Fifth Brigade at Verrieres Ridge

The Fifth Canadian Infantry Brigade arrived in France on 16 July 1944 during the worst days of the battle of Normandy. The Allies had expected heavy losses on the D-Day beaches and then, once through the Atlantic Wall, lighter casualties in a war of rapid movement. The opposite had happened. The coastal defences had been quickly breached, but then there were only slow movement and horrendous casualties. In one month more than 40,000 U.S. troops were killed, wounded or missing, while almost 38,000 British and Canadian troops shared the same fate. The Allied air forces enjoyed total air superiority over the battlefield, but in June alone the cost was 6,200 aircrew. Soldiers on both sides were beginning to say that it was 1914–1918 all over again—a static battle of attrition with gains measured in yards and thousands of dead

General Simonds Speaks: Canadian Battle Doctrine in Normandy

On the afternoon of 11 July 1944, a Canadian Corps HQ once again became operational on the soil of France. Lieutenant-General Guy Granville Simonds assumed responsibility for 8,000 yards of front in the Caen sector. There was little time or inclination to mark this event or link it with the memory of the vaunted Canadian Corps of World War 1 fame—there was too much to be done. Elements of the newly-arrived 2nd Canadian Infantry Division would take over part of the line and acquire some badly needed experience. Plans for the Corps’ role in Operation “Goodwood” had to be elaborated while Simonds met with his Divisional and Brigade commanders. The following documents are reproduced from the War Diaries of the 2nd Field Historical Section, July 1944 (National Archives of Canada RG24 Volume 17506). Major A.T, Sesia, who commanded the unit, tried to record Simonds’ words in the first extract, but settled on a summary of the General’s views in subsequent reports

Counter-Mortar Operational Research in the 21 Army Group

The campaign in Northwest Europe has been the subject of thousands of books and articles, including a number based on careful documentary research. But even the best accounts pay insufficient attention to the German weapons systems that inflicted the majority of Allied casualties. The mortar and the Nebelwerfer were chiefly responsible for the Wehrmacht’s temporary success in stablizing the front in Normandy, and for the balance of the war they played a major role in demoralizing and reducing the strength of Allied infantry units. The Allies did not foresee the central role these weapons would play in Northwest Europe and all three armies left counter-mortar operations to the initiative of individual divisional commanders. This paper focuses on the work of 21 Army Group’s No. 2 Operational Research Section (ORS) in developing a systematic and ultimately successful system of neutralizing enemy mortar and Nebelwerfer fire. Other attempts to deal with the problem were undertaken concurrently in the Mediterranean theatre and in First American Army but they are not examined here