The Far Shore

by Edward Ellsberg

  It was obvious that the enemy would try to join up his forces landed on the Cherbourg Peninsula to the west and those landed before Vierville and St. Laurent. In between those separated enemy forces lay the town of Isigny with its massive Norman stone buildings, a natural fortress easy to defend. It lay, moreover, on the banks of the Aure, astride the bridges forming the only possible highway for a junction of his enemies’ troops. There Rommel placed one of the remaining regiments of the 352nd Division, heavily reinforced it and awaited the enemy, fully confident that he could never get through Isigny to effect his necessary junction. After that, Rommel, taking the invaders one at a time on either side of Isigny, would cut each of them up more at his leisure.

  What had actually happened? Again those heavy naval guns. On D + 2, 14-inch shells, fired from invisible battleships from a distant invisible sea had come crashing down out of the sky upon his troops in inland Isigny. The Nazis had no option but to evacuate or die. They evacuated. The extremely important junction town of Isigny was occupied by the enemy without even a real fight for it.

  The implications were plain to Rommel. There was not a chance now of preventing a siege of Cherbourg. There was not a town on the relatively narrow Cherbourg Peninsula, which he had been counting on as anchors for a line of defenses blocking every highway leading northward into Cherbourg, which was not as vulnerable to those naval guns as Isigny had been. All were within easy range from the sea from one side of the Cherbourg Peninsula or the other. Cherbourg was doomed. At best, it might withstand a siege of some weeks; at worst, it might be taken in ten days. And it was useless for him to move an army up the Peninsula to raise such a siege; those naval guns on his flanks would soon smash his army.

  There was now only one thing to do to Cherbourg. It was no longer of any value to Germany. But as a port, it was sine qua non to the enemy; they had to have it to make a success of their invasion. Had he ever doubted that, he knew now from a V Corps Field Order taken from the dead body of an American officer in Vierville, that the capture of Cherbourg well to the north of all the landings, was nevertheless the first order of business for the American forces—all else was to be subordinated to that. It was that important to his enemy.

  Very well, then. The denial of the port of Cherbourg to those Americans was even more important to him. He might, if von Schlieben, its commander, put up a good defense, delay the capture of Cherbourg; it was unlikely, in the face of all those battleship guns, he could do anything to prevent it. But there was one thing he could do, and he so ordered it—as a port, Cherbourg must be destroyed. He would so sabotage and destroy the port facilities of Cherbourg and so mine its harbor waters with all the underwater mines in the naval arsenal there that it would be worthless to the Allies when they got it and unusable for long months afterwards. And thus while the Allies had the city of Cherbourg, they would still have no port. And without a port, long before they could possibly rehabilitate the wreck of Cherbourg he would leave them, he would, inland and out of range of those damnable naval guns, have crushed them with the overwhelming weight of armor and artillery he had already in France.

  Already the order had gone out to Admiral Hennecke, Naval Commander there, to destroy the port of Cherbourg. Hennecke, with typical German thoroughness, would have ample time to make such a job of its destruction as the world had never seen before. So if his foolhardy enemy, as that captured V Corps order clearly showed, was counting on the possession of Cherbourg quickly to provide him the port he needed to stage a real campaign, Rommel, still as much the fox as ever he had been in the Libyan Desert, was seeing to it that he was leaning on a very broken reed.

  Rommel had lost the first round to our naval guns. But now he was insuring himself, by the timely offering up as a sacrifice to the gods of war of the entire port of Cherbourg (which would be a French loss anyway, not his) that he would lose no more. Let the Americans, covered by their naval guns, take Cherbourg if they wished to pay the price von Schlieben and his garrison troops would exact in a siege. They would find when finally they entered Cherbourg, that still they had no port. And that would be the death warrant of their foolhardy invasion.

  CHAPTER 32

  All over Normandy, events were moving fast, except on the left flank. There Rommel and Montgomery were in stalemate before Caen, where Rommel, to block off Montgomery’s path to Paris, had thrown in the 21st Panzer Division, the 12th Panzer Division, and the Panzer Lehr Division, all the armor he had at hand in Normandy. He was blocking Montgomery, all right, but had he only known it, that was exactly what the Overlord Plan hoped for—that Montgomery at Caen would attract and hold on his front the major German forces in Normandy, especially the armored divisions, while Bradley on the right would be left free to consolidate his Utah and Omaha beachheads and then move northward up the Cotentin Peninsula to take Cherbourg.

  Bradley, unfortunately, was far behind time. The D-day catastrophe on the Omaha Beach had seriously crimped him in both men and fighting materials ashore. The deep penetrations he had counted on to secure by nightfall on D-day against a surprised enemy, he didn’t even have by D + 5 against an enemy now thoroughly aroused and viciously fighting back. And had it not been for naval fire support, called on now immediately each time the enemy made a stand at one of those massively built Norman towns erected centuries ago to withstand the ages, he would still not have progressed that far. But with the support of those naval shells, which one after another swiftly beat into dust and rubble the stout Norman masonry of the towns the Nazis attempted to defend, he soon formed his junction and prepared to wheel north up the Cotentin Peninsula toward Cherbourg, which by schedule, he was to take by D + 17.

  Meanwhile, to make that possible, men struggled ceaselessly on the Omaha Beach. Combat engineers with bulldozers (they had plenty now) chewed away the shingle and the seawalls to give access to the beach road all along the beach. Other engineers and other bulldozers carved more roads up the shoulders of the bluffs, not only at the four natural draws the French had used but at other slopes those Frenchmen never dreamed of as having exit possibilities.

  Still other engineers with probes and mine detectors searched for minefields and particularly for the undiscovered solitary mines buried in the supposedly already cleared road shoulders, which were daily still killing our G.I.’s going inland. Night and day, mingled with the roar of artillery battling only a few miles inland was the nearer thunder of mines exploding as our engineers found and destroyed them.

  But a view of the harbor offered the real miracle. On the quiet harbor surface behind the breakwaters, all along the beach at the high water mark lay dozens of LST’s, their jaws flung wide apart, their ramps down, long lines of trucks, of tanks, of troops streaming endlessly ashore from them and up the draws to back up the G.I.’s on the inland battleline.

  Here and there were LCT’s and the smaller LCM’s and rhino ferries, beached also, discharging down their ramps the combat-loaded trucks they had taken aboard from freighters lying off, some inside the breakwater lines, some inside the Bombardons.

  But the most amazing sight of any on Omaha was the Dukws. Ceaselessly, a long stream of Dukws coming down to the beach from the dumps inland would enter the water, swim out to whatever freighter they were unloading, with military precision range themselves starboard and port, five on each side, one opposite each cargo hatch of the freighter. There almost immediately, dropped from a cargo boom overhead on the freighter, a net containing two to three tons of whatever freight that ship had would land in the body of the Dukw. And simultaneously then all ten Dukws together would shove clear with bulging cargo nets and all they contained, and head for the shore, making way alongside that freighter for the next ten Dukws. In a couple of minutes, twenty-five tons of supplies from that ship were discharged and on the way ashore—well over 300 tons an hour from each freighter.

  But that was not all. With their loads now, the Dukws swam in, blandly ignored the waterline which ordinarily would require transshipment from boat
to truck on a pier, clutched out their propellers, clutched in their wheels, and as trucks with no pause at all ran up the draws and a mile or so inland to the proper dump for what cargo they had—this for ammunition, that for food, another for cased gasoline, and so forth. There at the dumps came the final step in unparalleled speed and efficiency in cargo handling. Hardly would a Dukw come to a pause at its proper dump when a tractor crane there would drop its hook, seize the loaded cargo net containing all the Dukw had received from the freighter out at sea, lift it clear, fling into the Dukw an already emptied cargo net, and the Dukw, unloaded now after a few seconds only at the dump, would be on its way again down the road to the beach, there to metamorphose itself once more to a boat and swim out for another load.

  It was marvelous. Round and round went that stream of cumbersome Dukws, hundreds of them, ceaselessly. And freighters, unloaded at speeds undreamed of before, emptied in a fraction of the time that same task would have taken alongside a pier, steamed back to the U. K. for another cargo.

  With the breakwaters all completed, by D + 9 the unloading at Omaha for the Mulberry Harbor went over the top—9000 tons for the day as against a fondly hoped for 8000 tons in the original plans for the entire operation, including the as yet uncompleted floating pierhead installation.

  On the hurried completion of that, Clark was pushing Lieut. Freeburn and the Seabees under him ferociously. He had been allowed twelve days from D-day for the job. The British admiral commanding in Plymouth had expressed a doubt that the task could be done even in thirty days. Clark, risking a courtmartial for obvious insubordination, had snapped back at him that he would need not even the twelve days allotted—he would get it done in ten.

  And now Clark was driving hard to do just that. With him it wasn’t just a case of meeting a completion date—they might well meet it and their quotas of cargo tonnage also and be content. But Clark wasn’t content. Ashore men were dying battling to oust Nazis from their chosen positions for defense. The more shells and guns and tanks we landed, the fewer G.I.’s would die in overrunning those enemy positions. And soon must come the day when somewhere inland out of range of the support of our naval guns, we would have to face Rommel’s armor flung at us in massive counterattack. If by then Bradley didn’t have more armor, they’d all die.

  It didn’t matter how much we were getting ashore—the guns were insatiable—no matter how many shells we got ashore, it wasn’t enough—not if human effort could get any more landed.

  Clark led his men, drove his men, lashed his men to get the Artificial Harbor put together as speedily as human or (so some of his men thought) inhuman effort could achieve it. They were dealing with gigantic pieces, each running to thousands of tons, topped by those 6000 ton Phoenixs, all to be placed in an area with terrific tidal currents, all neatly fitted together, and they weren’t simple to fit. But in spite of all that, down went the Phoenixs for the breakwaters, and somehow men ready to drop from exhaustion nevertheless got the floating pierheads in place, their huge steel legs driven down into the sands beneath, the Whale sections joined end to end to make the half-mile long roadways, the network of steel guy wires run sidewise from each pontoon of the Whales to anchors set well out to prevent distortion of the roadways from the tidal currents sweeping alternately east and west.

  By nightfall on D + 9, the task was done. Next day the floating pierhead could commence discharge, three days ahead of schedule, far ahead of the similar Mulberry being installed by the Royal Engineers for the British on their beachhead off Arromanches to the east.

  On June 16, D + 10, ten days only after D-day, Mulberry A at Omaha, ready and waiting, received its initial tank landing ship. The first LST vessel ordered to unload at the new floating pierhead nosed slowly up to it, assisted by one ST tug, landed her bow on the underwater slope of the pierhead.

  Slowly her monster doors swung wide apart and then her ramp banged down on the pierhead slope. While still the ramp was descending, the roar of truck engines starting up inside the belly of the LST filled the air. Hardly had the ramp landed than the first truck headed out and up the slope to the pierhead, made a slight left turn onto the roadway and at fifteen miles an hour headed down that long steel lane for shore.

  Simultaneously from the upper deck of the LST, another truck started across a gangway to a pier ramp leading downward. Soon from both inside the LST and from its upper deck, two streams of trucks were flowing ashore, to be meshed together at the floating roadway entrance and from there to continue in one steady traffic line without a stop across the half-mile Whale roadway to the shore entrance to the nearby Vierville Draw. In minutes from the time they had rolled off the LST, they were vanishing from our sight inland past those shattered casemates on the shoulders of the Vierville Draw, which ten days before one approached from sea only at the cost of his life.

  In less than forty minutes from the time it had made its approach, that LST, completely unloaded, was lifting its ramp, closing its bow doors, and shoving clear again, bound back for the Near Shore and another load of vehicles.

  It is dubious if ever a Broadway opening played to a more absorbed first-night audience than the one watching the startling performance of the Mulberry pierhead in unloading that LST. From generals down to G.I.’s, everybody roundabout got a tremendous lift. And not the least among those uplifted were the men of Force Mulberry. Their bit had been thankless, the forces afloat had uniformly ignored them when they needed a hand, but there before everybody now was the proof of the pudding. It all worked wonderfully—breakwaters, Lobnitz pierheads, floating roadways.

  Shortly another LST was berthed that this time carried a cargo of General Sherman tanks. Like its predecessor it came up to the pierhead, swiftly opened its doors and dropped its ramp. Again came the roar of engines as the first tank, battle-ready, crawled up the ramp onto the pierhead, its grim-faced driver in padded leather helmet peering out his opened hatch just under the tank gun, its helmeted tank commander just as grim with head protruding from the hatch on top. That tank was immediately ready for combat. Within the hour, it most likely would be in action, so close was the front to the beach.

  But that was not yet. For that tank had still to get ashore over a roadway floating on pontoons many of which had never been designed to bear any such load as that of this battle-loaded 38 ton Sherman tank. And in spite of mathematics and all the calculations in the world, till actually it had been done, there was no absolute assurance that under the strain the overloaded pontoons might not submerge or collapse.

  I was standing on the pierhead, blocking access to the Whale roadway leading ashore as that tank lumbered up to it. The tank stopped. I stepped up to the driver. I was going to go backward all the way over the half-mile bridge between his tank and the shore; he was to follow in my footsteps though always fifty feet behind and to keep his eye on me. But I would not be keeping an eye on him; both my eyes were going to be over my own right shoulder, keeping an eye on the next pontoon astern of me to see how it behaved as the load of the tank came onto it. And should I hold up my hand, he was to stop instantly, prepared to back. And should I wave him back, there was to be no hesitation; he must back immediately or all of us and the roadway would submerge. So in that fashion we got underway—an odd procession led by a naval officer walking backward with his head twisted over one shoulder, followed at an interval of fifty feet by a Sherman tank with clanking treads, and tailed by a long string of more tanks all cautiously keeping two truss lengths apart.

  It was a little nerve-racking as I strained my eyes over my shoulder to watch the first 25 ton pontoon completely submerge its straight sides as the load of that approaching first tank began to come on it from the first truss. And decidedly more nerve-racking as with one hand ready to shoot up in the air to halt the oncoming tank, I watched the water flooding steadily up over that cabochon-shaped pontoon top as the tank got nearer and nearer to the end of the truss resting on that pontoon and under the increasing overload the pontoon sank deeper a
nd deeper.

  But it was all right. The tank came slowly on till it was squarely over the pontoon and the maximum load it could exert was laid on—all 38 tons of it—and enough of that cabochon was still protruding above the sea to give a slight margin of safety—nothing any engineer would want to accept in times of peace, but this was wartime.

  I waved to the tank—I should turn about and we’d speed up now to a normal walk. It was all right, but still I’d go all the way with him. So walking as fast as I could, somewhere around four miles an hour, I continued, with that steel roadway undulating oddly beneath my feet as the pontoons went deeper each time a tank came directly over, and bobbed back to normal as it passed.

  At the far end of the roadway, I stepped down on the sand of the Omaha Beach. The tank behind me rolled off also onto the sand, speeded up, and headed for the road up the nearby Vierville Draw. I waved “Good luck!” to the driver as he went on by me but he didn’t see it. His tense eyes were fixed only on that road up the battle-scarred draw, and his mind no doubt only on the battleline which lay so close beyond in Normandy.

  Tank after tank now rolled off the weaving roadway and went on by me as I stood there at the end of our Mulberry highway into France, waving them goodby. And as I watched at close range the grim faces of the helmeted heads of the tank crews going by, I saw immediately what was the only possible end now to the battle for France. Twelve hours before, those tanks now rolling into battle just behind our beachhead had been in England. If now we lost one of them in action, within twelve hours we could land its replacement on French soil. But if Rommel lost a tank, with our fighter planes interdicting all road traffic in France by day and with all the bridges across the Seine knocked out already, it would be at least a month before Rommel, moving a tank surreptitiously by night, could ever get a replacement tank from somewhere behind his Siegfried Line four hundred miles away up to the line of battle in Normandy.