Lost to Time

by Martin W. Sandler

  THE REMAINS OF USS LST-289 in port, after being struck by a German torpedo.

  As Graves later wrote, LST-511 was even more fortunate.

  The convoy was now broken up. . . . It was every ship for itself. We headed for the nearest land which was 20 miles away; . . . I found out later that the captain of our ship had no chart, and no idea of the minefields that had been laid down by the British. Even if he had been able to call for help, it could never have got to us in time. The corvette that was supposed to be our protection, we never saw.

  We sat and waited for the torpedo we knew would come. Our work was done. There was nothing to do but wait. But the torpedo never came. The only way we would figure it was that they had run out of torpedoes. Nothing else was there to stop them. At about six o’clock in the morning, in the grey mist, we were able to make out land. An hour later we were at anchor in the little harbor of Weymouth. Columbus himself wouldn’t have been happier at the sight of land than we were that morning.

  Graves had been right about the corvette assigned to protect the convoy. Throughout the entire disaster, from the time the surface firing began, through the torpedo strikes and the sinkings, the LSTs received no help from the Azalea. Remarkably, the corvette’s captain later reported that he saw no E-boats and received no calls for help from the LSTs (that, at least, was understandable given the tragic wavelength errors). And Graves was also correct in assuming that his ship and shipmates had been spared because the E-boats had run out of torpedoes—that, and the fact that the whole operational policy of the German raiders was to hit and run as quickly as possible.

  As they sped back to Cherbourg, the commanders of several of the E-boats were still uncertain as to what type of Allied ships they had torpedoed. But they could not help but be aware that they had made a major strike. What they could not know was that theirs was to be the most successful E-boat raid of the entire war. The carnage they left behind was horrific. Hundreds of soldiers and sailors had been killed in the explosions. Hundreds of others had drowned. Scores of frightened men remained in the sea, waiting to be saved.

  Although the Azalea was still nowhere to be seen, two sister ships of the Onslow did arrive to help in a rescue effort. “We arrived in the area at daybreak, and the sight was appalling,” a warranty officer aboard one of the British vessels later wrote. “There were hundreds of bodies . . . in the sea. Many had their limbs and even their heads blown off, but some were still alive. We took aboard all those we could find living and applied first aid and resuscitation. . . . Small American landing craft with their ramps down were literally scooping up bodies, driving them ashore, and dumping them on the beaches. . . . Of all those we took on board, there were only nine survivors.”

  The rescue effort had actually begun even before the two British ships arrived. LST-507’s Dale Rodman had managed to climb aboard the one lifeboat that had survived the destruction of his ship.

  We pulled away from [our] sinking LST and began to pick up people from the water. I was startled to see scores of dead soldiers floating in the water with their packs and lifebelts on. The backpack and the lifebelt around their waists made them top heavy and they were lying on their backs with their heads underwater. They had been knocked unconscious by the impact of hitting the water when they jumped overboard with their belts inflated, and they had drowned before they regained consciousness. Those of us on the lifeboat located what survivors we could in the darkness from the sound of their cries for help. Altogether there were between fifty and sixty survivors aboard when we were picked up by a British destroyer, HMS Onslow, at about 6:30 A.M. As I climbed to safety, I looked out over the water and saw hundreds of bodies still floating there.

  Once it became clear that the E-boats had left the scene, the overall commander of the convoy had ordered all the surviving LSTs to head immediately for Slapton Sands. But Lieutenant John Doyle, captain of USS LST-515, could not bring himself to obey the order. How could he leave men from the other ships behind to die in the sea? Ignoring the consequences of disregarding a direct command, and with the overwhelming approval of those aboard LST-515, he began to search for survivors. Sadly, there were only a few who could be rescued, among them Ralph Bartholomay, a naval gunner on the stricken LST-507.

  Describing what he experienced after he had been in the water for some time, Bartholomay later recalled,

  I spotted some wreckage with a few people hanging on so I swam over. There were the first live persons I had seen in a while and it was encouraging. We were holding on to a small piece of wreckage that wasn’t too stable and one fellow was trying to sit up on it. Every time he tried, the object turned over and would spill us all into the water. It seemed almost like a game. No one became angry, we were all too tired. This is where I started to say the Lord’s Prayer over and over. I was beginning to get drowsy, a bad sign in cold water, and praying supplied some hope. I was starting to slip in and out of reality, with the unreal parts getting longer, when I heard the faint sound of a boat engine with someone calling out. Maybe some day I will hear a more welcome sound, but that night it sounded like the answer to a prayer. When the boat came close enough, I saw it was the LST-515 come back to pick us up. I mustered what strength I had left and swam over. It was the longest ten yards I ever swam.

  Bartholomay and several others owed their lives to Doyle’s determination to follow his conscience and disobey a command. As for Doyle, he not only escaped reprimand, but was eventually officially commended for his actions.

  According to the U.S. Department of Defense, 749 servicemen were killed during Exercise Tiger. Eventually, other reports placed the death toll considerably higher. Whatever the exact figure, this largest training disaster of the war was only the beginning of the Exercise Tiger story. For decades, the story of what had taken place at Lyme Bay was kept totally secret. The public was never told what had occurred. When relatives of those who had been killed tried to find out what happened to their loved ones, they were met with a wall of silence. Eisenhower, the man in charge of every aspect of the training exercise, never said a word about it in his best-selling memoirs.

  The veil of secrecy began as early as mid-morning on April 28, 1944, when most of the surviving ships of the LST flotilla reached shore. “When we got closer to land,” Corporal Eugene Carney of the 4th Infantry Division recalled, “we saw a long, sloping road leading down to the water. Ambulances were lined up bumper to bumper—a pitiful sight. We were unloaded from the ship and put into trucks before the dead and wounded were removed. We were told to keep our mouths shut and were taken to a camp where we were quarantined.”

  The secrecy continued when the wounded survivors of Exercise Tiger were taken to area hospitals. Captain Ralph Greene of the U.S. Army Medical Corps served in the laboratory of the 228th Station Hospital at Sherborne, Dorset. On the morning of April 28, he was going about his regular duties when an announcement was made that all personnel in the hospital were to assemble in the facility’s recreation room, where they would be addressed by the hospital’s commander, Colonel James Kendall.

  What a tense Kendall had to say came as a complete surprise. He announced,

  We’re in the war at last. In less than an hour we’ll receive hundreds of emergency cases of shock due to immersion, compounded by explosion wounds. SHAEF [Supreme Headquarters, Allied Expeditionary Force] demands that we treat these soldiers as though we’re veterinarians: you will ask no questions and take no histories. There will be no discussion. Follow standard procedures. Anyone who talks about these casualties, regardless of their severity, will be subject to court-martial. No one will be allowed to leave our perimeter until further orders.

  It was an astounding announcement, and if Greene or any of his fellow hospital staff members had any doubts about the seriousness of the situation, they were removed once they looked out one of the hospital’s windows. The entire compound had been surrounded by counterintelligence troops, each man carrying a bayoneted rifle.

  About half an h
our later, a host of ambulances and trucks began pulling up to the hospital. “They were filled,” remembered Greene, “with wet, shivering, blue-skinned, blanketed, and bandaged young Army and Navy men.” In the hours that followed, hundreds of men, many of them in great pain, were treated by the doctors, nurses, and orderlies without a single word being exchanged between them. Many of the patients responded quickly to the treatment. Many others required longer hospitalization. Others died.

  A few days later, the bizarre episode ended as abruptly and as mysteriously as it had begun when all the remaining patients were suddenly removed from the hospital. Neither Greene nor any of his fellow personnel had any idea of where they had come from or where they were taken. The code of silence remained unbroken.

  Unbeknownst to Greene, the same scenario had been played out in other hospitals and casualty stations throughout the southwestern corner of England. Wounded soldiers had suddenly arrived, hospital personnel were forbidden to talk with them, armed troops surrounded the hospital, and within days, whatever patients remained in the hospital were abruptly taken away.

  So powerfully had the military authorities emblazoned the need for secrecy on the survivors of Exercise Tiger that for decades they did not discuss it publicly. In an interview he gave more than thirty years after the events at Lyme Bay, Crapanzano stated that in all the years following the disaster he never told anyone about it, not even his psychiatrist.

  In 1974, many of the secrets of World War II became available through the passage of the Freedom of Information Act. By this time, the Exercise Tiger episode had been so long and so thoroughly buried that, despite the FOIA, it remained largely unreported. Greene, however, had never forgotten what he termed “that curious day” at the 228th Station Hospital. And in the early 1980s, while gathering material for a book he intended to write on the effects of malaria and hepatitis in World War II, he unexpectedly got the opportunity to try to satisfy a mystery that had perplexed him for more than forty years.

  Stumbling upon previously unrevealed accounts of Exercise Tiger, he decided to put his book on hold while he attempted to contact survivors of the episode named in the documents he had encountered. What he discovered was that those who responded to him, including Eugene Carney, were enormously relieved to at last be able to relate their stories.

  These initial accounts, when revealed, elicited a response from the British and American media that perhaps should have been expected. Typical of the statements included in newspaper reports and in a three-part report aired by a Washington, D.C., television station were such proclamations as: “It was a disaster which lay hidden from the world for forty years . . . an official American Army cover-up.” “That a massive cover-up took place is beyond doubt. And that General Dwight D. Eisenhower authorized it is equally clear.” “Generals Omar N. Bradley and Eisenhower watched the ‘murderous chaos’ and were horrified and determined that details of their own mistakes would be buried with the men.” “Relatives of the dead men have been misinformed—and even lied to—by their government.” “It was a story the government kept quiet . . . hushed up for decades . . . a dirty little secret of World War II.”

  Strong words—but was it really a cover-up? Or were there legitimate reasons why Exercise Tiger was cloaked in secrecy? In the 1980s, when more information about the ill-fated exercise became available, it became clear that there might well have been an important reason for strict suppression of information immediately following the disaster. Records revealed that among those aboard the eight LSTs were ten officers who had so-called Bigot-level clearance for the invasion of Normandy. That meant that they knew such vital details as the date and location of the assault. If, following the E-boat attacks, these men had been captured and made to reveal what they knew, it would have jeopardized the invasion.

  In the days following the Exercise Tiger disaster, divers were sent to Lyme Bay to check the bodies lying at the bottom of the bay, in the wreckage of the sunken LSTs, and in the tanks and other vehicles that rested there. The divers removed the dog tags from every body they found. Remarkably, when these tags were checked against the roster of those who had been aboard, it was discovered that every one of the “Bigoted” officers had been killed and had taken the secrets of D-Day with them.

  There could have also been other reasons for the suppression of information immediately following the disaster. The military may well have been determined to keep secret any clues that might link the rehearsals at Slapton Sands to the planned invasion of Utah Beach. But a giant question remains. Why the cloak of secrecy for the better part of forty years after World War II had ended? And why, in 1954, when the United States erected an obelisk to thank the people of Slapton Sands and its neighboring villages for leaving their homes, was there absolutely no mention of the hundreds of lives that had been lost?

  Another mystery that remains is more macabre. What happened to the bodies of the men who sacrificed their lives in the D-Day rehearsal? According to Slapton Sands resident Ken Small, who in the early 1970s conducted an extensive search for records of their interment, the only thing that is known is that some of the remains were buried near Cambridge, England, at a place called Madingley Hill. Other than that, according to Small, there are “virtually no records of the disposal of the bodies.”

  A SHERMAN TANK stands as a memorial for Allied soldiers killed during Exercise Tiger at Slapton Sands, Devon. The tank was raised from the sea in 1984.

  We do know, through accounts by survivors such as Eugene Carney, that immediately following the tragedy, scores of bodies were buried in temporary graves. And there is a seemingly reliable eyewitness account from a woman who swore that she saw a mass unmarked grave in a meadow close to Slapton Sands in which soldiers in American battle dress were buried. According to the woman, who visited the site often, the bodies were never exhumed. The U.S. Department of Defense, however, disputes that part of the woman’s testimony. According to the Pentagon, approximately 450 bodies were never recovered and still lie on the bottom of Lyme Bay. The Department of Defense agreed that more than three hundred bodies were buried in that mass grave, but by 1956 all had been secretly transferred to various official cemeteries. Again, if true, why the need for secrecy?

  What is unmistakable is that the operation known as Exercise Tiger was a major disaster from the very beginning. Even when the exercise was well over, the tragedy continued, as evidenced by the fate of Exercise Tiger’s last casualty—Rear Admiral Don P. Moon. Moon, the officer in charge of the naval part of the invasion rehearsal, was severely reprimanded by his superior in the presence of his own officers and reduced to a lesser command. He never recovered. Months later he took his own life, the only high-ranking American officer to commit suicide during World War II.

  The story of Exercise Tiger, deliberately hidden for so long and mostly forgotten today, is one that needs to be remembered. Out of the many tragic blunders that were committed came changes vital to D-Day’s success. Radio frequencies were standardized to prevent the type of tragic errors in communication that had plagued the ill-fated rehearsals.

  ON JUNE 1, 1944, five days before the D-Day invasion, artillery equipment is loaded aboard LSTs at Brixham, England.

  The conveyance of detailed instructions for the proper use of life belts was made mandatory on every type of naval vessel. New, more effective procedures for the rescue of survivors in the sea were created. All proved invaluable in the Normandy invasion. Most important, what must be recaptured from the lost pages of history is the story of the sacrifices made by so many who gave their lives to give their country and its allies their best chance of victory.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  The author is most indebted to Sterling editorial director Michael Fragnito for having suggested this book. Thanks are due also to Katherine Worten and Danielle Antosta for their valuable help. As always, Carol Sandler has been both a colleague and an inspiration.

  As with my previous Sterling books, I am also indebted to a host of dedi
cated and accomplished professionals who made this book possible, including, at Sterling, publisher Jason Prince, Associate Art Director Christine Heun, and production editor Andrea Santoro. Special thanks to copyeditor Lori Paximadis and proofreader Loretta Mowat.

  Finally, once again I have been blessed with having Barbara Berger as my editor. And again I find that there are no words adequate to express what Barbara’s insights, editing skills, and work ethic have brought to this book. Barbara—you are the best and I am deeply grateful.

  NOTES

  Preface

  IX “The only thing new in the world”: Merle Miller, Plain Speaking: An Oral Biography of Harry S Truman. (New York: Berkley Publishing, 1974.)

  IX “history can only live if one recovers”: Russell Potter, foreword to Resolute: The Epic Search for the Northwest Passage and John Franklin, and the Discovery of the Queen’s Ghost Ship, by Martin W. Sandler. (New York: Sterling Publishing Co., Inc., 2006.)

  Chapter 1: Ziryab

  1 “There never was, either before or after him”: Ahmad ibn Muhammad al-Makkari, as quoted in Yusef Ali, “The Music of the Moors in Spain,” in “Golden Age of the Moor,” ed. Ivan Van Sertima, Journal of African Civilizations 11 (1991).