The Guns at Last Light: The War in Western Europe, 1944-1945

by Rick Atkinson

  If confident enough to travel: Keegan, Six Armies in Normandy, 60–61 (200 million); Cooper, The German Army, 1933–1945, 496 (eight different languages); Overy, Why the Allies Won, 225–27 (Army Group B relied); Friederich Freiherr von der Heydte, “A German Parachute Regiment in Normandy,” 1954, FMS, #B-839, MHI, 8 (“Emplacements without guns”).

  “Our friends from the East”: Liddell Hart, ed., The Rommel Papers, 467–68; F. Ruge, “Coast Defense and Invasion,” June 9, 1947, NARA RG 334, E 315, ANSCOL, ONI IR 243, box 642, 9, 14 (“nailed to the ground”); “Railway Sabotage in France and Belgium,” SHAEF, G-3, n.d., CARL, N-16313 (armed railwaymen); Mark, Aerial Interdiction in Three Wars, 233–41; CCA, 225–30; AAFinWWII, 160; GS V, 287; memo, Erwin Rommel, Apr. 22, 1944, captured document, NARA RG 498, ETO HD, “Combat Engineering,” admin file #547, 8–9 (“The enemy will most likely”).

  “a cock-fight controversy”: Bodo Zimmerman, 1946, FMS, #B-308, MHI, 42–43.

  “main battle line must be the beach”: Fraser, Knight’s Cross, 455; OH, Hans von Luck to author, Hamburg, Mar. 3 and Apr. 7, 1994 (“If we can’t throw”); CCA, 247.

  This impertinence found little favor: Stafford, Ten Days to D-Day, 43 (“unlicked cub”); Isby, ed., Fighting the Invasion, 48 (“Marshal Laddie”); Leo Geyr von Schweppenburg, ETHINT 13, Dec. 11, 1947, MHI, 2 (S’engager).

  Hitler dithered, then ordered a compromise: Germany VII, 508–20 (“In the East”); Wood, ed., Army of the West, 4; CCA, 243–49; Ose, “Rommel and Rundstedt: The 1944 Panzer Controversy,” Military Affairs (Jan. 1986): 7+; CCA, 333–34 (eight hours passed); Beevor, D-Day, 150 (“arrive too late”).

  “Der Führer vertraut mir”: Fraser, Knight’s Cross, 476–78; Isby, ed., Fighting the Invasion, 48 (“the Führer’s marshal”); Young, Rommel, the Desert Fox, 151 (stamp collector); Margry, “The Death of Rommel,” AB, no. 80 (1993): 38+ (confiscated from Jews); Liddell Hart, ed., The Rommel Papers, 485 (“come round to the idea”), 468, (“fate of the German people”).

  The struggle in Normandy would depend: VW, vol. 1, 201–4: Lefèvre, Panzers in Normandy Then and Now, 65 (oddments), 106–8 (pulverized by naval gunfire); OH, Hans von Luck to author, Hamburg, Mar. 3 and Apr. 7, 1994; Luck, Panzer Commander, 139–44; Reynolds, Steel Inferno, 57–58; Daglish, Operation Goodwood, 67 (Parisian fleshpot); Isby, ed., Fighting the Invasion, 241; VW, vol. 1, 204–5; Saunders, Royal Air Force, 1939–1945, vol. 3, 113 (almost 250 more British gliders).

  At 10:40 P.M., General Friedrich Dollmann: war diary, Seventh Army, June 6, 1944, NARA RG 407, E 427, ML #2201. The 21st Panzer commander put his tank losses for June 6 at 25 percent, while official British sources calculate the loss at 40 to 44 percent. The official German history states that 80 of 125 deployed panzers were destroyed. Germany VII, 593; Hinsley, 474; VW, vol. 1, 204; Reynolds, Steel Inferno, 57–58.

  Swarming enemy aircraft impeded movement: Luther, Blood and Honor, 70–73; Hastings, OVERLORD, 117 (Grenadiers skulked back).

  “We cannot hold everything”: Speidel, We Defended Normandy, 98–99; Ryan, The Longest Day, 237–38 (“I’ve nearly always succeeded”).

  A monstrous full moon: VW, vol. 1, 222; AAFinWWII, 562–63 (first of 241 airdromes); Omaha Beachhead, 108 (only a hundred tons); Balkoski, Utah Beach, 317 (nineteen airborne battalions); Astor, June 6, 1944, 239 (“to kill each other”).

  “I must have Caen”: notes, Miles Dempsey, May 15, 1944, UK NA, WO 285/1; Hinsley et al., British Intelligence in the Second World War, vol. 3, part 2, 841–42; Beevor, D-Day, 142; Hastings, OVERLORD, 115 (“not unpleased”).

  “My wife, my children!”: Beevor, D-Day, 146; Harris G. Warren, “Special Operations: AAF Aid to European Resistance Movements,” 1947, AFHRA, study no. 121, 149 (seventeen Norman towns); “Historical Record, A.E.A.F.,” n.d., UK NA, AIR 37/1057 (bomber fleets would follow); Keegan, Six Armies in Normandy, 183 (eleven days), 185 (Westminster Abbey); Hitchcock, The Bitter Road to Freedom, 29–33; Gilbert, D-Day, 158–59 (five hundred coffins); Arthur Layton Funk, “Caught in the Middle: The French Population in Normandy,” in Wilson, ed., D-Day 1944, 252.

  three thousand Normans would be killed: Hitchcock, The Bitter Road to Freedom, 27; Beevor, D-Day, 49 (fifteen thousand French civilians), 123 (calvados); Moorehead, Eclipse, 120 (“excessive hardship”).

  As for the liberators: casualty estimates vary substantially. VW, vol. 1, 222–23; Buffetaut, D-Day Ships, 122.

  The 8,230 U.S. casualties: historian Joseph Balkoski tabulates 4,720 casualties at Omaha, plus 3,510 at Utah and on the Cotentin Peninsula. Omaha Beach and Utah Beach, each appendix 1; Reister, ed., Medical Statistics in World War II, 13–20 (first of almost 400,000 men).

  Many were felled by 9.6-gram bullets: Andrus et al., eds., Advances in Military Medicine, vol. 1, 192–201; Capa, Slightly Out of Focus, 149 (corpses into burial sacks); J. H. Patterson, No. 4 Commando, ts, n.d., IWM, 05/491, 1/7, 13 (“nothing was being done”); George E. McIntyre, “As Mac Saw It,” ts, n.d., MHI, 159 (handkerchiefs draped the faces); OH, Richard Oliphant, NARA RG 38, E 11, U.S. Navy WWII Oral Histories, 2–3 (“They do not seem to matter”).

  Omaha was the worst: “Operation Report Neptune,” Provisional Engineer Special Brigade Group, Sept. 1944, NARA RG 407, ML #951, box 24198, 328–29; “Activities of Medical Detachment,” 16th Inf, D-Day, n.d., NARA RG 407, AFIA, 2-3.7 BG; diary, Jack Shea, ts, Nov. 1, 1944, NARA RG 407, CI, 29th ID, box 24034, 37 (cat’s-eye headlights); Fisher, Legacy of Heroes, 33, 38, 64 (gas gangrene); Kenneth C. Davey, “Navy Medicine on Bloody Omaha,” in “Sixth Naval Beach Battalion 1998 Reunion,” 1998, MRC FDM (bullet in the brain); “Vierville-sur-Mer,” ts, n.d., MMD (“There were men crying”).

  “swollen grayish sacks”: Moorehead, Gellhorn, 219.

  “I walked along slowly”: Gaskill, “Bloody Beach,” American Magazine (Sept. 1944): 26+; Andrew T. McNamara, “QM Activities,” 1955, PIR, MHI, 128 (More than double that number); Pyle, Brave Men, 246 (toes sticking up); Richard H. Oliphant, “Eleventh Amphibious Force,” n.d., NARA RG 498, ETO HD, admin file #217 (“staring was rude”).

  Graves Registration teams: Perret, There’s a War to Be Won, 485 (safety pins); “Operation Report Neptune,” Provisional Engineer Special Brigade Group, Sept. 1944, NARA RG 407, ML #951, box 24198, 341 (Two inland sites); Kenneth C. Davey, “Navy Medicine on Bloody Omaha,” in “Sixth Naval Beach Battalion 1998 Reunion,” 1998, MRC FDM (fortified with brandy).

  “since Alexander set out from Macedon”: Saunders, Royal Air Force, 1939–1945, vol. 3, 114; Gellhorn, The Face of War, 134–36 (“small shabby men”); Reporting World War II, vol. 2, 155 (“I’d kill him”).

  “We will never again have to land”: Balkoski, Omaha Beach, 261.

  “We have come to the hour”: Stephen E. Ambrose, “Battle Scars Remain But Little Has Changed in Normandy,” International Herald Tribune, Apr. 22, 1994, 12; Wacker, “The Voices of D-Day,” Retired Officer (June 1994): 26+ (scribbling “deceased”); Crosswell, Beetle, 795 (“dead stock”); Tapert, ed., Lines of Battle, 162–64 (“I wonder about him”).

  CHAPTER 2: LODGEMENT

  “This Long Thin Line of Personal Anguish”

  Light rain fell in Portsmouth: www.britishlistedbuildings.co.uk/en-474304-18-gun-battery-and-flanking-battery-king; Three Years, 571 (four white stars).

  “A scene of great confusion”: Love and Major, eds., The Year of D-Day, 84–85.

  Mines continued to bedevil: AR, Tide, July 6, 1944, NARA RG 38, CNO, 370/45/3/1, 2–3; OH, George Crane, XO, Tide, Sept. 30, 1944, NARA RG 38, E 11, U.S. Navy WWII Oral Histories; AR, Susan B. Anthony, June 7, 1944, NARA RG 498, ETO HD, admin file #217; “The United States Medical Department at War, 1941–1945,” vol. 1, part 3, Bureau of Medicine and Surgery, 1946, NHHC, 732–33 (“ship lifted and hogged”); OH, Byron S. Huie, salvage officer, Aug. 18, 1944, NARA RG 38, E 11, U.S. Navy WWII Oral Histories (frightened men off the prow); Liebling, Mollie & Other War Pieces, 191 (“put her nose in the air”).

  “Why in the devil didn
’t you”: Bradley, A Soldier’s Story, 280–81.

  “firmly rooted in France”: Bradley and Blair, A General’s Life, 256–57; Bradley Commentaries, CBH, MHI, box 41 (truck’s running board); “The Administrative History of the Operations of 21 Army Group,” n.d., NARA RG 334, E 315, ANSCOL, GB 21-AG AH, box 458, 25 (build their own cages); memo, F-48 to “Secret Mail Room,” Aug. 12, 1944, U.S. Fleet, OPD Information Bulletin, amphibious supplement no. 8, June 9, 1945, GCM Lib, box 1, file 34 (More than one-third of all shore obstacles); Bertram H. Ramsay, dispatch, London Gazette, Oct. 30, 1947, CMH, 5109+ (Straits of Dover); memo, B. B. Talley, Feb. 1948, RG 407, AFIA, 2-3.7 BG (pinpointed not only enemy gun batteries); corr, John H. Lauten, 16th Inf, to WD, July 22, 1947, “1st U.S. Infantry Division, G-2 report intelligence activities, MMD (now being pummeled).

  Yet First Army still had not reached: CCA, 341, 351 (Only a quarter); “A Narrative History of the Second Ranger Infantry Battalion,” ts, n.d., Robert W. Black papers, MHI, box 3; OH, Charles M. Bulap, Co E, 2nd Ranger Bn, HI (Pointe du Hoc).

  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 time: 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”).