D-Day Read online

  Meanwhile, Fortitude North aimed to deceive the Germans that a joint Anglo-Soviet invasion would land at Trondheim on the coast of Norway. Another fake army was established, the British Fourth Army, based in Edinburgh, and false information fed to the Germans by two Norwegian double agents, codenamed Mutt and Jeff (although the British later had their doubts about ‘Mutt’ and subsequently interned him). Indeed, at the launch of Overlord, some 400,000 German troops were, in the event, needlessly stationed at the ready on the coast of Norway. Other plans aimed at deceiving the Germans included false attacks via Spain, the west coast of France, the west coast of Italy, plus Albania, Greece, Romania and Sweden. The deception worked: far fewer Germans were stationed at the beaches because Hitler had them posted across north-west Europe, while German troops bet each other on where the invasion would land.

  Operation Fortitude’s second objective, following D-Day, was to persuade the Germans that the invasion of Normandy was but a feint, and that the main Allied landings were still to come in the Pas-de-Calais. By the time the Germans fully realized that they had been deceived, it would be too late.

  In late June 1943, COSSAC’s draft plans for the invasion were presented to a conference held in Scotland, chaired by Mountbatten. Having received Mountbatten’s approval, and confirmation that Normandy was indeed the preferred point of invasion, the plans were then presented to Churchill and Roosevelt, and the Canadian prime minister, William Mackenzie King, at the Quadrant Conference held in Quebec that August. It was here that the Allies prioritized the defeat of Germany over that of Japan, and set the date of 1 May 1944 for ‘D-Day’. (The term ‘D-Day’ was a commonly used term during the war signalling the planned day of attack. The ‘D’ merely stood for Day. The hour of attack was similarly termed ‘H-Hour’, the ‘H’ standing for Hour.)

  Italy

  It was also at the Quadrant Conference that the Allied leaders decided to invade mainland Italy within the month. Allied troops had landed on the island of Sicily the previous month, on 10 July, where they had enjoyed an ecstatic welcome from the islanders. On 25 July, the Italian fascist dictator, Benito Mussolini, had been ousted from power and had since been held in captivity by the new Italian government. By mid-August, German forces had withdrawn from Sicily by crossing over the narrow Strait of Messina on to the Italian mainland. On 3 September, the Allies invaded. Five days later, Italy surrendered and swapped sides to join the Allies.

  The first of the so-called ‘Big Three’ conferences, the big three being Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin, was held in Tehran, 28 November to 1 December 1943. It was at Tehran that Stalin agreed, on the condition that the second front would be opened by May 1944, to launch a counteroffensive against Germany from the east, and, once Germany had been defeated, to join the Allied war against Japan.

  Meanwhile, in Britain, preparations and intense training ahead of D-Day had begun in earnest.

  EISENHOWER

  Dwight D. Eisenhower and Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Tedder.

  With three-quarters of the ground forces being American, it was inevitable that the overall commander of Operation Overlord was, likewise, going to be an American. Sure enough, in December 1943, the command structure for Operation Overlord was decided: the Supreme Commander was to be a Texan, General Dwight D. Eisenhower, with a Scotsman, Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Tedder, his deputy. In charge of ground forces, both US and British, was to be General Sir Bernard Montgomery, Britain’s hero of El Alamein. They were to be joined by Admiral Sir Bertram Ramsay and Air Chief Marshal Sir Trafford Leigh-Mallory, commanding the naval (Operation Neptune) and air divisions respectively. (Four years earlier, Ramsay had made his name by overseeing the mass evacuation of 330,000 soldiers stranded at Dunkirk. Both men, Ramsay and Leigh-Mallory, would die in plane accidents before the war’s end.)

  The following month, Eisenhower set up his headquarters first in London’s Grosvenor Square, then, from March 1944, in Bushy Park, near Hampton Court. His team, the Supreme Headquarters of the Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF), replaced COSSAC as the driving force planning the invasion of occupied Europe. Montgomery expanded Morgan’s three-beach proposal on the Cotentin Peninsula to five, and extended the target area from thirty to fifty miles, with airborne attacks on both the western and eastern flanks. The Americans would land on the two western beaches, codenamed Utah and Omaha, while the British would attack via the middle and eastern beaches, codenamed Gold and Sword, and between these two, the Canadians would land at Juno. The town of Caen, Montgomery decided, needed to be captured within the first twenty-four hours, followed swiftly by Cherbourg. (In the event, it would take Anglo-Canadian forces until 9 July to capture Caen.)

  The expansion of Morgan’s original plan entailed greater numbers of landing craft, ships and, vitally, troops; hence, to have more time to prepare, the launch date was pushed back first to 1 June, then, from mid-May, to 5 June 1944. War production went into overdrive in an effort to meet SHAEF’s demands in time.

  On Christmas Eve 1943, President Roosevelt broadcast one of his ‘fireside chats’, in which he said, ‘The war is now reaching the stage where we shall all have to look forward to large casualty lists – dead, wounded and missing. War entails just that. There is no easy road to victory. And the end is not yet in sight.’

  By the spring of 1944, over 2 million troops had amassed across southern England – thirty-nine divisions, of which twenty divisions were American, fourteen British, three Canadian, one Polish and one French. Among these divisions were troops from Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Belgium, Norway, the Netherlands, Czechoslovakia, Rhodesia, Denmark and India.

  THE ATLANTIC WALL

  Artillery position, part of the Atlantic Wall (Photo: Bundesarchiv, Bild 101I-263-1583-35 / Valtingojer / CC-BY-SA)

  Hitler knew an invasion would at some point materialize. On 23 March 1942, in his Führer Directive No. 40, he declared, ‘In the days to come the coasts of Europe will be seriously exposed to the danger of enemy landings.’ Appointing 66-year-old Field Marshal Karl Gerd von Rundstedt in command, he ordered the building of a defensive perimeter known as the Atlantic Wall. Employing 2 million labourers from across Nazi-controlled Europe, many of them slave workers, construction began on a line of fortifications that, once completed, spread 2,800 miles along the coast of the whole of Western Europe – from the northern tip of Norway, along the coasts of Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium, along France’s Channel and Atlantic coasts down to the border of neutral Spain in the south. Consisting of some 700 concrete gun batteries and 12,250 fortified bunkers at intervals rarely more than a hundred yards, it was guarded round-the-clock by 300,000 troops. These troops were far from Hitler’s crack troops, but were, instead, often made up of the oldest and youngest men and POWs captured on the Eastern Front and forced into working for the Germans.

  In February 1944, Hitler appointed one of his ablest generals, Erwin Rommel, to oversee the defence of France. Rommel, who had gained fame during Germany’s defeat of France four years earlier and in North Africa where he earned the sobriquet ‘the Desert Fox’, believed that to prevent the Allies from securing a presence on continental Europe, they had to be contained on the beaches and driven back to the sea within ‘the first twenty-four hours’. Declaring the French section of the Atlantic Wall to be inadequate, Rommel ordered the immediate bolstering of defences, with the laying of mines both on the beaches, in places up to a thousand mines deep, and inland, eventually numbering some 6 million, and the installation of obstacles underwater, such as lethal metal spikes. In April 1944, on Rommel’s orders, the Germans planted huge numbers of wooden poles, fourteen to sixteen feet long, sticking out of the ground in fields behind the beaches to disrupt and damage potential Allied paratroopers or gliders. The poles, nicknamed ‘Rommel’s asparagus’, were linked by wire and often armed with a mine.

  Rommel also wished to have all nine German panzer divisions available in northern France near the beaches to help repulse any invas
ion. His superior, Rundstedt, wanted the tanks positioned north of Paris, out of reach of Allied firepower, from where they could be moved as required at short notice. Rommel argued that Allied air superiority would simply destroy the panzers once they tried to move into position. Refereeing this battle of wills, Hitler compromised and allocated three divisions to Rommel, and the rest to Rundstedt.

  Several ports along the Channel and Atlantic coasts were re-fortified and designated fortress status, with Hitler personally advising on their design. Each fortress was assigned a commandant, who, on promising to fight to the end, swore an oath of allegiance.

  French civilians were ordered to hand in their radios. Anyone caught listening to the BBC faced harsh consequences. In England, as D-Day loomed ever closer, security was also stepped up. Civilians were banned from visiting areas along the English Channel and North Sea. Europe-bound letters were censored and subject to prolonged delays between posting and delivery.

  BOMBING

  Bomber Command: a Bristol Blenheim in action.

  Meanwhile, as initially discussed at Casablanca five months earlier, from June 1943, the Allies had launched Operation Pointblank, the strategic saturation bombing of Germany by American bombers by day and British bombers by night. The destruction of strategic strongpoints in Germany and the undermining of German resolve were seen as prerequisites to the invasion.

  Towards the end of March 1944, Eisenhower faced a major disagreement on how Allied aerial strategy should be prioritized. The commanders of the Bomber Command campaign, Britain’s Arthur Harris and his American counterpart, Carl Spaatz, urged the continuation of Operation Pointblank. ‘Bomber’ Harris believed that he could win the war with his Lancaster bombers, rendering an invasion of occupied France unnecessary. Trafford Leigh-Mallory, commander of Operation Overlord’s air divisions, insisted the priority should be the strategic bombing of German transport facilities in France, an operation codenamed the ‘Transportation Plan’ that had commenced earlier in the month. At a crisis meeting held on 25 March, Eisenhower found in favour of the latter.

  The ‘Transportation Plan’ paid great dividends over the coming months leading up to the invasion. Over 200,000 sorties destroyed or damaged points of German military value, including railway lines and depots, bridges (all bridges across the rivers Seine and Loire were destroyed), power stations, radar stations, etc., disrupting defensive preparations. Almost 2,000 Allied planes were brought down and 12,000 Allied airmen lost their lives, but their efforts greatly helped hinder the German response on 6 June and beyond.

  But, as well as the crewmen lost, there was another heavy price – some 15,000 French and Belgian civilians were killed and almost 20,000 wounded during these air raids. Churchill questioned the legitimacy of causing such heavy fatalities on the very people the Allies were hoping to liberate. His air chiefs disagreed, arguing it was a price worth paying and that without their work, the number of Overlord casualties risked being far higher. Not convinced, Churchill took the issue to Roosevelt. The president, while regretting the ‘attendant loss of civilian life’, ordered a continuation of the raids.

  On 21 May, the Allies launched Operation Chattanooga Choo-Choo, a sustained bombing campaign against German trains and rolling stock in northern Europe, the object being to diminish Germany’s capacity to reinforce their armies once Operation Overlord had been launched. Such was the success of Chattanooga Choo-Choo, the German command was forced to immediately repair the extensive damage inflicted on its railway network, employing slave labour and POWs.

  The French resistance played a vital role in the lead-up to D-Day, carrying out constant acts of sabotage against the fabric of German occupation and the French collaborationist government and its police force, the Milice. The risk of capture or denunciation was high, with the invariable result of intensive questioning and torture at the hands of the Gestapo.

  TRAINING

  As D-Day approached, training intensified. Troops were told only what they needed to know; they certainly had no idea about when or where they’d be going into action. Troops trained embarking and disembarking from landing craft. (The flat-bottomed Landing Craft, Assault vessels (LCA) weighed ten tons each, could carry thirty-eight men and travel up to ten knots per hour, while the much larger Landing Ship, Tank (LST) carried 300 men and sixty tanks. Both vessels could sail right on to a beach.)

  US troops in training for the Normandy landings.

  It was at one such training exercise, one that involved the use of live ammunition, that tragedy struck. Twenty-three thousand American troops, the entire invading force of Utah beach, and 300 vessels were rehearsing on Slapton Sands in south Devon on 27 and 28 April 1944 in an exercise codenamed Tiger. It was designed to acclimatize troops as accurately as possible to what they could expect at Utah during the real thing, right down to a number of pretend dead bodies strewn around. Six villages in the area had seen the evacuation of their 3,000 inhabitants. They’d been told they would one day be allowed back. But when, no one knew. Thirty thousand acres of land around Slapton Sands, chosen because of its similarities to the intended target area of Utah beach, had been sealed off with barbed wire and sentries. On the 27th, during Exercise Tiger, poor communication resulted in a number of troops being fired upon by their own ships.

  The following day, even greater casualties occurred when a patrol of nine German torpedo boats bumped into a convoy of American landing craft, LSTs, quite by accident. The convoy was being escorted by a British corvette (a small warship specifically designed for escort duties) but the main escort, a destroyer, had been involved in a collision the day before and was temporarily out of action while receiving repairs. At 01.30, the German patrol began firing on the LSTs. Some of the American soldiers mistook the German attack for part of the exercise. Many troops aboard LSTs drowned, having not been instructed on how to fasten their inflatable life jackets and laden down in full battle dress. Fuel caught fire and many men suffered terrible burns. Between the two events, 946 servicemen were killed and some 200 wounded (a greater number of casualties than suffered on the actual attack on Utah beach).

  The tragedy of Exercise Tiger was kept hidden, the dead swiftly buried, and survivors sworn to secrecy, lest it should damage morale. Doctors, treating the wounded, were to ask no questions. The extent of the disaster was not fully known until the 1970s. Ten of those declared missing, presumably dead, were of high enough rank to be carrying extremely secret instructions and plans. The commanders feared that some of these men might have been picked up by the Germans and taken prisoner. Had such a scenario manifested, the whole operation would have been in serious jeopardy. Much to all-round relief, divers accounted for all ten corpses.

  EVE OF THE INVASION

  1 June

  On Thursday, 1 June, Eisenhower moved his HQ to Southwick House, north of Portsmouth. Meetings were held twice a day. The intense work and preparations of the previous months had prepared the way. Now, everything depended on the one thing even Eisenhower couldn’t influence – the weather.

  Group Captain James Stagg.

  The weather played a huge part in the timing of the launch of Operation Overlord. In the days leading up to the invasion, Eisenhower received regular updates from his chief meteorologist officer, James Stagg, which included reports on tide movements and the position of the moon. The forecast was not good – the clement weather of late May was, according to Stagg, about to give way to a prolonged bout of rain, high winds and heavy cloud. The pressure on Stagg was immense, probably not helped by Frederick Morgan’s earlier quip, ‘Good luck, Stagg… but remember, we’ll string you up from the nearest lamppost if you don’t read the omens right.’ The longer the delay, the more time the Germans had to prepare, and the greater the opportunity of them learning more of Allied plans. The element of surprise was Eisenhower’s greatest weapon.

  Each branch of the armed services required specific conditions in order to launch a successful attack. The army needed a rising tide in the hour
s before dawn; the airborne forces needed clear moonlight, while the navy required calm waters. Meteorologists favoured the days of 5, 6 and 7 June. After that, the tides would change. The next period that would meet all conditions would fall on the five days starting 17 June.

  The Allies weren’t the only ones to assess June’s weather. The Germans believed that their enemy would need four consecutive days of fair weather before launching an invasion; thus the forecast ruled out early June – and, thanks to the British codebreakers, Eisenhower knew this. Indeed, the weather on 5 June was so foul, the Germans had to recall their Channel patrols. To add to the Germans’ disadvantage, the Allies controlled the Atlantic off Ireland; therefore the German forecasters had no access to emerging weather patterns coming in from the west and so, unlike Stagg, were not privy to the expected lull in poor weather.