Montgomery, the Allied forces’ ground commander and leader of the powerful British 21st Army Group, ordered a bold “right hook” to try and envelop Caen. Caen, a key communications and transportation center viewed as the “hinge” of the Normandy campaign, was fiercely defended and would remain in German hands for a critical month.

The assault forces secured their bridgeheads and started pushing inland.īut they soon ran into concentrated resistance as the Germans swiftly drew the bulk of their panzer groups to the Bayeux-Caen-Falaise area, where the bocage country-a patchwork of small fields hemmed in by sunken roads, ditches, and thick embankments-strongly favored defense and hindered the Allied advance.Ī costly slugging match developed, and a series of frontal assaults by British and Canadian armored and infantry units produced heavy losses and little headway. 1st and 29th Infantry Divisions at Omaha Beach. The Allied landings on five Normandy beaches had gone well that fateful Tuesday morning, despite fierce initial German opposition on the British beaches and a bloody setback for the U.S. Sir Miles Dempsey’s British Second Army on D-Day, June 6, 1944.

Straddling the River Orne nine miles from the English Channel coast, the French medieval city of Caen was the focal objective of Lt.

Battle of kursk tiger tank clip art