Divided on D-Day

by Edward E. Gordon

  Despite the obstacles of the bocage, the US Ninetieth and Ninth Infantry Divisions and the Eighty-Second Airborne Division hacked and chewed their way through these hedgerows and the entrenched Germans with more Yankee grit than any tactical finesse. The most apparent weakness in the American June ground attack was the lack of sufficient training given to the infantry divisions to coordinate with separate tank battalions. Armor and infantry radios operated on different channels. To develop mutual infantry-armor confidence and awareness, the tanks in Normandy installed infantry-type radios tuned to the infantry radio net. Army signal companies also attached telephones or microphones so that infantrymen were connected with the tankers inside.

  On June 18 they finally reached the west coast, having cut an eighteen-mile path across the Cotentin Peninsula. (See map 10.) The Americans now turned north toward their principal objective, the port of Cherbourg.35

  THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING

  After Germany's crushing defeat of France in May and June 1940, an obscure French officer, General Charles de Gaulle, fled to England and gradually assumed leadership of the Free French Forces. In 1944 de Gaulle persuaded Eisenhower that he was the only French leader capable of rallying the Resistance in France and thus ably assisting the Allied invasion and liberation of his country.

  De Gaulle spent 1916 to 1918 during World War I in a German POW camp. Between the wars he became an early advocate for the offensive use of armored units in the French army. This made him unpopular with the military leadership of France who had a defensive mindset. The loss of over one million soldiers in World War I caused them to build the Maginot Line, designed to be a massive barrier for the next war.36

  De Gaulle was only a colonel when World War II began. After the German armored breakthrough at Sudan, he was given command of an improvised Fourth Armored Division. On May 17, 1940, he slowed the German advance to the English Channel with two hundred tanks, but with no air support his success was only temporary. This brought him a promotion to brigadier general, and shortly afterward on June 5, he was appointed under secretary of war in Premier Paul Reynaud's government. On June 16 he learned that Marshal Philippe Petain had formed a new government and planned to seek an armistice with Germany. Because de Gaulle had strongly opposed surrender and feared arrest, he boarded a small plane at Bordeaux on June 17 and fled to England. The next day he made his famous address to the French people on the BBC, urging others to continue the war against Germany. “Whatever happens, the flame of resistance must never go out and will not go out.”37

  Fig. 7.5. General Charles de Gaulle. (Office of War Information, Overseas Picture Division)

  De Gaulle was arrogant, demanding, haughty, and very difficult to deal with. He was determined to be the leader who would restore France to its great power status after its humiliating defeat in 1940. Churchill was almost driven mad by de Gaulle's extreme intransigence, yet respected his determination to fight on against long odds.38

  Very few of Free French joined him at first. Most French people believed that after the fall of France, Britain would be forced to conclude an armistice with Germany. This never deterred de Gaulle who immediately began to organize the Armée Secrete (FCNL) as a French paramilitary resistance organization. Up to 22,500 men were parachuted into France, and weapons were stockpiled. They gradually became ready to act on D-Day in support of the Allied landing in France. The FCNL also prepared for a national uprising to be launched in conjunction with the invasion.39

  De Gaulle needed to convince the Allies that he had broad support across French society. Some of the resistance groups had come under the control of the French Communist Party. An internal conflict broke out between the Communists and the Free French resistance groups. The Communists sought to foment a national insurrection with the full participation of French and foreign resisters and then form a left-wing government. De Gaulle, on the other hand, sought to have his Free French forces pave his way to land in France, liberate Paris, and acclaim him the leader of the French government. Then de Gaulle planned to take the lead in reestablishing France's role as a great power during the closing days of the war in Europe.

  While recognizing the value of de Gaulle's Free French movement, both Roosevelt and Churchill were skeptical of his contention that he represented the French government in exile. Unlike the Polish, Dutch, Norwegian, and other legitimate government leaders that had fled to London to escape the Nazi invasion, de Gaulle in 1940 was neither an elected official nor a widely recognized leader of France. Roosevelt and Churchill took the position that free elections should be held after the liberation in which the French people would decide on the form of government and its leadership.

  As SHAEF's military leader, Eisenhower sought to drive the Germans out of France and avoid internal political disorder during this process. He did not exclude the possibility of creating an interim Allied Military Government in Occupied Territory (AMGOT).

  However as D-Day approached it became very difficult for the Allies to cut de Gaulle's Free French out of the liberation of their own country. By 1944 de Gaulle had established his headquarters in French Algeria. Free French army forces were fighting with the Allies in Italy.

  Roosevelt and Churchill reluctantly concurred that de Gaulle should be flown to England on June 4 so that Eisenhower could brief him on OVERLORD.40

  Eisenhower and his deputy Walter Bedell Smith charmed de Gaulle into cooperating with the OVERLORD effort. But Eisenhower explained the Allied dilemma in a secret June 3 memorandum:

  All our information leads us to believe that the only authority these Resistance Groups desire to recognize is that of de Gaulle's and his Committee [FCNL]…. De Gaulle is apparently willing to cooperate only on the basis of our dealing with him exclusively, the whole thing falls into a rather sorry mess. De Gaulle is, of course, now controlling the only French military forces that can take part in this operation. Consequently, from a purely military viewpoint we must…deal with him alone.41

  After June 6 the French underground launched a widespread campaign to attack Germans throughout the country. They also helped the Allies in their advance across France by providing vital intelligence on enemy positions and strength.

  On June 14 de Gaulle, with Eisenhower's approval, embarked from Portsmouth for Normandy on the Free French destroyer La Combattante provided by Admiral Ramsay. It was exactly four years to the day that the Nazi army had marched into Paris.

  British officers met de Gaulle's party at the beach and drove the general to meet Montgomery for lunch. Afterward they were driven to Bayeux, home of the famous Bayeux Tapestry that told the story of another invasion—William the Conqueror's 1066 landing in England. Ignoring Churchill's condition for his visit of no public meetings, de Gaulle stepped onto an improvised platform outside the Sous-Prefecture (town hall) and addressed a large crowd that broke into cheers. At the speech's conclusion he said, “The Government of France salutes Bayeux—the leading town of French liberty.”42 All then sang the “Marseillaise” After receiving pledges of support from local officials, de Gaulle departed. He repeated this assertion of authority in two nearby towns, Isigny and Grandcamp. By the time he departed that night, de Gaulle was firmly in control. Eisenhower had helped him make the difficult leap from being a minor general to becoming the acclaimed leader of France. De Gaulle's next stop would be Paris.43

  “FIGHT AND DIE WHERE HE STANDS”

  By mid-June Hitler was still insisting that his forces would throw the Allies back into the sea. Sensing “defection” he summoned Rundstedt and Rommel to Margival near Soissons, France. They met (June 16) in a large elaborate concrete command center built to direct the German invasion of England in 1940, not the Allied landings from England in 1944.

  Rommel began with a grim review describing “the seriousness of the situation…how impossible were the conditions under which the German soldier was being forced to fight.”44 The field marshal wanted to carry out a limited withdrawal beyond the range of the Allied fleet to l
aunch a panzer counterattack on the British army's flank.

  Hitler refused. No withdrawal, “every man shall fight and die where he stands.”45 Any other solution was defeatism. Rommel had been forced to improvise, using the Normandy landscape's bocage as the stage for small unit firefights that hinged on the fighting strength of the individual solider to hold or to take a position. At first the more seasoned German veterans had an advantage over many less-experienced Allied soldiers. But this was a battle of attrition that could end in only one way for Germany.

  Seated on a high stool Hitler swept aside his field marshals’ warnings and told them his plans for the next phase of the German Normandy operation. Four panzer divisions were on their way from Russia to France. They would create a Schwerpunkt (center of effort) by launching a drive at the junction of the Allied armies. Meanwhile his new V-weapons’ bombardment of London would help win the war by breaking British morale. His field marshals then pleaded with him to direct this weapon against the invasion's beaches or ports in England.

  Hitler summoned the commanding general of V-weapon ballistics, Lieutenant General Erich Heinemann, to their conference. He explained that the margin of error of these missiles was huge—up to nine to twelve miles from the intended targets. This would endanger German troops in the bridgehead. Heinemann's admission revealed that it was still technically impossible to accurately launch German V-weapons at the Allied armies. Viewing his commanders as mere subordinates to his military genius, Hitler thought them politically naïve and dismissed their estimates and judgments.46

  Rommel finished the situation report by frankly urging an armistice to end the war. An enraged Hitler cut his favorite field marshal off: “Don’t occupy yourself with that issue—look after your invasion front.”47

  THE GREAT STORM—“CUT THEM OFF IN THEIR REAR”

  OVERLORD's logistics were always Admiral Ramsay's top long-term worry. Supply issues were critical from the very beginning and were never completely solved during the entire campaign.

  During the three days following June 6, a huge backlog of ships jammed the anchorages. Bureaucratic army/navy procedures slowed the unloading. Ramsay ordered the ships unloaded and the cargos sorted afterward. Soon the backlog cleared.

  During the week immediately following D-Day, the average daily arrival of vessels carrying men, stores, and equipment for the Allied buildup in the beachhead included forty LSTs, seventy-five LCTs, twenty LCIs (L), twenty-five Liberty ships, thirty-eight Coasters, and nine Troopships.48

  On June 18 everything in both American and British sectors was “all tickety-boo” (a phrase Montgomery used for military perfection).49

  The weather had been basically benign. On June 18 the two artificial Mulberry harbors were unloading seven ships simultaneously. Unexpectedly in the early hours of June 19, Normandy was hit by the worst storm in nearly forty years. Few men or supplies landed for three days. Some eight hundred ships were beached or lost. The American Mulberry off Omaha Beach was destroyed. The British Mulberry at Arromanches was damaged but repairable.

  In three days the “Great Storm” destroyed many more Allied ships than the Germans had damaged in sixteen days of fighting.50 Hitler had always predicted that bad storms would overturn the Allied invasion. A period of “foul weather and storms [will] cut them off in their rear [making] everything…all right.”51

  At first it may have appeared that the führer was right. In the three days before this storm, daily landings averaged over 29,000 tons of supplies, 5,800 vehicles, and 34,000 troops. The daily logistics from June 19 to June 22 plummeted to 7,300 tons of supplies, 2,400 vehicles, and 9,800 troops. American ingenuity now saved the invasion.52

  Fig. 7.6. Wrecked pontoon causeway of one of the Mulberry artificial harbors, following the storm of June 19–22, 1944. (US Navy Photograph: SHAEF-OSS, collection, Archives Branch, Naval History and Heritage Command, Washington, DC)

  Before the Mulberry harbors were completed, LCSs, LCVPs, LCTs, Rhino-barge-type ferries, and DUKWs amphibious trucks were used for discharging troops and cargo from freighters and transports onto the beaches. A crucial decision was made to also allow the large LSTs to drive up right onto the beach. After discharging their cargo the lighter LSTs floated off on the next high tide. Normandy's soft, sandy beaches caused little ship damage.

  After the American Mulberry was destroyed, this use of LSTs increased dramatically. It was soon discovered that each Mulberry pierhead accommodated only two LSTs at a time. However Utah and other appropriate beaches accommodated dozens of LSTs. The British Mulberrys were faster at unloading a few ships, while the beached American LSTs were slower at discharging but simultaneously unloaded many more ships at once. Ultimately both methods were employed at the same time. A logistics crisis passed as the flood of supplies for the invasion once again continued.53

  Larry Hendrickson was a lieutenant on LST 527 sailing from Weymouth and other southern English ports to Utah, Omaha, and other Normandy beaches. He recalled, “The beaches were a flurry of activity—10 to 20 ships at a time would unload or wait to unload while jeeps and other vehicles scurried around the sand transporting men and supplies…. We made 45 trips from June 6, 1944 to May 8, 1945…. It took 10 or 12 hours to make the trip across the channel.”54

  One month after D-Day, despite the ruinous storm, 1,000,000 men, 200,000 vehicles, and 700,000 tons of supplies were delivered to the Normandy bridgehead. Once again a Hitler prediction of the path to victory was proven wrong.55

  CHERBOURG DELAY

  Bradley had cut off the Germans on the Cotentin Peninsula by June 18. He had hoped to take the vital port of Cherbourg by June 21. On that same day Montgomery had sent Bradley the order, “First US Army will thrust toward La Haye du Puits and Coutances beginning on 21 June.”56

  Unfortunately on June 19, the Great Storm lashed Normandy and offensive operations slowed to a near halt. General Joseph Collins's VII Corps (Ninth, Seventy-Ninth, and Fourth Divisions) were delayed for two days in their advance toward Cherbourg. Nicknamed “Lightning Joe,” Collins was the commanding general on Guadalcanal and was known as an aggressive hands-on leader. The storm, like the bocage, had slowed down the US Cherbourg attack. (See map 10.)

  It was not until June 21 that the Americans were deployed to assault the city. General Karl von Schlieben had withdrawn his German forces into the heavy fortifications surrounding the city. The defenses of Cherbourg were very formidable. Before the war the city was an important French naval base. The Germans further fortified these defenses to the point of impregnability. Although the Allied air forces laid down a massive aerial bombardment on June 22, they inflicted very little damage to the German defenses. American troops were reluctant to assault the strong fortifications.

  Operation NEPTUNE included plans for a naval bombardment of Cherbourg to speed the city's surrender and save its harbor facilities. Ramsay, however, was not very confident that the Allied capital ships could knock out the German batteries. Rear Admiral Morton Deyo commanded a mainly American task force consisting of the US battleships Texas, Arkansas, and Nevada with twelve- and fourteen-inch guns; US cruisers Tuscaloosa and Quincy along with British Cruisers HMS Glasgow and Enterprise, each with six-inch guns; as well as a strong screening force of destroyers and minesweepers.

  These Allied ships were up against a formidable foe. For example, the Hamburg Battery had four 280mm (eleven-inch) guns, far larger caliber than any the Allies had previously faced. Expert naval gunners from the Kriegsmarine manned these guns. The battery was encased in heavy concrete, steel-reinforced casemates. Cherbourg's batteries consisted of twenty gun-housing casemates.

  On June 26, the guns of the Allied capital ships fired 376 large caliber shells for two hours and twenty minutes.57 The fleet also offered to fill call-fire requests from Collins's ground forces then assaulting the city. At 2:51 p.m. the task group retired, but they had not suppressed the German defenses. German marksmanship, however, proved very accurate. The USS Texas suffered two hits; U
SS O’Brien, USS Barton, and USS Laffey were all hit, and the HMS Glasgow had two hits and one very near miss.

  The Allies did have some successes. The USS Texas landed a fourteen-inch shell directly on one of the big German guns, knocking it out. The Allied bombardment also helped undermine the German garrison's fighting spirit, although some of the forts held out for one or two days after the city's surrender.

  After the June 22 air assault, Collins began his attack on Cherbourg's outer defenses. Two days later it became a battle of close encounter, with house-to-house fighting. General Schlieben's main goal was to delay the fall of the city until his engineers had thoroughly wrecked the harbor, as Hitler had ordered him to leave the harbor a field of ruin unusable for receiving Allied supplies. Late in the day of June 23, fires set by the Germans raged across Cherbourg, consuming military installations, buildings, and supplies that might support the Allied invasion. During that night a tremendous explosion and fireball engulfed the harbor's Gare Maritime. A German demolition team blew up an entire freight train loaded with dynamite inside the port terminal. The concussion was felt by soldiers in their foxholes well outside the city.58

  Schlieben did not surrender to Collins until June 27, when a ceremony was held at the Hotel de Ville (city hall). It took two more precious days for the outer forts to surrender.

  The port of Cherbourg was a scene of complete devastation. “The demolition was masterful,” said Colonel Alvin O. Viney, the engineer who planned to rehabilitate the port, “beyond a doubt the most complete, intensive, and best-planned demolition job in history.”59 When Ramsay came to Cherbourg on July 6, he noted in his diary, “The damage is unbelievable…. Dry docks and basins undamaged but blocked by numerous ships and craft. It will take anything up to 3 months to clear away these wrecks.”60 Yet by early September the port became operational, moving twelve thousand tons per day of supply, about half of its normal capacity.