At Omaha, one in nineteen of the men landed on D-Day became casualties (nearly 40,000 went ashore; there were 2,200 casualties). At Juno, one in eighteen were killed or wounded (21,400 landed; 1,200 were casualties). The figures are misleading in the sense that most men landed in the late morning or afternoon at both beaches, but a majority of the casualties were taken in the first hour. In the assault teams at both beaches the chances of being killed or wounded were close to one in two.
The biggest difference between the beaches was that at Juno there was no bluff behind the seawall. Once across and through the villages, the Canadians were in relatively flat, open country with few hedgerows, few fortifications, and almost no opposition.
• •
The trick was to get over the seawall and through the villages. That was where Hobart’s Funnies came into play. Tanks carrying bridges put them up against the seawall. Flail tanks beat their way through minefields. Tanks with bulldozers pushed barbed wire out of the way. Churchill crocodile tanks, towing 400 gallons of fuel in armored trailers, with a pipeline under the belly to the flame guns in front, shot out streams of flame at pillboxes. Tanks carrying fascines dropped them into the antitank ditches, then led the way over.
Sgt. Ronald Johnston drove his tank up to the seawall. His captain fired forty rounds of armor-piercing ammunition against it, cutting it down. A bulldozer cleared away the rubble. Johnston drove through and reached the street running parallel to the beach. The tank was buttoned-up; Johnston was looking through a periscope. He did not see a slit trench “and I went left and the damn track went in the slit trench and there we sat. But the Lord was with us.”
The tank came to a halt in a position that had its .50-caliber machine gun looking right down the throat of some German infantry in the trench. The gunner gave a blast, killing or wounding a few Germans. Twenty-one other Germans put their hands up. Another British tank came through the gap, hooked onto Johnston’s tank, and pulled it out of the trench.16
Capt. Cyril Hendry, the troop commander who had unfolded his bridge on the LCT so that it would not act as a sail, was “terrifically busy” on the run into shore. “Getting all our tanks started up, warmed up, lifting that damn bridge, getting everybody into position, making sure all the guns were loaded and this sort of thing, everybody so flaming seasick, it was rough.”
When he drove off the ramp, he was pleased to see an armored bulldozer already on the beach, using its winch to pull barbed wire off the seawall. “I had to drop my bridge on the sand dunes so that the other tanks could climb and drop down on the far side.” The first of the Funnies to cross began flailing a path for the follow-up vehicles and infantry.
When the flail tank reached “this bloody great hole of a tank trap,” it turned aside to allow a Sherman carrying a fascine to move forward and drop the fascine into the hole. Then the Sherman started to cross, only to slide down into an even deeper hole, evidently created by a naval shell. Hendry drove forward with his bridge, which had a thirty-foot reach. The combination tank trap and crater was sixty feet wide. Hendry used the turret of the sunken tank as a pier. After he got his bridge in place, the far end resting on the sunken Sherman, another bridge-carrying tank crossed and, also using the sunken tank for support, dropped its bridge to reach the dry ground on the far side.
By 0915 the two bridges resting on the sunken tank were secure enough for flail tanks to cross. Infantry came after them and rushed the houses from which machine-gun fire was coming.17, I
• •
The Canadian infantry moved across the seawall and into the street fighting in the villages, or against pillboxes, with a fury that had to be seen to be believed. One who saw it happen was Pvt. Gerald Henry. His company of the Royal Winnipegs was scheduled to land at 0800, but it was late, so he was an observer for the initial action. His comment was to the point: “It took a great deal of heroics and casualties to silence the concrete emplacements and the various machine gun nests.”18
Sergeant Sigie Johnson saw one of the bravest acts possible in war. A pioneer platoon was held up by barbed wire. It was supposed to use a bangalore torpedo to blow a gap, but the torpedo failed to explode. A soldier, unknown to Johnson, threw himself over the wire so that others could cross on his back. Johnson saw others crawl through barbed wire and minefields to get close enough to the embrasures of pillboxes to toss in grenades. He concluded his interview with these words: “Very few publications ever get the truth of what our Winnipeg infantry faced and did.”19
Every platoon in the Canadian assault companies had an assigned sector in the villages to attack. In some cases they met almost no resistance once over the seawall. Company B of the Regina Rifles, for example, cleared the east side of Courseulles in a matter of minutes. But A Company, at the western side, was held up and badly hurt by machine guns, an 88mm gun beside the harbor entrance, and a 75mm out to the right flank. Fortunately, fourteen of the nineteen DD tanks launched by B Squadron of the 1st Hussars provided support for the infantry, who worked their way through the trenches and dugouts connecting the concrete positions.
Sergeant Gariepy nearly got stuck in Courseulles. His tank ended up in a narrow street “and there was one of those funny-looking trucks with a charcoal burner on the running board. I couldn’t get my tank by, and I saw two Frenchmen and a French woman standing in a doorway looking at us. So I took my earphones off and told them in good Quebec French, ‘Now will you please move that truck out of the way so I can get by?’
“They must have been frightened because they wouldn’t budge. So I then called them everything I could think of in the military vocabulary. They were amazed to hear a Tommy—they thought we were Tommies—speak French with the old Norman dialect!’ ” But they finally moved the truck and Gariepy was able to push inland.20
B Company of the Queen’s Own Regiment, attacking Bernières, also ran into undamaged fortifications. Before it was able to get around and behind the guns and put them out of action it took sixty-five casualties. But within an hour, Courseulles and Bernières were in Canadian hands.21
The North Shore (New Brunswick) Regiment assault teams hit St.-Aubin. Within an hour A Company, on the right, cleared its immediate front with a loss of twenty-four men. B Company, attacking the village itself, ran into a reinforced-concrete casemate with steel doors and shutters, with well-prepared entrenchments around it and 100 German soldiers inside. Not until tanks lobbed several twenty-five-pound petards against the bunker and cracked the concrete to stun the defenders did the Germans surrender. Half the garrison was by then dead or wounded.22
As at Omaha, strong points that the attackers thought they had cleared came alive after the Canadians passed through. Germans infiltrated via their trench system back into the positions and resumed the fight. Within the villages, the Germans would pop up at one window, then another, fire a round or two, then disappear. Street fighting, sometimes heavy, sometimes sporadic, went on through the day. The North Shore assault teams did not have St.-Aubin fully secured until 1800.
• •
Follow-up waves came in steadily. Many of the men in them carried bicycles, which in some cases actually worked (although by the end of the day most of the bikes had suffered the fate of most of the gas masks carried ashore, that is, they were discarded). Using the bikes and their feet, the reinforcements passed over the seawall and through the villages to dash forward and seize crossroads and bridges inland.
C Company of the Canadian Scottish reached the area between Ste.-Croix and Banville, where follow-up elements of the Royal Winnipegs were involved in a firefight with German defenders. A platoon commander from the company described what happened: “An LMG [light machine gun] which sounded like a Bren opened up from a position about 150 yards away. We ‘hit the dirt’ and I shouted, ‘This must be the Winnipegs! When I say “UP”—all up together and shout “WINNIPEGS.” ’
“We did, and to our surprise two enemy infantry sections stood up. . . . They too were a picture of amazement. . . .
Their camouflage was perfect and it was no wonder we did not see them earlier. But the stunned silence did not last long. There was only one course of action, and to a man the platoon rushed the enemy position. It was a bitter encounter with much hand-to-hand fighting.”23
At 0930 the 12th Field Regiment, Royal Canadian Artillery, began landing. The gunners drove their self-propelled 105mm guns onto the beach, lined them up only a few meters inland, and began firing, sometimes over open sights. The assault sappers from the Royal Canadian Engineers meanwhile were clearing the beach and opening exits, allowing tanks and other vehicles to move inland.
By 1200 the entire Canadian 3rd Division was ashore. The Winnipegs and Reginas, supported by tanks, had penetrated several kilometers inland and captured the bridges over the River Seulles. No German tanks had been seen. Early in the afternoon the Canadian Scottish had passed its leading battalion through the Winnipegs and captured Colombiers-sur-Seulles.
• •
Sgt. Stanley Dudka of the North Nova Scotia Highlanders landed at 1100. “Our instructions were to break through immediately hitting the beachhead, to stop at nothing, not to fight unless we had to, but to get to Carpiquet airport [just west of Caen, fifteen kilometers inland] and to capture and consolidate the airport.”
For a variety of reasons, the Highlanders did not get that far, or even close to Carpiquet. Dudka explained that, first of all, his platoon was held up on the beach by German fire and congestion and did not get started inland until 1400. When the Highlanders did move, they had only got a couple of kilometers inland when it was time for tea. (“The British and Canadian armies can’t fight three and a half minutes without tea,” according to Robert Rogge, the American volunteer in the Black Watch.)
Dudka brewed up his tea and met his brother Bill, also a Highlander. “We had our tea together and cautioned each other to be careful, like brothers do. Then we started on our way.” The march was slow, as each man was carrying approximately ninety pounds of gear, land mines, ammunition, and weapons.
“The tanks got too far ahead of us at times,” Dudka went on. “This was caused by the anxiety of Canadians to get into the action.” When the Highlanders were about halfway to Carpiquet, it was 2000. Orders came down to dig in for the night, put out patrols, and prepare for a counterattack.24
Another cause of delay was the tendency to stop to loot—always the bane of infantry commanders trying to hurry their men forward. Corporal Rogge noted that as the Black Watch moved through the farmhouses that the Germans had been using for billets, men would break away from the column to do a bit of looting. Luger pistols, binoculars, and cloth swastikas were the most sought-after items.25
Sergeant Dudka described a further problem. “The grass and wheat in France was ready to be cut, and the visibility was nil. When we dug in or laid down, we had no visibility whatsoever, just a bunch of grass in front of you. You couldn’t see where the others were at. We had not been prepared for that.”26
Private Henry of the Winnipegs called it “a very slow day. We were sort of on the move all day, but didn’t travel very far without stopping to take cover in ditches or whatever cover was available. My first day in France was one of amazement. I seemed to always be far enough away from danger, yet was always a part of it. When we dug in for the night it was a welcome stop.”27
At the end of the day Private Levers brought his diary up to the minute. After making it to the seawall and resting for a few minutes, his platoon cut the wire and started inland. “We keep moving along—have to cross six or seven tank obstacles. They are ditches four to five feet deep and six to eight feet across and filled to the brim with water. There is a heavy machine gun firing up ahead and we go off on the left flank to try and round him up.” On completing that task, “we start out immediately for our second objective. We bypass two big straw stacks which are in reality pillboxes. We leave them for the troops coming up behind.”
Two Germans appeared in a barley field and came in with their hands in the air. “There are two more hiding in the field, so we start looking for them with the bayonet. I happened to come across him first and am just going to sink the bayonet home when he shouts, ‘Russky.’ I pulled up my rifle when the bayonet was about two inches from his chest and turned him over to our officer.”
Levers’s platoon kept moving. It spotted a machine gun and closed the distance. “As we get close we come under a crossfire of machine guns. By this time I am pretty cocky and have all the confidence in the world. I was ahead of my section, which was in the lead and was on the right flank. We were in grass which gave us cover from the machine-gun fire. I crawled up to a barbed-wire fence which was about a hundred yards from an enemy slit trench. I saw a Boche well exposed and like a sucker raised myself to take aim. I drew a nice bead and was just squeezing the trigger when a machine-gun bullet smacked me down. It hit me in the right leg and went through the thigh from left to right. Two inches higher and I would have stopped being a man.”
Levers crawled back to his platoon. A medic dressed his wound. Soldiers in German uniforms came across the field, hands in the air. They were Poles and Russians. Levers was put to guarding them. Eventually he was carried back to the beach and transported by landing craft to a hospital ship. By evening, June 7, he was back in England, where he had started out on the afternoon of June 5.28
• •
Shortly after 1800, the North Nova Scotia Highlanders reached Beny-sur-Mer, five kilometers inland. There the Canadians were greeted by the sight of excited French civilians looting German barracks. Men were carrying off bags of flour, wheelbarrows full of army boots, bread, clothes, furniture. Women were taking chickens, butter, sheets, and pillows. The parish priest was helping to liberate a set of dishes. The French took time off from their looting to offer the Canadians glasses of milk and wine.
The Canadians pushed on to the south, against light resistance. One troop of 1st Hussar tanks crossed the Caen-Bayeux railway, fifteen kilometers inland. It was the only unit of the Allied invasion force to reach its final objective on D-Day. But it had to pull back because the infantry had not kept up. The tanks refueled and stocked up on ammunition to prepare for the expected counterattack.
To the west, the Canadian Scottish had made a ten-kilometer penetration and linked up with the British 50th Division at Creully. Between them, the British 50th Division and the Canadian 3rd had landed 900 tanks and armored vehicles, 240 field guns, 280 antitank guns, and over 4,000 tons of stores.
The Canadians had failed to reach their D-Day objective to the south, the N-13, while to the east there was a four- to seven-kilometer gap between the Canadians and the British 3rd Division at Sword Beach.
The reasons the Canadians did not achieve all their objectives were many. For a start, the objectives had been wildly optimistic, especially for men going into combat for the first time. They were late in hitting the beaches. The high tide and strong wind hampered the landings. The obstacles were more formidable than expected (Canadian engineers complained that the obstacles off Juno Beach were much heavier, stronger, and more numerous than those they had practiced against in England). The air and sea bombardments had been disappointing. The schedule for landing was too tight, too many vehicles were brought ashore too soon, creating congestion that took hours to straighten out. As a consequence, the attack lost its initial momentum.
Finally, once ashore and through the villages, there was a tendency for men to feel that they had done their bit.29
The German soldiers encountered by the Canadians gave cause for optimism. They were young or old, Pole or Russian, not the tough fanatical Nazis the Canadians had anticipated. Wehrmacht POWs were a dispirited, sorry-looking lot. But the Canadians knew the Germans had better troops in the area, especially the 21st Panzer Division, and they anticipated strong, determined counterattacks. So they dug in short of their objectives.
But as John Keegan writes of the Canadian 3rd Division, “At the end of the day its forward elements stood deeper into F
rance than those of any other division.”30 Insofar as the opposition the Canadians faced was stronger than that at any other beach save Omaha, that was an accomplishment in which the whole nation could take considerable pride.
After two years, the Canadians had given the Wehrmacht a payback for Dieppe.
* * *
I. The sunken tank was a Churchill with the 26th Assault Engineer Squadron, Royal Engineers, under the command of the 7th Canadian Infantry Brigade. Later on D-Day the 85th Field Company, Royal Engineers, improved the bridge. It remained in use until 1976. When a new bridge was built, the tank that had served as a pier was lifted out of the crater and placed at a gap in the sand dunes just west of Courseulles, where it sits today, a memorial to all those from Britain and Canada who came to liberate France.
30
“AN UNFORGETTABLE SIGHT”
The British at Sword Beach
SWORD BEACH ran from Lion-sur-Mer to Ouistreham at the mouth of the Oran Canal.I In most areas there were vacation homes and tourist establishments just inland from the paved promenade that ran behind the seawall. There were the usual beach obstacles and emplacements in the sand dunes, with mortar crews and medium and heavy artillery pieces inland. Primarily, however, the Germans intended to defend Sword Beach with the 75mm guns of the Merville battery and the 155mm guns at Le Havre.
But Lieutenant Colonel Otway’s 6th Airborne Division men had taken and destroyed the Merville battery, and the big guns at Le Havre proved to be ineffective against the beach, for two reasons. First, the British laid down smoke screens to prevent the Germans’ ranging. Second, the Le Havre battery spent the morning in a duel with HMS Warspite (which it never hit), a big mistake on the Germans’ part as the targets on the beach were much more lucrative.
Nevertheless, the 88mms on the first rise, a couple of kilometers inland, were able to put a steady fire on the beach to supplement the mortars and the machine-gun fire coming from the windows of the seaside villas and from pillboxes scattered among the dunes. In addition, there were antitank ditches and mines to impede progress inland, as well as massive concrete walls blocking the streets. These defenses would cause considerable casualties and delay the assault.
The Men of World War II Page 103
