CHAPTER 17
Linking Up
Lieutenant-General Lewis Brereton, commander of the US Ninth Air Force, had discovered during his time in Cairo and the Mediterranean that journalists would often ask him how the Brits and Americans got along, and he would always cite the answers given by his friends and colleagues, Air Marshal Mary Coningham and Brigadier-General Auby Strickland, who had commanded IX Tactical Command in the Mediterranean. In the morning, one would come over to the other’s tent, they would ask how each other was, then they would suggest they shared a glass of gin. Coningham would produce the bottle of gin and Strickland a can of grapefruit juice. That, Brereton would tell people, was how the British and Americans get along.
It wasn’t always plain sailing, yet, for the most part, the Allied air force leaders got on well. Spaatz and Tedder had a close, easy relationship, with one another and also with Eisenhower, while those running the tactical air forces also got on well. No one liked Leigh-Mallory much, but that didn’t matter because he had been effectively sidelined by both Tedder and Mary Coningham, who had been given the title Commander, Advanced AEAF. This gave him, rather than Leigh-Mallory, operational control of the US Ninth Air Force as well as his own Second Tactical Air Force. It meant yet another Brit in charge of a key component of the Allied forces, which annoyed Brereton, who was getting increasingly frustrated about the dominance of the RAF, but on a personal level he had no issue with Coningham, a friend and fellow bon viveur. The two had worked closely for months. Among the air force commanders, the long periods of tent-sharing in North Africa were now paying dividends.
Coningham had ordered a maximum effort on D-Day and D plus 1, regardless of wear and tear on aircraft and the strain on crews, which was why fighter pilots like Gabby Gabreski were flying four times a day and bomber crews such as Ken Handley of 466 Squadron were flying two missions in a day. Much thought had been put into every aspect of the air operations. To ensure effective and accurate fighter cover over the beaches, Fighter Direction Tenders had been added to the invasion fleets, on which were radar, plotting rooms and ground controllers. These had worked very well, but perhaps the greatest triumph had been won earlier, leading to the almost complete no-show of the Luftwaffe on D-Day. In early 1943 the Americans had pushed hard for prioritizing the destruction of the Luftwaffe. The POINTBLANK directive, issued on 10 June 1943, had been driven by them and they had been absolutely right. D-Day had been possible because of it, and the firm footing the Allies now had was in large part due to the immense support the air forces had given those on the ground. Command of the Allied Air Forces might now be dominated by the RAF, but the USAAF had driven the strategy that was paying such dividends now.
An essential part of Allied strategy was to swiftly establish airfields in Normandy from which aircraft could operate as soon as was humanly possible. The level of planning to achieve this was immense, but the closer aircraft were to the front, the more they could fly. And the more they could fly, the easier the task would be for those Allied troops battling on the ground.
Brigadier-General Pete Quesada flew into Normandy on Thursday, 8 June, arriving on Emergency Landing Strip 1 at Pouppeville, just behind the southern part of Utah Beach, and nearly cutting down an engineer still trying to finish the airfield. He had come to confer with Bradley and the corps commanders, as well as to see how his airfields and advance parties were getting along. The challenges were many. In the pre-invasion plan, the Allies had hoped to be further south already, but first the delays in getting engineers, ground personnel and equipment ashore and then having to construct airfields while still being shelled and sniped had ensured that on D plus 2 only two airfields had been built in the American sector and just one in the British. That these three had been open for business in so short a time was, however, little short of a miracle. Many of the men involved had been drafted from AT&T, the company that was almost single-handedly responsible for implementing the telephone network across the USA. ‘They were AT&T’s best,’ commented Quesada, ‘and they could do anything.’1 At any rate, these engineers simply shifted west and created an airfield between Omaha and the village of Saint-Laurent-sur-Mer – behind Easy Red. Incredibly, airfield A-21 C was operational by evening that day.
Also ashore were the first radar sets, as well as offshore radar and ground control, the forward directing posts. It wasn’t ideal – Quesada’s new microwave early warning – MEW – radar ideally needed higher ground – but by the time he touched down at ELS-1, he did have some 1,600 engineers, ground crew and signals troops in Normandy. In all, Quesada alone had some 80,000 personnel ready to ship over to France, and every one of them knew exactly what they were supposed to do when they got there and where they were supposed to be. He was certainly anxious to be based in Normandy as soon as possible and, with scant regard for his own safety, he flew over again on 10 June. Just to the south of Pointe du Hoc, on the coastal road at the hamlet of Le Guay, IX Tactical Command HQ was set up alongside Bradley’s embryonic First Army Headquarters. A mile to the south, at Cricqueville, A-2, a further US airfield, was being built. ‘Headquarters IX Tactical Air Command,’ signalled Quesada at 3.30 p.m. on the 10th, ‘established on the continent.’2
The troops on the ground also had reason to thank the contribution of the Allied naval forces, which had been phenomenal. The role of the navy in the success of D-Day has been all too often underplayed – and even rather taken for granted – yet in the most trying and difficult weather conditions imaginable they had cleared dense minefields and got the vast invasion forces successfully across the Channel, in order and on time, both men and truly huge amounts of materiel; on D-Day alone, 132,000 men and almost 20,000 vehicles were landed. In addition, there was the incredible amount of naval fire support, which not only destroyed vital enemy gun positions such as those at Longues-sur-Mer, but also helped turn the tide on the beaches, not least at Omaha. The destroyer USS Carmick alone fired 1,127 5-inch shells on D-Day; its effort was not exceptional. Offshore naval bombardment had continued to help the Allies push inland – performance on the ground improved considerably when communications with the naval forces were intact.
Admiral Ramsay had reason to be proud of his command and what they had achieved, although he was none the less furious that three S-Boats had managed to penetrate Allied naval defences and sink three LSTs on 8 June, which, added to the sixty-three landing craft destroyed on D-Day, amounted to serious losses. He was also equally frustrated that half a Kriegsmarine destroyer force moving up from Brest had got away. ‘I wanted all to be sunk,’ he noted in his diary, then added, ‘The U-boats are approaching the Portsmouth area & will become active by Saturday.3 E-boats [S-boats] still a menace.’ The following day he was flung into another rage when an LST carrying more than 250 wounded was kept at sea for several hours due to bad organization. ‘Just a day of one d … d thing after another,’ he noted, ‘but the general trend of the operation is good & progressing.’4
Nor were naval operations confined to warships and landing craft. Lieutenant Ambrose Lampen, aboard the ancient Channel paddle-steamer Queen of Thanet, had arrived at Arromanches, just to the west of Gold Beach, on the morning of 7 June, after his ship had weaved sedately along the Z-shaped channel cleared through the enemy minefields. Anchored a mile off shore, he could hear only the distant rumble of guns and see occasional flashes on the skyline. His task was to place the ‘Corncobs’ – old blockships that were to form the first breakwater. With the shelter they would provide in place, the Phoenixes and other elements of the Mulberry harbour could be brought in, swiftly assembled and put into operation.
The first blockship, Alynbank, arrived at 10.30 a.m. It had to be manoeuvred into position at 280 degrees, then sunk in such a way that it settled at the right angle. Working against this was the tide, which was now high but was about to start ebbing and might easily push the ship out to a different angle or off course entirely. ‘The method of scuttling the ship was crude,’ noted Lampen.5 There were
charges either side below the waterline, each of which was supposed to blow a 4-foot hole. ‘But no-one really knew what would be the effect of the blast, or how long the ship would take to sink.’ The hope was that, while the ship sank, tugs would hold it in position. Unfortunately, the first attempt on Alynbank failed badly, as strong tidal currents took hold, the tugs lost control, and the ship swung round, settling at almost 90 degrees to where she should have been. This was the first Corncob to have been sunk and it could not have gone more disastrously wrong. Mortified, Lampen hurried back to shore in his small motor craft to see his boss, Captain Christopher Petrie.
‘I saw the whole thing, Lampen,’ Petrie said calmly.6 ‘We should not have attempted it on the ebb tide. It was bad luck.’ Nothing more was said, but Lampen felt certain his time as a ‘planter’ was over. None the less, he got the tug captains together and worked out how they might avoid this happening again, and the following morning, 8 June, they sank the next Corncob, the old tramp steamer Saltersgate, perfectly, her bows almost touching the misplaced Alynbank.
Rather than experiencing any sense of elation, however, Lampen felt shattered because a few minutes earlier he had seen Captain Petrie being escorted from Arromanches. ‘I knew immediately what it meant,’ he recorded.7 ‘A fine gentleman had been caught between loyalty to this own subordinate and the inflexible ambition of his successor. For my mistake with the Alynbank he had been summarily removed from command and sent back into the oblivion of retirement.’ There was little time for him to dwell on the unfairness of Petrie’s dismissal, however, because there were more blockships to sink. He and his team were rapidly getting into the rhythm of the operation and by nightfall they had completed a third of the task.
By the evening of 10 June, Lampen and his men had completed the ‘Gooseberry’ harbour – the long breakwater of sunken blockships. Later, he climbed a track leading out of the town and walked up on to the cliff where the Germans had had a radar station; the broken Würzburg was still there. Looking out he could see the breakwater and the piers being put into place by the army engineers. Three ‘spud’ pierheads had already been situated, with ‘whale’ units – the individual parts of the pier – stretching back to the shore. On the beach, an LST was busy unloading, while further out, coastal steamers were unloading on to DUKWs, which beetled their way back to the shore. Both Arromanches and Gold Beach were hives of activity. Further along the coast, he could even see one of the other rows of blockships that were being established at each of the invasion beaches.
Lampen had also been elevated. Quite a team had been put in place to supervise the construction of the Mulberry B, but Lampen had now been given the additional post of ‘planter’ for the Phoenixes, the huge caissons that would make the main harbour wall. On Sunday, 11 June, they began positioning the Phoenixes, which had already been brought safely across the Channel and which would form the deepest part of the harbour. Having learned from Alynbank, he was determined not to put a foot wrong. His Phoenixes would be planted on a rising tide; Lampen realized that for the harbour to work successfully – and to last against whatever capricious weather might be thrown against it – each needed to be sited perfectly and, for that, timing was everything. And so this extraordinary offshore project progressed. Slowly but surely, almost a week after the invasion, the battle to win the build-up of supplies appeared to be in the hands of the Allies.
Meanwhile, the Americans were making progress to the west of Cricqueville. On 9 June the Rangers, along with the help of Company C, 116th Infantry, took both Grandcamp and the battery complex at Maisy. To help them they had the 58th Field Artillery, now attached, as well as the 743rd Tank Battalion, so were able to operate as an all-arms assault force. Captain John Raaen’s first task was to clear the houses in Grandcamp of snipers. ‘So I made up four teams of four,’ he said, ‘and put two on the right two on the left, and then leapfrogged the pairs from house to house.8 And we cleared about twenty or thirty houses that way.’ The next day, after a night in ditches by the hedgerows, they joined the attack on the Maisy Battery itself, which they swiftly overran. This battery had been firing on them while they’d been holed up in Saint-Pierre near Pointe du Hoc, but, like all the German strongpoints along the Normandy coast, it had been worn down by air and naval fire and now by an overwhelmingly strong assault from inland. Concrete bunkers were all well and good, but they were immobile and dependent on the mutual fire support of others. When isolated, damaged and with ammunition supplies running short, such complexes often ended up becoming coffins instead, as had been painfully proved to the defenders since D-Day.
Sergeant Bob Slaughter and the 1st Battalion, 116th Infantry, swung inland a little way while the Rangers were attacking Grandcamp and cut across to the south of Maisy. Ahead were surviving elements of Grenadier-Regiment 914. Slaughter and his squad followed a squeaking Sherman tank as it trundled forward along a sunken road. High hedges lined the way, and Slaughter and his men took solace from the protection both these and the Sherman gave them, although because of the dust from the tank, he was happy to hang back a bit. Then sporadic mortar and the occasional larger shell began whistling over, until suddenly an almighty explosion up ahead pulsed through the ground. A fireball erupted and rolled in all directions as the Sherman hit a teller mine, blowing all the men inside to smithereens, as well as almost an entire squad of ten men who had been crouching behind the tank. Slaughter felt the blast and heat from some 40 yards back, and when the flame, dust and smoke began to settle, he saw that the 30-ton tank had been flung sideways into the ditch at the edge of the road. ‘One minute they were healthy young men,’ he wrote, ‘and the next minute they were bloody arms and legs wrapped around bloody torsos.’9 They found body parts, including boots with the feet still in them, more than 25 yards away. Slaughter was far from being the only one to vomit. ‘I thought I was getting used to seeing men killed in every gruesome way possible,’ he added, ‘but that teller mine explosion was one of the most horrific things I have ever witnessed.’ After this, he vowed to keep his distance from tanks on roads.
The remnants of the shattered 352. Division were now pulling back to the Hauptkampflinie – the new main line of defence they’d prepared before the invasion. Leutnant Hans Heinze and his 5. Kompanie were among the first to reach it, having pulled back south of Colleville. After they had dug in, they watched as yet more Allied aircraft flew over; such overwhelming enemy air power and their huge materiel advantage was something Heinze had not experienced in Russia. After one pasting by Allied bombers, he found his friend Leutnant Heller, a veteran of France 1940 and the Eastern Front, quite unashamedly weeping over the loss of so many of his men since the invasion. ‘If they would only fight us man to man,’ Heller told him, ‘we would have a chance.10 We can’t fight their planes and bombs.’
Karl Wegner was among those exhausted German survivors continuing to trudge south and west. That day, Friday, 9 June, the division lost 2,000 men – a fifth of its fighting strength, and on top of the number that had been lost the two previous days. All day they were harried by Jabos, fighters and even bombers, while the roads were littered with dead horses and burning vehicles. ‘Even though we fell back,’ he said, ‘other parts of our regiment were still fighting in the hedgerows.’11 Sometimes it was only a few men, but a machine gun or two and a couple of snipers could prove incredibly effective, holding up an entire American company and giving the rest precious time to make good their escape. As they trudged on, Wegner and his fellows kept a constant watch on the sky, but time and time again the Jabos dived down on them and they had to jump for cover and hope for the best. ‘But always we asked the same question: where is the Luftwaffe?’ he wrote.12 The most common answer was, ‘They’re all back home protecting Fat Hermann’s medals.’
On the morning of 9 June, Generalleutnant Bayerlein was finally ready to enter the battle, with his artillery shelling the enemy positions on the ridge opposite where the British 8th Armoured and 53rd Infantry Brigades were now dug
in waiting to push forward. Above Saint-Pierre and Tilly-sur-Seulles, the Sherwood Rangers were feeling the heat. ‘Point 103 became most uncomfortable,’ noted Stanley Christopherson with typical understatement, ‘and appeared to be the main target of German mortar and artillery fire.’13 His tanks were quite safe in the trees, but the moment they pushed forward they were exposed to enemy tanks down in the village. Eventually Sergeant Dring managed to push forward with his Firefly and, using the high-velocity 17-pounder gun, hit a Panther five times and knocked it out. Three Shermans were destroyed, although in each case the crews managed to get out. One of those hit was Lieutenant Mike Howden’s tank. ‘Mike’s stammer prevented any kind of speech for half an hour,’ noted Christopherson after Howden and his crew had escaped, ‘and his complexion – which at the best of times is devoid of colour – was even whiter than snow.’14 But Christopherson did lose his second-in-command that day, Captain Keith Douglas, who was killed instantly by flying shrapnel. Douglas had been with A Squadron since Palestine and had fought with them all through North Africa. Arguably the greatest British war poet of the Second World War, he also wrote a superb book about his time with the Sherwood Rangers, Alamein to Zem Zem, which had been published before they left for Normandy.
Later that day, the Sherwood Rangers were withdrawn and their positions on Point 103 taken over by the 4th/7th Dragoon Guards. With the British in this sector coming up against the Panzer-Lehr, however, the Sherwood Rangers, along with all the infantry and armour of 50th Division plus the attached independent brigades, were needed once more, and the very next day were moved back up to Point 103. By then, Saint-Pierre had been taken in a combined infantry and armour assault backed by artillery, which, by this time, was in full support. Christopherson’s A Squadron was on the left flank supporting the infantry. He and his men spent a sleepless night on the edge of Saint-Pierre expecting a counter-attack that never materialized.
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