Beyond Utah Beach, confusion remained: “Continuation of Command Narrative,” n.d., JMG, MHI, box 12; Blair, Ridgway’s Paratroopers, 257 (Benzedrine), 259–60 (“where’s the picnic?”).
The 82nd now occupied: Gavin, On to Berlin, 111; CCA, 291 (no real bridgehead existed west); Ruppenthal, Utah Beach to Cherbourg, 74–75.
“Bridgehead still very shallow”: Love and Major, eds., The Year of D-Day, 84–85; Bradley and Blair, A General’s Life, 257 (“pointless interruption”).
“With the mast swaying”: Three Years, 572–73; Love and Major, eds., The Year of D-Day, xvi (“aura of vinegar”).
“We’ve started”: Eisenhower, Letters to Mamie, 190.
Even war could not dim the radiance: VW, vol. 1, 265; CCA, 339; Aron, France Reborn, 30 (cadging cigarettes), 24 (forty thousand); OH, Lt. Richard Oliphant, NARA RG 38, E 11, U.S. Navy WWII Oral Histories (White blossoms rioted); Liddle, D-Day by Those Who Were There, 145 (cows lowed); Watney, The Enemy Within, 108 (blue smocks); CBH, July 2, 1944, MHI, box 4 (fascist salutes); Lankford, ed., OSS Against the Reich, 88 (shops offered goods); author visit, Bayeux, May 26–27, 2009; Osmont, The Normandy Diary of Marie-Louise Osmont, 45, 49 (“without overcoats”).
“belted with gigantic floats”: Aron, France Reborn, 30 and foreword (Thirty-six thousand French communes); Drez, ed., Voices of D-Day, 293; Donnison, Civil Affairs and Military Government in North-West Europe, 74–77 (“impossible to differentiate” and “Looting by troops”); Middleton, Our Share of Night, 315 (set up a press camp); Moorehead, Eclipse, 113 (“a dry Sauterne”).
“only shells with their insides blown out”: Moorehead, Eclipse, 109; Thompson, The Imperial War Museum Book of Victory in Europe, 90–91 (“please stop the shells”); Scannell, Argument of Kings, 157, 165–66 (“What I can never understand”); Osmont, The Normandy Diary of Marie-Louise Osmont, 41, 46–47 (“Overhead the hisses”).
“looking helpless and insignificant”: CBH, June 8, 1944, MHI, box 4; Pyle, Brave Men, 251–52; Tobin, Ernie Pyle’s War, 173–79.
A Gunman’s World
Enemy soldiers by the tens of thousands: Keegan, Six Armies in Normandy, 157; Wilmot, The Struggle for Europe, 305 (French buses upholstered).
Traveling by five dusty routes: Lefèvre, Panzers in Normandy Then and Now, 81; VW, vol. 1, 23; Carell, Invasion—They’re Coming!, 107–8 (“bombers hovering”); Mark, Aerial Interdiction in Three Wars, 246 (six miles per hour); Wilmot, The Struggle for Europe, 300; Cooper, The German Army, 1933–1945, 503 (Not until June 9). Historian Niklas Zetterling asserts that Panzer Lehr march losses were exaggerated, although delays were significant. Normandy 1944, 47, 384–89.
Half a dozen flak battalions: Carell, Invasion—They’re Coming!, 114–15; Zetterling, Normandy 1944, 48 (sixty trains); Keegan, Six Armies in Normandy, 156 (Das Reich matériel and troops).
“My friends, you are going to appear”: Hastings, Das Reich, 116–26, 170–82; Foot, SOE in France, 399 (“book of iniquity”).
Evil also shadowed: Cooper, The German Army, 1933–1945, 503; Milner, “Stopping the Panzers,” JMH (Apr. 2010): 491+; Isby, ed., Fighting the Invasion, 241; Zetterling, Normandy 1944, 46 (too low on fuel); Chandler and Collins, eds., The D-Day Encyclopedia, 361 (former miner and policeman); Luther, Blood and Honor, 72–73 (broken nineteen bones); Murray and Millett, A War to Be Won, 423 (tossing live hand grenades).
Like hornets the grenadiers swarmed: Milner, “Stopping the Panzers,” JMH (Apr. 2010): 491+; Luther, Blood and Honor, 147 (chocolate, peanuts).
Belated salvos from the warships: VC, 132–33; C. P. Stacey, “Operation Overlord and Its Sequel,” Canadian Military HQ, report no. 131, n.d., NARA RG 407, E 427, ETO ML, #640, 13–14 (more than two miles); OH, Dixon M. Raymond, 1981, Craig W. H. Luther papers, HIA, box 1, 4–5 (“couple days”).
Yet Panzermeyer lacked the strength: Margolian, Conduct Unbecoming, 58–64.
“Why do you bring prisoners”: Luther, Blood and Honor, 181–82; C. P. Stacey, “Canadian Participation in the Operations of North-West Europe,” Canadian Military HQ, report no. 147, Oct. 1945, NARA RG 407, E 427, ETO ML (Murder Division); “Report on the Court of Inquiry,” SHAEF, July 1944, NARA RG 331, 290/715/2, E-56, box 2; Margolian, Conduct Unbecoming, 102; Hart, Clash of Arms, 383–85 (cycle of atrocity); McKee, Caen: Anvil of Victory, 201 (“We just shoot them”); Beevor, The Second World War, 594 (“NPT below rank major”). War crimes courts later found the 12th SS Panzer Division culpable for sixty-two cold-blooded murders; many scholars and soldiers believe the number of victims was at least double that. Reynolds, Steel Inferno, 94.
Canadian battle casualties approached three thousand: VC, 140; Granatstein, The Generals, 132 (“fuck and frontal”); English, The Canadian Army and the Normandy Campaign, 310 (expanded to more than fiftyfold).
“They went at it like hockey players”: Hastings, OVERLORD, 125; CCA, 373–74 (Authie impossible to replicate); Luther, Blood and Honor, 175 (“screamed from rage”); Milner, “Stopping the Panzers,” JMH (Apr. 2010): 491+ (“stupid things”).
Among the bastards watching: Bodo Zimmermann, 1946, FMS, #B-308, MHI, 42–43; MMB, 181; Luther, Blood and Honor, 170 (“My dear Meyer”); CCA, 373–74.
Trailers, tents, and four large radio trucks: Wilmot, The Struggle for Europe, 303; Bennett, Ultra in the West, 58–59 (rely increasingly on the radio), 68–69; George F. Howe, “American Signal Intelligence in Northwest Africa and Western Europe,” n.d., SRH 391, NSA, NARA RG 457, E 9002, 134 (seventeen thousand messages a day); Hinsley, 486–90.
Geyr now cocked an ear: Luther, Blood and Honor, 179–80.
Geyr escaped with minor wounds: Wilmot, The Struggle for Europe, 303; Bennett, Ultra in the West, 68–69 (fled to Paris).
Similar decapitations further impaired: Geyr, “Reflections on the Invasion,” Military Review (Jan. 1961): 2+; Luther, Blood and Honor, 195; Günther Keil, “919th Grenadier Regiment,” n.d., FMS, #C-018, MHI, 36–38 (“little piece of life”); Hastings, OVERLORD, 173–74 (wooden leg); McLean, Quiet Flows the Rhine, 2, 130 (675 World War II German generals).
“The Seventh Army is everywhere”: VW, vol. 1, 258; “Special Messages,” June 11, 1944, UK NA, HW 1/2927 (intercepted by Ultra); Leo Geyr von Schweppenburg, ETHINT 13, Dec. 11, 1947, MHI, 6 (antiaircraft gun carriers); BP, 33 (borrow fifteen machine guns).
Rommel too was unnerved: Liddell Hart, ed., The Rommel Papers, 477–78; Ruge, Rommel in Normandy, 183 (“territory for bargaining”); Cooper, The German Army, 1933–1945, 504–5 (“every man shall fight”).
“The battle is not going”: Liddell Hart, ed., The Rommel Papers, 491–93.
Rommel’s lament would have delighted: “Monty’s Wartime Caravans,” AB, no. 20 (1978): 32+; Wilmot, The Struggle for Europe, 336. John Colville, who was Churchill’s private secretary, reported that Montgomery had even signed some of his own photographs. Colville, Footprints in Time, 184–87 (“three of Rommel”).
On D+2 he had come home to Normandy: Montgomery, A Field-Marshal in the Family, 7–8; author visit, Creullet, May 29, 2009; Eisenhower, General Ike, 115 (“keep left”); Kennedy, The Business of War, 343 (“betting book”); Hamilton, Master of the Battlefield, 718 (“beaten when necessary”); Hamilton, Monty: Final Years of the Field-Marshal, 1944–1976, 419 (menagerie); Kingston McCloughry, Direction of War, 158 (“slender, hard, hawk-like”); J. S. W. Stone, memoir, n.d., LHC, folder 5, 22 (reading scripture).
“The way to fame”: D’Este, Decision in Normandy, 504; Moorehead, Montgomery, 188–89 (275 guineas); Howarth, ed., Monty at Close Quarters, 22 (“Master”), 79 (“interesting personage”); Lewin, Montgomery as Military Commander, 349 (“Cromwellian figure”); Granatstein, The Generals, 113 (“God Almonty”); PP, 472 (“little monkey”); Hastings, Armageddon, 26 (“little shit”); Moran, Churchill: Taken from the Diaries of Lord Moran, 174 (“Monty wants to be a king”); OH, Charles Miles Dempsey, March 12–13, 1947, FCP, MHI (“Monty is a good man”).
He had arrived for the second t
ime: Carver, ed., The War Lords, 501; Raymond Callahan, “Two Armies in Normandy,” in Wilson, ed., D-Day 1944, 261 (“last great field army”); Belfield and Essame, The Battle for Normandy, 47 (British Liberation Army).
“the power of commanding affection”: Carver, ed., The War Lords, 503; Bradley, A Soldier’s Story, 319–20 (“tolerant and judicious”); Moorehead, Montgomery, 36 (“mousetrap”); Howarth, ed., Monty at Close Quarters, 11 (“a burning glass”).
“I keep clear of all details”: Richardson, Send for Freddie, 146; Leasor, The Clock with Four Hands, 7 (“Do you agree”); Howarth, ed., Monty at Close Quarters, 28 (“One was impressed”); OH, Field Marshal Montgomery of Alamein, Oct. 1, 1966, John S. D. Eisenhower, CBM, MHI, box 6, 9 (usual bedtime).
“too many of his best qualities”: Lewin, Montgomery as Military Commander, 342; Carver, ed., The War Lords, 501–3 (“Like Bottom”); Howarth, ed., Monty at Close Quarters, 37 (“only rude intentionally”).
“very small-boyish”: Hamilton, Master of the Battlefield, 537, 546 (“As long as 51 percent”); Miller, Ike the Soldier, 660 (refuse to attend her funeral); Irving, The War Between the Generals, 170; Moorehead, Montgomery, 36; Howarth, ed., Monty at Close Quarters, 23 (“Alone I done it”).
“Enjoying life greatly”: Hamilton, Master of the Battlefield, 652.
The OVERLORD plan was largely his: Ellis, Brute Force, 374; OH, David Belchem, 21st AG, Feb. 20, 1947, FCP, MHI (American right to capture Cherbourg); Wilmot, The Struggle for Europe, 311–12 (“My general policy”); memo, B. L. Montgomery, Apr. 14, 1944, IWM, Christopher “Kit” Dawnay collection, PP/MCR, C46, Ancillary Collections, micro R-1 (“armored force thrusts”).
Thirty-four Allied armored battalions: Zetterling, Normandy 1944, 107; Davis, Carl A. Spaatz and the Air War in Europe, 457 (“gutless bugger”).
A flanking attack from west of Caen: D’Este, Decision in Normandy, 176–89; VW, vol. 1, 254–56.
“The whole show on land”: Trafford Leigh-Mallory, “Daily Reflections on the Course of the Battle,” UK NA, AIR 37/784; Moorehead, Montgomery, 217 (“a gunman’s world”); Hastings, Inferno, 524 (“Bloody murder”); Lewis, ed., The Mammoth Book of Eyewitness World War II, 405–6 (“Day of Hell”).
For the Americans in the west: Friedrich Freiherr von der Heydte, “A German Parachute Regiment in Normandy,” 1954, FMS, #B-839, MHI, 16–19; CCA, 366–67; Schrijvers, The Crash of Ruin, 93 (“Lousy & undersized”), 125 (“I thought of Carthage”); “FUSA Weekly Report, 6–14 June 1944,” in “Memorandum to Harrison,” May 27, 1948, CMH.
Bradley late on June 13: corr, Clarence R. Huebner to G. A. Harrison, Oct. 17, 1947, NARA RG 319, CCA historical files, box 164.
“I’m sitting in a little gray stone”: TR to Eleanor, June 11, 1944, LOC MS, box 10.
No one took a greater proprietary interest: “General de Gaulle Visit to Normandy, 14 June 1944,” UK NA, ADM 1/16018; Aron, France Reborn, 45–47 (“not altogether in accordance”).
“I wrote to Mr. Churchill”: Kersaudy, Churchill and De Gaulle, 357; Beevor and Cooper, Paris After the Liberation, 1944–1949, 29 (“Has it occurred to you”); Fenby, The General, 142-44.
“We have not come to France”: Beevor and Cooper, Paris After the Liberation, 1944–1949, 109; “General de Gaulle Visit to Normandy, 14 June 1944,” UK NA, ADM 1/16018 (“dislike of smoking”); Aron, France Reborn, 45–47 (“I missed him in Africa”).
“a stiff, lugubrious figure”: Moorehead, Eclipse, 122; Beevor and Cooper, Paris After the Liberation, 1944–1949, 30 (saluting gendarmes); Whitehead, “Beachhead Don,” 130–31 (“Vive De Gaulle”); Donnison, Civil Affairs and Military Government in North-West Europe, 78–79 (Several thousand people awaited); De Gaulle, The Complete War Memoirs of Charles de Gaulle, 563–64 (“women smiled and sobbed”); author visit, Bayeux, May 27, 2009, historical signage, Place de Gaulle (“glorious and mutilated”); Aron, France Reborn, 45–47 (“The path of war”).
After belting out “La Marseillaise”: “General de Gaulle Visit to Normandy, 14 June 1944,” UK NA, ADM 1/16018 (fourteen hotel rooms); Hamilton, Master of the Battlefield, 666; De Gaulle, The Complete War Memoirs of Charles de Gaulle, 638 (“France would live”); Robb, The Discovery of France, 29 (“cheese”).
Montgomery wrote Churchill: BLM to WSC, June 15, 1944, UK NA, CAB 120/867; Guérard, France: A Short History, 239 (“Blessed be he”).
Terror Is Broken by Terror
In happier days, when the Reich: Germany IX, 415 (a force of 28,000 workers); World War II Diary of Jean Gordon Peltier, MRC FDM, 181–82 (new maple furniture); Mark Watson, “As I Saw It,” in Knickerbocker et al., Danger Forward, 269–70 (bootjack); Stenbuck, ed., Typewriter Battalion, 222–24 (Potemkin farmhouses); Speidel, We Defended Normandy, 105 (Soissons Cathedral).
“the most forbidden place in France”: Stenbuck, ed., Typewriter Battalion, 222–24; Beevor, D-Day, 172 (“meat flies”); http://www.hitlerpages.com/pagina33.html.
This was Hitler’s first return to France: CCA, 140; Fest, Hitler, 695–98 (“tipping to the right”); Bodo Zimmermann, 1946, FMS, #B-308, MHI, 111 (personal command).
Hitler sat hunched on a wooden stool: Speidel, We Defended Normandy, 106–7; Bertram H. Ramsay, dispatch, London Gazette, Oct. 30, 1947, CMH, 5109+. Twenty Allied divisions had landed by D+9, but Rommel put the number at twenty-six. James Hodgson, “The German Defense of Normandy,” Sept. 1953, R-24, NARA RG 319, 270/19/30/4-7, box 6, 8–9.
The German Seventh Army opposed them: Cooper, The German Army, 1933–1945, 503; Edward J. Drea, “Unit Reconstitution: A Historical Perspective,” Dec. 1983, CSI, 16 (averaged under eleven thousand); VW, vol. 1, 262 (casualties had reached 26,000); WaS, 62; James Hodgson, “The German Defense of Normandy,” Sept. 1953, R-24, NARA RG 319, 270/19/30/4-7, box 6, 8–9 (superiority in matériel).
Anglo-American warplanes harried: G. Rundstedt, “Experiences from the Invasion Battles of Normandy,” June 20, 1944, in Naval Intelligence Weekly, Nov. 15, 1944, Sidney Negretto Papers, MHI, box 4; Biddle, Rhetoric and Reality in Air Warfare, 280 (three hundred trains); Germany VII, 328–30 (German aircraft reinforcements); F. Ruge, “Coast Defense and Invasion,” June 9, 1947, ONI IR 243, NARA RG 334, E 315, ANSCOL, box 642; Buffetaut, D-Day Ships, 147 (Le Havre).
American tanks had crossed the Cherbourg–Coutances road: Isby, ed., Fighting the Invasion, 30.
“Don’t call it a beachhead”: Keegan, Six Armies in Normandy, 165; Blumentritt, Von Rundstedt, 235; Speidel, We Defended Normandy, 106–7 (“Cherbourg is to be held”).
Rundstedt said little: Barnett, ed., Hitler’s Generals, 175–76, 191–98; Roberts, The Storm of War, 501 (Der alte Herr); Holt, The Deceivers, 570–71 (Der schwarze Ritter); Blumentritt, Von Rundstedt, 13–15 (Junker gentry); MMB, 477–78.
Beset by rheumatism: Liddell Hart, The Other Side of the Hill, 390 (“psychic resignation”); Holt, The Deceivers, 570–71 (slept late); Isby, ed., Fighting the Invasion, 47 (disdained both the telephone), 50 (“just as before 1866”); Liddell Hart, The German Generals Talk, 71–72 (“brown dirt”); Speidel, We Defended Normandy, 89–90 (“Bohemian corporal”); “Battle of the Bulge,” PIR, MHI, 12 (“Quatsch!”); G. Rundstedt, British interrogation, July 9, 1945, NARA RG 407, E 427, ETO ML #2126, box 24231 (“cheap bluff”); Barnett, ed., Hitler’s Generals, 185; Günther Blumentritt, ETHINT 73, Jan. 1946, MHI, 2–4 (deepened his gloom).
Now Rundstedt stepped forward: James Hodgson, “The German Defense of Normandy,” Sept. 1953, R-24, NARA RG 319, 270/19/30/4-7, box 6, 8–9; Irving, The Trail of the Fox, 387 (“The fortress is to hold out”); Wilmot, The Struggle for Europe, 326 (“They must hold here”).
Rundstedt thought another invasion was likely: G. Rundstedt, British interrogation, July 9, 1945, NARA RG 407, E 427, ETO ML #2126, box 24231; Holt, The Deceivers, 580–81 (diverted but a single division); Howard, British Intelligence in the Second World War, vol. 5, Strategic Deception, 189 (twenty-one others); Bodo Zimmermann, 1946, FMS, #B-308, MHI, 86 (Rundstedt agreed with Ma
rshal Rommel); Liddell Hart, The Other Side of the Hill, 401; Speidel, We Defended Normandy, 98–99; CCA, 412–13.
“You must stay where you are”: Liddell Hart, The Other Side of the Hill, 410.
Great things were afoot: IFG, 46–47; Hinsley, 483–84; WaS, 69.
“imagination run wild”: Germany VII, 420; Hinsley, 424 (Volkswagen factory); AAFinWWII, 105 (thirty-six thousand tons); “The V-Weapons,” AB, no. 6 (1974): 2+ (simple mobile equipment); M. C. Helfers, “The Employment of V-Weapons by the Germans During World War II,” 1954, OCMH, NARA RG 319, 2-3.7 AW, 85 (weapon was a flying torpedo); Irving, The Mare’s Nest, 299 (“cherry stones”).
The first salvo, launched from western France: Hinsley, 428–29; Germany VII, 375 (“Terror is broken by terror”).
Rundstedt suggested that the V-1: Liddell Hart, ed. The Rommel Papers, 454n; Goerlitz, History of the German General Staff, 1657–1945, 460–61; Germany VII, 426–29 (margin of error); Speidel, We Defended Normandy, 109 (“easier for peace”).
They broke for lunch: Blumentritt, Von Rundstedt, 235; Speidel, We Defended Normandy, 110; Irving, The Trail of the Fox, 386–88 (three liqueur glasses).
“What do you really think of our chances”: Wilmot, The Struggle for Europe, 333; Goerlitz, History of the German General Staff, 1657–1945, 460–61 (“Attend to your invasion front”).
“The discussion had no success”: VW, vol. 1, 269; Bodo Zimmermann, 1946, FMS, #B-308, MHI, 112 (V-1 flew east rather than west); Germany VII, 432 (court-martial investigators); Kershaw, Hitler, 1936–45: Nemesis, 643 (“Only optimists”).
“cannot escape the Führer’s influence”: Irving, The Trail of the Fox, 387; Ruge, Rommel in Normandy, 190–97, 234 (“endless parallels”).
Rommel retired to his chambers: author visit, La Roche–Guyon, May 30, 2009; Liddell Hart, ed., The Rommel Papers, 492 (“The long-range action”).
Even on the Sabbath morn: http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/homefront/arp/arp4a.html (crowed in jubilaton).
The Liberation Trilogy Box Set Page 309