The Breakout

Today could be summarised as us taking photos standing next to signs of various unknown Normandy villages. We certainly stopped next to a lot of them – Eterville, Esquay, Le Bon Repos, Hervieux, La Morichesse les Mares, St Martin des Besaces, La Bruyere (this last one was only a metre long and part hidden in a hedge). But that wouldn’t be the whole story – we were looking for these because they were the confirmation that we were in the very places that my Dad trod in the first two months of the Normandy campaign. My book was our travel guide and it worked.

These unknown Normandy villages though would have been deeply imprinted on the minds and memories of Eric and his fellow Glasgow Highlanders because they were some of the places where they fought pitched battles against enemy infantry and tanks.

Today we squashed some of Eric’s experiences in mid-July and the first couple of weeks of August 1944 into a morning and an afternoon. We had the advantage of a speedy AM to get round (speedier when Andrew was driving it), whereas my father had to route march it most of the time.

Our morning consisted of a walk around Eterville trying to locate a wood behind the village church where a ferocious battle took place resulting in 85 Glasgow Highlander casualties. My book describes the spirited defensive action by an officer with a PIAT (a British bazooka) and a bayonet charge led by a Cameronian corporal. We read the account as we stood near the church. (Get the book…!)

Even better, we drove on from there to Esquay to find the site of a battle at Le Bon Repos. Seeing this area for myself greatly helped make sense of decisions and responses of the soldiers who were there. Esquay village and the Guigne valley was in a saucer of low-lying land overlooked by Hill 112. Le Bon Repos consisted of a crossroads with a few assorted houses.

We were able to identify the very spot at Le Bon Repos where German troops were cleared from their roadside trenches by flame-throwers and the heroic actions of a Glasgow Highlanders’ sergeant who destroyed two enemy tanks at point blank range. (My book tells a really good story…! 😉

We visit Hill 112 and the memorials to the 7000 men (yes, 7000) who died there in the course of a month fighting for control of it. It was said, “Whoever controls Hill 112, controls Normandy.’ Maybe a bit of an exaggeration but certainly whoever did, would dominate the whole of the flat land west and south west of Caen. There were other hills which dominated in the area and were more directly relevant to Eric’s war and we visited two in the afternoon (see below).

Lunch beckons as someone’s stomach was rumbling but we find the monument to the 15th Scottish Division at Tourville first. All the main WW2 battles fought by the Division and the Glasgow Highlanders are listed here. A proud, beautifully kept monument to ‘Scotland the Brave’.

And so to lunch – which we decide to take at Caumont where the big breakout of the British forces in Normandy began. But true to French form, it’s 2pm and nowhere is open apart from a bar / betting shop / ‘restaurant’. There’s no one eating in the ‘restaurant’ apart for the owner, his wife and mother. I say in French, ‘we would like to eat and drink something’. The response is pretty Gallic: ‘I’ll see what we’ve got left’. Nothing like honesty. He returns. He can do boiled eggs for starter (with mayo) and some grilled chicken (with mayo) (‘avec frites’). That satisfies us mainly as the bill only comes to 20 euros in total (with coffee too). It’s nutritional inadequacy though forces us to find a patisserie for a custard flan and an eclair (Andrew’s diet has certainly gone out the window today).

And so on to retracing Dad’s steps in Caumont. We are in very different Bocage country where it was easy for tanks and infantry to conceal themselves. We drive the 5 miles south and up Quarry Hill, a journey that Eric would have part-made riding on a tank but the rest on foot. Another dominant position the result of high ground – but it had to be fought for. More details in the book!

From there we drive on again to Eric’s final defensive position near the Bois des Monts – more high ground. The sat nav eventually returns us to the main road via a gravel farm path that gets the DB9 ‘speeding’ along at a whopping 3mph!

The Normandy stage of our war footsteps journey is complete. The Allied breakout is in full swing by the second half of August 1944 and as they drive on to Belgium, so will we tomorrow.