The Steel Wave (44 page)

At Juno Beach, the Canadians under Major General Rod Keller made their landings hemmed in by formations of rocks, which forced them to drive forward in wedges that were more narrow than the planners had anticipated. The result was two separate assaults onshore, which bypassed a German stronghold between them, the town of Courseulles-sur-Mer. But the Germans who held their ground were soon cut off, and by nightfall the tenacity of the Canadians had overcome the resistance they faced on Juno Beach. With much of the opposition eliminated, the Canadians had been able to drive inland nearly five miles.

On either flank of the Canadian landings, the British landings at Gold and Sword saw equal success. As at Juno, the British troops pushing ashore at Gold found a large escarpment of rocks, which limited their landing to a narrower slice of beach. Here, the British, under the overall command of Lieutenant General Neil Ritchie, drove inland across a more narrow front than expected, which gave the British the same advantage as the Canadians, allowing them to punch a hole through the German resistance. Though the Germans maintained several strongpoints, the British, like the Canadians, were several miles inland by dark. Farthest to the east, Sword Beach straddled the mouth of the Orne River, the vital waterway that led straight into the city of Caen.

Inland, the British Sixth Airborne had made their jump on the far eastern flank of the entire operation. At the very least, the British paratroopers would serve as a first wall of protection on that flank, should the Germans launch a counterattack from the direction of Calais. Unlike the Americans, a large percentage of the British troopers came down relatively close to their designated drop zones east of the Orne, and had fought effectively to capture vital bridges that crossed the river. At the key river crossings, British paratroopers and especially glider troops accomplished most of their missions with stunning success, and Montgomery’s plan to capture the city of Caen on D-Day seemed within his grasp. Though the British on Sword Beach struggled with stout German strongholds, they too were able to drive a spear several miles in from the beach, pushing southward along the river with expectations that Montgomery’s boast of grabbing Caen was about to come to pass. But British expectations met reality. The Twenty-first Panzer Division was the only serious armored force that Rommel’s command had at their immediate disposal, and despite so much confusion and doubt among German generals, the Twenty-first was moved into position exactly where it needed to be to keep the British out of Caen. Late in the day on June 6, the panzers managed a counterattack of sorts, resulting in one column of German tanks actually reaching the western fringes of Sword Beach. But the attack lost steam, the panzers still reeling from confused orders and the dispersal of so much of their armor in small-scale battles scattered across the countryside. The panzer division had suffered from the unexpected dilemma of dealing not only with British infantry at the beaches but with the paratroopers engaging so many vital strategic targets along the river. By dark, the panzers had withdrawn to a formidable defensive position closer to Caen, and both sides understood that any significant contact would wait for morning. Though Eisenhower had heard Montgomery’s grand pronouncements that Caen would be in the bag by dark, that boast was just one part of the vast paper plan that had been tossed away by the stark reality of the assault. Operation Overlord had succeeded in landing 150,000 Allied troops on French soil. Their first priority was to drive the enemy away from the beaches and then keep him away. Once the beachheads were secured, an enormous number of troops were poised to flow in behind them, along with mountains of supplies and matériel. Despite the horror the Americans had confronted on Omaha Beach, Eisenhower knew D-Day had opened the door that might finally drive Hitler out of France and possibly end the war. The question now was, What were the Germans going to do about it?

OFF OMAHA BEACH
JUNE 7, 1944

They started early in the morning, transported on the minelayer
Apollo,
Eisenhower’s temporary headquarters at sea. At Eisenhower’s instructions, the small ship first cruised the waters past Utah Beach, which had become a virtual city of activity, large landing craft clustered in what seemed to be an enormous traffic jam, each ship waiting in turn to disgorge more men and equipment, supporting and adding more troop strength that would follow the American Fourth Division inland. But Eisenhower was far more anxious to see Omaha, knowing that, off that beach, Omar Bradley waited aboard his own command ship, the cruiser U.S.S.
Augusta.
The
Augusta
had supported the landings at Omaha Beach, its eight-inch guns contributing to the naval bombardment thought to have neutralized German opposition, a grotesque miscalculation.

As the
Apollo
maneuvered close to the
Augusta,
Bradley had already received word that Eisenhower was coming, and with a neatly executed transfer, Bradley moved from his own ship to the much smaller
Apollo
by crane, aboard a thirty-man landing craft, an LCVP, that never actually touched the water.

“
M
onty was here this morning, full of piss and vinegar,” Bradley said. “Happy vinegar, I guess. Well, hell, Ike, you know Monty.”

Eisenhower had not taken his eyes off the beach. “Yep, I’m sure of that. I talked to him earlier, and I should see him in about an hour. They had something of a rough go, particularly at Sword. The enemy was pretty heavily fortified, and it took the Canadians a little longer than they expected to get off the beach. But they’re on the move now. Damned fine work, I hear. Monty says he has them in gear this morning, to keep up the push.”

“He pushed me pretty hard to get the beachheads connected. His usual speech about speed and boldness. He thinks we have the initiative and must take advantage of it.”

Eisenhower looked at him. “You disagree with that?”

“The plan called for us to drive south and cut off the peninsula. Now, he wants me to spread out the beachheads, so we link hands first. It’s going to cost us time, Ike. All his chatter about phase lines just went out the window.”

“Drop it, Brad. Not the time. Monty’s right. We had better take every advantage we have, but we’re too vulnerable right here. Until Omaha is in stronger hands, your part of this operation can wait. You can damn well bet that Rommel is over there making some plan to bust us in the chops. I’m surprised as hell it hasn’t happened yet. I half expected to hear of a full-out counterattack hitting us across the whole landing zone, but there’s almost no incoming fire at all around Utah. It’s a big damned parking lot, which scares me a little.

“No matter what Monty says, I can’t accept that Rommel is just going to let us waltz in without one hell of a fight. It’s like waiting for the second shoe to drop. We had every reason to believe that all five beaches were going to be hot as Omaha. I was more afraid of that than anything, that we were going to catch holy hell every step of the way. It’s almost like they sat back and let us land, and the only thing I can figure is that Rommel’s about to give us one hell of a counterpunch.”

“Could be, Ike. But every indication is that we caught them completely by surprise.”

“Except right out there. What happened?”

Bradley leaned on the ship’s rail and stared at the distant beach, low clouds of smoke drifting across. There were thumps, the ongoing fight that had spread inland, but on the beach itself the landing craft continued to pour out men and equipment.

“We stumbled into a mess. We were too blind to what was waiting for us.” He looked at Eisenhower, a hard scowl. “I’m not casting blame anywhere. Be clear about that. This was my ballpark, and I got my people whacked hard. Most of the prisoners we picked up are from the Three-fifty-second Division, and we hadn’t heard they were there at all until early yesterday. By then, it was too late to change anything, too late to prepare anything different. The whole operation was in full motion. The opposition at Utah was pretty much what we had hoped for, enemy units we knew weren’t up to snuff. But here? The Three-fifty-second is one of the best German outfits in the theater, and they were sitting up there on those bluffs.

“I sweated blood out here, Ike. Saw most of it myself. Had to push Gerow a little bit, but I can’t really blame him. The First Division had experience under their belts and we sure as hell needed that. And the Twenty-ninth fought like madmen. They lost most of their field officers and still kept fighting. I heard that General Cota took charge and did one hell of a job getting his people off the beach. Nothing like this at Utah. Over there, Collins was ready for anything. Anybody who’s spent time in the Pacific knows what kind of hell these beaches can be, and Collins had his men in tip-top condition. But here…none of the senior people had been through anything like this before.”

“We’re all supposed to be in tip-top condition, Brad. Gerow is a good man, and his division commanders are first-class. That doesn’t explain what happened here.”

“You’re right. The other fellow was up there waiting for us. I’m not saying he knew we were coming, but they had their best people in the right place at the right time.”

“Bad luck?”

Bradley stared at the beach again, fingered his binoculars, kept them at his chest. “It’s supposed to be my job to eliminate
luck.
We had a tough fight here, but dammit, we’re getting the job done. The First and the Twenty-ninth took heavy casualties all day yesterday, and they’re still taking them now. But we’ve pushed up past the bluffs, and the villages are fairly secure. We’re in about a mile and a half. The Rangers took Pointe-du-Hoc, and it looks like they knocked out the big guns that were up there. At least, it seems so; enemy artillery hasn’t been a factor at all. We don’t know how many Rangers are left up there, because no one can get through to them. The enemy is still close, heavy-machine-gun emplacements and some deeply entrenched strongpoints. That’s awfully high ground, and the infantry moving off the beaches hasn’t been able to reach it. Those are Rudder’s people, toughest sons of bitches in the army. We’re pushing like hell to support them, but it’s a slow go. The other fellow is giving us all we need, Ike.”

The other fellow.
Eisenhower knew Bradley’s term, no insulting slang for the enemy. The Germans were simply…the other fellow.

“You been to the beach?”

“This morning. My own staff raised hell with me, but I had to see it.” Bradley paused. “Keep the damned reporters away, Ike. We don’t need pictures of that place on the newsreels, not yet. I saw Ernie Pyle out there, and I told him he better keep his damned dispatches to himself until we clear it. Not even sure how he got onshore so quickly, but he was as sick to his stomach as I was.” Bradley paused again, seemed to search for words. “I’ve never seen anything like it. The dead…they were rolling up on the beach like seaweed. Our boys were still taking heavy fire, so for half the day we couldn’t even pull the casualties out of the water. The troops in the later landings were stepping through…pieces. It’s a little better now, but a lot of the seriously wounded are still on the beach, pulled into cover as much as possible. And the wrecked equipment is still playing hell with the landings. We kept the
Augusta
about two miles out from the beach, and we were bumping through debris even there. I asked the captain to put a bunch of men up in the bow to search for survivors, but it was mostly busted-up landing craft, pieces of God knows what. The engineers are telling me that right now we need bulldozers on that beach more than anything else. We were supposed to land sixteen of the damned things here; three survived. The rest either sank or got blown to hell before they could do the job. Not sure what the engineers were expecting. Too many rehearsals probably. They learned it’s a lot harder to build your damned road when somebody’s dropping mortar shells on your head. This morning, they were working up on the bluffs trying to flatten out a landing strip. We’re getting there, Ike, but any idea of a timetable’s been tossed out the window.”

Eisenhower heard no complaint, no excuses in Bradley’s voice. And Bradley would not exaggerate.

“Monty give you any orders?”

“Well, yes. He didn’t want to hear much about what these boys ran into here. Called it a
bloody tiff,
said his boys had one at Sword. Like I said, he pushed me to link our left flank to his right, to seal the landing zones into one secure sector. He’s afraid Rommel will punch through and keep us separated. Collins is doing what he can at Utah to drive some people this way, help us break through to the Rangers from the other direction.” He paused. “That wasn’t the plan, Ike.”

Eisenhower nodded, thinking of the maps. The primary goal of the troops at Utah Beach was to drive hard to cut off the entire Cotentin Peninsula, isolating the crucial port of Cherbourg. Once the peninsula was cut, new troops would land at Utah to drive toward the city itself. One of the essential objectives of the entire operation was to grab a major port city, which would serve as the conduit to feed and equip the ever-growing army.

“Plans change, Brad. That’s what Monty does best. He makes damned sure he’s ready before he orders a move. We’re not ready until these beaches are secure, and a mile and a half of bridgehead is not secure. Cherbourg will wait. It’ll still be there. The floating piers should be coming in pretty soon, and that’ll help a hell of a lot.”

“Floating concrete boxes. Yeah, I saw those things. Pretty impressive, if it works. Mulberries. Who thought of that name?”

“Morgan’s people. Pure genius, if you ask me. Until we grab Cherbourg or Antwerp, these beaches will be the best ports we have. No way the enemy could suspect we’re bringing our own docks with us. I don’t think I could have made it as an engineer. I’m like you. Never thought so damned much concrete could float. But it’s floating right now, out there somewhere, big damned blocks of it, and as quick as they get it hauled in here, they’ll sink those things right offshore, and—
bang!
A port. Mulberries.”