by Mark Zuehlke
While this parlay unfolded, Hartigan crept off on another reconnaissance and discovered a shallow, disused three-foot-deep trench completely concealed by cast-off rotting hay and overgrown weeds, which ran from the antitank ditch next to the lane over to the German gun position. Hartigan suspected the Germans were no more aware of its existence than had been the Canadians. From where the ditch ended near the German position, he would be able to fire the mortar at the 75-millimetre gun with good effect.
Hartigan excitedly explained his discovery to Sergeant MacPhee, who agreed with the plan. “I’m coming with you to make any judgement about calling it off if things become too hazardous,” he cautioned Hartigan. The two men then set about gathering up all the two-inch mortar bombs they could lay hands on.14
As the two men firmed up their plans, a cluster of Germans emerged from the fortification. Two soldiers strained under the burden of the cart, in which they had propped up the three immobile casualties, while another three walking wounded hobbled along beside. Just short of the château, a German machine-gun crew suddenly fired a long burst from behind the casualty party that riddled the cart and wounded inside with bullets and also cut down the walking wounded. Having been protected by the cart, the two men who had been pulling it fled to the château to become prisoners.15 The paratroopers could only surmise that some Nazi fanatic had objected to the mission of mercy and killed the wounded rather than see them surrender to the Allies.
After witnessing this tragedy, Hartigan and MacPhee crawled up the ditch with the mortar, moving cautiously to ensure that no swaying of weeds betrayed their presence to the Germans. Eventually, they reached the trench’s end and wormed into a position behind a half-buried rock from which they could clearly see the 75-millimetre. MacPhee whispered to Hartigan that the trajectory to the target should be almost flat, a possible angle for the two-inch mortar because it had only a two-by-six-inch base plate and no bipod to regiment its deployment. The corporal loaded the mortar and then lowered the barrel with one hand until it was only a couple of degrees from flat on the ground, with the base plate braced against the rock. He sighted it by looking along the side of the barrel. “Handled this way,” Hartigan wrote, “it acted much like a small infantry antitank gun and was surprisingly accurate. I fired two or three shrapnel shells at the enemy field gun, followed by a couple of smoke shells to help conceal our getaway.
“Our nerves were stretched to the limit because we expected the big gun to return fire. I went out of control as we scurried down the sloping ditch on our hands and knees. Without realizing it, I overtook MacPhee by clawing my way right over him and landed in our deep antitank ditch ahead of him.”16
The mortaring, combined with Mademoiselle Hiervieux’s continuing urging that the Germans surrender, had the desired effect. A few minutes after Hartigan and MacPhee’s attack, the white flag again appeared over the fortification and at 1030 hours forty-two Germans emerged from the position with hands raised. Four Canadian paratroops captured earlier by the Germans were released.17 Lying by the 75-millimetre gun was a dead German killed by Hartigan’s mortar fire. Other corpses were strewn throughout the fortification.
Corporal John Ross, the radio signaller at Varaville, soon learned of the victory and transmitted “Blood,” the coded message to confirm that ‘C’ Company had captured the German field piece. Hanson moved his men into the fortified position, intent on holding it against any counterattacks by turning the many captured machine guns and the field piece on the enemy. Instead of Germans, however, the next troops approaching Varaville proved to be two platoons of the British No. 6 Commando astride bicycles, who had landed that morning on Sword Beach and ridden through the day to relieve the Canadian paratroopers at Varaville. At 1500 hours, Hanson handed the position over to the commandos, gathered those German prisoners who were not wounded, and marched the Canadian paratroopers around Varaville towards le Mesnil crossroads to link up with the rest of the battalion.18
Hanson reported to Lieutenant Colonel Bradbrooke at 1730 hours. The battalion commander and his force had reached the crossroads at 1100 hours and since then more paratroops had been filtering into the position, bolstering the ranks. But they still remained terribly few. ‘A’ Company, whose D-Day task had been to cover the rear of 9th Battalion’s attack on the Merville Battery, completed that mission with only twenty men and two officers. Lieutenant Jack Clancy, lacking any idea where the rest of his company or officers were, led the little force that had completed the task without serious incident and then marched towards le Mesnil, arriving thirty minutes after ‘C’ Company.19 He was relieved to find that most of his company, scattered far away from their rendezvous point, had opted to make for le Mesnil crossroads and either had already arrived or were beginning to filter in.
With ‘C’ Company’s success at Varaville, Bradbrooke was able to report to 3rd Parachute Brigade’s commander, Brigadier James Hill, that 1st Canadian Parachute Battalion had completed all its assigned missions for D-Day. Bradbrooke, who had proven himself to be more than a competent peacetime officer this day, then set about establishing a defensive position around a brick factory that dominated the crossroads. As men trickled in, he was able to establish an all-round defence. The lieutenant colonel was greatly relieved seeing the ranks grow because, as late as noon, he had had no idea of the whereabouts or fate of about 250 Canadians. Now he could count 390 at le Mesnil and another 30 to 40 at Robehomme, but still there were many unaccounted for as night fell. As for the force at Robehomme, which, including British paratroopers, numbered about 100, it was perilously exposed to the threat of counterattack, but Captain Griffin had determined that a German force stood between it and le Mesnil crossroads. He decided to stay put until this enemy blocking force’s strength could be determined in the morning.
AMONG THOSE STILL unaccounted for were Lieutenant John Madden and his little band, which had been dropped practically on Sword Beach. Once the naval bombardment had lifted, they had started off on a ten-mile journey towards the original drop zone with ears still ringing, walking through air thick with dust and smoke. A shell splinter he could not remove stuck out of the stock of Private G.H. Pidluberg’s rifle. Madden spied a patrol of German infantry poking about in a way that told him it was a search party trying to find the paratroopers. They were fanning out from the parachutes abandoned near the German anti-aircraft gun position.
He pondered holing up until the British troops landed at Sword and overran the area, but always in the front of his mind was the mantra, “Get to the objective, get to the objective.” That objective was Varaville and Madden hoped to shake the hunters on his track, cross the River Orne at the Ranville bridge, and get to the objective before day’s end.20
Eventually, Madden could no longer see the pursuing Germans and realized they had either lost the trail or given up. This enabled the paratroopers to move more quickly, although they were still careful to not move in the open. Madden had no intelligence on where German positions might be located, because the paratroops had not been briefed on operating anywhere west of the River Orne.
As they crept past a group of farmhouses, the paratroopers heard a babble of voices from inside that seemed to be speaking Czech or Polish rather than German. Suddenly, a German soldier wearing a soft field hat and with a rifle slung on his shoulder pedalled past the Canadians with barely a glance, but then turned slowly around towards them. Madden fired a burst from his Sten gun and the man wobbled as if hit. Then he swung the bike around and started riding away. The lieutenant let go three more short bursts, emptying the magazine. “The bicycle wobbled. With a clatter, he fell and lay gurgling on the road. In the awful silence that followed the chatter of my Sten, we heard the rattle of equipment, the scuffle of feet running towards us. One moment of searing fright and we too were fleeing for our lives, even as the cyclist had tried to flee for his. There is nothing for pride in the way I killed that man; there is nothing for shame in the way we ran.”21
The cross-country s
curry turned eerily surreal when Madden’s party stumbled half-lost into the village of Colleville-sur-Orne later in the morning, only to find it full of British troops from a Suffolk Regiment that had landed on the beach several hours earlier. “Khaki-clad soldiers sat at the tables of an outdoor café, sipping drinks, while a jeep-mounted 20-millimetre cannon fired round after round into a distant church steeple in an attempt to dislodge a sniper.” Madden rounded up another seven men from ‘C’ Company and hitched a ride on a truck carrying supplies through to British paratroops, who had secured the vital crossing of the River Orne and Caen Canal near Ranville. Now designated Pegasus, the crossing would hopefully provide the paratroops with a way to get on the eastern side of the river and back into the lines of 6th Airborne Division.
Upon arriving at the bridges, Madden saw they were in British hands but still disputed by German snipers for anyone trying to cross over them. After glassing the situation for a while with his binoculars, Madden ordered the men to sprint over one at a time. Leading the way, Madden heard bullets chiming off the metal girders. After each perilous crossing, the men regrouped on the east bank of the river, but three men failed to dash through. Madden was angered to discover they appeared to have fled the scene in order to search out a safer crossing point. This was not the kind of behaviour he expected of paratroopers.*
From here, Madden and his remaining men walked as far as Amfreville, but a group of British commandos holding one side of the road warned that there was a strong German force between the village and his route to Varaville. As night was beginning to settle, Madden told his men to dig in on the other side of the road and secure the right flank of the commandos for the night. D-Day had proved little more than frustration broken with moments of fear and hazard for the young lieutenant, which had in no apparent way contributed to the successful outcome of the battalion’s operations. Regardless of problems encountered tomorrow, Madden decided he would damn well reach his assigned objective.22
* After the war, Madden happened into one of the paratroopers who shirked and listened to a long explanation of how one of the men had suffered an injury which precluded the dangerous crossing. The lieutenant was unim-pressed and chalked the failure up to personal cowardice.
[ 16 ]
In Good Fettle
HITLER WOKE AT NINE. It was the Führer’s habit to convene two daily operational briefings attended by about twenty of the highest-ranking and most politically powerful officers in the German military. Normally, these briefings began respectively at noon and midnight, with the late-night session often not beginning until 0100 hours. Due to Hitler’s increasing penchant to lecture the officers on military strategy and tactics in a manner that gave the impression he was speaking “out the window” rather than to anyone in particular, the briefings could drag on for hours.1
After the late-night session ended, the insomnia-plagued Führer required a sleeping draft or injection from his doctor, and to function effectively had to be allowed to waken naturally each morning from his drug-induced rest. Consequently, by the time Germany’s supreme military commander rose from his bed on June 6, the Allied assault waves were ashore and a toehold on the beaches already won.
Oberkommando der Wehrmacht’s chief of staff, Generalfeldmarschall Wilhelm Keitel, also slept late that morning, while its chief of operations, Generaloberst Alfred Jodl, who had risen at 0600 hours, did not warrant the reports emanating from Normandy sufficiently serious to merit wakening him early. Jodl was surprised to learn that Oberbefehlshaber (Commander-in-Chief) West, General-feldmarschall Gerd von Rundstedt’s headquarters in St. Germain near Paris had on its own initiative put two armoured divisions on alert for an intended move towards the Normandy coast. He immediately directed Oberst Horst von Buttlar-Brandenfels of the operations department general staff to inform von Rundstedt that this order was to be rescinded.
It had been General der Infanterie Günther Blumentritt, von Rundstedt’s Chief of Staff, who issued the alert order to the 12th SS Panzer (Hitlerjugend) Division and the Panzer Lehr Division. He had done so at 0400 hours following a frustrating conversation with Buttlar-Brandenfels, in which the officer had refused to authorize release of these divisions. By this time, Blumentritt and his intelligence staff were convinced that reports of parachute drops between the River Dives and the Cotentin Peninsula constituted the beginnings of the major invasion. Blumentritt hung up the phone and immediately “began to move one detachment… of each division in the general direction of Caen” in defiance of OKW’s instructions.2
But at 0630 hours, Buttlar-Brandenfels rang to say that these divisions “should forthwith be stopped, because the principal landing was expected at an entirely different place.” Only the Führer, the OKW staff officer snapped, could decide to deploy these divisions. Blumentritt had no choice but to comply. He also could not know “for certain whether this was the decisive main landing or only a preliminary diversion.”3
Meanwhile, in accordance with orders issued days earlier, the 12th SS had started a planned move from its assembly point near Dreux, about forty miles west of Paris, towards Elbeuf on the south side of the River Seine across from Rouen. This was to better position the division to respond to the expected Pas de Calais invasion. While the invasion developed in Normandy, the tanks and mechanized vehicles of one of the most elite German divisions in France trundled in the wrong direction.4
As one hour followed another and the divisions defending the Normandy coast filed sporadic and confused reports of massive amphibious landings following the airborne drops, von Rundstedt directed Blumentritt to press OKW harder for authorization to dispatch the Panzer divisions.5 For his part, von Rundstedt was so disdainful of Hitler, whom he called “that Bohemian Corporal,” and his toadies at OKW that he would not deign to talk directly to anyone at Hitler’s headquarters.6 Despite repeated calls in which Blumentritt argued the case with Buttlar-Brandenfels, Jodl, and other OKW staff, he was left with the impression that “OKW still had its doubts whether a landing would also be made in the Fifteenth Army area [between the Somme and Seine rivers].” He wondered also whether reports of wide-ranging landings by paratroop and glider forces not only between the Dives and Orne rivers, but also on Fifteenth Army’s left flank to the east, might actually constitute the first stage of this feared larger attack. That the paratroops landing east of the Dives had been an error was not considered, nor did Blumentritt have accurate intelligence that would expose how few men actually constituted this unintentional and fully disorganized force.7
The inability of the Commander-in-Chief (West) to respond decisively to the invasion with an immediate counterattack by the armoured divisions in reserve meant that the coastal defence divisions were left to fight and die alone during the most critical hours. Responsibility for defending the beaches upon which British Second Army landed rested on the shoulders of Generalleutnant Wilhelm Richter, commander of the 716th Infantry Division. Having first donned an officer’s uniform in 1914, Richter had seen extensive World War I service. Before assuming command of the 716th in March 1943, he had also served in Poland, Belgium, and Russia. Nothing in this experience had prepared the general for June 6. In the space of only a few hours, Richter’s weak division, largely deployed in fixed coastal fortifications, was faced by four British and Canadian divisions attacking both from the sea and air. Lacking any significant reserves or inherent transport to quickly move inland units to reinforce his shore defences, Richter was rendered largely impotent to affect the battle’s outcome. All he could do was plead unceasingly to both Seventh Army commander Oberstgeneral Friedrich Dollman and von Rundstedt to secure the release of the Panzers, but in the absence of orders from Hitler neither officer could offer any resources of substance. Instead, Richter was assured that help would be forthcoming and that in the meantime his division must hold regardless of casualties.
BY THE TIME HITLER had awakened to learn of the invasion, the Royal Winnipeg Rifles had tipped the battle on the beach in Mike Sector in th
eir favour. Major Lochie Fulton was already pushing ‘D’ Company through the seemingly endless mine and wire fields in front of the hamlet of la Valette, with the intention of hooking into Graye-sur-Mer from the left. ‘B’ Company, meanwhile, had crossed the River Seulles into the neck of land east of Courseulles-sur-Mer and was methodically clearing a pillbox and trench system there. This still left a gap of ground facing the beach where several fortifications remained intact. It was in front of this position that the reserve companies and an advance party of battalion headquarters landed in the midst of heavy mortar and machine-gun fire at about 0900 hours.8
Dragging behind them a No. 22 wireless set mounted on a hand-pulled carriage, the headquarters section presented an easily identifiable target that immediately drew a swarm of mortar fire. The men dived for cover and ended up pinned on the beach for two hours until finally the German artillery observers were forced back to inland positions from which they could no longer see to accurately direct fire onto the beach.
While the Winnipeg Headquarters Company hunkered down, its reserve rifle battalions attempted to pursue their assigned tasks. ‘A’ Company, under Major Fred Hodge, was to advance on St. Croix-surMer, while Major Jimmy Jones’s ‘C’ Company would simultaneously break through to Banville-sur-Mer by way of Graye-sur-Mer.9 Both companies had first, however, to get clear of the beach. The LCA carrying ‘C’ Company’s No. 13 Platoon had dropped it three hundred feet out in deep water. With their Mae West life preservers inflated, the men started swimming awkwardly under the weight of their packs towards shore while trying to keep their weapons dry. About halfway in, Rifleman Jack McLean, who topped six feet, managed to touch bottom with his toes and started tiptoeing towards the sand. McLean staggered out of the water exhausted.
A major wire obstacle about thirty feet deep and an average height of two feet blocked the platoon’s advance just short of the dunes. Having lost the platoon’s bangalore torpedo in the water when the man carrying it had been shot and killed, the men had no option but to try carefully picking their way through the wire. McLean was halfway through when a blast knocked him down with stunning force, leaving him badly tangled in the sharp barbs and staring up at the ghastly sight of bits of bloody cloth and flesh hanging from the wire to his right. Dazed by concussion, the soldier was convinced he was looking at the remnants of his legs hanging there until a glance assured him that he was still intact. Lying nearby, however, he saw the corpse of another soldier from whom both legs had been torn. Several other men—either wounded or dead—were snarled in the wire close by. McLean realized that either one of the soldiers had tripped a mine or they had all been hit by an exploding mortar round.