VIII Corps Engineers Aid the War of Movement
For VIII Corps, the "direct pressure force" in the breakthrough, H-hour was 0530 on 26 July. The commander, Maj. Gen. Troy H. Middleton, had four divisions that he planned to move abreast in a fifteen-mile zone between the west coast of the Cotentin peninsula and the Taute River: the 79th Division facing the Ay River near Lessay on the extreme west, the 8th Division facing hedgerow country, the 90th Division along the Seves River, and the 83d Division on the extreme left along the Taute. (Map 19) Two armored divisions, the 4th and the 6th, were to roll through gaps on the Lessay-Periers road. Because both the 79th and the 90th Divisions faced flooded regions that offered the Germans excellent fields of fire, the 8th was chosen to spearhead the attack, opening a gap. The 79th was to follow through the gap, turn west, outflank the enemy south of the Ay, and seize Lessay. Engineer support of the advance was the responsibility of the 1110th Engineer Combat Group, with its 207th Engineer Combat Battalion directly behind the 8th Division and its 148th Battalion behind the 79th Division.
