by Mark Zuehlke
Meanwhile, Lieutenant William Little, commander of ‘A’ Squadron’s No. 5 Troop, launched off another LCT. Waves immediately broached the canvas screen and two of the Sherman’s five engines sputtered and died. Corporal Jim Paisley, the driver, assumed water had shorted out some electronics. Bursts of machine-gun fire tore through the screen just above the water line, but the tank remained buoyant.19
Back on the LCT from which Little’s tank had just launched, the remaining two tanks in his troop were still waddling towards the ramp when a nearby rocket ship fired a salvo. Trooper Stan “Fish” Seneco, the driver of Corporal Harv Stanfield’s tank, watched with growing horror as the salvo pushed the rocket ship back with such force that a small tidal wave was created. Seconds later, that wave smashed into Little’s tank and demolished the canvas screen, causing it to immediately sink. To Seneco’s relief, all five tankers soon bobbed to the surface, but then a spray of blood spurted out of Trooper G.H.S. Hawken’s body and the man, who had only recently joined No. 5 Troop as a reinforcement, sank below the surface and did not reappear.20
Deciding to delay launching the tanks still aboard the LCT until it was closer to shore, the naval commander ordered the craft to steam past the survivors of Little’s tank. Although there were numerous small rescue power launches nearby, none attempted to pick up the four men because priority was given to saving fully intact tank crews for delivery ashore. Finally, when one launch passed close by at about 1000 hours, Little threatened its crew with his pistol, with the result that the men were picked up.21
While ‘A’ Squadron managed to launch only ten of its nineteen DD tanks, all of ‘B’ Squadron got away. Lieutenant Bruce Deans immediately reported complete engine failure and ordered his tank abandoned as it foundered. Major J.S. Duncan tried to form the remaining tanks in a line for a kind of six-knot cavalry charge to shore, but the heaving seas left each tank crew fending just to keep afloat and heading roughly towards assigned touchdown points. Sergeant Léo Gariépy was about thirty yards off Duncan’s port side when the strut holding up one of his rear sections of canvas broke. Gariépy’s crew prevented the screen’s total collapse by hastily wedging a fire extinguisher between it and the tank hull. Small-arms fire from the beach showered the tank. Then two great pillars of water shot up around Duncan’s tank and it just disappeared. Gariépy noted that “there were only four heads in the water.” Duncan and his crew, save Trooper R.E. Tofflemire, who drowned, were later rescued by an LCT and returned to England. Looking over his shoulder and seeing the other tanks still churning towards the beach, Gariépy led the way in.22
MIXED IN AMONG THE DD tanks were the LCAs bearing the Royal Winnipegs and Regina Rifles. Standing in the front of his assault craft, Major Fulton thought, “there was all the noise in the world” around him. Fulton was watching the beach, trying to pick out through the smoke and dust cloaking it where his landing point was situated. The major wanted ‘D’ Company’s headquarters section to set down precisely in order to ensure that he could effectively gain immediate control over his platoons. Suddenly something started whacking against the steel hull of the LCA and with a start Fulton realized it was German small-arms fire. “Then you’d see a big spout of water come up and it dawned on me it was artillery fire and this wasn’t going to be a surprise. The Germans were awake and waiting for us.”23
Off to the east, the Queen’s Own Rifles and North Shore regiments were well ahead of the Fort Garry Horse squadrons that were to have preceded them to the beach because of the time lost when it was decided not to launch the tanks until they were almost ashore. CSM Charlie Martin was shocked to discover, as the LCAs carrying the two assault companies drew closer to the beach, that the great armada standing off Normandy was no longer visible nor were there any aircraft overhead. All he could see were the regiment’s ten little boats formed in a line across a 1,500-yard front. Ahead, the houses and buildings of Bernières-sur-Mer were visible. No fire was coming from the German fortifications. In fact, for a few minutes a deathly quiet prevailed that added an eerie sense of unreality. As the LCAs closed on the beach, they started moving farther apart, each making for an assigned landfall point. To Martin’s right, he could see a concrete breakwater and line of rocks jutting out into the water. Suddenly, a single machine gun opened up from shore and a piece of metal chipped off the LCA by a bullet slashed Rifleman Cy Harden’s cheek open. A sailor quickly slapped a bandage on the wound and shouted, “If that’s the worst you get, you’ll be lucky.”24
While the Germans defending Bernières-sur-Mer held fire until the Queen’s Own had practically touched down in order to avoid betraying their positions, those at St. Aubin-sur-Mer opened up with everything they had while the North Shore Regiment was still well out. In Lance Corporal Gerry Cleveland’s LCA, the men were still gawking at the beach, trying to make out their objective among the row of shell-battered houses that were visible through the drifting smoke, when machine-gun rounds started hammering the ramp in the front. Everyone sat down quick to get below the protection offered by the armoured gunwales.25
Lieutenant Charles Richardson’s platoon of ‘B’ Company had treated the initial run in as nothing more serious than another training scheme. His men were in high spirits, nobody suffering sickness despite the rough seas, and loudly singing bawdy popular songs. “Now, this is number one, and the fun has just begun. Roll me over, lay me down, and do it again,” they belted out lustily.26 Before they could break into the chorus of “Roll Me Over,” an armour-piercing round sliced through the front of the LCA and a chunk of shrapnel struck Private P. White in the chest, knocking him sideways but only winding the man. There was a deathly silence. Richardson looked at the thirty-nine men under his command and the expressions on their faces told him that they now understood this was serious business.27
That war was no laughing matter had been rammed home to Richardson by the drowning death of his older brother, James Stanley Richardson, in a tragically ill-conceived demonstration exercise on July 2, 1942, when twenty officer cadets attempted to swim Ottawa’s Rideau Canal. Intended to promote the newly declared Army Week, the swim was attended by National Defence Minister J.L. Ralston and attracted hundreds of onlookers. The young men had dropped into the canal burdened by full battle gear, including forty-pound packs and rifles. No safety precautions were in place to rescue any of the cadets who should falter during the twenty-yard swim. Many ran into difficulty and five were fished unconscious from the water. Two of these, James Richardson and Raymond Lawton Roberts, died. Richardson had been just shy of his twenty-second birthday.28
The younger Charlie had been a lance corporal at the time with no ambition to enter officer training. Following his brother’s death, however, he was encouraged by senior North Shore officers to take the admission tests and become what Jim no longer could. Deeply affected by his brother’s death and by that of a close cousin, Marvin Black, who had fallen during the Commonwealth defeat at Hong Kong in December 1941, Richardson agreed. He rejoined the North Shores as a lieutenant just a few months after Doug Black, Marvin’s brother and a tail gunner in an RCAF bomber, was shot down and killed over Belgium. Doug had been his age, Marvin the same age as Jim, and the two Blacks as close as his own brother. Richardson grimly decided in the aftermath of these tragedies that, as the war had taken the other three, it surely wasn’t “going to take the whole four of us… I had the feeling I was going to come through.” But it was hard to be confident of personal survival when suddenly there were German shells whistling right over his head as he hunkered down in the LCA and anxiously waited to hit the beach.29
On the North Shores’ right flank, Lance Corporal Gerry Cleveland had a Bren gunner, Private Gilbert Duke, stick the muzzle of his weapon through an open slot next to the front ramp so he could fire back at a German MG that was raking the craft with bullets. They were about two hundred yards from touchdown and the little LCA’s engine strained forward under full power. Tracers from the German gunner flicked overhead in cluster
s. “Fire! Fire!” Cleveland yelled at Duke, but the man just stood there with the butt of the Bren in his shoulder as if paralyzed.30
Down the entire length of Juno Beach, German fire was thickening, making it abundantly clear that the massive naval, artillery, and aerial bombardment had failed to even dent the beach defences. Queen’s Own Rifleman Doug Hester turned to his comrade Doug Reed as their LCA approached the shore and said, “There’s the church. I thought it wasn’t supposed to be there.” The steeple, which dominated the shoreline, was to have been blown off to prevent its use as an observation and machine-gun position. It stood defiant, showing nothing more than a couple of superficial shell scars on its exterior. Then the two riflemen saw the five pillboxes positioned on the seawall, each spitting tracer fire their way, and knew a tough job lay ahead.31
An after-action analysis of the bombardment by the Royal Navy gloomily concluded that only 14 per cent of 106 German positions targeted by naval guns were put out of action and most of these fell prey to the close-range fire from the destroyers. The Combined Operations Headquarters Special Observer Party concurred. “All evidence shows that the defences were NOT [emphasis theirs] destroyed.” Most of the fire had been widely scattered and the bombs dropped during the aerial bombardment were found to have largely landed well inland. However, a great deal of explosives had struck the towns indiscriminately. St. Aubin-sur-Mer’s foreshore buildings were determined to have been 90 per cent destroyed, most totally collapsed by shell strikes. The remainder of the town had suffered damage ranging between 30 and 40 per cent. Bernières-sur-Mer and Courseulles-sur-Mer were more fortunate, but those buildings still standing were capable of being used as defensive positions. As for the rocket fire, it was found to have been more noise and bluster than useful. It was hoped rather forlornly that the entire massive bombardment might at least have served to dampen German morale and in that way made the going easier for the assault forces, but there was no hard evidence to support this.32
Also unscathed were the obstacles barring access to the beach. Royal Canadian Navy Lieutenant Russell Choat had cast off from the Llandovery Castle with a platoon of Regina Rifles aboard his LCA, which was part of the 557th Landing Craft Flotilla, Royal Marines. The eighteen LCAs were arrayed in three rows of six craft each, with Choat as the navigation officer in the centre of the second row, from which position he could control the move to shore. When they had started the run in, the beach had been so wreathed in smoke it had been hard for Choat to detect the beachfront hotel in the centre of Courseulles that was his aiming point. But as they drew closer he had no problem matching it to the recognition photos memorized during ceaseless hours of training. His goal was to hit the beach right in front of it.
There was a surprising amount of fire coming his way and the Reginas were crouched right down for cover. Choat and his coxswain didn’t have that luxury. They hunched behind the thin armoured screen and struggled to keep the LCA on track in the rough seas. The lieutenant thought the man in the most dangerous position was actually his engineer, who had to sit right between the two Ford V-8 engines that powered the craft and monitor their operation. If the LCA hit a mine, the explosion was predicted to tear the bottom out of it and rip the two engines free of their moorings so that the man would likely end up with a massive engine crushing his lap. Choat was actually surplus to the craft’s operation, there only to control the flotilla’s navigation. On most of the other LCAs there was just the coxswain and engineer.
The LCA was only one hundred yards from touchdown when a 40-millimetre shell “knocked a small hole in the bow just where the ramp hinged with the main hull,” Choat later recounted. “This effectively forced water through the hole at greater volumes than would be normal and the boat started to sink.” The LCA pressed on, settling as it did, to within twenty yards of the beach when it lost way. Choat ordered the Reginas off. The soldiers piled down the ramp into waist-deep water and started sluggishly wading towards shore under the weight of their gear. Choat and the marines shut down the engines, then jumped into the water and sloshed towards the dubious safety of land.33
NOT ONLY THE INFANTRY LCAS were struggling to get ashore, the DD tanks of the 1st Hussars were still battering their way in against the might of the unrelentingly rough seas. The winds continued to howl and the waves battered the canvas screens with punishing blows. Nineteen-year-old Trooper Bill Bury was the co-driver in Sergeant James Malcolm “Ace” Bailey’s tank, which had launched from the same LCT that had carried Major Duncan and the rest of ‘B’ Squadron. The Hamilton-born Bury was seasick, as were the rest of the crew. Fearing the waves were going to break the struts holding up the screens, Bailey ordered Bury, gunner Al Williams, and loader/operator Larry Allen to come out of the tank and support them. But when they were a few hundred yards out, machine-gun rounds started ricocheting off the water around them and the three men jumped back inside. Bailey dropped down into the turret and used a periscope to look over the top of the screen so that he could continue steering the tank in the right direction. Suddenly, the tank’s treads were churning on sand and the crew knew they were ashore. Almost immediately, Bailey ordered the tank halted and the screens dropped to enable the main gun to be used against enemy targets.34
Fortuitously, the tank had grounded right between two concrete pillbox positions that had been constructed so their firing ports looked down the length of the beach rather than out to sea. This enabled them to fire on anything trying to cross the beach to reach Courseulles-sur-Mer and also rendered the positions virtually impervious to any seaward shellfire. Each pillbox was armed with a small artillery piece and a machine gun, so they could smother the beach with withering fire. The Germans inside either pillbox, however, were unable to bring these guns to bear on Bailey’s tank.
Trooper Williams started blasting away at any German targets Bailey identified. Every time Trooper Allen fed another 75-millimetre round into the breech, the stench of cordite and smoke filling the turret caused him to throw up because of the lingering effect of his sea-sickness. Everyone in the tank was so focussed on bringing effective fire down on the Germans, they failed to notice that the tide was rising around them until water gushed into the engine compartment and drowned several of the motors. Then Bury reported that water was rising in the driver and co-driver compartments. When Bailey ordered the tank moved further up the beach, the still functioning motors proved too gutless to power the thirty-five-ton Sherman out of the mushy sand. They were stranded, but decided to stay inside the tank and keep firing the gun until the seawater threatened to drown them all.35
Bearing down on the beach nearby was the LCT with the ramp that had earlier lost its lift chains. Suddenly, this boat struck a mine that ripped a hole in its bottom and set it listing hard to port. Sergeant F.B. “Sailor” Kenyon managed to launch his tank off the damaged ramp, but shrapnel shredded parts of Corporal Harv Stanfield’s screen and the moment his tank hit the water it began sinking. His driver, Stan Seneco, frantically tried to get out of his compartment’s hatch but the Davis Escape Apparatus made him too bulky to get through it. He dropped back into the compartment, ripped the escape vest off, and then floated to the surface. A non-swimmer, Seneco clung grimly to the top of the tank turret, which for the moment was still above the surface and seemed to be kept buoyant by some of the screen’s inflated tubes.
Beside him, loader/radio operator Trooper Nicholls suddenly cried out, “I forgot to turn the radio off.” The man dove headfirst through the turret hatch into the completely flooded tank interior and returned a moment later to report that he had been successful in his mission. Nobody had the heart to tell him it had been a pointless thing to do, for it was part of their training to never leave the tank unmanned with the radio on, running down the batteries.
Looking to shore, Seneco saw Corporal J.M. Kay’s Sherman still in the water and almost on the beach when its DD screen started deflating.36 Shot in the stomach on the run in, Kay had initiated the deflating process prematurely. W
ithin seconds, the tank was swamped and the rising tide forced the crew to bail out.37 As the men climbed out of the turret, German machine guns opened up from three sides. Seneco watched helplessly as bullets cut Kay, Trooper E.S. Sinclair, and Trooper J.L. Jackson “to ribbons.”38 Trying to avoid the bullets, Trooper J.W. Forbes was smashed into an obstacle post by waves and suffered back injuries that paralyzed him. The driver, Corporal Stephen Runolfson, managed to help Forbes ashore and then went back into the sea repeatedly to rescue other wounded men in danger of being drowned. He was awarded the Military Medal.39
Despite the heavy gunfire striking the water around Stanfield’s half-sunken tank, Trooper Oscar E. Smith and Seneco decided to risk inflating the dinghy strapped on the Sherman’s hull for fear they would otherwise drown. As Smith climbed aboard the bright orange dinghy, a wave suddenly swept it away. Seneco was dragged along clinging to its side for a bit but then lost his grip. He was left struggling to keep afloat, waving his arms and legs ineffectually in the rough seas. For some reason Seneco could never later explain, he paused in his struggles to carefully remove his pistol from its holster and stow it inside his jacket next to a thick wad of cash he had won off the other men in poker games during the crossing to Normandy.
Stanfield obviously remembered the cash, too. He started yelling to Seneco, “Throw your money back. Fish, throw your money back.” Seneco knew that Stanfield thought he was going to drown any moment and, being a poor swimmer, was unable to do anything to rescue him, so he didn’t even think the corporal callous. Just as he was on the verge of sinking forever under the surface, a Davis Escape vest with “Fishey” written on it floated up and, hardly believing his good fortune, the trooper wrapped his arms around it. Floating on the current, Seneco drifted in front of the beaches until finally another tanker on one of the LCTs standing offshore was able to come over and rescue him in a dinghy. The rest of the crew managed to get safely ashore.40