How did American soldiers beat German snipers in the hedgerows of Normandy? This WW2 documentary follows one answer from June to July 1944: stop looking for the hidden rifleman, and put fire on every hedge and every tree before anyone moves.

In June one shot could pin an American company in a field while German mortars, already aimed at that field, did the rest. Ernie Pyle wrote that whole units had become "sniper-conscious". Staff Sergeant Walter D. Ehlers of the 18th Infantry showed what one squad could do by going at the fire instead of lying down. Through the 29th Division's rehearsals under its assistant commander, Norman Cota, and the Army pamphlet Combat Lessons No. 4, the answer became a drill: tank, rifle squad and engineers taking one field at a time. On 11 July 1944 the 2nd Infantry Division used it on Hill 192, east of Saint-Lô, against German paratroopers who had held the hill for a month. A paratrooper named Helmut wrote home about that morning. So did the Army's historians.

Chapters
0:00 The sniper's bargain
0:23 Hill 192, 11 July 1944
3:25 Four weeks earlier
6:19 "Sniper-conscious"
8:03 Walter Ehlers
10:00 The hedgerow as a fortress
12:46 Why lying down killed
14:21 The first reply: nerves
15:54 The drill
20:46 06:30, the main assault
23:18 Purple Heart Draw
25:12 The German side
27:10 The cost
28:52 What the drill bought
30:12 Who lay down?

Sources
1. War Department Historical Division, St-Lô (7 July – 19 July 1944), American Forces in Action, 1946
2. Michael D. Doubler, Busting the Bocage: American Combined Arms Operations in France, Combat Studies Institute, 1988
3. Martin Blumenson, Breakout and Pursuit, US Army in World War II, 1961
4. War Department, Combat Lessons No. 4, 1944
5. Bill Shadel, "Hedgerows of Normandy", The American Rifleman, September 1944

⚠️ American soldiers called every hidden German rifleman a "sniper", and so does the title. The defenders of Hill 192 were paratroopers; US intelligence called such regiments "crack outfits". "Every tree" is the drill: fire on every hedge and tree line before the move.
⚠️ The battalion commander who lost no men to sniper fire on Hill 192 is not named in the source. The story of the voice from the hedgerow is, in the Army's words, "not authenticated".
⚠️ Maps use today's ground; Kraut Corner and Purple Heart Draw are approximate. 3D scenes are reconstructions. Photographs from other places and dates are labelled.

Photographs: US National Archives (Signal Corps); Bundesarchiv, CC BY-SA 3.0 de; Conseil Régional de Basse-Normandie / National Archives USA. Air photographs: IGN.

#WW2 #Normandy #Hedgerows #Snipers #DDay #USArmy #MilitaryHistory