The Battle of the Hedgerows

After D-Day, one of the greatest battles in history.

The night of June 5-6 marked the final hours of the Occupation of Normandy. Numerous American paratroopers jumped onto the Cotentin Peninsula, targeting the towns of Carentan and Sainte-Mère-Église. Their role was to clear the way for American infantry and armored vehicles by securing key locations. American units jumped into the darkness toward their mission, while a few hours later, troops freshly landed by sea on Utah Beach linked up with them. By the evening of June 6, the beaches were American, despite heavy losses.

The war then entered a second phase, which consisted of capturing the town of Carentan to secure the link between the Utah and Omaha Beach beachheads. Eisenhower then intended to cut the Cotentin Peninsula in two to isolate the Cherbourg region. The Allies needed a strategic port as quickly as possible to facilitate the landing of their reinforcements and supplies.

On June 18, 1944, the capture of Barneville-Carteret isolated the Cotentin Peninsula and allowed the Allies to consider taking Cherbourg. The naval port fell to the Americans a week later. The Battle of the Hedgerows, also known as the "War of the Hedgerows," then began, one of the longest and most costly ordeals for the American troops.

Carentan, a key objective of the landing

Eisenhower always considered Carentan the primary objective of the D-Day landings on June 6, 1944. Consequently, the General Staff committed maximum resources and elite troops to the battle for the town, a crucial logistical hub. The American assaults of the 101st Airborne Division on Carentan began on June 10.

Two days later, the German army was forced to abandon the town. On June 12, Carentan was liberated, but the very next day, the German paratroopers holding the town attempted to retake it with the support of recently arrived SS armored units. The assault ultimately failed, thanks to the tenacity of the American paratroopers, reinforced by the armored reinforcements.

The capture of Carentan allowed the American army to consolidate its positions and establish a line of defense in order to advance inland. After the capture of Carentan, the American army refocused its attention on its primary objective: Cherbourg.

From the bocage to the coast: destination Cherbourg

In the Allied strategy, capturing a deep-water port like Cherbourg was essential. Direct resupply of food, weapons, equipment, reinforcements, and medical support from the United States depended on it. The port and city of Cherbourg were only liberated on June 26th after difficult and grueling fighting. According to Allied forecasts, the American army should already have been in Brittany and Mayenne by the same date. However, it would still take several weeks before the port, sabotaged by the Germans and heavily bombed during the fighting, was repaired.

The capture of La Haye-du-Puits

Once the Cotentin Peninsula was cut off, the American troops shifted their advance northward to capture Cherbourg. But this respite on the initial front line allowed the Germans to reorganize, bring in reinforcements, and establish a solid defensive network, stretching from the coast through the marshland to the bocage of Saint-Lô.

In early July, the American army attempted to recapture the town of La Haye-du-Puits. This town, a major road junction, seemed impregnable, fortified as it was with mines, trenches, and barbed wire. The assault was launched on July 4th and lasted nearly a week. The Americans entered the town several times but were repelled each time after fierce fighting.

It was only after massive bombardments by American artillery and a joint advance of armored vehicles and infantry that the town fell to the Americans. On July 9, the town of La Haye-du-Puits was finally liberated, but in ruins.

To die for Saint-Lô

The capture of Saint-Lô was entrusted to the 19th Corps of the U.S. First Army, under the command of General Corlett. Aerial bombardments were launched on the city the day after D-Day. It was left for dead and resembled a field of ruins. Numerous civilian casualties were reported. Firmly entrenched on the city's high ground, the Germans were difficult to reach. Their units were well-prepared, drawn from the 3rd Parachute Division and an experienced infantry division.

This battle is, in a way, the symbol of the Battle of the Hedgerows, which had paralyzed the Americans since the beginning of July, in a Norman bocage they didn't know but which the enemy exploited to their advantage. On July 16 and 17, fierce fighting took place for the capture of Saint-Lô, leading to the gradual withdrawal of the German army on July 18.

It was not until July 25th that Saint-Lô was entirely in American hands, thus preventing German reinforcements from coming from Brittany to supply the front.

A month in the hell of the bocage

The “Norman Jungle”, the unpleasant surprise of the hedgerow battle
At the beginning of July 1944, with the Americans having captured Cherbourg, a new phase of the Battle of the Hedgerows began, moving from the Cotentin Peninsula towards the center of the Manche department. For three weeks, extremely deadly fighting raged. Heavy losses were suffered on both sides. The American troops faced the Norman bocage, an intricate network of sunken lanes and small fields bordered by dense hedgerows—a landscape so unexpected that it gave the battle its name: the Hedgerow War.

Unlike the Caen region, which is mainly composed of large plains, the Manche department is dominated by hedgerows, making troop advances and armored maneuvers even more difficult. On the other hand, it is ideal terrain for the defenders, who use every field and hedgerow as a rampart and inflict very heavy losses on the Americans.

The hedge cutter: the solution for escaping the hedgerows

In their strategies, the Americans did not pay sufficient attention to the bocage landscape, comparable to a jungle from a military perspective. Vehicles, and especially tanks, were poorly suited to the small fields enclosed by hedgerows and sunken lanes. To overcome these obstacles, armored support proved essential. Unfortunately, maneuvering was difficult for tanks due to the density of the hedgerows. Crossing them was therefore necessary, but as the tanks began their advance, they were forced to expose their almost unarmored underbelly to the enemy, making them ideal targets for German anti-tank weapons. Day after day, the charred wrecks of Sherman tanks accumulated in the bocage, which seemed increasingly impassable to the GIs.

To solve this problem, one man devised an ingenious system. Sergeant Curtis G. Culin developed the "hedge cutter." He first acquired "Czech hedgehogs," an assembly of steel beams placed by the Germans on the beaches to counter landing craft. He then detached these beams, welded them together, and added enormous teeth to create a kind of harrow capable of breaking through the hedge. Finally, he attached his ingenious system to the front of tanks so that they could now cross hedges not by going over them, but by driving through them. A large number of tanks were equipped with it by mid-July, shortly before the launch of Operation Cobra.

Cobra and Lüttich, the two major offensives of the summer of 1944

The end of a deadly battle

To remember

• After the D-Day landings, the fighting in the Norman bocage became particularly deadly for both soldiers and civilians.
• Between La Haye-du-Puits and Lessay, some American units advanced at the cost of considerable losses. It was reported that one American soldier was killed for every meter gained.
• The fighting in the summer of 1944 caused the death of several thousand Norman civilians and destroyed many towns and villages.
• Operation Cobra, launched at the end of July 1944, allowed American troops to break through the German front and gradually emerge from the Norman bocage.