Telling It Like It Was (original) (raw)
May 29, 1994
Telling It Like It Was
By RALEIGH TREVELYAN
D-DAY, JUNE 6, 1944The Climactic Battle of World War II. By Stephen E. Ambrose.
early 10,000 Americans lie in the cemetery near St.-Laurent in Normandy. It is a place of awesome beauty, overlooking one of the five landing beaches of D-Day, code-named Omaha. Here -- with a chill in the heart -- we get the full impact of what has been called the last great set-piece battle of the Western world, the most thoroughly planned amphibious operation in history. How could anyone have survived on that narrow, crescent-shaped strip, studded with mines and raked by enfilading German machine-gun fire, from virtually indestructible blockhouses? Not of course that all those young men in the cemetery died on that first fatal morning. The Normandy campaign was to last months longer, and 12,000 more bodies were taken home for burial.
As we stand on this now silent spot, we also have to visualize an armada of over 5,000 ships out at sea: battleships, destroyers, mine sweepers, landing craft, merchant ships. Nothing like it had ever been seen before. During and after the landings the battleships, nicknamed Old Ladies, had mercilessly pounded these very cliff-top defenses of Hitler's so-called Atlantic Wall, as well as 60 miles to the right and left, salvo after salvo, a shrieking inferno. Hundreds of planes had roared overhead, unloading their bombs, shaking the earth. Add to that the crackle of machine guns and the whine and scream of German heavy artillery.
Stephen E. Ambrose acknowledges that "The Longest Day," by Cornelius Ryan, was an early inspiration for his new book. Like that account, "D-Day, June 6, 1944" is mostly about people, but goes even further in evoking the horror, the endurance, the daring and, indeed, the human failings at Omaha Beach and other places along the Calvados coastline. As director of the Eisenhower Center in New Orleans, Mr. Ambrose has been able to use the 1,200 oral histories of veterans deposited there, and these are of special importance. He has also included firsthand stories from British, Canadian, German and French sources, some from the topmost commanders. Well known as the biographer of Eisenhower, he contrasts and compares Ike's character with that of his opponent, Field Marshal Erwin Rommel: one the team player and crusader, the other a loner and highly experienced risk taker. He also emphasizes the essential isolation of each when faced with the ultimate decision -- Eisenhower, especially, when he had to postpone the landings by a day because of foul weather, and this when some troops had already embarked.
THE early chapters about strategy, planning and preparation include some new and illuminating details about undercover liaisons with the French Resistance and the Allies' deceptive ruses, notably Operation Fortitude. This elaborate scheme, carried out by military intelligence with some help from German double agents and even film industry set designers, used a blitz of false radio transmissions, papier-mache tanks and planes, phony docks and many other ghosts to hoodwink the Germans into believing that the Second Front could be in the Pas-de-Calais area or even in Norway. It is one of the great mysteries of the war that the Germans did not draw the right conclusions from the buildup in the south of England. Mr. Ambrose rightly describes the performance of the German high command as "pathetic," because of the dictatorial remote control of Hitler and the fundamental disagreements on defense between Rommel and his superior, Gerd von Rundstedt, the German commander in chief on the western front.
But the descriptions of individual ordeals on the bloody beach of Omaha make this book outstanding. Some 40,000 men and 3,500 vehicles were scheduled to land there. Almost from the start it was every man for himself. As Eisenhower was to say, before the battle plans are everything, but as soon as battle is joined plans are worthless. That could not have been more true of Omaha. Image after image follows in ever more horrifying succession: men in the first waves already half paralyzed by seasickness, exhaustion and confusion due to unexpectedly vicious German defenses; landing craft overturned, men sinking under too-heavy loads; screams for help, no time to rescue, men drowning or blown to pieces by German shells; limbs and heads floating in the water; machine-gun bullets whipping up the sand ahead; scores of corpses already lying there, vehicles afire; the coxswain yelling at his hesitating passengers, "For Christ's sake, fellas, get out! I've got to go get another load!"; a man holding his chin, the bone half shot away, staggering across the shingle. There were some 2,300 casualties at Omaha that day. Sheer force of numbers won through, but only a mile was gained. Gen. Omar Bradley, the principal American ground commander, had even at one stage contemplated withdrawal.
To the west of Omaha, at the base of the Cotentin peninsula, is the site of the other landing area of the American First Army, Utah Beach. This also had obstacles on the beach, especially mines, the Bouncing Betties. Although the continued bad weather had forced landing craft well off target, casualties were lighter here, and there were dunes to contend with instead of cliffs. Between Utah Beach and Omaha is the high point called Pointe du Hoc, scaled with grappling irons and captured after great loss by Rangers of the United States Army, one of D-Day's many acts of almost unbelievable bravery, dramatically described by Mr. Ambrose.
TO the east are the sites of the British Second Army landings -- Gold Beach and Sword -- and Juno, where the Canadian infantry landed. The British and Canadian cemeteries are scattered in small, leafy graveyards in the region behind. From the present-day tourist resort of Arromanches, near what was Gold Beach, we can still see the hulks of the giant concrete caissons that were towed across the English Channel to form an artificial harbor called Mulberry, as big as Dover's harbor and now known as Port Winston to the French. These relics alone are a tribute to the immense and varied feats of planning and the revolutionary technology behind D-Day (although the creation of the towable harbors, code-named Mulberries, which employed 40,000 men over two years before they were pulled across the English Channel to France, is skipped over by Mr. Ambrose -- perhaps because the American Mulberry was so soon and disappointingly swept away by the gale of June 19).
Dunes in the British sector were not so high as at Utah Beach, and German blockhouses were placed among French vacation homes. Gold Beach went relatively smoothly, but initial casualties at Juno were as severe as at Omaha because, as Mr. Ambrose says, objectives proved so wildly overoptimistic, and confusing to men going into action for the first time. Sword landings were at the mouth of the river Orne, beyond which lay the town of Caen, whose capture was to be a main object of D-Day.
As at Utah, glider troops and parachutists had preceded the Sword landing in order to seize bridges and destroy German command posts. In both cases strong winds and miscalculations caused chaos. To the rear of Utah, men were drowned in flooded areas or spiked on antitank obstacles; when darkness fell, survivors were still marooned in isolated pockets. Around the Orne, British parachutists became entangled in woods or unexpectedly high hedges.
Mr. Ambrose's descriptions of these two drops and their aftermaths are as harrowing and gripping as those of Omaha. Although the Sword and Juno troops met up with the parachutists, who had captured the vital Pegasus bridge over the Orne Canal, Caen was not taken -- a bitter disappointment, much criticized by later historians. Total casualty figures for the Allies for the whole of D-Day are reckoned at around 4,900.
For those who may be curious about the designation "D-Day," there is an amusing footnote in the book, indicating that the "D" stands for nothing more than "day" in the military jargon, just as "H" stands only for "hour," and that both formulas date from World War I. The note quotes the issue of Time magazine that appeared a week after the invasion as saying the American Army traced the first use of both D-Day and H-Hour to a single field order issued in 1918.
Mr. Ambrose makes some didactic pronouncements in this book that could cause arguments, demolishing, for instance, the "mythical" qualities of the German fighting soldier. A few remarks about the British are a little irritating to this particular British veteran of those days. Our commanders were indeed haunted by memories of the Somme and Passchendaele, but casualty rates of British units throughout the campaign sometimes equaled or exceeded those of the World War I battles. Perhaps it was true that the British were "lousy" at times when using the fruits of their intelligence gathering, and that when some troops ran low on ammunition they had to surrender.
Such matters aside, Mr. Ambrose wonderfully illuminates the mind of the very young soldier of any nation anywhere who has never been in fighting before. The fear of being afraid. All too soon, "It can't happen to me" will turn into "It can happen to me." As an ex-private in the Fifth Rangers remarked to Mr. Ambrose: "A veteran infantryman is a terrified infantryman." Which explains why most of those who died were between 18 and 28 years old. Mr. Ambrose calls his book "a love song to democracy," and Eisenhower would certainly have been proud of it, as he was of the words inscribed on the memorial hall at the American Cemetery near St.-Laurent: "This embattled shore, portal of freedom, is forever hallowed by the ideals, the valor and the sacrifices of our fellow countrymen."
AS IF ZEUS WERE HURLING THUNDERBOLTS
When the battleships opened fire, it was as if Zeus were hurling thunderbolts at Normandy. The noise, the concussion, the great belches of fire from the muzzles, made an unforgettable impression on every man present. . . . On the Bayfield, ship's stores officer Lieut. Cyrus Aydlett hurried on deck to observe. "It was like the fireworks display of a thousand Fourth of Julys rolled into one," he wrote in his diary. "The heavens seemed to open, spilling a million stars on the coastline before us, each one spattering luminous, tentacle-like branches of flame in every direction. . . . Pillows of smoke and flame shot skyward with great force -- the resounding blasts even at our distance were terrifying -- concussion gremlins gave involuntary, sporadic jerks on your trouser legs -- the ship shrugged and quivered as if she knew what was occurring." . . .
In Vierville, the tiny village atop the bluff at the west end of Omaha, the air bombardment had awakened the populace. When the bombers passed, "a strange calm succeeded." Pierre and Jacqueline Piprel hurried to the home of M. Clement Marie because they knew he had, despite stern German orders, a pair of binoculars. "From a window in the attic the three of us in turn were able to contemplate the formidable armada, getting bigger and bigger as it closed in. We could not see the sea anymore, only ships all over."
Then came the first salvo. Naval shells descended on Vierville. Within minutes, "there was not a single glass left on the windows." One shell exploded in the upstairs bedroom "and everything fell into the dining room below." Another shell whistled through the house, coming in one window and going out another. A shell exploded in the baker's bakehouse, killing the maid and the baker's baby she was holding in her arms. . . .
U.S.S. Harding, a destroyer, Comdr. George G. Palmer commanding, opened fire at 0537 on Omaha Beach. The target was a battery east of Port-en-Bessin, range 4,800 yards. Harding sent 44 rounds of 5-inch shells toward the German guns, temporarily neutralizing them. Meanwhile, near misses from the Germans sent geysers up all around. . . .
All the while German guns ashore blasted back. The men on Harding could hear the whine and scream of the shells as they passed overhead and astern. Lieut. William Gentry remembered that the Germans were shooting at the battleships and cruisers seaward of Harding, "but their trajectories were so flat that shells were whizzing by at the level of our stacks. Some members of the crew were sure a couple of shells went between our stacks."
-- From "D-Day, June 6, 1944."