Wolfert: Nazi divisions demoralized as American trap closes
Germans travel in disjointed units trying to hook up with main force
By Ira Wolfert
With U.S. forces, south of Coutances, France – (July 128, delayed)
A string 18 miles long has been drawn around the throats of remnants of perhaps seven German divisions trapped in a triangle whose southernmost point was below Notre-Dame-de-Cenilly when I left the front after 6 o’clock tonight. This string is expected to be the hangman’s rope in another few hours. U.S. armored forces fought through these 18 miles of Germans in exactly 56 hours, once they were shaken loose by the infantry.
The fighting is going on sporadically almost all along the roads running southwest from Canisy to the sea. And the fighting indicates demoralization among the German divisions caught in the triangle
Broken from divisions
The Germans are traveling in disjointed units, some equipped with mobile artillery and mortars and others being merely medical companies or rifle platoons. They seemed to have been broken from their divisions and to be wandering generally in a southeast direction from Coutances trying to join up with the main German forces in the southeastern corner of the Cherbourg Peninsula. The dead of seven German divisions was identified by their insignia in the fighting along the edges of the triangle today.
The only fighting I saw today came when bands of Germans tried to sneak across our line running southwest of Canisy. They were an odd mixture of troops, but were commanded by canny Nazi officers who waited until our column, rumbling past them, offered a soft spot; then they hir with all they had to break through and scoot southeast to safety.
Lie in hiding
These bands of desperate, very frightened men lay in hiding until a segment of our column arrived which offered them the chance of local superiority, then they turned loose their mortars, mobile artillery, machine guns and whatever else they had and tried to force their way through.
As a result, the part of the front I toured, making a circle within view of twin church spires that dominate Coutances, was a series of briefly flaring hotspots, with large, tranquil spaces in between with nobody of lesser rank that of general exactly sure what lay to the right or left or ahead or behind.
The Germans are sharing this confusion. The demoralization of German troops was illustrated by one encounter when howitzers, moving up to support our armor, were attacked by the Germans in force. Rifle fire killed an American riding on the top of a truck and as he fell sideways to the ground Nazi machine guns opened up.
Wreck two tanks
Lt. John Staples of Ardmore, Pennsylvania, led a reconnaissance party down a county lane, saw a German suddenly pop up from behind a hedge and open fire on his party with a bazooka. More Germans with bazookas then opened up, destroying two or three Yank tanks in the party and clipping the rack off the back of the third tank; it wads very fine and very firm-nerved shooting. Lt. Staples cut loose with all his machine guns, while those who could dismount from their vehicles and deployed as infantry and destroyed the bazooka positions.
Then German mortars and machine guns started their brisk fire. Our artillerymen took up rifles and ducked through the fields looking for the Nazis. Florentino Castillo of Hatch, New Mexico; Clayton Long of Niles, Michigan, and Edgar Hess of St. Mary’s West Virginia, were looking along cautiously together. Pvt. Castillo saw a little white dog frisking down the road from a chateau, then saw a German officer strolling casually along behind it, as if out for an afternoon walk. He and the German pointed rifles at each other simultaneously, by Pvt. Castillo shot first and the German was dead before he could pull the trigger, one bullet piercing his heart and two going in his stomach.
Before the echo of Pvt. Castillo’s shots died out, 11 Nazi soldiers climbed out of holes on the chateau grounds and came forward waving upraised arms and shouting, “Kamerad!” They were all that were left of a platoon that had been forced to continue the fighting by the officer holding a gun to their backs. When the officer was killed, they jumped at the chance to surrender.
Nazis demoralized
These German troops were demoralized completely. When I asked one of them what effect the bombing of July 25 had on him, he began to cry. He cried in a broken, helpless fashion, and it was impossible for him to answer my question with words.
For several hours after that, the area was quiet. Then suddenly the firing began again with American cars having to run a gantlet of bullets on high ground just beyond the village. Among the cars manning the gantlet was one bearing senior officers who huddled down low in their jeep and let the bullets clip the hedges alongside them as they passed about their duties. Two lieutenants in a car with a senior officer took up rifles and wanted to go after the German machine guns, and they had to be shouted down by the senior officer.
The officer told me after he finished shouting:
I know exactly how they feel. They had to shout me back to my maps when I took up a Tommy gun to chase some Heinies this morning.
The Luftwaffe made a brief appearance overhead while I was talking with the officer. Eighteen Messerschmitts started strafing but four of our Thunderbolts got on their tails and chased them out of sight. I saw one Messerschmitt nose-diving toward the earth from a thousand feet, with glycol streaming from it.