Then, flaunted in all faces, was the prospect held out almost nightly by Goebbels of wholesale drowning on the way over. Aside from bombs and torpedoes, we faced the threat of deadly minefields in the Channel, sowed with mines of a new and terrible nature, against which no known means of sweeping would be effective. Here again was something which must be taken seriously. Early in the war, the Nazis had unveiled another secret weapon, the magnetic mine, which amidst widespread sinkings, had practically blockaded every British port for some weeks and was threatening the United Kingdom with starvation until a hastily developed counter—degaussing belts—provided ships with some protection.
What could the new mines against which none of our sweeping measures were effective do to us? It was impossible to say. Our best protection lay now in seeing no squadrons of German mine-layers got out into the Channel to lay any such minefields in quantity. Still, it wasn’t possible wholly to prevent any being laid, from U-boats or from planes.
So to the perils of flame and poison was added the peril of being drowned en masse, which Goebbels repeatedly stressed. To G.I.’s mainly unaccustomed to the sea and made oversusceptible of drowning anyway by their recent wartime crossing of the Atlantic, death in this form loomed up more real than that by either flame or poison gas. So real, indeed, that the Supreme Command itself became alarmed and had to act to avoid demoralization; so real that, almost on the very eve of invasion an urgent cry went out from SHAEF to Washington in late May—a demand that no matter what else got bumped off in consequence, at least fifty fast Coast Guard 83 foot picket boats be put aboard freighters at once for immediate dispatch to the Channel. It was anticipated that thousands of G.I’s would be swimming in the Channel waters during the night crossing; the picket boats were solely for the purpose of accompanying the fleet to rescue them from drowning. No one from Eisenhower down, still less Rear Admiral Moon and the Navy, least of all the G.L’s, had forgotten what had happened to the men in Exercise Tiger shortly before, when Nazi E-boats had drowned 700 soldiers—what easily could happen to us from mines on the Channel crossing could make that tragedy seem picayune.
Shortly the Coast Guard picket boats began to be unloaded—substantial craft each easily capable of taking aboard well over a hundred men. Ostentatiously they were paraded in all the Channel loading ports, for what morale effect they might have on the G.I.’s, waiting to be loaded. There was a counter to German mines they could see. They were not to be left to drown as had been the hapless G.I.’s in Exercise Tiger. Five thousand swimmers at least, possibly twice that many, could easily be rescued by that flotilla shepherding the invasion fleet, ready instantly with life rings and life nets to take men from the water wholesale.
Flame, poison gas, and water—hideous as death from any one of them was to contemplate—were at least nameable terrors. What were the others—the nameless terrors that Goebbels was always hinting at? Just because you couldn’t put a name to any of them, you couldn’t afford to laugh them off merely as fantasies designed to frighten you—too many times in the past had Germany suddenly unmasked some unimagined weapon to annihilate her enemies—she could again. A feeling of facing mysterious terrors against which one was powerless to take precautions began to grip everyone, creating far more unease in everybody’s soul, now that D-day was no farther away than you could count on the fingers of one hand, than the more concrete prospect of running head on into the Atlantic Wall with Rommel and all his Panzers to back it up.
Goebbels had done a first class job on us. Not since Columbus in 1492 was about to weigh anchor, had men prepared to sail so fearful of the mysterious perils of the unknown seas before them.
With the disclosure of the date finally set for D-day came an unlooked-for effect—all Britain was sealed off from the rest of the world. No mail was dispatched, no cables or phone messages permitted to go out, even the diplomatic dispatches of such few neutrals as had embassies in London were embargoed, regardless of their outraged protests. No chance was taken, should any espionage agent, and especially an alluring female one, worm the date from some half-drunk or loose-lipped member of our forces. For then it was certain that through some neutral country, Sweden or Switzerland, for instance, it would be promptly piped through to Berlin. Two thousand men of the Counter Intelligence Corps descended on southern England to enforce security in this regard.
For surprise was as vital to success for us as all the armaments we had provided for the invasion—surprise as to the day the blow would fall, surprise as to the spot on which the blow should land, even surprise as to whether actually it was intended there be any blow at all. Many Nazis felt the whole invasion was only a gigantic hoax.
Now more than ever was security needed—those three vital secrets were become the common property of some hundreds of thousands of men, who now knew they were to assault just after dawn on June 5, and were being most minutely briefed, even down to the privates involved, as to exactly where they would strike and what manner of terrain they would find confronting them as they landed.
On all points, we had good reason to expect we should achieve surprise. The Germans would expect us to attack, if ever we actually attacked, on that day on which high water came at dawn. That day was June 1; already it had gone by. Not till June 15 would there be a similar conjunction of tide and dawn. On June. 5, the Germans, therefore, would not be expecting us. Further, the weight of expert German military opinion was that the point of assault would be Calais. There the Channel was narrowest; the roads, both to Paris and to Berlin, the shortest. There, sure that was where we should strike, von Rundstedt had massed nineteen German divisions, by far the largest single Army he had in one spot in Western Europe and over twice as many as the seven divisions he had allotted Rommel to repel an attack in Normandy.
We had done everything possible all through the spring of 1944 to encourage the Nazis in their belief in Calais as our intended point of attack. Fake invasion exercises in southeastern England, obviously aimed at the Pas de Calais, were staged with next to no security measures taken, with the expectation that Nazi espionage agents would hurry the news to Berlin. Dummy campfires and dummy tents, all visible from the air, were set out there, to create the impression that vast numbers of troops were bivouacked in that area, ready to jump off for Calais. And finally, it was given out that General George Patton, who of all American commanders the Nazis most respected and most feared, unemployed since he had routed the Nazis out of Sicily and itching only for another chance at them, had taken command of this nonexistent army and with much-publicized ferocity was whipping it into shape for a savage assault on von Rundstedt at Calais.
From von Rundstedt’s disposition, it appeared the Germans believed all that and were strenuously engaged in preparing to fend off Patton; we should achieve our hoped for surprise as to point of attack. While we struck at Normandy, their major mobile forces would be waiting to repel Patton at Calais, one hundred and fifty miles away—much too distant effectively to reinforce Rommel short of a week’s time after D-day.
So on two points, as to time and as to place, we expected confidently to achieve surprise. We weren’t attacking on the day on which high tide came at dawn; and we weren’t assaulting at the point where the Channel was narrowest—Calais. But to keep those secrets, southern England was suddenly more thoroughly seeded with Counter Intelligence men than a plum pudding with plums. And further to keep confidential our intentions, the troops to whom unavoidably now the secrets must be disclosed; commencing at the end of May, were rushed directly from their barbed-wire enclosed encampments to their transports, there to be held incommunicado till they sailed for Normandy.
June 1, June 2, and June 3 came and went, three days long to be remembered by all hands on the Channel—days marked by endless columns of British and American combat troops marching from their encampments to the “hards,” the concrete paved waterfront slopes on which the landing ships were grounded, swiftly to be swallowed up there by the waiting vessels. And made even more not
eworthy for the camouflaged strings of tanks and mechanized heavy artillery, parked for weeks along the roads, coming suddenly to life and with clanking treads and roaring motors, swarming ponderously down also to the hards, there to be engulfed in the bowels of the huge LST’s or run up the ramps of the smaller LCT’s. And following closely in the wakes of the tanks down to the hards, also there to be run aboard, came thousands of trucks. These were already combat-loaded with the ammunition, the priceless gasoline, and the military stores without which today’s fighting man is completely helpless.
Over 4000 vessels, in a dozen English ports from Bristol on the Irish Sea around Land’s End to Portsmouth on the Channel, were loading for the invasion. By afternoon on June 3, those farthest away, at Bristol, carrying mostly the supporting follow-up troops for the assault, would be sailing. By afternoon of June 4, all the rest would set sail from the Channel ports, prepared to have the first wave hit the beach under cover of the air and sea bombardment just after dawn on June 5, and the supporting waves in the hours following.
On the morning of June 3, with the rearguard troops still being loaded, we received at Selsey Bill our final instructions for D-day on the Far Shore. They were in the form of a caution, relating not particularly to Mulberry, but to craft of any kind carrying anti-aircraft guns. That took us in, for every Phoenix carried at least one and most of them two, forty millimeter AA guns and a force of soldiers to man them. All told our Phoenixs had over 100 AA guns, a very formidable armament.
So along with every other kind of craft carrying AA guns of any caliber, we were warned:
“If you see any aircraft overhead during daylight on the Far Shore, do not fire. They will be ours. We have absolute control of the air over Normandy; no enemy planes can get over the beachhead.”
The word went swiftly out to the Army gun crews, but it spread just as quickly among the Seabees. So we need fear nothing from the air; with all the other fears we had to weight us down, it was at least a slight comfort to know we had that one countered.
At Selsey Bill we were ready also. Fully afloat, standing high above the water, was the first batch of ten Phoenixs moored temporarily by lines to other still sunken Phoenixs. They were fully manned now. Aboard were their riding crews of Seabees, ready to make fast the mooring bridles to the squadron of ten ocean-going tugs, anchored just beyond the Phoenix park. Aboard them also were the anti-aircraft gun crews, expectantly watching the skies, guns loaded and ready, for now of all times they could expect more bombs than ever.
In the Phoenix park, MacKenzie’s men labored night and day over their pumps, readying the next batch of ten Phoenixs for swift lifting. Too many could not be afloat at once, but dozens could be lightened enough to make the final pumping out and breaking free the work of only a few more hours.
The schedule was all set up. The first ten Phoenixs would go out in tow immediately behind the tail end of the invasion fleet and follow over at three knots. Then in batches, with the second tug flotilla a few hours later, would go the second ten, and so on as the tugs worked back and forth across the Channel, till all were on the Far Shore. MacKenzie’s crews would have to work fast to keep ahead of tugs; however, he had men and pumps and salvage craft enough to do it.
But now, shortly after noon on June 3, most unexpectedly came something else we couldn’t counter, to throw sand into the intricately geared timetable of Operation Overlord—the weather.
All through May, the weather, in England had been wonderful—the kind of spring that poets, especially English poets, grow lyrical over. And a thorough search of weather records for all the years back so far as records went, a search made while Overlord was being developed, had indicated that June weather along the southern coasts could safely be relied on to be as good as May had been. All of Overlord depended on good weather for D-day and on reasonable weather for several days at least thereafter for the build-up. Good weather was imperative to avoid landing combat-laden assault troops through heavy surf; for swimming in from three miles at sea the DD tanks for the close-in artillery support; for clearing the beach obstacles; for decent visibility right after dawn for the vital pre-H-hour air bombardment, and for the just as vital naval barrage during the run-in of the assault forces—in other words, no good weather, no invasion. But there had been no cause for worry over that in all the planning; we would pick for D-day the day in June that suited us; June weather in southern England was always good, or at least, good enough. So the records showed. And as June came in, the weather charts from far west in the Atlantic showed that the good May weather was to continue. Group Captain J. M. Stagg, R.A.F., Chief Meteorologist for Overlord, was quite satisfied as to that as a long range prediction.
However, before Saturday, June 3, was half over, it began to look to us on Selsey Bill as if our luck had completely run out. It started to rain, it commenced to blow a gale, and the latest weather forecast, flying in the face of everything normally to be expected and suddenly reversing the previous long range forecast given out for early June, indicated several days more of not only the same, but of worse yet to come. The wind we had by nightfall on June 3, given two days more to act on the water, could kick up quite a sea in the Channel by June 5 and a worse one on the surf-beaten beaches. It became more and more evident that now of all times, on the very eve of the invasion, the worst gale to hit southern England in twenty years at least was coming in from the Atlantic to lash the Channel waters.
At Selsey Bill, we knew that the invasion forces in the Channel were all to be underway by 1600 (4 P.M.) on Sunday, June 4—unless by noon of that day, we got the code word, BOWSPRIT, that the invasion was postponed for twenty-four hours. As I looked off to sea from Selsey Bill on the morning of June 4, it was obvious to me that this was no weather in which to launch an invasion on anybody’s coasts, defended or undefended—disaster would be insured, not by the enemy but by the breaking seas driving before that gale which would certainly swamp all our landing craft on their way in. To go as scheduled would be suicide. We should only be transporting a cargo of G.I.’s, too deathly seasick to fight when they got there, to a beachhead on which they couldn’t possibly be landed successfully through any such seas.
And sure enough, before noon the coded signal, BOWSPRIT, came over from Portsmouth—we were all to delay twenty-four hours—D-day now would be Tuesday, June 6—unless before noon on June 5 we got another signal in code postponing it for yet a second twenty-four hour period until June 7.
Meanwhile, destroyers raced to sea to intercept and turn back to port the flotillas which on June 3 had already sailed for the Channel rendezvous from Bristol and the northern ports. But that could only be done once; those vessels had not fuel enough to last through a second turnback. If again they turned back, they must refuel before sailing for a third time. And that refueling delay would make it impossible for them to sail for a D-day set for June 7. If the invasion were delayed till June 7, it would have to be made without the supporting troops for the first wave.
Completely wet and miserable, we waited at Selsey Bill for any sign of a break in the weather that might give us a chance to land on June 6. For while not so many in the hundreds of thousands loaded aboard the invasion fleet knew that a day’s delay or even several days’ delay was anything worse than the added aggravation of being packed aboard overcrowded transports for that many days more, those few who had ever read the Overlord Plan itself knew how tightly the Plan was tied to the moon—that if by June 6, we didn’t assault, we couldn’t try again till June 19, or perhaps even till July 3.
And it would just not be possible to keep all those men jammed into the invading ships till June 19. If we didn’t attack on June 6, they’d all have to be unloaded again. And if some hundreds of thousands of men were unloaded, all aware now of where they were to assault and when they should have assaulted (which was the key to exactly when next they might assault), what chance was there, in spite of 2000 Counter Intelligence agents trying to enforce security, of keeping those secrets
intact until June 19?
Even on June 19, we shouldn’t be as well off as on June 6. We’d have, it was true, the same conjunction then of the moon and the sun which would give us half tide flood an hour after dawn, which was our most imperative need, but we wouldn’t have the same late rising moon—we’d have no moon at all on June 19. And part of what Eisenhower was planning heavily on to relieve Nazi pressure on the landing beaches was to drop a large force of paratroopers on both flanks of the invading forces—American paratroopers to be dropped at 0200 (2:00 A.M.) behind the Utah Beach on the Cherbourg Peninsula on the western flank, and British paratroopers to be dropped simultaneously behind Sword Beach on the eastern flank to the east of Caen. In both cases, Eisenhower wanted no moon at all till well after midnight, thus to mask from the enemy the approach to the drop zones of the troop-carrying planes and gliders; But immediately the approach was nearing completion, he wanted a rising moon to give the light desired by the pilots to help locate the points of drop, and to light the fields for the paratroopers in their assemblies and initial attacks on the nearby bridgeheads they were to seize before dawn.
Now on June 5 (and June 6 also) we got what we wanted—a rising half tide an hour after dawn to give us the precious hour of daylight for pre-assault bombardments; the incoming tide still low enough to expose all obstacles at H-hour, an hour after dawn; and a moon rising about 0130, which was just what the paratroopers wanted to allow darkness to shield their approach and then moonlight to light their drop.
The Far Shore Page 17