Victory at Falaise: The Soldiers' Story

Sidney Allinson is a Victoria-based communications consultant, Canadian
news correspondent for Britain’s The Army Quarterly and Defence, and
author of The Bantams: The Untold Story of World War I.

Few crucial battles have become more distorted over the years than the
struggle that raged around the Falaise Gap. Canadian, British, American,
Polish, and French forces attempted to break through German armies
there, to make the drive to liberate Paris. Why it took 76 days to do so
is the focus of this book. It is written by the accomplished Canadian
team of Brigadier Denis Whitaker and the journalist Shelagh Whitaker,
and includes a summation by Professor Terry Copp.

The authors combine thorough historical research with anecdotal
eyewitness accounts to explain what actually happened during those
bloody days of June–July 1944. They had their work cut out for them;
inaccurate news reporting provoked among Allied commanders a groundswell
of ill-feeling that lingers to this day. Americans became convinced that
they were doing most of the fighting and suffering the bulk of the
casualties, while the British were getting the credit for successes. The
Whitakers point out that the actual costs to the two armies were roughly
equal. Of 591,000 British and Canadians on the ground, 49,000 (or 8.9
percent) were casualties by July 25. In the same period, U.S. troops
with a fighting strength of 770,000, had sustained 73,000 casualties
(9.5 percent).

While the writers draw on official records of the Allies and Germans,
it is the stories they gathered from surviving combatants that give
their book its vividness and authenticity. We read about, among other
things, the savage fighting through “bocage” hedgerows, hand-to-hand
combats, huge tank battles, massed artillery fire, and the cold-blooded
massacre of 41 Canadian prisoners of war by fanatical SS Hitler Youth.

The overall toll was much higher. As the Whitakers point out,
“Normandy cost the Allies close to 2,500 casualties a day, 75 per cent
of them among combat troops at the sharp end.” They go on to observe,
“It was their valour, their endurance, and their ability to adapt that
won the battle of Normandy and launched the liberation of Western
Europe.”