He could look off through his binoculars at the beach and could see nothing at all that meant anything to him. Between low visibility, smoke and dust, all he could clearly make out was the distant crestline of the bluffs—beyond that, nothing of what was going on there could be seen. And as for hearing, the portable radio transmitters sent in by the dozens with the units of the first wave to tie operations together and to keep him informed as to what was happening on the beach, were all strangely totally silent. Not a word from his men on the beach itself. What little news he got were scraps picked up on the Navy network from landing craft skippers or naval beach commanders talking to each other—about their own situations, all of which were desperate.
Gerow, commanding the Vth Corps, had sent his Assistant Chief of Staff, Colonel Benjamin Talley, in on a Dukw behind the first wave to report to him by radio from the beach as to the progress of the battle.
But Talley from his Dukw swiftly saw that if he ever landed on that beach, he’d be instantly immobilized. The most of the battle he’d ever see would be only what little happened within a few yards either side of where he chose to touch down. And even that much he’d never be able to report to Gerow, for his radio set would be soaked and useless, if by a miracle he ever managed actually to get it in through the breakers and then through the obstacles.
So Colonel Talley prudently decided to stay in his Dukw along with his radio equipment, cruise up and down about 500 yards off the beach, see what he could, and report what he saw.
Even from 500 yards off, visibility across the rough water from a low freeboard Dukw turned out to be none too good. And what he could see, both during his approach and later as he scanned the sands, was none too good either—swamped Dukws, swamped DD’s, sunken landing craft, heavy enemy artillery fire, furious machine gun fire, corpses washing up on the beach, G.I.’s struggling through the obstacles to the shingle, only finally and firmly to be pinned down there without ever getting near the enemy on the bluffs. Talley’s reports, no more pessimistic than he could help, went sketchily in to Gerow who sent them along to Bradley:
“Obstacles mined, progress slow. 1st Battalion, 116th, reported 0748 being held up by machine gun fire—two LCT’s knocked out by artillery fire. DD tanks for Fox Green swamped.”
(The two LCT’s referred to were those carrying eight tanks destroyed in front of the Vierville Draw by the guns of Pointe de la Percée; Fox Green was the beach before the Colleville Draw.)
Talley’s reports were certainly models of understatement—to say “progress slow” where there was no progress at all, was surely not being unduly pessimistic. But Talley, considerably handicapped in observation, was cautious as to what he reported—he did not care to make things sound worse than he was certain they were, and he could not be very certain as to most of what he saw.
An officer in a naval fire support party, scanning from a short distance offshore the same beach that Talley was looking at, reported on it a little later in much more forthright language:
“Troops were plainly visible on the beach lying in the sand. So were the dead. Heavy machine gun fire coming from enemy positions halfway up the hill. Troops were unable to advance.”
With great faith in the rockets on the LCT(R)’s behind him, his solution for breaking what to him seemed a deadlock in the battle was to request permission to lay down another rocket barrage and smash those obstreperous enemy machine gun positions on the bluffs. Those, he reasoned correctly enough, were the main cause of the trouble.
But the Army higher command, properly enough dubious of how accurately any rocket barrage might be controlled, refused permission. Rockets were certainly deadly enough weapons, but what if the barrage fell short? There were our own men pinned down on the sands who would then be obliterated. And, as it was hopefully phrased in the refusal, even if it didn’t ‘fall short we had to have regard for the safety of our assault troops “who may have filtered through.”
So no permission was given for more rockets.
And that, as the morning wore on, was all the information on the battle transmitted across the Channel to Eisenhower, sweating it out even farther from the scene of battle in his headquarters overlooking Portsmouth. Essentially, what little came to him over his elaborately prepared battle radio communications network added up only to this—negligible progress, troops pinned down on the sands, disaster to the tanks.
Fitting those dismal bits against the background of the one fact incontestably known to all in the higher command—that the assault had been laid on in spite of the storm—gave substance to the comment made then by one of the staff at Portsmouth—the gloom at SHAEF was so thick you could cut it with a knife.
And, no doubt, though none of his staff had any knowledge even of its existence, Eisenhower himself, nervously fingering the announcement he had written and shoved into his pocket the day before, was beginning to wonder how soon he would have to pull out that confession of culpability for defeat and publish it.
Had Eisenhower known how it looked then to von Rundstedt, who had a plethora of first hand information, his worst fears would have been confirmed. He might well have felt then and there that the time had come to release that announcement.
For the Nazi Commander of the casemated fortifications at Pointe de la Percée, the one man on either side who really had a ringside seat at this battle, giving him an unexcelled view of the entire beach, having surveyed the scene before him with complete satisfaction, had just sent in his report. He saw the American troops ashore (the few that had got that far) firmly pinned down by machine gun fire, seeking what shelter they could behind the shingle and the obstacles. He observed that ten tanks he could count, and “a great many other vehicles” he couldn’t count were burning. The fire of his own guns, as well as that of the other artillery emplaced on the bluffs, he felt had been excellent. There were those two burning LCI(L)’s as well as the smashed tanks and numerous other wrecks as proof. The sands below him were strewn with American dead and wounded. The defenses of the Atlantic Wall were intact.
All this he passed on to the headquarters of Generalleutnant Kraiss, commanding the 352nd Division. From there it was passed along to General der Artillerie Erich Marcks, commanding the 84th Corps. Marcks noted it and sent it on up to von Rundstedt—the Allied assault on the Atlantic Wall in what we called the Omaha Beach had been hurled back into the sea.
CHAPTER 25
It happened that on the far right of the assault, on its far left, and in a few spots more or less in the middle, some officers still remained alive with their men, and with enough of their shot-up units still together to react to orders.
On the far right, Captain Ralph Goranson, out of the original sixty-five men who composed his Company C of the 2nd Rangers, had managed to get the twenty-three who had survived the frightful strafing on the beach to shelter at the foot of the cliff between Pointe de la Percée and the Vierville Draw. Directly above him lay the westernmost strongpoint on the Omaha Beach.
On the far left, Company L of the 16th Infantry, commanded now by Lieut. Robert Cutler, Jr. (his company commander had just been killed) had also around half his company still left, about a hundred men, situated at the eastern end of the beach. The easternmost strongpoint of the beach defenses was just above him on the bluff.
Between the St. Laurent and the Colleville Draws, Companies E and G of the 16th Infantry, each still about half intact, lay behind the shingle, together with a disorganized mass of men who comprised a good part of what else was left of the regiment that had been the pride of the First Division, the veteran 16th Infantry. Into this area with the second wave came the regimental commander, Colonel George Taylor.
Between the Vierville Draw and les Moulins, Lieut. Colonel Schneider with his 5th Rangers, and Company C of the 116th Infantry, were together jammed up against the seawall. Into this area, also with the second wave, came Colonel Charles Canham, commanding the 116th Regiment, and Brigadier General Norman Cota, Assistant Division Commander
of the 29th Division to which the 116th Infantry belonged.
None of these groups could see any of the others, nor was there any communication or coordination possible between them—their only common factor in what they all did next was that they still had officers, and the officers had men enough, still together, to do something with. Each group acted in complete ignorance of what might be going on elsewhere. Its driving motive was to get itself well inland to the line there it was supposed to defind against imminent counterattack in the afternoon. But each group (except one) was handicapped by lack of exact knowledge as to what lay above it on the bluffs that it must first assault. The landings had all been hopelessly scrambled, and all their previous briefing was therefore worthless.
Action started on the right.
Captain Goranson and his handful of Rangers, practically alone of all those along the beachhead, knew exactly where they were and what defensive positions the Germans had above them. Before them was the vertical cliff between Pointe de la Percée and the Vierville Draw. Above them lay the western maze of machine gun nests protecting the Vierville Draw, which had already killed over half their company as they came in to beach, and which had power enough easily to dispose of the remaining two dozen should they assault it. By all the laws of logic, Goranson and his men should have stayed below, clinging for shelter to the base of the cliff.
Goranson and his Rangers had come prepared for mountain climbing. Lieut. William Moody and two men started west, hugging the cliff base, looking for a spot in the face of that precipice offering possibilities. Three hundred yards toward Pointe de la Percée they found one—a crevice. There, hand over hand, using bayonets to dig in for handholds, they made it to the top—ninety feet up. Moody had brought along four toggle ropes. These he secured to stakes in a minefield near the crest, and all was ready. Moody went back along the ridge, under small arms fire now from the Vierville Draw, to above where Goranson and the rest of the company were clustered at the base, then shouted down directions to them. Clinging to the cliff base for shelter, the men went west to the ropes, then like a troop of jungle apes, clambered up the toggles—hardly two dozen men to face whatever they might find above.
While Goranson, intending to be last man up, was watching his Rangers ascending the swaying ropes, he spotted a lost LCVP, loaded with men of Company B, 116th Infantry, which should have been landing directly in front of the Vierville Draw (where they would undoubtedly all have immediately been cut to pieces), landing instead on the rocky beach near him. Here was luck. Goranson sent a Ranger to guide the whole boatload to his ropes—he could use those men; now his tiny force would be doubled.
But without waiting for these reinforcements to get ashore and up the ropes, Goranson himself climbed up and with only his two dozen Rangers started for the German trenches. Of the vast invasion army, these were the first Americans to scale the cliffs at Omaha and come to grips with the Nazis manning the Atlantic Wall.
A weird battle ensued. Topping the cliff just beyond its crest, protecting the western flank of the Vierville Draw, was a fully-manned zigzag maze of trenches and dugouts cut into the rock. Machine gun nests and a mortar position stiffened up the trench lines—a position deadly in its fire power, as the landings attempted before the Vierville Draw had already proved, and an impregnable position to assault frontally. But on its right, with an abandoned stone house in between, was another trench, also abandoned, as the Germans apparently feared no attack from the western flank. There they considered the vertical cliff face an unsurmountable obstacle to attackers.
First dropping his men into this empty German trench, Goranson used it as a point of departure for initially feeling out and then for assaulting the manned trenches to the east on the other side of the house, and a series of ferocious battles promptly ensued. Four times Goranson’s men surged out of their trench, broke into the German positions, smashed the elaborately concreted mortar post there, and cleaned out the defenders. But each time, hardly were they in occupation than German reinforcements came through communicating trenches from the Vierville Draw and the savage fight for those trenches started all over again.
For some hours Goranson’s men fought grimly on, while the possession of the main German trenches passed back and forth, knowing that here at least they were dealing out more than they were getting. And knowing further that since they had first opened their attack, not another machine gun bullet had been fired from that strongpoint upon the beaches below to carry on the slaughter to which they themselves had been exposed.
Finally no enemy reenforcements remained to come a fifth time from the Vierville Draw—they had bled its reserves white. Captain Goranson was left at long last in unmolested possession of all that network of German trenches. That section of the Atlantic Wall was unlikely ever again to figure in Dr. Goebbels’ radio programs—when the new occupants counted up, they could scarcely believe it—they had themselves suffered just two casualties, but sixty-nine of the enemy lay dead in the position the Nazis had been unable to hold.
Captain Goranson, leaving the men of Company B to hold the trenches, hastily collected his Rangers and moved out to proceed overland to Pointe du Hoe. Somewhere in that vicinity he had a rendezvous with Lieut. Colonel Rudder and some other Rangers; already he was late for it.
Meanwhile on the far left of the Omaha Beach, Lieut. Cutler and what he had left of Company L of the 16th Infantry, decided also to get off the beach. In a way, though they were in a strange territory on which they had no briefing, they were favored a little by luck. The beach road, beyond which the Nazis had strung coils of concertina wire, turned inland short of their position. There was, therefore, no such barbed wire in front of them, any more than there had been in front of Goranson’s position at the other end of the beach. But there were minefields to be wary of.
And Lieutenant Cutler had some further luck. With the second wave, there had been landed near him one of the Naval Shore Fire Control Parties (designated as NSFCP’s), intended promptly to pass inland with the troops they were assigned to, to assist in naval fire support on inland objectives. But since nobody was passing inland (yet, anyway) that NSFCP eagerly attached itself to Cutler’s force. Was there anything it could do for him?
There was. A couple of thousand yards offshore was a destroyer, its guns all silent, waiting impatiently a chance to help. Would the NSFCP get in touch with that destroyer, lay its fire on the strongpoint above them on the bluff, while Cutler’s men, under cover of that fire, moved up to assault it? The NSFCP would and did. In a moment, beneath salvos of destroyer shells bursting atop that bluff, the men of Company L began their attack, helped by bits and pieces of four other companies in the vicinity. And helped further by the fire of two tanks still in action on the left end of the beachhead, which for the first time were given a chance really to assist in covering an infantry attack.
Cutler developed a beautifully coordinated assault. While the destroyer fire and that of the two tanks kept down the fire from the strongpoint, three sections of Company L advanced up a slight draw a little to the right of the strong-point, shielded from view by heavy brush. With only minor losses, in spite of having to cross minefields, they got to the top of the bluff and spread out a trifle inland and directly behind the strongpoint.
Meanwhile, scattered groups of Companies E (of the 116th, which belonged on the western end of the beach, three miles away) and of I, K, and M (of the 16th), all directed by Captain Richmond of Company I, senior surviving officer of what was left of his battalion, were massed in a second assault group which moved straight up the bluff toward the strongpoint against the now negligible enemy fire, till they brought up just below it.
At that point, Cutler’s men behind and Richmond’s in front had the strongpoint in a nutcracker. But they couldn’t close it; there was that destroyer’s fire, a vital aid till now, still bursting on the strongpoint itself.
From on top, the men of Company L phoned the beach they were ready to assault if the naval fire
were lifted.
NSFCP radioed the destroyer to cease fire. It did, and so did the tanks. And then matters happened lightning fast. Before the Germans sheltering from the destroyer fire in their dugouts could swarm out and get back to their guns, and before even the men from Company L behind could get to the strongpoint, it was stormed from the front by the troops below. Hand grenades and satchel charges swiftly ended all resistance in the German trenches and the machine-gun emplacements; thirty-one Nazis still able to walk, with hands held high above their heads as assurance of submission, straggled out of the trenches as prisoners.
And that finished off the strongpoint on the far eastern end of the beachhead. Captain Richmond and Lieutenant Cutler started inland with their conglomeration of men from both ends of the battle line, to take up their assigned defensive position inland.
So now at either end of the beachhead, the flanking strong-points had been knocked out, and the attackers were moving inland. Meanwhile, there was action also in the middle.
Between the St. Laurent and the Colleville Draws, the major units of the 16th Infantry which had made it that far were banked up against the shingle fringing the beach road. The seawall itself did not come that far east.
Conditions behind the shingle were bad. With the case-mated guns of the St. Laurent Draw on the right, and those of the Colleville Draw on the left, the already demoralized men behind the shingle were exposed to enfilading fire from both sides should they stay behind the shingle, and to the fire of a dozen machine gun nests on the bluffs in front of them should they leave the shingle to advance across the road to the concertina wire on its far side. The net result was a huddled mass, too stunned to move.
In these circumstances, two different officers organized advances. Second Lieut. John Spalding, who had managed to get through on the first wave with part of what had been his original section of Company E of the 16th Infantry, saw facing him directly across the beach road what looked like a small draw running at a slight angle up the face of the bluff. If only he could get to that, he might stage an advance, shielded from the fire of the strongpoints to his right and to his left, and get up on the plateau beyond, in between those strongpoints.
The Far Shore Page 24
