D-Day, June 6, 1944: The Climactic Battle of World War II (2 page)

Alice Mayhew, as always, was an outstanding editor. Her staff at Simon & Schuster, especially Elizabeth Stein, as always did an excellent job of production. My agent, John Ware, was a fine source of encouragement and support.

My wife, Moira, has been my partner in this enterprise, flying back and forth across the Atlantic and to veterans' reunions in the States. Every one of the hundreds of veterans she has met will attest that she has a wonderful way with them, putting them at their ease, making them comfortable, enjoying being with them, fascinated by their stories, providing a soft, sensitive woman's touch to our meals, meetings, tramps over the battlefields, and airplane hassles. In addition, as with all my writing, she is my first and most critical reader. Her contribution to my work and my life is beyond measure; indeed, she is as dear to me as life itself.

As I've tried to make clear in the preceding paragraphs, this book is very much a team effort. I like to think that General Eisenhower would have approved. From the moment he took up his responsibilities as Supreme Commander Allied Expeditionary Force until the German surrender, he insisted on teamwork. Of all his outstanding characteristics as leader of the multination, multiservice Crusade in Europe, his insistence on teamwork was the key to victory.

General Eisenhower liked to speak of the fury of an aroused democracy. It was in Normandy on June 6, 1944, and in the campaign that followed, that the Western democracies made their fury manifest. The success of this great and noble undertaking was a triumph of democracy over totalitarianism. As president, Eisenhower said he wanted democracy to survive for all ages to come. So do I. It is my fondest hope that this book, which in its essence is a love song to democracy, will make a small contribution to that great goal.

Stephen E. Ambrose

Director, The Eisenhower Center

University of New Orleans

For Forrest Pogue, the first historian of D-Day

"The most difficult and complicated operation ever to take place."

Winston Churchill

"The destruction of the enemy's landing is the sole decisive factor in the whole conduct of the war and hence in its final results."

Adolf Hitler

"The history of war does not know of an undertaking comparable to it for breadth of conception, grandeur of scale, and mastery of execution."

Joseph Stalin

"Good Luck! And let us all beseech the blessing of Almighty God upon this great and noble undertaking."

Dwight D. Eisenhower, Order of the Day, June 4, 1944

"In this column I want to tell you what the opening of the second front entailed, so that you can know and appreciate and forever be humbly grateful to those both dead and alive who did it for you."

Ernie Pyle, June 12, 1944

Airborne and infantry divisions in World War II armies were made up of:

Squads (usually nine to twelve men) Three squads to a platoon Three or four platoons to a company Three or four companies to a battalion Three or four battalions to a regiment Three or four regiments to a division plus attached engineers, artillery, medical, and other support personnel.

U.S., British, and Canadian infantry divisions were from 15,000 to

20,000 strong on D-Day. Allied airborne divisions were about one-half that size. Most German divisions were less than 10,000.

Contents

PROLOGUE

At 0016 hours, June 6, 1944,* the Horsa glider crash-landed alongside the Caen Canal, some fifty meters from the swing bridge crossing the canal. Lt. Den Brotheridge, leading the twenty-eight men of the first platoon, D Company, the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry Regiment, British 6th Airborne Division, worked his way out of the glider. He grabbed Sgt. Jack "Bill" Bailey, a section leader, and whispered in his ear, "Get your chaps moving." Bailey set off with his group to pitch grenades into the machine-gun pillbox known to be beside the bridge. Lieutenant Brotheridge gathered the remainder of his platoon, whispered "Come on, lads," and began running for the bridge. The German defenders of the bridge, about fifty strong, were not aware that the long-awaited invasion had just begun.

As Brotheridge led his men at a fast trot up the embankment and onto the bridge, seventeen-year-old Pvt. Helmut Romer, one of the two German sentries on the bridge, saw the twenty-one British paratroopers—appearing, so far as he was concerned, literally out of nowhere—coming at him, their weapons carried at their

* British double-daylight savings time. French time was one hour earlier. Throughout Nazi-occupied Europe, clocks were set at Berlin time, and the Germans did not use daylight savings time, while the British set their clocks two hours ahead.

hips, prepared to fire. Romer turned and ran across the bridge, shouting "Paratroopers!" at the other sentry as he passed him. That sentry pulled out his
Leuchtpistole
and fired a flare; Brotheridge fired a full clip of thirty-two rounds from his Sten gun.

Those were the first shots fired by the 175,000 British, American, Canadian, Free French, Polish, Norwegian, and other nationalities in the Allied Expeditionary Force set to invade Normandy in the next twenty-four hours. The shots killed the sentry, who thus became the first German to die in defense of Hitler's Fortress Europe.

Brotheridge, twenty-six years old, had been training for this moment for two years, and for the specific task of seizing the bridge by a
coup de main
operation for six months. He had come up from the ranks; his company commander, Maj. John Howard, had recommended him for the OCTU—Officer Cadet Training Unit— back in 1942. His fellow platoon officers were university graduates, if not rich at least well-to-do, if not aristocrats at least upper class, and at first they were a bit uneasy when Brotheridge returned as an officer because "He wasn't one of us, you know."

Brotheridge played soccer, not cricket. He was a first-class athlete, good enough that it was freely predicted he would become a professional soccer player after the war. He got on easily with the men and had no sense at all of that vast gulf that so often separates British subalterns from the enlisted men.

Brotheridge would go into the barracks at night, sit on the bed of his batman, Billy Gray, and talk soccer with the lads. He would bring his boots along and shine them as he talked. Pvt. Wally Parr never got over the sight of a British lieutenant polishing his boots while his batman lay back on his bed, gassing on about Manchester United and West Ham and other soccer teams.

Den Brotheridge was a lanky, laughing, likable sort of chap, and his fellow officers warmed to him. Everyone admired him; he was fair, conscientious, hard-driving, quick to learn, a master at all the weapons in the company, an able teacher and an apt pupil, a natural leader. When Major Howard selected Brotheridge as leader of 1st Platoon, the other lieutenants in the company agreed that Den was the right man to lead the first troops to go into action on D- Day. Brotheridge was as good as any junior officer in the British army, among the best the country had produced to fight for its freedom in the life-and-death struggle.