For most of the men the first few hours of the journey were spent quietly. Many grew introspective and talked of things men usually keep to themselves. Hundreds later recalled that they found themselves admitting their fears and talking of other personal matters with unusual candor. They drew closer to one another on this strange night and confided in men they had never even met before. “We talked a lot about home and what we had experienced in the past and what we would experience at the landing and what it would all be like,” Private First Class Earlston Hern of the 146th Engineer Battalion recalls. On the slippery wet deck of his landing craft, Hern and a medic whose name he never learned had such a conversation. “The medic was having trouble at home. His wife, a model, wanted a divorce. He was a pretty worried guy. He said she’d have to wait until he got home. I remember, too, that the whole time we were talking there was a young kid nearby singing softly to himself. This kid made the remark that he could sing better than he ever had in the past and it really seemed to please him.”
Aboard H.M.S. Empire Anvil, Corporal Michael Kurtz of the U.S. 1st Division, a veteran of the invasions of North Africa, Sicily and Italy, was approached by a new replacement, Private Joseph Steinber of Wisconsin.
“Corporal,” said Steinber, “do you honestly think we’ve got a chance?”
“Hell, yes, boy,” said Kurtz. “Don’t ever worry about getting killed. In this outfit we worry about battles when we get to them.”
Sergeant Bill “L-Rod” Petty of the 2nd Ranger Battalion was doing his worrying now. With his friend, Private First Class Bill McHugh, Petty sat on the deck of the old Channel steamer Isle of Man watching the darkness close in. Petty took cold comfort from the long lines of ships all about them; his mind was on the cliffs at Pointe du Hoc. Turning to McHugh, he said, “We haven’t got a hope in hell of coming out of this alive.”
“You’re just a goddam pessimist,” said McHugh.
“Maybe,” replied Petty, “but only one of us will make it, Mac.”
McHugh was unimpressed. “When you gotta go, you gotta go,” he said.
Some men tried to read. Corporal Alan Bodet of the 1st Division began Kings Row by Henry Bellamann, but he found it difficult to concentrate because he was worrying about his jeep. Would the waterproofing hold out when he drove it into three or four feet of water? Gunner Arthur Henry Boon of the Canadian 3rd Division, on board a landing craft loaded with tanks, tried to get through a pocket book intriguingly titled A Maid and a Million Men. Chaplain Lawrence E. Deery of the 1st Division on the transport H.M.S. Empire Anvil was amazed to see a British naval officer reading Horace’s odes in Latin. But Deery himself, who would land on Omaha Beach in the first wave with the 16th Infantry Regiment, spent the evening reading Symond’s Life of Michelangelo. In another convoy, on a landing craft which was rolling so much that nearly everybody was seasick, Captain James Douglas Gilan, another Canadian, brought out the one volume which made sense this night. To quiet his own nerves and those of a brother officer, he opened to the Twenty-third Psalm and read aloud, “The Lord is my Shepherd; I shall not want….”
It wasn’t all solemn. There was lightheartedness, too. Aboard the transport H.M.S. Ben Machree, some Rangers strung three-quarter-inch ropes from the masts to the decks and began climbing all over the ship, much to the astonishment of the British crew. On another ship, members of the Canadian 3rd Division held an amateur night with assorted recitations, jigs and reels and choral offerings. Sergeant James Percival “Paddy” de Lacy of the King’s Regiment became so emotional listening to the “Rose of Tralee” played on the bagpipes that he forgot where he was and stood up and offered a toast to Ireland’s Eamon de Valera for “keepin’ us out of the war.”
Many men who had spent hours worrying about their chances of survival now couldn’t wait to reach the beaches. The boat trip was proving more terrible than their worst fear of the Germans. Seasickness had struck through the fifty-nine convoys like a plague, especially in the rolling landing craft. Each man had been supplied with antiseasickness pills, plus an article of equipment which was listed in the loading sheets with typical Army thoroughness as “Bag, vomit, one.”
This was military efficiency at its best, but it still wasn’t enough. “The puke bags were full, tin hats were full, the fire buckets were emptied of sand and filled,” Technical Sergeant William James Wiedefeld of the 29th Division recalls. “The steel decks you couldn’t stand on, and everywhere you heard men say, ‘If they are going to kill us, get us out of these damn tubs.’” On some landing ships men were so ill that they threatened—possibly more for effect than in earnest—to throw themselves overboard. Private Gordon Laing of the Canadian 3rd Division found himself hanging on to a friend who “begged me to let go his belt.” A Royal Marine commando, Sergeant Russel John Wither, remembers that on his landing ship “the spew bags were soon used up and in the end only one was left.” It was passed from hand to hand.
Because of the seasickness, thousands of men lost the best meals they would see for many months to come. Special arrangements had been made to give all ships the finest food possible. The special menus, which the troops dubbed the “last meal,” varied from ship to ship, and appetities varied from man to man. On board the attack transport Charles Carroll, Captain Carroll B. Smith of the 29th Division had a steak with eggs on top, sunny side up, and then topped it off with ice cream and loganberries. Two hours later he was fighting for a position at the rail. Second Lieutenant Joseph Rosenblatt, Jr., of the 112th Engineer Battalion ate seven helpings of chicken à la king and felt fine. So did Sergeant Keith Bryan of the 5th Engineer Special Brigade. He put away sandwiches and coffee and was still hungry. One of his buddies “lifted” a gallon of fruit cocktail from the galley and four of them finished that.
Aboard the H.M.S. Prince Charles, Sergeant Avery J. Thornhill of the 5th Rangers avoided all discomforts. He took an overdose of seasick pills and slept through it all.
Despite the common miseries and fears of the men who were there some memories are etched with surprising clarity. Second Lieutenant Donald Anderson of the 29th Division remembers how the sun broke through about an hour before dark, silhouetting the entire fleet. In honor of Sergeant Tom Ryan of the 2nd Rangers, the men of F Company gathered around him and sang “Happy Birthday.” He was twenty-two. And for homesick nineteen-year-old Private Robert Marion Allen of the 1st Division it was “a night ready-made for a boat ride on the Mississippi.”
All over, throughout the ships of the fleet, the men who would make history at dawn settled down to get what rest they could. As Commander Philippe Kieffer of the lone French commando unit rolled himself into his blankets aboard his landing ship, there came to his mind the prayer of Sir Jacob Astley at the battle of Edgehill in England in 1642. “O Lord,” prayed Kieffer, “Thou knowest how busy I must be this day. If I forget Thee, do not Thou forget me …” He drew up the blankets and was almost immediately asleep.
It was a little after 10:15 P.M. when Lieutenant Colonel Meyer, counterintelligence chief of the German Fifteenth Army, rushed out of his office. In his hand was probably the most important message the Germans had intercepted throughout the whole of World War II. Meyer now knew that the invasion would take place within forty-eight hours. With this information the Allies could be thrown back into the sea. The message picked up from a BBC broadcast to the French underground was the second line of the Verlaine poem: “Blessent mon coeur d’une longueur monotone [Wound my heart with a monotonous languor].”
Meyer burst into the dining room where General Hans Von Salmuth, the Fifteenth Army’s commanding officer, was playing bridge with his chief of staff and two others. “General!” Meyer said breathlessly. “The message, the second part—it’s here!”
Von Salmuth thought a moment, then gave the order to put the Fifteenth Army on full alert. As Meyer hurried out of the room, Von Salmuth was again looking at his bridge hand. “I’m too old a bunny,” Von Salmuth recalls saying, “to get too excited about this.”
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Back in his office, Meyer and his staff immediately notified OB West, Von Rundstedt’s headquarters, by telephone. They in turn alerted OKW, Hitler’s headquarters. Simultaneously all other commands were informed by teletype.
Once again, for reasons that have never been explained satisfactorily, the Seventh Army was not notified.* It would take the Allied fleet a little more than four hours now to reach the transport areas off the five Normandy beaches; within three hours eighteen thousand paratroopers would drop over the darkening fields and hedgerows—into the zone of the one German army never alerted to D Day.
Private Arthur B. “Dutch” Schultz of the 82nd Airborne Division was ready. Like everybody else on the airfield, he was in his jump suit, a parachute hanging over his right arm. His face was blackened with charcoal; his head, in the crazy style affected by paratroopers everywhere this night, was shaven Iroquois fashion, with a narrow tuft of hair running back the center of his scalp. All around him was his gear; he was ready in every respect. Of the $2,500 he had won a few hours before he now had just $20 left.
Now the men waited for the trucks to carry them to the planes. Private Gerald Columbi, one of Dutch’s friends, broke away from a small crap game that was still going and came running up. “Lend me twenty bucks quick!” he said.
“What for?” asked Schultz. “You might get killed.”
“I’ll let you have this,” said Columbi, undoing his wristwatch.
“Okay,” said Dutch, handing over his last $20.
Columbi ran back to the game. Dutch looked at the watch; it was a gold Bulova graduation model with Columbi’s name and an inscription from his parents on the back. Just then someone yelled, “Okay, here we go.”
Dutch picked up his gear and with the other paratroopers left the hangar. As he climbed aboard a truck he passed Columbi. “Here,” he said, as he gave him back the watch, “I don’t need two of them.” Now all Dutch had left were the rosary beads his mother had sent him. He had decided to take them after all. The trucks moved across the airfield toward the waiting planes.
All over England the Allied airborne armies boarded their planes and gliders. The planes carrying the pathfinders, the men who would light the dropping zones for the airborne troops, had already left. At the 101st Airborne Division’s headquarters at Newbury, the Supreme Commander, General Dwight D. Eisenhower, with a small group of officers and four correspondents, watched the first planes get into position for take-off. He had spent more than an hour talking to the men. He was more worried about the airborne operation than about any other phase of the assault. Some of his commanders were convinced that the airborne assault might produce more than eighty percent casualties.
Eisenhower had said goodbye to the 101st’s commanding officer, Major General Maxwell D. Taylor, who was leading his men into battle. Taylor had walked away carrying himself very straight and stiff. He didn’t want the Supreme Commander to know that he had torn a ligament in his right knee that afternoon playing squash. Eisenhower might have refused him permission to go.
Now Eisenhower stood watching as the planes trundled down the runways and lifted slowly into the air. One by one they followed each other into the darkness. Above the field, they circled as they assembled into formation. Eisenhower, his hands deep in his pockets, gazed up into the night sky. As the huge formation of planes roared one last time over the field and headed toward France, NBC’s Red Mueller looked at the Supreme Commander. Eisenhower’s eyes were filled with tears.
Minutes later, in the Channel, the men of the invasion fleet heard the roar of the planes. It grew louder by the second, and then wave after wave passed overhead. The formation took a long time to pass. Then the thunder of their engines began to fade. On the bridge of the U.S.S. Herndon, Lieutenant Bartow Farr, the watch officers and NEA’s war correspondent, Tom Wolf, gazed up into the darkness. Nobody could say a word. And then as the last formation flew over, an amber light blinked down through the clouds on the fleet below. Slowly it flashed out in Morse code three dots and a dash: V for Victory.
*There is considerable controversy as to the exact number of ships in the invasion fleet, but the most accurate military works on D Day—Gordon Harrison’s Cross-Channel Attack (the official U.S. Army military history) and Admiral Samuel Eliot Morison’s naval history Invasion of France & Germany—both agree on a figure of about five thousand. This includes the landing craft which were carried on board. Operation Neptune by the Royal Navy’s Commander Kenneth Edwards gives a lower figure of around 4,500.
*All times in this book are given in British Double Summer Time, which was one hour later than German Central Time. So to Meyer the time his men intercepted the message was 9:15 P.M. Just for the record, the Fifteenth Army War Diary carries the exact teletype message that was sent out to the various commands. It reads: “Teletype No. 2117/26 urgent to 67th, 81st, 82nd, 89th Corps; Military Governor Belgium and Northern France; Army Group B; 16th Flak Division; Admiral Channel Coast; Luftwaffe Belgium and Northern France. Message of BBC, 2115, June 5 has been processed. According to our available records it means ‘Expect invasion within 48 hours, starting 0000, June 6’”
It will be noted that neither the Seventh Army nor its 84th Corps is included in the above list. It was not Meyer’s job to notify these. The responsibility lay with Rommel’s headquarters, as these units came under Army Group B. However, the biggest mystery of all is why OB West, Rundstedt’s headquarters, failed to alert the whole invasion front from Holland to the Spanish border. The mystery is further compounded by the fact that at war’s end the Germans claimed that at least fifteen messages pertaining to D Day were intercepted and correctly interpreted. The Verlaine messages are the only ones I found entered in the German war diaries.
PART TWO
THE NIGHT
1
MOONLIGHT FLOODED THE bedroom. Madame Angèle Levrault, sixty-year-old schoolmistress in Ste. Mère-Église, slowly opened her eyes. On the wall opposite her bed bunches of red and white lights were flickering silently. Madame Levrault sat bolt upright and stared. The winking lights seemed to be slowly dripping down the wall.
As full consciousness came to her, the old lady realized she was looking at reflections in the large mirror on her dressing table. At that moment, too, she heard off in the distance the low throbbing of planes, the muffled booming of explosions and the sharp staccato of quick-firing flak batteries. Quickly she went to the window.
Far up the coast, hanging eerily in the sky, were brilliant clusters of flares. A red glow tinged the clouds. In the distance there were bright-pink explosions and streams of orange, green, yellow and white tracer bullets. To Madame Levrault it looked as if Cherbourg, twenty-seven miles away, was being bombed again. She was glad she lived in quiet little Ste.-Mère-Église this night.
The schoolmistress put on her shoes and a dressing gown and headed through the kitchen and out the back door, bound for the outhouse. In the garden everything was peaceful. The flares and the moonlight made it seem bright as day. The neighboring fields with their hedgerows were still and quiet, filled with long shadows.
She had taken only a few steps when she heard the sound of airplanes growing louder, heading for the town. Suddenly every flak battery in the district began firing. Madame Levrault, frightened, rushed wildly for the protection of a tree. The planes came in fast and low, accompanied by a thunderous barrage of antiaircraft fire, and she was momentarily deafened by the din. Almost immediately the roar of the engines faded, the firing ceased and, as though nothing had happened, there was silence again.
It was then that she heard a strange fluttering sound from somewhere above her. She looked up. Floating down, heading straight for the garden, was a parachute with something bulky swinging beneath it. For a second the light of the moon was cut off, and at that moment Private Robert M. Murphy*of the 82nd Airborne’s 505th Regiment, a pathfinder, fell with a thud twenty yards away and tumbled head over heels into the garden. Madame Levrault stood petrified.
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nbsp; Quickly the eighteen-year-old trooper whipped out a knife, cut himself loose from his chute, grabbed a large bag and stood up. Then he saw Madame Levrault. They stood looking at each other for a long moment. To the old Frenchwoman, the paratrooper looked weirdly frightening. He was tall and thin, his face was streaked with war paint, accentuating his cheekbones and nose. He seemed weighted down with weapons and equipment. Then, as the old lady watched in terror, unable to move, the strange apparition put a finger to his lips in a gesture of silence and swiftly disappeared. At that moment, Madame Levrault was galvanized to action. Grabbing up the skirts of her nightwear, she dashed madly for the house. What she had seen was one of the first Americans to land in Normandy. The time was 12:15 A.M., Tuesday, June 6. D Day had begun.
All over the area the pathfinders had jumped, some from only three hundred feet. The task of this advance guard of the invasion, a small, courageous group of volunteers, was to mark “drop zones” in a fifty-mile-square area of the Cherbourg peninsula back of Utah Beach for the 82nd and 101st paratroopers and gliders. They had been trained in a special school set up by Brigadier General James M. “Jumpin’ Jim” Gavin. “When you land in Normandy,” he had told them, “you will have only one friend: God.” At all costs they were to avoid trouble. Their vital mission depended on speed and stealth.