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THE CAPTURE OF
LE HAVRE
Number 139
3 9
9
770306
154080
£3.95
NUMBER 139
© Copyright
After the Battle
2008
Editor-in-Chief: Winston G. Ramsey
Managing Editor: Gordon Ramsey
Editor: Karel Margry
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Le Havre lies at the entrance to the Seine estuary, on the right bank of the river.
A fishing settlement since Roman times, its history as an ocean port began in 1517
when King François I set out to construct a new port city to replace the ancient har-
bours of Honfleur and Harfleur, whose utility had decreased due to silting. Later kings
extended the harbour and fortified it and Vauban greatly enlarged its capacity.
By 1939 it was the second-largest port of France. A deep-water harbour, predominant
in the American and colonial trade, it could accommodate the largest vessels afloat.
It comprised two tidal basins and 13 wet docks providing 22 kilometres of quays,
equipped with 241 cranes and 27 special lifting appliances for grain, coal, timber,
bananas, etc. Facilities included 29 floating cranes, seven dry docks, three floating
docks and three petroleum wharves. The city’s industries included three shipbuilding
yards, a Schneider motor and Diesel engines plant, two aircraft factories and many
smaller chemical, engineering and metallurgical firms.
DUNKIRK
CALAIS
CONTENTS
THE CAPTURE OF LE HAVRE
UNITED KINGDOM
The Plessey Tunnel Factory
EASTERN FRONT
The Carpatho-Dukla Operation
2
32
44
BOULOGNE
Front Cover:
Churchill tank memorial to
Operation ‘Astonia’ – the Allied capture of
Le Havre in September 1944. The mem-
orial is located along the D52 between the
villages of Montivilliers and Fontaine-la-
Mallet, some six kilometres north-east of
Le Havre, the starting point of the set-
piece attack on the port city. (Karel
Margry)
Centre Pages:
Czech LT-38 light tank
preserved at the Museum of the Slovak
National Uprising at Banská Bystrica in
north-eastern Slovakia. (Pavel Náter)
Back Cover:
A Soviet T-34 and German
PzKpfw IV set up along the E371 road
down from the Dukla Pass in north-eastern
Slovakia to commemorate the ferocious
battles that took place in this mountainous
border region in September-October 1944.
(Pavel Náter)
Acknowledgements:
For help with the Le
Havre story, the Editor would like to thank
Johan van Doorn and Hans Houterman.
Photo Credits:
IWM — Imperial War
Museum, London; LTM — London
Transport Museum; RRA Svidník —
Regionálna rozvojová agentúra Svidník;
VHM Svidník — Vojenské historické
múzeum Svidník.
LE HAVRE
By the first week of September 1944, the First Canadian Army advancing along the
Channel coast had bypassed and invested four major French ports: Le Havre,
Boulogne, Calais and Dunkirk. Urgently needed to alleviate the Allied supply prob-
lems and also to reduce the heavy cross-Channel guns south of Calais that were still
shelling Britain, the ports were to be captured as soon as possible. Three separate
operations were planned. Le Havre was reduced in a neat 48-hour operation (code-
named ‘Astonia’) on September 10-12. Next came Boulogne (Operation ‘Wellhit’),
captured by the Canadian 3rd Division in a six-day operation from September 17 to
22 (see
After the Battle
No. 86). After that it was the turn of Calais and the cross-
Channel guns at Cap Gris-Nez (Operation ‘Undergo’), reduced by the 3rd Canadian
Division between September 25 and October 1 (see
After the Battle
No. 29). Dunkirk,
first invested by the 2nd Canadian Division, was not attacked, Field Marshal Mont-
gomery deciding on September 14 that it was to be merely contained. Its German
garrison held out until the end of the war, surrendering on May 9, 1945.
2
The capture of Le Havre was a classic example of a successful
set-piece battle. After the German defences had been ‘softened
up’ by colossal aerial and naval bombardment and artillery
shelling, a ‘siege-train’ of specialised armour broke through the
outer crust of the German defensive perimeter and allowed
two British infantry divisions to push through the gap and
methodically reduce the enemy strongholds before driving into
the heart of the city. Here, in the late afternoon of September
12, British soldiers, French FFI resistance fighters and other Le
Havre citizens watch British shells falling on the last German
strongholds in the dock area, pictured by British Army photog-
rapher Sergeant Albert Wilkes.
THE CAPTURE OF LE HAVRE
By the first week of September 1944, the
Allied armies sweeping north and east across
France and into Belgium after their break-
out from the Normandy bridgehead had
bypassed and isolated the Channel ports of
Le Havre, Boulogne, Calais and Dunkirk.
Now far behind the new battlefront, all of
these ports were heavily defended with a
strong German garrison under a Fortress
Commander. Nevertheless, if they could be
captured quickly without serious damage to
the harbour installations, the pressure on the
Allied supply lines from the invasion beach
‘Mulberry’ harbours would be reduced and
the momentum of the pursuit could be better
maintained.
The task of capturing the Channel ports
had been given to the Canadian First Army,
commanded by Lieutenant-General Henry
Crerar. The Canadians had captured Dieppe
and Ostend without a fight, but expected a
heavy battle for the other ports and, since his
resources were limited, Crerar decided that
he would have to take each fortress in turn.
The first to be assaulted was Le Havre, the
great ocean port at the mouth of the Seine,
and the task of reducing it was assigned to
Lieutenant-General Sir John Crocker’s
British I Corps. SHAEF had allotted this
seaport to the maintenance of the American
armies. Thus a British corps under Canadian
command would assault a port destined for
American use.
British I Corps, composed of the 49th
(West Riding) and 51st (Highland) Divisions,
had crossed the Seine on September 1, and
leading elements of the 49th Division made
contact with Le Havre’s perimeter defences
on the evening of the 2nd. It soon became
clear that the port was garrisoned and that the
Germans intended to offer a strong defence.
General Crocker now judged that a full-
scale set-piece attack, with strong support by
heavy bombers, naval gun-fire, artillery and
special armoured equipment, would be nec-
essary to reduce Le Havre. Obtaining and
co-ordinating these various resources took
time, and so a pause was made which meant
that the assault could not be undertaken for
over a week. As a first measure, the 51st
By Karel Margry
Division, which had liberated St Valéry-en-
Caux — site of its gallant defeat in 1940 —
without difficulty on September 2, was
ordered to move down the coast and take
over the northern sector of the Le Havre
perimeter, on the right of the 49th Division.
The picture was taken from the edge of the escarpment that comprises the upper
part of Le Havre and overlooks the lower parts of town — the docks and the city
centre. More precisely, the men are standing among the bushes close to the Terrasse
Amiral Mouchez, opposite the Rue André Messager.
3
ATB
IWM BU 917
Oberst Eberhard Wildermuth, Festungskommandant of Le Havre. Born in Stuttgart on
October 23, 1890, Wildermuth fought in the First World War, being wounded twice.
Between the wars, after commanding a Freikorps battalion till 1921, he completed his
law studies to became a director of the Deutsche Bau- und Bodenbank in Berlin in
1928. A reserve Major, he was called up in 1939 to lead the II. Bataillon of Infanterie-
Regiment 272 of the 93. Infanterie-Division, earning the Ritterkreuz for actions during
the attack on the Maginot Line in 1940. From July 1941, he served with the 717. Infan-
terie-Division in Serbia in anti-partisan operations. Promoted to Oberstleutnant in
December 1941, he was given command of Infanterie-Regiment 371 of the 161. Infan-
terie-Division, fighting with Heeresgruppe Mitte at Rzhev on the upper Volga in Russia
until September 1942. Released due to combat fatigue, he then spent time recovering
in hospital until February 1943. The following May, promoted to Oberst, he was given
command of Grenadier-Regiment 578 of the 305. Infanterie-Division, first on the Côte
d’Azur, and then from August 1943 on the Italian front. After heavy combat on the
Volturno and Sangro rivers, and another sojourn recuperating in hospital, he was
assigned to command the coastal defence sector of Venice. On August 12, 1944, he
was transferred to Heeresgruppe B in France and appointed Fortress Commander of
Le Havre two days later. After the war, released by the British in July 1946, he joined
the Liberal Freie Demokratische Partei and became Minister of Housing in the West
German government (1949-52). He died on March 9, 1952.
the latter basin. The city itself is built at two
distinct levels: the northern half lies on a
fairly high escarpment while the lower parts
of the city — the docks and the city centre —
are along the Seine estuary. By September
1944, some 60,000 of the peacetime popula-
tion of over 160,000 remained in the city, the
rest having been forced out by German evac-
uation orders or fled as refugees from Allied
bombing.
Situated at the end of a peninsula, Le
Havre had considerable natural strength. It
was protected by water on three sides: on the
west by the sea, on the south by the Seine
estuary and the Tancarville Canal, and on
the east by the deep valley of the Lézarde
river, which the Germans had flooded to
make it even more impassable. Conse-
quently, the only approach to the town was
from the north but this terrain was over-
looked by high ground at Octeville-sur-Mer.
One of the strongest fortresses of the
Atlantic Wall, Le Havre had been prepared
for defence for several years. However,
although the city was heavily fortified against
naval attack, the landward defences were
incomplete. A defensive line ran west of and
roughly parallel with the Lézarde, turning
west at Montivilliers to reach the coast by
way of Dondenéville and Octeville. Consid-
ering this northern sector the weakest part of
the front, the Germans had barred it with a
deep, though not fully continuous, anti-tank
ditch coupled with extensive minefields and
barbed wire. Behind the ditch there were
many strongpoints of company-size strength
with concreted dugouts, machine guns,
88mm guns and anti-tank guns.
In the town itself were two large forts —
the Fort de Ste Adresse and the Fort de
Tourneville (the old fort of Sanvic) — and
many road-blocks, pillboxes and fortified
houses, together with flak and anti-tank
guns. The German garrison lacked a mobile
reserve of tanks and self-propelled guns but
was well equipped with artillery. Apart from
the 35 coastal guns, most of which could fire
only to seaward, and which included one
380mm and two 170mm guns in the Grand
Clos battery three kilometres north of the
city, there were 44 medium and field guns
and 32 anti-aircraft guns.
BURKHARD WILDERMUTH
Le Havre had long been a city of much
commercial and military significance and had
figured prominently in the old Anglo-French
wars, the British having bombarded it in
1694, 1759, 1794 and 1795. Immediately
before the Second World War it was, after
Marseilles, the most important port in
France, with a capacity of 20,000 tons daily.
There were 15 basins in the harbour, the old-
est of which dated back to 1669, with 22 kilo-
metres of quays. The chief docks were the
Bassin Bellot and the Bassin de l’Eure. The
Canal de Tancarville, by which river boats
unable to negotiate the Seine estuary can
make the port direct, enters the harbour by
EDDY FLORENTIN
In the early evening of September 3, three German envoys
entered the British lines under a white flag to discuss the terms
of the surrender ultimatum addressed to the Le Havre garrison
by the British besiegers. The negotiations took place at the
villa
(left)
of the former Mayor of Gonfréville on the Route
Nationale 14 (today the RN15), the main road east out of Le
Havre. The picture
(right)
was taken at 0900 on the morning of
the 4th, when the delegates returned to the house with Oberst
4
Wildermuth’s written reply. The latter flatly rejected the British
demand of unconditional surrender, whereupon General John
Crocker, the British I Corps commander, refused Wildermuth’s
request to allow the civilian population to evacuate from the
besieged and bomb-threatened city. The breakdown of negoti-
ations sealed the fate of Le Havre and its cornered population,
as destruction by naval and aerial bombardment prior to an
assault was now certain.
DANIEL PALFREY
It was during the siege of Le Havre that the extraordinary affair
of Captain William Douglas Home occurred. A subaltern serv-
ing in C Squadron, 141st RAC (the Crocodile flame-thrower
unit), he objected to what he saw as the unnecessary bombing
of a town full of civilians, which he considered a war crime, and
therefore refused to go into action. A member of an aristocratic
family, educated at Eton and Oxford (his eldest brother Alec
would become Prime Minister in 1963), Douglas Home had in
1941-43 unsuccessfully contested three parliamentary by-elec-
tions as an independent candidate opposed to the Allies’ war
aim of unconditional surrender. Sent to France with his regi-
ment, he had seen the result of the bombing of civilians at
Caen, which deeply disturbed him, and on August 30 had writ-
ten an open letter to the
Maidenhead Advertiser
repeating his
criticism on the conduct of the war. On September 5, assigned
to act as liaison officer between his unit and the 51st Division
for ‘Astonia’ and having heard that Oberst Wildermuth’s offer
to evacuate the French civilians had been rejected on the
grounds that there was ‘no time’, Douglas-Home went to his
battalion commander, Lieutenant-Colonel Herbert Waddell,
and told him that he refused to take part in the operation, as
his conscience would not allow it. Waddell called a witness
and gave Home a direct order, which he refused. Waddell ini-
tially did nothing with Home’s defiance but sent him back to
his squadron. Two weeks later, at Boulogne, Home made
another stand when he offered to go down into the besieged
Le Havre had been designated a Festung
(Fortress) in January 1944, one of 12 coastal
installations selected by Hitler to be
defended to the last in order to deny their
use to the enemy. Fortress Le Havre had
been commanded since mid-August by
Oberst Eberhard Wildermuth, not a regular
soldier but an officer of wide experience.
Fifty-five years old, a bank director in civil-
ian life, he had seen service in France, Russia
and Italy before being appointed Fes-
tungskommandant of Le Havre, where he
arrived on August 14. Like all Fortress Com-
manders, Wildermuth had had personal
orders from Hitler to demolish the harbour
facilities and defend Le Havre to the last.
The strength of the garrison was about
11,000 (Allied intelligence under-estimated it
at 8,700), including 4,000 artillery and flak
personnel, and some 1,300 naval personnel
of doubtful fighting value. The some 5,500
infantry troops comprised six battalions of
varied quality: Füsilier-Bataillon 226 and the
I. and II. Bataillon of Grenadier-Regiment
1041 of the 226. Infanterie-Division; the III.
Bataillon of Grenadier-Regiment 936 of the
245. Infanterie-Division; the III. Bataillon of
Sicherungsregiment 5; and Festungs-Stamm-
Abteilung 81, the latter a permanent fortress
unit. The artillery units included the person-
port and negotiate a surrender with the Germans. By now,
Waddell had decided Home’s insubordination at Le Havre could
not be tolerated and put him under arrest to be court-mar-
tialled. (His hesitation had repercussions for Waddell too, for it
caused him to be relieved of his command a few weeks later).
At Home’s trial, held in Belgium on October 25, it became clear
that his refusal was symbolic and that he had done it to draw
public attention to the moral issue of bombing civilians and to
the unnecessary waste of lives brought about by the uncondi-
tional surrender policy. Home argued that a man’s conscience
came before orders which he believed to be morally wrong.
The court did not accept this and sentenced him to dishon-
ourable discharge and 12 months of hard labour (of which he
served eight at Wormwood Scrubs and Wakefield Prison).
Although Douglas Home was publicly scorned at the time,
ironically, at the later Nuremberg trials, Allied judges would
condemn German officers for failing to do exactly what he had
done: refusing to obey orders which they knew to be morally
wrong. This obvious double standard always bothered Douglas
Home. In 1988, after Britain had condemned former UN Secre-
tary-General Kurt Waldheim for not refusing wartime orders
that he knew to be ethically wrong, Home (who after the war
had become a well-known playwright) sought to get his hon-
our restored and applied for his case to be reconsidered. The
War Office declined to re-open the case and in 1991 Home
abandoned his appeal. He died on September 28, 1992.
commander of the 146th Brigade,
approached the German lines in an
armoured car carrying a white flag and a
loudspeaker and invited the enemy to send a
representative to receive terms of surrender.
Shortly afterwards, three German envoys —
a Leutnant and two NCOs — entered the
British lines where they were informed of the
British terms: unconditional surrender or
else intensive air and naval bombardment.
The Germans took the ultimatum back into
Le Havre and early on the 4th returned with
a letter from Oberst Wildermuth in which he
refused to surrender but instead asked for a
two-day armistice to evacuate the civilians.
The German offer to rescue the French pop-
ulation from suffering severe casualties was
referred back to General Crocker, who
refused on the grounds that there was ‘no
time’ — a refusal that sealed the fate of Le
Havre and has been the source of much con-
troversy and debate ever since, especially in
France.
In an attempt to spare further damage and
save the lives of soldiers and civilians, some
922,000 ‘safe conduct’ leaflets were dropped
by aircraft or fired into the city by gunners
appealing to the German soldiers to surrender.
Loudspeaker teams addressed the same mes-
sage to the German forward defence lines.
5
nel of Heeres-Küsten-Artillerie-Regiment
1254 and Marine-Artillerie-Abteilung 226,
which manned the Army and Navy coastal
batteries, and of schwere Flak-Abteilung
193, which operated the AA batteries in and
around Le Havre. The naval personnel fur-
ther comprised what remained of the Kriegs-
marine patrol boat, torpedo boat and
minesweeping flotillas that had been sta-
tioned at Le Havre. The garrison was amply
stocked with food and ammunition, enough
to last for three months.
On August 20, Wildermuth ordered a gen-
eral evacuation of the entire civilian popula-
tion. The townspeople, still with bad memo-
ries of the exodus of 1940 and expecting
liberation to arrive any day, were naturally
reluctant to leave their homes. The local
Resistance called on them to disobey the
German decree. As a result, few left the city.
The order was repeated on August 31, but
with little effect. Meanwhile, the Germans
began the systematic demolition of the port
facilities.
In the late afternoon of September 3,
Major-General Evelyn ‘Bubbles’ Barker, the
49th Division commander, declared an 11-
hour truce — from 7 p.m. till 6 a.m. — to
enable him to send an ultimatum to the Ger-
mans. At 1900 hours, Brigadier John Walker,

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