Beachhead Panorama: Going Ashore with the Troops at Utah Beach

Soldiers of 4th US Infantry Division make their way inland from Utah Beach.

by Ira Wolfert

Wolfert won the Pulitzer Prize for his dispatches on the Battle for the Solomons. This article is largely based on a series of on-the-scene dispatches he wrote for the North American Newspaper Alliance.

This Normandy beachhead of ours is the fourth beachhead I have been on in the last two years. All beachheads are unlike anything else on earth. Thousands of things are going on at once, from life to death, from hysterical triumph to crushing failure. Night is different from day only because the light is poorer, the tracer bullets more lurid, the waves creamier and your particular task either harder or easier. You work until your job is done or your superior feels too exhausted to work you any longer. Then you sleep until prodded awake by explosions or bullets or some other urgency.

Our first view of France, from the U.S. Coast Guard troop transport that carried us across the Channel, was that reflected by anti-aircraft shells lighting up the night above Normandy. It was a little past 1 a.m. on D-Day, and paratroopers were beginning to land, their planes showered by whole buckets of blazing shells and golf-ball flak. One plane went down, then another and another, in plain sight of our ship, while our men stood silently in the darkness, their faces grim and their hearts sick.

The transport anchored about eleven miles offshore, and at dawn, after a terrific naval and air bombardment of the beaches, we transferred to small boats for the landing. The boats were being thrown five and ten feet into the air and digging deep into the troughs between the waves, and the leap from the slippery ladder to a greasy hatch had to be timed nicely.

To the right and left and ahead and behind, farther than a man could see, the scene was the same—a spreading mass of ships lying to, waiting patiently as cows to be unloaded, each deep laden and teeming with men and goods. The waters between them were teeming too, with small boats threading back and forth and hanging to the sides of the larger vessels like the metal spangles of a tambourine.

We passed under a sky full of airplanes laid layer upon layer on top of each other. We passed warships bombarding the enemy, and saw the splashes of enemy shells trying to hit the ships. An inferno was brewing on the beach; smoke was clotting up from it, and blinding white and orange blasts of explosions flickered hotly.

Then the war reached out a giant paw and struck dead ahead of us. There was a big explosion. Gray smoke and white water rose hundreds of feet into the air. Out of its center a mortally stricken minesweeper plunged and tilted, bleeding oil in spouts as if an artery had been severed. Then it righted itself and lay quietly, with the big gaseous-looking bubbling that ships make when they die.

Standing by to pick up survivors, we came first to those who had been blown farthest by the explosion. They were all dead. “Leave the dead and take the living first,” cried Lieutenant John Tripson.

And then, from all over the sea around us, sounding small and child-like in the wild world of waters, came cries of “Help! Help!” and one startling, pathetic cry of “Please help me!”

Big John Tripson is a Mississippi boy who used to play football for the Detroit Lions. His strength came in handy now. The wet boys in the sea with all they had on them weighed up to three hundred pounds. Big John reached out and scooped them up with one hand, holding onto the boat with the other. We fished six out of the water, two of them uninjured, taking only the living and leaving the dead awash like derelicts in the unheeding sea. One man was naked. Every stitch of clothing, including his shoes and socks, had been blown off and his body was welted all over as if he had been thrashed by a cat-o’-nine-tails.

Other rescue ships had come alongside the minesweeper now, and we stood out again on our mission. Close to us was the U.S. cruiser Tuscaloosa. A German battery had challenged her, and she and an American destroyer had taken up the challenge. The Germans were using a very fine smokeless powder that made it impossible to spot their gun sites unless one happened to be looking right there when the muzzle flash gave them away. They also had some kind of bellows arrangement that puffed out a billow of gun smoke from a position safely removed from the actual battery. This was to throw off the spotters. But their best protection was the casements of earth-and-concrete twelve-and-a-half feet thick.

The affair between the battery and the warships had the color of a duel to it. When the Germans threw down the gauntlet you could see the gauntlet splash in the water. It was a range-finding shell. Then the shells started walking toward our warship, in a straight line. If you followed them on back you would eventually get to the battery. This was what our warship commanders were trying to do. It was a race between skills. If the Germans landed on the ship before our gunners could plot the line of their shells, then they would win. If our gunners could calculate more rapidly, then we would win.

Captain Waller, in command of the Tuscaloosa, held his $15,000,000 warship steady, setting it up as bait to keep the Germans shooting while his gunners worked out their calculations.

The destroyer—I could not identify it—stuck right with our cruiser. The splashes kept coming closer. Our ships did not move. The splashes started at five hundred yards off and then went quickly to three hundred yards. Now, I thought, the warships would move. But they remained silent and motionless. The next salvo would do it, the next one would get them, I was thinking. The next salvo blotted out the sides of the vessels in a whip of white water, throwing a cascade across the deck of the Tuscaloosa.

Now in this final second the race was at its climax. The Germans knew our ships would move. They had to guess which way, they had to race to correct range and deflection for the next salvo. Our ships had to guess what the Germans would think, and do the opposite.

The destroyer had one little last trick up its sleeve. And that tipped the whole duel our way. Its black gang down below mixed rich on fuel, and a gust of black smoke poured out of the stacks. The ship had turned into the wind, so that the smoke was carried backward. The Germans could not tell whether it was the wind doing that or the destroyer’s forward speed. They decided that it was forward speed and swung their guns, and straddled perfectly the position the destroyer would have occupied had it gone forward. But the destroyer had reversed engines and gone backward.

Now the game was up for the Huns. The warships swung around in their new positions and brought their guns to bear; their shells scored direct hits, and the Germans lay silently and hopelessly in their earth.

On the first beach we touched the air smelled sweet and clean with the sea. Clouds of sea gulls swooped over­head, filling the air with a whole twitter of flute notes as they complained of the invasion by American troops. There was bleak strength here, and bare wild blowy beauty, and death over every inch of it.

The Germans had sown every single inch of the soil with mines. In twenty-four hours our men had cleared only narrow paths, losing seventeen wounded and one dead in doing so.

They walked, slept, ate, lived and worked along those paths. When they walked they put one foot carefully before the other. When they lay along the paths to sleep they put rocks alongside themselves to keep from turning over.

We had landed in the early afternoon. The wind was dying then, and the black and gray smoke stood up in spires wherever one looked and hung in the gentle wind. Smoke came from planes that had been shot down and from mines being set off by mine detectors and from American guns and German shells. Normandy seemed to be burning.

Men were coming out of the sea continually and starting to work—digging, hammering, bulldozing, truck­ing, planning, ordering, surveying, shooting and being shot at. Amid the artillery and machine gun fire, and the rush and smack of shells, you could hear typewriters making their patient clatter and telephones ringing with homey businesslike sounds.

German prisoners were coming down one side of the road while American assault infantry were going up the other side. The Americans had that odd preoccupied look of men going into battle; but they were a fine, bold, brawny sight as they swung along.

 “Where are you going?” I asked one of them. “I don’t know,” he replied. “I’m following the man ahead.” The man ahead was following the man ahead, too. Finally I asked the head of the column. “I’m following the column ahead,” he said.

I laughed and he laughed, but he laughed with a jubilant sound. “Well,” he told me, “it’s not as bad as it sounds. We’ve all got the same idea in this army, and if you just follow the man ahead you’re bound to get to where the doing is to be done.” He looked very tan and healthy as he said this, walking along with a long-legged slouch, chewing a slab of cheese from a ration tin as if it were a cud of tobacco. He was a soldier to be proud of.

Our men would go along until fired upon. Then they would investigate what was firing on them. If they had enough force on hand to solve the problem, as the military saying goes, they solved it. If not, they contained the problem and sent for what force was needed—air, artillery or ground reinforcement.

The first French people I saw were a family of typical Norman farmers—tall, blue-eyed, sturdy and very red-cheeked. American soldiers going up to the front had left the mark of their passing on the household’s dining table—chewing gum, hard candy and some cigarettes. We talked about the bombardment, and I asked how they managed to live through it.

 “An act of God,” they said. “But the Germans, they were worse than the bombardment.”

I had forgotten what the French word for “run” is, and I asked if the German soldiers billeted in their house had “promenaded away quickly” from the bombardment. They all laughed heartily.

 “The Germans,” one of the men said, “promenaded from the bombardment—ZIP! The way an airplane promenades through the air.”

The Germans were tough veteran fighters. You never got a chance to make more than one mistake against them. Yet they were willing to surrender and seemed only to want sufficiently strong inducement. They were veterans of duty in Russia. The Russians seem to have made them very tired of the war. They fight while they think they are winning, but it is not hard to hammer them into believing they are losing. Then they give up.

When I returned to the beach more German prisoners were being brought down to await transportation to England. The bay and its immense weight of shipping was spread out before them. A German officer, when he saw that vast mass of ships, lifted his hand and let it drop in a gesture of utter despair, as if to say, “Who can win against this?”

But the thing I remember most clearly about this long day was a particular moment in the twilight. It is a picture frozen in my mind—the way a scream sometimes seems frozen in the air.

I was aboard an LCT moving both American and German wounded from the murderous beach. The Nazi prisoners sat silently slumped side by side with the silent Americans. We were a few hundred yards offshore when there was a low-swooping air raid which came close enough for me to feel the desperate heat of one Hun plane. It hit like a bundle of fists against my face.

Very few of the men aboard stirred. Most of them were immersed in the apathy that seizes a man when he knows he has done all he can possibly do.

A large, sooty cloud of smoke sprang up from the beach as abruptly as if prodded. Our LCT trembled all over. There was debris in that cloud—big, black, torn chunks of it—and sitting on top of the cloud, poised delicately there for a moment many feet in the air, was a truck, all intact. It was silhouetted so sharply in the twilight that I could make out its wheels. Then the blasting sound of the explosion came clapping like a huge hand against our ears.

A German officer told me the war would be over in October because the Americans and Russians could not fight longer than that. I told him that all the enlisted men among the Germans I had spoken to had agreed the war would be over in October because Germany could not hold out longer.

“Your men seem very tired of fighting,” I said. “Do you have trouble convincing them that Hitler will lead them to a happy end?”

“German soldiers,” he said, “fight for the Fatherland and there is no separation possible in any German mind between Der Führer and Das Vaterland.”

As the officer delivered his pronouncement about Hitler and the German mind an enlisted man sitting next to him winked at me. I smiled broadly back at him.

Suddenly I saw a German Hein­kel seemingly stuck in the air above me. I saw the first of its stick of bombs drop into the water. Then I threw myself against the iron deck. The German officer clamped down on his emotions and the pain of his wounds and stood erect to show that no German was afraid. He posed himself insolently against the rail, smoking a cigarette in a careful, graceful, stiff-handed way while one knee wilted slightly in the manner approved for gentlemen posing before a mantel. I looked away in disgust from this Nazi superman across the open deck where the brown-blanketed seriously wounded lay in silent rows.

As we made our way out into the darkening sea we could see fires springing up from the town of Montebourg. The fires were the work of the Tuscaloosa—or, as I found out later when I got aboard the vessel, more specifically the work of the Army’s Lieutenant Joe PuGash, of Tampa, serving as spotter with a naval shore fire control party; and Lieutenants Theral O’Bryant, of Tampa, and William Braybrook, of Ohio, sitting deep in the ship, in the plotting room. These boys had been talking to each other over the radio.

“German infantry is entrenching itself in the main square of the town,” Joe said. “Let’s ginger them up.” The guns fired.

“Cease firing; mission successful, old boy,” said Joe.

Two roads lead into Montebourg. The Germans were shoveling reinforcements down from Valognes. Joe was changing places to get a line on these roads when suddenly in a very abrupt way he gave a target and cried, “Open fire!”

Immediately afterward there was silence from him.

O’Bryant sat listening to the silence from Joe for a long time. A British voice from a plane overhead brought him back to work.

“There are transports coming into town, troops getting out of trucks and taking up positions near a cemetery there.” The voice was tranquil and most British. “Would you care for a go at them?”

After the Tuscaloosa had fired a salvo the British voice lost most of its tranquility. “Beautiful!” it cried. “Oh, beautiful! What a lovely shot!”

It seems that ten trucks full of Huns had been blown across acres of field by a single straddle. The British voice abruptly regained its calm. “I’m afraid I’ll have to be off now,” it said. “My covering plane has been shot down and a Jerry is shooting at me. Good-bye all.”

“The best to you and thanks,” shouted O’Bryant. But he never heard the British voice again.

Instead he heard from Joe. The boy was back overlooking Montebourg.

“I couldn’t keep on spotting for you,” he explained. He sounded very tired. “The Germans had us in a barrel for two hours and if I had lifted my head to see what was going on I’d have got it knocked off.” Joe began running around all over the place, spotting infantry positions, troop movements, observation posts and strong points. “You sure shot the hell out of them that time,” he kept saying in his tired voice.

About the time we were huffing and clanking past the Tuscaloosa, O’Bryant came out on deck for a breather. He helped us watch Montebourg burn. “That Joe is sure building himself up a hot time there,” he said.

The wounded to whom I talked gave some idea of what the day had been like. A paratrooper captain said, “When I landed I broke my leg. I had spent two years training, and four seconds after I go to work I’m out of it. I rolled into some kind of ditch. There the krautburgers were shooting at me but they didn’t hit me. I waited in the ditch and thought, ‘Well, your total contribution to the war effort is that you spared the time of a man in the burying detail by finding your own grave.’ A German started coming toward me. ‘What’s the German for Kamerad,’ I wondered and remembered that Kamerad is the German for Kamerad. Then I thought, the hell with that. I’m going to get at least one lick in in this war. So I killed the German. I waited till he got close and aimed for his groin and walked my tommygun right up the middle to his chin. Then I passed out. But I got one. My training wasn’t altogether wasted.”

A naval officer, suffering from exposure, said: “The whole stern blew up. You know, it’s a funny thing. There was a kid blown higher than the mast. I saw him in the air, arms flailing around, legs kicking, and recognized his face in the air. That kid was picked up later and all he had was a broken leg.”

A glider pilot, shot down behind German lines, said, “I walked all night. I went toward where the guns were shooting and then I met a Frenchman. I gave him my rations and he gave me wine.

“Boy, did I get drunk! I walked through the whole German lines—and our lines, too—drunk as a goat and singing.”

There is no way to record all the events that take place in a typical beachhead day, not even in a typical beachhead hour. There are hundreds of thousands of men in and around this beachhead, and if each made a record of what startling violent things he saw the records would differ in hundreds of thousands of ways.

Ira Wolfert.

 

USS Tuscaloosa (CA-37), off of the Philadelphia Navy Yard, on Nov. 10, 1944. She is wearing camouflage Measure 32, Design 13d.

Operation Neptune, June 6, 1944, coast of Normandy. Target near Ozeville. On 3 June, Tuscaloosa steamed in company with the rest of Task Force 125 (TF 125) bound for the Normandy beaches. At 0550, 6 June, she opened fire with her 8 in (200 mm) battery, and three minutes later her 5 in (130 mm) guns engaged Fort Ile de Tatihou, Baie de la Seine. For the remainder of D-Day, coast defense batteries, artillery positions, troop concentrations, and motor transport all came under the fire of Tuscaloosa's guns, which were aided by her air spotters and by fire control parties attached to Army units on shore. VCS-7, a US Navy spotter squadron flying Supermarine Spitfire VBs and Seafire IIIs, was one of the units which provided targeting coordinates and fire control. Initial enemy return fire was inaccurate, but it improved enough by the middle of the day to force the cruiser to take evasive action.

A landing craft carries US troops to Utah Beach on D-Day.

Soldiers from the 4th Infantry Division wade onto the beach.

An aerial photograph of US troops landing at Utah Beach.

American casualty on Utah Beach.

Troops land on Utah Beach, June 1944.

US troops land on Utah Beach on D-Day.

A German 88mm gun points seaward from a casemate at Les Dunes de Varreville, Utah Beach, shortly after D-Day (June 6, 1944).

U.S. soldiers protect themselves from enemy fire as an 88 mm shell explodes on Utah Beach.

Troops leave the shelter of a seawall at Utah Beach on D-Day, June 6, 1944.

Army medics rendering first aid to troops on Utah Beach, June 1944.

Normandy Invasion, Utah Beach, June 1944. Members of the U.S. Navy 2nd Beach Battalion catch a “breather” at their new “home” on the French beach, after hot action on beachhead. Photograph released 11 June 1944.

Normandy Invasion, Utah Beach, June 1944. Members of the U.S. Navy 2nd Beach Battalion catch a “breather” at their new “home” on the French beach, after hot action on beachhead. Note, the walkie-talkie in the foreground. Photograph released 11 June 1944.

Normandy Invasion, Utah Beach, June 1944. Members of the U.S. Navy 2nd Beach Battalion catch a “breather” at their new “home” on the French beach, after hot action on beachhead. Lone magazine comprises the this sailor’s library. Photograph released 11 June 1944.

Normandy Invasion, Utah Beach, June 1944. A U.S. Navy Hospital Corpsman writes a letter, in a Normandy beachhead bunker, 11 June 1944. Possibly at Utah Beach.

US Navy Communication Command Post on Utah Beach, June 1944.

This was the scene at the easternmost of the two American beaches (Utah Beach) at about 3 p.m. on D-Day. The fighting had moved inland, but all along the seawall, which extends a considerable length of the beach, men dug themselves in - hospital corpsmen, beach battalion members, Sea Bees, and anyone whose work was on the beach itself. The beach first aid station was a short way down from here, and the wounded and dead are in the sand in front of the sea wall. The tide was out at this time, and the wounded could not be evacuated back to the ships because of the difficulty in getting landing craft in and out. An enemy artillery battery, located some distance inland from the beach but still in range, sent shells steadily over the Americans, impeding work. An ammunition truck was hit and burned at the beach’s far end. A lone LCI unloaded her troops and the men filed across the beach and started inland. In this section beach obstacles were not as formidable as in other areas, and the demolition parties were able to clear the way for landing craft with few losses. Painting, watercolor on paper by Mitchell Jamieson, 1944.

First Aid Station on the Beach D-Day. Painting, watercolor on paper by Mitchell Jamieson, 1944.

Utah Beach, June 1944.

The Canadian Army in the Normandy Assault

Canadian troops disembark from landing craft in an orderly manner onto the beachhead in Normandy.

by C. P. Stacey

The Normandy landings of June 1944 were one of the most decisive operations of the Second World War and, indeed, one of the most significant in modern military history. The invasion of Northwest Europe marked the beginning of the final phase of the war with Germany and led, less than a year later, to the final German collapse. Canadian forces played an important part in the operation, which was tremendously complicated and on a vast scale.

Development of the Plan

In the summer of 1940 British forces were expelled from the continent of Europe, and Britain and the Commonwealth were thrown back on the defensive. The entry of the United States into the war late in 1941 made it possible to accelerate planning for a return to the continent, and American strategists were anxious to invade Northwest Europe at the earliest possible date. During 1942, however, neither trained divisions nor landing craft were available in sufficient numbers to launch such an operation successfully, even though hard-pressed Russia was urgently demanding a “Second Front” in the west. Instead, available forces were diverted to North Africa where victory was achieved in 1943.

At the Casablanca Conference in January 1943 the decision was taken that the build-up of men and material for an assault upon Northwest Europe should be resumed. Lieutenant-General F. E. Morgan, a British officer, was appointed “Chief of Staff to the Supreme Allied Commander (Designate)” in March, and under him an Anglo-American planning staff began work on a broad operational plan for the great invasion. The target date for the operation was 1 May 1944.

The first task facing the COSSAC planners was the selection of the area to be assaulted. Command of the sea enabled the Allies to strike almost anywhere, but short-range fighter aircraft based on England could maintain command of the air only over the enemy-held coastal sector between Flushing and Cherbourg. Study of the beaches on this coast soon narrowed the choice to two main areas: the Pas de Calais (Strait of Dover) and that from Caen to Cherbourg. Although direct assault on the Cotentin peninsula would bring the Allies the valuable port of Cherbourg, this area lacked suitable airfields and might become a dead end since the enemy could hold the neck of the peninsula with relatively light forces. The Pas de Calais offered a sea crossing of only 20 miles, good beaches, a quick turn-around for shipping and optimum air support; here, however, the German defenses were at their most formidable. This left only the Bay of the Seine, where defenses were light and the beaches of high capacity and sheltered from the prevailing winds. Its distance from the south of England would make air support less easy but the terrain, especially southeast of Caen, was suitable for airfield development. Therefore the Caen area was selected for the initial assault, the intention being to expand the foothold into a “lodgment area” to include Cherbourg and the Brittany ports.

It had long been believed that the immediate capture of a major port was essential to the success of an invasion operation; but the Dieppe raid had shown how difficult such capture was likely to be, and experience in the assault on Sicily had encouraged Allied planners to rely on the possibility of maintaining an invasion force over open beaches. In the English Channel, however, it is always necessary to count on the possibility of bad weather; and with this in view General Morgan reported that in the absence of a major port it would be necessary to improvise sheltered water somehow. He recommended that two artificial ports be made by sinking blockships. This was the origin of the famous “Mulberry” harbor.

The availability of landing craft would limit the size of the assaulting force, and General Morgan had been told that he must plan on the basis of an assault by three divisions. He aimed to land these on a front of roughly 35 miles from Caen to Grandcamp, with three tank brigades and an extra infantry brigade following on the same day. A similar shortage of transport aircraft determined that only two-thirds of an airborne division (although two had been made available) could be dropped; its main object was to be the capture of Caen. Assuming the best possible weather conditions the fifth day after the assault would find nine Allied divisions, with a proportion of armor, in the bridgehead. It was hoped that by D-plus-14 about eighteen divisions would have been landed, Cherbourg captured and the bridgehead expanded some 60 miles inland from Caen. On this basis General Morgan completed an outline plan during July 1943, and the Combined Chiefs of Staff approved it at the Quebec Conference in August.

No Supreme Commander had yet been appointed; but in December 1943 General Dwight D. Eisenhower, the American officer who had been commanding the Allied forces in the Mediterranean, was named to this post. His ground commander for the assault phase was to be the Commander-in-Chief, 21st Army Group, General Sir Bernard L. Montgomery. Both these officers were convinced that under the COSSAC plan the initial assaulting forces were too weak and committed on too narrow a front. On his arrival in London the Supreme Commander approved changes suggested by General Montgomery; subsequently these were ratified by the Combined Chiefs of Staff. To enable more landing craft to be available from production, the target date was put back to 31 May; subsequently a simultaneous landing which had been planned for the south coast of France was postponed until August. This made it possible to increase the initial assault force to five divisions supported by two follow-up divisions pre-loaded on landing craft.

The front to be assaulted was widened. On the west, it now included the beaches beyond the Vire estuary on the Cotentin peninsula, behind which it was planned to drop two American airborne divisions to speed the capture of Cherbourg; eastward it was extended somewhat to facilitate the seizure of Caen and the vital airfields in its vicinity. A British airborne division was to be dropped here to seize the crossing over the river Orne. The D-Day objectives on the British flank included Caen and Bayeux; on the American side the plan was to penetrate to the vicinity of Carentan. Thereafter, as reported later by the Supreme Commander,

...our forces were to advance on Brittany with the object of capturing the ports southward to Nantes. Our next aim was to drive east on the line of the Loire in the general direction of Paris and north across the Seine, with the purpose of destroying as many as possible of the German forces in this area of the west.

The immediate purpose, however, and the one we are concerned with here, was the establishment of bridgeheads, connected into a continuous lodgment area, to accommodate follow-up troops. This initial assault phase was known by the code name NEPTUNE. The great liberation operation as a whole was called OVERLORD. General Eisenhower’s international headquarters, which absorbed the COSSAC organization, became known as SHAEF (Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force).

The Enemy Situation

Allied intelligence had been able to provide a picture of German dispositions in the west which proved, in the main, to be accurate. By 3 June enemy strength in the Low Countries and France had been increased to some sixty divisions. This included troops on the Biscay coast and the Riviera. All these formations were under the Commander-in-Chief West, Field Marshal von Rundstedt. Army Group “B,” commanded by Field Marshal Rommel, included the Fifteenth Army, covering the Pas de Calais, where most German strategists believed invasion would come, and the somewhat smaller Seventh Army in Normandy and Brittany. The divisions holding the beach defenses were not of high category and had limited transport. Thus German plans to defeat invasion in the north were chiefly built around seven panzer or panzergrenadier divisions which were held in reserve. The plans have usually been considered a compromise between the views of Rundstedt, who favored defense in depth supported by strong mobile reserves and those of Rommel, who believed that the place to defeat invasion was on the beaches and therefore favored placing the reserves close up to the coast.

Hitler’s “Atlantic Wall,” though he had ordered its construction in 1942, was still far from completion as 1944 opened. Attention had been directed mainly to the ports and the Pas de Calais. After Rommel’s Army Group “B” took over the coast early in the year the defenses of other areas began to be reinforced with underwater obstacles, mines and more concrete; but in June much still remained to be done. The garrison of the assault area was also somewhat reinforced; in mid-March a good German field division appeared in the American sector. One coastal division manned almost the whole of the beaches allotted for British and Canadian assault; however, one panzer division was actually in the Caen area and two others were within a few hours’ march.

The Final Preparations

Since the middle of 1943 the air assault by RAF Bomber Command and the U.S. Eighth Air Force against German war industry (particularly aircraft production) had been gaining momentum and, at the same time, decimating the enemy fighter force which tried to oppose this strategic bombing. About three months before D-Day the air forces also began to strike at the French and Belgian railways systems to reduce enemy mobility all over Northwest Europe. Somewhat later still attacks began on tunnels and bridges with the purpose of isolating the battlefield from the rest of France.

The Seine bridges were particularly heavily hit. Those over the Loire were, with a few exceptions, left alone until after D-Day. As the Seine bridges would have been equally important had the Allies landed in the Pas de Calais, these attacks did not give the plan away.

Attacks upon enemy airfields within a radius of 130 miles from the assault area began by D-minus-21, to force the removal of German fighters to more distant bases. In order to delude the enemy, however, only a part of the bombing effort was expended against the intended assault area; the Pas de Calais and other possible landing areas continued to receive attention.

These preliminary air operations had a vital effect upon the great Allied enterprise. To them must be attributed the almost total failure of the German Air Force either to attack the great pre-invasion concentrations of men and material in southern England or to offer opposition to the actual assault. “Our D-Day experience,” General Eisenhower wrote later in his report, “was to convince us that the carefully laid plans of the German Command to oppose OVERLORD with an efficient air force in great strength were completely frustrated by the strategic bombing operations. Without the overwhelming mastery of the air which we attained by that time our assault against the continent would have been a most hazardous, if not impossible undertaking.”

It was essential to mislead the Germans as to the time and place of the Allied attack. Elaborate security precautions, including the prohibition of travel out of Britain and event the denial to ambassadors of the use of uncensored diplomatic bags, were taken to prevent information reaching the enemy; and a cover plan was adopted to encourage him to think that the Allies were going to attack the Pas de Calais. As part of this, Canadian formations were moved into the Dover area. Arrangements were made for naval and air diversions in the Channel to give the same impression.

The administrative preparations required were enormous. It was planned to land more than 175,000 men and more than 20,000 vehicles and guns in the first two days; and the requirements of the invading force in ammunition, food and supplies of every sort would be great from the beginning and would increase steadily as more troops landed. Since every unit and every item had to have a place in some ship or craft, and such a place as would enable it to perform it assigned function on the other side, very detailed administrative orders were required. To protect the camps and the depots near the embarkation ports, special air precautions and a special deployment of anti-aircraft guns were necessary; however, as previously mentioned, the anticipated enemy air attacks did not come.

The Plan of Assault

The greatest lesson drawn from the Dieppe raid of 1942 had been the necessity of overwhelming fire support for any opposed landing on a fortified coast; and the 3rd Canadian Division, in a series of exercises with the Royal Navy, had helped to work out a “combined fire plan” suitable for the task. As used on D-Day, the plan was as follows. During the night before the assault, the RAF Bomber Command attacked the ten main coastal batteries that could fire on our ships. Immediately before the landings, the U.S. Eighth Air Force attacked the beach defenses. In each case, over one thousand aircraft were used. While the Eighth was attacking, medium, light and fighter-bombers were also in action. Naval gunfire began at dawn, the bombarding force including five battleships, two monitors, nineteen cruisers and numerous destroyers; naval rockets increased the storm just before the first troops touched down, and small craft gave close gunfire support. In addition, the Army made its own contribution; its self-propelled guns fired on enemy strongpoints from their tank landing craft.

Many special devices, and particularly special armored vehicles, had been developed to assist the assault. Notable among them were the AVREs (Assault Vehicles, Royal Engineers)—tanks mounting “petards” for hurling heavy demolition charges—and the “DD” or amphibious tanks, capable of swimming in from landing craft offshore. These two types of vehicles were to lead the assault, landing before the first infantry. A night landing had been discussed, but the Navy considered daylight essential to enable it to land the troops at the correct points and to increase the accuracy of the bombardment. The landing was therefore planned for soon after dawn. It was necessary that it should take place at a period of relatively low but rising tide, so that the beach obstacles would be exposed and the landing craft would not become stranded; and for the airborne operations during the night before the assault moonlight was desirable. The necessary combination of conditions would exist on 5 June and the two following days, and the 5th was accordingly designated D-Day.

D-Day: The Assault

As 5 June approached everything seemed ready. The Allied Expeditionary Force had thirty-seven divisions available—and others would move direct from the United States to France once ports had been captured. Under General Montgomery’s headquarters, the First U.S. Army was to assault on the right and the Second British Army on the left. The 5th U.S. Corps planned to use a regimental combat team of each of its two divisions on Omaha Beach, while the 7th U.S. Corps attacked Utah Beach with one division. In the British sector, the 30th Corps was on the right, with one division assaulting; on the left was the 1st Corps with two divisions. One of these was the 3rd Canadian Infantry Division, on Juno Beach; though the First Canadian Army had been designated a “follow-up” formation, Canada would be represented in the first landing by this division, supported by the 2nd Canadian Armoured Brigade. On its right was the 50th (Northumbrian) Division, on Gold Beach, and on its left the 3rd British Division on Sword Beach. British Commandos and American Rangers were given subsidiary objectives along the coast. The 6th British Airborne Division had the airborne task on the eastern flank and the 82nd and 101st U.S. Airborne Divisions those in the west.

Everything was ready—except the weather. On 4 June the meteorological report was so discouraging that General Eisenhower decided to postpone the operation for twenty-four hours. Next day, although conditions were still very far from ideal, the meteorologists predicted a temporary improvement; and on this basis the Supreme Commander took the heavy responsibility of deciding that the operation would proceed on the morning of the 6th.

Operation NEPTUNE began shortly before midnight, when the RAF commenced to pound the coastal batteries. Soon after midnight the men of the three airborne divisions began to land in Normandy. All were much more widely scattered than had been planned, but were nevertheless able to carry out their essential tasks, protecting the flanks of the seaborne landings and spreading confusion among the enemy. On the British side the 6th Airborne Division (which included a Canadian battalion) seized bridges over the Orne and the nearby canal intact, captured a coastal battery and carried out demolitions to cover this flank. With the coming of daylight the great bombardment of the beach defenses began. Clouds forced the U.S. heavy bombers to do without direct observation, and their anxiety to avoid hitting the Allied landing craft resulted in many bombs coming down too far inland. The naval bombardment likewise scored direct hits on only a small proportion of the enemy positions. Yet this terrific pounding of the whole defense area had a powerful morale effect on the Germans, and there is no doubt that it went far to enable the Allied troops to breach the Atlantic Wall at a much lower cost in casualties than had been expected. At many points Allied units got ashore without coming under really heavy fire, although fierce fighting was required afterwards to reduce strongpoints which the bombardment had not destroyed.

The roughness of the sea somewhat upset the timetable. Some of the craft carrying the special armor were late, some of the DD tanks could not be launched, and the infantry themselves were delayed in landing. Yet in general the attack went well, and before the morning was far advanced the Allied troops were pushing inland, by-passing the strongpoints that still held out. Nevertheless, stubborn German resistance kept them from attaining their final D-Day objectives before evening at any point, except for a few Canadian tanks that reached them and then withdrew. The situation was worst in the Omaha area, where there were German field troops and a steep coast. For two days the Americans had to fight desperately to keep a foothold, and casualties here were three times what they were elsewhere. The Canadian division had 335 fatal casualties on D-Day, somewhat fewer than had been expected.

The Allies had achieved strategic and even tactical surprise; that is, not only had the German high command had no time to reinforce the threatened area, but even the units holding it had no warning until the Allies bombardment opened. However, the German reaction was rapid, even though there was delay in getting Hitler’s permission to move some of the reserve panzer divisions. A tank counterattack on D-Day, although beaten back, helped to prevent the 3rd British Division from getting Caen. The next morning the 50th Division took Bayeux, and the 3rd Canadian Division got its right brigade on to the final objective (the Caen-Bayeux road and railway)—the first brigade in the Second Army to do so; but the left brigade was struck by one of the reserve panzer divisions and driven back. The Germans regarded the Caen area from the beginning as the point of greatest danger and the pivot of their defense in Normandy. By throwing their reserves in piecemeal in that area as they came up, they temporarily stabilized the situation there; but they were never able to build up a striking force equal to delivering a large-scale counteroffensive and really threatening the Allied bridgehead. The movement of their reserves was most seriously hampered by the havoc which the air forces had wrought upon their communications, and by continuing air attacks; while the Allies, their sea communications protected by their navies and air forces, poured men and material into the bridgehead, hampered only by unseasonable bad weather. Above all, the Germans had been deceived into the belief that the main Allied attack was still to come—in the Pas de Calais; and there the Fifteenth Army, whose infantry divisions might have turned the scale in Normandy, sat idle while the British and American bridgehead was steadily built up.

Consolidation of the Bridgehead

The days following D-Day were spent in linking the various Allied footholds into a continuous and secure lodgment area. With good naval and air support, the hard-pressed Americans on Omaha gradually deepened their penetration and on 9 June they were able to take the offensive effectively. By that time the bridgeheads were linked up all along the front of assault except for a gap between the two American sectors near Carentan. Contact was made across this the next day, and after stiff fighting Carentan itself was captured on 12-13 June. On the British front the Germans went on throwing in fierce local armored attacks; on 8 June, for instance, the 7th Canadian Infantry Brigade beat off a serious threat and continued to hold its position on the final D-Day objective. Caen remained in German hands, but the eastern flank of the bridgehead, though much more contracted than had been planned, was secure.

By 12 June the first phase of Operation OVERLORD had been successfully completed. The Allies had established a firm foothold on the continent. Some 325,000 men, 55,000 vehicles and 105,000 tons of stores had already been brought ashore. The construction of the artificial harbors, on a more elaborate plan than that projected by COSSAC, was well advanced. The Germans’ plan of defense had failed; they had not driven the invaders into the sea, and had now to prepare for their inevitable attempt to break out from the bridgehead.

Comments

By 1944 the western democracies, unprepared when war broke out, had built up their strength to the point where they could challenge the enemy with confidence. It seemed clear, however, that the only way of obtaining a rapid decision was by defeating the main German armies on a European battlefield. The necessary preliminary to this was the crossing of the Channel and the establishment of a bridgehead, carried out in the teeth of strong defenses and an experienced and determined enemy. This was such a hazardous operation that many good judges on the Allied side felt very uncertain about the outcome. That the invasion succeeded was due to the fact that the Allies were able to mobilize sea, land and air power on a vast scale, but even more to the fact that as a result of remarkably skillful and thorough planning they were able to use that power to the best advantage.

Every one of the accepted principles of war is illustrated in Operation NEPTUNE. Eisenhower was told to enter Europe and “undertake operations aimed at the heart of Germany and the destruction of her armed forces.” The special aim in the assault phase was “to secure a lodgment on the continent from which further offensive operations can be developed.” These great simple objectives were never lost sight of and formed the foundation of the whole plan, a good example of sound selection and maintenance of the aim. The ultimate object was achieved eleven months after D-Day.

It is clear that the achievement of surprise played a very great part in the initial success. The enemy was completely deceived as to the Allied intentions, and continued to grope in the dark long after D-Day. This helped the Allies to effect a destructive concentration of force at the decisive point, while great German forces elsewhere waited for attacks that never came. The related principle of economy of effort, the result of “balanced employment of forces” and “judicious expenditure of all resources,” is equally clearly illustrated.

Where could a better example of cooperation be found than in NEPTUNE? The victory won on the coast of lower Normandy was the result of the efforts of the three fighting services of three different nations, working smoothly in combination under a Supreme Commander acknowledged to have a special genius for coordination. The point does not require to be labored. “Goodwill and the desire to cooperate” paid their usual dividends, on this as on lesser occasions.

Similarly, it is clear that the Allied victory was largely a triumph of administration. To get the invading force to France, and to maintain it when there, required, as has been seen, extraordinarily thorough administrative planning and a tremendous mobilization of human and material resources. The prefabricated harbors, brought across the Channel and assembled on the invasion coast, may stand as symbols of the administrative ingenuity which made such a great contribution to this epoch-making victory.

Other principles can be briefly dealt with. Offensive action speaks for itself. NEPTUNE is the very embodiment of it. As for maintenance of morale, only troops of high morale could have carried out the task, for it was actually more formidable in prospect than it turned out to be in reality; on the other hand, the famous Atlantic Wall once broken, success, as always, encouraged the Allied troops to push on to further victories. Security of the base and the lines of communication was well provided for by the navy, the air forces and the anti-aircraft gunners; however, as it turned out, the enemy was in no state to threaten them. Similarly, flexibility was less important in this operation in that the plan as written succeeded so well; it appears chiefly in the use of those very flexible weapons, naval and air power, to support the troops ashore at any point during the bridgehead campaign where they found themselves hard pressed.

Bibliography

American Forces in Action Series: Omaha Beachhead (6 June-13 June 1944). Washington, 1945.

—: Utah Beach to Cherbourg (6 June-27 June 1944). Washington, 1947.

W. F. Craven and J. L. Cate. The Army Air Forces in World War II, Vol. III. Chicago, 1951.

General of the Army Dwight D. Eisenhower. Crusade in Europe. New York, 1948.

—. Report by the Supreme Commander to the Combined Chiefs of Staff on the Operations in Europe of the Allied Expeditionary Force, 6 June 1944 to 8 May 1945. London and Washington, 1946.

Major General Sir Francis de Guingand. Operation Victory. London, 1947.

Gordon A. Harrison. Cross-Channel Attack (United States Army in World War II: The European Theater of Operations). Washington, 1951.

Field-Marshal Viscount Montgomery. Normandy to the Baltic. London, 1947.

Lieutenant-General Sir Frederick Morgan. Overture to Overlord. London, 1950.

Colonel C. P. Stacey. The Victory Campaign (Official History of the Canadian Army in the Second World War, Vol. III). Ottawa, 1960.

The Allied commanders from left, General Omar Bradley, Admiral Bertram Ramsey, Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Tedder, Supreme Allied Commander General Dwight D Eisenhower, General Sir Bernard Montgomery, Air Chief Marshal Trafford Leigh-Mallory, and Lieutenant-General Walter Bedell Smith. These men were responsible for the success of Operation 'Overlord', but there were differences about how it could be best achieved.

 

Map of Allied concentration and routes, June 6, 1944.

Juno and Gold Beaches, June 6, 1944.

The Defenses of Juno Beach. This 1:25,000 scale map shows the landing area of 3rd Canadian Infantry Division, and the intense machine guns, anti-tank positions, bunkers and trenches the Canadians had to fight through.

Map of North Shores and Queen's Own Rifles (3rd Canadian Infantry Division) landings at St. Aubin-sur-mer and Bernieres-sur-mer on Juno Beach (Nan Beach). 

Map of Regina Rifles, Royal Winnipeg Rifles, and Canadian Scottish (3rd Canadian Infantry Division) landings at Courseulles-sur-Mer on Juno Beach (Mike Beach).

Map of 3rd Canadian Infantry Division front line positions at midnight June 6.

German Forces and Defenses: 716th Infantry Division Area, June 6, 1944.

Map of 3rd Canadian Infantry Division landings on Juno Beach showing D-Day objectives ("Yew", "Elm", "Oak" ) and front line at midnight June 6. 

Map of 3rd Canadian Infantry Division landings on Juno Beach showing D-Day objectives ("Yew", "Elm", "Oak" ) and advance of 1st Hussars, Fort Garry Horse and Sherbrooke Fusiliers tank regiments.

"Preparations for D-Day" (Southampton Water, Hampshire, England, UK, 1944). Richard Ernst Eurich’s (1903-1992) enigmatic composite painting of land and naval forces massing off the South Coast before D-Day gives an impression of brooding calm before the storm. The dark belt of trees across the center of the painting obscures the transition from land to sea. The roads end in barriers of smoke or barbed wire and the only way forward is into the unknown, through the huge jaw-like hold-doors of the central ship. Camouflage netting, smoke screening and the camouflaged shipping all contribute to the sense of secrecy and hidden strength conveyed by the painting. Eurich was a marine painter living near Southampton and was very familiar with this part of the coast, overlooking the Isle of Wight. He was a salaried war artist with an honorary commission of Captain in the Royal Marines and would have been able to paint from his own observations. His wartime style has been compared to the sixteenth century Flemish painter Pieter Breughel whose work shows a similar attention to distant detail and purposeful activities. Indeed, the gaping ship’s doors seem to echo Breughel’s Mouth of Hell, making a visual equation between war and hell which agrees with Eurich’s Quaker background and beliefs. (Imperial War Museum Art.IWM ART LD 4587)

Canadian soldiers study a German plan of the beach for the D-Day landing operations in Normandy on June 6, 1944.

Overhead aerial of 'Nan Green' Beach JUNO Area and Strongpoint 9785 (Widerstandsnest 29), east of the River Seulles at Courseulles-sur-Mer. This position was defended by 6th Company of the German 736th Grenadier Regiment, and was captured by the Regina Rifles and the 1st Hussars of 7th Canadian Brigade, after heavy fighting on 6 June. Note the scattered stakes and 'Hedgehog' obstacles on the beach.

Troops of the 3rd Canadian Infantry Division going ashore from assault landing craft at East Wittering, Sussex, during Exercise FABIUS III, April 23 to 7 May 1944.

HMCS Prince Henry Anchored in Greenock; May 1944.

Assault landing craft leaving HMCS Prince Henry during a training exercise in May 1944.

Assault landing craft leaving HMCS Prince Henry during the same training exercise in May 1944.

Assault landing craft leaving HMCS Prince Henry during the same training exercise in May 1944.

Infantrymen going ashore from the HMCS Prince Henry, June 6, 1944.

Infantrymen going ashore from the HMCS Prince Henry, June 6, 1944.

The same landing craft and infantry as seen in the previous photo now going ashore.

Personnel of Royal Canadian Navy Beach Commando "W" landing on Mike Beach, Juno sector of the Normandy beachhead, France; July 8, 1944.

Operation NEPTUNE. Canadian infantrymen of the North Shore (New Brunswick) Regiment disembark from a Landing Craft Assault [LCA] onto 'Nan Red' Beach, JUNO Area, at la Rive, near St Aubin-sur-Mer, at about 8.05 am on 6 June 1944, while under fire from German troops in the houses facing them.

Operation NEPTUNE. Canadian infantrymen of the North Shore (New Brunswick) Regiment disembark from a Landing Craft Assault [LCA] onto 'Nan Red' Beach, JUNO Area, at la Rive, near St Aubin-sur-Mer, at about 8.05 am on 6 June 1944, while under fire from German troops in the houses facing them.

Canadian troops of the North Shore (New Brunswick) Regiment, 8th Canadian Infantry Brigade, 3rd Canadian Infantry Division, disembark from an LCA (Landing Craft Assault) onto Nan Red beach, Juno area, near St Aubin-sur-Mer, at about 8.00am on 6 June 1944, while under fire from German troops in the houses facing them.

Canadian troops of the North Shore (New Brunswick) Regiment, 8th Canadian Infantry Brigade, 3rd Canadian Infantry Division, disembark from an LCA (Landing Craft Assault) onto Nan Red beach, Juno area, near St Aubin-sur-Mer, at about 8.00am on 6 June 1944, while under fire from German troops in the houses facing them.

Vertical aerial photograph of the landings on Mike beach, Juno area, at Courselles-sur-Mer, 6 June 1944.

Vertical aerial photograph of the landings on Mike beach, Juno area, to the west of Courselles-sur-Mer, 6 June 1944.

LCI(L)s (Landing Craft Infantry Large) about to disembark troops of 9th Canadian Infantry Brigade onto Nan White beach, Juno area, at Bernieres-sur-Mer, late morning, 6 June 1944.

Watching from the HMCS Prince David, as the assault craft heads ashore, June 6, 1944.

A German machine gun nest along the Atlantic Wall, background, was captured by Canadian troops on June 8, 1944, following the D-Day invasion.

Private D. D. Martin on sentry duty along the Normandy beachhead on June 10, 1944.

Infantrymen of Le Régiment de la Chaudière resting behind a Universal Carrier in a low ground position along the Normandy beachhead in June 1944.

(Left to Right) Lieutenant E. M. Peto, Company Sergeant-Major Charlie Martin and Rifleman N. E. Lindenas, preparing to lay a minefield in Bretteville-Orgueilleuse, France, June 20, 1944.

View looking east along 'Nan White' Beach, showing personnel of the 9th Canadian Infantry Brigade (Stormont, Dundas, and Glengarry Highlanders) landing from LCI(L) 299 of the 2nd Canadian (262nd RN) Flotilla. These are second wave troops going ashore at Bernières-sur-Mer, Normandy, France, 6 June 1944. The 260th Flotilla of infantry landing craft was assigned to Juno Beach. Two Canadian destroyers, HMCS Algonquin and HMCS Sioux, made themselves very useful in the early landing phases, with HMCS Algonquin shelling and destroying an enemy artillery position.  The 29th Canadian Torpedo Boat Flotilla had the role of intercepting coastal trade and enemy warships operating in the landing zone.

Troops of 9th Canadian Infantry Brigade disembarking with bicycles from LCI(L)s (Landing Craft Infantry Large) onto Nan White beach, Juno area, at Bernieres-sur-Mer, shortly before midday, 6 June 1944.

A Sherman tank of the 27th Canadian Armoured Regiment (Sherbrooke Fusiliers), supporting 9th Canadian Infantry Brigade, comes ashore on Nan White beach, Juno area, near Bernieres-sur-Mer, 6 June 1944. Beach Group personnel can be seen constructing trackways over the sand, and an armored bulldozer is partly visible on the right.

Troops and landing craft occupy a Normandy beach shortly after the D-Day landing. The bombardment of the beaches began at 6 a.m. on June 6, 1944, and within hours soldiers from Canada had established the beachhead at Juno Beach and the German defenses were shattered.

Canadian Tank Destroyer crews removing the waterproofing kits from their tanks after landing in Normandy, June 1944.

Mike Beach, Juno, with a tracked 40-mm Bofors AA Gun and an A Squadron, 6 CAR, DD tank with floatation kit collapsed, on the Normandy beachhead, 7 June 1944.  The organization chart of the 22nd Armoured Regiment (CGG) had the CO's control party; HQ Squadron with 2 halftracks, 4 scout cars in Intercommunication Troop, 11 Stuart tanks in Recce Troop, and 7 Crusader III AA Mk. II tanks.  As the war progressed, the size of the recce troops expanded.  Some had up to 13 cars by the end, with the AA vehicles being used for recce, as there was no Luftwaffe to defend against.

Canadian tanks firing into German positions in Normandy, 8-9 June 1944.

Canadian soldiers guard German prisoners captured on the Normandy beachhead.

The German Army was comprehensively defeated in Normandy, its losses compounded by Hitler's refusal to allow his generals to conduct an orderly withdrawal. Allied delay in closing the Falaise-Argentan pocket allowed many German troops to escape, but around 400,000 were killed, wounded or captured during the campaign.

Canadian troops land at Juno Beach, Courseulles-sur-Mer, Normandy, on June 6, 1944.

Canadian infantry going ashore during the Normandy invasion.

Canadian infantrymen landing on a beach in Normandy.

Canadian soldiers in amphibious tank arriving in Normandy, June-July 1944.

Unfurling of the Canadian flag at 1st Canadian Army Headquarters on Dominion Day; the first time that the Canadian flag flew on French soil after D-Day. Normandy, France, 29 June 1944.

RSM Rutherford raising the first Canadian flag to fly in Caen, France, 11 July 1944.

Caen was a key objective for D-Day, but the city was not completely liberated until 18 July. It suffered considerable damage from bombing raids and naval bombardment. The bulk of the city was destroyed and 2,000 civilians killed before the campaign ended. Image: "Caen" by Stephen Bone, war artist, in chalk, 7 August 1944. (Imperial War Museum Art.IWM ART LD 4367)