The limitation thus imposed on the strength of the garrison in the West, reduced, but did not remove, the possibility that the enemy’s rate of reinforcement to Normandy might exceed that of the Allies. With 60 divisions von Rundstedt had a considerable margin in his-favour, for all the 37 divisions under Eisenhower’s command in Britain could not be brought into action until seven weeks after D-Day. To some extent this numerical advantage was counter-balanced by the indifferent quality and limited mobility of some German divisions and by the Allied command of the sea and air, which enabled Eisenhower to threaten the invasion of almost any sector of the enemy coastline. The German forces were consequently strung out from the Mediterranean to the Zuider Zee. Nevertheless, if von Rundstedt were to learn or to guess correctly the time and place of invasion he might still be able to concentrate sufficient forces to ensure its defeat. Thus at all costs by secrecy and deception the Allies had to gain surprise.

As D-Day approached the security ring around Britain was tightened. In February all civilian travel between the United Kingdom and Eire was stopped, in order to reduce the leakage of information to Dublin where German diplomats maintained a fertile centre of espionage, apparently unhindered by the Irish Government. In April a coastal belt, ten miles deep, from the Wash to Land’s End and on either side of the Firth of Forth, was closed to all visitors, and unprecedented restrictions were imposed upon foreign diplomats. Neither they nor their couriers were permitted to enter or leave the country and their mail was subjected to censorship.

The public announcement of these orders aroused considerable interest, and irritation, in the enemy camp and produced an outburst from Hitler at a staff conference on April 6th. “Frankly,” he declared, “this English performance seems to me farcical: the latest reports of these prohibitive regulations, these restrictive measures and so on. Normally that sort of thing isn’t done when one plans an operation like this....I can’t help feeling that after all this may be nothing but insolent posturing....It’s all so unnecessary. They can assemble their forces there, embark them and ship them across to here, and we can’t find out what they’re up to. I’m inclined to think that this is sheer impudent bluff.”{176}

There was no element of bluff in these restrictions, though they were intended to contribute incidentally to the war of nerves. All the guile and ingenuity of British Intelligence were being turned to the devising of a scheme of strategic deception, far more subtle in technique, far more sinister in design. The object of this plan, which carried the code-name FORTITUDE, was to convince the German High Command before D-Day that the assault would come in the Pas de Calais, and after D-Day that the Normandy landing was a preliminary and diversionary operation, intended to draw German reserves away from the area north of the Seine so that the main Allied attack might be delivered there at a later date. By this bluff it was hoped that an army of a quarter of a million men might be kept, idle but expectant, between Le Havre and Antwerp until the Battle of Normandy had been won.

The seed of deception was sown in fertile ground, for von Rundstedt, and the General Staff at OKW, had already concluded that the Pas de Calais was the place most likely to be attacked. It contained the main launching sites for V-weapons. Through it lay the easiest route to the Rhine and the Ruhr, and any successful landing there would probably mean the loss of all France. To the Germans the Pas de Calais was of vital importance and they made the common German mistake of assuming that it must therefore bulk equally large in the eyes of their adversaries. In working to strengthen these preconceptions, the British played upon the notorious tendency of German Intelligence Officers to approach problems with a card-index mind, indefatigable in collecting information, but incompetent in assessing it.

The primary weapon for the carrying out of FORTITUDE was air power, and the aerial plan was shaped accordingly. For every reconnaissance mission over Normandy, two were flown over the Pas de Calais. For every ton of bombs dropped on coastal batteries west of Le Havre, two tons were put down on batteries north of it. In the bombing of railways 95 per cent of the effort was directed against targets north and east of the Seine.

The impression created by these operations was confirmed by information which came from the English side of the Channel—from air reconnaissance, wireless interception, and the reports of spies who were surreptitiously provided with appropriate data. The deception of enemy pilots and agents had been begun by COSSAC in 1943, as part of its attempt to threaten invasion that year. An elaborate combined operations H.Q. had been built at Dover, and the pumping-head for one of the PLUTO’s had been ostentatiously set into the cliffs facing Boulogne. New staging camps and depots, new roads and railway sidings, additional port facilities and ‘hards,’{177} had been constructed in the south-east then, and good use was made of them now. Divisions which could not be landed early in the assault were concentrated opposite the Pas de Calais. Dummy landing-craft were assembled in the Thames Estuary and in south-eastern ports; dummy gliders were set up on airfields in Kent and East Anglia.

These and other preparations in the south-east were discreetly revealed, but those being made in the south-west were hidden as carefully as possible. In this deception the Luftwaffe gave gratuitous help. Because it was easier to make ‘snap and run’ flights over Kent and Sussex than over Devon and Cornwall, German air reconnaissance provided von Rundstedt’s Intelligence branch with more effective photographic cover of the area on which the Allies wished its attention to be concentrated.

The presumption that the main invasion forces were assembled in the south-east was reinforced by deceptive wireless traffic. Although Montgomery’s H.Q. was close to Portsmouth, its radio signals were conveyed by landline to Kent and transmitted from there.{178} By another radio subterfuge the idea was conveyed that the two follow-up armies (First Canadian and Third American) were in fact an assault force destined to land in the Pas de Calais. The Germans were allowed to learn that this Army Group was under the command of Lieut.-General George S. Patton, who was an ideal bogey. In Sicily he had shown himself to be the outstanding American field commander and, as he was considerably senior to Bradley, this set-up carried conviction to the logical German mind.

Through February, March and April all the evidence from France pointed to the success of this deception scheme. The Fifteenth German Army, north of the Seine, continued to receive priority in reinforcements. During these three months its infantry strength increased from 10 divisions to 15, and here alone, in the sector between Le Havre and Calais, was the enemy able to establish defence in depth with a second line of infantry divisions in close support of those holding the coast. There was no indication that the German command seriously contemplated a landing between Le Havre and Cherbourg. Reinforcements were spared for the Mediterranean coast in March and for Brittany in April, but none went to Normandy.

To Allied Intelligence officers, studying the enemy’s Order of Battle, it seemed almost too good to be true, but in mid-April there was a sudden alarm when air photographs of the Orne Valley revealed that the enemy was erecting stout posts as ‘anti-air landing obstacles’ in the very fields where the British gliders were due to land. Had the enemy got wind of the plan? Reconnaissance aircraft were dispatched to other sectors and their photographs showed that similar obstructions were being set up right along the Channel coast, and particularly between Calais and Dieppe.

Anxiety was allayed, but only for the moment. In the first week of May there was exceptionally heavy rail traffic in the area between the Seine and the Loire. Aerial reconnaissance and agents’ reports indicated that a drastic re-arrangement of enemy reserves was in progress, and that the focal point was Normandy. It was soon known that the 21st Panzer Division had moved from Rennes in Brittany to the Caen-Falaise area, hard by the beaches which Second British Army was to assault, and that Panzer Lehr, returning from Hungary, had gone not to its old location around Verdun, but to the region of Chartres-Le Mans-Châteaudun, only one day’s march from Caen. Those moves were the more significant because the enemy had never before placed panzer divisions in these locations. In the past the armoured reserves in Normandy had consisted of only one SS division around Lisieux. Now between the Seine and the Loire were the three best-equipped armoured divisions in von Rundstedt’s command, and a fourth (116th Panzer) was astride the Seine, west of Paris.

It seemed almost certain that the enemy had discovered, or guessed, the Allied intention, and this impression was strengthened in the middle of May when an infantry division, plus a parachute regiment, fresh from Germany, took up a blocking position at the base of the Cotentin Peninsula, right on the dropping-zones which had been chosen for American airborne troops. At the same time it was learned that another mobile division, the 5th Parachute, had moved into Rennes and news came from agents south of the Loire that the 17th SS Panzer Grenadier Division, stationed around Poitiers, was preparing to move north into Normandy. For the Allies the great unanswered question of the hour was: how much did von Rundstedt really know?

The truth was, however, that these moves were the result of intuition, not information, and the intuition was Hitler’s. Implicit in the German appreciations of Allied intentions was the assumption that the principle assault—north of the Seine—would be preceded by at least one diversionary attack, designed to draw off von Rundstedt’s mobile reserves. Early in the year Hitler was extremely anxious about a diversion against Denmark. In March he became concerned at the possibility of a double assault against the Biscay and Mediterranean coasts. Von Rundstedt shared this concern until April when it became apparent that Italy was the point of immediate concentration for the Allied armies in the Mediterranean. He then decided that the diversion would be made in Brittany and advocated the withdrawal from the area south of the Loire of everything except a meagre police force. He argued that the Allies were now too deeply committed in Italy to make an early landing in Southern France and that German strength in the West should be concentrated on the Channel to match the Allied concentration in Southern England.

From a purely military standpoint this was sound strategy, yet Hitler rejected it, not merely because of his fundamental reluctance to yield ground, but because he knew that any loosening of his grip on the occupied territories would have disastrous political repercussions throughout Europe. His fears on this score were not unjustified, for the area south of Limoges and Lyons was the stronghold of the Maquis, the most intractable element of the French Resistance. He could not risk an open outbreak of revolt at this critical time.

Although he adhered to his determination to defend the whole of France, Hitler rightly predicted where the main blow would fall. In the last week of April, when the Allied assault shipping began to assemble in the embarkation ports, German reconnaissance aircraft noted the heavy concentrations in harbours west of the Isle of Wight and the absence of any marked increase in the forces in Dover and Folkestone. On May 2nd, in the light of this evidence, Hitler proclaimed to his staff the belief that the Schwerpunkt of the Allied landings would be in Normandy, and he ordered the immediate reinforcement of the sector between the Seine and the Loire.

Von Rundstedt carried out these orders reluctantly, since Admiral Krancke, commanding Naval Group West, assured him that it was “almost impossible” for large-scale landings to be made between Caen and Cherbourg on account of the dangerous outcrops of rock off-shore.{179} In addition, von Rundstedt’s chief engineer insisted that the flooding around Carentan would discourage any major assault on the Cotentin Peninsula. Accordingly, C.-in-C., West, remained true to his original conviction that the initial blow would fall between Fecamp and Le Tréport (i.e. around Dieppe) and the chief assault north of the Somme. He, and his staff, decided that the shipping concentrations in Devon and Cornwall must be part of a deception plan designed to distract their attention from the Pas de Calais. When their night reconnaissance aircraft reported that road convoys driving to ports in South-Western England were using their lights they presumed that this ‘breach of security’ was deliberately designed to deceive.

Rommel’s appreciation fell half-way between the views of Hitler and von Rundstedt. He continued to believe that the major landings would be made at the mouth of the Somme, but he now expected a strong diversion in Western Normandy. Accordingly, in May he intensified the fortification of the sector between Cherbourg and Le Havre, strengthened the static garrisons and redistributed his reserves, moving them closer to the coast. He suggested further that 12th SS, one of the panzer divisions held back in Hitler’s strategic reserve, should be moved to the area St. Lô-Carentan—to the immediate vicinity, in fact, of the chosen American assault beaches. Von Rundstedt opposed this and for once Hitler did not force the issue in Rommel’s favour.

The Allied commanders knew nothing of these arguments and estimates, but they learned enough to realise that the character and strength of the enemy forces in the NEPTUNE area had altered drastically and dangerously during May. To them the only reassuring fact was that none of these changes had been made at the expense of the Pas de Calais, which was still the most strongly defended zone, nor was there any sign that the enemy felt free to weaken his garrison in Southern France.

At the end of May, as far as the Allies knew, von Rundstedt’s strength was still widely dispersed, for his 60 divisions were deployed as follows:

 

 

This dispersion was the inevitable result of the Allied command of the sea and air and of Hitler’s insistence that the whole of France must be defended. It gave an initial advantage to the invaders, but the strengthening of the coast defences and the last-minute reinforcement of Normandy kept the overall balance of ground strength weighted against them. When the revised Overload Plan was approved in February, it was estimated by Williams that the Allies would meet not more than six divisions on D-Day. By mid-May, however, it seemed likely that at least eight divisions, two of them armoured, would be able to oppose the landings on the first day and that three other armoured or mechanised divisions and an additional infantry division could be in action against the bridge-head by the morning of D plus 2, instead of D plus 4 as originally estimated. It was now apparent that Rommel was seeking to defeat the invasion on the beaches and that the critical phase would be the first week or ten days. During this period there was the possibility that the comparative rate of build-up would be as follows:

 

 

This prospect heightened the importance of the campaign of disruption and deception which the Allied Air Forces had been waging against German defences and communications since February.

 

The air supremacy, which the Allies had established from the Atlantic and Mediterranean coasts to Berlin and Vienna by March 1944, enabled Eisenhower to make full use of the flexible weapon of aerial power in support of OVERLORD, but his plan for its employment was settled only after a prolonged and acute controversy. This revolved chiefly around the question whether the primary target for the Strategic Air Forces in the months preceding the invasion should be the railway system of Northern France and the Low Countries or the synthetic oil refineries and other industrial targets in Germany.

Eisenhower insisted that he could not outstrip the German build-up unless the rail communications leading to the invasion area were paralysed, and this, he urged, could be assured only if rail targets were subjected to a prolonged and intensive campaign of bombardment, not only by the ‘mediums’ of the Allied Expeditionary Air Force, but by the ‘heavies’ which were not under his jurisdiction. The U.S. Strategic Air Forces and R.A.F. Bomber Command were directly responsible to the Combined Chiefs of Staff and their commanders, Spaatz and Harris respectively, were most reluctant to be diverted from their appointed task of crippling German industry just when they believed they were about to achieve decisive success. They were both convinced that Germany could be bombed into impotence, if not submission, provided that their attacks were maintained without respite; any slackening or pause would give the enemy the opportunity to patch up existing scars and carry through his programme of dispersal.

Harris’s reluctance was due primarily to his doubt whether he could “achieve the extraordinary precision needed if the project was to succeed,” for experience had shown that railways were “extraordinarily difficult and unrewarding targets for air attack.”{180} Bomber Command had been concerned almost exclusively with attacks on large industrial areas, and, says Harris, “there was little reason to think that the whole force could be rapidly switched to the destruction of small targets.”

The chief opposition came, however, from Spaatz, for his Fortresses and Liberators were about to launch an offensive against the synthetic oil plants, which provided the life-blood of the German war machine and had become increasingly important in view of the growing Soviet threat to the Rumanian oilfields. The attack on German oil was to be the culmination of the American campaign in the air, for now at last they had the air supremacy, the range and above all the radar equipment to strike accurately through cloud or smoke screen even at such small targets as refineries. Like Harris, Spaatz was ready to harness his forces to the OVERLORD plan for the weeks immediately before and after the landing, but both were opposed to any premature diversion of their strength for the sustained bombardment of rail targets. Spaatz suggested that enemy communications could be sufficiently disrupted by direct attacks on the main lines and junctions in the immediate NEPTUNE area on the eve of invasion.

This proposal was rejected by Eisenhower, who was advised by Tedder and Leigh-Mallory that nothing less than the saturation of the repair and maintenance facilities of the French railways would produce the necessary paralysis. Accordingly he demanded that all air resources be employed to ensure the success of the main Allied effort, OVERLORD. The bombing of oil refineries, even if successful, would not affect the strength of the Wehrmacht in the field in time to assist the over-riding task of getting the troops ashore in Normandy. The railway bombing plan did promise to do so.

Eisenhower’s view prevailed and in March the Combined Chiefs of Staff agreed to place the Strategic Air Forces under his ‘operational control.’ He in turn delegated to Tedder the intricate task of co-ordinating the efforts of the British and American heavy bombers and of Leigh-Mallory’s A.E.A.F. Thus Tedder exercised the authority of the Supreme Commander in respect of air operations. This was a wise move. The Americans were reluctant to follow Leigh-Mallory’s direction, but they accepted Tedder in the role of co-ordinator because he spoke for Eisenhower.

A successful commander of fighters in the defence of Britain and the Dieppe Raid, Leigh-Mallory had risen to become A.O.C.-in-C., Fighter Command, but he was not experienced in bomber operations and he lacked Tedder’s strategic sense and diplomatic touch. In directing operations Leigh-Mallory was resolute and aggressive, but in planning he was inclined to take counsel of his fears. He had very strong opinions about the use of air power, and many of his original ideas were to be proved correct by events, but he was obstinate and blunt in presenting his views and extremely hot-tempered when crossed. He inspired great loyalty and confidence in his staff and his fighting squadrons, but he was not so successful in his dealings with other services, or with the Americans who resented his dogmatic manner. He did not possess the knack of easy association essential for an Allied commander-in-chief in a combined operation. Admittedly, he had a difficult task, for successful air commanders tend to become temperamental personalities, and the Americans were unwilling to accept anything more than nominal control.

Tedder, on the other hand, had exactly the qualities and the experience to play the role of referee. In Africa and the Mediterranean he had directed the Allied Air Forces with a brilliant hand. The Americans liked and respected him and he understood what the Army needed. Of all the British commanders serving under Eisenhower, he was undoubtedly the best fitted to resolve inter-service and inter-Allied difficulties. Even Tedder’s appointment, however, did not entirely eradicate the weakness of the Air Command. He had no staff and there was no Supreme Air Headquarters. Tedder had to co-ordinate as best he could the efforts of three separate Air Forces, each with its own Commander-in-Chief and each jealous of its own position. Out of this complex and unwieldy arrangement even his deft direction could not evolve a fully integrated air plan.

The decision regarding the control of the heavy bombers did not end the argument about targets. The plan to bomb the French railways evoked repeated protests from the Prime Minister and from General Pierre Koenig, the Commander of the F.F.I. (Les Forces Françaises de d’Intérieur), who were alarmed at the casualties which might be inflicted upon civilians. Koenig offered to achieve equal dislocation of the railways by sabotage. “You name the targets,” he said to Eisenhower’s Chief of Staff, Bedell Smith, “and we will see that they’re destroyed.” This gallant offer had to be refused, for the scope and character of the plan was such that its fulfilment could not be left to the hazard of sabotage.

 

 

In Sicily and Italy Tedder had learned how difficult it was to cripple enemy rail communications by the conventional methods of line-cutting and bridge-busting, but he had also discovered that a whole railway system could be paralysed if the attacks were concentrated on the centres of maintenance and repair. His primary targets, therefore, were railway workshops and locomotive sheds, the destruction of which would cause long-term and widespread dislocation which the enemy could not rapidly make good. Since most of these centres were alongside major junctions and marshalling yards they provided dual-purpose targets and it was possible to strike simultaneously at both the current traffic and capital equipment of the railways. When this process of attrition was well advanced, Tedder planned to switch the main attack to locomotives, lines and bridges, paying special attention in the final week to the road and rail bridges over the Seine and, he hoped, inflicting damage so severe that the enemy’s already weakened repair services could not cope with it.

Although the primary purpose of the rail offensive was to reduce the enemy’s capacity for moving reserves, it was important that it should also contribute to the deception plan. By a fortunate accident of geography a single bombardment programme could achieve both objects. The chief German supply routes to Western Normandy were either extensions of, or offshoots from, lines which served the Pas de Calais or the Le Havre-Amiens area. They ran either through Paris or across the Seine west of the capital. Thus the bombing of repair-shops and junctions between the Seine and the Meuse could disrupt German communications with Normandy almost as effectively as attacks directed at the zone between the Seine and the Loire. Moreover, the general paralysis of the railway system could best be achieved by attacks on targets in the Région Nord, for it was here that the principal maintenance facilities were located. Nor would the bombing of the Seine bridges betray the Allied intention, since this would appear as the last act in an attempt to isolate the Pas de Calais.

For the execution of this plan a team of railway experts chose 80 key targets in Northern France and Belgium, 39 of which were to be dealt with by Bomber Command. The offensive opened on the night of March 6th-7th with a raid by the R.A.F. on Trappes, 20 miles west of Paris. There the engine shed was wrecked and 190 direct hits were scored on the tracks; the marshalling yard was still under repair at the end of April. Bomber Command exceeded all expectations in the accuracy of its attacks; the Eighth U.S. Air Force was equally successful, and, once the ‘heavies’ had devastated a particular target, the ‘mediums’ kept the scars open with stoking raids, and fighter-bombers harassed the reconstruction gangs.

At the end of March the bombed lines were usually repaired within forty-eight hours, but before the end of April it was taking more than a week to get them open and by the middle of May the accumulation of wreckage was so vast that even important routes were closed for ten to twelve days after an average attack. By this time 15 major marshalling yards and 40 large depots for the servicing of locomotives had been wrecked, and little could be done to restore them owing to the serious shortage of cranes.

Early in May Colonel Hoeffner, who was in charge of all rail transportation for von Rundstedt, reported to OKW that the situation was critical. To maintain the Wehrmacht in France, he said, required 100 trains a day from Germany; the daily average for April had been 60 and this had now fallen to 32. Of these, nearly half were coal trains from the Saar, for he could no longer supply the French railways with coal from Belgium. Consequently he was only just able to meet the current needs of the forces north and north-west of Paris. He could not maintain supplies for work on the Atlantic Wall nor could he carry out the planned stocking-up of ammunition and petrol dumps near the coast. More than 50,000 Germans and foreigners had been brought in to keep the railways running but more would be needed, because it was becoming increasingly difficult to find Frenchmen to operate the trains or repair the lines west and north of Paris.

When Hoeffner made that report the offensive had not yet entered its most intensive phase. This began on May 21st when the policy of strategic attrition was supplemented by tactical interdiction and dislocation, by attacks on bridges, viaducts and locomotives and by straight-out line-cutting. Although the raids were more widespread, the deceptive purpose was maintained and the Germans recorded 246 attacks on targets north of the Seine and only 33 south of it during the next week. By the end of the following week 430 locomotives had been wrecked by Allied aircraft; of the 2,000 engines in Région Nord, 1,500 were now immobilised by direct air attacks or lack of maintenance; and traffic had fallen to 13 per cent of the January level. At the H.Q. of Region Nord in Brussels the Germans kept an elaborate wall chart showing the weekly state of traffic, lines and rolling stock. On this chart from the end of March the graphs went steadily down until at last on May 28th the Germans abandoned the attempt to keep account of the damage and destruction. In the three months before D-Day only four of the 80 special rail targets escaped serious damage, and traffic over the whole of France declined by 70 per cent.

The final blow in the preparatory campaign against enemy communications was the attack on bridges over the Seine, the Oise and the Meuse. The technique for these attacks was worked out by the Ninth U.S. Air Force, which used fighters as dive-bombers with spectacular success. By June 5th, of the 24 road and rail bridges over the Seine between Paris and the sea, 18 had been destroyed, three were closed for repair and the remaining three were under such threat of air attack that they could not be used for any large-scale movement in daylight.

This successful interdiction counteracted to a very large degree the increase in strength which the May reinforcements had brought to the Seventh German Army in Normandy and made it likely that the early battle would have to be fought out by the divisions already deployed between the Seine and the Loire. In the immediate area of the invasion there were now six, possibly seven, infantry divisions and one panzer division, with two other panzer divisions at close call and capable of intervening within twenty-four hours, unless their attention could be distracted to another quarter.

While the Allied Air Forces were developing their assault against the enemy’s communications and coastal defences, there was little opposition or counter-action from the Luftwaffe. Even daylight raids on vital installations were seldom resisted by German fighters and the anticipated onslaught against the harbours of Southern England by V-weapons and conventional aircraft did not materialise. In February and March London had nine night raids—ironically dubbed ‘the Little Blitz’— but these were merely token reprisals for the bombing of Berlin. On moonless nights during April and May there was some minelaying and scatter-bombing along the south coast, but it never reached serious proportions. The failure of the Germans to launch their promised offensive with V-weapons was amply explained by the persistent bombing of the launching sites, but the limited activity of the Luftwaffe, even during the most ostentatious exercises in the Channel, seemed accountable only on the ground that Göring was husbanding his resources until the armada put to sea. In the final weeks every enemy airfield within 130 miles of the Channel coast was heavily bombed, yet it was by no means certain that the degree of air superiority which the Allies enjoyed during May would prevail in the first critical weeks after D-Day.

 

While the air offensive developed in power and scope, the final plan for the NEPTUNE assault was approved by Eisenhower, though Leigh-Mallory continued to express his fears about the employment of airborne troops in the Cotentin Peninsula. The Army plan provided for the operation to begin with the dropping of three airborne divisions behind the Atlantic Wall during the night immediately preceding the main invasion from the sea. These divisions—the 6th British in the Orne Valley and the 82nd and 101st American at the base of the Cotentin— were to secure the flanks of the bridgehead and weaken the beach defences at keypoints by attacks from the rear. Their landing was to be followed soon after daybreak by the seaborne assault, for which the Order of Battle was:

FIRST U.S. ARMY (Lieut.-General Omar Bradley) to land North and East of the Vire Estuary:

Right: VII U.S. Corps (Major-General J. Lawton Collins).

UTAH Beach—4th U.S. Infantry Division assaulting, followed by the 90th, 9th and 79th Divisions.

Left: V U.S. Corps (Major-General L. T. Gerow).

OMAHA Beach—1st U.S. Infantry Division, with part of the 29th Infantry Division under command, and the rest of the 29th, plus the 2nd Infantry Division, to follow up.

 

SECOND BRITISH ARMY (Lieut.-General M. C. Dempsey) to land between Bayeux and Caen:

Right: XXX British Corps (Lieut.-General G. C. Bucknall).

GOLD Beach—50th Northumbrian Division and 8th Armoured Brigade, followed by the 7th Armoured Division and the 49th Infantry Division.

Left: I British Corps (Lieut.-General J. T. Crocker).

JUNO Beach—3rd Canadian Infantry Division and 2nd Canadian Armoured Brigade followed by Commandos of 4th Special Service Brigade.

SWORD Beach—3rd British Infantry Division and 27th Armoured Brigade, followed by 1st Special Service Brigade, the 51st Highland Division and 4th Armoured Brigade.{181}

 

The immediate task which Montgomery had given to these forces was to form two bridgeheads on D-Day: one between the Rivers Vire and Orne, including Isigny, Bayeux and Caen; the other on the coast of the Cotentin, north of the Vire, extending to the line of the Carentan Canal and beyond the River Merderet. It was not expected that these two bridgeheads could be linked up before D plus 1 at the earliest, for Carentan was strongly held and there was no likelihood that it could be attacked on the first day.

Montgomery intended that in the next week this foothold should be expanded north-west, west and south, but not appreciably east or southeast. On the left flank the role of I British Corps was to hold Caen and the open ground immediately south of the city as a pivot and as a bastion, which must at all costs withstand the counter-attack of the enemy’s main panzer reserves stationed in the area Chartres-Paris-Amiens-Rouen. From the centre of the bridgehead V U.S. Corps and XXX British Corps would attack south to secure by D plus 9 the high ground along the line St. Lô-Caumont-Villers-Bocage, thus gaining sufficient depth to protect the MULBERRY harbours from direct fire. Meantime VII U.S. Corps was to strike west and seal off the base of the Cotentin and north to capture Cherbourg—by D plus 8 if all were to go well, though Bradley did not believe that this could be achieved before D plus 15.

With Cherbourg taken, Bradley’s full strength would be concentrated for a southward drive to expand the bridgehead into a substantial lodgement area. Montgomery hoped that by D plus 50 his forces— including the First Canadian and Third U.S. Armies—would hold an area including the Brittany ports and extending south to the Loire and east to the line Deauville-Tours. If the battle were to follow the plan, the Allied armies (strengthened by divisions brought direct from the United States to Cherbourg and possibly to Brest) would be established along the Seine, across the Paris-Orléans gap and down the valley of the Loire to the sea by D plus 90.{182}

 

 

This statement of the probable course of events is taken direct from the notes Montgomery used on May 15th when he spoke at a Final Presentation of Plans in the presence of the King and the Prime Minister. Confident and resolute, Montgomery talked “without pretension or bombast,” to quote the opinion of Brereton, who commanded the Ninth U.S. Air Force.{183} His survey was masterful and prescient, and when he turned to speak of the enemy he revealed how thoroughly he understood his opponent’s mind.

“Last February,” he said, “Rommel took command from Holland to the Loire. It is now clear that his intention is to deny any penetration: OVERLORD is to be defeated on the beaches.” He then went on to state in detail what changes Rommel had made, and he continued, “Rommel is an energetic and determined commander; he has made a world of difference since he took over. He is best at the spoiling attack; his forte is disruption; he is too impulsive for a set-piece battle. He will do his level best to ‘Dunkirk’ us—not to fight the armoured battle on ground of his own choosing, but to avoid it altogether by preventing our tanks from landing by using his own tanks well forward. On D-Day he will try to force us from the beaches and secure Caen, Bayeux, Carentan....Thereafter he will continue his counter-attacks. But, as time goes on, he will combine them with a roping-off policy and he must then hold firm on the important ground which dominates and controls the road axes in the bocage country.”

Montgomery then propounded his solution: “We must blast our way on shore and get a good lodgement before the enemy can bring up sufficient reserves to turn us out. Armoured columns must penetrate deep inland, and quickly, on D-Day; this will upset the enemy’s plans and tend to hold him off while we build up strength. We must gain space rapidly and peg out claims well inland....Once we get control of the main enemy lateral Granville-Vire-Argentan-Falaise-Caen and have the area enclosed in it firmly in our possession, then we will have the lodgement area we want and can begin to expand.”

He concluded with this injunction: “We shall have to send the soldiers into this party ‘seeing red.’ They must see red. We must get them completely on their toes, having absolute faith in the plan; and imbued with infectious optimism and offensive eagerness. Nothing must stop them. Nothing. If we send them into battle in this way—then we shall succeed,”

To the inculcation of this fiery spirit in his troops Montgomery bent all his energy and ardour in the weeks that remained before they set forth upon their great crusade.