Sword of Fire

Aerial photo of Sword. Lebisey is the circle in the far distance. Hermanville is on the far right. The photo doesn’t reveal the rolling nature of the terrain, of the ridges and valleys.

X Company, 2nd KSLI

Sergeant-Major J.R. Roberts

We were all right until we came to Biéville, as we went round the bend in the road there was a good deal of opposition from what we assumed was the church spire. A man in X Company fired at the snipers and said, ‘Oh, I’ve got one.’ He’d knocked one off. Shortly afterwards, he was crouched behind a stone wall, when a German hopped a grenade over the wall and blew him up. Before we could do anything, the German had just disappeared amongst the houses.

On to Caen / Y Company, 2nd KSLI

While W and X companies cleared Beuville and Biéville, Major P.C. Steel led Y Company on toward Caen.

It was an attack planned for thousands of men and squadrons of tanks. Instead about 100 soldiers went toward their fate.

Biéville / The Crossfire of War

Normandy was a combat zone and French men, women, and children were caught in the crossfire. In a letter describing the invasion, Madame Bouriez (resident of Biéville) gave an account of the day that began with falling bombs.

“The noise was atrocious,” she wrote, “making the house tremble in such a way that none of us slept at all. Finally, around 5 am, the bombs started landing on Biéville. We went down into the cellar.

“The bravest ventured out for news. I couldn’t stop Marcel from going over to Lébisey which had been flattened from the bombing, no sooner was he back than Philippe, who was on emergency rescue duty, went over to Caen. While he was going through Lébisey some bombs landed right behind him on the factory and the road killing people.

“Finally both my sons came back around noon. The afternoon was pretty bad, and we heard the bombing of Caen.

“The Boche had to beat a retreat through the village, and they told us with dread that the Tommies were on their heels. People ran about the village and the swamps between machine gun and rifle fire and the horrendous noise of the big guns off shore. Finally, a woman from the village came in yelling, ‘They’re here! I held their hands; they’re all black!’ I thought that the emotional stress had affected her, but she was right. During a clear spell, I was in the library when I saw three ‘red skin’ types, their faces painted black and scary, coming up through the park from the swamp, armed with sub machine guns and with nets on their helmets.

“The first of them having seen me, aimed his gun at me. I waved to him and explained, I’m not sure how, that the house was full of women and children. Right away, from every direction, black faced and exhausted soldiers appeared. Everyone went wild.”

Panzer attack / 4:00 p.m.

There was one armored force stationed near Caen, the 21st Panzer Division. The division had been up and ready at 1:30 a.m. when Allied paratroopers began to land. Soldiers waited in place for more than three and a half hours while officers tried to get authorization to attack. By the time tanks were moving, the Allied bombardment began. When it was quiet, the tanks were hit from the sky by the Royal Air Force.

The Panzer division stopped and started, received orders and counter-orders, went one way and then another throughout the morning and early afternoon. By 4:00 p.m., ninety German tanks and two infantry battalions of the 21st Panzer Division had assembled north of Caen. A general made a fiery speech. “If you don’t throw the British into the sea,” he warned, “the war will be lost!”

With the fate of Nazi Germany riding with them, the first group of Panzers charged off.

Major Steel and Y Company neared the quiet village of Lébisey. Then monsters roared out of the woods.

The soldiers dropped to the ground as the enemy charged past some distance away. The reconnaissance troop radioed a warning: forty enemy tanks, moving very fast.

Outside Biéville, Able Squadron of the Staffordshire tanks arrived just in time to take up battle positions on the ridge. So did Sergeant Walker and the big anti-tank guns of the KSLI.

Corporal Robert Littlar saw the anti-tank guns and said to a friend, “Trouble coming up, mate!”

The tanks’ wireless crackled with the warning, and tank commanders shouted from the open turrets: “Nasties are coming!”

Inside a Staffordshire tank, Sergeant Billings may have been first to spot the enemy. He shouted the range to the gunner and an armor piercing shell banged to its target. A German tank exploded. All the Staffordshire tanks and KSLI guns were firing. Another Panzer exploded. The German charge faltered. The Germans were stunned to meet the British so far inland. Then two more Panzers were hit by KSLI anti-tank guns.

The Germans returned fire but couldn’t lift their gun barrels high enough to blast the British gunners. Only one Panzer shell hit home. An anti-tank gun blew up, and flying metal ripped through Sergeant Walker.

Shells landed in Biéville. Two farmhouses were destroyed. A man who worked for the Bouriez family, René Boulanger, tried to free tethered horses and was killed.

The German tanks veered off. The Staffordshire tanks galloped after them. The Panzers maneuvered so the British would face into the afternoon sun. Then the Germans charged, but the glaring sun didn’t help. Sergeant Joyce’s tank gunner fired from a range of six hundred yards. The gunner hit his target and an enemy tank was burning. Soon two more were hit as well.

The Panzers swung off again and raced for Périers and the high ground above Hermanville.

As German tanks reached Périers, the guns of the Staffordshires were waiting on the ridge. Both sides opened fire. Three enemy tanks were hit. Panzers trying to join the fight were blasted from the air. British Typhoons dive-bombed and shot their powerful cannon, and tanks went up in flames.     

But some German tanks made it to the beach. There was a gap between Juno and Sword and that’s where the tanks escaped. The Panzer soldiers made contact with the German infantry. There was now a chance for victory. If enough force were gathered, the wedge between Sword and Juno could tear the invasion apart.

The Germans waited for more tanks to pass the gauntlet of British guns.

Brave men / Y Company, 2nd KSLI

6:00 p.m.

Major Steel’s country had been at war four hard years, but this was his first day in the fight. He loved his country and its army. As a British officer he was taught to be worthy of the name. An officer must be the bravest man in the army, he must never duck under fire or show fear, and he must always be where the bullets were thickest. Steel and his men entered Lébisey woods.

A German machine gun post was ahead. No one can know what Major Steel thought as he ran forward. Maybe he was thinking of England, of winning the war. Maybe he was thinking of his men and protecting them with his courage. Steel ran forward and machine gun bullets sliced through him  like a scythe.

It would later be said that no top commander really expected Caen to be captured on D-Day. Commanders had meant it as a “far star” for men to try and reach. Major Steel died reaching for that star. His men fell back to Biéville.

Decision on D-Day

More tanks charged out of Lébisey wood. A Staffordshire tank was hit and Lieutenant Winterhalder was killed. Close to Biéville, a Panzer with an open top came clanking toward X Company’s positions. Norman Millward remembered, “The order came out to everyone, ‘Let it go, let it go through.’ One of our young soldiers was on guard and can’t have heard. He just got up, and put his hand up to say, ‘Stop!’. Jerry just opened up on him, and that was the end of him.”

Meanwhile, on the wedge between Juno and Sword, the German Panzers still waited.

Then they looked up.

9:00 p.m.

Two hundred and fifty gliders filled the sky. The British were overjoyed. The Panzers panicked. They were afraid of being encircled and cut off from the rest of the division.

The German armor on the coast retreated and ran into the Canadians. There were many confusing skirmishes as tanks, armored half tracks, and infantry tried to find a weak spot in the line. In one encounter, a platoon of Chauds was wiped out. In another, the Winnipegs took 19 German prisoners. Despite being bone-tired and facing an enemy who knew the terrain, the Canadian line could not be broken.

The invasion was ashore and would never be thrown back.

10:00 p.m. / Périers

On Périers ridge, a woman named Marie-Louise Omont left her shelter. The sound of gunfire was more distant. She saw farm animals killed by artillery and two German soldiers cautiously moving along the pasture wall. They looked, the French woman wrote, “lost, disoriented, sad.” She told them they must still have friends where the guns were firing. As they left, she wondered, “What will be their fate? How many more of them are still in the area, hiding and watching?”

Nearby, British soldiers carried the bodies of three men to a meadow. They were placed beside other dead soldiers from the signal corps and artillery regiments.

Grave registration units would identify and bury them where they lay.  Telegrams of condolence and appreciation for the ultimate sacrifice in war would be sent to the families. Later, the soldiers would be disinterred and laid to rest in one of seventeen British cemeteries in Normandy.

Biéville

The KSLI soldiers dug slit-trenches in a farmer’s field. Everyone was on edge after the German attack. The soldiers could hear the enemy moving, fortifying their positions in Lébisey. The Germans might attack again at any time with ground troops. Lieutenant Rees, Sergeant Davies, and Corporal Littlar were sent off to patrol.

They returned after dark. A man on sentry duty heard them approach. He called out the password and didn’t hear an answer. Sergeant-Major Roberts heard the lieutenant yell, “Don’t shoot!” as the sentries opened fire. Only Corporal Littlar survived.

Lieutenant Harry Jones walked alongside a farmhouse, checking on his platoon’s slit trenches. Soldiers had broken out their 24-hour ration pack: cubes of meat, a tin of soup, biscuits, oatmeal, chocolates, tea, sugar, sweets, and toilet paper.

Something caught the lieutenant’s eye. It was the KSLI anti-tank gun destroyed in the battle. On the ruined gun track was Sergeant Walker’s arm, severed above the elbow.

Jones suddenly felt close to losing his mind. He turned and walked past the farmhouse. There he saw a villager, Madame Barette, a nurse trained in the First World War, saving the lives of the wounded.

Lieutenant Jones kept going on.