Overview

This 4-day program emphasizes the actions of the multinational forces involved in the Battle for Normandy, especially in the period following D-Day through August 1944 and the phases commonly known as the Breakout from the Bocage and the German Escape Through the Falaise Pocket. It also focuses on the problems in the planning effort following the invasion itself and examines Allied mistakes in communication and the utilization of resources. The pre-reading will be John Keegan’s Six Armies in Normandy.

The victory in Normandy is first examined in the action following the D-Day airborne landings in the Cotentin Peninsula (at Utah Beach, Neuville au Plain, Brecourt Manor, and St. Come du Mont); we follow the capture of Carentan and the seizure of the port at Cherbourg with Patton’s sweep from the sea down the Western coastline to Avranches. The events of Mont Castre-Le Haye du Puis, Operation Cobra, and La Croix Rouge-Hill 192 are vivid sources of leadership examples relative to this phase of the action.

Next is Montgomery’s Operation Goodwood and the Commonwealth forces’ move south and west.  The focus of the events will include the actions and decisions of Canadian Armor and Infantry units with the British (Scots) 15th Infantry, which culminated in the action at Mont Pincon in securing the corridor between Caen and Falaise. The heroic actions of the German armored divisions in and around Cintheaux are examined, as is the death of the German tanker ace, Michael Wittmann, as a prelude to the flight through Falaise.

And, near the conclusion of the Battle for Normandy, the decisions and actions of the Allied commanders come under scrutiny as the mistakes leading to the German escape at Mont Ormel are explored. From positions on Lookout Point at Exmes and in the Corridor of Death through Chambois, participants see how all but 50,000 of the 250,000 Germans trapped in the Falaise pocket managed to evade the blocking of the 1st Polish Armored Division at Hill 262 and flee toward the Seine and Paris.