Falaise Bloody Falaise.

[Owen]

sapper
The stench of death and decaying bodies? remain with all the Vets, Always

That's the one thing we can't get from photos and film. The SMELL.
I've said before, that's the thing the Great War Veterans mentioned all the time. The SMELL.

Sgt Sam Beard, 179th Field Regt RA, 43rd (Wessex) Division

We fired 600 rounds per gun into the falaise pocket. The observation and reconnaissance vehicles returning to our lines were washed down with disinfectant to remove human and animal debris from them. Dead friend and foe alike- for there were many French civilains trapped in the area- lay in heaps, their bodies mixed together with horses and domestic animals, filling the sunken lanes where they had sought shelter. So intense was the carnage of man and beast, that all the dead animals could not be buried and later these piles of rotting flesh were bulldozed into heaps and set on fire with petrol.

Wally Caines, battalion signals sergeant 4th Dorsets, wrote in his diary:

22 Aug. Near Falaise, massed slaughter had taken place by Typhoon Fighter Bombers. the recce party passed through this area. We travelled one road and actually our vehicle travelled over the top of many crushed German dead bodies.... how that lot looked and stunk, dead bodies were running over with maggots and flies- it was indeed a ghastly sight seeing these dead Nazis bursting in the blistering heat of the day. the road was about 1 1/2 miles long. Never before had I seen or smelt anything like it.

From The Fighting Wessex Wyverns. Patrick Delaforce.


Even the RAF got a close up view of the carnage.Johnnie Johnson wrote in Wing Leader

"After the fighting had ebbed away from Falaise, we decided to drive there and see the results of our attacks at first hand. We thought that we were prepared for the dreadful scenes. On the last flights the stench from the decaying bodies below had even penetrated through the cockpit canopies of the Spitfires. Another, and , perhaps the most important, object of our visit was to bring back a suitable German staff car, since it was obvious that we should soon be on the move across France, and a comfortable Mercedes would provide a welcome change from our hard-riding jeeps. After we left Falaise behind, all the roads were so choked with burnt-out German equipment that it was quite impossible to continue the journey. The bloated corpses of unfortunate domestic animals also lay in our path, so we took to the fields and tried to make some progress across country. Each spinny and copse contained its dreadful quota of dead Germans lying beside their wrecked vehicles, and once we came across the body of waht had been a beautiful woman lying sprawled across the back seat of a staff car. We found our limosines, which consisted of Renaults, Citroens, Mercedes and strangley enough a smooth Chevolet. We had brought ropes , jacks and a few jerrycans of petrol, but it was impossible to extricate any of the cars. Soon we abandoned our search and left the fields and lanes, heavy with their rotting burden in the warm sunshine."

Can't have a Falaise Gap thread without this famous painting can we?
http://www.vectorfineart.com/Images/...g_typhoons.jpg



Rocket Firing Typhoon's at the Falaise Gap - Normandy 1944 by Frank Wootton

[Za Rodinu]

Doesn't it strike you that among the carnage and rotting flesh the main concentration object for Johnnie Johnson is getting himself a fancy enough car? What planet is this?

[Owen]

JEJ and his car, that's the RAF for you.
It must have really stank to smell it in a flying Spitfire.

Anyhow here's another picture.
CL910
Description: A road near Chambois, south-east of Trun, Normandy, filled with wrecked vehicles and the bodies of retreating German soldiers following an attack by Hawker Typhoons of 83 Group.

[von Poop]

It's said that smell is the sense most closely associated with memory. Thinking about it regarding events both pleasant and unpleasant, it's probably true.

[sapper]

Great carnage is not always remembered by the dead, or the smell,
Little things can come to signify everything about Falaise.
The little Normandy Villages had a place where the folk came to pray.

Many Religious statues were destroyed, one very poignant sight was that of a life size statue of Christ with his hands spread wide in supplication. But, with both hands blow off.
And I am nor religious.
Sapper

[George Wilkinson]

I have enjoyed the discussion. There is not much left to say. In my research into my Uncle Lorne Marr of the A&SH of Canada, I was attempting to find out what other men, that were at the Gap, said of the experience. I ran across a short ecerpt from the diary of Major Wladyslaw Zgorzelski of the First Polish Armoured Div. The Poles had just helped take Chambois and had been ordered to hold at all cost.
" The weather created particular dufficulties on that battlefield. Battledress proved very uncomfortable in the days heat under the blazing sun. Clouds and dust raised by hundreds of tracked and wheeled vehicles from dry soil, covered the countryside and penetrated into the eyes and parched throats , while drinking water was in short supply. (The) most pitiful sight was that of the dispatch riders covered in dust, with black faces, swollen eyelids and reddened eyes. There was no water, so locally found cider was tried but found to be a poor subsitute. The most budensome thing one had to endure was the stench of the swollen German corpses decomposing quickly under the blazing sun. their bodies were scattered everywhere on the fields--- in the hedges and amongst the buildings. Continuous fighting left no time to bury the dead."
I want to thank those who help us of a younger generation understand a little of what it was like.

[von Poop]

Thinking of the Keegan quote there is surely a lot of truth there?
Regardless of the sheer scale of the defeats in the west there was something hugely significant about the retreat from France for Germany.
Similar perhaps to the way most westerners now perceive the battles in Western Europe as a more immediate and accesible part of the war, wouldn't the German 'Volk' have seen the crushing loss at Falaise as rather closer to home than the (at that time) slightly more 'remote' conflict to the East?
The first 'local' catastrophe for the Reich? and maybe more significantly than any other factor; over the same ground as the First War. An enormous symbolic defeat with huge ramifications across not just the military sphere but also the Social and political? It has to have been the point many German citizens, politicians, and soldiers finally thought "We're not going to win this are we..."

[sapper]

Falaise Bloody Carnage.
I remember very clearly, a young dead German sat on the road with his back to a grassy bank, just as though he was taking a rest and a short sleep, feet spread, hands in lap, head on chest covered in this thick grey dust, he looked as though he, and his uniform were fashioned from grey clay. But, his sleep would last for all eternity.
Sapper

[kfz]

Sapper,

I was reading 'Flame Thrower' by Andrew Wilson not long ago, which I was struggling with a bit as it not that well written. When he got to Falise his desciption was preety much exactly like the long desc that you wrote not that long ago, right down to the blanket of dust.

Kev

[sapper]

Horrible place Kev
Sapper