21st Army Group in Normandy: Towards a New Balance Sheet

The purpose of this article is to offer further evidence in support of the view that the combat performance of the Anglo-Canadian armies in Normandy has been greatly underrated and the effectiveness of the German forces vastly overrated. This argument informs my study of the Canadians in Normandy, published under the title Fields of Fire, but the intention here is to consider questions about combat between British and German units in Normandy

On the Kimmeridgian (Jurassic) succession of the Normandy coast, northern France

Kimmeridgian rocks crop out on the Normandy coast north and south of the Seine Estuary at Le Havre in a series of small foreshore and cliff exposures separated by beach deposits and landslips. A total thickness of about 45 m of richly fossiliferous strata is exposed, ranging from the base of the Baylei Zone to the middle part of the Eudoxus Zone. The sections are mostly unprotected by sea-defence works and are subject to rapid marine erosion and renewal. Taken together, the Normandy exposures currently provide a more complete section through the low and middle parts of the Kimmeridgian Stage than any natural English section, including those of the Dorset type area. Descriptions and a stratigraphical interpretation of the Normandy sections are presented that enable the faunal collections to be placed in their regional chronostratigraphical context. The Kimmeridgian succession at outcrop on the Normandy coast contains numerous sedimentary breaks marked by erosion, hardground and omission surfaces. Some of these are disconformities that give rise to rapid lateral variations in the succession: biostratigraphical studies need, therefore, to be carried out with particular care

The 1st Polish Armoured Division in Normandy

Editor’s note: The 1st Polish Armoured Division fought side-by-side with the Canadians during the Normandy Campaign. The Division was formed in England in early 1942 mainly from Poles who had fled the German occupation of their country in 1939. On 30 July 1944 the Division arrived in Normandy where it was placed under the command of Lieutenant-General Guy Simonds’ 2nd Canadian Corps. Its first introduction to battle came on 7 August during the battles south of Caen. The report reproduced below constitutes the afteraction report of the 1st Polish Armoured Division for it operations in Normandy. This report forms the basis of many accounts of the Division and deserves to be read in its original, unedited form

To the Last Canadian?: Casualties in the 21st Army Group

In Normandy, Canadian infantry divisions suffered a higher rate of casualties than British divisions engaged in similar operations. These figures have been used by some historians to prove Canadian failure on the battlefield. However, by using statistics gathered by operational research scientists during the war, this article shows that the “considerably heavier casualties” suffered by the Canadians in Normandy and beyond were the product of a greater number of days in close combat with the enemy, not evidence of operational inexperience or tactical failure

Stout Hearts: The British and Canadians in Normandy, 1944 (Book Review) by Ben Kite

Review of Stout Hearts: The British and Canadians in Normandy, 1944. Ben Kite. Solihull, UK: Helion and Company, 2014. Pp. 488

Fish zoning of some watercourses in Normandy [Translation from: Verhandlungen der Internationalen Vereinigung fuer Theoretische und Angewandte Limnologie 18, 1135-1146, 1972]

The identification of fish zones in western and central Europe has been the objective some major studies. This paper concerns a stream in Normandy specially studied by the author in 1969 and 1970 in the framework of a study on the role of the mean temperature in fish zoning. The paper propounds the comparative study of the morphodynamic and occasionally physico-chemical characteristics, as well as the results of previous sampling by electric fishing of the fish populations of two other streams of the higher Cretaceous layer and supplied by ”chalky” water in Normandy and Picardy