Scottish troops attack Waffen SS

26th June 1944: Two accounts from infantry soldiers who advanced through the Normandy cornfields as the British launch a major attack

Led by their piper, men of 7th Seaforth Highlanders, 15th (Scottish) Division advance during Operation 'Epsom', 26 June 1944

Men of 12 Platoon, 'B' Company, 6th Royal Scots Fusiliers, 15th (Scottish) Division, wait for the order to advance during Operation 'Epsom', 26 June 1944

Infantry of 6th Royal Scots Fusiliers, 15th (Scottish Division), advance through waist-high corn behind a Churchill tank of 9th Royal Tank Regiment at the start of Operation 'Epsom', 26 June 1944.

On the 26th June Montgomery launched Operation Epsom, a major attack aimed at the town of Caen, the major obstacle to British expansion in the east of the Normandy battlefield. The attack was led by the 15th (Scottish) Infantry Division comprised of the 44th (Lowland) Infantry Brigade and the 46th (Highland) Infantry Brigade - with a number of famous regiments taking part, including the Royal Scots, the Royal Scots Fusiliers, the Cameronians, the Seaforth Highlanders and the Gordon Highlanders.

Robert Woollcombe¹ was a platoon commander with the King's Own Scottish Borderers (K.O.S.B.). This was to be their first day in action in Normandy - and Woollcombe had an 'indelible memory' of the day which he recalls in some detail in his memoir. They arrived at their forming up point at 3am in drizzling rain. They then scraped pits in the ground before trying to get some sleep before breakfast at 5.30am - porridge, tinned sausages, biscuits, tinned margarine and lots of tea. Then at 7.30 the opening barrage:

The minute hand touched 7.30. ... On the second, nine hundred guns of all calibres, topped by the fifteen-inch broadsides from the distant battleships lying off the beaches, vomited their inferno.

Concealed guns opened from fields, hedges and farms in every direction around us, almost as if arranged in tiers. During short pauses between salvoes more guns could be heard, and right away, further guns, filling and reverberating the very atmosphere with a sustained, muffled hammering.

It was like rolls of thunder, only it never slackened. Then the guns near by battered out again with loud, vicious, strangely mournful repercussions. The thunder angry, violent and death-dealing. Hurling itself over strong-points, enemy gun areas, forming-up places, tank laagers, and above all concentrated into the creeping mass of shells that raked ahead of our own infantrymen, as thousands of gunners bent to their task.

Little rashes of goose-flesh ran over the skin. One was hot and cold, and very moved. All this “stuff” in support of us! Every single gun at maximum effort to kill; to help us.