Breakout

After Lieutenant General Courtney H. Hodges' First Army punched a hole
in the German defenses at a French town called St. Lo, the Third Army
began roaring through the hole with their Sherman tanks. They began an
attacking advance that moved in every direction on the compass; north,
south, east, and west, all at the same time. There was no stopping
them once they got started. They went east toward Le Mans, south and
southwest through Laval, west toward Brest, and north toward St. Malo.

Third Army was not a defensive army. General Patton didn't believe in
defensive tactics, he believed in attacking. He often told his
soldiers, "When in doubt, attack." They knew that to defeat the
Germans, they had to be on the offensive at all times. Like a boxer,
they understood that once you got your opponent on the ropes, you had
to keep at him until he went down. You couldn't let up and give him a
chance to rest.

The soldiers of the Third Army took the fight to the enemy. They swept
over the Brittany Peninsula before the enemy knew what was happening.
Two tank columns of the Sixth Armored Division, commanded by Major
General R.W. Grow, forced the Germans to withdraw into the fortified
ports of St. Malo, Lorient, St. Nazaire, and Brest.

Threatened with a severed supply line where it narrowed to a ten mile
wide strip at Avranches, the soldiers of the Third Army delivered
those needed supplies despite nightly air attacks. At the same time
they repulsed a vicious German counter-attack at Mortain.

Facing complete encirclement, the Germans quickly withdrew to the
east. Although the Third Army had almost surrounded the German Seventh
Army, they were not allowed to close a gap that existed between the
towns of Argentan and Falaise. They were told to wait and let General
Bernard L. Montgomery close the gap with his British Second Army.

Montgomery moved too slowly. He failed to close the gap until almost
a week later. Because of this the Germans were able to continue their
retreat from this pocket and they managed to save a large portion of
their armor. They did, however, suffer a great loss of men and
materials.

This Argentan-Falaise Pocket later became a very controversial issue.
Many people claimed that the Third Army could have closed the gap
themselves and they could have destroyed the complete German Seventh
Army. If this had happened, the war might have been won much sooner
than it was.

The Germans desperately raced toward the Seine River while being
chased by the Third Army's spearhead units. Fearing a second
encirclement west of the Seine River, the Germans fought to save their
dwindling escape routes. All during their escape, they were hit with
a never ending barrage of air and artillery bombardment which took a
fearful toll of their lives and material.

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