There could be only one answer to the battle now—so long as through our Artificial Harbor we could keep up anything like that flow of heavy military hardware. I was no military strategist, but I could tell a plain fact when it was thrust right under my nose. As the last of that column of tanks went on by me and vanished up the Vierville Draw, and as at the far end of our floating highway I could see the LST which had brought them from the U. K., already with its ramp retracted and its bow doors closing, shoving clear to head back for the Near Shore and another load, I saw one fact very clearly.
If Erwin Rommel were really the general he was acclaimed to be, while still he had an army, he should beat the fastest retreat with it he possibly could to behind the Siegfried Line, much closer to his base of supplies, and put us that much farther from our own. There, perhaps, with good generalship, he might fight us to a standstill. But here in Normandy, with the huge advantage the Artificial Harbor (which Rommel didn’t yet seem to realize we had) right at our backs was giving us, no matter what super-genius of a general Rommel might be, he was bound to lose. Unless he could destroy our Mulberries. And that, with our overwhelming air superiority and our naval guns to guard them, was, of course, wholly beyond his power.
CHAPTER 33
On June 17, D + 11, Bradley’s troops succeeded in reaching the sea on the western shore of the Cotentin Peninsula at Barneville, slicing the peninsula completely across, cutting it off from the German army to the south, and neatly laying it out on the operating table, ready for the amputation of Cherbourg.
Leaving three divisions to hold off the enemy on this southern flank, Bradley turned Collins and his VII Corps northward toward his first main objective, Cherbourg, 20 miles away.
To shut Collins and his American troops off from any such access to the north, von Schlieben confidently expected to make a firm stand hinged first on the city of Montebourg, and secondly and finally on Valognes. Both were heavily built Norman towns astride the road going north to Cherbourg, both ideally suited for stout and long-dragged out resistance from their thick-walled stone buildings and from the massive concrete pillboxes long before erected outside them to prohibit their being outflanked.
But under the pounding of distant naval gunfire immediately laid on in front of our troops, both crumbled into rubble. Von Schlieben, with the anchors for his defense lines destroyed, during the night of June 19 fell back in considerable haste to a fortress perimeter ringing Cherbourg at about a five mile radius. The major delay Collins’ VII Corps encountered at both Montebourg and Valognes came from waiting for his bulldozers to clear the blocked streets of shattered masonry, so his armor could proceed northward through them.
On June 21, the siege of Cherbourg began. Bradley was ready for it.
All during June 16, 17, and 18, there had been pouring ashore over the floating pierheads at Mulberry, as well as directly over the beaches, a stream of heavy siege artillery—our own motorized self-propelled 155 mm. howitzers, the “Long Toms” intended to pound the defenses of Cherbourg into powdered dust. And flowing ashore also, interspersed with them were 105 mm. field guns, tanks by the score, antitank guns—all the armor his mechanized army required.
Now all this artillery was before Cherbourg, ready to batter down its fortress defenses.
The siege of Cherbourg was going to be wholly an Army task. For Cherbourg was the one spot so far encountered within reach of the sea that the Navy was helpless to lend an effective hand in assaulting. Cherbourg, France’s major naval base and arsenal, was itself defended by heavy naval guns in emplacements ashore you could hardly see and which you could not sink. Those shore guns had ranges and hitting power equal to any carried by battleships; they had range finding devices superior to any aboard ship; finally as targets, they offered no silhouettes standing out against the horizon. For battleships likely to be sunk by hits from such powerful shore batteries to engage them in a serious artillery duel was suicidal. Here the Navy, for the first time since D-day, would have to stand aside.
No, Cherbourg was a nut for the Army to crack. Bradley began to crack it—he had the men, he had the air support, he had the siege guns. He opened fire.
But meanwhile in Bradley’s rear, real tragedy was brewing, which for the first time since the close of D-day, threatened to smash the invasion.
By June 18, D + 12, the second roadway, a 25 ton design, was wholly completed. Unloading from the floating pierheads immediately speeded up with two streams of vehicles, one of tanks and one of trucks, being able now to move ashore simultaneously.
But I was no longer on the Omaha Beach to witness this final triumph, which (since not enough Whale sections were left afloat ever to complete the third intended roadway) marked the end of mechanical installations to increase the tonnage unloading capacity of Operation Mulberry. For the afternoon before, June 17, Commodore Flanigan in London had concluded that whether on the Far Shore or the Near, my services with Mulberry were no longer imperative, and had ordered me back to Grosvenor Square. I had consequently immediately boarded an LST loaded with wounded and about to shove off for its return to Southampton; by mid-morning of June 18, I was back in Grosvenor Square.
By noon I was studying my new assignment. The campaign in Normandy, the Omaha Beach, and the Mulberry Harbors were definitely in the past, so far as I was concerned. Ahead of me now lay the Port of Antwerp in Belgium; it was not expected that it would be out of Nazi hands and in ours short of, say, the coming November, when we should be well on our way toward the Rhine and would be needing bases of supply much closer thereto than Cherbourg and the Brittany Peninsula. I was to study Antwerp thoroughly and develop plans for opening up to traffic the sabotaged channels we could count on the Nazis leaving us.
But I wasn’t through with the Omaha Beach, though at the moment neither Commodore Flanigan nor I foresaw that. For hardly had I left it than on the afternoon of June 18, the seas in the Chanrier started to roughen up perceptibly and the skies took on a peculiar appearance. A storm must be coming, the first since D-day.
Colonel Richard Whitcomb, commanding the Army’s port unloading facilities, dispatched a messenger to Navy headquarters on the Lobnitz pierheads asking for weather information—three of his loaded Dukws had swamped that afternoon bound in from the area beyond the breakwaters; nothing like that had happened since the casualties on D-day. What was the answer? Should he cease operations?
The regular weather report from the Allied Naval Commander, Expeditionary Forces, posted on the bulletin boards for all to read, was for fair weather for the rest of the week, just gentle breezes. But as it was obvious the breezes even then weren’t gentle, and were increasing in strength from the northeast, making of the Normandy Coast a dangerous lee shore, it seemed wise to get a fresher report on what was to come. The flagship Augusta, anchored five miles out, was signalled—what were the latest weather reports?
The Augusta’s weather prediction for next day was most reassuring—a gentle wind from the northeast, eight to thirteen knots.
But by nightfall of June 18, there was grave doubt all along the Omaha beachhead that the weather forecasters knew what they were talking about. Already the wind was above twenty knots—by no stretch of anyone’s imagination any longer a gentle breeze. All work of unloading vessels from offshore by ferrying craft, whether Dukws or LCT’s, was suspended.
By morning it was blowing thirty knots. A storm was already kicking up a bad sea outside the harbor, and was rapidly growing stronger. And now an even worse factor than the wind entered the picture. It was around the period of the new moon, when maximum spring tides were due. Between the high tides due anyway at that time, the falling barometer which of itself lifted the sea level, and those strong onshore winds piling the Channel waters high up on that lee shore, the sea level rose a full ten feet above any normal maximum and started to wash clear over the tops of the Phoenix breakwaters, as well as to sweep straight across the decks of the sunken Gooseberry ships.
It was evident the AA
gun crews aboard the Phoenixs were in danger; soon the seas would begin to wash them overboard. So they were hurriedly evacuated, no easy task with waves breaking over the Phoenix tops now. But it was done. Next, all traffic ashore over the floating roadways, undulating violently now on their heaving pontoons like writhing pythons, was suspended altogether. On the Lobnitz pierheads, everything portable was lashed down and extra hawsers run to secure more safely the vessels moored alongside.
The wind continued to increase as darkness fell on June 19. No doubt about it now; a real storm was already blowing; worse was likely to come. The weather reporting system had failed miserably; there had been no warning, giving reasonable time to get the hundreds and hundreds of small craft safely sheltered against a full scale gale. All they could do now was to anchor inside the breakwaters, wherever they happened to be.
As a result, now came real trouble. The smaller landing craft, the LCT’s and the LCM’s mainly, all ramp-type vessels, had no bow anchors. Their normal method of anchoring was by a wire line off a reel on their sterns, so that after touching down to unload over their ramps (having already dropped their stern anchors before beaching) they could then haul themselves astern and off the beach. But that method of anchoring had serious drawbacks in a storm—stern to, a vessel, and especially flat sterned craft as these all were, does not ride storm waves so well as bows on to them. And secondly, and worse, those wire lines, all they had for moorings, had a woeful shortcoming as anchor cables in a storm. There was no spring whatever to them, as there is in a chain link cable hanging in a long bight due to its weight, which under extra strain lengthens slowly into a flatter curve and eases the shock. But those wire anchor lines, already stretched as taut as bow strings by the tension on them, had no possibility of any further give at all under any added strain. So when a heavy sea smacked the flat stern of one of those anchored craft, the inevitable happened—the already taut wire snapped under the blow, and that landing craft found itself instantly adrift in the storm, driving to leeward at the mercy of the seas.
The landing craft, caught without warning, anchored themselves by their sterns as usual and then did what they could to ease the strain on their anchor wires. They started up their diesels and kept them going full astern to mitigate the danger by easing the strain on their anchor wires. But it didn’t always work. Some, half waterlogged by seas breaking over them, couldn’t get their soaked engines going; others, after long hours of such unexpected oil consumption, ran out of fuel; still others, going full astern for such unusually long periods, suffered machinery breakdowns.
The results in all cases, regardless of the cause, once engine power failed, were identical—almost instantly after the next heavy sea smacked their flat sterns came a parted anchor line and then a landing craft with no longer any motive power drifting helplessly before the storm.
Many drove up on the beach, which in itself was bad enough, but nothing to what followed when other helpless craft piled up on the same stretch of sand and then still others, with all then churning against each other in the heavy surf and making hopeless masses of scrap iron of the lot, not to mention what happened to their crews caught between grinding steel and pounding surf.
Even worse occurred. Five LCT’s, broken adrift, drove down before the storm in the night and crashed into the eastern roadway to the Lobnitz pierheads. Instantly there was trouble. The battering LCT’s smashed the concrete pontoons, banged holes in the steel ones, sank some pontoons completely, sank others on one end only, so that some of the bridge trusses submerged, other trusses were twisted sideways on upended pontoons, and the Whale roadway was soon a terrible wreck.
The night dragged on, dawn came on June 20, the storm blew on. The tide during the morning was low. The Mulberry Seabees and their officers, led by Lieut. Freeburn, worked their hearts out, dragging those LCT’s clear of their precious roadway and its pontoons, leaving the trusses free for resetting when the storm subsided.
But the storm didn’t subside. With afternoon came high water again and an increase in the gale. More landing craft smashed into the roadways. Again they were dragged clear. But by that time every little tug or motor boat Force Mulberry possessed had either been sunk in the storm or disabled. Her men could do no more.
Captain Clark through all this had been shrieking orders through loud speaker and megaphone into the teeth of the gale, for all adrift landing craft to keep clear of his Whales. When that failed to produce results, he reinforced his orders by frenzied threats of gunfire on any vessel disregarding them. But in the storm, orders and threats alike fell on deaf ears. The man who for a year had lived for nothing save to make a working reality of Mulberry had to stand impotently by and watch more and more of those fouled up landing craft battering his priceless roadways to destruction. No longer did he have a tug left to drag them clear.
Night came, the storm increased—to what nobody knew, but enough. And in those pounding seas now came still worse disaster. The Bombardons, that floating breakwater of dubious value, to provide the steel for which the Mulberry roadways and pontoons had been both skimped and scamped, ironically turned now into an engine of further destruction for Mulberry. That 2400 foot long floating steel barrier, set well offshore to form an outer harbor, tore from its moorings, broke up into its units, and those steel units, gigantic floating battering rams now, drifted to leeway before the storm waves to find the line of concrete Phoenixs directly in their path. There in the surging seas those ponderous 200 foot long sections of steel Bombardons started hammering away on the concrete Phoenix walls, battered many of them in, and as the tide fell, carried that destruction down to the low tide line. Then as the tide rose again, the unobstructed seas poured now through the gaps in the breakwaters to set up even worse waves in the inner harbor than before.
And another day, June 21, went by with the storm still continuing, the Bombardons making greater breaches in the Phoenix wall, the desolation over the harbor beyond description. And once again the waters off the Omaha Beach were dotted with the bodies of the dead, mostly seamen from foundered landing craft this time, still clad in life preservers, a ghastly sight as they drifted amongst the spume and the spray of the breaking waves.
The storm waves began now to exert a powerful influence inland. What was beyond Rommel’s power was well within theirs. Bradley, pounding away at the defenses of Cherbourg with every gun, large and small, that he had, found himself suddenly nearly out of ammunition. The steady flow from the beachhead which had heretofore at least kept up with the voracious demands of his guns, though allowing little leeway for building up a reserve, now stopped abruptly. Angrily, Bradley sent word back to the beachhead, demanding more ammunition.
When informed in reply that a storm at sea had shut down the port, he refused to believe it necessary, sent some of his aides to order more landed regardless. The obedient aides, at the risk of their lives, made their way out over the twisted and tossing wreckage of the Whale roadways to learn what chance there was of somehow getting in some ammunition through that storm.
The only possible way was pointed out to them. Some small coasting steamers loaded with ammunition, riding out the storm at anchor well offshore, might be brought inside the Gooseberry breakwaters as near high tide as possible and stranded there. When the tide went out and left them completely high and dry, it might be possible to run trucks directly alongside the coasters on the wet sands and unload from their cargo hatches into the trucks, which with luck, might then get all the way inshore without bogging down—some might, anyway. The whole thing was dubious, but it might work. The only thing about it that didn’t seem dubious was that the coasting steamers would most likely all leak like sieves thereafter from the pounding against the sands they’d get till the receding tide fell enough to leave them solidly on the bottom; they’d all probably be wrecks after that single unloading. It didn’t seem worth it to sacrifice valuable ships for such a one-time operation in discharge; ships weren’t that expendable; they could tell Bradley
that.
The aides crawled back ashore to relay that message to Bradley on the battle front. The answer from Bradley was short and unequivocal—to hell with what happened to the ships—he had to have ammunition! If soon he didn’t have some, the enemy could turn on his helpless troops and butcher them! More ammunition immediately, no matter what the cost to the ships!
So storm or no storm, the coasters were run in, beached, and when the tide went out, unloaded directly into trucks—1000 tons of ammunition on June 21, 500 tons on June 22. Apparently it sufficed as a stopgap.
Bradley, fuming and incredulous at what he’d been told, in view of the importance of the situation came down on June 22 to see for himself and then to speed up matters. But looking at a beach which to him seemed more littered with destruction than even on D-day, he stood appalled, and made no further criticism of those running the harbor. Now he understood. For by night, when the gale finally subsided and a count could be made, it appeared that some 800 landing craft had been stranded on both British and American beaches, vast numbers of them beyond any hope of possible salvage and repair, 300 of these hopelessly battered wrecks on our waterfront alone.
At the Omaha Beach, the wrecks were literally piled six deep against the shore end of our twisted Whale roadway—other wrecks encumbered the waterfront from one end of the beach to the other. And one LCI(L), caught at sea outside the area of the harbor and there exposed to the full blast of the gale, had been flung bodily up on the rocks at the base of the cliffs near Pointe de la Percée, so high above any sign of high water in that vicinity that except by building launching ways under her and sending her down that incline, it was hopeless to expect ever again to get her back into the water.
The Far Shore Page 31
