France

The D-Day Battlefields

The Battle of Normandy - Caen

*Page under construction*

Caen is the capital of the Calvados department in the Normandy region of Northern France. Although it lies approximately 9 miles (14km) from the coast, it is a port city connected to English Channel by the Caen Canal and Orne River, plus it acts as a transport hub with several important roads and railway lines emanating from its centre. The city`s historic area features the Château de Caen, a castle built by William the Conqueror around 1060. The fortress stands on a hill flanked by the Romanesque abbeys of Saint-Étienne and Sainte-Trinité, which both date from the same period. ​

Following the German invasion of France and the Low Countries during the summer of 1940 and subsequent Armistice, France was divided into a German Occupation Zone in the north and west and a "Free Zone" (zone libre) in the south. ​On 17 June 1940, the day on which Marshall Petain made a radio broadcast requesting French soldiers to lay down their arms, the lead elements of the Wehrmacht arrived in the South Calvados area of Normandy.

Saturday 22 June 1940: German troops position the rail carriage for the signing of Armistice terms with France on the exact spot in Compiegne Forest where, in 1918, the French had dictated terms to a defeated Germany. The other shot shows General Charles Huntziger and other officers entering the rail carriage for the official signing ceremony.

The divisions of the 16th French Army Corps had attempted to form a stop-line which Rommel`s tanks outflanked and advanced rapidly towards the port of Cherbourg which fell two days later. Caen was also surrounded. As the population of Caen filtered back to the city after the fighting had ended, the extent of the defeat and evidence of the German military occupation were felt immediately. French society as a whole was forced to adapt quickly to the new regime of restrictions. curfews, deprivation and checks on a daily basis. 
​
The Germans took charge over the city`s civil authorities and occupied barracks, hospitals, schools, hotels and other public buildings. Many bedrooms were requisitioned to house officers and troops as reinforcements arrived to police the city and construct defences along Channel coast. Road signs in German soon appeared and entertainment venues were reserved for the Occupation forces. 

The Feldkommandantur site, symbolising the power of the victorious invader, was set up in the Hotel Malherbe on Caen`s Place Foch. This was where the French had to go to carry out the administrative procedures required by the Occupier. The Pegasus Memorial Museum (below) also has a small display relating to the German occupation of Caen.

The Battle for Caen, which lasted from D-Day (6 June 1944) until early August 1944, is the name for the prolonged, bitter fighting between the British Second Army and the German Panzergruppe West. The city`s strategic location made it an important operational objective for both sides.
​
Caen and the area to the south were on flatter, more open terrain than the bocage country in western Normandy and the Allied Commanders wanted to push inland as soon as possible while at the same time securing optimum locations for the construction of forward air bases. 

Canadian troops advance to contact near Troarn, east of Caen.

While the Normandy landings in all five sectors managed to establish footholds in Normandy, many D-Day objectives were not met, including the capture of Caen and Bayeux. The Anglo-Canadians resumed their attacks in the vicinity of Caen and the suburbs and city centre north of the Orne were captured during Operation Charnwood (8–9 July). ​The two images below, from the Federal German Archives, show German Army commanders in Caen, June 1944.

The Caen suburbs south of the river were captured by the II Canadian Corps during Operation Atlantic (18–20 July). The Germans had committed most of their panzer divisions in a determined defence of Caen, which made the fighting mutually costly and greatly deprived the Germans of the means to reinforce the west end of the invasion front.

In western Normandy, the US First Army cut off the Cotentin Peninsula, captured Cherbourg and then attacked southwards towards Saint-Lô, about 37 mi (60 km) west of Caen, capturing the town on 19 July. ​On 25 July after a weather delay, the First Army began Operation Cobra on the Saint-Lô–Périers road, coordinated with the Canadian Operation Spring at Verrières (Bourguébus) ridge to the south of Caen. Cobra was a great success and the German stranglehold on Normandy began to crumble; the Allied break-out led to the Battle of the Falaise Pocket (12–21 August), which trapped most of the remnants of the 7th Army and 5th Panzer Army (formerly Panzergruppe West), which opened the way to the Seine and Paris.

The city of Caen was destroyed by Allied bombing which, with the damage from ground combat, caused many French civilian casualties. The image above left shows North American Mitchell Mk II, FV970 'NO-K', of No. 320 (Dutch) Squadron RAF flying past the smoke-enveloped Colombelles steel works, east of Caen, during a raid by No.2 Group. The Orne river and Caen Canal can be seen at right. After the battle little of the pre-war city remained and reconstruction of the city lasted until 1962. (to edit)*

General Sir Bernard Montgomery shows Winston Churchill the battle situation on a map held by the Commander of the 2nd Canadian Division, General G. G. Symonds, during the Prime Minister's visit to Normandy, 22 July 1944.

​The British 2nd Army Commander, Lieutenant General Sir Miles Dempsey, commanding the British Second Army, looks on. 

The following figure of a British soldier during the Battle for Caen is part of a diorama in the Overlord 1944 Museum at OMAHA Beach.

The Imperial War Museum images above show a gun crew of 53 Heavy Regiment, Royal Artillery loading a 155mm Howitzer under camouflage netting. The 155mm gun was an American gun, often manned by British troops on the Normandy front.

 JagdPanzer 38T Hetzer tank destroyer ​etc*

Carpiquet Airfield after its capture etc* (finally captured on 9 July?*

Exhausted Canadian troops near Caen. The youth of these soldiers is immediately apparent.

​Operation Totalise (8–9 August 1944) (above) *

Villers-Bocage

​The Sturmgeschütz III (StuG III) assault gun was Germany's second most-produced armoured fighting vehicle during World War II after the Sd.Kfz. 251 half-track. It was built on the chassis of the proven Panzer III, replacing the turret with an armoured, fixed superstructure mounting a more powerful gun. Initially intended as a mobile assault gun to provided infantry with direct-fire support, the StuG III was continually modified, and much like the later Jagdpanzer, was employed to great effect as a tank destroyer.

Right: Avro Lancasters carpet bomb a road junction near Villers-Bocage, Normandy, through which the 2nd and 9th SS Panzer Divisions were expected to move to carry out an attack on the junction of the British and American armies. The daylight attack, by 266 aircraft of Nos. 3, 4 and 8 Groups, was carried out at 4,000 feet to ensure that the target indicators dropped by the Pathfinders were seen and 1,100 tons of bombs were dropped with great accuracy.

Above: Avro Lancasters of No. 514 Squadron RAF, lined up at Waterbeach, Cambridgeshire, before taking part in a daylight attack on fortified villages east of Caen, in support of the Second Army's armoured offensive during Operation Goodwood (18 - 20 July 1944).

This aerial reconnaissance photograph, taken from 24,000 feet, shows the St Jean district of Caen, which was destroyed by two heavy raids on the city by aircraft of No. 5 Group, Bomber Command, on the nights of 6/7 and 12/13 June 1944. The Bassin Saint-Pierre is at bottom left and the River Orne flows from upper right to middle left. The church of St Jean, damaged but still standing, is visible towards the middle of the lower-right quarter of the photograph. Another badly damaged area can be seen across the river in the Vaucelles district, to the right of the main railway station (top left).

British forces including Sherman tanks and a 6-pdr anti-tank gun in the centre of Caen, on or about 10 July 1944.

​This Caterpillar D7 Bulldozer `Booger Kid`, on display at the Battle of Normandy Memorial Museum (Musée Mémorial Bataille de Normandie) landed in July 1944 and was quickly put to use by Canadian engineers in clearing rublle in the ruins of Caen.

​After the War, it was purchased by the company that operated the quarries in Feuguerolles, a village situated a few kilometres from the city, where it gave faithfull service until 1984. It was traded in for an up-to-date machine and its new owners presented it to the City of Bayeux in recognition of the vital and often dangerous work done by Allied engineering units.

Right: Prime Minister Winston Churchill observes destruction at Caen, France, with General Sir Bernard Montgomery and Lieutenant General Sir Miles Dempsey on 22 July 1944.

Above left: Lieutenant General J. T. Crocker, 1st Corps Commander, talking to some of the liberated civilians during his tour of Caen. The other photo shows AFPU (Army Film and Photographic Unit) cameraman Sergeant J. H. Goddard using a turret-lensed Eyemo camera to film a German military direction sign attached to the only part of Caen`s Hotel Moderne left standing.

​Royal Engineers help to repair track at the railyard in Caen, 24 July 1944. This bronze head, on display at the Caen Memorial, was knocked out of shape by an exploding Allied bomb and found in the ruins of the city. By the end of August, Caen, having suffered countless aerial and naval bombardments and endless artillery shelling, like many other towns in lower Normandy, had paid a heavy price for Liberation. Over 2,000 civilians had been killed in the regional capital, and over 70 percent of the city lay in ruins, including many of Caen`s historic buildings and monuments.

​Above: Interior view of the Church of Saint-Pierre in Caen showing the damaged organ, 10 July 1944.

Some of the first troops to enter the city pose with local inhabitants outside wrecked shops, 9 July 1944. The other scene above was taken outside the NAAFI in Caen almost a fortnight later. Many of Caen`s citizens had sought refuge in the city`s cathedral during the bombing.

German POWs being marched through the ruined city after its capture by Allied forces.

These photos were taken in Villers-Bocage after it was captured by British force on 5 August 1944. The knocked-out Cromwell observation post tank, was commanded by Captain Paddy Victory of 5th Royal Horse Artillery, 7th Armoured Division. The other shows wrecked German Tiger tanks in the rubble.

Caen Memorial

The Mémorial de Caen is both a war memorial and a museum. The buildings and grounds occupy the site of an old bunker system used by the Germans during WW2 and a command bunker has been preserved and forms part of the museum. The flags of the main nations involved in the Battle of Normandy usually fly from the flagpoles in front of the entrance. The museum was officially opened on June 6, 1988 (the 44th anniversary of D-Day) by the French President François Mitterrand. 

Access to the bunker system is via a door at the back of the foyer. The way leads across a Bailey Bridge, followed by a descent to the bottom of the slope where the entrance is located. The bunker was the Headquarters of German General Wilhelm Richter who was in charge of defending the Calvados beaches in 1944.

Located 15 km from the coast, the Headquarters of the 716th Infantry Division comprised a 70 metre-long tunnel connected to three staggered access corridors. Outside, camouflage netting screened the entrances from aerial observation. The main gallery, hewn out of the rock and reinforced with concrete, was partitioned into twelve sections, all of which were linked with General Richter`s office in the centre. On either side were HQ staff for engineering, artillery, transport and radio communications. There was also a kitchen and a sick bay. The following plan of the site is on display within the actual bunker.

The Caen Memorial is dedicated to the history of violence and major conflict in the 20th Century with particular emphasis on World War II. Additions to the museum since opening include a gallery dedicated to the Nobel Peace Prize. a Cold War display which includes a Mig-21 fighter jet, a deactivated atomic / nuclear bomb / missile, and a piece of the Berlin Wall. The original building deals primarily with World War II, looking at the causes and course of the conflict. (to edit)*

This sculpture titled "Non-violence", is by Swedish artist Carl Fredrik Reuterswärd.

I didn’t check out the Cold War section due to time constraints but the rest of the Caen Memorial has a number of outstanding exhibits, including this full-scale replica of a Typhoon fighter bomber which is suspended above the ticket desk in the foyer. (to edit)* Only one original Typhoon survives and is on display at the RAF Museum, Hendon. On the left below is a Pak 38 anti-tank gun. It was used extensively on the Eastern Front where its tungsten-cored projectiles were effective against medium armour but could not penetrate the thicker protection of the heavier Soviet tanks. As a result, the gun was gradually replaced on the front line although it continued to equip infantry units manning the Atlantic Wall.

​Around 400,000 people visit the memorial annually and if you’re working your way round the basement display areas when parties of highly animated French school kids charge in, it can seem like most of the yearly visitors have arrived at once! 

Unsurprisingly, there is a fairly large section relating to Operation Overlord.

Above right: Wing Commander R. E. P. Brooker, the No. 123 Wing Leader, takes off from Thorney Island, Hampshire, in his Hawker Typhoon Mark IB, MN570 'B', with seven more Typhoons of No. 198 Squadron RAF, on a sortie over the Normandy beachhead. They attacked and destroyed several German armoured vehicles on the Caen-Falaise road. The other image shows rockets fired from a Typhoon of No.181 Squadron, Royal Air Force, on its way towards buildings at Carpiquet airfield. The Canadian 3rd Division finally took Carpiquet to the west of Caen on 4 July after prolonged, bloody fighting.

The display on the Spanish Civil War includes a copy of `Guernica`, a mural-sized oil painting on canvas by Spanish artist Pablo Picasso which he completed in June 1937. This work, regarded by many art critics as one of the most moving and powerful anti-war paintings in history, was created in response to the bombing of Guernica, a Basque Country village in northern Spain, by Nazi Germany and Fascist Italian warplanes at the request of the Spanish Nationalists. The painting shows the population`s terror and the widespread destruction caused by mass aerial bombing and immediately draws comparisons with Caen, as its citizens would experience an even more devastating attack less than a decade later. 

Above: An anti-shipping mine and a `Rupert`. At least 500 of these 3ft high stunt puppets were dropped along with S.A.S. soldiers at several locations well away from the Normandy beaches and genuine Allied drop zones to fool the enemy into thinking a major attack was underway. Sent in the middle of the night, these canvas dummies were designed to let off firecrackers then burst into flames when they landed so the Germans wouldn`t realise what they were. The deception was greatly augmented by a small band of SAS soldiers who parachuted in with the dolls, equipped with loudspeakers through which they played the sounds of a fierce gun battle. Although the Ruperts were only half the size of an average human, they would have appeared lifelike to those looking up from ground level on a dark night.

The Luftwaffe made almost no attempt to disrupt the Landings on 6 June but in the weeks that followed, bombers would drop mines in the Seine Estuary and in the sea off Cherbourg.

Many of these mines, like the one pictured on the left, were fairly sophisticated and would react to magnetic and acoustic signatures, posing a constant threat to Allied vessels. 

Off UTAH Beach, 12 vessels were lost and 25 badly damaged. Between 22 and 29 June, in the British-Canadian sector, 9 vessels were destroyes and 8 damaged.

Below: ​Just a couple of the posters on display: The one on the left publicises the 1945 film `La Bataille du Rail`, directed by René Clément (1913-1996), which tells the story of the resistance mounted by French Railway Workers during the Second World War. The other promotes the purchase of war bonds in the USA.

Below: This is a copy of `Stormtroopers Advancing Under Gas` (1924), an etching by German artist and ex-soldier Otto Dix (2 December 1891 - 25 July 1969). ​At the outbreak of the Great War, Dix was an enthusiastic volunteer and in 1915, like hundreds of thousands of his countrymen, he was sent to the Western Front where he was awarded the Iron Cross. He was wounded a number of times but survived, despite coming close to death on one occasion after sustaining particularly severe injuries. 

Following the Armistice, Dix found his political views changing and he became increasingly angry over the way in which ex-soldiers, especially the wounded and disabled were treated in Germany. His work took on a graphic anti-war character, showing the horror experienced by those who fought, and paintings included decomposing bodies and wounded troops in writhing in agony. The public was so outraged by his first painting displayed in public, `The Trench`, that the director of the art gallery in which it was displayed was forced to resign.

Dix became an art tutor at the Dresden Academy and during Adolf Hitler`s rise to power Dix`s anti-war paintings became increasingly controversial and eventually he was forced to leave his position. When the Nazis seized control, two of Dix`s works were selected for an exhibition to discredit and ban modern art and a number of his other anti-war paintings were later destroyed by the regime. In 1939 he was arrested on the false charge of being involved in a plot to assassinate Hitler but was eventually released. During the Second World War, Dix was later conscripted into the Volkssturm, roughly similar to the British Home Guard, and was captured by French troops just before the conflict ended. He was released in February 1946.

​Above: A rather crude model of Maginot Line fortifications. Named after the French Minister of War André Maginot, this was a series of inter-linked concrete strongpoints, gun emplacements, obstacles, and other installations built by France in the 1930s to deter invasion by Germany, after the latter`s rapid advances following the outbreak of war in 1914. The line stretched along France`s borders with Italy, Switzerland, Germany, and Luxembourg, but did not extend to the English Channel coast due to French strategy that envisioned a move into Belgium as a counter-stroke. 

​The defences were impervious to most forms of attack, including aerial bombardment and direct tank or artillery fire, and had underground railways to move troops and ammunition quickly and safely. In the event of prolonged periods underground, air-conditioned living conditions for garrisoned troops, made their stay more comfortable.

The innovative nature of France`s state-of-the-art defences ultimately proved useless, however. Although the Germans invaded through the Low Countries, bypassing the Maginot Line to the north, as the Allied armies mobilised, the Germans made a surprise thrust through the Ardennes forest, a region which the French had ruled out for a large-scale advance due to the rough nature of the terrain. ​Hitler`s Panzers rapidly crossed the River Meuse and encircled much of the Allied opposition, resulting in hundreds of thousands of troops being evacuated from Dunkirk (above) and other Channel ports. The remaining forces to the south were unable to prevent most of France being overrun before an Armistice was declared.

Between June 1941 and May 1945, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union were embroiled in a cataclysmic struggle on what became known as the Eastern Front. Following the Germans` surprise invasion, code-named `Operation Barbarossa`, the resulting conflict became one of the largest and deadliest military duels of all time, and ultimately led to the fall of Hitler`s Third Reich, ending the Nazis` conquest of Europe. It was also a clash of arms marked by strategic blunders, mass atrocities and human suffering on a previously unimaginable scale. The Caen Memorial has a hall relating to the `Eastern Front` also known as the `Russian Front` which includes uniforms, weapons including several vehicles, and other items of interest. The sled displayed is similar to those used by the besieged citizens of Leningrad to move not only belongings and supplies but also the bodies of those who died of starvation. 

The Katyusha multiple rocket launcher fielded by the Soviet Union in World War II was extremely effective in saturation bombardment and was particularly feared by German soldiers. The weapon was cheap to produce and usable on any chassis with vast numbers mounted on ordinary flatbed trucks, such as the one seen here. This mobility gave the Katyusha the ability to change position immediately after launching its devastating salvo, reducing the risk of becoming the target of counter-battery fire. Numerous variants were developed during WW2 and beyond and the basic design is still in use with many countries across the globe. Thousands of Sherman tanks like the example above were delivered to the UK and Soviet Union under the Lend Lease policy, before the USA entered the war, and supply of vehicles, weapons and other equipment continued until the Japanese surrender on 2 September 1945.

The distinctive PM M1910 heavy machine gun (top right) dates from 1910 and was used extensively by the Imperial Russian Army during World War I and the Red Army during Russian Civil War then World War II. Later, the gun saw service in the Korean War and the Vietnam War and numerous other conflicts around the world. The infantry version was mounted on a wheeled mount with a gun shield but there were aircraft-mounted and naval variants. Some were fitted with a tractor radiator cap fitted on top of the water jacket to allow handfuls of snow to be packed in to melt while firing.

Even though it`s only a facsimile, one of the most chilling exhibits is this label from a can of Zyklon B, the gas used by the Nazis to exterminate millions in the death camps during the Second World War. 

The following slideshow features general views of the museum and some of the other items on display...

There are also three memorial gardens, The American Garden, The British Garden and The Canadian Garden, dedicated to the three main Allied nations involved in liberating France. This is the former although, like the others, it will be seen at its best in late spring or summer. 

The wall overlooking the pond contains plaques representing the various US units and states that took part in the D-Day Landings and the Battle of Normandy.

Please bear in mind that all images on this website are Copyright. They are not free to use and have been embedded with a digital watermark. Any historic photographs from the Imperial War Museum and other organisations` archives have been used courtesy of a `Share & Reuse` policy and are also subject to copyright restrictions, or are in the public domain.

Top of Page

Battle of Normandy Main Page

D-Day Main Page

France Main Page