Breaking the Panzers

Breaking the Panzers by Baverstock, Kevin. Hardcover edition. ISBN: 9780750928953.

Over the course of fourteen hours of fierce fighting in Normandy on 1 July 1944, the 1st Tyneside Scottish played a major part in halting the advance of two formations of Hitlers crack Waffen-SS. Twenty-five days after the Normandy landings on 6 June 1944 the Allies were still trying to force a break-out from the beachhead. At the end of Operation Epsom, the British Second Army decided to pull in its defensive perimeter as intelligence reports suggested a German counter-attack was imminent. The 1st Bn Tyneside Scottish, weary and depleted after two weeks of bitter fighting, dug in and awaited the assault. The enemys last throw came on 1 July, targeted upon the shoulder of the Epsom salient, with the intention of penetrating the British line and forcing the Second Army back to the coast. Elements of two elite formations blooded on the Eastern Front, the 2nd and 9th SS Panzer Divisions, attacked in the early hours. Unjustly overlooked and dismissed by many historians, the days fighting won the Tyneside Scottish a battle honour. The author has gained access to some fifty vivid eyewitness accounts of the days action made by British veterans of the battle and has interwoven them with detailed intelligence reports from the battalions War Diary. Computer-generated graphics, based on contemporary reconnaissance photographs, accurately portray the bocage countryside, helping the reader to visualise the action as it unfolds, hour by hour. Linking narrative, colour maps and diagrams, the author has produced a definitive account of this crucial but often ignored one-day battle.