For weeks after the D-Day Iandings, AIlied troops were pinned down in the dense Normandy 'bocage', the small fields, narrow lanes, and high hedgerows where German anti-tank ambushes and snipers inflicted mounting casualties. Their resistance would only be broken by a spectacular breakout action, and this vital task was entrusted to the flamboyant, hard-driving George Patton. Once his armoured units had been unleashed on the Allied right wing, and were swinging round behind the German defences there was little that Guenther Hans von Kluge's battle-weary troops could do to hold the line.
