D-Day, June 6, 1944: The Climactic Battle of World War II (35 page)

As the platoon prepared to move out, Smith's last words to Cartledge were, "I'll send the right message. Don't make me out a liar."

As the platoon left, a German machine gun opened up. The men dove back into the marsh. Cartledge had no radio. He was lost, chest deep in water, taking fire without being able to return it. Private Fordik, "a tough Pennsylvania coal miner," leaned over to whisper in his ear, "You know, Lieutenant Cartledge, I think the Germans are winning this war."
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Ten weeks later, when the airborne troops were back in England, preparing for another jump, possibly at night, the regi-

mental and battalion commanders of the 82nd gathered at Glebe Mount House, Leicester, for a debriefing conference. They did an analysis of what went wrong, what went right.

They started with the pilots. In the future the paratroop commanders wanted the pilots trained for combat and bad-weather missions. They wanted them forced to slow down—one suggestion was that every pilot of Troop Carrier Command be made to jump from a plane going 150 miles per hour. They wanted the pilots told that evasive action in a sky full of tracers did no good and caused much harm.

They did not say so, but it seems clear that radio silence also did more harm than good. The German antiaircraft crews were fully alerted by the pathfinder planes anyway. Had the pathfinder pilots sent back word of the cloud bank, the pilots in the main train would have been alerted. Had they been able to talk to each other on the radio, the dispersion of aircraft would not have been so great.

Only the battalion commanders of the 505th had anything good to say about the lighted-T system—Lt. Col. Edward Krause, CO of the 3rd Battalion, said that when he saw his T, "I felt that I had found the Holy Grail." None of the others had seen their Ts (which in most cases had not been set up because the pathfinders were not sure they were in the right place). No one expressed faith in the Eureka system.

There was general agreement that equipment bundles had to be tied together and a better lighting system devised. The commanders wanted every man to carry a mine (and put it to immediate use by placing it on a road; the men should be instructed to stay off the roads otherwise). Some way had to be devised to bring in a bazooka with each squad. The Gammon grenade "was very satisfactory." Each man should be issued a .45 "so as to be available immediately upon landing."

As to assembly, the commanders thought that flares would be the most effective method—but not too many. One per battalion, carried by the CO, would be sufficient. Whistles, bugles, and the like had been unsatisfactory, partly because of the noise from antiaircraft fire, partly because in hedgerow country the sound did not carry. The rolling-up-the-stick method was a failure because of the hedgerows and the scattered nature of the drops. Better radios and more of them would be a great help. The men had to be taught how to get out of their chutes faster (the simple solution to that was

to get rid of those buckles and adopt the British quick-release mechanism, which was done).
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So the paratroop commanders found much to criticize in the operation. Still, contrary to the fear Private Fordik had expressed to Lieutenant Cartledge, the Germans were not winning the war. Scattered though they were, the paratroopers and gliderborne troops were about to go into action while the Germans, for the most part, were still holed up, badly confused.

12

"LETS GET THOSE BASTARDS"

The Airborne Night Attack

At the Glebe Mount House debriefing in August 1944, the 82nd's regimental and battalion commanders concluded that the troops should be trained to assemble more quickly and to send out search parties for the equipment bundles. "It is most important, however, that the hours of darkness be used for the seizure of key points and objectives. The enemy reaction becomes increasingly violent with daylight."

Further, "prompt aggressive action by each individual is imperative immediately upon landing. An individual or small unit that 'holes up' and does nothing is ultimately isolated and destroyed. An airborne unit has the initiative upon landing; it must retain it. This is the essence of successful reorganization and accomplishment of a mission."
¹

Obviously, the commanders were unhappy with some of their troopers. Too many had hunkered down in hedgerows to await the dawn; a few had even gone to sleep. Pvt. Francis Palys of the 506th saw what was perhaps the worst dereliction of duty. He had gathered a squad near Vierville. Hearing "all kinds of noise and singing from a distance," he and his men sneaked up on a farmhouse. In it was a mixed group from both American divisions. The paratroopers had found the Calvados barrel in the cellar (there was one in virtually every Norman cellar) and "they were drunker than a bunch of hillbillies on a Saturday night wingding. Unbelievable."
²

The 505th's historian, Allen Langdon, attempted to explain the actions of these and other men who were not acting aggressively. He wrote, "A parachute jump and in particular a combat jump (if you survived it) was so exhilarating that first-timers were apt to forget the real reason they were there—to kill Germans. The feeling was: 'We've made the jump, now the Germans should roll over and play dead.' In every regiment it seemed to take one combat jump to instill the idea that jumping was only a means of transportation. Another phenomenon noted . . . was the shock of the quick transition from a peaceful . . . situation to a war zone. Because of it, troopers were ofttimes reluctant to shoot."
³

Pvt. Dwayne Burns was crouched beside a hedgerow. He heard a noise on the other side. "I climbed up and slowly looked over, and as I did, a German on the other side raised up and looked over. In the dark I could barely see his features. We stood there looking at each other, then slowly each of us went back down." They moved off in opposite directions.
⁴

Others had similar experiences. Lt. Lynn Tomlinson of the 508th was moving down a hedgerow. He looked across at a low point in the hedge and saw four German soldiers going in the opposite direction. "They were kids. I was within five feet of them." The moon had come out, and "One of these kids saw me and smiled. I decided that if they would stay out of our way, we would stay out of theirs."
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Pvt. R. J. Nieblas of the 508th was crouched beside a hedgerow with a paved road on the other side. His company CO had ordered him not to fire. He heard hobnailed boots on the road, then saw a German patrol marching past. "These were young fellows, kids—well, we were too—and their sharp uniforms impressed me. We didn't fire and I thought at the time, God, I don't know if I could fire point blank at an unsuspecting man."*

Some of the battalion and company commanders had given their men orders not to shoot at night for fear of revealing their positions. A few went so far as to order the men not to load their rifles or machine guns. They should use grenades or, even better, their knives. The 82nd's commanders agreed at their debriefing that those orders had been a big mistake.

Sgt. Dan Furlong of the 508th would not have agreed. He

* Later that day, Nieblas saw a paratrooper hanging from a tree. Although he was obviously helpless, the Germans had shot him. That made Nieblas furious and "settled my problem about shooting an unsuspecting enemy. If he wore a German uniform, I'd shoot."

came down alone and sneaked up to a farmhouse. It was full of Germans. He could hear them talking. They must have heard him, too, because a soldier came to check out the farmyard. He came around a corner "and I was standing up against the wall. I hit him in the side of the head with my rifle butt and then gave him the bayonet and took off."
⁶

Furlong was alone the remainder of the night. So were hundreds of others. "Dutch" Schultz wandered, trying to move to the sound of firefights, but before he could hook up with fellow Americans the area would become tranquil. "The peace would come, and then the noise, the violence. Then the peace, it was almost like taking a walk in the country on a Sunday afternoon, very peaceful. The peace and then again violence."
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Of course it was the commanders' job in a debriefing to be critical; at the time (August 1944) they were planning for the next mission, which for all they knew could be at night, so they concentrated on the shortcomings and mistakes of the D-Day operation rather than congratulating themselves on how well they and their men had done. But although the airborne assault had not been a complete success in the sense of accomplishing all assigned missions, the troopers had done enough that night to justify the operation.

The overall missions of the three airborne divisions were to disrupt and confuse the Germans so as to prevent a concentrated counterattack against the seaborne troops coming in at dawn and to protect the flanks at Sword and Utah beaches. For the 6th Airborne, that meant destroying the bridges over the Dives River and capturing intact the bridges over the Orne Canal and River, holding the dividing ridge between the Dives and the Orne, and destroying the German battery at Merville.

The Merville battery, four guns of undetermined size in four casemates, stood just east of the mouth of the Orne River, on flat, open grazing ground. The assumption by Allied planners was that those guns could cover Sword Beach to disrupt and possibly drive back the 3rd Division's landings, so they had made it a priority target. The battery would be attacked by air, land, and if necessary by naval gunfire.

The air attack, by 100 Royal Air Force Lancaster bombers, would begin at 0200. It was designed more to create foxholes around the battery and to stun the German defenders than to destroy it; even a lucky direct hit would not be sufficient to penetrate the thick, steel-reinforced concrete.

Next would come an attack by land. But just as the casemates were well defended against air bombardment, so were they prepared for a ground attack. There was a wire fence surrounding the area, with a minefield inside, then a barbed-wire entanglement, another minefield, an inner belt of barbed wire, finally a trench system for the German infantry reinforced by ten machine-gun pits. There were estimated to be 200 German soldiers defending the battery. So formidable were these defenses, so critical were the guns, that the British assigned more than 10 percent of the total airborne strength of the 6th Division to the task. The job went to twenty-nine-year-old Lt. Col. T. B. H. Otway and his 9th Battalion. He planned to execute it by a
coup de main
operation somewhat similar to Major Howard's at the Orne Canal (Pegasus Bridge), but on a much larger scale. Howard had six gliders and 180 men; Otway had 750 men, sixty of them in gliders, the remainder paratroopers. His plan was to assemble his battalion in a wood a couple of kilometers from the battery, move into position, and attack when the gliders crash-landed inside the defenses, right against the walls of the gun emplacements. If successful, he would then fire a Very pistol as a signal of success.

The job had to be completed by 0515. If there was no success signal by then, the British warships off Sword would commence firing on Merville.

So much for plans. In the event, whereas Howard's glider pilots had put him down exactly where he wanted to be (Leigh-Mallory called lead pilot Jim Wallwork's accomplishment that night "the finest feat of flying in World War II"), Otway's pilots badly scattered his battalion. They had not hit a cloud bank, but like their American counterparts they were not accustomed to flak and thus were unable to judge how dangerous it was. They took excessive evasive action to escape what was essentially light flak; as a consequence, the 9th Battalion had a bad drop.

Otway came down just outside a German headquarters. He made his way to the assembly point in the wood, where his second in command greeted him, "Thank God you've come, sir."

"Why?" Otway asked.

"The drop's a bloody chaos. There's hardly anyone here."
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It was nearly 0200. Otway had fewer than 100 men with him. He needed to get into place around the battery's defenses before the gliders came, but he needed more than one-seventh of his strength to do the job. He fumed and waited.

By 02 30, a total of 150 men had come in. Between them they

had but one machine gun. They had no mortars, antitank guns, radios, engineers, or mine detectors. The gliders were due in two hours. Otway decided to attack with what he had.

At 0250, the company-sized party set out, hoping to meet outside the battery a small reconnaissance party that had landed earlier with the pathfinders. On the single-file march to Merville, the main group passed a German antiaircraft battery shooting at incoming British planes and gliders. It was a tempting target of opportunity and the men wanted to attack it, but Otway's task was specific and urgent. He did not want to reveal his position and in any event his time was running out. He passed the word back down the file—no shooting.

Shortly, the commander of the reconnaissance party met Otway. His report was mixed. He had cut the outer wire fence and crossed the first minefield. The barbed wire was not as bad as had been feared. But he had no tape with him to mark the path he had followed (searching for mines with his fingers). Worse, the RAF bombardment had been a bust. Not a single bomb had hit anywhere near the battery.

At 0430, precisely on time, the gliders were overhead, flying in circles, watching for the mortar flares from Otway that were the signal to come on in. Otway watched helplessly—his men had failed to find the bundles carrying the flares. Without the flares, the pilots of the gliders assumed that something had gone wrong. Otway saw one glider skim over the battery, no more than 100 feet off the ground, then turn away to land in a field to the rear.