Today in history ...

[Maushake]

There was naturally a lot of attention paid to the recent 80th anniversary of D-Day, but in the days since then, perhaps not so much to the battles which unfolded after the invasion.  Today's the 80th anniversary of a battle which has particular personal resonance for me, so I thought I'd post about it ...

The Black Watch (Royal Highland Regiment) of Canada was commanded at various times by my great-grandfather George Cantlie, my grandfather Stephen Cantlie, and various other family members also served in it.  On 25 July 1944, when it was under the command of my grandfather's cousin Stuart Cantlie, it attacked Verrières Ridge south of Caen as part of Operation Spring, and suffered very heavy losses; it was the worst single day for any Canadian regiment since Dieppe, resulting in only 50 men left out of the regiment's 750 (figures which eerily echo those for another battle which looms large in the history of the province where I currently live: in the battle of Beaumont-Hamel on the first day of the Somme, 780 members of the Newfoundland Regiment went 'over the top', and only 68 attended roll call the following day).

Stuart Cantlie was killed at the very beginning of the battle, and all of the senior commanders of the regiment suffered a similar fate, eventually leaving the survivors under the command of Capt. Ronnie Bennett, who with his band of 50 'odds and sods' managed to stagger back to the village of St-Martin-de-Fontenay and, cut off and nearly surrounded, managed to hold it against repeated attacks by elements of the 9th SS Panzer Division.

Although Operation Spring resulted in terrible losses for the Canadian forces involved, it did (along with Operations Atlantic and Goodwood) draw German forces away from the American operational area, thus contributing to the success of Operation Cobra, and Verrières Ridge was eventually taken just a couple of weeks later, as part of Operation Totalize.

There was a good discussion today on the YouTube WW2TV channel, featuring some excellent Canadian military historians who have written about this battle and its context: