Voices from D-Day

by Jon E. Lewis

  Lieutenant-General Frederick Morgan, Chief of Staff to the Supreme Allied Commander [COSSAC]

  What was probably the most acute internal conflict was that which took place between the so-called movement staffs of the Navy and Army branches of COSSAC. The duties of these two sub-divisions of a combined staff are of course bound of their very nature to overlap, and it is almost inevitable that friction should be set up. Over long years the general line of demarcation between Army and Navy has been set as High Water Mark at Ordinary Spring Tides. But this last war has played ducks and drakes with many land and sea marks, amongst them ‘HWMOST’. Largely owing to the great work of the Combined Operations staffs, it no longer rouses comment to find soldiers attired in lammies manning ships at sea or sailors dressed in khaki battledress driving trucks in the heart of a continent. But this didn’t come about overnight. When, as was the case with the COSSAC Staff, the whole affair virtually hinged upon rates of movement of men, vehicles and material from shore to sea and from sea to shore again, there was present every sort of opportunity, not only for inter-service rivalry but for inter-service jealousy and ultimately inter-service conflict. At one moment a point was reached at which the soldier glared at the sailor saying, ‘This much has got to be done at this place in this time,’ or words to that effect. The sailor replied with equal or greater emphasis, ‘This cannot be done,’ or its verbal equivalent. For a few hours it seemed as though unbreakable deadlock was reached. Figures, which as the axiom says cannot lie (though as our American staff repeatedly pointed out, liars can figure), were overhauled and recalculated ad nauseam with ever the same result. ‘One shall have them,’ said the Army. ‘They shall not pass,’ said the Navy. And relief came in what one would like to say was the typical COSSAC way. One of the soldier boys, though dead beat to the point of exasperation with hours and days of argument, called up his last reserves of humour, sat up all one night and produced a notable document all by himself. This took the form of a complete plan down to the last detail of an imaginary operation which the author christened ‘Overboard’. Whereas our real project for the great invasion, operation ‘Overlord’, was classified in the terminology of the time as American Secret, British Most Secret, the plan for operation ‘Overboard’ bore the proud heading, American Stupid, British Most Stupid. There followed an extremely witty skit on the whole of our activities, and the subsequent laughter completely cleared the air and brought about the reconciliation so earnestly sought after.

  But even this little outburst of humour had its serious side and, in fact, brought us within an ace of disaster. Our security experts were quick to see that in spite of its lightness of touch and apparently nonsensical content, the plan set forth for this hypothetical operation ‘Overboard’ bore of necessity many marked resemblances to the original, the aping of which was the secret of its fun. We had, therefore, to ensure as far as we could that distribution of the plan for operation ‘Overboard’ was severely restricted. Apart from personal complimentary copies sent to the Commander-in-Chief, Home Forces, the Chief of Combined Operations and to the Prime Minister’s Chief of Staff, it was enacted that the whole affair should be kept strictly within the walls of Norfolk House. This unfortunately was not done, and a copy somehow made its way across the Atlantic. It certainly was tough that such a gem should be born to waste its sweetness on the confined spaces of COSSAC Headquarters, as the poet might have said but didn’t quite. Anyway, if one had not had much experience of the necessity for absolute security, Washington DC was a whale of a way from Berlin, and what could it really matter?

  But our luck held. Some weeks went by and the whole episode had been overlaid in the mind by many more pressing events before I received a note from General Gordon Macready of the British Army Staff in Washington in which he told me he had just been visited by a representative of The Pointer, the weekly publication by the Corps of Cadets, West Point, who considered himself fortunate to have obtained a copy of the paper produced in London entitled ‘Plan for Operation “Overboard”’. This seemed eminently worthy of publication even in this august periodical but, seeing as the material was produced in England, it was thought only right that before publication, official sanction should be sought from the British authorities. Without knowing too much of what was afoot at the time in England, these same British authorities were quick to perceive a distinct aroma of rat. Hence the friendly note to me and thus it was not only that The Pointer was deprived of a notable contribution but what might have proved a serious leak of priceless information was effectively stopped.

  But as well as maintaining secrecy about their own designs, the Allies needed information about the sites in Occupied France which were proposed for the invasion. Those who gathered such information took incredible risks.

  General Omar Bradley, US First Army Group

  Before recommending that the assault be made against the Calvados coast of Normandy, Morgan’s planners had scrutinized the shore line of Europe from the Netherlands to Biarritz. From their intelligence archives the British had culled volumes of patient research on subsoils, bridges, moorings, wharfage, rivers, and the thousands of intricate details that went into this appraisal of the Overlord plan.

  Characteristic of the enterprise the British applied to this intelligence task was the answer they brought in reply to our inquiry on the subsoil of Omaha Beach. In examining one of the prospective beach exits, we feared that a stream running through the draw might have left a deposit of silt under the sand and shingle. If so, our trucks might easily bog down at that unloading point.

  ‘How much dope can you get on the subsoil there?’ I asked Dickson when G-3 brought the problem to me.

  Several days later a lean and reticent British naval lieutenant came to our briefing at Bryanston Square. From his pocket he pulled a thick glass tube. He walked over to the map on the wall.

  ‘The night before last’, he explained dryly, ‘we visited Omaha Beach to drill a core in the shingle at this point near the draw. You can see by the core there is no evidence of silt. The shingle is firmly bedded upon rock. There is little danger of your trucks bogging down.’

  To get this information the lieutenant had taken a submarine through the mine fields off the coast of France. There he paddled ashore one evening in a rubber boat directly under the muzzles of the Germans’ big, casemated guns.

  The men – the GIs, Tommies, matelots and flyers – who would put Overlord into effect, who would translate its words and lines into bullets and blood, were a diverse group. They came from Nebraska, from Glasgow from Swansea, from the Bronx, from Kentucky, from Calgary, and from small villages in England’s West Country. Perhaps all they had in common was their age, for few of them were past their mid-twenties. Some had volunteered to join the armed services in a passionate desire to beat Nazism, some succumbed to pressure of the times and their peers and reluctantly ‘volunteered’, some were regulars and a surprising number joined up for the adventure. And many, unsurprisingly enough, were drafted.

  Lance-Bombardier Stanley Morgan, RA, 112th Heavy AA Regiment, aged 26

  I was a militia boy, you see, and should have gone for six months military training being over twenty-one, but the war came. I was working on a farm and everybody said, ‘Oh, you’ll get out [of being conscripted].’ But farming wasn’t a reserved occupation then. I had to go in. I did six and a half years.

  John Houston, US 101st Airborne Division

  We were all volunteers who had come into the paratroops because we wanted to help put an end to Hitler’s evil government as fast as possible. I remember reading about the treatment of the Jews in Poland one day in the fall of 1942 and going to the recruiting station the next day.

  Marine Stanley Blacker, RM, 606th Flotilla LCM, aged 19

  I would have been conscripted anyway had I not volunteered, and by volunteering I could go into what I wanted to go into, which was the Royal Marines.

  Corporal Ted Morris, 225 Para Field Ambulance, 6th Airborne Division, aged
24

  I never did well in school. I was a lazy bugger, and just didn’t settle in – I had this urge to get out and about. Now everybody of my age from around here [Towyn] joined the Air Force, which was glamorous and there wasn’t any work anyway. But about 1935 they fetched out a propaganda film, OHMS – On His Majesty’s Service. John Mills starred in it and it was all about a rookie in the Army. And I’m convinced that that film and the fact I wasn’t getting anywhere at school made me join the Army. This was in 1936.

  Nevin F. Price, USAAF 397th Bomb Group, aged 19

  I would have been drafted anyway, so I thought I might as well volunteer and get the branch of service I wanted. I didn’t.

  Alfred Leonard, Merchant Navy, aged 16

  I wanted to join the Merchant Navy. Lots of my friends were already in it. I was chuffed to death when I got in, but I can’t imagine what my parents really thought. I pressurized them to sign me in.

  Leading Aircraftman Gordon Jones, Combined Operations, aged 22

  Things were intensely patriotic. There were about fifteen of us – all good friends – and they had all gone into the war. I was literally the only one left and was sick and tired and fed up of being in a reserved occupation – an aircraft cost clerk, put there by a doting uncle. I was an only child and my mother obviously said to him, ‘Oh my God, I’m worried about Gordon with the war!’ Understandably! Anyway I stuck it for some months and then got the bus one lunchtime and went down to the RAF recruiting office in Bristol. I passed Grade I for aircrew. This was probably a Monday or a Tuesday and I thought I’d be in by the next week. I had to wait a year, and by then there had been many volunteers for aircrew and my eyesight was deemed below standard. So I met this Squadron Leader who said, ‘Gordon, we have some rather bad news for you – you’ve failed your eyesight test and unfortunately we can’t accept you for aircrew. As you’ve volunteered from a reserved occupation you have the option to go back to civvy street, but I’m sure you don’t want to do that.’ He gave me a cigarette and called me Gordon, so he really hit it off with me. I looked at a list of trades he gave me – armourer, policeman, pigeon keeper – and asked what armourer entailed. And that was it. I became an armourer.

  To be in uniform or in the Merchant Marine, however, was no guarantee of ‘seeing action’ on D-Day, or any other day. To be there on 6 June 1944 was a matter of luck, good or bad. For most men under arms life in World War II was a steady routine of polish, parades and exercises, a matter of enduring the boredom that forms 95 per cent of all war. Fewer than a quarter of the British Army, Churchill lamented, would ever ‘hear a bullet whistle.’ Some deliberately joined units most likely to go into combat; others simply found themselves in units earmarked for Overlord, a fate over which they had no say; and some took every precaution to ensure they were not in Normandy in June 1944, but still found themselves there.

  W. Emlyn ‘Taffy’ Jones, Commando Signal Troop, 1st Special Service Brigade, aged 23

  I got fed up with doing nothing. At one time I was in tanks as a wireless operator and all you were doing was going on exercise. Then another one. I thought, ‘There’s a bloody war going on out there, what the hell am I doing?’ Then you’d get a chap who would join you, in a new intake, and of course he’d have the Africa Star – he’d done something. I could see the war passing me by. So I went and joined this new unit. I didn’t know it was the Commandos then.

  Sergeant H.M. Kellar, Devonshire Regiment

  We were called to a special parade and addressed by the Company Sergeant-Major. He read out a message from General Montgomery requesting volunteers for his 21st Army group. I was bored stiff as usual, so I stuck my hand up and I was on my way in a few days and joined the 2nd Battalion of the Devons.

  Donald Thomas, 53rd Airlanding Light Regiment RA, 6th Airborne Division

  I was in the Anti-Tank Regiment until 1942. Our Colonel volunteered for all of us to join the 6th Airborne.

  Seaman C.J. Wells, Empire Crossbow, Merchant Navy, aged 20

  My brother had been on the Murmansk run, Merchant Navy, and he told me not to hand over my ID card when I went up to the Shipping Federation offices because they stamp a great big V for Volunteer in it – you haven’t been asked, but you’ve volunteered for the invasion. So I got up to the Glasgow Shipping Federation offices and they asked for my card behind the counter, which was like a Post Office counter, but I said, ‘No I don’t want no V in my card, I’m not volunteering for the invasion.’ So I got on this Empire Crossbow at Glasgow and went down to Southampton. A few days before the invasion the Special Branch came aboard for a security check on all of us. I went in front of this officer with my papers, and the officer said, ‘I see you haven’t got a V in your card.’ I said, ‘No, and I aint no bloody volunteer either.’ He said, ‘It’s like this laddie’ – a Scotsman he was – ‘you’ve been through all the security checks and you are going. But you won’t get the pound a week extra danger money, a couple of bars of chocolate, the cigarettes and a couple of cans of beer if you don’t have a V.’ I said, ‘If it’s like that put a V on there.’ That’s how I volunteered for the invasion.

  The men who went to the far shore on 6 June and in the weeks that followed were supremely trained. Many had been in training since 1942, long before the invasion details had been agreed by the political and military heads of the Allied camp. In 1944, however, the training was stepped up; and then up again. Troops and sailors practised landings on beaches in Devon, Pembrokeshire, Scotland – anywhere in Britain that resembled the coast of France they would hit on the sixth. As the invasion would be the biggest seaborne assault of all time most training required an essential ingredient – water.

  Lance-Bombardier Stanley Morgan, RA

  If there was a hole or gravel pit in the south of England with water in it, we went through it in our waterproofed vehicles.

  Leading Aircraftman Gordon Jones, Combined Operations, aged 22

  We used to run and march eight miles to Erlin, get into landing craft and go out in the bay, then run down these ramps, charge ashore, back on the boats, day after day. And then do vehicle landings in Jeeps which we had to waterproof ourselves. There were huge drums of Harbutt’s plasticine and we used to get handfuls of this stuff, which was very malleable, like putty, and put it all around the distributors and all the electrical points under the bonnet. An exhaust came straight up from the engine vertically and another pipe went up vertically which was the air intake for the carburettor. The jeeps were loaded on board the landing craft and we drove them off. You were in about five feet of water. Your head and shoulders were above the water but you were driving this thing like a bodiless driver. You’d see busts going through the water towards land.

  Sergeant H.M. Kellar, Devonshire Regiment

  There [Loch Fynne] we met up with the Glenroy and spent a week on board, practising boarding our landing craft. Each landing craft carried a platoon of infantry, about thirty men. We would land on the beaches of the loch and return to the Glenroy. This was what we termed a cushy number, nothing very strenuous and good food aboard ship, plus the daily rum ration we were allowed, the same as the crew. The thought inevitably crossed my mind that we were being fattened for the kill.

  Major F.D. Goode, 2nd Battalion, Gloucestershire Regiment

  In March [1944] the battalion moved to Inverary to train for the assault of the beaches. We practised getting in and out of the landing craft which was manned by enthusiastic marines. One of them, we were told, had been too enthusiastic and steering his assault craft across the loch in semi-darkness he hit a buoy. Thinking it was the beach he ordered ‘Down doors’ – and some ten fully equipped infantry dashed into the loch and vanished forever.

  Colonel H.S. Gillies, King’s Own Scottish Borderers

  Moray Firth, 1 January 1944

  I threw myself into the uninviting swell and struggled ashore, followed by my company. During the next three days of the exercise my clothes froze on me, but it illustrates our then high state o
f physical fitness that I did not even get a cold.

  Among those given the most extensive and safety-conscious training were the tank crews who might land General Percy Hobart’s amphibious DD tanks in Normandy – in case the tanks floundered and sank like stones.

  Trooper Peter Davies, 1st East Riding Yeomanry, aged 21

  We had to go through a lot of swimming exercises, and everyone had to learn to swim. I couldn’t as it happened. We trained in open-air baths in the middle of winter, dressed in denims which were soaking wet. We were in and out of open-air swimming pools for about a month. We also had to learn to swim underwater, and to do that we used the Davis escape apparatus that submariners use to bring you back to the surface. We tested it by having weights on us, as divers do, and we had to go down iron steps into a tank of water and walk along the bottom wearing this escape apparatus, which consisted of an airline fastened to your chest, with a nose-clip and goggles. We did this for about two days. This period culminated in us being trained by the Navy for a couple of days in a huge concrete tank about 30 feet deep, into which they had placed the hull and turret of an old tank. It was without tracks, just sitting on the bottom. We had to go down there and sit in the positions as we normally would in a fighting tank. And then they flooded the concrete tank to a depth of about 20 feet, through 20-inch pipes. Within seconds the water was rising. We had ten seconds to get the escape equipment on, then wait until the hull and turret were full and get out. We had two failures. The first time one of our crew shot out immediately before the tank was full, so we had to wait for the concrete tank to be drained again, sitting there in wet clothes. On the second time I got hit on the side of the head by one of the lads getting out. They spotted it and the test was immediately stopped again. So we had three goes at that.