Divided on D-Day

by Edward E. Gordon

  When the Germans opened fire at 6:30 a.m. their eighty-five machine guns concentrated on each landing ramp as it hit the shore. Thirty men massed together were perfect targets. Engineers followed the first wave in, loaded with TNT to clear beach obstacles. Sixty percent of their equipment littered Omaha Beach that day. One of their craft received a direct hit. The detonation killed everyone aboard.34

  Infantrymen who somehow made it across that beach huddled behind a small bank of shale. Badly disoriented and disorganized, they were trapped.

  At 7:00 a.m. the second wave struggled to land. Their rate of survival was as low as soldiers in the first wave. Those who made it onto the beach had a suicide run to the sea wall to join the huddled mass of men. Everyone on Omaha Beach saw that this situation was a disaster.

  The forward elements of the First and Twenty-Ninth Infantry Divisions were being endlessly raked by German mortar, machine-gun and artillery fire. Omaha was strewn with dead and wounded and piles of wrecked equipment. This was the scene that Rommel had envisioned—the ruinous collapse of the Allied invasion.

  Ben Newman, a navy radioman, sent messages between the Omaha beachmaster and the offshore fleet members: “It was a hell of a mess. Boats didn’t get where they were supposed to be…tanks that were supposed to float…weren’t close enough to the beach and they sank…. OMAHA Beach was a tough beach.”35

  It was at 8:30 a.m. that the Omaha beachmaster radioed Admiral Hall that “they were stopping the advance of follow up waves.” After only two hours Omaha Beach had shut down.36

  “BACK INTO THE SEA”

  At 9:24 a.m. General Marcks's headquarters reported that the forward positions of the 352nd Division had been penetrated at Omaha. However the situation was not critical. This motivated Marcks to request a panzer counterattack in the more threatened invasion area protecting Caen. Later at 1:35 p.m. Marcks was mistakenly informed by the chief of staff of the 352nd Infantry Division that “the Division has thrown the invaders back into the sea.”37

  But the Germans had only two regiments that morning on Omaha Beach. As noted earlier, half of Kraiss's infantry strength had been sent off during the night to investigate the exploding dummy Rupert paratroopers that were dropped south of Carentan as part of Operation TITANIC.

  Kraiss further weakened his reserves. The reports from his forward battalions on Omaha Beach told him they were successfully containing the early landings. So he only sent a single battalion to reinforce them. Kraiss dispatched the rest of his last reserves toward the eastern beaches where the British had broken through.

  By noon Heinrich Severloh in strongpoint 62 had fired twelve thousand rounds from his machine gun, but at midday the German Omaha Beach defenses began falling apart as ammunition began running low. While the beach was littered with First Division dead, the Americans had not been thrown back into the sea, and they were beginning to unload tanks and machine-gun carriers on the beach. Soon a tank sent a shell right through the strongpoint's aperture, and an offshore destroyer hurled multiple shells on the dugout.

  The Americans had turned the German flanks. Mortars were destroyed, German infantrymen decimated. Lieutenant Frerking ordered his men in strongpoint 62 to get out, and they withdrew by intermittent leaps under the hail of fire from American tanks and naval guns.

  Kraiss's mishandling of the 352nd Infantry Division saved the Allies from a major disaster in the central OVERLORD invasion sector. Antony Beevor and other historians agree that a greater concentration of the available German infantry behind Omaha Beach would have made it very difficult, or even impossible, for the Americans to hold it.38

  INDIVIDUAL COURAGE

  The outcome of that day on Omaha was determined by the actions of individual soldiers and sailors, not divisions. This was the combat experience of the Twenty-Ninth Infantry Division. In the initial hours on the beach many officers died, and troop losses were heavy. Confusion paralyzed the division. The battle-tested First Division also suffered the same fate but used its prior combat experience to adapt and infiltrate enemy positions. By 7:30 a.m. small groups reached the higher ground to attack the German bunkers’ flanks.

  Brigadier General Norman Cota, commanding the Twenty-Ninth, came in on the second wave at 7:30 a.m. Seeing the desperate situation, he asked a group of men sheltering beneath the beach shingle bank who they were. When they identified themselves as rangers, he exploded, “Then goddamnit, if you’re Rangers get up and lead the way!”39 (Rangers were trained as elite US combat troops.) In response the admonished rangers pushed four-foot lengths of Bangalore torpedoes beneath a forest of barbed wire to blow a gap and then crawled forward up one of Omaha's five valley hillsides that were wreathed in smoke. Some thirty-five soldiers reached the road at the hilltop. They were gradually joined by other soldiers and NCOs who began the laborious, very dangerous task of attacking the German positions one by one.

  About the same time more soldiers slowly began moving forward toward the bluff. They decided it was better to fight their way forward off the beach than to stay and die in the German death zone. Staff Sergeant William Courtney and Private First Class William Braher of the Second Rangers worked their way up the heights from the sea wall. At 8:30 a.m. they may have been the first Americans to reach the top of the cliff.40

  By 9:00 a.m., five thousand soldiers were crammed on Omaha. The situation seemed grim. Destroyer skippers saw the beach situation was desperate. Although not ordered to do so, individual captains sailed back to the beachfront and opened fire on the German positions on the high bluffs. Shortly past 8:30 a.m., Rear Admiral John Hall, who was in command of the Omaha Beach landings, ordered all the destroyers to join in smashing the German bunkers. More than a dozen US and British destroyers sailed to within eight hundred to one thousand yards, as close as their shallow draft allowed, to blast enemy positions to pieces. In some instances Allied tanks used their firepower to direct the destroyers to also target the same positions. Over the next ninety minutes, the Allied destroyers helped turn the tide of the battle for Omaha Beach.41 A disaster had been averted.

  As historian Stephen Ambrose recounts, “The effect on the troops on OMAHA of the destroyers’ heroic and risky action was electric.”42 General Omar Bradley, who was not a great navy admirer, was forced to admit that “the Navy saved our hides.”43

  Between 9:00 and 10:00 a.m. units of the Sixteenth Infantry fought their way to the top of the bluff. In close hand-to-hand fighting, aided by the destroyer's bombardment, they moved across Omaha Beach clearing the fortifications.

  Because most of the shore radios had been lost, there was little shore-to-ship communication. Thus Bradley and Admiral Kirk did not know of these breakthroughs. “Never reinforce failure” was a military principle that caused them to consider evacuating Omaha Beach. The men might have been shifted to Utah or the British beaches. However, at 10:45 a.m. they decided to land the reserve 115th Infantry. By noon there were four major breaches in the German defenses.

  At Omaha's west end, Private Ray Moon of the 116th Infantry looked back toward the sea. “The view was unforgettable…. The scene below reminded me of the Chicago stockyard cattle pens and its slaughter house.”44

  Some German troops, now cut off on the bluffs, attempted to retreat from their positions. But most of the defenders fought on until their ammunition was exhausted.

  At 1:30 p.m. General Leonard Gerow commanding the V Corps radioed to Bradley that “the troop formerly pinned down on the beaches…advancing up the heights behind the beach.”45 At 4:00 p.m. General Clarence Huebner, First Infantry Division commander, landed to direct beach operations. By dark the American position at Omaha Beach was a narrow strip of Normandy, ten thousand yards wide and only two thousand to three thousand yards deep. It was a foothold.

  Omaha had been a near-run thing. It was the closest to outright failure of all the D-Day beaches. The Americans wanted a bridgehead sixteen miles wide and five miles deep. By the end of the day, it was barely the width of the beach. A few uni
ts made their way two miles inland, but most were still below the bluffs. Nearly forty thousand men landed. The Twenty-Ninth suffered 2,440 casualties, the First Division 1,744. Most of the 2,400 Americans who died for this strip of sand perished in the first two hours. Bradley later wrote, “OMAHA Beach was a nightmare. Even now it brings pain to recall what happened.”46

  Fig. 6.1. Buildup of Omaha Beach reinforcements. (US government)

  The Germans lost 1,200 men, 20 percent of their defending forces.47 Because they failed to organize any counterattacks, they lost their best chance to snuff out the invasion on Omaha.

  REVENGE FOR DUNKIRK

  Lieutenant General Sir Miles Dempsey of the British army was a veteran of Dunkirk and the North African and Italian campaigns. He was given the command of three D-Day beaches: Gold-British, Juno-Canadian and Sword-British. (See Map 5.) Montgomery, the overall Allied ground commander, and Dempsey decided on 7:30 a.m. as the landing H-Hour in order to ensure a longer shore bombardment and a shorter assault run on the beach. One hundred thirty-seven warships laid down a devastating two-hour preliminary bombardment. The British moved their troop transports three to four miles closer to the coast for a shorter assault run-in.48

  While the fleet bombardment was commencing, German E-boats made their one and only attack on the NEPTUNE armada. Two torpedoes missed, but a third hit and sank the Norwegian destroyer Svenner. Most of its crew was saved. The HMS Warspite fired back with its fifteen-inch and four-inch guns destroying one E-boat. The remaining German flotilla made a fast exit behind an intentional smoke screen.

  The midnight attack by RAF Bomber Command also covered these three beaches. The D-Day attack was the heaviest Bomber Command had mounted to that time. The Flying Fortresses of the Eighth US Army Air Force also conducted an early-morning raid.

  Along the entire twenty-four miles of the three invasion beaches, the British and Canadian soldiers faced less challenging terrain than that of Omaha and Utah. These were low beaches with a sea wall beyond. Summer resorts or villas lined a coastal road. Behind the coast was flat, open terrain.

  On these three beaches the German forces deployed ten infantry companies, fifty mortar teams, five hundred machine guns, and ninety artillery pieces. Over a secondary defensive zone, four to six miles deep, were fourteen infantry companies and twenty-two artillery batteries with over one hundred guns. Beyond them were another five infantry battalions and more guns. Finally, around Caen the Twenty-First Panzer Division waited.49

  As the three assault waves made their shorter runs into the beaches, British fleet destroyers guarded their flanks with their 4.7-inch guns engaging enemy beach batteries. Other smaller destroyers moved very close inshore for added assault fire support. The Second Tactical Air Force (RAF) rocket-firing typhoons flew low blasting the German defenses. About forty-five minutes before the assault, sixteen landing craft gunships opened an intense close-range bombardment on beach defenses. Fifteen minutes later, twenty-two rocket launching landing craft each hurled a thousand five-inch rockets every minute and a half. Despite the virtual invulnerability of the bigger casemated German batteries, the combined impact of the longer, more intense British naval and air bombardment had the positive effect of silencing, at least for a time, nearly all of the fixed German batteries. When some batteries finally opened fire, they were engaged by the Allied fleet and again lapsed into silence.50

  As the landing craft neared these beaches the British and Canadians had a greater personal incentive than their American counterparts. Now they were returning to northwestern Europe to avenge the stain of the retreat from Dunkirk exactly four years earlier.

  GOLD BEACH

  Though the sea was very rough, the British troops rushed ashore meeting little resistance. The German defenders, mainly Russian “volunteers,” rapidly surrendered. However one strongpoint, the village of Le Hamel, held out until midafternoon. (See Map 6.) Yet by midday, British troops reached Creully, five miles inland.

  The Forty-Seventh Royal Marine Commandos’ objective was to push inland and travel west along the coast to help take Port-en-Bessin. (See Map 5.) The marines were to link up with the Americans from Omaha Beach. Neither made it to their goal on that day.

  Once the thin perimeter of German defense caved in, the Fiftieth Infantry Division advanced almost to the town of Bayeux, their principal objective. Many German infantrymen hid and did not surrender. They attacked the flanks and rear of the advancing British assault, slowing but not stopping the advance from Gold. By the end of the day the British landed twenty-five thousand men on Gold Beach, suffering only 413 casualties.51

  Fig. 6.2. Gold Beach British Fiftieth Infantry Division going ashore. June 6, 1944. (Photo by Midgley [Sgt.] No. 5 Army Film & Photographic Unit)

  JUNO BEACH

  The Third Canadian Division was eager to avenge the 1942 Dieppe raid disaster. The four hundred Germans that the 2,400 Canadians encountered on the coast put up a stiff resistance. It took them over three hours to take the town of St. Aubin-sur-Mer. (See Map 6.) Once the thin line of the German defensive zone was broken, the Canadians had a relatively easy advance inland.52

  But this advance was slowed by the chaos on the beaches. Later in the day as the tide rose, Rommel's beach obstacles took a heavy toll when the landing craft attempted to back off the beaches after unloading. Twenty out of twenty-four of the lead boats were seriously damaged or destroyed by the day's end. This delayed the landing of follow-up second and third waves of reinforcements, thus seriously disrupting the timetable for the day's ground objectives.53

  The Ninth Canadian Infantry Brigade had as its main goal the airfield near Carpiquet just west of Caen. (See Map 6.) “Our instructions were…to stop at nothing…but to get to Carpiquet airport [nine miles inland]…and to capture and consolidate the airport,” said Sergeant Stanley Dudka of the North Nova Scotia Highlanders.54

  The enemy had been completely overcome. Chaos reigned at the airfield. The Luftwaffe was blowing up the installation in a frenzied evacuation. The road to the airport and Caen lay open. Yet the Highlanders were ordered to stop. They never even got close to taking Carpiquet. Upon reaching Villons les Buissons they were halted (see Map 6) over their commanders’ misplaced fears of a German counterattack.

  Montgomery and Eisenhower were delighted that Juno held a lodgment up to six miles deep. However the failure to take the airport on D-Day proved to be a very costly one over the following weeks. The Caen airfield was to witness some of the most intensive fighting of the entire Normandy campaign. Over a month elapsed before the British occupied Carpiquet after suffering major casualties.55

  SWORD BEACH

  The Sword Beach landings were preceded by heavy battleship fire that smashed the German strongpoints. The battleships HMS Ramillies and Warspite and monitor HMS Roberts fired many salvos of fifteen-inch shells at the defensive shore batteries. This was strongly supported by four cruisers, including the Polish warship Dragon and thirteen destroyers. The British LCTs launched their DD amphibian tanks less than a mile from the beach. Thirty-four out of forty DDs made it to shore.56

  With this excellent support the British troops knocked out the remaining German beach defenses, largely clearing Sword Beach by 8:30 a.m. Specialized British armor also did a rapid job of clearing lanes through minefields and using napalm tanks to incinerate German bunkers. The early landings went so well that a coxswain of a LCA (Landing Craft Armor) returning for a second load told others on the deck of the transport, “It's a piece of cake!”57

  French inhabitants along the beach rushed out of their homes with bottles of wine and cider saved for liberation day. They were given to the gratefully surprised Englishmen with cries of “Vive les Anglais.” The soldiers received many hugs and kisses as they advanced.58

  The Third Infantry Division had D-Day's most important objective—to take the city of Caen. Eight miles inland, its capture would protect the invasion's left flank from the expected German counterattacks. This was a heavy commitment. In
late May British army intelligence had discovered the presence of the Twenty-First Panzer Division around Caen. Its official history reported that in spite of the intelligence Montgomery did not considerate it necessary to revise or strengthen his plan to capture Caen. Also most significantly Monty decided not to even tell the commanders of the Third Infantry Divisions about the presence of the Twenty-First Panzer.59

  The original Twenty-First had been destroyed with the Afrika Korps in February 1943. A new Twenty-First Panzer was created in May 1943 by General Edgar Feuchtinger with a complement of three thousand men. Its tanks and armored vehicles came from German scrapyards or from captured equipment. However, by June 1944, it had a total strength of 16,300 men and had also been equipped with 146 new Mark IV panzers.60

  The Third Division had a double mission on D-Day. First, it linked up with the British airborne that had secured Pegasus Bridge. Secondly, their 185th Brigade had the assignment of taking Caen. By 11:00 a.m. its three battalions had reached Hermanville for the push to the city. (See Map 6.) They were to be supported by the King's Shropshire Light Infantry that was supposed to be mounted on the tanks of the Staffordshire Yeomanry and advance with the 185th Brigade to Caen. In the confusion of D-Day, this complex military choreography began to break down.

  The supporting tanks failed to get off Sword Beach because of congestion. The exit routes were still under German fire, causing a pileup of vehicles. The infantry was told to walk to the rendezvous point. This seriously delayed the advance toward Caen and gave the Germans time to organize a counterattack. Unlike German armored divisions, whose mobile infantry (called Panzer Grenadiers), kept pace with the panzers by riding in armored half-track vehicles cross-country, the British armored divisions kept their supporting infantry in trucks confined to roads. If the British armor and support infantry had landed together with half-tracks for the infantry, the Eighteenth Brigade as a combined strike force would have immediately set off to seize and hold Caen before any counterattack was launched by the disorganized local German reserves.