The LSTs circled in slow, lazy patterns as they awaited the signal to come onto the beach. This was D + 28, so all the fighting had long since cleared the beach itself. There was still threat of aircraft, but I was assured that we had adequate protection.
A few moments later, a lone Me109 came screaming down the beach. Although the combat vessels were gone, it seemed as though hundreds of giant hoses sprayed liquid antiaircraft fire in long, arched trajectories as the tracers tried to seek their target. Yet the plane continued on its path until it was out of sight. I found out later that it was a reconnaissance plane that repeated this operation several times a day. Although I had seen enemy reconnaissance planes in the searchlight beams over England at night, this was my first view of the enemy in actual combat. It was indeed an exciting Fourth of July.
I had a bet with my buddy Ernie Nibbelink, who was on the LST next to us, as to who would be the first to go ashore. We were all off the Fox Orange section of Omaha Beach, awaiting the beach master’s signal. The captains of the LSTs apparently also had bets as to who would go ashore first.
Immediately after the signal, the ships broke formation and headed for the beach. As our ship approached, it trimmed aft as much as possible, dropped the stern anchor about two hundred yards from shore, and rammed the beach at top speed. Because an LST is most vulnerable when beached, all due haste was made to unload and get it off the beach as quickly as possible.
We were all down below revving the Jeep engines and ready to debark. I had loaded on the transport as late as possible so that my Jeep would be close to the bow doors and I’d be able to get off before Ernie. He’d apparently had the same thing in mind. As we came down the landing door, his Jeep appeared to be somewhat ahead of mine. However, about thirty feet of water separated the end of the landing door and the beach, which meant that he had to wade. This should have been no problem; we had already waterproofed the vehicles to be able to operate in about three feet of water. But Ernie’s Jeep came off the landing door and dropped straight out of sight. It seems that the LST had landed in a shell crater; it had to be pulled out with a bulldozer. Needless to say, I beat Ernie to the beach and won the bet.
The beach operation appeared extremely well organized. The Normandy beaches were receiving an average of thirty thousand troops a day and a greater tonnage of cargo than the port of New York. In addition to this, numerous burned-out hulks of tanks, half-tracks, and other vehicles were strewn up and down the beach, as if a giant child in a temper tantrum had broken his toys and scattered them in disgust.
The traffic control was well planned, and we immediately exited the beach on one of the many roads that had been bulldozed through the sand dunes to the paved roads behind the beach. Yellow tape marked both sides of the sand road and also both sides of the highway that led westward. Signs at all exits from the road and at intermediate points read, “Mines clear to the hedgerows.” This was a warning to be extremely careful about pulling onto the shoulder of the road or going into any field that was not guaranteed to be cleared of mines. Numerous Jeeps had hit mines; they were completely destroyed and their passengers were killed. We continued with caution to our first bivouac area, just south of Isigny.
The Bocage and the Hedgerows
The area south of the Cotentin Peninsula is the bocage country, the ancestral home of the Normans, who invaded England in the eleventh century. Now the process was being reversed.
The area in peacetime had an almost storybook quality. Beautiful, quaint, small villages were scattered throughout the gently rolling hills. The villages were surrounded by fields that were separated by picturesque hedgerows. These hedgerows proved to be a death trap for the American army.
The Normandy countryside has deep, rich topsoil that is free of stones. Due to this lack of stone to build walls, Norman farmers who wanted to divide their land among their sons would plant rows of hedges and trees to separate the fields, which were often only one to three acres in size. The roots embedded themselves deeply and held the soil. Natural erosion over seven centuries of Norman occupation washed away the land, leaving these hedgerows—earth mounds six to eight feet high and ten to twelve feet thick at the base. Reinforced by tree and hedge roots, these natural fortifications could not be penetrated by tanks.
This bocage country extended from ten to forty miles inland from Omaha Beach throughout the Normandy area. German generals could not have conceived of a more formidable defense against highly mobile armored and infantry troops. Even the vaunted Maginot and Siegfried lines paled in comparison.
In spite of this terrain, the selection of Normandy as the invasion site proved fortuitous. Northwestern France is separated from the rest of the country by the Loire and Seine Rivers. Access to the area depends on bridges. Normandy and the Cotentin Peninsula are at the extreme northwestern tip of this area. For about six months prior to the invasion, the Allied air forces bombed all the bridges across these rivers. The Germans would rebuild them by night, and Allied aircraft would knock them down the next day.
At the same time, the air forces heavily bombed the Pas-de-Calais area and built up a false concentration of military units in the Thames estuary. This ruse apparently worked well, because it convinced Hitler that the Pas-de-Calais area was the main invasion spot even after the Normandy landings had taken place. Hitler remained convinced that the Normandy invasion was a feint until the night before the Saint-Lô breakthrough. Not until then did he finally release the panzer divisions that had been held in reserve in the Pas-de-Calais area. Fortunately for the Allies, this decision came too late.
The planning and execution of Operation Overlord was brilliant. Naval, ground, and air forces cooperated with precision. Logistics and supplies were well coordinated. It appeared that great lengths were taken to attend to the most minute details. A small booklet entitled “Invade Mecum” (invade with me) was given to platoon leaders before the D-day invasion. It contained detailed drawings of every hamlet and village in the Normandy area, with the location of major buildings in the village, such as the mayor’s home, city hall, the public utility building, and the telephone exchange; in some cases it even gave the names of the mayor and the director of utilities.The booklets proved an invaluable source of information to the combat troops.
In spite of all this planning, and even though hedgerows existed in England, somehow the tremendous defensive potential of the hedgerows was completely overlooked. If the G2 and G3 sections were aware of this, it never reached the combat units that had to negotiate these terrible obstacles. The hedgerows were to cost the Americans dearly in lives and equipment.
The maintenance battalion set up its first bivouac in several fields about a mile south of Isigny. The vehicles pulled off the road between yellow taped markers, then circled the edges of the field. It occurred to us that the hedgerows would provide excellent cover. Little did we realize the price we would pay for this camouflage.
Everyone was cautious about mines, particularly antipersonnel mines. After a time, however, we developed a kind of sixth sense about our surroundings.
A dilapidated lean-to against a hedgerow in one corner of the field we entered was occupied by a young Frenchwoman and her little boy. They had fled Isigny when the fighting started and had been here ever since. Although thin, they appeared to be in good health. We fed them and turned them over to the military government, which evacuated them. These French civilians, the first I had encountered, impressed me with their will to survive and their ability to adjust to the most primitive conditions.
Combat Command A: Action at Villiers-Fossard
We had no sooner settled down than we were called for a briefing to inform us of the tactics that the Germans would use to oppose us in the hedgerows. They would run telephone wire completely around the perimeter of each of several fields in a row. As they were driven out of a field into the one behind it, they could hook their telephone clips into the wiring and immediately call for mortar fire in the field they had just left. This abil
ity to get mortar and artillery fire almost instantly would prove to be devastating to our infantry and tanks who had just occupied the field.
At the French village of Villiers-Fossard, south and east of Airel on the Vire River, the Germans had penetrated three thousand yards into the 29th Division area. Combat Command A (CCA), which had come in ten days before Combat Command B, was given the mission of capturing Villiers-Fossard and eliminating the German salient. After three years of training, the division was being committed for the first time.
The combat command was organized in three separate task forces, each consisting of a reinforced tank battalion with infantry and artillery support. The attack started on the morning of June 29 with two task forces abreast and one in reserve. The columns on the right and left of the highway each had one bulldozer tank to get through the hedgerows. The initial penetrations moved rapidly but soon ran into heavy small-arms, mortar, and antitank fire from a German reinforced infantry battalion. The two bulldozer tanks were knocked out early in the operation, leaving only explosives to break through the hedgerows.
It was here that we encountered, for the first time, the deadly combination of hedgerows and the short-range German panzerfaust. Operated by a single man without any special training, the panzerfaust was an ideal weapon for close-range hedgerow fighting. After the two dozer tanks were knocked out, the only way to get through the hedgerows was by planting explosives and blowing enormous gaps so that the remaining tanks could pass. This, of course, warned the Germans where the next tanks were coming; they concentrated their fire at those points, with murderous effect.
After two days of bitter fighting, CCA accomplished its objective and withdrew. It lost 31 tanks, 12 other vehicles, and 151 men—heavy losses for an operation of this type— but the lessons learned by the combat command would save many lives and much equipment in future operations.
At a critique following this operation, General LeRoy Watson, the division commander, voiced his concern not only about the losses but also about our having left several knocked-out tanks in the fields. Although the maintenance people of the 32d Armored Regiment had T2 armored recovery vehicles, they explained that some of the knocked-out tanks were actually behind the German lines and others were in no-man’sland between the lines. Burned beyond repair, they were not worth the sacrifice of further lives. Colonel Joseph Cowhey, seeing an opportunity to enhance the prestige of the ordnance maintenance battalion, told the general that if the armored regiments could not recover the tanks with their T2s, he and the maintenance battalion would retrieve them.
As a West Point graduate, Cowhey had stood high enough in his class to be selected for ordnance duty. Having taken considerable pride in this, he apparently became greatly concerned when lower ranking classmates, assigned to the infantry and artillery, were being promoted much faster than he was. He saw the recovery of these tanks as an opportunity to show what a combat ordnance unit could do.
Because the maintenance battalion had no T2 recovery vehicles, Cowhey selected an M25 tank transporter—a large, heavy-duty six-by-six tractor—to do the job. Probably no other vehicle was less suitable. The colonel proceeded down the Isigny–Villiers-Fossard highway with his small task group: the M25 in the lead; followed by the Jeep holding himself, another officer, and a driver; and a three-quarter-ton weapons carrier with a tank maintenance crew.
Except during heavy fighting, the front lines in combat were extremely quiet and calm, as was the case this day. As the small convoy approached the last infantry outpost, the M25’s 250-horsepower engine created quite a commotion. The convoy was stopped at the roadblock by an infantryman and cautioned about proceeding further.
At this point, a disheveled-looking soldier emerged from the hedgerows with a Thompson submachine gun. “Who in the hell told you to bring that monster down here!” he yelled.
The colonel got out of his Jeep and came around to the front of the transporter. “I did, damnit!”
“And who the hell are you?” hollered the young soldier as he nervously pulled back the bolt on his Thompson. His helmet net did not camouflage his insignia; he was a captain. He was obviously nervous; his unit had been under heavy mortar fire. He was infuriated that anybody could be dumb enough to bring a large, noisy transporter into this area, which would call additional fire on his men simply to recover worthless, burned-out tanks.
“I’m Colonel Cowhey of the 3d Armored Division, and I’ve come to recover our tanks.”
Apparently unfazed, the captain pointed his tommy gun directly at the colonel. “I’ll give you fifteen seconds to turn around that pile of junk and get the hell out of here. If you don’t, I’ll blow your brains out.”
The colonel, who had never been talked to in such an insubordinate manner by a junior officer, yelled to the lieutenant to turn the convoy around and leave. On the way back to Isigny, Cowhey realized that what he had done must have appeared to be a grandstand play, and the captain had risked a court-martial against the chances of being killed in action. Cowhey was so humiliated that he never mentioned the incident. Some felt that, in the long run, it resulted in the survival of other officers and men in the maintenance battalion.
2
First Combat
Combat Command B Actions at Airel, Pont Hébert, and Vents Heights
On the afternoon of July 8, Major Arrington, the maintenance battalion shop officer and my immediate superior, told me to report to Combat Command B (CCB) headquarters at 1700. Each unit in the combat command had its own liaison officer, and we all assembled with the staff to hear the briefing by General Bone, CCB’s commander.
In a brief opening statement, the general told us that we were now ready to put to use all those years of training for combat. He felt that the state of readiness was excellent, our morale was high, and the equipment was good. I had a slight twinge of uneasiness when I remembered the disaster our tanks met in CCA’s first engagement. However, we had just received a few new M4A1 tanks with 76mm guns, which I felt would give us a better chance against German armor. They were bound to be more effective than the short-barreled 75mm M2.
The G2 briefed us on the enemy situation and gave us a general outline of German positions along the Vire River and slightly north and south of Airel. The G3 then briefed us on the general plan of operation. It appeared that the line north and west of Saint-Lô was highly irregular, and certain positions of high ground should be seized prior to the final assault on Saint-Lô itself, a key communication center for the German 7th Army. Its capture was essential to breaking out of Normandy.
The immediate plan of operations was to capture the high ground north and west of Saint-Lô. The 30th Division had already launched an attack at daybreak across the Vire River at Airel, driven three thousand yards deep, and set up a perimeter defense around the village. Combat Command B was to cross the river at Airel on the night of July 8 and bivouac in this perimeter before attacking at daybreak. This operation was supposed to straighten out the line somewhat and give the American First Army a better position from which to assault Saint-Lô.
After the briefing, I reported to Major Arrington. The convoys began to form on the Isigny–Saint-Lô highway at about 2000. The liaison officer group formed up immediately behind combat command headquarters.
It was strictly a start-and-stop operation, similar to a heavy traffic jam. Maintaining normal intervals between vehicles became impossible as we proceeded farther down the highway and the convoy increased in size. By this time, we had become accustomed to the periodic firing of our own artillery into the German lines. The closer we came to the intersection of the Airel–Le Dézert highway, five miles south of Isigny, the more intense the firing became.
Suddenly, we heard a whirring noise and then wrack, wrack, wrack as three incoming German artillery shells landed in the woods about a hundred yards to our right. Prior to this, all the artillery had been outgoing; now a new dimension had been added. The artillery was aimed at us.
When we reached the in
tersection, we turned right and headed toward Airel. The incoming artillery became much more intense; I wasn’t sure whether it was targeting us or the infantry around us. In any event, the column kept bunching up and stretching out in accordionlike fashion as it headed for the bridge at Airel.
I found myself at the head of the liaison group and immediately behind a Red Cross ambulance half-track from CCB. I thought I’d be safe if I stayed close to the half-track. Although the incoming artillery was more frequent, I was somewhat reassured by the briefing at CCB, earlier in the day, informing us that we were not actually going into combat until the next morning.
As we approached the bridge about a hundred yards east of Airel, we came upon an old tavern with an open courtyard. The building was in flames, and two dead young American soldiers were lying naked on the ground near a Jeep. Apparently, they had taken cover from artillery fire in the courtyard; a shell had struck the building and the blast had been deflected directly down on them. It had blown them both out of the Jeep and torn off their clothes. Their horribly burned flesh was splotched red and black. The light from the flames of the burning building danced across their bodies, which looked like surreal painted mannequins. As I turned away I noticed that my driver, Smith, was also choked up. There was no dignity for these young soldiers, even in death. A great sense of revulsion welled up in me, and the sadness was almost overwhelming. At this point, we both felt completely human.
A direct hit by German artillery had blown a large gap in the stone floor of the bridge into Airel. The tanks and half-tracks were being routed across the bridge; the wheeled vehicles were crossing the river on a pontoon bridge about a hundred yards to the north. We came across the pontoon bridge and met up with the column again. The MPs were stopping the columns and merging them by allowing one vehicle from each to pass. Thus, I had to stop and let the ambulance half-track go ahead. When I was allowed to go, I wound up behind one of the medium tanks assigned to CCB headquarters. I wasn’t sure whether I had gained or lost in the deal.
Death Traps: The Survival of an American Armored Division in World War II Page 3