Extracts 'Eye Witness D-Day'

Thanks for the feedback Guys,

Its all that there is from Leutnant Poppel's diary, but there are quite a few other unrelated German accounts in the book.

Gerfreiter Werner Kortenhaus, 21st Panzer Division:
'I can paint you a strange picture which stays with me still. On 28 June we mounted an attack west of Caen and succeeded in getting through the British line. The battle lasted a very long time, from 10 in the morning until 5 in the afternoon, but around midday there was a lull in the battle.

Suddenly the background was filled with dance music. Some infantrymen had gone and played with an English radio set, and dance music had come on, filling the air. It was a little unusual.

One day, right at the beginning of the invasion, we were standing around our tanks quietly smoking cigarettes, with no sound of battle at all, when out of the blue a light English tank came shooting out from our right, out of some woods, came towards us, went between some tanks and crashed into a tree. Nobody had fired because we were taken completely by surprise. Two English soldiers got out of the tank, they were wounded and gave themselves up. I imagine that had panicked because they had some lost their way and suddenly found them found themselves in the middle of so many tanks and then made a bad reaction.

So of course we were interested to have a look inside an English tank, and inside I found a large thermos flask. My crew were very pleased because it was full of delicious hot coffee.

A few days later this thermos flask slipped out of my hands and broke - and I was really sworn at by the crew. The wireless operator always had to look after the provisions and the thermos flask was a real prize. When I broke it I was much told off.'

Not a lot of tactical information in this account but I still like to read this type of simple every day detail. It somehow makes the story of Normandy that bit more human.

Regards,

Pat

 

Niels, I should have started Kortenhaus's accounts in the correct order.

This is an editor's note just prior to the first account by this man:

'Gefreiter Werner Kortenhaus of the 21st Panzer Division stared into the Normandy night above him. On patrol north of Falaise he and his four comrades had become alarmed at the sounds of aircraft flying overhead. Usually aircraft passed high above them but these were flying low, much lower than usual, then zooming up. They suspected that agents or supplies were being dropped for the French Resistance and decided to investigate. They found nothing, but still they could hear aircraft. Worried, Korttenhaus and his patrol turned back to their tank harbour.'

Gefreiter Werner Kortenhaus, 21st Panzer Division [p73-74]
'As we got close to the village where out tanks were dug in, the moonlight was coming through the clouds, and we could see that the crews were at their tanks. This was unusual because most of them would normally have been asleep. 'What's going on?' I asked. It occurred to me that it might be some sort of night exercise.

They sais, 'No, it's an alarm.' This was about 00.45. As the others prepared the tank, I remembered that my laundry was still with the French woman who did our washing. I woke her and said, 'I need my clothes straight away.' She said, 'But they're still wet.' I said, 'Imust have them anyway,' and paid for them and ran to my tank.'

There follows a second editor's note:

'As Kortenhaus hurried back to his tank, the first of the Allied airborne troops, parachutists and a small glider force from the British 6th Airborne Division, had already landed near the Orne River. As the minutes passed more and more British parachutists decended on Normandy, like so much confetti in the night. Nearly 5000 of them had landed by 1am.'

Regards,

Pat

 

Another extract from Kortenhaus:

Gefreiter Werner Kortenhaus, 21st Panzer Division [p92]
'I would say we were ready to march at 2 a.m. at the latest. As well as the earlier alarm, news of an airborne landing at Caen had meanwhile come through on the telephone, and we were ready to go. The engines of the tanks were running, but we didn't receive any marching orders. We thought 'If we have to march, let's go now while it's dark and the enemy planes can't see us.'

We waited for orders, and we waited. Just stood there, inactive by our tanks. We couldn't understand why we weren't getting any orders at all'

and...

Gefreiter Werner Kortenhaus, 21st Panzer Division [p146]
'The long road from Falaise to Caen rises to a hill where one can suddenly get a view over Caen, and as we drove over this hill we got a shock because the city of Caen was burning. I had never seen the city before, never been there at all, and all I could see was a huge black cloud over Caen, as though oil had been burnt. At that point, I realized for the first time that I was at war.

As we got closer to Caen our tanks had difficulty getting through the city because the streets were covered with rubble. So we lost a lot of time while some tanks went west around the city and others went east.'

Niels, do we know where the 21st Panzer 'tank harbour' was in the Falaise area?

Thanks,

Pat

 

Thanks for the clarification and addition information Guys,

I'll be digging into the accounts again later.

Pat

 

These two accounts show the devastating effect of Allied air power on the attempts by German armoured units to move up to the invasion area by road. No dates are given but from the location in book - 'D-Day, 6th June 1944', the dates must be from the 6th or shortly thereafter.

General Fritz Bayerlain, Panzer Lehr [p.145-146]
'I was driving in front of the middle column with two staff cars and two headquarters signal vans along the Alencon-Argentan-Falaise road. We had only got to Beaumont sur Sarthe when the first fighter-bomber attack forced us to take cover. For once we were lucky. But the columns were getting further apart all the time.

Since Army had ordered radio silence, we had to maintain contact by dispatch riders. As if radio silence could have stopped the fighter-bombers and reconnaissance planes from spotting us! All it did was prevent division staff from forming a picture of the state of the advance - if it was moving smoothly or whether there were hold-ups and losses, and how far the spearheads had got.

I was forever sending officers or else seeking out my units myself.

We were moving along all five routes of advance. Naturally our move had been spotted by enemy air-reconnaissance. And before long the fighter-bombers were hovering above the roads, smashing cross-roads, villages, and towns along our line of advance, and pouncing on the long columns of vehicles.'

Much the same fate was befalling the 12th SS Panzer...

Brigadefuhrer Kurt Meyer, 12th SS Panzer Division, aged 33 [p.146]:
'A chain of Spitfires attacks the last section of the 15th Company. Missiles and cannon reap a devilish harvest. The section is travelling through a narrow pass; it is impossible to get away. An elderly French woman is coming towards us screaming 'Murder, Murder!' An infantryman lies on the street. A stream of blood comes out of his throat - his artery has been shot through. He dies in our arms.

The munition of an amphibious vehicle explodes into the air - high tongues of flame shoot up. The vehicles explodes into pieces.'

Anyone able to suggest a location for this last account?

Thanks,

Pat