Roman ruins

Today saw us in Normandy, but rather than initially focusing on the period between 1939-45, or more particularly, June – August 1944, we decided to go back much further in time and visit the Roman ruins at Vieux which managed to survive all of the fighting for the nearby Hill 112… ‘though one does wonder whether they would have done had the British successfully broken through.

EPSOM photoshoot plans

One of the other groups that I belong to is the Manchester Military History Society (I’ve delivered a “Men in the Shed” talk to them) and earlier in the month, I’d delivered a second talk on Operation EPSOM which was designed to break through the German lines to the West of Caen with an ultimate objective of crossing both the Rivers Odon and Orne ending up south of Caen, but, having completed the talk, I’d realised that I could have done with a few more photographs, so I decided to take this opportunity to do some further detailed research & photography.

Food at le Poivrier

However, before we started, the “Inner Man” required attention, so what better place to visit than our usual haunt on 5^th June – Le Poivrier in Evrecy. Even though it was just the two of us on this occasion, rather than with our usual veterans in tow, we were still made to feel really welcome & had a great meal & beer – nice & cool to complement the heat outside.

So, back to the research.

Hill 112 in context

We started at Hill 112, one of the key intermediate objectives of Operation EPSOM, but this time, rather than staying on the top of the hill – which is a very broad plateau, we took the time to move towards the further slopes where you could immediately see why the position had such strategic value with excellent views in all directions.

Rauray and the Tyneside Scottish

We then picked up a number of key locations including the “junction” of two operations & two excellent battlefield histories near the hamlet of Rauray. Where on the right was 49^th Division holding the western flank of Operation EPSOM & on the left 15^th Scottish Division… The small hamlet of Rauray & the slight rise in land known as the “Ring Contour” saw the Tyneside Scottish (amounting to around 500 men) hold off two German SS Panzer Divisions & their accompanying tanks.

The two books that also meet here are Ian Daglish’s excellent: Over The Battlefield – Operation Epsom & Kevin Baverstock’s equally good “Breaking the Panzers”.

Interestingly, Ian & Kevin met when they were researching their respective battles & as Ian put it “circled around each other warily” until they realised that their battles touched, but didn’t overlap (at least from the British perspective). As a result, a friendship developed, with Kevin doing much of the map work for Ian’s book (& subsequent ones).

In fact, Kevin is delivering the 2015 Ian Daglish Memorial Lecture