THROUGHOUT SOUTHERN ENGLAND, soldiers by the thousands were either moved to security compounds or awoke one morning to find their base transformed into a virtual concentration camp. Since April 5, the Regina Rifle Regiment had been in Hiltingbury Camp, Camp 7, Block C (C-7)—part of a great tent city that sprawled over most of Hiltingbury Common six miles north of Southampton. On May 25, American soldiers with orders to allow nobody in or out sealed the entire camp.
Only ten days earlier, the only people in 3rd Canadian Infantry Division who had known the precise location of the invasion had been a mere handful of Major General Rod Keller’s divisional staff officers. On May 15, however, the veil of secrecy had been lifted for the brigade and battalion commanders and their second-in-commands during a day-long briefing session held in the great dining hall of Cranbury House—the large estate housing Keller’s headquarters.1
Major John Clifford Cave, the Sherbrooke Fusilier Regiment’s thirty-six-year-old second-in-command, had never seen so much senior brass gathered in one place. The tobacco smoke–filled room was crammed almost to overflowing.2
First came a general appreciation of the overall invasion plan, with the division’s intelligence officer using a large map to detail the passage of the invasion fleet from England to the five beaches in Normandy. Then a new map was undraped that showed Juno Beach and the inland countryside. The beach was a five-mile strip of low, flat sandy coastline running from the seaside resort of St. Aubin-sur-Mer in the east to the Château Vaux about a mile west of the mouth of the River Seulles. Fronting the beach were the villages of Bernièressur-Mer about two and a half miles west of St. Aubin-sur-Mer and the small fishing port of Courseulles-sur-Mer on the eastern bank of the Seulles River. Tucked slightly inland on the western bank of the river was the hamlet Graye-sur-Mer. River Seulles widened just behind its mouth to create several basins that offered good shelter for fishing boats.3
In several places, a series of rocky ledges normally submerged during high tide extended as far as a mile out to sea. On the west bank of the Seulles, the beach at low tide was a half-mile deep and backed by a deep swath of ten-foot-high dunes. Between Courseulles and Bernières it was mostly sand broken by a few rocky outcrops. Both villages were well protected from storms by concrete seawalls the assault forces would have to breach.4
Next, Lieutenant Colonel Don Mingay took the stage to explain the operational plan. Two infantry brigades, each supported by an armoured regiment and two regiments of artillery, would comprise the assault wave. Tanks and infantry would hit the beach together, with the artillery providing covering fire. The Royal Winnipeg Rifles strengthened by a Canadian Scottish Regiment company would land west of the River Seulles, while the Regina Rifles touched down in front of Courseulles. The rest of the Canadian Scottish Regiment would form 7th Canadian Infantry Brigade’s reserve. Supporting these landings would be the 1st Hussars Armoured Regiment and the 12th and 13th artillery regiments. On the left, 8th Canadian Infantry Brigade would put the Queen’s Own Rifles on the beach in front of Bernières while the North Shore (New Brunswick) Regiment swept into the western outskirts of St. Aubin. The Fort Garry Horse would be in support along with the 14th and 19th artillery regiments—the latter seconded to the division from 2nd Army Group, Royal Canadian Artillery. In reserve here would be Le Régiment de la Chaudière.5
Immediately after the assault force secured the beach, Mingay explained, the reserve regiments would land. Then the two brigades would launch a four-phase drive inland. Phase I was simply to occupy Vaux, Graye-sur-Mer, Courseulles, Bernières, and St. Aubin. InPhase II, 7 CIB would secure crossings over the River Seulles and advance to Creully—a medieval castle town about six miles inland—while 8 CIB would take up a parallel position on a low ridge extending north to south from the village of Basly through Anguerny to Anisy. These were the division’s intermediate objectives for the day. ForPhase III, 9th Canadian Infantry Brigade, having landed while the two leading brigades pushed inland, would pass through 8 CIB and seize the villages of Authie, Ardenne, Carpiquet, and the strategically vital Carpiquet airport. Simultaneously on the right, 7 CIB would wheel to the southeast from Creully to occupy the ground between Putot-enBessin, Bretteville-l’Orgueilleuse, and Norrey-en-Bessin. This would put the two leading brigades astride the Caen-Bayeux Road—Objective Oak—by evening. Phase IV was simply to reorganize here and dig in.6
Because of a significant gap on the left flank between the Canadians and the British division on Sword Beach, No. 48 (Royal Marine) Commando was placed under Keller’s command. Its four hundred-strong force of five fighting troops and one heavy weapons troop armed with mortars and medium machine-guns would land on the division’s eastern boundary and capture Langrune-sur-Mer while another commando unit drove over from Sword to link up with No. 48.7
Opposing the Juno Beach landing would be the 716th Infantry Division’s 736th Grenadier Regiment, most specifically its 2nd Battalion beefed up by elements of the 441st East Battalion (comprised of eastern European conscripts and volunteers). The intelligence officer described the 716th as “a low category division of two regiments of infantry and one regiment of artillery [equipped with] two field and one medium battery. All personnel are trained in coast defence although the better trained have been transferred to field divisions. The remainder consists of young soldiers, men of older classes unfit for service on the Eastern Front and men who have been wounded and are only slightly disabled. In comparison with a first class field infantry division its fighting value has been assessed as 40 per cent in a static role and 15 per cent in a counterattack. The division should be up to strength in personnel (13,000) and equipment, and is probably over-strength as it has been reported that non-German soldiers, Russians, Mongols, etc. have been seen in the divisional area.”8
Although the opposing regiment was considered of poor material, it was dug in behind a maze of beach obstacles and enjoyed excellent fields of interlocking fire from a complex of fortified strongpoints. These strongpoints consisted of concrete pillboxes with adjacent open machine-gun pits. In key points, 75-millimetre guns had been positioned inside casemates or open emplacements to add to the direct defensive fire. All obvious routes by which infantry and tanks could move off inland from the beach were covered by at least one strong-point, and all the strongpoints were well protected by minefields and barbed wire entanglements.
Reconnaissance photos had identified at least nine strongpoints on Juno Beach, with two particularly formidable positions on either side of the river mouth by Courseulles and one each at Bernières and St. Aubin. Ranging between two thousand and three thousand yards back of these, the reconnaissance photos showed that the Germans were well along in construction of a system of dugouts thought to contain heavy mortars and machine guns. Although some positions had been identified, intelligence staff had only a slight idea of the number of German artillery batteries deployed well back of the beach that could be brought to bear on the landing force. Most of these were 75-millimetre batteries, but at least a few 88-millimetre guns had been detected. There was also a battery of four 105-millimetre guns within direct fire range of the beach.
Once the strongpoints were overwhelmed, the 716th Division was expected to pose little further threat to the landings, but in short order the Canadians could face counterattacks by two armoured divisions positioned within easy striking distance of Juno Beach. The 21st Panzer Division, under Generalleutnant Edgar Feuchtinger, was just eight hours away in the area of Falaise. Almost wiped out in Tunisia at the end of the African campaign, this division had been rebuilt with young and well-trained soldiers. Farther east, near the Seine estuary, the 12th SS Panzer (Hitlerjugend) Division was comprised of untested but fanatical Hitler Youth. Its officers and non-commissioned officers, however, were all veterans and many had seen service on the Eastern Front. The 12th SS could easily be on the scene the day after D-Day (D+1).9
The briefing ended with discussion of a subject that had been worrying everyone in the room—estimates of probable casualties. They were told that 21st Army Group Headquarters predicted that 9,250 of the 70,000 British and Canadian soldiers landing on D-Day would be dead, wounded, or missing by day’s end. Of these, 3,000 were expected to have drowned. The Canadian forces, including 1st Canadian Parachute Battalion, landing on D-Day would total about 15,000. By simple averaging, Canadian casualties were expected to tally 1,982 men, almost 15 per cent of the landing force lost in a single day.10
It was a sobering thought and one that Mingay again explained a few days later to a group of about thirty Canadian journalists who would accompany the division to Normandy. Mingay walked the reporters through the same thorough brief that had been given to the officers, including illustrating the operation on a series of highly detailed maps. When Mingay told the reporters of the estimated casualty projections, the room grew quite still. Then Montreal Gazette correspondent Lionel Shapiro stood and asked Mingay “what plans had been made to withdraw if the landing was unsuccessful?” Mingay, who was sitting on the edge of a desk at this point of the briefing, responded: “There are no plans for withdrawal. If it fails the Allied cause will be in real jeopardy.” Shapiro was incensed, accusing Mingay and the entire Allied planning staff of being “stupid, incompetent.” Mingay sharply retorted that they “were taking no chances that anyone in the organization would even contemplate anything but success.” The invasion force either succeeded or died on the sand.11
THAT THE ENGLISH CHANNEL might be running red with blood as the assault ended in failure was a distinct possibility. And even if it succeeded, the likelihood of personal survival was by no means guaranteed, as soldiers, sailors, and airmen alike learned when the bleak casualty projections were revealed during ensuing briefings. During several brigade and battalion level briefings, Captain Peter Simonds of the Royal Canadian Corps of Signals noted the general reaction. “Some,” he later wrote, “remembered that the estimated 500 casualties for Dieppe had run to about seven times that figure and decided, on this basis, that they had just about ‘had it.’” Yet they seemed strangely unfazed. Simonds was “downright alarmed as well as forced into admiration at the carefree, relaxed manner with which they approached their ordeal. Frankly, I would have liked to have seen this splendid cross-section of young Canadian manhood outwardly place a higher value on their own useful lives and well-being.”12
When Major Roger Rowley briefed the Cameron Highlanders of Ottawa, which, as the division’s heavy weapons battalion, would be landing in scattered units alongside the rest of the division’s battalions, Simonds was taken aback by the man’s casual dismissal of their chances. Rowley reminded Simonds of Errol Flynn, both in his appearance and cavalier style. “You might as well face the facts, men,” Rowley said, “that you stand a good chance of being killed. So what? It’s a damned sight better to die gloriously writing one of the greatest pages in history than to die twenty years hence lying in a drunken stupor in a gutter with the rats eating off your red nose.” Expecting outrage at such flippancy, Simonds was surprised when the men instead “burst into a gale of appreciative laughter. They felt just like [Rowley] about the whole affair—they were in it to the finish, come what may. Nowhere else have I seen anything approaching the devil-may-care exuberant morale and spirits I encountered… with the 3rd Canadian Infantry Division.”13
Not everyone appreciated the manner in which briefing officers warned of a possible slaughter. In late May, a Royal Navy Commander briefed the 31st Canadian Minesweeping Flotilla’s ship captains aboard HMCSCaraquet. Lieutenant Commander James Green, captain of Wasaga, was deeply disturbed by the man’s cold-blooded manner. First, he dismayed the captains with the news that, instead of clearing the invasion route for Force J’s crossing to Juno Beach, the Canadian flotilla was now to sweep the lanes ahead of the American force sailing to Omaha Beach.
He followed up this bad news by saying that the minesweepers leading the way into the beaches were particularly vulnerable to being crippled by shore battery fire and could expect heavy losses among their crews or even the disabling of their ships. In the latter event, he warned, the damaged vessel would immediately be blown out of the water so it would not get in the way of the landing craft carrying troops and equipment to the beaches.
Briefing over, the ship captains proceeded to Caraquet’s quarter-deck to await boats that would take them back to their respective ships. For a time, nobody spoke and Green noted each man’s grim expression. Finally, one officer dug a set of dice out of a pocket, knelt down, and rolled them on the deck. A rough, hard crap game ensued with every man throwing in pound notes without the slightest care if they were lost. At first, Green raked in the loot, then he fell into a losing streak that continued until his wallet was emptied.14
Shortly after the briefing of the ship captains, Royal Canadian Navy Vice Admiral Percy Nelles addressed the crew of Caraquet. Among those assembled was Stoker 1st Class George Irwin, who listened to Nelles calmly explain that the minesweepers were expected to suffer 75 per cent losses. As Caraquet would be in the lead, the vice admiral fully expected the ship and its entire crew would be lost. For that reason, he offered everyone in the crew a chance to stand aside without fear of penalty. They would merely be confined ashore until the invasion was launched and then reassigned to other duties. No one took the offer up.15
WHILE FEW FALTERED, a good number flinched when told the precise nature of their assignments. Rifleman Hugh Lamb of the Queen’s Own Rifles’ ‘A’ Company discovered he was to be the third man off his Landing Craft, Assault. He was to dash across the sand to the concrete seawall and blast a hole in the tangles of barbed wire on top of it with a bangalore torpedo. During landing exercises, the rifleman raced towards imaginary concrete seawalls with his hollow explosive-filled pipe on a shoulder and imagined what it would be like on the real day. Germans dug in behind the wire, ripping away with machine guns, and him running straight into their fire. Lamb saw himself dead, his wife left without a husband, his son orphaned.
He had married young, at seventeen, on August 7, 1939 and promised his wife that despite having spent four years in the militia he would not enlist until they were settled. For the first year, he and his bride were too poor to live on their own, so each lived separately with their respective parents in Mississauga. Then their son came along and Lamb found a job as an apprentice carpenter with a sash-and-door company in nearby Georgetown, where the young couple set up a home. But on January 3, 1943, Lamb and his brother went to the local RCAF recruiting depot to enlist. When his brother was rejected, however, the two walked over to the army depot and enlisted there, with the idea that they wanted to stay together.
Little concerned with the desires of two brothers, the army promptly split them up. Lamb’s militia experience was such that he fast-tracked through training at Camp Borden and was sent overseas just six months after his enlistment. At Aldershot, he asked to join the Queen’s Own Rifles for no better reason than he liked their dress uniforms and knew they were Canada’s second-oldest regiment. Surprisingly, the army actually gave him the requested assignment.
But Lamb didn’t want this current assignment. He searched desperately for any way short of desertion to avoid carrying that bangalore torpedo and found his opportunity when a call went out for volunteers to the pioneer platoon. Despite the fact that the platoon was nicknamed “the suicide squad,” Lamb figured his survival odds were better in its ranks than being the third man out of that LCA. To his relief, he was accepted.16
SOUTH ENGLAND LITERALLY seethed with men and equipment as the month of May drew to a close. Ships clogged every port and it was the rare open field not cluttered with tents or vehicles. Every day, more ships steamed into the harbours until eventually they overflowed so that vessels were sent to any sheltered anchor point along the coast or around the Isle of Wight. The destroyer HMCS Algonquin steamed out of a clinging night fog into brilliant morning sunshine at Portsmouth on May 27 to find the sea “a mass of shipping of all types.” Eventually, Captain Desmond W. Piers tracked down an oiler to refuel. When that was completed, the destroyer was conducted to an anchorage off Seaview on the Isle of Wight. It was 2230 hours when the Algonquin dropped anchor alongside HMCS Huron and the other ships of 26th Destroyer Flotilla.17
Until being ordered south to join the invasion fleet, this flotilla had been part of the Home Fleet based at Scapa Flow, Scotland, serving primarily as escorts for convoys sailing to Russia or launching fast raids on German shipping in Norway. When the flotilla started practising shore-bombardment techniques in the late spring, however, Piers had realized they were to be part of the forthcoming invasion. This was a complex new form of gunnery to learn, as it combined the use of radar and visual tracking both from the destroyer itself and from spotting craft offshore to bring accurate fire down on beach targets. Then there was the added complication of firing indirectly on invisible inland targets with fire direction provided by officers operating alongside the advancing troops. That the invasion was imminent was rammed home when Algonquin’s gunnery training became so intense that for the better part of ten days “the hands were continuously at action stations for up to fifteen hours at a stretch and every form of action organization was tested.”18 This training ceased on May 25 and after a quick resupply the flotilla sailed south.
After many dreary months in Scapa, southern England in springtime seemed a paradise. Piers, who was nicknamed the “Smiling Tiger” because his smile never reached the eyes that seemed to be constantly alert for any dereliction of duty, had joined the navy in 1931 at age seventeen and took command of Algonquin in the early part of 1944. He was a strict disciplinarian, who would never hesitate to break a subordinate officer’s career if he deemed it necessary, but would surely do so in a polite and friendly manner. On Sunday, May 28, Piers took a break from his duties and went ashore with another ship’s captain. “All the things we missed at Scapa were here,” he later wrote, “trees in full foliage, gardens in bloom, people bathing on the long sandy beaches, everybody enjoying the lovely summer sun. At this point war seemed very far away.”19
The war was, however, very close, as the vast armada of assembled shipping standing off the beaches attested. Piers quickly found it difficult to cut himself free for shore visits as each day was eaten up “reading the unbelievable amount of Operational Orders that are necessary for such an operation as this. However the instructions are very clearly laid out and it is easy to find any information required.”20 The masses of documents were supplemented by various briefing sessions as the destroyer captains learned their role in the invasion. Algonquin would at first protect Major General Rod Keller’s 3rd Canadian Infantry Division headquarters aboard HMSHilary during the channel crossing and then bombard targets on Juno Beach. That Algonquin would be supporting Canadian troops delighted Piers and his crew. On June 2, when Algonquin returned from a night patrol in the channel and entered Portsmouth harbour to hook up with an oiler, Piers saw troops everywhere going aboard landing craft and realized the invasion was imminent.21
LOADING THOUSANDS of soldiers and their mass of weaponry and vehicles onto ships was a vast logistical undertaking. The first Canadians entered “the sausage machine” on May 30 just a few days after the division was equipped with new battle dress uniforms and assault helmets specially designed for the Commonwealth invasion forces. With a less distinctive brim than the traditional piss-pot “Tommy” helmet, the new model fit more snugly and was wrapped with camouflage netting into which twigs and leaves could be woven to break a man’s outline. The new battle dress jerkin was touted as being “waterproof, gas proof, rat, mouse, and louse proof,” wrote the North Shore Regiment’s Catholic padre, R. Miles Hickey. It was also thick, coarse, and heavy. Hickey found his could stand on its own without collapsing, “like the old time starched dresses of years and years and years ago.”22 They were also liberally supplied with pockets, into which most of the men stuffed extra magazines of ammunition.
When the soldiers moved out of the security camps to board the trucks that would carry them to the ships, each man carried only his battle kit. Still, they were staggering under the weight. Stormont, Dundas and Glengarry Highlander Private Danny Darling weighed his gear load and discovered it tallied seventy-eight pounds. His kit was basically the same as every other Glen carried. He “carried two Bren gun magazines, two No. 36 grenades, one No. 75 anti-tank grenade, two smoke grenades, one No. 69 grenade and three bandoliers of rifle ammunition, besides socks, towel, gas cape, respirator, ground sheets, a small collapsible bicycle, two 24-hour ration packs and a commando knife.”23
Troops in the 7th and 8th Canadian Infantry Brigades were spared the weight of the folding bicycle with which some 9 CIB soldiers were equipped. This brigade’s three regiments would land on the heels of the assault brigades, whereupon some infantry companies were to immediately assemble the bicycles and then breezily pedal along country roads to Carpiquet airfield with their company commanders riding along on small James motorcycles. In the absence of the weight of the bicycles, most of the assault troops opted to pile on more ammunition and grenades, fearful of running out at a critical moment. Captain Ronald Shawcross of the Regina Rifles noted that each man in ‘A’ Company generally carried 150 rounds of ammunition for their Lee Enfield rifles as well as several magazines for the Bren guns. At the time, it didn’t strike him as excessive. He had burdened himself with a rifle and stuffed his pistol inside his tunic, figuring that waving a pistol around would only mark him as an officer to any German sniper.24
For the infantry, the entire process of assembling kit and moving down the pipe to the ships proved an orderly undertaking. But the tankers of 2nd Canadian Armoured Brigade were left fretting until virtually the last moment as to whether they would have enough tanks for everyone. During the training phase, the three regiments had been equipped with outmoded Rams and Valentines, with a complete changeover to Shermans promised by the end of April. In the end, even as the squadrons were being ordered to ready for shipboard loading, the Shermans were just arriving. These tanks were a mixed bag of diesel-powered Sherman IIIs and Sherman Vs equipped with Chrysler gasoline engines. Many, particularly among the Sherman IIIs, were in poor condition.25 Those sent to the 1st Hussars had come direct from long service at a firing range, where the guns had fired off ten thousand rounds each. The morale of Lieutenant Bill McCormick’s ‘C’ Squadron troop crashed the moment the men saw the tanks they were to take into combat. He scrounged a can of paint and dressed up the interior of his Sherman, but there was nothing to be done about one of the three tanks that had an engine in such bad shape it was unable to keep up even during column marches around the camp. McCormick managed to wangle a replacement, which proved to have an unfixable chronic fuel leak. When yet another replacement was provided, the gun muzzle was found to have a bad burr that affected its accuracy, but the crew managed to file the steel edge smooth. With two extra tanks fit only for the wrecking yard, teams of 2 CAB’s Royal Canadian Electrical and Mechanical Engineers (RCEME) Workshop and regimental fitters cut their tracks into pieces and welded these to the fronts of many Hussar tanks to strengthen the armament of the thin-skinned Shermans.26
A 2 CAB report noted “that it was only thanks to Trojan work by [these personnel] that the regiments were able to go into battle with more or less ‘battleworthy’ tanks.”27 Fort Garry Horse commander Lieutenant Colonel Ronald Morton worried that the delay in delivery meant that ‘A’ Squadron, which was not equipped with Duplex-Drive tanks, had almost no opportunity to learn how to operate the new tanks before the invasion itself. He was even more concerned about the reconnaissance troop, which received its light turretless Stuarts, known as Honeys, so late that the crews’ first chance to drive them was en route to the loading docks.28
The Canadians moved from the camps to marshalling points near the ports of Southampton and Portsmouth, where they were divided into specific loading complements for each vessel. In the marshalling areas, each soldier was handed a small pack of French currency, a Mae West lifebelt, pills to prevent seasickness, and, should the pills fail to work, a vomit bag.29 Many factors beyond maintaining unit integrity determined who was assigned to which ship. Weight factors had to be considered, as did each vessel’s scheduled approach to the beach and its means for disembarking troops. Detailed manifests drafted to control the process proved their worth as the loading proceeded with few glitches or last-minute changes.
On Landing Ship, Tank 155, Fort Garry Horse Major E.M. Wilson was the senior army officer and therefore commanded all army personnel aboard. In addition to his tankers, there were sixteen additional units. These included some British airborne engineers, Royal Canadian Army Service Corps personnel, medical staff, and heavy anti-aircraft gunners. “The staff work behind the successful marshalling and embarkation of a force this size,” wrote the Fort Garry Horse war diarist, “staggers the mind.”30
Not everything proceeded without mishap. When engineers started backing a group of heavily loaded twenty-ton trailers aboard LST 155 on June 3, one gathered such momentum going down the ramp that the eight-wheeled monstrosity plunged overboard with its tractor dragged helplessly along. Although much of the equipment was damaged, nobody was injured.31
There were disruptions to the carefully drawn manifests that also had nothing to do with loading procedures. On June 3, the 1st Hussars Regiment’s ‘C’ Squadron and Regimental Headquarters tanks lined up on a street next to the Southampton docks to load on several Landing Craft, Tank. Trooper Ralph Burley was loitering beside the tank in which he was a gunner when a group of the regiment’s officers came up and one announced, “This tank won’t go in on D-Day.” Burley and his mates were dismayed. They had been working towards this moment for years and now were to be denied a role. The officer curtly informed them that the tank would be shuffed over to join the regiment’s rear echelon elements as a security detail and would land well after the invasion.
No sooner had Burley absorbed this unwelcome news than the squadron’s sergeant major approached Burley. “You’re not getting off that easy,” the man said. “You’re going with Lieutenant Irving. He’s going to be on a landing craft with two 17-pounder Shermans mounted on the bow and you’re going to be ammunition detail. You and three other guys.” The twenty-one-year-old Torontonian joined Lieutenant Fleming Ladd Irving’s party on an LCT and found the two tanks chained down on the vessel’s bow. Irving told the four men they were to pass ammunition stored behind the tanks up to the loaders while the gunners engaged a fortification next to Courseulles-surMer that was protecting a German gun. The lieutenant explained that the ammo-passing detail was necessary so that when the tanks finished the fire mission they could immediately land with still full ammunition racks.32
British tank specialists had developed the 17-pounder Sherman Firefly to give Commonwealth armoured regiments a tank capable of winning head-to-head shootouts with the German Tiger and Panther V tanks. With a muzzle velocity of 2,900 feet per second, its armour-piercing rounds had almost twice the penetrating power of the Sherman’s standard 75-millimetre gun. Whereas only the occasional fluke round from a 75 would pierce the thick hide of a Tiger or Panther, a hit from a Firefly meant an almost certain kill. The 17-pounder barrel was much longer than the 75-millimetre, however, giving it a distinct profile that was hard to camouflage. Being the new star in the Allied armoured parade, the Fireflys allotted to 2 CAB regiments were usually commanded by troop leaders and, because of the late delivery of these tanks, the average crew had only been able to fire six test rounds before marshalling for loading. They would have to learn the strengths and limitations of the new gun in battle.33
With D-Day scheduled for the morning of June 5, most of the division was well along in the loading process by June 2. Some of the assault infantry companies were berthed aboard former passenger liners (Landing Ship Infantry, Large) that were well equipped with kitchens and sleeping quarters below deck, such as the Canterbury that Major Lochie Fulton’s Royal Winnipeg Rifles ‘D’ Company boarded. But the armoured regiments that would be involved in the initial assault and the artillery regiments that would be firing from ship decks were loaded onto flat-hulled LCTs lacking accommodation areas. These tankers and gunners found whatever clear spaces they could beside their tanks or guns and bedded down on the hard steel. Still, nights were warm and days sunny, so the men were content. They sunbathed, wrote letters, and gambled. Officers threw in the occasional route march up and down the docks to keep their troops limbered up.
June 4 dawned windy but clear. The 1st Hussars were ushered off their boats and marched up and down the docks for several hours.34 Many craft were already at sea, having sailed the day before to anchorages in the Solent. Canterbury and Laird Isle—the latter carrying ‘B’ Company of the Royal Winnipegs—had sailed from Southampton into the Solent on June 3. ‘A’ and ‘C’ companies, along with a reserve company of the Reginas, were already anchored nearby, having sailed on Llandovery Castle the previous day.35
As the morning progressed, the weather began to turn. Clouds moved in, the temperature dropped, a strong northwest wind came up, and light showers fell. The sea in the Solent grew rough. Despite the worsening conditions, Llandovery Castle and many other ships weighed anchor on schedule and started creeping slowly into the English Channel. Lieutenant Russell Choat, the navigating officer for the Landing Craft, Assault boats that would take the soldiers onto the beach from the ship, worried that the appalling sea conditions would result in some of the smaller vessels being lost during the crossing. Then late in the afternoon, with the ship about eight miles out, a radio signal ordered the ship back to harbour. The invasion was cancelled.36
For the ships like Llandovery Castle that were equipped with radios the order was immediately acknowledged and acted upon. But many vessels, such as Landing Craft Infantry 262 and the rest of the LCIs of the 262nd LCI Flotilla, had no radios. Lieutenant Peter Hinton, commanding LCI 262, saw large vessels on every side of him suddenly swing about while his twelve-ship flotilla plodded onward. Then a destroyer swept past with its signal light madly blinking the order to turn back. Hinton brought the helm about. During the brief but chaotic return voyage, Hinton witnessed several collisions, including one between a heavy cruiser or battleship and a Landing Craft, Tank that threw up “a great shower of sparks from the LCT.”37 From his vantage, it looked as if the LCT had been sliced in two, but there were no ships reported lost that day.
As the returning ships approached the English coast, all semblance of order was lost and “a massive traffic jam ensued.” The LCIs finally struggled back into Southampton harbour and tied up in the berths they had departed only hours before.38 Sailors and soldiers were left to speculate whether the invasion would happen at all.
THAT DECISION WAS CAUSE for heated debate at Supreme Headquarters, Allied Expeditionary Force. Either the invasion went ahead on June 6 or it must be postponed until June 17 at the earliest, and the meteorologists were predicting that the weather would only worsen as the month progressed. In fact, they were predicting the stormiest June of the century. Because of the vast array of obstacles planted below the high-tide line it was critical the invasion be launched when high tides coincided with first light. The door on the first such period in June was fast closing and would shut entirely on June 7, with the next favourable period beginning June 17 and lasting only until June 21. But during that period there would be no moon, while on the night of June 5–6 the moon would be full, illuminating the channel for the crossing and assisting the air force in locating their bomb targets and paratroop drop zones.39
On the evening of June 4, General Dwight D. Eisenhower and his commanders-in-chief met in the library of Southwick House in Portsmouth, SHAEF headquarters since May 29. SHAEF Chief Meteorological Adviser, Royal Air Force Group Captain J.M. Stagg, was grim. “No one could have imagined weather charts less propitious for the greatest military operation in history as those we had before us,” he later wrote. There did, however, appear to be a slight chance the weather would clear sometime late on the 5th and remain so at least through the morning of June 6. After that, the forecast grew worse by the day. That was the best Stagg could offer Eisenhower.40
The supreme commander looked to the others. His army commander, General Bernard Montgomery, had been willing to go on June 5 despite the weather conditions and vehemently opposed further postponement. Admiral Bertram Ramsay and Air Marshal Trafford Leigh-Mallory were both hesitant, with the latter gravely worried about the likelihood that air operations would be impossible or difficult because of heavy cloud.41 Leigh-Mallory’s enthusiasm for Operation Overlord had been waning steadily as the launch date approached.
Perhaps more than any other commander-in-chief, the air marshal feared disaster. Only the week before, he had argued for cancellation of the airborne operation because the heavy casualties in planes and men predicted for the initial drop was unacceptably high. And there was the probability that the airborne divisions would face annihilation if the amphibious landings failed or the beach assault forces were seriously delayed in reaching them. Eisenhower had remained resolute that the airborne plan must be carried through despite the risks. The role these divisions would play in screening the beaches from immediate counterattacks was critical to success.
Leigh-Mallory again leaned towards cancellation. He suggested the decision be delayed until early in the morning to give the meteorologists more forecasting time. Eisenhower said they would reconvene at 0415 hours. Stagg consulted a clutch of weather forecasters by telephone conference at 0300 hours and was presented with a host of wildly diverging predictions. By the time some consensus was agreed upon, he had to dash directly to the library.
Eisenhower and the rest looked sombre when he rushed in. Stagg told them there would be fair weather throughout southern England during the night of June 5 and that this front should last “into the late forenoon or afternoon of Tuesday [June 6]. Visibility would be good, wind force 3 mostly and not exceeding force 4 to 5 along the Normandy coast.”42
Again Eisenhower polled his commanders. Montgomery was impatient to get on with it. Ramsay deferred to Leigh-Mallory. The air marshal pondered a moment and then slowly stated that although the conditions were poor he was willing to proceed. Eisenhower nodded and then said: “I don’t see how we can possibly do anything else.”43