The Longest Day

by Cornelius Ryan

  Lance Corporal Richter went through the dead man’s pockets and found a wallet with two photographs and a letter. Wuensch remembers that one of them “showed the soldier sitting next to a girl and we all concluded that maybe it was his wife.” The other was a snapshot “of the young man and the girl sitting on a veranda with a family, presumably his family.” Richter began putting the photographs and the letter into his pocket.

  Wuensch said, “What do you want to do that for?”

  Richter said, “I thought I’d send this stuff to the address on the envelope after the war.”

  Wuensch thought he was crazy. “We may be captured by the Amis,” he said, “and if they find this stuff on you …” He drew his finger across his throat. “Leave it for the medics,” said Wuensch, “and let’s get out of here.”

  As his men moved on, Wuensch remained for a moment and stared at the dead American, lying limp and still “like a dog who had been run over.” He hurried after his men.

  A few miles away a German staff car, its black, white and red pennant flying, raced along the secondary road leading toward the village of Picauville. Major General Wilhelm Falley of the 91st Air Landing Division, together with his aide and a driver, had been in his Horch for almost seven hours, ever since he set out for Rennes and the war games a little before 1:00 A.M. Sometime between 3:00 and 4:00 A.M., the continuous droning of planes and the distant explosions of bombs had caused the concerned Falley to turn back.

  They were only a few miles from the headquarters north of Picauville when machine-gun bullets ripped across the front of the car. The windshield shattered and Falley’s aide, sitting beside the driver, slumped down in his seat. Swaying from side to side, tires screaming, the Horch swerved and smashed into a low wall. The doors flew open with the impact and the driver and Falley were hurled out. Falley’s gun slithered out in front of him. He crawled across the road toward it. The driver, shaken and dazed, saw several American soldiers rushing up to the car. Falley was shouting, “Don’t kill! Don’t kill!” but he continued to crawl toward the gun. There was a shot and Falley collapsed in the road, one hand still stretched out toward the gun.

  Lieutenant Malcolm Brannen of the 82nd Airborne looked down at the dead man. Then he stooped and picked up the officer’s cap. Stenciled on the sweatband was the name “Falley.” The German wore a greenish-gray uniform with red stripes down the seam of the trousers. There were narrow gold epaulets at the shoulders of his tunic and red tabs decorated with gold-braided oak leaves at the collar. An Iron Cross hung from a black ribbon around the man’s neck. Brannen wasn’t sure, but it looked to him as though he’d killed a general.

  On the airfield near Lille, Wing Commander Josef “Pips” Priller and Sergeant Heinze Wodarczyk ran for their two solitary FW-190 fighter planes.

  The Luftwaffe’s and Fighter Corps headquarters had telephoned. “Priller,” the operations officer had said, “the invasion has started. You’d better get up there.”

  Priller had exploded: “Now you’ve dropped it! You damned fools! What the hell do you expect me to do with just two planes? Where are my squadrons? Can you call them back?”

  The operations officer had remained perfectly cool. “Priller,” he had said soothingly, “we don’t know yet exactly where your squadrons have landed, but we’re going to divert them back to the field at Piox. Move all your ground personnel there immediately. Meanwhile you better get up to the invasion area. Good luck, Priller.”

  As quietly as his anger would allow Priller had said, “Would you mind telling me where the invasion is?”

  The officer, unruffled, had said, “Normandy, Pips—somewhere above Caen.”

  It had taken Priller the best part of an hour to make the necessary arrangements for the movement of his ground personnel. Now he and Wodarczyk were ready—ready to make the Luftwaffe’s only daylight attack against the invasion.*

  Just before they got into their planes, Priller went over to his wing man. “Now listen,” he said, “there’s just the two of us. We can’t afford to break up. For God’s sake, do exactly as I do. Fly behind me and follow every move.” They had been together a long time and Priller felt he must make the situation quite clear. “We’re going in alone,” he said, “and I don’t think we’re coming back.”

  It was 9:00 A.M. when they took off (8:00 A.M. to Priller). They flew due west, hugging the ground. Just over Abbeville, high above them, they began to see Allied fighters. Priller noticed that they were not flying in tight formation as they should have been. He remembers thinking that “if I only had some planes, they’d be sitting ducks.” As they approached Le Havre, Priller climbed for cover in the clouds. They flew for a few more minutes and then broke through. Below them was a fantastic fleet—hundreds of ships of every size and type, stretching endlessly, it seemed, all the way back across the Channel. There was a steady procession of landing craft carrying men toward shore, and Priller could see the white puffs of explosions on and behind the beaches. The sands were black with troops, and tanks and equipment of all sorts littered the shoreline. Priller swept back into the clouds to consider what to do. There were so many planes, so many battleships offshore, so many men on the beaches, that he figured he’d have time for just one pass over the beaches before being shot down.

  There was no need for radio silence now. Almost lightheartedly, Priller spoke into his microphone. “What a show! What a show!” he said. “There’s everything out here—everywhere you look. Believe me, this is the invasion!” Then he said, “Wodarczyk, we’re going in! Good luck!”

  They hurtled down toward the British beaches at over four hundred miles an hour, coming in at less than 150 feet. Priller had no time to aim. He simply pressed the button on his control stick and felt his guns pounding. Skimming along just over the tops of men’s heads, he saw upturned, startled faces.

  On Sword, Commander Philippe Kieffer of the French commandos saw Priller and Wodarczyk coming. He dived for cover. Six German prisoners took advantage of the confusion and tried to bolt. Kieffer’s men promptly mowed them down. On Juno, Private Robert Rogge of the Canadian 8th Infantry Brigade heard the scream of the planes and saw them “coming in so low that I could clearly see the pilots’ faces.” He threw himself flat like everyone else, but he was amazed to see one man “calmly standing up, blazing away with a Sten gun.” On the eastern edge of Omaha, Lieutenant (j.g.) William J. Eisemann of the U.S. Navy gasped as the two FW-190s, guns chattering, zoomed down “at less than fifty feet and dodged through the barrage balloons.” And on H.M.S. Dunbar, Leading Stoker Robert Dowie watched every antiaircraft gun in the fleet open up on Priller and Wodarczyk. The two fighters flew through it all unscathed, then turned inland and streaked up into the clouds. “Jerry or not,” said Dowie, unbelievingly, “the best of luck to you. You’ve got guts.”

  *According to Von Buttlar-Brandenfels, Hitler was well aware of Von Rundstedt’s contempt. “As long as the Field Marshal grumbles,” Hitler had once said, “everything is all right.”

  *Hitler had become so convinced that the “real” invasion would take place in the Pas-de-Calais area that he held Von Salmuth’s 15th Army in its position until July 24. By then it was too late. Ironically, Hitler seems to have been the only one who originally believed that the invasion would take place in Normandy. General Blumentritt says that “I well remember a call from Jodl some time in April in which he said, ‘The Führer has definite information to the effect that a landing in Normandy is not unlikely.’”

  *This report was given, sometime between eight and nine, directly to the 352nd’s operations chief, Lieutenant Colonel Ziegelmann, by a certain Colonel Goth, who commanded the fortifications on Pointe et Raz de la Percée overlooking the Vierville end of Omaha Beach. It caused such elation that Ziegelmann, according to his own account written after the war, considered that he was dealing with “inferior enemy forces.” Later reports were even more optimistic and by 11:00 A.M. General Kraiss, the 352nd’s commanding officer, was so convinced that
he had rubbed out the Omaha beachhead that he diverted reserves to strengthen the division’s right wing in the British sector.

  *I was not able to locate the fanatical captain who tried to hold the bunker, but Häger believes that his name was Gundlach and that the junior officer was a Lieutenant Lutke. Later in the day Häger found his missing friend Saxler—he, too, was working among the obstacles. That night they were taken to England and six days later Häger and 150 other Germans landed in New York en route to a Canadian prisoner-of-war camp.

  *In some accounts it has been written that eight JU-88 bombers attacked the beaches during the initial landings. Bombers were over the beachhead on the night of June 6-7, but there is no record that I could find of a D-Day morning raid other than Priller’s fighter attack.

  *Voigt never did make it back. He still lives in Germany, where he works for Pan American Airways.

  4

  ALL ALONG THE Normandy coastline the invasion stormed. For the French, caught up in the battle, these were hours of chaos, elation and terror. Around Ste.-Mère-Église, which was now being heavily shelled, 82nd paratroopers saw farmers calmly working in the fields as though nothing were happening. Every now and then one of them would fall, either wounded or killed. In the town itself paratroopers watched the local barber remove the sign “Friseur” from the front of his shop and put up a new one that said “Barber.”

  A few miles away, in the little coastal hamlet of La Madeleine, Paul Gazengel was bitter and in pain. Not only had the roof of his store and café been blown off, but he had been wounded during the shelling, and now 4th Division troops were taking him and seven other men down to Utah Beach.

  “Where are you taking my husband?” demanded his wife of the young lieutenant in charge.

  The officer answered in perfect French. “For questioning, madame,” he said. “We can’t talk to him here, so we’re taking him and all the other men to England.”

  Madame Gazengel couldn’t believe her ears. “To England!” she exclaimed. “Why? What has he done?”

  The young officer was embarrassed. Patiently he explained that he was simply carrying out instructions.

  “What happens if my husband gets killed in the bombing?” asked Madame Gazengel tearfully.

  “There’s a ninety percent chance that won’t happen, madame,” he said.

  Gazengel kissed his wife goodbye and was marched off. He had no idea what it was all about—and he never would find out. Two weeks later he would be back in Normandy, with the lame excuse from his American captors that “it was all a mistake.”

  Jean Marion, French underground sector chief in the seaside town of Grandcamp, was frustrated. He could see the fleet off Utah Beach to his left and Omaha Beach to his right and he knew troops were landing. But it looked to him as though Grandcamp had been forgotten. All morning he had waited in vain for soldiers to come in. But he was heartened when his wife pointed out a destroyer that was slowly maneuvering opposite the town. “The gun!” exclaimed Marion. “The gun I told them about!” A few days earlier he had informed London that a small artillery piece had been mounted on the sea wall, sited so that it would fire only to the left, in the direction of what was now Utah Beach. Now Marion was sure that his message had been received, for he saw the destroyer carefully moved into position on the gun’s blind side and commence firing. With tears in his eyes Marion jumped up and down each time the destroyer fired. “They got the message!” he cried. “They got the message!” The destroyer—which may have been the Herndon—blasted the artillery piece with round after round. Suddenly there was a violent explosion as the gun’s ammunition blew up. “Merveilleux!” yelled the excited Marion. “Magnifique!”

  In the cathedral town of Bayeux, roughly fifteen miles away, Guillaume Mercader, the underground intelligence chief for the Omaha Beach area, stood at the window of his living room with his wife, Madeleine. Mercader was having a hard time fighting back his tears. After four terrible years, the main body of German troops billeted in the town seemed to be pulling out. He could hear the cannonading in the distance and he knew that heavy fighting must be taking place. Now he had a strong urge to organize his resistance fighters and drive the remainder of the Nazis out. But the radio had warned them to be calm, that there must be no uprising. It was difficult, but Mercader had learned to wait. “We’ll be free soon,” he told his wife.

  Everyone in Bayeux seemed to feel the same way. Although the Germans had posted notices ordering the townspeople to stay indoors, people had gathered quite openly in the cathedral courtyard to hear a running commentary on the invasion from one of the priests. From his vantage point he could clearly see the beaches; hands cupped around his mouth he was yelling down from the belfry of the steeple.

  Among those who heard of the invasion from the priest was Anne Marie Broeckx, the nineteen-year-old kindergarten teacher who would find her future husband among the American invaders. At seven she had calmly set out on her bicycle for her father’s farm at Colleville, back at Omaha Beach. Pedaling furiously, she had cycled past German machine-gun positions and troops marching toward the coast. Some Germans had waved to her and one had warned her to be careful, but nobody stopped her. She had seen planes strafing and Germans diving for cover, but Anne Marie, her tresses flying in the wind and her blue skirt ballooning around her, kept on. She felt perfectly safe; it never dawned on her that her life was in danger.

  Now she was less than a mile from Colleville. The roads were deserted. Clouds of smoke drifted inland. Here and there fires were burning. Then she saw the wreckage of several farmhouses. For the first time Anne Marie felt frightened. Frantically she raced on. By the time she reached the crossroads at Colleville she was thoroughly alarmed. The thunder of gunfire rolled all about her and the entire area seemed strangely desolated and uninhabited. Her father’s farm lay between Colleville and the beach. Anne Marie decided to continue on foot. Hitching her bicycle over her shoulder, she hiked across the fields. Then, topping a little rise, she saw the farmhouse—still standing. She ran the remainder of the way.

  At first Anne Marie thought the farm was deserted, for she could see no movement. Calling to her parents, she dashed into the little farmyard. The windows of the house had been blown out. Part of the roof had disappeared and there was a gaping hole in the door. Suddenly the wrecked door opened and there stood her father and mother. She threw her arms around both of them.

  “My daughter,” said her father, “this is a great day for France.” Anne Marie burst into tears.

  Half a mile away, fighting for his life amid the horrors of Omaha Beach, was nineteen-year-old Private First Class Leo Heroux, the man who would marry Anne Marie.*

  While the Allied attack raged in Normandy, one of the region’s top underground officials was fuming on a train just outside Paris. Léonard Gille, Normandy’s deputy military intelligence chief, had been riding the Paris-bound train for more than twelve hours. The journey seemed interminable. They had crawled through the night, stopping at every station. Now, ironically, the intelligence chief had heard the news from one of the porters. Gille had no idea where in Normandy the assault had taken place, but he could hardly wait to get back to Caen. He was bitter that after all the years of work, his superiors had chosen this of all days to order him to the capital. Worse, there was no way for him to get off the train. The next stop was Paris.

  But back in Caen his fiancée, Janine Boitard, had been busy ever since she had heard the news. At seven she had roused the two R.A.F. pilots she was hiding. “We must hurry,” she told them. “I’m taking you to a farm in the village of Gavrus, twelve kilometers from here.”

  Their destination came as a shock to the two Britishers. Freedom was only ten short miles away, yet they were going to head inland. Gavrus lay southwest of Caen. One of the Britishers, Wing Commander K.T Lofts, thought they should take a chance and go north to meet the troops.

  “Be patient,” said Janine. “The area between here and the coast is swarming with Germans. It
will be safer to wait.”

  Shortly after seven they set out on bicycles, the two Britishers dressed in rough farm clothes. The journey was uneventful. Although they were stopped several times by German patrols, their fake identity papers stood the test and they were passed on. At Gavrus, Janine’s responsibility ended—two more fliers were a step closer to home. Janine would have liked to have gone farther with them, but she had to return to Caen—to wait for the next downed pilots who would pass along the escape route, and the moment of liberation that she knew was close. Waving goodbye, she jumped on her bicycle and cycled off.

  In the prison at Caen, Madame Amélie Lechevalier, expecting to be executed for her part in saving Allied pilots, heard a whisper as the tin plate with her breakfast was slid under the cell door. “Hope, hope,” said the voice. “The British have landed.” Madame Lechevalier began to pray. She wondered if her husband, Louis, in a cell nearby, had heard the news. All night there had been explosions, but she had thought that it was the usual Allied bombing. Now there was a chance; maybe they would be saved before it was too late.

  Suddenly Madame Lechevalier heard a commotion in the corridor. She got down on her knees by the slit beneath the door and listened. She could hear shouting and the word “Raus! Raus! [Out! Out!]” repeated over and over. Then there was the tramping of feet, the slaming of cell doors and then silence again. A few minutes later, somewhere outside the prison she heard prolonged machine-gun fire.