Post by Bill ShatzerIs there any good explanation of why the allies, particularly the US,
were apparently so unprepared to deal with the bocage. Certainly they
had lots of aerial recon to disclose the existence of the hedgerows and
there must have been some numbers of folks among the Free French and
French refugees in England were familiar with the terrain and could
advise them as to the nature of the hedgerows and the difficulties they
would present.
The allies eventual over came the problem by a combination of material
and manpower superiority and some clever improvisations but breaking
through the bocage country took much longer than expected and put things
considerable behind schedule.
Why were they not better prepared to deal with the hedgerow country?
Much of southern England was and perhaps still is hedgerows so they had
the opportunity to train for it, but what they lacked was time, and, to
a lesser extent, a good reason to train for it.
The divisions that landed on June 6 and 7, had spent a lot of time
training for Normandy, but that training for the infantry and armor was
rightly focussed on getting onto the shore, off of the beach, and
dealing with the prepared fortifications. The airborne forces were
focussed on landing, getting organzied, moving to a few selected
targets, and dealing with those targets. Any training not focussed on
those problems would have made the first couple of days of the invasion
that much more costly. As it was the casualties for those forces on June
6 were a substantial fraction of their casualties for that month.
The divisions that were landed later were by and large divisions that
were more recent arrivals in Britain. By the time they had arrived at
their bases in England, they had spent a couple of days on trains, a few
weeks in port waiting for the next convoy, weeks in convoy travel, and
more days off loading, getting organized, and moving to the base. Time
enough to forget much of the fundamentals of their training in the
states and loose much of their physical conditioning. While getting
their capabilities back to what it was beffore they started on their
voyage took less time than their original training, it still took time.
As to the bocage, the higher commands of the Allies had good reasons to
expect that any combat there would be of short duration compared to the
rest of the campaign. They rightly believed that the best strategy for
the Germans would be a fighting withdrawal to the rivers of northern
France. Hitler had other ideas, with the result that the fighting in
Normandy in general, and the bocage in particular, lasted longer than
expected, but once the German's started to withdraw they no longer had
the capability of stopping the Allies at the Seine. Instead they had to
let logistics stop the Allies near the German border.
In the long run what would have been better than preparing for the
bocage in particular, would have been the realization that if they had
the resources to attach a tank battalion to every infantry regiment, it
might be a good idea to attach a tank battalion during the traing and
see what could be learnt about combined arms.