Sorry..I didn’t mean to sound snippy..The hedgerows began more than several miles from the beaches. The Norman farmers, centuries back, made stone berms, from the rocks they cleared from the fields, covered them with dirt, and planted trees and bushes. When a US tank attempeted to go “up and over” the hedgerow, the soft, lightly armored underbelly was exposed, and the German infantry was killing them with the Panzerfaust. A US tanker came up with the idea of taking the steel beams that the Germans had used to create obstacles for the landing craft on the beaches, and welding them to the front of the tanks...sumilar to a cowcatcher on the front of an old locomotive. There’s a name for this device, but I can’t recall it..The tank would drive forward, and it would rip a breach into the hedgerow..
The device of which you speak was an invention of one SSG Curtis Culin of the V Corp’s 102nd Cavalry Sqdn. It was made from German beach obstacles and nicknamed the “Rhino.” Between July 15-25th, when Operation Cobra, the breakout from St. Lo started, 500+ Rhinos were manufactured, enough to equip 60% of the 1st Army tanks that participated in the assault.
Other units developed their own versions of the Rhino, but all were ordered to be considered Top Secret by the 1st Army commander Omar Bradley untill the beginning of Operation Cobra.