Crossing the Vire

Three weeks after the 50th Infantry Division drove the Germans back behind the protection of the Vire-et-Taute Canal and the River Vire, the division launched its first full-scale offensive, an assault crossing of a defended river line. The days preceding …

1944-07-07

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Three weeks after the 50th Infantry Division drove the Germans back behind the protection of the Vire-et-Taute Canal and the River Vire, the division launched its first full-scale offensive, an assault crossing of a defended river line. The days preceding the assault had been spent reconnoitering, planning, and constructing improvised footbridges and ladders to scale the steep banks on the far shore. In the early hours of 7 July, the US forces converged by the last hedgerows on the near side of the river to launch their assault.

Vire-et-Taute, France

The Battle of Saint-Lô is one of the three conflicts in the Battle of the Hedgerows, which took place between July 7–19, 1944, just before Operation Cobra. Saint-Lô had fallen to Germany in 1940, and, after the Invasion of Normandy, the Americans targeted the city, as it served as a strategic crossroads. American bombardments caused heavy damage and a high number of casualties, which resulted in the martyr city being called "The Capital of Ruins", popularized in a report by Samuel Beckett.

Wikipedia: Battle of Saint-Lô

German

American