A great opportunity now presented itself to the Allies. Patton’s Third Army had broken out of the hedgerow country and was driving toward the Seine River, to the south of the German Seventh Army. With the Canadian occupation of Falaise to the north, a pocket was forming in which the Seventh Army-and perhaps all of German Army Group B-could be trapped if Patton’s troops turned north to link up with the Canadians.

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The Allied supreme commander, General Dwight D. Eisenhower, had his misgivings, however. He was concerned that poor communications might result in the converging British and American forces trading fire with each other. Bradley, now commanding the U.S. Twelfth Army Group, agreed; Patton did not. ‘Although Patton might have spun a line across the narrow neck,’ Bradley later explained, ‘I doubted his ability to hold it. Nineteen German divisions were now stampeding to escape the trap. Meanwhile, with four divisions George was already blocking three principal escape routes through Alenon, Sees and Argentan. Had he stretched that line to include Falaise, he would have extended his roadblock a distance of 40 miles. The enemy could not only have broken through, but he might have trampled Patton’s position in the onrush. I much preferred a solid shoulder at Argentan to the possibility of a broken neck at Falaise.’

Although Eisenhower and Bradley were unwilling to risk a head-on collision with the British, they did commit one division to block the German escape route. On the night of August 16, the 90th Infantry Division, situated at Le Bourg St. Leonard, was released from the Third Army’s XV Corps and assigned to a provisional corps to assist in closing the Falaise pocket.

The Germans were now becoming increasingly alarmed by the gravity of their situation. On the afternoon of August 16, Field Marshal Günther Kluge, commander of German forces in the West, returned to his headquarters at La Roche Guyon. He had been visiting the Falaise area when his radio truck was disabled, leaving him out of contact with his headquarters for several hours. Since Field Marshal Erwin Rommel had been strafed and wounded by an Allied fighter on July 17, Kluge had also been in personal command of Rommel’s Army Group B in Normandy. Fully alerted to the danger there, Kluge now ordered the army group to withdraw, which it began to do that night. The German escape route included two vital crossroads-Trun and Chambois-and two bridges of high load-bearing capacity at their disposal at Chambois and St. Lambert.

On August 17, the British commander in chief, General Bernard Law Montgomery, ordered the Canadian 4th and Polish 1st Armored divisions to advance through Trun and take Chambois. At the same time, the 90th Infantry Division was returned to the control of the V Corps of the First Army, with which it had entered combat back in June. The Polish 1st Armored and American 90th Infantry divisions had embarked on separate courses that were to converge at Chambois.

‘The weather created particular difficulties on the battlefield,’ wrote Polish Major Wladyslaw Zgorzelski in his diary, ‘battledress proved very uncomfortable in the day’s heat under the blazing sun. Clouds of dust raised by hundreds of tracked and wheeled vehicles from dry soil covered the countryside, penetrated into eyes and parched throats. (The) most pitiful sight was that of the dispatch riders covered in dust, with black faces, swollen eyelids and reddened eyes. There was no water, so locally made cider was tried but found out to be a poor substitute.’ As the Poles advanced, they were assailed by the stench of swollen German corpses, scattered everywhere and decomposing under the blazing sun.

The Polish 1st Armored Division advanced along two roads. The eastern column drove through Bout-du-Haut, Vendeuvre, Barou, and Hills 259, 258 and 240, while the western column moved through Rouvers, Sassy, Jort, Morteaux, Couliboeuf, Hill 159, Louviers-en-Auge and Hill 137. On the evening of August 17, the brigade commander, Colonel Thadeusz Majewski, ordered Major Zgorzelski to form a battle group to seize the high ground south of Louviers-en-Auge and Le Mesnil Girard, secure an observation point over the Trun Valley and destroy escaping enemy columns. The battle group consisted of the 10th Dragoons (a motorized cavalry regiment), the 24th Lancers (a regiment of M-4 Sherman medium tanks) and two anti-tank batteries.

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