Normandy '44

by James Holland

  Even so, they were not immune, as Boylan had seen with his own eyes on 28 May, his first mission after a spell of leave in London. Their target that morning had been a bridge over the River Risle, which flowed roughly parallel to the Seine just south-east of Le Havre. The weather was not great, so they were guided by pathfinders and, although they had been warned to expect some flak, generally the anti-aircraft guns dotted about the French villages did not have gun-laying radar and so were pretty inaccurate. Boylan and the other six men in his crew were fully expecting it to be a ‘milk run’.

  The stone bridge was at the small village of Grosley-sur-Risle and most of the thirty-one Marauders attacking this target were carrying a single 1,000lb bomb. Safely crossing the coastline, they flew on, the cloud thinning so they could see patches of the east Normandy countryside. Not far from the target, flak started to rock them, peppering the sky with smoke as shell fragments clattered around them. Positioned in the high flight formation, Boylan had a bird’s-eye view of the Normandy landscape and the flight below him.

  ‘One of our planes got it!’9 shouted the bombardier from the nose, Lieutenant Billy Rose.

  ‘Who?’ Boylan asked.

  Rose wasn’t certain, but the aircraft had taken a direct hit and was plummeting, an engine on fire. Then the starboard wing tore off. Rose counted the parachutes. ‘There’s one chute! There’s another one!’

  They flew on, and, directed by the flares of the pathfinder, spotted the bridge and hit it as planned. There had been no flak at all over the target.

  Only once safely back at their base at Matching Green, near Harlow in Essex, did they learn that the downed aircraft had been Lieutenant Bob Goodson’s plane. Boylan was quite choked up when he heard the news. The co-pilot, Bob Clark, and the bombardier, Ross Taylor, were both good pals of his and had been his companions during their leave in London just a few days earlier.

  Another vital target was the German radar stations. A raft of intelligence sources, including specialist organizations such as the Noise Investigation Bureau and Telecommunications Research Establishment, had collaborated to create a clear picture of ninety-two radar installations between Calais and Cherbourg. Some were to be jammed, while the long-range radars would be bombed. The campaign against them had started on 10 May, four years to the day after the Germans had launched their attack on the West. For the most part, these air attacks were to be carried out not by the bomber forces but instead by ground-attack single-engine aircraft armed with bombs, cannons and also rockets, as it was felt that the best way to knock out radar installations was to strike obliquely from a low level – and this could only be done with forward-firing missiles.

  The best-suited Allied machine for such a task was the Hawker Typhoon, a brute of an aircraft that could fly at over 400 m.p.h. and was armed to the teeth with four 20mm cannons, as well as being able to carry two 500lb bombs; it could also be equipped with four RP-3 air-to-ground rockets under each wing. It had a wingspan of over 41 feet, a Napier Sabre 24-piston, 2,200 h.p. engine and a massive bulbous and menacing air intake under the engine cowling that somehow made it look like an angry Spanish bull about to charge. The Hawker Typhoon, originally designed to replace the Hurricane, looked like exactly what it was: a big, mean, incredibly fast and powerful ground-attack fighter.

  There were eighteen squadrons of Typhoons in Coningham’s Second Tactical Air Force, among them 609 Squadron of 123 Wing. This had been a pre-war auxiliary squadron based in the West Riding of Yorkshire – the ‘weekend fliers’, as they were known – and had been mostly young, well-to-do gentlemen, but since the start of the war they had evolved into a highly professional, multinational outfit. The first squadron to score one hundred victories in the Battle of Britain, even then they had attracted Americans, Poles and others, and by 1944 were a magnet for Belgian pilots too. They were also home to three New Zealanders, three Canadians, one Argentinian, and to Flight Sergeant Klaus ‘Ken’ Adam, a German Jew from Berlin who had fled Germany with his family in 1934.

  They had escaped in the nick of time. Adam’s father had run an upmarket sports store in the capital and had been a decorated cavalry officer in the First World War. Refusing to accept the threat of the Nazis, Herr Adam had been devastated when he was arrested in 1933. Through contacts, he was released forty-eight hours later, but his eldest son, Peter, already studying in Paris, had urged the family to leave. ‘Living outside Germany,’ said Adam, ‘where the press was hostile to the Nazis, he could see what was happening.’10

  The children were sent ahead to Britain, then their parents followed. Klaus went first to St Paul’s School – Montgomery’s old alma mater – and then to University College, London, to study architecture. By this time he had worked hard to embrace England and Englishness, and despite his accent had changed his name from Klaus to Ken. He was also very keen to do his bit once war arrived and repeatedly tried to join the RAF. Eventually accepted in late 1941, he trained in Canada and was finally posted to 609 Squadron in October 1943. Almost inevitably, no one called him Ken; in the squadron, he was always known as ‘Heinie’. Despite the nickname, he was made to feel at home immediately and was struck by the camaraderie and team spirit that pervaded the squadron. New pilots were welcomed and carefully nurtured until their fighting skills were sufficiently honed.

  By the spring of 1944, Adam had become a fully established part of the 609 team. The squadron had been operating independently in a fighter role, but at the end of February they had begun retraining as a rocket-firing unit. They were then attached to Second Tactical Air Force and assigned to 123 Wing, part of 84 Group. Now based at Thorney Island, near Portsmouth, they had become primarily aerial artillery, given the task of carrying out regular ground-attack ‘shows’ on targets in northern France. Early May had begun with a flurry of missions: an attack on a road bridge near Cherbourg on the 2nd; the following day, nearly a hundred rockets were fired by the squadron at railway sheds near Amiens. On 7 May targets included a shipping canal and another bridge.

  Four days later – 11 May – they began their part in neutralizing the enemy radar, attacking the station at Fécamp, near Le Havre. It was a big operation and their attack was preceded not only by American bombers, but by other Typhoon squadrons as well. ‘We were the last in,’ said Adam.11 ‘The German flak was trained on us by the time our wave of Typhoons came in.’ Moreover, they had been ordered to attack from inland and out to sea. The first four of 609’s planes attacked in line astern, one behind the other; two were promptly shot down and a third badly hit. Flying behind, Adam watched in horror as Flight Lieutenant Wood’s Typhoon burst into flames, hit Flight Sergeant Keith Adams’s Typhoon, ripping 2 foot 6 inches from the latter’s port wing, and then plunged to the ground. Realizing what sitting targets they were, Adam immediately fell out of the line-astern formation and made his attack from a different angle. This decision probably saved his life. ‘Junior Soesman hit and bailed out but didn’t get into dinghy,’ Adam noted in his logbook.12 ‘Woody was also hit. Caught fire, collided with Adams and crashed into houses, exploding. Damned tough luck.’ To lose three aircraft – and two pilots – out of eight was, as Adam pointed out, ‘a big hit’.

  Twelve days later, they were hitting the Normandy coast and three radar stations: at Pointe de la Percée; Distelfink, the largest radar base along the Normandy coast at Douvres; and also at Saint-Valéry, north of Le Havre. The next day it was another radar station at Cap de la Hague, on the north-west tip of the Cotentin Peninsula. Just four, Adam included, hit that one. ‘Target well pranged,’ was the comment in the squadron records book.13

  The Typhoons were certainly causing considerable damage, but by 3 June it was agreed that the strategic air forces should hammer the key installations as well. Later that day, and again on 4 and 5 June, heavy bombers pummelled radar sites on the northern French coast, including Distelfink. By D-Day, 76 out of 92 radar stations along the coast had been put out of action, including all those containing the particularly a
ccurate Mammut and Wassermann radars. Along the planned invasion front not a single radar station was still working. With the addition of jamming measures, the entire German radar chain along the Channel coast was operating at just 5 per cent effectiveness. Allied air power and radio technology had turned out many of Germany’s defensive lights.

  Conflicting intelligence and interpretations dogged the defenders in these final days before the invasion. The relentless bombing, strafing and drone of overhead aero-engines took their toll, while the bad weather prevented them building much of a clear picture of Allied intentions. German weather forecasters had very few weather stations out in the west, so, although they had plenty to draw from all along the Atlantic coast and right up into the Arctic Circle, they had even fewer reports from the Atlantic than the Allies. They had picked up the low front sweeping across Britain and heading towards the Continent, though, and general unsettled weather that looked to be sweeping in that first full week of June. General Marcks had also repeatedly studied previous Allied invasions and realized that the confluence of moon and tides was paramount. He now reckoned the next time the moon and tides were suitable for an invasion was around 20 June. According to Marcks the weather outlook, the rising winds, the moon and the tides all suggested any invasion was at least a fortnight away.

  Largely for this reason, Feldmarschall Erwin Rommel had felt able to leave La Roche-Guyon on Sunday, 4 June and head to the Berghof to see Hitler in person, to ask that two more panzer divisions be sent to France and to implore, one further time, that he be given tactical control of the panzer divisions. He still believed the Allies could be halted, but he also remained utterly convinced that it could happen only if the panzer divisions were congregated close to the front in the Normandy–Pas de Calais area, although his hunch remained that the invasion would come in Fifteenth Army’s sector, from the Seine estuary up to the Pas de Calais and the Belgian and Dutch coasts. Without his direct control – without the freedom to manoeuvre the panzers with speed and decisiveness – he feared all would soon be lost. And there was another reason for going now: en route to the Berghof lay his own family home at Herrlingen, near Ulm, and Tuesday, 6 June would be his beloved wife Lucie’s fiftieth birthday. He had even gone to Paris the previous day to buy her a pair of new shoes.

  Elsewhere, however, different intelligence sources were picking up different signals. On 1 June, a French Maquis commander had been caught by men of the 352. Division and during his interrogation had told them the invasion would be coming any day. No member of the Résistance knew exactly when it would be, but they had been picking up the BBC’s alerts. For General Kraiss, this was enough to warrant putting the division on full alert, but this being 1944 and not 1940, he could not do so without higher authority. Nor could General Marcks, who agreed with Kraiss that it would be the most sensible course of action. Their request, however, was turned down. Kraiss was able to get around this because of the war games that had been scheduled for that week; he would put his division on full alert, but if questioned by his superiors would tell them they were carrying out practice operations as part of the week’s exercises. As a result, on Monday, 5 June, the 352. Division was the only one in all Normandy on full alert.

  The truth was, though, that none of the Germans really knew Allied intentions. Thanks to a German spy in Turkey, Elyesa Bazna, or ‘Cicero’, who was working as a valet to the British ambassador in Ankara, they knew the invasion code name was OVERLORD, but that didn’t count for very much. On 27 May, Hitler confidently told the Japanese ambassador that the Allies had completed their preparations. After diversionary operations in Norway, Denmark, south-west France and on the French Mediterranean, they would establish a bridgehead in Normandy, or possibly Brittany, and then would launch the real second front across the Pas de Calais. This, of course, was just waffle. Hitler was hedging his bets and displaying his woeful ignorance of military planning and operations. After all, how could the Allies conceivably mount all these amphibious operations?

  On the afternoon of Monday, 5 June, OB West released its latest intelligence summary, suggesting the most likely place for invasion was somewhere between the Scheldt Estuary in Holland and Normandy. ‘Where within this entire sector the enemy will attempt a landing is still obscure,’ ran the report.14 ‘As yet,’ it concluded, ‘there is no immediate prospect of the invasion.’

  Certainly at La Roche-Guyon no one was braced for imminent invasion. In Rommel’s absence, General Hans Speidel was in charge. Admiral Ruge had spent the day driving through the rain to see Marinegruppe West and give them a dressing down. The 2nd Minesweeper Flotilla had been in Brittany, had been sent to Le Havre and en route had been heavily attacked by Allied air forces and all but one had been lost. Their movement was, as far as Ruge was concerned, inexplicable, as there were already plenty of S-boats – very fast torpedo boats – as well as motor minesweepers, both of which were small vessels with low silhouettes. Also, because these were made of wood they were less susceptible to British radar.

  Having given them what for, Ruge was back at La Roche-Guyon for dinner, which he found a highly convivial affair. Among others, Speidel had invited his brother-in-law, Dr Horst, and the writer Ernst Jünger. What Ruge didn’t know was that all were conspirators, plotting against both Hitler and the regime. Speidel was under specific instructions to try to recruit Rommel, although so far this had not gone well. Reinvigorated, Rommel was somewhat in thrall to the Führer once more and full of fight; on 13 May, he had even asked Hitler to begin the V-1 flying bomb campaign against Britain early in an effort to disrupt Allied invasion plans. The forthcoming battle was one he still had every intention of winning.

  In fact, Jünger had even drafted a peace proclamation, which would be put into mass circulation the moment the Hitler regime was eliminated. It declared that they believed in a united and Christian Europe in which notions of democracy, tolerance and social justice would be thrust to the forefront. However, such things were not discussed at the dinner table, although there was, as always when Rommel was not there, plenty of badinage about ‘the arsehole from the Berghof’.15 Ruge thought the discussions were ‘highly animated’.16 Much wine was drunk.

  Unbeknown to them, the invasion armada was already sailing across the Channel and by the time the party broke up after midnight, the first of nearly 25,000 Allied airborne troops were poised to land on French soil.

  The hour had come. It was Tuesday, 6 June 1944. D-Day.

  Landing craft of the US 18th Infantry and 115th Infantry approaching Omaha Beach.

  CHAPTER 8

  D-Day Minus One

  On Friday, 2 June, Lieutenant-Colonel Mark Alexander wrote to his parents in Lawrence, Kansas, for what he knew might well be the last time. At thirty-two, he was older than most of the men he was serving alongside, and married too, and both his age and his position as executive officer of the 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment allowed him to see a somewhat bigger picture than most of the young men under his command. He also had experience behind him, including combat jumps into Sicily and southern Italy and the bitter and tough fighting that had followed.

  ‘Well, here it is,’ he wrote, ‘the day before we take off again and I’m about to jump into the roughest one of the lot.1 We paratroopers are going in ahead of everyone else as usual, to try and soften it up a bit for the beachheads. And I’d much rather be going in this way than coming in with the amphibious forces. Yes, I still feel pretty lucky and shall of course take very good care.’ At the bottom he signed, ‘Remember that I love you always, your son, Mark.’

  An athletic and artistic young man from the Midwest, Alexander had left high school and then travelled around America, bumming rides and doing a number of different jobs, before, with a bit of money in his pocket, he had enrolled at the University of Kansas and undertaken a degree in art, which he gained in 1940. Intending to pursue a masters, once war began he instead joined the local National Guard in Lawrence. Encouraged to sit exams for officer training, Alexa
nder passed with flying colours, becoming 2nd lieutenant on 1 January 1941 and a platoon commander in the 35th Infantry Division. As he was older than most, smart and with a worldliness the majority of his fellows lacked, Alexander soon stood out. He had learned enough on his travels around America about what made good and bad leadership – lessons he swiftly applied to being an infantry officer. He was also physically fit, a decent marksman from his childhood days with a .22 rifle, confident and able to lead by example.

  By the spring of 1942, he had been promoted captain and, after a whirlwind romance, had married an Irish nurse called Mary Collins, although since their hurried wedding there had been little time to spend together. Alexander had decided to volunteer for the airborne branch; he wanted to push himself and certainly did so during the rigorous four-week jump-school course. With five completed jumps and the course behind him, he was posted first to the 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment and then to the newly formed 505th PIR. Almost a year after first heading off to jump school, he was heading to North Africa. In July 1943, by then commanding the 2nd Battalion of the 505th, he jumped into Sicily.