Howard learned a lesson from the experience. He got regular, if short, periods of sleep for himself, and he saw to it that the platoon leaders arranged regular rest periods for everyone in turn, especially after attack or shell fire. Another manifestation of the pressure was some self-inflicted wounds, shots through the leg or foot 'usually said to have occurred when cleaning weapons. They were very difficult to prove.' Howard found that keeping up morale when casualties are heavy is always difficult and he did what he could. 'Good discipline and esprit de corps goes a long way towards overcoming it, but I found keeping the men well occupied was as good a cure as any. Active aggressive patrolling, sniping parties, marches behind the line and above all keep everyone in the picture. Glean all you can from HQ by way of information about how the battle is going and have regular meetings with the men to pass it on.'
Howard went to HQ not only to find out what was going on, but to do all those little things a good company commander does. He made certain there were plenty of cigarettes, for example, with an extra supply after a battle or a shelling. He also ensured the prompt arrival and distribution of the mail ('Essential for maintaining good morale'), sending runners back to HQ for the mail if he thought he could save a few minutes. Getting fresh bread was another morale-booster, though the first shipment did not arrive until about D plus 25. 'I was astounded over how much we longed for it.'
Cleaning weapons became almost an obsession. First thing in the morning, after the dawn stand to and breakfast, everything came out - rifles, machine-guns, Piats, mortars, grenades, ammunition - and everything was cleaned, oiled and inspected. Many of the men had a Schmeisser by this time.
During this period, Howard says, 'one thing I could never get used to were the smells of battle. Worst of these was dead and putrefying bodies. The men, friend and foe, were buried, but there was dead livestock everywhere just rotting away. In the middle of summer it was hell. At one chateau a stable full of wonderful racehorses was caught in a burning building. The appalling smell from that place spread over a very wide area, and it was sickening. We eventually dealt with it by loads of lime, but you can imagine the flies that pyre attracted.'
But the biggest morale problem of all was a nagging question in every man's mind: 'Why are we being wasted like this? Surely there must be other bridges between here and Berlin that will have to be captured intact.'
It is indeed a mystery why the War Office squandered D Company, a unique group in the British army. Huge sums had been spent on its training, and its combination of training, skills, and hand-picked officers was unsurpassed.
Despite all this, the War Office sacrificed D Company to the German guns. Sweeney was wounded, Friday was wounded, Hooper was wounded - by August none of D Company's original officers were left, save Howard himself. All the sergeants and the sergeant-major were gone. Thornton had a leg wound and had been evacuated; so had Parr.
On D plus 11, Howard was wounded again, receiving shrapnel in his back. His driver took him back to an aid post where a surgeon removed it, and when he finished, the doctor told Howard to lie there for a while. Mortar rounds started coming in, and everybody ran for cover. Howard looked around. He was alone in the farmhouse operating-room. He jumped off the table, put on his shirt and battle smock, and went outside. Finding his driver taking shelter under the jeep, he told him, 'Let's get back to the company. It's quieter there than it is here.'
Howard's return to the front lines was followed by some confusion as to his whereabouts. All the documentation at the aid post showed that he had been evacuated to England, and as a result his mail was diverted to hospital there. The daily letters he had been getting from Joy suddenly stopped coming. This was the period when Vis and V2s were raining down on England and he was tortured with thoughts other death and the loss of his children. That experience, Howard says, 'nearly sent me round the bend'.
It was worse for Joy. She got a telegram from the War Office which was supposed to read, 'Your husband has suffered a mortar wound and is in hospital'. In fact it read, 'Your husband has suffered a mortal wound and is in hospital'. A frantic Joy was told that he was in such-and-such hospital. She called there and was told he never arrived. No one knew where he was. For two weeks before the matter was worked out, and they started receiving letters from each other again, John and Joy suffered terribly.
Sergeant Hickman was fighting across from D Company once again. He gives a description of what it was like from the German point of view:
There was man-to-man fighting, fighting in the rubble along the streets. You didn't know who was running in front of you and who was running behind you, you couldn't recognise anything and everybody ran. In the daytime we took position, and night we moved either to the left, to the right, back. I had a map case in my belt. The map made no difference to me because I didn't know where I was. So you were moved two kilometres to the left, two kilometres to the right, three kilometres forwards, or back again. Every day you counted your men, one section had two men left, another three. I was a platoon commander with five men to command.
On September 2, while trying to swim the Orne River, Hickman was wounded, captured, interrogated, and sent on to a POW camp in England.
Von Luck was also having a bad time. Every two or three days he would launch armoured attacks, but every time his tanks moved, observers in balloons would spot him, radio to the big ships offshore and the planes overhead, and down would come naval gunfire and strafing Spitfires.
On July 18, there was the biggest bombardment von Luck ever experienced, from bombers, naval warships, and artillery. This was part of operation Goodwood, designed to break through the German lines, capture Caen, and drive on towards Paris. As the barrage moved past him, von Luck set out for the front on his motorcycle. He arrived at a battery of smoking 88mm guns pointing skyward, commanded by a Luftwaffe major. Off to his right, less than a kilometre away, von Luck could see twenty-five British tanks moving forward. He pointed them out to the battery commander and said, 'Major, depress your guns and kill those tanks'. The major refused. He said he was a Luftwaffe officer, and his target was bombers, not tanks. Von Luck repeated his order. Same response.
Von Luck pulled his pistol, pointed it between the major's eyes at a six-inch range, and said, 'Major, in one minute you are either a dead man or you will have won a medal'. The major depressed his guns, started shooting, and within minutes had crippled twenty-five British tanks. Shortly thereafter, Monty called off operation Goodwood.
In late August, 21st Panzer Division was pulled out of the Normandy battle. Von Luck and his men were sent over to the Rhone Valley to meet the threat of the invading forces in southern France.
At the end of August the British broke through and had the Germans on the run. D Company was part of the pursuit. It reached a village near the Seine, where Howard established his headquarters in a school and received the schoolmaster. The Frenchman said he wanted to show some appreciation for being liberated. 'But I've got nothing of any value that I can give you', he confessed to Howard. 'The Germans took everything of value before they left, in prams and God knows what, but the one thing I can give you is my daughter.'