The World at War (67 page)

MAJOR GENERAL COLLINS

We had a number of conferences at General Omar Bradley's headquarters at Bristol and then we had a final show at St John's in London, which was supervised by Montgomery and in which the Army Commanders all along the line, the British and the Canadians and ourselves, outlined our plans and the Corps Commanders all spoke there also. We had a big map laid out on the floor and we stood in front of the map. Mr Churchill was present at that, it was a very dramatic thing, and then following each of our presentations Monty would ask us questions as to what we would do under various circumstances. I found it fascinating and profitable.

GROUP CAPTAIN STAGG

Towards the end of May the date for the actual invasion was fixed for 5th June and during that time, just as the whole of General Eisenhower's forces were assembling round the coast of these islands, there seemed on our weather charts to be nothing but a series of depressions with almost winter-like intensity. As the time went on the seriousness, the ominous-ness, of the whole situation got worse until by Saturday night, 3rd June, it became obvious there would certainly be a storm in the Channel area on the Sunday night and Monday. General Eisenhower, at that meeting, decided to hold the operation. On that Sunday morning, 4th June, after three days of tremendous tension, we were completely uncertain what could happen. Then, miraculously and mercifully, the almost unbelievable happened: during the Sunday we spotted from two reports from the Atlantic that there might just be a slight interlude between the two depressions off western Ireland.

LIEUTENANT RAY NANCE

117th Regiment, US 29th Division, Omaha Beach

We were loaded on trucks and proceeded to the port of embarkation, which in our case was Weymouth in southern England. We'd travelled this way once before on a dry run and there'd been nothing along the road, but this time there was so much equipment parked along the road and in the fields that it seemed the whole island would tilt and slide into the Channel.

SAPPER MINOGUE

I would say that the success of the actual invasion was simply down to the fact that the soldiers were so glad to get off the landing craft and to escape the seasickness that they were just ready to go anywhere by that time. But it was a fantastic sight to see so many ships of all shapes and sizes heading down the Channel and all going one way. I think anybody who saw that sight couldn't fail to be impressed by the organisation that must have gone into it.

GROUP CAPTAIN STAGG

If that interlude could be long enough and if it arrived in the Channel at the proper time, it might just let the whole thing get started again. When I reported this to General Eisenhower's staff during the afternoon they seemed to be very pessimistic about it, they didn't think it could be started again. But by the evening my own confidence in the forecast for this quieter period had so increased from further reports that had come in that I convinced General Eisenhower. The next morning, early on 5th June, they met again to confirm this decision and when I could tell them that we were even more confident than we had been the previous night, the joy on the faces of the Supreme Commander and his Commanders after the deep gloom of the preceding day was a marvel to behold. It was in the early hours of Monday, 5th June, General Eisenhower made his final and irrevocable decision for the operation to go forward again, round midnight that night. As it turned out that Tuesday, 6th June, when D–Day actually took place, was the only day in the whole of June on which it could have been started. The day before was too stormy and the period a fortnight later was the stormiest of the whole month. The Germans seemed to be caught unawares, whether they didn't spot this interlude coming along or whether they didn't think it would last long enough to be of any use to General Eisenhower we don't know, but they certainly didn't expect General Eisenhower's forces at that time.

BRIGADIER BELCHEM

The only formations that managed to gain their D-Day objectives, or approximately so, were on the British side the 50th Division in the Gold sector and on the American side General Collins's Corps at the base of the Cotentin peninsula. In other areas we fell short. Tanks got south of the Bayeux road but we weren't able to follow them up with infantry and it took some months before we captured the city of Caen. The main problem actually on D-Day was the American Omaha Beach. Throughout D-Day the situation there was extremely critical and it demonstrated in the event the wisdom of using highly experienced divisions in this sort of operation. The 1st American Infantry Division, which was one of the top Allied divisions, did a magnificent job in holding on in the Omaha area, bearing in mind that when they landed they found the German defence division at that particular part of the coast was holding an anti-invasion exercise, so they ran straight into a formation deployed to stop exactly what they were trying to do.

PRIVATE GEORGE ALEX

101st US Airborne Division

After we all got in the air and circled some part of England for quite some time waiting for the rest of the aircraft to get off the ground and get together we felt this was it, this is for real, we're going. It was about three hours, something like that, by the time we all took off and got in the air together and as the time was getting closer, because you'd got to get there just before daybreak, you're getting nervous, getting butterflies in your stomach and you're wondering, What am I doing here, why did I ever come, why did I volunteer? You're worrying if you're going to get hit by your own people again, like for instance when we dropped into Sicily our own Navy shot us down when we were flying over the beaches and that was almost the end of the Airborne at that time. Someone would get sick in the aircraft and they'd pull their steel helmets off and start getting the heaves and then everyone else down the line would follow suit and everybody is heaving, dry heaves, and waiting to get out of that aeroplane, hoping that the moment would come right away to get out of that place because it stunk. And of course we all managed to pitch our gas masks out, we didn't want to carry that around our necks all the time and the English Channel must be full of gas masks. When the time came to go, when that green light went on and out the door we went, we didn't hesitate one moment we were so happy to get out of that thing.

MME THÉRÈSE BROHER

Resident of Sainte-Mère-Eglise, inland from Utah Beach

It began day before D-Day, it was in the evening of the 5th, about nine o'clock. We went at first to go to bed and we heard planes and they dropped lights. Many colours in the sky, it was wonderful. And we heard other planes coming so we set out for a shelter, but bombs dropped all round the house and we went under a table in the kitchen. We were frightened and we thought that will probably be it for us, and it lasted about one hour – we did not know exactly because all clocks stopped. And bombs dropped, we were frightened, and at last it was the end of the bombardment. And we heard crickets, funny noises, we did not dare to go out and then we saw two men with all kinds of weapons around their body and one of them came near us and he told us in French, 'We are Americans.' It was a very good, big surprise and we had at home a bottle of white wine that wasn't broken and my father was so happy he gave that bottle to the first American soldier he saw.

MAJOR GENERAL COLLINS

The 82nd did seize the bridge across the Mederet, which was very helpful. But their drop was scattered almost from the base of the Cherbourg peninsula up to the city of Cherbourg itself. This resulted in confusion to the Germans as to just where the attack was going to take place because they couldn't believe that it could be so scattered, and this did tend to slow down their reaction to where the landing was actually taking place and therefore it was an advantage.

MICHEL DE VALAVIELLE

French farmers, resident inland from Utah Beach

I was here in my farm when the landing happened. We were having in the farm a German battery of artillery with 88-millimetre guns and when the American people came we were afraid. We don't realise what has happened during the night, many, many planes, and I go to the farm and see an old woman who was just coming from the beach and told me the sea is dark with ships, and some time after a German soldier came here and he was having a prayer book on which it was wrote, Murphy, Michigan. He told us it was a prayer book of a paratrooper, so we realised it was the landing. The German obliged us to stay a long time in the house while they were fighting with the American soldier; the fight was during the beginning of the day until about twelve. At that time the American soldier began to approach the house. I go out first to tell him Germans were gone and there was nobody except French people in the house. He took me, I suppose, as a German soldier and so I was wounded by the American soldier. When they realised their mistake they took me immediately and I was the first Frenchman wounded on the beach in a hospital. So it was unforgettable view of the D-Day for me.

LIEUTENANT PATRICK DONNELL

47 Commando, Royal Marines, Gold Beach

We expected a clear beach with an indication as to exactly how we should proceed. We were even told the Military Police would be there to greet us. Our job was to land immediately behind the first wave of the 50th Division and pass through them, swing to the west, and capture a small port called Port-en-Bessin, which was halfway between the British beaches and the American beaches. About a mile off the beach we realised that the thing was not at all as we had expected. My commanding officer waved to us to turn to the left and at that moment a German battery on high ground beyond Arromanches got their sights on to us and started to pick some of the craft off. Of course these craft sank in deep water and very few of the men actually got on to the beach. Most of them were rescued and taken back to England. It became obvious to us as we proceeded further along the beach eastwards, in the wrong direction from what we had originally intended, that the beach itself was in a considerable state of chaos and ultimately it became a matter of each craft for itself. On the run-in, other craft ran into underwater obstacles and mines, and of the fourteen craft that set off, only two actually returned to the parent ships. I was pretty concerned about the German battery because it had considerable accuracy, but just as we turned and they began to pick us off a destroyer saw the situation and began to fire at the guns, and anyone who's ever experienced naval gunfire knows it's a terrifying thing because of the very high velocity and I think this shut the Germans up so that we lost only two or three craft in deep water. The other craft were lost closer to the beach. One of them went over a mine and the front half of the craft with the personnel in it went straight up in the air. That was not a very pleasant sight. The sea was quite a different colour when that craft blew up.

CAPTAIN JOHN FINKE

Company Commander, 16th Regiment, US 1st Division, Omaha Beach

There was a great deal of confusion, in fact we didn't realise what some of it meant. For instance we thought there had been a lot of aircraft shot down because the water was covered with these bright orange life rafts. But they were actually the survivors from the tanks, we called them DD [duplex drive] tanks. They had a canvas thing and they swam in the water and used the motor of the tank to push themselves by means of a propeller. Well, I think ninety-nine per cent of them swamped, that is went down in the drink, and the tank crews had been able to get out in most cases and into these orange rafts, which we didn't realise the meaning of until we got ashore and found that all these tanks that were supposed to be with us weren't there. They later brought in a few of what they called wader tanks, which were unloaded at the water's edge. They had been waterproofed and they could move up the beach, but there were very few of those actually.

SERGEANT GARIEPY

The retaliation, very, very mild, they were firing, and machine-gunning at us but not heavy at all. Of course you must understand that the DD Tank in the water looks like a little, very unharmful canvas boat; there's only about fifteen inches of rubberised canvas that shows. It's only when we're coming out of the water, that's when they realised there were tanks, but by then we were a little too close to their heavy-calibre guns on us and they were firing over our heads. No, the tanks lost at sea were through rough sea not by enemy action; there may be one or two that was sank by mortar but the big opposition was the sea, the condition of the sea, not the enemy.

CAPTAIN EDWARD WOZENSKI

Company Commander, 16th Regiment, US 1st Division, Omaha Beach

At Slapton Sands in England when we were rehearsing we had nine landing-ship rockets. They would trigger off a rocket at a time until they walked down the water and hit the beach. Then somebody would pull the master switch and a thousand rockets would take off per ship in a fantastic display, they would just churn up the beach. In the real show they were drawing some shore gunfire and we saw the rocket ships taking some evasive action and somebody panicked and pulled the switch. And we saw this tremendous display but I'll bet my bottom dollar that there wasn't one rocket that came within a half a mile of the beach. Nine thousand rockets, the most beautiful display you ever saw in your life, and I swear to God I didn't see so much as a hand-grenade crater within a half a mile of the beach. Of course we expected great things of the Ninth Air Force too. We'd been briefed with their pilots, John Finke and I were both briefed. He had Exit E-3, and I had responsibility for Exit E-l, and each one of those exits was to get one hundred and eighty-six tons, the figure stays right in my mind to this day, one hundred and eighty-six tons of dive-bombing by the Ninth Air Force on Exit El and the same thing for John Finke on Exit E-3. To this day, I don't know what happened. As I say, I didn't sec so much as a hand-grenade crater anyplace.