THE CAPITAL OF RUINS

THE BATTLE OF SAINT-LÔ WAS SHAW’S INTRODUCTION TO THE DEVASTATING IMPACT OF WWII ON EUROPEAN CITIES

In 1944 Saint-lô was a strategically important Norman city where a number of major roads intersected. If the Allies could take it then it would allow them to access the entire region and provide a route to advance towards Paris. The Germans also knew its importance and in July 1944 they fought a bloody battle against US forces.

Saint-lô had already been bombed several times by Allied bombers before the battle began. Fierce fighting also took place in the bocage and hills around the city for almost a fortnight. It took the combined efforts of four US divisions to break through the German defences and the Americans suffered bloody casualties of over 11,000 men. Because of devastating aerial bombings and artillery bombardments, 95 per cent of Saint-lô was destroyed. This led one American soldier to grimly quip, “We sure liberated the hell out of this place.”

The battle was also Shaw’s first major engagement with 283rd. Fighting as part of an artillery battalion, he and his comrades felt terrible about the destruction that units like theirs had to inflict. Saint-lô was a depressing introduction to similar scenes that were repeated across the continent, “It was hard to know what we had to do, and particularly to know what was going to be destroyed, but some of the buildings had to come down. Many of these towns were so beautiful but they had to be destroyed to get the Germans out. That was a tough situation to take, even though we knew we had to do it.”