Battle of Hill 112
Jonathan Trigg takes you into the heart of one of the most deadly battles of the Normandy campaign, in the Summer of 1944
While D-Day was a success, there was harder fighting to come. Jonathan Trigg takes you into the heart of one of the most deadly battles of the Normandy campaign, in the Summer of 1944.
The ancient city of Caen in Normandy was just a few miles from the sea leading Allied planners to hope that it would be liberated on D-Day itself. It wasn’t so capturing it became vital to the British and Canadians as they strove to break out from the invasion beaches. The Allied ground commander, Bernard Montgomery, decided the key to taking the city was to push south and west and swing behind it, forcing the Germans to abandon its narrow boulevards and medieval walls. The terrain Britain’s most famous soldier picked for his men to fight over was one of small Norman villages, nestled in a land criss-crossed by the River Orne and one of its tributaries, the Odon. Between the two rivers was a ridge line lying southwest to northeast that rose to twin peaks a couple of miles
apart and named after their spot heights - Hill 113 and Hill 112 – the latter being closest to Caen.
The fighting in Normandy after D-Day was often dominated by the bocage but Hill 112 was different. Its slopes and cornfields were long and open, without a shred of cover except for a small wood near the top. From that summit the Germans could see Caen some six miles to the northeast, Carpiquet airfield, Mont Pinçon and the Bourguébus ridge to the southeast. The summit itself was a flat plateau with commanding views of both its forward and reverse slopes that were perfect killing grounds for a defender and a death-trap for any attacker.
The German General Paul Hausser famously declared that, “He who holds Hill 112 holds Normandy,” as it was, “the key to the back door of Caen.”