The Far Shore

by Edward Ellsberg

  And right at the foot of the bluffs labored the burial parties, clearing the beach of the dead G.I.’s. Temporarily the bodies, wrapped only in their blankets, were hastily being tossed into the wide anti-tank ditches the Nazis had dug to block access to the roads up the draws; bulldozers then pushed a thin covering of sand over, to fill that impromptu mass grave. More formal burial would have to wait more settled conditions on the beach.

  But if the view of the beach itself looked hopeless, offshore, at least, there were visible and marked signs of the improvements Captain Clark had already wrought. Paralleling the shore, from les Moulins to the eastward, the sunken ships forming the Gooseberry breakwater were mostly in place—a magnificent shelter, already operating to speed up unloading by protecting from the waves and the surf the myriad of small craft beaching to discharge before the St. Laurent and the Colleville exits.

  And off the westerly half of the beach fronting the Vierville Draw also lay the substantial beginnings of the Phoenix breakwater—almost a quarter of a mile of concrete wall already, standing boldly out against the sea. In its lee were anchored temporarily some of the floating pierheads and a number of the Whales that already had arrived—those links of steel bridging, 480 feet long each, that were to connect up the Lobnitz pierheads with the beach. Clark was obviously making unusual progress.

  It seemed from a look at the devastation on the beach that there was urgent need of it. Bradley’s carefully worked out assault schedule for getting ashore immediately a huge amount of artillery and ammunition to back up his men must have been sadly set back on its heels by what obviously had been a catastrophe in the attack. Both in the men and in the tonnage, so confidently counted on in the first few days for his build-up, he was clearly terrifically behind. In a situation where originally he had had no margin of safety anyway, now he was in imminent peril. Unless he could swiftly make up that deficit in his fighting power, Rommel, no mean antagonist, once again back in Normandy to direct the defense, would shortly knock him flat in counterattack with his Panzers, and then massacre the whole invading force in a debacle to which Dunkirk would be nothing. And perhaps, do it even if that deficit were swiftly made up. For Rommel with his Panzers behind him was a name to conjure with—plenty of the wizardry which had earned him the title of The Desert Fox, still clung to Rommel. It would take a vastly superior and a superbly armed force ever to defeat him in the field. Bradley knew that.

  Looking at that battered beachhead, it was easily obvious what was bothering Bradley.

  CHAPTER 30

  I found Captain Clark aboard an LCI which had been converted to a headquarters ship, and informed him I had moved my base of operations as a consultant to the Far Shore. Did there happen to be anything on the Far Shore respecting either the Phoenixs or Operation Mulberry that once more he would like to consult on?

  There very certainly was, and Clark further added that it was a pleasure to him to see me. I wished I might have said the same about him, but I couldn’t—it was a shock to me to see him—positively cadaverous now, with sunken eyes and a voice so hoarse it was absolutely raw; it did not seem possible he could have had even one minute’s sleep since D-Day morning.

  It was evident now how so much progress had been made in so few days in getting that breakwater of sunken ships in place under fire and so many Phoenixs already sunk as a shield for the landing craft. Captain Clark had been driving himself inhumanly and every man under him mercilessly day and night, first to get those vital breakwaters in, then behind them the rest of the Artificial Harbors. If no one else there in the Navy understood what Mulberry meant and what depended on its early functioning, Clark, at least, understood it very clearly.

  The lives of a vast army of G.I.’s, compared to which even all those sacrificed on D-day to gain a foothold on the beach were as a corporal’s guard, were hanging in the balance. Which way that balance swung depended now wholly on who should win in the build-up for the massive battle soon to come. Clark wasn’t sparing anyone’s body or feelings in Mulberry, least of all his own, to insure that the winner should not be Rommel.

  Well, what was his problem?

  Clark explained, and further that he had to have a solution in a hurry, so that he might get going with his pierheads, on which now he was stymied.

  His dilemma was this:

  The floating pierheads had been designed for three seperate floating roadways (or Whales) running from the floating pierheads some 3000 feet more or less in to the beachhead, to provide three wholly independent traffic lanes going ashore.

  But the loads to be taken ashore varied from battle-ready Sherman tanks weighing 38 tons, to a vast number of combat-loaded trucks and lightly armored vehicles all weighing under 25 tons. A sensible solution would have been to design and build all the roadway bridge sections and the pontoons on which they floated for loads of 40 tons—then any vehicle or tank could be run ashore indiscriminately on any one of the three roadways. But steel was very scarce in wartime England and to save some, the British designers had cut their solutions very thin—they had designed and built two of the three Whale roadways to take only 25 ton loads; the third roadway alone had been built with steel trusses and supporting pontoons massive enough for the 38 ton loads of the tanks. Since there would be far more trucks than tanks, they considered that satisfactory—when there were many trucks and no tanks, the trucks would have all three roadways to get ashore on. And when an LST loaded with Sherman tanks came in, the whole of the 40 ton roadway (the western one of the three) would be reserved for the tanks—the trucks would then have the use of only the other two.

  And that way the British had saved some of their scanty stock of steel. And they had saved a lot more (much to my distress when first I saw it on the Near Shore) by building many of the supporting pontoons, both for the 25 and for the 40 ton trusses, out of an eggshell type concrete instead of all out of the far sturdier steel plate.

  Now came the hitch. On the Near Shore, there had been trouble enough keeping the Whale links, borne up on those concrete eggshells, from partly submerging whenever one of those eggshells cracked and sprung a leak. That had been bad enough. But on the Channel crossing, there had been disaster. Under the motion of the open sea and the pounding of the steel trusses resting on them, more of these concrete eggshells had crushed or cracked and some of the Whale links had gone to the bottom of the Channel. So now there just weren’t enough 40 ton links left afloat even to run that one 40 ton roadway far enough in to reach the shore. Unless some solution could be found, the main value of the floating pierheads would be lost—no tanks at all could be unloaded on them—just the trucks, which were less important.

  Clark pointed out he had considered inserting into the 40 ton roadway, sections enough to be stolen from one of the 25 ton Whales to lengthen it as necessary, leaving him finally with two roadways only. He believed that the steel trusses designed only for 25 tons had margins of safety enough to stand up under the tank loads of 38 tons, but there were still those 25 ton pontoons to be considered; they seemed to have little reserve buoyancy. They were his headache; would they float if 38 ton loads came on them instead of the 25 tons they were intended to support? Or would they promptly submerge completely and drop his roadway, tanks and all, into the sea?

  Clark looked at me somberly. I was a salvage man; I ought to know all about pontoons. Would these very peculiarly shaped and constructed things the British had given him in the guise of pontoons still float or would they sink if he overloaded them by 60%? In other words, was he going to have the D-day tank disaster all over again, except that this time, instead of their canvas wings collapsing under the DD’s and submerging them, it would be his Whale pontoons submerging under the General Shermans and going down into the sea with both the tanks and his roadway? Would I kindly give him the anwer to that?

  I saw that—a proper enough question. If Clark would provide me with a small boat from which I might work while surveying those pontoons, I would provide him with the answe
r—pronto.

  Clark got me the boat—one of the small skiffs he had to run out mooring lines for his Whales. In that tiny tub, I was soon afloat in the waters of our new harbor, under one of the steel trusses of a 25 ton Whale link, studying the pontoons supporting them.

  They were oddly shaped affairs on top, resembling a huge cabochon ruby in their peculiar faceting—no very simple solid on which quickly to calculate buoyancy volumes as they sank deeper under additional load. And it was swiftly obvious that should a 38 ton tank load come on that pontoon, it would submerge down to that cabochon top, which had never been expected to go under water at all. Under an added weight of at least 13 tons, was there buoyancy enough in that cabochon top to float 13 tons, and a little more for safety, or would the whole thing promptly submerge under such an overload and head for the bottom?

  Here was a neat problem in solid geometry, which would have intrigued Euclid himself. I crawled all over the top of that pontoon, getting measurements. And when finally I had them, I went back to Clark’s LCI(H), where I was given a tiny stateroom to serve both as quarters and office, and turned to on calculations. Fortunately, I’d brought a slide rule.

  The figuring took me most of the night. When it was done, and I went out for a final look at Omaha Beach in the dark before turning in, to my surprise there was Clark himself in his own cabin, still awake and poring over dispatches.

  I looked at Clark in astonishment. Didn’t the man ever sleep?

  But all Clark, brusque as always, wanted to know was when would I get back to my figuring and produce that answer for him? By daylight, he hoped?

  I told him he could have it then. And the answer was—Yes. Those 25 ton pontoons would remain afloat, though only by an eyelash, under a 38 ton load, but I would guarantee they would remain afloat. All that would be necessary to unload the General Shermans over them would be to have plenty of M.P.’s on the floating roadway as traffic police to see the Sherman tanks stayed at least 160 feet apart (the length of two trusses) and never exceeded a speed of 5 miles per hour. So wide an interval was required between tanks to prevent the weights of two Sherman tanks ever coming simultaneously on one pontoon, while the slow speed was necessary to avoid any dynamic loads that might submerge a barely afloat pontoon. With those precautions, it could be done.

  I turned in. Captain Clark, I imagine, stayed up through what little was left of that night to compile a new schedule for installing Whales, mixing 25 ton links as necessary with his 40’s to make a complete roadway. That seemed to cover all he wanted of me—then, anyway. I got a few hours sleep.

  I found a few other things to do the next day, and on the days following—mainly in the salvage of D-day damaged craft, no one of itself of any great difficulty, but in the mass quite a problem.

  On that, over the next few days I struggled aiding Captain Chauncey Camp, NOIC for the Omaha Beach, and the slight salvage forces the Navy had there under its beach-salvage officer, Lieut. Henri. They might profitably have used a far greater force than the few allotted them—but I suppose the Navy had never envisioned the terrific destruction of that D-day landing.

  During that period on the beachhead, I became exceedingly wary of mines. While the Nazis had not mined the sands up to the shingle and the beach road, still it was unwise even on them to assume they were safe—unexploded Teller mines washed in from the obstacles might be anywhere under the sand. It was the part of prudence to move only where you could step in Dukw tracks or areas already flattened by the bulldozers.

  But beyond the beach road and up the four main draws, it was suicide to move outside the lanes marked with white tapes, where the engineers with mine detectors had done their best to remove or explode the hidden mines. Still, even there, there was no assurance of safety—several Dukws and their crews had been blown up proceeding up the Vierville Draw and three G.I.’s on foot, unfortunately too near a truck when it set off a mine in the same area, had been blown to bits.

  So if you wanted to stay alive, aside from avoiding the beach areas being shelled from inland by the Nazis, it was wise when on a road to stay on the pavement, and when off one, to proceed only in the wheeltracks of some truck which had gone before, or not to proceed at all.

  Still in spite of caution, it didn’t always work. Several days after my arrival, going inland up the Colleville Draw (which that far in from the beach had a paved road) a truck convoy headed for the shore came down the other way. The driver of the leading truck, a ten wheeled affair with dual rear axles and double tires except on his front wheels, carefully hugged the pavement, even though on the stone walls bordering each side of the road ran a white tape, indicating the road shoulders had been cleared of mines all the way out to those tapes.

  As luck would have it, just as the rear of his truck, came abreast of me, a double outside tire on his right rear end running just off the pavement went over an undetected Teller mine, not ten feet from me.

  When the stunning effect of that blast had passed enough to let me think again, and I saw alongside me the wreck of the rear end of that truck, and the gap blown in the stone wall just outboard of it, I could hardly believe I was myself left still alive and in one piece.

  Even if I hadn’t before, from then on I had a most wholesome respect for Nazi mines, to those of us left on Omaha Beach still a deadly peril. But my experience gave me also one slight comfort—if one of those mines did actually get you, you were dead before you realized even what was happening to you.

  Meanwhile, as I worked ashore on beach salvage, I watched the startling growth of the Phoenix breakwater, and in its lee, the speedy installation of the Lobnitz pierheads. By this time also, Commander And had his floating breakwater, the Bombardons, all moored in a long line outside the Phoenixs, giving some moderate shelter out there to vessels being unloaded.

  It was amazing to observe the effect obtained inside the Gooseberry and the Phoenix breakwaters on unloading. Gone now were the waves in the inner harbor and with them were gone also the surf and the breakers pounding the beach. Aside from the anticipated help in allowing safe unloading of LCT’s and LCM’s, the smaller types of landing craft, a wholly unexpected result also followed.

  Previously, to General Bradley’s intense disgust, Admiral Kirk and the Navy had firmly opposed the beaching of its big tank landing ships, its LST’s, for direct unloading on the shore, fearing (with good reason) that on those uneven sands and with normal wave action, they would pound and break their backs. The big LST’s weren’t that expendable. But with wave action washed out by the breakwaters, and with the combat engineers and their bulldozers quickly smoothing out the sands just below highwater mark opposite the Colleville and the St. Laurent exits, an entirely new complexion was put on the beaching situation.

  It was found then by trial, under pressure from Bradley to make up for the deficit in tonnage discharged in the days immediately following D-day, that with the breakwaters in and the sands levelled, an LST brought in at high tide could swiftly discharge directly to the beach, and at the next high tide, float off, safe and undamaged. And with that, ferrying cargoes in from LST’s ceased—they all started coming in to beach themselves. And that helped two ways; first, the LST’s discharged more quickly, and second, all the ferrying craft were released to help unload ordinary freighters which couldn’t come up on the beach, drop their ramps, and unload. As a result, by D + 5 the tonnage unloaded at Omaha jumped to 7100 tons per day against a target of 8000 tons daily for the, fully completed harbor, something not anticipated till D + 12. So by D + 5, through the extraordinary efforts of Captain Clark on breakwaters and of the combat engineers with their bulldozers on beach clearance, the tonnage landed through Mulberry had nearly reached the goal set for a week later.

  Bradley, fighting fiercely inland now to link up his Omaha beachhead with that of Utah on his right and with that of the British on his left, before Rommel could gather force enough to prevent it, was beginning to catch up at least on the wherewithal to hold his own. Already, to t
he puzzlement of the Germans facing him, he had guns and shells enough ashore to match their artillery shell for shell. That, they could not understand.

  Mulberry was beginning to pay off.

  CHAPTER 31

  Field Marshal Erwin Rommel was considerably perturbed. A factor he had not previously attached any weight to had upset his carefully planned defense of the Atlantic Wall. Hitler, in a rage, had demanded of him a detailed explanation of the failure. Why had not the invaders been thrown back into the sea?

  Before Rommel now was the simple explanation, furnished by General Kraiss of the 352nd Division on whom had fallen the assault—heavy naval guns. All his cunningly concealed casemates had been smashed by heavy shells from battleships offshore, blasted off the cliffs by more of their heavy shells, or penetrated by direct hits on their armored shields by destroyer shells from close in—all directed by naval fire control groups on the beach. And in addition, so the 352nd Division felt, minefields on which they had every reason to count confidently to protect all approaches to their strongpoints, both up the bluff faces and in behind their positions on the plateaus, had been exploded by the preliminary naval bombardment of those same warships. The enemy must have had advance knowledge of precisely where those minefields were—that bombardment had destroyed practically all the major ones, and exposed the defenders to enemy infantry infiltrations up the bluff faces, which had then captured such trenches and strongpoints as the naval guns had not already destroyed.

  But Rommel had more on his mind now than that report to be forwarded to der Fuehrer. After all, Rommel was an outstanding exponent of the tactics of mobility—that he had lost a fixed position of defense was nothing to crush him. In mobile warfare, he should crush his enemy. But in the last few days, other things had occurred to throw him badly off balance just as he was starting the crushing.