Seven Days in Hell: Canada's Battle for Normandy and the Rise of the Black Watch Snipers

by David O'Keefe

Starting at precisely 0600 hours, the first of 15,000 bombs crashed down for forty-nine minutes on a corridor in the German lines along the Bourguébus sector, with five thousand tons of earth-shattering high explosives duly administered in less than an hour. Once again, the men witnessed brilliant yellow flashes, followed by deep-brown geysers of dirt and debris that rocketed skyward while the earth trembled incessantly across the battlefront. German defenders, caught beneath this rain of death, were crushed or eviscerated or buried alive. Their vehicles and guns, including sixty-ton Tiger tanks, were tossed in the air like discarded toys, leaving them twisted, abandoned and half-buried in giant craters. The centuries-old village of Cagny, which had thrived since the days of the Romans, ceased to exist by any recognizable measure. Buch, watching from several miles away, saw the explosions and then felt the concussive waves rip into his chest and “clear through” to his spine a second later.27 When the last bomb of the first wave fell on their targets, another wave of a thousand aircraft—medium bombers, fighters and fighter-bombers—swooped down to fire rockets and drop fragmentation and high-explosive bombs. Then, on cue, the artillery opened fire. At 0800 hours, over a thousand field, medium and heavy artillery pieces from units in the 2nd British Army opened fire, laying a concentration of high explosives on a wide range of targets ringing the perimeter of the German posit...