Countdown to D-Day

by Peter Margaritis

In the meantime, time to notify higher authorities. He tells von Criegern to contact Max Pemsel at Seventh Army headquarters immediately. It is 1:15 a.m.

  God help them now.

  ***

  Speidel’s party at La Roche-Guyon finally breaks up after midnight. Most of the guests are returning to Paris, and the trip will take longer than usual since the Seine River bridges are out. At 1 a.m., Speidel turns in to go to bed. A few, like Admiral Ruge, decide to stay up a while, drinking fine brandies, telling stories.

  ***

  It is just past 1:15 a.m. at Seventh Army Headquarters. Max Pemsel, ready to turn in for the night, is told he has a phone call in Operations. Whoever it is had better have a good reason for keeping him up. It is von Criegern, Marcks’ chief of staff. Pemsel listens to him report on the paratroop landings. Pemsel turns to a staff member and orders him to wake the entire army staff up immediately.

  He and von Criegern then briefly discuss the reports and agree that this is probably the beginning of the invasion. Pemsel ends the call by instructing von Criegern to keep him informed of all developments.

  Pemsel immediately noted in the phone log at 1:35:

  Chief of Staff LXXXIV [84th] Corps reports: Since 0030 parachute jumps in area east and northwest of Caen, St. Marcouf, Montebourg, astride Vire and on east coast Cotentin. LXXXIV [84th] Corps has ordered Alert II.

  Pemsel orders the entire Seventh Army be put on alert. Then he calls General Dollmann’s quarters. and tells him that there have been several reports of airborne landings in the Calvados area and in the Cotentin peninsula. “General,” he concludes, “I believe that this is the invasion. Will you please come over immediately?” Dollmann tells him he will, as soon as he gets dressed.

  Taking a deep breath, Pemsel picks up the phone again and nervously calls Speidel at La Roche-Guyon. The chief of staff has to be woken up to come to the phone. Pemsel passes on the reports of the paratroop landings. Speidel takes the news in a calm sleepy voice and in turn promises to immediately call von Rundstedt’s headquarters.

  Right after the call, Pemsel notes in his diary:

  The long-awaited invasion has begun.

  They will all be busy tonight.

  ***

  Speidel, now awake, notifies all major commands of the airborne sightings. Reports now coming are perplexing and often contradictory. Some of them are illogical, placing reports of enemy sightings in wildly irrational locations.

  Not having a clear picture yet, he decides to wait and see what develops. This will pretty much be his drill for the whole night.

  ***

  At 1:23 a.m., the staff at the OB West headquarters bunker first gets the word of the paratroop landings from Naval Group West. They are also informed that Marcks’ 84th Corps is on full alert. Blumentritt and von Rundstedt are woken up at their villa.

  Around the base of the Carentan peninsula, scattered American paratroopers start to get organized. Groups of one or two find others, and they in turn merge with other clusters to form squads and then platoons. Some find their locations. Those not too far from their objectives set out for them. Many scamper up telephone and telegraph poles to cut the lines, to further isolate the Germans in the area.

  By 1:30, reports are reaching General von Salmuth in Tourcoing. Then comes a phone call from Oberst! Wise, chief of staff for Kuntzen’s 81st Corps headquarters near Rouen. He reports enemy paratroopers landing in Deauville, 15km up the coast, and around the 711th’s headquarters at Cabourg. Fighting is supposedly going on all around the buildings. Wise tells von Salmuth that the noise of battle can be heard over the receiver. No other details are available at this time.

  To von Salmuth, this sounds crazy. His army is already on full alert, and though enemy air raids have hit Calais, nothing much else seems to be going on. To find out, he calls the divisional commander, General Reichert. Finally getting through, he growls, “Reichert, what the devil is going on down there?”

  Reichart had been sitting in the officers’ mess with other officers, exhausted after a hard day of training, sipping calvados, 6 wondering about the heavy enemy air traffic, when a flight of slow-moving aircraft had flown over. He had dashed into his command bunker to get his pistol, and returning in the dark, he spotted paratroopers floating down over his quarters. Two had landed on his lawn and had been immediately captured. He and his men were desperately trying to defend the divisional headquarters when von Salmuth called.

  Reichert now replies, “My General, if you’ll permit me, I’ll let you hear for yourself.” He holds up his receiver to the doorway. Von Salmuth waits a moment, listening sullenly. Suddenly, his eyes widen as he distinctly hears machine-gun fire in the background. “Thank you,” he promptly responds, and hangs up. He then calls Speidel and tells him that, at the headquarters of the 711th, “the din of battle can be heard.”

  Von Salmuth immediately raises the Fifteenth Amy alert to Level II. Then he picks up the phone again to call Heeresgruppe B.

  ***

  1:45 a.m. General Marcks at his headquarters continues analyzing the reported locations of the paratroop drops. A few more sightings have come in. One group of British paratroopers has had the nerve to come down right on the lawn of Reichert’s 711th headquarters. Marcks could just imagine the look on the division commander’s face.

  The phone rings. Oberst! Hamann7 at the 709th headquarters in Valogne. The colonel relays that enemy paratroopers have been reported just south of St.-Germain de-Varreville, near the base of the Cotentin peninsula. Another group has been sighted west of the main road to Carentan, near Ste.-Marie-du-Mont. More groups of enemy paratroopers have been spotted along both sides of the Merderet River, and on the road between Ste.-Mère-Église and Pont-l’Abbé.

  Marcks asks him about any firefights. He replies that there are some going on at the river crossings. “Have they identified any of the units yet?” Marcks asks.

  Yes. 3rd Battalion of the 919th Grenadier Regiment has identified a few prisoners as belonging to the American 101st Airborne Division.

  As staff members try to contact the 84th’s division commanders, Hayn orders the French postal service in the corps’ area shut down, Marcks continues plotting the new drops. Scattered all over the map, he cannot make out the enemy’s main objectives.8 He does though, quickly decide that this is the main event—the invasion. He orders the message “ALARM COAST” be sent, the coded phrase that put the coastal units on maximum alert for an invasion.

  The alarm goes out over the service telephones (the civilian phones are not operating, courtesy of the Maquis). It is coming up on 2 a.m. when he calls Speidel at Heeresgruppe B again and tells him that this is the invasion.

  ***

  It is 2 a.m. Günther Blumentritt, still tired from having been awoken a half-hour ago, is called to the phone. It is Eduard Wegener at Naval Group West.9 He reports airborne landings around Caen, and radar contacts near the entrance to the English Channel. Wegener says that Admiral Hoffman, Blumentritt’s naval counterpart, is convinced that this is the invasion.

  Blumentritt though is not quite convinced. There had been no evidence of any enemy shenanigans the evening before. And besides, the storm…

  “In this weather?” he challenges. Blumentritt hopes this is a false alarm, because he’s tired. “Maybe you’ve picked up sea gulls,” he ventures hopefully.

  Wegener’s reply is icy. “Surface contacts, Herr General. Confirmed by several stations.”

  “Well, I still don’t believe it, but I’ll pass on your report.”

  “Yessir. And Naval Group West is alerting all the ships and ports along the coast.”

  Hanging up, Blumentritt is depressed. Doesn’t anyone look outside anymore? Who invades in storms?

  ***

  Just after 2:09 a.m., a couple still operable German radar stations start seeing large areas of “snow” all across their screens for a good part of the night. There appear to be two very large bomber groups headed for Germany. And a number of vessels have b
een picked up by surface radar, apparently headed for Le Havre. At the same time, German radar and communications networks are being jammed.

  In the next hour, these contacts turn out to be a hoax as they disappeared back into the English coastline. But now, one of the repaired radar sets has picked up a large number of ships in position off the Normandy shoreline. Naval Group West in Paris is contacted.

  ***

  It is 2:10 at Heeresgruppe B. The headquarters has received incoming messages of airborne landings further up the coast, in the Fifteenth Army sector. Also, Admiral Ruge has received reports of straw dummies that explode upon landing. They are being dropped all over the 84th and 47th Corps area. Speidel, weary from the party earlier in the evening, now concludes that any naval assault will probably be elsewhere, possibly near Calais. Perhaps the field marshal is right. The invasion may come near the Somme estuary.

  Shortly after talking to von Salmuth, Speidel receives another phone call from Max Pemsel. More paratroopers in the lower Cotentin peninsula, including near Carentan. Pemsel tries to convince Speidel of the seriousness of the situation, contending that this is a major operation. To back that up, he tells Speidel of a report from Admiral Kanalküste10 that ship engine noises in the Channel have been heard east of the coast of the Cotentin peninsula.

  When asked, Pemsel replies that there are no immediate radar reports of any vessels in the Channel. Most of the radar networks along the Bay of Seine have been taken out by bombs. A couple naval observers though, have reported possible ship movement around Cherbourg.

  Speidel calmly reassures him, replying that, “The affair is still locally confined. All of the paratroop drops are either diversions, bomber crews that are bailing out, or dummies.”

  Pemsel is understandably in disbelief. These are all dummies?

  Speidel patiently explains. In one or two reports, the “paratroopers” were just rubber dummies fitted with roman candles. The explosions when they went off convinced the German troops that there were real airborne troops in the area.

  After the phone call, Speidel enters into the war diary:

  Chief of Staff Army Group B believes that for the time being this is not to be considered as a large operation.

  If some of these sporadic landings are by real paratroopers, it is probably a large reinforcement to the French Resistance. Someone needs to do something.

  Speidel sighs, picks up a phone, and tries to get a hold of Feuchtinger at the 21st Panzer headquarters. Feuchtinger is not in. No matter. They have given the 21st Panzer standing orders: in the event of an enemy paratroop landings, move out and attack them immediately.

  ***

  At about 2:15, Fifteenth Army gets a phone call from Heeresgruppe B. They have reports of strong airborne landings in several locations in Normandy, as well as continued flights of gliders. There are reports of firefights on the Cotentin peninsula. There has also been a report in one area of booby-trapped wooden dummies being dropped.

  ***

  Around 2:45 a.m., Admiral Theodor Krancke is sleeping in a hotel room down in Bordeaux. He had gone down there to inspect the naval forces along the southwestern coast of France. Most of the vessels currently operating in that area were conducting mining operations in the Bay of Biscay.

  He is awakened by his aide. Konteradmiral Hennecke in Cherbourg is calling. When Krancke gets on the line, Hennecke reports that paratroopers have landed somewhere below the St. Marcouf naval battery along the eastern coast of the Cotentin peninsula. The battery commander insists that this is the invasion. Krancke tells Hennecke to alert his forces.

  Krancke immediately calls his Naval Group West headquarters in Paris. Wegener, his Operations officer, tells him that airborne landings have been reported near Caen, a considerable distance from the St. Marcouf battery. OB West is sure that this is only a diversion, but Wegener adds that his staff feels that this is the real thing. Several ship contacts have been detected.

  At 3 a.m., Krancke calls Wegener back and instructs him to alert everyone. The destroyers in Royan are to sail up the coast towards Brest. He tells Wegener to send a few torpedo boats into the Seine Bay to find out what is happening. Although the U-boats are under Dönitz’s direct authority, Krancke orders that the coastal boats be made ready to put to sea to repel an invasion fleet.

  Wegener tells him that their staff is getting organized. Their chief of staff, Admiral Hoffmann, has also received reports of surface targets from a couple of radar stations near the Atlantic side of the Channel. He and Hoffmann are convinced that this is the invasion. Krancke tells him to notify OB West and OKW immediately of the recent radar reports. Wegener replies that they are in the process of doing that. Krancke thanks him.

  After hanging up, Krancke hurriedly gets dressed. Leaving his quarters, he quickly walks across the darkened courtyard of the Bordeaux naval headquarters and up to the commandant’s quarters. He is worried. He knows that the second Verlaine verse has been broadcast, and that the Fifteenth Army was on alert.

  He wakes up the Bordeaux naval commandant and tells him what has been reported. They sit in the commandant’s drawing room and discuss the situation. Krancke admits that he cannot understand how any type of enemy operation could possibly be afoot, not with Force 6 seas in the Channel.

  They discuss the radar contacts. Wegener had told Krancke that the radar returns could not be completely confirmed. There was such a large area of them. The radar operators are convinced that either this is some new type of enemy jamming device, or every ship in the Allied fleets is headed for France.

  ***

  3 a.m. General Wilhelm Falley, sitting in the back of his Dusenburg, orders his driver to stop the car as they approach a clear intersection, some twenty miles south of Coutances. As the car stops, two guards walk over. Falley and Major Bartuzat get out and identify themselves, bringing the guards to rigid attention.

  He tells them to relax, and then asks how long they have heard planes flying by. One of the men has just got on so he does not know. The other one though has been on for two hours and replies that he has been hearing aircraft engines all through that time.

  “So have I…” replies Falley thoughtfully. They all fall silent as they hear aircraft fly above them, headed north in the night sky. Too much is going on. And a little earlier, the guards had seen flare markers being dropped. Markers meant pathfinders, and that strongly indicated enemy paratroop landings.

  “This is no routine attack, Bartuzat,” Falley says. “I don’t like it,” he adds.

  He thinks about it. They hear enemy bombers flying overhead, headed for targets inland, the sound of their engines loud and harsh.

  Falley finally decides. He tells Baumann, “Turn around. Back to the command post.” War games or not, they are returning to headquarters to see what is going on.

  They climb back into the car, the sound of its running motor almost impossible to hear over the overhead din. Falley tells the driver as he gets in, “Let’s get back to headquarters right away.”

  Baumann turns the staff car around in the intersection and they speed northward, towards Picauville again.

  They do not know that, by the time they get close to their headquarters, it will have been overrun by American paratroopers.

  ***

  At 3:15, General Kraiss, commanding the 352 Infantry Division, summons his regimental commanders. He tells them about the airborne drops, then turns to Oberst!leutnant Karl Meyer, commanding his reserve regiment, the 915th, with 1,750 men. He orders him to lead his men away from the Bayeux area to look for paratroopers. He is to probe inland west-southwest behind the division’s left flank. The companies will have to load up, some in tired old French Otrag trucks, some on confiscated bicycles, and many simply on foot. They are to head towards the Cerisy Forest.

  One thing is critical, Kraiss adds. If Meyer does not meet any real resistance and the invasion comes, they are to return as fast as possible to augment those on the coast. So Meyer will have to stay in contact with
division headquarters by radio. Meyer acknowledges.

  Kraiss wished him good luck, and Meyer leaves. It will take him almost an hour to move all of his men out and get his Kampfgruppe on the road.

  By 3:35 a.m., assault craft are being lowered from Allied transports in preparation for the landings that will soon follow. Hundreds of Allied soldiers begin warily descending swaying nets into scores of landing craft. Many men are tired from lack of sleep. They have been aboard transports for days, and are finally getting ready to assault their targets.

  Shortly after 4 a.m., as Allied aircraft roar overhead, the first wave of the American assault craft begin their 1½-hour trip in towards the beaches. They have an 11½-mile run. Each of the five sea lanes is marked with buoys for traffic control.

  The landing has begun.

  3:40 a.m. Max Pemsel is busily filtering messages coming into Seventh Army headquarters. A major airborne drop has come down along the east bank of the Orne River, and another has landed over on the left, around the Vire and Merderet Rivers. Marcks is probably right. Chances are, the landing will be on the coast, somewhere in the middle.

  A dispatch is passed to Pemsel. Communications have been lost with Ste.-Mère-Église.

  ***

  It is now after 4 a.m. At OB West, von Rundstedt and Blumentritt have been monitoring the incoming messages for the last three hours. Fallschirmtruppen have landed sporadically over an extensive area, and an amphibious assault now seems likely. In reaction to the paratroop reports, he had ordered the 12th SS Panzer and Panzer Lehr divisions alerted around 2:45. The 12th SS Panzer was to form up its units and get ready to roll towards Caen. Bayerlein’s Lehr was told to prepare to do the same.

  Finally, von Rundstedt decides that it is time to bring up the panzers. Rommel is in Germany, so at 4:25 a.m., von Rundstedt orders Panzergruppe West to “reconnoiter in force into 711th Division sector.” To keep OKW informed, Blumentritt calls Warlimont and informs him what they are doing. They follow up with a message at 0445, formally requesting that the panzer reserves be released: