Battle of Saint-Lô
The Battle of Saint-Lô was one of the three conflicts in the battle of the hedgerows, which took place between July 7 and 19, 1944, in Saint-Lô, Manche, Normandy, France, just before Operation Cobra. Saint-Lô had fallen to Germany in 1940, and, after the Invasion of Normandy, the Americans targeted the city, as it served as a strategic crossroads. American bombardments caused heavy damage (up to 95% of the city was destroyed) and a high number of casualties, which resulted in the martyr city being called "The Capital of Ruins", popularized in a report by Samuel Beckett.
| Battle of Saint-Lô | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Part of the Normandy Campaign, World War II | |||||||
Saint-Lô, 95% destroyed after the 1944 bombardments, known as The Capital of Ruins. | |||||||
| |||||||
| Belligerents | |||||||
| United States | Germany | ||||||
| Commanders and leaders | |||||||
|
Charles H. Corlett Charles H. Gerhardt Leland Hobbs Paul W. Baade |
Paul Hausser Dietrich Kraiß Eugen Meindl Otto Baum | ||||||
| Casualties and losses | |||||||
|
For the period July 7–22 29th Infantry Division: 3,706 30th Infantry Division: 3,934 35th Infantry Division: 2,437 Total XIX Corps: 11,000+ casualties, of which 3,000+ killed | Unknown | ||||||
| 352 French civilians | |||||||
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.