Juno Beach

by Mark Zuehlke

  WHILE THE ARRIVAL of daylight greatly increased the likelihood that the scattered parties of paratroopers would be killed or captured by the many German units actively hunting them, it also made life more difficult for the small elements of Canadians who had successfully reached their objectives. At Robehomme, Captain Griffin’s band of about fifty troops from ‘B’ Company had withdrawn from the destroyed bridge into the clutch of rough houses and barns that constituted the village and were frantically fortifying the position in expectation of counterattacks.4

  Situated on a piece of high ground largely surrounded by land flooded by the German diversion of the River Dives and on one side by the river itself, the village was a good defensible position. Griffin set up a Vickers machine gun to cover the road and bridge and then distributed the rest of the force to ensure a 360-degree defensive ring around the small church whose tower served as an observation post. From its heights, Griffin could see Varaville and Bavent, about a half-mile to the northwest and north respectively.

  Bavent was a German base and within its streets Griffin could see troops mustering and then moving out towards Varaville, where the Canadian Parachute Battalion’s ‘C’ Company was to have destroyed a gun position at the nearby Le Grand Château de Varaville and secured the village. Hearing the distant sound of gunfire from Varaville, Griffin knew that at least some paratroops had reached that objective and were involved in a battle there. But he had no way of warning them that a German reaction force was headed their way.5

  Griffin’s men had barely completed digging in around the church when three trucks loaded with German troops appeared on the east bank of the river. Quickly piling off the vehicles, the Germans swarmed two paratroopers—privates L.E. “Doc” O’Leary and L.D. Ross—who had been standing guard there and took them prisoner. After spreading out in the thick brush near the riverbank, the Germans attempted to deter the Canadians from firing on the trucks by putting the captured men up on the hood of one vehicle to serve as human shields. They then tried to cross the river, apparently expecting that the presence of the two prisoners on the truck would ensure no reaction from the paratroopers in Robehomme.

  Instead, the paratroopers ripped into the Germans with deadly fire. In the ensuing gunfight, Ross was killed, but O’Leary managed to escape his captors and swim across the river to safety. When the Germans withdrew, they left behind numerous dead and, more importantly, weapons and ammunition that Griffin’s men quickly rounded up to bolster their depleted stocks. Private W.J. Brady was particularly pleased to be given a “German sniper’s rifle with lots of ammunition, telescope and cheek rest—the best!”6 The two sides hunkered down to scowl across the river at each other and pick away at anyone who moved with small-arms fire. At best, the situation was a stalemate, but the Germans had the surety of being able to eventually summon reinforcements.

  In the event, however, the scales tipped in favour of the Canadians, the sounds of gunfire serving as a beacon for lost paratroopers making their way out of the flooded terrain around the River Dives. Throughout the day, ever more men filtered in, ultimately adding another hundred men to the Canadian force’s strength before dawn of June 7. For their part, the Germans confined themselves to trying to infiltrate the village throughout the course of June 6, but without success. Still it was dangerous, anxious work for the men in the most advanced fighting holes to determine whether it was friend or foe approaching the lines. This became particularly difficult once darkness fell.7

  As the initial firefight had broken out at Robehomme, the paratroops holed up in Varaville and the gatehouse of Varaville Château overlooking the German strongpoint had also greeted the morning trading bullets with the enemy. In Varaville, Lieutenant Sam McGowan perched in the steeple of the village’s church, where he had established a platoon headquarters and around which his troops were dug in. Soon a party of German troops, possibly those from Bavent, were observed closing on the village through a small wood. As a German section started crossing a large bomb crater towards the churchyard, the paratroopers opened fire. Three of the enemy fell dead, while the others ran back into the woods. After digging in among the trees and several outlying farm buildings, the German force added its weight to the mortar, machine-gun, sniper, and artillery fire all being directed at McGowan’s men. Yet the Canadians suffered few casualties and noted that the Germans seemed content to merely harass them rather than trying to overwhelm the position with a direct attack.

  For their part, the paratroopers had neither the strength in manpower nor abundance of ammunition to even contemplate going on the offensive. McGowan was satisfied to sit tight and keep his men sniping at any Germans foolish enough to expose themselves.8The small force of paratroopers was soon being significantly assisted by many of Varaville’s villagers. Several women insisted on setting up an aid station in the church, where they bandaged the wounded as best they could with first-aid supplies the paratroopers had with them or with white sheets fetched from their homes. Some of the men volunteered to serve alongside the Canadians in the slit trenches and positions inside buildings. The paratroops gave one villager a maroon beret and rifle, after which he quickly demonstrated a deadly eye by killing three German snipers.9

  The situation at the château’s gatehouse, meanwhile, remained deadlocked. Captain John Hanson’s thirty-man force from ‘C’ Company was keeping the Germans pinned down in the concrete em-placement and trench system with sniper fire, but it was unlikely this situation could be sustained indefinitely. As the Germans were heavily armed with machine guns and the 75-millimetre artillery piece, going on the offensive was not an option. Taking stock of his situation, the captain determined that he had a single Bren gun, four Sten guns, twenty rifles, a couple of pistols, and a small number of grenades and Type 82 grenades. Nicknamed “Gammon bombs” after British para-troop Lieutenant Jock Gammon, who invented the explosive to provide airborne troops with a lightweight but effective antitank weapon, these were basically a canvas bag filled with two pounds of plastic explosives fitted with a tumbler fuse. When a protective plastic cap was removed to expose the detonator atop the fuse, the explosive would explode at the slightest motion or impact.10 Ideal for placing on roads to disable any passing tank, they were less functional as a thrown explosive and the German bunkers were out of range anyway.

  Private Esko Makela was packing the Bren gun. Since his welcome appearance a couple of hours earlier, he had set up a firing position in the room on the second floor next to the one in which Major Murray MacLeod and the others had been killed by the 75-millimetre shell. Standing a few feet back from the window—to prevent the Bren’s muzzle flash betraying his position—Makela had set the gun on single shot and was using it like a sniper rifle to shoot at the enemy. He had killed several men this way and was a major reason the Germans were keeping their heads well down.11

  Before dawn, Hanson had sent two men to le Mesnil crossroads to advise Lieutenant Colonel G.F. Bradbrooke of the situation at Varaville. He had also asked them to find out if the battalion’s 17-pound antitank gun had survived the landings and, if it had, to fetch it to the château. But it would be hours before he could expect any help from that quarter. The only advantage the Canadians enjoyed was that the Germans were as immobile as they were.

  Hanson was still pondering his options and getting nowhere, when help materialized in the unexpected form of thirty-year-old Mademoiselle Laura Hiervieux, who arrived at the gatehouse from her home in Varaville. The daughter of a French father and English mother, Hiervieux and her brother Rene had both been educated in England before the war. After the occupation, Rene had emerged as a leading figure in the local Resistance and just two days before the invasion had been forced to flee into a large forest near Bavent to escape a Gestapo squad. Hiervieux told Hanson that he faced about eighty heavily armed Germans amply supplied with ammunition and commanded by an Austrian major. However, she also knew some of the soldiers. While the non-commissioned officers were all Germans, the troops were mostly
Poles, Russians, and Romanians not particularly eager to die in the war.

  Offering to act as an intermediary, Hiervieux proceeded to establish contact with the enemy soldiers in the trench close to the gate-house and started urging them to surrender or the Allies would soon kill them. Calling to them from a window in the gatehouse, the Frenchwoman alternated between cajoling and haranguing the men, while the Canadians punctuated her remarks with gunfire aimed at the trench and apertures of the concrete bunker.12

  SOON AFTER Mademoiselle Hiervieux’s arrival, Corporal Dan Hartigan and Private Eddie Mallon, who had trekked through the night from Merville Battery to reach Varaville, also appeared. The two men had almost not made it. Dawn’s half-light had found them lying in a field across from the château trying to perceive whether there were any friendly forces there or not. At last, they ventured out in the field and were about halfway across when a group of soldiers suddenly materialized out of the misty haze that blanketed the area. “Punch,” Hartigan called fearfully and was relieved when someone answered, “Judy.”

  The troops proved to be British paratroopers from 3rd Parachute Brigade’s Headquarters group, of which the Canadian battalion was part. As far as the British soldiers had been able to tell, Varaville appeared to be in Canadian hands and any battle over. Relieved at this news, Hartigan and Mallon slung their rifles and strode nonchalantly towards the village, looking forward to a rest. They had passed the château and started up the lane leading to the gatehouse when some men from No. 7 Platoon, hunkered in the adjacent antitank ditch, shouted for them to get down. Training kicking in immediately, the two men dived headfirst into the ditch just in time to avoid being killed by a savage burst of machine-gun fire that ripped down the lane from a German position.

  Hartigan was shocked to learn that his company commander, Major Murray MacLeod, was dead and that a number of other men had been killed so far in the fight at the château. He was also disgusted by what he considered a wait-and-see attitude on Hanson’s part. Hartigan confronted Sergeant Mosher MacPhee and demanded that an assault on the position be launched. MacPhee eventually was persuaded to let Hartigan reconnoitre the German lines to see if there was a way in. The sergeant told the corporal he was agreeing to this mostly because Hartigan had with him a two-inch mortar that might provide sufficient firepower to open a gap in the wire, through which an assault force could get into the enemy defences.

  Hartigan stepped behind a big Lombardy poplar beside the ditch and peered around it to get a feel for the general layout of the German positions. Satisfied, he ducked back into the ditch a moment before the 75-millimetre gun banged loudly and an armour-piercing round “tore a slab like a railroad tie off the tree… Jagged chunks and shards of wood splayed around the ditch. None of us,” Hartigan later wrote, “were injured but some were badly bruised.”

  Undaunted, Hartigan crawled to the gatehouse and ascended to the second storey where Makela was sniping at the enemy. The Bren gunner had stacked some furniture in front of the window and was using it as an aiming rest for the machine gun. “Don’t go in there,” Makela warned as Hartigan opened the door to the room

  Southampton’s port, like many in southern England, was crammed to over-flowing by hundreds of landing craft. Taken on June 4, this photo shows many Landing Craft, Tanks loaded with trucks, tanks and other equipment bound for Juno Beach on D-Day. Frank L. Dubervill, NAC PA–132653.

  top left • At Camp Shilo, Manitoba, 1st Canadian Parachute Battalion troops faced gruelling, highly realistic training to prepare for their forthcoming role in the vanguard of the Allied invasion of Normandy. Here, paratroops advance through mock defensive positions in a live-fire exercise. NAC PA–209720.

  left • Personnel of the Royal Winnipeg Rifles on June 1, 1944, combat gear close at hand, in an embarkation camp awaiting loading onto the invasion ships. Donald I. Grant, NAC PA–132473.

  above • Spirits ran high aboard the multitude of landing craft onto which the men of 3rd Canadian Infantry Division were loaded for the crossing of the English Channel. The men jammed onto this LCT likely had no idea how rough and uncomfortable their trip would prove in the cramped space. Dennis Sullivan, NAC PA–129053.

  above • Telegraphist Stan Richardson (foreground with Lanchester gun) and Signaller L.D. “Duke” Fallon (rear with Bren gun) aboard HMCS Bayfield, using automatic fire to detonate German mines swept up during operations off the Normandy coast on D-Day. Photo courtesy of Stan Richardson.

  top right • Aboard HMCSPrince Henry, the Reverend Robert Seaborn leads a group of Royal Canadian Engineers in a prayer prior to their boarding a Landing Craft, Assault for the run into Juno Beach. Dennis Sullivan, NAC PA–129054.

  right •HMCSAlgonquin fires a broadside with its 4.7-inch guns against targets on the Normandy coast. Herb Nott, NAC PA–170770.

  above • Soldiers of Le Régiment de la Chaudière descending scramble nets from HMCSPrince David into LCAs on June 6. Richard Graham Arless, NAC PA–169304.

  top right • View from German gun position looking out at Juno Beach. Note the landing obstacles in the surf. Donald Grant, NAC PA–128792.

  right • Major Lochie Fulton, commander of Royal Winnipeg Rifles ‘D’ Company, would win the Distinguished Service Order for his bravery during the D-Day fighting. Donald I. Grant, NAC PA–131271.

  top left • Soldiers of the Highland Light Infantry wade through heavy surf towards the beach in front of Bernières-sur-Mer at 1140 hours on June 6. Gilbert Alexander Milne, NAC PA–137013.

  left • Canadian troops at St. Aubin-sur-Mer. The tank on the right is a Churchill mounted with a 14-inch petard gun. Frank L. Dubervill, NAC PA–128789.

  above • Highland Light Infantry troops eat a hasty meal aboard LCI(l) 299 while awaiting the order to land as part of the reserve 9th Canadian Infantry Brigade on D-Day morning. Gilbert Alexander Milne, NAC PA–136980.

  above • Just before noon on D-Day, Major General Rod Keller and his staff landed at Bernières-sur-Mer. Pictured left to right are Captain Charles Turton, Captain W.H. Seamark, Major General Rod Keller (wearing beret), and Brigadier Bob Wyman. Frank L. Dubervill, NAC PA–115534.

  top right • Canadian tank crews removing waterproofing from their tanks just off the beach. Ken Bell, NAC PA–132898.

  right • An anti-aircraft gun guards the beach on June 6. In front of it is a knocked-out Duplex-Drive tank with its screen collapsed. Frank L. Dubervill, NAC PA–132897.

  above • Canadian wounded lying behind the protection of a wall on Juno Beach in the afternoon of D-Day. Frank L. Dubervill, NAC PA–133971.

  top left • After completing its minesweeping operation in the advance of the invasion fleet, HMCSBayfield took up a position off the invasion beaches to await further orders. The beach in areas was completely obscured by fires burning ashore. Courtesy of Stan Richardson.

  left • German troops under guard in front of the seawall at Bernières-sur-Mer. Frank L. Dubervill, NAC PA–133754.

  above • German prisoners (one a stretcher-bearer) carry a wounded soldier back towards the beach. Frank L. Dubervill, NAC PA–132469.

  top right • Within hours of the first landings, Royal Canadian Engineers began clearing the hundreds of German mines. Frank L. Dubervill, NAC PA–131441.

  right • The main Canadian column during the advance inland with Le Régiment de la Chaudière in the lead. Frank L. Dubervill, NAC PA–131436.

  On the night of June 6–7, the few German planes that dared venture over the great armada standing off the Normandy coast were greeted by hundreds of anti-aircraft guns whose tracers eerily illuminated the skies. Joseph J. Scott, NAC PA–138754.

  where MacLeod and the others had died. “The room was a shambles, but more. A pair of legs hanging by the crotch of the trousers over a part of a wrecked bunk bed. A torso—no arms, head, legs or hips—lying on a pile of brick and covered in brick mortar dust; simply an insignificant little remnant clothed in a dirty [T-shirt]. It was something which had been a you
ng man a few minutes earlier.”

  Despite the horror of the room, Hartigan took his time to examine the enemy position from its window. Then, leaving the gatehouse, he carefully circled the entire fortification, crawling through thick hedges and along ditches. Returning to the gatehouse, the corporal told MacPhee that there was no easy way through the wire and the only way to do any damage was to bombard the position by setting the mortar up in the ditch alongside the lane. MacPhee told him to save the mortar ammunition. The angle of fire from the ditch was too poor for effective fire.13

  At 0830 hours, a white flag appeared aloft over the enemy fortification and a German sergeant approached the gatehouse. Hanson met him in the open ground between gatehouse and enemy position and soon determined that the Austrian major had been wounded. The sergeant said he sought a truce because he had a considerable number of casualties, no medical supplies, and the humane thing would be for the paratroops to share their supplies with the Germans.

  Mademoiselle Hiervieux, who knew the German, firmly warned the man that the Canadians would soon overwhelm the position and kill them to a man. She urged him to impress on the others the urgent need to surrender. Tiring of the exchange, Hanson abruptly instructed the German that he could take a two-wheeled cart from the wagon house back to his lines, load the wounded on it, then return to this position and the Canadians would tend them.