From his bunker at WN71, overlooking Dog Green, the Vierville Draw, Karl Wegner had continued to fire. It was strictly verboten to fire an MG42 continuously for more than 250 rounds, or 11 seconds, and it was not advisable either. Each bullet was propelled by a charge that exploded in the casing, causing immense heat as it did so. With twenty-three explosions in the breech every second, and with comparatively thin steel barrels that were only air-, not gas-cooled, it took no time at all for an MG42 to become, first, red hot and then white hot. Accuracy was never the MG42’s strength at the best of times – hardly surprising at that rate of fire – but very soon the barrels literally began to melt and needed changing. Firing discipline was all very well in practice, and Karl Wegner, for one, was trying hard to fire short, sharp bursts as he had been trained to do, but with hundreds of Americans coming towards him and the sea thick with enemy boats, the bursts were getting longer and the cooling-off periods shorter. Accuracy was becoming wilder and the stoppages and jams more frequent. ‘When I pulled back the bolt for what seemed to be the thousandth time,’ said Wegner, ‘I paused for a good look down the beach.’20 Americans were lying everywhere, some dead, others alive. Landing craft were at the shore. One boat appeared to hit a mine, sending both men and boat fragments high into the air. But naval guns were also firing back at them, causing Wegner and his fellows to duck for cover. One shell hit their view slit and a chunk of concrete struck Obergefreiter Lang in the face. With every gun jam or barrel change, and every duck-down from Allied naval fire, so the gaps between firing were growing greater and the chances for the American assault troops to get off the beach increased.
The killing ground of Dog Green, overlooked by three strongpoints, was still a horrifically dangerous place to be, however, no matter how overheated Karl Wegner’s machine gun was becoming. On board his LCA, Sergeant Bob Slaughter was not only feeling literally sick, he was also feeling increasingly apprehensive about what was unfolding. He and his fellows had been told beforehand they could expect little opposition, but where this idea came from is unclear; Colonel Charles Canham, commander of the 116th, had circulated a memo throughout all three battalions expressly warning of underestimating the enemy and it was read to all the troops before they set sail. ‘We expected A and B Companies to have the beach secured by the time we landed,’ noted Slaughter.21 As they neared the shore, artillery and mortar shells exploded in the water around them. ‘I suddenly became very worried about what Jerry could do to us.’
His LCA landed at 7.10, some 300 yards to the east, but still within view of the Vierville cluster of strongpoints. The first man off jumped before the ramp was fully down, the LCA surged forward and he was crushed to death. When it was Slaughter’s turn, the craft was still bobbing up and down and it took him a moment to judge the right time to leap into water he knew was far too deep. At 6 feet 5 inches tall, his height was, for the moment, a huge advantage, and he could feel others grabbing on to him as he pushed forward through the surf. Both bullets and water seemed to be killers of equal potency. ‘It was demoralizing to hear good men scream as bullets ripped into soft flesh,’ wrote Slaughter, ‘and others scream as the fierce, flooding tide dragged the non-swimmers under.’22 He was still in the water when Private Ernest McCanless appeared next to him, struggling with an ammunition box.
‘Slaughter, are we going to get through this?’ he shouted above the din of artillery and mortars, men’s screams and the rattle of small arms.23
Slaughter could not answer him; he thought they must surely be killed, a feeling reinforced as a body floated by, the face already turned purple. He struggled on, reaching the cover of a beach stake, only to notice a teller mine tied to its top. Struggling to comprehend what was happening, he looked around, wondering where all the senior non-coms and officers were. Leadership was needed and he was a sergeant, but he was nineteen and he now saw a GI get up and move only to be cut down. Lying there on the beach, his blood pouring on to the sand, the wounded man was screaming. A medic hurried over to him but was shot as well. A couple of minutes later, both were dead.
Slaughter knew he had to get off the beach. He couldn’t go back and he couldn’t stay where he was, so, summoning all his reserves of courage, he shouted to his depleted squad and urged them to get moving. With his bayonet fixed to the end of his Garand rifle, he got up and ran, although even without his assault jacket he was loaded down with gear and heavy, sodden clothes. Hitting a small tidal pool, he tripped, accidentally loosed off a round, recovered his balance and hurried forward, finally making the comparative safety of the sea wall. He then tried to fire his rifle but it was jammed. Taking off his assault vest, he spread it on the sand so that he could lay down his weapon to clean it, only to notice several bullet holes in his pack. Overwhelmed by a renewed bout of fear, he felt his knees weaken and his hands begin to shake. Breathing deeply, he desperately tried to compose himself.
It was 7.45 a.m. and approaching the shore were Captain John Raaen and the assault craft of the 5th Rangers. The noise was overwhelming. On his LCA, standing next to the coxswain and the British crew, Raaen could see ahead. Away to their front right, an LCM or LCT – he wasn’t sure which – was hit by an artillery shell and burst into flames. ‘The scene was one from hell,’ he wrote, ‘smoke from the fires on the face of the bluff, fires from the burning vessels and equipment, black ugly puffs from artillery bursting, dust and flying debris everywhere.’24 They were nearing the shore, the coxswain weaving through the obstacles. Suddenly, it looked as if they were bearing down on a staked mine, only for a wave to push them off course in the nick of time. Moments later, the LCA ground to a halt, the ramp went down and Raaen jumped off, mercifully into water only boot-deep.
‘Headquarters! Over here!’ he shouted, then dashed forward, heading to the sea wall now only 50 yards or so ahead and conscious of lots of small arms pinging, zipping and fizzing all around, mostly from the right.25 Fortunately, they too had landed further east, around the same stretch of Dog White as Company C of the 116th, having been alerted on the run-in to the suicidal situation at Dog Green. Smoke filled the air and blood – there was now lots of blood, on the sand, in little tidal pools – and the sound of artillery shells was absolutely deafening. The assault on the senses was immense and ugly. Behind Raaen, his HQ Company runner was hit in the leg and cried out, but kept going. The beach wall was just 20 yards away now, packed with men. Crouching down, he glanced back to see that his men were still coming. He watched LCI 92 touch down, the ramp drop and men spill out – then suddenly an artillery round hit it. A shard must have struck the man with the flame-thrower, because the whole side of the vessel burst into flames. Another shell hit his own LCA, killing the British crew on board, but not before all his men were off. He did a quick head count. All were there. All thirty-three, albeit with one wounded.
Further towards Dog Green, Sergeant Bob Slaughter was working up the courage to lead his depleted squad over the sea wall and to the foot of the bluffs. He might have been terrified and might also have believed the situation to be hopeless, but it was not. Already, by 8 a.m., the tide was literally and metaphorically beginning to turn. Despite the carnage and the slaughter of that first wave, it was the Americans, not the German defenders, who were winning on Omaha.
CHAPTER 12
D-Day: The British and Canadian Landings
Just before 5.30 a.m., first light was creeping over the beach at Courseulles. Now off shore, having navigated safely through the cleared channels among the dense enemy minefields, HMCS Algonquin was in position off Juno Beach, designated for the Canadian landings, and Lieutenant Yogi Jenson was overseeing the laying of a Danbuoy with a large metal reflector that was to be their reference mark as they moved up and down the line of bombardment. For now, however, bombing of the coast was left to the cruisers and the air forces. Jenson kept wondering when the enemy might open fire at them, but as the light began to grow there appeared to be very little happening on shore. As far as he could see, he was looking
at a quiet Normandy coastal town. ‘Any minute now,’ he thought, ‘we will be surrounded by white columns of water, but all stayed quiet.’1
Algonquin was one of eleven destroyers, two cruisers – HMS Belfast and HMS Diadem – and a number of specially adapted landing craft that made up the bombardment arm of Force J. The combined fire-power of this force alone was impressive: twelve 6-inch guns, eight 5.25-inch, twenty-nine 4.7-inch and sixteen 4-inch – sixty-five guns all firing shells of 100mm in diameter. Along all the Juno defences, the Germans had just four guns of 100mm or larger, and just twenty of 50–88mm. The Canadians also had six Landing Craft, Gun (Large), each with a further two 4.7-inch guns, four Landing Craft, Flak, eight Landing Craft, Rocket, and several of the amazingly named Landing Craft, Assault (Hedgerow), which could fire twenty-four 60lb bombs to saturate wire, mines and obstacles.
Behind this screen of destroyers, the men of the Canadian 3rd Infantry Division were clambering into landing craft and experiencing much the same difficulties and nausea as their American allies further to the west. Company Sergeant-Major Charlie Martin had been up since 3.15 a.m. and was scrambling down nets thrown over the side of their transport, SS Monowai, at 5 a.m. Getting into the LCA as it bobbed up and down on the swell had been no easy feat, especially with all the heavy kit they were carrying. Martin had immediately realized that the real invasion was going to be nothing like the training exercises. Originally from Wales and the son of travelling circus performers, he and his family had emigrated to Canada in 1928 when Charlie was nine, settling in the Dixie area to the west of Toronto. In 1940, Martin was working on a dairy farm when the local regiment, the Queen’s Own Rifles, mobilized in Toronto. He felt strongly that he ought to do his bit and so, like all other Canadians in the war, volunteered to serve. He was accepted into the Queen’s and in July 1941 they set sail for England. They had been training for this moment ever since. In the meantime, Martin had won his corporal’s stripes, then his sergeant’s, and also the heart of an English girl; he and Vi were married on 30 October 1943. She was now working for the ATS (Auxiliary Territorial Service) as a Royal Artillery gun radar operator and he was now A Company sergeant-major and bracing himself to storm the beaches of Normandy.
The Queen’s Own were part of the 8th Infantry Brigade, who would be coming ashore in the Nan sector, which ran across the beach-front towns of Bernières-sur-Mer and Saint-Aubin-sur-Mer. A second assault brigade, the 7th, was to land a little further to the west on Mike sector, either side of the town of Courseulles-sur-Mer. Martin and his fellows had about 5 miles to travel and as they began the journey to the shore, and despite the weight of naval fire-power to support them, they were silent and he couldn’t help feeling rather alone. Like Yogi Jenson, Martin was also struck by how quiet it seemed. There were no enemy guns firing as they ploughed forward through the choppy surf. The battalion was being transported by ten assault craft. ‘Ten boats stretched out over fifteen hundred yards is not really a whole lot of assault force,’ he wrote.2 ‘The boats began to look even tinier as the gaps widened.’
To the west of Omaha, the cliffs became more pronounced before dropping briefly to the small fishing ports of, first, Port-en-Bessin and then Arromanches. They then climbed again before dropping away once more, 12 miles from Omaha, to the beach designated Gold. The long, sandy shoreline ran east from Gold to Juno to Sword Beaches, all the way to the mouth of the Caen Canal. Perched high on the hill between Port-en-Bessin and Arromanches was the Kriegsmarine’s four-gun battery of Longues-sur-Mer and these guns and other strongpoints along the British and Canadian section were now coming in for particular attention from the Royal Navy’s big battleships and cruisers as the assault forces headed towards the beaches. Longues-sur-Mer alone was hit 179 times by the cruisers HMS Ajax and HMS Argonaut firing their eight 150mm and ten 133mm guns against the four 150mms of the coastal battery. The massively superior British fire-power was already beginning to count; by 6.30 a.m. the Longues battery had been silenced, as had a key strongpoint in the Gold Beach sector.
There were still Widerstandsnester fairly evenly spaced out and mutually supporting all along this stretch of the coast. At La Rivière, a village on the shore near Vers-sur-Mer, WN33 stood right on the beach’s edge. There were two high-velocity 88mm dual-purpose anti-tank and anti-aircraft guns, as well as a 50mm Tobruk and all the usual wire entanglements, networks of trenches, mines and machine-gun posts. Martin Eineg was a private in Infanterie-Regiment 726, twenty years old and something of a boxer, despite a chronic lung condition that had technically made him unfit for active service. But this was 1944, and that was not the exemption ticket it had once been in Nazi Germany. After serving with the Luftwaffe as flak crew near Munich, he had been posted west a few months earlier and made an observer and machine-gunner. His position was in a bunker with a slit fitted with an MG34 – the early-war German light machine gun – on a gimbal mount set in the floor. This was part of a larger concrete casement housing the two 88mms 100 yards back from the sea wall, while his billet was several hundred yards further inland in an old farmhouse that had been reinforced with concrete and sandbags.
Eineg had been roused and sent forward at first light. Hurrying to his position, he found two of his comrades already there and manning the MG. Looking through the viewing slit, he was stunned. ‘I was struck speechless at this sight,’ he said, ‘which I had never imagined possible.’ Beside him, the machine-gunner, who was a middle-aged man, turned to him and laughed mirthlessly.3 ‘Are we sorry we started this war now?’ he said. Soon after, a Typhoon sped towards them, low, fast and spewing cannon shells, which hit the concrete around them.4 It was so low Eineg could smell its fuel. Then the firing from the ships began, endlessly it seemed, with shells whistling and screaming over and some hitting the casement. The structure shook, dust, smoke and grit filled the air, while the noise was unbearable. The loader began to scream and bang his hands against the wall, then the steel door opened and one of the artillery officers with the 88s came in. As he did so, another shell hit the edge of the viewing embrasure, sending shrapnel and bits of concrete hurtling into the bunker and whirling around, pinging off the walls. Several pieces hit the officer in the face, blinding him and smashing teeth. Flung back against the wall, he slumped to the floor.
Suddenly, the shelling stopped and, slowly, Eineg got himself to his feet. The hands of the machine-gunner were shaking, but he managed to get a grip of himself, although the loader was still on the floor, clutching his head in his hands. Eineg took over as loader. In front of them the ground was on fire, partly obscuring their view, but they could see landing craft reaching the shore.
This was the section of Gold Beach the Allies had named King sector. It was now around 7.30 a.m.; the landings by 50th Northumbrian Division were taking place almost an hour after those on Omaha – a delay necessary because the tide had to be high enough for the assault craft to get over the Calvados Reef that lay off shore. Here, at King sector, the 6th Green Howards and 5th East Yorkshires came ashore alongside DDs and AVREs – Armoured Vehicle, Royal Engineers – including flail tanks and dozers. The infantry, tanks and assault engineers were also arriving more or less where they were supposed to, and all fairly close to each other, with the result that they were able to operate together, straight up the beach and off it again, as Martin Eineg and his fellows at WN33 were about to discover.
First, though, the attackers had to get off the beach and to begin with they came under heavy fire. From WN33, the 88s began firing, tracer flashing across the beach. One shell hit the ramp of a landing craft, which then started sinking, nose down. Eineg’s MG began chattering and he watched six or so men cut down as the troops tried to exit a landing craft. Another landing craft was hit by an 88. It was burning from the rear and continued to surge forward, flames rising, as it crashed on to the beach.
The shelling began again from out at sea and soon after the 88s stopped firing. Eineg heard shouting and yelling from the casement and men screaming for f
ire-fighting equipment. In their own bunker, Eineg and his middle-aged gunner kept firing. ‘Our MG was running very hot,’ said Eineg.5 ‘The breech was glowing and it was difficult to lift the mechanism to insert fresh belts of ammunition.’ Churchill tanks had come ashore and although several had been hit and knocked out, others were now targeting WN33. Blinded by smoke and dust, Eineg and his gunner stopped firing while Eineg hurried back to get some more ammunition. As he reached the corridor, however, he was stopped at pistol-point by an officer. Ordering Eineg back to his position, the officer then yelled at some medics to bring in the ammunition boxes. These arrived soon after and they began firing again, cutting down a column of infantry that had been cautiously moving towards them. It was clear, though, that their position would soon be overrun. A Sherman tank rumbled forward, infantry crouching behind. One of the 88s, functioning once more, fired, hitting the front of the tank and blowing bits off, but it still came forward. In the bunker, the MG was overheating again and Eineg struggled to reload, partly because of the heat but also because his hands were shaking and his eyes were filled with grit.
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