COMBAT AND COMPETITION.pdf - Lakes Gliding Club

CHAPTER FOUR TYPHOON
produced a bottle and demanded that we toast every conceivable aspect
of 'la Liberation.'
As the road climbed towards Mount Pincon we looked back,
savouring the warmth of his raw Calvados, and saw him standing
there, a lonely scarecrow, waving to us from the desolation of his
home.
Mount Pincon was a shambles. In and around the orchards and
homesteads the spiked and shattered guns stared blindly out across the
slopes which they had failed to hold. Abandoned equipment, empty
ammunition boxes, the jetsam of battle lay everywhere. The remains
of a classic defensive position, where the Germans had fought to the
death, until overwhelmed at last by sheer weight of numbers and
superior firepower.
Here the dead were already buried, each temporary grave marked
by a rough wooden cross, with a few hastily scrawled words, under a
steel helmet. Even the aroma of death had begun to fade and the
predominant smell was of burnt and pulverised buildings with a touch
of farmyard manure.
Not so as our truck jolted and rumbled on down the winding roads
to the south and east of Falaise. The sickly sweet odour grew steadily
worse, until it dominated the senses, and there was no escaping its
dreadful embrace. Surrounding us on every side was the reality of
what had been happening, down there in the bocage, inside the ring
of steel which had closed and tightened around the German Armies in
Normandy. It was like a vision of the apocalypse.
From Trun to Vermoutiers ran the awful highways of death where
the retreating columns had been cornered, and systematically
destroyed, as they tried to escape. Stalled nose to tail they had been
devastated by nonstop air attack, on roads swept by torrents of
artillery and mortar fire, until hardly a living creature remained. We
climbed down from the truck and walked among them in a valley still
as the grave itself, where no birds sang and nothing moved except the
flies and maggots. They lay where they had fallen, amongst the debris
of their broken weapons and ruined vehicles. Some were hideously
torn and disfigured, or charred and blackened until their shrunken
corpses were hardly recognisable as those of human beings.
Others lay seemingly untouched, calm and peaceful, handsome in
death, their sightless eyes staring forever into space.The horses were
the saddest sight of all. Unable to escape they had been mown down
where they stood. Their bodies swollen and distended, their noble
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