Normandy '44 Page 9
Nor was Oberst Friedrich Freiherr von der Heydte, the commander of Fallschirmjäger 6, much impressed by what he had seen of other troops or by the equipment available in Normandy. It was deplorable. ‘Weapons from all over the world and all periods of the twentieth century seemed to have been accumulated,’ he noted, ‘in order to convey the impression of a mighty force.’8 Within his heavy weapons companies he had German, French, Italian and Russian mortars and seven different types of light machine gun. Von der Heydte had only reached Normandy at the beginning of May, but during a subsequent exercise near Cherbourg, General Marcks had been most scathing about his corps. ‘Emplacements without guns,’ he had told von der Heydte, ‘ammunition depots without ammunition, mine fields without mines, and a large number of men in uniform with hardly a soldier among them.’9 In 325. Division’s sector, Leutnant Hans Heinze was not much impressed either. ‘A large percentage of the machine guns in the bunkers were captured weapons that did not fit our standard ammunition,’ he said, which created further difficulties for both the quartermasters and the troops using them.10 ‘At several points the barbed wire and trenches were not complete or manned properly.’
On 4 June, Heinze had accompanied a staff officer from Marcks’s LXXXIV. Korps Headquarters on an inspection tour, going from strongpoint to strongpoint. At one stage, a sergeant stepped forward and said, ‘Herr Major, we have enough ammunition to stop the first, second, third, fourth and maybe even fifth wave of Tommies.11 But after that they’re going to kick the door in on top of us then all is lost.’
Rommel was still working hard to rectify this and to wrest back control of the all-important panzer units. On 3 June, he visited von Rundstedt in Paris to tell him of his intention to drive to the Berghof to see Hitler and ask for more armour, more anti-aircraft guns and to try to persuade the Führer to give him tactical command of the panzer divisions. ‘The weakest point in the overall defence structure,’ noted Admiral Ruge in his diary on Sunday, 4 June, ‘was still the fact that the panzer divisions had not pulled up close enough to the “Rommelbelt” to allow them to participate immediately in the attack, thereby giving the infantry the urgently needed support.’12
Across the sea in England, the countdown to invasion was on. By the third week of May, training was largely complete and the 155,000 men earmarked to be dropped or landed had been moved to camps close to the coast from where they would march to embark. Training had been thorough. Men had practised jumping from landing craft, operating with live ammunition, training with other arms, and every effort had been made to make it as realistic as possible. Inevitably, there were accidents, with soldiers getting both badly wounded and killed. The 1st Battalion, Suffolk Regiment, for example, had been training up on the west coast of Scotland, with the Royal Navy, with tanks and with explosives. Corporal Arthur Blizzard of the Pioneer Platoon was among the men firing machine guns at the rest of the infantry and setting off explosives as they practised seaborne landings. On one occasion, an explosive was detonated by mistake before one of the men, a Royal Engineer corporal, had got clear. ‘The corporal was lying with his arm off,’ said Blizzard, ‘and I lay there all day with him … It shows what war is.13 He was just watching with his officers to see how things go.’ The injured corporal died in hospital.
Now, however, the regiment was in one of the ‘sausages’, as the concentration areas were known, at Havant, near Portsmouth, the port from which they would be heading to France, and confined there with guards to make sure they stayed put. A few of Blizzard’s mates thought about absconding, but he wasn’t interested and told them not to be fools. After all, they would be sent over eventually, even if they managed to avoid it this time. Blizzard reckoned it was far better to go with your mates than with strangers.
Not far from Havant, the Sherwood Rangers Yeomanry were also now confined to camp at Sway in the New Forest. The Sherwood Rangers were a Territorial regiment, who, like the American National Guard, only trained part time in peacetime. Mostly made up of country farmers and local Nottinghamshire men, they had been posted to Palestine in September 1939 and had headed overseas with their horses. Early in 1940, they had taken part in a cavalry charge with sabres drawn against Arab insurrectionists, before an embarrassing stampede had led to them being ordered to send their chargers home. To compound their hurt and humiliation, they had then begun retraining as gunners, something that was seen as massively demeaning by these proud but hopelessly out-of-date yeomen. They served at the siege of Tobruk and on Crete before being retrained on tanks. Their baptism as an armoured regiment had taken place at the Battle of Alam Halfa in late August 1942, Rommel’s last attempt to break the Alamein Line in Egypt, and although they had proved a little impetuous and rough around the edges, they had then performed well at the Battle of Alamein and had remained in Eighth Army until victory in Tunisia in May 1943. By then they had turned themselves into a highly experienced, slick and professional outfit, part of the independent 8th Armoured Brigade. Sent back to England, they had been training for D-Day ever since and were earmarked to land with 50th Division on Gold Beach, the westernmost of the three British and Canadian assault beaches.
One of those who had been with the regiment since the beginning of the war was Major Stanley Christopherson. Now thirty-two and commanding A Squadron, he was bright, well travelled and charming. Christopherson made friends easily and was a gifted sportsman, as well as being socially as smooth as glass. He had also proved himself to be a good man in a crisis, with the kind of courage and phlegmatism that made him ideal officer material. He also had a healthy dose of steely competitiveness and was among a number of officers in the regiment who had always striven to improve. Amateur they might have been at the start of the war, but since then Christopherson and his fellows had trained hard, learned the lessons and honed themselves into one of the best-armoured regiments in the British Army, which was precisely why they were to be among those spearheading the invasion.
Christopherson had drilled his men well, and had insisted on each man, no matter what his role, being expert in both gunnery and radio training. A couple of years earlier, the Sherwood Rangers had adopted a radio code based largely on horse-riding and cricket; that had long gone. ‘The success of any tank versus tank battle,’ Christopherson had noted, ‘depended on accurate and quick fire, and it was quite impossible to fight any kind of battle, either on a troop, squadron, regimental or brigade level, unless wireless communication was good.’14 As he rightly pointed out, that could only come with training.
On Saturday, 20 May, all the officers in the Sherwood Rangers were informed that the invasion would take place on 5 June and were given the broad outlines of the plan and then very specific details of their own role and objectives, although still not the location. The plan of assault was demonstrated on a sand model with code names for all the villages and towns. ‘I lay you 10–1 we shall land in Normandy,’ John Bethell-Fox, one of Christopherson’s troop commanders, told him.15 ‘I recognize the coastline.’
All along the south coast of England, men were now in ‘sausages’ roughly in alignment with the beach on which they would be landing. Far to the west, in Devon, were the Americans of the US 4th Division, who would be landing at the eastern base of the Cotentin Peninsula, code-named Utah. Further east, in Dorset, were the men of the US 29th Infantry and 1st Infantry Divisions, who would be landing at the long and potentially most problematic beach along the invasion front, code-named Omaha. The Sherwood Rangers, now in Hampshire, would be coming ashore at Gold Beach along with the 50th Division; the Canadians, who had been based some way east along the coast of England, correspondingly further along at Juno; and Arthur Blizzard and the 1st Suffolks, part of 3rd Infantry Division, who were coming from Kent, at Sword.
Among those scheduled to land with the US 1st Infantry, the ‘Big Red One’ as it was known, were identical twins Henry ‘Dee’ and Tom Bowles. From Russellville, Alabama, the brothers were already combat veterans having fought through the Tunisian campai
gn and then also in Sicily. Incredibly, Normandy was to be their third amphibious landing. Through it all, they remained remarkably laid-back. They had been in different companies in North Africa and Sicily, but Tom had recently managed to get a transfer to Headquarters Company in the 2nd Battalion, 18th Infantry Regiment of the 1st Division, where he had joined his twin as a wireman. This meant that the moment they moved anywhere, it would be their job to run telephone wire from Battalion HQ to the various companies. ‘So, yeah,’ said Tom, ‘we were now doing the same thing in the same company.’16
To all intents and purposes, the brothers were alone in the world. Growing up in the Depression-hit Deep South, in a poor family, they had lost a brother and then their mother when they were just twelve and their father died in 1940, soon after they joined the army. An older sister had married and they hadn’t seen her in years. ‘I know we had some guys that worried about getting home to their wives and everything,’ said Dee Bowles, ‘but we didn’t have anything to worry about.17 The 18th Infantry was our home. And we knew we wasn’t going to get back until the war was over.’
They were now confined to camp on the edge of the small village of Broadmayne, a few miles east of Dorchester, but on one of their last evenings off they and a couple of their friends visited the New Inn, a pub in neighbouring West Knighton. Tom was a keen amateur photographer and as they sat outside, tankards in hands, he first took some pictures of Dee and their buddies Dotson and John R. Lamm, then the brothers posed for a picture on their own, taken by Lamm. They were a good-looking pair and, despite what lay around the corner, did not appear to have a care in the world. Rather there was a look of insouciance and even confidence on their faces. If they were worried, they certainly weren’t showing it.
About 15 miles to the east was Blandford Camp, where the 116th Infantry were finally finishing their training. The 116th was part of the 29th Infantry Division, due to lead the US First Army’s invasion at Omaha alongside the Big Red One. Unlike the 1st Division, however, the 29th – and the 116th Infantry – were new to combat and, as yet, completely untested. Sergeant Bob Slaughter was confident enough, though. ‘The men were honed, eager and ready to go,’ he wrote.18 ‘We were sure that with our training and skill most of us would survive.’ Although a sergeant, Slaughter was still only nineteen years old, having joined the National Guard on 3 February 1941, his sixteenth birthday. His motives had been financial rather than patriotic. As for so many families in the US in the 1930s, times had been tough. Slaughter’s father, a lumber salesman, had lost his job in Bristol, Tennessee, and the family had moved to Roanoke, Virginia, where eventually he joined the Skyline Lumber Company, albeit in a lesser position and with a cut in pay. His declining health required his four children to pitch in, first with newspaper rounds and then, in Bob’s case, by taking a job at a sawmill at 50 cents a day.
When he joined the National Guard his parents were not happy, but young Bob was determined and the money was not to be sniffed at, so they signed for him and he was in, joining Company D, the heavy weapons unit, of 1st Battalion, 116th Infantry. Ten months later, America was at war and another ten months after that the 116th Infantry, along with the rest of the 29th Infantry Division, sailed for England. Ever since then, first in Scotland and then in south-west England, Slaughter and his fellows had been in training for the invasion. Physically, they could hardly be fitter. They were well equipped. Morale was high. Since the start of the year they had practised amphibious assault training intensely. What they hadn’t done was train with either tanks or artillery; nor had they learned how to attack the many small, high-hedged fields of Normandy, despite being based in Devon where there were plenty of both small fields and high hedges.
On Thursday, 1 June, the 116th Infantry’s command post at Blandford was closed and the assault units moved to transit camps closer to the coast. Just over a month earlier, Eisenhower, General Bradley and other senior commanders had watched the men carry out one of their amphibious assault exercises and afterwards the Supreme Allied Commander had spoken to some of the men. One of them had been Sergeant Bob Slaughter.
‘Sergeant,’ Eisenhower had asked, ‘are you and your men ready to go?’19
Slaughter had snapped out his reply. ‘Yes, Sir, we are!’
Eisenhower and Bradley were not the only senior commanders inspecting the men and giving pep talks. General Montgomery had been touring much of the country in a final visit to his troops that had begun on 23 May and was finishing on the morning of Friday, 2 June, at Broomfield House, 21st Army Group Headquarters.
Now it was the turn of his immediate staff, who sat cross-legged like schoolboys on green tarpaulins on what had formerly been a grass tennis court. There was a palpable sense of expectancy while they waited for him to arrive. In front of them was a Jeep with a set of mounting steps up to the bonnet, while behind this makeshift podium was a wood of chestnut trees, already in full leaf. It was sunny and fresh – England at its early-summer best.
Monty’s car drew up behind them and, accompanied by one of his aides, he walked round to the front, at which point everyone, generals and captains alike, stood. He ushered them to sit down again, then climbed on to the bonnet of the Jeep. In addition to this last tour, Montgomery had spent much time travelling the country speaking to the men who would be fighting under him in the coming battle. This has since drawn much criticism, which has suggested Monty should have been concentrating on the details of the plan rather than gadding about pandering to his own ego. However, it was important that army commanders were visible, honest, and gave their men a clear picture of what was going on and their part in the battles to come; certainly, it had proved very successful in South-East Asia, where both British General Bill Slim and the new Allied Supreme Commander, Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten, had managed to get around all their troops with a palpable rise in morale as a result. Leigh-Mallory and Ramsay sometimes found it frustrating that Montgomery was not always available, but after presenting the plan on 7 April his part in the process was largely complete. Detailed planning was not down to him and, in any case, the complexity of the naval operation meant the land plan had to be set in stone by then; there could be no major tinkering after that point, so boosting the morale and confidence of his armies was a very good use of his time.
Monty now gave a brief overview of what had already happened in the war, what was happening right now, and how he envisaged the endgame playing out. ‘The essence of his technique,’ noted Carol Mather, one of those listening to his clipped no-nonsense words, ‘was clarity.20 Everyone knew exactly where they stood, where they were going and their part in the proceedings. The “fog of war” was for a moment dispelled and the curtain lifted on future events.’ Montgomery concluded with five key points. The first was the importance of unity with their allies. Second, they all needed to remember to keep fit in body and mind and to believe in the rightness of the cause. Third, they should all feel confident: they were highly trained, well equipped and ready. Fourth, they should be enthusiastic about the cause for which they were fighting. Finally, it was essential they threw everything into the all-out battle, especially in the initial, most vital, stages of the landing.
He then paused and a deep silence descended. Carol Mather felt as though time was briefly standing still as he dwelt on the enormity of the task before them.
‘He either fears his fate too much,’ continued Montgomery, intoning the soldier-poet James Graham, Marquis of Montrose, ‘or his deserts are small, that will not put it to the touch, to win or lose it all.’21 He looked up at them. ‘Good luck to each one of you. And good hunting on the mainland of Europe.’
‘Then everyone burst out cheering,’ wrote Mather, ‘and we knew we were going to win.’22
CHAPTER 5
The Winds of War
To the east of the planned invasion front, south of Le Havre and the Seine estuary and some 50 miles from Caen, stood the small village of Saint-Étienne-l’Allier in the Eure Valley. Like most of the villag
es in Normandy, it was surrounded by lush farmland, had centuries-old stone houses and a church, and was, to all intents and purposes, entirely unremarkable. It was, though, now the headquarters of the Maquis Surcouf, a Résistance group that had swollen considerably in the past year, and because of its location – in the path of many of the German reinforcements that could be sent to Normandy – it seemed likely to play an important role in the battle to come.
The undisputed leader of the Maquis Surcouf was Robert Leblanc, the owner of the village café and grocery, a handsome 34-year-old with thick, dark hair swept back from his brow. Leblanc had had tuberculosis and so had avoided military service at the start of the war, remaining in the village with his wife, Denize, and their four young children. A fierce patriot, from the outset he had been outraged by the German occupation and was determined not to stand by idly. With the village priest, the Abbé Meulan, and the carpenter, Robert Samson, he began carrying out small acts of defiance, such as painting V for Victory signs on doors and tearing down German posters. Leblanc refused to sell newspapers that were pro-German and pro-Vichy. The three also hid downed Allied airmen and helped them escape. By the spring of 1943, others had begun to visit them and join their movement. Most were young men trying to avoid the Service du travail obligatoire, introduced in February 1943, in which all men aged 18–25 were compelled to work in Germany for two years, where they could expect minimum pay, minimal rations, brutal conditions and to have to work like slaves – which is pretty much what they were. The first 250,000 had been called up within days of the law being passed. Needless to say, a lot of young Frenchmen fled to the hills. Very quickly, a new word spread through France, from the mountains of the Alps and the Pyrenees to the remote valleys of Normandy: maquis is the Corsican word for mountainous scrubland, but it came to describe the groups of young men escaping forced labour in Germany and instead organizing themselves into groups of resistance.