The Bitter Road to Freedom: The Human Cost of Allied Victory in World War II Europe by William I. Hitchcock Page A
Authors: William I. Hitchcock
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the damage could not have been greater.” 32 Lisieux had suffered the second-highest death toll in Calvados after Caen: 781 killed. “ We traveled by jeep through Tilly-sur-
Seulles,” recalled another soldier, “now not so much a village as a scrap heap with every house and shop shattered.” The once well-tended land was filled with “orchard trees broken, blackened and stripped of foli- age, the ground blasted, buildings razed and carcasses of horses and cows lying in the open, grossly inflated, putrescent, and beset by swarms of blood-avid flies, feeding on their exposed flesh and tender parts.” In vil- lage after village, “roofs gape, houses lie in amorphous heaps and church spires, reduced to skeletal shapes, stand out like interrogation marks above surrounding debris. Streets are choked until bulldozers force a track through them, shoveling the rubble aside, temporarily blocking entrances to alleys and side streets.” Villers- Bocage “appeared dead, mutilated and smothered, a gigantic sightless rubble heap so confounded by dev- astation as to suggest an Apocalypse.” The small ham- let of Aunay-sur- Odon, where 145 people—9 percent of the population—had been killed by Allied bombing, had “no civilized shape,” and was “little more than a succession of crumpled ruins.” 33 Sgt. R. T. Greenwood saw only “a barren wilderness of destruction [that] resembles the battlefields of the last war. A few gaunt trees standing up, leafless, lifeless.” 34
A British soldier lends a helping hand to an elderly resi- dent in the ruins of Caen II. Imperial War Museum
An American jeep snakes through the remains of Saint- Lô, which was obliterated during the assault of July
11-18, 1944. U.S. National Archives
For sheer carnage, nothing matched the twenty-mile stretch of ground known as the Falaise pocket in which
the retreating Germans had been nearly encircled. Between Falaise and Argentan, the RAF’s murderous Typhoon fighter-bombers, with rocket projectiles and machine guns, had laid waste to the penned-in Ger- mans. The town of Falaise itself was churned into rub- ble: of 1,637 homes in the town, 950 were destroyed. 35 A few miles to the southeast, between Guêprei and Villedieu, K. W. Morris saw “the terrible results of the Allies’ saturation bombing and fierce fighting. The Ger- mans had suffered heavy casualties: thousands of pris- oners had been captured but many more lay dead in the fields, hedgerows, and woods.
Animals too had suffered. Cows, rigid and bloated, lay as they had fallen in the fields. Much of the German transport had been horse drawn. Dead horses still in their traces, sometimes with fearful injuries and intes- tines blown apart, blocked every road, the contents of their wagons strewn in the ditches. The stench of death was dreadful.” 36 Captain W. G. Caines passed through the same area where mass slaughters had taken place by Typhoon fighter bombers…. We traveled along one road and actually our vehicles traveled over the top of many hundreds of crushed German dead bodies and horses. Vehicles of all types of German transport lit- tered the whole area. I could never express here on this page or many others how that lot looked and stunk,
dead bodies were running over with maggots and flies, it was indeed a ghastly sight seeing these dead Nazis bursting in the blistering heat of the day. This road was about a mile and a half long, and never before had I smelled anything like it. 37
The nearby village of Chambois “stank of dead men and cattle,” recalled Lieutenant William Greene. “Our Typhoons and guns had wrought havoc all along the road which led through the smashed village…Ger- man dead were being buried. Stiffened corpses lay in the roadside fields, awaiting burial. Dead horses and cows cluttered up the farmyards. And down the road, unmoved by the carnage, three small girls wandered in their Sunday clothes. I thought of my own little girl at home and thanked God
Seulles,” recalled another soldier, “now not so much a village as a scrap heap with every house and shop shattered.” The once well-tended land was filled with “orchard trees broken, blackened and stripped of foli- age, the ground blasted, buildings razed and carcasses of horses and cows lying in the open, grossly inflated, putrescent, and beset by swarms of blood-avid flies, feeding on their exposed flesh and tender parts.” In vil- lage after village, “roofs gape, houses lie in amorphous heaps and church spires, reduced to skeletal shapes, stand out like interrogation marks above surrounding debris. Streets are choked until bulldozers force a track through them, shoveling the rubble aside, temporarily blocking entrances to alleys and side streets.” Villers- Bocage “appeared dead, mutilated and smothered, a gigantic sightless rubble heap so confounded by dev- astation as to suggest an Apocalypse.” The small ham- let of Aunay-sur- Odon, where 145 people—9 percent of the population—had been killed by Allied bombing, had “no civilized shape,” and was “little more than a succession of crumpled ruins.” 33 Sgt. R. T. Greenwood saw only “a barren wilderness of destruction [that] resembles the battlefields of the last war. A few gaunt trees standing up, leafless, lifeless.” 34
A British soldier lends a helping hand to an elderly resi- dent in the ruins of Caen II. Imperial War Museum
An American jeep snakes through the remains of Saint- Lô, which was obliterated during the assault of July
11-18, 1944. U.S. National Archives
For sheer carnage, nothing matched the twenty-mile stretch of ground known as the Falaise pocket in which
the retreating Germans had been nearly encircled. Between Falaise and Argentan, the RAF’s murderous Typhoon fighter-bombers, with rocket projectiles and machine guns, had laid waste to the penned-in Ger- mans. The town of Falaise itself was churned into rub- ble: of 1,637 homes in the town, 950 were destroyed. 35 A few miles to the southeast, between Guêprei and Villedieu, K. W. Morris saw “the terrible results of the Allies’ saturation bombing and fierce fighting. The Ger- mans had suffered heavy casualties: thousands of pris- oners had been captured but many more lay dead in the fields, hedgerows, and woods.
Animals too had suffered. Cows, rigid and bloated, lay as they had fallen in the fields. Much of the German transport had been horse drawn. Dead horses still in their traces, sometimes with fearful injuries and intes- tines blown apart, blocked every road, the contents of their wagons strewn in the ditches. The stench of death was dreadful.” 36 Captain W. G. Caines passed through the same area where mass slaughters had taken place by Typhoon fighter bombers…. We traveled along one road and actually our vehicles traveled over the top of many hundreds of crushed German dead bodies and horses. Vehicles of all types of German transport lit- tered the whole area. I could never express here on this page or many others how that lot looked and stunk,
dead bodies were running over with maggots and flies, it was indeed a ghastly sight seeing these dead Nazis bursting in the blistering heat of the day. This road was about a mile and a half long, and never before had I smelled anything like it. 37
The nearby village of Chambois “stank of dead men and cattle,” recalled Lieutenant William Greene. “Our Typhoons and guns had wrought havoc all along the road which led through the smashed village…Ger- man dead were being buried. Stiffened corpses lay in the roadside fields, awaiting burial. Dead horses and cows cluttered up the farmyards. And down the road, unmoved by the carnage, three small girls wandered in their Sunday clothes. I thought of my own little girl at home and thanked God
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