Fire Plan: The Canadian Army’s Fire Support System in Normandy

Consigned initially to a decentralized and limited tactical role, the fire support organizations of British and Canadian armies experienced exponential growth during the initial stages of World War II. By D-Day, fire support had become a critical enabler of Anglo-Canadian combat operations and artillery units were numerous, networked, and efficient. Facilitating successful tactical manoeuvre was the goal of the fire support system. This article will explore the ‘ways’ and ‘means’ of that system – the people, procedures, resources, and organizations that combined to produce the devastating battle-winning fire support that contributed to tactical success. The contribution of the artillery to final victory in the German war has been immense. This will always be so; the harder the fighting and the longer the war, the more the infantry, and in fact all the arms, lean on the gunners. The proper use of artillery is a great battle-winning factor.1 A the outbreAk of the Second World War, British and Canadian fire support doctrine focussed on decentralised fire units supporting fluid, highly-mobile, infantry and tank manoeuvres. The disastrous Anglo-French campaign in France in May 1940 and subsequent British reversals during the opening stages of the Desert Campaign in North Africa demonstrated the weakness 1 Field Marshal Sir Bernard Montgomery, quoted in Richard Doherty, Ubique: The Royal Artillery in the Second World War (Stroud: The History Press, 2008), 13. © Canadian Military History, 2016 1 Grebstad: Fire Plan Published by Scholars Commons @ Laurier, 2016 2 The Canadian Army’s Fire Support System in Normandy of this doctrine. Once the Allies halted the expansion of German forces and assumed the strategic offensive, thanks in no small part to a marked increase in deployed artillery assets, German skill at defensive operations forced the Anglo-Canadian armies to adopt an offensive tactical doctrine predicated on massive fire support. By the close of the Desert Campaign in North Africa in 1943, the pendulum of tactical doctrine had swung from a focus on manoeuvre to a focus on firepower. So fundamental was fire support to Allied battlefield success, the tactical doctrine employed by the Canadian Army in 1944 was, essentially, artillery-based.2 Thrust into this predominant role, the fire support organisations in the British and Canadian armies experienced exponential growth. By the start of the Normandy Campaign in June 1944, Anglo-Canadian artillery units were numerous, networked, and efficient. While the ends that were furnished by the artillery of the AngloCanadian armies are generally well known, the ways and means of the fire support system are less so. Most historical works of AngloCanadian operations in Normandy focus almost exclusively on the manoeuvre element, the infantry and armour formations of the 21st Army Group. Detailed surveys of the fire support hierarchy and how it was employed are wanting. The exceptions are artillery-specific works such as, but not limited to, Colonel G.W.L. Nicholson’s official history of the Royal Canadian Artillery, The Gunners of Canada; Major-General J.B.A Bailey’s Field Artillery and Firepower; Brigadier Shelford Bidwell’s Gunners at War, and Fire-Power, The British Army Weapons & Theories of War 1904–1945 (the latter with Dominick Graham); and of course George Blackburn’s excellent trilogy of first-hand accounts Where the Hell are the Guns?, The Guns of Normandy, and The Guns of Victory. While not exclusively artillery-based, retired Canadian artillery officer Brian A. Reid’s chapter entitled “Bullets and Bombs – The Fire Plan” in No Holding Back, Operation Totalize, Normandy, August 1944, is also instructive, although he does not delve into any great detail at the lower levels of the fires support organisation. Each of these worthy historical works only scratch at the surface of fire support tactics, techniques, and procedures: How was the artillery organised? How were fire plans and barrages planned and executed? How were 2 Terry Copp, Fields of Fire, the Canadians in Normandy (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003), 29. 2 Canadian Military History, Vol. 25 [2016], Iss. 1, Art. 14 http://scholars.wlu.ca/cmh/vol25/iss1/14

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