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A Fine Night for Tanks: The Road to Falaise

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"Operation Totalize" doesn't get much ink in most reference books about World War II. It was a less than successful action, one of a series of such by the British and Canadians in France. The Germans were superb defensive soldiers, and they checked Montgomery's forces time and again.

On this particular section of front, the Germans held all the high ground. They were able to block British movements by day, allied air superiority notwithstanding, and rebuild their defenses by night. The lumbering Tiger tank and 88 mm anti-tank gun were nightmares to the crews of the inferior British armor--and to the Polish army-in-exile crews of the lend-lease Shermans. "Tommy-cookers", the Germans called them, on account of their combustability.

The solution the British command came up with was to launch an armored attack at night. Tracer fire would mark the boundaries of the assault lanes, and strategic bombers would act in a tactical role, pulverizing the German rear.

The usual "fogs of war" descended over the plan: last-minute tinkering by the commanders, unexpected movement and resistance by the Germans, columns going astray, friendly fire from the bombers, etc. The Poles were too eager for revenge and outstripped their support. The Canadians were too reserved in places and did not gain ground that they otherwise might have, or else were destroyed when they cornered first-class German armored formations. The front was too narrow for such a heavy attack, and it ground to a halt about ten miles from its objective, Falaise.

This book, however, shows how no combat is minor to its participants. The book opens with an eye-witness account of the night assault. Red and green tracers zip overhead. Armored vehicles in the column are little more than shadows in the blacked-out conditions. The canucks in a personnel carrier go flying when a grenade lands in their vehicle. Shell-stunned Germans huddle in a ditch, watching the column go by. Bombs roar. Muzzles flash. And so forth. It continues with other first-person stories of the attack, which are as dramatic as anything from better-known battles in WWII. It points up the fact that a battle may be no less enormous or horrible to its combatants for being little known. A solid anecdotal history of a neglected episode of the War.