D-Day: The Battle for Normandy

mistimed their jump or were caught between the rail and the ship’s side. It was easier for those lowered in landing craft from davits, but a battalion headquarters group of the 29th Infantry Division experienced an inauspicious start a little later when their assault craft was lowered from the British ship, HMS Empire Javelin. The davits jammed, leaving them for thirty minutes right under the ship’s heads. ‘During this half-hour,’ Major Dallas recorded, ‘the bowels of the ship’s company made the most of an opportunity which Englishmen have sought since 1776.’ Nobody inside the ship could hear their yells of protest. ‘We cursed, we cried and we laughed, but it kept coming. When we started for shore, we were all covered with shit.’

The US Rangers, whose principal task was to scale the cliffs at Pointe du Hoc to the west of Omaha beach, were less heavily burdened. Most were armed with little more than a Thompson sub-machine gun, a .45 automatic and a quarter-pound of TNT attached to their helmet. The ship’s captain bade them farewell over the public address system: ‘Good hunting, Rangers!’

One engineer about to land on Utah with the 4th Infantry Division later described in a letter the lowering of the assault boats as ‘the loneliest time’ of your life. ‘With a slap that jars everyone aboard, the craft hits the water. We chugged away and in a few seconds the large mother ship became just a darker blob in a world of darkness and then disappeared from view entirely.’

As the first flotillas of landing craft took up formation, two Ranger officers jumped on hearing a tremendous explosion. They looked around to see what had caused it. ‘That, sirs’, a British petty officer informed them pedantically, ‘is the battleship Texas, opening the barrage on the Normandy coast.’ The men on the landing craft felt the shock waves of the heavy shells from the battleships and cruisers firing over their heads. The other bombarding ships of the Western Task Force for the two American beaches of Utah and Omaha also opened up with their main armament. Unlike the Royal Navy, which fired their turrets in sequence, the American battleships Texas, Arkansas and Nevada fired broadsides with all their fourteen-inch guns at once. The sight made some observers think for a moment that the ship had blown up. Even at a distance, the concussion could be felt. ‘The big guns,’ noted Ludovic Kennedy, ‘make your chest feel that somebody had put their arms around you and given you a good squeeze.’ The passage of the heavy shells created a vacuum in their wake. ‘It was a strange sight,’ wrote a staff sergeant in the 1st Division, ‘to see the water rise up and follow the shells in and then drop back into the sea.’

Many, however, were suffering dreadfully from seasickness as the flat-bottomed boats pitched and rolled in and out of the five-foot waves. ‘The other landing-craft,’ wrote a private, ‘could be observed sinking and reappearing in their troughs.’ As he looked around, he observed that ‘the sky and the sea and the ships were all the colour of pewter’.

Soaked in spray, British and American soldiers alike regretted their ‘hearty breakfast for the condemned man’. Many ‘started throwing up chunks of corn beef’ from their sandwiches. The damp seasickness bags which they rapidly filled fell apart and some resorted to vomiting into their helmets, then rinsing them out over the side when a wave came along. The Royal Navy forward observer attached to the 50th Division was faintly amused when a senior officer, sitting majestically in his Jeep, became furious after soldiers were sick over the windward side and the results were blown back over him. The effects of seasickness, however, were far from funny. Men were exhausted by the time they reached the beaches.

Others who had good reason to feel queasy from fear were the crews of tanks about to launch into the sea. These were specially adapted and waterproofed DD, or duplex-drive, Shermans, with propellers and inflatable canvas screens. The idea of this new invention was to surprise the Germans by landing tanks at the same time as the very first wave of infantry. Unrecognizable in the water, they would emerge to provide fire support against bunkers and gun emplacements. DD tanks had not been designed for sea conditions as rough as this and some soldiers, terrified by their training back in England with the Davis escape apparatus designed for submarines, had refused ‘to be a bloody sailor in a bloody tank’. Only the commander, standing on the engine deck behind the turret, was above water level. The rest of the crew remained inside and the driver could see nothing but a grey-green murk through his periscope.

The original plan had been to launch them from tank landing craft at 8,000 yards from the shore, out of the range of German guns, but the sea was so rough that this was reduced. Major Julius Neave of the 13th/18th Hussars received instead the order: ‘Floater, five thousand!’ But the Sherwood Rangers Yeomanry launched their tanks much closer to the beaches. Even so, five tanks foundered out of their two swimming squadrons. Most crews managed to get out and were rescued, but a number of men drowned. The American tank battalions swimming in were to face even greater difficulties, partly because of the currents further west, but mainly because one of them received the order to launch much too far out.

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The grey dawn began to reveal to the German defenders the huge fleet lying offshore. The headquarters of the 352nd Infanterie-Division began to receive frantic calls on the field telephones. At 05.37 hours the 726th Grenadier-Regiment reported, ‘Off Asnelles [Gold beach] numerous landing craft with their bow towards the coast are disembarking. Naval units begin to deliver fire on beaches from their broadsides.’ A few minutes later the divisional commander called his superior, General Marcks, the commander of LXXXIV Corps. He suggested that ‘in the light of new developments’ he should bring back the task force of three battalions commanded by Oberstleutnant Meyer which had been sent to investigate the ‘Explosivpuppen’. Marcks agreed. At 05.52 hours, the 352nd Infanterie-Division’s artillery regiment reported, ‘60 to 80 fast landing craft approaching near Colleville [Omaha beach]. Naval units on high seas too far off for our own artillery.’

As soldiers on the landing craft started to see the coast more clearly, the last phase of the bombardment began with rocket ships. These were specially adapted tank landing craft, with 1,000 racks welded to the open deck. Each rack was armed with three-foot fused rockets with another 1,000 below deck in reserve. The rockets created a terrifying sound when fired in salvoes. One soldier in the Hampshires, approaching Gold beach, indicated the torrent of shells and rockets and shouted to a neighbour, ‘Fancy having that lot on your breakfast plate.’ One Royal Navy officer in command of a rocket ship had frozen in horrified disbelief when he had opened his secret orders. His allotted target at the mouth of the River Dives was the elegant seaside resort of Cabourg. As a Francophile and a devoted Proustian, he was appalled. Cabourg was Marcel Proust’s ‘Balbec’, the setting for A l’ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs.

The fearsome sight of the rocket salvoes raised the spirits of soldiers going in, but those on assault craft approaching Omaha were unable to see that the rockets ‘missed the target entirely. All the rounds fell short and in the water.’

Just as the first waves went in, General Eisenhower contemplated the good news from Leigh-Mallory about the far lighter losses than expected on the airborne operation. Ramsay’s headquarters staff were also deeply relieved at the way the naval operation had gone. They could still hardly believe their luck, that the minesweeper force had escaped unscathed seemed like a miracle. Eisenhower wrote a quick report for General George C. Marshall back in Washington, then prepared a communique with his staff. The Germans, however, made the first announcement, but to the pleasant surprise of SHAEF headquarters it stated that the landings had taken place in the Pas-de-Calais. Plan Fortitude and the deception activities in the eastern Channel seemed to have worked.

It was six months to the day since Roosevelt had turned to Eisenhower in the staff car on Tunis airfield and said, ‘Well, Ike, you are going to command Overlord.’ But the ‘longest day’, as Rommel was to call it, had only just begun. Extremely worrying news soon came in from Eisenhower’s great friend General Gerow, the commander of V Corps, which was assaulting Omaha beach.

7. Omaha

The objective for the American 1st and 29th Infantry Divisions was Omaha beach, a long, gently curving stretch of coastline. Approaching from the sea, the beach ended on the right with massive cliffs. Four miles further round to the west was the Pointe du Hoc promontory. This was where a battalion of Rangers had to scale a sheer cliff to silence a German battery.

The main strip of beach rose gently to a bank of shingle up against a low sea wall. Beyond the sea wall was a