The Valour and the Horror

JUNE-12: The British, thinking they had discovered a hole in the German defences west of Caen, rushed the famed 7th Armoured Division division towards the strategic hill town of Villers-Bocage. In anticipation of just such a flanking movement, and unknown to the British, two companies of the 1st SS Panzer Corps panzer reserve had arrived and were already in position at Villers-Bocage.

SS-Hauptsturmführer (captain) Michael Wittman, leader of a group of five Tiger tanks, watched them advance. That day he would earn the praise of both friend and foe as the most acclaimed tank commander in history. Wittman and his company of four other Tigers and a Mark IV Special had the same mission as the 22nd Armoured Brigade, to occupy the commanding terrain around Point 213. One of the most amazing engagements in armoured history was to take place at Point 213.

At around 9 AM the lead elements of the London Yeomanry reached Point 213 accompanied by an advance party of infantry from "A" Company, 1st Battalion The Rifle Brigade. The tank-infantry column consisted of some 25 half-tracks, and tanks stopped a few hundred yards behind a hedgerow lined section of highway. The infantry was called forward simultaneously as two or three Tiger tanks were spotted moving parallel to the stopped column, screened by the hedge.The Tigers swung around to face the column whose crews had just dismounted. Wittman had watched the column stop from the wooded high ground several hundred meters north from the road.

German tank bursting from ambush

He immediately saw the columns vulnerability, and decided to attack at once without waiting for the other Tigers to assist. "Running to the left of, and parallel to, the road on which the British column lay, there was a narrow cart track. Wittman decided to approach the column via this track and to destroy....the personal carrier near the road and track junction. The high velocity gun was laid, armed, and fired. The [British] half-track, swung across the road by the force of the impact, caught fire and began to pour out dense clouds of black smoke....the heavy Tiger thundered towards the British, shuddering only slightly as the heavy gun fired shell after shell into the mass of machines. Half-tracks, carriers and tanks were smashed by 88 mm shells, and then with a final burst of speed the 55 ton steel monster, destroying in its rush a British tank which it met on the narrow path, crashed through the junction, was swung in a tight arc onto the roadway and began its descent upon the vehicles lined up outside the village and along the narrow high street." Panzer, London, 1976

Wittman's Tiger, entering the main street, immediately ran into the RHQ tanks whose crews had dismounted and were unable to react to the lone Tiger bearing down on them. Wittman's Tiger knocked out three more British tanks and then withdrew into the woods southeast of Villers-Bocage. This was only the beginning. That afternoon, after rearming and refuelling, Wittman returned with four other Tigers, the Mark IV Special, and three other tanks plus infantry.

The German force attacked what was left of the British tank infantry force.

German Tiger tank bogey

The Canadians spent the last two weeks of June out of the line, and went back into battle at the beginning of August.

Valour and Horror, Second World War, Canadian history, World War II, W.W.II