D-Day, June 6, 1944: The Climactic Battle of World War II (27 page)

There were some screw ups. Capt. Robert Walker of the 116th Regiment had done practice exercises on LCVPs, LCTs, Ducks, and LCMs. The only type of landing craft he had never been on was an LCI. For the invasion, naturally, he was assigned to LCI 91 and designated as billeting officer. The ship's capacity was 180 men but he had 200 badly overloaded men on his roster. In addition, LCI 91 was already carrying large rolls of telephone wire, bangalore torpedoes, satchel charges, grapnels, extra flamethrowers, "and much, much more." Nevertheless, Walker managed to crowd everyone in, then talked to the skipper, a Coast Guard lieutenant from Boston. The skipper said he had entered the Coast Guard anticipating spending the war guarding the Atlantic Coast near Boston, but now was about to embark on his third invasion.
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Lt. Charles Ryan of the 18th Regiment, 1st Division, had been on an LCI in an exercise, so he knew what to expect when his craft moved out into the open Channel. He described the LCI as "a metal box designed by a sadist to move soldiers across water while creating in them such a sense of physical discomfort, seasickness, and physical degradation and anger as to induce them to land in such an angry condition as to bring destruction, devastation, and death upon any person or thing in sight or hearing. It combined the movements of roller coaster, bucking bronco, and a camel."
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Around the airfields, glider troops and paratroopers checked out their equipment for about the 1,000th time, tried to think of some place to carry an extra pack of cigarettes or an extra grenade, visited the models of the Cotentin or the Orne and Dives rivers one last time—and then once more. They were tightly sealed in, ready at a moment's notice to march out to the airfield and get into the British-built Horsa gliders or American-built C-47s to get the invasion under way.

At another airfield, Fairford in Glouchester, a less-well-known unit prepared for the flight over the Channel. It was a Special Air Service (SAS) operation. SAS was a British army unit formed to operate behind Axis lines. It consisted of three regiments, one to work in France, plus two French battalions and a Belgian company. Capt. Michael R. D. Foot was a brigade intelligence officer in SAS. Since August 1942, he had been studying the German occupiers of France and their defenses. He had gone on a commando raid. Now he was preparing to send off some special teams to take advantage of what he knew about the Germans in Normandy (because Foot was bigoted, he was not allowed to go behind enemy lines).

Foot had experienced a difficult time in getting his teams for the operation code named Titanic (Foot had picked Titanic from a list, "trusting that would sound large to a German"). He had approached his regimental commander, who was preparing his squads for behind-the-lines bridge destruction and other acts of sabotage, to ask for four small parties of SAS troops.

"To do what?" the CO asked gruffly.

"To provide a bit of deception to assist in the landing."

"No."

"Colonel, this is an order."

"Not to me. Put it in writing if you like and I will reply in writing why I won't do it. But why should we waste paper? I will tell you why I won't do it."

He softened a bit and explained, "In the early days of the regiment we were all briefed to raid an Italian airfield. Intelligence canceled it at the last minute. We went on leave in Cairo, came back nursing our hangovers and were told, 'Right, chaps, it's on tonight, off you go.' Very few of us came back. And I swore then I was going to have no further dealings with any intelligence authority. Get out!"

Foot went to see Colonel Francks, commander of one of the other regiments in SAS, "with whom I had made my very first parachute jump, his first jump too. We were reasonable friends and he rather grudgingly agreed to Titanic, but only if it was cut down from four parties to two."

Foot agreed. He went down to Fairford, which was jammed with SAS teams preparing to go into France to fight, and there he gave his two teams—each consisting of an officer, an NCO, and two privates—the special equipment he had helped dream up and their mission.

The equipment consisted of about 500 dummy parachutists, a record player, and a mass of Very pistols and ammunition. Foot explained to the two teams that the idea was to drop the dummies, which would self-destruct on landing with a small explosion and a flash, then jump themselves carrying the equipment. On landing, they were to turn on the gramophone. The record would play snatches of soldiers' conversation, interspersed with small-arms fire. Then they should move around the area, shooting off Very pistols. One party would go in about midway between Rouen and Le Havre, the other near Isigny.

The French SAS battalion had its own special missions, including one for an advance party to seize a landing place in Brittany in order to bring the whole battalion into Brittany. The leader was a big game hunter named Bourgoin who had lost an arm but taught himself how to parachute with a single arm. The Frenchmen in the party were scheduled to be the first Allied soldiers to land in France.
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All across England, from four-man squads of the SAS to the overstrength divisions of the 6th, 82nd, and 101st Airborne, the men going into France by air were ready.

By the evening of June 3, the assault waves of the AEF were loaded up. Force O, carrying the 29th Division for the right flank at Omaha, coming out of Falmouth, had the longest distance to sail so it sallied forth first, during the night. To General Eisenhower, "the smell of victory was in the air."
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On the far shore, all was quiet. Rommel spent June 2 hunting for stags. On June 3, he drove to Paris to buy shoes for Lucie's birthday, which would come on June 6. In Paris, he conferred with Rundstedt, who agreed with him that "there is still no sign that the invasion is imminent." The tides in the Strait of Dover would not be suitable for an invasion until mid-June. Rommel checked the weather report—it indicated increasing cloudiness, high winds, and ram. He decided to go to Herrlingen for Lucie's birthday, then on to Berchtesgaden to see Hitler to beg for reinforcements. He wanted two additional panzer divisions and control of all the tanks. He wrote in his diary, "The most urgent problem is to win the rtihrer over by personal conversation."
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Although Rommel had half or less of what he calculated he
^re
quired, in men, guns, mines, Rommel's asparagus, beach obstacles, and fixed emplacements, he exuded confidence. He had

brought to his task outward enthusiasm and confidence. Morale was apparently high all along the Atlantic Wall, or so the German leaders told themselves. A secret Gestapo morale report claimed that the troops were actually looking forward to the invasion. "People see it as our last chance to turn the tide," it said. "There is virtually no fear of the invasion discernible."
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Rommel had managed to persuade some of his officers and a few of his troops that not only did they have a chance, they would prevail. Most German soldiers on the coast hoped the invasion would come far from them, but if it did hit them many were prepared to stand and fight. "Er
soil nur kommen,"
was Goebbels's sneer. ("Let them come.")

And why not? Even the
Ost
battalions had landing obstacles, barbed wire, and mines in front of their trenches and fortified pillboxes. To the rear, mortars and artillery pieces had zeroed in on every feature of the beach. At their sides were casemates holding 88mm cannon prepared to fire crisscross across their front. Behind them stood German sergeants, pistols ready. Those Allied briefers who told their men that the troops they would face on D-Day were inferior and could be expected to run away had got it wrong. Those briefers who reminded their men that the
Ost
battalions were made up of rough, simple, ignorant men with German noncoms and officers to ensure that they fought had got it right.

But for the German high command, there was the nagging problem of surrender. They feared that many of their men would take the first opportunity to turn themselves into POWs, and they too had got it right.

At Omaha Beach, Maj. Gen. Dietrich Kraiss commanded the 352nd Division, which had moved up from St.-L6 to Calvados in May. Kraiss was a veteran of the Eastern Front, where he had distinguished himself, but his disposition of his forces in Calvados left much to be desired. On the Eastern Front, the German practice was to let the Red Army attack, then counterattack with reserves held back from the front line. That was not Rommel's idea at all in Normandy, of course, but in accord with German doctrine Rommel left tactical dispositions up to his subordinates. Thus at Omaha —the only place in Kraiss's sector of the coast (stretching from the mouth of the Vire River to Arromanches) where an amphibious assault could come ashore—he had in place but one artillery battalion and two infantry battalions (from the 716th Infantry Regi-

ment). Kraiss had his reserve, ten infantry battalions and four artillery battalions strong, as much as twelve miles back from the coast.

There was one advantage to the Germans in this arrangement: Allied intelligence had failed to see the move of part of the 352nd's strength to the coast. Briefers told the 29th Division that Omaha would be defended only by second-rate troops from the 716th Division.

Like Rommel, Colonel General Dollmann, commanding the Seventh Army in Normandy, was convinced that the deteriorating weather precluded an invasion. He ordered a map exercise to be conducted in Rennes on June 6. All divisional commanders plus two regimental commanders per division were ordered to attend. Admiral Krancke canceled E-boat sea patrols because of the foul weather.

Only the one-legged Gen. Erich Marcks, in command of the LXXXIV Corps on the western sector of the Calvados coast and in the Cotentin, was uneasy. He was especially concerned about the 716th and 352nd divisions in Calvados. Each division had a fifty-kilometer line to defend. "It's the weakest sector of my whole corps," he complained. On June 1, he went to Arromanches. Looking out to sea, he told an army captain at his side, "If I know the British, they'll go to church next Sunday for one last time, and sail Monday [June 5]. Army Group B says they're not going to come yet, and that when they do come it'll be at Calais. So I think we'll be welcoming them on Monday, right here."
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10

DECISION TO GO

At the end of May, as the loading began, Air Vice Marshal Traf-ford Leigh-Mallory, who had doubted from the first the wisdom of dropping the two American airborne divisions into the Cotentin, came to Eisenhower at his headquarters in Southwick House (Admiral Ramsay's HQ, taken over by SHAEF for its command post for the invasion), just north of Portsmouth, to protest once again. Intelligence had discovered that the Germans had put their 91st Division into the central Cotentin, exactly where the 82nd Airborne was scheduled to drop. The 82nd had moved its drop zone to the west to avoid the Germans, but Leigh-Mallory felt not far enough.

He told Eisenhower, "We must not carry out this airborne operation." He predicted 70 percent losses in glider strength and at least 50 percent in paratroop strength even before the paratroopers hit the ground. He warned of a "futile slaughter" of two fine divisions, futile because the divisions would not be able to make any contribution to the battle. To send them into the Cotentin was "just plain sacrifice."
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Eisenhower went to his trailer, about a mile from Southwick House, "and thought it over again. I had no need for experts at this late time." He later described this as his most worrisome moment in the war, and wrote in his memoirs, "It would be difficult to conceive of a more soul-racking problem."

He reviewed the entire operation in his mind, then concentrated on the American airborne. He knew that if he disregarded Leigh-Mallory's warning and it proved accurate, "then I would carry to my grave the unbearable burden of a conscience justly accusing me of the stupid, blind sacrifice of thousands of the flower of our youth."
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But he felt that if he canceled the airborne mission, he would have to cancel the landing at Utah Beach. If the paratroopers were not there to seize the causeway exits, the entire 4th Division would be endangered. But cancellation of Utah would so badly disarrange the elaborate plan as to endanger the whole Overlord operation. Further, Leigh-Mallory was only making a prediction, and the experience with airborne actions in Sicily and Italy (where Leigh-Mallory had not been present; Overlord was his first involvement with a paratroop operation), even though the airborne performance in 1943 had been flawed in many ways, by no means justified Leigh-Mallory's extreme pessimism.

"So I felt we had to put those two airborne divisions in," Eisenhower related, "and they had to take Ste.-Mere-Eglise and capture the causeway exits, and protect our flank." He called Leigh-Mallory to tell him of his decision and followed the call up with a letter. He wrote Leigh-Mallory, "There is nothing for it" but to go, and ordered him to see to it that his own doubts and pessimism not be spread among the troops.
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While Rommel was going to see Hitler to beg for more tanks and a tighter command structure, Eisenhower was visited by Churchill, who was coming to the supreme commander to beg a favor. He wanted to go along on the invasion, on HMS
Belfast.
("Of course, no one likes to be shot at," Eisenhower later remarked, "but I must say that more people wanted in than wanted out on this one.") As Eisenhower related the story, "I told him he couldn't do it. I was in command of this operation and I wasn't going to risk losing him. He was worth too much to the Allied cause.