7On the night of June 1, a group of 200 Halifaxes and Pathfinder Mosquitoes had attacked this station near Cherbourg, but had been unable to score any hits because of the haze and cloud cover. The target was again hit on the night of June 3.
8Operational Report, USS PC.484.
9See entry for June 3. The shocked Germans finally concluded that the transmission was either an error or a hoax. It was in fact an accident. A 22-year-old teletype dispatcher in the Associated Press had been making practice perforated tapes on a disconnected teletype to improve her typing speed in preparation for the actual landings. An editor had interrupted her with a report to transmit immediately, a summary of a recently monitored Soviet war report on the radio. Not realizing that a fake message was started on the tape, she dutifully typed out the report, and then ran the tape on a live teletype, thus immediately transmitting both messages to the world. Of course, the announcement was quickly noticed and cut off midway through the Russian report. However, the damage had been done. The dispatcher, when told what had happened and its enormity, collapsed and had to be sedated. Despite the mishap, she was not fired. Eisenhower’s aide, reacting to the incident, was not bothered. Eisenhower, he commented, had bigger worries.
The details of this unusual story are covered in my book, Bust Eisenhower: The Message that Almost Ruined D-Day.
10The perhaps surprising controversy as to when Rommel left for home has pretty much been settled. The most authoritative writers of the invasion—Ruge, Irving, Ryan, Fraser, Reuth, Toland (Adolf Hitler, pp.890)—put his departure date at June 4. Others have stated that it was June 5, including, surprisingly, Rommel’s own chief of staff, Hans Speidel (Invasion 1944). Other authors simply leave the date out (such as pioneer biographer Desmond Young in The Desert Fox, and Harrisons in his exhaustive Cross Channel Attack). Most eyewitnesses though (Lang, Tempelhoff, Ruge, and Rommel’s own wife and son), as well as the Army Group B War Diary, confirm that his departure date was indeed the 4th.
11Admiral Ruge wrote that Rommel had at some time recently thoroughly discussed with Speidel the measures to be taken in case of an attack. That statement could be given a critical eye, considering Speidel’s actions two days later in the early morning hours of the 6th.
12The details of Rommel’s trip to Germany at this momentous time are covered in my book entitled Rommel’s Fateful Trip Home: June 4th to June 6th, 1944, 2014.
13When the Reich began calling up men in 1939, it was carried out in waves. From each wave called up, the men were either assigned to existing infantry units or used to create new ones. There were some 35 waves called up during the war. From the 22nd wave, called up in November 1943, five new infantry divisions were formed. The 25th wave, called up in the first two months of 1944, created six.
14Roast veal stew with German noodles.
15Rommel once told Lang, “If [the invasion] is going to come at all, it will be around the middle of June, sometime around the 20th, when the moon is full.” Attacking during a full moon was a pattern that he had noticed in North Africa. The British seemed to prefer it, and he often did too. He had expressed this idea to his wife and son as well.
16Amazingly, decades later, the American weather team leader, Irving Krick, was still claiming that if his optimistic predictions had been followed and the invasion launched on June 5, it would have been just as successful.
17Many sources have indicated that the Allies (specifically, the Americans) hit the beaches exactly at low tide. This is very close. The first waves of Americans came ashore at or near 6:30 a.m., BDST. According to data taken from the English Channel Handbook prepared by the British Admiralty and included with all US Navy operational orders, low tide for June 6 at St.-Vaast-la-Hougue (north of Utah beach) was to be at 6:04 a.m. and again at 6:28 p.m. High tide was to occur at 11:04 a.m. and 11:40 p.m.. At Port-en-Bessin (east of Omaha beach), these figures respectively were 6:21 a.m. hours and 6:45 p.m. for low tide, and 11:36 a.m. and 11:57 p.m. for high tide. Thus, extrapolating, low tide on Utah beach would be about 6:12 a.m., and about 6:18 a.m. for Omaha beach. Low tide at the British beaches would occur around 6:26 a.m.
18Admiral Sir Bertram Ramsay, the Commander-in-Chief of the Allied Naval Expeditionary Force.
Monday, June 5
Shortly before 1 a.m., two Royal Navy midget submarines, X20 and X23, surface off the Normandy coast. With heavy seas in the Channel, no German patrol boats are in the area.
These two small five-man subs are the first Allied vessels to reach the invasion site. Their mission will be to guide the many incoming vessels and landing craft to the British and Canadian landing areas.1 Having arrived at their target destination at daybreak on the 4th after a long, 36-hour trip across the Channel (in bad weather), they have quietly sat submerged on the bottom all day, waiting to go into action.
Now as they make final preparations for their critical mission, they receive a coded message: “Ripcord 24.” The invasion has been postponed for at least a day. So they will have to submerge again, and sit on the bottom of the English Channel for another 24 hours before they can surface and find out if the invasion is on.
Eisenhower has decided to launch the invasion. The orders go out at once to the Allied fleets. Nearly six thousand ships of all types set sail once again from various points all over England in the early morning hours. Spearheading the task forces are waves of various-sized minesweepers. There are over 290, including the ones already working at sea. They must all clear wide channels through the German minefields, so that the task forces can safely pass through.
The 1,200-plus warships in these fleets include seven battleships2. Four are British: HMS Nelson, Rodney, Ramilles, andWarspite. Three are American: the USS Arkansas, the old Texas, and the illustrious Pearl Harbor veteran, Nevada.
Steaming besides them are numerous smaller escorts, including 23 cruisers, over a hundred destroyers and destroyer escorts, some 360 corvettes and motor torpedo boats, and several hundred frigates, sloops, cutters, buoy layers, gunboats, and many others.
Sailing with these warships are the vital key to the entire campaign: the invasion fleet. This assault flotilla consists of some 4,000 amphibious assault and special purpose vessels, and includes some 1,500 landing craft.3
At 4:15 a.m. BDST, 4 Eisenhower meets one more time with his meteorologist, Captain Staggs, and his team leaders. Stag reconfirms his assessment of the two-day break in the bad weather. Though conditions will then get worse, he explains, they will not get bad enough to stop invasion supplies from landing.
This is the final moment. If he is going to postpone the invasion again, it must be done now. After some deliberation, the room gets quiet. Finally, Eisenhower decides. He stands up, looks at his senior officers and says, “Okay… We’ll go.”
The others immediately stand up and start to leave. He orders the “It’s on” messages be sent to confirm the invasion date for the 6th by quipping, “Let ’er rip.”
The others scurry out of the room, a thousand tasks to perform.
For the Allies, there is now no turning back.5
Oberst! Professor Dr. Walther Stöbe is in his central office, studying the latest weather conditions. He is the chief meteorological officer for not just for the Luftflotte 3 headquarters in Paris, but for all air units in Western Europe.
His command center is located on the second floor of the Luxembourg Palace in Paris. It is an ornate building, and even though the Nazi flag flies out front, the Germans, in deference to French sensitivity, have been ordered never to take a picture of the building with the flag flying. Stöbe does not see how that makes much difference, what with the many German military personnel that come and go through its doors.
Today, the weather, as anticipated, is bad. The Wehrmacht generally assumes that no invasion will come if visibility is only a couple of miles and the wind strength is at least 4 on the Beaufort scale, with the sea at Force 4 or 5, making waves between 1.5 to 2.5 meters high. Occasional weather recon flights over the North
Sea are made, but as a rule, they are next to useless to predict what might be coming out of the west. And there are currently no U-boats in the area to take meteorological measurements. Lacking any evidence to the contrary, it looks like the winds will continue to be high, and that the sky will get increasingly cloudy. And it is going to continue to rain.
Reports record the winds around Cherbourg near Force 7 and at Calais near Force 6. There are no indications at this time that these conditions will change anytime soon. The cloud base is less than a thousand feet, lousy conditions for any tactical aerial operations, and certainly prohibitive for any sort of airborne landing.
It is a pity that they are no longer getting reliable weather reports from their hidden weather stations in Greenland. Over the last couple years, the Allies had played a cat-and-mouse game with them, conducting search parties over vast areas, weeding their meteorological units out. In response, the Germans had been forced to slowly evacuate those that were left. They have lost their key weather stations on Jan Mayen Island, Greenland, Iceland, and Norway.
Nevertheless, anyone can see that the weather is far from ideal right now, and this will probably continue for a few days. So the chance of an invasion coming is nil. Dr. Ströbe confers with his top aide, Major Ludwig Lettau. They agree that no large enemy operations will be forthcoming, at least for the next 48 hours. So Stöbe tells Lettau to give their staff members the day off. Most of them immediately begin planning on touring or carousing through the Parisian hotspots. In the meantime, Stöbe decides that he had better phone in his weather report to von Rundstedt’s headquarters.
He calls his liaison officer at OB West, “Heeres” Mueller, 6 and gives him his assessment of the storm. Mueller promises to write it up and forward it on to the field marshal.
***
Early morning. Seventh Army is still on a low-level alert. That there is any alert at all is testimony to all of the air attacks that have recently been made upon the Seine, Loire, and Somme river bridges.
Marcks and the staff of the 84th Corps are indoors today, catching up on paperwork, especially with the weather so bad. The chief of staff, Oberst!leutnant Friedrich von Criegern, is going through some reports. Marcks’ intelligence officer, Major Hayn, is logging in a strange report that has been sent from the 709th Division. A report concerning a dead carrier pigeon.
According to the report, the bird had been shot by an Oberfeuerwerker in the 709th Infantry Division early yesterday morning along the Normandy beach. On the leg of the dead bird had been found attachéd a small aluminum tube containing a modest scrap of paper with a coded message of numbers, letters, and a drawing of a small image, possibly a fox. Both the tube and the paper rolled up within have been taken to the 709th’s headquarters for analysis.
Well, this message confirms at least one thing. The Resistance in the area is still using carrier pigeons to send messages across the Channel. Marcks will be interested in this.
Hayn turns to look out his big window across to the beautiful cathedral, and to the skies beyond. He does not think anyone will be landing soon. The weather continued to be bas, with winds in the English Channel at Beaufort Force 5 the sea at Force 4 or 5. In some places, it is raining. Hopefully, the Allies will give them a break.
More than likely, the paper clipped to the bird contains troop dispositions. Anyway, tomorrow the tube and its message will be sent to Army Intelligence in Paris. They will have the time and resources to analyze the code.
***
Late this morning, Adolf Hitler chairs a meeting on Portuguese tungsten imports. He then attends his noontime OKW conference. Most of the time is spent discussing the loss of Rome and the withdrawal of the Tenth Army as the Americans advance up the Italian boot.
That afternoon, the Führer has a lengthy talk with Speer and Jodl about bridges. Speer, having recently noted damage by an Allied air raid and read reports of the Seine bridges going down, has suddenly realized that the enemy could knock out all the Rhine bridges in one day. A landing in the North Sea would then become feasible, and a blitz down through Germany could effectively neutralize all the units in France.
When he mentions this at the conference, Jodl dryly comments to the architect, “I suppose you are now, on top of everything else, becoming an armchair strategist as well.” Hitler though, finds merit in the argument, and they spend some time making plans to set up smoke screens around the Rhine bridges. There are no further discussions on conditions in France.
The Führer later attends a meeting about the production of diesel trucks.
***
Throughout the 5th, nothing unusual is reported to Heeresgruppe B. General Speidel, in charge while Rommel is away, considers it to be a quiet day. There have been no recon flights this month, so no photo-intelligence reports have to be analyzed. There is, in short, nothing that plausibly indicates that an invasion might be on its way. On the contrary, it is dreary outside, raining at times.
***
Rommel is up early and spends the day at home in Herrlingen, lounging around in relaxed attire with Lucie and Manfred. With them is a guest, Hildegarde Kircheim. Her husband had been with Rommel in North Africa.
Although he enjoys his relaxation, he spends some time going over what he will discuss with the Führer. Interestingly, his notes are peppered with small drawings, because he thinks that they will make his point much better to the Führer and the High Command.
He chats with his wife and son at different times during the day. He tells them about how the French rail lines are getting pounded by Allied aircraft. An idea comes to him. “You know,” he says, “we should use the French canals and rivers to move up our supplies and reinforcements…” He pauses and thinks about it. “We could use specially built concrete boats which could be easily camouflaged, and they would move at night. This’d give us an extra arm in our supply problem.”
Later, he calls General Schmundt, Hitler’s army adjutant, to arrange for a meeting with the Führer. Schmundt tells him that they could probably have some time in the next day or two—probably on Thursday, the 8th. Schmundt will call him back later to confirm this.
Rommel spends part of the evening talking to Manfred and Lucie about glass mines, before retiring early.
Around 9:15 p.m., Oberst! Oskar Reile telephones OB West from Gestapo headquarters. He reports rather excitedly that many second-part triggers of two-part messages are being broadcast to the Resistance on the BBC, including the Verlaine poem. The first parts had been sent on June 1. Now these messages are being sent to the various groups, probably instructing them to start committing acts of sabotage.7
To make sure that OB West truly understands what this implies, he personally goes over to St.-Germain and gives a summary to von Rundstedt’s counterespionage officer, Major Brink. Brink knows that their Ia, Bodo Zimmermann, must be informed immediately, So he decides to give the report to him. Before he leaves though, he calls Major Doertenback and tells him to find the Operations chief immediately and verbally inform him of the information.
Reile then informs Berlin. He also passes the information on to the unemotional Colonel Roenne, head of the expert staff at Fremde Heeres West, so that they can pass it on to lower army echelons. Reile does not send the information to Heeresgruppe B, because he assumes that since the coastal armies are now under Rommel’s direct command, he will alert them.8
***
9:18 p.m. General von Salmuth is in his quarters, playing a boring game of bridge with his chief of staff and two other officers. They are suddenly interrupted by Oberst!leutnant Meyer, who comes in out of breath from running.
“Herr General!” he exclaims. “The message! The second part—it’s here!”
“What?” replies von Salmuth tiredly as he looks up.
Meyer explains in an agitated state that the second part of the Verlaine poem has just been picked up. If their intelligence information from the Abwehr is right, the invasion will now come within the next 48 hours.
Von S
almuth thinks a moment, then calmly orders the Fifteenth Army once again to full alert—to Alarmstufe II. Meyer remains standing, waiting for more. The general looks up, sees that he has not moved, and says politely, “Danke,” to dismiss him.
Meyer hesitates, then quickly leaves. The other three officers remain silent as the general calmly looks back at his cards, returning to the game. After a pause, he looks up at the other players and, as if to explain his reaction, he quips, “I’m too old a bunny to get too excited about this.”
Meyer runs down the hallway to initiate the alert. Quickly he begins drafting a priority message to go out to various commands. He will send a similar message out to all general headquarters. To expedite things, he will also telephone OB West to forewarn them.
As the message is being prepared, he wonders if the second Verlaine verse will be repeated. Probably.9 His message soon goes out:
Teletype No 2117/26 Urgent
To: 67th Corps 81st Corps 82nd Corps 89th Corps Military Governor Belgium and Northern France
Army group B
16th Flak Division10
Admiral Channel Coast
Luftwaffe Belgium and Northern France
Message of BBC 2115, June 5 has been processed. According to our available records, it means “Expect invasion within 48 hours, starting 0000 June 6.”
***
This evening, a strange event takes place at Rommel’s headquarters. His chief of staff, the overthrow plot foremost on his mind, has taken the liberty of inviting by phone a number of guests over for dinner. The list includes many co-conspirators from the Paris section of the secret anti-Hitler resistance. With unusual Teutonic humor, he prefaces his unexpected invitations with the wry phrase “The Old Man’s gone away.”
Countdown to D-Day Page 77