by Andrew Brown
And then almost miraculously the change came. The clouds flew away, the wind dropped, the sea quieted almost at once. The strong, bright sun shone over all the ships and the woods and the fields of the coast. The whole anchorage seemed to shake itself and stir into activity.88
With an American major, Bernal now made another attempt to reach the shore – this time successfully. He jumped out of the landing craft at ‘one of the precise spots that [he] had studied so often and whose history and geography were more familiar [to him] than any place on earth… It was an incredible scene: the confused row of stranded craft: the queue of vehicles coming off the beach, some broken down or bombed, derelict tanks here or there.’89 The assault the day before had taken place on a spring tide with a strong onshore wind that had made the tide two feet higher than expected. Sage saw what had happened: as each wave of landing craft grounded, a number failed to clear because of enemy action or because they were holed by underwater obstacles. In addition, ‘many undamaged craft broached to, were washed up by the tide and neaped’.90 There were repair and salvage parties trying to clear the beach, the Military Police were directing the traffic, and bodies were laid out in rows under blankets awaiting burial. Bernal and the major walked off the beach up a dusty road, observing considerable damage from bombs and shells as they went.
Then we saw our first civilians, blue-bloused peasants, quiet and almost surly, none of the enthusiasm of the Arabs or even the Italians in Tripoli. A woman passed by and smiled but ever so slightly. Further up the houses were not so knocked about, their doors were wreathed in roses but the roses were dusty and dust, road dust and bomb dust, gathered everywhere. I saw a middle-aged man and his wife passing along the street: he looked intellectual, I think he was the village schoolmaster. I said ‘Bonjour, monsieur.’ We talked for a few minutes… Later I addressed some nuns very politely, but was received with frozen and taciturn virtue.91
Sage and the major split up, and he continued to meander through the village, where he saw a large group of bewildered-looking prisoners being watched by just a pair of armed guards. He met some soldiers who immediately began to press him for local information about minefields and for any broader news on how the invasion was going. He began to feel too warm in the afternoon sun, but dare not remove any part of his uniform in case he lowered ‘the dignity of the officer caste’.92 Hearing bangs that were very familiar to him from all the bomb trials he had attended, Sage returned to the beach and found gangs hard at work trying to clear the hedgehogs and mined posts.
The willing ones were shinning up the posts and defusing the mines and shells. They complained that it was dangerous work: they did not mind defusing, they said, but it was unfair to make blast waves whilst they were at work. I took their photos not feeling too happy about it myself, as I was effectively just as close to the shells as they were. However, I did not think that they were sensitive enough to matter. From time to time, there would be a somewhat feeble whistle which made us take cover but usually we only took cover after the explosion so as to keep clear of the bits and pieces falling from the sky.93
The clearance gang had been working for thirty-six hours with hardly a break, and Bernal could see that there were far too few of them for the enormous task. Their spirit was indefatigable and they made suggestions for improving the methods and for better equipment. They were led by a tough, young lieutenant, who had been wounded in the shoulder during the assault, but kept working.
More obstacles were being blown up [and] rather heavy pieces of steel were being thrown into the air; we took cover behind stranded craft. The men were drinking soup out of tins; they offered me some energy tablets which were very good, and asked for news eagerly, but not anxiously… Everything was quiet again, no gunfire or planes.94
Sage went to take a close look at the German gun emplacement, and found himself ‘very irritated at the stupid and slipshod construction of this work and felt like sending a note to the Todt organization, telling them to sack the people responsible’. He wandered along the beach to the area where he had predicted peat and clay, and was dismayed by what he found. Sure enough the ground was soft, with the peat laid down in the Neolithic Period on top of the clay of the last ice-age.
In it, like flies in amber, were stuck every kind of vehicle except the jeep: tanks, lorries and even DUKWs. Some were being pulled out, but others were getting bogged down again. I thought – it is always the same way: I may be right, I may even know that I am right, but I am never sufficiently ruthless and effective to force other people to believe that I am right and to act accordingly. All this was so unnecessary: it all could have been avoided. If people had not thought that my objections were just theoretical and statistical, and that they were practical people [who] need pay no attention to them.95
At nightfall he managed to get back to the dispatch boat and felt uplifted by the sappers he had met on the beach – so cheerful, kind and energetic. In the wardroom, he discussed his observations with four other officers, one of whom had managed to cover the entire front, walking and hitch-hiking rides in jeeps. He reported the beginnings of a small counter-attack, north of Caen. Sage thought that this small group ‘knew more about what was going on, on the second day of the second front than anyone in the world’. D-Day+2 dawned peacefully, with the water glassy smooth. Bernal and a colonel transferred to a control ship opposite Bernières. After a while they hailed a passing LCM (Landing Craft Motors) with a heavy lorry on board. They soon approached the rocks, ‘the charting of which had caused such a flurry a fortnight before’.
A number of ships were stranded on the rocks – I could see them now, vast, illdefined, patches of seaweed. A man in the bows was taking soundings with a pole… we were aground. The boat swung round and managed to back out. I said to the coxswain, ‘I think I know something about these rocks. You will never get in at this stage of the tide; better wait for it to rise a foot or two and then I think I can show you the way in.’ We drew out further and waited. I was impatient… After twenty minutes we started again… I said ‘Steer for the church, but then, to allow for the wind, you had better bear a little to the right.’… there was a grating sound and when the coxswain tried to reverse one of the propellers went. We drifted clear again and tried to edge forward but it got more and more difficult. The wind was freshening and catching in the large hood of the lorry and kept swinging the boat away from its course and there was a strong tide running as well. It took us the best part of two hours to get in that mile, but at last we landed on a firm sand beach and the lorry, with us in it, rolled out.96
While waiting for the tide, they had heard some sporadic firing and seen flashes of fire coming from the village. Now on land, they were told the battle of Bernières was over, but that there were snipers in the great tower of the church, which dominated the whole countryside. Sage badly wanted to see the church, but felt that it would be foolish to be shot ‘for the love of Norman architecture’. So he stuck to the beach defences, where he was again disappointed by the quality of the German construction. There was a rumour that eight captured snipers were Frenchwomen in German uniforms: they had been summarily shot. Sage wondered whether the story was true, and if so whether the women were motivated by affection or politics. He walked west along the beach and was intrigued by the range of activities taking place in what was such a pretty setting, if one removed the trappings of war.
… in the water meadows between the church and the dunes, the tank machines were clearing mines, looking for all the world like hay-tedders, but which belied this by suddenly becoming enveloped in a pall of black smoke from an exploded mine.… The tide was up and the beach was in full activity. Enormous pontoon rafts, every inch loaded with vehicles and men, were coming in and discharging… Men just ashore were looking around them; the older hands were digging in against expected air-raids, or hanging out their clothes to dry or cooking meals. Sitting against a telegraph post of a little railway, a midshipman was writing his first letter home. Behind
, the clearance of mines went on punctuated by explosions and smoke.97
Sage reached the small port of Courseulles, famous for its oysters, which was so peaceful it reminded him of Ireland. Most of the houses were punctured by shell fragments, not destroyed like the bombed houses in England. A gaping hole in the recently vacated German HQ allowed access straight into the officers’ mess, its walls covered with Nazi slogans. On the bar, there was an empty champagne bottle and a full glass of milk; the piano had its strings torn to pieces by shell splinters.
Still accompanied by the colonel, Bernal set off next for the marshes inland, which they found full of bomb craters. They came upon a tank stuck in a ditch; the tank commander told them his story:
‘We had a tough time getting through’, he said. ‘There were a lot of defences in the dunes which we could not see and mortar fire from the hills behind. When we did get through we found the floods, or rather the first tank found them when it disappeared in the blown up culvert across the stream. The local people were specially helpful. They showed us the sluice to let the water out. Then we bulldozed some rubble over the tank and went on ahead. I got stuck in the ditch because I could not see it under the water.’98
The late afternoon and early evening was taken up with waiting for the next bus, as Bernal had come to regard the landing craft, plying their way to and from the larger ships. He spent some of this time writing up his notes, but found it hard to stay awake. He had to go back to England that night, but did not want to: ‘I had got attached to the place and its strange inconsequent life, its near peacefulness and its distant dangers.’ He returned to Portsmouth on the same MTB that had brought him across on D-Day, and watched as the young navigator plotted their course in a lane through the minefields – one of ten approximately parallel routes that had guided the invasion force to La Baie de la Seine.
Sage could be pleased with the preparatory work done over the previous eight months at COHQ. The obstacles encountered on the beaches corresponded ‘in almost every detail to expectations’ from the charts issued for the landings. ‘The methods for dealing with them were adequate if allowances are made for the extra difficulties introduced by the weather.’99 Among the lessons learned were that mechanical removal of obstacles by armoured bulldozers, at low tide, was more successful than destruction by explosives, and that some of the landing craft were overloaded and should have been reinforced so that they could force their way through underwater obstacles. The engineering feat that was the Mulberry harbour would prove its worth in protecting ships and other vessels during the great midsummer’s storm to come. COHQ issued a series of bulletins on the planning of Overlord in November 1944. Three conclusions stood out:
The element of surprise offset the rough weather.
Heavy preliminary bombardment, although it did not effect a lot of material damage, achieved the desired effect of neutralizing enemy batteries by its effects on the defenders.
Although uncleared and causing considerable damage to incoming craft, the underwater obstacles were not sufficiently dense or effective to jeopardize the operation.100
In short, Overlord was a ‘planning triumph’.101
13
Lessons of War
The complexities of South-East Asia Command (SEAC) were such that they would have overwhelmed a leader without Mountbatten’s ineffable self-confidence. By 1943, most of South-East Asia was firmly under Japanese control, following the unstoppable advances they had made through thick jungles, which the British had long regarded as impenetrable. To the British soldier, the Japanese had taken on the aura of invincibility, and morale was further depressed by the debilitating tropical conditions that bred mosquitoes and malaria. Mountbatten’s approach to raising spirits was direct and simple.1 Relying on his royal pedigree, he cheerfully informed the troops that they were not the Forgotten Army: no one had ever heard of them, but this was all going to change under his leadership. His absurd optimism and ironic humour proved irresistible.
Mountbatten’s background naturally predisposed him towards amphibious operations in the new theatre; as soon as he was appointed SACSEA at Quadrant, he asked Bernal to think about the prospects for landings on the peninsulas and islands of the Indian Ocean. Sage’s early impressions were not encouraging:
I have been chasing up information on swell and weather on your coasts with Hussey. Extraordinarily little quantitative data is available. The best we can hope for is the statement of sailors on their experiences, which, even if all were true, are not always representative. I am hoping to get much better information from cinema films, which would give some indications of the height and period of surf, and also from air photographs.
The whole thing wants to be organised rapidly and scientifically as part of intelligence. I strongly urge you to ask for a Scientific Advisor who is up in the M.W.D. work, to be sent out to Colombo immediately. You will want this information, not only for ports, but for landings. They should be able to match the conditions pretty well on the Southern coasts of India for practice purposes. I gather that the best Dutch intelligence as to the island coasts is also to be had from the Dutch representative in Colombo.2
Aside from the lack of intelligence and the operational problems to be faced, there were delicate political balances to be struck. The Americans were distrustful of renewed British imperialism in Asia, while being benevolent towards Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek and the Nationalist Chinese. The American paradox was personified in General ‘Vinegar’ Joe Stilwell, Mount-batten’s limey-loathing Deputy Supreme Commander, who also served as Chief of Staff to Chiang Kai-shek and commanded his Chinese troops in Burma. Stilwell’s first experience with these men in battle against the Japanese was dismal. He was alarmed by the almost total lack of medical services in the Chinese Army to deal with casualties, and by the poor health of the men due to malaria, dysentery and malnutrition – all of which greatly reduced their fighting power. Finally, SEAC was bound to take second place to the planning of Overlord, as Bernal warned Mountbatten in September 1943.
There was marked unwillingness to make any attempt at covering your area, here in Washington. Wernher quite rightly wanted to get back to OVERLORD, which will need every bit of effort we can put into it, and I think it would be advisable to appoint an entirely fresh committee to deal with your harbours. I doubt if the Americans are likely to be of much use, although if the committee could work to cover very similar West Pacific areas, they would be more keen on it and could contribute more experience.3
Sage recommended that if Mountbatten found himself in Chungking, Chiang Kai-shek’s capital, he should ‘look up my great friend Dr Joseph Needham, British Council Scientific Representative in China, who should be able to give you a very complete picture of what the technical, as well as scientific, possibilities are there’. Writing one month later from COHQ, Bernal informed Mountbatten of a proposed Royal Army Medical Corps mission to China to report on what medical assistance and supplies were needed by Chiang Kai-shek’s army.4 The sending of such a mission appeared to Bernal ‘to be one of the few ways in which it is open to Britain to give concrete and impressive assistance to China in the military sphere’. He suggested that it would be important for the RAMC mission to make contact with SEAC’s own medical advisers so that a uniform health plan might be adopted for the whole area. Mountbatten was in agreement: the statistics for the 1943 monsoon season showed that for every wounded man admitted to hospital there were 120 admissions for dysentery and malaria.5
When he left COHQ in October, Mountbatten took with him the last, fantastic scheme hatched by the dejected Geoffrey Pyke to overcome the lack of suitable ports in South-East Asia. Pyke’s preliminary ‘Note on the Military Significance of Power-Driven Rivers’ began in his finest orotund style (‘In pursuant of your instructions of September 1943… to submit to you personally any suggestions, particularly those relevant to the war in the Far East’) and continued for another fifty pages.6 As with Habbakuk, Pyke’s wonderful idea was crisply s
ummarized for Mountbatten by Sage. Power-Driven Rivers were ‘essentially for the use of pipelines to carry military and other stores in cylindrical containers travelling along with the oil or other liquid in the pipe’.7 Ships at anchor would send large-bore pipes ashore, and all manner of supplies would then be pushed along the pipes by hydraulic force. Once a secure lodgment was established, the pipes could be extended inland, through swamps and over mountains, to overcome the lack of conventional roads. To Pyke, Power-Driven Rivers was a solution of ‘intellectually abnormally elementary nature’, but Sage, for once, was cautious saying that the idea would need a lot of investigation. He agreed with Pyke that the scheme should be technically possible, but could foresee problems in the production of such lengths of pipe and the pumping gear necessary.
Mountbatten was looking forward to a visit from Bernal and Zuckerman in December, but, as we have seen, this proved impossible because of their commitment to Overlord. Sage instead wrote a long apologetic letter to Mountbatten saying that he did not want his unavailability ‘to deprive you of scientific advice and research until some problematical date’.8 As on previous occasions, he suggested the name of G.I. Taylor as an alternative adviser; Bernal knew Taylor was in Washington but did not know that he was an indispensable member of the Manhattan Project team. He was encouraged that John Kendrew, whose company he enjoyed in Cairo, was transferring to Delhi to take charge of operational research for the RAF. Bernal was also hoping ‘to establish better liaison with Needham in China’ and was sorry to hear that he had been stuck in the Gobi Desert, while Mountbatten was in Chungking. He suggested flying Needham to Delhi, when Chinese matters were being discussed. With the handwritten letter, Bernal sent ‘a longer and more official document on some topics that seem from this end to need attention on the spot’.
