Original subtitles

Normandy, France.

One month after D-Day.

A Canadian regiment confronts a notorious SS Panzer unit.

Accused of horrific war crimes.

The Canadians and the 12th SS Hitler Youth had clashed,

since the 7th of June.

So, the Canadians and the 12th SS

have a very vicious personal war.

For the Germans,

this leaves no room for compromise.

It's only victory or death.

On June 6th, 1944,

allied forces finally land troops in Normandy

to open the Western Front.

But Nazi fanatics and diehards

continue to fight ruthlessly for survival.

D-Day was a battle.

The Allies still need to win the war.

July 8th, 1944.

Outskirts of Caen, France.

The Canadian Regina Rifles prepare to do their part

to liberate the French city.

They scout the approach to their objective in the Northwest sector.

And what they saw they didn't like. It was extremely flat.

There was very little cover.

Lieutenant Colonel Foster Matheson

has brought along his company commanders:

Acting Major Gordon Brown,

Major Eric Syme, and Major Stuart Tubb,

to find the best way forward.

And they're driving around in universal carriers

and at one point they get lost.

The driver takes a wrong turn.

And they find themselves in the midst of fighting.

The Regina Rifles quickly come under attack.

One of the drivers is shot and killed.

The passengers dive for cover.

As the battle rages around them, the vehicles try to reverse course.

In the confusion,

the carriers start to pull away leaving the officers behind.

It proves to be yet another setback in the quest to take Caen.

Only 12 miles from the coast,

allied forces had planned to take the city on D-Day.

But more than a month later,

the goal has proved stubbornly elusive.

Both sides understood that the capture of Caen

was crucial to going through the rest of the country,

that if you could capture Caen,

you could enter the rest of France.

860,000 allied troops

are bottled up at the Normandy beachhead.

The Allies need their forces to break out into France,

then east for Paris.

Caen is a critical road and rail hub.

The Germans understood, if you can defend Caen,

you can block the Allies' advance.

These are armored divisions that had hundreds of tanks.

They needed good roads

and so they were going to be passing through Caen

to strike at the Allies who were on the beaches

and who of course were very vulnerable.

The Regina Rifles have landed in a battle

between the German 12th SS Panzer Division

and other Canadian forces.

This is not the first time

the Rifles have encountered the 12th SS.

A month earlier, on D-Day plus one,

the Reginas had seized the town of Bretteville, not far away.

The Reginas withstood four counterattacks

from the 12th SS Panzer Division,

inflicting 152 German casualties

and destroying six tanks to hold the town,

and earned battle honors for their unit.

At a distinct disadvantage here,

the trucks make a desperate escape.

The officers of the Regina Rifles are in danger of being left behind.

Go, Go!

They haul themselves onto the back of a vehicle,

loaded to their surprise with crates of explosives.

They duck for cover as enemy fire riddles the vehicle,

and can only hope

that a bullet doesn't ignite a fatal explosion.

After finally clearing the battle scene,

the officers take up their reconnaissance position

in the nearby village of Authie.

Earlier that day,

General Bernard Montgomery launched Operation Charnwood,

the British second army's latest attempt to seize Caen.

To support the operation,

the Regina Rifles must take the Abbaye d'Ardenne,

which guards the northwest approach.

A high stone wall surrounds the 12th century church

and its adjoining buildings.

It was a stone fortress.

It had a large tower.

And from the heights of that tower,

they could see the entire countryside.

And so, it's a really critical position,

a strong point that the Germans will use

both to observe the Allies coming off the beaches

and from where they will launch their counterattacks.

Flat grain fields surround the Abbaye on all sides,

providing clear lines of sight for German snipers.

The Germans occupy the only cover:

a dirt mound that once held anti-aircraft guns,

partway across the field.

Matheson plans for Major Syme's B Company

to advance 400 yards from the village of Authie

and take the mound.

Brown's D Company on the left,

along with Tubb's C Company on the right,

are to pass the mound

and advance the remaining 700 yards to the Abbaye.

At 1700 hours,

allied artillery begins to shell the Abbaye d'Ardenne,

in preparation for the assault.

The barrage is meant to soften up German defenses

and keep German heads down as the Canadians approach.

The artillery will last for 30 minutes,

after which the Regina Rifles will launch their attack.

The Abbaye d'Ardenne

is the headquarters of the 12th Panzer Division

they had encountered earlier.

Their commanding officer is Standartenfuhrer Kurt Meyer.

The 33-year old colonel

is one of Germany's youngest divisional commanders.

Kurt Meyer

is an extremely courageous and brave officer.

But at the same time,

he's also extremely ruthless.

He's very much determined to the cause of Nazism

and is also determined

to instill this ideology into his men.

Meyer's Panzer Division is made up of former Hitlerjugend.

The infamous "Hitler Youth" movement

raised a generation of German children

to believe in their Aryan superiority.

For the SS leadership,

12th SS Panzer Division Hitler Youth

is a kind of symbol

for the next generation of Nazism.

Meyer withstands the barrage inside the Abbaye complex.

The main building, as such, would be too much exposed

to Allied artillery fire

or Allied air bombardment.

So, he situates his headquarters in a secondary building,

in the cellar, so that he's protected.

As the allied shelling of the Abbaye continues,

Brown and the rest of the Regina Rifles

try to move into the field from which they are to attack.

But it proves difficult.

Well the Regina Rifles are pinned down

because the village of Authie is not cleared.

This means that the Germans are also able to bring fire

to bear down on the Rifles.

German counter battery fire also opens up.

Several allied tanks position themselves nearby.

But as their jump-off time approaches,

a hidden German 88 begins to launch shells.

The 88 millimeter gun

is the most effective artillery piece in the Nazi arsenal,

and feared by allied tankers everywhere.

In ground combat,

it has a maximum range of over 16,000 yards.

And a well-trained crew

can fire a round every three seconds.

The 88 quickly destroys three Sherman tanks.

As their crews escape,

they draw German machine gun fire from the nearby mound.

Unwilling to stay exposed to the German artillery,

the remaining tanks retreat.

The fighting in Normandy is often envisioned

as a slashing tank assaults,

and almost blitzkrieg like attacks on the enemy.

But this was combined arms warfare

and if the tanks got too far in front of the infantry,

they were easily knocked out by anti-tank guns

that are very effective at this point in the war.

With their tank support gone,

all three Regina Rifle companies are trapped in the open.

The German barrage continues.

The Canadians risk being wiped out

before they can even leave their lines.

July 8th, 1944.

German artillery targets the Regina Rifles' position

as they prepare to attack the Abbaye d'Ardenne,

which blocks access to the French city of Caen.

The Regina Rifles are dubbed "Farmer Johns"

by other Canadian units

because they come from a rural part of Canada.

Obviously, Farmer John's is meant as a bit of a put down.

But the John's, they seem to have shortened it,

they got rid of the farmer part and they proudly, they embraced it.

Pinned down due to enemy fire,

the John's miss the jump-off time for their attack against the Abbaye.

In the chaos and the confusion,

units are late arriving to the front

and in fact most of the three attacking Regina companies

get there after the barrage has gone off.

And so, with communications broken down,

there's really a dire situation here.

The Reginas are looking at attacking this fortress

with almost no artillery support.

The Reginas can only take cover

and wait for the German barrage to ease.

When it finally does,

Acting Major Gordon Brown and his fellow officers

hurry to organize their men.

At 1800 hours,

30 minutes after their jump off time,

the Reginas commence their assault,

with Major Eric Syme's B Company in the lead.

The Germans have put the time to good use.

During this pause,

the German defenders are able to regroup

and sight their machine guns, sight their anti-tank guns.

And this is the worst-case scenario for any army.

As the three Regina companies start out,

Baker company is to advance 400 yards from the village

and take the mound,

the only cover in the field.

German forces open fire on them from all directions.

Caen is considered so critical,

General Feldmarschall Erwin Rommel

has assigned elite units to defend it.

Overseeing the defense of Normandy,

Rommel had invested heavily in the Atlantic wall.

It is a series of bunkers, block houses, casements,

fortified positions along the French, Belgian,

Dutch, Danish and Norwegian coast.

It is supposed to ward off an Allied invasion.

Based on Rommel's experience with the Allies in North Africa,

he knew German tanks were vulnerable

to allied air superiority.

Rommel believed the Allies had to be defeated on the beaches

in the earliest hours of the invasion.

The German failure to do so on D-Day,

makes the fighting more desperate.

Germans are still determined to fight,

because they think if the Allies win the war,

this would mean the annihilation of the German people.

This was especially true of German military leadership,

like Kurt Meyer,

who commands the 12th SS Panzer Division,

which holds the Abbaye.

How they understand war is that it must be fought

in the most ruthless way

because it is a struggle for survival.

Meyer has encountered Canadian units before.

The Canadians and the 12th SS Hitler Youth had clashed,

since the 7th of June.

So, really, the second day of the fighting.

And there had been fierce battles all over the front.

On June 7th and 8th,

Meyer's unit executed 18 Canadian prisoners of war

at the Abbaye d'Ardenne,

in flagrant violation of the Geneva convention.

For people like Meyer or for SS officers,

it's all or nothing.

And there is no way of compromising with the enemy,

so it's only victory or death.

Now, the 12th SS Hitlerjugend

believed that if they are captured or surrender to the Canadians,

they will be executed in retaliation.

And so, the Canadians and the 12th SS

have a very vicious, personal war.

Regina Rifles B Company still leads the advance

towards the German occupied mound partway across the field.

Faced with heavy gunfire,

B Company must run or crawl, in short bursts,

to avoid being hit.

The Germans open up with mortar fire, machine gun fire,

sniper fire.

And the Regina Rifles are being picked off one by one.

As they inch their way forward,

the company suffers heavy casualties.

There's no easy way to take out machine guns.

Machine guns firing 500 bullets a minute,

firing on an arc.

You have to sacrifice soldiers to take that out.

They have no choice but to keep moving.

Three companies of the Regina Rifles

commence an assault against the Abbaye d'Ardenne.

Across more than 1100 yards of open field,

without tank support,

and one half hour after their artillery barrage lifts.

B Company leads the way.

Baker Company advances slowly

and using whatever cover is available.

But there's not a lot of cover.

So, this means you got to stay low. You got to stay in the grass.

You got to try to stay out of sight of any sort of German sniper,

German artillery, or German machine gun.

So, it is a very slow process and it causes significant casualties

because every time they pop up, they get shot.

As the casualties mount,

weeks of strain also take their toll.

The Regina Rifles were very weak at this point.

They had lost a lot of soldiers

in the fighting in the first month of Normandy.

As frontline troops at the sharp end,

they get very little sleep and endure unimaginable stress.

There's no question that the lack of sleep

and the continual engagement with the enemy

that just combined will wear anyone down.

It has been four weeks of constant combat.

So as these soldiers are engaged with the German enemy,

as they're approaching the Abbey,

there are soldiers that are breaking down,

there are soldiers that are crying,

there are soldiers that are catatonic and can't even move.

This now includes Baker Company's commander,

Major Syme,

who succumbs to what is called battle exhaustion.

Major! Major!

I need a medic!

Though the Canadian division

had undertaken psychiatric screening prior to deployment,

conditions like battle exhaustion or battle fatigue

prove unpredictable and claim many soldiers.

By late July 1944,

battle fatigue makes up 25 percent

of all non-fatal casualties to the Allies.

After D-Day, the British and Canadian army group

established front-line centers to treat battle exhaustion.

Therapy is simple: sedation and sleep.

You want to treat them quickly, you want to treat them effectively

and then you want them back in the front line.

As Major Syme is carried from the field,

the remainder of B Company continues to press to the mound.

As they are making those hard yards,

riflemen would lay down fire,

Bren machine gunners would lay down heavier fire.

The way they knocked out those machine guns

was to use grenades for the most part.

And those grenades explode

and they send shrapnel, of course,

and that's how, ultimately, they knock out the mound.

The Germans are forced to retreat back towards the Abbaye.

To achieve the objective, Baker Company is gutted.

61 out of 100 men become casualties.

With the mound finally in Canadian hands,

C Company and D Company now continue the advance

and pass through the remains of B Company.

From that position,

Baker Company can then provide covering fire

for the other two companies.

You have Dog Company on the left, Charlie Company on the right.

And Baker Company will provide very important covering fire,

which will allow the other troops to move up slowly.

So, the idea simply here is what we call fire and movement.

Someone's shooting. Someone's moving.

To prevent his men from meeting B Company's fate,

Major Stu Tubb, the commander of C Company,

orders high explosive mortars against the Abbaye complex.

He hopes the distraction

will provide his men much needed coverage.

But Tubb receives word

that the Reginas have no high explosive mortars available,

and he is offered smoke instead.

This works for a while, until the wind comes up.

They're now wide open

and exposed completely to German fire.

All hell breaks loose.

Facing heavy enemy fire,

C and D companies of the Canadian Regina Rifles

must attack the Abbaye d'Ardenne

across 700 yards of open field.

They have just learned

that they've run out of high explosive mortars

to subdue the German counter fire.

Such shortages have proved a problem across the allied front.

Just three weeks before,

a major storm struck the Normandy coast.

Eight hundred ships and vessels were stranded,

damaged or destroyed on June 19th,

to further cripple allied supply lines,

already hindered by a lack of a deep-water port.

All units were having to make do.

Advancing in the open would be suicidal.

So, the Reginas fire smoke to cover their advance.

Once more,

Acting Major Gordon Brown and D Company

press forward on the left flank.

But with the men still 500 yards short of the Abbaye,

wind clears the smoke.

With the companies now exposed...

...the Germans have clear shots.

In the chaos,

C Company's 13th platoon stumbles into a minefield.

You don't know where to step,

and they are set up for a number of reasons.

One is to cause casualties, of course.

But secondly to slow an advance.

The minefield creates a shooting gallery.

Riflemen and snipers and machine gunners

will turn upon those isolated soldiers

who are stuck in the middle, unsure of where is safe.

As their losses mount,

Major Stu Tubb enters the minefield to help extract his men.

Tubb falls to German machine gun fire.

His second-in-command moves forward to help,

and is killed.

C Company's third in command is wounded moments later.

Wiping out the enemy's leadership

is a time honored military strategy.

And that is a technique that the Allies and the Germans use,

that snipers would aim for those NCOs

or those lieutenants or those captains

to try to, in effect, decapitate the unit.

Without leadership, C Company retreats to the mound.

They have lost 85 out of 106 men.

General Bernard Montgomery's stated goal at Caen

was to draw in German troops to kill, wound or capture

as many as possible.

A war of attrition.

But the campaign to capture Caen proves costly to everyone involved.

Allied aerial bombing to support Operation Charnwood

began the night before, on July 7th.

More than 460 aircraft

dropped 6000 bombs on the city.

While the bombing improved the morale of allied soldiers...

...the strategic impact on German troops was minimal.

The rubble created hinders the allied advance

and retreat by German forces.

It also has got an impact on French civilian population,

because French civilians perished

and this had a negative influence

on the attitude of the French population towards the Allies.

Now, to the northwest of the city,

the remaining 15 able-bodied members of C Company

retreat to Authie

to bring back stretchers for their wounded.

Almost three hours after commencing their attack

on the Abbaye d'Ardenne,

Gordon Brown's D Company

remain the only Regina Rifles left in the fight.

Still hundreds of yards from their objective,

the covering smoke has also just cleared on their position

and leaves them dangerously exposed to enemy fire.

The 12th SS quickly pin down Brown and his men again.

Several of the Reginas are hit.

To limit the company's casualties,

Brown and his men push forward in short bursts,

often gaining just a few feet at a time.

German troops at the Abbaye have the ideal weapon

to prevent Brown from achieving his objective.

The MG-42

is arguably the best machine gun of World War II.

At 1200 rounds per minute,

its rate of fire outpaces comparable allied machine guns.

Light, reliable and easy to deploy,

the MG-42 has a range of nearly 1,100 yards.

To avoid the German machine guns,

D Company's number 16 platoon

makes a flanking move to the left of the Abbaye.

The remaining Regina Rifles continue their frontal assault.

But at 2100 hours,

his runner reports to Acting Major Gordon Brown

that number 16 platoon has vanished.

July 8th, 1944.

As darkness falls,

the Regina Rifles continue their assault on the Abbaye d'Ardenne.

A fortified position that controls access to the French city of Caen.

With reports that some of his men are missing

and knowing he needs them all to seize the Abbaye,

Acting Major Gordon Brown goes in search of his 16th platoon.

Searching the battlefield, he makes a disturbing discovery.

And he stumbles into a small ditch area,

which is a scene of a nightmare.

There are wounded soldiers bleeding, dying, crying out,

and he thinks that's his lost platoon. It's not.

It's a group of the Can Scots,

who have stumbled into the battle somehow,

and there are many wounded there.

Brown tries to help.

He bandages some of the more seriously wounded.

And he's not sure what to do,

of course human instinct is to care for them,

but that's not the role of a company commander.

And so, he rightly gives them his water.

He must have been parched.

Unable to do any more for them...

...Brown turns back to rejoin the rest of his company.

He did the right thing. He did what he had to do.

He did what a soldier had to do,

was to keep pushing on to the final objective.

When he returns,

Brown finds D Company in the thick of battle.

D Company is spread out over the battlefield.

They're facing a stone fortress,

the Germans are firing at them non-stop.

I'm amazed at how they could have pushed their way forward.

They make a daring charge for the Abbaye walls.

They do call in some smoke, and the smoke is quite effective.

It obscures the front for precious minutes.

The men shoot and throw grenades on the run.

Their bold initiative pays off.

At 2200 hours,

D Company reaches the Abbaye walls.

With the Regina Rifles closing in,

Colonel Kurt Meyer has made plans to protect his fighting strength

and asks for permission to retreat.

He gets the answer, no. There is no way to retreat.

The reason for that,

in the mindset of the German leadership,

is where does our retreat end?

But Meyer withdraws anyway.

He would later claim that he knew Caen could not be held.

Hitler's order to hold the city to the last bullet

would mean the needless and futile sacrifice of his men.

Thus, the desperate fighting on July 8th

was to bide time for the evacuation of Meyer's wounded soldiers

under the cover of darkness.

They devise a plan to delay the capture of the Abbaye,

and make it as costly as possible for the Canadians.

The Regina Rifles encounter the German soldiers

left to cover the withdrawal.

They launch one final assault

and they find a way through and around those walls

and drive the Germans out.

Some of the Canadians begin to push into the Abbaye courtyard.

Captain Brown calls the soldiers back

and he tells them to dig in outside of the walls.

Having fought the Germans for a month now,

Brown knows they are not safe yet.

The Germans will have pre-ranged their guns.

One of the nice things about occupying a position

when you're on the defense

is you have it perfectly placed on your map,

which means your artillery knows exactly where to hit it.

Learning that allied troops have reached the walls,

Meyer orders an artillery barrage against the Abbaye.

Brown's shrewd orders prevent further casualties amongst his men.

But they have yet to completely achieve their objective:

to occupy the Abbaye itself.

Heavy German shelling prevents acting Major Gordon Brown

and the rest of the Regina Rifles' D Company

from fully capturing the Abbaye d'Ardenne.

As the men endure the barrage,

their lost platoon finally reappears.

During their absence, 16th platoon has been busy.

16th Platoon is able to achieve something pretty remarkable.

They have knocked out a battery of German 88 guns.

This means that any Sherman tanks coming up behind them

are now free to move in the open countryside.

The platoon's reappearance

brings the company's strength to 70 soldiers.

But Brown knows he needs more men,

if he's going to take and hold the Abbaye.

They've fought for five and a half hours.

They've lost about 200 soldiers killed and wounded.

Many of them left strewn over the battlefield.

And now in the dark, crying out for help.

But there's no communication from front to rear.

There's no wireless. There's no telephones.

Brown and a lieutenant

return to the village of Authie on foot

to request reinforcements

and inform headquarters of their progress.

But on their way,

the two men are caught in a sustained mortar attack.

They endure the 80-round bombardment.

The shelling is another phase of Colonel Kurt Meyer's plan

to cover the German retreat of the 12th SS from Caen.

Meyer's withdrawal proves sensible

to protect the unit's fighting strength.

By the second week of July,

German battle casualties in Western Europe

totaled more than 100,000 men.

Yet German command had managed to replace

only nine percent of their manpower losses.

Late into the night,

Brown returns to the Abbaye walls with reinforcements,

the Regina Rifle's A Company,

which had been held in reserve.

In the early morning hours of July 9th,

the German shelling stops.

It's an eerie calm.

I couldn't imagine what it'd be like to look around

and not hear bullets whizzing by your face

and not hear artillery rounds exploding around you.

And suddenly realize that for a brief period,

there's some calm. You've done it.

At first light,

the Regina Rifles A and D Companies

advance cautiously into the courtyard.

So, when Meyer retreats,

he tries to delay the enemy's advance by leaving snipers.

This gives his own troops time

to withdraw in good order.

With snipers and booby traps,

the enemy doesn't feel secure.

He doesn't know where the enemy is, where he's coming from,

so he must be very cautious when he advances.

It takes them until mid-afternoon

to clear the Abbaye of German snipers.

Inside the Abbaye, they discover the headquarters in the cellar.

Brown, who himself is beyond exhaustion,

he later talks about almost being delirious, hallucinating.

An exhausted Gordon Brown pours a drink...

...climbs into the bed...

...and falls asleep.

The western half of Caen to the Orne River

would fall to the Allies by the end of July 9th.

During Operation Charnwood,

the Regina Rifles suffer 216 casualties,

including 36 men killed.

In terms of the casualties on that day,

something like 50 percent

of the combat soldiers were killed, wounded or taken prisoner.

The casualties were so severe

for Charlie company and Baker company

that after this combat on the 8th and 9th of July,

they were non-operational.

French civilians are also deeply affected.

Up to 75 percent of Caen lay in ruins

and hundreds were killed.

After the war,

Colonel Kurt Meyer faces trial for war crimes

for his part in the execution of Canadian prisoners of war

at the Abbaye d'Ardenne.

Meyer would be sentenced to death, later commuted to life imprisonment.

He serves nine years before being released.

The two Canadian company commanders,

Majors Stuart Tubb and Eric Symes,

recover and survive the war.

Major Tubb is later awarded the distinguished service order

for his leadership and coolness in the face of enemy fire.

Gordon Brown continues to serve throughout the war,

and would earn the distinguished service order

for personal valor and devotion to duty.

While ultimately successful,

the capture of Caen

confirms that allied gains could be slow

and sometimes measured only in yards.

It is clear to the Allies

the road to Berlin is not a simple walkover.

It will be a costly and bloody campaign.

And the war in Europe

would continue for another ten months.