I’m glad I’m here. I’d hate to miss what is probably the biggest battle that will ever happen to us.
Anonymous Allied soldier
Gefreiter Werner Kortenhaus of the 21st Panzer Division stared into the Normandy night above him. On patrol north of Falaise he and his four comrades had become alarmed by the sounds of aircraft flying overhead. Usually aircraft passed high above them but these were flying low, much lower than usual, then zooming up. They suspected that agents or supplies were being dropped for the French Resistance and decided to investigate. They found nothing, but still they could hear aircraft. Worried, Kortenhaus and his patrol turned back to their tank harbour.
Gefreiter Werner Kortenhaus, 21st Panzer Division
As we got close to the village where our tanks were dug in, the moonlight was coming through the clouds, and we could see that the crews were at their tanks. This was unusual because most of them would normally have been asleep. ‘What’s going on?’ I asked. It occurred to me that it might be some sort of night exercise. They said, ‘No, it’s an alarm.’ This was about 00.45. As the others prepared the tank, I remembered that my laundry was still with the French woman who did our washing. I woke her and said, ‘I need my clothes straight away.’ She said, ‘But they’re still wet.’ I said, ‘I must have them anyway,’ and paid for them, and ran to my tank.
As Kortenhaus hurried back to his tank, the first of the Allied airborne troops, parachutists and a small glider force from the British 6th Airborne Division, had already landed near the Orne River. As the minutes passed more and more British parachutists descended on Normandy, like so much confetti in the night. Nearly 5,000 of them had landed by 1 a.m.
Report: RAF 296 Squadron
At 23.00 hrs [5 June] the first aircraft took off, followed closely by the other aircraft of Phase I. All aircraft followed the same route to LITTLEHAMPTON and from there to the French coast. The first aircraft encountered little opposition while carrying out the drop.
Adventures in the rear of the machine delayed F/Lt. WHITTY’S drop. The first man of the stick collapsed and fell on the doors over the jumping hole. The aircraft circled off the coast while he was lifted and one door opened. This meant a delay of 10 minutes before he was thrust out and 7 troops dropped on the first run over the DZ [Drop Zone]. On the second run the other two men jumped. For the other two aircraft of this phase everything went according to plan. A little light flak was experienced after dropping but was easily evaded.
Parachutists falling over and blocking the jump doors was to be a surprisingly common occurrence during the Normandy drop. Mostly it was occasioned by the pilots taking action to avoid flak.
Corporal Ted Morris, 225 Para Field Ambulance, 6th Airborne Division
The green light went on and we started to jump … about two or three did so, but when Bud Abbott went to jump he fell over because the plane lurched and he became wedged across the door. We had to drag him away before we could jump. I got out, but they sat Bud Abbott in the corner of the plane – it was too late for him to jump. But Abbott came back to Normandy that night, hitching a ride on a glider, and landing with the ruddy glider reinforcements. The best of it was that Abbott was a conscientious objector. We had about a dozen of them in the para field ambulance unit – they wouldn’t shoot or fight, but they acted as orderlies.
One of the more bizarre adventures of the drop happened aboard an Abermarle aircraft of RAF 296 Squadron.
Flight Lieutenant J.G. Hayden, RAF
In one of the aircraft there was a dog which belonged to one of the paratroopers, but the dog didn’t want to drop. The crew had an awful difficult job chasing it around the aircraft to get its parachute fastened to the static line and then to throw it out after the paratroopers.
For some of the human British parachutists the drop was relatively straightforward, landing near their DZs and quickly finding friendly company in the darkness.
Captain Philip Burkinshaw, 12th Yorkshire Parachute Battalion
At approximately ten minutes to one, with some assistance from Cockcroft beside me, I got up and made my way over to the long hole at the back of the Stirling. The chaps followed and stood behind me in their jumping order. The hatches had been raised by the RAF despatchers and the blast of air flowing up into the plane was fresh and invigorating. I stood on the edge of the hole, parachute static line trailing behind me inside the fuselage. At about 500 foot it was possible as I looked down to make out the dull grey sea below in the light of the moon which was occasionally visible through the scurrying clouds. Suddenly, as our pilot cut back on his engines, a white line of cliffs passed by underneath and I realized that this was at last the Normandy coast. Almost immediately afterwards a patchwork of fields and hedgerows cut by narrow white lines was clearly visible. Moments passed – the ‘Action Stations’ red light was switched on up front by our pilot, followed quickly by the green, and the command ‘Go’ from the RAF despatcher. I stepped off into space, the verse from the poem, ‘Paratroops’, vividly coming to mind:
Out of the hatch we are hurled, and the body that bore us
fades to a shadow, its murmur a breath of the breeze,
weather and earth and the passage of arms are before us,
battle may blaze before half of us rise from our knees.
During the next few moments I fell, aware of nothing apart from a rush of air until the comforting jerk on my back and shoulder webbing told me that my chute had opened. I then became aware of aircraft overhead and my chute canopy swelling out above me as I lazily drifted down to earth. My first positive action was to pull on the pin to release the kitbag, containing the wireless and reserve ammunition, secured to my right leg. I pulled but nothing happened and soon I realized that the bag and I were inseparable! By this time I was nearing terra firma and it was obvious that the defences were coming to life – tracer crisscrossing up into the sky and some on the ground. I hit the ground with a fair bump and crumpled up. Although the kitbag was still on my leg I was none the worse for that. A tap on my quick release box and I was out of my parachute harness and on my feet. Shortly, I came across two other figures walking in the same direction as myself and challenged them with my Sten at the ready. To my great delight they were two of the lads from my platoon, and having briefly exchanged mutual congratulations, we moved on together. After about a quarter of a mile or so we ended up at a small copse where I found three other chaps.
Corporal Ted Morris, 225 Para Field Ambulance, 6th Airborne Division
I dropped near Ranville church, about a quarter of a mile from it across a field. It was the usual thing when we landed, there was a password and God knows what. Someone came out of the darkness as I landed and I never used the password – they could have been German, anybody at all for all I could see. I said, ‘Who’s that?’ He said, ‘It’s me.’ It was a bloke named Cooper. He’d actually jumped next to me, so the drop system worked for us.
James Byrom, 6th Airborne Division
A shadow darted from a nearby tree, and I was joined in the open by the huge Sten-gunner with the black face. The whites of his eyes gleamed in the moonlight, and for all my weariness I found myself on the verge of giggles.
‘You speak the lingo, tosh? All right then, you go up and knock on the door, and we’ll give you coverin’ fire. I’ll stay ’ere and my mate’ll creep round the other side of the yard so’s to cover you proper.’ I knocked once and nothing happened. I knocked again, louder this time. Suddenly there was the clamour of French voices. Footsteps approached the door, withdrew, hesitated, then approached again. The door opened.
On the way I had been searching for suitable words with which to introduce ourselves – some calming, yet elegant, phrase worthy of the French gift of expression and of their infallible flair for the dramatic moment. But at the sight of the motherly, middle-aged peasant the gulf of the years disappeared, and I might have been back in 1939, an English tourist on a walking tour dropping in to ask for a glass of cider and some Camembert.
‘Excusez-nous, Madame. Nous sommes des parachutistes anglais faisant partie du Débarquement Allié.’
There was a moment of scrutiny, then the woman folded me in her arms. The tears streamed down her face, and in between kisses she was shouting for her husband, for lamps, for wine. In a moment I was carried by the torrent of welcome into the warm, candle-lit kitchen. Bottles of cognac and Calvados appeared on the table, children came clattering down the wooden stairs and we found ourselves – an evil-looking group of camouflaged cut-throats – surrounded and overwhelmed by the pent-up emotions of four years. The farmer and his wife wanted us to stay and drink, to laugh and cry and shake hands over and over again. They wanted to touch us, to tell us all about the Occupation, and to share with us their implacable hatred of the Boche. It seemed that the moment so long awaited could not be allowed to be spoilt by realities, till every drop of emotion was exhausted. I was nearly as much affected as they were. Warmed by the fiery trickle of Calvados, I rose to this – certainly one of the greatest occasions of my life – so completely that I forgot all about the Drop, all about the marshes and the Battery. It was the sight of my companions, bewildered by all this emotion and talk, automatically drinking glass after glass, that suddenly reminded me of what we had come for. I began politely to insist on answers to questions which had already been brushed aside more than once: Where were we? How far away were the nearest Germans? Once more the questions were ignored. ‘Ah, mon Dieu, ne nous quittez par maintenant! Ah, les pauvres malheureux! Ils sont tous mouillés!’
Sixty miles across Normandy to the west, the Airborne’s American comrades began jumping from their Dakotas at 1.30 a.m.
General Matt B. Ridgway, US 82nd Airborne Division
Beside the door, a red light glowed. Four minutes left. Down the line of bucket seats, the No. 4 man in the stick stood up. It was Captain Schouvaloff, brother-in-law of Fedor Chaliapin, the opera singer. He was a get-rich-quick paratrooper, as I was, a man who had had no formal jump training. I was taking him along as a language officer, for he spoke both German and Russian, and we knew that in the Cotentin Peninsula, which we were to seize, the Germans were using captured Russians as combat troops.
A brilliant linguist, he was also something of a clown. Standing up, wearing a look of mock bewilderment on his face, he held up the hook on his static line – the life line of the parachutist which jerks his canopy from its pack as he dives clear of the plane.
‘Pray tell me,’ said Schouvaloff, in his thick accent, ‘what does one do with this strange device?’
That broke the tension. A great roar of laughter rose from the silent men who were standing now, hooked up and ready to go.
‘Are we downhearted,’ somebody yelled.
‘HELL NO!’ came back the answering roar.
A bell rang loudly, a green light glowed. The jumpmaster, crouched in the door, went out with a yell – ‘Let’s go!’ With a paratrooper, still laughing, breathing hard on my neck, I leaped out after him.
John Houston, US 101st Airborne Division
Left foot forward, on the edge of the door to push off, swing the right leg out to make a half turn, and get your back to the prop blast, feet together, knees bent, arms on the reserve chute, head down. The static line jerks and the chute snaps open perfectly. We are so close to the ground that there is no time to do any sightseeing on the way down. Hands on the risers to pull up against the shock of landing. The ground is coming fast. Thump, one roll. This is France.
A cow stands looking from a few yards away. She seems curious but not excited. There is no wind, so the chute collapses quietly. Unsnap the harness and get the rifle out of its boot. This is done quickly, then the question ‘Where am I and where is everyone else?’
Each man in the division had been issued a little cricket snapper to use in place of a password. One click is the challenge and two clicks the answer. I hear someone moving along the hedgerow and click the cricket. Two clicks come back, and Shedio and Spitz come out of the shadows. We whisper together for a minute. There is no firing nearby, but we don’t want to announce that we are here. Mac hears us and joins the group. We move along in the direction of the flight of our plane, and soon gather fifteen men. This is everyone from our plane except Bray, who, as Number 16, jumped last.
General Matt B. Ridgway and Private John Houston were among the lucky that night, for the American drop, centred on the village of Ste Mere Eglise, threatened to assume the proportions of a disaster. A bank of cloud disorientated the pilots, some of whom were anyway panicked by the necklaces of incandescent flak and tracer shooting up from the German defences. There had been some dispersement on the British drop, but members of the US 101st and 82nd were dropped too high, too low, over the sea and as much as 30 miles from their objective. Many of them were in action almost as soon as their boots hit the earth.
Donald Burgett, US 101st Airborne Division
I lay on my back shaking my head; the chute had collapsed itself. The first thing I did was to draw my .45, cock the hammer back and slip the safety on. Troopers weren’t issued pistols, but my father had purchased this one from a gun collector in Detroit and sent it to me in a package containing a date-and-nut cake. Captain Danes kept it in his possession for me and let me carry it on field problems. He had returned it to me when we entered the marshalling area.
The pilots were supposed to drop us between 600 and 7oo feet, but I know that my drop was between 250 and less than 300 feet. The sky was lit up like the Fourth of July. I lay there for a moment and gazed at the spectacle. It was awe inspiring, I have never seen anything like it before or since. But I couldn’t help wondering at the same time if I had got the opening shock first or hit the ground first; they were mighty close together.
The snaps on the harness were almost impossible to undo, and as I lay there on my back working on them, another plane came in low and diagonally over the field. The big ship was silhouetted against the lighter sky with long tongues of exhaust flame flashing along either side of the body. Streams of tracers from several machine guns flashed upward to converge on it. Then I saw vague, shadowy figures of troopers plunging downward. Their chutes were pulling out of the pack trays and just starting to unfurl when they hit the ground. Seventeen men hit the ground before their chutes had time to open. They made a sound like large ripe pumpkins being thrown down to burst against the ground.
‘That dirty son of a bitch of a pilot,’ I swore to myself, ‘he’s hedgehopping and killing a bunch of troopers just to save his own ass. I hope he gets shot down in the Channel and drowns real slow.’
Small private wars erupted to the right and left, near and far, most of them lasting from fifteen minutes to half an hour, with anyone’s guess being good as to who the victors were. The heavy hedgerow country muffled the sounds, while the night air magnified them. It was almost impossible to tell how far away the fights were and sometimes even in what direction. The only thing I could be sure of was that a lot of men were dying in this nightmarish labyrinth. During this time I had no success in finding anyone, friend or foe. To be crawling up and down hedgerows, alone, deep in enemy country with a whole ocean between yourself and the nearest allies sure makes a man feel about as lonely as a man can get. For the French civilians watching the 13,000 American parachutists come down over the Cherbourg peninsula the drop presented a remarkable spectacle. The American parachutist himself was no less interesting a phenomenon.
Alexandre Reynaud, Mayor of Ste Mère Eglise
All around us, the paratroopers were landing with a heavy thud on the ground. By the light of the fire, we clearly saw a man manipulating the cables of his parachute. Another, less skilful, came down in the middle of the flames. Sparks flew, and the fire burned brighter. The legs of another paratrooper contracted violently as they were hit. His raised arms came down. The giant parachute, billowing in the wind, rolled over the field with the inert body.
A big white sheet hung from an old tree covered with ivy. A man was hanging from the end. Holding onto the branches, he came slowly down, like a snake. Then he tried to unbuckle his belt. The Flak were only a few yards away. They saw him. The machine guns fired their sinister patter; the poor man’s hands fell, and the body swung loosely to and fro from the cables.
A few hundred yards in front of us, near the sawmill, a big transport plane crashed to the ground, and soon there was a second fire raging.
The belfry sounded the alarm once again.
Now we were directly in the line of fire of the machine gun in the belfry. The bullets hit the ground right near us.
It was a lovely night, lit by large swaths of moonlight.
Meanwhile, a paratrooper appeared suddenly in the midst of the group at the pump. He pointed his machine gun at us, but when he realized we were French, he didn’t shoot. A German sentry hiding behind a tree let out a yell and ran away as fast as he could. The paratrooper tried to ask a few questions, but since no one in the group could speak English, he crossed the road and disappeared into the night.
Above the fire, the big planes glided by uninterruptedly, dropping their human cargoes on the other side of the cemetery
…
Around 3 o’clock, on the square under the trees, the flash of lighted matches appeared, followed by the red glow of lighted cigarettes, then an electric light on the body of a parachutist. By the light of that lamp, it looked as though men were lying at the base of the trees. We whispered about it for a long time: were they Germans or British? Given the situation, we didn’t think Germans would be lying on the ground, but standing up or ambushed in houses.
Little by little, the night began to dissolve, and a milky dawn began to filter through. As the contours became more precise, we were astonished to see that the town was occupied neither by the Germans nor the British, but by the Americans. The first thing we recognized were the big round helmets we had seen illustrated in the German magazines. Some of the soldiers were sleeping or smoking under the trees; others, lined up behind the wall and the town weighing building, stood with arms in hand, watching the church still held by the enemy. Their wild, neglected look reminded us of Hollywood movie gangsters. Their helmets were covered with a khaki coloured net, their faces were, for the most part, covered with grime, like those of mystery book heroes.
The more enthusiastic and sympathique French civilians proved useful to American parachutists still wondering exactly where in hell they were.
Donald Burgett, US 101st Airborne Division
Just then three young girls, about eighteen or so, came out of a doorway and ran to me yelling, ‘Vive les Americains.’ Then, with a lot of hugging and kissing, they offered me a jug of wine, which I refused. Not that I don’t like wine, but I just didn’t feel like being poisoned, and at this time I didn’t trust anyone. The Lieutenant had arrived by this time, and asked if anyone could speak English. The girls said, in very poor English, that there was an old woman who could; she used to teach it in school. One of the girls brought her to us. Muir asked her where we were, and even though she told us we still didn’t know. The Lieutenant brought his map out and the old woman pointed to the coastal town, ‘Ravenoville’, and told us there were other Americans here, but also many Germans all around and even in the town itself. We thanked her, then Lieutenant Muir cussed and swore as he examined the map, for we were about twelve miles from our drop zone and our objectives. Muir let out a string of oaths that ended with the Air Corps: ‘They dropped us all over the whole damned Cherbourg Peninsula,’ he said. ‘Who the hell’s side are they on anyway? Now we’ve got to fight through nine towns and twelve miles of enemy country just to get to where we were supposed to land and start fighting in the first place.’
All that night spats of violence erupted over the Cotentin as US airborne troops fought their way to their objectives, and fought Germans wherever they found them.
General Matt B. Ridgway, US 82nd Airborne Division
My own little command group of eleven officers and men set up division headquarters in an apple orchard, on almost the exact spot we had planned to be before we left England. Hal Clark’s boys had not failed us. They had put us down on the button.
The Germans were all around us, of course, sometimes within five hundred yards of my GP, but in the fierce and confused fighting that was going on all about, they did not launch the strong attack that could have wiped out our eggshell perimeter defence.
This was in large part due to the dispersion of the paratroopers. Wherever they landed, they began to cut every communication line they could find, and soon the German commanders had no more contact with their units than we had with ours. When the German commander of the gist Division found himself cut off from the elements of his command, he did the only thing left to do. He got in a staff car and went out to see for himself what the hell had gone on in this wild night of confused shooting. He never found out. Just at daylight a patrol of paratroopers stopped his car and killed him as he reached for his pistol. The lieutenant commanding the patrol told me the story with great glee.
‘Well,’ I said, ‘in our present situation, killing division commanders does not strike me as being particularly hilarious. But I congratulate you. I’m glad it was a German division commander you got.’
Donald Burgett, US 101st Airborne Division
‘What’s your plan?’ one of the men asked. After a little thought the Lieutenant answered, ‘A head-on attack and the sooner the better, so let’s go.’ He jumped up and started running toward the group of houses across the field, yelling as he went. We all jumped up and followed him, yelling and screaming at the top of our lungs. We automatically spread out and fired as we ran through the fields, apple orchards and right up to the houses themselves. I saw my first Kraut running through the trees on an angle toward our right flank. I stopped, took a good sight on him and squeezed the trigger. The rifle bucked against my shoulder. I don’t remember hearing the shot or feeling the recoil, but the German spun sideways and fell face first out of sight in the grass. Another Kraut stepped around the corner of a building, stopped and just stood there looking down at the spot where the first soldier fell. He was facing me. I had a good straight-on shot at his chest and took careful aim. Again the rifle bucked against my shoulder, and he too fell face forward.
Fighting was at a fever pitch now. All around, men were running between buildings, through yards and over fences. Three troopers ran through a gate in a hedge surrounding a house and almost immediately there came a long ripping burst of a Kraut machine gun. The three Americans died in the weed-choked front yard. Automatically other troopers shunned the yard but moved on the double on all fours down the hedges on either side until they were in throwing distance of the house and grenaded it. One trooper leaped through a side window, fired several rounds from his M-1, then stepped to the front door and motioned that it was all clear. Running through the open gateway, past the dead and into the house, I saw a German machine gun, a lot of empty shells and a couple of boxes of ammo under the window to the left of the door. No Germans or bodies were in the house. Evidently they had cleared out when the first grenades hit, leaving their gun behind. The trooper who went through the window said they went out the back way just as he entered. He fired at them but none of them went down. We left the house and rejoined the others in clearing out the remaining houses.
Two troopers came out of one of the buildings carrying a case of German hand grenades between them. They ran down the street throwing potato mashers into windows and apertures in the walls. German soldiers were pulling out of town by the back way and. disappearing into fields and woods surrounding the town. German dead were scattered about in the houses, ditches and fields. I don’t know how many I hit. The ones that fell when I fired would have dropped anyway if a bullet had passed close to them.
After occupying the enemy positions we wondered why they had given up so easily, for the walls were all of stone and two feet thick, with small rifle apertures to fire out from, and many of the rooms were filled with food, ammo, and weapons. Over 200 Germans had vacated these positions, leaving behind thirty dead and about seventy-five prisoners. Four of our men had been killed. Phillips could speak some German and he questioned the prisoners as to why their comrades had pulled out. They said that when we came running at them yelling, hollering and shooting across the open fields, they figured the whole invasion was directed right at them and never dreamed that only twenty men armed with rifles would attack over 200 well-armed soldiers in stone fortifications.
If the British and American parachutists had a tough time of it, few of them would have swapped positions with the airborne troops arriving in Normandy that night by glider, crash-landing in tiny fields all too frequently occupied by ‘Rommel’s asparagus’ and other anti-landing devices.
The Times war correspondent, attached to 6th Airborne Division
Our glider was a Horsa, which looks almost like a normal aeroplane except that its wings are set farther back to compensate for the lack of engine weight forward. It is generally used as a troop-carrier. Heavy weights are carried in Hamilcar gliders, which look like nothing on earth except possibly streamlined pantechnicon vans.
Our trip to France was made in almost complete darkness, and we had seen few signs of flak or of firing from the ground when the pilot of our tug aircraft slipped the tow rope and we headed down. Gliders, just before they land, usually put their noses down through 45 degrees and then pull them up sharply to land in as short a space as possible. Parachutist pathfinders had been before us to clear away as many obstacles as they could, but even if the obstacles had not been removed we should have been able to get down safely provided the fuselage itself did not strike one of the iron or wooden posts which the Germans had compelled the French farmers to put up all over their open fields.
Ours, however, was in no way a normal landing. We hit a telegraph pole, and crashed in such a way as to break the back of our glider in two places. Our business then was to get out as quickly as possible and scatter because, for all we knew, we might have landed right in front of a German position, and if they had opened fire immediately we should all have been trapped.
The crash had jammed fast the door in the fuselage, but after some kicking and banging against the glider’s plywood walls we got out into the night air. Immediately fire was opened on us, and we had several casualties. I was slightly hurt and later went off in search of divisional headquarters and of stretcher-bearers for our wounded.
Private William Gray, D Company, 2nd Battalion Oxfordshire & Buckinghamshire Light Infantry
The glider was twisting and turning a bit and, looking over the pilot’s shoulder, you could see the bridge. It was exactly like the models we’d been shown but it suddenly vanished as the glider veered to make its approach to landing and the next thing – crash! – and it hit the deck. Sparks were flying left, right and centre, and, all of a sudden, it just came to a halt and then there was silence again – just the creaking of timer in the glider. The undercarriage had gone and the front of the glider had caved in. Den Brotheridge, our platoon commander, quickly shoved the door open and said, ‘Gun out!’ Which was me, so I jumped and stumbled on the grass because of the weight I had on me. I set the Bren gun up firing towards the bridge and the rest of the lads jumped out. Den Brotheridge looked around to make sure everyone was out and he said, ‘Come on, lads!’ We were about thirty yards from the bridge and we dashed towards it. I saw a German on the right hand side and I let rip at him and down he went. I kept firing as I went over the bridge.
With the loss of only two men, the coup de main of Major John Howard’s 2nd Battalion Oxfordshire & Buckinghamshire Light Infantry secured both canal bridge objectives. The Caen Canal bridge was later immortalized as Pegasus Bridge, named after the insignia of the 6th Airborne Division. Meanwhile, the seizing of the Merville battery fell to Lieutenant-Colonel Terence Otway’s 9th Parachute Brigade:
Obituary: Lieutenant-Colonel Terence Otway
Daily Telegraph, 25 July 2006
Lieutenant-Colonel Terence Otway, who died on Sunday aged 92, led the 9th Parachute Battalion in operation on D-Day and was awarded the DSO.
The 9th Battalion, part of 3rd Parachute Brigade, was given the task of destroying the coastal battery at Merville before the seaborne invasion began at dawn on 6 June, and afterwards of occupying a key feature of the heavily invested defence perimeter on the Allies’ eastern flank.
The battery was believed to be equipped with four 150 mm calibre guns capable of laying down fire on Sword Beach, which was the landing area for the British 3rd Infantry Division. It was guarded by a garrison of 130 within a 15 ft thick and 5 ft high barbed wire fence and surrounded by a minefield 100 yards wide. Twenty weapon pits had been counted in aerial photographs; there were also isolated minefields laid across all likely approaches; and an anti-tank ditch had been dug on the west side.
The assault, supported by three gliders with orders to crash-land directly on the battery, was to go in at 4.30 a.m., thus allowing the battalion one hour to destroy the guns before the assault-craft landed.
Otway divided his force into 11 groups, each with its own task. Among them was a reconnaissance party, a taping party, a breaching unit and the assault group. Four minutes from the dropping zone, the assault group ran into anti-aircraft fire and began to take evasive action. As a result, instead of being dropping in a concentrated area the battalion was spread over 50 square miles.
A shell exploded close to Otway’s aircraft, and incendiary bullets went through his parachute just as he was about to jump. He, his batman Corporal Wilson and another man landed close to a farmhouse which was a German HQ.
Wilson fell through the roof of a greenhouse which attracted fire from the Germans but, with quick thinking, he threw a brick through one of the farm windows. This was mistaken for a grenade, which provided a moment of respite in which the three men got clear. Much of the path-finding equipment had been damaged and smoke from a bombing raid reduced visibility. As a result few of the pilots saw the beacons prepared by the advance party, and there were parachutists who missed the dropping zone by 30 miles. Some landed chest high in water and, weighed down by their 60 lb kitbags, were drowned. On reaching the rendezvous, Otway discovered that he had no radio sets which worked, no engineers, no medical orderlies and only a quarter of his men.
But as the attack went ahead, it was found that the reconnaissance party had penetrated the minefield. The taping party had also arrived, but without tapes or mine-detectors; they marked the route through the minefields by scratching heelmarks in the dust. The plan had to be drastically changed. The men from ‘B’ company were divided into two breaching teams. The assault was to be made by a composite force of ‘A’ and ‘C’ companies, comprising about 50 men. As they formed up, they were fired on by machine guns inside and outside the perimeter from both flanks.
At 4.30 a.m., two of the three gliders carrying the assault party could be seen circling low over the battery. The plan for illuminating this had gone seriously awry and one of the gliders landed four miles from the objective; the other crashed in an orchard and immediately engaged a German platoon which was trying to reinforce the garrison.
The enemy machine guns were silenced and Bangalore torpedoes were detonated to clear the wire in front of the assault. ‘The battery concentrated everything waist-high on the gaps in the wire,’ Otway said later. ‘Booby traps 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 a machine gun in the tower which was shooting at me.’
Twenty-three captured men were then ordered to guide Otway’s force through the minefields as the Germans opened fire with shells and mortars from neighbouring positions. Otway started with about 750 men, few of whom had seen action before; of the 150 who took part in the attack, only 65 were still on their feet at the end of an action, which saved a great many Allied lives. The citation for his DSO stated that his utter disregard for personal danger had been an inspiration to all his men.
Those landing by glider included Major-General Gale of the 6th Airborne, arriving as part of the division’s reinforcement in the early hours of the morning.
Major-General Richard Gale, 6th Airborne Division
We were flying at about five thousand feet and we soon knew the coast was under us, for we were met by a stream of flak. It was weird to see this roaring up in great golden chains past the windows of the glider, some of it being apparently between us and the tug aircraft. Looking out I could see the canal and the river through the clouds; for the moon was by now fairly well overcast and the clear crisp moonlight we had hoped for was not there. Nevertheless here we were. In a few moments Griffiths said, ‘We are over the landing zone now and will be cast off at any moment.’ Almost as soon as he had said this we were. The whistling sound and the roar of the engines suddenly died down: no longer were we bumping about, but gliding along on a gloriously steady course. Away went the tug aircraft with Crawford in it back to England. Round we turned, circling lower and lower; soon the pilot turned round to tell us to link up as we were just about to land. We all linked up by putting our arms round the man next to us. We were also, as I have said, strapped in. In case of a crash this procedure would help us to take the shock.
I shall never forget the sound as we rushed down in our final steep dive, then we suddenly flattened out, and soon with a bump, bump, bump, we landed on an extremely rough stubble field. Over the field we sped and then with a bang we hit a low embankment. The forward undercarriage wheel stove up through the floor, the glider spun round on its nose in a small circle and, as one wing hit one of those infernal stakes, we drew up to a standstill.
We opened the door. Outside all was quiet.
Captain Philip Burkinshaw, 12th Yorkshire Parachute Battalion
One glider, which just missed the copse, floated down almost on top of us like some giant bat and ground to a halt after a very rough landing in the field beside us. It proved to be the one which carried the Divisional Commander, Major-General Richard (‘Windy’) Gale. Apparently slightly stunned and somewhat shaken up by the heavy landing, he lumbered up to me and bellowed in his customary direct manner, ‘Where the hell am I?’ I tried to enlighten him with my assessment of our position and told him where the CO could be found, but I must confess my confidence momentarily suffered a setback! I hasten to add that ‘Windy’ was the nickname for our respected Divisional Commander because of his surname and in no way implied any weakness of nerve; in fact, the opposite was very much the case.
About this time we had our first encounter with the enemy. A staff car containing, it was subsequently discovered, the officer in command of the bridge defences, came at speed down the road from the direction of Ranville, followed by a motor-cycle escort. The armoured car somehow survived the fusillade of small-arms fire directed at it, but the motor cyclist was killed, his machine careering off the road into the ditch. The armoured car proceeded on its way to the bridge and was taken care of by Major Howard’s men. When captured, the German officer, a Major Schmidt, who was fairly badly wounded, apparently asked to be shot as he had let his Fuhrer down by failing to hold the bridges. He made it plain, however, that he was confident that we would all soon be thrown back into the sea!
After this brief initial encounter, the battalion proceeded on down the road to Le Bas de Ranville, taking it with little difficulty and being joined there by other members of the battalion who, having landed outside the dropping zone, had not managed to reach the rendezvous. Digging in furiously and encouraged the while by some mortaring and shelling from the direction of Caen, we were in position by 4 a.m.
Some hours previously the news of the airborne landings had been passed to the headquarters at St Lô of one of ‘Windy’ Gale’s opposite numbers, General Marck of the Wehrmacht. The news arrived during a small surprise birthday party for the general, a veteran of the Eastern Front.
Major Friedrich Hayn, Wehrmacht Staff Officer
At 01.11 hours – an unforgettable moment – the field telephone rang. Something important was coming through: while listening to it the General stood up stiffly, his hand gripping the edge of the table. With a nod he beckoned his chief of staff to listen in. ‘Enemy parachute troops dropped east of the Orne estuary. Main area Bréville–Ranville and the north edge of the Bavent forest. Counter-measures are in progress.’ This message from 716 Intelligence Service struck like lightning.
Was this, at last, the invasion, the storming of ‘Festung Europa’? Someone said haltingly, ‘Perhaps they are only supply troops for the French Resistance?’ … The day before, in the St-Malo area, many pieces of paper had been passing from hand to hand or had been dropped into the letterboxes; they all bore a mysterious announcement: La carotte rouge est quittée. Furthermore, our wireless operators had noticed an unusually large volume of coded traffic. Up till now, however, the Resistance groups had anxiously avoided all open action; they were put off by the danger of premature discovery and consequent extermination.
Whilst the pros and cons were still being discussed, 709 Infantry Division from Valognes announced: ‘Enemy parachute troops south of St-Germain-de-Varreville and near Ste-Marie-du-Mont. A second drop west of the main Carentan–Valognes road on both sides of the Merderet river and along the Ste-Mere-Eglise–Pont-l’Abbé road. Fighting for the river crossings in progress.’ It was now about 01.45 hours.
Three dropping zones near the front! Two were clearly at important traffic junctions. The third was designed to hold the marshy meadows at the mouth of the Dives and the bridge across the canalized Orne near Ranville. It coincided with the corps boundary, with the natural feature which formed our northern flank but would serve the same purpose for an enemy driving south. It is the task of parachute troops, as advance detachments from the air, to occupy tactically important areas and to hold them until ground troops, in this case landing forces, fight their way through to them and incorporate them into the general front. Furthermore, in Normandy they could, by attacking the strongpoints immediately west of the beach, paralyze the coastal defences. If it really was the task of the reported enemy forces to keep open the crossings, it meant that a landing would soon take place and they were really in earnest!
Erich Marck proved to be an exception among German generals that June morning. He mobilized his 87th Corps almost immediately. Other senior German commanders proved sluggish, their bewilderment and indecisiveness improved by the Allied ruse of dropping several thousand dummy parachutists. Worse still for the German Army, numerous of its commanders were away from headquarters. General Dollman and others were in Rennes for a kriegspiel (wargame, ironically enough with the scenario that the Allies would land in Normandy), and General Edgar Feuchtinger of the crack 21st Panzer Division was nowhere to be found. Rommel himself was in Germany, convinced that the weather was too bad to allow an invasion. It was a frustrating experience for German troops ready and willing to encounter the enemy.
Gefreiter Werner Kortenhaus, 21st Panzer Division
I would say we were ready to march at 2 a.m. at the latest. As well as the earlier alarm, news of an airborne landing at Gaen had meanwhile come through on the telephone, and we were ready to go. The engines of the tanks were running, but we didn’t receive any marching orders. We thought, ‘If we have to march, let’s go now while it’s dark and the enemy planes can’t see us.’ We waited for orders, and we waited. Just stood there, inactive by our tanks. We couldn’t understand why we weren’t getting any orders at all.
As Kortenhaus waited by his tank, and night began to pass into grey dawn, the largest armada of ships ever assembled had crossed the Channel and lay off the invasion beaches of Normandy. The sea was crammed with ships from the Cherbourg peninsula to the mouth of the Orne. The Americans were to land first, the H-Hour (landing time) for their two beaches in the west, codenamed Omaha and Utah, being 06.30. The British and Canadians were to land an hour later, at 07.30, on beaches Gold, Juno and Sword, the landing priority dictated by the tide conditions. Contrary to German expectations, the Allies would go in at low tide. Aboard the Allied ships there were last-minute pep talks, breakfast (for those who could eat it) and farewells. The first of the assault waves began clambering into their beaching craft. By 05.25 they were well on their way to shore, launched, in some cases, over eleven miles away.
At that same moment warships in the British sector began a mighty bombardment of German coastal defences, lobbing enormous shells at batteries and pill-boxes. Ships in the American sector began a bombardment of coastal positions at 05.45. Allied rocket ships rushed in and released salvo after salvo at German positions. From the air RAF and USAAF bombers released hundreds of tons of explosives. The noise was enormous, the sight awesome.
Ken Wright, 1st Special Service Brigade
Up at 4.15 a.m. Breakfast 4.45. It was quite unpleasantly rough, and I did not feel much like eating. Went on to the upper deck about 5 o’clock just in time to see a destroyer blow up and sink within 5 minutes, a mile or two to port: I think through striking a mine. It was rather appalling. The ship just cracked in half, and the two ends folded together as if it were a pocket knife closing.
Frederick Wright, RN
Diary, 6 June
The big battleships have opened up a heavy bombardment – the air is absolutely full of planes. I have just been up on our gun turret – a fine view from there. Our lads are singing ‘You are my sunshine’ full of good spirits … What a wonderful sight – clear visibility … Still the big battleships are banging away like Hell … All I can hear is Bang! Crash! Bang! Crash! – We are all amazed! Cannot realize the truth – not one German plane to be seen. I can still see our invasion barges, pitching and tossing, almost turning over.
Lieutenant-Commander R.C. Macnab, RN, aboard HMS Glasgow, supporting 2nd American Army
One six-inch gun battery on Pointe du Hoc in particular came in for a terrible time; enormous explosions rent it continuously for about 20 minutes and later it received many broadsides from the US battleship Texas. Almost the entire point is now crumbled into the sea, and the battery never fired a shot … Our orders contained the positions of every gun, machine gun, mortar, beach obstacle etc. on the shore – we almost knew what the Huns were having for breakfast – if we hadn’t interrupted them. Some new guns and smoke throwers were installed two days previously – but we had them lined up as targets and destroyed them before the landings. Two towers had been removed the day before, but we had been tipped off not to look for them as landmarks!
Able Seaman R.E. Hughes, aboard HMS Glasgow
Diary, 6 June
05.45 I said a few prayers and am thinking of you all at home. We started shelling the beaches and approaches. RAF still bombing. Y turret is the first to open fire, our targets being gun batteries and insistent smoke mortars. Continued patrol by RAF gives us a grand feeling.
Anne de Vigneral, Ver-sur-Mer
Diary, 5 June
I quickly wake the children – we take clothes and blankets (prepared and ready at the foot of each bed for a month or more) and beneath a frightful noise run towards the trench and tumble in. The house trembles and the windows dance – we pile into the centre and stay crouched. Eight people in this narrow pipe 5 metres long by 0.5 metres wide! … from this moment we are dumb with terror and deafened; the whole sky is lit up, flashes, fires, tracer bullets, shells fall all around us and we hear windowpanes fall out. Fires break out some way away (it was the Château de Courseulles). Sometimes we no longer see the nearby house because so much dust and soil is flying around …
M. Leveel, aged 19
Everything was exploding into violent action. It is impossible to imagine the noise, and suddenly in the direction of Vierville we saw this strange orange-red light. At first we thought it was the sun, but there were many lights, changing colour and shape. We decided to leave the house to go and take cover in some trenches we had dug, but everyone kept getting in each other’s way as we rushed about. There were about ten people in the house, my parents, some friends, a couple of cousins etc., and we just couldn’t think straight. There was a certain amount of nervousness and apprehension too. Then we heard another strange noise, a sort of swoosh, and out to sea we saw something rising high in the air, rather like giant fireworks. There were thousands of them. I didn’t find out till some years later what they were. They were rockets fired from ships. Even 20 km away the noise was unbelievable.
Marine Stanley Blacker, RM
As we went in to land the noise, the noise was deafening. Behind us the Rodney was firing ten-ton salvos, which almost shattered your ears. In front, I could see all the coast and villages in smoke and flames.
G.G. Townsend, Combined Operations
I received and passed to the Captain a message informing us that H-Hour had been delayed by a matter of minutes, which did nothing to calm down the feeling of excitement, until, at last, we were aiming ourselves at the target area which was exactly as depicted on the photographs removed from our briefing package, the church spire of the village of Bernieressur-Mer clearly visible. We thundered in, full speed ahead, because there were no sophisticated adjustments to be made, the only range finder being the craft itself. With the command, ‘Fire One’, we launched our first salvo over the heads of the assault craft in front of us, our own craft almost shuddering to a halt from the thrust of the rockets as they sped skywards. Each successive salvo bombarded the bridge with base plates, and spray from the water cooled the deck, and the whole craft, now completely enshrouded in a great pall of choking smoke, was shaken and subjected to so much strain that she seemed to be in danger of falling apart.
Donald S. Vaughan, 79th Armoured Division
There was an awful lot of noise going on, planes were going over, the Germans were firing, and there were big warships behind us firing 15-inch shells over the top – I’d never heard them before, and they sounded like locomotives going through the air.
William Seymour, RN
You could see the coastline on fire for miles. I thought we’d never make it in alive.
For the Allied troops on the assault craft the bombardment was the only cheer on the long journey in. In waves which reached six foot in the westerly American sector, many of the troops were chronically seasick. They were wet and drenched with spray, and a number of landing craft floundered or were hit by mines and underwater obstacles.
Ernest Hemingway, war reporter
As we moved in toward land in the grey early light, the 36-foot coffin-shaped steel boat took solid green sheets of water that fell on the helmeted heads of the troops packed shoulder to shoulder in the stiff, awkward, uncomfortable, lonely companionship of men going to a battle. There were cases of TNT, with rubber-tube life preservers wrapped around them to float them in the surf, stacked forward in the steel well of the LCV(P), and there were piles of bazookas and boxes of bazooka rockets encased in waterproof coverings that reminded you of the transparent raincoats college girls wear.
All this equipment, too, had the rubber-tube life preservers strapped and tied on, and the men wore these same grey rubber tubes strapped under their armpits.
As the boat rose to a sea, the green water turned white and came slamming in over the men, the guns and the cases of explosives. Ahead you could see the coast of France. The grey booms and derrick-forested bulks of the attack transports were behind now, and, over all the sea, boats were crawling forward toward France.
As the LCV(P) rose to the crest of a wave, you saw the line of low, silhouetted cruisers and the two big battlewagons lying broadside to the shore. You saw the heat-bright flashes of their guns and the brown smoke that pushed out against the wind and then blew away.
…
The low cliffs were broken by valleys. There was a town with a church spire in one of them. There was a wood that came down to the sea. There was a house on the right of one of the beaches. On all the headlands, the gorse was burning, but the north-west wind held the smoke close to the ground.
Those of our troops who were not wax-grey with seasickness, fighting it off, trying to hold on to themselves before they had to grab for the steel side of the boat, were watching the Texas with looks of surprise and happiness. Under the steel helmets they looked like pikemen of the Middle Ages to whose aid in battle had suddenly come some strange and unbelievable monster.
There would be a flash like a blast furnace from the 14-inch guns of the Texas, that would lick far out from the ship. Then the yellow-brown smoke would cloud out and, with the smoke still rolling, the concussion and the report would hit us, jarring the men’s helmets. It struck your near ear like a punch with a heavy, dry glove.
Then up on the green rise of a hill that now showed clearly as we moved in would spout two tall black fountains of earth and smoke.
‘Look what they’re doing to those Germans,’ I leaned forward to hear a GI say above the roar of the motor. ‘I guess there won’t be a man alive there,’ he said happily.
That is the only thing I remember hearing a GI say all that morning. They spoke to one another sometimes, but you could not hear them with the roar the 225-horsepower high-speed grey Diesel made. Mostly, though, they stood silent without speaking. I never saw anyone smile after we left the line of firing ships. They had seen the mysterious monster that was helping them, but now he was gone and they were alone again.
I found if I kept my mouth open from the time I saw the guns flash until after the concussion, it took the shock away.
T. Tateson, Green Howards
The assault landing craft held about thirty men tightly packed. They were low-lying, flattish boats and we were seated so that our heads were below the level of the gunwale. We were ordered to keep our heads down as we approached the coast to avoid enemy fire. However, our landing craft was disabled by some underwater mine or obstacle and became impossible to steer. One of the other boats was brought alongside and although it was already fully loaded with a similar number of men, we had to clamber aboard and abandon our boat. We were now exposed to enemy fire as well as being grossly overloaded.
As the boats approached the shore they began to encounter German resistance. Many of the Wehrmacht’s gun emplacements, made from concrete several feet thick, had withstood the barrage. Unhappily for the GI in Hemingway’s boat, not every German was dead – far from it.
Petty Officer J.E. Burton, RN
As we headed towards the beach I could hear the noise of shells exploding and gunfire, above the engine-room noise, and getting louder and louder. We could feel the effects of explosions in the water from near misses. We were both anxious as to what was happening and what we were to be faced with upon beaching. I suddenly became aware that there were hundreds of gallons of high-octane petrol in the fuel tanks in front of me! As we ran in to the beach, the shelling became worse, louder and more frequent. One shell dropped very close to the port side of the engine room and when it exploded all the tins of paint, grease etc. shot off a shelf and the stoker on the port engine leapt across the engine room and into my arms like a trained monkey. I persuaded him to return to his engine.
Trooper Peter Davies, 1st East Riding Yeomanry
Close to us we could see a little landing craft disappear in the trough when one of the great shells would land by it and a plume would go up in the air. Everybody was saying, ‘Oh they’ve had it, that’s one gone.’ And suddenly this one particular landing craft would bob back up and a cheer went up, not just from our boat but every boat around.
Lieutenant (jg) Clark Houghton, US Navy
So we were amid sniper fire and machine-gun fire and flak. When we got to the beach we saw the obstructions that Jerry had put up, and all became more tense. The skipper picked his spot and headed in. How close we came to tragedy at this point. We headed between two stakes on which were fastened mines. There was just room and we made it. Then all hell broke loose.
It was H-Hour. At 06.25 the Americans began to land at Omaha and Utah beaches. One of the first to wade ashore at Utah was the naval officer in charge of the beachhead.
Commodore James Arnold, US Navy
As the ramp lowered, I was shoved forward up to my knapsack in cold, oily water.
German 88s were pounding the beachhead. Two US tanks were drawn up at the high-water line pumping them back into the Jerries. I tried to run to get into the lee of these tanks. I realize now why the infantry likes to have tanks along in a skirmish. They offer a world of security to a man in open terrain who may have a terribly empty sensation in his guts. But my attempt to run was only momentary. Three feet of water is a real deterrent to rapid locomotion of the legs. As I stumbled into a runnel, Kare picked me up. A little soldier following grabbed my other arm. Just for a moment he hung on. Then he dropped, blood spurting from a jagged hole torn by a sniper’s bullet.
The soldier on Arnold’s arm was bitterly unlucky, for Utah was to be a comparatively easy landing – at least in the cold terms of casualty statistics – that June morning. By a freak of nature – the strong tide – the bulk of the invasion force on Utah landed south of the designated place in an area which turned out to be very lightly defended. The difficulties of the Utah landing were to come later in the day as the narrow exits from the beach became blocked and troops became bogged down in the marshy area behind the dunes. In the meantime, some GIs landing on Utah even found the experience something of an anti-climax.
Anonymous Pfc, US 4th Infantry Division
You know, it sounds kind of dumb but it was just like a [training] exercise. Easier. We waded ashore like kids in a crocodile and up the beach. A couple of shells came over but nowhere near us. I think I even felt somehow disappointed, a little let down. Can you believe that!
Omaha was a very different affair. It was always going to be the most diflicult of the Allied landings, dominated at each end of its long crescent length by cliffs, with the centre overlooked by green bluffs. The advantage at Omaha would always lie with the defence.
Sergeant Richard W. Herklotz, 110th Field Artillery, US 29th Division, aged 22
On Omaha the Germans were looking right down our throats.
And the Germans at Omaha were first-rate troops, unlike most of the Wehrmacht’s coastal defence that day.
Captain Edward W. McGregor, 18th Infantry Regiment, US 1st Infantry Division, aged 25
We had a bad break tactically because the German 352nd Infantry Division were on a counter-attack training exercise at Omaha. So instead of a fortress battalion – you know, with kind of second-rate troops – we had a whole damned infantry division in front of us.
The misfortune was compounded by poor judgement, with most of the amphibious DD tanks which would support the landing being released too far from shore and sinking like stones. For the Germans it turned into a veritable turkey-shoot. For the assault waves of the US 1st and 29th Infantry Divisions it was a nightmare.
Lieutenant Robert Edlin, 2nd Ranger Battalion
It seemed like the whole world exploded. There was gunfire from battleships, destroyers and cruisers. The bombers were still hitting the beaches. As we went in, we could see small craft from the 116th Infantry that had gone in ahead, sunk. There were bodies bobbing in the water, even out three or four miles.
Then there was a deep silence. All the gunfire had lifted; the Navy was giving way to let the troops get on the beaches. The sun was just coming up over the Frenchy coast. I saw a bird – a seagull, I guess – fly across the front of the boat, just like life was going on as normal.
Then there came something like a peppering of hail, heavy hail on the front of the ramp. I realized it was enemy machine-gun fire. All hell broke loose from the other side – Germany artillery, rockets and mortars. It was just unbelievable that anyone could have lived under that barrage.
Our assault boat hit a sandbar. I looked over the ramp and we were at least seventy-five yards from the shore, and we had hoped for a dry landing. I told the coxswain, ‘Try to get in further.’ He screamed he couldn’t. That British seaman had all the guts in the world but couldn’t get off the sandbar. I told him to drop the ramp or we were going to die right there.
We had been trained for years not to go off the front of the ramp, because the boat might get rocked by a wave and run over you. So we went off the sides. I looked to my right and saw a B Company boat next to us with Lt. Bob Fitzsimmons, a good friend, take a direct hit on the ramp from a mortar or mine. I thought, there goes half of B Company.
Don Whitehead, Associated Press war correspondent
The ramp lowered and we waded ashore to the rattle of machine guns and bursting of shells. Bullets cracked over our heads and we flung ourselves on the rocky beach under cover of a gravel embankment.
The enemy on the right flank was pouring direct fire on the beach. Hundreds of troops, pinned under cover of the embankment, burrowed shallow trenches in the loose ground. No one was moving forward. The congestion was growing dangerous as more troops piled in. Snipers and machine-gunners were picking off our troops as they came ashore … Wounded men, drenched by cold water, lay in the gravel, some with water washing over their legs, shivering, waiting for stretcher-bearers to take them aboard returning small craft. ‘Oh God, lemme aboard the boat,’ whimpered a youth in semi-delirium. Near him a shivering boy dug with bare fingers into the ground. Shells were bursting on all sides of us, some so close that they threw black water and dirt over us in showers.
Report: 16th Infantry Regiment, 1st Infantry Division
As the landing craft reached the beach [at Colleville-sur-Mer], they were subjected to heavy artillery, mortar, machine-gun and rifle fire, directed at them from the pill-boxes and from the cliffs above the beach. Men were hit as they came down the ramps of the landing craft, and as they struggled landward through the obstacles, and many more were killed or injured by the mines attached to the beach obstacles. Landing craft kept coming in with their human cargoes despite the heavy fire and continued to disgorge them on to the narrow shale shelf from which no exits had been opened. Several landing craft were either sunk or severely damaged by direct artillery hits or by contact with enemy mines.
The enemy now began to pour artillery and mortar fire on to the congested beach with deadly precision and effect. Visibility from the enemy strongpoints was such that the assault groups, armed with rocket launchers, flame-throwers, Browning Automatic rifles, and pole charges of TNT could not approach them directly. A few squads and platoons of infantry gradually and slowly crawled forward from the shelf across the minefields between the enemy strongpoints, and made the slope.
Captain Edward W. McGregor, US 1st Infantry Division
My impression of the beach when I landed was, ‘This is a rough place to be.’
Anonymous Pfc, US 1st Infantry Division
There were men crying with fear, men defecating themselves. I lay there with some others, too petrified to move. No one was doing anything except lay there. It was like a mass paralysis. I couldn’t see an officer. At one point something hit me on the arm. I thought I’d taken a bullet. It was some-body’s hand, taken clean off by something. It was too much.
Captain Joseph T. Dawson, 16th Infantry Regiment, US 1st Infantry Division, aged 30
The beach was a total chaos, with men’s bodies everywhere, with wounded men crying, both in the water and on the shingle. We landed at high tide, when the water was right up to the shoreline, which was marked by a sharp-edged crystalline sand, like a small gravel, but very, very sharp. That was the only defilade which was present on the beach to give any protection from the fire above. That was where all the men who had landed earlier were present, except for a handful who had made their way forward, most of them being killed … The beach sounded like a beehive with the bullets flying around. You could hear them hit and you could hear them pass through the air.
Russell Stover, 116th Infantry Regiment, US 29th Infantry Division
The boat stopped. We were on an obstacle. Thank God it wasn’t mined. The ramp went down and we leaped out, into waist-deep water and three-foot waves. Some lost their footing, some their weapons. We had more than two hundred yards to go to the high water mark. Some engineers were working to our left. There was only one tank ahead and to the left but it wasn’t firing or moving. There were no ‘instant fox holes’ either; there wasn’t one crater for cover. There wasn’t even one DUKW with artillery firing on the machine-gun placements on top of the bluffs. No Piper Cubs overhead to direct the naval fire. It was very obvious to me that many plans were going wrong. There was a boat burning to our right, heading back out. We waded through the surf and floating debris. I looked back and saw that we were in good formation, well spread out, just as we had practised dozens of times before. Reaching the sand, I tried to run, but found it was very difficult, my impregnated pant legs were filled with water. The extra weight took its toll and about half way in I fell to the sand exhausted. I thanked the Good Lord for the smoke that still covered the bluffs. A shell had started a grass fire. If not for that smoke, we would not have made it in. Recovering, I started running again. The man to my right didn’t follow, I think he was our first casualty.
Lieutenant Robert Edlin, 2nd Ranger Battalion
It was cold, miserable cold, even though it was June. The water temperature was probably forty-five or fifty degrees. It was up to my shoulders when I went in, and I saw men sinking all about me. I tried to grab a couple, but my job was to get on in and get to the guns. There were bodies from the 116th floating everywhere. They were facedown in the water with packs still on their backs. They had inflated their life jackets. Fortunately, most of the Rangers did not inflate theirs or they also might have turned over and drowned.
I began to run with my rifle in front of me. I went directly across the beach to try to get to the seaway. In front of me was part of the 116th Infantry, pinned down and lying behind beach obstacles. They hadn’t made it to the seaway. I kept screaming at them, ‘You have to get up and go! You gotta get up and go!’ But they didn’t. They were worn out and defeated completely. There wasn’t any time to help them.
I continued across the beach. There were mines and obstacles all up and down the beach. The air corps had missed it entirely. There were no shell holes in which to take cover. The mines had not been detonated. Absolutely nothing that had been planned for that part of the beach had worked. I knew that Vierville-sur-Mer was going to be a hellhole, and it was.
When I was about twenty yards from the seaway I was hit by what I assume was a sniper bullet. It shattered and broke my right leg. I thought, well, I’ve got a Purple Heart. I fell, and as I did, it was like a searing hot poker rammed into my leg. My rifle fell ten feet or so in front of me. I crawled forward to get to it, picked it up, and as I rose on my left leg, another burst of I think machine gun fire tore the muscles out of that leg, knocking me down again.
I lay there for seconds, looked ahead, and saw several Rangers lying there. One was Butch Bladorn from Wisconsin. I screamed at Butch, ‘Get up and run!’ Butch, a big, powerful man, just looked back and said, ‘I can’t.’ I got up and hobbled towards him. I was going to kick him in the ass and get him off the beach. He was lying on his stomach, his face in the sand. Then I saw the blood coming out of his back. I realized he had been hit in the stomach and the bullet had come out his spine and he was completely immobilized. Even then I was sorry for screaming at him but I didn’t have time to stop and help him. I thought, well, that’s the end of Butch. Fortunately, it wasn’t. He became a farmer in Wisconsin.
For the GIs waiting to land it was an unedifying scene.
Sergeant Richard W. Herklotz, US 29th Division
As we got closer to the beach we saw that casualties were floating in the water just like refuse in a harbour. There was this and that equipment floating, soldiers, sailors – it was very disheartening. For hours off the coast we watched the tide bring out the debris and the bodies of those who had died.
At one point the battle for Omaha was going so badly that General Bradley, waiting offshore on the Augusta, ‘gained the impression that our forces had suffered an irreversible catastrophe.’ Hundreds of the initial assault waves lay dead – there were to be over 2,000 casualties on the beach that day – and the landing schedule was in turmoil. And yet force of numbers, determination and individual example began to get the GIs off the beach and forcing routes up the hill to the rear.
Sergeant Mike Rehm, US 5th Rangers
We were pinned down by heavy fire for about an hour. General Cota, who was the executive officer, came along and saw ‘us crouched behind a wall. He said, “Who are you people?” We said, “Sir, we’re Rangers.” He said, “Goddamit, if you’re Rangers get up there and lead the way.”’
Captain Joseph T. Dawson, US 1st Infantry Division
We landed at H + 30 minutes and found … both the assault units rendered ineffective because of the enormous casualties they suffered. Fortunately, when we landed there was some let-up in the defensive fire from the Germans. Even so the boat containing assault unit Company G, which I commanded, took a direct hit from the artillery of the Germans, and I suffered major casualties. I lost about twenty men out of a total complement of 250 from that hit on my boat, and this included my naval officer who was communications link with the Navy, who were to support us with their fire from the battleships and cruisers some 8,000 yards out in the water.
As soon as we were able to assemble we proceeded off of the beach through a minefield which had been identified by some of the soldiers who had landed earlier. We knew this because two of them were lying there in the path I selected. Both men had been destroyed by the mines. From their position, however, we were able to identify the path and get through the minefield without casualties and proceed up to the crest of the ridge which overlooked the beach. We got about halfway up when we met the remnants of a platoon of E Company, commanded by Lieutenant Spalding. This was the only group – somewhere less than twenty men – we encountered who had gotten off of the beach. They had secured some German prisoners, and these were sent to the beach under escort. Above me, right on top of the ridge, the Germans had a line of defences with an excellent field of fire. I kept the men behind and, along with my communications sergeant and his assistant, worked our way slowly up to the crest of the ridge. Just before the crest was a sharp perpendicular drop, and we were able to get up to the crest without being seen by the enemy. I could now hear the Germans talking in the machine-gun nest immediately above me. I then threw two grenades, which were successful in eliminating the enemy and silencing the machine gun which had been holding up our approach. Fortunately for me this action was done without them having any awareness of my being there, so I was no hero … it was an act of God, I guess.
…
I had only one thought and that was to get to the enemy. My feelings at the time were completely subordinate to the moment in hand, where my responsibility was to get off the beach and approach the enemy. That was my main objective, and that was the only thing I could possibly think at that time.
Don Whitehead, Associated Press war correspondent
Then the brigadier began working to get troops off the beach. It was jammed with men and vehicles. He sent a group to the right flank to help clean out the enemy firing directly on the beach. Quietly he talked to the men, suggesting next moves. He never raised his voice and he showed not the least excitement. Gradually the troops on the beach thinned out and we could see them moving over the ridge.
Captain Edward W. McGregor, US 1st Infantry Division
We hit the sand and found ourselves behind the bodies of the amphibious engineers, who had taken a terrible beating. Eventually we started moving up a draw, where some engineers had been and which was marked with tape. We had several casualties, and I know at least one officer right near me was killed, stepping on a mine. We came up to the top of the ridge and tried to advance a bit, but there was a large German bunker in front of us, and its machine-gun fire hit us every time we tried to move. At this point we didn’t have any communication with the American destroyer behind us because within five minutes of landing on the beach the naval ensign officer had been killed – his driver too – and the radio set destroyed by a shell which landed right on top of them. S0 we planned an assault against the bunker. I volunteered to take some troops with me but before we could get organized there were huge demolitions around the bunker. Thank God we hadn’t moved out yet. An American destroyer had moved in and was firing direct with 4-inch guns into the bunker.
Captain Albert H. Smith, 16th Infantry Regiment, US 1st Infantry Division, aged 25
When we were just 500 yards from the shore everything changed. We were now boat to boat, only five inches apart, boats banging side by side. We could see a lot of burning, and a lot of firing from the bluffs. Just as our landing-craft bottom hit the hard sand we took machine-gun fire on the ramp of our LCVP. I yelled to the coxswain, ‘Hold the ramp!’ For one time the Navy obeyed the Army and he held the ramp. When the machine-gun fire switched to the boat which was just to our left, I said ‘Drop the ramp!’ and the coxswain dropped the ramp. Thirty-four of us got into the Channel about waist deep, sometimes chest deep, but the last two who were trying to get out were hit as the machine gun swung back … As we waded through the Channel our clothing, which was impregnated against a German gas attack, became like a board. We were overloaded, all of us. Finally, we made it to the soft sand. We saw people lying down back of the stone wall – not a concrete wall, just a wall of stones which had been rolled by the tide up on to the beach. Shingle. I said to Captain Hangsterfer, who was under me as the adjutant of the battalion, ‘Hank, I think there is some movement off to the left of the beach. I can just see it. We should head left’ – which is where we were supposed to land. That we did with the thirty-four men with us, and we went four or five hundred yards to the left, parallel to the sea. On the way we saw some people we knew, they were still there from the first wave. They were rather dazed, and had taken a lot of fire. As we were going left we saw a column of men going up through the minefield, past the barbed wire and up into the high ground behind the beach. I said to Hank, ‘We’ll follow them and leave the company in a little protection and see what’s going on and then bring them on up.’ So we in fact got into the column which was composed of other soldiers of the 1st battalion, mainly Bravo Company. As soon as we were off the beach the fire we had been taking became less and less. We had no casualties at this time. We followed the column up and we had only one adventure as we were starting to get to the higher ground. I said to Hank, ‘Let’s bypass this column, let’s make a little more headway, let’s go a little faster.’ So we made a sharp right turn and went into an area which turned out to be swamp area, just off of the beach. We sank, and the only way we survived was to pop our life preservers, the Mae West preservers. They popped up, and we made our way back to dry ground. I said, ‘Hank, we’re going to stay here with the column. We’re going to take the slow pace forward.’ At this time we saw, in the edge of the minefield, two US soldiers who had apparently tried to make it earlier in the day and had blown up. We had to pass over these two bodies so as not to disturb the other mines that were there. All this was in a sector called Easy Red. Well, it wasn’t easy, and it was only red with blood. But we still got up out of it.
Russell Stover, 116th Infantry Regiment, US 29th Infantry Division
We reached the high-tide mark only to discover that the first and second waves were still on the beach. Some had dug fox holes which gave some protection from the fire coming from the bluff. The barbed-wire had stopped them. There were three rolls of concertina, then a staked fence, then three more rolls of concertina, about twenty feet wide. Sgt Ritter pointed to a location, and we set up our gun and began firing at the top of the bluff. We were in action! Suddenly I recalled advice from veterans of the Africa and Sicily landings – we could expect mortar fire within three minutes of starting to fire a machine gun.
Our boat load was not equipped with bangalore torpedoes as the wire was to be blown by the first wave of men, but evidently the squad responsible had mislanded or been killed. Word was passed up and down the beach to pass any bangalore torpedoes on to us. After what seemed an eternity, we had four. Sgt Ritter yelled to increase my fire. We were going to try to blow the wire. About this time the Germans fired a rocket from on top of the bluff to my right. I heard the sound of a large gun firing in back of me. I looked back and could not believe what I saw. There was a destroyer, so close I thought it would go aground. Finally we had something larger than a bazooka on our side. But as all our radios had drowned out on the way in, we could not contact the destroyer to coordinate our attack. The fire from the top of the bluffs slackened. I believe that the German machine-gunners up there did not want to disclose their position to the destroyer.
There was a heavy explosion directly in front of me. We had blown the wire. Our riflemen rushed through the gap. Some didn’t make it.
Yet, even ‘Bloody Omaha’ had its lighter moments.
Captain Albert H. Smith, US 1st Infantry Division
I’m moving along [the beach] to my left and I meet standing there and directing some of the troops, Brigadier-General Bill Wyman. He was the senior commander in that area. He said, ‘Smitty’ – which was my nickname – ‘are you advancing by fire and movement?’ That was the correct way, in any army: to lay down fire and move quickly while you were protected by your own fire. But I looked at him and I kind of smiled, and I said, ‘Yes, sir. They’re firing, and we’re moving.’
…
When we got up to the top of the bluff and the column slowed down, Hank and I moved off to a little grassy knoll there. And I said, ‘We’re going to take a five-minute break’, and I reached into my knapsack and brought out a bottle of Johnnie Walker Red, which was a gift from a wonderful old lady in Lyme Regis. So Hank and I, sat on top of our first objective, had a nip of Scotch and an apple.
It was about 10.30 a.m. when Captain Al Smith sat down on top of the bluff above the Easy Red sector of Omaha beach, aside the route forced by Joe Dawson. By that time the Americans had found ways up the bluffs in other sectors and were fighting their way inland. The morning on the US beaches had also seen one of the most epic actions of D-Day, the assault by the Rangers on the Pointe du Hoc, a headland which jutted out between Omaha and Utah and was the site of a German gun battery.
Lieutenant Hodenfield, Stars and Stripes reporter
As the morning light grew brighter, we could see hundreds of other boats all making for the shores of Normandy. But those boats were landing on beaches, while ahead of us were sheer cliffs that had to be scaled before we could come to grips with the Germans. Personally, I was less scared of the Germans than of those cliffs; I had been shot at before, but I had never had to climb a rope ladder first.
Those rope ladders were the secret weapon of this expedition. Lt.-Col. James Rudder, former Texas football coach, and Capt. Harold Slater had worked out a system by which grapnel hooks were shot over the cliffs by rockets, trailing ladders and single lines. The grapnels were to bite into the bomb-blasted earth on Pointe du Hoc, and when the slack was taken up, the ladders would be ready to climb.
The entire success of this operation depended on those ladders. Pointe du Hoc is accessible from the sea only by scaling the cliffs, and the Germans, believing that not even ‘military idiots’ would dare to come from that direction, had placed all their defences facing inland. They knew that Pointe du Hoc was an extremely important target, but they thought our attack would be made from the flank, so they had placed a ring of defences around the inner arc of the point.
Soon we were able to see on the horizon the dim outlines of the coast of France, and about that time a terrific naval barrage started. The naval barrage was not primarily intended to destroy the German guns – they were too well casemated for that – but the barrage would drive the Germans into their deep tunnels.
The plan was that the Rangers were to land at exactly six-thirty in the morning, just five minutes after the lifting of the barrage. By the time the Germans would dare to come out of their holes, the Rangers would be over the top of the cliffs, spiking the big guns. And then, after the guns had been spiked, the Rangers would be able to devote their full time to killing Germans.
Gradually we drew nearer, and some of us raised ourselves partially out of the boat to take our first real look at Normandy. It looked very much like England, which we had just left the night before, and for some reason we felt disappointed.
But we weren’t disappointed in our Navy. The Texas, bulking heavily against the horizon in the half-light of early morning, was sending shell after shell screaming into Pointe du Hoc, the sound of the firing reaching us long after we could see the blast of flame from the gun muzzles.
As we watched the coast of France draw nearer and nearer, it didn’t seem possible that this was really the invasion, the second front for which so many men had trained for so long. It looked too peaceful, too quiet. But suddenly we heard a sharp rat-ta-tat, and we saw machine- gun bullets fall into the water ahead of us.
‘Hey, boss!’ yelled one man. ‘Those jerks are trying to hit us!’
They were, too.
The wind was blowing at least fifteen knots, and the heavy seas, with waves reaching four feet, had pushed us off our course. A check with charts and watches showed we were well behind our carefully planned timetable. The naval barrage stopped, as scheduled, five minutes before we were to make our touchdown, but we were far off the course and we had to give up the idea of surprising the Germans. So we kept bucking and bobbing about, getting closer and closer to Pointe du Hoc, but likewise getting closer to the cliff defenders, who had taken positions along the top.
We kept our heads ducked low below the gunwales of the LCA, and we jumped each time a burst of machine-gun fire rattled against our sides. When we dared to look up, we could see men floating around in the water after their boats had been overturned. One man gave us a cheery wave of his hand. It was Captain Slater, who had helped devise the rope-ladder-launching idea. After two hours in the water, he was picked up by the Navy in a fit of high temper at the fate which had robbed him of his chance to see his own weapon in action. He didn’t reach France until a week later.
I suppose that we all should have been scared when we finally nosed up to the narrow beach to make our touchdown, but we all were too excited. I was sitting next to Capt. Otto (‘Big Stoop’) Massney, a company commander. Together, we watched rockets being launched from other craft on our right, and he cursed roundly when he saw that some had been fired too soon and had fallen far short of the cliff top.
‘Don’t fire those things until I give the word!’ he yelled. ‘We’ve got plenty of time!’
When the nose of our LCA ground against the sand, we stopped: he gave the word, and, with a loud roar and whooshing sound, our rockets sailed over the top of the cliffs.
I had ducked my head when the first series of rockets exploded, heeding Massney’s warning that we could be blinded if we didn’t, but then I looked up to see what had happened. I was lost in admiration of the pretty picture the rockets were making, when the second and third series went off. The explosions were so startling that I fell over backward into the bottom of the boat, but as I rose shamefacedly, Massney patted me on the back and said, ‘If that scared you, what in hell you think it did to the Germans?’
But there was no time for further conversation, for the ramp had been lowered and our men were scrambling ashore with lethal weapons ranging from pistols and knives in small hip cases to big bazookas and trench mortars.
Snipers and machine-gunners were on the cliffs all around us, so we scrambled to the base of the cliff for safety. Sgt. Bob Youso and Pvt. Alvin White had already started up the ladders which were hugging the face of the cliff, and others were lined up, waiting their turn, while Massney stood at the bottom, yelling advice and encouragement.
Those of us not so useful had to wait nearly an hour for our turn to start climbing, so, for lack of anything better to do, I lit a cigarette. Then the thought struck me, This is a helluva way to invade France, sitting down in the shade with a cigarette.
I saw Lt. Amos Potts, Army photographer, who was fuming mad because here he was, in the middle of the greatest picture story of his life, and all his equipment had been water-soaked in the landing. He and I were too nervous to sit still, so we started digging some ammunition out of the sand, where it already was being partially buried by the incoming tide. Later, we had reason to be very thankful that we had salvaged that ammunition.
Over on our right, Capt. Walter (‘Doc’) Block, of Chicago, the medical officer of our battalion, had set up a first-aid post for those men wounded by snipers on the trip in to the beach. He had an impressive number of patients already.
My trip up the ladder was interrupted only by numerous stops to catch my breath. We were able to hear the firing of small arms and occasional loud roars from the top of the cliff, but we had no way of telling what was going on, because Massney had become impatient and had gone up earlier than scheduled, taking the field telephone with him.
Finally I tumbled over the top of the cliff into a shell hole left by a previous bombardment from our Air Force, and I asked some of the men in the shell hole what the score was. But I could learn only that two of the six guns in Target No. 1 had been destroyed by the Air Force, prior to D-Day, and that the remaining four had been removed.
Raising my head carefully over the edge of the shell hole, I got my first real look at Pointe du Hoc. Just picture it as a huge letter V, jutting into the Channel, with sides formed by cliffs 15o feet high. The Rangers had landed on the left side of the V, with our group at the extreme upper end.
Straight ahead of me for a mile was nothing but shell holes from the air and naval bombardments. At my left was a series of small fields with hedgerows extending to the cliffs. On the far right was the English Channel on the other side of the V, and along the cliff was a concrete observation post which controlled the fire of all six German guns. I moved over to the left-flank troops and stayed there until late that evening.
Meanwhile, other units which were also assaulting the cliffs had been having various sorts of trouble. The Germans had come to the edge of the cliffs and had rolled hand grenades down the ladders. Later, as a sort of afterthought, they started cutting the ropes, but by this time the Rangers had gone up and over and were pushing the Jerries back.
And then came the last great assault from the sea of the morning of 6 June 1944. Four years after Dunkirk the British sailed back to France, touching down at 07.30, an hour after the Americans, on the eastern half of the invasion coast, some 20 miles of flatness backed by dunes and marshes and dotted with fortified villages. With them came the Canadians whose 3rd Division were to land at beach Juno, in between the British beaches of Sword and Gold. The British landings would prove a curiously mixed affair. Many would find the myriad sea-obstacles and the getting ashore itself the most terrifying part of the process. Others – like the men of the East Yorkshire Regiment – would be mown down as they left the water in a slaughter reminiscent of the Western Front in 1916.
Lieutenant K.P. Baxter, 2nd Battalion, Middlesex Regiment
Steadily the flotilla of LCAs pressed onwards towards the beach. Four hundred yards from the shoreline and the Royal Marine frogmen slipped over the side to start the job of clearing underwater obstacles. This would be sufficiently hazardous at the best of times, but add to it the risk from all those churning propellers – with many more following – and their task became most unenviable.
Closing to the shore rapidly, eyes scanned the clearing haze for familiar landmarks. There were none. A burst of machine-gun fire uncomfortably close overhead brought curses upon those in following craft for their enthusiastic ‘covering fire’. Suddenly a burst ricocheted off the front of the craft, telling us that this was no covering fire. The opposition was very much alive and well.
We had still been unable to identify our position but we were by now right on top of the beach. The protective steel doors in the bows were opened and everyone waited, tensed for the soft lurching bump. ‘Ramp down!’ – and out into knee-deep water. Ahead, a line of prone figures just above the water’s edge and, some 200 yards beyond, a tank was nosed up against the small strip of dunes at the head of the beach.
The first impression was that the tank had got in ahead of the first wave and they, following the same instructions as given to the Beach Exit Teams, were holding back until the explosive charges had been detonated.
I had not gone far when I was tripped by some underwater wire, and, with no hope of retaining balance with the heavy Assault Jacket pack that had been issued to us, went flat on my face. Attempting to rise, I was struck a heavy blow on the back which flattened me again. Then suddenly the machine gun opened up on us once again.
The fire came from dead ahead and we could now make out the shape of a heavy embrasure in the low silhouette of some concrete fortifications at the top of the beach. We then realized that, by the narrowest of margins, we had landed immediately in front of Strongpoint 0880, code word COD.
Sergeant Leo Gariepy, 3rd Canadian Division
More by accident than by design, I found myself the leading tank. On my way in I was surprised to see a friend – a midget submarine who had been waiting for us for forty-eight hours. He waved me right on to my target and then made a half turn to go back. I remember him very very distinctly standing up through his conning hatch joining his hands together in a sign of good luck. I answered the old, familiar Army sign – to you too, bud!
I was the first tank coming ashore and the Germans started opening up with machine-gun bullets. But when we came to a halt on the beach, it was only then that they realized we were a tank when we pulled down our canvas skirt, the flotation gear. Then they saw that we were Shermans.
It was quite amazing. I still remember very vividly some of the machine-gunners standing up in their posts looking at us with their mouths wide open.
To see tanks coming out of the water shook them rigid.
Lieutenant-Commander Dennis Glover RNZNVR, HM LCI (S) No. 516, transporting Lord Lovat’s Commando Brigade to Ouistreham
The beach looms close, maybe a mile. There are people running up and down it. There are fires, and the bursting of shells. Yes, and wrecked landing craft everywhere, a flurry of propellers in the savage surf and among those wicked obstructions. Beach-clearance parties, I expect, bloody heroes, every one. Special craft stooging quietly in, some of them on fire, though. Diesel fuel burns black. That vicious destroyer to port is irritating me, but the Colonel doesn’t seem to mind. He’s cool but I bet he’s worried. Curious how all these soldiers dislike an assault by water. I’d hate to dash out of foxholes at machine-guns. Damn him, I can pretend I’m cool, too. It’s the noisiest gun – starboard ten! – it’s the noisiest gun in the Navy, that four point seven – Midships, Cox’n! What a cool, disinterested reply he makes. Colonel, you make me grin. I like your nerve.
We are on those bristling stakes. They stretch before us in rows. The mines on them look as big as planets. And those graze-nose shells pointing towards us on some of them look like beer bottles. Oh, God, I would be blown up on a mine like a beer bottle! Now for speed and skill and concentration. Whang, here it comes – those whizzing ones will be mortars – and the stuff is falling all round us. Can’t avoid them, but the mines and collisions I can avoid. Speed, more speed. Put them off by speed, weave in and out of these bloody spikes, avoid the mines, avoid our friends, avoid the wrecked craft and vehicles in the risking water, and get these troops ashore. Good, the Commando officers have their men ready and waiting, crouched along the decks. Number One is for’ard with his ramp parties ready. Everything is working as we’ve exercised it for so long. Oh, hell, this new tin hat is far too big for me – I’ll shake it off my head out of fright if I’m not careful. Port twenty. Midships. Starboard ten. That was a near one. Nearly hit it. But we won’t, we can’t, slow down. Midships. Port ten, port fifteen, port twenty. We’re going to hit it, we’re going to hit it! A beer bottle, I knew it. Ease to ten. Midships! Not bows on, though. We’ll strike to starboard on the beam. One, two, three, four, five … Huh, nothing’s happened. Must be luck for me in beer bottles after all. Now for the next lot of obstructions.
Don’t jump, you fool. It was near, but you’re not hit. Straddled. All right, keep on. And here’s where I go in, that little bit of clear beach. Port ten. Midships. Starboard five. Wish the swell weren’t throwing us about so much. Let’s be in first, as a glorious gesture, then no one will know how frightened we really were. Tommy always said when coaching us, if you hang around on the outside of the scrum you’ll get hurt – go in! Sorry to give you so much work, Cox’n. That’ll rock him, and I’ll light up my pipe, too. What does he say? Nae bother at all, sir, and I’m still sticking to my pipe, am I? Can’t even the enemy take the bounce out of this, Cox’n? You’re not being familiar, I hope, Cox’n? I musn’t grin. What? Not bloody likely? Anyhow, he’s a cocky bastard and cheerful. A shell may kill us both any minute.
Slow ahead together. Slow down to steady the ship, point her as you want her, then half ahead together and on to the beach with a gathering rush. Put her ashore and be damned! She’s touched down. One more good shove ahead to wedge her firm. Out ramps!
Smooth work, Fitz, oh, smooth as clockwork. Now off you go! Good luck, Commandos, go like hell! Next meeting – Brighton! How efficiently, how quickly, they run down the accustomed ramps, not a man hit that I can see, and there they go splashing through a hundred yards of water, up over more of the flat beach than that, and out of sight among the deadly dunes. The colonel turns to wave, and is gone with them. They ignore beach fire. They have their objective and they are going for it, the best troops we can produce. God be with them.
Commander Phillipe Kieffer, French Commandos, attached to British 1st Special Service Brigade
Our two landing craft advanced as on exercise – straight for the coast. The 4th Commandos (British) were in their LCI on our left flank. We couldn’t see the coast, which was obscured by a thick cloud of smoke, but the radio contact between the craft on the sea was perfect. The smaller British ones danced on the short waves. At 700 metres to port a Polish destroyer had hit a mine and was sinking by the prow. We had to be very close to the coast, the enemy shells enveloped us increasingly. Were we in fact in front of our objective? My watch said 7.25. The two landing craft with the French commandos on board navigated at the same level, fifty metres apart. Suddenly, through a gap in the smoke, the submarine defences, stakes and barbed wire entanglements surged up in front of us. We had arrived. A shock – a bump – we were aground. At this exact moment the sea bed seemed to rise in a rumble of thunder: mortars, the whistle of shells, staccato fire of machine guns – everything seemed concentrated towards us. Like lightning the ramps were thrown down. Wearing their green berets, a first group rushed to the beach but a few seconds before the second group flung themselves forward a 75-mm shell tore away the ramps in a scream of metal and wood. A second’s hesitation – the vessel must be cleared and the beach reached at all costs. Speed became the vital factor. The commandos jumped into 6 feet of water with their 35-kilo packs, their weapons making even more weight, and they gained a footage in a few strokes. The other craft, more fortunate, was able to put down its troops by way of its ramps.
Lieutenant H.T. Bone, 2nd East Yorkshire Regiment
In the Mess decks we blacked our faces with black Palm Olive cream and listened to the naval orders over the loud-hailer. Most of us had taken communion on the Sunday, but the padre had a few words to say to us. Then the actual loading into craft – swinging on davits – the boat lowering and finally ‘Away boats.’ While this was going on, all around could be seen the rest of the convoy, with battleships and cruisers firing their big guns every few minutes and destroyers rushing round. One had been hit by something and only the up-ended part of its bows remained in view. As our flotilla swung into line behind its leader we raised our flag, a black silk square with the white rose of Yorkshire in the centre … It was some distance to the beaches, and it was a wet trip. All of us had a spare gas-cape to keep us dry and we chewed our gum stolidly. Mine was in my mouth twelve or fourteen hours later and I usually hate the stuff and never touch it. Shielding ourselves from the spray and watching the fire going down from all the supporting arms and the Spits [Spitfires] overhead, the time soon passed … Suddenly there was a jarring bump on the left, and looking up from our boards we saw one of the beach obstacles about two feet above our left gunwale with a large mine on top of it, just as photographs had shown us. Again a bump, on the right, but still we had not grounded. The Colonel and the flotilla leader were piloting us in, and for a few brief minutes nothing happened except the music of the guns and the whang of occasional bullets overhead, with the sporadic explosions of mortar bombs and the background of our own heavy machine-gun fire. The doors opened as we grounded and the Colonel was out. The sea was choppy and the boat swung a good bit as one by one we followed him. Several fell in and got soaked through. I was lucky. I stopped for a few seconds to help my men with their wireless sets and to ensure they kept them dry. As we staggered ashore we dispersed and lay down above the water’s edge. Stuff was falling pretty close to us and although I did not see it happen, quite a number of people from my own boat were hit. Instinctively where we lay we hacked holes with our shovels. The Colonel moved forward. I tried to collect my party of sets and operators, but could only see a few of them. I began to recognize wounded men of the assault companies. Some were dead, others struggling to crawl out of the water because the tide was rising very rapidly.
Sergeant H.M. Kellar, Devonshire Regiment
When we were about 200 yards from our landing point I could see heavy-machine-gun bullets cutting up the sand and making a noise like a huge swarm of bees.
I thought, ‘My God, we are going to be slaughtered!’ Then we were on the beach and the ramp was down and I do not know why but the firing stopped. Had it not done so I had my eye on a huge crater in the sand in front of a pill-box. On coming down the ramp I spotted our Company Commander staggering about with blood streaming down his face.
Anonymous Private, East Yorkshire Regiment
It was like a bloody skittle alley. The lads were being bowled over right left and centre. I thought to myself, ‘You’ll be a lucky bugger if you make it up there.’ Christ, it were bad.
W. Emlyn ‘Taffy’ Jones, 1st Special Service Brigade
Looking over the side we saw many craft broken down and some sinking and still no sign of the beach – too much smoke. Columns of water were now shooting up between our landing craft and the sound of battle grew louder. Can’t be long now, I can hear the small-arms fire; then suddenly, the beach appeared before us, tanks and landing craft on fire, men moving up the beach as quickly as possible, no doubt remembering Lord Lovat’s words: ‘If you wish to live to a ripe old age, keep moving.’ There were those lying there that just didn’t make it. Only seconds to go now before we hit the beach; the noise, the smell of gunpowder, flashing of guns. The naval ratings both port and starboard were firing guns at the enemy targets oblivious of the enemy fire which was now raining down on us. Landing craft to left and right had been hit and were now on fire. This is it – ramp down, let’s move, we’re a sitting target. Naval personnel scamper back to the rear of the bridge for safety. What’s the hold-up? Let’s move. Bren gunner has frozen at the top of the ramp, won’t move. Hit him out of the way. It seemed like hours before we got moving, then we found that only one ramp could be used. The other had broken away from its stanchions. To make matters worse, the only way we could land was to scramble down this one ramp on our backsides.
Ken Wright, 1st Special Service Brigade
There was a terrific jar, and all the first half of the party in the craft fell over on top of each other. I felt quite numb in my right side – no pain, just a sudden absence of feeling really, and a feeling of being knocked out of breath. At the same moment, the doors of the craft were opened and the ramp lowered, and the naval bloke said, ‘This is where you get off.’ So I got off, after a bit of preliminary gasping for breath and struggling free from all the others. Doughty kept on saying, ‘Go on, sir’, and it seemed ages before I got myself up and off the boat. There were quite a few who could not follow me off, including our padre. I got off into about three feet of water. It was nearly 7.45 … We had about fifty or sixty yards to wade and what with the weight of the rucksack and the water to push through, I was nearly exhausted by the time I got clear. I realized that I had been hit and was therefore less mobile than usual (which is saying something!) so when I got on the beach I just sat down and dumped the rucksack with all my belongings in it. That beach was no health resort, and I thought I’d be better off away from it, even without a change of underclothing!
Driver John Osborne, 101 Company General Transport Amphibious
As I went into the beach there were little spurts in the water; it took a little while for me to realize they were made by bullets. There were still a number of Germans in the houses and pill-boxes along the front. Suddenly between the waves right in front of my DUKW there was a pole sticking up with a shell tied to the top. That’s when all sense of adventure disappeared.
Private Islwyn Edmunds, South Wales Borderers, aged 19
I was very frightened, not only because of the shot and shell, but the fact that I could not swim troubled me greatly. Not that it would have made any difference with the weight of equipment I was carrying. I was also ordered to take a bicycle off with me, but I declined by saying I had enough trouble getting myself off. However, while I was arguing with the sergeant a sailor from our craft swam to the shore and attached a rope to a disabled tank, and we were able to work along this line. Unfortunately as I was proceeding along this rope, the buckle of my pack got caught in the rope … with the waves coming in I couldn’t keep my head above water. I was going under for the third time, when a hand pulled me out. It was my friend, who was aware of my fear of the water and had kept a look-out for me. He dragged me to the beach, where I lay exhausted, shells exploding everywhere.
Private Robert Macduff, Wiltshire Regiment
The landing craft drew up towards the beach. The infantrymen, who had their small packs on their back, gas-mask in front, pouches full of ammo and their rifles, jumped in the water and partly swam ashore. I had a number 18 communication set on my back, on top of it was my small pack, a number 23 communication set below my gas-mask, a telephone set on one side, on the other the new telephone equipment and spare batteries – all waterproofed – and a Sten gun in my hand. Off I jumped from the landing craft – straight down into the water. With the weight I was carrying swimming was out of the question. As the water closed over my head sheer panic gripped me and I began to run as fast as I could until my head was above water.
Sergeant Bellows, Hampshire Regiment
I said we were in deep water and was stuck on an obstacle. The ship officer said it was only four feet six deep. He had his way and ordered the vehicle to disembark. I ordered all the men to get on the turrets of the tanks and on the trailer of the bulldozer. The first tank went off and went to the left, the water was deep, only the top of the turret and the exhaust was showing and two men clinging on for dear life. The other tank went to the right. He foundered, he went deeper. Next to go was the armoured bulldozer, it went down the ramp, fouled the chain of the ramp and capsized pulling the trailer which broke from the bulldozer and floated on its side. The left-hand tank got ashore, the other didn’t. The bulldozer never stood a chance. Some of the men still clung to the trailer and were OK. Quite a few died.
Alfred Leonard, Merchant Navy
There were dismembered personnel in the water, which was upsetting. From a young man’s point of view, up to then D-Day had been exciting, with all the guns going off, everything on the move and nobody getting killed. It was pure excitement. But when you see dead chaps in the water, you think, ‘Crikey, what is this all about?’
George Collard, 1st RM Armoured Support Regiment
The tanks slid into the sea at some depth. Water was pouring in through the turret ring causing some trouble. I found out that the troop sergeant could not get out through his hatch. I could, so it fell to me to give directions to the driver. Exposed in the turret hatch I had some thoughts about being shot between the eyes, but I looked with some admiration at the sight of the shells landing on the concrete stongpoints. Giving orders – ‘drive right’, ‘drive left’, ‘forward’ – I got the tank onto the beach between the anti-invasion obstacles, when we were suddenly in an explosion which blew off the left track. Under cover of the dunes we managed to shorten and correct this, and keep going.
Corporal L.E. Richards, 50th Division, Signaller to Brigadier Sir Alexander Stanier
I asked Corporal Davidson whether he thought the carrier and the jeep could be driven ashore. He replied that the back axle of the jeep was broken but that the carrier seemed all right. The carrier had been fitted with extra plates which extended eighteen inches or more above its normal height. These plates were held together by string at the top corner and all the joints had been made waterproof. Knowing Corporal Davidson would try to land the carrier, I volunteered to stay on the front and give him steering instructions, because he was unable to see from his driving seat. Before starting I drew his attention to two mines on a pole slightly to the right of the craft and about eight feet away. To avoid these I told him to bear left when he felt himself on the run or when I should tell him.
Corporal Davidson started the engine and we began to move. I grasped the string, holding the front and side plates together, and stood on the front, with my back to the carrier. As we were moving onto the ramp the carrier hit the side of the craft and I felt myself falling sideways. By this time the carrier was going down the ramp and I must have entered the water at the same time. For a split second I did not know what had happened, and I felt myself being dragged along beside the carrier. In falling, I had hooked two of my fingers round the string and the back of my left hand rested on the top of the side sheet. We were now making for the shore. My fingers pained me intensely but I realized that if I attempted to move them I should, to say the least, lose my tow ashore. My right hand was free and I brought it across my chest and held the set above the water, at the same time kicking my legs. I did this for two reasons, first and foremost to try and keep my feet away from the tracks of the carrier and secondly to propel myself along to ease the weight on my left arm.
Corporal Davidson stopped when he got into shallow water and I stood up and disengaged my fingers. He looked at me and said that he thought I was dead, and wanted to know what had happened. He could hardly believe it when I told him. Neither of us to this day can say how close we must have been to the two mines. They must have been barely inches away. I followed the carrier as it moved onto the beach. We joined up with our party who were already on the beach and I learned that the tanks and vehicles on the beach were unable to leave because of a huge crater in the road near the beach exit.
Alan Melville, RAF war correspondent
It was the first time I had driven anything – waterproofed or not – through any depth of water, and it is a terrifying experience. You can’t hear a sound from your engine, and the natural thing to do is to panic and assume that you have stalled. For weeks I had had the one golden rule drummed into me about one’s behaviour on such occasions: don’t use your clutch – never, never, never use your clutch. I had the most maddening temptation to get at that damned clutch: my toes itched to get near it. But to my intense surprise, I realized that we were still moving. Water was surging round the sides of the windscreen, and we were leaving a fair-sized wash behind us. Someone shouted something after us from the rhino, but whether it was advice, good wishes or just the usual blasphemy I never knew.
Captain Peter Young, 1st Special Service Brigade
Land ahead now – a hundred yards away a column of water shoots into the air. Away to port a tank landing craft burns fiercely, ammunition exploding as the crew go over the side. Ashore is a line of battered houses whose silhouette looks familiar from the photographs. They must surely mark our landing-place. On the beach a few tanks creep about and fire occasional shots at an unseen foe. Ouistreham is not much more than a thousand yards to port now. Somewhere on the front are the guns that are shelling us; the flashes are plainly visible every few seconds. The craft slows down.
‘What are you waiting for?’
‘There are still five minutes to go before H + go,’ the Captain, a young RNVR officer, replies.
‘I don’t think anyone will mind if we’re five minutes early on D-Day.’
‘Then in we go.’
In fact, most landing craft were ordered in by the beachmasters in strict succession, and had to wait their turn, milling around offshore in huge herds. This not only made the craft vulnerable to German shells, but the unpleasant motion on an anyway choppy sea produced yet more seasickness.
Major F.D. Goode, Gloucestershire Regiment
As we drew nearer we could see the distinct coast was a mass of smoke and flames. At this time the Colonel joined us on the bridge and the Captain said that we were too early and we would have to circle offshore until we were called in to the beach. So we started to circle slowly and the motion became very unpleasant. Nearly all the troops were seasick and those who had managed to find a place on deck looked very grey and miserable. One of the naval ratings brought me a mug of cocoa. Until that moment, although queasy, I had not been sick, but almost immediately after I threw up into a bucket, placed for that purpose on the bridge … As we neared the beach we could see some activity by our troops and guide parties and a number of bodies lying about and broken-down tanks and DD tanks. However, by this time we were all feeling so seasick that the one thing we wanted to do was get ashore.
Naturally, being British they had to assume an air of nonchalance. There were some who even pulled it off.
Captain Peter Young, 1st Special Service Brigade
No. 3 Troop comes ashore in grand style and almost unscathed. In the bows Troopers Osborne and Jennings make mock of the German gunners: ‘Put your sights up, Jerry!’ ‘Down a little.’ ‘Give her more wind-gauge’, and much nonsense besides, as each shell flies past and, as luck would have it, misses their craft – except for the wireless aerial. The first man ashore is Slinger Martin, our veteran Administrative Officer, whose first campaign in France lies thirty years in the past.
Among the most surprising receptions on reaching the sands of Normandy was that granted a company of the Royal Berkshire Regiment.
Captain Peter Prior, Royal Berkshire Regiment
There was a hell of a battle going on further up the beach, but in our sector the opposition quickly crumpled. As we went ashore we were met by a lovely blonde French girl shouting, ‘Vive les Anglais.’
This, though, was an exception. The most common welcome was that provided by the Wehrmacht. After touching down on the Normandy shore, the men of the British and Canadian Armies still had to make it across the sand and shingle into the hinterland. Their ease in doing this was largely dictated by the local calibre of the German coastal defences and troops. On Gold beach the British 1st Hampshire Regiment fought a bitter eight-hour battle against the defences at Le Hamel. Several hundred yards to the left the Green Howards moved inland and secured their first objective in under an hour.
Private Cartwright, South Lancashire Regiment
As soon as I hit the beach I wanted to go, get away from the water. I think I went across the beach like a hare.
George Collard, 1st RM Armoured Support Regiment
A number of wounded and dead were on the beach, including some killed where our own [not the Royal Marines’] tanks had run over them, pushing – it appeared – the bile in the liver up to the faces.
Howard Marshall, BBC war correspondent
When they got ashore they seemed to be in perfectly good order because the troops out of that barge immediately assembled, went to their appointed places and there was no semblance of any kind of confusion. But the scene on the beach, until one had sorted it out, was at first rather depressing because we did see a great many barges in difficulties with these anti-tank screens. We noticed that a number of them had struck mines as ours had struck mines. But then we began to see that in fact the proportion which had got through was very much greater and that troops were moving all along the roads and that tanks were out already and going up the hills. That in fact we were dominating the situation and that our main enemy was the weather, and that we were beating the weather. We had our troops and tanks ashore and the Germans weren’t really putting up a great deal of resistance.
Donald S. Vaughan, 79th Armoured Division
I was in an AVRE, our job being to lay a coconut matting over any soft spots on the beach. This wasn’t necessary, so when we got to the top of the beach we stopped and Corporal Fairley, the demolition NCO, and myself got out to erect a windsock so as to show anybody behind that it was a clear lane. We’d finished erecting the windsock and were re-mounting the tank when we were hit. Corporal Fairley was killed. The tank itself was damaged so badly – tracks were blown off, bogeys as well, the petrol tank was pierced – that we abandoned it. What was left of us.
Ken Coney, Royal Corps of Signals
Diary, 6 June
07.55. We have landed in two feet of water and take cover on the beach. Bullets are zipping through the sea, two Sherman tanks go up in flames. We move along the beach.
08.30. Now we have dug in before a Jerry strong point. A CEP is there. Dead and dying are everywhere. I can’t understand why I am not frightened. The shelling is getting worse. MG [machine-gun fire] opens up from the flank. I see a few POWs huddled in the sea, terror-stricken of their own fire. I have exultation at the sight.
10.00. Still hell on the beach.
War Diary: 8th Canadian Infantry Brigade, Juno Beach
Driver John Osborne, 101 Company General Transport Amphibious
Leaving the sea I saw a young soldier about my age lying half in the water. I was looking down, feeling sorry for him, when I heard a loud explosion in front. I jerked my head around and saw a large piece of something floating down towards me – it was the hatch-cover off the engine compartment of the DUKW in front, the bows of which were now curved up. The driver, Stan Hall, was nowhere in sight but his co-driver George Burton came running towards me yelling like hell. He had actually been blown out of the DUKW! I stopped and pulled him aboard. He was unhurt, except that both his ears had been completely skinned. I later learned that Stan Hall was still alive, but had had his bottom jaw blown off.
James Gallagher, RE
The German artillery piece had been put out of action and replaced by a British gun which the RA boys were operating to good effect. On the outside wall of the encampment were chalked the words: ‘UNDER NEW MANAGEMENT – DAY AND NIGHT SERVICE.’
Anonymous Sergeant, RE
We got to the top of the rise [when] I saw my first German. He was alive, but not for long. These two Canadians behind me … went up through this opening in the sea wall … The Jerry came out of the emplacement with a Schmeisser. I thought, Christ! They haven’t seen him … But they just didn’t stop running. They just cracked their rifle butts down on the German and that was that.
T. Tateson, Green Howards
The beach was in a state of organized chaos with tanks, guns, jeeps, trucks, personnel carriers and every type of vehicle, some of which had been hit and knocked out. The heather or grass off the beach was burning and clouds of smoke prevented a view of what lay beyond. Wounded men, including some Germans, were sitting at the top of the beach, and stretcher-bearers were carrying others down to the boats from which we had landed. We walked along the top of the beach to reach our intended landing place, which was the road leading inland from le Riviere to Ver-sur-mer.
Major F.D. Goode, Gloucestershire Regiment
I concentrated on following the taped guys to my left through the dunes marked by a wrecked Sherman flail tank … I stopped for a while to look at my map but we were off it and my best bet was to find the lateral road and turn right in the direction of Le Hamel. We were now in an area of the main German beach defences, which had been heavily plastered by the Navy and RAF. Pill-boxes and blockhouses were shattered and I have a clear recollection of one embrasure out of which a German officer had tried to climb; it had descended on top of him and squashed his top half, leaving his legs with a pair of well-polished boots protruding.
W. Emlyn ‘Taffy’ Jones, 1st Special Service Brigade
I remember Sergeant Ian Grant, cameraman of the Army Film and Photo Unit – ‘Jock’ as I affectionately called him – attached himself to me. We’d had a few words together on the way over. He was a cool customer. The enemy fire didn’t seem to bother him, he wanted pictures and on a few occasions I had to tell him to get his head down before he had it blown off. As we came off the beach we again came under heavy fire and we dived into the nearest ditch. On looking up, I noticed ‘a piece of steak’ on the rear of his shoulder and without a word I pulled out my commando dagger and quickly flicked the offensive piece of meat away. ‘What’s up?’ said Jock, feeling a little nudge. ‘I don’t know, but I think somebody is trying to hit us,’ I replied.
Trooper Peter Davies, 1st East Riding Yeomanry
On the way [off the beach] we passed about in all a dozen French civilians. They were mostly old and didn’t look very excited – if they’d had to go through the preliminary bombardment that is hardly surprising.
Ken Wright, 1st Special Service Brigade
There was a huge pill-box right in front of us as we landed, and there was a lot of fire coming from there and from the chateau behind it. I think I must have walked through a machine-gun arc at this time, though I noticed nothing then, for a little later I found bullet holes in my right thigh and left calf. I certainly was in luck that day!
Captain Peter Young, 1st Special Service Brigade
We trot down the inland side of the dunes, dash across a road and a tram-line, and hurl ourselves over a wire fence, no great obstacle. The soldiers come swarming down the slope. Away to the left a quick-firing gun opens up. A shell smacks into the soft ground behind us, and something like the kick of a mule hits me on the right shoulder blade.
‘That was a near one,’ shouts RSM [Regimental Sergeant-Major] Stenhouse.
‘Near one be damned, it hit me!’
This marsh is not the place to linger in. We push on. Progress is slow, floundering and leaping across deep slimy ditches. But the soft ground minimizes the effect of the German shells. Even so Lieutenant Cowieson, of 5 Troop, has a nasty wound, and Sergeant King takes over his section. No. 3 Troop has lost Sergeant Dowling, wounded by a shell that landed within a yard of him.
At length we reach the forming-up place. Except for 6 Troop the Commando is still more or less intact. Donald Hopson comes up and reports. Then Cowieson appears, assuring me that he is all right, but he seems to be pretty hard hit and I tell him to go back. John Pooley, my Second-in-Command, has also been hit. He soon appears, however, not much the worse for a near miss, though he has a gash on his lip. I move my right arm about and find that it is still in working order; a clod must have hit my equipment.
Near our forming-up place a company commander of one of the assault battalions sits under a hedge with his CSM [Company Sergeant-Major] and two others, waiting for his men whom we last saw digging-in on the beach a thousand yards behind him …
Suddenly there comes an unearthly, blood-chilling, bellowing noise like a gigantic cow in agony and six bombs land in the next field in a cloud of black smoke – our first meeting with ‘Moaning Minnie’, the German six-barrelled mortar.
‘Ah, Nebelwerfer,’ says Donald Hopson in his usual cool manner, as if it were some sort of military curio that he has been wanting to add to his collection.
Taking a quick look round to check whether everyone is present, I see Captain Martin again.
‘All up, Slinger?’
‘Aye, aye, sir.’ ‘Good. Vörwats!’ and the advance begins again.
The Allies had broken through Hitler’s Atlantic Wall. By midday the Canadians, British and Americans were everywhere on the move inland, plodding up narrow lanes, wading through marshes, edging through Norman orchards bounded by high hedges and along village streets. In the east the British struck out towards their D-Day objectives of Caen, Bayeaux and, in the case of the commandos of Lord Lovat’s 1st Special Service Brigade, the reinforcement of the flank on the Orne held by the 6th Airborne Division.
Report: 79th Armoured Division
The [AVRE] crew made their way to Hermanville on foot, led by the crew commander, Sgt Kilvert. Reaching a high farm wall they were checked by heavy small arms fire, which they answered with Brens. Then Sgt Kilvert burst open the farm door and, covered by his crew, raked the farmhouse with fire killing eleven Germans. They later routed an enemy patrol on the same road and handed over to the infantry.
Lieutenant H.T. Bone, 2nd East Yorkshire Regiment
The move inland was not much fun since, although we had cleared the beach defences, Jerry was mortaring us pretty badly from his rear positions. Besides, we had to cross a marsh and in places we were up to our armpits in muddy water and slime. The mortars had our range and as I helped my people through the deep parts (why are all Yorkshire signallers only 5 ft 2 in?) they were bursting only 50 yards behind us. We had just got across the deepest drain when Jerry hit. Then for about half an hour we had a rest while the companies fought the next battle and the commandos streamed through us to do their job …
We could not get away, neither could we dig. The ground was hard and tangled with roots, the bombs were bursting literally everywhere all the time. I laid on my face for a few moments then, seeing the Provost sergeant hit five yards away, I pushed over to him and shoved my field dressing on the back of his neck. He had a piece through his shoulder, but it was not serious, and we got him out of it. (Curious how everyone turns yellow when hit.) We all had to get out of it, and we did. The attack went in the rear instead and was successful, lots of Jerry prisoners being captured, but Dicky was killed and Hurch wounded, as well as a good many others.
Captain David Tibbs, Regimental Medical Officer, 13th Battalion, Parachute Regiment
Fierce fighting was going [on all] around while the Germans tried to recapture the bridges over the canal and the river at Le Bas de Ranville itself was almost in the front line. The Germans were only a few hundred yards away from Le Bas de Ranville and attacking it fiercely all the time, just as Ranville itself was under counter-attack from the Germans who were beginning to send in elements of the 21st Panzer Division.
The scene around the Field Ambulance, which was occupying a chateau in Le Bas de Ranville, was extraordinary. We were, the 9th Parachute Brigade, by this stage confined to a very tight area in Ranville and Bas de Ranville and the Germans were fiercely attacking, which meant there were consistent storms of mortars coming down and a number of casualties occurring all the time. In the Field Ambulance itself a large number, perhaps a hundred or two [hundred] wounded, had been brought and were filling the buildings … The surgeons were doing their best to cope with some of the worst wounded who would benefit most; for example, those with haemorrhagic or thoracic wounds. The scene was one of noise, of wounded men, but nevertheless of organisation.
W. Emlyn ‘Taffy’ Jones, 1st Special Service Brigade
I saw Sergeant-Major Harry Larkman legging it over a barbed wire fence into a field. ‘Harry,’ I shouted, ‘What the Hell do you think you’re doing? Can’t you read German? Look between your legs’, and when he did there was a notice saying ‘Achtung Minen’. He gave a wry smile and waved then took another route. Now it was open country and we had broken through the ‘Atlantic Wall’ – marshland lay ahead. There was no cover and progress was slow. Shells and mortars came raining down but luckily the soft ground minimized the effect of the bombardments. Into a copse at the top of the rise, a slight rest and then on to Colleville where we were met by enemy small-arms fire; many enemy snipers around but progress had to be made – time was of the essence. The airborne troops who landed during the night of 5/6 June were holding the bridges at Benouville and the Commando Brigade had promised to relieve them by midday. Through Colleville and on to St Aubin D’Arquenay where we met with very little resistance, though one had to be aware of snipers. From there on to Benouville where once again we had trouble with snipers. While on our way to Benouville we heard what we thought could only be a tank coming from our road. This would be a great help to us but, unfortunately, it turned out to be one of our bulldozers. We warned the driver to stay put as the area wasn’t cleared yet, but he insisted he’d had his orders. We were to meet again a few hundred yards down the road – he was slumped over his wheel, a bullet through his head. Now lay the approach road to the bridge – now known as Pegasus Bridge. A halt was called and we were thankful for the break but still couldn’t relax as the enemy were keeping up a relentless bombardment.
The time came for us to cross the bridge which was under a smoke haze. Lord Lovat was standing in the middle of the road, just a few yards from the bridge, oblivious of the enemy fire which came raining down from the Château de Benouville on the west bank of the canal a few hundred yards to the south. A number of dead Germans lay around, obviously victims of the airborne assault. To the east side of the canal lay the gliders which had landed during the night. Lord Lovat standing there reminded me of a policeman on traffic duty, urging us on. ‘Don’t run across the bridge – walk,’ were his orders. Then it was my turn to go, passing some airborne lads who were dug in at the side of the bridge. ‘Good luck, keep going, there’s another bridge,’ they shouted. I think it must have been one of the fastest walks I have ever undertaken, feeling so vulnerable with bullets pinging off the steel girders and a fair amount of mortar fire. Soon I was across and into a ditch on the other side – a slight breather.
London Gazette: Victoria Cross citation for No. 4390973 Warrant Officer Class II (Company Sergeant-Major) Stanley Elton Hollis, The Green Howards
CSM Hollis was the only serviceman to win the VC on D-Day.
In Normandy on 6 June, 1944, during the assault on the beaches and the Mont Fleury Battery, C.S.M. Hollis’s Company Commander noticed that two of the pill-boxes had been by-passed, and went with C.S.M. Hollis to see that they were clear. When they were 20 yards from the pill-box, a machine-gun opened fire from the slit and C.S.M. Hollis instantly rushed straight at the pill-box, firing his Sten gun. He jumped on top of the pill-box, re-charged his magazine, threw a grenade in through the door and fired his Sten gun into it, killing two Germans and making the remainder prisoner. He then cleared several Germans from a neighbouring trench. By his action, he undoubtedly saved his Company from being fired on heavily from the rear and enabled them to open the main beach exit.
Later the same day, in the village of Crepon, the Company encountered a field gun and crew armed with Spandaus at 100 yards range. C.S.M. Hollis was put in command of a party to cover an attack on the gun, but the movement was held up. Seeing this, C.S.M. Hollis pushed right forward to engage the gun with a P.I.A.T. from a house at 50 yards range. He was observed by a sniper who fired and grazed his right cheek, and at the same moment the gun swung round and fired at point-blank range into the house. To avoid the fallen masonry C.S.M. Hollis moved his party to an alternative position. Two of the enemy gun crew had by this time been killed, and the gun was destroyed shortly afterwards. He later found that two of his men had stayed behind in the house and immediately volunteered to get them out. In full view of the enemy who were continually firing at him, he went forward alone using a Bren gun to distract their attention from the other men. Under cover of his diversion, the two men were able to get back.
Wherever fighting was heaviest, C.S.M. Hollis appeared and in the course of a magnificent day’s work, he displayed the utmost gallantry and on two separate occasions his courage and initiative prevented the enemy from holding up the advance at critical stages. It was largely through his heroism and resource that the Company’s objectives were gained and casualties were not heavier, and by his own bravery he saved the lives of many of his men.
Platoon commander, Canadian Scottish
An LMG which sounded like a Bren opened up from a position about 150 yards away. We hit the dirt and I shouted. ‘This must be the Winnipegs. When I say “UP” – all up together and shout “WINNIPEGS”.’ We did, and to our surprise two enemy infantry sections stood up just 125–150 yards ahead. They too were a picture of amazement. Their camouflage was perfect and it was no wonder we did not see them earlier. But the stunned silence did not last long. There was only one course of action, and to a man the platoon rushed the enemy positions. It was a bitter encounter with much hand-to-hand fighting.
T. Tateson, Green Howards
Without warning, a salvo of gunfire landed right in the middle of the troops to our immediate left, followed by a second shortly afterwards. From messages being passed on the radio, I learned that no one knew who was responsible except that it was coming from behind us. When a third salvo descended with the most enormous crack my signal training deserted me and I sent the unauthorized message, ‘Stop this fucking barrage.’ By complete coincidence, but to the flattery of my ego, the firing ceased. We later learned that it came from the Navy lying offshore, who did not realize we had advanced so far.
The speed of the British advance also caught German units unaware.
Anonymous German Private
Right in the middle of all this turmoil I got orders to go with my car for a reconnaissance towards the coast. With a few infantrymen I reported to a lieutenant. His orders were to retake a village nearby. While he was still talking to me to explain the position, a British tank came rolling towards us from behind, from a direction in which we had not even suspected the presence of the enemy. The enemy tank immediately opened fire on us. Resistance was out of the question. I saw how a group of Polish infantrymen went over to the enemy – carrying their machine guns and waving their arms. The officer and myself hid in the brush. When we tried to get through to our lines in the evening British paratroops caught us.
At first I was rather depressed, of course. I, an old soldier, a prisoner of war after a few hours of invasion. But when I saw the material behind the enemy front, I could only say, ‘Old man, how lucky you have been!’
In the meantime the ‘Tommy’ advance went resolutely on.
Major F.D. Goode, Gloucestershire Regiment
Our advance was to be supported by rocket-firing Typhoons of the RAF. The enemy was holding the hedge on the opposite side of the field some 150 yards away. At this point I took the time to change my shirt and vest for dry ones from my pack as I was soaked with seawater and sweat. I am vague as to the time but it must have been after midday, as the sun was high. We heard the roar of the engines of the aircraft as they swept over us at almost ground level. They released their rockets behind our position and we could hear these swish over our heads. The whole line of the hedge opposite burst into flames with a thunderous bang and we clambered through our hedge and advanced through the dead cattle. There did not seem to be any firing from the direction of the enemy and when we arrived at their position it was deserted.
… The colonel called another ‘Q’ Group to meet in the village of Ryes and we sat in the ditches by the roadside. The village had been heavily shelled and most of the trees were cut down, some across the road. There were a number of dead Germans lying about and there was a sickly smell of death in the air. It was hot, sunny and smelly. Colonel Biddle had a bad cold and could smell nothing, but I for one was glad to get back to my company.
…
As D Company we brought up the rear of the battalion. We were marching with some fifty yards between companies and the transport was in the rear of the company. The roads were bordered with trees and grass verges which we presumed were mined. There was a certain amount of sniping and one who was firing at us turned out to be Japanese.
The sniper was probably recruited from the many Japanese students at German universities. A significant proportion of the Wehrmacht’s army was made up of non-German nationals including, aside from Japanese, Poles, Russians, Mongolians, Tartars and Uzbeks. Often they surrendered to the Allies with alacrity.
With the Allied advance came the liberation of the first French villages.
Anne de Vigneral, Ver-sur-Mer
Diary, 6 June
12 noon. Relative calm, but we all run to find boards and branches to cover our trench. We fetch rugs, mattresses etc. On the last foray we meet a German officer who says to me, ‘The sleep is ended.’ He was naive! We try to have a disjointed lunch, but it is interrupted continually. The German officer stations himself in a farmer’s hedge and forbids them to betray him … In any case bursts of fire are everywhere, the children run back into the house. I hadn’t realized that in the field where we collected our wood the English were in one hedge, the Germans in the hedge opposite and they were shooting at each other!!
1 p.m. I beg everyone to eat, but the noise gets worse and when I open the window I see all the Germans bent double going over the village bridge. We take our plates out, scuttle across the terrace and fall into the trench. The terrace is covered with bullets, the little maid feels one scrape her leg … we found it afterwards … We see lots of Germans in the area between the property and the river. We don’t know what to think.
1.15. We pop our heads out of the trench and see soldiers, but we can’t recognize them. Is the uniform khaki or green? They are on their stomachs in the leaves …
1.30. To reassure myself I go to the kitchen to get some coffee (we had lunched in the trench) and come back quietly but very obviously carrying a coffee pot … and then the soldiers hidden in the laurels by the bridge come out. Hurrah, they are Canadians. We have lumps in our throats, we all speak at once, it is indescribable. Some laugh, some cry. They give the children chocolate; they are of course delighted. Themselves, they arrive calmly, chewing gum. (Isn’t that typically English.)
2.00. Their officer arrives and tours the house with me looking for delayed action bombs. I, without a thought of danger, and all in a rush, open doors and cupboards. We find some bottles of champagne which we bring down. We sit on the steps and all drink. Even Jacques, 7 years old, has a glass and drinks a toast with us. We all have already been given Capstan and Gold Flake cigarettes. Oh, don’t they smell lovely!!
Trooper Peter Davies, 1st East Riding, Yeomanry
When we stopped outside Colleville there were two infantrymen, one standing guard on the corner of the road and one digging a trench. Two young French girls came out, walking around, from this house and stopped and chatted to these infantrymen. The first thing I saw that made me smile that day was their emergency ration of chocolate being handed over to these two French mesdemoiselles that were chatting to them. It proved we were in France.
As the first invasion forces fought and fraternized, tens of thousands of other GIs and Tommies continued to pour across the Channel, along with ship after ship of material.
Nevin F. Price, USAAF 397th Bomb Group
Flying back from a bombing raid behind Omaha it occurred to me that if we had to ditch there were so many ships in the Channel we could have walked back to England bow to stern.
Included in this cross-Channel traffic was a bizarre procession of gigantic concrete objects (caissons, or ‘Phoenix units’), later to be metamorphosed into the purpose-built Mulberry Harbour. Sitting on top of one of the caissons was an anti-aircraft gunner of the Royal Artillery.
Bombardier Richard ‘Dickie’ Thomas, RA
As the tug pulled us out, we could see these flags on small buoys. Slowly but surely we started swaying from side to side – there was no steering mechanism on the caisson, it was just a concrete box. As we went along we caught up the flags and started pulling them out. Anybody following us didn’t know where they were going. Apparently a lot of ships mislaid their route because of the lost guide flags.
The departure of the thousands of Allied troops left English ports in an eerie silence.
Mary Thomson, Tilbury
We woke, it was a bright sunny day, and the troops had all gone. Everything had gone. The tents had gone – we didn’t hear anything. The men had just disappeared. Strangely enough there was no litter. There was just flattened grass where the tents had been.
Even though the worst of the fighting on the Normandy beaches had subsided after the breakthrough by the first invasion waves, the beaches continued to have their horrors and dangers.
Colonel H.S. Gillies, King’s Own Scottish Borderers
Signs of earlier fighting were abundant on the beach. The turf and sand were ripped up by tank tracks, barbed wire and beach obstacles were targeted together among broken glass and debris from the houses, and here and there a few bodies lay around covered with gas-capes.
By this time the beach was not under direct enemy small-arms fire, but spasmodic mortar and gun fire were taking a continuous toll.
Alan Melville, RAF war correspondent
I stopped the jeep to ask someone if he had seen anyone else in RAF uniform; at that moment something – I never found out what – dived out of the sky and seared along the beach with its machine guns blazing. There was a half-dug slit trench right in front of me and I threw myself into it head first. My legs were sticking out and I remember lying there thinking that I would rather be shot in the legs than anywhere else. I wanted to push my steel helmet back to protect my neck but I was too frightened to move. My face was pressed tightly down into the sand, and I must have pushed the top layer of sand away, for it was wet and clinging. It got in my mouth, and it was a taste we were all to get to know very well.
Driver John Osborne, 101 Company General Transport Amphibious
During the afternoon the bodies had been collected off the beach and stacked up outside the beach dressing station. They were like a wall about three or four bodies high.
Lieutenant H.T. Bone, 2nd East Yorkshire Regiment
The Colonel was getting a grip on the battle and I was sent back on the beach to collect the rest of us. I did not feel afraid, but rather elated and full of beans. There were some horrible sights there and not a few men calling out for help. I wanted to pull a body out of the waves, but he looked to be dead and I had no time or duty there, the beach medical people would gradually get round to them all. Under the sides of a tank that had been hit I saw a bunch of my people and I bawled at them to get up and get moving since they were doing no good where they were and could quite safely get along to H.Q. I felt a little callous when I found that nearly all of them had been hit and some were dead.
Bombardier Harry Hartill, RA
Unfortunately the ramp of the liberty ship had been lowered at the edge of a bomb crater and the first vehicle off promptly vanished in ten feet of water. The ramp was resited and the ship’s captain ordered the next vehicle down. But there were no John Waynes among us – better to be a live coward than a dead hero, we thought, and we waited for someone to drive off. The Captain drew his revolver and shouted, ‘I’ll shoot the first bastard that disobeys my orders,’ and fired over our heads. Reluctantly we drove down that awesome ramp onto the beach at Normandy.
…
We were ordered to dig in and my four cable-laying signallers and myself dug a 12-foot long and 2-feet deep trench for our protection. A couple of enemy shells came over and we dug deeper. More shells brought more digging, making it difficult to climb in and out.
Leading Aircraftman Gordon Jones, Combined Operations
Everything on the beach was laid out so beautifully: there were tapes where we were supposed to go, there was a beach master giving directions, so up we went in our Chevrolet four-wheel drive trucks. Wonderfully easy. When we got to our designated area we were supposed to dig slit trenches, but we thought, ‘What the hell do we want to dig slit trenches for? This is an absolute cakewalk.’ S0 we didn’t. Then three Heinkels – I think it was Heinkels – came over at about 100 feet, parallel to the beach from further up in France, and they were so low that I could see each gunner in his perspex cupola. They sprayed machine-gun fire everywhere. No one in our group was killed but it was certainly an eye-opener.
This Heinkel raid was one of the very few appearances by the Luftwaffe on D-Day. In the weeks beforehand numerous Luftwaffe planes and pilots had been withdrawn from France to protect the skies of the Fatherland itself against USAAF and RAF bombing. In the morning of 6 June, the Luftwaffe made only one raid on the Allied invasion forces, a low-level streak along the beaches by Josef ‘Pips’ Priller and his wingman Heinz Wodarczyk in their FW-190 fighters, a piece of outrageous bravery in a sky filled with Allied planes which drew admiration from the most anti-German of the invaders. Luftwaffe pilots still in France faced the most mundane but disabling problems in flying in to help their Normandy-based comrades, as in the case of this Merog pilot proceeding from Perpignan via a refuelling stop near Paris.
Gunther Bloemertz, Luftwaffe
Our destination lay somewhere south of Paris, and no one but the Kapitan knew which airfield it was.
As the Eiffel Tower thrust itself needle-like out of the mist over the French capital, we climbed higher and then, with the squadron-leader ahead, dived with increased speed.
‘We land here,’ he called through to us as we flew low across the dry earth of an airfield.
‘Still much too far from Paris,’ grumbled one of the night-birds. But we landed all the same.
The shining hulls of American bombers were drawing across the sky above us.
‘Where’s our Sprit, Herr Major?’ called the Kapitan from his cockpit as the Airfield Commander approached. This elderly officer could scarcely have seen a single aircraft land on his field in the whole war. Now he pointed significantly at the bombers.
‘There’s Sprit,’ he said. ‘We’ve got to have Sprit, Herr Major, Sprit – I repeat – otherwise we give up!’ The Chief jumped angrily from his machine. ‘I have orders to fly operational sorties against the invasion from your airfield. Your field has eighty thousand litres of petrol in its tanks for this purpose. My aircraft must be tanked up within an hour. We are armed for the sortie, and Le Bourget is sending ammunition for subsequent operations.’
‘Yes, I have eighty thousand litres of A3 here. You can have that.’
‘What! A3? Eighty thousand litres of A3? That’s crazy! You can drive your car with A3, Herr Major, but our aircraft won’t get off the ground with it.’
We stood round in dismay, thirsty men standing before a pool of poisoned water.
So we didn’t fly on.
Wing Commander Johnnie Johnson, 144 Wing RAF
Four times that day we made our way across the Channel, and never a sign of the Luftwaffe! We arrived back at Ford from our last patrol as dusk was falling and had to wait for a few minutes for the night fighters to take off and maintain the vigil over the beach-head. Tired and drained, I drove to the mess for the evening meal. All my pilots were there. All had flown on this day and some had participated in all the missions. They were very quiet: it was apparent that they were bitterly disappointed with the Luftwaffe’s failure to put in an appearance on this day, which was one of the most momentous in our long history of war. We had geared ourselves for a day of intense air fighting, and the actual result had been something of an anti-climax. I could not let them go to bed in this mood of apathy and frustration, and I gathered them together for a short ‘pep’ talk. Although we had not succeeded in bringing the enemy to combat, I said, it was still a brilliant triumph for the Allied Air Forces as it marked our complete dominance over the Luftwaffe – an ideal we had striven to attain for more than three years. I glanced at my audience. Lounging in chairs, propped up against the walls, rather dirty and many of them unshaven, they received this somewhat pompous statement with the cool indifference it merited. I tried another approach.
‘We know that the Luftwaffe squadrons in this area are not very strong. In fact, the latest order of battle estimates that they have only about 200 fighters and less than 100 fighter-bombers. But they still possess many crack squadrons of fighters based in Germany. You can bet your last dollar that some of these outfits will move into Normandy immediately, if they haven’t already done so. You’ll have all the fighting you want within the next few weeks, and perhaps more! Don’t forget that we shall soon have our own airfield in Normandy and then we shall really get at them. And now we’ll force a beer down before we turn in.’
We repaired to the bar, where we partook of no more nor less than one pint each, and on this note called it a day.
The absence of the Luftwaffe over Normandy was a particular curse for those Wehrmacht and Waffen SS units making their way to the front, left completely at the mercy of Allied airpower. These units included the crack Panzer divisions, Lehr and 12th SS, which Berlin, after much prevarication, had agreed to mobilize in the afternoon. For Panzer Lehr it was a sacrificial journey.
General Fritz Bayerlain, Panzer Lehr
I was driving in front of the middle column with two staff cars and two headquarters signal vans along the Alençon–Argentan–Falaise road. We had only got to Beaumont-sur-Sarthe when the first fighter-bomber attack forced us to take cover. For once we were lucky. But the columns were getting farther apart all the time. Since Army had ordered radio silence we had to maintain contact by dispatch riders. As if radio silence could have stopped the fighter-bombers and reconnaissance planes from spotting us! All it did was prevent the division staff from forming a picture of the state of the advance – if it was moving smoothly or whether there were hold-ups and losses, and how far the spearheads had got. I was forever sending off officers or else seeking out my units myself.
We were moving along all five routes of advance. Naturally our move had been spotted by enemy air-reconnaissance. And before long the bombers were hovering above the roads, smashing cross-roads, villages and towns along our line of advance, and pouncing on the long columns of vehicles.
Much the same fate was befalling the 12th SS Panzer, as its legendary leader describes, somewhat breathlessly, here.
Brigadefuhrer Kurt Meyer, 12th SS Panzer Division, aged 33
A chain of Spitfires attacks the last section of the 15th Company. Missiles and cannon reap a devilish harvest. The section is travelling through a narrow pass; it is impossible to get away. An elderly French woman is coming towards us and screaming, ‘Murder, Murder!’ An infantry-man lies on the street. A stream of blood comes out of his throat – his artery has been shot through. He dies in our arms. The munition of an amphibious vehicle explodes into the air – high tongues of flame shoot up. The vehicle explodes into pieces.
Amazingly, Werner Kortenhaus and the 21st Panzer Division had escaped an air attack on their march forwards all morning. On reaching Caen in the afternoon, however, they encountered the terrible results of Allied bombing.
Gefreiter Werner Kortenhaus, 21st Panzer Division
The long road from Falaise to Caen rises to a hill where one can suddenly get a view over Caen, and as we drove over this hill we got a shock because the city of Caen was burning. I had never seen the city before, never been there at all, and all I could see was a huge black cloud over Caen, as though oil had been burnt. At that point, I realized for the first time that I was at war. As we got closer to Caen our tanks had difficulty getting through the city because the streets were covered with rubble. So we lost a lot of time while some tanks went west around the city and others went east.
Consequently, the 21st Panzer Division, the Wehrmacht’s best hope that day of pushing back the British and Canadians, lost valuable hours. Finally, at around 5 o’clock in the afternoon, 21st Panzer was ready to make its armoured dash to the sea. At the start-line, three miles to the north-east of Caen, General Marcks had a final word with Herman von Oppeln-Bronikowski, who would lead the panzer charge: ‘Oppeln, the future of Germany may very well rest on your shoulders. If you don’t push the British back to the sea, we’ve lost the war,’ said Marcks. Only minutes later as Bronikowski’s tanks raced towards the sea they were met by heavy fire from Sherman Fireflies of the Staffordshire Regiment. Thirteen panzers were knocked out almost immediately. A handful made it through to Lion-sur-mer, but not enough even to embarrass British operations. It was too little, too late. Perhaps fortunately for Werner Kortenhaus, his company did not take part in the dash, having been detailed to hold the line on the Orne against the British 6th Airborne. Yet, if the 21st Panzer Division had failed to throw the Allies back into the sea, it also prevented the British from reaching their D-Day objective of Caen. It would do so for many days to come.
Off Omaha and Utah beaches the Americans, like the British and Canadians, were moving inland. At Utah the progress was spectacular, with the US 4th Infantry Division rolling out into Normandy to link up with the US 82nd and 101st Airborne, as groups of the latter continued to hold Ste Mère Eglise and fight toward their buddies arriving by sea. Probably the biggest problem at Utah in the afternoon of 6 June were jams in the traffic of thousands of men as they left the narrow beach exits.
At Omaha too, the Americans were moving inland, but here they had to fight savagely for every inch. Having reached the top of the bluffs behind the beach, the US 1st and 29th Divisions found a lattice-work of hedges, narrow fields and hamlets that made ideal defensive territory for the determined remnants of the 352nd and 716th Divisions of the Wehrmacht. It was a bitter foretaste of the fighting in the bocage that was to come. And the beach itself was still coming under heavy shell fire.
Sergeant Richard W. Herklotz, US 29th Division
It [Omaha] was no summer resort. It was really a chaos, people were wounded, bodies were being piled up, equipment which had been destroyed was being pushed out of the way because of the continued flow of landing craft coming in. If they were blocked on landing they would have been dead targets, because the Germans could look right down the cliffs and shoot the craft right out of the water. By the time we landed the engineers had opened up the obstacles on the draw which went up to Vierville and St Laurent, but we were, I guess, not fifty yards off the beach when we got shelled by a heavy weapon which hit our ammunition truck, and there was a fire. Of our battery of sixty-eight men we lost seventeen right there. At moments like that you cope, you endure because of the training that you have received, the repetition of it, so you do everything naturally, on the spur of the moment. You just do what you were trained for so many months to do, and keep going.
Captain Joseph T. Dawson, US 1st Infantry Division
The Germans were now retreating, we were advancing and although we had some contact with them we didn’t experience any more active resistance from them until we had got across a small open field some 100 yards wide and entered into a wooded area which led to the town of Colleville. We had a very fierce battle all the way into the village, which was about a mile and a half from the crest of the ridge [at Omaha beach] … It was a long narrow little village commanded in a meaningful way by a church with a steeple which the Germans were using as an observation point, to direct artillery fire at the beach itself. I entered the church along with a sergeant and an enlisted man and we encountered Germans in there, just as we entered the door. They were trying to get out, as we came in. I lost my enlisted man and my sergeant was wounded; however, we were able to overcome the Germans. After we cleared that, we were able to secure and stabilize the village itself, so that subsequent troops landing were able to pass through us at approximately 3.30 in the afternoon.
Shortly after the contingent of the following force of the 18th Infantry had passed through us our Navy started firing on us, on the village, and literally levelled it. During this time we suffered the worst casualties we had experienced in the whole day’s work. Fire from our own Navy; ‘friendly fire’ it was called. It happened due to the fact that I had lost communication with the Navy back at the beach when I lost my naval officer. The Navy didn’t realize we were in the village. I was frantically throwing smoke grenades up in the air to identify us as friendly, but it was too late for the barrage to not take effect. What was very disturbing to me was that they had waited until 15.30 to level the town and we had been there two hours by that time. Later when we brought an inquiry the Navy contended that their orders were to fire at H+6o and again as visibility would permit. They contended that the smoke and firing on the beach obscured their opportunity to see any targets until the pall of battle lifted sufficiently for them to have visual observation, which happened to be 15.30. I feel that the Navy’s interpretation of their orders was, shall we say, a little far-fetched. I was very bitter about it, but time has permitted me to mellow my feelings. We lost over eighteen men dead, and several wounded – I never did count them all. I’d suffered casualties throughout the day. Out of the day’s run we were over 50 per cent depleted by the end.
Captain Albert H. Smith, US 1st Infantry Division
I recall testing German defences south of the hedgerow along our dirt road [on top of the bluffs at Omaha beach]. Several rifle teams attempted an advance across the hedgerows – only to receive heavy arms fire from three directions. Somewhat later, a helmet raised on a stick just above the hedgerow vegetation drew immediate sniper fire. It was not difficult to conclude the enemy was in strength just to the south – in fact, right next door … Towards late afternoon I was happy to see Lieutenant-Colonel Joe Sisson and his 3rd Battalion, 18th Infantry, approaching our location. It was a great feeling to know reinforcements were at hand. I passed along what little I knew about friendly and enemy dispositions. Shortly thereafter, two lead companies were deployed from east to west along our dirt road; bayonets were fixed, and men charged south across the hedgerow. That bayonet charge – to the best of my recollection – was made sometime around 17.00. Initially, German small-arms fire was heavy; then, it seemed to fade as attacking companies moved further south to other hedgerows and fields.
Donald Burgett, US 101st Airborne Division
All the troopers were firing now, and some of the ones closer to the road were lobbing grenades as fast as they could on the other side. It became a pitched battle with only a narrow black-top road separating the two forces. Actions became automatic, firing at fleeting shapes, crawling to different positions and firing, reloading and firing again and again.
The Germans were in the ditch on the other side of the road while we were in the ditch on this side. A distance of not more than fifteen yards separated us. At times, just as I slipped my rifle through the foliage to fire, I could feel the muzzle blasts from the enemy rifles as they fired towards us. The Germans usually dropped back into the ditch while working the bolt of their rifles, but we could nearly always get off one to three shots before ducking back down. We were so close together that our faces were being blackened by the enemy’s muzzle blasts. They used a smokeless powder and were hard to locate, whereas our weapons spewed out billows of smoke that gave our positions away and kept us moving to keep from getting our brains blown out. There was very little wind and the smoke hung close around us. The smell of powder burned deep into our nostrils, leaving the backs of our throats and the roofs of our mouths dry, along with a taste like sucking an old copper penny.
Lt. Elliott Johnson, US 4th Infantry Division
We weren’t the only ones that got across the water. There was an anti-aircraft crew. This was the dangedest thing. You can’t imagine all this noise and all these shells exploding and fellows being hurt and killed, and here’s this crew sitting smoking cigarettes and reading a comic book. I couldn’t believe it. We stopped a hundred feet from them. I could see them out of the corner of my eye.
All of a sudden – wham! – they were galvanized into action. I looked up and nobody had to say anything. All of us dived out of that thing and crawled under, ’cause here came these three German aircraft. These guys didn’t do any hiding. We did. It’s a good thing we did. The Germans hit that thing with those .50-calibre machine guns. And these guys hit every one of those three German airplanes and knocked them down. Every one of them.
Pfc P.J. McCall, US 4th Infantry Division
As we pushed inland from Utah I was sent ahead to check the road we were going along. I cautiously went around a corner, and everything seemed OK, but after I cleared the corner I suddenly knew someone had their sights on me. I could just feel it. I was about to dive to the ditch when this voice – in the other ditch – said, ‘Hey soldier, can you give me a light?’ A head popped up slightly, and it was grinning. I wasn’t sure for a moment whether it was a German playing a trick, but he had the drop on me anyway – and his voice was pure Bronx. He was 101st Airborne, and walked his way towards the beach through the night and morning.
Sergeant Richard W. Herklotz, US 29th Division
We were always told to have nothing in our gas masks, always to have it ready because you’d have just 30 seconds to don it if gas came. I remember going around this churchyard above Omaha just after we got shelled, and I got tied up with communication wire. Somewhere along the line the Air Force had dropped yellow smoke, and the yellow smoke was knitting through the area and somebody shouted ‘Gas!’ I had my gas mask all tied up with the wire, and I couldn’t get to it and when I got to it I had oranges in there, I had cigarettes – everything I wasn’t supposed to have. I never did get the gas mask out, so if it had been gas I’d certainly still be there.
…
Off the beach there was a church surrounded by wire or some sort of wrought-iron fence. And there was a German in the tower and I think every GI on the beach shot at this German guy in the tower. We came to find out later that the German was tied in the tower, everybody shot at him figuring he was alive, but he’d been shot many times and had been tied so that he would not fall out.
Able Seaman R.E. Hughes, aboard HMS Glasgow, off Omaha beach
Diary, 6 June
17.00. Urgent call for fire from beach.
17.15. Troops had a sticky time being shelled by mobile AA. We cannot get range because they keep moving.
Donald Burgett, US 101st Airborne Division
The officer had a bullet in his neck. The bullet had passed almost all the way through from the right side to the left and was lying pretty close to the surface, forming a big lump. He brought the tank to a stop and said he didn’t feel good, so we helped him from the tank and placed him on the grass under the trees. The other troopers said I had done a good job setting the arm earlier, so they elected me to remove the bullet. I didn’t want the job but someone had to do it.
After building a fire from one of the German packing crates, I heated my trench knife while another trooper gave the officer a shot of morphine. He was cold and clammy-feeling, and his tan skin had suddenly taken on a pallor that looked kind of sickly, but he did not pass out, even when I cut in his neck. The bullet did not come out easily and when the ordeal was finally over, he looked up at me and said in a weak voice, ‘I don’t think I’m going to make it.’
It was the first thing he had said. All through the operation he hadn’t even groaned. We covered him as best we could to keep him warm against shock. The last time I saw him he was still living and looked as though he was getting better.
Tom Treanor, LA Times war correspondent
‘Watch yourself, fella,’ someone said, ‘that’s a mine.’ A soldier sprawled on the bank was speaking. He had one foot blown half off and tied with a crude bandage. Pain had sucked his face white but still he remained conscious and still he took care lest someone should step on a live mine a few feet from his elbow. As each man edged up the path, he repeated the warning in a weak voice: ‘Watch yourself fella, that’s a mine.’
He knew what a mine could do. He’d stepped on one a couple of hours earlier.
I can stand the dead, but the wounded horrify me, and I only looked at him to thank him. He looked very tired but perfectly collected. ‘What you need is a medico,’ I said. ‘I will get one for you when I go back down.’
‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘but how are they going to get up here?’
He was right. The pathway was so clogged with men and so heavily mined that it was impossible for stretcher-bearers to get up to him. The engineers would have to get up first.
Sergeant Richard W. Herklotz, US 29th Division
Well, when you stand there and you’ve been with an individual – your sergeant, your right-hand man, say – and he’s gasping for his last breath and he’s speechless, it leaves you speechless. What would you say to him? What could you say?
It was now evening on 6 June 1944. In the brilliance of the sinking sun the business of war continued.
Driver John Osborne, 101 Company General Transport Amphibious
In the evening I was sent out again to pick up some of our airborne chaps who had been caught in a flamethrower. They were in a bad way. Four of them were on stretchers placed across the DUKW. There was also a German who had been shot in the leg; he was the only one who complained. He kept on about losing his boot. (I later found the German’s damn boot in the DUKW; I don’t know if it was given to him.) With me too was a young chap from Ordnance Corps. He had been bombed by something in a house and was bomb happy. I gave him my home address and asked him to write to my mother to tell her I was all right. I learned later that he played on this and had money and food from her.
Able Seaman Cooling, RN, aboard HMS Scorpion
All that day we bombarded the coast without a break, but it was not until the evening that the gliders came over. We watched them come along thick and fast, towed over the beaches and away out of sight. It seemed almost impossible to count them. It was a wonderful sight indeed.
Alan Melville, RAF war correspondent
There was a wonderful sunset that evening. I was standing at the entrance to our dug-out during a lull in the shelling when the most almighty roar of aircraft brought everyone up from their holes. Two great waves came in from the sea; the first of glider-towing bombers, the second of paratroops. They went through exactly the same moves: they roared in majestically as though this was just one more exercise over Salisbury Plain, the bombers released their gliders and the gliders slipped down between our own position and the first rising slopes of the ridge of hills. The bombers swept majestically round – quite slowly: you would have thought they were lingering on purpose in the hope that the Luftwaffe or the enemy ack-ack guns would have a crack at them. Then, somewhat disappointed, they turned out to sea and went home for their suppers. The paratroops who followed did just the same; their aircraft swept over our heads and the parachutes began to drop just at the foot of the ridge. They opened and billowed out – hundreds of them. Pure white against a lovely sky: we use white parachutes for men, and coloured for supplies, and it was men that we were wanting that night. They disappeared from our view behind the clumps of trees, and it was days later when some of them filtered back to the beaches that we learned what had happened to them that night. Their aircraft, too, swept round and tore back home. The troops forgot all about the shelling and the snipers. They stood on the edges of their trenches and waved and yelled themselves silly. It was the greatest hoister of morale which anyone could have provided and it came at precisely the right minute. I talked next morning to some German prisoners, and the arrival of those two waves of aircraft seemed to have had an equally great effect on them. They said they had never imagined that we possessed so many aircraft, and that when they saw them – the first formations three miles inland and the tail of the armada still out on the horizon – they knew that it was hopeless.
Lieutenant C.T. Cross, Oxford and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry
The glider flight was bloody! It was, of course, longer than most we’d done before because of the business of getting into formation, collecting fighter escort and so on. After about quarter of an hour I began to be sick and continued until we were over the Channel where the air was much calmer. The Channel was a wonderful sight – especially the traffic this end – Piccadilly Circus wasn’t in it.
The landing was ghastly. Mine was the first glider down though we were not quite in the right place, and the damn thing bucketed along a very upsy-downsy field for a bit and then broke across the middle – we just chopped through those anti-landing poles (like the ones I used to cut down during my forestry vac.) as we went along. However, the halves of the glider fetched up very close together and we quickly got ourselves and our equipment out and lay down under the thing, because other gliders were coming in and jerries were shooting things about at them and us – so it wasn’t very healthy to wander about. Our immediate opposition – a machine gun in a little trench – was very effectively silenced by another glider which fetched up plumb on the trench, and a couple of Huns – quite terrified – came out with their hands up.
Donald Thomas, 53rd Airlanding Light Regiment, RA
On the way over in the glider one of my colleagues was very nervous. I was sitting between him and somebody else in the tail end. I remembered that the major … in his briefing of the day before [5 June] had promised an umbrella of fighters flying above us. Half-way across the Channel I went to look through the window for these fighters and this nervous chap pulled me back saying, ‘Sit down, you’ll affect the balance of the glider!’ (He stayed very nervous, and was sent back to England after four or five days. I was glad because he was making me nervous as well.) We landed in a cornfield, hit one of the posts planted there and finished up at a bad angle … Getting out we could hear machine-gun fire and we went down to the ground. I always remember the smell of the ground – a sweet, scented smell. After all, I had my nose in it.
As well as delivering airborne reinforcements, the Allied air forces continued their bombing of targets in Normandy.
Odette Lelanoy, Vire
My father had found on his way to work that morning in Vire – we lived about 1.5 km away, in the countryside – lots of pamphlets on the roadside path. The pamphlets had been dropped by the Allies, and had written on them, ‘URGENT, townspeople leave the town quickly because you are going to be shelled’ – something like that. So my father, at the factory where he worked, gave out these pamphlets to everyone, telling them to ‘head for the countryside, don’t stay where you are.’ He went to see friends to convince them and tried to convince everyone, but no one listened. Not even our friends. It was awful because on 6 June at 8 o’clock in the evening, when we were still outside in the garden, we heard aeroplanes coming in high overhead, Flying Fortresses at a height of about 3,000 feet in tight formation. The next thing, in a space of a few seconds, there was a ripping sound – as though silk was being torn. After that there followed a whistling and then explosions. They had dropped bombs from these Flying Fortresses which, at 3,000 feet, looked really tiny. They looked like fleas, no bigger than that.
We began to see dust and flames as more and more waves passed over us. We hid for cover in the house behind the thickest walls and stayed there throughout, in the thick of it, this fire, this deluge. I don’t know how long we stayed there. It seemed like an eternity. It terrifies me even now as I look back. Afterwards my father, who had been in the 1914–18 war, told my mother and I to leave for a farm about 1.5 or 2 km away where we knew the farmer, and we set off for it on foot. My father went into town to see if our friends were still alive. He went to all the places we had lived. Our old flat was destroyed, everything opposite was destroyed. All he found there was a fragment of thread hanging in a tree, which he recognized from the smock of a child. He stayed in the town all night, helping the wounded.
By the fall of night, 100,000 Allied troops had landed in France. More than 12,000 of them had become casualties of war. A similar number of Germans had died or been wounded trying to stop them. Now, over 60 miles of front, soldiers tried to snatch some sleep, planned their next moves, or nervously scanned the darkness. And the diarists among them made their last entries of the day.
General Matt B. Ridgway, US 82nd Airborne Division
I was in fine physical shape, but never in all my life have I been so weary as I was at the end of that first day in Normandy. Just before midnight, tottering on my feet as was many another soldier who had fought there on that day, I rolled up in a cargo chute and lay down for the first sleep I’d had in forty-eight hours. I crawled into a ditch, for the town of Ste Mère Eglise was only a short distance away, and all that night German airplanes were overhead, dropping five-hundred-pounders, and German artillery was shelling the city heavily.
Captain Albert H. Smith, US 1st Infantry Division
At about midnight we thought we would be able to get a little sleep. You know the hours were such that daylight lasted almost until 11 p.m., 23.00 hours? We were dead tired then. Everyone was dead tired. I said that I was walking around like a zombie. It got very cold, it went down to about 30 to 40 degrees Fahrenheit. Two of us, another officer and myself, got under his raincoat and tried to get some sleep leaning against the hedgerow. It was a very bad physical feeling, but nevertheless we knew we had landed and were going to hold our position on the bluffs, and troops were moving inland. So it was a feeling of cold, miserable tiredness, but mentally we were feeling, ‘God, we did it.’
Corporal G.E. Hughes, 1st Battalion, Royal Hampshire Regiment
Diary, 6 June
06.00 Get in LCA. Sea very rough. Hit the beach at 7.20 hours. Murderous fire, losses high. I was lucky T[hank] God. Cleared three villages. Terrible fighting and ghastly sights.
Able Seaman R.E. Hughes, aboard HMS Glasgow
Diary, 6 June
23.30. Bombs are dropping near us now and everyone standing to. Several enemy planes fly low over the ships – terrific reception for them.
Major F.D. Goode, Gloucestershire Regiment
It was now night, my servant Private Morris had blown up my Lilo and put it in a farm cart that sloped slightly and was under an open shed. It faced north towards the beaches. Here I set up my company HQ and being by this time very tired settled down on my Lilo … there was a steady noise of aircraft going to and coming from the beaches. It was a clear night and the beaches represented a fantastic firework display as the Germans tried to bomb them and all the ships and AA opened up with coloured tracers. Watching this I fell asleep.
Lieutenant-General Edgar Feucthinger, CO, 21st Panzer Division
About midnight, Kurt Meyer arrived at my headquarters. He was to take over on my left and we were to carry out a combined operation the next morning. I explained the situation to Meyer and warned him about the strength of the enemy. Meyer studied the map, turned to me with a confident air and said, ‘Little fish! We’ll throw them back into the sea in the morning.’
D-Day was over, and the Allies had secured a bridgehead. The Battle of Normandy, however, was only just beginning.