Overlord (Pan Military Classics)

by Hastings, Max

  A little after 7.00 a.m., a 21-year-old farm boy from Metzingen named Lance-Corporal Hein Severloh had borrowed the binoculars of his battery commander, Lieutenant Frerking. He peered in fascination over the thick concrete parapet at the spectacle unfolding out to sea: ‘The big one is still hove to, not moving . . . More ships coming up now . . .’2 Severloh was one of the forward observation team of 1 Battery, 352 Artillery Regiment. When the alert was called, he and the others had driven hastily to the coast from their billets in the battery position at Houteville. Now the gunners were reporting by field telephone, having suffered no hits from the bombing, ‘perhaps they weren’t really after us . . .’ Severloh began his running commentary again: ‘The big one’s moving inshore . . . Landing craft on our left, off Vierville, making for the beach.’ Sergeant Krone said: ‘They must be crazy. Are they going to swim ashore? Right under our muzzles?’ He was one of the 19 men of the 726th Grenadiers sharing position WN 62 – Wilderstandsnesten, ‘resistance nest’, 62 – with the gunner OP. The telephone buzzed from regimental HQ with an order to withhold fire until the enemy touched the shore. Severloh laid aside the glasses and took up his own position at an MG 42. Frerking began telephoning fire orders to his guns: ‘Target Dora, all guns, range Four Eight Five Zero, basic direction Twenty Plus, impact fuse,’ Now there was a long, violent pause, as the naval bombardment plastering the sand and scrub around the pillboxes reached a crescendo, deafening even men behind five feet of concrete. Yet although the blasts filled the bunkers with dust, shook fragments of masonry from the ceilings, fired the scrub along the hillside at intervals above the 6,000 yards of beach where the Americans were to land, the naval shelling did no more than the bombing to reduce the fighting power of the defences. These had been constructed to be almost immune to direct fire from the sea. Now, 47 minutes after it began, the bombardment lifted as a black smoke signal curled into the sky from the command ship. There was a brief moment of silence. The grey shoals of landing craft bumped through the four-foot waves breaking onto the shore. There was only one casualty thus far in WN 62 – an NCO wounded by a shrapnel splinter tearing through a firing slit. Then the first boat dropped its ramp a few yards short of the beach and the overburdened Americans within it began to pour forward, splashing into the surf. The Germans in WN 62 and every position along the Omaha front opened fire, their machine-guns traversing steadily to and fro across the waterline, arcs of fire interlocking, occasional ricochets shrieking off the steel of the beach obstacles. Frerking called into his handset: ‘Target Dora – Fire!’

  There is no more demanding task for infantry than to press home an attack across open ground under heavy fire, amid heavy casualties. The American assault on Omaha beach came as close as the experience of any western Allied soldiers in the Second World War to the kind of headlong encounters between flesh and fire that were a dreadful commonplace in the battles of 30 years before, and which were so grimly familiar on the eastern front. V Corps’ plan for Omaha eschewed tactical subtleties, the use of British specialized armour, and any attempt to seize the five vital beach exits by manoeuvre. Instead, General Gerow committed his men to hurling themselves frontally against the most strongly defended areas in the assault zone. This was an act of hubris compounded by the collapse, amidst the rough weather, of all the elaborate timetables for the landing.

  Whipped by a 10-knot north-westerly wind, the seas swamped at least 10 LCVPs during the run-in, drowning many of their infantry. The attempt to land artillery from amphibious DUKWs failed disastrously, and in all 26 guns from elements of five regiments were lost. The supporting rocket ships opened fire at extreme range from the shore, and most of their projectiles fell short, some landing among the assault craft. Under the impact of the waves, the flimsy canvas walls on most of the amphibious DD tanks collapsed immediately. A special kind of sacrificial heroism was demanded of the DD crews that morning when, by a serious error of judgement, 32 were launched 6,000 yards from the beach. Each one, as it dropped off the ramp of the landing craft, plunged like a stone to the bottom of the sea, leaving pitifully few survivors struggling in the swell. Yet the following crews drove on into the water undeterred by ghastly example. One commander – a certain Sergeant Sertell – insisted upon launching even after his canvas screen had been gashed open before he left the craft. Just five of this wave of DDs reached the shore. The infantry were thus called upon to storm the beach without the benefit of vital supporting armour which was intended to shoot open the way ashore. Those tanks which reached Omaha did so behind, rather than ahead of, the leading wave of eight companies – 1,450 men in 36 landing craft.

  Most of the young Americans plunging into the surf had been crouched in their landing craft for some three hours, having been transferred from the transports 12 miles out from the beach rather than the seven miles the British decided upon. Many had quickly thrown up their breakfasts, and then crouched miserably in the bucketing boats, drenched in spray, paddling in vomit, as darkness gave way to the first light of dawn. Each man was grotesquely heavily loaded with gas mask, grenades, half-pound blocks of TNT, pole or satchel charges, two bandoliers of rifle ammunition, rations and waterbottle – 68 pounds in total. Now, in an instant, they were compelled to rouse themselves from the cramped, crowded stagnation of the landing craft and stumble forward into the hail of machine-gun and mortar fire from the German defences, which killed and wounded many before they even reached dry ground. Others, still groggy with seasickness, their clothes and equipment stiff and matted with salt, desperately sought cover among the beach obstacles or lay paralysed amid the harvest of wreckage that quickly gathered on the shoreline. Early in the assault the beach was clogged with grounded and damaged landing craft, some hulks being swept broadside onto the German obstacles to create a logjam which the next wave could not pass. A flamethrower operator on one vessel suffered a direct hit on his weapon: the explosion catapulted his dying body into the sea, spewing blazing fuel over the decks. The landing craft caught fire and burnt for the next 18 hours, amid constant detonations from its 20 mm Oerlikon ammunition.

  The plan demanded that 270 specially-trained demolition men would follow the lead infantry onto the beach and immediately begin to blow the German obstacles, clearing the way for the great rolling succession of follow-up units before the tide covered the mines. 25,000 more men and 4,000 vehicles were due on Omaha with the second tide of the day. In the event, under the intense fire, which killed or wounded more than 40 per cent of the engineers, and the chaos of soldiers wounded or terrified behind the steel hedgehogs, only a handful of obstacles were exploded that morning. The path to the beach was forced open principally by the hulls of landing craft that rammed obstacles by accident or intent, often triggering the mines and adding more hulks to the debris on the waterline. Of 16 armoured bulldozers sent ashore, only six arrived and three of these were quickly destroyed. Among the infantry, command quickly approached collapse. Three-quarters of the 116th Regiment’s radio sets were destroyed or rendered unworkable, and the unit’s forward headquarters was effectively wiped out by a direct hit. Many men were confused to discover that they had been landed far from the sector for which they had been briefed and trained. Americans lay prone in the shallow water seeking cover, or dragged themselves painfully up the sand with wounds suffered before they were even out of the landing craft. Hundreds huddled beneath the sea wall at the head of the beach, seizing the only shelter Omaha offered that day, although some companies’ survivors took 45 minutes to struggle even that far from the waterline. Hundreds of men were already dying or dead – there would be more than 2,000 casualties on the beach that day.

  Among the living, an overwhelming paralysis set in. Much of what takes place on every battlefield is decided by example, men being driven to act in noble or ignoble fashion by the behaviour of those around them. On Omaha that morning, the inexperience of many American junior leaders made itself felt. The confused nature of the landings, with men landing by half-platoons often many yards
from the boats carrying their own officers and comrades, destroyed unit cohesion. To the great majority of infantrymen looking for an example to follow out of the apparent collapse of purpose on Omaha that morning, it seemed most prudent merely to seek what shelter they could, and cling to it.

  Aboard the cruiser Augusta offshore, General Bradley watched the events unfolding on the beaches frustrated by the paucity of communications. A steel command cabin had been built for him on deck, 20 feet by 10, the walls dominated by Michelin motoring maps of France, a few pin-ups and large-scale maps of Normandy. A row of clerks sat at typewriters along one wall, while Bradley and his personal staff clustered around the big plotting table in the centre. Much of that morning, however, the general was on the bridge, standing beside the Task Force commander, Admiral Kirk, watching through binoculars the distant smoke shrouding the shore, his ears plugged with cotton to muffle the blast of the Augusta’s guns, his nose swathed in plaster over an embarrassing boil that had been troubling him for days. Photographers were kept away from First Army’s commander on 6 June.

  The day had begun with a series of minor alarms: the sight of the swell that they knew at once would imperil the DD tanks; the report of 15 E-boats putting out from Cherbourg, sinking the Norwegian destroyer Svenner before they were put to flight: ‘As the morning lengthened,’ Bradley wrote, ‘my worries deepened over the alarming and fragmentary reports we picked up on the navy net. From those messages we could piece together only an incoherent account of sinkings, swampings, heavy enemy fire and chaos on the beaches. Though we could see it dimly through the haze and hear the echo of its guns, the battle belonged that morning to the thin, wet line of khaki that dragged itself ashore on the Channel coast of France.’3 By mid-morning the apparent collapse of the landing plan, both on and offshore, had plunged V Corps’ staff into the deepest dismay. Colonel Benjamin Talley, cruising in a DUKW a few hundred yards from the beach to report directly to Gerow, told of LCTs milling around the smoke-shrouded sands ‘like a stampeding herd of cattle’. Bradley ‘gained the impression that our forces had suffered an irreversible catastrophe’.4 A situation was unfolding that came nearer than any that day to matching the terrible fears of Churchill, Brooke and Eisenhower.

  Ranger Mike Rehm of C Company, 5th Battalion, landed in Dog Green sector shortly after H-Hour with 10 men, two of whom were killed and three wounded in the first hundred yards between the sea and the base of the hill. Rehm huddled for shelter behind a knocked-out DD tank, finding himself beside a Ranger whom he did not recognize, smoking a cigar. Suddenly they discovered that the tank was not knocked out, for its engine sprang into life and it began to move. The two men ran hastily towards the sea wall. After a few paces Rehm glanced around and saw that his companion lay covered in blood from the waist down. He reached the wall alone. There he lay through the two hours which followed, amidst a huddle of infantry and other Rangers representing almost every unit on the beach that morning.

  A, B and C Companies of 2nd Ranger Battalion had lain offshore awaiting a signal from their commanding officer, Colonel Rudder, to land and advance through the positions of the landing force on Pointe du Hoc, if this successfully gained its objectives. But even after delaying 15 minutes beyond the appointed radio rendezvous, the men tossing in the boats had heard nothing. They were obliged to assume that the Pointe du Hoc landing had failed. They were ordered in to the western flank of Omaha beach. One LCA struck a mine as it approached, blowing off the door of the craft, killing the seaman manning it and stunning the Ranger platoon commander. His 34 men floundered out of the sinking vessel and struck out for the shore. The next platoon commander, Lieutenant Brice, waded onto the beach and turned to shout ‘Let’s go!’ to his men before falling dead in front of them. Meanwhile, A Company’s craft had grounded 75 yards offshore, and many of its men died in the water under machine-gun fire. When Gerard Rotthof’s mother heard that her son was to become a radioman, she said: ‘Well at least he won’t have to carry a rifle any more.’ But now Rotthof lay trapped on the beach beneath the weight of his 60-pound SCR 284 set, wounded by mortar fragments in the face and back. He received the last rites twice, but somehow survived terrible internal injuries. Only 35 men of A Company and 27 from B of the 2nd Rangers reached the sea wall, out of 130 who launched from the transports before dawn.

  200 yards out from the beach, Lieutenant Sid Salomon and 1 Platoon of C Company still supposed that the whole thing looked a pushover: not a single shell or small-arms round had come close to them. Then the ramp dropped and they were exposed to the full fury of the defences. An immensely tall 31-year-old graduate of New York University who enlisted in March 1942, Salomon had ordered his men to go all-out for the cliff base, under no circumstances pausing for a casualty. Yet within seconds one of his sergeants, Oliver Reed, was hit and fell beneath the ramp. Salomon could not stop himself from seizing the wounded man and dragging him through the waist-high water to the beach. Some of the platoon overtook him as he floundered, and now he passed four already dead from a mortar burst. He himself fell hit in the shoulder. Convinced that he was finished, he called to his platoon sergeant, Bob Kennedy. Reaching into his field jacket, he said: ‘I’m dead. Take the maps.’ But then a machine-gun began to kick up sand in front of them, and Salomon found that he was not only alive, but could run. At the base of the cliff he counted nine survivors of his platoon, out of 30 who left the landing craft. His old sergeant, who had left the platoon on promotion, insisted upon joining them for the assault. Salomon had placed him last out of the boat to give him the best chance of making it. But Sergeant Goales was already among the dead. All told, some two-thirds of the company were casualties.

  It was a tribute to the quality of the Rangers that despite losses on a scale that stopped many infantry units in their tracks on Omaha that morning, the survivors of C Company pressed on to climb the cliffs west of the beach with bayonets and toggle ropes, clearing German positions one by one in a succession of fierce close-quarter actions with tommy guns and phosphorus grenades. Sergeant Julius Belcher charged headlong against one pillbox, tossed in a grenade and then shot down the garrison as they staggered out of the entrance. In their own area, they found later that they had killed some 60 Germans on 6 June. Yet they lacked the strength and the heavy weapons to press on westwards towards Pointe du Hoc. Towards the end of morning, Salomon stood in a captured German position, gazing down on the chaos below. ‘I was of the opinion that the invasion had been a failure,’ he said laconically.5 He reflected that it was going to be a long swim home.

  Corporal Bill Preston’s DD crew of the 743rd Tank Battalion watched five of their unit’s Shermans sink on launching offshore before it became obvious to the officer commanding their group of eight LCTs that the conditions were impossible. The remainder of the tanks were brought to within 250 yards of the beach before leaving the craft, very late. They glimpsed the cliffs shrouded in thick clouds of smoke as they ran in, then they were crawling out of the water among huddles of isolated infantrymen under intense small-arms fire. The tank commander, a Minnesotan farmer named Ted Geske, pressed the button to collapse their canvas screens, but nothing happened. He clambered out of the turret to do the job manually. At that moment, the waterproofing fell, and Geske was left cursing at his own vulnerability, perched on the hull in the midst of the battlefield. They saw that their tank was well to the right of its objective. They could see dead engineers floating beyond the beach obstacles, where so many wounded men also died as the tide came in over them. They later discovered to their dismay that they had run over one man, for they found his clothing jammed in their tracks. Then they saw the neighbouring platoon of Shermans brew up briskly one by one as an anti-tank gun caught them. Their battalion commander was hit in the shoulder as he stood on the sand, seeking to direct a tankdozer to clear a path for the armour through one of the beach exits.

  It was obvious that something was very wrong. 21 of the unit’s 51 tanks were destroyed on Omaha, and the neighbouring battal
ion fared even worse. Preston’s crew simply took up position just above the high-water mark, and began to fire at such German positions as they could identify. These were not very many, for the tank fired only about a third of its ammunition before dusk. The 743rd remained on the beach for the next 12 hours.

  Some unhappy men ended up on Omaha who should never have been there at all under such circumstances. Sergeant Andy Hertz, the Boston-bred son of a Dutch Jewish father and British mother, had been building airfields in England for almost two years with the 922nd Aviation Engineer Regiment when, somewhat to their bewilderment, he and his unit were issued with carbines, mines, bazookas and combat equipment, and loaded onto invasion transports to build airstrips in France. Aboard his liberty ship offshore, Hertz was in the galley listening to radio reports of the fall of Rome when the engineers were piped on deck. They saw the burning shore before them. A landing craft came alongside. Its skipper asked if the ship could provide any coffee, and announced that he could take in 90 men. A Ranger commanding officer sharing the ship with them declined to send his men ashore at that moment. The major responsible for the engineers shouted that they would go. Lacking assault training, they found the most frightening experience of the morning to be the descent of the scrambling nets into the pitching craft. Then, as they pulled away from the side, they saw their major waving farewell from the upper deck. He had decided to leave Hertz and the others to explore Omaha alone that day, and they never saw him again. An hour or so later, they struggled through five feet of water to the beach.