Normandy '44

by James Holland

  ‘Come on, be quick boy,’ urged his comrade, ‘because those troops will kill us for sure after what we’ve done.6 There’s no point surrendering, do you see?’ Eineg was shocked – that hadn’t occurred to him – but now the Sherman was firing again and was being fired at in turn by one of the 88s. A shell knocked the tank off its tracks, slewing it sideways, and a second hit it in the side near the engine. It erupted in flames. Hatches opened and two men clambered out, only to be shot by Eineg’s machine-gunner. Eineg saw them tumble off the tank and into the flames. Another shell hit the turret and the tank commander, immobile, stood there, rapidly engulfed by fire. ‘I began to understand now,’ said Eineg, ‘what the gunner meant when he said these English would kill us for sure.’7 A Churchill emerged and came forward to within a few yards, firing at point-blank range at the 88, destroying both the gun and the inside of the casement.

  Briefly blinded by smoke and dust, Eineg heard the Churchill firing over and over. Frantically, he tried to change ammunition belts, but then came face to face with a Tommy, covered in grey concrete dust, charging towards them. The soldier flung in a grenade, which bounced off the wall and exploded in the corridor. Eineg ducked, crouching a split second before the Tommy opened fire with his Sten sub-machine gun. The gunner, however, was not so quick. Eineg saw the bullets punch holes in his chest, then emerge from his back and ricochet wildly around the concrete walls. Several hit Eineg, but their energy was spent and, miraculously, he remained uninjured. Suddenly, the Tommy trod on a mine and bits of him and his uniform flew through the slit. Eineg ran out into the corridor. Mayhem reigned, but despite this, the same officer who had stopped him before now motioned for him to follow him back to the MG post. As the officer stepped inside, first a burst of Sten-gun fire and then another explosion rocked the room. ‘I looked into the MG room and the scene was terrible,’ said Eineg.8 ‘The officer and my gunner were on fire, with their limbs burned away, and the room full of burning powder which coated the walls and was dripping from the ceiling. I was sickened by the sight.’

  Eineg hurried out of the back as a flurry of Allied fighters sped overhead, running towards a number of cooks and clerks who were also fleeing and taking odd pot shots. He glanced back and saw the roof collapsing. One of the men said, ‘We should surrender,’ then threw away his rifle and put up his hands, only to be shot in the head, his skull fragmenting while he stood there. Tommies were now charging towards them. One German soldier was bayoneted in the stomach. Eineg turned and ran for his life along a sunken path towards his billet, where at last he met some more of their own troops, equipped with MG42s and Panzerfaust anti-tank weapons. An officer ordered them into the reinforced billets. Here, he said, they would make a stand.

  A little over half a mile away, the 6th Green Howards had also been charging German strongpoints. Hurrying straight up the track towards Vers-sur-Mer, they had almost passed the forward positions of the Mont Fleury strongpoint when Company Sergeant-Major Stan Hollis, realizing one of the casements was still active and threatening the troops coming off the beach, charged up a track, firing his Sten sub-machine gun. Somehow dodging enemy machine-gun fire, he jumped on top of the first bunker, threw a grenade into the viewing slit then finished off those inside with his Sten. With one bunker knocked out, he jumped into the connecting trench, changing his magazine as he ran, and was about to attack the next bunker when the Germans swiftly emerged with their hands up. Soon after, the entire Mont Fleury strongpoint, an extensive and major position with commanding views over much of Gold Beach, was overrun and out of action for good.

  Meanwhile, a couple of miles to the west, at Jig sector, where the Sherwood Rangers were due to land, most of the assault troops had come ashore too far to the east. The 1st Hampshires had had a particularly difficult time of it. Several of their landing craft had hit the offshore reefs and, thinking they had beached, they had lowered the ramps only for the first men to jump out into deep water. Weighed down by their heavy equipment and packs, most of them drowned. When the rest did finally reach the shore, they had drifted some way down the beach. Meanwhile, the Royal Engineer breaching parties had landed more or less where they should and so had started clearing lanes. To reach these, the Hampshires then had to advance sideways and westwards, along the beach, which was exactly where most of the German fixed gun positions from the strongpoint at Le Hamel were pointed. Typhoons carrying 1,000lb bombs had been over and attacked the position shortly before the landings, but had been unable to knock it out. ‘Get on the beach and then get off the beach’ had been drummed into every man, so despite the lack of tanks and coordination with the engineers, they had pressed forward and moved inland before working their way back towards Le Hamel from behind. They still suffered considerable casualties.

  Among the DD tanks supposed to support them had been the Shermans of the Sherwood Rangers Yeomanry. Major Stanley Christopherson’s A Squadron was in reserve, so not swimming ashore; that dubious privilege had been given to B and C Squadrons. At H-Hour, 7.30 a.m., Christopherson, still out at sea on his LCT, switched on his own tank’s radio set to see how the other two squadrons were faring. Reception was, unsurprisingly, poor and there was continual interference from other stations, but he was able to hear occasional familiar voices, including that of his greatest friend in the regiment, Stephen Mitchell, who was commanding C Squadron. ‘He certainly appeared to be most irritated,’ noted Christopherson with typical understatement, ‘but it was good to hear his voice, which meant he was safe for the time being.’9

  He was, but in fact they too were drifting off course and badly behind schedule. In all, five DD tanks from C Squadron and three from B sank, but the rest – which amounted to thirty – made it, thanks to the good sense of the navy, who took them in to within 600 yards of the shore rather than releasing them at 7,000 yards as originally planned; so far, only the 741st Tank Battalion had suffered that error of judgement. The first tanks of the Sherwood Rangers came ashore just after 8 a.m., and also too far east, which meant they too had to work their way back up the beach, and under the watch of a 77mm gun in a casement at the western end, part of the Le Hamel strongpoint. Within moments of getting ashore, Lieutenant Monty Horley’s B Squadron Sherman was hit. Three of the crew managed to get out, only for two of them, Horley included, to be shot and killed. Horley had been with the regiment since North Africa.

  All along the beach, vicious fighting was taking place, while landing craft were struggling against the beach obstacles.

  To the east, at Juno Beach, the first destroyer of Force J had opened fire at 6.19 a.m., targeting enemy gun positions inland, but Algonquin did not join in until 7 a.m., when she began pasting two strongpoints at Saint-Aubin and Saint-Bernières, WN27 and WN28, both of which had 50mm anti-tank guns as well as machine guns and mortars; these were the Widerstandsnester that Bob Roberts, Charlie Martin and their respective regiments had been told to capture. Their landing craft were heading towards Juno, but slightly behind schedule and with almost no interference from the enemy; the contrast with Omaha could not have been greater, as German guns inland were firing at Force J – not that Yogi Jenson noticed – and the guns on the beaches were faced along the beach rather than out to sea. DD Shermans were also heading towards the beach, as were AVREs of the 80th Assault Squadron. AVREs were part of the British 79th Armoured Division, commanded by Major-General Percy Hobart, who, despite being a pioneer of British armoured warfare and a superb trainer of men, had been retired before the war and in 1940 had been serving as a private in the Home Guard. Swiftly brought back into service, he had first raised and trained up the 11th Armoured Division and then the 79th, with a specific brief to expand specialist assault armour. DD tanks had been developed on his watch, as had a number of other ‘Hobart’s Funnies’, as they became known, most of which were based on the Churchill tank, which not only had the thickest armour of any tank in the Allied arsenal but could also climb more steeply than any other. The AVREs were designed to help the infantry g
et ashore by blasting paths through beach defences. Among these AVREs were ramp carriers, bridge layers, fascine carriers, Churchills with the main gun replaced with a 290mm bunker-buster mortar and also a ‘Crab’ or flail tank, which rotated chains ahead of a Sherman, whipping up the ground and any potential mines. Then there was ‘Crocodile’ – a Churchill tank that, in addition to its main gun, was fitted with a flame-thrower that towed a trailer filled with fuel. Using compressed nitrogen as a propellant, it could project a lethal burst of flame as far as 150 yards.

  The Canadian troops landed at 7.45 a.m. As soon as the ramp was down, Sergeant Charlie Martin of the Queen’s Own Rifles shouted, ‘Move! Fast!10 Don’t stop for anything! Go! Go! Go!’ Then they were running across the beach, scaling the sea wall and dashing across the railway line. Bullets pinged and zipped all around. A number of men were hit. From his LCA alone, Martin lost four killed and one wounded. One of the platoon commanders was hit twice; two NCOs from 9 Platoon were also wounded; others from the company, men Martin had known since joining the regiment, were cut down and killed. Discipline and training kept them going, however. They were fit and at least 30 per cent of the platoon were first-class marksmen. They quickly cleared one MG post, which gave them some let-up, then hit wire entanglements. With mortars falling worryingly close and the hiss of bullets, they swiftly opened a path with their cutters and pushed on through, only to reach a minefield. There was no choice but to keep going. Martin led, and had gone ten paces when he trod on a Schu-mine – an anti-personnel mine that, the moment the pressure was released, burst in the air at knee height, spreading shrapnel and buckshot over a wide area. The key was not to release the pressure. Waving his men on past, Martin waited until they were all clear and was just leaning forward about to spread himself flat on the ground when a bullet hit a glancing blow on his tin helmet, spinning it round and knocking it off his head. Leaping forward, he dived for the ground, the mine exploded – thankfully above his head – and, having survived two close calls within a matter of moments, he hurried on without his helmet.

  While the Queen’s Own had been approaching Nan White, on their left had been the North Shore New Brunswick Regiment, due to land at Nan Red, facing the town of Saint-Aubin. One of those now heading towards the sea front was 21-year-old Eldon ‘Bob’ Roberts, his section’s Bren machine-gunner. Unlike the MG42, the Bren was magazine- rather than belt-fed and had a rate of fire of around 500 rounds per minute, the firing speed that had proved so effective in the First World War. While a Bren could not produce the initial weight of fire of the German light machine gun, it was considerably more accurate, far easier to carry and manoeuvre than the MG42, and had a thicker barrel that could fire 250,000 rounds before replacing. The lower rate of fire and a change of magazine after twenty-eight rounds also ensured it suffered none of the overheating issues of the German model. ‘It was a great gun,’ said Roberts.11 ‘Reliable, accurate, easy to handle.’

  Roberts was a fairly laid-back fellow. One of an astonishing fifteen children, he had been brought up on a farm in New Brunswick on the eastern edge of Canada. The nearest town of any note was 30 miles away. ‘Right out in the country,’ he said.12 ‘Real wild. We had cows, sheep, pigs – all horse power in those days. Man power and horse power.’ The tiny local school for the farming families round about was 2 miles away. In summer they walked there, in winter they skied. They were almost entirely self-sufficient and the children were expected to pitch in just as soon as they were old enough. ‘When I was eight years old,’ said Roberts, ‘I was on the end of the old cross-cut saw, sawing down trees with my father.’ His parents were strict but loving and devoutly Christian, so Roberts grew up respecting authority and discipline, but was also independent of mind and used to thinking on his feet. It was, in fact, the kind of upbringing that prepared him very well for life in the army.

  He joined up in May 1942, reaching England very early in January 1943. Since then he and his mates had been training non-stop: eighteen months preparing for this moment. He felt ready for what was to come and wasn’t particularly scared. ‘Because you didn’t know what you were going to face,’ he said.13 ‘You’d done so much training, it had become second nature.’

  In his bunker in Courseulles, Oberleutnant Tauber looked out across the long stretch of the beach, then at low tide, and at the belts of defence obstacles silhouetted spectrally against the grey dawn. Turning to his men, he was reminding them of their tasks when suddenly a massive barrage of explosions broke all around them. ‘When the explosions began,’ he said, ‘I realised they were of an enormous calibre, much bigger than any artillery I had heard before.’14 This was the Eastern Task Force opening fire, which to anyone watching from the coast looked rather like a single flash of orange flame. The ground shook and shock waves pummelled the Germans’ ears as they crouched down, hands around their heads. One of the younger lads broke down and began sobbing uncontrollably. Another tried to run, but Tauber’s corporal tackled the man before he could escape. ‘However great the pressure,’ said Tauber, ‘we could not tolerate men acting like that.’15 Looking through the periscope, all he could now see was smoke, dust and debris filling the air.

  At Saint-Aubin, Bob Roberts’s landing craft was the first to touch down and he was the second man ashore as the ramp came down on to sand rather than in water. It was around 7.50 a.m. There was absolutely no firing at all in those first moments. ‘There was nothing,’ said Roberts.16 ‘It was absolutely empty because they all had their heads down.’ He was following Corporal Cleeve Campbell and several others from his section. They went around the 50mm bunker, then pushed down a road that led from the sea front, wondering where all the Germans were. Campbell now ordered them to start searching the houses, two men to each house. Roberts was with Private Lecroix. They kicked open the house door to find a startled-looking Frenchman. Lecroix, a French speaker, told him they had come to search his house. The man showed them into a room that had a hatch, which, he told them, led down to a tunnel to the sea front and a bunker where the Germans had a machine gun. Roberts hurried out to find Campbell and get permission to investigate, which the corporal granted. He also handed Lecroix a flame-thrower.

  Back they went into the house, then through the hatch and down a ladder. It was dark and Roberts wondered if they would ever get back out alive. Feeling their way along a narrow tunnel, they eventually saw a slit of daylight and other tunnels joining theirs. Up ahead a machine gun was chattering – whatever stupor the Germans had been in, they had clearly recovered. The firing of the machine gun masked the sound of Roberts’s and Lecroix’s approach, however. ‘All I could see was two men standing there,’ recalled Roberts.17 ‘It was like a semi-circular platform with a four-foot wall and a gun on top.’ He now stepped forward and gave them a burst from his Bren gun across their legs; at the same time, Lecroix moved in with the flame-thrower. They stepped back into the shadows as more troops came running to the help of the downed men. ‘They thought it was something coming from the sea,’ said Roberts, ‘and so they come trying to beat the flames out of the burning men.’18

  Roberts and Lecroix took another step forward and let rip with the Bren and flame-thrower once again. ‘Come on,’ Roberts now said to Lecroix, ‘let’s get the hell out of here.19 And if you hear or see anything on the way out it won’t be one of ours, so give them a lick of flame.’ But they both got out safely without meeting any more of the enemy. By neutralizing that gun position, Roberts and Lecroix had saved the lives of a lot of their fellows.

  A short way up the coast at Courseulles, Oberleutnant Cornelius Tauber was peering through his periscope in his camouflaged bunker, desperately trying to make out what was going on. He had ordered one of the Goliaths to be started and moved to the tunnel towards the beach; the sound had seemed so feeble compared to what was going on outside, it had made them all laugh somewhat manically. Now Tauber saw Sherman tanks moving up across the beach – precisely the targets for which the Goliaths had been intended – and so o
rdered his men to move out the first Goliath. Through his periscope he watched it advance towards the first Sherman. The nearby 50mm gun was also firing and a shell could be seen ricocheting off the tank’s turret. Off shore, the naval guns were continuing to fire, shells hurtling over. One struck the rocks in front of the bunker, the blast wave knocking Tauber over. Recovering, he looked back towards the Goliath and saw it was stationary and had shed a track. It was now effectively useless. A second Goliath was sent out, but 20 yards from the nearest tank it also ground to a halt. Tauber ordered its detonation – what else could he do? – but the explosion did not appear to cause much damage.

  Moments later, a number of Canadian troops passed by the viewing slit without noticing them. Unfortunately for Tauber, one of his men fired his rifle, hitting one of the Canadians, who began writhing on the sand while his fellows took cover. Then, before Tauber and his men had a chance to respond, one of the Canadians stepped forward and a second later a shot of flame sped through the viewing slit. Two of the men were hit immediately, their uniforms catching fire. They threw themselves about, thrashing wildly and crashing into the others. ‘They screamed as they thrashed about,’ recalled Tauber.20 ‘I can still hear those screams in my mind.’ Another spurt of flame shot through the slit, setting a waiting Goliath on fire. Those who could leaped for the exit tunnel as the two burning men collapsed on the floor. Tauber and his men ran like rabbits, down the tunnel and towards the main bunker, where he emerged, pistol in hand, straight into a Canadian with a rifle and bayonet fixed. Tauber was stunned to see enemy troops there already. The Canadian yelled out and swung his rifle butt, hitting Tauber in the face. Stunned, in pain and utterly shocked that someone would actually want to kill him, Tauber fired twice, sprays of the man’s blood blowing back at him. Half dazed, he looked up, saw a mass of contrails in the sky and then realized the Canadian had fallen. Dazed and confused, he rolled into a trench, landing on two bodies, a German and a Canadian who had apparently killed one another. He crawled over them and tried to escape, his pistol still in his hand, blood from the smash on his face blurring his vision.