Normandy '44

by James Holland

  At 1.50 a.m., the drone of aircraft could be heard and flares were lit along the drop zones a mile away. To the east of the Orne lay the village of Ranville; beyond was a large area of open farmland before the rise of the Bréville Ridge. It was an ideal DZ, so much so that Rommel, visiting the ridge in May, had ordered that his ‘asparagus’ – anti-airborne poles – be immediately sown across the entire strip. Now, paratroopers were falling there, in the light of the flares their chutes quite visible to the men at the bridges. German tracer was also stabbing into the air.

  The first man to jump was a young platoon commander, just five days shy of his twenty-fifth birthday. Lieutenant Richard Todd had been an aspiring actor when war was declared, but on his call-up in the spring of 1940 he had left the Dundee Repertory Theatre and been posted to the King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry. Officer training had followed, then Battle School, in which he was training with live ammunition, and then a spell of Arctic training in Iceland. His so far safe passage through the war had eventually taken him back to England as a liaison officer for 42nd Division. Increasingly bored, he had been looking for an escape route, but his repeated attempts to join the Commandos or Parachute Regiment had led nowhere. While delivering a message to General Windy Gale on Salisbury Plain one day in 1943, however, he was recruited to join 6th Airborne Division instead. Todd was delighted. Then, by chance, he had been accosted by a colonel in the 6th Airborne who said he was looking for some officers. ‘Fate,’ noted Todd, ‘had led me straight to the one man who was responsible for all officer-postings to 6th Airborne Division.’10 Now, just under a year later, he was commanding a stick of paratroopers in the lead transport aircraft, which made him the first man in the main drop to make the jump.

  For much of the journey from Fairford in Gloucestershire, southern England, to Normandy Todd had been asleep, and had only woken when shaken by the despatcher a few minutes before he was due to jump. Like everyone else, he was heavily laden and heaved himself to his feet unsteadily, hooking himself on to the static line, the device that pulled the cord on the parachute once out of the plane. The hatch was opened and Todd stood over it, looking down at white-crested waves which then gave way to the coastline. As the red light came on, he saw yellow and orange stabs of light arcing upwards like leisurely shooting stars. This, he realized, was tracer. A minute later, the green light went on and, heaving an extra dinghy bag towards him, he jumped, from around only 600 feet above ground. He had about ten seconds to land and as soon as the canopy of his chute opened, he pulled the ripcord to release his leg-bag and held on to its rope with his other hand. This slipped, burning and tearing his skin as it dropped.

  ‘Bugger!’ he called out in pain. The noise around him was immense: aircraft droned overhead, machine guns chattered, guns boomed. Moments later he landed heavily in a cornfield. Quickly discarding his harness and the leg-bag cord, he crouched down to take stock. There was no one around and he couldn’t see Ranville church, a given marker, which made him think he had probably dropped a little early. Suddenly, an aircraft descended in flames, burning brightly across the sky, but there wasn’t time to think much about that; he needed to get moving. Heading for a wood, to his relief he soon heard English voices and in a clearing found Lieutenant-Colonel Richard Pine-Coffin, the improbably named commander of Todd’s own 7th Parachute Battalion and part of 5th Parachute Brigade. Their task was to head to the bridges and reinforce Major Howard’s men, while the other two battalions took Ranville and secured the approaches and the areas of the DZs. The battalions of Brigadier James Hill’s 3rd Brigade would destroy the bridges over the Dives and take out the German battery at Merville.

  That was the plan but, as ever with airborne operations, it was unravelling somewhat, and quickly too. Overall, 5th Brigade had landed pretty successfully: Drop Zone N, next to Ranville, was inland a few miles, which allowed the aircrew and troops aboard to get their bearings; it was also close to the canal and river for guidance, and the pathfinders had done a good job. Over 2,000 men and 702 containers were successfully dropped. The bulk of Brigadier Hill’s 3rd Brigade, however, which arrived at much the same time, was considerably more scattered. Confusion was caused by the pathfinders of DZ K landing on N and not realizing their mistake until too late, while at DZ V the pathfinders ran into the hundred Lancasters of Bomber Command, who were due to bomb the Merville Battery at half past midnight. For strategic bombers operating at night with limited visibility and a stiff wind with which to contend, this was a small target and a very tall order, and perhaps not unsurprisingly they overshot by 2,400 yards and almost wiped out the DZ V pathfinder force in the process. They also smashed the Eureka beacon, the radio-direction finding set that would send directional pulses to the lead transport plane heading for this DZ. To make matters worse, smoke from the accident then drifted right across the entire area, largely obscuring it. Only 17 out of 71 aircraft carrying the 9th Parachute and 1st Canadian Parachute Battalions were dropped with any kind of accuracy. What’s more, the area just to the east of DZ V had been flooded and too many landed in waterlogged ground. ‘Gentlemen, in spite of your excellent training and orders, do not be daunted if chaos reigns,’ Brigadier Hill had warned his men.11 ‘It undoubtedly will.’ He had not been wrong, but their challenge now was swiftly to make sense out of the chaos and get on with the considerable tasks they had been given.

  Just inland from Courseulles, some 10 miles to the west of the Caen Canal, Oberleutnant Cornelius Tauber had returned to his barracks from a site inspection of a new bunker at around midnight and had immediately heard the sound of aircraft overhead, most of them flying low. It didn’t feel to him like an air raid. There was drizzle in the air, clouds were flitting across the moon and, now that he paused to look closely, he could actually see the shapes of the aircraft. Flak guns were firing, tracer streaking up into the sky. Was this the invasion? Neither Tauber nor his colleagues were sure, but if it was their last peaceful night, they thought they might as well make the most of it, so they opened a bottle of brandy to share.

  Sitting in a sparsely furnished house in Bellengreville, a village just to the south-east of Caen and only a few miles to the south of the British drop zones, Major Hans von Luck heard low-flying aircraft coming over twenty minutes or so after midnight. He was generally not in the best of moods; a man of action, he yearned for the old days when they had charged through France and then North Africa. Sitting around waiting for an invasion was not to his taste. He was still up and about because he was waiting for a report from his II. Bataillon that their night exercise around Troarn had ended. Now, large numbers of Allied aircraft were flying over – they could be nothing else – and minutes later his adjutant was on the field telephone telling him paratroopers and gliders were dropping.

  ‘All units are to be put on alert immediately,’ von Luck ordered without hesitation, ‘and division informed.’12 Despite orders from higher up the chain to the contrary, he also told his adjutant that II. Bataillon was to go straight into action wherever necessary and prisoners brought straight to him. He then headed to his command post, where he learned that some of II. Bataillon were already in action, but that 5. Kompanie had been training without live ammunition, which worried him. He was further annoyed to discover Generalmajor Feuchtinger was away in Paris.

  It really was incredible how often senior German commanders were absent at the launch of major Allied attacks. Rommel had been in Germany when the Battle of Alamein began and was absent again now; before the Allies had launched DIADEM, the battle for Rome in May 1944, the German 10. Armee commander, Generaloberst Heinrich von Vietinghoff, and senior corps commander, Generalleutnant Fridolin von Senger und Etterlin, had also been back in Germany; Oberst Wilhelm Meyer-Detring, the chief of intelligence at OB West HQ, was also now away. This was careless to say the least.

  Elsewhere, the Germans were only slowly waking up to what was happening. The Allies had hoped to achieve complete tactical surprise at every level and so far that had proved t
o be the case. There had, of course, been various signals and a gathering intelligence picture that something was afoot – von Rundstedt’s intelligence men had cracked the BBC’s codes to the Résistance, for example – but this counted for little if the senior headquarters at Heeresgruppe B and OB West chose to ignore them. Since the intelligence picture issued by the OKW had stated that the Allies were likely to mount diversionary raids and landings first, senior commanders were reluctant to respond too quickly in case they made the wrong call; they were all keenly aware that whatever was issued by the OKW was, in effect, Hitler’s own take on the situation.

  However, Generalmajor Josef Reichert, commander of the 711. Infanterie-Division, soon recognized this was no diversion when one of the scattered British paratroopers from 3rd Brigade landed right on top of his headquarters as he and his senior staff officers played a late-night game of cards. Although Reichert and his division were part of Generaloberst Hans von Salmuth’s 15. Armee, he immediately telephoned General Marcks. It was then 1.11 a.m. Generaloberst Friedrich Dollmann, the 7. Armee commander, was then informed and at 1.30 a.m. ordered a general alert. Reports of paratroopers now landing in the Cotentin Peninsula were also passed on to Heeresgruppe B at La Roche-Guyon at 1.35 a.m.

  Speidel, Rommel’s chief of staff, however, hesitated and did not immediately tell the OKW, or even Rommel, most likely because he was drunk or at the very least half-cut. Certainly, drinking large amounts of wine and spirits and then acting with clear-headed decisiveness did not really go hand in hand. However, any senior German commander should have known after nearly five years of war that airborne troops were, by their very nature, lightly armed and best used for short, sharp coup de main operations. After only a brief time they would need to be supported by considerably more troops – in this case troops that could only realistically arrive by sea. Even if this was a diversionary operation – and if the Germans had thought this through sensibly they would have realized it was unlikely to be so – the odds were that troops would be landing on the Normandy beaches very soon. Swift, decisive action was needed, just as Rommel had rammed into the minds of all, but none of the panzer divisions could be ordered up without the express authority of the Führer. This being so, the sooner Hitler knew and issued orders, the better. Speidel, however, remained silent. He did not even ring his boss, Rommel, at home in Herrlingen.

  In Paris, however, Konteradmiral – Rear Admiral – Karl Hoffmann, commander of the Marinegruppe West, had no such doubts and at 1.50 a.m. signalled to the OKW that the invasion had begun. Ten minutes after this, von Rundstedt was informed and tentatively placed 21. Panzer-Division – and only 21. Panzer – on Level 2 alert, which meant they needed to be ready to move within ninety minutes. This was, to put it mildly, a half-hearted response. On the other hand, both General Marcks and Generalmajor Max Pemsel, the 7. Armee chief of staff, did recognize the airborne assaults for what they were. Over the past weeks, Pemsel had become increasingly convinced that Normandy would be the location for the Allied invasion: in his view, the intelligence picture clearly pointed that way. War games for how to deal with an airborne assault on the Cotentin had been planned for 6 June and the commanders were due to meet at Rennes in Brittany. Pemsel, however, had issued a strict order for them not to start their journeys until after dawn – just in case the Allies arrived. Not all had obeyed him, including Generalleutnant Wilhelm Falley, the highly experienced commander of the 91. Luftlande-Division. He was still en route to Rennes when he was stopped and ordered to return.

  Across Normandy, the US airborne assault was now under way. Ironically, had they gone the previous night, the sky would have been clearer over the Cotentin, although cloudier over the eastern flank; the rain had run across Normandy and cleared from the eastern parts by around 3 a.m. on the 5th. With timings adjusted to the British airborne drop, it would possibly have been better to have stuck to the 5th rather than risk a small ridge of high pressure that could well have dissipated. In fact, that night the ridge had developed into something that would provide a longer window than had first been anticipated.

  Be that as it may, the decision to postpone had certainly not helped the American airborne assault. Some 6,900 paratroopers of the 101st Airborne were approaching the Cotentin coast just a little after 1 a.m. in a massive armada of 433 C-47s, each in giant vics – V-formations of three flying together in ‘serials’ of thirty-six aircraft. Following up were a further fifty-two gliders, primarily carrying Jeeps, anti-tank guns and other weapons. This large force was to cross the coast at 1,500 feet, then throttle back to just 110 m.p.h. and drop to some 600 feet, the optimum speed and height for an airborne drop. Much higher and the paratroopers would spend too long in the air, where they were very exposed and vulnerable; too low and their chutes would not have the chance to open; too fast and they would be swept off course and the drop would dramatically lose accuracy. Yet for all the intricate planning, no one had thought to send a reconnaissance plane ahead to see what the weather situation actually was over the Cotentin – nor had the British for their drop, though they had largely got away with it. Neither had there been any specific nighttime training in adverse weather; and apart from the dress rehearsal in May, the 101st hadn’t made any practice drops for more than seven weeks.

  The 2nd Battalion, 506th PIR was flying in Serial 12, numbers 46–81, and up front near the hatch of Number 67 was Lieutenant Dick Winters, 1st Platoon commander in Company E, nicknamed Easy Company. Twenty-six years old and from Lancaster, Pennsylvania, he was a college business graduate with a high-class degree, an excellent work ethic and a natural athleticism. Having volunteered to take part in a war he had absolutely no desire to join, so far he had shown natural aptitude as a soldier and leader of men – albeit one who, like all of those in the 101st, had yet to taste combat.

  Twenty minutes before they were due to jump, the pilot called back to the crew chief, who then took off the door. Winters stood up from his seat and glanced out. The full moon, although low, gave off sufficient light for him to see clearly enough. It seemed as though the entire sky was filled with aircraft, but this calm and awe-inspiring scene was quickly shattered as they crossed the coast and hit a wall of cloud that had not dispersed since the pathfinders had come over. Suddenly, the pilots could see nothing. They were still supposed to be in tight formation, however, so the risk of collision was enormous. Most of the aircraft in each serial were dependent on the leader for navigation, but now they could not see them and were flying blind. Some pilots panicked, climbing higher or lower, speeding up and slowing down.

  Between 10 and 12 miles inland, the cloud became progressively thinner and more broken. Winters, who had been surprised to encounter little flak as they crossed the coast, now saw the entire sky lit with criss-crosses of red, blue and green tracers hurtling up towards them. Some aircraft were still in vague formation, but the serene cohesion of the crossing had gone. Suddenly, the C-47 next to them was hit: Winters saw tracers go right through it and out the roof. A further bank of cloud hid it from his view. Unbeknown to Winters, the stricken aircraft turned over on its wing and fell away, crashing to the ground below and exploding, killing all on board, including Lieutenant Thomas Meehan, the Easy Company commander.

  On Number 67, the pilot now accelerated to avoid enemy fire and Winters looked down, adrenalin coursing through him, searching the ground for landmarks and for signs of the DZ. Ordering everyone to their feet, they hooked their static lines and then he glanced out of the open doorway once more. The tracer was getting closer, until finally it hit their tail, rocking the aircraft and causing some of the men to topple over. Winters glanced back at the despatcher and then, when the green light flashed on, he yelled, ‘Go!’ just as a 20mm cannon shell hit the aircraft. He jumped, but by this time the plane was travelling closer to 150 m.p.h. than 110, and in the initial shock of jumping at such speed his leg-bag was torn off along with most of his other equipment.

  In moments, he was down, landing heavily and badly bru
ising his shoulders and legs. But he was alive. None the less, his situation was hardly ideal. He had missed the DZ, he knew, but wasn’t quite sure where he was. Nor did he have his weapon, which was also lost in the jump. Strangely, he didn’t feel at all scared. He knew he needed to think clearly and calmly and found he was able to do so. ‘Though I had been apprehensive whether or not I would measure up,’ he wrote, ‘the long months of training now kicked in.’13

  Winters was soon joined by another trooper, although from HQ Company, not Easy. After skirting round a German machine-gun team, they pushed on and by using the dime-store cricket clickers with which they had been issued, managed to link up with others from his platoon. After a cautious examination of the map, Winters realized they were close to Sainte-Mère-Église – in fact, they could see the town lit up by a fire blazing in one of the houses. They were about 4 miles north-west of their DZ, which wasn’t great but, on the face of it, not too disastrous either.

  At 2 a.m., at his 12. Kompanie Headquarters in a farmhouse not far from Carentan, Oberleutnant Martin Pöppel was roused and told that the entire Fallschirmjäger-Regiment 6 was now on full alert. The only Fallschirmjäger regiment in the area, its three battalions had been split up – the I. to Sainte-Marie-du-Mont, the II. to Sainte-Mère-Église, and the III. to Carentan. They had spent several weeks making a thorough investigation of the surrounding countryside, which was largely reclaimed marshland criss-crossed with a close network of hedgerows, or bocages. These, they realized, were high earthen walls, thickly woven with tree and dense bush roots. And so they had trained hard, carrying out regular exercises that made the most of these natural defences, and waiting for the day the Allied armada arrived off the coast of France – as they knew it surely would.