The weather was not good. As predicted, somewhat before darkness fell, the wind moderated to about twenty knots, the skies partly cleared, and the waves in the Channel decreased somewhat—to about five feet in height. Even in the regular ocean-going transports, that was enough to make the average G.I. seasick. But in all the special landing craft—the small but shipshape 150 foot LCI(L)’s, the shallow draft LST’s, and the many variations of the flat-bottomed barge-like LCT’s, the troops embarked had a miserable voyage. For such small vessels, five and six foot high waves were heavy seas indeed; they had trouble maintaining course and speed; the G.I.’s in them were all soon badly under the weather. Long before they had cleared the YOKE rendezvous, and turned southward directly into the open Channel, they were a thoroughly seasick set of soldiers who would be landed for assault, come H-hour. Still, even that had some compensation. The desperately seasick men were too oblivious now to all else save their then retching stomachs to keep their imaginations on the terrors promised them by Goebbels on the Far Shore, now mile by mile getting closer as H-hour approached.
But to Rear Admiral Alan Kirk, Commander of the Western Naval Task Force, whose major job it was to get General Omar Bradley and his first U. S. Army to the Omaha and the Utah Beaches reasonably intact for the assault, H-hour was a problem hours away yet. Kirk had more pressing problems to engage his immediate attention. There were those lightning-fast Nazi E-boats, working out of Cherbourg, which had hit Exercise Tiger. As darkness fell, Kirk paced his bridge on the cruiser Augusta, his flagship, subconsciously keeping a wary eye on the sea to starboard. On that side lay Cherbourg. It was inconceivable that Admiral Theodor Krancke, German Naval Commander at Cherbourg, could be any longer unaware of the day long movement of such vast numbers of ships in the Channel hardly fifty miles to northward of him. He had radar, he had air reconnaissance, he had his fast patrol boats. One or all of these was bound to spot the movement, and it could not possibly be misinterpreted this time for a rehearsal headed for some point on English beaches. It could mean only one thing—the invasion was finally underway.
What that news would mean to Rommel, come H-hour, was General Bradley’s affair. Right now, what it meant to Admiral Krancke was what desperately concerned Kirk. For Krancke could be waiting only for cover of night to strike with everything’ he had. In the murky darkness, any moment now Kirk could expect hurtling destroyers and E-boats at 40 knots to come lunging suddenly at him out of the night, letting go salvos of torpedoes at the slow-moving columns of ships wallowing along in the wake of the minesweepers. With such a huge number of targets broadside to them, each torpedo could hardly miss hitting some ship. And the usual defenses for a vessel under torpedo attack—maneuvering evasively or sharply changing speed—would do none of his ships the slightest good. Such maneuvers would lead only to collisions in the darkness which could easily be as disastrous to life on his jam-packed transports as exploding torpedoes.
Kirk had but one defense—his own radar, and those on his destroyer screen. He must detect the impending attack while yet it was far outside torpedo range and smash it with his screening destroyers before it got within range. On the Augusta, on every flanking destroyer, the radar men sat with eyes fixed on their radar screens, intent on catching the first faraway pip of light which would signal an enemy destroyer or an E-boat making an approach.
But as the night wore on Kirk and his men gazed more and more incredulously at their radar screens. Not a single pip ever showed up!
Was it possible that from all over the south coast of England such tremendous numbers of ships could get to sea undetected by enemy radar, enemy reconnaissance planes, enemy patrol boats? They couldn’t believe it.
But it was so. The same foul weather that had tied knots in the Overlord schedule had put the enemy to sleep. For, lacking the weather information that Stagg had gathered from Greenland, from Iceland, and from the Azores, the Nazis had not the slightest intimation that there was in prospect for June 6 even a twenty-four hour break in the storm whipping up the Channel. To them, all through June 5 it looked from local indications as a bad gale bound to continue for some days.
Now to Nazis who believed firmly that June 1 having gone by without attack, no assault could be staged until June 15; and further that regardless of the moon, no assault anyway could take place in any such weather, ordinary vigilance seemed unnecessary. Since two nights before, when the storm first struck, no routine patrols had gone to sea from Cherbourg; no reconnaissance flights had been made from anywhere; and even the German radar, whatever the reasons (probably lack of vigilance) had picked up nothing at all of what was going on along the far side of the Channel. Nor for that matter any sign of what now by air and by sea was approaching Normandy this night of June 5.
How the Nazis, in view of this combination of conditions, regarded any probability of action on June 6 was well highlighted by three things. Rommel himself, en route to Obersalzburg in Austria for a personal conference with Hitler, was on June 6 stopping over at his own home near Ulm in Germany for the day—he wasn’t even in France, let alone with his armies in Normandy. Further, on June 5, because of bad weather Admiral Krancke had cancelled all mine laying and patrol operations out of Cherbourg harbor which had been already scheduled for that night. And finally, General Dollmann, Commander of Rommel’s Seventh Army, had revoked a practice invasion alert previously ordered for all troops along the Normandy coast for the night of June 5, so his subordinate commanders could attend a war game to be played on June 6 in the army map room in Rennes, a hundred miles to the south.
So it was. Between their own fixed conceptions as to what phase of the moon we might attack in, and their belief that no one could launch an attack in the foul weather that day lashing the Channel, the Nazis in Normandy failed wholly to detect and to oppose in any way, save by already placed minefields, the movement of our ships or of the planes carrying our paratroopers.
As the hours drew on toward midnight, Kirk’s fears about E-boats and destroyers slackened. If they were ever coming out, they should be attacking by then. Still, there was no slackening of the radar watch. However, there still remained somewhere ahead of him those sixteen Nazi minefields, laid during the last half of 1943 in the middle of the Channel by the enemy. Destroyers and E-boats, if your radar was good, you could detect in advance and if you were fast with your guns, you might counter. But minefields were different; there was never any advance warning. The first knowledge you had you were in a minefield was when the sweepers started to explode them, and (so you hoped) without themselves being blown sky-high. When your sweeping techniques were right for the type of mine in your path, the sweepers would explode them all safely astern of themselves. When the techniques your sweepers had didn’t suit the types of mines you encountered, or when some new type you had no gear to sweep appeared in your path, the results then were different and extraordinarily distressing. Both the minesweepers and the vessels following them, regardless of size, normally all disappeared amidst huge volcanoes of erupting flame and water.
But to the intense relief of every Navy man in the convoy from Kirk on down (not the least relieved of whom were the crews of the minesweepers themselves) no mines were encountered—or, at any rate, no live ones. Those original minefields were now so old that their detonating mechanisms apparently were no longer operative—there could be no other explanation of such luck. And to keep them that way, for months before, our vigilance in the open Channel had denied to Krancke any opportunity on a major scale to freshen up his minefields.
So to the incredulous amazement of all hands in the naval convoy, the invasion squadrons stood on across the Channel, undetected and unmolested in any way, either by torpedoes or by mines, thanks partly to the storm, partly to the vigilance which had prevented the laying of any new mines in those old fields. The Coast Guard picket boats found nothing to do on the crossing. They might just as well have stayed in the United States. Of all the thousands of G.I.’s conservatively estimated to re
quire rescue that night from the dark waters of the English Channel, not one man went overboard. But by most of the G.I.’s on the crossing, that bit’ of luck went unnoticed—they were too sick to care.
With the unmolested invasion fleet nearly all the way over on its passage toward the coast of Normandy, to the Nazi defenders still blissfully unaware of what was going on, there came a sudden awakening. At 0200 on the early morning of June 6 American paratroopers started to drop from the skies on the Cherbourg Peninsula well inland behind the Utah beachhead. Simultaneously, fifty miles away, British paratroopers began to rain down on both banks of the Orne, just east of Caen. Within minutes, in both sectors, German sentries sleepily walking their posts found themselves suddenly engaged in hand to hand actions in the fitful moonlight, trying to fight off blackened-face demons rushing to seize the nearby bridgeheads.
That began at 0200.
By 0215, Seventh Army Headquarters for all Normandy and Brittany at Le Mans was flashing out warnings, ordering the highest state of alert to every defense installation along the coast of Normandy from Caen in the east to Avranches at the western base of the Cherbourg Peninsula. Immediately, although it was miles away from where on the east and on the west startled Nazis inland were already battling paratroopers, the Atlantic Wall came suddenly to life. But its hastily turned out defenders, peering out from its defenses into the storm and the darkness to seaward saw nothing there to alarm them.
Beyond alerting its coastal defenses, Seventh Army Headquarters was still literally and figuratively in the dark as to what it should do next. So also was von Rundstedt himself, hastily routed out-of bed, to whom all this had instantly been transmitted at his headquarters in far-off Paris. What meant these two seemingly isolated air attacks, so far apart? Had a major invasion aimed at Normandy actually begun?
Von Rundstedt in Paris thought it over and concluded not. To him it was most likely a diversionary attack, intended to draw his main forces, the Fifteenth Army, away from the Pas de Calais. The instant he moved from there, Calais would be assaulted by Patron’s army in the real allied effort. He refused to be drawn off base. No troop movements of any nature from other areas to reinforce Normandy were to be made. Field Marshal von Rundstedt was not going to be made a fool of. The Seventh Army, with the forces on hand already in its sector, would cordon off and destroy the paratroopers attacking its flanks. It should not take long. Meanwhile, of course, the defenses of the Atlantic Wall should remain on the alert for whatever, if anything, might follow in that area during the night.
But if there was indecision in the German High Command as to what the paratroop attack portended, there was no indecision whatever among those gathered at Rennes as to what was indicated for them. Instantly the map exercise for the coming day was abandoned—the action for June 6 was not going to be on paper. Within a few minutes, out of Rennes, staff cars were on their way to the threatened front. Heading east toward his headquarters in Le Mans roared the car bearing Colonel General Friedrich Dollmann, commanding Seventh Army. Northward at high speed rushed other staff cars, headed first for St. Lô, where they would separate, bearing Generalleutnant Dietrich Kraiss, commanding the powerful 352nd Division, and Generalleutnant Karl-Wilhelm von Schlieben, commanding the troops defending Cherbourg and its Peninsula.
As these cars ran through the night for St. Lô, General der Artillerie Erich Marcks, whose 84th Corps was holding the areas attacked, had substantial cause to congratulate himself. With the blessing of Rommel himself on the change, he had already pulled that ragtag regiment, the 726th, composed half of substandard Germans, half of Russian and Polish “volunteers,” out of the line facing the beaches. And in their place, he had moved up from reserve in St. Lô to man the Atlantic Wall in that sector, not just a better regiment but instead an entire infantry division of three regiments, the 352nd, the very best he had. The 352nd, Generalleutnant Kraiss’ Division, were a fine outfit—battle-tested on the Russian front, well rested now in Normandy, superior fighting men.
And to top off all, he was sure the enemy had no knowledge even that they were there, though he had had the 352nd in place for weeks—long enough for them to become thoroughly familiar with all their guns and with the beach terrain before them. For by a freak, his security men had recently shot down a carrier pigeon bearing to England a message from a Resistance agent on recent Nazi troop movements in that area. Without that precious bit of intelligence on changes, the enemy would be unaware that the scum in the 726th, and not even scum enough properly to stretch over that front, no longer faced them there.
General der Artillerie Marcks, alone of all those commanding in Normandy, had reason to relax as the others rolled on toward St. Lô. Those paratroopers, east and west on the flanks of his 84th Corps, he would dispose of by morning. And that marriage of the elite 352nd Infantry Division with the Atlantic Wall which he had arranged lifted all remaining worries from his mind. Should von Rundstedt be wrong on the strategy involved, and should it be the Yankee intention really to assault the beaches lying between those paratroop drops, Eisenhower and his men were in for a startling surprise.
CHAPTER 20
Shortly before 0300, with the dreaded Channel crossing uneventfully behind them, Admiral Kirk’s forces separated. So far, on balance the storm had been a blessing. Force U, under Rear Admiral Moon, now turned with its transports southwestward toward the Utah Beach. Force O, under Rear Admiral Hall, kept on due south a few more miles until, still completely blacked out, it came to anchor a little over 12 miles offshore from the sands that were to become the Omaha Beach. This spot, so far out in the open sea, was chosen because at 25,000 yards it was expected to be just outside the effective range of that venomous battery of six 155’s at Pointe du Hoe. An anchorage not one-fourth as far offshore would have been vastly preferable, to avoid subjecting the troops to so long a voyage in small boats in such rough seas. But should they be detected, it was obviously suicidal to bring the transports while unloading within short range of so powerful a battery of howitzers as those on Pointe du Hoe.
With the wind still blowing from the northwest at around fifteen to twenty knots, the seas thereabouts running white-caps from three to five feet in height, and beneath a sky half overcast through which the moon showed only intermittently,’ the transports of Force O first put overboard their troop carrying LCVP’s, and then began in the darkness to offload their troops. About 35 men were assigned to each LCVP, six LCVP’s to each infantry company.
A cynic might have said that if anything more was necessary to make troops about to go into battle care less about whether they lived through it or died, it was promptly provided by that shattering period of being loaded into pitching LCVP’s from transports rolling in the open seas. The LCVP’s, precariously held alongside by bow and stern lines, leaped and jerked erratically amongst the waves sliding by. Meanwhile the overburdened G.I.’s, each now further encumbered by an inflated Mae West buckled around his middle, clambered down the scramble nets to drop into an LCVP, there to cling desperately to the gunwales, struggling to hold some kind of footing till the remainder of his outfit had come down the scramble nets into the LCVP and they could cast loose. They thought they were seasick already from their rough crossing. Now that they were being packed into small landing craft gyrating violently among those waves, preparatory to twelve more miles of the same or worse on the long run to the beach, their tortured stomachs began to show them what it was really to be seasick.
Meanwhile, the minesweepers which had led the fleet across the Channel steamed closer in and in the darkness began to sweep parallel to the coast line, clearing the water there for the bombarding warships to operate in for the preliminary naval bombardment. Behind them, the larger warships inched slowly in to their firing positions—the battleship Texas with her 14-inch guns on the western side to take Pointe du Hoe under fire; the battleship Arkansas with 12-inch guns on the eastern side to engage a battery at Port-en-Bessin between the British and the American beachheads; a
nd the heavy cruiser Augusta, Kirk’s flagship, with her 8-inch guns about opposite the middle of the beach. Eight destroyers, their convoy duties over, moved closer in even than the big ships, preparing also for their part in the barrage of shells that was to keep down the fire from the guns on the cliffs when the landing craft ran in.
The Nazis of that tough outfit, the 352nd Infantry Division, manning the casemates and trenches fringing the cliff tops and bluffs, all alerted now to the fact that far to east and west of them paratroop landings had taken place inland, looked anxiously to seaward in the darkness but saw nothing at all there to alarm them. Nevertheless, twelve miles out the unloading of troops into LCVP’s was furiously going on, nine miles out the battleships were taking station, and three miles out the line of LCT’s that were to launch the 64 DD tanks for the close-in artillery support were ranging themselves opposite their intended strips of beach. All this took nearly two hours, but with every vessel concerned still completely blacked-out it went on totally unobserved from shore.
Sunrise was due on June 6 at 0558. The tide would be low at 0525. H-hour was set for 0630, about an hour after dead low water. Dawn and the first light sufficient for some visibility should come at 0530. At H-40, that is, at 0550, the assault on the beachhead was to open with the naval bombardment, thus allowing about 20 minutes after dawn for the light to strengthen enough for decent visibility. Ten minutes before this, at 0540, the 64 DD’s, which were no speedboats, were to go overboard for their three mile swim in to the shore. This allowed them forty-five minutes to get to the beachhead waterline, there to open fire on the enemy guns above them at H-5, five minutes before the spearhead of the first infantry wave touched down there at H-hour.
Meanwhile, General Bradley, looking down into the darkness from the Augusta’s bridge at the waves washing by, began to have qualms as to whether all would go as planned with an assault predicated on fine weather. They were having, as a fact, the break in the storm predicted by Captain Stagg, but even so, no one but a moron could call this any weather suitable for a sea borne invasion. Admiral Kirk had suggested that among those waves, the DD’s might not prove as seaworthy as in rehearsal on the Slapton Sands in Devonshire. Bradley gazed dubiously at those foam-crested waves, rolling endlessly by to disappear into the windy night. What would such waves do to the flimsy canvas wings that made his tanks amphibious? And if, as seemed likely, those waves did what seemed probable to his DD tanks, what would the G.I.’s on the beachhead do without their close-in artillery support? But to Bradley on the Augusta it looked too late for-him now to do anything, though the landing craft bearing those DD’s were still within a few miles of him. It was, he felt, up to the junior officers on the DD’s themselves and in the LCT’s carrying them, to decide what to do; and to the G.I.’s in the LCVP’s to take the consequences of those decisions.
The Far Shore Page 19
