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.

Exchange of Letters Between Gen. George C. Marshall and Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower on Proposed Airborne Invasion of France, 1944

General Dwight D. Eisenhower and General George C. Marshall meet in North Africa in 1943.

OCS

GCM

10 February 1944

My dear Eisenhower:

Up to the present time I have not felt that we have properly exploited air power as regards its combination with ground troops. We have lacked planes, of course, in which to transport men and supplies, but our most serious deficiency I think has been a lack of conception. Our procedure has been a piecemeal proposition with each commander grabbing at a piece to assist his particular phase of the operation, very much as they did with tanks and as they tried to do with the airplane itself. It is my opinion that we now possess the means to give a proper application to this phase of air power in a combined operation.

I might say that it was my determination in the event I went to England to do this, even to the extent that should the British be in opposition I would carry it out exclusively with American troops. I am not mentioning this as pressure on you but merely to give you some idea of my own conclusions in the matter.

With the foregoing in mind and seeing the proposed plan for OVERLORD in Airborne troops, Gen. Arnold had Brig. Gen. Fred Evans, Commanding General of the Troop Carrier Command, and Col. Bruce Bidwell, the OPD Airborne Consultant, make a study of the proposition for OVERLORD.

They first presented to us Plan A, which utilizes the airborne troops in three major groups with mission to block the movement of hostile reserve divisions as now located. This was not acceptable to me. On paper it was fine; but on the ground it would be too few men at the critical points with almost the certainty that the Germans would circumvent them in vicious fighting. I saw exactly this happen in the great German offensives of March 1918. In preparation for the attack the Allies organized their forces in depth, the various points of resistance being staggered. On a map it was a perfect pin-ball setup to disrupt the enemy’s effort. On the ground it was a series of quick collapses where small groups of lonely men were cut off and surrendered.

I then had them reconsider the plan more in accordance with my conception of the application of airborne troops on a large scale. This resulted in two plans.

Plan B—This establishes an airhead in the general Argentan area approximately thirty miles inland from Caen, with missions to seize two airfields, and restrict the movement of hostile reserves that threaten the beach landing area from the east and southeast.

This plan is not satisfactory to me because the airfields are small and not capable of rapid expansion and we could not take heavy planes in to provide quick build-up. Moreover, holding this particular locality would not pose a major strategic threat to the Germans.

Plan C—Establishes an airhead in keeping with my ideas on the subject, one that can be quickly established and developed to great strength in forty-eight hours. The area generally south of Evreux has been selected because of four excellent airfields.

This plan appeals to me because I feel that it is a true vertical envelopment and would create such a strategic threat to the Germans that it would call for a major revision of their defensive plans. It should be a complete surprise, an invaluable asset of any such plan. It would directly threaten the crossings of the Seine as well as the city of Paris. It should serve as a rallying point for considerable elements of the French underground.

In effect, we would be opening another front in France and your build-up would be tremendously increased in rapidity.

The trouble with this plan is that we have never done anything like this before, and frankly, that reaction makes me tired. Therefore I should like you to give these young men an opportunity to present the matter to you personally before your Staff tears it to ribbons. Please believe that, as usual, I do not want to embarrass you with undue pressure. I merely wish to be certain that you have viewed this possibility on a definite planning basis.

Faithfully yours,

—G. C. Marshall

*

SHAEF

19 February 1944

Dear General:

This is a long letter, in tentative answer to yours of 10 February on the subject of Airborne operations. General Evans and Col. Bidwell have presented their plan to me and are now working with others, pending opportunity to hold a meeting to be attended by Montgomery. If you are pushed for time I suggest that you have the Operations Division brief the following for your convenience.

You will recall that more than a year ago in Algiers, you talked to me on the idea that in the proper development of airborne operations lies one field in which we have a real opportunity and capability to get ahead of the enemy. Obviously, it is only by getting definitely ahead of him in some important method of operations that we can expect to accomplish his defeat. Since that time this has been one of my favorite subjects for contemplation.

My initial reaction to the specific proposal is that I agree thoroughly with the conception but disagree with the timing. Mass in vertical envelopments is sound—but since this kind of an enveloping force is immobile on the ground the collaborating force must be strategically and tactically mobile. So the time for the mass vertical envelopment is after the beachhead has been gained and a striking force built up! The reasons on which I base these conclusions are discussed below.

As I see it the first requisite is for the Expeditionary Force to gain a firm and solid footing on the Continent and to secure at least one really good sheltered harbor. All of our anxiety concerning Mulberries, Gooseberries, and other forms of artificial aids in landing supplies and troops for assault and build-up are merely an indication of the great concern that everyone feels toward this problem of establishing and maintaining ground forces on the Continent. This means that the initial crisis of the campaign will be the struggle to break through the beach defenses, exploit quickly to include a port and be solidly based for further operations. To meet this first tactical crisis I intend to devote everything that can be profitably used, including airborne troops.

The second consideration that enters my thinking on this problem is expressed in the very first sentence of your letter, in the phrase “air power as regards its combination with ground troops.” Whatever the conditions in other Theaters of War, the one here that we must never forget is the enemy’s highly efficient facilities for concentration of ground troops at any particular point. This is especially true in the whole of France and in the Low Countries. Our bombers will delay movement, but I cannot conceive of enough air power to prohibit movement on the network of roads throughout northwest France. For the past five days there has been good weather in Italy and our reports show an average of 1,000 sorties per day. Yet with only two main roads and a railway on which to concentrate, our reports show a steady stream of traffic by night to the south and southeast from Rome. We must arrange all our operations so that no significant part of our forces can be isolated and defeated in detail. There must exist either the definite capability of both forces to combine tactically, or the probability that each force can operate independently without danger of defeat.

The German has shown time and again that he does not particularly fear what we used to refer to as “strategic threat of envelopment.” Any military man that might have been required to analyze, before the war, the situation that existed in Italy on about January 24, would have said that the only hope of the German was to begin the instant and rapid withdrawal of his troops in front of the Fifth Army. The situation was almost a model for the classical picture for initiating a battle of destruction. But the German decided that the thrust could not be immediately translated into mobile tactical action, and himself began attacking. The Nettuno landing, due to the incidence of bad weather, was really not much heavier in scale than an airborne landing would have been during those critical days when time was all-important. The force was immobile and could not carry out the promise that was implicit in the situation then existing. But from our standpoint the situation was saved by the fact that our complete command of the sea allowed us to continue to supply and maintain and reinforce the beachhead. I am convinced it will turn out all right in the end, but there will be no great destruction of German divisions as a result thereof. An airborne landing carried out at too great a distance from other forces which will also be immobile for some time, will result in a much worse situation.

The resistance to be expected by our landing forces at the beaches is far greater than anything we have yet encountered in the European War and I have felt that carefully planned airborne operations offer us an important means of increasing our chances in this regard. The American Division, which has first priority, dropping in the Cherbourg Peninsula, gives us a reasonable expectation of preventing reinforcement of that area and seizing exits from the great flooded area that separates, in that region, our only practicable landing beach from the interior of the Peninsula. Unless we throw a very strong force in this vicinity, the division attempting to land there will be in a bad spot. The British Airborne Forces have the Caen area to seize. Subsequent airborne operations are planned to be as bold and in as large a mass as resources and the air situation then existing will permit. I do not agree with Bidwell that large-scale, mass use of airborne troops will thereafter be impracticable.

To a certain extent the conduct of airborne operations must be planned in accordance with technicians’ ideas of feasibility. Even under the most favorable circumstances the air people anticipate quite large losses among troop carrier craft because of the high efficiency of hostile radar coverage and the impossibility of preventing enemy fighters from getting into such formations. I hope soon to have here a man that Arnold is sending me from Kenny’s command. Possibly he can show us wherein we may have been too conservative.

All of the above factors tend to compel the visualization of airborne operations as an immediate tactical rather than a long-range strategical adjunct of landing operations.

If we were not planning so definitely upon the bombardment effect of our bombers to help us both tactically and strategically, there would be available a greatly increased force to support and maintain airborne operations, but present plans call for an all-out effort on the part of both day and night bombers for a very considerable period both preceding and following D-Day.

I instinctively dislike ever to uphold the conservative as opposed to the bold. You may be sure that I will earnestly study the ideas presented by the two officers because on one point of your letter I am in almost fanatical agreement—I believe we can lick the Hun only by being ahead of him in ideas as well as in material resources.

—Dwight D. Eisenhower

Marshall and Eisenhower on Omaha beach on 12 June 1944.

 

The German XIV SS Corps in November-December 1944

Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski at a map briefing.

by Von Dem Bach-Zelewski

This is the complete text of Manuscript #MS B-252 obtained from the National Archives, Washington, D.C.

On 8 November while I was on leave I was ordered to report to Heinrich Himmler, in his special train in the Black Forest, in order to take over a new corps which was about to be activated. On 10 November I presented myself in the special train, which was at Triberg in a railway tunnel. Himmler had been appointed commander in chief of the Army Group Upper Rhine which was about to be constituted.

Himmler explained to me, with the help of a situation map, the catastrophic situation of our collapsed front in Alsace-Lorraine.

I was ordered to build up, as the XIV. SS Corps, a new defensive front in the German West Wall, on the eastern bank of the Rhine.

The right corps limit ran past and included Graben-Bruchsal. I was to establish contact with the army of General der Panzertruppen Balck. On account of the retreating movement of the front which was still continuing, the point of main effort in building up the new defensive front, on my right wing, was in the bridgehead of Karlsruhe–Maximiliansau–Maxau, situated north of the West Wall and in the development of Karlsruhe as a strongpoint under a generalleutnant, whose name I cannot remember, as commanding officer.

As left corps limit the Leopold Canal, inclusive, was decided on. My left neighbor, linking up with the Swiss frontier was the XVIII. SS Corps, to be newly organized by Waffen-SS Generalmajor Reinefarth.

The smaller bridgeheads of Drusenheim, Gerstheim and Rhinau, to the west of the Rhine, which were still held by isolated units of company strength reinforced by “Volkssturm” were to be abandoned even on small pressure by the enemy; the larger bridgehead in the harbor area of Strassbourg manned by one replacement training battalion of the army from Stuttgart was to be held. Adolf Hitler had reserved for himself the right to authorize blowing up of the large bridges Strassbourg-Kehl.

In the new corps area at first only, the following troops were on hand: four replacement training battalions of the Army in the area Kehl–Oberkirch, under the command of Generalleutnant Seeger; Recruiting Area Headquarters Stuttgart; a fortress construction engineer battalion, and an anti-aircraft artillery battalion in the Maximilian-sau–Maxau bridgehead. I was to build up the rest of the front by committing the local “Volkssturm” and collect all the split-up parts of the army and its rear formations which were streaming back over the Rhine. At the end of November the remnants of the 9th Volksgrenadier Division, destroyed by the Americans at Zabern were also transferred to the area of Baden-Baden for reconstitution, and were subordinated to the XIV. SS Corps. By the energetic combing out of all villages for [cut-off] units, and individual stragglers, the reorganization of battalions and regiments with a strength of about 12,000 men was gradually achieved.

The corps command post was established at Baden-Baden, advance corps command posts prepared at Leibersdung, Memprechtshofen and Kehl.

The corps headquarters staff consisted mainly of the personnel of the former operational staff of the chief of the anti-partisan formations. Police Colonel Goltz became Chief of General Staff.

Between the end of November and the beginning of December 1944 the troops of the XIV. SS Corps were organized as follows:

Right Sector

Improvised divisional staff, division commander Colonel of the Army von Witzleben, bearer of the Knight’s Cross, command post at Malsch, advance command post at Hügelsheim.

Regimental staff of the Positional Regiment No. 1 under a Lieutenant Colonel of the Army at Welsch. Two “Volkssturm” battalions at Graben and Leopoldshafen, which achieved a certain military coherence through having skeleton of non-commissioned officers and enlisted men from permanent West Wall personnel. The fortress construction engineer battalion in the Maximiliansau–Maxau bridgehead was placed under Regiment No. 1 as 3rd Battalion, also the Maxau anti-aircraft artillery battalion. The combat commander of Karlsruhe was subordinated directly to the XIV. SS Corps.

Positional Regiment No. 2, regimental command post in the barracks of Rastatt, regimental commander a major of the Army. Subordinated to it was one replacement training battalion of the Army and a battalion composed of the supernumerary supply train members of the 9th Volksgrenadier Division. As 3rd Battalion the permanent “Volkssturm” with its post at Elchesheim. The only heavy armament was an improvised battery with captured Russian guns, and a 2-cm anti-aircraft battery dependent on cooperation with the Regiment No. 2.

Left Sector

Division Generalleutnant Seeger—previously staff of the training division at Stuttgart—divisional command post at Oberkirch.

The right regiment as Regiment No. 3 the SS Police Regiment No. 2 with two battalions, reinforced by one battalion of Customs Frontier Guard as 3rd Battalion. The regimental command post was at Memprechtshofen, one company was sent forward to Drusenheim to man the bridgehead. Police Regiment No. 2 had a heavy armament company of its own, and in addition, I placed an improvised anti-tank company under it. An artillery battalion with captured Russian guns was being constituted and trained in the regimental sector.

Positional Regiment No. 4 was in the Kehl sector, consisting of four replacement training battalions of the Recruiting Area Headquarters Stuttgart, regimental commander a particularly experienced major of the Army, regimental command post at Kehl. One battalion respectively at Kehl, Altenheim, Aünheim and as bridgehead unit in the harbor of Strassbourg. Four anti-tank guns in position on the bridges of Strassbourg, the bridges prepared for blasting and guarded by an engineer unit.

Positional Regiment No. 5 consisting of the Police School of Ettlingen and of two “Volkssturm” battalions, the regimental commander was the commandant of the police school, a lieutenant colonel of the police. The regimental command post was at Lahr, two bridgeheads in company strength at Gerstheim and Rhinau respectively.

In the area of Oberkirch–Kehl one improvised artillery battalion and two heavy railway guns in position subordinated directly to Division Seeger.

The combat commander of Offenburg, a brigadier general of the Army, was subordinated directly to the XIV. SS Corps.

Enemy pressure against the bridgehead of Strassbourg by continuous artillery fire and attacks by French infantry supported by tanks was very strong from the beginning. Our casualties, in the terrain which offered no cover and was overlooked by the enemy, were so considerable that the danger arose that a stronger attack by the enemy would allow the bridges to be captured intact.

On my urgent request to be allowed either to widen the bridgehead by way of attack or to evacuate it, I was finally authorized to evacuate and blast the bridges.

The blasting of the bridges was accomplished without hindrance, the withdrawal of our infantry only in part as the enemy pressed forward energetically after the blasting detonations. Half of our infantry were able to cross in assault boats, the other half was taken prisoner.

In the course of further expansion by the enemy from Strassbourg to the north and south, the small bridgeheads at Drusenheim, Gerstheim and Rhinau were also given up on weak pressure from the enemy, and the bridges were blasted as had been ordered.

The French sentries and single American tanks guarding the west bank of the Rhine being very sure of victory and therefore rather careless, rendered possible the maintenance of our stationary patrols on the western bank of the Rhine during the whole period in the wooded and marshy terrain between the enemy sentries.

Distant reconnaissance patrols were sent forward every night far into the enemy’s rear, some of them stayed out for several days and advanced as far as Hagenau.

Therefore, our picture of the enemy’s situation, including American tank movements was complete, which fact was to be of inestimable service to me during our own attack in January 1945. On the other hand, the information available to the Commander-in-Chief Upper Rhine Army Group, was miserable and my patrol activity was really its only source. The reason for this was that during the precipitate withdrawal of the German troops from Alsace, the German High Command omitted leaving behind any experienced net of agents. Subsequent improvisations could not be successful as the psychological effect of the German reverse did not leave the Alsatian population prepared to cooperate in favor of the Germans.

Enemy patrol activity east of the Rhine could not be ascertained. From this and from the fact that there was no evidence anywhere of enemy work for the construction of ferries or bridges it was clearly to be concluded that the enemy had no intention of attacking in my sector.

Therefore, the guarding of our bank of the river could safely be left more and more to the “Volkssturm”; the military units on the other hand, could be carefully trained and equipped.

When the German offensive in the Ardennes had come to a standstill, Adolf Hitler called a meeting, for 28 December 1944 at the headquarters of the Commander-in-Chief West of the Army, with commanders and commanding generals intended to lead a new attack.

Field Marshal von Rundstedt announced the assembled generals to Adolf Hitler, whereupon the latter began to speak. He at once confessed frankly that the offensive in the Ardennes had failed. Hitler attributed this failure of the German offensive not to enemy air supremacy, but above all to German mistakes. In very sharp and plain words he exposed the alleged German mistakes. Hitler saw the principle reason of our coming to a standstill in the over-motorization of the German formations. This over-motorization had crowded everything together on the few roads, an advance in developed formation and hopelessly obstructed the roads. Only because of this could the enemy air force have such a decisive effect. In practice what had happened, was that the infantry divisions which simply went on marching beside the roads when these were obstructed, advanced more quickly than the fully mechanized formations.

From the failure of the offensive, Hitler drew the following operational decision:

The conditions necessary to continue the western offensive on a large scale existed no more, especially as the Russian offensive might begin at any moment. But it would be a great mistake to change over now to rigid defense and thereby give full liberty of action to the Western Powers. In this case the western enemy would concentrate his main forces against the Ruhr District. In order to divert and split up these enemy forces, but also because a German defensive would hold down the same amount of our forces as attack, if not more, the attacks were to be continued, although with limited objectives.

For the first days of January, Hitler ordered, as the first such limited attack, that the Blaskowitz Army should start attacking from the area of Weissenburg in a west-southwesterly direction towards Wörth.

A few days after the beginning of the attack the XIV. SS Corps should form a bridgehead north of Strassbourg in order to draw the enemy reserves and by that to facilitate the advance of the Blaskowitz Army.

Under favorable circumstances the bridgehead of the XIV. SS Corps should aim at establishing contact with the Blaskowitz Army west of the forest of Hagenau.

After the issue of these orders by Hitler, Field Marshal von Rundstedt thanked him for his hard but just criticism and promised in the name of all generals present to take Hitler’s instructions to heart and to do his utmost in the coming battles.

Two days before, the XIV. SS Corps received orders to attack and form the bridgehead on 5 January 1945. Choice of the terrain of attack and the time left to me. Only the following were given to me in addition by the Army Group: an assault gun battalion, an anti-tank battalion, and material for the construction of one heavy and two light ferries. I had to organize the other attack groups from my improvised formations, including the 9th Volksgrenadier Division which had only been reconstituted up to forty per cent.

Considering the strained overall situation, however, the equipment of my unit with weapons, ammunition, motor vehicles and also with motor fuel could still be designated as being satisfactory. This had been achieved less by regular supply on the part of the Army Group than by meticulously picking up of all irregular reserves in the form of isolated troops and supply formations from the collapsed Alsace-Lorraine front, who had quartered independently in my sector.

My work of building up was very much facilitated in this case by the endeavors, which had become more and more pronounced during the whole war, of all formations to hoard their own “black” material and even personnel reserves, as they could rely less and less on the legal means of supply; in the end it was only success that counted and after a success nobody asked how the unit had been able to reorganize itself again so quickly for action. The formations concerned seldom ventured to complain of a confiscation as they were convinced themselves of the illegality of their “black” stocks.

As an assembly area, the XIV. SS Corps decided on the region between Freistett and Lichtenau. The bridgehead was to be in the area of Drusenheim, Offendorf and Gambsheim. I had chosen this region because the bank of the Rhine on this side was wooded and thus, by providing camouflage for the assembly position and above all for the construction of ferries, offered the possibility of surprise even in face of the strong enemy air reconnaissance; the western bank of the Rhine was especially favorable for the first critical days in the creation of the bridgehead, because here the wooded area was, in addition, traversed by a number of creeks to the Rhine. This seemed to me the removal of any danger of the bridgehead being destroyed by the enemy tank attack which was to be expected immediately, before a sufficient number of armor-piercing weapons had crossed. The two ferries were my most vulnerable spots in face of the enemy air superiority. Therefore, in the first few days, only the hours of darkness and in the early morning mist it would be suitable to operate the ferries.

For reasons of security I had the rumor spread among the population by alleged quartering of officers, that the “Volkssturm” would soon be relieved by GHQ troops in the line of concrete fortifications. The ferry construction took place only at night, the assembly areas were not occupied until the last night.

The corps command post was transferred forward to Memprechtshofen, the command post of the 9th Volksgrenadier Division to Scherzheim.

A special combat team was formed under the command of Captain of Armored Troops von Lüttichau, and an infantry battalion and an anti-tank battalion were subordinated to him in addition to his assault gun battalion. This combat team particularly was to bear the main weight of all attacks. The assembled two improvised infantry regiments were to be committed, according to their fighting qualities, only for the defense of the bridgehead.

The attack took place in the earliest morning twilight. The infantry battalion von Lüttichau and an infantry regiment crossed over in assault boats. After firing a few shots the enemy sentries retired immediately into the nearest villages and alerted the single American tanks standing there. These at once started counterattacking in small groups but they soon stuck fast among the mass of water-filled ditches. As we succeeded before it became real light, in ferrying across an 8.8-cm anti-aircraft artillery battalion and an anti-tank company, the small bridgehead was secured for the first twenty-four hours.

Simultaneously, with this main attack, a combat team composed only of an improvised infantry regiment and “Volkssturm” without heavy weapons under Colonel von Witzleben had, in order to create a diversion, started an attack in assault boats from the area of Hügelsheim against Fort Louis and Neuhausel. I had given Colonel von Witzleben a free hand to evacuate the enemy bank again immediately in case the enemy should counterattack. Surprisingly enough, the troops in Beinheim, Neuhausel, Fort Louis and Stattmatten, consisting only of French infantry, evacuated these places after a short engagement giving the impression that these villages in the outpost area of the Maginot Line had been occupied only by French rebels.

I ordered Colonel von Witzleben to prepare the occupied localities for defense, to resist weaker attacks and to send reconnaissance patrols forward towards the Maginot Line.

In the main bridgehead the combat team of von Lüttichau succeeded within the first five days in occupying the villages of Herrlisheim, Ottendorf and Gambsheim against strong enemy resistance and thereby decisively enlarged the bridgehead.

In the next few days the villages did change hands again many times, as our infantry’s morale could not stand up to the American tank attacks. Our infantry losses were considerable, especially in prisoners, but von Lüttichau’s combat team always succeeded in recapturing the villages again.

The combat team took several hundred prisoners and was able to report in the first few days the disabling of twenty-two enemy tanks; altogether, during the first three weeks, the disabling of forty-eight enemy tanks.

As the enemy resistance in this main bridgehead was obviously stiffening, reconnaissance by the northern combat team of von Witzleben showed that there the American forces were only just beginning in the occupation of the Maginot Line and the relief of the French forces. I proposed in higher headquarters that we should take the fortifications of the Maginot Line west of Fort Louis, by bringing up a strong combat formation and thus gain the Maxau–Maximilian­sau–Lauterbourg–Seltz–Drusenheim road as a supply route on the western bank, to relieve the inadequacy of the ferrying operations.

My proposal was accepted, and the 10th Parachute Division was added to the XIV. SS Corps.

The newly activated 10th Parachute Division, under the command of Generalmajor Schulz, was inspired with an offensive spirit which was seldom still to be found in the year of 1944.

Its aggressive spirit was ample compensation for its lack of combat experience. With hard fighting, the villages of Roppenheim, Röschwoog, Aünheim and Dalhunden were taken, and the Maginot Line was thus pierced.

These successes induced the higher command to put the SS armored division “Frundsberg” under the command of SS-Brigadeführer Harmel into the bridgehead of Herrlisheim–Gambsheim, by the road now cleared from Lauterbourg via Seltz, then on the Rhine dam east of Drusenheim.

While the SS panzer division prepared for the attack against Bischwiller, Kurtzenhausen und Weyersheim, the 10th Parachute Division took Forstfeld, Kauffenheim, Leutenheim and Soufflenheim in a speeding advance, took several hundred American prisoners, among them a battalion staff and an American colonel and finally in combined action with the 9th Volksgrenadier Division, captured the strong point Drusenheim, stubbornly defended by American tanks, in house-to-house fighting at night.

This was the situation when I was ordered to the east with my corps headquarters staff, to take over the X. SS Corps in Pomerania.

General der Panzertruppen Decker took over my formation on the Upper Rhine. I was finally relieved by him on 25 January 1945.

Obergruppenführer der Waffen-SS und General der Polizei Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski, 1943. In December 1944 he became commander of the XIV SS Corps in the Baden-Baden region and between 26 January and 10 February 1945 of the X SS Corps in Pomerania, where his unit was annihilated after less than two weeks. He then commanded from 17 February 1945, the Oder Corps under Army Group Vistula. After the war in Europe ended, Bach-Zelewski went into hiding and tried to leave the country. US military police arrested him on 1 August 1945.

 

General der Panzertruppen Hermann Balck, 1943. In September 1944 Balck was transferred from 4th Panzer Army in Poland to the Western Front to command Army Group G in relief of General Johannes Blaskowitz in the Alsace region of France. Balck was unable to stop the Allied advance under General George S. Patton, and in late December he was relieved of command of Army Group G and placed in the officer reserve pool. By the intervention of General Heinz Guderian he was transferred to command the reconstituted 6th Army in Hungary, which also had operational control of two Hungarian armies. Balck's unit surrendered to the U.S. XX Corps in Austria on 8 May 1945.

General der Panzertruppe Karl Decker. Decker was appointed commander of the XXXIX Panzer Corps that was attached to the 3rd Panzer Army and promoted to General der Panzertruppe on 1 January 1945. After his unit was relocated to the Western Front, his corps fought the Americans at Uelzen and in the Alsace. Here the 5th Panzer Army was subordinated to Army Group B. Decker committed suicide on 21 April 1945 after the defeat and encirclement of the Army Group in the Ruhr Pocket in April.

SS-Gruppenführer Heinz Reinefarth. In November 1944, Reinefarth was given command over the XIV SS Corps on the Upper-Rhine and in December 1944 over the XVIII SS Corps in the central Oder river area. Between January and March 1945, he commanded the defence of "Festung Küstrin" (Kostrzyn nad Odrą). He declined to defend it to the last man and Hitler found fault with the way he withdrew his troops. Himmler, acting on Hitler's order, had Reinefarth arrested at the end of March 1945. Later he was sentenced to death by a military court. However, the sentence was not carried out, and he continued to command those of his troops that managed to leave the fortress. He moved his troops to the west and surrendered to the British.