Voices from D-Day Read online

  JON E. LEWIS is a writer and historian. His many previous books include the bestselling The Mammoth Book of True War Stories, Spitfire: The Autobiography and The Mammoth Book of Cover-ups.

  Constable & Robinson Ltd

  55-56 Russell Square

  London WC1B 4HP

  www.constablerobinson.com

  First published in the UK as Eyewitness D-Day

  by Robinson Publishing Ltd., 1994

  This revised paperback edition published by Robinson,

  an imprint of Constable & Robinson Ltd., 2014

  Copyright © J. Lewis-Stempel 1994, 2004, 2014

  The right of J. Lewis-Stempel to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988

  All rights reserved. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  A copy of the British Library Cataloguing in Publication

  Data is available from the British Library

  ISBN 978-1-47210-398-7 (paperback)

  ISBN 978-1-47210-399-4 (ebook)

  Printed and bound in the UK

  3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

  Cover by Stuart Polson

  CONTENTS

  Map

  Introduction

  The Prelude

  To the Far Shore

  D-Day, 6 June 1944

  Soldiering On

  Aftermath

  Appendix 1: Order of the Day

  Appendix 2: Allied Order of Battle

  Appendix 3: Glossary

  Appendix 4: Sources and Acknowledgements

  INTRODUCTION

  It was going to be, said Admiral Sir Bertram Ramsay to a group of his captains gathered before him, ‘the greatest amphibious operation of all time’. He apologized for the superlatives, but believed that this time they were necessary. Three days later, on 6 June 1944, the Allied invasion of Normandy – of which Ramsay was naval commander – took place. The Allied armada involved over 5,000 craft, and had by the end of ‘the longest day’ landed 156,000 men, and breached Hitler’s much vaunted defensive wall. Ramsay had not exaggerated.

  Yet, dramatic and historic though the events of D-Day were, they were but the opening shots of a much larger – and equally remarkable – battle, the battle for Normandy. A legend has grown up in the years since the war to the effect that the invasion was a matter of one glorious day in June, followed by a triumphal march on Paris. The reality was conspicuously different. It took the Allies ten weeks of bloody, painful fighting to get out of Normandy. At times the infantry casualty rate rivalled that of the Western Front in World War I. Only the lucky got out of Normandy alive.

  The reason for the peculiar bloodiness of Normandy was simple; in the words of one British soldier, ‘the Germans were bastard hard to beat.’ The Germans had fifty-nine divisions in France, many of them of second-rate quality and composed of ‘volunteer’ foreign (Russian, Polish, Mongolian and so forth) troops. However, even these divisions proved stubborn – denying the Allies most of their inland objectives on 6 June itself – and there were enough crack divisions like 352 Infantry, Panzer Lehr and, especially, the 12 SS Panzer to make things very difficult indeed. The Allied chiefs were all too aware of the formidability of the German Army, and that it was likely only to be beaten in the most propitious circumstances. That is, when the Germans were outnumbered, out-gunned, out-planed, out-guessed and out of luck. These circumstances were some considerable time in the making.

  The Allied invasion, later to be codenamed Overlord, first stirred into life in late 1941 with the entry of the United States into the war, and was followed by a huge build-up of American forces in Britain from 1942 onwards. The original plan, as conceived by General Sir Frederick Morgan, Chief of Staff to the Supreme Allied Commander (COSSAC), foresaw a first-day landing by three divisions. Eventually, this was revised by the Supreme Commander, Eisenhower, and the Field Commander, Montgomery, to five divisions on a broader front. To ensure that adequate supplies reached the Allied divisions after they landed, two prefabricated artificial harbours, or ‘Mulberries’, were built to be towed to Normandy on the big day. An underwater pipeline, PLUTO, was devised to hasten the supply of fuel to the invasion army. To overcome the German beach obstacles a strange population of tanks, nicknamed ‘funnies’, was created by Major-General Percy Hobart, among them an amphibious tank, the DD, and the mine-clearing flail tank. The men who would fight the invasion were trained for months. Even years. The preparations were meticulous.

  It was, of course, impossible to conceal from the Germans that an invasion would happen, as the Germans knew it must. The trick was to keep the Germans guessing as to when and exactly where in France it would happen.

  In spring 1944 the Allies began a brilliantly successful subterfuge, Operation Fortitude, which festooned the ports and aerodromes of south-east England with dummy landing craft and gliders. Heavy hints were dropped before German ears about Patton’s ‘First US Army Group’ and its readiness to cross the Straits of Dover. More and more the Germans, especially the Wehrmacht’s Commander-in-Chief in the West, Von Rundstedt, began to believe that the Pas de Calais would be the invasion site. In fact the Allies’ chosen landing place was the bay of the Seine, the fifty-mile sweep of Normandy coast from Cape d’Antifer to the Point of Barfleur. If the German High Command had settled its internal bickering and its prejudices it would have realized that this was the only possible place for a mass landing. Most of the land behind the beaches in Seine bay is flat, the tides are mild and the approaches free of natural obstacles.

  The Allies selected five main assault beaches. The Americans had the two most westerly, Utah and Omaha, the British Sword, Juno and Gold. The initial assault would be carried out by the British 3rd Division on Sword, the Canadian 3rd Division on Juno, the British 50th Division on Gold, the 4th US Division on Utah and the lst US Division on Omaha. The left flank of the British assault was to be protected by the British 6th Airborne Division; the right flank of the American assault by its 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions. The invasion would be prefaced by extensive bombing of roads, railways and German positions, the chaos added to by the attentions of the Resistance and a small group of SAS. Minesweepers would clear gaps in the German minefields which ran up the middle of the English Channel. The date for the invasion, the day when all the cards would come together in the right combination, was set by Eisenhower for 5 June 1944.

  There was, though, a joker in the pack: the weather. The invasion required a calm sea. The weather stood fair for France until just three days before the off, when a high-pressure area above the Azores began to disintegrate. Eisenhower’s meteorologist, Group-Captain Stagg, advised a postponement. But when could they go? The outcome of the Allies’ mightiest operation came to rest on Stagg’s judgement. He forecast a window in the bad weather for Tuesday, 6 June. This left Eisenhower the choice to go on the 6th or wait three weeks until the tidal requirements were again favourable – but by which time the morale of keyed-up troops would have likely sunk. Ike went for the 6th. Luck was with him. The German weather experts divined 6 June as far too bad a day to launch an invasion. Consequently, the Germans dropped their guard. Some senior officers, like Rommel, even took leave. By coincidence, the 6th was the start date for a Wehrmacht war game, attended by senior German officers from Normandy. When the Allies came ashore on the morning of 6 June much of the head of the German army was missing. Eisenhower, had he known it, could probably not have picked a better day.

  This book is
the story of that fateful day, the preparations which led up to it, and the ten weeks of fighting in Normandy which followed it, told by the men and women who were there, who witnessed it at first hand. It is compiled from interviews with scores of veterans, from diaries, memoirs and letters. Occasionally I have sacrificed exact chronology in the interests of communicating better the experience of Normandy, for above all this is a book about how the invasion looked and felt to those who were there. It is often brutally honest, far removed from the comfortable romantic version of D-Day and the battle for Normandy. (For example, there are accounts here of crimes committed against German POWs by Allied soldiers.)

  It would be disingenuous of me to claim that I have simply relayed the words of veterans and eye-witnesses into book form, for no act of writing and editing is neutral. Inevitably, one chooses some incidents and feelings above others, not least because of constrictions of space. I could have put a shiny gloss of chauvinism on this book, but chose against it. I was not a participant in 1944. I was not even born then. I belong to a generation made cynical by Vietnam. Myths have a habit of becoming exposed and there is little point in perpetuating them. Truth in war history, as in most things, is usually the best policy. And, anyway, the achievement of Allied soldiery in Normandy was very considerable; it is especially so when one fully realizes the moral and physical dilemmas the Tommies and the ‘dog-faces’ had to endure. To survive Normandy took not only luck, but fine feats of arms, stamina and guts. The men who fought in Normandy in 1944 were a special breed. I doubt if any generation since could have done better.

  I am indebted to those veterans who so kindly wrote up memories, lent diaries and original material, or who were interviewed for this book. Although they are now older, their recollections of 1944 are crystal sharp. Where they are quoted in the text, I have given their age and rank as of June 1944. I am also grateful for the advice and help of the Imperial War Museum, the D-Day Museum at Arromanches, the Normandy Veterans Association, and the Deutscher Soldatenverbande. I am indebted to the staff at Constable & Robinson, particularly Duncan Proudfoot, and to Julian Alexander and Ben Clark at LAW. I owe particular thanks to Joyce Lewis and Michele Lowe for translation and interview work above and beyond the call of duty. My greatest thanks, however, goes to Penny Lewis-Stempel, without whose skill in research, interviewing and translation this book would simply not have been done.

  Jon E. Lewis

  The Prelude

  Private Vernon Scannell, Argyll & Sutherland Highlanders

  From far away, a mile or so,

  The wooden scaffolds could be seen

  On which fat felons swung;

  But closer view showed these to be

  Sacks, corpulent with straw and tied

  To beams from which they hung.

  The sergeant halted his platoon.

  ‘Right lads,’ he barked, ‘you see them sacks?

  I want you to forget

  That sacks is what they are and act

  As if they was all Jerries – wait!

  Don’t move a muscle yet!

  ‘I’m going to show you how to use

  The bayonet as it should be done.

  If any of you feel

  Squeamish like, I’ll tell you this:

  There’s one thing that Jerry just can’t face

  And that thing is cold steel.

  ‘So if we’re going to win this war

  You’ve got to understand you must

  Be brutal, ruthless, tough.

  I want to hear you scream for blood

  As you rip out his guts and see

  The stuff he had for duff.’

  The young recruits stood there and watched

  And listened as their tutor roared

  And stabbed his lifeless foe;

  Their faces were expressionless,

  Impassive as the winter skies

  Black with threats of snow.

  1944. If wars are fought by young men, they are planned for by men with age and its assumed attribute, wisdom. As England and Western Europe shivered in the snow of the New Year, the leaders of the Allied invasion of France, already selected in the last days of 1943, began taking up their appointments. Montgomery arrived in England on 2 January. Eisenhower, the Supreme Allied Commander, landed on 15 January, holding his first full meeting of staff and commanders at Norfolk House, London, six days later.

  Captain H.C. Butcher, aide to Eisenhower

  Diary, London, Friday, 21 January 1944

  The new Supreme Commander, moving into his job with an Anglo-American staff already created by General Morgan, is busily engaged in meetings.

  The meeting held with Admiral Ramsay, General Montgomery, and Air Marshal Leigh-Mallory today may prove to be one of the most important of the war. Ike wanted the strength of the assault increased from three to five divisions and the area of the attack widened. He also wanted to employ two airborne divisions on the Cotentin (Cherbourg) Peninsula and not to use one against Caen. Leigh Mallory felt that it would be wrong to use the airborne on the Cotentin Peninsula and that losses will be seventy-five to eighty per cent. Ike believes it should be done to cut the ‘neck’ of the peninsula, and so does Monty. They will still use one airborne near Caen to seize bridges over the Orne and Dives, but will not try to take the city itself from the air. With all these changes, the need for postponing the assault for a month is apparent.

  Three days before, the designated commander of the US First Army in the invasion, in England since the previous autumn, was confirmed in his appointment by ‘Ike’. The news came in an unofficial fashion.

  General Omar Bradley, US First Army Group

  The news that I was to command this Army Group came to me suddenly and indirectly: I read it in a morning paper. On January 18 as I turned through the lobby of the Dorchester Hotel bound for breakfast at the mess across the street, I stopped to pick up a copy of the four-page Daily Express.

  The clerk at the counter grinned. ‘This won’t be news to you, sir,’ he said and pointed to a story in which Eisenhower had announced that ‘51-year-old Lieut.-General Omar Nelson Bradley, who led the US Second Corps in Tunisia and the invasion of Sicily, is to be the American Army’s “General Montgomery” in the western invasion of Europe.’ But it was. For this was the first inkling I had that my Army Group command was to be more than a temporary one. Eisenhower had just arrived in England and I had not yet talked with him. In his press conference the day before, the first on his return, Eisenhower had been asked who would command the American ground forces on the invasion. ‘General Bradley is the senior United States ground commander,’ was his reply.

  For the moment that statement was not clear, for it did not indicate whether Eisenhower meant First Army on the assault or the Army Group as an opposite number to Monty. It was not until later that Eisenhower said he meant the Army Group.

  It was not only on the Allied side that the commanders were taking their positions for the invasion that all knew would come, sooner or later. Though Field Marshal Geyr von Rundstedt was the Wehrmacht Supreme Commander West, Hitler had directly charged Erwin Rommel with the task of thwarting the Allied invasion of his Festung Europa. Rommel, with an energy that amazed his staff, set about building up the defences on the coast of France. He found himself, though, hampered in the job. He unburdened himself in his letters to his wife, Lucie-Maria.

  Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, Army Group B

  19 January 1944

  Returned today from my long trip. I saw a lot and was very satisfied with the progress that has been made. I think for certain that we’ll win the defensive battle in the West, provided only that a little more time remains for preparation. Guenther’s going off tomorrow with a suit-case. He’s to bring back my brown civilian suit and lightweight coat with hat, etc. I want to be able to go out without a Marshal’s baton for once …

  … Situation in the East: apparently stabilized

  … In the South: severe fighting and more heavy attacks to be m
et

  … In the West: I believe we’ll be able to beat off the assault.

  26 January 1944

  The job’s being very frustrating. Time and again one comes up against bureaucratic and ossified individuals who resist everything new and progressive. But we’ll manage it all the same. My two hounds had to be separated, after the older one had well nigh killed the younger with affection.

  Inevitably the Allies planned and plotted their Operation Overlord in conditions of great secrecy. They were especially zealous to guard the knowledge of the time and the place of the landing. Despite this, on two occasions secrecy was breached.

  Captain H.C. Butcher, aide to Eisenhower

  Diary, Widewing, Thursday, 23 March 1944

  Possibility that essential facts of Overlord, including D-Day as originally set, may have been ‘compromised’ has stirred the high-level officials of SHAEF and the War Department. The G-2s are excited, particularly in Washington.

  A few days ago Ike received a personal message from General Clayton Bissell, the new War Department G-2, saying that a package containing important documents concerning Overlord had been intercepted in Chicago. It had been sent from our Ordnance Division, G-4, and erroneously addressed to a private residence in a section of Chicago heavily populated by Germans. The package was poorly wrapped and, according to General Bissell, a casual perusal of the papers was made by four unauthorized persons in the headquarters of the Army’s 6th Service Command in Chicago, in addition to at least ten persons in the Chicago post office.

  It now appears that the package was addressed by an American soldier who is of German extraction. He states that his sister, who lives at the Chicago address, has been seriously ill and thinks he simply erred in writing the address on the package because his mind was preoccupied with thoughts of home. Thus he wrote on the package his sister’s home address rather than the proper address in the War Department in Washington. The clumsy handling would indicate that no professional spy was involved, but, nevertheless, important facts, including strength, places, equipment, and tentative target date, have been disclosed to unauthorized persons – just another worry for the Supreme Commander.