Building for Battle - Hitlers D-Day Defences

HITLER’S D-DAY DEFENCES PHILIP KAPLAN

For Margaret First published in Great Britain in 2017 by Pen & Sword Military. An imprint of Pen & Sword Books Ltd 47 Church Street Barnsley South Yorkshire S70 2AS Copyright © Philip Kaplan, 2017 ISBN 978 1 52670 540 2 eISBN: 978 1 52670 542 6 Mobi ISBN: 978 1 52670 541 9 The right of Philip Kaplan to be identified as Author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical including photocopying recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission from the Publisher in writing. Pen & Sword Books Ltd incorporates the imprints of Pen & Sword Archaeology, Atlas, Aviation, Battleground, Discovery, Family History, History, Maritime, Military, Naval, Politics, Railways, Select, Transport, True Crime, Fiction, Frontline Books, Leo Cooper, Praetorian Press, Seaforth Publishing, Wharncliffe and White Owl. For a complete list of Pen & Sword titles please contact PEN & SWORD BOOKS LIMITED 47 Church Street Barnsley, South Yorkshire, S70 2AS, England E-mail: [email protected] Website: www.pen-and-sword.co.uk Book design: Philip Kaplan

CONTENTS TO A SECOND FRONT DEFENDING FRANCE THE RUN-UP ORGANISATION TODT ENTER ROMMEL PRIDE AND CONCERN CLEARING THE AIR GERMAN DEFENCES MERVILLE AND SWORD POINTE DU HOC BLOODY OMAHA

TO A SECOND FRONT By summer 1942 there was war all over the world; it was not a good year for the Allies and everywhere British and Commonwealth troops fought they lost. Russia was on its heels as Adolf Hitler’s Nazi forces were advancing in the Caucasus, and the Americans were still reeling from their losses in the Philippines and at Pearl Harbor. Allied prospects seemed to range from bleak to hopeless. And there was a wide-spread belief among the British people, their military leaders, and the U.S. military Chiefs of Staff that the development and launch of a second front in Europe was both essential and urgently required. Since June 1941 the Russians had been pressing the Western Allies for that new front. The Russian Ambassador to Great Britain, Ivan Maisky, began campaigning for it, urging the British Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden to do something. Josef Stalin, the Russian leader, took up the case in July asking the Allies to mount a new offensive in northern France. His objective was to divert some of German Chancellor Adolf Hitler’s invading army divisions from their activities on the Eastern Front in the Soviet Union, to take some of the pressure there off the Russians. Or, in lieu of implementing such a new front, he implored the British to send at least twenty-five fighting divisions to join the action on that Eastern Front. It was there that the Allies were facing perhaps their greatest challenge to that point in the war. The gigantic armies of Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia were engaged in a savage fight to the death, with the Russians seemingly unable to reverse the Nazi offensive. Stalin, together with the Western Allies, feared the possibility (some thought probability) of a Russian military collapse which would bring down the entire Allied war effort. In July British Prime Minister Winston Churchill pointed out a few harsh realities to the Soviet Premier, “… that the German enemy had positioned forty divisions in France … that Britain had more than 400,000 soldiers involved in combat against Field Marshal Erwin Rommel’s Afrika Korps in the Western Desert … and that the entire

Channel coast line of France bristled with cannon, barbed wire, pillboxes and beach mines making such an attempted landing a bloody repulse.” Stalin was unmoved by those facts. Even the American President Franklin D. Roosevelt was applying pressure on Churchill in March 1942. Roosevelt said he was “becoming more and more interested in the establishment of a new front this summer on the European continent.” In somewhat more than a thinly-veiled threat / promise, Roosevelt and the senior American naval and military chiefs indicated that unless the Allies quickly developed and launched a new offensive in the West, the U.S. would have to refocus the bulk of its war effort on the Pacific war against the Japanese. At that point the general public in both Britain and the United States strongly favoured a new offensive in support of the beleaguered Russians, staging mass rallies in London and New York in April to express that support. The cry was “A Second Front Now.”

foreground, left to right: U.S. Generals George Patton, Omar Bradley, and British Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery.

A Focke-Wulf Fw-190 fighter on a French airfield;

German Chancellor Adolf Hitler.

Churchill would later write in his war memoirs: “I thought it most important that a large-scale operation should take place this summer, and military opinion seemed unanimous that until an operation on that scale was undertaken, no responsible general would take the responsibility of planning the main offensive … In discussion with Admiral Mountbatten it became clear that time did not permit a new large-scale operation to be mounted during the summer (after Rutter had been cancelled [initially]), but that Dieppe could be remounted (with the new code-name ‘Jubilee’) within a month, provided extraordinary steps were taken to ensure secrecy. For this reason no records were kept but, after the Canadian authorities and the Chiefs of Staff had given their approval, I personally went through the plans with the C.I.G.S., Admiral Mountbatten and the Naval Force Commander, Captain J. Hughes-Hallett.” What resulted from that pressure exerted upon the British PM was

Operation Jubilee, which was to be a sort of mini-invasion exercise in advance of an eventual full-scale invasion on the European continent. It was planned to be an “armed reconnaissance”, a test of the capability of British amphibious forces supported by Royal Air Force fighters, to capture and briefly hold a French port on the English Channel coast. The objective was Dieppe and the raid was scheduled to launch during the night of 18-19th August, having been postponed from 7th July due to unfavourable weather conditions, and then deferred indefinitely following a German fighter-bomber attack on the troopships and other vessels of the supporting fleet assembled mainly in the Solent. After that attack it was thought by the Allied commanders that, having lost the element of surprise on which the success of the operation had depended, with two of the troopships having been damaged and not readily repairable, and the entire operation facing unsettled weather, it was decided to again postpone the operation and disperse the men and ships. Dieppe is a bit more than sixty miles across the Channel from the English port of Newhaven in Sussex. It would also be an initial test—a probing of the vaunted “Atlantic Wall” defences that Hitler had been building from the North Cape south to Spain, with heavy emphasis on the Channel and Brittany coasts of France. The objectives of the operation were minimal and limited. The entire effort was to be completed within nine hours, including five hours occupying the beach and a four-hour withdrawal period. It would require a personnel strength of about 6,000 infantrymen and their ammunition, food and medical supplies, and some 3,000 sailors to transport the troops to and from France. The landing force would include 5,000 Canadians, 1,000 Britons, and fifty U.S. Army Rangers. The invaders would land and assault six beaches within a ten-mile stretch of coastline. British paratroopers would be required to attack and neutralize two large gun batteries on the headlands to either side of the Canadians, who would be launching a frontal assault from the sea. In an effort to improve the overall plan, make the operation less weather-dependent and re-launch it at the earliest possible date, the

parachute operation was later cancelled and replaced by a commando attack from the sea. They were to take the port, destroy the St Aubin airport and reconnoiter the Pourville radar site, with the possibility of destroying it as well. The revised and ‘improved’ plan—which was accepted by all three services and the Chiefs of Staff—called for assaults on eight separate locations around Dieppe, with extensive air bombing and naval fire support.

The German Enigma machine was an electro-mechanical rotor cipher developed between the 1920s and 1940s, initially for commercial use and later adapted for military and government use, by Nazi Germany to send and receive coded information in WWII. British cryptologists decrypted intelligence called ‘Ultra’ which helped turn the tide of the war for the Allies.

In the run-up to the planning of the operation, Mr Churchill was feeling considerable pressure from the Canadian leader, William Mackenzie King, to bring the substantial force of the Canadian 2nd Division soldiers then stationed in Sussex, into action as quickly as possible. Their lack of involvement in the war to that point was creating significant political trouble for King in the Canadian press. On the morning of the 18th, the Canadian, British and American troops of Operation Jubilee were activated. They had been put through intensive training at a camp on the Isle of Wight and felt they were ready for whatever the operation held for them as they travelled by truck convoy to the warships awaiting them in the English ports of Newhaven, Portsmouth and Shoreham. Their assignments early the next morning involved the seizure and holding of a major French port for a brief period and gathering intelligence while occupying it; and the destruction of enemy coastal defences, port structures and strategically important buildings. If they were successful it was anticipated that Allied morale would be boosted by their efforts in an impressive demonstration of commitment on the part of the United Kingdom towards the opening of a second front in Europe. But—for many reasons—they were not successful. One important example was that the final plan failed to include the ample aerial bombardment ahead of the main force frontal assault on Dieppe. The rationale for that change of plan was apparently based on British and Canadian concerns about the use of air and naval bombardment and the desire to strictly limit French civilian casualties in the port city. Some of the Canadian commanders believed too that the combination of speed in the assault, the surprise factor, and the “shock” to the German defenders in seeing tanks actually coming ashore with the Allied infantry would be enough to enable the plan to succeed. The assault landings were planned for six Dieppe beaches, four of them directly in front of the town, codenamed Yellow, Blue, Red, White, Green, and Orange. The main landings were to be on Red and White beaches and were to be supported by the armour of fifty-eight Churchill

tanks of the 14th Army Tank Regiment (The Calgary Regiment), with all of the tanks having been adapted to operate in the shallow water near the beaches. Some 237 ships and landing craft were to be operated by the Royal Navy, but there would be only limited naval gun support (from eight Hunt-class destroyers) due to First Sea Lord Sir Dudley Pound’s reluctance to risk the involvement of capital ships which he believed vulnerable to attack by the German Air Force. In the planning, Mountbatten had asked Pound to provide Jubilee with a battleship for heavy fire support in advance of the landings. But in light of the disastrous loss of the battleship HMS Prince of Wales and the battlecruiser HMS Repulse to Japanese air attacks off Malaya in December 1941, Pound felt he could not risk sending any capital ship into an area where the Allies did not have absolute air superiority, even with the RAF providing seventy-four squadrons of aircraft, with sixty-six of them operating fighters. Another preparatory failing of the Allies was in Intelligence. Early assessment of the landing beaches, their gradients and suitability for tank operations was largely limited to a study of holiday snapshots and very little was known about the German gun positions on and in the cliffs around Dieppe. The planners had no aerial reconnaissance photos of the enemy gun defences. This led to a deadly underestimation of the enemy defences in the area as well as the nature of the terrain. A planning conclusion was that: “intelligence reports indicate that Dieppe is not heavily defended and that the beaches in the vicinity are suitable for landing infantry and armoured fighting vehicles …” As for German Intelligence, information provided to the Germans in Dieppe by French double-agents indicated the British interest in the area. The Germans there would also detect an increase in British military and naval radio traffic and a concentration of landing craft in various British southern ports. German defences emplaced along the beaches of Dieppe and nearby towns were actually substantial and Dieppe was defended by a garrison of 1,500 German infantry troops. Cave positions within the flanking cliffs around the town housed heavy guns for the protection of Dieppe and its port. German

defenders were also positioned in open areas outside the town and manned the radar station at Pourville, and the artillery batteries at nearby Varengeville and Berneval. Finally, the German Air Force units defending in the area included 200 fighters, most of them the latest Focke-Wulf Fw 190, which was superior in most respects to the Spitfires and Hurricanes then operating in RAF Fighter Command, together with approximately 100 bombers. What happened that day as Operation Jubilee began to unfold, was chaotic, utterly inept and chillingly disastrous for the Allied invaders who achieved almost none of their objectives. Some 6,086 troops made it ashore and nearly 60% of them were either killed, wounded or captured by the Germans. What had been meant to show the world the capability, resolve and determination of the Allies, conveyed instead a very different message—that, in fact, they were nowhere near ready to invade German-occupied Europe. The operation had been mounted to examine the feasibility of capturing a German-defended port in France; to learn as much as possible in a brief period about operating an invasion fleet, and to test and evaluate training, techniques and equipment in such an assault.

A Junkers Ju-87 Stuka divebomber;

A British Mark IV Churchill infantry tank, a type used in the Normandy action on D-Day;

German Field Marshal Hugo Sperrle, commanded one of the Luftwaffe’s four air fleets in the West.

From the end of the Battle of Britain, RAF Fighter Command had been looking for work. While assigned to fly a lengthy series of search-anddestroy missions over France, its pilots found that, for much of the time, their enemy counterparts were disinclined to engage them in air combat over the French coast, preferring to stay well inland. The German fliers were trying to draw the British aircraft deep into France and put them at a substantial disadvantage, making them use up their precious fuel in the effort. British Intelligence knew from Ultra intercepts via the Bletchley Park codebreakers that the Germans would interpret any apparent effort by British forces to seize a French port as the start of an invasion and that the German Air Force would quickly react with an all-out attack on the Allied forces in that port. In spring 1942, that knowledge caused RAF Fighter Command to strongly urge that a raid be mounted to

temporarily seize such a port with the goal of provoking the Luftwaffe to commit the bulk of its fighters in engaging the RAF over the French coast, which would improve British odds against the German airmen. Many historians accept that the pressure exerted by the RAF to set the stage for such an air battle caused the British to move ahead with Operation Jubilee. And the choice of Dieppe as the target port for the raid was in large part because it was well within the range of the RAF fighter planes.

German Army Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt was appointed Commander-in-Chief in the West in 1942; he was dismissed following the German defeat in Normandy in June 1944, and recalled as Commander-in-Chief in the West in July 1944 and finally dismissed by Hitler in March 1945. He was charged with war crimes after the war but did not face trial due to his age and poor health.

There may also be reason to believe that the writer Ian Fleming, author of the James Bond novels, while working with British Naval Intelligence, oversaw what has been referred to as an “Enigma Pinch Mission” in connection with the Dieppe Raid. It is thought by some that a small force of commando troops was to be sent into Dieppe specifically to steal one of the latest models of the four-rotor German Enigma code machines together with the related code books and rotor setting sheets, from the German Admiralty headquarters. It has been speculated that the Allied intent of the pinch was to get these items to the cryptanalysts at the Bletchley Park code-breaking facility re the Ultra project and that the balance of the Dieppe raid was simply to provide a cover and distraction for the Enigma heist. The 1942 introduction of a fourth rotor to the naval version of Enigma had thus far proven an insurmountable stumbling block to the Bletchley codebreakers. This enabled Admiral Dönitz’s U-boats to regain their efficiency in the Battle of the Atlantic in their attacks on the vital convoys keeping Britain re-supplied. Possession of a four-rotor Enigma machine and the associated materials was crucial to Britain’s survival and the Allied war effort. The initial landings began at 4:50 a.m. of the 19th August. The action started with a landing on Yellow Beach and commando attacks on the two artillery batteries flanking the main Dieppe landing area. It was essential to put these big gun positions out of action as they were able to heavily shell the main landing beaches and had to be neutralized before the arrival of the main force. In the only actual Allied success of Operation Jubilee, Lieutenant Colonel Lord Simon Lovat led No. 4 Commando, which included the fifty U.S. Army Rangers, in two landings on Orange Beach six miles west of Dieppe. They were assigned to neutralize the coastal gun battery called Hess and located at Blancmesnil-Sainte-Marguerite near Varengeville. Climbing the steep slope, the Rangers and commando troops attacked and succeeded in neutralizing the battery of six 150mm guns. By 0730 they had withdrawn with minimal casualties. In

evaluating the raid later, Lovat’s part of the assault was hailed as a fine model for future Commando assaults as part of major amphibious landing operations. A catalogue of failures would rapidly develop, however, beginning with something that might have been preventable, an encounter between portions of the Allied assault fleet and a small German convoy at 0338, which was observed by personnel aboard two of the Allied destroyers. Some of the landing craft were fired on, but the commanders of the destroyers assumed (incorrectly) that the fire was coming from enemy gun positions ashore and failed to come to the rescue of the troops in the landing craft. Earlier that evening at 0130, and again an hour later, British ‘Chain Home’ radar stations had located some “unidentified vessels”—the German coastal convoy—and radioed warnings to the landing craft carrying some of the No. 3 Commando troops, but Captain Hughes-Hallet did not acknowledge the warnings and the raiding force took no evasive action. Some of the landing craft were attacked by German S-boats escorting the convoy. Allied warships drove off the S-boats, but in the action the German coastal defences were alerted to the approach of the Allied landing craft. Just after 0300 eighteen of the commando troops made it ashore at the intended landing place. Their unit had been assigned to attack and neutralize Berneval gun battery. Using only small arms, they were unable to complete their task, but managed to keep the German gunners distracted long enough to prevent them from sinking any of the assault ships off Dieppe. The commando troops were, however, forced by heavy enemy fire to withdraw without completing their assignment. In the encounter with the German ships, which included some armed trawlers, several of the small LCPs (Landing Craft Personnel) were sunk with others scattered. Machine-gun and artillery battery defenders in position on Blue Beach were alerted by the offshore engagement between the small German convoy and the landing craft transporting troops of No. 3 Commando. These Allied troops had been tasked with neutralizing the German defenders of the beach. They were delayed twenty minutes in

their advance to the beach and the smoke screens that were intended to conceal their approach had lifted, costing them the advantage of surprise, which led to the German forces manning their beach defences in preparation for the Allied landings. This enabled the well-fortified and powerfully-armed German defenders to hold the Canadian commando fighters on the beach, pinned behind the sea wall and unable to advance. Of the 556 Canadians landed on Blue Beach that morning. 200 were killed and 264 captured. The 5,000+ Canadian assault troops stumbled into intense gunfire and determined opposition by the fully alerted and well-prepared German defenders of the Dieppe town and port that August morning. The defenders of the main beaches, code-named Red and White, were ready and waiting to begin the slaughter. The preliminary air bombardment of the original Allied plan for the limited exercise had been cancelled and substituted with a smoke screen which, in any event, had largely dissipated and blown away from the main landing beaches by a strong southerly wind. This Allied misfortune was immediately followed by a delay in the arrival of nine Churchill tanks that had been scheduled to land with the initial military assault but were late due to navigational errors. The same erroneous intelligence that had lacked identification and warnings of the very substantial gun and machine-gun defences in the high cliffs flanking the beaches, failed to inform the Allied landing forces of how well and powerfully defended was the port itself by experienced and highly dedicated German troops. As for any sort of aerial and naval softening up of the target area prior to the Allied landings, it was in fact, limited to a relatively minimal bombardment from four destroyers lying off the main beaches and a vigourous but largely ineffective attempt at suppressing the German defences by five squadrons of strafing Hurricanes. The effort of the destroyers achieved less than was needed when their guns were insufficiently depressed to take out the enemy positions at both sides of the bay.

It was the enfilading fire of the German defenders in the cliff positions that brought down most of the Allied infantrymen and assault engineers as they struggled to cross Red and White beaches in those first deadly minutes of their arrival at Dieppe. The virtual impossibility of their task in the circumstances guaranteed the fate of the subsequent waves of assault troops who piled in behind them. And of the tanks the invaders brought with them, just thirteen managed to make it into the promenade area behind the beaches.

A Messerschmitt Bf-110 twin-engine German heavy fighter / fighter-bomber. The aircraft had considerable success as an air superiority fighter, as a strike fighter and in the

ground suppot role.

Sixty-six RAF fighter squadrons took part in the Battle of Dieppe, fortyeight of them Spitfire squadrons. The Dieppe raid was the combat debut of the Mark IX like this one, the only British fighter that was then the equal of the German Focke-Wulf Fw-190.

The chaos and turmoil continued as small numbers of Canadian infantry troops fought their way into the town and sent a few confused reports to their force commander, Major-General John ‘Ham’ Roberts, aboard his headquarters ship offshore. Those reports soon led to the sending ashore of Roberts’ reserve force into the horror and carnage on the beaches. When the reality of the situation on the beaches finally became clear to the commanders offshore, a signal to withdraw all of the assault forces was sent to the men at the beaches later in the morning. With the effort to withdraw, German gunfire on both the retreating assault troops and naval personnel attempting to rescue them intensified. When the rout was over, 3,367 of the 5,000 Canadian personnel involved had been killed, wounded or captured by the Germans, for a casualty rate of 68%. The British lost 247 men; the Royal Navy lost one destroyer, thirtythree landing craft and 550 killed or wounded. The Royal Air Force lost 106 aircraft; the German Air Force lost forty-eight. There were 591 German casualties. Six of the fifty U.S. Army Rangers on the raid were killed, with seven wounded and four captured. Rightly or wrongly, Major-General Roberts was later scapegoated for the debacle and was never again to command troops in the field. Before the launch of the Jubilee operation, he had tried to buck up the morale of the Canadians in a last-minute pre-raid pep talk: “Don’t worry, boys. It will be a piece of cake!” Each year thereafter, on the 19th August anniversary of the tragic raid, until his death in 1962, an anonymous “gift” arrived at the home of General Roberts in Jersey, the Channel Islands—a piece of dried-out black bread representing the piece of cake he had referred to prior to the Jubilee operation. Why was Dieppe such an unmitigated disaster for the Allies? Why were the German defenders able to make of it such an overwhelming defeat of the Allied invaders? Was it simply a matter of incompetence

versus competence? Historians, politicians and others have examined the notion that the Germans knew in advance about the coming raid by virtue of poor security in the British ports where it was launched, as well as the contention that for nearly two months prior to the 19th August raid, the BBC was apparently broadcasting warnings to the French civilians about the likelihood of action to come on or near the French coast and the need to evacuate from the Atlantic coast of France. It is known too from first-hand accounts of many Canadian veterans of the raid how well prepared the enemy defences were when the Allied troops came ashore at Dieppe.

Luftwaffe air gunners in combat during 1942.

Many cited the fact that the vessels that had brought them across the Channel, and the landing craft in which they arrived, were immediately and very accurately shelled as the troops hit the beaches. Late in 1942, the Canadian government published a report which concluded: “The Germans seemed to have had ample warning of the raid and to have made thorough preparations for dealing with it.” Allied and German prisoners-of-war have commented that they believed the Germans had been given ample warning of the coming raid and were certainly ready for it. Many accounts by French citizens and interrogated German prisoners indicated that the Germans had in fact been preparing for the raid for several weeks prior to it. Other seemingly credible sources, however, dispute the contention that the Germans knew Dieppe to be the specific target of the raid, explaining away the accounts of the German POWs as mere propaganda. So, what did the Allies learn from the Dieppe debacle? In evaluating the operation in its entirety, they reflected on a number of aspects that provided lessons in what to do—and especially what not to do—in the

amphibious landings to come later in the war. These included vitally important requirements of aerial bombardment and artillery support; thorough and reliable intelligence about the enemy fortifications; a sustained element of surprise; avoiding a direct frontal attack on a welldefended port city; and having appropriate re-embarkation craft. Other valuable information arising from the ashes of the Dieppe effort led directly to development of several specialized armoured vehicles that have come to be known as “Hobart’s Funnies” after the commander of the 79th Armoured Division of the British Army, Major-General Percy Hobart. His men, together with Royal Engineers personnel, developed unusually modified tanks which performed special functions impressively in subsequent landing and other operations including the Normandy D-Day landings. Another lesson of the Dieppe operation was that seizing a major port facility was not, in fact, essential to the successful establishment of a second front, particularly as such a port was almost certain to be damaged in the bombardment to the point of being virtually useless to the invaders. With that change in policy came the decision to develop and construct the large, prefabricated harbour structures that were code-named Mulberry, which could be towed from their construction point to the beach areas where they were required. From the German perspective, their analysis of the plan for the Dieppe operation led them to conclude it was “incomprehensible” that a single division should be expected to overrun a German regiment which was supported by artillery, and the strength of the Allied naval and air forces was entirely insufficient to contain and suppress the defenders in such landing operations. The Germans thought the Churchill tank type used at Dieppe an easy mark armed with a poor, obsolete gun and fitted with inadequate armour compared to that of the available German and Soviet tanks. However, according to German Generalfeldmarschall Gerd von Rundstedt after Dieppe: “Just as we are going to evaluate these experiences for the future, so is the assaulting force … perhaps even more so as it has gained the experience dearly. He will not do it

like this a second time.” Of the airmen involved in the Dieppe operation, one of the most remarkable was Wilhelm Mohr. Lieutenant General Mohr, who died in September 2016, age 100, was a quiet, modest, somewhat atypical fighter pilot who led his RAF Spitfire squadron, No 332, from North Weald near London, in attacks and fighter support over Dieppe during the ill-fated Allied raid of 19th August 1942. After the German occupation of his native Norway in the spring of 1940, Mohr was deputy commander of his reconnaissance squadron near Trondheim until the unit was forced to move south and then to the west coast where he was given command of the squadron. For a few weeks he and his pilots continued to fly reconnaissance sorties tracking the enemy advances, until Norway was finally forced to surrender to the Germans. While operating at the time from a frozen lake he was given permission to escape to England. Mohr left by fishing boat from the port of Molde on 2nd May, but the boat was attacked and sunk. He and his small party then took possession of another boat and made for the Shetland Islands off Scotland.

Reichsmarschall Hermann Goering, Germany’s air force chief in WWII, was a fighter pilot ace in the First World War and the last commander of Baron Manfred von Richthofen’s squadron, Jagdgeschwader 1. He was Commander-in-Chief of the Luftwaffe from 1935 until the end of the Second World War. After the war he was charged with and convicted of war crimes and crimes against humanity and sentenced to death by hanging, but committed suicide the night before his execution was to be carried out.

The crash-landed wreck of an Me-110 heavy fighter-bomber.

He was sent to Canada as a flying instructor near Toronto and returned to England in May 1941, posted to No 615 Squadron where he gained experience on Hurricanes and, as a flight commander, flew several raids over northern France, and provided fighter escort for a heavy bomber force in an attack on enemy capital ships in the harbour at Brest on the Brittany coast. In January 1942 Mohr was a founding member of No 332 (Norwegian) Fighter Squadron and was soon a deputy commander. From their North Weald base the squadron took part in numerous attacks over France. In one of the raids he engaged a Focke-Wulf Fw 190 fighter and suffered facial wounds, but continued on operations. The two North Weald-based Norwegian squadrons took part in the 19th August Dieppe raid, giving fighter support. In the action there,

Mohr was involved in some dogfights with enemy fighters and received a leg wound but continued to fly and fight for a further half hour during which his squadron was credited with the downing of seven German aircraft.In September he joined No 132 (Norwegian) Wing and flew a Spitfire patrol over the Normandy beachhead on 6th June 1944, D-Day.

DEFENDING FRANCE

A casemate with its gun still in place at Longues-sur-Mer, situated between Omaha and Gold beaches. This site originally housed four 152mm naval guns, each sheltered in a large concrete structure containing a command post, shelters for personnel and the ammunition and several machine-gun emplacements.

When in November 1943 he was preparing for the Allied invasion of the European continent, Adolf Hitler issued his Directive 51, shifting priority in the allocation of his forces and resources to the Western front. In conjunction with that order, he reassigned Field Marshal Erwin Rommel to inspect the state of the Axis defences of “Fortress Europa”, from Denmark to the Bay of Biscay. On his tour Rommel was alarmed to discover that the Führer’s vaunted system of defences was largely a figment of Propaganda Minister Josef Goebbels’ vivid imagination. The

more prominent features of the intended impregnable fortress were a relative handful of fortifications spotted along the Pas de Calais, the area believed by the majority of Germany’s military leaders to be the target of the Allies in the impending invasion landings—a conclusion the Allies gladly built upon in their grand deception. Rommel’s remit was to commence his inspection in Denmark on 30th November 1943, reporting regularly to Hitler and to Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt, the overall commander in the West. Rommel’s affiliation in the new role was to be Army Group B, then based at Fontainebleau and his own area of command was to extend from Belgium to Brittany. Their area of responsibility was to be the main areas of presumed threat, the Pas de Calais and Normandy. What Field Marshal Rommel encountered in his initial inspections of the coastal defensive facilities was disturbing in its lack of preparedness. The realization that his command of the defence of northwestern Europe brought into focus for him his particular vision of how the unified armed forces of Nazi Germany, the Wehrmacht, would have to deliver that defence. Clearly, he would have to awaken those forces along the Channel coast immediately and see that all possible effort was concentrated on the continued establishment and construction of appropriate fortifications for the region. He would devote the bulk of his time in the next six months to making sure that all those responsible to him worked feverishly building the bunkers and fortifications, digging the required trenches, laying the barbed wire, and emplacing the massive number of deadly beach obstacles within the low and high tidal limits. He oversaw the enormous effort of laying mines, his intention being to greet the Allies with upwards of twelve to fifteen million such explosive devices— a goal he did not achieve. But Allied intelligence reports of these efforts were so upsetting to the Allied planners they elected to alter the timing of the land-ings from high to low tide.

A Handley Page Halifax bomber over a heavily-bombed German installation in the Pas de Calais;

The fast-firing German Schmeisser sub-machine gun.

In his frantic landing beach preparations, the field marshal decided to address the airborne threat through the use of what came to be called “Rommel asparagus”, concrete and wooded posts and telephone poles which he ordered emplaced through the many meadows and fields just behind the more obvious landing sites. In these heady days of anticipation and preparation, Rommel was operating with a far superior knowledge and experience of American and British air power and military capability than that of Hitler and most of the other German military leaders. His was a much more sophisticated understanding and recognition of the enemy threat, and he had accepted that those capabilities would most likely lead to German defeat. He knew better than anyone—and his experiences in North Africa certainly supported it —that if the German forces failed to defeat the Allies on the beaches of France, the Anglo-American logistics and air power would enable the Allies to overwhelm the Germans. But Rommel’s principal opposition in the German military leadership, von Rundstedt and General Leo Geyr von Schweppenburg held to a very different perspective on what to do about the coming of the Allies to the French shores. They believed unshakeably in German tactical and operational doctrine as laid out in Die Truppenfürung (Troop Leadership) as detailed in the basic doctrinal manual of the Wehrmacht. They clung to the dictate that the German forces in

western France should mass all available armoured forces and launch a massive counterattack led by the Panzers once the Allied forces had landed. The counterattack would also be supported by a mobile force of German armour to execute a defence utilizing superior Wehrmacht tactics, equipment and training.

Beach obstacles intended to rip the hulls out of the Allied landing craft at high tide. Installation of this “forest” was far from complete on the eve of D-Day, 6 June 1944.

Rommel, however, reasoned [correctly] that, with the Luftwaffe heavily engaged in defending the German homeland from the onslaught of the Allied combined strategic bombing offensive, as well as their operations in the East, the Germans were underestimating the power the Allied air forces would bring in their assault on the French coast. Rommel knew there was little the Luftwaffe could do to keep the masses of Allied planes that were sure to come, from eliminating whatever large concentration of Panzer tanks the Germans might assemble. He saw as inevitable a big Allied army advance across Europe toward an ultimate defeat for the Reich. And, that being the case, his foresight led him to believe that should the Wehrmacht manage to bring heavy losses on the Allies in such an action, that would merely increase the likelihood of a harsher peace being imposed on a defeated Germany. In fact, neither Rommel’s approach to the problem, nor that of his German general opponents, was implemented. Hitler had simply taken the teeth out of the potential German defensive tactics by placing the

Panzer and Panzergrenadier divisions under the control of the OKW, the command structure of the Wehrmacht and limiting their employment to movements that only he could authorize. Thus, if he did not so act, or was not available to do so, nothing would happen. And so, there was virtually no possibility of rapid intervention by German reserve divisions against the Allied landing forces. Other events occurred which worked in favour of the successful Allied landings on D-Day. One happened when Field Marshal Rommel requested permission to relocate some fanatical Hitler Youth volunteers of the 12th SS Panzer Division HitlerJugend to Carentan. Rommel could not then know that Carentan lay almost exactly half way between what would become the American invasion landing beaches of Utah and Omaha and, as such, the SS Panzer Division would have been perfectly positioned to act against either of the American landing forces. In that position, whether or not they might have succeeded in preventing one of the American landing operations, they would certainly have been able to make a linkup between the two American beaches very difficult. Deception was a highly effective tool in the successful execution of the Allied invasion plan. So effective was that effort, that even after the D-Day landings had taken place, a number of the primary German military leaders (including Hitler) were still convinced that the Normandy beaches assault was a diversion and that the main invasion target area was the Pas de Calais. It must be said too that Rommel was only slightly more perceptive but he did, in fact, devote greater effort to preparing the coastal areas outside of Pas de Calais for defence against the Allied forces than had been the practice prior to his taking command of Army Group B. As fate would have it, Rommel had returned to Germany and was there on 6th June 1944, the day of the Allied landings in Normandy. The German weather predictions indicated no break likely in the poor conditions of that week and most German commanders believed that the invasion would not be launched until much better weather prevailed. Rommel hoped to meet with Hitler during his short stay and be given control of the reserve divisions. It shocked the field marshal to learn

that morning in a phone call from his Chief of Staff, GeneralMajor Hans Spiedel, that the Allied landings were under way and of their actual locations on the Normandy coast. He rushed back to France, but by the time he finally arrived at his headquarters the Americans, British and Canadians were essentially in control of all five landing areas, and Allied paratroopers had taken much of the area east of the Orne River and a large portion of the Cotentin Peninsula.

The view from a German Observation post structure in the bluffs behind Omaha.

While the attacking Allied troops— especially those on Omaha Beach— must have felt they had been singled out for a special kind of punishment by the German defenders there, and they certainly took heavy casualties in the effort, it would surely have been much worse for them had the defenders been properly organised and fully supported by the German reserves. But the German command in the region had decided to use those reserves against the more immediately successful British landings to the east. The process of clearing and controlling Omaha and the pathways off it proved far more costly and difficult for the Americans there. Another odd event involving some of the German Panzer tank divisions being held in reserve in Normandy took place when General Alfred Jodl, the OKW operations officer, decided against waking the sleeping Hitler on the morning of the Allied invasion, nor to release the Panzers in reserve. It was not until that afternoon that the 12th SS and the Panzer Lehr divisions—the German tank units nearest to the invasion areas—were released to the control of Army Group B to move towards the beachhead. Panzers sent to form a battle group between

Sword and Juno beaches were met by the British in Sherman Firefly tanks mounted with 17-pounder guns which quickly destroyed more than a dozen of the enemy tanks. With the end of the action late in the day, the Sherman crews had knocked out seventy of the 124 German tanks in the battle. Field Marshal Rommel had few advantages in the Normandy battle. These included the difficulty for the Allies having to cope with the hedgerows of the bocage, and the powerful, impressive performance of both the German armoured and infantry forces, as well as various tactical weaknesses of the Allies which enabled Rommel to counter their offensive efforts and largely hold them to the Normandy bridgehead for almost two months. But he had to contend with the highly effective activity of the French Resistance which delayed the deployment of German units to the battle areas. Intelligence information on the Allies was minimal for Rommel, whereas that provided to Eisenhower and Montgomery via Ultra information out of the British facility at Bletchley Park was a great Allied advantage. Further, the Anglo-American air campaign against the German forces and facilities in Normandy had created enormous logistical problems for Rommel. Daytime movements of German units, armour in particular, proved impossible against the might of the Allied fighterbomber aircraft which accounted for huge losses among the enemy trucks, tanks, halftracks and self-propelled guns heading for Normandy from other parts of France. The great power and effectiveness of the Allied air weapon in the Normandy battle caused von Rundstedt, Commander-in-Chief of German Forces in the West, to state in a message intercepted by Ultra at Bletchley, “In large-scale operations by thousands of bombers and fighter-bombers, Allied air forces stifled German tank attacks and had harassing effect on movements. High losses in wireless equipment by fighter-bomber attacks were noticeable in making reporting difficulties.” The Germans lost the battle of the beaches and Rommel knew he had to somehow keep the Allies tied up in the tangle of the bocage in which the capabilities of his own troops might contain them. He hoped

that the SS Panzer Division HitlerJugend would be able to hold the Allied forces in the area around Caen. And on 12th June events moved in Rommel’s favour when several tanks of the British 7th Armoured Division drove east of Caen behind German lines to the village of Villers-Bocage. There they encountered a force of Tiger tanks under the command of SS Captain Michael Wittmann, a high-achieving tank ace and veteran of the Eastern Front. Needing little help from the other tanks in his unit, Wittmann and his crew destroyed most of the British force. In the engagement the British lost twenty-five tanks and a further twenty-eight armoured vehicles.

German Tiger tank commander Obersturmführer Michael Wittmann and his crew photographed in Normandy on 5 June 1944. He was promoted to the rank of

Hauptsturmführer (Captain) that month. By 8 August, when he was killed near Cintheaux, he had been credited with the destruction of 138 enemy tanks in combat on the Eastern Front and in France.

Taking full advantage of the bocage and their superior capabilities within it, the German forces were, for the most part, initially successful in containing the Allies within the coastal areas of Normandy, but despite that achievement most of the German commanders no longer believed in their chances of prevailing. Both von Rundstedt and Rommel enraged Hitler with reports to the OKW in which they referred to the German military situation in the West as desperate and both urged the abandonment of Caen. Rommel visited Hitler for the last time at the Führer’s Berchtesgaden retreat on 29th June. There he tried to discuss Germany’s position in the war at that point and the idea that it might be appropriate to think about political solutions, a notion that the German leader would not consider. Then, in a move that cost him his command, von Rundstedt responded to a query from Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel on what was to be done about the situation: “Make peace, you idiots! What else can you do?” Von Rundstedt was soon replaced by Field Marshal Günther von Kluge, who had had command experience on the Eastern Front and later at Hitler’s headquarters where he had been indoctrinated in both Hitler’s optimism about the war situation and Rommel’s pessimism about it. He and von Kluge did not get on well at first, but soon he arrived at the same conclusion as Rommel, who on 16th July submitted his latest very negative report on the Western Front situation. The next day he was badly wounded in an attack on his open staff car by a British fighterbomber. He was in hospital on 20th July when an organized attempt was made on Hitler’s life, and later in August when the German situation on the Western Front deteriorated dramatically.

SS Unterscharführer Balthasar Woll was the gun pointer on Michael Wittmann’s crew;

Some of the British casualties after action against the Wittmann crew at Villers-Bocage 13 June; far right: The German military cemetery at La Cambe, Normandy.

In the reprisals that followed the Hitler assassination attempt, Rommel was implicated by some of the plot suspects and, probably due to Hitler’s perception of Rommel’s “defeatist” attitude, the field marshal was forced to commit suicide.

THE RUN-UP “You will enter the continent of Europe and, in conjunction with the other United Nations, undertake operations aimed at the heart of Germany and the destruction of her armed forces …” So began the instructions received by General Dwight D. Eisenhower, newly appointed as Supreme Allied Commander, on his arrival in London to take charge of the monumental Allied invasion to be known thereafter as D-Day. Through a swift process of elimination, the target area for Operation Overlord, the code-name for the cross-Channel invasion of Germanoccupied Europe by the American and British Allied forces, was determined. A small Anglo-American staff group was formed in March 1943, which included British Lieutenant-General Frederick Morgan and his American deputy, Brigadier General Ray Barker. Their list of possible landing sites, all in France, included Calais, the Brittany peninsula, and Normandy… the latter offering a suitable port in Cherbourg, relatively close to Portsmouth on the English south coast, and well-connected by road and rail to Paris. There were some in high places, both British and American, who did not exactly share General Eisenhower’s enthusiasm for proceeding with Overlord. The British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, for one, was quick to warn Eisenhower: “Let us take care that the waves do not become red with the blood of American and British youth.” And Churchill’s scientific adviser, Professor Frederick Lindemann, pointed out to General George C. Marshall, the U.S. Army Chief of Staff: “You must remember you are fighting our losses on the Somme.” General Morgan would later comment on U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt and his Chiefs of Staff: “Their eyes were firmly fixed on the German target. Their main idea was to hit it quick, switch rapidly to deal with Japan and get back to business. We went to Normandy or we stayed at home.” It would take a major conference in Tehran from 28th November

to 1st December 1943 to affirm the plan for Overlord. There, Churchill, Roosevelt, and Soviet Premier Josef Stalin met in the Soviet Embassy to discuss the Allied invasion of occupied France. Stalin pressed Roosevelt and Churchill to go ahead with the invasion and the second front against Nazi Germany. In the conference it was agreed that Overlord would be launched by May 1944 and Stalin also agreed to support the operation with a concurrent major offensive on Germany’s eastern front to divert some German forces from northern France. It was also agreed that another landings operation, code-named Operation Dragoon, against southern France, would be undertaken in conjunction with the Normandy operation. Stalin further agreed, and guaranteed, to aid the United States in the war against Japan after the defeat of Germany.

Supreme Allied Commander General Dwight Eisenhower rallying American paratroopers of the 101st Airborne Division, the ‘Screaming Eagles’, on the eve of the D-Day invasion.

British Major General R.M. Gale, commander of the 6th Airborne, with his divisional flag in the background.

In the English midlands and East Anglia, the remainder of 1942, all of 1943 and much of 1944 were devoted to the construction of more than 160 new airfields for the bomber and fighter missions of the U.S. Eighth Army Air Force. The Eighth was rapidly getting up to speed in its daylight precision bombing campaign against German targets in occupied Europe, while the bombers of the Royal Air Force were conducting their own campaign by night. It would become a coordinated round-the-clock offensive, a massive effort to cripple German war industry, its oil and other resources, and its air force in order to gain air superiority or preferably, air supremacy over France, a key requirement for the success of the coming Overlord invasion. For the Allies, getting ready for the invasion was almost certainly the biggest logistical nightmare in all of recorded history. The requirement ranged from paper clips to landing craft, ammunition to medical supplies, more than 700,000 separate items (some of them ordered in quantities of a million or more); 156,000 Allied troops (61,715 British, 73,000 Americans, 21,400 Canadians); 13,000 paratroops; more than 6,939 warships and landing craft; 11,590 aircraft, 54,000 vehicles, 500 tons of gasoline; and 104,428 tons of supplies to be landed on the invasion beaches within the first five days of the operation. From the BBC Home Service, 6th June 1944: “Thousands of Allied troops have begun landing on the beaches of northern France at the start of a major offensive against the Germans. Thousands of paratroops and gliderborne troops have also been dropped behind enemy lines and the Allies are already said to have penetrated several miles inland. The landings were preceded by air attacks along the French coast. About 1,300 RAF planes were involved in the first wave of assaults, then 1,000 American bombers took up the attack dropping bombs on targets in northern France. The British Prime Minister Winston Churchill had told MPs that “Operation Neptune—a codename for the Normandy landings—was

proceeding in a thoroughly satisfactory manner.” He said the landing of airborne troops was “on a scale far larger than anything there has been so far in the world” and had taken place with extremely little loss. The assault began shortly after midnight under the command of General Bernard Montgomery. The timing of the Normandy landings was crucial. They were originally scheduled to take place in May—then postponed until June and put off again at the last minute for 24 hours by bad weather. Upwards of 4,000 ships and several thousand smaller craft crossed the Channel to the northern coast of France. Enemy reports say the landings took place between the port of Le Havre and the naval base at Cherbourg. King George VI broadcast a message last night warning of the “supreme test” the Allies faced and he called on the nation to pray for the liberation of Europe. The Allied naval commander, Admiral Sir Bertram Ramsay, said the landings had taken the Germans completely by surprise. There were no enemy reconnaissance planes out and the opposition of coastal batteries was much less than expected. He added: “There was a slight loss in ships but so slight that it did not affect putting armies ashore. “We have got all the first wave of men through the defended beach zone and set for the land battle.” A statement which was broadcast from Berlin at midday said the German troops were “nowhere taken by surprise”. It said many parachute units were wiped out on landing or taken prisoner. Hits were also scored on battleships and on landing craft from the “guns of the Atlantic Wall”—the German defensive positions.

The Overlord operations room at Southwick House northwest of Portsmouth was the headquarters for the Allied D-Day planning.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt told a news conference the invasion did not mean the war was over. He said: “You don’t just walk to Berlin, and the sooner this country realizes that the better.” From the BBC Home Service: “The Normandy landings were the beginning of Operation Overlord—or the invasion of German-occupied Europe. Originally planned to take place on 1 May 1944, the operation was postponed a month to allow time to gather more troops and equipment. The timing was important to allow for the right weather, a full moon, and tidal conditions. To keep the destination of the landings secret, a deception plan, Operation Fortitude, was mounted which led the Germans to believe the main target was the Pas de Calais, much further east. Fortitude was divided into two parts, North and South and was organised to

deceive and mislead the German High Command about the location of the imminent Allied invasion landings. The Fortitude plan called for development of “phantom” field armies to be based in the north near Edinburgh and in the south of England. Fortitude North was to threaten German-occupied Norway, while Fortitude South would threaten the enemy in the Pas de Calais area of France. The intention was to divert enemy attention from the Normandy region. After the actual invasion there, it was to delay German reinforcement through convincing German High Command that the Normandy landings were merely a diversionary attack to draw their attention away from “the actual attack” being mounted elsewhere. Fortitude was part of a larger Allied stratagem known as Operation Bodyguard, a deception scheme meant to persuade the Germans not to build up their troop numbers in the Normandy area, by presenting the appearance that the Allied forces would actually be landing in other locations. Following the 6th June invasion landings, the Allies hoped to delay the shifting by the Germans of reserve forces to the Normandy beachhead, with the aim of preventing a devastating German counterattack. They wanted to focus enemy attention on Norway and the Pas de Calais as the most likely actual Allied invasion targets. This deception strategy was under the overall management of a highly secretive body called the London Controlling Section (LCS), but the execution of the deception plans fell to the theatre commanders, and in the case of Fortitude it was the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF) under the command of General Dwight D. Eisenhower. The LCS retained control over the use of diplomatic channels and that of double agents. A special section was established at SHAEF to handle the Fortitude operation. It was called Ops B and was run by Noel Wild. A primary figure there was Christopher Harmer who had a dim view of Ops B and the LCS in general. Of key importance to the potential success of Fortitude—and of the actual DDay invasion landings— was maintaining the impression that a (fictional) force of six divisions under the command of British General Bernard Montgomery, the 21st Army Group, would front the invasion

landings at the Pas de Calais on a date in mid-July. Montgomery’s deception staff was headed by Colonel David Strangeways, and the colonel was perceived by Harmer as being extremely dissatisfied with the outline for Fortitude South and “determined to ride roughshod over the established deception organisation.” Strangeways made the point that the plan aimed to cover up the Allies’ real intentions rather than create a realistic threat to Calais. He apparently felt, too, that the Germans might well be aware of the actual state of Allied readiness in southwest England to launch the invasion and with that liklihood might then anticipate an invasion in early June, leaving them several weeks to defeat any bridgehead and then turn to the defence of Calais.

An Allied Assault Routes map published by the U.S. War Department in September 1945.

It is likely that Strangeways was behind a letter sent by Montgomery’s Chief of Staff, Francis de Guingand, to the deception planners asking that they focus their effort on the Pas de Calais as the “main assault.” Noel Wild then developed the final Ops B plan for Fortitude South, which was approved by the Allied chiefs on 18th February. It called for fifty divisions positioned in southern England, to attack Pas de Calais. Once the real invasion had occurred, the idea was to get the Germans to believe that many assault divisions still remained in England ready to make a cross-Channel attack, after the Normandy beachhead had drawn German defences away from Calais. The plan still proposed to make the Germans think that the probable date for the Allied invasion would be mid-July.

The flying goggles of a WWII RAF fighter pilot;

Colonel Strangeways was unconvinced by the plan. He referred to the difficulty he foresaw in making the Germans believe in the existence of the many fictitious divisions and, at least as importantly, making them believe in Montgomery’s ability to manage two such substantial invasion operations. Wild thought Strangeways every bit as arrogant as Montgomery.

The crumbling remains of the flying control tower at Kings Cliffe, an American fighter airfield located in Northamptonshire. At Kings Cliffe the 20th Fighter Group flew missions in their P-38 Lightnings and, later, in P-51 Mustangs, many of them escorting the heavy bombers of the 8th U.S. Army Air Force.

The Wild plan required ten divisions for the Calais attack, six of them being fictional; the rest being the actual American Fifth Corps and the British First Corps. The myriad problems— logistical and otherwise— associated with the plan left Strangeways with profound objections causing him to refuse to undertake much of the physical deception effort. This led to a further deteriorating relationship between Strangeways and Ops B, but Monty sided with his chief of deception and Strangeways prevailed, decreeing Wild’s plan useless, and rewriting it from scratch. In his entirely redrafted version, Colonel Strangeways created a new outfit, The First United States Army Group (FUSAG), a purely administrative organisation, but one which the Germans learned about

through their radio intercepts. Strangeways’ idea was to activate the unit incorporating both fictitious and real formations in order to overcome the problem of Montgomery coping with two invasion operations. He intended for FUSAG to pose the primary Allied invasion threat to the Germans, which he thought they would expect around Calais. In their deception efforts, the Allies devised several methods to be deployed and referred to as “special means”. These included various combinations of leaking information through diplomatic channels; the use of double agents; fake wireless activity; and physical deception to mislead the enemy about non-existent units through the use of fake equipment and infrastructure, i.e. dummy airfields, landing craft, and decoy lighting. The controlled leaking of information via diplomatic channels might be passed on through neutral countries to the Germans. Wireless traffic was to be used to simulate that of actual units to mislead the enemy. German agents who were controlled by the Allies in a Double-Cross system were to be used to get false information to the German intelligence services. Finally, there was the public presence of well-known figures including the American General George S. Patton in association with the phantom FUSAG organisation. Relative to the process of deception about the invasion target, it must be remembered that the Pas de Calais provided some specific advantages over the actual Normandy beaches. When the real landings finally began there were only 14 of the 58 German divisions in France facing the Allies. While there was stiff resistance at other beaches, Omaha was the only one where the success of the Allied mission was in serious doubt. By 11 June the Allies had secured the Cotentin Peninsula beyond Cherbourg but progress continued slowly as the Germans put up fierce resistance. The end of the Normandy campaign came with the destruction of the German 7th Army in the Falaise pocket in August. Although the Allies had reached the German frontier by September they decided to re-group during the winter, because of the failure of Market Garden and the setback in the Battle of the Bulge, and the invasion of Germany only began in January 1945.

The cockpit panel of a restored North American P-51D Mustang fighter plane. The Mustang was the best American fighter of the Second World War and contributed hugely to the Anglo-American round-the-clock bombing offensive against Germany and the ultimate Allied victory. It was widely utilized in France during and after the Normandy landings;

The American cemetery above Omaha Beach.

A Packard Motor Car Company manufacturer’s identity plate of a license-built RollsRoyce Merlin engine made for a North American P-51D Mustang fighter;

ORGANISATION TODT

Inspired by the concept and fortifications (if not the effectiveness) of France’s Maginot Line, German Chancellor Adolf Hitler decided to build his Atlantic Wall fortification system in December 1941 and issued his Order Number 40 in March 1942: Coastal Defense. In anticipation of the Anglo-American invasion landings, and the realization that he had already lost the advantage to the West, the Nazi leader determined to create a rigid, rock-solid defensive system—from the North Cape to Spain—behind which there would be no retreat. He assigned the task to Dr Fritz Todt, a German engineer and senior Nazi figure who, in 1938 founded the Organisation Todt, a composite of private companies, government firms, and the Reichsarbeitsdienst (Reich Labour Service). The first project of the OT was the design and construction of the “West Wall”, later renamed the Siegfried Line, along the Franco-German border in the prewar years. Todt was also appointed by Hitler to be Reich Minister for Armaments and Munitions. On 8th February 1942, Todt was killed in a plane crash and was succeeded in his ministerial role by Albert Speer, a German architect whose achievements led to his becoming a prominent member of Hitler’s inner circle. He was said to have performed “an armaments miracle” in dramatically increasing German war production, an impressive accomplishment that lasted until the summer of 1943 when the Allied bombing of German industries began to take effect. With the fall of France and its German occupation, Organisation Todt, which had built the great submarine pen shelters along the Brittany coast for Germany’s U-boat fleet, was ordered to start work on what would become known as the “Atlantik Wall.” With Albert Speer in charge, the Todt group assembled a work force of 291,000 conscripted labourers to build the facilities of the ‘Wall’. According to Speer, Hitler himself created much of the bunker design planned for use in the 15,000 concrete forts and other structures of the system. While it was never completed, parts of it served as a formidable barrier to the Allied invaders when they arrived on the

Normandy beaches in early June 1944. The highly ambitious project was intended to defend more than 3,000 miles of coastline, from the North Cape near Kirkenes, Norway, to the Spanish/French border. More than 3.7 billion Deutschmarks was spent on its construction in the first two years of the work in France, Belgium and the Netherlands. More than seventeen million cubic metres of concrete and 1.2 million tonnes of steel were used in the effort. More than 700 standard bunker designs were employed in the construction and, along the French coast alone, more than 11,500 structures were built. It is estimated that at least that number were additionally under construction in the region by mid-1944. Following a period of more than two years’ construction at a cost of many billions of Deutschmarks and many valuable German resources, the vaunted Atlantic Wall defensive system was breached in less than a day on the beaches of Normandy, France, by approximately 150,000 Allied troops from Britain, Canada and the United States. The Wall would be built by hundreds of thousands of conscripted French and other workers and was the continuing subject of the propaganda messages created by the fertile mind of Dr Josef Goebbels, Hitler’s Minister of Propaganda throughout the war years. The system itself was notable for its colossal size, and for being among the largest construction projects in history, was designed to include thousands of coastal batteries, guns, artillery, mortars, observation, command and control positions, a wide range of bunker types, shelters, pillboxes and troop facilities, as well as ammunition, storage and supply facilities. In the many months leading up to the start of construction in the Atlantic Wall project, the early moves by the German military forces resulted in the invasion of Poland on 1st September 1939 and followed in May 1940 with a lightning-like offensive through France and the Low Countries lasting just six weeks. In June Hitler elected to move against the main islands of the English Channel and ordered that what he thought to be wholly inadequate defensive measures there be augmented through construction by Organisation Todt of up to 250

strongpoints on each of the larger Channel islands. This project to permanently fortify these islands was to be designed and completed within fourteen months and was to result in an “impregnable fortress”. Six months later, on 23rd March 1942, the German chancellor issued his Directive No. 40 ordering the creation of the Atlantic Wall system. He also ordered the heavy defence and fortification of naval and submarine bases concentrated around the ports along the main coastline north to south. His orders mobilized German army engineers and the management and engineers of Organisation Todt (OT) to rapidly organize in preparation for the huge project and included ordering the enormous quantities of reinforcing steel, cement and armour plating required, as well as the transportation that would be needed for the construction materials and personnel. In that preparation effort ahead of actual construction of the Wall, a standard-build system of plans called the Regelbau was prepared. It covered each of the more than 600 approved types of bunkers and casemates, each with specialized purposes, and taking advantage of information gathered as comparative enemy constructions were overrun and examined during the wartime operations. Many of these facilities were also tested to destruction to help determine their effectiveness. A system of standardization was established to simplify manufactured equipment and components, the supply of materials, the control of finances for construction and the efficiency of planning for construction projects. Standard features that were incorporated into the designs included armoured air intakes, steel doors, wood-lined interior walls, telephones and ventilation elements. To circumvent the problem of wartime shortages, some French equipment and that of the armies of other occupied nations was incorporated into the defences, as were some casemates that had been designed for non-German artillery, machine-guns, and anti-tank guns, as well as the use of turrets from obsolete tanks in Tobruk pits.

Construction work in Normandy by workers of Organisation Todt.

A casemate remaining at Pointe du Hoc;

The OT supervised, as well as providing labour, organizing supplies, machinery and transport to supplement the staffs and equipment of other construction companies, many of them being German, although some such companies in occupied countries also submitted bids for the construction projects. And while some companies applied for OT work, others were simply conscripted. It was a risky business for any companies with such involvement, should they (for whatever reason) fail to complete their work on schedule (and, with the OT controlling the materials and manpower of each firm) they sometimes found themselves fined, shut down, taken over or merged with another firm in order to create a larger and more efficient operation. More successful firms, though, often earned substantial profits from the work. Companies looking for contracted work with the OT submitted quotes for their work and entered into contracts with it, having agreed a price and the terms of the agreement, possible bonus payments for efficiencies, wage rates and bonus payments for the OT workers. Often several such companies were working on an OT project site.

A wartime view of a Crisbec casemate and its 155mm gun.

The structure of the OT workforce included various levels of status. Skilled engineers, designers, supervisors, and volunteers were paid and treated well. Next came volunteer workers who were often skilled technicians such as carpenters, electricians, plumbers, and metal workers, who were also reasonably well paid and well treated. Then came the unskilled workers who were forced labour. They were poorly paid and harshly treated. Finally, there was the slave labour who were paid very little, poorly fed and very harshly treated. The OT did, however, provide training courses for some employees in order to raise their skill levels. In France, the Vichy government dealt with the enormous need for construction project workers by imposing a compulsory labour system in which more than 600,000 French workers were drafted to build the portions of the wall along the Belgian, Dutch and French coasts of the Channel. But significant problems arose for the OT, and its efficiency decreased late in 1943 due to the manpower and fuel shortages, and the Allied bombing attacks on some of the worksites such as the V-

weapons launching facilities. Many volunteers also refused to work under such dangerous conditions. In coping with the growing inefficiencies of the period, the OT required (in the Cherbourg area in 1944, as an example)—of the thirty-four companies with 15,000 workers and seventy-nine subcontractors—daily, weekly and monthly reports on progress, work variations, material used, stock levels of material, labour hours used per skill type, the weather, equipment inventory and quality, levels of supervision, employee absences, staffing levels, deaths and problems experienced.

An unidentified German General with two staff officers being briefed by a Captain of a Panzer unit.

Throughout the bulk of construction on the Atlantic Wall facilities, only two events took place of major concern to Hitler regarding sites in the

Wall system. Both were relatively large-scale British attacks. The first, Operation Chariot, in March 1942, was a successful strike on a German pumping facility at St Nazaire on the Brittany coast, causing substantial destruction and severely damaging the Normandy dry dock. The second event was the Dieppe raid launched near the French port in August 1942. Its purpose was twofold; to provide combat experience for the new force of Canadian troops in England, and to test the strength and capability of the German defences at Dieppe. While the operation itself was a failure for the Allies and caused them to suffer many casualties in the effort, it caused Hitler to fear that the main Allied invasion of the European continent would soon follow and he responded by making Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt the overall German Commander-in-Chief in the West and repositioning fifteen additional divisions in the region. But the invasion didn’t come; the Wall construction continued and Hitler’s next major related move was to appoint Field Marshal Rommel to inspect and improve the defences and defensive capability of the Wall system. Rommel’s inspection resulted in his belief that the massive coastal fortification facilities were wholly inadequate and he immediately went to work strengthening them. In evaluating the overall Allied threat to the Wall system of defences, Rommel was most concerned about air power. He vividly recalled his impressions of the British and American air attacks of his days in North Africa and was convinced that, should the Germans manage to mount a significant counterattack, such an effort would be neutralized by Allied aircraft before it could have any real effect. What he did choose to implement was a huge new programme of building hundreds of reinforced concrete pillboxes, both on the beaches and inland, to contain machineguns, light and heavy artillery and anti-tank guns. He had thousands of land mines and anti-tank obstacles planted on the beaches and had hundreds of naval mines placed just offshore with the intent of destroying as many Allied landing craft as possible before they could deliver their human cargoes onto the beaches. As early June approached, Erwin Rommel’s forces in northern

France had managed to lay nearly six million mines and the Todt workers had completed hundreds of additional gun emplacements as well as minefields that reached inland along roads extending from the beaches. In the flatter, larger areas that the Germans had considered most likely to be used as drop zones and landing areas for paratroops and gliders, Rommel’s people implanted slanted poles with sharpened tops which they referred to as Rommelspargel (Rommel’s Asparagus). In addition to these measures, he had many low-lying river and estuary areas deliberately flooded, with the intention of drowning the arriving airborne Allied troops who would likely be overloaded with equipment and ammunition. All of these moves were inspired by Rommel’s firm belief that Germany would be defeated unless the Allied forces could be contained on the beaches: “It is absolutely necessary” he said, “that we push the British and Americans back from the beaches. Afterwards it will be too late; the first twenty-four hours of the invasion will be decisive.” When any war ends, there is usually little if any interest in remembering its events or revisiting its locations. Most people want only to forget everything about it and get on with their lives and interests … to make up for lost time. The notion of preserving anything to do with those events and their place in history is, at most, premature if not utterly irrelevant. Years later, though, things and attitudes tend to change. Interest returns and with the passage of time, many people who were part of those events (and their children, relatives and friends) become interested in what they had done when they were young, especially if the events happen to have been of some historical significance. Often, a need arises in them to revisit the site or sites of such events. Some join reunion groups and actually travel to those sites for what, in most cases, is a last look at the scene of what has turned out to be the one great adventure of their lives, even though some of their memories are sad and unpleasant. While many of the structures on the wall sites have been destroyed or have collapsed, many remain today and may still be visited.

In France, in the aftermath of the Second World War, there was very little interest in preserving any remains of the Atlantic Wall structures. Associations with the Nazi occupation of the war years were much too painful for any such considerations. But, over time, curiosity and historical interest grew and received considerable support from organisations in many countries. Such organisations encouraged visits to and spearheaded the preservation of many sites, including aspects of the Atlantic Wall. Some of the European locations where such sites may be visited today are: Alderney, Bordeaux, Boulogne, Brest, Calais/Cap Gris-Nez, Cherbourg, Dunkirk, Guernsey, Jersey, La Pallice/La Rochelle, Le Havre, Le Verdon-sur-Mer, Lorient, Ostend, Royan, Scheldt, Saint Malo/Dinard, St. Nazaire, and Zeebrugge.

Norman civilians fleeing the combat zone, finding shelter behind an embankment during the Battle of Tilly.

Todt-built German gun emplacements and an observation post along the Normandy coast between Caen and Cherbourg;

ENTER ROMMEL

When the German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel took charge of the

Normandy anti-invasion defences he immediately determined to improve the heavily fortified area of coastline around Calais. Having been a mere army division commander (one among 140), Rommel had the rank of Major General. He had led the 7th Panzer Division in the blitzkrieg through France, leading to his rapid promotion. Sent to North Africa in 1941 to command a small force of mobile and mechanized troops on a purely defensive task to prevent the collapse of the Italian position in Libya, he instead disobeyed his superiors both in Rome and Berlin, and made a series of spectacular advances with his impressive Afrika Korps. His brilliance in the field there was amply demonstrated in June 1942 when his outnumbered force hammered the British Eighth Army along the Gazala Line east of Benghazi and chased the overwhelmed Tommies back to El Alamein, the Eighth’s last defensive position in Egypt before the Nile, taking the fortress port of Tobruk along the way as well. Rommel has been the target of much criticism over the years for failing to halt after the Gazala victory to allow his German and Italian amphibious and airborne forces to assault Malta. Many historians though have argued that the general performance of the Italian forces to that point in the war had led Rommel to doubt the possible success of such an operation, a view that was shared by Hitler. Believing that the Afrika Korps had the British on the run and he was in a position to cause the fall of Egypt to his forces, he continued his moves. Hitler promoted him to Field Marshal on 22nd June 1942. But from August Rommel no longer had things his own way. With the appearance in the field of Lieutenant General Bernard Montgomery, the British Eighth Army suddenly came into its own. In Monty, the British had a leader who was ready and able to fight the Eighth to the limits of its ability, limits that he would find ways to extend. He put it to them plainly when he spoke of the men who were then defending Alma Halfa Ridge in the autumn of 1942: “They would stay there alive, or they would stay there dead.” There they stayed and turned the tide against Rommel’s Afrika Korps. By the end of September the German field marshal was

exhausted and suffering from jaundice which forced his return to Germany for specialist treatment. Timing, as they say, is everything, and Rommel’s was not the best when in October Monty opened the second Battle of El Alamein. Still in recovery, the German hastily returned to North Africa to resume command of the Afrika Korps, but he was too late. The battle had already been lost to Montgomery’s forces. The powerful and overwhelming ground and air forces of the British there had prevailed and, for the first time in the war, the Afrika Korps found itself up against a superior foe able and more than willing to stand up to them. And when Rommel tried to make Hitler and the Axis military leaders in Berlin and Rome fully aware of the deteriorating situation for the Germans in North Africa, he was rebuffed and ordered to hold fast. In his efforts to carry out that order he came close to losing what remained of his Afrika Korps force and his relationship with the German leader began to collapse.

Field Marshal Rommel, second from left, inspecting anti-invasion obstacles, the highly

destructive Hemmbalken, wooden barriers fitted with mines and metal blades for ripping open the hulls of landing craft expected to cross this area on a high tide.

Anti-tank obstacles along the Normandy coast in 1944.

In November, the British and Americans joined together in Operation Torch, the landings in Morocco and Algeria, an action that caused Rommel to urge the German High Command to pull the Axis out of North Africa, referring to the strength of the Anglo-American air and naval forces as being such that German and Italian defeat in the region was virtually inevitable. Rommel’s own position was further threatened on his return to Tunisia when the interim Afrika Korps commander, Colonel-General Jürgen von Arnim, opposed Rommel’s plan to significantly damage the American forces in central Tunisia prior to the arrival of Montgomery’s troops in the south. Arnim was against providing his armour in support of Rommel’s operation. This resulted in a relatively limited offensive in February 1943 in which the Axis fighters inflicted a meaningful but only temporary defeat of the Americans at the Kasserine Pass. The American forces at Kasserine recovered rapidly from their losses and profited from lessons learned in the action. A lot

of the credit for that evolution was owed to the leadership and toughness of Major General George S. Patton, whose capabilities were misinterpreted by British Field Marshal Alan Brooke and Lt General Harold Alexander, in whose judgement the American army at Kasserine had been shown to be utterly incompetent. Rommel, though, interpreted the overall experience of Kasserine very differently, impressed by how quickly the Americans had recovered from the defeat and how they had learnt from it. He would certainly not make the mistake of underestimating them again.

With his hurried return to action in North Africa and the demands of the second Battle of El Alamein, Erwin Rommel was still trying to recover from the effects of his exhaustion and jaundice, together with the irrational and troubling orders that had haunted him from Hitler and the High Command for nearly four months. Those pressures and the intense combat demands against Montgomery at Medenine in early March completely exhausted him and forced his evacuation back to Germany and Austria for a further three months of recuperation. But

Hitler still needed his services and by the summer had reassigned him to various roles in the Mediterranean, during which time a threatened Anglo-American advance on Greece had Rommel located there when, in July, a coup in Rome brought the overthrow of the Italian leader, Benito Mussolini, and Hitler immediately recalled Rommel to Berlin. It was clear to the Germans that the new government of Marshal Pietro Badoglio in Italy wanted out of the war at that point and was on the brink of switching sides out of the Axis alliance. In order to defend Italy and Germany’s position there, Rommel then found himself having to put up with the German Field Marshal Albert ‘Smiling Al’ Kesselring, a field commander perceived by many in the German military as greatly overrated, and the two men were less than compatible in the situation.

A German Königstiger (King Tiger) tank being prepared for battle in Normandy in the spring of 1944.

The ever-optimistic Kesselring retained his belief in the ability of the German Army to defend Italy to the south of Rome and could cope with threatened Allied invasion landings—a view not shared by Rommel. Kesselring prevailed and, as events would have it, succeeded in the defence of southern Italy, an effort which raised his stock with Hitler, to the cost of Rommel. By November 1943, virtually all in the German military accepted that the Anglo-American forces would soon embark on a major effort to invade and occupy the European continent. In his preparations for the possibility of that widely anticipated western front, the German chancellor issued his Directive 51 on 3rd November 1943. It read: “The hard and costly struggle against Bolshevism during the last two and a half years, which has involved the bulk of our military strength in the East, has demanded extreme exertions. The greatness of the danger and the general situation demanded it. But the situation has since changed. The danger in the East remains, but greater danger now appears in the West; an Anglo-Saxon landing! In the East, the vast extent of the territory makes it possible for us to lose ground, even on a large scale, without a fatal blow being dealt to the nervous system of Germany.

On Pointe du Hoc

“It is very different in the West! Should the enemy succeed in breaching our defences on a wide front here, the immediate consequences would be unpredictable. Everything indicates that the enemy will launch an offensive against the Western front of Europe, at the latest in the spring, perhaps even earlier. “I can therefore no longer take responsibility for further weakening the West, in favour of other theaters of war. I have therefore decided to reinforce its defences, particularly those places from which the longrange bombardment of England will begin. For it is here that the enemy must and will attack, and it is here—unless all indications are misleading—that the decisive battle against the landing forces will be fought.

“Holding and diversionary attacks are to be expected on other fronts. A large-scale attack on Denmark is also not out of the question. From a naval point of view such an attack would be more difficult to deliver, nor could it be as effectively supported by air, but if successful, its political and operational repercussions would be very great. “At the beginning of the battle the whole offensive strength of the enemy is bound to be thrown against our forces holding the coast-line. Only by intensive construction, which means straining our available manpower and materials at home and in the occupied territories to the limit, can we strengthen our coastal defences in the short time which probably remains. “The ground weapons which will shortly reach Denmark and the occupied areas in the West (heavy antitank guns, immobile tanks to be sunk in emplacements, coastal artillery, artillery against landing troops, mines, etc) will be concentrated at strongpoints in the most threatened areas on the coast. Because of this we must face the fact that the defences of less threatened sectors cannot be improved in the near future. “Should the enemy by assembling all his forces, succeed in landing, he must be met by a counterattack delivered with all our weight. The problem will be by the rapid concentration of adequate forces and material, and by intensive training, to form the large units available to us into an offensive reserve of high fighting quality, attacking power, and mobility, whose counter-attack will prevent the enemy from exploiting the landing, and throw him back into the sea.

Utah Beach

“Moreover, careful and detailed emergency plans must be drawn up so that everything we have in Germany, and in the coastal areas which have not been attacked, and which is in any way capable of action, is hurled immediately against the invading enemy. “The Luftwaffe and Navy must go into action against the heavy attacks which we must expect by air and sea with all the forces at their disposal, regardless of the losses. “I therefore order the following; A. ARMY 1. The Chief of the Army General Staff and the Inspector General of Panzer Troops will submit to me without delay a plan for the distribution, within the next three months, of weapons, tanks, selfpropelled guns, motor vehicles, and ammunition on the Western front and in Denmark, in accordance with the requirements of the new situation. The plan will rest on the following basic principles:

(a) All Panzer and Panzer Grenadier divisions in the West will be assured of adequate mobility, and each will be equipped with 93 Mark IV tanks or self-propelled guns, and with strong anti-tank weapons by the end of December 1943. The 20th Luftwaffe Field Division will be converted into an effective mobile offensive formation by the allocation of self-propelled artillery before the end of 1943. SS Panzer Grenadier Division ‘HJ’ [Hitler Youth], 21st Panzer Division, and the infantry and reserve divisions stationed in Jutland will be brought up to full armed strength with speed. (b) There will be a further reinforcement with Mk IV self-propelled guns and heavy anti-tank guns of Panzer divisions in reserve in the West and in Denmark, and of the self-propelled artillery training unit in Denmark.

An observation post at Utah Beach

(c)

A monthly allocation of a hundred heavy anti-tank guns Mks. 40

and 43 (of which half will be mobile), for the months of November and December, in addition to the heavy anti-tank guns, will be made to the newly raised formations in the West. (d) An increased allocation of weapons (including about 1,000 machine guns) will be made to improve the equipment of ground forces engaged in coastal defence in the West and in Denmark, and to coordinate the equipment of units which are to be withdrawn from sectors not under attack. (e) A liberal supply of short-range anti-tank weapons will be granted to formations stationed in threatened areas. (f) The firepower in artillery and anti-tank guns of formations stationed in Denmark, and on the coasts of occupied territories in the West, will be increased and Army artillery will be strengthened. 2. No units or formations stationed in the West and in Denmark, nor any of the newly raised self-propelled armoured artillery or anti-tank units in the West, will be withdrawn to other fronts without my approval. The Chief of the Army General Staff and the Inspector General of Panzer Troops will report to me, through the High Command of the (Operations Staff), when the equipment of armoured units, selfpropelled artillery units, and light anti-tank units and companies is complete. 3. Commander-in-Chief West will decide which additional formations from sectors of the front that have not been under attack can be moved up and made capable of an offensive role, by a timetable of exercises in the field and similar training measures. In this connection, I insist that areas unlikely to be threatened should be ruthlessly stripped of all except the smallest forces essential for guard duties. In areas from which these reserves are drawn, units will be formed from security and emergency forces for duties of surveillance and protection. Our labour units employed on construction will open the lines of communication which will probably be destroyed by the enemy, employing for this the help of the local population on an extensive scale. 4. The Commander of German troops in Denmark will adopt the

measures outlined in paragraph 3 for the area under his command. 5. The Chief of Army Equipment and Commander of the Replacement Army will raise battle groups of regimental strength in the Home Defence area from training depots, troops under instruction, army schools, training battalions and recuperative establishments. These will form security and engineer-construction battalions, and will be ready; on receipt of special orders, to move within forty-eight hours of being called up. In addition, all further personnel available will be incorporated in infantry units and equipped with such weapons as are available, so that they may immediately replace the heavy casualties to be expected.

B. LUFTWAFFE In view of the new situation, the offensive and defensive power of formations of the Luftwaffe stationed in the West and in Denmark will be increased. Plans will be drawn up to ensure that all forces available and suitable for defensive operations will be taken from flying units and mobile anti-aircraft artillery units engaged in Home defence, from schools and training in the Home defence area, and will be employed in the West, and if necessary in Denmark. Ground establishments in southern Norway, Denmark, northwestern Germany, and the West, will be organized and supplied so that, by the largest possible degree of decentralization, our own units are not exposed to enemy bombing at the beginning of large-scale operations, and the weight of the enemy attack will be effectively broken up. This applies particularly to our fighter forces, whose ability to go into action must be increased by the establishment of a number of emergency airfields. Particular attention will be paid to good camouflage. In this connection also I expect all possible forces to be made available for action regardless of the circumstances, by stripping less threatened areas of their troops.

C. NAVY The Navy will draw up plans for bringing into action naval forces capable of attacking the landing fleet with all their strength. Coastal defences under construction will be completed with all possible speed, and the establishment of additional coastal batteries and the laying of further obstacles on the flanks will be considered. Preparations will be made for the employment of all ranks capable of fighting, from schools, training establishments, and other land establishments, so that they may be deployed with the least possible delay, if only on security duties, in the battle area where enemy landings have taken place.

D. SS The ReichsFuehrer SS will test the preparedness of units of the Waffen SS and Police for operational, security, and guard duties. Preparations will be made for the battle-trained formations for operational and security duties from training, reserve and recuperative establishments, and from schools and other units in the Home defence area. E. Commanders-in-Chief of the branches of the Armed Forces, the ReichsFuehrer SS, the Chief of the Army General Staff, Commanderin-Chief West, the Chief of Army Equipment and Commanding General of Replacement Army, the Inspector General of Panzer Troops, and the Commander of German Troops in Denmark will report to me by the 15th November the steps taken, and those which they propose to take. I expect all staffs concerned to exert every effort during the time which still remains in preparation for the decisive battle in the West. All those responsible will ensure that time and manpower are not wasted in dealing with questions of jurisdiction, but that they are employed in increasing our powers of defence and attack. Signed: Adolf Hitler

Omaha Beach today.

Rommel’s Quineville headquarters, Normandy;

A German minefield sign;

PRIDE AND CONCERN

A German helmet found near Omaha Beach;

“The attack will come, there’s no doubt about that any more … If they attack in the West, that attack will decide the War. If this attack is repulsed the whole business is over. Then we can withdraw troops right away.” —Adolf Hitler, 23rd December 1943 Ernst Franz had served as Field Marshal Erwin Rommel’s interpreter since Hitler had appointed Rommel Inspector of the Atlantic Wall and assigned him responsibility for the fortification of more than 2,000 miles of coastline stretching from the North Cape to the Bay of Biscay with special emphasis on the 800 miles from Holland to Brittany. Rommel, known as “The Desert Fox” since the days of his command in North Africa, now told Franz that “The war is as good as lost and hard times lie ahead.” Franz: “Unfortunately, Feldmarschall Rommel is still obsessed by the retreat from Africa” (referring to the major defeat suffered by Rommel’s Afrika Korps forces at El Alamein in 1942). “It

may almost be said ‘Before Alamein we never had a victory. After Alamein we never had a defeat.’” — Winston Churchill Rommel’s perspective when he received the Atlantic Wall assignment was glum. He had misgivings about the assignment, but he was nearly always moved by a challenge and this loomed as perhaps his greatest challenge ever. When he arrived in northern France to begin his initial survey of the system facilities in December, he was astonished and distressed by what he saw. As the newly appointed Commander-in-Chief of Army Group B, a combination of the Fifteenth Army in the Pas de Calais and the Seventh Army in Normandy and Brittany, he found that the vaunted “Wall”, so highly touted by Hitler’s propagandameister Dr Goebbels, was, in practical terms, barely a wall at all. The so-called impregnable fortress being constructed by Organisation Todt and endlessly celebrated by Goebbels was in fact limited to only about twelve sites where the Todt workforce and the German Navy had even approached the development and completion of the necessary strongpoints of such a facility. One of these was at Cherbourg, and even such strongpoints were providing concrete head cover that was merely 60 cm thick; the naval gun batteries were in steel cupolas, but the set-ups for the army artillery, in order to allow for greater freedom of fire, were simply dug in.

An observaion post at Morsalines, Normandy.

Rommel’s concern was more than shared by the patrician Commander-in-Chief West, Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt, who considered the gun emplacements, blockhouses and casemates of the Wall an immense waste of money having cost more than 3.7 billion Reichmarks to that point, and “an enormous bluff … more for the German people than the enemy.” He believed that, while the Wall might “temporarily obstruct” an Allied attack, it would never stop it: “The Wall has no depth and little surface; it is sheer humbug.” Even as troubled as Rommel was with what he observed of the Wall project, he was somewhat shocked and upset by the cynical and defeatist attitude of von Rundstedt, whose own Chief-of-Staff Generalmajor Gunther Blumentritt, recalled that, in von Rundstedt’s opinion, Hitler was often referred to as “that Bohemian corporal.” When he relaxed, Gerd von Rundstedt enjoyed the novels of Agatha Christie. He was then sixty-eight and his influence and long experience

had led to his own view of what the coastal defence of France should be. The inevitable invasion, in his opinion, could only be defeated after the Allied troops had landed, and only by a mass assault of troops that would initially be withheld from the coast and would then be unleashed to strike savagely at what he presumed would be the invaders’ “disorganised bridgeheads and inadequate supply lines.” This was not how Rommel perceived the situation. He believed the only possible and realistic approach was to “smash the attack at the very outset—on the beaches. We’ll have only one chance to stop the enemy and that’s while he’s in the water… everything we have must be on the coast. The first twenty-four hours of the invasion will be decisive … for the Allies, as well as Germany. It will be the longest day.” Rommel tried repeatedly to persuade Hitler’s Chief of Operations, General der Artillerie Alfred Jodl, von Rundstedt, and Hitler himself to add two particular armoured divisions to the coastal defence system: Generalleutnant Fritz Bayerlein’s Panzer Lehr and Gruppenführer Fritz Witt’s 12th Panzer Division. Witt’s force was based some thirty miles south of Rouen, while Bayerlein’s was near Avranches. But Hitler disagreed: “Their part is to get killed behind the fortifications, so they’ve no need to be mobile.” But with all their disagreements about the defences and how to defeat the Allied invaders, the overarching issue occupying Rommel, the German High Command, and Hitler remained that of where the invaders would actually land. Some favoured the Pas de Calais as the logical choice, located between Dover and Calais at a point where the Channel was only twenty miles wide. Entry to the continent through the Pas de Calais would provide the shortest route to the Ruhr, the German industrial centre; and the Pas de Calais region from November 1943 had seen the siting of many launch facilities for Hitler’s V-1 and V2 “vengeance weapons” which the High Command believed must certainly be a high priority for capture by the Allies. Finally, if they succeeded in the early stages of the invasion, the Allies coming in at Pas de Calais might be able to reach the Rhine River and Germany in

as little as four days. There were, however, other potential landing sites. Rommel persisted with his personal campaign and, at last, on 7th May convinced the higher-ups to agree a compromise in which three Panzer divisions were put at his disposal and the four remaining Panzer divisions were held in reserve fifteen miles inland, those four units to be ordered into action by Hitler personally. Two months before this decision, though, the Führer had announced that he considered Normandy and Brittany to be especially threatened by invasion. He saw them as particularly suitable for the creation of beachheads, and within the following week Field Marshal Rommel had taken up residence in his permanent headquarters, Chateau de la Roche-Guyon. At this point his attention was focused on establishing a series of densely-laid minefields six miles wide and stretching the entire length of the Atlantic Wall, an effort intended to enable the planting of some 200 million mines in France or 65,000 mines per square mile. Rommel: “It would be a precoastal coral reef where every beach, given precious time, would prove a graveyard.

German anti-tank ditches and metal girders called tetrahedrons in Normandy.

Referred to as “the greatest engineer of the Second World War”, by General Wilhelm Meise, Rommel saw to the emplacement of some of the war’s most deadly obstacles all along the coastline of northwest Europe. These included Elements C or Belgian Gates, large iron structures that were fifteen feet long and twelve feet high which were set up 300 yards from the highwater mark and made with strong legs to brace them against pressure from the tides. They were designed in the late 1930s as an anti-tank weapon and also to tear the bottoms out of landing craft. These gate barriers were meant to give way to tanks and entrap them, making it relatively easy for infantry troops to keep the crew members in the tank so the enemy artillery could destroy them with gun fire. Originally made for the Belgian and French armies, but were ultimately abandoned with many of them collected by the Germans for re-use, for example, at Omaha Beach on D-Day.

Oberleutnant-zur-See Walter Ohmsen commanded the Saint-Marcouf battery in June 1944.

A Type H683 casemate at Saint-Marcouf;

A sunken gun position behind Utah Beach.

Utah Beach in the 1990s;

Czech Hedgehog obstacles were embedded in concrete plinths;

Another beach weapon of note was the Czech Hedgehog, a steel or wooden triangle four feet high. Mines and obsolete French artillery shells primed to explode on contact were attached to these deadly items. Additionally, there were fat black Teller mines, ramps fitted with blades, curved rails, and concrete pyramids called tetrahedral, all of these designed to tear the Allied landing craft apart on impact. Rommel called one land obstacle Luftlandehindernis (air-landing obstacle), which came to be known as Rommelspargel (‘Rommel’s Asparagus’). These were logs about fifteen feet long set into the fields and meadows of Normandy and intended to damage the Allied gliders and injure paratroopers. They were positioned in both France and the Netherlands as a defence against air-landing infantry. Though more than a million such obstacles were placed, mainly in Normandy, their effect was relatively inconsequential, with fewer than 300 casualties attributed to them following the invasion. When Rommel took charge of the Atlantic Wall defences and the German Army Group B, he quickly decided that the defences would have to be substantially improved in the short time he estimated was left before the Allies would invade. Initially he ordered millions of tree

trunks felled and set in the fields against the expected Allied airborne forces. He had barbed wire and trip wires strung between the poles. The poles were mostly of six to eight-inch diameter. Every third pole carried a mine or hand grenade on its top. In many instances, British forces that encountered the poles used dynamite to blow them up and clear landing fields for the gliders and paratroopers. In an example of casualties suffered on D-Day by members of the U.S. 82nd Airborne Division, eighteen gliders landed in a field studded with the Rommelspargel defensive poles. The gliders were delivering 250 infantry troops and were nearly all badly damaged in their attempted landings among the poles. Fewer than sixty of the troops managed to crawl from the wrecks of their gliders and survived.

A German gun post at Omaha.

Even before Rommel took control of the Atlantic Wall defences, obstacles to the Allied invasion landings were being built and placed on the beaches of France and Belgium. While on a brief visit to a beach at Neufchatel-Hardelot, he learnt of a new way in which troops there were installing wooden poles (Hochpfähle) in the wet beach sand. The troops were using a highpressure water hose to quickly create a hole in the beach sand in which a large wooden stake could be set. This

method took about three minutes, roughly fifteen times faster than doing the same job with a pile driver. Taking advantage of this capability, Rommel ordered that it be used to place wooden poles, beams, metal rails and other obstructions all along the beaches of Normandy’s coast where the Allied landings would ultimately come. Some 11,000 such obstacles were set into the southern part of the Normandy coastline. However, testing later established that the wooden stakes were not strong enough to stop a captured British landing craft and the stakes were soon joined by stronger, thicker beams set at a different angle and, in most cases, topped with a Teller mine. These additions were called Hemmbalken or obstruction beams. Topping mines were also added to many of the earlier poles.

A U.S. War Department map of the Cotentin area in Normandy showing Utah Beach; far

According to U.S. Navy Commander Edward Ellsberg in regard to the various Atlantic Wall obstacles: “Rommel had thoroughly muddled our plans. Attacking at high tide as we had intended, we’d never get enough troops in over those obstacles … “Instead, landed at low tide, which increased the length of beach to be crossed, but uncovered and revealed the obstacles, which considerably reduced their effectiveness. On the airborne aspect of the invasion, Rommel said: “Like a cunning hunter, we will have to lie in wait for the wild birds descending from the air … Envision swarms of locusts falling from the moonlit sky.” “Rommel is a disrupter. Yes, he is a disrupter. He will commit himself on the beaches … He has made a world of difference since he took over … He will do his level best to ‘Dunkirk’ us … prevent our tanks landing by using his tanks well forward”. —General Sir Bernard Montgomery at St Paul’s School, West London, 15th May 1944

A small church in the region.

CLEARING THE AIR

Members of the British XXXth Army surveying the wreck of a crashed Bf 109G Messerschmitt fighter near Creully southeast of Arromanches in Normandy.

A superbly restored, historically important example of the Douglas C-47 Skytrain. This particular aircraft took part in the D-Day invasion flying its paratroops to jump into Normandy behind the landing beaches. A view of its authentically recreated interior is shown on page 88.

“The fliers had been given full details, including altitudes, routes, timings, manoeuvres for each group between the initial point and the target, directions on reassembly of the force—everything but the date and time of the departure. Then they’d been … shown something only British patience could have constructed—a sand model of a big piece of city, with the projected target at the center. And what was the target? Schweinfurt. ‘It means in German “In a pig’s arse”. Honest. It’s clear the other side of Germany … Goddamn near to Czechoslovakia …” —from The War Lover by John Hersey In 1938 the U.S. Army Air Corps strength was about 20,000 men and fewer than 500 first-line aircraft. By mid-1944 it had grown, as the Army Air Force (the name was changed in 1941), to a strength of twoand-a-third million men and nearly 50,000 aircraft. The growth of that

part of it known as the Eighth Air Force was even more dramatic. First activated in January 1942, it grew in thirty months from nothing to a strength of 200,000 men and about 4,000 aircraft.

Such rapid expansion—such swift moulding of thousands of youngsters who knew nothing about aeroplanes into the world’s most powerful air force—demanded strong leaders who understood organization and aeroplanes and human nature, and in whom lack of patience was a virtue. Fortunately, many such leaders were found. Among them: General Henry “Hap” Arnold, who never commanded the Eighth itself, but who, as chief from 1938 to 1946 of all the U.S. Army Air Forces, was responsible for its creation and welfare. A career army airman who had first begun flying in 1911, Arnold, with his white hair and habitually benevolent expression, looked like a kindly grandfather. He did not, however, act like one. In his mid-fifties, he was

demanding, dynamic, and had a talent for picking the right man for a job and then seeing that the man had what he needed to get the job done. General Carl Spaatz commanded the Eighth Air Force in England from May until November 1942 when he was reassigned to command Allied air operations in the Mediterranean. On 6th January 1944 he was sent back to England as overall Commander of U.S. Air Forces England and the Mediterranean. Spaatz had served in the Air Corps in France during the First World War. In World War II his friend General Dwight Eisenhower, Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Forces in Europe, wrote of him: “On every succeeding day of almost three years of active war, I had reasons for thanking the gods of war and the War Department for sending me ‘Tooey’Spaatz.” The Deputy Commander of the Eighth Air Force under General Spaatz was General Ira C. Eaker. Eaker served as Commander of the Eighth until January 1944, when General James H. “Jimmy” Doolittle took charge. The war correspondent Ernie Pyle referred to Eaker as: “one of the most thoughtful men about doing little things for people, he got along with the British better, perhaps, than any other American general.” Ira Eaker had also been an army pilot and was remembered by his personal pilot, Max Pinkerton of the 351st Bomb Group at Polebrook, Northamptonshire, as “very calm, very articulate, very low key, quite a writer and a master in the use of the English language.” That last quality proved highly important in the future of the American daylight bombing campaign against Germany. Having tried and failed in their own programme of daylight bombing attacks, the British opposed that approach and one of their newspapers wrote that it was “a great pity [the Americans] hadn’t seen fit to build Lancasters, Britain’s finest bombers, and fly them by night instead of clinging to the discredited theory of daylight raids.” British Prime Minister Winston Churchill agreed with that view and prevailed upon his ally U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt, to halt the American daylight bombing. After Roosevelt discussed Churchill’s request with the American air force

chief, General Hap Arnold, Arnold called on Eaker to try to change Churchill’s mind on the matter. When Eaker met with Churchill about it he brought the prime minister a one-page argument putting forward the case for daylight bombing. Eaker later recalled: “Sort of half reading aloud, Churchill came to a paragraph that said ‘If the RAF bombs by night and we bomb by day, bombing around the clock, the German defences will get no rest.’ He repeated the ‘bombing around the clock’ phrase … and said, ‘you have not convinced me … but when I see your president I will tell him that I withdraw my objection.” Churchill kept his word. He also liked Eaker’s bombing around the clock phrase and used it enough for it to become a common expression of the time.

On another memorable occasion recalled by Pinkerton, when

Churchill and Roosevelt were to meet in a wartime conference, “While the president’s airplane was approaching the field, a boy in a shot-up fighter was also approaching. He could have bailed out, but he was trying to save his plane and he did save it, but in the process he cut the Sacred Cow (as we called the president’s plane) out of the traffic pattern. Well, there was a big flap about that, and Eaker was ordered to reprimand the boy. I never saw the letter he wrote, but I was told it went like this: ‘I must reprimand you for furthering the war effort by saving a valuable airplane and also your own life. By so doing you cost the Commander-in-Chief an extra three minutes in the air. Such acts as this cannot be tolerated.’” The Eighth was commanded by General James H. Doolittle from 6th January 1944 until the German surrender in May 1945. Another First World War veteran, Jimmy Doolittle later became the first to fly across the United States in less than a day and the first to take off and land a plane by instruments. While flying in air races he broke many speed records and won both the Thompson and Schneider trophies. On 18th April 1942, he led a flight of sixteen B-25 Mitchell bombers in the first American bombing raid on Tokyo, flying from the aircraft carrier Hornet. For the feat he was awarded the Medal of Honor and promoted to the rank of general. The war correspondent Ernie Pyle wrote: “Doolittle ran the Eighth Air Force. It was a grim, stupendous job, but he managed to keep the famous Doolittle sense of humour about it. He said he used to be six feet tall but had worried himself down to his present height in the past five months.” The Eighth U.S. Army Air Force was in action 1,008 days in World War Two. Statistically, it burned a billion gallons of gasoline, fired ninety-nine million rounds of machine-gun ammunition, and dropped 732,000 tons of bombs on Germany and German-occupied targets on the European continent. It lost 5,982 bombers, more than 3,000 fighters and 146 other aircraft. More than 46,000 of its airmen were killed, wounded or captured by the enemy. The men and planes of the Eighth and Ninth U.S. Army Air Forces

played a vital role in the run-up to and the implementation of the Normandy invasion landings on D-Day, 6th June 1944, and in the days that followed, as they and airmen of British Royal Air Force continued in the Allied progress toward Berlin and the ultimate victory in Europe. Lieutenant Bert Stiles flew as co-pilot on the Sam Newton B-17 crew of the 91st Bomb Group stationed at Bassingbourn near Cambridge. On completion of his tour of duty he transferred to fighters. Tragically, he was killed in the crash of his P-51 Mustang after air combat in which he shot down an enemy fighter. While at Bassingbourn he wrote a fine book called Serenade To The Big Bird. Here is an excerpt relating to D-Day: “We waited for so long it turned into a joke. Each time they woke us up in the night somebody would say, ‘It’s D-Day.’ But it never was. “And then on the sixth of June it was. The squadron waker-upper dragged us out of the sack twenty-nine minutes after midnight of the fifth of June.

A fine image of a Boeing B-17F bomber being serviced on its hardstand at the Grafton

Underwood base of the 384th Bomb Group (H) in 1943.

“‘Breakfast at one, briefing at two,’ he said tiredly. “ ‘Jesusgod,’ I said. “ ‘What the hell is this?’ Sam said. “We were sick of their war. We’d been in bed a half hour. “When we went to chow there was a faint glow from the moon, curtained off by a low overcast. The line men were pre-flighting the Forts, running up engines. There were a lot of RAF planes going over. “All the rank in the group made chow, tablefuls of majors and colonels and captains. “ ‘Late bridge party,’ Bell said. “ ‘Ground-gripping bastards,’ somebody else said. ‘They go to bed when we get up.’ “ ‘Maybe this is D-Day,’ I said. “Nobody laughed. It wasn’t worth a laugh any more. Too many times I drank a lot of tomato juice and hoped it would be good for the deep weariness in my knees. Doc Dougherty was there, looking charming. ‘I’m going along,’ he said. ‘Maybe with you.’ “ ‘See you in Moscow,’ I said. “Maybe it was a shuttle job. It was early enough. “The briefing map was uncovered when we came in. France again, just south of Cherbourg. “ ‘Good deal,’ Sam said. ‘Sack time before lunch.’ “Mac, the public relations officer, was there in white scarf and flying clothes. “ ‘You think this is D-Day,’ I said. He nodded. “The weariness was gone. For the first time I tuned in on the tension in that room. I grabbed the Doc and Bell and Sam in one handful. “ ‘D-Day,’ I said. ‘Honest to God.’ They already knew. “We were in on it. We were flying in the big show. “Colonel Terry (CO), got up. ‘This is invasion …’ were the first words I got. There was a lot of noise. ‘You are in support of ground troops.’ “The excitement was a tangible thing. Everyone was leaning forward. “ ‘Eager,’ somebody muttered. That was the word. We were all eager.

B-17Fs of the 96th Bomb Group on a raid in 1943;

The briefing officers took their turn. “ ‘… tanks on the beach at 0725.’ “ ‘… the troops will hit the beach at 0730.’ “ ‘… there will be 11,000 aircraft in the area …’ “ ‘… you must stay on briefed course …’ “ ‘… no abortions …’ “ ‘… you can’t go down … you can’t turn left or right …’ “ ‘… Wing says give ‘em hell …’ “ ‘… It’ll be just like the photographs …’ “We were bombing by squadrons, six planes. Our squadron was hitting a wireless-telephone station, five minutes before the ground boys hit the beach. “I wondered if the Nazis knew it yet. The last six raids had been France jobs. Full moon. High tide at dawn. I figured they knew. “The moon came through just before take-off time, a big yellow moon soft on the easy hills.

“We formed at 17,000 in the dawn. There were Forts circling everywhere. Every two hundred feet was another layer of Forts. The sun was a deep bloody orange in the east, and the fading yellow moon lay in a violet sky. “Some of the Forts flew in combat wings and groups, but most of them were in six-ship squadrons, heading south, with a few lost ones flubbing around in the air.

A wounded gunner is removed from this Flying Fortress bomber in England.

“The tattered overcast pulled itself together south of London, and became a steady blanket, puffed up here and there in soft cumulus. “Six-plane formations is lazy-man’s stuff after big-time 60-ship wing formations. There were Forts all over the sky, pointing the same way. “We hit prop wash once, so violent I almost went out the top. Crone called up and asked us to get him down off the roof. All the ammunition in the turrets jerked out of the boxes.

“ ‘Rough,’ I said. “Rugged,’ Sam said. “The sky was endlessly clean, with a few soapy clouds above, and the goddamn overcast below. Somewhere down there the fighters were moaning in low, beating up the shore installations. The mediums were just above them, and somewhere offshore the guys were waiting to wade in. “We could see the smoke bombs of some of the earlier groups. “ ‘These goddamn clouds,’ Sharpe said. “Then just before we crossed the coast, the overcast thinned out, and I saw a curve of landing boats … maybe fifteen. And they were really pouring it on. The flashes of the guns were a bright stutter against the gray sea … and then we were over them, bomb bays coming open.

A high-time B-17G after belly-landing at its base in Bassingbourn, England in 1944;

A B-24 Liberator bomber just back at its Hardwick, England base after a raid.

“The Pathfinder ship lined up, and the bombs dropped away into nothing. There wasn’t a puff of flak in the sky, just Forts … endless streams of Forts all the way to hell and back. “ ‘Step down, brother,’ Sharpe said. ‘The war’s over.’ “The sky was a blue-white bathroom, tiled off from the war, tiled off from all the blood and hell below. “We knew they were on the beaches then, far below us, far behind. We flew on in a while, turned right and flew west a ways, and turned back for England. “We were in on it, but we missed it, curtained off by the clouds. “Ross tuned in on General Eisenhower’s speech on the liaison set and told us about it afterwards. “We were all thinking about those poor bastards down on the beach. The planes would be over them, and the ships would be behind them but they had to go in alone. “ ‘Step down, brother,’ Sharpe said again. ‘We had our turn.’

“Maybe we were all thinking the same thing. Our own war was over, the exclusive war of the 8th and 9th Air Forces by day and the RAF by night. And probably nobody will ever know how much we did. “We’d be trucking the bombs over, more of them, more often, but it wasn’t our own private show any more. The boys who take it the slow way had the bright lights on them now. “… you are in support of ground troops …’ Colonel Terry had said. “We were all in it together now. Blood is the same whether it spills on aluminium or Normandy mud. It takes guts whether you fly a milliondollar airplane or wade in slow with a fiftydollar rifle. But the time element is different. And we get all the breaks there. “If a German takes a pot-shot and misses a Yank on the ground, he may get another shot, and another. But the last guy that shot at us went by in a Focke-Wulf and he was four miles deep and below before I took a deep breath. The flak batteries are shooting at whole formations. There’s nothing personal in it. “Maybe some of the airpower fanatics will scream that the big brains didn’t give us a chance to win it our way. Maybe we could have. Maybe not. There aren’t many guys around here who mind sharing this war. The only thing that matters is to win, and win in a way so there is never another one. “When we got home the truck didn’t come for a while, so I went back behind the tail wheel and lay down in the grass. “It had been the milk run of all milk runs, no flak, no fighters, no weaving around for position on the bomb run … just straight in, turn right, and straight home again, alone in our bluewhite world of sunshine. “The flak guns were all set low, waiting for tanks to lurch through the hedges, and jeeps to wander down the lanes. “After the truck came we got dressed fast so we could get to a radio. We spent an empty day waiting around the radio in Fletch’s room, thinking about that long shot through the clouds and the curve of landing craft. One look was all I got, I looked out the window, south

toward France and tried to imagine what it was like. “I’d been to Paris, Avord, Metz, Nancy, Le Havre, St. Dizier, Cherbourg, Calais, and all the places between. I could tell how green the fields look in Normandy. I could see no sign of a maid when we went over Orleans. I know about the sun patterns on the Seine, and the flowers in the fields, the way the Alps grow up out of the mist, east of Chalon. “I could tell, too, about the diseased sky over Paris, the flak blotches over all the towns and all the ports. If I was drunk I would probably tell about the Abbeville Kids, the yellow-nose boys of the Hermann Goering club who claimed to pick their teeth with Fortress spars. But if I told about them, I would be lying, because they were all dead or gone before I came to this theater. “I could tell about a bunch of slowrolling 109s who lived for a while around Tours. “But none of it was very real. A Fort lives in the sky, from three to six miles up, and the only real things up there are the throttles and the feathering buttons, the engine gauges and the rudder pedals, an oxygen mask full of drool, and a relief can half full of relief. “The flak is real when it clanks on the wings, and knocks out your number one oil cooler. The rest of the time it is only a nightmare of soft black puffs and yellow flashes outside the window. “The 190s are real enough when they swing in from one o’clock high and start blinking their landing lights. They’re plenty real when the top turret opens up, and the nose guns start shooting, and the 20millimeters blow away half the tail end of the ship. “I’d seen Sharpe in bloody shorts, wrenching his neck to see the wound on his left cheek. I’d seen what a knee looked like with the kneecap clipped away, and a waist gunner with his brains all over the Alclad, and his legs shot off just below his flak suit. That guy was just as dead as any of those in the surf today. A dead one lies just as still in the sky as in a mudhole. “But most of the time you don’t live with death in a Fort the way they must in a ditch. The smells don’t get to you, and neither do the sounds,

and every night as long as the luck holds out, your sack is in the same place, ready and waiting, soft and dry. “I thought about those guys in the grass, moving down the roads, crawling through the brush, ready and waiting, and I hoped they made it okay. “Everything was different then, different from the day before. I wanted to get in the big bird and go over there. I hadn’t been eager since I left Pre-flight, but I was eager then.

D-DAY PLUS ONE It was cool in the morning and gloomy and quiet. We didn’t go out. We sat around the radio in Fletch’s room and listened to the King. The news afterwards was vague and no help at all. “There were a couple of carloads of new crews in for lunch, looking virginal, and they took over the mess hall completely. There was beef setting for three meals, but when I finally squeezed in at 1330 there was only weary hamburger from two days before.

Part of the instrument panel of a B-17 bomber.

“I was asleep when Porada came around. ‘Get down to operations and we’ll tell you what to do,’ he said. “We sat around the operations office all afternoon, waiting for the good word. The clouds were resting on the top turrets of the airplanes, but there weren’t any rumors of a scrubbed mission.

B-17 gunners at their work stations.

“Nobody did much bitching. Day before yesterday, when it was strictly an air war, we would have bitched all afternoon, and listened to the others bitch, but the war had changed; the jokers over in Normandy had priority on all bitching at that moment. “We were Hollywood stuff that afternoon. Nobody knew where we were going. Nobody cared much. The G.I.s were beating the typewriters, filling up more filing cabinets. Danny was operating as Assistant Operations Officers must, but Captain Martin was taking it easy, as a lead Operations Officer can when he has a good assistant to do his work. “I tried to go to sleep on an egg crate and fell off and broke four eggs. “ ‘What do you say we just sit here all afternoon,’ somebody said. “ ‘It’s teatime,’ somebody else said. “Then Porada came in with a tense look on his face and told the lead

crews to get up to S2 for briefing, and the rest of us to scatter out to the ships.

“We still didn’t know and we still didn’t care. “We took off in the late afternoon and flew to the west of England and turned south. Out of sight over there, across the Channel there was fighting on the beaches, and many dead men lay in the surf. “But we were high above all that. We had an easy one coming up. The target was an airfield, a place called Kelvin-Bastard, not so far from Lorient, where the Forts used to go in the old days. I flew when it was my turn and watched the sun slide down through the soft blue toward the sea. “When it was time to bomb, the field was already a smoky mess from the wings up ahead. The flak started just after bombs-away. The first four puffs were just outside the window. I could see the dull flashes as the shells burst. The formation leader banked off steeply right. The flak tracked along easily. “There was an ugly clank underneath somewhere. I knew we were hit.

“Engines okay. Instruments reading true. Everything okay. “A helpless fear of those soft black puffs tightened inside me. It was always the same. Nothing to do but sit there and pray the luck holds. “And then we were out of it, turning toward home. “ ‘Ball turret to pilot,’ Beach called up. ‘We got a couple of holes in the gut.’ “Once you’re out of it, flak never seems quite real, till the next time. The formations churn through the quiet sky, and the earth is a million miles below. We let down in the darkening east. I leaned forward waiting for England. England! I could say in my mind, and then slow in my mouth, without moving my lips. “When I was eight years old I read Robin Hood the first time, and after that I must have read it twenty more times. Sherwood Forest and Nottingham town in the days of Richard of the Lion Heart. “I used to dream of it then, waiting for the day when I’d stand at the rail of a ship watching for England to come out of the sea, out of the haze.

“Almost like then. “But it wasn’t the same because then England was home, more home than Colorado, more home than my folks’ house on York Street can ever be. It slipped in gently as always, clean and friendly and far off. That would be Land’s End, Cornwall and Devon. The names ring. I could sit with a map any day and say the names out loud, and never get tired of the sound of them … Torquay and Nutt’s Corner and Coventry and Charing Cross. “We hit the coast at 8,000 feet. A flight of Spitfires was playing in the clouds at three o’clock, low. A guy named Mitchell lay on a cliff above the sea and watched the gulls and dreamed up the Spitfire. And a guy named Leslie Howard was Mitchell for a couple of hours’ worth of movies and he crashed back there somewhere, coming home from Lisbon, probably leaning forward watching for England to show through the dusk.

Francis Gabreski, an ace of the famous 56th Fighter Group, 8th USAAF in WW II.

“Strange how any land could be so many shades of green, with the

lazy netting of the lanes that wandered everywhere and nowhere. Looking down there, war was just a word without a meaning. It looked so peacefully lovely, yet the people who lived there had fought since the beginning of time, since before the Romans. And they are still fighting. “I flew my turn for a while, taking it easy, not trying to squeeze the lead ship any. I was glad when Sam took over again. It was better just to look. “I tried to imagine it as it must have been once, long before William the Conqueror, when King Lear was wandering mad on the heath. I couldn’t bring it through. It didn’t look like it had ever been wild. Everything looked permanent, steady till the end of time … Nissen huts, barracks, gun emplacements, airfields … public houses, crossroads, bomb dumps, more airfields … more towns … “I was so tired of sitting. I wanted to bale out. Yet I would have liked to fly on for hours, up to the lands of the Scotsmen, Stornoway, Inverness, and the Isle of Skye. “Two Lancasters were landing on the east-west runway. A flight of P51s came over the top from nine o’clock. “Though it was not my land, and though I had only lived here a little while, I thought I knew why these quiet Englishmen raise so much hell with anyone who tries to take over. “I was tired, saggy tired, starting at the knees on up to the eyes. But I felt good, just so glad to be there, there were no words to tell it. “Not as good as after Berlin or Munich … but almost. It was almost dark then, and the stars were coming through.

D-DAY PLUS TWO “We didn’t make the team. Some of the ships went down by Tours and blew up a bridge. They did a sweet job, because the tail-end planes didn’t even see the bridge. It was gone before they got there. “In the afternoon Sam and I stole a jeep and went out to the ship, our new one. Roy and the ground crew had named her the Times Awastin’. Sam didn’t think much of the name, and it didn’t strike any deep chord in me, but we figured the ground crew might as well have the honor. They took care of her and put her to bed, and fixed her up when she got scratched. “The group artist had a picture painted on it of Snuffy Smith breaking out through a newspaper with invasion headlines. “There was a secret meeting for all combat crews at three o’clock. They had to keep it secret because no one would have come if they had known what was coming. “A major got up and told us the venereal rate at this station was showing a remarkable increase. The announcement was followed by a movie, approved by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. In the movie there were a lot of ugly things about sex that people never think about until they get dosed up. I was impressed for the twelfth time since I joined the Army. Afterwards the major followed up with a short talk. The officers are just as bad as the enlisted men, he said, and the combat men are just as bad as the non-combat men. It used to be the non-combat men got dosed up two to one, but lately only combat men have been getting passes to London. “After that somebody decided it was time we had another ball game. The enlisted men cleaned us. Some new guy caught, instead of Fletch, and he threw down to second seven times and never even came close. He had a nice wing though, if he could have cooled it off and channeled it. I got in front of one of his throws and looked around for what was left of my hand, after the ball went on through to left field. It started to rain in the fifth inning. I had to hide my Brooklyn hat so the bill wouldn’t warp. We called the game after Sam broke two bats.

“We boiled some eggs when we got back to the room. I dropped one in a pair of parked shoes and spent an hour getting it out. After that I started to read an Economics book, only I’d lost my place, and I didn’t want to read the whole book again just to find out where I was. “In the end I sat on my bed like a yogi and stared at Ingrid Bergman. She undoubtedly has a beautiful soul. Just looking at her for an hour was a soothing ending to a long day.” “The initial explosion caused us to go into a stall. We fell right about 2,000 feet on a vertical fall. Airplane out of control. And as we were pulling back up to altitude the second series of explosions started and that’s when the bomb-bay was hit in the number two aircraft. The whole thing started disappearing right in front of us as we were climbing up to it. Of course, the selfpreservation thing takes hold and you just try to turn and get out of there quick as you can.

Hank Mills, a P-47 pilot with the 4th Fighter Group at Debden, Essex;

“Everything has gone wrong. Trying to figure out what it’s going to

take to save yourself, really, you’re worried about avoiding falling debris, avoiding the concussion, the fire, and by the time you get out of the mess and start looking around, you’re into an area then where the German fighters are starting to close in on you because you’re a single. So you start worrying about that and trying to figure out what that is, and you really don’t have any kind of time to record what your feelings are. It’s just genuine fear. “When we recovered and pulled back up to altitude, Harold, my copilot, laughed and said, ‘Don’t say you never sweated in below-zero temperature.’ It was forty degrees below zero and the perspiration had rolled down over my eyes and the front of my oxygen mask. It was caked on the top of the mask a quarter of an inch thick. At forty degrees below zero you can sweat!”—Robert White, 390th Bomb Group,

One of the great fighterbombers of WWII, the Hawker Typhoon.

A restored P-47 Thunderbolt fighter at Duxford Airfield, England.

American P-51 Mustang fighters taking off from a base at Duxford, England.

GERMAN DEFENCES

“In the thick of battle, the soldier is doing his job. He has the knowledge

and confidence that his job is part of a unified plan to defeat the enemy, but he does not have time to survey a campaign from a fox hole. If he should be wounded and removed behind the lines, he may have even less opportunity to learn what place he and his unit had in the larger fight.” —General George C. Marshall This brief section originally appeared in Omaha Beachhead, part of a series of publications called American Forces In Action, published in September 1945 by the U.S. War Department. In the years following the fall of France, the Germans publicized the building of an “Atlantic Wall” against any invasion attempts on the part of the Allies. In his speech announcing his declaration of war on the United States, Hitler said (11 December 1941): “A belt of strongpoints and gigantic fortifications runs from Kirkenes (Norway) to the Pyrenees … It is my unshakable decision to make this front impregnable against every enemy.” Commando forays on the coast of France, aerial reconnaissance, and reports from the French Resistance and secret agents helped Allied Headquarters to amass detailed information on the enemy’s progress in strengthening his fortifications in the west. On the basis of this intelligence, Allied plans were checked and revised up to the middle of May. The estimates were later found to be substantially correct regarding enemy fire power, the underwater and beach obstacles, the plans for use of terrain in defence, and the strength of defensive emplacements. German coastal defences in the V Corps zone were distributed in accordance with the degree of opportunity offered by different sectors for a landing assault. Thirty-two fortified areas or strongpoints were located between the Vire River and Port-en-Bessin. The Vire Estuary, Grandcamp, and Port-en-Bessin were strongly defended. On the long stretches of coast enjoying natural protection by reefs and cliffs, the strongpoints were widely spaced. The enemy had recognized that the Omaha sector was more favourable for attack from the sea, and 12 strongpoints were so placed as to be able to bring direct fire on the

beach. The enemy’s tactical plan for meeting assault was suggested by the disposition of his coastal defences, which were concentrated at the beaches and were not developed in any depth. Every evidence pointed to the conclusion that the Germans intended a maximum effort on the coast, seeking either to smash the attack at the water’s edge or, at worst, to hold the assaulting forces near the beach until mobile reserves could arrive, to finish them off. The beach defences were designed to stop the attacking force by obstacles and mines, both on the tidal flat and the beach itself, while it was annihilated with concentrated fires from every type of defensive weapon. In 1944, at all main beaches practicable for massive landings, the Germans had begun to construct an elaborate system of obstacles along the tidal flat between the high and low water marks. These obstacles, designed to wreck or block off landing craft, had begun to appear in the Omaha sector early in April, and work on them was still in progress by D-Day. The first band of obstructions consisted of a series of Element “C,” gatelike structures of reinforced iron frames with iron supports, on rollers, about 250 yards out from the highwater line. The main support girders were 10 feet high, and waterproofed Teller mines were lashed to the uprights. The second band, 20 to 25 yards landward, were composed of heavy logs driven into the sand at such an angle that the mine-tipped ends pointed seaward, or of log ramps, reinforced and mined. This belt was found to be more formidable than had been anticipated. One hundred and thirty yards from shore, the final row of obstructions included hedgehogs, about five and one-half feet high and made of three or more steel rails or angles, crossed at the centers and so strongly set that the ends would stave in the bottoms of landing craft. None of these bands were continuous, the elements being staggered at irregular intervals. There were no mines in the tidal sands. Shortly after work began on these obstacles, Allied intelligence learned of the new development, and Allied planning staffs were preparing new measures to meet this new and serious complication in the assault

problem. If the attacking troops reached the bank of shingle at the edge of the tidal sands, they would still have to cross the narrow shelf of beach flat to reach the bluffs. The Germans made liberal use of wire and mines to slow up movement beyond the shingle. Along most of the beach, a row of concertina wire was placed just to landward of the shingle; at the western end, the wire was on top of the sea wall. Irregularly placed minefields, usually posted with warning signs, lay in the flat ground behind the wire and on the bluff slope. In addition to the ordinary types, there were rock fougasses (charges of TNT covered by rock and set off by trip wire, sometimes in the concertina), ordinary trip-wire mines, and mustard pots. Some dummy minefields consisted of scrap iron planted below the ground surface, but most of the fields were real.

At the Crisbeq site;

A gun post near Grandcamp Maisy.

Construction by the Organisation Todt workers at Normandy;

Enemy firing positions were laid out to cover the tidal flat and beach shelf with direct fire, both plunging and grazing, from all types of weapons. Observation on the whole Omaha area, and flanking fire from cliff positions at either end, were aided by the crescent curve of the shore line. The emplacements between Vierville and Pointe de la Percée were particularly dangerous because of their ability to deliver enfilade fire on a large stretch of the landing area. Each strongpoint was a complex system made up of elements including pillboxes, gun casemates, open positions for light guns, and firing trenches, surrounded by minefields and wire. The elements were connected with each other and with underground quarters and magazines by deep trenches or by tunnels. Most of the strongpoints protecting Omaha were situated near the entrance to the draws, which were further protected by anti-tank ditches and road blocks. In some cases the elements of a strongpoint were echeloned from the north end of the beach flat to the top of the bluff, with weapons sited for both grazing and plunging fire on every yard of approach to the draw. In June the Germans were still in the process of completing or strengthening several strongpoints, including those guarding E-1 draw.

One of the “Belgian Gates” on a Norman beach in the invasion period;

A machine-gun position on Arromanches (Gold Beach);

A German artillery directional fire post near Le Havre, disguised as a typical Norman

house.

In a village near Caen, young German soldiers of the HitlerJugend before an attack on the British enemy.

While machine-guns were the basic weapons in all emplacements, there were over 60 light artillery pieces of various types. Eight concrete casemates and four open field positions were designed for guns of calibre from 75mm to 88mm; 35 pillboxes were occupied by lighter guns; and there were about 18 anti-tank guns (37mm to 75mm). The heavier guns were sited to give lateral fire along the beach, with traverse limited by thick concrete wingwalls which concealed the flash of these guns and made them hard to spot from the sea. Mortar positions were sometimes included in the strongpoints but were more frequently placed behind the bluffs. About 40 rocket pits were later found, located several hundred yards inland on the high ground and

each fitted to fire four 32cm rockets. The considerable areas between the strongpoints were supposed to be protected by their flanking fires, but minefields scattered on the beach flat and the slopes of the bluff, and by occasional trenches, rifle pits, and machine-gun emplacements along the crest. While the line of defence was not continuous, no areas of beach were left uncovered in the pattern of defensive fires. Nearly all weapons, machine guns as well as artillery pieces, were sited primarily to give lateral fire down the length of the beach, and the defence of a given sector usually depended as much on the flanking fire from neighbouring positions as on the emplacements in the sector itself.

A machine-gun post among the cottages above Gold Beach, Arromanches;

Le Chaos observattion post above Omaha Beach;

The Omaha sector was not strongly defended by coastal batteries of heavier guns. But at Pointe du Hoc, some 5,000 yards to the west, there was a battery believed to consist of six 155mm howitzers (French make), mounted partly in casemates. This position was regarded as the most dangerous in the American zone, for guns of that calibre could cover not only the V and VII Corps landing beaches but also both transport areas. Further west, at Maisy, was a battery estimated at four 155mm howitzers and near Géfosse-Fontenay were four 105mm field gun howitzers. Both of these batteries were later found to consist of mobile field guns. Just beyond the First Army boundary, in the British zone, the strong defences of Port-en-Bessin included guns that might be used against the landing area at Omaha. All main enemy defences in the Omaha sector were on the beach or just behind it; there was no evidence that the Germans had prepared positions inland for a defense in depth. There were known to be a few minefields in the area just south of the bluffs, and some scattered

emplacements at bivouac areas and assembly points. Defence beyond the beach would depend largely on the use of local reserves in counterattack. Omaha Beach lay in the 53-mile sector reportedly held by the 716th Infantry Division, extending from the Orne River to the Vire Estuary. This was a defensive division, estimated at two regiments, two or three artillery battalions, and other small divisional units. Non-German elements in the division were estimated to be as high as 50 percent, mostly Poles or Russians, and morale was thought to be poor. The 726th Regiment was responsible for the coast defences from west of Grandcamp to a point three miles east of Port-en-Bessin. According to the intelligence available, defending troops in the Omaha Beach strongpoints amounted to about a reinforced battalion, some 800 to 1,000 troops, most of them needed to man the beach defences. Local reserves at the 716th Division were estimated at three battalions, two of these near enough to the Omaha assault area to reach it in two or three hours. Counterattacks by these units were not regarded as likely to be effective against penetrations of the beach defences, and major counterattacks would depend on the arrival of mobile reserves. The nearest of these to the Omaha area, and the most likely to be committed there was the 352nd Infantry Division, reported as stationed in the St-Lo—Caumont area some 20 miles inland. Commanded by Lt. Gen. Heinz Hellmich, this was an offensive division of good quality, with a core of veterans experienced in fighting on the Russian front and was expected to furnish most of the opposition to V Corps. It was at full strength, with three infantry regiments and normal artillery of three battalions of 150mm howitzers. By commandeering local transportation, the enemy was believed able to get one regimental combat team of this division into the Omaha area by afternoon of DDay. In addition, the three small battalions of the 30th Mobile Brigade, headquarters at Coutances, might be used for early counterattack. These battalions, consisting of three companies each, were provided with adequate transport for quick movement. Other enemy mobile reserves, including his available armored divisions, were located nearer

the Caen-Bayeux area in the British zone. V Corps units were warned to guard against possible armoured counterattack on this flank by late on D-Day. The three German divisions in the Cotentin peninsula were expected to be completely occupied by VII Corps attack and by the need for defending the Cherbourg area against possible further landings.

A German first aid kit.

It was thought that the German air force would make a supreme effort against the Allied convoy and landing operations. Despite his heavy air losses during the winter, the enemy was believed capable of making 1,500 sorties on D-Day, mainly of fighters and fighterbombers. In view of the overwhelming Allied naval strength, there was little fear of enemy surface action against the assault convoy. Enemy capabilities would be limited to harassing raids by E-boats on the flanks of the convoy lane, and underwater attack by U-boats from bases in western

France.

A rocket-firing workhorse Typhoon fighter-bomber.

Officers of the Canadian Armoured and RCAF work as a team for land-air liaison in the Caen attack;

This German King Tiger tank was disabled in an attack by British rocket-firing Typhoon fighterbombers, Normandy, June 1944.

MERVILLE AND SWORD

The 1st South Lancashire of the 3rd British Infantry Division landing at Hermanville, Sword Beach.

Sword Beach lies at the far eastern end of the five D-Day landing beaches. It is five miles long, stretching from Lionsur-Mer to Ouistreham at the mouth of the Orne River. Sword is about eight miles north of the city of Caen. On D-Day the objective of the AngloCanadian forces of the 3rd Division, British 2nd Army, under the command of Lieutenant General Miles Dempsey, was to cross Sword Beach, carry on through Ouistreham and capture the historic Norman city of Caen and the nearby Carpiquet airfield. A unit of British commandos under Simon Fraser, Lord Lovat, was ordered to leave the beach and head inland toward the Orne River and the Caen Canal bridges, there to link up with British airborne forces. In the initial landings at Sword, the British suffered casualties but were soon able to secure the area. Once they crossed the sand strip and the sea wall

and headed inland, however, their progress was impaired by traffic congestion as well as by some enemy resistance in a few heavily defended areas. And when they finally reached the approaches to Caen, they ran into the only armoured enemy counterattack of D-Day in the presence of the 21st Panzer Division.

British glider-borne troops have arrived in hazardous landings in obstacle-laden fields behind the Normandy invasion beaches.

In considering the capability and composition of the enemy forces in northern France from late 1943, it must be remembered that the German army lost much of its strength and morale while fighting major campaigns in Russia, North Africa and Italy, and, though it was still a powerful force, many of its divisions established along the Channel coast then were composed largely of experienced but battered veterans, still rebuilding and recuperating after lengthy service on the Eastern Front, and many of its formations were made up of raw new recruits. The total German troop force in France then amounted to about 850,000 men, most of them stationed along the Normandy coast. They had the support of an additional 60,000 conscripts who were mainly Russian and Polish. In preparation for the anticipated Allied invasion, the German commanders Field Marshals Erwin Rommel and Gerd von Rundstedt had spent the first half of 1944 dramatically upgrading the defences of the Atlantic Wall system, and nowhere more so than along the Normandy coast where they employed 17 million cubic yards of concrete and over 1 million tons of steel in an effort to shore up and revitalize those defences. The beach areas there had been planted with a half million obstacles and some four million anti-personnel and anti-tank mines. On and behind Sword Beach were twenty strongpoints which were equipped with several artillery batteries and the entire beach expanse to the west from Sword was virtually carpeted with mines, hedgehogs, Dragon’s Teeth, and wooden stake defences. At the back of and above the beach, the enemy had dug a network of trenches, gun and mortar pits and machine-gun nests. All of these positions were surrounded with barbed wire and the beach itself was lined with it. The large, exposed flat areas of beach front were covered by a relatively small number of widelyscattered bunkers that provided machine-gun and sniper positions, with some in the tourist facilities and holiday homes along the shore line. Rommel and von Rundstedt had seen to the construction of six important strongpoints to reinforce the other German defences in the

area. These facilities were provided with a minimum of eight 50mm anti-tank guns, four 75mm guns and one 88mm gun. All the exits from the beach had been blocked by a range of obstacles. In the areas behind the beach a further six artillery batteries had been set up, facilities housing up to four 100mm guns and ten 155mm guns. And beyond all this hardware, lying east of the Orne River, was the Merville Gun Battery, a formidable complex with four 100mm howitzers capable of raining shells onto Sword Beach as well as the ships of the invasion fleet. Thirty-two such facilities had been constructed with casemates, many of them with six-footthick reinforced concrete walls, between the River Seine and Cherbourg, capable of laying heavy shell fire on the five invasion beaches. Actual German units in place to defend the Calvados coast of Normandy and the area of Sword Beach included the 8,000-man 716th Infantry Division under command of Generalleutnant Wilhelm Richter, positioned north of Caen to cover the Sword area. The 352nd Infantry Division had been in control of the Calvados coastal area since March 1942 and was made up of four regular infantry battalions and artillery units. Four of its infantry companies were positioned along Sword, with another four behind the beach. The 21st Panzer Division with more than 16,000 men under the command of Generalleutnant Edgar Feuchtinger, was then located further inland on both sides of the Orne River to protect Caen and positioned to launch an immediate counterattack in the event of invasion. Two Panzergrenadier battalions and an anti-tank battalion from the 21st Panzer Division were added to Richter’s command in May 1944, resulting in the elimination of the 21st as a mobile reserve force. Further defences were then added with the positioning of one of these battalions, along with several mobile 155mm guns and anti-tank guns, to the Périers Ridge three miles south of Sword.

A memorial to the British troops who attacked and captured Merville Battery;

A bullet-riddled British flag from action on D-Day;

Merville Battery.

Remains of the Merville battery near Caen.

At 0300 in the morning of 6 June, an Allied naval and air bombardment of the German coastal defences and artillery sites in the area of Sword Beach began. The Allied landings on Sword were to be concentrated in the area around Hermanville-sur-Mer and at 0725, the first wave elements headed towards the beach. In the lead were the DD “swimming” tanks of the 13th/ 18th Hussars, followed by the 8th Infantry Brigade and the Royal Engineers arriving in various examples of specialty vehicles nicknamed “Hobart’s Funnies”, strange creations of Major General Percy Hobart. They were mainly modified versions of Churchill and Sherman tanks whose re-designs resulted from lessons learnt in the disastrous British raid on Dieppe in 1942. In their various forms they provided an amazing range of capabilities. The Crocodile, for example, had a flame thrower in place of a machine-gun and towed an armoured trailer carrying 400 Imperial gallons of fuel. With a firing range of more than 120 yards, this frightening weapon proved effective in clearing trenches, bunkers, and other enemy facilities. The AVRE (Armoured Vehicle Royal Engineers) was a Churchill tank adapted specifically for attacking German defensive facilities, its main gun having been replaced by a Petard Mortar that fired a forty-pound highexplosive projectile, referred to as a “flying dustbin”, which could destroy concrete obstacles and structures such as roadblocks and bunkers. The tank could also carry and operate such items as: a Bobbin: a reel of ten-foot-wide canvas reinforced with steel poles carried in front of the vehicle and unrolled onto the ground to form a “path” so that the vehicle (and following vehicles) would not sink into soft ground or beach sand during the amphibious landings; a Fascine: a bundle of wooden poles or rough brushwood lashed together with wires and carried in front of the tank to be released to fill a ditch or form a step. Metal pipes in the centre of the fascine allowed water to flow through; a Small Box Girder: an assault bridge that was carried in front of the tank and could be dropped to span a thirty-foot gap in thirty seconds; a Bullshorn Plough: a mine plough intended to excavate the ground in front of the tank, to expose and render harmless any land mines; a Double Onion: Two large demolition charges on a metal frame

that could be placed against a concrete wall and detonated from a safe distance; the Ark (Armoured Ramp Carrier): a Churchill tank without a turret but with extendable ramps at each end, enabling other vehicles to drive up the ramps and over the vehicle to scale obstacles; the Crab: a modified Sherman tank equipped with a mine flail—a rotating cylinder of weighted chains that exploded mines in the path of the tank; the DD tank: a duplex-drive amphibious Sherman or Valentine tank fitted with a large, watertight canvas housing, able to float and reach the shore after being launched from a landing craft several miles from the beach. They were meant to give support to the first waves of infantry attacking the beaches; the Barv (Beach Armoured Recovery Vehicle): a Sherman tank which had been water-proofed and its turret replaced with a tall armoured structure. Capable of operating in water to a nine-foot depth, it was designed to remove vehicles that had broken down or been swamped in the surf and were blocking access to the beaches. They were also used to refloat small landing craft that had become stuck on the beach. While not actually Hobart inventions, the Barvs were developed and operated by the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers; the LVT Buffalo: a lightly armoured amphibious landing vehicle with a ramp to make cargo loading easier; the Armoured Bulldozer: a conventional Caterpillar D7 bulldozer fitted with armour to protect the driver and the engine. Designed to clear the invasion beaches of obstacles and make roads accessible by clearing rubble and filling in bomb craters; the Centaur Bulldozer: a Centaur tank with the turret removed and re-fitted with a simple winch-operated bulldozer blade. Unlike a conventional bulldozer, this well-armoured obstacle-clearing vehicle was fast enough to keep up with tank formations; the Canal Defence Light: was a powerful carbon-arc searchlight mounted on several types of tanks inside a modified turret. The name of the device was deliberately inaccurate to help keep it secret. It was intended to illuminate enemy positions during night attacks and dazzle defenders with its high-intensity light.

Oberleutnant Raimund Steiner was in command of the Merville battery on 6th June 1944, D-Day

As soon as they arrived on the beach, the Royal Engineers went to work in a massive effort to clear the mines and beach obstacles. They worked under a constant hail of artillery and small arms fire coming primarily from Périers Ridge. Still, within about two hours the engineers had managed to clear most of the main exits from the beach. By 1300 British and French commando troops had met and efficiently dealt with strong enemy resistance in Ouistreham and elements of the 1st Special Service Brigade had linked with paratroops of the 6th Airborne Division who had taken control of the bridges on the Orne River and the Caen Canal. It was the 9th Parachute Battalion, attached to the 6th Airborne Division, that had been assigned the task of destroying the threatening Merville Gun Battery. They were flown into Normandy, but when they were dropped their descent was widely dispersed and, of their 600 troops, only 150 found their way to the battalion assembly point. Then, without most of their equipment and heavier weapons, they pushed on towards their objective. The four six-foot-thick concrete gun casemates of the Merville Battery had been built by Organisation Todt as a part of the Atlantic Wall. They housed and sheltered WWI-era Czech-made 100mm guns and the site included a command bunker and other buildings for

personnel accommodation and ammunition storage. The two final casemates were only completed in May, less than a month before DDay, at Rommel’s insistence. The Merville Battery itself was defended by fifteen machine-gun positions and by a 20mm anti-aircraft gun, as well as two large barbed-wire walls. It was surrounded by a minefield 100 yards deep and had an anti-tank ditch on the west side. The battery was commanded by Oberleutnant Raimund Steiner, in charge of fifty engineers and eighty artillerymen. The main complement consisted of about 100 men who formed the gunnery crews. In addition, it was served by staff officers and their assistants, cooks, medical personnel, maintenance people, observation teams, and guards. The assault on Merville Battery began moments after midnight on 6 June with the arrival by parachute of the 9th Parachute Battalion’s advance party and pathfinders, who reached the assembly area. Major George Smith then led a reconnaissance party to scout the battery facility. As they departed, a group of RAF Lancaster bombers arrived to attack the gun battery. All of their bombs missed the target, however, falling away to the south. The smoke and debris from their bombing unfortunately obscured the lights of the Eureka beacons the pathfinders were using to attract the attention of the British transport aircraft bringing the main body of the 9th Para Battalion and their gliders. Thus, the great majority of those arriving troops landed a substantial distance from their planned drop zone. Lt Col Terence Otway was leading the battalion in their assault on the Merville Battery, a job he was supposed to complete by 0530 of DDay, an hour before the first landing craft were due at Sword. Four minutes before they were to arrive over the drop zone, Otway’s group of aircraft ran into some flak and began to take evasive action. That resulted in the assault force being spread out over a fifty square-mile area. Just before jumping, a flak shell burst near Otway’s aircraft, ripping holes in it and in his parachute. Landing with the rest of his stick of jumpers about 400 yards from the drop zone, Otway and his little group found themselves close to a farmhouse being used as a

command post by a German battalion. One of the men in Otway’s party came down through the roof of a greenhouse and the noise attracted fire from the Germans in the farmhouse. Cleverly, British paratrooper threw a brick through a window of the farmhouse causing the Germans to mistake it briefly for a grenade, which gave the paratroopers an instant to get clear of the area.

A panzergrenadier of the HitlerJugend Division was wounded in the face and captured near Carpiquet airfield in the vicinity of Caen as the battle action increased in the region around Caen during early July.

Some of the hundreds of descending paratroopers landed in chesthigh water. They were weighed down by their sixty-pound packs and were drowned. When Col Otway joined the others at the battalion assembly point at 0130, he took stock of the situation and realized he had no radios that worked, no medical orderlies or medical equipment, no engineers. By 0250 only 150— or one-quarter of his men—had arrived and they had just twenty Bangalore torpedoes and one machine-gun. Missing, along with the other 450 of his men, were their anti-tank guns, mortars, mine detectors, jeeps and most of their other equipment. Otway could wait no longer if he was to accomplish his objective on time, and led what remained of his force on towards Merville. Major Smith and his reconnaissance party, meanwhile, had cut a pathway through the barbed-wire at the battery and marked four routes through the minefield there. They then linked up with Otway’s men outside the village of Gonneville en Auge where they awaited the arrival of three gliders from England. While being towed towards France, the tow-rope of one of the gliders snapped and it had to make a forced landing back at RAF Odiham. When the other two gliders arrived in the general area of Merville, their towplane pilots were unable to locate the correct landing zone and during their run-in, both gliders were hit by antiaircraft fire.

A British Centaur tank of the Royal Marine Commandos south of Bayeux.

Chaos reigns in the midst of an air raid on St Lo, 25th July 1944.

At 0430 the two gliders were seen circling in the area of the Merville Battery. One then landed about four miles away. The other glider crash-landed in an orchard and its troops were immediately engaged in a fire fight with a German platoon which was trying to reinforce the Merville garrison. Otway launched the assault as soon as the first of the two gliders overshot the battery. At the battery Otway’s men silenced the enemy machine-guns and some of the Bangalore torpedoes were employed to clear enough of the wire in front of them to allow the assault on the complex. Otway later recalled: “The battery concentrated everything waisthigh on the gaps in the wire. Boobytraps and mines were going off all over the

place. Fierce hand-to-hand fighting was going on inside the battery, and I had to keep dodging [the fire] of a machine-gun in the tower which was shooting at me.” The noises of the Bangalores alerted the German defenders at the battery and they opened fire on the British troops, inflicting heavy casualties. Some of the casemates were disabled by firing into apertures and tossing grenades into air vents. Other casemates were cleared using fragmentation and white phosphorus grenades. While the bombing raid was under way, the defenders had moved the battery’s into the casemates, leaving the steel doors open to provide ventilation. Oberleutnant Steiner was at a command bunker in Franceville-Plage while the raid was in progress and set out to return to the battery immediately after it. When he arrived in the area he could not gain entry due to the heavy small arms fire there from the British occupiers. His arrival there coincided with that of a German army Flak unit reconnaissance patrol with a half-track and an anti-aircraft gun. The patrol was trying to find shelter in the Merville complex but instead was compelled to engage the British paratroopers.

The British 7th Armoured Division—the Desert Rats—advancing through the ruins of Lisieux on 23rd August 1944.

At this point, the British troops were in control of the battery and ready to carry out their mission to destroy the big guns of Merville, but lacking both the explosives required and the sapper personnel to employ them. All they had was a relatively small amount of plastic explosive and were in some doubt about their capability to complete their assignment. Steiner soon returned to Franceville-Plage and there ordered the 2nd and 3rd Regiments to direct firing onto the Merville Battery facility. By 0500 only 75 battalion survivors of the 150 attackers under the command of Otway in the assault on the Merville Battery remained. They moved out towards their secondary objective, the village of La Plein where, in their weakened state, they managed to liberate roughly half of it. They had to wait there for the 1st Commando Brigade to assist them in taking the remainder. With the withdrawal of the Otway force from Merville, the enemy managed to re-occupy it and Steiner was able to restore two of the battery guns to be useable, but was unable to direct accurate fire onto the landing beach, but was aided in that effort by observers from the 736th Infantry Regiment who were involved in a holding action at La Bréche. The Merville Battery was again assaulted on 7 June, by commandos of the 1st Special Service Brigade, but they incurred heavy losses in the effort. The British mission to destroy the battery complex was not successful and the facility remained under enemy control until the start of the German withdrawal from France on 17 August. When D-Day had ended, nearly 29,000 men of I Corps had been landed on Sword Beach and, according to British Official Historian L.F. Ellis, “In spite of the Atlantic Wall over 156,000 men had been landed in France on the first day of the campaign.” The British forces lost 683 men in the Sword area. At the end of the action in and around the Merville Battery, Lt Col Otway’s force had captured twenty-three German prisoners who were ordered to guide Otway’s men through the minefields while small pockets of enemy troops fired on them from

positions in the area. Otway had begun the day with more than 600 men. He went into battle with just 150, and finished 6 June with only sixty-five men still standing.

POINTE DU HOC

There is a place on the Normandy coast in northern France, a promontory with a 100-foot cliff facing the English Channel. It is the highest point between Omaha Beach to the east and Utah Beach to the west. It is called Pointe du Hoc and during the Second World War the German army fortified the area as part of the Atlantic Wall defence system, constructing gun pits and concrete casemates. It is most famous for an assault on the site on the day of the Allied invasion in Normandy, 6th June 1944, when United States Army Rangers scaled the cliffs and captured the Pointe du Hoc complex. Situated four miles west of the midpoint of Omaha Beach, the Pointe du Hoc element of the Atlantic Wall system was heavily fortified by the Germans. The main battery there was constructed in 1943 and used initially to house six captured 155mm French First World War guns which were positioned in open concrete gun pits. The Germans had occupied the

promontory and facility to defend the site from attack. By spring 1944, they were well along in their effort to improve the defences of the Pointe du Hoc battery and their plan to build six new casemates. Four of the new structures were actually completed by D-Day. The new casemates were constructed above and forward of the existing circular gun pits housing the 155mm guns. Included too in that construction work was a new observation bunker as well as mounts for new antiaircraft guns. The next major event to affect the Pointe du Hoc complex was an Allied bombing raid in April 1944 which resulted in the removal by the German occupiers, of the six 155mm guns. As the Allies continued their extensive planning and preparation for the D-Day invasion, it was decided that they should utilize ground forces to attack the casemates of Pointe du Hoc early in the morning of D-Day in order to prevent the Germans from using them for observation. The job of attacking the casemates was assigned to the American 2nd and 5th Ranger Battalions and, in the actual assault, men of the 2nd Rangers went in to scale the cliff, but delays in the landings operation at Omaha Beach held up the arrival of the remainder of the 2nd and all the Rangers of the 5th Battalion. The prior removal of the big guns from the casemates of the Pointe resulted in the German shelling of the beachheads from the nearby Maisy Battery; firing that continued until 9th June.

The Allied assault on Pointe du Hoc came within the range of operations of the American 1st Infantry Division, the Big Red One, as it was known, a part of General Leonard Gerow’s V Corps. The two Ranger battalions involved in the assault were commanded by Lieutenant Colonel James Earl Rudder and his plan required three companies of Rangers to be landed by sea near the foot of the cliffs at the Pointe and, using grapnels, ropes and ladders, scale them under enemy fire and then engage the German troops at the top of the cliffs. This entire effort was intended to be carried out and completed prior to the main beach landings. Preparatory to the assault, the Rangers had trained for it on the Isle of Wight under the direction of highly experienced British commandos.

Remains of one of the large gun positions on the Pointe du Hoc complex

Part of Colonel Rudder’s plan called for three companies of the 2nd Ranger Battalion, also referred to as Force A, to operate under the command of Major Cleveland Lytle. In the course of the briefing being held aboard the Landing Ship Infantry (LSI) TSS Ben My Chree, Lytle learned from Free French sources that the main guns of the Pointe du Hoc complex had not been removed. Lytle loudly expressed his opinion then that the planned attack would now be suicidal and unnecessary and, at the last minute, Rudder relieved him of his command and took the command himself, taking the view that Lytle would not be capable of leading the mission if he did not believe in it. The assault force of Rangers was arriving in the area near the Pointe in a group of ten landing craft accompanied by two additional craft carrying their supplies and another four landing craft—DUKW amphibious trucks bringing 100-foot ladders borrowed from the London Fire Brigade. As they entered the area, one of the troop-carrying craft sank and all but one of the troops aboard drowned. A second landing craft was swamped in the choppy waters. One of the supply craft also sank and, in order to stay afloat, the crew of the other supply boat elected to put their supply load over-board. German defenders firing mortars and machine-guns sank one of the DUKWs as it approached

the Pointe.

The chaos experienced in their approach resulted in a forty-minute delay in the landing of the majority of the Rangers at the cliff base, and the surviving members of the force finally arrived by 7:10 a.m. Rocket launchers fitted to the landing craft then fired the grapnels and ropes up the slope, enabling the Rangers to scale the cliff as two Allied destroyers, HMS Talybont and USS Satterlee lay down supporting fire to suppress firing by the enemy defenders on the climbing U.S. troops. Colonel Rudder’s plan had also called for a large additional force of Rangers to join the initial force in the attack when they were ordered in by signal flares to be fired from the cliff tops, but the delayed landings of the first Ranger elements set the plan back and the large second wave of Rangers ultimately were landed on Omaha Beach instead of at Pointe du Hoc. As fortune and skill would have it, that second force of 500+ Rangers arriving on Omaha Beach seems to have greatly helped to avert what was apparently developing into a terrible Allied defeat

there. That larger group of Rangers were able to force the Allied assault on Omaha beyond the beach itself and up into the high bluffs behind it where they managed to outflank the German defences.

When the initial Ranger force reached the cliff top on the Pointe, they made two important discoveries. They found that their main objective, the artillery battery, had been removed. They quickly regrouped and sent two small patrols out to search for the missing guns. Five of the six big guns were located nearby and the sixth was found shortly thereafter in another location. The Americans used thermite grenades to destroy the firing mechanisms of all the guns. The second discovery the Rangers made on the cliff top was that their radios didn’t work.

An American survival kit of World War II.

The Rangers occupying the complex on Pointe du Hoc were determined to hold that vital high-ground position, but with ineffective radios they were isolated and all but out of contact with other Allied forces. They spent the next hours fighting off several German counterattacks. Other Rangers from the elements then in the Omaha Beach area headed towards the Pointe du Hoc, but just twenty-three of them managed to link up with their comrades on the pointe during that night of 6th June. The Germans reduced the strength of the Ranger force there somewhat and took several Allied prisoners. Finally, in the morning of 8th June, fully two days after the initial assault on the Normandy beaches, the Rangers that had first taken the Pointe du Hoc complex were relieved by elements of the 2nd and 5th Rangers, the 1st Battalion of the 116th Infantry, and tanks of the 743rd Armoured Battalion. By the end of D-Day +2, that initial Ranger landing force of 225 men had been reduced to just ninety. After the battle for Pointe du Hoc, several French civilians were suspected of collaborating with their

German occupiers, of shooting at American forces, or of assisting the Germans by acting as artillery observers for them, and were executed. The value and significance of the Allied victory in the battle for Pointe du Hoc lies in the fact that the massive six-gun artillery complex there posed a potentially catastrophic threat to the Allied forces landing on Utah and Omaha Beaches on D-Day. In planning the assault on the site, the Allies were determined to eliminate that threat and reduce the loss of American lives on those beaches. Near the small fishing village of Grandcamp, on the coastline of Normandy in northern France, a section of thirtymeter high cliffs extends out into the English Channel to form a spectacular, unexpected promontory overlooking a thin pebble beach. The promontory, is called Pointe du Hoc and in the Second World War its German army occupiers considered it to be unassailable, an ideal site to construct one of the strongest fortifications of Adolf Hitler’s Atlantic Wall. The six great 155mm guns of the complex there were mounted in heavily reinforced concrete bunkers and were easily capable of hitting both of the Utah and Omaha D-Day landing beaches and the several thousand vessels of the Allied invasion fleet off the shores of Normandy. Many thousands of Allied lives were at enormous risk in the course of the landings and the coastal battle had those big guns been allowed to rain their shells on those targets. From Omaha Beachhead, a September 1945 publication of the United States War Department: “While the main assault was proceeding on Omaha beaches, three companies (D, E and F) of the 2nd Ranger Battalion were engaged in an isolated action three miles to the west. Led by Lt Col James E. Rudder, commander of the provisional Ranger Force, about 200 men came in at Pointe du Hoc. Their primary mission was to seize that fortified position and neutralize its battery of six 155mm howitzers, which could put fire on the whole Omaha approaches, from the craft assembly area in to the beaches. “The mission presented special difficulties. The beach at the Point was a twenty-five-yard strip, surmounted by sheer cliffs 85 to 100 feet

high. The Rangers had been training for several months on English cliffs of similar character, and, as a result of experiment aided by the experiences of British Commandos, they had developed special equipment for their task. Each of the ten LCAs was fitted with three pairs of rocket guns, firing grapnels which pulled up (by pairs) ¾-inch plain ropes, toggle ropes, and rope ladders. In addition, each craft carried a pair of small hand-projector-type rockets, which could be easily carried ashore and fired small ropes. Each craft also carried tubular-steel extension ladders made up of light, four-foot sections suitable for quick assembly. Four DUKWs mounted a 100-foot extension ladder, fire-department type. Personnel of the assault parties carried minimum loads, with heavier weapons amounting to four BARs and two 60mm mortars per company. Two supply craft brought in packs, rations, demolitions, and extra ammunition for the three companies. “Their assault plan provided landing at H Hour, Companies E and F on the east side of the Point, Company D to the west. Unfortunately, one of the accidents of misdirection befell the Rangers; they headed eastward so far that, when the mistake was corrected, they had to approach the Point from that quarter on a course close to and almost paralleling the shore. Under fire from strongpoints along the cliffs, the flotilla came in forty minutes late. This delay meant that the eight other companies of Rangers (A and B of the 2nd Battalion, and the entire 5th Battalion), waiting offshore for word of the assault, did not follow in to Pointe du Hoc but went toward Vierville. “One LCA had been swamped, going down soon after leaving the transport area; one of the supply boats sank fifteen minutes after the start, and the other jettisoned all packs aboard in order to stay afloat; one DUKW was hit and sunk by 20mm fire from a cliff position near the Point. The nine surviving LCAs came in on a 400-yard front from on the east side of the Point. Naval fire had been lifted since H Hour, and the enemy had been given time to recover and to man the trenches above the cliff. The destroyer Satterlee observed their movement and swept the clifftop with fire from all guns; nevertheless, scattered small-arms

fire and automatic fire from a flanking machinegun position beat around the LCAs, causing about fifteen casualties as the Rangers debarked on the heavily cratered strip of beach. The rockets had been fired immediately on touchdown. Some of the water-soaked ropes failed to carry over the cliff, but only one craft failed to get at least one grapnel to the edge. In one or two cases, the demountable extension ladders were used. The DUKWs came in but could not get across the cratered beach, and from the water’s edge their extension ladders would not reach the top of the cliff.

American Rangers aboard an LCA prior to their landing at Pointe du Hoc on 6th June 1944.

“Germans appeared on the cliff edge and started to harass the Rangers directly below them with rifle fire and grenades. This show of

enemy resistance was promptly discouraged; BAR men picked off the riflemen as they exposed themselves, and the destroyer Satterlee, coming in at close range, swept the clifftop with a few minutes of concentrated fire from all her guns. The escalade was not delayed. In less than five minutes from time of touchdown, the first Rangers, by one type of rope or another, were getting to the cliff top. Some, covered with mud from having fallen into deep crater pools on the beach, had trouble in climbing. A few ropes had been cut by the enemy or had slipped from the anchorage. The first men up waited no longer than it took for three or four to assemble, then moved out on prearranged missions toward the gun positions. They found themselves in a no-man’s land of incredible destruction, all landmarks gone, and the ground so cratered that if men got fifteen feet apart they were immediately out of contact. Only a few enemy were seen, and these were quickly driven to cover in a network of ruined trenches connecting deep dugouts and emplacements. One after another, the small advance parties reached their appointed gun emplacements, only to find them empty. The gun positions, three of them casemated, were partly wrecked; the guns had been removed. Without hesitation the Ranger parties started inland on their next mission: to reach the coastal highway, set up a defensive position cutting that main route between Vierville and Grandcamp, and await the arrival of the 116th Infantry from Omaha Beach.

Rangers scaling the cliff at Pointe du Hoc with some of their D-Day equipment and ammunition cans.

The moon-like cratered landscape of the Pointe du Hoc complex as it appears today. The area was heavily bombed in the run-up to the D-Day landings.

“They were still proceeding by small parties which joined up gradually as they moved inland. Three hundred yards from the fortified area they came under small-arms fire and artillery fire from the south. Fifteen men were killed or wounded as they pushed straight on, wiping out two small nests of resistance. About thirty-six men from Companies D and E reached the highway shortly after 0800; farther west, a dozen or so from Company F came out on the blacktop at the same time and joined up. The force took up a defensive position in fields just beyond the road, putting one group in position to block the highway toward Grandcamp. A few enemy parties had been met and driven off with losses during the speedy advance. “Patrolling was started at once about 0900; two Rangers went down a lane 200 yards off the main road and found the missing battery of five guns. Cleverly camouflaged, they were sited for fire on either Omaha or Utah Beach and large ammunition stocks were ready at hand, but there were no enemy in or near the position. The patrol put

two guns out of commission with incendiary grenades and went back for more grenades. While they were gone, a second patrol finished the job of disabling the guns and set fire to the powder. Word was sent back to the Point that the main objective had been accomplished. “There was mounting evidence that the enemy on or near the Point was recovering from his confusion. East of the fortified area a machine-gun emplacement which had caused most of the losses on the beach was assaulted by some men of Company F. They were unable to reach it, and the position remained in action until the whole cliff edge was blown into the sea by naval fire late in the morning. Just west of the Point an anti-aircraft emplacement near the cliff edge began to sweep the Point with fire. By 0740 all the Ranger boat teams were up, and a dozen men of the late-comers were diverted from going inland and sent to attack this anti-aircraft position. As they worked toward it through craters, artillery and mortar fire stopped them and the party scattered. A few minutes later a German counterattack, emerging from tunnels or nearby trenches, overwhelmed and captured all but one man. So torn up was the ground that the command post group, in a crater only a hundred yards away, was unaware of what had happened until the survivor returned. Another assault was hastily improvised, consisting of a dozen riflemen and a mortar section. They got halfway to the strongpoint and were caught by artillery fire, which killed or wounded nearly every man in the party. “For the rest of the day the small force on the Point was in a state approaching siege. Enemy snipers appeared in the fortified area, and despite several attempts, the Rangers could never clean out the maze of wrecked positions. Three or four Germans still held out on the tip of the Point in an undamaged concrete observation post. During the afternoon two enemy counterattacks coming from the direction of StPierredu-Mont were stopped, the most dangerous one by accurate and rapid fire from the Rangers’ only remaining mortar. The anti-aircraft position was still very much in action, and destroyer fire could not quite reach it. Communication with the advance party on the highway was intermittent, depending chiefly on patrols that occasionally had to fight

their way through. “The command post on the Point was out of communication with the assault forces on the main beaches, but was able to contact naval support ships with blinker and (later) radio. Naval Shore Fire Control Party No. 1 was able to establish communications as early as 0728 with the Satterlee, which stayed on hand for the rest of D-Day and gave extremely useful fire support. In the afternoon a message from the Point came through to V Corps via the Navy, ‘Located Pointe du Hoc—mission accomplished—need ammunition and reinforcement— many casualties.’ This, the only word received on D-Day from Colonel Rudder’s force, left considerable doubt and anxiety at headquarters.”

One of the many Todt-built World War II gun positions remaining today along the coast of Normandy;

Now, more than seven decades since the D-Day invasion and the battle for Pointe du Hoc, there is a museum dedicated to that battle on the site and a memorial to the men who fought there. A number of the original fortifications remain there along with hundreds of bomb and shell craters. The site and the wartime complex are now in the care and control of the American Battle Monuments Commission.

Le Surfer nightclub occupies one of the Second World War German bunkers.

BLOODY OMAHA

The most deadly and intense battle of the D-Day invasion landings on

6th June 1944 was that fought on the five-milelong stretch of beach called Omaha by the Allied planners of the assault. It was the largest of the five landing beaches and the most difficult and dangerous to attack because of the high bluffs overlooking virtually the entirety of the beach and the nature of the enemy defences along most of their length. The task of taking Omaha and Utah beaches went to the Americans. The Germans had carefully designed and built gun emplacements, observation posts, pillboxes and other hardened facilities on the clifftops, most of them connected by a series of trenches to ease the movement of their personnel between the facilities. General Omar Bradley was leading the troops of the American 1st Army in the attack on the enemy forces at Omaha, which was set to begin at 0630. The Allied planners had intended for the American infantry troops to hit the beach in company with twenty-nine amphibious Sherman “swimming tanks” (DDs), which would have given the troops substantial fire power against the defending forces. Unfortunately, the Shermans were released from their landing craft much too far away from the beach. The swell on the sea at their release point was too heavy that far out and all but two of the tanks were swamped with water almost as soon as they left the landing craft. They began to sink as soon as they were released; the landing craft personnel could do nothing to help the crews of the Shermans and most of them drowned and the troops on the beach never received the armoured protection they were expecting. In addition to these problems, the unpredicted strong winds and tides drove a number of the landing craft off line, adding to the extreme chaos among the Allied troops on the beach. Omaha was heavily defended by German machine-guns and other gun emplacements which inflicted many hundreds of casualties among the Americans there. The only hope of success and survival for most of them lay in somehow managing to cross the strip of sand from the surf to the seawall, a sprint that for many was deadly. As General George Arthur Taylor, Commander of the 16th Infantry Regiment on Omaha said to those who remained from his unit, huddled there, exhausted,

shell-shocked and pinned down along the seawall, “There are two kinds of people staying on this beach: those who are dead and those who are going to die. Now let’s get the hell out of here.” The main Allied objective at Omaha was to secure a beachhead five miles deep between Port-en-Bessin and the Vire River, that would link up with the British forces that were landing further east, and reaching to Isigny to the west and link with the U.S. VII Corps landing at Utah beach. The Allied D-Day planners assigned code-names to each of the five invasion beaches along the Normandy coast of France. From the west near St Martin de Varreville, there was UTAH, then OMAHA near St Laurent, then GOLD at Arromanches, JUNO near Ver sur Mer, and SWORD near Colleville sur Orne.

U.S. Troops landing at Omaha Beach on D-Day.

The strategy of the German defenders was to defeat any seaborne assault at the shore line. They were deployed at strongpoints all along

the coast, detailed to defend a thirty-three-mile front. They were comprised of the 12,000 men of the 352nd Infantry Division, 6,800 of whom were experienced combat soldiers. Responsibility for the sea transport of the American troops going to Omaha, the mine-sweeping, and a naval bombardment, fell to the U.S. Navy and Coast Guard who were ably assisted by the British, Canadian and Free French navies. One of the first actions on Omaha was that of the largely inexperienced 29th Infantry Division together with nine companies of U.S. Army Rangers who were meant to have landed down the beach a few miles at Pointe du Hoc, but instead were landed at Omaha. It was this combined outfit that was then sent in to attack the western half of the beach. The eastern half was assigned to the battle-experienced 1st Infantry Division, also known as “the big red one.” The planning called for the elements of the first wave of attackers —the tanks, combat engineer forces, and infantry—to destroy as much of the coastal defences as they could, in order to lessen the problems and danger to be faced by the following waves from the larger ships of the Allied armada.

One of the American soldiers in the surf at Omaha on D-Day was Ed Regan, a young Pennsylvanian who happened to be caught on camera by the war photographer Robert Capa early that June morning in 1944;

Ed grips his dog-tag souvenir of that grim experience—fifty years later.

For the Americans landing at Omaha, carrying out their plan of attack proved far more difficult than had been imagined back in the safe confines of the English south coast. Weather-related considerations and navigational problems led to the bulk of the landing craft missing their landing targets through much of the day. The strength of the enemy defences, particularly at Omaha, had been underestimated by the Allied planners and the casualties inflicted on the landing troops by the German defenders were certainly heavier than had been expected. The problem for the landing engineers as they struggled to try and clear the thousands of beach obstacles was massive. They had to do their work under heavy gun fire from the Germans in the hillside and hilltop positions. So heavy and intense were the casualties suffered by the American assault troops that their effectiveness in clearing the well-defended exits off the beach, which in turn created delays and additional problems. It took most of the long

day for several small pockets of American survivors who somehow were able to launch makeshift assaults up the heavilyfortified bluffs and neutralize those enemy positions to a limited extent. Their progress was actually limited to just two pathways through the defences, but they later led to the elimination of additional enemy defences further inland. As they slowly advanced it became clear to the Americans that the defensive arrangements of the Germans, together with their evident lack of any substantial defence in depth, meant that the enemy plan was, if possible and at all costs, to simply stop the invaders on the beaches.

Treating a wounded American soldier on the beach at Omaha;

Five companies of German coastal defence infantry were distributed

among fifteen strongpoints known as Widerstandsnester or “resistance nests” which were identified numerically from east to west, WN-60 through WN-74. These strongpoints were mainly located near the draws in the bluffs and were well protected with barbed wire and minefields. An intricate network of tunnels and trenches had been established connecting the various strongpoint facilities, which were also defended by a significant number of lighter weapons—rifles and machine-guns, as well as about sixty light artillery pieces. The Omaha Beach area was further protected by eight large-gun casemates and a further four open gun positions. Machine-guns and light weapons were housed in a system of about thirty-five pillboxes and the beach was also targeted by eighteen anti-tank guns. German defensive coverage of the spaces between the strongpoints was relatively light. There was a rather minimal layout of trenches and rifle pits, as well as some eighty-five emplacements with machine-guns. Rommel had seen to it that there were no holes or blank spots anywhere along the large and lengthy beach. His arrangement of weaponry had enabled efficient flanking fire employment to be laid down anywhere on it.

Omaha today.

From Omaha Beachhead, a September 1945 publication of the United States War Department: “The assault on Omaha Beach had succeeded, but the going had been harder than expected. Penetrations made in the morning by relatively weak assault groups had lacked the force to carry far inland.

Shock and awe on Omaha in the early morning of D-Day.

Delay in reducing the strongpoints at the draws had slowed landings of reinforcements, artillery and supplies. Stubborn enemy resistance, both at strongpoints and inland, had held the advance to a strip of ground hardly more than a mile-and-a-half deep in the Colleville area, and considerably less than that west of St-Laurent. Barely large enough to be called a foothold, this strip was well inside the planned beachhead maintenance area. Behind U.S. forward positions, cut-off enemy groups were still resisting. The whole landing area continued under enemy artillery fire from inland. “Infantry assault troops had been landed, despite all difficulties, on the scale intended; most of the elements of five regiments were ashore by dark. With respect to artillery, vehicles and supplies of all sorts, schedules were far behind. Little more than 100 tons had been got ashore instead of the 2,400 tons planned for D-Day. The ammunition supply situation was critical and would have been even worse except for the fact that 90 out of 110 preloaded DUKWs in Force ‘O’ had made the shore successfully. Only the first steps had been taken to organize the beach for handling the expected volume of traffic, and it was obvious that further delay in unloadings would be inevitable.

“Unit records for D-Day are necessarily incomplete or fragmentary, and losses in men and materiel cannot be established in accurate detail. First estimates of casualties were high, with an inflated percentage of ‘missing’ as a result of the number of assault sections which were separated from their companies, sometimes for two or three days. On the basis of later, corrected returns, casualties for V Corps were in the neighbourhood of 3,000 killed, wounded and missing. The two assaulting regimental combat teams (16th and 116th) lost about 1,000 men each. The highest proportionate losses were taken by units which landed in the first few hours, including engineers, tank troops, and artillery. “Whether by swamping at sea or by action at the beach, materiel losses were considerable, including twenty-six artillery pieces and over fifty tanks. No satisfactory overall figures are available for vehicles and supplies; on unit, the 4042nd Quartermaster Truck Company, got ashore only thirteen out of thirtyfive trucks (2 ½ tons), but this loss was much higher than the average. On the Navy side, a tentative estimate gives a total of about fifty landing craft and ten larger vessels lost, with a much larger number of all types damaged. “The principal cause for the difficulties of V Corps on D-Day was the unexpected strength of the enemy at the assault beaches. By the middle of the morning prisoners had been taken not only from the 726th Regiment but from all three regiments of the 352nd Division (the 914th, 915th, and 916th Regiments). During May, when the 91st Division was brought into the Cotentin peninsula and the 21st Panzer Division to the Caen area, the German Seventh Army had also strengthened the beach garrisons between the Vire and Orne rivers. The 352nd Division, moving from the St-Lo area, had taken over the sector from Isigny to a point several miles east of Bayeux. Apparently units of the 726th Regiment already holding the coastal strongpoints remained there but were reinforced by 352nd units. This meant that all strongpoints were completely manned, that reserve teams were available for some of the weapons positions, and also that there were units close behind Omaha Beach in support of the main defenses. How much of the 352nd

Division was actually at Omaha is not yet known; certainly not the whole unit, for elements of it were encountered in the Bayeux area by the British, and the 915th Regiment was ordered on D-Day to guard the Carentan area. Nevertheless, the Omaha sector had been so strengthened as to account for the rough opposition both on the beaches and inland. Much of the heavy artillery fire during the afternoon was probably due to the 352nd Divisional Artillery, which included four battalions, one of medium guns. In view of the German strength near the beaches, a surprising feature of the D-Day battle was the enemy’s failure to stage any effective counterattack. The reason may have been that the 352nd Division units were too scattered; it may also reflect disorganization of the division and loss of control as a result of the inland air bombardment and the naval gunfire. Whatever the answer, not a single enemy attack in real strength had been met by the assaulting forces as they pushed south from the beach. Particularly in the morning, when the first penetrations were being made by small units without support of armor or artillery, determined counterblows of battalion strength in the Colleville or Vierville areas might have pushed the battle back to the beach. Enemy power had been frittered away in stubborn defensive action by small groups, which were nowhere able to do more than delay our advances. There is enough evidence to suggest that the 352nd units were committed piecemeal, in battalion strength or less, and that companies and battalions of different regiments were intermingled. Elements of the 915th Regiment, for example, were identified east of Bayeux, in the Omaha sector, and near Isigny. Such disposition would not lend itself to coordinated attack in sizable force. “In any event, there were few indications of the aggressive defense called for by German tactical doctrine. All this was the more significant since the 352nd Division represented a defensive unit which the enemy had been expected to use for counterattack by the second day. Employed instead in closeup defense of the beach, it had made the initial assault phase harder but had not achieved a defensive success. In that respect, V Corps surmounted a severe crisis, and the success

of its hard fight should be measured in other terms than the size of the beachhead. To the extent that the 352nd Division had been used up on D-Day, the enemy had lost in available strength for effective early countermeasures. If his local striking force, committed at the start of the invasion, had not been able to gain a decisive advantage, it was by that very commitment less likely to be as dangerous later on. The next few days would show whether the 352nd Division had been wisely used. It had delayed the whole assault schedule at Omaha, but unless enemy reserves were available in time, this delay might mean little for the eventual outcome.

Situated between Gold and Omaha landing beaches in Normandy, the Longues-sur-Mer battery was attacked on the eve of D-Day by aircraft dropping 1,500 tons of bombs and, on the day of the landings, by French and American warships.

“The Omaha assault was only one of several Allied landings, and the fortunes of each were important to the others. On the whole, the Allied operation had achieved a good measure of success in each main area. In the Cotentin, VII Corps’ landing from the sea had been relatively easy, and part of the 4th Division was six miles inland near the

Carentan—Cherbourg highway. The airborne divisions, however, had been hampered by scattered drops, and some of their vital objectives had not been attained, notably at the Merderet River crossings. SteMere-Eglise was held, but only partial contacts had been made by the airborne units with each other and with the 4th Division. Losses had been severe in a score of separate battles waged by small units, and control had not yet been established over the large area involved in the air and sea landings. To the east, British Second Army landings had scored impressive early successes. The airborne units had seized the Orne crossings north of Caen, and a wide breakthrough was made in coastal defenses by the assault troops landed from sea. Nevertheless, the 716th Division, perhaps strengthened by the shortening of its sector, had held out tenaciously in some of the bypassed strongpoints. In the later afternoon, elements of the 21st Panzer Division counterattacked in the Caen area and were checked after some initial success. Stopped short of their main objectives, Caen and Bayeux, the British Second Army was nevertheless inland at some points as far as six miles and had cut the Bayeux-Caen highway. Four of its divisions were in action and another was scheduled to start landing on D+1. “The complete absence of enemy air from the assault area of V Corps was an outstanding feature of the day’s action. It is easy to imagine what the intervention of enemy fighters and fighter-bombers would have meant in the critical morning hours, when the assault forces were crowded on the narrow beach flat. Allied air supremacy on D-Day had been absolute. Only three Fw-190s had been sighted and chased off by the U.S. patrols covering the shipping area, and enemy air efforts to get near the battle zone had been negligible. Not until nightfall was there any German air activity near Omaha; then twenty-two enemy planes attacked shipping without causing any serious damage, though one bomb from a Ju-88 landed only thirty-five yards from the battleship Arkansas. Intense anti-aircraft fire shot down three planes.

German soldiers captured and wounded.

“In contrast, Allied air forces had carried through a day of heavy and farranging offensive activity, initiating the program, to be carried on for days to come, of isolating the battle area and hampering the movement of enemy troops and supplies in or near it. Eighth Air Force bombers carried out three major missions after the opening assault bombing. On two of these, involving 1,264 heavies, choke points for traffic behind the assault area were hit from Brittany to the Seine; among them were St-Lo, Vire, and Coutances. On similar missions, the Bomber Command of the Ninth Air Force dispatched 1,011 aircraft on D-Day, many crews flying two missions. 2,065 fighter-bombers of the Ninth attacked, including among their missions eleven flown on request for air-ground cooperation by ground forces. These efforts included attempts to deal with enemy batteries between Isigny and Bayeux, and with the guns near Maisy and Géfosse-Fontenay. British planes in the tactical air force (A.E.A.F.) flew 2,489 sorties on D-Day.

German troops in captivity after D-Day

“The enemy had been aware of impending Allied invasion since the late winter. The German High Command believed that the most likely area for the blow was the Pas-de-Calais coast. Hitler, on the other hand, regarded Brittany and the Cotentin area of Normandy as more likely targets. As a result of his views, reinforcements were brought to that area in May. The 91st Division was placed in the Cotentin. The 2nd Paratroop Division was ordered from the eastern front, but only the 6th Regiment had arrived by June, to be stationed near Carentan. By May, intelligence had revealed the movement of troops into southern England, and other preparations for the assault. Rommel’s Army Group

B was put in a state of readiness by the end of May, and Rommel himself expressed his complete satisfaction with the preparations for defense. The arrival of reinforcements had permitted him to plan for tactics which he had long advocated: that of making a ‘more tactical defense’ of the coast, with reserves as close as possible to the more vulnerable areas. The letter of 22 April 1944 to commanders of coastal units: ‘We must stop the assaulting forces in the water, not only delaying, but destroying all enemy equipment while still afloat.’ On 6 June Rommel was absent from France on a visit to Hitler’s headquarters, and had stopped in Stuttgart on his way back, to celebrate his wife’s birthday. “Plans for use of the German air force in the event of an invasion had been embarrassed by a number of factors. Goering was afraid of shifting fighters to France before the last moment, since this move would expose them to attack by superior Allied air power. Furthermore, Allied attacks on airfields in France had wrecked so many installations that the Luftwaffe would have great trouble in finding bases for operation close to the coast. Finally, it was difficult to plan on weakening the fighter defense of Germany against Allied air blows. As a result of these considerations, German air strength in France in early June was weak. “According to a statement made in 1945 by a high German staff officer, radio intercepts had yielded the German High Command information on the afternoon of 5 June that led them to expect an invasion the next morning. Col. Gen. Alfred Jodl, Chief of the Armed Forces Operations Staff, did not deem it necessary to inform the local commanders in France, since their state of readiness was regarded as sufficient without further notice; furthermore, there had been several false alarms earlier. “At 0130 on 6 June the German Seventh Army received word from LXXXIV Corps that landings from the air were under way from Caen to the northern Cotentin. Despite many early reports of an erroneous nature, and despite the wide distribution of the landings, by 0230 Army felt able to designate the focal areas of the Orne River mouth, and the

Ste-Mére-Eglise sector. In contrast to Seventh Army’s views that the Allies were attacking to cut off the Cotentin peninsula, Army Group and Western Command (Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt) were of the opinion that a major enemy action was not in progress. By 0250 coastal stations were reporting movement at sea east of Cherbourg and north of Caen, but no detailed appreciations reached Corps then or later. Despite further reports of parachute landings at inland points all through western Normandy, at 0400 Gen Erich Marcks (LXXXIV Corps) confirmed the first impression that the focal points were Caen sector and around Ste-Mére-Eglise. He reported that the 935th Infantry, corps reserve, had been ordered to occupy the Carentan area with the mission of maintaining communications through that point. Army group alerted the 21st Panzer Division, attached it to the Seventh Army, and ordered it to attack in the Caen area with main effort east of the Orne. Measures were taken to deal with the air landings in the Cotentin by counterattack, and the 30th Mobile Brigade was sent in to march towards Périers. At 0515, Seventh Army reaffirmed its earlier view to Army Group: a major offensive was in progress with landings by sea expected. The 21st Panzer Division had begun movement northward for immediate counterattack east of the Orne River. “At 0600 Corps reported heavy naval gunfire from Grandcamp to the Orne; at 0645 Army told Army Group that the Allied intentions were still not clear and expressed an opinion that the naval gunfire might be part of a diversionary attack, to be followed by the main effort in some other area. German air and sea reconnaissance, active since daylight, had furnished no new information. Not until 0900 did Army hear from LXXXIV Corps that heavy landings from the sea had taken place from 0715 on; the sectors reported were from the Orne to northeast of Bayeux and at Grandcamp. At 0925 Corps reported the situation as very threatening north of Caen, with Allied armor reaching artillery positions, and asked for a mobile reserve to be constituted at once west of Caen. Penetrations in the forward positions of the 352nd Infantry Division were reported at this time but were not regarded as dangerous. At 1040 the naval command reported enemy ship

movements at the mouth of the Vire Estuary. “Corps reported at 1145 an Allied bridgehead sixteen miles wide and over three miles deep north and northwest of Caen; no information was on hand from the 352nd Division, and communications were out with the eastern Cotentin area. Both Army and Corps were convinced that the Caen landings presented the main threat; the 21st Panzer Division was headed for the beachhead both east and west of the Orne, and the 30th Mobile Brigade was ordered to come up to support the 716th Division. Army endeavoured to get Army Group’s approval of a plan whereby the 711th Division would take care of the east bank of the Orne and the 12th SS Panzer Division would be committed in the Caen sector. At noon, Corps stated that attempted sea landings from the Vire to the coast northeast of Bayeux had been completely smashed and the only critical area was that near Caen. “The 352nd advised Army at 1335 that the Allied assault had been hurled back into the sea; only at Colleville was fighting still under way, with the Germans counterattacking. This reassuring view was sent on to Army Group. “At 1500 Army Group decided to put I SS Panzer Corps in charge of the Caen area. It would include the 716th Division, the 21st Panzer Division, and the 12th SS Panzer Division, to which would be added the Panzer Lehr Division. Its mission was to attack and wipe out the Allied beachhead on both sides of the Orne. The 12th SS Panzer would move at once from the Alencon area toward Caen; Panzer Lehr was to come behind it. The 21st Panzer Division had elements north of Caen by 1600 and was expected to enter the battle at any moment. “At 1620 Army gave Army Group a general estimate of the situation: the situation in the Cotentin was noted as reassuring, and German forces on hand there were regarded as adequate; Army expressed its surprise that no landings by sea had supported the airborne troops, and hazarded the view that the Allied operation in this sector was diversionary. Twenty minutes later this conclusion was upset by word from Corps that sea landings had taken place in the Madeleine area, just north of the Vire mouth. At 1800 more bad news came from the

352nd Division: Allied forces had infiltrated through the strongpoints, and advance elements with armor had reached the line CollevilleLouviéres-Asniéres; the objective of this attack was believed to be Bayeux. At the same time the right wing of the 352nd Division was threatened by advance of Allied troops toward Bayeux from the northeast. Ryes had been taken, and the 352nd was mounting a counterattack to recover it. This effort came to nought; at 2100 Corps reported a heavy Allied penetration toward the Bayeux-Caen highway at the expense of the 915th Regiment. As for the evening attack of the 21st Panzer Division, that unit had at first made progress and nearly reached the coast; it then met heavy resistance and was forced to yield ground. “Army Group at 1700 had transmitted von Rundstedt’s demand that the Allied bridgehead be wiped out that evening; also, the order of General Jodl that all available forces be thrown into the battle. Army replied that it was impossible to clean up the penetration area on 6 June, but that all measures were set for a counterattack at the earliest moment. “By midnight Seventh Army and Army Group had made plans for a heavy armored counterattack on 7 June against the British landing area by I SS Panzer Corps, with the 716th Division attached. The 21st Panzer Division would attack east of Caen; 12th SS Panzer and Panzer Lehr west of Caen. Steps had been taken during the day for setting in motion other units to reinforce the battle area. Battle groups (Kampfgruppen) from the 266th and 77th Divisions were put in a state of readiness, and those from the 275th and 265th Divisions were started by rail transport as reinforcement for LXXXIV Corps. All these units were in Brittany, and some hesitation was felt by Army Group in taking too much strength from that area before Allied intentions were fully clarified. “Corps and Army had already received preliminary explanations from the 716th Division on reasons for the success of the Allied assault. (This report may have related only to the British zone). Particular stress was laid on the devastating effects of the naval gunfire; in

addition, it was claimed that ‘special bombs’ had set off German minefields, and that the assault troops had used new tactics in bypassing strongpoints with strong armored units and then attacking the coastal defenses from the rear. German efforts to counterattack had been stopped with high losses, mainly by the action of Allied air and naval fire. In a further report, made about a week later for submission to Hitler himself, the same unit went into more detail. It was fully alerted on 6 June, and there was no question of being caught unprepared or by surprise. German reconnaissance by sea and air failed completely to produce any information. Defensive obstacles, not yet completed, were not effective, and the minefields had been partly detonated by gunfire and air bombardment. Smoke screens hindered the coastal guns from aimed fire on the ships, and German artillery was put out of action at an early stage by bombing and naval gunfire. The loss of two anti-tank companies as a result of the air bombardment was keenly felt when it came to meeting armored attack. According to this report, the Allies obviously knew every weak point in the German defensive positions and had made good use of this intelligence in the assault. Because of the lack of a second defensive line, fortified in depth, penetrations were extended rapidly to the proportions of a breakthrough, and air and naval gunfire had greatly hindered the bringing up of operative reserves for counterattack. “At the end of D-Day the German Seventh Army had decided that the landings near the Orne constituted the main threat, and had taken steps to commit its strongest and most readily available reserves in that sector. The situation in the Cotentin was not causing particular worry. Information as to the Omaha Beach sector had been scanty throughout the day, and both Corps and Army tended to pay little attention to developments there, even after the evening news of Allied penetrations. The evidence suggests that both Corps and Army regarded the assault to this area as a mere adjunct of the main effort directed at Caen and Bayeux. Communications were evidently poor in the 352nd Division’s sector, and no inkling had come back to Corps of the scale of landings in progress at Omaha.

“When Hitler, on 6 June, received word of the invasion he was about to appear at a reception near Salzburg of the new Hungarian prime minister. Hitler came in to the meeting with a radiant face and announced ‘It’s begun at last.’ He was confident that all measures were being taken to meet the crisis, and that by 13 June counterattacks would wipe out any beachheads.” No accurate casualty figures are known for the action at Omaha Beach on D-Day. The accepted estimate of American casualties for that day is between 2,000 and 4,700 killed, wounded and missing. The heaviest losses took place among the infantry, tanks and engineers. On the German side, the 352nd Division suffered the loss of about 1,200 men,

CREDITS Photographs by the author are credited PK; from the collection of the author are credited AC; from the Imperial War Museum IWM; from the Bundesarchiv Bundesarchiv. P3 both: PK; P5: IWM; P6 both: AC; P8: AC; P10: PK; P11 both: AC; P12: AC; P15: Bundesarchiv; P16: PK; PP18-19: AC; P21: AC; P22: AC; PP24-25: PK; P26: IWM; P27: PK; PP28-29: AC; PP30-31: PK; P33: Bundesarchiv; P34 both: Bundsesarchiv; P35: PK; P37: AC; P38: IWM; P40: PK; PP42-43: U.S. War Department; PP44-45 both: PK; P46 all: PK; P47: PK; P48: PK; P51: Bundesarchiv; P52: PK; P53: AC; P54: Bundesarchiv; P56: IWM; P57 all: PK; P58: Bundesarchiv; PP60-61: Bundesarchiv; P62: AC; P63: Bundesarchiv; PP64-65: Bundesarchiv; PP66-67: PK; PP68-69: PK; P70: PK; P73 both: PK; P74: PK; P75: PK; P77 Bundesarchiv; P78 top: U.S. Army, bottom: PK; P79 both: PK; P80: AC; P81: AC; PP82-83: U.S. War Department; PP84-85: AC; PP86-87: Stephen Fox; P88: PK; P90: AC; PP92-93: AC; P94: AC; P95: AC; P96 both: AC; P99: PK; P100 both: AC; P101 both: AC; P102: AC; P104: AC; P105: courtesy Merle Olmsted; PP106-107: PK; PP2108-109: PK; P110: AC; P112: PK; P113 top: PK; P113 bottom: AC; P114: PK; P115 both: Bundesarchiv; PP116-117: Bundesarchiv; P118 both: PK; P119: PK; P121: Public Archives of Canada; PP122-123: IWM; PP124-125: Public Archives of Canada; PP126-127 both: AC; P128: PK; P129 both: PK; P130: PK; P131: PK; PP132-133: PK; P135: IWM; PP136-137: IWM; PP138-139: AC; P140: IWM; P142: AC; P143: PK; P144: PK; P45 both: PK; P146: PK; PP148-149: AC; PP150-151: AC; P152: PK; PP154-155: PK; P156: AC; P158: AC; P159 top: AC; P159 bottom: PK; P160: U.S. Army; P161: PK; P162: U.S. Army; P163: U.S. Army; PP164-165: PK; P166: AC; P167: U.S.Army; P168: AC, P173: IWM; P176: courtesy Malcolm Bates. Reasonable efforts have been made to trace the copyright owners of all material used in this book. The author apologises to any copyright owners we were unable to contact during this clearance process.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The author is grateful to the following for their kind and generous help in the development of this book, and / or for the use of their quoted material, photos, illustrations and other materials: Stephen E. Ambrose, Malcolm Bates, Jean-Pierre Benamou, Tony Bianchi, Quentin Bland, Damien Burke, Robert F. Cooper, Stephen Fox, Oz Freire, Ernest K. Gann, Han Geurts, John Hersey, Laura Hirst, Eric Holloway, Hargita Kaplan, Neal Kaplan, John Keegan, Bud Knapp, Eric Koh, Fergus Mayhew, Michael O’Leary, Rosemary Harley Prindle, Doug Siegfried, Mrs Bert Stiles, Ray Wild and Tom Woodhouse. And very special thanks to Margaret Mayhew, my wife, best friend and a wonderful novelist.

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