Neptune: The Allied Invasion of Europe and the D-Day Landings (60 page)

But they never forgot. Karl Bischoff had spent more than a year as the “motor mac,” a machinist’s mate, on LCI(L)-489, including a landing on Omaha Beach on D-Day. His main job had been to ensure that the engines were working and in good repair. One night he woke up in pitch darkness with the chilling awareness that he could not hear the engines. He threw off the covers and raced to the door. Yanking it open, he was completely befuddled to see his father standing there holding a cup of coffee. It made no sense: what was his father doing in the engine room? It took him several seconds to process it. And then he knew. He was home.
⁹

A
S IN EVERY PROJECT
, I am indebted to the many people who went out of their way to help me find resource materials, provide information and insight, and make valuable suggestions about the remarkable story of Operation Neptune and the Allied invasion of Europe.

At the National Archives (Archives II) in College Park, Maryland, Nathaniel Patch directed me to U.S. Navy and Allied sources; Timothy Mulligan brought my attention to German sources I would otherwise have overlooked, and even translated them for me. John Hodges of the Naval History and Heritage Command (NHHC) in the Washington Navy Yard was helpful with both sources and logistics during my visits, and managed to dig up Rear Admiral Morton Deyo’s description of the naval bombardment of Utah Beach out of Samuel Eliot Morison’s old files. Evelyn Cherpak, archivist at the U.S. Naval War College and editor of Hewitt’s memoirs, assisted me with the Kent Hewitt Papers. Both Jennifer Bryan and David D’Onofrio were unflaggingly cheerful and welcoming during my visits to the Special Collections Room of Nimitz Library at the U.S. Naval Academy. The late Stephen Ambrose spent years collecting hundreds of oral histories of D-Day veterans, which he then had transcribed and which are now deposited with the Eisenhower Center (which he created) at the National World War II Museum in New Orleans. All students of World War II are indebted to Ambrose, and I am grateful as well to Lindsey Barnes, the senior archivist and digital projects manager at the museum, who was gracious and generous when my wife, Marylou, and I conducted research there. Similarly, I am grateful to Reagan Grau, archivist at the National Museum of the Pacific War in Fredericksburg, Texas, who made available not only the museum’s oral history collection but also the extensive and valuable papers of the LCI Association, which are archived there. Janis Jorgenson at the U.S. Naval Institute was once again an invaluable aid in helping me find and identify suitable photographs, as was Richard Porter, the museum director at the Britannia Royal Naval College in Dartmouth, England.

I am grateful to Otis Bingemer, who served on LST-325 at Normandy and who gave me a tour of his former ship at Evansville, Indiana. Of the more than a thousand LSTs built during the war, LST-325 is the only one still in operational condition. Sold to the Greek navy after the war, the 325 was decommissioned by the Greeks in the 1970s. A handful of U.S. Navy World War II veterans, by then in their seventies, determined that
their ship should not be sold for scrap. They raised the money to buy it, flew to Athens, and sailed it back across the Atlantic, an adventure worthy of a major motion picture. The ship is moored today in the Ohio River at Evansville, where it was built. I am also grateful to Dr. Meredith Moon, daughter of Rear Admiral Don P. Moon, and to her cousin, also named Don Moon, both of whom were generous with their time and their materials, and helped me understand the circumstances and character of their admiral ancestor. I offer thanks as well to Navy Captain William Garrett (Ret.), who took a particular interest in this project from the start, and Rev. John R. Kenny, who served off the Normandy beaches in 1944.

Finally, I am deeply indebted to those who helped me look at the events in different ways or who offered both substantive and editorial help. The idea for this book came from my editor at Oxford University Press, Tim Bent, who provided just the right amount of direction, encouragement, and license to allow me to engage fully with the topic. It has been wonderful to work again with the team of professionals at Oxford, including Keely Latcham, Joellyn Ausanka, and Sue Warga. I am thankful to Evan Davies, my former colleague at Britannia Royal Naval College in Dartmouth, England, with whom I first toured the Normandy beaches. I am particularly indebted to two friends who read the entire manuscript, made me rethink some aspects of the story, corrected more than a few errors, and offered enthusiastic encouragement. These two worthies are Richard B. Frank, whose knowledge of the Second World War is unmatched, and Paul Stillwell, whom I have known for more than thirty years and to whom every historian of naval history owes an enormous debt for his leadership of the Oral History Program at the U.S. Naval Institute, as well as for his many books and articles. If some gaffes have nonetheless survived the careful scrutiny of these two scholars, it is not because they did not make every effort to save me from myself. I am grateful, too, to Jeffrey Ward, who rendered the maps and charts in this book with exceptional care and accuracy, and tolerated my repeated pleas for just one more addition or correction.

Finally, as always, my greatest debt is to my wife, Marylou, who remains my most exacting and sympathetic editor as well as my indispensable partner in all things. This book is dedicated to Jeff Symonds and Susan Witt, both of them exceptional teachers and exceptional parents to our two grandchildren, William and Beatrice, and to my big sister Carol who claims to have read all my books, including “The Professor General,” which I wrote at age eight.

Chapter 1: Germany First

1.
Robert E. Sherwood,
Roosevelt and Hopkins: An Intimate History
(New York: Harper, 1948; reprinted, Enigma Books, 2008), 337–80 (all page references are to the 2008 edition); Richard Ketcham, “Yesterday, December 7, 1941,”
American Heritage
, November 1989, 54.

2.
Harold Ickes,
The Secret Diary of Harold Ickes
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1953–54), 662 (entry of December 14, 1941); Frances Perkins,
The Roosevelt I Knew
(New York: Viking Press, 1946; reprinted, Penguin Press, 2011), 364 (page references are to the 2011 edition).

3.
Mark Harrison, ed.,
The Economies of World War II: Six Great Powers in International Comparison
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 10.

4.
FDR press conference, November 3, 1941, in
The Complete Presidential Press Conferences
(New York: DaCapo Press, 1972), 18:280.

5.
Ickes,
Secret Diary
(entry of April 20, 1941), 485; Henry Morgenthau,
The Presidential Dairies of Henry Morgenthau, Jr
. (New York: Clearwater, 1984), 2:253–54.

6.
Sherwood,
Roosevelt and Hopkins
, 349.

7.
Ibid.

8.
Edward Miller,
War Plan Orange: The U.S. Strategy to Defeat Japan, 1897–1945
(Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1991); Craig C. Felker,
Testing American Sea Power: U.S. Navy Strategic Exercises, 1923–1940
(College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2007).

9.
Ingersoll’s testimony, April 21, 1939, is quoted in Mark S. Watson,
Chief of Staff: Prewar Plans and Preparations
(Washington, DC: Historical Division, Department of the Army, 1950), 98.

10.
From Marshall’s notes at the June 22 meeting, quoted in Watson,
Chief of Staff
, 111.

11.
Watson,
Chief of Staff
, 111–12, 114.

12.
Ibid., 108.

13.
Stark to Knox, November 12, 1940, available at
www.fdrlibrary.marist.edu
.

14.
Ibid.

15.
Memo of the Joint Planning Commission to the Joint Board, January 13, 1941, in Watson,
Chief of Staff
, 371.

16.
Watson,
Chief of Staff
, 372–73.

17.
“United States–British Staff Conversations Report,” March 27, 1941, printed as exhibit #49 (copy No. 98 of 125), U.S. Congress,
Pearl Harbor Attack Hearings
(Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1946), 15:1487–96. The passages referring to assumed U.S. participation in the war are on 1489 and 1524.

18.
Ibid., 1490–91.

19.
Ibid., 1491.

20.
Ibid.

21.
Ibid., 1493.

22.
Ibid., 1497.

23.
Ibid., 1485.

24.
Sherwood,
Roosevelt and Hopkins
, 230.

25.
Thomas A. Bailey and Paul B. Ryan,
Hitler vs. Roosevelt: The Undeclared Naval War
(New York: Free Press, 1979), 138–40.

26.
Sherwood,
Roosevelt and Hopkins
, 242; Kenneth R. Davis,
FDR: The War President
,
1940–1943
(New York: Random House, 2000), 229, 232.

27.
Robert F. Cross,
Sailor in the White House: The Seafaring Life of FDR
(Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2003), 90–92.

28.
Jean Edward Smith,
FDR
(New York: Random House, 2008), 499n; Jon Meacham,
Franklin and Winston: An Intimate Portrait of an Epic Friendship
(New York: Random House, 2004), 105–6.

29.
Sherwood,
Roosevelt and Hopkins
, 276–77.

30.
Ibid., 276.

31.
Ibid., 276–78.

32.
British Strategy Review, July 31, 1941, in Watson,
Chief of Staff
, 403.

33.
Memo to the Joint Board, September 25, 1941, in Watson,
Chief of Staff
, 408.

34.
Winston Churchill,
The Grand Alliance
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1950), 433–37. A facsimile of this document is on 235.

35.
Sherwood,
Roosevelt and Hopkins
, 338.

36.
Knox to ALNAV (all Navy personnel), December 7, 1941, Nimitz Papers, NHHC, box 1, folder 5.

37.
Grace Tully,
F.D.R.: My Boss
(New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1949), 256–57. A facsimile copy of FDR’s hand-edited speech is available at
www.archives.gov/education/lessons/day-of-infamy
.

Chapter 2: Arcadia

1.
Robert E. Sherwood,
Roosevelt and Hopkins: An Intimate History
(New York: Harper, 1948; reprinted, Enigma Books, 2008), 347 (page references are to the 2008 edition); Winston Churchill,
The Grand Alliance
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1950), 603–4; Lynne Olson,
Citizens of London
(New York: Random House, 2010), 143–44.

2.
Churchill,
The Grand Alliance
, 606–8.

3.
Ibid., 641.

4.
Sherwood,
Roosevelt and Hopkins
, 347–49. A transcript of the telephone conversation between Beaverbrook and Hopkins is on 348.

5.
WSC to George VI, December 8, 1941, in Churchill,
The Grand Alliance
, 608; WSC to FDR, December 10, 1941, in Francis L. Lowenstein et al.,
Roosevelt and Churchill: Their Secret Wartime Correspondence
(New York: Saturday Review Press/E. P. Dutton, 1975), 169–70.