Pontaubault (Manche)
The cities of Normandy during the 1944 battles
- Liberation: 31 July 1944
- Deployed units:
Combat Command A, 4th Armored Division
6th Armored Division
332nd Engineer General Service Regiment
Kamfgruppe Bacherer, 77. Infanterie Division
- History:
The capture of Avranches by the Americans that same day did not yet ensure a rapid advance southward. A major obstacle still blocked the path of General Patton’s Third Army: the Sélune. This river, which flows into the Bay of Mont-Saint-Michel, crosses the town of Pontaubault south of Avranches. A stone bridge allows vehicles to cross it: this structure immediately becomes a major landmark for both opposing sides. It is worth noting that another bridge, dedicated to rail transport, also crosses the river west of the town, but it had been destroyed in the preceding weeks by Allied bombing.
On July 31, 1944, around 8:00 p.m., reconnaissance troops from Combat Command A (CCA) of the 4th Armored Division, who had been tasked with informing the division on the feasibility of the routes and crossings over the Sélune, reached the bridge without difficulty. To their great surprise, the bridge was still usable despite some damage, while the rest of the village was in ruins. Their adversaries had not had time to destroy it and had mostly withdrawn south of the Sélune, abandoning equipment and armored vehicles along the way. The CCA immediately secured the approaches to the bridge and conducted reconnaissance of Pontaubault, which was liberated in the absence of German resistance.
In this sector, the Germans were under the command of Oberst Rudolf Bacherer, commander of Grenadier Regiment 1049 at the start of the Battle of Normandy, who now commanded various units of the 77th Infantry Division, assembled into combined arms tactical groups (Kampfgruppe). During the night of July 31 to August 1, they attempted to retake the bridge and the village, launching several unsuccessful counterattacks, while the 6th Armored Division overran the 4th Armored Division.
Wanting to exploit both the capture of the bridge and the lack of coordination among enemy units to implement his “Blitzkrieg,” Patton pressed his troops to cross the Sélune as quickly as possible, despite the fears of the engineers, who would first like to consolidate the thirteen arches of the bridge to allow heavy tanks to cross safely. Thus, from August 1st to 3rd, seven divisions crossed Pontaubault, comprising approximately 100,000 soldiers and 15,000 vehicles. The accumulation of units, concentrated in this bottleneck, caused numerous traffic jams, reminiscent of the slowdowns experienced by the German army in the Ardennes in May 1940.
On August 4th and 7th, the Germans organized two air attacks targeting the bridges over the Sélune and Sées to prevent American reinforcements from continuing to surge toward the southern Cotentin Peninsula. On both occasions, they fired several Henschel Hs 293 guided glide bombs, originally designed as anti-ship weapons and deployed for the first time against land targets, without achieving their intended purpose: the Pontaubault bridge remained usable.
During the second half of August, American sappers from the 332nd Engineer General Service Regiment were tasked with repairing the railway bridge. This impressive work was completed in just 12 days: a “Bailey”-type metal structure weighing nearly 200 tons was used, representing one of the most daring projects undertaken by the American army during the liberation. Securing this bridge allowed the reopening of the Pontaubault-Dol-Rennes-Le Mans railway line, thus ensuring the evacuation of the wounded by rail as well as the supply of the front lines.
Pontaubault map:
Back to the Normandy cities in 1944