21

Boats and Bugles

‘All along the fringe of the bay, as far as visibility would permit, I could see smoke, fire and explosions. Inland some areas were completely smudged out by evil clouds of smoke. Underneath it, great flashes of fire would erupt and burst, like bolts of orange lightning. Normandy was like a huge, fire-rimmed boiling cauldron. To seaward, ships of all shapes and sizes lay patiently at anchor. Between them and the beaches, an extraordinary regatta was taking place as hundreds of smaller craft dashed hither and thither.’

Wing Commander Desmond Scott, Typhoon Pilot (1982)¹

In the great Neptune armada, after the minesweepers and warships came the assault flotillas. Most soldiers recalled their journey across the waves with varying degrees of discomfort, brought on by the weather or nerves or both. The armies were brought in a variety of vessels, ranging from the largest troopships and LSTs, smaller flat-bottomed craft bearing infantry (LCIs) and tanks (LCTs), right down to the tiny, barely seaworthy LCMs, all of which had to make their own way across the Channel carefully shepherded by Ramsay’s grey-hulled fleet. The most diminutive craft, the Landing Craft, Assault (LCAs) and their American equivalents, Landing Craft Vehicle, Personnel (LCVPs) – the Higgins boats – would arrive off Normandy piggybacked on larger assault landing ships.

These tiddlers would convey the fighting men from their mother ships to the surf, but with each small landing craft capable of taking only thirty, less than a battalion could be put ashore from each assault landing ship at any one time. Towards dawn, aboard one Utah-bound LCT, Sub Lieutenant W. B. Carter saw ‘the small red lights issued to all troops fixed to the lapels of survivors bobbing about in the water’. Even though against orders, he paused to fish them out of the drink, something accomplished with difficulty, ‘for although the tanks were properly secured to the deck, there was barely nine inches between the tanks, and as one slid between them, one could feel one’s chest being slightly squeezed as the ship rolled’, he recalled. ‘It was hardly an auspicious start for the rest of the troops.’²

Despite much rehearsing in Scotland and along the south coast, filling a ship’s complement of landing craft generally took about an hour – off Omaha, USS Thomas Jefferson would unload the 2nd Battalion of the 116th Infantry in a timed sixty-six minutes.³ Sometimes craft were filled first, then lowered – but with embarrassing results if the mechanism jammed during the descent. Early on 6 June, the 1st Battalion headquarters group of the US 116th Infantry Regiment were left hanging for thirty minutes right under the Empire Javelin’s heads (latrines), discharging ordure straight into the Channel. As Major Thomas S. Dallas, XO (executive officer) of the 1st Battalion, noted, ‘Streams, colored everything from canary yellow to sienna brown, continued to flush onto the command group, decorating every man aboard. We cursed, we cried and we laughed, but it kept coming. When we started for shore, we were all covered with sh*t.’⁴

Notwithstanding such inconveniences, it then took a minimum of two vomit-inducing hours for ship-to-shore runs, so the major landing ships would spend much of 6 June at anchor discharging their men, retrieving their boats and repeating the process. Thus the Allied land forces who stormed ashore on D-Day did so, trickling in by platoons and companies, rather than as an irresistible phalanx of men and materiel – and making them easier to oppose.

GIs were unhappy at being issued a last-minute special set of overalls, impregnated with chemicals designed to protect against gas attack, as we noted earlier. Landing craft crews were issued with similar garments. The replacement uniforms did not let the skin breathe like regular cotton, ‘were hot as hell, itchy and their odor was unbearable’, recalled one, ‘like rotten eggs’. They made soldiers feel they were ‘walking around in a steam bath’, which only added to the general nausea brought on by seasickness. Some began to wonder if poison gas might not be more preferable.⁵ Chuck Hurlbut with the 299th Combat Engineer Battalion, about to conquer Omaha, recounted, ‘They gave us these impregnated coveralls. They were so stiff and unwieldy they could almost stand up by themselves. They had been specially treated with some solution that would withstand gas. You put those on. And on top of that, you had your belt, your gas mask, a bandolier of bullets. And your cartridge belt had a bayonet, a canteen, a first aid packet, and more bullets. Your helmet. And your rifle. And your backpack.’⁶

Anxiety was heightened for those waiting to disembark, with an eye cast always towards the smoking French coastline, lit up with bright flashes, portending nothing good. The loitering at anchor also worried everyone on account of the potential threat from the Luftwaffe. Old hands from Sicily, Salerno and Anzio were particularly nervous, remembering occasions when roving planes had done serious damage to the seaborne invaders. At Gold Beach, Gunner Edwin ‘Nobby’ Clarke, operating 25-pounders with the 74th Field Regiment, himself a veteran Mediterranean campaigner, recalled his merchant-marine-crewed Liberty ship, whose ‘skipper was English, first mate Russian and the remainder multinational. As we waited for landing craft to come alongside, two Messerschmitt 109s flew at us. Three of the crew dashed below deck to get ammunition for the ship’s single anti-aircraft gun; they returned in a few seconds each carrying a different calibre shell, none of which fitted the gun. By this time the two Messerschmitts were out of sight.’⁷ The air threat was very real: apart from mine-laying, dive-bombing and torpedo runs, in 1943 the Luftwaffe had used their new glider bombs to sink the transport Rohna and damage the battleship HMS Warspite and cruisers USS Savannah, USS Philadelphia and HMS Uganda, causing severe loss of life. Despite the patrolling air umbrella, on 8 June 1944, more glider bombs launched by the Luftwaffe’s KG-200 would account for the destroyer USS Meredith and frigate HMS Lawford.⁸

As noted in the Introduction, there remains an erroneous impression of American primacy on D-Day, driven by the many newsreels of the era – perhaps understandably so, given their intended target audience. While US dominance would be true later on during the campaign to liberate France, 6 June perhaps represented Britain’s last moment of military pre-eminence, before surrendering the whip-hand to the United States. We have seen that eighty per cent of the maritime element deployed on the day of invasion was British, not American. Amongst the landing ships of Admiral Hall’s Force ‘O’, carrying troops to Omaha and the Pointe du Hoc, eight were British-manned – Empire Javelin and Empire Anvil, Ben-my-Chree, Amsterdam, Princess Maud, Prince Charles, Prince Leopold and Prince Baudouin. The other seven flew the Stars and Stripes: Thomas Jefferson, Charles Carroll, Samuel Chase, Henrico, Anne Arundel, Dorothea L. Dix and Thurston.

These last were purpose-built USN attack transports. The former were an array of requisitioned ferries and steamers, converted to an assault landing role and manned by the British Merchant and Royal Navies. In fact, the whole British assault fleet ranged from former liners, like the 10,000-ton HMS Monowai, carrying twenty LCAs, to HMS Ben-my-Chree, a 3,000-ton Isle of Man ferry, or the 2,000-ton Great Western Railways steamer HMS St Helier, both of which carried just six little craft. The landing barges carried on all the larger ships were grouped into flotillas of six to ten boats each, commanded by young reservist officers of the RN, RCN, USN or US Coast Guard.

The transatlantic maritime partnership was perhaps better highlighted during the afternoon of D-Day, when on Sword Beach a flotilla of ten American-manned LCIs landed some of the second wave of the British 3rd Division. Even the splendidly named Empire-class assault ships – technically known as Landing Ships, Infantry (Large) and ordered by the British Ministry of War Transport – had been manufactured by the Consolidated Steel Corporation of Wilmington, California. The yard employed twelve thousand folk building over five hundred major wartime vessels, and delivered the Empires in early 1944. Each was of about 11,000 tons, carried a crew of 250 with sixteen or eighteen LCAs suspended from their davits, while accommodating 1,500 troops.

They more than proved their value, with all thirteen Empires carrying assault-wave troops on D-Day to four of the five beaches; the exception was Juno, where several of the landing ships were converted Canadian steamers, manned by Canadian crews. At H-Hour on Sword Beach, the 537th LCA Flotilla from HMS Empire Battleaxe took the 2nd East Yorkshires ashore, Empire Broadsword carried the 1st Suffolks, while Empire Cutlass landed troops of the 1st South Lancashires – all assault battalions of the 8th Brigade, British 3rd Division. Over at Gold Beach, HMSs Empire Arquebus, Empire Crossbow and Empire Spearhead landed the 231st Brigade at Le Hamel, with Empires Halberd, Lance, Mace and Rapier, putting the 69th Brigade ashore at Ver-sur-Mer (both of the British 50th Division).

The 550th LCA Flotilla from HMS Empire Anvil landed troops from the 3rd Battalion of the 16th Infantry, US 1st Division, on the eastern edge of Omaha at Colleville, whilst HMS Empire Javelin’s 551st Flotilla put the 1st Battalion of the 116th Infantry, 29th Division, onto Omaha’s western fringes, at Vierville. Finally, Utah witnessed the eighteen LCAs from HMS Empire Gauntlet’s 552nd LCA Flotilla deliver the 8th Infantry of the 4th Division.

In 1943 the British ordered thirteen 7,000-ton Empire-class assault ships, built in the USA, which could each accommodate 1,500 troops and sixteen landing craft. In this little-known image, a Royal Marine-manned LCA of 536th Flotilla pulls away from the Empire Cutlass during rehearsals to land the 1st South Lancashires on Sword beach. (NARA)

Thus far, the fates of those taking part in Operation Neptune had been pretty uniform. Exciting, challenging, dangerous – but a similar range of experiences in the approach to the five beaches. The day began with sailors and soldiers marvelling at the vast array of shipping. Some had glimpsed the armada the previous evening, but many were too seasick to notice – or care. Lieutenant William G. Pepe, with Headquarters Company, US 5th Engineer Special Brigade heading for Omaha, recollected that ‘We had absolutely no awareness of the magnitude of this operation until the morning light. We had all made our peace with God and the sudden sight of the fleet infused a massive boost of confidence. Morale soared and adrenalin flowed in rivers throughout our bodies: now, we realised we were no longer alone in our insignificant little ship, but a part of this huge fighting force.’⁹

A jeep driver with No. 5 Beach Group recalled his moment of arrival on ‘Queen Red’, part of Sword Beach. ‘It was 0725 hours and I stood up expecting to see the coast on the horizon – not two hundred yards away. I had no idea we had arrived already. Only then, looking to my right, sorry starboard, did I see the landing craft of all sizes as far as the eye could see, and I realised the fountains of water appearing all around came from the enemy, not spouting whales.’¹⁰ Others were able to watch Neptune remotely: Lieutenant Robert A. Jacobs on the Liberty Run, a B-24 of the 389th Bomb Group – the ‘Sky Scorpions’ from RAF Hethel in Norfolk – recalled: ‘As we approached the French coast, the navigator called me over to look at his PRI scope. It clearly showed the vast armada standing just off the coast of Normandy – a thrilling sight even on radar!’¹¹

Now the full impact of what was unfolding – and the implications of the minute-by-minute timetable – hit them. Once under way, Neptune would be like some giant industrial machine in Fritz Lang’s 1927 film Metropolis, whose ‘on’ button had already been pushed, but for which there was no ‘off’ button. Colonel Red Reeder of the 12th Infantry thought ‘the whole movement looked like a well-rehearsed play’.¹² The steady hum of Allied aircraft overhead – not always visible through the overcast – started the day on an uplifting note. However, as the smaller landing craft were cast off and, in company with the larger LCIs and LCTs, started to make their way over the last few miles of ocean to the sand and shingle, in the fashion of a giant surrealist jigsaw, events would play out in a far from uniform fashion.

The first discordant note was H-Hour. As each individual concentrated on his own few yards of French shoreline, few would have been aware that because of the tide differential and unique geography of the Normandy coast, GIs would be landing sixty minutes ahead of their Canadian and British comrades-in-arms. The beach reconnaissances had already shown that the seashore gradients were very gentle, gaining on average only one foot of height for every fifty feet of sand. The average distance uncovered between high and low tides was six hundred yards. With a pretty extreme tidal range – the water rising on average twenty feet from low tide, twice a day – the shape of each beach altered dramatically through the day. On 6 June 1944 low water was at 0552 and 1810 hours, with high tide exactly five hours later.¹³

The simple maths was that all along the coast, the tide would rise 240 inches in 300 minutes, four inches every five minutes, a foot every quarter of an hour. This would be lethal for the wounded lying on the shingle, men taking cover, or vehicles fighting for a diminishing water-free patch of sand, but helpful for retracting beached landing craft. Thus, the decision of precisely what time to land, H-Hour, had been the subject of as much debate for Eisenhower as it had been for Rommel and Rundstedt.

The Allied land commanders had advised a high-tide assault, when the killing zones on the beaches would be at their narrowest – something the Desert Fox anticipated, hence his programme of erecting mined beach obstacles, which would be covered by the water at such an hour. Thus invisible, they were designed to rip the landing craft apart. Fearing catastrophe amid the obstructions and surf, Ramsay and his fellow admirals advised a low-water landing – with the obstacles exposed, allowing beach demolition units to clear channels through them for the landing craft. However, this would leave long stretches, averaging a third of a mile, of dangerous beach for the infantry to rush.

The compromise was to attack after low tide, with the exposed area narrowing. For Utah and Omaha, this was fixed at 0630 hours. Aboard LCT-88, Beachmaster Lieutenant Commander Joseph P. Vaghi noted that his craft ‘kissed the sands of Normandy when the tide was almost at its lowest, a half-mile from the dune line of Easy Red sector on Omaha’.¹⁴ However, there was another fly in the ointment. Low water exposed sand bars in the British sector – impossible for landing craft to cross. This necessitated a later H-Hour of 0725 hours on Gold and Sword, when the assault craft would be able to pass over.

The rising tide was to help the landing craft flotillas, which were less likely to get stranded as the waters rose – their job was to shuttle men and equipment ashore, so it was vital they remain seaborne, not beached. However, this was at the cost of many tanks and vehicles potentially drowning, due to faulty waterproofing or unexpected depths in pools and runnels – unlikely to happen with a falling tide. There would be a high price paid by the landing craft, too. Submerged vehicles subsequently became underwater obstacles for following waves of craft, and accounted for much hull damage and fouled anchors among landing fleet. Beaches were easier at low tide with more room to manoeuvre around the debris of earlier waves, when the remaining obstacles were exposed. At high tide, the available sand rapidly became crowded and the waters cluttered with submerged wreckage.

Historical assessments tend to focus on landing vessels sunk, rather than damaged ones still afloat, which consumed valuable resources and slowed timetables. The practical effect of craft mangled by swamped boats and vehicles was that, for example, only nine out of the thirty-six in the American 18th LCT Flotilla at Omaha, which had arrived early on 6 June, were operational by the following morning. This translates as seventy-five per cent non-operational, which was a surprisingly common statistic across all five landing areas, with bent rudders, lost kedge anchors and broken ramps, or ramp winches, being the most common features. This was not damage caused by German guns or mines, but by Allied equipment. All could be repaired locally by the salvage and repair tenders accompanying the fleet, but this took time, and ate into the sustainment schedule. Both LCT-415 and LCT-460, damaged but not destroyed, were recorded as being shipped to Portsmouth on D+9 aboard the LSD (Landing Ship, Dock) HMS Oceanway, which had earlier brought LCMs to the area – an example of the huge logistics backup for Neptune.¹⁵

The next note of discord was how long the naval gunfire support should last. Given that the fleet would open fire simultaneously – in theory at 0550 hours, though earlier in practice – the invasion of occupied France would commence after forty minutes of naval gunfire support in the US sector with their earlier H-Hour, but over double that against the defenders of the British and Canadian beaches.

‘This gift of time’, wrote Bradley bitterly, ‘enabled the warships of the Royal Navy to deliver to Monty’s beaches a two-hour daylight bombardment, nearly four times the length of the bombardment at Utah and Omaha.’¹⁶ This weighted the firepower away from Omaha and Utah and towards the Anglo-Canadian sector. It also allowed the latter more sleep – those who could. Captain Donald Gilchrist of No. 4 Commando had dozed in his bunk aboard the Prinses Astrid, the converted Belgian cross-Channel ferry. As his batman woke him at 0330 he noticed ‘the steel plates juddering as the ship’s head rose and fell to plough the sea. “It’s me, Sir, McCall. I’ve brought your tommy-gun, Sir, cleaned and checked – over there, with one filled magazine.’¹⁷ On the Prince Baudouin, another Belgian steamer taking the 5th Rangers to their rendezvous with the surf, it was at 0400 that she downed anchor and her loudspeakers sprang into life announcing, ‘Attention on deck! Attention on deck! British crews report to their assault boats.’ The Prinses Astrid reached her anchorage off Sword Beach an hour later, noted Stan Hough, when her master announced, ‘Hear ye, hear ye! This is your captain speaking. Crew to action stations, commandos to assault craft! And the best of luck!’¹⁸

With radio silence broken at 0530 hours – five minutes later in the British sector – the code word ‘Floater’ flashed through the air to ‘A’ and ‘B’ Squadrons, 13th/18th Hussars, off Sword Beach; the Fort Garry Horse and 1st Canadian Hussars off Juno; and the Sherwood Rangers Yeomanry, and ‘B’ and ‘C’ Squadrons of the 4th/7th Royal Dragoon Guards, off Gold. This instructed them to launch their DD swimming tanks. Some were launched five thousand yards offshore, but many more were taken much closer in because of the rough seas, and landed later. The American tank battalions – the 70th at Utah and 741st and 743rd at Omaha – were also launched, with mixed results, as Chuck Hurlbut with the 299th Combat Engineers witnessed: ‘We passed a craft carrying tanks with the big canvas collar around them. When they hit the water, these canvas things would allow them to float until they could reach land. And this thing started letting them off. The first went “blooop!” straight down. Second one: “blooop!” Three or four went down like that. And we’re right alongside of it. All of a sudden the guys come bobbing up, fighting for breath and air, they’re like corks in the water, yelling and screaming. I hope they were rescued. We could not stop: had to go right by them – boy, that hurt to watch.’¹⁹

Later still, at 0558 hours, seven miles off Gold Beach, the echoes of a bugle could be heard aboard HMS Empire Lance, playing reveille. This was to summon the 6th Green Howards of the 69th Infantry Brigade on deck and commence boarding for their voyage to Ver-sur-Mer. Wherever possible, naval veterans of the Mediterranean assault landings were put to good use in Normandy. Lieutenant Alasdair Forbes Ferguson had already landed Canadian troops at Dieppe and the 50th Division in Sicily. This time, in command of the 524th LCA Flotilla aboard the Empire Arquebus, his appointment was to lead Brigadier Stanier’s 231st Brigade onto Gold Beach at Le Hamel.

The 7,000-ton landing ship HMS Clan Lamont heading for Juno was ‘crammed full of French-Canadian troops, who spent most of their time on board queuing up to sharpen their commando knives on the grindstone in the galley and playing “Crown and Anchor” on the mess deck, using the invasion money we had been issued’. They were treated to an early breakfast of ‘pork chops and a choice of stewed prunes, apricots or fresh fruit. A lot of the men couldn’t face it, but one had to be sensible about this – you didn’t know when you were going to eat again.’²⁰ Generally, His Majesty’s ships offered little in the way of a cooked meal – though how many might have wanted one in the rough swell is debatable.

At the very least, all British troops were given corned beef sandwiches and tots of rocket-fuel-strength rum that came from great stoneware jars, stowed in each landing craft – a throwback to ‘grog’ issues of Nelson’s day. George Kirkby, coxswain of one of the Prinses Astrid’s LCAs, remembered two crewmen being stretchered aboard. They hadn’t been wounded, but were legless from having over-indulged on some of the spirit. Many used cigarettes to calm their nerves; Lieutenant Roy Clark, commanding LCT-770, packed with 9th Canadian Brigade vehicles, found he had smoked sixty cigarettes on the crossing to stay awake. ‘I didn’t think I was a heavy smoker, but there was the evidence in my duffle coat pockets: three empty packets of Capstan Navy-Cut! It must have been about 0130 hours when I saw the bombing of France over the horizon, which was then about forty miles away, to judge by the flashes in the sky.’²¹ Older soldiers showed their experience: the youngsters watched them ‘pack cigarettes and matches into Elastoplast tins and seal them carefully with sticky tape. With the same cunning care they stuck pieces of adhesive tape over the muzzles of their weapons.’²²

‘The accommodation for the troops was primitive,’ telegraphist Alan Higgins noted of his British LCA bound for Sword. ‘Just rows of wooden, ribbed seats, like park benches. The guys were packed like sardines, with all the equipment, weapons and webbing they needed. The stench of vomit was terrible.’²³ Another soldier remembered sitting in his LCA ‘on fixed bench seats, one row to port, another to starboard and one along the centre. It was a tight squeeze: thirty or so men with rucksacks, Bren guns, rifles, tommy-guns, bangalore torpedoes, radios, festooned like Christmas trees’.²⁴ Many GIs wrapped their rifles in waterproof plastic, which can be seen in newsreels and photographs taken on the day. In the Higgins boats, there was no seating; troops stood, crouched or sat on the deck for the ride.

Louisianan John ‘J.J.’ Witmeyer, a platoon commander with the 12th Infantry destined for Utah, reported of the LCVPs: ‘they were made out of quarter-inch plywood, but the navy painted ‘em grey so they would look like steel to us. There was a damned ramp at the front, about seven foot high. You couldn’t see over it and you couldn’t make yourself heard because the flat bottom kept slappin’ the waves like thunder. The motor and the waves drowned all conversation.’²⁵ The British and American landing boats were similar, but not the same: LCAs were heavier, lightly armoured and sat lower in the water, but ran on a pair of silenced engines and had been developed for commando raids; LCVPs could take a small vehicle – which LCAs could not – and were faster. Both could carry weapons: LCVPs often had a pair of stern-mounted 0.50-inch machine guns, the LCA was equipped with a 0.303-inch Lewis gun in its portside armoured shelter – but neither was designed for rough seas.

Whatever the nationality or destination of the infantrymen, the process of leaving their mother ships was generally the same. To do this, they had to perform the hair-raising task of climbing down scrambling nets with all their gear, then leap into craft that were rising and falling at least six feet in the swell, and being flung away from the mother ship, then against it with a ferocious clang. It was an inexact science: those who misjudged their jump were crushed or drowned. At Omaha, Charles Norman Shay, a Native American of the Penobscot Nation in Maine, serving as a combat medic with Company ‘F’, 16th Infantry, witnessed the danger of just getting into their LCVPs: ‘The seas were still very strong, and the craft rose and fell alarmingly beside USS Henrico as we went down those net ladders. You had to be very precise when you left them to jump into the Higgins boats. You’d had to time it just so, to avoid injury, and we knew that no one could get us if we fell in the water’, he related to me during the 2018 D-Day commemorations. The previous evening Shay had been comforted when a fellow Penobscot warrior named Melvin Neptune sought him out and talked about home, ‘knowing I had never been in combat and that all hell was about to break loose on me’.²⁶

Another from USS Henrico was Earl Chellis, Jr, with the 16th Infantry’s Company ‘E’. He saw his LCVP ‘rocking so bad it was hard to stand up. It was rough going; we were rocking from side to side and bouncing up and down. Men who got seasick were hanging on to each other to keep from falling down. As we were bouncing up and down, our LCVP got stuck on something underwater, about 250 yards from the beach,’ Chellis recalled. ‘The coxswain tried everything to back off; nothing worked. He said he was going to lower the ramp; I jumped off into the water – it was over my head. When I hit the bottom I had to kick up and down, getting air and doing it again, but I was being pushed onto the beach from the tides and waves. Finally, I got a footing and walked out of the water, and fell onto the sand to catch my breath.’²⁷

Before even reaching their beaches, troops of all the invading armies were faced with the perilous task of climbing down ropes into their rocking landing craft, while festooned with heavy equipment and life preservers. Although practised many times, pre-dawn darkness and extreme sea conditions slowed this down, causing injuries and fatalities. The upper image was shot in the perfect light of a daytime rehearsal and shows men leaving the USS Thomas Jefferson. On D-Day itself, the troops carried far more equipment. The lower shot belongs to a later campaign, but gives a good idea of the challenge of climbing into a bucking LCVP. (NARA)

Second Lieutenant Wesley R. Ross, with Company ‘B’ of the 146th Engineers, was another headed towards Omaha Beach. Ross, from Maupin, Oregon, led a boat team helping the Naval Combat Demolition Units remove obstacles on ‘Easy Green’ sector. The NCDUs assigned to Omaha included 183 navy and 107 army personnel, who comprised sixteen gap teams, each tasked to clear a lane through the beach obstructions. Some 145 men and eight teams supported the 29th Division, including Ross – the balance worked with the Big Red One. Each gap team was meant to be aided by a Sherman with a dozer blade, in his case from the 743rd Tank Battalion.

They had crossed the Channel by LCT, towing a smaller LCM containing two rubber dinghies. Piled into each of these was about five hundred pounds of explosives, Bangalore torpedoes, mine detectors, gap markers, buoys, and up to one hundred cans of gasoline.²⁸ At 0330 hours, they had to climb down into their LCM, wearing the ‘foul-smelling clothing supposed to protect from chemical and gas attack’, carrying rifles, equipment and ‘fifty-pound, foot-long sacks stuffed with C2 plastic explosive fitted with hooks and lines for attachment to obstacles. One man had his legs crushed when caught between the landing craft – out of action even before having been a target! We were all were suffering from the greatest case of mass-seasickness ever known to mankind,’ Ross recalled.²⁹

Captain John R. Armellino commanded Company ‘L’ of the 16th Infantry, containing many veterans of Tunisia and Sicily. ‘My men went over the side of Empire Anvil by rope ladders hanging from the ship and into the landing craft, which were rolling and turning in the rough waters. We carried two life preservers per man, one for the soldier and one to float heavy equipment into the beach. On our way to Omaha Beach, one of my landing craft was swamped by the violent seas and sank. To this day, I don’t know how many of those men were lost.’³⁰

Company ‘I’ likewise lost two boats swamped, explained Floridian Bill Ryan in 1994. ‘Once we departed from the lee side of the Anvil, we were like a cork in a bathtub. I was the only one in my boat not to get seasick, no doubt due to my service in the merchant marine before I enlisted in the army. On the way towards the beach we lost two boats to the high waves. The coxswains of the remaining four became disoriented, mainly due to the disappearance of the patrol boat guiding us. The beach was covered in haze and smoke from earlier heavy bombardment, which made the identification of any landmarks completely impossible.’³¹

Tom and Dee Bowles, from Russellville, Alabama, were identical twins serving with Headquarters Company, 2nd Battalion, 18th Infantry. They weren’t meant to be serving together but had somehow managed to achieve the proximity they desired before Operation Torch. With the Big Red One they had fought through Tunisia, where both men were awarded Silver Stars; now in the grey morning of 6 June, laden down with heavy pack, field telephone and two rolls of wire, they gingerly made their way down the nets flung over the side of USS Anne Arundel. Tom reminisced that his hands were constantly being trodden on by the men above him. ‘Feeling kind of nauseated’, their journey ashore would take over three hours.³²

Aboard the Empire Javelin was Private Hal Baumgarten with Company ‘B’ of the 116th Infantry, who had earlier drawn the Star of David on his combat jacket. Eleven miles off the coast, they climbed down into their British-built LCAs. ‘Their bilge pumps didn’t work. Had we landed in an LCVP Higgins boat, we wouldn’t have had that problem. The sides were higher and the water wouldn’t have come in. So in order to stay afloat for three hours we had to bail with our helmets: we were wet and freezing when we landed.’³³

Philadelphian Charles ‘Hank’ Hangsterfer, a company commander with the 16th Infantry headed for Omaha, had been on board the Samuel Chase, a US Coast Guard-crewed vessel, having boarded her on 1 June at Weymouth. Unlike the other American landing ships, he remembered that ‘the Chase had been designed so that her LCVPs were loaded at deck level, then lowered into the water, thus eliminating climbing down the rope ladders or cargo nets’. He explained, ‘here’s how it was supposed to go: the Air Force was to bomb the beaches, Navy gunfire was to bombard, and our self-propelled guns were to provide initial artillery support. A special amphibious Engineer Group was to remove the obstacles and mines on the beach, and of course we were hardened, seasoned veterans.’

Looking back on their nonchalance before D-Day, Hangsterfer mused, ‘for us no mission was too difficult, no sacrifice too great, it was duty first; nothing in heaven or hell could stop the 1st Infantry Division – we thought all we have to do was to show our Big Red One [patches] and the enemy would run. Besides: it was Easy Red Beach, a good omen.’ Then he paused – ‘Was I scared? I was always afraid and even more afraid to let my company know that I was scared. After being in combat for over two years I considered myself a fugitive from the law-of-averages.’³⁴

The 3rd Canadian Infantry Division would disembark from a total of 142 LCAs in exactly the same way the majority of Americans left their mother ships. Some of these craft came from the former New Zealand liner Monawai, converted into a landing ship with twenty landing craft. Royal Marine Corporal Jim Baker was piloting one of them and observed, ‘at first light we dropped twelve craft and started to make our way to shore. I was coxswain in charge of thirty-eight lads of the Régiment de la Chaudière, part of 8 Canadian Brigade. On the way we fished out a Yank from their “Big Red One”, who had drifted all the way from Omaha.’³⁵

Also depositing Canadian troops ashore on Juno were the former Canadian liners Prince Henry and Prince David; on the former, attentive sailors made sure that the soldiers had an extra two hard-boiled eggs and a cheese sandwich to take with them. Other Juno-bound troops from the Clan Lamont witnessed: ‘one of our chaps broke both his ankles in the perilous descent to the landing craft. There was nothing we could do about it. We had to take him to the beach even though he was injured.’³⁶

Apart from the specially commissioned Empires, the British and Canadian navies reconstructed passenger liners and ferries as infantry landing ships. Typical of these was the Canadian attack transport HMCS Prince Henry. Formerly the steamship North Star (inset) and commanded by Captain V. S. Godfrey RCN, she was extensively altered to carry eight craft of the 528th LCA Flotilla, and 550 men. On D-Day, her craft put men ashore on Juno beach. (Author’s collection)

Across all five beaches 233 LSTs loitered offshore and unloaded using their Rhino ferries, while 208 LCIs, sixty-four assault flotillas totalling 768 LCTs, and the numerous LCMs, LCVPs and LCAs were obliged to steer their way between the obstacles and dump their cargo as close to the water’s edge as possible. ‘After the boys had loads of fun whistling to the Wrens on the dockside, later that night they got their comeuppance as LCI-501 rolled in every imaginable direction,’ related Captain Eric Hooper, with the 9th Battalion Durham Light Infantry of the 50th Northumbrian Division. ‘I, too, got little sleep during the uncomfortable crossing and at about 0500 hours I made a supreme effort and crawled on deck: the lovely fresh air was worth a million pounds.’

Like many British and Canadian battalions struggling ashore from LCIs, they had been issued cheap rubberised waders, ‘which came up to one’s chest from one’s feet’ but tore easily, and lightweight assault jackets ‘which felt they were made of lead’, in addition to an inflatable life preserver. Hooper and the rest of the 151st Brigade clambered down the LCI’s gangplank; he remembered the ‘water four-foot deep, and I gasped as the freezing surf swirled around. It was the hardest ten yards I ever had to do, but we all got ashore. Jack Heath serving aboard LCT-522 of the 20th Flotilla at Juno Beach recollected the waders, too. Watching a nearby LCI unload its men at Courseulles, he recalled ‘the first ones down the ramps had bad luck when their trousers filled with water. They were swept out to sea and drowned. We were forced to watch in horror for we could not reach them with our hand lines, though we tried. The following troops realised what was happening and slashed at the waterproofs with their bayonets’.³⁷ R. G. Watts aboard LCT-2455, witnessed the same tragedy. ‘The tide was strong and the sea was still very rough. We had attached hawser ropes from wrecked craft to the beach. The soldiers were in a desperate situation carrying full packs on their shoulders. Sadly, we saw too many of them fail to grasp the rope, or slip underfoot. The weight they carried and the force of the sea was just too much for them. They drifted out to sea, while we watched on, helplessly.’³⁸

At Gold, Captain Hooper, the Durham Light Infantryman, mused, ‘I think we were all mightily thankful to be off LCI-501 and her terrible motion, though one poor chap was crushed to death, falling between the gangplank and the rocking side of the vessel. First thing I did, even before fighting the Germans, was tear off those blasted waders. One thing was immediately apparent – the water had brought me round like a footballer’s magic sponge: my seasickness evaporated instantly.’³⁹