America in WWII - (Page 32) TRAPwith a GAPby Brian John Murphy for the LXXXIV Corps, Combat Command B of the US 4th Armored Division drove for Avranches on the west coast. In the process they scattered the forward headquarters of the German 7th Army, obliging the commander, SS General Paul Hausser, to flee east on foot with his men toward the town of Mortain. Combat Command B took Avranches by nightfall and successfully defended it the following day against German troops who had been flushed out of Granville, a coastal town to the north. Combat Command A of the 4th Armored moved out from Avranches on July 31 and secured a bridgehead across the next obstacle to the south, the See River. Command A then pushed on to capture a vital crossing further south across the Selune River. The capture of that crossing set the stage for an explosion of American might into Brittany. Patton THE US THIRD ARMY WAS officially activated on August 1, 1944. The headquarters had actually been in Normandy for some time and the commander, Patton, had closely watched the Cobra events. Job one for Patton was to take the Brittany peninsula, as envisioned in the original Overlord plan. Patton designated his VIII Corps, under Major General Troy Middleton, for the task. Middleton acted swiftly. Outside of its port cities, Brittany was almost devoid of German forces, with the exception of Rennes, where the 4th Armored met stiff resistance. Spearheads of Patton’s westward advance had nonetheless traveled about 40 miles from their start point near Avranches by the end of August 2. On August 5, Middleton had cut off the entire Breton peninsula from the rest of the German 7th Army and had taken the lightly defended port city of Vannes on Quiberon Bay after a dash of 70 miles in seven hours. Hitler was displeased with the turn of events in France. Reading the maps carefully, however, he had an inspiration. The Americans were funneling troops and supplies to the Third Army through a narrow coastal corridor centered on Avranches. One way of looking at the situation was to say the Americans had split the Seventh Army and outflanked Army Group B. Or, Hitler reasoned, you could look at that narrow corridor as an opportunity. A determined westward offensive to capture Avranches would cut the US Third Army off from the rest of Bradley’s 12th Army Group and restore the German line in Normandy. Hitler ordered Kluge to mount an all-out offensive along the line of Mortain to Avranches. Kluge would much rather have begun extricating his army group from Normandy to make a stand on the other side of the Seine, but orders being orders, he arranged for the counterattack. The offensive, dubbed Operation Lüttich (German for Liège, France, where a similar tactic succeeded in World War I) began with elements of the XLVII Panzer Corps assembling at the start point east of Mortain on the night of August 6. The offensive began without artillery preparation just after midnight on the 7th. The Germans surprised the Americans, with the 2nd Panzer Division making the deepest westward penetration and the 2nd SS Panzer Division hitting the US First Army’s 30th Division, driving it out of Mortain. The Germans secured the town, but missed securing the heights just east of Mortain. About a battalion’s worth of Americans—elements of three rifle companies—took refuge on Hill 314 (so named because it rose 314 meters above sea level). Meanwhile the Germans recaptured Mortain and points west of the city. Bradley, who knew an attack was imminent thanks to decryptions of German messages, rushed armored reinforcements to halt the enemy tide. Due to determined American resistance, the enemy offensive petered out 16 miles short of its goal, Avranches. First light on the 7th treated the Americans DREAMLINE CARTOGRAPHY/ DAVID DEIS
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