[Tallguy]

Re: hedgerows.

Part of the reason Normandy was selected was because the peninsula could be isolated by air & sea power to allow a lodgement to be formed. Problem is that if the terrain like that cuts both ways. It becomes a real b*tch to breakout when you’re ready. Witness Montgomery stalled before Caen.

[jmacusa]

Operation Cobra. No one anticipated the hedgerow country. Prior to the war no one from America or Britain ever went there. Even most French people didn't. Isolated little back water with dour Norman peasants. It wasn't even wine country and it certainly was ‘’Gay Paris’’. Allied planners just simply didn't realize how much of a problem for fire and maneuver they were going to be running into going into such terrain.

[jmacusa]

Allied aerial reconnaissance showed what appeared to be some kind of hedges bordering fields. Neither the British or the Americans paid any attention to it. They were looking for German armor and gun positions. When the troops got into the hedgerows they were up against a kind of warfare they were unprepared for. Bradley turned to the USSAF and the RAF to try and blast their way through out of it.