D-Day, June 6, 1944: The Climactic Battle of World War II (3 page)

Brotheridge had more at stake in the struggle than most, for he was one of the few married men in D Company, and his wife, Margaret, was eight months pregnant. So he had had an unborn child's future on his mind during the flight over the English Channel.

Romer's shout, the
Leuchtpistole
flare, and Brotheridge's Sten gun combined to pull the German troops manning the machine-gun pits and the slit trenches on both sides of the bridge into full alert. They began opening fire from their
Maschi-nengewehr
(MG-34) and their
Gewehrs
and
Karabiners
(rifles and carbines).

Brotheridge, almost across the bridge, his platoon following, the men firing from their hips, pulled a grenade out of his pouch and threw it at the machine-gun pit to his right. As he did so, he was knocked over by the impact of a bullet in his neck. He fell forward. His platoon ran past him, with two other platoons from two other gliders close behind. The men of D Company cleared out the machine-gun pits and slit trenches in short order; by 0021 the enemy in the immediate vicinity of the bridge had either been killed or had run off.

Private Parr went looking for Brotheridge, who was supposed to set up his command post at a cafe beside the bridge. "Where's Danny?" Parr asked another private. (To his face, the men all called him "Mr. Brotheridge." The officers called him "Den." But the men thought of him and referred to him as "Danny.")

"Where's Danny?" Parr repeated. The private did not know. Parr ran to the front of the cafe. He found Brotheridge lying on the ground in the road opposite the cafe. His eyes were open and his lips were moving, but Parr could not make out what he was saying. Parr thought, What a waste! All the years of training we put in to do this job—it lasted only seconds and there he lies.

Stretcher-bearers carried Brotheridge back across the bridge to an aid station. The company doctor, John Vaughan, found the wounded lieutenant "lying on his back looking up at the stars and looking terribly surprised, just surprised." Vaughan gave him a shot of morphine and began to dress the bullet hole in the middle of his neck. Before he could complete the first aid, Brotheridge died. He was the first Allied soldier to be killed by enemy fire on D-Day.

Lt. Robert Mason Mathias was the leader of the second platoon, E Company, 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment, U.S. 82nd Airborne Division. At midnight, June 5/6, 1944, he was riding in a C-47 Dakota over the English Channel, headed toward the Cotentin Peninsula of Normandy. Two hours later, the plane was over France and starting to take some flak from German guns. At 0227 hours, Lieutenant Mathias saw the red light go on over the open door of the plane, the signal to get ready.

"Stand up and hook up!" Lieutenant Mathias called out to the sixteen men behind him as he hooked the clip from his parachute to the static line running down the middle of the roof of the aircraft. He stepped to the open door, ready to jump the instant the pilot decided the plane was over the drop zone and turned on the green light.

The Germans below were firing furiously at the air armada of 822 C- 47s carrying the 82nd and 101st Airborne divisions into battle.
Flakvierling-38s
(20mm four-barreled antiaircraft guns) filled the sky with explosions; machine-gun tracers—green, yellow, red, blue, white—arched through the sky. The sight was at once awesome (nearly every paratrooper thought this was the grandest Fourth of July fireworks display he had ever seen) and terrifying. For every visible tracer, there were five unseen bullets. Unseen, but not unheard—the bullets rattled against the wings of the C-47s, sounding like rocks being shaken in a tin can. Flying at less than 1,000 feet and slower than 120 miles per hour, the planes made easy targets.

Looking out the door, Lieutenant Mathias could see an intense fire raging. A hay barn on the edge of the village of Ste.-Mere-Eglise had caught fire, probably from a spent tracer, and was burning fiercely, illuminating the horizon. As the C-47 lurched this way and that, a consequence of the pilot's futile attempts to escape the flak, the men behind Mathias were calling out "Let's go," "For Christ's sake let's go," or "Jump, damn it, jump." As machine-gun bullets came up through the fuselage, the men instinctively put their hands over their crotches. They had made a dozen or more practice jumps; never had it occurred to them they would be so eager to get out of an airplane in flight.

Mathias had his hands on the outside of the doorway, ready to propel himself into the night the instant the green light went on. A shell burst just beside him. Red-hot flak ripped through his

reserve chute into his chest, knocking him off his feet. With a mighty effort, he began to pull himself back up. The green light went on.

At twenty-eight years of age, Mathias was five or so years older than the other lieutenants in the 508th, but he did not look it. He had reddish blond hair and an Irishman's freckles, which gave him a boyish appearance. Long and lanky (six foot one, 175 pounds), he was in superb condition, all raw bone and muscle, strong enough to survive a blow that would have felled an ox and recover almost instantly. He regained his feet and resumed his post at the door.

It was the kind of action his men had learned to expect from Bob Mathias. He was immensely popular with his platoon and fellow officers. For two years he had been preparing himself and his platoon for this moment. He was known to be absolutely fair, totally dedicated. He was the best boxer in the regiment, and the best marcher. On one twenty-five-mile march, an intraplatoon competitive hike, when everyone was pushing to the limit, one of his men gave out. Mathias picked him up and carried him the last three-quarters of a mile home.

When he censored the mail, one of his privates, Harold Cavanaugh, related, "He took extreme pains so that all that he would see were the contents. If something were written that should not have been, then and only then would he look to see the author's name. He personally would take it back to the writer to explain why certain sections had to be deleted. After the required correction, the letter was on its way. The least time possible was lost and the author always knew what would be read by the addressee."

Mathias was a devout Catholic. He went to Mass as often as possible and did all he could to make church attendance convenient for his men. He never swore. His company commander said of him, "He can hold more than his own with the toughest man alive; yet you won't ever hear him use hell or damn."

When a man in the second platoon had a problem, Mathias could sense it. He would discreetly offer his counsel, but he never intruded. One of his privates recalled, "He made allowances, but never compromised his standards. He seemed deeply hurt on the few occasions we failed to meet his expectations, but he never lost his temper."

He had prepared himself in every way possible for the up-

coming struggle. He was a student of military history. He had mastered every weapon and skill necessary to a rifle company. He had studied German weapons, organization, and tactics. He had learned the German language well enough to speak it fluently, and French well enough to ask directions. He had taught his men German commands and French phrases. "Valuable lessons," Ca-vanaugh remarked. Afraid the Germans would use gas, Mathias had given his platoon schooling in vesicants, lacrimators, sternuta-tors, and the like. "This knowledge later proved useless," Ca-vanaugh remarked, "but he wasn't overlooking a single phase of warfare."

Col. Roy E. Lindquist, commanding the 508th, said of Mathias, "He will either earn the Medal of Honor or be the first 508th man killed in action."

At the airfield on the evening of June 5, as the 508th loaded up, Mathias had shaken hands with each member of his platoon. The platoon was being carried in two planes; Private Cavanaugh, who was in the other stick, recalled, "There was an air of deserved confidence about this grand fellow. We shook hands and he said: 'We'll show 'em, won't we, Irish?' "

When Lieutenant Mathias was wounded from the shell burst and the green light went on, he had enough strength to push himself out of the way, so that the men behind him could jump. Had he done so, the crew of the C-47 could have applied first aid and— perhaps—gotten him back to England in time for a life-saving operation. Later, every man in his stick was certain that Mathias must have had that thought.

Instead, Mathias raised his right arm, called out "Follow me!" and leaped into the night. Whether the shock from the opening parachute, or the shock of hitting the ground, or excessive bleeding from his multiple wounds was the cause, no one knows, but when he was located a half hour or so later, he was still in his chute, dead. He was the first American officer killed by German fire on D-Day.

Operation Overlord, the invasion of German-occupied France in June 1944, was staggering in its scope. In one night and day, 175,000 fighting men and their equipment, including 50,000 vehicles of all types, ranging from motorcycles to tanks and armored bulldozers, were transported across sixty to a hundred miles

of open water and landed on a hostile shore against intense opposition. They were either carried by or supported by 5,333 ships and craft of all types and almost 11,000 airplanes. They came from southwestern England, southern England, the east coast of England. It was as if the cities of Green Bay, Racine, and Kenosha, Wisconsin, were picked up and moved—every man, woman and child, every automobile and truck—to the east side of Lake Michigan, in one night.

The effort behind this unique movement—which British prime minister Winston S. Churchill rightly called "the most difficult and complicated operation ever to take place"—stretched back two years in time and involved the efforts of literally millions of people. The production figures from the United States, in landing craft, ships of war, airplanes of all types, weapons, medicine, and so much more, were fantastic. The figures in the United Kingdom and Canada were roughly similar.

But for all that American industrial brawn and organizational ability could do, for all that the British and Canadians and other allies could contribute, for all the plans and preparations, for all the brilliance of the deception scheme, for all the inspired leadership, in the end success or failure in Operation Overlord came down to a relatively small number of junior officers, noncoms, and privates or seamen in the American, British, and Canadian armies, navies, air forces, and coast guards. If the paratroopers and glider-borne troops cowered behind hedgerows or hid out in barns rather than actively seek out the enemy; if the coxswains did not drive their landing craft ashore but instead, out of fear of enemy fire, dropped the ramps in too-deep water; if the men at the beaches dug in behind the seawall; if the noncoms and junior officers failed to lead their men up and over the seawall to move inland in the face of enemy fire—why, then, the most thoroughly planned offensive in military history, an offensive supported by incredible amounts of naval firepower, bombs, and rockets, would fail.

It all came down to a bunch of eighteen-to-twenty-eight-year-olds. They were magnificently trained and equipped and supported, but only a few of them had ever been in combat. Only a few had ever killed or seen a buddy killed. Most were like Den Broth-eridge and Bob Mathias—they had never heard a shot fired in anger. They were citizen-soldiers, not professionals.

It was an open question, toward the end of spring 1944, as to whether a democracy could produce young soldiers capable of

fighting effectively against the best that Nazi Germany could produce. Hitler was certain the answer was no. Nothing that he had learned of the British army's performance in France in 1940, or again in North Africa and the Mediterranean in 1942-44, or what he had learned of the American army in North Africa and the Mediterranean in 1942-44, caused him to doubt that, on anything approaching equality in numbers, the Wehrmacht would prevail. Totalitarian fanaticism and discipline would always conquer democratic liberalism and softness. Of that Hitler was sure.

If Hitler had seen Den Brotheridge and Bob Mathias in action at the beginning of D-Day, he might have had second thoughts. It is Brotheridge and Mathias and their buddies, the young men born into the false prosperity of the 1920s and brought up in the bitter realities of the Depression of the 1930s, that this book is about. The literature they read as youngsters was antiwar, cynical, portraying patriots as suckers, slackers as heroes. None of them wanted to be part of another war. They wanted to be throwing baseballs, not hand grenades, shooting .22s at rabbits, not M-ls at other young men. But when the test came, when freedom had to be fought for or abandoned, they fought. They were soldiers of democracy. They were the men of D-Day, and to them we owe our freedom.

Before we can understand what they accomplished, however, and how they did it, and appreciate their achievement, we must look at the big picture.

I

THE DEFENDERS

At the beginning of 1944, Nazi Germany's fundamental problem was that she had conquered more territory than she could defend, but Hitler had a conqueror's mentality and he insisted on defending every inch of occupied soil. To carry out such orders, the Wehrmacht relied on improvisations, of which the most important were conscripted foreign troops, school-age German youths and old men, and fixed defensive positions. It also changed its tactical doctrine and weapons design, transforming itself from the highly mobile blitzkrieg army of 1940-41 that had featured light, fast tanks and hard-marching infantry into the ponderous, all-but-immobile army of 1944 that featured heavy, slow tanks and dug-in infantry.

Like everything else that happened in Nazi Germany, this was Hitler's doing. He had learned the lesson of World War I—that Germany could not win a war of attrition—and his policy in the first two years of World War II had been blitzkrieg. But in the late fall of 1941 his lightning war came a cropper in Russia. He then made the most incomprehensible of his many mistakes when he declared war on the United States—in the same week that the Red Army launched its counteroffensive outside Moscow!
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