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Battle of St Lo
The Battle of Saint-Lo was part of the Battle of Normandy and took place between the 7th and 19th of July 1944, beginning just over one month after the Normandy Beach landings. It resulted in a decisive Allied victory.
Saint-Lo is a small city located at the base of the Cotentin Peninsula, approximately 20 miles southwest of where American forces came ashore on D-Day, 6 June 1944. During the war, it was strategically important because of its location at the base of the Cotentin Peninsula (and its port of Cherbourg) and because it sat astride a major crossroads and a railway junction.
The US First Army was assigned responsibility for clearing the Cotentin Peninsula and taking Saint-Lo, while the British Second Army and Canadian First Army were responsible for capturing Bayeux and then Caen, which lies about 35 miles east of Saint-Lo. In addition to consolidating and expanding the invasion beachhead established on D-Day, the primary objective of this two-pronged Allied offensive was to drive a wedge between the two main German forces in northeast France: the Seventh Army, tasked with defending Brittany and the Cotentin-Normandy area; and the Fifteenth Army, defending the coast from the Pas-de-Calais area north to Antwerp.
The assault on Saint-Lo opened on July 6 with a massive American air bombing of the city. The next day, the US First Army’s XIX Corps, comprising the 29th, 30th, and 35th Infantry Divisions, advanced on the city, which was defended by the German 352nd Infantry Division and the 3rd Infantry Division of the 2nd Parachute Corps. The following two-week battle was intense and bloody, marked by house-to-house and sometimes hand-to-hand fighting. At its end, the entire city was almost completely destroyed, presenting a landscape of nothing but collapsed buildings and rubble. American casualties were very heavy, totaling more than 11,000. Casualties in the two main German defending units were so great that one unit (the 352nd Infantry Division) was disbanded, its few remnants being distributed to other divisions; what remained of the other unit was almost completely wiped out during the Battle of the Falaise Pocket one month later.
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Those known to have fought in Battle of St Lo during the Second World War 1939-1945. The names on this list have been submitted by relatives, friends, neighbours and others who wish to remember them, if you have any names to add or any recollections or photos of those listed,
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S/Sgt. Melvin Howard "Dutch" Lachelt Bronze Star 3rd Btn., G Coy. 320th Infantry Regiment My dad, Melvin Lachelt, entered the Army, but would have rather joined the Marines. He would laugh and say he never was in the Army, because he was at the rear of a large group of men being inducted, he did not raise his right arm when the induction ceremony was held.
He did his basic training at Camp Wolters, TX. He was deployed to San Luis Obispo and then redeployed to the east coast for training in preparation for moving oversees. He also trained in England near Exeter, and moved with the 35th Infantry Division, 320th Infantry Regiment to Normandy about 3rd of July 1944.
He marched to St. Lo and took part in the battle to liberate St. Lo. He became part of Patton's 3rd Army and started the sweep around Paris. They passed through Pithiviers and Chateaudun. He witnessed female collaborators having their heads shaved in Chateaudun. They moved to the Moselle river region, between Nancy and Metz. My dad fought and was wounded on 31st October 1944 in the battle near Foret de Gremecey. He remembers the awful tree bursts of artillery that showered wood splinters down on soldiers. He ended the war near Le Havre recuperating from wounds. When he left the line there were only four men left from the original group that landed in Normandy.
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