See our National Archives restored Academy Award winning documentary The True Glory, here on RU-vid. Mortain has since become overlooked, but it gets as much coverage as the Battle of the Bulge in the film, because Eisenhower and everyone else in Allied high command were deeply worried by the attack. The Germans had their most elite surviving panzer divisions attacking our 30th InfDiv: 1.SS, 2.SS, and the 2. 30th Div's 2nd Bn 120th Inf Rgt was marooned atop Hill 317 on the east side and above Mortain itself, and held out for 6 days until the Germans had to withdraw under heavy artillery fire and RAF and USAAF air attack ... and the British breakthrough at Caen, as well as the US 1st Army breaking out and setting up the south side of the Argentan-Falaise Pocket. Our 30th InfDiv proved so tough and impossible to crack - these were National Guard mountain boys from Kentucky, Tennessee, and West Virginia, probably all who had seen the movie "Sergeant York" - they were a division of Alvin Yorks! - that the German high command started calling them "Roosevelt's SS!" The 116.PzDiv was held back for the crucial first 48 hours by its anti-Hitler commander General der Panzertruppen Gerhard Graf von (Count of) Schwerin, until he was relieved ... too late to make a difference. (von Schwerin was then sent to defend Aachen, where he had a "Welcome, GIs!" sign made up, but the US armored column wasn't Patton's and it paused to refit/refuel/"regroup," and the SS found the sign! Only Feldmarschal Model's and other vons' intervention saved von Schwerin from execution, and he ended the war in Italy, surviving it!) I have 2 free print-and-play (for your own personal use) games about Mortain: little Postcard Mortain and the larger Mortain Aug44: Old Ironsides vs. the SS, and - 50% chance - the 116.PzDiv makes a BIG difference, there on the offensive's northern flank where it should have been.
