Horror of the Hedgerows: Thankless, Miserable, Disheartening

On July 19, 1944, American ground forces took the French city of St. Lo. It was the culmination of the Battle of the Hedgerows, and it set the stage for Operation COBRA – the American breakout from Normandy that culminated a little more than a month later in the liberation of Paris. It is a battle that sometimes gets lost between D-Day and General Patton’s drive across France and the Allied liberation of the French capital. As the American Forces in Action volume noted, for “the American soldiers, it had been a thankless, miserable, disheartening battle.” 

American forces in that battle were under the overall command of General Omar Bradley. Three main divisions launched the assault: the 29th, 30th, and 35th. The German 7th Army commanded by SS Lt. Gen. Hauser was undermanned but benefited from the topography. This was the bocage countryside of Normandy where hedgerows formed a series of strong defensive positions that made U.S. forces pay dearly for every foot of ground gained. The hedgerows were described as “massive embankments that formed dikes up to 10 feet high, often flanked by drainage ditches or sunken roads.” 

“A rush, a pause, some creeping … "

Glover Johns, who commanded a battalion of the 29th Division’s 115th infantry regiment, memorably recalled what the fighting was like in his book The Clay Pigeons of St Lo: 

Thus goes the battle, a rush, a pause, some creeping, a few isolated shots, some artillery fire, some mortars, some smoke,

more creeping, another pause, dead silence, more firing, a great concentration of fire followed by a concerted rush. Then

the whole process starts over again.

Joseph Ewing, who served in the 175th infantry regiment of the 29th Division, described the approach to St Lo as “a vast maze of natural fortifications miles in depth.” “Every hedgerow,” Ewing wrote, “was a possible enemy position.” Joseph Balkoski, the contemporary historian of the 29th Division, writes that German forces were “nearly invisible in the bocage.” And every 50-100 yards, American troops ran into yet another hedgerow. 

The War Department’s postwar study of the St. Lo campaign described American infantry regiments “pushing through an endless series of defended fields and orchards.” Historian James Jay Carafano noted that “each patch of farmland became its own universe of battle.” Perhaps General Bradley put it most succinctly: “The damndest country I’ve seen.”  

The opening assault on July 7th was led by soldiers of the 30th Division (117th, 119th, and 120th regiments) near the Vire River, supported by the 3rd Armored Division. After making incremental gains, on July 11th the 29th Division attacked along the St. Lo-Bayeaux highway, which traversed ridges on its way to St. Lo. Armed Forces in Action noted that the terrain in this region was “broken into innumerable small compartments of field or orchard by the bush-crowned earthen dikes three to five feet thick and some six to nine feet high.” 

'Unrelenting fatigue and danger'

As a sergeant  in the 175th regiment of the 29th Division, my father Frank Sempa shared the awful experience of infantry soldiers fighting from hedgerow to hedgerow on the way to St. Lo. In an article he wrote for the Scranton Tribune (where he worked as a reporter and editor after the war), my father described the hedgerows as “high earthen walls, topped with brush, trees, and briar.” On July 11, 1944, in a letter written to his parents from somewhere along the St. Lo-Bayeaux highway, my father noted that German artillery “twas a bit noisy” so he hadn’t had much sleep. Two days later, my father wrote that “this fighting . . . doesn’t give one very much time off.” On July 14, my father told his parents that he tried to write another letter to them that day, but “everytime I start the shells start thick and fast and I have to give up.” He mentioned that he was “a bit tired after being in the front lines for almost 40 days” (he landed on Omaha Beach on June 7, 1944, the day after D-Day). In another letter, he wrote how tired he was because “the last few days have been tough.” He expressed the hope that “there is a rest in site.” These letters betray the unrelenting fatigue and exhaustion of hedgerow fighting. 

As the American forces approached St. Lo, my father wrote that “War is hell so why talk about it.” St. Lo, one historian of the battle wrote, “was a wasteland of rubble with almost no undamaged buildings and hardly any distinguishable roads.” The three infantry divisions, with some armoured support, captured what was left of the city. British military historian Max Hastings called the American campaign to capture St. Lo “one of First Army’s outstanding feats of arms.” What the soldiers who survived remembered was best described by an American general: 

I doubt if anyone who ever ducked bullets and shells in the hedgerows, waded through the mud on foot, and scrambled over the hedgerows never knowing when he might find himself looking into the muzzle of a German tank gun, will look back on those days with any remembered feeling other than the deadly unrelenting fatigue and danger.  

U.S. Army gained five miles in two weeks

During that horrible battle, poor weather limited the effective use of air power, while the terrain was inhospitable to tanks. The toll in casualties during the two weeks of fighting for gains of three to seven miles across the front was as follows: the 30th Division suffered nearly 4,000 casualties; the 29th Division suffered some 3700 casualties, and the 35th Division suffered nearly 2,500 casualties.  

In 2013, I traveled to the Normandy countryside and viewed some of the hedgerows over which my father and other U.S. infantry troops fought in July 1944 on their way to St. Lo. I was amazed at their thickness, height, and ubiquity. Seeing that terrain made me understand why it took the U.S. Army two weeks to advance five miles. And it made me appreciate the courage and sacrifice of my father’s generation that helped free a continent and prevented the world from, in Winston Churchill’s words, falling back into a new Dark Age. Americans should never, ever forget the Battle of the Hedgerows.