worst of the hedgerows. Beyond lay rolling countryside. Roads were more numerous; many were tarred; a few were even four-lane. The front line ran close to the St. Lo-Periers road, which was an east-west paved highway, the N-800. Here the Panzer Lehr Division held the line for the Germans. Facing them were the American 9th, 4th, and 30th divisions.
Bradley decided he could use the St. Lo-Periers road as a marker for the strategic air forces and lay a carpet of bombs on Panzer Lehr by having the bombers fly parallel to the road-a landmark they couldn't miss. The area to be obliterated was six kilometres along the road and two kilometres south of it. Massed artillery would come after the bombardment, followed by a tank-infantry assault three divisions strong. If it worked, the Americans would break out of the hedgerow country and uncover the entire German left wing in Normandy, with Patton's Third Army ready to come in and exploit a breakthrough. Bradley gave the operation the code name Cobra.
On July 24 the weather appeared acceptable, and an order to go went out to the airfields, only to be rescinded after a third of the bombers had taken off. By the time the recall signal had gone out, one flight of B-17s had crossed the coast and released its load of 500-pound bombs through cloud cover. Most of the bombs fell short, causing casualties in the American 30th Division and leaving the infantrymen madder than hell.
Worse, the bombers had come in perpendicular to the line, not parallel. The airmen argued that they couldn't funnel all the bombers through the narrow corridor created by using a single marker. It would take hours for them to pass over the target-all the time exposed to antiaircraft fire from the 88s. By coming in perpendicular, spread out, the bombers would only be taking flak during the seconds it took to cross the line and jdrop the bombs. Bradley still wanted a parallel approach, but the airmen convinced him that it was too late to change the plan.
July 25 was clear. At 0938 some 550 fighter-bombers were guided in by radio messages from air controllers riding in tanks at the head of armoured columns. P-47s fired rockets and machine guns on German positions just south of the road and dropped 500-pound bombs that could be placed within 300 metres of the American lines.
Reporter Ernie Pyle wrote, "The dive bombers hit it just right. We stood in the barnyard of a French farm and watched them barrel nearly straight down out of the sky. They were bombing less than a half-a-mile ahead of where we stood. They came in groups, diving from every direction, perfectly timed, one after another."
After twenty minutes the P-47s gave way to 1,800 B-17s. Their appearance left men groping for words to describe it. Pyle did it this way: "A new sound gradually droned into our ears-a gigantic faraway surge of doomlike sound. It was the heavies. They came on in flights of twelve, three flights to a group and in groups stretched out across the sky. Their march across the sky was slow and studied. I've never known anything that had about it the aura of such a ghastly relentlessness."