German Defenses in the Bocage

Chapter 4 The Normandy Campaign in Close Combat

Standing between Bradley’s First Army and its goal of Saint-Lô are six German divisions of the Seventh Army, several of which are made up of units that have been shattered on D-Day. One of these, the 91st, has been reinforced by the Sixth Parachute Regiment, an élite volunteer group whose average age is 17. The 352nd Infantry, which opposed the Americans so fiercely at Omaha Beach, has been pulled back along the valley of the river Vire, which flows past Saint-Lô and between the two U.S. invasion beaches. The other German divisions in the area are the Third Parachute Division, the 353rd Division, and the 17th SS Panzergrenadier, although none of these is strong enough to mount an effective counterattack.

The best German defenses in Normandy weren’t put there by Rommel in 1944, but by Celtic farmers more than a thousand years earlier. The Norman hedgerow country, or bocage, consists of small, irregularly shaped fields, only about 200 by 400 meters, enclosed by ancient, overgrown hedges that grow from earthen mounds flanked by drainage ditches. The hedgerows reach a height of 15 feet, limiting visibility to one field at a time. They are impenetrably

dense—even for tanks. The hedgerows form a thousand square miles of tough patchwork terrain, connected by a network of dirt roads sunken far below field level by centuries of use. The towering hedges shade these roads, further decreasing visibility.

“We were flabbergasted by the bocage. . . . Our infantry had become paralyzed. It has never been adequately described how immobilized they were by the sound of small-arms fire among those hedges.”

General Elwood Quesada, U.S. IXth Tactical Air Command

“Make every field a fortress.”

Obergefreiter Paul Kalb,

352nd Infantry Division

200-400 yds

“Every field a fort” is a phrase that recurs throughout the literature of the Normandy Campaign. It sounds like poetic exaggeration, but it’s true. Allied troops advancing into a hedgerow enclosure are walking into an area soon to be covered by pre-planned fields of direct and indirect fire. Using the ideal camouflage and concealment of the bocage to their advantage, the Germans disperse small, heavily armed antipersonnel and antitank units through it, dug in at the bases of the hedgerows and nearly invisible to the oncoming Americans. Out of the silence a sudden, tearing burst of fire from an MG 42 machine gun, the chatter of a machine pistol, the detonation of a Panzerfaust antitank round, incoming mortar fire, or a single sniper shot is usually the first sign of the enemy’s presence. Heavy German machine guns are dug into

200-400 yds

Hedgerows

Heavy machine gun

Light machine gun

Direction of fire

German hedgerow defenses

Preplanned mortar targets

American infantry platoon

Antitank weapon

Microsoft Close Combat manual German Defenses in the Bocage, German hedgerow defenses

Models: Close Combat