Schwerpunkt: From D-Day to the Fall of the Third Reich (11 page)

But it wasn’t only soldiers who were brought over in these Higgins boats. These work horses also brought over tanks, trucks, jeeps, supplies and everything else we needed including sections of pipelines which our engineers would have to put together so that fuel could be pumped to France from England through an underwater pipeline. This thing was called PLUTO which I think stood for something like Pipe Line Under The Ocean. They also brought over sections of what were to become artificial ports which were code named Mulberries. One was to be in the eastern British section of beaches and one was to be in the western American section.

Harold is heading over to Utah and I just got a letter from him delivered to me special…

June 6 about 0700

Hey Frank,

I was supposed to be on shore by now but there’s another SNAFU so I’m stuck in a tub called a Higgins boat. I just finished my bailing water duty which helps to take my mind off how darn sick I feel. We take turns bailing out the water that washes over the sides. I’ve heard these tubs are unsinkable but no one in our boat is willing to take the chance so we take turns bailing. We also tried to take turns puking but our stomachs aren’t that cooperative. Plus, you know how I am. All I have to do is hear the word and I’m ready to gag. I’m sea sick as heck and I’m miserable Frank, but in spite of the agony my stomach is going through, you should see what the water looks like. I say water but truthfully, you can hardly see the water. Almost every square foot has a boat of some kind in it. I bet you could hop from boat to boat and walk to the shore, there’s so many of them!

There are barrage balloons to keep prying eyes away too. What makes it more of a spectacle (if that were even possible) is when our fighters fly overhead. You can barely see them because it’s so dark but it’s good knowing they’re there. There are even a couple of warships including one I heard was hit at Pearl. I guess they’re there to bomb the crap out of the coast line defenses which suits me just fine because if they do their job properly, it’ll make my job that much easier. Earlier there was a lot of bravado from the guys in the boat with me but now as we are approaching the shoreline and the beach we were ordered to land on, it got pretty darn quiet in the boat and most guys seemed to be reflecting on what’s going to happen. I know I am.

We’re moving out now Frank, so I gotta go. I love you and hope to write again soon. Really pray for me, Frank.

Harold

Jesus. The tension is unbearable over here. We’ve got close to a quarter million guys lined up to assault France. It was timed to the second and with this goddamn weather, it’s a real crap shoot if we’re even going to get some of them ashore. Given Captain Stagg’s weather report, we were lucky we could land or fly anything in that very small window of clear weather. But “clear weather” is a relative term, we came to find out. The Channel currents are a lot stronger than we planned for and it was soon reported to us that some of the vessels were far off course which clearly made the seaborne landings more dangerous and challenging than we had thought. The heavy cloud cover forced air pilots to drop their paratrooper loads either higher than the clouds or in some devastating cases, lower than the clouds which meant that some of those guys barely had time to open their chutes before they plunged to the ground.

As the hours of DDay ticked down, we received report after report after report, although they sure didn’t come in fast enough to suit us back here in Portsmouth. It seems our guys on Omaha ran into the crack 352
^nd
German Infantry Division which somehow, our intelligence had failed to discover. Later I found out that the 352
^nd
had arrived to the Omaha sector just a couple of days earlier. So now instead of facing the one washed out division we knew about, these poor heroes had to face a second one, one who was well trained and very well equipped. I know there were constant reports coming in earlier from the French underground but I sure don’t remember seeing any piece of intell about this second division. We knew that the German 12
^th
SS Panzer and the Panzer Lehr Divisions were nearby but we were counting on interrupting their route of travel and their communications lines to keep them out of the way for a while if they started to move. So far, we’ve had no reports of them interfering, thank the Good Lord Almighty. (Want to hear something ironic? I later learned that these two Panzer divisions were reserve units that some Kraut General wanted to be released for immediate help on the beaches but he got overruled. God was sure on our side that time since for some reason, the request to move them up was denied for a day. A whole day! Thank God it was!) The poor boys who had it worse than anybody were the guys landing on Omaha and they had it plenty bad enough without more firepower.

One report of the Omaha landings that I read said that the approaching boats came under heavy enemy fire even before they landed their troops. Those guys had to wade in because of the rough surf which, I guess, was the cue for the landing craft pilots to drop these men farther back from the beach than they were supposed to. The choppy waves kept knocking more and more men off their feet. I read that many of them couldn’t regain their balance and they drowned before they even got to the shore. It’s hard to stomach shit like this, I’ll tell you. It’s bad enough that with the Huns they faced they stood less than a snowball’s chance in hell as it was. Situation Reports told us that once the first wave landed, the Jerries unloaded on them with everything they had…machine guns, mortars, shells… everything! The Krauts had gun batteries built in on the high ground overlooking the crescent shaped beach. They were so well hidden that our planes didn’t see them and the naval ships couldn’t get to them. Our men had nowhere to hide except behind the beach obstacles but since these were mined, they were not even close to protecting them. Instead, those lousy Krauts aimed for the obstacles and blew up not only the obstacle, but our men hiding behind it. Later Sit Reps coming in after the first ones were literally no better. Men were exposed on the beaches under heavy and continuous fire. It was reported they were crawling on their bellies moving inches at a time. When Officers arrived they did everything they could to get the men moving off that goddamn beach. I remembered that General Norman Cota and other generals were going to be landing with their men after the initial waves. Later in the day we heard that he, and other officers too, were reported to have exposed themselves to enemy fire just so they could get their troops moving and off the beach to whatever “safety” that would afford.

Three and a half miles from Omaha Beach towards British Gold Beach was a promontory named Pointe du Hoc. We were told by the French Resistance that the Krauts had built an emplacement there with six massive guns capable of shooting over ten miles which meant it could shoot towards both Utah and Omaha Beaches. We tried to knock it out with our earlier bombing runs but apparently we failed that mission and now those guns had to be destroyed before they could be manned. But how to get up to that promontory was the big question since reports were that it was 100 feet high. Three boatloads of Rangers were given the DDay objective of neutralizing and destroying those guns but word came in that before they even got to shore, one of their boats sank leaving only one survivor. Then we received word that the other two boats were being landed at the wrong promontory so to correct that error, their pilots had to cruise along the shore for three miles which delayed their arrival time by well over a half hour. While that doesn’t sound too bad, it meant that the naval guns had already stopped their bombings so all during the time the Rangers were moving along the shore, the Krauts were honing in on them and moving to the big guns. Now the Rangers had to scale the right cliff with Krauts who had had about 40 minutes to get themselves prepared. Thank God the naval vessels were still on hand and I heard they recommenced their bombings and began firing on those bastards on top of the cliff. Those Krauts who were left standing were throwing grenades down on the Rangers who were trying to scale the heights. Those heroes found the guns, although we were told they were not in the place where they were supposed to have been. Once the guns were located, the Rangers put a couple of well placed thermite grenades in the loading mechanisms and destroyed six 155mm guns. They also blew up the ammunition lying nearby. The Rangers faced critical opposition and lost many men but by destroying those guns, I know a whole lot more men lived because of them.

As we expected, the Germans seemed to have the initial advantage on DDay. They were dug in with huge gun batteries. They had control of all roads and could phone for reinforcements as the need arose, unless of course the road was barricaded or the phone wires were cut. They had scores of divisions they could move around the relatively small area of Normandy and we were reliant on all our men and materiel coming in by boats. What a gamble! But we planned for as many of the contingencies as we could. We notified the French resistance to cut phone lines, disable rails and roads and ambush German reinforcement troops to the extent possible. We bombed radar stations, jammed those we couldn’t, we employed Operation Fortitude and we generally tried to keep as many Kraut defenders guessing as to what was happening for as long as possible. While all these tactics were taking place, we brought in boat, after boat, after goddamn beautiful boat full of men and tanks and vehicles and supplies.

We knew that the “Desert Fox,” General Rommel was in charge of the defense of Northern France. From what we heard, he must have figured that he needed to defend the beach at Omaha and the beach at Calais most heavily. The defenses, we were told by the French Resistance, were imaginative and deadly. Our naval ships soon found out about those huge guns capable of firing 10 miles away. We knew there were only five ways off Omaha Beach and that bastard Rommel laid minefields and set up gun batteries and machine gun nests impeding all of them. Once off the beach itself, our guys ran into added obstacles which further complicated them getting to the roads leading from that damn beach. And if that weren’t enough, we learned that once our guys were past the mine fields, barbed wire and machine gunners, it was reported that they then came up to huge gates blocking the only pathways off the beach and that these gates were guarded by even more gunners. We were told that once past the gates, our soldiers would encounter yet more machine gun fire and heavy artillery attacks. With all those defenses, there were two kinds of heroes on that beach: those who made it off and those who perished trying. God bless them all since they’ve each been to hell already.

Omaha was so bad that we received some early indication that General Bradley was seriously thinking about aborting any further landings on Omaha. (The casualty rates did not come in for days afterward, but when they did, it was reported that Omaha had over 2,000 killed. Utah had less than 200. There were thousands more injured or captured.) As more and more information came into headquarters, it seemed unlikely that anyone would survive, let alone take the beach. Miraculously, though, by 0900, two and a half hours after the debacle began, more than 500 men got off the beach and took out the first of the Kraut defensive positions. It wasn’t until after noon that day that anything even looking like good news came off of Omaha when we heard that some of the men were able to start moving inland through the exits after destroying the gates and other barriers. Bangalore torpedoes seemed to be the weapon of choice for getting through the barbed wire. Flame throwers turned the trick on the gun batteries. I’m not sure what they did to get over those goddamn obstacles by the exits, the poor bastards. But we finally got word that after six hours of death and destruction, the men were starting to get off Omaha and were moving to the bluffs that overlooked it. Then, less than two hours after that, we got reports that some troops had finally managed to make it into the first town. That goddamned beach had to have been running red.

Omaha gave us the worst news so when we read reports from the other beaches where progress was not nearly so bad, we at least had that news as silver linings. I’m ashamed to admit that I was most concerned about the landings on Utah as that’s where my baby brother Harold was to have landed. He’s in the 4
^th
Infantry Division, in better than great hands, since he’s with General Raymond O. Barton. Ike has a lot of respect for General Barton and that makes it easier for me to swallow. I think about Harold all the time whenever I see orders going out but I can’t nursemaid him and he’s nothing if not tough and feisty. I’m older than him but he used to pick fights with me all the time and never squawked when I beat the hell out of him. He’d just punch me back harder, trying to get me off him. And except for picking fights with me, he’s pretty smart too. I know I’m like a mama hen but I sure like hearing from him, knowing he’s ok. I’m just thanking the sweet Lord he didn’t go to Omaha.

June 7, 1944

Hi again, Frankie.

sometime in the afternoon

I made it, Frankie...I busted my watch but that’s about all! I really thought I was a goner like about a million of the other guys who didn’t make it. I’m in a small house somewhere where God lost his shoes, in France now, after the scariest 2 days of my life. About a hundred years ago it seems like, we left England, got on a ship and met up with our landing craft where we shoved off in a small boat piloted by a navy guy who was too scared he’d run aground to get us close to the beach. I looked out of my boat (notice I didn’t say “ship” because this tub was as far from a ship as I am from being home). I saw about a million tugs, boats, and things that didn’t look like they should sail but did and we were all coming in to the beaches somewhere in France at about the same time. In waves, if you pardon the pun... My division and many others too were to land on one of the beaches, not 150 yards out like we did! I got about a hundred pounds of equipment on me and I’m supposed to do a running swim, like a bat out of hell, through water over my head, up onto the beach, then cross the sand to the rocky part, get past that and then meet up and start blasting my way inland. Be nice to know what we’re supposed to do for an encore to that, won’t it?