The Victors: Eisenhower and His Boys

by Stephen E. Ambrose

  Sweeny describes himself and his fellow subalterns: “We were irresponsible young men, life was very lighthearted, there was a war on, lots of fun for us. John was a dedicated and serious trainer and we were rather like young puppies and he was trying to train us.”

  Howard was pleased with his company, officers and men. He especially liked having so many Londoners in it. The regiment moved to Bulford. D Company went into a spider block, near the barracks but separate from it. So, Howard notes, “Right from the first there was an atmosphere of D Company being on its own.” He set out to make it into a family and into a first-class combat unit.

  • • •

  In North Africa, Hans von Luck was fighting in the only war he ever enjoyed. He commanded the armed reconnaissance battalion on Rommel’s extreme right (southern) flank. He thus enjoyed a certain independence, as did his British opposite number. The two commanding officers agreed to fight a civilized war. Every day at 5 P.M. the war shut down, the British to brew up their tea, the Germans their coffee. At about quarter past five, von Luck and the British commander would communicate over the radio. “Well,” von Luck might say, “we captured so-and-so today, and he’s fine, and he sends his love to his mother, tell her not to worry.” Once von Luck learned that the British had received a month’s supply of cigarettes. He offered to trade a captured officer—who happened to be the heir to the Players cigarette fortune—for one million cigarettes. The British countered with an offer of 600,000. Done, said von Luck. But the Players heir was outraged. He said the ransom was insufficient. He insisted he was worth the million and refused to be exchanged.

  One evening, an excited corporal reported that he had just stolen a British truck jammed with tinned meat and other delicacies. Von Luck looked at his watch—it was past 6 P.M.—and told the corporal he would have to take it back, as he had captured it after 5 P.M. The corporal protested that this was war and anyway the troops were already gathering in the goods from the truck. Von Luck called Rommel, his mentor in military academy. He said he was suspicious of British moves farther south and thought he ought to go out on a twoday reconnaissance. Could another battalion take his place for that time? Rommel agreed. The new battalion arrived in the morning. That night, at 5:30 P.M., just as von Luck had anticipated, the British stole two supply trucks.

  • • •

  Heinz Hickman, meanwhile, had gone through the campaigns of 1940 in Holland, Belgium, and France as a gunner on an 88-mm gun. In 1941, he volunteered for the parachute regiment, looking for adventure, and went to Spandau for jump school. In May 1942, he was in the middle of his training.

  In Warsaw, Vern Bonck was doing his best to stay out of the German conscription net by working with extra efficiency at his lathe. Helmut Romer, in Berlin, sixteen years old, was finishing his school year.

  At the bridge over the Caen Canal, there were as yet no elaborate defenses, and only a tiny garrison. Still, the garrison was large enough to make the lives of the people of Bénouville, Le Port, and Ranville miserable. The Germans helped themselves to the best of everything, paid for what they did purchase with nearly worthless printing-press francs, took all the young men away for slave labor, made travel even within the country almost impossible, imposed a curfew, and shot dissenters. By May 1942, the Gondrées had decided to do something about it. Georges joined the local Resistance, which advised him to stay put and use his situation to get information on the bridges and their defense to the British. As noted, he did so on the basis of his wife’s reports on what she heard in the café. Let there be no mistake about this action—the Gondrées knew that if the Germans caught them they would be tortured, then hanged. But they persisted.

  • • •

  In May 1942, Jim Wallwork, a Manchester lad who had volunteered for the Army at age nineteen in March 1939, was also in training camp. Jim’s father, who had been an artilleryman in the Great War, had advised him, “Whatever you do, Jim, don’t for God’s sake join the infantry. Get in the artillery, the biggest gun you can find; if possible, the railway gun.” Naturally, Jim ended up in the infantry, bored to tears, although he did make it to sergeant. He tried to transfer out, into the Royal Air Force, but his commanding officer blocked the move because he wanted to keep Wallwork with him.

  Then in early 1942 a call went out for volunteers for the Glider Pilot Regiment. Jim signed up, and by spring was at Tilshead, Salisbury Plain, in training. “It was rather rough,” he recalled, “because I was doing my own equipment, polishing my own brass, going on those God-awful run-marches, and drills, and all sorts of that nonsense.” What he most feared, what every man in the Glider Pilot Regiment most feared, were the letters “RTU.” They stood for Return to Unit, disgraced, a failure. Jim managed to stick it, and by May 1942, he was at flight training school, learning to fly a small airplane.

  • • •

  Howard’s own family was growing. Joy was then living with relatives near Shrewsbury. She was pregnant. During the war, Howard was a virtual teetotaler, partly because he wanted to keep a clear mind, partly because “I saw the mess a lot of people were getting into, making bloody fools of themselves, and I wanted to set an example for my own subalterns.” The child was due in late June; during the fortnight between the due date and the actual delivery, Howard was so irritable and bad-tempered that his subalterns found him unapproachable. On July 12, a son, Terry, was born. When news of the successful delivery arrived in Bulford, everyone was so relieved that a huge party developed. Howard, drinking straight shots of whiskey, “to wet the baby’s head,” got royally drunk.

  • • •

  By July, Howard was pretty much on his own, allowed by his colonel to set his own training pace and schedule. Initially, he put the emphasis on teaching the men the skills of the light infantryman. He taught them to be marksmen with their rifles, with the light machine gun, with the carbine and the pistol, with the Piat and other antitank weapons. He instructed them in the many types of grenades, their characteristics and special uses.

  The basic weapons of a gliderborne platoon of thirty men included the Enfield .303 rifle, the Sten carbine, the Bren light machine gun, 2-inch and 3-inch mortars, and the Piat (projector infantry antitank). The Enfield was the old reliable British rifle. One or two men in each squad were snipers, equipped with a telescopic sight for their rifles. The Sten was a 9-mm submachine gun that reflected Britain’s inability to produce quality weapons for its troops. The Sten was mass-produced, and distributed to thousands of fighting men, not because it was any good, but because it was cheap, it could be fired single shot or automatic, but the weapon frequently jammed and too often it went off on its own. In 1942 David Wood shot Den Brotheridge in the leg with his Sten, after forgetting to put the safety back on. Brotheridge recovered, and indeed he, like all the officers, carried the Sten by choice. It weighed only seven pounds, was only thirty inches long, had an effective range of one hundred yards, and used a box magazine holding thirty-two rounds. For all its shortcomings, it was deadly in close-in combat—if it worked.

  The Bren gun was a light machine gun, weighing twenty-three pounds, fired either from the hip or from a bipod or a tripod. It had an effective range of five hundred yards and a rate of fire of 120 rounds per minute. There was one Bren gunner per squad; everyone in the squad helped carry the thirty-round magazines. In rate of fire, in dependability, and by other measurements, the Bren was inferior to its German counterpart, the MG 34, just as the Sten was inferior to the German Schmeisser.

  The Piat was a hand-held rocket launcher, fired from the shoulder, that threw a three-pound grenade through a barrel at about three hundred feet per second. The hollow-charged grenade would explode on target on impact. Effective range was supposed to be one hundred yards, but the men of D Company never could get more than fifty yards out of the Piat. Being spring-loaded, Piats were inaccurate and subject to frequent jamming. No one liked them very much, but all got proficient with them. Their only other antitank weapon was the Gammon bomb, a plastic
explosive charge developed from the “sticky bomb,” which could be thrown at a tank and, if all went well, would cling to the tank before exploding.

  Most of all, Howard put the emphasis on learning to think quickly. They were elite, he told the men; they were gliderborne troops, and wherever and whenever it was they attacked the enemy, they could be sure the premium would be on quick thinking and quick response.

  Howard’s emphasis on technical training went a bit beyond what the other company commanders were doing, but only just a bit. Each of Howard’s associates were commanding top-quality volunteers, and were volunteers themselves, outstanding officers. What was different about D Company was its commander’s mania for physical fitness. It went beyond anything anyone in the British Army had ever seen before. The regiment prided itself on being fit (one officer from B Company described himself as a physical-fitness fanatic), but all were amazed by, and a bit critical of, the way Howard pushed his fitness program.

  D Company’s day began with a five-mile cross-country run, done at a seven- or eight-minute-to-the-mile pace. After that the men dressed, policed the area, ate breakfast, and then spent the day on training exercises, usually strenuous. In the late afternoon, Howard insisted that everyone engage in some sport or another. His own favorites were the individual endeavors, crosscountry running, swimming, and boxing, but he encouraged soccer, rugby, and any sport that would keep his lads active until bedtime.

  Those were regular days. Twice a month, Howard would take the whole company out for two or three days, doing field exercises, sleeping rough. He put them through grueling marches, until they became an outstanding marching unit. Wally Parr swears—and a number of his comrades back him up—that they could do twenty-two miles, in full pack, including the Brens and the mortars, in five and one-half hours. When they got back from such a march, Parr relates, “you would have a foot inspection, get a bite to eat, and then in the afternoon face a choice: either play soccer or go for a cross-country run.”

  All the officers, including Howard, did everything the men did. All of them had been athletes themselves, and loved sports and competition. The sports and the mutually endured misery on the forced marches were bringing officers and men closer together. David Wood was exceedingly popular with his platoon, as was Tod Sweeney, in his own quiet way, with his. But Brotheridge stood out. He played the men’s game, soccer, and as a former corporal himself he had no sense of being ill at ease among the men. He would go into their barracks at night, sit on the bed of his batman, Billy Gray, and talk soccer with the lads. He got to bringing his boots along, and shining them as he talked. Wally Parr never got over the sight of a British lieutenant polishing his boots himself while his batman lay back on his bed, gassing on about Manchester United and West Ham and other soccer teams.

  Howard’s biggest problem was boredom. He racked his brains to find different ways of doing the same things, to put some spontaneity into the training. His young heroes had many virtues, but patience was not one of them. The resulting morale problem extended far beyond D Company, obviously, and in late summer 1942, General Browning sent the whole regiment to Devonshire for two months of cliff climbing. He then decided to march the regiment back to Bulford, some 130 miles. Naturally, it would be a competition between the companies.

  The first two days were the hottest of the summer, and the men were marching in serge, wringing wet. After the second day, they pleaded for permission to change to lighter gear. It was granted, and over the next two days a cold, hard rain beat down on their inadequately covered bodies.

  Howard marched up and down the column, urging his men on. He had a walking stick, an old army one with an inch of brass on the bottom. His company clerk and wireless operator, Corporal Tappenden, offered the major the use of his bike. “Not likely,” Howard growled. “I’m leading my company.” His hands grew more blisters than Tappenden’s feet, from his grip on the stick, and he wore away all the brass on the end of it. But he kept marching.

  On the morning of the fourth day, when Howard roused the men and ordered them to fall in, Wally Parr and his friend Jack Bailey waddled out on their knees. When Howard asked them what they thought they were doing, Wally replied that he and Jack had worn away the bottom half of their legs. But they got up and marched. “Mad bastard,” the men whispered among themselves after Howard had moved off. “Mad, ambitious bastard. He’ll get us all killed.” But they marched.

  They got back to base on the evening of the fifth day. They marched in at 140 steps to the minute, singing loudly “Onward, Christian Soldiers.” They came in first in the regiment, by half a day. Only two of Howard’s men, out of 120, had dropped out of the march. (His stick, however, was so worn he had to throw it away.)

  Howard had radioed ahead, and had hot showers and meals waiting for the men. As the officers began to undress for their showers, Howard told them to button up. They had to go do a foot inspection of the men, then watch to make sure they all showered properly, check on the quality and quantity of their food, and inspect the barracks to see that the beds were ready. By the time the officers got to shower, the hot water was gone; by the time they got to eat, only cold leftovers remained. But not one of them had let Howard down.

  “From then on,” Howard recalls, “we didn’t follow the normal pattern of training.” His colonel gave him even more flexibility, and the transport to make it meaningful. Howard started taking his company to Southampton, or London, or Portsmouth, to conduct street-fighting exercises in the bombed-out areas. There were plenty to choose from, and it did not matter how much damage D Company did, so all the exercises were with live ammunition.

  Howard was putting together an outstanding light-infantry company.

  CHAPTER 3

  D-Day

  Minus One Year to D-Day Minus One Month

  By the spring of 1943, the British airborne force had grown sufficiently to divide it into two divisions. The 1st Airborne went off to North Africa. The 6th Airborne Division (the number was chosen to confuse German intelligence) was formed around the companies that stayed behind, including D Company.

  General Richard Gale, known to everyone as “Windy,” because of his last name, commanded the 6th Airborne Division. A large, confident, experienced officer who had commanded the 1st Para Brigade, Gale had a bit of the buccaneer about him, and more than a bit of imagination to complement his professionalism.

  Nigel Poett commanded the 5th Para Brigade. He was a regular officer from the Durham Light Infantry. A big, powerful man, Poett was meticulous on detail and an officer who led from the front. The 3d Para Brigade was commanded by James Hill, a regular from the Royal Fusiliers who had won a DSO in North Africa. D Company was part of the Air Landing Brigade, commanded by Hugh Kindersley.

  Under Gale’s prodding, training intensified, but there were few complaints, because the word was that the division was being prepared for the invasion of France. Gale, through his training exercises, was trying to figure out what the division was capable of performing, while simultaneously trying to figure out exactly how he would use it to achieve his D-Day objectives.

  • • •

  At COSSAC (Chief of Staff, Supreme Allied Commander), planning for Gale’s role, and for the invasion as a whole, had been going on for a year, under the direction of General Frederick Morgan. By the spring of 1943, Morgan and his planners had settled on Normandy, west of the mouth of the Orne River, as the invasion site. A variety of factors influenced the choice; the one that affected D Company and the 6th Airborne Division was the need to protect the left flank of the seaborne invasion, where the British 3d Division would be landing on Sword Beach. That left flank was the single most vulnerable point in the whole invasion, because to the east, beyond Le Havre and the mouth of the Seine River, the Germans had the bulk of their armor in the West. If Rommel brought that armor across the Seine, crossed the River Dives and the Orne River, then launched an all-out counterattack against the exposed flank of 3d Division, he might well roll up the entire
invading force, division by division. It would take days for the Allies to unload enough tanks and artillery of their own to withstand such a blow.

  Morgan and his people decided to meet the threat by placing the 6th Airborne between the Orne waterways and the River Dives. There were many changes in the COSSAC plan after January 1944, when Eisenhower took over SHAEF (Supreme Headquarters, Allied Expeditionary Force) and Montgomery took over at 21st Army Group, which commanded all the ground forces; the most important change was the widening of the assault area from three to five divisions. But one COSSAC decision that remained unchanged was the one that placed 6th Airborne on its own, east of the Orne River, with the task of holding off armored counterattacks. How to do it was left to General Gale.

  • • •

  D Company had begun its flight training, in little Waco gliders that carried seven men. Howard concentrated on exit drill. The door was open before the glider touched down; it was “Move, move, move” when the glider hit the ground. Again and again Howard reminded the men that they were “rats in the trap” so long as they were inside.

  The chief novelty of flying in a glider was one Howard could not get over. As General Sir Napier Crookenden writes in Drop Zone Normandy, “Since the glider on the end of its tug-rope moved in a series of surges as the tug-rope tightened and slackened, and was subject to the normal pitching, rolling and yawing of any aircraft, few men survived more than half-an-hour without being sick. The floor was soon awash with vomit, and this in itself was enough to defeat the strongest stomach.” Howard could not get away from being sick; he threw up on all twelve of his training flights. Fortunately, for him it was not like being seasick, with its long recovery time. After being sick on a glider flight, Howard was fit and ready as soon as his feet hit the ground.