by Mark Zuehlke
From the dune side of the wire, Rifleman Wheeler Graham shouted at McLean to free himself from the barbs and join him in the shelter of a shellhole. Tearing flesh and clothing in the process, McLean managed to wrench himself free of the wire’s grasp and ran to the hole. Throwing his rifle in ahead of him, McLean dived into the hole only to have the weapon’s fixed bayonet strike his throat. “My God, I’ve killed myself,” he thought, before realizing the blade had merely broken the skin. Graham, however, pulled apart a tear in the clothing on McLean’s back and discovered a deep shrapnel wound, which he quickly slapped a field dressing on.
Bullets were spitting sand up all around the shellhole, so the men huddled in its shelter were pinned down. Unable to see any muzzle flashes to tell where the German fire originated, they started firing randomly up into the dunes, hoping to at least make the enemy duck. Finally, Lieutenant Lewis McQueen, the platoon’s commander, arrived and reorganized the men for an advance through the sand dunes. Corporal James Kyle’s section, which included McLean, took point with the men moving in single file. Kyle was nineteen and McLean’s closest friend.
Passing through the dunes, they met only sporadic sniper fire and soon reached a canal that ran west from the River Seulles behind the dunes, constructed as a tank obstacle. Having been briefed on the existence of this canal, ‘C’ Company had retained its Mae Wests to help the men swim it. This No. 13 Platoon did without incident and then pressed past fenced-off areas marked with signs that read: “Achtung Minen.”
Coming upon a road that cut across their front, the platoon drew enemy fire and dashed to take cover in a deep roadside ditch. Hoping to determine where the fire came from, McLean and several others crawled up to the edge of the road for a better vantage. As the man beside McLean raised his head, a bullet immediately smacked into his forehead, killing him. Three more men were hit before the platoon managed to drive off the sniper.10
They started closing on Graye-sur-Mer. With every step, however, McLean felt his right leg stiffening. It also felt like someone was jabbing the leg with a hot poker that was being left on red coals for longer periods before being pushed into his flesh. Glancing down, the soldier realized for the first time that his right pant leg was pocked with shrapnel holes through which blood was seeping at a quickening rate. Upon seeing the man’s wound, Lieutenant Mc-Queen ordered him to go back to the beach and get it dressed by medics. The rifleman said a quick goodbye to Kyle and his other buddies, reassuring everyone that he would see them again in a day or two. It seemed to take far longer to return to the beach than it had to advance inland. Reswimming the canal left McLean drenched through and shaking with cold. At the base of the sand dunes on the beach side, he found a long line of wounded, some wrapped in blankets. The wind off the water made him shiver all the harder and his teeth began chattering. A captain with a wounded arm offered to share his blanket. Gratefully, McLean crawled under it and the two men huddled together. “Inside pocket of my tunic has a flask in it,” the officer said, “but can’t reach it with this arm like it is.” McLean fished the flask out and the two men proceeded to polish off the rum inside. After that, the rifleman felt a lot better.11
HIDING IN THE SMALL homes of Graye-sur-Mer were about five hundred French civilians who had endured the terrific shelling of the beaches. Among them was fourteen-year-old Georges Lecarpentier, who lived with his parents, aged grandmother, and twin sister Georgette in a small house that faced the beach. Before dawn, the two teenagers had gone outside and listened to the great roar of the navy shells flying overhead, while staring in awe at the gun’s muzzle flashes. When it turned light, Georges and his sister had joined five other teenagers in climbing a tower that the Germans had constructed on top of one of the buildings in town as an observation post. Georges looked out to sea “and it was filled with boats. It was magnificent!” At first, the young boys and girls on the tower hoped to stay there through the landings, for they could see small boats filled with soldiers racing towards the shore and knew this must be the long-awaited invasion that BBC Radio had so long promised. But shells started exploding in and around the village, so they dashed to their homes. Looking over his shoulder as he ran, Georges saw the tower take a direct hit and disappear in a spray of splintered wood. As Georges was ducking into the front door of his home, a shell exploded nearby and a piece of shrapnel lodged painfully in his right heel. Unable to remove the little chunk of steel, his parents could only bandage the small wound.*
Occasionally, as the morning wore on, Georges risked furtive glances out a window to follow the progress of the various landing craft, but the sound of gunfire and exploding shells warned him it was dangerous to be exposed for long. He feared for the men who must land on the beach. During the last few months, the Germans had planted a deep minefield just back of the beach that extended right up to the road running in front of Graye-sur-Mer, and surrounded the field with vast wire entanglements. Signs had been posted warning the civilians to stay away from the beaches and mined areas. There had also been talk of their forcible evacuation to somewhere inland so that the village itself could be used as a fortification, but that had not developed. Now Georges hoped it was too late for the Germans to
* Lecarpentier still carries the piece of shrapnel in his heel, having been unable to have it surgically removed in the weeks following the invasion.
move them. He hoped the Allied landing would succeed and the Germans would soon be thrown out of all France.
It seemed to the young teenager that the battle for the beach passed very quickly and in no time at all Allied soldiers entered the village. Everyone poured out onto the street to greet them. Georges was surprised when some of the troops spoke to him in French. One soldier, who looked to be an officer, shouted that the people should go back into their homes where it would be safer, which was probably true, as German mortar and artillery rounds were still periodically exploding nearby. Georges saw strange-looking tanks with some kind of drum that rotated and lashed the ground with “huge chains” working through the minefields. The chains were detonating the explosives, but that appeared to be the tank’s purpose.
As the civilians started returning to their houses, some of the soldiers pressed forward to hand the younger people chocolates and strange packets containing a hard little stick that smelled rather sweet. A man with a face blackened as if by gunsmoke grinned at Georges when he stared in puzzlement at the substance. The soldier unwrapped a stick identical to the one Georges held in his hand, popped it into his mouth, and then rather than swallowing it began methodically chewing like a cow might his cud. Georges mimicked his actions and the two stood happily munching away while the soldier kept saying, “Chewing gum, chewing gum.” Although he had no idea what the stuff was made out of, Georges decided that it was pretty good and was pleased when the soldier gave him an entire pack to keep. Then he rushed to join his family inside the house even as the soldier hurried on his way inland.12
THE WINNIPEG RIFLES pushing towards St. Croix and Banville were still unaware that a German counterattack force that had gathered in these villages was advancing in their direction. Blocking their advance, however, was ‘C’ Company of the Canadian Scottish Regiment. At about 0900 hours, Major Desmond Crofton had first engaged this force by having destroyers standing off the coast hammer the villages with 4.2-inch guns. He then ordered Lieutenant Roger Schjelderup to close on the Germans with No. 13 Platoon and keep them bottled up while his other two platoons provided covering fire.13
Moving into the waist-high wheat in an extended line, Schjelderup’s men walked towards the gap between the two villages. Schjelderup was anxious, worried about the location of the Winnipeg Rifles, who were to have been closing on St. Croix and Banville on the left of ‘C’ Company’s line of advance. When a light machine gun ripped off a burst from about 150 yards away in that direction, he thought it sounded like a Bren gun. “We hit the dirt,” Schjelderup later wrote, “and I shouted: ‘This must be the Winnipegs—when I say UP—all
up together and shout Winnipegs.’ We did, and to our surprise two enemy infantry sections stood up in their slit trenches just 125 [to] 150 yards ahead. They too were a picture of amazement and looked rather odd with their painted faces below helmets covered with grass. Their camouflage was perfect and it was no wonder we did not see them earlier. But the stunned silence did not last long.
“There was only one course of action and to a man the platoon rushed the enemy position. It was a bitter encounter with much hand-to-hand fighting. Enemy supporting machine gun fire from the area on the northern outskirts of St. Croix and mortar fire from St. Croix made our task more difficult.”14
Unable to get a clear field of fire against the enemy while lying down with the Bren gun braced on its bipod stand, Private V.C. Paulson strode forward, firing the gun from his shoulder. Other soldiers were running and shooting Lee Enfield rifles from the hip.
From his position behind the attacking platoon, Crofton could see Germans “in the area of St. Croix darting between hedgerows and ducking down through the wheat and… working their way… towards us. But… the fine work of [the platoon] stopped this attack. In fact, all ranks fought like veterans while under heavy machinegun and mortar fire.”
The Germans skulked back into the villages and No. 13 Platoon fell back on the rest of the company. Schjelderup had been shot in an arm, but refused to relinquish command. His heroism in this action would win him a Military Cross. With his platoons all heavily reduced by casualties, Crofton was worrying about ‘C’ Company’s ability to withstand an attack should the Germans recover from the surprise of the engagement in the wheat field and renew the offensive. So it was with great relief that he saw ‘A’ Company coming up on his rear with Lieutenant Colonel Fred Cabeldu striding vigorously along in its midst. Adding to the impression of the cavalry arriving was the presence of several tanks from the 1st Hussars.15
NEITHER THE TANKERS nor the rest of the Canadian Scottish Regiment had met an easy time getting ashore. As the twenty-six LCAs carrying the reserve element of the battalion started the run shore-ward, the persistently rough seas disrupted the orderly formation. In the battalion headquarters LCA, Lieutenant Colonel Cabeldu stood next to the Royal Canadian Navy commander in charge of the flotilla that had departed from Queen Emma, Duke of Argyll, and Prince Henry, listening as he used a loud-hailer to coax and bully the other LCA crews into their assigned positions. The navy officer was a veteran of landings in North Africa and at Salerno, Italy, so knew his business well. But suddenly the man became violently seasick and collapsed. With the naval officer rendered helpless, Cabeldu had to take over. The thirty-seven-year-old officer and former real estate agent from Victoria was not overly worried by this development, as the directions required to land the troops in the right place had been something on which he had been briefed many times. Looking shore-ward, he saw the church steeple and water tower of Graye-sur-Mer standing well back of the beach. Taking up the loud-hailer, Cabeldu used these markers to direct the LCAs towards their assigned landing zone to the right of the village.
As the flotilla closed on the beach, Cabeldu realized that the rising tide and rough seas had prevented the engineers from clearing paths through the obstacles and he had to order the LCAs to each find its own way through.16 Mines holed two LCAs as they did so.17
Seeing the listing wreck of an LCT with its bow almost on the sand, Cabeldu directed his craft to be pulled up alongside its stern. His party then scrambled onto the LCT, raced down its length, and piled almost feet dry onto the sand. Several LCAs from ‘A’ Company, including that carrying Major Arthur Plows, followed suit when they were unable to find a path through the beach obstacles.18 Aboard the LCA carrying Private Jack Daubs, a twenty-year-old from London, Ontario, one of the Royal Navy crewmen calmly took off his shoes and socks, folded the socks and laid them on the precisely aligned shoes, and then rolled up his pants to just below his knees. Moments later, the ramp dropped and the man jumped into waist-deep water and ran to shore pulling a long rope behind him. Daubs and the others piled out, using the rope to help maintain their balance as they slogged under the burden of their heavy equipment to the sand. “Good luck, Canada,” the sailor said to each passing man.
Daubs looked at him standing there with no helmet, no shoes, or protection of any kind and was struck by his calm courage, which stood in stark contrast to his own feelings. “I just wanted to get the hell off the beach,” Daubs later recalled, “as there were dead guys around and smoke and people hollering.” The private was sopping wet. Right ahead of him, Private Neil McPherson, a twenty-one-year-old from Vancouver, had a mortar round plow into the sand directly between his legs and the blast tore his legs off. As Daubs passed, he saw that the skin on the stumps was “all pink and black around the edges.” McPherson was pleading, “Help me, help me.” But there was nothing anyone could do, so the platoon left him lying there and ran hard for the sand dunes.19
The LCA carrying ‘B’ Company’s Major R.M. Lendrum had been jockeying towards the LCT with an eye to following ‘A’ Company’s method of getting ashore, when it was bracketed by heavy mortar and artillery fire. Realizing the Germans had cottoned on to the fact that the listing vessel was being used as an improvised wharf, the LCA crew commander swerved and made a run through the beach obstacles, with the rest of the company’s craft following close behind. Private V.R.D. Garcia was killed when mortar fire hit the LCA carrying No. 10 Platoon. The platoon commander, Lieutenant J.H. Russell, and several other men were seriously wounded.20 As the lieutenant was carried through the waist-deep water to shore, “he reviled the fates for [being so quickly wounded] after three years waiting.”21
‘B’ Company’s second-in-command, Captain P.F. Ramsay, was surprised to find the beach, supposed to have been secure by this point in the invasion, still a “no-man’s land. Shells and mortar bombs… landing in fairly regular succession on the sand, which was fortunately loose and absorbed most of the shrapnel. God knows it would have been a different story if it had been rock or solid shingle.”22
The battalion paused to regroup in the sand dunes. The Canadian Scots had been assigned two immediate missions. ‘D’ Company under Major G.T. MacEwan was to seize two bridges over the River Seulles before they could be destroyed. One bridge was about three miles inland between Banville-sur-Mer and Reviers and the other stood a half-mile farther south at Colombiers-sur-Seulles. A platoon under Lieutenant Tom Butters was given the task of capturing the bridge near Reviers, and responsibility for the one south of Colombiers-sur-Seulles fell to Lieutenant A.C. Peck’s platoon. To hasten each platoon’s passage, the men were equipped with folding bicycles. Because the company had lost some of its bicycles during the landing, MacEwan was forced to give those of his HQ section to the leading platoons. This left his headquarters and the company’s third platoon to follow on foot towards the bridge near Colombiers, which was the company’s final rallying point. The second mission, to be carried out by the rest of the battalion, was to advance five miles to the high ground west of le Fresne-Camilly.
‘D’ Company quickly took off on its task and Cabeldu led the remaining two companies inland. Having received Major Crofton’s urgent report that ‘C’ Company had successfully blocked the counterattack out of St. Croix-sur-Mer but was unsure if it could stave off another, Cabeldu decided to push through to Crofton with ‘A’ Company and the battalion headquarters. ‘B’ Company would meanwhile advance left of ‘A’ Company into the gap between St. Croix and Banville. ‘C’ Squadron of the 1st Hussars under Major D’Arcy Marks was to support the move forward, but it was having difficulty finding a route off the beach because of the canal behind the sand dunes. Cabeldu decided the infantry would have to proceed alone and hope the Hussars could soon catch up.
The advance inland by the Winnipeg Rifles had been so hasty that a lot of pockets of German infantry had been bypassed and were “now coming to life.”23 Captain Ramsay of ‘B’ Company, wanting to get off the beach quickly because it was prov
ing “hazardous in the extreme as small-arms fire whistled around like angry bees,” led the men to a point where an exit across the water obstacle reportedly existed. They arrived to find that an AVRE Churchill tank had tried crossing this supposedly shallow area and was now sunk right up to its turret top. Jumping on the tank, Ramsay scrambled through knee-deep water washing over the deck and managed to vault the rest of the distance onto a road parallelling the watercourse. Seeing some scrub brush about two hundred yards up the road, he dashed “hell for leather” to its shelter. Once under cover, Ramsay scanned the ground ahead and determined the enemy fire that had been chipping the road behind his feet was coming from the Graye-sur-Mer church tower.
Ramsay signalled Company Sergeant Major Frank Fisher to rally on his position by having the company come up the highway in extended order. With machine-gun fire whistling around them, the men clambered over the tank and then sprinted up the road to join the captain. Through his binoculars, Ramsay observed that “fighting was still strong in Graye-sur-Mer and figures could be seen on roof tops.” Lieutenant Ian MacDonald’s No. 12 Platoon had been specially trained for street fighting and was spoiling to join the fight, but Major Lendrum reminded the men that they had “other fish to fry” and would stick to the plan by moving inland alongside the River Seulles.24