"6th August 1944, 80 years ago today" Topic

Always nice to wake up and see a BBC article on a battle I have some personal attachment to:

link

A BBC article about a British soldier who received the VC for an action in a battle my Uncle Evan was in.

I've been to this battle site and it's at a place called Pavee not Sourdeval. The Brit maps had it labelled wrong in 1944.

My Uncle Evan's unit was the 3rd Monmouthshire Battalion, 11th Armoured Division and had been there for 3 days when Sidney's unit the Norfolks arrived to relieve them. Just as they did so the Germans attacked with Tiger tanks escorted by SS Engineers so both British units stayed and fought them off, with the help of a lot of Artillery fire as well. Hence they called it the battle of the NorMons.

Evan saw Sidney get up and run towards the Germans. Evan's unit lost about 150 guys in this battle.

There is a monument there in Normandy to Sidney and the NorMons.

link

Years ago I even wrote a scenario for it for Fire and Fury WW2 rules and it's still up there:
Fire and Fury WW2 Scenario:
PDF link

Might raise a glass tonight for Evan and the NorMons 😊🍻

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I had a cousin die with the 80th Division while holding against a panzer counter attack. This was also the Falaise as well. He was manning an anti tank gun with HQ company when killed. They had knocked out a Mark IV and a 88 beforehand according to 80th Division history.

At one All American Week in the mid-90s, I went to a small event for veterans of the 504th, just to help out; I was an FSO for the same battalion that my great uncle had served in as an enlisted man. I had only met him a few times, as a small boy, while he was alive, but my grandmother had always kept one of those company photographs, posed (I assume in England) in mid-1944.

While talking to one elderly gentleman, he mentioned the company he had served with in Holland, and it was the same one. I told him that, and he immediately brightened up and told me a story about a patrol, which he drew out on a cocktail napkin- Germans on a , ambush, my uncle, outside of the kill zone, pulled off a well-executed fire and flank and killed the Germans with a grenade. Small action, didn't get a name or a place in the history books, but there it was- textbook maneuver, carried out by a brave and well taught soldier, just like George Marshall said it could be.

Of all the things I've left behind over the years, I regret and remember few like that cocktail napkin. If I had it, it would be in a shadow box.

Apparently, the word for a levee along a canal bank is now de facto obscene.

a poignant read, thankyou.

80 years ago my father was sent with his company to guard the northern road into Rennes against a "possible' German counterattack. It did not come, and they got a well earned rest.