WO 171/675 - 152 Infantry Brigade - September 1944

Instructions regarding War Diaries and Intelligence Summaries are contained in F.S. Regs., Vol. 1. and the Staff Manual respectively Title pages will be prepared in manuscript.	WAR DIARY or INTELLIGENCE SUMMARY	Army Form C.2118
	WAR DIARY or INTELLIGENCE SUMMARY	Unit: 152nd Infantry Brigade
Month and Year: September 1944	(Erase heading not required).	Commanding Officer: Brig. A.J.H. Cassels

Place	Date	Hour	Summary	Reference
LE MARE COUBERT	7-10		Meanwhile plans were being made for the attack on LE HAVRE. A frontal assault on the Northern defs of LE HAVRE by 51 Div was never considered it being rightly assumed that such an attack would be playing too much into enemy hands as he had spent four years building defs to meet an attack from this direction. The broad intention was to get inside the anti-tank ditch just West of MONTIVILLIERS and roll up the Northern defs from the East before launching an attack against the city, and the inlying parts thereof. 49 Div was to deal similarly with the Eastern defs of LE HAVRE making an entry just West of MONTEVILLIERS and rolling them up from the North. Def overprints and air phs showed that such a line of attack would take the enemy strongpts from the weakest side. D Day for the attack was to be 9 Sep but this was postponed to 10 Sep as bad weather delayed the air bombardment programme. Meanwhile details of the ground plane were worked out during a long series of conferences interspersed among concentrated liaison with individual comds. French civilian sources of infm were prolific but not always accurate which was largely due to the lack of military knowledge of these sources and also to the fact that much of such infm was about eight days old. This infm was amassed and where it agreed with air phs was taken as additional confirmation. Enemy deserters and Pw provided the best infm so much so that by D Day a complete and detailed picture of these strongpts which 5 Seaforth and 5 Camerons were to attack was available. It was proposed to use flame-throwers during the op and a training team was loaned to the Bde to instr in their use. The scale of issue of flamethrowers was twelve Lifebouys and three Wasps per Bn. The composition of the Bde Gp for op Astonia is shown in Appx Sq 141 Rac and Sqn Avre u/c 152 Bde had a practice gapping exercise night of 9/10 Sep this was attended by Bde Comd, Bn Co's and Bm. The Bde Gp was conc per Oo No. A Tcp manned by the Staff Capt was set up to control mov fwd from the assembly area.	Appx I - 2; Appx D - 3; Appx J - 3; Appx J - 4; Appx J - 5

Source: Jeroen Koppes, TracesOfWar.com, transcribing: Pim van Gelder.

Disclaimer: This War Diary is based on its original, but typos might be corrected. Locations are calculated, so might not be in the correct place. For historical research, always check the originals.

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