But by no means were all the Germans surrendering. The toughest units and the most fanatical Nazis-panzer and Waffen SS troops-were determined to get out so as to fight another day.
On August 14 Eisenhower issued a rare order of the day (he sent out only ten in the course of the war), exhorting the Allied soldiers: "If everyone does his job, we can make this week a momentous one in the history of this war-a brilliant and fruitful week for us, a fateful one for the ambitions of the Nazi tyrants." The order of the day was broadcast over BBC and distributed to the troops in mimeographed form.
The following day Eisenhower held a press conference. There was great excitement among the reporters, who had earlier been gloomy about the stalemate in Normandy and were now optimistic about what lay ahead, as evidenced by the first question Eisenhower received: "How many weeks to the end of the war?"
Eisenhower, disturbed by the excessive optimism, exploded. He said such thoughts were "crazy." The Germans were not going to collapse. He predicted that the end would come only when Hitler hanged himself, but warned that before he did, he would "fight to the bitter end," and most of his troops would fight with him.
IF NOT MOST, enough. The Canadians did not get to Falaise until August 17 and then failed to close the gap between Falaise and Argentan. The German army still had an escape route open. For sheer ghastliness in World War II nothing exceeded the experience of the Germans caught in the Falaise gap. They were in a state of total fear day and night. They seldom slept. They dodged from bomb crater to bomb crater. "It was complete chaos," Private Herbert Meier remembered. "That's when I thought. This is the end of the world."
German army, corps, and division headquarters got out first and headed towards the Siegfried Line. Most junior officers felt like the enlisted men- it was every man for himself.
"It was terrible," Lieutenant Giinter Materne recalled, "especially for those lying there in pain. It was terrible to see men screaming 'Mother!' or 'Take me with you; don't leave me here! I have a wife and child at home. I'm bleeding to death!'"
Lieutenant Walter Padberg explained: "Honestly said, you did not stop to consider whether you could help this person when you were running for your life. One thought only of oneself."
"All shared a single idea," according to Corporal Friedrich Bertenrath of the 2nd Panzer Division. "Out! Out! Out!"
All this time, bombs, rockets, mortars, and machine-gun fire came down on the Germans. Along the roads and in the fields dead cows, horses, and .soldiers swelled in the hot August sun, their mouths agape, filled with flies. Maggots crawled through their wounds. Tanks drove over men in the way-dead or alive. Human and animal intestines made the roads slippery.
Lieutenant George Wilson of the 4th Division was astonished to discover that the Wehrmacht was a horse-drawn army, but impressed by the equipment. He had been raised on a farm and "was amazed at such superb draughthorses and accoutrements. The leather was highly polished, and all the brass rivets and hardware shone brightly. The horses had been groomed, with tails bobbed, as though for a parade." His men mercifully shot the wounded animals.
By August 18 the 1st Polish Armoured Division had moved south, almost to the point of linking up with the US 90th Division to close the gap. Still. Germans escaped. One of them was Lieutenant Padberg. "When we made it out of the pocket," he recalled, "we were of the opinion that we had left hell behind us." He quickly discovered that the boundaries of hel! were not so constricted. Once beyond the gap, Padberg ran into an SS colonel.
"Line up!" the colonel bellowed. "Everyone is now under my command! We are going to launch a counterattack." There were twenty or so men. The others shuffled into something like a line, Padberg said, "but unfortunately, I had to go behind a bush to relieve myself and missed joining the group behind the colonel."
Even in the bloody chaos of Falaise, a humane spirit could come over the young men sc far from home. Lieutenant Hans-Heinrich Dibbern, of Panzer Grenadier Regiment 902, set up a roadblock outside Argentan. "From the direction of the American line came an ambulance driving towards us," he remembered. "The driver was obviously lost. When he noticed that he was behind German lines, he slammed on the brakes." Dibbern went to the ambulance. "The driver's face was completely white. He had wounded men he was responsible for. But we told him, 'Back out of here and get going. We don't attack the Red Cross.' He quickly disappeared."
An hour or so later, "here comes another Red Cross truck. It pulls up right in front of us. The driver got out, opened the back, and took out a crate. He set it down on the street and drove away. We feared a bomb, but nothing happened. We opened the box and it was filled with Chesterfield cigarettes."
ON AUGUST 20, at Chambois, the linkup of the Americans and Polish troops finally occurred. Captain Laughlin Waters recorded that over the next couple of days "the Germans attacked with all of the fury they could bring to bear, fuelled by their desperation to escape." Others were trying to surrender, many of them successfully-too many, in fact. Neither the Poles nor the Americans had the facilities to deal with them. Waters established a POW pen in Chambois. but it was badly overcrowded.
On August 23 the SHAEF G-2 summary declared, "The enemy in the West has had it. Two and a half months of bitter fighting have brought the end of the war in Europe within sight, almost within reach." Two days later American forces liberated Paris. General Charles de Gaulle was already there, along with elements of the French 2nd Armoured Division. Paris was overrun by reporters, led by Ernest Hemingway, and over the next few days had one of the great parties of the war.
THE BATTLE of Normandy had lasted seventy-five days. It cost the Allies 209,672 casualties, 39,976 dead. Two thirds of the losses were American. It cost the Germans around 450,000 men, 240,000 of them killed or wounded.
But between 20,000 and 40,000 Wehrmacht and SS soldiers got out. They had but a single thought: get home. Home meant Germany, prepared defensive positions in the Siegfried Line, fresh supplies, reinforcements. They had taken a terrible pounding, but they were not so sure as SHAEF G-2 that they had "had it."
Chapter Four
To the Siegfried Line: August 26-September 30, 1944
THE LAST WEEK of August and the first week of September, 1944, were among the most dramatic of the war. The Allied Expeditionary Force (AEF) swept through France, covering in hours ground that had taken months, years, really, to take in World War I. The sons of the soldiers of the Great War crossed rivers and liberated towns whose names resonated with the Tommies and doughboys-the Marne, the Somme, Ypres, Verdun.
Romania surrendered to the Soviets, then declared war on Germany. Finland signed a truce with the Soviet Union. Bulgaria tried to surrender. The Germans pulled out of Greece. The Red Army's summer offensive liberated Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, eastern Poland, and reached Yugoslavia's eastern border. It destroyed twelve German divisions and inflicted 700,000 casualties.
American and French troops had landed in the south of France on August 15 and were driving up the Rhone Valley against scant opposition (they called it the Champagne Campaign). American reinforcements continued to come from England, enough for the creation of yet another army, the US Ninth, commanded by Lieutenant General William Simpson. British, Polish, and American paratroopers five divisions strong-in England were organized into the First Allied Airborne Army and constituted a highly mobile reserve capable of striking wherever and whenever needed.