大象传媒

In the early morning hours of August 8, 1944, all four tank squadrons of the British Columbia Regiment, 10th Armoured Brigade of the 4th Canadian Armoured Division were on the move up Route Nationale 158 in the second phase of Operation Totalize - the closing of the Falaise Gap.

With the mass of armoured vehicles and supply trucks on the road, progress was painfully slow and first light found the regiment in the undulating countryside northeast of Tilly-la-Compagne. It was a day spent on open ground between the totally rubbled villages of Ifs and Verrieres, subjected to intermittent artillery fire of the retreating, but still resisting German 7th Army. It was a day in which the officers, the NCOs and the Troopers had to endure the heat of a blazing August sun, imprisoned within the oven-like confines of their tanks. What also made their day one of misery complete was the insufferable stink of the rotting remains of hundreds of bodies, both that of the enemy and Canadian infantry scattered about in the dusty fields.

It was a mile or so outside Verrieres that the regiment moved to the head of the column to lead the advance towards Falaise. As the shadows of evening closed in on the 8th August, the BCR squadrons, in line, swung off the road, deployed into action formation and cut across the wide, open meadowlands a short distance north of the village of Cintheaux where each squadron formed a 'laager'. They formed their tanks into a defensive square with all guns pointing outwards. No one had to tell the crews that the enemy, in their grudging retreat, might very well be all around them, and they had to be prepared for any eventuality.

At 2:30 on the morning of the 9th, the tanks broke 'laager', formed up in column again and made off down the road in the characteristic din of tanks on the move. The grinding and squeaking of tracks against sprockets, along with the noise of engines revving up and throttling down, most certainly alerted the enemy to the coming attack.

The BCRs and the Algonquin Regiment who were in half-tracks, were on the move into their first major battle. Their orders were to occupy Hill 195 on the right hand side of the Caen/Falaise Highway. By 3:30am the tanks once again veered off the road and advanced across country shooting up isolated pockets of the enemy and anything else in their path that might offer opposition.

While one troop of the BCR kept to its line of advance, the main body signed its death-warrant when it mistook the lateral road running east from the hamlet of Estrees as being the Caen/Falaise Highway and headed for Hill 140 which they were sure was Hill 195, their objective. In the grey light of early dawn the squadrons found themselves in a field 400 by 200 yards in depth with an overwhelming force of enemy tanks and SS Grenadiers practically surrounding them.

It was soon to be a killing ground - a graveyard for the flesh and blood of the BCR. They were about to fight to their finish powerful elements of the 12th SS Panzer (Hitler Youth), many of them teenagers devoid of principle and compassion, as ruthless as any soldiers can be. They thought nothing of shooting in cold blood the over 150 mixed bag of prisoners from the North Nova Scotia Highlanders, 1st Hussars, Highland Light Infantry and other units taken in the close-quarter fighting at Authie and Buron two months earlier. Their 56 ton steel fortress Tiger tanks and the slightly smaller, though no less deadly Panther tanks were more than matches for the woefully under-gunned and thinner armoured Shermans. The grievous losses in tanks and crews who had to go into battle inside the Shermans was indeed bleak testimony to the short-sightedness of our much vaunted Allied industrial sector in building weapons to put into the hands of our troops that would enable them to take on the enemy's tanks with a better than even chance of survival.

But let's get back to the 2nd phase of the armoured thrust by the combined force of BCR tanks and Algonquin Regiment infantry. The column plunged through the darkness shot through with streams of tracers from their ball-mounted MGs and the sharp bangs of their 75s. This force was slowed here and there by pockets of determined groups of the enemy Panzergrenadiers manning wheeled anti-tank guns, shoulder-fired rocket-propelled panzerschrecks, and hip-fired panzer-fausts. By first light of the new day the BCR squadrons were deployed on the open ground less than a half mile east of Hill 140, close by the lateral road from Estrees-la-Campagne. And then the destruction began. Virtually surrounded by a heavily armed enemy who wasted no time in blasting away at the intruders with everything they had in their arsenal, the BCRs began taking the same kind of punishment the 1st Hussars suffered on the 11th of June in the fields between Authie and Buron.

Tank after tank took killing hits. Some became horrific cauldrons in which crews not mercifully killed at the moment the armour-piercing shot slammed through their hulls or turrets, screamed their way into eternity as their bodies were consumed in the flames. The hill shuddered and thundered to the drum-roll bark of tank cannons, the rending crash of mortar-bombs, and the non-stop crackle of small arms fire. It was a hell of hells on earth for the BCR tank crews and the Algonquin infantry. As the author of the Regimental History of the BCR, Douglas Harker, put it; 'From dawn to 8pm the battle raged with a fury that had no precedent.' It was a 'no-holds barred' battle of annihilation, with the BCR and the Algonquins taking by far the heaviest punishment in the firing coming at them from all points of the compass.

From the very outset it was clear to everyone on that hill of horrors that the Regiment was in deep trouble as the enemy poured a drenching fall of shells and mortar bombs onto their hilltop defences. Throughout the day, however, they valiantly fought off vigorous counterattacks by the SS infantry supported by the Tigers and Panthers with their long-barrelled 88s. When the battle closed down towards evening of the 9th, however, there was little left of the BCR, only enough to field one squadron from the few that managed to emerge unscathed from the battle. These few were joined by the one troop that stayed on course for Hill 195, and by personnel and tanks left out of battle, along with a large infusion of reinforcements, making ready to fight another day on another battle-field.

The toll: 47 tanks destroyed - 40 BCRs killed or died of wounds - 80 wounded, and 34 were taken into captivity.

Stan Scislowski

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