The Men of World War II

by Stephen E. Ambrose

  “What can you mean?” Lane demanded.

  “They always get other people to do the fighting for them, the Australians, the Canadians, the New Zealanders, the South Africans. They are very clever people these English.”

  Rommel grew serious. “Well, where do you think the invasion is coming?”

  “I certainly don’t know, they don’t tell junior officers. But if it was up to me, I would do it across the shortest possible way.”

  “Yes,” Rommel nodded, “that’s very interesting.”

  They talked politics. Rommel thought the British should be fighting side by side with the Germans against the Russians. Lane thought not.

  When Lane was dismissed, he was driven to Paris and turned over to the Gestapo. But the Gestapo asked no questions, used no torture—after all, he had been interrogated by Rommel himself. So Lane was very lucky, as were the Allies—Lane’s missions had all been directed against the Calvados coast of France.25

  • •

  Other adjustments had to be made. In the Cotentin, the arrival in late May of the German 91st Division in the area where the 82nd Airborne was scheduled to come down caused a change in plan. On May 28, the drop zone was moved west, astride the Merderet, with the objective of seizing the ground between the Merderet and Douve rivers.

  “Daily I viewed new aerial photographs of Utah,” Col. James Van Fleet, commander of the 8th Regiment, 4th Division, recalled. “The Germans were working furiously to strengthen their defenses. It seemed a terrible assault against steel and cannon for us to make. I kept asking the Navy to land us further south, to get away from these defenses. But the Navy commander said the water was too shallow, and our boats would ground.”

  Van Fleet did win one fight with the Navy. The operations manual said the skippers of the LCTs would decide when to launch the DD tanks. Van Fleet had little faith in the DDs. He wanted the Navy to take them in as close as possible before launching, because the DDs moved so slowly in water and were terribly vulnerable to artillery. The Navy insisted that the skipper would decide when to launch. Van Fleet recalled, “I argued back so strongly that the Navy backed down; the tank commander would give the launch command.”26

  Multiply Lord’s and Van Fleet’s experiences by hundreds to get some idea of the scope of the ever-changing planning operation. With such dedication, and with such an awesome firepower, how could the invasion not work?

  • •

  Montgomery had no doubts. On May 15 he held the final great dress rehearsal for Overlord at his St. Paul’s School headquarters. Churchill was there, and King George VI, and all the brass, admirals and generals from the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada. Montgomery presided in a large lecture room; the audience looked down from a crescent-shaped auditorium; on the floor Montgomery had placed a huge colored map of lower Normandy. Churchill arrived smoking a cigar; when the king arrived Churchill “bowed in his usual jerky fashion retaining the cigar in one hand.”

  “As we took [our] seats,” Adm. Morton Deyo of the U.S. Navy, in command of the bombardment group for Utah, later wrote, “the room was hushed and the tension palpable. It seemed to most of us that the proper meshing of so many gears would need nothing less than divine guidance. A failure at one point could throw the momentum out of balance and result in chaos. All in that room were aware of the gravity of the elements to be dealt with.”

  Eisenhower spoke first. He was brief. “I would emphasize but one thing,” he said. “I consider it to be the duty of anyone who sees a flaw in the plan not to hesitate to say so.” According to Deyo, “His smile was worth twenty divisions. Before the warmth of his quiet confidence the mists of doubt dissolved.”27

  Montgomery took over. He was wearing a well-cut battle dress with knifelike trouser creases. He looked trim and spoke in a tone of quiet emphasis. According to the note taker, Churchill occasionally interrupted him to ask questions designed to show off his military knowledge. “At one point the PM intervened, saying a trifle wryly that at Anzio we had put ashore 160,000 men and 25,000 vehicles and had advanced only twelve miles. He thought, therefore, that to take a risk occasionally would certainly do no harm.” Montgomery remained “quiet and deliberate.”

  Montgomery’s message was “We have a sufficiency of troops; we have all the necessary tackle; we have an excellent plan. This is a perfectly normal operation which is certain of success. If anyone has any doubts in his mind, let him stay behind.”

  He was more realistic about Rommel’s plans than he had been in April, when he had expected the enemy to hold back his tanks for the first couple of days. Now he said, “Rommel is an energetic and determined commander; he has made a world of difference since he took over. He is best at the spoiling attack; his forte is disruption; he is too impulsive for the set-piece battle. He will do his level best to ‘Dunkirk’ us . . . by using his own tanks well forward.”

  Montgomery said, “We have the initiative. We must rely on:”

  “(a) the violence of our assault.

  “(b) our great weight of supporting fire from the sea and the air.

  “(c) simplicity.

  “(d) robust mentality.”

  He went on to say some words that later would come back to haunt him: “We must blast our way ashore and get a good lodgement before the enemy can bring sufficient reserves up to turn us out. Armoured columns must penetrate deep inland, and quickly on D-Day; this will upset the plans and tend to hold him off while we build up strength. We must gain space rapidly, and peg out claims well inland.”28

  The meeting began at 0900 hours and concluded at 1415, “thus ending,” according to the minutes, “the greatest assembly of military leadership the world has ever known.” Churchill was all pumped up. At the beginning of 1944 he had expressed qualms about Overlord, saying to Eisenhower on one occasion, “When I think of the beaches of Normandy choked with the flower of American and British youth, and when, in my mind’s eye, I see the tides running red with their blood, I have my doubts . . . I have my doubts.” Early in May Eisenhower had lunched alone with the prime minister. When they were parting, Churchill had grown emotional. With tears in his eyes he had said, “I am in this thing with you to the end, and if it fails we will go down together.” But after the St. Paul’s briefing Churchill grabbed Eisenhower by the arm and said, “I am hardening toward this enterprise.” That was a bit late to be getting on the team, but it was good that he had finally joined up. As for Eisenhower, his confidence was high.29

  * * *

  I. The beach that visitors see today is considerably different from what it was in 1944. U.S. Army engineers tore down most of the seawall and entirely removed the shingle embankment during unloading operations in the summer of 1944.

  II. So Admiral Ruge had been right when he told Rommel that the army mines were no good for the job at hand.

  7

  TRAINING

  NO MATTER how brilliant the plan, no matter how effective the deception, no matter how intense the preinvasion sea and air bombardment, Overlord would fail if the assault squads did not advance. To make sure that they did, the Allies put a tremendous effort into training.

  The Americans thought that they had emphasized training in 1942—indeed, that they were putting their divisions through as tough a training regimen as any in the world. In February 1943, at Kasserine Pass, they discovered that their training was woefully inadequate to the rigors of modern warfare. Men had run, commanders had panicked. Men who thought they were in top physical condition found out they weren’t. “Our people from the very highest to the very lowest have learned that this is not a child’s game and are ready and eager to get down to the fundamental[s],” Eisenhower wrote Marshall. “From now on I am going to make it a fixed rule that no unit from the time it reaches this theater until this war is won will ever stop training.”1 As supreme commander, he enforced that rule.

  The point of the training was to get ashore. Everything was geared to the D-Day assault. The AEF later paid a price for t
his obsession. Nothing was done to train for hedgerow fighting; techniques suitable to offensive action in Normandy had to be learned on the spot. But of course there would be no hedgerow fighting if the AEF did not get ashore.

  For some divisions the assault training had begun in the States. The airborne divisions had been formed in 1941–42 for the purpose of landing behind the Atlantic Wall, and their training reflected that goal. After jump school, the airborne troops had carried out jump, assembly, and attack maneuvers throughout the middle South.

  • •

  Col. James Van Fleet took command of the 8th Infantry Regiment of the 4th Division on July 21, 1941. The 8th had been activated a year earlier for the express purpose of developing tactics to contain a blitzkrieg offensive, but when Van Fleet took over the situation had changed and he trained the 8th “as an assault unit, the American force that would make the first landings.” He explained, “The initial thrust of our training was how to storm and seize enemy strong points such as pillboxes. By the time Allied forces reached Europe, the enemy would have had years to construct concrete emplacements, to shield artillery and heavy weapons. We spent long months practicing how to assault these positions, beginning with squads, and working up through the company and battalion level.”

  The 8th had a good mix of people, thoroughly American. As Van Fleet noted, it had historically been a Southern regiment, made up of country boys from Florida, Alabama, and Georgia. He called them his “squirrel shooters.” They could find their way through the woods at night without being afraid and knew how to shoot a rifle. When the draftees began coming in, many of them were from New York and other Eastern cities. They knew nothing about weapons or woods, but they had skills the Southern boys lacked, such as motors and communications. “The marriage of North and South was a happy one,” Van Fleet commented.

  In training the 8th for an assault, Van Fleet emphasized coordination and firepower. If two men were attacking a pillbox, one would put continuous fire on the embrasure while the other crept up on it from the other side. When the advancing man drew fire, he went to the ground and began firing back while his partner crept closer to the objective. Eventually one crept close enough to toss a grenade into the pillbox. “This sort of attack requires bravery, confidence in your partner, and patience,” Van Fleet observed. “We enacted this scenario countless hundreds of times from 1941 through 1943, often with live ammunition.”2

  Two years was a long time to be training. Men got impatient. One of Van Fleet’s most aggressive lieutenants, George L. Mabry, wanted to get into the real war. He applied for a transfer to the Army Air Force. Van Fleet called him in for a chat. Knowing his commander would be upset, Mabry was shaking “like a leaf” when he reported.

  “You are applying for the Air Force?” Van Fleet asked.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You ever been up in an airplane?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Well, you better get over and withdraw that application. You might get sick in an airplane.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Mabry stayed with Van Fleet. He became one of the best officers in the 4th Division.I

  • •

  The 29th Division sailed for England in September 1942 aboard the Queen Mary, converted from luxury liner to troop transport. The Queen Mary sailed alone, depending on her speed to avoid submarines. At 500 miles out from the Continent, and thus within range of the Luftwaffe, an escort of British warships appeared. A cruiser, HMS Curacao, cut across the bow of the 83,000-ton Queen Mary. The Queen knifed into the 4,290-ton cruiser and cut her in half, killing 332 members of her crew. It was not an auspicious beginning to the great Allied invasion.

  The division took over Tidworth Barracks, near Salisbury. These were the best barracks in England but woefully short of what GIs had become accustomed to in the training camps in the States. For men who had trained in the American South, the English weather was miserable. Pvt. John R. Slaughter of Company D, 116th Regiment, recalled, “Morale was not good during those first few months in the British Isles. Homesickness, dreary weather, long weeks of training without pause caused many of us to grumble.”3

  It didn’t help that the 29th necessarily became an experimental outfit. It was the only large American combat unit in the United Kingdom. It had no specific mission for the first year it was there. Instead, it carried out training exercises that were, in effect, experiments in the development of doctrine, procedures, and techniques in amphibious assaults. In short, the men saw themselves as guinea pigs.

  Making things worse, the food was awful. Britain had been at war for more than two years; there were no fresh eggs, little fresh meat, too many brussels sprouts. Lt. Robert Walker of Headquarters Company, 116th Regiment, remembered that on field problems “we were issued sack lunches. These consisted of two sandwiches made of dry brown bread; one had a glob of jelly in the middle, the other a slice of pork luncheon meat. We called them Spam and jam lunches.”4 Any American tourist who has ever purchased one of those sandwiches at a London shop knows just how bad they are.

  Weekend passes to Salisbury or, even better, to London were hard to come by and highly prized. As the Yanks were paid more than double what the Tommies received, and had much better-looking uniforms, they attracted the girls. This caused considerable resentment. There was also friction between black GIs, mainly in the Services of Supply (SOS), and the white soldiers. When they mixed in a pub there was almost sure to be a fight, too often culminating in a shooting. The Army took to segregating the pubs—one night for blacks, another for whites. Overall, however, considering that by D-Day there were some 2 million Yanks on an island only slightly larger than the state of Colorado, the American “occupation” of Britain was carried out with remarkable success. It helped beyond measure that everyone had the same ultimate objective.

  It helped, too, that the Americans tightened their standard of discipline. Col. Charles Canham commanded the 116th Regiment. Canham was a West Pointer, class of 1926. Pvt. Felix Branham characterized him as “a fiery old guy who spit fire and brimstone.” The colonel “was so tough that we used to call ourselves ‘Colonel Canham’s Concentration Camp.’ ” If a man was a few minutes late from a pass, he was fined $30 and confined to camp for thirty days. One day Branham overheard a conversation between Canham and the CO of the 29th Division, Maj. Gen. Charles Gerhardt. Gerhardt told Canham, “You’re too hard on the men.”

  “Goddamn it, Charles,” Canham shot back, “this is my regiment and I am the one commanding it.”

  “You know,” Gerhardt replied, “the men don’t mind that $30 but they hate that thirty days.” Canham eased up, but only a bit. “I tell you, we trained,” Branham declared. “We started out on various types of landing craft. We got on LSTs, LCVPs, we got on LCIs, on LCMs, we landed from British ships, we landed from American ships. You name it, our training was there. We threw various types of hand grenades. We learned to use enemy weapons.”5

  Gerhardt was a West Pointer, an old cavalryman and polo player, flamboyant in his dress, gung ho in his attitude. He did everything by the book and insisted that his men dress just right, always appear clean-shaven, even keep their jeeps spotless. He also wanted enthusiasm; one way he got it was to have the men chant their battle cry as they marched over the dunes, “Twenty-nine, let’s go!” When an old-timer from the 1st Division, a combat veteran of North Africa and Sicily, heard that he yelled back, “Go ahead, twenty-nine, we’ll be right behind you!”6

  The 29th marched all over southwestern England. The men spent nights in the field, sleeping in foxholes. They learned the basic lesson infantrymen must learn, to love the ground, how to use it to their advantage, how it dictates a plan of battle, above all how to live in it for days at a time without impairment of physical efficiency. They were taught to see folds in the terrain that no civilian would notice. They attacked towns, hills, woods. They dug countless foxholes. They had fire problems, attacking with artillery, mortars, machine guns, crashing into their objecti
ves. They concentrated single-mindedly on offensive tactics.

  A member of the 29th Division recalled “loading and unloading landing craft, exiting, peeling off, quickly moving forward, crawling under barbed wire with live machine-gun fire just inches overhead and live explosions, strategically placed, detonated all around. We were schooled in the use of explosives: satchel charges and bangalore torpedoes were excellent for blowing holes in barbed wire and neutralizing fortified bunkers. Bayonets were used to probe for hidden mines. Poison-gas drills, first aid, airplane and tank identification, use and detection of booby traps and more gave us the confidence that we were ready. I believe our division was as competent to fight as any green outfit in history.”7

  • •

  They spent countless hours on the firing range. Sgt. Weldon Kratzer, Company C, 116th, remembered the day Eisenhower, accompanied by Montgomery and other big shots, came by to watch. After a bit, Eisenhower called to Kratzer. “Sergeant, I was observing your firing,” he said, “and I must compliment you.” He went on, “I used to be a good shot, do you mind if I use your rifle?”

  “It would be an honor, sir.”

  Eisenhower took the prone position, adjusted the sling, aimed, tried to pull the trigger, and nothing happened.

  “Sir, your rifle is on safety,” Kratzer said.

  “I don’t blame you for taking precautions,” Eisenhower replied, blushing and taking off the safety. He blasted away at a target 600 meters off. “He wasn’t bad,” Kratzer reported. “Most of his shots were four or five o’clock.” When Eisenhower had a total miss and Maggie’s drawers went up, he called out “And the same to you, old girl.”

  After Eisenhower had fired a full clip, Kratzer offered to reload for him. Eisenhower said no, thanks, “You fellows need the practice more than I do.” As he was leaving, Eisenhower told Kratzer, “Sergeant, I’m impressed with your marksmanship, you sure know your Kentucky windage.”