The Guns at Last Light: The War in Western Europe, 1944-1945

by Rick Atkinson

“very small-boyish”: Hamilton, Master of the Battlefield, 537, 546 (“As long as 51 percent”); Miller, Ike the Soldier, 660 (refuse to attend her funeral); Irving, The War Between the Generals, 170; Moorehead, Montgomery, 36; Howarth, ed., Monty at Close Quarters, 23 (“Alone I done it”).

  “Enjoying life greatly”: Hamilton, Master of the Battlefield, 652.

  The OVERLORD plan was largely his: Ellis, Brute Force, 374; OH, David Belchem, 21st AG, Feb. 20, 1947, FCP, MHI (American right to capture Cherbourg); Wilmot, The Struggle for Europe, 311–12 (“My general policy”); memo, B. L. Montgomery, Apr. 14, 1944, IWM, Christopher “Kit” Dawnay collection, PP/MCR, C46, Ancillary Collections, micro R-1 (“armored force thrusts”).

  Thirty-four Allied armored battalions: Zetterling, Normandy 1944, 107; Davis, Carl A. Spaatz and the Air War in Europe, 457 (“gutless bugger”).

  A flanking attack from west of Caen: D’Este, Decision in Normandy, 176–89; VW, vol. 1, 254–56.

  “The whole show on land”: Trafford Leigh-Mallory, “Daily Reflections on the Course of the Battle,” UK NA, AIR 37/784; Moorehead, Montgomery, 217 (“a gunman’s world”); Hastings, Inferno, 524 (“Bloody murder”); Lewis, ed., The Mammoth Book of Eyewitness World War II, 405–6 (“Day of Hell”).

  For the Americans in the west: Friedrich Freiherr von der Heydte, “A German Parachute Regiment in Normandy,” 1954, FMS, #B-839, MHI, 16–19; CCA, 366–67; Schrijvers, The Crash of Ruin, 93 (“Lousy & undersized”), 125 (“I thought of Carthage”); “FUSA Weekly Report, 6–14 June 1944,” in “Memorandum to Harrison,” May 27, 1948, CMH.

  Bradley late on June 13: corr, Clarence R. Huebner to G. A. Harrison, Oct. 17, 1947, NARA RG 319, CCA historical files, box 164.

  “I’m sitting in a little gray stone”: TR to Eleanor, June 11, 1944, LOC MS, box 10.

  No one took a greater proprietary interest: “General de Gaulle Visit to Normandy, 14 June 1944,” UK NA, ADM 1/16018; Aron, France Reborn, 45–47 (“not altogether in accordance”).

  “I wrote to Mr. Churchill”: Kersaudy, Churchill and De Gaulle, 357; Beevor and Cooper, Paris After the Liberation, 1944–1949, 29 (“Has it occurred to you”); Fenby, The General, 142-44.

  “We have not come to France”: Beevor and Cooper, Paris After the Liberation, 1944–1949, 109; “General de Gaulle Visit to Normandy, 14 June 1944,” UK NA, ADM 1/16018 (“dislike of smoking”); Aron, France Reborn, 45–47 (“I missed him in Africa”).

  “a stiff, lugubrious figure”: Moorehead, Eclipse, 122; Beevor and Cooper, Paris After the Liberation, 1944–1949, 30 (saluting gendarmes); Whitehead, “Beachhead Don,” 130–31 (“Vive De Gaulle”); Donnison, Civil Affairs and Military Government in North-West Europe, 78–79 (Several thousand people awaited); De Gaulle, The Complete War Memoirs of Charles de Gaulle, 563–64 (“women smiled and sobbed”); author visit, Bayeux, May 27, 2009, historical signage, Place de Gaulle (“glorious and mutilated”); Aron, France Reborn, 45–47 (“The path of war”).

  After belting out “La Marseillaise”: “General de Gaulle Visit to Normandy, 14 June 1944,” UK NA, ADM 1/16018 (fourteen hotel rooms); Hamilton, Master of the Battlefield, 666; De Gaulle, The Complete War Memoirs of Charles de Gaulle, 638 (“France would live”); Robb, The Discovery of France, 29 (“cheese”).

  Montgomery wrote Churchill: BLM to WSC, June 15, 1944, UK NA, CAB 120/867; Guérard, France: A Short History, 239 (“Blessed be he”).

  Terror Is Broken by Terror

  In happier days, when the Reich: Germany IX, 415 (a force of 28,000 workers); World War II Diary of Jean Gordon Peltier, MRC FDM, 181–82 (new maple furniture); Mark Watson, “As I Saw It,” in Knickerbocker et al., Danger Forward, 269–70 (bootjack); Stenbuck, ed., Typewriter Battalion, 222–24 (Potemkin farmhouses); Speidel, We Defended Normandy, 105 (Soissons Cathedral).

  “the most forbidden place in France”: Stenbuck, ed., Typewriter Battalion, 222–24; Beevor, D-Day, 172 (“meat flies”); http://www.hitlerpages.com/pagina33.html.

  This was Hitler’s first return to France: CCA, 140; Fest, Hitler, 695–98 (“tipping to the right”); Bodo Zimmermann, 1946, FMS, #B-308, MHI, 111 (personal command).

  Hitler sat hunched on a wooden stool: Speidel, We Defended Normandy, 106–7; Bertram H. Ramsay, dispatch, London Gazette, Oct. 30, 1947, CMH, 5109+. Twenty Allied divisions had landed by D+9, but Rommel put the number at twenty-six. James Hodgson, “The German Defense of Normandy,” Sept. 1953, R-24, NARA RG 319, 270/19/30/4-7, box 6, 8–9.

  The German Seventh Army opposed them: Cooper, The German Army, 1933–1945, 503; Edward J. Drea, “Unit Reconstitution: A Historical Perspective,” Dec. 1983, CSI, 16 (averaged under eleven thousand); VW, vol. 1, 262 (casualties had reached 26,000); WaS, 62; James Hodgson, “The German Defense of Normandy,” Sept. 1953, R-24, NARA RG 319, 270/19/30/4-7, box 6, 8–9 (superiority in matériel).

  Anglo-American warplanes harried: G. Rundstedt, “Experiences from the Invasion Battles of Normandy,” June 20, 1944, in Naval Intelligence Weekly, Nov. 15, 1944, Sidney Negretto Papers, MHI, box 4; Biddle, Rhetoric and Reality in Air Warfare, 280 (three hundred trains); Germany VII, 328–30 (German aircraft reinforcements); F. Ruge, “Coast Defense and Invasion,” June 9, 1947, ONI IR 243, NARA RG 334, E 315, ANSCOL, box 642; Buffetaut, D-Day Ships, 147 (Le Havre).

  American tanks had crossed the Cherbourg–Coutances road: Isby, ed., Fighting the Invasion, 30.

  “Don’t call it a beachhead”: Keegan, Six Armies in Normandy, 165; Blumentritt, Von Rundstedt, 235; Speidel, We Defended Normandy, 106–7 (“Cherbourg is to be held”).

  Rundstedt said little: Barnett, ed., Hitler’s Generals, 175–76, 191–98; Roberts, The Storm of War, 501 (Der alte Herr); Holt, The Deceivers, 570–71 (Der schwarze Ritter); Blumentritt, Von Rundstedt, 13–15 (Junker gentry); MMB, 477–78.

  Beset by rheumatism: Liddell Hart, The Other Side of the Hill, 390 (“psychic resignation”); Holt, The Deceivers, 570–71 (slept late); Isby, ed., Fighting the Invasion, 47 (disdained both the telephone), 50 (“just as before 1866”); Liddell Hart, The German Generals Talk, 71–72 (“brown dirt”); Speidel, We Defended Normandy, 89–90 (“Bohemian corporal”); “Battle of the Bulge,” PIR, MHI, 12 (“Quatsch!”); G. Rundstedt, British interrogation, July 9, 1945, NARA RG 407, E 427, ETO ML #2126, box 24231 (“cheap bluff”); Barnett, ed., Hitler’s Generals, 185; Günther Blumentritt, ETHINT 73, Jan. 1946, MHI, 2–4 (deepened his gloom).

  Now Rundstedt stepped forward: James Hodgson, “The German Defense of Normandy,” Sept. 1953, R-24, NARA RG 319, 270/19/30/4-7, box 6, 8–9; Irving, The Trail of the Fox, 387 (“The fortress is to hold out”); Wilmot, The Struggle for Europe, 326 (“They must hold here”).

  Rundstedt thought another invasion was likely: G. Rundstedt, British interrogation, July 9, 1945, NARA RG 407, E 427, ETO ML #2126, box 24231; Holt, The Deceivers, 580–81 (diverted but a single division); Howard, British Intelligence in the Second World War, vol. 5, Strategic Deception, 189 (twenty-one others); Bodo Zimmermann, 1946, FMS, #B-308, MHI, 86 (Rundstedt agreed with Marshal Rommel); Liddell Hart, The Other Side of the Hill, 401; Speidel, We Defended Normandy, 98–99; CCA, 412–13.

  “You must stay where you are”: Liddell Hart, The Other Side of the Hill, 410.

  Great things were afoot: IFG, 46–47; Hinsley, 483–84; WaS, 69.

  “imagination run wild”: Germany VII, 420; Hinsley, 424 (Volkswagen factory); AAFinWWII, 105 (thirty-six thousand tons); “The V-Weapons,” AB, no. 6 (1974): 2+ (simple mobile equipment); M. C. Helfers, “The Employment of V-Weapons by the Germans During World War II,” 1954, OCMH, NARA RG 319, 2-3.7 AW, 85 (weapon was a flying torpedo); Irving, The Mare’s Nest, 299 (“cherry stones”).

  The first salvo, launched from western France: Hinsley, 428–29; Germany VII, 375 (“Terror is broken by terror”).

  Rundstedt suggested that the V-1: Liddell Hart, ed. The Rommel Papers, 454n; Goerlitz, History of the German General Staff, 1657–1945, 460–61; Germany VII, 426–29 (margin of error); Speidel, We Defen
ded Normandy, 109 (“easier for peace”).

  They broke for lunch: Blumentritt, Von Rundstedt, 235; Speidel, We Defended Normandy, 110; Irving, The Trail of the Fox, 386–88 (three liqueur glasses).

  “What do you really think of our chances”: Wilmot, The Struggle for Europe, 333; Goerlitz, History of the German General Staff, 1657–1945, 460–61 (“Attend to your invasion front”).

  “The discussion had no success”: VW, vol. 1, 269; Bodo Zimmermann, 1946, FMS, #B-308, MHI, 112 (V-1 flew east rather than west); Germany VII, 432 (court-martial investigators); Kershaw, Hitler, 1936–45: Nemesis, 643 (“Only optimists”).

  “cannot escape the Führer’s influence”: Irving, The Trail of the Fox, 387; Ruge, Rommel in Normandy, 190–97, 234 (“endless parallels”).

  Rommel retired to his chambers: author visit, La Roche–Guyon, May 30, 2009; Liddell Hart, ed., The Rommel Papers, 492 (“The long-range action”).

  Even on the Sabbath morn: http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/homefront/arp/arp4a.html (crowed in jubilaton).

  In the Guards Chapel at Wellington Barracks: “Services Tomorrow,” Times (London), June 17, 1944, 8; Ziegler, London at War, 1939–1945, 290 (“Te Deum”); Baker, Ernest Hemingway, 501–3 (“white-hot bunghole”); Churchill, Triumph and Tragedy, 39–40.

  Then they heard nothing: King and Kutta, Impact, 198–99; www.flyingbombsandrockets.com/V1*; War Damage Report No. 1861, Royal Military Guards Chapel, Aug. 3, 1944, UK NA, IR 37/59 (blew out walls); author visit, Guards Chapel and Museum, Apr. 5, 2010; McKee, Caen: Anvil of Victory, 133–34 (“Be thou faithful”).

  Clementine Churchill hastened home: Churchill, Triumph and Tragedy, 39–40; reminiscence, George Laity, Aug. 15, 2005, www.bbc.co.uk/print/ww2peopleswar/stories/66* (wax tableau); McKee, Caen: Anvil of Victory, 133–34 (Churchill wept).

  That afternoon he motored to Bushy Park: Chandler, 1933; AAFinWWII, 526–32; CCA, 215–17 (thirty thousand attack sorties); www.discoverfrance.net/France/Paris/Monuments-Paris/Eiffel.shtml (four Eiffel Towers); M. C. Helfers, “The Employment of V-Weapons by the Germans During World War II,” 1954, OCMH, NARA RG 319, 2-3.7 AW, 33–34 (forty or more times); Lyall, ed., The War in the Air, 374 (harpoons).

  CROSSBOW countermeasures in the coming weeks: Hillson, “Barrage Balloons for Low-Level Air Defense,” Airpower Journal (summer 1989): 37+; Germany VII, 430; Lyall, ed., The War in the Air, 378 (learned to use their wings); Baldwin, The Deadly Fuze, 257–58 (eight times more difficult); Collier, The Defence of the United Kingdom, 383–84 (guns were shifted from greater London); Churchill, Triumph and Tragedy, 40 (Bomb Alley).

  Eisenhower’s “first priority” edict: AAFinWWII, 532, 528 (one hundred V-1s were still fired at Target 42 each day); M. C. Helfers, “The Employment of V-Weapons by the Germans During World War II,” 1954, OCMH, NARA RG 319, 2-3.7 AW, 100 (one-quarter of all combat sorties); Collier, The Defence of the United Kingdom, 387 (73,000 tons); Davis, Carl A. Spaatz and the Air War in Europe, 432 (bombers had little impact); diary, July 4, 1944, Frederick L. Anderson papers, HIA, box 2 (“give the enemy full credit”).

  A British study calculated: “CROSSBOW Probable Scale and Effect of Attack on London by Pilotless Aircraft,” Jan. 10, 1944, British COS, NARA RG 331, E 3, SHAEF SGS, 290/7/4/4-5, box 132; corr, Bernard Lipford, 115th Inf, NARA RG 407, E 427, HI (“pushed through the walls”).

  Soon not a pane of glass remained: King and Kutta, Impact, 202, 211; Fussell, Wartime, 215 (“little devilish laughs”); Eisenhower, Letters to Mamie, 197 (nineteen times); Ziegler, London at War, 1939–1945, 306 (“How squalid”).

  Fewer and fewer were willing: King and Kutta, Impact, 211; Collier, The Defence of the United Kingdom, 395 (“an ordeal perhaps as trying”).

  How Easy It Is to Make a Ghost

  West of Bayeux, the Norman uplands: Keegan, Six Armies in Normandy, 152–53; Davies, “Geographical Factors in the Invasion and Battle of Normandy,” Geographical Review (Oct. 1946): 613+ (pre-Cambrian schist); memo, Cleave A. Jones, July 17, 1944, SHAEF, NARA RG 498, ETO HD, UD 603, SLAM 201 file, box 1 (sunken lanes); Nouveau Petit Larousse, 1934, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bocage (“agreeable shady”); Wellard, The Man in a Helmet, 126 (“Gethsemane”); Doubler, Busting the Bocage, 21 (Guadalcanal).

  “I couldn’t imagine the bocage”: OH, ONB, 1974–75, Charles Hanson, MHI, IX-4; “Neptune Monograph,” TF 122, Apr. 21, 1944, NARA RG 331, E 23, SHAEF G-3 Plans, 290/7/10/6, box 43 (amply forewarned); The 35th Infantry Division in World War II (“fortification like a wall”); terrain study, Charles H. Bonesteel III, FUSA, Apr. 18, 1944, Arthur S. Nevins papers, MHI (“Norman bocage”); OH, Charles H. Bonesteel III, 1973, Robert St. Louis, SOOHP, MHI, 164; “Appreciation of Possible Development of Operations to Secure a Lodgment Area,” May 7, 1944, 21st AG, UK NA, WO 205/118, 2; St.-Lô, 4 (four thousand hedged enclosures); Cawthon, Other Clay, 76 (“We were rehearsed endlessly”).

  “I feel we’ll be getting to St. Lô”: CCA, 383.

  Tank companies now reported: Doubler, Closing with the Enemy, 43–44; Mack Morriss, “My Old Outfit,” in Reporting World War II, vol. 2, 539 (“a wall of fire”); “Terrain—Cotentin Peninsula,” July 8, 1944, VIII Corps, NARA RG 498, G-3 OR, box 10 (“spitting range”); Charles H. Coates, “German Defense in Hedgerow Terrain,” WD Observer Board, July 27, 1944, NARA RG 334, E 315, ANSCOL, AGF ETO C-117 (intimacy neutralized Allied air and artillery); Pyle, Brave Men, 255 (“snipers everywhere”); msg, 15th Army Group to SHAEF, Feb. 11, 1945, NARA RG 331, SHAEF SGS, 383.6/4 (sliding scale of rewards).

  Enemy panzers, artillery, and savage small-arms fire: Simpson, Selected Prose, 139, 122 (“purr of the bullets”), 125 (“Some ideas stink”); Linderman, The World Within War, 85 (“I lie in the grass”); Shephard, A War of Nerves, 252 (“a soft siffle”); Whitaker et al., Victory at Falaise, 309–10 (Mortar fragments).

  French civilians waving white strips: Pyle, Brave Men, 284–85 (eight cents); Belfield and Essame, The Battle for Normandy, 132 (“plastered to the walls”); Wilson, ed., D-Day 1944, 254 (stiff-legged as wooden toys); Rosse and Hill, The Story of the Guards Armoured Division, 33 (“gigantic rake”); Daglish, Operation Goodwood, 96 (smoke tinted red); Whitehead, “Beachhead Don,” 133 (“not a building standing whole”); Peckham and Snyder, eds., Letters from Fighting Hoosiers, vol. 2, 120 (“deserted and silent”).

  Each contested town, like each hedgerow: memo, Royce L. Thompson, “ETO Invasion Casualties,” May 27, 1948, OCMH, GCM Lib, Royce L. Thompson collection, box 1; Osmont, The Normandy Diary of Marie-Louise Osmont, 88 (“white as sheets” and “like hunted animals”); Shephard, A War of Nerves, 252; memo, July 15, 1944, NARA RG 498, ETO, SGS, 333.5, 290/50/10/11/7-1, box 35; memo, First Army IG, Aug. 7, 1944, NARA RG 338, First Army AG Gen’l Corr, OIG, box 218 (five hundred cases of suspected “S.I.W.”); memo, Cleave A. Jones, July 17, 1944, SHAEF, NARA RG 498, ETO HD, UD 603, SLAM 201 file, box 1 (“Have we 100 divisions”).

  “Things are always confusing”: Pyle, Brave Men, 269, 305; Hadley, Heads or Tails, 90 (“make a ghost”); Holt and Holt, Major & Mrs. Holt’s Battlefield Guide to the Normandy Landing Beaches, 133 (slain by a mortar splinter); L. F. Skinner, “The Man Who Worked on Sundays,” n.d., IWM, 01/13/1, 18 (“I buried him close”).

  Only the sharpest weather eye: WaS, 64; Stagg, Forecast for Overlord, 126; Bates and Fuller, America’s Weather Warriors, 96; Woodward, Ramsay at War, 164–65 (SHAEF forecasters predicted); Karig, Battle Report: The Atlantic War, 352–56 (chance of a June gale); “Operation OVERLORD: Report on the Effect of Bad Weather, 19–23 June 1944,” SHAEF, n.d., NARA RG 498, ETO HD, admin file #220 (three hundred to one).

  More than two hundred ships now plied: “Report by the Allied Naval Commander-in-Chief,” Oct. 1944, NARA RG 407, ML, #624, 94–95; CCA, 423 (218,000 tons); Bynell, “Logistical Planning and Operations—Europe,” lecture, March 16, 1945, NARA RG 334, E 315, ANSCOL, box 207, 5 (30 percent less than planned); LSA, vol. 2, 392–93 (anchored off the wrong strand); “Amphibious Operations: Invasion of Nor
thern France,” CINC, U.S. Fleet, Oct. 1944, NARA RG 407, ML #252, box 24148, 5–13 (officers in small boats); Waddell, United States Army Logistics, 65, 134 (“Please, oh, please”).

  But shortages were more common: Waddell, United States Army Logistics, 75–76, 83 (strict firing limits); Bynell, “Logistical Planning and Operations—Europe,” lecture, Mar. 16, 1945, NARA RG 334, E 315, ANSCOL, box 207, 5; Charles F. MacDermut and Adolph P. Gratiot, “History of G-4 Com Z ETO,” 1946, CMH, 8-3.4 AA, 73 (bundles of maps); “Supply and Maintenance on the European Continent,” NARA RG 407, E 427, AG WWII operations report no. 130, 97-USF5-0.3.0, 41; “G-4 History,” n.d., NARA RG 498, ETO HD, admin file #553A-C, 22 (145,000 tons); Howard, lecture, Aug. 8, 1944, NARA RG 334, E 315, ANSCOL, L-6-44, H-83, box 191, 9 (expected to shoot 125 rounds).

  Salvation appeared to be rising: Churchill, Triumph and Tragedy, 8 (“synthetic harbors”); H. D. Bynell, lecture, Oct. 31, 1944, NARA RG 334, E 315, ANSCOL, L-7-44, box 199, 6 ($100 million); “Invasion Harbors Towed to France,” British Information Services, Oct. 17, 1944, Hanson Baldwin papers, YU, box 109, folder 862 (another ten thousand now bullied); Keegan, Six Armies in Normandy, 161; IFG, 25–26; “Prefabricated Ports,” Oct. 1944, British Information Services, Hanson Baldwin papers, YU, box 109, folder 862; WaS, 28 (160 tugs); VW, vol. 1, 88–90; IFG, 25–26; WaS, 26–27 (“journey of self-immolation”); Karig, Battle Report: The Atlantic War, 347 (antique side-wheelers); “Mulberry B,” SHAEF G-4, Nov. 1944, NARA RG 498, ETO HD, admin file #44 (enormous tricolor).

  To this suicide fleet were added: “Prefabricated Ports,” Oct. 1944, British Information Services, Hanson Baldwin papers, YU, box 109, folder 862; “Mulberry B,” SHAEF G-4, Nov. 1944, NARA RG 498, ETO HD, admin file #44 (ten miles of floating piers); VW, vol. 1, 88–90 (two million tons); www.nycgovparks.org/sub_your_park/historical_signs/hs_historical_sign.php?id=8771 (seventeen times more concrete); Mason, ed., The Atlantic War Remembered, 377 (“One storm will wash”); “Task Force 128: Report on Installation of Mulberry A,” n.d., DDE Lib, A. Dayton Clark papers, box 2 (unloading had begun at Mulberry A); Karig, Battle Report: The Atlantic War, 352–56 (LSTs could be emptied).