Priests on the Line

By the fourth day of Operation Cobra, it was obvious to the German High Command that their forces were on the verge of being surrounded. They ordered the front line units to break out from the evolving pocket by moving south-east towards Percy. Near La Pompe, a column …

1944-07-29

J074

By the fourth day of Operation Cobra, it was obvious to the German High Command that their forces were on the verge of being surrounded. They ordered the front line units to break out from the evolving pocket by moving south-east towards Percy. Near La Pompe, a column of armor from the 2nd SS Panzer Division, supported by infantry from two companies of the 6th Fallschirmjager Regiment, ran into an outpost of the 4th Infantry Division manning one of these road junctions with M10 tank destroyer support. The armor and the paratroopers quickly overran the small outpost of Americans, who were forced to fall back along the road to a field where the 778th Armored Field Artillery Battalion had its M7 “Priests” set up to provide indirect fire support. The “Priests” lowered their guns, and along with the remnants of the infantry, engaged in a pitched firefight with the panzers.

La Pompe, France

Operation Cobra was the codename for an offensive launched by the United States First Army under Lieutenant General Omar Bradley seven weeks after the D-Day landings, during the Normandy campaign of World War II. The intention was to take advantage of the distraction of the Germans by the British and Canadian attacks around Caen in Operation Goodwood, and thereby break through the German defenses that were penning in their forces while the Germans were unbalanced. Once a corridor had been created, the First Army would then be able to advance into Brittany, rolling up the German flanks once free of the constraints of the bocage country. After a slow start, the offensive gathered momentum and German Resistance collapsed as scattered remnants of broken units fought to escape to the Seine. Lacking the resources to cope with the situation, the German response was ineffectual and the entire Normandy front soon collapsed. Operation Cobra, together with concurrent offensives by the British Second Army and the Canadian First Army, was decisive in securing an Allied victory in the Normandy campaign.

German

American

Scenario Type = Standard