The Liberation Trilogy Box Set

by Rick Atkinson

  In the Guards Chapel at Wellington Barracks: “Services Tomorrow,” Times (London), June 17, 1944, 8; Ziegler, London at War, 1939–1945, 290 (“Te Deum”); Baker, Ernest Hemingway, 501–3 (“white-hot bunghole”); Churchill, Triumph and Tragedy, 39–40.

  Then they heard nothing: King and Kutta, Impact, 198–99; www.flyingbombsandrockets.com/V1*; War Damage Report No. 1861, Royal Military Guards Chapel, Aug. 3, 1944, UK NA, IR 37/59 (blew out walls); author visit, Guards Chapel and Museum, Apr. 5, 2010; McKee, Caen: Anvil of Victory, 133–34 (“Be thou faithful”).

  Clementine Churchill hastened home: Churchill, Triumph and Tragedy, 39–40; reminiscence, George Laity, Aug. 15, 2005, www.bbc.co.uk/print/ww2peopleswar/stories/66* (wax tableau); McKee, Caen: Anvil of Victory, 133–34 (Churchill wept).

  That afternoon he motored to Bushy Park: Chandler, 1933; AAFinWWII, 526–32; CCA, 215–17 (thirty thousand attack sorties); www.discoverfrance.net/France/Paris/Monuments-Paris/Eiffel.shtml (four Eiffel Towers); M. C. Helfers, “The Employment of V-Weapons by the Germans During World War II,” 1954, OCMH, NARA RG 319, 2-3.7 AW, 33–34 (forty or more times); Lyall, ed., The War in the Air, 374 (harpoons).

  CROSSBOW countermeasures in the coming weeks: Hillson, “Barrage Balloons for Low-Level Air Defense,” Airpower Journal (summer 1989): 37+; Germany VII, 430; Lyall, ed., The War in the Air, 378 (learned to use their wings); Baldwin, The Deadly Fuze, 257–58 (eight times more difficult); Collier, The Defence of the United Kingdom, 383–84 (guns were shifted from greater London); Churchill, Triumph and Tragedy, 40 (Bomb Alley).

  Eisenhower’s “first priority” edict: AAFinWWII, 532, 528 (one hundred V-1s were still fired at Target 42 each day); M. C. Helfers, “The Employment of V-Weapons by the Germans During World War II,” 1954, OCMH, NARA RG 319, 2-3.7 AW, 100 (one-quarter of all combat sorties); Collier, The Defence of the United Kingdom, 387 (73,000 tons); Davis, Carl A. Spaatz and the Air War in Europe, 432 (bombers had little impact); diary, July 4, 1944, Frederick L. Anderson papers, HIA, box 2 (“give the enemy full credit”).

  A British study calculated: “CROSSBOW Probable Scale and Effect of Attack on London by Pilotless Aircraft,” Jan. 10, 1944, British COS, NARA RG 331, E 3, SHAEF SGS, 290/7/4/4-5, box 132; corr, Bernard Lipford, 115th Inf, NARA RG 407, E 427, HI (“pushed through the walls”).

  Soon not a pane of glass remained: King and Kutta, Impact, 202, 211; Fussell, Wartime, 215 (“little devilish laughs”); Eisenhower, Letters to Mamie, 197 (nineteen times); Ziegler, London at War, 1939–1945, 306 (“How squalid”).

  Fewer and fewer were willing: King and Kutta, Impact, 211; Collier, The Defence of the United Kingdom, 395 (“an ordeal perhaps as trying”).

  How Easy It Is to Make a Ghost

  West of Bayeux, the Norman uplands: Keegan, Six Armies in Normandy, 152–53; Davies, “Geographical Factors in the Invasion and Battle of Normandy,” Geographical Review (Oct. 1946): 613+ (pre-Cambrian schist); memo, Cleave A. Jones, July 17, 1944, SHAEF, NARA RG 498, ETO HD, UD 603, SLAM 201 file, box 1 (sunken lanes); Nouveau Petit Larousse, 1934, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bocage (“agreeable shady”); Wellard, The Man in a Helmet, 126 (“Gethsemane”); Doubler, Busting the Bocage, 21 (Guadalcanal).

  “I couldn’t imagine the bocage”: OH, ONB, 1974–75, Charles Hanson, MHI, IX-4; “Neptune Monograph,” TF 122, Apr. 21, 1944, NARA RG 331, E 23, SHAEF G-3 Plans, 290/7/10/6, box 43 (amply forewarned); The 35th Infantry Division in World War II (“fortification like a wall”); terrain study, Charles H. Bonesteel III, FUSA, Apr. 18, 1944, Arthur S. Nevins papers, MHI (“Norman bocage”); OH, Charles H. Bonesteel III, 1973, Robert St. Louis, SOOHP, MHI, 164; “Appreciation of Possible Development of Operations to Secure a Lodgment Area,” May 7, 1944, 21st AG, UK NA, WO 205/118, 2; St.-Lô, 4 (four thousand hedged enclosures); Cawthon, Other Clay, 76 (“We were rehearsed endlessly”).

  “I feel we’ll be getting to St. Lô”: CCA, 383.

  Tank companies now reported: Doubler, Closing with the Enemy, 43–44; Mack Morriss, “My Old Outfit,” in Reporting World War II, vol. 2, 539 (“a wall of fire”); “Terrain—Cotentin Peninsula,” July 8, 1944, VIII Corps, NARA RG 498, G-3 OR, box 10 (“spitting range”); Charles H. Coates, “German Defense in Hedgerow Terrain,” WD Observer Board, July 27, 1944, NARA RG 334, E 315, ANSCOL, AGF ETO C-117 (intimacy neutralized Allied air and artillery); Pyle, Brave Men, 255 (“snipers everywhere”); msg, 15th Army Group to SHAEF, Feb. 11, 1945, NARA RG 331, SHAEF SGS, 383.6/4 (sliding scale of rewards).

  Enemy panzers, artillery, and savage small-arms fire: Simpson, Selected Prose, 139, 122 (“purr of the bullets”), 125 (“Some ideas stink”); Linderman, The World Within War, 85 (“I lie in the grass”); Shephard, A War of Nerves, 252 (“a soft siffle”); Whitaker et al., Victory at Falaise, 309–10 (Mortar fragments).

  French civilians waving white strips: Pyle, Brave Men, 284–85 (eight cents); Belfield and Essame, The Battle for Normandy, 132 (“plastered to the walls”); Wilson, ed., D-Day 1944, 254 (stiff-legged as wooden toys); Rosse and Hill, The Story of the Guards Armoured Division, 33 (“gigantic rake”); Daglish, Operation Goodwood, 96 (smoke tinted red); Whitehead, “Beachhead Don,” 133 (“not a building standing whole”); Peckham and Snyder, eds., Letters from Fighting Hoosiers, vol. 2, 120 (“deserted and silent”).

  Each contested town, like each hedgerow: memo, Royce L. Thompson, “ETO Invasion Casualties,” May 27, 1948, OCMH, GCM Lib, Royce L. Thompson collection, box 1; Osmont, The Normandy Diary of Marie-Louise Osmont, 88 (“white as sheets” and “like hunted animals”); Shephard, A War of Nerves, 252; memo, July 15, 1944, NARA RG 498, ETO, SGS, 333.5, 290/50/10/11/7-1, box 35; memo, First Army IG, Aug. 7, 1944, NARA RG 338, First Army AG Gen’l Corr, OIG, box 218 (five hundred cases of suspected “S.I.W.”); memo, Cleave A. Jones, July 17, 1944, SHAEF, NARA RG 498, ETO HD, UD 603, SLAM 201 file, box 1 (“Have we 100 divisions”).

  “Things are always confusing”: Pyle, Brave Men, 269, 305; Hadley, Heads or Tails, 90 (“make a ghost”); Holt and Holt, Major & Mrs. Holt’s Battlefield Guide to the Normandy Landing Beaches, 133 (slain by a mortar splinter); L. F. Skinner, “The Man Who Worked on Sundays,” n.d., IWM, 01/13/1, 18 (“I buried him close”).

  Only the sharpest weather eye: WaS, 64; Stagg, Forecast for Overlord, 126; Bates and Fuller, America’s Weather Warriors, 96; Woodward, Ramsay at War, 164–65 (SHAEF forecasters predicted); Karig, Battle Report: The Atlantic War, 352–56 (chance of a June gale); “Operation OVERLORD: Report on the Effect of Bad Weather, 19–23 June 1944,” SHAEF, n.d., NARA RG 498, ETO HD, admin file #220 (three hundred to one).

  More than two hundred ships now plied: “Report by the Allied Naval Commander-in-Chief,” Oct. 1944, NARA RG 407, ML, #624, 94–95; CCA, 423 (218,000 tons); Bynell, “Logistical Planning and Operations—Europe,” lecture, March 16, 1945, NARA RG 334, E 315, ANSCOL, box 207, 5 (30 percent less than planned); LSA, vol. 2, 392–93 (anchored off the wrong strand); “Amphibious Operations: Invasion of Northern France,” CINC, U.S. Fleet, Oct. 1944, NARA RG 407, ML #252, box 24148, 5–13 (officers in small boats); Waddell, United States Army Logistics, 65, 134 (“Please, oh, please”).

  But shortages were more common: Waddell, United States Army Logistics, 75–76, 83 (strict firing limits); Bynell, “Logistical Planning and Operations—Europe,” lecture, Mar. 16, 1945, NARA RG 334, E 315, ANSCOL, box 207, 5; Charles F. MacDermut and Adolph P. Gratiot, “History of G-4 Com Z ETO,” 1946, CMH, 8-3.4 AA, 73 (bundles of maps); “Supply and Maintenance on the European Continent,” NARA RG 407, E 427, AG WWII operations report no. 130, 97-USF5-0.3.0, 41; “G-4 History,” n.d., NARA RG 498, ETO HD, admin file #553A-C, 22 (145,000 tons); Howard, lecture, Aug. 8, 1944, NARA RG 334, E 315, ANSCOL, L-6-44, H-83, box 191, 9 (expected to shoot 125 rounds).

  Before dawn on Monday, July 17: Balkoski, Beyond the Beachhead, 262; memoir, William Puntenney, ts, n.d., MMD, 59–63 (killing the new commander); St.-Lô, 110–11 (undershirts); BP, 167 (plasma bags); Robert E. Walker, “With the Stonewallers
,” ts, n.d., MMD, 65 (“unbearably sorry scene”).

  But German defenses were melting: BP, 170–71; Johns, The Clay Pigeons of St. Lo, 198, 233–34 (stone sarcophagus); Whitehead, “Beachhead Don,” 195 (“Here among the dead”); Miller, Division Commander, 90 (slashed his arm); St.-Lô, 117–19 (seventeen strongpoints); Balkoski, Beyond the Beachhead, 278 (Howie’s body arrived by jeep).

  “You couldn’t identify anything”: “Between Collaboration and Resistance: French Literary Life Under Nazi Occupation,” New York Public Library, exhibition, June 2009; Carpenter, No Woman’s World, 59 (“On this lake”); Blumenson, Liberation, 28 (“liberated the hell”); Bair, Samuel Beckett: A Biography, 242–44; Perloff, “In Love with Hiding,” Iowa Review (2005): 82 (“capital of ruins”); Linderman, The World Within War, 117 (“fence posts, teacups, doorbells”); AAR, George V. Bleier, Jr., graves registration, 11th Inf, n.d., NARA RG 407, ETO G-3 OR, 290/56/5/1-3, box 11 (booby-trapped German bodies); “Graves Registration Service,” NARA RG 407, E 427, AG WWII operations reports, 97-USF5-0.3.0, no. 107, 10 (“jerked by a rope”).

  “If there was a world beyond”: Cawthon, “Pursuit: Normandy, 1944,” American Heritage (Feb. 1978): 80+.

  “eaten the guts out”: OH, 2nd ID, July 13–18, 1944, NARA RG 407, E 427-A, CI, folder 12.

  “Here!”: Whitehead, “Beachhead Don,” 198; Balkoski, Beyond the Beachhead, 278. Many bodies of the division dead had yet to be recovered.

  Rommel rose with the sun: Irving, The Trail of the Fox, 372–74; Liddell Hart, The Rommel Papers, 463–64 (“can take your mind off”).

  Troubles he had: Ruge, Rommel in Normandy, 228; VW, vol. 1, 307; memoir, J. S. W. Stone, n.d., LHC, folder 5, 54 (“funk holes”).

  “Militarily things aren’t at all good”: Liddell Hart, The Rommel Papers, 491–93; Davis, Carl A. Spaatz and the Air War in Europe, 460 (six thousand half-ton bombs); BP, 120 (forty minutes); Moorehead, Eclipse, 145 (“nothing more to see”); Aron, France Reborn, 106 (Eight thousand French refugees); VW, vol. 1, 316 (a single battalion).

  On any given day now: Liddell Hart, The Rommel Papers, 496, 486–87 (Only 10,000 replacements); BP, 181 (80,000 artillery rounds); Ruge, Rommel in Normandy, 213–19 (“bleeding white”); James Hodgson, “The Battle of the Hedgerows,” Aug. 1954, NARA RG 319, OCMH, R-54, box 8, IV-5 (1.6 million German casualties).

  That bloodletting had intensified: Gilbert, The Second World War, 544; Megargee, Inside Hitler’s High Command, 210; Erickson, The Road to Berlin, 228 (shuffle through Moscow).

  Rommel’s disaffection grew: Lewin, Rommel as Military Commander, 230; Young, Rommel, the Desert Fox, 165 (“without the least regard”); Speidel, We Defended Normandy, 84–85 (dangerous talk); Beevor, D-Day, 326–30 (would consider taking command); Barnett, ed., Hitler’s Generals, 200 (Rundstedt had been removed); Günther Blumentritt, ETHINT 73, Jan. 8–11, 1946, MHI, 2–4 (“make an end to the whole war”); Carver, ed., The War Lords, 197 (250,000-mark gratuity); CCA, 447 (“I will be next”).

  Rundstedt’s successor: MMB, 282–83 (Cunning Hans); Barnett, ed., Hitler’s Generals, 404–5; Speidel, We Defended Normandy, 120–22 (“obstinate self-will”); Keegan, Six Armies in Normandy, 240 (“couldn’t be grimmer”); Liddell Hart, ed., The Rommel Papers, 486–87 (“growing worse every day”); VC, 179 (Kluge had endorsed).

  Fried eggs and brandy: Ruge, Rommel in Normandy, 233; “Rommel’s Accident,” AB, no. 8 (1975): 42+; Luther, Blood and Honor, 229 (“Who do you think”).

  During a conference at St.-Pierre: Belfield and Essame, The Battle for Normandy, 149; McKee, Caen: Anvil of Victory, 256 (efforts to conceal the noise); Germany VII, 596–97 (still expected in the Pas de Calais).

  Dietrich agreed that an attack seemed imminent: Daglish, Operation Goodwood, 83–86; Liddell Hart, The Tanks, vol. 2, 362 (ear pressed to the ground); Irving, The Trail of the Fox, 417–18 (“I obey only you”).

  The car raced east on Route D-4: Fraser, Knight’s Cross, 510. Conflicting claims were advanced for this action. The British official RAF history credits Spitfires of Squadron No. 602, flying from airfield B11. Saunders, Royal Air Force, 1939–1945, vol. 3, 121.

  Slugs stitched the left side of the Horch: “Rommel’s Accident,” AB, no. 8 (1975): 42+; Young, Rommel, the Desert Fox, 170–71 (Rommel lay in the roadbed).

  He was grievously hurt: Brown, Bodyguard of Lies, 743–44; “Rommel’s Death Reported,” (Melbourne, Australia) Argus, Aug. 23, 1944, 16.

  Not for weeks would Reich propagandists: Bodo Zimmermann, 1946, FMS, #B-308, MHI, 121–22.

  Salvation appeared to be rising: Churchill, Triumph and Tragedy, 8 (“synthetic harbors”); H. D. Bynell, lecture, Oct. 31, 1944, NARA RG 334, E 315, ANSCOL, L-7-44, box 199, 6 ($100 million); “Invasion Harbors Towed to France,” British Information Services, Oct. 17, 1944, Hanson Baldwin papers, YU, box 109, folder 862 (another ten thousand now bullied); Keegan, Six Armies in Normandy, 161; IFG, 25–26; “Prefabricated Ports,” Oct. 1944, British Information Services, Hanson Baldwin papers, YU, box 109, folder 862; WaS, 28 (160 tugs); VW, vol. 1, 88–90; IFG, 25–26; WaS, 26–27 (“journey of self-immolation”); Karig, Battle Report: The Atlantic War, 347 (antique side-wheelers); “Mulberry B,” SHAEF G-4, Nov. 1944, NARA RG 498, ETO HD, admin file #44 (enormous tricolor).

  To this suicide fleet were added: “Prefabricated Ports,” Oct. 1944, British Information Services, Hanson Baldwin papers, YU, box 109, folder 862; “Mulberry B,” SHAEF G-4, Nov. 1944, NARA RG 498, ETO HD, admin file #44 (ten miles of floating piers); VW, vol. 1, 88–90 (two million tons); www.nycgovparks.org/sub_your_park/historical_signs/hs_historical_sign.php?id=8771 (seventeen times more concrete); Mason, ed., The Atlantic War Remembered, 377 (“One storm will wash”); “Task Force 128: Report on Installation of Mulberry A,” n.d., DDE Lib, A. Dayton Clark papers, box 2 (unloading had begun at Mulberry A); Karig, Battle Report: The Atlantic War, 352–56 (LSTs could be emptied).

  one of the worst June gales in eighty years: Woodward, Ramsay at War, 164–65; log, H.M.S. Despatch, June 19, 1944, UK NA, WO 32/12211; “Construction Battalions in the Invasion of Normandy,” Nov. 30, 1944, SEM, NHHC, box 81, folder 28, 39–40 (Anchors dragged and fouled); Thompson, The Imperial War Museum Book of Victory in Europe, 96 (“Storm continues”).

  Swept away they were, pier by pier: “Task Force 128: Report on Installation of Mulberry A,” n.d., DDE Lib, A. Dayton Clark papers, box 2; IFG, 177 (gunshots from sailors); Buffetaut, D-Day Ships, 140–42; CCA, 423–26; Karig, Battle Report: The Atlantic War, 352–56 (Distress calls jammed); Love and Major, eds., The Year of D-Day, 93 (“a damnable spell”).

  After eighty hours, the spell broke: WaS, 64 (“a rent in the sky”); log, H.M.S. Despatch, June 19, 1944, UK NA, WO 32/12211 (Force seven gusts); OH, Byron S. Huie, Jr., Aug. 18, 1944, NARA RG 38, E 11, U.S. Navy WWII Oral Histories, 5–6 (“Not even a thousand-bomber raid”); Belfield and Essame, The Battle for Normandy, 102–3; Fergusson, The Watery Maze, 346–47 (small tanker deep in the dunes); AAR, 21st Weather Squadron, AAF, 1944, NARA RG 498, ETO HD, admin file #493-A (sea wrack); VW, vol. 1, 272–73 (two miles of articulated steel pier).

  Mulberry A was a total loss: R. W. Crawford, “Guns, Gas and Rations,” June 1945, SHAEF G-4, NARA RG 498, ETO HD, admin file #145; Chalmers, Full Cycle, 238–39 (Gooseberries were positioned); Mason, ed., The Atlantic War Remembered, 377 (“formidable abortion”).

  Mulberry B ultimately did prove: Buffetaut, D-Day Ships, 136 (completed in mid-July); Hickling and Mackillop, “The OVERLORD Artificial Harbors,” lecture, Nov. 6, 1944, CARL, N-12217; Charles C. Bates, “Sea, Swell and Surf Forecasting for D-Day and Beyond: The Anglo-American Effort, 1943–1945,” 2010, a.p., 20 (Port Winston); H. D. Crerar, “Notes on Conference Given by C-in-C 21 Army Group,” June 22, 1944, National Archives of Canada, RG 24, vol. 1054 2, file 215A21.016 (9) (“at least six days behind”); WaS, 65–66 (until late July); VW, vol. 1, 274 (Rommel had exploited the bad weather); “Supply and Evacuation by Air,” n.d., NARA RG 407, E 427, AG W
WII Operations Reports, 97-USF5-0.3.0, no. 26 (hand grenades were flown); LSA, vol. 1, 407 (eight coasters deliberately beached).

  With the beaches again in disarray: memo, R. C. Partridge and C. H. Bonesteel III, Dec. 31, 1943, NARA RG 407, ETO ML, #205, box 24143 (“overwhelm us”); “Official Study of Port of Cherbourg,” 1945, NARA RG 498, ETO HD, admin file #492 (supplying up to thirty divisions); Coles and Weinberg, Civil Affairs, 721 (“most important port”).

  Great misfortune had befallen Cherbourg: “Official Study of Port of Cherbourg,” 1945, RG 498, ETO HD, admin file #492 (pillage by the heriditary enemy); Baedeker, Northern France, 158–61; “Cherbourg, Gateway to France: Rehabilitation and Operation of the First Major Port,” 1945, NARA RG 319, ETO HD, 8-3.1 AE (financed with German reparations).

  Now Cherbourg was again besieged: CCA, 420–22; Whitehead, “Beachhead Don,” 146–47 (French farmers tossed roses); Pyle, Brave Men, 273–75 (“terribly pathetic”); Bradley, A Soldier’s Story, 308 (Strauss waltzes); Three Years, 596–97 (hog calling); Fussell, Wartime, 255 (“bumf”); Lasky, “Military History Stood on Its Head,” Berlin Journal 14 (spring 2007), American Academy of Berlin: 20+ (“Ei sörrender”).

  An American ultimatum: Ruppenthal, Utah Beach to Cherbourg, 172–77, 189; Whitehead, World War II: An Ex-Sergeant Remembers, 79 (“All you sons-a-bitches”).

  In radio messages decrypted by Ultra: CCA, 431–34 (“bunker paralysis”); Sunset 604, June 25, 1944, NARA RG 457, E 9026, SRS-1869 (“greatly worn out”); Reardon, ed., Defending Fortress Europe, mss, 165 (five thousand cows); Saunders, Royal Air Force, 1939–1945, vol. 3, 123 (four U-boats); CCA, 434 (“You will continue to fight”).

  Schlieben’s miseries multiplied: “The Reminiscences of Alan Goodrich Kirk,” 1962, John Mason, Col U OHRO, NHHC, 349–50 (bombardment force split); Karig, Battle Report: The Atlantic War, 362–65.

  Great salvos soon arced: OH, John F. Latimer, n.d., NARA RG 38, E 11, U.S. Navy WWII Oral Histories, 19–20 (“more concentrated firing”); Morton L. Deyo, “Cherbourg,” Feb. 1956, SEM, NHHC, box 81, file 33; IFG, 198–205 (most pugnacious German battery).