Voices from D-Day

by Jon E. Lewis

  The training had its desired effect. The men of June 1944 were at the peak of their physical preparedness. The comments of this commando can stand for many.

  W. Emlyn ‘Taffy’ Jones, Commando Signal Troop, 1st Special Service Brigade

  I stood in a pub in London, bought a pint and looked around and thought to myself, ‘I could clear this lot out of here if I wanted to.’ It wasn’t that I wanted to, but I felt so fit, so full of confidence, that I could handle anything.

  But a question mark hung over the combat and mental readiness of the thousands of US infantry – few of whom had any experience of war for real – pouring into Britain at the rate of tens of thousands a month in the build-up to Overlord. Accompanying General Eisenhower to the US training ground at Slapton Sands in Devon, his aide confided his worries to his diary.

  Captain H.C. Butcher, aide to Eisenhower

  Diary, 4 April 1944

  I am concerned over the absence of toughness and alertness of young American officers whom I saw on this trip. They are as green as growing corn. How will they act in battle and how will they look in three months’ time?

  And it was at Slapton Sands that the Americans suffered their greatest training tragedy. A force of nine German E-boats intercepted the American landing craft, sinking them in a duck-shoot. On the harbourside when the Americans returned was a young British sailor.

  William Seymour, RN

  A large American craft came into Poole; it was quite a mess. Six hundred of them [Americans] had been killed, and some of them were on this ship. I saw a number of bodies being carried to shore. It put us off a bit. Until then we hadn’t really worried about war.

  Not all of the training for the assault on Fortress Europe involved water. Huge areas of farmland were given over to infantry and tank exercises, so the ‘dog-faces’ and the Tommies could undertake realistic training for the battles which would come in Normandy after they got off the beaches and into the countryside. Farmers whose land was requisitioned for these exercises were seldom pleased, particularly if the Occupiers happened to be American.

  Anonymous woman farmer, Berkshire

  The troops would arrive in luxury coaches in the morning, leaving them to block the lane all day, walk down the hill to the battle area (apparently American soldiers don’t march) and begin the battle. Unfortunately they seldom warned me that they were coming, so sometimes we were at work, ploughing, drilling, threshing and so on in their area, and had to abandon work and beat a hasty retreat to avoid the bullets and shells, all of which was very annoying and disorganizing … I don’t know how many of their people got shot, it was a miracle they never shot any of us … I once saw them using a flame-thrower, a ghastly weapon, and they completely burned up a little spinney with it.

  It was not just farmers who disliked the ‘Yanks’. One opinion poll found them more unpopular among the British public than Mussolini. As far as the British were concerned, the Americans ‘were oversexed, overpaid, and over here’. For their part the Americans thought the ‘Limeys’ aloof – at least initially – but tended to admire their ‘pluck’.

  Anonymous GI, 1st Infantry Division

  You always had the feeling that the Brits were looking down their nose at you. It didn’t matter how low-born they were themselves. They obviously thought every Yank was a hick, a country cousin with no breeding. Someone actually used that word with me once, ‘breeding’. They weren’t exactly friendly, the men especially, but it improved after a while, when we’d rubbed shoulders a bit.

  There was one section of the Great British Public which liked the Americans without reserve. Kids found their easy manners, their relative affluence, and their stylishness near-magnetic.

  John Keegan, schoolboy

  How different they looked from our own jumble-sale-quality champions, beautifully clothed in smooth khaki as fine in cut and quality as a British 0fficer’s … and armed with glistening, modern, automatic weapons. Thompson sub-machine guns, Winchester carbines, Garand self-loading rifles. More striking still were the number, size and elegance of the vehicles in which they paraded about the countryside in stately convoy.

  The British Army’s transport was a sad collection of underpowered makeshifts, whose dun paint flaked from their tin-pot bodywork. The Americans travelled in magnificent olive-green, pressed-steel, four-wheel-drive juggernauts, decked with what car salesmen would call optional extras of a sort never seen on their domestic equivalents – deep-treaded spare tyres, winches, towing cables, fire extinguishers. There were towering GMC six-by-sixes, compact and powerful Dodge four-by-fours, and, pilot fishing the rest or buzzing nimbly about the lanes on independent errands like the beach buggies of an era still thirty years ahead, tiny and entrancing jeeps, caparisoned with whiplash aerials and sketchy canvas hoods which drummed with the rhythm of a cowboy’s saddlebags rising and falling to the canter of his horse across the prairie.

  John G. Coleman, schoolboy

  At that time I was about 12 years old and recall the massive presence of American troops camped on the Penllwyn at Pontllanfraith. We used to rush home from school at Libanus, have our tea and rush straight up to the American or ‘Yankee Camp’, as we called it, with my mother’s wicker shopping basket. The reason for the shopping basket was, the Yanks loved our fish and chips and we would take their orders and go down to Burris’s Fish Shop, get a basketful and run like hell back to the camp, which was about a mile away. When we returned to the camp and distributed the fish and chips, we would be paid with Lucky Strike or Camel cigarettes. After we had had our puff, we would rub our fingers in the grease on the bottom of the basket, lick it off our fingers to hide the smell of smoke on our breath.

  Across the English Channel Erwin Rommel and his men were also preparing for, even looking forward to, the forthcoming conflagration.

  Field Marshal Erwin Rommel

  Letter to his wife, 27 April 1944

  It looks as though the British and Americans are going to do us the favour of keeping away for a bit. This will be of immense value for our coastal defences, for we are now growing stronger every day – at least on the ground, though the same is not true for the air. But even that will change to our advantage again some time.

  My little dog is touchingly affectionate and loves sweet things. He sleeps in my room now, underneath my luggage stand. He’s going to be inoculated soon against distemper. Went riding again yesterday, but I’m feeling my joints pretty badly today.

  Still no signs of the British and Americans … Every day, every week … we get stronger … I am looking forward to the battle with confidence.

  Gefreiter Werner Kortenhaus, 21st Panzer Division, aged 19

  In April 1944 we were still stationed in Brittany but were then moved to the area of Caen at the end of the month. I believe that this was at the order of Rommel himself. In the weeks that followed we actually occupied ourselves less with military training, but more with manual work because we had to dig holes in which to bury our tanks, so that only the gun barrel was above the earth. It was very strenuous physical work for young people, and when we had finished that, there were still the lorries and munition stores to dig in. And added to all this was also the fact that the large flat plains where we were were expected to be a site for enemy air landings, so we stuck lots of trees – chopped down trees – vertically into the earth. We called these ‘Rommel asparagus’, because it was Rommel who had ordered them. The point of them was that nobody could land on the flat plains without accident. We did all this as well as our usual army work.

  Then, in May, the load became even greater because our guard duties were very, very much stepped up. Every day we had to run patrols. At the end of the month the weather was very hot – and we expected the invasion then, we were prepared for it – the only question was whether it would come in our sector or somewhere else.

  Our tanks were very well prepared; that was one thing we did not have to worry about. We had spent months and months previously getting them ready
. We knew our tanks, we had full command of them. The technical side of things was something which interested us young men. We were, though, not able to carry out many exercises because we always had to be frugal with petrol and also with ammunition. On shooting exercises perhaps only one or two shots would be fired. For the real thing, though, we were fully equipped, with about 100 shells for each panzer. Our big problem was rationing of food, and the quality of the food, something a lot of people complained about. Often we had potatoes which were so bad we had to throw them away. Sometimes we bought some provisions, such as eggs and butter, from the French. The French were a bit aloof, a bit isolated, but we were very, very concerned that nothing untoward should happen. If something like a theft occurred, the offender would be very, very heavily punished and locked up.

  Yet, even with the workload and the poor provisions, morale was actually quite good in our unit. Because we had spent so many months together and had celebrated together – Christmas and birthdays – we became a good team. I know I and most of my friends did not give a thought to political things, though we were already a bit sceptical about how the war would pan out for Germany. After all, we had already had Stalingrad and El Alamein, so weren’t totally confident about the situation as a whole, but we assumed we would be able to push back a sea landing. Indeed, we took it for granted. You know, people are amazed by this but we young panzer men were burning at the thought we were perhaps going to be involved in some action. Of course, we had no idea what that would mean. No idea at all.

  In Britain in late April military leave was cancelled and the Allied troops who would cross the channel were slowly moved into huge assembly camps along the south coast, which were guarded by grimfaced ‘Snowdrops’ (American MPs – military police) and ‘Red Caps’ (British MPs). Large signs dotted the perimeter of these camps, warning: DO NOT LOITER. CIVILIANS MUST NOT TALK TO MILITARY PERSONNEL. The country began to resemble a vast military encampment. The movement of the men involved – fourteen British divisions, twenty American divisions, three Canadian, one Polish, one French division and thousands of commandos and support units – choked the narrow roads with trucks, tanks, field guns and jeeps (accidents were common). In the ports the build-up of craft was no less impressive.

  Lance-Corporal R.M. Wingfield, Queen’s Royal Regiment

  When we returned from Embarkation Leave, they were sharpening bayonets.

  ‘Guess who?’ leered the Armourer Sergeant.

  … We stood rigidly to attention before our kit. A sergeant stepped forward.

  ‘The Company Commander will now inspect you and your kit for the last time before you go overseas. He is a man of vast experience. He will ask each of you a question of vital importance to see if you are really ready for battle. You must know the answer to that question. It may save your life one day.’

  The Major looked at my kit and walked all the way round me. He now stood before me. I stared, frozen-faced, at his Adam’s apple. It moved.

  ‘How many needles in that housewife [sewing kit] of yours?’

  … The train pulled slowly out of Halesworth Station. Our old Platoon Sergeant, grim-faced, saluted.

  ‘Gawd!’ said someone. ‘He’ll be presenting arms in honour of the dead next!’

  As the train gathered speed past the end of the platform, we saw a sentry at the ‘Present’.

  We felt ill.

  Captain Philip Burkinshaw, 12th Yorkshire Parachute Battalion

  It was about this time that my father, mindful of the fact that the 2nd Front must be imminent and expecting that my division would be in the van of any attack, had procured for me at considerable expense a canvas covered breastplate, the strength of which he proceeded to test with the most powerful and penetrating weapons in his armoury of pistols and revolvers! He was an avid collector of all kinds of small arms from the early Colts onwards.

  Having satisfied himself that it would withstand almost anything the enemy could bring to bear on it, he handed it over to me when I was home on a short leave in April 1944 and advised that once in action I should never leave it off. Suffice it for me to say that had I followed his advice and been inclined to emulate Don Quixote, I would, accoutred as I already was with over half a hundredweight of equipment, guns, grenades and ammunition, never have risen from the Normandy soil!

  George Collard, 1st RM Armoured Support Regiment, aged 23

  In April we moved from Corsham to Lord Mountbatten’s Estate near Romsey in Hampshire. The move was by road, and the Royal Marine tanks must have looked a little odd with ration boxes and five naval hammocks lashed up behind the turret.

  Going through Devizes, near the Moonraker public house, was a high wall belonging to a large house. Our tank, driven by a three-badge Royal Artillery man, left the road and promptly crashed through the wall. When passing through in later years I’ve often tried to check where it was repaired.

  Trooper Peter Davies, 1st East Riding Yeomanry

  Tanks, lorries and everything was lined up on the roads of every town and village that we went into down on the South Coast. Streets, roads – all filled both sides with military vehicles.

  Sub-Lieutenant Alun Williams, RNVR

  About six weeks before D-Day I moved to Dartmouth to take charge of the minesweeping base there, and I found the transformation staggering. The width of the Dart appeared to have been halved by LST after LST moored alongside one another, manned by US Navy personnel. My abiding recollection is that endless records of Glenn Miller and his band were played over the public address equipment of such ships, presumably to boost the morale of the homesick American troops.

  Bombardier Richard ‘Dickie’ Thomas, RA

  We were put into a field – marched into a field, I should say – which was completely surrounded by barbed wire, to make sure we didn’t get out. We didn’t have the foggiest idea what was going on. It was a good 8 foot of barbed wire.

  Alan Melville, RAF war correspondent

  Our assembly camp was in Hampshire, near a little village called Hambledon. One day I want to go back to it and see it as it really is: I imagine a very pleasant place. But by May it had been completely engulfed by preparations for the invasion. Three-ton lorries, trucks, tanks and jeeps lined its meandering main street and every house had three or four vehicles attached to it by camouflage nets, like barnacles on the side of a ship. The roads were a mass of signs directing military traffic to the many camps and headquarters in the district, and military policemen were at every crossroad. The dear old English village bobby had wisely decided that the whole thing was beyond him, and had thrown in the sponge. The nature of the countryside was ideal for concealing huge quantities of men and supplies: rolling hills covered with glorious woods. I can’t remember a lovelier spring: the lilac and laburnum were so heavily blossomed that they were bent almost double; the fruit trees, even though they had been caught by a late frost, still made a wonderful show. But, however hard one concentrated on the setting, it was impossible to get away from what was being hatched in it. If you looked long enough at the laburnum, you realized that an amphibious Jeep was tucked away behind its yellow bunches of bloom; if you wanted to admire the tulips in somebody’s garden, you had to wedge your way between a couple of tanks in order to lean up against the garden fence. The King came down one day to inspect troops: several thousand of them were drawn up in a great green well formed by a dip in the hills. When the first part of the inspection was over, the men of the Armoured Brigades concerned in it were allowed to fall out until the rest of the ceremony had finished. I had been watching the King walk along the long lines of Lord Lovat’s special brand of Commandos, and hadn’t noticed the others falling out. I thought at first, on looking back at the hillside, that it was completely covered in rhododendrons. Then I realized that it was completely covered with men. There was a solid mass of them, only distinguishable as human beings when the sun glinted on some buttons or on someone wearing glasses. It was like that all over the south of England in the days before
the balloon went up: the rhododendrons were as plentiful as ever, but they were crowded out by men in uniform.

  Life in the assembly camps was a round of training, equipment preparation (including more waterproofing of vehicles), briefings, reviews by dignitaries and a desperate battle against boredom. The men also learnt for the first time that their destination was France.

  Lance-Corporal R.M. Wingfield, Queen’s Royal Regiment

  The first thing which met our eyes was a large board giving details of the ever-open NAAFI and the continuous film show. This should have put us on our guard, but our suspicions were finally confirmed when … we marched to our quarters. There, beneath the trees, were neat two-man tents, each with two American Army cots – and sheets.

  ‘Lofty’ stared, then roared:

  ‘I’ll bet we’re not here long. The condemned man ate a hearty bloody breakfast!’

  He was right.

  P.H.B. Pritchard, No. 6 Commando, 1st Special Brigade

  We were eight to a tent and slept on canvas folding beds with US Army issue woollen blankets which impressed us with their quality, as did everything the US issued. Each group of four tents had a urinal bucket for night use. These were emptied by a US private wearing gloves, who used to grumble, ‘When I left the States I thought I was going to be a soldier, but here I am emptying p—s buckets. I guess the folks back home will call me chicket s—t!’ So we nicknamed him that!

  …

  At nights we were shown the latest films from America and the food was generally very good and plentiful. Our other spare moments were spent in reading US-Army-issued novels by Steinbeck or Hemingway and other such authors. Also for those so inclined there were the inevitable, and endless, games of ‘two up’ (Australian swy) which was extremely popular in No. 6 Commando generally. I did not indulge and neither did my chum Gunner Puttick (Royal Artillery); we just read the books and had our hair cut by Corporal Draper (‘Ginger’), using a comb and a pair of nail scissors.

  …

  We paraded on a road by lining each side in single file. H.M. [His Majesty], I seem to remember, walked between our ranks, and spoke with several soldiers (not me unfortunately). In the same park various tanks and other vehicles all of special design, i.e. Flails, Crocodile, AVREs, [Armoured Vehicle Royal Engineers, a modified Churchill tank] etc., were parked under trees. I understand that these were also for inspection by H.M. To be inspected by the King was regarded as a great honour, which indeed it was.