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 The Invasion
Interactive feature of the most complex attack ever conceived
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E-mail your letter to the editor
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Anton Herr in the German "Panzeer" uniform - rank of "Oberleutnant" |
IN HIS OWN WORDS: ANTON HERR
Posted Sunday, May 23, 2004
The German officer, 24, commanded a dozen tanks in a company stationed near Falaise
It was actually a relief for me when the invasion finally happened. I was having trouble keeping my crews in a state of readiness. I knew it was coming off when a young man from the chateau where we were staying brought me a tract to translate that had been dropped from an Allied plane. It ordered him and his family to get out of the chateau into the surrounding fields because they were going to start bombing it. I told him instead to take all the civilians to the deepest cellar, where they'd have a better chance of surviving. That was good advice, since I learned later that they all survived.
We left at around 5 a.m. for Caen. The whole way up, we were never fired at. But when we got to Caen, the Allies were bombing the bridge over the River Orne. I noticed the cadence of the bombs, and I sent my tanks over one by one between the bombs and didn't lose any of them. We were the first of the tanks over that bridge, and we continued north. The town seemed completely untouched by war at that time.
None of the German tank companies were communicating with the others. We'd been told to keep radio silence so the Allies couldn't pick us up. We were like an orchestra without a conductor, and there I was playing flute. I continued all the way up to the coast, and when I got there, I saw an armada like a plague of locusts. The number of ships was uncountable, and the Allies' superior firepower was obvious. But in war, what you lose first is reason. I wanted to attack. I wanted to vanquish them.
We were fired at, and one tank took a direct hit—I never knew whether from the enemy or our own tanks—and the whole crew was killed. After we took another hit, we found a little wood and dug in. The order to all tank units, maybe from the Führer, was not to yield a single meter. Before I slept that night under my tank, I wrote an angry letter home. As a young officer, I thought we could have broken the invasion if we'd been better led.
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