The Steel Wave

by Jeff Shaara

  “Knock it off. We landed when we did because it was the right thing to do. I’m just the guy who had to dot the i’s. Believe me, I’ve been giving considerable thanks to the war gods.”

  “If you say so. But we’re still looking at a disaster. I had to push like hell to get the navy to tell me how bad the storm hurt us. Admiral King finally got me these figures, before he wanted to release them to anybody else, even you. Ike, we lost eight hundred ships! Everything from beach landers to LCTs to full-sized cargo ships. Eight hundred ships, busted to hell or sunk. It’ll take the engineers a month to clear that damned beach of the wreckage. And the mulberries at Omaha are shot, useless.”

  “I know about the Mulberries. That’s why we need Cherbourg.”

  “Fine, we need Cherbourg. But my orders are to send Collins up there and, at the same time, send Middleton’s Eighth Corps south, to capture Saint-Lô and open the door out of the Cotentin. We sure as hell can’t stay penned up the way we are for very long. The enemy is building up his defenses every day. Monty assumes that our next step is to hammer the Saint-Lô area, maybe bust through, but right now that’s where Rommel is the strongest. I’ve been talking to Middleton about bypassing that to the west, keeping the Eighth Corps closer to the coastline. It’s pretty clear to me that we’ll make better progress if we strike toward Avranches. We could cut off a hell of a lot of Rommel’s people by moving around that way, maybe surround them altogether. But not anymore. Middleton can’t move until Collins finishes the job at Cherbourg.”

  “Why not? Dammit, Brad, this isn’t like you. I’m already hearing too much about what we can’t do from Monty. Is this about supplies?”

  “More specific than that; it’s about ammunition. We can’t supply the artillery fire for both operations. We don’t have enough damned shells! Admiral Kirk’s a good man, Ike, a good friend. He’s agreed to send the navy’s big guns to bombard the port. Until the heavy bombers can help us out, it’s the only real power we can bring to bear. The Germans have poured enough concrete at Cherbourg to cover Kansas a foot deep, and we can’t just prance up to those walls with a big show of uniforms and expect them to surrender. It’s a damned citadel. You know they’ll fight for it.” He stopped. “Part of this is my fault.”

  “Which part?”

  “I haven’t climbed on the backs of the artillery people the way I should have. Every time we launch a ground attack, we’ve started with the biggest damned artillery barrage you’ve ever seen.”

  “I would hope so.”

  “No, Ike. The biggest damned barrage you’ve ever seen. Some of the infantry commanders won’t send their people forward until every living thing in front of them is wiped off the map. Every damned mortar company is crying about ammo, every tank commander, every artillery officer. So far, no one has shown me that it actually works. We’ve stepped off several times, thinking it’ll be a walk in the park, and—son of a bitch—the enemy’s still there, still putting up a hell of a fight. So when our boys get resupplied for the next attack, they do it again, more this time, fire every shell they have. Stupid mistake, but it stops here. It has to. With the problems we have getting ammo into France, I can’t supply Middleton with enough firepower to drive south until Collins takes Cherbourg. Neither you nor I have any idea how long that will take.”

  “Give me an idea anyway. I know you, Brad. You’ve thought about this until you’re blue in the face. Don’t tell me you don’t have an estimate.”

  Bradley sat on the narrow bench again and leaned forward, his elbows on his knees.

  “Okay, Ike. This damned weather will decide a great deal. Collins is already moving north, and if we can send the bombers up to help him, Cherbourg might fall in a week, maybe sooner. If he can secure the city and turn south to link up with Middleton, we’ll be strong enough to hit Rommel.”

  “You’re talking July.”

  “Yep. July.”

  “What does Monty say?”

  Bradley seemed surprised. “You haven’t talked to him?”

  Eisenhower felt the weight of the question. “Not today. De Guingand is supposed to meet me here this afternoon.”

  Bradley sat back, frowning, and Eisenhower knew what he was thinking. Freddie de Guingand, Montgomery’s chief of staff, was an affable, efficient man, who had always worked well with his American counterparts. Eisenhower liked him immensely and had grown accustomed to meeting far more often with de Guingand than with Montgomery himself. De Guingand seemed to accept his role as Eisenhower’s preferred go-between, but Eisenhower had to wonder if Montgomery’s own chief of staff was aware how difficult it was for Eisenhower every time he had to face Montgomery. Eisenhower’s patience for excuses and bluster was wearing thin. He looked at Bradley, saw the stern-faced frown, couldn’t tell if Bradley was reading him.

  “This isn’t something we need to discuss, Brad. I should go to see Monty anyway. He’s made it plain that when I show up I’m taking him away from the business at hand, interfering where I don’t belong. Not sure how much longer that game can be played. He hasn’t delivered what he said he would deliver, and I know damned well that Churchill is grousing at him, and a few British newspapers are raising hell.”

  “That’s not justified, Ike, not at all. I know he’s got his problems at Caen, and some of that’s his own doing. And you know damn well I’m not smitten by the Legend of Monty or anything like that. Right now, Rommel’s got seven panzer divisions in front of Monty, and we’re facing no more than two. Monty has never stuck his nose any further into my command than it needed to be. His biggest problem is that he shoots his mouth off. When you tell the whole world what you’re going to do, and then you do it, that makes you a hero. If you don’t do it, you look like a jackass. I’m mad as hell about our delays and our problems, but I’m not blaming anything on Monty. I’ve got my hands full right here.”

  Though the foul weather continued, on June 26, the commander of the German garrison at Cherbourg, General Karl-Wilhelm von Schlieben, was captured, along with eight hundred defenders of the primary defensive position at the heart of the fortress city. Over the next few days, the remainder of the city, including the critical waterfront, fell completely into American hands. But Cherbourg was not the supply panacea that Eisenhower had assumed it to be. With the Allied attack coming from air and sea as well as by land, von Schlieben had known that Hitler’s orders to hold the city “to the last cartridge” was a hopeless task. Bowing to the inevitable, the Germans had instead wrecked as much of the harbor facilities as they could, clogging the shipping channels with sunken ships and debris and in general making the port virtually useless. It was yet another difficult challenge for the Allied engineers, the men who were charged with repairing what the Germans destroyed. For Bradley’s army, that destruction meant more delay and more shortages of the matériel they had to have before they could consider their next major attack.

  While Bradley wrestled with the challenges of confronting Rommel’s forces at the base of the Cotentin Peninsula, Montgomery struggled again to take the increasingly fortified city of Caen. On June 26, he launched what he referred to as the showdown stage of the campaign, but the Panzer Lehr Division rose to the challenge and blunted the British attack. With the weather preventing British air support, the Germans launched a counterattack of their own, resulting in a hard fight that cost both sides enormous casualties. But neither side could hold the momentum, and by July 1, the front along the Caen sector continued to show disturbing signs of becoming a muddy stalemate, too reminiscent of what these two armies had endured thirty years before. Despite Montgomery’s insistence that the attack on June 26 had achieved a notable victory, Eisenhower saw the reality on the maps. Though the Germans had suffered a higher toll of casualties, losses Rommel could not afford, the British had gained very little ground and were no closer to occupying Caen than when the attack began. Despite all the planning, despite Montgomery’s confident certainty in his own predictions, Eisenhower was becoming increasingly concerne
d that if there was to be a turning of the tide, if a great hole was ever to be punched through the German lines, that punch would have to come from the right, on Bradley’s front. Whether Montgomery would ever admit that his failure to capture Caen was in fact a failure at all, he continued to insist that his efforts there had accomplished his goal of drawing German strength away from the Americans.

  Montgomery’s raw-nerved defensiveness was producing strains in England that Eisenhower could not avoid. The heavy hand of politics was being felt, a grumbling toward Montgomery that was growing louder. But Eisenhower had no reason to step into that fray, not as long as the battlegrounds were still so dangerous and the outcome still very much in doubt. Montgomery was right that Bradley was facing far fewer German tanks than were bloodying the British at Caen, and American troop strength was continuing to increase. Despite supply issues and weather, if there was to be a major success in the Overlord campaign, the Americans were in the best position to make it happen.

  With Collins’s Seventh Corps now able to turn south, Bradley was finally able to assemble the enormous strength required for a large-scale push against the Germans, whose best efforts were aimed at keeping the Americans bottled up in the Cotentin Peninsula. The Seventh Corps would push southward alongside the newly arrived Eighth. To their left, the Nineteenth Corps, also newly arrived, would fill the space closer to the British positions. Bradley’s force totaled fourteen American divisions, who outnumbered their German opposition by nearly three to one. Their overall objective would be to drive south, from the western coast of the Cotentin, on a front that would extend east, past the valuable crossroads of Saint-Lô. It was the Americans’ most ambitious attack of the entire Overlord campaign. With the British continuing to hold the majority of the German armor at Caen, Montgomery enthusiastically championed the plan, insisting it would throw open the door to a collapse that could consume Rommel’s entire front. But the failure of the Ninetieth Division was still fresh in Bradley’s mind and, like Eisenhower, he recognized that placing so much dependence on freshly arriving troops was a serious risk. Bradley decided to rely upon the most experienced troops in his command. No matter how worn out the paratroopers were, Bradley insisted the Eighty-second Airborne lead the next attack.

  * * *

  35. ADAMS

  * * *

  NEAR PONT-L’ABBÉ

  JULY 2, 1944

  “General Gavin’s as pissed off as I’ve ever seen him.” Scofield took a drink from his canteen. “Probably as pissed off as you’ve ever seen him.”

  Adams, his back against a tree, stared at the mess tent in the distance, trucks in a line on the road, men milling around, most holding plates of food. He shook his head. “Again?”

  Scofield didn’t answer, chewed the corner off a thick cracker. Adams saw men gathering, talking, helmets in their hands, a larger crowd around one of the lieutenants. The captain’s news was spreading throughout the company, the men reacting with curses and numb shock, the entire camp building into more of an angry rabble than a regiment of soldiers. Adams reached down beside him, grabbed a tuft of dry grass, and pulled it up by the roots, a feeble show of anger, the most energy he could muster.

  “What the hell’s wrong with the One-oh-one? They’ve been kicked as hard as we have. Aren’t they involved in this war too?”

  “Not this time. Not here anyway. According to General Gavin, the One-oh-one has already been moved off the line. They’re up north, on the coast, Cherbourg’s new police department.” Scofield let out a breath. “Keep your mouth shut about that. You don’t need to know about our troop positions. I know better than to talk about that.”

  “Don’t worry about it, Captain. I’m not drawing any maps, and no one in my platoon will hear a damned thing. I’d love to tell ’em though. Might fire ’em up.”

  “Not funny, Sergeant. I heard enough cracks about that. Gavin was pretty steamed about Ridgway, something Ridgway told the higher-ups. Doesn’t matter how beat to hell we are, he said. We might be weak in numbers, but our fighting spirit is unimpaired.”

  “Oh, for crying out loud. It’s Ridgway who’s impaired.”

  “Can that, Sergeant. There’s already enough bitching about generals at Gavin’s CP. I don’t want to hear it from you.”

  “I’m entitled, sir. How many men are in this damned army? We’ve lost—what, half our strength? And we’re all they have to make this attack?”

  Scofield put a hand up. “Shut it! Now look, Sergeant, I hate this as much as anyone in this outfit, but we’ve got a job to do. Gather your platoon, and make sure they know what we’re doing. The Ninetieth will be on our left and the Seventy-ninth on our right. The Eighth is coming up behind us, and Gavin says they’ll replace us in line as soon as we reach our objective. But they need people leading the way who won’t stumble over their own feet. Like I said, Gavin’s madder than hell about this, and the division has made protests all the way to Bradley. But the orders come from the very top, and it doesn’t much matter what any of us think out here. We jump off at Oh-six-thirty, and advance toward a town called La Haye-du-Puits, about eight miles south of here. Colonel Ekman wants everybody rested, so make sure your guys get some sleep. No cards, no dice.”

  “Who’s leading the advance?”

  Scofield looked down, another long breath.

  “That was Colonel Ekman’s decision. The Five-oh-seven is more beat up than we are, and most of the Five-oh-eight is already off the line. The Three-twenty-five hasn’t exactly impressed Gavin, and so, they’ll come in on our flank and rear, along with the Five-oh-seven.” He paused, and Adams waited for the words. “The Five-oh-five is the point.”

  “Of course we are.”

  SOUTH OF PONT-L’ABBÉ

  JULY 3, 1944

  The swamps and hedgerows were mostly behind them; the terrain now was wooded, the ground rolling, only a few grassy fields and pleasant farms. The roads were dismal, sloppy with mud, and the tired legs of the paratroopers made slow progress. Adams could feel the wetness in one of his socks, water seeping through a gash in the side of one boot, the same boots he had worn since the operation began. There had been no supply trucks for the personal needs of the men; most of the trucks they had seen brought K rations and tanks of drinkable water.

  The ammunition trucks had been scarce as well, and Adams knew from the telltale tugging on his pants legs that he had only a half dozen magazines for the Thompson. For reasons no one explained, there had been ample supplies of grenades, the men scooping them up from habit and attaching them to their shirts without comment. Whether or not it was an accident, a chance delivery from the supply convoys, the inevitable talk began. If the commanders were issuing more grenades, it meant they expected a close-up fight. Adams felt it as well as his men. No one wanted to charge yet another machine-gun nest. No matter how much Adams had grown to hate Germans, the thought of hand-to-hand fighting opened up that cold hole in his gut. If I have to kill them, he thought, I’d rather not look ’em in the eye. Not anymore. It’d be awfully nice if that Hitler bastard would just up and quit.

  His own platoon stretched out behind him, no one talking, the men conserving their energy for the terrain. Scofield’s briefing had offered few details beyond the description of their ultimate goal, La Haye-du-Puits. But before they reached the village, there would be a sizable hill, what the maps called Hill 131, where the enemy would certainly be dug in. Beyond that was La Poterie Ridge and then Hill 95, the final obstacle before the village itself. Adams had no idea of a timetable, if anyone above Scofield had even guessed how long the mission was supposed to take, or just how many enemy troops were waiting for them. It was obvious to the paratroopers that someone far above them had decided that if the fight was likely to be a tough one, the airborne should throw the first punch.

  He marched in a daze, fighting to stay alert, an essential with woods close on both sides of them. It was more than sleeplessness, or the weariness of too many marches. Adams had felt the numbness growing
for days now, even before the death of Marley. It angered him, quiet fury in his brain he couldn’t sweep away. The men around him rarely talked about anything like this, seemed to go about their routine in the camps with matter-of-fact acceptance. Even Unger was still annoyingly chipper, the boy who had learned to become such an utterly efficient killer. Corporal Nusbaum still did his job with the same uninterested effort, always a hint that he would rather be doing anything else, probably outside the army. Adams assumed that before much longer Nusbaum would make sergeant, the regiment’s need to fill the gaps left by the cost of so many hard-fought engagements.

  There were hints, often from Scofield, that Adams himself would be promoted, a field commission to second lieutenant. There was nothing appealing to Adams about a lieutenant’s bars, even with the raise in pay. I’m already the first one in line, he thought. They already do what I tell them to do, and as long as I’m a sergeant I can kick asses without getting court-martialed. It was a tired theme now: the training, jump school, curses, and screaming, what every instructor inflicted upon his men. He thought of Fort Benning, the jump towers, the first rides in the C-47s, terrified men, some who wouldn’t jump at all, men who couldn’t handle the training and would disappear without fanfare. How long ago, two years? His brain wouldn’t do the math, so he tried to bring himself back to the march, the woods, the men in front of him stepping slowly through the mud. Didn’t much matter how much ass I kicked at Benning, he thought. No matter what the army told me, I couldn’t make paratroopers out of men who weren’t designed for it. I sure as hell couldn’t make heroes. You can never predict that, no one can, not even Gavin. Unger…I figured the first time he heard machine-gun fire, he’d crawl under some rock and cry his eyes out. Now I know damned well he’s got my back, a kid! But he’ll never make sergeant. He’s too clean-cut, won’t say a single cussword. Never even heard him raise his voice. His mama’d be proud. What would my mama say? The cussing wouldn’t bother her. Wasn’t a day gone by that my old man didn’t spew out some kind of filth, most of it at her. Bastard. He still thinks soldiers are scum, the bottom of the ladder. What are you, old man? You dig holes in the ground. Try this for a couple days.