by Mehlo, Noel
Colonel Rudder and his staff took on the assault planning after being presented a plan they were unhappy with in the spring of 1944. Major Schneider was thus integral to the success of the overall planning for the Rangers on DDay. The Germans believed their fortification at Pointe du Hoc to be unassailable from the sea. One American Officer widely stated “It can’t be done. Three old women with brooms could keep the Rangers from climbing that cliff.”1
Braunton is located in the southwest of England. It is in the District of North Devon in the Shire county of Devon at 51.11°N 4.162°W. It is 5 miles west of Barnstaple, and is south of Woolacombe and is one of the larger villages in England. Braunton overlooks Barnstaple Bay two miles from the sea. The Caen Stream, tributary to the Taw River runs through the middle of the village. The coastal area facing the Atlantic Ocean has considerable surf, so much so that today it is a popular surfing destination in the United Kingdom. The etymology of Braunton comes
the village after a saint, Brannock, who originated in South Wales as a Christian missionary in 550 A.D. Converting the tribal Britons to Christianity, a church was developed here, and Western European development took root. The area was and remains suitable for farming with fertile, low-lying fields. The village name was officially recorded in 1086 A.D. Several modest English villages established themselves in the region of Devon over the following thousand years.3
Just north of Braunton lies the seaside resort area of Woolacombe.4 This area is at the mouth of a valley in the parish of Mortehoe. A combe is another term for valley. The gently sloping, long and sandy beach faces the Atlantic Ocean near the western limit of the Bristol Channel between England and Ireland. The beach itself is about three miles in length and is long in flat in shape. The conditions there and on the land beyond made it a decent surrogate for the Normandy Beaches. Bracketing the beach to the north and south are low cliffs. Of interest is that at the time of the war, the beach and much of the surrounding land was owned by a family named Chichester. This family had continuously owned this land since 1133 A.D. during the reign of King Henry I. Lady Rosalie Chichester, the last of her line willed the land holdings to the National Trust in 1949.
Regarding the U.S. Assault Training Center (USATC) at Braunton Camp, England, I had a research bonanza. Another researcher in England, Richard T. Bass, has developed a website that documents the facility very well. I made acquaintance with Mr. Bass and he graciously allowed me access to his research for use in this work as well as his knowledge. Mr. Bass has been a researcher of the U.S. Assault Training Centre in North Devon for many years and has published a book "Spirits of the Sand", amongst other research work on the training center. Mr. Bass has been uncovering details forgotten for over sixty years. His work spans the entire site and includes field archaeological work in support of his findings. He works as a battlefield guide for U.S. Assault Training Centre and at Normandy.
An original assumption of the European Theater of Operations was that as Divisions and other units arrived in the United Kingdom, they would do so fully prepared and trained for the tasks that would be assigned to them. The planning for D-Day revealed many special technical problems with this assumption. As joint Allied planning went on, it became apparent to American planners of the invasion that an American training center be established in England to test new methods, techniques and weapons as troops were given final preparations for invasion. The Americans drew from the experience of the British experiments and successes of their Combined Operations Headquarters. Work began in earnest in 1942 to establish the training center. Development in 1943 was hampered by the requirements of the Mediterranean Theater as the Allies successfully prosecuted action in Africa, Sicily and Italy. In looking for suitable training grounds, the Americans had to deal with the legalities of procuring private property. On April 2, 1943 the U.S. Assault Training Center was activated under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Paul W. Thompson, an engineer officer. The center took until September to offer training at Woolacombe in order to prepare the facility and the engineering works contained therein. The U.S. Assault Training Center covered 25 square miles along ten miles of Atlantic coastline, including terrain such as beaches, cliffs, headlands and sand dunes between Woolacombe and Appledore. I found that in the published works covering the topic, the U.S. Assault Training Center is referred to under its name, Woolacombe, Braunton Sands, Braunton or derivations of these names.5
The Training Center headquarters was established at the Woolacombe Bay Hotel. First, U.S. engineers cleared mines that the Brits had laid. The Brits had left the area without leaving minefield maps so the GIs had to clear the coastline of miles of real beach obstacles and mines that had been installed to thwart any German invasion. Roads and paths to and from the newly created training areas were established throughout the area. Pill boxes and other training structures were erected for training. The American Red Cross headquartered at the Bungalow Café later and
Figure 153: The U.S. Army Assault Training Center, Woolacombe, England (Courtesy Richard T. Bass) now known as “Red Barn” café. Nissan or Quonset huts were erected throughout the region for various purposes. A camp at Lincombe near Lee, Burrow Woods Camp could house over 2000 troops. The Americans constructed a large motor pool and large ammunition dump near Sandy Burrows field. In town, the Pandora hotel became a hospital and the Boathouse Café became the PX, with the Forty Eight Club serving as an NCO club. The Belle View was converted for use as a military stockade. Small barber shops appeared for the GIs to get their hair cut. The post band billeted at the Rayharden hotel. The Americans established a trash dump at High Bullen that became popular with the locals for finding treasures in the cast offs of the soldiers such as K rations, clothes, cigarettes and lighters. The brass American booby trap detonators were reusable and a collectable to many an enterprising English schoolboy. The Americans lavished the British with chocolate bars and black silk stockings, a luxury missed by the English ladies during the war years. Figure 153 shows the general camp layout.
Although they had established joint amphibious training with the Navy and or Marine Corps in the continental United States, the U.S. Army had no published principles for making an assault of heavily fortified coastlines in 1943. The military had its experiences in the Pacific against the Japanese; however they were a very different adversary from the Germans in terms of fighting style and doctrine. The only published advice at the time was to assault elsewhere and to take fortifications from the rear or landward side. The German Atlantic Wall presented a unique problem to be solved and defeated. With successes in the Mediterranean, the Army began to understand the German military’s capabilities, strengths and weaknesses.
Lt. Col. Thompson was given the mission to produce a doctrine of training for the units to participate in the invasion, and as an engineer, to develop the physical environment in which they would train. He knew that the assault would take place somewhere on the French coast. Lt Col Paul W Thompson selected his own staff for the USATC based on their special skills, knowledge and expertise. Thompson and his staff spent March and April 1943 making detailed surveys and analysis of the French coast. In May 1943, he convened a month long conference in London where he took what today would be considered a multi-disciplined approach to the engineering problem. Experts were brought in from every service and from amongst the Allied powers. The task at this conference was to figure out a workable way to neutralize the Atlantic Wall including beach defenses and fortifications. All kinds of intelligence data concerning the French coast was gathered including photographs, maps and other data such as soils and weather data. Experimental projects were put on the table including what became known as the British “Funnies” like the Duplex Drive Sherman tanks that could swim ashore and would support the Rangers on Omaha.
Nearly all U.S. units who would later participate in Operation Overlord trained in some form or another at Woolacombe. The amount and intensity of training received varied among units, with some, such as the 1st Infantry Divis
ion and 82nd Airborne Division receiving very little formal training as they arrived in England as seasoned combat troops fresh from action in the Mediterranean. Other units, who were newer to combat such as the 29th Infantry Division, sent nearly all of its troops through training at the center. The U.S. Assault Training Center offered special short courses in the technique of assaulting fortified positions amongst other specialties.6
With the selection of Normandy as the landing area and with the Omaha Beach area being assigned to the U.S. forces a realization came that the Americans would have to fight their way up cliffs and also take the few heavily defended valleys, or draws that made their way inland from the beaches. The idea of developing infantry units into thirty-man “Assault Sections” was formulated. The number of men in an Assault Section was driven largely by the capacity of the landing craft, specifically the LCA and LCVP. These Assault Sections would have to land, attack the enemy defenses by using a variety of weapons that an infantry unit could carry. Combined services operations would be brought together, including aerial and naval bombardment and supporting fire. Pillboxes would be engaged by flat trajectory, high velocity naval gunfire. The development of transports able to bring in artillery that was able to fire while onboard the vessels were finalized.
The main mission of preparing troops for amphibious assaults was augmented by furthering amphibious doctrine for the U.S. military. The USATC experimented with new equipment, combined exercises and knowledge sharing with the British. They developed methods to assemble, group and train invasion forces. They spent a great deal of time analyzing the troop strength needed for the assault through analysis of the units who trained at the center. They also studied what the best conditions would be for the invasion. “The assault was considered as a frontal attack which was unlikely even to have the advantage of tactical surprise.”6
Trials at the Assault Training Center and in various Allied exercises showed that smoke tended to confuse assault troops as much as the defenders. The final conclusions were that smoking of the hostile shore could not be sufficiently controlled, that it offered too many opportunities for fatal mistakes, and that by interfering with observed fire it would handicap Allied fire superiority. An amphibious assault without cover of darkness or smoke, and without the flexibility of a large floating reserve, depended for success on developing a weight behind the initial attack that would not only crumble enemy defenses but would carry the assaulting troops far enough inland so that follow-up troops could be put ashore behind them to consolidate and then exploit the beachhead.7 The USATC staff calculated The USATC staff calculated 2,500 yards to protect beach fortifications. They deduced that Germans would have extremely strong field defenses with concrete pillboxes, emplacements, and shelters, and thinly spread defenders providing considerable automatic fire.6
The doctrine developed for the USATC was developed based on the conference of experts in London. Mr. Bass reported that a secret document of the time stated: “Modern fortified areas are characterized by a series of steel pillboxes, steel turrets, open emplacements, troop shelters, slit trenches and similar installations. Such defenses are commonly called Hedgehog. The heart of the defensive system is the concrete and steel pillboxes. These are camouflaged, project only a small portion above the ground, and are so located as to provide interlocking zones of fire and mutual fire support. The entire area is surrounded by various anti-tank obstacles, ditches, tank traps, minefields, and from two to many bands of wire. The wire, minefields and normal avenues of approach for foot troops are liberally sewn with anti-personnel mines. The ground immediately before the weapon openings, or embrasures, in the pillboxes is leveled to provide long fields of fire. Where natural cover in the form of trees or underbrush is present, the trees and brush are cut down. Generally little, if any, natural cover for attacking troops exists. The pillboxes have weapons that vary from machine guns to anti-tank guns up to light field artillery. To successfully attack such a formidable area of new construction embodying the latest principles of modern tactics, infantry must be specifically trained, provided with additional weapons, and be backed up with a preponderance of artillery and direct fire weapons. In addition, air bombardment and ground support formations are extensively employed”.
The USATC therefore developed a sound approach to conducting a direct assault of German fortifications along the coastline. These methods were trainable, repeatable and involved the application of sufficient firepower and maneuvering to accomplish the mission at the lowest unit level possible. These techniques were taught up through the Division Level. They included enough standardization that in the heat of battle, as would later be demonstrated during the assault, units could mix and match forces and accomplish the mission. Whether units would land at the wrong location, or causalities mount to the point where units would have to join forces to remain combat effective, they fundamentally knew what was expected of them and had enough equipment on hand to execute their missions through this standardization.
The assault divisions were formed therefore simply by reducing the overhead of a normal infantry division both in men and vehicles and increasing the normal infantry fire power. While the basic divisional structure remained unchanged, the rifle companies were organized in assault teams with special equipment to deal with fortified positions. The platoons of the assault companies were split into two assault sections apiece, each with twenty-nine men and one officer, the size being determined by the capacity of the LCVP. The two assault platoons in each company included rifle teams, a wire-cutting team, a bazooka team, a flame-throwing team, a BAR team, a 60-mm mortar team, and a demolition team. The third platoon was similarly organized except that it had an 81-mm. instead of a 60-mm mortar and a heavy machine gun instead of a BAR. After the assault, each platoon was reorganized into a normal rifle platoon with two rifle squads and a weapons squad. The infantry assault troops were stripped to the barest combat essentials.6
Part of the technique for infantry conducting a direct assault of German defenses resulted in reorganization of infantry elements to incorporate the use of soldiers using flamethrowers and high explosives at the heart of the assault section. The Assault Teams were to advance under massed artillery and direct fire weapons preceded by an aerial bombardment, and covered by smoke. It was anticipated that the infantry troops would be the deciding factor at destroying each fortification. The intention of the massed air and naval bombardment was not to rely on those assets to destroy targets, rather for them to provide fire support of the assaulting troops and to provide cover fire for the assaulting troops. This doctrine has evolved and is still in use today, but on a much more lethal and surgical scale. Another use for the bombardment was to cause casualties amongst the enemy and to cause their forces to duck and cover, while at the same time disrupting enemy fields of fire.
The naval bombardment, areal bombardment and artillery supporting fire would step inland from the landing zones as the soldiers actually landed in order to disrupt the enemy from bringing up reinforcements and reorganizing successful counterattacks. At the infantry level, Wire cutting teams would advance using Bangalore torpedoes to blow gaps in the barbed wire and to destroy landmines. Assault troops would then move forward to cover the advance of the flamethrowers, bazookas and demolitions teams per the training and methods described later. As the flamethrowers and demolition teams approached within 40 to 60 yards of the fortification, the flamethrower would be unleashed upon the target while the demolition team moves in to place their charges. The process would be repeated at each successive defensive structure. Engineer troops and sailors would work alongside the assault sections clearing major gaps in the minefields and beach obstacles in order to clear avenues for ever increasing forces such as additional tanks and other vehicles and soldiers as they land. Navy personnel only worked at demolishing the beach obstacles (NCDUs) and clearing the gaps ever wider for arriving troops.
The new doctrine drastically altered the conventional structure of an infantry divis
ion. The first problem to be encountered by the training staff was selling the idea to unit commanders. This was an issue that required diplomacy and rank to convince skeptical commanders that this was the way things had to be done, and the task fell to the Center’s Executive Officer, Lieutenant Colonel Lucius P. Chase.5
The very backbone of the USATC doctrine was the concept of the Assault Section. Each Assault Section was comprised of thirty infantrymen, divided into eight teams. This was not much unlike the setup in an individual platoon of a Ranger Company. Each Assault Section trained in the requisite skills and practiced together to function as a self sufficient unit, again, not unlike the methodology used by the Rangers. This being said, the Rangers molded easily to this model.
The Army provided instruction regarding the lifesaving equipment of an assault landing such as life vests, gas masks and the like. This instruction and equipment was provided to afford the individual soldier the best possible chance to reach the beach from the landing craft.
Training Memorandum ASLT – 18 listed what each soldier should carry, including: Pack, field, less bed roll, meat can, knife, fork.
3 pkts "K" rations, to be carried in field pack
3 bars "D"
5 (or 6) grenades, fragmentation and smoke.
*96 rounds, M-1 ammunition to be carried in belt and bandolier. First Aid Packet, to be carried on belt.
