The Normandy bocage country

The terrain of Normandy provided a natural advantage to the defender. The terrain was dominated by bocage of over fifty miles mostly between the Orne and Vire Rivers. The bocage is a series of small fields ringed by earthen banks 3-4 feet high and overgrown with dense shrubbery. It is almost impossible to see further than one field at a time. Dirt tracks criss-cross the bocage around the edges of the small fields, allowing troops and equipment to move freely without being seen either from the air or the ground.

The Germans took full advantage of the fields, and turned each into a death trap. Soldiers who fought there remember the Battle for Normandy as an unending series of firefights for each small field. To make matters worse for the attacking Allies, the bocage also includes many streams, rivers, and steep hills, and valleys. In the middle of Normandy is mount Picon, the highest point in the area, 1200 feet above sea level on a large plateau. This region is denser, and more difficult to attack in than the rest of the bocage. There are few roads, lots of forest, and suffers dense fogs in summer and winter. Allied intelligence had totally failed to anticipate these problems.

The failure to prepare men and equipment for the challenge of offensive action in the hedgerow country was an egregious error. Allied intelligence had done a superb job of locating the German fixed defences, and a solid, if not perfect, job of locating the German units in Normandy, but intelligence had failed completely to recognize the difficulties of fighting in the hedgerows.

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