[Includes 59 photos/illustrations and 30 maps] The hedgerow country of northwestern France-the Bocage presented a trying challenge to the U.S. Army in 1944. During the Normandy invasion, U.S. forces faced a stubborn German Army defending from an extensive network of small fields surrounded by living banks of hedges bordered by sunken dirt lanes. German forces fighting from these ready-made defensive positions were, at first, able to curb most of the American advances and make the attempts very costly. For the U.S. Army, busting through the difficult Bocage country required tactical, doctrinal, and organizational ingenuity. Busting the Bocage: American Combined Arms Operations in France, 6 June-31 July 1944 shows how the U.S. Army identified and overcame the problems of fighting in difficult terrain. The adoption of new tactics combined with technical innovations and good small-unit leadership enabled American forces to defeat a well-prepared and skillful enemy. In the hedgerow country, the U.S. Army eventually brought the separate components of the combined arms team-infantry, armor, and artillery-to bear on the enemy simultaneously. The resulting successes were costly but effective. Combat in the Bocage demonstrated the U.S. Army’s capability to fight and win in a new and hostile environment.

Includes more than 20 maps, diagrams and tables. History instructs that for a variety of reasons, cities have always been targets for attack by adversaries. From the earliest of times, attackers came bearing weapons ranging from knives, arrows, and spears, while in modern times, they have brought weaponry the Industrial Revolution made available: cannon, rocket artillery, and ultimately bombs and rockets delivered from aerial platforms and even thermonuclear warheads, not to mention the potential for chemical and biological payloads. In turn, cities have responded to most of these threats. Early on, for example, they thickened city walls and erected other barriers to entry. But attackers seeking to subdue the cities simply countered with new and better weapons. So the game of measures and countermeasures-the adult, and much more deadly, version of the familiar children’s game of rock, scissors, paper-has continued apace for centuries. The expert authors of this excellent study focus on the following Urban Operations 1) Through the ages - Pre Second World War Urban Combat 2) Bloody Stalingrad 3) The demolition of Aachen 4) Battle of Manila 5) The Siege of Hue 6) Battle for Grozny 7) Fight for Beirut 8) Siege of Sarajevo 9) The capture of Kabul 10) Lightning strike at Panama City 11) Urban Terrorism in Argentina 12) The US Military in the Hurricane Katarina rescue effort 13) The Future of Urban Combat

First published in 1988. Over sixty years have passed since Allied armies landed in Normandy with the purpose of liberating western Europe and destroying Hitler's Third Reich. Despite this passage of time and extensive writings on the landings in France, officers and historians are still intensely interested in D-Day and the Normandy campaign. Indeed, a great deal remains to be learned about the U.S. Armys's participation in the Normandy campaign, and a detailed examination of the fighting yields a fruitful case study for America's professional officer corps concerning how American soldiers performed in combat, how squads and platoons closed with and destroyed the enemy, and how the Army adapted methods to overcome a whole host of problems that it encountered in combat. This study attempts to identify the problems that hampered the operations of the U.S. First Army during the weeks immediately following the D-Day landings. in Normandy, inexperienced American combat units struggled with veteran German defenders on terrain specially suited for the defense. The U.S. Army was faced with the problem of conducting offensive operations in the Normandy hedgerow country- known as the Bocage. Shortcomings in preinvasion training and preparation resulted initially in uncoordinated efforts whenever American infantry, tanks, and artillery tried to combine forces during attacks.

"Busting the bocage: American combined arms operations in France, 6 June-31 July 1944" shows how the U.S. Army identified and overcame the problems of fighting in difficult terrain. The adoption of new tactics combined with technical innovations and good small-unit leadership enabled American forces to defeat a well-prepared and skillful enemy. In the hedgerow country, the U.S. Army eventually brought the separate components of the combined arms team-infantry, armor, and artillery-to bear on the enemy simultaneously. The resulting successes were costly but effective. Combat in the bocage demonstrated the U.S. Army's capability to fight and win in a new and hostile environment." -- Foreword.

The hedgerow country of northwestern France - the Bocage - presented a trying challenge to the U.S. Army in 1944. During the Normandy invasion, U.S. forces faced a stubborn German Army defending from an extensive network of small fields surrounded by living banks of hedges bordered by sunken dirt lanes. German forces fighting from these ready-made defensive positions were, at first, able to curb most of the American advances and make the attempts very costly. For the U.S. Army, busting through the difficult Bocage country required tactical, doctrinal, and organizational ingenuity. Busting the Bocage: American Combined Arms Operations in France, 6 June-31 July 1944 shows how the U.S. Army identified and overcame the problems of fighting in difficult terrain. The adoption of new tactics combined with technical innovations and good small-unit leadership enabled American forces to defeat a well-prepared and skillful enemy. In the hedgerow country, the U.S. Army eventually brought the separate components of the combined arms team-infantry, armor, and artillery-to bear on the enemy simultaneously. The resulting successes were costly but effective. Combat in the Bocage demonstrated the U.S. Army's capability to fight and win in anew and hostile environment.